11 Permission

John walked out of the Tamer's Club half an hour later with a spring in his step and a badge on his chest proclaiming his achievement. Strutting down the path to the dorms, he couldn't wait to walk into the freshmen area and sit down to dinner while he listened to everyone whisper about how awesome he is...

"Hey, wait up!" Kara called as she jogged to catch up with him, another badge pinned to her chest.

"Hey!" John said, a giant smile on his face, "Congrats, I can't believe you managed to tame an Illusion Butterfly as your first monster!"

Kara blushed a little, obviously not used to praise as she caught up and matched his pace as they headed to the freshmen dorms. "Not as impressive as catching a Fire Viper." She said, eyeing it John's monster warily as it hissed at her in greeting. "Carrying the Fire Core in your fist and getting it to attack your fist so it'd swallow the core was so cool."

John winced, reaching over to rub at his hand that still itched like none other. "Yeah, it might of looked cool but I never want to do it again."

Kara laughed a little at that as they walked into the dorms, and headed to the cafeteria. Noticing Mike sitting with someone, John waved and went to grab a tray before inviting Kara to join them.

"Hey Mike, this is Kara. She just passed the Tamer Exam with me."

Setting his tray down, John put the extra plate he'd grabbed with a whole steamed rabbit, rubbed with the hottest sauce they had at the dorms next to him. John prodded the Fire Viper to wakefulness as he sat down. Hissing in anger because her nap had been interrupted she bared her fangs at John before noticing the feast laid out in front of her. She struck with such incredible speed that all they could see was a blur. "You know, I really need to name you." John said to himself, before noticing that Mike and the other guy were staring at his new monster with a mixture of fear and awe.

Snapping his fingers in front of their faces, John tried to get their attention while Kara giggled and sat down next to him.

*SNAP SNAP SNAP*

"Come on, it's just an 8th ranked tamed monster. You're acting like you've never seen a monster before!" John finally said, sighing as he took a bite out of his meatloaf.

Finally coming back to life, Mike and the other guy stared at John in disbelief. "You said it was a minion?!?!" Mike accused John.

"Well it was, just it happened to evolve last night to 9th rank and after feeding it the core and taking it to the evolution chamber it managed to evolve again."

"Dude, that's awesome!" The guys sitting next to Mike said, holding his hand up for a high-five. Getting a good look at him, John was surprised to see several nose and ear rings. The guy had dreads down to his lower back with a massive tattoo of a rune covering most of his neck.

Giving him a High Five, John sat back down to start eating while Mike introduced them. "This is Steven, we're paired together for the final selection round in the Hunter's Club tomorrow."

"Guys, this is Kara. She just passed the Tamer's Club exam with me." John said again, figuring they'd been to zoned out to hear anything when he'd introduced her earlier.

"Awesome!" Steven said, "What'd you tame Kara?"

"A 9th ranked Illusion Butterfly." As she spoke, the butterfly in question flickering into existence at her side and drinking the nectar she'd gotten from the cafeteria lady. The cafeteria here had some amazing choices due to the varied and extreme diets of some cultivators.

"Wow!" Mike looked impressed, "Can't they create illusions so powerful people die in them?"

"Yeah, but only after reaching the Mid Boss level, and even then it's difficult for them to actually kill a human. They're really good at killing monsters though and they are amazing scouts."

Mike thought for a moment before nodding, "That'd be incredibly useful for a Hunter."

"Agreed." Steven said, looking at the butterfly with even more interest.

The four of them continued to chat as they ate, breaking up to head to their rooms and get ready for another busy day tomorrow. In the elevator, John couldn't help asking Mike. "How did Steven pass the tests? He's such a stoner!"

Mike chuckled, "Did you see that rune on his neck? His entire body is covered in them he can use them to do incredible things like punch a monster so hard it explodes, or cause an earthquake. The dude only sounds like a stoner because he was born on the west coast."

"Ahh, I'll try not to hold it against him." John said with a smirk.

"It's not like you can talk, I'm amazed you managed to walk into the forset Mr. Bunnyphobia!"

John shuddered at Mike's words, "Don't remind me, there were a couple times when we passed a herd of them that I nearly freaked."

Walking out of the elevator, Mike went to get cleaned up so John headed to his room to create a nest for his first monster. "I think I'll call you Cuddles."

The snake hissed in anger, snapping it's jaws at John.

"Hey be careful! I had to give the protection amulet back, if you bite me I'll die." John said, glaring at her as he closed the door behind him.

Setting her down on a bed of his least favorite clothes with some poison milk extract for her to drink he continued to talk, "How about Rumple Snakeskin?"

The hissing only grew louder as she chocked on some of her milk, spitting it out. "Hey, that's poisonous!" Leaping out of his bead, John grabbed another shirt he hated to mop up the mess before laying back down.

"Fine, I'll call you Snakey. Snakey Caplin." He said, pulling out his phone and forwarding the email from Ms. Winslow to his parents before he opened it up. He was shocked to find a video nearly 20 hours long of the entire test along with notes about his answers, and a psychological test showing that he was somewhat insane, definitely had a serious case of PTSD, and might have been cursed by an evil bunny overload... he might have been hallucinating that part but the test did say he was insane. Even with all that, he was somehow functional enough the Tamer's Club let him in.

"Well thanks for that..." He muttered to himself as he continued to read, finally reaching the part that interested him most. "As a freshman in the Tamer's Club you are considered to have already passed all classes pertaining to Taming held during the freshman year. You'll meet with an adviser to go over your options during the first week of school."

'Awesome!' John thought to himself as he opened up his schedule and started crossing off all the taming classes he'd signed up for. Since he wasn't sure that he'd pass the test to get into the Taming Club, he'd signed up for everything a freshman can about taming leaving only the absolute basics of a couple hours a week of math/literature/science that he was hoping to test out of over the next couple of days, and the mandatory cultivation class. With all that time freed up he could look into taking some other classes.

Before he could look into what classes he'd like to sign up for, his phone started ringing. "Hey dad." John said with a huge grin on his face.

"Son, I'm so proud!" His dad's voice boomed from the other end of the phone. "That said, I don't think you should've forwarded that entire email to both your mother and I. She's in the other room watching the video now," His voice lowered into a whisper as he continued, "I read ahead and noticed that you got injured, so I decided to sneak away to send you a copy of the signed permission slip before she see's it."

Sighing in relief, John said, "Thanks dad, I didn't realize the email included the entire video of the test."

"It's nothing, just give her a few days to recover from the shock, after what happened the first time you went into the forest she's just a little oversensitive right now. I looked ahead and noticed that you have a bunch of free classes, if you want your mother to get over the injury sign up for Alchemy, Formations, Smithing, Runes, anything that falls under the Maker's Guild's purview. She could never understand why you suddenly decided to become a Tamer instead of joining the Maker's Guild like us."

Over the phone, John could hear his mom yelling. "Get back in here, it's getting good!"

"I gotta go, love ya!" John's dad said, hanging up before he could reply.

Chuckling to himself, John opened his email and found the signed version of the permission form, forwarding it to Ms. Winslow along with his dad's phone number and email address.

Thinking for a moment, John decided to turn off his phone and go to bed early so he could legitimately say he was sleeping when he misses his mom's calls later tonight. "You know Snakey, we might have to go off the grid for a few days."