A New Story

Human Faced Owl:

The next day Hakari kicked into full gear, her tracking mastery fully deployed. To see her at work was a marvel. She employed her crystal style jutsu, marking trees with her chakra blue rock, she was perceptive of every misplaced leaf and snapped branch signifying that someone had passed. There was nothing that escaped her notice, nowhere was made safe from her keen awareness, not a soul could hide from her all seeing eyes.

"Hakari-san, when did you get time to clear all these locations?" Amoroto pointed off at all the markers on the map, ticked off, from where he knelt on the ground.

"I woke up earlier today. Since Nari and Argies were watching the camp I was free to track down and mark out all the places I knew the owl spirit didn't go. Leaving us with a trail, a lead to where we are most likely to find her." Hakari spoke off while caught in the rhythm and pattern of her tracking practices, it seemed so natural for her that it spoke of how many years she had trained in the art.

Nari arched an eyebrow, yet continued her path through the thickening forest, finally clearing her voice to speak she pulled back a branch out of her path and closed in on Hakari. "What makes you think she has chosen to tread the ground when she could have chosen the approach of flight?" She inquired clearly not understanding why anyone would choose to walk through such a thick mess of bush.

Hakari didn't lift her eyes off her study of the invisible tracks we weren't adequate enough to see, but spoke evenly and cleared the air with her conviction. "Because I know what the tracks of a wounded animal look like, and because I can see the blood in the dirt."

I was the first to inspect, not seeing blood and earth mixed before I had not expected it to form a type of mud just as if it were water. "I'll have to remember this for next time we track a wounded victim of Amoroto's jutsu, the blood is almost indistinguishable from mud except for the fact that it's almost brittle instead of simply dissolving to the touch."

"Do you ninja always categorise every detail, honestly I feel as if an encyclopaedia hits me on the head whenever you talk." This time I knew Nari's words were no complement, but it seemed that Amoroto had a different inquiry.

"What is an encyclopaedia?" He asked coming to take his turn in inspection, almost as if following in my footsteps though his question was now my ponder.

"I have likewise never heard of this word, what is this encyclopaedia?"

Nari twisted her head at us, in disbelieve she struck a squinted look at Hakari wondering if it was a shared lacking. "An encyclopaedia is a book about every facet of knowledge, or a book only of a single subject yet containing every branch dealing with that subject. In the Sand Village we have hundreds of such books, do you not have such works here?"

All three of use simply marvelled with a collective "Oow!" and it was taken upon Hakari to pick our chins up off from the floor. "Here within in the Leaf such books would be forbidden, it would lead to too many opportunities for theft and damage. The libraries here will not allow you to leave with a book more than one hundred pages thick, and some sections of the library are barred with literal iron bars."

Nari was caught off guard by this revelation, pulled back suddenly realising how stringent a country she was in. "We have rules on returning books , and encyclopaedias are never allowed to leave the Libraries, but your village rules sound utterly absurd!"

"Augh it seems so." Taking up the slack I dismissed the coming argument to continue our mission "Now Hakari if you could give us a progress report, I do not want to hold Nari any longer in our absurd country then she need be here. The Great Kami knows I wouldn't want to stay if I had the choice."