Yay!  New chapter!

they'd been playing since Sakura had woken hours earlier, naked and
alone in an empty room somewhere deep within the bowels of ANBU's
torture and interrogation facility.

Huh.  Too bad this isn't an anime episode.

 O_o;...

At least, that's where Sakura assumed they were. The endless miles
corridors that she'd been wandering through were probably just an
elaborate genjutsu that the examiner was using to torment her. The
simpler versions of such techniques- the ones that could be maintained
for hours on end -depended on having a homogenous environment for the
victims to wander in, such as poorly-lit forest path or a series of
specially prepared rooms with no telltale features to distinguish one

>from the next... much like these halls, with their drab gray plaster

walls, half burnt-out ceiling lamps and heavy, black metal doors.

Hm.  In episode 67, which kicked off the invasion of Konoha by 
Orochimaru
and the Sound and resulted in the death of the third, Kabuto and the 
others
used a genjutsu technique to put almost everyone to sleep.

Except Sakura.  Sakura realized what it was and dispelled it for 
herself
without prompting.  She was later instructed to dispel it for Naruto 
as
well.  Well, and Shikamaru as well, but he had already dispelled it 
for
himself.

So if she thinks she's in a genjutsu now, why isn't she at least 
*trying*
to dispel it?  It's possible that she doesn't know the exact technique
(though I doubt it, see below), but it seems logical that she would at
least know of it and some more rudimentary ways to either counter it 
or at
least confirm she's under genjutsu.  That incident is only a few weeks 
away
now in the current timeframe.

(The dispel technique is an easy one to do - it consists of one hand 
seal
(Tora) and one word 'Kai' (which they translate as 'dispel').  I can't
imagine that a genin as talented in chakra control and likely in 
genjutsu
would not have been instructed in this pretty much at the beginning of
their training or at some point in school.)

Basically, this can probably be handled by a short note to the effect 
of
having tried it and it not being successful, or something along those
lines?

Perhaps, perhaps not. I reserve the right to ignore parts of Naruto 
canon that make no logical sense ^_^. If all genjutsu could be dispensed 
with as easily as using a single seal, then _nobody_ would use genjutsu. 
Kurenai would be a total joke among the jounin and Itachi would be much, 
much less scary.

As far as i'm concerned, the most basic genjutsu dispelling technique, 
which involves the manipulation of your own chakra to effectively 
'freeze' it, in hopes that the genjutsu will break, is _not_ 100% 
effective. It may work well on kabuto's mass sleep genjutsu because that 
is a non-focused, non-maintained area of effect genjutsu, and thus he 
can't exactly give any one person special attention and doesn't exert 
any effort to keep people under his influence. He activated it, and a 
lot of folks went to sleep, but those who were prepared resisted it 
without much difficulty.

The dispelling technique was defeated _easily_ by a bunch of Hidden Rain 
nins in one of the filler arcs, where they 'layered' their genjutsu 
effect, giving the victim the illusion that he had escaped their 
illusion, when in actuality he had not. This shows that even if you use 
the dispelling technique, there's no gaurantee that the genjutsu will 
break for even a moment. The hidden rain were maintaining their 
technique on him, and thus he was unable to free his chakra from their 
influence.

Sakura _does_ know the dispelling technique, as well as quite a few 
other _theoretical_ ways of defending herself against genjutsu. Anko's 
most advanced ninja skill is genjutsu, according to the character books, 
and Anko has had extensive training, while Sakura has had none. Sakura 
has Anko's undivided attention at the moment, so it makes sense to me 
that Sakura would be unable to escape...

I shall consider putting in a note about the dispelling technique, 
though i'm not entirely certain it's necessary to mention it 
specifically. And, as i said before, i will take whatever liberties i 
need to in order to force things to _make sense_ in my version of the 
Naruto universe. You have been warned ^_^...

Other than that, I have no real complaints or comments.  I just sat 
back
and enjoyed reading it. :)


Joel

Good to hear that the little details i may miss sometimes don't detract 
_too_ much from the story ^_^. I'm glad you're enjoying it!

~Eimii 


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