(Hers Chap two and again I'll post it here just in case you can't download file)

Chapter 2

As Vetto entered the royals place and he was very astonished by how many people they have gathered so quickly since the letter has only been out for about a week, maybe a little longer, to gather all the strong young men. In the room there had to be at least seven thousand people from the surrounding lands if not more. As he slowly headed up to the royals with the letter, he notice all his childhood friends there expect for the one he was the closest to since he was shot down in front of his house. Vetto walked up to one of the royal soldiers to hand them the letter, “I am the last from the west rice village there would have been one other, but he was shoot down in front of my home.” The soldier nods, and sends him down with the gathering groups before he goes to tell the king the news of the west rice village.

Vetto nods, then steps down, and looks around at everyone as he looks around he spots another old friend of his. The friend he has been really close to as well, this friend is a jet-black fox that is 1/32 percent tiger with silver markings. This is very rare and unusual for any fox hybrid breed around. Vetto walks up to him and smiles some, “Hey Kage! Long time no see how you been?” He asks in a friendly way.
Kage turns and looks at him then smiles back at his friend, “Hey Vetto, I am good and you these days?”

“I have been good, but it has been about five or so years since I seen you. What have you been up to as of lately?”

“I have been here and there working for the higher ups becoming one of their best fighters around. How about you, what have you been up to as of lately?”

Vetto sighs deeply, “just the same old things with grandfather, and in between him training me with swordsmanship and how to protect things. Now I’m here on the request of the letter and the fact that one of those jackals killed our very close friend and my granddad.”

Kage nods and then sighs deeply. “I see, I am also here on the request of the letter, but no one was harmed where I have been staying as well as I am one of the royal guards for the Prince himself.”

Vetto nods and smiles at his old friend, then an unusual scent hit his nose and then looks at Kage, and then leans and whispers into his ear. “Do you smell a female in this group of males?”

Kage only smiles and then leans back. “Yeah, but don’t tell any other males or she will be in trouble since only you and I can detect her scent.”

Vetto nods and smiles back as he looks around at the group of males seeing if he can pin point where she is. He has not spotted her just as of yet, but as he continues to sniff though the air her scent seems to becoming more recognizable to him. An old friend of his since he and Kage was just pups, but he is not one hundred percent positive that it is her or another female, since he picked up another female scent. He needs to see her to be positive that it is her for sure. He would like to know if the first female he caught scent of in the male group is that spunky silver fox that is Kage’s twin sister. Even though he follows the scents, he does not catch up with her since there are so many males gathered here for the battle to come. Vetto just sighs and walks over to the doors he had entered just to look outside for a bit. He looks over to the mountains and watches the sun slowly set as the sky changing colors. The sky changes from the blue hues to red, orange, and purple hues before it slowly changes to a deep navy blue to almost black. As well as the stars start to slowly appear into the sky as well, one after another along with the orange harvest moon making it just bright enough to see without much need of torch light needed.

While sitting there he had also notice about another thousand or so young men had just arrived for the war that is building up between them and the jackal invaders that came from another land. As Vetto continues to watch a while longer and he catches this female’s scent again and started to follow her scent once more. This time he had followed the scent to the other side of the huge royal doors. He did not bother her or say hello to her, he just wanted to get close enough to see the back of her ears. When he spotted the white circles on each ear, he smiles to himself and walks off knowing for sure that was the spunky vixen’s scent he been smelling all over the place.

He did not say hello or bother he because he did not want anyone else to discover that there is a female or two in the group of males as well as not to get her into any trouble. Since he figures that, she joined the group for the same reason as anyone else. To help protect their homeland from any invaders that does not belong in Japan as well as chase them back to their lands or kill them.

Vetto soon sighs softly and then wonders off looking through the group that had gathered to see if he could find any other old friends of his, but he has not had any luck on that. Since in his past not many children, when he was a cub, really liked him they thought that he was a creepy little fox cause of his two different color eyes. So to this day, he keeps his right red eye covered up with an eye patch so that anyone would think he is just blind in that eye. Even though he is not blind in the eye, he still hides it because everyone seems to think that a multiple tail fox like him with red eyes are horrible demons themselves.

As Vetto continues to stand in the door way watching the sky his ears suddenly perk up as the prince steps up on the stands and calls out to everyone for their attention. As the prince called for everyone’s attention Vetto turns and looks the same way as everyone else to listen to his ideas and plan for now.

“Excuse me everyone,” The prince called out. “We seem to have a dilemma on our hands here. We have an unknown enemy in our beloved land. I have heard from some villages that they are Jackals and other villages that they are felines, and others of both the feline and Jackals. Also we still have no clue as of how many there is, so far between the villages and the littler information that we have at the moment that there seems to be at least a thousand maybe two counted of the enemy so far. Even though we have this little information we cannot just assume that is all of them, I say we figure that there are double if not more.”

Everyone nods in agreement then a tall wolf/dragon hybrid steps up. “That maybe true Sire but what if there is only the few we already figured out? What I have seen is that they are powerful and well skilled, skilled enough to hide and take aim. Just one of the Jackals shot two of my friends along with my beloved wife down. The arrows he shot landed right where he wanted them to and if the first arrow did not hit their throats. Then he would shot them with a deadly poison arrow which killed the targets almost instantly, but allowed them long enough to tell their loved ones a final ‘I love you’ or a final ‘good bye’. But, in other words sire how will we all handle such a deadly force?”

“Yeah I have heard of that happening as well through all the villages that have made it here. I have been thinking about that and been thinking how all of you can go about. I have a small group of royal guards’ that are highly trained like them, so I am going to have them come out here and run you through a few tests. So that they can pick out groups of ten and start training you in their skills.” He sighs softly. “I know that is not very many at a time, from all of you that has come here for this battle. But since we do not have much time; the small groups are easier and faster to train.”

As soon as he finishes his talk of the battle, he singles for his ten highly trained royal guards to come up and start to get everyone to get together so that they can begin with the tests. Everyone slowly makes ten different long lines for the tests, so Vetto goes and lines up in the line that is going to be tested by Kage along with that spunky vixen. Kage had started his testing as soon as there was about fifty in the line already waiting. So it does not take him long to pick his group of ten unlike the other nine royal guards. Kage had chosen the vixen, Vetto, and eight others he felt qualified for this training.

“Okay group, if you are hungry go and get something to eat while we wait on the other nine to get their group of ten. The meal will be on me this time, so let us go and eat.” Kage says and then leads the way out of the palace to go to the roman shop where Vetto had been earlier. Even though Vetto had eaten earlier, he was getting a little hungry again so he order a bowl of his favorite roman once more. Once everyone gotten their fill of food they all followed Kage to their training area since the other nine finely gotten their groups of ten.

“Okay you sir will be the first to start the training,” Kage said as he pointed to a normal colored orange fox. “Now the rest of you have a good night’s rest,” and he sends them away so they can sleep for now.

After eight days and eight of the ten gotten through the heavy training so far, Kage picks Vetto finely to do training now. “Well just like the others I want to see what you know already, so let’s see your swordsmanship, hand to hand fighting, your skills with an bow, and lastly your hiding and tracking skills.”

Vetto nods and follows Kage to the training area to show what skills he knows so far. First, he showed off the swordsmanship and does a short dual with Kage showing that they are equal to a point until Vetto does one of the skills he thought himself and beat Kage in the dual. He had impressed Kage greatly with the swordsmanship skills that he had gained from his grandfather and making up his own skills.

After the showing and dueling of the swordsmanship, they move on to the hand to hand combat. Even though Vetto had not done much in this type of battle he still seemed to of surprised Kage. Since he was able to keep up with him with every stride, every hit of the way, with a few surprise attacks here and there. One of the surprised attacks was a fist going up under one of Kage’s jabs and hitting Kage right in the jaw. Another one had caught Kage in the lower stomach almost too close to comfort down below there and that is when the hand to hand combat stopped.

“Okay you are not a bad fighter you are actually one of the best I have came by so far in this group. Now let’s see what you can do with a bow since bows are harder to work with then the hands and swords.” Kage says.

Vetto nods and smirks some and picks up a bow and goes into the target range to show off his skills with the bow. Vetto goes and picks up the bow and the quiver full of arrows that is ready for him to show his skills. He gets the bow ready and takes aim at the target and fires; he misses the bulls’ eye by about two inches.

“That’s not to bad for the first shot but you need to hit the red dot precisely. However, at lest you have an easy target right now but a moving one is much harder. So let’s give a moving one a try and see if you can get it and if not I’ll train you more on the bows.” Kage says.

Vetto nods and waits a bit as Kage sets up the moving target. “Well I had not worked so much with a motionless target so that was a little tougher to do. Now a moving target I should be able to get it right on the dot and if not maybe I should take up shooting deadly poison arrows at them like they have been doing to us.”

Kage nods. “Well if you do not get good after my training then we shall move to that for your skills.” Kage moves over towards Vetto again after the moving target was set up. “Okay now try this and shot about five arrows and we figure how good you are with this.”

Vetto nods, then takes out five arrows and takes aim, shooting off one at a time but at a rather quick speed. After ten seconds he had shoot all five arrows and all five hit the target, which really surprised Kage. Once Vetto had finished Kage gone over and stopped the moving target and toke a good look over it. “Now that is impressive Vetto three of four shoots you had made would have killed your target instantly. I believe you are just as good as our enemies and may just need poison ones as a back up.”

Vetto was even impressed with his own skills. “Well I think I still prefer to have the poison arrows just in case I do miss and still be positive that the target is going to die. Since the prince seems positive that he wants to kill them if we cannot kick them out of Japan.”

“Well I would have to talk with the prince and see if that is a good idea or not since he is so sincerer that he wants his people protected and not harm any more then what they have been.” says Kage.

Vetto nods, “Okay then well we have one more thing to do then.” He goes and puts the arrows and bow away and gets ready to show off his hiding and tracking skills now as he follows Kage to the wooded area to home in on how good he is with these two skills.

Once to the edge of the woods Kage looks at Vetto. “Okay waits here and counts to ten and no picking while I go off into the dark woods and hide about. I would like to see how high king your senses are and if you can find and/or track me.”

Vetto nods and turns his back to Kage and the woods and begins to count down from ten. “Ten, nine, eight…” As he slowly counts down Kage goes off and hides as well as try to figure out how he can lead Vetto on this little hunt. “Four, three, two… ONE!” Vetto thought he oddly give Kage a warning that he was coming in but instead counts another five before he slips into the woods and starts the tracking.