Raiju's Grand Adventures: Wolfnapped

      It had been a couple of days since Grimoire had gone to some rainforest to help someone at a temple. To be honest, the rainforest sounded so much better than living in this desert. Even though Raiju didn’t mind the heat, the sand was getting really annoying. Always having to bath constantly because if he didn’t, he’d be more sand than wolf. He could already tell that it’d take a good while before he was finally sand free. Despite that, the biggest thing he didn’t like about this place, was being alone. Normally in the forest, there was plenty of things he could do but here, it felt like there were eyes on him. So many rules he had to follow to avoid scaring people or drawing too much attention.

      Raiju shrugged as he looked out the window. “Just another sandy day.” He turned around and looked around the room he was in. “Let’s see. What to do.” He looked around again. “Seriously, what could I- Oh! I know!” He quickly walks into the bedroom and looks at a book shelf. “Grim normally keeps a lot of interesting, books…” His ears fell to his head as he looked at the spines of the books. They were all in Japanese and the only ones that weren’t, were cook books. “Guess now’s as good a time as ever to learn.” He reached for the bottom shelf and pulled out a workbook and a pencil.

      “Learning Japanese Workbook for Beginners. Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. Ok, I can do this. How hard can it be?” He laid down on the bed on his stomach and opened the book. He flipped through several pages looking at all the content before flipping back to the table on contents. “Where does the first lesson, oh.” His ears fell again when he realized that what he thought was a preface, was the actually lesson. “I hope I can actually do this...” He started to read the workbook out loud to himself since no one else was around. “Japan general information… Table of hiragana characters…” He turned the page. “Table of katakana characters. The basic, 103 kanji character! How am I supposed to learn all of these? How can anyone learn all of these? There’s 105 hiragana characters, 105 katakana characters, and at least 103 kanji? At least I have Grim to help me. Or tease me about it…”

      He turned the page again but before he could continue reading, there was a knock at the door. He walked to the door and looked through the peephole. There was a wolf wearing some sort of armour standing out there. Raiju slowly opened the door. “C-can I help you?”

      “I’m sorry to bother you but we’re looking for a fox named Tenko. Is he home?”

Tenko? That was the name Grimoire gave those that he had just met or didn’t trust. “I’m sorry, but could you-” Before he could finish, more wolves shoved the door causing Raiju to fall while wolves flooded the house, swords drawn.

      “I’m sorry but we can’t let him escape.” The first wolf said as he pointed his sword at Raiju.

      “No one’s here. Grab the wolf and let’s get going.”

      “Wait, what! Why mmph-” Two wolves immediately grabbed Raiju as another shoved a gag in his mouth and placed a sack over his head.

      The wolves carried Raiju out and threw him into a cage on a cart. “Burn the place down. We can’t have any evidence that we were here.” The first wolf ordered the rest before sitting next to the cage. “Don’t worry wolf. You’ll be returned when Tenko’s dead.” Raiju’s heart sank when he heard those words. What did Grimoire do? Why were these wolves doing this to him? Suddenly learning Japanese didn’t seem so bad.

      It wasn’t long until the cart was moving and after what felt like several hours, the cart stopped. “Here’s your portion of the payment. The boss will be in touch at a later date to debrief you four. Remember, keep your eyes peeled for suspicious activity.”

      “Yes sir. Thank you sir.”

      “Dismissed.” After he heard that, he heard a weird yet familiar sound. Someone opened a portal near them and the cart started moving. There was a sudden change in temperature and the sounds he heard sounded oh so familiar. He was back in Faedin! Or at least a forest of sorts.

      “Sir! Welcome to Faedin.” Guess that mystery was short lived. “The scouts are all in place and are ordered to keep watch of the forest for the fox.”
      “Thank you. Lets get the show on the road you lazy mutts! The longer we stay in one place, the greater the risk that the fox will find us!” With that, the cart started moving at what felt to be a quicker pace than before. Whatever Grim did, these wolves were really scared of him.

      After a few minutes of silent travel, a wolf broke the silence. “Uh, sir? May I ask why we’re even here? Why not just take him straight to Aridin where the boss is so we don’t have to waste time with all this travel.”

      “The boss needs time to get everything ready for when the fox arrives and us taking this detour will give him that much more time and stall the fox if he manages to follow our tracks.” The ‘leaders’ tone was very different than before. Whoever he was talking to must be a wolf he likes to some degree. “It’s also why we’re doing this like this opposed to other missions we’ve done where we were in and out without making a huge scene.”

      “So, the boss wants the fox to find us?”

      “Not us but him.” He points to Raiju but he can’t see since he has the bag over his head. “He’s our bait to bringing the fox to us since we can’t find locate him with the portals he uses.”

      “Who is he? It’s not like the boss to set up an operation this big for nothing.”

      “We don’t really know who either of them are. This wolf, all I know is that he’s important to the fox and we know even less about the fox. Apparently he was the one that stopped the boss from stealing those figurines from the temple he was at.”

      “You mean the mission that was supposed to be so smooth it couldn’t fail?”

      “Yep. And this fox beat the boss and the authorities detained him. We broke him out obviously and now he wants his revenge for ruining his easy money and for making him look bad. We’re almost there so you might want to get back in formation.”

      “Yes sir.”

      So, the reason why these wolves had wolfnapped him, was because Grimoire beat up their leader and stopped him from stealing things? That didn’t make a lot of sense since it seemed like he was spending far more money on whatever trap he’s planning than he could have made selling those things, unless they’re that valuable. But then again, if they were so valuable, they wouldn’t be so easy to steal. He heard their leader talk to some female but they were speaking too quiet as he could only hear what he assumed to be a river so he couldn’t catch most of what they said. Before he knew it, he heard the sound of a portal opening again and the cart moved through it. This time, he could feel water landing on him and the sounds of the forest were replaced with the sounds of rain hitting leaves.

      “Ah there’s my third favourite company! I take it everything went without a hitch?” This voice was new but Raiju could guess this was their boss.

      “Yes sir. We grabbed the wolf without any resistance from him or locals. Tenko was not there however.”

      “I didn’t think he would be. He’s probably just finding out that we took this wolf.” He opened the cage and grabbed Raiju before walking a short distance and somewhat tossing him into what felt like a metal box. Shortly after he felt the sack get removed and the gag after that. “It’s good to see another wolf. Such a shame it’s under such poor circumstances.” He paused. “Oh well! Maybe after we kill your lover you’ll join us and you can be my minion. Or I might just kill you if I get bored. We’ll see.”

      After that he slammed the door leaving Raiju in near darkness with a small window to let air in but not big enough for him to get more than his paw through letting in a little light. He couldn’t believe this was happening. All he wanted was to be with Grimoire again. “You’ll come for me, right?” He whispered to himself before he laid down and forced himself to sleep.