the "epic" training day (over 20k words! lol)

It was a bright and sunny day that Ryusei woke up to. Sitting up, he yawned, rubbing his head, having smacked it on the ceiling. He could just never remember that he slept in a loft bed now could he. The pain and slight shock slowly faded, as the boy shook the sleepiness from his head, slapping himself a few times. Splashing his face with water, he thought over his day. He drew a blank. Thinking he was still sleepy, Ryusei filled a bowl with water, plunging his face into it soon after, spraying water all over his apartment. A few minutes and a lot of cleaning later, Ryusei finally was ready to get to whatever he needed to do, which meant breakfast. At least breakfast had no hang ups. Ryusei got his equipment and headed out, only having a minor disagreement (scuffle actually) with another genin, when the other genin, full of himself, slighted Ryusei’s clan. This scuffle lasted several minutes and attracted some attention, most noticeably that of a retired jounin, who sent the two of them packing, each on their separate ways, their bottoms slightly sore from the business end of a broom.

Ryusei had 2 stops planned for the entire day, these being the library and the training grounds. It would be entertaining to do pushups in the library just to see what others would say but it would not be fun if one of the librarians formerly of the ninja occupation did not see things in the same light. Well, when ninjas wanted to retire as they did not feel up to the task of fighting ninjas from other villages who were also aging, they had to do something, and apparently being a librarian was a particularly nice occupation, since for one thing it was cool inside the buildings, and kind of quiet too. None of this was important to Ryusei yet though, he was in a prior stage of life. He wandered around town, unsure where the library was. He had not been there in quite some time, or frankly, even managed to spend any time training recently, only managing a spar or two here or there, not that he was happy about the state of affairs. He felt he could become a lot stronger soon, if only he would work a little harder. This was easier said than done though, there was a lot of other things that happened in life that took time away from what you may want to do most.

Entirely by luck, Ryusei ran into a more experienced Nara clan member who was on break. After a bit of pestering, the two of them walked off somewhere secluded among the alleyways, and there he finally learned how to perform one of the shadow manipulation jutsus, to be specific the Shadow Clutch technique. Normally Nara Clan members learned the Shadow Imitation technique but Ryusei thought other techniques had more potential use, such as the one he learned. While he was at it, he asked a little about the Shadow Imitation jutsu, and it turned out that technique and the one he learned differed in very small ways. A little more convincing and wheedling, and he had soon learned 2 jutsu for the price of one conversation and far less than an hour of his time. It was so much easier learning jutsu from other people, he wished he could do it more often, it made things go much quicker. While he was at it, the other ninja was bribed with some fresh baked cookies, to teach him one last jutsu, the Earth Spear, as they both had the Earth Element. Ryusei found it simple to use, but it still needed practice. He walked through the town, hardening and… unhardening his skin.

He eventually found the library and opened the door. He was going to do some training and start learning some jutsu. This was rather necessary for him, as he often put it, he seemed to have fewer jutsu than fingers, and this was not a good thing. It would be one thing if he was a taijutsu user, or of the mighty Uchiha Clan, whose overall strength, speed, and general abilities in basic combat put them ahead of many already. Instead, he was a slightly gangly teenager with no special qualities whatsoever aside from a friendly and slightly rebellious streak. He began looking among the books in the section for the earth element, hoping to find something useful. Most books were fairly small, having a brief description of the jutsu on the back, and he grabbed a couple that sounded interesting. He realized that he had not learned any A-rank jutsu yet, which he would remedy soon. Walking over to the section which had books which had no particular element, he looked through them looking for one that seemed particularly helpful.

He also had a bag that had been hitherto unmentioned. This was filled with paper that was used to determine one’s chakra nature. Ryusei had used these before, finding out that he had Earth as his primary element. While not unheard of, this was slightly unusual in a village renowned for their fire using ninja. He would use the paper later to try to determine if he had any more chakra natures in him. For now, it was time to study the three books he had grabbed. He had briefly considered getting more earlier but last time he had seen someone try getting 5, they got their bottom end handed to them by one of the librarians, and was gently asked to put at least one book back. Ryusei figured stopping at 3 books meant specifically for individual techniques would be reasonably safe so long as he did not damage the books. He sat down at an empty table in a corner, aiming to be as secluded as possible without being downright rude. He looked at the books he had gotten: “The Best Way To Hide From Your Enemies”, “Sinking The Gigantic”, and “How To Entomb A Target, In EZ Steps”. In small letters he could see the actual jutsus that were explained in the books. Why the actual jutsu were not somehow incorporated into the title, he was not sure, but at least he could read the books for free, so he was not going to complain.

He flipped open the first book. The book was about a really helpful jutsu apparently, with a nice long title. The jutsu’s actual, official name, was “Hiding With The Camoflauge Technique”, which seemed a little redundant in spots. He read into the jutsu a little. He could not see what was so helpful about the jutsu, as all it did was let you be largely invisible. This would help some, but still, it was not as good as the book made it out to be… right? Wait… he read on further. There was a second level of usage, made famous by the Second Tsuchikage, which enabled the user to also be virtually undetectable, erasing their chakra signature as well. Apparently to learn it you had to be specializing in ninjutsu, which was fortunate for Ryusei. Other people would not be all learning this jutsu as well. It was also mentioned that due to the higher level of difficulty for the null version, it had to be practiced itself, as it is a difficult technique to learn. Ryusei read on, apparently the first level reflected light around the user or something… he scratched his head, unable to make sense of all the explanations into how it worked, for either version. He did memorize the steps though, to practice it. He would work on the null version by himself when nobody was looking.

He could not see a reason why this would not be learned by many accomplished ninja, best not to let people know. However, nobody ever looked over in his direction here in the library so… still, it wouldn’t do to practice here. He walked into the bathroom, and looked at the mirror. He washed his hands until he was alone in the bathroom, then he looked into a mirror and formed the Tiger hand seal. He slowly changed color. Excited, he realized that he was still stuck on the green color and he was not becoming transparent. He thought back to the FAQ’s section of the book (which was its 15th edition) and realized he was not bending all of the light, only most of it. With practice he would have to barely think about the jutsu but for now… Ryusei released the jutsu and tried again, making sure to bend all of the light, and bingo. Nothing appeared in the mirror when he looked. Doing an invisible fist pump, he walked back out the door. He had taken a couple of steps outside, his footsteps echoing in the hallways, when he realized that he had not released the jutsu.

Stepping back into the bathroom briefly, he released the jutsu and walked back out to his pile of books. Reading through the other two books, one for the Swamp of the Underworld Jutsu (Sinking The Gigantic), he realized that these other jutsu were actually not very hard to learn, it would just take practice. The Swamp of the Underworld jutsu had similarities to the water element jutsu, with earth as the main component, it seemed, and the other jutsu, BedRock Coffin, taught by the book “How To Entomb A Target, In EZ Steps”, was just a longer version of the Moving Earth Core jutsu it looked like. Borrowing the book, walking out to the forest where it was quiet, and practicing, he was able to learn both of the jutsu rather quickly, managing to destroy a tree with the Bedrock Coffin, and trapping a herd of deer temporarily with the Swamp technique, releasing them afterwards. That all being done, he pulled out the pieces of special paper he had grabbed earlier. He ran his chakra through the paper several times, each time the paper crumbling due to his earth nature. He was not going to get far like this, he reasoned, so he tried running pure chakra and not the earth part. After several tries, the paper was altered slightly, but he couldn’t tell – it seemed his chakra was not strong enough to contain another element yet. Disappointed, he put his stuff back, and returned the books. At least he had learned a whole bunch of jutsu now. Time to hit the second stop of the day….
Ryusei ran through the village, towards the training grounds, and into someone’s pile of stuff. Cursing, he scanned his surroundings - stuff was scattered all over the street, some boxes spilling upon impact with the rather hard to avoid ground. A man scurried outside, and just so that he would be quiet, Ryusei agreed not only to help the guy pick all his stuff up (basic etiquette right) but he also got roped into helping the guy move his stuff to what would be his new dwelling. It was not like Ryusei did not need the exercise, besides, that guy was rather insistent, and it was easier than walking around with the other guy yelling in both ears. It would be bothersome if that man knew how to make clones, since they would all be able to proclaim Ryusei’s faults to the entire village of Konoha. While he would technically not be at fault for not helping the other guy move, it would be a really big annoyance, especially if the Hokage heard the guy’s infuriated cries. He started picking up boxes, and sprinting all the way to the new place the other guy had bought. He repeated this trip many times, running as fast as he could both ways, with very little time to rest in between. His only respite was when the man who was making Ryusei help him could not decide what needed to be moved next, from his old apartment. Slowly, the pile of boxes in front of the first dwelling diminished in size, and the piles inside the next dwelling increased. Ryusei began to feel it in his legs about halfway through, and started to move a little slower to conserve energy for the training he intended to do later on, but the man whose stuff he was moving started to get cranky again, despite not doing anything much to help, and he sped up a little, but only when around said cranky guy.

The heat of the day wore on, and Ryusei was still carrying boxes, but at least he had finished his last trip. He was then informed that while the furniture had already been moved for the most part, he was needed to help move one particularly fun looking set of drawers. What is meant by fun looking, is that the cursed thing is fragile, has a delicate varnish that chips extremely easily, is rather heavy, and the drawers do not come out. Ryusei heard the other guy recite all those facts, and groaned inwardly. At least the other guy did not trust Ryusei to carry the thing by himself, and insisted that he go along with Ryusei to make sure nothing happened to his precious set of drawers. He of course completely ignored that he had pretty much impressed Ryusei into his current occupation without consideration. The two of them set off, each grumbling to himself about a different matter, the chest of drawers between them. Unfortunately, the man who owned the drawers exclaimed that his back was going to give out, and suddenly let go without warning. Ryusei barely managed to avoid dropping the chest of drawers, managing to rest it on a rock. Leaving the other guy to watch his precious item while nursing his back, Ryusei borrowed a cart, and ended up pushing not only the chest of drawers but also the crotchety middle aged man as well. Leaving the man there at his other dwelling, Ryusei informed the guy that he had other things he needed to do, apologizing for not being able to help for free for everything else that man might need him to do, such as cook, and walked off, leaving the other guy to stew.

Ryusei was thirsty by this time but had nothing to hold water in. Not wanting to have to keep going back and forth to get water, he decided to go get a bucket so that he would have something to drink from at the training grounds. He headed over to the forest. Felling a tree using a hatchet, Ryusei set to work chopping it up. He sweated profusely in the heat of day, but at least he had shade, and hopefully soon something to hold water in. First he went and sliced off all the branches, and then the top of the tree, where the wood was too thin to be usable for his purposes. He spent a while stripping bark from the tree, until it was smooth, turning it occasionally so that he could smoothen part of the wood he had cut, or to be able to get at more bark. After what felt like too long, Ryusei had finally got a nice 15 foot log that was smooth as a cut from a master swordsman, and about 2 feet wide at the bottom. He paused and walked off a few feet where there was more room, and stretched his arms and legs out, still aching slightly from all the volunteer work he had done earlier for the
grouchy guy.

After stretching out his annoyingly clenched quadriceps, Ryusei finally got back to his impromptu exercise. He took a foot long section of the log, and cut it off from the rest of the log. This took a little while, as the wood was fairly hard, and Ryusei was not renowned for his strength by any means. Some of the other genin Ryusei had seen could probably take the hatchet and blow a hole through the entire tree, but Ryusei quite unfortunately was not one of them. After he had sliced off the foot logn section, he set to work, cutting off thick strips of wood, approximately 6 inches wide and 2 inches thick. After he had a sizable quantity of them, he hacked off a piece of wood to form the bottom, afterwards realizing he had not made enough pieces to make a good circle around the bottom piece. This was given a remedy rather quickly, and Ryusei had much more than enough, which was fortunate because he was bad at trimming wood to fit nicely, being slightly scatterbrained. He spent the next few minutes slicing off bits of wood so that the edges would line up nicely when the chunks of wood were stood up on the bottom piece. This took some time. Afterwards he cut the bottoms to be all flat, upon realizing that to leave them rough would result in a lot of leaks. He tried standing them all up, the pieces of wood cut so that they would all lean in slightly, but then he had a realization. He did not know how to do metalworking, never mind that he had no metal to use. Unless he could make a metal band to hold the pieces of wood together his bucket would not hold properly.

Ryusei cursed, having wasted quite some time trying to make a bucket which was largely a failed concept from the very beginning. It seemed that he would have to get a bucket from his apartment but wait… Ryusei had a bright idea, even though he was not a lightning jutsu. Going up to the log, he sliced off two sections of wood, each a foot and a half long, from the thicker end. Then he sliced off another section, approximately 6 inches long. He started cutting the smallest section, the 6 inch long one, first. He hacked off a 4 by 6 inch piece of wood, in the shape of a rough rectangular prism. He started slicing corners, some at different angles than others, and slowly, a tall cup began to take shape. At first it was a thick triangle joined with a square, in shape, but as the time progressed it began to look teardrop shaped,if viewed from the top. The outside bit was relatively smooth, he just spent a few minutes with a kunai to eliminate all the splinters of wood. He didn’t think he would want to drink any of course. Then he cut a long hole into the shape in the thin section, leaving an inch on either side. After smoothing that out, he had a block of wood shaped like a tall cup filled with cement. Ryusei then took the other chunks of wood and rounded some of the corners, ending up with 2 large bowls.
Now for the fun part: how was he going to cut out the middles to make a hole, without ruining the sides of the pails? While he was at it he should cut some holes to put rope through so that he would be able to carry the water easier. Ryusei thought this over a little, and eventually hit upon an idea for carving the sides out. He took the cup to use as the experimental one. Tapping on the back of a kunai with the flat of the hatchet, bracing the cup with his legs, Ryusei slowly made a circular pattern of cuts that extended most of the way down to the bottom, and between them all would additional cuts, eventually resulting in a block of wood with a deep circular hole in the middle. Ryusei took a deep breath, and then switched the two blades. He used the hatchet to slowly chip away at the center pillar, stopping the blade before it could cut into the side, rotating the cup often. The cup rocked at first but wedging it between two rocks solved the problem for the most part. The central pillar slowly disappeared, every once in a while Ryusei had to dump out the cup when too much sawdust got in the way. The really painful part was when Ryusei reached the bottom but, as he had no way to truly smoothen it out. He needed a bent cutting edge to be able to straighten out the bottom but he had none. Exasperated, he pitched the cup behind him, the cup flying away into the forest, landing with a crash and a yelp. Judging by the anguished looking fox that he saw scampering around immediately afterwards, he had unintentionally disturbed a resident of the forest.

Ryusei sighed, and walked over to the other ones. He thought over his experience with the cup, hoping his forearm muscles did not get too tired. He picked up one of the larger tree trunk sections, and proceeded to carve a thin line near the outside of the reasonably round slice of tree trunk. Taking the hatchet, he started hacking from near the circle inwards, repeating from several different angles, eventually being able to pull out a large triangular wedge from the middle that he had cut. Ryusei pumped his fist at this small accomplishment, attracting curious stares from other people in the area. Having cut out the center, Ryusei then used the hole he had made in the middle to help him create a cylindrical hole, lining up with the lines he had initially carved into the wood. First he used a kunai and the hatchet in the same manner he had with the cup. Having cut a deep circular cut into the wood, leaving about an inch and a half approximately from the rim on all sides before the edge of the cut, Ryusei put down the kunai again. He took the hatchet and, leaving the kunai in the hole, would swing the hatchet through the hole, aiming to cut the hollowed out wood pulp in the middle. Eventually he was left with a round circle he was able to lift out of the section of tree trunk, with nary a stray cut mark to be found.
Emptying out the dust onto the ground, burying an ant hill, nearby, Ryusei got back to work. His forearms aching, Ryusei took a moment to stretch, then he got back to work. He first cut the island of wood left over from the ring he had previously removed, into pieces before using the hatchet at a high angle to separate the said island of wood in the tree trunk section from the tree trunk section. This took a while, but he was soon left with a rough bottom. Taking a kunai, he began scraping off the bottom to gain a roughly smooth surface. He had to hold the angle so that the edge was almost flat, with barely any room for his fingers, on the very end of the kunai handle. Needless to say, his forearms got quite a lot of exercise during this part of his work, giving him difficulty when he had finished, when he had to hold the kunai still to smoothen the sides.

Eventually he was left with something fairly smooth, for which he took stones and ran around the inside, especially in the corners, removing the splinters. For some of the angles he had to change to using a shuriken since the kunai were not able to reach some spots as effectively, but he still managed to finish the first bowl before noon. Then he remembered that he would need holes across the rim from each other so that he could thread rope through. He made a hole. It occurred to him that he should cut a slight indent in one of the sides so that he could have an easier time drinking, so on one end with a naturally projecting area, he cut in a small v-shape. Hopefully he would not be spilling water all over the place, since water was precious in his opinion.

Realizing he needed rope in the first place, Ryusei ran off into the village and came back with some worn old rope that had been tossed away by someone who did not feel like pulling large boxes on carts anymore. He quickly cut out a thick plank with holes, through which he would be able to tie rope to hold the wooden bowl he had cut out of a tree trunk. Then he set to work on the second bowl. To make a long story short, he made a second bucket, largely through the same process described above for the first one, except that it took slightly longer. This is because though he had a little more experience and could do the job faster, his forearms were getting extremely sore and he kept stopping to stretch them. Thus was his second quite literally organic pail completed in a little more than one twentieth of the time taken to describe the process for the first one. When he was finished he took the leftover wood and donated it to the saw mill.

Ryusei headed off to a clean stream to get water. Lowering each of the impromptu buckets he had painstakingly made, he swirled the buckets and was pleased to see no splinters in the water. The painstaking smoothing he had done to the buckets had paid off. It would be no fun drinking shards of wood that would stick in your throat and possibly kill you, no matter that had taken until approximately 2 o’clock in the afternoon to make what he could have walked back home to get. Ryusei worried that the wood would impart a strange flavor to the water, so he lifted each of the pails in turn to his lips, remembering in time the v-shape nozzles he had cut into the wood. This saved him from splashing water all over his clothing, which though refreshing, would keep him from doing physical training effectively, due to the constricting clothing. An agility training would not be a bad idea though, with wet clothing. Ryusei grinned, the water tasted just fine. Refilling the buckets, he put the make-shift yoke over his shoulders and headed off to the training grounds.

Upon his arrival at  the hub for the training grounds, Ryusei muttered dozens if not hundreds of filthy curses under his breath. The training crowd was not deserted. It was not moderately used. To say it was busy would be a gross error. The only way to describe the training grounds was that every ninja in a hundred miles must have come out to train. Well, that would explain why there was no line in front of the mission assignment office, if even some of the guys who handed out missions happened to be training on this fine weekend. Ok, this was not technically correct, the guards would still be on duty, as would their replacements, but it looked like almost all the other ninja were training, to his eyes. Ryusei surveyed all the training grounds hoping to find one that was unused, but he had no such luck. He gave a heavy sigh, and sat down near the middle of the hub leading to all the training grounds. From this vantage point, he could watch the entrances for all the training grounds at once, so if any large groups left he could run over. Hopefully everyone else, or at least most of the crowd, were here to burn off calories from lunch, especially those of the Akimichi clan. Not many ninja intended to train the entire day. Heck he might have to train late into the night at this point, if the crowds only began to thin around dinner time. Well, hunger was a potential condition during missions so Ryusei would have to train under tougher conditions than expected, potentially.

Ryusei began meditating, letting go of all the stress he had so far accumulated over the day. His legs crossed, he held his hands close together, the fingers touching their counterparts across a span of an inch. His wrists rested on his legs. He had forgotten to get dressed in the morning and he would be darned if he gave up his terrific spot in the training grounds. He would just have to change his undershirt and his favorite shorts to sleep in, when he got back. It was not like they did not need a washing anyway. Ryusei took several deep breaths, and promptly fell asleep. When he woke up, the moon was high in the sky. It had been a full moon recently so this was no surprise, even if the sun was out. However, by the position of the sun, he could see that it was in the evening. Surprisingly, despite the crowd, his bowls of water were still intact. This was not a big surprise, given that many ninja would be able to do acrobatic maneuvers in midair to avoid getting their feet wet. Ryusei picked up his yoke and buckets, and walked around to the various training grounds, hoping that one of them would be relatively open.

He was in luck, sort of. An attractive girl was the only person present. Looking around, Ryusei mumbled a greeting, turning slightly red, and wondered aloud why nobody else was around with someone like this to be near. As he was setting his stuff down near the entrance to the training ground, the girl resumed her taijutsu training. Ryusei hear a massive thump, and could have sworn the earth shook. Turning around, he saw that the ground had been largely destroyed under the girl, and she was reforming the earth so she could have another go. Ryusei did not believe his eyes, even after she did another hit. Heck, she didn’t even seem to have a jutsu going, as she used no hand signs, and her hands were not glowing. What kind of monster was able to punch the bare ground, hard, without any apparent adverse effects. Ryusi gawked for a while, before a third punch to the ground shook him back into his senses. Picking his jaw off the ground, he made a mental note to never, ever, cross this girl. If she got mad at him and hit him, well, he didn’t want to think about it too much, but there would probably not be much left of poor Ryusei Nara except for a few strands of spiky black hair.

Ryusei slapped himself a few times, nowhere near as hard as that girl would be able to though. He had heard whistling sounds coming from this training ground earlier, so that monster of a girl had probably been practicing movement or long range taijutsu attacks, or such, and had finally settled down enough that someone else would dare to enter the training ground. Ryusei reckoned that most village leaders would be happy to have brute strength like that. He wondered who she was, and if she would scare of potential suitors without the help of her father, assuming he was still alive. Her parents were probably scary to be honest, having produced such a… powerful “little” girl. Ryusei decided that he had better get to his training regimen to make sure she did not think he was ogling her or anything else potentially objectionable. His main chance at survival was to be sincere looking.

Ryusei wiped his brow, and got to his own, much more meager looking training. He could not help but think that he looked kind of pathetic in the same training grounds as her, but he would have to fix that. If he was going to elevate the status of the Nara to be equal to that of the Uchiha, he would need to become strong, so strong that his name was as well known as the Uchiha currently running around this little world at the time. Hard work and grit would be needed but if he made it… Ryusei slapped himself out of his little fantasy world. He would need to put his back into it so to speak if he was going to get anywhere.

Ryusei started what he had set out to be a war-up. He began running at full speed around the training ground. He pumped his arms, beginning to feel a pleasant burn throughout his body. That meant his muscles were getting activated and he would – SPLAT!!! Ryusei picked his face out of the mud puddle he had created when he had knocked over one of his two buckets. Grumbling, he used some of the clearer water to wipe himself off, and resumed running. This time he kept an eye out for potential obstacles, manmade or not. On his second complete lap, only 1 lap after face planting on the ground, unintentionally giving it a nice long kiss, Ryusei had the bright idea to move his stuff just outside the training ground, lest any errant shockwaves knock the remaining bowl over. While he was at it… Ryusei dusted off the now empty bowl, and poured half of the water from the second bowl into the first. That way if one of them was knocked over or bumped, there was a good chance he would still have some water left over. If not it would be a long thirsty trip back to the stream.

Ryusei resumed jogging, occasionally shifting his footing to avoid stepping on an anthill that was consistently in his path. He was tempted to step on the anthill and get things over with, but considering there were powerful animals everywhere, some of whome appeared to have their own little villages of ninja – whatever species they were, stepping on “just an anthill” did not seem to be a good idea. He did not want to hurt the little bugs too much anyway, if they did not deserve it. In the back of his mind he still hoped that that girl who was still pounding the ground did not think Ryusei was not deserving of a good beating himself. Ryusei was running laps still, watching the girl in the middle executing a scary looking combo, unleashing a mixture of flurries of air punches, and directly smashing the ground. The girl finished, landing lightly on the dirt she had raised, and Ryusei caught her eye. He stared in astonishment as she was not looking in the least tired. She stared back, and burst out laughing when Ryusei ran straight into a tree. Stunned, Ryusei was largely insensible as he slid to the ground in a heap, the taijutsu girl trying desperately to stifle her laughter. Ryusei figured that any chances he had of leaving with dignity were now shredded, cut, and dried in the hot sun of the afternoon and evening.
Ryusei decided to make his warmup harder so that he would be forced to focus and stop getting distracted by a rather violent girl he could nonetheless help wanting to like him. He had a brilliant idea. He would use his tree walking jutsu, to walk on trees. To put it more accurately, he would run around the circle of trees, as if in a giant hamster wheel. He would have to carefully plan his route, and pay attention the whole time, unless he wanted a wood flavored knuckle sandwich. The only issue was that the entrance was kind of large, but Ryusei practiced a few times and was able to clear it with some momentum on his side, the gap at the entrance would not be a problem after all.

Ryusei had a quick slurp of water, noticing that the girl’s outfit was soaked a little with sweat and it caught his eye. Fear of the likely retribution if he was caught looking got him back in business, and he started running on the ground, building up momentum. When he thought he was going fast enough, Ryusei jumped, twisting his body, and managed to successfully start running around the training ground without touching the ground. He had to put all his effort into running, soon he was gasping for breath and his footing was a little shaky, though firm. He did not see the girl rolling her eyes at him as he scrambled by. The laps wore on, and Ryusei found himself running to the beat of the girl smashing the ground. In other words, he ended up taking two steps for every time she hit the ground. Worse yet she was not tired. Ryusei forced himself to keep going, not able to stop and wipe sweat from his eyes or he would miss his time his next one leg jump, the result would be a miserable crumpled heap on the ground.

Eventually the sweat got into Ryusei’s eyes, trailing down from a spot on his neck just behind his ear. He groaned aloud, and bilnked furiously, unwilling to take his eyes off of his goal of 50 laps for an instant. True warriors had blood seeping into their eyes, not just sweat, though it was true that blood was probably not as salty as Ryusei’s sweat was. Eventually the sweat became most of a flood and was getting in Ryusei’s second eye. This largely made his efforts at keeping his upper eye closed, futile, and his vision became blurred. Never mind that he was beginning to feel dehydrated, and his legs had gone way beyond the pleasant warmup routine he had envisioned. Ryusei suddenly collapsed, the exhaustion getting to him. He missed his next step, and sailed some 20 meters into the forest, landing in a thick bush. Poking his head out from the leaves, Ryusei began limping back to the training grounds, where he caught a glimpse of a wide smile on that girl’s face. He ignored her upon his arrival into the training ground, and headed straight for his water. He had a big gulp, and took off his shirt to wipe the sweat that he could not remove with his damp hands. He should have brought a towel but he had not expected the training to be so strenuous. It was to be expected from now on though and he would not make this mistake again.

Ryusei took another drink and thought of another dastardly idea with which to torture himself. The bucket was approximately two thirds full and decently heavy. Ryusei started his running exercise again, carrying the bucket. Soon he began running on the trees again, still holding the bucket, but now sideways compared to his body. He would finish the next twenty laps without spilling any water, if at all possible. Of course, he figured this would be rather hellish, and halfway through he should change sides just so that the strain on the two sides of his body was equal. He did not think it would be very funny to be built like a monster on one side, and still be skinny and weenie on the other. People would laugh, and it would be really, really bad for his body, especially his spine, to have unequal muscles pulling in different directions. Ryusei started off a little slow, struggling to keep his momentum and make his landing each time, but determined not to let the bucket tip. He did not want to have to walk all the way back to the stream to get water because he messed up. Hopefully the sweat would not get in his eyes for a while. That shirt had better help as he was going to get a weird tan from all his different training. The first time he had undergone a physical fitness examination at the Ninja Academy, he had been asked whether he truly thought he could be a ninja, the examiner playfully poking his skinny stomach, which had exactly 0 abs. It would be accurate to say that Ryusei had had a 1 pack at that time. No more, now he had slightly more, the beginnings of a 2 pack. He would show everyone that muscle definition was not all that made a ninja!
Ryusei racked up the laps, sometimes running by himself, sometimes to the beat of that monstrous girl smashing the ground. His shoulder ached from trying to hold the bucket straight up, without bending his arms. If he dropped the bucket, it would hurt like crazy, though he was not sure whether he would remain passed out from the blow, or if the water would wake him up. Either way he would be covered in mud, something Ryusei was rather happy to try to avoid. All went smooth for the first ten laps, and even the five after that, all that happened was Ryusei began to get very tired. After that his arms began to get tired, one from holding up the bucket on the palm of his hand, the other from supporting the first arm. His arms began to wobble, but he gritted his teeth and kept going. If he ever was a team leader he would make his students do this kind of exercise too. Mental toughness and discipline were the most important attributes for ninjas, since without those two mental pillars, it would be impossible to obtain the necessary musculature. He swore under his breath, he could swear his arm was going numb due to the unnatural position and loss of blood flow. During the last two laps, his arm bent a little, several times, but he flexed his tricep muscle really hard, almost throwing the bucket, but his arm managed to hold on all the way to the end.

Finishing his 20th lap, Ryusei came to a stop, and checked the bucket. Noticing a little less water in the bucket, he almost had a panic attack. He had not just spilled water had he? The sides were dry though. Then it hit him, the water had evaporated all this time, little by little, from the moment he pulled it out of the stream. Breathing a sigh of relief, he raised the bucket to his lips, aiming to rehydrate himself. He was wringing out his shirt when it hit him: he was only supposed to have done 10 laps in the direction he had been going. He had forgotten to do 10 going the other way. He had better do the other way for 20 laps as well, so that his musculature was even, assuming it ever developed. He groaned inwardly but then had a bright thought: the first 15 laps had actually been surprisingly easy, compared to what he had thought, so while the 20 laps in the other direction would be hard, they would not be unduly so.

Ryusei rewrapped his shirt around his head and neck, and picked up the bucket. He started running, feeling pumped up despite the ache in his legs and arms. It had not occurred to him, but holding proper running posture even though he was running in a weird way had also been training some muscles in his back and his obliques. This was more comprehensive training than he had intended. He ran around the training ground without touching the ground again, holding the bucket in the opposite hand. He swore many obscenities under his breath but he refused to give in to his exhaustion, it was not yet time to quit. He darted around the training grounds, raising a couple of eyebrows from those who saw him. The onlookers sometimes stared in fascination, watching this skinny guy doing a rather intimidating looking training exercise. Not as intimidating as the powerful attacks launched by that monster of a girl in the middle, but that boy was doing something harsh. Ryusei did not know it but he earned the respect of a number of ninja that day, as the sweat poured down and off his body, the bucket quivering in the wind. Yes, the wind picked up a little, catching Ryusei by surprise and almost knocking the bucket over. By the 15th lap, his arms were shaking. By lap  17 he was barely conscious, and wobbling a little, in his entire body. Partway through lap 19, he blanked out from exhaustion, and missed his footing. Flying past the tree he was supposed to have landed on, he recovered just in time to step on a second tree, nearly scraping his body on the ground. He paused for a little, looking at his surroundings, and he realized what had happened. He was nearly finished, so he would not give up now! Ryusei began running again, and made it back into the inner circle of trees in the training ground. Taking the last few steps to the entrance where his other stuff was, he slipped, deftly dropping his bucket carefully while sailing through the air, so that the bucket would not spill, even if Ryusei was.

Gasping for breath, Ryusei got up from his perch on the ground, and staggered to his bucket of water. The water tasted slightly brackish now having sat in the hot sun for a long time, but he did not care. He spent several minutes stretching, and thinking over everything he had done. It occurred to him that the guy who had impressed Ryusei into helping him, had unwittingly given Ryusei a workout as well, and he was feeling the cumulative effects now, so that had not been an entire waste of time. He wrung out his shirt again, and hung it up on a low tree branch to dry. The next few minutes were spent pumping out different types of pushups. After he had done several hundred pushups, around a hundred or two of 5 different types, he stretched his arms out, swinging them around sideways, back and forth. He began doing sit-ups. This was difficult due to the speed at which he was doing them. This part of his training he found was always enhanced by hanging upside down from a tree branch or a pole. Then he had to be careful on the way down, since otherwise he would swing back and forth, making him a little dizzy. At least his shirt was off before it gravity could pull it in his face, but there was sweat everywhere…. Well, he found that doing a sit-up fast flung some of the sweat away, and holding his torso up at the top for a second made most of the remaining sweat run back down his body. There was also the benefit that the current variation of the traditional sit-up, which started with the person hanging upside down, their torso straight, pulling up until their face was at their knees, or as close as they could get, covered the full range of motion, and required some decent measure of flexibility. The final part of his warm-up for Ryusei was 10 laps around the training grounds, while doing a handstand. He encountered a number of difficulties while attempting this. Most of these were due to exhaustion, from his quivering arms to his shaky lack of body balance, from tired core muscles. The only hindrance he encountered while he was finishing his warmup, was that that girl was still smashing stuff, mostly the ground, and this caused the ground to vibrate every few seconds, not allowing him any time for rest. He barely made it, his energy petering out as he ran on his hands the last few steps.
Ryusei had a nice long drink, and walked back to the stream to refill his buckets. The training grounds were suddenly deserted so he would probably have no trouble getting an open spot later when he returned. At the stream, he took an extremely long drink, cooked and ate a fish, and rested a short time. Energized, he walked back to the training grounds, humming a tune and carrying the yoke with the buckets of water attached, over his shoulders again. When he arrived at the training ground, he was surprised as almost nobody was there. Even the girl that had been busting up the ground was gone, so he had virtually the pick of the place.

Ryusei thought over all his fights that had any shred of seriousness to it and concluded that his stamina was his weak point. He had significant difficulty using almost any useful jutsu for a significant amount of time, as he would get tired and then he would be unable to do much else except lying on the ground. Reflexes would not hurt either. Kenshin Uchiha had obviously superior reaction to be able to just deflect Ryusei’s attacks with what seemed to be barely a thought. Ryusei hit upon an idea. He would train using his jutsu, so that he could improve his endurance.
Ryusei walked to the largest training ground that was empty, and began putting out jutsu like there was no tomorrow. He used his Moving Earth Core jutsu to make a training course for himself. One section of the obstacle course he was making was a large 20 meter rock climbing wall, with thin handholds everywhere. Ryusei made 3 of these, in succession. Huffing and puffing from exertion, he formed a series of hurdles along another edge of the training ground. Ryusei had used up a lot of his chakra by this time, and had to sit a little bit. He then made a bunch of little pits, for practicing agility training. He could not think of anything else to make for training his body in that way, so he then made abunch of training dummies. To add realism, he put blocks representing trees on some sides of some of the training dummies. He would be able to practice his accuracy then. Just for giggles, he made some fake buildings with the equivalent of windows through which you could see silhouettes of “enemies”.

Satisfied with the results of his jutsu, Ryusei decided to use the idea he had earlier. He had a good drink from one of the buckets, and then poured the remainder of the water in the bucket over himself. Sopping wet, dripping water absolutely everywhere possible, he walked over to the first of the obstacle course parts. He was about to clamber up the dirt wall when it occurred to him: he was dripping wet, the dirt would become mud quickly, so he would have to climb up extremely quickly if he was going to succeed without using chakra, which was kind of the point. He decided it would not hurt to wring out the extra water, so at least he was not making huge mud puddles everywhere he walked. Otherwise his creations would dissolve as he tried to use them. He backed up, to around twenty feet away from the climbing wall he had made. He took off his shirt, struggling to pull it off without tearing it. The wet clothing clung to him and he got stuck for a few minutes, his hands pulling at various parts gently, eventually tugging the entire thing off. He wrung it out carefully, leaving the shirt wet, but not nearly as much as before. Now it just dripped instead of being a veritable rainstorm underneath. He needed to do the same with his shorts but…. Ryusei saw a particularly thick clump of bushes. He quickly whipped off his shorts, standing in only underwear (the shirt counts too by the way), and wrung out his shorts as well. Fortunately his shoes were waterproofed, he would need to wash them out carefully though when he finished or they would seriously smell after a few hours. His socks were sopping wet too, but there was not much he could do about that other than emptying the standing water in his shoes. A rustling from a nearby training ground reminded Ryusei to put his pants back on.

Walking back into the training grounds, he checked himself. He was wet, dripping a little still, and the clothing still stuck to him, but he was not a fountain like he had been previously. Shaking his arms and legs out to warm them up, he stepped up to the climbing wall. 20 meters of hell stared down at him, conspiring with the only clothing on his back to give him a difficult time. At least there would be less mud now, which would be able to dry in time when Ryusei made it back around the circuit. Just in case water rendered parts of the course unusable, water from him, he would use first one side, and then the other, then the area in the middle, then he could potentially still use the earth made equipment more later.

Ryusei began his ascent of his climbing wall. He started out on the left, and ascended slowly. He had to carefully plot his route so that he used as few handholds as possible. However in some spots there were no handholds, and he needed to pull out a kunai to go and cut out the dirt in some places, carving out little niches for his fingers or feet to take hold of. He was not ascending slowly by choice. He had to be careful or the mud would slip beneath his feet and he would have to dig his bare hands or perhaps a kunai in each hand, into the dirt. Each step was slightly painful to Ryusei, is arms still tired from all the exercise in the morning. This was nothing though, in comparison to the bucket exercise he had done earlier. Gritting his teeth, he sped up, not caring about the quality of his handholds. He sped towards the surface, ascending at approximately walking speed, until his apathy over his earthen supports led him back to the ground. One of the handholds was nothing more than a mere crack, and he slipped, his foothold slippery with mud. He landed flat on his back, and, coughing and hacking, rolled over onto his side. For those who do not know, landing flat on one’s back is rather painful, as it sends a shockwave through the entire body and upper chest organs, and as such it should be avoided by rolling or arching, such that the impact is reduced and the momentum redirected. This was a first for Ryusei though, and he moaned in pain.

After a minute he recovered and grumbled. Not handing the handholds, he whipped out a kunai into each hand, and ran at the wall. He jumped, slamming the kunai in each hand into the dirt, making sure the blades were turned sideways to be parallel to the ground. His feet swung wildly, landing against the earth wall with a sickening crack. He hissed, having had his lower legs smashed against a fairly hard surface. His feet scrabbled for purchase immediately though, and he soon was able to continue his journey upwards. Step after step, or rather, reach, stab, pull, after reach, stab, pull, Ryusei got closer, about a foot at a time. Each time he did not dare look down, preferring to carefully push his boots against the dirt, and lift them up and down, trying to find some projection to get afoot of. He did not dare look down because he was afraid that he might be afraid of heights.

Eventually, after a lot of painstaking climbing, and time spent wishing he could nurse some sore muscles, Ryusei made it to the top. He made it to the top by pulling and grunting as hard as he could. When he got to the top, he put one of his kunai back into his weapon pouch, fumbling with the zipper for the container. He messed up and the kunai fell from his fingers, narrowly avoiding impaling itself in his boot between his toes hopefully, and stuck itself into the ground at the bottom of the wall. Ryusei looked at it with wide eyes, the only reason his foot had not been stabbed was that he had pulled it back when he had felt the kunai leave his hand at a time which was not when he expected. He clung on tight to the other kunai with one hand. He started swinging his body sideways, along the wall, and when he was close, he twisted his obliques for a little extra momentum. Reaching up with his hand, he managed to get his lower arm on top of the wall, but his legs did not quite make it. Ryusei clung on, but his arm strength or lack thereof failed him, and soon he was swinging again. He had been close.

Ryusei tried again, swinging harder, but worrying as the kunai was starting to work itself loose from its burial in the vertical slab of ground. This time he managed to get both his free hand and his leg on top of the wall. Breathing a sigh of relief, he felt his other hand slip, his body almost twisting and falling off. He barely managed to hook his leg over the other end, his body turning until he was bent at a rather painful angle. He almost dropped the kunai entirely, barely grabbing it by the little loop at the end as it fell. Slowly, Ryusei managed to sit back up properly, and breathed a sigh of relief. He had finally made it all the way up. Now to climb back down. He pulled out a third kunai, the first being on the ground at the bottom of the wall, and the second being in his hand still. The descent should be easy. Ryusei Stabbed one kunai into the ground on the top of the wall, wondering why he had not thought to do such before. The other kunai was stabbed horizontally into the wall, a little and much to one side of the first. Holding both kunai tight, he descended, swinging his legs gently over the side. Once he was there, he started swinging his body side to side. When he thought he had enough momentum, he pulled out the kunai from on top of the wall, and when he swung back down, reached out, stabbing it quickly into the side. As soon as the first kunai was secure in the extremely tall ground, he pulled out the second. Again, when he swung down, he stabbed the kunai into the ground. He progressed like this, downhill all the way, without any real incident or things worth description. When he reached the bottom, he ran around to the kunai lying on the ground at the other side of the wall, and stashed it back into his bag.

He walked up to the next of the 3 walls, feeling a little confident now that he had done one now. He had the bright idea to try the swinging idea again, just for fun, but to ascend. While it was not he had intended to do initially it would be a fun experiment, assuming he did not fall and hurt himself severely. Ryusei walked up to the wall, and plunged a knife into the ground, almost as high as he could reach. Kicking with his legs, he swung up sideways, stabbing the second knife into the ground a foot and a half higher. From there he pushed up with his lower kunai, pulling it out fast following his body rhythm, and plunging it in the ground again much higher. This he found to be much easier, though the initial push required to get a start each time he moved a kunai, was a little tiring. Ryusei made it all the way to the top without mishap, even remembering to stab into the top so that he could climber up easier. The descent was boring too.

For the third of the walls, Ryusei ascended quickly, the only issue going up or down was that he had raised up part of a mole tunnel when he used his jutsu. He found this out when he accidentally kicked in the side of the mole’s tunnel, the mole rushing out and landing on his foot. Not wanting to hurt it, Ryusei had slowly clambered back down, picking up the dirty mole with his equally dirty hands, and putting it back into the hole. He then used his Moving Earth Core jutsu to reseal the tunnel for the mole. When he ascended again, he realized his first two kunai were a little out of reach, having dropped from them down at the end, so he had to maneuver around, awkwardly to be able to grab them again. He then had too many kunai in his hand and had to spend several moment re-stabbing the one kunai in his other hand, and sticking the other kunai into the wall. Fortunately he did not drop any kunai while he was dangling from one arm, somewhat painfully. When that was over with, he clambered up and over, and descended all the way. Partway through, he paused, stunned. He had apparently bisected the mole’s den. He had not noticed from the back side but… Fortunately none of the moles were hurt. Making sure he had all of his belongings off of the wall, Ryusei sank the ground he had raised to make the third wall back down. Hopefully the mole den was whole once again.
Ryusei turned his attention to the hurdles. After that was the agility footwork type course. The hurdles came first though. They were deliberately varying heights, sometimes with spikes or other nasty looking stuff made on top of them, to force Ryusei to constantly adapt, without building up a rhythm. He decided to do three laps, one forward, one coming back by a slightly different route, and one more forward, starting at a different point in what was an easy maze to navigate but difficult to complete. Getting a running start, Ryusei charged forward, and began jumping over the hurdles without using his arms. Several times he ate dirt when he mistimed a jump or did not lift his legs high enough on one occasion, but each time he got up, the fire of determination in his eyes, a good enough substitute for killing intent. He sprinted between hurdles, trying various flips for the fun of it, mostly landing on his feet. There was one painful episode though where he ran his face straight into a spike sitting on a hurdle. Fortunately, the spike was pointing upwards, so when Ryusei ran into it like a very light freight train, hitting his face on the base of the spike, he was not in danger of poking out anything important, aside from a strand of very frightened, black spiky hair.

After getting up, Ryusei kept going, spurred on by his determination to become one of the strongest shinobi in existence. The hurdles came fast, one after the other, sometimes two in a row, necessitating a longer jump than normal. In a few spots between the hurdles he had put small spikes or deeper pits, requiring him to quite literally think on his feet, to avoid any painful incidents. The hurdles were fairly long, and each one was different, so Ryusei ended up taking a zig-zag shaped path over, between, and through hurdles, depending on the occasion. At least there were no moles or other creatures he had accidentally pulled above ground that normally sat below the ground. He eventually made it through the set of hurdles, and looked behind him. He had apparently gone overboard when he was making hurdles, as the hurdles stretched around a full half of the outside of the training ground. There was barely any room left for the other stuff, the climbing walls, the agility footwork training course, and the targets, within the training grounds.

He started running back on the training hurdles. This time he made it his goal to not only avoid touching the extras, as he liked to call them, on the hurdles, but also not the ground, with his feet. He might have to use his arms for this one. Everything he thought of as extra was anything that stuck out from the basic hurdle – spikes, bumps, projections (these faced forwards or backwards), or what were pretty much walls on the hurdles, all of which blocked off his route in some way or another. He got off to a running start, and jumped on the first one. Doing a running step similar to when he was running around between trees earlier, Ryusei was able to mostly keep his balance. His legs got a workout though as he often had to shift direction, often having to travel up to 5 or so feet at once, sideways in midair, while retaining his momentum forward. Aside from that the hurdles came a little slower but much harder, he was fine. He initially struggled to push off in the right direction every time he landed, but soon learned to watch the surrounding environment for clues on what his next action should be, and by the time he was halfway through, was having no issues.

The third lap he completed by only touching the ground, using his legs only, running quickly, holding the bucket in his arms. He began to figure out how to use other objects to change his momentum as a result, finding the bucket helpful for changing his center of gravity. He also got used to jumping high, even with a load on his person. Overall it was a grueling exercise, but technique wise, fairly easy. He finished his last lap and put the bucket back.

After a quick stretch and a drink, he was ready for the agility footwork training exercise. It seemed a little redundant considering the previous exercise he had done, but almost everything would help at this point. He walked, stopping in front of his training course. He had a sudden thought. It would reduce his stamina some but that was the point of this entire exercise of course. He quickly used his Moving Earth Core jutsu to put back all the earth he had raised, to make the walls and the hurdles, neither of which he intended to use again that day. The footwork course was different though, since it was a pattern of holes Ryusei would have to quickly put his feet in and out of.

He decided he would aim for ten laps back and forth along the footwork course, at least one of which would be backwards, just for fun. He took a deep breath, and plotted his course. There were hundreds and hundreds of holes he had created, some of varying size, and many with different angles and unstable or stable footing. He would have to be almost literally on his toes to make it across without falling, as he intended to do the course without using chakra to help him maintain balance. He took off at a run, and started doing what would be more accurately called one leg hops, as opposed to running. He stopped far too often. This was not good, it needed to be running speed. If he ever was trying to step between patches of particularly vile acid, or avoid falling lava, or even caltrops, he would not have the luxury of pausing, he would often be under enemy fire, in terms of projectiles, or just as likely, actual fireballs. Yes, indeed, pausing was not an option. Ryusei started running, as fast as he could, trying to only step in holes quickly. This was a challenge because he was attempting to use his peripheral vision to see the holes in the ground that he was trying to step in. In other words he was trying to run while keeping his eyes on a target instead of where he was stepping. If he was able to figure this out and do it quickly without mistakes, or at least without falling, he would have an easier time on the battlefield. Ryusei made it all the way to the other end, only tripping on the edge once near the beginning. He had found that if he ran hard and fast, picking his legs up instead of swinging them forward like what normally happened with running, he was able to generally step on top of most obstacles, as opposed to pushing his feet into them, and tripping.

(Sorry for the double post but this was way too long to fit in just one... lol)

Ryusei stopped at the other end of the course, and looked back at the distance he had covered. Not bad, but he should make this more difficult to see whether he really was doing things right. Ryusei took a drink contemplatively, and looked at his course carefully. He had a bright idea. He would pour water in the holes, and would run, without looking directly at the ground, attempting to not get his feet muddy. Yes, he would have to do this barefoot, so that the mud did not stick to his shoes as much. The shoes needed a lot of drying out anyway. Back to his idea. The sun was low in the sky, and the evening was now a pleasant 72 degrees, a slight gust blowing would increase the water evaporation slightly but not too much. There were more holes than he could wet with his current bucket, but If he was to make a couple of trips to the stream that was nearby… yes. Yes, it would definitely work. Ryusei then had a brainwave. He put his hands to the ground, his cardio system was still tired, but his stamina was partially back. He raised 3 targets on each of the ends of the training course. He also put 2 targets on each side of the agility footwork training course. Thinking fast, Ryusei also put up backstops around the entire thing, so that he did not lose his kunai or shuriken. Even worse, he did not want to accidentally hurt someone, especially a civilian, just because they were happening to be in the forest at the same time as he. He would never life that down. So up the backstops went, forming large walls that would block anything short of… Tank Akamichi? In any case, the barriers were more than enough to block his kunai and shuriken, which was the original purpose. There was no point to trying to do much more with it. Ryusei remembered that the day was getting short and he should hurry. He hurried over to the stream nearby, refilling his buckets. He ended up making several trips because he tripped over a rock obscured by the buckets, and eventually had good size puddles in each of the holes. He also decided he needed to learn to briefly take note of the evolving landscape so that he would have to directly see things anymore, or at least not have to all the time. The sun would be setting soon, in about an hour or so, so Ryusei made a fire, using it to light makeshift torches he put up all around the training grounds, since lights were installed in some areas of the training grounds, but not everywhere. He would have to remember to put everything back, referring to the ground, when he left, in case anyone decided to train into the night. It was generally a bad idea to make someone else ruin their career because of your own idiocy.

Ryusei took a deep breath, and dashed off at the course again. This time he twisted, so that he was moving sideways, pushing to the right hand side. Looking around, keeping his eyes at the trees around the training grounds, he turned to face his right, trying to keep track of all the passing holes, without actually looking at the ground. This was easier said than down. He had scarcely taken 5 steps when his foot stepped in the mud, making him slip. He caught himself on the way down, avoiding putting his right elbow, and his face each in their own mud puddle. Cursing his own foolishness and weakness, he got to his feet and continued running sideways. He at first had to run slowly, but after the first two laps doing such, was able to run sideways at full speed. The same kinds of events happened when he used his left side, as a lot of the exercise, aside from generally detecting stuff without directly looking, as this exercise also trained his coordination. He ended up doing more laps than he had intended, but he was able to do his sideways laps in a timely manner as he did them faster than he expected in the end, only taking a little longer than intended.

Ryusei then realized that he had not done very many laps going forwards. He was too used to running sideways and actually did a face plant on the ground, smacking his forehead into the ground, inches from a hole on one side of his head. Then he forgot to pick his feet up. He remedied that issue rather quickly. In no time, he managed to run forwards at pretty much top speed, at different sections of the course, without getting mud anywhere.

Backwards was going to be a real challenge though. Rysuei warmed up by running backwards, glancing over one shoulder to keep an eye on where he was going. This was already kind of hard, and he ended up relying on noting the overall terrain and landscape features so that he was not pathetically slow. He would have to do that with just a glance, if it was to be effective. Ryusei walked back to the training course, and scanned the entire thing. Setting the pattern of holes, and the dummies in his mind, turning it around to be relevant for his movement backwards, he began running backwards, looking first over one shoulder, or while he was pushing off the ground after a few steps, over the other shoulder. This took some getting used to, not only because he had frequently interrupted or obscured vision, but all the head movement made him dizzy. Several times he fell on his rear end, one time in a cold wet puddle, because his head started to spin. He found it helped though, to imagine that monster girl from earlier being ordered by the Hokage, to punch Ryusei’s living daylights out. That always snapped him back to reality, or straightened him out, or sobered him out (he was imagining what that girl’s mother might be having to do to try to get her married off), whatever it was, bringing him back to normal.

Going backwards was a lot harder, and definitely took longer than he intended. He ended up doing 10 laps back and forth, but it was worth it because his coordination improved drastically and he was not as dizzy anymore when his head turned. Now the real fun would begin. Ryusei would first do the course forwards, then sideways each way, backwards, and finally turning constantly to face his target, all the while propelling himself to the other end. While he was getting to the other side, he would have one chance to hit each of his 10 targets since he had 10 kunai and shuriken combined. He would not use the word run, for two reasons. The first reason was that he was not exactly running anymore, what he was doing was related but running was usually in a straight direction, facing one way only. It also involved alternating leg strokes, as opposed to the skips and funny hope Ryusei would employ to keep himself in the air. The second, and equally important reason, was that if Ryusei was going to ever tell anyone else about this weird training exercise he had made up, he did not want to use such a common sounding word as “run”. It would sound much harder if the movement he employed was instead described as “Propulsion towards one’s goal, using one leg, often repeatedly”. In the very least, if he was a teacher and was paid by the word, he would get a little more ( 8 more words to be exact ) than he would if he merely used the one lonesome word “run”.

Ryusei set off at a forwards angled propulsion, usually using one leg at a time, thought occasionally using both when needed. He began pulling out shuriken and throwing them at the targets he knew to be behind him. He heard thunk sounds and hoped that the shuriken hand landed. He had no time to pause though, pulling out more shuriken and then the kunai, throwing them hurriedly at all the other targets, not looking to see whether he had landed the hits or not in his haste. He made it across to the other side, and looked around him. He groaned. Not one of the targets had been hit, in most cases the targets had been missed by a large margin. He grumbled at himself, his incompetence and rashness the target of his accusations. He had hurried too much, and he could have died if on the battlefield.
He gave it another try, this time aiming to hit just one target accurately while running forward. Not only that, he would ignore the ones behind him until all the ones in the front were “eliminated”. He decided on this course of action because a wounded ninja or an unscathed one, could still do damage, while a “dead” one would not. In addition, any ninja in front of him would have a greater chance of restricting his movement, which would hamper Ryusei if he was attempting to flee from enemies behind, especially as he was currently unable to target the ones behind him. That eye to hand coordination or lack thereof, was a real issue sometimes. Charging forth, he nearly put his foot in a mud puddle. He recovered just in time, picking his foot up before it could touch the mud, and sliding it forward through the air. He then pulled out a kunai, and took careful aim. Letting fly, his arm crossed his face for a brief interval. His foot ended up in a mud puddle while he was distracted, and due to the sudden movement, his aim was off and he hit a target, but not the one that he had intended.

That was no good. He needed to hit the one he intended to, since that other person could well be a civilian or even a hostage. Besides, he had to figure out when he should throw the weapons, for greater or at least some effect. Perhaps, if he threw while he was in the air…. He had this train of thought as he had thrown the kunai while moving on the ground. It seemed that moving around on the ground could have more unexpected… incidents… such as an unexpected change of direction. While he could be slightly more easily be targeted in the air, he would have fewer interferences. It was hard to trip over something in the air, and pretty much anything that could hit him in the air would be able to hit him on the ground. If he was going to do any precision attacks that he could not control later on, it would be best to attempt them while his body was in the most stable state. Ryusei thought those thoughts quickly, and then continued on his journey across the course, not wanting to waste any more time. He would keep practicing, aiming slowly at first, when he was in the air, as opposed to the ground. Then it would be easier to try to perform flips and such so that he had an easier time hitting targets he could not normally see with his regular field of vision.

Ryusei reached the other side of the course. Quickly, he picked up the weapons again, he was in a hurry, the sun would set in about an hour, and he needed to be done with anything which required much accuracy before then. He had no illusions as to his present skill. If he was missing the target in daylight he would poke his own eye out most likely if he tried the same exercises under the cover of night. Ryusei checked everything, and went forth again. Running forward, he unleashed a resounding war cry, as he flew through the air. Touching the ground, he took another powerful step, spinning to enhance the strength of his throwing. The kunai shot through the air like it had been shot from a cannon, or more correctly, flung by the Nine-Tails in a temper tantrum. The kunai zipped towards the target, nicking it slightly where the upper arm would be, embedding itself almost to the hilt in the barricade behind it. Ryusi kept running this time instead of stopping. He let out a rather noisy stream of curses, waving his hand in the air, infuriated that he had largely missed again. Sure, he had technically hit the target, but it was not a very good one, and even the most lazy of instructors at the academy would have lambasted Ryusei for his incompetence.

Ryusei continued running, faster than before, ignoring the muscle fatigue he was undergoing, fueled by rage. He gave it another try, jumping a little harder, twisting his body, and realizing that he had forgotten to pull out a kunai. Darn it, he would try again. He reached for a kunai and miss stepped on the ground. stumbling and barely regaining his footing in time to jump again. This time he had his kunai out and launched it, spinning again, and hurling with all his force, this time accounting for the slowly shifting viewpoint he was experiencing. He landed, still running, making sure he had jumped and was ready to land again, before risking a glance at the target. The kunai had given the target a rather painful haircut. The kunai had sliced off the thinnest part of the top bit of the dummy. Well, that was slightly more lethal than his previous attempt but it still was not good enough. Ryusei landed, his feet almost a blur as he dodged and sidestepped holes, his body seemingly floating in the air. He continued running, his body seeming to float, his legs were moving so fast. He threw a third kunai, as the sun inched closer to the horizon, and the third time did the trick. The kunai embedded itself in the approximate area of the chest, and Ryusei managed to not fall either, landing on the dry ground without any splashing. He propelled himself to the other end, and upon completion of his lap burst out in gleeful cries. He had finally successfully completed the first level of the training exercise he had devised.

Hurriedly collecting the kunai he had dropped, Ryusei was all pumped up and ready to go. He ran back the other way again, the thought of counting laps not even crossing his mind one instant. All that mattered was that he was able to hit the targets fast, without missing any of them, or falling. Last time he had hit the target for sure, and while running, but only on his third try. He would need to do better than that or if a war ever broke out he would definitely not survive. He stepped over holes, jumping up to six inches off of the ground whenever he was landing near a hole (which was almost all the time). He got a good pace going, pulled out a kunai, and let fly… and THUNK! The kunai hit its mark. Ryusei pumped his fist in celebration, continuing to speed along the ground. He wanted to dance in celebration but he had not finished his lap yet, so he kept going. He was not yet a third of the way through his travel so he pulled out another kunai, and threw it, aiming for the center of the “chest” of the training dummy. He slapped himself when it missed – he had gotten arrogant and in his haste would have wasted a valuable weapon while on the battlefield, potentially giving it for free to the opponent. He grumbled, his sense of joy gone already, dispelled by his just occurring failure. He could not let his sense of pride get to him or he would be easy prey. There were rumors that some ninja could reanimate dead bodies, so if Ryusei relaxed because he thought he had killed what was really just a puppet, he would be extremely vulnerable. He could not let that happen. He kept going, pulling out another kunai, taking fast but careful aim, and let fly. He scored a clean hit on the second dummy, with the end of the course coming up fast. He skidded to a stop, having been running faster than he thought he had been. He grabbed the kunai from its place in the backstop, and pulled the two knives out of the dummies.

He had first missed twice then hit 1 dummy. Then he had hit once, missed one, then hit a second target. He would not think about hitting the targets behind him, or even the ones to the sides, until he was hitting the 3 in the front with time, or maybe more accurately while he had enough distance left to travel along the course, such that he still had time to take a proper shot at another target elsewhere. He set off, his feet pattering heavily on the pounded smooth ground. Pulling out a kunai in each hand, he threw both at once, aiming to practice a little coordination. The kunai flew through the air. One embedded itself in the dirt a little behind one dummy. The other one was wedged firmly in the “neck” of a earthen training dummy. Ryusei had mixed emotions at this result. On the one hand he may well have a sure kill going in one hand, but the other kunai would only have given a weaker shinobi a bad scare. Close, but no cigar, in Ryusei’s opinion. He kept on his way, pulling out more kunai. He was around halfway through the course, when he threw the second pair of kunai, and managed to miss both of the remaining two targets he had aimed at, which were to his front. He grumbled. He had been too hasty again. He pulled out his last kunai and a senbon, throwing the two of them as he hit the two thirds mark along the way down. This time he managed a clean hit with the senbon, hitting around the stomach. The kunai however, hit the ground. If the earth made training dummy was a real ninja, he would be nearly standing on a kunai, as it was buried in the ground right in the middle, in front of the dummy. Almost… Ryusei pulled out a pair of shuriken in one hand, keeping the other out to catch himself in case he fell. He threw the shuriken as he was nearly finished his lap, one after the other, his arm a blur going each way, a shuriken snapping out of his hand each time his arm moved, until he was out of them and needed a reload. Or did he? Ryusei stepped down onto the rest of the normal ground, the bits without holes, and walked up to the dummies. Retrieving his kunai and senbon, he stored them back into the weapon pouches at his waist. He looked at the backstop for the shuriken, as he had not watched to see where they would land. He did not see them there. Worried, Ryusei clambered up, and peered over the side of the backstop for the shuriken, but he had no luck there either. He had heard no screaming so that meant.... He looked at the dummy he had ostensibly aimed at. Two shuriken were embedded into the dummy, around the forehead area, one just half a centimeter above the other. His jaw dropped, for the first time in quite a few hours (the first time being when he saw the monstrously powerful girl earlier). He wished he was that accurate all the time, as it was, that would be a fun story to tell, if a little short and lacking in actual action. He took the shuriken and stuffed them into his weapon pouch, careful to not cut his hands on the multitude of sharp objects.

He took a deep breath. He tried to relax a little, as he was slowly improving, either in accuracy, or in overall speed, so it might take a while but he would get there. The last few of the laps had only taken about 10 minutes tops, even accounting for picking up his many scattered weapons. He was actually making decent progress. Ryusei smiled to himself. Nobody else around really missed anything, as he tended to do that a lot, with or without good reason. He would give it another go and hopefully he would miss fewer of the shots he took this time. Ryusei got off to a running start, leaping on the spots between holes that were slowly drying up. He whipped two kunai from his pouch, and hurled them, one after the other, targeting the dummies to his immediate front that were on the edges, not aiming at the middle one. He whooped as both landed. Then suddenly the ground was rushing up… and Ryusei realized he had stepped in a hole, having gotten too absorbed in his throwing practice. Ok, so if this was the battlefield he had killed two ninja and lost his left leg. Not a bad trade for the village, but still a very bad trade for yours truly. He just had to make sure he was calm when he threw, as too much concentrating would have a similar effect to tunnel vision – he would not notice outside influences if he needed too. So yes, far better to be in a calm state than to be too concentrated on one thing. He had still hit two dummies accurately, so he could not be too bad though. He resumed his trip, pulling out another kunai. Throwing it, he could see it was going to miss, and pulled out another kunai. Launching this one after taking a couple of deep breaths to calm down a little, he landed another hit on the targeted dummy, and without stepping in a hole either!

Woohoo! Now what to do with the remaining quarter of a lap he had left…. Ryusei figured he had enough time to try for one more target, so he pulled out a shuriken. Holding it in one hand, his arm outstretched, he deliberately spun as he hit the ground, aiming to stabilize his body. He launched the shuriken in the direction of one of the dummies at the side of the training course, aiming quickly as his body was spinning rather rapidly. He tried to take another step and managed, but the world was spinning too fast, and his second step did not feel right. The third was obviously not right, literally, as it was his left foot, which slid out from under him, as he had been slowly tipping over in his disorientation, his foot pushing almost horizontally against the ground and being of little help for maintaining his balance. His arms flailing, Ryusei fell almost directly face first into one of the holes in which he had earlier poured water. His face an inch away from the water, he breathed a sigh of relief that the hole was not an inch or two shallower. Otherwise he would literally be eating the dust, along with some other rather unsanitary components, some of his own unintentional choosing from earlier that afternoon.

He got slowly to his feet, and scrambled in a rather undignified manner to the finish. Once there, he tried to collect his kunai, and this was easy, they generally being stuck in the targets. He ran into problems though with the shuriken. Last time he had had trouble finding weapons of his during his training exercise, they had been attached to the training dummy. It was not so this time. They were nowhere to be found, on any of the training dummies. They were not embedded in the backstops either… which meant… either that they had either dug a hole and closed the ground after themselves politely, or that when he threw them, that Ryusei had really, really messed up, and thrown them so badly that they had flown over the backstop entirely, which would be impressive considering that the backstops in question were about 20 meters in height. Ryusei gave a heavy sigh, and looked around the other side of the backstop he had apparently thrown the shuriken over. He looked frantically in the fading light for his weapons but they were nowhere to be seen. He groaned. He did not want to be looking all over the forest for them. He gave a heavy sigh, and was turning back towards his training course, when someone called him to him from the shadows of the forest. He turned and walked around, turning to face the speaker as… she walked out of the forest. He gulped, and began to sweat a little in nervousness, with good reason.

The girl with rather monstrous strength was holding 2 shuriken in her hand and she did not look happy. Ryusei began thinking over all his life, trying to find a sincere regret or wish that he might be able to convince her to let him accomplish first before killing him. Life was too short for him to die yet!

The girl walked up to him and passed him the shuriken. “Careful, wouldn’t want to hurt anyone unintentionally now would we…?” she inquired. She pointed to some strands of missing hair, or rather, the spots where the hair was missing, that were noticeable upon close inspection, being slightly out of place in contrast to the rest of her appearance.

Ryusei’s voice shook a little in fear – “N-no, of course not. I’m very sorry!” He hurriedly but carefully took the proffered shuriken, stuffing them in a weapon pouch while keeping his eyes on her the whole time, ready to spring away in the off chance that he was faster than her.

She laughed gently, and started to walk off. “You look to be training hard, if you are still here after I left to have dinner. Be careful now!” Her laughter rang into the woods long after she had left.

Ryusei watched her walk off, and breathed a sigh of relief when she was gone. That had gone better than he had expected. He had the shuriken back, and he was still alive, that monster of a girl had not slaughtered him like he was worried she might. Well, at least he could get back to his training now.

He walked back to the agility footwork course he had set up, and pulled out a kunai. Thinking over what he had done when he threw the shuriken, he realized that it was really hard to keep his body stable while on the ground and moving like that. It was one thing to be throwing in front of him at targets he could always see, that did not really shift in perspective much. What he was doing was much, much harder, and he would never succeed if he was not careful, if only because that monster of a girl may not give him a second chance. He took a deep breath, remembering that he needed to focus to make this work. He charged again, pulling out kunai and throwing them at the 3 dummies at the front. There was no rush. He just had to keep calm and not get overexcited. This was fun to do when he was not eating the dust, but he could not let it get to his head, lest it hampered him. While he ran, when he was not trying to throw a projectile weapon, his mind wandered, and he wondered if he would be able to kill a friend if needed. Would he be able to kill a loved one if they became an enemy? Would he prioritize the mission over his teammates (not that he had any at the moment)? His mind raced. His conclusion was to become as strong as he could so that he could decide for himself, when the occasion arose, so that he would not have to worry about what anyone else thought. His eyes filled with determination, he went through the course, doing carefully controlled spins through the air, enabling him to launch fairly precise attacks. He managed to hit most of the 6 dummies he aimed at, using 8 of his weapons before he arrived at the other side. Huffing and puffing from the exertion, took a look at his handiwork. It seemed he could improve rather quickly when he set his mind to it. Maybe the title of Sannin was not impossible after all.

He did 5 more laps of practice at this exercise. During the first 2 laps of the 5, he ended up working his way up to hitting all 10 targets, as he was on a roll. Once that was accomplished, he did another 3 just for practice, as he did not want to waste too much time with practicing, as the sun was going to start setting any minute now. When he was satisfied with his progress doing the forward version, he started aiming at targets while going sideways, each way, and then backwards. Some of the difficulties he had initially were rather universal. Every time he got too focused on throwing, or too focused on his movement, he would mess up one or the other. He had to generally throw while in the air to make himself able to be accurate. He began running into other issues though, due to his body position. When he was going sideways, his natural position was not quite in line obviously with the direction he was headed, so he had to get used to being a little dizzy. With both going sideways and backwards, he found it helpful to memorize brief amounts of the oncoming terrain, and noting his movements, so that he knew where he was, and could avoid the oncoming holes or other obstacles, one time including a drunkard, without as much difficulty. When he was running backwards, he had an easier time throwing at the targets he was moving away from, but for all the others, the change of perspective was something he took a little time to get used too, to put it mildly. During the last few sets as the sun was setting, he dropped his long spiky hair into mud several times, each and every time shaking it dry, and pausing to pull most of the mud out of his hair. It was a bad habit but everything had to come in steps.
Ryusei finally completed the last of his sets to his satisfaction. It had been a long day, and due to the jerk who forced Ryusei to help him far more than he needed to, the day would be longer still. He had a nice long drink, smacking his lips at the taste. Wiping some of the sweat off of himself, he turned and faced the training grounds. He went and put back all of the remaining earthen training equipment he had pulled up for himself to use. If anyone else went digging there they would potentially find a small underground lake of sweat. Maybe Ryusei would become important enough to have a body of water named after him. He burst out laughing at the thought, some birds nearby taking off instantly at the sound. He realized that he had not done his original throwing practice, so he went back to the stream with his buckets, and filled up the buckets again, pausing to soak his spiky hair in water to get the extra dirt out. His hair plastered to his forehead, but slowly drying out, he walked back to the training grounds.

He had a few things he wanted to practice. He walked around, looking for a taijutsu user. This idea was a little foolhardy but it should work. When he used the “Hiding Like A Mole” jutsu, he wanted to be able to better track movement aboveground. In addition, Taijutsu users were much faster, so he could try to race them, underground. He had evidently forgotten the monster girl from before. Humming a tune, the same one in fact, like he had near the start of his long day, he wandered around, keeping track of the location of the training ground he had already used. As the sun was setting, he found that the only taijutsu user in the training grounds at that time was the monstrously strong girl. Well, he would probably hear her moving around then. He started using his “Hiding Like A Mole” jutsu, and dug into the ground in the middle of the hub connecting the training grounds. He quickly dug toward the training ground, using his magnetic sensing in tandem with the sound of trees getting pounded, to better locate the training ground. He was able to sense her movements, and followed her as closely as he could, attempting to mimic situations he might encounter on the battlefield, or more correctly, that he might encounter, under the battlefield. He followed frantically, as fast as he could, but suddenly the ground started shaking. Either Godzilla from a recent movie really had come down to invade the Land of Fire, or that monster girl was pounding the ground again. Ryusei slowly dug upwards, but paused when he started seeing daylight through massive cracks in the ground. Seeing something move, he dug back down and back to his own training ground. It occurred to him that if he was caught he might be accused of stalking or such, which, while not true, would be rather irritating to say the least. Arriving at the training ground he had been suing, he had a big gulp of water and then thought over his next move, all after climbing back out of the ground.
The sun was setting, as he walked back to the training dummies had made earlier. Pausing to put back the bits left over from the training ground he had already used, he pulled out his projectile items again. Standing at the edge of his throwing range, he began hurling the projectiles, several at a time, at a single target, aiming to make the target look like a pincushion. It took a while but eventually the training dummy was reduced to a pile of dust, he had made small holes in it by throwing his projectiles, until eventually the dummy was worn through and one of his projectiles had actually knocked most of the remainder down, skidding to a stop on the ground 20 feet away. After that, it was time to practice the basic attacks all ninja were supposed to know, that Ryusei had not practiced in a lone time. Walking up to one of the remaining training dummies, he began punching it ferociously, moving his fists as fast as he could. The earth was a little rough, which meant that the punches would hurt his fists, but at least he would toughen them up a little. Most ninja he was sure would be stronger than his training dummies, as he knew of a number of Genin who had no trouble at all with the stuff he could make so far. One of them literally walked through his barrier without a word, obviously unhindered significantly. That episode had been a little discouraging, but Ryusei wanted to become that strong himself.

Close to that strength, to be frank, would be good already for Ryusei, as he intended to focus on ninjutsu for most of his portfolio of abilities. Some taijutsu prowess might come in handy, you never know. With this in mind, he pounded away at the training dummy, until his hands bled, and then some. He blocked out the pain, he could not let it be a distraction. When he had finished his 500 strikes on the dummy, he taped up his hands to control the bleeding using spare bandages someone had given him. Then it was time for his kicking practice, which was another 500 strikes. This took a little longer, as his legs could not reach as high as his fists and his flexibility left a little to be desired. Later he would find that calousses were starting to form on his legs, and there was a fair amount of bruising. When the kicking practice was over, he carefully examined the training dummy. He was a little disappointed to see that the only sign it had been used, was that there were scuff marks on it. There were no noticeable points of impact, at all. He grumbled, and lowered the disgraceful dummy along with all of its buddies, back into the ground.

Frustrated, he walked back out of the training ground, and bumped into another genin. He was not in a good mood, and the other genin, an arrogant twit who had graduated from the Ninja Academy at the impressive age of 16 only a week ago, after 3 years, was in no mood to be friendly either, having been beaten up earlier by a ninja who took offense at his general attitude towards life, the universe, and everything, having asked him a question. There was no way around this for the two of them. They needed to put their dukes up right in the hub, ignoring their surroundings. The other genin, his pride affronted twice, swung at Ryusei. Ryusei dodged, he could tell the other guy was slower, even if his build was slightly more reminiscent of Tank Akimichi than Ryusei’s was. Ryusei then punched the other guy in the armpit, eliciting a sharp cry of pain. Clutching his armpit, the other guy fell over, and Ryusei took advantage of the distraction to roll the guy over sideways, stopping him just short of a mud puddle. The other guy was not amused, and declared he would win with jutsu instead of hand to hand combat, since Ryusei’s ugly mug kept distracting him. At that comment Ryusei’s foot whipped out and smacked the new genin in the side, avoiding the vital organs, and gave the genin something else to distract him.

Gasping for breath, the other genin suddenly yelled out that he would try to perform all of his jutsu at once. Ryusiei raised an eyebrow. The other ninja proceeded to run up a nearby tree, making clones that floated through the air, suddenly taking the appearance of a log, which was then replaced with an actual log, as the genin himself mistimed his step and landed on the ground in front of Ryusei with a “thump!”.

Groaning, the other genin slowly got to his feet, to find that Ryusei had his hands to the ground and was very precisely sinking the ground under his feet, not letting him move his legs around inside the tube. The other genin cursed Ryusei, telling him to not hit a man while he is down. Then he told Ryusei that he should be impressed with that display, to which he was told that it was boring and largely a waste of time. Ryusei used his Fist Rock technique to smash a nearby tree to smithereens with one blow. The other genin said he could beat that, and after some difficulty extricating himself from the pit he was in, launched himself ferociously at Ryusei.

Ryusei grinned. This guy obviously only had endurance going for him, he was even weaker than Ryusei, and much much slower. He wasn’t even capable of any other techniques beyond the most basic. Ryusei dug into the ground and came up behind the other so called “ninja”, performing another of his new jutsu. Stones came up out of the ground, and flew at the other ninja, who had only just turned around and was suddenl scrambling for safety. The rock landed in a “whomp” all around the other ninja, missing him by a hair (not literally). The other ninja had big eyes, as Ryusei told him that he (Ryusei) knew of much, much more powerful ninja than himself, and that the other ninja had better watch it if he did not want to actually die. Unfortunately, he sounded wise, as the other ninja suddenly ran forward. Ryusei thought he was going to be attacked again when the other ninja suddenly dropped to the ground, prostrate before the man he would now proclaim to be his “sensei”. Ryusei had formed the Fist Rock again though, and smashed it into the ground in frustration. He deliberately avoided the other genin though, hitting the ground, just next to him. The other genin did not move, and asked from his position on the ground what Ryusei had done to learn that jutsu. Ryusei groaned, and turned away, walking back out of the training ground. Suddenly, the genin was in front of Ryusei prostrate again, blocking his path. Ryusei grumbled, and jumped over the other genin, and sprinted off towards the village. The other genin cried out that he would try to become as fast as his teacher and fell back into the distance.

It was getting late now. Ryusei did not have his headband on his forehead, which is why he was suddenly attacked while walking in an alley. While he was a little tall, it was fairly obvious to almost anybody who had eyes, and even a few who did not, that he was fairly skinny, and as such may well be easy prey. The first pickpocket thought that until he realized that the person he was attacking was a doppelganger. The mugger who was in a different alley thought he had the advantage with a small knife, until Ryusei pulled out a kunai in one hand and used the Fist Rock technique to hit the other man’s knife when he charged, sending the knife flying away to stick into a wall. After seeing him smash a nearby timber in half using the Fist Rock technique, the other man chose to flee. Ryusei shook his head at the retreating figure.


He was nearly home when he happened to walk past the office that handed out assignments to ninja. Strangely enough, the office was still open. Curious to see if there was a meeting going on that he had not been informed of that he was supposed to attend, he walked up. The door was open. He peeked inside. Empty rooms awaited his gaze, except for one tired official who handed him a mission before Ryusei could protest. The official mumbled that nobody else was around to help track down the criminal and Ryusei was the only one around to do it. Ryusei asked if he really was the only ninja available at this time, and yes, he was. The guards were the only other ones around at this time and you couldn’t very well ask them to abandon their posts now could you….

Ryusei gave a heavy sigh and trudged out of the building, mission details in hand. Outside the building he looked at the mission details, and then at the sky. The moon was high in the sky, it was between midnight and 2 am in the morning approximately. The bell chimed… yup, it was now just after 2 am in the morning. If Ryusei was going to get the mission done, he would have to hurry while there was still nighttime left to sleep away. He read through the details, which even had a picture of the criminal to catch. Ryusei suddenly burst out laughing. The face on the details matched almost exactly the man who a little earlier had tried to rob Ryusei of his… well, he didn’t have any money on him at the moment so it would be weapons he guessed. If he had known just a little earlier he would be off to bed now. Well, let bygones be bygones, at least he had an idea of where that guy might be. Ryusei went back to his apartment temporarily, snatching a jacket off of the coathanger. He put it on, obscuring his face, his hair stuffed into the hood. If he now slouched a little he would be very difficult to recognize if he met someone who knew him well, never mind a guy who did not get a close look at his face, in the dark.

He wandered the alleys, heading towards where he had knocked the robber’s knife into the wall. The knife was gone, a small slit cut into the wall. The robber had probably returned to fetch his knife when he thought Ryusei had left. Nobody else was likely to be up at this hour aside from the guards, who had somewhere else to be. He walked slowly, limping slightly, enough to look realistic but not over the top. A few alleys over, a knife that looked oddly familiar was waved in front of him, the owner’s voice coming from behind… “Put your hands up!”

Ryusei burst out laughing, his sound reverberating off of the silent walls of the surrounding buildings. He suddenly grabbed the hand holding the knife in front of his neck, slamming the hand into a wall and then twisting it so that the knife fell out onto the ground with a clatter. He heard a cry of pain, and turned the other way, bringing his elbow around towards where he judged the stomach might be on the other man, if his memory of his height was accurate. He looked at his handiwork – a hunched over man clutching at his belly while nursing a hand. Ryusei looked closely, and yes indeed, it was the criminal he needed to catch, the same one who had assaulted him earlier. The would-be robber cursed his luck, and Ryusei used the Fist Rock technique to smash the wall next to the robber’s head. The robber stuttered in fear, and Ryusei pulled back his hood with his unused hand. The robber stared, then groaned at his poor luck. He kicked dirt at Ryusei’s face and tried to run, but Ryusei was much, much faster. He didn’t need to be though, he used the Temporary Paralysis Technique, freezing the other guy in his tracks before he could finish turning away.

Ryusei spent the walk back to the office admonishing the would-be robber on his morals (what was he doing trying to steal hard earned money?), and his judgement (if he was going to try to rob people, don’t do it in a village of warriors and ninjas for crying out loud). The robber hung his head, as much as he could while being towed by the ear all the way back to the collection office. He was really in for it. Ryusei finished chewing out the wannabe robber, as they approached the collection office. Once inside, Ryusei said… “I got him.” to the official. The official thanked Ryusei for his service, and proceeded to berate the robber for trying to rob poor innocent little villagers, including kids (pointing at Ryusei), the poor, and single parents. The robber slowly dissolved into a blubbering mess, saying that he needed to pay the rent and had no money. This did not help with the official who stated that that was no excuse, [perhaps jail would change his attitude. The poor (literally and metaphorically) robber was hauled off by the other ear by a guard summoned by the official. The guard could be heard fading into the distance, lugging along the robber, chewing him out too, for a third unasked for helping. That robber would be miserable by the time he got into jail. Ryusei laughed out loud at the thought. Then it occurred to him…
The official replied to Ryusei saying that as the mission was not quote – unquote “official”, Ryusei could not be paid for the work he had done, besides, he had enjoyed it right? The night time air, the quiet, the moonlight, the clatter of ghostly hands knocking over buckets in the middle of the darkness… but nope. Ryusei did not enjoy the scenery, he was too tired to care, really. It was painful though to hear that he would not be paid for his troubles though. He took offense. He grumbled sleepily at the official. The official said that he would pay Ryusei if Ryusei could defeat him, the official, in single combat. No killing, just a spar to see who was superior. Ryusei accepted, when the official mentioned money. His nose sniffing the air tentatively for coins, Ryusei had looked skeptical until the official had pulled out his own wallet, and dropped it on the ground between him and Ryusei. Ryusei had needed no further encouragement, and charged forward. Unfortunately he was tired, and did not last long. This referred to the official. The official was soon pressed against the wall by a seething, but sleepy, bundle of rage, which kept making futile grabs in a half conscious state at the money pouch. Eventually, the official landed a surprise attack on Ryusei, knocking him back and stunning him.

Ryusei slowly came to, when a bucket of water was emptied over his face. Sitting up, he shook his head. Was it his imagination or had he slept on the floor of the office all the rest of the way through the night? No, wait. The bright lights were making him think it was the daytime, and it was still dark outside. In fact, only a few minutes had passed since he challenged the official, though he did not know it. He sat up, and the official gave him the bucket. He mindlessly grabbed it and wandered outside. He slowly made it home, only falling over in his semiconscious state 5 times. When he made it back, there were burglars. Today was not his day, at all apparently. The official at the collection office was rather surprised to see Ryusei return, with a burglar in each hand, but still did not give him any money. Ryusei was tempted to fight but was too tired and went back to his apartment. After mindlessly cleaning up all the junk scattered around by the burglars, he cleaned the bathrooms, and fixed the door they had kicked down. This took a good two hours, as even though he was fairly fast, he had a fair amount of work to do.

He flopped down on the bed, ready to sleep. Then he saw the pile of paper he had brought to the library earlier. It seemed at some point he had brought I back, even though he could not remember when. He decided to give it another try. He grabbed a piece of the paper, and, making sure not to run the earth element chakra through his hand and the piece of paper, began focusing. The paper barely reacted, this time less than last time. He groaned, sleepily still, and tossed the paper out the window. Apparently he was still too weak to have a second element. At least he had learned a lot of other jutsu. He walked outside. He decided to practice the jutsu while he was unable to sleep. It was funny, really. He was really, really tired, but he could not sleep, and it was not from apprehension or excitement neither. It was something else, that he could not put his finger on at all. Well, maybe he would figure it out later. Walking into the garden, he found an old tree that was supposed to have been chopped down ages ago that nobody ever got around to. He would fix that tonight. He made the appropriate movement, and then activated the Bedrock Coffin jutsu. Large slabs of earth moved and crushed the small tree beneath their weight. Mission accomplished. Fortunately the bending and snapping had been muffled by the moving earth, so nobody had been disturbed. Then he used the Swamp of the Underworld Technique to bury the remains of the tree, however much he could. He then used the Shadow Clutch technique to move a small pebble and toss it, since it solidified shadow and let him move it around. The last thing he did was to use the Hiding With Camoflauge technique to run up the stairs, and into his room quietly as he could, in an extremely hard to detect manner.


Once inside, he took a deep breath, one, and then another. Today had been a long day. It felt like he had compacted weeks and weeks of training into one long, boring at times, slightly monotonous day. It was a little weird that all the interesting stuff had largely happened at the end of the day, with the exception of the library. Learning about so many powerful jutsu was very fun after all. Ryusei remembered there was one other jutsu that he had wanted to learn though, that was reasonably helpful. Its name was a bit of a misnomer though, it was called “Earth Spear” but it did not actually involve blades of any kind. Instead, it hardened the user’s body. He had learned it earlier from one of his kin, but had not practiced it much, or frankly, at all since the time he spent at the library. He would fix that. Ryusei practiced his Earth Spear jutsu while lying on his bed, and slowly fell asleep, putting a rather late end to his long day.

****************************************
Wc: 20,284
Claiming:
4000/4000 words towards learning: http://naruto-role-play-rpg.forumotion.com/t22919-shadow-clutch-technique
4000/4000 words towards learning: A-rank http://naruto-role-play-rpg.forumotion.com/t22458-v6-shadow-imitation-jutsu
4000/4000 words towards learning: http://naruto-role-play-rpg.forumotion.com/t23973-earth-release-bedrock-coffin
4000/4000 words towards learning: http://naruto-role-play-rpg.forumotion.com/t22615-v6-swamp-of-the-underworld
4000/4000 words towards learning http://naruto-role-play-rpg.forumotion.com/t22725-hiding-with-the-camouflage-technique
284/3000 words towards learning the http://naruto-role-play-rpg.forumotion.com/t22415-v6-earth-release-earth-spear
+101 stats

Side note: the longest training topic I found, wc wise, is:
http://naruto-role-play-rpg.forumotion.com/t3195p20-training-with-sensai-the-race-to-15-000-words?highlight=18k+words
and the longest single post: http://naruto-role-play-rpg.forumotion.com/t20121-an-average-morningmassive-training-private?highlight=kenzo+training (10k words or so)

Noice

(Killing you for breaking my record.)