Researching My Prey

I had two goals in mind, and I had a plan to make both of them possible. There was another goal I was keeping in mine however, and it would be in fact a small reward to add onto the others. I wanted, above all else, to gain enough power to protect my friends when the need would arise in the near or distant future. That would be an obvious benefit of capturing one of the great Tailed Beasts. I would get immediate power at the cost of my body and intense training. Another goal of not only me, but of my entire new group of Uchiha refugees, is to redeem the name of the Uchiha. In capturing the Bijuu, I would not only prove my clan powerful, but it would also end the vicious village-destroying sandstorms that prevented the survivors from Sakyugakure from returning home. That would definitely make the name of the Uchiha better, and it would also help the whole "promoting world peace" situation, which would be a side benefit although not at the forefront of my own mind.

Capturing this Bijuu would grant me all of these goals, so it was the most prominent objective in my mind, but I wouldn't be able to accomplish this daunting task without first learning a bit about the One-Tail.

So I decided I needed to visit my local library. It wouldn't make sense to travel to another village to use their library, because I would be leaving here in a few days to begin the hunt anyway. I needed to unbury the ancient Uchiha library from underneath the ash that layered the streets of Jokigakure. I would begin looking in the streets behind the Academy that we had been refurbishing for the past week. If there would be a library, it would probably be somewhere in the more instructional area of the village. The only rough part of this search would be that this ancient library had been missing even before the volcanoes wiped out the rest of the village. Although, I had found a few old maps that almost fall apart every time I open them, and on the maps, they mark the old library being in the block right behind the Academy, but when I get there, there is nothing. No rubble, no ash, just a large stone floor. I found this odd, because even if there wasn't a building there, ash would be here like in every part of the village. Ash would fall from the sky every day in average life of Jokigakure, and especially now after the volcanic eruptions. But nay, only the stone brick floor was here, with the Academy at my back. Ash flakes slowly fell from the sky, but there were still none on the ground. I knelt down and rubbed my finger on the ground. "Well, it's definitely real stone, and there's definitely no ash..." I began to think to myself to solve the problem. I then locked my eyes on a single larger piece of ash falling from a few feet above me, and carefully observed what would happen to it when it hit the ground. It slowly drifted closer and closer as the current of gravity pulled it down, but when it hit the ground, it simply... disappeared. I raised an eyebrow in curiosity and walked towards the center of the large stone floor that I was standing on.

As I walked towards the center of the floor, a thought occurred to me, a thought of a certain type of jutsu from my studies of the various shinobi styles in my days at the Academy in Morigakure. Fuuinjutsu as well as Genjutsu. "A seal.." I began to create the only hypothesis that I could think of at the time, "A seal with a Genjutsu constantly being released in intervals from it." There were several cases of combined jutsu liked this one, but there had never been any with these two particular jutsu being combined, but it was all I could think of. "I have to find the seal," I said to myself out loud.

I looked around for anything hidden, anything out of the way. If anything on this floor disappeared, that would mean if anything could actually stay on it, something had to be different about it. "But what about me?" I asked myself, "How can I stand on it and not sink down into whatever is under this stone?" But then I simply came to the conclusion that it had some kind of chakra blocker to make it so that chakra-filled beings couldn't pass through it. That was when I noticed a small pile of leaves in the far corner of the stone floor. Even with the breeze, they didn't move or shake. "This illusion is impressive to say the least,"I said to myself as I walked towards the leaves.

I reached the leaves and knelt down to brush them to the side, but as I did, the pile of leaves faded into nothingness. There was nothing there but stone yet again, so I activated my Sharingan to see if there was some detail I was missing. As soon as I activated it, I fell back onto my back and deactivated it almost immediately. What I saw shocked me and hurt my eyes, for when my Sharingan was activated, all of the air around me lit up brightly with chakra, so much chakra that I couldn't even bare to look with my eyes open. I got back onto my knees and tried to recover from the shock I had just suffered from burning eyes. I blinked a few times to try to regain myself as I leaned over and pressed my face closer to the stone to inspect it, all the while thinking to myself, "What source could possibly be producing that much chakra?!"

Eventually I found the small seal made in chalk on the ground, and inspected it closely. It was made of black chalk, and was almost too small for the eye to see, especially without my Sharingan. I took my thumb and smudged it away, and the stone floor gave way and I fell into a huge pit of black ash and charcoal nearly 15 feet below my feet. "Now I know where all the ash went," I said to myself as I coughed violently and attempted to regain my footing. I managed to clamour to my feet, and then I hopped off of the ash pile. I looked around the dark room I now stood in and noticed that this pit was surrounded by elegant walls with detailed paintings that described the history of the Uchiha Clan. It was well worn away by the years and ash, but there was one picture at the beginning of the mural that was big enough and noticeable enough to be obvious. It was a giant portrait of the Nine-Tails, and in its mouth was the head of the first Uchiha. "I'm here."

I found a padlocked metal door along the mural wall, and pulled out my wakizashi to cut the lock off of the door. I lifted a large metal bar that was holding the door locked in place, and pushed it forward with all my might. It slid open with a loud screech, and what I saw astounded me. It was a room dimly lit with chakra-based candles that never extinguished, and the bookshelves were several stories high. Huge ladders climbed up the sides of the shelves in an attempt to reach the highest peaks of the huge domed ceiling. Shelves lined the walls and huge oak desks lined each aisle with quills, scrolls, and parchment. On the domed ceiling was a huge lit up picture of the noble Lion, the Nine-Tailed demon.

After a few minutes of scanning aisles, I found what I was looking for. There was an entire section dedicated to the storing of knowledge of the Tailed Beasts and the legend of the Raksaka and the Nine-Tails. I grabbed the Raksaka book and placed it into the napped sack I brought with me from the Academy. We might have use of it for later.

I read books and scrolls for nearly 4 hours, and learned everything I needed to know. The One-Tails was located in a cave exactly 10 kilometres perfectly west of Sakyugakure, and he was easy to frighten. It was extremely defensive, but I felt like with the element of surprise, I could frighten it to catch it off guard, and strike. I packed a few more books on the Nine-Tails and the Raksaka into my bag and left the library, locking up the huge solid metal door behind me. This library needed to be protected until I was wealthy enough to build a tower on top of it to conceal it. I left to the Academy to give orders to Ventus and Ayame as well as to prepare for my departure at dawn. The One-Tail Armadillo would be mine.

Finished. Research for the Ichibi has been completed, and the hunt can now begin.