"Why do you meet with him so regularly?"

"Uh. I'm not sure. He's never really given me a clear answer as to why."

"That's so weird!"

Rian smiles a bit, remembering some of their theories. If Sora doesn't want to share, she won't, though.

Actually...

"It's been a while. I wonder if your mom's done cooking yet?"

....Sayuri jumps up and runs through the door to the kitchen. A moment later Rian and Sora can hear a loud groan of frustration coming from Sayuri.

She walks slowly back into the other room and holds out a small peice of paper to the other girls, the smell of something burning wafts through the open doorway.

"I knew this would happen! And then she ran away. This is so typical." She pouts. 

"Uh. What. Is something burning?"

What does the paper say?

Summoned for a mission. 500 ryou on countertop for dinner. Will send hawk with update. Xx

"...Wow. Um, what are we doing for food? I can help cook if we're eating in..."

Sora hides her amusement. "Me too, though I can't do anything fancy."

Sayuri sighs loudly.

"No it's fine." She walks over to the fridge and grabs a menu. "Mama orders out a lot, so we get a lot of discounts from restaurants."

She takes a deep breath and now she has a smile. "They give us free delivery too!"

She shows them the menu. "Pick whatever you like!"

Rian picks something that sounds good. Spicy with garlic sounds nice right about now.

Once everyone's got their orders in, she says, "So, Sayuri, what do you think the test tomorrow will be like? Did you get a chance to ask your mom about Mariko-sensei?"

"Ooh! Um. I did ask mama about her and she said that Mariko-sensei was the Fourth Hokage's genin teammate! So she's super good at seals and she has a really good mission completion ratio. I could tell mama was impressed with her being my sensei."

Sora laughs and looks to Rian. "So she does know Jiraiya then."

"I wonder if she'll be able to answer our questions about him? She sounds like a good sensei, at least."

"What'd you want to know about Jiraiya?"

"Well, he's one of the Sannin, and I'd like to know more about them in general."

(Like if Sora's secretly his love child. Which is a hilarious concept to Rian for some reason.)

"And we were hoping for him to take us on a fabulous team adventure."

"!!!That would be so much fun!!! We should definitely ask Mariko-sensei about meeting him."

"Definitely!" Giggle. "So, anyways, I wonder what sort of test sensei has in store for us? Maybe we should all brush up on our seals some..."

"Mama wouldn't give me any hints about the test. She did say that it was different for each jounin-sensei though, so maybe she just didn't know."

"I brought along some of my extra sealing scrolls if you wanna use them for tomorrow. I can make up some new ones if you wanna keep them too."

To Sora: "I think I will, thanks. I can bring more kunai and shuriken that way..."

Then: "You know, I don't really know what sorts of things you can even do with seals, beyond storage scrolls and sharingan-locked information."

"Oh a bunch of stuff. You can use them on yourself and other people. They can grant enhanced strength or speed, or make your senses really really good. Um. They can also restrict you from doing things, like make it so you can't tell people certain secrets. It's a really versatile field, I only really know a small amount."

"Wow, that's a lot! No wonder there's so few seal masters."