even moar training yo!

Hysterio thought there was nothing cooler than to be able to point at someone and make them see terrifying illusions. No, really and truly! He had heard of Uchiha Itachi and his genjutsu prowess, he wished to be able to do the same. From the historical depictions from when Itachi, one of the few good Uchiha to ever exist, had visited his home village of Konohagakure after “defecting”, it seemed he had merely to point his finger at someone and when they saw it they were caught in a maze of horrifying illusions. This was most likely a feat of chakra control. His finger likely was used to control chakra, similar to the wand used by wizards in fantasy genre stories. To activate the genjutsu he merely had to point his finger, and attack the opponents when they looked at it, concentrating his chakra in that one moment. He assumed it could also work when he used it on other parts of his body but that would require more chakra control than he truly had, and that was unlikely to be easy, if anything it would be harder than he wanted. When the user pointed their index finger at the target, they concentrated their chakra and used it to obscure the senses of anyone foolish enough or ignorant as to the effects of the genjutsu, who looked at the casting finger. When he used it, it would detach the target from the physical world, and trap them I the world of illusions. They would see images of the user’s choosing, which would often be of the target being tortured or such, the images being at the disgression of the user. The situations could be many, it appeared this was a handy way to try to make someone confess to something under rather extreme duress, of course only if they were prevented from realizing it was a genjutsu and trying to break free, though that could easily be arranged to be prevented. The images were in fact so realistic that the target would be completely unaware of their surroundings until they escaped the illusion. The illusions were rather easy to manipulate as the user pleased, and they could be altered to even be in sync with actions the user did in the actual real life, while their opponent was largely helpless. That would be perfect for some people to learn, such as Xyxer, former Tenkage and soon to be Mizukage, assuming the events, the “party” at Kumogakure went smoothly, as it appeared torturing people to make the mythical prisons of Alcatraz, Guantanamo, and Sing-Sing look tame, like Barbie doll houses, was something he liked doing. Hysterio might end up picking up a few “bad” habits too while he was at it, if he was not careful. He wanted to fix a few bad habits of his own that primarily had to do with him being too nice to bad people, perhaps he could learn something from Xyxer then.

He remembered briefly and then buried the thought – the Ephermal genjutsu was able to put those under its influence for long enough, to sleep. They might wake up later when others had left, if they were lucky. Or they might not wake up, period. That would be the slightly less desirable This meant Hysterio Shinkou better be the one who was actually trying to cast the genjutsu, not the one caught in it. Otherwise there would be trouble and those precious village documents Xyxer, Former Tenkage and potential Mizukage, had entrusted to him might disappear forever. He needed to stay alive so he better get learning this genjutsu. He felt that he was just slightly more than one fifth of the way towards learning the genjutsu but he needed to practice a lot of chakra control. He tried concentrating the chakra in his finger but found it difficult to visualize internally to do successfully. He started again, and tried to break it down into steps. He started off by going and doing the Wind Release: Chakra Blade technique, but only on his hand, forming a small blade of white colored chakra that extended in all directions from his hand. His hand was not covered in a small white cloak of chakra, it was covered in a relatively larger and noticeable one compared to the pitiful examples he had tried to make before. He debated internally whether it was more important to try to eliminate the element of the chakra running through the hand he was using, or to control the size of the bunch of chakra that was concentrated on his hand. On the one hand, he was seriously wasting energy with the un needed addition of the elements. Now that he looked closer he could see not only the wind element but also the earth element mixed in there, and that was no good. He was not sure what kind of effect the elements might have on the Ephermal genjutsu if used in tandem, but if it was not planned there was a reasonable chance something would go wrong, likewise if the Shinkou clan element, the Yuumei, were to be infused unintentionally, especially the Yuumei due to its anti-chakra properties that occurred ominously naturally. That was important. So was the fact that he was not yet able to control his chakra such that it would only appear on a single finger. That also would require some work, as to cast the genjutsu he had to stockpile a lot of action onto the single finger and release it like a dam inserted into a mountain gorge. The dam had to be extra strong and capable of holding back a lot of water, or in this case, chakra, else it spill prematurely and in an uncontrolled fashion. That would be potentially disastrous as well and he needed to prevent that.

Hysterio thought about the two and tried to decide between the two of them. Unsure, even about how to decide, he decided to play ro-sham-bo, or Rock Paper, Scissors as others knew the game to be called. He called out into the clear morning air “One… Two… Three!” his hands waved through the air. Two scissors, that reminded him of swords for some reason, stared at each other for some reason. It seemed his mind was very uncoordinated and was not able to simultaneously come to two different decisions on the same matter, in the same instant. That was ok, others were not able to either. He would have to get stronger so that he too could do the impossible, cause not being able to do the impossible kind of sucked, if he was completely honest with himself. He pulled out a coin, and decided “Heads” will be for elements. “Tails” will be for the changing the scope of the chakra used to activate the genjutsu. He flipped the coin. The coin flipped through the air. He waited. The coin did not return. He waited. The coin did not return. He waited even more. The coin did not return still. After a few minutes he figured that by divine providence the coin had decided to give up the ghost and would not be returning any time soon. A pity really, as that value of coin would easily buy him a pig’s blood and pickle sandwich. Suprisingly, whenever people asked him about food, it was always the pickles that surprised him, never the pig’s blood. That or it took a few brief moments for the shock from the pig’s blood to step into their feeble little minds and distract them by the time he mentioned anything to do with pickles and the sandwich having any relation to eachother. Well, whatever, he could always come up with something else to talk about again. The coin hit him on the head. He rubbed his head ruefully, glad that he would be able to buy himself lunch later. It occurred to him that whatever result the coin had had when it fell, or rather, whatever result it would have had, it was now ruined because it had fallen on his head. He would have to try again. He sighed, unhappy about this fact but nevertheless determined to get this done and over with. It occurred to him that he might have to tone down the coin flipping a little, he had gotten a lot stronger recently and that maybe, just maybe, he had flung the coin higher than he had intended, more than the 20 feet that he would have previously moved it. He tried again, flinging the coin with less energy. The coin came flying through the air and nearly poked him in the eye but his reaction speed was fairly high and he was able to dodge the unintended attack, the coin nearly giving him a hair cut instead. He dodged backwards to avoid the hurtling miniature meteor that was his coin previously. He watched as it made a spinning flip and ended its path on the ground, in the one patch that was relatively flat. He watched the dust settle and stared in disbelief. The coin, had fallen, against all odds, on top of a twig, and was wedged in securely, obviously on its edge to anyone’s eyes. Wow. He was starting to wonder whether he would need to just try to do both eliminating the elements and using only the basic chakra, as well as reducing the scope to his finger, at once. He would give it one last try and then he would give up and do just that, much as he hated to admit it.

He flipped the coin of fate, and watched it go down the throat of a badger. Infuriated, he chased the little bugger, and hit it over the head with a branch he had cut off of a tree with his bare hand as he ran by. The badger eventually coughed up the coin again, and Hysterio cleaned it in the nearest bathroom he could find. Stepping back out onto the training ground, he flipped the coin. The coin spun, and landed. Heads first huh. Finally he knew which way to go. He could not help but notice though, that the sun had progressed through the sky quite noticeably, and that it was going to be less time than he had hoped to be able to practice the genjutsu. Time flew huh. He had spent longer than intended trying to decide how he would go about training and had ended up not training as much as he could and should have. That was rather unfortunate, frankly, and it was a mistake he hoped to not repeat later. He used the Wind Release: Chakra Blade technique, determined to take the elements out of it and reduce it back to the regular chakra variant. This was harder than you would have thought because he was extremely used to doing this jutsu and as a result the addition of the wind element, and sometimes the earth element too when he was not paying attention, proved rather annoying. He needed to focus. He took a deep breath and did just that, focusing and attempting to clear the wind part of the Wind Release: Chakra Blade so that it was instead just a normal Chakra Infusion skill type technique usually seen among the jounin of any nation due to its usefulness. It took a lot of struggling and experimentation but eventually he was able to get it down to just the wind element, no earth element involved. Some more practicing, a lot of grunting, and much straining physically and mentally, while looking extremely constipated without actually being extremely constipated, he managed to get the wind element out as well. The result was a largely translucent blade that he wished he could refine further but for the time being he had no time nor the ability too. Making complicated jutsu that were essentially hiden techniques that nobody else knew of, took time and effort and he was not going to bother. Not at all. He was not going to go down that road uet, well, that was not true. He had made some genjutsu that were now taught to the other Shinkou that studied genjutsu, as well, so they were not truly his own anymore, never mind the fact that he had not learned how to do one of the genjutsu he had invented and passed around, conceptually at least. That was a sticking point he was not happy about, frankly.

He took a deep breath again, and tried activating the Wind Release: Chakra Blade without having the wind or earth elements present, and he succeeded rather handily. He then turned his attention to trying to focus his chakra onto a single index finger. He tried to reduce the scale of the thing he was doing without reducing the power significantly, which was hard. He was trying to reduce the output of chakra in most of his hand and simultaneously increase that in his single index finger. This was harder than he had thought. Sweat rolled down the young genin’s face as he concentrated, his body producing more heat than was necessary and making him wish he could have a shower soon. Maybe he would but first he had to learn this genjutsu or he would not be getting very far would he? He frowned, and concentrated like he had on the day of his final exam in the last grade of normal school he had attended. His eye brows furrowed frightening away several nearby caterpillars and causing a flock of birds to take off and fly away into the distance. He slowlymanaged to get the chakra output to be limited to just that one area of his body, his index finger, which to his chakra sensing eyes, glowed a little still. Good. He had managed it once, now he just needed to be able to project chakra from that one part of his body, consistently. He tried to do the variant of that first jutsu again, and this time he managed to get his body to project chakra off of that one little area of his body called the index finger. Great. Now from there he just had to practice hitting people metaphorically with the genjutsu, by projecting the chakra from his index finger and disrupting and manipulating the target’s nervous system instead.

He needed a variety of test subjects for this and he was not about to use his duck summons. He looked around for some local bandits to beat up, so he could work off a little steam while he was at it. He had a lot of throwable missiles, and they were fairly weak and slow. It was a fairly simple matter for him to defeat them all by throwing weapons that stabbed them and caused flesh wounds, or merely pinned their clothing to the ground or trees such that they could not move. Well, mostly not move, and they were entirely able to scream, which only added to the effects of the illusions, Hysterio just needed to alter their hearing so that the screams sounded like that of others being tortured, he doubted they would be able to tell the different screams of agony and fear apart after a while, he was sure he would not.
He walked up to the first of the bandits. All of them could see him but only the one directly in front was able to actually see his finger that he pointed. He projected his chakra from his finger targeting the senses of the captured bandit, and messing with his mind. He unleashed all kinds of horrors on the captive’s mind, attempting to learn how to control what they saw as he did so. The other bandits did not know that he was learning though and assumed he was merely toying with the first victim and taking his time. This was good, for inspiring fear, knowledge that he was figuring things out would have been… bad. It would have made practice for this genjutsu a lot harder if they were not as frightened by the illusions now would it. The first one began frothing at the mouth and eventually fainted.

Hsyterio left him where he was and walked over to the next one, who began to try to shrink away to no avail. Hysterio pointed at him and cast the Ephermal Genjutsu again. This time he tried to cause extra amounts of pain, as opposed to those merely imagined by the target. This was surprisingly easy, and came naturally to Hysterio. The bandits were not amused and began quivering in terror. Unfortunately he did not get much practice from the second bandit.

The third bandit was no more determined to get out of this alive. Hysterio decided to do another experiment. He picked up a rock, pointed at the bandit, and cast the Ephermal Genjutsu again. This time he tried to make it look like Hysterio was going to stuff rocks down the bandit’s throat until he exploded literally. He listened carefully to the man’s whimpering and used that to judge whether he was doing a good job. General screaming meant he was inaccurate in his illusion making, screaming specifically pertaining to not doing bad things with the rocks meant that the illusion was working. It was fortunate that the remaining bandits were not able to see what was going on and would thus assume the threats were real, not that Hysterio could not kill them if he wanted to already.

The remaining bandits dwindled, as Hysterio spent his time mentally torturing them. On the last two, he tested out the ability to make them fall asleep after a long enough session. This was different from just them passing out from fear, as this was controlled, like having a parachute when jumping off a cliff instead of free-falling. Eventually, after the last of them had fallen unconscious, by Hysterio’s own design, he ate their food and walked off, leaving them all there after recovering his weapons from their bodies.

*****
(total word count: 3016, claiming: +15 stats, 3000/3000 towards http://naruto-role-play-rpg.forumotion.com/t22883-ephermal)