Hitting the ground running.

Sakuran Hatake woke up from a long sleep, the morning had just broke and the farm was covered in a warm orange light. She opened a window and took a deep breath of crisp cold air, she had a had a good dream about becoming the greatest Kunoichi Kiri had ever seen, even greater than Sakumo Hatake, her clans greatest champion. She hoped this was a good omen as she got dressed in her gear.

She had breakfast with her family and was a little quieter then usual, her mind was focused, she knew her mission and nothing would stop her. Akira and Kaito were bickering over the last piece of bacon allowing Sakuran to use her ninja skills to effectively ninja the bacon. Her brothers yelled at her, Jiro laughed, and her mother promised more bacon in a few minutes. Sakuran left for her training with a grin on her face.

She had to wait for the ferry a bit and decided to get a head start on her training. When she found a good nearby tree  Sakuran attached some straw mats to it and started practicing her kicks.

She started off at a slow pace to watch her form and as she grew more satisfied she increased the rate of kicking. She did this for both legs and when Sakuran was happy doing the single form exercises she started butterfly kicking the log, that is where you hit with the right and as you come down you use that momentum to launch the left and continue that switching without pause. Pushing herself to the brink is where the real gains were made. It is a very tiring exercise, but it was good practice.

Right when her legs were feeling like lead, she switched to basic punches, making sure to do two straight hits and one uppercut with the other arm and then switching off again. Repetition and form were key here, and she was well aware. Again, when she was satisfied, she increased the rate of punching. Her hands stopped hurting since she knocked them silly by now. Sakuran continued until the numbness had radiated to her wrists, this is where it got dangerous, so lets switch it up.

Now a bit of stretching to make sure her limbs did not cramp up, she started with her legs standing a bit wider then shoulder width and pulled her chest to her legs, the trick here was to feel the tendons and not to overextend. Tendons and muscles are very different in training, muscles you can push to the edge but tendons you pull slowly over time, if you did not, they would hurt for weeks, and she had been there too many times.

Sakuran assumed a shoulder width stance and started rotating her torso, making sure to keep the movement deliberate and not the throw it around. Carefully she pushed her rotation further and further until her muscles started aching from the strech. Then she moved her legs together and brought her chest down while holding her legs for added strength. She saw the ferry coming in the distance and could rest up there untill she could train in Kiri again.

Kirigakure no sato had an advanced training facility and even though she was not allowed in every section, the places she could go were more then good enough. She started to run from her home to the ferry to catch a boat to the main island. She knew Jack very well since she had been coming here since she was little. "Off for more training young one ?" the old man said curiously. "Yeah, I am planning to stay with Tomi for a few days while training at the advanced training facility."

"Oh, big plans then" Jack said with a wry smile. Sakuran smiled and nodded, the ferry was moving along the water and her mind wandered to the task before her. She wondered what Shin was doing today, the exam was in a few weeks and they were both getting very excited. She was daydreaming about being an amazing Taijutsu user when the boat lightly tudded on the shore. "Good luck Sakuran, be safe and say Hi to Tomi and the gang for me." Sakuran waved as she ran off.

Arriving at the training ground she did notice some people around but this place was huge, more then enough room for five times the people to work out comfortably. Today she was going to test her limits. Later she was going to sleep over at Tomi's house, her cousin and his family were also Hatake and regularly helped her train. She surveyed the area to find the best place for her warmups, finding a large piece of stomped earth she put down her bag.

Sakuran began with some warm up exercises, starting to stretch loose her muscles and prepare her body for the tough day ahead. As see was doing her exercises her resolution grew firmer, today was about pushing boundaries and limits. She concentrated on keeping her movements fluid, making sure she got some deep stretches in but not hurting her tendons, Sakuran made sure to keep her breathing deep and regular, this was a marathon not a sprint.

She finished her warm-up with a few running laps, making sure she was properly extending every step and keeping her breathing under control she increased her speed with every lap she ran. Her muscles started to burn but the pain was not at a level of concern yet. Getting this blood pumping hard was the best way to ensure she was actually making any progress, the sun was helping her wake up properly, she was a slow starter after all.

After her legs could not move some more she strolled over to the training dummies, they were all across the area and in different shapes and sizes each intended for a specific excercise. She selected one to practice straight jabs, the most basic and easiest of punches but critical none the less. Sakuran moved slowly at first checking her posture and looking at her shadow to find any faults, a trick she had learned from her uncle.

Once she was satisfied with her form Sakuran started to increase the pace. Doing light but fast jabs she worked on aiming her punches visualizing where on the body she would strike. Correcting herself a few times once she was in a good rhythm she increased the power as well, this is where she could advance the most, the blows came heavy and fast and she was working up quite a sweat. The exercise dummy was creaking under her barrage but these things were designed by the research and development facility of Kirigakure no Sato and she knew they could take quite a beating.

She started to increase the complexity of the exercises, ducking and weaving her punches instead of doing the straight jabs standing still. The pace was slowly getting to her but sh kept on pushing herself, she wanted to show Shin how much she had advanced even though their training methods were completely different they still enjoyed the company and advice both provided for each other.

Sakuran was satisfied with her striking routine for now and wanted to switch it up. She found one of the training dummies that was designed to be kicked instead of punched. Taking a minute to calm her heart rate she looked around the training area, there were a couple of genin from her class training and she thought the big guy back there was a chuunin, she tried to discern what exercises they were all doing so she could maybe add it to her own routine.

The method of training was pretty much the same for her leg kicks. First she started off slow making sure her legs were fully extended and that she would properly turn in her hip for maximum impact coupled with the exact right timing to fully extend her leg. There was a trick to this and practicing it slow made sure she could perfect it. A tree is only as strong as its base and she planned on having a massive base.

Sakuran was satisfied with her technique making sure with the trick her uncle taught her to watch her shadow as well as her own body. The kicks were picking up speed, she tried to alternate legs because this would help her return to the same base position time and time again, and that would help her master it. She did feel kind of ridiculous doing it like that from a distance it would look like she is hopping up and down like a maniac, but she put that thought away and continued.

Once again she increased her pace while maintaining form, precision and pace. Her kicks were coming in fast and she switched from low kick to mid kick to high kicks almost every other kick. When the speed was at her highest she added power to the mix, aiming to land each kick as a finishing blow. The tempo was brutal and the sun was not helping but she pressed on, defeat was never an option.
She finished her kicking routine and decided to stretch for a while, a series of exercises like that could cause her to feel sore tomorrow, she was going to be anyway but stretching now would most definitely reduce the pain she would feel then, Sakuran already had a good routine down for stretching. Starting a bit over shoulder width Sakuran slowly pulled her chest to each of her leg, focusing a long and controlled movement. The goal was to stretch not to rip.

After that she stood shoulder width and started rotating her upper body, doing half a twist at every full extended twist to really made sure her spine got a proper stretch. She could feel her tendons lengthening and knew she had hit the sweet spot, carfeull to not over extend she finished the excercise. Bringing her legs together she brought her upper body down while grabbing her ankles, a tricky excercise but vital in achieving high kicks.

Then focusing on her arms she held them out to the sides and started making little circles and making then increasingly wider, each movement had to be precise and controlled. Excercises that were not controlled tended to be the ones that caused injuries, she was well aware of this and kept widining the movement circle until she had achieved the widest circle possible. This was going great and she smiled.

She did some generic stretches with her arms, putting them behind her back and holding her arms while slowly bringing them up each move was slow but deliberate, you could not rush these types of things. Sakuran then stood up straight and started to bend her arm inward while holding it with ther other hand, the increased resistance the arm got while moving in provided a nice stetch and helped building muscles for explosive contraction.

Satisfied with her after work out stretch she sat down to get some food from her bag. Munching on a couple of sandwiches her mom had provided she contemplated her next course of action. Jutsu training would come later, the focus for now was Taijutsu, she observed the other ninja and noticed them doing similar excercises except for the chuunin, he was doing a series of strikes on wooden poles who had sticks protruding from them. It looked like and excercise to combo different techniques together.

Scanning her surrounding she found another setup like where he was training and tried to walk very casually towards it while getting a closer look at his routine. Giving him the side-eye she noted in what order he did his routine, a series of punches combined with rolls turning into a triple kick on low, medium and high to then jump back and do a spin kick. The excercise looked complicated and she pretended to look around while really only focusing on his excercise.

"Right. Lets give this a go" She peeked at the chuunin to make sure she had the correct order and started. Wide stance and two jabs on the first pole, block against the left protrusion and then roll to the next, rise into an uppercut and two jabs, roll away to the next and do three kicks, on low, one med and then high.  A low and a high weave next, jump back into a spin kick. She glanced over at the chuunin to see if she had it correct and he had left already. "Damnit i guess this will do" Maybe he was just taking a break.

She continued practicing the complex routine but focussing on the changes in between coupled with doing her strikes correctly was a bit more challenging then she thought, but that was after all why she was training, Sakuran had to spend alot more time getting the movements correct and rolls thenshe did with her simple jab and kick excercises but this felt like a natural next step.

Slowly she started increasing her speed, trying to make sure she did not mess up any of the movements and watching her shadow for anything she missed. It took a while but she was getting in the groove, even switched up the punches with her other hand and licks with the other foot to make sure the entire training excercise was balanced. She was gaining confidence in the exercise and started doing it without much thinking.

Now was the time to increase the speed, her punches and kicks grew rapid again and the movement in between the poles was gaining fluidity. Each strike precise and every movement deliberate with no wasted movement, she thought to herself that she could train many forms of combinations like this it would just take some time to come up with it, unless she could peek a sneak at some of that chuunins excercises.

With speed and accuracy down she added strength, each blow made a loud sound and the entire thing was exciting her. Loosing herself in the rhythym of it she pushed far harder then the previous excercises and that in itself was another motivator. "If i keep this up I will be a genin in no time." Blow after blow her confidence grew until she truly felt she had made this excercise her own.

Sakuran grabbed her notes on the Clone Technique. "Right, lets train some jutsus, can not become a ninja with only taijutsu afterall!" Going over her notes and trying to remember her teachers word she said "Right it was the Ram sign."  Quickly forming the seal and activating her chakra. Only a clone and a puddle appeared and their faces were devoid of features. "Calm down." She told herself, "This is no flurry of kicks, it is a precise uppercut. Steadying herself she once again made the Ram sign, inspecting her finger placement to see if she had formed it correctly.
Facing forward she assumed a shoulder width stance while firmly holding the seal. A deep breath in and a slow one out while gathering her chakra as best as she could. She visualised herself being surrounded by five copies of herself. "Bunshin no jutsu!" she said calm. Making sure her chakra was flowing enough but not overflowing.

In a puff of white smoke she was now surrounded by 5 exact copies of herself, proudly she looked around herself pleased with her accomplishment. Now to get it every time, for the next  hour she kept dispelling and performing the jutsu again and practiced by running and jumping while summoning clones. After taking a short break she tried doing the clone technique in every circumstance she could think of to be fully prepared when it was requested on the genin exam.

Now that that was done she decided to keep this going and train the Transformation technique. She grabbed her school notebook once again and started reviewing the technique they had learned about in the past few weeks. "Okay so we have to form the Dog seal and proceed to concentrate chakra while clearly picturing us as the item or person we want to become."
Sounded simple enough but imagning random things what not her strong suit at this time, she formed the handseal, pictured the tree in front of her and shouted "HENGE" in a puff of smoke she transformed into the tree but her leaves were yellow instead of green. Not easily deterred she tried several times to get the colour just right.

Next up was the training dummy from before. Carefully making the Dog seal and summoning her chakra, only when she had it clear in her mind did she yell "Henge" and transformed in a perfect duplicate of the training dummy. Pleased, she undid the transformation and proceeded to transform herself in the various objects she could spot and for giggles into an apple as well! wondering how it would feel if someone would bite her.

Now for actual people. She up straight and pictured her dad, forming the seal and focusing her chakra she yelled out 'Henge!"  A perfect copy of her father, great. She walked around a bit inspecting herself and decided to put it to the test. Looking for a victim she scanned the surrounding and spotted what was likely to be another genin coming onto the field. Most likely he did not see her transform.

Imitating her dads walk as best she could she straddled over. "Young man?" The genin looked at her in suprise. "Uhm, Yes sir." Sakuran looked him up and down "You are a student or a genin." The boy was visibly concerned he had done something wrong. "Genin, Sir." She raised her hand to hold her chin while looking him over. "Then where is your headband?" The genin gulped "I left it at home sir as to not damage it in training."

Sakuran undid her transformation and said casually "Not a bad plan, smart." The genin had a look of shock and annoyance on his face, Sakuran looked apologetic at him "I am sorry i just wanted to do a real test to see if my transformation was any good." The genin glared at her and said "Next time practice on your family like the rest of us, now if you will excuse me i have training to do." and walked off.

That could have gone better but her field test was a succes, trying to not look too pleased with herself because she suspected he was still looking at her she returned to her bag and stored her notebook which was laying on the ground still. She looked around wondering what the next exercise was going to be and settled on an agility course. Seemed like a fun and good workout.

She came closer to the agility course and ran over hit in her mind, it started with several hanging ropes going into jumping on platforms then a set of logs you would have to half run half jump on since it was cut at an angle then came the classic monkey bars looping back into a narrow walkway with logs swinging across it leaving you the option to go really fast or jump over them each time they swung by.

Sakuran decided the best way to learn was just to go for it and started swinging on the ropes which went harder then she expected, it was not holding on it that was hard, it was the aiming for the next part that was a bit tricky.  But she managed and continued to jump the logs, she slipped once and had to start over, but she quickly caught on and realized that you had to angle your foot and body in such a way that your running speed is what kept you upright. She tried this excercise a few times going back and forth to really understand the knack.

Next up was the monkey bars, a fairly straight forward excercise but she notitced the rungs of the ladder were alot wider on the end then on the beginning, she figured a running start would give her enough momentum to clear the last few rungs. When she got to the wider ones she realized how wrong she was, falling down again she glared at the monkey bars. She did the course again and when she got to the monkey bars she stopped and thought for a moment.

Maybe the trick was not speed but patience, hanging and swinging on the bars could give her the momentum needed. The first few rungs went fine and when she got to the widers ones she hung there for a while swinging back and forth, the first one was a succes and now that she had some speed she did not have to swing back and forth so many times to reach the other ones. She finally landed with the final obstacle of the course, the day started to take its toll.

She pulled the lever that controlled the swinging of the bars until they were nice and fast and decided to make a run for it. She readied herself, coiling her legs as if they were a spring, and waited for her moment. GO, she ran over the walkway and was about to make it when the last one hit her, driving her off the walkway. But quitting was not a thing she was very familiar with, she grabbed the offending bar. clutching on for dear life and as it crossed the walkway again, let go and scramble to her feet to finish the course before it came back.

Succes! She laughed "And now to do it all again." she dusted herself off and continued to practice the obstacle course, going first on the hanging ropes continuing on the jumping logs minding her posture and foot placement, then the monkey bars with a bit of patience and accuracy at the end to land on the platform leading to the walkway. This time she moved a bit slower on the walkway to let one of the logs swoop her by before she went for the finish.
She continued the obstacle course, increasing in speed as much as she could but it was clear to her that soon she would messing it up because she was getting dead tired. She tried a couple of more times but noticed she was slowing down and decided to end it there.

Her day was coming to an end, wearily gathering her things Sakuran made her way to her cousins house not to far from her. She greeted her extended family on arrival and shared the story of her day over a good meal they had set aside for her. She spend some time talking to Tomi about the chuunin they saw and laughter ensued. Tomi showed her where she was going to be sleeping and it did not take long for her to pass out.

Next day she woke up and found the sun had risen already, it was a bit later then she would have liked but Shin should not be there already, she quickly gathered her things and went in for breakfast. Her uncle made fun of her disheveled hair and so did her cousin, Sakuran laughed it off and set out to go train, today she was going to practice a whole bunch of techniques and really up their game for her first set of actual D-rank missions, the first step in a long road.

Arriving at the advanced training grounds she started to stretch for a bit, yesterday was pretty intense and some of her muscles still ached, going through her routine the aches quickly cleared up, she sat down and reviewed all of the complicated techniques Mako wanted to do instead of her regular Taijutsu training. It was fine though he was a great help with learning new jutsus and everything was more fun with more people.

Having an actual master around that could do White Ray and actual White Fang Fighting Style with her would help her perfect her training. She scanned the training ground to see if she could find him but she could not find him. "Looking for me?" Mako said from way too close behind her. She gasped; he always did that. "Oh Hi, you always manage to sneak up to me." Mako chuckled, "An advantage of the White fang style of fighting which we will cover today."

Sakuran made a little jump, she had been waiting years for this. "LETS GOOOOOOO!" She yelled. Mako took his bag and Sakuran followed him, they choose a secluded spot to train. "So you trained the basics like we discussed?" Sakuran nodded. "Good then lets learn to chain it all together." They started doing their basic white fang style excercises and bit by bit Mako was showing her how to put it all together,

He explained about the philosophy behind it and how it was first created, how her own input was just as important as learning the traditions behind it. "Even though White style can be taught, to master it you need to feel what combination feels the most natural to you." They practiced many different sets and after about twenty of them he asked her which one felt more natural, it could also be a combination of sets.

Sakuran loved the fast paced movement style of some of the sets and then the jumping of things in others so they worked on finding her a moveset that would allow her to do both. After a while they got in a good grove and Sakuran was starting to master her own set of movements. Her uncle commended her on her training and said it really paid off. They tried some more advanced combos and techniques to really solidify her knowledge of the fighting style.

Her uncle expressed his pride in her mastering this Style and was excited to show her more, White Ray. The clan advanced element based on lightning and yin. She had heard about this and thought it would be ages before she was taught. Her uncle explained to her then the sooner she learns the sooner she could master the various techniques thar utilized the style. They started of with some basic lightning summoning techniques.

Gradually they started adding Yin to it She could see the color shift to a pure white but it was hard to maintain. they spend the remainder of the day summoning White Ray under various circumstances and near the end of it she got the hang of it. "I am loving your progress little niece." Sakuran smiled more exhausted then she cared letting on, they reviewed some of the advanced techniques so she would get an idea what it was used for but was slightly disappointed She wanted it to be used in Taijutsu.

"If that is what you want then make it, that's how all of this got started."

She agreed and together they went back home for some much-needed rest.

[4524 WC]
+5 Chakra
+40 Speed

1500 White Ray
1500 Divine Breathing
1500 White Fang Fighting Style
Total bought 4500 WC

[Exit]

Sakuran Hatake wrote:

[4524 WC]
+5 Chakra
+40 Speed

1500 White Ray
1500 Divine Breathing
1500 White Fang Fighting Style
Total bought 4500 WC

[Exit]

Approved!