The Uchiha Jounin; The Troubled Youth: Meeting?

Narora let out a small groan as he walked down the dirt path. People who knew him and he knew in return waved, nodded in his direction, or called out a greeting.

It wasn't hard to know him. The public new him as 'AN Uchiha Jounin'. Any Uchiha was usually well known in this village, and their rank was just about public knowledge (unless they were an ANBU, of course). But there were the rare few that personally knew Narora, and as such, he acknowledged them and those that had been introduced to him by those same people.

But, enough about that, his resent mission, assigned by Kuraikage-sama, was a simple, inner village patrol mission.

Kuraikage-sama was a bit paranoid, and always had been around this time. It was near this date that a major battle had happened in the village, when it had first started. It had been a band of Bandits, Thieves, and Nuke-nin that had attempted to overthrow the Village government and take Mukougakure no Sato as their 'Home Base'.

Well, they had almost succeeded, but were eventually pushed back by the combined force of every Jounin, ANBU, and the Shodaime Kuraikage himself. The current Kuraikage, the Yondaime, was just a paranoid man in his late twenties. And while he seemed slightly out of his mind, he was by no doubt extremely powerful.

He came out of his thoughts as he reached a good part in his current book, a small Novel named 'Bakemonogatari'.

...Damn the main character was a lucky bastard...

And as he read this, he began to come into view of the Shinobi Academy.

In front of the academy, in plain view, there was Masato, sitting out in the front. A young man, with spiky long hair being held to his forehead just above his eyes by sweat. It seemed that the students of the academy were doing more physical learning than mental. As always, Masato worked very hard, after all, people had high expectations for him. He was pretty skilled, considering his age. But, at this moment, he was quite weakened from the trials of his day. His eye lids were low, half obscuring his dark, golden eyes. His face, expressionless as always, except now, it was covered in sweat that was drying by this time. His lips were parted, with a cookie stick sitting between them, his hand on the end that wasn't in his mouth. From under his eye lids, his eyes wandered, looking around. At first, he wasn't looking at anything in particular, but he noticed someone walking past the academy reading. His eyes couldn't help but follow the man. He was familiar with him, however, since he was bored, he saw no point in ignoring it, he would be bored either way, he always was.

He stood up, and pressed his lips together, trapping the cookie between his lips, and he dropped his hand to the side that was holding the cookie not too long ago. He proceeded towards the man, walking as stiff as his expression. It was quite ironic actually. When demonstrating combat ability, he was very loose and rather flexible. Yet, as he walked towards Narora, he was stiff as a board. Once he approached the Jonin who was reading, he blocked his path. He figured, Narora would bump into him since he assumed that he was not paying attention, so before that could happen, he spoke. His voice rather deep for his age, loud too, but he had no emotion, no tone in his voice. He sounded almost robotic, like what he said was planned, and practiced for hours on end. "Accidents can occur like this, you never know what's in front of you." He started off normal, but as he continued to speak, it was clear that this young man had no censor. "You could have stepped in any number of things, you know; road kill, pitfall traps, dog shit." As he spoke, no change in tone was evident, his words just fell out, one after the other. He would go on to list the possible things Narora could have stepped in until he was cut off.

Narora simply lifted his eye from his book for a moment, and heard a kid speaking to him. However, Narora continued on his way. The boy blocking his path was nothing new. He'd seen people try to act smart like this before, and he had done one simple thing that they probably weren't expecting... or maybe they were.

He simply jumped.

Or more accurately, jumped over the boy in his path. There was no acrobatic flip, or spin, or anything. He simply kicked hard with his right foot, and as he flew over the boy, his body was still comically straight and his eyes still on the book. And with barely a sound, he landed behind the academy student.

He paused, and turned his head around, the rest of his body still facing forward. “My boy, standing in the road like that, is a good way to get hurt. You could be run over, walked into, hell, what if some clown on a unicycle came by and accidentally crushed your tiny, cute face?!” As he said this, he seemed to be actually concerned, and the last part was just put in there for some humor, so as not to make him look like an ass...

...well hopefully...

It was at this time that he took another quick glance at the boy, and took in his appearance. He didn't seem to come from any Clan he knew of in Mukou, nor did he look like a well known family member of a Family that was just as well known.

Hell the boy looked... average...

...but all the years of Narora's training told him, that absolutely nothing was average...

The kid Masato, just stood there. Clearly unamused. To the untrained eye, he might have looked like a prankster whose joke just failed. However, he wasn't trying to gain any entertainment from the man, he was seriously looking out for him. However, he was able to realize the man was mocking him. He was used to getting looked down on because he was a kid. He learned at a very early age to not take such things personal. Plus, if the man knew as much about him as the people who were close to him did, he would be taken a bit more seriously. So he just turned to face the man and nodded. His expression had not changed, and he nodded. Before he spoke again, he grabbed the end of his cookie and bit it. Then he moved the remainder of it into his mouth and let it rest there showing a small piece outside of his mouth. His hands once more dropped to his side.

In the same cold, constant tone he used before, he spoke once more to the man. "It's up to you to decide if you would like to heed my words or not. But, do not complaint if you get hurt. After all, I did warn yo-" Before Masato could finish speaking, he heard a loud noise coming from ahead of him. However, he couldn't see with Narora blocking the way, so he poked his head out to the side and saw a large crowd forming not too far away from them. He looked from the crowd to the man before him, then once more back at the crowd. He walked pass Narora brushing him with his shoulder. He didn't do it intentionally, but he didn't care to apologize either. Accidents happened. He walked towards the crowd to see what was going on, and if there was any problems, he would have no choice but to put a stop to it. It was only the least he can do to serve his village.

Narora kept the small smile on his face, even as the boy had no reaction.

This one was truly strange. Narora could honestly say he'd never met the boy now, he was far to emotionless to forget meeting. Narora himself wasn't always bursting with Joy or Sorrow, but he did show emotion when he wasn't observing his surroundings.

Part of him really did want to warn the boy like that. He may have been trying to help, but he was still doing something that could have ended bad. For example, if Narora really hadn't been paying attention. Not that-that would ever happen really, Narora was a Jounin for a reason, and reading while he was walking, really meant nothing for him. As he walked, his attention was just split between the book and him, in a 60:40 ratio, with the book having the most.

But, as he was about to reply to the boy once more, he heard a sound, and he knew it was a crowd behind him, but had no idea what they were doing. So, like a curious little Jounin, he turned his head to look at them, but found thing as a wall of bodies blocked his view.

He felt the boy walk past him, but at the same time, felt no flair in the boy's Chakra that would indicate annoyance or anger, and deducted that it was a simple accident. But the boy could have apologized.

But, following the boy's example, he walked forward to the crowd, book still in his hand, but he was now paying more attention to the people before him.

Masato did not walk with any urgency. As a matter of fact, if Narora wanted to, he could have passed him with a little extra effort on his part. Despite, his lack of urgency in his walk, it didn't take him very long to reach the crowd. He pushed many of the people in his way off to the side and in very little time, he was at the front. Because of his height, he made it a point to learn the easiest way through crowds. Then he finally saw what was going on. In the center of the crowd, there was three things that his eyes caught.

Two of those three things were two men, clad in white, their faces obscured by white masks. They appeared to be menacing, though looks at many times were deceiving. In fact Masato was quite sure that he could stop them in their tracks, and save the person being "held hostage" by them.

The third thing he noticed was a small girl being held hostage by the two people hiding their identities like cowards. She was small, young and defenseless. The look on her face made it obvious that she was afraid, meanwhile the two men were trying to figure out a way to escape the circle that the crowd had formed around them.

Masato wanted to move and try to stop them, however, he couldn't budge. As a matter of fact, a feeling of nostalgia was creeping up on him. He wanted to move and save the young girl, but he was becoming overwhelmed by the sudden rush of memories that he tried to suppress with all of his energy. The feeling froze him, and for the first time in a while, made his face soften. But this change of expression only lasted for a second as he recalled events from his past.
(I was too lazy to write a history, so Ima slip a bit of it into here, if you don't mind.)

(OOC: Not a problem ^^, I've made it a point in my mind that some members may like to keep their character's histories shrouded in shadows, and unveil them throughout their Roleplay.)

As Narora made it to the front, he let his eyes narrow slightly.

'ANBU? Better yet, two Taichou? What could they possibly be doing here... and with a child...?' He sent a glance down to the small girl, searching for any sign of deception that the others may not. He didn't bother to use his Sharingan for this, he would become to reliant on it, and he really didn't want to end up like the other Uchiha.

He was soon parting people and walking forward toward the ANBU Taichou, and as he stepped into the circle, which had a fairy wide diameter, he closed his book with a snap, mentally storing away the page number for later. The snap seemed to be loud enough to gain the Taichou's, and Civilian's, attention.

It wasn't long before hushed whispers began to echo threw the crowd about an “Uchiha”, “Jounin”, and a few “Narora”s here and there.

He let his eyes grow slightly softer, but they still had that edge in them as he stared down the ANBU. Narora was fairly confident that if these ANBU had tried to put up a fight, and they shouldn't because it would be an offense that would be charged with treason and rewarded with death (and in some rare cases, exile), he would be able to handle them. Or at least, hold them off.

...OK so maybe he could take one down if it was one-on-one, but he'd be hard pressed to hold off two-on-one. He would have to get them in a situation where he could use Genjutsu: Sharingan on them and throw them into a deep slumber.

But, back to the situation, Narora began to speak. A friendly tone in his voice, but with a hint of hostility, “ANBU-san,” he said, addressing both, “May I inquire as to, exactly, why you have a child near you, and a crowd around you that looks to be slightly on edge.” He nodded with his head around the crowd.