Welcome to Gaia! ::

Batafurai listened to her sensei eagerly, and nodded. "Alright, I love cows!" Tilting her head upwards, it seemed she was daydreaming. "Nice.." She whispered to herself, not even knowing what she was talking about. Shaking her head, she returned back to reality and smiled. "Good to go."

Ran nodded to her sensei, and then shifted her head to examine Batafurai. She raised her eyebrows a little at the murmur the girl gave to herself, then returned her attention to her teacher. A mission already...? Ah, but of course. Even as gennin, and even with the treaty, they needed to bring up their reputation and skill, to gain other missions.

Standing off to the side, Ran was fully ready to leave. Although she still had questions to ask, she held them back, and planned to speak of them at a later time. Regardless, though, she had a feeling they would come up, anyways, in due time. One reguarded Yuki's village and it's history. The scroll she'd learned most of her Jutsu was from there. It also had been where someone dear to her had lived, though she had never met him....

All in due time... she thought to herself, giving a cough.

(( Guys, try to keep things together. Also- please don't get into any arguments about posts. If one of you posts something wrong, please notify them and simply ask them to change their posts. I know you guys aren't trying to be mean, and argue about it, but sometimes it reads that way ^^; ))

Berai cracked his knuckles a little as he examined the paperwork in front of him. A mask resembling a mix between a weasel and a fox resided on his face. His ANBU armour made his skin sweat a little, but he ignored it. He actually felt oddly bare, without his regular garb, whenever he got a long enough break to wear it. The brunet sneered a little behind his mask, and then sighed lightly as another team of gennin wandered in.

The Kokourei didn't understand why he was there, to begin with. He should've been in the office, dealing with the village issues... not assigning stupid teams their missions. But, then again, the thought that this was what the Hokage would be doing entered his head, and he stopped his mental complaining. After assigning the team a low-rank mission, he sighed and leaned back in his seat, his long braid flopping over the chair.

Somehow, most of the villages had mixed many of their shinobi together, for this peace treaty. He, himself, was from Otogakure, and yet, he was working in a Konoha workspace. The gennin team that had just left had been a mix of a few of Sunagakure's nin, as well as one or two from grass. These times seemed a little too friendly for the ANBU. Regardless, he continued on with his work.

((Um, ok, you are right. I read your post incorrectly, and I'm sorry. I thought it meant you had two shadow clones and not two arrows. I must be on crack. biggrin . In any event, you said in your post, the clone said aloud "So what if I told the both of you that I’m actually aiming for both of your heads right now?". They assumed the rest.

One thing I'm curious about is where are yin and yang chakra mentioned in the series? I've personally never heard of it, but I've been known to be dead wrong. See above apology for further info on me being dead wrong. biggrin ))

The twins noiced their cute tricks weren't working, but something was bugging them. This person was obviously fairly skilled in the arts of aiming, meaning that if she had wanted to, she could have taken them out with the first shot. She didn't which meant a few things were possible. One was she was trying to measure them up, and if that was the case, she was more than likely their elusive jonin-sensei. Two was she was a rogue ninja, but they pretty much assumed that a Leaf team would be here about now if they didn't know this person. They went with possibility one as the more likely of the two, mostly due to the absence of other jonin. It's not as though they were in a densely populated area, but there had been enough people around to notice a disturbance. The twins kept up their guard but decided to eliminate one of the two possibilities.

"Out of curiosity, jonin-sensei, how are we doing?"

((GACK! eek ! I suck so much for not being online! Sorry, please don't kill me. Busy busy!))

"Huh." Roque managed to say after Kae disappeared. "Everybody seems like they're in such a hurry in Konoha." Roque said, stretching his arm and grinding it around a bit. There came some satisfying creaks and snaps that Roque smiled at. He tapped on Gaens' knee to get his attention. "Okay bud, ride's over." Roque said. Gaen hung on for a little longer, givng Kiesel a goodbye snuggle, and hopped off Roques' shoulders. Kiesel gave a little whine of complaint that she wasn't getting attention anymore. "Geez girl, you like the spotlight don't you?" Roque murmered to his white and fluffy passenger before turning his attention back to his team mates. "Well, I don't know where the little rock-monkey is but he's my roomie, so he'll eventually make it back to the apartment. I'm heading there to leave him a note or something so he knows where to find me." He looked up at Kinu. Roque knew that she didn't like him that much. He wasn't one hundred percent sure why, but it was probably because of her serious nature. That, and they didn't really know each other all that well. Roque knew some of her techniques, and that she liked books, but that was about it. She was equally informed about Roque, though it wasn't for lack of trying on Roques' part. She just didn't seem interested in getting to know him. "I'm heading off to training ground #26, if either of you want to give me a serious pounding, I could use the defensive training." The offer was mostly aimed at Kinu since he and Gaen had already sparred a lot on their off time. "Any takers?"


Gaen didn't want to leave his cosy little spot on Roques shoulders. There was a kitten there after all, and that was a powerful insentive to remain. He did get his bare feet back onto solid ground again though. It felt kind of wierd to be standing up right, so he hopped back to crouch on the chair where Kae had once seated herself. He listened to Roques' offer of training, but was ignorant of its' intended target.
"I can't. Sorry buddy, and kitten, but I've got a small flock of birds to check. I hear they had three chicks added to the roster and I have to catalogue them." Gaen crouched low and made reading to leap off into the rooftops. "By the way, training ground #26 is a valley with a lot of very impressive flowers that attract some species of giant centipiede. If one comes crawling by, don't kill it. The only ones that can eat you are over twenty years old. Not many of them, so give the forest custodians a break." Gaen warned, then vanished in a manner not unlike his sensei.

((Yin and Yang chakra were never mentioned in the series, I was just applying Taoism/Buddhism to the nature of Chakra, since Naruto is Japanese and all. But Jiraiya does make a reference to it in Shippuden. During the two year training, Naruto asks: "How do you get out of a Genjutsu-user's illusion?"

Jiraiya made the reference saying: "One is to say Kai, while putting the pointer fingers up with hands together (not exact quote). In events where the Genjutsu, or the user is stronger than the basic release, one can release themselves from the Genjutsu forcing their own chakra to stop flowing immediately, or making their chakra wild and uneven, so as to disrupt the flow of chakra(instead of flowing smoothly). Because what Genjutsu really does is control the victims chakra flow.))

Mayumi’s shadow clones disappeared when the twins mentioned this. Immediately, she used Ashibumi to come out of her hiding place and move herself in front of the twins. Her other clone was still fighting with Shinji, however. She smiled big towards the twins and made the “be quiet” gesture, putting her finger up to her lip as she pointed towards Shinji.

“You guys may have gotten it, but I haven’t played enough with him yet,” she said quietly, keeping her distance away from Shinji, “just wait a little bit, and we’ll get finished.”

Her clone drew back the kunai she had thrown. When Shinji had jumped into the air, she felt his weight leave the earth. Even though she couldn’t see, she looked up, expecting an attack to happen somewhere from above. Before he could strike, she simply used Ashibumi to step behind his line of attack and threw another end of the kunai at him.

((I hope I didn't drag my team's character along too much with this post. I tried to leave spots in which the genin could act on their own to an extent, but I wanted to keep things moving. Nobody has an interest in reading 12 posts all about what happened in their short trek to the elder's residence, anyway.))

Batafurai remained energetic, even when faced with dull chores. Ran seemed unaffected by Yuki's announcement, and Isaakus was cleary disheartened. I had expected them all to be depressed at this prospect. Luckily for them, the soil is fertile, and the animals are tame. That's a lot more than other villages can attest to. Even Oto doesn't have a strong grasp on domesticated animal husbandry. Not paying too much attention to the budding group dynamics, he continued his ponderings.

At Ran's part-request and part-question, Yuki responded, "I do believe so. Now follow me!" He flashed into the air and dashed over to a nearby rooftop. In doing so, he was careful to keep his skills guaged to that of a genin's. Hopping from rooftop to wall to clothes-line, Team Iron made it to the other side of the village in a few minutes, not saying much throughout the journey. Yuki halted just before the elder's plot of land and pivoted on his landing ankle to face his genin.

"Okay, before we charge in there and try to make work easier for ourselves through the use of chakra and associated jutsu, I must inform you that there will be no jutsu used throughout our duties here. Even building up chakra will not be permitted. You may or may not know, but animals are very skittish when near amassing chakra flow. We don't want the elder's horses rampaging over and trampling his fields, now do we?" He then took a moment to view their expressions and proceeded, "Granted, it will make our job more difficult, but this is a character-building and stamina-testing excericse after all." Finished with his final instruction, Yuki lept up to the elder's homsestead without leaving his gening enough time to potentially protest to his face (for they wouldn't dare to complain in front of the elder whom they would see in just moments). Knocking on the door, the elder answered. He greeted them formally and gave them specific tasks that needed doing. Milking, feeding, sowing, and weeding: all of them classic farm tasks.

Isaaku had expected as much, "No chakra? I wonder how the others will fair..." Normally, Isaaku used his chakra to help him stop when he was running full blast. But he could slow down earlier. He nodded after bowing hurriedly to the elder, "I got sowing and weeding! Could I ask where you keep the seed?" After the elder had answered Isaaku disappeared, a plume of dust spiraling up where he had once stood. He had chosen those tasks because they wouldn't require so much strength or time, and his speed would really come in handy. Isaaku stayed on the tips of his feet so as not to disturb the crop.

He already had everything planned, a few kunai to make the holes for the sowing and his running to pluck weeds and insert seed.


(Hope I'm not going to far ahead here...)