A New Era [Specialty change, private, NK] [WIP]

[Specialty change training]

Dante had finally awoke in the morning, having a good nights sleep. That was rare for him, because he always seemed to be up late partying or out in the town for a ramen run. Dante did not, by any means live a quiet lifestyle and enjoyed going out and doing things. However, he enjoyed sleeping too. One of his favorite pastimes. As he opened his eyes, Dante glanced over at his alarm clock. It read "6:30 A.M.," thirty minutes before his alarm went off to abruptly awaken him for the day. He rose out of his bed, sitting on the edge glaring off into the short distance across his home, staring into space. After a few minutes he snapped, and stood up, stretching. After a few yawns, Dante walked to his dresser and threw on the usual- a purple robe and veil, with a beaded necklace. After putting on his shoes and scroll, Dante walked outside into the blistering sunlight which seemed to impale pain upon his forehead as he was rudely greeted by the brightness of the new day. Dante immediately began to slowly start for the notorious volcano, known for it's vigorous training areas and immense heat. As he was walking, he passed by a few friends he couldn't help but wave at, and eventually arrived to the gate of the volcano. As he arrived, Dante spotted a few other select ninja of the area he had seen around before, but never spoke too. Dante wasn't about to change that fact today, as he was to remained fully focused on what the day would bring him. An entire new combat style, that would re-season his beliefs and strategies in battle.

Dante began unpacking his things as he layed down at the volcano. The immense heat was showing no remorse to his heated self, as he wore his purple robes and refused to remove them. Dante took off his satchel, and opened it. It revealed a few kunai, some chalk, a couple apples, a couple bottles of water. He would force himself to conserve water as if he drank it at will, the heat would force him to down at least five bottles in an hour. He also removed his scroll from his back, and sat it down. Dante was much less encumbered without his scroll, and was actually a battle tactic. Dante would remove his scroll in battle so that he would be more light on his feet than normal because of the normal encumbrance burden the scroll would carry. Dante took no hesitation to begin his vigorous training. He went over to a heap of stone and sat in front of it. Dante was about to perform a ritual that had passed down through his family, the Ritual of Metamorphosis. This ritual was specifically used to make lifestyle changes of a ninja, and Dante had only performed it once in his childhood, when he learned medical jutsu. However, Dante had made a conscious lifestyle change that he decided would benefit him in the long run. Dante had taken a peculiar interest in puppets lately, and the more he read up on them, the more he became immersed in the art. Puppetry is the art of a craftsman, and Dante always did have a knack for precision craft. After much reading of the fine art, Dante had officially decided he wanted to be come a puppeteer. The training would take much practice, and the successful performance of the Ritual of Metamorphosis.

The ritual took a long time to perform, and was a very complicated procedure. Dante had learned the ritual well and was confident he could perform it correctly. The goal of the ritual is to refocus the mind into fine tuning a new element of specialty into the body. The ritual was made to create a mind body connection, transferring studies into actual performance. Dante began meditation in front of the stone, the first step of the ritual. The point of this step was to achieve complete focus in the mind, and generally the step took about an hour to complete. Dante had little trouble achieving this kind of focus, because he recreation ally meditated daily for religious purposes. In his meditation, Dante tried to create a transparent box, taking all things out of relation and putting them into the box. Then, after everything was gathered, he set fire to the box. This helped him achieve a state of emptiness, to fill with his new art. After about an hour and a half of complete focus, Dante was beginning to transition into the next phase of the ritual. Something called 'initiation.' This was actually performed by making a few hand seals, boar, ram, tiger, dog, hare, respectively. This activated chakra flow concentrated to the brain, and increased state of focus. This phase MUST be remained in for at least two hours, as it would ensure success of the ritual. Dante gathered all the chakra he could muster to focus to his head, which would send him into a daze of focus. Two hours had passed, and the time was about noon. Dante finally had finished the second step of his ritual, and had achieved utter focus in the mind. This phase would signify the end of the meditation, as he had achieved mental and physical chakra focus that would last for about twelve hours. Now that the prerequisite of concentration had been met, he could have lunch before the next part of the Ritual of Metamorphosis.

For lunch, Dante had eaten one of his apples and drank one bottle of water. That would be good enough to hold him over until dinner time. The chakra he focused was flowing through his mind, and he felt like he could see through and inside everything around him. The state of focus could be achieved by anyone, but the next part of the ritual could only be performed if one knew the ritual by heart. Dante walked back over to his meditating stone to set up the next part of the technique. He brought along his satchel with him, as he would need some of the things inside it. Along with all that, he took his scroll too. This would be a very important part of the ritual. Dante took the white chalk out of the bag, and drew a little on the ground to test and see if it would write correctly. Once he was confident, Dante put down the chalk and began to perform a few hand signs. Dragon, Hare, Dog, and Bird. Directly after performing the hand seals, he clapped his hands together signifying a focus of chakra to the hands. At this point, Dante had focused the majority of chakra in his body to his brain and his hands. After approximately thirty minutes, Dante had successfully focused all chakra into his brain and hands. He proceeded to pick up the chalk, and began drawing on the stone. The diagram he drew on the stone appeared to be something like a ritual circle, with many different shapes inside it. The drawing was a perfectly sculpted circle, inside the circle being a large square, hexagon, and a miniature circle, respectively. This was the focal circle of the Ritual of Metamorphosis, and was used to focus chakra and mental energy to learn a new ability. At this point, Dante was convinced that he could perform the ritual. However, the next part of the technique was the hardest. That technique, would be the ability to send chakra into the focal circle. Dante would have no problem achieving the feat.

In order to send chakra into the stone and the focal circle, Dante would have to perform many hand signs and send the chakra out of his hands, through the ground, and literally inside the stone. This technique also drained much energy from the user, and is to be done with utter caution. So, Dante began performing hand seals, yet again. In a fast process, he showed Boar, Dog, Monkey, Dragon, Monkey, Hare, Bird, Rat, Ram, Dog, Horse, Ox, Dragon, Hare, respectively. The quickly performed hand seals were followed by a firm hit on the ground, signifying chakra flow through the Earth. As this was happening, Dante was trying to focus the chakra and guide it into the stone, which drained much stamina from his body. Dante had been very careful to navigate the chakra into the stone, and did it with success. Once the chakra was inside the ritual stone, it immediately caused the focal circle to glow a faint blue aura. This was showing that the chakra transfer was successful, and the next step of the ritual was ready for performance. After doing this, Dante layed on his back and tried to catch his breath. He decided it would be best to take about an hour break, and get all his energy back before the next part of the ritual. The time was about three o' clock in the afternoon.

Dante decided after some thought not to eat or drink anything, as he was supposed to be training himself to go without eating or drinking for a while. This would help him, while performing the ritual, to draw more mental energy than physical energy which he would need to save for later when more chakra focus comes into play. Dante, after a long bit of rest and maintaining chakra focus, decided to get up and continue the Ritual of Metamorphosis. The focal circle was still glowing with aura, which meant the ritual could be continued. Dante went into meditating position, and closed his eyes to begin another state of focus in front of the focal circle. As he remained in meditation, Dante began envisioning his medical techniques fading away, as they became translucent and then transparent in his mind. This was the next step of the ritual, to mentally block out the technique you want to forget. This procedure was more dependent on mental strength compared to chakra usage, and gave the body time to rest and recover some chakra. Dante continued to envision his knowledge of medical techniques fade away, and eventually used the white box technique to completely block them out from his mental capacity. After about an hour or so of meditation, Dante had completely removed medical thoughts from his mind. However, the technique was not yet forgotten by any means. In order to perform the ritual, one has to remove all traces of medical technique. The next step of the ritual requires a small amount of chakra use. Dante, out of his satchel, grabbed all his medical supplies and placed them in front of the focal circle. He then grabbed his giant scroll, and ripped out a blank page of parchment. Dante placed the empty paper on the ground and took out his chalk yet again, continuing chakra flow to the hands. He began to write something on the blank paper. The thing he was drawing was a seal, called the Rite of Destruction. This seal would destroy memories and physical being of anything that it was used on. In order to use the seal correctly, one must place it over top of the things to be destroyed and draw the seal around the objects. And so, that is just what Dante did. He placed the sealed paper on top of all his medical equipment, and began to take his chalk and draw yet another seal around all the pile of equipment. This seal also had to be infused with chakra to work properly, and when performed would combust all materials inside it and turn them into ash. Dante got on his knees, and performed the same hand seals that were required for the flow of chakra into the stone: Boar, Dog, Monkey, Dragon, Monkey, Hare, Bird, Rat, Ram, Dog, Horse, Ox, Dragon, Hare. Dante again slammed his hands to the ground, and infused the seal with chakra. As the chakra began to glow blue on the circle, it promptly switched over to a red aura. The materials inside the seal then made a small explosion, obliterating the memories and materials. Dante officially could not recall how to perform medical ninjutsu.

Dante began to get a shoot of confidence when he realized the ritual was actually working it's miracle. He was shocked to realize that he couldn't recall in the least anything about the medical techniques he had studied for so long. It was truly an enigma in the mind of Dante, someone so intellectual, how this ritual truly worked it's magic. That philosophical nonsense was no matter, however, to Dante Shikura. He would continue the ritual to now achieve the final goal he's been studying and working for. With the supplies incinerated as planned, the next step of the ritual was at bay to be taken up. That would be to begin infusing the knowledge of the subject that was wished to be learned, in this case, Puppetry. In order to do this, Dante would have to have some certain supplies to infuse knowledge into him. Dante had brought along a few books with him, which he would need to learn his new specialty. However, after some retrospect, he realized he had left a few valuable supplies at his house. This was no matter. Dante's chakra focus and the focal circles still had about until midnight until they would fade away. The ritual had much time to be performed, however, Dante was skeptical that someone would tamper with the ritual setup. He had already made it this far, so Dante wasn't about to let this ritual get interfered with. Dante simply set a few traps using some trip wire at his home, and set it up in a small perimeter around the site of the ritual. This wire, when tripped, was set to launch three kunai knives at the area tripped. It was a fairly crude setup, and only took about twenty minutes to prepare. The area of the ritual was very secluded, however, and Dante had little fear that the trap would have to claim any victims. He placed a few of his things inside the perimeter, and began to start toward the gates to regather the things he mindlessly forgot to bring along with him.

As Dante began towards the village, he noticed a large amount of people in town. This made him slightly uneasy about leaving his belongings at the volcano, so he began to discreetly get on the rooftops and flash to his home. In a few minutes, Dante arrived and picked up the two books he left at his house: "Master Puppeteers: Insight" and "Advanced Puppetry for Basic Ninjas". These two books were crucial to the success of the ritual. At this point, Dante saw it. He saw the glowing, bright jug of water right there in front of his eyes. Or at least, to him it was glowing and bright. He finally gave in to his will, and chugged the jug of water. That's one thing that he failed at today, hopefully the ritual wouldn't be the same way. Dante, proceeding the shameful consumption of water, sped back to the ritual site. He hoped and prayed that everything remained as he had set it. To his grace, Dante arrived at the site to see that nothing had been tampered with. This left a huge sigh of relief for Dante, and he layed down at the site and relaxed. Unfortunately, this was a near fatal mistake. Dante set off his own trap! He jumped, and dodged two kunai, but had one strike directly through the palm of his left hand. Oh the irony, he thought, as he had forgotten all medical techniques he learned. Dante carefully removed the kunai from his hand, and wrapped it all around the loose purple robe he wore. As Dante began to recall, however, blood is one of the requirements for the ritual's last step! The trap was an angel in disguise, and Dante was somewhat satisfied by the mishap.

After all the flukey business concerning Dante's airheadedness and clumsiness, he was determined to continue the Ritual of Metamorphosis. The focal circles were still glowing with aura, a sign to continue the steps. The next step of the ritual is to somewhat mimic the last-- take all the materials concerning the information to be learned and pile them in the focal circle on the ground. Dante didn't have too much, but he had enough. The books he piled held enough knowledge to make at the least a journeyman puppeteer. The next step was also a bit of a mimic, to rip off another piece of scroll and draw the sealing circle. Except this time, the information would not be incinerated, but stored in the user's mind-- the Rite of Knowledge. And so, this is all just what Dante did. After drawing the seal, he again proceeded to place it on top of the pile of written knowledge and redo the hand signs. He slammed his hands on the ground after using the seals, and all of a sudden, the focal circle erupted in aura with much of it pouring around and inside Dante's head. This was the most intense part of the ritual, and also the most satisfying. After all the information was stored in his mind, Dante was mentally exhausted and his body required rest and sleep. However, there was still one more step of the ritual that needed to be done. The final step, also known as the Blood Seal, was required to seal the information into the user's mind, just the same as the information from the destroyed specialty was collected. The blood seal could be a painful process, luckily, Dante had already endured the required pain when he penetrated his hand when he set off his own trap. Dante unwrapped the robe from his hand, to reveal little bleeding still. He took his other hand, and smeared the blood all on his hand to where the blood was on his fingers and palm. The then proceeded to take his hand, and slam it into the focal circle on the stone. The stone erupted in a red aura, and the aura surrounded Dante. After a few minutes of chaos, the aura died down and the information on the subject had been officially sealed inside Dante. The focal circles then disappeared, and everything remained as it was before Dante arrived at the volcano.

After finishing the ritual, Dante was so mentally drained he literally collapsed at the volcano. Dante woke up the next morning, at about six A.M., feeling fairly rested. He woke up to find a low population of people at the volcano, and his stuff still remaining next to him. Dante stood up, and gathered all his supplies. He then proceeded to his home. While Dante was walking to his house, he was amazed to see that he could recall everything he had read in books about puppetry, and that he seemed to know how to perform certain jutsu like Chakra Strings. He was very impressed with himself, and when he got home he decided to eat a feast. Now all that was left was for him to actually get a puppet. Things were looking up for Dante Shikura, and he was beyond satisfied with the result of all this training. Dante finally decided to lay down in his welcoming bed, and drift off into a state of deep sleep to meditate on everything he learned-- and forgot.

[END TOPIC]

Words: 3263
Stats Trained: Chakra, Stamina
Stat Points gained: 16
JP gained: 32
New Specialty obtained: Puppetry
Specialty forgot: Medical ninjutsu

Approved.