<strong>Name:</strong>Maeno Juro  [Don't complain.  After fourteen children you'd be running out of ideas too.]<br/><br/><strong>Age:</strong>16<br/><br/><strong>Appearance:</strong>Juro tends to wear clothes that are either brown or deep crimson. The design emphasizes avoidance of heat rather than protection against cold, but it does cover all of his body except the face.  The fabrics are generally smooth, without any designs or identifying marks.<br/>His skin is tan, eyes are blue, and hair is black. He’s about 4’ 8” tall and weighs about 80 pounds.  He carries the weight around with a slim frame—no muscles bulging in his sleeves, but no paunch either.<br/>His posture is generally a slight hunch.  It’s minor enough that when his arms are relaxed (most of the time) they hang parallel to his legs.  It does make him seem smaller, though.<br/>His overall appearance is quite generic, except for the extra padding on his forearms and the sometimes-visible horizontal cut just above the hairline on his forehead.  His hair is always kept short enough that it doesn’t get in his eyes.  In fact, if you saw him in his favored garb, you might not even be able to tell what color his hair is.<br/>[Couldn't find a picture I liked, suggestions welcome!]<br/><br/><strong>Rank:</strong>Genin<br/><br/><strong>Affiliation:</strong>Konoha<br/><br/><strong>Kekkei Genkai:</strong>Two stages-<br/>1. Jishuku-- the ultimate form of self-control, to the point of being able to consciously break down fat cells and release adrenalin.  Also the ability to give yourself a heart attack, but that's not as useful.  It still happens.<br/>2. Seisuru-- By introducing their own genetic material into several key points (both ends of the spinal column, the brain, the heart) on another person's body, a user of Jishuku can exert self-control over someone else's "self."  The effect is highly dependent on proximity, though if it is sustained for a long time a skillful user of this tehcnique can realign the subject's body to increase the range and power of the effect.<br/><br/>Chakra Element: Wind<br/><br/>Specialization: Efficient taijutsu, low-energy ninjutsu, Kekkei Genkai techniques.<br/><br/>Bio:<br/>Juro was born fourteenth to a pair of reasonably competent Shinobi (one male, one female, one Jounin, one chuunin) in the Village Hidden in the Leaves.  While the experiences of a child’s first years are no doubt<br/>extremely important and foundational to a child’s future attitude, they are also almost always forgotten by the child in question, probably with good reason, so we will do likewise.<br/><br/>By the time he was six years old, his training as a Shinobi was underway.  When he was eight he received his first test on controlling his emotions—his mother died of an embolism.  Such a small thing!  In the course of explaining why his perfectly healthy mother died while shopping for dinner, Juro’s father probably produced his son’s focus on detail and control.  The two spent a lot of time talking, a habit that continues in the present day.<br/>The two also spent a lot of time training, both generally to exhaustion.  His father’s philosophy was that it was the duty of every shinobi to be as strong as possible, which meant constant practice.  Special attention was given to the Kekkei Genkai.  While his father never said so explicitly, he clearly didn't want his son to die from something as preventable as an embolism.<br/>In his studies at the academy, Juro was relentless in his efforts to learn everything his teachers had to offer.  It was a fairly popular habit at most times, but following a weary instructor practically to the door of his house, firing questions all the way, prompted several lectures on tact.  It took almost a year before he began distinguishing between his father and other adults.<br/>You may note that there is little mention of his interaction with other students.  There wasn’t much, actually.  Older students weren’t interested in talking with him, and younger students didn’t know<br/>anything he wanted to talk about.  Juro spent a great deal of time in solitude.  It is possibly during this time that his unique sense of “duty” developed, with not altogether negative results.  One incident<br/>should illustrate:<br/>Solitude is not readily available in a dense community such as the leaf village. Juro wandered quite broadly in his attempts to find it. Once, when attempting Kawarimi no Jutsu (substitution), he chose as his replacement a large, papery object in the upper branches of a tree. It turned out to be the home of a colony of Vespa Mandarinia. The nest was torn from its moorings and split in half when it hit the ground, resulting in an extremely angry swarm at both locations. Their stingers proved effective against his thin clothing, and he fell from the smaller swarm in the tree's branches into the larger one near the base. Even using a wind jutsu to create an opening in the mass of massive hornets, he barely escaped alive.<br/>After some time spent in a tub of lemon juice and ice water, he was functional again. He left the village carrying some paste, some honeybee larva from a bemused Aburame clan beekeeper, some rice paper, and several small pieces of wood. His clothing was substantially more solid and included a wire helmet. The thought process behind all of this was quite simple: completely unnecessary harm had been done, and it was his responsibility to undo it. It was not long before he arrived at the tree and saw the split hive and the swarming wasps.<br/>It took him more than 24 hours of steady work to carefully move all of the nest pieces back up the tree and repair the damage. While he was working, he put out the larva. Now only a portion of the hornets were busy trying to sting him-- the others were feeding their larvae with the new food. After a while, the creatures seemed to grow tired of trying to penetrate his clothes and moved off.<br/>As he was putting the last layer of paper onto the hive, a strange wasp landed on his finger. It was strange because it was almost five and a half inches long, more than twice the size of the hive’s queen. It was also strange because its highly visible stinger was barbed as if it were a bumblebee.<br/>"I'm sorry the paper isn't as good as what you had before. It was the best I could find. I didn't know it was a nest, really!" Speaking to a hornet might possibly be attributed to the fact that not all of the venom in his body had been neutralized. It was certainly what he later believed made him imagine what came next. The insect crawling on his hand<em>nodded</em>once, then slid forwards along his wrist, its stinger slicing through his heavy sleeve as if it was paper. When it lifted up, there was a thin red line on his exposed arm, and on the tool that had done the damage. The creature crawled into the rebuilt hive, and Juro clambered down the tree (unmolested) and back home to sleep.<br/>Nothing further came of the incident (except a splitting headache) until a few months later, when his class was learning about summoning jutsus. After that, Juro had some friends who knew things he very much wanted to know.<br/>It was during this time that he began demonstrating his unusually defensive taijutsu style.  Some found it odd that one of his age could deflect a kunai with a tiny hand movement.  When they asked how it was accomplished, he answered one word: "Practice." In a way, that word summarizes much of his life to the present date.<br/><br/>A four-time veteran of the Chuunin exams, Juro was repeatedly passed over without comment in the final stage.  There are rumors, of course, but he's not the only Genin of his age, and its impossible to<em>prove</em>anything about what happened in the Forest of Death.  He's recently been assigned to a new squad.<br/>