Warrior Bites: Tunnel Buns
For the Warrior Bites series, also check out: The Rules, and The Tools!
[Image ID: Three rabbit-shaped baked goods. The first two have ‘ears’ that connect at the back. The third is darker, shinier, and fancier, with ornate markings.]
"It’s not enough that WindClan has a warren for a diet, all their food has to look like rabbits too!”
Clan of Origin: WindClan
Occasion: Travel ration, trade good
Requires: Oven
An old recipe originally made for Tunnelers, to have a ration that wouldn’t get filthy from all the dirt underground. Unleavened dough is molded into the shape of a rabbit, stuffed and baked with mincemeat and spices, and then fastened to a belt by the ‘ears‘ of the tunnelbun.
Traditionally, the tunnel bun was cut open by a claw and the stuffing was licked out, the dirty crust discarded underground. Since tunnel buns survived the death of tunneling, sometimes the crust is now eaten in bites along with the stuffing. These are a valued good for trade, as WindClan is the only Clan that can create dough.
Step 1: WindClan’s Dough Quest
[Image ID: Breezepelt from Warrior Cats, a solid black cat with yellow eyes, gathers wheat in his mouth. Behind him is a field and blue skies. He is smiling and winking.]
Rye, wheat, barley, and oats are all candidates to create the dough, but the one that WindClan chooses is mostly dependent on what's available. Grains grow best on WindClan territory, but often escape nearby twoleg farms to grow wild which is how WindClan gathers them...
But there are, occasionally, hard years with low yield where the warriors will risk swiping stalks. They try not to take too much, having noticed that twolegs are more likely to invest in dogs when they steal too much.
So, in an attempt to be honorable and polite, WindClan warriors will leave a “gift” at the doorstep of a farmer who they’ve taken some wheat from. Usually a rat or a crow. This seems to work, resulting in less loose dogs and thrown boots and more of the twoleg sound of friendliness, ‘pspsps.‘
Step 2: The Bakening
[Image ID: A batch of tunnelbuns is on a stone slab, ready to roll into a stone oven. Mudclaw, a brown tabby cat, is rolling dough flat with a stick. His brother, Torear, a gray tabby, is sitting off to the side, smiling. They are at the border of WindClan territory, with Fourtrees in the distance.]
WindClan’s general diet consists of an obscene amount of rabbits and they’re always seeking new ways to make rabbit meat taste different.
Tunnel Buns used to just be stuffed with marinated mincemeat, whatever they happened to have laying around after taking the best cuts for other things. Organs, toes, shredded ears, tossed in gravy and baked.
WindClan's oven is specially designed to accommodate making an entire batch of Tunnelbuns all at once. The stone tray rests on a wooden lean, so the edge of the stone is never too hot to grab and roll out.
This oven is considerably more advanced than the simple ones of the other Clans, thanks to the savviness of Tunnelers contributing to an early problem-solving culture and WindClan's unique access to grains for flour.
Step 3: Specialization
[Image ID: 3 traditional tunnelbuns and 2 fancy tunnelbuns are arranged in a row. The white paw of Scourge is reaching for one that has distinctive tabby markings, a notch in one ear, and a stripe across the nose.]
“Traditional Tunnelbuns” were made with function in mind, with clearer emphasis on the ‘ear loop’ to feed through a belt. In the modern, post-Tunneling era, this dish has a WILD amount of variation.
Even the simplest, plainest ‘traditional tunnelbun’ usually has a stylized “face“ so you can tell at a glance which one was made BY whom, and FOR whom. Mudclaw would be very upset if he bit into the wrong tunnelbun and got a mouthful of bug meat, his brother Torear’s favorite!
“Fancy Tunnelbuns” are made to be immediately eaten in camp, and as such, the ‘ear loop‘ is more of a decoration. They’re distinguished by being ornate, and usually full of higher-quality cuts of meat. These ones are also shiny, having been washed with egg during the baking process.
Because they’re traditionally eaten by slicing the bun open from tail-to-chin... there is a new, beloved joke about them after Tigerstar’s defeat.
Tunnel Buddies
[Image ID: Three baked goods in the shape of various animals, including a deer, duck, and large fish.]
WindClan and Tunnelbuns are as synonymous as RiverClan and Fish. No other Clan can access the grains to make them. You could say tunnelbuns are the Clan equivalent of hotcakes; everybody wants them.
So WindClan often makes fancy tunnelbuns in the shapes of other animals, in bigger sizes. Non-rabbit tunnelbuns are colloquially referred to as “Tunnelbuddies.“
They make appearances in trades, festivals, and other multi-Clan events where WindClan is looking to make a display of friendliness towards honored guests.
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The Missing Fang AU Part 1 - The Mission
How Sakumo got the mission and how it went...
Sakumo had just dropped Kakashi off at the academy when an ANBU, one of the Hokage’s personal guards, summoned him to report immediately for an important matter. He doesn't waste time jumping over roofs, instead, he shunshin directly in front of the Hokage tower and runs up the wall.
Nobody stops him when he climbs in through the window, inside are six men, the Hokage, Councilman Danzo, and four other Jonin he can’t place. Hiruzen informs him that there was a mole somewhere in Konoha, who leaked important documents to a specific contact in Suna. he is to lead the mission to retrieve the documents, before the specific seals on the scrolls can be broken by Suna’s intelligence division.
Something about the whole thing sends off a warning bell in the back of Sakumo’s head, but he is a loyal soldier to his Kage, and he bows and accepts the mission. He thinks he sees councilman Danzo smile, but he ignores it as a trick of the lighting since that man is incapable of ever being pleased. Sakumo had figured that out when… Well, that’s a story for another time.
The mission itself is relatively straightforward. Go and steal information from this one person and then kill him on your way out. The problem is that it is deep in enemy territory. It can’t be done solo, too dangerous, so they assign Sakumo a team. He’s never worked with these particular men before, but he is given a quick brief over their skills.
One is a sensor, the second is an expert at camouflage and genjutsu, the third is short range combatant, and the fourth is a former ANBU who spent years on an extended mission in the Land of Wind. Sakumo himself is the team leader, a tracking and all-round combat specialist, with tactical experience.
The team should have been perfectly suited to the mission, but halfway to Suna, they get ambushed, and Sakumo is confused because shouldn’t the sensor have sensed a dozen shinobi hiding under the shifting dunes?
Five Suna nin herd him away from his team, he kills them all, but realises that the others got captured. This confuses him further, because he had already killed two before being separated, so the battle should have been 4 vs 5. The ones who ambushed them were high level chunin or maybe tokubetsu jonin at best judging by their skill, his team had a former ANBU and three senior Jonin.
So there he is, in the middle of a desert, trying to decide what to do. Abandon his team, or abandon his mission, which is the better choice, which is the choice he can live with. Which is the choice that won’t end with his futile death.
Sakumo decides he'll do neither. He’s been on suicide missions before, and during the Second War he did crazier things. Like slaughtering the only son and his wife of Chiyo of a thousand poisons while on an off the books mission that may or may not have pushed the terms of the peace agreement. Suna has a kill on sight order for him anyway, he’s remained persona non grata even after the Second War ended. He supposes he might as well piss them off even more.
He sends the smallest and fastest member of his summoned pack to track his team, and finds that they've been imprisoned somewhere outside the village's border.
He waits till nightfall, then sneaks into Suna. It's a bit troublesome, but he sends one of his wolves with plenty of explosive tags and distracts the Suna nin in the area enough that he is able to get inside their offices and get what he needs dealing it in a large storage scroll, giving his target a clean and quick death.
He overhears that most of the Suna nin present in the village are scouring the desert looking for him. A bit overkill in his opinion, but at least it makes sneaking in and out of the village easier.
Then, he makes his way to where his team is captured, and with some smoke bombs, his entire pack howling like feral mad animals and some theatrics that make him look scarier than he is, he dispatches the guards and frees his team.
The other combatant is injured and unconscious and the former ANBU ends up being the one carrying him, while the sensor takes the genjutsu specialist with a broken leg on his back. Expert genjutsus from the specialist keep them mostly hidden, while the desert storm picking up on their heels handles their scent.
They break out in a free run across the desert, but end up getting cornered an hour away from the border by a border patrol on high alert. Again the sensor fails to warn them and leaves Sakumo to wonder if he pretended to be a sensor or is he just extremely bad at his job.
Sakumo gives the storage scrolls to the sensor and tells the former ANBU to lead the rest back to the village, and that he’d cover their backs.
And he does it spectacularly. Over the years, Sakumo had not only honed his already present Lightning and Earth release, he’s also gotten a good command over wind and water release. He makes a hurricane. It takes a lot of chakra, almost exhausting him completely after the solo rescue mission he’s just pulled off, but it’s flashy enough for him to sneak away and enter the Land of Fire.
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👻 IT'S HERE! PRESENTING CARO GREENE'S MIL-LIMINAL-THE PODCAST! 👻
Consider this a soft launch cuz i know it's not live on ALL services yet, but you can now listen to the introduction episode of Caro's podcast, Mil-Liminal on Youtube, Podcast Addict, Podbean, and Spotify, and probably more cuz idk how distribution works.
There will be a full length episode soon, but for now, take a listen to the intro, and if you like it, share it to your friends to help people find it! Its written in a way anyone can jump in, even if they aren't familiar with the comics or characters. Thank you SO MUCH for all the support getting here, I'm so happy to finally be able to do this!
Mil-Liminal is a cozy horror podcast featuring the charming and slightly unhinged Caro Greene, an employee working the counter during the night shift at a tiny gas station in the middle of the woods. Join their journey of witnessing the unexplainable! Liminal spaces, ghosts and ghouls galore, there won't be any jump-scares or hopelessness, just unsettling vibes with moments of comedy to lighten the mood. The podcast is in canonical order, meaning the first episode is Caro's first 'episode' as well, learning as they go to create their podcast.
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