A Lesson in Swords (P/Solo)

Kyo walked out of his house with his training gear and usual training outfit on. It was a bright red hoddie, a black tank top, and a pair of bright red shorts to match his red hoodie. He let his hood sag behind him as he walked towards the forest to train as his spiky, blonde hair swayed with the breeze. This time, he had a new weapon on his back. It was a konoha katana from the ninja shop in a sheathe on his back. He sparred nothing in his attempts to grow stronger than before everyday. The katana was quite long, being a meter long and only half an inch wide. The blade was sharp enough to cut through paper and using the katana was sure to bring him the close range offense he lacked.

Today, he planned to learn a technique stuck at the top of his list for a long time. It was the great fire annihilation technique, a technique where you shoot as much fire as possible from your mouth in a massive cone. This was many, many ranks above the weaker variant he had of this technique, fire style: fire stream, but Kyo was still itching for the challenge of it all. He walked towards his usual training spot thinking about everything along the way as he made his way across the path.

Kyo thought to himself. I wonder what's next for me? I have two friends now, a lava style, and an earth style technique under my belt. It feels as though my chakra network is straining as it tries to keep up with all these high level techniques. To adjust my flow for each one of them can take a toll on my chakra network and now it makes sense why my chakra is so vast. Keeping up with all these techniques already can be a bit difficult. Every new technique seems to cause me to get rusty on some old techniques. It feels as though I can only handle two more of these high ranking techniques and stepping farther might do more harm than good. After great fire annihilation, I probably should only learn one more high level jutsu to keep myself focused on improving what I already know. After great fire annihilation, I really do wonder what I will learn next. Reo only left water and boil techniques within my journal of his teachings meaning the road ahead is quite cloudy now. There is also the drastic possibility to learn a whole new specialty, but, surely, at this level that would be much too hard for me and probably cause me to become weak in ninjutsu. My chakra network is only so flexible to new techniques at this stage. Learning many more sounds like hell in itself.

After thinking about everything for awhile, he continued to head to the clearing before suddenly being thrown to the ground and having his own katana pointed to his neck.
"You're weak still for a ninja of konoha. Had I had an intent to kill you, you would have been lost into tiny little pieces..."
The cloaked man wearing a combination of red and green all over his body looked to Kyo with his sapphire colored eyes. Everything on the man was covered except for his eyes and half of his nose and forehead. It appeared as though this man also had an assortment of weapons all over him ready to strike with. Kyo looked at the man wondering what kind of move he could make with a helpless feeling before the man gave him a hand to help him up and removed the katana aimed for his throat.
"...I'm Yuuto, a training instructor for rising stars in bukijutsu and taijutsu. I was wondering around the forest and saw a kid dazing off with a katana on his back. If you're out here to train, come with me. Consider your katana mine until the training is over."
Yuuto seemed to be considerably blunt and Kyo was still skeptical. This guy could be lying through his teeth, but his name still sounded familiar from an advertisement he saw somewhere. He had to believe Yuuto, he thought. This guy was far stronger than he was physically and he believed he could benefit greatly from it. Also, what existed here was a question every village ninja must ask. At what point can you say that a person you encounter is evil or not? If Kyo killed Yuuto where he stood and found out that Yuuto had been telling the truth, then Kyo would be no better than a missing ninja. Putting stupid thoughts aside, Kyo decided to outstretch a hand for the weaponry teacher to shake.
"My name is Kyo Terumi, Genin of Konhagakure. Any wisdom you have to share on bukijutsu, please train me on. I have no experience with my katana and just got it today. I would be deeply indebted if you could-"
Yuuto interrupted him and firmly shook Kyo's hand with an iron grip Kyo had never felt before.
"Cut the shit kid. You aren't winning any medals from me. I'm going to teach you whether you like it or not. Ninja these days get out of the academy and don't know shit about what to do or how to train. This is for konoha primarily and secondarily to your benefit. This first lesson is free, but the others are gonna cost 2,000 ryo a pop for 5 hours of training no breaks."
Kyo didn't exactly know what he was expecting. The man had been blunt enough to appear as though he was going to kill him before and now he was even more blunt. His actions appeared to show his motive was just and helpful, but the execution was a bit... hard to get used to. As Kyo followed Yuuto over to another part of the woods, he began to feel uneasy about the training.
"Mr. Yuuto sir-"
Yuuto interrupted once more and cut off Kyo before he could speak in a rather calm manner.
"Just call me Yuuto."
Kyo felt like Yuuto's bitch, but given the circumstances of how Yuuto nearly killed him in a flash, it was very understandable. The genin cleared his throat and tried to speak up to show Yuuto he had a fighting spirit in him.
"...I don't specialize in weaponry. I'm actually more of a ninjutsu guy, so don't expect me to be able to do high level techniques."
With this, Yuuto came to a sudden stop before a clearing in the woods and turned around to see Kyo halting to a stop without any grace within himself. The genin looked up to Yuuto feeling a slight bit of unease before his instructor started chuckling.
"I'm glad you told me that, Kyo. Do you believe you have a large amount of chakra within you boy?"
Kyo looked while hesitating for a bit before proudly nodding.
"Yes, it's what I pride myself on."
Yuuto looked to him for a second before pointing over to the clearing behind him for Kyo to follow to. The genin walked into the clearing with Yuuto worried about his response ever so slightly. After they made it to the center of the clearing, Yuuto turned back around and broke the silence.
"Weave the tiger hand seal."
It was a bit of a shock to be asked this, but Kyo did anyway as quickly and precise as he could. Yuuto took one look and shook his head to cause Kyo to get angry all over on his insides.
"Just as I thought. When you weave hand seals like that mess. How do you expect to defend yourself? If I cut your arm off right here, you wouldn't be able to weave any hand seals correct?"
Kyo gave a frustrated sigh as he tried to respect his instructor.
"Yes, but-"
Yuuto, once more, interrupted Kyo quickly and shut Kyo down. Inside, Kyo wanted to beat the living hell out of Yuuto for talking down to him this whole time. He knew he was strong and this instructor wouldn't tell him otherwise.
"Shush. I will first teach you the skill you need to possess to go down the path you want. You must learn how to weave hand seals with just one hand before I can teach you how to wield a sword in the other. A bit of a warning, the highest level techniques, rated S-rank, muster so much chakra that I doubt you would be able to weave them with just one hand. Also, A-rank jutsu require the seal of confrontation at the end of the hand seals. You must try to find balance and control through just one hand weaving your chakra into the right directions. I will sit and read some manga as you do this. You also will not get your katana back until you have mastered this skill. I expect silence from here on."
Now Kyo really felt the man was delusional. Yuuto threw him a slip of paper and Kyo felt like asking many questions about this strange and unheard of technique. This broke everything he knew about jutsu and how to cast them. Being able to find the balance and control on just one hand would make everything much more strenuous for him. Still, Kyo kept the silence as he knew he was probably just going to get interrupted again anyway. Unfolding the slip of paper, he saw a list of many different one handed hand seals and instantly got lost into it. From his studies in theoretical ninjutsu at the academy and the studies of the chakra network at the academy, he began to realize that this would be possible and not cost any more chakra than needed. This was a trick he couldn't believe existed and, to say the least, this was immeasurably impressive to him.

Kyo began to practice forming each of the one handed hand seals and began to really delve deep into how he could deconstruct the jutsu to require only one hand seal. He started off small and went over this bizarre theory mentally. He would have to be considerably precise in his hand seals and have a great understanding of chakra control to be able to preform this feat. This would be quite a task for him and one that required lots of focus. He started small, going all the way back to the transformation technique he graduated the academy with. He weaved the half dog hand seal and recalculated his chakra to be portioned out for the jutsu in the same way he had practice numerous amounts of times. The first attempt went badly, he had put too much chakra into the technique. The second attempt, he hardly put any into the technique. Many attempts later at just the first hand seal, he felt his chakra network clicking into place and got adjusted to what it was like to control it through just one hand. The fire stream technique used just a half tiger hand seal, so he used this mentally as a reference to how to preform this technique. Through just his right hand, he weaved the half dog, half boar, and half ram hand seals and felt the flow was just right. In an instant, he appeared as though he was Yuuto. The whole process began to make more and more sense to him.

He gave a sharp smile to his instructor before finding a determination within him to learn this game breaking ability. Looking at his right hand, he found power within it to push above and beyond. It wouldn't be any sort of trouble on his left hand either since he was trained to be ambidextrous. Kyo pushed his limits and moved onto his more powerful techniques as he got adjusted to the portioning and control of chakra through just one hand. Weaving the half tiger hand seal, he mentally got himself set up for the great dragon flame technique. He focused forwards, getting lost in the half tiger hand seal until he felt it almost click mentally once more. Sure it was a bit awkward still, but he was already getting mildly good with this skill. He shot out a great dragon mouth from his lips and into the grassy ground of the clearing. It shot through the ground and burned a whole downwards until ceasing to exist. Kyo thought it would just dispel on the ground. He had no idea this technique was that powerful. After preforming that technique, he made no haste to move onto swamp of the underworld. He weaved the half boar, and half tiger hand seals finding it mentally clicking on the first time. It appeared as though portioning out a massive amount of chakra used for this technique wasn't too challenging for just one hand. A swamp appeared above the whole he created and the terrain shifted to allow the swamp to fill in the hole. He then ended the technique to show the hole was now covered by earth from his swamp. Looking over at Yuuto, he smiled and was about to speak before getting interrupted once more. It appeared as though Hart Meijin had been watching this whole time with a shiny headband on his forehead.
"Hey Kyo. I haven't seen you around for a bit and saw you out here effortlessly casting swamp of the underworld with just one hand. You have come a long way since we last saw each other, but so have I!"
Hart, an academy student he met at another time, was smiling at him as Yuuto was standing up and eyeing the two of them up.
"Hart was it? I'm Yuuto, Kyo's training instructor for today. You can watch, but your body is like spaghetti. If you ever want a lesson, come to me when you feel you are a fulfilled Genin so I can break that idea down to you as nothing more than just a lie."
Hart looked at him awkwardly as Yuuto threw Kyo's katana into Kyo's hands hilt first. A bit dazed, Kyo grabbed the katana and waved at Hart before Yuuto walked up to him and stopped him from speaking.
"I want silence. This is on my time and I don't have time for reunions. Kyo, you have proven you can use one handed hand seals, so now prove yourself with your katana. I will teach you the very basic technique, the quick draw technique. You will quickly draw your sword and slice in front of you while enhancing the action through chakra. This is a low level technique, but a good start..."
Kyo nodded as Hart frowned and took a seat. Yuuto peered at Kyo with a straight, solemn face of a 40 year old before continuing his lengthy ramble.
"...you must remember the most important lesson anyone will tell you. Even if you know this, I must reinforce it until its ingrained in your head. This enhances your body as you use it and having two body enhancers at once will result in your body failing on you and result in death. Jutsu that enhance your body should not be used alongside this technique. Got it?"
He had already heard that rule dozens of times before, but now it seemed much more serious than before. If he used soul expulsion and quick draw, he would be able to swing at incredible speeds, but at the cost of his life. Kyo had to be wary of this, he knew this.
"I got it, but what are the hand seals for this technique?"
Yuuto just looked at Kyo completely amused as he awaited Kyo to understand what was wrong with that sentence. After a few seconds of silence, Kyo looked at him lost in confusion before receiving a pat on his right shoulder.
"There are no hand seals. Today you are stepping down from two, to one, to zero. This isn't me teaching you how to cast a jutsu without hand seals, but, instead, its me teaching you a technique that doesn't require hand seals in the first place. Note this."
Kyo nodded while he held his katana in his hands the way he had been taught to. Yuuto looked down at this and swiped the katana from Kyo's hands with ease. It was then an overwhelming amount of frustration took place inside of Kyo, but he restrained himself and kept silent as Yuuto took a glance back at him before looking forwards at a small tree before him.
"This is the quick draw technique at work."
Kyo didn't even blink as Yuuto reached for sword sheathed and then suddenly put it back into the sheathe. As it slid back, the tree fell over as it was cut in half from his katana. Yuuto then looked over at Kyo and started to laugh.
"Okay, okay. I couldn't resist. I will slow it down for you. First grab your sheathed sword, pull it out with chakra enhancing your movements, and then slice forwards. I have trained my body to be so fast that most people don't even see my strikes, so I will have to demonstrate again."
Yuuto grabbed the sheathed katana and stroked it forwards with precision and passion. This time it was slow enough for Kyo to see happening, but it was mildly difficult to see still. Hart, appearing to have walked up to them, looked a bit confused.
"Why do you keep messing around with unsheathing and sheathing the katana? It seems pointless."
Yuuto gave a smile and patted Hart on the head as Hart saw a small tree cut to pieces. Hart's eyes widened with fear and wonder as it appeared as though he was realizing how fast the cuts were.
"You need to train your body boy. I keep telling you this, but I also keep telling you to keep quiet so I can teach Kyo. By the way, Kyo, you should start practicing this technique. It will be awkward at first for you as you are probably only used to ninjutsu, but I'm sure you can get it."
His instructor ended by looking right at Kyo as Hart walked away a bit disheartened by the power he saw before him. Kyo kept the silence Yuuto craved as a sign of respect for the instructor who taught him these great lessons on bukijutsu and ninjutsu. Taking his katana back for a second time, he placed it sheathed onto his back, strapped on, and walked over to a large tree. In the background, Yuuto walked over to the disheartened Hart and seemed to be teaching him lessons of his own. Yuuto, to Kyo in the end, appeared to be a great man that become blunt from age and experience. The whole training session appeared to be very unique and worth wild to Kyo. 

Looking over at a large tree, he grimaced at it and focused the rage he had inside of himself from Yuuto, he focused on his chakra network as he gripped the handle of his katana and found a peace within himself as he focused on himself. Learning a weaponry technique would be quite difficult for him as he had never even touched upon it. It seemed to be an advanced version of taijutsu to him as it all relied on body enhancing. He focused on enhancing his arm and imagined the motion of slicing before him with the katana. He had to step into a whole new area of jutsu and this required that he completely change the way he thought about chakra entirely. Gripping his katana tightly, he focused on empowering his arms for the motion of slicing into the tree. He poured all he could into them before going out and causing his muscles to cramp up before he could hit the tree. Kyo had overdone this quite a bit and felt his muscles hurting from the technique as he bit his lip and dropped his katana. While he was surely making progress, he felt as though running chakra through his body could very well kill him if he wasn't careful. It appeared to be a trend with a lot of techniques that he learnt. Every single one of them seemed to be capable of killing him as he learnt, but learning them made it all the more deadly. With a focused stare, he picked up the katana and massaged his muscles before re-sheathing it.

"Here I go," he whispered to himself before looking at the tree as if it were that death guy that tried to kill him. 

His rage flared up and he focused on leaking through enough chakra into his muscles to make this technique possible. As Yuuto was focusing on Hart, he would focus on mastering this new technique. Kyo drew out his sword feeling as though his muscles were far stronger than before and as though he was considerably quicker. He slashed forwards against the tree only to find he had cut right through half of it with his swing. Kyo felt a bit relived after seeing it cut, but knew this was a one time deal. Doing this consistently would require a calm mind and a lot more practice, but he did find the technique to be a low enough level to not mess up his chakra network to be more tuned towards weaponry than ninjutsu. Once more, he re-sheathed his sword and imagined Reo watching him with pride. It was funny, he could almost feel Reo staring at him and congratulating him for how far he had come. In the afterlife, he thought, maybe Reo was really trying to reach out to say these very words, but that wasn't up to him to decide upon. Someday, he might too find a jutsu to talk to Reo and visit him in the afterlife, but that was far from him at this point. Nothing he had learned came close to the power to see the dead.

Getting back on track, he felt a great warmth flood over him as he drew the katana and swiped the tree in half in one go. It was mesmerizing to him to see such an act from his own hands. Quickly, he jumped up and kicked the tree towards a direction it could fall safely instead of a direction where it would fall into the clearing. With a crackling sound, the tree fell and he felt two hands on his shoulders after he landed. One was smaller, belonging to Hart. The other was a bigger hand, he knew to be his instructor's.
"Lesson is over kiddo. You can do training with me from now on for 1,000 ryo for 5 hours. Kyo, you're a rising star in this stuff. It could be experience, but you just preformed the technique perfectly with that last slice. Keep practicing and come to me when you want to push this power of your farther. Gonna head out for now."
Yuuto outstretched his arms and enveloped Kyo in a great big hug before saluting Kyo. Hart was about to give Kyo a hug, but Kyo interrupted this to thank his instructor for what he had been taught today.
"Yuuto, thank you. This training gave me some of the most important skills I have learnt. You will see me around."
His instructor gave a grand smile before turning away to hide it. He gave a thumbs up to Kyo before vanishing with a gush of air. The speed his instructor presented was far beyond what he had seen before, but this time around he swore he could see a little bit more of the instructor's movements than before. As Kyo gave Hart a hug, he got a grand smile and ensured his sword was sheathed on his back. After a second or two, he released the hug as Hart spoke to him.
"Can you train me, Kyo?"
Kyo smiled a grand smile before nodding.

[WC: 4,002]
[Training Complete]
20 Stat Points Gained
One-Handed Handseals learnt (2,000/2,000)
Battojutsu: Quickdraw learnt (2,000/2,000)
2 words donated to the chat box and its mysteries
[Exit]

~Completion bump

Approved