Wanted: Hyuuga teaching Gentle Fist. (P, IO, NK)

Bar saw the kick coming, but it was coming in too low, too close! Bar's right heel rolled back and Bar deliberately went backwards into a right "leg stretch," landing on the balls of his left foot while his left forearm, held horizontally, came in at an intercept course and tried to deflect the kick, and make SOME part of Goon's leg meet his knee, maybe Goon's foot, while releasing tenketsu chakra from his knee and elbow. It was hasty, off-the-cuff, unprepared, and probably badly-timed as well. Bar didn't think it would succeed in his wildest dreams. Bar thought there was a good chance his forearm would take a hit, or he'd hit his own tenketsu. If Goon had followed up his kick with another strike, Bar was pretty much flat-flooted. But he had to try. He had to see if adapting the Gentle Fist to include these kinds of External/Hard "Strong Fist" had a chance of success.

And if this move did fail, it was with the greatest of self-disappointment as Bar performed a Heavenly Rotation, again at its lowest setting.

(Yeah, the Heavenly Rotation has a one-opponent-post cool-down, while the Intersection Method does not. Theoretically, you could combo-chain Intersection Methods in a single post.)

Goon watched intently as Bar tried to avoid the kick. He was doing a good job of it as well, but it seemed Bar wouldnt get what he wanted just yet. The moment Bar tried to catch Goon's leg, using all the strength he could piled up into his other leg. Goon would push off and back, as he couldn't fully stop his kick's motion. Even if he would of connected with Bar in some way it didn't feel right to him. 

Goon straightened himself up and returned back to his stance, and spoke, "My apologies it seemed as if you wanted try something new, and I wanna do it the right way. With both of us on the same level, plus I want to see the sixty-four palms again." Goon knew it probably came off weird that he attempted to stop his own attack, but it just didn't feel right.

"You're gonna have to wait to see the Sixty-Four Palms, until I'm sure I can control myself. Try to overwhelm my defense, but aim a bit higher, please? You ever play Street Fighter? There's a dude who does the Hundred-Hand Slap, this one girl who does the Hundred Rending Kicks, I wonder if I should do that..." Bar mirrors Goon's Muy Thai stance, though his arms are held a bit closer to his body, for defense. Bar wished that he knew the Vacuum Palm, he never thought that the Sixty-Four Palms had a weakness until now.

Goon watched as Bar mimicked his stance, but put more of a defensive twist. Goon wanted to see mor of the sixty-four palms, but Bar's reasoning was understandable. So He went on, "Alrighty, gotch ya. Just so you know I'm only going to use half my strength, usually I'd try to go all out but I want this to last a bit. 

He figured his style was going to be a little predictable, so he decided to experiment while he has a chance to. He went more of a free flow stance, he wanted it be versatile, so he took sort of a boxer's pose, but his hands were lower than the usual. He kept the stance loose, to allow more flowing movement, and left his hands open only closing them just before he would strike.

"Ready?" Goon asked, regardless of the answer he would receive, he would begin his assault. His first strike being a hook coming from his right hand, going for the Bar's mid body, almost parallel to the navel. He'd follow it up, with a left back spin kick, still going with same motion, with a full follow through from the hook. Depending on the result of Bar succeeding with the intersection, if he failed the kick would commence, if he succeeded, then Goon would send a left hook going for the same, spot just the opposite side.

Before Goon had started experimenting with his stance, there was a knock at the door, followed by the cheerful declaration, "Delivery from the Tengakure Tech Shop!" Bar practically Body Flickered to the door, snatching the package from the deliveryman's hands, signing the form, and ripping the box in half at his haste to get at the contents inside. Inside, was a brand-new set of armor.

As Bar quickly put on the armor while reading the instructions, an almost maniacal giggle kept bubbling from his lips, as well as several words of almost ecstatic glee. "Yes, the shiny is my precious. My precious will protect me from the hurtings."

If Goon chose to wait until Bar had finished putting the armor on, Bar will resume his normal Gentle Fist stance, an arrogant smirk playing on his lips. Goon's assault was ambushed! Goon will find his punches and kicks inexplicably slowed, as if he was trying to punch through water. Which unfortunately, made them easy targets for Bar's Intersection Methods. Yes, that's right, plural. His right hook was answered with a left Intersection Method. His spin kick was even worse, as Bar took advantage of Goon's outstretched leg, and performed several Intersection Methods up and down his leg with both sets of Bar's arms and legs. Goon's left hook was met with a right Intersection Method, and just to add insult to injury, Bar finished Goon off with a Sixty-Four Palms, confident that with all his arm and leg tenketsu sealed, Goon could not possibly retaliate with his own Intersection Method.

After Haru healed Goon back up, Bar couldn't help but gloat a bit, waving the armor instructions under Goon's nose. "Do you like it? Cost me four thousand ryo, but the value to a Tai user like you or me is PRICELESS."

(Takeo said that I could get my purchases IC this way, which, if you have the ryo, I highly recommend you do as well. Furthermore, if you have two people teaching you the Intersection Method, can you reduce the WC requirement even more, or what?)

Bar said to Goon, "Ok, that was fun for me, but you might wanna take out that wakizashi now, and a kunai for your other hand. I wanna see if this armor, and the Intersection Method, is as good against another weapon-user. If you're nervous about cutting my bits off, you can always keep the sheathe on."

(Dude, it's been a week.)

Haru’s eyebrows raised as Bar pulled the set of armor out. He recognized the design.
”Oh, hey. Tech armor!” He said, mostly to himself. [olor=grey]”I almost got a set when I was a genin, but my grandpa was too stingy.”[/color] He commented. What followed was an absolute beatdown. Haru laughed out loud when Bar preformed a double intersection method, something he had actually done in a recent fight against Altar. Haru would quickly step in when Bar began his 64 palms attack, pushing the boy back.
”Nice shootin’, Tex, now let me patch him up before you kill him.” He said, turning to Goon and activating the mystical palm technique. Bruises and cuts he could heal, but healing the chakra circulatory system was difficult, thankfully he had stopped Bar before that became an issue.
 
Once he finished healing Goon, Haru put a hand on his shoulder.

”Don’t get too mad, everybody has off days.” He said, not realizing how true his words would be to the boy. The drunken state he had been reduced to when they first met certainly could be considered an “Off day.”

"Ahhh, less mad, more irritated, but hey that's how you learn." Goon laughed as he said it in reply to Haru, after he finished healing him. There wasn't a reason to be mad, getting mad did nothing but limit yourself. He had to realize that the hard way years ago, to harbor I'll feelings you can't think straight, and it would usually lead to death. As Goon straightened himself out and stretched, feeling better than he did before, he thought about Bar's and using the Wakizashi, it's been a while since he touched it, the thing was a dusty. "I can use it just let me tell you I'm a little rusty with it, but give me a minute, I haven't held this thing in a while."

It didn't take long for Goon to pull the sword out gripping it, by the hilt, removing it completely from the sheath. "Don't worry you won't get cut, that's what the dull side is for. It's only one-sided." With that Goon thought as to how to confuse his opponent, ideas rang through his head like a school bell, so he just went with the flow, instead. He squared up sword in his right hand, it felt different, weird for the most part, so he had it down point towards the ground and dull side towards Bar. Goon wanted to test Bar's reflex first so he lifted the sword, moved his right foot forward slashing, towards bar's stomach. the moment Bar would react it Goon using his left foot would kick towards, his right side.

Unfortunately for Goon, Bar reacted by simply taking the hit on his belly armor, so when Goon kicked, Bar did an Intersection Method on his leg. "I told you, you gotta overwhelm my defense. If you wanna overload the Defensive Matrix, you gotta slash me three times, and then make the fourth one count. Do you know any sword routines or kata?"

(How to calculate weaponry: After the Defensive Matrix debuff, Goon's Strength is 3, and his Speed is 15. The average of those is 9. Adding the Wakizashi's sharpness of 80 gives us 89. Since you need 90 to break through my 40 Armor, Goon misses me by a mere 1. However, after the Defensive Matrix overloads, Goon's buff is 19, and then any hit in the next three posts with the Wakizashi will KO me, before the Defensive Matrix resets. Unfortunately, after V6, kunai is not enough to even get through the armor, so it is useless in this fight. How much damage does the wakizashi do to the armor's health, though?)

One feature of the armor that Bar was curious to test was turning the Defensive Matrix off in certain situations, so that when they over-committed, trying to punch through the field that was not there, they over-extended. And since exploiting over-extensions was the point of the Intersection Method...

With Goon's help, Bar continued to practice the Intersection Method. But one problem kept coming up, again and again: Without the armor padding, Bar lacked the callouses necessary to perform the Intersection Method without hurting himself, with really bad failures leading to him hitting his ulnar nerve, more commonly known as the funny bone, or getting a Charlie Horse, as Goon called it, which Bar did not get at all. The breakthrough came when Bar remembered another Gentle Fist technique that protected the user while not sacrificing offense, the Twin Lion Fists. Bar didn't need the full coverage or the extended duration of the full technique, he just needed to cover his elbows and knees for the split-second that he was performing the strike. It helped that Bar had learned and practiced the Heavenly Rotation earlier, because the same concepts applied.

First, Bar concentrated on forming a small chakra shield around his right palm. At first, it resembled a sort of mist, then an oblong ball, but Bar wasn't going for the Rasengan, today. After a bit of experimentation, he managed to achieve a half-sphere. Messing around with the half-sphere turned it into a concave lens, that gradually got thinner and harder the more he experimented with chakra shaping. Finally, Bar was satisfied with the look of the thing, and attempted transferring it to his right elbow. Bar pretty much had to start all over as he taught that tenketsu the necessary precision, then his left elbow, then each knee. The knee-shields came out looking a bit like a knee-cap at first, which Bar found to be interesting. Was there potential to make a Gentle-Fist-based Amaterasu...? Attempts to use the defensive technique using only elbows or only knees served to give everyone an unscheduled Laugh Break, but Bar discovered that cross-limb Intersection Methods had definite potential. Bar experimented with sending a needle of chakra to strike a tenketsu through the mini-shield, and adding a spike to his shield that stuck as he struck, and found that both methods had merits, and filed them away for later experimentation with future Gentle Fist techniques. After that, it was a simple matter of training two tenketsu to fire at the same time while also coordinating elbow and knee to strike, a trivial task for someone who had learned the Heavenly Rotation.

After Bar repaired them, an easy matter as Bar had done this before as part of a "mission," Bar also put in time on the wooden man post, just as Goon did, but Bar kept getting distracted by the lack of tenketsu on the dead wood, which resulted in some painful lessons on timing his elbow to go down while his knee came up. Eventually, Bar simply stuck targets in the appropriate spots, and hit those. Bar was able to practice much faster and harder, since the chakra-sensitive targets were MADE to absorb chakra, and release them as audible "PAK!" sounds, without breaking. Bar found that keeping the Defensive Matrix off until he was ready to strike, and thereby widen openings, was the best strategy. It made sense, considering the possibility for the Defensive Matrix to overload. Bar wondered if there was a way to bypass that, such as draining the chakra into his own system, or into a Chakra Capacitor or something.

When defending against weaponry, Bar found that he either had to block the weapon with the armor, or knock it out of his hands with the Heavenly Rotation, then exploit attempts to retrieve the weapon with the Intersection Method. Bar simply ignored shuriken and kunai, as those would not get through his armor. The gloves also featured in a few attempts to catch the blade, and wrench it out of Goon's hands. Bar was aware that trying to do this with a Fire or Lightning Blade would be ill-advised, but he was practicing a hand-variant of the Intersection Method, but the blade simply absorbed the chakra, without breaking. Ah, well. Two steps forward, one step back, as the saying went.

Inwardly, Bar decided that if he ever taught his own student in the Gentle Fist, he would teach them the Intersection Method, then the Heavenly Rotation. Bar wondered why nobody, including Haru, had taught him about or how to defend against Eight Gates-style Taijutsu, and inwardly resolved to surpass his master in this. Privately, Bar decided to name this new integrated Taijutsu style, the Gentle Fist: Humane Style, or the Humane Fist for short. Was there a way for him to learn all the Taijutsu in the world, and be acknowledged as the Supreme Taijutsu Master? Bar hoped that the spirits of the legendary Taijutsu Masters of the ancient past approved of his desires, and granted him luck and success. If not... Well, Rock Lee fell down and got back up again and again, after all.

With this new Humane Fist, Bar considered techniques that he now had access to. He had to find someone who could teach him more Taijutsu, and not just Gentle Fist. Perhaps a trip to Kumogakure, with the Tenkage's permission? Bar wondered, not for the first time, why Tengakure and Kumogakure had split up. It would make this kind of travel so much more convenient...

With Taijutsu covered, Bar considered the kind of enemies he might have to fight. Ninjutsu wasn't so bad, just overwhelm the opponent with fast attacks so they couldn't use hand-seals, exhaust their Stamina, and seal their tenketsu. Genjutsu was a definite problem, especially if he had to fight them one-on-one. Most Genjutsu was visually-based, but the legendary Sannin Jiraiya and one of Orochimaru's lackeys had a sound-based one. Bar regretted that the Tech Shop hadn't restocked the Genjutsu breakers, as those would've been perfect. Bar considered using something else to blind or obstruct vision that wouldn't affect him, and settled on using a combination of Smoke Bombs, Byakugan, and some sort of Wind Release to counter the inevitable someone trying to blow it away. Of course, now he had to find someone to teach him Wind Release...

Bar thought he had a good handle on Weaponry Ninja, based on his fights against Goon, but he heard rumors of another Genin or two who was much stronger, and had much better gear. He'd have to go out and observe them, and figure out how to beat them.

After going to the tournament a few times, Bar also had to consider how to use a team to beat a Chuunin or better. Worst case scenario, Bar and his team would have to beat Haru himself, now that he was on guard against his own Gentle Fist. Too many unknown variables, against Bar not knowing all that Haru was capable of. Bar resolved to go out and make friends with more of the other Genin, and learn what they had to teach, without giving up too much of what he also could do. Bar's Byakugan would be busy for a while...

(*Sings.* Say something, I'm giving up on you... Just kidding, it's been a busy week for me, too. XP)
((Claiming 2032 WC for Intersection Method and since Humane Fist was approved, claiming that, too.))
(((Personal note: Total WC for Bar=6095)))