Dream Synecdoche [t][o]

[Naitome]

<sub>The scenery seemed unchanged. Around him, the shards collected themselves into mere dust. They melted back into the familiar unfamiliar of the dream-scape. Able to move freely, he stretched. He began rotating his shoulders, and gathered more chakra from his core.

It started to spread out and envelop the boat and water. His hands were clapped together. His eyes were shut tight and twitching slightly with the intensity of his focus. The air around him became stiff with the atmospheric pressure of his chakra's influence. Random molecules free-falling like snow on some high mountain settled and bonded closely together and warped.

Physical and spiritual energy collided. At the point where they met, they destroyed themselves in a manic fury. What residual mass was left from their ruination clung to each other. They swirled in the air like a cloud of flies. They shifted from a type of muddy black ash, to eerie ghost refractions of the vibrant sky.

Everything seemed covered in a mealy coat. It was still soft and imperfect. The same holes that had just formed intruded into the magnetic sphere of his imaginary form yet again. He panicked. His chakra reached forward with a sweeping gesture of heaviness and purpose and finality, it reached with the same force of will as Naitome's own determination.

It was aided by his considerable fatigue. His chakra attempted to encompass the totality of all that was attempting purchase in the ionized air with a simple command; hold. He could feel the vibration from his efforts. As he demanded that the stiffening creation contain its structure, it rebelled against him. In one shuddering oscillation of defiance, a loud >pop< caused his eyes to open, and he stood in renewed silence, an unwavering block of semi-solid mineral in the kaleidoscopic business of his mind.</sub>

[Naitome]

<sub>He allowed himself to let go. His skin once more, grew cold and stiff. A tangible second-skin of iron seemed to withdraw into his center. It pulled in on itself, also drawing in the compacted mineral of the water and the boat, the hills and earthen limbs of and bizarre flashing sky. He moved, out of the boat, stepped over its side, and was surprised when a surge of chakra poured out from his heart without any conscious decision to summon it.

He stepped down in awe. Beneath him, the water would not give. It felt the presence of his chakra. It collected into a hardened surface. He could walk as if it were a glass floor, and he did not feel it have any reaction other than arranging its molecules even tighter as his heavy boots skimmed its top layer.

His chakra set his surroundings into activity. The boat itself began to tremble and rise into the air. The surrounding rock and grass, the thoughts of fish, all seemed to be seeking and searching for purchase on this particular aspect of their imagined lives. All seemed to be breaking apart at their foundation. All became fragmented black granules, absorbing the light.

His physical and spiritual energy was finally in sync. As he moved his hands out over the former liquid, tiny rivulets as thick as his arm rose up, new composite structures of sand and darkness. They created trenches. He moved with purposeful heavy steps. They forced more of his chakra into manipulating circuits of aggressive energy, traveling faster than he could comprehend. Where the tangible met the intangible, instructions were given, and something new was created.

He looked up at the insanity of the sky and reached up. He focused his attention on a passing cloud shimmering in a rainbow of hues that made him want to praise its wonder and vomit simultaneously. A wave of chakra rose, its origin within his own heart, and shot up and out, it moved itself into the sky and formed a fist like protrusion of pressure and force around the cloud. It held on to the mist, fell in deeper, touched the hydrogen and oxygens bond, touched the essence of what it was to be solid matter. It spread and infected like some virulent plague and ended with a complete and perfect black jewel, directly reflecting the emptiness he felt at its destruction.

It was only a dream. It was far more.</sub>

[Jae]

Naitome Kagirinai received +6000 EXP

[Naitome]

<sub>The cloud form iron was enveloped in his own chakra. He used it to crush the now hardened air moisture. It separated into little more than fragile grains against the insane backdrop of the sky. It pulverized beneath the grasp of his intertwined energies and compacted. It became a moving brace of dotted matter, tiny spotted cores of mineral and stone twitching in the night or day or twilight that glowed before him.

He performed a blurring succession of handseals, fingers interlocked. As he formed each one, a pattern of super-thin constellations was outlined above him. They shone in glaringly bright energy. His chakra spun out of him in visible puffs. It ingrained itself deeper into the shivering hard-matter air.

The loose connections that caused it to spread became charged with a static-like buzzing of intent. The holes that had previously formed began again, only smaller. They were arranged in neat rows, and soon grew smaller still. The entire iron powder surface he'd created was re-formatting itself. The construct became stronger and more durable.

The dense material it was born from broadened. From a tiny rock-hard center it stretched out. It covered itself with whatever was available. Each molecule around him was swiftly broken down and re-joined from its most insignificant compound up. They gathered first around his body, centered on his clasped hands, and were finally pooled into the hardened black metal cloud.

It descended slowly. It was now simply a square block of crystal. When it fell within his reach, he ran his hands (or he felt as if he had, or perhaps it was a dream, or a nightmare most definitely something on the precipice of being or of being done, perhaps...) along its surface. It pulsed with something like life beneath his touch. His chakra was wound throughout its length and insinuated between the rigid molecules and hardened to a strictness more permanent and real then anything else around him.


He woke up.</sub>

[Naitome]

<sub>--| He awoke to sunlight everywhere. His startle response exaggerated as he jumped to attention and cleared the dust from his clothing. He stretched briefly before walking a short distance to a raised lever sticking out of the side of an unremarkable decorative stone, and a tiny door unsealed itself and crashed open loudly. Inside, while nature also woke to greet the day, he perused a series of scrolls whose language was esoteric and indecipherable.

The scroll outlined the process of forming handseals and the bio-physical relevance the forming of seals has other than just as memory aids; they too were instructions. The various veins and arteries wound throughout the fingers and palms were wired directly to the heart, which as everyone understood, was the focal point for chakra within the body. He formed the handseals slowly and deliberately in time to the diagrams crudely drawn on the paper. He saw a scattering of uniform lines which showed each fingers direct connection to a specific chakra point within the body. Bird, Dog, Ram, Dragon, Tiger..each was performed in gradual succession, mimicking the path energy traveled within your body when being intentionally molded.

He could feel different nodes within his body respond to the prodding intrusiveness of his chakra activating. Waves of energy coiled through his body. Visualization, as an aspect of creation, was also paramount to the formation of thought form shapes. A shinobi's mind gave birth directly to the complicated shape transformation that could construct anything out of chakra. It would also allow it to be changeable enough to constrict and expand and, Naitome was correct...even evolve.

From all his reading led him to believe, the shaping of a construct he'd attempt to form using magnetic energy as its core would have to be formed near instantaneously. He felt momentarily stunned at how far he had yet to go in order to make this sort of training an asset as opposed to a liability. As positive and negatively charged particles were drawn in red and blue ink dyed with various flowers and cheap oil on the scroll, chakra flowed throughout his body, renewed by his brief sleep. He allowed the negative particles to flood around the chakra, changing its consistency.

This time, a solid shape sprung into existence much quicker. Naitome was happy that his rest had replenished his chakra. It shimmered in a bright white for just a few seconds before nearly burning to a rich gray, and then black. It had only formed at a total size of three meters, and Naizaisei formed another energetic interruption at its center to expand it. A tiny black sphere formed in the center, pushing against the outer edges, a triangular formation. The makeshift prisms hard flat walls dissolved into a semi-gasseous mass before blowing out another meter of space, and re-solidifying. His hand began to shake as he slowly closed it into a fist, concentrating the negative chakra to follow the movement. There was a heavy satisfying crunch as it stabilized and shimmered darkly in the mornings gentle rays.</sub>

[Naitome]

<sub>--| A pyramid of iron sand had fully formed, but the chakra within was still weak. If a simple sphere of charged chakra could expand it, it wouldn't exactly be a true sign of mastery. His hands moved painstakingly over the filled triangular shape as his own chakra refined its dimensions. It grew larger and harder. Out of pure chakra it rose, forming a solidified spur of black energy like a handle extending from its center.


He extended his hand across its length. The shape of the pyramid faltered. His control seemed to be lacking. He held the dragon handseal tightly compressed against his chest. The chakra molding the pyramid fluctuated wildly and it seemed ready to disperse itself amongst the wind. Without hesitation, he poured more of himself into the creation, more thought, more belief in the metaphysical positioning of reality. Though he'd memorized the contents of the scroll, the practical application of the shape manipulation techniques was much harder than merely reading it.


The diagrams failed to acknowledge the complexity of negative and positively charged chakra particles interacting on a level beyond what was taught at the academy. He understood suddenly why he spent so much time alone; he couldn't stay stabilized in the moments composing a conversation for more than a few minutes at a time. His mind wandered into dream even while awake. With his eyes wide open, he strained. His tenketsu flooded the surrounding area with a confining energy that gave the pyramid new dimensions. It shifted subtly beneath his unspoken commands.


He practiced using his own willpower to move it along three dimensional space. It would float hesitantly near him, then suddenly shudder away at a quick pace. Its center opened up and enclosed random objects and stones placed around the training grounds. While the counter-clockwise rotation continued its methodical patterns throughout his body, the chakra construct branched out. It seemed to want to cling to its creator, but his focus was unwavering. He pushed out a second and third time, until it was finally still. It sat a full six meters in length, towering above him, bristling with energy that intimidated even Naitome.


He felt his focus waver. He was concentrating too much on the end result, and not enough on the pyramids formation. As particles were created and instantly destroyed themselves against their opposites, Naitome clasped his hands together tightly and envisioned pain, caught...a cage...blood. The incredible pressure exerted by the black prism. The way light folded in on itself and seemed to cut at the skin all the while crushing him into oblivion.


The internal pressure of the chakra pyramid increased, and he was elated to see tiny layers of magnetic flux build at its center. If he reached out now, his hand would go numb from the beautiful dance of destructive force held tightly within its unfolding completion.</sub>

[Naitome]

<sub>--| He began to force a discharge of chakra directly from his heart. It moved in odd patterns. It swirled around his rib cage and he traced it through tactile sensation alone. It built momentum as the black pyramid before him seemed suddenly fragile. It was dangerously close to breaking from the pressure building within.

It's edges were not sealed. Where the three sectional flat triangles met to connect to the flat square bottom, there was only the tiniest spread of connective chakra holding things together. He didn't simply allow it to dissipate into thin air. He began to draw the particles in towards his overworked heart. Chakra spiraled out of the core of his energy network. It was also sucked in from the rapidly lightening black (now gray....now white) construct withering in front of his eyes.

He compressed it into a shapeless and amorphous jelly-like mixture. Like a cloud of plasma, a cloud of free-floating negative chakra particles and thin scraps of metal. He reached out to place his open palm into the messes center. His hand tingled and seemed to go numb. There was a distinct cold chill that spread from his wrist on up to his chest.

He refused to pull away from the strange feeling. He opened himself up to releasing finely tuned bursts of chakra. At regular intervals, the newly formed chakra still carried the positive charge of the life that sparked its birth. It was new life, unsure, and easily dominated by the negative effluvial soup crafted from the dregs of the first unsuccessful forming. With a shiver that carried through to his bones, he performed sloppy handseals he could barely feel. He held the straining pent up energy prepared to crash out and coat everything, the overture before the symphony.


As quickly as he'd begun this process he calmed it. It wasn't the break down of restraint that would cause his body to overflow with chakra. It was a gradual siphoning off of effort. One moment he was rigidly steeling himself against absorbing what stray particles he could, they next he was a small bit more relaxed, each consecutive second his shoulders falling as he let it go little by little. Lacking anywhere internal to dwell, it rose up like a viscous black tide, nearly invisible, crashing out before Naizaisei's slightly hunched form. His hands fell weakly into his lap, but his eyes flared with concentration.</sub>

[Naitome]

<sub>--| He spasmed suddenly. His outstretched hands clapped together, then apart, then together again in quick fury. All that escaped energy made a slight crackling as it was spurred into movement. It was a billowing dark miasma of shattered particulate chakra. With fervor and haste it was called to attention. It stiffened in place, no longer folding in on itself, but dwindling into blackness.

It was overcome with a simple set of instructions. It would prevent its own imminent destruction. It hardened. Before, weak connective pseudo-tissue had tethered each plane of the polygon to its own flat reflection. Now was wholly different. Now it was told form a prism, withdraw from light. It shivered, a protest against itself. It struggled and flailed while struck with its own urgency of purpose.

But Naitome held it in place. It was seeking some way to pull back from the ultraviolet rays naturally present in the atmosphere. It struggled in vain, then withdrew into itself. As it did so, particles intermingled and formed a cheap type of crystalization. They were never allowed the chance to balance back into non-physical form.

The unrelenting waves kept seeking to escape. The found, puzzlingly, that they had nowhere to do so. They raged against their own foundation. They placated themselves by dividing into even smaller shards, fractured, split, shook free of gravity and screamed blindly into an oblivion too small for any human eye to view the interactions. But it was pointless, they met only more of themselves. An endless veldt of space curved as to only be a few feet thick. A hellish event horizon of contradictory forces.

The end result was a three meter pyramid of deepest onyx. It floated a few precious seconds, then crashed suddenly into the ground. Around it, several invisible walls of chakra and pressure held it in place. These walls mimicked the same formation that had gone into creating the pyramid. They were maintained solely by Naitome's mind.</sub>

[Naitome]

<sub>--| The pyramid sat in complete stillness. It sunk into the ground. It was causing the land beneath it to split. Naitome grunted in discontent under the pressure it exuded. He rose from a sitting position to one where his knees were bent and he crouched on the ground, holding his right arm in concentration. The chakra construct was too dense.

At this point, he wouldn't be able to control it enough to protect its own harsh counter-magnetics from ripping apart. He also wouldn't be able to cause the energy to contract and expand of its own volition, naturally, with its own preset instructions, which was, unfortunately, the whole point of the exercise. Blood began to trickle out of his nose. He felt awkward and the bitter sting of failure hit home as he grew quietly enraged at having wasted so much chakra on an effect that didn't seem possible to achieve.

Its black surface was shiny and absolute. Inside, it was a congestion of barely contained turmoil it took effort to beat down. He saw that it was still feeding on itself. It sunk a few more unpleasant inches into the ground while he pulled at it unconvincingly. He began forming as many walls of chakra as he could, a barrier around the negatively charged entropic shape.

He soon saw that he had no choice, and released the pent up and aggressive energy. He allowed the chakra to explode out in a blast that forced him to cover his eyes. Without pausing to even catch his breath, he began forming a long tirade of handseals. He considered a new way of calling forth the correct mixture of physical and spiritual force.

The palms of his hands connected. In front of his body, he created a simple triangle shape. He didn't bother trying to influence the charge of the chakra particles it was composed of. He trapped a mote of dust within its rapidly enfolding hold. Inaudibly, he clenched his fingers into a clawed shape. The triangle duplicated and ensnared the pollutants in the air, sectioning off into a shape reminiscent of the pyramid he'd just disassembled. Light was bent around and through and beyond everything within the white pyramids boundaries. He closed his left hand over the right, holding his own fist. From the uppermost corners of the glowing pyramid, a corruption grew, a taint, a visible shade of purely negative magnetic force.

Something was happening.</sub>

[Naitome]

<sub>--| The blackness spread like an unholy scar. It enveloped his creation completely, end to end. It seemed to almost pause. It moved insidiously as if it could feel its way through existence with some monstrous and intangible sensory awareness. Like an intelligent being, a living creature, the negatively charged aura of life.

It hovered above the skin of chakra before swallowing the pyramid with a distinct granular crunch. A third, invisible prism was formed around this new shape. Naitome released his fists. He suddenly clapped his hands back together, palms touching, teeth set in determination and defiance. Sparks created from where each wall grated against another were made tangible. Shape manipulation at its finest, rivaling the complexity of introducing elements into this, his bastardization of energy and matter.

They droned on in a high pitched electrical hum that didn't distract Naitome at all, though it took much out of him. He began pushing out a funnel of energy from his own heart to the underside of the floating multi-pyramids. With a grunt and great strain, he pushed his palms into each other hard, as hard as he could stand without injuring himself. His wrists began to bend inwards and his muscles flexed. They fought against the restriction of resistance, they bled from their tenketsu pure brilliant energy.


The triple walls began to rive and cut through one another. They melded and melted and congealed coldly into a single massive black polygonal static. They reached out with fervor like a starving animal, found mass in the maelstrom of wild force ripping its way through his surrounding. It eventually settled into physical reality in time for Naitome to slump back into a cross-legged, seated position. He exhaled a great breath of air afraid to move his arms for fear of losing some aspect of his progress.


Now all that was left was the internal pressure. He'd have to create an interplay of pulling and pushing force that mimicked gravity. This way, he'd be able to expand and contract the walls of the pyramid as he saw fit. More time spent focusing chakra meant more time spent leaving oneself open to attack, and he'd need to be able to combine each component of the complicated maneuver near instantaneously if he had any hope of making it work. With a tired sigh, he forced the crushed together negative and positive chakra particles to vibrate, at first slowly, and then with a speed that would have made them a blur, had he been able to see them grating energy into primitive fuel like a baby star.</sub>

[Naitome]

<sub>--| He watched the motion of chakra listlessly drifting through a fog of tightly packed air pressure. It was stuck between walls of stubborn black energy. As he gazed into its abyss, it had a hypnotizing effect. His heart beat uncertainly. He collapsed the pyramid into little more than a hollow shell. He dispersed the pull of its swirling internal pressure while it hummed loudly, full of kinetic potential.

He denied the urge to quit trying, found resolve that strengthened his commitment to perfection. He held his chakra in check. His hands motioned even more swiftly to control the displacement of crushing force. After a few short seconds, the shuddering heavy pyramid rose a couple of more feet. It was propelled by nothing more than his unspoken commands.

It obeyed the flickering intrusion of his chakra through the terse atmosphere. Beads of sweat formed along his forehead. He would not wipe them away. He exerted more force to its outer perimeter. While allowing its center circumference to decrease in a gentle ebbing rhythm, he watched it sway.

It pulsed like blood through an artery, grew larger and smaller. It was twitching as if unsure of what state it was supposed to be in. He seemed to have finally gained control over the exterior and interior of the pyramid. He allowed the invading pressure to glide up and away. The blackened pure chakra construct visibly shattered into grains of dark dust.

He felt a brief chill and a rushing of trapped air pushed against him. He surveyed his environment, the training grounds swelling up around him suddenly just as real as his attempts to perform the exercise. He eyed a swarm of oversized beetles, chitin and wings and antennae swerving chaotically in a blot of sunlight shielded trees. His eyes quickly studied the air around them, determined their relative distance and began a ridiculously fast performance of randomized handseals, ending by gesturing wildly in the beetles general direction. For the first time in two days, he spoke:

"電磁共鳴" ^*


...and felt the chakra well up inside of him, flushing it out.</sub>

*^{(Denji kyōmei)
[translation - "Electromagnetic Resonance."]}

[Naitome]

<sub>--| At once, the chakra within his body exploded forth. It was directed by his intentions just as much as his angered gesture towards the grouping of insects. At once, the fragile outline of three gray triangles sectioned off an area of air. It was definitively wide enough to encompass the entire swarm. Near instantaneously, negative and positive charges collided.

The negative charges won easily. The gray triangles became as black as night. Beneath them, a square of black chakra suddenly popped into existence. It spread its reach around to connect and attach permanently to the three triangular shapes. He heard a satisfying sound akin to a thunderclap, loudly; the sound of pure force exerting its power over nature.

His pure chakra hardened. It switched casually from a malleable cloud of shifting plasma into a hardened outer layer of reinforced energy. It was prickling with sparks representing their powerful charge. Negatively empowered chakra, along with an extra invisible layer of chakra walled off any chance of escape. The internal pressure had begun at almost the same time, sectioning off the inside of the pyramid.

Inside of its black depths, the swarm panicked. They attempted to beat themselves mercilessly against the triangular outer edges of the pyramid, but to no avail. They were held tightly and absolutely by the chakra. He held up his right arm, opened his palm, then made a claw shape as it closed slowly into a fist. The object, created by but unstuck within an electro-magnetic barrier, began to withdraw; it shrunk, and by restricting its size, it increased the chakra pressure held inside of it.

Soon, the grouping of insects had stopped moving entirely. With only a few seconds having passed, the pyramid of chakra had reduced itself to a tenth of its original size, and the insects within were pressed against its rapidly closing walls. There was no sound as the beetles reached their death. There was silence as the pyramid shrank completely out of sight, leaving behind only a bit of black dust, and a feeling of true accomplishment.</sub>

[Naitome]

<sub>--| A marked kunai flew through the air, aimed to pierce through Naitome's chest.

An instant swirling up of magnetic force rippled into an upside down-triangle composed of iron sand, exploded around the kunai to stop it mid flight, glowing with a dull energy a few seconds later as the tag attached exploded, and the pyramid became a faceted cloud, turned black, and fell to the floor as crackling ash.

Naitome sprinted out, scanning the area sharply to determine exactly where the kunai had come from. Even for a genin, this was a weak assassination tactic to use against a Sunagakure shinobi, and he felt as if surely, some other attempt would follow. His eyes darted back and forth until he was certain no one hid in the few shadows morning left untouched, and stretched once more, relieving his tension.

He gathered his gourd, called the tiny particles of iron sand still floating through the atmosphere to fill it, and began walking towards the tower. He slung the gourd's strap over his shoulder as he walked, his bright blue and ready, his mind focused. He took a winding path of crushed stone until he could reach the Kazekage's stronghold, and resolved himself to remember the tiny grotto he left behind, as a place to perhaps build a home.

[exit]</sub>

[Apple]

[Naitome]

<sub>[enter]

--| In from the heat, finally, exhausted. And there would be rest for him soon.

His mind entered a place of tranquility and calm that felt foreign. He suppressed the natural inclination to recoil from such peaceful meanderings. His eyes closed. His chakra built as he sat within the grand hovel of sand that was his favorite spot in Sunagakure, and sought to resonate with the essence of the desert. The thing that should have been his heart shuddered with the effort, lulled him into dream.


The sands around him seemed to gather to a flesh of iron sand. He allowed them to become some small part of his body. They would add to the grainy totality he was composed of. They were given shape by his will. His thoughts focused on running tiny tremors of intention throughout his form.


His head, his hands, his legs, his clothing; all was merely a suggestion. They were like layers of his mind placed precariously atop a pile of rocks. They could falter and change. They could become more than what they first appeared. Color and texture were merely perspectives that he was free to alter as he saw fit.


He would shift each section of his iron sand body in turn, from the form he was so used to into…something else. For the moment, he would merely become more sand. His chakra pooled around him in waves. It was seeking new shapes. His body was a meeting place for ideas, thoughts of structure; not blueprints but shadows.


He existed as physical and mental energy combined in a unison of compacted earth. He thought of this fact, as his ‘breathing’ increased. He was an impression in reality, but he would choose the perspective. An ebbing assault of energy radiated out from his core. The sand around him would suddenly become more of his own mass to manipulate as he saw fit.

All alone, in the tiny kingdom of his mind, in the dark.</sub>