When the Sand Meets the Wind [training/open]

[.:Ryo:.]

[39/80]

Now that Ryo's chakra control was improving he had to find a way to move the sand that extra five meters and keep it up like that. Then the Sand Controlling would be complete until he had to learn the A-Rank of it, which actually would be coming up soon, but Ryo didn't really want to think about that. He still had to conquer the B-Rank of it, and his chakra control still wasn't at its best state for the level of ninja that Ryo claimed himself to be. He still had a long way to go, and he knew that. He got back into his normal Ninjutsu stance with his fingers pointed upward as he focussed his chakra. "Can't afford distractive thoughts now..." He closed his eyes and powered up his chakra to its maximum limit before it was unleashed in front of him, several spikes advancing down the sand. When Ryo opened his eyes he saw that they were much larger than him, towering over him actually.

He had discovered something quite unique. When he unleashed this technique in a full blast it went in several spikes ahead of him. That demonstrated very precise chakra control, but then Ryo should be able to send the spikes down in every direction, right? He just had to be able to unleash the chakra he built up inside of him in every direction. Right now he could only unleash it to in front of him. With practice he should be able to do a full fifty percent barrage and, finally, unleash it to every spot, even his blind spots. He put his fingers together and powered up his chakra, but this process would take much longer than usual.

Sand Control was no easy feat, even for someone learning it at age twenty, thirty, forty, or even fifty! It always takes time, determination, and concentration. Older people aren't strong enough to learn it usually and younger people give up because they are so impatient. Only the patient, powerful, and wise ever master it. And Ryo considered himself to be pretty powerful and wise. The patient part he wasn't so keen on. He continued to power up the chakra, but it was going to take much longer than before. He had to generate it in every part of his body so that it would go in every direction. Before he just had to worry about concentrating it in front of him. But, this time when he closed his eyes, he got a completely different picture than usual.

A mental map (similar to that of the Sand Conversion mental map) formed in his head. It showed himself as the center of attention with red arrows pointing in front of him. That was where his current level of chakra was currently fixated. A red arrow pointed above him. That was the next spot where he had to concentrate. Ryo's fingers tensed up as he felt the chakra strain throughout his body. He bit his bottom lip and continued, unwilling to give up just because he was feeling some pain. Everybody felt pain... Another red arrow pointed downward now as he concentrated on that particular spot, the chakra inside of him desperate to be unleashed. It was like the chakra was asking him to allow it to come out.

It's not easy to keep chakra inside of your body, especially when the technique you're doing takes a lot of chakra but you have to build it up in yourself over the duration of sixty seconds. Ryo quickly lost that thought and went back to the map he had forged inside of his head. He saw a few more red arrows pointing behind him now as his lips curved into that of a smirk, a small stream of rid on his lip from where he had been biting down. His eyes blasted open as he screamed at the top of his lungs, the chakra unleashing in every direction in the form of violent waves like those of an ocean, but it was much more controlled than that.

The spikes, waves, or whatever you'd call them were at least seven feet tall and one foot wide. There were four in the front, one on one side, one on the other side, and four behind him, all going in a straight direction through the desert. Like the Sand Arm technique, they didn't travel through the sand, but they glided over it. They were spiked at the top, hence why Ryo called them spikes basically. They moved like a shuriken, except it was flat at the bottom since it couldn't actually be a perfect wheel or circle. They hit the thirty mark and kept going. Past the thirty-five... Thirty-six... Thirty-eight... And all of them stopped at thirty-nine all at once, refusing to go past, no matter how much Ryo wanted to rid himself of this technique.

"Close..." He muttered. "But not close enough, sad to say." He pushed his fingers tighter together and thought just about the front now, as if concentrating on one particular area would push them forward even more. The red arrows pointed right ahead as Ryo let the chakra explode insdie of him. The waves emitted more quicker than before, but it still stopped at the thirty-nine mark. "They won't go any further not because I'm stretching my chakra thin... But because if I master one spike... I master them all..." He slowly realized this as he put his hands back together and just unleashed one, massive spike, but it also stopped at the thirty-nine mark. "I'll get all of them to forty soon enough..."

[.:Ryo:.]

[??/80]

Still in disbelief over his own jutsu, Ryo shrugged and straightened his back, hoping that fixing his own physical appearance would somehow help his techniques overall. He put his fingers together and kept his head up, his eyes shut though. "Focus... My... Chakra..." He said slowly as he pushed all of his chakra in every direction inside of his body, taking deep breaths as he did so. The red arrows were going in every direction once more, Ryo thinking that if he pushed spikes in every direction that he would somehow get better results. "And..." He said as the chakra reached the brink of its power, unable to get any larger.

"UNLEASH!" He yelled out as his eyes snapped open like before when he had released the large amount of chakra within him. The spikes wheeled over each other and hit the edge of the sand pool at the thirty-eight mark. "Now I'm just going backward... Great..." He said as he scratched the back of his head, still unsure of what to do to fix himself. "I guess I just need better chakra control," he said with a shrug of his shoulders. He put his fingers together and moved the chakra around his body. He started with the bottom part of his body: the toes, feet, ankles, and legs. After that were the fingertips, hands, wrists, arms, and shoulders. Then you have the stomach and chest. And finally the neck and, most importantly, the head (or the brain, more simply put).

His toes tingled, sending a feeling kinda like being tickled, but not as obvious. It was like a feeling of happiness or sadness, only in a more passive way. It was really impossible for Ryo to describe, no matter how much he thought about it. The chakra moved in a circular motion through his toes until it wanted to be pushed elsewhere. Obeying it, Ryo moved it up through his ankles and moved it in another circular motion, his eyes closing as he created a mental map of his body and bone structure now. He zoomed in on his ankles and thought of his chakra as that of a bluish-green color.

It swirled around wildly and rapidly, having no real specific movement except to stay in the feet and ankles and not move any more north until Ryo wanted it to move more. He pushed it through his feet and to his knees, where it swirled around more. One might say that this really had no purpose at all, but Ryo knew differently. Sand Control is all about chakra control and if you can't control your chakra in one location then you can't control it anywhere else. If you want your chakra in your feet but it somehow goes to your chest and shoulders then you won't be able to successfully complete techniques that require strict chakra discipline. If Ryo mastered this now then he wouldn't have to relearn it until Sand Control A-Rank, which he was trying not to worry about, at least not now.

He zoomed in on the upper part of his legs, feeling the chakra stimulate upward and toward his groin and, for obvious reasons, he stopped it just short of that particular location. In the spikes used to determine the level of his Sand Control, Ryo knew he had to keep chakra flowing in different locations at the same time. So, he kept the chakra going in his legs while he moved to his hands. The chakra still floating around his legs, Ryo started the next flow of chakra at the fingertips and moved to the hands, the feeling tickling his palms. He let out a slight chuckle as the chakra quickly flowed through his wrists and up to his elbows. This was more rapid than usual, but it was nothing extreme. It hit his shoulders and Ryo stopped it there.

Now this is where things got a lot harder. He had to keep the chakra flowing in two places at once while he started a flow separate from both of these. Then he had to combine the flow of all three while starting a fourth one in the neck... And then he had to combine that fourth flow to the main flow, and that main flow was the three separate ones previous to the fourth one. It was extremely difficult for Ryo to explain, even to himself, but he knew what he meant. He started around his belly button, generating chakra to the best of his ability there. Without warning, the chakra moved straight up to the chest and attempted to go up through the neck, but Ryo stopped it as soon as it tried to enter. With a sigh of relief, he thought about each of the three flows and connected them. It was like a bridge connecting two landmasses, except he did it in a very quick motion.

"And now for my brain..." And that's the most difficult...

[Akemi]

+10+
+9+

.58/80.

[.:Ryo:.]

[58/80 - 3 posts left hopefully]

Now, there is a very big problem in what Ryo was doing, and he knew the problem from the very beginning. He had combined all of the chakra so far from his neck to the rest of his body, but now came his brain. He had to keep all of his current chakra stimulating and flowing at an above-average rate while he also applied the same method to his brain. That is nearly an impossible task and Ryo wasn't even sure if he could do it. But... He thought of it as a nearly impossible task, not a fully impossible one. He smirked as he created a mental map of just the brain now, zooming in on each and every one of the regions that he could think of.

Ryo didn't know every part of the brain. He wasn't a medical ninja and, frankly, he just didn't really care enough about the parts of the body to worry about it. But he zoomed in on it and thought about it very hard before applying chakra to it. The chakra steadily flowed up the neck to the brain, but it was denied. It had gone in a straight line up the chin, past the nose, and right up to the forehead before proceeding inward. But it all came trickling back down to the top of the neck, and Ryo wasn't exactly sure why. His fingers sweating from being tightened together so many times, he tried again, but tried in a slightly different manner.

He made three lines of pure chakra run from his neck. One proceeded up the left side, up the left cheek, and up to the scalp. Another went up the right side, up the right cheek, and to the top of the head before going into the scalp. And the third went the most direct route by first going into the mouth and then another part went to the forehead and scalp like Ryo had tried the first time. Using this multiple-pronged 'attack,' so to speak, Ryo was able to gain entry into the brain by way of chakra. But really, what did this mean? He had gotten into the brain, so now all he had to do was actually get chakra to reach every place inside of his head. And that wasn't impossible, but it was close enough.

The chakra ran throughout the left side of the brain, through Ryo off for several minutes before he stabilized himself enough to run chakra through the right side. Now came the awfully boring and dreadful task of actually unleashing all the chakra that was flowing through the body, and this was equally hard as getting chakra to the brain. As stated before, the chakra wants to explode after it builds up for a long time, but it, as well as the user, grow accustomed to keeping the chakra built up inside of the body. If you keep it like this for long enough (Ryo had it like that for fifteen or twenty minutes) then the user might not care if the chakra is unleashed or not, becoming passive about it.

Ryo had tried to avoid this, but had fallen into the trap. With his eyes closing once more, he kept his fingers out in front of him, bending his arms at the elbows. He felt the power radiating within him, his veins and muscles twisting and bending unnaturally as he felt the explosion coming on very greatly within him. There were several seconds of twisting, tormenting pain that was unavoidable, but this time it was worth it. The torture was worth it for once as one single word left Ryo's lips, and that was the key word to this entire, very long process. The sand reacted to it right away, the Sand Control technique nearly mastered in Ryo's mind. "RELEASE!"

And, with that single, powerful word, all of the sand around Ryo picked itself up and rose to heights unimaginable. It wasn't just one spike of sand or ten spikes of sand, but the entire pool of chakra-infested sand picked itself up and dragged itself upward and outward in a very swift manner, even surprising Ryo, but he had been doing that a lot more and more recently. This time there was no need to keep feeding the chakra. There had been such an enormous build-up that it fed itself for the next sixty seconds, the sand not once falling until that minute was up. And then everything fell, including Ryo. But he was impressed by himself...

[.:Ryo:.]

[??/80 - 2 left with any luck]

Not sure if he had passed out or not, Ryo eventually got back to his feet and put his fingers together. He had unleashed every bit of chakra within him, but by resting (still, not sure how long he had been resting), he had regained much of it. He was even more impressed by himself since he had basically mastered chakra control, and at such a low stage as a gennin. He was only D-Ranked out of all the shinobi in the world, but he was growing up to be quite the fighter. Getting out of this cocky stage, Ryo put his fingers together and got back into his Ninjutsu fighting stance.

The good thing was that now he didn't have to worry about going through every bit and part of his body in order to make sure the chakra was flowing properly. It was like second nature now. He just had to think about controlling the sand and it was done without another thought registered. His eyes open, Ryo silently sent a mental message to his chakra, which dictated the sand at the moment. The sand moved itself out to the thirty-five meter mark and tried to force itself onto the full forty meters, but Ryo still couldn't do it. He had strained his body too much and was shaking a lot now. He collapsed onto his knees.

Unwilling to just get pissed off, he got back onto his feet and sighed, trying one more time... Only this time... He was pissed off... He moved both of his hands up high into the air and did a variation of the Sliding Sand Wave, only this time it was more like a mini-tidal wave. It formed itself into the shape of a ten-foot tall, non-aggressive wave as Ryo looked up to it and continued to feed it both sand and his chakra from his body. The chakra left his body and transferred into the sand in order to keep it 'alive,' so to speak. Ryo looked at his masterpiece and smiled to himself, knowing that this time he had definitely conquered the jutsu.

The entire technique crashed down upon the desert floor, a bit of a tremor coming Ryo's way, but he caught himself with ease. The pool of sand had definitely made its mark at the forty meters and didn't stop short at all. Ryo knew he wasn't done yet, but he was very, very close to getting there. Another ten minutes or so and it would be fully complete. But first, he wanted to do something a bit more fun. He moved the sand around in a circle, smirking now. He was very happy that he had learned Sand Control in a forty meter radius total. He never knew he had it in him...

Ryo spread both of his arms out into the air, a breeze picking up which ruffled his hair. He spun around and the sand did the same, becoming a whirlpool. Ryo laughed madly as he became the center, the eye, of the whirlpool, the sand rotating around him. He was the master, and the sand was his servant, or maybe it was the other way around. It didn't matter either way because Ryo respected the sand and the sand respected him. The whirlpool reached a very great height before the funnel was finally ended with Ryo still laughing in the center of it. "I couldn't be happier..."

[psyche]

--- +8
--- + 6
72|80

[.:Ryo:.]

[72/80 - Let's end this!]

To combine everything you know into one, collective training session is no easy feat, even by the most talented of shinobi. But Ryo could do it... If he could remember everything that he had done so far and then combine it. He put his fingers together and formed another mental map on his head of the surrounding area. This map sort of... minimized as another map popped up next to it. This one was of Ryo's body. The maps were identical to the ones that he had used before. This was a skill that could also serve the boy well in combat. He shrugged his shoulders and put his hands together, getting ready to finish this technique once in for all!

Chakra began to build up in his toes and feet, eventually spreading to his ankles, only the process was much faster than before. Red arrows suddenly appeared in the other mental map, pointing directly in front of Ryo. It was an aerial view so it wasn't exactly easy to see, but he managed. As the arrows pointed forward and showed the exact distance in meters, in the other map the chakra was building up past the knees. The more chakra that built up in one picture, the further the arrows would go in the other picture. By analyzing both Ryo could see exactly how much chakra he would need for this technique.

Since he had already done this once, Ryo built up chakra in both of his arms simultaneously, the arrows to the side appearing and spreading out quickly. But all of these arrows didn't reach the full forty meter distance that was required for the B-Rank of Sand Control. Pushing aside that thought, Ryo pushed the chakra into his stomach and forced it into a whirlpool there since the stomach, chest, and head were the hardest parts. He wanted to spend more time on these body parts then the arms, legs, hands, and other parts. He then moved the chakra up to his chest and neck, watching the red arrows in the back appear.

And, finally, the chakra pushed into the brain and managed to stay there on the first try, just reinforcing the chakra control that Ryo had taught himself during the course of this training. When the chakra moved into his head, however, the arrows showed the full forty distance. That meant that the chakra in the head just reinforced the chakra in the other body parts, giving an advantage like a longer sand control distance. Not feeling like he was yet powerful enough to unleash the might of this jutsu, Ryo continued to build up the chakra until it was at its limit and he was forced to unleash it.

The explosion was akin to that of earlier. It sent the sand rolling over the forty meter distance as Ryo's eyes sprang open and watched the sand move out, but this time it was somehow different. He couldn't place it, but it was... just different. It had a way that it moved that showed off how Ryo had mastered this technique. He shrugged his shoulders and watched the various waves crash down upon the ground and give the giant sand pool much more distance. It had taken a lot out of Ryo and he was glad that he had mastered it. It was definitely worth it and would most likely pay off in the future.

Once all of the chakra-waves were finished, Ryo held out both of his hands and unleashed the rest of his chakra into the sand. He had to make sure that the sand would stay at the forty meter mark and not retreat like it had been doing most of the time. He was confident in his abilities that it would stay there so he didn't waste too much time on this. "I... Am done..."

[pandoru]

+8

Learned.

[.:Ryo:.]

Doujou Kirikae no Jutsu (Soil Conversion Technique)
Rank: "C", "B", "A", "S"
Skill: NinJutsu
Effect: When the user does not have sand for them to use in a vast amount for Jutsus the user is capable of taking what sand that they do have to convert materials around them to create more sand. Depending on the type of rank the user is capable of learning this the user is capable of converting different types of material. The higher the rank is the stronger the material the user can convert. When first learned the user is capable of using components from the ground of soft soil to transform into sand. The user is capable of converting two meters of Sand per post when they learn the C Rank version of this technique. When the user learns the B Rank version of this technique the user is capable of transforming small rocks into sand and is capable of creating sand within three meters per round. When the user learns the A Rank version of this technique the user is capable of transforming hard rock into sand and is capable of converting within four meters per round. The S Rank version allows the user to convert sand from concrete and even weak metals into sand as well as the capability of converting sand within five meters.
Special: ---
Drawback: The largest drawback is that it takes time to be capable of doing such a thing as well as it takes an abundance amount of chakra in order to perform this technique. This technique should be used only if the user needs to use as a last chance for a large move. Also the user must know certain ranks of Sand Control in order to go into this tree.
Description: ---
Limit: Must have the Sand Release. To Learn C Rank user must know C Rank Sand Control. In order to learn B Rank the usr must know B Rank Sand Control. In order to learn A Rank the user must know A Rank Sand Control. In order to learn S Rank the user must know S Rank Sand Control.

[0/80 - Going for the B-Rank]

Location, Location, LOCATION! Ryo screamed it into his head while he sat, Indian-style, in his pool of sand. He had his eyes shut, his mind racing through the ground, providing something similar to a video feed, though the quality wasn't really the best. This technique is very similar to the Sand Control technique simply because when learning it you have to have deep concentration and good chakra control. Ryo had been working on both of those things and had proved to be very capable when learning the B-Rank of Sand Control. Now he just had to master the B-Rank of Conversion and the A-Rank of Control and he would be golden.

"First thing's first... Create a better picture..." The one currently in Ryo's head was very fuzzy and distorted. He slowly allowed the flow of chakra from the rest of his body to strengthen when it came his head. There was no need for an 'explosion' this time because all he had to do was keep the flow going in strong and keep the chakra built up in there. That caused the sight of the ground below Ryo's feet to become much clearer so that he could see the smallest rocks, pebbles, and minerals. If he couldn't see them then how could he expect to ever convert them into the sand he would need for high-ranking techniques?

And now came the part of slicing all these rocks and things up in order to obtain the sand from them. Ryo concentrated very hard in finding as many rocks as possible, even though his current limit was only two meters of sand. The B-Rank of this would enable him to use three meters of sand which, in all reality, isn't that much, but it's better than nothing and Ryo knew that. Pushing his fingers tighter together in order to strengthen the flow of chakra, Ryo found groups of rocks all over the place, but didn't start the fracturing and slicing stage yet. He continued to find more... and more... and more... STOP! That's enough.

Many of the small rocks, just pebbles and such, were immediately fractured and broken into bite-sized pieces, the sand coming together underground, but not coming to the surface quite yet. The ones Ryo classified as medium-sized were still slowly cracking and breaking into small pieces, but he hadn't quite finished yet. Once the first fracture was made it didn't take very long for the rest of the rock to just fall apart or crumble. So, the only problem Ryo would run into was when he couldn't get that first cut made because the thing he was trying to cut was either too strong, big, or heavy, though all three of those things usually describe one thing.

The medium-sized rocks were broken and the sand combined underground, forming a massive whirlpool that Ryo remembered when he did the C-Rank of this training. He now focussed in on some of the larger rocks underground and looked around in his mental map for more, but couldn't find any. Though Ryo had no idea how they got there, there were some metal underground. He would've tried to use them since one chunk of metal would provide a pretty good amount of sand, but breaking metal took a lot more skill than Ryo actually had. He doubted he would ever get to that level. Satisfied that he had found adequate rocks, Ryo began to break the bigger ones now.

Ryo stood up and broke his stance, moving his hands around in a circle, spreading his feet out. He was demonstrating to himself what the sand was doing underground. It was moving around in a giant circle, looking like a whirlpool, only made out of sand and not water obviously. It continued to move around in this giant circle as Ryo brought his hands up and felt a very slight, but existent tremor shook his feet. He shrugged it off and, in one very fast motion, moved both of his hands up. Like the training that he had done earlier, all of the sand came up through the ground and covered the surrounding area.

"This training is too similar to what I had done earlier... I need to strengthen it... Now the question is 'how?' " He muttered to himself as he sat back down and pondered the question.

[Koori.]

Im assuming you already have the C rank version, If not you gotta learn that first. If so-
+7

7/80

[.:Ryo:.]

[7/80 - I have the C-Rank down, did it earlier in this thread]

"What's that?" Ryo muttered as he looked over his shoulder and rose his eyebrow to three kids who were walking toward him. "More of them?" He got up and crossed his arms, making sure his gourd was near him. The concentration between himself above the ground and the rocks under the ground was still very much alive. He was currently in that process known as 'location' where he just went through the ground in search for rocks that met his specific requirements. Couldn't be too small, couldn't be too large. Each time he did this stage of the training Ryo upped the requirements so that he could get better at knowing what the best types of rocks were.

"You broke our leader up pretty bad..." One of the kids said, who Ryo knew wasn't the Taijutsu user from before, but he definitely looked like a very bad-ass Taijutsu user. Ryo nodded, keeping a silence about himself as not to give too much away. "You'll pay!" He ran forward at an impressive speed, but it didn't matter. Ryo had been splicing the rocks since this punk had started talking, draining the hard, solid objects of all the sand. It was surprising how much a small rock could give you so much sand. Ryo smirked as the sand quickly came to the surface and bent at Ryo' swill, trapping the kid so that he fell onto his face.

"Dude, you can't beat somebody who uses what's in the ground to defeat you, get over it." Ryo shook his head and looked at the other two, crossing his arms. And then Ryo went back into the ever long process of locating the damned rocks. He had gotten to the point where his mental map had extended over a very long distance. He noticed that there was a specific pattern among the minerals. The same rocks occurred at the same elevation in every location unless Ryo had already gained the sand from them and moved on. He realized that if this fight was going to take much longer he would have to relocate so that he wouldn't run out of sand.

The other two were much more hesitant in their attacks. One of them went off to the right, who was immediately snatched by the shackles and then a giant hand went over them just like Ryo had done to their leaders. He was surprised that he was able to keep up both the Conversion technique and make other jutsus, but he was basically just relearning the C-Rank of the Conversion technique with more rocks to crack and bigger rocks to crack. "So, just another Tai user? That's a bit disappointing." Ryo did a flash of handseals and felt his chakra stimulate as the sand moved through the ground and came up to lock the third, and final, opponent.

The chakra within Ryo's body felt the same as the sand that crawled up through the ground. The sand moved like a snake through the ground. The rocks had been slit open, yes, but that wasn't the hard part. The hard part was finding the best route to take the sand through. If there was a giant boulder in the way of the sand then it obviously had to travel around it, but if there was some sort of wall in the way then.... well, what do you do? Ryo had to make these decisions in the middle of a battle too, which put more strain on his body than he really cared for. Plus, if his body strained, then the chakra within his body would just be harder to move around and control, throwing off every technique in his arsenal.

The chakra slithered around his body as the sand did. If the sand got stuck somewhere then the chakra would hold up, which screwed up the chakra flow in the rest of Ryo's body, which throws off the entire chakra system. If that happens, which often does in training processes, Ryo just quickly reformats all of his chakra systems and begins again. If the sand continued to move in a continuous line around the rocks then the chakra would keep flowing as well. If the sand decided to split up and go in two different directions then the chakra would also split up, and Ryo would have to either split up his concentration half and half or concentrate harder on both, putting more chakra into it.

Eventually, the sand always finds a way around whatever obstacle is in the way since Ryo had gotten used to things getting in his way underground. After it got around the obstacle then it can quickly travel to the top of the desert because sand flows well through more sand. So, the entire process ends up something like this: Location of the rocks is found, splitting of the rock occurs, the sand forms a very large cloud, the sand starts to find its way through the ground to the top, it gets around anything in its way, and it comes to the top and does whatever the chakra (which is commanded by Ryo, of course) commands it to do, like turning into shackles to immobilize an opponent.

The only one that wasn't surprised by Ryo's moves was the last one that he had cuffed; the one that hadn't tried to move. All of a sudden the same technique that Ryo had used came up to lock his own feet in. "Well... That's odd... But I guess it makes sense..." He said with a shrug, but suddenly his concentration within his Soil Conversion technique was completely thrown off. "WELL SHIT! Looks like this fight will be equal..." Ryo said, realizing this enemy sand manipulator had actually cut off his own flow of sand. He quickly reestablished his connection, desperately trying to convert more sand, but it was a feeble attempt. He had been cut off...

[.:Ryo:.]

[??/80]

This is definitely not an ideal situation for any sand manipulator, so the question stands: What do you do when encountering a person who can cut off your own techniques? Do you keep cutting theirs off until one of you gets too weary and chakra-deprived that they pass out? Ryo had noticed that this kid hadn't used the Great Sand Arm so he probably wasn't a Ninjutsu Master or he just wasn't as far into his training as Ryo was. Ryo continued to push his mind into the ground beneath him, finding where his enemy had been splicing the rocks and quickly disrupting both the flow of sand and the flow of chakra.

It was funny when both members of the fight were cuffed to the ground and were standing with their eyes closed, middle and index fingers pointed skyward. Ryo quickly began to splice into the rocks and, this time at least, his technique out did his opponents... Or so he thought. He had done it very fast and got around two and a half meters of sand, but on the way back up to the surface his enemy's own sand and chakra had sliced right through the middle so that barely any sand came up when Ryo tried to call on it. He sighed and made a much larger mental map so that he could pick several locations to run Soil Conversion at simultaneously.

Now, this is where Ryo's chakra really suffered because it was stretched so thinly that he couldn't keep up with all of it at the same time. He drilled mentally into the ground and found an abundance of rocks in this spot, which is exactly what he had been anticipating. But meanwhile some ten or fifteen meters away was another field of rocks and minerals that also needed Ryo's attention. When he switched over he lost concentration on one field but gained concentration on another one. Also, in this switch of concentration and everything, he lost at least half of his fields since the switching of concentration also took some chakra out of Ryo.

The rocks were eventually sliced in five of the original fields, which was very good considering the amount of chakra and concentration it actually takes out of a sand manipulator. The process was nowhere near done though since the enemy wasn't just sitting around on his ass. Ryo began to bring the sand up to the surface when four out of five of the strands were completely cut off, bringing Ryo's complete attention to that last flow. He sighed as it came up and hardened the shackles, also creating some sand shuriken which were used to slice up the punk that had challenged Ryo.

"You'll never win... I'm working on the A-Rank of this technique..." Ryo sighed... He was a rank behind this kid? What a drag...

[Umehara]

+8
+5
20/70

[.:Ryo:.]

[20/80 - Last day of the month, let's see how much I can get done, eh?]

Match for match. Sand for sand. Chakra for chakra. Ryo sighed to himself as he continued to pour his entire body and mind into what was miles beneath his feet, his head aching and throbbing from the amount of chakra he had been exerting. And this punk, this son of a bitch, was outdoing him in every thing that had to do with the Soil Conversion technique. It was pathetic on Ryo's part because this fight should be near a conclusion... But it wasn't. He was stuck here with almost no chakra in his body because all of it was underneath him. Pushing aside that thought, he strained his body again, feeling the veins in his arms make a 'pop' sound.

Eyes closed, he reformed at least a dozen mental maps. "I have you this time..." Ryo muttered as the chakra slithered through the top, soft sand and into the cold, hard rocks a mile or two further down. "That's done," he said, feeling his chakra string broken in six of the twelve places. He moved the other six at phenomenal paces, making up for lost time as they dove straight into the ground. The mental camera (it was now moving so fast that it didn't even seem like a map) moved with the chakra and the sand, going much further down into the ground than Ryo thought he was able to do.

It was fuzzy at first, but it began to get clearer. Once the sand moved to a certain spot the camera was able to uncover that spot and see exactly what was there in a, more or less, clear picture. Then the camera would stop, as would the sand, and it would turn back into the map that Ryo had originally known. Clusters of red dots appeared all over the place, but these weren't really noted, at least not right now. A few clusters of yellow dots appeared. Then there were green, and purple. The red dots were the smallest rocks, the yellow were medium-sized, the green were larger, and the purple were practically boulders. First Ryo would try the purple (unsuccessfully for the most part), then the green (better chance here), yellow (gets easier each time), and then the red (so easy).

That was done in less than a minute. The sand from each six streams shot out in all different directions, heading to the rocks that would provide them with the most sand to start out with. Then they would go down in size from there until the sand provided was enough to keep Ryo content for the duration of the battle or training or whatever he was doing. The sand, not loosing any momentum, hit the heaviest rocks with a crash, but this wasn't felt besides in Ryo's head. It was miles beneath the ground, how could one feel it? He slowly wedged the chakra into the heaviest of materials, wasting no time since his enemy was, without a doubt, also on the move.

The sand went through any and all cracks in the rock, if there were any, and then expanded outward until the rocks were broken up. Then the broken up pieces would be broken up into smaller pieces so that more sand could be taken from them. If there were no cracks in the rocks in the first place then it might be forgotten if it was too large, or Ryo would keep trying until he finally cracked it. "Another," Ryo said, feeling his sand streams minimize down to five. "He's tracking me," Ryo whispered to himself. He sighed as he gathered up his sand beneath the ground, running out of rocks to split.

He was almost done, but not quite yet. And now he was down to four. Entire body trembling, Ryo moved both of his hands up so that the sand shot straight up from beneath the ground, delayed only a little bit in getting to the surface of the ground. It came up right in front of his opponent's face, then Ryo did a few quick handseals and turned them into shuriken, watching them come down and slice the boy's legs up. Whatever he was working on was finished with this move as he fell to his knees and looked at Ryo with both anger and frustration since he obviously still couldn't free himself from the shackles. "You'll lose to me!" Ryo barked.

A new symbol appeared in the mental legend of Ryo's mental map. His own sand and chakra streams had never appeared on the map because he knew where he was going with them, but now a new chakra and sand source appeared. It was yellow... And there at least fifteen of them... They were his enemy's. "Oh, well isn't that interesting..." Ryo quickly flicked his wrists around, pointing his fingers in different ways and directions. His eyes were closed, but he was directing his sand and chakra beneath the ground, cutting all of the sand streams into halves and quarters. He opened his eyes and looked at his opponent. "You lose..."

[.:Ryo:.]

[??/80]

Shoot. Hit. Direct Hit. The sand streams shot out, but streams of the main streams also broke off. Some of the side streams ran and intersected the enemy's streams, preventing him from converting sand, which was almost like a side-technique of learning Soil Conversion. But the main streams were the ones still converting the soil into rich sand used to defeat the enemy and make the battle that much shorter. Ryo smirked as he now knew what his opponent had been doing to him the entire battle, but he had taken a long time to figure it all out, so that one question still stood out in Ryo's mind: Am I too late? Never.

Ryo's opponent, that punk, had been slicing into Ryo's sand and chakra so that he couldn't convert sand. But while his enemy had been doing that, he had also been collecting his own sand for his own offensive techniques and jutsus. But, if Ryo assumed that all to be correct, then where was all the sand that his enemy had been building it up? He shrugged to himself, knowing that he wouldn't be able to escape the claws closing in on his small frame. The sand continued to build up under ground while his opponent was stuck with no sand at all, all of his chakra and sand streams having been cut off in a radius at least a five mile circle around the pair.

And, with all of the enemy's streams out of the picture, Ryo had nothing to worry about as he collected his own mass of sand. All of the biggest rocks were split and sliced into tiny pieces, all of the sand going into a cloud-like form underground, still not ready to erupt above ground. Then the pieces of the big rocks that had already been slit were spliced again and again until the original rock parts were just particles underground, too small to be seen even with the most accurate of eyes. Even a creature with remarkable vision would have a difficult time seeing the rock particles when Ryo was done with them. He was getting much better.

The sand erupted like a volcano out of the ground, Ryo's eyes snapping open. As soon as the proper seals were made, the sand was formed into a giant claw and was brought down on the kid with no remorse. As this was going on, Ryo had to remain training so he reformed his own mental map and continued to convert the soil beneath his feet. The kid, however, was not at all about to accept defeat. He formed his own seals and slammed his hand on the ground, a dome forming around the kid, protecting himself from the claw. Ryo's eyes split open as he had learned that jutsu himself... He sighed.

"This is getting old dude," Ryo said as he closed his eyes and slammed his fingers back together, not at all liking the situation he had somehow gotten himself in. The same colors were back into the madman's head, only this time he didn't even worry about anything smaller than a large rock. His own sand shot forward and into the rocks, only this time when it hit, it cracked the shell surrounding the rock and went to the center, where any bit of sand was completely drained out and brought into another swirling sand cloud beneath the surface of the planet. But this time Ryo had learned from his past mistakes.

He also formed a huge defensive circle around where he was performing the Conversion technique so that if his opponent tried to get through, he would find himself just feeding Ryo's own sand. The circle was very thick and protected every centimeter of sand that was beneath the ground on Ryo's behalf. After the conversion was complete, the converted sand moved to the surface and went inside of the dome where his opponent was. They were all formed into shuriken and sliced into the boy's skin as he screamed out in pain. Ryo just laughed as he continued to convert the soil below him into pure sand.

The kid tried to cancel out the dome technique, but Ryo had used his own sand to glue the dome shut. Meanwhile, he converted more and more soil into sand and brought the sand into the dome where it was changed into sand shuriken and sliced up the boy until Ryo grew tired of this game and thought he should end it. He split one very large rock up and brought all of the sand into the dome where it formed one giant blade. It went straight through the boy's throat before he had any time to prevent it. "Now... It's over..." Ryo said as he let the dome fall limp, showing the dead sand boy. "Serves him right..."

[Spamato]

+10
+10
40/80

[.:Ryo:.]

[40/80 - Let's try to finish this tonight]

Both of the Taijutsu users from the petty gang had been let go since their leader and now apparently their sand manipulator had both been defeated. The leader wouldn't be out of the hospital for a few months and the sand manipulator had suffered a tragic death at the hands of Ryo, who was gloating with happiness. He had gone back into his Indian-style seat with his fingers put together pointing skyward. His head was tilted down slightly and both of his eyes were closed. He was obviously in deep concentration, but it wasn't with the ground this time. It was within himself... It was with his chakra yet again.

He had discovered that there were multiple ways to stimulant and negate chakra within the body so it only made sense that there were multiple ways to go about a technique, like Soil Conversion or Sand Control. Ryo had been testing and experimenting and had also figured out that there was not just one best way to do things. Each way had a drawback and a gain or it had something unique about it that made it worth training that way. Ryo hadn't decided which way was the best so he just alternated between all of them. The only reason he cared about the chakra techniques at all was because it was vital to his training. If he didn't control his chakra then both Sand Control and Soil Conversion wouldn't even be possible.

The sand slithered through the ground as the chakra moved through the body, more like a snake than anything else. Once the sand had located a decent rock then the chakra would stop and come out of Ryo's body and force itself into the sand. The chakra moved the sand into the rock and it was the chakra, not the sand, that forced the sand to expand and eventually crack the rocks. If Ryo put enough chakra into the rock then it would split that much faster, but when he was splitting dozens of rocks at the same time it was hard to concentrate a lot of chakra on just one rock or just one cluster of minerals.

Then the chakra inside of the converted sand would expand and expand until the sand formed a giant circle resembling a cloud. The chakra continued to force the sand outward until there was absolutely no way to expand the particles in the sand anymore. If he stretched the sand too far then the particles would be invisible to the human eye and would be essentially weightless so Ryo would have no need to use them at all. Vice-versa, if Ryo didn't expand the sand open enough then it would be useless since it would only be a tiny bit of sand available for use. So the cloud formed underground and then there was a slight delay where Ryo regathered his chakra inside of his body to make the trip back up.

Once the chakra was regathered and grouped within Ryo's body he was prepared to take the sand back to the surface. The chakra moved in a straight line up the body until it reached the top where it was forced to break through. Tiny explosions of chakra occurred here because he had to force the sand to break through the soft sand and into the regular ground and air, which didn't seem difficult, but it was one of the things that Ryo struggled with in particular. He rose his hands up, all of his fingers curved at the end, indicating that he was bringing the rest of the sand up.

All of the sand spurted up at once as Ryo's eyes looked at all of it, scanning over it. He smiled and stood up, happy to see that his chakra connection and his connection with his sand was improving and maintaining a strong appearance. But it was still only two and a half or two and three quarters of sand instead of the three meters that he was supposed to be able to obtain from the B-Rank of the Soil Conversion series. He sighed to himself, thinking that if he couldn't do this then how was he ever supposed to get Sand Control A-Rank down? He sighed and put his fingers back together. He was standing up now, but his chakra flow just proved to be stronger now.

All of his chakra went straight into the ground, nineteen or twenty strands of sand streaming straight down a mile, two miles, or something like that. His mental map had just blanked out until he got to a comfortable distance underground, then it had come back up to show him the location of all the good rocks and minerals. But all the chakra Ryo had put into the technique suddenly backfired as he fell backward, a pain shooting up into his head and down throughout his body. He had put too much strain on his veins and the chakra in them had threatened to burst completely. "Too... much..."

[.:Ryo:.]

[??/80]

Playing with chakra enough, even by the weakest ninjutsu user, made aware to them how much chakra they really needed in each technique. Ryo sat, surrounded by his sand, and put an extreme amount of chakra into his Soil Conversion technique, and that was where the backfire started. The mental map of Ryo's body was put back into his head, his eyes closing for the moment. He needed to understand his body before he could fully master this technique, and he knew that. The chakra built up in his body and got too large for his body to maintain, so it exploded within the body like a great implosion, rocking the body and causing a considerable amount of pain.

The pain could even cause an arm to be useless if the chakra supply was large enough within the body during the implosion. There was a reason that most techniques required an outward explosion and not an inward one. It was because the body could only take a certain amount of beating before it was forced to push the chakra in another direction besides inwardly. But if the user didn't use enough chakra then there would be no results at all, inside or outside. Most of the time Ryo used too much chakra, which could cause an inward explosion or the outward explosion would be too violent to control.

The mental map zoomed out and Ryo came back into reality. He created a very detailed map within his head of the entire area. It was mostly just a flat desert with the Hidden Sand Village and the Wind Capital City, but the Wind Country was huge in comparison to many other countries. And, even though the top was all sand and desert, underneath all of that was a vast supply of rocks that could be spliced and slit open to provide the rare sand manipulators a source for their techniques. Ryo was searching all over the entire country for minerals and rocks that he could use to perform his jutsus.

After creating a radius over a large distance, Ryo figured out the details of every piece and inch of land. Everything then went a few feet underground where it was all still sand and nothing could be broken open to give Ryo the things he needed. He went further underground and saw small rocks that wouldn't give him much sand, so he went further down where the largest rocks were so that he could start the process of slicing into them once again. This process had been reduced time-wise for quite some time since Ryo had to do it nearly every time he trained for this damned Conversion technique.

But this time he had figured out a new, faster, and more efficient way to splice open the rocks. He spun both his chakra and the sand in the form of a drill and went straight through the rock in one fluid motion. If the drill didn't break the entire rock in half on the first try then it would back up and hit it again. If it didn't work the second time then he would create another drill and use them both at the same time in order to force the rock to break into smaller pieces. Then a number of smaller drills would form in order to break apart the smaller pieces of rocks in a very fast way.

The drills would then cancel out and all of the sand would be gathered to the top of the surface. This time the sand didn't come all the way up to the surface though for not all of it had been gathered. The sand went out and found more rocks which they cut and split open and then took the sand from them. The different streams of sand continued to do this until Ryo's body was trembling because his chakra couldn't hold that much sand at one time. He was forced to let all of it go before he was actually finished bringing it to the top. He sighed and kicked the sand in front of him. "Too close..."

[fina]

+9
+10

[.:Ryo:.]

[59/80 - Hopefully I'll finish this today]

This technique was coming to a close and Ryo knew that, but he still had a lot of training to do before he could actually consider this session successful and close it for a while. This time there was a different question he had to ask himself, but first he had to analyze a few more things. When the sand goes into the ground, it is covered by chakra. That was the first thing that Ryo had to fix since he either put too much in or didn't put enough in. Then there was the question of how many streams to send out to gain sand from the soil. If Ryo sent out too many then it would overwhelm in his body like before, disabling his chakra flow and, in that process, loosing all the sand he had gathered.

"You must figure out how to control chakra above ground," Ryo started, kneeling down in front of his sand with his hands over it, "Before you can do it below the ground." He generated chakra within his veins, feeling it stimulate throughout his entire body. He was pulsing with the very energy that gave him the power for every single technique that he had ever even attempted to create. But he wasn't ready to master the Soil Conversion technique. He had to control this chakra and right now it was very violent. It was flowing at an amazing pace within Ryo's body, yes, but that didn't mean he had control of it. Right now it was to violent to control, so he had to conquer it.

The chakra in Ryo's body began to die down a bit, most of it transferring through his body and into the sand. The sand reacted, but it stayed in one spot, which just proved that Ryo had gained complete control over the chakra. If it was still violent and rowdy then the sand would've blasted in all kinds of directions with all kinds of amazing speed and power. But since he had it under control, Ryo kept it one place. It moved around in a spinning circle, awaiting orders from its master. Ryo kept his palms over it and then flicked all of his fingers outward in one, fluid motion. He smirked as the sand obeyed this silent command.

They moved in streams across the desert, going at very quick pace, faster than Ryo thought his body would ever allow him to do. But, at the same time, he had to figure out a way to suppress his chakra' urge to implode within his body or explode outside his body. He couldn't allow an implosion because it would hurt him, but if it exploded then it would just prove to him that he had absolutely no control over this chakra and he would just be training for hours when he didn't need to be training during that time. So he kept his chakra at a medium level, not bringing it up too high, but not allowing it to die out.

The sand streams moved until Ryo could not see them any more, and that's when he pointed his fingers downward and formed another mental map. His streams hit the ground and went through the first layer of soft sand in no time flat. They had a bit more trouble breaking into the harder soil underneath the soft sand, but they managed to do it in a little less than a minute. There were only about five sand streams, so maintaining each one of them wasn't too hard for Ryo. They broke straight into the biggest and heaviest of rocks, which is what the B and A-Ranks of this technique promised. The S-Rank really only helped with rocks on the sizes of boulders and some metals.

All of the sand, both the original sand that Ryo had sent down there and the converted sand, formed new streams. All of the sand was equally distributed among the streams so that no too much was in one place and not too little was in another place. In a little while Ryo would try to bring the sand streams up at different locations above ground, but right now it would just be easier for him to bring it all up at the same time. And so that's what he did. All of the sand rushed to the surface, joining forces with each other to form one giant streams and spurting up through the ground. "That's got to be three meters... But we're not done yet..."