Chakra Training I

It was Saturday, which meant that Masaru had not been able to use school as an excuse to get away from his stepmother and her twin daughters. His father was gone from the village for a few days due to some work at a nearby town, so that meant that Masaru’s stepmother would have free reign at their house.

As such, it hadn’t even been a question that Masaru would get as quickly out of the house as possible, to use the morning at the training grounds in order to improve. The first thing to do here, Masaru decided, would be some Jutsu training. As he began making hand seals, he thought that he should spend some time improving his speed with them. Do you train the speed, or was it just something you got with experience, or is it just some swim-or-sink thing and you die if you are not fast enough? Eh, he would not be able to find the answer to that just by thinking about it. Maybe it was just a mix of it all? He made a mental note to ask a Jounin about that sometime.

After turning his attention to the actual Jutsu that he intended to perform, instead of the hand seals required to do so, Masaru quickly formed the hand seals required the Clone Technique, and observed the result. His clone looked a little pale, but people who did not know him should not be able to tell the difference, and even those who knew him would probably not be able to tell that it was a clone, unless they were pretty close to it. Of course, this was assuming that the observer was merely looking at the clone while ignoring the surroundings, as the clone had neither shadow nor mass.

After making the clone disappear, he decided to try to find out a bit about why his clones were looking pale, by doing a test. Molding chakra once again, but this time using twice the amount of chakra. If the clones were the same as before, his problem was merely that his chakra control was a bit off, as he believed that he was using just the right amount of chakra to make a clone. If this was not true, the clones most likely look somewhat like a distinctly humanoid puddle, as that would mean that his chakra reserves just were not large enough. Of course, this would mean that he would probably try to use more chakra than he had, but with the techniques that he was using, he did not think that he would end up dying. Or so he hoped.

After he finished the technique again, with twice the power, it would appear that his first theory was right, as the new clones had the same paleness that the old clone had had. Maybe a bit more, but the likeliness to the first clone was enough to convince him that he had to work more on his chakra control. While he could do it with the Clone Technique, he had a better way to do so; Tree walking.

As he walked towards a tree, he shortly thought about the last time he had done this. A teacher at the academy had mentioned it, and Masaru had asked how it worked, after which the teacher had explained the theory behind it. It had not ended well. In fact, it had ended with him falling down to the ground quite a few times, but it would hopefully go better this time. Standing a meter or two away from a tree, he gathered some chakra in his feet, and then began running up the tree. The first time he managed to take two steps on the tree, before his control failed. He managed to land on his feet, thinking a bit about what went right the two first steps, and what went wrong with the last step, before trying again.

This time, he chose to try to walk up the tree, instead of trying to run. While it might not be feasible to simply walk then in combat, it would probably be easier to get the basics down like this. After taking a few steps on the trees, Masaru quickly agreed with himself that it was quicker this way. However, he could still not control his chakra well enough, so he fell from the tree once again. Well, perfect chakra control was not supposed to be something that was easily obtained. With that in mind, he tried again, again, again, and just once more for good measure. As the sun began reaching its zenith, he was now able to get halfway to the top of the tree, which Masaru suspected was more or less growing taller for every minute that passed. This suspicion did, however, not discourage him, and after a few hours more of training he found himself sitting on one of the upper branches of the tree, not quite able to hold a smile back.
TWC: 836

+ 8 JP, +4 Chakra

Approved for the appropriate rewards