Mina had seen plenty of things.
She was a witch. She worked with odd things all the time.
She had plants that killed when they screamed, cabbages that were the bane of shoes everywhere, and a stairway that led back into the room it left.
Ignoring the man that had spied on her when she went to the public baths (Her washroom also on the other side of the stairs and she was too embarrrassed to ask to use Shisui's even after a month of living with him.) she stared at the toad on his shoulder laughing at his misfortune as the man clutched his eyes. The conjunctivitis curse was a marvelous spell. "HAHAHAHA! That was an excellent shot!"
She had never seen a talking toad before.
She waved her wand for the animagus revealing charm, only for nothing to happen. How odd, she had never gotten THAT spell wrong before (she practiced on the Marauders once she discovered their secret.) One of her friends (possible fiance actually, his family owned Quality Quidditch Supplies), Riddley Wolfe, used to play a great many practical jokes by disguising himself as a large piece of furniture and jumping out at people.
"Now Now. No need for that." chuckled the toad. It was an abnormally large thing, with great, bulging, yellow eyes and black sclerae. He had eyebrows and a goatee, something Mina was sure toads weren't supposed to have. "Good heavens it's been a while since I've seen a magus."
Her confusion must've shown on her face because the toad keeps talking. "Not from here I take it?"
"No?" She replies curiously.
"Which school then? You don't sound like you went to Mahoutokoro."
"Hogwarts sir." She replied, defaulting to the much more polite tone of a student addressing a professor.
"Hmmm. Good school that one. Tough to get to." The toad murmured as he motioned for her to fix the man's eyes. "Jiraiya-chan here is a bit stupid, you'll have to forgive him for that."
"Really now?" Mina raised her eyebrow at what he said. "I do not know the customs here, but where I come from the female is allowed to retaliate against sexual harassment providing it is proportionate to the action."
"Really now. Here it is usually a man who fights for his lady's honor." Croaked the frog. "Though your idea may be better for keeping fights of honor down."
Mina stares at the toad suspiciously. Perhaps it was part goblin? There were plenty of odd mixes.
She sank back into the hot water. Public baths were rather frowned upon in wizard society mostly for being unhygienic. She read in a book once about how the high bathing temperatures weren't hot enough to kill most of the germs. If Mina had a cauldron large enough to sit in she would've used that.
Plus it was really weird being the public baths alone after the pervert had scared away.
"Now Young lady, are you the one that has a torqued dimension in your stairway?" Inquired the toad.
"I am."
"When you are done bathing, I can inspect your stairs." Chuckled the old toad. "But only if you lift the curse on my summoner's eyes."
"Agreed Mr. Toad"
"Fukasaku."
"Agreed. Fukasaku-san"
Later as she watch the toad inspect her doorway she wondered if this was what she was expecting when she told her grandfather that she wanted to expand the market and start a shop somewhere else. She still wasn't sure what kind of people lived in this town, only that their magic was different and she couldn't decipher any of the spells or jutsus as they called it.
Mina liked her job at her grandfather's shop. She wasn't on the same level as her older sister (Deep breaths, don't think about it.) who would've taken the shop from grandfather had she lived (Red lights. Flames. Tears.), but she could fashion a workable wand. She made a number of sickles in school by offering to embellish wand handles (She didn't trust herself to alter the shaft.) with various jewels and metals or adding security runes like the one on her own wand.
She knew how to work one rune into a charm or a ward. Anything longer then that failed to do anything and anything other then a security ward left her brains leaking out of her ears. The stairway was probably the first instance of her folding the dimensions in on itself.
"What exactly were you trying to do with these runes?" Asked Fukasaku after spending an hour inspecting the runes.
"Sound proof my stairs. I read that it would last longer then a silencing charm."
"I see. How do you fix it?"
Jiraiya watched the proceedings with a great deal of interest.
He was a seal master.
His protegee crafted the seal that contained the kyuubi within his godson.
He had never seen anything like the stairway in his life. Which was probably a good thing as it gave him a huge headache trying to comprehend how the doorway could possibly lead back into itself. It was almost as disturbing as the time some Iwa nin stripped Orochimaru buck naked in the middle of the battle field.
It was disturbing then and it was disturbing now, in a laugh until you choke kind of manner.
He didn't even know that sealing via carving was possible outside of the Uzumaki clan.
Then again, it was clearly from a different source. There were no kanji lining the doorway. Instead there were a great many shapes, not carved out of lines either but whole flat shapes were scraped out of the wood and linked together with a single groove.
A different method of sealing then what he was taught.
It seemed that Pa Toad knew about those seals too and was giving the girl a quick lesson on the proper grammar and useage.
This must be the girl from the rumors he was hearing about. He had been in Water country when word of a motion controlling kekkei genkai appeared in Konoha. Then the word of a store runned by demons popped up he had to come and take a look.
It would've been nice if Sensei just told him who she was instead of slamming his head into the desk but this worked too.
Even if it did end with his eyes getting cursed by the witch.
Witch.
Witches were only supposed to exist in stories. Why was there one here? Sensei would've known about
How did Pa Toad know about them?
He can't help but feel as if this was the beginning of something big, something bigger then Konoha.
There was no surprise in the toads face when the girl used her magic (Witches called their powers magic right?) which means he either knew about this or was expecting it.
The Uchiha in the room was also listening to the seal lecture with interest, though he took a great deal of care to not look at the stairway. From the way he stood in proximity to the witch he could assume that they had known each other for a good deal of time. Sensei had mentioned that his godson came to the store very often (which is probably where the demon rumor came from) and that the Uchiha worked there as punishment for robbery.
Of course the Uchiha would be interested in the power that no one else could use. He doubted they could copy with spells with the sharingan but it wouldn't stop them from trying.
Wait.
Robbery?
Didn't sensei also mention something like that during the Konoha-Kumo conference? What the hell?
The recent edition of several bingo books mentioned Konoha's Puppeteer Witch.
They were linked weren't they. Along with the lightning incident that caused Uchiha Shisui to become her part time worker.
Oh God.
Sensei must've encouraged the spread of the more outrageous rumors to make leaf both powerful and mad at the same time. You can't make up stuff like that. Anyone who dismisses the outlandish rumors from leaf will get a nasty shock if Kumo's Purple Monstrosity is any indication.
He couldn't help it. He began laughing (Partly out of mirth and partly out of shock).
Dear god, a half grown witch (Still young and innocent. Mostly.) has managed to thwart a plot to kidnap the Hyuuga princess (Konoha made a pretty penny pressing charges on her behalf), befriended his godson (he should check up on him), Given Inoichi a headache, and tweaked the nose of the old warhawk. This girl was going places.
It took them well into the night to undo the mess of the stairway.
Turns out that she used the wrong runes and the array she had used was more suited for things like anchoring a floo
By then a thunderstorm had blown in and water was coming down as if it was being poured from buckets.
Mina spent a good bit of time flittering about making sure that her plants wouldn't drown, that she had enough food to feed her guests,
Fukasaku had long been dismissed after an very interesting discussion regarding runes and seals and the differences between them.
While they were both power manipulated by words there were some very obvious differences between them.
For one thing the medium for seals was a brush, ink, and paper. It drew its power from a person's chakra which was affected by their mental state, their physical state and how they thought. It was also finite. It would run out and the person would die when that happened. This was rather difficult for Mina to wrap her head around the idea that someone could die if they did too much spell casting. That never happened with wizards.
The main boon of sealing was its versatility. It could be used for a variety of things as there was no required order for the kanji to be written except that they had to all be spaced equally apart. Otherwise the unfortunate seal master may end up a few fingers short. The art required many many years of study in order for someone to be able to pull it off correctly and even longer for them to be able to omit parts of their stationary. Once the seal was set it had to be picked apart by erasing or altering the kanji in strategic places so that nothing exploded and released the stored power within.
For Runes the medium was what ever surface was available with whatever carving implement was available. The arrays were limited to wards (amulets that repel creatures), various barriers (the hogwarts express gateway), and effects (old swords have runes to keep them from dulling). It drew its power from the world around the area and as such, did not need to be tended to once it was set up. Runes also had many different rules for each of the different purposes and thus were only suited for magi of high intelligence. The level of calculations that went into setting up simple rune wards with mutiple sygils made seal type barriers look like children's exercises. Many runes had similar appearances and pronunciations (Mina continuously snickered at the failed attempts to pronounce the runes.) similar to horse vocalizations (To the elemental natives anyway).
While not as volatile as chakra seals, rune wards and spells were just as disastrous when mistakes were involved. Rather then blowing up the carver it would result in space dimention shifts, accidental summonings of dangerous creatures (The kyuubi in the forbidden forest was likely a result of such), permenantly scrambled minds, and inconsistent time flow. The reason for the lack of explosive power is that the runes, once linked by a series of strategically placed lines charged by the wizard, drew magic from the area around them. If necessary (when the area is unstable) some of the lines could be replaced with wizards, witches, or magical artifacts.
Jiraiya nearly fell out of his seat when Mina explained that magi were born with the ability to manipulate the forces beyond normal perception rather then with excess energy from within. She described it as similar to smoke in a room that could be directed with a fan.
"Nature chakra? You manipulate nature chakra?"
Her eyebrow quirked in confusion. "No? I do not know what that is."
"It's basically what you are describing." Then he elaborated on how it was all around them and caused strange things when it was not properly controlled, like turning the poor person into a statue.
Mina shook her head and denied the similarity. "Can't be right. Chakra is painful for me. Just like Magic is painful or unpleasant for the majority of ninja." Then she explained that the only person in the village who currently had a wand was Ebisu.
"Yeesh talk about a mind screw." Lamented Jiraiya with false agitation. It was more out of joking curiosity then anything else.
"Pah. Chakra is a bigger head ache then magic. How can you run out of something and die? Why would you use something like that? It's like fighting with blood. You moronic or something?"
"You mentioned that the witches only limit is their focus right? The more complex the more mentally taxing?"
"I suppose so. It's hard to explain." She shrugged.
It was then the door bell sounded.
The sign above the shop entrance read '(Entrance) Uzumaki Naruto'. He must've just arrived outside.
"It's very late at night." Clucked Mina as she went to let him in. "He should be in bed at the orphanage. Not out in the rain"
Jiraiya nodded and made himself scarce as he watched his godson. The boy looked so much like his father it hurt to look at him. Besides, he can come back later to pick at the witche's brain for information on runes and his godson. It looked like she would be a more reliable source of information then Sensei. Since Pa Toad knew a thing or two about runes. Perhaps she could consent to getting lessons in exchange for delivering progress reports?
"Naruto is something the matter? Your supposed to be asleep." She asked.
The boy merely shuffled looking both relieved and uncomfortable at the same time. He looked as if he had been crying for some time. "Can I stay the night nee-chan?"
"Ah... sure. Give me sometime to conjure a bed in my room and rearrange a few things. I don't want you to go to the bathroom and get thrown out the window by a charmed towel or something." She hurried off to clean up her living space after drying him and giving him a cup of warm apple cider.
Naruto simply stared into his mug as tears slowly slid down his cheeks. He quickly wiped the away before anyone else could see them.
Crying was for wimps but sniffling as alright.
He might not have a home anymore, but at least he had Mina-nee.
AN:/
Ancient runes is to sealing what cuneiform and latin are to the english language.
She still isn't perfect at speaking japanese and tends of omit words when she is agitated.
Eeirany: I don't feel like disclosing the answer to your first question right now. You will get your answers though. As for the second set of questions. It's neither actually. She has never taken an ancient runes class in her life and she never knew how bad a mistake could get until she was staring at herself in the stairway. At which point she knew she was out of her league and needed outside help. Plus sealing and runes were so different that it was a head ache for jsut about everyone involved.
Raven Blanchard: I live to surprise. Hopefully in a good way.
PappyOldGuy: I'm glad I have lived up to your expectations.
Lurking Pheonix: The thing regarding the ages is meant to be a joke in the future. But suffice to say that there is an age gap that is a potential show stopper.
I sincerely thank thee for thy patronage. ^_^
Reviews are love and questions help me think. *Hint* *Hint* X3