We Are Farmers...

[King of Cats]

It was early in the afternoon and Roku was feeling especially spry. The Blue Tailed Beast of Tea had slept off a long day of fun and drunken exploits. Fortunately for Roku he awoke with no hangover and nothing on his agenda, so the fisherman did what he did best and fished off his favorite bridge for some fresh grub. Roku only ate fish meat and he liked to harvest his own pickings. Roku was a hunter and he was a damn good one at that, of course Hideoyoshi at his side was certainly a great boon. Before ten am Roku had fished up a giant rock bass and he was fixing for a great lunch. Using his claws Roku gutted the fish right on the bridge and proceeded to find an appropriate place for a fire. Once he had done so roku roasted his catch over the campfire and ate up.

The shark skin was having a good day as he sat by his smoldering fire and chomped down on the fish, head and all. To his surprise a young samurai girl came running up to Roku. She was wearing a standard samurai outfit and Roku could tell just by the way she was walking that she was a messenger. The girl reported to Roku, having him sign a piece of paper before she explained what she was there for. The paper was for her team captain, to prove she talked with Roku. "Sir! I've come to report tha tyou have been requested for a certain duty today. Your mission will be in the rural Tanin district of Xingcha, just outside of the city to the west. There is a farmer that has requested help gathering acorns for his annual acorn brandy distillation." That was an important detail to the samurai of Heart, they drank a lot of Ranin's acorn brandy when they were on leave. "Help Ser Han aquire his goods." Roku gave the girl an informal smile and then gently saluted to her. He didn't say a word and she stood there for a moment before leaving. She was definitely waiting for something, but Roku was far too engaged in picked the fish bones out of his many pointed, dagger teeth.

When Roku had put his fire out he headed off with the Soldier of Fortune to the Tanin district. Roku didn't spend a lot of time in the rural outskirts of Xingcha and he didn't know what to expect but he was having a good day and could ot complain. He even found a missing pouch filled with ryo on the side of the road as he was walking away from the woodsy area he had built his fire in. "Hideoyoshi! I told you not to do that." Roku was smirking despite admonishing the spirit. Roku hated when Hideoyoshi used his powers for personal gain but the spirit loved to exert his influence over the world.

After a long four hour walk Roku made it to the destination he was looking for. On the dirt road he stood and looked at the farm house where his new boss was located. The distance from the road to the farmhouse was great and all around the property there were large acorn trees. Roku figured he would be using some tool to gather the acorns from the trees he saw, and walked over to the farmhouse to knock on the door.

[Zao]

The younger man's knocks would end up going unanswered, at least from inside the rugged looking farmhouse as a soft voice called over to him from the orchard of giant oak trees that filled as far as the eye could see, each being evenly spaced out to form long rows and columns of the broad leaf trees. That voice seemed to belong to slender looking man who was seated at the base of one tree, long unkept black hair fell down around his face and to a point just past his shoulders, his clothing almost looked like something a homeless man might where as it was simply looking cloth pants and a shirt, with no shoes on his feet that appeared to be a darker color but it could also just have been the dirt caked upon them from the life as a farm hand.

A pale skinned arm could be seen through the holes in the long sleeved, baggy black shirt as the hand itself was concealed with a work glove, but upon the man's arms were a multitude of tattoos and as he turned his face toward the direction of Roku, the blue skinned helper could see that the stranger's face was also covered in similar tattoo markings. "The old man had to run into town, but looks like you're here to help out?" It was a statement and a question towards the newcomer as the truly frail looking farmer slowly rose to his feet. "Ken." He spoke revealing just his name as the farm hand began to walk over to speak with the new help, "Nothing too hard about the job here, it's just rather time consuming."

Ken looked over his left shoulder, but as he turned his head it seemed to turn almost to far for a normal person's range of motion, but he quickly turned his attention back onto Roku after looking out at the numerous rows of large trees that made up this acorn farm, one of the largest of suppliers to the alcohol industry within this region. His left hand rose up and pointed to large carts that looked like they should be pulled by horses or similar animal labor, except there wasn't any animals in sight. " The acorns have already started to drop, so we just need to move quickly to insure they aren't left on the ground for too long. This leads to them drying up and also allows a chance for the insects to get at them."

The voice was still a soft one, as the man's eyes peered through his long hair silently evaluating the stranger in front of him, while off in the distance in a pair of adjacent trees were a duo of snow-white serpents that were hunting for small animals to make a quick meal out of. These two were never far from their master's side and even stared at the boy themselves, thinking he might even make a meal, but they were turned off by his scaley skin...

[King of Cats]

Giving Ken a big smile, Roku showed off his three rows of many, pointed shark teeth. He had a sort of charming smile, if you could get past the many scales. Roku waved and looked around the field as Ken explained the parameters of the mission. Roku was expecting something a bit more complex so he was thankfully relieved to see that most of the work he had to be done could be performed with Water Clones. Roku had a notably large chakra reservoir and he was not shy about exercising it. He listened to Ken and silently thought up his plan to harvest all of the acorns in a reasonable amount of time. Roku hated sleeping when there was work to be done. The shark skin man was a hard worker, but he needed his rest. As Ken explained that they didn't want the acorns to dry up and get infested with buds Roku was debating how he could use Hideoyoshi's power over luck to better their chances at providing Ser Han a respectable harvest, courtesy of the Heart Empire.

Still smiling wide Roku told Ken, "Alright, sounds easy enough. Just a lot of work, but we can make quick of it with some effort." Roku pointed his thumb at an expanse of trees to his right flank. "I'll take care of this, just uh. As a little nod to our work for Tea, tap this." Roku reached around his shoulder and pulled Hideoyoshi from his back. The bamboo fishing pole was glowing with a golden sheen and it looked to be an exceptionally made fishing pole.

Ken didn't know it but by tapping the pole Roku would have temporary access to the man Serendipity Field, a spiritual flux of energy that alters ones luck. Hideoyoshi granted him the power of Yoshijutsu and Roku wanted to make sure he put it to good use. Roku hated using his power for simple things like finding money or catching fish. While it was convenient, he felt like it brought the shine of Hideoyoshi's powers down to a lack luster level. For work as a samurai though, Roku was more than happy to oblige his talents for the cause. If Ken touched Roku's fishing pole he would feel a surge of Hideoyoshi's gracious spiritual energy flow through him.

[Zao]

The older man didn't seem to give much notice to the shark-like teeth found in the smile of the fellow ronin, having seen several things in his journey up to this point, but he was glad to hear that the man came ready to work and seemed to carry with him a good work ethic. After all, that was probably one of the most important traits of a good warrior no matter it be a shinobi or a samurai was the ability to put in the hard work in order to see the results down the road. "Indeed, with some effort it shouldn't take a young lad like yourself to much time." Ken took in the details of the blue, scaley skinned young man's body and only gave a gentle nod of his head.

"That's okay..." As for the mention of giving the fishing pole a gentle tap, the snake sage gave a somewhat cold response as he declined to touch the rather unique looking bamboo pole, before turning to look at the part of the orchard that was on his left-hand side, opposite to that of Roku's. Even though the man was trying to be a more approachable figure after his trials with the Konoha shinobi, it was hard to be something that he truly wasn't. "The old man has already placed additional wagons throughout each sector of the field, I interested to see how much of the work effort you have, my young friend."

As he glanced back at Roku his hair parted enough for his deep red right eye to be clearly seen, a hint of a smirk on the snake man's narrow lips, almost like some sort of provocation towards his fellow farm hand, perhaps out of sheer coincidence or perhaps just to test the shark boy. "It's already getting close to noon, let us see how much we can finish before dark." With that the man began to walk towards the cart off to his left and even though his movements didn't appear to be too fast it only seemed to take a few seconds before he had reached the cart and reached out a single arm grasping hold the wooden wagon by the elongated tongue.

The tongue was meant to hook up to work animals to be pulled and it seemed to barely, if any at all, burden the frail looking figure who didn't even notice the heavy weight of the wood and metal wagon as Ken moved toward the first tree in what appeared to be an almost endless sea of them. 'Perhaps I can have a little fun today, after all...'