Learning from the best (IO, valen)13

James wakes up with the dawn, the sunlight reaching the tree that he was sleeping on. He sits up on the limb he had fallen asleep on last night, carefully keeping his balance as to make sure he does not fall off. He stretches and looks around, enjoying the view of nature around him. He takes a few minutes to listen to the sounds of nature around him, to the birds chirping to the morning sun, the sounds of squirrels rushing about, looking for some nuts if James was to guess. One such squirrel climbed up the same tree James was in. James kept absolutely still, watching the squirrel climb around the tree, expertly leaping from tree branch to tree branch. James continues watching with interest, until he sneezes. As soon as he does, the squirrel takes off. James watches as it rushes down the side of the tree, and flees away from the tree James is in. Pretty soon the squirrel is out of sight and James begins to laugh. He jumps down to the ground with a smile on his face and snatches his coat off the tree branch he had hung it on. He shrugs it on and begins his morning run back towards Hoshi.
He finishes up his run thirty minutes later, ending a few meters away from the gate. He joins the morning rush of people going in and out of the city. He puts on his headband on and nods towards the gate guards as he walk past them. As soon as he is in the city proper he unties his headband and reties it around his side, adjusting his coat so that it covers the headband unless someone stands directly in front of him.
He begins the slow trudge through the streets to make his way to the library. After taking the necessary turns, he steps into a street that was not as crowed as the previous streets. In fact, this early morning the streets were empty. Most civilians avoided the streets where ninjas liked to gather, especially where they liked to train. He walks farther down the street, stopping in front of the library. He pauses before walking up the steps into the building. As soon as he enters, the old dust smell of books perpetrates his sense of smell. He deeply breathes in the smell and begins looking around the library.
He walks past the wings of Taijutsu, Weaponry, Genjutsu, Fuinjutsu, Space/Time Jutsu and Medical Technique. He pauses briefly before the Fuinjutsu wing, and shakes his head. 
"Not today, but one day I will learn all I can of Fuinjutsu." James thinks to himself, as he continues his walk towards the Ninjutsu wing.
"Non elemental or elemental today?" James questions himself. He shrugs his shoulders and walks towards the elemental side. He strolls through the aisles, reading off the shelf names, "Earth, Water, Lightning, Wind. Fire."
He steps in front of the aisle marked fire and walks down the aisle, passing E-, D-, and C- ranked jutsu stopping in front of B- ranked Fire Jutsu.
He reads through he scrolls available for him to learn from,  "Fire Release: Demon Lantern, Great Dragon Fire Technique, Flame Whirlwind, Phoenix Sage Flower Nail Crimson, Fire Halberd and Searing Migraine." 
He picks up and reads through all of them. He puts all but Searing Migraine back on the shelf. He walks to the main wing and places the scroll in front of the librarian. The librarian looks up from the book she's reading, and smiles, "Proof dear that you can check out this jutsu scroll. As you well know only those who graduate from the Ninja Academy can check out from here."
He moves his coat open a little, revealing his ninja headband. She nods, points to a different scroll, and states, "Please record your name here, and the scroll is all yours. Please return it within a week as there might be others who wish to check it out."
James records his name on the scroll she pointed to, along with what scroll he had checked out. He grabs the scroll and places the scroll in his pocket and says, "Thank you. Have a nice day."
He turns and walks out of the library. He begins walking towards the training grounds. He follows the simple twists and turns of the streets until he finds his favorite place to train. He steps into the area, and looks around, noting the few trees that were there for people to practice tree climbing, a still pond for surface climbing and those who wish to practice learning water jutsus. He turns his attention to his left where there was an area to practice some serious fire jutsu. The area was in a hole about five meters across, about three feet down, packed with hard dirt so nothing could catch fire, and surrounding the hole so nothing accidentally sailed out of the hole was sandbags that lined the hole- a foot off the edge of the hole.
James walks over to that area, vaults over the sand bags, and looks into the pit. He smiles, as he was the only one there for right now. He removes the scroll from his pocket and opens it up. He reads through the jutsu, reading what it does, how far it can go, how fast it can travel, and how powerful it was. He also makes sure to review the hand seals. 
"Hmm, rat, dog, tiger." James thinks to himself. He closes the scroll up, placing it in his coat pocket. He removes his coat, and places it behind the sandbag barrier. he then stretches his body, rolling his shoulders, popping a few bones, and then cracks his knuckles. 
Before leaping in there, he decides to practice the hand seals, letting himself get used to flowing from one hand seal to the next to the next without making mistakes. He begins with rat, placing his hands in the proper configuration for rat. He places his hands back to normal and then form rat again. He practices the rat hand seal over and over again. After doing a full five minutes of forming the rat seal, he begins practicing the hand seal of dog. He does the same thing he did with rat, forming the hand seal of dog over and over again until he was confident he had the hand seal down. He also practices tiger, but he was use to the hand seal from earlier jutsus he practiced so he did not need to practice as much as the other two hand seals.
He then starts to string the three hand seals together. He starts with rat, and flows to dog. He messes up the position of dog and sighs. He begins again flowing from rat to dog to rat  and then dog again. He practices and practices going from rat to dog until he was confident in his use of those two hand seals. He then practices from dog to tiger, flowing back and forth between the two. After a couple of minutes of practicing that, he begins to do all three at once, flowing from rat to dog to tiger and repeat. He starts slow, making sure his hands and fingers are in the precise location they need to be. As he continues to practice, he moves his hands faster and faster, flowing through smoothly. 
 He stops, nodding to himself, and states, "I think I got the hand seals down. Let's move on to the chakra part of this."
He decides to practice gathering his chakra up. He jumps down into the pit, and sits down on the ground, crossing his legs underneath him. He begins to gather his chakra in his body, focusing it all into one spot. He grins, figuring that he has it.
He then stands up, and does the hand seals, maybe too fast and too imprecise, as he tries to cast the jutsu. He spits out the chakra from his mouth, and nothing happens.
"Why didn't that work?" he asks out loud, frustrated at the fact nothing happened.

[wc 1355]

Arriving at one of the training grounds of the village Valen would stride toward a small pond. The ashen haired teen wanted nothing more than to practice his sword kata’s. Intending to polish off his skills and wanting to ‘break in’ his new arm so to speak. Kenshin had left the village the day prior and Valen had a hell of time organizing and categorizing all of the random christmas stuff that the man had left in his home. It was like Santa Claus exploded a magic bag of crap all over the place and Kenshin just kind of said “Fuck it” and shoved it all into the closet. Considering he had found small christmasy little containers with more stuff in them, two of them having magic bags to keep all of the stuff in. Which, seemed to still not fill them up. Regardless, everything was kept inside of one of the bags which he promptly stored inside of his own storage displacement. The small little pocket dimension that allowed him to store and recall his items as he saw fit. 

The Hogokage’s blade felt heavier lately for some reason. As if a great weight was holding it down in his grip and making it more difficult to wield. He had little doubt it would affect his combat prowess, however it was something he didn’t like the idea of. Later today he also intended to try to learn a new technique he’d been trying to get down. Or rather, finish an old one. His original S rank jutsu, Reflection Zone, could be stronger. He knew it could, he just needed to figure out the missing link to make it that way. It shouldn’t be too hard to do, after all he had a jutsu as strong as Reflection Zone in the first place. How much more powerful could it get? He’d had other ideas for jutsu too, including a blast he could just charge up and fire. As well as finally finishing up his perfected chakra chains technique. He was so close he could almost taste it and when he finally got the technique down, he would become an absolute force of nature on the battlefield. 

The late morning sun was hot in the desert village and the rays beat down mercilessly on those moving throughout it to go about their daily business. Beads of sweat would already for forming on Valen’s forehead as he moved onto the pond, standing on it easily with his surface walking technique. He’d begin to move through kata after kata with his sword on the water, never feeling as if it moved quite properly to him. It all felt too heavy, cumbersome, flawed in some way. He couldn’t figure out why it was either. He’d have to iron that out before long or it could hinder him in combat. In all reality, this entire situation regarding his form being off, or the blade being heavy was all completely in his head. Something the teenage kage would have to work through. 

He had noticed one of his shinobi practicing fire jutsu not too far off in the area designated and designed for such a purpose. The shinobi seemed to be having some trouble now and couldn’t seem to get his fire jutsu to work properly. The kage, deciding that his first priority should be to help the shinobi finish his training to better protect the village would step off the pond and approach the teen. He wasn’t sure if the teen would recognize him as his kage. He wasn’t wearing the robs or the hat, and a lot of shinobi never saw him much due to him being in the office or off doing other business. However Valen would offer help regardless. “Need assistance?” He would ask, his voice flat, eyebrow raised in curiosity. His usual tone of voice when dealing with pretty much anyone other than Hikari or Kenshin. 

WC: 655

As if by some miracle of the gods, or maybe just a huge coincidence, as soon as James asked the question, well almost as soon as he asked the question, someone asked him if he needed assistance. James turns towards the sound of the voice, and notes the man before him. He sees that the guy is near his age. He sees that the guy's hair is ashen colored, and the guy was holding a sword. Other than that, he does not recognize the person before him.

He smiles towards the man, and says, "Ay, I do need some help, I am working on practicing a jutsu, but it seems that I am not yet getting on how this jutsu operates. Any tips you have for me would be great."

"Actually, first I guess I should introduce myself, I am James Terumi. I am a new genin for Hoshi. It is nice to meet you, might I inquire to who you are?" James would ask, trying to appear as friendly as he could. He really needed some help with this jutsu, and appearing friendly could help the guy help him even more, maybe teach him a few things. Or it could have the complete opposite effect if the guy was more about shinobi being serious. James decided that it would be an interesting route if that is how the guy reacts to him being friendly.

His madness whispers in him to ignore the offer of assistance, to not become indebted to anybody, to forge his own path, one that does not involve relying on anyone. He would ignore what the voice of madness said, just because it was wrong. While listening for the guy's response, he would shoot back a thought to the madness, "The human experience required interacting with other people, to grow, to learn, to live."
The madness would respond with, "Better to be monster than man. Monsters are strong, while men are weak and will always stumble in the end. What I offer you is a gift, not a curse, young one."
James turns his attention away from the madness bubbling up in his head. He found it best to ignore it when it wanted him to abandon everything that made up being a human. He also hoped that one day it would disappear for good, but James realized that the chances of that happening by itself was not likely. 

"Of course, I could always embrace the darkness inside me. Allow it to take over me and let it out for a spin. It would almost be too much fun." James thought to himself. He was surprised at that thought and wondered where it had come from. He decided not to dwell on that thought too much. In the echoes of his mind, he could hear the madness chuckling inside of him. He internally shrugs off the madness, and the madness descends back into the depths of his mind, waiting for the day that James slips, and allows itself to take control of the mind.

He would turn his gaze back towards the guy, waiting for his reply to come. If it already had been delievered, James would mentally review what had been said. For although he was thinking, he was also letting his body listen, and hear what they guy said, so that James would be able to answer fully. He didn't want to appear rude by asking the guy to repeat himself. If he had not responded yet, since the conversation between himself and his madness had been fast, James would wait until to further question the guy until the guy had introduced himself.

[wc 609]
[twc 1964]

The teen would indeed request assistance, and give his name while asking Valen for his own. ‘James hm, one of my newer genin if I recall.’ He would think as he considered his options on responding. ‘If I tell him my name he could get nervous and screw his training up. It’s also best so he doesn’t get a big head. I’m not taking him as an apprentice or anything. He’ll find out who I am soon enough.’ He would think, nodding his head as if to take the teen’s name to memory. “My name is my own business James, perhaps if you impress me today I’ll tell it to you. Don’t get your hopes up however.” He would say before sheathing his sword and folding his arms over his chest. “Given the area you chose to train in I’m assuming you’re wanting to do a fire jutsu. Although I will go ahead and ask what you’re training in particular.” He would say, his gray eyes cold, calculating as he took in James’ general appearance. He didn’t seem particularly powerful, however he could be wrong and the genin Valen’s own age might be a hidden gem. 

A dark chuckle would enter his mind, a sound he hadn’t heard since the Kage Summit. ‘So you’ve returned to being your old talkative self then Gobi?’ He would ask simply, a mental eyebrow raised in curiosity. The beasts voice would echo throughout his head, speaking in a deep, almost melodious voice. ‘Only wondering if you’ll kill this one too my prison.’ He would say, referring to Valen as his place of captivity. He supposed he couldn’t argue with that logic either. Valen was his prison after all, and only one other person in the village knew that secret. That would of course be none other than Hikari Namikaze. A woman he desperately needed to speak with when she returned from Konoha. Despite how much the idea of that conversation concerned him. He had no trouble admitting that he was worried about how the conversation would go. He’d have to be honest with her about what he had done at the summit. The cold blooded killing of Kotetsu could not be hidden. The abandonment of Kenshin Uzumaki, The ‘Ragdoll of Hoshigakure’ could not be simply brushed over either. He wondered if she would abandon the village as Kenshin had. If she would take it further, and abandon him as well. The thought terrified him. 

The Gobi’s chuckle would resonate through the teen once more as his mind set him down the path of internal suffering. It’s ploy to bring it’s container to the brink beginning as it patiently waited. It had all the time in the world after all. It would have it’s freedom one day. It might even come sooner if the blonde girl that it’s container loved rejected him for his crimes. She’d probably be hurt emotionally too. That meant both the prison, and the one who put a beast as noble as it into such confinement would both suffer. It was something the beast was looking forward to a great deal.

WC: 520
TWC: 1175

If he wasn't going to respond to him, Valen would simply leave. He had better things to do than wait for someone who clearly didn't want to speak to talk. He'd turn and teleport away to his office without a word.

[Exit]

Claiming: 1175 words toward Dismissal of Dawn

Approved.