Black Fire [training]

[Molokai]

SPOILER: Click to show

Name: Tama no Kami (Paper Sphere)
Rank: C
Skill: Ninjutsu
Effect: Creates a dome around the user that can defend from oncoming attacks from all angles.
Special: handseals
Drawback: Only as strong as the users Paper Strength. This sphere blocks the users vision.
Description: After forming handseals, the user is able to form a sphere out of paper used to defend against attacks. The sphere has the ability to fly above the ground and can float wherever the user desires, however, it blocks the vision. This requires 100 pieces of paper to create.
Limit: Paper Release. Paper Manipulation C

0/10

In terms of defense, protection from all angles is crucial. While his other means of defense protected actively against incoming threats, Toru wanted a shield that constantly protected him. At the same time, he needed to be able to move in a wide variety of ways, effectively turning himself into a paper tank. The only object that could protect equally from all sides was a sphere, and using the sphere shape he was essentially unlimited in the directions he could move. A very short set of handseals would imbue his many pieces of paper with chakra, and he would begin tracing paths through the air around him. Following suit, the paper quickly formed an object that could easily be described as a dome. It was quickly discovered that the dome was immobile and really nothing that he hadn't created before.

But how did he expect to make a shield that could move? Since he had lived most of his life in a flytrap, he pretty much had a mobile shield at all times. That being said, he had to now think about something he had never considered before. Clearly he would have to fabricate the entire structure as a unified whole so that it could move as a unit. So, if he created a sphere of paper release chakra and held it as a single solid object, the paper would naturally follow. The rush of paper was chaotic at first, building the sphere piece by piece from the bottom down. To avoid creating a dome, Toru had to sharpen the curve by a few degrees so that the structure would finish beneath his feet. With that done, he felt confident that he had created his ultimately protective ball and set out to move it.

The movement he had in mind wasn't simply rolling it around on the ground, though. No, he had much bigger plans than that. In fact, he planned on making the whole unbreakable ball fly through the air. Toru intended to use his paper release to keep the sphere together while it hovered around, but to do that he would have to abandon the idea of the paper as individuals. The entirety of the huge paper ball was a single impenetrable unit, so when Toru used his chakra to lift the sphere within his field the entire thing should come with it. For a moment there was a bit of distention as the sphere attempted to rise, pulling against Toru's weight and threatening to come apart as a result of it. Then, with a suddenness that almost cost Toru his concentration, it sprang back into shape and held him aloft.

This hovering was short-lived, though. Within moments it began stretching again, and despite his best attempts to force the paper into a spherical shape, it refused to obey. So, after nearly a minute of struggling with it, he fell through the bottom and was rained on by his crumbling shield. Wasting no time, Toru reformed the handseals and imagined a sturdier pattern that would hold the paper together. Starting as a ring of paper in the center, the sheets started at both top and bottom and moved toward it. Very carefully interweaving each piece of paper with at least four others around it, Toru ensured that there would be no weak points to be exploited. Once the shield was solid and complete, Toru commanded it up and felt it respond without even the slightest change in shape.

[yets3]

+10

[Molokai]

SPOILER: Click to show

Kinrui: Gisou (Fungal Technique: Camouflage)
Rank: B
Skill: Ninjutsu
Effect: Utilizing fungus as a natural camouflage, the user hides themselves.
Special: "Handsigns"
Drawback: See able by chakra seeing Doujutsu.
Description: A simple technique that uses fungus and the user's body in order to completely blend their appearance into a plant-filled environment. Due to the user's wood-like body abilities, they are capable of being invisible while not moving and hardly even noticeable while moving. Due to the fact that this technique doesn't use chakra after being used, it cannot be seen with the chakra seeing abilities of Doujutsu. But, the user's chakra can still be seen in this was as long as a Doujutsu has the ability to see through the fungus. Animal example.
Limit: Wood Release. Must know Kinrui: Oishigeru (Fungal Technique: Overgrowth) C rank. Must know Mokusei Shishi (Wooden Limbs)

0/60

His time in the forests of Water country had revealed to him many things, many animals that existed without the knowledge of any other creature. These creatures were a part of their world, so much a part that if they ceased moving they vanished into the landscape itself. Even when these creatures were engaged in locomotion, their movement was untraceable except by those who knew where to look. This system was brilliant, and Toru believed that if he could emulate it he could vanish into his surroundings and be invisible. The most effective human camouflage he had witnessed still left a great, conspicuous lump wherever they attempted to hide. So, logically he couldn't simply build a suit out of his environment and expect it to hide him. No, he needed a more effective way of blending in.

Some plants were capable of altering their pigmentation in times of crisis, so maybe part of his plant DNA included the ability to do that. For that to work, he would have to tap in to his dormant plant-like abilities and choose just the right one to be expressed. If he chose wrong he could grow an extra head or accidentally fill his veins with some strange nuerotoxin, so he would have to be extremely careful. Focusing his energy primarily on his skin, trying to draw up the pigments in his flesh, he tried to devise a way to modify them. A simple color change would make him harder to see or blur his outline slightly, but to truly disappear would require something far more advanced than that. Knowing this, he pressed on in hopes of at least taking the first step toward reaching that advanced level. A small patch of green appeared on his hand.

Taking that green patch in his mind and his focus, he commanded it to spread across his digits and around to his palm. The variation in color would spread like liquid and steadily engulf his long, bony digits. Once his entire hand had turned forest green, he observed the metamorphosis begin climbing up his arm, lurching like a great tube-mouthed monster trying to consume his body. That image occurred to Toru when it was about halfway past his elbow, and it caused him to rethink his idea for a second. Turning green by no means makes one harder to see in a forest. If anything, it was more obvious than a big, brown buck prancing through the underbrush. Sure, his starkly contrasting black-and-white skin tones weren't much better, but it seemed clear that in this case he was wasting his time.

However, just as he was about to cease with his terrible idea, he noticed something. The green goo, which was presumably the chlorophyll that kept his blood green, stopped abruptly right where his body divided. So it seemed that even if the color change would work, it wouldn't be easy to get it across his entire body. With the process halted, Toru watched the color slowly dissolve back into his blood vessels, making him appear patchy at first but soon evening out to it's normal coloring. Clearly he would need something a bit more complicated than that to pull his idea off. His recent experiments with fungi granted him an idea, though. If he could fabricate the perfect combination of fungi and pigmentation, he could match any backdrop. Although it would involve growing fungus directly onto his flesh and over his clothes, the possibility intrigued him and he decided to try it.

[goliath764]

10++

[Molokai]

10/60

It seemed clear that he couldn't just camouflage himself with a particular growth behind him. The idea was invisibility in an area with lots of foliage, and for that to happen he needed all-purpose fungus to match the landscape. Too bad that wasn't as easy as simply doing it. What Toru needed to do was hunt down some animals skilled at concealing themselves and study how they worked and what made them so successful. But then, if he managed to find them, they really weren't all that successful at hiding themselves, were they? Which clearly meant that instead of copying them, he had to improve on their design so that his actually worked. Starting from the bottom, the forest floor, he scanned the area for any sign of movement, anything that might signify the presence of sentient life.

Nose to the ground, Toru peered into every nook and cranny of the woods, making very slow progress and probably looking pretty silly. Still he pressed on, until he heard a very familiar warning sound, the agitated hissing of an irritated snake. From beneath a pile of dry leaves, a small constrictor coiled in warning, it's scales patterned in color to match the leaves upon which it sat. The pattern on it's back was clear, a nondescript brown traversing most of its sides, with large black diamonds imprinted along it's spine. Within the diamonds and around the edges were color blotches and deformities designed to reduce the rigidity of the shape, giving it a more natural feel so that it stood out much less. Since this pattern was so easily identifiable, Toru made a note of it and filed it away for later use.

As he lifted his head and allowed the scrutinized serpent to creep suspiciously away, he barely avoided having his head taken off by a rather large butterfly. Flying through the air like that, it was painfully transparent and apparently not very hidden. That was, until it alighted on a nearby tree. The vibrant green color with vein-like streaks that adorned it's wings gave it the distinct appearance of being a leaf, especially this time of year when everything was green and healthy. Interested, Toru approached the tree and gave it a sharp shove, shaking the entire structure. To his great pleasure, a good deal of the leaves alighted from their respective branches and flew off, on a mission for another home that wouldn't be disturbed. Disguising something as something else seemed to be very effective, as not even one who was watching could tell. He filed it away for consideration.

Still, there had to be a creature that was more effective at disappearing from view, something that he simply wasn't seeing. Of course that was a paradox, if he saw an animal with perfect camouflage then it wasn't perfect, but if he didn't see it he had no way of knowing it existed. As he pondered this, he noticed a piece of lichen traveling up a nearby branch. As strange as it was, it soon vanished and left Toru to his thinking. But as quick as it stopped, it started again, moving along a set path with a wavy sort of motion. Crawling up close, examining the mobile fungus as carefully as he could, he was floor when it vanished right before his eyes. It seemed that whatever was moving was absorbing right back into the lichen as soon as it was finished. Whatever it was, it deserved closer examination.

[Molokai]

??/60

This fascinating little creature, phasing in and out of the fungus whenever it stopped moving, Toru was positive this was what he was looking for. When it moved again, when he could actually tell where it was, he reached out and plucked it gently from it's branch. What surprised him most was not how effective it's camouflage was, or how oddly different it seemed from the other hidden animals, what really surprised him was it's species. He almost didn't want to believe it at first, he must have accidentally grabbed the wrong thing in his struggle to observe it. It was undeniable, the creature that hid so perfectly was a caterpillar. But there was something about this caterpillar's camouflage that was different from any other creature. Aside from it's effectiveness, there was something he just couldn't put his finger on.

After a moment he cataloged the mental snapshot and set about creating camouflage of his own, hoping to take bits and pieces from each. What he noticed distinctively in the creatures he found was the pattern, a biological copy of their surroundings that blended them with it. Glancing around, he took note of most of the colors of the background and formed a short string of handseals. Once those were completed, he focused his chlorophyll pigments in different concentrations all around his body, creating a multicolored mesh that would hopefully make him difficult to distinguish. What he noticed instead was that he became a six-foot tall finger painting accident in pitch-black clothing. Definitely not very stealthy, if anything it actually made him more noticeable.

Obviously his skin coloration wasn't enough to fully hide him, he also needed a way to alter the pattern of his clothing. Knowing this, he realized that the only way to do it was with a physical covering, one similar in composition to the environment. Since Gilly suits already exist and weren't as effective when moving, Toru realized that he would have to construct a different concept. What was the most prominent feature of a forest? The trees, of course. But not just trees, there were all of the plants and fungi conglomerating together to form his backdrop. So, it would make sense that channeling his control over wood and plants through his physical body could create a convincing covering. However, it also meant full-body coverage, which would take some time and effort.

Pushing into the earth and matching his chakra with it, then drawing the chakra into his body to mix with the water inside, he flowed his wooden power through himself. Pushing to the outer layers of his skin, he concentrated first on growing things to cover his clothing. Roots and branches snaked over his torso and down his legs, hiding their human origin and replacing it with one of floral descent. Then, pushing the same chakra all around his body, he wrapped himself in roots and branch-like attachments to copy the tangled appearance of the forest. Looking at himself in a reflective pool of water, he noticed right away a massive problem with his design. Camouflaged was the last thing he could have been called, since he looked more like a stalky swamp monster than and invisible agent of death. Dropping everything, he sat back and rethought his strategy.

[✗ Kaeor ✗]

+20

[Molokai]

30/60

There needed to be a pattern of foliage that would blend him with the environment. Swamp-monster roots clearly weren't going to cut it, and it was very unlikely ferns were going to do much better. He couldn't copy the butterfly and make himself into a giant leaf because, well. . . it was a giant leaf. Then he thought of the caterpillar, covered from head to toe in lichen and the only one to successfully hide. Thinking back, he remembered his recent training with fungus and wondered if he had enough control to use it on his body. Clearly he could focus his wood release and pull them from his skin without actually growing fungus on his flesh, so it seemed feasible that it would work. Since the fungus was so versatile, he could adjust color and consistency as much as he needed to to match the background.

Still, he needed a logical pattern to form the fungus in, like the snake hiding in the leaves. The snake's pattern alone didn't bring up the sensation of dry leaves, but when it was curled and atop a pile, one didn't question it's status as a pile of leaves. So Toru needed to find a pattern that wouldn't raise question to his status as part of the forest. Brown vertical stripes perhaps? Then he would look like a striped swamp monster, equally as hidden but not half as intimidating. Maybe he could just put his back against a tree and form a wood pattern. That would mean he couldn't move from his spot without looking like a naked tree sprite, and anybody that didn't look at the tree dead-on to where he was standing would surely see him. Looking around, he knew there definitely had to be a pattern to it.

Knowing that his best medium for camouflage was his fungal technique, he set off finding the most appropriate fungus to hide himself with. First completely coating himself in lichen, he placed his back against a tree and considered his stealthiness. My, what an awfully large patch of tree on that human-shaped fungus. Yeah, completely hidden. Brilliant. Still, not such a big deal, all he had to do was extend the fungus to cover up his human outline and he would appear as a large parasitic growth. So, as the lichen extended and blurred the edges of his more distinctive parts, he again considered the effectiveness of the current setup. When standing still against a tree, he could believe himself to be mostly invisible. The problem existed when he started moving, and became a giant walking pile of green stuff. Yeah, that'd be pretty noticeable.

So maybe on top or within the lichen should be a few bits and pieces of other plants, bark and leaves and such, to make him able to stand alone and still be mostly unseen. Since it was impossible to be completely invisible while moving, he was willing to settle with being unnoticeable except by somebody who knew what to look for. Abandoning any concept of a pattern, he allowed random bits of bark and things to start growing from his body and fill in the lichen. Quickly he lost even more of his humanity as he transformed into this great plant beast, hiding himself from the world using his own floral affliction. Now appearing to be a part of the forest itself, Toru wondered if he was actually hidden by any stretch of the imagination. He figured he must be, but he still wasn't sure that he was invisible enough.

[goliath764]

10++

[Molokai]

40/60

The answer wasn't simply going to be stacking more and more stuff on himself, because eventually he'd hurt both his mobility and his actual hiding. He was starting to figure out what he needed to do, though. First and foremost, he needed to break up his human outline, reduce the familiar shape so that the eye wouldn't be attracted to it. That alone reduced his chances of being seen by a casual passerby to almost zero, which meant that very little had to be done to hide himself from someone with a vested interest in finding him. Knowing that, he could move on to the second important factor, which was environmental accuracy. A coat of leafy greens wouldn't hide him in a frozen tundra, just like a white jumpsuit wouldn't hide him anywhere except frozen tundra.

So what about the current environment did he need to emulate in order to blend in? The mist and fog reduced visibility to almost zero, transforming the mighty wooden monoliths to nothing but large shadows in a hazy background of grey. Knowing this, it seemed clear that if he wasn't human shaped and possessed no human details, he wouldn't be distinguishable from anything else in the mists. If he were to begin moving, he could do it in such a way that wasn't the obvious two-step pattern of human footseps, such as ducking quickly to the next position. Knowing this, it still required practice and still had to be changed every time he entered a different environment. For now, though, he picked a humble merchant to stalk and see if he could successfully hide.

He decided he might as well start off bold and try to be a bit more careful if it didn't work. Creeping really close to the road, he placed his back firmly against a tree and activated his fungal camouflage as best he could remember. As his victim drew near, his heart rate didn't increase, his breathing all but stopped, and he was perfectly calm. No sound, no motion whatsoever, his slow metabolism allowing him to remain perfectly and completely still, he watched the grizzled old vendor creep by with his caravan. While the old man glanced around, wary of the mists that blocked his vision, he stopped on Toru's tree for just a moment longer than he had seen the other trees. At that moment he glanced away, but suddenly realizing that something was not as it seemed, he threw his head back and stared hard at the tree.

Sensing the double-take, Toru dodged behind the tree in question before the man's eyes returned to his position. However, the man suspected that it was merely his old eyes playing in to his paranoia. The strange shape on the tree was dismissed, and he continued his trek. Toru was not to be stopped, though. With a quiet flying leap, he appeared between two trees a short distance from the road. His position was somewhere the old man hadn't seen yet, but the strange dark shape dashing through the woods was definitely noticed. Eyes wide with watchfulness, the traveler scanned the depths of the woods, suspecting an ambush of either creature or thief. He looked primarily behind and around the trees, trying to discern the location of the creeping darkness, and as his eyes passed by Toru's still form, they did not stop.

[goliath764]

10++

[Molokai]

50/60

But any poor old man could miss something in this thick fog, what Toru needed was one with fresh eyes to try to find him. Emerging from the fog onto the path, he hung is arms low and hunched his back, staggering up the path going the wrong way. He had to wait and walk for a while, pretending to be the undead covered in leafy draperies, but soon enough a blacksmithing apprentice came trotting down the dirt path. Not seeing Toru until the last second, he closed his eyes and covered his face to avoid being injured in the collision. Little did he know, Toru saw him coming from a long way off, spinning to avoid the blow while the boy still had his eyes covered. So, before he had a chance to recover, Toru leaped into the woods and did his best to blend with the bush he landed in.

Observing the boy look back apologetically, find nobody, and begin looking around with a befuddled expression, Toru knew that he had hidden himself at least partially. That was no evidence of camouflage, however, since he's hidden in such a manner before without any. To really test to see if he did what he meant to, he waited until the boy had his back turned then stood up in place. If his disguise worked, he would merely have to stand stock still and the bewildered apprentice would look everywhere except directly at him. Tenacious this boy was, even after his initial search went fruitless, he was filled with renewed vigor when the bushes rustled. There was no wind, the fog wasn't moving, so there had to be something else there. Looking right at the perpetrating bush, he drew a knife and started pushing leaves aside.

Adapting his camouflage, Toru appeared to be nothing more than a drapery on the skinny shrubbery. Most of water country was swamp lands, all kinds of strange plants and odd dangly things hanging from trees, one more in a bush wouldn't raise any suspicion. Besides, nobody expected the plants to fight back. As the brave young lad kept poking around for the creature that had rustled the bush, Toru remained still and invisible. Eventually his adversary had to give up, since there wasn't a creature there to find, so when he did Toru decided he wasn't quite finished yet. Reaching out and gently brushing the boy's hair, then swiftly moving away from his previous position, he changed his hiding place and thoroughly terrified the young merchant. The knife in his hand switched grips and became a combat weapon, and he began creeping into the swamp.

Toru, in the meantime, had migrated a few feet away and now stood alone, disguised as a dead and crumbling tree trunk. This was a test of adaptability, to see if he could remain hidden in different settings at different levels of awareness for those looking. If he was found, he knew he would have to refine his technique a little better. But if he was not, then he would be confident that he could hide himself from anyone. Not that an old man and a blacksmith's apprentice equaled a trained ninja, but it would show that he was knowledgeable enough to adapt to them when the time came. Keeping these in mind, he remained perfectly still, perfectly part of the environment, watching his adversary search all around before backing slowly away and returning to his cart.

[ｒａａｈｎ]

+10

update TP counter -&- add jutsu to bio

[Molokai]

[exit]