Ah, right. Okay, decision-ing and rolling has happened:
~ Two weeks before the trip to Tea, during seal research ~
"Agh! What do you think you're doing?!" Kagome yelled, tackling Hazou before the young genin could set brush to paper. "Not like that, you damn fool! You'll kill us all!"
Hazou blinked. Usually when Kagome-sensei freaked out it was for very good reasons, but right now the genin felt like perhaps his teacher was overreacting juuuuust a bit.
"Sensei?" he said, lying very still in no small part because Kagome-sensei currently had him trapped in a submission hold and was wrestling the brush out of his fingers. "What's wrong, sensei?"
"That was the regular ink, you nitwit!" Kagome said. "You can't mix that into a half-finished seal or you'll leave the chakra pathways unconnected and when you try to infuse in the middle of the stinking barracks it'll spray everywhere and chain-fire all the other half-finished seals and blow you to meat paste and I'll have to scrub the damn floors until my fingers bleed just because some of your teeny-tiny little brain got trapped in the tiles even though it totally wasn't my fault!"
"But...," Hazou started, before trailing off. As usual when Kagome-sensei went off on one of his rants it was all a little hard to untangle. Bits of the man's very clearly colorful past (most of those colors apparently being blood red and brain-matter grey) all mixing up with the current moment, leaving him to wonder how much was flashback and how much was actual caution.
"Sensei, that wasn't the seal," Hazou said.
"...what?" asked Kagome. "What do you mean it wasn't the seal?"
"That was my journal, sensei. I was writing down my latest research."
"Oh," said Kagome. "Um, really? Your journal?"
"Yes, sensei."
"So, just to be clear, there's nothing explosive or storage-y or brain-exploding or explosive or face-melting or explosive about this journal?"
"No, sensei. No chakra at all. Just notes."
"Oh. Um, right," said Kagome. "Well, uh...good job, then! Carry on!"
Hazou lay still for another moment before asking very politely, "May I have my arm back, please, sensei?"
Kagome seemed to suddenly realize that he still had his student trapped in a nasty armbar. He immediately let go and scrambled to his feet. "Right, yes! Sorry." Hazou started to push himself up when Kagome remembered that it was polite to offer a hand. The sealmaster tried to make up for his forgetfulness by darting forward and yanking Hazou up so fast that he nearly hurled him into the air. The genin caught his balance and waited as Kagome brushed the dirt off of him too vigorously.
"So, uh, how goes the research?" Kagome asked, smiling his best smile. He was definitely out of practice at smiling.
"It's going well," Hazou said. "I've got all the main pieces sketched out, although I'm still filling in the bodies of most of them. I'm feeling really good about it, actually. Give me another few weeks, I think I'll have it."
"Great news, great news!" said Kagome. "Um, just...be careful not to summon any eldritch horrors from beyond time and space to schlurp out our brains before disappearing back through the purple crack to their own hellish dimension, okay? That tends to ruin my appetite for weeks."
