bait and switch (P Dana)

Another day, another list of tasks for everyone's favorite side character. I say side character because while Pino has quickly become a crowd favorite for his plucky attitude and propensity for finding new and interesting ways to hurt himself, He will of course never be the star of the show. And so he enters the training facility unaware of what will transpire later involving everyone's favorite puppet princess. Pinochio was on fire. Not literally of course, but in the past few days he'd managed to learn a whole slew of techniques, meet several new friends, and was finally feeling close to ready to put up a good and proper fight. He just needed a little bit more practice and everything would fall into place. 

He glanced about the open main pavilion, trying to decide where exactly to start. He popped his head into the weapons training room, allowing his gaze to shift across the long line of target dummies before finding it empty. As much as he totally loved getting some time to train all by himself with absolutely no human interaction, he was hoping to find someone to make the time pass more quickly. What can you do right? He passed doorway after doorway, glancing in before moving with hopes that one of his many friends would be inside. Much to his dismay, it would seem the training facility was a bit empty. 

"Alright. This is fine. Just lil old you PIno my man. Proabably start with warm ups. If i can't do one thousand pushups then I have to run five laps around the training facility! If i fail to do five laps around the training facility then uh. Then I have to do one thousands pull ups. Yes." It would seem that our beloved side character was adopting the Rock lee training style. It fit his personality, to be fair, with PIno's general outlook being a slightly more mature version of the taijutsu master of old, but where was the green and orange outfit?! Can a character even be a rock lee clone if they aren't from the leaf village?! Can we actually tell a creation of Sayatria that they can't do anything?! The answer to all of these questions is a solid maybe. We'll see. 

He took a seat at the dining area towards the back left corner of the main area. With a wave he motioned to the girl behind the juice bar. She knew what he needed. Being a regular he always ended up starting his day with a solid energy juice blend with extra Kale. Nothing got the blood pumping like An extra kale fruit juice. The murky green color and slightly crunchy texture just seemed right. 

"Right. Training regimine is set, everything is quiet so I don't have to worry about being interupted, This is going to be a good day." The first sip brought his mind from the worries of ninja life. Soon he would need to take on a dangerous mission. That day wasn't today though, and so he prepared harder than his student ever had, clinging to the notion that one day he would be known for his remarkable power. 

(TWC 531)

Dana was feeling restless.

After she'd heard Pinochio's interesting troubles about sleeping, Dana - the medical expert that she was - had decided to try and do some experiments by also putting herself through the same sleep schedule as Pinochio. The results had been pretty boring as Dana didn't sleep much to begin with, but now that it had been about a week a rather odd effect had happened: Dana felt even more energetic. Dana wasn't really sure what the science behind it was, or whether or not it was just some kind of placebo effect, but Dana couldn't deny that the energy surge she was experiencing had some kind of correlation with her sleeping schedule.

Thus, Dana was heading to the training grounds for the day. Dressed in some simple grey jogging bottoms and a dark fleece she even looked quite inconspicuous, as much as someone with long crazy white hair could look anyway. She didn't really have anything she wanted to train at the moment, but literally everytime she'd gone to the training grounds in her life she'd ended up meeting someone she recognized or made a new friend. First time it was Niko, second was Saya, Ai and Pinochio. Every visit since had been Dana meeting one of the four, which was amazing! Dana loved how coincidences like that always happened.

Dana skipped through the entranceway to the advanced training facility and waved at the various guards. She walked past several rooms, smiling and waving at everyone she saw. A lot of them looked a bit put-off by her positive attitude, though, for some reason. Dana didn't understand, but anyone looking at her would. Whilst it was true that Dana herself felt great and full of energy, her outside appearance was anything but: dark bags under her eyes, scruffy clothes, unbrushed hair. She looked like quite a state.  

Dana entered the main area with a big, slightly manic grin and then realized that she was actually quite peckish. Dana couldn't remember precisely, but she was pretty sure that the last time she'd gone to the dining area in the training facility she'd encountered Ai. Wait, that had been when she'd made her first business deal hadn't it? Ah, good memories. She'd come so far since then, too, having done several successful transplants and made a pretty penny doing so. Not that it mattered, because Dana still didn't have enough money to live on her own. How and why Dana hadn't been kicked out was a mystery.

Dana approached the dining area, and then her green eyes widened when she spotted the familiar figure of...

"Pinochio!" Dana shouted, waving a hand towards the little guy. Hopefully he wouldn't react like the others had and totally ignore her.

WC: 452

PInochio was so excited for his prework out meal that he didn't see the small sprite slip not so quetly into the main area of the training facility. He watched in amazement as the blender prepared his drink, sniffing the air for the tell tale sign that the barista had also gotten his silent food order correct, and general spent the entire time just salivating until he heard his name. Oh. Well. He was glad to have someone there he knew. He had spent the past twenty minutes or so specifically looking for someone to train with, but he wasn't sure his half asleep self could deal with the energy of a second Saya right now, and before him, he saw the white haired senju girl beaming. This is fine. 

"Hey! Dana! Come join me. I was just going to have, uh. How do you say it... I wa' a bit peckish ya see, so i thought i'd fancy a bite bfore training" In his defense his accent was getting better. He sounded a bit more like Dana's normal voice tonaly, though he over emphasized the sylables in a way that was clearly off from his goal. Before him was sat two drinks. The first was the smoothie he'd ordered. The second looked more like peanut butter than a drink, dark brown in color and thick as malassas. Between the two and himself was a steaming plate that held a steak far larger than the size of his head. It is important for a physical fighter to ensure they get their proper protein allotment for the day, and the seventy two ounces of beef before him would be an excelent start. 

Impressively, he'd never actually considered if he was going overboard with all of this. He didn't have a trainer to tell him the right ammount of stuff to eat and prepare. How could the head of a martial arts dojo have someone else training them?! Instead he kind of listened to people at the gym and just tried to crank everything they said they did up to eleven. 

"What brings you to the training facility today?! I have such a busy day planned, so it's nice to see someone who can help the training pass yanno? I've been studying these scrolls in the library talking about medical ninjutsu and I thought to myself pinochio, I said, If Saya can't figure out Medical ninjutsu no matter how hard she tries, then this is the perfect way to prove you're just as good as a tiny little child. THinking about it, maybe I should have worded it better, but yanno, it was in my head so it made way more sense. " If she stuck around, he would have to put off his one thousand push ups. That was fine. He could get cardio in later with his weight training and his second and third steak. Something something Gains. He tried to think through the techniques that Saya had known, when he realized the last time they'd talked, She'd used medical ninjutsu on him. Could she teach him what he needed to learn?!

(TWC 1052)

It really showed how tired Dana was that she didn't even blink at Pinochip's absolutely horrendous abhorrent attempt at mimicking her accent and speech mannerisms again. Okay, it wasn't that bad, but normal not-tired Dana would consider it that even if it was perfect. Regardless, she waved a hand tiredly at Pinochio and skipped up to the table he was sat at. Gone was the usual graceful way she skipped around, replaced with a clumsy lumbering thing that almost had Dana fall over onto the floor every time one of her feet impacted the ground. Huh, maybe she really was a little bit too tired. She felt drunk - not that Dana knew what that felt like or anything as she hadn't ever been drunk before.

Nonetheless, Dana arrived at the table haphazardly and had to catch herself on the back of one of the chairs to keep herself from falling over. She smiled lopsidedly and pulled out the chair opposite Pinochio to sit down, only to remember why she had come here in the first place. She held up a single finger to signal that she'd be 1 minute and walked over to the bar to order some food. She ended up getting an absolutely ginormous bowl of unsalted cashes with two fried eggs on top and a mug of warm coffee - a lovely, hearty meal - and walked back to the table with a more alert and happy smile.

"Hey Pinochio!" Dana repeated the same thing as earlier, tucking into her meal. The best way, she'd found, to eat this was to grab one of the eggs with her hand, wrap them around a clump of the cashews, and eat it like a dumpling. Ultra-efficient, and remarkably tasty too, "It's good to see ye again!"

She continued to polish off her meal as Pinochio spoke, stopping momentarily to do a little happy gesture with her hands when he mentioned medical jutsu. That was perfect! Dana had already proved herself an adequate teacher many times over: Mitsu, Daiko, Yuri. All people who'd managed to pick stuff up from her teachings in no time at all. Dana could totally teach Pinochio everything she knew about medical techniques in no time at all! It probably wasn't wise to teach him how to manipulate the body's cells to stimulate healing and whatnot whilst she was as tired as she was, but when had Dana ever cared about being 'wise'?

"Oi just came to see if there was anyone oi knew here, t'is all," Dana shrugged, finally finishing the egg and cashew bowl and leaning back in her seat, thoroughly satisfied. She gripped the mug with her hand, seemingly unaffected by the heat from the mug, and began to chug the coffee without a care in the world. She finished it in a couple seconds, and wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeves. Hey green eyes buzzed with energy, caffeine hyping her up nearly instantly, "Oi can definitely teach you medical techniques! Oi can show you how to heal, how to create a barrier, how to heal other people, how to cure a hangover. The good stuff!" Dana practically vibrated in her seat as she explained everything, excited to teach another person medical technique and also just from the caffeine.

"When do we get started?"

WC: 552
TWC: 1004

"Dang Dana." He'd learned in his time with the girl that she seemed to be sensitive to things said about her, even to the point of getting upset when he tried to commiserate through showing some knowlege of her dialect. With the way she looked at current, almost like she'd been dragged through the mud and beaten with a stick for several hours, He knew he had to choose his words very carefuly. It was a boon that Pino had always been quite the word smith. He could choose the perfect comment that spoke to the problem he saw while dancing around any chance of insulting her to ensure she knew that it was worry for her safety and not rudeness that had brought him to the conclusions made. 

"You look like absolute shit. What happened? Did you have to do a long mission in a trash yard or something?!" Ah yes. Pinochio. The perfect picture of poise and grace. "Hey. so listen. I was looking to pick up some Medical ninjutsu cuz Saya can't do it and I wanted to show her up real good when I take my first combat mission. I remembered that you did that healing thing back then, Think you can stand long enough to teach me some stuff?!" Once again he'd completely missed the elephant in the room. While he did try to be kind and respectful, he was all of the brashness of the puppet princess brought to life. He was excelent at coaching others about what not to say, but horible about figuring it out himself due to lack of actual socialization personally. 

He realized after she responded that he'd already asked this question. It would seem that the senju girl wasn't the only one suffering from struggles caused by lack of sleep. In the time since they'd met last he'd not actually remembered to get a set of ear muffs, and try as he might inevitably every night just as his head hit the pillow it was upstairs band practice or a pot banging marathon or she was practicing her jump style. Why was she even learning new dancing styles?! It didn't mesh well with her general musical performances, which were more broadway than rap god, so its not like it would even be helpful. 

"Excelent. Yes. Teach me all of that. I want all of the good stuff you've got. Maybe one day I'll be able to consider myself a medical ninjutsu specialist!" While the idea of punching stuff really hard was incredibly appealing, as he grew as a ninja, he'd learned about so many other specialties that felt like they would fit in much better with his fighting style. One of those was Medical both for its ability to give added defense and the reasons given previously. He'd also taken to the idea of Space and time specializations, but how would he learn three new specs and still keep up his weaponry practice?! Four specializations seemed a bit much. 

(TWC 1552)

At Pinochio's totally rude and unnecessary comment about her looking like shit, Dana looked up from her meal straight at Pinochio with a somewhat unhinged look in her eye. She stared for a few seconds, eyelid twitching with an uneven frequency. Was this it? Had Pinochio finally set off the beast inside? Had Dana finally lost it? She narrowed her eyes and placed her hands on the table to push herself; not up, but towards Pinochio. The white-haired girl leaned over the table, eyelid twitching until her face was uncomfortably close to Pinochio. She smiled crazily, and then...

She'd attempt to boop him on the nose with the index finger on her right hand. She sat back down in her seat with a marginally maniacal giggle, and took a sip of her coffee with a smug expression her face at her latest 'prank'.

"Was just acting the maggot, oi'm foine!" She said, unconvincingly, "Oi just haven't slept in weeks. A little experiment, ye see. Fer the good of medical research." she closed her eyes and nodded, head dipping far lower than it should in the motion since she very nearly fell asleep when she closed her eyes. She needed some caffeine. Wait, no, she needed something stronger. Oh yeah, she'd made that tea with some petrol in it... Sometime in the past. Time was ceasing to lose all meaning at this point.

"Of course oi can stand long enough to teach ye!" Dana scoffed, pushing herself back from the table so and standing up just like she'd said. She swayed on the spot for a second, then began to pace backward and forwards. She was doing that a lot, something Pinochio would likely notice. She was fidgeting, moving around a lot more than normal. She had to, lest she accidentally fall unconscious before she could finish her experiment.

"Hmm, something easy oi can teach you..." Dana wondered aloud, walking in circles. What had she started with, when she'd been learning how to use the Medical Speciality? It had been... The damage reduction shield, hadn't it? That was a nice easy one, and Dana felt like Pinochio would get a lot of use out of it as a close-range specialist. Since he'd always be right in the thick of a fight, next to fireballs and explosions - unlike Dana - he'd probably need it a lot more than she did. Actually, had Dana even tried this technique before? Huh, she hadn't. Well, no time like the present.

"Got it!" Dana said, catching her fist in her other palm as the idea entered her brain, "Pinochio! Once oi finish the handseals and give ye the go-ahead, hit me in the face as hard as ye can." She nodded once again, this was a perfect plan that wouldn't go wrong at all. Assuming Pinochio was happy with the plan, Dana would do the handseals for the Damage Reduction Shield and her body would instantly be wrapped in a light blue chakra. If Pinochio wanted to move to a different area, Dana would do so. Finally, assuming everything was fine, she would turn to Pinochio and point to her zombie-like face with her thumb.

WC: 530
TWC: 1534

This was it. This was the day that Pino died. If an oracle came from beyond the veil to tell him that he would die at a table with over sixety ounces of beef in front of him, murdered by a girl he could so easily lift and throw across the room, first he would ask what the veil is. It's a pretty dated and odd saying that he could never have pretended he'd heard before. Then he'd tell this strange entity that they were a liar and probably not real, and yet.... Here they were. His breath drew deeply. He was ready to accept his fate with the dignity of a fighter when instead, she booped his nose. Crisis adverted.

"Right. Acting the maggot." As she explained her sleep experiment, He drew from the small bag at his side a palm sized top flop notebook and pen. He scribbled the phrase frantically, trying his best to figure out what exactly it meant as he wrote his notes for later convorsations. Thankfully, unlike Saya, he was able to multi task.

"That... That doesn't sound very healthy--I say having basically done the same thing for months. Thinking about it, Tria hasn't really slept much since she graduated from the academy, and she doesn't have caffine. Can you imagine her with caffine?!" He gave a bit of a laugh at the thought. She'd had tea once. It had NOT ended well. You hear about people running up the walls, but our favorite protagonist made that less of a metaphor. Where she got those spiked boots, no one knows.

He also stood as his friend did, Taking another huge chunk of his food into his mouth and chewing as he watched. Dana, an incredibly powerful ninja with incredible ability far beyond his own told him to punch her real hard. While he couldn't "really" do that anymore given his technique pool had shifted to a weaponry specific setup, he knew the next best thing. A set of whistles ressonated through the training field as the fourth gate opened, 4 specifically denoting the seals needed to test this barrier she'd erected. Even as the chained ball of his weapon flew towards her. The strike failed to hit the shield, arcing at a steep angle towards her before wrapping itself around his back and under his arm, but that wasn't the danger of this specific technique. Activating his glass shard swing, He watched as the air itself shattered, sending pulses of pure air pressure that looked like glass towards the barrier with power and speed of 165. It wasn't quite the fearful pressence of Katchu tenshin, but as a semicircle formed out from him, The barrier created seemed pitiful in comparison.

He actually looked away, worried about what exactly his technique would do to his friend if the shield wasn't actually strong enough to defend against the strike. It would be right?! Clearly she had the strength to easily destroy anything he tried to throw at her. He hoped. As he waited for confirmation that she was okay, He ran through the seals in his head, memorizing whatever this jutsu was.

(TWC 2078)

She watched Pinochio write down her expression with a mysterious smile, still not explaining what it meant to him. It was far too amusing to watch him, and others, try to figure out what it meant. Her tiny friend was the first to actually write it down for further study. He'd already made surprising headway into deciphering some of the other stuff she said, as she heard last time they'd met, but she wouldn't make his life any easier for him. She'd continue to use expressions as she had been, and also try and figure out some harder ones for him to figure out on his own. Wait, how was he researching her dialect? Had he somehow figured out where she came from, something she herself had never been able to do? Alas, this line of thought would soon be forgotten as Pinochio began to talk about her sleep deprivation experiment again and her short attention span diverted her focus elsewhere.

"Oh yeah oi'd imagine that'd be quite a blast," Dana said, imaging hanging out with Saya on caffeine. Dana when she drank caffeine became a bit of a menace, especially coffee. Wait, hold on, hadn't she just downed a coffee to try and stay awake? Uh oh, she'd give it about 10 more minutes before the caffeine hit her and she became Saya 2.5 for an hour. She started to speak tremendously fast - about on the same level as Saya's usual conversational tone, now that she thought about it. When paired with her unique accent that many people couldn't make out at normal speeds... Things got difficult. Anyway, year. If Saya arrived anytime soon Pinochio would have to deal with double the hyper, poor guy. Almost enough to make Dana feel sorry for him, but, well, after the Jutsu he was about to unleash on her that would never happen.

Dana watched with a dumbfounded expression as, instead of approaching her, Pinochio decided to: pull out one of his weapons, activate some enhancer, and begin to swing so hard that he literally broke the air and summon a bajillion... Glass... Shards at her. Huh, that was quite odd. Anyway, Dana didn't fancy her chances of surviving all that so she, rather smartly, decided to not try and tank it with her medical technique. If she'd actually put everything into it as Pinochio had, she'd be in a much better place. For now, she'd have to actually focus.

Since Pinochio was only about 10-meters away, Dana had to act fast. The instant she saw the glass shards begin to head in her direction, Dana did several things. Her hand's came together to form the handseals for the Ninjutsu Amplifier at the same time as she activated the Trifle of The Senju. Since calculations are hard and Dana was tired, let's just put the shards at 5-meters by the time she finishes this. Then, she did the next to handseals for Earth Style Wall and crouched down behind it. Thankfully, due to the speed and the health of the wall ((230 - 10)/2 + 10 + 50 = 170) Dana remained completely safe behind it. She heard the thud of the shards impacting the wall but failing to pierce through, waited until there was nothing more, then popped her head over the wall.

"Bloimey, that was a bit much don't ye think?" Dana said, voice cheerful. Of course, this was rich coming from Kirigakure's second tiny terror.

WC: 574
TWC: 2098

:"It uh. Decidedly was not. She somehow found spiked boots and literally climbed the walls. There was so much damage to the mansion that she was confined to her suite for a month, which in hindsight was less of a punishment and more like a normal day. She still hated it though. She was six. " He hadn't really taken the time to look back on the destructive nature of his student until this point. He'd gotten upset hearing stories from Pupnochio about how she'd dismantled large portions of the training facility, only to put them back together with some rediculous jutsu she'd created, but now that he thought about it... She'd kind of always been like this.

He couldn't remember a single year of her life when her existence didn't cost someone a large volume of money. There was the fireworks incident, THe time she wanted to take a dip in the swimming pool(they did not in fact have a swimming pool) and that one day they still only reffer to as "the incident". Maybe this was his fault. He almost definitely could have done more to curb her destructive tendencies--well. Destructive tendencies wasn't really the word. She didn't choose chaos, it was simply the state she constantly lived within. Yea, after a bit of consideration it was clear that none of this was his fault. VINDICATION!

His motions with the weapon were practiced perfection. The chain portion of his weapon was as much an extension of his own being as the scythe itself, so the single fluid slash seemed effortless asside form the frantic whistling that accompanied it. Behind the shield he assumed was some sort of ninjutsu or medical ninjutsu he watched the girl form hand seals quickly. Had he over done it?! She did say punch as hard as he could right? This had to be what she meant, but there was something about the way she flashed through seals that told him that maybe he'd been a little gun ho. Still, he watched as a wall of earth floated up, Definitely moving quickly enough to put a barrier between her and the technique that would have hurt like. Hella. Thankfully Glass shard swing was not as destructive as Kachu tenshin amaguriken.

"Yo. I'm pretty sure that's ninjutsu. I'm not trying to figure out any ninjutsu Dana.... I need that good medical! Though. Some space time could probably be good too. Fuinjutsu even. Heck. I'd have to talk to Saya for that stuff though. Maybe I'll hold off. When she finally spoke, his face contorted in embaracement.

"You uh. You did say punch as hard as I can... I dont really like. Do the punching thing anymore? But I think i've gotten good with weapons though. I guess it's still not quite strong enough though." It was a bit disappointing to see that her hasitly made wall tanked one of his strongest techniques like it was nothing. Still it helped him understand where he was in comparison to the chuunin.

He formed the seals she'd showed him, drawing his own medical shield around his body.

(TWC 2596)

"The punching thing was really cool though..." Dana sighed, reaching up to the top of the wall to pull herself over and plonk herself on top. Once situated she let her legs dangle and swing as she racked her brain for all the medical techniques she could teach the tiny man. The medical shield was probably one of the most useful medical techniques in her arsenal, but she also didn't really have a lot, to begin with. Bodily Restoration would probably be quite useful to someone like Pinochio as he always managed to get himself injured in tragic - but hilarious - ways. That was it for useful medical techniques, right? Oh yeah there was also the general Iroujutsu Amplifier, which was pretty useful when paired with the damage reduction shield. Yeah, she definitely had quite a few to teach.

"Roight then!" Dana said suddenly after a couple of seconds of silent consideration. Like usual, Dana clapped her hands together a single time to punctuate her sentence. She really didn't understand why clapping her hands like that came so naturally to her, maybe it was another lost memory of her past - a custom of her people, perhaps? Regardless, Dana needed to continue speaking, "Oi have a few techniques oi think ye'd like, get ready we're going to speed through these really fast."

Still sitting down on top of the wall she'd created to protect herself from Pinochio's, Dana's hands flowed through the handseals: Bird, Boar, Dog, Dragon, and Hare. Since she hadn't taken any damage, there was no visible effect. She did, however, go on to explain the technique, "This jutsu is just called 'Bodily Restoration' and it's pretty simple, just heals any injuries ye get and that. Pretty cool."

She then went on to do some more hand seals: Tiger, Boar, Dog, and Rat. "This one's another super simple one, it's basically just like the amplifier ye've probably seen Saya use, but it works on medical techniques instead. Ye can use it on the damage reductions shield to absorb more damage, if ye want." Dana was on a roll, and she was having a lot of fun teaching. Hopefully, Pinochio would be a better student than Ai - how the girl messed up the same technique multiple times in a row was impressive. It was almost like they needed to pad the WC or something. Dana banished the thought before it could become a problem of the 'universal destruction' variety.

"This one's called Chakra Absorption and, as it says, it allows ye to absorb chakra from your opponents. Not a lot, but it could be useful in a pinch." She smoothly brought her hands up and they began to glow with a blaze of blue chakra, "There are no hand seals, so you could do it at the same time as ye punch someone or something." Dana shrugged and pushed herself off the wall. She landed with a small parkour roll, completing the movement with a signature gymnast finish.

"That's pretty much everything oi can teach ye, any questions?"

WC: 511
TWC: 2609