Dank Beginnings [IO, NK]

Kozachi had the book open in front of her, staring at it moodily. How long had she been sitting here at this stupid park trying to understand this stupid jutsu? Surely, it wasn't that hard. Just a sprinkling of chakra and a bit of ninja magic, and bam! You could get two images of you... doppelgangers, as it were, standing next to you. Not the coolest party trick she'd ever seen, but it was good enough for some academy student. If only she could watch someone do it... But, then, it wouldn't be entirely her own effort, would it? Gah, stupid girl. That didn't matter, she just had to learn the damn jutsu and pass the exam so she could be a genin and do fun missions already! Imagine getting assigned one outside the walls... Daydreams floated through her head, and before long, she found that half an hour had gone by and she hadn't made any progress. Dammit. 

She wasn't known for being a particularly airheaded girl, so this was somewhat uncharacteristic of her. She shook her head, trying to stay awake, and focused back on the book in her lap. Right, so all she needed to do was start with the handseals, which she'd done maybe twenty times today. Most genin had this down by muscle memory, so she was striving to do the same. She certainly wasn't a clumsy person, so it was getting easier and easier each time she did it. Still, it shouldn't be taking this long, right? Maybe she should ask Kenjiro for help... But that'd be kinda like learning it from someone else, right? She scrunched up her face, her mood souring by the second. As the clouds above began to clear, she got up and looked around. Should she practice now, maybe?

[WC 300]

Kenjiro had been walking around the Uchiha District for some time, the academy had been having issues ever since the "invasion" Konoha suffered from Kiri...it seemed that the once proud village he called his home had now become just a territory for an imperial force. With a sigh, he would kick some loose debris that laid on the ground in a bored fashion.

"I should probably go find Koz and see if she has made any progress on learning the techniques needed so we can get out of the academy and learn some real power." He said to himself before turning towards his family compound, hopefully, his sister was out back. As he arrived at the family compound, he removed his boots before stepping inside and donning his sandals before announcing to anyone that was home that he had arrived.

The silence was all that greeted him.

As he walked out back he noticed how the sky had darkened as he looked out to find his sister looking like she was in some sort of daydream which was really odd considering he had never known her to slack off like that.

"Hey, slacker...make any progress on the jutsu yet? You know the Academy only does so many promotion exams per month." Kenjiro said as he leaned over to look at the book she was reading to see the hand signs that she was using seemed to be correct, but it did not seem as if she was that exhausted.
"you have to put in a bit more effort into it in order to see results. Look here," He said as he pointed to a paragraph in the book reading about how you have to move chakra throughout one's entire body. "Ram, Snake, and Tiger. These three signs combined with a steady flow of chakra will allow you to actually split your chakra resources into half so that you can produce an accurate little mirror that you can see but you cannot actually feel...it cannot even take a real hit." He would say as a plume of smoke would appear next to Kenjiro as a copy of himself stood before Kozachi, as they both waved and smiled at her as he showed off a little. "The use of the technique is to set up for a combination attack or to confuse your opponent while on a mission so you can do other things." He would say before performing a basic kick to the gut of the clone causing to poof out of existence with an explosion of smoke that moved up into the air and dissipated just as quickly as it had come.

He would then walk about a meter away from Kozachi and motion for her to get up. "now enough reading, time to put knowledge into action. Remember...control your chakra and let it move through your entire body before finally pushing it out of your body, almost like you were making a second skin and shedding it off." He smiled and waited.

WC:500

E-eh? She hadn't noticed Kenjiro sneaking up on her like that. Had he been... looking for her? Man, she hated that he was better at stealth than she was, despite the practice she had put into it earlier. She also had secretly been hoping NOT to meet him right off the bat like this, but it seemed that variance had it out for her today. It was something everyone had to deal with from time to time. Kozachi refused to believe that there were people out there who were COMPLETELY blessed with flawless lives, and the idea seemed to be impossible to other people as well. 

Holding herself back from giving him a tirade about calling her "slacker", she listened to his advice. Man, did she have any idea how long she'd spent trying to figure this out? Well, whatever. If he could do it already, then maybe she could too. Perhaps she was thinking too hard about it. Simply trying to push the chakra out of her body and shape it in the way that she desired wasn't quite the most efficient way, is what she got from her brother. 

Nevertheless, she didn't quite agree with him about the usefulness of this technique. Any schmuck they went against out there probably also knew the clone technique, or at least how it worked. That meant that against stronger opponents (hell, even ones of their own skill level), it had no purpose whatsoever. But, the genin exams had its requirements that she had to fulfill, so she'd work harder to try and get this damn thing down. However, her view about it being no more than a neat trick to show your civilian friends hadn't really changed that much. It'd really only work in the field if your opponent was a total retard.

"Well.... alright, if you say so." Her mind still stung a bit at the insult, but you had to know when to pick your fights sometimes, especially when family was involved. Peace and stability, especially in these times, were more important than ever. To be fair, within the carefully guarded compound, there wasn't really any strife, even with all the strangers around the village. 

She'd perform the handseals again, ignoring Kenjiro's scrutiny as she began to knead the chakra within her. It wasn't that she was really ashamed of herself (alright, just a little) or that she had a bad relationship with her brother. On the contrary, the current state of the village had given them an even stronger filial bond than the one they had before.

The chakra began to leak out of her, and the jutsu began to fail. Gah! She expected more from herself. Seize control, right? That's all she had to do, really. It was like... mixing pudding or something like that. You could make something really delicious if you could just keep the mix inside the bowl... even though she was terrible at cooking, she knew these things, of course. It was just common sense to anyone. She had no doubt that Kenjiro had stronger chakra control, but that was no reason for her to give up. 

For a moment, she didn't think she'd make it. Then the image doppelgangers appeared next to her, signifying that the technique had been learned. 

"Sweet! See, Ken? I knew I could do it!" She gave him a proud (and relieved) grin as she dispersed the clones.

[TWC 870]

Kenjiro applauded his sister, she seemed to grasp the technique without fail after he had arrived. Apparently, she just needed a nudge in the right direction. With a grin, he would raise his fists in the air in an almost comical victorious pose one would normally see in an action manga. Now the other part of the Genin exam focused on how well they could use the transformation jutsu, a technique that would allow one to take the form of another human as long as they maintained control over their chakra.

"So you seem to have a good understanding of how to make a copy of yourself, but let's see if you can transform yourself into another person." He would say with a sly grin on his face before remembering the hand signs that they learned at the academy; Dog, Boar, then ram.

The premise was quite simple, taking the form of another human had a specific use of course...though in the shinobi world it was more like child's play than actually being useful one hundred percent of the time. The weird part about the actual books that taught the technique stated that the way to tell if it was working would be to see exactly how strained a person was while trying to perform it.

"Let's just try to see which one of us can make the better transformed grown up, I bet with a little practice I could make our teacher...probably improve his looks a bit too...ugly bastard," Kenjiro said with a chuckle before focusing once more and performing the hand signs needed for the Transformation Technique.

In his head he took the mental image of their teacher, an almost portly fellow by the name of Sensei Haruki...he was not even apart of any real clan, and rumors around the village stated he is just an offshoot of the Akamichi clan. His beard was a dirty brown color and his head was a buzzed cut of the same color. His eyes seemed always too narrow and his jaw seemed too sly even for a ninja. He stood roughly 5'3" tall and had a deep voice...he even recalled how some people named him Dwarf Sensei instead of his actual name. The thought made him lose control as he would fall to his ass laughing.

If Kozachi were to ask why he did such a thing he would explain in his head the picture of trying to fix the sensei's looks and would joke about how much it would not work. After a quick laugh, he would sigh and stand back up before doing the same thing again, this time he maintained a clear head before imagining the picture of a thinner version of Sensei Haruki. With a quick movement of his hands in the proper hand signs, he would finally control his chakra enough to make the transformation happen.

Kenjiro would open his eyes as he would no stand at 5'11" in height and weigh roughly 200 lbs. with more muscle than fat as he would look more like a built-up superhero in their backyard than the actual version of the teacher himself. He would look at Kozachi and in his best-imitating voice of the teacher he would bellow out.

"You don't want to embarrass me by becoming productive members of village shinobi society, get to work you lazy kids." He would then finish up with "I am not FAT I just store food for the winter." Before laughing and canceling the jutsu.

WC:585/1,085

Ooh, she didn't mind a little competition. It... certainly couldn't hurt. Besides, she definitely wouldn't lose out this time. While her brother performed the jutsu, she selected a form mentally and started to knead more chakra. Thinking on it now, a little extra physical training might help with that. She'd seen diagrams in the academy library about the efficiency of chakra conversion. Each person had a specific physical constitution, and the energies within them, denoted as "stamina", could be converted to chakra. Naturally, no process was ever one hundred percent efficient, but she could certainly try to approach that. Fire jutsu were the pride of the clan, and she (naturally) possessed that element, so her future in the clan was a little brighter than some of the other... less endowed. 

She chuckled a little at her brother's choice of form. Dwarf Sensei was certainly funny, if nothing else. She was sure that in combat, he was an entirely different person, but had never seen enough of him to know. Stories, though, of "fat Santa" weaving in and out of crowds, picking off targets, though, were whispered around the teacher's lounge... or at least, that's the rumor she got from the janitor. She'd never admit it to outsiders, but she tried her best to keep a firm hold on information within the academy. What people did, why they did it... it was her business. Practice for espionage, she told herself, but in reality, it was just an endless curiosity about business that shouldn't have been hers. Most likely, the teacher's knew about her bouncing between social groups, subliminally collecting all sorts of intel on her fellow students (mostly meaningless, but habitual nonetheless), but she really didn't care. It's not like they'd ever really try to stop her. If they wanted to, they would have already.

She already knew, more or less, how to perform this jutsu. In practice, her forms had been a bit wobbly, but with this knew method for chakra control, she was sure she could make the jutsu stick. Performing the hand seals for the technique, she projected the chakra around her, then proceeded to firmly mold it. See, it really was much easier this time around. She picked the form of the lady janitor who cleaned up the school grounds. Word was that she was a higher ranked shinobi as well, but you'd never know it from looking at her. The janitor lady seemed to be originally a foreigner, as she always insisted the kids call her "Ajhussi", which was a Northwestern tribal term for "auntie". 

"Ha! I can do this one, too." Her grin grew more confident as she disperse the jutsu. Aw man, they were TOTALLY ready for these exams! Whatever concerns had been in her mind before were now greatly diminished in the face of this sudden and surprising success. The clouds had now completely cleared away now, revealing a pleasant evening sky.

...

Wait, evening? 

"Oh, shoot! Big brother, we'd better head back, or we'll be missed." 

[TWC 1373]

Kenjiro was super impressed by his sister's transformation, the janitor was someone the boys of Kenjiro's age kind of crush on.  Some just thought that she was plain weird, but regardless she was able to do it without so much as a single hiccup.  Then he noticed it as well, the fact that the sun had been setting behind them as they were still a bit away from the house, good thing they were still in the clan district.  

"Damn...we need to hurry, dad won't be happy if he knew we were out training without his knowledge,"  Kenjiro said as he grabbed his sister's hand and began to run before he realized that they had forgotten the book back behind them.
"just our luck..."  He would say before letting go of her hand to go grab the book really quick before taking off towards her once more, grabbing her hand he would run towards their house.

It was not like Shinji did not know where his kids were, after all in a village that was just recently invaded it was commonplace for parents to become a bit overprotective.  He had his wife put marking seals on both of them, behind their right ear so that way they would never know that they were being watched at all times.  Shinji saw that his kids were about ten meters away and would be there within minutes.  He wanted to play a trick on them to make them remember that they had a curfew while in the academy.  He set up a small genjutsu trap that would activate when they would open the main door.  The trap was to show that their house had been broken into and their parents were nowhere to be seen.  In actuality, the mother and father would be beginning their evening meal silently inside the illusion waiting for their children to join them.

It would not take long for them to arrive at their house as Kenjiro would stop a moment to catch his breath.  He looked at his sister and laughed for a moment as the sun had already set and darkness was upon them.

"If only I found out you were training sooner we could have done all of this sooner, tell you what I have a handy trick a few of the higher ranking shinobi use to track each other, how about we use it next time to make sure we can find each other easier?"  It was more of a statement than a question as he would press his hand while channeling chakra to his hand before pulling away as a small dot would be left on her skin, like a freckle, except after a few seconds it would disappear.
"Ok the trick is to just channel your chakra into the hand of the person you are marking, it is like you are leaving a piece of yourself with the other person really.  It will mark me so that you can find me if you need me and the other way around applies as well."  He would explain quickly allowing her to do the same Mark Seal if she so wished.
 
Kenjiro would open the door quickly to try and get in, hoping his parents would not be waiting on the other side as usual.  However this was different, the air around the room seemed stale and old as the darkness welcomed them to a ransacked house with their parents nowhere in view.  If Kozachi would seem worried Kenjiro would comfort her before calling out for his parents, but when he examined the room once more he saw that there was an item that actually did not belong in the room, that much he was certain of.  A statue that was usually out in the garden was now in the living room standing straight up as if it had been moved with the utmost care and handling to make sure it did not fall.  

"That is clever, but that is the point of all this I am sure...Kozachi don't worry this is just a trick set up by dad...I will try to dispel it immediately."  Kenjiro said as he began to focus his chakra in his body, remembering the basics for the genjutsu release he would make the tiger seal before expelling his chakra outwardly until finally, the genjutsu broke.  His mother and father looked at them sternly as they finally spoke.

"Your late...come in and eat I am sure you two have been training all day...you will need that training in the morning when I test you both,"  Shinji said as he sighed and made them bowls of  freshly steamed rice before getting back to his own food.

WC:785/1,868
[EXIT]

Clone Technique500/500
Transformation Technique500/500
Mark Seal500/500
Genjutsu Release370/500

Approved

Fine by me, she was about to say, when they opened the door. Naturally, she didn't know that there was a visual genjutsu trap hidden there, but she did blink as she walked in, missing the stimulus as she walked in. Hmmm...? Why had her brother stopped? Oh, right. After receiving the mark seal, she noted that his perception of the environment seemed to be different than hers. Just contextual clues that she picked up as she removed her shoes. She'd already figured out the mark seal, but didn't really want to try it out on her brother yet. 

It didn't take her long to figure out what was going on, and was relieved to see that her brother could release the illusion on his own. Well, at least he was on the right track. Genjutsu was also supposed to be some kind of focus within the clan, but she couldn't figure it out for the life of her. Apparently, not even some of the genin had done much in terms of genjutsu training, which was kind of surprising to her. After all, were they not standard shinobi, with the skills to match? Maybe she expected too much. Wouldn't be the first time, either...

Although she hadn't seen the genjutsu herself, she was sure that if it was one of dad's "specials", it would be a lot harder to figure out than most. So, it was true what the people around her said. Kenjiro had more talent innately than she did. Well, while there wasn't much she could do about that, there was a lot she could do about herself. If her skill level was too low, she only had herself to blame. Still, she wished that she was more lucky when it came to this kind of thing. It was impossible for her to resent family, though.

While she did feel a little disturbed to learn that their father would try to test them in the morning, she dug in with gusto. Right, those diagrams in the library had informed her that lack of food or sleep could lower a person's stamina output over time. A person's body was like an engine of sorts. Keep it well fueled and well cleaned, and it could do wonders for you. Avoid tissue damage, avoid sleep deprivation, avoid things like alcohol and the like, and she was sure she'd do fine for another eighty years or so, give or take.

She couldn't help but feel curious as to what kind of training Kenjiro had been doing on the side. What was he doing, or who was he learning from? Alright, she admitted it, she was just a teensy bit jealous. Who wouldn't, though? Was he... training with people outside the clan? Now, that might be something she could get mad about. Why not train with her, instead? Surely, she was nicer than whoever he was going to see. Not that it mattered, she kept trying to persuade herself. Focus on what really mattered here: getting past those genin exams.

Could she do it by herself? Well, the short answer was "yes". Naturally, since she had just learned all the techniques she needed to know, and had the constitution to perform them, she could blow past it (probably). There was, of course, the off chance that her proctor had other things in mind. However, this was most likely not the case. In addition, there was the expectation of her clan that she would come into the power of her bloodline limit at some point as well. Now THAT was something to be excited for. The sharingan, especially its evolution, was something to be watched with awe (and caution, apparently) in the clan. Was it really such a dangerous power? She kinda wanted to find out for herself.

[TWC 2010
10 stats
500 to http://naruto-role-play-rpg.forumotion.com/t22310-clone-technique
500 to http://naruto-role-play-rpg.forumotion.com/t22306-transformation-technique
500 to http://naruto-role-play-rpg.forumotion.com/t31713-v6-mark-seal
500 to http://naruto-role-play-rpg.forumotion.com/t22313-genjutsu-release
exit]

Approved