Review of Skills

Kosuke Himitsu, the father of Nozomi Himitsu, had trekked out to the Training Grounds with his daughter, leading her to a more secluded wooded area of the grounds. It was time for a review of her skills so far, and he wanted to make sure that she wasn't just neglecting her other skills and talents. She was going to be one of the strongest in this generation of fighters, as he himself was in his, and they didn't need a powerful clan to do so.

"Alright, let's start this one rather simple. I want you to run through all of your mid level Suiton Techniques. Go ahead and draw out that additional reserve of power if you need to. You won't be fighting me today." Kosuke said, crossing his arms. He'd taught her a large portion of them, and had left her to practice through them on her own, only briefly explaining how they worked. Now was the moment that she needed to tap into her knowledge in order to utilize them.

Nozomi nodded, recalling the techniques she'd been shown, and started to demonstrate her usage of them. The first up one would be the Water Clone technique, a very simple one that was only slightly different than the usual clone variant. Although, in using Suiton Chakra in the creation of the clone, it did allow the clone to be made solid, rather than just a copy of something made intangible. The glory of this was that it allowed for her to fight using more of her own fighting skills, which were already immense. Besides, they didn't require chakra to sustain them, just to create, which made them vastly more versatile.

Holding the Tiger seal, Nozomi gathered her Suiton chakra inside of herself, and created a single clone using the technique. The clone gave a thumbs up before Nozomi dismissed it, her chakra flooding back into her. She hadn't necessarily needed to do that, but it was easier for her to start with the technique that didn't really drain her chakra any, so she could continue on with her list at a greater rate of chakra, hopefully not requiring that she access her hidden reserves of stamina.

One down, a few more to go, although she knew she'd end up having to do much more than just Suiton jutsu before the end of this. Walking over to a small stream, Nozomi stepped inside of the slow moving water, moving deeper until she could submerge herself in the water fully, and then seemed to vanish from sight from everyone else. By flowing Suiton Chakra around her, she was able to camouflage herself completely, and almost seem to merge with the water. In Kiri, this was a useful technique, as water was readily available almost everywhere, and she wouldn't need to worry too much about ever having to make a source of water to hide in. Of course, it wasn't without it's drawbacks, Kosuke had told her that she was still able to be targetted, plus she was much slower than she should be in order to maintain the disguise. Besides that, she couldn't breathe water, and would need to eventually resurface, but buying a Rebreather might help her deal with that issue. It wasn't too big a deal, she was an up close and personal fighter anyhow, so hiding in water didn't help her fight any closer.

Emerging from the water, Nozomi didn't mind that she was now soaked through, as it was cool and refreshing after their hike there anyhow. Kosuke nodded his approval of her techniques so far, but didn't say anything as he wanted her to continue on. Nozomi ran through three different seals, to demonstrate the use of the Water Whip technique, using the water that was currently dripping off her as the catalyst for the technique rather than her own Suiton Chakra. Of course, her chakra was necessary to hold the water together in the form of the whip, but the primary purpose had been to assist in her drying off a bit. She cracked the whip around a couple of times, but she wasn't much of a whip user, so it was mostly for show. Eventually, she'd need to learn how to actually use one of them effectively, or she'd have someone show her a technique that could manipulate the whip any way she wanted it to be moved without her actually having to whip it around. Releasing the technique, the water fell to the ground harmlessly.

Next up was the Starch Syrup Capturing Field. Nozomi turned so that she wasn't aiming directly at her father, and once again began kneading the chakra inside her, adding a little bit of stickiness and cohesion to the Suiton. Moving through the Ram and Tiger seals very quickly, Nozomi launched the sticky liquid onto a tree, and it slowly dripped down the side of it, clinging as the technique was wont to do. Nozomi found the jutsu kind of gross and disgusting, but she did see its usefulness. One of the hardest parts of being a Taijutsu user was making sure that your opponent stayed within melee range, otherwise your techniques would be partially nullified. This techique was one of those that allowed her to keep on fighting someone without them running away as much. Of course, there was the issue that someone could use the Walking on Water technique, but not everyone had time to think about that before the jutsu landed.

In somewhat of a contrast to that technique though, was the Wild Bubble Wave. Rather than making everything sticky, it made everything kind of slippery and impossible to grab onto without a technique that allowed you to stick to something. Perhaps the Walking on Water technique or the Walking on Tree's technique would be just as beneficial as it had been to negate the stickier jutsu. She hadn't really tested it out yet, nor did she particularly care to. She didn't see much of a use for this technique, as she didn't like her opponents to be tripped up. It made her easier to counter attack because it increased the amount of time that she needed to reach someone. Still, she had learned the technique and practiced it quite a bit, and now had to demonstrate it. Holding the Tiger seal, Nozomi launched the Bubbles towards the sticky tree, and watched as it helped mix the two and turn them into normal water.

Nozomi was starting to get a little tired at this point, having used up a little less than a third of her chakra, but she still had a few more techniques to go through before she was quite finished with her demonstrations. Her father hadn't appeared angry yet, nor had he appeared impressed, simply exactly as she had expected him to. He had expected she would learn the techniques, and wouldn't be impressed that she had because that's what she had been charged with doing. It would be how she used them in combat that would set her apart from anyone else that simply knew the techniques.

Next up for her was one of the more difficult ones for her to do. Since it was such a wide scaled technique, and actually demanded that she create the water that it used, the Waterfall Basin Technique was one she had to focus on more to initialize. The other ones had not really required too much focus, but with this one, Nozomi needed a second to think before she could actually gather the chakra around her, flowing it into her surroundings. Perhaps the issue was that she was used to flowing chakra through her own body, but this manipulated her environment more so than her own personal self, even if those previous techniques hadn't been Taijutsu. Still, after forming the three required seals, the Boar Dog and Ram, the ground next to her started to crumble, revealing a waterfall that connected to the spring. She quickly finished with the technique, the water ceasing to run through it of her own will, although the streams overflow did fill in where she had made a divet in the ground.

With the Waterfall Basin technique demonstrated, Nozomi only had two more of the Suiton Library techniques to demonstrate, which was completely fine by her. Most of those techniques were Ninjutsu, and they were very stamina intensive for what Nozomi was used to. Mainly being a Taijutsu practitioner, and with her being able to save as much stamina as possible using her Taijutsu, even simple techniques such as these tended to drain as much chakra from her as her heavily pushed body fighting at peak potential. Now of course, that was with multiple Taijutsu based techniques stacking onto each other to increase her fighting ability, but still. Holding the Tiger seal and kneading the chakra inside her again, Nozomi let a large amount build up inside her and launched a gunshot at the tree she'd been using for practice on a couple of other techniques. The large bullet of condensed water blasted a chunk of the tree off, to which Nozomi waited a moment before completing the final jutsu. She didn't want to be caught doing handseals if the tree was falling towards her after all.

After a moment or so, the tree held steady, proving it wasn't going to fall down, to the girl's relief. The final Suiton jutsu she had to demonstrate was of course, the Water Bullet technique. She wasn't quite sure why it was named such, it was more of a constant stream of condensed water. It did seem to be used in similar manners as stronger Suiton Techniques, so perhaps it was a building block on to higher level bullet techniques, but even so, she didn't see why the name was as such. She would have called it Water Stream or something like that. Chaining the 4 seals together, Tiger, Ox, Tiger, Rat, Nozomi launched the final stream at the tree, the powerful torrent of water finally proving to be the match of the tree, and launched it backwards and away from the two of them.


Water Clone used/ returned
-5 Hiding in Water
-5 Water Whip
-5 Starch Syrup Capturing Field
-5 Wild Bubble Wave
-5 Waterfall Basin
-5 Gunshot
-5 Water Bullet

Stamina: 45/80

Looking pleased with herself, Nozomi looked over to her father, who clapped his hands together. "You learned the techniques well enough, as I had expected. That said, we aren't quite done with your review just yet. Next up, a quick run down of the newly acquired Taijutsu skills. You don't need to really focus all that much on them, I know you're far above par with your Taijutsu skills, but I want a fast demonstration of your ability to use Slamming Palm, Shatter Palm, from the Arhat Fist school, and after that, I would like to see you demonstrate the very basics of the Spring Chant." Kosuke said, motioning for her to continue.

His teaching method was to establish that Nozomi was continuing to improve herself using body mechanics to allow her to contend with people vastly out of her league in terms of strength. With the Arhat Fist, even she as a genin was able to hold her own against people of much higher pure strength. The body held a reserve of strength in it that could be tapped into briefly by pushing it to its limits as well as using knowledge of how the body could maximize its output. The Shatter Palm technique was one such of those maximizing attacks, combining the stance of the Arhat Fist and the full power of body mechanics to deliver one single powerful blow. Nozomi had of course, already demonstrated that she could utilize this technique, but there was no harm in doing it. Long term use of the Arhat style was hardly even a drain on Nozomi's stamina, although having already used around half of her chakra on her water demonstrations did leave her slightly drained.

Moving towards a smaller tree, and then shifting into the basic Arhat Fist stance, Nozomi delivered a powerful Shattering Palm into the tree, splinters flying off of it as the bark was all but stripped from it. It was enough to demonstrate that she fully understood how to use the technique, and Nozomi knew he need not see any more of the Shatter Palm, so she instantly moved to attack a low hanging branch with the Slamming Palm. It wasn't really any different than the Shatter Palm, except in an uppercut fashion. The tree branch shattered, launched away. Her hand stung slightly, but she ignored it for now, seeing no blood having been drawn. The problem right now was that her constitution was a deal weaker than the power she could output, so some of her attacks hurt her slightly as well. It wasn't much, but it was enough for her to feel backlash.

Having properly demonstrated those techniques as asked, it was time for her to review her knowledge on the Spring Chant technique. On its own, it wasn't particularly strong, and Nozomi didn't have any techniques down that added to it by itself, but her father had shown her this style for his particular brand of Nin-taijutsu. Since the Himitsu family style didn't really require any sort of real power behind a strike to deliver powerful injuries, they tended to focus more on speed of strikes, optimized towards multiple fast strikes over few powerful ones. The Ninjutsu they had created made the faster strikes much more powerful than they would be otherwise, although increased strength would still be beneficial regardless.

Nozomi was a bit of a special case when it came to the Spring Chant though. She was already quite fast with her body movements, and could increase her own speed normally to match up with that, although the amount of focus that required was intense. However, her skills could shine above that as she could stack her already intense body movements with the Spring Chant to match even the fast movement of high ranking Jounin. Of course, this made her own actions a blur to herself at current level, but she'd been taught a technique that would help increase her perception to help keep up with such speeds. She moved through some of the fast pace strikes of Spring Chant, simply pantomiming an enemy in front of her. She didn't focus incredibly on it, the style enough to show her proficiency.

Still, her movements were already quite hard for her to keep up with as it was, and not focusing was making herself seem like a blur to herself, so she quit for a moment, and ran through a small series of hand signs, using the Oculus Enhancement technique that she had been taught to help specifically with that problem. Since she knew that using that would drop her close to half of her stamina level, Nozomi also took a moment to reach deep within herself, and pull out a special reserve of chakra, enhancing herself even further, and basically restoring herself to the level of chakra she had before the review began. With the Oculus Enhancement active, Nozomi's perception allowed her to keep up with her own movements a little better, the lense-like filter doing its own thing to let her focus on her own movements with more detail, and she ran through the same training she had previously, but with much greater accuracy and speed as she could max out her own skill and not hold back.

Her father nodded for her, signalling she'd done enough for the moment. It was on to the final phase of his review for her.

-1 Arhat Fist
-1 Shattering Palm
-1 Slamming Palm
-1 Spring Chant
-5 Oculus Enhancement

Stamina: 76/120

UA:

Spoiler:

Kosuke held up his hand for her to stop. "Alright, good good. Your form is impeccable, as I would expect. Finally, we'll finish out this review with the Himitsu Clan techniques. I want you to use your other techniques in conjunction with these to show me what sort of plateau you have right now. There are a few techniques I haven't taught you just yet, but I will be doing so in the future, perhaps when you've proven you're able to take on high level missions. I don't think you're quite ready for those ones, but what you have in sufficient, as it's more than other clan members have been able to master. You truly are perhaps my prodigal weapon." Of course, Kosuke was proud of his daughter, but not with fatherly pride.

It had long since been established for Nozomi that her skill set wasn't honed from birth for her to use as she pleased. She was being forged into a powerful tool for Kirigakure and the Himitsu Clan to utilize. Perhaps one day, even being used as a tool from the Himitsu Clan against Kirigakure. As far a genin went, she was far superior to the average run of the mill genin, and perhaps even passed quite a few Chuunin. With training and time, and honing her skills even sharper, she would be able to fight people leagues above where she should.

Her Oculus Enhancement still active, as well as the Spring Chant style of combat, Nozomi smiled slightly. She'd known of these techniques for a while now, but she wasn't often allowed to utilize them, as they were secret ones that she needed to hone responsibly. The review of her abilities right now was partially to see how she stacked up, but also a review to determine whether she would be allowed to use them outside of family practices. She'd just have to show her father that she was ready.

Running through the Dragon Snake and Bird seals, Nozomi's hands started to glow lightly with a liquid like aura. Petals began to fall gently from the aura, forming constantly. Her focus intensified, and Nozomi finally let herself fall into a small rhythm. After all, fighting was little more than a dance. Her feet also activated the Misty Petal Step technique, allowing her to smoothly skate around the area as she chose to. The glory of that technique was that it was much like the Walking on Trees and Water techniques, allowing her to simply choose when she was skating and when she wasn't, but it also acted to keep her attached to things as if on a guide rail.

Her chakra built up around her back, and launched her forward, the skates letting her maintain maximum speed without actually building up any movement from her legs. She had been launched towards a tree at the speeds she could attain using the Body Flicker Technique, and usually she would stack the two techniques, but she didn't quite want to do that when that meant her body would be arriving at the tree moving faster and stronger than she could deal with. Having tapped into her reserves, she could feel the soreness of her body much more. Still, her Petal Propulsion was enough to increase her speed, and as she moved through the trees, tagging them with fast blows as she moved past them, she took a moment to launch herself off the ground, creating a platform to bounce off of without having to break her movement and launch herself a different, sideways direction.

In addition to the platform, she'd also used two quick applications of the Misty Petal Shift to help rotate her, the skating motion allowing her to do an about face without having to completely reactivate the Misty Petal Propulsion technique. Still moving forward at her rate, Nozomi continued toward her father, tagging the trees around her with quick jabs, and slid to a halt in front of him. She had managed to actually surpass his expectations a bit, moving fast enough with her own motions that he had to actually focus in order to see her moving through the woods. Petals flew around them due to the sheer amount of techniques she had used, and it looked like he might even be slightly proud.

"Very well, you've passed. Feel free to utilize these techniques at any point you desire. I shall also be teaching you new versions in the future, so keep up the good work. You make an excellent Kunoichi, Nozomi. Now let's return home so you can rest. I'm sure that your sensei will be calling you for something sooner rather than later, and you have expended a deal of stamina on this."

-1 Oculus Enhancement
-1 Spring Chant
-5 Dance of the Misty Petals
-1 Misty Petal Step
-5 Misty Petal Propulsion
-1 (x2) Misty Petal Shift
-1 Misty Petal Platform


EXIT THREAD

TWC: 3384
Used for Training Jutsu: 2600
-150 for Slamming Palm [C rank canon]
-150 for Shatter Palm [C rank canon]
-150 for Water Clone Jutsu [C rank canon]
-150 for Water Bullet [C rank canon]
-150 for Gunshot [C rank canon]
-150 for Water Whip [C rank canon]
-150 for Waterfall Basin [C rank canon]
-150 for Wild Bubble Wave [C rank canon]
-150 for Starch Syrup Capturing Field [C rank canon]
-150 for Hiding in Water [C rank canon]
-100 for Misty Petal Step [E rank custom]
-100 for Misty Petal Platform [E rank custom]
-150 for Misty Petal Shifts [D rank custom]
-200 for Misty Petal Propulsion [C rank custom]
-200 for Petal Dance of the Mist [C rank custom]
-200 for Oculus Enhancement [C rank custom]
-150 for Spring Chant [D rank custom]