Decions of the Council and a Lesson

The council finally came to a bit of a consensus almost three hours later, which Usagi said was on the longer end of things; they must have been given quite a bit to chew on. They told the group, for the time being, they would make none of Yuri’s potential sexual partners younger than his current age, which Yuri informed him was 19 years. The council also said they would deliberate on what constituted a legal adult for the village after Yuri had left when he was done assisting with what they were after.

“So,” said Yuri to the council members after being brought into the main chamber, “how many in the village actually meet the criteria? And what percentage of the village does that currently constitute?”

“Of the seventy individuals that call this village home,” said the center rabbit woman, “only twenty-two, including the members of this council, meet our current criteria for your potential sexual partners. That said, we are in agreement that some things require a more concise age limit moving forward. There are some things that just require more experience before you are ready for them, and approaching things regarding age restrictions isn’t much different. Now then, it is still being decided by this council whom your first partner of the village will be; we encourage you to get a better understanding of the village during this time.”

“I will see to showing them around,” said Usagi, “seeing as I was the one who first encountered him and brought this matter to the attention of the honored council.”

“Given your rank and position,” said the rabbit woman on the far right, “the council believes you can be entrusted with this task, for the time being. The appropriate messages will be sent out to the rest of the village.”

“We thank you for your decision,” said Usagi. She led the party out of the facility, motioning for the rest of the party to follow her lead.

Once they were out of the facility and had been led away about twenty from it, Alma said, “That was awkward, more than I anticipated! And why does every building look the same?”

“Tradition mostly,” said Usagi as she led them through the town, “there are subtle differences in facilities you learn to pick up on once you’ve been around it all long enough.”

“It also has historical precedence,” said Yuri casually.

Everyone stopped to stare at him, especially the villagers nearby, “I’m sorry,” said Thelsia, “What?!?!?”

“Back in the world I grew up,” said Yuri, “there was an island nation that had a class of people called Shinobi, commonly misconstrued simply as ‘Ninja,’ but that distinction was a designation for only male shinobi; female shinobi, like all of the rabbits around us, were given the distinction of ‘Kunochi’ and each distinction had specialties apart from their counterpart. Shinobi, in and of themselves, were, and are survivalists; most of their training involved survival techniques, followed very closely by espionage techniques; only a very small percentage of their training actually covered combat, and even then, they were encouraged to avoid direct combat as much as possible and apply their training survival and spycraft to combat as much as possible, even well beyond the point of using tools and times with no direct combat application as weapons themselves. This stems from intentionally cutting them off from typical society and the rather sparse interconnectivity of the more rural areas of that nation.”

All the characters blinked and stared at him in surprise; a moment later, Usagi said, “And you know all this how?”

“A variety of sources,” said Yuri, “mostly videos on social media discussing culture, history, and the like.”

“Right,” said Usagi, “you can get into those details with the council later. For now, we’re just going to keep you all occupied until the council gets everything solidified for what comes next.” She led the group through the surprisingly tightly arranged, strictly ordered, buildings for several minutes, pointing out how to identify dining establishments, equipment shops, the general store, and so on.