Big Bad Bug Bodybuilding

Anzo stretches nice and slow as he stares down at the scroll in front of him. The jutsu itself wasn't really all that difficult, it was a jutsu similar to at least two others that he'd learned and used before, and was a highly useful jutsu as well. He finally arches his back and then bumps his sunglasses lower to take a closer look at the jutsu scroll before he pushes his sunglasses back up on his face, causing the light from the training facility to flash across the yellow lenses to hide his eyes from view, then he quickly brings his hands down to perform four rapid handseals, kneading the earth nature chakra in his body before expelling the earth directly from his mouth. The earth slowly takes the form of Anzo himself, matching his appearance perfectly, all the way down to his sunglasses.

Anzo and the earth clone grin at one another before Anzo himself raises his right arm, and the earth clone does the same before both clasp their hands with one another, like two people with one mind, hooking thumbs and curling their fingers around each other's fists. Then Anzo grins as he uses another technique he'd been studying and begins sinking into the ground, ending the dap by shoving his own clone backwards and setting it off-balance before Anzo slips deep into the earth suddenly. With the Rock Clone unable to perform Anzo's own insect techniques, though that doesn't mean the Rock Clone itself isn't capable of some counterplay; the clone itself is capable of using moves on its own without Anzo's own input, so it grins as Anzo sinks below. Anzo himself is quizzical, but even his hair is underground now, so he's unable to see what the clone has planned.

OOC: 150/150 Rock Clone
150/150 Subterranean Voyage

As soon as Anzo's eyes disappears under the ground, the Rock Clone itself rises up to stand on its own two feet, dusting its own similar red jacket clean of dirt before he begins making handseals; the clone really is a lot like Anzo himself in that Anzo wouldn't simply allow someone else to train a jutsu and not let him train a jutsu himself. Of course, not being a Shadow Clone, the Rock Clone would have to actually show Anzo how to do the technique in order for Anzo himself to learn it from the Rock Clone training it, but it was still better than simply training alone. Regardless, the clone rapidly covers its fist and arm with rock, allowing the Rock Clone of Anzo to be able to punch much harder than before while not needing to worry about harming himself with his own punches.

Anzo himself rises up out of the ground behind where his clone was still standing, surprised at first that his clone hadn't decided to move to a different location in order to hit Anzo with a surprise attack; little does he know that his Rock Clone doesn't really need to go anywhere in order to set up an ambush! Regardless, Anzo smiles as he readies his own 900 Kikaichu in order to use a new technique he'd come up with, purely to protect himself from a possible counter-attack as the bugs rapidly crawl all along the inner lining of his red jacket until they completely cover his body from his neck down, hidden entirely within his helpful large coat so that even their crawling doesn't cause the shape of the jacket to change much.

"Heh! You know, with that smile you just gave me, I was worried you'd have some trick up your sleeve to ambush me! But here you are, ready to help me train!"

The Rock Clone looks over its shoulder at the original and grins as it responds in his own voice.

"Who says I don't have a trick up my sleeve? Good choice of words, though, if I do say so myself! And I do!"

With that, the Rock Clone spins around and aims a strike at the original Anzo Aburame's gut, only for the strike to simply land, with Anzo barely even reacting to the hit, and grinning even more.

OOC: 200/200 Rock Fist
200/200 Insect Armor

Anzo can only smile wider as it seems that the Rock Clone's Stone Fist doesn't even deal damage to Anzo, and he laughs before sending his bugs down from his body along the ground, gathering rapidly around the Rock Clone until the entire ground under his feet and all around him in a wide circle becomes black with the swarming Kikaichu, hungrily pulling him down, the strength of so many parasitic bugs making it impossible for the Rock Clone to get free, before the Rock Clone laughs as he's brought down to his knees, finding this to be great sport. He lifts his right arm up towards Anzo again, now free of those stones that had made the arm and hand into a huge fist made of stone, and Anzo raises his own right arm, and then slam their hands together again, dapping his own Rock Clone up and cancelling the Kikaichu from dragging the Rock Clone all the way down into the bog they'd made in order to trap opponents. They have a good laugh while the Rock Clone shows Anzo how the clone itself trained the Stone Fist move, and after practicing the technique himself for a while, forming handseals and then gathering earth nature release in the form of rocks and stones around his hand and fist, he releases the Stone Fist technique and then the Rock Clone, allowing it to simply crumble back into gravel before he gathers up the scrolls he'd been using to learn jutsu with, carrying them away from the training facility to put them away where he'd found them.

OOC: 250/250 Insect Bog Technique

Exit Thread

Anzo returns to his usual training floor without a scroll this time around; the blonde man was going to focus on learning more Aburame techniques this time around, and with most of the clan's jutsu being quite secret, he wouldn't want the extra responsibility of carrying them around. He'd simply asked to look at them after proving his identity as Anzo Aburame, and then been allowed to look through the clan's secret clan scrolls to allow him to read how the techniques were used and how they were taught. Most of those techniques were fairly simple, such as the one he trained now, if only to get it out of the way; he quite easily builds a cocoon around himself, allowing the fabric-like material to cover his body as he moves down to a laying position, with the dark green color of the cocoon fibers taking on an appearance not unlike the dark forest moss that grows in the Senju Forest surrounding Konoha.

Of course, utilizing this technique naturally leads to the next, fairly similar technique, one meant to use such a cocoon to allow their Kikaichu to breed much faster than normal, used in order to regenerate the number of Kikaichu for the clan member if they run low on their beetles. With his body covered, the insects breed at a greatly increased rate, though there's not enough room for the 900 he already has in him to produce much more than this, but that's fine; he only needed to ensure that the technique could work the way the scrolls suggested.

OOC: 100/100 Human Cocoon Technique
100/100 Secret Technique: Insect Cocoon

Anzo feels confident that he could use these techniques if needed, and so he simply breaks himself out of the cocoon, feeling energized and ready to continue on with training the techniques he'd had access to. The next two were far less simple, and so he had to focus to remember how they were used as he moves to one dummy situated nearby, this one set up to look like a person, though it was merely a scarecrow. While the Kikaichu themselves wouldn't be able to feed off of it, it would still show him that his training these techniques was effective. He wills his Kikaichu along the ground, gathering them up underneath the scarecrow before thrusting his hands up to guide the insects to climb up over their target, attacking the scarecrow the same way they would a living human, though there's no chakra to drain, and so they simply return to Anzo after a moment of investigation. He gives the Kikaichu a wordless apology by feeding them a little more chakra, and they settle down after a moment and return to a more peaceful buzzing noise.

The next technique to train, Anzo felt he needed some more serious help with, particularly from a sensor ninja, but he doesn't have anything like that available. He did hear that the training facility had a sensory suite meant to help ninja train their chakra control and balancing, however, so he turned to that, and put on a headset for himself, somewhat like a VR headset he'd seen that was all the rage. When he does so, four large pillars rise up on the edges of the training facility, meant to be weak automatic chakra detectors, and he can see the chakra through special lenses on the camera. It's a bit weird seeing his own chakra signature in a third person perspective, but it certainly helps. With this information, it takes very little work to be able to learn how to control his Kikaichu to form swirling patterns in a cloud around him, letting them output a very specific amount of chakra until his actual location was lost in a kind of strange white noise like he might see at the end of the village's daily broadcasts. With this training done, he has the Kikaichu return to his body once more.

OOC: 150/150 Insect Deception Technique
150/150 Insect Jamming Technique

This was the extent of the Aburame clan jutsu he had been allowed access to; now it was time to have some fun with some of the jutsu he'd learned already. He puts away the VR headset he'd been using to train the jamming technique, and the four pillars return from where they'd come up from the ground originally, as though they'd never been there to begin with. Now, instead, Anzo holds the Snake handseal, a handseal commonly used for other Doton techniques, although the jutsu he'd based this technique on didn't actually require handseals to use. Still, the handseal allowed him to effectively transfer the use of this technique to his beetles, which now tunnel underground with practical ease, slipping from his legs and into the earth as he directs them towards the scarecrow once more. They're able to travel with much less visibility now before they drive back up from the earth and onto the scarecrow's legs again, latching onto it and climbing up over it to take hold the way they would a human target, though once more there's no chakra for them to steal from this lifelike human analogue. Anzo calls them back once more, and winces as he has to feed them chakra once again for a job well done. They really were like pets that way.

Regardless, he has one more technique he wants to try, and this one is significantly more complex than the Insect Clone technique he'd learned with Nikola, though it was potentially even more useful. He makes handseals to mold earth release chakra inside of his own body, churning it into rock before he expels the mud from his mouth to slowly form a clone out of the mud, which is already starting to harden into rock. Before it can reach its final hardening, he sends some of his own Kikaichu insects inside of it, allowing them to take hold inside of his clone until those parasitic insects are traveling all throughout the clone the same way they would his own body, even capable of appearing out of specific holes in the Rock Clone's body to appear at any point within it that the Kikaichu might find necessary. With the final hardening complete, the Trudging Terrarium, as Anzo has named the technique, is fully formed and capable of utilizing both Earth Release techniques and Aburame clan jutsu that he already has access to. He grins at his dual type clone, and the clone grins back as they dap each other up in perfect sync. Then Anzo finally releases the jutsu, allowing the clone to simply break apart into its constituent elements, with the insects returning to his own body and the clone simply returning to mud on the ground.

With his training done, Anzo turns around and walks from the training facility, hopefully returning soon for more training.

OOC: 250/250 Trudging Terrarium Technique
200/200 Secret Technique: Underground Swarm

Thread EXIT

It had been a while, but Anzo was back, along with a scroll to help him learn a bit of ninjutsu, but part of what he would be learning wouldn't be ninjutsu at all, despite that being one of his typical methods of attack along with his bugs. He figured he might as well learn some other techniques in case either his ninjutsu or his bugs weren't enough to help him out in a pinch. But first thing was certainly first, and he wanted to learn a completely different jutsu first. He opens up the learning scroll and sets it up so he can read from it while sitting down. It takes only a bit of concentration on what he's supposed to do before he performs the handseals necessary for the technique, focusing on kneading earth release chakra through his feet and legs and into the earth underneath and all around him before leaning forwards and slamming both of his palms onto the ground, granting him control over some of the terrain around him, though he can feel just how deep the earth runs in the fourth floor of the training center, so he only changes around the earthwork a bit before returning it to normal with a second application of the technique, just to make sure he's got it down perfectly.

OOC: 200/200 Earth Release: Moving Earth Core

Anzo carefully rolls back up the scroll once he's done with it, since the next bit of training has nothing to do with ninjutsu and was instead a focus on taijutsu that he could use in case he was in danger. He takes up a stance with his left arm behind his back, clenched in a fist so that the arm is ready, but not immediately in use, and his right arm presented forwards with his palm towards himself, fingers outstretched. He took up a position with his feet, slightly bent and his right leg further forwards than his left as he faces towards a nearby training dummy. Already in this position, he feels a bit stronger, maybe a bit faster, too. He'd watched a couple of strange folks in green tights training their taijutsu in this way, though they admittedly did many, many hours of warming up before they'd gone on to training taijutsu, but regardless, he felt like he could use this power as well.

He'd also watched them for hours, perfecting a single kick over a thousand times against each other, back and forth and back and forth. They screamed a lot, but Anzo wasn't sure that added anything in particular to these techniques, nor did any "youth" statements were likely necessary. Instead, the Aburame clan member is silent as he builds up strength in his forward right leg before initiating a spin with that leg to sweep where the mannequin's feet would have been, had it been an actual person. But a simple sweep isn't all, because he keeps the momentum going even faster into the next swipe of his foot across the mannequin's chest, with Anzo's body rising with the growing momentum before he swipes up at the training dummy's face analogue, but now he turns all that growing momentum into a downward heel kick right onto the practice dummy's shoulder before landing back on his feet, feeling a bit winded but proud of the power he'd been able to generate with such attacks.

OOC: 150/150 Strong Fist
150/150 Leaf Great Whirlwind

Still, Anzo felt that the kicks had felt a little bit sloppy, and although he was sure that he'd done those techniques correctly, it didn't hurt to make sure that he even got the basics of the style down. He returns to the training dummy and returns to the previous stance, facing towards the dummy with one hand behind his back and the other pressed towards the target, allowing Anzo to focus on the enemy while the enemy might focus on his hand. He builds up strength in his leg for another spinning kick, and he suddenly rotates his body to bring up another kick towards the dummy's chest, but suddenly drops his standing leg, rotating hard to turn the feinting first kick into a low sweep, feeding the momentum of the first attack into the second in a move that would have tripped an opponent.

Feeling sure that he'd be able to do the technique with much more effect next time, he steps away from the dummy and stretches his limbs out a bit. The strange pair in green tights had had some kind of equally strange greeting as well, and he wonders if he could replicate it, so he takes up the previous stance again. Instead of staying still and then turning into the attack, however, he runs towards the training dummy to start before jumping into the air to aim a kick right at the dummy's face, smashing directly into it before landing back in the stance, and he turns the downward energy of his landing into a horizontal rotational force on his left leg, twisting around into another sweep to where the training dummy's legs would have been, had it been a person. After his foot connects with the stump again, he decides he's sore enough that he's done with training for now, so he limps away from the training ground with the scroll in hand, feeling fairly accomplished.

OOC: 100/100 Leaf Whirlwind
100/100 Leaf Gale
100/100 Dynamic Entry

(THREAD EXIT)

Anzo returns once more to the Grand Konoha Training Facility, though this time he had been caught watching the two strange people in green jumpsuits, and after they had offered to help him train in their Taijutsu style themselves (as well as "offering" to make him wear their garish green clothing), Anzo had decided he would leave them well enough alone, at least for a while, so that they wouldn't catch him at it anymore. Instead, he brings a few scrolls of Doton ninjutsu that he can train up in, at least one of which might be really useful to learn. He sits down on the ground to study that scroll first, though he's careful not to set it directly on the ground, for fear or ruining the paper. After reading through it for a while, he picks it up and sets all three scrolls near the entrance to this floor so he can be sure he won't be getting it dirty. Then he takes up his position further back in the training room and performs four handseals in quick succession, focusing on the training dummy simply so he has an available target.

All around the dummy, and even directly on top of it, a portal opens up, and a sticky mud drops down onto it and the surrounding area before surging outwards, though Anzo himself stays outside of the range of that gunk. He looks down at the stuff with at least a bit of disgust, but he can't deny that the jutsu would be useful to trap opponents in.

OOC: 200/200 Earth Release: Sticky Earth Drop

With that technique having been trained, he quickly and quite simply uses a bit of earth release jutsu to remove the stuff, or at least re-incorporate it into the earth already provided by the training facility in order to not interfere with the rest of his training. Then he picks up the next scroll, and he has to wonder for a moment how in the world Konoha managed to get its hands on an Iwagakure technique, of all things. He supposed, however, that it was likely to have been observed in use by enough high-level ninja that were able to replicate the technique and then pass the knowledge of such a jutsu onto scrolls for future learning.

Anzo reads through the technique fairly quickly; it was a simple jutsu after all. After performing the four handseals and molding the earth chakra around in his mouth, he spits out several small stones at the dummy, which rapidly expand into boulders that slam into the mannequin again and again before the stones run out. Anzo nods once and sets that scroll aside so he knows which two jutsu he's trained, leaving only one more technique for that particular day.

OOC: 150/150 Earth Style: Stone Pistol Technique

It's just as well that Anzo picks this jutsu as the last one to train, as it is a technique that might be quite infamous for ruining the floors of some of the Grand Training Facility's levels. But he knows that someone comes around and cleans up after the ninja have made use of them, so he feels this is probably going to be fine again. He stands and faces the mannequin while reading through the scroll's explanation of the technique one last time. Then he performs three quick handseals before slamming both palms directly onto the earthen floor, and more like water than like hard stone, the earth churns into a spiral around the training dummy he'd only recently pummeled with stones from his second technique and also covered in sticky mud.

As he watches, the training dummy gets dragged into the center of that earth vortex, getting crushed together with the stone boulders he'd also spit into the mannequin and likely actually causing damage to the training aid. After making sure he's done the technique correctly, Anzo whistles as he gathers up the scrolls he'd borrowed, and then hurriedly escapes from the training facility before anyone can see what violence he hat wrought.

OOC: 150/150 Earth Release: Tearing Earth Turning Palm

THREAD EXIT

It had been a while since Anzo had been in the training facility, but he still feels like he has a lot more training to do in order to make himself somewhat more effective in combat. He comes back up to the fourth floor of the Grand Konoha Training Facility with some more jutsu to train, having asked one of the staff members for assistance in training, though perhaps he should have been a little more straightforward with what he had in mind, in retrospect. He directs the civilian worker towards the back of the training floor and stating that there's something back there for the worker to see.

As the worker shrugs and then turns towards the back of the training floor to start walking to the back of the false forest, Anzo makes a single handseal, focusing on a change in the perceptions of the surroundings. Nothing happens at first, but he knows it can take a while for the technique to set in, so for the time being, he gets to work on training the next technique...

OOC: 150/150 Sly Mind Affect Technique

Without needing to perform any handseals for this next technique, it's entirely mental for him, so he simply focuses on moving back towards where he had seen the civilian worker disappear beyond some of the trees towards the back of the training floor, inlaying his own chakra into that specific area, ensuring that when the civilian worker does eventually step into the area, that it looks exactly like the back of the training floor again instead of the entrance. After several minutes, Anzo then hears some of the bushes rustling, and he moves back a bit, then slipping behind a tree as the civilian worker comes upon that specific area, seeing the same back of the training floor he thought he'd just left.

Anzo watches the worker scratch his head in confusion, then turn straight around to head back in the opposite direction, clearly reasoning that he must have gotten turned around, and unwittingly setting up a loop within the Sly Mind area to set him circling back around and around, allowing Anzo plenty of time to set up for training his third genjutsu.

OOC: 150/150 Demonic Illusion: False Surrounding Technique

Anzo quickly begins the handseals for his next genjutsu to train while he simply watches from above as the civilian helplessly walks around in a huge circle, and even when he tries a sudden harsh turn like he's attempting to turn away from the oddly repeating landscape, he simply ends up turning straight into the genjutsu trap area again, and then circling in the opposite direction again, as he becomes gradually more worried, and then that worry turning to fear, and Anzo knows that the next step will be panic.

Anzo performs the final hand seal, layering down the final genjutsu atop the first two fairly simple environmental illusions meant to sow confusion for his test subject. This final one begins to work just as the civilian worker begins to feel panic set in, rushing around and around the sly mind location before Anzo releases that genjutsu as well, leaving behind this final technique as he watches the civilian turn his face upwards, his eyes widening in complete terror before helplessly dropping to his knees.

Anzo actually feels pretty bad for the worker he'd just left sobbing in a fetal position on the ground, but without someone to test genjutsu on, he's not sure he'd be capable of testing those genjutsu out. He shrugs then and walks back out of the training facility, trying to pretend to be a completely innocent party as several workers rush around, trying to find their missing coworker.

OOC: 150/150 Demonic Illusion: Descending Hell Technique

(THREAD EXIT)

Anzo hadn't been avoiding the Grand Konoha Training Facility... Well, not actively. He'd simply been too busy to go back for a while after the... incident with the facility worker. Luckily, it seemed that nobody thought to blame him for what was apparently a minor psychological break for one of their employees who had "gotten lost" in one of the training facility floors. There was now tape over his usual floor's button in the elevator, marking it as "OUT OF ORDER", according to the note attached to the adhesive, so he'd need a different floor for a while. It was no big deal for Anzo, although he did feel a bit guilty about the employee.

In any case, he chose to train on a different floor for a while, picking out one with some nice open spaces that would allow him to train some of the other techniques he needed to become proficient with. As he steps out of the elevator into the empty training floor, he sees a nice open plains, like a grassland, allowing him to get in plenty of practice, where the far end of the field were a series of barely visible human-shaped dummies; apparently, this floor was normally used for long distance training. Not that it was relevant for what Anzo had in mind for training, but that was fine.

The first technique he was training was actually an extremely simple technique, but it was a wonder he hadn't learned it during the Academy, which was apparently where some ninja had first learned it. The second most common method of learning such a technique was apparently from one's parents, but that was... not an option for Anzo. With its simplistic nature, Anzo had been able to memorize the steps to perform the technique as soon as he'd read it from the training scroll, weathered as it was. He simply made the Tiger seal with his right hand while focusing chakra to the bottom of his right foot, then bent both knees before he rockets forwards a full 100 meters into the field, moving faster than he'd normally be capable of. Anzo lets out a puff of air as he completes the dash, turning to look out across the distance he'd just traveled. It really was quite an effect for such a simple technique.

OOC: 100/100 Body Flicker Technique

One of the next techniques was rather more complex, but possibly even more useful, especially for a ninja like him, who was better suited for attacking enemies where he wouldn't be so easily spotted. Although it requires a lot more set-up than what would normally be needed. He moves over to the settings for the training floor, changing the set-up for the floor completely by filling most of the room with many more trees; he'd have to remember to remove them later, but it would certainly be helpful in training this particular technique right now. Once the trees are in place in the program, he goes to stand underneath one, right in its shade, before using a single handseal to help focus his chakra. He mentally pictures himself sinking down into the shadow, becoming one with it and disappearing from view, and his body slowly moves downwards, though it likely takes longer for him than it would for someone a full foot shorter. He does slip down quite easily, however, slipping into the shadow until even his blonde hair is gone from view.

He slinks through the shadows provided by the trees, moving as quickly along the shadows as he would normally move, and completely hidden from view. He very nearly makes a game of it before he's traveled as far as he needs to; he's now reached the dummy at the furthest end of the training floor, and he slips back up out of the shadows to stand directly behind it, feeling quite accomplished, though the jutsu was still fairly simple, especially compared to other techniques he'd already mastered such as the Shadow Clone Technique and the multitude of Aburame and Doton jutsus that he'd already learned and trained to mastery.

OOC: 150/150 Hiding in Shadows Technique

In any case, it's time to train one last jutsu now that he's reached the dummies. He always found them a little bit creepy in their almost-human appearance, and it was honestly a bit worse when they were enveloped in shadows like this, but it was likely better than hitting another ninja at full force. He remembers being hit by a puppet earlier that week and winces at the memory, even though Anzo has already fully recovered from that hit. In any case, he moves back around to the front of the dummy, since he'd be aiming at the underside of its chin with this technique. He'd been spying on those strange green ninja again, though this time he'd avoided getting caught. They'd been practicing a move that looked like it needed a lot of stretching and working out to do, but he figured after he'd watched them do it 1000 times that he'd be able to replicate it at least a little bit.

He goes into the Strong Fist stance he'd seen them take, then kicks his right foot off the ground, turning the push into a powerful upwards strike with the side of his foot up into the dummy's chin, causing the head to violently flop backwards in a movement that looks like it would cause quite a lot of damage to another person, even with Anzo's own poor musculature. The genin moves his leg back down and practices it a few more times; slamming his foot directly up into the dummy's chin and jaw at various angles until he feels he can get it off quite rapidly like he'd seen the strange ninjas doing when he'd been watching them at their training. With his own training done, he walks back over to the settings and quietly removes the trees from the field before he fully leaves the training facility for the day.

OOC: 150/150 Leaf Rising Wind

(THREAD EXIT)

Anzo returns once more to his usual floor of the training facility. The repairmen had apparently found nothing malfunctioning with the technology that made the environments work, and since the problem could not be replicated and wasn't being reproduced, they considered the problem apparently resolved. This was great news for Anzo, who had tried momentarily to do a bit of training outside of the village, but had found it somewhat less rewarding.

In any case, he had a few new jutsu to try out, one of which would at least ensure the weakness of his thrown weapons would be somewhat negated by the size of the weapon being increased. He uses a technique he'd learned during the exceedingly short training session with that strange puppet boy, making a simplistic shuriken out of stone, then focusing his aim at a dummy only about 20 meters away before throwing it straight at the human-shaped target. It only takes a quick three handseals to suddenly expand the stone shuriken to 10x its normal size, causing the now huge shuriken to stab into the dummy by its sheer force and weight alone as the momentum pushes its point straight into its chest.

OOC: 150/150 Ninja Art: Shuriken Giant Body Technique

The next technique was one he'd come up with while reading through some manuscripts of genjutsu techniques he thought he might try training some other day, perhaps when he can find a more willing assistant to help him train some techniques and reach a better understanding of genjutsu. In any case, Anzo wasn't so comfortable with carrying around a bell, but he'd seen and certainly heard all kinds of bugs and beetles using their legs and wings to make loud, even cacophonous noises, noises they didn't have to make until the time was right, unlike a bell, and a flute would simply get in the way if he wanted to use one.

He deftly sends out a large group of insects over to the wooded area; he figured if he could get enough Kikaichu to work together, he could make them work not just as a distraction or as a medium for those odd sound-based genjutsu he'd read about, but also as an actual senses-based attack on an opponent's ears. Quite quickly, Anzo stuffs his ears with some wax plugs he'd made from melted candles once they'd dried, though he doubted he would want to use something like them in combat, as they were rather flimsy little things, but they would do for training his bugs without actually causing eardrum damage to himself.

After getting the bugs and his own ear protection situated, he begins practically getting those grouped Kikaichu to start rubbing their wings together, until they at least start making noise, then training them to begin turning that noise into a louder and louder constant droning noise, until he can actually hear the noise through his waxy protection instead of just feeling the weak vibrations, until the noise is almost loud enough to almost pierce the wax. He rapidly silences those Kikaichu before they get too loud even for him, knowing that they'll be able to pass the information for how to do that to their offspring and to the rest of his brood as he reincorporates the group back into his own body.

OOC: 200/200 Secret Technique: Insect Decoy Technique

Speaking of training his bugs, there was at least one more thing he wanted to test out. He'd heard that it was possible to actually breed up a new form of beetle if one were to help focus the reproduction of Kikaichu for a few singular traits to become bred into a larger population until they became a more prominent and separate group of insects that were no longer Kikaichu, but something entirely new. Anzo starts by placing himself into the insect cocoon, allowing him to totally focus on the reproductive cycles of his insects, even as they reproduced so rapidly inside of him.

With all of his intent focused on his beetles, he begins selecting certain traits for them to breed, starting off as a curiosity, then turning that curiosity into a much more focused implied desire for specific traits. He starts by making them breed for greater size, but soon they become too large, and their bodies are too frail to support their weight, and despite breeding for that size, those beetles end up dying before they can reproduce. He scraps that particular breeding pattern in favor of breeding in some stronger limbs and a much harder body first, turning a few Kikaichu into walking tanks, until he can feel how tough they are as they move, capable of even shoving around whole groups of other, normal Kikaichu, although it's never obviously in an inharmonious way, but simply in a way that allows them to march about for tougher mates to breed. Once this is accomplished, he guides that tough group to breed for greater size once more. It takes some work to guide their breeding, but eventually Anzo finally emerges once more from the insect cocoon, carrying two absolutely gigantic beetles, tough to an extreme level, and although they could no longer consume chakra, their size and toughness could likely prove useful. Even so, Anzo doesn't choose to produce more of them just yet, but now he knows how to do it. He's certain he'll be able to do so again soon.

With this intense training complete, he decides to leave the training facility once more, at least until he can come up with more techniques to train.

OOC: 250/250 Kabutochū

Thread Exit

Anzo returns back to the Grand Konoha Training Facility to try and learn some more techniques, this time bringing with him a dusty old scroll along with a couple of others. This dusty scroll contained a technique that had been lost in the back of a whole bunch of other Ijutsu techniques when he'd been looking for techniques involving that healing ninja art, since Anzo wanted to become a more useful shinobi on the battlefield, and he felt that healing ninjutsu would certainly help him to increase the longevity of anyone he might have to go on missions with. Although he hadn't been thinking explicitly of Hanabi, he realized he'd only been on missions with her. In any case, that Uchiha girl was clearly focused heavily on offensive techniques, so it wouldn't hurt for him to become proficient with defensive or simply supplementary techniques. This one "healing" technique had been quite different, however, which might have explained why it was so dusty and underused; it used the basics of healing ninjutsu's ability to focus chakra control to such a tight degree and apply it offensively, rather than with healing techniques. The concept had intrigued him, so of course he'd grabbed that one as well as a couple of others.

He chooses to actually start with that fighting style, taking the elevator up to his usual floor and moving straight to the nearby dummy so he can get straight to training this technique. It was one of the more mentally and physically challenging techniques, but Anzo thought he had quite a chance to learn how to use it. Anzo starts by focusing chakra into his right fist, keeping his foremind centered on his fist until he's able to subconsciously keep the chakra there. Then, after turning to the dummy, he punches it as hard as he can while also pushing the subconscious focus of that chakra on his hand in a forwards push, multiplying the strength of his strike to smash into the dummy, causing it to flop back quite harshly, and he pulls his hand back before the dummy can snap back to him, avoiding the consequences of such a strike.

OOC: 200/200 Chakra Enhanced Strength

Feeling he's got the technique down well enough that he can use it in a pinch, he sets it aside to be mastered maybe in more depth at a later date, perhaps when he's much more versed in Taijutsu than he currently is. Instead, he picks up another Ijutsu scroll, this one apparently meant to turn one's hands into a cutting tool like a scalpel would typically be used to assist with surgical dissection, perhaps when one does not have ready access to such tools when necessary. In any case, it's rather more simple compared to the chakra focus required for the more physical technique he'd just learned to use, and so he feels it's just fine as a follow-up technique. He coats his left hand in chakra this time, giving his right hand a rest after that punch earlier. Anzo takes a moment to control the chakra coating his hand into a single, sharp edge, requiring a higher degree of focus than what would normally be needed for normal elemental ninjutsu. With a high degree of focus, he manages to use this slicing chakra edge on his hand to pierce into, and then delicately slice through the puppet.

After a long moment of slipping the blade of chakra through the dummy, he can actually watch as the upper half of the puppet flops downwards as if all that was holding it up was its outer sackcloth covering. He isn't sure that it could be used offensively considering the amount of focus he needed to maintain, but Anzo considered the idea that he could utilize it in combat, and so he takes a look at the third scroll he'd brought along, that had been handed to him when he had picked out the chakra scalpel technique as well.

OOC: 150/150 Chakra Scalpel

Anzo picks up that third scroll and studies it over to find that it was something like a subset of that second technique, but simplified for use as a full fighting style instead of simply a surgical tool when one had no access to proper equipment. The Aburame had to wonder for a moment what that stranger had known when they'd slipped the scroll in among the others that he'd been carrying out, but that was no matter for him. It was useful, and so he would learn it. He focuses the chakra into a single sharp edge once more, but this time is able to move and attack more swiftly and gracefully, as he uses his subconscious rather than his foremind to focus the chakra and keep its shape as a cutting tool. There's more to train though as he slices the dummy's body internally; the technique suggests that the chakra scalpel can be further focused to become not simply and intangible blade of chakra, but to become as physical and sharp as an actual scalpel.

Anzo returns the technique to his foremind once more, but this time turns his attention to the edge, pouring more chakra into it and changing the technique before he spins, making a cutting motion with his open hand angled at the dummy's neck and causing its head to fly upwards as it becomes cut entirely by the physical, tangible chakra blade coating his hand. He considers this enough training for one day, as the amount of focus is giving him a headache, and so he packs up the scrolls and walks back out of the training facility, choosing to come back and learn more techniques from this new wealth of knowledge offered by a seemingly underutilized ninja skill.

OOC: 100/100 Dissection Blade
100/100 Dissection Blade: Focusing

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Anzo returns to the training facility, having found a few more techniques and even another fighting style he finds would be particularly helpful to train. He starts off with the fighting style, something he's been training an awful lot lately, but which has its uses if an opponent gets in too close to him or is immune to his insects. Or potentially both. He sets the fighting style one aside and quickly opens it; while its use might be limited for him, there are a few instructions on follow-up techniques that make it clear that it's useful as a grappling fighting style. The fighting style seems fairly simple, if unorthodox. He approaches a nearby dummy, though not the one that he'd learned to use the Dissection Blade with. After focusing his chakra to making his limbs malleable, he grabs hold of the dummy, wrapping his limbs around the dummy's and then constricting, utilizing his now soft physique to take hold and grapple the dummy.

OOC: 100/100 Soft Body Manipulation