Kiba had firmly grabbed hold of the cat in his hands. However, the second he’d touched it, the cat’s body crumpled into pieces like stone.
“What the?!”
Pebbles? No, that wasn’t what they were. They were crunchy bits of cat food. The cat had definitely been there a moment ago. When in the world had it switched itself with a fake made of cat feed…?
“I see, so it’s a Cat Feed Bunshin…” Shino murmured.
“Is this really the time to be praising them?!” Kiba snapped.
“It’s really about time you get going, meow.” The cat spoke from an room inside the passage, its eyes shining in the dark, “Even a cat will only turn the other cheek three times. From now on, it’ll be time to bring out the claws, meow.”
It was like this that the ninja cats turned away intruders. For the sake of protecting the town and the Black Marketeer clan. However, it should be that if a merchant stops by, they don’t turn them all away. That’s what Shino thought.
However, he didn’t know what to do that would make the cats stop fending them off.
“Ugh, fuck this!” Kiba howled irritably, “We can’t catch the cat, we can’t get information from the cat, there’s nothing we can do!”
“If you want information, then you exchange it for matatabi*. But that’s impossible, since you lot don’t have any matatabi. You understand now? You really stink of dog, so we really want you to hurry up and leave.”
So that was it. Matatabi could be traded for a pass to get inside. They’d been thoughtless. Their opponent was a cat after all.
“This is bad, Kiba…” Shino said. “At this rate, we’ll make no process. The reason is that we didn’t bring even a little bit of matatabi…”
Shino leaned in closer to Kiba, whispering so the ninja cat couldn’t hear. “Since the situations turned into this, I’ll use my bugs to-”
“Hold on, Shino. Leave this to me.”
Kiba took out a soldier pill from the pouch on his belt, and tossed it towards the ninja cat. “Alright, cat. I’ll give you this. Let’s make it a trade. That for information on the beekeeper’s location.”