Arguments in favor of wind weapon buffs:
- Summoning advice/training
- Things Pangolins want (so she can make contracts easier)
We should really ask Pandaa about either of these first. No need to burn a favor when we already have a liaison on demand.
Technique hacking instruction
As others have pointed out, Hazou would be better suited for this since Keiko has used her Monomaniacal Skill on Summoning. Since this is a favor for Keiko, I doubt she will be interested in using her favor on him.
A wind technique which makes her faster
Mari already has wind wall ready to teach and that also has the advantages of increasing the entire party's move speed as well as deflectin projectiles.
A wind technique which creates a breeze (because we want to build an airship)
If such a technique exists, I'd rather have something more along the lines of a push-back technique so Keiko can disengage from an opponent trying to fight her in melee range. So long as the technique pushes the assailant back as well as pushing Keiko away from her starting location it would be trivial to use that for aerial propulsion as well. I am mostly in favor of this alternative.
That being said, I originally proposed wind weapon enhancement since (theoretically) it would improve Keiko's strongest skill combat skill, Weapons, like Roki boosts Hazou's tai jutsu.
From the official Naruto wiki page on
Asuma:
Asuma had the ability to use both
Wind and
Fire Release nature transformations. He would mainly use his wind-nature manipulation abilities in combination with his trench knives to increase their lethality. When tutoring
Naruto Uzumaki about wind-natured chakra,
Asuma explained that enhanced with it by someone with an affinity for Wind Release, the trench knives possessed enough striking power to pierce through rock.[24] Asuma was also well-versed in ranged wind techniques, such as the
Wind Release: Dust Cloud Technique. In the anime, it was shown that he could use his wind chakra to
levitate his trench knives and control them remotely.
Infusing weapons with wind chakra allows them to puncture through stone, so Keiko would then be able to attack through any obscuring MEW walls Hazou makes after we have used them for defense. Adding explosive tags to the ends of the weapons would allow us to have armor piercing explosives in case we want to remotely splat someone. Also, she would be able to throw PMYF kunai through walls so that we can create our own escape routes as needed.
Mechanically speaking, having a, for all intents and purposes, weapon style that can be applied to all weapons means Keiko can still use whatever weapon(s) she wants without massive penalties. Additionally, just like Roki the initial levels of the weapon enhancement will allow Keiko to still level up other non-combat skills while still increasing her best offensive skill at the fraction of the cost it would be to get only Weapons levels. Keiko will be leveling up Capacity regardless of our intentions since she wants to summon more Pangolins but this gives her a way to utilize her excess chakra whenever she runs out of Pangolins to summon (like how the leader of the rollers was poofed almost instantly and Keiko only had her weapons to fall back to).
While we may be unable to get chakra blades (for now), if the QM's follow canon in regards to wind infusing training, Keiko will still need to practice first with a genuine chakra blade. If Asuma is similar to canon, he should have two and so Keiko could do a training montage like Naruto did in canon. She may or may not need the first ten levels in order to continue improving on her own like Hazou needed a teacher for Sealing, but even if she doesn't explicitly need one having a teacher should make the process itself go faster (I can't remember where in the thread it was posted, but I remember the QM's once saying that Hazou would be able to research faster if he collaborated with Kagome rather than simply working on his own). Furthermore, as a wind technique, Keiko should get some training discounts since she already has 8 levels in Zephyr's Reach.
Don't forget that every single team member still needs to increase skills other than new shiny skills. When was the last time we increased our team's tac move or our stealth? Those are our primary defenses against getting caught and killed by hunter-nin after all.
Anything that can augment Keiko's 20 Weapons dice while still allowing her to increase her needed social, survival, and summoning skills seems to be worth it to me. We could get another utility jutsu but I fear it will just end up like Zephyr's Reach which we sunk a lot of XP into with minimal returns.
