[raika hyuga]

310 words training: Kekkai: Kagitabako [Barrier: Snuff] E-rank jutsu: 1/8

Raika stretches a little, preparing herself and psyching herself up for some much-needed training. Although, for once, it wasn't just training more Taijutsu techniques or any new styles that she might like, and she's training by herself, which she'd had plenty of experience with in Kawa, but she'd had so many people to train and spar with recently that she had little reason to go off by herself to train. This time around, however, she wanted to learn at least one defensive technique that she could use in a dire situation, and she was instructed that her best bet for such a thing, particularly with her fine chakra control, would be to practice something in the barrier ninjutsu series of techniques, although this suggestion was given to her by a member of the Hyuuga clan. This was still quite odd for her, since she was still somewhat distrustful of most of the members of her clan. They'd been the ones to send her off to Kawa in the first place.

But she didn't need to remind herself of that. For now, she needs to focus on training a barrier technique, and this one would be very helpful for her and would probably be easy enough to train alone, especially as she had a scroll from a library of techniques, and this one was meant to be a simple starter for barrier training. She'd even brought a candle and a sparker for lighting it, not that she thought she'd need it more than once. Raika starts off by setting the candle down on the floor of her bare training room. This wasn't really what she'd intended when she was making the room, but at least it was quiet, private, and empty of distractions. She opens the scroll and gets started on at least reading how the technique is supposed to work.

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by Pinn @ THQ

[raika hyuga]

248 words training: Kekkai: Kagitabako [Barrier: Snuff] E-rank jutsu: 2/8

Raika is honestly a bit flabbergasted after reading the scroll once, as it's really a jutsu far outside of her usual repertoire, but she thinks she can somewhat understand it. And this is a very simple jutsu anyways, just something to get her started on learning to use slightly more advanced Barrier techniques, so it's not all that complex, but it's just something she's completely unfamiliar with. At least with her Byakugan, she'll be able to clearly see her own chakra for performing the jutsu, and with her chakra control, it shouldn't take too much more effort than what had been required for her to learn Chakra Scalpel. She moves over to the candle and lights it with the sparker after a couple of tries, then sets the sparker away, as she probably won't be needing it for the rest of her training. With the candle now lit, Raika does one of the hardest things for her to do: she sits and focuses on her chakra flow. She spends a few minutes feeling out how her chakra ebbs and flows through her body before activating her Byakugan, staring intently at the candle. She's almost glaring at the flame on top of the wax tower, though she doesn't need to look directly at it to do that much. It's at least enough to establish her focus on the candle as she brings her hands up to form a single handseal in order to help her better mold her chakra.

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by Pinn @ THQ

[raika hyuga]

216 words training: Kekkai: Kagitabako [Barrier: Snuff] E-rank jutsu: 3/8

With the intense focus on the flame, she's barely aware of the rest of the world around her as she works to form her chakra into a ball around the flame. Even with her hard focus and her chakra control, it's not so simple as she might have thought it would be to learn even an E-rank technique. It takes a lot of compression to turn the chakra she normally works with as a nearly intangible energy into a more solid shape, and at that, she's only capable of making something resembling an upside-down bowl the first time. While it does look nice capturing the smoke, it's not what she needs to be able to snuff out flame, so she simply disperses it and lets the chakra flow back out again. She draws another breath and performs the handseal again, pumping a bit more chakra into the technique. Just like training to be more efficient with the use of her Byakugan, she's similarly training to use the technique with as little chakra investment as possible, as she's using her chakra control to make up the difference for less chakra to use for the technique, though it's already quite low. At least this time, the barrier she makes is a hemisphere instead of merely a shallow bowl.

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by Pinn @ THQ

[raika hyuga]

205 words training: Kekkai: Kagitabako [Barrier: Snuff] E-rank jutsu: 4/8

Raika lets out a hard little huff of exasperation. A simple E-rank jutsu really shouldn't be this hard for a member of the Hyuuga clan, especially one with the Byakugan and was expected to become the clan heiress when she had been younger. Granted, this was still the type of technique she's never really attempted before, an entirely new school of Ninjutsu. She lets the hemisphere dissipate again and returns to staring at the scroll for some additional instruction. While she could have simply made the hemisphere much larger and simply put the entire thing over the candle in order to eventually snuff out the flame once it had used up all the oxygen, she felt that would have been rather like cheating. After some careful reading and consideration, the Genin is still somewhat confused and unsure if she can even succeed at training something like this on her own. Regardless, she returns her full attention to the candle, flickering a bit in a gentle breeze, as if to mock her. Raika furrows her eyebrows and forms a handseal again, pulling more chakra into the technique as she starts forming a more rounded shape to try and catch the flame and strangle it for its insolence.

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by Pinn @ THQ

[raika hyuga]

220 words training: Kekkai: Kagitabako [Barrier: Snuff] E-rank jutsu: 5/8

At least this time, Raika is capable of making a sphere, but it misses the flame, and had instead simply closed around smoky air. Clearly, part of making a barrier is knowing how to make it, its dimensions, and where it should be in space in order for the technique to really work as it is intended. Raika dismisses the spheroid shape she'd managed to create, then realizes that it was somewhat lopsided anyways, and she would want to actually make a true sphere with this technique, if she really wanted to prove her mastery of it. She lets out another huff, feeling a bit self-conscious even in this empty room with nobody to actually judge her. She considers simply calling it off and not going through with the training any further, and just calling it a lost cause, but she isn't much of a quitter. She glares at the judgmental candle, but for now she wants to make sure she can make the barrier into just a perfect sphere for now. With a handseal, she focuses her chakra again, her Byakugan carefully regarding how she molds the chakra into a hard barrier so that she's able to turn it into a single hard spherical shape. With enough focus, she at least does that much. Now it's time for revenge!

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by Pinn @ THQ

[raika hyuga]

214 words TRAINING: KEKKAI: KAGITABAKO [BARRIER: SNUFF] E-RANK JUTSU: 6/8

Raika refocuses her attention on the candle flame, forming a single handseal in order to help her form her chakra as her Byakugan watches carefully for an exact position to form the barrier, her chakra coalescing into the perfected sphere again, though it's quite small. It only catches a part of the flame, forming a bit too high to actually catch the wick as well as the full flame itself, showing Raika that her aim was just a bit too high and the spherical barrier a bit too small for the purposes of snuffing out this flame. At the very least, she was getting a lot closer to performing the technique successfully, but she ends the barrier again, causing the chakra to disperse once more and letting out a harmless puff of smoke from the flame it had originally managed to capture and strangle. She moves her focus down a bit more before forming the single handseal again, this time putting more chakra into the barrier to increase its size just a bit, and her chakra at least forms into the correct shape and location, but is only a bit larger than it had been when she'd done her previous attempt, showing Raika that she'd need even more chakra to increase its volume further.

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by Pinn @ THQ

[raika hyuga]

234 words TRAINING: KEKKAI: KAGITABAKO [BARRIER: SNUFF] E-RANK JUTSU: 7/8

Raika can't help but to let out another loud groan of frustration as she ends the barrier once more and lets the chakra escape into the ether. At the very least, she's getting tantalizingly close to correctly performing the technique, but she's now realizing that the volume of the barrier needs exponentially more chakra to make it larger, when she'd thought it would be much more straightforward than that. With this new knowledge in mind, she returns to the scroll, just to make sure she's understanding the principles of the technique correctly and also to gather her thoughts and calm herself down. Once she returns to a nearly trance-like state, one that she rarely feels herself enter unless she's training her clan's Taijutsu, she forms the single handseal in order to help her better focus her chakra, sending it forwards to form it into a sphere that surrounds the head of the candle, and then locking down to make the barrier form and tighten before suddenly extinguishing the flame by strangling it from any further oxygen, and she finally breathes a sigh of relief at having successfully performed the technique in this highly controlled setting, but she knows that this is only the first real step towards training a technique; now she needs to be able to learn to use it almost instinctively, or her training will have just been nothing but an intellectual exercise.

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by Pinn @ THQ

[raika hyuga]

242 words TRAINING: KEKKAI: KAGITABAKO [BARRIER: SNUFF] E-RANK JUTSU: 8/8 complete end thread

Raika spends the rest of the day sparking up the candle with the sparker and then setting further and further away, forming the handseal, focusing her chakra, and then extinguishing the flame from greater and greater distances until it becomes quite easy to successfully perform the technique, and finally she gives herself the hardest test by using her Byakugan and actually turning her back to the candle. This time around, she forms the handseal and uses the ability of her Byakugan to see behind her to the candle flame, forming her chakra there and then locking it down, forming the barrier meant to instantly extinguish a candle flame. The chakra tightens and then forms into a small spherical barrier, snuffing out the flame by strangling it of oxygen before Raika turns back around to see that the barrier is once more formed around the very tip of the candle, filled with nothing but smoke and no longer putting out any flame. With a bit of glee, she dispels the barrier and lets the chakra disperse, causing the smoke to rise back up again as she feels quite accomplished, since this type of technique was normally quite outside of her normal wheelhouse of techniques, but could prove useful in helping her to practice other barrier techniques. Or not. The amount of work she'd needed in order to successfully perform this simple barrier jutsu was enough to make her rethink this type of training altogether.

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by Pinn @ THQ