The Nara Forest, while not any less dangerous than the rest of the Hi no Kuni, was where Jinta's father had taught him everything he knew about medicine, and it was here that he had trained the last 6 years after he graduated from the academy. His progress was pretty slow looking back on it, but the past is the past. There isn't much he can do about his slip ups anyways since he simply wasn't capable enough at the time. Even with his six years of training he was still mediocre at medical jutsu since he didn't have access to many of the Nara medical techniques. This didn't stop his father from asking him to go on errands every now and then when he was busy, or really whenever he thought his son wasn't busy enough and didn't feel like doing anything.

This time his father had requested that he, after getting permission to enter the Nara forest, went in and collected ingredients from a list that he had to get for some of the medications he was making for patients. While Jinta wasn't able to take freely from the Nara reserves what he wanted, this was the best way to learn how to collect the medicine without breaking the rules. A beige envelope with 鹿 printed on the front of it that he had in his hand contained the rough locations he could find most of the vegetable matter he needed to find, and the physical descriptions of all of the ingredients, and where they came from. For many of these it was extremely simple for the young Nara to locate them without the information in this envelope, but the Nara record keeper that he received the envelope from was insistent that he have all of them just in case. There were always at least one or two ingredients that he was unfamiliar with on lists like these, but Jinta was a little annoyed that he had to carry the descriptions for dozens of unnecessary ingredients in the arbitrarily large envelope.

The Nara traversed through the woods in dark black slacks and a black shirt that made him difficult to see in the forest that obscure the noon sun with dense foliage. He hopped tree to tree collecting the herbs and fungi in the forest for his father a task that normally only took a few hours. For the most part none of the ingredients he had seen were so rare or strange that he had a hard time finding them. Every now and then he had to find a new area to search for some because the population in the area he was used to going to was a bit under populated, but even this was a trivial task that he was used to doing. He was jumping from branch to branch when he realized that he had gotten towards the bottom of the list, and he was presented with an item that he had never seen before. He paused for a moment as he one of the items required him to find an old deer. Well really any deer probably would have been fine, but it was typically common practice to hunt older or sick deer. The problem was he didn't really know where to find one he had some training in tracking people, but tracking animals was a different ball game. To start with most deer were faster than he was, and even if he could manage to get the jump on one of them all he had with him was the kunai that he had brought to gather herbs and fungi. Therefor every time he missed he would have to start over and the task would be harder.

"How unpleasant," Jinta talked himself out of complaining too much since he knew that it was rare for his father to send him to get important items without reason. It was going to be an arduous task, but he steeled himself to do it without complaining too much. "Dad better be buying me dinner when he explains this one." For Jinta these experiences were one that created a strong bond between him and his father. His father, being as busy as he was and no longer living with his son, rarely saw Jinta now except during one of these deliveries. He racked his brain to think of where he would find one of the reserve's deer. He read the description in the for the item, and the more he read it the more he felt like it was purposefully cryptic. That is until he reread the second to last line and something clicked. "During this time of the year, this species of deer typically drink from bodies of water containing Red Turkey Tail mushroom, a sub species of Trametes versicolor, commonly mistaken for the pheonix tailed mushroom." This information alone would be useless because this time of the year there wouldn't be many of the mushrooms around since they would mostly have been consumed by the forests herbivores. This mushroom got its vibrant red hues from its symbiotic relationship ship with a type of red algae native to the Nara forest. As a common medicinal ingredient utilized by the Nara to reduce the likelihood of heart disease. This red algae though only lived in small bodies of water and died the water that it inhabited a bloody red color, so the task became slightly simpler. Stake out at a pond the color of blood, and the deer will come to you.

Three hours passed and all that had come to the lake were a few random animals and a doe with her fowl, something he was definitely not permitted to collect the ingredient from, so all he could do was wait.

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Three hours. Three long, slow, unpleasant hours later Jinta heard the signs of a deer. It wasn't quite at the lake yet, but he was confident that this one was an older man. The buck as he slowly made his way to the red lake would lower his antler adorned head to eat from the earth, and seeing that he took longer than normal to chew Jinta assumed that this was a sign of tooth wearing. For a moment he entertained the idea that the buck could have just been a gourmet savoring the sublime flavors that Jinta was unable to experience from the combination of leaves, fungi, and other flora he was ingesting, but as quickly as the thought came it was dismissed. Even though this animal was an herbivore catching it would still be a bit difficult because of the speed advantage the deer had on him. He was able to lethally injure the deer, but that would both required copious amounts of paperwork and was generally frowned upon by the Naras. Which meant he had to catch it alive, get what he needed, and release the deer before it died from being stressed out by a ninja assaulting it,

As the deer began to settle down Jinta maneuvered himself directly over the deer disturbing a few leaves as he did so. After pausing for only a few moments when the leaves began to fall, the buck resumed drinking from the red lake unknowingly ingesting some of the medical factors of the Red Turkey Tail mushroom. The Nara stood on a thick tree branch using the local flora to hide his breathing, smell, and image from his quarry, and he unsheathed his kunai in preparation for collection. With very little sound and a burst of speed, the beginner hunter descend upon the deer. The moment his feet hit the ground he sprung his arms around the 200 pound buck, and pulled both it and him to the ground as it began to move in a panicked manner.Pinning the buck under his body with one leg on either side of the older mammal Jinta cupped one of its hooves in his hand, straining to keep it still, and removed a very thin layer of its hoof. As he moved the collected ingredient to his pocket the underestimated deer kicked one of its forelegs at the Nara who, in his distracted state, didn't react fast enough to dodge. The deer upset with its current predicament lodge hoof into his flesh, making his eyes grown wide. He jumped off the deer and back as he inspected the wound that he was given by a surprisingly strong adversary.

He placed his right hand onto his shoulder checking out the large one inch  deep hole, from his best guess, that had been punched into his shoulder. The blood seeped profusely from his wound and onto his hand as he tried to focus and put pressure on the wound. He regained focus on his environment again and in front of him was the pissed off buck locking eyes with him, but Jinta, not one to back down to a food animal no matter how angry it was or how hurt he was, puffed up his shoulders and stared the buck down. Not wanting to take any chances with him the, deer stared the ninja down, and to Jinta it looked as if it was saying, "You win ninja, this time. If me or my boys see you here again." The deer walked began to walk off before pausing to make sure that Jinta didn't follow. "Just don't let us see you here again." The deer ran into the forest probably never to return to this lake again or at least it would avoid it for a few months due to the semi-traumatic experience it had had here. The odds were the deer would be fine since deer hooves naturally regrow, and Jinta only took a small amount off of his quarry's hoof.

He removed his over shirt and ripped off a small piece from it applying pressure directly to the wound. He really slipped up, and even though he knew that most of the fauna in this forest could be dangerous, even the deer, he underestimated them and let his guard down. With his right right hand held the small patch of cloth in place, cringing slightly at the lingering pain. With his other hand he tossed his injured left shoulder causing a the blood to come out of the wound and soak into the fragment cloth. Grabbing one of the shirt end with his teeth and tying the knot with the other end over his right hand, pulling out his hand only when the shirt was snugly tied. He hadn't really suffered from too much blood loss so continuing and getting the last few items wouldn't be too unpleasant. He regained his lost composure and looked for where he had stashed the bag of other items that he had collected, and placed the clippings that he gained from the buck inside. He reached for his kunai, but much to his annoyance he hadn't put it back. "Must have sat it down when I did this," he said tapping his wound. After also tediously searching for his misplaced kunai and trimming up his makeshift gauze and bandage to make them more presentable, he went over to the lake washing as much blood as he could from his shirt and his hands dying his once white under shirt a light pink color, but removing the grime and blood from it. He put the white shirt on somewhat concealing his injury but the hole in the shirt still revealed the black wrappings that went over his shoulder.

With his injury taken care of and his likelihood of bleeding out any time soon reduced significantly, Jinta drank a bit of water and started chewing on some a half foot of jerky. The rest of the search went relatively uneventfully. He managed to collect the rest of the materials from the forest within a few hours, and around six p.m. Jinta was leaving the forest and returning to the Nara complex where he would hopefully be able to find his father to give him the ingredients he had asked for before getting his injured arm treated.

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[Exit Thread]

Strength E0 -> E1 -75 words
Speed E0 -> E3 -450 words
Endurance
Perception E0 -> D0 -750 words
Reaction Time E0 -> D0 -750 words
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