I Can See Clearly Now the Rain is Gone

Jason’s pale white-violet eyes open abruptly in his wake almost as if he were frightened from a dream.  He breathes deeply, in through his nose and out through his mouth. He wasn’t dreaming this night. It’s just another one of the mornings where his awakenings are sudden rather than slow, making it seem as if he felt he were in danger when, in fact, he knows completely that he is perfectly fine. Well, at least 85% sure.
 
He registers the ceiling as he looks into it and feels the bed below him, the pillow his head is resting on. His heels rest at the bottom edge of the bed while the top of his head taps the wall. He’s too tall for it.
 
“Too lazy to do anything about it though. Not like it’s hindering me from sleeping.” He thinks.
 
Jason sits up and turns so that his legs hang over the wide edge. To his back is the corner of his bedroom. His feet brush the wooden floor and he feels the heat radiating from it, the heat generating panels he invented below beginning to kick in because it’s morning.
 
He stands.
 
“I told myself I would train today.” He tells himself, as he makes his way to his washroom. “And I think it’s about time I learned to use these Byakugan of mine. They’re useless unless I activate them.”
 
----------[30 minutes later]----------
 
Jason leaves his bedroom, having bathed and dressed, and enters his kitchen. He grabs a quick steamed bun before leaving through the main entrance of his house. He straightens his back and brings his hands up to his chin to turn his head left and right, cracking any tired bones. He feels and hears the satisfying series of soft clicks and feels his muscles relax. Deep breath.
 
Jason’s hand brings a small book from his pocket, a booklet he found while exploring his house the night before. Opening it, he rereads it’s contents. Again, he finds in it a dusty diagram of a byakugan with labels, explanations, and, the reason he takes it with him on this training journey, instructions to aid in the activation of the eye.
 
“I remember needing to have good chakra control…” Jason whispers, looking out into the woods in the opposite direction of the Raikage’s office in the distance. He heads out in that direction, making sure not to go too far out. If anyone found him this far out in the woods, he could be accused of attempted escape.
 
Jason finds himself before a wide and tall tree. A medium sized lake is about 70 feet from the area.
 
“I’ve seen other ninja do this with chakra. It must require much control. Perfect for practice.” Jason smiles and takes multiple steps back in preparation to scale the trunk.
 
Chakra accumulates at the soles of his ninja sandals. After just a few seconds of surveying the tree and grasping it’s height, he runs straight towards it. His feet crash into the tree’s bark and his chakra closely tethers the bottom of his sandals to the surface and he climbs as high as he can before his chakra loses strength. Jason, before falling grabs a kunai from one of his ninja pouches and slashes a line through the bark. As he falls back down, he backflips so that his feet face the ground and he lands bending his knees, his arms out wide. He looks up at the tree again, seeing the mark he made only a few meters off of the ground. Gripping his kunai, he runs again at the tree, marking it again only if he makes it past the first one.
 
----------[30 minutes later]----------
 
Many marks decorate the tree, with many scattered around the bottom of the tree while less cover the higher areas.
 
Jason turns to look at the lake to his right. He pulls the handbook from his ninja pouch and puts the kunai way as well.
 
He opens the books and turns to the byakugan page, right after the sharingan’s page. There, on the page after the byakugan’s diagram, are artworks of an unidentifiable man performing multiple stances. The top of the page reads “Gentle Fist Style”.
 
Jason, with a dangerous idea, heads toward the lake to test himself further.
 
At the lake, Jason concentrates chakra at the soles of his sandals and takes a few steps out onto the water. It’s constantly changing nature, requires Jason’s constant attention to chakra flow. Even so, he goes ahead with his task, looking at the book and the stances once more before putting it away.
 
He assumes the same stance as best as he can from memory, slightly sinking below the immediate surface as his concentration splits.
 
“Getting a hang of chakra control is only part of the needed training if I want my byakugan to be of use. Practicing the stances of the Hyuuga clan is necessary as well. And what better way to train than to do both at the same time?”
 
Slowly, as Jason gets the hang of the stances, he alternates between them while he walks upon the surface of the water with his chakra infused sandals.
 
After making multiple laps around the pond with different poses, it’s been at least an hour since he left his home. The steamed bun he ate hasn’t been enough to hold him like he had thought. His stomach whines for him to return to the residential area of the village for food. But he understands that his training isn’t complete. Not yet.
 
Jason looks over at the large tree, the one he attempted to scale when he first arrived in the area.
 
“Once more.” He thinks.
 
Jason, without needing to concentrate on holding himself above the water, walks across the pond and towards the same tree. His eyes gaze at the highest mark, showing the height he could reach in one run up the trunk of the tree. He stands at that side and takes some steps back, chakra accumulating at the soles of his sandals again. Jason brings a kunai from his ninja pouch again, though he probably won’t need it.
 
“I’ve circled that pond.” He reason’s looking over at it through the trees. “This should be easy now.”
 
After taking a deep breath, Jason leans first and then dashes forward, gaining momentum. When he hit’s the tree, his feet are lighter against the bark than before. He doesn’t need as much strength against the tree as before, knowing that the chakra is enough to keep him tethered. He falls into the same track as his former footsteps up the tree and his eyes follow the lower marks as he ascends to the higher ones farther up. His breathing rate increases once he’s reached the middle marks. After reaching the highest slash in the tree, Jason almost cuts a new one in above it, sure that his chakra would weaken and that he would begin to fall again. But he continues farther past it and finds himself in the leaves of the tree. He stops, sits on a branch, and cuts a slash into the tree, though it isn’t necessary. He’s accomplished his goal.
 
Jason jumps down from the tree and puts his kunai into his ninja pouch. As a test for his achievements, he runs begins walking in the direction of his house. As he goes and new trees make up his surroundings, he closes his eyes and activates his byakugan.
 
“Byakugan!” He whispers. The veins by the ends of his eyes become prominent and his eyes begin to strain.
 
He can see everything around him now, the trees around him, a single bird who flies through his 360 degree field of vision, and can dodge trees with his eyes closed as he now runs to his house.
 
Upon making it, he deactivates his byakugan and opens his eyes. His stomach growls once more, reminding him that he still has to eat something.
 

“Training deserves delicious food!” He thinks, heading for the market district and taking his wallet from his pocket. “So, General Tso’s chicken it is!”

[WC: 1354]

[Claiming: Level 1 byakugan and 6 stats]

Approved