Preparing for the Genin Exam(NK)

Sparring with Miroku
Ayumi, after learning two C-Rank jutsus succesfully and feeling stronger than most of her classmates, she decided to take the genin exam by the end of the month. This meant she had to be prepared for anything. She was already feeling ready about any "knowledge" questions since she read a lot about jutsus, items, past ninjas etc. She was also confident with her Bunshin Jutsu, still she knew she lacked the physical abilities and that she could be asked to perform Henge / Kawarimi jutsus, neither of which she was fully capable of performing even though they are E-Rank jutsus.

She decided to work on her physical attributes first, she thought jutsus would be trained easier if she built up her stamina first. She went to the academy's backyard, collected chakra on her fists and feet after which she started punching and kicking the training dummy on the head as hard as she could. "Punch-punch-punch-kick! Punch-punch-punch-2!"

Ayumi kept training with this same order until another girl came outside the academy. "Punch, punch, punch, 134!" The girl looked around Ayumi's age but she was much taller than her, 1 ft taller maybe? The tall girl introduced herself: "Hi, my name is Miroku, nice to finally meet you Ayumi." Ayumi was surprised she knew her name. She usually sits to the left-back corner of her class and doesn't talk to many people. Lately, she realized she was being talked about more though, she thought it was because she got stronger and close to genin rank. She did the routine once more "Punch, punch, punch, 135!" and she turned towards Miroku.

"Nice to meet you too Miroku, are you here to train?" All Ayumi knew about her was that they were in the same class. There were some loud ones that made you know their name and personalities by screaming every now and then, and some less loud ones that she kept an eye on to compare her progress with. But this girl Miroku, she didn't even know her name before.

Miroku smiled and said "I was going home but I saw you training and didn't want to miss the chance to spar with you while you are still an academy student.". Ayumi was right after all, people expected her to become genin pretty soon, that's why they knew her name. "Ok, let's see what you got!" Ayumi took a couple steps back, putting a distance of 6 meters between Miroku and herself.

Miroku quickly took some kunai with explosive tags from her pouch near her right leg and threw them right in front of Ayumi. Seeing the explosive tags, Ayumi jumped back immediately and formed the tiger seal, "Mizu Bunshin No Jutsu!", suddenly two water clones of Ayumi appeared behind Miroku, they attempted to hit Miroku from behind with their fists as Ayumi threw a kunai at Miroku from front.

Miroku turned around blocked the first clone's fist and dodged the second one but took the kunai to her right leg from behind. Miroku fell on her knees as Ayumi started running towards her "Oh no! I am so sorry, I thought you would block the kunai not the clones." when she came 2 meters close, Miroku suddenly turned and said "Katon! Goukakyuu no jutsu!", the big fireball was coming towards Ayumi very fast and she had nowhere to run. She laid down to the ground to make the impact less severe. After the fireball went through, she took some damage and when she looked up, she saw Miroku jumping towards her with the kunai she threw at her leg in Miroku's left hand.

Ayumi rolled left, dodging her attack and hit Miroku behind her legs, making her fall down. She quickly got up and formed the seals Snake-Ox-Clap Hands. "Suirō no Jutsu!" Miroku was about to get up when she got trapped in the water prison Ayumi created. Ayumi's one hand was in the prison, so she couldn't form any seals but luckily, Ayumi hasn't lost control of her two clones during the battle, so she could use them to finish Miroku off as she kept her imprisoned. Her clones took kunai of their pockets and pointed at Miroku. "It's over." said the 3 Ayumis.

Miroku admitted defeat "Good spar, you live up to your name, you will definitely be a good genin." Ayumi thought, "Up to my name huh? Do I really have that sort of reputation here?". She replied: "You fought well too. By the way, that was pretty dirty of you, I thought you seriously got hurt.", looking at Miroku's uninjured right leg. Miroku laughed "Well, I had to try anything to beat you.".

Miroku was leaving the training ground when she saw Ayumi go back to the training dummy. "You will go on?". Ayumi replied: "I need to prepared for anything in the exam! Anything!" Miroku smiled, turned back and walked away. Ayumi started her routine again: "Punch, Punch, Punch, hmm which number was I at? Right, 136! Punch, punch, punch 137!".

WC:826 {Finished}

+4 stats, +8 JP

Approved for Appropriate Rewards

Clone sparring
Ayumi realized it was time to stop training the punches and kicks when the training dummy had no face to hit anymore. There were more dummies around but she wanted to change the type of training. She formed the tiger seal and yelled "Mizu Bunshin no Jutsu!", her favorite and most proud jutsu. Two clones formed in front of her from the moisture in air. She knew the clones were half as strong as her which meant two clones would be around equal strength with her. Ayumi was aware that she would lose a lot of chakra by fighting her own clones but she wanted to give this training method a try. This way she could maybe see her weaknesses from an opponent's point of view.

She jumped back, Ayumi was about to throw one of her kunai to the clone on the left but she felt weird throwing a kunai at herself and stopped. "It is just a clone, come on Ayumi!". She threw each clone one kunai and started running towards them. The clones managed to dodge the weapons rather easily and ran towards Ayumi. The clones and Ayumi started battling with their fists and feet. Ayumi didn't use her other jutsus, since they would be rather pointless in a battle against herself. After 10 minutes, surprisingly only a couple of blows were made by the clones while the real Ayumi couldn't hit a single blow. "Is it that my dodging is good or my attacks are slow?" she thought as she continued the battle. She was losing concentration thinking during the battle. The clone to her right tried to punch her in the stomach, as soon as the real Ayumi blocked, the other clone hit her back with the left elbow. It was a pretty strong attack that made Ayumi fall down. Ayumi lost.. against her clones? She quickly made the clones disappear and started analyzing.

It made sense that the clones won, although the total strength was equal, 2 always has the advantage against 1. She thought about how the blows from her clones except the last strong hit as she wasn't concentrated, didn't have big effect.

Strength Training
She decided she should build some muscles and make her attacks more powerful. This way her weapon throwing would also improve in speed. She found some weights in the training ground, they were labeled according to their weight, she knew it was more important to get into a form than lifting heavier weight, so she chose a couple of 3 kg weights and started lifting them with her arms.

"1,2,3,4,5,6.." it didn't seem to be much of a weight for Ayumi, maybe she was underestimating herself in strength. "7,8,9,10,11,12..." or maybe she wasn't, her right arm was starting to get tired but her left arm was fine for now. "13,14,15." she stopped to rest her right arm. "Ok, 15 times with both arms seem to be a good start for my strength training." She sat there until her arm was good to go, after 10 minutes she started again. She continued like this for 5 sets and then remembered how sudden starts to physical training can effect human body badly and stopped training. "I will do another 5 sets tomorrow, I guess I should just go home for today before I hurt myself." She packed her stuff into her bag and turned back to see Miroku running towards her. "Hey, I forgot my bag but didn't want to interrupt your training." Miroku looked somewhat embarassed. Ayumi replied "Ok, thanks. I didn't see your bag around though." then she remembered she hadn't even brought a bag to training that day, she only brought her pouch and understood the bag in her hands was actually Miroku's. Ayumi blushed, apologised and started taking out her stuff "It doesn't even look that much like my bag. I don't know how I forgot not bringing a bag, sorry. Here you go." Ayumi gave the bag to Miroku and ran her way home before she could reply.

WC:650{Finished}

+3 stats, +6 JP[b][b]

Approved.

Henge no Jutsu Training
5 days passed, and Ayumi already felt more fit and stronger. She thought she was physically ready for the exam, now the one thing left to do was to master Henge and Kawarimi jutsus. She was shown how to perform them in the academy and she had listened very carefully back then, she knew how these jutsus had to be second nature for a succesfull shinobi. Still, listening the teacher and reading up on the jutsu meant nothing without practice.

She decided to start with Henge no Jutsu - Transformation Technique. First, Ayumi had to decide who or what she wanted to transform into. In the exam she would probably be asked to transform into a human, maybe the Hokage, the exam giver or maybe a classmate. Therefore Ayumi decided to pick a human, not an animal or a weapon. Since she saw her uncle's face the most during daily life, she decided to pick him. It was a wise choice, it would be much easier to picture him in her head than someone she knew less like Miroku.

She concentrated on her uncle's appearance, she tried to picture him on her head, although she saw him everyday it was still hard to picture everything right. After 2 minutes, Ayumi made the seals Dog-Boar-Ram and yelled "Henge no Jutsu! *poof*". A white cloud appeared and vanished, she ran to the restroom to look at the mirror. She was horrified when she saw the result. "Th.. this is how I pictured him?". Her body seemed ok but the face looked more like an abomination than a human let alone her uncle. She quickly dispelled the Transformation went back to the backyard. She was going for plan B.

Ayumi was hoping that she was good enough to transform into someone without a picture or the person around. But after failing so badly, she didn't even try once more. She took out her wallet out of the bag to find her uncle's photo. Another photo fell from her wallet as she was searching for her uncle's, it was her father and Ayumi, the photo was taken a couple of weeks before her father died. She picked up the photo and she stood there for a while gliding into memories in her head. Ayumi would do anything to see her dad alive again, she knew transformation jutsu was not bringing anyone back nevertheless she decided to use it to transform into her father.

Ayumi wanted to make sure she wouldn't make a mistake and make his dead father look like a monster. She concentrated on the photo, she still remembered her father's figure like she saw him yesterday but looking at the photo for a while couldn't hurt. She went back into the bathroom and performed Henge no Jutsu. She was scared to look at the mirror for a while after her last try, she looked at the floor for more than a minute until she somehow convinced herself and slowly raised her head. It was perfect, her father was in the mirror just like she remembered him. She smiled at the mirror and said "I did it" but the happiness of seeing him quickly turned into grief. She dispelled the jutsu, after the poof Ayumi was on her knees, left in tears.

Kawarimi no Jutsu Training
Ayumi stopped training for a couple of days after that incident, she didn't want to even leave the bed. It was again her uncle who was there for her when she needed counseling. He helped her get out of the bed and return to training. He wasn't doing this because he wanted her to be powerful, he just wanted her to be happy and he knew Ayumi loved training.

Ayumi was still depressed as she walked out of the house, she was walking very slowly towards the academy with her head down. She heard a voice that resembled her father's as she was walking, she lifted her head in excitement to see a middle-aged guy with his daughter. She went to the academy but didn't feel like training, she went to a shadowed corner in the backyard, created a clone to watch around and started crying. She tried to keep it silent, she didn't want people to see her weak like this. She wanted to stop her self-pity, get up and train but she kept seeing that memory of her father's image in the mirror.

After some time, her clone saw Miroku coming from the building and informed Ayumi. She quickly made the clone disappear, stood up and tried to wipe away her tears. She knew Miroku thought highly of her and she didn't want that to change. Miroku said enthusiastically as she came near Ayumi "Hey! I am ready for anoth...", Ayumi couldn't help it she wasn't strong enough. Miroku's enthusiasm vanished when she saw Ayumi's eyes tearing up. Miroku held her hands and asked with a sad face "Did something bad happen?". Ayumi didn't answer.

They sat there for a while without speaking till Miroku broke the silence. "Hey, come on you have to train for the exam, let's perform the body replacement technique." Miroku didn't know Ayumi very well but she has seen her excitement during training and sparring before. She had to get her mind off whatever was bothering her. Ayumi replied: "I don't know, that's the only thing I have to learn before my exam." Miroku was surprised, she thought Kawarimi no jutsu was an easy one. She actually opened the subject because it was one of the few jutsus she knew how to do properly. Miroku put a goofy smile on her face and said "Well, you're in luck! I will teach you how to do it!". Ayumi finally stopped crying and stood up "Ok... Miroku sensei" she smiled.

Miroku explained Ayumi the basics of kawarimi jutsu in an informal manner, Ayumi listened although she read these things again and again but was still unable to do it. "It is about using an optical illusion, making it look like the opponent succeeded with the hit by substituting a nearby object with yourself just before the attack lands." They trained for 5 straight hours, Miroku didn't give up on Ayumi since she knew it would probably be too devastating for Ayumi to leave her now. After 5 hours, Ayumi was still unable to perform the jutsu. She was getting more frustrated with every attempt, "Is this where my path as a ninja ends?" she was thinking. Miroku stopped Ayumi and shook her from her shoulders yelling "Your mind is somewhere else, stop thinking about anything and focus on training, come to your senses!", Miroku started crying, "I don't want to see you like this!". Ayumi suddenly disappeared from Miroku's hands without even doing any hand seals, Miroku turned her head back as she heard Ayumi's voice behind her: "Thank you, Miroku.", Miroku looked back at her hands to see a training dummy and a tear. Miroku smiled and said with a low voice, "Good luck in the exam Ayumi.. although I think you won't need it.". After that day, Miroku became the close friend that Ayumi was desperately looking for even though she didn't realize.
WC:1203
+6 Stat, +12 JP

Approved!