[Uchiha Miroru]

Uchiha Miroru

Konohagakure No Sato

Academy Student Extraordinaire!

@name | 229 | notes

Our Dearest Miroru,

We're ever so proud of you for graduating from the Academy! We know you've been frustrated that you haven't inherited the family's Doujutsu, but we've been watching you grow into an absolutely exceptional young woman without the burdens the Sharingan demands and places on its bearers. We truly believe you are exactly as you're meant to be, and we wanted to express that to you.

As a graduation present, we're going to be arranging for a special present to be commissioned. It isn't finished yet, but we'd like you to practice with this bo staff for the time being until your gift is completed. We're confident you'll find the practice worth your while.

We love you, Mikki <3

---

Miroru stood in the family's courtyard with what, to her, felt like just a big stick and tried to think of what her parents could be thinking. She waggled the staff around and sighed, sitting down crosslegged and pouting. A stick? That's what her parents wanted to get her to make sure she felt special? How was a stick gonna help with that?!

She sighed and rolled the stick in her hands, thinking about things. There had to be things that sticks were good for, right?

"Just don't give up on me! We can figure this out!"

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[Uchiha Miroru]

Uchiha Miroru

Konohagakure No Sato

Academy Student Extraordinaire!

@name | 224 | notes

Standing, she went over towards the family's wooden practice dummy and poked it with the stick. That was something, she guessed. She was like. Way outside of normal reach, and she could hit the dummy with the stick without much trouble. She tried it a few different ways- lunging like a spear, swinging it from above or from the sides, starting to get a feel for the extra reach it provided.

But then, she supposed, that wasn't the only advantage a staff provided, was it?

She tried shifting her grip. If she wasn't afraid to get up close, she could spread her grip and treat the weapon as if it was providing two shorter weapons past each hand. She gave that a try, staying in close, striking with the short pieces extending past her hands. She didn't like it as much, but if her opponent liked her being close even less, all the better.

And that was the goal, really, wasn't it? Being adaptable, unpredictable, being able to shove her opponents into crappy situations they had no way to escape. A staff worked well for that- it could be used like a blunt spear, a close up weapon- but how else?

"Just don't give up on me! We can figure this out!"

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[Uchiha Miroru]

Uchiha Miroru

Konohagakure No Sato

Academy Student Extraordinaire!

@name | 237 | notes

While she practiced rotating between the close form and the extended form, she let her mind wander. Things were changing, after all, and it was as good a chance as any to think about them.

She'd passed her graduation exam. It'd been stressful, but she'd made it, and she knew that Shigure, too, had promoted as well. Was he going to keep teaching? He said he was, at least long enough to see his students graduate, but what about after? Was he gonna lead a Genin team? Probably, right? All the existing teams were full. Was he gonna start a new one? Or get pushed into an existing one?

That idea made her mad, and she started striking a little harder, opting for two-handed close strikes to hit faster, harder. Reach was nice but it didn't have the weight to take advantage of the leverage. What if he DID get shoved to some dopey existing team? He was her teacher. That didn't seem fair. Sure, Koshin and Iruhi and everyone were perfectly nice people but. Bleh. The whole idea just made her see red.

She danced back and lanced the staff forward, pushing the dummy back into a tilt before the weight pulled it forward again. Maybe she should practice like this for a bit.

"Just don't give up on me! We can figure this out!"

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[Uchiha Miroru]

Uchiha Miroru

Konohagakure No Sato

Academy Student Extraordinaire!

@name | 228 | notes

Stepped back, she started to practice wielding the staff like a spear again, studying the changes. With both hands spread, she had a lot of leverage to deliver hard blows up close. Further back- how did that alter her advantages?

She could stay further away, and that was a huge help. Sweeping strikes were easier, and she could see how that would make evasion trickier. Close up, the danger zones were small and didn't really swing through that much dangerous space. Further back, those sweeping strikes could make entire planes of space entirely threatened, forcing retreat or vertical evasion, which was always tricky. Go up and you were usually stuck mid-air, a sitting duck for a follow-up attack. Go low, and you were usually off-balance, again poorly prepared for a second evasion- and most evasions possible from a crouch left you prone, another dangerous position to be in.

She was starting to see a lot of possibilities. If she was fast enough, she could follow a swipe with a vertical smash or a lunging stab, punishing the evasion of the original attack. That's how she was starting to approach things- study the ways the staff could be brought to bear to remove options from the table.

"Just don't give up on me! We can figure this out!"

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[Uchiha Miroru]

Uchiha Miroru

Konohagakure No Sato

Academy Student Extraordinaire!

@name | 224 | notes

Vertical mobility was an interesting thought. She took a few steps back and braced the staff's tip against the cobblestones, pondering briefly. People vaulted with poles all the time. It had its limitations, but perhaps she could work around them.

She gave it her first shot, taking a few steps and jamming the staff into the ground, bouncing up and trying to hold onto the grip to hoist herself up. That didn't work so great. She ended up not really moving much before the stick was sliding towards horizontal on the other side again.

Backing up, she went once more, this time trying to KEEP a strong grip on the end, to hold herself up instead of pulling herself up. That went better- tucking her feet up got her a few feet off the ground, better than she could hop normally. Progress!

She kept at that for a while, slowly figuring out how to move her body to maximize the distance off the ground, swinging her body up almost horizontal before pushing the pole down as she straightened her legs and swung them down after the vault, landing with the staff held back over her shoulder.

Hm.

Could she attack like that?

"Just don't give up on me! We can figure this out!"

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[Uchiha Miroru]

Uchiha Miroru

Konohagakure No Sato

Academy Student Extraordinaire!

@name | 223 | notes

That was trickier. She started practicing that immediately, but the trick she was running into was the transition from vault to attack. She tried practicing the attack on its own a few ways, and that part was simple enough. Time the downwards swing right and she could land a hit combining her own downwards momentum and weight with the strike itself, but the form to do so wasn't super compatible with the optimal vault landing posture.

A few more tries and she was getting a much better hang on the technique. While the BEST landing form didn't cooperate well with the downwards strike, she was rapidly finding that compromise turned out pretty well, in fact. Shifting her grip so she already had a good swinging grip on the base of the staff meant all she needed was decent form coming off the vault, and she could just incorporate the staff swing into the landing.

She went to try it on the dummy, and quickly realized a new issue: aiming your landing and your attack at two different locations was exactly not easy. It was the opposite of easy. It was hard! She could land well, but her strikes kept landing off-center!

"Just don't give up on me! We can figure this out!"

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[Uchiha Miroru]

Uchiha Miroru

Konohagakure No Sato

Academy Student Extraordinaire!

@name | 223 | notes

A bit frustrated, Miroru opted to sit down and rest. Her arms and shoulders were tired from the vaults, after all.

There was a lot of potential here, though. She had to admit that, as boring as a stick sounded for a weapon. Mobility options, multiple effective ranges, and it gave her an option to smack incoming shuriken and kunai out of the air without stabbing her hands. Plus there were plenty of bukijutsu techniques that used polearms, and she knew fuuinjutsu had seals to expand the size or weight of a thing. That was useful too- increasing the weight as she struck or increasing its length while vaulting to catapult her up out of danger? Those were both extremely useful traits. Plus blunt weapons were great for not killing people. If you had to kill someone, it wasn't a bad option, but it WAS harder to disable targets with swords and spears than bashing gear.

She couldn't help but wonder what her parents were getting her. For it to be suitable for a genin, it couldn't be all that impressive, right? Still, maybe it would be chakra responsive! Maybe it could shoot lightning bolts! That'd be pretty awesome, right?

"Just don't give up on me! We can figure this out!"

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[Uchiha Miroru]

Uchiha Miroru

Konohagakure No Sato

Academy Student Extraordinaire!

@name | 224 | notes

She had to be more realistic, though. She suspected if it had any special properties, it would probably just conduct electric attacks well. That was fine too, though. That was an excellent advantage. After all, with a reach weapon, it was harder to dodge and more tempting to block. If she channeled Raiton all through the weapon, blocking became very unappealing. Or, more specifically, ineffective. It wouldn't stop anyone blocking, after all, it would simply very effectively punish them for doing so, shocking the defensive limbs, likely inducing paralysis, and letting her land unguarded hits immediately afterwards!

The more she thought about it, the less disappointed she was with the idea of a conductive staff weapon. The mere idea of surrounding the staff with crackly lightning had her back on her feet, making silly thunderbolt noises with her mouth as she swung the stick around, smacking the dummy and imagining faceless Enemies wiggling comically as their skeletons flashed from the electrocuting energies running through them! Maybe they'd start calling her the Kage of lightni-

No, wait, the Raikage was already a thing. That was kinda disappointing. But then, she supposed everyone who'd ever wanted to be the Hokage probably felt the same.

"Just don't give up on me! We can figure this out!"

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[Uchiha Miroru]

Uchiha Miroru

Konohagakure No Sato

Academy Student Extraordinaire!

@name | 267 | notes

Miroru sat back down with the letter and read it again a few times. It was hard to understand why her parents seemed so consistently proud of her. She didn't really think she was worth being proud of. She was proud of herself sometimes, but she didn't see what anyone else had to be proud of. She was okay. Clever, sure, but not the strongest, smartest, fastest, toughest... and that stung. It probably always would.

Wouldn't it?

She thought about that a bit. She'd never heard an adult complain about not being the best at something. She'd always just sort of assumed it was because eventually, everyone figured out that nobody wanted to hear about that. So maybe she was just immature. That seemed to track.

But maybe it was just that when you grew up it wasn't important anymore. That could be the thing, too.

She frowned a bit at that. She really did want to be the best at... something. To have something she could be unabashedly proud of. But that- she supposed- wasn't super likely. There were an awful lot of people out there. Heck, even a lot of people in the village. Trying to be better than all of them?

Seemed pretty darn silly, honestly.

So maybe she'd just have to settle for being good at everything!

For now, at least, she thought as she put up the staff and headed back instead, that was gonna have to be good enough.

"Just don't give up on me! We can figure this out!"

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