Seal Sight
Learning more about fuuinjutsu would be useful in its own right, but Renji was also fairly certain that it would aid him in his quest for a more functional version of immortality as well. He determined that being able to study seals would make him better at performing them as well and set out to do just that.
After inscribing several and borrowing a few from fellow members of Henkou- just minor ones, the sort of things such high calibur shinobi could perform by pissing kanji into snow- he set to concentrating. Peace of mind came with surprising ease to the Yamanaka reprobate, and after a few moments of meditation he began.
He set his hands together, forming a hand seal in order to summon the necessary chakra. His sensor capabilities and training might theoretically aid him, but he wasn't counting on it. He did his best to focus it into one of the seals, closing his eyes and allowing himself to visualize the chakra only, directing it with painstaking precision along the seal.
It took a moment for him to trace it it's entirety, and really he didn't feel he'd learned anything, but learning to differentiate was the key to this exercise. Selecting a scroll with a slightly more advanced fuuin inscribed on it, he repeated the process, forming the same hand seal in order to direct the energy into the design, map it. It took slightly more chakra, this time, largely due to the complexity. Maybe that was all it took?
For nearly an hour he sat almost perfectly still save to arrange the seals before him and perform his hand seals. It got easier. Eventually he didn't have to trace, he could just will the chakra in while gaining a sense of how difficult the fuuin was. He switched seals regularly, emphasizing detection of the differences rather than mastering the technique on single type of seal.
Finally, he set out each seal, spacing them evenly before him in a crescent. He blindfolded himself with a thin strip of cloth, just to avoid accidentally cheating, and then formed his seal and invested chakra into the first. It took several breaths, but he could soon sense his chakra moving through the fuuin, revealing its complexity.
He repeated the process for each of the seals, and the results were the same each time. Well, different in technicality for each seal, but the same in terms of him feeling confident which were minor, which were moderate, and which was complex.
Satisfied and bored as all get out, he undid his blindfold and went to find someone to bother.
[1100-950=400] 432/400 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Shut Up
Another day, another drifter hired to perfect jutsu upon. Renji was looking a bit frayed at the edges (strung out? who knew?) as he paced around the man, who was seated and waiting with a wary expression.
He got together some ink and needles, since the technique he had in mind needed to be applied to the flesh (and really because it was just more fun this way). He'd seen the seal used before but not really had an opportunity to find out exactly how it worked, so his new friend was in for some trial and error.
"Stick out your tongue," he commanded. The man did. Renji took his time, affecting a patient smile that he imagined to be benign as he began inking a circle, then a series of lines, onto the man's tongue. He kept it small, and when he was finished added a few hand seals and an investment of chakra to lend it the potency it needed. "Dog," he said aloud, before stepping back and eyeing the test subject furtively.
"Now you say 'dog.'"
Looking perplexed, as if wondering if it were some sort of trap, "Dog...?" he asked tentatively.
Mumbling a few choice perjoratives, Renji went back to work, layering a few more lines onto the seal, and saying the word "cat" when he finished.
"Now you."
"Cat...?" Fear filled the man's eyes at Renji's deep frown.
"You don't feel anything in your mouth? Not even a tingle?"
When the man shook his head, Renji renewed his efforts. He started over, forming a new larger seal closer to the back of the man's mouth. He might have poked him a few times with the needle just for fun, but his next try was complete all the same within a few minutes. "Buttercup," he intoned, keying the word into the seal's effect.
"Buthacut," the man lisped, his brow furrowing at the numbness in his mouth. He looked like he was going to say something else, but Renji cut him off, pushing his needle back into the man's mouth to make a few adjustments. He molded more chakra, this time tracing it with exacting precision along the black designs he'd etched into the spongy flesh of the hireling's tongue.
"Try again."
The man did, but found that he was incapable of doing so. He tried for several seconds before looking panicked. "Am I mute?" he stammered hurriedly, and when he didn't realize he wasn't Renji rolled his eyes. "Yes. You're mute forever. Get the fuck out, Buttercup."
[1100-950=400] 409/400 Words
Another day, another drifter hired to perfect jutsu upon. Renji was looking a bit frayed at the edges (strung out? who knew?) as he paced around the man, who was seated and waiting with a wary expression.
He got together some ink and needles, since the technique he had in mind needed to be applied to the flesh (and really because it was just more fun this way). He'd seen the seal used before but not really had an opportunity to find out exactly how it worked, so his new friend was in for some trial and error.
"Stick out your tongue," he commanded. The man did. Renji took his time, affecting a patient smile that he imagined to be benign as he began inking a circle, then a series of lines, onto the man's tongue. He kept it small, and when he was finished added a few hand seals and an investment of chakra to lend it the potency it needed. "Dog," he said aloud, before stepping back and eyeing the test subject furtively.
"Now you say 'dog.'"
Looking perplexed, as if wondering if it were some sort of trap, "Dog...?" he asked tentatively.
Mumbling a few choice perjoratives, Renji went back to work, layering a few more lines onto the seal, and saying the word "cat" when he finished.
"Now you."
"Cat...?" Fear filled the man's eyes at Renji's deep frown.
"You don't feel anything in your mouth? Not even a tingle?"
When the man shook his head, Renji renewed his efforts. He started over, forming a new larger seal closer to the back of the man's mouth. He might have poked him a few times with the needle just for fun, but his next try was complete all the same within a few minutes. "Buttercup," he intoned, keying the word into the seal's effect.
"Buthacut," the man lisped, his brow furrowing at the numbness in his mouth. He looked like he was going to say something else, but Renji cut him off, pushing his needle back into the man's mouth to make a few adjustments. He molded more chakra, this time tracing it with exacting precision along the black designs he'd etched into the spongy flesh of the hireling's tongue.
"Try again."
The man did, but found that he was incapable of doing so. He tried for several seconds before looking panicked. "Am I mute?" he stammered hurriedly, and when he didn't realize he wasn't Renji rolled his eyes. "Yes. You're mute forever. Get the fuck out, Buttercup."
[1100-950=400] 409/400 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Bursting Tag
For once, Renji was taking a somewhat more conventional approach to his self improvement. Taking with him a fistful of twelve inch by four inch pieces of paper, a brush he had stolen from an art supply store on a whim, and a small container of jet black ink, he headed out to the shade beneath a rather idyllic tree.
He fished one of his kunais with an attached exploding tag from his holster and tugged the tag free. With the brush dry, he spent several moments tracing the lines that made up the symbols that caused the tag to explode upon activation. It was mostly for the sake of getting it nice and embedded in his memory.
Taking the first of the blank tags, he dipped his brush in the ink and set to work after performing the handseals necessary to wander back through his memory. He did his best to replicate the tracing, but frowned when it wound up at slightly the wrong scale- he ended up running out of room on the tag. It was off kilter, since he was more or less trying to increase the size of the inscription by one hundred percent, but while keeping it precisely to scale.
Discarding it, he started another, trying twice more before he could confidently reproduce what approximated the correct kanji and symbols in the allotted space. Tying it on to his kunai, he flicked the knife through the air in a clean arc. The blade bit into the bark of a nearby tree, causing some nesting birds to stir.
He performed the familiar hand seal to activate it and... nothing. Wrinkling his nose in the direction of the fizzled tag and mumbling about lucky birds, he took up his implements once more. The next tag proved no more effective, but the one after that did at least catch fire and slowly burn away to ash. He'd added a few extra characters in a fit of inspiration, and decided to keep them as he continued. His method was part trial and error, part instinctive superstition, but his instincts had served him well in the past.
"Aha!" He fairly shouted it, after collecting the tags and the charred remnants of the third in order to inspect them. After comparing them to his control tag, he realized that there was a small defect in one of the characters, only barely noticeable. It was enough to sate his swelling frustration, so he grabbed a fresh blank and his brush, sopped up some more ink, and then with exceeding, exacting care proceeded to precisely re-create his work, only this time, he took extra pains not to include the small burr he'd been mistakenly making by holding the brush down a bit too long, allowing the ink to well up.
He waited for it to dry utterly, just in case, before fixing it to one of his reclaimed kunai. He launched it right at the tree, not even bothering to embed it in the drunk this time around. Instead he let it sail through the branches, directly over the nest where the mother bird was protecting her young.
When it was still in flight, he activated it, and this time he was rewarded with a very satisying roar as it immolated and exploded outward, sending flaming leaves, branches, and baby birds raining down to the ground below.
"That's gonna save me a lot of money," he observed idly before packing up his gear and heading off to find some lunch.
[1500-950=550] 579/550 Words
For once, Renji was taking a somewhat more conventional approach to his self improvement. Taking with him a fistful of twelve inch by four inch pieces of paper, a brush he had stolen from an art supply store on a whim, and a small container of jet black ink, he headed out to the shade beneath a rather idyllic tree.
He fished one of his kunais with an attached exploding tag from his holster and tugged the tag free. With the brush dry, he spent several moments tracing the lines that made up the symbols that caused the tag to explode upon activation. It was mostly for the sake of getting it nice and embedded in his memory.
Taking the first of the blank tags, he dipped his brush in the ink and set to work after performing the handseals necessary to wander back through his memory. He did his best to replicate the tracing, but frowned when it wound up at slightly the wrong scale- he ended up running out of room on the tag. It was off kilter, since he was more or less trying to increase the size of the inscription by one hundred percent, but while keeping it precisely to scale.
Discarding it, he started another, trying twice more before he could confidently reproduce what approximated the correct kanji and symbols in the allotted space. Tying it on to his kunai, he flicked the knife through the air in a clean arc. The blade bit into the bark of a nearby tree, causing some nesting birds to stir.
He performed the familiar hand seal to activate it and... nothing. Wrinkling his nose in the direction of the fizzled tag and mumbling about lucky birds, he took up his implements once more. The next tag proved no more effective, but the one after that did at least catch fire and slowly burn away to ash. He'd added a few extra characters in a fit of inspiration, and decided to keep them as he continued. His method was part trial and error, part instinctive superstition, but his instincts had served him well in the past.
"Aha!" He fairly shouted it, after collecting the tags and the charred remnants of the third in order to inspect them. After comparing them to his control tag, he realized that there was a small defect in one of the characters, only barely noticeable. It was enough to sate his swelling frustration, so he grabbed a fresh blank and his brush, sopped up some more ink, and then with exceeding, exacting care proceeded to precisely re-create his work, only this time, he took extra pains not to include the small burr he'd been mistakenly making by holding the brush down a bit too long, allowing the ink to well up.
He waited for it to dry utterly, just in case, before fixing it to one of his reclaimed kunai. He launched it right at the tree, not even bothering to embed it in the drunk this time around. Instead he let it sail through the branches, directly over the nest where the mother bird was protecting her young.
When it was still in flight, he activated it, and this time he was rewarded with a very satisying roar as it immolated and exploded outward, sending flaming leaves, branches, and baby birds raining down to the ground below.
"That's gonna save me a lot of money," he observed idly before packing up his gear and heading off to find some lunch.
[1500-950=550] 579/550 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Remove Sealing: Lesser
Tedious but necessary. That was Renji's mantra, until he decided that too was boring and abandoned it for some rather colorful, rhythmic limmericks he'd learned during his three months inhabiting the body of a young sailor.
Step one was giving himself ample material to practice on. As such, he had spent a few hours over the course of the prior week working up a sheaf of parchments with seals inscribed upon them. None were particularly complex- really, his Bursting Seal dominated the pile- but they were tricky enough to test his limits when it came to fuuin removal.
He set the first beforehand, performing the handseals necessary for lesser iterations of the technique he intended to master. He molded the chakra, tracing it over the lines and kanji of the fuuin to no avail. It just sat there, inert, practically taunting him in the way that only something personified by a genuine madman could manage to taunt that self-same madman.
He added seals to the arrangement, molding even more chakra, but still, his efforts went unrewarded. Just once, he would have sworn he'd seen the ink fade just a tint, but he'd been staring at the damnable design for so long he was beginning to see Jungian shapes in them. Shaking his head and clearing his mind, he took a break from the hard work, instead breaking out a half-dozen prepared lesser seals and methodically unwrote them, undoing the work with practiced ease.
On his next attempt at removing the somewhat more advanced seal, he built up chakra well in excess of what he would need to do the job. He then traced his finger over a single line of kanji, pouring his energy into the mystically endowed ink to disrupt it and erradicate it. He had to move his finger slowly, achingly slowly, but eventually he was certain that the thinning of the dark lines in symbols was no hallucination. It wasn't the whole seal- in fact, he hadn't stripped away enough to even render the seal inert-but-repairable.
It was, however, progress.
The boredom gave way to a furious intensity. Renji imagined a lot of things. He imagined that the fuuin was formed by columns of small ants, and that the chakra he was bathing them in was light concentrated through a magnifying glass. He imagined that the fuuin was a particularly interesting network of scars, fascinating to the touch and leading toward a reward. He imagined that he was connecting the dots between the freckles of a dowdy-but-repressed girl who he had seen once in the Water Country but been unable to pursue on account of hunter-nin.
On and on it went. He was beginning to feel the strain, beginning to feal his chakra depleting much more than it should have been. It was overkill in the strictest sense, but it helped. Once he'd got the hang of hammering away individual lines, it was much easier to go back and apply the fine touch required for the job. Handseals and then tracing. It continued, and several times he had to break briefly to crack his knuckles and stretch his fingers.
For all the imagining that helped him get through the otherwise mind-numbing process, the results were just as he wished them. It had been hours, and he'd spent more chakra than he had in his last half-dozen battles, but the seal was reliably gone, and when he attempted to reproduce the results he did so with an appropriate investiture of chakra traced over the perimiter of the seal. The lines seemed to catch blue fire before burning away like quick fuses wrapped into a pretty design.
[1500-950=550] 601/550 Words
Tedious but necessary. That was Renji's mantra, until he decided that too was boring and abandoned it for some rather colorful, rhythmic limmericks he'd learned during his three months inhabiting the body of a young sailor.
Step one was giving himself ample material to practice on. As such, he had spent a few hours over the course of the prior week working up a sheaf of parchments with seals inscribed upon them. None were particularly complex- really, his Bursting Seal dominated the pile- but they were tricky enough to test his limits when it came to fuuin removal.
He set the first beforehand, performing the handseals necessary for lesser iterations of the technique he intended to master. He molded the chakra, tracing it over the lines and kanji of the fuuin to no avail. It just sat there, inert, practically taunting him in the way that only something personified by a genuine madman could manage to taunt that self-same madman.
He added seals to the arrangement, molding even more chakra, but still, his efforts went unrewarded. Just once, he would have sworn he'd seen the ink fade just a tint, but he'd been staring at the damnable design for so long he was beginning to see Jungian shapes in them. Shaking his head and clearing his mind, he took a break from the hard work, instead breaking out a half-dozen prepared lesser seals and methodically unwrote them, undoing the work with practiced ease.
On his next attempt at removing the somewhat more advanced seal, he built up chakra well in excess of what he would need to do the job. He then traced his finger over a single line of kanji, pouring his energy into the mystically endowed ink to disrupt it and erradicate it. He had to move his finger slowly, achingly slowly, but eventually he was certain that the thinning of the dark lines in symbols was no hallucination. It wasn't the whole seal- in fact, he hadn't stripped away enough to even render the seal inert-but-repairable.
It was, however, progress.
The boredom gave way to a furious intensity. Renji imagined a lot of things. He imagined that the fuuin was formed by columns of small ants, and that the chakra he was bathing them in was light concentrated through a magnifying glass. He imagined that the fuuin was a particularly interesting network of scars, fascinating to the touch and leading toward a reward. He imagined that he was connecting the dots between the freckles of a dowdy-but-repressed girl who he had seen once in the Water Country but been unable to pursue on account of hunter-nin.
On and on it went. He was beginning to feel the strain, beginning to feal his chakra depleting much more than it should have been. It was overkill in the strictest sense, but it helped. Once he'd got the hang of hammering away individual lines, it was much easier to go back and apply the fine touch required for the job. Handseals and then tracing. It continued, and several times he had to break briefly to crack his knuckles and stretch his fingers.
For all the imagining that helped him get through the otherwise mind-numbing process, the results were just as he wished them. It had been hours, and he'd spent more chakra than he had in his last half-dozen battles, but the seal was reliably gone, and when he attempted to reproduce the results he did so with an appropriate investiture of chakra traced over the perimiter of the seal. The lines seemed to catch blue fire before burning away like quick fuses wrapped into a pretty design.
[1500-950=550] 601/550 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Mind Preservation Method
Renji had obtained some corpses. The how wasn't particularly important, so far as the day's exercise went, but the why very much was.
His technique to read the minds of the dead had a limitation- namely, that it had to be used within 24 hours of demise to prove effective. Sometimes there just wasn't time to pour through a consciousness in the midst of conflict, but there had to be a solution.
The five bodies laid out before him varied in appearance and age, but none of that that mattered. All that mattered was the fact that they had each been slain within roughly the same eight hour pyramid. One bore char marks, a few knife wounds, and the final the telltale bruising marks indicative of strangulation.
There were medical jutu for preserving bodies, but none for preserving minds. That was Renjiro's aim, to find a way to retain that precious information ad infinitum.
He had spent several hours previously devising five different seals, each of them made up of different symbols that might or might not have the desired effect. Kanji like "death", "stasis", "information", and "mind" were wound throughout each of them, but the arrangements and supplementary symbols varied. One was arranged in a spiral, simply repeating the kanji over and over from center to outer perimeter. One took the form of a cross, surrounded by a circle of containing characters. Two were nearly identical- complex arrangements of symbols, with some omitted or transposed here and there. The final bore a great deal of resemblance to his Spare Body Sealing Method fuuin, albeit with a few additions and deletions releveant to the cause.
He shaved the skull of each corpse, then spent a few hours carefully inking his seals onto the very crown of each. It was slow going because he checked his plans for references frequently. The work was dull, and he didn't want to have to repeat the experiment. He also kept careful track of time, since that was a factor- he'd written the relative time of death onto each body's arm for the sake of knowing when the mental expiration date arose.
At last, he was finished. He let them rest on their respective tables and wandered off to kill some time.
The appointed hour arrived, and he returned shortly thereafter. He began with the burn victim, whom he had inscribed with the riff on the Spare Body Sealing fuuin, since he had the highest hopes for that one. He enacted the handseals for Naidokushinjutsu before laying his hands flat against the burn scarred flesh of the head...
And could do nothing. The corpse was just a corpse.
Next he made his attempts on the two similar but complex seals. Hand seals, contact, an effort to flood his chakra into the seat of what had once been conciousness, and...
Bupkus on both counts.
Starting to feel vaguely annoyed, Renjiro moved on to the cross-shaped seal, which was marked on the strangled girl. "Oh, come on," he spoke aloud, his voice a hiss of irritation, after his mind reading technique failed yet again.
It was down to the final attempt. The spiral, the simplest of the fuuin (though still complex by the standards of sealing methods), marked on the head of a very average looking man. After molding his chakra with a series of seals, he made contact...
And was rewarded with a montage of the last few years of the poor fellows life. He noted with amusement that the man was, in fact, quite a terrible person. The things he'd done to his wife and children would likely have horrified a viewer who hadn't done much worse things over his long life span.
"There's my good deed for this decade," he mused idly, before wandering off to report his success to Yaku, and find someone to get rid of the bodies.
[1500-950=550] 633/550 Words
Renji had obtained some corpses. The how wasn't particularly important, so far as the day's exercise went, but the why very much was.
His technique to read the minds of the dead had a limitation- namely, that it had to be used within 24 hours of demise to prove effective. Sometimes there just wasn't time to pour through a consciousness in the midst of conflict, but there had to be a solution.
The five bodies laid out before him varied in appearance and age, but none of that that mattered. All that mattered was the fact that they had each been slain within roughly the same eight hour pyramid. One bore char marks, a few knife wounds, and the final the telltale bruising marks indicative of strangulation.
There were medical jutu for preserving bodies, but none for preserving minds. That was Renjiro's aim, to find a way to retain that precious information ad infinitum.
He had spent several hours previously devising five different seals, each of them made up of different symbols that might or might not have the desired effect. Kanji like "death", "stasis", "information", and "mind" were wound throughout each of them, but the arrangements and supplementary symbols varied. One was arranged in a spiral, simply repeating the kanji over and over from center to outer perimeter. One took the form of a cross, surrounded by a circle of containing characters. Two were nearly identical- complex arrangements of symbols, with some omitted or transposed here and there. The final bore a great deal of resemblance to his Spare Body Sealing Method fuuin, albeit with a few additions and deletions releveant to the cause.
He shaved the skull of each corpse, then spent a few hours carefully inking his seals onto the very crown of each. It was slow going because he checked his plans for references frequently. The work was dull, and he didn't want to have to repeat the experiment. He also kept careful track of time, since that was a factor- he'd written the relative time of death onto each body's arm for the sake of knowing when the mental expiration date arose.
At last, he was finished. He let them rest on their respective tables and wandered off to kill some time.
The appointed hour arrived, and he returned shortly thereafter. He began with the burn victim, whom he had inscribed with the riff on the Spare Body Sealing fuuin, since he had the highest hopes for that one. He enacted the handseals for Naidokushinjutsu before laying his hands flat against the burn scarred flesh of the head...
And could do nothing. The corpse was just a corpse.
Next he made his attempts on the two similar but complex seals. Hand seals, contact, an effort to flood his chakra into the seat of what had once been conciousness, and...
Bupkus on both counts.
Starting to feel vaguely annoyed, Renjiro moved on to the cross-shaped seal, which was marked on the strangled girl. "Oh, come on," he spoke aloud, his voice a hiss of irritation, after his mind reading technique failed yet again.
It was down to the final attempt. The spiral, the simplest of the fuuin (though still complex by the standards of sealing methods), marked on the head of a very average looking man. After molding his chakra with a series of seals, he made contact...
And was rewarded with a montage of the last few years of the poor fellows life. He noted with amusement that the man was, in fact, quite a terrible person. The things he'd done to his wife and children would likely have horrified a viewer who hadn't done much worse things over his long life span.
"There's my good deed for this decade," he mused idly, before wandering off to report his success to Yaku, and find someone to get rid of the bodies.
[1500-950=550] 633/550 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Contact Shintensin Seal
Renjiro considered one of his greatest strengths to be his awareness of his many, many weaknesses. He was simply an amalgam of them, the result of a single character defect snowballing for centuries into a force of sheer destruction. He was a creature of negation, creating in one breath and tearing down in the next.
Awareness of one of his more salient weaknesses drove him to theorize on a variety of ways to overcome it. Simply put, when it came down to physical altercations, Renji just couldn't stand toe to toe with most of his peers. Lengthy training, dozens of bruises and even broken bones... that was how most shinobi would have gone about it, but Renjiro's recent focus on sealing techniques left him wondering about the plausibility of a lazier but ultimately much more interesting solution.
For all that Shintensin and his various derivative works thereon had yielded him, at its most basic, it was a very easy technique to avoid. It was best used against an opponent who was already for all intents and purposes defeated, or so slow that it was unnecessary. What if it didn't need to be?
He set himself up on his bed with a pad of notepaper. While he worked, his youthful features acquired a look of distinct concentration. He was jotting down ideas, connecting them, ammending them. As he reached his full momentum, he began tearing out sheets of paper, splaying them out on the bed around him. It might have looked like chaos to a random witness, but the order flowed with reason to Renji, helping him to map a new method for soul transferrence.
He got the feeling that he was onto something important, but stowed that notion for later. He checked and rechecked his notations and charts (which included everything from some basic fuuin designs to crude portrayals of the human body and its chakra system) before moving on to the next phase of the project with some semblance of the design he wanted to implement.
He needed a bigger piece of paper, but was too in the rhythm to stop and get one. Instead he spread dozens of them out across the floor, lining up the edges almost perfectly until it was one plane large enough for two man-sized bodies to fit on comfortably.
The main seal would rest over the heart, and he began there after crudely tracing out the silhouette of a bipedal creature for reference. His intimate familiarity of the Mind Body Switch technique made it fairly simple to create a seal capable of containing its mechanisms, and so that part went quickly.
The next bit was trickier. He needed a way to cause the technique to trigger on touch, and he had some ideas. Referencing his notes, he expanded the symbol with a series of characters meant to do just that... but then, in his mad brilliance, he realized how that could go wrong. What if a comrade touched him accidentally? That would expend the whole seal, rather defeating the purpose of its existence. It needed a release method- a simple chakra kai would do- that he could execute when he so desired.
Undoing his additions, he built that particular trigger in. After that, it was time for the next tricky part.
From the symbol in the center, he extended a number of impossibly thin lines of minute kanji. It was a simple repeating pattern, meant not to do anything extra, but to spread the area of the seal across the whole of the body, allowing for a touch to nearly any part of it to accomodate the transfer.
It took hours to lay down the many tiny symbols, but eventually, both of the shapeless forms that he had drawn were covered in an intricate web of lines that extended and crossed one another. He stood up, inspecting the finished whole for flaws, and then proceeded to unseal the body of Ichiro from the scroll he kept it in. Laying the prone form out carefully on the ground, he stripped off the clothing that the soulless husk was dressed in and set to work replicating his work.
When he was finished, he imbued the seal with chakra and molded the hand signs for Shintensin, channeling the chakra for the technique to be captured by the seal over Ichiro's heart. Next, it was time to hop.
He went through the lengthy hand seals, building up chakra and re-writing his very soul into it. In a surge, he sent it lancing into the boy. It was always a little jarring to have his senses thus transported, and as such he gave himself a moment to adjust before sitting up. He looked down at the body of the Yamanaka that he'd stolen and come to utilize as primary, and then went right back to work, utterly naked, stripping that body, inscribing the same fuuin, and investing it with the same technque.
Only when that was done did he redress and go looking for his favorite hireling, Buttercup, as he'd nicknamed him. He said that he was "the wackos" young assistant, and that "Master Renjiro" had sent him to acquire Buttercup's services. Once the usual payment was negotiated, he had Buttercup accompany him to a remote patch of woodlands. He'd sealed the Renji-body up and brought it along, in case the seal needed some revision as it likely would, and then told the man to strike him.
Buttercup looked nervous, suspecting a trap, but after a moment's hesitation complied, drunkenly swinging a fist to collide with Ichiro/Renji's gut. He formed the single handseal necessary to release the fuuin, and...
Nothing happened.
Annoyed, he told Buttercup to wait while he secreted himself a half mile away to unseal Renji's form and quickly made a few edits to the seal-web. It had to work this time, otherwise he'd be delayed; he could only transfer so many times without using up all of his chakra, after all.
It didn't work that time, either, and so for the next several days Renji got in an attempt or two, making additions, deletions, or outright changes here and there to the fuuin.
Finally, on the fifth day and ninth attempt, when he released the seal he felt his soul shudder out, traveling by way of the physical contact into the body of Buttercup, who had just landed a haphazard kick to his kneecap. He released the technique immediately and paid the man a small bonus provided that he would meet him once a day for a week so that Renji could refine both the seal and the jump.
When that week was up, he'd gotten so used to the transfer that he could take control at the instant of contact, pulling the punch to negate most of its force. It might be good enough for Buttercup, but he knew full well that the strikes of a taijutsu specialist would still inflict harm before he could reign them in. Still, it would serve its purpose.
[1800-950=850] 1153/850 Words
Renjiro considered one of his greatest strengths to be his awareness of his many, many weaknesses. He was simply an amalgam of them, the result of a single character defect snowballing for centuries into a force of sheer destruction. He was a creature of negation, creating in one breath and tearing down in the next.
Awareness of one of his more salient weaknesses drove him to theorize on a variety of ways to overcome it. Simply put, when it came down to physical altercations, Renji just couldn't stand toe to toe with most of his peers. Lengthy training, dozens of bruises and even broken bones... that was how most shinobi would have gone about it, but Renjiro's recent focus on sealing techniques left him wondering about the plausibility of a lazier but ultimately much more interesting solution.
For all that Shintensin and his various derivative works thereon had yielded him, at its most basic, it was a very easy technique to avoid. It was best used against an opponent who was already for all intents and purposes defeated, or so slow that it was unnecessary. What if it didn't need to be?
He set himself up on his bed with a pad of notepaper. While he worked, his youthful features acquired a look of distinct concentration. He was jotting down ideas, connecting them, ammending them. As he reached his full momentum, he began tearing out sheets of paper, splaying them out on the bed around him. It might have looked like chaos to a random witness, but the order flowed with reason to Renji, helping him to map a new method for soul transferrence.
He got the feeling that he was onto something important, but stowed that notion for later. He checked and rechecked his notations and charts (which included everything from some basic fuuin designs to crude portrayals of the human body and its chakra system) before moving on to the next phase of the project with some semblance of the design he wanted to implement.
He needed a bigger piece of paper, but was too in the rhythm to stop and get one. Instead he spread dozens of them out across the floor, lining up the edges almost perfectly until it was one plane large enough for two man-sized bodies to fit on comfortably.
The main seal would rest over the heart, and he began there after crudely tracing out the silhouette of a bipedal creature for reference. His intimate familiarity of the Mind Body Switch technique made it fairly simple to create a seal capable of containing its mechanisms, and so that part went quickly.
The next bit was trickier. He needed a way to cause the technique to trigger on touch, and he had some ideas. Referencing his notes, he expanded the symbol with a series of characters meant to do just that... but then, in his mad brilliance, he realized how that could go wrong. What if a comrade touched him accidentally? That would expend the whole seal, rather defeating the purpose of its existence. It needed a release method- a simple chakra kai would do- that he could execute when he so desired.
Undoing his additions, he built that particular trigger in. After that, it was time for the next tricky part.
From the symbol in the center, he extended a number of impossibly thin lines of minute kanji. It was a simple repeating pattern, meant not to do anything extra, but to spread the area of the seal across the whole of the body, allowing for a touch to nearly any part of it to accomodate the transfer.
It took hours to lay down the many tiny symbols, but eventually, both of the shapeless forms that he had drawn were covered in an intricate web of lines that extended and crossed one another. He stood up, inspecting the finished whole for flaws, and then proceeded to unseal the body of Ichiro from the scroll he kept it in. Laying the prone form out carefully on the ground, he stripped off the clothing that the soulless husk was dressed in and set to work replicating his work.
When he was finished, he imbued the seal with chakra and molded the hand signs for Shintensin, channeling the chakra for the technique to be captured by the seal over Ichiro's heart. Next, it was time to hop.
He went through the lengthy hand seals, building up chakra and re-writing his very soul into it. In a surge, he sent it lancing into the boy. It was always a little jarring to have his senses thus transported, and as such he gave himself a moment to adjust before sitting up. He looked down at the body of the Yamanaka that he'd stolen and come to utilize as primary, and then went right back to work, utterly naked, stripping that body, inscribing the same fuuin, and investing it with the same technque.
Only when that was done did he redress and go looking for his favorite hireling, Buttercup, as he'd nicknamed him. He said that he was "the wackos" young assistant, and that "Master Renjiro" had sent him to acquire Buttercup's services. Once the usual payment was negotiated, he had Buttercup accompany him to a remote patch of woodlands. He'd sealed the Renji-body up and brought it along, in case the seal needed some revision as it likely would, and then told the man to strike him.
Buttercup looked nervous, suspecting a trap, but after a moment's hesitation complied, drunkenly swinging a fist to collide with Ichiro/Renji's gut. He formed the single handseal necessary to release the fuuin, and...
Nothing happened.
Annoyed, he told Buttercup to wait while he secreted himself a half mile away to unseal Renji's form and quickly made a few edits to the seal-web. It had to work this time, otherwise he'd be delayed; he could only transfer so many times without using up all of his chakra, after all.
It didn't work that time, either, and so for the next several days Renji got in an attempt or two, making additions, deletions, or outright changes here and there to the fuuin.
Finally, on the fifth day and ninth attempt, when he released the seal he felt his soul shudder out, traveling by way of the physical contact into the body of Buttercup, who had just landed a haphazard kick to his kneecap. He released the technique immediately and paid the man a small bonus provided that he would meet him once a day for a week so that Renji could refine both the seal and the jump.
When that week was up, he'd gotten so used to the transfer that he could take control at the instant of contact, pulling the punch to negate most of its force. It might be good enough for Buttercup, but he knew full well that the strikes of a taijutsu specialist would still inflict harm before he could reign them in. Still, it would serve its purpose.
[1800-950=850] 1153/850 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Chakra Disguising Seal
Things were beginning to unfold, which meant Renji needed to be prepared. It was a notion he'd been toying with for a while now, but until he'd started on his fuuin quest, he hadn't had the means to make it a reality.
His own chakra-sensing capabilities were limited, but he knew that his signature remained the same even with body switching. No one might recognize it at the moment, but as Henkou became more active, being spotted by a pesky sensor on that basis was a very real possibility.
His theory was that, by means of fuuinjutsu, he could partially contain his chakra signature, altering its appearance enough that it would still be visible, but mutable enough to fool anyone on the lookout for a man who could be anyone.
The first leg of the technique entailed observation. He didn't bother mentioning it, but over the course of several days of casual interaction, he monitored the chakra of each Henkou member he could encounter, noting the differences, the ways they fluctuated, the general shapes that they took. It was crude, but it worked.
Once that small, statistically irrelevant database was compiled, he set to work on the seal while keeping it in mind. He started small- simple techniques to make minor alterations, nothing permanent or even codified. It was almost random, the kanji he employed, since as far as he knew this was uncharted territory. "Chakra" was the one constant, along with hundreds of various modifiers, simply to see what happened when they were applied on a small scale. He eventually set on a base formula of "chakra" written thickly, crossed over by 'field" and "distortion", and had assembled a master list of symbols that could then be used to alter the base.
Next came composition. Tying the modifiers together, combining and layering them to produce a noticeable, tangible effect. It wasn't as simple as just stringing a bunch of symbols, together. He found that some didn't work together at all, others just negated one another, leaving the results unchanged, and others yet behaved in completely freakish ways that defied expectation. Arrangement mattered, too. "Large" and "small" connected directly just cancelled, but provided that they had distance between them, buffers of modification, they could be interspersed to simulate peaks and valleys in the signature.
For a few hours a night, he labored to create a series of test seals, each of which would theoretically alter a chakra signature in... ways that he didn't quite grasp, just yet. Making specific changes was beyond his capability, for now. The command of chakra that this technique would require surpassed its actual complexity quite a bit. The method itself was intermediate; it was the application that was difficult.
He hit a snag placing the first seal. In totum, it seemed to have no effect at all, giving him cause to go back and agonize over every tiny detail of the fuuin in order to find the disabling flaw. He did, though his eyes felt as if they might start bleeding after an hour of squinting. The modifier elements needed to follow a circuit of sorts, rather than all simply being connected, channeling the power of the fuuin in a pattern that was going to take even more work to perfect. It was the alteration of that pattern, he realized, that would one day allow for effects such as replication or another signature, or even the creation of an entirely new one, rather than edits to the old.
Once he'd sorted that out, he applied the seal to himself once more before achieving the focus needed to view his chakra. It definitely seemed different... but not enough so that a skilled shinobi wouldn't be able to make connections Renjiro did not want made. He removed it, opting to inscribe the seal with the most modifications. After he'd set the augmentation, he scryed himself once again. This time, the results were very much different, but too unnatural. Even a novice would be able to tell that something had been done to tamper with it.
He needed a happy medium, and none of his other test seals fit the bill. He tried each one. Some of them were close, almost close enough that he considered using them, but the notion of a mission failing because of momentary laziness in the now drove him to dive back into work once more. Really, fuuinjutsu wasn't nearly as tedious as he'd once imagined. There was a certain challenge to it that engaged him even when he was doing little more than laying out connective kanji.
He dissected the test seals, actually copying pieces of them out wholesale onto entirely new sheets of paper, then cutting them out to arrange them, touching at the edges, like pieces of a puzzle, in a stroke of genius. He poked and prodded at the dozens of small scraps for many minutes, nudging them into the perfect positions. Finally, he sat back, using fresh paper and ink to recreate the finished "puzzle" as a whole seal, working at it until he had mastered every micrometer of it.
He inscribed the finished product on himself immediately, and then spent eye-glazing minutes closely inspecting every inch of his altered signature until he was satisfied that it was both organic enough not to elicit suspicion and different enough to matter. He made a few more minor adjustments, stylistic really, before he was content. After that it was just a matter of belaboredly practicing the seal until it was fixed in his memory.
[1800-950=850] 914/850 Words
Things were beginning to unfold, which meant Renji needed to be prepared. It was a notion he'd been toying with for a while now, but until he'd started on his fuuin quest, he hadn't had the means to make it a reality.
His own chakra-sensing capabilities were limited, but he knew that his signature remained the same even with body switching. No one might recognize it at the moment, but as Henkou became more active, being spotted by a pesky sensor on that basis was a very real possibility.
His theory was that, by means of fuuinjutsu, he could partially contain his chakra signature, altering its appearance enough that it would still be visible, but mutable enough to fool anyone on the lookout for a man who could be anyone.
The first leg of the technique entailed observation. He didn't bother mentioning it, but over the course of several days of casual interaction, he monitored the chakra of each Henkou member he could encounter, noting the differences, the ways they fluctuated, the general shapes that they took. It was crude, but it worked.
Once that small, statistically irrelevant database was compiled, he set to work on the seal while keeping it in mind. He started small- simple techniques to make minor alterations, nothing permanent or even codified. It was almost random, the kanji he employed, since as far as he knew this was uncharted territory. "Chakra" was the one constant, along with hundreds of various modifiers, simply to see what happened when they were applied on a small scale. He eventually set on a base formula of "chakra" written thickly, crossed over by 'field" and "distortion", and had assembled a master list of symbols that could then be used to alter the base.
Next came composition. Tying the modifiers together, combining and layering them to produce a noticeable, tangible effect. It wasn't as simple as just stringing a bunch of symbols, together. He found that some didn't work together at all, others just negated one another, leaving the results unchanged, and others yet behaved in completely freakish ways that defied expectation. Arrangement mattered, too. "Large" and "small" connected directly just cancelled, but provided that they had distance between them, buffers of modification, they could be interspersed to simulate peaks and valleys in the signature.
For a few hours a night, he labored to create a series of test seals, each of which would theoretically alter a chakra signature in... ways that he didn't quite grasp, just yet. Making specific changes was beyond his capability, for now. The command of chakra that this technique would require surpassed its actual complexity quite a bit. The method itself was intermediate; it was the application that was difficult.
He hit a snag placing the first seal. In totum, it seemed to have no effect at all, giving him cause to go back and agonize over every tiny detail of the fuuin in order to find the disabling flaw. He did, though his eyes felt as if they might start bleeding after an hour of squinting. The modifier elements needed to follow a circuit of sorts, rather than all simply being connected, channeling the power of the fuuin in a pattern that was going to take even more work to perfect. It was the alteration of that pattern, he realized, that would one day allow for effects such as replication or another signature, or even the creation of an entirely new one, rather than edits to the old.
Once he'd sorted that out, he applied the seal to himself once more before achieving the focus needed to view his chakra. It definitely seemed different... but not enough so that a skilled shinobi wouldn't be able to make connections Renjiro did not want made. He removed it, opting to inscribe the seal with the most modifications. After he'd set the augmentation, he scryed himself once again. This time, the results were very much different, but too unnatural. Even a novice would be able to tell that something had been done to tamper with it.
He needed a happy medium, and none of his other test seals fit the bill. He tried each one. Some of them were close, almost close enough that he considered using them, but the notion of a mission failing because of momentary laziness in the now drove him to dive back into work once more. Really, fuuinjutsu wasn't nearly as tedious as he'd once imagined. There was a certain challenge to it that engaged him even when he was doing little more than laying out connective kanji.
He dissected the test seals, actually copying pieces of them out wholesale onto entirely new sheets of paper, then cutting them out to arrange them, touching at the edges, like pieces of a puzzle, in a stroke of genius. He poked and prodded at the dozens of small scraps for many minutes, nudging them into the perfect positions. Finally, he sat back, using fresh paper and ink to recreate the finished "puzzle" as a whole seal, working at it until he had mastered every micrometer of it.
He inscribed the finished product on himself immediately, and then spent eye-glazing minutes closely inspecting every inch of his altered signature until he was satisfied that it was both organic enough not to elicit suspicion and different enough to matter. He made a few more minor adjustments, stylistic really, before he was content. After that it was just a matter of belaboredly practicing the seal until it was fixed in his memory.
[1800-950=850] 914/850 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Thought Hiding Method
It started with sketching. Renjiro was fairly crouched over a desk, with sheafs worth of parchment scattered about the lamp lit room around him. Various kanji, symbols, and characters were scrawled across the faces of these sheets of paper, bearing testament to the frustration the Yamanaka was experiencing at meeting Yaku's latest request.
A method for protecting the mind from unwanted intrusion. Renji had laughed, assured him that it would be a simple feat for someone as skilled at such intrusions as he. The best person to design a security system, after all, was the greatest thief one could find.
In practice it was not so simple. He'd gone through his usual round of hiring transients to experiment on, but pure ninjutsu resulted in techniques that were far too... well... transient. They could provide the desired protection, but only for a short degree of time (or in the case of one unfortunate test subject, could create the specified effect permanently by blocking all thought). He had techniques for erasing minds, for supplanting them, even for laying waste to them... but reinforcing them was proving to be a chore.
It was after days worth of failure that he switched tactics, seeking to employ the sealing arts as the means to achieve his ends. The failures were not fruitless, though; they'd yielded quite a bit of useful information about mental fortifications. Now it was just a matter of converting that information into a proper seal, and armed with his notes and keen intellect, Renji set about assembling all those datums into a formula that would be quite difficult to overcome
The doctors, they knew the brain, and they assumed arrogantly that the lump of gray flesh was supreme. Renjiro knew diffrently. He didn't need incisions or drills to map the mind, he just needed chakra and his own. As such, he was already intimately familiar with the methods and symbols that affected the mind. He'd just never really had any occasion to go about stringing them together in order to forge a lasting technique.
He scrawled the kanji for mind, then bisected it laterally with characters denoting limits, power, and darkness. The entire affair was then encircled with symbols and squiggles of protection. After several minutes of squinting at the design he wrinkled his nose, grabbed the paper and crumpled it up, then tossed it away to rest in the idea graveyard he had clustered about his desk. Continually, he sifted through the parchments, snatching up one to revisit a concept, combine it with another, incorporate some minor element.
"Mind" crossed with "soul", with "block", "deflect", "bar", and "escape" arranged in the four cardinal directions. "Information" surrounded by three instances of "thought" layered with simple seals of forbiddance. Those too soon joined the creative fire-hazard spreading around him. He shuffled them, building a complex flow chart around himself in order to watch the way that the components came together in hopes of better understanding where he was going wrong.
Shouts of wrathful annoyance bounced around the small room, some even echoing out into the corridor of the hideout to alert other members of the criminal organization that Renji was in the midst of one of his brain-tempests. The tantrum actually helped, though, venting pent up frustration effectively and allowing him to take a deep breath, quell his manic thoughts, and get back to work. He labored without thought for rest, food, or drink, arranging and rearranging, connecting and deleting, using every ounce of knowledge and instinct he had gained in his climbing of the fuuinjutsu pyramid to date.
It was nearly ten hours of combinations before he finally let out a peel of triumphant, disturbing laughter. Each failed arrangement provided just a little more insight, and for all his peculiarity, Renjiro had a mind that did not ignore small details or fail to take variables into account. Allowing himself a cigarette of victory, he stared down at the fuuin seal, quite pleased with himself. It really was quite masterful. The end result was reminiscent of a stylized sun. "Mind" rested in the center, but layered over it like a web were lines containing tiny repetitions of "blank-wall-ward-charm". The perimeter of the circle was made up by symbols of protection, six different types arranged by means of a complex algorithm. Finally, a corona consisting of thirteen evenly spaced "flares" formed of haiku meant to distract and demoralize anyone viewing it as a whole. The whole seal wasn't more than three inches in diameter- the detail was painstaking,the complexity enough that an untrained eye might not even recognize individual characters.
It was time to test it, and test it, and test it again if it came down to it.
Doing so on a fellow member of Henkou might be a little dangerous, and as such, Renji resorted to his usual method of exchanging coin for a willing body. For the sake of a jutsu, this time, not his own self gratification. He found a ratty man who had "done work" for him before, and just as every time before, his coin overrode any lingering concerns.
He rented a room and instructed the hireling to remain very still while he began the intricate inscription. He worked through the entire seal with only a few pauses to reference his master, and after half an hour, had transposed it perfectly. This time, he set chakra moving through the interconnected circuit of the fuuin, activating it that it might do its work. Several subsequent attempts to pith or read the man, who had the mental fortitude of most leather boots, proved ineffective.
There was a problem, though, and it took Renji a few minutes of thinking to sort out what it was. The seal was just as removable as any other, and any organization or village that could field a mind reader could field someone capable of tearing the obstacle down. "Bear with me a moment," he mused thoughtfully, turning over the master sheet to reproduce his seal. This time, though, he incorporated slender strings of characters. "Sink, fade, vanish, submerge, gestate, bolster, recede". He wound them like chains around the "mind" janji in the center, and proceeded, after wiping his forehead clear, to transcribe it into flesh yet again.
He wound up having to tie the poor fellow down to keep him from twitching too much at the tattooing process, but eventually, it was complete. This time, activation had the desired effect: the seal eased out of sight, and Renjiro quickly formed the handseals required and placed his hand to the man's brow. He pressed his mind and molded chakra's into the man's...
And found himself fighting to get in. Wanting to test the limits of his creation, he fought hard, chipping away at the protections until he managed to insidiously sneak past to peruse vivid memory. He slithered back out, retaking command of his own body, and made adjustments based on the success of the invasion, stopping gaps and sealing cracks before trying to read his thoughts once more.
He could glimpse the mind from the outside, but that was all. A massive representation of the seal seemed to hang before him, barring his way. Mentally, he grinned wickedly. Removing the seal would require both a strong grasp of fuuin and techniques to access the mind, something he would expect only of his former clan, but even then, the number of shinobi in the world capable of defeating the seal inherently could likely be counted on a single hand.
He made several valiant attempts to breach the seal, but it proved more than adequate to stand up to his methods. Satisfied, he withdrew.
[2200-950=1250] 1262/1250 Words
It started with sketching. Renjiro was fairly crouched over a desk, with sheafs worth of parchment scattered about the lamp lit room around him. Various kanji, symbols, and characters were scrawled across the faces of these sheets of paper, bearing testament to the frustration the Yamanaka was experiencing at meeting Yaku's latest request.
A method for protecting the mind from unwanted intrusion. Renji had laughed, assured him that it would be a simple feat for someone as skilled at such intrusions as he. The best person to design a security system, after all, was the greatest thief one could find.
In practice it was not so simple. He'd gone through his usual round of hiring transients to experiment on, but pure ninjutsu resulted in techniques that were far too... well... transient. They could provide the desired protection, but only for a short degree of time (or in the case of one unfortunate test subject, could create the specified effect permanently by blocking all thought). He had techniques for erasing minds, for supplanting them, even for laying waste to them... but reinforcing them was proving to be a chore.
It was after days worth of failure that he switched tactics, seeking to employ the sealing arts as the means to achieve his ends. The failures were not fruitless, though; they'd yielded quite a bit of useful information about mental fortifications. Now it was just a matter of converting that information into a proper seal, and armed with his notes and keen intellect, Renji set about assembling all those datums into a formula that would be quite difficult to overcome
The doctors, they knew the brain, and they assumed arrogantly that the lump of gray flesh was supreme. Renjiro knew diffrently. He didn't need incisions or drills to map the mind, he just needed chakra and his own. As such, he was already intimately familiar with the methods and symbols that affected the mind. He'd just never really had any occasion to go about stringing them together in order to forge a lasting technique.
He scrawled the kanji for mind, then bisected it laterally with characters denoting limits, power, and darkness. The entire affair was then encircled with symbols and squiggles of protection. After several minutes of squinting at the design he wrinkled his nose, grabbed the paper and crumpled it up, then tossed it away to rest in the idea graveyard he had clustered about his desk. Continually, he sifted through the parchments, snatching up one to revisit a concept, combine it with another, incorporate some minor element.
"Mind" crossed with "soul", with "block", "deflect", "bar", and "escape" arranged in the four cardinal directions. "Information" surrounded by three instances of "thought" layered with simple seals of forbiddance. Those too soon joined the creative fire-hazard spreading around him. He shuffled them, building a complex flow chart around himself in order to watch the way that the components came together in hopes of better understanding where he was going wrong.
Shouts of wrathful annoyance bounced around the small room, some even echoing out into the corridor of the hideout to alert other members of the criminal organization that Renji was in the midst of one of his brain-tempests. The tantrum actually helped, though, venting pent up frustration effectively and allowing him to take a deep breath, quell his manic thoughts, and get back to work. He labored without thought for rest, food, or drink, arranging and rearranging, connecting and deleting, using every ounce of knowledge and instinct he had gained in his climbing of the fuuinjutsu pyramid to date.
It was nearly ten hours of combinations before he finally let out a peel of triumphant, disturbing laughter. Each failed arrangement provided just a little more insight, and for all his peculiarity, Renjiro had a mind that did not ignore small details or fail to take variables into account. Allowing himself a cigarette of victory, he stared down at the fuuin seal, quite pleased with himself. It really was quite masterful. The end result was reminiscent of a stylized sun. "Mind" rested in the center, but layered over it like a web were lines containing tiny repetitions of "blank-wall-ward-charm". The perimeter of the circle was made up by symbols of protection, six different types arranged by means of a complex algorithm. Finally, a corona consisting of thirteen evenly spaced "flares" formed of haiku meant to distract and demoralize anyone viewing it as a whole. The whole seal wasn't more than three inches in diameter- the detail was painstaking,the complexity enough that an untrained eye might not even recognize individual characters.
It was time to test it, and test it, and test it again if it came down to it.
Doing so on a fellow member of Henkou might be a little dangerous, and as such, Renji resorted to his usual method of exchanging coin for a willing body. For the sake of a jutsu, this time, not his own self gratification. He found a ratty man who had "done work" for him before, and just as every time before, his coin overrode any lingering concerns.
He rented a room and instructed the hireling to remain very still while he began the intricate inscription. He worked through the entire seal with only a few pauses to reference his master, and after half an hour, had transposed it perfectly. This time, he set chakra moving through the interconnected circuit of the fuuin, activating it that it might do its work. Several subsequent attempts to pith or read the man, who had the mental fortitude of most leather boots, proved ineffective.
There was a problem, though, and it took Renji a few minutes of thinking to sort out what it was. The seal was just as removable as any other, and any organization or village that could field a mind reader could field someone capable of tearing the obstacle down. "Bear with me a moment," he mused thoughtfully, turning over the master sheet to reproduce his seal. This time, though, he incorporated slender strings of characters. "Sink, fade, vanish, submerge, gestate, bolster, recede". He wound them like chains around the "mind" janji in the center, and proceeded, after wiping his forehead clear, to transcribe it into flesh yet again.
He wound up having to tie the poor fellow down to keep him from twitching too much at the tattooing process, but eventually, it was complete. This time, activation had the desired effect: the seal eased out of sight, and Renjiro quickly formed the handseals required and placed his hand to the man's brow. He pressed his mind and molded chakra's into the man's...
And found himself fighting to get in. Wanting to test the limits of his creation, he fought hard, chipping away at the protections until he managed to insidiously sneak past to peruse vivid memory. He slithered back out, retaking command of his own body, and made adjustments based on the success of the invasion, stopping gaps and sealing cracks before trying to read his thoughts once more.
He could glimpse the mind from the outside, but that was all. A massive representation of the seal seemed to hang before him, barring his way. Mentally, he grinned wickedly. Removing the seal would require both a strong grasp of fuuin and techniques to access the mind, something he would expect only of his former clan, but even then, the number of shinobi in the world capable of defeating the seal inherently could likely be counted on a single hand.
He made several valiant attempts to breach the seal, but it proved more than adequate to stand up to his methods. Satisfied, he withdrew.
[2200-950=1250] 1262/1250 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Distance Shintensin Method
Yaku and his little requests. Every day he learned a little more about why the Fushinkou had sought him out, and every day he wondered just how much of his partner's knowledge was guesswork. As of yet he'd not made one that Renjiro couldn't accomodate, and this was no exception.
A means to borrow eyes and ears, and to convey orders, across vast distances. His sensory skill wasn't up to snuff for it, not yet, but there was possibly an even more effective method to employ in the meantime.
As usual, Renjiro's project began with a great deal of tedious research and note taking, compiling and organizing information with the efficiency and nearly insane insight that only his mind and probably a handful of others in the world could.
There were quite a few fuuin that allowed for long distance communication, but Renjiro didn't need much from them other than the methodology that they employed to transmit whatever it was that they were transmitting. Not enough to require learning the actual seals; he just needed to scavenge a few pieces of the relevant fuuin, cannibalize them and restructure them into something that would suit the performance of a jutsu that he was perhaps the reigning expert of: Shintensin.
It was perfect, after all. Just what Henkou needed. Of course, he'd have to find some workarounds to reduce whining from members who didn't trust him to have a means of jumping into their bodies whenever he pleased. As much fun as that would have been, he couldn't really blame them. Sometimes he even wished he could keep himself out of his own body.
He'd chewed the tip of a brush into mangled, unrecognizable gnaw markings by the time he was even ready to start working on the basic seal. What he envisioned would require a single seal on his own body, with mirrors of it on the body of the intended recipients (read: Henkou). The master seal would allow him to send his soul traveling much more quickly than it usually did. In fact, he might not even need to build in any limitations. The sheer distance itself might diminish the effects of the hiden technique by itself.
Still, he reminded himself, best to build in the contingencies rather than hope for the best.
With several sheets worth of research at the ready, he set to work, drafting nearly a dozen basic seals over the course of a few hours. Each serves a particular function, basic really. The hard part lay in splicing them together, overlaying them in such a way that ever aspect of the fuuin would function without "shorting out". It would take only a single missed brush-stroke or burr on a character to disrupt the "circuit" that the sealing technique represented, something that was a tricky bit even with far more easy seals.
He was having a hell of a time with it, enough so that he decided to break for some R-rated recreation that really doesn't need to be described here. Suffice it to say, though, that diving under some bed sheets spurred a fit of inspiration on his part, one so striking that he immediately abandoned the sticky fun times to hastily dress himself and get back to work.
He obtained some very thin parchment, thin enough that it was nearly translucent. Vellum? Sure, why not? Keeping his measurements exact, he set down the base of the seal, the portion that would allow for transmission to other seals like it. On another page, with similarly painstaking measurements, he set down the portion that would allow it to interact with his once-clan's trademark jutsu. Next, grinning at his own cleverness, he placed the two pieces over one another so that the borders of the seals lined up exactly.
From there, with a nib of pink tongue poking out from between his teeth, he set about adding the aspects of the seal below to the seal above, editing only as needed to keep it one contiguous shape. Setting aside that hybrid, he inscribed the next characteristics, one that would tie it to the recipient's chakra, enabling easy self-removal. Again, he overlaid the sheets of paper when he was finished, very much confident that this would work. Of course, that hardly meant he'd be finished any time soon. He'd need to inscribe it and then get enough distance away from the recipient to actually see if it worked if intended, which knowing Yaku, would mean a week on the road.
Another sheet, with the elements that would restrict the nature of the Shintensin, refining it to occlude the usual factor of body control in the hopes that it would allow his mind to make the long, fast leap. He set the master sheet over it and went to work. Tracing tediously, he forged the nearly finished prototype. Just one more to go.
The final aspect to incorporate was more or less a fixitive, binding all the disparate pieces despite the uniformity that his tracing method had allowed for. It would add structure, permanence, buffers that would keep use from breaking down the integrity of the fuuinjutsu over time while smoothing the movement of chakra through the design. It would also include the dimensional aspects that would link the instances of the seal, enabling him to send his consciousness much further than would otherwise be possible.
When he was finally finished, he held it up to the light, admiring his handiwork. It was, in his humble opinion, a masterpiece. The sort of thing his former clan would fall over itself to possess. Every element of the seal tied into every other aspect perfectly, making it the perfect amplifier for a controlled shintensin. That had been part of the inspiration- using the dimensional capability of sealing to allow activation to create a "bridge" of sorts for the purpose of projecting his chakra and mind.
Time to test it!
He found Buttercup in the usual dive tavern. The man knew the routine by now, and finished his drink on the way out. It may have been humiliating, terrifying, and sometimes dangerous, but working as Renjiro's lab rat was the best job he'd ever held down.
Renji carefully marked down the seal, placing it on the right side of the man's neck, just above the jugular. With that done, he dashed off, moving at his nearly top speed out of the inn and into the empty space outside the village, heading for the distant enough Henkou hideout. Once he was safelt in his room, he focused on the seal he had of course inscribed on his own neck and performed the handseals for shintensin.
He could feel his consciousness rushing outward. His body had slumped down behind him on his comfortable mattress, and for the first time in decades, Renjiro Yamanaka was experiencing something new and exhilirating. He would have laughed, if an astral-form held together by chakra and will alone could laugh. It only felt like a few seconds before he saw the other seal blazing before him and brushed it.
It took another half dozen tries before he actually managed to find his way into Buttercup's body, and was pleasantly surprised by how well the limitations on the Shintensin came off. He could borrow his senses, even communicate, but he couldn't, despite his best efforts, get the guy to lift a hand. That would please the whiners.
Afterward he went back to touch up the seal, both on Buttercup's neck and his own. Just a few tweaks, before he tried a few more times- this time, traversing the slight distance nigh instantaneously. The next time he was out of the region, he'd test a few more times... and then he could tell Yaku that he had to get the others to agree to being sealed.
[2200-950=1250] 1285/1250 Words
Yaku and his little requests. Every day he learned a little more about why the Fushinkou had sought him out, and every day he wondered just how much of his partner's knowledge was guesswork. As of yet he'd not made one that Renjiro couldn't accomodate, and this was no exception.
A means to borrow eyes and ears, and to convey orders, across vast distances. His sensory skill wasn't up to snuff for it, not yet, but there was possibly an even more effective method to employ in the meantime.
As usual, Renjiro's project began with a great deal of tedious research and note taking, compiling and organizing information with the efficiency and nearly insane insight that only his mind and probably a handful of others in the world could.
There were quite a few fuuin that allowed for long distance communication, but Renjiro didn't need much from them other than the methodology that they employed to transmit whatever it was that they were transmitting. Not enough to require learning the actual seals; he just needed to scavenge a few pieces of the relevant fuuin, cannibalize them and restructure them into something that would suit the performance of a jutsu that he was perhaps the reigning expert of: Shintensin.
It was perfect, after all. Just what Henkou needed. Of course, he'd have to find some workarounds to reduce whining from members who didn't trust him to have a means of jumping into their bodies whenever he pleased. As much fun as that would have been, he couldn't really blame them. Sometimes he even wished he could keep himself out of his own body.
He'd chewed the tip of a brush into mangled, unrecognizable gnaw markings by the time he was even ready to start working on the basic seal. What he envisioned would require a single seal on his own body, with mirrors of it on the body of the intended recipients (read: Henkou). The master seal would allow him to send his soul traveling much more quickly than it usually did. In fact, he might not even need to build in any limitations. The sheer distance itself might diminish the effects of the hiden technique by itself.
Still, he reminded himself, best to build in the contingencies rather than hope for the best.
With several sheets worth of research at the ready, he set to work, drafting nearly a dozen basic seals over the course of a few hours. Each serves a particular function, basic really. The hard part lay in splicing them together, overlaying them in such a way that ever aspect of the fuuin would function without "shorting out". It would take only a single missed brush-stroke or burr on a character to disrupt the "circuit" that the sealing technique represented, something that was a tricky bit even with far more easy seals.
He was having a hell of a time with it, enough so that he decided to break for some R-rated recreation that really doesn't need to be described here. Suffice it to say, though, that diving under some bed sheets spurred a fit of inspiration on his part, one so striking that he immediately abandoned the sticky fun times to hastily dress himself and get back to work.
He obtained some very thin parchment, thin enough that it was nearly translucent. Vellum? Sure, why not? Keeping his measurements exact, he set down the base of the seal, the portion that would allow for transmission to other seals like it. On another page, with similarly painstaking measurements, he set down the portion that would allow it to interact with his once-clan's trademark jutsu. Next, grinning at his own cleverness, he placed the two pieces over one another so that the borders of the seals lined up exactly.
From there, with a nib of pink tongue poking out from between his teeth, he set about adding the aspects of the seal below to the seal above, editing only as needed to keep it one contiguous shape. Setting aside that hybrid, he inscribed the next characteristics, one that would tie it to the recipient's chakra, enabling easy self-removal. Again, he overlaid the sheets of paper when he was finished, very much confident that this would work. Of course, that hardly meant he'd be finished any time soon. He'd need to inscribe it and then get enough distance away from the recipient to actually see if it worked if intended, which knowing Yaku, would mean a week on the road.
Another sheet, with the elements that would restrict the nature of the Shintensin, refining it to occlude the usual factor of body control in the hopes that it would allow his mind to make the long, fast leap. He set the master sheet over it and went to work. Tracing tediously, he forged the nearly finished prototype. Just one more to go.
The final aspect to incorporate was more or less a fixitive, binding all the disparate pieces despite the uniformity that his tracing method had allowed for. It would add structure, permanence, buffers that would keep use from breaking down the integrity of the fuuinjutsu over time while smoothing the movement of chakra through the design. It would also include the dimensional aspects that would link the instances of the seal, enabling him to send his consciousness much further than would otherwise be possible.
When he was finally finished, he held it up to the light, admiring his handiwork. It was, in his humble opinion, a masterpiece. The sort of thing his former clan would fall over itself to possess. Every element of the seal tied into every other aspect perfectly, making it the perfect amplifier for a controlled shintensin. That had been part of the inspiration- using the dimensional capability of sealing to allow activation to create a "bridge" of sorts for the purpose of projecting his chakra and mind.
Time to test it!
He found Buttercup in the usual dive tavern. The man knew the routine by now, and finished his drink on the way out. It may have been humiliating, terrifying, and sometimes dangerous, but working as Renjiro's lab rat was the best job he'd ever held down.
Renji carefully marked down the seal, placing it on the right side of the man's neck, just above the jugular. With that done, he dashed off, moving at his nearly top speed out of the inn and into the empty space outside the village, heading for the distant enough Henkou hideout. Once he was safelt in his room, he focused on the seal he had of course inscribed on his own neck and performed the handseals for shintensin.
He could feel his consciousness rushing outward. His body had slumped down behind him on his comfortable mattress, and for the first time in decades, Renjiro Yamanaka was experiencing something new and exhilirating. He would have laughed, if an astral-form held together by chakra and will alone could laugh. It only felt like a few seconds before he saw the other seal blazing before him and brushed it.
It took another half dozen tries before he actually managed to find his way into Buttercup's body, and was pleasantly surprised by how well the limitations on the Shintensin came off. He could borrow his senses, even communicate, but he couldn't, despite his best efforts, get the guy to lift a hand. That would please the whiners.
Afterward he went back to touch up the seal, both on Buttercup's neck and his own. Just a few tweaks, before he tried a few more times- this time, traversing the slight distance nigh instantaneously. The next time he was out of the region, he'd test a few more times... and then he could tell Yaku that he had to get the others to agree to being sealed.
[2200-950=1250] 1285/1250 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Polygraph
The time had come to expand his abilities as a sensor. Before he could expand the raw power of his Mind's Eye Gate, though, Renjiro needed to add a bit of variety to his repertoire. He was well aware of a variety of effects that sensors could achieve, even if he'd never bothered to buckle down and suss any of them out.
He began his effort with a round of meditation. He'd need to head to somewhere with a little more life, for what he had in mind, so it was best to clear said mind before he journeyed out. It was easier said than done, for Renji. His mind was a fractured vessel, teeming with more memories than the human brain was likely designed to hold.
After an appropriate amount of deep breathing, he had managed to calm the chaotic psychic storm that was his mind into something more restive... or at least, managed to position himself in the eye of that storm for a time.
He headed into the village and found himself a quaint little bar. Settling in at a corner table, he ordered some sake and proceeded to ignore it. He was more focused on the patrons, or, after activating his technique and expanding his senses, their chakra.
He studied the fluctuations in their signatures. It was a matter of familiarization, really. Watching the ways that they moved, expanded, contracted, surged, radiated. None of these simpletons were particularly developed, as far as chakra went, but they still appeared however dimly. That dimness would serve him well. If he could focus well enough to detect changes in such weak signals, doing the same for trained shinobi would be comparatively simple.
His rapacious mind devoured and cataloged the different ways that the energy varied. Now for the tricky part.
Opening his eyes, he swept his gaze about the bar. He needed to couple his chakra observing skills with the many decades of experience with human nature he had raked in. He chose a young couple close enough to hear, see, and see. His aim was to detect lies, and in his experience, nobody lied like a young man hoping to score.
He listened for several minutes, establishing himself a baseline for the boy's mannerisms. Most people without training had some form of tell, a tic or some other tiny movement that accompanied deception. Being able to match his tics to the disturbances in his chakra signature would allow Renji to identify that brand of fluctuation in the future. He would need to observe a few more people to be certain, but for now...
It was nearly a full three minutes before he'd discerned the young man's tell. He had a propensity for rubbing the pad of his thumb over the first knuckle of his index finger. It was unconscious, but Renji was certain, and as the conversation wore on he witnessed it along with an identical fluctuation every single time the Casanova bent or outright broke the truth.
He turned his attention on the girl. She was a little more honest, so it took longer for him to identify her tell (a tendency to look slightly away, sometimes accompanied by a syllable of laughter). He noticed a similar disturbance in her chakra, and it repeated the few times that she lied.
With this new knowledge at his mental finger tips, he decided it was time to mingle. Skillfully, he maneuvered a few interactions, setting people up to present themselves falsely. A few exaggerations here, some unbelievable banter there. Each time he coaxed a fib, he watched with more than his eyes, and with each viewing, he was more and more sure of his ability to detect lies.
[1500-950=550] 619/550 Words
The time had come to expand his abilities as a sensor. Before he could expand the raw power of his Mind's Eye Gate, though, Renjiro needed to add a bit of variety to his repertoire. He was well aware of a variety of effects that sensors could achieve, even if he'd never bothered to buckle down and suss any of them out.
He began his effort with a round of meditation. He'd need to head to somewhere with a little more life, for what he had in mind, so it was best to clear said mind before he journeyed out. It was easier said than done, for Renji. His mind was a fractured vessel, teeming with more memories than the human brain was likely designed to hold.
After an appropriate amount of deep breathing, he had managed to calm the chaotic psychic storm that was his mind into something more restive... or at least, managed to position himself in the eye of that storm for a time.
He headed into the village and found himself a quaint little bar. Settling in at a corner table, he ordered some sake and proceeded to ignore it. He was more focused on the patrons, or, after activating his technique and expanding his senses, their chakra.
He studied the fluctuations in their signatures. It was a matter of familiarization, really. Watching the ways that they moved, expanded, contracted, surged, radiated. None of these simpletons were particularly developed, as far as chakra went, but they still appeared however dimly. That dimness would serve him well. If he could focus well enough to detect changes in such weak signals, doing the same for trained shinobi would be comparatively simple.
His rapacious mind devoured and cataloged the different ways that the energy varied. Now for the tricky part.
Opening his eyes, he swept his gaze about the bar. He needed to couple his chakra observing skills with the many decades of experience with human nature he had raked in. He chose a young couple close enough to hear, see, and see. His aim was to detect lies, and in his experience, nobody lied like a young man hoping to score.
He listened for several minutes, establishing himself a baseline for the boy's mannerisms. Most people without training had some form of tell, a tic or some other tiny movement that accompanied deception. Being able to match his tics to the disturbances in his chakra signature would allow Renji to identify that brand of fluctuation in the future. He would need to observe a few more people to be certain, but for now...
It was nearly a full three minutes before he'd discerned the young man's tell. He had a propensity for rubbing the pad of his thumb over the first knuckle of his index finger. It was unconscious, but Renji was certain, and as the conversation wore on he witnessed it along with an identical fluctuation every single time the Casanova bent or outright broke the truth.
He turned his attention on the girl. She was a little more honest, so it took longer for him to identify her tell (a tendency to look slightly away, sometimes accompanied by a syllable of laughter). He noticed a similar disturbance in her chakra, and it repeated the few times that she lied.
With this new knowledge at his mental finger tips, he decided it was time to mingle. Skillfully, he maneuvered a few interactions, setting people up to present themselves falsely. A few exaggerations here, some unbelievable banter there. Each time he coaxed a fib, he watched with more than his eyes, and with each viewing, he was more and more sure of his ability to detect lies.
[1500-950=550] 619/550 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Scouter
It was time to refine his sensor techniques, to expand upon the basic ability to sense chakra sources that he had developed in a trickle over the course of his lifetime. The idea he had in mind- being able to gauge the overall amount of chakra that a signature contained- would be mostly a matter of research, he decided. He would need to observe the signatures of a variety of shinobi in order to find a way to quantify their chakra capacity.
Charity begins at home, so this might as well too. Over the course of a week, he made sure that he ran into any of his fellow Henkou members that he could and took a few minutes to observe their chakra signatures. Yaku, his partner, was the first that he studied. Fixing the appearance of the bannin's chakra in his mind, he moved on, comparing it to each of the other nukenin in the compound he could find. His frustration led him to take pains and run into those who he had missed, whether because they were on missions or just particularly elusive.
He needed more data. Shinobi data. The untrained villagers of Waterfall Country wouldn't do much for this endeavor, but considering all that was going on, jaunting to one of the hidden villages seemed like a terrible idea for such little gain.
It took quite a bit of mulling before he arrived at an idea. He had a lifetime's worth of memories of chakra signatures that he could access. All he needed to do was plunge into them by mean's of one of his clan's jutsu, and he would have a statistical sample worth using when he added in the powerful peers that he had observed.
He retired to his room to perform the memory-walking technique, closing his eyes and performing the string of handseals that would send him into his own past.
He went as far back as he could- back to Konoha. There were a variety of shinobi there for him to have interacted with, and as he wandered through his perceptions of Hidden Leaf, he carefully noted the appearance of every chakra signature he had ever perceived there. Chuunin peers, jounin mentors, members of his clan who had wielded much more power than him. He'd even gotten to witness the Hokage's, once, and added that to his little database as well upon re-perceiving it.
He trudged toward the present through his memories, refreshing himself on the signatures of nearly every shinobi he had ever encountered. Amusingly enough, there were several whom he'd tangled with more than once, and they proved the most instrumental to refining his chakra senses. Their chakra had grown between meetings, and since it was the same inherent source, it was much easier to note the differences and know what to look for.
After several hours of skipping around in his sordid past, he felt reasonably sure that he had enough data to proceed. Holding the images of the hundreds of signature in his mind, he took some ink and paper and began sketching out rough diagrams of each, creating a database of sorts, hard copies that he could reference and compare more simply.
From there, he proceeded to cut out each signature into what would best be described as flash cards. He spent the next few hours laying them out, shuffling them about in a pattern that spread across the entire floor of his quarters. He was, to the best of his ability, arranging them in ascending order, from what he thought was the weakest signature he'd ever perceived (genin from his distant past in Konoha), to the strongest (the Hokage from four generations ago, Yaku).
He couldn't quite get into exact amounts. It wasn't that precise a science, at least, not yet. He could, however, classify them into rough categories. Weak, Moderate, Strong, Very Strong. He began to sort them accordingly, wavering on a few decisions that seemed like they could go either way, and then studying each classification to be sure.
[1500-950=550] 674/550 Words
It was time to refine his sensor techniques, to expand upon the basic ability to sense chakra sources that he had developed in a trickle over the course of his lifetime. The idea he had in mind- being able to gauge the overall amount of chakra that a signature contained- would be mostly a matter of research, he decided. He would need to observe the signatures of a variety of shinobi in order to find a way to quantify their chakra capacity.
Charity begins at home, so this might as well too. Over the course of a week, he made sure that he ran into any of his fellow Henkou members that he could and took a few minutes to observe their chakra signatures. Yaku, his partner, was the first that he studied. Fixing the appearance of the bannin's chakra in his mind, he moved on, comparing it to each of the other nukenin in the compound he could find. His frustration led him to take pains and run into those who he had missed, whether because they were on missions or just particularly elusive.
He needed more data. Shinobi data. The untrained villagers of Waterfall Country wouldn't do much for this endeavor, but considering all that was going on, jaunting to one of the hidden villages seemed like a terrible idea for such little gain.
It took quite a bit of mulling before he arrived at an idea. He had a lifetime's worth of memories of chakra signatures that he could access. All he needed to do was plunge into them by mean's of one of his clan's jutsu, and he would have a statistical sample worth using when he added in the powerful peers that he had observed.
He retired to his room to perform the memory-walking technique, closing his eyes and performing the string of handseals that would send him into his own past.
He went as far back as he could- back to Konoha. There were a variety of shinobi there for him to have interacted with, and as he wandered through his perceptions of Hidden Leaf, he carefully noted the appearance of every chakra signature he had ever perceived there. Chuunin peers, jounin mentors, members of his clan who had wielded much more power than him. He'd even gotten to witness the Hokage's, once, and added that to his little database as well upon re-perceiving it.
He trudged toward the present through his memories, refreshing himself on the signatures of nearly every shinobi he had ever encountered. Amusingly enough, there were several whom he'd tangled with more than once, and they proved the most instrumental to refining his chakra senses. Their chakra had grown between meetings, and since it was the same inherent source, it was much easier to note the differences and know what to look for.
After several hours of skipping around in his sordid past, he felt reasonably sure that he had enough data to proceed. Holding the images of the hundreds of signature in his mind, he took some ink and paper and began sketching out rough diagrams of each, creating a database of sorts, hard copies that he could reference and compare more simply.
From there, he proceeded to cut out each signature into what would best be described as flash cards. He spent the next few hours laying them out, shuffling them about in a pattern that spread across the entire floor of his quarters. He was, to the best of his ability, arranging them in ascending order, from what he thought was the weakest signature he'd ever perceived (genin from his distant past in Konoha), to the strongest (the Hokage from four generations ago, Yaku).
He couldn't quite get into exact amounts. It wasn't that precise a science, at least, not yet. He could, however, classify them into rough categories. Weak, Moderate, Strong, Very Strong. He began to sort them accordingly, wavering on a few decisions that seemed like they could go either way, and then studying each classification to be sure.
[1500-950=550] 674/550 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Broad Senses
A natural setting was required. Peaceful. Idyllic. The sort of place that Renjiro would normally have found obnoxious. Nature was supposed to be a constant struggle for power, survival of the fittest, raw elements competing for dominance. The conventional images of sun dappled meadows and cheerful, chittering squirrels tended to infuriate him.
And yet here he was. He kicked off his sandals, allowing the grass to tickle his pale feet. He stripped off his shirt, so that when he leaned against a grand, ancient tree that he'd staked out, he would be able to feel the rough bark against his skin.
Once he sat, he closed his eyes and brought his hands together. He shaped his chakra, formed it, visualized it as a net that he could cast out over the clearing and then unfurled it. That done, he let his hands drift to the ground and dug them into the soil. It wouldn't -actually- help him connect to the environment, no, but he'd found over the years that symbolic acts had value even if it was purely imaginary. Even the imaginary mattered, when one's mind was involved.
The utilitarian purpose of Mind's Eye sensor techniques was the detection of other shinobi by means of their chakra signatures. All living things had chakra, though, however infinitesimal the amounts involved might be. Human beings seemed to have the most, and trained shinobi even more than that. The more powerful the ninja, the easier he was to spot by means of such techniques (unless, of course, he had some method to evade sensor techniques himself). In essence... doing what it was meant to do was easy, comparatively speaking.
There were no other humans within his current range, but hopefully by the end of this exercise, he would have a wider range. That was essentially the point. Unable to detect any finite signatures, he focused, honing his sixth sense, his chakra sense. He tried in vain to “see” the tree he was leaning against as more than bark and trunk and leaves and branches. For a brief instant, he thought he had it. A vague outline, a shimmer, but then, with his eyes closed, in the shade of the frustrating tree, he was in the dark once more.
Too big, he realized. The chakra of the tree was limited, but because it was so large, it was spread much thinner. He needed to start smaller. He needed to start tiny.
Shifting for the sake of comfort, he felt the long blades of verdant grass brush against the sensitive flesh on the arch of his foot, and he had an idea. Pulling his fingers from the damp earth, he pinched a single blade of grass between his fingers, holding it straight upward without plucking it from the ground.
He aimed his sight down at his own hand. He was easily able to see his own signature, veritably ablaze compared to many that he had perceived over the years. He focused and focused, paring down the way that his mind interpreted the signature of his own chakra, defining where it began and where it ended. Slowly, after what seemed like hours but was probably a lot less time, the edges began to have shape and form. He couldn't make out a hand or fingers, no, but he could more or less tell where his chakra was and was not.
Now for the hard part. He mentally squinted, focusing so hard that his defined visualization of himself began to blur out of focus. He couldn't just ignore it, but he could, with some mental discipline, pay a lot less attention to it. He could feel exactly where the grass was, relative to his own fingers. He could reconstruct his immediate surroundings in his mind, seeing the single blade and measuring how close it was without actually opening his eyes and disrupting his concentration. He tried to cause the two “images” to overlap, tried to bring them together, like some sort of optical trick where you closed one eye and then the other to change the way objects in the distance appear to move, giving him a map of sorts to use to find the tiny, tiny mote of chakra running through the blade of grass.
It was excruciatingly difficult, but eventually time and concentration gave way and he more or less had the two different brands of perception, touch and chakra sensing, aligned, and he used that alignment to navigate.
He had it! It was almost washed out by the glow of his own chakra, but it was definitely there, a slender whisp of impossibly pale light. Triumphant laughter bubbled from his lips, and he released the stalk of plant matter. The instant his nerves no longer conducted its existence to him, he lost track of its signature. Annoying, but not unexpected. This was good. This meant it was possible at all.
He grasped a different blade. Focused. Imagined. It came easier this time, that is to say, after several prolonged and difficult minutes of intense concentration. Once again, he found a hint, a whisper, and then managed to seize it and cling to it. He'd never imagined that simply sensing something so utterly insignificant would ever feel like such a victory, but it did.
It vanished again when he released the grass, and he decided he needed a break. He stretched, but didn't open his eyes. He didn't want to loose too much ground. He was beginning to feel some mental strain, but he was certain that he could achieve this in a single afternoon and evening. Maybe two, if he was going to be honest with himself.
He breathed deeply. Meditated. Tried to visualize the clearing based solely off his memory. He tried to reconstruct the trees, the contours of the earth, the texture of the grass. Bird song played in his ears, and he tried to find the bird using his sense of hearing, placing it into the mental landscape he was creating. Whether or not it was actually helpful was up for debate, but it did help keep him in the right state of mind and contributed to his mental elasticity.
It was time to begin again. He pinched the blade of grass between thumb and index finger and focused on his sensory jutsu once more, interpreting the information that it relayed. Either his little game had helped shake some pieces into place or the third time was the charm, because it only took a few seconds for him to differentiate the grass's chakra from his own.
This was the moment of truth. He held his breath as he released the blade, fighting to keep its sliver of chakra in view. It seemed to flicker, to dim, but... it was there! He continued his struggling until the wisp remained visible, truly visible. He watched it for long minutes before he was finally satisfied that he wasn't just imagining this progress... and then he reached for another blade of grass, one a few inches away.
He kept the grass chakra he'd already fixed in his mind fixed as he focused on finding this new one. A few times he nearly lost track of the first, but he persevered and then finally managed to identify the new one. He was practically sweating from the effort involved, but he could see, clearly, the ephemeral signatures of two blades of grass. It was definitely working. He wasn't going to quit until he'd lit up a constellation of the things.
Keeping two “in view” was even more taxing. He lost them both on the first attempt, and couldn't keep them dimly glimmering until the sixth. The second, third, fourth, and fifth were somewhat instrumental to the feat, though, enhancing his ability to focus his “gaze” on two tiny points at once.
His arm was trembling, however faintly, as he reached for a third blade of grass. By the time he managed to find it with his Mind's Eye, the tremors had crept up into his neck. When he managed to visualize the scalene triangle he'd created in choosing the blades of grass, he had the start of a headache, and by the time he'd created a malformed quadrilateral, his brain felt like it was being made into a senbon pin cushion.
Finally, with a gasp, he released the jutsu and slumped back against the tree. Blinking his eyes open, he let himself rely on much easier to use senses. It was quite a while before he was ready to begin again. Dusk was lazily intruding on the sky, and the shadows of the forest around him began to lengthen and creep.
This time, he tried a new approach. Rather than grasping a single blade of grass, he pressed his hand to the ground so that it was in contact with more than a dozen of them, smooshing them into a layered, chaotic pattern. He closed his eyes and traveled down his own arm with his Mind's Eye, finding the borders of his own signature and then trying to find the patch of grass.
He found the first mote quickly enough, and then followed it to the next. It was a bit like completing an invisible maze. He didn't know exactly where the path of weak chakra was going to lead until he took it, but eventually, he found the next blade's signature. For nearly an hour he traced the grass beneath his splayed out hand, wandering around the web of chakra until he had mapped each and every bit of it. Breathing calmly, he lifted his hand slowly, slowly, micrometers at a time. The grass began to unfold itself, undoing the positioning that the weight of his hand had wrought. He watched the web move, shaking hard as he finally removed his hand entirely.
To his amazement, he could still see the grass chakra in its entirely. His resolve was reforged, and without reservation he kept it “visible” while locating the next nearest blade, and then the next. Some sort of breaking point had been reached, because it was almost easy, now. With a half hour worth of effort, he was “mapping” the chakra structure of all of the grass around him in ten feet.
He delved deeper, locating annelids and bugs that crawled unseen through the ground. The root system of the tree he sat against was there too, and he followed it about under the earth, traced it back to the trunk. He mentally climbed it, riding his way up through the boles and branches until he could see the flitting chakra within each and every leaf.
He found the singing bird, and used that to move into the branch that it rested on, and then the tree it was connected to. If Renji were capable of being humbled, he might have by the interconnectedness of this little piece of biosphere.
Instead, he was just grinning at yet another challenge that had fallen prey to his prowess.
It was time to test the fruits of his labors. He kept his technique active for the walk toward the edge of the nearest settlement. It was small, obscure, but as he stood at its very borders, he could suddenly sense...
Too much. Almost too much. There were people everywhere, seemingly. It jarred his mind, painfully, and he canceled the jutsu to avoid an overload. He decided to pace himself, activating from a greater distance so that he could clearly define his boundaries and slowly work in more and more chakra signatures as he advanced.
Satisfied that he had strengthened his Mind's Eye Gate, he headed back to the Conclave.
1948/1800 Words
A natural setting was required. Peaceful. Idyllic. The sort of place that Renjiro would normally have found obnoxious. Nature was supposed to be a constant struggle for power, survival of the fittest, raw elements competing for dominance. The conventional images of sun dappled meadows and cheerful, chittering squirrels tended to infuriate him.
And yet here he was. He kicked off his sandals, allowing the grass to tickle his pale feet. He stripped off his shirt, so that when he leaned against a grand, ancient tree that he'd staked out, he would be able to feel the rough bark against his skin.
Once he sat, he closed his eyes and brought his hands together. He shaped his chakra, formed it, visualized it as a net that he could cast out over the clearing and then unfurled it. That done, he let his hands drift to the ground and dug them into the soil. It wouldn't -actually- help him connect to the environment, no, but he'd found over the years that symbolic acts had value even if it was purely imaginary. Even the imaginary mattered, when one's mind was involved.
The utilitarian purpose of Mind's Eye sensor techniques was the detection of other shinobi by means of their chakra signatures. All living things had chakra, though, however infinitesimal the amounts involved might be. Human beings seemed to have the most, and trained shinobi even more than that. The more powerful the ninja, the easier he was to spot by means of such techniques (unless, of course, he had some method to evade sensor techniques himself). In essence... doing what it was meant to do was easy, comparatively speaking.
There were no other humans within his current range, but hopefully by the end of this exercise, he would have a wider range. That was essentially the point. Unable to detect any finite signatures, he focused, honing his sixth sense, his chakra sense. He tried in vain to “see” the tree he was leaning against as more than bark and trunk and leaves and branches. For a brief instant, he thought he had it. A vague outline, a shimmer, but then, with his eyes closed, in the shade of the frustrating tree, he was in the dark once more.
Too big, he realized. The chakra of the tree was limited, but because it was so large, it was spread much thinner. He needed to start smaller. He needed to start tiny.
Shifting for the sake of comfort, he felt the long blades of verdant grass brush against the sensitive flesh on the arch of his foot, and he had an idea. Pulling his fingers from the damp earth, he pinched a single blade of grass between his fingers, holding it straight upward without plucking it from the ground.
He aimed his sight down at his own hand. He was easily able to see his own signature, veritably ablaze compared to many that he had perceived over the years. He focused and focused, paring down the way that his mind interpreted the signature of his own chakra, defining where it began and where it ended. Slowly, after what seemed like hours but was probably a lot less time, the edges began to have shape and form. He couldn't make out a hand or fingers, no, but he could more or less tell where his chakra was and was not.
Now for the hard part. He mentally squinted, focusing so hard that his defined visualization of himself began to blur out of focus. He couldn't just ignore it, but he could, with some mental discipline, pay a lot less attention to it. He could feel exactly where the grass was, relative to his own fingers. He could reconstruct his immediate surroundings in his mind, seeing the single blade and measuring how close it was without actually opening his eyes and disrupting his concentration. He tried to cause the two “images” to overlap, tried to bring them together, like some sort of optical trick where you closed one eye and then the other to change the way objects in the distance appear to move, giving him a map of sorts to use to find the tiny, tiny mote of chakra running through the blade of grass.
It was excruciatingly difficult, but eventually time and concentration gave way and he more or less had the two different brands of perception, touch and chakra sensing, aligned, and he used that alignment to navigate.
He had it! It was almost washed out by the glow of his own chakra, but it was definitely there, a slender whisp of impossibly pale light. Triumphant laughter bubbled from his lips, and he released the stalk of plant matter. The instant his nerves no longer conducted its existence to him, he lost track of its signature. Annoying, but not unexpected. This was good. This meant it was possible at all.
He grasped a different blade. Focused. Imagined. It came easier this time, that is to say, after several prolonged and difficult minutes of intense concentration. Once again, he found a hint, a whisper, and then managed to seize it and cling to it. He'd never imagined that simply sensing something so utterly insignificant would ever feel like such a victory, but it did.
It vanished again when he released the grass, and he decided he needed a break. He stretched, but didn't open his eyes. He didn't want to loose too much ground. He was beginning to feel some mental strain, but he was certain that he could achieve this in a single afternoon and evening. Maybe two, if he was going to be honest with himself.
He breathed deeply. Meditated. Tried to visualize the clearing based solely off his memory. He tried to reconstruct the trees, the contours of the earth, the texture of the grass. Bird song played in his ears, and he tried to find the bird using his sense of hearing, placing it into the mental landscape he was creating. Whether or not it was actually helpful was up for debate, but it did help keep him in the right state of mind and contributed to his mental elasticity.
It was time to begin again. He pinched the blade of grass between thumb and index finger and focused on his sensory jutsu once more, interpreting the information that it relayed. Either his little game had helped shake some pieces into place or the third time was the charm, because it only took a few seconds for him to differentiate the grass's chakra from his own.
This was the moment of truth. He held his breath as he released the blade, fighting to keep its sliver of chakra in view. It seemed to flicker, to dim, but... it was there! He continued his struggling until the wisp remained visible, truly visible. He watched it for long minutes before he was finally satisfied that he wasn't just imagining this progress... and then he reached for another blade of grass, one a few inches away.
He kept the grass chakra he'd already fixed in his mind fixed as he focused on finding this new one. A few times he nearly lost track of the first, but he persevered and then finally managed to identify the new one. He was practically sweating from the effort involved, but he could see, clearly, the ephemeral signatures of two blades of grass. It was definitely working. He wasn't going to quit until he'd lit up a constellation of the things.
Keeping two “in view” was even more taxing. He lost them both on the first attempt, and couldn't keep them dimly glimmering until the sixth. The second, third, fourth, and fifth were somewhat instrumental to the feat, though, enhancing his ability to focus his “gaze” on two tiny points at once.
His arm was trembling, however faintly, as he reached for a third blade of grass. By the time he managed to find it with his Mind's Eye, the tremors had crept up into his neck. When he managed to visualize the scalene triangle he'd created in choosing the blades of grass, he had the start of a headache, and by the time he'd created a malformed quadrilateral, his brain felt like it was being made into a senbon pin cushion.
Finally, with a gasp, he released the jutsu and slumped back against the tree. Blinking his eyes open, he let himself rely on much easier to use senses. It was quite a while before he was ready to begin again. Dusk was lazily intruding on the sky, and the shadows of the forest around him began to lengthen and creep.
This time, he tried a new approach. Rather than grasping a single blade of grass, he pressed his hand to the ground so that it was in contact with more than a dozen of them, smooshing them into a layered, chaotic pattern. He closed his eyes and traveled down his own arm with his Mind's Eye, finding the borders of his own signature and then trying to find the patch of grass.
He found the first mote quickly enough, and then followed it to the next. It was a bit like completing an invisible maze. He didn't know exactly where the path of weak chakra was going to lead until he took it, but eventually, he found the next blade's signature. For nearly an hour he traced the grass beneath his splayed out hand, wandering around the web of chakra until he had mapped each and every bit of it. Breathing calmly, he lifted his hand slowly, slowly, micrometers at a time. The grass began to unfold itself, undoing the positioning that the weight of his hand had wrought. He watched the web move, shaking hard as he finally removed his hand entirely.
To his amazement, he could still see the grass chakra in its entirely. His resolve was reforged, and without reservation he kept it “visible” while locating the next nearest blade, and then the next. Some sort of breaking point had been reached, because it was almost easy, now. With a half hour worth of effort, he was “mapping” the chakra structure of all of the grass around him in ten feet.
He delved deeper, locating annelids and bugs that crawled unseen through the ground. The root system of the tree he sat against was there too, and he followed it about under the earth, traced it back to the trunk. He mentally climbed it, riding his way up through the boles and branches until he could see the flitting chakra within each and every leaf.
He found the singing bird, and used that to move into the branch that it rested on, and then the tree it was connected to. If Renji were capable of being humbled, he might have by the interconnectedness of this little piece of biosphere.
Instead, he was just grinning at yet another challenge that had fallen prey to his prowess.
It was time to test the fruits of his labors. He kept his technique active for the walk toward the edge of the nearest settlement. It was small, obscure, but as he stood at its very borders, he could suddenly sense...
Too much. Almost too much. There were people everywhere, seemingly. It jarred his mind, painfully, and he canceled the jutsu to avoid an overload. He decided to pace himself, activating from a greater distance so that he could clearly define his boundaries and slowly work in more and more chakra signatures as he advanced.
Satisfied that he had strengthened his Mind's Eye Gate, he headed back to the Conclave.
1948/1800 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Detection
Now that he'd thoroughly expanded his range for sensing chakra, it was high time he learned to do a bit more than that with it. He'd already devised an elementary means for lie detection by observing the fluctuations in a signature, and learned to distinguish the strength of a particular signature by comparing it to others.
Was it possible that sensory techniques had their own changes in signatures that could be observed? That would be useful- being able to tell when other sensors were about. A dagger thin smile curved his lips as he considered the implications. The tactical benefits of sensor jutsu could easily be countered by another sensor. It was all about knowledge, and knowing that your opponent knew what you knew...
Well, it was just the sort of convoluted concept that Renji could sink his teeth into.
It was just a matter of discerning the pattern that accompanied sensor jutsu, now. He spent a few moments racking his brain. He must have fought at least a few other sensors, over the years. Odds were, if he delved into those memories, he'd be able to identify them, and the use of their techniques thanks to the ability to play the memory over and over. Then it would just be a matter of noting and comparing their chakra signatures.
He enacted the hiden jutsu that would allow him to travel back through his life, or lives, depending on the outlook. Surprisingly few of his memories were battles; he'd done an excellent job of concealing himself from the shinobi world, after all. Every so often, though, due to misfortune or capriciousness, he'd engaged other nukenin or village ninja in combat. He scrolled through those memories quickly...
And found one that fit the bill. A battle with a Suiton user, who'd covered the ground in ankle deep water. He'd proceeded to enact a jutsu, and then looked astonished at the results, voicing his surprise at Renji's lack of elemental affinities. That meant the jutsu employed had been meant to tell his affinity, which meant that it was a sensor technique, water empathy, in all likelihood.
He replayed those few seconds of the scene over and over again, carefully scrutinizing the remembered chakra signature as the jutsu was enacted, watching the split seconds before the surprise registered on the now very dead shinobi's face.
There it was. He'd found it. A little blip, in the signature. He replayed it over and over to be sure it wasn't just some trick of perception, but, no, it was definitely there.
Now to see if that “blip” appeared in any of his other sensor encounters.
He recalled an elderly shinobi he had spent time as the “young apprentice” of. The man had been a sensor, as well, and hadn't known much, but Renji had pretended he'd known less than he did in hopes of getting him to divulge a few choice secrets. It hadn't panned now, but at least the experience would yield some dividends in the here and now.
He made his way into those memories, watching the older man's chakra signature carefully throughout. There were several different times over the week they'd spent together that he could use. It took several replays for each instance, but there it was- slightly different, to be sure, but similar enough that it was the same anomaly. This time, thinking better of it, he paused from his trip down memory lane to do a quick sketch of the anomaly, and then went back to the first sensor and did the same. It would be much easier to compare and codify them with a visual representation he could place side by side (by side, once he'd dug out a few more).
All told, he had encountered, battled, or slain a full eight ninjas who served to flesh out his data. A few had used elemental empathy, and a few the Mind's Eye Gate method that he favored. If the “blip” hadn't been so damnably similar, he would have discounted the sample size as much too small to be statistically relevant, but it was there in ink on paper, plain to see.
A smile curled his lips as he realized a way that he could test his theory in real time. Yaku was a sensor, and a powerful one at that. Odds were that if Renji staked him out long enough via his own sensor jutsu, he'd be able to witness the other shinobi displaying just such a “blip” before long.
He engaged his Mind's Eye and went Yaku hunting, and sure enough, found him before long in the cavernous hideout. He closed his eyes, relaxing on his bed and simply waiting, assuming a nearly meditative state of mind that would allow him to detect such a small anomaly when it hopefully happened.
Finally, he observed what looked like a blip. Not wanting to get too thoroughly excited over what might have been a coincidence, he recorded what he'd seen for comparison quickly and continued “watching”. It would have been much easier just to inform Yaku of his intentions and get him to do it, but Renji tended to enjoy the convoluted.
On and off for a few days, he observed his partner's signature, most often from a distance, but occasionally, from nearby. Every so often he missed what he was looking for due to distraction or boredom, but eventually, his data pointed in a clear direction, and he had learned to perceive the presence of other sensors by means of observing their chakra signatures.
[1800-950=850] 931/850 Words
Now that he'd thoroughly expanded his range for sensing chakra, it was high time he learned to do a bit more than that with it. He'd already devised an elementary means for lie detection by observing the fluctuations in a signature, and learned to distinguish the strength of a particular signature by comparing it to others.
Was it possible that sensory techniques had their own changes in signatures that could be observed? That would be useful- being able to tell when other sensors were about. A dagger thin smile curved his lips as he considered the implications. The tactical benefits of sensor jutsu could easily be countered by another sensor. It was all about knowledge, and knowing that your opponent knew what you knew...
Well, it was just the sort of convoluted concept that Renji could sink his teeth into.
It was just a matter of discerning the pattern that accompanied sensor jutsu, now. He spent a few moments racking his brain. He must have fought at least a few other sensors, over the years. Odds were, if he delved into those memories, he'd be able to identify them, and the use of their techniques thanks to the ability to play the memory over and over. Then it would just be a matter of noting and comparing their chakra signatures.
He enacted the hiden jutsu that would allow him to travel back through his life, or lives, depending on the outlook. Surprisingly few of his memories were battles; he'd done an excellent job of concealing himself from the shinobi world, after all. Every so often, though, due to misfortune or capriciousness, he'd engaged other nukenin or village ninja in combat. He scrolled through those memories quickly...
And found one that fit the bill. A battle with a Suiton user, who'd covered the ground in ankle deep water. He'd proceeded to enact a jutsu, and then looked astonished at the results, voicing his surprise at Renji's lack of elemental affinities. That meant the jutsu employed had been meant to tell his affinity, which meant that it was a sensor technique, water empathy, in all likelihood.
He replayed those few seconds of the scene over and over again, carefully scrutinizing the remembered chakra signature as the jutsu was enacted, watching the split seconds before the surprise registered on the now very dead shinobi's face.
There it was. He'd found it. A little blip, in the signature. He replayed it over and over to be sure it wasn't just some trick of perception, but, no, it was definitely there.
Now to see if that “blip” appeared in any of his other sensor encounters.
He recalled an elderly shinobi he had spent time as the “young apprentice” of. The man had been a sensor, as well, and hadn't known much, but Renji had pretended he'd known less than he did in hopes of getting him to divulge a few choice secrets. It hadn't panned now, but at least the experience would yield some dividends in the here and now.
He made his way into those memories, watching the older man's chakra signature carefully throughout. There were several different times over the week they'd spent together that he could use. It took several replays for each instance, but there it was- slightly different, to be sure, but similar enough that it was the same anomaly. This time, thinking better of it, he paused from his trip down memory lane to do a quick sketch of the anomaly, and then went back to the first sensor and did the same. It would be much easier to compare and codify them with a visual representation he could place side by side (by side, once he'd dug out a few more).
All told, he had encountered, battled, or slain a full eight ninjas who served to flesh out his data. A few had used elemental empathy, and a few the Mind's Eye Gate method that he favored. If the “blip” hadn't been so damnably similar, he would have discounted the sample size as much too small to be statistically relevant, but it was there in ink on paper, plain to see.
A smile curled his lips as he realized a way that he could test his theory in real time. Yaku was a sensor, and a powerful one at that. Odds were that if Renji staked him out long enough via his own sensor jutsu, he'd be able to witness the other shinobi displaying just such a “blip” before long.
He engaged his Mind's Eye and went Yaku hunting, and sure enough, found him before long in the cavernous hideout. He closed his eyes, relaxing on his bed and simply waiting, assuming a nearly meditative state of mind that would allow him to detect such a small anomaly when it hopefully happened.
Finally, he observed what looked like a blip. Not wanting to get too thoroughly excited over what might have been a coincidence, he recorded what he'd seen for comparison quickly and continued “watching”. It would have been much easier just to inform Yaku of his intentions and get him to do it, but Renji tended to enjoy the convoluted.
On and off for a few days, he observed his partner's signature, most often from a distance, but occasionally, from nearby. Every so often he missed what he was looking for due to distraction or boredom, but eventually, his data pointed in a clear direction, and he had learned to perceive the presence of other sensors by means of observing their chakra signatures.
[1800-950=850] 931/850 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Augmented Senses
Some things were best left to dark alleys.
Renjiro was in a bit of a foul mood. Tracking down the man who had what he needed had proven more taxing than he'd expected. He'd known him in another life, more than a decade before, but it seemed that Yuushin had moved up in the world of illicit substances since then. A fresh face to the scene, like Renjiro's current one, wasn't fit for a meeting. He'd had to pull quite a few mental strings to arrange it, and finally managed to place his order.
Days had past, and the appointed hour had arrived. Renji entered the meeting place, an alley that sat between a club where women who had seen better days danced topless and a disgusting restaurant. Annoyance marked his features when he spotted the employee Yuushin had sent for the delivery. He was clearly a novice, judging by his twitchy demeanor and the way he continuously looked about. He even flinched when Renji approached, watching him uncertainly.
Renjiro eased his hand into his left pocket, rather than his right.
”You have it?” The ratty little man, a few years younger than the Yamanaka costume Renji was wearing, got right to the point.
Renji nodded, removing his hand from his pocket and proffering a thick envelope. The dealer snatched it quickly, opening it enough to spot the many bills within, then pulled a small black box from his own jacket and handed it off to Renjiro. He opened it, smiling curtly when he saw the vial.
”Pleasure doing business with you,” Renji cooed, a smirk developing on his lips as he turned and headed out of the alley. ”Give your boss my regards,” he called over his shoulder... letting his gaze linger, briefly, before he formed a single handseal and rounded the corner.
The exploding tags he'd laced into the left pocket envelopes detonated in a roar of fire and force, destroying the payment utterly and leaving the young criminal's corpse armless and horrifically burned.
Renji didn't like dealing with underlings, or being kept waiting.
He needed privacy. Well. He wanted privacy. This was going to leave him... interesting, and he didn't particularly want any other members of Henkou taking advantage of it.
After locking the door to his quarters, he settled down on the bed. He'd prepared. Water, some fresh fruit, some balls of rice. It had been quite a while since he'd done anything like this, but the fundamentals had stayed with him.
Removing the vial he'd procured from the box (a box he'd keep to commemorate the occasion, he decided), he spun the cap off carefully. Even though he technically hadn't paid for it, the clear liquid within was shockingly valuable. Sinking an eye dropper into the vial, he squeezed the bulb to fill the pipette and then secured the vial in the box once more.
Shifting into a lotus position, he tilted his head back until it was nearly parallel to the bed. He closed his left eye and opened the right as wide as he could. Levering the dropper into position over his eye, he gently squeezed, loosing three drops directly onto the surface of his eye. Despite the furious way that it water, he kept it open for a full ten seconds before emptying the other three drops onto his left eye.
Discarding the eye dropper, he closed both eyes. He forced his breathing into evenness, deep in and deep out. He had to tamp down a slight feeling of giddiness. It would be a few minutes before the potent hallucinogen kicked in, and he was excited to experience it. The number of drugs Renjiro had consumed in his enviable lifespan was more than most people could name, but none had been as enjoyable or as enlightening as substance that was even now seeping through his eyes. They had begun to faintly tingle, an odd sensation to be sure.
Focus, Renjiro. He slackened his features and continued his breathing, letting his thoughts drift aimlessly until they were nowhere at all. Once he'd cleared out his mental clutter, he activated his Mind's Eye technique, giving the hallucinogen a new sense to work with. He hadn't been a sensor, last time, so the results of this little experiment would likely be surprising. He was hoping that the mind expanding effects might lead to a breakthrough.
Where he was, he could only sense the rough direction of the nearest chakra signatures- those of the other Henkou members still within the Conclave. Even then, seeing them was a bit like trying to see something a horizon away with the sun in his eyes.
The onset was euphoria. It spread like golden warmth, pooling in his skull and then suffusing the rest of his body as it descended. He couldn't help himself but giggle, nearly silently at first, but the idea of doing some sort of monotonous meditative exercise when he felt like this...
He unfurled himself, laying his head on his pillow and closing his eyes. His giggling spiked. In the darkness that swam before his eyes, he could still just barely sense peripheral chakra signatures. They'd started moving, flickering in a uniform way, like trained and synchronized candle flames. It was hard to tell whether some of them were coming closer or he was being drawn toward them, but it hardly mattered.
The silvery-blue flame of one particular bit of chakra was looming over him. His mouth fell open as he “stared” at the hallucinogen-born manifestation. His eyes were still shut, but he could “see” more clearly than ever. It stretched above him, almost languidly, its edges in a constant state of flux that grew more and more geometric every second that Renji tried to follow the flowing movements.
The flickering had somehow created a tempo, and the chemical coursing through his brain transformed the ambient silence of his quarters and his stream of subconscious thought into a rhythm. Everyone had a theme song, even the most mundane and humdrum individual. Renjiro was a tympanic frenzy, ever changing and hungry, in a constant state of crescendo. If there were words, which he didn't doubt, they were barely a whisper in comparison to the glorious swell.
The rhythm changed the visual and the visual changed the rhythm. It reached a peak that was almost painful to comprehend, deafening and blinding. Throwing up a hand to shield his eyes and then burying his head in the pillow did nothing to ablate the nearly overwhelming stimulus.
He could sense the chakra-form changing behind him, evolving. It thinned and distorted. Pieces of it stretched out, lengthening into amorphous limbs, what might be termed arms and legs or maybe pseudopods. Whatever this was, it had no face, but the rippling at its edges was impossibly expressive. He stared up at it in wonder once he'd finished hugging his pillow, his eyes tearing up in a way that had nothing to do with the occularly absorbed drug. It was beautiful. It shifted what would have been its shoulders, quivered a bit. The articulation was so defined that it might as well have spoken. Open your eyes. Come with me.
He did as directed. When he opened his eyes, he was no longer in his quarters, or the Conclave, or anywhere he'd ever been. He was sitting on nothing, buoyed in what seemed to be a vast void. The alien thing was leaning over him still, and in the distance, he perceived what seemed to be pin prick stars. He counted only a few at first, but then he realized that there were more than he could ever count even with an indefinite time to do so.
It was chakra. A slight ripple from the ethereal thing hunched over him confirmed the revelation. Each of those pin pricks was a being with a chakra network.
”You aren't real,” he commented dryly to the chakra-thing. His voice seemed to stretch on the vacant air, bending back to echo in his ears and make him realize how petty he sounded. ”None of this is. This is the drug. I suppose you're my guide?”
Rather than replying with audible motion, it responded by moving. It didn't need to turn about- it just flowed away from him, as if it had always had what served as its back to him. Scuttling to his feet, he ran after it, somewhat amazed that the emptiness below him didn't induce vertigo.
Distance is only a construction of that which believe it exists in space. It seemed to just be plodding along, in its silver fire way, but the movements spoke volumes. Space is the one true illusion. There is only nothing, endless nothing, which surrounds a single point of white light which is everything extant. Nothing can exist without nothing. You are within it, as are your few allies and many enemies.
Renjiro rolled his eyes. ”Spare me the life lessons, figment of my imagination. Let's try to stay on topic.” He would have sworn that it shrugged, but it had paused when he'd spoken up, and continued, conveying where it had left off.
As is the world you inhabit. Constant contractions, that single point being but a point and filling up all the nothingness constantly and not at all because it is all that there is. Your perceptions, they pierce a single layer of the veil, but that single layer is all you will ever know regardless of how far you believe you can see.
The Yamanaka wasn't a stranger to philosophy. After all, every word of this was scrawled somewhere in his subconscious, and as such, he didn't have nearly as hard a time as he'd imagined. He nodded, thoughtfully. Chakra really was everything, or could be, for all he knew. His own jutsus supported the theory that bodies were little more than husks for chakra and soul. Fundamentally, all chakra was the same, and as such, it made sense that the ability to see beyond the crude matter draped over it was only limited by the human element of perception.
Even as he processed the thoughts, he could almost feel... something. He'd elicited the attention of something, and that something was converging, closing in. Had the chakra-form hurried its pace? It seemed a little more desperate as it shaped his lesson.
Even as you think you understand, you can only understand a lie. Knowing that you are being lied to by your own senses is not enough. You must know what is concealed, and you never will, not even in the death you have so long eluded. You see a point and emptiness around it, and then a point filling everything, but you will never imagine both at once. It is too much. You limit yourself in order to stay sane without even realizing it.
Something was definitely closing in. The stars. They seemed closer, just like this initial flame had at first. The existence of motion was immaterial. The existence of distance, dimension, it meant nothing at all. They were upon him and nowhere near him at once. In this void that a drug and his fractured mind had created, there was no escape and no danger. He couldn't help feeling a bit uneasy, though.
There are barriers in your mind you must break. Safeties. It will be painful, at first, but you will adjust quickly. The... voice?... seemed even more hurried. Their not-movement was even faster now, and for the first time, Renjiro felt as if they had a destination. Abruptly they stopped. The chakra-being had stopped utterly, silent in its way.
Renji pressed forward as the stars seemingly closed in, but after what might have been a few footsteps or a few lightyears, he was stopped. There was nothing in front of him, but he could continue no further. A barrier?
Shaking his head, he drew a deep breath and focused. He visualized, within the non-existent barrier, a single point of light. He visualized that pinhole of whiteness expanding evenly in every direction at once, becoming a blazing sphere. With a sense of urgency that he couldn't place, he realized that it hadn't been enough. He hadn't reached the edges of the barrier's nothingness.
He did it again. The sphere might as well have been the sun, for all it dwarfed him. It filled his entire field of vision, and yet still, it was not enough. He let it continue growing, and growing, and growing, until finally it had swallowed up everything and then him as well...
He could see nothing but whiteness that must have been his mind's interpretation of everything. Eventually the bleached background began to darken. Distinction existed once more.
The stars were all around him. They were chakra-shapes too, but they were even more alien and nightmarish than the thing that had led him to the barrier, told him how to destroy it. They surrounded him, cutting off any chance of escape, and then fell upon him.
Renji gasped for air, sucking it down greedily as if he'd just surfaced from underwater. Sight returned all at once, jarringly. Color seemed unfamiliar and foreign, and made his retina itch. The blanket beneath him seemed to scrape his skin. When he made the mistake of moving, shifting to his feet, his stomach lurched.
He was done vomiting before he realized he was. The caustic nature of the act, the contraction of stomach muscles, it was sheer agony, leaving him insensate. Feebly, he lifted some water, sipping and then gulping it in order to wash the bile down his throat.
When he had the notion to check the time, he realized that his little trip had only lasted perhaps ten minutes. To him, it had seemed much longer. Or maybe shorter. The more he tried to reconcile that, the more infuriated he got with his own psyche.
Eager to test the results of what he'd endured, he closed his eyes and centered himself. The drug was still in his system, resulting in a faint sense of movement and a decidedly pleasant tingle that helped keep his nausea at bay.
The same dim flickers appeared, though some of them had moved. Visualizing himself as a point, he expanded. The air seemed to rush out of his lungs as the range of his sensory technique suddenly rushed forward, riding the border of the expanding point.
It was almost too much. It hurt, literally, lighting up his skull with painful spots. There were too many chakra sources to consider all at once, and so he had to focus his attention here and there. It wasn't so much about learning to see farther. It was about realizing that he could, and then finding a way to do so in a manageable way.
He realized, almost with shock, that his perception had moved well out of the Henkou hideout, miles out. He'd reached the limit of his realization, of the barrier that he'd managed to break, and he wasn't sure that he wanted to risk breaking another before he'd mastered these newfound capabilities.
”Don't see why you couldn't have just said that,” he mumbled weakly and disagreeably to the chakra-construct, wherever it had gone, before he deactivated the jutsu and slumped backwards onto his bed, breathing raggedly.
2553/2200 Words
Some things were best left to dark alleys.
Renjiro was in a bit of a foul mood. Tracking down the man who had what he needed had proven more taxing than he'd expected. He'd known him in another life, more than a decade before, but it seemed that Yuushin had moved up in the world of illicit substances since then. A fresh face to the scene, like Renjiro's current one, wasn't fit for a meeting. He'd had to pull quite a few mental strings to arrange it, and finally managed to place his order.
Days had past, and the appointed hour had arrived. Renji entered the meeting place, an alley that sat between a club where women who had seen better days danced topless and a disgusting restaurant. Annoyance marked his features when he spotted the employee Yuushin had sent for the delivery. He was clearly a novice, judging by his twitchy demeanor and the way he continuously looked about. He even flinched when Renji approached, watching him uncertainly.
Renjiro eased his hand into his left pocket, rather than his right.
”You have it?” The ratty little man, a few years younger than the Yamanaka costume Renji was wearing, got right to the point.
Renji nodded, removing his hand from his pocket and proffering a thick envelope. The dealer snatched it quickly, opening it enough to spot the many bills within, then pulled a small black box from his own jacket and handed it off to Renjiro. He opened it, smiling curtly when he saw the vial.
”Pleasure doing business with you,” Renji cooed, a smirk developing on his lips as he turned and headed out of the alley. ”Give your boss my regards,” he called over his shoulder... letting his gaze linger, briefly, before he formed a single handseal and rounded the corner.
The exploding tags he'd laced into the left pocket envelopes detonated in a roar of fire and force, destroying the payment utterly and leaving the young criminal's corpse armless and horrifically burned.
Renji didn't like dealing with underlings, or being kept waiting.
He needed privacy. Well. He wanted privacy. This was going to leave him... interesting, and he didn't particularly want any other members of Henkou taking advantage of it.
After locking the door to his quarters, he settled down on the bed. He'd prepared. Water, some fresh fruit, some balls of rice. It had been quite a while since he'd done anything like this, but the fundamentals had stayed with him.
Removing the vial he'd procured from the box (a box he'd keep to commemorate the occasion, he decided), he spun the cap off carefully. Even though he technically hadn't paid for it, the clear liquid within was shockingly valuable. Sinking an eye dropper into the vial, he squeezed the bulb to fill the pipette and then secured the vial in the box once more.
Shifting into a lotus position, he tilted his head back until it was nearly parallel to the bed. He closed his left eye and opened the right as wide as he could. Levering the dropper into position over his eye, he gently squeezed, loosing three drops directly onto the surface of his eye. Despite the furious way that it water, he kept it open for a full ten seconds before emptying the other three drops onto his left eye.
Discarding the eye dropper, he closed both eyes. He forced his breathing into evenness, deep in and deep out. He had to tamp down a slight feeling of giddiness. It would be a few minutes before the potent hallucinogen kicked in, and he was excited to experience it. The number of drugs Renjiro had consumed in his enviable lifespan was more than most people could name, but none had been as enjoyable or as enlightening as substance that was even now seeping through his eyes. They had begun to faintly tingle, an odd sensation to be sure.
Focus, Renjiro. He slackened his features and continued his breathing, letting his thoughts drift aimlessly until they were nowhere at all. Once he'd cleared out his mental clutter, he activated his Mind's Eye technique, giving the hallucinogen a new sense to work with. He hadn't been a sensor, last time, so the results of this little experiment would likely be surprising. He was hoping that the mind expanding effects might lead to a breakthrough.
Where he was, he could only sense the rough direction of the nearest chakra signatures- those of the other Henkou members still within the Conclave. Even then, seeing them was a bit like trying to see something a horizon away with the sun in his eyes.
The onset was euphoria. It spread like golden warmth, pooling in his skull and then suffusing the rest of his body as it descended. He couldn't help himself but giggle, nearly silently at first, but the idea of doing some sort of monotonous meditative exercise when he felt like this...
He unfurled himself, laying his head on his pillow and closing his eyes. His giggling spiked. In the darkness that swam before his eyes, he could still just barely sense peripheral chakra signatures. They'd started moving, flickering in a uniform way, like trained and synchronized candle flames. It was hard to tell whether some of them were coming closer or he was being drawn toward them, but it hardly mattered.
The silvery-blue flame of one particular bit of chakra was looming over him. His mouth fell open as he “stared” at the hallucinogen-born manifestation. His eyes were still shut, but he could “see” more clearly than ever. It stretched above him, almost languidly, its edges in a constant state of flux that grew more and more geometric every second that Renji tried to follow the flowing movements.
The flickering had somehow created a tempo, and the chemical coursing through his brain transformed the ambient silence of his quarters and his stream of subconscious thought into a rhythm. Everyone had a theme song, even the most mundane and humdrum individual. Renjiro was a tympanic frenzy, ever changing and hungry, in a constant state of crescendo. If there were words, which he didn't doubt, they were barely a whisper in comparison to the glorious swell.
The rhythm changed the visual and the visual changed the rhythm. It reached a peak that was almost painful to comprehend, deafening and blinding. Throwing up a hand to shield his eyes and then burying his head in the pillow did nothing to ablate the nearly overwhelming stimulus.
He could sense the chakra-form changing behind him, evolving. It thinned and distorted. Pieces of it stretched out, lengthening into amorphous limbs, what might be termed arms and legs or maybe pseudopods. Whatever this was, it had no face, but the rippling at its edges was impossibly expressive. He stared up at it in wonder once he'd finished hugging his pillow, his eyes tearing up in a way that had nothing to do with the occularly absorbed drug. It was beautiful. It shifted what would have been its shoulders, quivered a bit. The articulation was so defined that it might as well have spoken. Open your eyes. Come with me.
He did as directed. When he opened his eyes, he was no longer in his quarters, or the Conclave, or anywhere he'd ever been. He was sitting on nothing, buoyed in what seemed to be a vast void. The alien thing was leaning over him still, and in the distance, he perceived what seemed to be pin prick stars. He counted only a few at first, but then he realized that there were more than he could ever count even with an indefinite time to do so.
It was chakra. A slight ripple from the ethereal thing hunched over him confirmed the revelation. Each of those pin pricks was a being with a chakra network.
”You aren't real,” he commented dryly to the chakra-thing. His voice seemed to stretch on the vacant air, bending back to echo in his ears and make him realize how petty he sounded. ”None of this is. This is the drug. I suppose you're my guide?”
Rather than replying with audible motion, it responded by moving. It didn't need to turn about- it just flowed away from him, as if it had always had what served as its back to him. Scuttling to his feet, he ran after it, somewhat amazed that the emptiness below him didn't induce vertigo.
Distance is only a construction of that which believe it exists in space. It seemed to just be plodding along, in its silver fire way, but the movements spoke volumes. Space is the one true illusion. There is only nothing, endless nothing, which surrounds a single point of white light which is everything extant. Nothing can exist without nothing. You are within it, as are your few allies and many enemies.
Renjiro rolled his eyes. ”Spare me the life lessons, figment of my imagination. Let's try to stay on topic.” He would have sworn that it shrugged, but it had paused when he'd spoken up, and continued, conveying where it had left off.
As is the world you inhabit. Constant contractions, that single point being but a point and filling up all the nothingness constantly and not at all because it is all that there is. Your perceptions, they pierce a single layer of the veil, but that single layer is all you will ever know regardless of how far you believe you can see.
The Yamanaka wasn't a stranger to philosophy. After all, every word of this was scrawled somewhere in his subconscious, and as such, he didn't have nearly as hard a time as he'd imagined. He nodded, thoughtfully. Chakra really was everything, or could be, for all he knew. His own jutsus supported the theory that bodies were little more than husks for chakra and soul. Fundamentally, all chakra was the same, and as such, it made sense that the ability to see beyond the crude matter draped over it was only limited by the human element of perception.
Even as he processed the thoughts, he could almost feel... something. He'd elicited the attention of something, and that something was converging, closing in. Had the chakra-form hurried its pace? It seemed a little more desperate as it shaped his lesson.
Even as you think you understand, you can only understand a lie. Knowing that you are being lied to by your own senses is not enough. You must know what is concealed, and you never will, not even in the death you have so long eluded. You see a point and emptiness around it, and then a point filling everything, but you will never imagine both at once. It is too much. You limit yourself in order to stay sane without even realizing it.
Something was definitely closing in. The stars. They seemed closer, just like this initial flame had at first. The existence of motion was immaterial. The existence of distance, dimension, it meant nothing at all. They were upon him and nowhere near him at once. In this void that a drug and his fractured mind had created, there was no escape and no danger. He couldn't help feeling a bit uneasy, though.
There are barriers in your mind you must break. Safeties. It will be painful, at first, but you will adjust quickly. The... voice?... seemed even more hurried. Their not-movement was even faster now, and for the first time, Renjiro felt as if they had a destination. Abruptly they stopped. The chakra-being had stopped utterly, silent in its way.
Renji pressed forward as the stars seemingly closed in, but after what might have been a few footsteps or a few lightyears, he was stopped. There was nothing in front of him, but he could continue no further. A barrier?
Shaking his head, he drew a deep breath and focused. He visualized, within the non-existent barrier, a single point of light. He visualized that pinhole of whiteness expanding evenly in every direction at once, becoming a blazing sphere. With a sense of urgency that he couldn't place, he realized that it hadn't been enough. He hadn't reached the edges of the barrier's nothingness.
He did it again. The sphere might as well have been the sun, for all it dwarfed him. It filled his entire field of vision, and yet still, it was not enough. He let it continue growing, and growing, and growing, until finally it had swallowed up everything and then him as well...
He could see nothing but whiteness that must have been his mind's interpretation of everything. Eventually the bleached background began to darken. Distinction existed once more.
The stars were all around him. They were chakra-shapes too, but they were even more alien and nightmarish than the thing that had led him to the barrier, told him how to destroy it. They surrounded him, cutting off any chance of escape, and then fell upon him.
Renji gasped for air, sucking it down greedily as if he'd just surfaced from underwater. Sight returned all at once, jarringly. Color seemed unfamiliar and foreign, and made his retina itch. The blanket beneath him seemed to scrape his skin. When he made the mistake of moving, shifting to his feet, his stomach lurched.
He was done vomiting before he realized he was. The caustic nature of the act, the contraction of stomach muscles, it was sheer agony, leaving him insensate. Feebly, he lifted some water, sipping and then gulping it in order to wash the bile down his throat.
When he had the notion to check the time, he realized that his little trip had only lasted perhaps ten minutes. To him, it had seemed much longer. Or maybe shorter. The more he tried to reconcile that, the more infuriated he got with his own psyche.
Eager to test the results of what he'd endured, he closed his eyes and centered himself. The drug was still in his system, resulting in a faint sense of movement and a decidedly pleasant tingle that helped keep his nausea at bay.
The same dim flickers appeared, though some of them had moved. Visualizing himself as a point, he expanded. The air seemed to rush out of his lungs as the range of his sensory technique suddenly rushed forward, riding the border of the expanding point.
It was almost too much. It hurt, literally, lighting up his skull with painful spots. There were too many chakra sources to consider all at once, and so he had to focus his attention here and there. It wasn't so much about learning to see farther. It was about realizing that he could, and then finding a way to do so in a manageable way.
He realized, almost with shock, that his perception had moved well out of the Henkou hideout, miles out. He'd reached the limit of his realization, of the barrier that he'd managed to break, and he wasn't sure that he wanted to risk breaking another before he'd mastered these newfound capabilities.
”Don't see why you couldn't have just said that,” he mumbled weakly and disagreeably to the chakra-construct, wherever it had gone, before he deactivated the jutsu and slumped backwards onto his bed, breathing raggedly.
2553/2200 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Container Summoning: Activation
He'd already designed the corresponding seal. Now, he needed to create a jutsu that would activate it properly, creating a beacon of sorts that would provide a guide for the dimensional forces that would transport the sealed container from his dead body to his waiting hand. It was a little more complex than a usual chakra kai... or actually, it was quite similar, but different in nature. In fact, it would require some more chakra, he imagined, if he wanted it to work as intended.
A single jutsu to summon several instances of the same seal. He already knew of a variation on chakra kai that activated multiple seals, so that would be the foundation upon which he would build.
He inscribed the seal on a single holster of senbon. Best to start small. He knew the elements of the seal that his chakra would be “calling out to”, for lack of a better term. The difficulty would be molding his chakra in just such a way that it resonated with the seal, activating it and others like it correctly.
He began with the monkey seal, leveling one hand flat and then placing the other atop it so that palm touched palm and the thumb and small finger of each hand interlocked. Chakra began to well forth and he focused it, letting it build for a few seconds.
He lifted his hands, steepled them so that the tips of most of his fingers touched, save for the ring and index fingers, which he crooked in an overlapping fashion. The bird seal. The chakra seemed to lighten slightly, to hum without making any sound at all. Not quite there, yet.
He interlocked all of his fingers save for his index fingers, which he pressed tightly together and pointed toward his chin. The explosive tiger seal. He hoped that the power it would sink into the molded chakra would be sufficient to give the jutsu the oomph it needed...
But the chakra dissipated without effect. The holster sat on the table nearby, taunting him.
He tried again, this time starting with the tiger seal, then shifting easily to monkey, then bird. A more subtle effect, due to the change in order. Still, it wasn't enough, or it wasn't correct. He tried tiger, bird, monkey with similar non-results.
Sighing in vague frustration, he reordered the seals once more, beginning again with the monkey seal to provide a firm foundation relative to the other two seals involved. Next, he went to tiger, fueling the technique with the raw power. Finally, airy bird, diffusing the effect. Instinct told him he'd gotten it right, and so he released the chakra, forming the beacon...
And the holster winked out of existence briefly, reappearing virtually in his hand. He set it down once more, then sealed his scroll case and kunai pouch as well. A repetition of the jutsu summoned the three objects and their contents nearly halfway to him. It needed more power, and so he integrated another tiger seal, monkey, tiger, bird, tiger.
This time when he released it, all three leapt through the blind void into his grasp.
[1100-950=400] 524/400 Words
He'd already designed the corresponding seal. Now, he needed to create a jutsu that would activate it properly, creating a beacon of sorts that would provide a guide for the dimensional forces that would transport the sealed container from his dead body to his waiting hand. It was a little more complex than a usual chakra kai... or actually, it was quite similar, but different in nature. In fact, it would require some more chakra, he imagined, if he wanted it to work as intended.
A single jutsu to summon several instances of the same seal. He already knew of a variation on chakra kai that activated multiple seals, so that would be the foundation upon which he would build.
He inscribed the seal on a single holster of senbon. Best to start small. He knew the elements of the seal that his chakra would be “calling out to”, for lack of a better term. The difficulty would be molding his chakra in just such a way that it resonated with the seal, activating it and others like it correctly.
He began with the monkey seal, leveling one hand flat and then placing the other atop it so that palm touched palm and the thumb and small finger of each hand interlocked. Chakra began to well forth and he focused it, letting it build for a few seconds.
He lifted his hands, steepled them so that the tips of most of his fingers touched, save for the ring and index fingers, which he crooked in an overlapping fashion. The bird seal. The chakra seemed to lighten slightly, to hum without making any sound at all. Not quite there, yet.
He interlocked all of his fingers save for his index fingers, which he pressed tightly together and pointed toward his chin. The explosive tiger seal. He hoped that the power it would sink into the molded chakra would be sufficient to give the jutsu the oomph it needed...
But the chakra dissipated without effect. The holster sat on the table nearby, taunting him.
He tried again, this time starting with the tiger seal, then shifting easily to monkey, then bird. A more subtle effect, due to the change in order. Still, it wasn't enough, or it wasn't correct. He tried tiger, bird, monkey with similar non-results.
Sighing in vague frustration, he reordered the seals once more, beginning again with the monkey seal to provide a firm foundation relative to the other two seals involved. Next, he went to tiger, fueling the technique with the raw power. Finally, airy bird, diffusing the effect. Instinct told him he'd gotten it right, and so he released the chakra, forming the beacon...
And the holster winked out of existence briefly, reappearing virtually in his hand. He set it down once more, then sealed his scroll case and kunai pouch as well. A repetition of the jutsu summoned the three objects and their contents nearly halfway to him. It needed more power, and so he integrated another tiger seal, monkey, tiger, bird, tiger.
This time when he released it, all three leapt through the blind void into his grasp.
[1100-950=400] 524/400 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Container Summoning Seal
A quandry had presented itself. He a needed a means to summon his effects, once he'd been killed and transported into one of his spare bodies. A simple seal and activation combination should suffice, but even as simple as the idea was in theory, transportation wasn't something he had a lot of practice with.
The potential kanji that would work populated a fairly long list. Travel, conveyance, teleportation, leap, jump, move, movement, transportation, dimension, dimensions, pass... He fetched his paper and pen and began scrawling them down, adding the utility symbols and kanji that would serve to strengthen and stabilize the overall design.
He began cobbling the possibilities together, narrowing down his list until he'd found the ideal elements. Next came finding a suitable arrangement. This was where his inexperience came in. He'd never mapped out a summoning seal before. It wasn't quite the same as unsealing, which he'd managed at a much more complex level, though, it wasn't quite that different either.
He began experimenting with arrangements, drawing out line forms to test the efficacy of each. Once he'd created a half dozen or so, he began running chakra through them, molding it and then imbuing the design with it, feeling out how evenly and easily it moved throughout.
The arrangement that worked best was the simplest; a standard circle two inches in diameter, bisected by a wavy sort of line, similar in appearance to a standard yin yang symbol. With that done, he began arranging the pared down group of kanji and symbols along the lines, working them into repetitive patterns that would, when activated with a corresponding jutsu he'd also have to create, power the element of transportation, sending whatever container...
“Oh balls,” he muttered, when he realized that he needed to incorporate elements that would move the contents of the container as well. He went back to the proverbial drawing board, redesigning the kanji formula from the ground up to account for the stipulations he needed. Only once he was certain that he'd incorporated the necessary symbols did he once again test the integrity of the seal, channeling chakra through it for a moment to ensure that there were no flaws in the design inherently.
There were a few hiccups. Nothing major, but the defects would need to be addressed before he could proceed with the next phase. He found the problems quickly enough, a few kanji that overlapped rather than merely touched, and then he recreated the seal without the faulty elements.
[1100-950=400] 418/400 Words
A quandry had presented itself. He a needed a means to summon his effects, once he'd been killed and transported into one of his spare bodies. A simple seal and activation combination should suffice, but even as simple as the idea was in theory, transportation wasn't something he had a lot of practice with.
The potential kanji that would work populated a fairly long list. Travel, conveyance, teleportation, leap, jump, move, movement, transportation, dimension, dimensions, pass... He fetched his paper and pen and began scrawling them down, adding the utility symbols and kanji that would serve to strengthen and stabilize the overall design.
He began cobbling the possibilities together, narrowing down his list until he'd found the ideal elements. Next came finding a suitable arrangement. This was where his inexperience came in. He'd never mapped out a summoning seal before. It wasn't quite the same as unsealing, which he'd managed at a much more complex level, though, it wasn't quite that different either.
He began experimenting with arrangements, drawing out line forms to test the efficacy of each. Once he'd created a half dozen or so, he began running chakra through them, molding it and then imbuing the design with it, feeling out how evenly and easily it moved throughout.
The arrangement that worked best was the simplest; a standard circle two inches in diameter, bisected by a wavy sort of line, similar in appearance to a standard yin yang symbol. With that done, he began arranging the pared down group of kanji and symbols along the lines, working them into repetitive patterns that would, when activated with a corresponding jutsu he'd also have to create, power the element of transportation, sending whatever container...
“Oh balls,” he muttered, when he realized that he needed to incorporate elements that would move the contents of the container as well. He went back to the proverbial drawing board, redesigning the kanji formula from the ground up to account for the stipulations he needed. Only once he was certain that he'd incorporated the necessary symbols did he once again test the integrity of the seal, channeling chakra through it for a moment to ensure that there were no flaws in the design inherently.
There were a few hiccups. Nothing major, but the defects would need to be addressed before he could proceed with the next phase. He found the problems quickly enough, a few kanji that overlapped rather than merely touched, and then he recreated the seal without the faulty elements.
[1100-950=400] 418/400 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Barrier Encampment Method
It was time to find a more interesting use for exploding tags. There was a technique that Renji had heard of but never experienced himself, and with his recent plunge into the art of sealing jutsu, he was reasonably confidant that he could pull it off with some experimentation. He needed relative privacy, his entire stash of exploding tags, and a plentiful supply of ink.
Oh. And some planning. He'd need that too. In order to achieve the effect in question- having the fuuin trigger all four tags simultaneously when someone crossed over it- he'd need to create several parameters within the seal itself. The simplest, he knew already, would be linking the four tags for simultaneous detonation. He started there, quickly sketching out on a piece of paper the symbols that he felt would do the trick. It was essentially just a circuit for chakra to pass through. If that chakra acted in a manner similar to a release jutsu's chakra, all of the tags would explode. Easy enough. Constructing such a circuit was well within Renji's command of fuuin.
The next element equated to a trigger. The release chakra, so to speak, though it was hardly so simply as encoding a few kais into the circuit. Well. It was nearly like that, but it was a touch more complex since the kanji that would simulate the exploding tag release needed to be integrated in such a way that it didn't disrupt the circle. Again, the uncomplicated act of creating a seal that could contain such specifically molded chakra was a veritable walk in the park. He did it in minutes. The aspect that elevated this jutsu to the intermediate level, or one of them, was meshing it. That took a few more minutes, and a few more besides. It was nearly like surgery, or perhaps more accurately, some insanely tedious brand of art. He had to nudge and adjust the symbols that made the circuit around the trigger, had to force small segments of the kanji to overlap without occluding one another.
The final step was the trickiest by far. A condition needed to be built into the trigger. Any movement over the boundary of the fuuin would have been fairly elementary, but that would allow a thrown kunai or shuriken to detonate the trap prematurely. No, it needed to be limited specifically to living beings passing the threshold in order to counteract the barrier being counteracted.
After a few faulty drafts, he finally found the solution he was looking for. Chakra systems. It was a little more complex than he would have liked, but if he essentially programmed the barrier to only react when something with a chakra circulatory system crossed the line, there was a vastly smaller chance that the trap would accidentally or intentionally be set off by anything but a living being of some sort.
With his notes in hand, along with a fresh cut of meat, he trundled out into the woods to test the finished product. He set the meat on the ground, and then placed four exploding tags around it, forming a box roughly 3 meters by 3 meters around it with a tag at each corner. From there, it was a matter of inscribing his notes into the ground on a larger scale. He hit a few snags, but with patience and trepidation completed the larger version of the prototype seal he had designed.
It was now a matter of waiting. Taking up a stealthy position, he meditated for a while, waiting for some hapless woodland creature to come along and notice the meal he'd left on the ground. A mangy looking dog, probably a stray came along and loped hungrily to set upon the bait...
… only to be blown into clumps of fur and chunks of meat when all four seals went off at once around it.
[1500-950=550] 649/550
It was time to find a more interesting use for exploding tags. There was a technique that Renji had heard of but never experienced himself, and with his recent plunge into the art of sealing jutsu, he was reasonably confidant that he could pull it off with some experimentation. He needed relative privacy, his entire stash of exploding tags, and a plentiful supply of ink.
Oh. And some planning. He'd need that too. In order to achieve the effect in question- having the fuuin trigger all four tags simultaneously when someone crossed over it- he'd need to create several parameters within the seal itself. The simplest, he knew already, would be linking the four tags for simultaneous detonation. He started there, quickly sketching out on a piece of paper the symbols that he felt would do the trick. It was essentially just a circuit for chakra to pass through. If that chakra acted in a manner similar to a release jutsu's chakra, all of the tags would explode. Easy enough. Constructing such a circuit was well within Renji's command of fuuin.
The next element equated to a trigger. The release chakra, so to speak, though it was hardly so simply as encoding a few kais into the circuit. Well. It was nearly like that, but it was a touch more complex since the kanji that would simulate the exploding tag release needed to be integrated in such a way that it didn't disrupt the circle. Again, the uncomplicated act of creating a seal that could contain such specifically molded chakra was a veritable walk in the park. He did it in minutes. The aspect that elevated this jutsu to the intermediate level, or one of them, was meshing it. That took a few more minutes, and a few more besides. It was nearly like surgery, or perhaps more accurately, some insanely tedious brand of art. He had to nudge and adjust the symbols that made the circuit around the trigger, had to force small segments of the kanji to overlap without occluding one another.
The final step was the trickiest by far. A condition needed to be built into the trigger. Any movement over the boundary of the fuuin would have been fairly elementary, but that would allow a thrown kunai or shuriken to detonate the trap prematurely. No, it needed to be limited specifically to living beings passing the threshold in order to counteract the barrier being counteracted.
After a few faulty drafts, he finally found the solution he was looking for. Chakra systems. It was a little more complex than he would have liked, but if he essentially programmed the barrier to only react when something with a chakra circulatory system crossed the line, there was a vastly smaller chance that the trap would accidentally or intentionally be set off by anything but a living being of some sort.
With his notes in hand, along with a fresh cut of meat, he trundled out into the woods to test the finished product. He set the meat on the ground, and then placed four exploding tags around it, forming a box roughly 3 meters by 3 meters around it with a tag at each corner. From there, it was a matter of inscribing his notes into the ground on a larger scale. He hit a few snags, but with patience and trepidation completed the larger version of the prototype seal he had designed.
It was now a matter of waiting. Taking up a stealthy position, he meditated for a while, waiting for some hapless woodland creature to come along and notice the meal he'd left on the ground. A mangy looking dog, probably a stray came along and loped hungrily to set upon the bait...
… only to be blown into clumps of fur and chunks of meat when all four seals went off at once around it.
[1500-950=550] 649/550
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Spare Body Release: Death
It was time to finish what he had started. What had begun as a notion when he'd developed several other fuuin was nearing fruition. He had already developed one method of cheating death; now, he would parley it into yet another. Only one element remained to achieve his ends- a means of managing his additional bodies, to facilitate the transfers.
It began as always with brainstorming. He settled in to create a vocabulary of symbols and kanji that would prove useful for the sake of this endeavor. He scribbled down several in short order, more obvious ones, those that would form the core of the fuuin. Release, body, death, mind, soul, chakra. He spent quite a few more minutes diversifying that list, adding less obvious choices, and then recording more utilitarian symbols that he planned to use, elements that would stabilize and unite the various parts of the fuuin, allowing it to function flawlessly every time.
He already had a mechanism for triggering a seal upon death, developed along with the technique that this one would supplement. He retrieved the supplies he would need, plentiful ink and the not quite transparent paper that he favored for his fuuin experimentation. He copied, meticulously, his vocabulary list, at a size that would be appropriate for integration with one of his Spare Body seals. He also copied out the crux of the death trigger that he had developed.
Next he carefully cut them out into separate pieces and set them aside for the sake of arranging them over the foundation of the seal. It was a technique that he was more and more proud of, as far as fuuin design went, far more effective than continually editing or redoing seals as he went.
It was time to lay down a basic frame work for the seal. Grabbing a fresh piece of tracing paper, he proceeded, one tiny dot at a time, to map out the general shape it would take. The arrangement was just as important as the actual content, after all. There was a power to the geometry involved, and by now, Renji understood enough of that geometry to quickly lay out an effective starting point.
He began fiddling his little “puzzle” pieces into place, nudging them with surgical precision in such a way that they followed the “map” he'd recorded. It was tedious, agonizing work. A single forceful breath or slip of the finger could disrupt everything. After several long minutes, he had arrayed the symbols and kanji in such a way that he was satisfied. He carefully laid a fresh sheet of tracing paper over the whole affair, and then, with a practiced, delicate touch, transferred the whole design to the new sheet.
With that finished, he began manually filling in the design, which resembled a mobius strip, with the stabilizing elements. They would direct the flow of chakra through the seal with efficiency, powering the trigger and the effect in an even way that would maintain the energy uniformly.
For the sake of testing, he elected to use a more simple trigger. The death trigger was already established, and worked perfectly. No need for a test that could potentially cost him a body. He quickly worked in a standard release trigger, and then after double checking the entire design, located his scroll case and unfurled the scroll that contained Ichiro's preserved form.
He integrated the new seal slowly, taking pains to ensure that he wasn't disrupting any of the elements of either seal. It took some creativity, but after the fact he went back to his prototype and added in the “connectors” so that in the future, he would need only to place the whole seal in the right location.
He molded chakra with a series of hand seals, building it up until he had mustered enough to power the seal. He channeled the energy into the design slowly, ensuring that it flowed evenly thanks to the shaping and stabilizing efforts he had made. He could feel something amiss as he did and stopped abruptly, going back to the prototype an studying carefully for any defects that would result in the problem he'd encountered.
He found it. A single reversed kanji. The tracing paper puzzle piece must have flipped over at some point. Correcting it in both the prototype and the test seal, he molded his chakra again. This time, it permeated the fuuin seamlessly.
He formed the single handseal that would activate his improvised trigger. The symbols on the scroll glowed, and then the dimensional effect they represented broke down, releasing Ichiro's prone form a few meters away, like the new fuuin was meant to.
He sealed the boy's body away again before going back to his design and replacing the standard trigger with the more complex death trigger. Placing a piece of fresh tracing paper over the prototype, he replicated all of the design save for the standard triggering method. Placing his traced out death trigger beneath it, he methodically copied it into place, then completed it with a series of intricate tendrils of connective kanji. Furtively, he molded some chakra and channeled it through the seal in order to ensure that the circuit was complete.
Satisfied with the final component of his technique, he integrated the new seal with the Spare Body seal.
[1800-950=850] 890/850 Words
It was time to finish what he had started. What had begun as a notion when he'd developed several other fuuin was nearing fruition. He had already developed one method of cheating death; now, he would parley it into yet another. Only one element remained to achieve his ends- a means of managing his additional bodies, to facilitate the transfers.
It began as always with brainstorming. He settled in to create a vocabulary of symbols and kanji that would prove useful for the sake of this endeavor. He scribbled down several in short order, more obvious ones, those that would form the core of the fuuin. Release, body, death, mind, soul, chakra. He spent quite a few more minutes diversifying that list, adding less obvious choices, and then recording more utilitarian symbols that he planned to use, elements that would stabilize and unite the various parts of the fuuin, allowing it to function flawlessly every time.
He already had a mechanism for triggering a seal upon death, developed along with the technique that this one would supplement. He retrieved the supplies he would need, plentiful ink and the not quite transparent paper that he favored for his fuuin experimentation. He copied, meticulously, his vocabulary list, at a size that would be appropriate for integration with one of his Spare Body seals. He also copied out the crux of the death trigger that he had developed.
Next he carefully cut them out into separate pieces and set them aside for the sake of arranging them over the foundation of the seal. It was a technique that he was more and more proud of, as far as fuuin design went, far more effective than continually editing or redoing seals as he went.
It was time to lay down a basic frame work for the seal. Grabbing a fresh piece of tracing paper, he proceeded, one tiny dot at a time, to map out the general shape it would take. The arrangement was just as important as the actual content, after all. There was a power to the geometry involved, and by now, Renji understood enough of that geometry to quickly lay out an effective starting point.
He began fiddling his little “puzzle” pieces into place, nudging them with surgical precision in such a way that they followed the “map” he'd recorded. It was tedious, agonizing work. A single forceful breath or slip of the finger could disrupt everything. After several long minutes, he had arrayed the symbols and kanji in such a way that he was satisfied. He carefully laid a fresh sheet of tracing paper over the whole affair, and then, with a practiced, delicate touch, transferred the whole design to the new sheet.
With that finished, he began manually filling in the design, which resembled a mobius strip, with the stabilizing elements. They would direct the flow of chakra through the seal with efficiency, powering the trigger and the effect in an even way that would maintain the energy uniformly.
For the sake of testing, he elected to use a more simple trigger. The death trigger was already established, and worked perfectly. No need for a test that could potentially cost him a body. He quickly worked in a standard release trigger, and then after double checking the entire design, located his scroll case and unfurled the scroll that contained Ichiro's preserved form.
He integrated the new seal slowly, taking pains to ensure that he wasn't disrupting any of the elements of either seal. It took some creativity, but after the fact he went back to his prototype and added in the “connectors” so that in the future, he would need only to place the whole seal in the right location.
He molded chakra with a series of hand seals, building it up until he had mustered enough to power the seal. He channeled the energy into the design slowly, ensuring that it flowed evenly thanks to the shaping and stabilizing efforts he had made. He could feel something amiss as he did and stopped abruptly, going back to the prototype an studying carefully for any defects that would result in the problem he'd encountered.
He found it. A single reversed kanji. The tracing paper puzzle piece must have flipped over at some point. Correcting it in both the prototype and the test seal, he molded his chakra again. This time, it permeated the fuuin seamlessly.
He formed the single handseal that would activate his improvised trigger. The symbols on the scroll glowed, and then the dimensional effect they represented broke down, releasing Ichiro's prone form a few meters away, like the new fuuin was meant to.
He sealed the boy's body away again before going back to his design and replacing the standard trigger with the more complex death trigger. Placing a piece of fresh tracing paper over the prototype, he replicated all of the design save for the standard triggering method. Placing his traced out death trigger beneath it, he methodically copied it into place, then completed it with a series of intricate tendrils of connective kanji. Furtively, he molded some chakra and channeled it through the seal in order to ensure that the circuit was complete.
Satisfied with the final component of his technique, he integrated the new seal with the Spare Body seal.
[1800-950=850] 890/850 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Exploding Seal
Making his own exploding tags. It was a worthwhile investment in a few different ways, and so Renji decided it was high time to get down to it. This was going to be simple enough, by comparison to the masterworks of fuuinjutsu he had forged in the past weeks. Perfunctory, really.
He set himself up with paper, cutting it down to the six inch by two inch rectangle that was the standard for the seal, and with ink as well. Grabbing one of his already written exploding notes, he sat down and began copying the symbols and kanji marked upon it onto his blank tag, doing his best to transcribe them all exactly, down to their positioning on the tag.
The first try was murky at best. A few of the symbols were just a hair out of alignment, and several needed a bit of work before they would serve the way they were meant to. A loop here, just a tidge to wide. A descending line that descended too far.
Scrapping the first note, he tried another. This time, he focused on getting the spacing correct, paying a little less heed to the formation of the actual fuuin elements themselves. Size and positioning were more important. In fact, after an annoyingly useless second attempt that was much to similar to the first, he mapped out the different tiny scrawls using single, pin prick dots. He placed one wherever the center of a kanji should have been, and after two goes, had perfectly simulated the spacing.
From there, he expanded on the tiny marks, painstakingly recreating each kanji one at a time from the center he had marked for it. When he was finished, he focused and molded his chakra, allowing it to seep into the ink to empower the explosive force it would yield.
He had the good sense to go outside to test it, and after standing a good distance back from the tag, he activated it with a single handseal. The relatively small explosion was all the signification of success that he needed.
It was just a matter of being able to jot down the inscription quickly on his own now. Retreating to his room, he repeated the design, slowly at first to ensure intactness, but then more and more quickly until he was able to splash it across the small slip of paper with what seemed like only a few swipes of his pen.
[1100-950=400] 408/400 Words
Making his own exploding tags. It was a worthwhile investment in a few different ways, and so Renji decided it was high time to get down to it. This was going to be simple enough, by comparison to the masterworks of fuuinjutsu he had forged in the past weeks. Perfunctory, really.
He set himself up with paper, cutting it down to the six inch by two inch rectangle that was the standard for the seal, and with ink as well. Grabbing one of his already written exploding notes, he sat down and began copying the symbols and kanji marked upon it onto his blank tag, doing his best to transcribe them all exactly, down to their positioning on the tag.
The first try was murky at best. A few of the symbols were just a hair out of alignment, and several needed a bit of work before they would serve the way they were meant to. A loop here, just a tidge to wide. A descending line that descended too far.
Scrapping the first note, he tried another. This time, he focused on getting the spacing correct, paying a little less heed to the formation of the actual fuuin elements themselves. Size and positioning were more important. In fact, after an annoyingly useless second attempt that was much to similar to the first, he mapped out the different tiny scrawls using single, pin prick dots. He placed one wherever the center of a kanji should have been, and after two goes, had perfectly simulated the spacing.
From there, he expanded on the tiny marks, painstakingly recreating each kanji one at a time from the center he had marked for it. When he was finished, he focused and molded his chakra, allowing it to seep into the ink to empower the explosive force it would yield.
He had the good sense to go outside to test it, and after standing a good distance back from the tag, he activated it with a single handseal. The relatively small explosion was all the signification of success that he needed.
It was just a matter of being able to jot down the inscription quickly on his own now. Retreating to his room, he repeated the design, slowly at first to ensure intactness, but then more and more quickly until he was able to splash it across the small slip of paper with what seemed like only a few swipes of his pen.
[1100-950=400] 408/400 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Total Shintensin: Death
It was a notion that had occured to him passingly during his self-instruction in fuuinjutsu, spawning somewhere between his creation of a seal for short range, immediate Shintensin and the concept of bridging bodies together for mental transmission via sealing. He'd had other priorities, for the sake of Henkou, and this project was much more private. Much more intimate. It wasn't something he wanted Yaku or any of the others knowing about until it was perfected, and so for weeks as he tinkered with the complex methodologies of fuuinjutsu, in a dark corner of his mind, he tinkered with one particularly ingenious idea.
The Total Shintensin that had driven him from Konoha, begun the very footsteps that had brought him down this dark and twisting path, was quite a drawn out procedure. Could the structure and staying power of fuuinjutsu make it faster? Could it make it instantaneous? If so... well, there were degrees of immortality. With this technique, Renjiro could near the pinnacle of the term, able to survive as many deaths as he had prepared vessels to leap into.
He started, as always, with theorizing. This time he didn't have nearly as much in mind, so he kept it loose and free form, simply letting his stream of consciousness on the subject emerge as notes sprawling across page after page. He didn't stop until his wrist began to ache, and when he reviewed what he had written he couldn't consider himself to have made much progress beyond defining the parameters of what he would need to accomplish. There were at least three pages worth of ideas about the basics of the seal, the symbols and designs it would need to propel his whole soul from one body to another, and on the other end, to recieve a whole soul and safely enmesh it with flesh.
There were two pages of free form theories about the way that such a transmission might behave. The range would be short, possibly short enough to make it impractical. It would also be a brief, exact window while it occured.
Next came possibilities for a method of triggering, everything from anticipatory hand seals to in the event of his death. Each had their potential upsides and pitfalls, and the best tactic for initiating the transfer would emerge once he had developed more of the overall project. Ease was also a factor, and as the seal was closer to completion, he would hone in on the best, simplest approach. Efficiency was one of the keys when it came to fuuinjutsu, accomplishing the most with the least amount of intricate detail needed.
After reviewing his notes, stashed in a box beneath his bed, regarding the other relevant seals he had created, it was time to begin what would likely amount to the most difficult of the set of tasks before him: creating the actual body of the seal, which would incorporate elements of both of the others, blending them together with newer, more potent designs to forge a fuuinjutsu of a level of power unlike any he'd ever heard. Completing this seal wouldn't just mean he could cheat death; it would be another testament to his prowess as a keen shinobi mind, an innovator capable of treading the highest echelons of ninjutsu creation.
He'd discovered two handy methods for fuuin creation in the past, and employed both of them now. He inscribed the two shintensin seals on paper that was nearly see through, enhancing the size of both of them until they covered nearly the whole page, scaled differently to match up in overall size. The tracing method had served him well before, and he had no doubt it would aid him now. With the designs overlaid, he studied them, virtually meditated on them like a monk might with a mandala. He let his eyes follow the paths inherent to the combined seals, noting where they easily overlapped, where they complimented one another, where they were incompatible, which parts were inorganically formed.
Only when he felt like he understood the paradox of beholding both seals at once did he start to incorporate the puzzle method, but this time, on the same diaphonous paper. He began working out symbols and designs that would add to the stability of the seal, that would allow more chakra to flow through it, and thus more power. He scrawled them out: single pieces to be fit in, circular designs to either ring or sit within the overall design, strings of tiny kanji meant to be laid in lines across the center. Once he had several sheets scribbled out, he cut them apart, so that he could more easily arrange and move them about atop the core that he had tentatively created.
He worked with diligence and precision, nudging and bumping carefully. More than a few times he wound up slipping and disrupting every bit of his work, forcing himself to recreate what he had destroyed. It was nearly a half hour before he'd prodded the enhancing and stabilizing components into place, and once he thought it more or less complete, he set about redrawing the finished whole on a new sheet of tracing paper. He tweaked here and there, smoothing the transitions where either human error or the art of fuuin required him to, blending all the disparate elements into one final, finished product. It was mind boggling to look at and try to concieve as a whole.
The center was a one foot diameter nest of complexity, with three perimeters of kanji radiating out from it. Straight lines of kanji crossed it like spokes, sixteen in total, creating an almost asterisk like effect. All of the characters were placed in such an exact way that they were incoroprated into some other aspect of the design.
For the next several days, he fiddled with the seal itself. In the meantime, he stole out into Waterfall Country to procure a throw away body. For reasons that have entirely to do with training thread rules, the details of that particular adventure will remain vague at best. Needless to say, by the end of a week, he had husked out the body of an ordinary villager for the sole purpose of perfecting this technique.
He spent an hour painstakingly inscribing the seal on the chest of the poor man, and then actually swapped bodies in order to inscribe it on himself. Self inscription could be tricky before a seal had been mastered. Once both bodies were prepared, he laid one out on the bed and then lay himself out beside it, close enough to touch. The amount of chakra involved was staggering, which meant that he could only test a few times before he'd need rest to recover.
He used handseals for now, a long string of them to activate the seal. The first attempt failed utterly. He looked at the seal intently for a while before he discovered and corrected the flaw on his own. The next attempt went a little better. The seal at least activated, even if it failed to enact the Total Shintensin. He reviewed and revised the elements that would govern the transfer this time, experimenting a few times before he felt satisfied. He tried again, and this time, his soul lurched out of his body, traveling the almost non existent distance to the recently pilfered one.
It was jerky. Terrifying to experience, really. He took a few minutes to feel it out, to ensure that his mind was in working order. Satisfied, he went back and re-detailed the seals for one final transfer attempt before rest. This one went better, still not stellar, but it was incremental progress, and with the potential for dislodging his soul permanently, he was fine with a slow and steady approach.
The next day he tried again, several times. Only after two days of successful attempts, the last few as flawless as the use of the ninjutsu he had developed so long ago, was he ready to step it up. He went back to design, enhancing the elements that would allow the transfer to happen over short distances. He wasn't expecting more than a few handfuls of feet, but still, touching one of his shell bodies wasn't exactly condusive to the effect he had in mind.
His next attempt was nearly disasterous. He laid on the floor, with the body on the bed, close enough to the edge that he could reach up and touch it. He activated the seal...
And went hurtling. His soul was untethered, and it missed the body it was intended for entirely. It was only the century and more of experience with hopping between forms that enabled him to scratch and claw his way back into the body. Needless to say, he spent quite a while recovering and revising before his next try. Still a touch shaken, he gave himself a full day to recuperate before he finished his revisions and felt confident enough to resume testing.
After another day, the transfer occured shakily over the small gap. After another, it went perfectly. After another still, including some rather daring and inventive revisions to the fuuinjutsu, he'd managed to extend the effective range to nearly ten feet. The seal was beginning to lurk in his every thought- even when he was forced to abandon his work for a mission, or to attend to some level of Henkou business, his thoughts tended eventually to gravitate toward ways of fixing and improving it.
He started virtually from scratch after a burst of insight. He could feel himself nearing completion, so he reworked the seal onto a piece of training paper and started overlaying different combinations of symbols, testing a few different versions of the transfer seal itself until he had achieved a range of nearly 5 meters for effective swapping. It was more than he'd expected to get, but he wasn't about to complain. For one final day he tested to ensure that there were no flukes. He hopped from body to body and back again until his chakra was nearly utterly spent, and then slept deeply.
When he awoke, he began his work on the trigger. He was midway through working in a mechanism that would allow him to make the transfer with a minimal of seals when he realized the futility of it. There would be times when he might not be able to form the strings required, and so, it needed to be entirely contained within the seal. It needed to be fool proof. After all, his life was on the line.
Death, then. It would take time to work out the particulars, but causing the seal to activate immediately upon his death was the best course, albeit a bit difficult to test. After all, if he got it wrong, there wouldn't be another chance. There wouldn't be any more chances.
For nearly a full day he set himself to assembling the terms and symbols he would need to tie the seal to his mortality. Kanji and symbols for death, impermanence, transition, release, acuity, instant, time, mortality, immortality, and more filled the vocabulary from which he would work, incorporating the motifs into his base seal, removing them, starting over time and time again. He was only going to get one shot at this, and so the seal would need to be perfect. A masterpiece. If not... well, he'd had a better and longer run than most people. Now that the possibility of true immortality was in his grasp, he wasn't sure he wanted to live without realizing it anyway.
An ancient, cryptic symbol representative of the transition between life and death was now enmeshed in the central concept of mind transference detailed in the very middle of the fuuin. Lines of kanji spiraled around the "spokes" of kanji he'd already created, allowing for the trigger to unlock every part of the seal. He went over the finished product a dozen times, and re-wrote the entire seal each time, employing his tracing method judiciously to fit in and inspect changes before committing to them.
A smile overtook his features as he realized that this little training game could now come full circle. If anyone deserved to kill him, it was Buttercup. Poor, desperate Buttercup who had suffered so many cruelties and indignities at his hand. Attached as he was too the Yamanaka body, he switched into the stolen throwaway he had acquired. He obtained a room, and propped the body most knew him by in a chair, then set out to find dear Buttercup and brought him their.
He explained everything to the man. His time in Leaf, his first switch. When it seemed he didn't believe, Renji went further, sharing vast swaths of memory with the man to convince him, both of what Renji was and his desire to die. It was a lie, of course, meant to remove any suspicion from the man about why Renji wanted him to kill him.
"You're sure now?" Buttercup stammered, looking uneasily at the kunai that Renji had provided him for the dirty deed.
"Very sure," Renji supplied smoothly, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. He closed his borrowed eyes and arched his stolen neck, tilting his head back to expose his vulnerable throat.
He already had the coin in his pocket. Swallowing the lump in his throat, Buttercup stepped forward and slashed. Blood spurted and splashed, hot on his skin, speckling the floor and even the distant wall behind him. It wasn't enough, though. The things Renjiro had done to him, had made him do. The ways he'd violated him, both body and mind. He slashed again, his features contorting into a mask of disgust.
"You'll never hurt me again, you disgusting freak! You'll never hurt anyone again! I hate you. All you do is corrupt, destroy, pervert. All those people. And what you made me do, you sick-"
As he ranted and stabbed, mutilating the body, Buttercup had not noticed that the formerly inert, dead looking body in the chair had gotten up, enacting a jutsu that stole the sound from the very air, allowing him to approach silently. Buttercup didn't notice his own words evaporating due to the technique. He only noticed Renjiro's approach when the man caught his wrist, mid-stab. He cancelled the technique, and leaned in close to whisper: "That's enough, don't you think? Now... there's one thing I neglected to mention." He twisted his wrist, disarming the man in one fluid motion and plunging the knife right into his heart.
As Buttercup slumped to the ground, gurgling pitiously, Renjiro crouched over him, grinning. "Your services are no longer required."
From there it was just a matter of clean-up. Wiping out the memories of Buttercup, and literally cleaning up the double murder.
[2700-950=1750] 2471/1750 words
It was a notion that had occured to him passingly during his self-instruction in fuuinjutsu, spawning somewhere between his creation of a seal for short range, immediate Shintensin and the concept of bridging bodies together for mental transmission via sealing. He'd had other priorities, for the sake of Henkou, and this project was much more private. Much more intimate. It wasn't something he wanted Yaku or any of the others knowing about until it was perfected, and so for weeks as he tinkered with the complex methodologies of fuuinjutsu, in a dark corner of his mind, he tinkered with one particularly ingenious idea.
The Total Shintensin that had driven him from Konoha, begun the very footsteps that had brought him down this dark and twisting path, was quite a drawn out procedure. Could the structure and staying power of fuuinjutsu make it faster? Could it make it instantaneous? If so... well, there were degrees of immortality. With this technique, Renjiro could near the pinnacle of the term, able to survive as many deaths as he had prepared vessels to leap into.
He started, as always, with theorizing. This time he didn't have nearly as much in mind, so he kept it loose and free form, simply letting his stream of consciousness on the subject emerge as notes sprawling across page after page. He didn't stop until his wrist began to ache, and when he reviewed what he had written he couldn't consider himself to have made much progress beyond defining the parameters of what he would need to accomplish. There were at least three pages worth of ideas about the basics of the seal, the symbols and designs it would need to propel his whole soul from one body to another, and on the other end, to recieve a whole soul and safely enmesh it with flesh.
There were two pages of free form theories about the way that such a transmission might behave. The range would be short, possibly short enough to make it impractical. It would also be a brief, exact window while it occured.
Next came possibilities for a method of triggering, everything from anticipatory hand seals to in the event of his death. Each had their potential upsides and pitfalls, and the best tactic for initiating the transfer would emerge once he had developed more of the overall project. Ease was also a factor, and as the seal was closer to completion, he would hone in on the best, simplest approach. Efficiency was one of the keys when it came to fuuinjutsu, accomplishing the most with the least amount of intricate detail needed.
After reviewing his notes, stashed in a box beneath his bed, regarding the other relevant seals he had created, it was time to begin what would likely amount to the most difficult of the set of tasks before him: creating the actual body of the seal, which would incorporate elements of both of the others, blending them together with newer, more potent designs to forge a fuuinjutsu of a level of power unlike any he'd ever heard. Completing this seal wouldn't just mean he could cheat death; it would be another testament to his prowess as a keen shinobi mind, an innovator capable of treading the highest echelons of ninjutsu creation.
He'd discovered two handy methods for fuuin creation in the past, and employed both of them now. He inscribed the two shintensin seals on paper that was nearly see through, enhancing the size of both of them until they covered nearly the whole page, scaled differently to match up in overall size. The tracing method had served him well before, and he had no doubt it would aid him now. With the designs overlaid, he studied them, virtually meditated on them like a monk might with a mandala. He let his eyes follow the paths inherent to the combined seals, noting where they easily overlapped, where they complimented one another, where they were incompatible, which parts were inorganically formed.
Only when he felt like he understood the paradox of beholding both seals at once did he start to incorporate the puzzle method, but this time, on the same diaphonous paper. He began working out symbols and designs that would add to the stability of the seal, that would allow more chakra to flow through it, and thus more power. He scrawled them out: single pieces to be fit in, circular designs to either ring or sit within the overall design, strings of tiny kanji meant to be laid in lines across the center. Once he had several sheets scribbled out, he cut them apart, so that he could more easily arrange and move them about atop the core that he had tentatively created.
He worked with diligence and precision, nudging and bumping carefully. More than a few times he wound up slipping and disrupting every bit of his work, forcing himself to recreate what he had destroyed. It was nearly a half hour before he'd prodded the enhancing and stabilizing components into place, and once he thought it more or less complete, he set about redrawing the finished whole on a new sheet of tracing paper. He tweaked here and there, smoothing the transitions where either human error or the art of fuuin required him to, blending all the disparate elements into one final, finished product. It was mind boggling to look at and try to concieve as a whole.
The center was a one foot diameter nest of complexity, with three perimeters of kanji radiating out from it. Straight lines of kanji crossed it like spokes, sixteen in total, creating an almost asterisk like effect. All of the characters were placed in such an exact way that they were incoroprated into some other aspect of the design.
For the next several days, he fiddled with the seal itself. In the meantime, he stole out into Waterfall Country to procure a throw away body. For reasons that have entirely to do with training thread rules, the details of that particular adventure will remain vague at best. Needless to say, by the end of a week, he had husked out the body of an ordinary villager for the sole purpose of perfecting this technique.
He spent an hour painstakingly inscribing the seal on the chest of the poor man, and then actually swapped bodies in order to inscribe it on himself. Self inscription could be tricky before a seal had been mastered. Once both bodies were prepared, he laid one out on the bed and then lay himself out beside it, close enough to touch. The amount of chakra involved was staggering, which meant that he could only test a few times before he'd need rest to recover.
He used handseals for now, a long string of them to activate the seal. The first attempt failed utterly. He looked at the seal intently for a while before he discovered and corrected the flaw on his own. The next attempt went a little better. The seal at least activated, even if it failed to enact the Total Shintensin. He reviewed and revised the elements that would govern the transfer this time, experimenting a few times before he felt satisfied. He tried again, and this time, his soul lurched out of his body, traveling the almost non existent distance to the recently pilfered one.
It was jerky. Terrifying to experience, really. He took a few minutes to feel it out, to ensure that his mind was in working order. Satisfied, he went back and re-detailed the seals for one final transfer attempt before rest. This one went better, still not stellar, but it was incremental progress, and with the potential for dislodging his soul permanently, he was fine with a slow and steady approach.
The next day he tried again, several times. Only after two days of successful attempts, the last few as flawless as the use of the ninjutsu he had developed so long ago, was he ready to step it up. He went back to design, enhancing the elements that would allow the transfer to happen over short distances. He wasn't expecting more than a few handfuls of feet, but still, touching one of his shell bodies wasn't exactly condusive to the effect he had in mind.
His next attempt was nearly disasterous. He laid on the floor, with the body on the bed, close enough to the edge that he could reach up and touch it. He activated the seal...
And went hurtling. His soul was untethered, and it missed the body it was intended for entirely. It was only the century and more of experience with hopping between forms that enabled him to scratch and claw his way back into the body. Needless to say, he spent quite a while recovering and revising before his next try. Still a touch shaken, he gave himself a full day to recuperate before he finished his revisions and felt confident enough to resume testing.
After another day, the transfer occured shakily over the small gap. After another, it went perfectly. After another still, including some rather daring and inventive revisions to the fuuinjutsu, he'd managed to extend the effective range to nearly ten feet. The seal was beginning to lurk in his every thought- even when he was forced to abandon his work for a mission, or to attend to some level of Henkou business, his thoughts tended eventually to gravitate toward ways of fixing and improving it.
He started virtually from scratch after a burst of insight. He could feel himself nearing completion, so he reworked the seal onto a piece of training paper and started overlaying different combinations of symbols, testing a few different versions of the transfer seal itself until he had achieved a range of nearly 5 meters for effective swapping. It was more than he'd expected to get, but he wasn't about to complain. For one final day he tested to ensure that there were no flukes. He hopped from body to body and back again until his chakra was nearly utterly spent, and then slept deeply.
When he awoke, he began his work on the trigger. He was midway through working in a mechanism that would allow him to make the transfer with a minimal of seals when he realized the futility of it. There would be times when he might not be able to form the strings required, and so, it needed to be entirely contained within the seal. It needed to be fool proof. After all, his life was on the line.
Death, then. It would take time to work out the particulars, but causing the seal to activate immediately upon his death was the best course, albeit a bit difficult to test. After all, if he got it wrong, there wouldn't be another chance. There wouldn't be any more chances.
For nearly a full day he set himself to assembling the terms and symbols he would need to tie the seal to his mortality. Kanji and symbols for death, impermanence, transition, release, acuity, instant, time, mortality, immortality, and more filled the vocabulary from which he would work, incorporating the motifs into his base seal, removing them, starting over time and time again. He was only going to get one shot at this, and so the seal would need to be perfect. A masterpiece. If not... well, he'd had a better and longer run than most people. Now that the possibility of true immortality was in his grasp, he wasn't sure he wanted to live without realizing it anyway.
An ancient, cryptic symbol representative of the transition between life and death was now enmeshed in the central concept of mind transference detailed in the very middle of the fuuin. Lines of kanji spiraled around the "spokes" of kanji he'd already created, allowing for the trigger to unlock every part of the seal. He went over the finished product a dozen times, and re-wrote the entire seal each time, employing his tracing method judiciously to fit in and inspect changes before committing to them.
A smile overtook his features as he realized that this little training game could now come full circle. If anyone deserved to kill him, it was Buttercup. Poor, desperate Buttercup who had suffered so many cruelties and indignities at his hand. Attached as he was too the Yamanaka body, he switched into the stolen throwaway he had acquired. He obtained a room, and propped the body most knew him by in a chair, then set out to find dear Buttercup and brought him their.
He explained everything to the man. His time in Leaf, his first switch. When it seemed he didn't believe, Renji went further, sharing vast swaths of memory with the man to convince him, both of what Renji was and his desire to die. It was a lie, of course, meant to remove any suspicion from the man about why Renji wanted him to kill him.
"You're sure now?" Buttercup stammered, looking uneasily at the kunai that Renji had provided him for the dirty deed.
"Very sure," Renji supplied smoothly, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. He closed his borrowed eyes and arched his stolen neck, tilting his head back to expose his vulnerable throat.
He already had the coin in his pocket. Swallowing the lump in his throat, Buttercup stepped forward and slashed. Blood spurted and splashed, hot on his skin, speckling the floor and even the distant wall behind him. It wasn't enough, though. The things Renjiro had done to him, had made him do. The ways he'd violated him, both body and mind. He slashed again, his features contorting into a mask of disgust.
"You'll never hurt me again, you disgusting freak! You'll never hurt anyone again! I hate you. All you do is corrupt, destroy, pervert. All those people. And what you made me do, you sick-"
As he ranted and stabbed, mutilating the body, Buttercup had not noticed that the formerly inert, dead looking body in the chair had gotten up, enacting a jutsu that stole the sound from the very air, allowing him to approach silently. Buttercup didn't notice his own words evaporating due to the technique. He only noticed Renjiro's approach when the man caught his wrist, mid-stab. He cancelled the technique, and leaned in close to whisper: "That's enough, don't you think? Now... there's one thing I neglected to mention." He twisted his wrist, disarming the man in one fluid motion and plunging the knife right into his heart.
As Buttercup slumped to the ground, gurgling pitiously, Renjiro crouched over him, grinning. "Your services are no longer required."
From there it was just a matter of clean-up. Wiping out the memories of Buttercup, and literally cleaning up the double murder.
[2700-950=1750] 2471/1750 words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Stat Training#1: Strength
It was finally time.
Renjiro had never set much stock in physical prowess. His entire existence was a testament to the pre-eminence of mind, after all. If his ways were changing, though, his methods would have to as well (this is how he internally rationalized abandoning his laziness). It wouldn't be enough to vanish, lie low, and change bodies when it came to actual battles, and he was expecting quite a few more of those in the coming days due to his newest batch of friends.
He began in the comfort of his own room, using only his own body (well, the body of a Yamanaka who had the misfortune of meeting him) as equipment. Unfurling himself on the ground, he bent his knees and cupped his hands behind his head. Position assumed, he proceeded to lift the trunk of his body so that his shoulder blades were just a few inches above the ground. Before long, a telltale warm ache began to spread across his flat stomach, indicating that his crunches were working. It hardly hurt to work on his core strength and physical appearance at the same time.
He continued until the ache had evolved into a bothersome burn, until, in fact, he his entire abdomen felt like it was ablaze. This was muscles tearing, he know, to regrow and fill the void that their stretching resulted in, increasing strength. Reaching that point, he kept going until his body just flat out refused, and finally slumped back onto the cold ground to catch his breath. All told, he'd engaged in the repetitive process a few hundred times.
Rolling over with an affected grunt, he splayed his fingers out, pressing his palms to the floor, and getting onto the balls of his feet. Doing his level best to keep his head up, he straightened his arms fully, lifting his upper body up off the ground in a classic push-up. He then completed the movement, angling his elbows once again to lower himself at a controlled rate. Up and down, up and down, ad nauseum. Almost literally. This round didn't go nearly as well. He barely had enough pectoral muscle to feel a substantial burn where it counted, but the effort involved was tiring, and his arms ached on principle. Still, it was progress.
He gave himself a breather, during which he changed into garments more appropriate for the activity on the superstition that it might make things go better. He did another round of crunches, and then a set of push-ups, before racking his brain for other exercises he could engage in without leaving the room.
Pulling the door of his closet open, he fit his fingers against the ledge that ran above it and then pulled his legs up at the knees, hanging. In what proved the most excruciating bit of fitness thus far, he pulled himself upward using only the strength of his arms, which was considerable... for a lazy chuunin. Sweating and puffing, he hauled his form skyward again and again until finally his limp arms gave out and he dropped into a less than graceful crouch.
Sit-ups. Push-ups. Pull-ups. With only a real break for lunch, which he made obligatorily healthy in keeping with the spirit of the day, he went through series of the work out until he simply couldn't any more. His leaden limbs refused to respond, and he promptly passed out.
When he woke up, he felt worse. It was before dawn, far earlier than he tended to be awake, and with little else to do he decided to keep it up. He gingerly warmed himself up with fifty of each, marveling at the way he could feel muscles that he'd previously ignored the existence of.
He realized that he'd been ignoring his legs. He was bored with his room anyway, and so he headed out of the hideout entirely to greet the dawn. Picking out a patch of ground large enough to accommodate the exercise he had in mind, he broke into some jogging in order to loosen up the muscles involved.
Next came the sprints. Pouring on his speed, which was actually not too shabby, he burst forward across a short distance at full tilt. Stopping and rounding, he repeated the short distance run in the opposite direction. It was more effort to stop than it was to start in most cases. He wasn't just fighting the weight of his body- he was fighting his fair momentum, and gravity. His calves and thighs began to protest, but he forged onward, and then onward the other way. He was tough enough to endure his way through some over-exercise for the sake of results.
When his legs were spent he simply dropped down for some more push-ups and sit-ups. He even availed himself on a handy nearby tree branch for the sake of some pull ups. He took advantage of it not being a closet door ledge as well, performing every other set with his wrist rotated 180 degrees to work a different set of muscles.
After that he did... not much of anything relevant.
As the days went by, he found himself waking up less and less sore. He found himself able to engage in more and more strength training without falling apart, and so he did. He found pockets of time where he could fit in several smooth sets.
He began adding weight to increase his resistance. The idea of free weights didn't appeal, so instead, he weighted a belt before performing his pull-ups. First ten extra pounds, then twenty, then thirty, then fifty. He did the same for the sake of his sit-ups and crunches, holding the weight as he elevated his torso. Augmenting his push ups proved less practical, but he found a way around it by varying the hand that he used, graduating to the one-handed variety. At first it was single sets on the same arm, then he alternated during the sets.
He began doing his sprints with light weights as well, holding them in his hands and binding them to his ankles.
He varied his abdominal exercises, working in crunches and reverse crunches in order to work the different muscles.
Boredom began to set in, driving him to find other means to improve his body. Upon locating an infrequently used lake, he started swimming on a daily basis. He lacked form at first. Really, it was just fun, a delight that he'd somehow forgotten over the years. As his body began to tire, though, he realized what strokes worked what group of muscles. He began to tailor his swims, turning them effectively into reps that bolstered his resistance training. Learning breathing control and enhancing his endurance to a slight degree also helped with the rest of his work out methodology. He could go longer, move more efficiently. He had more energy.
His techniques evolved daily. He improved the range of his muscle movement, leaving him more able to avoid painful overload and resulting in being able to apply his strength more evenly, honing the short range gains that many of his exercises yielded.
Eventually, he was able to get more tricky about it. When his arms had more strength, he could upend himself, hands on the ground, legs in the air, and proceed to lift the entirety of his body weight straight upward for small, intense sets. Naturally, the addition of weight followed, along with longer and longer sets with every passing day.
He incorporated isometric exercises based on the same principle of using his own body weight only, hanging from a tree branch in a reverse pull up position for as long as he could without actually lifting himself, simply letting gravity and weight test and improve his muscles. He did the same with his hand stands, letting his mind wander free while he “stood” there for vast spans of time, gaining a bit of balance along with the muscle required to keep himself vertical for the duration.
He varied the complexity of these simple exercises. Letting one leg jut out during a hand stand at a 45 degree angle provided a slightly different work out than keeping them straightened, and doing the same with both legs provided a slightly different work out than that. Holding himself up on a tree branch in a “sitting” position, with his legs stretched straight out from his hips, toes pointed upward, proved one of the most taxing exercises in his growning arsenal, testing several groups of muscles in his arms, trunk, and legs against the laws of physics for a net gain.
His form had improved dramatically, expanding the gains of a daily routine that was becoming much more diverse than he'd ever thought possible without weights. He no longer transferred any of the weight to body parts he didn't intend, and as a result, his work-outs were much more focused and effective.
In order to shore up some missing muscle groups, he added a few more poses to his standing training, varying in order to develop the last lingering muscles that he was discovering on the basis of their not hurting. Lunges, grudging holding weights, served to fill the hole in his lower body regimen, more effectively working his hamstrings. The days and reps and sets added up, providing hints of definition in his favored form where none had been before.
1569/1500 Words
It was finally time.
Renjiro had never set much stock in physical prowess. His entire existence was a testament to the pre-eminence of mind, after all. If his ways were changing, though, his methods would have to as well (this is how he internally rationalized abandoning his laziness). It wouldn't be enough to vanish, lie low, and change bodies when it came to actual battles, and he was expecting quite a few more of those in the coming days due to his newest batch of friends.
He began in the comfort of his own room, using only his own body (well, the body of a Yamanaka who had the misfortune of meeting him) as equipment. Unfurling himself on the ground, he bent his knees and cupped his hands behind his head. Position assumed, he proceeded to lift the trunk of his body so that his shoulder blades were just a few inches above the ground. Before long, a telltale warm ache began to spread across his flat stomach, indicating that his crunches were working. It hardly hurt to work on his core strength and physical appearance at the same time.
He continued until the ache had evolved into a bothersome burn, until, in fact, he his entire abdomen felt like it was ablaze. This was muscles tearing, he know, to regrow and fill the void that their stretching resulted in, increasing strength. Reaching that point, he kept going until his body just flat out refused, and finally slumped back onto the cold ground to catch his breath. All told, he'd engaged in the repetitive process a few hundred times.
Rolling over with an affected grunt, he splayed his fingers out, pressing his palms to the floor, and getting onto the balls of his feet. Doing his level best to keep his head up, he straightened his arms fully, lifting his upper body up off the ground in a classic push-up. He then completed the movement, angling his elbows once again to lower himself at a controlled rate. Up and down, up and down, ad nauseum. Almost literally. This round didn't go nearly as well. He barely had enough pectoral muscle to feel a substantial burn where it counted, but the effort involved was tiring, and his arms ached on principle. Still, it was progress.
He gave himself a breather, during which he changed into garments more appropriate for the activity on the superstition that it might make things go better. He did another round of crunches, and then a set of push-ups, before racking his brain for other exercises he could engage in without leaving the room.
Pulling the door of his closet open, he fit his fingers against the ledge that ran above it and then pulled his legs up at the knees, hanging. In what proved the most excruciating bit of fitness thus far, he pulled himself upward using only the strength of his arms, which was considerable... for a lazy chuunin. Sweating and puffing, he hauled his form skyward again and again until finally his limp arms gave out and he dropped into a less than graceful crouch.
Sit-ups. Push-ups. Pull-ups. With only a real break for lunch, which he made obligatorily healthy in keeping with the spirit of the day, he went through series of the work out until he simply couldn't any more. His leaden limbs refused to respond, and he promptly passed out.
When he woke up, he felt worse. It was before dawn, far earlier than he tended to be awake, and with little else to do he decided to keep it up. He gingerly warmed himself up with fifty of each, marveling at the way he could feel muscles that he'd previously ignored the existence of.
He realized that he'd been ignoring his legs. He was bored with his room anyway, and so he headed out of the hideout entirely to greet the dawn. Picking out a patch of ground large enough to accommodate the exercise he had in mind, he broke into some jogging in order to loosen up the muscles involved.
Next came the sprints. Pouring on his speed, which was actually not too shabby, he burst forward across a short distance at full tilt. Stopping and rounding, he repeated the short distance run in the opposite direction. It was more effort to stop than it was to start in most cases. He wasn't just fighting the weight of his body- he was fighting his fair momentum, and gravity. His calves and thighs began to protest, but he forged onward, and then onward the other way. He was tough enough to endure his way through some over-exercise for the sake of results.
When his legs were spent he simply dropped down for some more push-ups and sit-ups. He even availed himself on a handy nearby tree branch for the sake of some pull ups. He took advantage of it not being a closet door ledge as well, performing every other set with his wrist rotated 180 degrees to work a different set of muscles.
After that he did... not much of anything relevant.
As the days went by, he found himself waking up less and less sore. He found himself able to engage in more and more strength training without falling apart, and so he did. He found pockets of time where he could fit in several smooth sets.
He began adding weight to increase his resistance. The idea of free weights didn't appeal, so instead, he weighted a belt before performing his pull-ups. First ten extra pounds, then twenty, then thirty, then fifty. He did the same for the sake of his sit-ups and crunches, holding the weight as he elevated his torso. Augmenting his push ups proved less practical, but he found a way around it by varying the hand that he used, graduating to the one-handed variety. At first it was single sets on the same arm, then he alternated during the sets.
He began doing his sprints with light weights as well, holding them in his hands and binding them to his ankles.
He varied his abdominal exercises, working in crunches and reverse crunches in order to work the different muscles.
Boredom began to set in, driving him to find other means to improve his body. Upon locating an infrequently used lake, he started swimming on a daily basis. He lacked form at first. Really, it was just fun, a delight that he'd somehow forgotten over the years. As his body began to tire, though, he realized what strokes worked what group of muscles. He began to tailor his swims, turning them effectively into reps that bolstered his resistance training. Learning breathing control and enhancing his endurance to a slight degree also helped with the rest of his work out methodology. He could go longer, move more efficiently. He had more energy.
His techniques evolved daily. He improved the range of his muscle movement, leaving him more able to avoid painful overload and resulting in being able to apply his strength more evenly, honing the short range gains that many of his exercises yielded.
Eventually, he was able to get more tricky about it. When his arms had more strength, he could upend himself, hands on the ground, legs in the air, and proceed to lift the entirety of his body weight straight upward for small, intense sets. Naturally, the addition of weight followed, along with longer and longer sets with every passing day.
He incorporated isometric exercises based on the same principle of using his own body weight only, hanging from a tree branch in a reverse pull up position for as long as he could without actually lifting himself, simply letting gravity and weight test and improve his muscles. He did the same with his hand stands, letting his mind wander free while he “stood” there for vast spans of time, gaining a bit of balance along with the muscle required to keep himself vertical for the duration.
He varied the complexity of these simple exercises. Letting one leg jut out during a hand stand at a 45 degree angle provided a slightly different work out than keeping them straightened, and doing the same with both legs provided a slightly different work out than that. Holding himself up on a tree branch in a “sitting” position, with his legs stretched straight out from his hips, toes pointed upward, proved one of the most taxing exercises in his growning arsenal, testing several groups of muscles in his arms, trunk, and legs against the laws of physics for a net gain.
His form had improved dramatically, expanding the gains of a daily routine that was becoming much more diverse than he'd ever thought possible without weights. He no longer transferred any of the weight to body parts he didn't intend, and as a result, his work-outs were much more focused and effective.
In order to shore up some missing muscle groups, he added a few more poses to his standing training, varying in order to develop the last lingering muscles that he was discovering on the basis of their not hurting. Lunges, grudging holding weights, served to fill the hole in his lower body regimen, more effectively working his hamstrings. The days and reps and sets added up, providing hints of definition in his favored form where none had been before.
1569/1500 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Stat Training#2: Taijutsu
It started with a small stone, easily held within the palm of Renjiro's hand.
First, he tossed it into the air. It rose in a dubious arc, and then began a rapid descent earthward. Lobbing it in just the right way for his purpose, though, was going to take some work. Catching it awkwardly and unimpressively, he let it fly once more. Mentally, he was prepared to map its trajectory, and its ideal course would send it falling straight down past his opposite hand.
It was off, though, by a few inches. This wasn't merely a job for the brain, but for muscle and bone as well, acting in collusion and synchronization with his senses. He didn't bother with catching it, let it fall and stooped to collect it. Incorporating the knowledge from the last two throws, he tossed it upwards once more, higher, truncating the angle at which it moved.
The stone sailed, seeming briefly to hang in the air, and then plummeted. Once more he stooped, and once more he threw. This time, the stone was almost where he wanted it to be. He repeated the simple and yet somehow complex series of muscle contractions involved. There. He had it. Up, and then down just in front of his hand.
Loosening his body and spreading his weight evenly by moving his feet to shoulders length apart, he bounced a bit on his knees and made the throw again with his right hand. He caught it, not so neatly, with his left hand, then passed it back to the right, then tossed it again, and again, and again, making the throw a few dozen times until it was nearly identical with repetition.
Ideally, he would be able to simply snatch the stone out of the air without moving his left arm at all, just his wrist and fingers. He wasn't there yet. On the next throw, he had to jerk his shoulder and elbow a bit in order to grab at the rough rock. On the throw after that, he crooked his elbow just so in order to allow the stone to land in his outstretched palm, but his aim was off. It glanced off the edge of his hand and hit the ground, tumbling a foot before he scooped it up once more and tried again.
A half step forward. A twist to the waist. Multiple bends to the elbow. These were the hallmarks of failure. A few good attempts were botched by a slight flaw to the initial throw, but Renjiro didn't allow himself to become frustrated. If he didn't need the work, he wouldn't be doing it. With every throw, he identified faults with his mind and body coordination. With every throw, he became closer to being able to perfectly toss and then catch and then hand off the stone, only to continue the circuit in a wide, loopy parody of juggling that was a little better suited to the sort of hand to hand combat he might encounter.
A perfect launch. He kept his eyes forward, rather than daring to move his body and potentially throw off his concentration. It would just be his neck and eyes, but if he was employing every element of the exercise correctly, he didn't need to track the movement of the stone in order to know where it was. It should be exactly where he needed it to be, where he had thrown it to be.
His left hand unfurled, reaching out to catch the stone. He was a split second off, though, and felt it brush off the tips of his fingers, igniting a brief, dull pain. He ducked down, quickly finding the stone by touch, and then threw again.
The rock sank through the air. Moving only his wrists and fingers, he managed to pluck it from the air. It wasn't a stellar catch. He practically knocked it toward his palm with his fingers and then hurriedly curled them around it to keep it from escaping. He smoothly transferred it to his right hand, feeling a little jolt at the success, and wound up botching the next throw for his pride.
Drawing a deep breath after collecting the projectile again, he sent it up into the air. In his mind's eye, he followed it upward, pictured it moving along the arc it was meant to. Without moving a single muscle in his body, he waited, and waited, and waited for it to fall. When it should have been just in front of and above his left hand, he let it shoot out, palm up. The stone was just where it needed to be. His fingers closed around it easily, holding it in place. Without losing momentum, he let his left hand meet his right, and then fluidly tossed it once more. There were a few seconds between each cycle. He was going for slow precision, for now. Just as he had slowly learned to make the rock follow a particular path, he slowly learned to put it through the complete circuit. Right hand, throw, up, down, left hand, pass to right hand.
A few times, he missed, or threw wrong, but he kept at it until he could, at a plodding pace, complete the circuit reliably every time. He kept mental count, and once he had performed the maneuver one hundred times, then, and only then, did he work on adding speed to the equation. At first he confused force for speed, and the rock sailed too high or too far, but as he learned to compensate, to move his wrist more quickly without giving the stone any more velocity, he gradually shaved fractions of seconds off of the mostly useless maneuver.
He continued his distorted one stone juggling act until he could eek no more speed out of it. Fifty more times he threw and caught and passed before he was satisfied that his body had learned to work with his mind, to remember the simple actions and perform them without fault.
Only then was he ready to move on to something a little more practical. Crossing to a distant tree, he used the stone to roughly hew an “X” into the bark at roughly chest height, making it almost eight inches tall and nearly as wide. With his target established, he counted ten paces away from the tree. He'd been sure to put the sun behind him so that he wouldn't have to squint, and then aimed, and then let fly.
The stone impacted at the very outer edge defined by the arms of the X, slightly off center. He retrieved the stone and made another attempt, waiting just a little longer, focusing just a little more. When he released the stone this time, he kept the movement in his wrist more than anything else, minimizing the different forces working on the stone in order that it might travel the flattest path possible. It struck below the center this time by at least three inches.
Over and over he jogged forward, grabbed the rock, jogged back, and threw. He didn't pay much heed to the force behind the throws just yet, focusing more, again, on getting the rock exactly where he wanted it. He repeated the motion what seemed like endlessly, until finally he hit the point where the two diagonal lines crossed, dead center.
He didn't keep track this time. The next throw hit, the throw after that was off by an inch. He just kept throwing, and throwing, and throwing until he was satisfied that he could hit the target in the exact middle at least ninety percent of the time. Only then did he start putting more force behind it, and more, and more. A few times he wound up having to spend a minute or two recovering the rock, which had ricocheted thanks to his learning curve off into some brush. It was coming to him more quickly now, though, and before an hour had passed he was capable of hurling the rock at nearly full force and striking the X in its center every time, gradually chipping away a small divot in the dense bark.
He backed up three more paces, marking the space. From farther back, he threw, returned, threw until he had proven to himself that he could strike the X every time from that particular distance. Then he moved back three more paces and repeated the process. He mastered each respective distance before moving back again and again until finally he'd moved back so far that reaching the tree, never mind the X, was impossible with any real accuracy.
Satisfied with his progress with a decently sized stone, he graduated himself to his senbon needles. He already noticed the differences in the way he launched them, the bad habits that the tedious repetition of throws and catches and throws had broken. It took a while to adjust what he had taught his body to the much less massive senbon needles, but before long at all, he was flinging them with just as much accuracy. He couldn't eek quite as much distance out of them, but he still graduated his practice, working until he could unleash the small weapons much more accurately than before at his maximum distance.
1551/1500 Words
It started with a small stone, easily held within the palm of Renjiro's hand.
First, he tossed it into the air. It rose in a dubious arc, and then began a rapid descent earthward. Lobbing it in just the right way for his purpose, though, was going to take some work. Catching it awkwardly and unimpressively, he let it fly once more. Mentally, he was prepared to map its trajectory, and its ideal course would send it falling straight down past his opposite hand.
It was off, though, by a few inches. This wasn't merely a job for the brain, but for muscle and bone as well, acting in collusion and synchronization with his senses. He didn't bother with catching it, let it fall and stooped to collect it. Incorporating the knowledge from the last two throws, he tossed it upwards once more, higher, truncating the angle at which it moved.
The stone sailed, seeming briefly to hang in the air, and then plummeted. Once more he stooped, and once more he threw. This time, the stone was almost where he wanted it to be. He repeated the simple and yet somehow complex series of muscle contractions involved. There. He had it. Up, and then down just in front of his hand.
Loosening his body and spreading his weight evenly by moving his feet to shoulders length apart, he bounced a bit on his knees and made the throw again with his right hand. He caught it, not so neatly, with his left hand, then passed it back to the right, then tossed it again, and again, and again, making the throw a few dozen times until it was nearly identical with repetition.
Ideally, he would be able to simply snatch the stone out of the air without moving his left arm at all, just his wrist and fingers. He wasn't there yet. On the next throw, he had to jerk his shoulder and elbow a bit in order to grab at the rough rock. On the throw after that, he crooked his elbow just so in order to allow the stone to land in his outstretched palm, but his aim was off. It glanced off the edge of his hand and hit the ground, tumbling a foot before he scooped it up once more and tried again.
A half step forward. A twist to the waist. Multiple bends to the elbow. These were the hallmarks of failure. A few good attempts were botched by a slight flaw to the initial throw, but Renjiro didn't allow himself to become frustrated. If he didn't need the work, he wouldn't be doing it. With every throw, he identified faults with his mind and body coordination. With every throw, he became closer to being able to perfectly toss and then catch and then hand off the stone, only to continue the circuit in a wide, loopy parody of juggling that was a little better suited to the sort of hand to hand combat he might encounter.
A perfect launch. He kept his eyes forward, rather than daring to move his body and potentially throw off his concentration. It would just be his neck and eyes, but if he was employing every element of the exercise correctly, he didn't need to track the movement of the stone in order to know where it was. It should be exactly where he needed it to be, where he had thrown it to be.
His left hand unfurled, reaching out to catch the stone. He was a split second off, though, and felt it brush off the tips of his fingers, igniting a brief, dull pain. He ducked down, quickly finding the stone by touch, and then threw again.
The rock sank through the air. Moving only his wrists and fingers, he managed to pluck it from the air. It wasn't a stellar catch. He practically knocked it toward his palm with his fingers and then hurriedly curled them around it to keep it from escaping. He smoothly transferred it to his right hand, feeling a little jolt at the success, and wound up botching the next throw for his pride.
Drawing a deep breath after collecting the projectile again, he sent it up into the air. In his mind's eye, he followed it upward, pictured it moving along the arc it was meant to. Without moving a single muscle in his body, he waited, and waited, and waited for it to fall. When it should have been just in front of and above his left hand, he let it shoot out, palm up. The stone was just where it needed to be. His fingers closed around it easily, holding it in place. Without losing momentum, he let his left hand meet his right, and then fluidly tossed it once more. There were a few seconds between each cycle. He was going for slow precision, for now. Just as he had slowly learned to make the rock follow a particular path, he slowly learned to put it through the complete circuit. Right hand, throw, up, down, left hand, pass to right hand.
A few times, he missed, or threw wrong, but he kept at it until he could, at a plodding pace, complete the circuit reliably every time. He kept mental count, and once he had performed the maneuver one hundred times, then, and only then, did he work on adding speed to the equation. At first he confused force for speed, and the rock sailed too high or too far, but as he learned to compensate, to move his wrist more quickly without giving the stone any more velocity, he gradually shaved fractions of seconds off of the mostly useless maneuver.
He continued his distorted one stone juggling act until he could eek no more speed out of it. Fifty more times he threw and caught and passed before he was satisfied that his body had learned to work with his mind, to remember the simple actions and perform them without fault.
Only then was he ready to move on to something a little more practical. Crossing to a distant tree, he used the stone to roughly hew an “X” into the bark at roughly chest height, making it almost eight inches tall and nearly as wide. With his target established, he counted ten paces away from the tree. He'd been sure to put the sun behind him so that he wouldn't have to squint, and then aimed, and then let fly.
The stone impacted at the very outer edge defined by the arms of the X, slightly off center. He retrieved the stone and made another attempt, waiting just a little longer, focusing just a little more. When he released the stone this time, he kept the movement in his wrist more than anything else, minimizing the different forces working on the stone in order that it might travel the flattest path possible. It struck below the center this time by at least three inches.
Over and over he jogged forward, grabbed the rock, jogged back, and threw. He didn't pay much heed to the force behind the throws just yet, focusing more, again, on getting the rock exactly where he wanted it. He repeated the motion what seemed like endlessly, until finally he hit the point where the two diagonal lines crossed, dead center.
He didn't keep track this time. The next throw hit, the throw after that was off by an inch. He just kept throwing, and throwing, and throwing until he was satisfied that he could hit the target in the exact middle at least ninety percent of the time. Only then did he start putting more force behind it, and more, and more. A few times he wound up having to spend a minute or two recovering the rock, which had ricocheted thanks to his learning curve off into some brush. It was coming to him more quickly now, though, and before an hour had passed he was capable of hurling the rock at nearly full force and striking the X in its center every time, gradually chipping away a small divot in the dense bark.
He backed up three more paces, marking the space. From farther back, he threw, returned, threw until he had proven to himself that he could strike the X every time from that particular distance. Then he moved back three more paces and repeated the process. He mastered each respective distance before moving back again and again until finally he'd moved back so far that reaching the tree, never mind the X, was impossible with any real accuracy.
Satisfied with his progress with a decently sized stone, he graduated himself to his senbon needles. He already noticed the differences in the way he launched them, the bad habits that the tedious repetition of throws and catches and throws had broken. It took a while to adjust what he had taught his body to the much less massive senbon needles, but before long at all, he was flinging them with just as much accuracy. He couldn't eek quite as much distance out of them, but he still graduated his practice, working until he could unleash the small weapons much more accurately than before at his maximum distance.
1551/1500 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Stat Training#3: Stamina
The setting: a small, ill-lit room. A single chair rests against the eastern wall, and a long table sits in the center. Arrayed on this table are a variety of weapons and tools; effectively, a torture suite.
The players: One Renjiro Yamanaka, body thief. Currently, he is tied to the chair that rests against the eastern wall. In his debut role, Hoshiri, a small-time thug hired for the part of torturer.
The aim of the scene was to toughen Renji up a bit. A lot, actually. Ever since he'd applied the seal that enabled him to swap bodies immediately, he'd noticed that his staying power was a bit lacking in most aspects.
”You're... sure about this?” Hoshiri seemed a bit skeptical, as he lifted a leather cat 'o'nine tails.
Renji flexed his arms against the ropes securing him to the chair in irritation and anticipation. ”What, is my money not good? Get on with it.”
He was bare chested, bound at the wrists, elbows, waist, arm pits and ankles to the chair. Hoshiri tentatively lifted his arm and then brought it down, lashing the tongs of the implement over one of Renji's pectorals.
Renji snorted. ”For the sake of the Sage of Seven Paths, man, you load cargo for a living. Put some strength into it. I should have hired your grandmother to beat me, if that's all you have.”
The next time the lash came down, Renji grunted and bit his lip. It fell again, even harder (apparently, Hishiri loved his grandmother, or responded well to insults), and Renji yelped. Thin red marks criss-crossed his pale flesh from the strikes, and pain danced across them, hot and dangerous.
For nearly ten minutes the abuse persisted. Blood was beginning to well up on his skin, the droplets running together and then plunging downward in erratic streaks.
”What, is your arm getting tired?” Renji did well to control his voice in spite of the damage he'd endured. Hoshiri struck him again, though, and for the first time, Renji screamed. The walls were thick enough that it didn't matter, but it seemed to be something of a turning point in the dangerous little liaison. The hireling viciously whipped the insidious little collection of knots back and forth across his chest a half dozen times, sweat beading on his brow, before then swinging a mean right hook that crashed into Renji's cheek, snapping his head to the side.
He'd gotten over his reservations. While Renji panted, a masochistic little smirk on his lips, eyes glassy, Hoshiri moved to stand before the table, inspecting his options. He lifted a few different items- a kunai, a wire garrote, a container of long, thin needles, various clamps, a hammer, and a length of chain- before ultimately choosing a simple lighter.
He flicked it a few times, eliciting flame, and then made his way back toward the chair and the captive it held. Gripping Renji's hand, he straightened his fingers, then starting at the index finger, called forth some flame and applied it.
The fire licked at the tip of his finger. It only took a few seconds before Renji was bouncing in the chair, cursing and struggling and breathing heavily. Perspiration shone on his skin, and it mingled with the blood that was seeping from the scoring the whip had inflicted. Only when the skin on Renji's index finger had begun to blister did Hoshiri move on to his middle finger to repeat the tactic. This time, he let the flame linger just a little longer; he was watching Renji's features, seemingly enjoying the agonized reactions he was evoking. If Renji hadn't been in agony, he might have commented.
Hoshiri passed the lighter below Renji's ring finger, again, burning him until a small blister had just formed. Finally, he worked on the tip of his pinky, leaving the skin there an angry red, peeling a bit.
”You seem to be... enjoying yourself,” he gasped, not managing to sound quite as flirtatious as he'd hoped, on account of the pain. Hoshiri narrowed his eyes before lifting his booted foot and pressing the heel into Renji's crotch. He then shifted his weight forward, stepping down on the chair with Renji's junk between it and the sole of his foot.
Renji howled, and tears filled his eyes as the incredible pain shot through him, nearly turning his stomach before it began to ache dully but persistently. He whimpered slightly in the wake of the man relenting, a shudder running through his mostly immobilized body.
The bleeding had mostly stopped. While painful, the injuries to his chest were shallow. His hand and groin were still ablaze with pain, though, and Hoshiri showed no sign of stopping now that he'd found his inquisitorial rhythm.
He picked up the senbon needles. Thought for a few seconds. He returned to Renji with them in his right hand, and then with his left, pinched the skin on the Yamanaka's forearm. Holding it up away from the bone beneath, he pushed the first needle in, piercing Renji's flesh. A soft hiss escaped his mouth through clenched teeth as Hoshiri worked the point through until it emerged. Releasing the flesh so that the needle stayed trapped like that, with maybe a half inch of skin showing over it, he pinched his arm a bit higher up and threated another through Renji's flesh.
The pain wasn't much at first, but with more time and more needles, it began to throb through his skin. Hoshiro fitted eight needles just through the flesh of one forearm, and he was far from done. He pierced the sensitive skin under elbow, then the skin of the bicep, leaving them there as well. Nearly two dozen needles were stuck through just the one arm, and by the end of it, the pain had added up and multiplied. The way they pulled the skin a bit in different directions, the continued stimulus, it all added up to a freakish amount of sensation, and it wasn't at all pleasant. Sort of an ache, but interspersed throughout the constant dull pain were these little points of intense, jabbing agony.
And that was only one arm. Hoshiri wasn't done; he seemed hell bent on using up every one of the senbon, and mirrored his work on the other arm. Not precisely; the placement was largely random, if the spacing remained fairly consistent. He altered the angles on each placement this time though, such that it was actually more painful. Of course, by that point, it was fairly irrelevant. Renji was nearly incoherent from the pain, weakly murmuring protest and not daring to move, for the spikes of anguish doing so would have inflicted.
There were needles left yet. Grabbing Renji by the hair and yanking his head forward roughly, which caused a spasm of response that yielded far more pain from the needles, Hoshiri proceeded to jab the few remaining ones into the back of his neck. Having to keep Renji's head forward meant that he couldn't slide them through quite so easily, and couldn't gather the flesh before hand... which meant that Renji was screaming hoarsely throughout.
Standing back to inspect his work, Hoshiri had a flash of torturistic inspiration. While Renji seethed breaths as carefully as he could, the hired thug loomed over him, and then opened his hand. He brought it down on Renji's bicep. Just a slap, not even a particularly hard one. He might as well have carved out a fist sized chunk of muscle with a rusty kunai, for Renji's response. He yoweled and kicked, and the instinctive movement only redoubled his pain.
Hoshiri slapped again. And again. And again. There was never much force to them, but Renji was incapable of counting, and would have lost count if he had been anyway, since he passed out for what must have been at least a few minutes through it.
When he came to, the needles were still there. Most of them. A few had actually torn the skin and snapped free, leaving erratic, sore like breaks along his arms. He shifted his eyes around, looking for Hoshiri... but didn't find him, which seemed impossible in the small room. His brain wasn't even moving at half speed yet, so he was midway through dimly wondering how someone could hide in such a small space when Hoshiri attacked.
He'd turned the chair, enough so that he could stand behind it with the wire garrote in hand. He'd laid in wait for Renjiro to show signs of waking up, and then quickly and brutally flipped the loop of wire forward so that it caught at his throat, then yanked back.
People assume that garrotes simply strangle the victim, killing by means of asphyxiation. Not strictly true, Renji would learn over the next span of washed together minutes. The small, thin nature of the wire actually amplified the force, not quite as much as a knife's edge would have, but enough that the wire was fully capable of actually biting through flesh and drawing some blood. It was also digging quite painfully into his larynx, crushing it, really, which was something Renji had never before experienced and hoped never again to repeat.
Hoped was the operative word. Hoshiri had other ideas. He kept the wire taut until Renji began to lose consciousness (struggling in the process, however feebly, to reignite the pain from the needles), but when he was just on the cusp, relented, allowing him to suck down needed breath. Then he repeated the entire grisly process.
”You've... done... this... before...” Renji had tried to croak. His mental state and the damage to his throat rendered the four words an incomprehensible muddle of pathetic sound, though. He was kept swimming between dim and dark, unable to breath and then struggling to, awake and just... out. Hishiro had kept it tight enough for him to fully succumb to unconsciousness once more.
When he awoke this time, he was free of needles, but not pain. Most of his pale skin was tinged with blood now. It had dribbled down from the various needle punctures and the lashes inflicted by the many tonged whip, spreading a sickly sort of red all across his form. Angry red lines, also blood covered, marked where the garrote had harried him.
In nearly two hundred years, he had never felt so much pain. He had never endured so much damage. He'd have to see Saigo, after this... there was a very real chance of some lasting damage, particularly due to the oxygen being cut off from his brain for several spans of seconds.
Despite that, Hoshiri still wasn't finished. Renjiro found his form, doubled by his vision, standing menacingly over him, holding a kunai. His lips moved to beg him to stop, but no sound emerged from his raw throat. The criminal brought the very tip up against Renji's pectoral and then exerted some pressure on it. Just enough to pass the skin. More pressure pushed it forward, excruciatingly slow, enough so that even in his hazy state, Renji could feel it moving through every layer of muscle fiber until, in a sensation that made his teeth hurt, the cold metal made contact with the bones of one of his ribs. Hoshiri was just as tortuous removing it, and blood ran freely from the small gouge, enough that Renji could feel the heat as it seeped down his abdomen to his hip.
He did it again, this time, piercing Renjiro's stomach. His rapidly evolving definition of pain changed once more as the kunai worked against his reflexively clenched stomach muscles. Breathing fast and rapidly through his mouth, Renji let loose an anguished, nearly inhuman moan. Stomach wounds were seldom fatal with medical care in a few days, provided the intestines weren't perforated, but the pain was incredible.
Hoshiri decided to round out the session with some serious blunt force trauma. The hammer, he decided, was overkill, and so instead he used his fist. He hammered it first and suddenly into Renjiro's cheek, snapping his head to the side. Next, the chest, a one two combination that hit his right pectoral and his punctured left pectoral brutally, eliciting a raspy scream. He kept up the punishment, towering over Renji as he unleashed blow after blow, using him as a human punching bag. The dull thuds of his fists connecting were punctuated with grunts or whimpers from Renji.
Finally, it was over. Renji wasn't even cognizant of the man untying him. Hoshiri had simply left him in the chair with his bonds hanging off him.
2103/2000 words
The setting: a small, ill-lit room. A single chair rests against the eastern wall, and a long table sits in the center. Arrayed on this table are a variety of weapons and tools; effectively, a torture suite.
The players: One Renjiro Yamanaka, body thief. Currently, he is tied to the chair that rests against the eastern wall. In his debut role, Hoshiri, a small-time thug hired for the part of torturer.
The aim of the scene was to toughen Renji up a bit. A lot, actually. Ever since he'd applied the seal that enabled him to swap bodies immediately, he'd noticed that his staying power was a bit lacking in most aspects.
”You're... sure about this?” Hoshiri seemed a bit skeptical, as he lifted a leather cat 'o'nine tails.
Renji flexed his arms against the ropes securing him to the chair in irritation and anticipation. ”What, is my money not good? Get on with it.”
He was bare chested, bound at the wrists, elbows, waist, arm pits and ankles to the chair. Hoshiri tentatively lifted his arm and then brought it down, lashing the tongs of the implement over one of Renji's pectorals.
Renji snorted. ”For the sake of the Sage of Seven Paths, man, you load cargo for a living. Put some strength into it. I should have hired your grandmother to beat me, if that's all you have.”
The next time the lash came down, Renji grunted and bit his lip. It fell again, even harder (apparently, Hishiri loved his grandmother, or responded well to insults), and Renji yelped. Thin red marks criss-crossed his pale flesh from the strikes, and pain danced across them, hot and dangerous.
For nearly ten minutes the abuse persisted. Blood was beginning to well up on his skin, the droplets running together and then plunging downward in erratic streaks.
”What, is your arm getting tired?” Renji did well to control his voice in spite of the damage he'd endured. Hoshiri struck him again, though, and for the first time, Renji screamed. The walls were thick enough that it didn't matter, but it seemed to be something of a turning point in the dangerous little liaison. The hireling viciously whipped the insidious little collection of knots back and forth across his chest a half dozen times, sweat beading on his brow, before then swinging a mean right hook that crashed into Renji's cheek, snapping his head to the side.
He'd gotten over his reservations. While Renji panted, a masochistic little smirk on his lips, eyes glassy, Hoshiri moved to stand before the table, inspecting his options. He lifted a few different items- a kunai, a wire garrote, a container of long, thin needles, various clamps, a hammer, and a length of chain- before ultimately choosing a simple lighter.
He flicked it a few times, eliciting flame, and then made his way back toward the chair and the captive it held. Gripping Renji's hand, he straightened his fingers, then starting at the index finger, called forth some flame and applied it.
The fire licked at the tip of his finger. It only took a few seconds before Renji was bouncing in the chair, cursing and struggling and breathing heavily. Perspiration shone on his skin, and it mingled with the blood that was seeping from the scoring the whip had inflicted. Only when the skin on Renji's index finger had begun to blister did Hoshiri move on to his middle finger to repeat the tactic. This time, he let the flame linger just a little longer; he was watching Renji's features, seemingly enjoying the agonized reactions he was evoking. If Renji hadn't been in agony, he might have commented.
Hoshiri passed the lighter below Renji's ring finger, again, burning him until a small blister had just formed. Finally, he worked on the tip of his pinky, leaving the skin there an angry red, peeling a bit.
”You seem to be... enjoying yourself,” he gasped, not managing to sound quite as flirtatious as he'd hoped, on account of the pain. Hoshiri narrowed his eyes before lifting his booted foot and pressing the heel into Renji's crotch. He then shifted his weight forward, stepping down on the chair with Renji's junk between it and the sole of his foot.
Renji howled, and tears filled his eyes as the incredible pain shot through him, nearly turning his stomach before it began to ache dully but persistently. He whimpered slightly in the wake of the man relenting, a shudder running through his mostly immobilized body.
The bleeding had mostly stopped. While painful, the injuries to his chest were shallow. His hand and groin were still ablaze with pain, though, and Hoshiri showed no sign of stopping now that he'd found his inquisitorial rhythm.
He picked up the senbon needles. Thought for a few seconds. He returned to Renji with them in his right hand, and then with his left, pinched the skin on the Yamanaka's forearm. Holding it up away from the bone beneath, he pushed the first needle in, piercing Renji's flesh. A soft hiss escaped his mouth through clenched teeth as Hoshiri worked the point through until it emerged. Releasing the flesh so that the needle stayed trapped like that, with maybe a half inch of skin showing over it, he pinched his arm a bit higher up and threated another through Renji's flesh.
The pain wasn't much at first, but with more time and more needles, it began to throb through his skin. Hoshiro fitted eight needles just through the flesh of one forearm, and he was far from done. He pierced the sensitive skin under elbow, then the skin of the bicep, leaving them there as well. Nearly two dozen needles were stuck through just the one arm, and by the end of it, the pain had added up and multiplied. The way they pulled the skin a bit in different directions, the continued stimulus, it all added up to a freakish amount of sensation, and it wasn't at all pleasant. Sort of an ache, but interspersed throughout the constant dull pain were these little points of intense, jabbing agony.
And that was only one arm. Hoshiri wasn't done; he seemed hell bent on using up every one of the senbon, and mirrored his work on the other arm. Not precisely; the placement was largely random, if the spacing remained fairly consistent. He altered the angles on each placement this time though, such that it was actually more painful. Of course, by that point, it was fairly irrelevant. Renji was nearly incoherent from the pain, weakly murmuring protest and not daring to move, for the spikes of anguish doing so would have inflicted.
There were needles left yet. Grabbing Renji by the hair and yanking his head forward roughly, which caused a spasm of response that yielded far more pain from the needles, Hoshiri proceeded to jab the few remaining ones into the back of his neck. Having to keep Renji's head forward meant that he couldn't slide them through quite so easily, and couldn't gather the flesh before hand... which meant that Renji was screaming hoarsely throughout.
Standing back to inspect his work, Hoshiri had a flash of torturistic inspiration. While Renji seethed breaths as carefully as he could, the hired thug loomed over him, and then opened his hand. He brought it down on Renji's bicep. Just a slap, not even a particularly hard one. He might as well have carved out a fist sized chunk of muscle with a rusty kunai, for Renji's response. He yoweled and kicked, and the instinctive movement only redoubled his pain.
Hoshiri slapped again. And again. And again. There was never much force to them, but Renji was incapable of counting, and would have lost count if he had been anyway, since he passed out for what must have been at least a few minutes through it.
When he came to, the needles were still there. Most of them. A few had actually torn the skin and snapped free, leaving erratic, sore like breaks along his arms. He shifted his eyes around, looking for Hoshiri... but didn't find him, which seemed impossible in the small room. His brain wasn't even moving at half speed yet, so he was midway through dimly wondering how someone could hide in such a small space when Hoshiri attacked.
He'd turned the chair, enough so that he could stand behind it with the wire garrote in hand. He'd laid in wait for Renjiro to show signs of waking up, and then quickly and brutally flipped the loop of wire forward so that it caught at his throat, then yanked back.
People assume that garrotes simply strangle the victim, killing by means of asphyxiation. Not strictly true, Renji would learn over the next span of washed together minutes. The small, thin nature of the wire actually amplified the force, not quite as much as a knife's edge would have, but enough that the wire was fully capable of actually biting through flesh and drawing some blood. It was also digging quite painfully into his larynx, crushing it, really, which was something Renji had never before experienced and hoped never again to repeat.
Hoped was the operative word. Hoshiri had other ideas. He kept the wire taut until Renji began to lose consciousness (struggling in the process, however feebly, to reignite the pain from the needles), but when he was just on the cusp, relented, allowing him to suck down needed breath. Then he repeated the entire grisly process.
”You've... done... this... before...” Renji had tried to croak. His mental state and the damage to his throat rendered the four words an incomprehensible muddle of pathetic sound, though. He was kept swimming between dim and dark, unable to breath and then struggling to, awake and just... out. Hishiro had kept it tight enough for him to fully succumb to unconsciousness once more.
When he awoke this time, he was free of needles, but not pain. Most of his pale skin was tinged with blood now. It had dribbled down from the various needle punctures and the lashes inflicted by the many tonged whip, spreading a sickly sort of red all across his form. Angry red lines, also blood covered, marked where the garrote had harried him.
In nearly two hundred years, he had never felt so much pain. He had never endured so much damage. He'd have to see Saigo, after this... there was a very real chance of some lasting damage, particularly due to the oxygen being cut off from his brain for several spans of seconds.
Despite that, Hoshiri still wasn't finished. Renjiro found his form, doubled by his vision, standing menacingly over him, holding a kunai. His lips moved to beg him to stop, but no sound emerged from his raw throat. The criminal brought the very tip up against Renji's pectoral and then exerted some pressure on it. Just enough to pass the skin. More pressure pushed it forward, excruciatingly slow, enough so that even in his hazy state, Renji could feel it moving through every layer of muscle fiber until, in a sensation that made his teeth hurt, the cold metal made contact with the bones of one of his ribs. Hoshiri was just as tortuous removing it, and blood ran freely from the small gouge, enough that Renji could feel the heat as it seeped down his abdomen to his hip.
He did it again, this time, piercing Renjiro's stomach. His rapidly evolving definition of pain changed once more as the kunai worked against his reflexively clenched stomach muscles. Breathing fast and rapidly through his mouth, Renji let loose an anguished, nearly inhuman moan. Stomach wounds were seldom fatal with medical care in a few days, provided the intestines weren't perforated, but the pain was incredible.
Hoshiri decided to round out the session with some serious blunt force trauma. The hammer, he decided, was overkill, and so instead he used his fist. He hammered it first and suddenly into Renjiro's cheek, snapping his head to the side. Next, the chest, a one two combination that hit his right pectoral and his punctured left pectoral brutally, eliciting a raspy scream. He kept up the punishment, towering over Renji as he unleashed blow after blow, using him as a human punching bag. The dull thuds of his fists connecting were punctuated with grunts or whimpers from Renji.
Finally, it was over. Renji wasn't even cognizant of the man untying him. Hoshiri had simply left him in the chair with his bonds hanging off him.
2103/2000 words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Stat Training#4: Stamina
Another day, another facet of the self to improve. It was beginning to get a bit laborious, but they dividends seemed promising. If he wanted to pal around with the big boys, he needed to be able to keep up. That much was evident.
His life force had lasted longer than most, but it could stand to be stronger. Academically speaking, it was his entire existence. Others were flesh and blood, mind and spirit. Renjiro was not so fixed.
If he wanted to improve his overall fortitude, body and soul, he had to do so in unity. It wasn't enough to merely expend vast quantities of chakra; he did that often enough, between testing fuuin and maintaining communication between members of Henkou. Putting one of his bodies to the test, that would help, but it wouldn't be enough.
He needed to combine the two, somehow, and a smirk lit his lips when a means to do so occurred to him.
He set himself up with an ample supply of paper, a large bottle, a brush, a single sharp kunai knife, and ample bandages and some fluffy towels. This was likely going to get messy.
He lifted the knife in one hand and pressed the edge of against the meat of his other palm. He hissed as he cut, relatively deep, and bright red blood began to well up. He clenched the bleeding hand into a fist and held it over the mouth of the container. The drips added up to a steady trickle, and began to slowly fill the bottle. The pain of the slash faded to a dull ache that throbbed with his pulse.
Renji waited until a bit of dizziness had set in before finally wrapping the injury up to stem the flow of blood. He kept pressure on it for a bit, and then got to work.
He dipped the brush and began, creating a series of symbols and lines, inscribing the formula for his bursting seal. It wasn't his most chakra intensive one, but it was enough of a drain that it would deplete him to continue creating them. Making this last a while was important- just shucking his chakra and losing some blood wasn't going to do it. He focused chakra into the seal, completing it.
He needed to approach the brink of utter undoing by emptying himself of life force and the chakra that derived from it simultaneously. If he could match the rate of blood loss to the amount of chakra he spent, this would likely prove effective.
At least, that was his take.
His motor skills weren't at all affected yet. Drawing out the elements of the fuuin and then joining them together with a series of modest hand seals was a bit slower than it might otherwise have been, but still quite proficient. Too proficient. He'd never encountered a situation where efficient use of chakra was a problem rather than a benefit. At this rate, he'd come too close to mortality by blood loss before he'd managed to spend every bit of his chakra.
The second seal came a bit slowly. It was barely noticeable, still first caliber work accomplished in a more than reasonable amount of time, but Renji could detect the difference attributed to his dizziness. He frowned as the effects began becoming a bit more pronounced. This was definitely going to throw off his rate. He needed to focus utterly, work harder to finish the seal fast enough to deplete his reserves. This was as grueling as any strenuous endurance work out, it turned out, as he rapidly hurried to finish yet another seal, and then another.
By the time he had mostly used up his supply of blood ink, the dizziness had evolved into a hazy, persistent effect that continually shifted the room about six feet to the left every few seconds. Just dealing with that alone was beginning to give him a nasty headache. Add in the more advanced tremors, most notably in his hands, and fuuinjutsu was getting tricky.
More than a few times, small errors caused by a tremor of the hand forced him to rework the kanji and shapes that formed the fairly straight forward seal. More than a few times, he let the brush linger just a little too long, welling up the bloody “ink” so that it blotted a crucial character.
He needed more blood out of his body though. He needed this to be even harder, to race toward the terminator between life and death. Lifting the kunai, he positioned his uninjured arm over the container before carefully making a small incision at the wrist. Blood spurted to the tune of his heart beat, creating another pint or so worth of medium in a much shorter time. He hurriedly put pressure on it, wound bandages around it again and again to keep it from bleeding too much more.
Satisfied that he wouldn't bleed out any time soon, he marveled at how quickly the rapid loss of blood worsened his condition. Almost immediately, he felt achy and feverish, his skin even paler than usual and a bit clammy. The dizziness made even sitting up straight a bit of a challenge; he found himself tilting every so often, and had to divert focus just to keep from tipping over.
Forcing himself upright, he dipped his brush. He'd underestimated how much the blood loss would mess with his ability to create seals. Even something simple, requiring little concentration, would have been challenging as he was. He gritted his teeth and lifted the brush, though, sank it into his own collected blood, and then set it to paper.
This time, he opted for a more complex seal. His Chakra Disguising Method fuuin. The amount of chakra required to power it was much greater, but the detail work and effort involved were taxing as well. It might be a better outlet, though, so it was worth a try.
Moving with as much precision as he could muster, he forced his arm to remain stationary and worked his wrist to manipulate the brush, laying out the basic formula of the seal and then embellishing it with the many tiny kanji that would contain the chakra he'd invest in it. Everything was more difficult, though. His limbs felt heavier, and the brush might as well have weighed fifty pounds for the toll it took on his oxygen starved muscles.
By the time he was half-finished, the symbols were all beginning to blur together, making it so that he could only work for a few seconds at a time when he managed to get his sense of sight under control and forced the sanguine threads of sealing to right themselves before his weary eyes. The going was slow, brutally so, but it was getting harder and harder to care about that. By his very loose estimate, he'd lost at least twenty five percent of the blood in his body already. Maybe a bit more or less. He needed to lose almost twice that (probably less) for the exercise to be effective, but he wasn't sure he'd be able to keep spending chakra by that point.
He managed to complete and empower the seal after several long minutes that seemed all the longer. The symptoms of the blood loss were getting worse and worse. He struggled through another copy of the seal, and then another, cutting a decent swath into his reserves of chakra. It wasn't fast enough, though. He'd pass-out from blood loss long before he expended all of his chakra, at this rate.
Maybe a converse approach, he dimly considered. Rather than using a few large seals, he could power his way through a multitude of the most simple fuuin that he possessed. It was certainly worth giving a try. He scrabbled his hand over the table for a fresh sheet of paper and went to work.
He labored through the first Exploding Seal, which took almost half again as long as normal, but still went much more smoothly than the more difficult seals had. Only a few errors to correct before he could move on to the next one, which took just a little longer. His head kept lolling, and his hands were shaking so badly that he was forced to clamp the left over his right in a somewhat vain effort to keep the trembling under control.
In the time it would normally have taken him to produce a dozen of the seals, he wound up with six. It was still a better way to spent chakra, though, and so he plodded through it and kept going, and going, creating a small armory worth of the exploding tags until finally, his reserve of blood ink was all but depleted.
With a weary sigh, he considered his options and then brought the kunai to bear on his unscathed palm. He was exceedingly careful, not quite trusting himself fully, and so the cut he made was considerably smaller than the first one on his other hand. He formed a fist yet again, and then tried to recompose himself while he dripped even more of his lifeblood into the container, one tiny drop at a time.
He started writing out and empowering seals again, but by then, even the act of channeling chakra, something fairly elementary, especially at such a rank level, was beginning to elude him. He realized with muted alarm, after the third Exploding Seal of the new batch, that he'd forgotten to bandage up his hand. It and his arm, and the table below it, were smeared with wasted blood. He abandoned the seal to bind himself up tight, overdoing it on the gauze because he knew undoubtedly that he could barely afford to lose more blood.
His skin felt cold, but there was a sheen of sweat upon it, making him feel almost unbearably clammy. The dizziness had perniciously evolved into a slow, constant spin that made him feel utterly nauseous, so nauseous that the sickly feeling developed into a dull ache that permeated his body, particularly badly at the sites of the cuts themselves. The shaking was so bad at this point that every single seal took twice as long as it should have due to errors and smudging...
And he nearly kicked himself when he realized that there was a better way. The seals he'd already created could be unsealed to spend chakra. While it wasn't precisely easy, it would at least cut out the drawing step.
He worked feverishly, molding and channeling chakra, summoning it to his fingertip and then tracing it over the seals one at a time in order to undo them. His clumsiness actually resulted in it using up even more chakra than normal, due to instances where he traced over the empty table rather than the page due to the clever tricks his eyes were playing on him.
One after another, he obliterated the low ranked seals. His chakra pool was getting low, very low, low enough that he felt almost hopeful beneath all of the exhaustion, ache, and urge to vomit. He moved on to the moderate seals, knocking them out much more slowly. So many characters to delete! He plugged through it, pushing his bloody, chakra-charged finger about in a slow motion frenzy to do what needed to be done.
He was so weak, then, that this was all extremely taxing. Quite a fitting workout, and certainly appropriate given his desire to expand both his capacity to endure and his capacity to store chakra. This was far more difficult than enduring punishment alone or marathon sealing alone. Combining the two activities was almost too much.
Almost. At last, midway through unsealing the Bursting Seals, he ran out of chakra. Nothing left. He was utterly spent. It occurred to him that if he'd saved a bit, he could call Saigo for help. But no... this was better. He could fight for his life for a while, until he was strong enough to go seek needed medical attention. Besides, if he did perish, he'd just need to replace the body in question, even if he was rather fond of the Yamanaka model he usually sported.
The hardest test of all was next. He needed to get ten feet across the room to his bed so that he could collapse. Breathing raggedly but deeply for a few long minutes, he summoned what little strength he had left and then braced his bandaged hands on the table and pushed himself up.
Almost immediately, his body wanted to sag back down. He had to close his eyes to keep from puking, and when he opened them again, the room was jerking about, reeling several feet to one side and then resetting. The shakes were nearly constant, just an ever present trembling that affected every muscle of his body, and he was fighting to keep his eyes open as he struggled for each step.
One foot in front of the other. He lost it, midway through, and fell painfully to his hands and knees to crawl the rest of the way feebly. Levering himself up off the ground and into the bed made the hoops he'd jumped through for the sake of strength seem like a pleasant stroll, but eventually he clambered atop the comforter, a sweaty bloody mess, and collapsed.
2231/2000 Words
Another day, another facet of the self to improve. It was beginning to get a bit laborious, but they dividends seemed promising. If he wanted to pal around with the big boys, he needed to be able to keep up. That much was evident.
His life force had lasted longer than most, but it could stand to be stronger. Academically speaking, it was his entire existence. Others were flesh and blood, mind and spirit. Renjiro was not so fixed.
If he wanted to improve his overall fortitude, body and soul, he had to do so in unity. It wasn't enough to merely expend vast quantities of chakra; he did that often enough, between testing fuuin and maintaining communication between members of Henkou. Putting one of his bodies to the test, that would help, but it wouldn't be enough.
He needed to combine the two, somehow, and a smirk lit his lips when a means to do so occurred to him.
He set himself up with an ample supply of paper, a large bottle, a brush, a single sharp kunai knife, and ample bandages and some fluffy towels. This was likely going to get messy.
He lifted the knife in one hand and pressed the edge of against the meat of his other palm. He hissed as he cut, relatively deep, and bright red blood began to well up. He clenched the bleeding hand into a fist and held it over the mouth of the container. The drips added up to a steady trickle, and began to slowly fill the bottle. The pain of the slash faded to a dull ache that throbbed with his pulse.
Renji waited until a bit of dizziness had set in before finally wrapping the injury up to stem the flow of blood. He kept pressure on it for a bit, and then got to work.
He dipped the brush and began, creating a series of symbols and lines, inscribing the formula for his bursting seal. It wasn't his most chakra intensive one, but it was enough of a drain that it would deplete him to continue creating them. Making this last a while was important- just shucking his chakra and losing some blood wasn't going to do it. He focused chakra into the seal, completing it.
He needed to approach the brink of utter undoing by emptying himself of life force and the chakra that derived from it simultaneously. If he could match the rate of blood loss to the amount of chakra he spent, this would likely prove effective.
At least, that was his take.
His motor skills weren't at all affected yet. Drawing out the elements of the fuuin and then joining them together with a series of modest hand seals was a bit slower than it might otherwise have been, but still quite proficient. Too proficient. He'd never encountered a situation where efficient use of chakra was a problem rather than a benefit. At this rate, he'd come too close to mortality by blood loss before he'd managed to spend every bit of his chakra.
The second seal came a bit slowly. It was barely noticeable, still first caliber work accomplished in a more than reasonable amount of time, but Renji could detect the difference attributed to his dizziness. He frowned as the effects began becoming a bit more pronounced. This was definitely going to throw off his rate. He needed to focus utterly, work harder to finish the seal fast enough to deplete his reserves. This was as grueling as any strenuous endurance work out, it turned out, as he rapidly hurried to finish yet another seal, and then another.
By the time he had mostly used up his supply of blood ink, the dizziness had evolved into a hazy, persistent effect that continually shifted the room about six feet to the left every few seconds. Just dealing with that alone was beginning to give him a nasty headache. Add in the more advanced tremors, most notably in his hands, and fuuinjutsu was getting tricky.
More than a few times, small errors caused by a tremor of the hand forced him to rework the kanji and shapes that formed the fairly straight forward seal. More than a few times, he let the brush linger just a little too long, welling up the bloody “ink” so that it blotted a crucial character.
He needed more blood out of his body though. He needed this to be even harder, to race toward the terminator between life and death. Lifting the kunai, he positioned his uninjured arm over the container before carefully making a small incision at the wrist. Blood spurted to the tune of his heart beat, creating another pint or so worth of medium in a much shorter time. He hurriedly put pressure on it, wound bandages around it again and again to keep it from bleeding too much more.
Satisfied that he wouldn't bleed out any time soon, he marveled at how quickly the rapid loss of blood worsened his condition. Almost immediately, he felt achy and feverish, his skin even paler than usual and a bit clammy. The dizziness made even sitting up straight a bit of a challenge; he found himself tilting every so often, and had to divert focus just to keep from tipping over.
Forcing himself upright, he dipped his brush. He'd underestimated how much the blood loss would mess with his ability to create seals. Even something simple, requiring little concentration, would have been challenging as he was. He gritted his teeth and lifted the brush, though, sank it into his own collected blood, and then set it to paper.
This time, he opted for a more complex seal. His Chakra Disguising Method fuuin. The amount of chakra required to power it was much greater, but the detail work and effort involved were taxing as well. It might be a better outlet, though, so it was worth a try.
Moving with as much precision as he could muster, he forced his arm to remain stationary and worked his wrist to manipulate the brush, laying out the basic formula of the seal and then embellishing it with the many tiny kanji that would contain the chakra he'd invest in it. Everything was more difficult, though. His limbs felt heavier, and the brush might as well have weighed fifty pounds for the toll it took on his oxygen starved muscles.
By the time he was half-finished, the symbols were all beginning to blur together, making it so that he could only work for a few seconds at a time when he managed to get his sense of sight under control and forced the sanguine threads of sealing to right themselves before his weary eyes. The going was slow, brutally so, but it was getting harder and harder to care about that. By his very loose estimate, he'd lost at least twenty five percent of the blood in his body already. Maybe a bit more or less. He needed to lose almost twice that (probably less) for the exercise to be effective, but he wasn't sure he'd be able to keep spending chakra by that point.
He managed to complete and empower the seal after several long minutes that seemed all the longer. The symptoms of the blood loss were getting worse and worse. He struggled through another copy of the seal, and then another, cutting a decent swath into his reserves of chakra. It wasn't fast enough, though. He'd pass-out from blood loss long before he expended all of his chakra, at this rate.
Maybe a converse approach, he dimly considered. Rather than using a few large seals, he could power his way through a multitude of the most simple fuuin that he possessed. It was certainly worth giving a try. He scrabbled his hand over the table for a fresh sheet of paper and went to work.
He labored through the first Exploding Seal, which took almost half again as long as normal, but still went much more smoothly than the more difficult seals had. Only a few errors to correct before he could move on to the next one, which took just a little longer. His head kept lolling, and his hands were shaking so badly that he was forced to clamp the left over his right in a somewhat vain effort to keep the trembling under control.
In the time it would normally have taken him to produce a dozen of the seals, he wound up with six. It was still a better way to spent chakra, though, and so he plodded through it and kept going, and going, creating a small armory worth of the exploding tags until finally, his reserve of blood ink was all but depleted.
With a weary sigh, he considered his options and then brought the kunai to bear on his unscathed palm. He was exceedingly careful, not quite trusting himself fully, and so the cut he made was considerably smaller than the first one on his other hand. He formed a fist yet again, and then tried to recompose himself while he dripped even more of his lifeblood into the container, one tiny drop at a time.
He started writing out and empowering seals again, but by then, even the act of channeling chakra, something fairly elementary, especially at such a rank level, was beginning to elude him. He realized with muted alarm, after the third Exploding Seal of the new batch, that he'd forgotten to bandage up his hand. It and his arm, and the table below it, were smeared with wasted blood. He abandoned the seal to bind himself up tight, overdoing it on the gauze because he knew undoubtedly that he could barely afford to lose more blood.
His skin felt cold, but there was a sheen of sweat upon it, making him feel almost unbearably clammy. The dizziness had perniciously evolved into a slow, constant spin that made him feel utterly nauseous, so nauseous that the sickly feeling developed into a dull ache that permeated his body, particularly badly at the sites of the cuts themselves. The shaking was so bad at this point that every single seal took twice as long as it should have due to errors and smudging...
And he nearly kicked himself when he realized that there was a better way. The seals he'd already created could be unsealed to spend chakra. While it wasn't precisely easy, it would at least cut out the drawing step.
He worked feverishly, molding and channeling chakra, summoning it to his fingertip and then tracing it over the seals one at a time in order to undo them. His clumsiness actually resulted in it using up even more chakra than normal, due to instances where he traced over the empty table rather than the page due to the clever tricks his eyes were playing on him.
One after another, he obliterated the low ranked seals. His chakra pool was getting low, very low, low enough that he felt almost hopeful beneath all of the exhaustion, ache, and urge to vomit. He moved on to the moderate seals, knocking them out much more slowly. So many characters to delete! He plugged through it, pushing his bloody, chakra-charged finger about in a slow motion frenzy to do what needed to be done.
He was so weak, then, that this was all extremely taxing. Quite a fitting workout, and certainly appropriate given his desire to expand both his capacity to endure and his capacity to store chakra. This was far more difficult than enduring punishment alone or marathon sealing alone. Combining the two activities was almost too much.
Almost. At last, midway through unsealing the Bursting Seals, he ran out of chakra. Nothing left. He was utterly spent. It occurred to him that if he'd saved a bit, he could call Saigo for help. But no... this was better. He could fight for his life for a while, until he was strong enough to go seek needed medical attention. Besides, if he did perish, he'd just need to replace the body in question, even if he was rather fond of the Yamanaka model he usually sported.
The hardest test of all was next. He needed to get ten feet across the room to his bed so that he could collapse. Breathing raggedly but deeply for a few long minutes, he summoned what little strength he had left and then braced his bandaged hands on the table and pushed himself up.
Almost immediately, his body wanted to sag back down. He had to close his eyes to keep from puking, and when he opened them again, the room was jerking about, reeling several feet to one side and then resetting. The shakes were nearly constant, just an ever present trembling that affected every muscle of his body, and he was fighting to keep his eyes open as he struggled for each step.
One foot in front of the other. He lost it, midway through, and fell painfully to his hands and knees to crawl the rest of the way feebly. Levering himself up off the ground and into the bed made the hoops he'd jumped through for the sake of strength seem like a pleasant stroll, but eventually he clambered atop the comforter, a sweaty bloody mess, and collapsed.
2231/2000 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Stat Training#6: Genjutu
Genjutsu. Illusion had never interested Renjiro, not in the strictest sense. Deception, misdirection, guile, cunning- those were all tools in his arsenal, tools which required no chakra or knowledge to employ but could be as deadly as any jutsu. His focus on Ninjutsu during his formal education had left him spotty in regard to genjutsu in general, and he'd had little reason to improve since then. Little guidance, as well. His natural intelligence and twisted track of mind had always been enough to help him out of them in his encounters with shinobi that employed chakra aided diversions from reality, but he got the feeling that his proverbial game needed to be stepped up due to his involvement with the nukenin organization Henkou.
Of course, the easiest way to improve himself in this particular regard would have been to enlist one of his newfound allies, perhaps even his partner, Yaku. The problem with that was that he didn't trust even Yaku to cast illusions on him unfettered. The others might take advantage of the opportunity to save them from a few future barbs, or competition, and the boss man might have found himself gripped by buyer's remorse.
With no other recourse, Renji turned to his own devices. Namely, his mind and extensive, centuries long memory.
Lying down on his bed, he closed his eyes and began meditating. It took some time to quiet his turbulent thoughts, but it was necessary for this sort of activity. He enacted his jutsu, a technique for regressing through his own memories and reliving them, and sought out those instances where he had encountered genjutsu users in the past. With some dissection, he could probably figure out a bit about the somewhat elusive art.
The most recent was nearly eight years prior, a chuunin from Iwagakure who had recognized a spare body from Rock Country and attack. With his perfect recall, he could play the footage back, experience the battle once more. The other shinobi formed some hand seals and then managed to make eye contact, and Renjiro had felt as if flames had lept up on his skin, burning him. He replayed the hand seals themselves a few times, and the trigger of eye contact. It took a few viewings for him to realize that the eye contact was definitively a trigger, actually. Once that was ascertained, he moved on to the illusion itself.
He'd been burned more than enough times for real that the sensation was indisputably that of fire grazing flesh. There had been no scent though, no tell tale aroma of burning hair and cooking meat, like there should have been. In the heat of battle, he hadn't realized it, but in the future he would be wary of such things when there was smoke without fire. It would have been simple enough to break the spell, had he had these thoughts at the time.
It was just a very particular sort of pain, he realized, after experiencing it a few more times. There had been no desire to do anything, no suggestion implanted. He'd just felt like he'd been burned. He hadn't given it much thought at the time, but the effect was obviously playing foul with his ability to feel, his sense of touch. Illusions were usually considered in the auditory or visual variety, but this was a little more insidious than that. Good to know.
In the battle, Renji hadn't found flames and had simply born through the pain, assuming it was some kind of ninjutsu technique that he would just need to suffer. The other shinobi had followed up with more hand seals, and then pointed toward a stream that ran not too far away. Almost immediately, Renji began running toward it, desperate to dive into the water in order to douse the flames.
Normally, Renjiro, skilled in misdirection as he was, would have ignored the elementary misdirection, but he'd actually looked, and noticed the water. Water put out fire. Why not relieve himself of this pain he was feeling? He'd turned and started running, barely even thinking. It had seemed like a reflex at the time, but after going over the events a few times, he got the feeling he'd been had.
It took several replays before he figured it out. That had been a genjutsu as well, but different in a way he couldn't quite put his mental finger on, yet. A few more times experiencing it led to the answer: it was indeed another genjutsu, but not an illusion. The other shinobi's chakra had infiltrated his mind and instilled the compulsion, probably when he'd seen the finger pointing.
He'd then felt compelled to look in the direction indicated. It had seemed organic enough, at the time, but now he knew that it wasn't. He could kick himself later, though; he'd underestimated his opponent and managed to escape anyway, so it wasn't the end of the world. This mental autopsy would ensure that he didn't make similar mistakes in the future. No doubt there were more powerful techniques like those that would be harder to resist, but this was a start.
It had happened without thought, without any at all. That was the “tell” of the jutsu-laden lie. Even at his most reflexive, Renji was a thinker by nature. He hadn't thought, he'd just done, and then he'd seen the water and rushed toward it with similar lack of forethought. Again, it would have been easy enough to disrupt, had he not been going through the motions in that particular “battle”.
Two different “types” of genjutsu. The illusion, albeit preying upon touch rather than a more obvious sense. Then the compulsion. Interesting. He'd have to see if there were any other sorts, or if the other techniques he had encountered conformed to these two varieties. He'd heard tell of genjutsu techniques that were similar to his once clan's method of overriding the body of an opponent. Mind control, hypnotism, whatever it was called. No doubt such potent effects fell under the non-illusion type.
The next most recent, a few years earlier, was fairly straight forward. The shinobi in question was more of a wind user, but he'd enacted a basic visual illusion, a cloud of dust that had briefly obscured his line of sight. It hadn't lasted long, not even long enough for him to break it. Nothing more than a parlor trick, an enhanced misdirection. Another illusion to file away. Hand seals, and then... a trigger? It took him only a single viewing to find it, a simple clap of the hands.
A slight smile curved his lips when he made it to the next incident. It was the first time in decades he'd flirted with death, a little less than eighty years before the present day. He'd been in the Water Country, living not far from the border as, of all things, a story teller. It had been a mean but interesting existence, but, hardly the point.
To cut right to it, he'd bitten off a bit more than he could chew when he'd attempted to overpower a shinobi. A partner had appeared, and the two of them had been at least as skilled as Renji, if not nearly as clever. One was much more physical, the other a ranged support type. The body thief had been hard pressed to mount any respectable offense between those two modes of attack; every time he managed to get away from the skirmisher, the artillery was ready.
They'd skirmished for a while, and then the ranged type had unleashed a technique. Their eyes had met, and Renjiro had found himself simply floating in a vast sea, so far below the surface that the light was dim. He hadn't needed to breath, but the sensory deprivation had an almost hopeless, pacifying effect. With his enhanced viewing capabilities, he saw the genjutsu a little more clearly.
It had lasted only a second, maybe a little more, in real time. He'd stood there impassively while they prepared their finishing attacks, but his mind had floated, drifted aimlessly, sank and bobbed in a world of blue gray haze. Interesting. It was quite sophisticated, as illusions went. Almost like capitalizing upon the mechanisms of dream, creating a fictitious world with it's own rules and regulations and then dropping someone off there for a while as they remained inert and helpless. It had real effects, as well. He'd felt strange for quite a while afterward, as if he really had been in sensory deprivation for hours. The implications were astounding. Floating in a sea was one thing. What about being attacked and brutalized? Tortured for hours? Even killed? The psychological ramifications were worth taking pause.
When it “finally” ended, he was still just standing there, with a volley of kunai en route from the side and a taijutsu specialist closing in on him from behind. Only quick thinking had saved him, along with a rapidly and perfectly executed Shinranshin to set the taijutsu user on his friend for long enough that Renji could regain control of the battle. He hadn't defeated them, but he'd escaped, which was more than good by his reckoning.
This type of genjutsu was much more than the base uses he'd encountered earlier and later. It was like being transported. A complete illusion, with mental effects, to a world with whatever rules the genjutsu artist had imagined. He replayed the fight over and over and over, looking for weaknesses, for implausibilities he could seize in order to break free of such a potent effect. He found none. There wasn't time enough to do anything anyway, not in reality. The best he could do against such a technique was be prepared for when it ended, be ready for anything when he came out of it. Still, with full control of his mind like that, the user could likely prevent him from preparing any contingencies or defenses.
He scrolled further back. A young woman in Amegakure had made him feel bliss for a moment, dulling his wits in hopes of stealing his coins. She'd been successful at the onset, but he'd found her and made her pay. A street person in Suna, so long ago that he'd actually been able to visit Hidden Sand without risking death at the hands of their defense network, had caught his eyes and managed to “convince” him to join him in a dark alley. The wastrel had wound up Renjiro's next body, but the data he gleaned from the memory was valuable. Genjutsu was as diverse as any of the other ninja arts. Likely a moderate form of the hypnotism brand of genjutsu, now that he thought about it. Combining that with his Shintensin based techniques was quite a powerful notion, and bore investigation when he could.
An interesting memory from Konoha, a mission that had pitted him and his team against a chuunin nukenin hellbent on sacking the caravan they were guarding. He had initiated a technique that left Renji immobilized, completely unable to move. He'd always assumed it was just some brand of paralysis, but the jounin team leader had freed him by stabbing him in the hand with a kunai. It had been a fairly severe wound, not life threatening given the fact that he was quickly bandaged and healed on his return to the village, but relative to the “strength” of the genjutsu, it seemed a deep disparity.
Pain could break them. As he made the realization, he scrolled back through the battles, looking for evidence to support that fact. He found a dim memory, very early, of his time in the academy. A lecture. Genjutsu are techniques which force chakra through the chakra circulatory system in order to affect the brain. If you have warning, or can figure out that you're in one, Kai can break you free. It is not a complete fail safe though. In order to Kai out of a genjutsu, you should be familiar with certain clues or wide used techniques, and always maintain an awareness of your surroundings. In dire circumstances, pain can free you as well, but more potent techniques require injuries that might leave you worse off than if you remained in the sway of the illusion...”
He re-watched a particular battle. Illusory stone walls had closed him in, and then a spike of very real earth had lanced up, piercing him right in the thigh. He'd assumed that the illusion had simply been dissolved when it had served its purpose, but after reviewing it a few more times, he was certain that it had ended at the exact instant that he'd felt the pain of the fairly serious injury. More information to file away. Especially given his unique capabilities, it might be beneficial to physically cripple himself in order to break out of a particularly nasty genjutsu effect. After all, if it would kill him anyway, he'd just transfer bodies; this way, he might be able to do a bit more damage to them, or accomplish some other objective, before using one of his few spares.
He ended his jutsu and got a pen and some paper, began jotting down notes about what he had remembered in order to better fix them in his mind, formatting them in a way that would be easy to work with without having to mull over the actual scenarios again. He picked out the parts that were common to all of the jutsus- the hand seals, the triggers (which, he'd realized, could be almost anything, but were most often some sort of auditory or visual cue). He made special note of the differences.
Genjutsu for the five senses, sometimes just one, often two or even three. He'd yet to encounter a full sensory illusion save for the one full immersion technique he'd barely survived, which led him to believe that the more senses it affected, the more powerful it was. It was quite possible that truly powerful masters of the Genjutsu arts might have utter control of one or more senses, or the ability to affect all senses as easily as one.
Then there were the “stirrers”. Techniques that warped or created emotions, instilled desires or compulsions, affected the thought process rather than the processing of information. These were a little more obvious, usually. Most illusions were plausible enough, or similar enough to ninjutsu effects that it was more difficult to tell, but he seldom got hungry in the middle of battles unless he actually hadn't eaten for a while. Along with those, the types that would allow someone to exert some suggestive control, like enhanced hypnotism.
It was a lot to consider and digest, but Renji was a champion muller. He'd re-experienced more than forty genjutsu techniques, all told. He'd seen the fallacies he should have picked up on, the ways that he could avoid triggering them in the first place, the strategies that their users tended to employ once they'd trapped him. All of it was valuable, all of it information he'd ignored out of arrogance or ennui. He knew now more than ever that his intelligence was his greatest weapon against such shinobi, and now, he was better equipped to make use of that intelligence.
Over the next few days, he perused his past, ensuring that he'd accounted for every instance of his brushes with Genjutsu. He found a few more, here and there, ones that he had missed at the onset but could now identify as illusions or tricks due to his expanded knowledge. In each and every one of them, he continued playing through until he was certain he would be able to escape from, counter, or at least be prepared for such or similar tactics in the future. He also began building some ideas for illusions he might like to possess, tinkering with them until he was satisfied with the premise. His ninjutsu was much more suitable in most cases, but a series of techniques meant specifically to aid his already significant ability to mislead and deceive was worth giving a try to.
Before he could begin that in earnest, though, he might as well work on the basics of how to actually perform genjutsu. He knew what it entailed, but had never really put it into practice or learned any techniques. Considering the various hand seals, he decided to test a few out, molding his chakra in ways that felt appropriate for directing into another's chakra network. He would need a test subject, when the time came, but for now it was more a matter of figuring out how to even test.
In theory, it was a bit like chakra kai. Managing to send chakra out, at a distance, just for a much more specific and complex reason than the activation of seals. The trick would be infiltrating a chakra network, and subverting it...
But that was for another day.
2829/2800 Words
Genjutsu. Illusion had never interested Renjiro, not in the strictest sense. Deception, misdirection, guile, cunning- those were all tools in his arsenal, tools which required no chakra or knowledge to employ but could be as deadly as any jutsu. His focus on Ninjutsu during his formal education had left him spotty in regard to genjutsu in general, and he'd had little reason to improve since then. Little guidance, as well. His natural intelligence and twisted track of mind had always been enough to help him out of them in his encounters with shinobi that employed chakra aided diversions from reality, but he got the feeling that his proverbial game needed to be stepped up due to his involvement with the nukenin organization Henkou.
Of course, the easiest way to improve himself in this particular regard would have been to enlist one of his newfound allies, perhaps even his partner, Yaku. The problem with that was that he didn't trust even Yaku to cast illusions on him unfettered. The others might take advantage of the opportunity to save them from a few future barbs, or competition, and the boss man might have found himself gripped by buyer's remorse.
With no other recourse, Renji turned to his own devices. Namely, his mind and extensive, centuries long memory.
Lying down on his bed, he closed his eyes and began meditating. It took some time to quiet his turbulent thoughts, but it was necessary for this sort of activity. He enacted his jutsu, a technique for regressing through his own memories and reliving them, and sought out those instances where he had encountered genjutsu users in the past. With some dissection, he could probably figure out a bit about the somewhat elusive art.
The most recent was nearly eight years prior, a chuunin from Iwagakure who had recognized a spare body from Rock Country and attack. With his perfect recall, he could play the footage back, experience the battle once more. The other shinobi formed some hand seals and then managed to make eye contact, and Renjiro had felt as if flames had lept up on his skin, burning him. He replayed the hand seals themselves a few times, and the trigger of eye contact. It took a few viewings for him to realize that the eye contact was definitively a trigger, actually. Once that was ascertained, he moved on to the illusion itself.
He'd been burned more than enough times for real that the sensation was indisputably that of fire grazing flesh. There had been no scent though, no tell tale aroma of burning hair and cooking meat, like there should have been. In the heat of battle, he hadn't realized it, but in the future he would be wary of such things when there was smoke without fire. It would have been simple enough to break the spell, had he had these thoughts at the time.
It was just a very particular sort of pain, he realized, after experiencing it a few more times. There had been no desire to do anything, no suggestion implanted. He'd just felt like he'd been burned. He hadn't given it much thought at the time, but the effect was obviously playing foul with his ability to feel, his sense of touch. Illusions were usually considered in the auditory or visual variety, but this was a little more insidious than that. Good to know.
In the battle, Renji hadn't found flames and had simply born through the pain, assuming it was some kind of ninjutsu technique that he would just need to suffer. The other shinobi had followed up with more hand seals, and then pointed toward a stream that ran not too far away. Almost immediately, Renji began running toward it, desperate to dive into the water in order to douse the flames.
Normally, Renjiro, skilled in misdirection as he was, would have ignored the elementary misdirection, but he'd actually looked, and noticed the water. Water put out fire. Why not relieve himself of this pain he was feeling? He'd turned and started running, barely even thinking. It had seemed like a reflex at the time, but after going over the events a few times, he got the feeling he'd been had.
It took several replays before he figured it out. That had been a genjutsu as well, but different in a way he couldn't quite put his mental finger on, yet. A few more times experiencing it led to the answer: it was indeed another genjutsu, but not an illusion. The other shinobi's chakra had infiltrated his mind and instilled the compulsion, probably when he'd seen the finger pointing.
He'd then felt compelled to look in the direction indicated. It had seemed organic enough, at the time, but now he knew that it wasn't. He could kick himself later, though; he'd underestimated his opponent and managed to escape anyway, so it wasn't the end of the world. This mental autopsy would ensure that he didn't make similar mistakes in the future. No doubt there were more powerful techniques like those that would be harder to resist, but this was a start.
It had happened without thought, without any at all. That was the “tell” of the jutsu-laden lie. Even at his most reflexive, Renji was a thinker by nature. He hadn't thought, he'd just done, and then he'd seen the water and rushed toward it with similar lack of forethought. Again, it would have been easy enough to disrupt, had he not been going through the motions in that particular “battle”.
Two different “types” of genjutsu. The illusion, albeit preying upon touch rather than a more obvious sense. Then the compulsion. Interesting. He'd have to see if there were any other sorts, or if the other techniques he had encountered conformed to these two varieties. He'd heard tell of genjutsu techniques that were similar to his once clan's method of overriding the body of an opponent. Mind control, hypnotism, whatever it was called. No doubt such potent effects fell under the non-illusion type.
The next most recent, a few years earlier, was fairly straight forward. The shinobi in question was more of a wind user, but he'd enacted a basic visual illusion, a cloud of dust that had briefly obscured his line of sight. It hadn't lasted long, not even long enough for him to break it. Nothing more than a parlor trick, an enhanced misdirection. Another illusion to file away. Hand seals, and then... a trigger? It took him only a single viewing to find it, a simple clap of the hands.
A slight smile curved his lips when he made it to the next incident. It was the first time in decades he'd flirted with death, a little less than eighty years before the present day. He'd been in the Water Country, living not far from the border as, of all things, a story teller. It had been a mean but interesting existence, but, hardly the point.
To cut right to it, he'd bitten off a bit more than he could chew when he'd attempted to overpower a shinobi. A partner had appeared, and the two of them had been at least as skilled as Renji, if not nearly as clever. One was much more physical, the other a ranged support type. The body thief had been hard pressed to mount any respectable offense between those two modes of attack; every time he managed to get away from the skirmisher, the artillery was ready.
They'd skirmished for a while, and then the ranged type had unleashed a technique. Their eyes had met, and Renjiro had found himself simply floating in a vast sea, so far below the surface that the light was dim. He hadn't needed to breath, but the sensory deprivation had an almost hopeless, pacifying effect. With his enhanced viewing capabilities, he saw the genjutsu a little more clearly.
It had lasted only a second, maybe a little more, in real time. He'd stood there impassively while they prepared their finishing attacks, but his mind had floated, drifted aimlessly, sank and bobbed in a world of blue gray haze. Interesting. It was quite sophisticated, as illusions went. Almost like capitalizing upon the mechanisms of dream, creating a fictitious world with it's own rules and regulations and then dropping someone off there for a while as they remained inert and helpless. It had real effects, as well. He'd felt strange for quite a while afterward, as if he really had been in sensory deprivation for hours. The implications were astounding. Floating in a sea was one thing. What about being attacked and brutalized? Tortured for hours? Even killed? The psychological ramifications were worth taking pause.
When it “finally” ended, he was still just standing there, with a volley of kunai en route from the side and a taijutsu specialist closing in on him from behind. Only quick thinking had saved him, along with a rapidly and perfectly executed Shinranshin to set the taijutsu user on his friend for long enough that Renji could regain control of the battle. He hadn't defeated them, but he'd escaped, which was more than good by his reckoning.
This type of genjutsu was much more than the base uses he'd encountered earlier and later. It was like being transported. A complete illusion, with mental effects, to a world with whatever rules the genjutsu artist had imagined. He replayed the fight over and over and over, looking for weaknesses, for implausibilities he could seize in order to break free of such a potent effect. He found none. There wasn't time enough to do anything anyway, not in reality. The best he could do against such a technique was be prepared for when it ended, be ready for anything when he came out of it. Still, with full control of his mind like that, the user could likely prevent him from preparing any contingencies or defenses.
He scrolled further back. A young woman in Amegakure had made him feel bliss for a moment, dulling his wits in hopes of stealing his coins. She'd been successful at the onset, but he'd found her and made her pay. A street person in Suna, so long ago that he'd actually been able to visit Hidden Sand without risking death at the hands of their defense network, had caught his eyes and managed to “convince” him to join him in a dark alley. The wastrel had wound up Renjiro's next body, but the data he gleaned from the memory was valuable. Genjutsu was as diverse as any of the other ninja arts. Likely a moderate form of the hypnotism brand of genjutsu, now that he thought about it. Combining that with his Shintensin based techniques was quite a powerful notion, and bore investigation when he could.
An interesting memory from Konoha, a mission that had pitted him and his team against a chuunin nukenin hellbent on sacking the caravan they were guarding. He had initiated a technique that left Renji immobilized, completely unable to move. He'd always assumed it was just some brand of paralysis, but the jounin team leader had freed him by stabbing him in the hand with a kunai. It had been a fairly severe wound, not life threatening given the fact that he was quickly bandaged and healed on his return to the village, but relative to the “strength” of the genjutsu, it seemed a deep disparity.
Pain could break them. As he made the realization, he scrolled back through the battles, looking for evidence to support that fact. He found a dim memory, very early, of his time in the academy. A lecture. Genjutsu are techniques which force chakra through the chakra circulatory system in order to affect the brain. If you have warning, or can figure out that you're in one, Kai can break you free. It is not a complete fail safe though. In order to Kai out of a genjutsu, you should be familiar with certain clues or wide used techniques, and always maintain an awareness of your surroundings. In dire circumstances, pain can free you as well, but more potent techniques require injuries that might leave you worse off than if you remained in the sway of the illusion...”
He re-watched a particular battle. Illusory stone walls had closed him in, and then a spike of very real earth had lanced up, piercing him right in the thigh. He'd assumed that the illusion had simply been dissolved when it had served its purpose, but after reviewing it a few more times, he was certain that it had ended at the exact instant that he'd felt the pain of the fairly serious injury. More information to file away. Especially given his unique capabilities, it might be beneficial to physically cripple himself in order to break out of a particularly nasty genjutsu effect. After all, if it would kill him anyway, he'd just transfer bodies; this way, he might be able to do a bit more damage to them, or accomplish some other objective, before using one of his few spares.
He ended his jutsu and got a pen and some paper, began jotting down notes about what he had remembered in order to better fix them in his mind, formatting them in a way that would be easy to work with without having to mull over the actual scenarios again. He picked out the parts that were common to all of the jutsus- the hand seals, the triggers (which, he'd realized, could be almost anything, but were most often some sort of auditory or visual cue). He made special note of the differences.
Genjutsu for the five senses, sometimes just one, often two or even three. He'd yet to encounter a full sensory illusion save for the one full immersion technique he'd barely survived, which led him to believe that the more senses it affected, the more powerful it was. It was quite possible that truly powerful masters of the Genjutsu arts might have utter control of one or more senses, or the ability to affect all senses as easily as one.
Then there were the “stirrers”. Techniques that warped or created emotions, instilled desires or compulsions, affected the thought process rather than the processing of information. These were a little more obvious, usually. Most illusions were plausible enough, or similar enough to ninjutsu effects that it was more difficult to tell, but he seldom got hungry in the middle of battles unless he actually hadn't eaten for a while. Along with those, the types that would allow someone to exert some suggestive control, like enhanced hypnotism.
It was a lot to consider and digest, but Renji was a champion muller. He'd re-experienced more than forty genjutsu techniques, all told. He'd seen the fallacies he should have picked up on, the ways that he could avoid triggering them in the first place, the strategies that their users tended to employ once they'd trapped him. All of it was valuable, all of it information he'd ignored out of arrogance or ennui. He knew now more than ever that his intelligence was his greatest weapon against such shinobi, and now, he was better equipped to make use of that intelligence.
Over the next few days, he perused his past, ensuring that he'd accounted for every instance of his brushes with Genjutsu. He found a few more, here and there, ones that he had missed at the onset but could now identify as illusions or tricks due to his expanded knowledge. In each and every one of them, he continued playing through until he was certain he would be able to escape from, counter, or at least be prepared for such or similar tactics in the future. He also began building some ideas for illusions he might like to possess, tinkering with them until he was satisfied with the premise. His ninjutsu was much more suitable in most cases, but a series of techniques meant specifically to aid his already significant ability to mislead and deceive was worth giving a try to.
Before he could begin that in earnest, though, he might as well work on the basics of how to actually perform genjutsu. He knew what it entailed, but had never really put it into practice or learned any techniques. Considering the various hand seals, he decided to test a few out, molding his chakra in ways that felt appropriate for directing into another's chakra network. He would need a test subject, when the time came, but for now it was more a matter of figuring out how to even test.
In theory, it was a bit like chakra kai. Managing to send chakra out, at a distance, just for a much more specific and complex reason than the activation of seals. The trick would be infiltrating a chakra network, and subverting it...
But that was for another day.
2829/2800 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Stat Training#6: Strength
More body training. Renji hated it more than almost anything else. It was annoying, given that he could choose a body that looked any way he wished, but it was a necessary evil, given the way that his methods worked. It was less about strengthening a specific body and more about learning to use his life force to use a body's strength. Otherwise, he would have needed to keep every body he planned on using in peak physical condition.
Now that would have been annoying.
He was very used to his Yamanaka model. Almost too used to it, it sometimes seemed. And so, for the purpose of this little exercise, he transferred his mind and chakra into the rather unimpressive body of Ichiro. Normally, the ratty little teenager would have been unable to lift much of anything, but empowered by Renjiro, his body was capable of much more.
It was time to put that to the test.
Gathering some very heavy objects, he placed them in a backpack and set it on Ichiro's narrow shoulders, adjusting the straps for the sake of comfort. After that, it was time for a meandering run through the country side, up and down hills, through as many bits of difficult terrain as he could find. He darted through the forest so heavily laden, even swam across a small lake, struggling to keep his head above water as he paddled and kicked frantically against the weight.
Save for the swimming, which had been a bad idea, it wasn't taxing enough, so he poured on speed, moving as quickly as he was able, pushing his body to the max. Now he was beginning to feel the burn, beginning to feel the ways that Ichiro's body didn't quite respond to his grasp of the human form. He began to consciously bolster certain muscle groups that seemed to be underperforming, and as he ran, kept that practice up until it became as subconscious as breathing or blinking.
He came upon a sheer cliff face and decided to climb it without using any chakra. It would have been simple enough to channel it through the soles of his feet and run up, but actually climbing it would use nearly every muscle in Ichiro's unimpressive body, clearly highlighting the areas in which he drastically needed improvement.
He stretched out thoroughly and removed about half of the weight from the backpack, setting it on the ground for retrieval upon his descent. With that done, he looked upward, scanning the craggy surface of the rock for some hand and foot holds to use as he went up. Surely there'd be some improvisation, but having a route picked out didn't hurt.
He grabbed hold of a little bit of rock that jutted out with Ichiro's delicate right hand and then jumped, latching onto a divot in the sandstone with his left. He hauled himself up to the next hand hold on his right side, and dug his left foot into a conventient little pockmark in the rock face of the cliff.
Hand over hand, foot over foot. The straps of the backpack dug somewhat painfully into his shoulders due to the objects contained within, or rather, the force that gravity was exerting upon them. It was actually sort of fun, though. He quickly abandoned his preconceived route in favor of picking out the most difficult but manageable concaves or convexes he could lay eyes on.
A few times he had to scuttle either left or right just to make a daring hold. Less often, he had to backtrack, climbing carefully back down when he reached a dead end in order to find a new way to go up without destroying his future options. It became a game of sorts, picking his way up the cliff's face, but it was more enjoyable than lifting more weights or doing pull ups in his closet.
He reached a small ledge and paused, giving himself a brief break and assessing the state of the body he was inhabiting. Gradually, over the course of the climb, he had been making small adjustments here and there, strengthening Ichiro's arms when needed, his legs in other cases. He was beginning to get a better feel, though, and with each deliberate movement, the process got that much closer to automation.
He started climbing anew. He'd scaled perhaps thirty feet, and had another eighty to go by his sight. Sweating and grunting, he kept right on plugging, snatching at impressions in the sheer stone, nearly losing finger nails a few times when he nearly missed a grab. He got more sure, more familiar with the rhythm of the stone, and began making more and more daring maneuvers. At one point, with no other option, he was even forced to leap about six feet and catch hold of a tiny ledge in order to continue his methodical, steady progress.
By the time he'd scaled another thirty feet of treacherous stone, the process was all but reflexive. His arm swung up, and his spiritual strength (for lack of a better term) surged into it, but enough still remained in Ichiro's bandy legs to keep them from giving out is well. Even more strength flowed when he had to drag himself against the laws of physics upward. He was almost certain that he'd have mastered it by the time he pulled himself up over the edge.
The next thirty feet came almost easily, in anticipation of the challenge that would follow. The final segment of the cliff jutted out at an angle, roughly forty five degrees, which would put him just shy of climbing while parallel to the ground some one hundred feet below. He could use chakra, if things got hairy, he knew, but this was going to require quite a bit of raw strength and quick reaction to pull off without it.
He made the first hand hold and the second easily enough. It was when his feet were no longer bolstering him straight up and down that the immense strain of the new angle made themselves known. He was using his fingers and toes, essentially, gripping the rock to keep gravity from snatching him downward AND continuing to power his climbing maneuvers. Every time he removed a limb from the surface of the cliff, he felt the sinister “going to fall” sensation welling up in his loins and gut. He fought it down, though, endured the pain and the feel of his skin peeling off against the rock, and ascended.
A few times he needed to channel some chakra in order to keep from falling. He stuck himself to the stone, perilously hanging, using every ounce of muscle in Ichiro's core to keep from doubling over under the seemingly egregious weight in the pack. He utilized those opportunities to rest a bit, then threw himself back into it with all the vigor that he could muster.
Gasping belaboredly at the top, he still needed to make the final pull. He loosed one hand, scrabbled for purchase on the edge of the cliff. It took a few flaps of his hand, some dragging of fingers, and then he had it, it seemed. A solid hold. One that would bear all of his body weight for as much time as it took to unlatch his other hand and find something to grab with it too. He waited long seconds before doing just that, lurching his body forward...
His left hand patted about. His fingers dug into soft soil, rending it uselessly. His hand slipped off, and then, anchored only by one arm, the weight of his body and the pack dragged against the arm of his right hand, sending pain screaming through every joint up to his shoulder in a vicious wrenching motion as he swung a bit to the side. He couldn't let go, though. He needed contact for chakra to save him, and if he did lose his grip, he'd simply be in free fall.
Closing his eyes, he mustered every bit of strength, spiritual or otherwise, that he could summon. He dug in his fingers, and then with painstaking care, began to bend his arm at the elbow, drawing himself upward inch by inch by inch. He then forced his shoulder to work, gaining a few more precious, agonizing inches. It was enough that he could make another grab with his left hand, and this time, being better anchored meant that he had a bit of time to find the hold he needed.
He found it after a few more seconds. With both arms in place, he dragged himself up and over in one drastic, frightening motion. His legs kicked frantically, rebounding off the stone below in order to help him achieve that much more leverage, and then finally, he was over. Ichiro's arms were practically numb beneath the pain, but he managed to struggle out of the backpack and flop onto his back, panting and recuperating.
He only gave himself a few minutes, though. After those minutes were up, he dutifully got to his feet and reshouldered his self inflicted burden. It was time to climb down, which was in some ways easier and some ways harder. It was harder to look down for foot holds, harder to choose his route, but he was at least working with gravity, and his efforts had paid off: his use of the spare body was now completely reflexive, allowing him to make it back down in half the time it had taken him to ascend.
1593/1500 Words
More body training. Renji hated it more than almost anything else. It was annoying, given that he could choose a body that looked any way he wished, but it was a necessary evil, given the way that his methods worked. It was less about strengthening a specific body and more about learning to use his life force to use a body's strength. Otherwise, he would have needed to keep every body he planned on using in peak physical condition.
Now that would have been annoying.
He was very used to his Yamanaka model. Almost too used to it, it sometimes seemed. And so, for the purpose of this little exercise, he transferred his mind and chakra into the rather unimpressive body of Ichiro. Normally, the ratty little teenager would have been unable to lift much of anything, but empowered by Renjiro, his body was capable of much more.
It was time to put that to the test.
Gathering some very heavy objects, he placed them in a backpack and set it on Ichiro's narrow shoulders, adjusting the straps for the sake of comfort. After that, it was time for a meandering run through the country side, up and down hills, through as many bits of difficult terrain as he could find. He darted through the forest so heavily laden, even swam across a small lake, struggling to keep his head above water as he paddled and kicked frantically against the weight.
Save for the swimming, which had been a bad idea, it wasn't taxing enough, so he poured on speed, moving as quickly as he was able, pushing his body to the max. Now he was beginning to feel the burn, beginning to feel the ways that Ichiro's body didn't quite respond to his grasp of the human form. He began to consciously bolster certain muscle groups that seemed to be underperforming, and as he ran, kept that practice up until it became as subconscious as breathing or blinking.
He came upon a sheer cliff face and decided to climb it without using any chakra. It would have been simple enough to channel it through the soles of his feet and run up, but actually climbing it would use nearly every muscle in Ichiro's unimpressive body, clearly highlighting the areas in which he drastically needed improvement.
He stretched out thoroughly and removed about half of the weight from the backpack, setting it on the ground for retrieval upon his descent. With that done, he looked upward, scanning the craggy surface of the rock for some hand and foot holds to use as he went up. Surely there'd be some improvisation, but having a route picked out didn't hurt.
He grabbed hold of a little bit of rock that jutted out with Ichiro's delicate right hand and then jumped, latching onto a divot in the sandstone with his left. He hauled himself up to the next hand hold on his right side, and dug his left foot into a conventient little pockmark in the rock face of the cliff.
Hand over hand, foot over foot. The straps of the backpack dug somewhat painfully into his shoulders due to the objects contained within, or rather, the force that gravity was exerting upon them. It was actually sort of fun, though. He quickly abandoned his preconceived route in favor of picking out the most difficult but manageable concaves or convexes he could lay eyes on.
A few times he had to scuttle either left or right just to make a daring hold. Less often, he had to backtrack, climbing carefully back down when he reached a dead end in order to find a new way to go up without destroying his future options. It became a game of sorts, picking his way up the cliff's face, but it was more enjoyable than lifting more weights or doing pull ups in his closet.
He reached a small ledge and paused, giving himself a brief break and assessing the state of the body he was inhabiting. Gradually, over the course of the climb, he had been making small adjustments here and there, strengthening Ichiro's arms when needed, his legs in other cases. He was beginning to get a better feel, though, and with each deliberate movement, the process got that much closer to automation.
He started climbing anew. He'd scaled perhaps thirty feet, and had another eighty to go by his sight. Sweating and grunting, he kept right on plugging, snatching at impressions in the sheer stone, nearly losing finger nails a few times when he nearly missed a grab. He got more sure, more familiar with the rhythm of the stone, and began making more and more daring maneuvers. At one point, with no other option, he was even forced to leap about six feet and catch hold of a tiny ledge in order to continue his methodical, steady progress.
By the time he'd scaled another thirty feet of treacherous stone, the process was all but reflexive. His arm swung up, and his spiritual strength (for lack of a better term) surged into it, but enough still remained in Ichiro's bandy legs to keep them from giving out is well. Even more strength flowed when he had to drag himself against the laws of physics upward. He was almost certain that he'd have mastered it by the time he pulled himself up over the edge.
The next thirty feet came almost easily, in anticipation of the challenge that would follow. The final segment of the cliff jutted out at an angle, roughly forty five degrees, which would put him just shy of climbing while parallel to the ground some one hundred feet below. He could use chakra, if things got hairy, he knew, but this was going to require quite a bit of raw strength and quick reaction to pull off without it.
He made the first hand hold and the second easily enough. It was when his feet were no longer bolstering him straight up and down that the immense strain of the new angle made themselves known. He was using his fingers and toes, essentially, gripping the rock to keep gravity from snatching him downward AND continuing to power his climbing maneuvers. Every time he removed a limb from the surface of the cliff, he felt the sinister “going to fall” sensation welling up in his loins and gut. He fought it down, though, endured the pain and the feel of his skin peeling off against the rock, and ascended.
A few times he needed to channel some chakra in order to keep from falling. He stuck himself to the stone, perilously hanging, using every ounce of muscle in Ichiro's core to keep from doubling over under the seemingly egregious weight in the pack. He utilized those opportunities to rest a bit, then threw himself back into it with all the vigor that he could muster.
Gasping belaboredly at the top, he still needed to make the final pull. He loosed one hand, scrabbled for purchase on the edge of the cliff. It took a few flaps of his hand, some dragging of fingers, and then he had it, it seemed. A solid hold. One that would bear all of his body weight for as much time as it took to unlatch his other hand and find something to grab with it too. He waited long seconds before doing just that, lurching his body forward...
His left hand patted about. His fingers dug into soft soil, rending it uselessly. His hand slipped off, and then, anchored only by one arm, the weight of his body and the pack dragged against the arm of his right hand, sending pain screaming through every joint up to his shoulder in a vicious wrenching motion as he swung a bit to the side. He couldn't let go, though. He needed contact for chakra to save him, and if he did lose his grip, he'd simply be in free fall.
Closing his eyes, he mustered every bit of strength, spiritual or otherwise, that he could summon. He dug in his fingers, and then with painstaking care, began to bend his arm at the elbow, drawing himself upward inch by inch by inch. He then forced his shoulder to work, gaining a few more precious, agonizing inches. It was enough that he could make another grab with his left hand, and this time, being better anchored meant that he had a bit of time to find the hold he needed.
He found it after a few more seconds. With both arms in place, he dragged himself up and over in one drastic, frightening motion. His legs kicked frantically, rebounding off the stone below in order to help him achieve that much more leverage, and then finally, he was over. Ichiro's arms were practically numb beneath the pain, but he managed to struggle out of the backpack and flop onto his back, panting and recuperating.
He only gave himself a few minutes, though. After those minutes were up, he dutifully got to his feet and reshouldered his self inflicted burden. It was time to climb down, which was in some ways easier and some ways harder. It was harder to look down for foot holds, harder to choose his route, but he was at least working with gravity, and his efforts had paid off: his use of the spare body was now completely reflexive, allowing him to make it back down in half the time it had taken him to ascend.
1593/1500 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Advanced Seal Sight
It was time to learn another sealing technique. Exciting! Far from it, really, but the development of his fuuinjutsu repertoire was important enough for him to deal with a bit of tedium. In order to accomplish this particular task, he had a mandatory warm up- the creation of three different seals, each of a different complexity. Working with characteristic efficiency, Renjiro quickly inscribed on simple paper one of his lowest rank exploding note, his highest rank exploding note, and a chakra disguising seal. Drawing the elements and kanji, channeling the chakra, at least got him in the right state of mind for what would follow.
He had a method already that would allow him to discern the complexity of a seal by touch. He was aware that the capability existed to do so more quickly, and by sight- important, given that many fuuin had insidious effects on touch, or traps that had the same. He began with that, forming a single hand seal and then tracing his finger along the path created by the various elements of the lesser most fuuin.
Next, he repeated the process, familiarizing himself with the inscribed bursting tag. It took a little longer, due to the complexity of the tag in question, but it wasn't at all tasking. Taking a new piece of paper, he made some quick, comparative notes about the differences between the two seals, and the similarities. He arranged them tidily in columns before moving to the next step of the process. He repeated his hand seal, his tracing, this time on the moderately difficult fuuin he had forged for training purposes. When he finally finished, he recorded more notes, creating two more columns. The first compared it with the weak fuuin, the second with the medium. Beneath these columns, he began rapidly re-recording the observations that held true of all the fuuin, characterizing the elements that were the same or similar in a unified way so that he'd know what to look for when he got tricky.
Now, to get tricky. He summoned chakra with a handseal, creating an abundance for the time being, and began directing it along the path laid by his tenketsu. It took a few tries to get it to his eyes in the most efficient way possible; without a doujutsu, he had very little reason to do much with his eyes but see, normally.
Once he'd gotten that under the belt, the next part was harder. He'd have to use said chakra to augment his eyes, enabling him to discern the chakra present in the fuuin. This probably would have been much, much harder if he wasn't already a sensor; because he was used to sensing chakra, detecting it came much faster.
As of now, it only looked like a twisted jumble in each seal. While he technically knew which was the strongest, which the needest, he needed to maintain the channeling until he could tell WHY one seal was more complex than the others, or another. He focused on the exploding seal first, running his eyes over the pattern of the seal until it began to move in and out of focus. It was a bit like an optical illusion, the sort that came in children's books. He had to look at it in just the right way before the truth would be revealed, only this time, it wasn't a hidden kunai- it was the fundamental aspect of the seal.
Repeating the exercise for the two more advanced seals took a little longer, but eventually, he had it to the point where he could focus his eyes just right, every time.
[1500-950=550] 606/550 words
It was time to learn another sealing technique. Exciting! Far from it, really, but the development of his fuuinjutsu repertoire was important enough for him to deal with a bit of tedium. In order to accomplish this particular task, he had a mandatory warm up- the creation of three different seals, each of a different complexity. Working with characteristic efficiency, Renjiro quickly inscribed on simple paper one of his lowest rank exploding note, his highest rank exploding note, and a chakra disguising seal. Drawing the elements and kanji, channeling the chakra, at least got him in the right state of mind for what would follow.
He had a method already that would allow him to discern the complexity of a seal by touch. He was aware that the capability existed to do so more quickly, and by sight- important, given that many fuuin had insidious effects on touch, or traps that had the same. He began with that, forming a single hand seal and then tracing his finger along the path created by the various elements of the lesser most fuuin.
Next, he repeated the process, familiarizing himself with the inscribed bursting tag. It took a little longer, due to the complexity of the tag in question, but it wasn't at all tasking. Taking a new piece of paper, he made some quick, comparative notes about the differences between the two seals, and the similarities. He arranged them tidily in columns before moving to the next step of the process. He repeated his hand seal, his tracing, this time on the moderately difficult fuuin he had forged for training purposes. When he finally finished, he recorded more notes, creating two more columns. The first compared it with the weak fuuin, the second with the medium. Beneath these columns, he began rapidly re-recording the observations that held true of all the fuuin, characterizing the elements that were the same or similar in a unified way so that he'd know what to look for when he got tricky.
Now, to get tricky. He summoned chakra with a handseal, creating an abundance for the time being, and began directing it along the path laid by his tenketsu. It took a few tries to get it to his eyes in the most efficient way possible; without a doujutsu, he had very little reason to do much with his eyes but see, normally.
Once he'd gotten that under the belt, the next part was harder. He'd have to use said chakra to augment his eyes, enabling him to discern the chakra present in the fuuin. This probably would have been much, much harder if he wasn't already a sensor; because he was used to sensing chakra, detecting it came much faster.
As of now, it only looked like a twisted jumble in each seal. While he technically knew which was the strongest, which the needest, he needed to maintain the channeling until he could tell WHY one seal was more complex than the others, or another. He focused on the exploding seal first, running his eyes over the pattern of the seal until it began to move in and out of focus. It was a bit like an optical illusion, the sort that came in children's books. He had to look at it in just the right way before the truth would be revealed, only this time, it wasn't a hidden kunai- it was the fundamental aspect of the seal.
Repeating the exercise for the two more advanced seals took a little longer, but eventually, he had it to the point where he could focus his eyes just right, every time.
[1500-950=550] 606/550 words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Blasting Seal
Renji was not usually overly concerned with offensive power. He knew better than any that the outcome of most shinobi battles depended much more on strategy than strength, in a roughly even engagement.
Still. There was just something about explosions. It was a recent fondness that he'd acquired, but he couldn't deny it. There was just something about being able to make things, people, or parts of the landscape become devastated by raw power and force, and it was even better when it was done in a particularly clever or amusing way.
Explosion fetish aside, there was quite a bit of tactical reasoning for enhancing his offensive arsenal. The greater likelihood of a kill or area affected meant that he was that much closer to victory just from the onset, and there might even be opponents who lesser explosions would leave unfazed.
As with all of his fuuin projects, this one began with design. The basic idea behind every exploding fuuin was the same, but it took a bit of style to be able to create a framework capable of holding the power necessary to boom bigger. He knew the various kanji and symbols that were necessary for such seals, and for the sake of an orderly effort, dutifully recorded every last one of them on a piece of scratch paper, forming a vocabulary of sorts to work with.
Next came the basic layout. This part would be identical to the smaller variants of the seal, but... well, larger. Using ink and a thin brush, he mapped out a dot matrix that described the dimensions of the actual fuuin on a sheet of normal paper, making them a bit larger than they needed to be for the sake of visibility in the next step.
Ah, the next step, arrived so soon. Pulling out some of his tracing paper, an innovation in fuuin he was very seriously thinking about trademarking, Renjiro laid it over the “map” and then studied his vocabulary list of options for what elements to lay down along the road the map described. The key here was the ability to store and release chakra, which required a stable circuit, along with a mechanism that would interact with a standard release for the sake of activation, unleashing that stored chakra to wreak havoc in a contained area.
He formed a pattern of symbols that would act as reservoirs for the chakra, little clusters of kanji that dotted the perimeter of the seal and then wound through it for the sake of uniformity and an even distribution when the explosion occurred.
Next, he surrounded those clusters with kanji that would translate the chakra directly into force. Due to the fact that the clusters held more chakra, more of them were required than for any of the other tags. It was a painstaking process; the arrangement had to be just right, and since this was the first time, he might need to come back and fix it, add a few kanji or delete a few, after testing.
Almost there. The next bit of vocabulary he needed was for amplification, maximizing the output of the chakra fueled explosion. This was perhaps the most easily botched element of the entire seal; too much amplification, and the seal would short itself out when activated. Too little, and it would be ineffective. He started with a moderate number of the trio of symbols he preferred for such work, arranging them in an equilateral triangle around each cluster.
The final and simplest element was a circuit to link the various clusters together, allowing the chakra from the activation to instantaneously traverse the entirety of the seal, firing off all of the clusters of kanji bound chakra simultaneously.
With his traced out master formed, he held it up to the light for a final inspection. Satisfied, he transcribed it onto three appropriately sized tags for testing. Best to be sure, after all.
He traipsed outside, whistling merrily, and set the tags up at a distant. He attempted to activate them one at a time, forming the single needed tiger seal...
And nothing happened every time. He tried again, to be sure, and then frowning, stalked to check the three tags.
They were identical, which fortunately meant that the problem was likely only one problem.
Returning to his master, he inspected it carefully. The simplest explanation for a complete short was that the circuit was somehow botched, but after triple checking it, he was sure that it wasn't.
That left the most reasonable suspect to be the activation or amplification kanji. He checked the activators, and they were formed correctly. If he wasn't so sure of his own work, he might have tried a different arrangement, but he... was sure of that one. It had served him well in the past months.
He deleted two of the amplification elements from each cluster before making a single tag to try it again. Annoyed, he brought his master and supplies with him this time, so that he wouldn't have to keep walking back and forth if more adjustments were required.
Setting the tag up a ways away, he retreated and formed the tiger seal for Chakra Kai yet again, welling up chakra and then focusing it into the tag. This time the chakra moved through the circuit in an even, singular flow, releasing that which was stored in the tag, which was then amplified as it was converted into raw power.
The results were encouraging. The tree that he had pinned it too, a moderate tree, was suddenly a cloud of raining leaves, branches, sheets of bark, and splinters.
[1800-950=850] 960/850 Words
Renji was not usually overly concerned with offensive power. He knew better than any that the outcome of most shinobi battles depended much more on strategy than strength, in a roughly even engagement.
Still. There was just something about explosions. It was a recent fondness that he'd acquired, but he couldn't deny it. There was just something about being able to make things, people, or parts of the landscape become devastated by raw power and force, and it was even better when it was done in a particularly clever or amusing way.
Explosion fetish aside, there was quite a bit of tactical reasoning for enhancing his offensive arsenal. The greater likelihood of a kill or area affected meant that he was that much closer to victory just from the onset, and there might even be opponents who lesser explosions would leave unfazed.
As with all of his fuuin projects, this one began with design. The basic idea behind every exploding fuuin was the same, but it took a bit of style to be able to create a framework capable of holding the power necessary to boom bigger. He knew the various kanji and symbols that were necessary for such seals, and for the sake of an orderly effort, dutifully recorded every last one of them on a piece of scratch paper, forming a vocabulary of sorts to work with.
Next came the basic layout. This part would be identical to the smaller variants of the seal, but... well, larger. Using ink and a thin brush, he mapped out a dot matrix that described the dimensions of the actual fuuin on a sheet of normal paper, making them a bit larger than they needed to be for the sake of visibility in the next step.
Ah, the next step, arrived so soon. Pulling out some of his tracing paper, an innovation in fuuin he was very seriously thinking about trademarking, Renjiro laid it over the “map” and then studied his vocabulary list of options for what elements to lay down along the road the map described. The key here was the ability to store and release chakra, which required a stable circuit, along with a mechanism that would interact with a standard release for the sake of activation, unleashing that stored chakra to wreak havoc in a contained area.
He formed a pattern of symbols that would act as reservoirs for the chakra, little clusters of kanji that dotted the perimeter of the seal and then wound through it for the sake of uniformity and an even distribution when the explosion occurred.
Next, he surrounded those clusters with kanji that would translate the chakra directly into force. Due to the fact that the clusters held more chakra, more of them were required than for any of the other tags. It was a painstaking process; the arrangement had to be just right, and since this was the first time, he might need to come back and fix it, add a few kanji or delete a few, after testing.
Almost there. The next bit of vocabulary he needed was for amplification, maximizing the output of the chakra fueled explosion. This was perhaps the most easily botched element of the entire seal; too much amplification, and the seal would short itself out when activated. Too little, and it would be ineffective. He started with a moderate number of the trio of symbols he preferred for such work, arranging them in an equilateral triangle around each cluster.
The final and simplest element was a circuit to link the various clusters together, allowing the chakra from the activation to instantaneously traverse the entirety of the seal, firing off all of the clusters of kanji bound chakra simultaneously.
With his traced out master formed, he held it up to the light for a final inspection. Satisfied, he transcribed it onto three appropriately sized tags for testing. Best to be sure, after all.
He traipsed outside, whistling merrily, and set the tags up at a distant. He attempted to activate them one at a time, forming the single needed tiger seal...
And nothing happened every time. He tried again, to be sure, and then frowning, stalked to check the three tags.
They were identical, which fortunately meant that the problem was likely only one problem.
Returning to his master, he inspected it carefully. The simplest explanation for a complete short was that the circuit was somehow botched, but after triple checking it, he was sure that it wasn't.
That left the most reasonable suspect to be the activation or amplification kanji. He checked the activators, and they were formed correctly. If he wasn't so sure of his own work, he might have tried a different arrangement, but he... was sure of that one. It had served him well in the past months.
He deleted two of the amplification elements from each cluster before making a single tag to try it again. Annoyed, he brought his master and supplies with him this time, so that he wouldn't have to keep walking back and forth if more adjustments were required.
Setting the tag up a ways away, he retreated and formed the tiger seal for Chakra Kai yet again, welling up chakra and then focusing it into the tag. This time the chakra moved through the circuit in an even, singular flow, releasing that which was stored in the tag, which was then amplified as it was converted into raw power.
The results were encouraging. The tree that he had pinned it too, a moderate tree, was suddenly a cloud of raining leaves, branches, sheets of bark, and splinters.
[1800-950=850] 960/850 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Detonating Seal
He could make things explode, but he couldn't make things explode enough. If there was any singular truth that defined the existence of Renjiro Yamaka, it was the fact that when he decided something, it was only a matter of time before that something became a reality. He wanted to be able to blow up a small house, so, that was all there was to it.
He had the desire, and fortunately, he also had the means to achieve that desire, in the form of fuuinjutsu. It was a means that he was leaning on more and more, but it wasn't a bad thing. It was less of a crutch than learning how to walk in a particularly effective way. Sealing was just so damn versatile that he wasn't sure how any shinobi lived without it, considering that he could live forever and more than once with it.
The theory behind exploding tags was one that he'd covered sufficiently. Creating an EVEN BIGGER explosion was just a matter of executing that theory on a larger scale.
He prepared himself by familiarizing himself with the lesser seal designs, not just visually, but by means of the technique he had worked out for actually gaging the complexity of the fuuin. He stared long and hard, looking at the way that the seals had evolved from his earliest and weakest to most recent and powerful. He knew the kanji, the symbols, the elements, but this next step was going to be a great deal more complex, and he wanted an idea of how complex it should be by measuring the comparative intricacy of the preceding techniques. Otherwise he'd just be guessing, and likely have to do a great deal of editing and reworking to achieve the desired balance.
He assembled his supplies and sat down at his new desk to get to work. He started, as always, by neatly arranging the elements that he would be using in order to form the seals, working up a grid of sealing elements that he could easily reference for the sake of employing them. This wasn't the most complex seal he'd ever created, but it was among them, so he took his time, racking his long memory for any tricks or seldom used kanji that might aid in the endeavor.
When he finally finished, he then had some thinking to do.
The usual arrangement, the basic “design” of the seal that the kanji would follow, was tried and through through the three levels of explosive power he already possessed. Messing with it was probably a terrible idea...
But Renjiro was going to do it anyway. It was a gamble, but he was confident enough in his grasp of the sealing arts to believe he could pull it off. He began tinkering with a few alternate designs, doing simple, quick, loose line drawings on throwaway paper to cement his ideas, compare them, theorize a few steps forward. A few were too cluttered, or would be, once he added kanji. Others weren't quite conductive to the circuit that would be needed to connect the disparate elements. Finally, he decided on the fifth of his seven designs- a riff on the standard that arranged the elements into an hourglass shape, two equilateral triangles that met in the center of the tag. It was elegant, deceptively simple, but geometrically speaking it was quite potent.
He proceeded to carefully translate his crude drawing into a workable matrix of single dots on a large sheet of clean paper. He over laid a sheet of nearly translucent vellum on the sheet, and after ensuring that it was lined up perfectly and he could see his “map” well enough, he went about adding the various elements that would form the functional seal.
He mixed things up yet again by working in the circuit first, rather than last. In order to evenly distribute the activating chakra of the release throughout a seal of this size, it would need to be completely perfect. He utilized six different kanji, weaving them together into a string that ran around the entire perimeter of the design, then bisected it from both top to bottom, side to side, and on each vertical axis. The Chakra Kai would focus on the center, then travel outward on the spokes nearly instantly, as efficiently as possible. That was the idea, anyway, and it seemed sound enough to him.
Next came the receptacles for the chakra that he would invest in the seal. Made up of a fairly complex arrangement of kanji that formed something like a slender diamond, they would be able to soak up quite a bit of energy and contain it stably. He placed one at each point of the triangles, and then midway through each of the equally long “lines” that formed its sides. He had to be careful, though, to integrate them seamlessly with the circuit bit, so that the design flowed together rather than overlapping. It took nearly twenty minutes of tiny detail work, but he was reasonably sure it was right.
After that, he placed the element of the fuuin that would interact with the release jutsu. It went in the dead center, a cluster of symbols that formed a concentric series of circles radiating out from the point where the two triangles met, touching every “line” of the circuit. A simple enough portion, completed in a commensurate amount of time, just a few minutes of work.
Next came the pieces that would convert the raw chakra trapped in the containing elements into pure, explosive force. Again, this was formulaic, something that didn't need to change from design to design. He worked them carefully into each receptacle nodule, easily enough, but the brushwork involved was quite intricate, so he took his time to ensure that he wouldn't slip up.
Now for the most difficult part. The amplifiers that would transform the seal from something destructive into something terrifying, trebling the amount of explosive force as compared to what chakra could usually achieve. The problem was that the ratio of amplifiers to chakra had to be perfect, or the seal would fail to function due to overload or simply not be impressive enough. This was where his clever use of seal sight came in: he knew the proportion of the difference between Bursting and Blasting seals, and so, if he applied that between Blasting and Detonating, theoretically, it should be very close to the correct amount, requiring very little in the way of fine tuning during the testing phase.
He began placing the amplification kanji, five separate characters formed into a star like shape surrounding each containment element. Five was the magic number he'd chosen, in order to achieve the exponential ratio he believed he needed. He took extra care in setting the ink on the page.
Last but... well, actually it was least, he made use of a few neutral, connective kanji where needed in order to stabilize the design as a whole. He inspected the finished product, first visually, the ensure that there were no pesky burrs on any of the characters, and then with his seal sight, to ensure that the complexity was at least close to the level he needed. It was.
With his master set, he worked much more quickly to transcribe it three times onto three separate eight inch by twenty four inch tags that were required. He headed far away from the conclave for testing, setting one of the seals on a boulder and then backing far enough away that he'd be well outside the blast radius.
He performed the simple activation jutsu, and a wide grin blazed on his mouth as the tag errupted, blasting apart the solid stone in the process. He placed the second on an ancient tree, and gleefully reduced it to kindling. Finally, he set the last in an open field, then activated it, making a twenty foot wide, ten foot deep crater.
[2200-950=1250] 1331/1250 Words
He could make things explode, but he couldn't make things explode enough. If there was any singular truth that defined the existence of Renjiro Yamaka, it was the fact that when he decided something, it was only a matter of time before that something became a reality. He wanted to be able to blow up a small house, so, that was all there was to it.
He had the desire, and fortunately, he also had the means to achieve that desire, in the form of fuuinjutsu. It was a means that he was leaning on more and more, but it wasn't a bad thing. It was less of a crutch than learning how to walk in a particularly effective way. Sealing was just so damn versatile that he wasn't sure how any shinobi lived without it, considering that he could live forever and more than once with it.
The theory behind exploding tags was one that he'd covered sufficiently. Creating an EVEN BIGGER explosion was just a matter of executing that theory on a larger scale.
He prepared himself by familiarizing himself with the lesser seal designs, not just visually, but by means of the technique he had worked out for actually gaging the complexity of the fuuin. He stared long and hard, looking at the way that the seals had evolved from his earliest and weakest to most recent and powerful. He knew the kanji, the symbols, the elements, but this next step was going to be a great deal more complex, and he wanted an idea of how complex it should be by measuring the comparative intricacy of the preceding techniques. Otherwise he'd just be guessing, and likely have to do a great deal of editing and reworking to achieve the desired balance.
He assembled his supplies and sat down at his new desk to get to work. He started, as always, by neatly arranging the elements that he would be using in order to form the seals, working up a grid of sealing elements that he could easily reference for the sake of employing them. This wasn't the most complex seal he'd ever created, but it was among them, so he took his time, racking his long memory for any tricks or seldom used kanji that might aid in the endeavor.
When he finally finished, he then had some thinking to do.
The usual arrangement, the basic “design” of the seal that the kanji would follow, was tried and through through the three levels of explosive power he already possessed. Messing with it was probably a terrible idea...
But Renjiro was going to do it anyway. It was a gamble, but he was confident enough in his grasp of the sealing arts to believe he could pull it off. He began tinkering with a few alternate designs, doing simple, quick, loose line drawings on throwaway paper to cement his ideas, compare them, theorize a few steps forward. A few were too cluttered, or would be, once he added kanji. Others weren't quite conductive to the circuit that would be needed to connect the disparate elements. Finally, he decided on the fifth of his seven designs- a riff on the standard that arranged the elements into an hourglass shape, two equilateral triangles that met in the center of the tag. It was elegant, deceptively simple, but geometrically speaking it was quite potent.
He proceeded to carefully translate his crude drawing into a workable matrix of single dots on a large sheet of clean paper. He over laid a sheet of nearly translucent vellum on the sheet, and after ensuring that it was lined up perfectly and he could see his “map” well enough, he went about adding the various elements that would form the functional seal.
He mixed things up yet again by working in the circuit first, rather than last. In order to evenly distribute the activating chakra of the release throughout a seal of this size, it would need to be completely perfect. He utilized six different kanji, weaving them together into a string that ran around the entire perimeter of the design, then bisected it from both top to bottom, side to side, and on each vertical axis. The Chakra Kai would focus on the center, then travel outward on the spokes nearly instantly, as efficiently as possible. That was the idea, anyway, and it seemed sound enough to him.
Next came the receptacles for the chakra that he would invest in the seal. Made up of a fairly complex arrangement of kanji that formed something like a slender diamond, they would be able to soak up quite a bit of energy and contain it stably. He placed one at each point of the triangles, and then midway through each of the equally long “lines” that formed its sides. He had to be careful, though, to integrate them seamlessly with the circuit bit, so that the design flowed together rather than overlapping. It took nearly twenty minutes of tiny detail work, but he was reasonably sure it was right.
After that, he placed the element of the fuuin that would interact with the release jutsu. It went in the dead center, a cluster of symbols that formed a concentric series of circles radiating out from the point where the two triangles met, touching every “line” of the circuit. A simple enough portion, completed in a commensurate amount of time, just a few minutes of work.
Next came the pieces that would convert the raw chakra trapped in the containing elements into pure, explosive force. Again, this was formulaic, something that didn't need to change from design to design. He worked them carefully into each receptacle nodule, easily enough, but the brushwork involved was quite intricate, so he took his time to ensure that he wouldn't slip up.
Now for the most difficult part. The amplifiers that would transform the seal from something destructive into something terrifying, trebling the amount of explosive force as compared to what chakra could usually achieve. The problem was that the ratio of amplifiers to chakra had to be perfect, or the seal would fail to function due to overload or simply not be impressive enough. This was where his clever use of seal sight came in: he knew the proportion of the difference between Bursting and Blasting seals, and so, if he applied that between Blasting and Detonating, theoretically, it should be very close to the correct amount, requiring very little in the way of fine tuning during the testing phase.
He began placing the amplification kanji, five separate characters formed into a star like shape surrounding each containment element. Five was the magic number he'd chosen, in order to achieve the exponential ratio he believed he needed. He took extra care in setting the ink on the page.
Last but... well, actually it was least, he made use of a few neutral, connective kanji where needed in order to stabilize the design as a whole. He inspected the finished product, first visually, the ensure that there were no pesky burrs on any of the characters, and then with his seal sight, to ensure that the complexity was at least close to the level he needed. It was.
With his master set, he worked much more quickly to transcribe it three times onto three separate eight inch by twenty four inch tags that were required. He headed far away from the conclave for testing, setting one of the seals on a boulder and then backing far enough away that he'd be well outside the blast radius.
He performed the simple activation jutsu, and a wide grin blazed on his mouth as the tag errupted, blasting apart the solid stone in the process. He placed the second on an ancient tree, and gleefully reduced it to kindling. Finally, he set the last in an open field, then activated it, making a twenty foot wide, ten foot deep crater.
[2200-950=1250] 1331/1250 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Advanced Chakra Kai
Bigger explosions meant that Renji needed to be able to trigger then from further away; naturally, this called for an improvement on the standard crowd favorite, Chakra Kai.
The principle of the technique was simple enough, which meant that the development of an enhanced version would be mostly about exercising better control to send more chakra a greater distance to ensure that it reached the seal in question and triggered it.
Simple enough indeed. After working up a quick weak tag, he placed it on a tree some 30 yards away. Further than he could normally trigger, but not by an egregious amount.
Forming the needed handseal, he molded his chakra and then “cast” it toward the seal. It fell short, very much so, and so he repeated the action several times, closing his eyes to focus. He didn't even bother with aiming at the tag for now. Instead, he did his best to increase the distance he could reach with the dollop of chakra each time.
He gained a few feet, and then a few more. Progress wasn't coming nearly fast enough to satisfy him, though. He held the handseal longer, welling up more and more of his chakra, much more than would be needed to trigger the tag normally, and then flung it. Due to his sensor capabilities, he could tell well enough that he'd overshot the tag by a few yards. Good.
Now, to work on his aim. He opened his eyes, and drew a few deep even breaths to center himself. After performing the tiger hand seal needed, holding it just a bit longer than necessary, and forming it into a tiny, pinprick sphere, he launched it.
The roar of the tag's detonation was all the assurance he needed that he'd hit it. Not bad.
He set another tag, and then backed even farther away. Repeating his earlier process, he ignored the tag for now, instead doing his best to use just enough chakra to get the distance rather than so much that he was being wasteful or so little that he fell short.
It took a half dozen attempts before he got it just right, and after that, he opened his eyes once more. With the increased distance, the aiming aspect proved trickier this time, requiring a full ten false starts before he finally hit his mark. He replaced the tag, some fifty yards away, and then tried again three more times to be sure that the first wasn't a fluke. It wasn't.
His tries so far had left him certain that he could economically afford to detonate the tag at an even greater distance. He set the tag up on a tree and then counted nearly 100 paces before stopping and turning around. Mold, shape, release, Mold, shape, release. It took a few minutes for him to realize that he was too far away. Without getting inefficient, he couldn't reach the tag. He drew closer and tried again, and this time, after a few tries, he could send it the 80 or so yards needed to reach the seal.
At long last, he sought to improve his accuracy, to actually hit the tag. At this distance, even a slight bit of off-courseness would screw the pooch royally, and Renji learned that in a very practical way, missing and missing until he'd spent as much chakra as it would have taken to make a dozen of the damned tags in the first place.
He tried a few more times, just to be sure, then called it a day.
[1500-950=550] 594/550 Words
Bigger explosions meant that Renji needed to be able to trigger then from further away; naturally, this called for an improvement on the standard crowd favorite, Chakra Kai.
The principle of the technique was simple enough, which meant that the development of an enhanced version would be mostly about exercising better control to send more chakra a greater distance to ensure that it reached the seal in question and triggered it.
Simple enough indeed. After working up a quick weak tag, he placed it on a tree some 30 yards away. Further than he could normally trigger, but not by an egregious amount.
Forming the needed handseal, he molded his chakra and then “cast” it toward the seal. It fell short, very much so, and so he repeated the action several times, closing his eyes to focus. He didn't even bother with aiming at the tag for now. Instead, he did his best to increase the distance he could reach with the dollop of chakra each time.
He gained a few feet, and then a few more. Progress wasn't coming nearly fast enough to satisfy him, though. He held the handseal longer, welling up more and more of his chakra, much more than would be needed to trigger the tag normally, and then flung it. Due to his sensor capabilities, he could tell well enough that he'd overshot the tag by a few yards. Good.
Now, to work on his aim. He opened his eyes, and drew a few deep even breaths to center himself. After performing the tiger hand seal needed, holding it just a bit longer than necessary, and forming it into a tiny, pinprick sphere, he launched it.
The roar of the tag's detonation was all the assurance he needed that he'd hit it. Not bad.
He set another tag, and then backed even farther away. Repeating his earlier process, he ignored the tag for now, instead doing his best to use just enough chakra to get the distance rather than so much that he was being wasteful or so little that he fell short.
It took a half dozen attempts before he got it just right, and after that, he opened his eyes once more. With the increased distance, the aiming aspect proved trickier this time, requiring a full ten false starts before he finally hit his mark. He replaced the tag, some fifty yards away, and then tried again three more times to be sure that the first wasn't a fluke. It wasn't.
His tries so far had left him certain that he could economically afford to detonate the tag at an even greater distance. He set the tag up on a tree and then counted nearly 100 paces before stopping and turning around. Mold, shape, release, Mold, shape, release. It took a few minutes for him to realize that he was too far away. Without getting inefficient, he couldn't reach the tag. He drew closer and tried again, and this time, after a few tries, he could send it the 80 or so yards needed to reach the seal.
At long last, he sought to improve his accuracy, to actually hit the tag. At this distance, even a slight bit of off-courseness would screw the pooch royally, and Renji learned that in a very practical way, missing and missing until he'd spent as much chakra as it would have taken to make a dozen of the damned tags in the first place.
He tried a few more times, just to be sure, then called it a day.
[1500-950=550] 594/550 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Power
“Damnit,” Renjiro spat, dropping the lifeless body that he'd been tasked with debriefing. He could go back quite far into the man's memory, but not far enough, it would seem. He had information that Henkou needed- that much Renji could tell from what he'd seen, at least. But there was no way that Renji could improve himself quickly enough to be able to plum the full depths of his memories, to unlock the secrets of his entire now defunct lifespan.
Or was there. He brought a hand to his chin, hardly caring that it had just touched a dead man. He'd touched far less sanitary things, and... well, that's rather beside the point. What if he could do a bit of a trade off? Take longer to get what he needed, but... well, get exactly what he needed. It was possible, in theory. Virtually anything was possible with chakra involved. The question just remained how much, and how to apply it.
He had a similar jutsu, a much more minor one that let him exercise greater finesse with his chakra at the expense of mobility. That was the framework from which he would work.
He started with planning. Performing the minor jutsu a few times, he recorded some basic notes regarding the seals involved and the method of channeling for the sake of self improvement. Both would need to be expounded upon and changed, significantly, for this kernel of an idea to succeed.
He started with the channeling. Getting the chakra to the right parts of himself was critical, but it would need to come from somewhere else. First, he needed to locate the tenketsu that governed the formative aspect of ninjutsu, since that was essentially what he was going for- raw power, rather than erudite application- and the corresponding parts of his brain (since that was no doubt where such chakra nodes were located).
He performed handseals, building up a decent little supply of chakra, and then began moving it through his own body. It got him nowhere at all, and so he tried again, choosing an alternative route. Being under the influence of the Focusing jutsu actually helped, to a small degree, and so he maintained it throughout his attempts. It wasn't as if he needed to move to do what he was doing.
Ultimately, he erred on the side of expediency. Casting a wide net and then narrowing it down was going to get him to his goal much more quickly than throwing out dozens of minuscule hooks. He switched tactics, and began working on the hand seals, in order to summon up more chakra and hopefully, configure it correctly for the technique he wanted.
He first tried doubling the seals required, to get a feel for it. Then, he began switching it up. Ox instead of Horse? Monkey instead of Bird? He reordered them, changed it up, and ultimately narrowed down his list to three arrangements that seemed appropriate before continuing with his method.
He rapidly employed the first set after reactivating the Focus ninjutsu, his hands working with precision through the seals, unleashing chakra and shaping it. Then he directed the energy inward, through him, and paid close attention to what areas “lit up” (for lack of a better term) in response. He repeated it with those seals a few more times to be sure, then dutifully recorded the results before moving on to the next of the three arrangements.
This one was a bit more complex, but only a bit. Compared to the jutsus that Renji had pioneered in the past, this was a veritable cake walk. He focused, breathing evenly, and molded his chakra with the precise set of hand seals, then cast his net inward several times, feeling the results and, after repetition for surety, noting them as well.
The final configuration was the one he had the most hope for. He'd taken the original seals and then repeated them, but inverted. The results had then been reordered, shuffled “three” backward universally. It was largely instinct, but Renji's instincts seldom failed him.
He performed the seals, let the chakra do its work. This time, he definitely felt something. It wasn't much, but it was progress, certainly. Repeating a few times, he jotted down his observations and compared the three sets of hand seals before sitting back to mull it out.
He needed more raw power, but at the expense of what? For the purpose of this particular jutsu, it was finesse. He was trading, for all intents and purposes, speed for force. Rather than sneaking into the mind in question and pilfering what he needed, he'd be hammering down the doors and taking everything. What was responsible for “finesse”, when it came to his mind reading techniques?
Lifting the corpse, he performed the technique again, but this time, more slowly, focusing on the process of it. He had a good idea already, but he wanted to be sure. After the dead mind reading, he was. It was his intellect, his ability to navigate through his mind. That was what he needed to trade for the sake of driving deeper.
Reviewing his notes, he compared and contrasted what he'd seen, scribbling all the while about what it actually meant. The first arrangement had indeed affected his reasoning capacity, though it hadn't changed it. He'd need to dampen that area, divert chakra to... where?
It came to him after several moments of mental gymnastics. The third arrangement had evoked the most certain “feeling”, and had done so while he was working on a jutsu. Obviously, it had played with the aspect of him that powered jutsu...
And so he combined the two arrangements in several ways. The first half of the first, the second half of the second, and vice versa. He quartered them, alternated the quarters, reversed the arrangement that resulted. After about twenty combinations, he finally found the one he was looking for. It was nearly random, the seals of the two spliced together, but it seemed to be lighting up what he needed and dimming what he didn't.
He lifted the corpse again and activated the theoretical jutsu. The going was indeed slow, but he was able to reel through the man's entire life from finish to start and get the information he needed.
[1800-950=850] 1058/850 Words
“Damnit,” Renjiro spat, dropping the lifeless body that he'd been tasked with debriefing. He could go back quite far into the man's memory, but not far enough, it would seem. He had information that Henkou needed- that much Renji could tell from what he'd seen, at least. But there was no way that Renji could improve himself quickly enough to be able to plum the full depths of his memories, to unlock the secrets of his entire now defunct lifespan.
Or was there. He brought a hand to his chin, hardly caring that it had just touched a dead man. He'd touched far less sanitary things, and... well, that's rather beside the point. What if he could do a bit of a trade off? Take longer to get what he needed, but... well, get exactly what he needed. It was possible, in theory. Virtually anything was possible with chakra involved. The question just remained how much, and how to apply it.
He had a similar jutsu, a much more minor one that let him exercise greater finesse with his chakra at the expense of mobility. That was the framework from which he would work.
He started with planning. Performing the minor jutsu a few times, he recorded some basic notes regarding the seals involved and the method of channeling for the sake of self improvement. Both would need to be expounded upon and changed, significantly, for this kernel of an idea to succeed.
He started with the channeling. Getting the chakra to the right parts of himself was critical, but it would need to come from somewhere else. First, he needed to locate the tenketsu that governed the formative aspect of ninjutsu, since that was essentially what he was going for- raw power, rather than erudite application- and the corresponding parts of his brain (since that was no doubt where such chakra nodes were located).
He performed handseals, building up a decent little supply of chakra, and then began moving it through his own body. It got him nowhere at all, and so he tried again, choosing an alternative route. Being under the influence of the Focusing jutsu actually helped, to a small degree, and so he maintained it throughout his attempts. It wasn't as if he needed to move to do what he was doing.
Ultimately, he erred on the side of expediency. Casting a wide net and then narrowing it down was going to get him to his goal much more quickly than throwing out dozens of minuscule hooks. He switched tactics, and began working on the hand seals, in order to summon up more chakra and hopefully, configure it correctly for the technique he wanted.
He first tried doubling the seals required, to get a feel for it. Then, he began switching it up. Ox instead of Horse? Monkey instead of Bird? He reordered them, changed it up, and ultimately narrowed down his list to three arrangements that seemed appropriate before continuing with his method.
He rapidly employed the first set after reactivating the Focus ninjutsu, his hands working with precision through the seals, unleashing chakra and shaping it. Then he directed the energy inward, through him, and paid close attention to what areas “lit up” (for lack of a better term) in response. He repeated it with those seals a few more times to be sure, then dutifully recorded the results before moving on to the next of the three arrangements.
This one was a bit more complex, but only a bit. Compared to the jutsus that Renji had pioneered in the past, this was a veritable cake walk. He focused, breathing evenly, and molded his chakra with the precise set of hand seals, then cast his net inward several times, feeling the results and, after repetition for surety, noting them as well.
The final configuration was the one he had the most hope for. He'd taken the original seals and then repeated them, but inverted. The results had then been reordered, shuffled “three” backward universally. It was largely instinct, but Renji's instincts seldom failed him.
He performed the seals, let the chakra do its work. This time, he definitely felt something. It wasn't much, but it was progress, certainly. Repeating a few times, he jotted down his observations and compared the three sets of hand seals before sitting back to mull it out.
He needed more raw power, but at the expense of what? For the purpose of this particular jutsu, it was finesse. He was trading, for all intents and purposes, speed for force. Rather than sneaking into the mind in question and pilfering what he needed, he'd be hammering down the doors and taking everything. What was responsible for “finesse”, when it came to his mind reading techniques?
Lifting the corpse, he performed the technique again, but this time, more slowly, focusing on the process of it. He had a good idea already, but he wanted to be sure. After the dead mind reading, he was. It was his intellect, his ability to navigate through his mind. That was what he needed to trade for the sake of driving deeper.
Reviewing his notes, he compared and contrasted what he'd seen, scribbling all the while about what it actually meant. The first arrangement had indeed affected his reasoning capacity, though it hadn't changed it. He'd need to dampen that area, divert chakra to... where?
It came to him after several moments of mental gymnastics. The third arrangement had evoked the most certain “feeling”, and had done so while he was working on a jutsu. Obviously, it had played with the aspect of him that powered jutsu...
And so he combined the two arrangements in several ways. The first half of the first, the second half of the second, and vice versa. He quartered them, alternated the quarters, reversed the arrangement that resulted. After about twenty combinations, he finally found the one he was looking for. It was nearly random, the seals of the two spliced together, but it seemed to be lighting up what he needed and dimming what he didn't.
He lifted the corpse again and activated the theoretical jutsu. The going was indeed slow, but he was able to reel through the man's entire life from finish to start and get the information he needed.
[1800-950=850] 1058/850 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Deranged Champion Technique
It was kind of amazing what you could get the destitute to do for money. The concept wasn't unfamiliar to Renji at all- in fact, paying people to engage in acts so pathetic or depraved that they were worth an investment was something of a past time to him. It was almost as much fun as convincing them to do the same things of their own volition, which was a little more fun than not taking their volition into account at all.
One of the men he'd hired before. The other was a friend of his, who he'd hinted was just as in need of coin as him and therefore pliant. The body thief was wearing his most fixed form today- it seemed fitting to actually look the part of the clan whose jutsu he intended to improve upon. He'd met them in a tavern and led them to a large rented room. The one who'd 'worked' for him before began disrobing almost immediately, prompting a surprised and wary look from his pal and a dimissive gesture from Renji.
"Keep your shirt on," he said, rolling his eyes (but not before raking them over his briefly exposed torso, which still showed cigarette burns from their last tete a tete). "That's not what we're here for today, so you can relax, person whose name isn't important enough for me to learn." That resulted in a look of relief from both of them, until they had occasion to wonder what they were there for. He didn't need to pillage their simple minds in order to read the question on their face. After a bit of languid stretching, he took a seat in a chair set against one of the fair-sized room's walls.
"Move the furniture. Get the center of the room as clear as it can be, and then we'll begin."
Perplexed the accomodated. It really wasn't even that much money, and so Renji was amused by how thoughtlessly compliant they were. He lit a cigarette idly and let it dangle off his lips. He gave the appearance of lounging casually, but behind the cruel and bored exterior, his acrobatic mind was already leaping and tumbling.
The mind and body were inextricably linked. That was a basic premise that almost all of the Mind Clan's hidden jutsu were based upon. Control the mind, and you controlled the body. Most of the time it was a gross effort. Overt, at least in hindsight. But there were smaller switches that could be turned, barriers that could be taken down. Instinct ruled everyone, even Renji (especially Renji), and denying such instincts was most often a matter of discipline.
Long ago (he'd been toying with this idea since before his test subjects parents were born) it had occured to him that there might be another way to override the controls that seemed to be built into every human being. A father trying to save his child had inspired him. In the wake of a bit of Renji's chaos, the boy had been trapped beneath an overturned cart and half-crushed to death. In spite of the futility, his distraught daddy had managed to lift the heavy wagon enough that other villagers had managed to extricate the tyke just in time for him to die a few minutes later.
Fear of losing his child had overrode the checks and balances that kept him from overexerting. Adrenaline had flooded, muscles had ignored their limits. Hypothesis: by studying mind's that were in duress great enough to flip that self-annihilatory switch, Renji might be able to learn how to flip it himself via jutsu.
"Right then," he announced, veering out of his planning when they shoved the last stick of furniture out of the way. "Now..."
He formed too familiar hand seals, and before they could react, he was inhabiting the body of the man he didn't know. His own body slumped, and the hireling's features contorted into a hungry grin. "I'm going to try to kill you. Your friend is going to try to fight off my control. You're going to fight for your life. Somewhere in all this panic, I'm going to find an answer."
With that he began. His limited skills at unarmed combat were more than enough to savage these common wastrels. He attacked hard, striking a solid blow to the poor man's throat. He could feel the mind he'd subjugated start resisting, and he monitored that resistance along with as many of the mental processes going on in the brain he was subletting as he could. The other man acquitted himself poorly, his form terrible, and earned himself a wicked jab to the gut for his efforts. The three way, two part battle went on for a moment before Renji was forced to recess to his more permanently stolen body.
There was definitely a connection between a variety of systems and the strength of the mental resistance. He let them catch their breath and look at each other worriedly while he calculated, going over every bit of data he thought he'd perceived. He enacted his memory revisiting jutsu, playing it all over again a few times before he was satisfied.
"Again," he put bluntly before enacting Shintensin once more. This time he was even more ruthless with his borrowed bone, muscle, and sinew. He trapped an arm, twisting until his 'opponent's' screams nearly penetrated the thick walls that were usually meant to muffle other sort of exclamations. He bit, hard enough to draw blood from the man's shoulder. All the while, he monitored the activity centers that had been lighting up previously.
The process was repeated several times. He knew for a fact that the simpleton would never be capable of shaking free of the mind body switch, but he could feel his struggles grow more and more urgent as his friend's situation became more and more perilous. He'd promised them, during the negotiation stage of the transaction, that they wouldn't die, but fortunately for the experiment they didn't seem to trust him.
Finally, when he had the one man's hands wrapped tight around the other's throats, when the victim had run out of oxygen, when his eyes were bulging and his face was bright red, he felt a real buck from the soul he'd shunted aside. It wasn't even nearly enough to wrest control, but it was much more than such an ordinary man should have been able to do, and after his viewing and re-viewing, Renjiro was almost certain that he'd identified the mechanism responsible for unleashing that desperate might.
He relented, resuming his vastly preferred body. The stunned former host wrenched his hands away from his friend's neck, and the friend gasped deeply, sucking down precious air.
"Y-y-you're a monster!" the one that was able to breath stammered.
"Y-y-you're just figuring this out now? Last month I used you as an ashtray." He dug into a pocket, tossing the agreed upon sum on the floor between them. "Get out. I need to think." Collecting themselves and their fees, the young ne'er-do-wells hastily got while the getting was good, and Renji grinned thoughtfully at the implications of the evening.
* * *
He'd figured out the best way to utilize his new discovery, and the most entertaining way to master it. Adopting the waifish, unsuspectable body of the Waterfall boy he'd scoured, he ventured to a filthy bar and took a seat in the darkest corner and put on a guise of nervously waiting- just enough purpose to look like he belonged in the place, but not enough that anyone would pay him too much mind.
Beneath his table he performed the hand seals for Shinranshin, targeting a man who was throwing darts at a board not too far away. He wheeled and staggered, driving his fist into a nearby patron's skull and then plowing forward into a clump of men who were engaged in a heated debate. Before long, the situation had developed into an all out brawl. Playing his part, Renji feigned horror and ducked under his table, peering out to watch.
Just as the derangement wore off, he activated the technique again, this time adding a few additional seals and molding additional chakra. He sent it surging at a bear of a man, whose eyes were apologetic as he bodily lifted a ratty fellow and tossed him across the room. The extra chakra crept insidiously through his mind, seeking out the switch, but Renji's influence lapsed before it could do its work. Undaunted, he analyzed, calculated, and seemlessly unleashed chaos once more.
This time, his target was a reedy fellow, and as he let loose with fists and feet at anyone in range, Renji maintained his final handseal like usual, but took a more active roll in guiding the molded chakra. It was clumsy, imprecise work, but this was how progress was made. Renji had pioneered enough techniques and riffs on techniques to know that. Once again, the technique fell short. Undaunted, Renji took a breather in order to replay and analyze his first attempts.
The brawl continued in his absence. Furniture was kindling, bottles were broken. The bar's staff was up in arms, with the bouncer's brandishing tonfas. Within another moment, Renjiro was at it again, brushing his soul against one of the bouncer's with a jolt of unhinging chakra. The warding blows he'd been dealing, more intended for crowd control than damage, became savage, and to Renji's delight, he seemed to really be letting go. He heard a piercing shriek and would have sworn he'd heard the sickening crack too. He definitely saw an arm, struck by the blunt weapon, bending the wrong way.
His next victim nearly killed a man by physically lifting a heavy, solid wood table and smashing it into an unsuspecting victim. The one after that tackled the bartender and began brutally pounding him in the face until both his victim and his knuckles were a bleeding, unrecognizable mess. Well aware of his limits, grinning manically at the thrill of this little experiment, Renjiro launched into his coup de grace. By then he was reasonably sure of himself. The level of chakra required certainly seemed much more involved as he poured it outward and maintained it.
His final target was a scrawny, hawkish man who had been stilting about and avoiding the raucous fisticuffs as best he could. He was fast, but not at all strong, but as Renji's influence overtook him, opening the floodgates and stripping away the mechanisms that kept his gangly form from unleashing every bit of strength it had.
The scarecrow-like man burst forward in a fit of speed, and his leading punch laid out a drunkard more than half again his wait. A quick, powerful kick to the groin actually lifted an experienced looking fighter off his feet and crumpled him to the ground. Attention began to focus on him, trying to bring him down, and to Renji's great pleasure the many blows his subject received did nothing at all to slow him. He waited until the jutsu had expired before he crept out from under his table and snuck out, grinning deviously. Mischief fuckin' managed.
[2700-950=1750] 1866/1750 Words
It was kind of amazing what you could get the destitute to do for money. The concept wasn't unfamiliar to Renji at all- in fact, paying people to engage in acts so pathetic or depraved that they were worth an investment was something of a past time to him. It was almost as much fun as convincing them to do the same things of their own volition, which was a little more fun than not taking their volition into account at all.
One of the men he'd hired before. The other was a friend of his, who he'd hinted was just as in need of coin as him and therefore pliant. The body thief was wearing his most fixed form today- it seemed fitting to actually look the part of the clan whose jutsu he intended to improve upon. He'd met them in a tavern and led them to a large rented room. The one who'd 'worked' for him before began disrobing almost immediately, prompting a surprised and wary look from his pal and a dimissive gesture from Renji.
"Keep your shirt on," he said, rolling his eyes (but not before raking them over his briefly exposed torso, which still showed cigarette burns from their last tete a tete). "That's not what we're here for today, so you can relax, person whose name isn't important enough for me to learn." That resulted in a look of relief from both of them, until they had occasion to wonder what they were there for. He didn't need to pillage their simple minds in order to read the question on their face. After a bit of languid stretching, he took a seat in a chair set against one of the fair-sized room's walls.
"Move the furniture. Get the center of the room as clear as it can be, and then we'll begin."
Perplexed the accomodated. It really wasn't even that much money, and so Renji was amused by how thoughtlessly compliant they were. He lit a cigarette idly and let it dangle off his lips. He gave the appearance of lounging casually, but behind the cruel and bored exterior, his acrobatic mind was already leaping and tumbling.
The mind and body were inextricably linked. That was a basic premise that almost all of the Mind Clan's hidden jutsu were based upon. Control the mind, and you controlled the body. Most of the time it was a gross effort. Overt, at least in hindsight. But there were smaller switches that could be turned, barriers that could be taken down. Instinct ruled everyone, even Renji (especially Renji), and denying such instincts was most often a matter of discipline.
Long ago (he'd been toying with this idea since before his test subjects parents were born) it had occured to him that there might be another way to override the controls that seemed to be built into every human being. A father trying to save his child had inspired him. In the wake of a bit of Renji's chaos, the boy had been trapped beneath an overturned cart and half-crushed to death. In spite of the futility, his distraught daddy had managed to lift the heavy wagon enough that other villagers had managed to extricate the tyke just in time for him to die a few minutes later.
Fear of losing his child had overrode the checks and balances that kept him from overexerting. Adrenaline had flooded, muscles had ignored their limits. Hypothesis: by studying mind's that were in duress great enough to flip that self-annihilatory switch, Renji might be able to learn how to flip it himself via jutsu.
"Right then," he announced, veering out of his planning when they shoved the last stick of furniture out of the way. "Now..."
He formed too familiar hand seals, and before they could react, he was inhabiting the body of the man he didn't know. His own body slumped, and the hireling's features contorted into a hungry grin. "I'm going to try to kill you. Your friend is going to try to fight off my control. You're going to fight for your life. Somewhere in all this panic, I'm going to find an answer."
With that he began. His limited skills at unarmed combat were more than enough to savage these common wastrels. He attacked hard, striking a solid blow to the poor man's throat. He could feel the mind he'd subjugated start resisting, and he monitored that resistance along with as many of the mental processes going on in the brain he was subletting as he could. The other man acquitted himself poorly, his form terrible, and earned himself a wicked jab to the gut for his efforts. The three way, two part battle went on for a moment before Renji was forced to recess to his more permanently stolen body.
There was definitely a connection between a variety of systems and the strength of the mental resistance. He let them catch their breath and look at each other worriedly while he calculated, going over every bit of data he thought he'd perceived. He enacted his memory revisiting jutsu, playing it all over again a few times before he was satisfied.
"Again," he put bluntly before enacting Shintensin once more. This time he was even more ruthless with his borrowed bone, muscle, and sinew. He trapped an arm, twisting until his 'opponent's' screams nearly penetrated the thick walls that were usually meant to muffle other sort of exclamations. He bit, hard enough to draw blood from the man's shoulder. All the while, he monitored the activity centers that had been lighting up previously.
The process was repeated several times. He knew for a fact that the simpleton would never be capable of shaking free of the mind body switch, but he could feel his struggles grow more and more urgent as his friend's situation became more and more perilous. He'd promised them, during the negotiation stage of the transaction, that they wouldn't die, but fortunately for the experiment they didn't seem to trust him.
Finally, when he had the one man's hands wrapped tight around the other's throats, when the victim had run out of oxygen, when his eyes were bulging and his face was bright red, he felt a real buck from the soul he'd shunted aside. It wasn't even nearly enough to wrest control, but it was much more than such an ordinary man should have been able to do, and after his viewing and re-viewing, Renjiro was almost certain that he'd identified the mechanism responsible for unleashing that desperate might.
He relented, resuming his vastly preferred body. The stunned former host wrenched his hands away from his friend's neck, and the friend gasped deeply, sucking down precious air.
"Y-y-you're a monster!" the one that was able to breath stammered.
"Y-y-you're just figuring this out now? Last month I used you as an ashtray." He dug into a pocket, tossing the agreed upon sum on the floor between them. "Get out. I need to think." Collecting themselves and their fees, the young ne'er-do-wells hastily got while the getting was good, and Renji grinned thoughtfully at the implications of the evening.
* * *
He'd figured out the best way to utilize his new discovery, and the most entertaining way to master it. Adopting the waifish, unsuspectable body of the Waterfall boy he'd scoured, he ventured to a filthy bar and took a seat in the darkest corner and put on a guise of nervously waiting- just enough purpose to look like he belonged in the place, but not enough that anyone would pay him too much mind.
Beneath his table he performed the hand seals for Shinranshin, targeting a man who was throwing darts at a board not too far away. He wheeled and staggered, driving his fist into a nearby patron's skull and then plowing forward into a clump of men who were engaged in a heated debate. Before long, the situation had developed into an all out brawl. Playing his part, Renji feigned horror and ducked under his table, peering out to watch.
Just as the derangement wore off, he activated the technique again, this time adding a few additional seals and molding additional chakra. He sent it surging at a bear of a man, whose eyes were apologetic as he bodily lifted a ratty fellow and tossed him across the room. The extra chakra crept insidiously through his mind, seeking out the switch, but Renji's influence lapsed before it could do its work. Undaunted, he analyzed, calculated, and seemlessly unleashed chaos once more.
This time, his target was a reedy fellow, and as he let loose with fists and feet at anyone in range, Renji maintained his final handseal like usual, but took a more active roll in guiding the molded chakra. It was clumsy, imprecise work, but this was how progress was made. Renji had pioneered enough techniques and riffs on techniques to know that. Once again, the technique fell short. Undaunted, Renji took a breather in order to replay and analyze his first attempts.
The brawl continued in his absence. Furniture was kindling, bottles were broken. The bar's staff was up in arms, with the bouncer's brandishing tonfas. Within another moment, Renjiro was at it again, brushing his soul against one of the bouncer's with a jolt of unhinging chakra. The warding blows he'd been dealing, more intended for crowd control than damage, became savage, and to Renji's delight, he seemed to really be letting go. He heard a piercing shriek and would have sworn he'd heard the sickening crack too. He definitely saw an arm, struck by the blunt weapon, bending the wrong way.
His next victim nearly killed a man by physically lifting a heavy, solid wood table and smashing it into an unsuspecting victim. The one after that tackled the bartender and began brutally pounding him in the face until both his victim and his knuckles were a bleeding, unrecognizable mess. Well aware of his limits, grinning manically at the thrill of this little experiment, Renjiro launched into his coup de grace. By then he was reasonably sure of himself. The level of chakra required certainly seemed much more involved as he poured it outward and maintained it.
His final target was a scrawny, hawkish man who had been stilting about and avoiding the raucous fisticuffs as best he could. He was fast, but not at all strong, but as Renji's influence overtook him, opening the floodgates and stripping away the mechanisms that kept his gangly form from unleashing every bit of strength it had.
The scarecrow-like man burst forward in a fit of speed, and his leading punch laid out a drunkard more than half again his wait. A quick, powerful kick to the groin actually lifted an experienced looking fighter off his feet and crumpled him to the ground. Attention began to focus on him, trying to bring him down, and to Renji's great pleasure the many blows his subject received did nothing at all to slow him. He waited until the jutsu had expired before he crept out from under his table and snuck out, grinning deviously. Mischief fuckin' managed.
[2700-950=1750] 1866/1750 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Advanced Shintensin
A very long time ago, a genius had been forbidden from tampering with a particular jutsu. It was the technique for which his clan, The Mind Clan of Hidden Leaf, was best known. They had glossed their concerns with the threat of danger- mental jutsu are temperamental and dangerous; that which works does not need to be changed- but the young genius had seen those concerns for what they were.
Fear.
The young man had cast aside those doubts and done as he wished. He had brought Shintensin no Jutsu to the pinnacle of it's capability, and in doing so, realized that he hardly cared if they ostrasized him for his dabbling. Kinjutsu was an arbitrary label at best, a tool in the arsenal of the status quo. Nothing a shinobi did was without danger, and yet the notion was allowed to persist.
That fear, that unwillingness to risk for the sake of change, was endemic of the shinobi world. Renjiro had traveled the world, seen the five great nations, lived within each village, and he had seen evidence of it at every turn. It was the reason that most nukenin existed, the reason that the Great War had occurred and that cold war had been the law of the land ever since.
It was time to take another crack at that hallowed jutsu, to make another stab at the corpulent body of stagnation.
Teamwork was required, in most cases, for a successful shintensin. Not usually an issue in a hidden village, but nukenin did not have that luxury.
He began his little project with some laborious note compilation. He was intimately familiar with the jutsu, possibly more familiar than any other living soul. Page after page he filled with tidy scrawl, putting the entirety of his knowledge regarding mind swapping down in writing. He didn't stop at the basic shintensin; he added his observations regarding the creation and two centuries of employment of Total Shintensin, the contact seal he had created, and even his experiences with sensor jutsu.
The difficulty of improving Shintensin had nothing to do with hand seals or chakra power, he realized. Those elements were more about trial and error from an informed starting point than anything else. What would enable for a superior mind body switch required nothing less than changing the very way that the mind worked during the technique.
The linear, plodding limitation of Shintensin was the product of the interaction between mind and jutsu. Both needed to be altered.
He flipped to a fresh page of his notepad and began doing some diagrams. These were not the illustrations of the brain that one might find in an iijutsu scroll; they were, to the best of his ability, the depiction of the mind itself, that which was contained within base matter.
Many of its attributes defied description, but not all, not to a Yamanaka. Considering it was somewhat paradoxical, but it was a paradox that someone who had studied and implemented, even created, dimensional fuuin could grasp. The mind was vast. Every mind, even that of the slowest of dullards, was an entire world. The amount of information that even an average person absorbed by happenstance every day was staggering, and that information did not simply evaporate even if the person did not consciously remember it.
Where, then, was all of that, along with personality, reasoning functions, and emotional intelligence contained? In the brain, yes, but there was more to it than that. Someone who had never stepped outside of their own body could never understand it, but Shintensin was, in essence, a limited form of astral travel that allowed a single mind to travel to another body.
It was the travel that needed to be improved, he finally decided. The amount of time spent outside the body needed to be improved, along with the control. But how to do it?
It was a few more hours of speculation and cross referencing before he arrived at his conclusion:
An astral construct.
Using chakra, he could create a vessel that would reinforce his mind. A body, more or less, something that he could manipulate, direct, and sustain in for long enough to get his mind from point A to point B and then force his mind into a target.
He began at once. It would be a bit like how he projected his senses using sensor techniques, and his mind using Shintensin. A hybrid between the two. Astral travel occurred on the astral plane, which meant he would need to be able to find the physical body he hoped to occupy.
He performed a quick series of hand seals, molding his chakra and envisioning the construct, or at least, part of it. He needed something capable of housing his consciousness; that was the most important part. Visualizing it as a ball, he began sculpting it a little at a time, tailoring it to his mind, in particular. It needed to both hold it and project it, and so the specifications required quite a bit of experimentation.
Over and over and over he formed seals, molded, tweaked and tested. Once he had a working prototype for the containment and projection element, he needed a “body”; something that would be able to move in order to get him close enough to initiate a transfer.
He saw no reason to vary too much from nature's design. Bipedal, with a pair of arms. It was the format of body he was used to, so it would be the easiest to learn to control. After an hour of experimentation, he had the astral skeleton he needed. Next came combining the two, which he accomplished easily enough.
Now, he needed to learn to inhabit it and control it. A bit dangerous, since he might not make it back to his body, but that sort of risk was commonplace for Renjiro. He combined the strings of hand seals required for the astral construct and for Shintensin no Jutsu; rather than trying to leap to the target, he would leap to the astral construct, then use it to close in on the target.
Drawing a deep breath, he enacted the hand seals. The construct formed, detectable only as chakra, and then his mind shot forward into it.
It was a strange sensation. The physical world disappeared around him. He tried to move the body like he might his own, but it didn't work. The process was much more mental; similar to the way that he might control chakra within his own body. The jutsu dissipated, returning him to his body before he had much of a chance to figure things out.
He performed it again. This time, he managed to “walk” around a bit before returning to his body. He repeated the process, making a bit more progress every time. It was fortunate that his capability for mental gymnastics was already so developed; the actual maneuvering of the astral construct, the fine motor skills, seemed to be based entirely at that. Powering it, propelling it, that was more about manipulating the chakra that held it together.
He only had so much chakra to spend on trials, and so, exhausted, he was forced to table his development until he could rest, recuperate, restore his reserves.
The next day he began again. It was entirely new, but he was a quick study. First he learned to walk, then to run. Almost like physical rehabilitation, albeit on an entirely mental plane. Next he added perception. Base matter was lost to him this way; it was actually more like flying than walking, since the ground didn't exist astrally. He could, however, see chakra; it would be enough to home in on a target and “make contact” in order to release his consciousness on them.
After a week of steady improvement, he decided it was time to perform a real test. He stole out at night into the nearest village and waited until he found a lone man, a bit drunk, wandering home from a night of drinking. Positioning himself in a dark, empty alley, he performed his jutsu after marking the man's positioning.
The world faded away to the dull gray of astral space, but the drunk's weak chakra signature shone well enough. He glide-sprinted toward it, all but mentally tackling the fellow and forcing his psyche into him. Once in, he tested his control, doing some stretches, touching his nose with each finger, testing the man's senses. Everything seemed to be in order.
Canceling the jutsu, he returned to his own form and smirked. One of these days he'd have to return to Konoha and see if he couldn't seduce away a few Yamanaka with the promise of his advanced jutsu.
[2200-950=1250] 1459/1250 Words
A very long time ago, a genius had been forbidden from tampering with a particular jutsu. It was the technique for which his clan, The Mind Clan of Hidden Leaf, was best known. They had glossed their concerns with the threat of danger- mental jutsu are temperamental and dangerous; that which works does not need to be changed- but the young genius had seen those concerns for what they were.
Fear.
The young man had cast aside those doubts and done as he wished. He had brought Shintensin no Jutsu to the pinnacle of it's capability, and in doing so, realized that he hardly cared if they ostrasized him for his dabbling. Kinjutsu was an arbitrary label at best, a tool in the arsenal of the status quo. Nothing a shinobi did was without danger, and yet the notion was allowed to persist.
That fear, that unwillingness to risk for the sake of change, was endemic of the shinobi world. Renjiro had traveled the world, seen the five great nations, lived within each village, and he had seen evidence of it at every turn. It was the reason that most nukenin existed, the reason that the Great War had occurred and that cold war had been the law of the land ever since.
It was time to take another crack at that hallowed jutsu, to make another stab at the corpulent body of stagnation.
Teamwork was required, in most cases, for a successful shintensin. Not usually an issue in a hidden village, but nukenin did not have that luxury.
He began his little project with some laborious note compilation. He was intimately familiar with the jutsu, possibly more familiar than any other living soul. Page after page he filled with tidy scrawl, putting the entirety of his knowledge regarding mind swapping down in writing. He didn't stop at the basic shintensin; he added his observations regarding the creation and two centuries of employment of Total Shintensin, the contact seal he had created, and even his experiences with sensor jutsu.
The difficulty of improving Shintensin had nothing to do with hand seals or chakra power, he realized. Those elements were more about trial and error from an informed starting point than anything else. What would enable for a superior mind body switch required nothing less than changing the very way that the mind worked during the technique.
The linear, plodding limitation of Shintensin was the product of the interaction between mind and jutsu. Both needed to be altered.
He flipped to a fresh page of his notepad and began doing some diagrams. These were not the illustrations of the brain that one might find in an iijutsu scroll; they were, to the best of his ability, the depiction of the mind itself, that which was contained within base matter.
Many of its attributes defied description, but not all, not to a Yamanaka. Considering it was somewhat paradoxical, but it was a paradox that someone who had studied and implemented, even created, dimensional fuuin could grasp. The mind was vast. Every mind, even that of the slowest of dullards, was an entire world. The amount of information that even an average person absorbed by happenstance every day was staggering, and that information did not simply evaporate even if the person did not consciously remember it.
Where, then, was all of that, along with personality, reasoning functions, and emotional intelligence contained? In the brain, yes, but there was more to it than that. Someone who had never stepped outside of their own body could never understand it, but Shintensin was, in essence, a limited form of astral travel that allowed a single mind to travel to another body.
It was the travel that needed to be improved, he finally decided. The amount of time spent outside the body needed to be improved, along with the control. But how to do it?
It was a few more hours of speculation and cross referencing before he arrived at his conclusion:
An astral construct.
Using chakra, he could create a vessel that would reinforce his mind. A body, more or less, something that he could manipulate, direct, and sustain in for long enough to get his mind from point A to point B and then force his mind into a target.
He began at once. It would be a bit like how he projected his senses using sensor techniques, and his mind using Shintensin. A hybrid between the two. Astral travel occurred on the astral plane, which meant he would need to be able to find the physical body he hoped to occupy.
He performed a quick series of hand seals, molding his chakra and envisioning the construct, or at least, part of it. He needed something capable of housing his consciousness; that was the most important part. Visualizing it as a ball, he began sculpting it a little at a time, tailoring it to his mind, in particular. It needed to both hold it and project it, and so the specifications required quite a bit of experimentation.
Over and over and over he formed seals, molded, tweaked and tested. Once he had a working prototype for the containment and projection element, he needed a “body”; something that would be able to move in order to get him close enough to initiate a transfer.
He saw no reason to vary too much from nature's design. Bipedal, with a pair of arms. It was the format of body he was used to, so it would be the easiest to learn to control. After an hour of experimentation, he had the astral skeleton he needed. Next came combining the two, which he accomplished easily enough.
Now, he needed to learn to inhabit it and control it. A bit dangerous, since he might not make it back to his body, but that sort of risk was commonplace for Renjiro. He combined the strings of hand seals required for the astral construct and for Shintensin no Jutsu; rather than trying to leap to the target, he would leap to the astral construct, then use it to close in on the target.
Drawing a deep breath, he enacted the hand seals. The construct formed, detectable only as chakra, and then his mind shot forward into it.
It was a strange sensation. The physical world disappeared around him. He tried to move the body like he might his own, but it didn't work. The process was much more mental; similar to the way that he might control chakra within his own body. The jutsu dissipated, returning him to his body before he had much of a chance to figure things out.
He performed it again. This time, he managed to “walk” around a bit before returning to his body. He repeated the process, making a bit more progress every time. It was fortunate that his capability for mental gymnastics was already so developed; the actual maneuvering of the astral construct, the fine motor skills, seemed to be based entirely at that. Powering it, propelling it, that was more about manipulating the chakra that held it together.
He only had so much chakra to spend on trials, and so, exhausted, he was forced to table his development until he could rest, recuperate, restore his reserves.
The next day he began again. It was entirely new, but he was a quick study. First he learned to walk, then to run. Almost like physical rehabilitation, albeit on an entirely mental plane. Next he added perception. Base matter was lost to him this way; it was actually more like flying than walking, since the ground didn't exist astrally. He could, however, see chakra; it would be enough to home in on a target and “make contact” in order to release his consciousness on them.
After a week of steady improvement, he decided it was time to perform a real test. He stole out at night into the nearest village and waited until he found a lone man, a bit drunk, wandering home from a night of drinking. Positioning himself in a dark, empty alley, he performed his jutsu after marking the man's positioning.
The world faded away to the dull gray of astral space, but the drunk's weak chakra signature shone well enough. He glide-sprinted toward it, all but mentally tackling the fellow and forcing his psyche into him. Once in, he tested his control, doing some stretches, touching his nose with each finger, testing the man's senses. Everything seemed to be in order.
Canceling the jutsu, he returned to his own form and smirked. One of these days he'd have to return to Konoha and see if he couldn't seduce away a few Yamanaka with the promise of his advanced jutsu.
[2200-950=1250] 1459/1250 Words
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Boomerang Projectile Training – 456/400 Words
Renji was still interested in diversifying his capabilities, so far as thrown weapons went. Without the ability to affect elements, his offensive jutsu were hampered, particularly given his talent with developing an using ninpou techniques. Still, he had a nasty habit of turning weaknesses into strength, and intended to do just that by supplementing his exploding tags with generic ninjutsu that would make them that much more pernicious.
He was standing in a clearing with a kunai in hand. He had a notion to imbue his weapons with chakra so that he could control them remotely, and in the interest of developing that concept, he wanted to test out something a bit more basic first.
Holding the throwing knife still, he worked his hands through a series of seals, molding chakra in such a way that he could transfer it into the inert metal. In theory, as the invested chakra was spent, it would alter the trajectory of the thrown weapon, changing its angle. Also in theory, enough control and the right amount of chakra would allow him to cause the weapon to do a complete 180 degree turn and come back to him (or, more pertinently, pass an opponent he had missed on purpose again, allowing him a sneaky tag activation in range).
He let fly with the kunai and watched. It flew straight for a time, then arced to the right, curving in a wide loop to plunge into the ground some ten feet to the right of its original path. Promising.
He altered the hand seals involved slightly, welling up half again as much chakra and gifting it to the next kunai. With a snap of his wrist he sent the small weapon sailing straight forward, and this time, the turn was much sharper, if not quite the full redirection he was going for.
The amount of chakra seemed right. He just needed to find the perfect balance by experimenting with which seals he employed. He went through a half dozen combinations, letting fly with a kunai each time and monitoring the difference between the warped flight paths. With each throw, he had a little more knowledge to incorporate into his experimentation, making it only a short matter of time before he arrived at the correct procedure.
After twenty minutes of testing, he was reasonably sure he'd arrived at the right conclusion. Forming his hand seals once more, he unfurled his arm and launched the chakra imbued kunai. This time, it looped completely around, and though its return was a bit slower than he would have liked, he realized there wasn't much that could be done about that. He let the returning kunai pass him, and then moved to collect his test weaponry.
Blocking Field – 461/400 Words
Renji needed to improve his defensive game. The style of combat he imagined suiting him best would involve a great deal of running out the clock, measuring his opponent's capabilities while frustrating them in order to prod until they made a fatal error. Techniques that served to simply stop ninjutsu or physical attacks could buy precious time, expose jutsus that the opponent used, and even just simply cause the opponent to overestimate the defense and spend more chakra than needed.
Renji began his first foray into a purely defensive jutsu with some theory, setting up with some paper and a pen and writing out possible non elemental means to hinder and block other jutsus or even physical attacks. Straight forward barriers were a little over done; people expected them, and tended to be experienced with them enough to gage their potency well enough. He needed something a little different, something unexpected.
Rather than creating a solid form of chakra, he could instead diffuse chakra throughout a small area, allowing those motes of his energy to stop anything that attempted to pass through. It was just a bit more complex, just a hint more unusual, and the competitor in Renji couldn't help enjoying the idea of such a simple technique that required surpassing control of chakra.
He decided the overkill approach would be best, and set to work, forming hand seals and molding far more chakra than the technique would possibly need to be successful. Concentrating intensely, he began to spread and shape the chakra, stretching it thin in a roughly door sized area in front of him, channeling it continuously.
He released the technique and tried again. He could put the finishing touches on it when he was better versed in the methodology. For now, he wanted to master the actual process of diffusing his own chakra, and so he focused on that and that alone, building up energy and then spreading and forming it until it was almost unconscious.
He was ready to test the blocking field. Forming his hand seals carefully, he began projecting his summoned chakra before him, exuding it in a rapid trickle until it had filled the desired space. The chakra itself would be invisible to anyone but a sensor, but the air that became trapped in the field seemed to darken slightly, not to full opacity, but enough that it was impossible not to notice that -something- was there.
It remained standing, structurally sound, which was a good sign. Renji reached forward, and was unable to pass his hand through the semi-solid air. He unleashed a few jabs and a kick upon it, striking until it broke, and then repeated the jutsu a few more times in order to cement the process in his mind.
Item Teleportation: Activate Training – 428/400 Words
Now that he'd managed to work out the particulars of his dimensional teleportation seal, he needed a means to activate it. The effect was a little sophisticated for chakra kai to apply to, and it wasn't so much of a difficulty that he minded a little extra work.
In preparation, he inscribed a dozen kunai with the Item Teleportation seal he'd worked up. They didn't need to be moving for the activation to succeed, but he'd start on displacing stationary kunai and then work his way up to thrown ones in order to ensure his success.
He was intimately familiar with the mechanisms of the fuuinjutsu, so tailoring an activation for it was more a matter of repetition than experimentation. He went through a few simple hand seals, then concentrated his molded chakra on the small seal that he'd etched into the hilt of one of the throwing knives...
And nothing happened.
Frowning slightly, he ran through a few quick mental calculations and realized his error almost immediately. The delicate nature of a jinjutsu seal caused for a very precise amount of chakra, and as such, a bit of fine control and experimentation was called for.
He started small and built his way up, using only a trickle of chakra at first and then gradually increasing the amount that he directed into the seal to activate it. Eventually, it would be the right amount, and then he'd know and be able to master the needed hand seals and implementation of chakra channeling.
It took nearly five minutes of excruciatingly precise channeling before the kunai finally winked out of existence and reappeared instantaneously a few feet forward of its former position. For the sake of consistency, Renji repeated the actions he had used five more times, displacing five more of the kunai in similar fashion.
With the remaining half dozen, he launched them, then at varying distances from himself, performed the activation technique. It was a little trickier to “aim” at a moving target, but not so much so that he hadn't managed to master it by the time he ran out of kunai. Just to be sure, though, he retrieved the kunai and reinscribed the seals. He wanted to find out the maximum range of the technique, since that would be useful to know, and so he laid the kunai out roughly five feet apart from one another, starting 30 feet from himself.
He repeated the activation technique on each kunai in line until he had reached the end of the activation's limits, some sixty feet away.
Homing Projectile Training – 616/600 Words
It was time to build upon the elementary “boomerang” technique he had recently nailed down. Rather than creating a static effect for the chakra imbued projectile, he wanted to be able to directly control the weapon in question, maneuvering it through the air and even using his chakra to enhance the weapon's velocity.
A few hours of note taking and theorize left him prepared to actually begin developing the jutsu from his conceptualization. He would need to invest the weapon with a decent amount of chakra- not an outrageous amount, but this wouldn't be something he would be able to perform constantly as he was currently. That was due to the amount of time it would need to spend in the air, and the corrections he would be making to its course.
He'd also need to maintain his hand seals and continuously channel his chakra, continuing the link between his own chakra system and the energy he was imparting the projectile with. It would be well worth the effort, though.
When he was ready to begin testing, he brought a sleeve of kunai outside of the Conclave and set to work. The hand seals would be similar to the boomerang technique, but a few more would be needed, and integrating the new seals into the prior one would take some trial and error. He began molding chakra straight away with one of the kunai in hand, but he didn't bother throwing until it -felt- right. He'd executed nearly a half dozen combinations of seals before he discovered a promising one, and once he did, he let fly with the kuna after investing it with the chakra he'd molded.
The difference in speed was immediately noticeable, so much so that Renji's surprise caused him to lapse his concentration and accidentally end the technique. He tried again, and this time, had the presence of mind to hold the final seal and focus on the weapon as it sped away. It was at least half again as fast as a normal throw from him, though the force seemed to be consistent with his own strength.
He attempted to nudge the kunai a bit, tip it off to the left. It wasn't as easy as he was expecting, so he redoubled his concentration, exerting the sort of chakra control that a near master of fuuinjutu techniques had no choice but to develop over two centuries.
He managed a slight course adjustment, but the kunai traveled too far away for him to do much more. He selected another and formed his hand seals once more, then let fly once more, sending the kunai streaking forward limned in light blue while he maintained both the final seal of the technique and utter concentration.
He found that lateral movements were the simplest; actually turning the kunai any respectable amount of causing it to rise or lower seemed to take more concentration. He kept at it though, throwing kunai after kunai until he had adapted his chakra control to account for nearly any maneuver he could conceive of.
For good measure, he got fancy. It would almost never be needed in combat, but in practice, performing much more elaborate maneuvers would help him develop his remote control over the homing projectile and better follow a moving target.
He urged a kunai through loops, twists, and other more complex aerial maneuvers, always banking it before it traveled too far away for him to control. So long as he kept the kunai within that range, he could do almost anything with it so long as he kept up his concentration. All in all, a productive afternoon. He collected his kunai and returned to his quarters.
Better Blocking Field – 645/600 Words
Renji had already developed a defensive technique, but it was time to expound upon it. The sorts of opponents he would be facing as a member of Henkou would likely be stronger than the likes of such a basic jutsu. He needed something with more oomph, more stopping power. Even the next logical step would likely not be enough in most cases, but it would be an improvement, a foundation for him to build upon with further, similar, more powerful techniques.
He already had his preferred method of barrier construction- a diffuse field of chakra, rather than a simple solid surface. It was just a matter of adding more juice, and in doing so, maintaining the structural integrity of the resulting field. Both aspects would require some testing, some fine tuning, in order to achieve the most efficient and potent results.
He started with the more basic technique, but added a few extra hand seals, bringing forth more of his chakra reserves to funnel into the technique. It was a process of trial and error, since simply doubling up on the seals wasn't enough; the art of ninjutsu was much more complex than that, with ramifications that could be either linear or exponential depending on the method employed.
He didn't bother with the chakra diffusion aspect until he'd developed a set of hand seals that he was confidant in. The result was half again as many as the basic blocking field, but with the order tweaked for the sake of enhancing and smoothing out the output all at once. With that completed, he was ready to move on to actually forming the barrier field.
He wanted it larger and stronger both, able to provide protection over a bigger area and against bigger jutsu or more potent physical attacks. As such, he needed to make the field of chakra motes more dense while expanding it to cover more of the air in front of him, which would require quite a bit of fine control. Forming the necessary seals, he began to separate and expel the chakra, drawing it before him like a thick curtain, constantly making adjustments here and there so that the distribution would be even. The air darkened considerably within the area of the effect, providing the tell tale indicator that the barrier field existed.
With the barrier formed, he tested it, directing a series of punches and kicks at the “structure”. It folded far too quickly, largely due to a few “weak spots” that he had failed to properly reinforce. With the field collapsed, he initiated his hand seals once more, and this time, put the information he had gained in destroying the last one to good use, intensifying the strength in a more uniform way.
The second barrier held up to quite a few more blows, but Renji was sure he could do better. He augmented the hand seals slightly, altering the nature of the chakra subtly to make it more congruous with the defensive intentions of the technique. Directing, controlling, and shaping the chakra once more, the body thief formed it into a wide, tall, thick area of discolored air. He launched another series of attacks, and this time, the barrier held up well.
It was time for a bit more strenuous of a test. He inscribed two of his bursting seals on the ground, then enacted his hand seals for a final time, placing the field of hindering chakra between himself and the explosive fuuin. He activated one of the seals and braced himself unnecessarily; the field was damaged, but held up and protected him completely from the ten foot blast. Pressing his luck, Renji activated the second seal.
The barrier shattered, but absorbed enough of the force of the explosion that Renji was only sent stumbling back several feet. Satisfied with the technique, he wrapped things up.
Communion of Mind with Mind Technique Training – 642/600 Words
Working largely alone over his prolonged existence had left Renji with few reasons to learn and employ techniques that were really only needed with allies. Particularly with Yaku as a partner, and to a lesser degree with the rest of Henkou to work with, it was high time that he explored a few of the techniques of his clan that he had neglected over the years.
He slipped into the body of Ichiro for the sake of finding someone suitable to play with. The villages near enough to the Conclave had been a good source of testing partners, but rumors of a white haired man with a cruel streak were beginning to circulate a bit, leaving finding willing dupes to experiment with jutsu upon few and far between.
Fortunately, Renji had no qualms whatsoever taking advantage of the naivety of youth.
He wandered a bit until he found a lonely teenager, the sort with few friends who would be easy enough to manipulate. Approaching, he struck up conversation, feeding a few disarming lies before he made his pitch:
“Hey, want to see something cool?”
The other boy bought it and agreed to accompany “Ichiro” to a disused section of the village, nearly outside of it. Renji easily overpowered the lad, then assured him he would come to no harm if he cooperated.
Forming hand seals, he locked eyes with the boy. He'd participated in this technique enough as the target to know the basics, and performed enough psychic techniques to have good guesses at the particular.
Mental intrusion was a very subtle thing. Those who didn't possess the finesse would never manage to master it. It wasn't a matter of battering down psychic walls and absconding with information; it was a matter of slipping through cracks, skulking through mental shadows. This technique was more elementary than some of his, but a bit different; it was less about stealing information and more about imparting it.
He nudged, tweaked, and slipped, averting the mental defenses that the teenager unconsciously employed.
Can you hear me?
The wide eyed boys startling was reply enough. Focusing on the mental link, he strengthened it, carving a channel for prolonged communication.
Think something. Think your name, or I'll take a finger.
With eye contact maintained, it wasn't hard to see the boy straining to appease him. He couldn't hear the thought he'd commanded just yet, and so he continued making adjustments, continued redefining the mental bond between them in order to enable a real enough conversation.
-ku. Jiraku. Jiraku. My name is Jiraku, please don't hurt me, please.
Success, at least thus far.
Relax, Jiraku. I'm not going to hurt you. I just need your help to figure a few things out. Sit tight.
With that, he canceled the technique. He needed a fresh start to move further, and after meeting the boy's frightened gaze, he performed his seals and initiated the mind to mind contact once more. This time, he wanted to improve the scope of his own information transmission capabilities.
I'm going to try to show you a few images. Please think about what they are, should you see them. Understood?
The boy nodded feebly, and Renji set to work. Summoning up a memory of a particular unique tree he'd spotted in the village, he brought it to the forefront of his mind and attempted to share it via the established mental link. When the boy thought nothing about trees, he frowned and attempted it again, focusing a bit harder on the image.
A... tree? The boy's mental tone even sounded uncertain and frightened.
Renji continued the process, conversing with the boy and sharing both pictures and scenes from his memory. Nothing incriminating, but it was enough to hone his control over the process and refine his ability to create and maintain such telepathic links.
Finger Engraving Seal Training – 416/400 Words
Sometimes, ink and a brush just weren't handy. Renji had learned this, had even substituted senbon for the sake of implementing fuuinjutsu in the past, but had never put a great deal of thought toward overcoming that particular limitation. Of late, he'd been doing much more sealing on the fly, and the necessities thereof spurred him to finally sort out a means to bypass the need for materia.
It was so simple, so easy, that he was a little amazed the idea had never occurred to him before. By channeling chakra through his finger for the express purpose of scoring or scarring a design onto a surface, he'd utterly subvert the need for anything but a pittance of energy if he found himself in need of an immediate seal.
Well versed enough in both ninjutsu and fuuinjutsu to know the requirements, Renjiro quickly went about practicing and mastering the needed actions. It was so elementary it didn't even require seals, just concentration and channeling.
He summoned the needed chakra forth from his tenketsu, letting it flow through his body into his arm and then down through his index finger. It took a bit of finagling to get the “nib” to form correctly, but eventually he had it. It took a bit of focus to maintain the makeshift writing implement while he was deciding what seal he wanted to test out, but after a few false starts, he was ready to begin writing.
Apparently, it wasn't going to be as easy as he'd thought. Upon bringing his finger against the nearest surface (a wall), he realized that he needed the point to be much, much finer. As is, he had flash burned a small line nearly half an inch thick into the paint- far too wide to use for something as delicate as fuuinjutsu.
He concentrated harder, ignoring the writing process for now in favor of just perfecting the technique. He made the “nib” finer and finer and finer, testing it periodically by drawing lines to check the thickness that resulted, and after several minutes of honing, he was able to produce neat, razor thin lines.
He went back to inscription, and it took a little getting used to. He was used to manipulating a brush, not just moving his finger, so the level of hand control needed was actually a fair bit higher. After several wavy or wobbily attempts, he managed to produce a perfect exploding tag seal, and after that, it was clinched.
Seal of Sight Training – 453/400 Words
Renjiro had come to the conclusion that he needed a means to pierce the Hidden Mist jutsu. His sensor capabilities were usually enough, but if he was going to be working with or against Yaku, actually being able to see would be quite helpful. Detecting living creatures by means of their chakra signatures was easy enough, but matters of terrain or inorganic hindrances could still potentially trip him up.
He began formulating a design for a fairly basic augmenting seal that would allow his vision to bypass sight based hindrances. First, as always, came the vocabulary list, a selection of symbols and kanji that he would pare down as he decided which ones would work best for his intended effect and the basic mechanics of the seal. In addition to the standard nuts and bolts symbols, he recorded those for sight, piercing, vision, chakra, obscurement, shadow, darkness, light, twilight, and eyes.
Next came a basic map for the placement of the seal's elements. With such a simple seal, he didn't need a particularly complex arrangement, and as such, just quickly placed down a pair of dot matrices that mirrored one another; one to surround each eye, with a connection between. With such small areas to work in, he did have to take a bit of care to ensure that there would be adequate spacing for all the kanji.
After that, he actually began the design of the fuuin, first layering in the symbols that would provide the basic function of containing and distributing chakra evenly throughout the seal. Since this seal would be toggleable, the arrangement was a little more complex than it would be for a straight augmenting fuuin in order to interact with the technique that would turn it on and off.
The next step was the most difficult bit of this particular seal; working in the more unique elements in such a way that they would be easily incorporated into the basic framework of the seal and function correctly. Even for easy designs, this could take some trial and error for effects that he'd never dealt with before.
He finished up and then inscribed it, and used a spare smoke bomb to test it out. The fact that he felt a slight drain on his chakra when he activated the seal was promising, but once he'd filled the air with obstructive smoke, he realized that some tweaking was needed to account for full visibility.
He removed the seal, then went back to his prototype and made a few edits, fixing up a few of the kanji and linking them with a few extra connective symbols. This time, when he tested the seal, the air might as well have been clear.
Switch Training – 426/400 Words
Renji had never had much use for the more straight forward augmenting seals, the sort that would give him benefits at the expense of a continuous drain on chakra, and as such, he'd never had much use for a conjunctive technique to enable or disable them. He was well aware of its existence, though, and now that he had designs on such fuuinjutsu, he would need to master it in order to make the best use of them.
He decided to use his Spare Body sealing method to test out and experiment with; it was one of the few such techniques that he deemed important enough to use, even at the expense of sealing away some of his very mind. He'd designed it with a trigger, but this switching technique would be a bit more like a universal remote.
The seal was inert usually, and so the first task would be figuring out how to get such a technique to turn it on. Chakra kai was a simple enough means, provided that he made a few tweaks to the triggering mechanism in the seal. Once he'd accomplished that, he activated the seal, turning it on so to speak, so that the next physical contact made with him would unleash the Shintensin technique stored within.
Now, it was a matter of figuring out how to turn it off. A bit trickier, really. He mulled it over for a few moments before deciding to try some hand seals, basically using chakra to short out the seal for a bit and restore it to its inert state.
A half dozen combinations proved faulty, and so he was forced to rethink his approach. Really, it was a subtle effect, one that relied much more on control than power. He channeled chakra, rather than molding it, and focused it into the seal, hoping that it would disengage. He gave a few different methods a go, but none of them seemed to have much in the way of effect. Frowning, he started to get annoyed.
Maybe he needed more control over the channeling, to accomplish the fine manipulation required? Tentatively, he laid his hand atop the seal and began focusing, building up a small amount of chakra and then washing it over the seal, letting it penentrate the fuuin's structure, then concentrating to maintain his control and cause the chakra to interrupt the circuits that flowed his chakra through the seal. Success. He went through the motions of switching the seal on and off a few more times before he was satisfied.
Seal of Abeyance Training – 447/400 Words
The idea had come to Renji without warning, a small fit of inspiration that he had rolled over and over in his mind for several days, considering the possibilities and procedures involved with such a fuuinjutsu before ever beginning to work on it in earnest. By the time he was ready to start, though, he had a fairly good idea of what it was he wanted to do.
This seal would be large, one of the largest he'd created, even if the effect was far simpler than most of the techniques he'd designed. As such, he decided to switch up his usual design process, focusing first on the actual “map” which he would use to place the elements of the seal in order to get it to function. A larger design meant different sizing and spacing than he was used to, so he wanted to take his time and get it right.
He decided on a nice even four feet arbitrarily; large enough for the intended effect to be useful, but not so long that the chakra would get too weak and diffuse to do much good. Using dots on the floor, he mapped out the general circuitry of the fuuin, laying out where he would place the separate larger than usual elements that would empower it.
He took his time, working carefully, measuring and remeasuring in accords with standard formulas brought up to the seal's scale. Only when he was satisfied did he began working on the actual elements of the seal.
He began with a vocabulary list, sorting through his mental library of kanji for applicable ones. Slow, abeyance, retardation, weight, heavy, flight, movement, stall, hinder, choke, grab. Along with those, he picked and chose between the more basic symbols, the universal ones that formed the framework of the seal, connecting and powering the disparate elements cohesively to produce and effect.
Next came actual kanji placement. He selected a thick brush an set to work, creating the scaled up characters with precision in accords with the “map” he'd laid out, then using smaller symbols to bind them all together.
Time for a test run. He activated the seal with some chakra, then grabbed a book from his desk and lobbed it through the air over the fuuin. To his consternation, the book flew normally and landed splayed on the other side of the fuuin. He stood over, inspecting it for errors and then correcting a few before he tried his test again.
This time, the book slowed a bit as soon as it passed the barrier defined by the fuuin, and then once it had exited began to speed back up to normal.
Chakra Draining Seal Training – 631/600 Words
More and more frequently, Renji found himself in need of a means to deal with captives. When one was dealing with shinobis, simply binding them with rope and hoping for the best seldom proved effective. Leaving them in the care of one of his Henkousubordinates allies was an option, but not one he wanted to lean on; more often than not, such captives weren't the likes that he wanted to expose to his “peers”.
The answer, he decided, lay in fuuinjutsu. He could apply seals to a captive and weaken them, making them easier to manage for the duration of his hospitality. He had two seals in mind, similar in nature, but he would develop the first before moving on to the second. The first would sap the target's actual life force, depleting their chakra.
As always, he first developed a composition of the various kanji that he would employ in order to create the seal. All the usual suspects were in attendance, the basic vocabulary of the art of fuuinjutsu. To them, he added characters specific to this particular endeavor: chakra, stamina, life, life force, drain, diminish, steal, plunder, negate, destroy. He mused a few more moments over his selections, jotting down a few more possibilities, and then finalized his choices.
After that, he set about placing a matrix of dots on a piece of blank paper, mapping out the way that he would incorporate the various elements of the seal. He chose an arrangement that would be stable, due to the effect of fuuin. Something that was tampering directly with an individual's chakra and constitution would need to be well reinforced.
With that completed, it was time to begin incorporating the elements that would power, contain, and define the seal (in no particular order). On sheets of very thin, translucent vellum, he created each aspect of the seal by laying the sheet over the basic design and then fitting the new kanji in, placing them carefully with some forethought spared for the future operations.
First he laid down the basic framework, the symbols of medium complexity that would tie the seal together, distributing chakra through it evenly and powering it after activation. It was comprised of clusters of kanji meant to house instilled chakra and a circuit of connective symbols that would set it flowing to engage each other element.
Next, he removed that sheet and replaced it with another to create the unique signifiers that would enable the seal to tap into a recipients chakra network and sap them of their resolve and energy. The ennervating kanji that he had selected wound up arranged in a complex spiral that was meant to facilitate drawing the needed energy out.
After that, he carefully placed both sheets over the original so that he could see both sets of symbols at once and transfer the lower set upwards, completing the design. He frowned though as he beheld the result, realizing immediately that he had made a grave error... but not one that he couldn't correct easily enough. By twisting the top sheet, he could rearrange the kanji manually. He made a half dozen minute adjustments, carefully reconfiguring... and then he was satisfied, and transferred the elements of the fuuin to the tracing paper.
Time to test the results. His own chakra was as good as any, and so he copied the prototype fuuin onto his own flesh, inscribing it and then activating it. He felt his energy ebb immediately, but it didn't seem like enough. Something was off. When he inspected the kanji, he noticed a small burr on one of the descending lines. He corrected the error on the seal and the results were noticeable, certainly. After fixing and finalizing the prototype, he committed the design to memory.
Strength Draining Seal – 624/600 Words
In addition to his stamina draining seal, which would deplete a captured target of their reserves and hamper their ability to perform jutsu, Renjiro hoped to devise a similar seal that would physically weaken them, reducing their ability to fight with Taijutsu and even escape mundane bondage in order to mount an escape. The process, he knew, would be fairly similar overall; in fact, he could probably cannibalize most of the fuuin from his work on the stamina seal and then make changes to account for the somewhat different effect.
The thought of completely neutering a captive in order to contain them more easily appealed to Renji immensely; he'd had a few close calls, over the decades, with canny would be spare bodies that managed to slip away. No more, once he'd finished this endeavor.
He rifled through his notes and found the basic foundation of the seal he'd created earlier. Studying that, he began to consider what changes would be needed to repurpose the generic elements of the fuuin and make them work with the new, specific markers he would have to work up. He made some more notes and sketches before moving on to the specifics.
Even many of the effect kanji would hold true across the two seals. Those that pertained to draining, siphoning, or otherwise doing away with the target's physical power would remain the same, but the actual descriptors for what was being taken away would need to change, and the arrangement of the supplementary kanji would need to be tweaked and fiddled with as well in order to maintain the seal's integrity.
With a new vocabulary list to make use of, he started with the foundation and then began incorporating the kanji that pertained to sapping. Much like in the original design, he arranged them in something of a spiral, relying on that shape to effectively draw out and remove the specified attribute. He left gaps though, for the new elements, and left some room where he could make use of connective kanji, neutral elements that did little more than bridge the gap between elements and ensure that the activation of the seal still affected each separate element.
Next, he added in the kanji that would cause the seal to siphon strength rather than stamina. He needed to fix the arrangement slightly as he went, accommodating the sizes of the various kanji, then using his connector kanji to smooth out the rough patches.
He double and triple checked the design for minor errors and, satisfied that the technical aspects were correct, decided to put it to the test. Using ink and a needle, he carved the seal into his flesh, and then performed hand seals, molding chakra and infusing it into the seal to empower it.
Nothing happened. Renji frowned and removed the seal, then returned his attention to the blueprint for it that he had devised. With no errors inhibiting it, the problem must have lay in the actual choices he had made for his kanji, or their arrangements. There were no burrs, no overlaps, no flaws in the formation of the characters, so that meant it had to be the characters themselves.
He went back to the second step and overlayed a new piece of vellum. He re-added the kanji, doubling up on some within the spiralling design, omitting others, and playing a bit with the spacing in hopes of correcting whatever problem there was.
He finished and sealed himself again. This time when he activated the seal, he immediately felt weaker, felt the design tug some of his actual strength away and contain it. He created the seal again and then activated it to test something; sure enough, even more of his strength ebbed away.
Fuuin Armor Training – 633/600 Words
Renji only enjoyed being hurt when it suited him. Pain was life, life was pain, but the body thief had transcended such base aspects of reality so far as he had decided. There were measures that could be taken against pain- armor, shields, protective jutsu- but all of those were a little too overt given his typical modus operandi. A fifteen year old boy running around in full samurai armor was far too conspicuous; a bookishly pretty girl with a tower shield stuck out like a sore thumb.
What he needed was something all but invisible. Something that he could activate at will without being too obvious. He poured over his options. Ninjutsu could certainly achieve the goal, but hand seals could be too conspicuous. After eliminating several ninpou options, he arrived at the conclusion that fuuinjutsu would be the best way to go about it.
But how? There were many ways that he could go about it. Given the intent, though, his best bet was to model the effect of the fuuinjutsu after actual armor. He toyed with the notion of hardening his skin, but that presented mobility issues. Finally, he remembered hearing about a brand of armor that redistributed force over a wider area, effectively diminishing the actual damage that a given strike could deal. It wouldn't offer much proof against blades or conjunctional damage from jutsu like burning flames or arcing lightning.
He set out creating a vocabulary list like usual, compiling a large number of relevant kanji that he would employ to achieve his results. Armor, strength, might, endurance, diffusion, spread, minimize, damage, pain, travel, channel, mettle, vigor.
The actual seal itself would be among the more interesting designs he had created. One seal on the palm of each hand, one seal on the sole of each foot, one on the stomach, one on the back of his neck. When activated, they would project the effect over his entire body. He created a basic outline for each of the six near identical seals. Most of the fuuin would be the same, but there would be slight variations to establish the direction that the protection was projected in.
Next, he worked in the basic nuts and bolts of each seal. The first segment was identical across each, just the framework that would form the structure, house the chakra and the other elements, ensure even distribution of the empowering chakra while the technique was active.
He also incorporated a cluster of fuuin designed to interact with his switching jutsu, making it possible to turn on and off easily since the armor would drain his chakra continuously and likely present some other side effects as well.
Next came the more difficult part; adding the kanji that would provide the armor effect. Rather than simply reproducing the same design in each seal, he had the notion in his head to make some stronger than others depending about the amount of his body that they would cover for the sake of the overall product. It took nearly an hour to work out the tiny, detailed kanji arrangements within each of the small seals.
Now it was time to test. He peeled of his shirt and inscribed the fuuinjutsu on each foot, each hand, and his neck and stomach. Now to try it out. He activated the technique with his switch technique and then moved about, attempting to discern changes. His range of motion was a bit restricted, as if a thin layer of protective film had been plastered over his form. What about the actual intent of the fuuin technique?
How to try it out? Punching himself just felt silly, so instead he moved to the wall and began slamming his head into it repeatedly. The damage certainly seemed to be diminished. Mission accomplished.
Item Teleportation Seal Training – 635/600 Words
In hopes of supplementing his burgeoning portfolio of ranged techniques, Renji wanted a means to actually improve his weaponry. Exploding tags and the stronger variants he had mastered were nice, but there were still some measures he could take to create kunai that could do the unexpected, taking advantage of the preconceptions of an opponent about what such simple shinobi implements could do. Ninjas took for granted what single kunai could accomplish; they tended to let their guard down a bit if they weren't staring down elaborate and potent jutsu.
The idea of causing an item to teleport appealed to him. He could use it to bypass barriers or cover, or even just to surprise an opponent who was gaging the distance and speed of the weapon in order to dodge and act at once. He knew full well that the effect could be achieved by sealing; he had designed a summoning technique for containers that would inform much of the basis for his new technique.
He reviewed the notes he had made while creating that very seal, sifting through to compile relevant arrangements of kanji, and then he expanded upon that, adding new kanji that he could make use of that would augment the space time effect to trigger a short forward hop rather than summoning the kunai to him.
The seal in question would need to be quite small, but for the sake of ease, he designed it at three times the scale. He could perfect creating it smaller later. He used a perfect circle, relying on that circuitous brand of perfecting geometry in order to create a very consistent, enduring seal that could withstand rapid transmission across dimensions.
Next, within the layout, he added quite a few basic kanji, creating clusters of them to power and control the energy involved in the transfer. It was quite a bit of energy to so displace something, thousands of times more than the energy required to simply move it the same distance. In terms of chakra cost, it wouldn't be much, but a specialized activation would be required to invest a little extra power each time. He worked keeping that in mind, tailoring an activation system into the actual design.
Finally, he blended in the actual jinjutsu seals, those that, when powered by the chakra that the other kanji and symbols ran throughout the design, would actually wrap the kunai in energy and move it between the realms of reality. It was painstaking work; for such a comparatively simple technique, it was quite difficult work.
Reproducing it on a scale tiny enough to fit on the hilt of a kunai proved even more difficult than the design itself. He would up forced to use his chakra inscribing method and focusing the point of the chakra created nib so finely that the resulting seal was nearly invisible for the thinness of the lines and kanji that formed it.
He had to work out an activation technique as well, but for now, he could force the issue and trigger the seal manually for the sake of testing. It would be a waste of chakra until he learned to mold the chara correctly, but it would do the trick to ensure that the fuuin worked correctly.
When he met with initial failure his annoyance was profound. He was forced to go back to the large scale seal and look for errors, but he found none. Taking a magnifying glass, he inspected the kunai, and realized that he had made a few nearly microscopic errors that he had to correct. He did so, taking far too long, and then used an overflow of chakra again.
Success. The kunai darted forward and then fell to the ground. Some testing revealed that the dimensional effect had limitations but he was satisfied.
Renji was still interested in diversifying his capabilities, so far as thrown weapons went. Without the ability to affect elements, his offensive jutsu were hampered, particularly given his talent with developing an using ninpou techniques. Still, he had a nasty habit of turning weaknesses into strength, and intended to do just that by supplementing his exploding tags with generic ninjutsu that would make them that much more pernicious.
He was standing in a clearing with a kunai in hand. He had a notion to imbue his weapons with chakra so that he could control them remotely, and in the interest of developing that concept, he wanted to test out something a bit more basic first.
Holding the throwing knife still, he worked his hands through a series of seals, molding chakra in such a way that he could transfer it into the inert metal. In theory, as the invested chakra was spent, it would alter the trajectory of the thrown weapon, changing its angle. Also in theory, enough control and the right amount of chakra would allow him to cause the weapon to do a complete 180 degree turn and come back to him (or, more pertinently, pass an opponent he had missed on purpose again, allowing him a sneaky tag activation in range).
He let fly with the kunai and watched. It flew straight for a time, then arced to the right, curving in a wide loop to plunge into the ground some ten feet to the right of its original path. Promising.
He altered the hand seals involved slightly, welling up half again as much chakra and gifting it to the next kunai. With a snap of his wrist he sent the small weapon sailing straight forward, and this time, the turn was much sharper, if not quite the full redirection he was going for.
The amount of chakra seemed right. He just needed to find the perfect balance by experimenting with which seals he employed. He went through a half dozen combinations, letting fly with a kunai each time and monitoring the difference between the warped flight paths. With each throw, he had a little more knowledge to incorporate into his experimentation, making it only a short matter of time before he arrived at the correct procedure.
After twenty minutes of testing, he was reasonably sure he'd arrived at the right conclusion. Forming his hand seals once more, he unfurled his arm and launched the chakra imbued kunai. This time, it looped completely around, and though its return was a bit slower than he would have liked, he realized there wasn't much that could be done about that. He let the returning kunai pass him, and then moved to collect his test weaponry.
Blocking Field – 461/400 Words
Renji needed to improve his defensive game. The style of combat he imagined suiting him best would involve a great deal of running out the clock, measuring his opponent's capabilities while frustrating them in order to prod until they made a fatal error. Techniques that served to simply stop ninjutsu or physical attacks could buy precious time, expose jutsus that the opponent used, and even just simply cause the opponent to overestimate the defense and spend more chakra than needed.
Renji began his first foray into a purely defensive jutsu with some theory, setting up with some paper and a pen and writing out possible non elemental means to hinder and block other jutsus or even physical attacks. Straight forward barriers were a little over done; people expected them, and tended to be experienced with them enough to gage their potency well enough. He needed something a little different, something unexpected.
Rather than creating a solid form of chakra, he could instead diffuse chakra throughout a small area, allowing those motes of his energy to stop anything that attempted to pass through. It was just a bit more complex, just a hint more unusual, and the competitor in Renji couldn't help enjoying the idea of such a simple technique that required surpassing control of chakra.
He decided the overkill approach would be best, and set to work, forming hand seals and molding far more chakra than the technique would possibly need to be successful. Concentrating intensely, he began to spread and shape the chakra, stretching it thin in a roughly door sized area in front of him, channeling it continuously.
He released the technique and tried again. He could put the finishing touches on it when he was better versed in the methodology. For now, he wanted to master the actual process of diffusing his own chakra, and so he focused on that and that alone, building up energy and then spreading and forming it until it was almost unconscious.
He was ready to test the blocking field. Forming his hand seals carefully, he began projecting his summoned chakra before him, exuding it in a rapid trickle until it had filled the desired space. The chakra itself would be invisible to anyone but a sensor, but the air that became trapped in the field seemed to darken slightly, not to full opacity, but enough that it was impossible not to notice that -something- was there.
It remained standing, structurally sound, which was a good sign. Renji reached forward, and was unable to pass his hand through the semi-solid air. He unleashed a few jabs and a kick upon it, striking until it broke, and then repeated the jutsu a few more times in order to cement the process in his mind.
Item Teleportation: Activate Training – 428/400 Words
Now that he'd managed to work out the particulars of his dimensional teleportation seal, he needed a means to activate it. The effect was a little sophisticated for chakra kai to apply to, and it wasn't so much of a difficulty that he minded a little extra work.
In preparation, he inscribed a dozen kunai with the Item Teleportation seal he'd worked up. They didn't need to be moving for the activation to succeed, but he'd start on displacing stationary kunai and then work his way up to thrown ones in order to ensure his success.
He was intimately familiar with the mechanisms of the fuuinjutsu, so tailoring an activation for it was more a matter of repetition than experimentation. He went through a few simple hand seals, then concentrated his molded chakra on the small seal that he'd etched into the hilt of one of the throwing knives...
And nothing happened.
Frowning slightly, he ran through a few quick mental calculations and realized his error almost immediately. The delicate nature of a jinjutsu seal caused for a very precise amount of chakra, and as such, a bit of fine control and experimentation was called for.
He started small and built his way up, using only a trickle of chakra at first and then gradually increasing the amount that he directed into the seal to activate it. Eventually, it would be the right amount, and then he'd know and be able to master the needed hand seals and implementation of chakra channeling.
It took nearly five minutes of excruciatingly precise channeling before the kunai finally winked out of existence and reappeared instantaneously a few feet forward of its former position. For the sake of consistency, Renji repeated the actions he had used five more times, displacing five more of the kunai in similar fashion.
With the remaining half dozen, he launched them, then at varying distances from himself, performed the activation technique. It was a little trickier to “aim” at a moving target, but not so much so that he hadn't managed to master it by the time he ran out of kunai. Just to be sure, though, he retrieved the kunai and reinscribed the seals. He wanted to find out the maximum range of the technique, since that would be useful to know, and so he laid the kunai out roughly five feet apart from one another, starting 30 feet from himself.
He repeated the activation technique on each kunai in line until he had reached the end of the activation's limits, some sixty feet away.
Homing Projectile Training – 616/600 Words
It was time to build upon the elementary “boomerang” technique he had recently nailed down. Rather than creating a static effect for the chakra imbued projectile, he wanted to be able to directly control the weapon in question, maneuvering it through the air and even using his chakra to enhance the weapon's velocity.
A few hours of note taking and theorize left him prepared to actually begin developing the jutsu from his conceptualization. He would need to invest the weapon with a decent amount of chakra- not an outrageous amount, but this wouldn't be something he would be able to perform constantly as he was currently. That was due to the amount of time it would need to spend in the air, and the corrections he would be making to its course.
He'd also need to maintain his hand seals and continuously channel his chakra, continuing the link between his own chakra system and the energy he was imparting the projectile with. It would be well worth the effort, though.
When he was ready to begin testing, he brought a sleeve of kunai outside of the Conclave and set to work. The hand seals would be similar to the boomerang technique, but a few more would be needed, and integrating the new seals into the prior one would take some trial and error. He began molding chakra straight away with one of the kunai in hand, but he didn't bother throwing until it -felt- right. He'd executed nearly a half dozen combinations of seals before he discovered a promising one, and once he did, he let fly with the kuna after investing it with the chakra he'd molded.
The difference in speed was immediately noticeable, so much so that Renji's surprise caused him to lapse his concentration and accidentally end the technique. He tried again, and this time, had the presence of mind to hold the final seal and focus on the weapon as it sped away. It was at least half again as fast as a normal throw from him, though the force seemed to be consistent with his own strength.
He attempted to nudge the kunai a bit, tip it off to the left. It wasn't as easy as he was expecting, so he redoubled his concentration, exerting the sort of chakra control that a near master of fuuinjutu techniques had no choice but to develop over two centuries.
He managed a slight course adjustment, but the kunai traveled too far away for him to do much more. He selected another and formed his hand seals once more, then let fly once more, sending the kunai streaking forward limned in light blue while he maintained both the final seal of the technique and utter concentration.
He found that lateral movements were the simplest; actually turning the kunai any respectable amount of causing it to rise or lower seemed to take more concentration. He kept at it though, throwing kunai after kunai until he had adapted his chakra control to account for nearly any maneuver he could conceive of.
For good measure, he got fancy. It would almost never be needed in combat, but in practice, performing much more elaborate maneuvers would help him develop his remote control over the homing projectile and better follow a moving target.
He urged a kunai through loops, twists, and other more complex aerial maneuvers, always banking it before it traveled too far away for him to control. So long as he kept the kunai within that range, he could do almost anything with it so long as he kept up his concentration. All in all, a productive afternoon. He collected his kunai and returned to his quarters.
Better Blocking Field – 645/600 Words
Renji had already developed a defensive technique, but it was time to expound upon it. The sorts of opponents he would be facing as a member of Henkou would likely be stronger than the likes of such a basic jutsu. He needed something with more oomph, more stopping power. Even the next logical step would likely not be enough in most cases, but it would be an improvement, a foundation for him to build upon with further, similar, more powerful techniques.
He already had his preferred method of barrier construction- a diffuse field of chakra, rather than a simple solid surface. It was just a matter of adding more juice, and in doing so, maintaining the structural integrity of the resulting field. Both aspects would require some testing, some fine tuning, in order to achieve the most efficient and potent results.
He started with the more basic technique, but added a few extra hand seals, bringing forth more of his chakra reserves to funnel into the technique. It was a process of trial and error, since simply doubling up on the seals wasn't enough; the art of ninjutsu was much more complex than that, with ramifications that could be either linear or exponential depending on the method employed.
He didn't bother with the chakra diffusion aspect until he'd developed a set of hand seals that he was confidant in. The result was half again as many as the basic blocking field, but with the order tweaked for the sake of enhancing and smoothing out the output all at once. With that completed, he was ready to move on to actually forming the barrier field.
He wanted it larger and stronger both, able to provide protection over a bigger area and against bigger jutsu or more potent physical attacks. As such, he needed to make the field of chakra motes more dense while expanding it to cover more of the air in front of him, which would require quite a bit of fine control. Forming the necessary seals, he began to separate and expel the chakra, drawing it before him like a thick curtain, constantly making adjustments here and there so that the distribution would be even. The air darkened considerably within the area of the effect, providing the tell tale indicator that the barrier field existed.
With the barrier formed, he tested it, directing a series of punches and kicks at the “structure”. It folded far too quickly, largely due to a few “weak spots” that he had failed to properly reinforce. With the field collapsed, he initiated his hand seals once more, and this time, put the information he had gained in destroying the last one to good use, intensifying the strength in a more uniform way.
The second barrier held up to quite a few more blows, but Renji was sure he could do better. He augmented the hand seals slightly, altering the nature of the chakra subtly to make it more congruous with the defensive intentions of the technique. Directing, controlling, and shaping the chakra once more, the body thief formed it into a wide, tall, thick area of discolored air. He launched another series of attacks, and this time, the barrier held up well.
It was time for a bit more strenuous of a test. He inscribed two of his bursting seals on the ground, then enacted his hand seals for a final time, placing the field of hindering chakra between himself and the explosive fuuin. He activated one of the seals and braced himself unnecessarily; the field was damaged, but held up and protected him completely from the ten foot blast. Pressing his luck, Renji activated the second seal.
The barrier shattered, but absorbed enough of the force of the explosion that Renji was only sent stumbling back several feet. Satisfied with the technique, he wrapped things up.
Communion of Mind with Mind Technique Training – 642/600 Words
Working largely alone over his prolonged existence had left Renji with few reasons to learn and employ techniques that were really only needed with allies. Particularly with Yaku as a partner, and to a lesser degree with the rest of Henkou to work with, it was high time that he explored a few of the techniques of his clan that he had neglected over the years.
He slipped into the body of Ichiro for the sake of finding someone suitable to play with. The villages near enough to the Conclave had been a good source of testing partners, but rumors of a white haired man with a cruel streak were beginning to circulate a bit, leaving finding willing dupes to experiment with jutsu upon few and far between.
Fortunately, Renji had no qualms whatsoever taking advantage of the naivety of youth.
He wandered a bit until he found a lonely teenager, the sort with few friends who would be easy enough to manipulate. Approaching, he struck up conversation, feeding a few disarming lies before he made his pitch:
“Hey, want to see something cool?”
The other boy bought it and agreed to accompany “Ichiro” to a disused section of the village, nearly outside of it. Renji easily overpowered the lad, then assured him he would come to no harm if he cooperated.
Forming hand seals, he locked eyes with the boy. He'd participated in this technique enough as the target to know the basics, and performed enough psychic techniques to have good guesses at the particular.
Mental intrusion was a very subtle thing. Those who didn't possess the finesse would never manage to master it. It wasn't a matter of battering down psychic walls and absconding with information; it was a matter of slipping through cracks, skulking through mental shadows. This technique was more elementary than some of his, but a bit different; it was less about stealing information and more about imparting it.
He nudged, tweaked, and slipped, averting the mental defenses that the teenager unconsciously employed.
Can you hear me?
The wide eyed boys startling was reply enough. Focusing on the mental link, he strengthened it, carving a channel for prolonged communication.
Think something. Think your name, or I'll take a finger.
With eye contact maintained, it wasn't hard to see the boy straining to appease him. He couldn't hear the thought he'd commanded just yet, and so he continued making adjustments, continued redefining the mental bond between them in order to enable a real enough conversation.
-ku. Jiraku. Jiraku. My name is Jiraku, please don't hurt me, please.
Success, at least thus far.
Relax, Jiraku. I'm not going to hurt you. I just need your help to figure a few things out. Sit tight.
With that, he canceled the technique. He needed a fresh start to move further, and after meeting the boy's frightened gaze, he performed his seals and initiated the mind to mind contact once more. This time, he wanted to improve the scope of his own information transmission capabilities.
I'm going to try to show you a few images. Please think about what they are, should you see them. Understood?
The boy nodded feebly, and Renji set to work. Summoning up a memory of a particular unique tree he'd spotted in the village, he brought it to the forefront of his mind and attempted to share it via the established mental link. When the boy thought nothing about trees, he frowned and attempted it again, focusing a bit harder on the image.
A... tree? The boy's mental tone even sounded uncertain and frightened.
Renji continued the process, conversing with the boy and sharing both pictures and scenes from his memory. Nothing incriminating, but it was enough to hone his control over the process and refine his ability to create and maintain such telepathic links.
Finger Engraving Seal Training – 416/400 Words
Sometimes, ink and a brush just weren't handy. Renji had learned this, had even substituted senbon for the sake of implementing fuuinjutsu in the past, but had never put a great deal of thought toward overcoming that particular limitation. Of late, he'd been doing much more sealing on the fly, and the necessities thereof spurred him to finally sort out a means to bypass the need for materia.
It was so simple, so easy, that he was a little amazed the idea had never occurred to him before. By channeling chakra through his finger for the express purpose of scoring or scarring a design onto a surface, he'd utterly subvert the need for anything but a pittance of energy if he found himself in need of an immediate seal.
Well versed enough in both ninjutsu and fuuinjutsu to know the requirements, Renjiro quickly went about practicing and mastering the needed actions. It was so elementary it didn't even require seals, just concentration and channeling.
He summoned the needed chakra forth from his tenketsu, letting it flow through his body into his arm and then down through his index finger. It took a bit of finagling to get the “nib” to form correctly, but eventually he had it. It took a bit of focus to maintain the makeshift writing implement while he was deciding what seal he wanted to test out, but after a few false starts, he was ready to begin writing.
Apparently, it wasn't going to be as easy as he'd thought. Upon bringing his finger against the nearest surface (a wall), he realized that he needed the point to be much, much finer. As is, he had flash burned a small line nearly half an inch thick into the paint- far too wide to use for something as delicate as fuuinjutsu.
He concentrated harder, ignoring the writing process for now in favor of just perfecting the technique. He made the “nib” finer and finer and finer, testing it periodically by drawing lines to check the thickness that resulted, and after several minutes of honing, he was able to produce neat, razor thin lines.
He went back to inscription, and it took a little getting used to. He was used to manipulating a brush, not just moving his finger, so the level of hand control needed was actually a fair bit higher. After several wavy or wobbily attempts, he managed to produce a perfect exploding tag seal, and after that, it was clinched.
Seal of Sight Training – 453/400 Words
Renjiro had come to the conclusion that he needed a means to pierce the Hidden Mist jutsu. His sensor capabilities were usually enough, but if he was going to be working with or against Yaku, actually being able to see would be quite helpful. Detecting living creatures by means of their chakra signatures was easy enough, but matters of terrain or inorganic hindrances could still potentially trip him up.
He began formulating a design for a fairly basic augmenting seal that would allow his vision to bypass sight based hindrances. First, as always, came the vocabulary list, a selection of symbols and kanji that he would pare down as he decided which ones would work best for his intended effect and the basic mechanics of the seal. In addition to the standard nuts and bolts symbols, he recorded those for sight, piercing, vision, chakra, obscurement, shadow, darkness, light, twilight, and eyes.
Next came a basic map for the placement of the seal's elements. With such a simple seal, he didn't need a particularly complex arrangement, and as such, just quickly placed down a pair of dot matrices that mirrored one another; one to surround each eye, with a connection between. With such small areas to work in, he did have to take a bit of care to ensure that there would be adequate spacing for all the kanji.
After that, he actually began the design of the fuuin, first layering in the symbols that would provide the basic function of containing and distributing chakra evenly throughout the seal. Since this seal would be toggleable, the arrangement was a little more complex than it would be for a straight augmenting fuuin in order to interact with the technique that would turn it on and off.
The next step was the most difficult bit of this particular seal; working in the more unique elements in such a way that they would be easily incorporated into the basic framework of the seal and function correctly. Even for easy designs, this could take some trial and error for effects that he'd never dealt with before.
He finished up and then inscribed it, and used a spare smoke bomb to test it out. The fact that he felt a slight drain on his chakra when he activated the seal was promising, but once he'd filled the air with obstructive smoke, he realized that some tweaking was needed to account for full visibility.
He removed the seal, then went back to his prototype and made a few edits, fixing up a few of the kanji and linking them with a few extra connective symbols. This time, when he tested the seal, the air might as well have been clear.
Switch Training – 426/400 Words
Renji had never had much use for the more straight forward augmenting seals, the sort that would give him benefits at the expense of a continuous drain on chakra, and as such, he'd never had much use for a conjunctive technique to enable or disable them. He was well aware of its existence, though, and now that he had designs on such fuuinjutsu, he would need to master it in order to make the best use of them.
He decided to use his Spare Body sealing method to test out and experiment with; it was one of the few such techniques that he deemed important enough to use, even at the expense of sealing away some of his very mind. He'd designed it with a trigger, but this switching technique would be a bit more like a universal remote.
The seal was inert usually, and so the first task would be figuring out how to get such a technique to turn it on. Chakra kai was a simple enough means, provided that he made a few tweaks to the triggering mechanism in the seal. Once he'd accomplished that, he activated the seal, turning it on so to speak, so that the next physical contact made with him would unleash the Shintensin technique stored within.
Now, it was a matter of figuring out how to turn it off. A bit trickier, really. He mulled it over for a few moments before deciding to try some hand seals, basically using chakra to short out the seal for a bit and restore it to its inert state.
A half dozen combinations proved faulty, and so he was forced to rethink his approach. Really, it was a subtle effect, one that relied much more on control than power. He channeled chakra, rather than molding it, and focused it into the seal, hoping that it would disengage. He gave a few different methods a go, but none of them seemed to have much in the way of effect. Frowning, he started to get annoyed.
Maybe he needed more control over the channeling, to accomplish the fine manipulation required? Tentatively, he laid his hand atop the seal and began focusing, building up a small amount of chakra and then washing it over the seal, letting it penentrate the fuuin's structure, then concentrating to maintain his control and cause the chakra to interrupt the circuits that flowed his chakra through the seal. Success. He went through the motions of switching the seal on and off a few more times before he was satisfied.
Seal of Abeyance Training – 447/400 Words
The idea had come to Renji without warning, a small fit of inspiration that he had rolled over and over in his mind for several days, considering the possibilities and procedures involved with such a fuuinjutsu before ever beginning to work on it in earnest. By the time he was ready to start, though, he had a fairly good idea of what it was he wanted to do.
This seal would be large, one of the largest he'd created, even if the effect was far simpler than most of the techniques he'd designed. As such, he decided to switch up his usual design process, focusing first on the actual “map” which he would use to place the elements of the seal in order to get it to function. A larger design meant different sizing and spacing than he was used to, so he wanted to take his time and get it right.
He decided on a nice even four feet arbitrarily; large enough for the intended effect to be useful, but not so long that the chakra would get too weak and diffuse to do much good. Using dots on the floor, he mapped out the general circuitry of the fuuin, laying out where he would place the separate larger than usual elements that would empower it.
He took his time, working carefully, measuring and remeasuring in accords with standard formulas brought up to the seal's scale. Only when he was satisfied did he began working on the actual elements of the seal.
He began with a vocabulary list, sorting through his mental library of kanji for applicable ones. Slow, abeyance, retardation, weight, heavy, flight, movement, stall, hinder, choke, grab. Along with those, he picked and chose between the more basic symbols, the universal ones that formed the framework of the seal, connecting and powering the disparate elements cohesively to produce and effect.
Next came actual kanji placement. He selected a thick brush an set to work, creating the scaled up characters with precision in accords with the “map” he'd laid out, then using smaller symbols to bind them all together.
Time for a test run. He activated the seal with some chakra, then grabbed a book from his desk and lobbed it through the air over the fuuin. To his consternation, the book flew normally and landed splayed on the other side of the fuuin. He stood over, inspecting it for errors and then correcting a few before he tried his test again.
This time, the book slowed a bit as soon as it passed the barrier defined by the fuuin, and then once it had exited began to speed back up to normal.
Chakra Draining Seal Training – 631/600 Words
More and more frequently, Renji found himself in need of a means to deal with captives. When one was dealing with shinobis, simply binding them with rope and hoping for the best seldom proved effective. Leaving them in the care of one of his Henkou
The answer, he decided, lay in fuuinjutsu. He could apply seals to a captive and weaken them, making them easier to manage for the duration of his hospitality. He had two seals in mind, similar in nature, but he would develop the first before moving on to the second. The first would sap the target's actual life force, depleting their chakra.
As always, he first developed a composition of the various kanji that he would employ in order to create the seal. All the usual suspects were in attendance, the basic vocabulary of the art of fuuinjutsu. To them, he added characters specific to this particular endeavor: chakra, stamina, life, life force, drain, diminish, steal, plunder, negate, destroy. He mused a few more moments over his selections, jotting down a few more possibilities, and then finalized his choices.
After that, he set about placing a matrix of dots on a piece of blank paper, mapping out the way that he would incorporate the various elements of the seal. He chose an arrangement that would be stable, due to the effect of fuuin. Something that was tampering directly with an individual's chakra and constitution would need to be well reinforced.
With that completed, it was time to begin incorporating the elements that would power, contain, and define the seal (in no particular order). On sheets of very thin, translucent vellum, he created each aspect of the seal by laying the sheet over the basic design and then fitting the new kanji in, placing them carefully with some forethought spared for the future operations.
First he laid down the basic framework, the symbols of medium complexity that would tie the seal together, distributing chakra through it evenly and powering it after activation. It was comprised of clusters of kanji meant to house instilled chakra and a circuit of connective symbols that would set it flowing to engage each other element.
Next, he removed that sheet and replaced it with another to create the unique signifiers that would enable the seal to tap into a recipients chakra network and sap them of their resolve and energy. The ennervating kanji that he had selected wound up arranged in a complex spiral that was meant to facilitate drawing the needed energy out.
After that, he carefully placed both sheets over the original so that he could see both sets of symbols at once and transfer the lower set upwards, completing the design. He frowned though as he beheld the result, realizing immediately that he had made a grave error... but not one that he couldn't correct easily enough. By twisting the top sheet, he could rearrange the kanji manually. He made a half dozen minute adjustments, carefully reconfiguring... and then he was satisfied, and transferred the elements of the fuuin to the tracing paper.
Time to test the results. His own chakra was as good as any, and so he copied the prototype fuuin onto his own flesh, inscribing it and then activating it. He felt his energy ebb immediately, but it didn't seem like enough. Something was off. When he inspected the kanji, he noticed a small burr on one of the descending lines. He corrected the error on the seal and the results were noticeable, certainly. After fixing and finalizing the prototype, he committed the design to memory.
Strength Draining Seal – 624/600 Words
In addition to his stamina draining seal, which would deplete a captured target of their reserves and hamper their ability to perform jutsu, Renjiro hoped to devise a similar seal that would physically weaken them, reducing their ability to fight with Taijutsu and even escape mundane bondage in order to mount an escape. The process, he knew, would be fairly similar overall; in fact, he could probably cannibalize most of the fuuin from his work on the stamina seal and then make changes to account for the somewhat different effect.
The thought of completely neutering a captive in order to contain them more easily appealed to Renji immensely; he'd had a few close calls, over the decades, with canny would be spare bodies that managed to slip away. No more, once he'd finished this endeavor.
He rifled through his notes and found the basic foundation of the seal he'd created earlier. Studying that, he began to consider what changes would be needed to repurpose the generic elements of the fuuin and make them work with the new, specific markers he would have to work up. He made some more notes and sketches before moving on to the specifics.
Even many of the effect kanji would hold true across the two seals. Those that pertained to draining, siphoning, or otherwise doing away with the target's physical power would remain the same, but the actual descriptors for what was being taken away would need to change, and the arrangement of the supplementary kanji would need to be tweaked and fiddled with as well in order to maintain the seal's integrity.
With a new vocabulary list to make use of, he started with the foundation and then began incorporating the kanji that pertained to sapping. Much like in the original design, he arranged them in something of a spiral, relying on that shape to effectively draw out and remove the specified attribute. He left gaps though, for the new elements, and left some room where he could make use of connective kanji, neutral elements that did little more than bridge the gap between elements and ensure that the activation of the seal still affected each separate element.
Next, he added in the kanji that would cause the seal to siphon strength rather than stamina. He needed to fix the arrangement slightly as he went, accommodating the sizes of the various kanji, then using his connector kanji to smooth out the rough patches.
He double and triple checked the design for minor errors and, satisfied that the technical aspects were correct, decided to put it to the test. Using ink and a needle, he carved the seal into his flesh, and then performed hand seals, molding chakra and infusing it into the seal to empower it.
Nothing happened. Renji frowned and removed the seal, then returned his attention to the blueprint for it that he had devised. With no errors inhibiting it, the problem must have lay in the actual choices he had made for his kanji, or their arrangements. There were no burrs, no overlaps, no flaws in the formation of the characters, so that meant it had to be the characters themselves.
He went back to the second step and overlayed a new piece of vellum. He re-added the kanji, doubling up on some within the spiralling design, omitting others, and playing a bit with the spacing in hopes of correcting whatever problem there was.
He finished and sealed himself again. This time when he activated the seal, he immediately felt weaker, felt the design tug some of his actual strength away and contain it. He created the seal again and then activated it to test something; sure enough, even more of his strength ebbed away.
Fuuin Armor Training – 633/600 Words
Renji only enjoyed being hurt when it suited him. Pain was life, life was pain, but the body thief had transcended such base aspects of reality so far as he had decided. There were measures that could be taken against pain- armor, shields, protective jutsu- but all of those were a little too overt given his typical modus operandi. A fifteen year old boy running around in full samurai armor was far too conspicuous; a bookishly pretty girl with a tower shield stuck out like a sore thumb.
What he needed was something all but invisible. Something that he could activate at will without being too obvious. He poured over his options. Ninjutsu could certainly achieve the goal, but hand seals could be too conspicuous. After eliminating several ninpou options, he arrived at the conclusion that fuuinjutsu would be the best way to go about it.
But how? There were many ways that he could go about it. Given the intent, though, his best bet was to model the effect of the fuuinjutsu after actual armor. He toyed with the notion of hardening his skin, but that presented mobility issues. Finally, he remembered hearing about a brand of armor that redistributed force over a wider area, effectively diminishing the actual damage that a given strike could deal. It wouldn't offer much proof against blades or conjunctional damage from jutsu like burning flames or arcing lightning.
He set out creating a vocabulary list like usual, compiling a large number of relevant kanji that he would employ to achieve his results. Armor, strength, might, endurance, diffusion, spread, minimize, damage, pain, travel, channel, mettle, vigor.
The actual seal itself would be among the more interesting designs he had created. One seal on the palm of each hand, one seal on the sole of each foot, one on the stomach, one on the back of his neck. When activated, they would project the effect over his entire body. He created a basic outline for each of the six near identical seals. Most of the fuuin would be the same, but there would be slight variations to establish the direction that the protection was projected in.
Next, he worked in the basic nuts and bolts of each seal. The first segment was identical across each, just the framework that would form the structure, house the chakra and the other elements, ensure even distribution of the empowering chakra while the technique was active.
He also incorporated a cluster of fuuin designed to interact with his switching jutsu, making it possible to turn on and off easily since the armor would drain his chakra continuously and likely present some other side effects as well.
Next came the more difficult part; adding the kanji that would provide the armor effect. Rather than simply reproducing the same design in each seal, he had the notion in his head to make some stronger than others depending about the amount of his body that they would cover for the sake of the overall product. It took nearly an hour to work out the tiny, detailed kanji arrangements within each of the small seals.
Now it was time to test. He peeled of his shirt and inscribed the fuuinjutsu on each foot, each hand, and his neck and stomach. Now to try it out. He activated the technique with his switch technique and then moved about, attempting to discern changes. His range of motion was a bit restricted, as if a thin layer of protective film had been plastered over his form. What about the actual intent of the fuuin technique?
How to try it out? Punching himself just felt silly, so instead he moved to the wall and began slamming his head into it repeatedly. The damage certainly seemed to be diminished. Mission accomplished.
Item Teleportation Seal Training – 635/600 Words
In hopes of supplementing his burgeoning portfolio of ranged techniques, Renji wanted a means to actually improve his weaponry. Exploding tags and the stronger variants he had mastered were nice, but there were still some measures he could take to create kunai that could do the unexpected, taking advantage of the preconceptions of an opponent about what such simple shinobi implements could do. Ninjas took for granted what single kunai could accomplish; they tended to let their guard down a bit if they weren't staring down elaborate and potent jutsu.
The idea of causing an item to teleport appealed to him. He could use it to bypass barriers or cover, or even just to surprise an opponent who was gaging the distance and speed of the weapon in order to dodge and act at once. He knew full well that the effect could be achieved by sealing; he had designed a summoning technique for containers that would inform much of the basis for his new technique.
He reviewed the notes he had made while creating that very seal, sifting through to compile relevant arrangements of kanji, and then he expanded upon that, adding new kanji that he could make use of that would augment the space time effect to trigger a short forward hop rather than summoning the kunai to him.
The seal in question would need to be quite small, but for the sake of ease, he designed it at three times the scale. He could perfect creating it smaller later. He used a perfect circle, relying on that circuitous brand of perfecting geometry in order to create a very consistent, enduring seal that could withstand rapid transmission across dimensions.
Next, within the layout, he added quite a few basic kanji, creating clusters of them to power and control the energy involved in the transfer. It was quite a bit of energy to so displace something, thousands of times more than the energy required to simply move it the same distance. In terms of chakra cost, it wouldn't be much, but a specialized activation would be required to invest a little extra power each time. He worked keeping that in mind, tailoring an activation system into the actual design.
Finally, he blended in the actual jinjutsu seals, those that, when powered by the chakra that the other kanji and symbols ran throughout the design, would actually wrap the kunai in energy and move it between the realms of reality. It was painstaking work; for such a comparatively simple technique, it was quite difficult work.
Reproducing it on a scale tiny enough to fit on the hilt of a kunai proved even more difficult than the design itself. He would up forced to use his chakra inscribing method and focusing the point of the chakra created nib so finely that the resulting seal was nearly invisible for the thinness of the lines and kanji that formed it.
He had to work out an activation technique as well, but for now, he could force the issue and trigger the seal manually for the sake of testing. It would be a waste of chakra until he learned to mold the chara correctly, but it would do the trick to ensure that the fuuin worked correctly.
When he met with initial failure his annoyance was profound. He was forced to go back to the large scale seal and look for errors, but he found none. Taking a magnifying glass, he inspected the kunai, and realized that he had made a few nearly microscopic errors that he had to correct. He did so, taking far too long, and then used an overflow of chakra again.
Success. The kunai darted forward and then fell to the ground. Some testing revealed that the dimensional effect had limitations but he was satisfied.
Making Up For Not-Lost Time
Sighting Training- 431/400 Words
Renji was moving at a full sprint through the foresty territory that lay not far from Henkou's base of operations. In his right hand, he held a fist full of senbon. His left grasped a single kunai. His pouches were full. He realized fully that he was behind, comparatively to many shinobi of his power level, when it came to the more martial aspects of combat.
Without slowing, he rapidly flicked his eyes about his surrounding, looking for viable targets. The overhanging branches and various rocks and shrubs made for excellent ones, at least in terms of what he had in mind. They might have been stationary, but the key was their positioning and distances. Being able to gauge those things rapidly when he was in the midst of a battle was important, especially given the fact that his primary way of outputting damage relied on explosive tags.
He'd heard, over his lifespan, that the fundamentals of ranged physical combat revolved around targeting and tactical awareness. At his speed, hitting small targets while moving would certainly hone that.
He let loose with a few senbon first, aiming at a gnarled root some twenty feet away. Only one of the three hit. Next, he hurled his kunai at an overhanging, thick branch. He only glanced it. His hands dropped to his waist, and he retrieved more weaponry. He'd be losing it all to hone his skills, but it would be worth the price in the small price in the end.
He flung a kunai at a rock in the far distance. Twisting, he sent senbon streaking toward a small bush with glossy leaves. As it was wont to in Waterfall Country, the skies opened up and rain began to fall in a sudden down pour. Rather than become deterred, he welcomed the lousy visibility and slick conditions. It would be harder in the instant, but better in the long run.
Until he was utterly spent of his common weaponry, he sprinted and through. All the while, he got better and better at discerning differences, gaging the strength and direction and timing he would need for his release in order to hit his mark. It was a slightly different way of thinking and acting than he was used to; his central vision needed to at least glance over the target in order for him to get an accurate distance perception, and moving his head to provide an economy of motion required some getting used to, especially while the rest of his body was going full tilt and he was moving over uneven terrain.
Dangerous Position Training – 443/400 Words
Throwing while standing still with knees bent and shoulders squared was easy enough, but Renji knew full well that in dynamic combat, such would seldom be an option for him. If he had the ability to stand still and do whatever he wished without interference, the fight was already over in his favor anyway. No, he had to be able to throw on the move, and not just on the move, but in all manner of positions he might find himself in. Being able to avoid an attack and mount one in almost the same action could be critical in a pitched battled, and so, Renji determined to learn to send projectiles off without the benefit of sturdy stances.
First, he needed to learn to fall, so to speak. He could incorporate the throwing afterwards, once he was familiar with the way his body moved while he was involved in typical defensive maneuvers. He practiced ducking, rolling, side stepping, back stepping, jumping in every direction. He performed each movement slowly until he was fluent in the muscles involved, and then gradually sped things up to account for any variations that doing so provided.
That done, it was time to see about his arms. The standard throw was effective enough, but in order to hit a typical target from the ground, one needed to throw differently. As such, he set a target up not too far away and then lay down on his stomach. It took a lot of getting used to in order to fling a kunai from his belly. First he work on actually getting it to the mark; with his visual point dropped, it took some adjustments. Next was testing grips and movements in order to get it to the target with enough power to pierce, and eventually, his full power.
He tried it again from his back, then his knees, practicing and retrieving his kunais as needed until he had worked out the ideal way to throw from each place. He figured that would give his bodies enough of a vocabulary when it came to more complex maneuvers that weren't just standing, but of course, he had to put that to the test.
He set up six targets in a thirty foot circle and then moved to the center with a full complement of kunai. For a full half hour he practiced rolling, throwing both before and after the roll again and again until he could consistently hit his mark with force enough to matter. He did the same with all the maneuvers he had practiced previously, again making sure to gain confidance with throwing before the action and afterward.
Rotation Shot Training – 425/400 Words
Renjiro could only become so strong. It was a little different for him than for most people- well, actually, quite a bit different, given the way his bodies actually behaved, but, the point stood regardless. His strength was what accounted for both the force and effective distances of his throwing techniques, and so when it became troublesome to increase it, he had to resort to other measures. Taijutsu techniques could surely accomplish such.
Remembering a fight with a Stone shinobi who seemed to specialize in ranged weaponry, he sat calmly and used his clan technique to travel through his memory and review the battle. Surely, there would be a plethora of throwing concepts that he could steal from the long dead shinobi by watching her in action in slow motion, as many times as he pleased.
Sure enough, after several reviewings, he found what he was looking for. When he threw his kunai, they just tended to travel in an arc. Her kunai had almost all been moving in a rapid, tight spiral, and with his knowledge of basic physics, Renji nearly kicked himself for not thinking of it sooner. He watched until he found a throw that hadn't been spinning, then compared and contrasted.
It was the index finger, he learned, after several moments of tedious frustration. The positioning of the index finger was all that had changed.
Armed with his knew knowledge, he lifted a kunai and wrapped his fingers around it until he was emulating the grip that the kunoichi had used. It felt very awkward and unnatural, and when he threw, it was more ineffectual than usual, without a hint of spin.
He threw dozens of times before realizing his error. It was the release. With his normal tactics, he let go of the kunai all at once to send it sailing. This way, he needed to let the index finger stray for a bit to initiate the spinning, using the force and natural arcing motion of the throw to actually provide the kinetic energy that would both propel it and keep it spiraling.
He tried, and was pleasantly surprised to get a few aerial turns out of the knife. Repetition was his ally in the matter, and after many, many tosses, he finally had managed to get it neatly spiralling with concentration. He needed it to be looser, though, and reflexive, and so he kept at it for hours, exhausting his supply of projectiles and then retrieving them as need be until he had mastered the simple but useful technique.
Trick Shot Training – 460/400 Words
As a fighter whose primary means of offense relied on fuuin powered exploding seals affixed to kunai, Renji realized that he needed, very much, to be able to place them both accurately and at distances. In fights where he had the leisure to take his time, he could easily set up some fairly devastating uses of his materia provided that he could learn to hit small targets at great distances.
Rather than set up with kunai and targets, he decided to avail himself on a den of iniquity. There was a bar he knew of not far from where he and Yaku were currently camped that hosted frequent competitions with darts, and touted a series of regular customers who, while not shinobi, had learned quite a bit about the sort of throwing he was looking for.
At least, that had been the case seventy years ago.
Fortunately, it seemed that the place was still there, and that there was still a dart board on one of the walls. He had donned the body of Ichiro, and with his most wide-eyed, corn fed expression, he wandered in.
Ordering milk, he glanced longingly at the dart board until finally he hit pay dirt. A rangy, grizzled looking fellow looked him up and down and questioned him about his interest.
Renji cobbled together a meandering but convincing account about cousins who mocked him because, at gatherings, they held tournaments, and he always came in dead last.
The old man, it turned out, had a trick or two to teach him.
The first lesson involved breathing, something Renji hadn't really ever considered to be integral to throwing. One wanted to make sure they breathed in as they aimed and out as they threw, and that doing so wasn't interfering with the muscle movements that would power the dart.
Next came aiming. Unlike he was used to in battle, he actually tried to use his dart a bit to sight, apparently. Renji figured that if it held true for darts, it would would well enough for kunai and senbon as well. The old man stood behind him, and in a not entirely unlecherous way, took hold of his arm and shifted his elbow, his shoulder, his fingers.
With the smell of whiskey breath in his nostrils, he was finally ready to throw. To his shock, he came very close to the dead center just based on the way his arm had been positioned. For his second try, he emulated the way his arm had been arranged and made a few tiny adjustments, then threw again. And again. And again.
The old man looked astonished as Ichiro managed bullseye after bullseye and showed no signs of stopping. He thanked the fellow before traipsing back to Yaku.
Deflection Shot Training – 425/400 Words
Renji had come far, in terms of expanding his direct martial capabilities. He'd learned almost every way of basic throwing a damn kunai that he could conceive of, but the time had come at last for him to take a step to the next level: incorporating ninjutsu and chakra.
He'd had very little reason to learn any nintaijutsu over the centuries, but he dimly recalled, once upon a time, having one of his energized needle attacks defended against by what he could only suspect was a chakra charged kunai. It wasn't disruptive, though, merely a deflective measure. He replayed the sequence of that battle a few times with his memory revisiting technique before setting to work.
He experimented a bit with hand seals first, molding chakra and getting a field for the right amount and application. Really, it boiled down to coating a weapon in what was effectively a small, chakra based barrier and then interposing that small barrier between one's self and the incoming attack.
It took several different combinations to work out what seals would correctly power such a technique, but once he'd gotten them, the Taijutsu part of the nintai equation came into play.
Incoming jutsu were a tricky target, comparatively speaking. Small, usually, or strangely shaped, and their trajectories could vary from a straight line to complete homing potential with everything in between. There weren't many ways to practice such throwing tactics, without a partner, but Renji was a little more creative than that.
He entered the forest, his usual training stomping grounds. Animals could be quick and erratic, and their survival instincts likely rivaled that of any strange moving ninjutsu technique. His first quarry was a squirrel. He found it on a horizontal branch, and shouted to startle it.
The animal froze, then scrambled. Renji worked quickly through his seals and let fly with his chakra infused kunai, but in his haste, he missed badly. Grabbing for another knife, he followed. The chase was on!
Up a tree it scurried, with Renji throwing blue glowing kunai after it. He missed twice, then finally succeeded in striking when it made for ground again. To his surprise, the chakra coating actually blunted the effect of the night; the squirrel was unconscious rather than skewered when he went to collect his knife.
He tried his method a few more times, first scaring and then attacking a sparrow, a green snake, and then finally another squirrel. Each time, he got better and better at intersecting his weapon with the path of the fleeing creature.
Manic Movement Training – 459/400 Words
Renji did not have many advantages when it came to fisticuffs. His only formal training had been two centuries prior, and his means of physical control were quite different than they had been at the time. However, he'd recently realized that he did have one: his lack of training meant that those who had been trained would have a bit of difficulty when he defied the basic tenets of melee combat. They would be expecting the most efficient counters, likely preparing to counter those counters, if they were particularly physical and well versed in accompanying jutsu.
To test this theory, he traveled to a bar that he had no intention of ever visiting against, at least not as Renjiro. It was a simple matter, really, to sweep his gaze over the crowd and then determine the best way to start a good, old fashioned brawl.
One spilled drink later and it had begun in earnest. The fellow took a swing at him, but rather than simply avoiding it, Renji threw himself to the side, knocking an elbow against another patron in the process. That fellow wheeled around, sending a heavy punch at Renji's gut, to which his response was to suck his stomach in as much as possible and arch his spine, creating a concave that caused the lugs knuckles to just barely graze his shirt.
The first man was back in action, and Renji laughed merrily as he pirouetted neatly, using his hands to brush the blow away from his body as he did. Noticing the fight, the rest of the pub split themselves between cheering friends or favorites and joining in themselves.
Renjiro danced through the chaos he had created, quite literally sometimes, dropping into splits or straddles here to duck a blow, back bending utterly, spinning, juking, never once merely doing what his opponents were expecting him to. When a brute charged him, he hopped backward onto the bar, and got to watch the man dislocate his shoulder against the hard wood of the counter. A look of satisfaction on his features, the body thief pranced off to find someone else to incite.
A few times, his techniques failed, but those were learning opportunities. Even with his relatively unimpressive stature, he was in no danger from common cretins such as these. In a particularly cunning bit of mischief, he managed to swing his leg up over a sweep, pivoting to turn his back to the sweeper, and by bowing deeply at the waist, he avoided a follow up strike that sailed harmlessly over his shoulder blades.
When all was said and done, he had endured only a few minor scrapes and bruises. He paid his tab for the drink that had started it all and disappeared.
Arcing Shot Training – 823/800 Words
In order to diversify his throwing portfolio, Renjiro turned to simple logic. There were a few common obstacles that he was versed enough in for having used them himself over the decades. The simplest way to mitigate a basic thrown attack was to go for cover and put something else between one's self and the projectile to intercept the weapon without harm.
Now that he was going to be on the throwing end, it seemed advisable to sort out a way to keep opponents from turning that sort of basic ingenuity against him. Really, if that was what they counted on to keep him from getting one of his exploding tags near enough to win the day, being able to bypass it would be utterly invaluable. Subverting and distorting basic elements of shinobi training could be quite effective, he'd learned. Ninja expected other ninjas to fight like ninjas, and that was all there was to it.
How to do it, though? A ninjutsu that would allow him to alter the trajectory of a thrown weapon wouldn't be out of the question, but there was likely a simpler method to employ. Obviously, there were forms of cover that nothing but brute force would finish off, so he would have to brainstorm what inds he could deal with.
Physics, geometry and gravity provided him the solution he needed. It was so simple he almost laughed. Throwing in a parabolic arc would be best, especially given his explosive note pension. It hardly mattered if he hit so long as he got close... and so, it was time to practice getting distances and ranges and heights in order.
He got himself plenty of kunai to work with. This would be a matter of diligent repetition and little more. Lifting the first, he sent it into an experimental arc through the air, watching as it climbed and shielding his eyes against the sun in the process, then watching as it sailed back to earth to embed itself in the damp ground.
It seemed pointless, but he was taking his own measure. Striding to the interred kunai, he plucked it up and then used it to carve a large X into the grass. That would be his target. He'd practice hitting it at various distances and angles before moving on to an actual cover scenario.
He backed twenty paces away and then let loose with a curving, overhand throw. The projectile almost seemed to hang in the air before plummeting downward only to miss the mark, over shot by several feet. The problem was that he couldn't really adjust by decreasing his force too much without making the attack ineffectual and too easy to dodge, cover or not.
The key was to adjust the arc. A steeper ascent would close the gap. It took four more throws until he'd managed to find the right angle, but even then, he was still finding it far too easy to hedge to either side. Just a slight error on the release could cause a significant deviation, since the kunai was in flight for twice as long as it needed to be to hit the mark normally.
It took most of his kunai before he'd managed to get it down pat, combining force, aim, and geometry to cause the projectile to hit near the center of the X almost every time. His mind remembered more and more with each attempt until it could transfer those memories to his muscles nearly reflexively.
It was time to try defeating some actual cover. In his stomping about near the Conclave, he had found a rather quaint abandoned cottage that would suit his purposes well. It had the remains of a stone wall slumping about it.
He was there in no time and set up another target, this time placing the X more or less where an enemy would crouch in order to take advantage of the dilapidated barrier for cover. Hopping back over the wall, he took up a position a respectable distance away to begin.
It was trickier, accounting for something physical actually being in the way. The angle had to be perfect. If the kunai clipped the stone even slightly, the entire throw was completely bungled. It had to be as close as possible though, otherwise it would simply pass the mark (or, in combat, the shinobi hiding behind whatever it was).
He spent all of his kunai, then collected them and spent them again before he was satisfied with his progress with the wall; next he decided to cement the training with a more imposing target- the cottage itself. He marked off yet another target area, and due to the size of the impediment before him, spent quite a while just getting his kunai in the right place, never mind directly on target.
Still, when all was said and done, he'd finished what he'd set out to do and veritably mastered arcing throws.
Prediction Shot – 818/800 Words
Moving targets were the bane of any marksman. Well. Any novice marksman, which Renji still essentially was, in his own estimation. It was easy to hit something that remained stationary, but enemies didn't have a habit of doing that, or if they did, Renji had far more useful techniques to bring to bear.
How to contend with the most basic means of evading attacks, moving? He could make use of ninjutsu easily enough; it wouldn't be hard at all to develop a technique that would allow him to speed up a projectile weapon and give it homing capabilities. In fact, once he was done here, that was just what he would do.
First, he wanted a chakraless means to do it. After all, the bulk of his strategy relied on causing damage without spending too much chakra in hopes of testing opponents, then finishing up after they'd showed their hands. A means to do some target practice occurred to him when he watched a bird pass lazily by overhead. Taking human lives failed to impinge on his consciousness most days; ending a few animals wouldn't even register on his moral compass.
He took to the forest with a few holsters worth of shuriken. It wasn't quite as helpful or eventful as he'd hoped, mostly due to the scarcity of furry or feathery things to take aim at. He did find a few, and had quite a bit of difficulty hitting the erratically moving avians and rodents that he'd managed to scare up. After wasting nearly a holster full of projectile's, he finally sorted out the best way to stand a chance of hitting the elusive beasts.
If he could gage the speed and direction that the critter was moving at, he could aim for the place they would be, rather than trying to track them for every second of the throw. It would mean letting his shuriken fly to impact just a few feet ahead of the creature in question.
His first few tries at the new method met with similar failure to the last hour's work, but eventually, he got the hang of it to a degree. He needed more controllable circumstances, he realized. The scarcity was just not going to get him the rote repetition he needed to perfect a taijutsu technique.
As such, Renji headed “home” for an empty, stoppered jug before setting out for a small tributary river that he knew of. Upon reaching it, he tossed the jug in, and it floated along, dragged at the speed of the steady current. Readying his shuriken, Renji jogged along the embankment and began throwing the ninja stars with quick snaps of his wrist, trying to lead the jug.
Eventually, he managed to actually score a hit. The shuriken pinged off the steel canister and then was lost to the river, but Renji was reasonably sure that he had the speed down now. He confirmed it with a few more throws before waiting for the water to bring the jug near and scooping it out. He needed a better test yet, and so he jogged upstream.
There, a long patch of the moving water was broken by white crests. Rocks and gravity dragged it at a rapid, uneven pace that would prove much more challenging to match and lead. He tossed the jug in and then got himself ready, bursting into motion the moment it rounded the bend into the rough water. He flung shuriken after shuriken, missing with all of them before the jug made it to calmer waters and he retrieved it.
He repeated the exercise several times, tossing the jug in and recovering it after it had exited the rapids. It was slow going, but the erratic, racing water did eventually help him improve his abilities. It was about fifty percent perception, since gaging the distance was necessary to put the shuriken a few feet in front of the jug, and accurately reading it's speed was important as well. Particularly on the river or with a sentient being, anticipating changes in direction was also key. More than a few times, an eddy or hard to see rock had held up the jug, making his attack splash harmlessly into the water.
As the afternoon wore on into early evening, he grew more and more confident. It wasn't a precise art. Nothing involving a thinking target ever would be, but he was hitting his mark more and more often; much more frequently than when he tried to just strike the jug. Rather than retrieving the jug, after a while, he just let it keep floating down the whole river, speeding along parallel to the bank and hurling shuriken rapidly, compensating for the way the speed picked up or dropped off and for the twists and bends of the sinuous body of water. He was as good at this as he was going to get.
Bending Like the Reed Training – 853/800 Words
“You're still trying to avoid, Brother Takao. Until you let go of that, you will never learn.”
Renji, masquerading as a monk from the Wind Country, was outside of the Still Waters monastery with Doru, a young monk whom he had more or less befriended. They had been sparring for more than an hour, and while Renji was forced to hold back a bit so that the boy could hold his own, but when it came to a particular technique born of Still Waters, he found himself the student rather than the teacher.
The entire principle was easy enough to grasp. Like a reed relied on flexibility to avoid breaking in a wind storm, the monks relied on moving with attacks rather than dodging them, minimizing the damage by accepting it as inevitable. It was sound enough as a taijutsu concept, and mirrored the tenets of the monk's faith. Their faith needed to be just as flexible, just as able to adapt, or it would surely break in the face of the disbelief of the outside world.
“I'm going to go again. Try to relax. Thinking is the enemy here,” Doru said with a helpful smile before adopting the odd stance that the monk's practiced.
The trouble was the instinct to survive. It was unnatural to accept a hit that once could easily avoid, but particularly for Renji, being able to survive a hit for the sake of contact with an opponent had is benefits. Doru didn't present much in the way of challenge, and so it was almost too simple to just weave out of the way or duck back.
The young monk came at him, unleashing a crescent kick meant to strike Renji in the knee. This time, Renji opted not to move at all. Better to work himself up to actually mitigating the damage; he'd have to get use to taking it in the first place.
The kick stung, and Doru laughed lightly. “Well, that's better, but now you need to work on moving wth the attack. It's all about direction, and keeping supple. When you throw a rock into the water, it causes a disturbance, but that only lasts for so long. Water receives and reverts, and you must do the same.” Smiling, he readied himself to attack again.
They were at it for nearly another twenty minutes before Renji began to get a feel for moving in the way required. Doru, for all his naivete, was not a terrible teacher. He was patient and willing, but not so easy going that Renji would never improve. He varied the angles of his attack when it seemed Renjiro was getting too comfortable with a particular direction.
It was easier to “bend” with attacks to his upper body. Simply twisting or shifting, dropping a shoulder or leaning a bit with the blow was usually enough. The lower body was more problematic. Only truly able to bend at the knees, it was easy and instinctual to use footwork to simply avoid the attack.
Together they worked, with Doru on a continuous, ever changing offensive. Slowly but surely, Renji began to feel the effects of the attacks less and less. Considering Doru's strength, ablating some of the force was just as good as avoiding the blows for the most part.
At least... that was what he thought.
Smiling, the youth eased out of his robe, revealing a surprisingly chiseled body and work out trunks. “You seem to have the hang of it, for the most part. Now let's try it at full strength.” The brat had been holding back the whole time. Renjiro's surprise was enough that he didn't even think to diminish the lightning quick fist jab that followed, and the body thief wound up doubled over and staggered back.
Once he'd regained his composure, they resumed. It was actually quite a nice progression. Now, Doru was capable of hurting him enough that it wasn't just a mental exercise to absorb some of the blows by moving and shifting his body.
The blows and ablations came much more quickly. Doru pressed him, forcing him to adjust and compensate to diminish a new attack even before he was finished with the other. It was quite a work out; the young monk was a far more serious opponent than Renji had suspected, and an even better instructor than that.
He was already beginning to out pace the boy. Doru's strength and speed were flagging far more quickly than Renji's were, which was really the point of the technique, he realized. An opponent would tire themselves out doing less damage than they expected, allowing a Still Waters practitioner to easily defeat them at the point of near exhaustion.
For a final exchange of blows, he shifted and twisted, presenting his stomach at an angle for Doru's fist to glance along, then turning his trunk and extending his leg so that the same would happen to a downward kick at his shin. Grinning and sweaty, he swung an arm around the monk's bare shoulder, and together they headed to clean up.
Bending Even Further Training – 1284/1100 Words
Renji was not expecting a visit from Morishi. The man was the ring leader of the Still Water sect, and a circumstantial victim of the body thief's decades before. For some reason though, reasons that Renji was still working out, he had allowed Renji to remain among the monks, even helped him develop a cover story and supported it. No doubt he hoped to change Renji's heart, or even just distract him while he plotted revenge.
It hardly mattered, aside from satisfying Renji's curiosity. He had no doubt he could outmaneuver the monk regardless of how driven he was.
“Come. Walk with me.” Hiyazato Morishi was as gruff and blunt as ever. Renji had been capitalizing on some peace and quiet following some of the menial duties that were expected of him to work on some fuuinjutsu, but did as the man said, rising to his feet and falling into step behind him.
“You've been making good progress,” he intoned once they were walking down the corridor. He seemed to be leading Renji to the main worship chamber of the temple. “Doru tells me that you have mastered the first defensive form. Impressive, in so short a time, but then, you would have to be impressive to have survived all these years.”
As they entered the temple proper, Morishi's voice trailed off abruptly. Suddenly, what felt like a sledge hammer impacted Renji's ribs, cracking at least a few and hurling him to the side. So this was it. The confrontation. He rolled over and scrambled to his feet, placing his hands together to form seals...
But he stopped. Morishi did not seem like a man taking his revenge. There was no anxiety. No satisfaction. His features were calm and composed, almost academic, and Renji knew well that the monk was emotional enough that such wouldn't be the case.
It was a test. He really had impressed him with his progress, Renji deduced. Morishi wanted to see it for himself.
So be it.
He adopted the horse stance inspired movements that the Still Water monks relied on, and waited.
Morishi was a much more capable opponent than Doru- than any that Renji had faced, really, at least as far as taijutsu went. He came fast and hard, striking with lethal power and deadly accuracy. Even with his grasp of the reed inspired defensive technique, if he simply kept accepting the man's blows, he was going to succumb to wounds quickly. Morishi was not aiming his attacks for Renji to cope with; he was targeting vital spots.
A quick jab connected with his left kidney, and even though Renji used his newfound knowledge to twist and ablate the damage, it was still almost unbearably painful to endure. The next attack was a knife handed strike to his sternum. If he hadn't bent back just slightly, the attack would have easily shattered the sturdy bone.
Renji began dodging as well, his mind racing. Maybe this wasn't so different from the way that Doru had tested him and gradually put him through his paces, building up until he could diffuse the strength of attacks almost effortlessly. He needed a bit of time to figure out exactly what it was he was supposed to be learning here, though, and if he just let Morishi hit him, the fight wouldn't be lasting long at all.
Morishi kept attacking vital spots. It made sense for him to do so. He had the power and skill to do so almost without pause against Renji, and if his aim was to defeat the body thief, it was an entirely sound strategy. Perhaps that was what he was meant to learn to defend against, though. It was a realistic enough scenario for him to face in pitched close combat...
So how did he defeat it? Typically he'd be mounting his own offense as well, but in this hypothetical purely defensive scenario, how did one protect against potentially lethal unarmed strikes without avoiding them outright?
He took a kick that made every bone in his right arm jar and feel like it was vibrating, then a powerful forward punch that nearly collapsed his throat. Morishi was unrelenting, though, and Renji had barely enough time to keep moving, keep twisting and shifting like a reed or dodging, never mind sort out whatever potentially deadly lesson plan the head monk had devised.
A hammer blow to his temples had him seeing stars, but finally, he realized the point of the entire endeavor. He was already shifting his body in order to minimize the force that Morishi could bring to bear against him; why not shift just a little bit more so that the attack hit somewhere less dangerous? It was just as delightfully simple as the more basic technique that it almost had to be the answer.
When the next attack came, a spinning kick meant to strike him in the spine, Renji didn't bother diminishing the force. He couldn't take many full hits from Morishi, but he could take enough to integrate the new idea with the old one. Rather than ablate the damage, he focused on controlling where on his person the damage occurred. He took the kick just below his shoulder blade, and suffered for it; it sent him stumbling forward to land on the ground in a pain racked heap.
When he collected himself and struggled to his feet, though, Morishi was smiling. That was all the confirmation Renjiro needed to know that he'd deduced the proper learning experience.
The next blow that came wound up jarring his very teeth, but that was far better than the knock out attack that Morishi had tried to land. This time, though, he'd managed to tilt his head just enough to take some of the sting out of the attack.
Morishi came at him several more times, and with each devastating attack, Renji managed to eek out only severe bodily harm. He was beginning to tire severely, but if he hadn't managed to minimize and redirect the damage as he had, he might already have lost consciousness or even lost a body, and that little trick wasn't one he wanted the monk to discover by accident.
Fortunately, the issue wasn't pressed. Morishi finally stopped, and Renji was able to stop as well and recover a bit. His body was patterned with ugly bruises, and he was reasonably sure a few non critical bones had been fractured by the monk's continuous attacks.
“You picked that up much more quickly than many of my better students, aberration. I am impressed. In the future, though, you should focus on economy of action. The slightest movements will not be detected by an opponent, and will serve your purpose just as well as more elaborate twisting and gyrating. You should seek to displace blows primarily to organs and soft tissue. Other attacks are likely only meant to inflict pain, or will be made with such strength that you should avoid them outright. Obviously, you have only been practicing this against unarmed opponents; the dynamic changes greatly when weapons are involved, since even a weaker foe can cause great damage with a blade.”
Renji listened to the lecture as he nursed his wounds, nodding and absorbing the information.
“Against blade bearing enemies, taking the attacks to extremities is usually best; most will be unable to penetrate bone. If you cannot, the stomach is the safest bet. Stomach wounds are intensely painful, but they take quite a while to die from, even untreated.”
With that, the monk nodded curtly. “I look forward to seeing your progress.” With that, he disappeared, leaving Renji to shamble to his quarters.
Renji was moving at a full sprint through the foresty territory that lay not far from Henkou's base of operations. In his right hand, he held a fist full of senbon. His left grasped a single kunai. His pouches were full. He realized fully that he was behind, comparatively to many shinobi of his power level, when it came to the more martial aspects of combat.
Without slowing, he rapidly flicked his eyes about his surrounding, looking for viable targets. The overhanging branches and various rocks and shrubs made for excellent ones, at least in terms of what he had in mind. They might have been stationary, but the key was their positioning and distances. Being able to gauge those things rapidly when he was in the midst of a battle was important, especially given the fact that his primary way of outputting damage relied on explosive tags.
He'd heard, over his lifespan, that the fundamentals of ranged physical combat revolved around targeting and tactical awareness. At his speed, hitting small targets while moving would certainly hone that.
He let loose with a few senbon first, aiming at a gnarled root some twenty feet away. Only one of the three hit. Next, he hurled his kunai at an overhanging, thick branch. He only glanced it. His hands dropped to his waist, and he retrieved more weaponry. He'd be losing it all to hone his skills, but it would be worth the price in the small price in the end.
He flung a kunai at a rock in the far distance. Twisting, he sent senbon streaking toward a small bush with glossy leaves. As it was wont to in Waterfall Country, the skies opened up and rain began to fall in a sudden down pour. Rather than become deterred, he welcomed the lousy visibility and slick conditions. It would be harder in the instant, but better in the long run.
Until he was utterly spent of his common weaponry, he sprinted and through. All the while, he got better and better at discerning differences, gaging the strength and direction and timing he would need for his release in order to hit his mark. It was a slightly different way of thinking and acting than he was used to; his central vision needed to at least glance over the target in order for him to get an accurate distance perception, and moving his head to provide an economy of motion required some getting used to, especially while the rest of his body was going full tilt and he was moving over uneven terrain.
Dangerous Position Training – 443/400 Words
Throwing while standing still with knees bent and shoulders squared was easy enough, but Renji knew full well that in dynamic combat, such would seldom be an option for him. If he had the ability to stand still and do whatever he wished without interference, the fight was already over in his favor anyway. No, he had to be able to throw on the move, and not just on the move, but in all manner of positions he might find himself in. Being able to avoid an attack and mount one in almost the same action could be critical in a pitched battled, and so, Renji determined to learn to send projectiles off without the benefit of sturdy stances.
First, he needed to learn to fall, so to speak. He could incorporate the throwing afterwards, once he was familiar with the way his body moved while he was involved in typical defensive maneuvers. He practiced ducking, rolling, side stepping, back stepping, jumping in every direction. He performed each movement slowly until he was fluent in the muscles involved, and then gradually sped things up to account for any variations that doing so provided.
That done, it was time to see about his arms. The standard throw was effective enough, but in order to hit a typical target from the ground, one needed to throw differently. As such, he set a target up not too far away and then lay down on his stomach. It took a lot of getting used to in order to fling a kunai from his belly. First he work on actually getting it to the mark; with his visual point dropped, it took some adjustments. Next was testing grips and movements in order to get it to the target with enough power to pierce, and eventually, his full power.
He tried it again from his back, then his knees, practicing and retrieving his kunais as needed until he had worked out the ideal way to throw from each place. He figured that would give his bodies enough of a vocabulary when it came to more complex maneuvers that weren't just standing, but of course, he had to put that to the test.
He set up six targets in a thirty foot circle and then moved to the center with a full complement of kunai. For a full half hour he practiced rolling, throwing both before and after the roll again and again until he could consistently hit his mark with force enough to matter. He did the same with all the maneuvers he had practiced previously, again making sure to gain confidance with throwing before the action and afterward.
Rotation Shot Training – 425/400 Words
Renjiro could only become so strong. It was a little different for him than for most people- well, actually, quite a bit different, given the way his bodies actually behaved, but, the point stood regardless. His strength was what accounted for both the force and effective distances of his throwing techniques, and so when it became troublesome to increase it, he had to resort to other measures. Taijutsu techniques could surely accomplish such.
Remembering a fight with a Stone shinobi who seemed to specialize in ranged weaponry, he sat calmly and used his clan technique to travel through his memory and review the battle. Surely, there would be a plethora of throwing concepts that he could steal from the long dead shinobi by watching her in action in slow motion, as many times as he pleased.
Sure enough, after several reviewings, he found what he was looking for. When he threw his kunai, they just tended to travel in an arc. Her kunai had almost all been moving in a rapid, tight spiral, and with his knowledge of basic physics, Renji nearly kicked himself for not thinking of it sooner. He watched until he found a throw that hadn't been spinning, then compared and contrasted.
It was the index finger, he learned, after several moments of tedious frustration. The positioning of the index finger was all that had changed.
Armed with his knew knowledge, he lifted a kunai and wrapped his fingers around it until he was emulating the grip that the kunoichi had used. It felt very awkward and unnatural, and when he threw, it was more ineffectual than usual, without a hint of spin.
He threw dozens of times before realizing his error. It was the release. With his normal tactics, he let go of the kunai all at once to send it sailing. This way, he needed to let the index finger stray for a bit to initiate the spinning, using the force and natural arcing motion of the throw to actually provide the kinetic energy that would both propel it and keep it spiraling.
He tried, and was pleasantly surprised to get a few aerial turns out of the knife. Repetition was his ally in the matter, and after many, many tosses, he finally had managed to get it neatly spiralling with concentration. He needed it to be looser, though, and reflexive, and so he kept at it for hours, exhausting his supply of projectiles and then retrieving them as need be until he had mastered the simple but useful technique.
Trick Shot Training – 460/400 Words
As a fighter whose primary means of offense relied on fuuin powered exploding seals affixed to kunai, Renji realized that he needed, very much, to be able to place them both accurately and at distances. In fights where he had the leisure to take his time, he could easily set up some fairly devastating uses of his materia provided that he could learn to hit small targets at great distances.
Rather than set up with kunai and targets, he decided to avail himself on a den of iniquity. There was a bar he knew of not far from where he and Yaku were currently camped that hosted frequent competitions with darts, and touted a series of regular customers who, while not shinobi, had learned quite a bit about the sort of throwing he was looking for.
At least, that had been the case seventy years ago.
Fortunately, it seemed that the place was still there, and that there was still a dart board on one of the walls. He had donned the body of Ichiro, and with his most wide-eyed, corn fed expression, he wandered in.
Ordering milk, he glanced longingly at the dart board until finally he hit pay dirt. A rangy, grizzled looking fellow looked him up and down and questioned him about his interest.
Renji cobbled together a meandering but convincing account about cousins who mocked him because, at gatherings, they held tournaments, and he always came in dead last.
The old man, it turned out, had a trick or two to teach him.
The first lesson involved breathing, something Renji hadn't really ever considered to be integral to throwing. One wanted to make sure they breathed in as they aimed and out as they threw, and that doing so wasn't interfering with the muscle movements that would power the dart.
Next came aiming. Unlike he was used to in battle, he actually tried to use his dart a bit to sight, apparently. Renji figured that if it held true for darts, it would would well enough for kunai and senbon as well. The old man stood behind him, and in a not entirely unlecherous way, took hold of his arm and shifted his elbow, his shoulder, his fingers.
With the smell of whiskey breath in his nostrils, he was finally ready to throw. To his shock, he came very close to the dead center just based on the way his arm had been positioned. For his second try, he emulated the way his arm had been arranged and made a few tiny adjustments, then threw again. And again. And again.
The old man looked astonished as Ichiro managed bullseye after bullseye and showed no signs of stopping. He thanked the fellow before traipsing back to Yaku.
Deflection Shot Training – 425/400 Words
Renji had come far, in terms of expanding his direct martial capabilities. He'd learned almost every way of basic throwing a damn kunai that he could conceive of, but the time had come at last for him to take a step to the next level: incorporating ninjutsu and chakra.
He'd had very little reason to learn any nintaijutsu over the centuries, but he dimly recalled, once upon a time, having one of his energized needle attacks defended against by what he could only suspect was a chakra charged kunai. It wasn't disruptive, though, merely a deflective measure. He replayed the sequence of that battle a few times with his memory revisiting technique before setting to work.
He experimented a bit with hand seals first, molding chakra and getting a field for the right amount and application. Really, it boiled down to coating a weapon in what was effectively a small, chakra based barrier and then interposing that small barrier between one's self and the incoming attack.
It took several different combinations to work out what seals would correctly power such a technique, but once he'd gotten them, the Taijutsu part of the nintai equation came into play.
Incoming jutsu were a tricky target, comparatively speaking. Small, usually, or strangely shaped, and their trajectories could vary from a straight line to complete homing potential with everything in between. There weren't many ways to practice such throwing tactics, without a partner, but Renji was a little more creative than that.
He entered the forest, his usual training stomping grounds. Animals could be quick and erratic, and their survival instincts likely rivaled that of any strange moving ninjutsu technique. His first quarry was a squirrel. He found it on a horizontal branch, and shouted to startle it.
The animal froze, then scrambled. Renji worked quickly through his seals and let fly with his chakra infused kunai, but in his haste, he missed badly. Grabbing for another knife, he followed. The chase was on!
Up a tree it scurried, with Renji throwing blue glowing kunai after it. He missed twice, then finally succeeded in striking when it made for ground again. To his surprise, the chakra coating actually blunted the effect of the night; the squirrel was unconscious rather than skewered when he went to collect his knife.
He tried his method a few more times, first scaring and then attacking a sparrow, a green snake, and then finally another squirrel. Each time, he got better and better at intersecting his weapon with the path of the fleeing creature.
Manic Movement Training – 459/400 Words
Renji did not have many advantages when it came to fisticuffs. His only formal training had been two centuries prior, and his means of physical control were quite different than they had been at the time. However, he'd recently realized that he did have one: his lack of training meant that those who had been trained would have a bit of difficulty when he defied the basic tenets of melee combat. They would be expecting the most efficient counters, likely preparing to counter those counters, if they were particularly physical and well versed in accompanying jutsu.
To test this theory, he traveled to a bar that he had no intention of ever visiting against, at least not as Renjiro. It was a simple matter, really, to sweep his gaze over the crowd and then determine the best way to start a good, old fashioned brawl.
One spilled drink later and it had begun in earnest. The fellow took a swing at him, but rather than simply avoiding it, Renji threw himself to the side, knocking an elbow against another patron in the process. That fellow wheeled around, sending a heavy punch at Renji's gut, to which his response was to suck his stomach in as much as possible and arch his spine, creating a concave that caused the lugs knuckles to just barely graze his shirt.
The first man was back in action, and Renji laughed merrily as he pirouetted neatly, using his hands to brush the blow away from his body as he did. Noticing the fight, the rest of the pub split themselves between cheering friends or favorites and joining in themselves.
Renjiro danced through the chaos he had created, quite literally sometimes, dropping into splits or straddles here to duck a blow, back bending utterly, spinning, juking, never once merely doing what his opponents were expecting him to. When a brute charged him, he hopped backward onto the bar, and got to watch the man dislocate his shoulder against the hard wood of the counter. A look of satisfaction on his features, the body thief pranced off to find someone else to incite.
A few times, his techniques failed, but those were learning opportunities. Even with his relatively unimpressive stature, he was in no danger from common cretins such as these. In a particularly cunning bit of mischief, he managed to swing his leg up over a sweep, pivoting to turn his back to the sweeper, and by bowing deeply at the waist, he avoided a follow up strike that sailed harmlessly over his shoulder blades.
When all was said and done, he had endured only a few minor scrapes and bruises. He paid his tab for the drink that had started it all and disappeared.
Arcing Shot Training – 823/800 Words
In order to diversify his throwing portfolio, Renjiro turned to simple logic. There were a few common obstacles that he was versed enough in for having used them himself over the decades. The simplest way to mitigate a basic thrown attack was to go for cover and put something else between one's self and the projectile to intercept the weapon without harm.
Now that he was going to be on the throwing end, it seemed advisable to sort out a way to keep opponents from turning that sort of basic ingenuity against him. Really, if that was what they counted on to keep him from getting one of his exploding tags near enough to win the day, being able to bypass it would be utterly invaluable. Subverting and distorting basic elements of shinobi training could be quite effective, he'd learned. Ninja expected other ninjas to fight like ninjas, and that was all there was to it.
How to do it, though? A ninjutsu that would allow him to alter the trajectory of a thrown weapon wouldn't be out of the question, but there was likely a simpler method to employ. Obviously, there were forms of cover that nothing but brute force would finish off, so he would have to brainstorm what inds he could deal with.
Physics, geometry and gravity provided him the solution he needed. It was so simple he almost laughed. Throwing in a parabolic arc would be best, especially given his explosive note pension. It hardly mattered if he hit so long as he got close... and so, it was time to practice getting distances and ranges and heights in order.
He got himself plenty of kunai to work with. This would be a matter of diligent repetition and little more. Lifting the first, he sent it into an experimental arc through the air, watching as it climbed and shielding his eyes against the sun in the process, then watching as it sailed back to earth to embed itself in the damp ground.
It seemed pointless, but he was taking his own measure. Striding to the interred kunai, he plucked it up and then used it to carve a large X into the grass. That would be his target. He'd practice hitting it at various distances and angles before moving on to an actual cover scenario.
He backed twenty paces away and then let loose with a curving, overhand throw. The projectile almost seemed to hang in the air before plummeting downward only to miss the mark, over shot by several feet. The problem was that he couldn't really adjust by decreasing his force too much without making the attack ineffectual and too easy to dodge, cover or not.
The key was to adjust the arc. A steeper ascent would close the gap. It took four more throws until he'd managed to find the right angle, but even then, he was still finding it far too easy to hedge to either side. Just a slight error on the release could cause a significant deviation, since the kunai was in flight for twice as long as it needed to be to hit the mark normally.
It took most of his kunai before he'd managed to get it down pat, combining force, aim, and geometry to cause the projectile to hit near the center of the X almost every time. His mind remembered more and more with each attempt until it could transfer those memories to his muscles nearly reflexively.
It was time to try defeating some actual cover. In his stomping about near the Conclave, he had found a rather quaint abandoned cottage that would suit his purposes well. It had the remains of a stone wall slumping about it.
He was there in no time and set up another target, this time placing the X more or less where an enemy would crouch in order to take advantage of the dilapidated barrier for cover. Hopping back over the wall, he took up a position a respectable distance away to begin.
It was trickier, accounting for something physical actually being in the way. The angle had to be perfect. If the kunai clipped the stone even slightly, the entire throw was completely bungled. It had to be as close as possible though, otherwise it would simply pass the mark (or, in combat, the shinobi hiding behind whatever it was).
He spent all of his kunai, then collected them and spent them again before he was satisfied with his progress with the wall; next he decided to cement the training with a more imposing target- the cottage itself. He marked off yet another target area, and due to the size of the impediment before him, spent quite a while just getting his kunai in the right place, never mind directly on target.
Still, when all was said and done, he'd finished what he'd set out to do and veritably mastered arcing throws.
Prediction Shot – 818/800 Words
Moving targets were the bane of any marksman. Well. Any novice marksman, which Renji still essentially was, in his own estimation. It was easy to hit something that remained stationary, but enemies didn't have a habit of doing that, or if they did, Renji had far more useful techniques to bring to bear.
How to contend with the most basic means of evading attacks, moving? He could make use of ninjutsu easily enough; it wouldn't be hard at all to develop a technique that would allow him to speed up a projectile weapon and give it homing capabilities. In fact, once he was done here, that was just what he would do.
First, he wanted a chakraless means to do it. After all, the bulk of his strategy relied on causing damage without spending too much chakra in hopes of testing opponents, then finishing up after they'd showed their hands. A means to do some target practice occurred to him when he watched a bird pass lazily by overhead. Taking human lives failed to impinge on his consciousness most days; ending a few animals wouldn't even register on his moral compass.
He took to the forest with a few holsters worth of shuriken. It wasn't quite as helpful or eventful as he'd hoped, mostly due to the scarcity of furry or feathery things to take aim at. He did find a few, and had quite a bit of difficulty hitting the erratically moving avians and rodents that he'd managed to scare up. After wasting nearly a holster full of projectile's, he finally sorted out the best way to stand a chance of hitting the elusive beasts.
If he could gage the speed and direction that the critter was moving at, he could aim for the place they would be, rather than trying to track them for every second of the throw. It would mean letting his shuriken fly to impact just a few feet ahead of the creature in question.
His first few tries at the new method met with similar failure to the last hour's work, but eventually, he got the hang of it to a degree. He needed more controllable circumstances, he realized. The scarcity was just not going to get him the rote repetition he needed to perfect a taijutsu technique.
As such, Renji headed “home” for an empty, stoppered jug before setting out for a small tributary river that he knew of. Upon reaching it, he tossed the jug in, and it floated along, dragged at the speed of the steady current. Readying his shuriken, Renji jogged along the embankment and began throwing the ninja stars with quick snaps of his wrist, trying to lead the jug.
Eventually, he managed to actually score a hit. The shuriken pinged off the steel canister and then was lost to the river, but Renji was reasonably sure that he had the speed down now. He confirmed it with a few more throws before waiting for the water to bring the jug near and scooping it out. He needed a better test yet, and so he jogged upstream.
There, a long patch of the moving water was broken by white crests. Rocks and gravity dragged it at a rapid, uneven pace that would prove much more challenging to match and lead. He tossed the jug in and then got himself ready, bursting into motion the moment it rounded the bend into the rough water. He flung shuriken after shuriken, missing with all of them before the jug made it to calmer waters and he retrieved it.
He repeated the exercise several times, tossing the jug in and recovering it after it had exited the rapids. It was slow going, but the erratic, racing water did eventually help him improve his abilities. It was about fifty percent perception, since gaging the distance was necessary to put the shuriken a few feet in front of the jug, and accurately reading it's speed was important as well. Particularly on the river or with a sentient being, anticipating changes in direction was also key. More than a few times, an eddy or hard to see rock had held up the jug, making his attack splash harmlessly into the water.
As the afternoon wore on into early evening, he grew more and more confident. It wasn't a precise art. Nothing involving a thinking target ever would be, but he was hitting his mark more and more often; much more frequently than when he tried to just strike the jug. Rather than retrieving the jug, after a while, he just let it keep floating down the whole river, speeding along parallel to the bank and hurling shuriken rapidly, compensating for the way the speed picked up or dropped off and for the twists and bends of the sinuous body of water. He was as good at this as he was going to get.
Bending Like the Reed Training – 853/800 Words
“You're still trying to avoid, Brother Takao. Until you let go of that, you will never learn.”
Renji, masquerading as a monk from the Wind Country, was outside of the Still Waters monastery with Doru, a young monk whom he had more or less befriended. They had been sparring for more than an hour, and while Renji was forced to hold back a bit so that the boy could hold his own, but when it came to a particular technique born of Still Waters, he found himself the student rather than the teacher.
The entire principle was easy enough to grasp. Like a reed relied on flexibility to avoid breaking in a wind storm, the monks relied on moving with attacks rather than dodging them, minimizing the damage by accepting it as inevitable. It was sound enough as a taijutsu concept, and mirrored the tenets of the monk's faith. Their faith needed to be just as flexible, just as able to adapt, or it would surely break in the face of the disbelief of the outside world.
“I'm going to go again. Try to relax. Thinking is the enemy here,” Doru said with a helpful smile before adopting the odd stance that the monk's practiced.
The trouble was the instinct to survive. It was unnatural to accept a hit that once could easily avoid, but particularly for Renji, being able to survive a hit for the sake of contact with an opponent had is benefits. Doru didn't present much in the way of challenge, and so it was almost too simple to just weave out of the way or duck back.
The young monk came at him, unleashing a crescent kick meant to strike Renji in the knee. This time, Renji opted not to move at all. Better to work himself up to actually mitigating the damage; he'd have to get use to taking it in the first place.
The kick stung, and Doru laughed lightly. “Well, that's better, but now you need to work on moving wth the attack. It's all about direction, and keeping supple. When you throw a rock into the water, it causes a disturbance, but that only lasts for so long. Water receives and reverts, and you must do the same.” Smiling, he readied himself to attack again.
They were at it for nearly another twenty minutes before Renji began to get a feel for moving in the way required. Doru, for all his naivete, was not a terrible teacher. He was patient and willing, but not so easy going that Renji would never improve. He varied the angles of his attack when it seemed Renjiro was getting too comfortable with a particular direction.
It was easier to “bend” with attacks to his upper body. Simply twisting or shifting, dropping a shoulder or leaning a bit with the blow was usually enough. The lower body was more problematic. Only truly able to bend at the knees, it was easy and instinctual to use footwork to simply avoid the attack.
Together they worked, with Doru on a continuous, ever changing offensive. Slowly but surely, Renji began to feel the effects of the attacks less and less. Considering Doru's strength, ablating some of the force was just as good as avoiding the blows for the most part.
At least... that was what he thought.
Smiling, the youth eased out of his robe, revealing a surprisingly chiseled body and work out trunks. “You seem to have the hang of it, for the most part. Now let's try it at full strength.” The brat had been holding back the whole time. Renjiro's surprise was enough that he didn't even think to diminish the lightning quick fist jab that followed, and the body thief wound up doubled over and staggered back.
Once he'd regained his composure, they resumed. It was actually quite a nice progression. Now, Doru was capable of hurting him enough that it wasn't just a mental exercise to absorb some of the blows by moving and shifting his body.
The blows and ablations came much more quickly. Doru pressed him, forcing him to adjust and compensate to diminish a new attack even before he was finished with the other. It was quite a work out; the young monk was a far more serious opponent than Renji had suspected, and an even better instructor than that.
He was already beginning to out pace the boy. Doru's strength and speed were flagging far more quickly than Renji's were, which was really the point of the technique, he realized. An opponent would tire themselves out doing less damage than they expected, allowing a Still Waters practitioner to easily defeat them at the point of near exhaustion.
For a final exchange of blows, he shifted and twisted, presenting his stomach at an angle for Doru's fist to glance along, then turning his trunk and extending his leg so that the same would happen to a downward kick at his shin. Grinning and sweaty, he swung an arm around the monk's bare shoulder, and together they headed to clean up.
Bending Even Further Training – 1284/1100 Words
Renji was not expecting a visit from Morishi. The man was the ring leader of the Still Water sect, and a circumstantial victim of the body thief's decades before. For some reason though, reasons that Renji was still working out, he had allowed Renji to remain among the monks, even helped him develop a cover story and supported it. No doubt he hoped to change Renji's heart, or even just distract him while he plotted revenge.
It hardly mattered, aside from satisfying Renji's curiosity. He had no doubt he could outmaneuver the monk regardless of how driven he was.
“Come. Walk with me.” Hiyazato Morishi was as gruff and blunt as ever. Renji had been capitalizing on some peace and quiet following some of the menial duties that were expected of him to work on some fuuinjutsu, but did as the man said, rising to his feet and falling into step behind him.
“You've been making good progress,” he intoned once they were walking down the corridor. He seemed to be leading Renji to the main worship chamber of the temple. “Doru tells me that you have mastered the first defensive form. Impressive, in so short a time, but then, you would have to be impressive to have survived all these years.”
As they entered the temple proper, Morishi's voice trailed off abruptly. Suddenly, what felt like a sledge hammer impacted Renji's ribs, cracking at least a few and hurling him to the side. So this was it. The confrontation. He rolled over and scrambled to his feet, placing his hands together to form seals...
But he stopped. Morishi did not seem like a man taking his revenge. There was no anxiety. No satisfaction. His features were calm and composed, almost academic, and Renji knew well that the monk was emotional enough that such wouldn't be the case.
It was a test. He really had impressed him with his progress, Renji deduced. Morishi wanted to see it for himself.
So be it.
He adopted the horse stance inspired movements that the Still Water monks relied on, and waited.
Morishi was a much more capable opponent than Doru- than any that Renji had faced, really, at least as far as taijutsu went. He came fast and hard, striking with lethal power and deadly accuracy. Even with his grasp of the reed inspired defensive technique, if he simply kept accepting the man's blows, he was going to succumb to wounds quickly. Morishi was not aiming his attacks for Renji to cope with; he was targeting vital spots.
A quick jab connected with his left kidney, and even though Renji used his newfound knowledge to twist and ablate the damage, it was still almost unbearably painful to endure. The next attack was a knife handed strike to his sternum. If he hadn't bent back just slightly, the attack would have easily shattered the sturdy bone.
Renji began dodging as well, his mind racing. Maybe this wasn't so different from the way that Doru had tested him and gradually put him through his paces, building up until he could diffuse the strength of attacks almost effortlessly. He needed a bit of time to figure out exactly what it was he was supposed to be learning here, though, and if he just let Morishi hit him, the fight wouldn't be lasting long at all.
Morishi kept attacking vital spots. It made sense for him to do so. He had the power and skill to do so almost without pause against Renji, and if his aim was to defeat the body thief, it was an entirely sound strategy. Perhaps that was what he was meant to learn to defend against, though. It was a realistic enough scenario for him to face in pitched close combat...
So how did he defeat it? Typically he'd be mounting his own offense as well, but in this hypothetical purely defensive scenario, how did one protect against potentially lethal unarmed strikes without avoiding them outright?
He took a kick that made every bone in his right arm jar and feel like it was vibrating, then a powerful forward punch that nearly collapsed his throat. Morishi was unrelenting, though, and Renji had barely enough time to keep moving, keep twisting and shifting like a reed or dodging, never mind sort out whatever potentially deadly lesson plan the head monk had devised.
A hammer blow to his temples had him seeing stars, but finally, he realized the point of the entire endeavor. He was already shifting his body in order to minimize the force that Morishi could bring to bear against him; why not shift just a little bit more so that the attack hit somewhere less dangerous? It was just as delightfully simple as the more basic technique that it almost had to be the answer.
When the next attack came, a spinning kick meant to strike him in the spine, Renji didn't bother diminishing the force. He couldn't take many full hits from Morishi, but he could take enough to integrate the new idea with the old one. Rather than ablate the damage, he focused on controlling where on his person the damage occurred. He took the kick just below his shoulder blade, and suffered for it; it sent him stumbling forward to land on the ground in a pain racked heap.
When he collected himself and struggled to his feet, though, Morishi was smiling. That was all the confirmation Renjiro needed to know that he'd deduced the proper learning experience.
The next blow that came wound up jarring his very teeth, but that was far better than the knock out attack that Morishi had tried to land. This time, though, he'd managed to tilt his head just enough to take some of the sting out of the attack.
Morishi came at him several more times, and with each devastating attack, Renji managed to eek out only severe bodily harm. He was beginning to tire severely, but if he hadn't managed to minimize and redirect the damage as he had, he might already have lost consciousness or even lost a body, and that little trick wasn't one he wanted the monk to discover by accident.
Fortunately, the issue wasn't pressed. Morishi finally stopped, and Renji was able to stop as well and recover a bit. His body was patterned with ugly bruises, and he was reasonably sure a few non critical bones had been fractured by the monk's continuous attacks.
“You picked that up much more quickly than many of my better students, aberration. I am impressed. In the future, though, you should focus on economy of action. The slightest movements will not be detected by an opponent, and will serve your purpose just as well as more elaborate twisting and gyrating. You should seek to displace blows primarily to organs and soft tissue. Other attacks are likely only meant to inflict pain, or will be made with such strength that you should avoid them outright. Obviously, you have only been practicing this against unarmed opponents; the dynamic changes greatly when weapons are involved, since even a weaker foe can cause great damage with a blade.”
Renji listened to the lecture as he nursed his wounds, nodding and absorbing the information.
“Against blade bearing enemies, taking the attacks to extremities is usually best; most will be unable to penetrate bone. If you cannot, the stomach is the safest bet. Stomach wounds are intensely painful, but they take quite a while to die from, even untreated.”
With that, the monk nodded curtly. “I look forward to seeing your progress.” With that, he disappeared, leaving Renji to shamble to his quarters.