The New Winds

Sakura had almost inhaled her breakfast. She was too excited to start her new project!

Once food and cleaning happened, she almost sprinted to where the forge was, skidding to a halt outside and offering her prayers before entering.

"Hello?" she called in loudly, knowing how hard it was to be heard in these places.

The forge is quiet and empty, though there is what looks to be a small, wrapped package with a note on it.

Where's all the people? Is this all for me?

She hurried in and went to read the note.

The note simple says "For the Crane"

Inside the cloth wrapping are 4 pieces of jade fingers.

"Wow...." Sakura took out the Jade, her eyes lightening up.

"Ok, I need to be careful with this. Jade can be fiddily...."

She began to set up the forges and started preparing the equipment ready to begin the first part of her mega project! Her work started very well in fact.

D1 Hare weaponsmith/Strength+vp. TN20: 5d10o10k3 42

"Ooooooh shiny!" Zashi peers over the girls shoulder, possibly surprising the girl

"Wha?!" Sakura did indeed jump, causing some very hot looking embers to fly and almost catch the boy. She turned round, looking very hot and sweaty from the work.

"What are you doing? You startled me and this is really dangerous!"

Sakura might look angry if she wasn't so small and cute.

"Please forgive me." Zashi makes a passable effort of contrition that is belied my a brilliant smile. "I find myself drawn to pretty things and well..."

Zashi gestures ambiguously, as if that explains everything.

"Huh....Oh!"

Sakura nodded, as if entirely understanding.

"It's really pretty isn't it? The work here, getting to create something brilliant and beautiful...although this won't be finished for some time yet, it's more bright green goo at this point" she giggled, bowing "I am Doji Sakura. I hope you'll be careful, it's very dangerous in here."

"Zashi Des!" Zashi pauses, blinking for a few moments. "Kitsune Zashi, at least I hope to call myself that when this is done."

Zashi leans over the work. "It's may be goo, but the quality is high. And you..." Zashi looks the girl over, appraisingly "I can't wait to see what you do with it."

"It won't be anything huge. The bigger the weapon, the harder it is shape and form as you're working with more and more materials. I'm planning to shape this into a Tanto" Sakura turned back to her work, focusing "this needed four fingers of Jade to provide enough materials to do the job. A no-dachi for example would need like thirty."

"Ahhh showing off for teacher?" Zashi's grin returns. "You would look rather fetching with that at the tournament too. I wouldn't have guessed a tanto yet"

"Well, sensei said they would supply resources for it, and I'm ambitious" Sakura said with a grin to herself "I couldn't resist the chance to actually work with Jade. There's a lot of pressure on though, I can't mess it up."

"You cannot worry about failure. You must simply be. If so, there is no failure, but lessons that place your path closer to the road you seek to tread." For a moment, the hyperactive redhead looks solemn, but soon breaks out into a grin. "Or so my elders would say...or something like that."

"Hai, although as the dojo is providing and these supplies are not easy to procure, there's expectation on me to make no mistakes" Sakura said as her focus returned to the jade "I don't know commerce well but this amount of jade would be like a hundred portions of sweets I bet."

"Oooh, that's a lot of sweets." Zashi wipes away a bit of drool. "I like sweets, do you like sweets?"

Aiichiro did everything normally, and had a little extra time on what to do next. He was still not trained as a smith as the Engineers were more known for, but he did hear sounds where the forge would be. Curious on would be here and his presence as a Kaiu hardly probaly being of intromission, he entered the forge.

"Of course I love sweets! Everyone loves sweets!" The energetic Doji said loudly, as amusingly the one person she met who didn't love sweets arrived on the scene. She hadn't spotted Aiichiro though as she was focused on her work.

"Oooh, there was this spot in town that had fried dough coated in spices and sweet glaze. There's so much good fooooood." Zashi's eyes begin to shine as the new person arrives.

"Hello! I'm Zashi!"

Kenji knew that he was not the only one sent to the Ruby Dojo by the Crane Clan, but he could not find the little Doji in the morning. After his breakfast he wandered around the dojo until he heard blacksmithing noises, which attracted his attention.

Curious about who was already working hard at this early hour he went there.
To his surprise, three other students were already there, including the doji he wanted to introduce himself to.

"Ohayōgozaimasu kohai-sans, Kaiu-San, it's good to see you!" he said with a bow. "If I may introduce myself, Kakita Kenji, it's an honor to meet you," he said, looking at the little doji and then at Zashi.
However, the red haired one had caught his attention because he didn't know the Clan-Mon.