Getting Aluminum 3

Spoiler:

Kouma was heading out to walk over to the administration office so that he could go and claim another mission for his weekly exercise. He had already eaten breakfast that day, and it was still really early in the morning, so the administration office should be open by now, although Kouma was not quite sure of the time because he was not paying attention to it, and the side of town he was walking on could not get a clear view of the clock tower that was in the middle of the city for everyone. Still, he knew that he was more than likely to be early than late, so he was not concerned about the time and simply walked over to the main part of the city towards the office for missions he was going towards. On the way, there were plenty of people that he knew from coming to this part of the city so often, and so he was busy greeting them for quite a while during his short walk. He was always polite to these people because of the proper and peculiar upbringing he had received from his mother as a part of his clan, but there was definitely a limit. Although he had been heading down to the butcher shop recently to grab some leather and do some leatherworking for the old man of the butcher shop, Kouma had waited a while and wanted to head back to the black smith’s store so that he could see if the man was done with whatever he was working on for the strange aristocratic man that was guarded by samurai, so he secretly hoped that he would find a mission to smelt some aluminum in the missions available today. As he walked up the steps to head into the administration office, as he was still fairly early, he saw the black smith was walking out of the building as he was walking in, and they spotted each other. After a small awkward silence of looking at each other for a bit, Kouma was suddenly really excited and put a smile on his face for the black smith.

The black smith simply shrugged and pointed his thumb over his shoulder towards the administration building and told Kouma to hurry up and grab the mission and come with him. Kouma immediately said okay in an excited tone and ran into the building before calmly waiting in the line, and luckily, since it was so early, there seemed to be only a single person in front of him, and he was much like the black smith, and so he was there to actually put a mission onto the board that he wanted a ninja to do today, before the large number of ninja would come here and start looking through the available daily missions. Kouma immediately walked over to the desk when it was his turn and politely asked the person behind the desk to get the mission that was just submitted by the black smith so that he could do it quickly. The procedure was fairly quick, but Kouma did not like letting the black smith wait, even though he was not waiting in any way, he just walked away from the building back towards his shop, so it was up to Kouma to catch up to him later. The procedures were finally done, and the mission had been assigned to Kouma for the day, and then he immediately ran out of the building to catch up toi that black smith and ask him some questions. As Kouma caught up to him, he matched the black smith’s speed while walking so that he was not overtaking him, as he did not want to be impatient when traveling to the shop, that would not really be very respectful.

As they were walking, Kouma simply said good morning to the black smith, and was quiet throughout their journey, in which the black smith was also silent, which was a bit of a torture for Kouma, as he wanted to ask the black smith what he had worked on, and if it was some sort of secret, because he definitely wanted to know about what he was doing at the time. Kouma kept quiet and composed on their way to the shop, and when they had finally got here, the black smith simply handed Kouma some materials and told him to start refining the aluminum and to get rid of the slag piles outside. Kouma was a bit confused, but he kept on going with the procedures as if nothing had happened, going to heat the metal up in the crucible so that he could scoop the slag off the top of it, and so there would be no more impurities. During this step, he kept casually looking back at the black smith, trying to find a good time to ask about the special weapon he had made for that dignitary, but the time to ask him such a question had never really come up, and he was not going to simply ask the question out loud, he was unsure if it was a sensitive topic or not, but the black smith was a straight forward, no nonsense type of person, so he was unsure if he simply did not care enough about it to bring it up himself.

Eventually Kouma mustered up the courage to ask the black smith what he had made for the people that came here while he was working on the casting of the aluminum ingots, all he had to do was wait for them to cool slightly before bringing them over to the anvil to hammer and fold. As he was opening his mouth to ask the question, the black smith seemed to anticipate this and cut him off, saying that Kouma was not skilled enough or prestigious enough to know what he had made, and that he needed to ask again when he became a chuunin.

EXIT
Claiming 2100 ryo from mission and genin
Claiming 10 ap from mission
Claiming Aluminum from mission
Using 750 words to Master Hiding Like a Mole for half handseals with 25% reduction
Putting 250 words towards Earthen Chakra Threads 250/1500 with discount

Approved