Training (open to any Suna)

Corvin awoke that morning feeling somewhat down. The chuunin exams were still looming over him and it weighed on his mind heavily. He knew that he needed to train and spar against others to work on his battle prowess. There is simply only so much a person could do by themselves. He had worked himself to the bone and had gone all out, but solo training cannot give what actual battle experience can give. 

He walked over to the training grounds and sat near the entrance. He was wearing his typical black cloak robe with the red trim that went down to his feet and had a collar high enough to cover his mouth when done up all the way. Combined with his hood up, only his nose and eyes could be easily seen. He sat there with his iron gourd on one side of him and his sad little puppet on the other and decided he would do nothing else until he found someone to work with, someone to train and spar with, and most of all someone to befriend. Jaw set in determination, Corvin waited.

[just an obsevation.... but i dont think you can be posting in suna while you are still in kohona in the CEs]

{Crono please do not post on a thread in this manner, such an issue should of been handled in private messages. I'll allow the training to take place in Suna since we do not have any set time limits between rounds, so for all someone knows it could be weeks between rounds, thus someone can easily go home if they would like. So long as they post in the CE I do not care either way haha.}

After waiting for so long, Corvin finally tossed his hands up and accepted the cold truth that no one would train with him. Though he could not grasp why this was, and it bothered him to no small degree, he decided it would not hold him back. He would simply have to find a way to get stronger without anyone at his side, without anyone to train and grow stronger with, and without friends. Corvin's spirit lost a little of its shine that day. It was the kind of moment when many shinobi begin thoughts of someday turning on their village and becoming missing-nin. However for Corvin much the opposite happened. He loved his village and the urge to protect it was too strong within him. He instead found a sort of grim determination to gain power for the sake of showing everyone his value. He would gain everyone's love and respect through obtaining more and more power. It is easy to see how this kind of mindset could be tipped in the direction of evil deeds. Only time would tell if this would happen to Corvin.

For the moment he was just a boy standing in the training grounds of Sunagakure trying to hide the tears in his eyes. He threw his puppet aside and sent his iron sand into the ground to grind out more and more of the stuff. Then he walked over to a simple training dummy and began to punch it. It was an odd thing to do. There were plenty of punching bags around that would have protected his hand better, but for some reason it had to be this dummy. His fists crashed into the dummy over and over again. He would hit the dummy's head, body, arms, anything that happened to be in the way of his fist when it went flying. He was not going for speed, but instead strength with each hit. The dummy was not going to dodge after all. Soon enough, blood was caking the spots where his fist landed as the hard dummy began to break the skin on Corvin's hands. With each punch, the cuts on his hand opened more and with each punch more of the blood from his hands was transferred onto the dummy. It was not long before it really did look as though he was causing the dummy to bleed with the force of his hits. Corvin was numb to the pain, however. He eventually stopped when even his emotions were not enough to fuel enough energy into his arms in order to raise them up let alone punch anything. 

Some of the people watching Corvin's outburst at the dummy sighed in relief when he put down his arms, relieved to see him stop punishing himself. They were forced to look away when Corvin began kicking the dummy. He did straight kicks and roundhouses and sometimes just brute force curb stomp kicks. This went on for longer than anyone was comfortable seeing. The people watching imagined that Corvin must see someone he hated in place of the dummy, or maybe someone very evil. Corvin however only saw himself. For him, he had to beat the weakness out of himself. When he eventually stopped, blood ran down his shins and caked into his socks. His hands, shins, toes, and feet were bleeding to an almost unsafe degree. Corvin did not even seem to notice. He instead decided to go for a run. 

He ran to the gates and got permission to run around the perimeter of the village walls. He did not want to run in the village streets because in his eyes all he believed they would see is a weak little boy. When last he went for a run he went down every street in the village and people cheered him on and offered encouragement about the chuunin exams. He now believed that those people were not genuine in their cheering. They were cheering the same way you cheer for a small child who just got the square block into the square hole or for the kid who makes a lopsided sand pile and calls in Sunagakure. He felt that they saw how pathetic he was and thought to give some pity to him in the form of false encouragement. He would not force them to look at him any longer. He would take his running exercises to the outer parts of the village until he was worthy of everyone. He had to get stronger, he had to become worthy. So he ran. He ran and he ran around the walls of the village until he eventually collapsed. His blood ran into the sand beneath him as he panted heavily. 

After laying there for a while he eventually picked himself up and brushed off all the sand that had collected on him. He walked back to the training grounds at a stumble. When he got there, even though he could barely walk, he refused to be finished with his training. He got out a few training puppets and had them fight one another. After each round of fighting, he would increase the amount of puppets he was using until he got up to ten. He fought them against one another as teams of five against five at first. This was something he was used to doing by now. It took intense focus and tactical strategy, but it made for good training of his mind. After fighting a few five on five rounds, he decided to change it up a bit and set the stage for a battle with five teams of two. This would take significantly more focus on his part, but he needed to get used to controlling many fights at once if he wanted to become a true master of puppetry. At first, the fight went slowly. The amount of focus it took for Corvin was somewhat intense. As the fight went on, he was slowly able to increase the speed of the battle until it reached real combat speeds. He did this five way team battle over and over and over. He replaced broken puppets so often that he had a pile of mangled puppet parts taller than he was before long. It was fortunate that the training grounds had a nearly endless supply of the things thanks to most puppet maker's practice puppets ending up there. Then Corvin decided to test himself further. He had his training puppets go on a ten way free for all. Each of his puppets would be out for themselves. For Corvin, that meant he was having to formulate ten different strategies and an almost endless amount of counter strategies to combat these puppets against one another. 

Round after round of this free for all went on until Corvin finally decided it was enough and time to move on to the next test for himself. He decided to make his puppet matches more interesting, and set the stage for a three on seven battle. This kind of training was two fold. It first allowed him to train strategies for when he was outnumbered. Any number of situations could arise where he had a limited amount of resources or puppets where he would have to fight multiple opponents that would outnumber him. Secondly, it would allow him to come up with strategies for the more common case of him outnumbering his opponent. One of a puppet master's greatest strengths is the ability to outnumber his enemy with any number of semi expendable puppets. He had to be able to coordinate attacks with them so that they did not get in one another's way while still being effective and not holding back. As he trained with this style, he changed the match ups from three on seven to two on eight and even one on nine. The more he pitted against fewer, the shorter the rounds went. It gave him a sense of satisfaction that he was so effective at dispatching opponents which he outnumbered. At any one point he could have ten puppets against a single individual. As he got older and gained more money and experience, the kinds of puppets he could create would get awe inspiring. He imagined what he would someday have a team of ten puppets, each individual one powerful enough to bring down a Kage. He wondered if such a thing were possible and for the first time that day he could not help but smile. He knew it was possible, he would make it possible. 

He put away the puppets that were still intact and disposed of the ones too far gone to repair. The rest would be sent off to the part of the Academy where they train to create and repair puppets. He collected his iron sand from the ground, watching as the grains of metal shards poured out of the ground in a seemingly endless stream. He set a training dummy up and formed his iron sand into a fist. He created more and more fists and used his multitude of fists to absolutely pummel the poor dummy. No blood poured from his iron fists, and it occurred to him that if he were more of a taijutsu person he could see himself making his sand into something like super hard spiked fists that covered his own fists. That would be quite the weapon, but useless for him. The training dummy eventually was turned to splinters under the assault of the iron fists Corvin was wielding. While they packed a decent punch against normal people and training dummy's he knew that against a decent shinobi they were not nearly enough. Sighing, he collected his sand into a gourd and poured the rest into it. Tired and bloody, Corvin headed home.

(WC: 1636, Reward: +8 stat points, 3 gallons of iron sand,)
(Topic Closed)

@pproved!
But dude, I made it 1000 words for 2 Gallons not 500 for 1 Gallon so you only get 2 Gallons out of this sorry