The Ice House [Training][P][NDE]

His hands moved flawlessly through the short list of handseals depicted upon the scroll. Crude drawings, almost like those of a child, had been left that showed a man suddenly sprouting a lions mane after focusing the correct amount and type of shape manipulation chakra, along with a diagram that showed its counter-clockwise rotation. Allowing his own chakra to rise suddenly and impress itself upon his scalp, he focused on holding the tiger seal. His head began to itch and his eyes started to water, but he could feel the chakra removing itself from out of his pores. It almost bled away from his tenketsu, while it was collected near the front of his head and poured lavishly and without any pause into the proteins and molecules that made up his own hair.


It was already quite long, but with the assistance of this new technique, he'd be able to strengthen and reinforce it, perhaps gaining the upper hand against a surprised opponent. His hands continued to hold the tiger seal, and almost imperceptibly, something shifted. His eyes caught sight of the sides of his face increasing in darkness, the shadow from his moving hair extending slowly downwards. The harder he pushed out with his chakra, the more he felt as if he were layering it in strands of pure energy, as if the growth of the hair itself was secondary to protecting it. He coated his scalp in a thin layer of energy to protect it from drying out too fast or scarring from the intrusion of hardened hair follicles suddenly being forced through, and tried to visualize his end desired result.

As his mind held on to the image of his hair extended quite a ways below his waist, his hair itself began to follow suit. The chakra required was minimal, but required constant tweaking, and needed a certain amount of control and finesse in order to successfully extend the correct proteins. Shape manipulation was slowly becoming his speciality, and after a few precious seconds, he saw that his hair had extended in length by several feet, almost five. He'd been able to grow almost a foot of hair each second, and as he checked his chakra reserves, he could tell that it hadn't taken much real effort. He shook his head, allowed himself to release the tiger seal for the briefest of seconds, and then went through the string of handseals again, calling forth the same counter-clockwise motions of chakra, and trying to achieve the growth of his hair a bit faster.

Minerals and life-giving vitamins were broken down, drawn out from all over his body, and infused into his hair, assisted with pure chakra. The energy mingled in strange sparks that he could feel lick the outer edges of his skin. His hair now extended rapidly down to cover even his own eyes, while the tiny amount of chakra he placed into the technique was augmented, extended, shortened, molded, and manipulated in several different ways simultaneously. He began to imagine fists of energy grabbing his hair, pulling it down towards the ground, extracting its very essence until it had been forced to solidify and extend. He stared at his own tiger seal and allowed the chakra to move on its own, stopping only once he felt the subtle motion of his now incredibly long green locks hit the floor.

He looked down at his hair as it touched the ground, released the tiger handseal, and ran through a slightly altered set. This time focusing on the reverse of everything he'd just achieved. He no longer had to hold a seal to keep the technique engaged, and once the final 'bird' seal was formed, he focused his chakra yet again. He felt it first flush through his skin, then collect itself around his head only, extending downwards. It formed a rough ovoid shape before being pushed down to surround and cover his newly grown hair.

It touched everywhere from the pores and follicles to the end of each thickened strand. He felt his hair grow heavier. The chakra he used seemed to create a backlash of mineral deposits that bubbled out of the hair, making it sticky and a bit wet. He'd changed its chemical composition somehow, completely with chakra. The energy manipulation was addicting, and for the first time he began to understand that this was a different process than just altering shape. His hair was transforming, the process it used to survive and grow and thrive was being changed, slowly but surely, through sheer force of will.

He felt a sharp retraction; an itching of his scalp as he watched in awe. The hair moved on its own. In a similar manner to that in which it had grown, the new sticky properties of the hair seemed to reach up, climbing over themselves. They found purchase on other strands of hair. Their stickiness was like an unguent; the hair seemed to be almost healing itself with the intrusion of the chakra. It collected against itself, felt almost like a nail being pushed forcefully into his skin, and with a loud sucking sound, began its true motion back into his head, trying to return to its original length.

No, it was something different than that. The hair was pulling into itself. He had a hard time understanding exactly how, but it seemed to simply fold in until it was invisible. He supposed that his hair was now permanently held at its unusual grown length, and that this was some sort of illusion, but no. It was just different. He allowed the stickiness of his follicles to further conceal the hair, taking a careful survey of his surroundings as the silence of his environment seemed to aid in his concentration.

Akin to canceling a genjutsu, he let the technique cancel itself, the hair ending back just past his shoulders. The stickiness and moisture subsided, the climbing attempts of the wayward particles ceased. The proteins in his hair exited their status of advanced adaptation. His head itself seemed to re-shape the pores, shrinking their size, allowing for the easy passage of the jutsu out of existence. He clapped his hands together as he returned, more or less, to normal.

He went through a simplified set of handseals, ending again with the bird. His hands clasped each other tightly, while the chakra began to move in a counter-clockwise rotation within and out of his body. His hair had begun an almost identical type of extension, but this time, the lengthening was far more meticulous and slow. Only when he truly concentrated could he see the reason why. His hair wasn't growing purely in length, it was thickening, growing the same type of stickiness as his last technique, but also hardening and clumping together.

Each individual strand congealed as if it hadn't been washed in some time. Thick walls of protein were instantly constructed within the barriers of each piece of hair, the follicles stretched. He reached a hand up tentatively to hold onto one of the strands, and suddenly gained an awareness of it, like an arm he'd forgotten he'd had would suddenly wake up to grab him. His hair began to perforate, seemed as if it would tear right in half, but simply folded at its most tense point of crisis and bent down. The thickness he'd just grown seemed to help it.

Every other strand of Naizaisei's hair mimicked the same process. His head seemed to sprout extra nerve endings, but no, he knew this was simply more chakra. Tiny particles floated up, moving throughout the tenketsu over his body and allowing enhanced mobility. The hair from his head grew a number of different inch-wide bands spread along its length. He could bend each of these bands at will, and experimented, still touching it, analyzing it with his hands. It seemed much much stronger, with a consistency like heavy leather or snake skin.

He flexed muscles he'd not been able to move until now, poured chakra into them,and watched his hair. A grouping of strands lifted almost instantly,began to braid themselves together, and were coated again in chakra. Where he instructed, one reached into his small carrying case, and removed a single kunai. He marveled at this development. He tested it out again, had it meet his hands at various locations around his body, visualized more braids and felt his hair respond in kind. It no longer sat atop his head like so much decoration, and he was happy that he'd grown that much closer to converting his entire body into a shinobi weapon. He'd gained a new level of control. His hair had become prehensile.


A few more stretching exercises, more focus on himself becoming an instrument of war or death. He flexed the hair like a whip, tested out its limitations, saw individual strands group together like ligaments and seeped in steadily decreasing amounts of chakra. It looked as if his hair was waving now. Each green lock could now gel together with a minimum of physical and spiritual energy, or stiffen suddenly, he pushed it out to its furthest extension and then recoiled sharply. It expanded and contracted like a heartbeat, like a muscle. His hair wound in on itself, and Naizaisei felt its dangling motions follow whichever unspoken instructions he gave it. He'd be able to grab a weapon now, or deflect a thrown projectile, so long as he gained enough practice. He let his hair grab at his own hand, spread the fingers, picked between the nails with the split ends, and held it up to the fast fading light for one last inspection before moving on.

He walked to a large stone, one that was at least a few hundred pounds, something his own physical strength was insufficient to lift. More handseals. More chakra flaring from his body, directed into his hair itself. As he held the tiger seal it extended, and with his new ability to increase his own control, the inherent stickiness increased in thickness, and began to move downwards, growing. As it huddled together, collecting around the perimeter of the heavy stone, he flexed several strands together, forcing them to braid,prepared to use them as if they were an arm and hand. Tentatively they bent upward, almost like they were awaiting spoken permission, and wordlessly, Mugetsu nodded and let the chakra flare freely.

He visualized his hair having developed its own musculature; a miniature system of overlapping thin strands acting like sinew and tendon. He imagined his hair acting like a pulley, counterweights at opposite ends pushing and pulling, lifting up the heavy stone. He felt his pores tighten as his hair grew heavier with the addition of the sticky chakra substance. As it unfolded, it wrapped itself around the stone, seemed to grip it in a fist of hair, and strained to raise itself into the air. At each point of tension, he subtly increased the amount of chakra pouring into each of its sections, allowed it to wrap around the stone in an energetic frame that mimicked the hair. His hair and chakra worked in unison, and painstakingly, the stone raised a few inches from the ground before his concentration broke and it crashed back to the ground.

His hair seemed to pull back in shock, climbed back up over itself, recoiled from the effort. He put his fingers through his own hair, brushing it out of his eyes, performed the same order of handseals and re-focused his chakra. This time noting the places where he'd need reinforced strength before he extended the strands towards the stone, his chakra moved in a slow twitching counter-clockwise rotation, picking up the hair, making it appear to wave in the wind. His hands dropped to his side, his forehead beading with strength, and finally, he reached out with chakra and hair, inexorably bound together. His hair reached like the prehensile tail of some primate beast, and touched the stone. His eyes closed.

He used his hair like another natural extension of his arms, hair like fingers. They grasped stupidly at the stone, flattened underneath it, and pushed up with their combined braided strength. The stone rolled over to one side, but was met by more hair, as a claw of twitching protein and chakra circled its nearly 300 pounds of mineral weight and shoved hard. The stone hesitated for the briefest of seconds, and was then lifted off of the ground. Mugetsu opened his eyes to see the stone waving in the air. Multiple locks of ebony secured it. It felt as if he had suddenly been overtaken with additional appendages. He tried to maintain the feeling before moving on to the next technique on the scroll.

The handseals seemed as if they would never stop. A brief pause as his hands dryly clapped together, more chakra built up and bubbled just beneath the surface of his skin. The pores of his scalp seemed to spasm and convulse, they let loose a surge of protein thickness to surround and infuse his hair with strength. The new growths were sticky and long, extending greedily straight up into the air. He'd already lifted the stone, discarded as it was thrown into the tiny sand granules composing the rock field. Seeing that he was still alive, he looked over the instructions printed onto the scroll. He tried to copy the movements indicated in their crude ink, and thought on the words his old sensei, Gokai, had spoken to him before departing to the Land of Fang.

He'd been told that in order to truly master what he referred to as the 'Kami Regiment', he would have to stop viewing the collected hair as if it were many separate extensions. They had to be experienced as one extra-sensory organ. Braided together, his hair felt stronger than iron, and he thought of the various different shapes iron took. Bladed weapons, knives, kunai, shuriken, staffs and daggers. As he visualized each weapon, his hair would shudder in time and begin to absorb its excess mass. One braid had begun to twist at its bottom, soon forming the familiar shape of a handle-less kunai. The shinobi wiped his brow and continued.


He began to run through a number of different shapes in his mind. He noted that his hair was slow to move and form each object, but he chalked that up to his need for perfection. As the chakra moved throughout, concentrated on his head, he felt a rush of adrenaline accompanied by the pure energy of shape transformation that marked his renewed understanding of the technique. He created a small obelisk like shape; an oversized four bladed shuriken, a small sphere, a crude bottle of sake, no matter what he thought of, his hair seemed to rigidly and reluctantly change its shape. His chakra felt like the hands of a sculptor, and he could mold everything within its grasp and vision into the things he imagined. His head hurt terribly, follicles almost ripped out from the constant strain, but this would not deter him.

He allowed his chakra levels to plummet sharply then, canceling out the transformational aspect of the Kami Jutsu. The air around him was suddenly heady and thick, and he coughed before clasping his hands together to create simulacrum constellations on the hot ground. Focusing the totality of his chakra control, he thought only of creating a double-bladed combat knife, imagined the folded steel, the gauze wrapped handle, the shine of the blade in the light. His hair wrapped around itself, and with seemingly little effort, began to elongate at both ends. They narrowed, pinching towards the center, until both ends flattened out into thin triangles. He reached a hand up to examine his handiwork, and was surprised at the weight of the weapon. It felt just as substantial as the real thing. Running his fingers across the sharpened edges of walled in protein that made it truly dangerous, he wondered just how deeply it would cut.

He relaxed his fingers and sat still for a few seconds to regain his composure. Without another word, he unfolded another section of the instructional scroll, and would begin again. His chakra died down, and sounded like wind blowing through a tunnel a great distance away. It was a ghost sound, eerie and indistinct and plotting. As quickly as it had begun, it stopped. The kunai he'd created bubbled up, seemed to fatten into an unrecognizable heap of hair, and fell to his sides. The sticky thickening agent produced by his manipulation of energy was now gone. The next technique might prove itself to be more difficult to understand. He continued.

His hands seems to vanish and flicker, breaking apart and reforming into each other as he ran through a string of handseals. He liked to call this his 'warm-up' set. They were movements designed to loosen him up and allow him the flexibility of adding or subtracting seals without losing chakra. Backwards and forwards he moved, as he attempted to break down his new technique into sections. The move was designed to crush an opponent, but also contained elements of calling up his chakra nature.


As he studied, he saw it also would require his shaping it into the form of a large dragon. He'd be feeding it instruction, allowing waves to be formed from all areas that would then converge at it's center. He'd have to actually hit his opponent, transferring the huge elemental collision through the strongest point of the Suiton construct. He would first practice simply enveloping himself in his Suiton Chakra Nature. He could feel it move within and around him. He held in his mind the image of a dragon, its inumerable scales, and shuddered at the glorious undertaking. He was anxious.

He felt as if he were caught in an enormous invisible net as the Suiton enveloped him. He was assaulted by intense pressure from all sides but felt strangely anchored in its middle. He realized suddenly that this was the same feeling he would need to introduce to his opponent. Unfortunately, that could only come once he'd mastered the technique. He was comfortable in the water, though parts of his brain wanted to panic caught in the flux of chakra swirling about him. His body was strong however, and even though his Kaishin physiology pulled and begged at him to simply create the water from nothingness, he resisted the temptation.

He felt suddenly, perfectly, at home. His muscle fibers and skin gave slightly to the unseen force of the Suiton chakra. He inhaled and exhaled slowly, trying to remember the instructions his most recent academy instructor had given him. At first, the breathing exercises amused him with their simplicity. He soon reconsidered his take on them once he felt their relevance to his training.


He felt that he could push and manipulate the chakra, move it around. In theory, this was a jutsu that was easy to perform, and dragons were a common shape for shinobi. But as the chakra moved, he felt different sensations. There was a low heat that obeyed the direction of his mind. He could collect it into his arms or legs, hold it in his chest, exhale it. With awe, he saw the rippling cascade of visible suiton chakra ebb and flow around his body, moving precariously towards his hands.

He settled the energy momentarily. Looking up, he skimmed past the handseals for the technique once more. He began going through those movements that represented each aspect of the constellations. He finished on the "Ram" symbol, the symbol for strength in stubbornness, the symbol for charging into a situation without foresight, reckless abandon. The water was suddenly pushed away from him violently.


He struffled to control it, imagined it spread out to form a lake. He formed small barriers of pressure within the water, slicing premature shapes from its mass. He allowed the Suiton chakra to 'get used' to him. He formed a small barrier against the onrushing walls of water, letting it both rush out in great waves, and centering it around his own form. He felt his muscles looses as the Suiton enhanced chakra comforted his body. It coated him in powerful layers, made his body a part of itself.


He felt joined together with the essence of the ocean and the sea. He imagined a cage in his mind. He constructed walls of falling water in his mind before pushing out with his chakra and surrounding himself with a small sphere of water. All was silent except for the faint sound of tiny waves colliding within. He'd created a current that would serve as the core of the dragon shape. He opened his eyes, let his facial muscles relaxed, and continued breathing deeply, visualizing the ferocious image of the dragon.


It was an irregular form. It reminded him of certain Hyouton based jutsu he'd seen his own clansmen perform before he'd arrived in Ame No Kuni. The water seemed oddly hard and astable. He sat in its center, retreating light from above reflected and broken up into pieces that played across his skin. He couldn't quite call it a success He felt his chakra begin to dissipate with the strain of maintaining just this simple form. He balked at the idea of forming an entire dragon from the same volatile substance.

He tried to create another burst of Suiton chakra that would exist solely on the inside of the fledgling shape. A secondary under-skin of water pressure to hold it together. As a Kaishin, he had the chakra pool necessary to perform such a high-level technique. However, he felt that it was the aspect of chakra control that he was lacking. In much the same way as the hair jutsu's had provided some difficulty with control, water was an even more difficult thing to rein under his command. His mind fluctuated, like waves.