Welcome to Gaia! ::

Aona had chosen a training area well outside of the village proper. She'd seen training within the village, and it was cramped, and prone to interruptions from the various village loonies. It had taken a while, but after a few days of scouting she'd finally found a suitable location. It was a natural clearing in the middle of a fairly heavily wooded area, charred remains indicating that a small, natural fire had cleared it out. The beginnings of regrowth were apparent, as a number of small flowers and shoots poked out from beneath the ground, still darkened in places, but for now it was a perfect place to train.

Aona sat on a large rock near the center of the oblong clearing. Her sword rested across her crossed legs, and a large scroll leaned up against the side of the rock. Her arms rested comfortably on the sword, and her eyes were closed lightly as she focused her sense of hearing on her surroundings.

Notes had been left dropped at the doorsteps of the homes of her students, deposited in the middle of the night by any ninja who were willing to be postmen for a little money. They had nothing on them but the coordinates for the location of the training area, and a map of the surrounding couple hundred square miles around Gaioh. Even when the genin read the map properly and located the site, they would still have to contend with a number of simple traps, such as dropping paint balloons and snares, as they made their way through the forests to the training area.

The map was a simple puzzle, easily solved by Westly. The traps, though... well, that's a complicated story.

As Westly neared the clearing, Westly noticed a trap. The exact nature of this particular trap was irrelevant to the peculiarity of what happened next.

"No," Westly thought. "This is a trick. I mean, I account myself a decently skilled trapsmith, but Aona's the undisputed master in this village. It can't be this easy to find one of her traps.... But wait, what if she's just messing with us? Toss out a few easy traps because we're Genin and we can't handle the hard stuff. That would make perfect sense... unless she's trying to push us to our limits on the first day to see what we're made of. Then she'd break out the good stuff. Which means, logically, that this is a decoy. We notice the simple trap, disarm it, think we're all that, and then we walk right into the super-amazing deathtrap she set up. Well, I'm not falling for it! Gotta find the real trap, gotta find the real trap, gotta find the..."

Westly eventually showed up about an hour late for the first meeting covered in scrapes, dirt, and twigs, holding a set of... well, every trap Aona had set, disarmed and strung up by a weird glowing rope. Westly looked at Aona with eyes that were frazzled and paranoid.

"I'm on to you!" Westly said accusingly, still convinced that the "Real" trap was out there somewhere ready to be sprung on him.

Westly blinked. It had appeared that he'd been overthinking things again. Damage control time.

"Well, we're teammates. We're supposed to be looking out for each other on missions, right? Besides, I've spoken to the man before. He's a puppeteer. A tinkerer should have been able to deal with these well enough. I just got a little... overenthusiastic."

Westly eyed the scroll. "And yes, I'm familiar with the basic skills from the Academy. I was actually held back a few years due to low chakra strength; nothing to brag about, I know, but given the number of times I've taken the Basic Skills class, I could teach it."

By way of example, Westly reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a full-sized kayak before replacing it. "I keep all my possessions at arm's reach. You never know WHAT you'll need when you're on the job."

Aona scanned the forest, searching with her eyes and ears for any sign of Midori. The puppeteer seemed to be late... what the problem was she couldn't decipher, but she expected him to be there before the sun reached the zenith of its daily journey. If he wasn't here soon, she'd just have to start training without him. Of course, she had a number of punishments in mind for this sort of incompetence...

She chuckled for a moment, imagining all the tor-er disciplines she could put her students through, an almost disturbing chuckle that she quickly silenced the moment she realized she was doing it. "A-anyways," she began, suddenly aware of her little outburst, "what do you know about sealing solid objects in scrolls, Mara?"

Mara looked up and blinked."Hm, well I must not have done my homework because I've never heard of it really." she shrugged her shoulders."Then again I don't think I'd need any large weapons that needed sealing. I'm more of a fan of daggers." She took out one of her new throwing blades, fairly small and double-tipped, to show her.

Mara looked at Midori's scroll and scowled. She wondered if it was anything like Aona's on the inside. Had he figured out how to do something before she had? Mara did not like it when someone figured out something before her. She pushed the thought away and focused on Aona, since she was bound to say something to the new arrival.

Mara couldn't resist joining in."But isn't that already what you picked for a summons?" She grinned widely."Or did you switch to the kitten?" Mara was greatly relieved. She didn't open her mouth much, but when she did it was usually for mouthing off at a teacher or someone in charge. Now she was just glad she had aimed it at her teammate instead of Aona.

Westly looked the two puppets over with a discerning eye. They seemed almost real. It reminded Westly of a tangentially-related research project of his own that he'd been forced to put on hold due to lack of knowledge. Perhaps he'd pitch it to Aona when he got a chance. Rumor had it that she had been trained by Chaos, and while she didn't seem to share her master's interest in research, she might know where Westly could find a book or two on applied psychology.

But that was for another time.

"And so it seems," Westly said as he turned around, grinning, "that the only one who can't seal things into other things is... drumroll please... Maradreay! Take a bow!" he teased.

Westly opened his mouth as if to speak, then held the position for a solid ten seconds before closing it. He held his chin, thinking. "How the hell DOES it work?" he wondered aloud. "I mean, I could stand here explaining how to DO it, the basic principles of seals in general, even explain one or two more complicated ones I've gotten to work, but... when it's all said and done, you're still completely ignoring how... not even physics, but REALITY works. You cannot put solid objects into other solid objects without breaking one or both. Unless it's a vessel of some sort, like putting a piece of fruit into a bowl."

Westly was silent for a few moments, mulling it all over. "I suppose... I mean, seals require complex diagrams and use of chakra, right? Perhaps, ultimately, it's something akin to pottery. By making a seal, you're shaping one object to be a vessel able to receive the other object inside of it. The apparent physical impossibility of this is overridden by the metaphysical possibility of it. Or perhaps it's just more evidence that the true nature of the world transcends our own perceptions of it."

Westly's train of thought wound around a corner and out of sight. "If I sealed myself into an item, I wonder what I'd see..."