Heavy Meditation [T][P]

[I C H I R O™]

Learned.

[naitome]

^{Doton Senbon Soushi no Jutsu (Earth Senbon Creation Technique)
Rank: "D" "D" "D" "D" "C" "B"
Skill: Ninjutsu
Effect: Creates Senbon out of the earth and fires them at the opponent.
Special: "Hand Seals"
Drawback: Must be learned more and more in order to be capable of performing better, and capable of producing more Senbon. Cannot be used on Sand.
Description: Forming the handseals, the User begins to use the Earth Creation Technique to form Senbon in the ground wherever they choose. These Senbon can then fire from the ground at the same speed and strength as if someone had thrown it. These earthen Senbon are shaped like those that are sold in stores and are just as sharp. At D rank, this jutsu forms five Senbon wherever the caster wants. This can be five in different spots, or five all together. The D rank can be learned 4 times for 20 Senbon. Then this jutsu can be learned C rank for 10 more and then B rank for 20 more. Fifty Senbon (after learning 4 D, 1 C, and 1 B rank Jutsu) can be fired from all around the opponent, aimed wherever the caster chooses.
Limit: Needs the Earth Release, must have knowledge of Doton Soushi no Jutsu (Rock Creation Technique) "D" and "C"}



0/10

The previous days training had passed by in a blur of nightmares and phantom images that kept him waking every few hours throughout the night. He was still giddy with excitement. He'd managed to find a way to get the upper hand on Saruhito, something he'd never done before. As he woke and stretched, bathing briefly in the small pond next to the renovated cave space they now used for a dojo, he saw an open scroll, and the spreading of crumbs and a few spare Ryo that meant his master had left to buy some breakfast. He studied the scroll...this time containing a simple earth technique for the creation of senbon, cracked his knuckles, and would begin.

His hands followed the familiar string of handseals. It seemed that many of the practices of the earth style shared similar beginning forms, and he thought briefly of the the earth creation technique. This was quite similar, only his creation would not be simple rounded structures, but actual shape manipulation to fire Senbon made entirely of the surrounding rock. As he allowed the chakra within him to build, he felt the familiar tug towards rigidity that always left him feeling as if the air had grown stale, and allowed the counterclockwise rotations of energy to push themselves deep beneath the earth, calling up a medium sized cluster of stone.

The collection of hardened rocks were pulled from the otherwise soft surrounding earth with little effort, and as he held them in place with his chakra floating just above his level of eyesight, he began to push out and maneuver them around the space of the cave. He'd made five pebbles float, and chuckled briefly, before carving them down with the oppressive grinding outlined in the scrolls instructions. Hands mimicked the hands of a sculptor, and he whittled away at the block-like exterior stone until he'd formed narrow cones; the fresh beginnings of senbon.

Slowly but surely, the earthen forms spun and wandered around the room. Painstakingly, five needles were birthed from his efforts as he imagined his chakra to be a large controllable jaw, chewing away at the dirt and spitting out the tiny natural senbon. His eyes followed them around the room, searching for a target. As he saw an old charcoal rendering of Saruhito in full battle armor plastered to a wall 20 meters away, he moved his chakra around the group like a fist, and as his mind painted an image of hurling them full speed towards the drawing of his master, the senbon seemed flung by an invisible force, and landed with hard thuds through the picture and into the wall behind it.

He formed more handseals. There was still more work to do before his master arrived. He needed to bypass the slow creation time for each needle if he ever planned to use this jutsu in battle. Muttering to himself, he completed the signs and gestured wildly at the earth; five balled knots of earth rose and had great shards ripped out in haste. Five needle-like structures spun in an endless rapid vacuum...then paused in mid air. His chakra revolved around him, flowed down through the earth, then rose up to encircle the five senbon, flung them at the same spot in the picture, riddling the brooding facial expression sketched out with solid stone. The entire process had only taken a few seconds, and from what he'd felt as the chakra moved about him ferocious and hungry for release, was that he'd be able to control them individually with a little more focus. He consulted the scroll. he could learn this technique many times if need be, and clapped his hands together again in preparation.

[Deleted]

[1o]

[naitome]

^{Doton - Doryuudan (Earth Dragon Projectile)}
Rank: "A" Rank
Skill: NinJutsu
Effect: The user quickly performs an amount and a set number of handseals as they quickly perform one of the most known Earth techniques of all time. What occurs is that the user when performing the handseals the earth is quickly picked up in a massive likes form of a dragon. The dragon is shot up from the very ground in the form of the very earth as it is used to slam into the enemy and used as a strong like technique against the enemy. This type of technique can also be used as a mud like form technique in which may be used as a prerequisite of other types of techniques in which is used in a projection-based manner.
Special: "Handseals"
Drawback: ---
Description: When the user performs the necessary seals the user concentrates the chakra along the ground and begins to make the formation of a dragon like form out of the earth itself. The user makes the earth either soft like mud or hard like stone to be used. A holder for a projectile hurls mud towards the enemy if needed, or solidified, in which is used as a ram against the enemy sending a large Dragon towards the opponents.
Limit: Needs the Earth Release
[/sup]

0/100

He could train higher levels of the same technique later. For now, he wanted to learn more powerful offensive techniques, and opened the scroll wider, rifling past the lower level jutsu, thinking only of his path to the upcoming chuunin exams. As his fingers raced across the width of the scroll, he came across something that held promise. He was already well versed in the act of shaping earth chakra, and would continue his study of the manipulation of elements. The technique would create a massive dragon from the earth itself, and referred to its learning as one of the premier techniques of the Earth Master's of old. It had been thumbed past casually, and Naitome was willing to bet his life on the idea that his master, Saruhito, had yet to learn the technique himself.

He focused a steady stream of chakra into his arms, channeling the loose reserves to follow his hands as he followed the hand-seal layout that would allow him to perform the technique. Without pause, his hands stopped, projecting the flood of Doton particles to flow down into the earth around him, gathering up a stone and rock and long lost mineral deposits into a fossilized hard stone he'd then mold with complete disregard for the structural integrity of the building surrounding him. Without pause, he'd continued pushing his chakra deeper into the earth, having read from his brief skimming of the scroll that he'd need an incredible amount of earth in order to cause the form of the dragon to appear.

Vines twisted below him. Metamorphic rock composed of several different types of stone congealed into a hard substance that flowed down beneath him and pushed up with their own strength, ravaging the land that spread out in waves and walls and pillars twisting with his manipulation of their energies. His chakra flared brightly, was almost visible in the reflected shadows of the cave, and without hesitation, he poured even more of his own internally clashing chakra to rip through the foundation of the cave, causing a hollow echo that reverberated up through the hole in the roof he'd created the day before. He could almost hear the sound of the dragon's breathing as he caused yet another intervention between the space below the ground and the space above, moving a massive sliding disruption of earth to jut out of the ground, protruding hard rock horns that seemed to flail about full of their own life.

He placed his hands on the ground and felt the tremors of earth respond to his touch. He moved the earth around; while no great artist, he had only to visualize the base image of the dragon to conjure the beginnings of its structure from the stubborn soil at his feet. With great strides not to break his own concentration by focusing on his fatigue, he continued with the assaulting waves of energy trying desperately to shape and form the mass of earth. He gritted his teeth with the effort. He closed his eyes and tried to become one with the fast moving groups of rock that spiraled in small sunken orbits around the pressure of his body on the floor. The cave walls shook. With a slow and predatory crawl, a small claw pushed its way out of the earth. It seemed to roam around for purchase, attached to nothing but his own chakra and the dirt. It's size was added to from the near floating particles surrounding it, and with a sound like the core of the earth itself had been split, Naitome funneled a great portion of his energy into individually crafting scales to coat and reinforce the claw. It's nails seemed retractable and played at extending to their full length, as tiny wisps of plant life, earth-worms, and damp sod melded together to complete a roughly shaped arm.

His knees almost buckled from the next quake that sped its way underground. He doubled over with exhaustion, hands still on the earth, energy still clocking in at several hundred revolutions per minute as he sculpted the first fledgling limbs of the dragon like a potter, winding away at the scales of the elbow and smoothing out the soft underside that would form moments after. He wielded the Doton element like clay, and with a final grunt of effort, seemed to pull from some unknown hidden reserve to sink the claw into the surface, almost as if the rest of the dragon were merely hiding and waiting to pull itself out.

[Deleted]

[1o]

[naitome]

10/100

Beneath him, chaos ranged. He moved on. Used his chakra to pool into the formation of the second arm, and almost lost his balance with the terrible shaking of the land. More scales were formed as the Earth Release chakra collected into tiny bubble-shaped protrusions of reality that flowed back and forth, at first hot from their vibrational charge, then cooling to slide themselves into metal-hard plates that soon allowed a second claw to pull itself up. As of yet, the dragon had no body, was merely two arms, one still half-formed, connected by a tiny tether of pebbles to Naitome's hands. He focused more intently, allowing the rapidly unraveling chakra to push itself further into the second arm, forming tiny tendrils first that moved brazenly across the dojo floor. Books fell from the shelves as the earth moved around him. The second elbow appeared to be a melted ball of mud and he pushed further below the earth to find the right materials to make it harden and settle, allowed it to form the joints that would let the limb move freely to attack an opponent.

The second claws clubbed and blunt-nails began to harden as he spiraled a funnel of energy around them, narrowing them down to sharp points, using the same concept he'd just learned when creating senbon to make them razor sharp. The things middle was abysmally incomplete, but Naitome couldn't focus on that now. He shook his head and backed up. The second armed roamed, found its partner, made grasping motions as if to scratch an itchy scale. Naitome merely allowed more ore and dirt to reinforce the structure, building on the size of the earth-born dragon with the earth that he had called home. The training grounds seemed to be growing smaller, pulled in to the center of channeled earth that used his hands as a medium, and with great patience and careful planning, he thickened the tether between the two arms, forming the rudimentary affectations of a chest.

Hard and bony earth plates rose up, at first uneven and seeming to give the incomplete dragon an impossible curvature of spine, but he doubled his efforts and straightened it, situating the plates next to each other. They gave the semblance of well trained pectoral muscles. His hands turned slightly; he kept seeing himself as an artist, and moved the large clump of earth erupting like an exploding mountain, nearly drowning himself in sharply solidified soil. It was still only partially formed, but moved it's monstrous limbs, now grown to be Naitome's size, with all the rage and strength of the beast it would soon become.

His hand turned again, re-coating the chest-plate in armored and hardened earth that twisted in on itself and spread thick to protect its form. The twitching torso raged against the restraints of the earth that held it in place, and more chakra was pushed down and out, forming a tightly knit sphere of twirling energy that gave off flecks of Doton energy to wrap and re-wrap the dragon in matter. It's mass almost doubled again as Naitome's chakra lurched out of him, but he held his grown, the instructions on the scroll bearing his sole motivation with their promise of power. The earth buckled below him. The opened hole that acted as a second mouth to the cave would crumble at odd intervals of movement, adding bits of dust and the miasma of stone to the thing that crept painfully out of the floor.

[naitome]

10/100

He moved on to the mid legs of the beast, the stabilizers, those which needed to be the hardest and the ones most thoroughly encased in stone. His hand pained him, but he kept on with the forceful release of his chakra into the stone, and allowed the rock to form the right-most leg of the creature, adding an undercurrent of twitching earth sinew and muscle, remembering the brief anatomy class he'd agonized through in the academy, attempting to form the correct sequence of pseudo-bones that would allow the dragon to move properly. The right leg connected itself with tough earthen tissues to the smeared chest mass, connecting at the plates and sending tiny informational data coursing along its 'body', telling the aggregate soil to form more scales; harder, in larger number, bunched closer together for added protection. Naitome wiped the sweat from his brow and watched with dismay as his creation sank a bit...placed his hand back on the hard surface of earth and willed the creature into existence.

The right most leg formed, then split and appeared to clone itself on the left hand side. Tiny twig-like apparitions winked in and out of existence as the harsh particles intermingled with the heavy air within the cave. These little vein-like structures were not for transmitting blood; the creatures 'life' was merely an illusion. No, these would form the basis of wings, but he was not yet at the point, and wiped the image from his mind, his chakra flaring wildly, moving more rock scales to cover the left middle-leg with its own bit of protection, connecting them at their middle with a band of rock-flesh that pushed fluidly into the connected chest plates and then hardened, locking it all into place. He squinted, studying his creation so far.

At different sections, the rock was indecisive about whether to be stone or mud. There were places where he could tell that if he touched them, would gel back into mush, as unfinished as the rest of its body. Instead of allowing any more chakra to leak out of himself haphazardly, he focused on the shape manipulation lessons he'd learned from Saruhito, created interventions of air and hot ground together ore to make these places as strong as any metal. The rock darkened in the places where he concentrated, wove itself together like cloth and left imprints of his struggling craft in the dust created from the pulverized dirt. The cave drew in on itself even more. It bled its substance into the dragon, into the spiraling vortex of desire that was Naitome's wish to become stronger.

The middle leg sprouted it's own sharpened and tough-looking claws, worn away by the storm of earth he'd created. They sank back into the nail-beds of the beast, and soon they too moved with idiot grace, scrambling to take a hold of something. He was reminded suddenly of the stone golem technique, reaching its way out of the depths...an amorphous monster prepared to strike. This dragon seemed hungry, even without being a living creature. Naitome imagined that hunger, tried to shape his chakra into a force of animal instinct so pure that he almost didn't notice as the stone separated slightly, and arched up into a simulation of its most telling feature. Wings.

[naitome]

10/100

He allowed the wings to stop their growth, a small barely noticeable flicker of his chakra would control that. He instead reversed the direction of the flow of earth, allowing it to build back up past the things chest, winding mineral hardness between the thick abdominal plates clashed together with an artists sensibility, and seemed to reach through with power that would shape the things neck. There was already something lilke a spinal column, a simple line defining the divide between its identical sides, but this too Naitome tacked on, adding ridges that made it all the more life-like, and all the more terrifying. Creating a wide outcropping of stone to form a sort of mantle rigidly connected to its shoulders, he formed a gullet, an internal esophagus, covered them with stone, and elongated the scale-covered rock into the beginning form of a jaw.

Teeth sprouted up suddenly, ferocious, seemingly self-directed, and he could see that his many meditation sessions regarding the purity of jutsu visualization were beginning to pay off. He'd simply thought of the jaw snapping closed, rending its prey limb from limb, and its fangs sprouted one by one, in order from back to front, then slid backwards once more to ripple out rock that would make the tongue. It rolled around, an absurd bizarre show, the roof of the things mouth created as Naitome's chakra surged up and could at any moment burst through the top of the cave. He attached even more teeth to the top row of the earth dragon's mouth, and for added effect, allowed the dripping mud that would have otherwise pooled unused in the things jaw to drip down slowly; earth dragon drool. As the teeth of the beast trickled upwards and round out, became hollow, formed a large snout, he could almost hear it snarling in response. He allowed the chakra to trickle back...form eyes, bony ridges crinkling its face in anger, and the thing opened its now fully shaped mouth and soundlessly roared into the bowels of the cave.

For his final bit of artistry towards the things head, he again hardened the stone, let the softer forms of it harden and discolor itself from the efforts, began shaping the scales like a sculptor. More protrusions! Fiercer! Naitome's eyes seemed to glow as the light from the surrounding torches died down, blown back by the raging earth flowing within and throughout the enclosed space. He moved his hand a quarter turn, and watched the things new neck bulge with muscles of rock and move its head side to side, already testing its limitations. More chakra. More time. With patience and power, he solidified what he'd crafted so far in a new layer of stone, held the beast together, and moved back to its lower body.

[naitome]

10/100

The things spine arched with tension. Naitome had moved back down, centering his chakra on the right wing, allowing thick braided tendrils of earth to arch out dramatically and form five spines. A muddy membrane stretched suddenly between them, vein-filled and thick with dirt that swirled around the many harsh protrusions. It still seemed too small to allow flight, and Naitome re-focused his mine on the pure act of creation. The earth 'bones' of the creatures wings arched up and agonizingly gave a single beat that threw natural wind around the cave with such strength that the torches went out, and only the small filtering of sunlight that bled in through the opened hole above lit his hard work in a ghastly off-yellow. The wing broke through the barriers of earth enclosing them, and breaking concentration for just a bit, Naitome raised himself and his neophyte creation on a pillar of stone up through the opening, allowing them more space in the open air.

The second he switched concentration to freeing up space, the malformed beast sagged in its middle; the scales melded back into an amorphous scattering of semi-liquid pebbles and the limbs he'd so painstakingly crafted began to fold back into the earth. As a gut reaction, more chakra poured out from him, recklessly forcing the shape of the dragon back onto the mass of stone, catching the wing before it dropped back into a wet mess on the ground. The spines were stiff again, the membrane of mud he'd stretched between them was thinned with his chakra and given a texture closer to leather than rock, held precariously together by the chakra carelessly dispersed amongst its whole. The sunken middle rose again, made the dragon seemed to have just taken a deep breath, and its hard rock face snarled in protest, missing lower body adding to its strangeness.

As the right wing sat properly situated within the shoulder-blade joints jutting from its plated chest, the left wing began to form as well. It was the same exact process, but with the freedom of space that the outside gave, he didn't have to worry about damaging the surrounding environment. In fact, their surroundings only added to the bulk of the creature, as the earth that had been pushed rudely aside and now sat in clumps circling the odd pair, rose up and added their weight to both wings. Where he needed more mass, or felt that the wings wouldn't be enough to allow the dragon to lift itself in the air and function as a combat projectile, he simply increased their size with what material he had, careful to sculpt as he did so. More scales poured forth. More and more of his mind was taken up with the image of the completed dragon and as he looked on in amazement, it sat, almost complete, almost ready to be sent into battle.

The chakra kept flaring. As Naitome moved it about the area, letting the natural hardness of the earth add to his own impressive command of the Doton Element, he let it move sparingly from the wings down to the waiting lower structure. He had only the hind legs and tail to complete, before he'd truly be ready to uncover the power of the jutsu. With a masters finesse, he funneled deeper into the earth, hand still placed less than a meter away from the structure, sinking slowly into the earth that he controlled.

[Deleted]

[4o]

[naitome]

50/100

He moved on to the hind legs, this time starting on the left side, careful to reinforce the earth even as he drug it softly from the ground below. His chakra was heady and thick, it flooded the area around him completely, and keeping with the instructions placed on the scroll, he emptied it without regard and moved a thick smudge of dirt out, smoothed down, newly ridged and mimicking the underlying bone of a flying creature, out into a sizable chunk of leg. As he dug his own fingernails deeper into the supple earth, the claws of the hind leg formed as well, attempting to bridge the gap between each side of the beasts sides with a thick but mushy band of earth chakra that let the particles directly underneath float lazily up and connect. The scales were the most laborious task. He formed each one in his mind, slid it carefully atop the one that came before it in the sequence, and when he felt that the dragon was sufficiently armored on that side, he repeated the process for the right leg.

A tiny pillar stretched out from the abdominal base. A tiny pillar sunk into itself and burst out again harder, more durable, closer the the bone structure of a true animal. A tiny pillar broke the symmetrical plane of earth that had formed the things almost immovable spine and allowed it for once to raise its fragile belly off of the ground, resting instead on its many groupings of legs. He allowed his hand to rise from the ground...as he did so, the dragon's head rose with it. He inspected it from top to bottom, reaching out with his own hand to sometimes push an unfinished shard back into place or to reform an errant scale that had otherwise escaped his attentions. Once satisfied, he turned his attention back to its growth and development, ignored the dripping mud that mirrored his lagging energy, and reinforced the hardened back end of the beast with more slabs of created stone.

The thing attempted to move swiftly forward as his hands touched the ground again, but was off-balance and wobbled uneasily on its six legs while maneuvering its head in a futile attempt to catch itself. He was no puppeteer, and without any consideration of control, the beast wouldn't be able to move in the manner that he desired. He reached back with his free hand to review the scroll, and after a few brief moments, felt as if he'd found a solution. Now placing both hands on the earth, he imagined that his chakra was in fact an incredibly sharpened surgical scalpel, capable of picking away those aspects of his creation that he was unhappy with.

Gone was a rough section of wing. He replaced it with thinner stones that blended better. He removed a sinkhole in the soil that had returned to its original softness and forced the thing to place unnecessary pressure on its hindquarters. He ground bedrock stone into its separate mineral ores and spread them lavishly about, as if he were a painter performing the final brushstrokes on a masterpiece. Though he knew he was far from over, his chakra ebbed a bit, allowing his skill at manipulation to take over without regard for the high levels of energy he poured into the technique. Once he had made what he considered the appropriate finishing touches, the dragon of earth was able to stand near-completely balanced, and he was able to focus his attention on the last and probably most difficult aspect of the things form. He had to create the tail.

[Deleted]

[1o]

[naitome]

60/100

He would not hesitate in his conviction to complete the technique. His hands still on the ground, he pushed into even lower levels of the earth, feeling as if he would scrape the planets core itself before he was finished. The base of the things back had ended in a bony ridge, and now, grown from the encroaching rock, a long mound of muddy matter was forced out into the open, extending to what would easily have been the entire length of the dojo cave by itself. His sense of self was almost lost in the strain. More chakra fled his body at blistering speed, as each individual placement of stone molded themselves into one indistinct barrage of earth.


Instead of joints, he had to allow the majority of the rock forming the dragons tail to remain soft and malleable, giving it all the more appearance of being a living, breathing creature, swinging the smooth lump of clay as if it were finished. His own chakra levels would be gone soon, the strain of holding up creatures length and weight through sheer determination was an incredible undertaking, and as he'd read the scroll, he noted the warning for Genin not to attempt learning such a dangerous technique. The chakra expenditure alone was enough to nearly kill him, but he'd practiced long and hard to manipulate the earth with the skill of a master, and right now was no exception. He moved more mud, more rock, more stone to the base of the creatures lower abdomen, and as pebbles reduced themselves to shards he would have been remiss not to use his waning chakra levels to hold them in place, adhering them to the nearly completed motions of the creatures tail.


He crafted each scale with the same care as he'd done before, and tried to commit its total structure to memory while taking in the brutal details of his work. His eyes darted around it mouth, lips, and eyes, picking up on irregularities that with his next attempt he could fix, but after a few sort seconds, went back to situating the tail properly and allowing it to sway so that the enormous creature could find a way to move. It's enormous legs seemed to be close to failing due its massive reinforced weight. Naitome began to be plagued by doubt, but had to let it dissipate as quickly as it had reared its ugly head, refined and sharpened bone leaked from the base of it's spine and the tail began to move. He turned his hand to the left. The tail followed. He turned his hand to the right. The tail followed. With a final push, he seemed to detonate a mass explosion of chakra that lifted the beast off of the ground, and with his hands now free from touching the earth, he gestured wildly, watching the chaos that unfolded.

[naitome]

60/100

The tail was complete. The beast lifted itself from the earth and Naitome inexpertly allowed it to crash into nearby trees as it seemed to purposely disobey the sway of his chakra. He tried to force control, attempted the same technique of intervention that had created the massive creature, and failed miserably, as it pulled at him with near invisible strings of chakra, exerting an amount of energetic pressure too vast for the young man to ignore. He had not expected this at all. He'd assumed the initial shaping of the earth dragon would be the most difficult aspect of its creation, but as he stood ankle-deep in earth that the creature kept pulling out of the earth with a clear disregard for his struggle, Naitome understood just how wrong he had been. As it pulled him, it drained even more of his chakra, and seemed to have a mind of its own as it crashed brazenly into the surrounding cold woodland.

He dug his free hand into a tree and tried to dispel the massive amount of chakra he'd summoned up, but to no avail. The dragon was already formed and its enormous hardened surface bucked and fought against the minimal control he exerted with the strength of its namesake. His insides burned. He tried to collect his thoughts, envisioned himself holding a leash of chakra wrapped around the beasts throat, and created one, pulling on his already strained resources, and only succeeding in making the thing...angry. The earth around it gathered into its wings and with a mighty push, it began to pull him inexorably into the sky.

"NO."

He said through gritted teeth, drawing on some as of now untapped resource of willpower and solidifying his focus. Instead of a leash, he envisioned a massive hand, twice the size of the earth dragon, scooping up beneath it and nearly crushing it in its embrace. The animalistic golem paused. He touched a tentative hand to the earth, and with all the strength he could muster, threw the thing at a faraway tree trunk, its wings spread, its rocky matter teeth sinking into the back, destroying it, pushing through with malevolent intent and tearing a path through the ice covered forest. It seemed to shake in joy at its freedom, and stopped only when it crashed into the side of a low mountain some twenty meters away. The last image of it that Naitome saw were the mud dripping fangs biting feverishly at the large hole they'd created in the mountain's side. They worked like a drill. They bit through as deeply as they could, before the structure he'd worked so hard to create shattered back into pebbles and rained down on the hard earth.

He panted, out of breath, before grinning. THAT was the power he'd been searching for. It was still untamed, still too fresh and new to try in battle just yet, but definitely capable of killing an opponent.

He ran through the handseals that first brought about the forming of the technique, allowing the chakra to build just as it had before, but exerting a finer level of control so as not to exhaust his reserves as thoroughly as he just had, pushing down and into the earth to create the core limbs and scale much faster then he'd first been capable of. The beast lumbered up from rough formed dirt clay and spread out...the same size, but less refined. He had weaponized the shaping of the technique. He would not reinforce the density of the creature in the step by step manner that had caused him so much grief before. Instead, he created the entire form from semi-liquid stone first, then used his understanding of the Doton Release to allow it to harden all at once. Limbs sprung out from a core of rock. Wings formed. A tail lashed out behind it, steadied it, allowed it to balance. The earth around him shifted and signaled its readiness to be used as he saw fit.

He would truly become a master of earth.

[Leonov]

+20

[naitome]

80/100

He looked ahead and saw the path the last dragon had made through the snow covered forest ground, and scanned the area for something like a target. About a mile above the distant horizon rose an abandoned tower overlooking his current training grounds, and his hands gestured forwards congenially before his chakra met and mixed inside of him, spilling out and engulfing the quick shoddy thing he'd created in a wave of purposeful instruction. The just-hardened wings flailed, pushed at the ground, found themselves capable of dragging its own enormous body weight into the air.

The thing's tail swayed low before slapping at the ground like a whip and propelling the beast higher into the air. He felt a connection grow between them, a way of seeing or of feeling his surroundings that put him more in tune with the 'dragon'. He could almost hear the tiny gradations of pebble mass flowing over and through one another to facilitate the flight that would turn it from a simple work of art, into a weapon.

The old tower was quite far away, close enough for a shuriken to reach only if it was thrown with a majority of his strength, and as he pointed off in its direction, the massive dragon began to move, gaining momentum with the monstrous beating of its wings. It lurched forward, adding to its incompleteness with small streams of rock flowing up from the ground to meet it mid-flight and pooling itself into the barest recognizable pattern of a drill. A large winged drill with fangs, moving like some phantom nightmare through the cold.

It hit the support beams beneath the structure, buckling the tower, tearing away at the soft pliable wood with broad swipes of its stone claws and a thrashing about of its tail. He felt his chakra levels dip, and fell to one knee while the dragon tore into the construction with ferocity and power, and in the span of a few short seconds, had reduced it and all of its contact points with the ground to nothing more than cheap rubble and brick that fell apart into dust soon after hitting the ground. The dragon reared up, seemed as if it would sit on its own hindlegs and begun something to heat, then yawn its mouth wide and began to fold into itself, reduced to earth dust and free-floating rocks with as little effort as had been used to conjure it from the ground.

Stationary targets; towers and trees and snow were all good, but how would he fare in battle? Could he use the technique if his life depended on it? Was he sure he'd memorized the seals?

The cold seemed to home in on Naitome, and he went to retrieve whatever knowledge of the technique might have been left on the scroll.

[Beltran]

+9

[naitome]

89/100

He began reading from the scroll, attempting to understand as much of the technique as he could. Aside from the more formal instructions, there were several notes that had been added by Saruhito, instructions, tips, and lessons learned from his own training. He read the first section of writing;

"The handseals are merely the first aspect of the technique. The true nature of the attack is concentrated around hte act of creation, and then the imprinting of primordial instruction within the creation. It requires not only the mind of a warrior, but the mind of an artist, and is considered one of the primary attacks of those within the Doton Release only because the skill required to perform it is a clear indication of mastery. Forming the beast, allowing it to solidify and take flight, giving it the semblance of life, none of these things are as paramount in importance as the ability to think and act simultaneously. This craft goes hand in hand with the process of visualization, and it is why the user must have a clear image in mind of exactly the creature they plan to create. They must envelop themselves in the essence of the dragon of earth."

He unraveled more of the scroll.

[Leonov]

+4

[naitome]

92/100

He held the scroll open, reflecting on the lessons left behind. As a wind began to pick up and whip around the chill air, the earth around him began to separate and break apart. The swirl of the wind combined with the torrential updraft of energy flowing within his body, and his commitment finally as solid as the land around him, he focused the sum of his chakra and looked ahead. 30 Meters away, a few straw-filled training dummies dangled on ropes, set up from some earlier session. They were worn and dirty, covered in snow that had thawed and re-frozen countless times before. The handseals took mere seconds to complete, and the air around him grew oppressive and weighed him down. The earth beneath him continued to crack...each one dividing itself into sections of ground that slowly rose up and joined in the air.

The rock flowed like water. He could see the rapidly forming spikes that would fan out to form a tail; the limbs, the crest of the head, the scaled underbelly carved out in mud toned rock. As his mind created the image, his chakra formed together with the doton particles and made what he thought a reality. More chakra flowed, and as he looked briefly down, there was a circular impression in the earth, a recess, as if some heavy weight had left its engraving there. Clapping his hands together, he made the tiny energetic intervention that would allow his creation to move from semi-liquid to hardened stone almost instantly.

The creature that rose did not pull at him with the ferocious strength of its predecessor. It didn't seem to dig into him with invisible claws of chakra that dictated his position, or uprooted him from holding on to control. His mind held on to the image of the dragon in his mind...he thought of all his previous attempts, all his hard work, and the triumph he experienced at being able to direct the flight of the creature at a target. He steeled his nerves, calmed the rage of free-floating earth particles that still moved through the atmosphere attempting to cling to the massive form he'd made, and placed a flat palm to the earth. The training dummies were in his sight.


He didn't need to say the jutsu aloud, didn't need to trace its path towards the training dummies with his hands in the air, all he needed was to visualize its movement forward. Keep moving forward, he thought to himself. Small chakra eruptions emerged from beneath his very skin, pooling into a chain like structure tha guided the projectile over the land, swiftlt through the blockade of trees, and with explosive force crashed into the training dummies. They were reduced to straw dust and powder almost instantaneously, and the dragon kept moving until the last of its stone remnants dispersed in the snow.

He sat in a crouched position suddenly to catch his breath, and looked up at the sky.