B Rank Techniques!

It was finally here, it was finally time! Sera skipped through the entrance to the grand training grounds ready to finally learn one of her most anticipated techniques. The shadow clone technique would allow her to spar against herself for training purposes, to distract enemies by making decoys, or to multiply her firepower in combat. She ran over to the destroyed wooden training dummies that she loved to abuse and gave them a half bow. You’ve done well. Thank you for your service. She laughed at herself a little. Although she would probably start doing more training against her own clone, she would probably end up still using the wooden dummy when testing brutal attacks. It was still fun to pay it tribute though.

Getting ready to create a new wooden dummy of sorts, Sera closed her eyes and formed the required handseal for the shadow clone technique. She focused on an image of herself, and cut off a bit of her own chakra, letting the chakra take her body’s shape. There was a little poof of smoke, and when she opened her eyes, there was another version of her staring back at her. Before she could say anything, her clone gave her a look and said in a matter-of-fact voice.

“You are not testing new techniques on me. We’re bringing wooden dummy back into the fray.”

-----------------------

Techniques Used/Learned:

Shadow Clone Technique: B Rank Ninjutsu (229/200 word count)

Spoiler:

The member 'MindPretzel' has done the following action : Dice roll

---

'Bunny Arrival' :

Now with a practice partner in front of her, Sera had the misconception that this clone would be subservient to her. She raised a finger up to object, but the Sera clone was already moving, reaching into her pocket to grab a hair band and putting her hair up in a ponytail. She gave herself a thumbs up and a smile. Proud of herself for her plan, the clone gave the original a little bow. “Oh! With a change in hairstyle, now we can tell each other apart more easily!” Sera said as the pieces all fit together.

“Exactly! Though, we’re not really looking at ourselves, so it's more for if anyone else walks in to join us.” The clone put her hand up to her chin in contemplation. “I guess its still a bit of a help. But anyways! What technique do we want to try next?”

The original sera gave a devious smile and extended her right arm, fingers pointed up to the sky. She channeled the flow of chakra into her fingers just like when she had created claws for herself, but didn’t halt the flow of chakra there. She continued to pour more energy into her hands until her claws looked even more deadly.

“Neko Claws!” She would smile and dash over to a wooden dummy, clawing deep grooves into its wooden form.

—---------------

Techniques Used/Learned:
Neko Chakra Claw Technique: B Rank Ninjutsu (227/200 word count)

Spoiler:

The member 'MindPretzel' has done the following action : Dice roll

---

'Bunny Arrival' :

Retracting the chakra created claws by releasing the technique, Sera centered herself to begin to plan out her next move. Her clone waited patiently for the original to propose the next steps. Sera had gotten a list of B rank techniques that she planned on training today, and so she careful went through the list in order to find just the right one. “Aha!” she exclaimed as she pointed to a name on the list. We could test this together right? It gives me the ability to curve and aim the lightning? Sera turned to her clone with a mischievous grin. “Do you trust me?”

Ponytail Sera shrugged at the question and waited a couple of seconds for dramatic effect. “Yeah, of course I do. You’re going to fire some lightning around me right? Don’t mess up my hair!”

Sera pumped her fist in victory as her clone agreed with her wild plan. She began to channel lightning chakra in her body and form the required hand seals. Lightning discharged from the kunoichi’s body and fifteen discs of energy were sent flying towards the clone’s location. Still connected to the discs through her lightning, Sera curved and aimed their trajectory so they missed the clone and hit the wooden dummy behind her.

“Whew. That was a bit of a close one.”


—---------

Techniques Used/Learned:
Lightning Release: Lightning Rat Violent Quake: B rank Ninjutsu (221/200 Word Count)

Spoiler:

The member 'MindPretzel' has done the following action : Dice roll

---

'Bunny Arrival' :

The power of lightning was always something that stood out to Sera as being the pinnacle of natural power. When there was a storm outside and lightning was striking the instinct was to hide and run to safety right? When she awakened to her affinity with raiton, her first instinct was that now she would have the power that others would be afraid of. Though she didn’t really want people to fear her, she would prefer to be friends with them. It was a bit of a conundrum that the stronger you became, the more people would lean towards fearing you instead of wanting to befriend you. Though it seemed like some people wanted to befriend the strong, so there was always that.

The next technique was a strike of lightning that the scroll she read described as specifically good at dealing mortal blows. She had never killed anyone before, but she knew that it was something that might need to be done in the field in the future. In fact, it was practically an inevitability. She looked at her clone for a moment, but as it shook its head “no”, Sera redirected her gaze to a wooden dummy. There were more hand seals than normal, but the electrifying result would be the same. When Sera finished conjuring the technique, she would open her mouth and shout in the direction of her target. A blast of lightning erupted and cleared a clean hole through the wooden dummy. She was getting to a point where she couldn’t just choose the same dummy over and over again. But would need to find more as she destroyed them. It was kind of sad in a way.

—-------------------

Used/Learned Techniques:

Lightning Release: False Darkness: B Rank Ninjutsu (283/200 word count)

Spoiler:

“Wow, that attack was pretty crazy.” Sera’s clone remarked, her mouth agape in awe. The original felt similarly, and as she saw the remains of the singed target dummy, she felt a bit of a pit in her stomach. What would that do to a person if it hit them? In her practice, she had no qualms about firing arrows at people, even at the incredible speeds that her new bow allowed her to fire at. There was just something different about using lightning that made it seem so much more destructive. Even if her arrow sank true and pierced into an enemy, it would only be a lethal blow if it hit her opponent’s weak spot or vitals. Lightning was far less precise, and it was easier to hit those vitals because most likely, the entire body would be hit.

She swallowed the discomfort and pushed it deep within herself to address later. The next technique would allow her a bit more control on where she targeted, but the downside was that it was a melee attack again. Trying to simulate a normal approach of attack, Sera would dash towards a new training dummy, swerving and dodging invisible attacks as if she was in battle. She channeled lightning into her forearm and would jump into the air, slamming down her arm onto the dummy’s “shoulder”. On the impact, the lightning would get dispersed into the dummy, and a light dent from the impact would remain as well.


—--------------------

Techniques Used/Learned:
Lightning Release: Thunderclap Drill: B Rank Ninjutsu (248/200 word count)

Spoiler:

One more lightning technique memorized, and one more name scratched off the list. There was another technique on here that seemed a bit interesting involving hair growth. Sera always liked the fact that she had long hair, and it seemed like this technique made it even longer? She read more details and it looked like it wasn’t actually just a jutsu to make you look better, but was in fact something used for combat. She ran her hands through her hair, making sure there wasn’t anything in it before she began to perform the hand seals. She channeled her chakra into her scalp and then into her hair follicles, causing her head to feel a little tingly. Not necessarily in a bad way, but the spontaneous growth was a weird sensation. And spontaneous growth was what happened indeed. A flood of new strands of hair burst from her head and she felt herself gain control of her hair as if it were a new prehensile limb. Sera extended her new hair limb about 15 meters away from her and picked up a rock, throwing it across the training grounds with ease. Her hair had more strength and muscle than she did! Well not muscle, but maybe hair fibers? Well it made sense her hair had more hair fibers than she did, but you know the point!

—----------

Techniques Used/Learned:
Lions Mane: B Rank Ninjutsu (226/200 Word Count)

Spoiler:

This was so cool! Sera picked up a stick with her hair and pretended to fence against an invisible enemy. Then she threw the stick as if for an invisible dog to go run after it. The hair was so strong! Like, physically strong! In her entire life she had never had such raw ability to move or lift things. It wasn’t really truly her that was doing it, but it was technically a part of her body right? So that must count for something. With a wide smile on her face she turned to the scroll and saw that there were more hair-based techniques available that used the lion’s mane as the base. Bring them on!

She performed the necessary hand seal and flooded her hair with even more chakra, causing extra layers of hair to be created and then sharpened like a porcupine.  Sera then manipulated these spiky layers and surrounded herself as if it were armor or a shield. She would call out to her clone: “Throw something at me!”  A couple of moments later, there was a light thud as a rock hit the armored hair and fell uselessly to the ground. Sera would retract the armor and dismiss the technique’s effect. “I LOVE that.”

—------------

Techniques Used/Learned:
Needle Cloak: B Rank Ninjutsu (206/200 Word Count)

Spoiler:

Having cast back to back techniques, Sera was feeling like it was a good time for a break. Unfortunately she hadn’t brought any food with her, so she wasn’t able to have a nice picnic or anything similar, but there was still some relaxing that could be had. The grand training grounds had plenty of land to maneuver and dozens of trees that enclosed the area. It wasn’t very difficult to find a nice fallen log that she could sit on. Sera walked over to the log and after stretching for a bit, decided to sit and relax for a bit. After only a couple of moments passed, she heard a yell from several meters away.

“Hey! What am I chopped liver? I’ve just been watching you train this whole time and now you’re going to rest? Either dismiss me or get up and keep training!” Sera’s clone would yell at her.

With a groan, Sera reluctantly put her hands on her knees and got to her feet. She put up a fighting stance and began to inch towards her clone. “Alright if that’s what you want. Let’s throw hands!” Sera and her clone would proceed to throw some pretty pathetic punches at each other, dodging most of them.

It was an incredibly strange situation seeing yourself move around in front of you, and even stranger when punches and kicks had your face attached to them. Sera ducked and weaved in between attacks her clone threw at her. The clone’s ponytail whipped around as she danced around the training grounds. The original grinned and would drop down to the ground and lash out with a side kick. With a snap and a crack, her low kick would sweep the clone of her feet causing her to crash to the ground with a thud. “Ow…” the clone rubbed her leg in discomfort and slowly got to her feet. “Taijutsu was never really our strong suit.”

Realizing that the melee sparring was over, Sera would disengage and reach down to help her clone up. Agreeing with her, she would tap the bow that was strapped to her back. “Yeah. Although shooting an arrow seems like it would be bad in close proximity, it still feels like it would be more effective than a half-assed punch huh?”

Having gone through technique after technique with a clone present, Sera was beginning to feel a bit drained of her chakra. It had been useful and even fun to have a friend here to talk to and train with, even if that friend was just herself. Having half of her chakra constantly inaccessible from her chakra pool was getting to be a large problem though. Having realized this, the clone would give Sera a goofy smile and a non-serious salute, then suddenly poofing out of existence.

Having her chakra supply replenished gave Sera the boost she needed to experiment with some more techniques.  With her clone gone, it was time to bring the wooden dummy back into the fray! She approached one of the discarded target dummies that had broken off of its stand and lay on the ground. With some quick hand seals, Sera would channel her lightning and release it into the ground by slamming her palm down.  Electricity would cascade out of her palm in the shape of a spider web and would wholly surround her. The target dummy was well within the range of this technique and would be fried. That’s a fun aesthetic, but putting my hand on the ground like this is too much of a commitment of body movement. I’m too physically slow for that not to be a trap.

—-----------

Techniques Used/Learned:
Lightning Release: Spider Web: C Rank Ninjutsu (227/150 Word Count)

Spoiler:

Using up B rank techniques was particularly draining on the young shinobi, and although her specialty in lightning made it easier to cast said techniques, she still needed to be wary of her limits. Although she could still keep going a little longer, Sera decided to test out one final move that cost a bit more than normal before calling it quits and heading home for the evening. Not wanting to destroy too many target dummies or burn down any trees, Sera scoured the training grounds for a large boulder that she could target with her attack. Once she found one, she would position herself about 30 meters away and begin to start the “false darkness” technique once more. Lightning began to form in her mouth, but instead of unleashing it right away, she began to apply the focused amplification technique upon it. She spent an extra couple of seconds compiling chakra and energy into the technique, and when she fired it off it sounded like a crack of lightning and a cannon firing simultaneously.  A clean whole burned its way through the giant boulder where the attack landed and cracks began to creep its way outwards towards the boulder’s edges.

A little wobbly on her feet from chakra exertion, Sera would begin to walk home with a large smile on her face.  Now with the ability to use even higher rank techniques, her weakness of just focusing on archery was diminished just a bit more.

[exit thread]

—------------------

Techniques Learned:
Focused Amplification: C Rank Ninjutsu (246/200 Word Count)

Spoiler: