Cursed

Sat Oct 01, 2022 11:35 pm

	BURNING CITIES AND NAPALM SKIES
	"Grrgrggh!" Training was a simple concept. Well, for most. With repeated actions and mindful notes, one could progress further in their ability to do... just about anything, really. Building ships. Writing forms. Doing maths. Performing martial arts. For Baruga Ryoinsatsu, "enduring several volts of lightning while focusing on active combat" felt highly unlikely to even come close to her mind in terms of "things she could possibly get good at over time". Pain endurance and training existed, she knew logically, but to douse yourself in electricity, without any form of slow acclimation or, really, any sort of mercy felt — impossible, to say the least. She was no freak of nature, her bloodline limit didn't particularly help her in this situation, and she didn't have her bloody nerves fried by some horrific accident — (She felt like that was inevitably going to happen soon, though, with the rate that this was going.) Deciding she had wallowed in her self-pity quite enough, Baruga shakily picked herself off from the training facility's floors and attempted to get back on her legs. She felt like a newborn doe, with how her entire body was quivering from the bolt of lightning that just struck her. With her digits trembling, Baruga put together her fingers in hand seals, trying to clench her teeth to endure what was to come. Hare. Monkey. Ram. Dog. Baruga pulled on the natural water affinity within herself. Cool, calm, easy. As distinct as salt on her lips after a dip in the ocean, as light as a beachside rain. And then, she tried pulling on the curse mark on her back. Like opening a gate to a dam ready to burst. Like looking directly into a bomb as it explodes, hot, burning, painful, prickly, electricity is running through her veins, it's too much — "Gngh — c'mon — nghghgh!" Baruga's Exploding Water Colliding Wave crumples in on itself, chakra-infused liquid losing control and crashing into the ground smelling like bleach and ozone, while Baruga slumps down onto her knees, her limbs twitching involuntarily. There was a sheen of sweat on her forehead that she coukldn't get rid of because her arms were too goddamn frayed by the lightning of her own curse mark to move properly. Ugh, it's getting into her eyes now. Rolling her body onto her stomach like a limbless piece of meat, Baruga groaned as she pressed her forehead into the ground, the rolling waves and the angry clouds of her curse mark tattoo slowly receding on her back. — The worst part was that there was no... manual. No instruction booklet. As far as she knew, it could just be a question of brute forcing it and forcing herself to get used to the pain... or it could be something else. She knew, after a bit of questioning around Thunderpeak Campus and other fuinjutsu specialists, that curse marks worked off of nature chakra in some fashion. Maybe she needed to get in touch with nature? The last time she tried that, it was like tuning a radio, but where only one station was crisp and clear, and the rest of it was just static. That one station being her Sage Mode, obviously — it's become almost second nature for her to reach for the ocean, the blue, the sea, the water, the storm, the sky, the deep, the abyss, and every other name that rings true in her soul before she devolves into philosophy and spiritualism. But the rest of it was static, meaning it either wasn't there, or she was trying to look for it the wrong way. She tried to attune herself to her curse mark using a similar method as when she achieved Sage Mode, but she had no luck there. She even tried to treat it like a Space-Time technique, or a new element, or even a new source of chakra. Nothing. Hence, she was trying to brute force it. Wrestling control of the lightning in her veins was hell on earth, but at least she could put herself under placebo and trick herself into thinking she was getting somewhere. Well. Attempt to, at the very least. Rolling over onto her back once more, Baruga raised a hand and attempted to summon a ball of water in her palm, using the most easy, basic Water Technique. Drip. Then she tried to infuse it with her curse seal. Her entire arm jolted involuntarily from the electric shock, and a handful of cold water dumped right onto her face. Right. Back to the drawing board. — ⌖ — ꜱᴛᴀᴛꜱ ɪɴꜰᴏ:
	FLARES INSIDE THOSE OCEAN EYES