Training Montage (Open)

Baruga was plenty of things.

Rich? Yes. Between her heritage and her bloodline, she had more money than any middle-class citizen would ever have in their bank account, let alone hold in their hands.

Spoiled? Hm, she'd say "selectively cared for", but yes. She had power, material wealth, and her own house in a gated community, all at the age of eighteen.

But the one thing she wasn't was lazy.

Tightening her exercise headband over her forehead (letting her bangs peek out fashionably) and putting on a fairly standard workout outfit (again, fashionable, breathable, expensive), Baruga jogged on over to the training fields and worked up a sweat, letting her energy roll through her veins.

While she jogged, she felt for her chakra and made the Tiger hand seal, furrowing her eyebrows as she focused on her chakra. Measured breaths, a deep hold on her yin and yang, aaand...

"Release! Release! Release! One, and, two, and..."

Feeling for the disruption of chakra in her body, Baruga started releasing bursts of chakra meant to cancel out light genjutsu — E-Rank at best — with every other step of her jog. She just needed to get a grasp of the rhythm and pattern of controlling her chakra in such a way, especially while her adrenaline's pumping, and what better way to do that than with cardio?

"Hoo! Hoo! Three, and, four, and, one, and — Ah, we're here!"

Still maintaining her jog, Baruga hopped on to an isolated corner of the training grounds, still upholding her Genjutsu Release exercise. She'd just have to avoid the weird looks, which, well. They were hopeless plebians, so she couldn't care less about their opinion.

————

WC: 279
- Genjutsu Release

And now, time for warmups!

Taking her hands out of the Tiger hand seal, Baruga decided to work on her sealless mastery of the technique as she stretched. She'd been working on it for weeks, really, but it was like riding a bike. If you kept doing it, you didn't forget, but if you mastered it, then you could do it no matter what.

Which would be great for making sure her head wasn't cut off in an illusion or something.

Jumping jacks first, and with every jump, she repeated that same disruption of chakra, but without the training wheels of the Tiger hand seal. Breathe, disrupt, breathe, disrupt, breathe, disrupt...

Side-to-side hops were next, and Baruga decided to up her game by furrowing two lines in the ground to jump over. Finally, her sweat was starting to sheen slightly on her forehead, but she didn't feel winded at all. Just had to keep working until she got to that burn. Bounce, disrupt, next foot, disrupt!

And then, the boring stuff. Shoulder rotations and torso rotations. She waved to some Academy students as she did her torso rotations, feeling her spine crack with the first few. Her genjutsu exercise never stopped, however.

Finally, some light yoga. Baruga let herself relax before falling into the splits seamlessly, one leg ninety degrees in front of her, the other one behind her. Stretching her arms in full hanumanasana, Baruga let her chakra disruption relax as she felt herself stretch. And then, she got up, and repeated the same with her bird of paradise pose, the svarga dvijasana.

Alright, onto the real workout!

————

WC: 269
TWC: 548
- Genjutsu Release
- Genjutsu Release [Mastery]

Heading to indoor training section after getting her outdoor exercise in, Baruga got a quick drink of water before heading over to the animal containers.

As it turns out, there were only really a few options in terms of training certain ninjutsu and genjutsu, and Baruga didn't really feel like traumatizing any poor Academy students, hobos, or otherwise subhuman individuals today. Or any other day, really, since this was mostly what she did for daily training.

Nevertheless.

Opening the doors and whistling, Baruga gave a quick hello to the staff and the other shinobi in the room, walking around in the kinda-sorta equivalent of a pet store before picking out a glass container with a rat inside and signing her name off to borrow it. Like a library book, except a rodent.

Holding the box to her chest, she moved on over to one of the free sections of the indoor training area, ignoring the sound of anyone else's hardcore, militaristic training. And possible ass whooping courtesy of their presiding instructor — this was Kumogakure, after all, and Baruga liked to believe she was self-aware.

"The best thing to ever happen to you was the shit stain that rolled down when your mother gave birth to you!"

Ah, there it was.

Tuning out the sound, Baruga sat the rat's container down on a nearby bench, and went over her itinerary for the day. Hm, let's see... Probably ninjutsu training was gonna be the majority of her day, followed by maybe some other stuff she should use. So! Best to review what she knows or else risk losing it all. That's the advice everyone gave, anyways. Judging by the lack of elderly ninja, she'd think they had a point...

Sobering, but not the point.

Focusing on the rat's chakra, as weak and muddled as it was, Baruga reviewed mentally how this was supposed to work, like she did every time she practiced. Right, here we go.

Tiger, Rat, Ox, Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rat, Ox , Dragon, Ram.

Suddenly, the rat's limbs were pulled to its body and it fell onto its side as the Temporary Paralysis Technique took hold, leaving it shivering on the ground of its container. Baruga rolled her tongue into her cheek as she waited and observed the rat's movement, patting her thighs as she wiped some sweat away from her face.

For a moment, the rat didn't move. But then she saw its fingers twitch, and then she saw it frantically trying to wriggle its right hind leg. Ah, her application wasn't perfect. Was she missing something...? No, she performed it how she usually did. Although, she did hear about a possible variant that her peers felt suited them more, so she figured it wouldn't hurt to try it.

Or, it might hurt painfully, but hey, at least there's medical assistance readily available. Baruga released the rat from its Temporary Paralysis and tried again.

Tiger, Rat, Ox, Rat, Ox — Dragon — Rat, Ox , Dragon, Ram.

With that, the rat went completely ramrod still, and Baruga considered her Temporary Paralysis Technique fully functional.

Onto the next!

————

WC: 520
TWC: 1068
- Genjutsu Release
- Genjutsu Release [Mastery]
- Temporary Paralysis Technique (D-Rank)

Well, while she still had the rat, she might as well do her other exercise. Rubbing her hands together, Baruga did her mental review once more as she went over the fundamentals of a space-time technique this time, rather than a ninjutsu.

Mind, she didn't plan on actually touching the rat, but, well. She had her sights on something smaller, with a technique closer to her personal tastes. Sure, it was the ninjutsu equivalent of such basics like elemental training and control, but this was something that did merit consistent practice, and Baruga was a decent student if nothing else.

Focusing on a little food bowl found in the rat container, Baruga went through only two hand seals: Rat, and then Monkey. Activating her Mass Shift Technique, Baruga started moving the bowl back and forth in the rat container, scaring the rodent into a corner as its dinner bowl started to float all around the container.

Now this, she was more used to. Baruga started exercising her control with the bowl, revolving it on its axis, and then flipping it over without spilling any of the food, and then rolling it along the vertical walls of the glass container. Opening the container slightly, Baruga used her Mass Shift to levitate the bowl up and out of the container, and then floated it slowly around her full area of movement for the technique: that is to say, roughly ten meters, or about as well as Baruga can eyeball ten meters.

At some point, though, all the little food pellets spilled out of the container, and she snorted in annoyance. Sure, she could move the bowl fine, but it was more a fine control thing to keep the food in it without spilling any of it. Bringing the empty food bowl back into the container, Baruga reapplied the Mass Shift Technique to pick a different target: the head of a small broom, seen at the opening of an unlocked cleaning closet.

Baruga watched the rat curiously, poking at the glass as her Mass Shift commanded the broom head to start sweeping up the lost food pellets in front of her. Once theyt had all been collected, she manually swept them up into a dustpan and then levitated the dustpan to the garbage. And then, she levitated both the broom head and the dustpan into the cleaning closet, leaving hert with herself and this rat whose food just got thrown away.

Ah, how annoying. And that was her usual party trick, too... Well, in any case. Baruga picked up the rat container and made her way back to the animal containment room, signing it back into the facility and putting it back to its original place.

Although...

Before she left, Baruga scooped a fresh bowl of rat food for the rat. Ah, how gracious she is, looking out for even the parasites that dare to feed on the hard-earned food and resources of these lands! Never call her heartless ever again. ...And that rat was kind of cute, just a little. It had cute red eyes and everything.

————

WC: 515
TWC: 1583
ATF Buff Applies (25% Less WC Required)
- Genjutsu Release (188/188)
- Genjutsu Release [Mastery] (188/188)
- Temporary Paralysis Technique (D-Rank) (375/375)
- Mass Shift Technique (D-Rank) (375/375)

And now, for the fun exercises!

Now that she'd gotten the basics out of the way — verty necessary, those, but still kind of a drag — she could move onto some stuff she was genuinely enthusiastic about. Such as, for example, full techniques that were more geared to her specialization.

— One of which, of course, was the ability to create portals. One would think that with her clan's ability to call upon a portal to a bank dimension at any time, she would get the hang of this sort of thing as quickly as possible, but as it turned out, the art of creating a non-immediate entrance to another point in space-time was far more tricky — and thus, had some vastly different ways of doing it.

Oh well, that's what practice was for.

With that, Baruga found herself a nice clearing with plenty of open space and, more importantly, smooth surfaces. With the amount of boulders and flat rocky ground there was, she figured this would be a decent place to work her metaphorical magic.

That being said, all she had to do was do the magic hand signs and sing the magic song.

Dragon, Hare — "Space-Time Art: Portals!"

Nothing happened.

Well, that was genuinely a first. It'd been a long time since Baruga was actually flubbed by her own technique. She'd even used this one successfully too, having learned it in the past week — maybe she had simply done something strange with her chakra?

Dragon. Hare.

"Space-Time Art: Portals?"

Nope, nothing. Baruga scratched her head and tried to figure out what she was doing wrong, awkwardly eyeing some other ninja training off in the distance, clearly having greater success than she was, right now. Alright, maybe she needed to review the hand seals, or the effect. Or maybe she should go to a doctor to check her tenketsu? No, no, she was doing techniques left and right just recently, it wouldn't be that.

Review hand seals, then. Baruga went through the entire Academy-taught set of hand seals, even going into an Academy student-leveled warm-up session to review all of them three times. Pausing, she furrowed her brows at Dragon in particular. That didn't feel right, compared to the muscle memory of her review. Unless...? No, no, now that she thought it over, she swore up and down that she was doing it right.

Taking a deep breath, Baruga just tried it one last time, bouncing on her heels to stay lively despite her two failures so far. But this time, she aimed her chakra at the flat ground underneath her.

Dragon, Hare!

Before she got the chance to verbalize it (not that she needed to, really), there was a blue portal underneath her, and she had successfully completed the technique. ...Right, she didn't normally need to aim her bloodline ability, but she had to aim this one mentally. Crazy how she forgot that bit. Talk about a brain fart.

Making the second orange portal, Baruga decided to have some fun and play with the portals for a bit before moving on.

---

WC: 511
TWC: 2094
ATF Buff Applies (25% Less WC Required)
— Genjutsu Release (188/188)
—— Genjutsu Release [Mastery] (188/188)
— Temporary Paralysis Technique (D-Rank) (375/375)
— Mass Shift Technique (D-Rank) (375/375)
— Space-Time Arts: Portals (D-Rank) (375/375)

Claiming 2094 WC for Thread:
— Exiting Topic
— Claiming 20 Stats (to Chakra)
ATF Buff Applies (25%) Less WC Required
— Genjutsu Release (187.5/187.5)
—— Genjutsu Release [Mastery] (187.5/187.5)
— Temporary Paralysis Technique (D-Rank) (375/375)
— Mass Shift Technique (D-Rank) (375/375)
— Space-Time Arts: Portals (D-Rank) (375/375)
— Water Release: Mouth Shot (D-Rank) (375/375)
— Drip (E-Rank) (187.5/187.5)
31.5 Remaining WC

Exit Claims Approved!