Mission library

We were sitting in Sasuke's living room, and today, we were going to start planning the heist. Everyone was very excited, it was easily seen on their dubious and doubtful faces, which were clearly because they were uncertain whether the heist would be able to live up to their sky-high expectations of how fun it would be. Clearly.

"As you all know, Sakura took a job at the library a little over one month ago, and no-one suspected anything since she's THE nerd of the academy" I started the meeting, getting only a slight glare from Sakura. "and while working there, she observed quite a bit about their routines and how the library is operated-"

"I didn't 'observe' how they did things, they told me because I work with them, saying that I 'observed' them makes me sound like some sort of spy" Sakura grumbled, clearly still on edge about the whole thing.

"Which she will now explain, to give everyone a clear picture of what we are up against," I said, giving the word to Sakura.

However, before she had the opportunity to explain, Kiba interrupted "are we just supposed to ignore that Shikamaru and Choji didn't come?" he said in a questioning tone, clearly wanting to know what had happened.

I grimaced, thinking about the last time we spoke two weeks ago "he was... not very positive about the idea of heisting Konoha's library, he told me it was an idiotic idea that would never work, and when I didn't agree he said that he wouldn't participate... and Choji followed Shikamaru" everyone looked worried after I explained the situation, as, in general, when a Nara thought something wasn't a good idea, they were right "But! No need to worry, as long as we plan thoroughly, we will definitely succeed. So, Sakura, what do we know?" I hastily tried to avoid more of them abandoning the heist.

"Well, all six librarians are retired ninja and no, I don't know what rank they used to have, but there is at all times at least one librarian guarding the only staircase to the higher floors, furthermore, there are no windows in the building to protect the books from the weather. The only time when the stairs are unguarded by a librarian is when the librarians go from floor to floor checking that all books are there once a month. When they do that, they get one of the assistant librarians to make sure nobody uses the stairs up, the assistant they choose can't be me, because I haven't been there long enough. They say that they don't use a specific pattern, but some of the older assistants told me there was one, but that it was just very convoluted. It usually takes a while to check the Genin floor, with each floor after that one taking less. But there are only two very small windows of time where nobody has a direct line of sight to the entrance of the floor, one five minutes after they start, the other five minutes before they finish, each only lasting a few seconds, and as soon as they are done with the genin floor one of the librarians return to guard the staircase because the upper floors have fewer books. The library does have a roof, but because all the floors have a very high ceiling the roof is far too tall to jump from, the library is back-to-back with the Hokage mansion. So, we also have to make sure that nobody sees us if we go to the roof" Sakura explained.

"In other words, we have to sneak up a wide-open staircase past a person whose sole purpose is making sure no one gets past her. Perfectly time it so we don't get spotted while entering the genin floor, go around the genin floor where we will sneak around trying not to get spotted by retired ninja. Let's not forget that we also have to get past those librarians, somehow, to take from the books that have already been checked. then either get out past a librarian AND an assistant librarian or go up to jump down from a fifteen-meter-tall building when we haven't even started to learn the ninja jump, in both cases carrying a lot of books? Oh, and all in thirty minutes or less" Kiba said, with heavy skepticism

"exactly!" I said while smiling my brightest, most optimistic smile.

"that's impossible!" Kiba yelled, obviously giving up on the idea after hearing just how hard it will be to complete.

"No need to worry about anything at all, because I have a plan" I grinned a roguish grin and started to tell them my plan.

Ino and I were walking down the street, Sakura had already split up from us and was waiting further back, while I continued to walk with Ino for a while. We were preparing to start the first step of the plan. it was the day of the check, and after sharing my plan, getting the obvious faults pointed out to me, then reworking the plan together time and time again we were finally ready.

"Are you ready, Ino?" I asked.

"you've asked a thousand times, and yes, I'm still ready," she said, clearly annoyed that I asked her again.

"well, I have to ask! After all, while I am always ready for anything, the rest of you aren't that amazing so I have to make sure" I said teasingly while giving her a pitying look.

"like how you were ready for anything when you lost faster than anyone, ever, and broke-"

"shattered"

"-that record?" she asked snidely, ignoring my correction on what I accomplished.

"and I will have you know that I was completely ready," I said confidently.

"Really?" she said, her tone indicating that she wasn't fully convinced of my readiness on that day years ago.

"Really! I also just happened to be incredibly unskilled and abysmal at anything physical at the time" I explained arrogantly.

"Sure, whatever you say, now leave! The girl Sakura said was going to be today's assistant is coming over" she said while preparing the weak poison dust she had, shall we say, appropriated, from her parents' workspace.

As she did, I went over to the ally way where we had made sure I could see both of them without them being able to see each other. Then watched as Ino pretended to read something from a magazine as she barreled straight into the library assistant, throwing some dust in her face as she waved the poisonous dust away from her with the magazine, disguising the action as an accident while she was flailing around. Then she quickly got up without taking a single breath of the toxic air, then walked off after helping the assistant up with a quick sorry, completing her part in the heist perfectly.

I signaled to Sakura that Ino had left, and she started sauntering down the road, then, she 'ran into' her coworker and struck up a conversation, walking with her to the library. They continued making small talk until they were close to the library, and I started to get worried. Would she make it to the library before the poison did its work and she 'got sick'? If so, one of the librarians would probably take over guarding the staircase and the plan would fall apart. But luckily, the assistant who was originally supposed to guard the staircase today started to quickly become sick as the poison did its job before Sakura stopped her and started talking to her with a worried expression. And although I couldn't hear what they were saying, I knew from the long hours of planning that Sakura was offering to take over the guard duty for today.

I quickly went over to Sasuke, Shino, and Hinata and started speaking "ok infiltration squad, Sakura just went in, are you guys ready?" I ask, smiling with anticipation.

"When did we decide to become the 'infiltration squad'?" Sasuke asked in annoyance.

"Right now! I, singlehandedly, came to a unanimous decision about it just seconds ago, incredible, I know, but we need to get going" I smiled before starting to walk to the library entrance, where we walked straight past Sakura and hurried to the roof.

When we got there, we saw Naruto waiting for us on the second of the three roofs of the Hokage's mansion, with only a small Strech of garden area and a small ally between us. He had visited the Hokage earlier, giving him a great excuse to be on the second-story roof of his office building, and one advantage of the hideous new orange outfit he had started to wear recently, was that it was so oversized and bulky that nobody would be able to see the long rope he hid in there. He then threw one end of the rope down to where Kiba waited in the alley between the two buildings, where Kiba then quickly secured the bag full of equipment we needed to the rope before Naruto took it back. But the clock was ticking, and we only had a short amount of time before we had to enter the Genin floor. Naruto then took a kunai from the bag and threw it on the roof, where we hurriedly grabbed it before it slid off, then we dragged the bag up, and I smiled with satisfaction that we had successfully gotten our equipment in.

I pulled out the tools I had made in preparation, they looked like T's, but with small, thin plates on the ends of the horizontal line, sticking upwards, and two parallel vertical lines instead of one. It was a rather simple contraption, its only ability was that the harder you pressed the grip together, the harder the plates on top came together as well.

I handed two to each of my friends and they took them before we ran down to the genin floor, getting there just in time to take advantage of the first window.

Then, a tiering and difficult game of hide-and-seek began.

The librarians moved in an intricate pattern, designed to eventually corner anyone foolish enough to try and steal with all six librarians in the room. However, we had a way to counter their pattern, and that way was by using the tools I had made, that was because they were designed with one very specific function, to grab stacks of books, along with the fact that the bookshelves were very thick, with two rows per shelf, one in each direction. Allowed us to grab stacks of books on both sides, then crawl through, and place them back, giving us the ability to pass through the shelves without a trace.

while The librarians were walking around in a pattern, it was not a pattern we knew, forcing us to constantly move around, going to places we had seen them be before, and grabbing books. Dodging them time and again, dancing on a knife's edge when we slipped through the shelves seconds before we would have been seen.

The books were sorted according to the subject of the book, so I was weaving through the different sections, desperately looking for the fuinjutsu section. But I couldn't find it, no matter where I looked it was just not there! But it was the reason I even bothered to convince everyone, if they aren't here then it will be far more problematic for me. Fuinjutsu takes time to learn, a long, long time, and while Orochimaru probably isn't the main villain from what I remember, that doesn't mean he isn't dangerous. so if I want to learn fuinjutsu and still be able to help when whatever Orochimaru's plan is happens, I need to start learning now. And Iruka said that genin could get access to fuinjutsu so it must be here.

I searched every nook and cranny, desperately looking for the books while narrowly avoiding the librarians when I finally accepted that the books on fuinjutsu weren't here. Did Iruka lie? No, Iruka doesn't lie to his students, so when he said that genin could learn fuinjutsu he didn't lie... oh, he said that genin COULD learn fuinjutsu, not that they could get access them alone. In other words, if your sensei decides you are ready, you CAN get them... from your sensei, after they take the books from the chunin section.

The second window would open soon, it was the only chance we had to get out, and we had to take it even if I didn't get what I wanted. We finally snuck out, reconvening outside of the room far from the entrance to the genin floor and just by the entrance.

"how many did you guys get?" I asked, curious about how successful we were.

"I have four in my bag," Hinata said, not firmly by any stretch of the imagination, but surprisingly less timid than usual.

"I have four as well," Shino said succinctly.

"five" Sasuke grunted

"I only got three, I was looking for some specific jutsu books and used too much time trying to find them, now let's go down, give the book-grabbers to Sakura so she can give them to the library as something her friend made to help the library, and get out before the guard librarian gets down," I told them, annoyed that I couldn't get what I came for.

Then, just as we were about to leave, I realized that I needed to try getting those books, even if they were in the chunin section.

I threw my backpack to Sasuke before speaking "go leave without me, I need those books and it doesn't matter if it will be more dangerous alone" I spoke, filled with determination to get my hands on the fuinjutsu books. even though I knew it was far more dangerous, because now, I was not only stealing from the chunin section, a rank far harder to receive than genin, but I was doing it without the buffer of doing it with five clan heirs, which meant they could punish me far more harshly without worrying about people accusing them of favoritism.

"What! You can't! What about the plan? how will you get out?" Hinata said, her voice becoming more and more high-pitched as she started to panic.

"She's right, moron, the librarians will leave that room in less than a minute and you won't be able to get out" even Sasuke tried to convince me that my plan was horrible.

"don't worry about it, ill be fine, now go," I said as I turned around and ran past the entrance to the genin floor before they came out, and towards the chunin floor.

The only problem was that the floor was sorted in a completely different manner than the floor below. While the genin floor was also sorted according to the subject, the pattern for where each subject was located changed completely, forcing me to go from shelf to shelf, checking the books before continuing to the next section. The layout was also something I wasn't prepared for, with all the shelves being curved and in a pattern of seven concentric circles, with a direct path from the entrance of the floor to the center, with seemingly random paths between the circles other than the central one.

I had just gotten inside the outermost circle, when the librarians entered, I hurried away from the entrance hiding from the suddenly faster librarians. Why were they suddenly so fast? Had they seen me? No, then they would have just walked directly to me, then why? I looked around for any hint of what was causing them to move more swiftly than before until I finally realized why. The books were larger. The chunin books were, of course, more complicated than the genin books, so there were far fewer books to check, combined with the fact that they must have done this at many times before, they were moving so fast that opportunities to go through the shelves were scarcer and scarcer. and it only got worse the further I got as the circles became smaller. But still haven't found the fuinjutsu scrolls.

I was scurrying through the center path when I finally noticed what should have been obvious from the beginning. in the innermost circle where there were only two entrances, I recognized what I should have seen far earlier. Kanji. That had to be the fuinjutsu scrolls as everything else in this place was written in a simpler form of Japanese called hiragana or whatever it was called here. I snuck over there as I had already seen someone go inside this circle before, just need to grab a couple of books and find a way to leave. But then, just as the knowledge was within reach, I heard voices coming from both sides. damn. This must be where they meet up to confirm that nothing was missing. And I can't leave.

I'm trapped.