Training one's Mediocrity

Shadow Shuriken (100)
Manipulated Shuriken Technique (100)
Phantom Shuriken Technique (100)
Manipulated Shuriken Giant Body (200)
Manipulated String Technique (200)
Multiple Phantom Shuriken Technique (200)
Offsetting Illusion: Bell Shuriken (200)
Fire Release: Flame Clone (200)
B-rank Speed (400)
Manipulated Shuriken Wire Binding (400)
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The art of utilizing shurikenjutsu it was something that Auri had resigned herself into practicing as it was something common to all shinobi and wouldn't make her stand out like say genjutsu or kenjutsu. No it seemed like everyone even mediocre people like herself were capable of throwing a shuriken or kunai at a target. Figures they'd be able to do this considering it was one of the things they need to do in order to pass the academy exams and it was for that reason that most typically dropped it when they actually became genin for ninjutsu. Not realizing that their chakra reserves were too small to effectively use ninjutsu for anything but a last resort whereas sharp metal objects were easily purchased with the measly funds a genin could scrape together over a week. Still she kept that nugget of wisdom to herself and he went out of her way to buy gear that could help her in the field even if she didn't actually use them and instead lingered near training grounds and pilfered the lost and discarded tools of other aspiring shinobi to practice her skills.

Over the course of time she had managed to be somewhat decent and chucking sharp implements of death at targets, and she began to try and use them alongside some nuance after all it wouldn't do to just be a one trick pony. That was for the ones considered above average, no a mediocre kunoichi like herself needed to be a jack of all trades, master of none type. This is because when you went out of your way to get good at one thing you stood out even if it was a dumb idea unless you were really good at that one thing like prodigy level good in which case you firmly qualified as a good shinobi. She had seen those types before and had made sure you creep away from them before she was infected by their single minded pursuit of one shinobi skill or another. No she was firmly in the camp of get passable at a certain skill before moving to the next one and getting passable at that before once again moving on to another type of technique. The end result was that when she eventually became a chunin she would be so well rounded with no clear cut "outlier skills" that she'd be forced into two roles, either as a gate guard which really was one of the chilliest jobs a mediocre kunoichi such as herself could aspire to or a desk job which was her true goal as paperwork scared away all prodigy shinobi no matter how fearsome in battle they are.

That was something she'll eventually learn how to do, paperwork that was, she had a feeling it probably fell under fuinjutsu not kinjutsu as much had suspected over the years. Sure mounds of paperwork were described by people to be utterly soul crushing but she refused to believe that anything that used scrolls and ink could not be related to fuinjutsu and there was nothing natural or unnatural about paperwork so it couldn't be considered juinjutsu either. Besides she was sort of going off topic with her talk about paperwork and such she would try and reign herself in as it was one of the few things in life she was allowed to be passionate about. She couldn't even look too much into finding a potential partner because then she would seem like a fangirl and she was aiming to be a mediocre kunoichi not a baby making fodder-nin. Still she hoped that whomever she ended up with could at least be average in the bedroom department, she wasn't some sort of deviant and didn't know much about sex like most thirteen year olds but she knew enough and the rumor mill supplied the rest. Either way she would refocus on what she was doing now that she had calmed herself and would stare at the targets she had in front of her. She had picked up some shuriken, partially rusty but they'd do for now, and she would throw a couple of them taking time to throw them in a specific way so that one of them would be under the other but in such a way that it would be concealed by the shadow of the first one.

This was called the Shadow Shuriken technique and she felt like this technique would be of great use in a life or death situation, well one that a mediocre kunoichi like herself would find herself in namely against a sort of creature or a genin drop out who thought being a missing-nin was a smart career choice. Sometimes people in this world really didn't think things through before they did them, didn't they know the world outside of the republic was super dangerous, no she wouldn't be caught dead outside those walls if she had a choice in the matter. Well actually no she probably would be found dead if she tried to build a life outside of the safety of the republic which was why she didn't even think about considering such a stupid thing in the first place. It was so unfathomable that she almost tried to put said thoughts out of her mind except that she realized that ignoring the implications of missing-nin was not conducive to her long life plan. In order to live to the ripe old age of 70 years and see her grandchildren while outliving her spouse she would need to be aware that missing-nin existed and sometimes she would need to deal with the potential situation of running into one, as low as it would be to run into a missing-nin while sitting at a desk or checking people at the village gate's documents.

She would draw back one of her hands which would cause the top shuriken to veer off course revealing the fact that she had attached a wire to it using the Manipulated Shuriken Technique which allowed her to essentially move it in such a way that she hid the shuriken in the shadow of the lower shuriken. A masterful display of basic shurikenjutsu skill which any prodigy would probably be able to dodge with their eyes closed, but that was why she had other techniques that she can use to harness her trickery so that she could at least survive an encounter with one of them long enough to hightail it out of there. She would learn how to use as much as she could and when she moved her other hand she would move the first and both shuriken would loop around one of the targets multiple times and essentially if this was a real person they would be bound in place. This technique was called Manipulated Shuriken Wire Binding and was a B-rank technique which she felt would be what she used when she was trying to kill someone, well as part of the set up to kill someone.

It was a common misconception among genin that the bigger the jutsu the higher the rank and the more likely it was to kill your enemies. That wasn't actually true, the only things constant with high rank techniques was that they took more energy to use and they were more likely to cause overkill when used against low level targets like lowly genin like herself. No all that it took to kill someone was a kunai to a vital spot like an eyeball, the neck or the spine. All solid targets, but her point was she had techniques that worked well when someone was bound up in ninja wire. The reasoning was that once bound she could finish them off with a well placed fire technique to light them on fire. Once she did that then they would burn alive while being unable to wriggle out of it or use the blessed technique of body replacement. It was why in order to avoid such tactics from her enemies she had pushed up her physical conditioning to the point that she would be able to run at the same speed as the average chunin. While this might surprise some people she knew that it was only natural for someone mediocre like herself to have some sort of conditioning and she allowed herself to push up her speed enough that while she couldn't sustain it for long it would be enough for her to run away from most opponents. Of course she knew about freaks of nature who were capable of A-rank or S-rank tiers but that was something that she would not hopefully encounter as a genin but even if she did she would not be a dangerous enough target for them to take seriously and hopefully through guile and cunning she'll be able to distract them long enough for her to make her escape.

One of the things she noticed the most about the academy was that they taught techniques which truly were the fundamentals of all other techniques and that someone like her wasn't the type to read through scrolls to find fantastical techniques which would shock and awe those who saw them, no in actuality she would be the type to look at what she could do and try to build upon that. Which was why she had learned how to make an illusionary clone of her shuriken which was based on the basic clone technique. She was so good that she learned how to do it seamlessly as if she had just thrown multiple shuriken though in order to do it she needed them to not look at her so she could quickly make the hand seal she needed to preform the technique. She likewise learned how to infuse her elemental nature into the basic clone technique allowing her to create something which could use her fire ninjutsu instead of her causing her opponents to think that it was the original and thus they'd more likely hit her clone than her. She actually used the transformation technique for a lot of things beyond the usual use as she found that it was quite the versatile technique in the right hands. She first learned how to use it to alter a moving object namely her thrown shuriken in such a way that they looked and felt as if they were a bigger shuriken than they were and it was through this that she learned how to apply it in such a way that she could use it for one of the components of a genjutsu that she had learned just in case. Who would of thought that the use of bells in shuriken could be so effective, well she did because she knew that most people would hear a bell and be like "huh that's weird what is that mysterious ringing sound" and promptly get got by shuriken which didn't have bells on them. However her truly inspired technique happened to be one of those "high powered" ninjutsu, it seemed that in order for her to really blend in with the rest of the genin she would have to commit to learning one of them. So she chose something that was more utility than it was powerful and built off of what she already knew in the shadow clone technique. It was called the Shuriken Shadow Clone Technique and well it blended what she used in shurikenjutsu with enough ninjutsu to make it all worthwhile and ultimately didn't cost as much chakra as she thought it would for it to be useful. Now she knew she had limited funds but more importantly she had limited equipment so it wasn't exactly smart for her to toss shuriken out left and right as if she wasn't going to run out of them. No it would be much better to conserve her real shuriken and use clones in order to bombard her enemies if she needed to because at the end of the day all that mattered was that the sharp metal objects found themselves impaling her enemies regardless if they poofed into smoke after doing so. In fact sometimes that was actually preferred because then they'd be pin cushioned and would start to bleed out rather than the blood loss being slowed due to the metal objects still being lodged in their body. It was essentially the icing on top of a set of techniques which worked very well together and she hoped and prayed she didn't run up against someone who was familiar with those techniques as she would have a much worse time fighting someone who was familiar with the types of stuff a dedicated shurikenjutsu user could do in the middle of battle.

Training Complete
Word Count 2122
Word Count Req. 2100
Can't solo train for 10 Days

Approved