Kamui's training (private)

The alarm clock went off, blaring in my ear. The next instant it various pieces of it were flying out the window specifically left open for this purpose. My fist quivered in the spot the alarm clock formerly occupied. A fellow genin downstairs took issue and we got into a minor scuffle. That woke me up. Properly warmed up for the day, I headed out to the training grounds. Swinging my arms, I accidental fu-d a jounin by, well, accident, knocking him over into an empty cart, blocking a major intersection for an hour. I continued on, oblivious to all the commotion. I headed down to the training grounds with mines. No-one else was around, so I had the place to myself. I grabbed a bunch of mines from one of the two bins and got to work.

I started digging a hole, my plan being to toss the mine in and fill the hole up. I was most of the way through a small hole for one mine when I realized that I had no idea what I was doing. I was just digging a hole, without a clue of what the normal process was. I stood up and looked around. Over by the bin, I saw a scroll. I picked it up and started reading. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. I dropped the scroll, thinking it was a cipher. I watched the scroll fall down on its end, then roll over, and roll away a bit. The scroll opened and I noticed that I could suddenly read the scroll. What the heck? I got up and picked up the scroll. There was no mistake. I could read the scroll. So why…? I put the open scroll down and walked around it. On the other side of the scroll the words became what I had thought was a code. So that was it. I had been reading the scroll upside down. Well that cleared things up.

I put the scroll down by the hole. I decided to start at the beginning. I filled back in the hole, patted the dirt down, and jumped up and down on the spot for good measure. I read the instructions. I dug a new hole. I made this one shallow. I picked up the mine, and put it in the hole. Not deep enough. The hole, I mean. I pulled out the mine, and dug deeper. I put the mine again. Still a little to shallow. The tip of the mine stuck out above ground. I pulled out the mine again and dug a bunch. This time the mine was a foot below. This was too deep. Great. I put in a bunch of earth. Too shallow. I kept at this for a while until the hole was the right depth.

I checked the instructions. I put in the mine and cursed. The hole was too wide. I pulled out the mine and packed in the dirt. I tried to put in the mine. The mine didn’t fit. Oh come on. I put the mine aside again and widened the hole. I put the mine back in the hole, only to find that the hole was just a shave too small. I widened the hole a bit, and an entire side collapsed. Great. I started repairing the side, but the other side was disturbed, and it fell down too. Gah! It took me a while to fix the hole, as I also accidentally knocked the most of the pile of loose, excavated dirt into the hole. I moved the pile farther to one side, and finished shaping up the hole.

I put the mine in. I checked the instructions. I pulled the mine back out. I switched on the mine. I put the mine back in. Now, this was going to be tricky. I gently covered the mine with dirt. I got most of the removed dirt back into the hole, the rest I arranged in a shape resembling a bump where a mine would be. I looked around for the scroll. I couldn’t find it. I started digging back up the dirt. I found the scroll. I think when I moved the excavated dirt, I put it on the scroll, so when I put the dirt in, I buried the scroll too. I pulled out the scroll out of the dirt and put the dirt back. I shifted some of the dirt on the second pile to the one covering the first to make up for the scroll’s absence. I patted the dirt down until it was level with (and indistinguishable from) the ground around it.

I went off for a snack. When I returned, I opened the scroll. A cascade of dirt promptly fell out, coating me. After several minutes dusting myself off, I continued reading the scroll, tracing through until I got past the part about burying the mine. I looked around, looking for the mine. Spotting a bare patch of dirt, I tiptoed towards it as if I was walking on eggshells. You could have heard a pin drop. I got to the bare patch, and bent over, to start digging. I heard the explosion when I shifted my weight over slightly. I flew several yards, landing flat on my back (ouch!). I examined myself and didn’t find a scratch. I looked at the spot I had been moments before, happily digging away. Nothing. Not even a sign of an explosion. Then what happened? I dug where I had been crouching, and found the mine. In retrospect I think I heard the sound of an explosion and jumped, myself. You see, on closer examination, the mine was a dud, rigged with loudspeakers so that instead of actually exploding, the mine would sound like it had exploded, giving mostly harmless feedback (you get a bit of a nasty shock). The mine also had a label on one side that declared to the world that it was a fake and would only play the sound of an explosion instead of behaving like the real thing. I somehow missed this label. I looked back at the bins. One of them was labeled “mines” and the other was labeled “fake mines”. Well. That explained things.

I spent several hours burying other practice mines while grunting, sweating, and cursing in a similar fashion to the episode with the first fake mine. I covered up the holes, and moved the excess dirt away. I then tried to activate the mines to see if I had set them up correctly. Most of them did work. One of them didn’t. I jumped on the ground over where the mine was, I smacked the ground. Eventually I got fed up and dug up the hole. Nothing. Just dirt, dirt, and more dirt. What was going on? Where was the mine? I piled the dirt back into the hole, and thought for a bit. Maybe… I had put the mine in one of the other holes by accident. I didn’t think I would have made a hole twice as large as normal without noticing but I can be very absent minded. Besides, I hadn’t heard any double explosions when I tried to activate the others. But on the other hand, maybe the mine wasn’t activated. I had no choice. I would have to dig up every single hole I had dug, until I found all the mines. As you might imagine, this took a while. I got annoyed when, after digging up all the holes, I had not found the missing mine. I checked through the holes again, and the dirt piles beside them. No sign of the missing mine. I checked inside all the holes, feeling around the inside of each to make sure that the mine had not been pushed and made a tunnel to the side. I still didn’t find the mine. I sat down and thought. I realized, that the only place I hadn’t looked was the big pile of extra dirt, that came from when the holes were originally dug.

I headed over to the pile of dirt, which was off to one side, and stood about 5 feet high. It was about ten feet wide. I started feeling through the pile of dirt, and finally. I found the missing mine. I tried to grab it but it was pulled from my grasp. I pulled my arm out from the dirt pile, and walked around the dirt. A dung beetle was rolling away the mine. I cursed, and chased after it, but the dung beetle sped up. The dung beetle was huge. It was a couple of feet long. On top of that, there was a ninja headband tied backwards around its head. I looked closely at the headband. There was a beetle engraved on the metal. Oh great. Don’t tell me. Don’t tell me. An entire hidden ninja village of dung beetles? Come on. I sped up, trying to catch the beetle to take away the mine from it. The beetle, seeing me out of the corner of its eye sped up.

The two of us burst out into a large clearing. I looked around. The clearing was probably hundreds of feet in diameter, with hundreds of little dwellings. In the distance, I could see groups of dung beetles hard at work farming something. The dung beetle I had been following disappeared into a nearby dwelling. The nearby dung beetles were staring at me. They all had headbands with the same engraving of a beetle that the first dung beetle had. The first thing that hit me in the face was the smell. The second was an engraved beetle. Following the engraved beetle was a real, live dung beetle. I rolled with the impact, and used my momentum to fling the beetle away. The other beetles inched in. One of the ones in the front appeared to be preparing a jutsu, judging by the leg signs it was making and the aura that was forming. I didn’t waste any time waiting for it to finish. I charged toward the building the first dung beetle had entered. I had to crawl inside, since the ceiling was a lot shorter. After searching several rooms, I found the mine. I grabbed the mine, turned to flee, and was confronted by an angry dung beetle. At least, I assume it was angry. I bowled it over in my flight, and upon crawling out of the dwelling, was confronted by a horde of dung beetles.

I surveyed the crowd. Many were shaking forelegs in the air. Some were tossing small kunai and shuriken in the air. Some looked like they were building up their chakra. I figured that this only meant one thing. They were out to get me. I leaped over the crowd of dung beetles and made for the edge of the clearing. The beetles turned as one, and charged. I ran for my life, pursued by flying shuriken and kunai, and a fireball which passed off to my right (thank goodness the dung beetles can’t aim very well).

I fled through another village, which was populated by rhinoceros beetles. I recognized them by the massive horns on their heads. The rhinoceros beetles started to pursue me as well, with the dung beetles in hot pursuit. In front of me, in the distance, I saw a rhinoceros beetle performing what looked like the Forward Lotus, on a dummy, with others lining up to take turns. Everywhere I looked there were rhinoceros beetles punching, kicking, or tossing training dummies. I guess the rhinocerous beetles specialize in taijutsu. I fled through their village, and hit a dead end. I spun around. The rhinoceros beetles charged around the corner, and screeched to a halt. I backed up toward the wall. The rhinoceros beetles walked forward as a group. The dung beetles zipped around the corner, and ran smack dab into the rhinoceros beetles. The two groups faced off. I inched toward the wall, ignored by the beetles; I was probably not considered since I had only fled and avoided fighting. The beetles continued to ignore me, and glared at each other and clicked their mandibles. Suddenly one of the rhinoceros beetles turned red all over, and got more muscular. I assume it had opened one of its gates. One of the dung beetles suddenly charged wielding what looked like a chidori (I think the chirping sound was a dead giveaway). Suddenly battle was joined by all the beetles. I turned and fled, the sounds of battle receding into the distance. I checked every few minutes and one time prepared an ambush but nothing was following me.

I headed back to the training grounds. It was getting late so I dug up, and put away all the other mines. I started digging a new hole for the mine I had gone to so much trouble to retrieve. I put the mine in the hole, and patted down a bunch of dirt to make it indistinguishable from the rest of the ground. I sat down, exhausted from earlier. I got up and realized that because I had made the dirt above the mine look the same as the dirt all around it. I searched, digging up all the dirt inside a five foot radius, and found the mine. I filled in the dirt and dug another hole, this time taking care to leave a small pile of dirt on top so I could find the pile again. I sat down again for a breather and the wind blew. The dirt I had piled up scattered. Great. I tried to find the mine. After more trouble, I did, and dug a hole again. This time I stuck several twigs in a circle around the mine and started burying it. I was not yet finished filling in the hole when I realized I had completely buried the twigs. I pulled out some dirt, retrieved the twigs, and stuck them in the ground higher up. This time when I put back the dirt, the tops of the twigs stuck out a little.

I stepped forward and stomped on the mine. Nothing. I stomped again. Still nothing. Maybe I hadn’t switched on the mine. I dug the mine out, but it was on. I re-buried the mine and (after some trouble) stomped over the mine again. Nothing. I pulled out the mine, and examined it for defects. There were none but there was a label that declared that the mine was for use in water. I experimentally punched the mine, and was rewarded by an explosion. I decided to try out the mine. I jumped in the river, and underwater, punched the mine. I heard another explosion. I tied the end of a string to one end of the mine and the other to a branch sticking out over the water. I walked upstream, and jumped back into the river. I was carried downstream, and into the mine. The mine made the exploding sound. I was carried downstream. I struggled out of the water, noticing the string had slipped off of the branch, and put the water mine back in the bin and headed home.

I came racing back, put the other mines away, and caught up with one that had rolled downhill and into a hole. After a tussle with a mole over the mine, I put the mine back in the bin and headed home. On the way back, I disturbed a badger, who gave chase. I lost it though, by swimming across the river, and running away out of sight of the river bank. I eventually made it home.

Add a word count next time......

Anyway, approved for 13 stats and 26 JP.

I decided to go train again. Determined to not have to spend most of
my training time walking back and forth like last time, I decided to
train in around town, instead of the usual training grounds. I started
out with ten 5 minute horse stances, and then did a ten minute
hand-stand hold. After finishing up with some v-ups (painful stuff), I
staggered outside.
Once outside, I started looking for people moving heavy objects. The
first person to catch my eye was an older guy holding a stack of
battleaxes. I asked him if he needed help but he declined, saying he
was a blacksmith and needed the exercise anyway. I kept looking around
and saw someone moving out of their apartment. I asked them if they
needed help moving, and they said yes. Determined not to get the
location wrong, I followed them first, to their new location. Once
they were sure they were in the right place, I started helping them
move. Back and forth I dashed, carrying various boxes filled with
heavy stuff. Eventually all the boxes were unpacked, and the other
people thanked me, before I could go they gave me a snack and a drink
to repay me.
I began looking around for someone else to help, and saw someone
building a shed. I asked if they needed help, and they did. I found
myself hammering nails into long planks while the other guy was
installing air conditioning. Every once in a while I would stop and
stretch, to keep my back from tightening up. I also had to alternate
hands, holding a hammer in each hand. Slowly but surely, the shed took
shape, until all the walls and roof were securely attached together,
at which point the other guy handed me some money and thanked me for
my time.
I took a shortcut through a nearby alley. I was so preoccupied with
looking for someone else to help that I didn’t notice a pickpocket
swiftly take my hard-earned cash. Even this I figured out after
realizing my loss a little later, and hunting around, I saw footprints
which I lost. I continued on, looking for someone else to help.
It was sunrise when I found a person pushing a ramen cart toward some
festival grounds. They were in a hurry to get to the festival before
it started so they could be ready, so I pushed the cart and they ran
alongside. They made it in, and I got a bowl of ramen out of the deal.
I went home and collapsed on my bed, and fell asleep. All in all, it
had been an industrious day.
On the previous mission I had completed, an enemy had hurled a whole
bunch of shuriken at me. There was too many to avoid or catch. I
needed to be able to keep myself safe in situations like that. I
decided to learn to intercept stuff with my clay minions.
The first exercise I did was to toss a kunai into the air and then try
to use my bugs to block it. I was even worse with this at first, than
I was at playing catch. I consistently would guide the bug to thin
air, where the kunai had been several long moments earlier. This was,
quite obviously, much too slow. I kept at it, studying what I was
doing to be so slow. I eventually realized that I was waiting too long
to try to catch the kunai. I would wait until the kunai was a split
second from hitting its target and then I would act. That wouldn’t
work. I had to look at the kunai, figure out where it was headed,
mentally set the trap early, and then I could start moving the insect,
so that the kunai would hit the clay.
I tried this and was mostly successful. I could now successfully block
kunai with clay minions. I stopped and thought again. The results
indicated that, while I was faster than before, it was not enough. I
could only block one kunai; how could I make it so I could block a
whole bunch of them? I tried several more times, but each time I got
the same results as the first one. Then I had an idea. Maybe, I should
make larger minions, like the bat I had made on the day I learned
bakuton. Maybe, I should break down this exercise, and just do the
jutsu as fast as I could first, and create a bat with a large
wingspan, thus attempting to catch more kunai.
To be make it faster to cast the jutsu, I did each hand sign,
individually, and then slowly began stringing them together. In this
way, I was eventually able to get the hand sings for the jutsu all
finished faster and faster. When I could get them all correctly in
less than a second, I started actually trying to catch kunai again.
Now I could sometimes do it. A bit of practice later and the bat could
catch kunai reliably.
I continued on to the next stage of training. I started trying to do
the same for shuriken. Now, catching a shuriken by the blades on the
outside, is kind of tricky. If you close in the wrong place, you can
get part of your finger cut off. I found that with clay constructs,
the shuriken was simply far too hard to pinpoint. That wouldn’t work.
Now, the other way to catch a shuriken is to stick your finger or
something in the hole in the center as it flies by. Considering that
the intended part of the target is only flying by and is not also a
spinning buzz saw of at least fairly painful doom, this is slightly
easier. Trying to catch the shuriken by this part was a trifle easier
with the human body. However, since I can make arachnids with eight
legs out of clay, it is much easier. If shuriken had the hole in the
middle facing toward the floor, then I just stick up a myriad of legs
and one of them will catch the shuriken. If no particular leg managed
to actually spear the shuriken, then the shuriken will stop, as it
runs into the clay beings ahead of it. This part was fairly easy.
Transcribing this to kunai was also easy. Now I would catch kunai and
shuriken alike.
I was about head home though it was midday, when I realized, there was
something missing from my training. All my training had involved me
placing or throwing the shuriken and kunai. I needed to have the
element of surprise too.
Later, I walked through the forest. I watched for potential enemies.
Suddenly kunai and shuriken flew at me from all sides. Caught off
guard, I only caught a few. Fortunately the guy who threw them wasn’t
aiming to actually hit me and the ones I didn’t catch flew by and
stuck themselves in the underbrush. I helped the other guy pick up the
shuriken and kunai. I gave the ones I picked up to him, and the other
guy ran off. I continued walking again, and walked into another storm
of kunai and shuriken. I forgot to use the clay to try to catch the
shuriken and kunai, and tried to catch the ones near me with my hands.
That didn’t work well. I missed a lot and in several cases also got
cut for my trouble. The same guy came out again. He lectured me on how
I was supposed to have tried to catch them with my clay bombs. We
picked up the kunai and shuriken. He disappeared into the underbrush.
This continued on for some time, while I started to catch more and
more of the kunai and shuriken. Eventually I was able to catch them
all. After several attacks during which I stopped all the shuriken and
kunai, the other guy admitted that more of it wouldn’t help me much. I
agreed and he headed home.
I felt like I needed more practice though.
I set a bunch of traps, loaded with kunai and shuriken, and I tried
again. I had improved a lot. This time I caught almost all of them
except for two. One of the two, the trap broke before I could activate
it, the other one passed between my legs, about one and a half feet
off of the ground. Needless to say that one gave me a scare.

(WC: 1422)

Approved of training this time. +7 Stats and 14 JP.

Please use Third person next time.