doing some much needed reading (open)

[Azai Momotaro]

The village of Kumgoakure was bustling today, kids out with their parents, couples going out and groups of friends just enjoying themselves. But among the masses one boy was walking alone, wearing his combat clothes, that consists of armor and a jacket, the traditional set up that is akin to what a samurai wears, his hands were crossed and hidden inside the sleeves of his jacket. His walk was care free, the boy had a satisfied look on his face.

“man another mission finished successfully, I am on a roll. Nozomi will be impressed, but my work is not over I must aim higher and higher, this is but a stepping stone for Momotaro the hero.” The boy said with confidence, his spirit was high as he felt unstoppable. “alright, I am getting a little hungry. Lets see I should have enough money to get me some decent meal, and maybe even some desert.” The boy said as he reached inside his pouch to take out a coin purse shaped like a frog.

As he opened it the boy flipped it upside down and laid it above his open palm to catch the falling coins……..only to discover that he has 300 yen. The boy looked at his palm, silently. Blinking a bit before yelling “Curse my poor money management skills!” he then leaned on a building next to him. “now what do I do, I cant get dinner so that’s out. Oh I know I will continue to look for that man.” The boy said as he headed to the library, he was determined to work hard mainly cause if he does not he will think on how hungry he is.

Once there the boy simply walked up inside the library and began to roam around, almost aimlessly as if he does not know how to properly track people down, finding something that interested him the boy took an article based on the geography of the village and began to read it. “Kumogakure is different from most villages because of its ge- geo ? geoligica- geological setting ? that’s a weird word, really hard hard to say, but whatever. Now how can I use this to track down my grandpa.” They boy said, his voice was not loud, but it was not low either, probably a product of his carelessness born from his slowly growing ego.

 

[Honnou]

It sure had been a while since Hon had visited the library last time. He still remembered the details of the last occasion here, but now he had grown a little, and the library looked as big and majestic as it always was. Not much had changed on the outside, really… but books were published and made every single day, and it was likely that a lot of new material was located here now. If one knew what to look for and where, then this library had all the knowledge that you needed.

In Hon’s case, he was going to make an upgrade on his carpal blades. A way to make an even longer, extending blade that would still fit discreetly under his sleeve was the goal, and he also wanted to recover some old blacksmithing trivia. The library was the proper place to learn about stuff that he couldn’t learn of back home; not a single other Saito dealt with weapon-making… or so, he thought.

He entered the library through the main entrance for once. Once when he smoothly maneuvered to the handicraft section, he found a couple of books about blacksmithing. They were thick, and they probably held thousands of pages of knowledge about hammering a piece of molten iron. But he would have to find a table to read them at…

About the amount that was mentioned earlier; he was holding enough books to cover his face. Walking across the hallway between two shelves, he relied on his eyes to see around when he finally found a sweet, little wood table. And that was when he simply assumed that the stack of books wouldn’t do anything when he just dropped them at the table…

It crashed. They fell right through, and Hon’s face contorted into pure fright. The crash was loud enough to be heard quite a good distance away.

“… O-Oh no, no, no, why this…?” he asked in despair, dashing around the crashed table to see all the broken pieces. His hands were flailing a little, momentarily not sure what to do other than to pick up the pieces and literally put them together like lego blocks.

 

[Saito Kyoshi]

Theme Song​

Kyoshi was finding his newfound freedom to roam outside the confines of the Saito compound just as liberating as his elder sister always told him it would be. The young academy student had spent most of his time in the last week or so wandering the streets of Kumogakure, smelling the foods, hearing the mind numbing clatter of more people than he'd ever seen. While it wasn't always the case that children of the Saito clan were barred from venturing beyond the clan compound, Kyoshi had been particularly isolated, not just from the outside world but even from his fellow clansmen. Everything he knew of the world came almost exclusively from his direct family unit, a sense of perspective that was challenged every moment the young Siato wondered the village. Of course, as curiosity is often peaked to do, Kyoshi's grew and demanded more. He ended up finding this in the history books and geographical maps of far away lands. His father had told him of such things in passing, but even Kyoshi wasn't naive enough not to realize his father had given him an extremely watered down and one sided account of the world.

The boy had spent hours, practically hidden under a crawlspace between bookshelves, the only indication of his presence the trail of books and scrolls half-read and discarded in a circle of Kyoshi's small cave of learning. For the most part, his interactions with the various librarians and other library goers had been minimal, and while the librarians admired his desire to learn and were mostly content to leave him be, Kyoshi had already managed to earn himself the ire of one or two of the more tedious cleaners on the library's staff who were not found of his inability to put things back where he'd found it. Sooner or later he knew he'd have to move to a new hiding place for fear of another raid by the librarians to reclaim their lost texts. Kyoshi could still feel the now fading bruise on the back of his ear where one particularly cranky old woman had snatched him up. Nonetheless, his attention and curiosity was thoroughly engrossed in the many texts before him. His current topic of interest, the centuries long relationship between farrious farming villages and the economic effect on the minor countries they fed.

His concentration was broken when there was a loud crash followed by footsteps Kyoshi recognized as the librarians. Crawling out of the space between the shelves, Kyoshi started looking around, noticed the man attempting to piece together the remains of what was once a table. It appeared that the blame was on the oversized and overstuffed bindings of whatever book the man had been attempting to decipher information from. "Ser, we should get out of here before-ow, ow, ow!" Kyoshi began to say before he felt the all all too familiar iron grip on his ear. It was the same old hag from earlier, peering down at the boy through her spectacles that hang too far from her eyes to be normal. A cruel grin pulled tight across her pale ashen face. She aimed her pointer finger to the roof, gustering for Kyoshi to shush it. Refusing to resign himself to his fate, Kyoshi couldn't help but feel it was a tad bit unfair he was being punished for something he didn't do, but his pleas for the old woman's understanding fell on deaf ears as she swiveled on her heels, causing Kyoshi to dance wildly about as she spun him by his ear as well.

"Destroying property is where we draw the line, you've been making a mess of this section of the library all day, perhaps a year long ban will allow you to mature young man." The librarian spat with a mild sense of bemusement as she began dragging Kyoshi towards the front door, past the man that had really been the cause of the accident, allowing Kyoshi the time to cast him a pleading look for aid. The pain in his ear was starting to make his eyes water and Kyoshi was determined not to make a fool of himself by crying here of all places. Still, even though he could have easily broken himself from the older woman's grasp, his father had always taught him to be respectful of his elders, no matter what it cost Kyoshi in personal dignity. Afterall, his actions were reflected upon his father, and more importantly the Saito Clan, which lead Kyoshi to the terrifying prospect of what his father would do to him once he caught word of this. That's when the tears finally started to fall, as Kyoshi began to beg the woman to let him go. Shushing him a second time, the woman ended up pinching him by the other ear as well, which only caused Kyoshi to howl in pain, drawing more stares and looks from anyone within earshot as the old librarian dragged him along.

 

[Azai Momotaro]

Momotaro was busy reading the geography book, he was not getting close to find his grandpa but he learned something new. Like why Kumogakure was cold, it was because they up in the mountains, that’s neat ain’t it ? Momo was enthralled by this new world he discovered, a world of books and information he decided that he would do this more often. Learning was fun, and he was satisfied to end things like this, but THUD he heard a noise come from somewhere in the library, he placed his book down and rushed to the location of the sound, when he got there he saw what was going on. A young man, about his age give or take, made a huge mess. Just before Momo could go to help him, he saw a younger boy try to help him only to be dragged away screaming by the ears. Momo looked up and it was the imposing figure of the famed librarian, Momo saw her on the way in but she was way to scary so Momo avoided eye contact with her. But this time he had to do something, do the right thing.

“PFFFFT hahahahaha he got blamed for it.” Momo began laughing from the bottom of his heart, tears flowing from his eyes, clapping gently. He almost fell down from the laughter barely standing up. Momo never laughed as hard as he did before, he did not want to be mean but the image of librarian punish people was hilarious, he never saw how they do it but now its just a laughable act. After catching his breath, Momo looked back up at the woman and walked up to her and the boy. “Miss, sorry about that. But I think this boy here is not the culprit you are looking for, he is just an innocent bystander. And besides I will clean up the message, so lets just end this with a nice simple apology, and some loveable hard work and we call this even ok ?” the boy tilted his head at the woman, hoping she would let go of this sad looking little boy. Momo had nothing better to do, so why not use this time to help him.

 

[Honnou]

Oh man. Hon felt like he was in trouble when he heard sharp steps approaching him. He felt that he would have to pay a fine for the damage, and it wouldn’t look that good on his record, and perhaps he would be obliged to do chores and service for the library due to his reckless underestimation of the weight of the books. Shockingly, the situation had a twist when the librarian had arrived with her very, very grunting, sharply angered face headed towards the mess that Hon was trying to fix. The table had broken sharply in two with some splinters cracked off and laying on the ground, and it was obviously the Hyuuga’s fault…

But someone else ended up being blamed. Even the girl next to him… who, upon a closer look with his constant active Byakugan turned out to be a male - shockingly - commented on it and tried to ease things up with the angry librarian who probably had a long and bad day today. Hon rose up and faced her with a sharpened face and his blue eyes drilling right through hers, although not compatible with his softened words: “Ma’am, I need to fix my mess, and I can’t do it alone. I promise that we’ll fix things again around here…”

 

[Saito Kyoshi]

It was difficult for Kyoshi to believe someone would actually accept the blame, much less stand up for him in the process. He'd only ever known his older sister to wield such kindness, not that he'd had much experience with people outside of his immediate family. His pleas for mercy were finally heard as the librarian release him to turn her attention to the two young shinobi in front of her, before quickly focusing on the clearly older of the two ninja. "Very well, you keep the brat out of trouble in my library and I'll let him work off his punishment rather than ban him outright." Returning her attention to Kyoshi, the older woman whispered sharply in his ear. "I expect you to be here an hour before dawn this week end, you can start by sorting through the old scrolls. If you manage to complete that task, I'll consider it one month off your ban, eleven more days and I'll see to it you have free access once more, but good luck, because those scrolls have never been translated." With a curt and nearly inaudible cackle, the librarian walked off, leaving the three shinobi to clean up the mess themselves.

Rubbing his ears and attempting to calm down so his face would return to his normal shade from the current cherry pink, Kyoshi looked up to the two shinobi whom had aided him. "Thank you senseis, I'm really in your debt. Saito Kyoshi by the way." The young academy student said as he offered his hand and a small smile first to the older of the two shinobi then to the second. "I'm not sure what to do to clean this mess up." Kyoshi stated, still a little shy. He was still embarrassed about crying in public, but with any luck he'd be able to help clean up and then just go home. After all, he had no desire to risk word getting to his father that he had shamed the Saito name. Better save than sorry he supposed. Kyoshi began to move towards the broken table, attempting to move the massive book out of the way so they could clear the floor of the splinters and table pieces. "Where should I put this book, not another table I hope?" Kyoshi asked, grinning mischievously.

 

[Azai Momotaro]

Momo watched as the other boy took responsibility for his own mistake despite it being blamed on the other boy, man talk about being a responsible man, it was what Momo would have done. He then turned to the woman and smiled at her, “thank you ma’am, when your back this place will be clean, and that’s a promise.” He said as he gave her a thumbs up. He watched as she walked away, and went to help the two boys clean the mess, the younger one introduced himself and asked about what to do to clean stuff.

“hey don’t say that, let us work together to fix this mess, I feel bad for laughing anyways. And nice to meet you Saito, my name is Azai nice to meet you. Don’t you worry about that let us do the basics first which is move the books away then figure out things gradually step by step.” He said as he got down to pick up the books, he decided to open one out of curiosity, and he was shocked by what he saw, it was a book about forgery, an art form Momo loved, weapons where the thing that interested the boy the most more than ninjutsu or genjutsu. Excited the boy turned to the oldest boy among the three and said. “hey there, you like smiting ? I do too, I am learning to do it as a hobby, I am not that good at it, are you good at it ?” he asked looking at the boy with curiosity, meanwhile his hand collected as many books as he could. Momo chuckled a bit at Kiyoshi’s comment.

“no don’t put it on a table, at least if we are going to put it on tables maybe spread them apart this time alright ?” he said looking at a young boy, he hopped that he would listen to his advice.

 

[Honnou]

Ah, well. It turned out that the lot present had work to do in order to ease the fury of the librarian. Once she left, the two guys introduced themselves; the boy with the ponytail was named Azai, and the other boy was Saito… was that his first name, or was he Saito… one of the young Saitos from Hon’s own clan? He should ask him, really… but perhaps that revelation and its impact would come in handy a little later than now, so he would simply introduce himself: “My name is Hon. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

He spotted that Azai had picked up his book, and wonder and awe reflected from the young boy’s eyes. He liked the content of that book… so he must’ve liked or at least known about forgery himself. Once Azai asked Hon about it, it was made too clear; there were two blacksmiths in this room. Man, if only his shop was nearby… but what Hon did possess that could help give Azai an idea of his skill was his discreet gauntlets - or rather, the bars on his carpals under his arms.

“I’ve had lots of time to practice…” were his words of reply as Hon raised an arm to release a hidden blade. It was sleek and overall not too flamboyant, but it damn sure was handy the way he could hide it from frontal view even just behind his arms without sleeves. “But uh, yeah, let’s just put the rest of the books on the ground next to that table over there.” The older Hyuuga would help by lifting up the stack of books and maneuver it to the floor next to the new table. The floor wouldn’t break…

Now they just had to fix the table. It wasn’t metal, so honestly, Hon had little knowledge on how to work with that just yet…