Aritomo leaned against a tree near the training area, taunts from earlier coming back to him. Even someone who doesn’t know what their element is can use wind to cut. Even a kid who’s just been given a chakra card can cut. It’s the most basic feature of wind techniques that there is! He concentrated, hands flipping through the basic symbols for Kaze Tekishutsu. Energy –here- apply pressure –here- air moves –here-. Simple. It shouldn’t be hard to modify, right? Well… It was possible to make an edge if the air was concentrated into an extremely fine destination point, but that took so much effort. It was supposed to be basic! The breakthrough came when the Genin realized that the reason it was taking him so much effort was the fact that all of his energy was being spent moving surrounding air into the shape of a blade. But that wasn’t really wind—wind was motion. This new philosophy produced much more dramatic results—without the burden of particles, his chakra formed a much more efficient edge far more quickly. He practiced for a while with different areas of effect, hitting the tree with a broad blast, then trying to cut different shapes out of the leaves that fell. It was actually pretty fun.
His next technique was an assignment from the Kechinbou no Genkotsu instructor. Apparently, running away was one of the foundational skills of that taijutsu style. Typical. His first technique that actually had a name was a method of escaping from danger. But still… ”Think back to when you first learned to climb trees with chakra. Some of the time, you probably overcompensated and went flying away from the tree. Start by learning to do that again, then add the elemental recomposition.” The instructions were typical as well—never miss an opportunity to remind a student of his failings. Not that Ari needed reminding. But it was surprisingly effective, especially for going straight up. Straight up… As he’d suspected, the technique was even more effect combined with one of his favorite techniques, Kaze Katai no Jutsu. Getting that right took even longer, but the results were worth it. I can fly!
Experimenting with any chakra release was tiring after a time, especially Kaze Katai. The fine manipulation involved always gave him a headache. To take a break from the releases, he went over to his pack and removed two of the scrolls—one blank and one with a simple writing kit sealed inside. Step one: unsealing. Recall the objects through the scroll. After that you can practice putting things in. He’d decided a while ago that mastering Fuuinjutsu was more trouble than it was worth—there were simpler ways of securing campsites—but the basics were undeniably useful. A lot of it was like his calligraphy courses—a certain shape had a certain meaning given its relationships to other shapes, even if the two appeared to be tangentially connected (if at all). Once he had a writing kit, he practiced moving objects into the scroll—marking the storage spaces and remembering which seal was which. Once he’d become fairly competent, he took a dozen kunai from one of the racks nearby and stored them on his “practice scroll.” Semi-satisfied, he glided home.
And now the hard part. Something inside had intentionally been avoiding training his earth-style jutsu—taunts aside, he was pretty good with wind, but his focus on air had led to significant neglect of the ground beneath it. And no wonder—his first efforts at moving the ground around felt like swimming in quicksand. He’d thought managing the particles in air was complicated, but there were orders of magnitude more in the ground, and they all had to be shoved to get anything done. He stopped to have a drink. There was another oddity—water. A half-dozen theory instructors in the academy had described the relationships between different elements, the ways they strengthened and weakened each other. Some of them made sense—wind increased the energy and oxygen available to fire, making it burn hotter. But how did water strengthen earth? He splashed some of his water on the ground half-jokingly to see if the loose dirt would suddenly explode. It actually sank a bit as it became mud. He made a quick handsign and pressed at it. Sphere. It moved. Substantially more easily. So water provides speed… He began alternating his training work between the softer ground near a pond and the harder earth in the main training area. His goal became to replicate the “feel” of moving wet earth while on dry land. It worked, after a fashion—he developed a variety of things that could be done with earth, even tried using wind to provide additional acceleration to the projectile forms. It was hard to tell which produced the greater effect for a certain amount of chakra. It was definitely easier to use his physical force to provide more power to earth-style attacks than wind, though.
The most exceptional case was the technique he came to think of as his “rock wall.” It wasn’t made of rock—reshaping that was absurdly difficult—but it was fairly sturdy chakra-reinforced earth. Kaze Katai was an effective barrier, and an artistic one, but it took much more concentration than just pushing a wall out of the ground. He memorized the appropriate handsigns, tested it on varying surfaces to see how that changed things, and decided to leave it at that. He did have to practice his taijutsu too, after all.
Word count: 925
Subject: Training Topic #1 
