Knightly Moves [Priv. Hachi Hozuki/Hikari Namikaze

Bedi took his place at the training field, armed with two kunai. He was practicing his bladesmen ship in preparation for learning projection, among other techniques as well. He had picked up an interesting technique from the local shinobi called Flicker Movement which could speed him up through the use of time based magic and allow him to move and react much much faster then he previously could.Still, he was nowhere on par with some of the other knights so his training would continue on everlasting. He made a cross shaped slash at a nearby dummy, smirking as he took a step back to throw his two kunai in quick succession into its chest then punching the handles of the blades hard into the dummy. That was a quick way to get through light armor, as well as hay and twigs apparently. He removed the blades with a flourish and sheathed them back into the pouches on his armored legs. He himself wore armor that would be rather ineffective in a serious fight and he would definitely have to amend that sometime soon. He would need a group to do missions with first though and that was much harder to come by. He walked a bit from his dummy and searched around for any prospective partners.


[WC: 200]

Hachi sighed as she did her best to find a quiet spot, though she was having some... issues. She had managed to get her hands on a book that was supposed to help her teach herself how to use chakra and attempt to do a jutsu and had gotten quite into reading it in a nice quiet spot. Unfortunately, so absorbed with her reading, she did not notice when some younger children had noticed what she was reading. Apparently they were the type who paid very close attention to their parents teachings, because when they realized she was reading one of those unholy books of evil spells, they began tossing small stones at her. While the children weren't throwing very large rocks or very hard... they were still rocks being thrown at her! It very easily broke her concentration from her reading. Not wanting to get the book wet, she decided to head back to the academy training grounds. She tried to avoid the field because of all the other students doing more physical practicing and talking and being loud... but noise was easier to ignore than rocks bouncing off her head, back and chest.

Once she was back on the "tainted" grounds, the children thankfully ran off, knowing better than to approach the academy. "Finally. Honestly, there's nothing so bad about this stuff. Lucky this book wasn't burned... but I'm sure they'll see reason once I can show them how useful it is." Finding a spot it seemed no one was using, Hachi sat down against a wall and began reading again while trying to manipulate her chakra. She could handle one of these simple jutsus right? They were easy enough for children younger than her to handle after all! She just had to... figure out these handseals! The book did it's best to describe them, and even had a couple diagrams and yet, she just... felt like she was doing them wrong, like her fingers weren't cooperating. And when she tried to go from one seal to the next too quickly she'd tangle her fingers together! 

"Come on... How am I going to teach anyone if I can't learn one of the basics?"  Setting the book down, she decided to try taking it slow. She didn't need to be fast, she needed to be CORRECT. Muttering the names to herself as she performed the seals again and again, intently focused on not screwing it up. After a few more tries she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. This time, for real. Not just practice, it was time to use that chakra she'd read so much about! Performing the seals one last time, she unleashed what chakra she could harness into the Clone technique. After feeling... something leave her body, the student slowly opened one eye and took a peek to her right... nothing... but to her left, a perfect replica was copying her every move! It was great, glasses and everything! Hachi giddily picked up her book and hugged it tight to her chest with glee. This was it! Her first real step to becoming a ninja! One that would convince all those fanatics that jutsu wasn't some evil abomination! All thanks to this book! "I'll prove it! I'll prove ninja aren't evil."
 Looking up with a smile, Hachi would flinch when she caught a glimpse of another person in the field, punching kunai into a straw dummy, her glasses slipping slightly. She did have to admit that things were a bit... violent, but violence wasn't necessarily evil. Then the person started looking around as he left the dummy... did he lose something?

(wc: 607)

He glanced over, the Knight seeing the girl reading and attempting some kind of jutsu. He wanted to help but..he also didn’t want to approach unbidden. So he took a moment to think what he should do to help. She didn’t appear to have a headband, and the jutsu she had performed was the clone technique so she was probably an academy student. If that was the case then it was his duty to help her out. Next she would need...the transformation technique. He clone seemed pretty spot on after all. The surface walking technique wouldn’t be bad for her either. He tried to smile gently as he walked towards her with a greeting. “Hey! Need any help? I know a few jutsu myself if your practicing.”
To prove this, he used the Dog, Boar and Ram symbols to use transformation jutsu. He became a perfect clone of the pink haired girl before he reversed the jutsu to turn back. “That's the next one you need right? It can be a little tricky. So try and create a shell of mana around yourself and use it to alter your appearance. The hand seals help do most of the job for you so I think it’ll be easy enough for you.”
He set his hands on his sides as he waited to see what she could do. It dawned on him that this was rather sudden, but he just wanted to help her out and that couldn’t be wrong could it? He inwardly sighed.

[250]

Hachi was quite surprised when the boy walked towards her with a smile, her mind starting to race with reasons why he might be walking this way, what she should say to him, how should she act? The result of all her thinking was silently watching him approach, blinking as he asked if she required help. "Oh, well..."
Before she could come up with a response however, he created a puff of smoke and transformed into her! Her clone vanished as she watched the display with awe, her force catching in her throat slightly as she fixed her glasses and tried to respond quickly. "Y-yes! I was just about to try that! It's... this one right?"
Flipping through the pages in her book until she found what she was looking for, she held it up to him, displaying the first pages introducing the transformation technique. Once she'd shown the book to him she would set it down again and put her hands together, furrowing her brow slightly as she tried to get the handseals down, repeatedly doing the wrong ones or doing them out of order. "C-can you display the seals for me again? Slowly please? I think it'll be easier if I'm able to see it with my own eyes."
  
After he had shown the seals and she leaned in close to examine his hands and copy him, Hachi would give a nod, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, muttering to herself as she tried to focus. "Okay... I can do this... Energy around me, from everywhere on everything. Chakra, not water..."
Performing the seals in succesion, a cloud of smoke would momentarily envelope her, fading away to reveal... Hachi without glasses, now additionally wearing a red apron, her eyes still closed. After holding still for a few seconds she'd begin blushing. 
 "I... remembered about needing to make dinner when I get home today and kind of... lost focus. It didn't work did it? I don't wanna move or look if it did cause it might stop working or something..."


(WC: 343)

Bedi smiled as he watched her concentrate, almost reminded him of himself when he was younger.She performed the jutsu admirably but seemed to lose concentration and just added on to her clothing and removed her glasses. This was...kind of impressive in a way but not exactly what they were going for. “I think that's...technically correct. There is nothing wrong with the material and you look natural. It IS however just you in an apron so that's not quite what we were going for Miss.”
He smile and gives her a small pat on the head, trying not to be condescending. “Now let's try again shall we?”
Bedivere held a hand up, as if to show her the seals once more, this time a bit slower and with more care. “Now first is Dog of course.”
He positioned his hands in the “Dog” formation, placing an open hand atop a closed fist, giving a smile to her. “Then it's Boar, another simple handsign.”
He placed his hands together upside down, with his fingers curled inward to show off the proper boar symbol. “Lastly is ram. The most complicated handsign in this set but not too hard to do of course, you did it well last time.”
He pressed his hands together, curling down several into the gap between his hands as his two longest fingers pressed together as if they were pointing. “Past that you just need to concentrate better this time and I think you can get it with relative ease."


After she had hopefully performed the jutsu successfully, he would think for a moment and give her one more task. “Another good technique is surface walking. Then you can run up walls and such. It's a technique that every ninja should learn for obvious reasons so I can give you a run down on that one as well.”
He’d give her a moment to respond, if she wanted to do this or not before he himself continued if she agreed to the training. “Now this one is a bit easier, at least for me anyway. Pool your chakra to the outside of your clothes, especially around your feet and make it stick to surfaces. Try to think of it like velcro or Honey even. Then you should be able to walk and even run across all the surfaces you want...as long as they aren’t like bladed or anything. Should perfect the technique before trying that.”




[400]

Hachi relaxed and let the transformation break, returning to her normal outfit with disappoint. "Really sorry about this, I can't believe I forget such an important step. Oh, right, never introduced ourselves! My name is Hachi. Pleasure meet you and thank you for teaching me!" Giving a short bow, Hachi would smile and perform the jutsu once more, this time keeping the image of the boy in her head, successfully duplicating his appearance for a few seconds before dispersing the illusion, a large smile on her face. "I-I got it that time! Yes!"
She pumps her fists in victory, her smile fading slightly as he begins talking about another technique, slowly nodding in understanding. "So... no handseals? Well, that certainly doesn't sound near as complicated to me. My hands just don't like making them most of the time and I have trouble remembering how they go without an example at hand. So, one that doesn't use them sounds like cake to me!"

Turning to face the academy wall, Hachi begins walking forward, slow focused steps as she tries imagining her feet being sticky, at least enough to cling to the wall. With a focused step she put her foot onto the wall, taking slow calm measured breaths as she began stepping up along the wall, wobbling as the direction gravity was pulling her seemed to change. She holds herself in place for a few seconds before continuing to go up a few more steps, carefully turning herself around with a smile to look back to the person who had explained the technique. "Way easier! Wow... being a ninja is amazing! Now walls won't ever be in my way when I want to get somewhere, I can just go right over! It's so conv-eh?"
As she spoke to the boy while looking to the ground, her glasses slipped off her face. Without thinking, the girl pushed off the wall, diving after the spectacles and snatching them out of the air as she fell. Continuing to the ground, she pulled the glasses to her chest and closed her eyes, liquefying her body as she neared the ground. If she connected with the ground. she would hit it with a splash, as if someone had dumped a large bucket from the roof. Hachi would become a large puddle of water on the ground with a large bulge where a pair of glasses floated in the center, rescued from cracking on the ground. 

If caught, the person attempting to catch her would certainly become drenched, Hachi pooling between their feet with only her glasses left on them/in their grasp.

(436)

He smiled warmly at the girl and nodded, happy to see her perform the jutsu correctly this time, crossing his armored arms and nodding. “My name is Bedivere. Bedivere Pendragon.”
Speaking of his clan, he had a technique of his own to train, known as Projection. It was one of the main arts of the Pendragon and would allow him to always have a blade at will when he needed one. It was an incredible feat of mana and mental skill that was one of the reasons that made them some of the most feared blade wielders to those that knew of them. He concentrated in his hand, and began the steps. First he had to judge it's concept of creation, how it was made and with what materials. Down to the impurities of the weapons metal. For this he concentrated on a kunai, a rather simple weapon to reproduce in theory. Next was Hypothesizing the basic structure, guess what it looked like and how it all fit together. With the small handheld blade this was also not very difficult. It was mostly steel with a wrapping around the handle for comfort and a honed edge for slashing. Next he had to use his mana to duplicate the composition material down to the finest detail and reproduce it from his mind alone. The next step was to imitate the skill of it's making, taking on the years and years of kunai production the original blacksmith had been through and reproducing that love and care into the blade.

He needed to sympathise with the experience of its growth, to feel how it felt to make the blade. How it felt to mold and craft it's metal, pouring the molten metal into the mold and sharpening each edge. Next he needed to reproduce the years that the blade had been around, how long since it was created. This wasn’t a long time of course but it was enough to make this step a little harder to do as he focused on the miniscule bits of wear and tear in the blade, the little bits of imperfection. Finally he had to excel at the process of creation, to reproduce it instantly. He had practiced these steps for years and this was the step he had taken the longest to master. But he had to master it sometime, and now was as perfect as any other time. Small crackles of green electricity appeared in his palm as an image of a kunai appeared in his hand. He went over and over the steps as he tried to excel at every part of its creation, the blueprint filling in within his own mind as well as within his palm, slowly but surely forming a blade in his hands. He pulled it up to smile at his efforts. As such, he had not been paying full attention to Hachi who had been climbing the wall above him with a great amount of effort. He didn’t notice her glasses fall, and he especially didn’t notice the girl dive after them.

He looked up just to be drenched in water, a pair of glasses now loosely sitting in his fingers where the kunai had been, the blade itself dissipating. He panickly attempted to re-cast projection but he could not re-create the blade a second time, apparently needing more practice with it or the water was affecting him. “Hachi? Did you see who did that? They kinda ruined my technique and you dropped...your glasses? Hachi?”

He rather worriedly looked around, unsure of where the girl had gotten of to.




[600]

Hachi believe what she'd just done. She just... splashed all over this nice person who had been helping her! And from what he said she'd ruined some sort of technique he was trying to work on! She mentally berated herself and even considered just staying a puddle of water until he left, but that would be even more rude. She HAD to apologize, she couldn't just leave him confused and worried about where she went! Besides, he was a fellow shinobi, so they'd meet each other again eventually and then he might have had time to get mad at her. So, Hachi shifted her water in front of him, her head rising up from the puddle as she began reforming, her face bright red. "That was... my bad. I-I didn't keep chakra around my face and when I looked down my glasses slipped off."
The Hozuki continued rising up from her puddle, some of the loose water on Bedivere that hadn't been absorbed or soaked up by clothing began sliding off of him and joining the shrinking puddle at her feet. Once she had completely reformed, she bowed in apology, her hair still dripping a bit. "I tried to catch them on reflex, and then I was falling, and didn't want to get bruised, and I didn't realize you were below me! I'm so sorry! I should have stayed solid! Or, well, I still would have fallen on you if I did that. I-I won't fall on you ever again though I swear! ...um, I'll just... can I have those back please?"
Looking up apologetically, Hachi held out a hand to take her glasses back from him, trying to think of some way to apologize again without being repetitive.

(289)

The Knight-in-training jumped as the girls head appeared from the water, apologizing to him. What kind of technique was THAT to be able to turn themselves completely into a liquid? She must have fallen off the wall and splashed over him to get this way, and as she reformed he felt the water physically slip off of him as it turned into the form of this girl. He shook his head in dumbfounded amazement at this ability and was surprised that she seemed unhurt and that all her body parts had returned to the places they were meant to be. Evidently her chakra had failed when her glasses had slipped off and thats what caused her rather sudden fall. Natural to someone who’s sight depend on these lenses but unfortunate for anyone that stands under them, especially if they can vanish into a puddle like state. He still needed a minute to process all of this, but he would hand her glasses back as soon as she asked. “Well first off, you should consider some kind of strap or wire to keep them on your head. That could be a death sentence in the battlefield if you are left with impaired sight. Next you need to learn to keep your chakra flow stable no matter the circumstance. Though falling….doesn’t seem to be a risk for you. Or well anything actually...would it be impolite to ask just HOW you did that Miss Hachi? It was rather incredible even if it was rather sudden.”
Such a technique seemed to fit the words immortal pretty well, especially if it was something this clan did purely on instinct. If a Pendragon could turn their skin to steel at a moments notice they would be rather invincible on the field of combat. Did such a technique even have a weakness?


[300]

Hachi slipped her glasses back onto her face, nodding slightly when he mentioned getting something to keep them on so she wasn't blinded in combat.  He was completely correct she just... hadn't taken it into account. This was a better mistake to be called out now rather than on a mission or something important however. "I'll find a way to fix that before I do anything dangerous... well, more dangerous than walk up a wall I suppose."
When asked, how she did what she'd done, Hachi smiled a bit. It was a fun thing to explain to children, but she'd never explained it to someone her own age before. Her explanation was childish and silly really, but she wasn't sure how else to answer so... might as well go with what she knows! "Well, I don't exactly know how it works or where it comes from. It's not quite a jutsu, it's just part of me and my family. The only explanation my mom ever gave me was an old fairy tale story about how a man sang to a lake for years and the lake eventually fell in love with him. According to that story, I'm the descendant of that lake. I don't THINK that really happened, but I am made of water. Like, more than normal people. If I ever lose consciousness I kind of go into an in-between state of solid and liquid. But as long as I'm awake, I'm in total control... excluding reflexes like getting scared about falling for example."

Hachi demonstrated a bit more, letting her arm melt with a smile, clear pure water where her shoulder connected to her body. "It's a little harder to just do parts because my body wants to stay together, but if I focus I can do stuff like this too. It's kind of like chakra actually. Just, more drastic. Makes getting clean a breeze too, since I can kind of 'feel' what is and isn't me. Sometimes I like putting dyes in because they tickle."
Hachi giggled a bit as she admits what she viewed as a more childish part of her then blushed and looked away, realizing she might come off as bragging about her clan's ability. "Oh, I'm sorry, I'm rambling on about myself. Anyways, it's not that important. Since I try to stay solid most of the time I can always get hurt by things I don't see coming. I've even cut myself cooking a few times, so it's not that impressive."


(418)