Mikatakujira Clan

The Mikatakujira clan is known as medical specialists and for their parasitic hijutsu which enables the host to have up to six hearts. Their loyalties lie with Takigakure no Sato.
== Ideology ==
The Mikatakujira is a Clan that is focused on one thing and one thing only. Progress. Ever since their beginning, before the very first villages were formed, members of the Clan were striving and testing the possibilities of the world around them. To the Clan, the true secrets of the universe are but a whisper away, and each member strives to be the first to break on through the veil and discover what lies beyond. This attitude however, does have some drawbacks. Many of the Clan members come off as callous or uncaring, priding the scientific method and results over petty feelings like love and friendship.
Along with their reputation as, inhumane, as some detractors would name them, the Clan exhibits a fondness for testing things, whether they be new drugs, Jutsu, or even weapons. The clan is near obsessed when it comes to testing their ideas or creations. Though with them having found a safe haven among like minds in Takigakure, the Clan is free to test, experiment, and push the bounds of their world. With each member working towards a better future for everyone, no matter the costs.
Though with the current Clan Head there have been slight reforms, human testing is only to be done on consenting individuals. But given that the open-mindedness of the Clan has seeped into the rest of Takigakure, many are willing to let themselves be experimented on for gain.
== Background ==
Starting in a time before there were villages, the Mikatakujira gained their infamy as a band of traveling Snake-oil salesmen. Selling out supposed cure-alls, miracle elixirs, and the like to any and all who would buy, collecting lots of profits from their often fraudulent medicines. From village to village they would roam, soon though their medicine would become less and less dangerous, through the constant experimentation and testing their members did, the Mikatakujira would gain heaps of knowledge in the field of holistic medicine. Soon becoming masters of the art, the picture of infamy they once had would fall away, now being hailed as actual miracle workers.
While they enjoyed their roving life, that would all change when a man by the name of Mikatakujira Teiji took his place as Head of the Clan. Teiji was a man with a dream, and that was to be the first to find the Fountain of Youth, to find immortality. Leading his Clan along in his search they would rove across the globe, Teiji seeking out any and all methods he could, trying everything under the sun. Teiji would not find the solace for his obsession, but he would find an heir. His son, Hideki, always by his father’s side through all his searches, the man’s dying wish would be for the boy to complete his legacy.
Mustering all his strength Mikatakujira Hideki would resume his father’s search. While his father had not ad much luck in the quest for immortality, Hideki on the other hand did. While traveling through the treacherous Bonchi no Kuni, a land of hot jungles, and high mountains, where the rocks themselves supposedly would slit a man’s throat in their sleep. Him and his Clan would find a great site. Hidden in a crater on a plateau only accessible through a hidden pass beneath a waterfall, the Clan would come across a magnificent sight. 
Sprouting from a small island in the center of a massive lake was an equally massive tree. With its branches stretching for hundreds of feet and it’s canopy having grown into the trees surrounding the plateau. Thinking themselves to have finally found the Fountain of Youth that Teiji was so convinced with finding, the clan members would rush to the tree in the center of the island. There beneath its massive roots they would find a pool of fresh water, about a man across and a man deep. Those who drank from this pool though would find themselves with magnificent power, though it wasn’t too long until that power started to burn their very bodies, destroying them in the process.
Hideki was not one of those who drank the water, instead he would inspect the roots of the massive tree that produced such water. He had a feeling that the key to his father’s dream was here. For years he and the rest of the clan would research the properties of the Great Tree and the strange water produced by its roots. The years passed and Hideki became obsessed about the roots of the tree, often he would regale his own son about how they held the secrets to the universe, bound the very world together, and all manner of crazy stories. Like his father before him though, they stuck.
Hideki’s son, Motonobu would continue the research of his forefathers, intent on finding immortality and making his ancestors proud. By this time the rest of the Clan had settled down, the strange water that was found in the roots of the Great Tree was soon discovered that it could increase the user’s chakra tenfold, though it would shorten the drinker’s live, and drinking too much at once could kill the user. Seeing it as bunk they’d instead study and catalogue the variety of plants growing inside the massive basin, finding medicinal purposes for many of them, and further expanding their knowledge.
Motonobu however did nothing but research the roots of the great tree, mixing them or preparing them a certain way before testing the effects. It seemed that nothing happened each time he tried it. With each failure his sanity would deteriorate and he would try more extreme methods. He would finally find his answer during an expedition inside the tree itself. Having found a hollow in the mighty tree he would travel inside of it. Deep beneath the tree surrounded by its mighty roots he would find a chamber with another pool inside of it. This pool though was over grown with undulated black vines, wriggling and squiring they were like great threads or worms. Taking samples from this mass of roots the man would test the samples on various animals.
What he found was both horrifying and wondrous at the same time. The vines would enter a living being, somehow consuming all its organs, muscle, and bones except the heart and eyes. While it appeared that the subject had died, the mice he had been testing on would soon be found moving around their cages in due time, as if they still had all their organs. The man wouldn’t notice any behavioral changes until he put in a normal mouse. The one that housed the roots would use them to rip open the other rat in a particularly gory manner, the threads tearing out the heart of the other rat.
Horrified by this the man would lock up the rats, intent on starving them to death. However that would not come, months passed and the rats would not die, he tried to gas them, inject them with poison, nothing would kill them. It was here that the man would realize what he had stumbled upon. It was what his forefathers had been searching for, they were right, his father was right. Now Motonobu like many of the heads of the Mikatakujira before him had a daughter, a small feeble thing who had just reached her tenth birthday, the girl, Yōsaiyama would be his first and last human test subject. 
Bringing her down to the pool filled with roots he would push her into them, interested at just how they would act. Burying into her body, they would consume and rip apart her organs, muscle, and bone. But unlike the rats the girl’s body would not still, instead the howling girl would fling herself at her father, the tentacles that were becoming a part of her boring into him and reaching the man’s heart from his body, before nestling it next to the girl’s own.
When she came to her senses Yōsaiyama knew something was wrong, she felt lighter, but stronger, and there was a voice in her head, it told her to consume, to eat, to find the hearts of people and take them. Pushing the voices from her head she would escape that pit, running from the copse of her father. The tentacles the girl was infused with would prove to be something getting used to. Over the course of the years Yōsaiyama would grow and learn, others of the Clan having taken her in after the demise of her father. Learning to control whatever was inside her, which would soon gain the name Jiongu, a fitting name for where it came from. Just like the rats her father had tested on, the girl would find herself soon outliving many of her comrades. Already having become the leader of the clan when she was of age, the woman would bind the Mikatakujira and the Yamakira together in a partnership that would give birth to the village of Takigakure. Ever since the advent of Takigakure, the Mikatakujira would enjoy their new home, and the freedom it allowed them in their ever present push forwards to progress.
== Hierarchy ==
While in times past the Clan was ruled by a Head who inherited their power from their parent, and passed it on to their child. The Clan now chooses its Leader based solely on merit. With the wisest and eldest of the clan being chosen to lead and teach the younger members of the clan, passing on their secrets to those below them. In turn this allows the younger generations to grow stronger and combined this former knowledge with their own, making a more powerful generation with each go.
While the clan has been lead for the last one hundred and ten years by the current Head, Yōsaiyama, she has gone through great strides to pound this ideal into her fellow clan members, who once valued backstabbing and keeping secrets from each other over the betterment of the whole. Though they do have an official leader at all times, the Clan seems to function well without one. With each member having usual control over what they do and what developments and breakthrough’s they have, making them a relatively autonomous group.
Though the Clan seems to be split into two factions. Keeping as close to the original Clan as possible, the scientific faction is made up of mostly medical specialists and other scientists, often times developing the various procedures and drugs and medicine that have made them famous over the decades. The second and more recent faction to pop up is a much more militant faction, inspired by their close allies the Yamakira, this faction of the Clan makes great use of what their scientists and specialists have developed, making excellent shock troopers to protect those not so inclined to violence and fighting as they are.
== Clan Hijutsu ==
=== Jiongu ===
Discovered by Mikatakujira Motonobu and used by the current Clan Head and his/her apprentice. Jiongu is not just one singular technique, but a separate living organism from the user. Much like a parasite, the roots that make up the mass of Jiongu will burrow into the host, consuming all the organs, muscles, and bones of the user but the teeth, eyes, and heart. As the roots consume the host’s brain they absorb all the knowledge and thoughts of the host, merging their own will with the will of the host. Becoming one entity the roots will try to entice and tempt the user to collect hearts from other of its kind, like a constant gnawing hunger, they will scream at their host body to take their sustenance from their peers. Though the roots can only support six hearts at a time, the gnawing hunger in the user’s mind finally quieting once they have reached this limit. 
In turn the user can control the tentacle or thread like roots however they wish. The tentacles prove to be rather versatile, acting much like threads they can be used to sew up wounds stretch, or harden for attack, as well as being rather flexible and dexterous. After having the roots inhabit someone, they will find that as long as they keep a heart attached to at least some of the roots making up their body at all times, the user is functionally immortal, only dying once their threads are completely removed from any living hearts. Lacking any real organs, circulatory system, or true nervous system, the host of the threads does not need to breath, eat, or sleep, as well as being unable to be poisoned. The roots taking care of keeping the hearts pumping and living and in turn drawing sustenance from them. The final thing these roots allow the user to do is utilize the inherent nature of any hearts they add to their body, allowing them to preform Jutsu of that element as if it was their natural affinity. Due to the rather inhumane nature of these threads, they have been labeled as a Kinjutsu and everyone, bar the Clan Head of the Mikatakujira and his/her apprentice is barred from accessing the pit in which they are located.
==== Amount of hearts: ====
Total amount of hearts the body can have at one time will be as follows
- 1 for Academy Student
- 2 for Genin
- 3 for Chunin
- 4 for Special Jounin
- 5 for Jounin/Elite
=== Medial specialists ===
Though with Jiongu [Earth Grudge Fear] being forbidden and limited by the Head of the Clan, many clan members have developed their knowledge. Excelling in all things medical and scientific, many Mikatakujira are prone to experimenting, on themselves or otherwise, and have developed a myriad of medicines and drugs that have made them famous. Many of the can members make excellent Medic Shinobi, as well as assassins with their massive libraries on herbs and plant based medicines and poisons. Many drugs and cures can be attributed to their name, with clan members who do become Shinobi often developing specialized drug cocktails to serve them on the battlefield.
== Clan Techniques ==
Mikatakujira Clan Techniques 001Category:Clans
Category:Hijutsu
Category:Takigakure Clans
Category:Bonchi no Kuni