Down time seemed to be his bane recently; and he wasn't happy about that. He'd never really had time to relax, as it was; growing up as he did meant that idle time was dangerous and could lead to very bad situations, if you weren't on guard you could get destroyed and all your valuable things stolen, too much time not hunting and trapping meant no supper for long periods of time, having nothing of value to trade meant that getting needed medicines and such was impossible. Downtime meant no pay from the clan, and he wasn't able to run missions for villages that would pay the bills, especially since inns and such where extremely expensive and missions for his skill levels where... absolute shit. If he was lucky he could work himself to the bone for 16 hours a day and barely make enough for a shit inn in a horrible part of town. Downtime was rare.

He'd managed to swing some; he was set to start his actual job in the village the next day, and he'd sent a message off to the nearest clan outpost outlining his plans to investigate the disturbance out in the desert, and the further trip to the temple in Kumo. With any luck he'd get a response by morning, and with any luck it would come with an advance on his normal stipend, as well as reimbursement for his current mission; the moment that he was given the interview with the Madame, it was enough to satisfy his mission requirements, enough for base pay and reimbursement for his basic expenses; so staying until Samael was ready to travel was now possible. Well, the clan pay and the couple of missions he'd done to pass the time. A few hundred ryo wasn't much, but it was enough to eat on, and to get the base supplies he needed. Those extra supplies would be reimbursed after the fact, he didn't have the receipts and such for something he hadn't bought yet, so that would have to wait. Records where the hallmark of the clan; they kept immaculate ones, it was the life of folklorists and scholars to record things after all.

This spike of motivation was still pushing hard; he really wasn't much of one to train ninja arts and skills, but given everything that he had planned, where he was going and what they (he and Sam) would possibly be coming across out in the high desert... he felt the need to protect himself. To protect Samael. Mostly Samael. Haruka didn't have a death wish, but he also had... very little self-importance; he saw himself as lesser to others, it was part of why he was so low within the hierarchy of his clan, even with his natural talent and skills. If he really cared, if he really felt he was worthy, he could be a super-star; but that wasn't in his sphere of comfort and desire; he saw himself as unworthy of the attention and such, anyone else was better and everyone was perfect compared to him; physically, skill wise, everything. Ah, the life of the downtrodden. If he didn't have this job, he'd be a teenage drunk; a drug addict, a vagrant and nuisance; if he was even alive by now.

He likely wouldn't have been, really. That he survived his orphanage days was a miracle; so making it this far without pure luck and a clan that was at least sort of taking care of him was pure luck and some quick of cosmic karma that was likely to run out before long. Or so the demons in his mind believed.

Eh. He'd get existential another time. He needed to do things, or else go down to the shitastic little bar that made up the bottom floor of the inn he was staying at and just blow through the last of his money on cheap beer and floozies. Not his style, really.

He'd picked up a staff earlier in the day, something simple and usable; nothing fancy; it was cheap and worn, but it would do. He'd tested it out a bit earlier, it was balanced enough for his usage, and none of the defects were major enough to be an issue most of the time. A chance of the staff snapping, but given where they were, he'd end up with usable battle sticks or batons, and he was... decent enough at using those. Not his area of specialty when it came to staff and stave weapons, but he'd dabbled, enough to be considered proficient. He could handle it. Hopefully.

He needed to get used to this staff, or more so than he was. It took time to learn new weapons, and give he hadn't made this one himself, he had to adjust to something that was meant to be generic, which meant that he'd have to change to fit it, not the other way around. This staff wasn't the type that could be shaved down to adjust the center of gravity to fit his preference; hence it would be more of a challenge to use. This was a good thing, really; it forced him to work, and working was how you learned, and learning was how you got better. The struggle meant he'd learn better, learn more and learn it properly; versus some easy knowledge handed to him for nothing.

This need to learn meant he needed time, and he needed space. He needed access to a place where he could work alone, that had access to the materials he'd need, and preferably some shade and/or water. He knew the perfect place.

It was time to visit the park once more.

It was as empty as the first time he'd come to it; more so really, as now it was cleansed of the spirit that had protected it for so many years. His last visit had seen him cleanse the area, breaking the bonds that held the spirit to the land and allowing it to move to the next world peacefully; the spirit was one of good intention, it's only purpose was to create happiness and joy in the children that had once frequented this place and given it life; but that life was over, the children had moved on and the poor being had been forgotten; so it was time to allow it to move on, before the loneliness and age tainted it and it became angry and bitter and lost a chance to move to the peaceful afterlife. When he arrived, he said a short prayer for the spirit; he might have helped it move on, but that didn't mean that the spirit couldn't still use one. Even in the next life, events of within this world could have an effect; and a prayer for happiness and peace was always appreciated.

A heavy wind had torn across the desert the previous night, and the dead trees had all but shattered under it's power. There was plenty of debris floating around, branches and sticks and the like that would be perfect to practice on. He had a few jutsu in mind to work on, one was a simple staff slam; enhanced with chakra; that would allow him to crack bones and such without breaking the staff itself. Wood in general wasn't quite as strong as bone, least of all this knotty old white oak; so he needed the chakra enhancement to strengthen the weapon to keep it solid. Small digits like fingers aren't all that strong, but it could still be a problem if the staff was to impact something more solid in the process of the attack, because he could end up shattering it without dealing any sort of damage at all; which would be bad.

He moved toward the large, dried out husk of a tree that had shattered under the force of the wind and fallen over; giving him access to the higher branches that were smaller and very similar in nature to small bones. It was the perfect target, really. Before he got that far, however; he needed to work on figuring out the center of balance for this staff.

To that end, he took several minutes to run through a series of training katas and spins; moving through them each a half a dozen times and with the end of each series he shifted his hands and started again, finding the adjustments and feeling the changes until he was satisfied he'd gotten it. Once he was at that point, he moved to the web of branches and began the swings; he was moving easily and slowly; practicing the motions with no power behind them, learning the level of grip he needed to allow the staff to move properly through the swing without catching on his flesh, or losing power.

That part took a bit longer, the imperfections and such of the wood made it significantly more difficult than it should have been; he'd have to invest in gloves or something of the like to make this easier. Something that would allow the wood to slide without catching... maybe a metal band in the palm of a glove. Yeah, that could be doable. Once he was satisfied with the movements, or as much as he could be, he moved to the actual power swing. This was simple as well, it was just a matter of speeding up the movements he already had, adjusting the grip power a hair more, and he was good. Hell, he even took the powered swing to the tree, breaking through a few of the smaller branches and such without much worry. They were dry and brittle after all, so long as he stuck to the super thin ones he was safe enough.

He did this for a good half an hour, before finally focusing chakra into the wood. It was dirt, impure wood, and it resisted the chakra, but it was able to handle it, and he was able to fill the fibers enough to strengthen it. One of the first things a Bukijutsu user learned was how to focus chakra through various materials, in preparation for using weapons enhanced by the energy. It wasn't hard to find a balance, and once that was done, he leveled a full power swing at the center of the trunk and watched at the staff shattered deeply into the old tree without splintering itself. Perfect. That was what he needed to do, so he was happy.

Now, for the second idea he had for his staff skills.

It was an odd thought, but it was useful. As a child, he'd been lucky enough to find an old pogo stick toy thrown away in the forest outside of his orphanage; and the old thing still worked. He hung onto that toy for years, it made for a source of play and enjoyment (a rarity in that world) as well as a wonderful weapon; as it was solid metal and extremely good as a general use club. He figured that he'd be able to create an effect similar to a pogo stick type of movement by releasing bursts of chakra from the base of the staff with him balanced on top of it. Given he was pretty used to that balancing act, this would be pretty simple of a jutsu to start. The hard part would be figuring out the amount of chakra needed, in conjunction with forward momentum, to keep balanced while moving at a decent speed without breaking his weapon.

Moving toward the open space that was once a ball field, he spent a moment examining the ends of the staff to decide which was the more level of the two. Finding neither to be all that great, he pulled a kunai out of a hidden pouch within in robes and used it to pare down the better of the two ends until it was level enough to use for balancing on. It didn't take much to get it balanced without him, which was the absolute easiest part. Once that was settled, he started working his way up to climbing up to where he was able to balance upon it. This was... not that difficult; he was extremely light and it wasn't that hard to get a stable place standing still. The actual difficult part was... moving. A solid hunk of wood wasn't really made for this; hence why he was going to be using chakra to get the moment and maintain it without splintering the wood or losing his balance.

He worked on that part for... over three hours; it took him half of that time to get to where he could hop in place without too many issues, and the rest was working on getting moving in a straight line. Turning wasn't happening, but that was fine; he had an idea for how he could use that to his advantage, he'd need to check that out later when he had a better weapon, but for now he was happy with what he'd gotten done.

He moved back across the field and back to the part of the park where there was a small covered picnic pavilion near a small pond with a broken fountain in the center of it. He'd trained there before, and it was rather perfect for both rest and a place to work on water jutsu. Water was a scarce resource in the desert, but the scattered parks and such still had access to rainwater ponds for part of the year. This pond only existed because of broken plumbing, and this poor park was so forgotten that no one had even bothered to come fix it; which given this was a desert and water was more valuable than gold or salt was saying something. He was pretty sure that no one but him had come here in months, if not years; this park was very out of the way and in no way near a residential area, which was why it was so odd that it existed in the first place; especially since when he'd first come he'd met a spirit of the park that had nothing but joyful memories of children and fun and glorious times of the past. It was likely that years before there had been residential structures nearby, likely across the canal, or else the buildings lining the street had been converted from apartment structures as the population moved into newer, better constructed structures. Fairly normal part of city life, from what he'd gathered from his travels and visits to larger cities and population centers.

He was moving into the shaded area for a bit; he needed to sit and rest, catch his breath and hydrate before moving on. Even working on water techs wouldn't solve his need to drink some water; he needed it inside of his body, not around it. He'd be making it rain, yes; but that wouldn't slake his thirst, and he needed a bit for the world to completely stop moving oddly; the time spent bouncing on the staff had unsettled his sense of balance a bit, and the world still felt like he was bouncing oddly. Once he was under the cover of the pavilion, he found a spot to sit down and unpacked the small bag he'd brought with him. Inside was nothing major; just a few bottles of water, a bag or two of tea, a few light snacks, first aid kit, etc. Nothing too special, but it was what he needed. Below the first aid kit was a large bottle of skin cream; he put it on in thick layers under his makeup when under disguise, or just in general when he was outside during the day. He'd put on a layer before he left the inn hours before, and he felt like he needed to put on more. He pulled a single, clean rag out of the bag and cracked a bottle of water open so that he could dampen the rag and began to wipe away the dust and grime from his skin. He had to get the stuff off before it damaged the sensitive flesh more than the sun itself was, and it took him a good few minutes of cleansing the cloth and then his flesh before he was able to pat his skin dry and open the small container. He dipped his fingers into the cream and began to rub it into his face and neck, taking long moments to work the soothing balm into every nook and cranny in a thick layer that actually managed to give his face some actual color, and dampen the transparent quality of his skin. He finished and closed the container tightly, using the damp rag to wipe the excess off his hands and replaced both to the bottom of the bag. He took another bottle of water and cracked it open, taking a long draw from it gratefully; the water was still somewhat cool thanks to the thick cloth of the bag keeping the heat and sun off of it enough to retain some level of coolness it had when it was originally packed away.

It would take a few minutes for the cream to fully set and dry, and he wouldn't go back into the sun until it was; so he had time to rest. He reached for a small bag of candied fruits; a couple of them would do his energy reserves good. A quick pick me up, with some salted crackers and a bit of jerky he'd made before coming into the desert to finish off a solid snack. The salty crackers were needed to help replace the electrolytes he was sweating out by the bucket, and the jerky was a bit of protein to help keep his body happy until he got back to the inn later and was able to eat a real meal. Oh sure, he could run up the road and get a sandwich or something from a tiny coffee shop that serviced the police station cum ninja outpost, but then he'd end up making himself sick while training; he was never great at eating any sort of 'real' meal while training without getting sick afterward, so he wasn't going to push himself with it now.

He gave himself a half hour to rest, eat, hydrate, and recover; it was more than enough, but this way he was able to cool down enough to handle being in the sun for a few more hours. He was pushing himself past his limits as it was; just being in this region for this long had gone a long way toward pushing his tolerances for the sun and heat in general higher; so it was all worth it in the end. His skin burned and was going to be a nightmare for a few weeks after he left the desert, but he wasn't going to complain much. He packed away his supplies and made sure that there was no trash or anything left behind; he had a policy of 'leave nothing behind', both as an environmental theorem and personal policy; he had to use everything he had to survive, and leaving behind trash and such meant that he wasn't doing that, and that was bad; it was also bad for the environment, and given he was basically homeless and spent much of his life outside and living in nature, he had a good reason to care about stuff like that. He prefered to leave the world in as good a condition, if not better, than it was when he arrived.

He left his bag and staff sitting on the floor of the pavilion as he moved off toward the pond; it was only a hundred feet or so from the edge of the covered area to the pond shore, So he wasn't worried about leaving them there. He'd be able to see them at all times, and there was literally not another living (human) soul around; with only the occasional sound of a bird cawing or something to break the silence of the windy desert. He could risk leaving a weapon unattended; since there was little chance of anyone getting hurt because of it; since there was no one around.

His next bit of training was likely the easiest of all of them; he knew exactly what he was going to be doing, and it was super simple. He just needed to work out the actual formation of the rain and make sure that he could do it at all, and he was set. The general idea was simple enough; condense a source of water and throw it into the air, where it would rain down like buckshot on a target; it wasn't meant to cause a lot of damage, but it would make for a great way to spread water around for other skills, and cause just enough pain and distraction to allow for setting up and combination jutsu to be used. Concept simple. Concept easy. Practice should be too, but that was why he was training it, verus just trying right off the bat in battle or something.

He was already fairly adept at pulling large volumes of water out of existing sources, and that's exactly what he did; pulling several cubic meters of water up and into the air before condensing it down into something roughly the size and shape of those balls kids play with when they play kickball; maybe one meter in diameter and almost perfectly spherical. He spent a few minutes passing it around and moving it, getting used to the weight and the way it moved before throwing it into the air above the pond. He was working on adjusting the angle of the throw, so that he was creating a controlled arc that would allow him to explode the ball and cause it to rain down in a specific way. He did this several times, working only on the aim of the throw and making it break apart correctly; it was nothing more than an gentle rain shower at this point. He began to charge the ball with chakra, so that when it broke apart the droplets created were larger than what would be normal, as well as being shaped like tiny river fish called minnows. It was a partially cosmetic touch, and he rather liked it; as well as being aerodynamic. In that shape, the droplet-fish fell faster through the air, meaning they hit harder, and caused more pain and bruising. He repeated the process a few more times, adjusting the numbers and all the details until he was happy with it.

For this last jutsu he had planned, he needed to work with an element that he wasn't as good with, but still decent enough. Wind, his secondary skillset; and the lesser used. Water was always his better deal, but wind was still extremely useful to have. The idea was to make a barrier of wind to trap a target; by using the wind he would be able to use this skill to trap spirits and such as well as humans; the wind combined with chakra would create a most effective barrier. Yet another in his trend of animal themed skills; his only friends and companions for years had been animals and spirits, and he was using them as inspiration for his work now. Early on, one of the first spirits he'd ever met and befriended was a cheetah; the spirit of a man that had been born to a tribe of plainsmen long ago and never left this world; over the years he had turned from a human soul to an earthbound spirit of the wind; his natural talent for speed and running had given rise to his ethereal form. It was also serving to inspire Haruka.

He'd create a series of cheetah out of wind and have them run at full speed around the target, releasing a stream of wind chakra that would create a barrier wall that couldn't easily be escaped from. The wind would trap anything physical, and the chakra would trap spirits and other non-physical creatures just as effectively. This would be the most difficult jutsu he'd worked on recently; or should be, although to be fair, he'd never really had much trouble working out how to perform jutsu before. So long as he had a good idea of what he needed, he was able to work it out pretty easily on his own. It was how he'd gotten this far without any sort of 'real' ninja training after all, and why he'd former Master's lackadaisical training methods had worked for him. He was given the basic idea of what he needed to learn, and figured it out himself. It worked.

It took him nearly an hour to figure out how to create a single cheetah out of wind; and really that was the hardest part. Once he could make one, making several more was simple enough. Controlling them took another half an hour of figuring out movements of his arms and chakra, but once that was figured out he was good to go there. Beyond that, getting the beasts to release a constant stream of chakra as they raced in circles around a target was absolute cake walk. The tornado-like cone of solid air created by their speed and the chakra was exactly what he wanted, and this pleased him greatly.

He was dead tired and way to hot for comfort when he finished up; and he didn't feel like hanging around anymore. He gathered up his gear and supplies and made his way back toward the inn; he could probably fit in a quick shower and such before hunting down some food. Yeah, that'd work. He was happy with his accomplishments for the day; he'd earned a little treat. maybe he could find a place selling ice cream, or flavored ices.


-Exit-


WC: 4422

750/750 D-Rank Monkey Staff Crush
750/750 D-Rank Raining Minnows
1000/1000 C-Rank Jumping Flea
1000/1000 C-Rank Running Cheetah Barrier


922 Remaining.

Jutsu trained: