Smelter's Blues

Spoiler:

Kouma had recently gotten enough funds for a special material for his puppet Tika Tika, and wanted to make sure that he had something else that would make his puppet more resilient. He was going to attempt the chuunin exams that were happening fairly soon, although he did not know when the chuunin exams were taking place exactly, but he definitely wanted to compete in it, because that would be fantastic if he could win and achieve the rank of chuunin, he would hopefully get more responsibilities in the village and be able to have access to more of the archives, which would be nice. He knew that the archives held some of the most comprehensive knowledge inm the ninja world, and increasing his knowledge of things would be great, especially the human body. As for now, he was going to focus on the new mission that he was taking part in, which was going to a local blacksmith and helping him extract pure aluminum out of some regular aluminum ore that they had. Kouma had extracted some metals out of ore before, which was why he was ready and willing for this mission. He really liked working with metals and being a black smith, as this was something that intrigued him for dealing with puppets. He really could only make very simple things out of raw metal, but he liked the design process and execution of making a puppet, and most of the time they had a great many small pieces that would make their mechanisms work inside of them, plus the features that needed to be sculpted a certain way for the chakra threads that puppeteers used to actually make them move the way that they should. It was a very precise work, and his familiarity aorund the forge was second only to his familiarity around a mechanism table or workshop. He woke up early on this particular day, as he wanted to make sure he had a decent breakfast and got in a jog, just so he could be at his absolute best when it came to actually extracting the metal.

He had done this before when working on puppet designs or his puppet itself, but he needed to remember to eat a big breakfast, because he got into a sort of state of mind that made it so he forgot to eat most of the time, and his mother had scolded him plenty of times before to take a break from what he was doing to make sure that he took care of his body properly. After eating a fairly large breakfast, Kouma then made his way down the street and towards the black smith shop that he was going to do the job at, which was just down the street from one of Kouma's favorite restaurants which sold dumplings. He had already eaten his own breakfast that he made at home, so there was no reason or craving for him to actually go into that restaurant right now, so he simply passed it by and headed towards the black smith shop, although he made a mental note to grab some dumplings for his mother on the way backj from the shop to his house, as they were definitely hif favorite. As he walked towards the shop, he noticed that most of the large pieces of equipment, such as the anvil, the furnace, the forge itself, and the stokers were outside in a small section that was simply decorated with tools and other weapons and things made of metal that the shop had made recently, and they seemed to be in good order. There seemed to be a middle aged man who was fairly burly standing there checking on things, and Kouma made sure to look at a local clock that was within the village center, and it stated that he was around twelve minutes early, and so he sighed in relief. He did not want to be late on a day like this, so this was something that he was happy to see, that he was a bit more than ten minutes early, which is what his mother taught him to do when he wanted to be professional and punctual. Kouma walked up to the man, but stayed a bit away from him, as it seemed like he was busy checking all of the tools that one would use to start the furnace as well as extract ore from metal, making sure that they were not worn out of broken in the slightest.

Kouma waited for the man to finish, because he might be in a sort of zone that he himself got in when he was greatly into something important to him, and he knew that when he was doing something important he did not like to be distruced, especially if he was counting something or keeping a mental note of the things he had already checked inside of his head. Kouma simply took a look at the shop's exterior when he was out there waioting for the man. The outside of the shop simply had a metal type overhang over all of the important things, and he noticed a set of what appeared to be chainmail curtains that were around the outside edges of the overhang, presumably so that the shop could close them down for the night without the risk of random dogs or other animals messing with it, plus it would make a large amount of noise if thieves were to try and sneak in to take things, which was an added benefit. There was a large furnace that seemed to be made out of thick, heavy bricks or chunks of stone, larger than one would use on a normal house, this seemed like the type of stone chunks that you would make a castle out of, as they were very large and earthen, without a hint of additional work other than cutting them. This furnace had a metal covering opening up to one side where the person working there would place the wood to burn, and then there was some sort of arch or tunnel made of stone that led to the actual forge, where one would put the metals that they wanted to melt. There also was an overhanging metal wire that seemed like it was for hanging things from, but Kouma could not recognize this, as he had simply heated up his metal that he was working with before taking it over to an anvil to be shaped into what sort of pieces that he wanted. It seemed that while he was checking out the black smith shop, the middle aged burly man was finished with his inspection and took a look at Kouma as well. The young Yamaguchi clan member was too enamored by the sophisticated layout and the things in the shop, that he did not notice the middle aged man checking him out.

It seemed like the middle aged man was a no nonsense type of person, but still admired that Kouma seemed to take a great interest in the things inside of his shop, so at least his profession would not be made fun of or questioned in any way by this young man, or at least that was what the middle aged man thought currently. Kouma kept his puppet with him at all times, but it was technically in a small pocket dimension made with a slightly easy application of space time, so it could be called out whenever he wished for it to be, as long as he was able to get off a hand seal or two. This meant that the middle aged man had no frame of reference when it came to Kouma, as he simply looked like any other ninja of the village, although he had his own unique but traditional outfit and the large scar on his face that usually drew some attention and sympathy from people, but that was about it, it did not tell them much about himself just from a look. The middle aged man suddenly made a guttural cough, attempting to get the attention of Kouma, which was successful, as Kouma seemed to snap out of it, before realizing that he was spacing out and hurriedly went to the man and gave him a respectful and deep bow. "My apologies senior, I was just interested in your shop. I'm also here for the mission to help you extract some aluminum, if you don't mind." Kouma said very politely, hoping that he did not give a bad impression of himself to this middle aged man so soon, as he respected and venerated his elders, there was no way he would want to do something that would put him in the bad graces of a person whom he respected as such. The middle aged man thought that it would be fun to test this young man that came here for the mission, and mess with him a bit at the same time. The middle aged man simply kept looking at him, walking around Kouma and scrutinizing him and making him feel very uncomfortable and a bit awkward to have a senior stare at him as if he was judging whether or not he was worthy enough for the mission he had.

Soon, the old man simply nodded with a hmph, before going back to checking a few things and getting a couple of the tools ready. He then turned back and looked at Kouma, before speaking to him. "Alright boy, head into the shop and grab a bag of charcoal, the large one in the area behind the counter. Bring that here." The man pointed to a spot near the furnace with his hand, before continuing on with his instructions. "After you do that, grab the extra protective gloves off of the counter, they're the ones for young people like you,m since they're smaller than normal. Put them on then come on out here, and we can get started." The old man told Kouma all of the instructions that he had for him at the moment, before getting the tools ready once again. He was making sure that they were at a distance to where someone could simply grab it and hand it to him if need be, but not close enough to where they would be considered cluttered or bang into each other. It was a perfectly neat and tidy system that the middle aged man was making, and it had served him very well for his years. He then went on to check the furnace and the actual forge, while Kouma had finally made his way into the store area, where he saw a great number of things. Most of the stuff that he saw were metal tools and simple metal weapons, such as kunai and shuriken, as well as normal tools such as shears and tongs. There was no one at the counter this early in the morning, as the shop had not officially opened yet, so Kouma was able to simply walk through looking for the things he was supposed to get. Soon, he went to a back room that was used mostly for storage, and he saw piled of metal bars that looked like iron and copper, as well as some special bars that seemed almost like gold, but it was a bit more orange than gold would be, and Kouma wondered what it was, but only got distracted for a split second, before heading to the large pile of charcoal in the back, and a burlap sack from the side before filling the sack with charcoal.

After that, he simply carried the large sack out of the shop interior and placed it near the furnace, as close as he could to where he remembered the black smith saying that he needed to put it. He wanted to do things correctly, and he was unsure if there was some sort of special thing about the spot that was chosen, but since Kouma did not know if there was or not, it would be better safe than sorry in this regard, so he simply placed it where the black smith told him to exactly. After fiddling with that, it was about time for them to actually starting the extraction of the aluminum, but Kouma did not get to do much, as it was something that they had to wait for, then clear of slag, which the black smith did, and then wait some more. Instead, the black smith told Kouma all about the process, regardless of whether or not Kouma was interested.

EXIT
WC 2111
Claiming 2100 ryo from new mission rules and genin rank
Claiming 1 Aluminum
Claiming 10 ap from mission rules
Claiming 1000 words to augment my Tika Tika with Meteoric Iron
Claiming 1000 words to augment the same puppet with Hemlock

Approved.