Old Dogs And New Tricks

Issei sat cross-legged in the room of fountains, eyes half-closed as he sought to discern any fluctuations among his internal chakra flows. Detecting the minute details of his meridian network and the natural energy patterns thereof was... taxing, to say the least. It was not difficult, persay, so much as it was an exercise in patience. The Chūnin who sat opposite his position was quite skilled with illusions. More than once, the physician had overlooked an innocuous change in his environment - a soft hum or petals of an illusory flower - that could just as easily have been a lethal genjutsu.

It was a... friendly training session, insofar as such a thing could be said to exist under the auspices of the Hidden Mist. Tanako-sensei was new blood - one of the Chūnin who had risen to prominence following the disappearance of the First Mizukage. While not as bloodthirsty as her predecessors, the young woman had proven disconcertingly competent in concealing debilitating, genjutsu-induced mental conditions in sensory stimuli that most people would consider beneath their notice. A single stick of incense burned in a simple, wooden stand between the physician and instructor. Gentle, fragrant smoke mingled with mist from the garden's myriad waterfalls.

There!

The smoke that rose from the stick of incense drifted ever-so-slightly into the faint wind that stirred the room's misty currents. That simple fact was enough to suggest the presence of a genjutsu, given the circumstances under which Issei was training. Of course, that didn't preclude the possibility of a distraction. The real test lay in the assessment of his chakra flow. The energy moved with a smooth, pulsating cadence - not unlike a heartbeat. There didn't appear to be any sudden spikes or dips in the stream, which would somewhat corroborate the presence of a counterflow and, therefore, a potential genjutsu.

A distraction, the genin decided. Which implied the presence of an actual genjutsu - otherwise, what would be the point of wasting the chakra on a jutsu that did nothing but slightly alter the trajectory of smoke? Tanako-sensei was many things, but a fool was not one of them. Her actions conformed to what Issei liked to call 'battlefield logic'. Conservation of energy was chief among the tenets of such behavioral philosophy. But then, if there was a genjutsu, wouldn't he have identified some manner of fluctuation upon inspecting his chakra flows? Silently, the man continued his self-inspection. Something isn't right, here.

After a few moments, the physician's eyes widened ever-so-slightly. Tanako, you clever girl... It was, perhaps, a trifle disrespectful to think of a Chūnin in such terms... but she was nearly six years his junior. It wasn't one genjutsu, it was three - each keyed to the same area of his meridian network, but triggered through a different sense. The sight of the incense stand... the feel of the mist on my skin... and... There was a third one, Issei was sure of it. The medium through which it had been delivered, on the other hand, remained well beyond his current understanding.

The physician was fairly confident in his ability to overwhelm the unnatural chakra flow, but knew that any external indicator of an attempt to break the jutsu would only trigger yet another stage in this training. While he was perfectly capable of forming a 'tiger' seal with one hand, both his palms were clearly visible from the meditative position they'd adopted - at Tanako's insistence, now that Issei thought about it. Making a handseal - even one-handed - was a bit of a giveaway when the action was performed directly in the opponent's line of sight. Which... left him caught between two metaphorical jutsu.

Theoretically, if one were to take the principles behind one-handed seals to the next logical stage of mastery... it should be possible to replicate a chakra pattern without the use of any hand-seals at all. Theoretically. Of course, if one were to attempt to replicate a chakra pattern in a hamfisted manner, the potential dissonance within their meridian network risked severe damage to the body. Issei silently gathered his resolve. There were few places safer to practice such a thing than the Academy, with its state-of-the-art medical facility - insofar as seal-less jutsu could be considered 'safe', of course.

Well, here goes nothing...

Spoiler:

Issei counted each breath as he stared at the six sheets of parchment that lay before him, face-down upon the desk. Upon his successful escape of Tanako's genjutsu without the use of hand-seals, the female Chūnin had advised him to enroll in the headmaster's fuinjutsu course. While the physician fancied himself an amateur calligrapher, the level of skill required by the more advanced ink-seals was far beyond his comparatively meager capabilities. It wasn't that he was bad, by any stretch of the imagination - but rather that his experience was inferior to those who relied, offensively and defensively, upon their handwriting.

Now, the moment of truth had come. The physician somehow managed to scrape the grades required to pass the course thus far... but as he challenged the final examination, the man couldn't help but feel a trifle inadequate. With just a hint of resignation, Issei flipped over the first bit of paper to reveal the easiest portion of this last obstacle. On its surface was scrawled a relatively simple design that he easily  recognized as a basic tracking seal. The genin frowned. Easier than expected. Slowly, Issei pressed two fingers against the seal and injected a bit of his chakra. Done.

The next sheet held... an odd-looking design that the dark-haired Yuki scion couldn't quite recall having covered during class. A bit puzzled, the man peered at the edges of the ink-based construct in an effort to discern any familiar features. Squinting at the seal - because it was very clearly some manner of fuinjutsu, that he was sure of - Issei slowly began to nod. The scrawl bore several characteristics he had come to associate with conventional, low-level sealing techniques. A bit more complicated than a tracking diagram... but not by much. Carefully, the physician dissolved a crucial part of the trigger mechanism.

Maybe this won't be so hard, after all... Eyebrows raised, the genin flipped over the next page. It was blank, barring a small dot in the upper right-hand corner that resembled nothing so much as incidental ink spillage. What in the bijuu-scoured elemental nations...? The man's brow furrowed and he eyed the back of the page - just in case some enterprising proctor might've decided to throw him an easy 'pass' for C-Rank. No such luck. It wasn't until Issei's nose scraped against the paper's fibers that he made out the minute features on the stain that suggested it was a seal.

It took even longer for him to work out how to eliminate the kami-blasted thing. Whoever had designed that seal was clearly a master of their craft. The physician suspected he might one day possess the clarity of quill to create something of such fine detail, but he certainly didn't at present. After Issei overloaded the little menace - effectively blowing out the seal's artificial chakra circuit - he moved on to the next task with confidence. He flipped over the paper that likely contained a B-Rank seal... and just stared. What in the name of the nine bijuu is this Sage-forsaken thing...?

Spoiler:

In the center of one of the Academy's many training rooms, a dark-haired physician stood at the center of a cloud of fluttering talismans. Roughly one-third of the hundred-odd talismans that were whirling in his vicinity bore a basic tracking seal, whilst the rest were cast-offs from his former classmates in his recent course on fuinjutsu breaking. Issei had only been certified as a C-Rank user of the technique, but he was still fairly certain that it would prove useful once he went into the field as a medic-nin. He was as likely to encounter seals as he was wounds.

It was only after sitting for his C-Rank exam that the dark-haired Yuki scion had realized that learning to counteract the effects of genjutsu and low-level seals was only of use if one could tell whether a patient was suffering from such techniques. In both cases, chakra vision - something of which the physician was not yet capable - would have been a great help. In the absence of such things, one had to make due with low-budget alternatives. In the case of fuinjutsu, that meant learning to sense seals. Luckily, his former fuinjutsu professor had taken pity on his need for 'targets'.

It had surprised him how willing the elderly Chūnin had been to hand over a handful of tags with his students' failed attempts at drawing basic seals. It had surprised him even more that the old man was willing to let him borrow a handle of working tags usually employed to track students and low-ranking genin during the Academy's notorious field exercises - albeit with the fervent promise to return every last one of them within the week, without so much as a scratch. Somehow, Issei suspected that few bothered with the precision control necessary to reliably sense the presence of seals.

And thus it was that the dark-haired physician found himself attempting - in vain, so far - to sense the tracking tags within the whirling mass of failed talismans and snatch them from the air. His initial attempts at throwing them all up in the air and playing a terribly-adult game of fifty-two card pick-up with talismans had amused one of the wind-users so much that they'd obliged him by manifesting a whirlwind in his immediate vicinity. It proved much easier to focus on sensing the blasted things without having to constantly keep them airborne. Of course, sensing and catching were different things.

One hand hovered in front of his chest, crooked halfway between 'bird' and 'rat'. The other was tucked behind his waist in a fashion reminiscent of a professional fencer, flickering through a series of seals - a practice that the genin had adopted to conceal his jutsu preparations from his opponents' lines-of-sight. Dog... hare... rat... A faint aura of chakra quested outward from his body, drawing his attention toward several of the tags fluttering about in the whirlwind. With a focused expression, the physician stepped forward and snapped his hand outward - trying for a certain tag that felt... prickly. Just twenty-nine more...

Spoiler:

Issei blinked at his fuinjutsu professor. Two days previously, the old man had made roughly thirty-odd tracking tags vanish with nothing more than a pair of handseals. The Yuki scion remembered them vividly - the sign of the rat, followed by the sign of the dog. It was with no small amusement that the elderly instructor had consented to walk him through the chakra construct that allowed shinobi to create an extradimensional storage space. The physician had just about lost his mind upon realizing that such a thing was possible, to say nothing of it being a staggeringly simple D-Rank technique.

"Now," the professor said, somewhat tersely. "The first thing to keep in mind is that space-time jutsu always require a minimum of four variables - three for the traditional dimensions we associate with matter, and one to reflect their relative state in the timeline." The man eyed Issei, seemingly to make sure that the genin's mind hadn't started seeping out his ears. The physician nodded soberly - his eagerness restrained behind his eyes. "Manifest a basic spatial construct and define those variables... define three variables to pinpoint its location in space... account for chronological drift... and charge the trigger point with your chakra."

The dark-haired Yuki scion squinted at his sensei for a moment before nodding slowly. "With the hand-seals channeling the chakra in accordance with..." His voice trailed off, his gaze becoming somewhat distant. "Then, I'd just need to..." One hand rose, making the sign of the rat... then that of the dog.

Spoiler:

It was Issei's first time delving into wind magic. He'd been toying with the idea since that seeing the utility of that whirlwind jutsu while learning how to sense seals. The Yuki scion did have an affinity for the element, after all, and there were often opponents who specifically targeted medic-nin due to their utility on the battlefield. As a result, it was in his best interest to avoid detection. Among wind users - both actual and potential - there was a basic technique that was quite helpful in that area, quieting one's footsteps through manipulation of the air currents around themselves.

The fundamentals of the jutsu really weren't too terribly difficult. One simply made the sign of the bird... the physician straightened the fingers of his leading hand, forming the seal one-handed in his usual fashion... and reached for the breeze that drifted about him. Much to his surprise, the wind responded readily to his touch - enveloping in small, localized currents that rendered the sound of his footsteps nearly non-existent. The medic-nin foresaw this jutsu becoming quite useful to him in the immediate future, once he started taking missions a-field.

Spoiler:

Issei scanned the scroll in his hands for the fourth time - hoping that, perhaps, he had missed the key variable in the equation that was the infamous Transparent Escape Technique. Useful as they were, sensory jutsu were clearly not the physician's forte. With a groan, the Yuki scion lowered his head and gently knocked his brow against the table. A few of the genin and chūnin scattered throughout the library cast sympathetic looks his way, whilst a handful more shot him irritated glares - presumably peeved at the dull echo in the otherwise quiet space. Issei sighed and straightened, breathing deeply.

Patience. Calm. These things were necessary for a researcher. Frustrated though he might be by the intricacies of sensory jutsu, quietening his footsteps alone wouldn't reliably grant him freedom from unwanted attention. Thus, he found himself studying one of the techniques that the First had taken from Konohagakure. The physician's eyes narrowed. Wait... Genjutsu worked through creating or modifying sensory stimuli to affect change. Quietening one's footsteps was similar in principle, using wind-aspected chakra to interfere with the transmission of sensory data from the point of origin - the feet, in that case - to the opponent's points of perception. Perhaps that's it...?

The physician allowed himself the luxury of cautious optimism. In theory, that same principle could be applied to other senses. One needn't interfere with the creation or perception of the stimuli if one could affect the transmission process. In that case, Issei asked himself wearily. How does visual data reach one's eyes from the point of origin? The answer was simple - light served as the medium of transmission. However, the manipulation of light itself was well beyond the capabilities of most Jōnin - to say nothing of a rather average genin, like the Yuki scion. What was feasible for him to affect?


The physician took a deep breath, seeking to calm his nerves now that he found himself at the precipice of the cliff of truth. Despite the difficulty that Issei had experienced in understanding the principles and processes behind sensory jutsu, he had come to something resembling a workable conclusion. Only one question remained - whether visualizing his chakra usage in the new way would have the desired effect. The man adopted his customary stance, his eyes narrowing to slits as his rear hand carefully formed a series of seals. The empty training room waited for the results with bated breath.

Monkey... Boar... Ox...

It would not do to be seen failing a simple C-Rank technique. This was Kirigakure, after all, and the village was not so different from how it had been under the First Mizukage. In the minds of some, the mist would always be Bloody - regardless of who sought to wash away the past. While Issei did not count himself among the old guard, he also had no wish to draw their attention. As his silhouette blinked out of sight, the Yuki scion could not help but rejoice at the success of his newfound technique.

One can't hit what one doesn't see.

Spoiler:

Now that the essentials had been taken care of, the physician turned his attention to more mundane jutsu. While there were a myriad of ways that one could penetrate the simple combination of the "Quiet Footsteps" and "Transparent Escape" techniques, the dark-haired genin did not expect to face sensory specialists or dojutsu-wielding powerhouses. Thus, Issei found himself staring at a slatted, bamboo scroll that sat - mocking him - upon the training room table. Jutsu that dealt with space and time were far easier for the Yuki scion to wrap his head around than sensory techniques, oddly enough, yet he remained stymied.

Back at Kirigakure General - when he'd been intelligent enough to keep his kami-blasted job - a slot on the emergency trauma team had remained open for medic-nin. The village's specialists rotated through ER shifts to keep their skills well-honed. The system allowed them to remain available for missions and remain qualified, without requiring the time commitment of a full-time hospital position. Issei had witnessed several medic-nin levitating their instruments during surgery. To his surprise, he'd found that the Academy had classified basic telekinetic manipulation as a D-Rank technique. Thus, it was not surprising that the medic-nin had performed the technique without seals.

The fundamentals were relatively simple. Really, it was nothing more than remembering the variables that his fuinjutsu professor had covered in the theory of storage displacement techniques, just a few days previously. Three variables were assigned to the traditional dimensions - no need for chronological positioning...

Rat... Monkey...

The scroll gently began to glow.

Spoiler:

The fine art of spatial manipulation was an area in which Issei had found he possessed particular talent. Rather than pursuing mastery of the sensory arts to augment his repertoire of medical skills - all of which currently remained mundane, much to his chagrin - the physician had chosen to derive his first offensive technique from the jutsu of space and time. During his foray into the Academy's vast archives, he'd found any number of techniques that weaponized dimensional transitions... yet there hadn't been anything simple and direct. Until he'd found a scroll detailing the Mass Pull jutsu. It was absolutely perfect.

As a C-Rank technique, it wasn't too terribly complicated. Ultimately, it was a slightly more complex combination of the chakra patterns involved in "Quiet Footsteps," "Mass Shift," and "Storage Displacement." By pre-defining an area of space - a disk fifteen centimeters in diameter, to be precise - and constructing a conditional statement that triggered a series of variables related to vectors of kinetic force, one could redirect the momentum of an opponent toward whatever direction took their fancy. In theory, more advanced versions of the technique could even manipulate the amount of kinetic force associated with directional inertia.

The trigger mechanism was invisible!

Of course, that wouldn't hinder opponents with the ability to directly perceive chakra overmuch... but how common could such a thing be, in the Elemental Nations? At the least, the average genin or chūnin were unlikely to possess such capability - barring those which boasted dojutsu or similar genetic advantages. The only difficulty that the physician saw with this technique was that it still required the use of hand seals. Of course, that was the curse of all jutsu, until and unless one mastered the principles to an extent such that they were able to flawlessly replicate a technique's chakra patterns from memory.

Issei had proven to himself that mitigating that curse was possible - first through the ability to perform seals one-handed, then through learning to break genjutsu without resorting to the single seal that was traditionally required. Logically, the same was likely possible with Mass Pull. The ability to change an opponent's kinetic vectors and inertia at the speed of thought? That was a daunting proposition for almost any shinobi or kunoichi that was likely to face the dark-haired Yuki scion on the field of battle. Besides - the technique could also be used to redirect projectiles or other airborne hazards, in a pinch.

Issei took a deep breath from the Academy training room that had become his home away from home since his sudden departure from Kirigakure General. This technique would be the final touch on his repertoire of skills to keep him alive. Only after he could perform it reliably would the man trust himself to delve into chakra-based medical techniques. Control was a matter of life and death. Assuming his 'casting' stance, the physician formed a trio of seals with his rear hand - Rat... Dog... Boar - and defined his variables. Unknown to Issei, a disk - 15 centimeters in diameter - hovered before him.

Spoiler:

Finally.

A medical technique. A genuine, chakra-based medical technique. The Yuki scion was in good spirits as he made his way through the Academy's halls. He'd saved up his pay for the better part of a month to earn admittance into one of the village's basic medical courses. Issei was almost certainly going to be the oldest genin present... but as long as the instructor taught them the principles behind the technique and gave them leave to practice, he was perfectly willing to deal with the occasional questioning glance or snide remark. Someone had to be the adult in the room.

What the physician did not expect was to find the training hall filled with grouchy, light-shy villagers from the local drunk tank. A handful of young shinobi and kunoichi - likely Academy students, or genin, like himself - stuck to the walls and poked fun at the other occupants in hushed whispers. Issei's brow furrowed, but he wove his way along the edges of the hall until he found someone that looked vaguely like an instructor. Not one he'd ever seen before, of course, but there was a sense of authority about the straw-haired shinobi that suggested he knew what he was about.

"Excuse me," the physician began quietly, upon reaching casual conversational distance. The other shinobi turned, his brow furrowed at being addressed. It was unexpected, it seemed. "This is Sename-sensei's introductory class on medical jutsu, is it not?" The young man snorted lightly, then briefly shook his head - looking amused. "No, sir," he replied simply. "This is detention." The straw-haired shinobi gestured toward the gaggle of drunks that exhibited a staggering variety of hungover symptoms. "Law enforcement sends the contents of the drunk tank our way every so often, for students to practice getting rid of hangovers. Simple enough technique, you see."

Issei blinked. He'd been completely unaware that there were medical techniques that required a level of skill attainable by a student. One of the biases of being trained as a mundane physician, perhaps - a prejudice in favor of collegiate-level instruction as a prerequisite for medical qualifications. "Sounds useful," he hazarded carefully. "I don't drink, but I've found myself around a lot of people that do. I don't suppose you'd mind walking me through it?" The straw-haired man snorted - partly in amusement, partly in consternation. Then, he looked out toward the sea of drunks and the relatively small number of Academy students.

"Eh..." The shinobi pondered Issei's request for a few heartbeats, tapping his chin with his fingertips. "Seems like there are more drunks than we're probably going to be able to handle, today. Tell you what - you meet double the quota... and I'll go over the technique with you." The physician nodded briskly. "Done. Now, how does one cure a hangover?" It took the straw-haired shinobi less than two minutes to go over the technique. It wasn't until the man was waving lazily over his shoulder, walking out of the room, that Issei realized he'd been stuck with his "teacher's" cure quota.

It was at that point that a loud shout rang through the hall, closely followed by the unmistakable sound of bony knuckles striking flesh. "Kami-blasted..." Issei whirled to see five or six of the drunks embroiled in a fist-flying affair of honor. Or whatever passed for honor among folk who were largely too hungover to listen to anything louder than a whisper. Of course, those same hangovers could also have accounted for the conflict that was unfolding before his eyes. The physician caught sight of a kunoichi in a flak jacket - Sename-sensei, he presumed - wading into the fray to separate combatants.

Something told him that he'd been lied to.

After a few heartbeats, Issei moved forward and began utilizing his new - and only - offensive jutsu to great effect. Hungover villagers didn't tend to rise after being thrown away from their opponents with the kinetic force of a respectably-strong "Mass Pull" technique. Perhaps five minutes later, the genin and instructor stood before a hall full of groaning men and women - both students and intended patients. Apparently, the students who got detention weren't precisely adverse to fighting. Who'd have thought? Of course, they also weren't exactly well-trained in how to navigate a melee of hungover degenerates.

The kunoichi - who Issei presumed was Sename-sensei - glanced toward the physician with a hint of exasperation. "You know the rule, right?" The Yuki scion tilted his head, expression questioning. The woman smiled. "You break, you fix." The dark-haired physician winced, then sighed - looking out over the sea of injured drunks and students. "You show me how," he said finally. "And I suspect I'll have plenty of practice. What I can't fix with chakra, I can tend with my own two hands." The kunoichi perked an eyebrow. "You a medic, then?" Issei snorted, rolling up his sleeves. "Aye, miss. Something like that."

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