Naruto: The Prince of Lust

Mabui made mental notes of every person she observed in the library as she arranged the study the material in front of her. Sat at a table near the quiet Fūinjutsu section, the eight men and women at their personal tables were the typical studious type; silent with heavy prescription glasses and hyper-focused attention. Even in her form-fitting mode of dress, the few around were all focused on their work rather than her, which spoke to either a lack of awareness or their work mattered more than the possibility of infiltration.

After multiple degrees as an academic and commendations as a soldier, organization and efficiency have been the key to Mabui's success. She may be a Chūnin like a grand majority of Kumo's military might, but, her pay grade has been the fastest climb out of anyone in her rank. With every goal she sets for herself, her very first step is creating a point-by-point plan beginning with a visual conception of the goal. She needs to identify the scope of the goal and break it down into manageable pieces. She then categorizes each objective by level of importance according to a basic study template and then outlines a timeline template—from concept to promotion—by which she will complete each objective.

It's how Mabui decided to leave her destitute village and apathetic parents as a little girl or how she worked to her first degree as a sociologist and then her second degree as a psychiatrist. If it wasn't for the death of her fiance and former professor, she would've continued her life as an academic. Even still, after joining Kumo's military might, her organization was second to none and when it was eventually discovered that it was her ideas that were radically improving efficiency and effectiveness, Dodai-san immediately promoted her.

Organizing her scrolls, writing utensils, references, examples, the key material she'll be attempting to decipher, Mabui can't help but wonder if she may have been too enthusiastic when accepting A-sama's offer to be his Chief Operations Management officer. The position, while appreciated, meant that she reached her ceiling, and that simply made no sense for someone as ambitious as herself. Though she's happy to have met Darui, the listless man was as content to be with her as not, generally depressing her self-esteem every time she thought about how little interest he seemed to have for her.

Lifting her fountain pen to begin the next stage of her goal toward Jōnin, Mabui's highly organized mind fully commits to the task at hand, and to her surprise, the information in the manuals appear to be leading her in the right direction. Noting the similar characters and their page number in her reference sheet, it's clear it'll take her quite some time to locate the modern characters that may be connected to her duplicated pages before reverse-engineering the ancient Fūinjutsu's meaning.

"Ooooh, that looks interesting," a voice in the path beside her table states.

Destructively breaking her out of her focused mind, a shocked Mabui quickly sits up, bumping and shaking the desk as she narrows her sharp green sight on a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy wearing a horribly bright orange two-piece jumpsuit. He was staring at the complicated Fūin scribed in her example stack closer to the right of the study desk, and to her grand surprise, he tilts his head as he reads, "Tensō… no Jutsu. Heavenly Transfer? What's it transfer?"

Like a girl discovering her boyfriend reading her diary, Mabui roughly drags all the sheets toward her ample bosom, stopping the startled boy from reading any further. Embarrassed by her frantic reaction, Mabui didn't even know where to start, simply sounding out, "How- I- You."

"Oh," the boy calls apologetically, taking a step away from her desk. He smacks his head with regret as he sheepishly explains, "my bad, nee-san. I was just passing by and saw you had the book I was waiting for. I spotted a bit of what you're working on, but I promise I wasn't trying to be nosy. Sorry," he voices before turning away to leave.

"Wait," Mabui calls and immediately is shushed by the few nearby. Getting up to move closer to him, she notices a few glaring at the blond as he turns to her. Whispering, she asks, "you can read this?"

"Uh, some of it," the boy answers. "It's a little wonky… or old," he adds and it's very rare for Mabui to be genuinely dumbfounded. Her fiance was the only man who could do that and his intellect made sense given his decades of experience. The blond-haired boy in front of her couldn't be more than sixteen or seventeen years of age, likely a genin, and yet, he read the title that took her a solid two weeks to translate with a single glance.

"See ya," he brightly calls before turning away.

"Wait," Mabui calls again, and again is shushed with a loud, "SHHHHH!"

Bowing slightly in apology to those she's interrupted, Mabui whispers to the blond, "can we speak?" Looking around she spots a nearby aisle that led to some of the more intermediary Fūinjutsu. Curious about the potential here, she points and voices "over there?"

"Um, I was on my way out," Naruto mumbles with a hum. "Will it take long?"

Taking his warm hand in both of hers she gives him a nice squeeze and sweetly assures him, "it won't. Please?"

"Okay," he smiles brightly, before adding, "but I have to head to my sensei's after so I can't stay long."

"I understand," she nods, wondering about his warm hand while simultaneously appreciating a diligent bond between student and sensei. With thoughts of her deceased sensei and fiance, she mentions, "I wouldn't want to keep you from your sensei." After sealing her pages in her clipboard, Mabui and the blond conundrum walk over to the empty aisles of the more secluded Fūinjutsu section. Certain of privacy between the tall stacks of tomes or scrolls, Mabui begins with a simple query. "I'm curious, do you by chance study the discipline Fūinjutsu?"

"Yeah," the boy easily responds, looking around the many books with a familiarity she was hoping for.

Mabui grabs a random book and opens it up to a framework she hardly recognizes before showing it to him and asking, "is this something you can understand?"

"Mmm, that's a detection array for general-purpose Fūin schemes," he effortlessly answers after a glance. "The jutsu executed depends on the functionality of the arrangement. This tests that- well, it's one of many tests for that," and judges it as, "super basic stuff."

Amazed, Mabui looks around for a more complicated book. Grabbing the nearest one, she flips toward the end to a section she has no clue what it means. Showing it to him, she asks, "and this?"

After a glance, the blond immediately answers, "that's a section of a kinetic feedback array. It's a little tricky to write out but it allows anything with chakra access to produce a defined kinetic motion. In this case…" he pauses a moment to look at the specific section of the complicated seal, before finishing, "vibration."

"Amazing," Mabui softly gasps, wondering if he's accurate or mistaken. "And, earlier, when you glimpsed the jutsu I was working on. You weren't confused by what you read?"

Tilting his head in obvious thought, he answers, "mnn, like I said, it's a bit wonky, but not really."

"Wonky," Mabui cautiously repeats. After a solid week of attempting to translate the item and scroll she inherited, she realized that it was an old jutsu that used outdated Fūin seals. Curious for his, apparently, prodigious understanding of Fūinjutsu, she asks, "can you elaborate?"

"Hmm, like it looked familiar but different at the same time," he responds.

"And you weren't confused," she repeats before quickly explaining, "I'm only curious due to the numerous reasons why Fūin characters are a challenge to understand; mostly due to the difference between heuristic human reasoning and the starkly literal nature of Fūinjutsu instructions." Feeling excited about discovering this boy, Mabui continues, "some studies highlight one reason, in particular, is practitioners tend to misunderstand arrangement, meaning the characters seem like they should be doing one thing, when in fact they're actually doing something else."

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