The letter she'd been given was not very encouraging or a strong start to Nishira's final ANBU task. Calling it a letter was a bit of a stretch, it was a single piece of paper that read:
Seek a man among the Ancients who carries the world in his pocket. 144553
Nishira had read it repeatedly, standing behind the turned back of a man who had sneered at her approach. Without introduction or ceremony, he had handed her the letter before returning to the manuscript he had been analyzing before her obviously inconvenient interruption. When Nishira tried to interrupt him again, he simply held one finger up to make her wait, she obliged. Her gaze wandered around the room while she waited and took in the wall-to-wall shelves of books and scrolls. Some were held behind glass with a darkened tint, Nishira recognizing it as a way to preserve ancient documents. When she looked back at the man hunched over a desk reading a manuscript with worn edges and pages yellowed from time, she realized he was wearing crisp white gloves and handling it with care. She waited another ten minutes before daring to interrupt him again with a gentle cough.
"What is it now?"
"Are there any instructions I should know about?"
He seemed to roll his eyes at her.
"Miss Kagechi, if you need me to hold your hand through a simple assignment then you have no right to be here. You have been given the information, now use it and figure out what it means. Now if you don't have any actual intelligent questions for me, you are dismissed. Remember you will be timed not only on your discoveries but also how long you take to make them. So, I would advise you not to dawdle with this."
He made a shooing motion with his hands and Nishira begrudgingly conceded, leaving the room and staring back down at the letter, flipping it to make sure there was nothing on the back with a frown.
Nishira sat in the library, in a small wooden study carrel covered with scribblings of previous occupants, mostly bored students that had been there before her. Most of the markings were now obscured by the large number of books. In front of her lay a notepad with her own frustrated scribblings. The word 'Ancients' brought to mind a person of the past, a previous Hokage, but as she flipped through the pages and pages that recounted their lives, both epic and mundane parts, Nishira was forced to think that that might have been too easy. Still, she tried to pick up the book on a heavy wooden pedestal that looked almost as old as the village itself, wondering if maybe that would have the answer. The title on the front said, "An in-depth Historical Examination of Konohagakure by Hiroto Isega". As she began to handle it, a librarian came up, her face lined with evidence of a lifetime of frowning across her forehead. She wagged a finger at Nishira.
"You put that back, it is much more precious than you or anything else here. It is not permitted to be checked out or moved! Get your hands off of it. If you wish to peruse it, I will provide you with some clean gloves, so you don't ruin it with your filthy hands."
Nishira waited awkwardly as the librarian did indeed fetch some white gloves, like the ones the man had worn back at ANBU, and she spent the rest of the evening flipping through the book, until she was forced to leave by the same curt librarian when they closed.
As she awoke the next day, rubbing crusty sleep out of her eyes groggily, her next thought was to read the passages that dealt with the founder of the shinobi arts, the Sage of the Six Paths. But digging into the myths and speculations and interpretations at the library, it made for a difficult time narrowing down what the rest of the clue meant. Nishira rested her head in her palm, drumming on the wooden surface, eyes flicking repeatedly over the letter frowning. Ancients could mean a myriad of things. It could mean a jutsu, the heavens, ancient spirits. Heck it could mean a type of grains, she thought bitterly.
After a deep breath of frustration slowly released, Nishira flipped to look at the next part of the riddle. The concept of holding the world in a pocket was also not very enlightening. Nishira suspected that would be clear if she could figure out what the first part meant. That left only the numbers to give her a clue. She squinted at them, before trying different cipher codes on them, typing out a myriad of gibberish words that might be the translation of them. scrambling the letters that may have corresponded to it. Nishira stared at it until her eyes felt as though they were going cross-eyed. With a ragged groan, she rose to take a walk in the fresh air outside.
Nishira thought maybe the number was a lock combination, the thought of trying every locker in the Academy or in the ANBU changing rooms was daunting. Maybe it was a Dewey decimal system number for a book, 144 was in the psychology section, she'd check when she got back. But that system needed a couple of letters for the author's last name, psychology has thousands of books out there. What if the right one was already checked out? Maybe the world referred to a map? Maybe the ancient is an old map maker? More and more questions swirled around her head as she blindly walked down to the corner shop to get something to snack on.
As Nishira waited in line to pay for the goodies she'd picked up, her head still rattled with all kinds of possibilities. Behind her, some young girls were waiting to pay for some candy.
"Guess what tomorrow is?"
The first voice had such an impish attitude, Nishira was pulled into the conversation, now curious what tomorrow was.
"What is it?"
"It's my birthday! Mom says you can come to the movies with us and then dinner at my place."
"Really? Awesome!"
"My mom says that's why she called me Lily, because I was born in May!"
Nishira frowned, before an idea occurred to her. She dropped all the goodies and ran back to the library to pick up the card. The numbers. Tomorrow was May third. The last two digits. She looked at the previous numbers, realizing they were a time. 2:45pm, great! But then the plain fact was, despite her stroke of brilliance, that she had no idea where she was supposed to be at that time.
After another fruitless day of research in the library looking for anything to refer to the Ancients, Nishira put the books away and began the walk home. As she reached for the doorknob, her makeshift hole repair still staring her in the face, letting herself in. It opened with only the pressure of her hand gripped the handle. She groaned as she entered the space, throwing down her bag with more force than she wanted before stomping to the phone. Gripping the business card for the landlord pinned on the board, the tack went flying, and she groaned again before aggressively punching the numbers into the number pad and hear the ringing. As Nishira waited for either a person or a machine to vent her frustrations to, she flipped the card over to see the design of a green tree, the holding company was Branch Holding Company, but that wasn't what held her gaze. The phone clicked and an answering machine beeped.
"Hey this is Nishira from unit 308 at the market location, you still haven't – uh" she looked even harder at the tree, the thought dangling over her brain like the carrot for a mule. "Um- yeah waiting for you to fix the-the thing. Yeah, call me back, or fix it."
She hung up the phone absently. And then the thought landed home, and she knew where to go tomorrow.
As the sun crept over the line of the horizon, Nishira was already up. She wanted to scope out the area. The area that had popped into her brain was a courtyard that held the oldest tree in the village as its centre. It wasn't far from the Hokage building, so it was beginning to look more and more likely to Nishira. It became clear that it was a well trafficked area for the morning crew. Members of the village that worked for the Hokage or some of the nearby businesses traversed through the lush space. Only the benches and the pathways disrupted nature's design, making it a lush space. It invited plenty of folks to sip on their hot beverages from a cart that was parked just outside the parameters of the courtyard.
Nishira hung out in one of the trees, not the ancient one in question as per her theory, but one large enough that she could see the whole place. Her notebook in her hand, she made notes of people who passed through, marking some based on their clothes that could indicate potential professions, trying to see of the 'world' comment of the letter would be revealed to her this way. So far, that was turning up a bust, but she anxiously looked at her watch to see the time pass until it was becoming close to the hour.
As soon as 2:30pm came around, Nishira made sure that she was well hidden to continue watching, and with each minute that inched closer, she battled the doubt that crept in, as the small amount of people that traversed the area didn't linger and kept on their way. Just as her clock showed the appointed time, she watched as a group of schoolkids were running through the courtyard giggling, an elderly lady carrying a grocery bag. It looked heavy as her steps were at a slow pace accompanied with some trembling. One of the schoolkids courteously stopped to ask if she wanted help and followed her out of the courtyard carrying the bag that was almost bigger than him. A couple of men in formal wear came through, idly chatting. But they didn't linger long. Nishira spotted an older man walk in and sit on a bench, pulling out a journal and scribbling in it.
She frowned at the sight of the man. The world in his pocket. Nishira wondered if that might be referring to a journal or book. That would fit with the theme of decoding cryptic and vague messages. If there was a code in the journal she had to break, that would be a test of her abilities. With her ability to slip into the air undetected, Nishira landed in a spot that wouldn't be seen by the subject. She wanted to take another good look at him to make sure she was right on the money. Her eyes lingered on his hand that moved with a pencil in it, and she realized he was drawing. But what was strange is he wasn't looking up to draw, so whatever it was it was in his memory. Nishira thought about subduing him with an assortment of jutsus, but wanted to do it stealthily, just in case her deductions led her astray. Three of the kids were about to leave the courtyard after filling balloons up from the hose nearby for maintaining such beautiful flora, when she slipped over in front of them.
"How would you three like to make some money, today?"
Nishira waited as the boys, each with a bill richer in their pockets, began running around throwing balloons filled with the frigid water at each other. She watched intently ready to teleport when the moment was right. Credit to their acting skills, the boys were yelling and giggling. When the one that the group voted had the best aim tossed a balloon purposely wide, landing on the man in question, drenching him. The man looked down at the wet stains that were appearing on his robe, wiping the water from his face before scowling at the three apologetic kids. Nishira watched him slip the journal into his jacket while the kids were running off from his evident displeasure. Something caught her attention, the movement of putting the journal back into the pocket made the tiniest crinkle in the air around it. Nishira smirked, it was definitely the right guy, her guess was that the crinkle was a justsu that would have blocked her use of any kind of jutsu to retrieve it subtly.
As the man got up to walk home, drenched through and through, Nishira appeared a little way down from where he was heading, and with a quick jutsu, disguised herself as a chunin with the vest, taking off at a run, hands up in a jutsu. With practiced ease, she bumped into the older man, her hand slipping carefully into his robe to lift the journal as he fell to the ground.
"I'm so sorry, did you see a bunch of kids running this way? The brats made a mess in the market!"
The man let himself be helped up before pointing the way the three kids she'd hired had run off to, and then began sprinting that way with a yelled 'thank you' over her shoulder. Once out of sight, Nishira leapt back into the trees where she had been hidden the whole of the morning. She wanted to double check that the journal was what she was looking for before leaving. Slipping open the leather cover, Nishira flipped through the pages and landed on one full of strange symbols of lines, squares, and dots. Bingo, she thought smugly.
Nishira stood to leave when, below her, a man wearing plain clothes approached the base of her tree and with a suspicious look around them, deposited something with quick ease before stepping away and moving on attempting to look nonchalant as he sauntered away. Once the man had moved from the courtyard, Nishira dropped down to see what it was. Another journal lay there before her, this one with a suede cover that wrapped around the page edge and bound together with twine. Untying it showed her a relatively basic journal discussing normal everyday things. Nishira looked to each hand to see both journals. What if one is a decoy? Nishira pondered. To be sure, she leapt back up into the tree and waited to see if anyone would claim the dropped journal, but when no one did, Nishira took both and headed home to begin examining them in more detail, more comfortable in pajamas.
As the sun came back around for another day in the leaf village, Nishira blearily looked down at the two notebooks. The one she'd lifted from the older man had sections of pages filled with the strange symbols. It hadn't taken her long to start sorting out certain letters, such as 'A' or 'I', but the majority were still fairly blank. The other contained diary entries with some of the most mundane occurrences that it threatened to put her to sleep with talks of cows and grains and all things farming. Nishira flipped through it with a grimace, the penmanship was sloppy and hastily done, there were tons of little marks, dots, lines, just floating wherever. She wondered idly if the marks were from a leaky pen.
As more thoughts tumbled through her brain, none of which were helpful in the slightest, Nishira believed a quick nap would do the trick. She set the alarm for an hour. Later as the alarm screeched angrily, Nishira couldn't recall even putting her head down on the pillow. She groaned and stood to pad over to the kitchen table with the journals on it. Her hand rested in her palm as the kettle began to boil on the stove, her gaze listing groggily over the bare room with her cushionless couch before bringing it back down to the farming journal. One of the random markings she'd assumed was from a poor writing instrument looked like one of the secret codes thieves and the homeless would use to communicate with others, writing them on buildings or message boards to warn, inform, or ward off unwanted attention. Two lines that met and made an arrow type shape with a dot inside the point. It was pointing to the right. She tried to recall what character that stood for, but it opened a whole new avenue to explore.
Taking a fresh notepad, Nishira began from page one and listed ever marking she could find that was outside the nauseatingly boring recounting of some likely made-up farmer. As she began to fill out pages of notes, Nishira let out a frustrated sigh. Both journals, she could confirm, possessed a code. She pressed her lips together wondering if ANBU would be sneaky like that. Nishira decided a quick phone call would give her the answers she needed. The man who had assigned the task answered on the second ring.
"What do you want?"
"It's Nishira, I have a question."
"It better be a good one, although I have an idea of what it is since your target reported in yesterday that you missed the appointment. Therefore, you don't have what you need to complete the task."
"Was it a journal?"
The other end was silent for a moment.
"So, you're craftier than expected. I can't give you any aid in deciphering the journal, you are on your own for that. Also, Sakino requests you have the task completed by the day after next first thing, or don't bother coming back. Her words."
Before Nishira could ask about the existence of two journals the line went dead. She called the man a colourful name while slamming the receiver down. He wasn't going to be much help, her determination sparked to decipher both. She put her head down and continued her work.