Life Return: Skin

Technique list name: Life Return - Skin
Overview: Life Return is a rare skill that works to boost the user’s control over their own bodies to extensive levels. These powers can range from control over the digestive system to control over the lungs, or even over hair. These specific techniques are learned by practitioners who desire to protect their body using the most basic of defenses: their skin. These abilities result in the skin becoming a defense from far more than just the normal outside world, being able to protect the body from blunt blows, swords, burns, and heat with ease.
User: Universally accessible.
History: The Life Return is a very unusual ability which focuses on total self mastery, it is said that one can unlock such a state by hours of meditation and intense physical training but it may be possible to learn this ability from other means. Though no standardized method or teaching the Life Return exists, it is popular among the Navy and World Government officials, who typically face pirates with Devil Fruits. These specific techniques have traditionally been used as defensive and occasionally supportive techniques, helping defend from attacks that normal methods cannot stop.
Techniques:

-Level Zero-

Name: Basic Tissue Advancement
Type: Life Return
Description: No action in particular is made: simply constant focus on the ligaments and skin, as well as various other tissues result in the strengthening of all aforementioned parts of the body.
Effect: The result of this constant attention to detail results in the tissues of the body simply being… better, overall. The ligaments are less prone to tearing (slightly), the skin seems healthier, and in generally the tissues of the organs of the body are in better shape.
Level learned: Zero
Stat Requirements: 5% Skill, 5% Talent

-Level One-

Name: Skin Elasticity -Basic-
Type: Life Return
Description: The elasticity of the user’s skin has increased due to larger control over the materials and chemicals used in its recreation.
Effect: The user is able to tighten or stretch his or her skin slightly more than before: the user is able to remove wrinkles caused by aging or create flaps of skin by pulling on his or her skin, though at this point that ability is rather useless.
Level learned: One
Stat Requirements: 7% Skill, 6% Talent

Name: Tendon Strength -Basic-
Type: Life Return
Description: The user simply focuses on the tendons and ligaments in their body, strengthening them to a minor degree.
Effect: The tendons of the body are strengthened and toughened, made so that even if the muscles are stronger than they should be, the tendons won’t spontaneously snap.
Level learned: One
Stat Requirements: 9% Skill, 6% Talent

-Level Two

Name: Skin Pigment
Type: Life Return
Description: By taking control of the production of melanin in the body, the user gains control over the color of their skin.
Effect: The user of this technique is able to remove all the imperfections of the skin by changing the melanin levels in his or her body to create an even color of skin, though this is usually just used for vain purposes, combined with other varieties of Life Return, this can lead to a change in identity through changing skin colors.
Level learned: Two
Stat Requirements: 13% Skill, 7% Talent

Name: Skin Replacement
Type: Life Return
Description: The body becomes capable of replacing skin far quicker than normal. This is a basis for later techniques, like Skin Sloughing, Skin Shedding and Skin Grafting.
Effect: Scabs vanish far quicker, and scarring is far less likely to occur.
Level learned: Two
Stat Requirements: 15% Skill, 8% Talent

-Level Three-

Name: Skin Toughness -Brass-
Type: Life Return
Description: The user simply hardens their skin to the toughness of brass.
Effect: The user gets a far more effective layer of protection around their body, helping soften hand-to-hand strikes, and it also serves to help harm whoever attacks them.
Level learned: Three
Stat Requirements: 17% Skill, 9% Talent

Name: Skin Elasticity -Medium-
Type: Life Return
Description: The elasticity of the skin has increased further since level one, and is now able to be stretched up to a meter and a half away from the point of origin: this is aided by the use of the level two technique Skin Replacement.
Effect: The user is able to stretch their skin beyond its normal limit, enabling them to use it as a weapon when combined with Skin Toughness.
Level learned: Three
Stat Requirements: 20% Skill, 10% Talent

Name: Skin Bludgeon
Type: Life Return
Description: The user simply combines Skin Elasticity with Skin Toughness, turning a flap of skin into a dangerous bludgeoning weapon.
Effect: The user becomes capable of wielding their skin as a whip like weapon. Skin Bludgeon improves as Skin toughness and Elasticity improve.
Level learned: Three
Stat Requirements: 20% Skill, 11% Talent

-Level Four-

Name: Skin Grafting
Type: Life Return
Description: The user modifies their skin so as to either use their skin to provide a skin graft for a wounded friend, or to be able to receive a skin graft from any person alive.
Effect: The user is able to give and receive skin grafts to and from any person alive.
Level learned: Four
Stat Requirements: 21% Skill, 12% Talent

Name: Tendon Strengthening -Medium-
Type: Life Return
Description: The user consistently provides resources to improve their tendons and ligaments, resulting in said tendons growing more durable.
Effect: At this point, it is nearly impossible to tear the tendons or ligaments of the user’s own accord, though those with a suitable amount of strength can still bend the user’s limbs far enough to ruin the tissues.
Level learned: Four
Stat Requirements: 21% Skill, 13% Talent

Name: Gripping Skin
Type: Life Return
Description: The user is able to manipulate their skin’s coefficient of friction in order to be able to hold onto things more tightly: combined with Skin Elasticity, the skin becomes extremely useful for holding onto things: however strange it may look.
Effect: In general, it makes it harder for the user to lose his or her grip on an object: however, it can also be used to allow someone to hold onto something using Skin Elasticity.
Level learned: Four
Stat Requirements: 22% Skill, 13% Talent

-Level Five-

Name: Skin Sloughing
Type: Life Return
Description: The user of this technique consistently sloughs off the upper layer of their dermis, resulting in the epidermis frequently being replaced with new skin, though the old skin is folded back into the body and recycled.
Effect: Scars become practically nonexistent, and burns do not last longer than twenty posts, for the worst of burns: the materials for making more skin come from the old skin.
Level learned: Five
Stat Requirements: 23% Skill, 14% Talent

Name: Skin Toughness -Bronze-
Type: Life Return
Description: An advancement of Skin Toughness -Brass-, the same thing occurs, except the skin becomes as tough as bronze.
Effect: The offensive and defensive capabilities of the user are increased further than in the prerequisite technique, though their skin can still be cut by iron and steel weaponry, as well as pierced by bullets, unarmed attacks do even less damage now.
Level learned: Five
Stat Requirements: 25% Skill, 15% Talent

-Level Six-

Name: Tendon Knitting
Type: Life Return
Description: Sometimes tendons get torn or, in rare cases, get cut or detached from their bones or muscles. With this technique, the user is able to rebind their tendons and ligaments to the appropriate bone or muscle and, if necessary, reconnect the tissues in order to join two halves together again.
Effect: The user is able to repair tendon and ligament damage on their own without a doctor to help them: however, this can only occur over a time period of twenty user posts or after a thread ends.
Level learned: Six
Stat Requirements: 26% Skill, 16% Talent

Name: Skin Elasticity -Advanced-
Type: Life Return
Description: A further improvement upon the previous versions of skin elasticity, it is practically impossible for the user to have normal wrinkles: even a user in their late seventies would look, skin wise, as if they were in their early twenties. The length to which the skin can stretch, is even further extended.
Effect: The user can stretch their skin to a length of up to four meters, and upon release said skin will return to its normal form.
Level learned: Six
Stat Requirements: 28% Skill, 17% Talent

Name: Skin Toughness -Iron-
Type: Life Return
Description: Yet another improvement upon Skin Toughness -Brass-, the skin grows to the endurance level of iron: at this point, one requires seastone or steel weaponry to pierce the skin at this point.
Effect: The offensive and defensive capabilities of the user are increased further than in the prerequisite technique, though their skin can still be cut by steel and seastone weaponry, as well as pierced by bullets. Luckily, unarmed attacks do even less damage now. Their punches and kicks now feel as if one is getting hit in the face with an iron mallet.
Level learned: Six
Stat Requirements: 28% Skill, 19% Talent

-Level Seven-

Name: Instant Shedding
Type: Life Return
Description: The user removes a full section of their dermis, replacing it with a new section of dermis: effectively removing the original section of skin’s relationship with the rest of the user’s body.
Effect: Instant Shedding can be used to remove more severe burns almost instantly, as well as remove poison from the surface of the skin. Unfortunately, the sudden and abrupt nature of this technique causes the new skin to be rather tender and unable to be used for anything particularly special for two to three posts.
Level learned: Seven
Stat Requirements: 30% Skill, 20% Talent

Name: Tendon Strengthening -Advanced-
Type: Life Return
Description: The user’s tendons are strengthened to superhuman limits: only the most brutal jerking motion could possibly cause these things to tear.
Effect: The user is able to perform nearly any feat possible without worry of his tendons or ligaments tearing: even forced hyperextension would stretch them, at most.
Level learned: Seven
Stat Requirements: 30% Skill, 20% Talent

-Level Eight-

Name: Skin Toughness -Steel-
Type: Life Return
Description: Yet another improvement upon Skin Toughness -Brass-, the skin grows to the endurance level of iron: at this point, one requires seastone weaponry to pierce the skin. Steel can still harm the user of this technique: however, the opponent must be suitably powerful enough to cut through normal steel.
Effect: Slashing and stabbing attacks do almost no damage, and getting hit with a unarmed fighting style, at this point, would just result in the aggressor getting harmed. The user’s hits are now amplified as if they were wearing steel on their limbs.
Level learned: Eight
Stat Requirements: 32% Skill, 21% Talent

Name: Heat Tolerance
Type: Life Return
Description: The user has trained their skin to tolerate high temperatures: the epidermis has become an extremely good optional insulator, capable of blocking temperatures up to 1000 C from reaching the other skin layers: the epidermis is still affected, however, as are the nerves in the middle layer of skin.
Effect: The user is rather unaffected by heat based attacks: though still burned and able to feel the heat, the normal amount of damage is greatly decreased. With enough heat, even this defense can be breached, however.
Level learned: Eight
Stat Requirements: 35% Skill, 25% Talent

Approved.