A day off

The night had ended, the moon faded back into obscurity for the next dozen hours. The sun had risen and was making its way to the zenith of its daily journey, at least to the perspective of Ryu. The previous weeks and days had been chaotic, every minute taken up by training, missions or life and death fights. Ryuzaki was taking a rare day off, he had slept a few hours more than he would of normally. Ryuzaki awoke and prepared himself for the day, bathing and dressing, he wore his usual garb, sandals on his feet that covered the wrappings that wound around his legs and up past his knees until they tucked into compression shorts, these hidden garments helped due to his physical heavy style. On top of his wrappings, he wore shorts that were slightly shorter than usual (due to the planned activity for the day), the shorts had a belt that wrapped through the loops and kept them in place, attached to the back of the belt was Ryu's weapon pouch, inside were several various ninja tools, such as kunai and shuriken, he was not prepared to leave the house completely undefended as that was how he got the scar that adorned his face. Ryu wore a simple plain t-shirt with the village logo on the front, strapped to the back of it he had a tanto and its holster on his lower back. From underneath his t-shirt more wrappings wound around his arms and crisis crossed around his hands and fingers, helping to keep them compressed and also protect them should he engage in any close combats with them. Around his neck hung a simple chain that had his clans symbol ring attached to it. Ryu did not have his headband on but it was in his pocket, just in case he would need to show his allegiance in a more official capacity. However, today was about relaxation, as much as he could afford anyway.

Ryuzaki made himself some breakfast consisting of toast and scrambled eggs, he also poured some dry food into a bowl and took it outside with his meal, sitting on the deck looking down over the mountainside Ryu sat with his breakfast, a bowl of dog food next to him. Taco came out from his new sleeping place under the house and started to chow down on the dry food. Ryuzaki finished his breakfast and then sat out on the deck for around an hour, Taco lazily led next to him, this type of relaxation was foreign to him, normally every spare minute was used for training, whether it be physical or mental. At some unknown cue, Ryu decided that he had lingered at this moment enough and stood up, clearing his dish and the dogs dish up and washing both. Ryuzaki went back out onto the deck where Taco still led "Come on boy, we are going for a walk". The dog responded with excitement jumping up and spinning around once. Taco usually spent most of his time in a guard role, the house was usually empty nowadays since their masters passing, with Ryu normally in the village taking on missions, when Ryu trained Taco usually could be seen or heard somewhere nearby.

Ryu and Taco began their walk by hiking up the mountainside, the area that they lived in was rough and barren, but it did have some breathtaking sights over mountain edges. the landscape itself was rarely flat and when it was it was usually because a sheer drop was about to follow the flat ground. There was vegetation on the mountain but it was mostly dry or dead, many tree trunks lay barely poking out of the ground and they were always darker or blackened. There was wildlife on the mountain but it mostly consisted of small creatures that dwelled in holes or caves. Ryu and Taco reached the summit above their home and Ryu made his way onto the plateau where some of the aforementioned flat ground plateaux before the mountain climbed again. Ringing the flat ground was more dead or dying trees, Ryu found a small stick that he could use to play fetch with Taco. Ryu used his hands to whistle for the dog, after a few seconds he arrived nearby and Ryu began a series of throwing the stick, where Taco would collect the stick, shake it around for a few seconds and then bring it back to Ryu for him to throw again. After half an hour of this cycle, Ryu started to walk back towards his home, Taco plodded along behind, the stick still in his mouth. Ryu and Taco returned to their home where Ryu would now look over and maintain his equipment.

The following day Ryuzaki would have to go back into the village and receive his next mission, he would clean and maintain his various weapon now so that he did not have to do it in the morning. Ryu took particular care of painting his master's sword, it had become a precious heirloom that had now been passed from his brother to Yamamoto, and now to his adopted son Ryu. The sword had a light blue scabbard that had decorative sakura trees coiling around the length of it, at the top, there was a symbol tie for it to be fixed onto a belt, the handle itself was light blue with black wrapping. the blade was the standard length for a katana, but the width was slightly thinner, there was an inscription running along the bottom of the blade, it was in a language Ryu did not understand. Unfortunately, he did not have a master to ask what the inscription meant, or what language it was written in, and before his masters passing he had never seen the blade close enough to know about the inscription before, he would ponder on this for a few more minutes as he completed the cleaning, unfortunately, he would probably never know what the blade said. Ryu pushed the thought from his mind and returned the blade to its stand within the dojo, he then packed up the rest of his tools and prepared his pack for the next morning. Ryu then took to cooking his evening meal, he was going to have steak.

[Exit]
WC: 1053
Claiming 1050 words to complete Block C and B using the 25% max stat discount

approved