The Juice Box Heroes meet again~!! (p, Shika)

Hado strummed on a guitar as he strolled through the town. So far there did not look to be too many ninja kiddoes walking around, but his plan to be a potential rock star had a chance, if he could convince the locals that playing a guitar like it was a violin was supposed to be appealing. Well, a bad violin. Anyways, yeah, he wandered through the streets. He was attempting to make sparks, he was supposed to have access to this super exclusive clan element thingy that used earth and lightning but he had yet to see this, as his parents had forsaken the ninja life and were decidedly unhelpful when it came to teaching him techniques.

As he played the guitar, now like a mandolin, he searched the area for a familiar face he could pester, that way he could get some advice perhaps on his playing. Of course, he could have started learning to play the guitar by learning about the scales and stuff, or by learning how to read music, but so far he figured plucking at the thin end of the guitar would do, for playing by ear.

Shika paced slowly across the streets of Hoshigakure no Sato, gaze plastered upon a small object clasped in her hand: an ordinary, everyday stick. Her eyes narrowed in concentration as she tried to force chakra through her fingertips into the twig, and seemed to narrow even further when nothing appeared to happen. Damn, she thought to herself, who knew fuuinjutsu could be so hard?

Oh yeah, she could. Freaking mark seals.

She continued to wander along her path, focused solely on making the seal appear upon the stick. As if the entire universe was mocking her, nothing happened. If she could have a single Ryo for every single scrap of chakra she'd wasted trying to make the freaking seal show up, she'd be able to buy out all of Hoshigakure. She scowled once more, forcing more and more chakra into her fingertips until they felt numb and sickly warm. Her eyes perked up as she noticed something change in the texture of the stick, scowl slightly loosening. Did I imagine the small dot that just appeared? She wondered. The stick cracked under the pressure of her chakra-enforced grip. Yep. I totally did, she answered herself, sighing and mentally smacking herself.

She picked up the broken stick once more (well, half of it anyways) and began to try and apply chakra, over and over again. Eventually, she vaguely noticed that she had wandered off again, but she didn't care. It was a matter of pride, now. She continued to force chakra into her hands, and once again, nothing seemed to happen. Am I doing it wrong? Shika wondered to herself, as a thought crossed her mind. She only read about this technique in a scroll she had stolen in her days as a missingnin, and back then, she had been too foolish to understand how useful a jutsu such as the mark seal could be, if used effectively. Tracking people, objects, potentially even human summoning. It was very hard to detect, too. It didn't take a genius to be able to tell that it was better to know how to place a mark seal than not.

Once again, she clasped the stick in her left hand, sending warm waves of chakra into her almost completely numbed right hand, and she poked the stick lightly, this time, not focusing on sending her chakra into the stick, but rather onto it. It was very faint, but she knew for a fact that she had seen the black dot that had appeared briefly upon the broken twig, before fading away inconspicuously. Two more times, she tried the exact same thing, and each time she got the same result. I guess that wasn't all that hard, if you thought about it the right way, she mused. Suddenly, a thought occurred to her. How does one remove a mark seal? They certainly never mentioned that in the scroll.

Thoughts occupied with fuuinjutsu and how to remove seals were racing through her mind, as she flexed her chakra-numbed fingers. Then, suddenly, she snapped back into reality. Huh?

A white-haired boy with a guitar walked past.

Had she met him before?

...Nah.

[522 Words and a Mark Seal. Heck yeah]

Hado hummed a tune he was attempting to play on the guitar, as he walked by a girl slightly older than him self, who looked vaguely familiar!

Hmm, who could that be?

He had walked past, but screeched to a halt from his current impressive pace of a mere two miles per minute. turning back to face the other, he said "Hey, haven't I seen you around before?" He punctuated his sentence with a strum that actually sounded good. Too bad it was actually a fluke.

Sparks flew from his eyes, as he gazed at the other, literally, for this youngun here was a trying to get himself some lightning element but he had no control over the electrical shinobi arts, too bad that this was a requirement to use any clan related jutsu. It made him as sad as a habitual clown, at least by nature, could be. Setting the guitar down, he glanced briefly at the other before pulling out a wire, and trying to run electrical energy through it, lightning the wire up slightly.

"Oh, yeah! Weren't you that person I saw outside the gates? With Mister Arashi or what ever his name was? I don't remember if I got your name? What was it?" Hado began zipping around happily, not unlike an excited labrador.

"Oh, yeah! Weren't you that person I saw outside the gates? With Mister Arashi or what ever his name was? I don't remember if I got your name? What was it?" the boy said with vigor, bouncing around as if he couldn't restrain his own energy. Keeping a solid poker face as he continued to zip about the area, she made her reply.

"Probably so. My name is Shika." she said, cracking her back as she stretched out her arms. She stood for a moment in silence, before speaking up again. "What you did with the guitar... I didn't know that you had the lightning element, as well. Although your control over it could certainly be refined..." She paused for a moment. "...I could probably help you with that."

"Really? That would be awesome!!!"

Hado began zipping around Shika in circles, twirling his guitar wildly, an occasional small arc zapping the occasional small rodent. "WOOO!!!"

After a little while, Hado dropped to the ground, gasping for air. Gosh, that cardio work out was really something. After an eternal wait, well, thats how it felt to him anyway, he got up, having spent all of about two seconds on the ground. "Ok, now I'm good! WadayaknowaboutlightningShika?" He began zipping around again, like he had never been tired earlier. He also began playign the guitar, but that was drowned out temporarily by the sound of his voice.

The boy zipped around her, and Shika's neck had to twist into awkward positions to follow him. "Well, that energy's certainly a good start," she muttered to herself. She brought her hand up to her chin, contemplating how exactly one went about teaching an element. Ah, well. When in doubt... Just make it up as you go along.

"Before we begin, I'd like to offer a word of warning. As someone who never had a formal education in the ninja arts or the elements, what I teach you will likely be different from what you'd learn in class. It works for me, though, and you're welcome to modify it to your heart's content.

"Anyways, onwards and outwards. Electricity, scientifically speaking, is a form of energy, pure and simple, that's caused by charged particles. Particles that have different charges attract each other-" as she said this, she raised both hands and put them close together. A small spark leapt from her right hand, landing harmlessly in her left. "-and the created energy can be forced out of your body and used to attack. It's a bit hard to wrap your head around at first, of course, but as they say, practice makes perfect. Try it; force apart your positive and negative energies." She looked at the boy afterwards, her head tilted in concentration. "...A word of warning, though. A blast of electricity to the heart can kill you, be it your own or someone else's."


(I'm only 50% sure this stuff is scientifically accurate. Not entirely sure if I get stats for teaching, but I'll count the words, just in case.
WC: 239)

Hado suddenly stopped his abrupt zipping around, and plopped himself down on the ground in front of his new teacher in the blink of an eye as soon as she began talking again, his head bobbing up and down furiously, his eyes curled up into little beady frowning orbs that focused intently on the slightly older girl, all screwed up in concentration. It would likely be slightly disconcerting, if only because Hado was clearly not normally like this.
 
Then after a couple of sentences had flowed from her mouth, he relaxed a bit, waiting for the first possible moment to re-enter what had become a two sided monologue – “I never took the formal education in dat ninja stuff neither, so I won’t really know the difference really… ha… haha….” Hado looked more than a little sheepish and scratched the back of his head, a rueful expression on his face.
 
He honestly didn’t understand most of what she had said unfortunately. Even though he was in his special head tilted position that helped him understand things marginally better, really a weird version of the placebo effect, though he did not know him self, it merely looked slightly odd to other people, since the head tilt was only supposed to be tilted for a few moments, not for all of the minutes he was doing instead.
 
When she was finished speaking, Hado meekly raised his hand. “Umm, I think I got a lot of that, mostly the shorter words though. What’s a charge?”
 

He looked even more sheepish than earlier. “Sorry, but I learned my stuff on the road for the most part, I don’t know what you mean by the charge, which I assume is not a physical attack? I sometimes feel electrical energy but its kind of hard to control, and it feels… granular? Like it is all mixed up? Like its disorganized as me? I dunno….”

Shika stared at the usually energetic boy, who had his head tilted in concentration. "To answer you question, charge is..." She thought for a moment. This was almost as much as a review for her as it was a learning experience for him. "The stored electric energy in every little thing. The fact that you're aware of your chakra's energy is a good thing- but bending it to your will takes time and practice. The thing about teaching elements is that I can only give you the tools- you must do the work yourself." She explained. Gosh, I probably sound ridiculous when I lecture like this. "I'll give you a tip." she found herself saying. "If different charges attract each other, then what do matching charges do?"

(ooc: if you train a little at the same time as teaching you should be fine to claim wc for all of it actually, just make sure you train some in each post)
 
Gosh! She was starting to remind him of his school teachers! Hopefully she only took part of the next day and did not steal time from the next one like one teacher of his had done! That would be horrible! He would be so hungry… it made him hungry just thinking of it actually.
 
A question popped up in his mind as she spoke, interfering with the question she had asked. He was tempted to write them down on the ground since his mind had about one available drawer not crammed with stuff, so to speak, but he figured that would take too long. Spilling out the questions would be the way to go and hopefully he would not forget!
 
Jumping from his bottom to his hands and feet, in a pushup position, Hado quickly began struggling with the pushups, making little in the way of significant progress sadly enough. While his arms struggled with loads they were rather unaccustomed to struggling or even attempting to bear, he blurted out both questions right on top of each other, almost obscuring the words so slurred were they.
 
“How do I control the pulses? I’ve never tried that before!!! What do you do Miss Shika??? And…”
 
He paused for a few long moments, his head tilted, his eyes beaded up into little specks of concentration that consumed many things entirely whole, his hands scratching at the back of his head as he tried to figure out the other question, the one she had asked.
 
Logic problems were honestly not his forte, he had trouble with them in school, between a distinct lack of blood sugar, and boring teachers, he was not in a good position to be a grade A plus student at all.
 
“Ummmm….”
 
An uncomfortable silence followed, in which Hado tried to wrestle with that for which he was not very well equipped. Ultimately he took a guess. ”Ummm…  they try to not come together, to separate?”
 
His expression was clearly bewildered, he was a bit out of his depth here, to make a massive understatement.
 

834+346=1180

When Hado gave his answer to her query, she did not respond immediately. Instead, she gave him a barely noticeable smirk and a minute nod of her head to display her pride. I think, she decided, I'll keep a close eye on this kid. There's more to him than meets the eye. Silence reigned for a couple moments, before she answered one of his previous questions. "The pulses you speak of... They can't be controlled easily. All you can do is serve as their guide and outlet until you are experienced and powerful enough to manipulate them." She thought to herself. How did she learn the lightning element, exactly? She had built it over time, but when it had developed the most quickly was when- Oh. Her smirk widened, until her grin seemed almost predatory. Her stance seemed to bend and shift, until she was in a loose, flexible one, battle-hardened and built for fighting. "Perhaps I can help you with that, too," her eyes glimmered. "Try and land a hit. The only attack you'll have that's fast enough to hit me will be your lightning. No other jutsus. In fact, let's make it more challenging, just for fun. You have six minutes, and your time begins now." She quickly extended her hand to give him a flick on the nose, before running down one of the stone streets until she came to a raggedy-looking building. Channeling chakra into the soles of her feet, Shika ascended until she was standing sideways upon the structure, looking down at the boy. "Well?" she asked. "I haven't got all day."

[522+239+262= 1023]
[AP= 60-1 = 59]