Chapter Seven
Alright! I'm An Office Assistant!


"Alright! I'm a Delivery Boy!" - Fry,Futurma: Episode 1 – Space Pilot 3000


The display case was massive. Constructed entirely out of a thick crystal clear glass, the display case that held various pieces from what appeared to out of every corner of the globe from any thought of period, started about twelve feet from the door and then followed the curving roll of the circular office for about ¾ of the way before ending. The office itself had to be around three times the size of an average living room in a condo with granite colored marble floors inlaid with gold veins here and there for that extra pop of expense. Pillars of a rose and cream colored marble lifted the high vaulted ceilings and were set six feet inward from the oak panel walls.

The whole place reeked of expense, big time money that only guys like this Yoshitsune Mamoru had to spend on more refined presentation of a personal office. While it showed off the accumulated wealth of the head curator of the soon to be opening Museum of Asian History, it all showed off his beloved attention to the history of the world outside the noise and chaos of New York. And for that, Sara held a small amount of respect for the older gentleman as she browsed her way along the glass display, reading the place cards and placards to each individual item set out on the wooden shelves. While she stared at these priceless pieces of history, Sara kept her hearing tuned in on the conversation that April was having with Mr. Yoshitsune himself.

There were a few times in which Sara's brow furrowed in a scrunch, but other than that she did seem a bit disinterested with the ground laying for April's new partnership with the head curator. Mr. Yoshitsune had contacted April a few days ago looking to enlist her help in finding a few last minute artifacts he had a bit of trouble coming by and had been hoping to have in the museum before its grand opening, which was only an entire three months away still.

And the reason Sara was there? It just so happened that Sara had become April's new assistant after that first night she met the four turtle brothers, their father (who was also their sensei), and April herself. If it hadn't been for April explaining to her parents that she wanted to hire Sara as a sort office assistant to the business that she ran with her partner and boyfriend Casey Jones, it would have been rather difficult for the teen to explain her reasons for coming home at such a late hour and looking as though she had been tousled about. Luckily enough, her parents took the explanation and were even excited to the fact that Sara now had a part time job in which she could exercise her rather expansive knowledge of Japanese folklore and ancient history.

So thusly, the partial reason as to why Sara had been dragged down to the still being put together Museum of Asian History. It was a near monolithic structure with three stories and the same area measurement as the White House. The Head Curator's office was on the third floor and tucked off into the east wing.

While there was a bright side to being woken up at six in the morning and hauled down to what seemed like that farthest end of the city from her parent's apartment, Sara was unwilling to admit to this so called "bright side". April argued, well pointed out excitedly to be more specific, that Sara and herself would one of the first of the public to see the inside of the new museum and catch a sneak peak at what was being setup.

"Yeah, I'm absolutely riveted. Forgive my lack of leaping about with glee, bad back you know."

"Good to know your sarcasm doesn't suffer like your attitude in the morning. By the way, I know you just quoted Lion King, so take any credit for it."

By the time seven thirty rolled around and they were actually inside the museum, Sara finally had to admit to the bright side that April had been pushing for. April – one, Sara – zero.

"Not a problem Mr. Yoshitsune." April smiled while nodding at the same time. "I have a few sources well-versed in Japanese folklore and ancient artifacts who will be able to help me with this project."

Yoshitsune Mamoru, a man of Asian decent who more than likely was gracing the age of fifty or so with salt 'n peppered black hair that he wore slicked back, adjusted the horn rimmed glasses that sat perched upon his nose while chuckling behind closed lips. "Well then, you're a better start than I was." he smiled. "And your young friend there," Nodding over at the teen who was still rather fascinated with his displays, he lifted his brows in a bit of question. "Is she one of your sources?"

April glanced over at where Sara was standing, the back of the teen was turned to them at the moment with just a glimpse of her reflection in the glass being caught for a moment. She nodded in answer to the question. "Sara, could you come here a sec?" April called out.

Glancing back over her shoulder briefly, Sara turned away from the display and crossed what seemed like one heck of an expanse between her and the two adults. Standing beside April, Sara gave Mr. Yoshitsune a small smile. She had already been introduced and he the same, so there seemed no real need for further formality in that area.

"Sara's a rather decent expert in Japanese folklore, Mr. Yoshitsune. She'll be helping me locate the pieces you've been looking for." April grinned while setting a hand on Sara's shoulder.

He nodded with a bit of an amused look on his face. "I see, so not only are you an office assistant, but you're also a bit of a historian. A young lady of your age with a range of talents is a very rare thing nowadays."

Why do I feel a bit resentful of that? It's like he almost expected me to be chewing on a wad of gum and twisting my hair about my fingers...you know what, that kind of pisses me off. Sara offered out a shallow chuckle as she tried to hold back on the sarcasm she was more than willing to let fly at this point.

"Well, then, Mr. Yoshitsune we'll be on our way. It was pleasure meeting with you, and I'll make sure to stay in touch with updates on our progress." April extended a hand out to the older gentleman, who accepted and shook hands with his new business partner.

"Excellent, excellent. It was also a pleasure to meet both of you ladies. Take care now." He bowed to them both, customary of course out of tradition and habit no doubt.

Returning the bow, both April and Sara guided themselves out the door and headed for the elevators. It was only until they got to the elevators and hit the button on the panel, that April turned to Sara with a lifted look on her face. April had been expecting at least a little bit of excitement on Sara's part, and wondered now what kept the teens' mouth shut instead.

"What?" Sara glanced up at April from the corner of her eye.

April shook her head. "Nothing. It's just that you seem a bit quiet, that's all."

Silence passed between them as they continued to wait for the elevators. Sara broke the silence again, her left brow pulling up in a bit of questioning manner. "What did he ask you to look for anyways?"

"He said they're scrolls dating back to the Heian period." April stared up at the lighted box holding the plastic casing that was hopefully just a few second from lighting up in declaration the elevator's arrival. "The Yamato Scrolls."

The very words sent a deathly chill straight down Sara's spine like a bolt of lightning, her eyes even went wide with a bit of constricted look to them as if she knew something April didn't. Looking away from her quickly, Sara stared down at the ground, hoping her rather sudden expression hadn't been noticed by the redhead beside her. "Great."

A chime-like alarm pinged from in front of them, the case above their heads lighting with a soft peachy glow as the brass shine doors slid open. The ride down to the main floor was almost as quiet as it had been with them standing in the hall outside Mr. Yoshitsune's office, which April noted as a bit odd. Once they stepped outside the museum itself and began the easy climb down what seemed like an unnecessary amount of stairs, April decided to pop a question that was currently bugging her.

"Sara, what's the matter?"

"What are you talking about?" The teen almost seemed to refuse meeting April's gaze as she clambered down the steps beside her.

April exhaled a bit of a frustrated sigh before continuing on and taking on Sara's ring-around the question "game". "I'm talking about your inability to actually look at me when I'm talking, and the lack of any and almost all communication." She pointed out with a slight frown feathering her lips. "What's wrong?"

Sara paused in the middle of the slope placed stairs leading up to and down from the museum. She seemed to be contemplating something for a minute before turning to face April, who happened to be a few stairs up behind her. "I know exactly where The Yamato Scrolls are."

"Well that's great." April's frown quickly dissolved into a broad smile.

"No, April, it's not." It was Sara's turn to frown now. "Those scrolls are locked up inside the Fushimi Inari-taisha. No one is allowed to touch or read them, let alone take them out of the chest they're locked away in. They're not some misplaced artifact that needs to be reclaimed and shared with the rest of the world." Sara explained, her brow furrowing deeper as she spoke. "Those scrolls were locked up for a reason. And I'm pretty sure that Yoshitsune knows exactly why they were locked away in the first place."

April's brows knitted together as she slowly becoming a bit confused by all this. "Why do you say that?"

Sara looked back towards the museum, her eyes literally zeroing in on the window she knew looked in on the curator's office. "Because his ancestor was the reason those scrolls were locked up in the first place."

"You're absolutely certain that this Yoshitsune Mamoru is linked to Minamoto no Yoshitsune." Splinter stroked the long train of white hair that dangled from the top of his chin. The claws at the end of his fingers pieced through his beard, separating tangles wherever they were to be found.

Sara nodded with a rather unhappy look on her face. "I'm dead certain." She sat back in her seat on the worn couch she had come to frequent quite a bit over the passed three weeks since her initial meeting with the family of anthropomorphic ninja after a tried ambush by the Foot Clan. "It would be one hell of a weird coincidence if his family name happened to be the same as the given name of a shogun name Minamoto no Yoshitsune, and that he happens to have an interest in The Yamato Scrolls."

"What exactly are these Yamato Scrolls anyways?" Donatello spoke up from his spot near the computer terminal he rarely seemed to leave during the day, unless of course Sara happened to come down for a visit. But even then, he somehow managed to wind right back up in front of it fiddling with whatever new gadget he was looking to improve on or invent. The purple masked turtle had a bit of a puzzled look on his face.

Splinter glanced from his son to Sara and beckoned for her to take the lead, but at the same time he eyed her with a look she had come to know as one that reprimanded her for the slip of heavier language than he thought was necessary for her to be using as a young lady. A small sheepish grin pulled at the corner of Sara's mouth as she noted his look.

"Initially they're supposed to be a legend that started when the Minamoto and Taira samurai clans were fighting one another in the Genpei war. It was said that The Yamato Scrolls were first given to the seventh son of Emperor Saga by a tengu named Sojobo who struck a deal with the Emperor's son. The Yamato Scrolls held inked drawing of various yokai, and when the one in possession of the scrolls called upon them, they would spring to life from the parchment and slay the enemies of their caller." Sara glanced over at Splinter who nodded for her to continue. "The legend of the scrolls picked up during the Genpei war. Minamoto no Yoshitsune heard about the scrolls handed down to the ancestor of his clan and sought them to win the war for his clan. It's said that Sojobo appeared before Yoshitsune at the foot of Mount Kurama and struck up a deal with him as he had done before with Emperor Saga's son. The scrolls were handed over to Yoshitsune and then rest is considered myth and fairytale after that."

Michelangelo exchanged a look with Donatello from across the room as the youngest of the turtle brothers was sitting in a chair he had pulled up from the dinner table and sat in it backwards. Looking back to Sara, a throughly confused look on his face, Michelangelo tilted his head to the side. "So, basically these scrolls are supposed to be like a portal or something for evil monsters?" He understood what yokaiand tengu were; Splinter had told him and his brothers stories when they were little. But what he didn't understand was why some museum curator wanted supposedly "monster scrolls" that were locked up in the shrine guarded by a shinobi clan.

Both Sara and Splinter nodded to this, which only confused Michelangelo and Donatello even more.

It was Leonardo who spoke up next with a rather obvious point to be made. "How hard is that to believe guys? I mean, we saw a portal to another dimension open up and power out monsters that we pushed back in with four immortal generals made out of stone."

Sara blinked a few times as she stared at the blue masked turtle sitting off to her right further down the couch, her own sense of confusion now coming into play. "What was that?"

"Oh yeah! We never told you about that did we?" Michelangelo grinned while rocking forward in his chair a bit. "So, last year, we totally saved the world from being overrun by monster coming out of like this evil Haley's comet thing that opened up this swirling vortex of doom."

Again, Sara blinked stupidly as she tried to now wrap her mind around something that sounded rather bizarre to her. "You did what to save the what now?" Her head tilted in a manner that seemed to mimic the movement of a owl, her brows knitting together as she tried to process Mikey's rather hurried cover of something that had happened the year before.

While Mikey attempted to once more explain the story to Sara, with Donatello's help now, Raphael remained rooted to his spot off away from the rest of the group. Arms jammed over his chest and his usual brooding scowl creased out across his face beneath the scarlet band that framed out his burning amber gaze. He was barely even amused or even showed any sign of interest in what was going on, at least his outward appearance suggested that. Still, as any teenager, Raphael was curious to know if this whole story of Japanese folklore and monsters was real.

There was a sudden soft buzzing sound that interrupted the conversations going on at the moment, and everyone went quiet, listening intently for whatever that sound was and trying to pin point its location. April's face alighted as she realized it was her cellphone that was buzzing away, buried inside her purse. Reaching down for the large brown bag she had set beside her seat, April fished out the silver flip-phone and smiled a bit as she read the LCD screen. Underneath the city streets, any call was going to be nothing but silent noise that never reached the receiving line being dialed up. Thus in April's case, as it happened to be her boyfriend Casey Jones calling, it was more a page than anything else.

"I'll have to catch the rest of the story later tonight, Sara." April announced while shoving her phone back in her purse before getting up and heading over to the pay phone mounted on the wall just off around the outside corner of the open dinning room.

Bobbing her head in a quick dip, her usual response when she decided not to verbally reply back, Sara watched April a moment before looking back to her turtle friends. "So anyways, what are you guys doing today?" She asked while scratching at the back of her head and messing up the gathered hair she had bound in a ponytail when she got up that morning.

Michelangelo shot up from his seat and pointed off towards the arcade game stalls off to Sara's far left. "I'm totally going to beat your score today!" He announced.

"Right." Donatello rolled his eyes and looked over to suggest something else to Sara, but found that she had suddenly disappeared from her seat on the couch and had relocated to the identified arcade game that Mikey was already gearing up on. "Is that all you guys think about?" He grumbled under his breath. But even as he grumbled, Donatello was already getting up out of his seat to join his brother and their friend.

"Whatever." Raphael huffed while pushing off his lean-to spot against the wall and headed off for the kitchen.

"Get the coin, Mikey! Get the coin!" Donny shouted while pointing at the said item on the screen from over his brother's shoulder. "That coin, right there! Mikey!"

"Back off Don, I see it!" Mikey snapped while trying to shoo his brother away without having to take his concentration off the game.


Author Note: Wow, that was a pretty short chapter (scratches head). Well I didn't want to ruin the purpose of the chapter, which is to both inform and move the story forward. Plenty of questions have probably arisen withing you all your little minds, and I assure you that eventually they will all be answered in due time

Sorry for taking so long on the update! I had to watch TMNT a few times to recharge my turtle batteries!