Training the Rashomon (COMPLETE)

Fenrir woke up on top of an apartment building.  He didn't have his own housing in Konohagakure yet, so he had found this creative way to make do.  He would sneak into 2 to 3 apartments on his way down from his current resting place.  Rising up from where he lay, Fenrir approached the edge of the building that was opposite the street.  He didn't want anyone from inside seeing him, but the ones on the outside seeing him could be just as bad.  This was why he would be silently climbing down to one of the uppermost apartments on the building, sliding the window open to let himself in.  Luckily, the owner of this apartment was still asleep,  and appeared to be enough of a slob to not notice a bit of missing cereal.  The perfect target for Fenrir, the Great Breakfast Thief of Konohagakure.  He was still working on the title for when he released his ultimate tell-all best seller, revealing the secret of what really happened to all of Konoha's cereal.  That was a topic for the future though, and he was currently supposed to be stealing cereal and training, preferably the former first.  

Tip-toeing through the man's living room, which was coincidentally also his kitchen, Fenrir silently approached the cabinets lined up against the wall.  Pots, pans, plates, cups, bowls, spices, flour, aaaand.... Cereal!  The man had Fenrir's favorite brand, Non-Copyrighted Cinnamon Roast Bunch.  They were so delicious, with the sugar and cinnamon blending perfectly to form a little box of heavenly delight.  This, combined with a bowl from earlier, and the milk the man had, which took a strangely long time to find,  made Breakfast, one of the most important meals of the day.  Putting all of the ingredients back into their proper place, Fenrir was ready to get going.  He would walk out through the man's front door, eating his cereal as he walked through the receptionists front room.  The receptionist would notice him, as she remembered everyone who had a room, but before she could question him he was gone, out the front door and heading down to his temporary training grounds.  Fenrir sort of liked the novelty of this places climate, forest, and people, but he was wishing he was home more and more each day.  This place was simply not as comfortable to him as Kirigakure, his true home.  That's weird, Fenrir thought as he walked.  I never had thoughts like this before coming here.  Maybe these weirdos were rubbing off on him.  This thought made him decide today was a day for solo training, as he didn't think more time with the weirdos would help this issue. 

Fenrir arrived at the training grounds quickly, the apartment building not being far from the area he spent most of his time at.  This was helpful, as he would need some extra time as he was now training alone, and he knew from experience that it always felt slower to do so.  This was not going to be an easy day.  For his starting warmups, Fenrir simply did some stretching, watching the sun rise as he did so.  It looked nice here, but the trees prevented you from seeing his favorite part.  In Kiri, he would stand by the water's edge and watch it from the beginning, no objects there to block his vision except for the occasional fishy.  Here the trees were so tall and thick that you had no chance of seeing this part, not even seeing the sun until the sky was already starting to turn blue.  After he was done stretching and thinking about Kirigakure, which was still strange in his mind, Fenrir moved on to the more advanced stuff.  Moving over to one of the training dummies, he began training some of his physical abilities, seeing how hard and how fast he could hit the target, as well as how long he could continue to do so.  He wasn't too bad at any of these three, but he was definitely better with the speed of his strikes than the stamina or strength.  This was when he thought about his abilities, more specifically, the ones that were lacking.  His durability was low, and he wasn't able to really take a hit.  This had been proven in the Tournament, when Kisuke's shuriken decimated his arm and his fireballs straight up launched Fenrir, knocking him unconscious almost instantly.  This was absolute proof in Fenrir's mind that he needed more defense, and the best way to do that was through Taijutsu training.

The first technique he would be training was the Inside to Outside block.  This technique was very basic, but incredibly useful if used correctly.  When it was used right, you can make a fairly useful opening in your opponents defense by throwing the attackers limb off course or even grabbing it to make them less able to defend against your followup attack.  This technique was usually used in conjunction with another Taijutsu technique, taking advantage of the opening to land a good strike.  Without another Taijutsu technique, it wouldn't be as useful, but Fenrir was completely certain he would be able to make good use of it.  The first thing he would need to train it is a target, which in this case would be the arm of the training dummy he was using earlier.  Turning it to where it's arm was pointing at Fenrir, almost like he was swingin on ya boi, so Fenrir could practice as if he was actually being attacked.  This would be better than just training on air, but he still didn't like it quite as much as training with a person.  Pushing his hand down towards the center of his body before pushing it out, taking the dummies hand with it.  He began with a closed fist, simply striking the arm to move it, then moved on to the open hand, grabbing the arm as he moved it and keeping a hold of it.  This was a fairly simple technique and it took very little time for Fenrir to get the hang of it. 

The Rashomon Gate.  This was one of the more powerful Space-Time techniques, as it was one of the few that could be fairly effective without summons, and built a sturdy defense quickly.  This made it invaluable to one such as Fenrir, who, thus far, was only able to use Space-Time techniques effectively, due to his specialization in them.  This left a few gaps in his arsenal until he achieved a summoning contract, but the Rashomon was a good way for him to fill in a couple of the defensive gaps.  By simply using the technique when he was being attacked, he would significantly reduce the power of any attack used against him, as well as completely block some attacks.  This wasn't something he could hope for against many ninja, as there were some really powerful fucking jutsu out there, and he would simply have to settle for reducing the damage of these techniques.  Without further ado, Fenrir began the actual training.  Fenrir hadn't even thought about this technique for a while, but now that he was thinking about it once more, he was incredibly excited to be finally learning it.  It had actually been one of the jutsu that got him interested in Space-Time, even though he had no way of learning it when he started, he had been looking forward to it.  Thoughts of when he was younger once again brought thoughts of Kirigakure, his home, and how he missed it.  Shoving those thoughts right of the metaphorical cliff in the back of his mind, Fenrir would continue on with the thoughts of training.  

The only seal used for the jutsu was Snake, which Fenrir reminded Fenrir of the reason he rediscovered this jutsu.  It was one of the jutsu used by the "Sannin" he had recently been reading about, and made him think about the three.  Tsunade, Jiraiya, and Orochimaru, all great ninja in their time for various reasons.  The snake, Orochimaru, was famous for being a so-called villain, his goal being to master all jutsu and become an immortal.  Whether or not he achieved these goals was unknown to Fenrir, as he seemed to just disappear off the face of the Earth.  Tsunade was famous for her strength and medical skill, expecially the Creation Rebirth technique, which, while not many details were covered in the book, was known to make her almost invincible in a fight.  Fenrir was also unsure of what happened to her.  The toad sage, Jiraiya was third, famous for his skill with Ninjutsu and summoning.  Of the three, Fenrir wished to emulate Jiraiya and Orochimaru the most, Tsunade specializing in Medical jutsu, which Fenrir had little to no interest in.  Orochimaru and Jiraiya, on the other hand, both used summoning and Ninjutsu, which Fenrir was interested in, and both taught another two great ninja, Naruto Uzumaki and Sasuke Uchiha, who Fenrir had yet to research.  If the fact that they were experts in Fenrir's 2 favorite fields of Ninja Techniques and trained two of the best ninja ever wasn't enough to emulate them, nothing was.  This was merely a reason however, and what was important was the training itself, which Fenrir needed to hurry the hell up and get to.

Taking up his position near the edge of the training ground, Fenrir formed the snake hand-seal, focusing on the image of the Rashomon gate, a large barrier with the face of a demon.  This would normally cause it to be summoned, but in this case, it simply caused a small poof of smoke, with neither wall nor demon appearing where it had been.  What the fuck jutsu?  This would prompt a yawn from within Fenrir's mind.  What the hell are you doing?  Where are we?  Ah, Fenrir hadn't heard from Red or Blue recently, and he was actually beginning to get worried about them.  Life would be rather lonely if he could no longer talk to himself.  A much more graceful, less lawnmower-on-a-cinderblock yawn would then be heard, obviously from Blue.  What happened?  Fenrir wasn't entirely sure how to answer that.  His first assumption was that they had gone into some sort of hibernation or just took a long ass nap, but brain voices don't take naps, do they?  No, probably not.  You both just disappeared for a while.  Right now I'm training Rashomon, but you wouldn't be able to tell from the results.  Fenrir would watch as the last of the smoke dissipated, the evidence of his failure now gone.  This didn't seem like the kind of technique he could really progress in measurable amounts, as it was either a success or a failure, and right now it was a failure.  As such, he would have no real way of knowing if he was making any progress other than by if there was a big ass wall in front of him, meaning he could be doing it completely wrong or simply needed to keep practicing, and it was impossible to tell which.  Welp, might as well keep doin the thing!

Forming the hand-seals once again, Fenrir pushed his chakra through space to where he wanted the wall to appear.  He visualized every detail, down to the last eyelash on the demon's face on the front of the gate.  Closing his eyes for a moment, Fenrir would open them quickly as he pushed one last wave of chakra into the spot, attempting to make the wall appear where he was looking.  A giant puff of smoke later, there was a Rashomon gate in front of him, in all it's demon-heady glory!  Well, that was fast.  Surprising from someone like you.  This was amazing, he had learned the Rashomon technique in so little time he was almost actually joyful about it.  Heading back to his apartment roof, Fenrir smiled about his quick progress today.  If only all training was like this session was.

As he walked away smiling, a small squirrel ran down from a nearby tree, no doubt investigating the gate.  Climbing to the top, it was incredibly surprised when the gate disappeared out from under it, unable to take even the damage of a squirrels weight.  Fenrir was not done training this jutsu.

EXIT
WC: 2051
Claiming 10 stats
1563 words towards

Summoning: Rashomon:

Claiming

Inside to Outside Block:

1551 toward Summoning: Rashomon if you're deducting 500 for the block.

Approved.