Moar Training!

Hysterio was frantically practicing his jutsu to prepare for the so called “party” at Kumogakure, he would be crashing the “event” uninvited along with his boss, and apparently the self proclaimed Tenkage, probably just an irate former superior or partner of Xyxer’s who resented his position. That or perhaps he would be keeping the title of Tenkage as a honorary title, while Xyxer was still the Mizukage, and leader of the current people from Tengakure. Hysterio could live with that, he had had science teachers with worse egos, though they tended to not make physical threats, merely academic ones, not that academic threats were to be ignored either, you could fail a class and retake a whole year for crying out loud! In any case, judging by how Xyxer had looked when he was talking about a party, Hysterio was willing to bet that it would not be a welcoming party, at least not the kind most people would have had in mind. From other people he had talked to after moving, it sounded like the Tenkage was bloodthirsty, which made Hysterio Shinkou, recent immigrant, wonder why he was able to talk to Xyxer, without being troubled so much by immense amounts of pain, the threats from the other older boy aside. Hysterio did not trust him and resolved to ask who he thought was his boss about this other fellow. He wondered what kind of relationship they had, and he did not mean the romantic kind. He did not want dotted line bosses, he had to know who was in charge and who followed who, and so on, then operating for them would be much easier. Until then…

Yeah…

Hysterio picked up his sword and thought over the various jutsu he knew. Of all of them, he figured the Body Flicker was pretty useful, and while it only required a single handseal, he would need it in specific moments, specifically when he was trying to escape someone or something, and as such he did not care so much what he was using so long as he got the heck out of dodge. What he needed to do was learn to manipulate the chakra in his body so that he could stimulate his body without having to make the handseal, then he could react as fast as possible, achieving near instantaneous teleportation when he would move, by using most of his chakra reserves to move. Too bad he was not able to cut things short or such as the Body Flicker was not without its weaknesses. He had a fairly high chakra level and was capable of performing quite high level techniques but he knew he could always improve and get better, he knew he did not even come close to holding a candle to the raw power displayed by the self proclaimed Tenkage, whose name he had never caught. Hysterio wondered if it was a name that implied megalomania, or kleptomania, it would be funny if the “Tenkage”’s name was something like a word based on “rob”, “conquer” or maybe even “take”. How ironic would that be, huh?

He decided to focus, he had very little time on his way out to the sea, as Xyxer wanted him and the “Tenkage” to meet up with him there, to regroup before heading out to Kumogakure, in the land of Lightning. He did the Body Flicker jutsu slowly, attempting to memorize the way he manipulated the chakra when he used the single Ram hand seal to move his chakra around. Being naturally analytical, he tried to ascertain what was happening but was stumped. He had no clue why. He tried looking at things from the top down, and slowly came to a realization. When he used the hand seal, it was actually a way for him to visualize his chakra more easily, the hand position working like a pneumonic device to which he would associate different patterns of chakra movement. If he could understand this idea, this new concept of his better, then he could get a lot stronger and fast at that, as well. He might be able to do this for other jutsu as well, if he understood the process well enough, that would work for the medical and genjutsu arts, not so much the weaponry ones though. The weaponry techniques TENDED to not be chakra based, though he knew at least one that most certainly was.

He continued practicing, attempting to stem the flow of thoughts from his brain, and focus on eliminating waste in his movement. He made the Ram hand seal, trying to notice how his chakra naturally flowed. At first, it was indecipherable, and the pattern most certainly was not always the same. After trying it many times though, not the whole jutsu, just the handseal, he noticed that the chakra tended to have certain, well, not patterns, something bigger, the flows seemed to have certain guidelines, and he might just be able to replicate these patterns.

Hysterio tried not using the Ram hand seal, now that he understood this idea better. While it was likely impossible to exactly match the immediate patterns, of the chakra flow within the tenketsu of the human body, it should be possible to imitate the patterns of the patterns, the overall guidelines that the patterns always followed. Cautiously, as if he was about to open a package that might quite just possibly have a live bomb, he tried imitating the Ram seal, without doing the Ram seal, using the resulting chakra flow to stimulate his muscles. It worked. Too well. When he then tried moving to a spot 25 meters away, he overshot and slammed into the wall that was 30 meters away. Ouch. He rubbed his head ruefully but he realized he had also achieved a rather important milestone that might well be unique among all of the ninjas in the world, the breakdown of chakra control. Perhaps he would be able to do crazy stuff like casting jutsu from different fingers, similar to Sasori of the Red Sand with his methods of controlling puppets!

*****
(total word count: 1017, claiming +5 stats and 1000 towards Mastering Body Flicker (no handseals, halved ap cost), if this is not ok for some reason i will just take the stats and not worry about applying the wc towards something else)

Sorry but body flicker can't be mastered

if this is because there is a blank instead of a yes/no for mastery, it might be nice to add a footnote somewhere stating that blank=no/nothing, otherwise people may well assume that because it is not specified, it is "yes"