the epic of Hysterio pt 4 (solo training)

Hysterio had been talking with the Ducks, and one of them seemed to think that Hysterio would be an interesting person to train and battle alongside. His name: Frank Sinatra. He was a rather interesting duck that liked leeks, and ate them on a pretty regular basis. The leeks he did not eat, he utilized as weapons, much like short staffs or blunt swords for a normal person. The small duck had gained quite the reputation as a swordsman, however, despite being one of the smallest of the Giant Ducks, only a meter tall with a wingspan also of 1 meter.

To describe this duck would take many words. Hysterio stood there, taking all the details in, not just the size of his potential training partner, but also the other details. He wanted to be able to sense if the summon was an imposter or not instantly, and know if anything was wrong. Hysterio’s eyes wandered over the duck, committing every detail to memory. The duck was a ostensibly brown duck, but his feathers were so light colored it seemed that calling it grey would be far more correct depending on the lighting. The only consistently brown part of Frank Sinatra was his eyes. While the majority of its body was a light brown, close to tan as well, its underbelly was a nice creamy white, that was fairly eye catching for some reason. Hysterio found himself wondering how the duck would taste on steamed buns. The feathers themselves were very fine, so fine that they looked like fur if viewed from any reasonable distance away. A quite odd creature, in fact. Frank Sinatra, potential duck race training partner of Hysterio, was also given by someone a V shape on his forehead, reminiscent of a pair of knotted eyebrows. The V shape was black as night, and it made Frank Sinatra often look like he was frowning at someone or something, or at least concentrating. It was almost comical, and Hysterio buried his urge to laugh inside his mind, not letting any such abnormal emotions cross his face. Frank Sinatra, like most ducks, had a light orange beak and webbed feet. Nothing interesting there. His feathers that reminded most people of fur for many reasons including the texture, fine-ness, thickness, and such, aside from its water repelling properties, stuck up on his head, similar to the bed heads found on many a human after an unintended nap. Three large tufts formed of extremely fine feathers, no, that was impossible. Those had to be 3 large feathers that stuck up on his head in that manner. Between the feathers that stood up on Frank Sinatra’s head, and the eyebrows, it always looked a little like he had just woken up and was not happy about it. Comparatively speaking, Frank Sinatra’s head was rather large in fact, similar proportioning to that of a human toddler, his head about half the size of his torso somehow. How he was able to fly despite his short wings, Hysterio was not sure, but he was not going to question it in case the duck suddenly lost the ability as a result. Hysterio had seen far weirder things going on. The tail meanwhile, while normally a device used by most bird’s bodies as they flew to regulate the air stream and currents and what not, Frank Sinatra seemed to have a naturally shorter tail. It was interesting how short it was, his feet and his beak were both bigger than his tail, by a fair proportion. The tail was too short, like the bumblebee it seemed Frank Sinatra was an abnormality of nature that might have been forgotten about and was approved to fly anyway. Frank Sinatra also had very interesting wings. Hysterio would have loved to look at the wings in greater detail, perhaps with a book of anatomy alongside. The wings were probably the most interesting feature of Frank Sinatra. Frank Sinatra was able to hold stuff with his wings. Most people could hold stuff with their hands, but relied on a thumb. Frank Sinatra, duck extraordinaire, was able to hold the same stuff using prehensile wings. Be “prehensile” was not meant like the wings of most birds. Most birds would only be able to use their wings to fly, and perhaps hit people. Frank Sinatra was able to move each of the three segments of his wings like fingers on a hand, making Hysterio wonder if in fact, they really were hands, and the feathers were just a disguise. The wings were too small and heavy looking to be able to make him fly, but if Frank Sinatra was a good swordsman, perhaps he had strong and dense muscles that somehow solved the equation of flight for him. Otherwise it made no sense. Anyway, each of the wings seemed to have long sections, split off, and each able to move independently. Cool. The feathers on the wings of Frank Sinatra were the same color as those on the rest of his body, save for his underbelly. His legs were yellow sort of. The wings though, it was said he was able to wield weapons and possibly other items just like a normal person. He could imagine that happening, Frank Sinatra could probably throw stuff too while nature was at it, considering what else he was able to do. Frank Sinatra was easy to get along with since he said nothing the entire time when Hysterio spoke, but that is a small detail that should be left for later. The wings were quite the engineering marvel, and Hysterio wondered whether the bones inside were hollow like those of most birds, or more solid if he was able to hold weapons so easily.

Hysterio had finished his physical examination of Frank Sinatra, having obtained all these details in the space of a few seconds, his eyes sweeping his new acquaintance up and down, no evil thoughts entering his pure and mostly normally just mind. No, really. Why would he get with a duck? Shame on you for even thinking about that, and the issue was not that the duck was male. To get back on topic, Hysterio observed other mannerisms of the duck friend he was trying to make. As stated earlier, Frank Sinatra did not seem to be a talker, at least no in human language, something that was relatively unique among the Giant ducks as pretty much everyone else there could speak to humans normally. Hysterio tried to get him to talk for quite a while, but eventually it was quite apparent that while Frank Sinatra was quite the genial duck, like most of his race, he was unable to speak the human language, though other ducks were able to understand him quite well. Instead he talked in quacks, which was quite understandable considering Frank Sinatra’s heritage, and Hysterio was not going to looka gift horse, er, duck, in the mouth and turn down help The boss wanted to go to Kumogakure and he needed to make sure he was as strong as possible. Having help would make him much, much stronger. Frank Sinatra could fly which was good. Walking however, unlike for most ducks, seemed to be his forte. He was able to walk at regular speeds like a human. His flight was not his strong point however. Frank Sinatra was also able to break into bird song when he was happy. The rest of the time, if he wanted to do something besides nodding his head (for saying yes) or shaking his head (which meant no, just like with humans), if he had any kind of complicated idea that would be much too difficult to act out through charades like at a party, he had a rather obvious way of communicating. He always, ALWAYS had a leek on him, which Frank Sinatra seemed to use for, well, everything. If he wanted to communicate with a human in any meaningful or complicated way, he would hold the leek ham-handed in one wing and scrawl on the ground until everyone understood. He was ok at it but honestly Hysterio began to think that maybe he needed to get an artist, or maybe someone or something who had telepathy skills so that he could communicate better with this nice fellow. Fortunately, this was one of his only flaws, aside from an almost nonexistent chakra signature. He was able to swim quite well, and go underwater for a significant amount of time, reasonably efficiently, having practiced diving underwater a lot in his youth. He was also able to fly, and did not like anyone who hated leeks themselves, so fortunately for their potential partnership, Hysterio was actually fairly partial to leeks.

It seemed Frank Sinatra had several abilities, that would be directly helpful in combat. He had been working on a single weaponry based technique that involved using his leek both as his mental support and his physical weapon. In this attack he would swing his leek at an amazingly fast speed, capable of disemboweling a watermelon in the blink of an eye, a single accurate cut that was capable of destroying many things that it impacted. Cool. For some reason Frank Sinatra felt this should be called “Leek Slap” instead of something that would sound more… I dunno, something that sounded more like a melee attack, like “Sky Slicer” or something, “Leek Slap” sounded tame in Hysterio’s opinion. Still, he had seen it several times now in person and he did NOT want to be on the receiving end, so no complaints from him. Frank Sinatra also had a couple of other combat related abilities. He was able to summon the leeks with which he did so many things and depended so heavily on. For some unspecified reason he did not ever have more than two on his body at a time, but he was able to make more than he needed and give them to others, for a limited amount of time. When he left so did the rather abnormal leeks, capable of denting the Tenkage’s desk it seemed. Anyways, he was able to summon leeks onto his person though this only applied to ones in storage, not including ones he had already summoned. He also was able to release reserves of energy stored within himself. The end result was that he got much, much stronger and faster, even more so than when he used the weaponry based technique with his plant based weapon. Nobody could say he was not as ecologically unfriendly as the poison or puppetry users. Just for kicks, Hysterio had tried placing a Mark Seal on Frank when he activated the release once, and noticed that he himself could also be boosted in speed and strength, though this did place a noticeably greater burden on Frank Sinatra. It was something he would not use unless absolutely necessary.

Upon further conversing with Frank Sinatra, duck leek weapon master extraordinaire, it appeared that there were many other ducks just like Frank Sinatra, and they had a name for themselves as a race that sounded like “far fetched” or such, Hysterio was not quite sure. The thing was, Frank Sinatra had gotten lost at one point while migrating, and had not been able to find his way back to the rest of his group and as such had moved in with the ducks instead. All of his race were similar to him, their name for their species seemed to be a joking reference to the many abnormalities abounding among their race. While a few of them could talk to humans directly, almost all of them appearance and physiologically speaking, were pretty much the same as Frank Sinatra, though it seemed that he was by far the best at singing. They made nests like most birds, but the nests were made of… leeks. Yes, leeks, like the ones Frank Sinatra was able to summon. It appeared that leeks were a vital part of their society, being used for everything from eating, cooking, sleeping, fighting, walking, and as mental support, being a stand in for the human’s stuffed animal. Good stalks could fetch quite the price it seemed, bad ones, not so much. The class of leeks carried by a member of Frank’s species could well be used to determine their class in society. They all had keen eyes and it was hard to avoid their gaze. Due to their training, they would not flinch if hit, being able to attack quite easily despite taking hits. The hardy creatures tended to become revitalized if the opponents tried to intimidate them, this sometimes led to ridiculous situations whereupon one of Frank Sinatra’s species would get into an argument with another. One of them would get and try to intimidate the other. The other duck would be offended, get more pumped up, and would intimidate the first one. This series of pumping up the opponent might last for some time, and it seemed many had anger management issues when dealing with others of their own race, for this very reason.

Hysterio was satisfied having learned much about Frank Sinatra’s past and present and family and so on. It was time to get on with their mission, assigned to Hysterio as always by a certain Dreary Duck, Counselor of the village in the land of Ducks. Go figure. Hysterio and Frank Sinatra had been assigned to find and defeat a certain ninja pig, called the Erymanthian Boar, and bring him back for questioning, after an attempted robbery on a local farm supply unit. On the way to the last known location of the Erymanthian Boar, Hysterio and Frank Sinatra encountered an old schoolmate of Hysterio Shinkou’s. This boy had fallen on hard times, mostly because of his underage drinking. He had many compatriots it seemed, and all of them were hopeless drunkards now. Hysterio prayed inwardly, despite not believing in any god save for those among shinobi, that he would never end up this way. Frank Sinatra made a gesture crossing where his heart would have been if he were human, which Hysterio understood to mean something similar in intent. The former classmate of Hysterio was dead drunk and in need of Ryo, serious amounts of cold hard cash, but he was not gonna ask an old classmate without a good reason, he had that much honor remaining in him at least. The others though, not so much. Hysterio had to attack them using the extra weapons he had used on a previous mission for the ducks, that had been dipped in the blood of the Learnean Hydra, and many of the attackers died pitiful meaningless deaths even if only barely scratched. Worried, Hysterio cleaned off the blood from the remainder of the weapons that had been dipped in the blood of the Learnean Hydra, not wanting to use such weapons again unless necessary. Lo and behold, the Ninja Park Ranger Association returned, and took the extra weapons off of Hysterio’s hands anyway, warning him to make sure to be ecologically friendly. The warning was friendly and only half of the association had large menacing weapons drawn when they spoke with him. Hysterio had no aptitude for ninjutsu but he now had extra reasons to not delve into that field. Meanwhile, his old classmate led the remainder of the group of homeless drunkards all the way to the Land of Snow, where they apparently died a cold old shivering death a little later, too bad none of them dried up and became sober. Hysterio’s old classmate had pricked his hand on one of the poisoned weapons and died a painful death, unfortunately, though not before questioning Hysterio as to his mission. Upon hearing who Hysterio and his duck race friend were hunting, Hysterio’s old classmate wrote down some information on a piece of paper about the Erymanthian boar, and gave it to Hysterio. That was the last time Hysterio saw his classmate, as was stated before. He only heard the news from one of the other ducks, later, and was not happy.

A footnote on the “other ducks issue”. This is not a typo or an extra word inserted into the narrative of the epic of Hysterio Shinkou, wanna be genjutsu master. No, it is truth. See, when he signed the contract to be able to summon ducks, and in turn be summoned by them, out of combat it seemed, the ducks accepted him as a brother, a new entry to be listed on their roster. Now, that was awesome, and made Hysterio feel like he was being a cannibal whenever he wondered how roast duck would taste between steamed buns. He comforted himself with the thought of having a pig’s blood and pickle sandwich from the tourist store that sold actual tourists, in the village in the land of Ducks! Well, that would have to wait though, he would have to bring back some barbeque pork soon, even if he had no fire jutsu. He finished rambling for the time being and put up his case of hysterical hysterio themed stuff in the mental shop of his mind, and began arguing with his Yuumei on how to best hunt the Erymanthian Boar.

The yuumei inside him won the argument when it pointed out that the entire argument was baseless and stupid if Hysterio did not know anything about the Erymanthian boar besides its heritage. Mollified, Hysterio began reading the piece of paper. Hmmm… It stated that the Erymanthian Boar did not like snow and was afraid of the cold. Hysterio began to wonder whether this was because perhaps the Erymanthian Boar had been captured and brought into a meat processing building and was nearly killed in a meat locker or something, as the stuff that had been stolen and later found destroyed, were ice packs, and cutting implements. Interesting. Maybe this was a case of PTSD or such. Perhaps if Hysterio drew his weapons it might get dangerous, if possible he would try to subdue the Erymanthian Boar with genjutsu instead. An evil idea began to take root in Hysterio’s mind. Perhaps he would be able to genjutsu the boar and make him think he was trapped hopelessly and about to be slaughtered and made into bacon…. He chuckled at the thought, and decided it was too evil to be used in modern warfare. He shelved the thought and finished reading the rest of the paper, which confirmed his suspicions about the boar having tusks and a lot of hair as well.

Frank Sinatra, duck extraordinaire, seemed to agree with Hysterio so the two of them respectfully folded up the piece of paper and put it away in one of their rucksacks. Then the journey to find this fellow began. It started out lame as, well, a lame duck, and Frank Sinatra did not seem to notice any unintended allusions to anything, which was good. Hysterio was not going to unintentionally break up any relationships prematurely, now. That would be bad and rather annoying. Hysterio searched for signs of the Erymanthian Boar, but was unable to find any. Fortunately, Frank Sinatra, and his way with other birds, was able to charm some into giving him info and it turned out that the Erymanthian boar guy was rolling in a nearby mud puddle about 20 meters away. So that is what the stench was. Ok, good to know. The two partners snuck up on the pig rolling in the mud. God, that was a lot of bacon Hysterio was looking at, here. He shook his head, trying to clear those thoughts from his mind. That was impolite and he did not want to think about potential cannibalism, even if he liked pig’s blood and pickle sandwiches. Perhaps he would become a vegetarian when this was over. That or he would swear to not eat any ninja animals. Still, he drooled a little… bacon was so good!

He and Frank Sinatra then engaged the Erymanthian Boar, patriarch of a small band of the ninja pigs who did not live in buildings and instead lived like hippies, being exploited as often, in a vicious three way duel. Three way duel, that is, because Frank Sinatra and Hysterio were dueling each other at the same time, so that they could practice fighting multiple opponent. This lasted for some time, mainly stopping because the Erymanthian Boar realized that his opponents were not truly taking him seriously. It was then that Hysterio and Frank Sinatra, rumored to be related to the mafia, found out that the Akimichi clan were not the only ones capable of expansion, though in this case it seemed to be primarily from rage, the gigantic boar’s chest puffing up like a balloon as his fury spilled across the plains. It was kind of intimidating, to be honest. Especially when he crushed a large tree with one hoof, that’s how small everything was in comparison to him, he was so frigging huge and ginormous and… yeah. You could see each individual hair from a distance, he was so large. Huge. He blocked out the sun frankly, from where Hysterio and Frank Sinatra were standing on the ground. Uh-oh. Their fears were confirmed, the giant Erymanthian Boar noticed them, and turned in their direction. It began charging and the two now hapless partners began fleeing. Both of them used every means available to flee the monstrosity, and somehow they were always just slightly ahead of the giant monster. They travelled for many miles, Hysterio using his flickers movement jutsu to speed up his movement, and Frank Sinatra keeping his boosters as long as possible, before hanging on to Hysterio while he recovered his stamina. This lasted for some time, until the two of them jumped over the top of a mountain range, and landed in snow. Ack!

The two “ducks” shivered in the snow, still trying to get away. The giant boar shook the ground as it leaped over, and then landed. Suddenly, the boar disappeared. Huh?

Hysterio walked closer to take a look, and suddenly the giant footprints and the giant cloud of snow that had erupted into the air upon the massive pig’s contact with the ground, were much reduced. What the…. Hysterio and Frank approached where the boar had been and saw just the little pig unconsciousness from the impact of flying through the air for 70 feet. There were no traces of the massive pig that had been chasing them. Hysterio began laughing. They had been taken for fools indeed. They had both been caught under genjutsu and were led to believe that the Erymanthian Boar was much bigger than it actually was. Hysterio learned an important lesson about using genjutsu that day, that very moment. Genjutsu used to make realistic illusions would be easily as effective as the direct attacking genjutsu he had learned. He would keep it in mind for later.

He and Frank Sinatra brought in the boar for questioning, and were immediately pestered by the Ninja Park Ranger Association. The boar had been defeated in the end by the cold of the Land of Snow, not Hysterio and Frank Sinatra, but they had caused it in a way, so nobody minded. When the Counselor Dreary Duck had heard that the boar was defeated, he hid in his half buried storage silo, demanding that the boar was locked up and sent off to the Ninja Park Rangers, who were after him for frightening a lot of wildlife beyond the usual from a fight. That was a rather funny situation and it took a lot of willpower for Hysterio to not crack up at the ridiculous situation.

Hysterio then found some thing, another thing about the ducks, that he had not known before. He had assumed they were all, well, bird brains, and would not be able to play chess, like he could. There were many pictures painted by ducks at the request of ducks, which showed Hysterio and Frank Sinatra playing chess, so to speak, next to a locked up Erymanthian Boar. They sold like hotcakes, enough for Hysterio to be able to stay in a nice hotel for the time which he spent in the area. That was nice.

After a while though, Frank Sinatra wanted to play a real game of chess with Hysterio so they could match wits. Fortunately they both knew Algebraic Notation. The two of them sat down at a chess board and began playing the moves to decide the winner.

Hysterio played the move e4, shifting the pawn on the E file, forward all of 2 squares. He did this because he wanted to claim some room in the middle and if the pawn was attacked, he would be able to reinforce it quickly still at this time. He was curious to see what his opponent might do, depending he might either shift his pawn up north another square, defend it, or bring another piece into play, depending on what the opponent did and what he felt like doing, and what the position looked like. Frank Sinatra played D5, apparently going for a gambit in which he would sacrifice material and attempt to gain it back by stealing the initiative from white, which was Hysterio, if he could. All in all a risk, but one that was sometimes worth taking. It truly depended on both the skill of the person taking the bait, and the person giving it.

Hysterio by taking the pawn, as most would have expected, with his own, e4xd5. There were variations though where white would instead push the pawn, resulting in headaches for the black player. Frank Sinatra did not seem to be able to look ahead with his moves, as he took the pawn right away, with his Queen. Looked good to a novice, but the queen, being the most powerful piece on the board, was perfectly capable of being chased around while Hysterio would develop, as he would proceed to do. Qxd5, and he could not remember the notation that indicated a bad move. It would not change the position though and mattered little in the greater scheme of things.

There was only one obvious move to do. Hysterio moved his knight to c3 (Nc3) and attacked the queen while safely developing a piece, figuring that the opponent would retreat the queen all the way back, but he was wrong. Frank Sinatra moved his queen to d6, stunning Hysterio. That move was silly to any reasonably experienced player. Perhaps Frank Sinatra wanted to keep his queen “active” but this was not only an exposed position for the queen, but it also blocked off one of his bishops from developing. Queen to e6, (checking White’s king) then moving to b6 or Queen to d8 would have been far superior.

The next moves on each side were relatively decent. Hysterio played D4, and the opponent played E5. Developing a knight of his would have been much better in Frank Sinatra’s position though, to say the least.

In the next pair of moves, Hysterio belatedly realized he had made a mistake. He took the opponent’s pawn with his own again, writing down d4xe5, but realized afterwards, as he was writing the moves down, that pushing his pawn to D5 would have been much more entertaining and fun and powerful to play. Oh well. Black (Frank Sinatra) took the pawn as he was kind of forced too, with his Queen (Qd6xe5+).

Hysterio blocked with his queen, moving it to e2. Frank Sinatra had little alternative but to trade queens otherwise being 2-3 pieces entirely behind in development or dropping a piece. At least this way he had the initiative. Hysterio wrote Qe2 and Qe5xe2 down on the paper.

At this point Hysterio could either take the opponent’s queen with his bishop or a knight or two. After a long think he decided to take the Queen with the bishop as the bishop should not be blocked off needlessly for it to be able to project its power all the way down the board. Frank Sinatra tried to be agrgressive and regain the initiative, and moved one of his bishops to B4. Hysterio wrote down the moves as being Bf1xe2, and Bb4. While on paper the bishop and knight were sometimes the same strength it really depended on the situation. In an open game like this it was generally better to keep the bishop around due to the longer range it had and its usefulness in stopping pawns.

Hysterio made a mistake here, and moved his second previously unmoved bishop to defend the knight. He overlooked the fact that doubled pawns are not always bad, and that he was tying down two pieces to fight one, which was silly. If he moved the knight he would lose the bishop and potentially his ability to castle as well. He had done a stupid move and his opponent beat it, by trading his only active piece, the bishop, for Hysterio’s knight. Hysterio wrote down the moves again. Hysterio of course took back using his bishop as intended, and the opponent pushed his F file pawn. That was boneheaded as well, as this ruined the position for castling on that side, its only virtue being to avoid a nasty attack that snagged Frank Sinatra’s rook. However, developing the knight on G8 would have had the same effect for Frank Sinatra while offering the chance to catch up on development instead of dooming himself to a lack of development.

The rest of the game passed in a similar manner. Hysterio and his opponent, duck extraordinaire Frank Sinatra, would each make a blunder every move or every other move, and Hysterio pulled ahead slowly by making slightly less unintelligent moves. Eventually it was plain as day that Frank Sinatra was going to lose and he surrendered.

The two of them analyzed the game while sparring, wooden blades drawn so as to not cause significant injuries should one connect, at least, not AS significant injuries as if they were real blades.

*****
(total word count: 5019
claiming +25 stats
5000/5000 towards http://naruto-role-play-rpg.forumotion.com/t26452-frank-sinatra )