Far, far from the tanuki revelers and farther still from the Shinden resort’s gates, Kaze the weasel came in for a landing at the mouth of a large and ominous cave on the far side of Mount Henbou. Well, crash landing might be more appropriate; as a kamaitachi (the tribe of so-called ‘sickle weasel’ youkai from the high mountains of Japan), the weasel-man was instinctively capable of riding the rinds for long distances, but more subtle skills like ‘landing on your feet without falling on your ass’ were still being mastered by the young thief. After pulling himself out of a thorny bush and pulling a spider out of his fur, he trotted over toward the cave’s entrance and braced himself for what awaited him inside. Moss and vines had overgrown the entrance to the cave, disguising it from all but the most keen eyes, but Kaze knew exactly where to look as he pushed the vines to the side and slowly walked down, deep into the heart of the mountain. His steps were careful and apprehensive, dreading the tongue-lashing he was sure to receive once he reached the deepest reaches of the cavern.
“Master? I have news…” he called out nervously when he finally stepped into a large, round chamber, ringed on all sides by stone lanterns burning a sickly green flame. The weasel’s sensitive nose always burned whenever he came here, which was just one of dozens of reasons he avoided coming whenever possible. At the far side of the cave chamber, a hunched-over figure was shrouded in the shadows near a stone workbench, carefully crushing various minerals and herbs and mixing up noxious substances into jars and bottles with feverish focus.
“...The blade. Where is it, you overgrown ferret?” the figure hissed in a tone that made the weasel’s fur stand on end as he dropped his tools to the table. “I would smell it if you had it with you. Which means, you failed to acquire it?”
“N-no! I mean, yes, but mostly no,” Kaze stammered, taking a step back. “I mean, I stole it, honest! And I know where it is, all I need to do is go back and retrieve it again. It’s in a safe place, where Shinden’s leaders won’t-”
“Do. NOT. Say. That name!” the figure roared, his eyes glowing furiously like embers in the darkness and silencing Kaze’s explanation. After seething for a frighteningly long time, he settled himself before continuing. “...How long?”
“T-to bring it here? Not long at all! I mean, everyone there’s looking for me right now, so I might have to wait a couple days for the heat to die down, but-”
“Too long. Tonight,” the shadowed man growled. He slowly walked to a small wooden chest near his table and fished around inside, withdrawing a simple bronze ring and tossing it across the room to land at Kaze’s feet. “A disguise. Now, get moving…”
Kaze plucked the ring up and silently bowed to the figure as he backed away toward the entrance to the cave, and once the hunched man was certain that the kamaitachi was gone he dug deeper into his chest of trinkets before drawing out a small, glowing spherical gem and admiring its softly flickering light.
“Oh, you silly little fox… Thinking you could hide from me?” he murmured, letting his huge, black wings unfurl behind him. “These mountains belong to me and me alone. The shrines, the people, and most of all the ridiculous ‘resort’ you have sunk so much effort into…”
Chuckling softly to himself, the withered old tengu tucked the gemstone into a pouch at his belt before returning to his work, confident that his protege would arrive soon with the ornate dagger that he had left behind with Robin…
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Robin had spend over an hour running around Shinden trying to find Beau before finally coming to the conclusion that his friend had ventured out of the village without him. As he wandered the streets of the resort village and took in the sights, he noticed by now that plenty of other guests of the resort had begun to try out the transformation magics available for them to partake in, with numerous new kitsune getting used to their fluffy tails, tanuki cheerfully indulging in their instinctual love of good food and drink, and many others like the maneki-neko (or ‘lucky cats’), kawauso (the mischievous river otter), and mountain snow monkeys all joining in on the fun of being something other than regular humans for a while. Indeed, even after less than half a day at the resort, it was getting more and more difficult to spot an ordinary human wandering the village's roads, such was the enthusiasm the guests were having toward trying out different transformations. They all seemed to be in good spirits, letting their new bodies guide them toward exciting new experiences in this magical place…
And here Robin was, sourly wandering around and missing everything. One would think that his experience with the kamaitachi thief calling himself ‘Kaze’ and the mysterious knife he had been saddled with would have set him down the path of a great adventure, but his quest was stalling while he waited to get his friend’s opinion on how to handle things.
Or, maybe he was just secretly hoping that Kaze would make good on his promise to find him and retrieve the knife. Not because he’d be interested in meeting the peculiar weasel-man again, of course. Definitely not. It was just because he wanted to get that odd knife away from him so he wouldn’t have to think about it ever again…
“I really just need to turn it into the guards… It’s not my problem, right?” Robin sighed as he felt the surprisingly heavy weight of the stolen object in his pocket. As soon as he had touched it, he had noticed that for something that shouldn’t weight much more than a kitchen knife, it was remarkably weighty, but he wrote it off as being because it was just an ornamental piece meant more for display than to be used for self-defense.
As soon as he started to think about the dagger, his finger once again began to ache where he had cut it open. He flushed with embarrassment for doing something so careless, but luckily for him the cut had healed up rather quickly for such a deep slice, though it still tingled and got hot occasionally. As he pondered what to do next, he absentmindedly brought the finger to his mouth to suck on the cut to try to ease the ache, but as soon as he did he felt something soft touching his lips…
“The hell-!?” he sputtered, spitting to get the feeling of fur and hair off his tongue. Looking down at his hand, his eyes flew open when he saw what was going on; the entire finger that he had cut was covered in a thin coating of whitish-gold fur that was slowly spreading downward to the rest of his hand and growing in thicker by the second. Robin stared in amazement as the individual strands of golden fur pushed outward from his skin and past his wrist until they reached almost halfway up his forearm, with a longer ruff of fur around his wrist that almost looked like a cuff. He felt another rush of heat concentrating in the palms of his hand, and when he turned his hand over to look he saw the skin on his palm and the tips of his fingers thickening and darkening into soft pads, the shape of which was unmistakable; they were clearly the pads of a canine paw. This was made even more clear as Robin felt a tightness in the tips of each finger, and only seconds later the nails on each fingertip twisted and folded themselves into the shape of a sharpened claw, their color dulling and darkening to a nearly black color.
Just as quickly as it had begun, Robin’s left hand was now completely unrecognizable as human, and instead it was the spitting image of some sort of canine paw. He experimentally used his unchanged right hand to probe and prod at his new paw, marveling at the softness of its fur (his fur) and the sharpness of his claws. He could see why some of the other tourists seemed to enamored with the different bodies they had transformed into while at the resort; even with only his hand transformed, Robin already felt an intense strength growing inside him, odd instincts coming to the front of his mind, and a general sense of curiosity of what he could do if he continued to change even more. The scents of the resort’s village seemed stronger, and his nose picked up the alluring scent of fresh tofu from a small shop halfway up the mountain, and it took all his self-control not to dash straight there.
“No, get ahold of yourself, damn it,” he hissed under his breath, frantically stuffing his hand (or rather, paw) into one of his pockets to avoid any unusual stares from the other resort guests. If he had completely transformed, that would be easy to explain, but nobody else seemed to be changing one part at a time like this and it was bound to draw suspicion. In his pocket, his paw brushed over the smooth enamel of the dagger’s sheath, and he somehow knew that it was what was causing him to change like this.
And if that were the case, he suspected that Kaze the thieving weasel would know something about what was going on. Whatever the hell this dagger really was and what exactly it was trying to change him into were questions that the man who had tried to steal it would be able to answer easily. But what wouldn’t be easy would actually be finding the evasive little weasel…
Making up his mind, Robin decided to…