Janus' Training |Private|

[Janus Yeider]

SPOILER: Click to show

Foot Vine Manipulation
Rank: "D" Rank
Skill: NinJutsu; Passive
Effect: Allows a Zassou member to manipulate vines extending from the feet.
Special: ---
Drawback: Cannot use foot vines until this technique is learned. When vines are extended beneath the ground, movement of the user becomes extremely limited based on how far under the ground they are and what rank of Vine Length Manipulation is known.
Description: A form of training that allows a clan member to manipulate vines from different portions of their bodies. Because the vines are threaded through the users chakra system, this allows them to control those vines. The Zassou will learn how to send the vines in and out from their feet, as well as how to control them more precisely.
Limit: Must be a Zassou.

0|10tp

---

Sitting in the park, in Takigakure no Sato, I wriggled my toes, enjoying the warm air. I had taken off my sandals in the name of comfort, but also in the name of ninja training.

Palms turned upwards, I and started down at them, like a sinner atoning for a sin. I looked at the tiny, almost imperceivable slots in them where the vines were. I made a singular vine grow from each palm with my chakra. I did this by putting energy into the plant and nourishing it. I used water from my body and nutrients as well. I allowed it to make glucose without photosynthesis, and then encouraged it to immediately break the bonds and use the energy to grow. This was the process for making the vines act in my hands, which was vital to know before I worked on my feet. Of course, the fundamentals would be the same.

I had the vines recede back into my hands. It was almost painless when my hands grew vines, because I had conditioned them, training this constantly. This was not going to be the case for my feet. I knew I could use chakra around the area to help dull the nerves, and I still do that for my hands, but I knew that this would not be without pain, and even years down the line it will hurt a little bit every single time I wielded theses weapons. I was told this when I joined the clan, and I did not regret agreeing to those terms. This power would be worth it.

With my feet loose, I sent tendrils of chakra to nourish the seeds inside of me. I felt them, making the transition from a seed into the budding plant that they would be. I used that thick layer of chakra to block my never from pain and my skin from bleeding, and the vines began to peek through my feet. Unfortunately, I began to notice some of the issues with using the seeds on the bottoms of my feet. It wasn’t exactly easy to stand as the vines reached one meter and longer. I would have to be a little bit more creative if I wanted to make this work.

Of course, I could use these vines like roots. I had heard of many people doing similar things to this, so it was not going to be particularly hard. There is always a knack to things like these. Nobody would keep doing them if it weren’t for a knack. So, I sent the vines downward, and felt them, straining against the dirt below me. Of course, a plant couldn’t easily pierce the ground. Roots start underground, and are designed to pierce the ground slowly, and only when the spring time brings the soil to its softest state. No, I would have to fix something. But, thats when it hit me.

Every single ninja ever to embark upon the wood release, and by extension the Zassou clan, had to have learned the earth release first. And so, I used my knowledge of the aforementioned chakra type to make my life easier. I reached of tendril of chakra before my tendril of vine, and I made the dirt softer, allowing the vine to have a clean path, one in which the earth would be willing, and almost tender. No doubt, once I had weakened the earth, my vines’ growth would barely be hindered by it. As I extended my vine, I felt the slight pain as it went smoothly down into the ground. I was rooted in place now, more like a plant than ever before.

[Father 'Suke]

Learned

[Janus Yeider]

SPOILER: Click to show

Forehead Vine Manipulation
Rank: "D" Rank
Skill: NinJutsu; Passive
Effect: Allows a Zassou member to manipulate vines extending from the hole in their forehead.
Special: ---
Drawback: Cannot use forehead vines until this technique is learned.
Description: A form of training that allows a clan member to manipulate vines from different portions of their bodies. Because the vines are threaded through the users chakra system, this allows them to control those vines. The Zassou will learn how to send the vines in and out from their fprehead, as well as how to control them more precisely.
Limit: Must be a Zassou.

0|10

---

Ah, the feet, the feet are easy. The real difficulty will come from my forehead, won’t it?

You see the problem with the vine implanted in my forehead is that the seed doesn’t exactly have a large amount of space. I had to think carefully before I sent chakra there, for the brain is a very fragile thing. I don’t want to kill myself in a stupid way such as having a vine take root into my brain, stopping my breathing. The other issue is, the surgeons who made me like this had to consider the fact that I didn’t have very much space. So the seed was small, and it drained a little bit more chakra and took a little bit more precision to control this vine.

I put my fingers over my forehead, not wanting go freehand on this one. I made my chakra take on a wood nature, and let the chakra slowly seep out of my hand and into my forehead. I could feel the seed, getting vitalized. It had the energy to burst out any moment, any direction. But I didn’t let it. I made it store the energy for little bit. I had to be precise with my control, or I would die. But, the natural behaviors of plants can make my life far simpler. The instinct of the little vine would make it obey me. Thats all it would take.

I put my hand in front, and let the chakra beat in, simulating the sun. No doubt, the plant would sense the source of its energy, it would know which way to grow for it to photosynthesizes best. And like every creeping vine, every leaning tree, every high-bush blueberry, it would begin to grow, and it would go outward, in the direction where I wanted it to go. My forehead vine was now protruding from my forehead. All I had to do was master the control of it, and I could consider it checked off my list of things to learn.

But, there were no muscles in my head to help me. I had to go pure chakra on this one, and that was not the easiest thing to do. I sent tendrils of chakra into the vine. The first step was to make it stand up straight. I did that by filling the entire thing with my chakra, and then using my energy to polarize the entire thing. It immediately sprung into the desired stance.

Once it was standing up straight, I extended sperate tendrils into each side of the vine. I then could send chakra into any single tendril, and make the vine grow out that way. I forced chakra into all four, and the thing began to grow towards its maximum length of 10 metes. On the right I pushed, and suddenly the vine bent, turning in the direction which I told it to go in. By alternating pulses of chakra, I made it spiral around, as if it were wrapping around a staff or a tree. Yes, another vine was under my control.

[Father 'Suke]

+10

[Janus Yeider]

SPOILER: Click to show

Shoulder Vine Manipulation
Rank: "D" Rank
Skill: NinJutsu; Passive
Effect: Allows a Zassou member to manipulate vines extending from the hole in the front portion of each shoulder.
Special: ---
Drawback: Cannot use shoulder vines until this technique is learned.
Description: A form of training that allows a clan member to manipulate vines from different portions of their bodies. Because the vines are threaded through the users chakra system, this allows them to control those vines. The Zassou will learn how to send the vines in and out from their shoulders, as well as how to control them more precisely.
Limit: Must be a Zassou.

0|10

---

But there are more vines left for me to activate, that I know.

The thing about using the shoulder vines was, a wrong move could easily bipe my shoulders and stop me from moving until I killed the vines. That was the reason why this could be considered somewhat ‘difficult’ of a task. Anything on a joint, specifically the muscular, important, limb-bearing joint which is the shoulder, must be executed carefully. And so, I began to send chakra into the seeds of my shoulder, and urged the seats to hasten and produce glucose so that they would be able to grow momentarily when I tell them to.

I let the vines peak they heads out from inside of my skin. The way I accomplished this was by channeling water and chakra into the side of the seed that was required for vine growth. The real trick here was to know which part of the seed was going to become the roots and which was going to become the vine itself. The truly unfortunate part about the Vine Octopus ritual was the fact that it left the entire baby vines inside of me, and didn’t remove the parts of the vines which were now useless. It was up to my chakra to make up for that fact.

So, as those little green things peaked their heads out from my shoulder, I performed the unforuntate task of removing my shirt in a public place for the sake of my training. There was nobody near by, so I didn’t feel all that awkward. The more fortunate part of this was the fact that my shoulder vine had a large cavity. That was where I could insert a herb and make my vines take over the properties of that herb. I didn’t particularly care about that feature at the moment, but it did give me a little bit of flex room for how and where I manipulated the vines coming out of my shoulders.

And so, I let the vines come out more and more, reaching almost a meter in length. It was difficult, getting them to stand up at first. The initial pain was quite apparent, so, as I lifted the vine upward towards the sky, a throb of pain sent the vines back into the flaccid state. I grunted, knowing I was going to have to try a little bit more than that to get the vines to stand up straight. I sent a long tendril of chakra down the center of the vine, and locked it into a straight shape. The substance of the vine had a natural tendency to be loose and flop around, but the chakra made it strong enough. By using my knowledge of wood release, I strengthened the cell walls of the vine to make them stand up better.

I made the vine move, by using burst after burst of chakra. It twisted up, and brushed my face. I memorized the process in my mind, made it something I could repeat, and quickly. Suddenly, my shoulder vines were an effective part of my arsenal.

[Father 'Suke]

+10

[Janus Yeider]

SPOILER: Click to show

Stomach Vine Manipulation
Rank: "D" Rank
Skill: NinJutsu; Passive
Effect: Allows a Zassou member to manipulate thick vines extending from the hole in his stomach.
Special: ---
Drawback: Cannot use stomach vines until this technique is learned.
Description: A form of training that allows a clan member to manipulate vines from different portions of their bodies. Because the vines are threaded through the users chakra system, this allows them to control those vines. The Zassou will learn how to send the vines in and out from their stomach, as well as how to control them more precisely.
Limit: Must be a Zassou.

0|10

---

It was no big deal of course, to now control the last vine, the one on the center of my stomach. The method of controlling vines has become almost second nature to me, but the difficult, most complex portion of this job was the fact that I have to be able to control not just one singular set of vines, but every single vine at my disposal, at the same time. With no difficulty, I thrust each and every vine out of my body, excluding the one on my stomach.

I then put some chakra into my stomach, and made the vine burst forward. The process was second nature to me. I closed my eyes, I put some chakra into my stomach, the vine grew, and grew, I extended several tendrils of chakra into the vines. I had five in each vine, and there were seven of them at the moment. That meant 35 points of chakra I would have to control, one for each direction the vine could go, and one for rigidity in the vines. Although it sounded simple enough, it was a lot to mentally take care of while in the heat of battle.

And here comes 36-40. I nourished the stomach vine, and made it grow. I threaded it with charka, made it grow, and shape, into a flexible but strong form. I had prove my ability to move one at a time already, but now, I mentally registered each and every string. I catalogued them. Right foot, up, down, left and right. Left foot, up, down, left and right. I twitched each one as I registered them in my mind. I would use this chakra configuration for all the time into the future. That way I would get used to the process of moving specific vines, and I would get instinctually rapid, and ready for battle.

So, with all of these threads of chakra all over the place, I would have to be careful. But, simultaneously, I had marked each and every one with their purpose.So, I moved my left and right palm-vines, and made them move towards each other. A quick pulse up on one and down on the other made them twist around each other. With all this going on, I had to focus a little bit more to make the stomach vine move.

I made the stomach vine move with constant flows of chakra. The vine accelerated as it wrapped around the other vines. It spun around, like a whipping rope coming through a pulley. The fibers bent and went back into place as I made it grow. I had the parts near me lock into place as I became happy with their locations. I made that part grow stockier and stockier, with a greater and greater focus on the cellwall, and less and less on the fleshier parts of the cytoplasm. Once I was happy, I retracted all the vines at once by pulling in on the tendrils of chakra in the core of the vines. A couple of the vines twitched as I sent the wrong impulses, but overall, it was smooth as they came back into my body.

[Father 'Suke]

+10, way to go man now go and have some unmentionable fun with all them japanese girls in sailor uniforms.

[Janus Yeider]

SPOILER: Click to show

Vine Length Manipulation
Rank: "E", "D", "C", "B", "A", "S" Rank
Skill: NinJutsu; Supplementary
Effect: Allows a Zassou member to freely manipulate the vines implanted in their bodies within a certain distance.
Special: ---
Drawback: Cannot manipulate vines at all without this technique.
Description: Must gain the lowest rank of this technique along with receiving the ritual
E Rank - Able to manipulate the vines in body to a maximum of 10 meters.
D Rank - Able to manipulate the vines in body to a maximum of 20 meters.
C Rank - Able to manipulate the vines in body to a maximum of 40 meters.
B Rank - Able to manipulate the vines in body to a maximum of 60 meters.
A Rank - Able to manipulate the vines in body to a maximum of 120 meters.
S Rank - Able to manipulate the vines in body to a maximum of 200 meters.

Limit: Zassou members only, can only use with holes that have been 'unlocked' through training

0|10 [Training "D" Rank]

---

Every single vine within my arsenal was now of use. Of course, they barely were of use; they currently had an extremely limited length. But that was a matter of skill; the very best of the Zassou ninja could manipulate their vines to grow to a length of 200 meters or so. Mine worked out to about ten meters before they flailed uncontrollably, and I couldn’t grow them past 11 or so.

No doubt, the two groupings of things which I must do would make up the training. The first part was learning to grow my vine longer, and the second part was learning to control the vine once it reached the greater length. Both of these things were really just continuations of the things which I could already do, but no doubt their was a trick to controlling the vines once they got longer. Otherwise the mental and chakra drain would be far too great for the masters of this clan.

I put my shirt back on, and extended my palm, and made the vine grow, inch by inch. This time, I coated the entire thing in chakra. That way I would be able to provide quick support to any part of the thing which needed to be aided. That would allow me more precise control, but the chakra grain would be greater. I allowed the plant to produce some of its own energy, and made it less dependent on me to take the slightest edge off the chakra drain on the growth. It was little, but it worked. Once the vine reached 10 meters, I knew the game had begun.

The way I’ve been growing the vine is by encouraging cell division at the very tip of the vine. That is the most direct way of doing things, it makes the growth appear right where it is needed. But, real life plants don’t need to do that. They grow everywhere and transport the energy to the places where its needed. So, I can make this plant do that just as well as I a natural plant does that. I made all the cells productive with my chakra. But, if I didn’t direct the energy to any particular place, it would just be wasted in seed production and other things which were irrelevant. I would have to focus in. So I did, I sent the nutrients into the end of the plant by controlling the adhesion properties of the water. I made the water that was laden with nutrients, by using my water style ninjutsu, move all the way up to the tip, having the same effect as making only the tip grow. The benefit was faster, more efficient growth, and not very march chakra was used as the vine reached twenty meter length.

But of course, now there was an even longer thing for me to control. Yes, I would need a slightly different take on my control scheme to make these vines work. A logical technique would be to simply control the nature of the cells by using their biological factors. Plants, like other substances, have hormones which determine the actions of various organs. By using specific hormones which create stockier or more flexible vines, I could easily shift the parts of the vine which I want to move, depending upon gravity to help add force where I needed it, and shaking the vine to provide it other places. The chakra consumption seemed to drop to reasonable levels as the twenty meter vine snaked along the ground.

[Nira]

Mm, nice focus on the growth. Basic cell biology, and general idea of how substances transfer through vegetation.

All vital for this technique.

+10, Learned.

[Janus Yeider]

[Exit for Purposes of Training in Another Thread]

[Janus Yeider]

SPOILER: Click to show

Vine Sensitivity
Rank: "D" Rank
Skill: NinJutsu, Passive
Effect: Allows Zassou members will be able to "feel" with their vines.
Special: ---
Drawback: Cannot be used in conjunction with Tetsubun Tsukene no Jutsu ("Iron Vines Technique").
Description: Vines are either spread underground or into a solid surface. When someone walks on the surface (or ground), it creates a vibration that can be felt by the vines. This vibration goes to the Zassou member, and the vine is connected to the nerves and let us them know if someone is around the user. Through this they can learn the approximate location of the opponent. The user will be unable to pinpoint exact location or any details about the opponent beyond their general location and general size.
Limit: Must be a Zassou.

0|10

---

The thing about those vines, especially the ones that I snaked underground is that I would never know if they broke off. I stood to gain some by learning to sense using them. That was the topic of the moment, and it was not a particularly hard one to cover, for my prodigy-class chakra manipulation was ready for action. 

I launched myself into the moment. I extended a vine out of my hand, my usual default vine had long been the one in my hand. I let it snake only two inches, that was deigned to be an appropriate distance for experimenting and learning principals without wasting tremendous amounts of chakra on dead-end tactics. I placed chakra into the vine, which I had done many times before, but this time the very nature of the chakra was different. Rather than being wood-nature chakra which was designed to intermingle with the vine it was more of a pure nature. The reason I had selected such a chakra was so that I could easily distinguish the sensory chakra from the manipulative chakra if I needed to at a moment's notice.

With the vine covered in the wrong-affinity of chakra, I was in the proper state for learning that technique. I then let my hand drop to my leg, and the vine brushed up against it. Unfortunately for me, the flow of chakra I had sent out was disrupted, but I accidentally replaced the entire immediately, due to force of habit of replenishing jutsu when they run out. More caution was to be utilized if the technique was to work fully and properly. Fortunately for myself, I had an abundance of caution and patience.

Once again, the vine was coated with a sufficient amount of the aforementioned neutral chakra. It was immediately draped down, and allowed to touch against the garment which was covering my left. This time, I choked off the chakra for the entire time, and felt where the pull was to replace the chakra. The only problem was, the chakra all slowly slipped through the vine and evened out once more. It was hard to determine with any precision what exactly I had felt. That decided the fact that a different technique would be required. Fortunately, my early technical error had presented a way in which I could readily create a sensory input from my vines.

The answer was quite simple. I used the same layer of chakra in the same way, but this time I made less effort to choke off chakra. I left a very small chakra point connecting to each and every bit of the vine. Using that, and by the amount of chakra that was pulled off, I would have been, in theory to determine what it was that the vine had touched and where it had touched that solely by the amount of chakra that was pulled through those pinholes I let them through, and also by which pin hole it went through. It was quite simple for anyone of any talent.

 

[Father 'Suke]

Learned

[Janus Yeider]

SPOILER: Click to show

Vine Liberation (Tsuneke Kaihou)
Rank: "D" Rank
Skill: NinJutsu
Effect: Allows a Zassou member to detach one of their vines.
Special: "Hand Seals"
Drawback: Takes time to regrow.
Description: The Zassou depend on their vines but some scenarios call upon the removal of a vine. In this jutsu the user can send chakra to any particular area of the vine. The chakra will cut off any energy, life and support to that area making it weak to the point where it breaks off. After this it will take the detached vine one turn to regrow.
Limit: Must be a Zassou.

0|10 TP
100|500 TP to “C” Rank

---

It did, of course, stand to reason that the vines which I had been wielding would be quite vulnerable to grappling attacks from any enemy. It was bad enough for a man with little focus on his body arts to have to strive to keep the enemy from seizing up his limbs, but it stood to be even worse when that particular individual was using vines which would provide infinitely convenient handholds. For that reason, among others, the need to liberate myself of vines at a moment’s notice was of the utmost importance.

So, the immediate way to train this technique was the practical way. But, an absolute understanding of the theory of the thing would come in far more handy when it actually came time to do it. For it was highly possible for the rise of multiple different situations in which vine liberation was an important ability. And, with conventional practice, only one aspect of the technique would be well explored, and the application of the technique to various problems would be all but impossible.

The main bit here was to invent a way that would sever the vine. While one who has minima understanding of a tree might turn immediately towards the concept of the axe, one who knows more about the nature of plant structure and cells would know that clever things on the level of organic molecules and intricate control of the cell walls would quickly and easily sever the cell. The only real problem with the simple control of the plant’s life is the presence of a cell wall in the plant cells. Without the cell wall, it would be a simple thing to force the cells to gain more water in a targeted area and eventually be destroyed by interior water pressure. That would make the vine lose all structural integrity in the targeted area, and break off the vine.

Perhaps the technique of the aforementioned ‘axe’ would not be nearly as ineffective as I thought. It would be simpler, perhaps substantially so, to simply cleave apart the vine at a given area, and then allow the newly detached piece to fly away. It would not have been the most stylish way, and was the kind of cruel, brutal use of chakra that I had always been trying to avoid for the sake of chakra conservation for use in long battles, but simultaneously, if I had added much more complexity to my cell manipulation techniques, than the chakra efficiency would likely become even less efficient than the ‘axe.’

The vine was extended a foot out of my hand, once again using that default vanilla vine that I usually made use of when I needed to train a new technique. I then sent a tendril of chakra to pry at the areas in between cells, even looking towards the ares where the passageways for water had weakened the vine. With that weak point located, My other hand sent a blade of chakra out through the air, and when it interacted with the chakra in the vine, the spiritual energy from within my body forced the cells apart, and with a pop, the bit of vine fell right off. Considering the minimal chakra gain and relative simplicity, that technique was highly applicable to combat.

[Father 'Suke]

Learned

Now just worry about your love handles for people to grapple on and you'll be in good shape LOL

[Janus Yeider]

SPOILER: Click to show

Hand Vine Seal Control
Rank: "D, C, B" Rank
Skill: NinJutsu; Passive
Effect: Allows a Zassou member to easily form hand seals for performing jutsu while fingertip and hand palm vines are in use
Special: ---
Drawback: Cannot use hand seals with fingertip vines until this technique is learned. Must have seal control to use jutsu of equal rank.
Description: A Zassou member is able the use of fingertips and hand palm during battle however without proper training it is difficult to use hand signs while fingertip and hand palm vines are in use. The user must train in order to do this. The training is knowledge based and does not expend any chakra to use. When a user trains at a particular rank of hand seal control they are able to perform jutsus up to a certain rank. At D rank knowledge the user is able to use up to C-rank jutsus. At C-rank knowledge the Zassou can perform up to A-rank jutsu's. At B-rank knowledge the user can use up to S-rank jutsu.
Limit: Must be a Zassou.

0|10 TP
110|500 TP to "C" Rank

---

Another major issue with the vines I had been using was the fact that they interfered greatly with my ability to perform and prepare handsets for the performance of non-Zassou ninjutsu. While there existed vines not located on my hands, it was also highly improbable that those other vines would be able to do everything I needed from my vines all of the time, and so, it would instantly become important as soon as I saw legitimate combat to utilize the vines located on my fingertips. The true problem with that was the fact that I also needed to utilize those hands for handseals, and so, I would need to master the use of handseals while those vines were still extended. This was largely a physical technique, but there were also the great chance to adapt my vines for the ease of performance of handseals.

This was one of those learn-by-doing situations, so I extended all of the vines on my hand and tried to perform handseals. The first problem that I encountered was the fact that the vines from each hand rammed into each other as I went in for a simple handseal position. While a technique such as the one-handed seals would void that problem, I also knew that those were beyond the ability of even one of my ability, so I went instead with the notion of making the vines set up in a way where they don’t bump each other.

The real trick there was the lace them, and wrap them around each other. By simply allowing them to embrace their natural tendency to wrap around other plants, I could actually use some distant instruct build into the plants to try to further my goal. I forced the vines to do so, and my hands slid together as tendrils of chakra wound themselves together in the area around my hands.

Then, the true trick to this hit me. The way handsets work is as a conduit in which chakra is controlled. Their perfomance moves chakra around more swiftly by stretching out certain pathways, but it also forces them to flow around certain loops, and therefore automates the processes of most techniques to an extent. But, there was no reason that the vines would not work as equally effective, if not slightly unwieldy conduits of chakra. The vines were designed by me long ago to have chakra flow through them regularly and effectively, so they would work just as well as my fingers for the purposes of executing handseals.

And so, I began the movements through my hands. I twisted and writhed my hands. I allowed the vines to lace themselves around each other when they weren’t needed, and this got them out of the way. I snaked them out of that position when they were needed, and I oiled the surfaces with water drawn from the vine. Then, finally, I pusled chakra through one hand, into a vine, and back through to the other. It seemed the circuit was as effective as it could be. Of course, this would not work as well as hands for advanced techniques, but what can we do about that?

[Father 'Suke]

Learned, well done.

[Janus Yeider]

SPOILER: Click to show

Forgery
Rank: "E"
Skill: Skill
Effect: This skill enables the character to create duplicates of documents and handwriting and to detect such forgeries created by others.
Special: ---
Drawback: ---
Description: On a successful check, a forgery passes as genuine except by other characters who are intimately familiar with the genuine article or by other persons with the Forgery skill. On a failed check, the forger’s work is so shoddy that it cannot pass examination by anyone. To forge a document (military orders, local decrees, etc.) where the handwriting is not specific to a person, the character needs only to have seen a similar document before. To forge a name, an autograph of that person is needed, and a skill check with a -10% penalty must be successfully made. To forget a longer document written in the hand of some particular person, a large sample of his handwriting is needed and a -15% penalty is applied to the check. If the check succeeds, the work will pass examination by all except those intimately familiar with that handwriting or by those with the forgery skill who examine the document carefully. Furthermore, those with the forgery skill may examine a document to learn if it is a forgery. On a successful skill roll, the authenticity of any document can be ascertained. Look in Task Skills thread found in the Skills and Traits Index for more information. Each time learned user gets 1 die roll to increase the skill.
Limit: —

0|5 TP
0|125 SP
1 Roll

---

I was to drop by a clerk’s office for the purpose of aiding him with a specific investigation. He was trying to determine whether a large number of bank slips submitted to him in the last twenty-four hours were actually legitimate. I had caught wind of this by being acquainted with his aprentice who had recently fallen ill and was of no use to him. I had decided that my studies in the arts of chakra could wait for a day, and that my usefulness as a ninja would see more impact from an in-depth understanding of forgeries and falsified documents than it would from another day of practice in the chakra arts. In hind-sight I am of the greatest certainty that this was one of the events that threw me from the path of goodness and into that of darkness.

He greeted me with a handshake, that sweaty little man. His pale complexion was either suited to the indoor environment in which he worked, or make pale by the hours he spent in it. Regardless of that, he sat me down and handed me a small pile of bank slips. He also handed me a book full of recorded signatures of those people. He told me that the simplest way to go about identifying a forgery is side-by-side comparison. And, seems though the only part of these documents that need to be authenticated was the signature, all I needed for a writing sample was an already authenticated signature.

I looked at the first slip, signed by one Mr. John Lennon. Flipping through the book, I found the “L” section under which Lennon’s signature was recorded. The signature matched reasonably well with the sample, excepting a slightly shorter and inconsistent tail. This immediately brought me to suspicion, but I quickly realized that the pen had been low on ink throughout the entire signature, bringing a sort of variable darkness to the writing. When that became evident, the signature seemed otherwise an impeccable replica of the sample. As far as that inexperienced me could have known, this was the very image of an honest signature. And, that was a great opportunity for me to understand how to compare signatures, and how other elements can make an honest signature seem far less convincing. I made a note never to use a poorly supplies pen.

[Father 'Suke]

+5 TP
+2 SP
2|125

[Janus Yeider]

SPOILER: Click to show

Same as the above.

0|5 TP
2|125 SP
1 Roll

---

I moved the first bank slip into a pile which I designated for the placement of authentic signatures, and then I looked at the second slip. This time Dr. Andre Young had signed the document. The signature was messy, as befit one of that claimed profession. I scrutinized it before I even opened the book for a side-by-side comparison. The work seemed absolutely sloppy. I couldn’t believe it was real. It looked like some care was put into the first letters of the words, but that whoever had signed it just gave up, and hoped their scribbling attempt at a forgery would go unnoticed. No, it would not. For I had caught my first forgery of the day. What a fortuitous event?

But, I was not yet the world’s greatest authority on authenticating signatures. I decided to humor some creeping doubt inside of my psyche and check the book for Dr. Young’s actual signature. Fortunately enough for me, the “Y” section was relatively lacking. There were but a few names between my family’s and the Young family’s. I looked down at the on-record signature of Andre Young, and was shocked when I saw some similarity to the actual document.

It seems, that many actual signatures are sloppy writings with little resemblance to the actual letters. First letters though, they tend to show some definition, due to the lack of any input that may screw them up. The first letter of a name stands free, and therefore can make its mark on a page without any interference, but as the name progresses, more and more places for sloppiness degrade the quality of the writing to a mere scribble. Yes, the first letter of a name represents far more in the way of forgery than any of the other letters did. I made a note to myself that authenticating documents without an on-site writing sample was not very easy.