Zenko no Senzai

The Garden of Ancient Days is a forgotten valley paradise in the mountains of Grass Country. It is hard to reach, and can only be gotten into through a cave near the base of the mountain. Within this place is a large, majestic tree which has been converted into a large base and storehouse. It's location is kept top secret. From the air, one would only see what appears to be a very large, and sometimes misty forest in a large valley. However, due to the size of some of the trees, on the ground level there are several clearings. The tree's canopies have simply stretched to cover them, hiding them from sight. There are also bamboo thickets throughout the area, as well as winding streams and rivers, and even a sizable lake with. The animals in this place are large, and often fearsome. It is a beautiful place, that in ages past held many secrets.

At the base of the large tree at the center of the valley, large buildings made of wood and stone surround the trunk, modeled after feudal castles. A large, secure looking yet stately and aesthetically pleasing main entrance is guarded by extremely think, double wooden doors. It is essentially a fortress. There is a large building at the base that has an entrance hall, and reaching into the trunk itself is a hallway, often lit with torches. If one were to go inside of the base, they would see a grand staircase reaching just inside the trunk of the great tree. It winds up and around until it reached the canopy, and in the canopy, there would be the largest structure yet seen. The canopy is where the true base was, hidden and protected within the leaves and branches.

It had been several days since Hayashi and Sessou had come to Kusa to hide out and formulate their strategies. He had been out surveying the area, creating detailed maps of the surrounding terrain for miles out. He had made a map of the valley, and much of the surrounding area as well. He had been at it for three days. Hayashi planned to return to the base today to continue training his jutsu. In a new black uniform, he walked through the bamboo forest slowly, leisurely almost. Checking his pack, his dark eyes widened as he realized he was low on blank scrolls. He'd had to use most of his carrying supply creating the maps. Hayashi always tried to keep a certain number of blank scrolls on his person at all times. One never knew when the need might arise for a canvas on which to draw, or write a message, or a fuuinjutsu array. Fuuinjutsu. That had been an area of interest for Hayashi for a long time now. He had a long list of unique techniques he wished to test out, but had not had the time before now. Hayashi looked up at the sun, shading his eyes from most of the intense light with his hand. It was half past noon, the hottest part of the day. He sighed. He quickened his pace, and within an hour, arrived back at the base. After washing himself and his clothes in a nearby stream, catching some fish, cooking and eating it making sure to save the rest to go in the food store, Hayashi stood up on top of the rock he had been resting on, leaped off of it and walked to his pack a few feet away. Taking out a scroll that said, "Fuuinjutsu", Hayashi unfurled it, sat down, and began to read. He studied many different fuuinjutsu arrays, and as he did, noted which ones were most important. They were in order of priority, and his first priority now was defense. Hayashi's battle style currently was best suited to one on one combat with strong opponents. He needed to make himself as strong at one on one combat as was humanly possible. He would need powerful defensive and supplementary techniques to begin with. His focus was not so much on offense, as he already had powerful offensive capabilities utilizing mokuton. Hayashi was trying to expand his experience as a shinobi. It seemed that every time he had to fight someone strong, he had to resort to using his bloodline. Though powerful, those abilities would be too distinctive now. He had to grow powerful enough to not need to rely on his bloodline to win his battles, or he could easily blow his cover. The amount of jutsu he planned to learn was daunting, but Hayashi was determined to become stronger and more experienced than any Senju that had come before him, to be powerful enough to stand on equal footing with the most dangerous shinobi in the world. He knew that if he attempted to fight someone like Uchiha Raiden now, his survival would be highly suspect. Though confident that he was a skilled shinobi, Hayashi was certain that he would not have been able to stand up to a shinobi like Uchiha Egress. And Uchiha Raiden had killed Egress, and by some accounts, had not had that much difficulty in doing so. If Hayashi had to estimate, at his current level, he was similar to the fabled Copy Ninja in strength. In truth, their fighting styles were similar. Hayashi very rarely went for direct combat with a strong opponent before he knew their abilities, and something about their close range fighting style. Rushing in head-first had gotten better men than him killed. Also they were similar in that both of them relied on misdirection, and leading their opponents into situations that were essentially unavoidable. Also insofar as their similar use of shadow clones, and earth style transportation techniques, they were similar. However, that was where the similarities ended. The copy ninja was very skilled in assassinations, and stealth techniques, and had a very wide array of jutsu both of the elemental and non elemental variety. Hayashi could not match that, as the copy ninja had the use of the Sharingan. However, though his range of abilities was smaller, some of his abilities were much more potent. Namely, his large scale Mokuton techniques. A balance was struck there, but because Hayashi hadn't had this much time to devote to training in years, he was lacking in versatility.

"For a shinobi, versatility is power..."

He muttered under his breath as he continued to read. His goal? To become a kage level shinobi in one month. That much growth may seem incredible, but Hayashi believed he would have no problems...his path was clearly outlined. Plus, he had to return to Konoha as soon as possible...to pick up the pieces if nothing else. Before leaving Konoha, he had taken a great many of his personal scrolls. He had a veritable library of techniques he wished to learn, derived from his clan's extensive jutsu library. What set Kage level shinobi apart from the rest was their virtual invincibility. Years ago, Sabaku no Gaara had huge offensive and defensive capabilities using his sand techniques. The former Raikage had incomparable speed and offensive ability which allowed him to quickly evade any attack his opponents threw at him, and counter with a finishing move before they could react. Hayashi's plan? To develop defense, offense, and supplementary abilities on par with the Kages of old. The first order of buisness, then, was to work on his defensive abilities. At present, he was proficient at the water wall technique, and also had a defensive mokuton ability. The problem was that elemental defenses are always susceptible to their elemental weakness, and his mokuton defense, while powerful, was not the sort of ability he could use openly. He needed a more focused, discrete defense...it had to be composed of pure chakra. Hayashi knew that it would be essentially impossible to simply develop a ninjutsu that erected a barrier around himself. Humans simply did not have the fine control necessary to execute a jutsu that manipulated the density, durability, and shape of chakra to that extend. However, if he channeled it through a fuuin, and used a barrier-style seal, it was certainly possible. He had already drawn up the arrays, the only thing left to do was test them. Drawing out a blank tag, Hayashi quickly copied down the fuuinjutsu array depicted in the scroll. Rolling up the scroll he then stood up and walked to the stream, stepping out onto the water and using chakra to walk on the surface. Forming the seal for the shadow clone technique, just such a clone poofed into existence. Jumping away from the original, the clone drew out a kunai, and attatched an explosive note to it. Pulling out the tag, Hayshi got ready.

There was a moment as Hayashi and his clone assessed each other. Without warning, the clone flicked the kunai towards Hayashi at deadly speed. Hayashi concentrated, the tag began to glow...and a barrier sprang up around him, completely covering his body in a field of chakra. The kunai glanced off of the barrier, and exploded suddenly, destroying the shadow clone, and spraying water everywhere. As the smoke cleared, Hayashi stood, still within the field of protection, the barrier utterly unchanged. Hayashi smiled and nodded. The technique was a resounding success. He knew without even needing to test it out that he could easily add an elemental affinity to the barrier to give it extra protection against elements of an opposing nature. Satisfied, Hayashi canceled the techinque. The barrier instantly disappeared. As Hayashi walked back to the scroll to find the next technique he mused on the maximum size of the shield...he estimated that it could comfortably protect up to three ninja, if they stood close together. Ample space, and there were few techniques that were able to pierce a barrier that powerful. Jutsu like chidori, however, would be a problem. Hayashi knew he was very weak against opponents with a Raiton nature. If he ever encountered one, he'd have to use mokuton to counter it. At least for now....

Having been back to base in order to pick up more supplies, Hayashi walked until he found a small clearing in the forest. Using Mokuton, he grew from the ground a small table and stool on which to work. Unrolling a scroll he had with him, he began to read what was written inside it. Inside the scroll were ideas for the construction of a powerful and complicated seal that would allow Hayashi to place a portion of his chakra into the seal itself, which would then be inscribed upon a object or surface for release at a later date with varied effects. In theory, it would, upon release, unleash a technique from Hayashi's library on an ususpecting opponent without Hayashi performing the hand seals for said technique, and without Hayashi being in the immediate vicinity. It was truly a powerful and complex ability that had no peer, as far as Hayashi knew. Due to its uniqueness it would be difficult to discern the correct method and seal formation. Hayashi had taken note of several other sealing styles, paying particular attention to the chakra-sealing styles of the Uzumaki clan. Hayashi remembered reading somewhere that the Fourth Hokage had be particularly skilled in this form of sealing jutsu. Recalling this, he reached into his bag and pulled out a scroll that read "fourth". Reading up on some of the fourth's unique sealing techniques, Hayashi was again amazed at the fourth hokage's genius. His better known and legendary techniques, such as Hiraishin, were not in the scroll, but Hayashi had more than enough information already.

Hayashi could recall several documented cases of someone sealing a technique within something for a conditional release. However the methods used to do this were imprecise at best, and downright convoluted at best. Hayashi believed the core cause of this was, in a nutshell, trying to do too much with one technique. The arrays involved would have to be extremely complicated, and Hayashi simply did not have the time to worry about making each of his sealing techniques have the ability to have conditional releases. Better to simply have them release according to a specific set of rules, perhaps a supplementary fuuin that could be added to the original in all cases, to achieve the desired effect. As a general principal, this should work well.

That was going off on a tangent, however. Hayashi quickly refocused his attention on the matter at hand. His goal was to invent a fuuin that would allow him to seal a technique into the seal itself, so that upon release the technique would activate. This would be particularly useful for his Mokuton techniques, but even elemental jutsu would work well combined with this technique. However the most useful aspect of this ability would be sealing a fuuinjutsu within a fuuinjutsu. Some fuuinjutsu are extremely powerful, such as the reverse four-symbols seal. However they can only be used in battle in extreme circumstances and usually at very close range. If Hayashi added the jutsu sealing fuuin onto a tag, then sealed another powerful offensive fuuinjutsu within it, the battle applications were enormous. However, that was only IF Hayashi was able to construct a stable array to regulate the chakras contained within the seal.

With that in mind, Hayashi set to work, drawing up hundreds of different arrays, then comparing the stronger ones the the weaker ones. Hayashi found he continually had to give up on one idea and start from scratch, much to his frustration. He couldn't use an even numbered seal to supplement an odd numbered one, because that was one of the fundemental rules of sealing techniques. One could not place an odd numbered seal on an even numbered one, or vice versa. The results varied: sometimes the technique would simply, completely fail, sometimes the seals would react violently, and injure the person performing the technique. One thing was absolute, it never worked the way it was supposed to. The results would be impossible to predict, and when working with seals and rites as powerful as the ones Hayashi was considering, caution was essential.

Hayashi spend hours comparing and contrasting different combinations of fuuin, weighing the advantages and disadvantages, weeding out the more sloppy designs, and narrowing down his search as he did. Eventually have had a few ideas that seemed like they could work. First, he had to have a rite to contain the chakras. He had to include protocols for varied chakra natures, as well as unique forms of chakra, such as his mokuton. He also had to establish fail safes to ensure that the technique could not end before he released it himself. The particular fuuin combination Hayashi was working with at the moment ensured that he would be unable to establish conditioning rites into the seal itself, meaning that other than releasing them directly, he had no way to ensure they would activate. Which was just as well, in Hayashi's opinion. He honestly didn't know how the fourth Hokage was able to store his chakra within a seal for over a decade without it degrading over time, or slipping into the host's chakra stream like the other chakra contained in the seal. It was nothing less than a feat of unadulterated brilliance.

Lastly, he had to ensure that once the chakra was manipulated and changed into the correct form for whatever technique was sealed, that it remained that way until its release. He had to make sure also, that the technique did not degrade, or that any chakra leaked out. Such a mistake would weaken the technique exponentially, defeating the purpose.

Once those steps, and a few other minutiae were taken care of the technique would reach completion. And then Hayashi could begin the experimentation phase, a favorite of his. He smiled as he worked. He genuinely enjoyed working like this, inventing new techniques, testing them out, bettering himself. He felt as if this, hard work, was the base of his clan's power. Of the leaf village's power. He was told that his father used to say, "Greatness is achieved through hard work and sacrifice. If power is not eared, it is not respected, it does not achieve its greatest potential." Well then that was what he would do. Through the techniques he had resolved to learn, he would achieve greatness. Through working hard to achieve them, he would learn respect for power, and that respect would allow him to use his own power to the greatest potential. He would know every aspect of his own abilities, and he would use them flawlessly.

Before he knew it, Hayashi was finished. Looking at the results of his work, everything seemed to check out. The only thing left now was to test his new technique, to see if anything needed to be modified. Pulling out a fresh blank scroll, he carefully used brush and ink to inscribe the array upon the paper. Once that was accomplished, Hayashi performed a few hand seals, and placed his palm upon the seal, which began to glow for a moment before returning to normal. He took up the scroll, and carried it over to a tree trunk, placing it on the ground in front of it. Walking back to a safe distance, he released the seal. Immediately, under the tree a Yomi Numa formed, and slowly sucked the treed down into its depths, never to be seen again. He then canceled the technique, and the ground returned to normal.

Hayashi smiled in satisfaction. He felt his father would be proud of him for what he had achieved so far. Hayashi turned and walked back to the table. Before this day was through, he had to develop two more techniques. Looking up at the sun, setting now, he had a ways to go.