Road to the Jounin Exams

                With his name finally tossed into the cup for the jounin exams it was time to work hard, harder than usual anyway and time to learn some new jutsu. Grabbing the scroll for the day’s lesson and some his bag, along with whatever other necessities the day would require the ninja headed out of the door and into the great desert land known as the hidden sand. No matter how often Ryu had thought there was too much heat or too much sun, he still exited his home every day smiling, only complaining after doing some training which would cause him to sweat out gallons of water that the ninja would have to replenish. At least water wasn’t hard to come by, if you knew where to find it. Of course if you were from the sand you were taught how to locate water at the academy, as on missions your water supply would be low and you’d have to find a way to locate it on your own. There were methods like opening a cactus, which retained moisture even in the blistering heat or something about camels storing water in their humps. There were also other methods, none of which Ryu had needed to use as of yet. As so far Ryu had been pretty contained within the village he had never really wandered its outskirts except for the time he had gone in search of the phoenix. Even that time though at most the ninja had only traveled so far and was able to return at any moment. The prospect of going even further than that was intimidating to a ninja who had only recently become a genin. Though there were fears and reservations about going to take the exams, Ryu was very confident he would do well.
As the ninjas mind stayed with the exams his brain brought up a previous conversation. The memory was still fresh, so it was quite clear and full of detail. The memory in particular was about when Ryu told his parents of the upcoming exams. The ninja brought it up over dinner when his father asked him about his day. Before Ryu had answered though he took a drink of water and another bite of food. If the ninja answered too quickly he may not be able to enjoy his food while it was warm and instead would have to wait as any arguments his parents had about his attending the jounin exams finished. When finally the ninja worked up the courage to tell his parents there was a slight raise in their eyebrows, but to Ryu’s surprise there was little argument or protest from either parent. The rest of the dinner though was ominously silent though for the rest of the day.

As the ninja thought and thought about things that had happened he continued moving his feet as he had to go to some places before heading directly to the training field. He had to pick up a scroll for his training and grab some extra dummies from the armory that he would use for the days training there would be a lot of work to do during the day. Ryu decided to grab the scroll first as the armory for dummies was closer to the training fields. As the ninja approached the entrance of the academy he waved to some people he had met before and continued inside to the library where they kept scrolls on non-secret jutsu. There was only one secret technique the ninja had learned actually, the extremely steaming murder, he had another scroll for a jutsu that combined them, but that one was too complicated to learn. Walking through the sections on ninjutsu the genin knew what he was looking for, a jutsu that could increase his speed, chakra or strength. He picked up two scrolls one called the fire halberd and the other known as the wind glaive. Both had similar effects one increased the users strength and chakra, while the other raised speed and chakra. Choosing between the two seemed difficult so he sat them both down and thought of what was his style. For fire halberd while an increase in strength was useful, it wasn’t necessary Ryu was not a taijutsu user, he knew some things not enough to be called an expert though. While on the other hand wind glaive added additional chakra to his already vast pool. Is it better to be good at somethings and bad in others, than to only be okay in all? Reaching out his hand Ryu picked up the scroll for fire halberd and returned it. He then grabbed wind glaive and brought it to the librarian. He returned any scrolls he borrowed the day before for his taijutsu training and took the new scroll with him.

With that part of the day’s things taken care of the ninja was ready to go get his dummies that would get smacked around by, wind glaive enhanced rasengans and murder orbs or whatever else Ryu decided to throw at them. When Ryu arrived at the armory there was jounin waiting for him, the man opened the door as Ryu identified himself and let the ninja take his ten dummies out. Of course dragging ten dummies all of different make would be difficult so Ryu just began setting the dummies up outside of the armory. As Ryu began setting the first one up it seemed to be made of a durable and heavy metal he had two others just like this one that needed set up, the jounin said these ones would also need to go into a recycling pile after it was finished being used. There were also three dummies made of stone, with all of the appendages connected by metal wire. Finally the other four dummies were made out of some brown substance (wood), which Ryu had never seen before. It was smooth to the touch and smelled oddly. What is this made out of?
 
                No longer really caring what the substance was and deciding to just destroy it when he had finally learned how to use wind glaive. Ryu opened the scroll and read about how to use the jutsu, apparently you channel wind chakra through your body and your muscles grow more defined and your skin gets pale. With his first attempt at the jutsu ready the ninja took his shirt off it would be harder to tell with a shirt on whether or not the jutsu was successful. This use of chakra was different for the ninja, usually when it came to using chakra it would be expelled in some form from outside of his body, whether they were fireballs, wind bullets or even the rasengan. This time though the purpose was to keep the chakra within and use it as a resource to empower your body to go beyond the human bodies limitations. Ryu began channeling his chakra which began to leak from his body as expected for someone who had never done something like this before. The genin ended the flow of chakra and let the wasted energy dispel into the surrounding air. “Once more.” The genin said, but it would take a lot more than another try to be able to use this jutsu. With a small ripple through Ryu’s arm it seemed that the jutsu had started to work, but it seemed the effects were not evenly spread and would just move through the ninja’s system instead of flowing throughout the body at once it seemed as if it would start to flow in one area and then move to another. Halting the chakra flow it was time to start the technique once more. It seemed just this jutsu alone would take hours and that is without the training Ryu wanted to do, where he used the jutsu in combat. With another attempt and another failure Ryu had run out of chakra before even mid-day. The chakra took its toll on the body quickly as the output of energy needed to sustain the technique was constant. The longest he had held the technique during the day was about five minutes and that was what finally tired him out. At least the chakra no longer leaked from the outside of Ryu’s body now though.
               
                With all of the improvements made to the technique done it was time for lunch, Ryu didn’t really care where or what he ate at the moment as long as it was food and would give him energy. Luckily he had packed some things the day before like energy bars. He took off the wrapper from the bar before starting to chew the bitter tasting bar slowly, hating the taste in his mouth every second. Ugh, bitter the opposite of sweet. Why do people even like these, they taste terrible. If I had to pick between eating this or not having sweets for an entire month I’d not eat sweets for a month. He definitely would have eaten the bar instead of giving sweets if the question were legitimate. Walking over to the trash can the ninja placed his garbage into the bag then laid down on the ground to let the bar do its thing. There was no effect from the bar within five minutes, but Ryu’s chakra had started to slowly come back. The return of chakra was natural though, it was returning at the rate it always did and soon it would be back entirely. With nothing left to do but twiddle his thumbs that exactly what Ryu began to do. Within a moment of starting to twiddle the ninja’s energy went from twenty to ninety and he shot up ready to use wind glaive again, with a deep breath Ryu began to move the air around his body which made his muscles bulge and his skin to take on a lighter shade of brown.
 
Moving forward seemed easier as if the wind wasn’t holding him back and he could run to his heart’s content. Punches and kicks also traveled to through the air more smoothly, with the extreme speed Ryu was moving at he attempted to use dynamic entry on one of the stone dummies causing it to fall over, because of the speed. While using the wind glaive the ninja began to produce scorch orbs, which added in all of the extra power of the jutsu resulting in stronger looking scorch orbs. The ninja sent the orbs flying towards metal dummy in an effort to take it out, but it had little effect due to the lack of water. Making some more orbs which floated and spun around the ninja he aimed them at one of the wooden dummies as the orb touched the wood began to wrinkle as all of the water within began evaporate and within seconds the dummy had become a dried husk. The item couldn’t withstand the evaporation process and now was just a flakey dried piece of wooden jerky. Particles of dummy began to fly off into the wind after the orb had done its job. Walking toward the disheveled object the ninja put his hand clear through it destroying what little shape the thing had retained, thus scattering charred wood flakes into the sand below. The jutsu was still flooding his system with wind chakra, but it seemed to be taking its toll on the ninja’s energy if he didn’t move quickly it would all run out before he even had a chance to finish everything he wanted. Which kind of sucks when you are using a jutsu to raise your speed, but still aren’t fast enough. Maybe if Ryu could perform a rasengan quickly and use it he could destroy the dummy and then end the wind glaive jutsu. Forming at rasengan with the additional power like the orbs Ryu dashed forward striking one of the metal ones where the chest would be. The metal warped around the chakra ball before being launched away and began to bang over the ground until it stopped. With this dummy down the wind glaive needed to go on break before starting again.
 
                The wind glaive really knew how to take the wind out of someone or was it in them? It was already the second time in the training that Ryu had to take a breather and just sit waiting for the moment he could do something again. Taijutsu wasn’t a problem when it came to regaining energy. Ryu could replenish his stamina he didn’t have to sit and take a break. Facing one of the wooden dummies Ryu went to work on it. He started with a punch to the dummies mid-section followed by a swift knee to the groin, then an elbow to the head, followed by some punches to the stomach. To any taijutsu expert it probably just looked like some random kid playing around, but the face the ninja wore was serious he had little time to learn and get better. There were many things that the ninja needed to train in before heading to the leaf village. Ryu never ended his assault not even as his knuckles began to hurt and the pain began to ache through his body. Ryu continued the same attack flow a punch to the dummies mid-section followed by a swift knee to the groin, then an elbow to the head, followed by some punches to the stomach, before finally done with his little taijutsu session.
 
                Ryu sat on the ground just looking up to the sky hoping soon his stamina would return and he could continue to smash the remaining eight dummies. The pressure of accomplishing the jutsu was high there was so much riding on this technique alone. Most ninja that would be in the exams had already learned jutsu similar to or better than the one he was learning, if he could just master this it would bring him if only a little closer to the chuunin entering the exams. I wonder if Salzem is entering the jounin exams. If he is I’m going to surprise him with all of the ninjutsu skills I have, I think he’s only seen me use a few of them so far. I have the great fireball shower and extremely steaming murder, which should come in handy. I also wonder if anyone else from our village entered their names and how many other genin there will be. I mean there couldn’t be many as crazy as Ryu that would enter as genin. Wadding up a paper ball the ninja began to toss it into the air and catch it on the way down. He continued to toss the ball up and, up and down, until his body told him that it was ready to go again. With a clap a gust of wind shot from the ninja’s hand and sent the paper flying in another direction. Ryu clutched his fists together making sure everything was set to go, he was ready to get started once more.
 
                Ryu activated the wind glaive once more and began to form another rasengan, this one was slightly bigger than the ones he usually made, probably a result of the extra chakra flowing through his body. Ryu thrusted the sphere into the head of the stone forcing the stone to crack until finally the stone went spiraling away crash landing around the area the metal dummy was. Ryu sprinted towards the head at maximum speed retrieving the thing and then turning quickly sprinted back toward the stone dummy and placed the head back on top of it. Next Ryu looked at the wooden dummy and shot a dragon flame bullet at it the bullets power carried the dummy some distance away and the ninja watched as the thing smoldered, sprinting towards this dummy Ryu clapped his hands releasing another gust of wind and feeding the flames within side the dummy causing it to burn brighter briefly before going out. Ryu kicked around the ashes looking for any burnable piece of wood, the more ash the stronger the technique so the fact that Ryu found none was a good testament to his growing strength. There were only six un-touched statues at this point all of which would be destroyed by the end of the training. Forming another rasengan Ryu ran at the destroyed metal dummy before running back and attacking at the metal legs of a different one. What the ninja had started to notice is that different things would happen depending on where the chakra ball was aimed, like striking the neck could cause the head to fall off, while attacking the feet blew off a leg and left the rest there while the limb went spinning away. Forming some extremely steaming murder orbs Ryu sent three at one of the wooden dummies and the other two to the other wooden one, destroying both all at once. They steamed up and the resulting smell was not a pleasant one by any standards. At least with a use of the leaf whirlwind the dummies and their smell dispersed leaving only three dummies standing. Using seals for the crimson earth spider the ninja had it attack the stone dummy with the messed up head the spider slammed the golem knocking it over, causing the head to roll briefly. With another rasenan Ryu attacked one of the metal dummies and watched as it flund backwards landing on top of the other. By this point though with only two dummies remaining he was out of chakra and it seemed the technique had been grasped.
 

                Ryu drug the metal dummies and the remaining stone one to the jounin. The man thanked Ryu and the ninja went about whatever it was he was doing. Walking away the ninja left the training grounds and headed into the direction of his home. With a smile the ninja walked thinking of all of the food he could eat once he had gotten there.


WC: 3001
Claiming Rewards: (Wind Release: Wind Glaive and 30AP)