Yesterday, Kurai engaged in an epic battle that he'd never forget. It involved he, Kouki, one of the heads of the village, Kong, the chief Gorilla of the Sage Apes, and Kua, the 2 tailed bijuu. It was a major brawl which seemed to shake the very earth, and left the mountain ranges around Kumogakure forever changed. The battle ended when Kurai managed to convince Kua to join with him, in order to protect the village from future attacks. Kouki, a member of the Uzumaki Clan, famed for their sealing techniques, was able to undertake the deed successfully, making Kurai Hinowa's first Jinchuuriki.

When Kurai went back home, he spent all of that day and night, and most of today in the bed. The semi conscious state of relaxation and meditation gave Kurai the chance to realize and memorize all of Kua's techniques. Kua also mentioned something to Kurai about a technique that allowed him to hide in plain sight; a camouflage technique. When perfected, it would allow him to conceal himself to even the best sensors, making him totally invisible, as long as he didn't move around too much or use any other techniques while it was in play. At first, Kurai thought hiding from someone was cowardly, but after thinking about it, such a technique would come in handy, and would quickly become another one of his trademark techniques.

The day began just like any other. Kurai pulled himself out of bed, and while putting on the top of his black body suit he did a zombie shuffle to the bathroom for his morningly drain. After the morning wash up, the next stop was the kitchen, where he fixed himself a sandwich. While normally one sandwich was enough to tide him over for a few hours, Now it failed to even make a dent. It was most likely because of now being joined with two tails; the body needed twice the nourishment. A total of 4 sandwiches is what it took for him to feel satisfied now.

Kurai stepped outside, avoiding his parents and sister for now, and jogged several dozen times around the entire perimeter of the village. With his daily exercise regimen complete, Kurai thought it best to go and read up on camouflage to get a better understanding on what he was about to attempt to teach himself.

In nature, every advantage increases an animal's chances of survival, and therefore its chances of reproducing. This simple fact has caused animal species to evolve a number of special adaptations that help them find food and keep them from becom­ing food. One of the most widespread and varied adaptations is natural camouflage, an animal's ability to hide itself from predator and prey. Since the ultimate goal of camouflage is to hide from other animals, the physiology and behavior of an animal's predators or prey is highly significant. An animal will not develop any camouflage that does not help it survive, so not all animals blend in with their environment the same way. For example, there's no point in an animal replicating the color of its surroundings if its main predator is color-blind.

For most animals, "blending in" is the most effective approach. You can see this sort of camouflage everywhere. Deer, squirrels, hedgehogs and many other animals have brownish, "earth tone" colors that match the brown of the trees and soil at the forest ground level. Sharks, dolphins and many other sea creatures have a grayish-blue coloring, which helps them blend in with the soft light underwater.

Many marine animals that float near the surface are highly transparent, giving them almost perfect camouflage. However, transparency is difficult for bodies made of materials that have different refractive indices from seawater. Some marine animals such as jellyfish have gelatinous bodies, composed mainly of water; their thick mesogloea is acellular and highly transparent. This conveniently makes them buoyant, but it also makes them large for their muscle mass, so they cannot swim fast, making this form of camouflage a costly trade-off with mobility.

Some animals' colours and patterns resemble a particular natural background. This is an important component of camouflage in all environments. For instance, tree-dwelling parakeets are mainly green; woodcocks of the forest floor are brown and speckled; reedbed bitterns are streaked brown and buff; in each case the animal's coloration matches the hues of its habitat. Similarly, desert animals are almost all desert coloured in tones of sand, buff, ochre, and brownish grey, whether they are mammals like the gerbil or fennec fox, birds such as the desert lark or sandgrouse, or reptiles like the skink or horned viper.

Some animals, such as the Horned Lizards, have evolved elaborate measures to eliminate shadow. Their bodies are flattened, with the sides thinning to an edge; the animals habitually press their bodies to the ground; and their sides are fringed with white scales which effectively hide and disrupt any remaining areas of shadow there may be under the edge of the body

Kurai sat behind his house for hours near the pond, concentrating his chakra through his skin to bend light around his body to make himself transparent. It was a long touch and go process. Eventually though, like all of his techniques, he began to get the hang of it, and through constant practice it began to become second nature to him, so that he could perform it on the fly. It got to the point that after minutes he'd began to fade out, after about an hour he was barely visible, and after 3 hours, he couldn't be seen at all.

He invisibly had himself a walk around the village. No one seemed to know he was there. He waved hands in the faces of various people, and they did not react. He thought he'd had the hang of this technique and was about to call it quits, and possibly find a job or a task that needed done, before he noticed one of the thugs that showed up to his house the other day. Still heavily bruised and sporting bandages, some of them bloody, he looked to be in a hurry somewhere, bumping into various people and pushing others out of his way. Kurai decided to follow him; an easy task, seeing as he was invisible.

He followed the thug down an alley, then down several flights of stairs behind a large warehouse. The dark passage beyond lead to an old submerged building that was Korigakure in origin. Now it seemed that it was being used as a hideout, possibly the headquarters of the so-called crime family. The thug did a special knock on the double doors, causing a portion of the door to open and someone to look out at him. The doors opened and the thug went in; Kurai along with him.

Obviously they had no sensors because Kurai was able to move around within freely. He took care not to bump anyone and alert them of his presence. The building they were in looked to be part of the old Administration Complex of Korigakure, although some rooms and hallways were buried under rock. There weren't very many of the thugs and so-called gangsters left down here; there looked to be many more, but most were likely driven off after the events that transpired in the Yanagi backyard, and because of Kurai's one man crusade to rid the village of the criminal element.

Kurai followed the bandaged thug to the office that looked like it once belong to the Korikage. The “Boss” sat behind the desk in the room, tall and muscular, sharpening a kunai knife. He turned to see the bandage thug enter, and laughed some. “It looks like you got into a fight with a bear or something,” he said. “Who handed you your ass like that?”

“These two kids,” he answered. “They have super powers or something. This little girl, she took out half the crew. There's this guy too, he took out Tank! By himself! He knocked him up in the air, and then blew up his body with some strange jutsu!”

“Some of the others were singing this same song. Then here you come saying the same thing.... Kids, huh. Maybe i'll have to pay them a visit myself, especially this kid that took out Tank.”

Kurai de-activated his stealth and appeared in the room. The bandaged thug fell down terrified, backing away from him. “Oh shit! It's him! It's him! He's here!”

The “Boss” only grinned. “...So you're the guy, huh. You must be pretty talented if you found your way down here. These guys, they've been telling me all sorts of stories about how you've been foiling our plans around the village. Stories about how you can make balls of chakra in your hands, how you can control the ground, and some little girl, your sister? About how she supposedly has skills out of this world too... What do you say to joining us? There doesn't need to be any fighting. We could take this village together. Sounds like a good idea, does it not?”
Kurai never said a word. After staring at the man a while to see if he were serious, he suddenly rushed towards him while his right hand gathered chakra for a Rasengan. The “boss” flicked the kunai at Kurai, but he missed. Kurai shoved the Rasengan into his face. The resulting reaction violently threw the man into the rear wall while the attack grinded him down into a bloody pulp.

Kurai turned to see the bandaged thug scared for his life, huddled in a corner, peeing on himself. Kurai only shook his head at the man while leaving out of the room. Several others in the outer halls and rooms attempted to stop him; these attempts left them on the ground bleeding, with broken limbs and bones, or dead.

Word Count Hiding with Camouflage training: 1,646/2,000 - 20% = 1,600