Masakazu was surrounded by food. It was not exciting food, by any means. It was all grown domestically, in terraced farms and pastures: rice, radishes, goat cheese, potatoes. These had the advantages of being both cheap and less noticeable purchases than imports, and with their nutritional prowess, Masa was grateful for the foresight of traders in acquiring potatoes from distant lands, in generations past.

These foods were set carefully on large swaths of paper, which themselves occupied a creaky, wooden floor. The teahouse was not a place which could afford more comfortable straw mats to top the wood.

"Seems like a lot of food for one trip." It was a woman's voice, and Masakazu resisted some not-yet-vanquished part of him that wanted to start in surprise. He'd forgotten she was there, despite this being her establishment.

He very carefully applied a sheaf of incredibly fine, mildly translucent, gray metal to a pewter scale. Combined with others of various thicknesses, this caused the scale's arm to dip a bit, but ultimately return to the topmost position. It took another leaf of lead for the scales to balance. Masa noted the weight on a nearby scroll, using the same arcane script written on its counterparts, and then removed a clay bottle from the scale, placing it within the ring of text.

Swiping the lead leaf off the scale and organizing the thicknesses into a box, then removing small weights from the same side of the scale, it struck Masakazu that he did not really need to be this precise. This had occurred to him before, but the extra work helped him manage the anxiety of what was planned for tomorrow.

Sparing a look to double-check that all was in order, he placed a hand on that nearest scroll and bled some chakra into it. His inkwork on the paper glowed, and the various foodstuffs disappeared. In their place, new patterns had sprung from his chakra-fed algorithms.

"The water was one of the harder parts, despite being inorganic," he said. He'd remembered (on seeing her) that the proprietor had spoken to him, and he deemed this conversation better than lying in response to what she had said.

"Cause it can spill on the ink," she suggested.

"No." Masa didn't hide his disappointment. After a moment of awkward silence, he clarified "Rather than the complexity of organics, liquids are always moving very quickly in macro, on top of micro movement. Makes it exponentially more difficult to seal them. Air is worse. Doing it algorithmically takes some of the burden off the sealer, reducing chakra consumption, but moving things are hard to quantify."

Looking to the proprietor, Masa observed her nodding, but even with minimal skill in reading people, it was clear she didn't follow. He attempted to back away from the subject.

"It doesn't matter much. The only consequence of corruption in sealing water is having less of it, due to... separation...." He paused a moment, lost in thought, then retrieved a pad of paper and a stick of charcoal from a napsack, scribling shorthand. [i]'wtr to brthble air mech? Poss via intent crrpt'[/i] He considered putting the phrase through a cipher on the fly, strictly for entertainment.

"Look, I really appreciate you helping with my problem."

Masa suddenly remembered the woman's presence, and turned to her. "Protection racket?" he queried.

"...Yeah." She had an expression he couldn't quite decipher. Embarrassed? Annoyed? It was difficult, and it faded when she continued. "But are these papers really gonna keep people out of my kitchen? My house?"

"Yes." It took a few beats of silence for Masa to realize she wanted more. "Anyone who steps through the doorway without registering themselves with a copy of that key I gave you will get burned." He thought about it. "Should probably put a sign up."

"And 'registering' is just....".

"Placing the hand of someone already registered and the hand of the person to be registered on the key. It will draw a little chakra and add it to the registry. That can only hold about a eight identities."

Satisfied with even adding the extra reminder, Masa turned away and began repeating his sealing technique on five more scrolls.

While she watched, the woman asked "What if I need to have more than eight people, or take people off the list?"

"If you try to put more data in than the registry can hold, it's designed to reset to only your identity. Won't even keep mine."

When he finished sealing and subsequently rolling, Masakazu looked over the scrolls on the floor. They were not dissimilar to six large eel, though white-yellow.

"Ah", he rememered: "Each door has eight flames."

"Oh, it won't just... keep doing it?" Disappointment? Relief?

"No. That's absurd."

The silence that followed was long enough to pack the remainders of Masakazu's belongings, but before he left, he explained "Even if it was designed to siphon chakra from the target, this wouldn't be the necessary nature of someone who was talented and trained to use fire. Your best resource is the library, if you need further assistance."

She did not ask him to come again, Masa noted. He wondered if this was a less common courtesy in the lower parts of Gobi. This teahouse was a sufficient distance from the more ideal Savory Lane that Gobi genin had not been entirely eager to retrieve the extortionists Masa had subdued two weeks ago.

Masakazu watched his surroundings marginally improve in quality as he made his way to the library, and considered what this transition would look like in other hidden villages. When younger, he had no interest in travel, aside from Whirlpool, and that had been destroyed painstakingly. He wondered if it had been his trip to a nearby town that had seeded his wanderlust, or if it was older. Whatever the reason, it had caused him to agree to what he was informed was a rather risky venture.

The Gobi Library had not started as such; nor indeed as a single place. As Masa understood it, an old woman had left a house-full of books and some secreted money to the ninja of Gobi, for that promising young Hyuuga to improve the village. Even with the minimal staff and attention possible, the place had eventually become important enough to consume neighboring homes, and even have legitimate security, once Gobi gained some documents and manuscripts worth guarding.

The core building was where Masakazu saw one of his new associates. Masa had specified the library was the ideal place to contact him, as his presence there would not be noteworthy.  Unfortunately, as was frequently the case, he did not remember the man's name. In fact, he'd only learned Tatsuya's name, as he understood there was a shared interest in fuuinjutsu.

In his late twenties, this was the oldest of their co-conspirators he'd met, and Masa had mentally termed him 'the genjutsu one', but decided against speaking this placeholder name.

"I know a more remote table for quiet studies," he offered, when finally within speaking distance of Kai. "Unless we need to go find some colleagues."