Herbal Remedy

Subject: Herbal Remedy Thu Jul 09, 2015 7:10 am

The Dawn of a new art

Haruna sits in the forest training area up in the northern reaches of Sunagakure. She stares at the soil before her intently, a slight frown creasing her brow as she thinks. Still not having experienced combat, she was entirely unsure how she would accomplish what she needed to. She had been given a limited time by her mother to come up with a way to apply her herbal medicines in a combat situation, before she would force Haruna in to working at the Hospital.

The thought of being stuck in the hospital was mortifying to Haruna, she wanted to go out places! Explore! And find new plants scattered throughout the world to add to her collection of plants and design new herbal remedies with the new plants. If she were stuck in that stuffy old hospital she would never be able to do any of this.

She started to panic a bit as the thoughts flooded her mind. She closed her eyes, took several deep breaths and calmed herself with a final last sigh heaved that stopped her racing heart and stilled her scattering thoughts. She collected herself then returned to focussing on the matter at hand. How she would apply her skills in combat, if it were even possib-No. No. No thinking like that! She thought to herself with a rapid shake of her head. Everything is possible if you put your mind to it. She steeled her resolve and slowly got to her feet, wandering around the forested area and observing every plant there with a keen eye, as she'd done for many years now in her devoted journey to learn about the plants she so loved for their mostly unseen potential and abilities.
She stared up at a tall tree near her, her eyes drifting over the many vines that hung low from the branches, thick and heavy. She grabbed one that was nearby, hanging low enough that she could reach it, and inspected it, noting the small bumps covering it. She frowned thoughtfully as she inspected these bumps, then an idea sprang in to her mind. She grabbed the vine and pulled at it, drawing it a little lower, before severing it from the rest of the vine. She looked in at the severed end, and laid a hand on it, tracing some Chakra through it as she closed her eyes. She burrowed small tubes through the vine with her Chakra, which branched out into the bumps covering its outer layers, while trying not to breach anything vital within the vine itself. She then grinned, a smile that split from ear to ear. She may have just found her delivery method.
Putting the vine down, she dropped to one knee and scooped out a handful of dirt, setting it aside. She grabbed a seed out of one of her pouches and firmly placed it in the palm of her hand. Keeping it there, she performed several Jutsu seals, where upon the chakra from the seals flowed directly in to the seed in her hands. She then proceeded to drop the seed into the small hole she'd scooped.

Closing her eyes, Haruna focussed on manipulating the Chakra within the seed, forming another few hand seals, the seed burst open, changing into a large vine that dug in to the ground, then breached up out of the ground a couple of metres away. Another couple of hand seals. She directed the Chakra to drill the tubes through the vine so she could attempt the next stage. The next stage, she figured, would probably be the most difficult. She concentrated really hard, her brow furrowed more than ever, creases forming on her forehead and sweat dripping down the side of her face from the sheer mental effort she was putting in to this attempt. She attempted to transform some of the interior of the vine to produce one of the first poultices Haruna had ever successfully created, within the tubes in the vine to excrete out of the bumps.

After about an hour of trying, and many varied and rethought seals, Haruna finally managed to find the right combination of seals and chakra flow to accomplish the task. She managed to create a delivery method, which would hopefully be effective in combat..
She tested the mobility of the vine now, making a final hand seal and watching with absolute glee as the vine shot away at a breakneck pace and wrapped itself around a nearby tree. When she repeated the handseal, the vine went limp and dropped away from the tree, leaving the smear of poultice around it.

Continued practice, and she'd be able to localise the poultice, and make smaller vines for a more precise job, she thought to herself happily. She walked over to the tree and realised, to her dismay, what kind of strength the vine possessed, and how tight its grip was. The vine had crushed the bark, and would no doubt crush one of her patient's bodies if she wasn't careful.. Another set back.

She sighed lightly, leaning her back against the tree as she looked up to the sky in thought, chewing her lower lip gently as she tried to come up with possibilities and improvements to make this potential method of delivery work.
Haruna gave the job up for the night and headed back home. She had only a few more days to figure this out before her mother would send her to work in the hospital for the rest of her life, Haruna thought gloomily. She walked into her house, had dinner and went straight to bed, dreaming of plants, and still thinking of how to accomplish this task.

Haruna woke early that morning. She sprung out of bed and rushed down stairs to the kitchen, jumping up on the bench and sliding along it from her momentum, right up to where her mother was preparing breakfast. Haruna snatched a couple of pieces of toast, grinned cheekily to her mother, who sighed and laughed softly, very patient by nature and very much used to Haruna's antics. Haruna hopped off the bench and ran out the front door, scoffing down the toast as she ran towards the forest. She'd had idea's in her sleep. Heaps of them! And she couldn't wait to try it out! She just 'knew' it was going to work this time!
As Haruna came near the centre of the forest, she stopped and dug out a small ditch in the soil at her feet, dropping one of her seeds in there after performing her handseals. She focussed this time on controlling how fast the Chakra would flow through the seed, so the vine would be smaller and weaker. She had two things she wanted to try today. The first was an improvement on what she had tried the other day. She performed a last handseal and sent the forming vine off to wrap around a bush, watching carefully to see how strongly the vine would wrap around the bush. Much to her excitement, the grip was light enough that it didn't crush the bush, but strong enough that it could cling to it. She danced around in glee, then calmed herself down with a deep breath, and a heavy exhalation of the breath. She mumbled to herself, ordering in her mind how she'd accomplish this next one. Similar to the last, she'd figured. But with a stronger grip. She would no doubt have to tweak it lots until she got it right. She sent a new vine running out to another bush, through digging the hole and placing the chakra infused seed into it. She performed her seal and sent the vine off to wrap around the bush, focussing like she'd never done before in order to gradually increase the pressure, and decrease it when she'd gone too far. She had a different poultice within the vine this time, something that would assist in the healing process, while the vines helped reduce the bleeding by putting pressure on the wound. She eyed her handywork and then snapped her fingers! "Oh I know!" she exclaimed. She then focussed on the Chakra within the vine, causing it to snap off at a certain point, she then used the residual chakra in the part wrapped around the bush to make it tie itself up so that it wouldn't come undone so easily, and so it would keep its pressure on.

Doing a little jig with glee, she danced around through the forest, spinning around as she laughed with joy. "I did it! .. Now I just need a volounteer for human trial!" She giggled to herself as she continued dancing around the forest, making her way out gradually, then dancing down the streets, doing spins, slides, and the full deal of dance moves. She was quite a spectacle that day as many residents of Sunagakure suppressed laughs of amusement, and a few Genin who knew her face palmed, or went red and quickly vacated the area out of embarrassment, and so they wouldn't get dragged into her what they thought of as, ridiculous public dancing.

She danced right in to the house, earlier than usual, and started singing a cheerful tune too as she fixed herself a light lunch and washing herself up. When her mum came home, Haruna jumped up and ran over to her, giving her mother a big hug. Jena, Haruna's mother, raised her eyebrows in surprise. "You're home early" She remarked. "Oh, and look what you've done. You've muddied up my work clot-" She stopped in confusion when she realised that for once in a good long time, Haruna hadn't come home covered in mud and plant bits.

Haruna danced around Jena, giggling "I did it mum! I came up with a delivery method for my poultices in the field! So that means I don't have to work at the hospital now, right?!" She giggled again and hopped up to sit on the edge of the table.
Jena was speechless for a moment then, finally finding her voice, she spoke, her voice warm with pride. "Is that right? You'll definitely have to show me tomorrow, then!"

"So I'm not going to get stuck working inside that big musty old building, then?" Haruna grinned happily.

"No, you don't have to work at the hospital, dear." Jena chuckled, amused.

Haruna gave a whoop of joy and ran off to her room, eager to show her mother what she'd created the next day.