Baenlin's training II

The wind blew through the hair of Baenlin’s upper body just as it did the trees around him. He lost himself in that feeling as he let his body flow through stretches he performed before his training. It would be a new experience for him, training solo. He had tried a few more times since Miss Takamura’s dismissal of him. She had gently, firmly and adamantly refused. It came as a blow to Baenlin, but she still encouraged him to continue his training, and sometimes in class it felt as though she dropped small hints into her lectures to help him along, but Baenlin was very aware that could just be him.

Pushing the thought aside, Baenlin focused on the training dummy in front of him. The dummy had it’s based buried in gravel, and from the trunk of the dummy sprouted three arms that zig-zagged their way up the trunk. A "leg" did the same towards the base of the trunk. The entire dummy was made of polished teak wood, with some padding in the form of layered leather wrapped around the "head" and "torso". The arms showed discoloration where the arms and hands of many years worth of students had worn on them.

Baenlin imagined an opponent bringing a fist up at his mid-section from the opponents right hand. Baenlin brought his hand up and over the corresponding arm on the dummy and pushed the arm wide to his own right. As the dummy turned with and its arm clacked in it’s fixture, Baenlin hammered on what would have been the back of the opponents ribs if the opponent had been flesh and blood. Baenlin quickly rolled his hand back over his opponents fist, pulling it back the other way. He then block what he saw as an incoming counter-punch from his opponent’s left hand by pushing it out wide with the opposite hand as he had done the first time, only this time his counter blow would have landed squarely on his opponents cheek. His imaginary opponent hardly seemed dazed though, as a kick came from down low. Baenlin blocked this with the bottom of his foot, as well as simultaneous blow coming from his his opponents right hand. He countered with a quick hammer blow to the would-be sternum of the training dummy. On and on Baenlin went; blow, counter, blow, counter. The blows and counters seemed simultaneous, and indeed it was difficult to not look ahead to what he would do next, to simply keep his movements reaction based. Baenlin knew he was not physically the most impressive specimen as ninja went. He knew there would be many larger opponents in his future that would see him as vulnerable to taijutsu techniques. He knew he couldn’t over power these opponents physically, so he practiced to use their own power against them. Deflecting rather than absorbing their attacks.

Baenlin continued training with the dummy for three hours, long blood had begun to fly from his skin without there being any cut. When he finished he stepped away from the dummy, grabbed the towel he had brought along an began to clean off the sweat and blood. While he did he considered the dummy. Though the style wasn’t the most popular, it suited him. It wasn’t overwhelmed until you had truly mastered it, but those taijutsu masters he had seen use it could hit the dummy four and five times each time they had countered a blow and all within the time he hit it once. While he doubt he would master the style, not being his preferred method of fighting, he still found the style appealing and impressive.

After Baenlin had wiped him down, he draped the towel around his neck, and crossed his legs as he sat down to meditate with his hands rested, palms up, on his knees. As he began his breaths, he curled his fingers and thumb on each hand to form a C shape. As his breathing got deeper and slower, he began to fall into himself, to tap into the source of his chakra. He could almost see the chakra pathways flowing through his body. Slowly, ever so slowly, he pushed his chakra down to his finger tips. As he did, they started to spark. The sparks jumped from each of his fingers to his thumb, creating a blue-ish lighting in his hands. He allowed the sparks to continue their frolicking for a bit, but he eventually forced their horseplay to a stop and started to exert control again. Again moving slow enough that the change was imperceptible, Baenlin started to force the miniature arcs of lightning to converge, not at his thumb, but mid-way between the thumbs and the fingers. How long he spent exerting this control he did not know, but he knew that at least a few hours had past. Once he had the chakra positioned where he wanted it, he started to gather it again, this time outside of his body in the place where the sparks converged. He continued to steadily build his chakra into an orb of electricity the size of a tangerine. As the orb almost touched his fingers he stopped building on it and simply held it. He held it for several more hours, blocking out the pain in his back, legs and butt from sitting on the ground for so long. It was an exercise in stamina and will power, between his self and his unruly body. As he started to tire, he began to separate a part of himself, his nature, his element, from his chakra. He had dabbled little in the use of raw chakra, but it was an exercise he had seen would be used after his meeting with Ganki-sensei. He began to retract his raiton from his chakra, starting at the exit point. This he did slowest of all, for he saw his nature as unruly as it jumped this way and that from the feeling of it. Beginning at his fingers and all the way to his core, raiton seemed to fight him, but it was not as strong as fight as it once was and he managed to subdue it. As Baenlin opened his eyes to see his work, he saw two orbs of steady, blue colored light on his lap against a pitch black back drop: night had fallen some time ago. Satisfied with his work for the day, Baenlin got up, spent some time stretching out the cramps from sitting for so long, and moved to his make-shift bed only a few yards away just on the edge of the training field.

word count: 1125

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