Paging Dr. Frankenstein... [Training Topic]

Tori Hitonomi stands again and dusts off his scarlet robe, although it does little to get rid of the caked-on mud from the recently unearthed grave. The puppeteer straightens up and arches his back, making his spine pop several times before he looks up at the dark, cloudy sky, threatening to let loose a torrent. It had only rained a little bit earlier in the day, and the puppeteer had thought that it would not rain again that night, but it looks as though he was wrong in his assumption. He leans back down to push away some dirt that had fallen back on top of the coffin, reading the name on top of it. It wasn't a member of any major clan... He was saving those for a time when his idea could be completed and made not only possible, but even likely. Tori punches the wooden coffin and winces when his fist only hits the thick wood and bounces back. Why the hell would anyone make a box for a dead body so thick? Idiots... The ninja manages to jump back out of the grave and pulls open the coffin from afar with a single chakra string. The sudden release of the nearly air-tight seal on the coffin lets loose a stench that nearly makes Tori puke right on the body. Now that would be disrespecting the dead.

The puppeteer climbs back into the grave, checking the age of the corpse and finding that the body is fairly recent, but still rotting on the inside. And part of the outside. Disgusting... But it's not like I can do this to a living body. He grabs the body and lifts it out, pushing it out of the grave before turning around and pulling the coffin closed again. Then he sees the pile of dirt he'll have to push back into the grave and groans just before he feels a raindrop hit the top of his head, then make its way down the back of his neck and sending a chill down his spine. This is going to be a long, long night... He picks up the shovel and begins to rebury the empty coffin, always keeping a lookout for anyone from the Kirigakure Police Force, and hoping that he doesn't end up with a fresh corpse to test the new idea on. As he refills the grave, he begins to enter some kind of trance-like state brought on by the repetitive work, and his mind brings him back to a dream he'd had that had originally brought him to the realization that maybe using a body would not be as difficult as just using wood.

In his dream he had seen his own puppets as being living, vibrant humans, standing in front of him, staring blankly like puppets but breathing and living. And then he saw their bodies open, revealing multitudes of weapons, deadly and beautiful like a rose with thorns. But afterwards, his dream became a nightmare. A hand erupted from the ground like a plant suddenly shooting up from the ground, but this plant's roots were far more sinister than any plant that could ever be constructed by nature. That skeletal hand grasped the puppeteer's ankle and pulled him under the ground, and the darkness engulfed him before his eyes adjusted, and he was surrounded by corpses. Moving, living corpses. Maybe not breathing, but definitely alive. Some were completely skeletal, some were recently dead. All of them frightening all on their own, none of them requiring any deadly weapons to be deathly. The corpses themselves were the embodiment of death. And just when he thinks his nightmare is over, he sees the corpse of his love, she who had tried to end his own life, and she was holding her own head in her hands. The woman holds her head out towards Tori and opens her mouth, and just when the ninja thinks that she's about to speak, a blade shoots out of her open mouth, ready to pierce the puppeteer's head before the dream ended, releasing him from the realm of the dead and bringing him back to the living.

Tori breaks out of his trance when his shovel blade suddenly sinks into much harder ground than the dirt he had been putting back into the grave. He had just stuck the shovel inside of the ground, the grave now filled and the jounin sweating like crazy. No, not sweat... He looks up at the sky and watches the raindrops pouring down from the sky and onto the earth, as though angels above were actually crying about the terrible crime that Tori Hitonomi was now committing against life itself. If you want an omelet... Tori sets the shovel on his shoulder and picks the nearly skeletal corpse up by its arm, draping it across his body and holding it up with his puppet strings so that it wouldn't fall while he walks back to his home, wondering how he will turn the flesh into the makings of a hard-skinned puppet, weaponized puppet that could at least work as a prototype, to show the ninja what needed to be done, what the limits were when it came to a human body... And his thoughts turned to what he could do to himself, if he could make himself beautiful... Tori steps outside of the cemetery, imagining himself with a face without scars, a faultless body..... And a deadly body, filled with weapons that the opponent could never possibly expect. He got himself thinking of a life without fear of pain, a life without fear in general. Women's nails couldn't touch him, med-nin would never be able to hurt him. He could be immortal.

The thought sent more shivers down his spine as he walks down the back streets of Kirigakure, taking long, winding paths so that the Kirigakure Police Force wouldn't be able to follow his movements. His body was now soaked, as was the corpse. It was starting to feel heavy and Tori actually considered trying to hurry home, but he knew that this would only garner more attention, would increase his likelihood of being caught. He trudges onwards, moving around the back streets, but moving always closer to his home.

First Post Total: 1073

When Tori finally reaches the rear entrance of his home, he opens the door and immediately takes off his nin shoes, letting the rain wash away the mud for him, and the jounin sighs happily at the feeling of the heat in his home warming his skin and evaporating the water, slowly, from his clothes. He quickly shuts the door and locks it, then carries the body down to his basement, almost having to drag the corpse down the steps when he ends his chakra string jutsu and sets the shovel aside somewhere where the pieces of puppets and weapons are not covering the floor and wall. The jounin puts the corpse on the table that he would normally use for creating his puppets. The stench of death and decay covers his body and clothes now, and he shudders at the smell, disgusted with himself, but knowing that he will get over this eventually and be able to make much better human puppets. Maybe even be able to make himself immortal and fearless... Tori turns on the light that he normally uses for a closer look at his more intricate traps and his face makes a grimace at the sight of the rotting innards that have been exposed from the skin of the abdomen having been eaten away by the hydrochloric acid stored in the stomach. Maybe I should have gotten a better look at the body before I decided to take it back home and turn it into a puppet... But, of course, Tori could not possibly drag the body back to the cemetery while taking the back roads in order to dig the grave back up and put the body back inside. He had made more risks than he had needed to already, and he wasn't eager to risk more.

The puppeteer steels himself and imagines that he's looking at a piece of wood that needs to be turned into a puppet instead of a human body that must be emptied out to allow for more weapons. Wielding a kunai, he roughly cuts away the organs, disgusted by the smell again, but before it can take its toll on the man's mind, he tosses the organs into a metal tub that he had bought just for this purpose. Later, he would burn these away to allow no trace of him ever having done this travesty. He reaches deep into the chest cavity, allowing the ribs to remain as a kind of infrastructure that he didn't need to create and install himself. As he cuts away the lungs and heart, he stops and stares at the no longer beating heart. It had caved in a little from decay, but it was clearly still a heart, the core of a human. But he again tosses it into the metal tub. Tori has to stop and look away from the body and ends up letting loose all of the food he had eaten during the day, and what feels like he had eaten all week. When he finally finishes upchucking, he has to look away from the tub, and instead turns the furnace on its highest setting, tossing the entire tub into the flames and shutting the door to the furnace, so that the organs can boil and burn away without Tori being able to see the traces of his work vanishing, then he realizes that he has forgotten a single component of the human body: the brain. He reopens the furnace and groans softly at the sight that greets him, and he knows that this work will be the worst he has ever forced himself to endure.

As he turns back towards the corpse, he can look inside and actually see the jelly-like brain through the empty eye sockets, part of the face around where the eyeballs had been, and even where the nose had rotted away to show another hole into the skull. Tori feels his body begin to dry heave, but he forces himself to remain calm and emotionless. Reaching towards his tools again, he picks out a small hooked utensil that can catch and pull out the jelly-like brain in one pull. At the last second, he plunges the utensil into the eye socket, but with his eyes closed, he can actually imagine what he's doing, and he dry heaves again, anyway. Even as he dry-heaves, he pulls the brain out carefully, and he stares at it, too. The holder of all memories, thoughts, dreams, in his hands now. After a moment of reflection, he tosses this too into the flames of the furnace, and again closes the door.

He stares at the empty corpse now. The jounin wonders if he truly wants to continue what he's started, if he's really willing to go through with this in order to make himself without fear, utterly deadly and immortal all at once. Just when his doubt reaches its apex, he grabs a small blade-extension machine and eases it into the corpse's mouth with the metal support inside of the throat so that the blade can stick straight out of the mouth. Tori carefully keeps the jaw open before activating the blade, causing it to spring out in a single deadly motion. As he looks on, he sees the face of his lover just before she had killed him in his nightmare. My fear will be the fear of all people... and in doing so, my fear leaves me. He takes a deep breath and decides, in that moment, that immortality is what he wishes. That living his life without fear is now the only thing that matters. At this thought, he opens the arms of the new, dead puppet to the bone, and begins adding weapons that can fit inside, eventually deciding on a pair of curved blades the spring around, but he can't do this without leaving the arm useless. Frustrated, he strikes the table, and he grabs the arm, wrapping it in chakra strings until the arm is completely covered in them, leaving no skin visible. He stays like this, imagining that the skin were made of his special puppetry wood and feeling emotions of pure anger and rage swell up inside of him, for almost an hour before he sinks back into the chair, ending the chakra strings and sighing sadly with his face in his hands, left with little emotion left. Tori doesn't notice it at first, but when he looks up from his hands, he sees that the flesh has been turned to the wood that he had imagined, and which had filled him with frustration.

Elated, he nearly jumps up and screams his delight, but he remembers that what he's doing is frowned upon in normal society, and he stays quiet, but punches his fist in the air in happiness. He was now on his way to making himself immortal.

Second Post Total: 1160

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You may use the Human puppet ability.