Training as one

Sakuran had returned to the training facility with Shinryuu, they met up a little outside of town and proceeded to the training grounds together. Once arrived Sakuran whipped out her technique book.

"Right, so we agreed on several techniques today, first up the learning and mastery of Genjutsu release, the book says we need to let our chakra flow through our entire body and attempt a release over our entire body to expel any foreign chakra."
She stood across from Shin, both forming the tiger seal slowly and deliberate.

They both envisioned their chakra flowing throughout their body and using the seal to release it all over to attempt to break genjutsus specifically. Sakuran was trying to visualise more then feeling it, her chakra control was not as good as Shins but that was not going to stop her.

Together they tried giving pointers as they were both mastering the jutsu, again and again they practiced, with each iteration becoming a little bit better. This was harder then Sakuran expected and she took breaks in between to try and feel the chakra flow inside her body recede, not only was she learning the technique she was also feeling the chakra flow in her body, a fairly new experience to her.

She looked over at Shin "I think with a bit more practice we have this in the bag!" driven by her small successes she kept on practicing, trying to control the flow and using each exercise as a learning experience.

[250 WC]

Today was trainingday. Sakuran had convinced Shin to do training together to make it more efficient, but Shin was pretty convinced she just either wanted some pointers, or just some company that didn't spend all day on a farm.

She had multiple techniques written down in her little booklet, and Genjutsu Release was first up, so they stood across eachother and practised. After a while though Shin figured stepping it up a bit, because it just didn't feel right yet.

Shinryuu offered a different training method: "What if i infuse a tiny lil bit of my chakra, so you can try sensing that which doesn't belong, and focus on expelling that instead of us both trying to dispel what isn't there?". With Sakuran's permission, they continued training like that to make things easier.

They swapped back and forth between being the one who expelled, and being the one who infused, giving eachother pointers as they moved along with the training. He had to hand it to Saky, this did end up being more efficient than if he had done this by himself. He was going to have to remember it for in the future.

Time passed as they got better and faster at detecting and expelling eachothers chakra from their own bodies, sometimes taking a short break and sharing some stories with eachother. Besides efficient, it was a lot more fun to train like this aswell. It was a shame she was such a Taijutsu maniac though, such a crying shame....

[251 WC]

She took a seat on the ground and grabbed her notebook again. The next one was going to be a bit more difficult. Body flicker technique was to Sakuran one of the coolest ways to enter a situation, the person using this may vanish in a cloud of smoke or disappear in a blur as they gain speed at an increased level. Sakuran was daydreaming about how she would use it to make cool entrances or spook her brothers, the latter seemed alot of fun. She kept reading on how to best train this jutsu and glanced at Shin also reading his notes so it seemed.

She got up and dusted herself off, "Right I am ready to give this a go! Let's hope i don`t crash into anything" She looked at Shin and grinned. "Or anyone." She faced away from Shin, which would help not to crash into him and formed the seal. The book was a bit sketchy on the details but she imagined her trajectory near a tree about twenty meters away. She focused her chakra to flow through entire body which she got a bit better at from the previous excercise and let it pool in her legs and feet, she carefully formed the ram seal and launched.

And crashed into the tree, her focus was a bit off but she did transport herself. She was laying flat on the ground, "Fucking hell, that hurt." she groaned, rolling over on her side, she laughed at Shin "Maybe not aim at a solid object next time!" Sakuran got up and tried to regain her composure, for a first attempt it could have gone worse, she knew for a fact she could travel alot further then twenty meters and maybe doing that would give her a better insight on why this went wrong, she rubbed her forehead which was still a bit sore.

Sakuran gathered herself to have another attempt, this time she was aiming for an open area but about 225 meters away, her absolute maximum, taking a shoulder width stance she started to gather her chakra again, letting it flow through her body and gathering in her legs and feet, then forming the Ram seal and at the same time focusing on her route at high speed she activated the jutsu, moving so fast it was like teleporting, while she was moving at high speed she was testing the limits of her movement and adaptability. She appeared at the 225m mark and waved at Shin.

Doing a little jump she cheered herself on and was confident she had mastered the trick, a bit more practice and it would be perfect, She focused on the next point which was fifty meters back and did the jutsu again, when she appeared she was pretty happy about her accuracy and she did it a couple more times until she was around five meters away from Shin. "Hiya buddy ! I think i got this one down and how about you?"
[500 WC]
[750 TWC]

Body Flicker was the technique next on the list, "For cool entrances!" as Sakuran had eagerly told him. Shin wasn't convinced about the neccessity of it, but he wasn't going to try to calm her down, he didn't even think anyone could. So here they were, reading their notes on the jutsu and contemplatinghow best to not fall face first in the mud.

Instead of mud, Saky got a face full of bark on her first attempt. "Try aiming in between the obstacles instead!", he shouted towards her as he grinned. Now, he was going to give it a try aswel. His physical prowess was far below hers, but he made up for it in his handling of his chakra. Accurately Shin mlded his chakra and send it down to his legs and feet, taking great care to not overdo it. He then looked ahead, envisioned his path forwards, at a small 10meters ahead, and activated the technique.

He zoomed forward 1meter, 2meters, 5meters, 9meters, 10meters, overshot his mark, 12meters, and slid to a halt looking back at the spot he initially aimed to stop at. "Not too bad though, we should be able to get the hang of this pretty rapidly", he thought to himself as he stretched his arms and legs a bit to get ready for a next attempt. Envision the path, but envision the destination a bit clearer maybe, and maintaining a better balance of chakra throughout the travel should improve the second attempt he was about to take.

Shin focussed up, rubbed the bottom of his shoes to remove any excess of dirt for better grip, and got ready. He gathered his chakra again, send it into his legs and feet, balanced it out, looked dead ahead 10meters further at the next landing target and used his technique. Again he shot forward, 10meters further he came to a stop, too abruptly, his feet having finished their travel and getting ready to rest and his body moving forward just a bit more than desired. Shin stumbled on the spot for a good 5 seconds with his arms flailing to the sides to maintain balance and he then took a step forward to break the future fall that otherwise happened.

"Close...", he thought to himself, "So very close". He continued to attempt the jutsu several times, and inbetween he would look over at Saky doing almost 6 times his speed and distance. "That's one speedy maniac, i pity anyone getting on her bad side", he grinned as he thought, and then he continued with his training.

Sakuran had already moved back to him in short (for her), ridiculous bursts of teleportation moves, showing why the Hatake clan had affinity for the lightning element. Shin had pretty much finished up with his slow snail-paced teleportations and was ready to finish up. He did a few more quick-succession teleports left and right, only moving 1 meter away from his starting point, before deciding he was content with his progress.

[500 WC]

Sakuran groaned when she looked at ther notebook "Storage Displacement, space time jutsu ... my favorite." she said sarcastically, Rat, Dog are the seals. and there was a whole lot of talking about space in there that she did not quite get, She saw Shin studying as well and wondered if he got it. She had to try something, basing herself on the previous two excercises she gather her chakra and started flowing it around in her body, forming the seals she tried to summon this thing but just got a loud snap instead and a scent of burning hair, her arm felt funny and she legit had no idea what happened.

She tried expelling all her chakra after pooling it, tried gathering it in first her left arm then her right arm but alas no succes and it smelled even more of burned hair ... she grabbed the book again and pondered the words very carfully, " Objects become suffused with the user's chakra, taking on its color before dissolving into round particles that seem to blink away into nothing from the point of contact outwards. If the item is being pulled from displacement, the reverse occurs, the item reforming from blinking particles from the user's hand outwards."

God, all of these hard to read words was not helping her, suffused, ... isnt that when something is drenched in something ? She tried the jutsu again first gathering her chakra and since she thought it had to be targeted she pointed her chakra at a little rock. She formed the rat and dog seals one after the other and then pointed at the rock while extending her chakra, was she seeing this right ? The rock was turning blue, but then she lost her concentration and it did a little jiggle but nothing much happened.

Sakuran cursed under her breath. "Goddamn timey wimey jutsus." She took a couple of deep breaths and tried to grasp the situation, she had achieved some result so she was heading the right way so lets go on from there. She again focussed her chakra, and formed the seals, Rat, dog, and focus the chakra at the rock, it started to turn blue and disolving into small bubbles, and then seemed to shift out of view. Sakuran was estatic and then confused ... "Wait where did it go ??" She looked around and then at her notebook almost kicking herself, it was in storage, riiiight.

Now to get it out ... the book was pretty fuzzy on how this was achieved but it must be like the sealing technique or body flicker ? Focus chakra inward, picture the item and take it out. She tried it once more making the seals and then reach her hand out as if it was there and lo and behold, a rock appeared. She made it work ! She kept practicing and with each round of practice it became smoother and smoother, soon she was storing her kunai and a piece of armor in it and was able to take them back without failure.

[505 WC]
[1255 TWC]

A storage skill was next on the list, some handy utility jutsu to keep items safe in a seperate... dimension? instead of in a special item scroll. Shin wasn't too sure about this one. What if he managed to store things but then never got them back? That would be a horrible way to lose all your underwear. Well, the choices were already made, and it was time to make some random pebbles dissappear for maybe ever.

Shin studied the text thouroughly. He didn't want to make any dangerous mistakes with these types of space/time types of skills. He watched Saky struggle for a little bit, that always got him motivated easier. He then started practising himself. He had gathered a nice pile of little rocks, sat down next to them, picked one up and placed it before himself on the ground. He touched it with one finger, and tried all sorts of chakra infusion, but literally nothing happened to the pebble at all.

With the text in hand again, Shin tried figuring it out once more. "Oh I see now", he proclaimed, "instead of trying to make the pebble dissappear, i have to make the dimensional storage instead". Shinryuu closed his eyes and focussed his thoughts and chakra. He had to somehow figure out how to envision a non-existing box somewhere he couldn't see it, to then touch his pebble and make it move to that non-existing spot.... Yeah easy enough. Maybe he should've studies how item scrolls worked first to have a better understanding of all this invisible space mumbo-jumbo.

He focussed up again to start his new career as a streetmagician. He hadn't figured out how to "infuse" his chakra into a non-existing invisble box yet, but he was sure he would figure it out if he could just stop thinking about this existential crisis. He could turn himself into a cat if he wanted to, which was technically also a shape that was not there. Surely he could manage the same with this invisible box thing. That was it. Instead of blocking himself with the thought that it doesn't exist, simply only envision the box to be there but invisible. and then by channeling chakra and touching the stone, he should be able to move it into his box that was absolutely right here but "just" invisible.

This time things went different, and better than he anticipated. The pebble actually started changing color into his chakra's color, before it completely dissolved into thin air by ways of little blinking particles from his touch outwards till the pebble was fully gone. Eyes wide open, staring at where the pebble once was, he was astounded by the quick success. Taken aback he quickly took another pebble and did the same thing again. This one dissappeared in the exact same manner. A success!

Shin then focussed on his own mana, and could sense it in his own personal storage dimension, with two pebbled occupying it in perfect shape. He focussed on them, opened his right hand, and managed to make them both reform from scrath to full pebbles in the palm of his hand.

[526 WC]

"OK, next one has to be better because that one was a nightmare to learn." Sakuran looked at the list ... "A fucking genjutsu," She glared at Shin "I have a feeling you wrote that in here without discussing it with me, BUT FINE, I will practice on you first." She looked over her notes and cringed a little, this was far from her wheelhouse, but she had to learn these things and understand at least the basics else she could never defend against it, reading that you have to reach your chakra into your target and picture what you want them to picture.

Ok, sounds simple enough. she reached out with her mind for Shin, and pictured ten copies of her slowly creeping up to him and becasue she did not want to attack him with a kunai decided on performing a wet willie on him, drenching her finger in saliva and pretending to jam it in his ear. She laughed so hard she broke her own genjutsu but quickly quieted down as Shin was glaring at her. "Sorry, did not mean to attack you with weapons ... I see now that was a bad call." She made a few awkward bows and pretended to read her book intently.

She was allowed to practice it a few more times, trying to attack him with weapons now instead of body violations. After a while she felt pretty confident but was wondering if Shin was going to exact revenge on her for actions she did earlier.

[253 WC]
[1508 TWC]

Finally they got to the jutsu that Shin had snuck into Sakuran's lil notebook during class. He had done his utmost best to mirror her handwriting.

This one was a simple genjutsu, but both of them weren't good at those, so it was not going to be easy. They both took turns using the genjutsu on eachother, the "victim" giving the caster enough time to practise and experiment, and then dispelling the genjutsu and giving eachother pointers on what could be improved and what went well.

Activating the genjutsu was not as difficult as Shin had anticipated, but making it believable for the "victim" was where the finesse of the technique really lay. Getting details right, shaping the clones properly, copying the location they were currently at, all of those added up to the believability of the genjutsu and the better it got, the harder it became to dispel it.

The remainder of the allocated training time for this jutsu Shin spend writing in his notebook. He added notes to every jutsu and technique he learned, for easier explanations on training, just in case he had to teach someone in the future and might not remember by then how he had done it today. A well prepared ninja is worth a thousand unprepped bandits.

Shin turned to Sakuran and asked her: "So whats next in that lil booklet of yours, in which only you and you alone wrote down jutsu to learn."

[242 WC]

Sakuran sat down and opened her notebook again, they were really going through this at amazing speed. The next one was really handy, to have perfect darkvision is something every shinobi should master, both Shin and Sakuran agreed on this. There was only one seal to do and that was Tiger, the book clearly stated that her chakra should be focused in her eyes and that was going to be a problem for her, focusing chakra into anything but her fists and feet was always difficult for her but it was something that had to be done, she could not only rely on her taijutsu anymore.

She tried her best to focus her chakra into her eyes but that was easier said then done, she had to try at least twelve times before she had the feeling that some chakra was there, she formed the seal and completed the jutsu, the world looked a bit lighter but soon lost its glow, she put her hands over her eyes and nothing. She tried again and this time she got it a big quicker and after forming the seal she activated the jutsu and covered her eyes.

She could see! Not very far but enough to know it worked. She tried several more times and soon she was able to keep the jutsu up, she looked at Shin and saw his eyes light up, this was a simple jutsu to train but it was nice to have someone she knew there at least.
[251 WC]
[1759 TWC]

The Cat Eyes Jutsu was a sensory technique, a very useful skill to have indeed. They had both decided this was a must train jutsu, and a fairly easy one at that. This training session was really paying off and Shin decided not to waste a single second and instantly started working on this new jutsu.

Shin sat with his eyes closed, feeling his chakra, molding it and moving it through his veins, up to his head, and towards his eyes, slowly and carefully. He then infused his eyes with his chakra, made the Tiger handseal and opened his eyes as he activated the technique. It hardly did anything though, maybe he put too much chakra in, or too little, or he made his chakra too thick or thin. These were the types of questions he had to find his answer for.

He continued to pour chakra into his eyes attempt after attempt, and then focussing his eyes on the darkest shadest area he could see from where he was at. It got easier and easier to see all the details of the area he focussed on in the shade, as he kept finetuning his chakra control.

It didn't take long before he fully got the hang of it and felt confident enough about how much chakra he exactly needed to use and maintain this jutsu effectively. Sakuran seemed to have also managed to find her groove and gain her own insights, judging by the content face she was making.

[250 WC]