I'm More of a 'Metal' Guy

[ThatGuy]

Abari did his best to avoid pouting. He knew he was being selfish and immature, but he couldn't help but be a little upset. All that time spent convincing his family and superiors to let him train in Iwa was wasted. The red-haired swordsman had been so excited to learn blacksmithing from a certified expert, only to find out they had kicked the bucket before he arrived. Couldn't the old man have waited at least another month before dying so unexpectedly?

With a groan, Abari left the training grounds. Being in another village was no excuse to slack on his training! He looked around for somewhere to eat in order to complete his daily ritual. After a short walk, he found a good spot. It wasn't so small as to force him to sit next to other customers, but not so big that he had to deal with the stress of being around a lot of people. Upon entering the establishment, he was greeted by a young woman.

“Welcome! Table for one?”

“Yes, please.”

“Right this way.”

The red-haired swordsman was ushered to a small table and provided with a menu. She gave him a moment to look over the menu and returned not long after Abari was ready. Doing his best to push through his timidity, he straightened his back and forced himself to speak loud enough to be understood.

“Can I get the beef yakisoba, a plate of yakitori, some sukiyaki, and-”

“I’m really sorry if this comes off as rude, but I just want to make sure that you’re aware that these are full servings.”

“Oh, uh, I know.”

“My apologies, sir! So beef yakisoba, yakitori, sukiyaki, and what else would you like?”

“Sake, please.”

Abari shrank in his chair as the wave of embarrassment overtook him. He’d gotten so used to his usual spot that he wasn’t even thinking about how crazy of an appetite he had. In all honesty, he was originally going to get an order of shabu-shabu to close out the order, but the embarrassment caused him to switch gears. He hadn’t planned on drinking at first, but he figured he deserved it after going on such a long trip that turned out to be pointless. Abari didn’t have the best history with drinking. But on every other occasion, it had been someone else’s idea to get him drunk. This time would be different!

It wasn’t long before the waitress brought him his cup, and the red-haired swordsman began to drink. It had been such a long time that the boy forgot just how much of a lightweight he was for a shinobi. That, combined with the fact that he hadn’t eaten yet, meant that alcohol hit fast and hard. With cheeks turning red and a warmness spreading through his body, Abari waited for his food. 

By the time the waitress brought him his food, Abari had already finished two cups and was more relaxed than he had been in a long time. With a large smile on his face, he thanked the waitress and looked at the feast before him.

“Anything else I can do for you?”

“Not unless you know a skilled blacksmith who is willing to teach a foreign shinobi. I mean, seriously, why the hell did he have to go and bite the dust before I even got here?”

The red-faced swordsman was about to launch into a rant about how things had not gone as he expected, but he quickly noticed the look on the waitress’ face. Whoops. He gave the girl a bow as he realized his rudeness. It wasn’t her job to listen to a customer whine!

“I’m sorry, ma’am! Thank you for the meal.”

With that, Abari started on his food. It only took a few bites before he had completely forgotten about the awkward situation that had occurred. Right now, the only thing he was focused on was shutting up that damn growing stomach.

[Kanade]

Kanade wasn’t averse to serving children, families of all sizes, or even people that came in from time to time to get drunk, and woke up the next morning with a ‘miracle’ happen to them of not having a hang-over from her blended and secret recipe that she gave to each one of her patrons that had one too many in her establishment right before it closed.

She had a sous chef that took over the restaurant for her in her absence, when she was tending to the forge out back or when she just had better things to do, and they seemed to be catching on rather quickly. The problem was, they had no chakra affinity whatsoever so people usually tried to cram in when Kanade was working the kitchen, and would only trickle in for her sous chef.

It was an abnormally quiet afternoon when the red-haired swordsman walked into the restaurant and started the order. A warmed sake wasn’t too much to drink for someone that had ordered all that he had, and she wasn’t too worried about any sort of headache or even that the fellow would have a hard time with paying the correct tip at the end of the meal from just that.

Her mind at ease, Kanade got ready to make the order, starting with the beef brisket that would be going into the Yakisoba and the Sukiyaki. It was a fatty beef brisket, but she usually put the meat in medium rare into the dishes so that the cooking could be completed in the broth. The skillet simmered and hissed as she turned over the meat and saw to the broth, making sure that the Sukiyaki wasn’t too sweet by adding a bit of kick with a blend of spices. Once the brisket had been seared, she cut off sixteen thin slices and started to sautee them in a separate cast-iron skillet that had been heating up on the stove.

Moving onto the chicken for the yakitori, she sliced it into cubes, and decided that the customer would probably enjoy six sticks rather than the usual three since his order was so large. She added the noodles, the vegetables, and rang the bell for the girl to take the three orders over to the customer, turning off the oven and waiting for the next customer to roll in. No need to add jutsu to this particular dish as it seemed like the shinobi that had wandered in was more than capable of handling himself, his liquor, and the food in front of him without any gastrointestinal problems.

The waitress nodded and bowed to the customer a couple of times on her way back from the table and cleared her throat.

“He doesn’t like it?” Kanade’s eyebrow raised in a cool manner, her features placid otherwise with displeasure. No one had disliked her cooking in a long time.

“Actually no, he liked it quite a bit. He just made an odd request. Um, he was looking for a smith and I know you have that one in the back, and well, I thought you might know someone.”

“He needs something repaired?” Kanade asked, frowning from the question, her time was better spent doing her own work or infusing chakra into metals, not mending the small wear and tear that came from just being a shinobi in the active line of duty.

“I don’t know, but maybe you can talk with him?” The waitress shrugged at a loss for what to say.

Kanade sighed, took off her apron and hung it on the wall beside the kitchen, turned the stove down to low so that she didn’t have a fire to extinguish any time soon but she’d be ready for another customer and walked over to the young man, sitting down across from him in a relaxed manner, draping her arm over the back of the chair and taking a relaxed, almost feline slump into it.

“Heard you need a smith, something you need repaired or-?” She asked in a voice that trailed off, tilting her head to punctuate the question. She would get to the bottom of the problem and probably would pawn him off on one of the smiths in training for the Enkouten, the ones that would have the job of mending, pounding out dents, or otherwise honing their crafts on things that didn’t need to be beautiful, but just needed to be functional. “I can point you in the direction of a couple of decent ones if you need repairs, but if you saw the smithy out back, I’m afraid I only take custom work, I only work on my own time, and I only do special projects that I agree with.”

[ThatGuy]

Abari still had a mouthful of yakitori as the girl took a seat in front of him. He cautiously looked at her as he finished his bite. It was not normal for anyone, let alone a woman, to approach him. When she stated her business, Abari immediately started blushing. He never meant to bother the staff with his problems. What a complete and utter breach of etiquette! This was so embarrassing! Shaking his head, he quickly tried to explain himself.

“No no I didn’t want any work done. Well, I did want work done, but nothing specific. Well, something specific, but…” Abari stopped himself and took a deep breath to reset. “I came to the village looking for someone to teach me blacksmithing, but they passed away before I got here. I wasn’t thinking earlier, and I apologize. It was rude of me to complain so openly. I know you guys are trying to do your job.”

The red-faced swordsman gave the girl a bow of apology as he scolded himself internally. After a brief moment, he raised his head back up and actually gave what the girl said a thought. From the sound of it, she was familiar with the local smiths and even had a forge of her own. She was already here talking to him, so while it was rude, why not ask anyway? Averting his gaze, the world's most timid shinobi spoke.

"I guess, considering we're already here, do you have any recommendations? Money isn't an issue. I'm eager to learn!"

He always hated the way he sounded when talking about money, but that was the only language most people spoke. Plus, he wanted the most skilled trainer possible, and that would undoubtedly be expensive. It was rude to eat mid-conversation, but that didn't necessarily extend to drinking. So after very briefly making eye contact, Abari looked back towards his cup and finished his sake. What a pathetic sight he must be.

[Kanade]

"I can see what kind of people would be willing to teach a Kirigakure ninja." She nodded and drummed her fingers on the tabletop, the manicured nails making a light clicking noise on the well-polished dark wood. She frowned, not at him, but to his right. She was supposed to be helping out as many people as possible during her trial period as an Enkouten, but she didn't know whether that extended to outsiders. Kirigakure was an ally, but leaking trade secrets to them might be considered unethical, or even treasonous. She would have to consult with the family that had taken her in and see what they had to say before she went around helping him.

"Meet me back here 3 hours, when we close, and I'll either give you the name of a person that I know that can teach you or that knows of a teacher." She didn't want to over promise and under deliver to this young man and wasting his time would be just as bad as setting him up to learn under her and dying. She smiled and nodded, "I'll leave you to your food. Remember, three hours, and then come back here. I'll probably be around back in the smithy, so if you see the lights off and nobody around come on back."

---

Three hours later Kanade was pounding on a piece of metal, shaping it into a guarded rapier and trying to get the handle right. She could, of course, just use her jikiton to shape it any way she wanted, but the rhythmic beating on the metal seemed more personal. She had been given the project by someone who wanted to have it be a graduation gift for their academy student, passing the exam and becoming a genin. She could have had this work done in an hour, but that seemed too impersonal and this was too special for just a regular piece of equipment.

She had talked to her foster family and they had told her that the mentorship would actually be a good thing, that it would help to improve relations with kirigakure. So she waited for the would-be student and pounded on the metal. She, of course, had others in mind if he refused her, but maybe she would have a new student. She had lost Hanako as a student and that still left a hole in her heart, one that wasn't easily filled. Maybe this would help though.

[ThatGuy]

"Thank you so much, ma'am!"

Abari bowed to the woman once more before returning to his food. Three hours was plenty of time for him to finish his food and return to the inn he was staying at. As she walked away, the red-haired swordsman picked up another stick of yakitori and made a mental note to leave a sizable tip. Not just for the help, but for the phenomenal food as well.

---

Three hours later, Abari stood at the entrance to the forge and silently watched as the woman worked the metal. He did not know enough about the craft yet to be able to tell if she was doing a particularly good job or not, but something told him that she was talented. Was it the rhythm with which she hit the anvil? Or maybe it was the confidence with which she performed the task, like it was just another day in her life.

“Hello. You said to come back here in three hours.”

The red-haired swordsman wandered into the forge and got a closer look at what the girl was working on. He was not familiar with the type of blade being made. Abari had seen one before, but his knowledge was somewhat limited to curved blades.

“One of the seven has a sword like that. I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing one in action.”

Abari was sure that the hand guard was standard when it came to a piercing weapon such as this, but he couldn’t help but appreciate the design. Even without holding it and feeling its weight, he could tell that it was sturdy enough to withstand incoming attacks. The blade itself would be a bit harder to tell given his limited experience, but he trusted this woman’s craftsmanship. If she made weapons half as good as the restaurant made food, then he was truly in the presence of an expert!

[Kanade]

Kanade continued to hammer the metal while she talked, making sure to talk on the off-beats of the hammering to make it so that her voice was heard over the general din of the metalworking, “Yep, and you’re right on time for it. Thanks for being so punctual.” She tilted her head and took the red-hot metal in her bare hand and dipped it into the barrel of oil, the top of the oil hissed as she moved her hand back and forth before taking it out and clicking her tongue, shaking her head back and forth, “You see that?” She pointed to the blade where it was less than straight, “That is why we need to make sure that the oil is the correct temperature before we plunge the blade into it like I did. I should have checked the oil before, and set the blade in the fire but I got distracted.” Kanade sighed and put the blade for the rapier aside.

“So you came back to me, I assume that means that you didn’t find anyone else in those three hours that were to your liking better than this girl here.” She looked him up and down and then put the hand not covered in oil to her face in perplexity, “you do know that I am probably younger than you are, right?” She raised an eyebrow, seeing if she could temper his resolve in her. What had he heard? Had he gone around and talked with the other smiths? Had he come to her doorstep blindly? This question could answer all of that.

She walked over to the cold water and started to scrub off the oil on her hand that she had doused in the hot oil with the blade, “I am going to have to show you the way to do this while not being at least a little bit protected from heat like the Enkouten are.” She took her hair in her hand afterward, pulling a stray bit of it back into place, the cold water from the sink touched her hair and created the same hissing noise that the quenching did from the blade when she had plunged it in, The strand darkened to black before heating up gradually again. “So tell me, what do you want to learn? If I don’t know it I can learn it and then teach you the best way to learn it yourself. There are at least 50 ways to smith ‘correctly’ so let’s work on your style shall we? We’ll work on the-.” She stopped and frowned, she was going to say 'we will work on the x style of smithing where x would have been his name, but she didn't know it, “I never really did catch your name did I?” She thought for a moment, and if he had given her his name, she couldn’t remember it, “I’m Kanade, just Kanade, no surname as of yet.” She extended a cooled, cleaned hand to him, “I might as well learn my new apprentice’s name before I scare him off hm?”


[wc: 540/??? for NANOWRIMO]

[ThatGuy]

Abari paid close attention as the woman showed him the flaw in the blade and listened intently while she explained the reason for it. This led to his face turning red as he realized that he had been the distraction. He hadn’t even been here for ten minutes, and he was already being a bother! Before he got the chance to apologize, however, she continued speaking. Abari had honestly not been looking at all in those three hours, he had been expecting to be given a name instead of the woman herself training him. When she mentioned being younger than him, Abari shook his head. She seemed more mature than him, and he himself could still be considered a young adult.

“I’m only twenty-three. Even if you were ten years old, I wouldn’t have an issue with training under you. There’s probably academy students out there that could teach me genjutsu if I cared to look for a teacher. Experience is important, and with age comes experience, but talent is a thing too. The way I see it, anyone better than me is worth learning from.”

There was a sincerity to his words that not many people got to see. The red-haired swordsman was always so unsure of himself, so it was rare for him to speak this much at once. Not without at least a couple of apologies, at least. But this was something he was passionate about, Abari wanted nothing more than to be better and to be of more use to his village. When she mentioned the name Enkouten, he couldn’t help but give a slight look of confusion. The name sounded so familiar, but he could not put his finger on it. Whatever they were, they were apparently protected from the heat, which likely meant that they were a clan of some sort. He wasn’t able to think about it for long before she asked an unexpected question. What did he want to learn? That was a difficult thing to answer. He assumed that “blacksmithing” would be the kind of response that would warrant a sigh. When she introduced herself, Abari hesitated before shaking her hand, having noticed the earlier reaction to her hair the water gave earlier.

“Abari. Just Abari. Nice to meet you, Kanade.”

It felt strange not introducing himself as an Itotsuki, but he was in Iwa, not Kiri. There was no expectation for him to represent his family here. Not that anyone back home ever recognized the fallen noble family's name. It gave him a certain sense of freedom, however. While he could not completely escape the burden of the Itotsuki name, he could forget about it for just a little bit. Abari rarely gets to be Abari around other people. Without the weight of his family name on his back, the red-haired swordsman’s posture straightened ever so slightly.

“I don-”

Abari was going to say that he doesn’t scare easily before realizing that was a complete lie. He couldn’t get through a single social interaction without panicking. As much as he hated to admit it, Kiyo’s supposed “training” had helped him avoid turning into a red-faced stuttering mess every time he left his comfort zone. Social situations like this were a lot less terrifying than interacting with that she-devil.

"I'm, uh, not one to be scared off by strict teachers. I don’t want to specialize in anything in particular. I’m not learning this for myself, and I’m not looking to open a shop. I just want to help contribute to my village, and despite the name, not all of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist use swords. So I want to be able to make anything my fellow shinobi want, even if it isn’t necessarily the best. I guess I’d want to start with something simple, something that nearly all shinobi keep on hand. I’ll obviously go with whatever you think is best, but maybe I could learn how to make shuriken and kunai?"

The red-haired swordsman’s confidence from earlier started to fade as he finished his piece. Was he presuming too much? Did he even answer her question? What the hell was his style of blacksmithing supposed to be? His only experience in the craft came from two horrific failures when he tried to learn on his own. Abari tried to keep calm as the sudden realization washed over him: he was ill-prepared for this lesson.

[Kanade]

“In that regard, yes, I could learn a lot from a genjutsu user.” She shook her head, “But my aptitude for it would be dismal at best, horrid at worst and I might end up a permanent vegetable.” She laughed at herself and knocked on her head, “Not much up here, but I make up for it here.” She patted her chest over her heart, leaving a sooty handprint on her white plain blouse, “Alright Abari, we’ll be trying to find the ‘Abari’ style. So tell me a bit about yourself.” She pulled up two metal stools. Their legs were worked in a corkscrew style that ended with scrollwork feet. They were fashioned so that they had a dip where the seat of the pants would fit quite nicely and their supports were made so that they dipped twice gracefully, and Kanade’s feet came up to rest, one on the lower support and one on the lower support. She put her chin on her kneecap and folded her hands in front of her, staring at her new apprentice with the same intensity that a cat gives a particularly interesting bug or bird in a tree.

“Smithing requires a total baring of the soul, so let’s be honest with each other hmm?” She nodded to the seat that she had just offered him, “I want to hear about your aspirations, your legacy that you want to leave behind, your background, your favorite food profiles.” She listed them off non-chalantly and started again, “I want to know your taste in men, or women, whichever you prefer, I want to know your favorite music genre, your favorite color, your favorite texture, your favorite plant, your favorite piece of smithing work, your favorite architecture style, and your favorite memory.” She listed them quite plainly, then smirked, “I’ll tell you all of mine if you bare yourself in this way, and in that way we’ll make sure that you can express yourself completely in your own style of crafting. I am sure that yours and mine will be wildly different, but that shouldn’t discourage us from working together to unlock the inner metalworker and artist in you.” She readjusted her seat, again in a feline manner and blinked twice at him, her hair and eyes started to burn brighter as the day started to get on into evening.

Chiaki had always loved, and Kanade still did, learning more about people. She found them fascinating, and each person was a work of art, a carefully crafted story that was waiting to be told. She wondered whether or not there was a muse out there that was awed by the people that walked around, that came out and became a part of their own story, or made their own story, and she wondered when she would ever meet a ‘main character.’ So far there had been many many people, and they all had seemed as much a ‘main character’ as each other. Everyone had not only a story to tell, but a series, a complete saga, and their histories, their individual experiences were too much for one girl to take inventory of at even a glance, but when she dove into their stories, really got into the nitty-gritty, that was when Kanade truly shone.

It was this shining that was evidenced by the fiery orange glow of her eyes, and her hair, normally a black with a peekaboo dull orange had turned to a fiery red with an almost brilliant yellow, framing her dark neck and backlighting her facial features as she drank in every detail of her apprentice’s figure, and hopefully his story to come.

[WC: 609/???? NANOWRIMO]

[ThatGuy]

Abari sat there for a moment, stunned by the barrage of questions he had just received. He’d never been good at telling people about himself, what was there to say? But if this was her style of teaching, then he’d try his best to be as thorough as possible. He avoided eye contact as she studied him, the undivided attention was not something he was used to. It was nothing like his father’s piercing gaze, but it still gave him that feeling that Kanade could see right through him, like his mask was useless. Abari reassured himself that he was just getting in his own head. After clearing his throat, the red-haired swordsman got ready for a long and exhausting speech.

“My aspirations are one and the same as what is expected of me. I wish to be a worthy representative of both Kirigakure and my family. If I’m being completely honest, I sometimes fantasize about becoming one of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist. It’s a pipe dream for someone like me, but someone planted the idea in my head a long time ago. I don’t have any grand expectations for my legacy. I just hope to not be remembered as a failure. I come from a wealthy family. We’re not as powerful as any of the major families in Kiri, but our name used to carry a bit of weight. All of that is gone, however. My father is the last surviving member of the previous generation and the only one who lived long enough to have an heir. My mother sustained an injury on a mission, leaving her incapable of having another child, so unfortunately, it all falls on my shoulders to carry on the family legacy. As far as my food profile goes, I’d have to say savory. As you could probably tell from earlier, I tend to work up a viscous appetite after training, and there’s nothing that tastes better than a good steak after a workout.”

The red-haired swordsman briefly made eye contact again and started to get embarrassed. She was actually listening to him, and he wasn’t sure how to respond to being in the spotlight. Face turning red, he tried to redirect his thoughts back to Kanade’s questions. He’d only answered a few so far, and he was determined to find a way to answer them all. After taking a deep breath, Abari continued.

“I don’t think my taste in women really matters. At the end of the day, it’s my father who decides who I end up with. He’s been searching for a bride that meets his criteria, but so far no one has been inte-” Abari stopped himself as he tried to find a less pathetic way to word his sentence. She didn’t need to know that he’d been rejected repeatedly over the last five years. “No one is a good match. I’m not big into music, but if I had to pick a favorite genre, it would probably be Enka. There's no particular reason, it’s just relaxing. My favorite color is blue. Not like my eye color, though, more like the ocean. My favorite texture would have to be smooth. Lavender is my favorite plant. The katana is my favorite piece of smithing work. I know there are better weapons out there, but it has spoken to me ever since I was an academy student. I don’t know if it counts as an architectural style, but I find pagodas to be quite appealing.”

He stopped to think about the final question. Somehow, it was even harder to answer than what his aspirations were. Abari felt guilty as he struggled to find a good one with his family. He loved his mother with all of his heart, but he couldn’t remember doing much with her. Most of his life was spent studying under his father or training by himself. Did that make him a bad son? The only memory that came to mind was rather embarrassing, but he forced himself to be as open as possible.

“There’s this girl I know named Kiyo. She insists on torturing me and claiming that it’s for my own benefit. Something about people only improving when pushed out of their comfort zone, I guess. So most of the time I spend with her is hell. But despite all that, she is probably the closest thing to a friend that I have in my life. She brought me to a party once, and despite my repeated protests, I actually kind of had fun. I made a complete fool of myself, but I had actually managed to talk to strangers. Part of that was the alcohol, but it was still the most social I had ever been. Unfortunately, the night ended with me apparently getting into a fight and puking, but I remember it fondly. Just for one night, I almost felt… normal.”

Abari smiled softly as he remembered the foolish way in which he introduced himself to people at the party. It was fun, but unfortunately, it was not enough to cure his social anxiety completely. Despite Kiyo’s best efforts, he still could not manage the most common of social skills. Starting up a conversation on his own was still an uphill battle, and few things terrified him more than the prospect of flirting. The only reason he was able to talk to a stranger like Kanade so openly was because it was supposedly important to his training.

“I uh… Hope that my answers were satisfactory.”

Despite his ears burning and his lack of eye contact, Abari was proud of himself. He had said all of that and not stuttered once! Was this evidence that he was on his way to becoming less of an awkward mess? Regardless, he was still concerned that Kanade might not have liked the way in which he answered her questions. Abari spoke more like he was trying to finish a quiz than telling her a story about himself. The red-haired swordsman shifted uncomfortably in his seat after he was done speaking. The silence before receiving a response was almost unbearable. For another brief moment, he made eye contact, waiting for Kanade’s reply.

[Kanade]

Kanade stared and processed and then thought of something that they could smith together, let it pass and then smiled. “Good! Good to know you Abari.” She smiled and got up from the stool, put a hand on it, tilted it so that it rested on one of the four feet, and then twirled it like a top, keeping her palm on it as it spun before setting it down again and nodded, “All very fine answers except the one about what kind of woman or man you like, but I’ll let that pass on account that you probably don’t want to share it with me right now. I’ll settle for watching you in the coming months to see what kind of woman or man catches your eye as you walk by them, when your head turns and your gaze lingers a bit too long.” She smiled at him in a devious way and chuckled, “Nothing sinister, but we have to know what kinds of inspiration you will take from in your artwork, like this fellow that I got a spoon from, was quite into pregnant women actually.”

She strode over and picked up a matching set of four spoons, each one had the bowl shaped in a different pregnant woman’s image, the swollen belly was the ladle, and she smiled, “He thought these were one of his best works, so I bought them.” She moved over to a candelabra and hoisted it up for him to see, it was wrought of pewter, but there were nude men playing instruments around the base, one playing the lute, one playing the lyre, and one playing the drums as if they were marching around the candelabra and eachother, “This was made by an old man who kept it in his attic away from his wife and four kids.” She smiled, “a yard sale from a far off village got me this little prize.” She then set it down and picked up a shield, it was covered in silver filigree and was a bronze-inlaid shield, depicting a fruit tree of some sort, and as she moved it in the light, the orange glittering gems that it was encrusted with flashed in the light, “This orange tree was the most beautiful thing that a woman saw, when she visited the south from the freezing wastelands in the north. And her husband made this,” She picked up a bearded axe that had a column, which looked Doric in structure, for the handle, it ended in an ivory bear’s head that was so lifelike in its creation that it almost looked to be alive. The axe blades themselves were shaped like Monstera Deliciosa’s leaves, with the fenestrations and everything, “This was his axe, until he died and his son didn’t want it anymore, he wanted gambling money more.”

She smiled, “So these are why I ask you,” Then she sat down again, crossing both of her legs on the seat of the stool and placed her hands on her knees, staring at the lad again so that he would get a sense of how serious she was in her answers.

“My aspirations are to be the best medical ninja in the world, to craft the finest armor that can keep any person safe that wears it and fits like a glove no matter the shape of the person that tries it on. I want to live as brightly as possible, and earn my place among the Enkouten. I want to leave behind a legacy of warmth, happiness, and pride. Not in my own work, but instill a sense of pride in others when they look in the mirror. I want to hone people like a finely crafted blade so that when they’re trying to cut a path for themselves, they’re met with the least resistance possible.” She smiled and then put a finger to her lips, “Let’s see, my taste in food has changed. When I was a little girl, I liked sweet things, and still do, but I like something spicy to eat, and something sweet to drink, which may sound dichotomous, but is lovely I assure you.”

A small chuckle escaped her lips as she rocked back and forth on her stool so that the front and then the back legs came off the ground, she looked no nearer to toppling than when she was sitting still listening to him though, “Alright, for the next question, you have to know that it’s a weird one, but I prefer both men and women. I love the ones that shine the brightest, and have the best personalities, ones that when you buff them up to shine really nicely, just dazzle you with their wit, or their charm, or their beauty." She frowned, “I’m actually a bit of a loose woman, when it comes to physical interactions, blame my upbringing, but I like people who know what they want and take it, who aren’t afraid to live.” She smiled, “Nothing gets me more drunk than someone genuinely enjoying what they’re doing or who they’re with at that particular moment.” She paused and thought, “Favorite music is probably a southern Suna drum dance that I saw performed, that I want to learn myself. The men looked like their feet could carry them on the winds, and the women moved like water over smooth stones.” She imitated some of the undulations of the stomach with her own body, moving her arms up and down in a pale imitation of the dance that she saw, “My favorite color is aquamarine, my favorite texture is velvet, smoothed down the right way, or the texture of skin after a hard workout. My favorite plant is a tie between the fiddle leaf fig and the holly for two completely diametrically opposed reasons. My favorite architecture style is the vernacular style of the Rumah Gadang.” Kanade hoped she said that correctly but moved on, “My favorite piece of smithing work has to be the arm guards that can double as offensive weapons that loop around the middle finger here.” She pointed to her middle finger and looped around it in a miming motion, “So that when you make a fist they extend and become like brass knuckles, but won’t break your fingers if you punch someone.”

She hummed and put a finger to her lips, “My favorite memory isn’t anything like yours unfortunately for me, but it’ll have to do since you told me yours. My favorite memory has to be when I turned into a cat and sat under the stars with a disciple of mine a long time ago. She was reading a book and I sat in her lap and we watched the stars together.” She smiled fondly at that tender moment and shrugged, “It was simple, and quiet, and wholesome, and I don’t know if I’ll ever have a moment like that again.” a tinge of regret rang through her voice as she cleared her throat and nodded, “Right, so now you know Kanade. What do you think of her? Different enough for you?” She smiled and then chuckled, “Now, on to making your weapons, would you like to do Kunai or Shuriken first? They’re vastly different from one another, so we can start small and work our way up from there.”


[WC: 1222/???? NANOWRIMO]

[ThatGuy]

Abari was happy to hear that his answers were satisfactory but only blushed further as she noted that he had avoided mentioning his taste in women. He wasn’t one to let his gaze linger, in fact, it was the exact opposite. The more attracted he was, the more he desperately tried to avoid looking in their direction. Unfortunately, it would likely be just as obvious to Kanade as if he were staring. He calmed himself down with the thought that they would likely be staying in the forge for lessons. It was unlikely to ever come up. When she showed him the various items, he did his best to appreciate them. The pregnant spoons could almost have been wholesome had he not been privy to the artist’s proclivities. The candelabra was something he could see in some sort of art show or maybe a display piece in a noble’s house. The axe and shield were the items Abari found the most beautiful, however.

“I think I get it.”

When she started giving her own answers to the previous questions, the red-haired swordsman listened as if it were going to be on a test later. He took in every detail, only wavering while she started speaking about her taste in men and women. But by the end of it, he felt like he knew Kanade a lot better. Obviously, a few questions were not enough to give a perfect picture of someone, but it was a hell of a lot more than he had gone through with any other of his teachers. He’d only just met her today, and yet he’d already talked to her more than any of his other instructors back in the village outside of lessons. It was a strange experience, but not unwelcome.

“It sounds like Kanade is a rather kind woman. I’m actually an amateur Iijutsu practitioner, so I think your path is very honorable. It seems like I might have found a great teacher.”

Given her apparent love for helping other people, he was excited to start learning. Most people just did it out of obligation or for a paycheck, but she seemed to legitimately enjoy building others up. From the sounds of it, he was lucky that he didn’t end up learning under the man he had originally came to Iwa to be instructed by. They might have been more skilled than Kanade, but at the end of the day, he was just collecting a paycheck from some spoiled rich kid. When she asked what he would like to start with, Abari didn’t waste much time before making a decision.

“I think starting with the Shuriken would be best. Both weapons are iconic shinobi tools, but I feel like Shuriken are typically in higher demand.”

Abari remembered the few missions he had gone on with other people. Many of them seemed all too happy to throw away all of their weapons at the first sign of combat. So why not learn how to replenish that limited amount they take with them? The red-haired swordsman stood up and walked back towards the entrance to the forge, retrieving a bag that he had left close to the doorway.

“I wasn’t sure if people would want me using their tools or not so I got a few of my own to be safe. Plus, I’d be beside myself with guilt if I accidentally damaged any of yours.”

After returning with the bag, he emptied the contents and laid them out on a nearby bench. The tools were well made, but not too impressive. They were good for a beginner to start out with and just sturdy enough to get the job done. It was apparent, however, that they would not last very long with repeated use. Abari simply did not know enough about the craft yet to excuse buying anything high-quality. That would come later. Assuming that his new teacher didn’t give up on him like his previous ones, that is.

[Kanade]

Kanade nodded at his want to know how to make shuriken, it was the most basic of practices, and it didn’t require much effort to make them, as they usually had a mold that would just be used over and over again. She went over to the molds, bringing out a flat mold of about three feet by three feet and put it on the table. “Alright, you want to know how to make shuriken, I can respect that. They’re rather easy to make, all you have to do is make one of these, and then place it somewhere that it’s not going to break. It’s made of ceramic, so it doesn’t break even if it is exposed to temperatures of steel, and since we’re going to be making something flat, it’ll take minimal time to make, and these ceramic molds can be taken pretty much anywhere you want to go and do smithing.” She looked at Abari to see whether he was understanding her.

“This can be done with Shuriken, kunai, or other such tools, but to be honest, making them this way will make them brittle, and if you don’t chakra temper them, and not just regular tempering, I mean chakra temper them, well, this happens.” She took a kunai from the table and whipped it at the nearest post. It exploded into metal shrapnel with a sound like a gunshot.

“I’m not even that strong, that was just because it was one that came directly from this mold here.” She patted it twice, fondly, “And I didn’t temper that one yet. So you’ll want to make sure that you include that in your process, or they will be expendable, and probably won’t do much damage.” Kanade walked over to the post, pointed at the point of impact, and only a small bit of metal had actually embedded itself into the wood, the rest had just shattered. There were small bits of steel that had cascaded all around the point of impact and they hadn’t made much of a dent either.

“You’re only as good as your tools, remember that, and you’ll be just fine. So, let’s start making you one of these ceramic molds.” She took out some clay slip powder bags, and some boards, then took ten shuriken that she had on the table where she had taken the one that exploded and brought them over to the table. She started to set up the casting table, placing the bottom board down, then building the frame for the ceramic molds, and then she smiled at him, “Alright, so what we’re going to want to do is we’re going to want to make the base here.” She pointed to the base of the finished mold. “First, and let it set for a small amount of time before firing it and then, once it’s cool, we’re going to want to create the top part of the mold,” She pointed to the top of the mold, where there were ten openings, leading down to ten shuriken molds, “It’ll take about twenty-four hours to make this mold, but once you have it, you’ll have it for life.” She smiled at hers, fondly, stroking the smooth surface of it, “And as an added bonus, you can put your own stamp on your mold, and you can put your own stamp on the shuriken as well.” She looked through the tools, but came up without a stamp, “Do you have a stamp, or do you need to make one of those as well? Those we can make easily enough with just a bit of wood and a knife. Shouldn’t take more than an hour with a ready-made hammer-haft.”

Perhaps Abari just kept it on his person, and perhaps not, but Kanade could help him along with his molding process no matter what he wanted, “So, what I am going to ask you is, do you want to make the standard shuriken, like these that I’ve made? I sell them for a pittance.” She patted the mold and then moved over to the masterpieces as she talked, picking them up and showing them off one-by-one again, “Or do you want your shuriken to be like these, each one has a piece of you in it. They still can be functional, but they can also be elegant and can be works of art.” She smiled, “I saw a knife the other day, it was crafted, probably with a mold similar to the one we’re going to make today, to look like an aspen leaf. It was sharper than anything that I had seen in the other shops, and it was unfortunately already sold. It looked as if someone had plucked a leaf from the ground after the tree was done with it in fall, and had honed it down to a razor’s edge. The detail, the veins were so intricate, that I swear that the person that made the blade must have stared at aspen leaves for hours on end before making the knife. Unfortunately, it was one of a kind, and that smith doesn’t like me all that much.” She frowned and shook her head, her shoulders slumping and the fiery hair that she had died out to a cold obsidian. She was more hurt by that than anything. She might as well have been ostracized from the medical field.

There were two things that were special about the location of her smithy and her restaurant. One: it was near to the entrance of the city, so if there was an attack it would burn down. But it also was one of the first things that someone saw, if they took a wrong turn into the residential district rather than following signs for the market district. Two: It was nowhere near the other respectable smiths, restaurants, or businesses, and was across the street from a house of ill-repute. She had almost no customers, for either her restaurant or her smithy, but they still brought her joy. Kanade sighed heavily and shook her head to loosen the cobwebs, then slapped her cheeks to get herself back in the game, “Right, so, do you want to make knock-offs that everyone has, where they don’t remember who made them, or do you want to sell them for a little bit more because they’re unique, and people will remark at how durable, and light, and creative they are?” She smiled and asked it in a challenge. Obviously, she wanted the latter, the question hung in the air between smith and student.

[WC: 1094/???? NANOWRIMO]

[ThatGuy]

Abari gave a confused look to his teacher as she mentioned having a stamp. The thought had never crossed his mind. Sure, the Itotsuki family had one for formal letters, but he was not yet head of the family. Plus, it would be a disgrace to the family crest if he were to put it on his shoddy creations. As conceited as it felt to put his own mark on things, Abari had to concede that it would be a good idea. The whole goal was to start providing for his village, so a little advertisement wouldn’t hurt.

“I’d need to make a stamp. I’d never thought of it, honestly. Maybe just my name?”

He didn’t get much time to think about the design, however, as she asked what kind of shuriken he’d like to make. Abari would definitely need to learn how to temper the metal with his chakra, like Kanade had mentioned earlier. The molds were a good idea if you were trying to mass-produce tools, but that’s not what he wanted to do. If he was going to make something, he wanted it to be as high-quality as he could manage. He wasn’t confident in his ability, but his teacher clearly had an immense love for the craft. Abari had only been there for a short time, yet she had provided multiple examples of beautiful creations. It was clearly something she paid close attention to.

“I don’t know how creative I can be, but at the very least I want to make something that leaves an impression. I’m not looking to make a bunch of money from this. I want to be able to provide exactly what someone needs, and maybe even more. I know it sounds pompous of me given my current skill set, but that’s my honest goal. So please, help me become the best blacksmith I can be!”

The red-haired swordsman sounded much more confident than he felt. Simply hearing himself speak was enough to make his ears burn from the embarrassment. A few years ago, he would have laughed at the idea that he could have talked this boldly to a person without stuttering, let alone a woman. Trying not to think about it any further and to also brush off his embarrassing moment of confidence, he tried to change the subject.

“Maybe the stamp can wait for now, though? I don’t think my name would be very memorable. Hopefully inspiration will strike when I learn a bit more.”

Noticing that it was starting to get dark outside, Abari wondered just how much time they would have for lessons. Kanade had a restaurant to run and presumably some blacksmithing work on top of that. That didn’t seem to leave much time for teaching. The last thing he wanted to do was pile more on her plate. 

“Are you sure you have time for all this? I imagine that between the restaurant, the forge, and being an active shinobi, you're quite busy.”

It was unlikely that Kanade would have offered in the first place if she didn’t think she had the time for it, but Abari wanted to make sure. According to her answers from earlier, she was the type who really liked building others up. So it would not be too much of a stretch to think that she might overextend herself. Abari simply wouldn’t allow himself to be a burden to someone so kind.

[Kanade]

Kanade nodded, “I think that a name would be good. You could write down your signature and we could make a stamp out of it too.” She thought for a moment and then smiled, “You know what they do in the north? They do a bind-rune for their family name and their first name. I used to have a stamp, but it was destroyed.” She lied, she still had the stamp. It read, ‘Kyoukan, Chiaki’ but she had been thinking of putting a bind-rune on it like she had seen on the bottom of the shield that the woman who had married her husband. The axe she thought had it somewhere as well, but it would be more easy to read the shield’s one.

“Here let me just- yeah, here it is.” She pointed it out and grabbed Abari’s hand to touch it, “See the bind rune that has been stamped on the inside of this? The metal was super-heated to a point where it was almost liquid and then they pounded this into the back of the shield before adding all of the filligree and other things, and then chakra tempering it.” She took the shield and hit the anvil with it, the shield rang out with a clarion ring, but there wasn’t even a dent in it. The anvil had the barest of scratches from the blow, “See? It hurt the anvil more than it did the shield. Now, I will probably need a better anvil if you’re going to be going about hitting it with the strength of a Kage, but if I am any judge of your musculature and your demeanor, I’d say that you don’t have that kind of strength in you-” Kanade smirked at him with bright orange eyes and an impish curve to her lips, “Yet.”

She looked herself at the bind rune, it was a bunch of straight lines that were woven into an itnricate pattern that had all of the northern letters of her name in it. What a beautiful thing. Each bind rune was completely unique, like a snowflake, and people would frown on you if you didn’t know someone else’s bind-rune and used it in your own works of art, or branded it on your cattle. She smiled and nodded to herself that would be what she talked about next for a stamp, “There is also the brands that you put on livestock. Around here I think it’s mainly used for sheep?” She shrugged, “In Kumogakure they use cows, and I think that Kirigakure isn’t as possessive of things that are alive, and just mainly harvest the fish in the ocean, but it’s a way of saying that a particular animal belongs to you. Now I would never brand an animal-” She shook her head and frowned at this, her face grew dark, as did her orange luminescent eyes, “And I would sooner brand a farmer with his own brand, but it is a good identifier, and I don’t mind you putting a brand on a piece that we make here.”

She had listened to him and nodded to herself, the next thing to do was to show him that he could do exactly what he wanted, to provide exactly what someone needed and not make just any kunai or shuriken, but ones that were made tailor specific to the person. She would wait for him to mull over what he wanted on his stamp, he did say that he wanted to wait for it, so it was better than trying to force him to think about it now and having him regret it and have to use a different stamp later on. The one thing that someone needed in a stamp, or a brand, or a signature on a piece of artwork was consistency. Then they could say that they had an original, non-duplicated, non-replicated Abari manufactured weapon or piece of armor. He had said that he wanted to learn something about the craft but had mentioned iijutsu, the medicinal chakra usage to heal wounds. Perhaps this would be a good time to teach him Megallium as well, though she wondered whether or not he would be able to use it or whether it would elude him.

Then he brought up the want to make sure that he wasn’t intruding upon her time. She had no idea where that came from and she laughed heartily at his concern. It was interesting to see it on the other end of things, rather than being the person giving the concern, being the recipient of it. She looked up at the stars and sighed after she was done laughing, wiping away hot tears that had started on the corners of her eyes from laughing so hard.

“I am sorry I didn’t mean to laugh at you, but you know, it’s funny seeing it from the other end.” She chuckled and kept the genuine smile on her face, “I see a lot of my good qualities in you. I just hope that you don’t take on any of my bad habits. No, you don’t need to worry about my time. I will let you know if or when it gets to be too much for me, or whether or not I want to teach you anymore. If I offer something please accept it without thinking too much about it, otherwise I will be embarrassed by it and might re-think it.”

She thought about this again and nodded to herself, “Yes, I think that I get what my mother used to tell me when she was alive.” She thought back to the tender moments that she would spend with her mother. Her mother had taken the sickness from Theraveda Kyoukan, the strongest Kyoukan that there was, now or even then, and the sickness had eventually led to her death. The heart-disease made it so that a transplant had been needed, and the botched surgery had left her unable to cope. She cleared her throat, trying to suppress the tears that came, just as hot and painful as she remembered them being the last time that she had cried, “Sorry um. She said that if I kept worrying about others, that someday I would find myself alone and taken advantage of.” She smiled at Abari, wiping a tear from her face with the back of her hand, “So please don’t let anyone, even me take advantage of that sweet heart of yours.”


She went over and retrieved a tissue from the table. It had been a very long time since she had thought about her mother. One thing had led to another and the thought, the experience, had been pushed further and further down. She had never truly mourned for her mother’s loss. She had been imprisoned, given a therapist who was only interested in what he could glean from prodding her too far for the Raikage. The man had given her a clean bill of health, but they had put a guard on her. The guard that Shinjiro had torn through in the festival, four kumogkaure shinobi, dead, and she wasn’t even allowed to be shocked. She knew that was the only way to escape Kumogakure, go out and pursue her dream, and then she was bound to Kintsugi, only to find that their defenses were lacking, their best one had been Maido who was now dead and revived in a weak body called Shuichi. The misfit ragtag bunch of shinobi had managed to shake her confidence in them so far as to have her politely accept the Tsuchikage’s invitation, which led her here.

“Sorry,” She shook her head, “Got lost in thought there, um. I was saying something before I went down the memory lane.” She scratched her chin with her fingernails, and then nodded, “Right, the techniques that you will be needing for the Shuriken. I am going to be teaching you the best way to make them. I usually only use folded steel for projects such as blades like katanas, but if I show you this, then I think that it will make more sense when we move onto the bigger projects.” She took the mold for the shuriken that she had made and put it aside, along with the bag of dry slick and all of the other ingredients for making the mold and then went over to the raw materials section of her smithy.

“First you’re going to want two types of metal. One should definitely be this specific type of steel.” She showed it to him, “See what number it has on it, it means that it is a specific type of steel that has a very specific concentration of iron, carbon, manganese, sulfur, and phosphorus.” She took out a book that showed the different compositions of each in each type of steel. The book was composed of only different types and flipped the book to a page called 1084, and showed it to him, “See, this is the composition of this type of steel, remember these ratios if you ever want to make sure that you’re getting the correct-” She trailed off and then handed Abari the book, “You know what, I know where to get another one of these books, you keep this one, and I’ll get a new one.” Then she frowned and shook her head, “Unless you want the new one and I can keep this old one. It’s covered in soot and god knows what else from being in the forge.” She laughed and shrugged, “Up to you though, which one you want. It’s a special order from the library, so if you want one of your own that is new you’ll probably have to stay here for a good month to get one in.”

She then turned the page in his hand to the other type of steel which she showed to him, “This is an entirely different type of steel called the 15n20.” She pointed to the spot in the book and tapped it twice. You can just make them out of the 1084, but then you won’t be able to pattern them out like you want, and you’ll have a uniform looking metal. I always like to see what kind of patterns will come out of the work when I am making this particular type of weapon or armor.” She pointed to a set of damascus steel knives, “That’s an example of what we’re going for there. Do you see the grain and how it almost looks wood-like? That’s what we’re going to go for here. If you want to make a perfectly good set of Kunai, all you need is the 1084 and you can follow the same process, but with a little cut out of the middle. But if you want to make works of art like those knives on the wall there, you’ll have to get a bit more creative with the metals and the metalworking.” She sighed and took the two pieces. Cracking her neck she put the pieces of metal onto the table and motioned Abari over, “So in order to work at night you had better have a good source of light, especially since a lot of forging doesn’t come when the fire is the right temperature to make all those fun flames that you stare at when you’re gathered around the campfire. You’ll want some sort of external light at least for this part of the process.” She smacked a bug that had landed on her neck and rolled her eyes, “The damn mosquitos this time of year will eat you alive. Luckily, I have helpers for that.” She motioned for her butterflies with two fingers and a quick whistle. They buzzed around in the air, their wings making the same noise as the shuriken had when she had thrown it, but they were faster, more deadly and it only took a couple of breaths for them to be done with their business. One of them landed on her finger and she smiled, “Lovely little killers these are, better than any shuriken I’ve ever thrown, and so accurate they can cut a mosquito in two with just a little encouragement.”

She cleared her throat, “So this is going to actually be my inspiration for making the shuriken. I am going to fashion the blades to look like butterfly wings, and I needed a good test subject. Wipe that little bit of mosquito off of yourself there sweetheart.” She said to the insect, who did so promptly while the others lazily kept guard, flitting as fast as lightning at the sign of any mosquitos, but that was only once every couple of seconds, the intervals started to get longer and longer as Kanade drew out the butterfly on a piece of paper and then held it up to the light. “I recommend a lantern for things like this.” She picked up a lantern from the wall and put it on the table, motioning for him to take a seat. "You see, when you’re drawing these pictures you’re going to want them as accurate as you can possibly make it, because we are going to use it to make the pieces that we’re going to cut out here in a second.” Kanade put the piece of paper up to the light. It was definitely a butterfly shape, but the wings had been slightly elongated at the bottom so that they would be more accurate and not top-heavy, perfect for throwing like regular shuriken. She then took a brush and a dollop of ink and traced her sketch through the thin paper onto the 1084 steel four times, and did the same with the 15n20 steel, producing four very similar patterns in the steel with the ink. “The right paper makes all the difference.” She noted.

“Next we will want to cut these out, and for that we are going to need either something that gets very hot in a pinpoint, such as one of these.” to which she pointed to a vent in her forge, “And we will put the butterflies up to the heat and wait until they’re a bright red color.” she held it up to the heat and showed him exactly what color they wanted. The ink that she had used was one that had been made with charcoal, and so it bubbled, dried, and then stained the metal beneath as she worked it over the small opening, using tongs to carry it to show abari the proper procedure. “Then we’re going to want to bring it over here and use this chisel to beat the metal around the design to get the shape that we want.” she took it over and started to beat a small chisel into it, and only got about four poundings in before it was time to bring it back to the small opening and do it again, “For patterns such as this, you’ll only want it a bright red color, as any higher and the ink will just burn off and you’ll be left with a blank slate and your imagination. I don’t know about you, but I can’t work metal with just my imagination alone the old-fashioned way.” She shook her head and then brought it over once more, it took the better part of a half an hour to get one butterfly out of the forge that way, and several times of Kanade adding wood to the forge.

“Now, if you have advantages in Jutsu you can do this a lot easier. I have seen katon users able to heat up their metal to a uniform temperature and keep them that temperature while they work, that’s useful. Then I’ve seen magnetic users use magnetic forces to form their metal that way. We here in Iwagakure can just use metal and force it into the shape we want.” She pointed to the other patterns and then shrugged, “But that would be cheating, and I wanted to show you how to create art, and I doubt you could get the scrolls off of Tatsuo even if you begged and pleaded and let him whip you naked through the streets. There are other ways of working with the metal, so you’re going to have to find what works best for you, but for now we’ll go through and only do this way, so as not to overload you with information on jutsu you may or may not have. Sometimes the old ways are the best ways.”

She took the rest of the metal and beat it out into the shapes she wanted, using the chisel to break the metal off and casting the metal into the appropriate buckets when she was done. She stacked all of them up and smiled at him, “These are fine as is, if you want to make a cheap set of Shuriken, but we’re going for a good set, a great set, one that will last forever, so we do this instead.” She took the butterflies and ground down the flat edge of them so that they were all smooth on both sides. That took the better part of a half hour, much quicker than the shaping of the butterflies to begin with. She took the butterflies and put them together and then went over to the forge. “Looks like we have enough fire to make these babies as hot as they need to be. You’ll be wanting to look for the yellow so that they will fit together nicely.” Kanade motioned for him to come and take over watching while she went to go set up the next part. “This is called a smith-helper. I don’t know what it’s actually called, but everywhere I’ve gone it’s always been called that.” She said, pulling over a piece of equipment that was just a rather large weight that was tied to a rope. Kanade pointed to the pulley system up above where they were and smiled, “And it is going to do the work that I can’t because of my lack of strength. This weight is 800 pounds and we’re going to use it to fuse those little butterflies in there together.” she pointed to the forge and flung the rope up and over, finagling the rope through the pulley system as the butterflies came up to the right temperature, before pulling it up and wrapping it around the post nearest to her, “See, when that comes down on the anvil, like it will when we are done setting up our little lovelies here, it’ll start to pound them together, which is what we call ‘welding’.”

She smiled, “The two different types of steel are going to be hard to tell apart, but the butterflies on the left are the 1084 steel and the ones on the right are the 15n20. They should be about the right temperature now to pull out.” Kanade went over to the forge and took the pieces of metal out as if they were cookies, sniffing the metal as it came out, “Just the right temperature." She took them one by one with a pair of tongs that were nearby and set them on top of one another, layering one on top of another and then brought the huge weight down on top of them four times, “That should about do it.” She nodded and then looked at the butterfly on the table. “See, it’s thicker than normal shuriken, so we’re going to have to do this about four more times before it flattens itself down to a more uniform size that we know and love.” She took it and did just that, put it back into the forge when it was orange, bringing it up to a yellow color, beat it with the ‘smith-helper’ as she called it four times, before she put it back into the forge, “If I had magnetism, this would be the time to use it, when they’re nice and hot, just shaping them into whatever shape I needed. Of course I could make these with Kouton, but that seems a little like cheating too.” She mused and then took them out and repeated the process four more times until they were the width of normal shuriken. She pointed to their form and shook her head, “Now you see, these won’t do anymore because they’re all the wrong shape, kinda like cookies that you put into the oven, so we will need to beat these sides off like we did in the beginning. We can heat them up nice and hot though, and we can use these.” To which she took a large pair of metal-clips, which looked like they had come from cutting horse-hooves and clamped them together twice, “and we can just work the pieces off that we don’t want. This is where art comes back into play.” She smiled and patted Abari on the shoulder, “When we’re done with this, you can take a break before I show you how to chakra temper these. Of course we’re going to temper the heck out of them the right way first, but we are going to want to chakra temper them so that we can show you that process as well.”

Kanade strode over as soon as the butterfly, which looked more like a four-pronged blob right now than anything, was a nice bright shade of yellow, almost white and took it out, putting it on the anvil, she started to take the large metal clips and clamped the metal herself, “It’s quite malleable, and soft, and so we’re going to want to make sure we’re extra careful to measure twice and cut once. This usually takes the longest of all of the process of actual smithing, since I am a perfectionist.” She smirked, “So please bear with me as I get this just right.” It did take upwards of three hours with her reheating the metal to pliability, clamping and clipping and then looking at the butterfly’s shape, before continuing on.

“Next we need to normalize, because all of that welding, all of that working, all of that heating and reheating has made our metal quite unstable, so we need to make sure that we have all of the impurities out of the metal, and we want to make sure that we have the whole thing under our thumb, rather than leaving anything to chance." She took the butterfly, which had retained its shape from what she had drawn on the paper to begin with and looked even more butterfly-esque with the rough edges now than it would when it was a finished product, and put it back in the forge, “We’re going for an orangish red. Or around the 1600 degree range. The way we can see this is if we look at the steel and see its color. When it’s a dull red, it’s 1100 degrees fahrenheit, when it starts to glow a bright red it’s 1500 degrees fahrenheit, when it’s orange it’s 1700 degrees fahrenheit, and when it’s yellow it’s around 2000 degrees fahrenheit.” She ran her hands through her hair, “My hair, on the underside right now is about 1500 degrees fahrenheit, which is how I am not sweating from all of this labor in the hot forge.” Kanade smirked and blew a sigh out, “If you’re getting winded we can work through the rest of this tomorrow.” She smiled and looked at the clock, “The sun will be coming up anytime soon, and I have kept you very much past when you thought you’d be here I’m guessing.”

She looked at the work in the forge and took the tongs out and placed the piece of work on the anvil, “Now we’re going to let this little beauty get to room temperature before we touch it again, so we’ll have about seven hours while the steel figures out what it wants to do with itself, then we will move onto thermal cycling, to make sure that everything is kosher between the two, albeit very similar, steel types. Since this is a work of art we’ll do the heat cycles rather than quenching it, if it was a normal blade, like that one that I accidentally warped we would quench it in canola oil at 130 degrees. The oil, not the blade.” She yawned and stretched, she had been up for at least 24 hours and this part always got the best of her. Sometimes she would take a nap in the chair if she couldn’t wait, other times she would put the whole of the anvil and the work of art in her shed and leave it until she was ready to work it again.

“Then after we’re done with the thermal cycling which could take up to 5 hours to complete we’ll do a sub-critical anneal, which means that we’ll heat it up to about 1700 degrees very very slowly, which will make sure that it keeps our edge as long as we want to use it, which will be forever. I want this shuriken to outlast my great grandchildren.” She cracked her neck and stood up, popping her shoulders and elbows, “After that we’ll go ahead and file it into a more finished state, and then do another stress relieving cycle, heating the blade up to a dull brown color, the color of very ripe wheat. It’s around 1200 degrees, and keeping it there for about 2 hours, after we are done with that is when we etch anything that we want into it, as this is almost the last part of the process, then after that we’ll fully harden the steel, which means bringing it up to a very dark tomato red and then quenching it in hot canola oil, 130 degrees, and then we temper the blade. After that we run a rag over it and polish out all of the blemishes. We then put it in an acid treatment, put it in the oven inside for two hours, baking off the acid, then acid treat it again, then wash off the acid and then we sharpen the damned thing and once all of that is done.” She let out a deep sigh and looked at the sun as it came up over the edge of the smithy, basking them in morning light, “After that we give it some coffee for about thirty seconds which deepens the color of the 15n20 steel and that gives it that wavy grainy pattern you see there in those knives. I would say that the whole process before you chakra temper it is about 20 hours, give or take." She smiled, her eyes laughing the tired laughter of delirium but she seemed happy with the work, “Then we get to chakra tempering which is a process in and of itself. Let me know if you have any questions, and if you’d like to have some coffee whistle we wait for the butterfly to cool. Or if you’d like to go home and get some rest.”

[wc:4505/???? NANOWRIMO]

[ThatGuy]

Abari soaked up all the information he could as Kanade spoke about binding runes, only losing focus for a brief moment when she grabbed his hand. He could never get used to physical contact with other people outside of combat. But he did his best to avoid reacting in a way that would only embarrass himself further and instead focused on what she was showing him. Abari shook his head as she mentioned him not having the strength of a kage yet. People always overestimated his potential, which should have been flattering, but to someone who doubted their own abilities as much as him, it only made him feel more guilty.

When she laughed at him, Abari tilted his head quizzically before she explained herself. While he appreciated her words, she was sorely mistaken. Outwardly, it might have seemed like Abari had a kind heart, but that was simply an illusion projected by the politeness drilled into him at a young age. If Kanade knew the atrocities he had committed as a shinobi, she would kick him out of her forge. So he decided to bite his tongue for the moment and let her continue. Telling her that there was nothing to apologize for, he gave his teacher a smile or reassurance.

As Kanade began teaching Abari his first lesson, the red-haired swordsman flipped the switch in his mind to get rid of his wandering thoughts in order to give his teacher his full undivided attention. He had vaguely understood the differences in metal composition before, but he had no idea where to get or what to do with that information. When she offered to give him the book, he reluctantly accepted it.

“If you’re going to buy a new one… I think I’ll just take this one.”

As his teacher continued the lesson, Abari did his best to soak up the knowledge being provided, but it was a lot to take in at once. Plus, he hadn’t expected to be getting any lessons today, he didn’t even have his notebook! His thoughts were interrupted by the butterflies being called upon to eliminate the mosquitoes in the area. He’d never seen butterflies move so fast, let alone ones that followed commands. It was a little unsettling that something so beautiful and seemingly innocent could kill him in a heartbeat.

“I can also get rid of the pests for you, but my way is less elegant than the butterflies.”

When she got to the designing phase of the shuriken, Abari started to get a bit worried. He wasn’t a bad artist, calligraphy was part of his lessons, so he knew how to draw a straight line, but he’d never been the creative type. Maybe that was something that would come with learning the craft. Brushing aside his nervousness, he focused on the remainder of the lesson. He felt like he had gotten the gist of it, but he’d definitely need to go over it again. It was getting late, however, and Abari had not prepared for this lesson in the slightest. On the bright side, he had a good idea of what to expect in the future.

“I think I’m going to get some rest. Normally, I would have been taking notes, but I had no idea you would be teaching me at all, let alone tonight. I’m suffering from a bit of information overload at the moment, but I promise I’m normally a much more proficient student. I’ll get some rest and be more prepared tomorrow. Once again, thank you for all of this! It was very nice meeting you, Kanade. Same time tomorrow?”

With a smile, the red-haired swordsman reached out his hand for a handshake before saying his goodbyes for the night. With a yawn as he left the forge, Abari did his best to mentally repeat everything he had been taught. Sleep would come later, and right now he needed to get back to the room he had rented out and copy down everything he could remember from the lesson while it was still fresh in his mind.

The sun was already up by the time Abari had finished his notes. There were definitely going to be some errors in the content, but it was better than nothing. With a sigh, he closed the book and blew out the candle he had been using for light. Crawling into bed, he couldn’t help but feel a slight sense of pride. He didn’t want to presume too much about his teacher, but it felt like he actually made a friend today. It was a rather unconventional and embarrassing way that he went about it, but it seemed to work. It wasn’t a particularly nice thought, but Abari had to admit that he was glad that the original trainer died before he had gotten there. When life gives you lemons, right?