Whipping Herself into Shape

Akame climbed the side of this steep hill made up solely of slate and other types of rock. Chakra coated her hands and feet as she climbed warily, making sure her footing never slipped accidentally by stepping on a loose rock. The ANBU was making her way to a specific place high in the mountainous area of Kumogakure, a training space few knew about because few dared to make the trip. She had made it a couple times however, each time to mess with her curse away from civilization. This time however, she was here on a more personal mission. She needed to improve, and she needed to improve quickly.

The ANBU was wearing her full combat dress including the flak jacket, a uniform of skintight black material that covered her entire body save for her feet, hands, and head. To katana dangled at her hips, a good one on her left and a mediocre on her right. Shinobi sandals were here choice of attire and fingerless black gloves were sported on her hands. The fuuinjutsu called Human Scroll was visible on the few parts of exposed skin she bore, none of the slots filled with anything. Various supplies were stored in the Human Scroll inscribed upon her flesh since she planned on being here for some time. Those supplies were store in one of the seals underneath her clothing since it was unimportant. She needed to train, needed to think. The best place to do that without being disturbed was a place that nobody wanted to go to, and that place was close by.

She soon managed to climb her way onto the rugged area she liked to train at on rare occasions. It was a barren land, exposed to wind though there was one shallow cave that provided shelter for when she needed to rest or there was a storm that was too powerful going on outside. The terrain was mostly uneven, with only one patch of relatively flat ground in the entire area. Numerous boulders of different sizes dotted the ground, some as massive as houses and some as small as a dresser. Dips and depressions made the terrain not just uneven, but outright treacherous if one was not careful.

Akame made her way over to the cave and sat inside, sheltering from the harsh wind for a few minutes as she took a breather. Getting here was not an easy task, requiring nearly a days worth of hiking. The sky was already dark, and so she decided to get some sleep rather than try and begin training while she was tired and it was late out. As she laid there, she thought back to when she had developed her sword forms here. In particular, Yugana Owari. This environment had been very conducive to her idea for that form, and the exercise gotten from its constant movements and erratic fighting style had always given Akame a sense of excitement.

The next day she would begin in earnest. The ANBU stepped out into the early morning light of dawn, yawning, preparing herself for the day's exercises. This was going to be the hardest day, the one where she had to do some mental shenanigans. There was a handful of combat genjutsu she had been wanting to try out, but she didn't want anybody else to know about it. So Akame would take full advantage of how useful the Shadow Clone technique is and created a clone to spar with her. It would be the one using the genjutsu in question, since Akame was the only one of the two it could work on. Oh yes, today was going to be a fun day.

The clone waited as Akame stretched, getting herself warmed up for the start of the exercise. Both women took the good katana and wrapped the sheathe in gauze to prevent any serious wounds and took up varying stances. Akame's was defensive, her clone's stance was offensive. Two opposing styles in her set of forms, one meant for total offense and the other meant for total defense. The two circled each other for a minute or two, both knowing that fighting herself was the most difficult thing she could do. There was no predicting yourself when you fought yourself, since the other you could predict you too. It was all instinct and, honestly, luck. But still, it was a good way to train in isolation.

The clone jumped at Akame suddenly, pressing her on the defensive. The two exchanged blows, the clone fighting aggressively with powerful sweeps and slashes while Akame herself parried, countered, and evaded attacks. Neither could land anything on the other, and then something changed. Akame didn't feel it, but two Quick Clones popped up near her. One on either side. She purposefully was not using Sensory, opting instead to see how the genjutsu would interact with most of the people she would be fighting in her career. She blocked the clone on the right, but when it made contact with its strike it would dissipate into nothing while the clone on her left landed a solid blow on her head. Akame cursed and rubbed the spot she had been struck, though she wasn't angry or anything like that. No, she was happy. The first illusion had worked, just like a charm.




Learned Quick Clone Illusion D rank Genjutsu

Akame gestured approvingly at her clone, indicating that she wished for the little bout they had going to continue. That illusion had done well, but there were still a few more she wanted to work on before she moved on to other types of training. The clone obliged the request, readying itself into the offensive stance again while Akame herself took up the defensive stance again. Both circled yet again, waiting to see what the other one would do or to think about how to approach attacking such an immovable presence as Akame when you couldn't outsmart her.

Then the clone struck again, moving lightning fast with its strikes as it tried to break Akame's concentration and get inside of her defenses. They exchanged blocks and parries for a time, matching each other perfectly for a couple minutes. Then, the clone made a powerful diagonal slice that Akame blocked. The ringing played in her ears, and suddenly the clone was launching an all out assault on Akame with every trick she herself knew. Akame desperately blocked the onslaught, backing away as it continued to pound against her defenses. Then, after a time, the clone would dissipate and Akame caught site of the real clone standing back, watching in approval as another of Akame's illusory attacks proved to be effective. This was turning out to be quite the training session.




Learned Beforeimage, C rank genjutsu

Again, Akame would signal to the clone to go ahead and start the training again. The two resumed their previous forms, Akame on defense and the clone on offense. The clone wasted no time circling this time, trying to catch Akame off guard. That didn't happen, because Akame had just been thinking that that is exactly what she would have done. Her defense was on par with what it usually was, sword blocking sword before the weight was shifted and thrown to the side. The clone's form put all it efforts into attack and powerful strikes, so redirecting the force of the blows was really the only thing Akame could do without risking injury. The clone continued its assault, throwing heavy blows at Akame.

A gust of wind that was particularly nasty hit the training area a few minutes into the exchange, tossing both off balance. Akame retained hers better since she had been set defensively and had better bracing, but the clone took a little time to readjust itself. Once it did, however, it made a quick slash at Akame's torso. She blocked the strike and the clone drew its sword back as if to thrust. It did, going for her heart. Akame made to block that strike but was instead met with pain in her thigh as the illusory strike faded away. Akame staggered back, rubbing the spot where the sheathed sword tip had been driven into her thigh. "Yeah, okay, that one works," she muttered, signaling to take a break while her aching thigh recovered. The clone had pulled back on its power to not break anything, but there would still be a nasty bruise there for a week or so.




Learned Reverse Thrust C rank Genjutsu

After the break was up, Akame and her clone would begin again. The ANBU's skin was getting close to freezing now since she had been out in the weather for so long at this point. After this she would need to head back to the cave to warm up or risk losing some fingers and toes. Still, there was enough time for one more exchange before she had to take a breather from her bout of solo training. The two clashed again, the sound of the sheathed blades meeting being drowned out by the howling wind that bit at her flesh and whipped her hair around into a tangle of unruly locks.

The clone pressed its attack, unconcerned about the weather since it wasn't actually a person and cared very little about how cold it was. Sure it was technically a conscious being, but it was a clone of Akame and Akame always tried to know what her purpose in life was. And so the clone, too, knew what its purpose was. It made to fulfill that purpose, Akame avoiding a slash from her clone when it turned the blade horizontal as if to cut at her again. It was coming from the right and so she blocked to the right. Then she felt the sheathed blade smack into her other thigh from the opposite direction, causing her to curse again. "Yeah, okay, that one works too. Jesus I hit hard," she muttered as she dismissed the clone and limped back to the cave for some rest and relaxation. There was still some other stuff she needed to work out up here.




Learned Reverse Flourish C rank Genjutsu

Akame rubbed her hands together to help warm them up a little quicker as she crouched in front of the small fire she had going inside the cave. The weather outside had taken a turn for the worst and so her only course of action for now was to sit inside the cave and wait out the storm before continuing to train. That was fine with her, she needed some time to think. Ever since waking up from her coma not too long ago and speaking to Nariko her mind had been on overdrive. The spar with Shimiko had let her know that her physical skills were lacking far more than she had been hoping they would be, putting her on a level with most ordinary jonin unless she really pushed herself. That was something she couldn't afford to do all the time, continuously. She would burn out eventually, and she knew it. That's why she was up here, trying to train and get better. Sure, she could develop some stop gaps in the meantime but increasing her base abilities is what was going to carry her to success in the long run.

A quick tap on one of the seals on the right side of her ribcage produced a canteen of water and some cubed meat she had seasoned and prepared for today. It had been preserved in the seal, fresh as when she had sealed it away. Akame skewered the meat, ten one inch chunks of meat, and set it over her small fire to cook as she waited. The ANBU sat back on her haunches and adjusted herself into a cross legged position, resting her hands on her knees and sitting straight up. She sighed, closing her eyes and allowing the fragrance of the meat to help soothe her nerves. There was one thing she wanted to try that couldn't be done in the midst of a harsh training session. She was pretty sure it would require a good level of focus if she wanted to be able to start the process off right.

She focused on her tattoo that was connected to her chakra circulatory system. Akame focused hard on eleven spots in familiar, placing these specific seals on specific parts of her body. It took a bit of time to get them in the right spots, one on each limb, foot, and hand as well as one on her head and two on her torso. Once she got the seals placed the way she wanted to, Akame would release her thoughts and focused on connecting these eleven seals together separately from the rest.

The task was more difficult than she had anticipated, taking quite a few minutes to accomplish. However, she did manage to get it done. Once it was, Akame focused on pulling chakra directly from her chakra system and directly into the tatto, moving the chakra throughout her body evenly as it distributed to these eleven seals. Almost like a drug, Akame felt a rush of power as the fine-tuned distribution of chakra heightened her body's physical capabilities. With a start, she would open her eyes as she realized that her body moved a little bit smoother. Her clothing and swords had gotten lighter, too. When she reached for the meat to turn it, her hand moved faster than she had expected and almost knocked the entire skewer into the flames which would have ruined the meat with ash. Akame managed to save it though, preventing a truly terrible disaster from happening. One did not simply waste meat around Akame, especially if it was her meat being wasted. Amazed at how successful her gambit had been, the ANBU would begin to quietly eat as she let the power that had been flooding her seal fade. There was no need to use that here... not yet anyways.




Learned Harmony, S rank restricted custom Fuuinjutsu

As Akame munched on the meat skewer, her mind turned to what Nariko had told her as well as the bit of information she had managed to dig up. Another touch on one of the seals of her tattoo produced a couple scrolls and a small stack of paper detailing everything Kumogakure knew about the Society and its machinations as well as a few oddities Akame had researched from the past few years. She flipped one paper over, reading it quickly before sorting and finding a scroll to unroll and examine in her lap.

The attack on the temple of Raiun, the Lightning Disciple, was relatively unexpected. It was the first of its kind to be attacked by this "Honiko" and her dragons. The result was a confrontation between her and a coalition of shinobi from various nations that was ultimately picked apart and defeated by Honiko, who escaped with one Kumogakure and one Kirigakure shinobi. The town outside the temple was destroyed as well as the temple itself, the dragon that did the deed carrying a coffin of some sort away from the site...

The report went on describing various other small details, things Akame already knew. She set that aside and grabbed a different piece of paper to examine again.

...temple of Hohoni in the Land of Fire was burned to the ground along with the surrounding forest. The temple had been relatively unknown to most before the fire, but the inferno was large enough that it required a large scale response. For the fire to have gotten so large so fast is unusual, with many guesses being that a powerful fire style jutsu was used to start the blaze. A body was found inside the temple by an empty pedestal alongside other bodies outside the temple. The purpose of these individuals is unknown...

Again she set the paper aside, now halfway through with her skewer of meat. The wind outside howled again, though Akame had come to learn how to ignore such things. She would continue like this, reading reports and various other items of interest. The Blood Prison report really got to her, since it had apparently been a small force of people from this Society to bring the prison down. The guards and the warden there were no slouches, but this was the furthest west the Society had openly operated. Yes, something was definitely fishy here.

She thought about it for a good long while, just as she had been for the past few days. The Society had made most of their moves in the eastern part of the continent. The woman who seemed to head the Society, Honiko, had been witnessed by numerous shinobi and civilians alike speaking religious drivel. If this was some sick cult or religion intent on 'remaking' the world, then it likely didn't have much in terms of financial support. At least, not any open support. That their first target had been a temple dedicated to one of the Disciples seemed a bit odd, especially considering that something was apparently taken from the temple in the Lightning Country. Not long after that, the temple in the Land of Fire was attacked though the Society had not claimed credit for that particular event. However, with how close the two events had been... it just seemed like too much of a coincidence to Akame for it to not at least be considered that the two events were linked.

As she finished the last cube of meat on the skewer, she would set aside the papers and rub her chin in thought. After their assault on Kumogakure's lands, the Society's next move in the open had been to try and bully Nariko into letting them compete in the tournament Kumogakure had hosted. Akame remembered that much herself, though sadly the plague had wiped away everything else that happened after that in her memory. And then the Blood Prison, a completely unrelated item among the other list of potential attacks that had happened. It made Akame's mind strain for an answer when she thought of all of this as being related to one organization that appeared to be some sort of religious cult. Perhaps the prison had simply been a test of some sort, though Akame couldn't imagine what kind of test that could be. All in all, it made little sense to her.

There were a few things she could be relatively sure of, however. The Blood Prison was the furthest west the Society had been in its years of open activity, which indicated either a lack of willingness to go further west or an inability to do so due to the lack of a reliable supply chain. Assuming it was simply the limit of their range of operation, that left the lands they could possibly be in narrowed down quite a bit. The Land of Fire and the Land of Lightning both had been attacked in some form around the same timeline, and Akame and Nariko had gotten their bijuu forced into them not long after. That too made her curious. Why them? These things made her doubt that the Society was based in the Land of Lightning, as that would be too close for them to operate safely. Kumogakure had been scouring the land for traces of the Society since their attack and nothing had been found yet.

If they weren't in the Land of Lightning, then perhaps the Land of Fire? But if that was the case, they should be able to extend their operations further into the continent with such a centralized base of operations. That, and if they HAD been the ones to attack the Land of Fire earlier then an attack on the Blood Prison would likely put the Land of Fire on high alert and increased the risk of discovery. Many of those criminals would flee into the forests of the Land of Fire to try and remain hidden and free after all, a big problem for them. No, the Land of Fire was unlikely though the possibility was still there. That left the island nations in the eastern sea, of which there were many lands that were almost entirely uninhabited. That kind of isolation would serve a religious cult who didn't want to be found well, though the sheer number of lands they could be in was somewhat daunting. Kirigakure had been rapidly expanding too if the current intelligence reports were correct, something that worried her slightly.

Kirigakure had yet to be attacked by the Society, or if they had been they were keeping it under wraps. Nothing really bad had happened to them yet, and that raised Akame's suspicions. Could Kirigakure be harboring these criminals covertly? She hoped not as that would make it much harder to infiltrate and eliminate the Society, but it was a possibility to keep in mind. Akame figured that if she was going to try and infiltrate this group that the best starting point for her to do so would be exploring the coast of the Land of Fire as well as some of the islands in the eastern sea. She doubted they would locate themselves in lands controlled directly by Kirigakure which left some of the outlying islands that still had a pirate presence and some of the minor nations like O'uzu Island or Nagi Island. Any further east and the Society might have issues operating in the Land of Fire, let alone the Land of Grass. Yes, her search would have to start in the Land of Fire or the Land of Water, she was sure. For now though, she needed to rest. Tomorrow was going to be another good day for training some things.

Akame awoke, the coals of her fire smoldering. Papers and scrolls lay about her, the ANBU having fallen asleep reading over them. She peered out of the entrance to the cave, seeing that the weather outside had improved. It was just its regular old windy as all hell with a lot of pebbles in the wind now instead of hurricane force winds with rocks. The former was [i]much[/] more tolerable. The jonin stood, stretching her stiff muscles before resealing all the papers scattered about her. A quick look outside was the next step and, once she determined it was safe to go and do stuff outside, would step out to begin her morning warm up.

She stretched for exercising rather than just a wake up stretch, and then she ran through all of the hand signs about a dozen times in various orders. It was a continuous stream of signs, her fingers attuning themselves to the day's tasks as she worked the morning stiffness out of her joints. Then came the chakra exercise. She focused her mind, gaze set on a specific boulder nearby. Why she chose that boulder she'll never know, nor would she ever care. Fuck that boulder.

Akame's hands wove another quick string of seals before they stretched out in front of her. Like a much better looking Emperor, she would fire bolts of lightning from her fingertips to strike the boulder with quite a bit of oomph behind it. The big rock shattered into many tiny pieces upon impact, the wind carrying the jagged pieces away from Akame instead of right into her face thankfully. With the warm ups out of the way, Akame would turn her attention to the things she truly wanted to accomplish in her training session this morning.




Learned Electromagnetic Murder A rank Raiton

The next thing Akame wanted to try out was something she had seen done before but had never found a use for herself. Not yet anyways, but anything you could have in your bag of tricks as a shinobi was something that you should have in your bag of tricks. You never knew when something might come in handy, no matter how off the wall it might be. This one wasn't really off the wall per say, just a variant of a technique she already knew that she felt she had never needed to learn. Akame's hands came together and formed the clone seal to make a shadow clone pop up next to her. The clone stepped a few meters away and drew its sword, waiting for Akame to keep going.

The ANBU held the clone seal rather than reforming it and focused chakra as if to make another shadow clone. This time, however, she infused raiton into its formation to create a lightning release shadow clone. It was Akame's personal policy to never get hit in a fight if she could help it, but letting one of these bad boys get smacked in the head is a good way to trap you opponent into a nasty shock they likely weren't expecting. This second, fancier shadow clone appeared and would make its way towards the first one, also drawing its sword. Akame sat back and watched as the two exchanged a few blows, the lightning release clone allowing the normal one to smack it with a sword and cut it. The clone reverted to raiton chakra and channeled up the other clone's sword, electrocuting it and causing it to poof out of existence due to taking too much damage at once. That would definitely be a neat trick to have in ones back pocket.



Learned Lightning Release Shadow Clone A rank

Akame created another clone, a regular shadow clone this time since she wanted to conserve chakra to practice the next part. Nariko had given her permission to learn any of Kumogakure's exclusive techniques that she wished to. There were few that seemed interesting to her, the Chakra Mode the village was known for being tempting but ultimately too limiting with its uses. The taijutsu was not her specialty either, but there were a couple things within the village that she wanted to learn relating to fuuinjutsu. The first among those is the Black Lightning technique, a fuuinjutsu that could convert Raiton into a stronger version of the element that Akame had seen rip through most other things with ease. One with sufficient Coordination could really ruin someone's day with this specific technique, as it could be difficult to dodge at close range unless they were quick.

Akame focused on her Human Scroll, particularly on one circle that represented one of the hundred fuuinjutsu slots available on her person. This one would wind up being a dedicated fuuinjutsu, similar to the eleven she had reserved for Harmony. The form of the seal began to take shape there, and once it was complete would revert to the kanji for "occupied". She memorized which one it was thanks to her ridiculously sharp mind. Then, she would stand and face a different boulder. This one was larger than the last one had been, and so Akame had saved it for this particular purpose. Raising her arm, she would focus raiton through the seal she just created and directed it to flow off of her arm and strike the boulder. The attack flew from her fingertips, the black scar of lightning ripping this larger boulder apart like paper in the wind. There was almost nothing left once she was done, the chunks being smaller than her earlier Electromagnetic Murder. Yes, this too was a very useful thing to know. She decided that was enough for now though, making her way back towards the village after packing everything away.




Learned Black Lightning A rank Fuuinjutsu/ Ninjutsu



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