Wabbit Season

Kaori was fairly perceptive. She'd been paying attention to people talking about some rabbits that had been spotted, and how they'd been lucky to those that had found them. Perhaps some sort of seals had been placed on them that were leaking out items.

Whatever the case was, Kaori was on the lookout for them. And even if she didn't find a rabbit around the training grounds, she was getting a fairly good workout in. Climbing trees, scooting around under the bushes. Looking in burrows.

But Kaori's eyes were sharp. She was a good tracker. And if she could find one, she'd not rest until she caught it. So far, there were no signs of any. She dropped down from the tree branch she was in, completely disregarding anybody who may be around in her search for it. To everyone else, she probably looked a little crazy, which worked out, people left her alone.

The member 'Kaori Murai' has done the following action : Dice roll

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'Bunny Arrival' :

Nothing yet. She took a moment to catch her breath and began to pivot in place, looking around her surroundings for any sort of tracks that would indicate an animal instead of a person. It was probably one of the easier things to look for, but she was perhaps making too much noise with her searching. Slowing down like this and being methodical was probably easier.

She picked up a rock from the ground and hurled it at a bush, acting frustrated. However, if there was a rabbit and it bolted, she'd notice it, and that was her real goal.

Preparing herself to start running after anything that came out, her ears and eyes were on notice for anything out of the ordinary. Of course, in the training grounds, there were a lot of people moving around and doing stuff, so she wasn't in complete silence. Imagine if there were no rabbits here, she'd look super foolish.

The member 'Kaori Murai' has done the following action : Dice roll

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'Bunny Arrival' :

Well, patience was a virtue. She had learned that one a long time ago, and it proved to be true yet again. Her rock throw had struck near something and the rabbit hurtled out of the bush, bouncing away. Kaori shot off after it. She'd catch this rabbit, and if she couldn't then she'd get a good workout in from the chase. While Doton jutsu would make this an easy experience, she didn't want to rely on jutsu, she was trying to train her body first and foremost.

She leapt for the rabbit only for it to juke to the side. Landing with a tuck and roll, Kaori bounced back up to her feet and quickly caught sight of her target, launching off after it once again. The little creature was fast.

Kaori grimaced as she was avoided. Maybe this would be some good training. She could learn some new jutsu and try and catch the rabbit. The rabbit didn't seem too interested in running as long as she wasn't chasing it, so maybe she could learn some new things and it would stick around.

There was one that she'd heard about that she thought might be a good one to learn. To be honest, she'd learned most of the jutsu she needed to, at least in theory, it just came down to practicing the jutsu. The one in question was Focused Amplification. She already had a mastery of Doton, being able to increase the lower level potency would be nice. It shouldn't be that hard to learn, right?

Well first, she'd need to learn a jutsu that went well with it. She had a few, but two birds with one stone. Or one rabbit.

Kaori aimed at the rabbit and used the Monkey, Dog, Boar, Ox hand seals, launching a stone out of her mouth like a bullet. The rabbit hopped to the side, avoiding her technique with indifference.

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-3 Chakra, Stone Pistol
Learned: "Stone Pistol Technique" [150/150]

Expecting that, Kaori followed it up with a focused amplification of the same technique. It was a useful technique to bring low level techs to relevance. Her affinity for Doton led her to believe that she'd probably be best suited applying it to those techniques as well. Although she'd still need to use the snake hand seal at the end to amplify something, as she wasn't able to do Non-Elemental techniques seallessly.

Going through the hand seals and following up with a snake seal, Kaori felt the additional surge of chakra enter into the jutsu and she launched the technique, a little faster, a little longer range, but a lot stronger.

As before, the rabbit leapt out of the way, casually. She could swear she saw a smirk from the rabbit, as if it was saying 'Bring it on'. Kaori scowled in frustration. Whatever, this rabbit was doing a good job pissing her off, but that motivated her training.

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-5 Focused Amp
-3 Stone Pistol

Trained "Focused Amplification" [150/150] Doton locked in.

Kaori thought about it and decided that the rabbit could wait. She needed to come up with some stuff against people that would actually matter. A rabbit wasn't worth her time. It sat there, tauntingly as she began to focus her attention on the training dummy in front of her.

Okay, against Mae, she'd need something that could disable without actually doing damage. She'd read about a technique called the Temporary Paralysis technique. Using the Tiger seal, you'd just put your index and middle finger on the spine or the forehead of your victim and they'd be rendered unable to move for a bit. Then she could use a Doton technique to capture her successfully. Easy enough.

She didn't need to actually use the chakra for the technique, as she wasn't about to paralyze a dummy. Well, not that type anyhow.

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Learned "Temporary Paralysis Technique" [150/100]

How to facilitate that one though? Well easy enough, she just needed to get enough distractions on the field that Mae or other opponents wouldn't know what hit them. The Haze Clone technique was a good option to use then. It was like the basic clone technique she'd learned in the academy, just ramped up to the next level. That's what made it perfect.

Unlike the basic one, this allowed for the creation of 10 fake bodies, in which the real one was able to hide among. Against a super perceptive opponent, that might not work very well, but against some of the lower level opponents, it would be perfect. The biggest issue she had with Mae was being able to damage her, but that wouldn't be an issue with this combination.

Haze clone, which she facilitated with a Dog and Tiger seal, popped around her, 11 Kaori's where there were 1. The rabbit hopped around for a moment, as if in encouragement.

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-3 Haze Clone
Learned "Haze Clone" [150/100]

Well, that was nice enough, it might even confuse someone who relied on stuff like that, but that silly rabbit probably would be able to hear her actual movement. It seemed to be taunting her, maybe taunting everyone. Well, she wouldn't let that keep on happening. Although, being able to see through the Haze Clones reminded her, she needed to brush up on her ability to break free from Genjutsu. It wasn't like she'd be that good at it, but it never hurt to practice.

It was just the tiger seal and stimulating her chakra, if she was recalling correctly. She practiced it for a little bit, but found that she didn't really have much of a knack for it. While it worked fine enough, she doubted she'd be able to do it very effectively. At least she was able to see through a lot of the perception based ones, she tended to notice flaws in stuff like those.

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Learned "Genjutsu Kai" [150/150]

What else though? Genjutsu weakness not-withstanding, she had a lot of things that she needed to be better with than just that. Some new Doton was fine, some non-elemental techs were all well and good, but something that would help her fight better. She was already good with Arhat Fist and a little of that, so many something else?

Well, truth be told, she knew a style that she'd picked up early on in Iwagakure, but she hadn't practiced it in a while. Perhaps it was time to clean the rust off of it, and go through some of the forms.

But first, what was it Hibiki had done? Oh right, that little simple wall of earth technique. Maybe she could do that one too. Using the Tiger seal, she made some of the earth in front of her rise up, like a tiny wall. Oh, that was a simple one.

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-1 Learned open Custom Doton "Wall of Earth" [150/150]
Learned

With that, she could trip people up a little bit, make them stumble and trip over that or push them up against a wall and stop them from retreating. That was well and good, but it was time to really brush up on her Taijutsu skills. There had been a style she learned in the Academy called the 'Hard-Soft Style'.

It was one of those styles that suited her particular way of fighting best. Paying attention and hitting fast, followed by a hard kick to take them down. She liked using it well enough, that much was certain, although she hadn't in a while, her natural perceptive abilities were good enough.

The only issue with it was that she had to maximize for speed, and that sacrificed her already (admittedly) weak enough strength. However, if she was able to utilize that with some of the stuff she had learned with Natsuki, then she wouldn't need to worry as much about losing strength, it would be jutsu enhanced.

That said, she just needed to remember it, but muscle memory was a thing she had on lock. Moving through the basic forms of the style, she began to train in it once again. Shadow boxing was always easy for her. The world slowed around her and she was able to see almost everything clearly. Her jabs became quicker.

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Trained open Iwa custom exclusive "Hard-Soft Style" [200/200]

There was another style that many members of Iwa's military learned, called Gentle Way. It was one designed primarily to take an opponent's force and use it against them, since many people didn't fully learn Taijutsu, or dedicate themselves to its mastery. Kaori had learned it early on. She didn't use it as often because she was a Taijutsu practitioner, but she had found that there was some use in learning the technique.

Gentle Way was primarily focused on grappling and redirections. An opponent's strikes coming your way, deflected to the side and then using their momentum to fuel a throw, or to direct them into a grapple. The stronger the opponent, the more useful the technique was for physically weak combatants. Of course, if it was overpowered fully, then there wasn't much use in it, but if it wasn't by too vast of a difference, then it was worth using.

Unfortunately, she didn't have a way to really practice the redirections, but she could use the grapples on some dummies. Finding the nearest one, she watched as the bunny rabbit followed her from a distance, watching her hugging the dummy in odd positions. She ignored it, trying to focus on remembering the grappling positions.

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Learned open Iwa exclusive custom "Gentle Way" [200/150]

She trained in the grapples for a moment, but her heart wasn't as focused on this as it would be on the Hard-Soft style. Gentle Way worked well enough in desperate situations, but she didn't like to lock down her own movement in the process. With Earth Spear, it sort of became more viable, but at the same time, she'd rather bounce around an opponent and punch them a bunch, or maneuver them with some Doton jutsu.

There was a particular one though, Cradle Bind, that worked really well for her to stop someone from making hand seals, as well as pummeling their face in. With Earth Spear on, she'd be hitting harder, impossible to injure, and able to use Sealless Doton to capture or injure below the waist, while her legs would bind the arms or abdomen with a lot of force.

Kaori leapt onto the dummy and squeezed her thighs around the body of it, pulling as tight as she could to try and see how much force she could exert and keep pressure on it. It wasn't all that taxing for her apparently. She could hold on for a long time, but of course the dummy wasn't trying to break out.

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Learned open Iwa custom exclusive "Cradle Bind" [200/150]

For now, she was done with the idea of Gentle Way and Cradle Bind, she had the technique down well enough. Maybe she'd use it for something else at some point too. Blushing at the idea, she was glad she was alone. Onto the next thing, she swapped back to Hard-Soft style. Everything was nice and slow as she brought her focus to bear. The dummy didn't move, but she could imagine an opponent there.

The rabbit hopped in the background like things were in slow motion as she focused on the imaginary opponent. She saw it in her mind's eye getting ready to strike at her and like a viper, her hand shot forward to the dummy's neck. She could imagine it breaking his windpipe, although that was fanciful thinking, she didn't have that much strength at the moment. However, the speed was incredible (for her), and had she been coated in Earth Spear or had some sort of armored gauntlet, she'd have definitely done so to many different types of opponents.

The rabbit looked (if it could) impressed with how fast she had launched the attack, as if she might be able to catch it had it been close and unexpecting.

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Learning open Iwa custom exclusive "Soft Style: Preemptive Break" [200/200]

Okay, that was a decent enough counter strike. She was impressed enough with herself, grinning slightly. Now she just needed to add some strength behind those blows. There were plenty that it didn't matter how fast she hit, she'd be unable to actually injure them with that level of power. The good thing about the training she was doing, she could feel the strain on her muscles, which meant that even this level of sparring, she'd be gaining some experience again.

It had been a while since she'd shaken off the rust. She was starting to regain the hang of things again. What else was there? Oh right, another of the Soft Style techniques. How flexible was she? Will Breaker was one of those techniques that required a ton of flexibility, and she raised her leg with an uppercut of a kick, slamming it into the dummy, and then immediately brought down her heel in a hammer kick.

The dummy shuddered. She looked a bit upset that the dummy wasn't broken, but it was made to withstand blows from high level Shinobi, so there wasn't a likelihood that she'd be able to do more than just make it shudder.

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Learned open Iwa custom exclusive "Soft Style: Will Breaker" [200/200]

Easy enough. She looked to the rabbit with a questioning look. It looked back and nodded its head like 'Doing good, keep it up'. What was this bunny's deal? She didn't pretend to know. It was for the best too, she'd just keep on training, the rabbit was enjoying watching her. She'd get back to chasing it soon, now that she was warming up again. She had some ideas on how to catch it, but maybe she didn't even want to.

Maybe she'd given up the idea of catching this bunny, it seemed to be a good source of motivation and a lovely little spectator. Maybe the thought of catching it was a better motivator than actually catching it.

Going back to her training, Kaori remembered the next sequence of attacks. A simple three hit combo, but focusing all the force into the front two knuckles of her hands. WHAM WHAM WHAM! Her fists slammed into three different soft points of the dummy, right under a rib, left on the clavicle, and right on the neck, she knew that that would have stunned most people, if not taken them down.

She was able to remember her next stage of maneuvering then, and like clockwork, went into it.

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Learning open Iwa exclusive custom "Soft Style: Nervous Breakdown" [200/200]

It was so simple, how could she have forgotten? The combination was a powerful stunner and finisher, so long as she could stun lock someone in it. Against a mere person, anyone would fall. Against other Shinobi, it was rather devastating, so long as they weren't monstrously durable and couldn't block the attacks.

In the Hard-Soft style, Kaori began her sequence. She didn't actually utilize the boosts of any of them, more practicing the motions rather than focusing on getting the benefits of any of them besides the purest of body mechanics. Start with a powerful counter, preemptive strike! Jab jab, Kaori's fists slam into the nose and neck of the dummy. Follow up with a nervous breakdown, jab jab jab, her fists kept up the assault. Once again, she hit the rib, the clavicle, and the neck. The opponent would stumble back, and the follow up of will breaker, uppercut kick, downward heel!

The heel landed on the shoulder of the dummy, and with all her strength, she used that to lever herself into the air and send her into a spin, with which she finished in Hard Style, utilizing the heel spring to begin a flip with which she ended in an ax kick, slamming into the top of the head of the dummy with incredible force.

She used that force to launch herself off of the dummy and towards the rabbit, hands outstretched!

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Learned open Iwa custom exclusive "Hard Style: Rock Smash" [200/200]

The rabbit dodged! Kaori was in the air and slid into the ground in exasperation. This was not in the way that a baseball player might slide on the ground, Kaori slid into the ground like a hot knife into butter. She dove directly into the ground like a diver.

The rabbit seemed surprised, but Kaori flipped into gear and went to where the rabbit was. Her hands shot up through the ground and made contact with the fuzzy feet of the little bunny. Her hands close around him and she pops her head out of the ground, grinning at the bunny. "Little buddy got distracted watching me train." She laughed.

Kaori was pleased with herself as the rabbit looked at her with surprise, kicking and flailing in the air as it attempted to run for a second, before it realized it had indeed been caught. It stopped and she set it down, the rabbit staring in defeat.

"Go on, hide. We'll continue this soon. I need to go to lunch."

Kaori walked towards her basket and set up lunch! The bunny stayed with her for the time being, although it went back into hiding, ready for round two soon.

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Learned "Double Suicide Decapitation Technique" [200/100]
[Exit]