Date: Six months nine days after awakening
Subject: Pre-planning
How can I get back at Chukichi for humiliating me like that? I can't fight him, he'd slaughter me, I can't do too many attacks on his camp since he might decide to respond in kind. I need to gain better combat effectiveness before I can really ruin his career.
Right, I'll focus on hunting down units on Mother island and sabotaging groups that move away from the main camp.
Actually, yeah, I take back what I said before. Konoha is free game, until I have the skills to really screw with Chukichi I can't be picky about whom I go after.
The advantage I have here is that my main ninjutsu is Earth release, whereas everyone here is mainly focused on Fire, Water and Wind. Not to say that each group doesn't have outliers, but still...
Up in Claw the other Suna nin would sleep on steel mats, so that they couldn't be dragged down into the ground. No one does that here, the expectation of massed subterranean assault is absent, and one or two Earth users would normally not be enough of a threat to matter against a whole squad.
Yeah. That's how I'll start.
Date: Six months eleven days after awakening
Subject: New disposable puppets
I've been working on quick production clay puppets. I finally got enough progress with the Earth transformation training that I can form the clay into appropriate shapes. I tried to make the microscopic structure interlock, but either I don't have enough control, or ninjutsu can't directly affect particles that small, or the nature of clay here is different. I don't quite know just yet.
Haven't figured out what I can use as biological material inside the clay just yet. Thinking of going with bone ash, but that might not be of much use with the stoneware quality clay. Plus getting that much bone and refining it down would be a bit of a pain.
Maybe mixing powdered blood into a silica glaze? Hmm. Not sure how well that would work, plus having the biological component on the outside would make it all the easier to remove in battle.
Animal skins? The latent chakra networks might cause unpredictable changes and fluctuations unless I took the time to arrange them individually.
Problem is I really don't want something water soluble or flammable, even if I stuck hairs deep inside the clay they would likely be broken down and destroyed if the puppet were exposed to a fireball.
Well, I guess there's nothing for it, I'll have to do without. It'll just be slightly more difficult to maneuver them.
I've got flame throwers installed in the arms of the puppets, now that I don't have the wooden exterior I don't have to worry about heat conductivity.
Hidden weapons can't really be used to the same extent, ceramics aren't quite as forgiving in regards to tiny slats and concealed mechanisms. Even with the internals reinforced with metal the chances of some hidden opening chipping are really high.
Date: Six months thirteen days after awakening
Subject: Moving into position
What's that process birds and fish use to reduce resistance? Tailgating! Right. Even with tailgating under the ocean floor it still took like three hours to get them all in position.
Tricky bit was figuring out how to match up the exact location above ground with where I knew they were underground. Since puppets can only see their surroundings subjectively it's really hard to coordinate together with the avian scout puppets when they can't see the same environment.
Date: Six months fourteen days after awakening
Subject: Trap set
Konoha squad coming through. Don't recognize any of the faces, must not be very famous. Chunin though, so I can't afford to underestimate them. Must be wary for plot armor.
Date: Six months fourteen days after awakening
Subject: After action report
Started by dragging the one at the rear under the ground. Subterranean fights generally rely on who can hold their breath the longest, and puppets don't breathe. Wouldn't work like that for a skilled Earth user though.
The other two responded by jumping into the trees, not something I have a strong counter for at this point.
Attacking with ranged bombardment from multiple directions didn't have any noticeable effect, they managed to deflect consistently.
The one the northern side closed to engage, the other one cast a wide area affect genjutsu. Probably didn't realize that they were being attacked by puppets, unfortunate since the genjutsu actually worked.
Had to cut off awareness of those puppets and submerge them under the ground. Back ups were sent in in the form of rodents and birds, using the same kawarimi tactic I used in my first engagement in Claw. The rapid switching had a noticeable effect on the close range fighter, very distracting but not very damaging.
After the few seconds it took to purge the genjutsu from the puppets they reemerged. Trying flamethrowers against the genjutsu user seemed largely effective, disrupting any further attempts at casting illusions. At that point I had one puppet switch out with a diving bird puppet and drag the genjutsu user under the ground.
The final fight with the taijutsu user was just a slog. He couldn't damage my puppets faster than they could damage him.
Would have been considerably easier if I started lacing my blades with drugs.
Date: Six months fifteen days after awakening
Subject: Capture results
Looks like it was a standard Nin-Gen-Tai squad, well rounded but not exceptional. The ninjutsu user turned out to be a kunoichi from the Sarutobi clan, had a couple of decent fire jutsu and Fire transformation training skills, but she was really pretty low down on the internal clan hierarchy.
The other two were clanless. One a civilian born, son of a baker, the other an orphan. The orphan was trying to seduce his Sarutobi teammate in an attempt at gaining clan backing. How adorably twisted in his affections.
Orphan-boy was the taijutsu user, he relied a lot on body reinforcement, kind of similar in style to a knock off goken. Might be useful. I did like the skills at deflecting incoming projectiles, he must have trained that a lot, very nice.
The baker's son was the genjutsu user, apparently his parents didn't want him being a close ranged attacker, trying to minimize his risks in combat and pushed him into the ranged support option.
Anyway, got the Phoenix Sage and Great Flame techniques from the Sarutobi girl, the latter was their clan exclusive jutsu. Kind of a pain though, Fire release is just so meh. It's neither more effective nor as cheap as the flame throwers I already have. Plus the jutsu are all so similar, they just burn shit, no supplemental or defensive ones at all.
Nabbed the False Surroundings and Hell Viewing genjutsu from the other guy. Sweet! I like those. My thinking on genjutsu is basically just that the more prescribed the result and second less real it seems the more useless it will be. A lot of the higher ranked genjutsu have very specific outcomes and look completely surreal, it's obvious in the extreme that the person isn't viewing reality and then they just have to figure out how to escape.
However, for these two genjutsu it's not like that. The False Surroundings technique is designed to just slightly change the environment, while the Hell Viewing technique causes the mind to invent its own worst fear and see it as real.
Plus, I have an advantage for genjutsu in that I can already separate out pure yin chakra, just like the current Mizukage, which makes it much harder to detect and dispel. I can see a lot of possible uses for those two genjutsu used in conjunction.
And, if I can twist the Hell Viewing technique around to also see what they want most, then I'd have a ninja corollary for both Boggarts and the Mirror of Erised, pretty effective ways of hashing out a quick and dirty personality evaluation.
Date: Six months seventeen days after awakening
Subject: Scouting
Both the enemy camps have taken to only giving out order as they send people out, then have them plan while en-route. Unfortunately this doesn't give me a lot of time to figure out their plans and react to them.
Longer missions are easier to interfere with though. A Kiri team is heading over the ocean to Moon Kingdom, which seems to be a relay station of theirs. I can just set up a trap for them in between, but I'll only be able to hit them on their way back, since they've already left and are too far away to catch up to.
Date: Six months twenty one days after awakening
Subject: Here they come
Team incoming. Escort mission? That wasn't on their orders. Either that or that person is a new transfer.
The plan stays as is. If some escape then it's still fine.
Date: Six months twenty one days after awakening
Subject: After action report
Used the False Surroundings area affect genjutsu to hide my puppets. Basically just made them look like rocks and mounds of mud on the sea floor.
This turned out to be a good thing as those with a strong Water release can sense the flow of water they are in contact with by infiltrating part of their chakra into it.
Once I have some sort of chakra sensing ability I'll have to practice on ensuring that I can use genjutsu to fool it.
When the Kiri nin passed onto the beach some of my puppets came up from out of the water and attacked with flame throwers. That was a mistake in hindsight, the flames across the low water level of the beach gave them too much steam to play with.
Still, it was partly alright, given that the puppets left underground still managed to attack them from below. Not so good was that they immediately rose the water table, turned the area to mud and then used their combined chakra to overpower my control over the Earth technique.
I wasn't even aware that was possible.
…Or, well, chakra magic, anything's possible, but I wasn't aware it was something I had to watch out for.
I got a few of them out of the situation by using shunshin, but most of those puppets got dragged down and broken by high pressure mud.
I managed to incapacitate one of the chunin with a drugged kunai and abscond with him. It was only after that that the guy they were escorting came into play.
He smiled.
His teeth were fully serrated.
Sure I got some decent taijutsu from before, but against someone like that… Yeah, my puppets got sliced to ribbons and smashed to pieces. Ceramics might be good against Fire and Water, but they're shit against decent weapons skills.
Date: Six months twenty two days after awakening
Subject: Kiri chunin
Kenjutsu user primarily. Dreamt of joining the Seven Swordsmen as a child, didn't have the gumption to pull it off. Admired the guy they were escorting, who is named Fujisaki Akira, because he was accepted as a potential heir for the Kiba.
Don't recognize the name, might mean he died in canon, might mean he was just never mentioned. The Kiba swords are supposed to be insanely sharp, which would help explain why he was able to cut through my puppets like that, but even if that wasn't the case I doubt I would have been able to defeat him on open ground.
I… wouldn't really call what this chunin used 'swordsmanship', more like 'magical sword arts', he focused a lot more on figuring out how to use chakra flow on his blade and use it together with Silent Killing than he did learning correct forms.
That seems to be a common problem, people focus too much on flashy jutsu and too little on fundamentals. No wonder the Samurai are a legitimate threat when they just focus on one or two chakra techniques as supplemental to their actual sword styles.
I imagine that the actual Seven Swordsmen and their apprentices are probably outliers though. The one I saw certainly seems like he was.
Oh! Silent Killing, not a jutsu. Just learning how to move very silently while not releasing any killing intent. Hmm, killing intent is something I'll have to look into, it might make sense under certain conditions.
Can't really fully exploit the Silent Killing skills without both practice and specially modifying the joints of my puppets. The lack of breathing and need for clothing makes it easier though, so I might start with that and work from there.
