Growth and Progress [NK/PRIV]

The newly ranked genin sat, cross legged, in the middle of the  training ground. Kama was all alone for now and appeared to be deeply concentrating. The girls outfit was slightly different now, having acquired some new equipment. On each of her legs was a pouch of equipment she had bought, each a dark maroon to match her color scheme. She still wore her Kimono that she had grown to love, though the newest addition to her outfit was the Hoshigakure headband sitting on her forehead. Displaying her newly achieved rank of Genin. Her parents had been proud of her, if a little worried about the new kind of life she would be leading. The Uzumaki had been training her medical jutsu, as she had felt a sort of aptitude for it and figured with her great amount of stamina and healing it would be a massive boost to her abilities. For the moment she was mastering her use of chakra anesthetic that she hadn’t been able to fully use before, trying to get the numbing flame of chakra on all of her fingers.


Once again, she focused her chakra towards her fingers, first performing hare then ox and finally the monkey sign to activate the jutsu while concentrating the amounts along her digits to be evenly spaced. Even still it was a bit trying, the girl not used to having to use so much of her chakra at any one time. It was definitely a bit trying, a small bead of sweat coming down her forehead as she eagerly began trying different combinations of chakra to see what amounts ended up being enough to work. It was a difficult process but the Uzumaki didn’t want to use it wrong and end up injuring a patient or not being able to effectively treat them.  3 Flames had already appeared on her fingers in the proper shape and form, her hand held palm upwards with her other hand gripping her wrist as she concentrated and pushed her chakra out. Another flame appeared, meaning she was just about to her goal, seeing that it was also perfect to what the jutsu required. She just needed to achieve the same level of perfection with her pinky finger and Kama would have the jutsu completely under her use.  The last flame slowly began to flicker to life as the jutsu was complete, eliciting a happy sigh from Kama as she released the technique and fell backwards. The girl was happy to finally have just a higher level jutsu available to her.


WC: 400


Chakra Anasthetic: 1,000/1,000


(Rest of Jutsu was trained here)

"Fine fine fine. I'll go. " The older woman was already pushing her out the door as she sighed, accepting that her chances of a quiet night in the small room she'd been renting had come to an end. She appreciated the worry, of course. Daily the inn keeper was becoming more like a parental figure to the girl, and it was nice to have someone who looked after her well being to this extent but she just wished it didn't involve making her leave the comfort of her quiet training area. She'd brought with her exactly three sticks of her incense, the last three she had until she purchased more, and she had planned to spread them out over the next two days but that didn't seem possible. She'd been informed upon entry into the village that it was a bit of a faux pas to perform jutsu or do various other ninja activities asside from very specific areas of the village, and that meant she would need to go to the training grounds.

The Raven haired girl, lost in her thoughts, found herself walking through the large ring of the training grounds before she'd even realized she'd started her treck that direction. Resolved to get something done even in the less then ideal situations she pulled out the first of her fragrant flamable items, but stopped as she noticed the girl with the (apparently) strange red hair.

"Oh. Good afternoon. Surprised to see you here again. " Well, she thought. There went training alone.

(254)

The Uzumaki girl, before Amber had quite shown up was already processing the next technique she wanted to learn. The mark seal was what most people called it, and it was one that would let her track targets or people that she needed to know the whereabouts of. She had looked up the jutsu all on her own, and gotten the basic idea even if the book itself was way too confusing. Why was it so hard to just explain things in simple terms and leave it at that. There weren’t any handsigns, as it appeared to be just making the seal a specific way through chakra to leave a sort of imprint on the target that she would be able to track with her chakra over some distance, but even if that was good in theory it was still a pain to figure out how to practice. The Kunoichi  began flowing chakra to her fingers once again, but with more intention to create a mark, even picturing the symbols and formula in her head. This part she wasn’t exactly good at, as it all got a bit jumbled up and confusing but she was managing for the moment. It suddenly dawned on her, that she wasn’t positively sure how to make sure it was going to work without a test subject. She sat up as Amber spoke to her, and also, solved her problem. “Oh! Hello Miss...say I was practicing the Mark Seal and I kinda need a subject to make sure it works...if you don’t mind?”


WC: 250


Mark Seal: 250/500

"Um... yea sure. Okay. If you figure it out though you have to teach it to me?" Amber was surprised at how unguarded this girl was. It was impressive. As she spoke she pulled the long feather quill from her side back, deciding to get a bit of practice in herself while she allowed the young ninja to practice her technique. With a thought she drew a hefty amount of chakra from her heart point, shifting it immediately to her solar and outward. She pooled the powerful energy in her right hand, using the new secondary chakra point she'd been able to make use of in a previous training session. Almost immediately the quill was surrounded by dull blue energy, the cloak of suiton chakra, the natural state she summoned chakra in unless she found need of something more specific, extending outwards past the tip of the quill as she worked.

"Just let me know what I need to do I suppose?" In truth she had absolutely no clue what this mark seal did. She could probably break down the name in order to figure it out.... No. No she couldn't. The name made no sense, based on her still limited knowledge of the way ninjutsu worked, or in this case fuinjutsu. She supposed it didn't really matter. Calming the voice in the back of her head that practically screamed for her to protect herself she approached the red haired girl, resolved that within the center of the village there was little to no chance that someone would legitimately try and do harm. That's what all the guards and high ranking shinobi were here for right?

Waiting for whatever effects the jutsu would have, she finished the last steps needed in her own preliminary training, and looking down at the quill in her hand she decided it was acceptable. Her chakra infusion seemed to have worked well enough that she could, when the time came, take additional steps in using it to create interesting and powerful effects on a weapon. That fact alone made her mind drift however, to the Domia scythe still lost. Her body felt frail, even with the training of the past week. In fact, it probably felt more frail because of it. While in her natural state she was used to battle, to intense training that could quickly turn into kill or be killed it was far too obvious that this body was not. Within these lands she'd spent most of her life as a simple tailor, drawing needle and threat through cloth and leather on occasion in order to craft great works. While that skill could be turned into combat prowess with training, the requirements would be significant and it was much more then she had the ability to do at current. Still she hadn't come close to passing out in over two days so that was something.

She shifted the focus of her energy, testing an idea that she'd had earlier in the day. Instead of pushing her chakra through her solar she shifted it's direction, moving it downward to her sacral point, Shifting it's focus as it made the trip. She could feel the cool blue chakra of her suiton element changing as it hit it's desired target, darkening and growing cold in a much different way. This was the strength of her Yin chakra, and the continuation of her training in the secret arts of her family.

(twc 829, finished training chakra infusion at 500 329 started towards shadow sewing)

The Uzumaki girl nodded emphatically, smiling brightly. “Sure! Its pretty simple after all!”
With those words she raised her hand lightly, chakra flowing to her fingers as she concentrated the energy to the focal points in the digits, making sure it was evenly spaced and not enough to burn the girl whenever it was placed. “I’ll show you in more depth a bit later, but it's just a small seal that you can place on someone to keep track of them within a short distance. Oh! If you're worried about that it's not hard to break it either, i’m sure you have plenty of chakra to do it!”
She would lightly touch the woman's shoulder, her chakra lightly flowing against the woman's skin painlessly, beginning to make a symbol though a bit slowly as she had yet to fully master the technique. Kama closed her eyes as she concentrated and flowed her chakra in the correct space to create each part of the symbols for the seal, a small circle with several symbols appearing on her shoulder even under the girls sleeve, if she had sleeves, and then would begin to fade as Kama removed her hand, no evidence that it had been there in the first place.
“Ok that's perfect then! Now you..hmm I never got your name! That's probably important.”

Kama would take a couple steps back to give the girl space if she needed, and let out a breath from the slight amount of energy it had used.


WC: 250


Mark Seal: 500/500 (Trained)

This point would serve as a very important reminder to the Demon of Chance to get information on a situation before you agreed to it. It wasn't that she didnt trust the girl. Well.... It MOSTLY wasn't that she didn't trust the girl. That wasn't too big of a deal. It was that she hadn't asked what this jutsu did out of the assumption that the effect would be trivial. Spoiler alert: the effect was not trivial. her worries were calmed a bit as the girl explained that it was easily broken, and she assumed since she could see the exact position it was being placed that should there be a reason to distrust the small girl with the red hair, she could fairly easily go to a fuinjutsu master and show them the positioning, asking them to remove the seal from her person. Still there must be other things that the seal could do.

"Natrually I have a fairly large pool. I'm not worried...... however...Is tracking the only thing this particular seal does?" She did not have a very large pool. It was ok in size, she supposed, but she could feel herself getting to the end of it quite easily, and the power was enough to create life in the jutsu she'd learned so far, but she feared that higher level jutsu would not be quite as easy. In time with her worries, the black shadow behind her once more began to move. she shifted it to and fro, trying to use the power of her clan's blood to raise the chakra from it's position in a new way. Instead of drawing it to wrap around her body, she called out to the shadow at her back to form itself into three dimensional shape. She needed to break the barrier between the two dimensional world of shadow and the world she lived in. Thankfully she'd had extensive practice with this before. Shadow had always been a specialty of hers, as the high goddess of the dark arts. Shadows were her typical means of defense, outside of her scythe of course, and the way in which she traveled between worlds. Her mastery of the element in a magical sense should make this too easy of a task.


It was not too easy of a task. The shadow answered her call.... sort of. It raised up, crawling gently up her heel, but as her mind gave the order for it to push outward, creating long sharpened tendrils it just kind of.... didnt? instead it became more slender in its path up her body, looking less like a cloak moving about her form and more like to a snake.

"Right. I didn't tell you my name. I appologize how rude of me. " This had been intentional. Once again it wasn't that she didnt trust the girl. Within the village she expected to be safe, as long as some great evil didn't come to attack. If it did then she should still have a margin of safety. She was not a ninja. Not really at least. She didn't belong to the village and few actually were aware of her abilities. In the event of an attack it would be too easy to follow the flock of terrified villagers, led by the high ranking shinobi, and hide without anyone knowing any different. "My name... Is Amber. " She didnt see a reason to give her last name. To be honest she wasn't sure what it was. Would she go by her last name, or the one of her fathers. Maybe she had taken the last name of her mother before her death. That would make sense. It was probably easiest to take the name that represented her clan but it felt odd and clunky.

(1459)

Kama listened to the girl, considering her research on the specific seal and put a finger on her temple, trying to recall the actual words and description of the technique. The book hadn’t been clear she felt, and mostly was full of confusing descriptions of the sealing formula as well as long winded passages about the ninja who had worked to develop it. It was entirely irritating whenever she felt like she had to read super boring long winded things but...the Kunoichi was sure there were other effects, or perhaps other uses of it? Suddenly she had a bit of inspiration. “Other uses would be uhmm.. You could pair it with the summoning jutsu! Instead of summoning like an animal though, you’d be able to summon a person with the seal placed on them! Though I imagine a person could resist that too.”


Kama wasn’t actually entirely sure how this would work out in practice but she imagined it would be fine. The two techniques worked on similar prospects right? If you knew the person's chakra and had them marked you should be able to pull them to you! The girl wasn’t sure if she should tell the woman about her non-assured jutsu pairings but the kunoichi imagined it was probably fine. In any case how wrong could she really end up being? She was brought out of these thoughts as the woman, apparently Amber, revealed her name. This confused the Uzumaki a bit, as she expected the girl to have a clan last name but she supposed that trust wasn’t always easy. “Thanks Miss Amber, it's nice to be fully acquainted. Oh, if you're looking for moves I’ll show the Body Flicker technique!”

Kama nodded, turning away from Amber as she prepared the jutsu, chakra flowing through her body. “This can be used to move super fast and maneuver past an opponent! You can only move in a straight line though so...it’s probably better to use it as an escape tactic.”

The Uzumaki performed the ram seal, her entire body glowing with red chakra, even the girls hair began floating a bit at the amount she was charging into her body. The girl had been trying to work on this jutsu in private for a while and wanted to show off the usefulness of the jutsu. Though if someone could see you move it probably wouldn’t end well for your strategy. Still holding the seal she waited until she could feel the correct amount of chakra. With a burst of red energy she would seemingly fly forward in a burst of amazing speed that, while may not match a Jonin’s, would be impressive to anyone in her class. Unfortunately for the young Kunoichi her chakra hadn’t been balanced properly and she had used way too much. As a result of this the jutsu would fail mid way, sending the girl tumbling across the training area and slamming her into a tree with a loud “THUNK”. The girl would fall backwards, her nose bleeding pretty badly. “Oops..I...I think I messed that up…”


WC: 500


Body Flicker: 500/1,000

"interesting. A jutsu that can be paired with another jutsu of summoning in order to call the target to their position. That sounds quite useful." Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. This was even worse then she'd thought. Judging by her looks and height she didn't expect it to be much of a problem. The girl was clearly very young and inexperienced. The chances that she fully understood what to do with a jutsu of that remarkable versatility was little to none, and even if she had she expected that her ability to resist, should she find the need, would be sufficient to save herself any trouble. She felt the Yin chakra fading as her mind shifted from manipulating it to the realization taht she may have just caused herself significant issues for her future. Slowly the deep black shadows returned to normal, sliding back off of her body and onto the ground below.

She cleared her mind, regaining concentration as the girl began to speak again. She needed to keep enough focus on this task to be able to figure out what she was doing wrong. There had to be so... "Im an idiot. How could I have been so stupid and careless?!" She had not meant to say that out loud, and yet here we are. The moment she went through the memories of her previous attempts to use the shadow sewing jutsu she'd realized exactly what she'd done wrong. hand seals. She'd spent hours with the blasted things, forming them and forming them until it felt like her fingers were going to fall of and yet when the time came to actually perform the jutsu for which they were needed she'd attempted once again to just brute force her way into mastery. That realization made her al little sick. Subtlety had always been her strength. Her ability to slip in and out of worlds, her skill in barely changing minute things about the world in order to gain an advantage was what had kept her live for so many years and here and now she found herself abandoning dexterity over a preference to bash her head into a proverbial brick wall.

"sorry. I was lost in thought. Body flicker you say?" She spent the next few moments paying absolutely no attention to the young girl with the red hair. Instead she formed the seals slowly, making sure that the positioning of her hands and fingers were precise as she'd practiced. WHen she felt confident that she'd gotten them correct she allowed her chakra to pulse once again, keeping it held strongly in her sacral before pouring it downward to her root, and the difference was like night and ay. The balck shadow behind her began to shift and contort, a small bit of it raising from it's two dimensional prison exactly as she'd hoped to form a small thin unpointed tendril of deep blackness that seemed to look up at her as if animated. Perfect. The first step was finally complete.

She shifted her attention to the girl who'd called herself kama, taking note at first that the name was like to a weapon. that interested her, though many of the names in this world had odd pronunciations and phonetics compared to what she was used to. Certainly she would find the name Amber plain and wierd in the same way she did the girl's own name. It didn't matter. Kama had attempted her jutsu, but it didn't seem that she'd done very well.

"Well. Looks like you'll have to practice that a bit more before you can teach it to me then hm?" She giggled, not because she thought she was so funny (she was) but more in order to take any tension from the situation. failing at performing a technique in front of a crowd was an awkward endeavor. As they continued to speak she honed the tendril, putting her concentration on summoning more. At her command this time seven more tendrils rose, their tips long with sharp points. It seems she had figured out the secret to the nara's jutsu finally.

(twc 2146, shadow sewing trained, 46 starting towards next jutsu )

Kama held her now aching head and sat up, leaning lightly against the tree she had run into, wiping her face and noticing she was bleeding with a grimace. The Uzumaki performed the boar, then rat and then snake seals her hand began to glow green. She held the hand to her face as the pain began to fade and the cuts on the inside and outside of her nose closed up, speeding up clotting and closing the wounds with relative ease, even faster then what one would expect of her age. The kunoichi herself didn’t notice the extra strength brought on by her bloodline, but within seconds the wounds were completely gone. She still had the problem of blood all over her face and intended to fix that as well with another useful technique for such situations. Next she performed the tiger seal and was enveloped lightly in her chakra, both the wet and dried blood was lifted from her face and seemed to dissipate within moments. Soon her face began to clear and even looked like she had just washed it, though without the wetness. As she cleaned herself up she stood, giggling nervously at Amber's comment and nodding sheepishly. “Y-Yea. I’m sure i’ll get it this time I just used too much chakra in the wrong places I think...made myself unstable probably!”
She wiped off her clothes, though she supposed she could have used chakra cleanse for that too, and prepared to try again. This time she would try not to slam into any dangerous objects or obstacles.


This time she began focusing chakra at her feet first, concentrating  on making the chakra balanced. If it flowed too hard or with too much force it would disrupt the jutsu and cause it fail, like what happened last time. Her chakra began to lightly flow around her feet, not nearly as bright as before as the kunoichi did her best on controlling the amount and the force with which the chakra flowed. It slowly began flowing up her ankles and still managed to stay at a balanced and even amount. It was proving to be quite a bit more difficult than she had first thought it might be, especially because of her failure earlier but this time she knew she could succeed. If the Uzumaki had no faith in herself then all she could do was fail, or at least that's what came to mind in this situation.  Her chakra flowed up just passed her knees as she slipped a leg behind her, preparing for the fling forward that the girl had experienced last time. As the chakra got to her hips she kept it there. The kunoichi figured there was little use in powering her entire frame up when her legs were the part that did all the work as part of this jutsu. With a burst of speed she would nearly teleport it across the training area, skidding to a stop as the jutsu worked perfectly. “There! Thats how you do it!”


WC: 500


Body Flicker: 1,000/1,000

That... That sounds more then a bit dangerous. " The thought that she could potentially make her form unstable when trying to use a jutsu terrified her. She'd assumed chakra to just be an energy source that you use to create things, like a batery that powers a car.... What what's a car? Never mind. Like a battery that powers a lamp, but the more she was learning about the effects of chakra on the body and the way it could be shifte and manipulated made it sound less like it was just an energy source to create things and more like magic. With mana you could affect the outside world in vastly different ways, but it took a dangerous tole on those who were unaware of the negatives to its effects. Magic always comes at a price.

"Do try to be a bit more careful. Dont need you fading from reality or something. " She meant it as a joke, but secretly wondered if that was possible. The moment she'd activated her nara jutsu she allowed the tendrils to sink back into the ground, feeling satisfied that the effects she'd created she would be able to replicate on the battle field should the need arise. It was time to work on something else. From the bag at her side she drew the small badly crafted notebook, it's edges simply sewn together with thread and it's pages yellowed from ages and carelessness. Opening it she turned to the section labeled "Suiton: jutsu that would be extremely helpful to learn". She was thankful for the pull her father had within the clan. Maybe one day he'd become the clan head, with the strange woman who'd shown up to take up position now gone without a trace. that would be interesting. Still he'd pulled some strings and gotten a few of the shinobi he knew to put together a sort of how to guide for the jutsu they thought she would need in order to gain enough strength to fight against the horrors of the world.

Flipping through the pages she skipped all the uninteresting jutsus. water clone? hah. water needles? far too small. No she needed something that would be really really good. That was when she found it. She remembered Kama talking about chakra sensory, a skill that she too had learned to harness. Reading through the lines of text that gave description to this particular jutsu reminded her of it in a delightful way. "Raining tigers of will...... interesting. " She corrected herself mentally as she stopped to read the technique more thoroughly, and as she did she cut the flow of her Yin chakra, calling forth suiton chakra instead. The black chakra shifted and contorted, changing from a deep black to an almost muddy grey, and then finally she could feel the clean blue power pooling in her body.

"Ah. Good job, you did it. " The girl had learned her technique, or at least fully performed it. That was impressive. She wasn't sure if she'd spent time before today practicing it, but if she hadn't that meant it had taken her two tries to fully understand and actualize the potential of the technique. She went through the list of hand seals, turning pages once more to learn the seals he hadn't and as the two of them talked she placed the book back in her bag, forming the seals over and over agian. Bird. Rat. ox. monkey. rat. snake. agian. Bird.rat.ox.monkey.rat.snake. Again. bird. rat.ox.moneky.rat.snake. Every time she performed them she got a bit better, though it was always dificult to remember the second rat seal. She was determined to test if there was a way to lower the seal count like she had with her cloak of the night jutsu, but that would be a topic for later, once she'd learned to harness the technique as it was described.

(2794)