It's Lit [Open]

Still wrapped in an all-encompassing cloak of mist, the village of Kirigakure found itself at the dawning of yet another day. Overworked merchants laid out their wares, stalwart fisherman pushed out from the docks, and caring mothers readied their broods for the day to come. Here and there one might spot a shaft of light attempting to pierce through an overcast ceiling of clouds but for the most part the sky remained dark with the threat of rain. Suffice to say it appeared as if it would be another dismal day of the rainy season; a perfect day for any reasonable human being to remain indoors. 

Shinobi, however, were not reasonable human beings in the slightest.

Wearing a gray hoodie with Kirigakure's emblem emblazoned on its back, knee-length black spandex under a pair of equally black sweatpants, and a pair of vaguely white sneakers, Asami Miyamoto wound her way through her home village. With her short hair pulled back into a small ponytail and childish spring in her step, she might very well have passed as a civilian were it not for the yet unmarred headband which hung loosely around her neck and declared to the world her status as a shinobi. It had been three weeks since she'd last been home and even as she navigated through the streets she unconsciously found herself tracing the familiar path to where she knew her mother and father would be waiting.

However, when she finally did come to the familiar street with its nicely aligned houses and well-kept gardens, Asami continued walking. Three weeks ago she had been admitted into a boot camp of sorts meant to harden Kirigakure shinobi should they be called upon to aide Kirigakure's army abroad and she now found herself on her first 'free day'. The conscripts were allowed to do anything on this free day except for see their families. The policy didn't make much sense to the young girl, but she had also seen what happened to her comrades who disobeyed a direct order and she preferred not getting beaten to a pulp. So, instead of following her heart home, she relied on her head and made her way to the ninja academy on the coast.

She soon left the relative hustle and bustle of the village behind and found only silence punctuated by the gentle intermittent sloshing of the sea. This particular branch of the academy had once been a pirate fort, but now its tall stone walls were turned against its former occupants as it guarded against those foolish enough to pilfer the shores of Kirigakure. Another nice aspect of the fort was that people rarely visited it and those who did had no business bothering a small genin. With this in mind, Asami began the first leg of her self-imposed training regime, laps...

Ten times around the fort clockwise and then ten times around counterclockwise.

Oh joy.

[TWC: 486]

These days, a day off in Kirigakure was quite the sight. With the vast majority of her shinobi off in the land of fire, Rakka was one of the very few remaining high-ranking shinobi, and that meant she would see very little in the way of rest. It was a real shame that she wasn’t paid hourly, because the amount of overtime she’d put in over these weeks could have paid for an early retirement. She chuckled at that thought.

A little training regime had been devised for some of the lower ranking Shinobi, in the event that Kirigakure’s forces would need reinforcement. Although she doubted it immensely, Rakka did not really have a say in this endeavor, so she had done what had needed. Many of the other shinobi had requested her specifically for these training exercises, for while Rakka might have been a laughingstock to some in Kirigakure for her alcoholism, there were just as many who feared her for her rage and her prowess with Katon techniques.

There were rumors galore surrounding Rakka. While some thought her nothing more than a drunk and a fraud, among many of the genin, she was feared. It was rumored that she had taken on several students, but all had died in the training exercises. While there was only some semblance of truth to the rumors, Rakka didn’t care enough to correct them. Perhaps she enjoyed the reputation she had, or perhaps she feared what people would think if she explained the truth.

The Yuki woman raised her flask to that. She was sitting upon the walls of an old fortress, drinking her troubles away. She hadn’t really anywhere to go today, because for all the work she had been doing, she was totally broke. She hadn’t a dime to her name, so the bar was out, and that eliminated pretty much all of Rakka’s hobbies, short of training. She’d get around to it eventually, but for now, she was just enjoying the break in the action, resting atop the walls of the fortress. There was but one technique she had any desire to work on today, and that particular jutsu would cause a bit of collateral, more than she would like.

Although she was at least respected for her powerful ninjutsu, there was a bit of an understanding between herself and the village authorities that she was not to use jutsu with high rates of collateral damage within the village walls, and so she had come here, to a remote little fortress used to fight off any invaders. She couldn’t use her Katon, within the village, but like a child bending the rules of a game, she leapt from the tower, until she was resting upon the waters of the sea.

No longer was Rakka inside the walls of the village.

A simple jutsu was what started her training. A warm up, if you will. A simple tiger seal was all she produced, but that was enough to bring forth the flames she desired. Katon was an element that had always come easily to Rakka, easier still then the Yuki Hyoton techniques. She loved the simplicity of it, the power, and the freedom. The raw strength she could bring forth with naught but a single hand seal, the beautiful and terrible flames she called and moulded in her belly were a sight to behold.

In short, Rakka loved fire.

This first jutsu she was practicing was something new, but nothing that she couldn’t handle. Forming a tiger seal, she moulded her katon within her belly, before spitting forth ten darts of Katon, which zipped past her and flew into the sea, sending up jets of steam as water evaporated under the sheer heat. Each dart would fly a considerable distance before meeting its own watery grave, and the steam this technique generated was great, surrounding Rakka and cloaking her in mist, now invisible to any occupants of the fort as the steam floated up into the sky.

Situational awareness had never been Asami's strong suit. One time in the academy she spent a good five minutes talking with her friend Junko before noticing that Kentomoto-sensei had slipped into the room and was waiting to start class. Then, another time, she got to watching old mister Kubo yell at the birds pilfering his garden that she forgot about the pan of eggs right in front of her until the all too familiar smell of burning food hit her nostrils. Maybe it wasn't situational awareness, but rather just a lack of general awareness? One couldn't be too sure, but either way, it should come as no surprise, dear reader, that our young kunoichi did not notice the figure perched far above her head as she made her first lap around the fort's high walls.

The plume of rising steam and hiss of vaporized water?

Well, that was hard to miss and even the oft-oblivious Asami took notice. Rounding the fortress after her first lap, the genin caught a fleeting glimpse of what appeared to be a person standing on the sea before it was swallowed by a billowing cloud of white. This stopped her in her tracks and for a moment she watched the spectacle with bated breath. However, soon her senses returned to the genin and, as the white cloud expanded to its fullest extent, her body moved as if controlled by someone other than herself. 

What little muscle memory and training she had took over.

Slipping back behind the fortress wall she'd just rounded, Asami took stock of the situation. On one hand, she may have stumbled across a Kirigakure shinobi with a strange grudge against the sea. Then, on the other, she might very well be faced with a pirate raid meaning the white cloud was meant to shroud a landing party. The latter, in Asami's opinion, was much more likely than the former After all, who in their right mind attacked the sea?

Though, she had to be sure. So, with a fast increasing heartbeat and sweaty palms, she poked her head out from behind the corner of the fortress and squinted into the steamy mess below. She felt certain that any moment now she'd surely spot a black flag and a crew of unshaven heathens clamoring for the shore...

TWC: 868

[72+ hours, I believe in you Nick!]

The soft winds that normally blew inland from the sea picked up in a sudden violent huff speeding over the island nation in search of umbrellas to steal away from unsuspecting owners. The warm breath of air blew through the young genin's black hair and brought with it the first errant drops of rain that always seemed to assail Kirigakure around this time of day. However, of greater interest to Asami than her now hopelessly frizzy hair, was the clearing of the white cloud that had once obscured what she was now absolutely certain had to be a marauding band of pirates.

After all, what else could the cloud have been other than a smokescreen to cover a landing party?

Black sails and sword-wielding bilge rats, however, never appeared and the genin found her heart rate returning to normal. Instead of the scourage of the seas clamoring up the beach, a female figure came into view standing atop the increasingly turbulent sea. Facing the sea, the figure must have surely seen the large waves summoned by the now howling wind as it continued its quest for any and all objects light enough to be carried off. Having nearly spent as much time on the water as on land, Asami knew the dangers of the sea and how it could overpower even the strongest shinobi and experienced sailor alike. 

The distant female figure?

Well, she clearly had no concept of mother nature's dark side, for she now stood arrogantly in the face of a set of fast building waves that would be all but invisible to the untrained eye until they began breaking right where the female figure now stood. If she did not move soon then she would surely find herself brutalized by nature's liquid haymakers. For her part, Asami—having banished the fear of pirates from her mind—was not going to stand by and watch some old woman get sent to visit Davvy Jones if she could help it. Unfortunately, the genin knew she would not be fast enough to stage an epic rescue, so all she could do was run out from her hiding place and scream into the unrelenting wind in hopes of the figure realizing her peril before it was too late.

"Watch out!" she exclaimed, running to the point overlooking the beach below and extending her index finger towards the sea in warning. "Watch out!"

With her words swallowed by the wind, she would probably only look like a small girl pointing out to the churning sea with a distinct look of alarm.

It was better than nothing, she thought.

TWC: 1304

The plumes of steam around her served to mask the approaching tidal wave that neared Rakka. As soon as she heard it, through, Rakka would raise an eyebrow. Why the hell was there a random tidal wave when the water was calm enough to walk on just moments before? Sometimes mother nature was strange, as if she were left to the whims of a bunch of weaboo kids on some kinda naruto fanfiction site.

Vaguely, Rakka heard a voice calling her to watch out for the massive wave that was careening towards her.
”No shit.” She said under her breath.

She had plenty of tools on her macgyver belt for this, though. She quickly weaved six hand seals, before exhaling a breath of incredibly cold air. The supernatural chill was such that the very sea below Rakka began to freeze over, the surface becoming cold and glassy, like a mirror. When the steam cleared from her prior fuckery with fire, a massive glacier stood before Rakka, the crest of the wave forming this new peak. Snow began to fall, and even though Rakka canceled the technique before things get out of hand, the snow continued to fall.

She stared at the wave for a little while, admiring her handiwork, before looking back towards the owner of the voice that had called out to her. A girl was standing there, apparently concerned for her wellbeing. She just shrugged, retrieving a flask from her coat and taking a drink.

”Where the hell did that come from?” She asked nobody in particular, looking back at the massive, frozen wave.

There is a maxim that any salesman worth his or her salt knows all too well: don't partake in what you make. Mother Nature, however, had probably never heard it as she was clearly high. What had once only been a set of relatively benign waves wrought from a sudden windstorm now coalesced into a giant wave which even the youngest child of Kirigakure would recognize in a frenzied heartbeat, a tsunami. Perhaps a tremor had rocked the ocean floor, maybe an earthquake had devastated the distant Funkagakure or there might even have been a small chance that someone misread another person's post and morphed many waves into a single one. Asami certainly couldn't say with any certainty one way or the other and all she could do was watch.

What she saw, however, defied all the rules of physics and seamanship she had ever learned in her short life. Instead of watching as the giant wave obliterated both her and the woman on the waves, she witnessed an impressive flourish of what she could only assume to be ninjutsu of some sort. After all, waves don't simply turn into ice shelves by themselves. No, as the steam cleared the wavewalker stood at the foot of a tsunami frozen in time like some prehistoric beast. Indeed, the whole feat sent a shiver down the young genin's spine, though it was probably more a result of the white flakes now falling from the sky rather than the woman's almost improbable halting of nature itself.

Well, that just happened.

Scampering down the winding cliffside, Asami made her way onto the beach. As she descended, the adrenaline ebbed from her veins and she found her clothes inadequate for warding off the cold that now permeated the air around her. Small snowflakes nested in her hair before winking out of existence a second or two later and she could see her breath for the first time in her life. By the time she reached the base of the cliff, she had her arms wrapped around herself in a vain attempt to weather the unnatural cold.

When the woman turned around she would find Asami standing at the edge of the sandy beach just out of reach of the now feeble waves. Closer up the weird wave lady looked a bit younger than Asami had initially assumed, but it was clear that she was still a more than a few years older than the genin. This, in Asami's opinion, put the woman in the distinguished category of 'old lady'.

"O-old lady," she called out, cupping her hands around her mouth in hopes of projecting her voice further through the ever-persistent wind. "A-re you alright?"

The cold had clearly gotten to the Kirigakure native; her words fell from her chattering teeth in a mechanical jumble as if they too had been flash frozen. The tropics of Kirigakure were never meant to have such cold weather and it showed in the girl's rosy cheeks.

TWC: 1811

The woman must have been much older than Asami initially thought as a good minute passed and she had yet to respond. A truly strange phenomenon, perhaps the woman had trouble hearing? She couldn't be too sure, but it did remind her of that dark-haired man she'd encountered a few days back. Both seemed to freeze in place as if time had stopped. Maybe there was something more sinister afoot? Yes, surely there was a someone or something causing the people of Kirigakure to freeze in place like statues..or...or like ice. Was this woman the cause of the random freezing of the village's citizens? Asami needed more information, so she waited and waited for the frost woman to respond.

More waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

The frozen wave groaned as if straining under a heavyweight.

Just keep waiting.

TWC: 1947

Well, she had waited long enough; Asami had more important things to do than wait for a geriatric woman to process a few words like continuing her workout and not standing in the shadow of a frozen wave of questionable structural integrity. Both things were much more important at this point. So, giving the woman a shallow yet polite bow, the young genin scampered up the cliffside once more and continued her workout. Hopefully, the woman didn't catch a cold out on the ice, that would be a shame.

Kirigakure was home to some truly bizarre people.

TWC: 2044

[Exit, +10 speed, 1468 of the 2044 words is going towards completing the training of demon lantern, which was started here and the remaining 576 is being put towards dual element convergence putting me at 1406/2000.]

Approved unless interupted.