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((Take it away Dr.K, feel free to carry both our characters to the tower. Mine is a little busy being a fan girl.))

"Ro-" Quite vomiting words would have been the rest of her comment to her new found team mate but he went dashing off before she could say another word. Aki was starting to wonder if he had a manic disorder of some kind. She studied quite a bit but hadn’t gotten into neurological disorders. It was an intimidating subject with many parts of it still experimental or vague. She didn’t miss that the blonde man, Dr. Kikkawa she correct herself, was extending his hand to her as he introduced himself. Her eyes went a bit wide as she heard him. He was a physician? To Aki that was like a being a triple platinum rock star. Better even.

“Ito Akihiko, gennin.” She said as she accepted his hand and bowed again, this time lower in respect to his position rather than simply his superior age.

“Please call me Aki Dr. Kikkawa.” She said, the idea of addressing him with anything but the utmost respect not even crossing her mind. A very slight flush entered her cheeks and she felt a slight tingle in her hand. A physician, what were the chances? She owed Ro now for his antics. Given her own way she’d probably have never spoken to the man in the first place.

“It would be an honor to work with you. We’ll gladly accept your help.” She said and only stopped herself from punctuating the sentence with another bow by force of will. It wasn’t much the slight flush and more engaged expression but it was gushing for her.

“If you’d like.” She paused at a loss for words for a moment then found her train of thought again.

“I’m studying to enter the training program. It’s my dream to become a doctor as well. If you wouldn’t mind could you tell me about what it’s like to work at the hospital on our way to the Kage’s tower?” She asked finally managed to get the words past the knot of her tongue after a moments effort.

Once breakfast was over with Aki had the day to herself as she was no longer beholden to the academy but as of yet still without a team. That meant she could do as she liked. Or mostly anyway, her mother had forbid her from training without permission. A blade only benefited from so much sharpening had been her words on the matter and Aki understood but still felt reluctant. She wasn’t used to having so much free time. Walking down the stairs that lead from her rooftop home to the lower level where her families school was she scratched at her un-gelled hair and wondered what she would do.

Passing through the back hall and into the main she listened to the sounds of training around her and felt a bit wistful. High ceilinged with decretive carvings on the stone support columns she walked through what had been at one time a small palace that would have been surrounded by gardens. A symbol of the family’s power. It had become a prep school for the wealthy and the gift it was rarely silent and she had grown up surrounded by the sounds of exertion. Her mother had crafted it through connection, cunning and force of personality with the dregs of the clan’s wealth. Her mother Soyokaze and Aki herself were not proper blood descendant of the Ito clan.

Soyokaze had been adopted into it when the previous generation had failed to produce a worthwhile heir but it had mattered little at the time. The clan had been in decline both in power and wealth for generations and while still technically noble held little but the title and the small bit of ground the house stood on. Aki loved the building and the school but it was her abiding wish to be able to lower the tuition. A wish thwarted by the debts still outstanding on the clan name. Though in decline her adoptive ancestors had spent like they were still at the peak of their power and wealth until the end and three generations later the family was still paying for it.

Aki looked at Ro for a moment before giving a proper if stiff bow to the new arrival. People just seemed to be getting older the longer she stood there and her earlier sense of unease returned. She wasn't going to just run off though, Ro would be held accountable for his offer come hell or high water.

"No sir. I don't know anything about that. As he said though he just asked for help with a mission and I've agreed." She looked over at Ro as she said the last, her earlier confidence in her decision somewhat tainted by his out burst. The chuunin exams were the goal of all gennin after all. That said the way he'd spoken had said a great deal more then his words and she didn't understand why he'd spilled his guts so completely in front of someone who was apparently a stranger to him.

"Also I have not seen anyone else aside from Ro and I’ve been jogging since before sun up." She added and would have an admonishment to Ro about not randomly prostrating himself before others but she was too off put as it was to think of it. Asking was fine but gushing like they were little kids playing shinobi was another matter entirely. Particularly when she wasn't sure if the man they were addressing was even a shinobi. Or hell he could have been a Jounin for all she knew. The point was they didn't know anything about him.

“Sorry, you caught me off guard. Hey back at ya, my names Ban-Ku Ro but you can call me whatever. I’m not too big on names anyways..” Yeesh, Aki didn’t exactly have a lovely voice and her ability to carry a tune when singing was dubious at best but this fellow was another animal all together. She wondered for a moment if he ate nails or something but snapped her focus back on what he was saying to catch his name. Ban-Ku Ro who didn’t care what she called him. A dangerous thing that, she was bad at giving nicknames.

“So what brings you all the way up here? Do you visit often?” Getting past how he spoke and into what he was saying Aki smiled a bit through a wince. He older than her but was making and effort to be nice it seemed and that left her feeling a bit relieved. Had she realized he was older from the beginning she’d have gone in another direction her mothers order be damned. Aki had never been picked on by anyone her own age but instead older boys who thought it was a good way to get at her older brother Eri. She avoided them as a rule outside of forced or supervised interactions because of that.

Looking him over openly his tattoo’s were a meaningless tangle of black to her eye. She paused for a long moment when his eyes met hers during their wandering. She hadn’t inherited them but her father had red eyes. It wasn’t intentional but she found herself trying to look more closely at them then was polite by any standard.

“Ito Akihiko, I’ve been training since a bit before sunrise like I do most days so it would be fair to say I come here often. You can call me Aki.” Akihiko, bright prince, her mother had a certain way with names.

“Is it alright if I call you Ro?” She asked rather than just rattling something off and assuming he’d be alright with it. She’d gotten punched for that before.

Early morning mist rolled up the banks of a nearby stream as Aki made her way through the residential area at a jog. Less about building strength and more about for developing her stamina further she paused to stretch for a moment beneath a shady tree. Not much taller then her but with many whippet like branches it was one of the greedy variety that always clung close to sources of water. A willow if she recalled correctly but she'd never been as good a student of botany as she should have been. Her mentor had always told her that it was important to know all the plants she possibly could rather than just the popular medicinals. Scrunching the the bridge of her nose up Aki did her best to recall something about it and after a moment she recalled one of Karasu's lectures.

They had been crawling on there bellies looking for mushrooms when the older dark skinned woman had put a restraining hand on Aki's shoulder and asked her what the tree above them was. Intent on her work she hadn't been able to answer and even after being allowed to look up hadn't know what to say. Genus something with an s it was an old medicine used for fevers and pain. Like aspirin or something along that lines. Aki reached out to touch one of the trailing branches as she tried to remember what she'd been told.

"Fuck."She muttered to herself as she knew that she'd been told much more but couldn't remember any of it. The color of the earth with raven wing hair Karasu could have named anything that Aki could see around her and so much more. Sadly though after a summer with her Aki hadn't learned much but reverence for her teacher who'd seems like something born of the earth itself with her wisdom and strange childishness.

Aki eyed the ball thrower warily as she heard its engine warm up. A low electric hum that could have easily been missed in the general cacophony of the city around. Easily save for the fact that she was listening for it specifically. She'd expressed her interest in working on general defense and Kawarimi no Jutsu in particular to her mother and had been instructed to use the devices in the walled courtyard at the back of the roof top property. Missed shots would not go astray and break neighbor’s windows or harm an unsuspecting passerby. The trouble was that given that her mother had suggested it she had likely set the thing to a harsh speed. Aki was not afraid of it but was loath to think of having to explain an injury to her new sensei once she was assigned. In school it had not mattered much as the curriculum had never been so rigorous that she could not preform to standard but on a mission the repercussions of her home training might become problematic.

Three beeps with lessening intervals of silence between them were her only warning before it began. The first straight on ball was easy enough to dodge despite its speed producing a sharp crack when it struck the wall behind her and the ricochet too did not come close to her but the fourth of the ball machines started before the others and she was not in as good position to dodge it as she should have been. Legs folding beneath her she collapsed down under the arch of fire, the wind in the balls wake brushing across her chest like a caress. It wasn’t going as fast as the first and she mental laughed at herself for clumsiness and her mother’s foresight on the point.

The reprieve didn’t last and in short time all four of the units were throwing at her, the misses proving more problematic then the initial shots as it was harder to predict where they would go. Trying to depend on her sense of the field, reaction time and physical fitness worked to an extent but she did have to employ her tonfa’s to deflect more then she would have liked. The units were stupid, able only to throw in lines and the ricochets while less predictable still shouldn’t have been such a threat to her. In her own mind anyway and as her frustrations mounted she found herself having more trouble dodging and had to resort to deflection which only increased her frustration further.

A ball hit her square in the side as she leap back, a senbon digging into the ground where she had been standing. The second slightly behind it and too close to her feet for comfort as she kicked off hard left into a shallow jump that ended in a shoulder roll and her standing on her feet again. Three more marked the path of her roll.

“Mom told me to come let you know lunch is ready.” Her brother said with a grin from his perch atop the wall that divided the court from the main yard that lead into the family residence. His fuzzy ginger hair a sharp contrast to her own straight aqua and despite his jovial demeanor any of his throws could have crippled if they had struck. Side aching from where the ball had hit her she counted the senbon in the ground and the ones in his hands she estimated that he had about fifteen left as the bastard was ambidextrous and made a point of wearing two holsters worth.

Moving fast she ignored the balls totally as the throwing units were pitched so that there highest arch wouldn’t reach her head and accepted the hits that she had too as she dodged the silver rain from her brothers hands. Five came in a wide spread after ten more selective throws and she found herself in the middle of the open space with him descending on her with his wakazashi drawn. He’d tired her out and then corralled her all too effectively but his blade met wood rather than flesh as after a moments illusion the log Aki had replaced herself with revealed itself.

The top third coming away as her brother severed it cleanly. He was older, stronger and more cunning though and as she appeared with her own senbon drawn for reprisal he kicked the log at her. It was slow given how unwieldy it was. She dodged it without much of a problem but her brother either guessed or predicted which way she’d go and was there to meet her. His fist came at her jaw for a knock out and poised awkwardly between direction change and motion she couldn’t do a damned thing about it.

“Ha, see.” He patted her on the jaw and gave her another grin as she froze in place, defeated.

“Your too hard on yourself Kiki, you can do it so you don’t need to train so desperately all the time. Come in to eat and take a break. You’re not going to learn anything getting pissed off at training targets.” Four years her senior Eri was more self-confident and had an annoying habit of seeing through what little she said straight to how she actually felt. With a nod she followed him out the courtyard door through the small garden and into the kitchen where the rest of her family was waiting for them. She didn't like to admit it but as the wait for a team grew she'd become more and more nervous about her own abilities. She'd graduated certainly but time had convinced her that she needed to do more in order to gain enough of an edge to be placed sooner rather than later.

"Dick." She muttered as she moved past him and gave him a playful nudge with her shoulder. It wasn't something she'd ever put in words but she was glade to have someone who understood her as well as he did.

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Kawarimi no Jutsu (Body Replacement Technique)
Rank: E
Type: Supplementary / Ninjutsu
Range: 0 - 5 meters
Special: Switch is near-instantaneous. Can be used once per thread, plus once more each time retrained,
Description: This jutsu lets the user quickly switch places with another nearby object, such as a plant (normally a section of a log), an animal, or even another person within reach, the moment an attack hits. This creates an optical illusion, making the enemy think the attack was successful. The user can then use this confusion to escape or launch a counter-attack - i.e. exploding tags can be attached to the replacement for an added surprise.
Domain: Academy Student Ninjutsu.

ARMAMENTS[/u]

• Primary Weapons
  
  Skull Crackers
  Rank: c
  Type: Primary / Melee
  Range: Melee
  Special: Designed to accept a steady flow of chakra and withstand being utilized as a part of special techniques.
  Description: A pair of metal Tonfa with the seven virtues of bushido engraved along the main shaft.
  
  
• Secondary Weapons
  
  Pack 1: Senbon (Throwing Needles)
  Rank: D
  Type: Secondary / Ranged
  Special: 10 per Pack.
  Cost: 200 Ryo per Pack
  
  Pack 2: Senbon (Throwing Needles)
  Rank: D
  Type: Secondary / Ranged
  Special: 10 per Pack.
  Cost: 200 Ryo per Pack
  
  Pack 3: Smoke Grenade
  Rank: C
  Type: Tool / Area of Effect
  Range: 0 - 10 meters
  Special: 3 per pack
  Description: This explodable comes in the form of a long, skinny cylinder, no more than a few inches long. At the top lies a pin which, when pulled, activates the grenade's internal components. Within seconds, thick, dark smoke begins to spew from the cylinder, covering a wide area and leaving all those nearby blinded and gagging.
  Cost: 600 per Pack
  
  Pack 4: Exploding Note
  Rank: D
  Type: Tool / Area of Effect
  Range: 0 - 5 meters
  Special: 10 per pack
  Description: The exploding note is a piece of parchment paper infused with special chakra, layered over with a special script on it that serves to enable and facilitate its explosive properties. Its execution is simple - the ninja can attach the note to another object such as a kunai or log, and upon activation, the note is set and begins either a slow countdown burn, which eventually results in a large explosion, or the explosion in itself upon command.
  Cost: 500 per Pack
  
  Pack 5: Hikari (Light Bomb)
  Rank: C
  Type: Tool / Area of Effect
  Range: 0 - 10 meters
  Special: 1 per pack
  Description: Flash Bombs are supplementary explodables used mainly for diversions, creating a blinding light when they detonate that spreads quickly across a small area. Flash Bombs come in many shapes and sizes depending by region; some may look like small spheres wrapped in paper or, more conventionally, as cylindrical canisters.
  Cost: 500 per Pack
  
  
• Items
  
  Radio
  Rank: C
  Type: Accessory / Self
  Special: Has a range up to 10 miles.
  Cost: Free accessory
  
  
• Releases: Doton