Improving Upon Anima

Corvin stood in his back yard trying to recall the fights he had been in thus far. In particular, he tried to remember situations in which Anima had been a direct player in the fight. He knew that he needed to improve upon his puppet designs, as well as get more designs in general, and when it came to improving his designs he knew that he needed to start with Anima. Anima was his last line of defense. It was his protective armor should someone get in close to him and his primary way of beating back any close combat fighters. Thus far, most of the people he fought could get past his other puppets with relative ease, meaning that the necessity for defense with Anima was all the more crucial. Without Anima being an absolute defense, he might as well be wearing paper armor. 

The first thing he knew he should do is get rid of things that he found he did not use in battle. The first thing he knew he needed to remove were the turrets inserted within the shell near the shoulders of Anima. When he first designed the puppet, these turrets were meant to be supplementary ranged weaponry to help keep his opponents at bay. Unfortunately, the more puppets he procured the more he found that he was in the position of being unable to use these weapons for fear of hitting his own puppets. Most of his attacks relied on pincer tactics to trap his opponent. However, if he were to try shooting the turrets along with the other attacks, it would be all to easy for an opponent to use one of his other puppets as a shield against these attacks. The risk, for now, was simply too high. So for the moment the turrets only proved to be a completely unnecessary weight within the puppet. On top of that, as long as they were there, he was going to waste valuable time in battles contemplating whether or not that moment would be a good moment for an attack with the turrets. The cons far outweighed the pros for the time being, so he simply had to remove them.

Going over to Anima, Corvin opened the plates hiding the turrets and extended them using his chakra threads. Having designed the connection mechanism, it was all too easy for Corvin to know precisely how to remove them. He set them in a box to be put safely somewhere should he ever decide to use them again. The only thing left to do was to use his Magnet Release to seal the plates that once covered the turrets. He had to make sure the seal was firm, otherwise it could easily become a weak spot in the design.

The next thing he wanted to do was make the arms more solid. He knew that he could not use his palm launchers for the same reason he could not use his shoulder turrets, and while his grappling hook fingers might have been a neat idea, it had thus far proven useless. When he first created the puppet, he had intended to be able to throw out his fingers as grappling hooks to hold onto his opponent while he shot them down with his palm launchers. The idea proved useless in actual combat scenarios because most people moved too fast to be grappled. Even if he could grapple them, it would be too easy for most opponents to get out of the trap in one way or another. While he considered simply strengthening the wires that controlled the fingers and increasing the speed of the launchers, it just did not seem like a good tactic for him. This part of the project was an easy fix however since all he needed to do was use his Magnet release to seal up the mechanisms allowing these things to open or release after removing a few mechanisms that would be unnecessary in the future. 

The next thing he wanted to do with Anima was not removal, but addition. On more than one occasion he needed Anima's tail to be longer. When he originally designed the tail, he assumed that ten meters would be plenty long. Unfortunately, actual combat has shown that to not be the case on more than one occasion. He decided to triple that length in the Mark 2 version of his puppet. It took Corvin a long time to collect the necessary iron sand, forge it into plates, and get those plates into proper form. Once finished, it was a relatively simple matter to connect the new blades onto the tail. With every addition, the tail got a little longer, and Corvin got more and more satisfied that he was making the right decision with this puppet. When finished, the tail was up to thirty meters long. Before finishing with it, he wanted to try a technique that he had learned while creating the Knight. Gathering up more iron sand, he used it to vastly increase the density of the plates within the tail. It was a tedious process, having to go and apply the extra sand and density to every individual separation in the tail and every connecting piece for every tedious millimeter of the thirty meters. By the time he was done, Corvin was moving on autopilot. The movements had become so monotonous and repetitive that he no longer had to think about his movements. The payoff for all of this hard work, was that Anima's tail was roughly twice as tough as it was before. 

Deciding that the tail should not be the only part of the puppet to receive this treatment, Corvin decided to do it to the rest of the puppet as a whole. It took far longer than Corvin expected. Every aspect of the puppet needed to receive the increased density or else he was leaving a weak spot that could be exploited if discovered. Everything from the feet of the puppet up to its head had to slowly be treated. Corvin had to fist gather the appropriate amount of sand, a project that alone took quite a long time. Next the same treatment that went into the tail had to go into the puppet as a whole. Corvin initially wanted to do the project segment by segment, having the legs, arms, head, and shell all acting individually as separate segments. However, he quickly realized that it would be much easier, if slower, to do it all as a unit while still together. This allowed him to see a real time working example of the mechanisms and connections themselves. He could armor up the major plates of the puppet to the point of literal unbreakability, but it would count for nothing if the joints were not given the same care. 

As he worked, on his puppet, he began to wonder what sort of techniques he could use to make his puppets stronger. He considered the fact that his iron sand might be able to accomplish the feat, but he worried about relying so heavily on his iron sand in his prospects for future power. If something were to come along and turn out to be a hard counter to his iron sand, then it would turn out very badly for him if too much of what he needed to win was counting on its ability to work properly. He was keenly aware that an army of puppets would count for nothing if he could not find ways to make them tougher, stronger, and faster. He had seen through the Kazekage that it was possible to use certain jutsu to armor up his puppets, and this was something he hoped to one day accomplish with his iron sand. He knew that if he could create armor and weapons on the level on the Kage's constructs as well as find other ways to buff up his puppets, he could become an unstoppable force the likes of which the shinobi world had never seen before. No one would dare attack the village for the intense fear that the mere mention of his name could instill if he were able to get that kind of power. The idea sent chills down Corvin's spine and he had to wonder how much of this was just fanciful dreaming and how much of it was actually a possibility to obtain. 

Finally finishing with making his puppet every bit as tough as he had made the tail, he looked the puppet over and considered if there was any other way to increase the defense of Anima. It then occurred to him that, while perhaps not something he used often, the shields that Anima was capable of deploying had a lot of potential. He decided to tinker with them in an attempt to take a step forward with that potential. The first thing he wanted to do was find a way to get the two shields to work in tandem. As it stood, only one shield could be deployed at a time. However, he knew that if he could get both of them to function together, it would create a bubble shield offering a more complete protection over the puppet. Corvin took out several books on the art of chakra defenses through chakra that he had originally gotten the idea for a chakra shield from. After studying the books for a while, he was no closer to the answer he sought. The type of designs he was working on was simply unprecedented. He was treading in uncharted territory and knew that if he could get it right then it would be he writing the next chapters of books on puppets. It was an exciting idea for someone Corvin's age. 

He took out his blueprint pages and began working on a design that would allow a continuous flow of chakra over a wide area and remain consistent and strong enough to be able to shield attacks. Chakra threads offered many possibilities with these types of designs, and Corvin marveled at the thought that villages had not taken advantage of such things for defensive purposes on a grander scale. He made a promise to himself then to mention it to the Kazekage at the next opportunity. After several hours of scanning over blueprints, attempting various tricks and bypasses, the solution eluded him. He sat back in his chair and began to wonder if maybe it was simply to grand an idea to work. Staring at the ceiling, he saw a wasp flying around. Seeing the wing beats of the bug lulled Corvin into a sort of drowsy state. The rhythmic buzz of the wings was oddly soothing. It was in that lulled state that the idea finally crashed into him. He nearly fell out of his chair with excitement and scolded himself for not having seen it before. He sat with his blueprints for a while longer and realized that his new design could be used for far more than simple shield effects. The new design could revolutionize the way he built weapons for his puppets. He decided to give one of those ideas a try as a sort of prototype to go along with his shield.

Corvin finished the blueprint for his idea and went about the task of adding the improvements to Anima. His new design was deceptively simple, but could only be performed by someone with a good understanding of puppets and chakra weaponry and defenses within them, as well as be able to use Magnet Release to accomplish various aspects of the design. This meant that for someone to successfully create one of his puppet designs, they would not only have to be a puppeteer, but also either have Magnet release themselves or have access to someone who did. This was extremely encouraging to Corvin. It meant that not only would his designs be potentially very useful and famous if all of the things he believed could be done with them were possible, but it also meant that in the event that one of his puppets were seized or stolen and a person worked out how the design was accomplished, they still would not be able to replicate the effect. This would potentially be a serious boon to Sunagakure. All of these ideas danced in Corvin's mind, but he tried to not be too overexcited. The ideas were still in their infancy and any number of complications could come around that would make his idea useless. 

Finally getting the shields to work in tandem to create a single shield, Corvin set to work on his prototype design. It was one of the harder feats that Corvin had yet to accomplish in his short lived era as a puppet designer, but with time and patience Corvin eventually got the design to work. The end result was that not only was the shield larger and stronger, but it also had the added effect that should chakra strike the shield, it could contain and redirect the chakra into a useful form to whomever was inside Anima. In essence the shield could, in simple terms, absorb chakra and then give that absorbed chakra to the person hiding within Anima so long as the shield remained intact. Since he really had no direct chakra attacks, he got the help of his parents to test it. The feeling of having chakra fed into his body by the mechanisms within Anima was not entirely what Corvin expected. It was by no means painful, but gave a certain tingle as it flowed into him and he enjoyed the feeling to some degree. He knew that if he kept working on it, he would likely be able to increase the strength of the shield and its absorption effect in his next iteration of Anima. All it took was time. 

It occurred to Corvin that time was as much of a limiting factor to Corvin as money was. It saddened him greatly to think that he would someday have many more ideas and not have the strength to so much as write them down due to the frailty of old age. He wondered if there were any jutsu in the world that could extend his life, even just a little. He was sure there had to be something within the medical field that could accomplish such a task. He vowed to himself that day to someday research the field of medical jutsu and find if any such technique existed. Surely, if something did exist people would already be using it widely around the world, unless of course it was a forbidden jutsu of some sort. He knew from the history books that some forbidden techniques could accomplish something similar to what he desired, but he was unwilling to delve into that sort of world. Perhaps he would gain as much luck with that sort of technique as he had had with his breakthrough with his puppet design. Only time would tell, so long as he did not get himself killed in the meantime. 

(WC: 2516, Rewards: Anima Mark 2 replaces the Mark 1, +12 stat points)

Approved dude