Shohei
Shohei merely gave a mirthless chuckle at Susumu's challenge regarding bargaining with eyes. “Before you say that, why not have a drink with that Sarubi-thing. He'll tell you a thing or two about eyes.” However, nothing needed to escalate, it never did between the two of them, and it probably never would, as Susumu let go of Sanja-sama almost immediately.
They all stared at the two humans. As he was waiting for the boss's word, Susumu took the opportunity to go and mess with them instead. Stealing his humans – what a low thing to do – and Susumu's tricks were pointlessly amateur compared to Shohei's contests. He ground his teeth, and turned his face away as Susumu winked at him. “Keh,” was all he said.
Apparently Sanja-sama wanted to go, and had a bad feeling about his shrine. Shohei looked back from the fox and the human children, then back up to Sanja-sama. He thought he might have an answer as to the source of his feeling. “There were five of those humans together, earlier. Where do you suppose the other three went?” he asked with narrowed eyes. It was rhetorical. If the other humans had gone to the shrine, well, then far better he and Sanja-sama were there than here. “Yes, boss,” he replied to the command, and took off after Sanja-sama as they took flight back up the mountain. He wasn't quite looking where he was going, as he was still giving evil glances to Susumu as they left, feeling mildly vindicated and amused by Sanja's spoiling of the Kitsune's riddle. “Heh, nice one, boss,” he said as they left.
They landed in the shrine's garden, and it was obvious that something was amiss. “I just left a minute ago.. Ki was here... what could have gone wrong?” he asked himself, walking in with his left hand on the hilt of his sword, in case of trouble. When he saw the source of the aggravation, he took his hand away. There was a familiar face. “Already eaten one dead cat today, got room for another,” he said by way of a friendly greeting to Rika, but it seemed Sanja-sama was already quite worked up about the situation. It was unusual to see him in such a bad mood, even using his illusions to scare and intimidate her. Shohei looked to Ki, they had said they were in charge of the shrine, so the kitty-cat getting in here and attempting to carry away all of Sanja-sama's belongings was … technically … their fault. But judging by the anger and frustration radiating from the boss … Ki did not deserve to be on the receiving end of that.
He approached warily, keeping between Sanja-sama and Ki. “Ah boss, I'm sure it's not their fault,” he said, “Ki likes to see the good in everybody, something that some unscrupulous felines like to take advantage of.” This kind of role didn't suit him and he sighed inwardly. He smoothly made his way up to Sanja-sama while the cat was distracted by the illusions or hopefully tidying up, and should he be able eto get close enough without something horrible happened, he whispered to Sanja-sama, “Don't worry about the objects she took … I replaced the most valuable ones with substitutions a while ago, just in case of something like this ... the real ones are all hidden away below the shrine.”
He hoped this didn't make the boss more annoyed, but just in case, he rushed to help with the tidying up.