Chapter 3: An Impromptu Hunting Session

Kazuki quickly pinched out the cigarette he was smoking and groaned in pain as the heat singed his fingers. The child that walked was a little boy no older than 4 with black fur only on his paws which he had for hands and feet and his medium-sized cat ears that peaked out of his messed up curly red hair.

"oh hey, kid" Kazuki shook his hand in pain.

The child walked closer to Kazuki waving his hand the same way or at least as best he could with his cat paws, as the kid walked up closer he noticed the big green cat eyes the child had. "Poppa? Why are you here? And what's that smell?" the kid covered his nose with his paws.

Kazuki didn't know whether it would crush a small cursed boy's hopes or not, but he chose not to react whenever referred to as "poppa" over visibly cringing in front of him.

"How bout a more interesting question, kiddo, why are you awake at 3 am?" Kazuki asked in a fatherly tone. "You should be in bed asleep." as he spoke he messed up the kid's hair.

"I'm hungry and I want to go hunt" the kid looked into Kazuki's eyes with his big cat eyes, which seared into Kazuki's soul, making him take cute damage.

"Aren't you too young to be hunting, kid?" Kazuki's stomach grumbled as he finished speaking.

As the Kid heard the sound of Kazuki's hunger, and his ears twitched with excitement "you're hungry too, let's go hunting!" he said loudly, making Tonpah grumble and flip around and a light turn on in a separate room.

"uh oh," they said simultaneously, as they heard the angry footsteps of the old nun from before. As the nun walked into the room they were in she was immediately assaulted by the scent of Kazuki's cigarettes and pulling the child aside.

"How dare you, I let you into this holy temple and you defile it by giving one of the children-"

"Do not dare accuse me of giving a child drugs" Kazuki angrily interrupted. "That's low even for a nun"

" Why are you people the way that you are, You're no different from the last abomination we let stay here, we should ban your kind from Liess altogether" she nagged.

"Why are you the way that you are?" Kazuki mocked "we should ban you abominations from liess altogether," he said in a silly voice making the child laugh, as he went into his jacket pocket to grab his cigarettes and lighting one in front of the nun, taking a hit and then blowing the smoke in her face.

"I'm the way that I am because of you, bitch." The cat child covered his mouth and oohed.

The sheer disrespect Kazuki showed her made her essentially become a weapon of mass cringe damage destruction, however, when she opened her mouth, Kuzuki shut her lips with his index and thumb.

"It's three AM lady, I'm pretty sure the last thing you need and want is for everyone in this small house to wake up?" He took another drag and exhaling through his nose, he then let go of her lips before kneeling and messing up the small child's hair. "poppa is gonna have to go now, see you around."

"get. out. now" she grunted through her grinding teeth.

Kazuki looked behind him to check on tompah only to be surprised by the fact that Tompah through all of the noise was still asleep.

Kazuki gets kicked out, Tompa is somehow still asleep, Kazuki goes out to hunt.

As Kazuki made his way out of the small church house his stomach started to grumble. He started to think that maybe the kid was right, hunting may be worthwhile.

Kazuki walked into the forest behind him where he took notice of his sorroundings. He looked to the trees above him to see if there were any branches he could hop onto all the while catching any fireflies that dared to shine their light around him with his tongue. He almost felt bad but they made it too easy for him to catch them even with his bad aim. Eventually he found a branch that he was able to hop on to that was around fifteen feet high. Kazuki got into position, and after 30 seconds of mental preparation, he leapt. He barely made it onto the branch, only getting the upper half of his body onto it and having to pull himself the rest of the way up.

Once atop the branch he sat and looked around for birds nests only to in turn be attacked by a bird, making him lose his balance and fall of the branch hitting the floor with a loud thud and getting the wind knocked out of him forcing him to loose consciousness.

Kill...

A Frog appeared to him in an empty dark room.

Kazuki immediately regained consciousness and balled himself up by a tree, croaking and shaking in fear. He wished he could ask Vaush what was happening to him, but that avenue was closed off to him. Kazuki took a deep breathe to calm down and pulled out his box of cigarettes and lit one, taking as many drags as he needed to, to no longer be on this plane of existence. As he enjoyed himself and finally calmed down he could hear the sound of a familiar voice in the distance.

"Kazuki!?"

He would've responded but when he went to put away his box he found that he had shed his skin during his fall and looking at his own shed made him hungry so he started eating it, using his tongue to grab the pieces of skin on the floor and munching on it like skin potato chips.

"Kazuki!?"

at least as much he could before Tompa was eventually able to find him.

"Kazuki?"

Kazuki looked up, having only finished half of the dead skin. "ye-yeah whats up buddy?"

Tonopah looked a little odd at Kazuki. "What are you eating?" he asked slowly.

Kazuki thought to himself wondering how he was supposed to answer that question. "I guess I'm eating myself?"

Tompah's head shook with confusion. "How do you eat yourself?"

Kazuki started laughing.

"Nevermind I hate you!" Tompah yelled, "You suck, man!"

"I'm so sorry man, but you walked yourself into that" he chuckled "It's just my skin dude, don't worry about it, anyway are you ready to go?" Also, do you want any?"

Tompah's body shook in utter disgust at the question "EWW! Why would I want any of your, frog skin?"

"I'm sorry for asking" Kazuki

"Alright then, lead the way" Kazuki insisted.

Tompa scratched his chin, "yeah ok but first I woke up on the floor outside the church, do you have any idea how?"

Kazuki sighed as his memory caught up to him. "Uhhhhhh, that might have been my fault," he said touching his fingers together. "I got kicked out for smoking, as to where I went, hunting, then I got lost for a little bit."

Tompah punched Kazuki on the shoulder, "smoking is for the outside dummy"

"yeah I know but I was down bad ok, can we just go?"

"Kazuki?"

Kazuki sighed "Tompah."

"Why are you down bad?"

Kazuki didn't know if he should answer the question and kind of tilted his head to the side in curiosity.

"why do you want to know?"

"what do you mean why we are traveling together so I wanna make sure my future bestie is gonna be ok for the trip" tompah sounded as if this was an extremely obvious answer.

"future bestie huh?" Kazuki made ribbet sounds as he laughed at the idea of having a bestie at this point in his living nightmare.

"yeah, future bestie, so tell me are you gonna be ok?"

"That depends, do you have a communication slate on you? I need to call someone."

"No, I don't, ill get one after I become a contractor."

Kazuki rolled his eyes and stood up "and you can't just exp-"

Tompah interrupted him "No I can't, but I can tell you contractors make good money."

Kazuki huffed in frustration. "Ok, I won't bring it up anymore, can we please get going?"

"Nuh-uh, you never really answered my question, and I'm not moving from this spot until you do" Tompah crossed his arms and stomped his foot on the ground.

Kazuki was surprised by how stubborn he was being but was already too far away from home to find his way back. "I had a really bad nightmare"

Tompah walked 5 steps forward before asking another question. "About what?"

"too horrible to say" Kazuki stammered

Tompah took another 5 steps and Kazuki sighed knowing he was going to hate this game. He then started to explain to Tompah what happened in his nightmare until the last part, at this point they were full-on walking towards their destination at least.

"Kazuki you might be right about being cursed" Tompah shuddered.

"Ya think so?" Kazuki mocked, I couldn't tell between the" he croaked "and the" he shot his tongue out to catch a random unassuming moth on a tree before swallowing it. "Regular humans don't do this Tompah"

Tompah smacked his hand on his head. "you're impossible, I mean your spirit is cursed"

Kazuki couldn't navigate the amount of confusion that he was experiencing so he asked one last thing. "Tompah, if I have a spirit where is it?"

Tompah started to pick his ear with his pinky "to be honest, wI dunno"

Kazuki started to sniffle out of pure frustration to try and guilt trip Tompah into giving him more information.

"This is why you shouldn't be asking me questions, if we pass the test I'm sure you'll get your answers"

Kazuki could've pulled his hair out at this point but now he had enough reasons to become a contractor his damn self. "Ok, you said you know where the location is right?"

"Yeah, I already know where it is" he opened the map and pointed to a circle he drew on the map "Can you read this place on the map for me?"

Kazuki got next to him and read the name of the town they had to go to "New Port, goddammit why'd it have to be there?"

"Well the location is always somewhere new, last time it was in loon, and then the time before it was in Massey and before-"

"Tompah how many times have you taken this exam?" Kazuki interrupted

Tompah avoided the question and started walking but couldn't whistle, as well as Kazuki, could. This made Kazuki ribbet with laughter.

"Ok fine, how long is it gonna take?" Kazuki made sure to walk close behind Tompah.

"about 3 days total, one to get to the station 2 to get to new port"

"OK then lead the way pal" Kazuki started smoking another one of his cigarettes as he spoke.

Tompah nodded his head and did just as Kazuki asked for the rest of the day they traveled walking along a path made by past travelers in the forest.

By the time Kazuki and Tompah arrived at the new town, the sky was dark and the town was mostly asleep. Tompah had exhausted every ounce of stamina he had and was being pushed into town by Kazuki whom he was leaning on.

"Tompah when I said to lead the way, this is NOT what I had in mind" Kazuki croaked somewhat frustrated. "Is this the reason you keep failing the test?"

Tompah teared up, no "I swear it's not" he cried as he tried to stand but only ended up putting more weight on Kazuki.

"God fucking dammit you're too thick for this!" he yelled as he dropped Tompah and rubbed his arms trying to recover from the soreness.

"Ow! Kazuki! are you just gonna leave me here all alone?" Tompah said making puppy eyes to

"No man, just lay there, I'm not strong enough to push you for more than an hour, the fact that we even got here is a miracle" Kazuki complained.

"But Kazuki" Tompah complained

"But NOTHING dude" Kazuki found a nearby tree and dragged Tompah under it while he hopped up on a branch about 10 feet high into the tree.

"No fair!" Tompah whined

"Yeah yeah yeah, I'm sure neither of us has the money for an inn even if we found one so we're sleeping here, don't worry ill take first watch"

Tompah huffed but didn't have the energy to complain anymore and swiftly fell asleep where he lay.