Learning in a Foreign Village (Open, Konoha)

It was late night and Roku could feel the dirt and salt from dried sweat crinkle over his face with each new expression, and nearly see the stench lines rising from his body.  He carried a pack with him, inside it being a change of clothes.  He stood in front of the Ninja Academy in Konohagakure, as he'd been told by some people at the training grounds that it offered a library, open at all hours of the night to be available to all Ninja, people who were known to have rather crazy schedules, and that inside were showers that he could utilize after certain hours, when all the children left.  Roku went inside, located the showers, and cleansed himself of the dirt and grime that had accumulated on the surface of his being.  Emerging from the steam refreshed and cleaned, Roku donned his new, clean change of clothes, stuffed his dirty clothes into the pack, picked up Naegling, and made his way to the library available for Ninja.

Once he arrived at the library, Roku located a few tomes of interest, all detailing separate, but equally important, aspects of Fuuinjutsu.  One tome described, in detail, what Fuuinjutsu was.  Another described the types of objects and entities that have been sealed and the known methods for sealing them, and yet another described the different caligraphy needed to write seals, what they meant, what they did, and how to draw them.  He found quite a few more, all detailing different aspects of the art, and he gathered them up.  His required texts in his arms, Roku made his way to a rather large desk, stacking the books on the corner, and he took a seat in front of them.  

Roku withdrew paper and writing utensils from his pack and set them in front of him, directly to the left of his first chosen tome:  An Introduction to Fuuinjutsu.  He cracked the book open, and he began reading, jotting down different notes on his paper.  It was just as important to know the theory of what ninja arts one was enacting as it was to learn about them in practice - for, by knowing the theory, one could devise many unique ways of utilizing said arts.  Thus, Roku poured over the texts, studying them as if he knew nothing about Fuuinjutsu, though he, of course, knew the basics.  Years of intense study enforced upon him by The Lord merchant, his caretaker, had made Roku very adept at such forms of study.  Thus, he managed to finish annotating the entire text in just a matter of hours, with many pages of notes.  It was just a few hours before dawn now, and the fatigue would eventually begin to take control.

[Fuuinjutsu Beginner --> Adept 1/3]

Despite the early hour - or late, for Roku - the boy continued his studies. While fatigue ebbed at his consciousness, it seemed it was only a minor distraction, and he continued to labor over the texts. His next choice in book, tossing An Introduction to Fuuinjutsu aside, papers filled with notes on its contents now scattered across the young man's desk, was Fuuinjutsu: The Art in the Ninja Art, the tome on the calligraphy of Fuuinjutsu. At first, Roku scoffed at the idea of the symbols requiring an entire book on how to produce them, but as he began reading, the validity of the requirement slowly presented itself to him. Very tiny, and minute differences in just the curve of a particular part of a character changed its entire meaning.

Early on, Roku abandoned the idea to record notes. It seemed as if it were the kind of content requiring practical application of the skill and memorization, so he set to memorizing the different characters, and how modifying them changed their meaning. He practiced drawing the characters, again and again failing to duplicate the symbols perfectly, and looking into what he'd drawn, finding that he produced symbols that would have completely different effects than what he had intended to create.

Slowly, he began to catch on, finding patterns in the intricacies of the arts, and, after a few hours, he was able to produce his own original symbols, just as the sun came up and he could hear young boys, just a few years younger than he, flooding the halls of the building. Some of them seemed old enough to be taking the Genin exams soon, which would place them as the same rank as Roku, despite the likelihood that Roku, as a Grand Master Sage, was likely exponentially more skilled than almost all of them. The bell for the first class rang just as Roku managed to produce the calligraphy for the Reverse Four Symbols Seal perfectly - despite knowing there was no way he could actually produce the technique, he could draw its symbols.

[Fuuinjutsu Beginner --> Adept 2/3]

Now that Roku had learned a bit about Fuuinjutsu in what it was and how to draw the seals it required, Roku was ready to put it into practice, and so he opened the text titled Applications of Fuuinjutsu. It was split into three different sections, each that detailed a separate object and how to seal them. The first was for inanimate objects, subsequently divided into smaller sections detailing different sizes of objects, and recommended methods of sealing them, while the second showed how to seal chakra, with smaller sections for amount of chakra and form the chakra was in, and the third, for living beings, and objects that contained chakra. Immediately, as he began reading, Roku realized that the content of this text was more sophisticated and complex than the other texts.

He had to do a combination of note-taking and memorization for this text. He looked for patterns, identifying variables that changed between each different type of summon, and he noted them down, as well as patterns in how to change them to achieve a desired effect. He wrote them in patterns and with a mode of organization that allowed him to reference back to it and study, and after each subsection, he stopped, studying the new material he'd covered, doing his best to commit it to memory and devise methods to jog his memory for the more complex sections. And again, after each of the full sections, Roku quizzed himself to be sure he still remembered the material from the previous sections. He always did.

A few hours passed, and soon, students walking by could see Roku, head slumped on the desk, asleep. Exhaustion had taken over, and the moment he'd finished the last text, he'd allowed himself a moment to recover before walking home, but its unintended result was his falling asleep on the desk instead. It was possible he'd remain asleep for the next few hours, even late into the night with how much he'd overworked his mind, but before he'd fallen asleep, he finally felt he'd begun to understand enough to be able to perform new types of sealing jutsu, so he slept with a smile of satisfaction on his face.

[Fuuinjutsu Beginner - > Adept 3/3]