Versatility!

Today was the day. 

It was the day that Sakaiza would no longer focus on his main taijutsu, gentle fist techniques. Today, he would focus on lesser ranked jutsu. Jutsu that serve as auxiliary techniques for combat, out of combat and even perhaps to prevent combat. Today was the day where Sakaiza would learn a wide variety of jutsu: genjutsu, juinjutsu, ninjutsu and of course taijutsu.

He was excited.

But he was also asleep.

After the weeks of intensive training Sakaiza gave himself, he had one goal and one goal only for the past several days. He wanted to catch up on his sleep. He had found himself training all hours of the night, pushing his body to and pass limits that he never would have thought he could reach. He had trained himself to the point where he could feel his muscles tearing and rebuilding themselves. To the point where his chakra network was developing so much, that he could feel his body swelling with chakra, as if it were going to burst. To the point where the only thoughts going through his mind were ways to improve his jutsu. But as a result of all of this training, it took its toll on his body. 

Sakaiza was fatigued. He was tired. He was hungry. But overall, he was sleepy. After his encounter with Korai, the Funka ninja, he had made his way home. When he had gotten home, his mother had began to talk to him. However, in his fit of tiredness, he could not understand anything she said. He could only make out the words 'instructor', 'paid' and 'different jutsu'. But besides that, Sakaiza would stare expressionless at his mother and simply nod when she would pose a question. He then stumbled off to his room where he would fall upon his bed, close his eyes and sleep for hours. 

It had been the best sleep that he had gotten in what felt like years. But it would come to a short end when his mother would breach his room, demanding that he wake up.

Startled, Sakaiza woke up and immediately began getting dressed, for he thought the world was ending or the village was being attacked. Although he was disoriented, he had been ready to adjust to his morning ritual. While one arm was fitting into his shirt, the other would be gripping his toothbrush cleaning his teeth. His mother just watched in awe, as he seemed to be getting ready in a heartbeat. However, she noted that his eyes had yet to open. Sakaiza had been functioning this entire morning without even opening his eyes. His mother just laughed.

When Sakaiza's eyes would finally open, he would be fully dressed and his hygiene was upkept. He stared at his mother and began speaking.

"So what's going on, why am I awake?"

"Did you forget everything I told you last night?"

Scratching his head, slight anxious, "Uh...maybe."

His mother sighed before giving in, "Sakaiza...I told you that you're meeting with an instructor today in the training grounds. He's going to teach you some lower jutsu that you may find useful. Also, I need to tell you something. Remember how your father and I had left the Hyuuga District in Konoha?"

Sakaiza, realizing that his day had begun on quite the serious note, listened carefully. He nodded when his mother posed him the question.

"Well," she said while removing the headband from her forehead to reveal a strange insignia branded upon her forehead. "This is the Hyuuga Curse Seal. It is put upon its members to ensure that even in death, your Byakugan cannot be stolen. Instead it will simply leave your body. We were given these seals when we left, in case we died. The secrets of the Hyuuga are important." She continued to speak with a slightly ominous undertone in her voice, "We promised the Clan that when you reached the age of a man, 15, we would put this seal on you to protect the clan. But I'm not going to put the seal on you, I'm going to let it be your decision. Take this scroll." she ended rather abruptly while handing Sakaiza a scroll. She would leave his room shortly after, running to her own and closing the door. It seemed to be something pretty serious to Sakaiza and the Hyuuga, and thus he should take it seriously. 

Opening the scroll, it read the following: 
"Hyuuga Curse Seal
This marks the seal of the branch family. It allows the Hyuuga to protect their Byakugan by locking it away after their death...."

It continued to describe the seal in such, letting Sakaiza know of its origin and its purpose and finally how to make the seal. Sakaiza, now with this information thought to himself. If he were to apply this seal to himself, he would be sealing away his Byakugan from enemies upon his death. It was a good, noble concept. However it would also be forever affiliating him with a mark that would identify him with a clan that did not want to associate with his family. It was a tough decision, one that he would have to take the entire day to decide on. He rolled the scroll back up, tucked it into his drawer and left out of his room. 

Calling out to his mother, he let her know that he was heading for the training grounds and that he would be back by dinner, hopefully. Sakaiza left out the front door and shut it behind him, starting for the training grounds. The training grounds, a place where he had basically called home for the last several weeks. A day did not go by where he did not find himself there. Whether he had been training himself, training a friend like Ashie or watching someone train like Korai. Nevertheless, he once again arrived. It was early in the morning and no one else had been at the training grounds. No one else except a familiar face sitting upon a bench reading a book.

Sakaiza approached the man and tapped his shoulder. When the man would turn, it would reveal to be none other than Evander, Sakaiza's former sensei.

"Evander - sensei! Are you training me today?" Sakaiza burst with excitement. It had been quite some time since Sakaiza had seen his former sensei, but he was thrilled to see him. The last time Evander and Sakaiza had crossed paths was when Evander bid Sakaiza farewell and the two went on their separate ways. However something strange was going, Evander was not responding to Sakaiza. He honestly wasn't even looking at him. Instead he just mindlessly read his book. Growing frustrated, Sakaiza let out, "Hey jerk the least you could do is-" he stopped as he placed his hand on the shoulder of Evander which caused his entire body to *poof*. But now, there were two Evanders. They were both facing Sakaiza. Sakaiza took several steps backwards, "Whoa..what the hell is happening?"

Continuing to step back, he felt something touch him and immediately *poof* as well. When he would turn around, there would be two Evanders there as well. Out of instinct, he leaped into the air and landed on the table which Evander had been reading his book at. Looking around him, he noticed a total of 12 Evanders, slowly but surely approaching him, none of them saying anything at all. Each Evander actually seemed to be rather mindless. Simply walking forward while saying nothing at all, almost as if they were being controlled by some distant person. That distant person was Evander, who hid roughly 10 meters away from Sakaiza behind a table. Sakaiza was oblivious to his former sensei though, and instead paid attention to the mist servants approaching him.

He quickly activated his Byakugan and was shocked by the results. Each of these clones seemed to have nothing flowing through their bodies but chakra. No bone, no blood, nothing. "What the hell is this? Some kind of genjutsu?" he called out aloud while releasing a wind slash at all of them. As he did, he watched each of the Evanders disappear one by one. But as they disappeared, two more replaced each.

Was he losing his mind? Sakaiza recalled from his days in the academy a student who used a move that would release the subject of a genjutsu from it. But what was the hand sign the student used? It was either the ram or the tiger. Struggling to get out of this illusion that seemed to be consuming his mind and attention, Sakaiza quickly formed the ram hand seal. Focusing his chakra, the only thing that happened was that his body propelled him forward. That was his newly learned body flicker technique. Therefore, the hand seal had to be the tiger. He quickly formed the tiger hand seal and closed his eyes. As he closed his eyes, he seemingly opened his mind to the truths of the battlefield. His byakugan pinpointed the culprit some distance off, hiding like a coward. With his eyes still closed and hands still formed, he exclaimed, "Release!"

When his eyes would open, all of the clones were gone. "Evander come out, I know you're over there!"

Evander would leap from the bench all the way over to Sakaiza's location. "Hey Sakaiza, no time for introductions. I've got to teach you this technique. It's so simple but so cool" he said, obviously way too excited to learn such a basic level jutsu. "Make the formation of a boar then a rat with your hands and extend your chakra out from your body and project it, just like the way you would do with a clone. And hurry!"

Sakaiza, feeling the sense of urgency immediately formed a boar hand seal followed by the rat. Simultaneously, he projected his chakra out from his body. When he began doing so, it seemed as if the chakra already had a predetermined location to direct itself to. It began to distribute itself in ten different locations, each adjacent of each other and in front of Sakaiza. Sakaiza, not understanding what just happened, took several steps back and saw each of the clones do the same. 

"Yeah that's right! Now these clones are pretty stupid, they do exactly what you do unless you learn to control their movements just like a clone. It's all chakra manipulation. If you don't control them, they will just approach their target aimlessly. They don't attack though, so what you'll have to do to create a sense of reality with this genjustu is attack from afar while making it seem like the clones are attacking." Evander called out, now surrounded by the clones.

Sakaiza nodded and began focusing his chakra to continue to surround Evander. He quickly formed the bird hand seal and released four air bullets with trajectories along a path that would come from four different clones. Each would lift their left palms up and the air bullet would simply phase through their arms and fly out of their palms towards Evander. Evander quickly leaped from out of his entrapment and landed off to the side away from all of them. The mist servants refocused their attention on Evander and began mindlessly approaching him again. "Sakaiza! Good work! This time, I'm going to attack them. It'll be an attempt to disrupt you chakra, but just focus on restoring it! If you do so, two servants will reappear in place of the one you just lost!"

Again nodding, Sakaiza focused his attention of the clones, waiting for Evander to strike. When he did, he attacked three. Sakaiza could literally feel his chakra wanting to come back to his body, but instead he sent more to its location. When he did, a *poof* could be heard and two servants arose in the spot where the last was. Satisfied with Sakaiza's quick progress, Evander quickly utilized his genjutsu release technique, thus causing all of the mist servants to dissipate.

"You know, most people talk before teaching a lesson to a former pupil." Sakaiza joked as he approached Evander.

"Yeah, but I'm not most people." Evander responded, laughing also. 

Sakaiza in turn laughed, it had been too long since he and Evander shared a laugh together. It was nice. It reminded Sakaiza of the old days, when the two would go on missions and would have jokes and laughs together. It seemed as if it had been years ago when in actuality it had only been a month or so. But the saying is absence makes the heart grow fonder. And that seemed to be the case here.

"So I'm guessing your mother already told you about what's on our agenda for today?"

"Nah, not at all. She only said I'd be training with you. Nothing more, nothing less." Sakaiza let out. He slightly glanced over the fact that his mother shared with him the information regarding the curse mark, but it hardly seemed as if that was of any relevance at all to the training session which would take place today. "So what do you got for me today?" Sakaiza inquired, trying to draw away his mind's focus on the decision he would have to later make. 


"Well I felt like in our time together, I had only taught you the basics of taijutsu. I felt as if it were unfair for me to impose limiting yourself to only one type of jutsu."

"Well I haven't limited myself. I've learned various types of elemental ninjutsu as well. I also learned some medical ninjutsu."

"Right, but that's still only a fraction of what your potential holds. Today I wanted to teach you a ninjutsu and weaponary technique. Two things which may prove to save your life, actually." Evander proceeded to rustle with his flak jacket as if it were bothering him. He then continued to speak, "So the first thing I want to teach you is this lower level ninjutsu, but if you invest time into it, it can be a lot more powerful than what it is. It's called the Temporary Paralysis Technique." Evander paused, giving Sakaiza a slight amount of time to reflect on the name alone of the jutsu.

Sakaiza, thinking on the technique immediately began to think about ways to incorporate it into his style of fighting. If it were a paralysis technique, he would be able to immobilize a distant enemy for long enough to approach them. Once he approach them, he would have several jutsu to follow this that could make it deadly. It seemed as if this technique was an opener. It could open up an enemies defense or even halt an enemy's offense and cause them to be stationary. Such an opening would create a limited window of opportunity that Sakaiza would need to capitalize on in order to land his next strike. He felt good about the name alone of this technique, and thus could not wait for Evander to show him it.

Evander could tell Sakaiza was deep in thought. He figured now was the best time if any to break that thought. "The way it works is you form the tiger handseal while an enemy is within a certain radius of you, and it can capture them in your sphere of paralysis." he said as he shot Sakaiza a piercing gaze.

Sakaiza, frozen in his tracks, suddenly found himself incapable of moving. He had tried to move his limbs but he found them to be completely unresponsive. No matter how much he tried to wiggle and move his body he could not. 

"Yeah that's it."

Continuing to struggle, he finally could muscle the strength to break free but only after about 10 seconds. "10 seconds? That's so long, that could be the deciding factor in combat between life and death." Sakaiza thought to himself as he took on his guard. 

"When you get really good with this jutsu, you don't even have to use hand seals to paralyze your opponent. Your gaze is simply stunning enough, sort of like a Medusa technique. Did you feel that though? The stiffening of your chakra and muscles for around 10 seconds? Yeah that's the power of this technique. I want you to give it a go, but keep in mind you'll have to use the hand seal. There's no way you can go from not knowing this technique to mastering it in an instant." Evander said, but he knew that Sakaiza was quite the special child. He knew that Sakaiza was capable of learning techniques fast and being able to apply them ever faster. However he also knew that not a single shinobi could master a jutsu as soon as they learned it.

And he was right, Sakaiza would not be able to master this jutsu so soon. But this wasn't Sakaiza was interested in attempting to master as soon as he learned it. Such haste would yield sloppy results. No, he wanted to learn how to apply it in its rawest form. If he could do so, he could potentially destroy an enemy. Upon the end of Evander's instructions, Sakaiza nodded and began to prepare. He focused his breathing so that it was slow and rhythmic. As he did so, his chakra did the same. It channeled through his body and flowed to his hands. He concentrated hard and brought his hands up to the center of his chest in a slow fashion. When his hands had met, his ring and pinkie fingers on each hand began to interlock with the opposite and fold in. His middle and index fingers aligned with each other and pointed towards the sky. His thumbs simply supported the index. This was the tiger hand seal. 

As he heightened his chakra, all at once he seemed to expel it stemming from his extended fingertips as the point source. As he did so, he could see the chakra leaving his fingers and creating a disk around his body. The disk began to take on a radius of about 5 meters. It quickly began to thicken though. As it did so, it took on the shape of a sphere surrounding Sakaiza and just so happening to catch Evander within its range. As Sakaiza trapped Evander, he noted that the sphere had reached its limitations and was now maximum size. He dropped his hands, and the sphere remained. He began to slowly approach Evander, while still focusing his chakra. He poked his former sensei in the face several times and finally went on to deliver a swift knee strike to him in the process.

Evander gasped slightly, feeling the power of his former pupil. He laughed though, realizing that Sakaiza was simply getting revenge on Evander for all the times that he had pulled the wool over Sakaiza's eyes. 

"I deserved that."

"Yeah you did."

He continued to laugh then let out, "And in about 2...1..." then he was released from the jutsu. "Good work Sakaiza, you always had been a fast learner but when did your chakra potency and control get so high?"

"I've been training a lot" Sakaiza responded in a serious tone. He began to think back about how tired he had been throughout the last several days and could only imagine how tired he would be after this training session. Evander had never seen Sakaiza push himself this hard so he would likely be surprised throughout the rest of Sakaiza's training today on how quickly he would be able to pick things up.

"So I'm told" Evander would respond. He and Sakaiza's mother had kept close contact regarding Sakaiza and his progress. They talked about how much he trained, what he learned and any missions he had completed. Evander always asked Sakaiza's mother about Sakaiza's progress because he did not want to miss out on too much. However, now watching Sakaiza and seeing the growth that he had obtained, Evander realized just how much he had already missed out on. "Now, seeing as you have seemed to execute that technique just fine and even managed to get a hit on me, it's time for the next one. This one is not a ninjutsu. Instead it is a weaponary technique." Evander said while reaching into the weapons pouch that he had strapped upon his leg. His hand rummaged through the pocket, searching for some unknown weapon. Once it stopped, Sakaiza could see Evander's fingers gripping something. As his hand surfaced from the pocket, Evander was gripping a shuriken. 

"Do you have one of these?" Evander asked. The way he had been holding the shuriken made it seem as if he only had one in hand.

Sakaiza nodded.

"Well then pay attention!" he exclaimed while hurling the shuriken towards Sakaiza. As it flew towards him, he leaped over it without much effort. But when his legs were coming back towards the ground, a second shuriken appeared to be flying towards him. It had caught him off guard. At no point did he see Evander holding a second shuriken. But perhaps, this was all a part of the jutsu. Sakaiza spread his legs as wide as he could, just so narrowly avoiding the second shuriken, then bringing them back together to catch his fall.

When he would land, he looked up to where Evander had been standing. To his surprise, Evander was not there. Then suddenly, he felt a slight breath of air fall upon his neck. Sakaiza quickly rolled forward and upon completion of the roll, he turned his body around and had seen Evander standing just behind where Sakaiza had been standing. 


"So what, did you just use a body flicker to nearly teleport behind me while the shuriken acted as a decoy?" Sakaiza inquired. He was truly curious. It made almost no sense how Evander had ended up behind him.

Laughing, Evander let out,"No, the shuriken are the attack, not the decoy. As I held one shuriken, there was a second placed behind it. The way I threw the two made it appear as if only one was thrown. But while the second was trailing behind it, I used a transformation jutsu. I knew you would be able to dodge both of the shuriken and I didn't expect you to swat them away, so instead I took on the form of the second shuriken to fly right pass you as you were dodging it. This jutsu allows you to create opening that you never would have known could exist. Now here," he paused while throwing two shuriken towards Sakaiza intending him to catch them, "You try".

Sakaiza caught both of the shuriken then quickly aligned them in his hand.  He held them so that the outline of the first shielded Evander's view of the second, although he knew that Evander was already aware of the jutsu Sakaiza would do. He crossed his arm over his body in build up, then hurled the shuriken at Evander. As the second one released from his grip, Sakaiza watched the eyes of Evander. As soon as his eyes switched from Sakaiza to the shuriken, he rapidly formed the appropriate hand seals for a transformation jutsu. His body was then switched with the second shuriken and he could feel himself soaring through and cutting the air. When he could feel himself passing Evander's chakra network, he disbanded the transformation and his real body appeared in the air. Not anticipating the mid air animation he was in, he quickly caught his fall from the shuriken's trajectory and landed on the floor. When he landed, once again he could feel breathing behind him. This time however, Sakaiza simply took several steps forward and turned around, seeing Evander with his hands crossed and eyeing Sakaiza.

"My oh my, look at that technique. You executed it flawlessly. Now once you get a better hang of it, you'll be able to mix it up and do more with that jutsu. It's like the paralysis technique, both of them are opportunity creators. You'll just have to learn how to apply them properly." 

Sakaiza then began to think again. He wondered if he had any jutsu in his arsenal that would allow him to employ them in conjunction with the shadow shuriken jutsu to make it more effective. He was sure that this weaponary jutsu was one well known by any weapons expert as well as many shinobi, therefore he would have to add his own creative spin on it. Realizing all of his jutsu were taijutsu based or wind based, he figured he would not be able to do anything exceedingly creative with it. However, an idea did strike him. He could used his air bullets or wind arrows in a similar fashion to allow himself to take on one of their forms and fly past the enemy in order to force an opening. It seemed like today was all about learn strategies to force an opponent to lower their guard. But by doing so, Sakaiza would be able to perform better and smarter in combat and thus defeat his enemies.

"Now do you feel confident with that jutsu? You got any ideas flowing?"


"Oh I've got ideas flowing alright, I've got ideas for days." Sakaiza said.

Evander was not shocked that Sakaiza said yes but was still impressed that Sakaiza already had ideas coming to him based off of him learning this jutsu for the first time. But that was why Evander decided on teaching Sakaiza these jutsu today. He knew that each and every single one of them would be able to be applied in a way that could throw off their enemy. They were all tricky jutsu that were lower ranked. If one were to simply bat an eyelash at one of these jutsu, they could suffer extreme consequences. And Evander knew against a shinobi as witty as Sakaiza, it would be potential fatal if Sakaiza did not hold back. But this was an accepting thought of Evander. He wanted Sakaiza to be prepared to kill if he had to, but he would not encourage killing outside of that. He knew Sakaiza wanted to travel and with the many threats in the world, you never know which battle could be your last. Therefore, by employing these jutsu, he could be indirectly saving Sakaiza's life.

Shaking off these thoughts, he spoke again, "Now that you learned the weaponary, genjutsu and ninjutsu techniques I wanted to teach you...I can teach you a pretty basic taijutsu technique." Evander said. He knew that this would excite Sakaiza, as Sakaiza had always looked for ways to advance his taijutsu abilities. "It's one from the hidden leaf village actually, called the Leaf Whirlwind."

Sakaiza smiled as he would be learning another taijutsu technique. The name of the technique to Sakaiza at least implied some sort of quick, flurry of movements that could likely serve as a barrage attack. Considering this, he began to wonder how the technique worked. He would only hope that it was a technique relying on kicks, for he had learned no jutsu yet that employed kicks. This was much unlike his comrade, Nobu, who seemed to be focused on kicks in his style of taijutsu. He wanted to ask Nobu to teach him some of the moves, but that day Nobu seemed too upset to talk to Sakaiza more than letting him know to keep his mouth shut about what he saw. 

"So I'm going to slowly go through this once, then once more fast and you can spectate and take all the notes your heart desires." Evander began with a roundhouse kick to what would be an opponent's head, as he did so he let out,"So you start this technique off with a high kick. It is likely that your opponent will see the kick and be able to block it, so this kick is actually just a feint." Evander continued as he immediately brought the leg down, used it as a pivot and used his opposite leg to sweep the ground in front of him. "Next, you execute a swift low kick which can be designed to bring the opponent off his feet. The cool part about this technique is that if the high kick hits the mark and causes the opponent to be discombobulated, the low kick can know the opponent of their feet if you target it right. If the high kick misses, I suggest employing a low leg sweep as the second move."

Sakaiza paid close attention the whole time, watching how Evander moved his body and how he reacted his foot work. Evander then stood to his feet and did the entire maneuver in one swift motion, almost as if the Leaf Whirlwind created a momentum that increased his speed. 

"You know the drill." Evander said while rising to his feet and waving Sakaiza over to try the attempt on him.

Sakaiza immediately dashed forward and sent a flying, rotating heel kick targeted at Evander. As Evander easily dodged it by simply ducking underneath it, Sakaiza recalled that this was actually quite a similar style of kicks that what Nobu had tried to execute on him. Sakaiza quickly reacted, planting his hands on the ground and pushing off, causing his leg to spin around quickly carried by the momentum of the initial rotating kick. Evander would simply leap over Sakaiza's kick, just as Sakaiza had only leaped over Nobu's kick.

"Good, that's really good!" Evander said while landing back on the ground.

After Sakaiza's leg sweep missed, he stood back up so that he was eye to eye with Evander.

Evander looked at the sun's position in the sky and seemed rather stunned, "Oh Sakaiza, I've got to run! I'm late for a meeting!" he said while immediately forming several handseals then poofing off.

Sakaiza, taken by Evander's quick and abrupt leaving, frowned slightly but then laughed. It was just like Evander to run late for a meeting and have to cut Sakaiza's training short. Nevertheless, Sakaiza started on his way back home. He would start to think about all the training he did and all the jutsu he learned today. One jutsu in particular stood out to him: the Hyuuga Curse Mark. He knew that with the potential shinobi had, it wouldn't be impossible of him dying from a more powerful one. He thought about Ryu and Salzem, who both could have easily killed him the day of his spar, taken his Byakugan and gone on to destroy the Hyuuga Clan. No, Sakaiza would never let this happen. 

Finally arriving home, he seemed to finally arrive at his final decision as well. He knew the risk it would impose upon his entire clan if he were to walk around without the curse mark. He knew that he could potentially be the fall of his clan if he were to continue in life without it, and he would not be able to accept that awful fate. Sakaiza knew he was not of the main branch. Sakaiza knew that he was of the side, serving branch. Sakaiza knew what he had to do. He knew how to perform the Hyuuga Curse Seal. So he removed his headband from his head, and began. His fingertips would seemingly light up with a green chakra and he would place his hands upon his now revealed forehead. As he did, he could feel the brand taking on its form. He could feel the curved lines being engraved upon his forehead and the X crossing in the middle of it. What was done was done, he would not have anything to say about it. Instead, he tied his headband back upon his forehead, laid in his bed, then dozed off. 

[Exit]

(WC: 5,301)

Claiming 26 stat points, Sakaiza now having the Hyuuga Curse Mark branded upon himself and the following jutsu:

Hyuuga Curse Mark [500/500]
Genjutsu Release [500/500]
Mist Servant Technique [1000/1000]
Temporary Paralysis Technique  [1000/1000]
Shadow Shuriken Technique [1000/1000]
Leaf Whirlwind [1250/1250]

Lol thanks Aki!