Hectic Day [solo]
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- TakazashiCitizen
- Ryo : 500
I decided to get started training. I
started off by going to the bookstore. Inside, I wandered around, looking for
the comic books. There, I looked for the Naruto series about a ninja of long
ago. I read through it, and the next, and the next, looking for the guy whose
style I was going to imitate, and hopefully surpass. I read on, past a fight
with a swordsman, the exams, and a time skip. Eventually I found the fight with
Kakuzu. I whipped out a pad, and took notes of what he did, and what his (few)
weaknesses were. After hunting around a bit more, I found a data book of the
characters. I flipped through it, noting good jutsu to learn.
I put the book back and walked out to the nearest training grounds. It was
crowded. Really crowded. So crowded that if someone dared to breathe in there,
the place would overflow. Ok, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it was very
crowded. It was no exaggeration that there were flying jutsu and kunai
everywhere, with accidental attacks, hits, and close shaves of the type found
in the Pink Panther series. I began stumbling back to the entrance, eager to be
out of that massive brawl, but I tripped over an academy student who had
previously gotten hit by a puppet with a boxing glove. The academy student was
as a result in a bad mood and took offense. We traded blows, clobbering a
nearby tree and a taijutsu specialist, but we were both swept away by a weak
pressure damage (it was only a strong gust, as opposed to a mighty blast of air
that could level the training grounds along with all of its occupants). I
thankfully was flung out into the relatively safe river filled with sharks. My
splashy entrance scared them off (the sharks in question were about an inch
long), and I glanced back at the unintended battlefield. Bodies were collapsed
all over the place, the owners apparently having collapsed from exhaustion. My
former opponent was angrily punching a large fern, which apparently was being
controlled by a puppet master and was striking back, by painting camoflauge
colors all over the attacked ninja's uniform.
I swam away down the river, looking for a training spot. I didn't find one. At
least, not an official one. I did find a clearing at one point that seemed
deserted. I mentally noted its location, and then started clambering up a tree,
my goal being to get to the top and locate my village (I was thoroughly lost).
I clambered up the tree, and my mind began to drift away as I climbed, having
nothing better to do. I idly clambered up the tree, at one point sticking my
foot in a hole in the tree. Ignoring this incident, I continued up the tree,
only to be grabbed by the ankle.
I glanced down, as I was dragged off of the tree by a wood pecker. The two of
us landed on the ground, with me on the bottom. Speaking of bottoms, while I
lay stunned face down on the ground, the woodpecker started jabbing me there
with a pointy twig it had found nearby. I jumped to my feet, cursing and
rubbing my bottom. The woodpecker renewed its attack, this time concentrating
on my shins. Seeing that its attacks weren't as effective (I kept moving my
legs around to avoid its stabs) against a moving target, the woodpecker
switched tactics. It tossed the twig at me (I caught it inches from my face)
and replaced the twig by picking up one end of a large branch instead. This was
just ridiculous. A tiny woodpecker, which definitely didn't weigh more than a
pound, picking up with apparently no effort, a 30 pound branch. Maybe it was a
taijutsu specialist. I stood there with my jaw hanging open, until the woodpecker
smacked me in the shins with the end of the branch. I yelled, and jumped 20
feet in the air, all the while clutching my shins.I landed on the ground, and
immediately rolled, the end of the branch crashing where my stomach was a split
second earlier. I rolled away and onto my feet, and the woodpecker barely
missed getting me in the noggin with the branch. I backed up slowly, as the
woodpecker advanced menacingly. The woodpecker darted forward, swinging the
branch like it was one of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist. For several minutes
I danced around the clearing, pursued by the woodpecker.
I figured the situation couldn't become any worse. I was wrong. A second
woodpecker came flapping along, saw the first one, and flew down. The two
woodpeckers began chattering away, then the new woodpecker also picked up a
large branch. Together, the two of them advanced. I turned and ran, pursued by
the two woodpeckers. I tripped over a bear, managing a spectacular face plant
as the ends of the two branches swung through the spce where my head had
previously been. The bear got up, just as the two woodpeckers launched another
attack, hitting it between the legs. Judging by the bear's change of expression(its eyes bulged out and it looked very paained), and
its pawing between its legs, I would assume it was male. The bear charged and
the woodpeckers started taking turns smiting him, only further enraging the
bear. I took this all in in amazement. I realized, eventually, after ten
minutes of this exciting show, that I had a chance to escape, so I backed away
slowly, unnoticed by either side
I backed up into something. I turned around, and jumped ten and a quarter feet
into the air. Then I did a double take. A chicken? I was scared of a chicken? I
started to laugh as I fell back to the ground, then I did a triple take. It was
not just an ordinary chicken that you would find in a farmer's chicken coop.
This chicken was MASSIVE. It towered over me, its beak several feet above my
head. I gulped. Behind me, I heard the woodpeckers and the bear disengage from
each other, and I felt their eyes boring into my back, almost literally. I felt
a gust of wind approaching at high speed and dived to one side. The woodpeckers
and bear both sailed through the air where I had been moments before, and ended
up simultaneously tackling the hen. The hen was not pleased. The bear and
woodpeckers were very confused. They were more so when the chicken shook them
off its legs and then kicked them into the underbrush. The woodpeckers (one
still clutching its tree branch) and bear staggered out of the underbrush. They
looked bewildered. I understood perfectly. They were fighting opponents they
would have never fought ordinarily, and to cap it off they were now fighting
together against, of all things, a chicken. The two groups glared at each other
before laughing themselves back into the fray. The fray (with no rope) began to
devolve into a rolling roiling dust cloud, filled with flailing limbs, cursing
(the air began to turn black and plants began to wilt), and a lot of inflicted
bruises. I stared in fascination as the struggle slowly approached and before I
realized what was happening, the fight lunged forward and enveloped me as well.
Inside the scuffle, it was utterly chaotic. The combatants hit themselves as
often as any of the other combatants. The scuffle (still with me trapped
inside) slowly moved toward the river, where everyone tettered on the edge,
frantically flapped at the air (why the woodpeckers didn't simply fly away I
don't understand), and then toppled into the river. The blast of cold water
snapped everyone out of it, and we all climbed back out and flopped onto the
beach, exhausted. I took the opportunity to roll back into the river, and was
carried away from the other combatants.
I climbed out onto the river bank a few minutes later. Finding an
inconsequential piece of money on the ground, I stumbled off to the actual bank
in the distance, only to discover (when I was going to deposit the
inconsequential piece of money) that someone pick-pocketed it from me on my
way. Oh well.... I headed back to the river bank to think on my next move. I
decided to start training, the classic way.
I dropped to the ground to give 50. Then I realized that dropping to the ground
was pointless since I had already collapsed on the ground from exhaustion.
Darn. I picked myself up and then dropped to the ground again just to be
proper. Then I started doing push-ups. I slowly lowered my body towards the
ground, and, grunting with exertion, started to push my body back up. Someone
else happened to be nearby and got annoyed at my bad technique and form, so I
spent the next few minutes being lectured by that guy, and helped with my
technique (arms wider, hands facing forward, bottom LOWER, bend the arms to 90
degrees when you lower your body, etc.) before I was on my own again. I
restarted the set (not that I had done many) just so I could do them all
properly. I began the first push-up again. I started lowering my body to the
ground until my chest touched the ground, and started lifting back up. Urk....
That was heavy. So this was what a push-up was like. This was going to be
painful, doing 50 push-ups. I struggled back up to the starting position,
resisting the urge to do the "worm" push-up (this is where you rest
your stomach on the ground, and push-up part of your body at a time, first your
chest, then your stomach, then your legs), and started gasping for air. I
needed a long breather, after the excruciatingly painful push-ups (ok, push-up,
since I only did one so far) so I stumbled off to the river, and had a good
long drink. Then I started to get sleepy so I dunked my face into the water to
wake myself back up. I dried my face on someone else's towel (the someone in
question was bathing and didn't notice), and then headed back to where I had
done the previous push-up.
I mentally steeled (after going through bronze, copper, tin, and many other
softer metals) myself for the next push-up. I took a deep breath and took the
plunge. I slowly lowered my body until my chest was touching the ground again,
and then, very quickly, picked myself back up. The reason for my haste is that
when I lowered my chest to the ground, something (on closer examination an ant)
bit part of my chest when it touched the ground. I got up, rinsed the part of
my body where the ant had bitten me, and started a third push-up, after
scanning the area to make sure nothing was gong to bite me like last time. Time
passed, and so did several more push-ups. Eventually I started to get very
tired, though, in the thirties, and I started to slow down on the way up, a
lot. I had a funny idea. I went looking for an ant hill or the nest of some
other animal. I found a badger den (occupied by a small badger). I got into
push-up position, with my chest centered over the opening of the den. I then
dropped down into the push-up, and quickly got back up. I barely made it in
time, as a pair of jaws snapped shut where my chest had been before. I did it
again, again narrowly avoiding the set of jaws. On the third such push-up,
however, I was a little too slow, and a paw raked my chest, tearing some of my
clothing. Ouch! I cleaned the wound, bandaged it, and resumed. This time I
spent almost no time touching my chest to the ground - as soon as I touched I
started frantically pushing back up, eager to avoid getting bit again. In this
manner I completed the rest of the 50 push-ups in record time (only five
minutes, twenty nine and a quarter seconds).
For a change of pace, I started stretching out my muscles, while walking
around. I started to let my mind drift as I swung my arms around in circles. I
happened to accidentally hit a ninja dog. The ninja dog started growling and I
apologized for accidentally hitting it. The ninja dog continued growling and I
decided to try a different tactic. I started doing muscle-man poses, and
flexing my muscles, and attempted to intimidate the ninja dog with my (lack of)
huge muscles. The ninja dog was not impressed and leaped at me. I then
proceeded to set one of the top times for turning, and running at a hundred
miles an hour. I happened to bowl over a second ninja dog and ran over it
(literally). I scampered away as the two ninja dogs began chasing me (or so I
assumed). I frantically fled wildly away from the pursuit. I ran and ran,
quickly running out of energy. Eventually I collapsed, but my speed returned
when I heard the crashing through the undergrowth. I continued pedaling along.
I had a bright idea. Why not, to shake off pursuit (I could hear the two ninja
dogs close behind, and closing in rapidly), I go through that ultra crowded
training ground. Proud of my quick thinking (it only took me half an hour to
come up with the idea), I scampered off toward the training ground. I found the
wrong one first. I saw a clearing and scampered toward it and promptly got
knocked flying by a ninja practicing "Chidori". I almost got skewered
by the ninja (his hand ended up next to my head). I got to my feet as the ninja
dogs burst into the clearing. We were all swept away by a (non-dangerous) blast
of air that sent us all tumbling, well, through the air. The three of us landed
some distance outside the clearing, and I set off, as the pursuit had caught up
to me. Behind me the chase was resumed by the twon ninja dogs.
I continued to pedal around the forest until I eventually did find the clearing
I had gone to originally (after nearly getting squashed by a giant toad
summoned through another summoning jutsu, almost getting fried by someone
practicing their "False Darkness" jutsu, artfully dodging a giant
water dragon, and nearly being roasted by the biggest fireball I have ever
seen). I burst into the clearing and froze, as a kunai whizzed right by where
my nose would have been if I hadn't stopped. I saw a flicker and ducked and
someone practicing raiton armor blasted through the target behind me, away,
into the underbrush. Yikes. I looked around. The clearing was more crowded than
before, with bodies collapsed all over the ground and more slumped in the
trees. I cautiously started to inch towards the other side and a flying
landmine almost took my right hand off when it exploded nearby. Fortunately
someone between it and me happened to be practicing earth armor with the art of
expansion and they made a human shield that protected me from the blast. The
two ninja dogs burst into the clearing behind me and I resumed my flight
through, my plan becoming to lose the two ninja dogs in the chaotic struggles
and get away, sneaking out the entrance on my tip-toes. I pedaled around
through the brawl. Someone used "Searing Migraine" but messed up, and
I collapsed, having a massive headache for a few seconds until the jutsu
dissipated (instead of the giant fire blast that was supposed to explode and be
very scary). The two ninja dogs were almost on me but they decided to get
through a sand controller (not a wise move). The sand user began buffeting the
two ninja dogs with sand and they retreated behind a uchiha practicing his
"Susano'o". The resulting melee spread and soon there was a mini
ninja war broiling in the training grounds.
I dashed to the side of the clearing, and surveyed the scene. I looked, but
couldn't find the two ninja dogs who had been chasing me earlier. Suddenly, I
was jumped by the two ninja dogs from behind. The two dogs began clambering all
over me, and I started blindly stumbling around. I fell into the clearing
again. I thrashed about, covered in the two biting and snapping ninja dogs, I
got hold of one and tossed it away towards the middle of the training grounds,
just as someone was preparing a Forward Lotus. The poor ninja dog got caught in
the attack instead of the intended ninja who was happy to take the opportunity
to attack someone else. The other dog managed to pin me down on the ground, I
flailed around, helpless, until someone practicing throwing boomerang managed
to club the ninja dog. Stunned, it collapsed, and I threw it into the path of
an oncoming "Human Juggernaut" attack, and the poor ninja dog got
steamrolled, literally. Delighted at my deliverance from my pursuers, I noticed
a very shaky-legged ninja dog (it was the one who got caught in the
"Forward Lotus") stumbling toward me. I started to back away but
someone had launched a "Konoha Hurricane" and it hit me in the arm,
sending me flying. The ninja dog got blasted by someone with Bakuton (the bomb
type, not to be confused with the landmine fist type Bakuton) and it was sent
flying away.
I staggered to my feet, and got hit by another "Konoha Hurricane",
this time in the face. That hurt. I tackled the user, and the two of us rolled
around, kicking, punching, clawing, and biting. The other guy was obviously a
taijutsu specialist, so he won. I was eventually left beaten up on the side of
the clearing. The other guy started to walk back to the fight but someone
imitating Kakashi grabbed his ankle and yanked the guy underground. I got up
and stumbled towards the clearing, but I saw something scuttling towards me. I
picked it up. It was a stray insect bomb from the Bakuton user. Hmm.... I
pocketed the bomb, thinking it would be useful (it never crossed my mind that
it might explode at any moment). I saw the Bakuton user preparing to detonate
his bombs, so I slung the one I had picked up. It exploded in mid-air next to
the Bakuton user, blasting him off his feet. The Bakuton user landed on a
porcupine who began running in my direction. Uh oh. I turned and fled the
battleground, followed by thje panicking porcupine.
I scampered in circles around the training ground, with the porcupine
apparently in hot pursuit (in hindsight, it probably thought I knew the best
place to hide). I was unable to shake it no matter how hard I ran (as the
porcupine would redouble its efforts to keep up). Eventually I collapsed again
from exhaustion, and the porcupine behind me tripped over a log. As it fell to
the ground, it rolled up, bracing itself for impact. A large number of its
quills made their way to my bottom when it landed. I think I jumped straight
into the top of the nearest tree, where, away from the fighting down below, I
carefully pulled out dozens of quills. When I finished, I looked for the
porcupine. It was still curled up, but it had rolled a distance from when and
where I had jumped, and I could see a bald patch where a large number of quills
had been pulled off of it. I spent a few minutes swearing (the quills HURT),
and then I hopped down onto the ground.
I saw a number of rogue shinobi creeping through the underbrush towards the
traiing ground, but when they saw the massive fight going on, they turned and
fled. I don't think it had anything to do with the guy practicing pressure
damage a lot. It certainly didn't have anything to do with any of the other
ninja duking it out on the field. It most certainly did not have anything to do
with the hailstorm of A to SS rank jutsu bombarding the training grounds. It
definitely didn't have to do with the fact that they were outnumbered and
outskilled by a lot (these guys barely made genin, some of them anyway, the
rest were disgruntled former academy students) of the ninja present. No, it was
because I happened to land on the ground in front of them and yelled BOO!. I'm
pretty sure that scared them off, not the Susano'o weilding Uchiha who was
charging towards them, sealing sword at the ready.
The rogue ninja scampered off into the underbrush, as I realized my headband
was missing. I spotted a headband on the ground, in the middle of the
unintended battlefield. I dived toward it without a second thought. Another
ninja saw the headband on the ground, and, upon realizing he was missing a
headband too, got into a scuffle with me. I won the scuffle, and grabbed the
headband, but I noticed that there was someone else's name written on the
inside of the headband. I looked at the headband and then at the ninja I had
just beat up, and noticed the name tag on the ninja matched the name on the
headband. I apologized, dropped the headband on the guy's face, and scampered
off in search of my headband.
I eventually found the headband floating away downstream. I jumped in, not
heeding the piranha, and grabbed the headband. I got chomped on an arm by a
piranha, so I leaped out of the water, and wrestled with the piranha. The two
of us rolled on the ground, and the piranha eventually opened up its mouth after
I hit its head several times on a rock. I grabbed the piranha by the tail, and
it hung there limply, until I looked away, at my headband lying on the ground
nearby. While I was distracted, the piranha took the opportunity to recover
from the earlier defeat I had somewhat handily handed it. It twisted its head
up, and chomped down on my arm. I noticed. I screeched, and started wildly
waving my arm around, trying to throw the piranha off. A number of tourists
from another village were hiking nearby, and obviously thought I was a dancer
who was demonstrating an exotic dance. They stopped and started watching in
fascination. Eventually the piranha released its grip, and I grabbed it by the
head this time. I collapsed on a rock, exhausted, but the tourists thought my
act had ended so they started shouting for an encore. The piranha took notice.
It heard the tourists cries and began to slap me in the face with its tail. How
humiliating. Getting beaten up on land by a sea creature. The tourists howled
with laughter. I tried to push the piranha away but it slapped my face back and
forth so fast I got dizzy and couldn't balance well - I fell over and the
piranha fell out of my hands and into the water where it happily began
splashing around, steadily working its way deeper until eventually it was
washed away downstream. I lay on the ground where I had fallen over, gasping
for breath. The tourists thought this was all very funny and applauded
enthusiastically. They tossed coins at my feet (on closer examination the coins
turned out to be chocolate, so I ate them as a snack).
I limped off towards my village, and sat down in the park. I took a nap on a
bench, and woke up feeling like doing some more exercise. I started doing squat
jumps around the park. I managed several laps before I got bored, and started
hopping up and down on a bench. This worked great until I tripped, jumping up.
I tripped over a crack in the bench, so I went over, face first, onto the
ground. There I was, face planted on the ground, with my legs, just above the
knees, stuck on the bench, my back stuck in a painful arch. I lay there,
stunned, for a while, before getting up and deciding that I had had quite
enough of this jumping up and down.
I clambered up a tree, shook a branch, and, like the well known Rock Lee,
jumped down, and tried to catch all the falling leaves before they hit the
ground. This did not work as I was nowhere near fast enough. I managed to
barely catch one leaf before it hit the ground. I decided to give up on that
excercise for the time being, and I clambered out onto a thick branch hanging
near a walkway. I dangled by my hands from the tree branch and started doing
leg lifts. The first time I pulled my feet up, someone came around the walkway
from the other side of the tree, and I accidentally kicked him in the head.
This resulted in a fight, which I won due to my thread body. I walked off,
leaving the other guy collapsed over the tree branch.
At home I practiced breaking boards. I planned to break boards until the entire
four thousand words of training I needed to do were used up. I continued
chopping away for about 20 or so words, and then I switched to using my feet,
in an attempt to get the remaining few words over with faster. Just to make
sure I had definitely over four thousand words, I practiced breaking extra
extra boards, despite it being dinner time, until I was sure I had done more
than enough training. Then I put away all the broken boards in a nearby
landfill (digging the hole myself) and then I figured I had done enough
training so I stopped after running home.
I decided to try for the chunin exams as soon as possible.
The next day, I decided to train with weapons. I went to a training ground
with practice weapons (which swing like the
actual weapons but can’t hurt anything). I swung them around for a while, but I
got bored, and decided
to get the real thing.
I walked over to the weapon shop
(which had a sign advertising that people could try out weapons in
their new training yard). On the way I got into a minor scuffle with another
academy student. Handily
winning the fight by making him smack his head into a wall (thanks for the
idea, Shikamaru) I continued
into the store.
Inside, there were all kinds of
weapons! I was completely overwhelmed, reduced to staring around me
in wonder. That clunk was my jaw hitting the floor. My mind went blank. I
gulped, and recovered my
composure. I started browsing. There
were the gold old straight swords. The straight swords became
katanas, which gave way to machetes, then giant two handed swords, then dirks,
then kopesh. After
that, daggers, throwing knives, and and rapiers. The conventional blades
section ended and I began
to see other common weapons. Quarterstaffs. All manner of axes. Shuriken.
Needles. Spears. Then
the standard Chains. From there, the weapons got more interesting and strange.
Razor wire. Sickles.
Bisento. Katar. Tonfa. Clubs (you would think those would be considered
redundant since they had
quarterstaffs too). Nunchucks, whips, meteor hammer s, flails, double bladed
swords, pickaxes (also sold
at the mining shop), chain sword, multi-section staffs, halberds, dagger axes,
rope darts, chain swords,
warhammers (also could be considered redundant), scythes, mauls, tridents, hook
swords, zanbato,
executioner swords, brass knuckles (for the gangsters), caltrops, gauntlets,
Korean fans, parasols, and
many other things I couldn’t recognize.
I couldn’t decide what I wanted to
try out first. The attendant at the counter said I could try out any
number of weapons, but only one at a time, and in the training yard. I asked
what was the most popular.
He replied that the shuriken and kunai were the most popular, but everyone uses
them, so that made
sense. He asked me if I wanted to try them. I asked what was different about
them, as they felt strange
in my hand. The attendant replied that the kunai and shuriken were made of a
special metal that could
absorb the user’s chakra. I decided to try them out.
I walked out into the training
ground. The pristine looking training ground was about one hundred feet
in each direction, it pretty much the inside of an old formerly abandoned
warehouse. There were all
kinds of dummies, windows, puppets, and sections of buildings for people to
test weapons on. I went
wild, hurling shuriken everywhere, in one case paralyzing a centipede when the
shuriken touched its
shadow. I picked up the shuriken, and asked the attendant how much the kunai
and shuriken sold
for. His reply had more zeroes than I had fingers. I politely said I would
start saving, and asked to try
something else. I changed my request to wanting to try everything in the store.
The attendant told me to
take as long as I needed.
I decided to do this the methodical
way. I started from the entrance, and grabbed a sword, and tried
swinging it immediately, knocking over a rack of battleaxes. The attendant came
rushing over and
politely asked me to please test out the weapons in the training grounds where
messes would be much
easier to handle. I obliged, the attendant watching with a strained smile as I
accidentally took a slice out
of the doorway. Once in the training area, I started imitating various members
of the swordsmen of the
mist. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, and dummy parts to be flung around
haphazardly. Windows
were smashed. Targets got shredded. No two things had been chopped or broken in
the same way. I
got bored, turned around to put the sword back, and saw the attendant staring
openmouthed at the
destruction caused in the now trashed training ground. I handed the sword to
the attendant and said
that swords were probably not for me.
I asked the attendant if he had any
recommendations for easy weapons to learn for inexperienced
people. I thought I could hear him say “I can tell”, but I didn’t figure out
what he was referring to until
someone else explained it to me (thanks Judai). The attendant glanced towad the
war hammers and
gulped. I took this to mean that I should give it a try. I picked up the
biggest one there, and headed
outside, before the stunned attendant could protest. I experimentally swung the
war hammer, and it
flew out of my hands, and made a big hole in someone’s nearby front door. Come
on now. Why did they
leave that door in the way? I walked over and pulled the war hammer out, and
opened the door to see
if what the building looked like inside. Inside, a family was frozen, mid-meal,
all staring at the hole in the
door. I apologized for the damage and disturbance, and told them to put the
damage on the weapon
store’s tab. I walked back to the store and replaced the war hammer on the
rack.
I looked around, and the first thing
that caught my eye was the maul. I charged back into the training
room. I hefted the maul, and swung it, ripping through several brick walls.
Dummies were sent flying.
Windows left their frames. I found I couldn’t stop spinning due to the mauls
massive momentum.
Several times I almost fell over,
but eventually I managed to stop spinning completely by ramming
the maul into the ground, making a large crack in the floor. I returned the
maul to the attendant,
commenting that the maul had this quaint habit of trying to destroy everything
it touched.
To test the scythe I went out to a
nearby abandoned empty field. I rhythmically swung the scythe back
and forth, cutting down lots of bushes, and saplings growing after a recent
fire prematurely. I had
problems due to the scythe cutting more trees than I intended, and that it
would sometimes get stuck in
the ground. I left after hundreds of saplings had been cut down. So they wouldn’t
go to waste, I hauled
them all off to the paper mill (other people giving me strange looks as I
walked by), and left them piled
right in front of the front door. I then returned to the weapon shop.
I put the scythe back, and grabbed
the double bladed sword. I twirled it over my head, and almost
knocked over the group of quarterstaffs leaned against the wall. I swung the
sword, and the attendant,
realizing that the sword’s path would take it right through the rack of
nun-chucks, grabbed the nearest
weapon to him, a flail, and blocked my swing. I thought at the time that the
attendant wanted a little
friendly sparring so I obliged. A furious duel ensued, with very short pauses
filled by my battle cries, as
the attendant getting very visibly tired. Back and forth the two of us fought,
with the obviously even
more inexperienced attendant hard pressed most of the time. I later learned
that our struggle was
heard a mile away, and people avoided the shop door in case anything flew out,
like the war hammer.
Eventually the attendant managed to beat me back with a somewhat mighty swing
of his mace, and
managed to get in a few words to the effect of “hold up”. I replied that there
were no breaks in duels or
sparring and raised my weapon again. The attendant raised his flail defensively
and quickly stammered
that when he used the flail to block my swing, he was trying to keep me from
knocking over a rack
of nun-chaku. He did not want a duel. We lowered our weapons slowly, and looked
around. Almost
all the racks of weapons had been knocked over, or broken. I heard the
attendant mutter sadly, “I’m
going to be in so much trouble for this”. I felt sorry for him so I helped pick
up all the weapons. As I did
so, I noticed the meteor hammer and thought it might be fun to try out. As I
picked up the last of the
weapons, the attendant collapsed on the floor.
I took the meteor hammer, and walked
outside. I swung it in a circle. As the meteor hammer swung
faster, I started trying to twirl it. My hands became a blur as the meteor
hammer moved faster and
faster. I had never done this before however, and the chain started to become
more and more lopsided,
eventually flying free of my hands (almost braining me), and wrapping itself
around a pole. Crap. I
could reach part of the chain, so I tried tugging on it. The chain remained
tangled. I continued to tug,
when suddenly the pole shifted. I know it wasn’t my imagination. The pole
shifted. Uh oh. I stopped
pulling and shimmied up the pole instead. I know, I know, it is not the smartest
decision to climb up
what is obviously an unstable structure. As I got higher, the pole shifted more
and more, but did not
fall. I hurriedly untangled the chain and dropped to the ground, and pushed the
pole back to its original
position, shoring up its base with loose dirt on the ground. I put the meteor
hammer back in the weapon
shop and headed home, brushing past the attendant who had his face in his
hands.
I had to fix all the damage and
replace the targets, dummies, and windows (took care of my training for
the next few days) on top of my missions for the next ten days. All this time,
my reliance on my eyes to stay alive, avoid trouble, and defeat opponents was
increasing. Without my sharingan, I would probably not have survived any of my
encounters. I was so… weak. So helpless. I NEEDED STRENGTH. And I got it.
[WC: 6053/6000 requesting 3 tomoe]
started off by going to the bookstore. Inside, I wandered around, looking for
the comic books. There, I looked for the Naruto series about a ninja of long
ago. I read through it, and the next, and the next, looking for the guy whose
style I was going to imitate, and hopefully surpass. I read on, past a fight
with a swordsman, the exams, and a time skip. Eventually I found the fight with
Kakuzu. I whipped out a pad, and took notes of what he did, and what his (few)
weaknesses were. After hunting around a bit more, I found a data book of the
characters. I flipped through it, noting good jutsu to learn.
I put the book back and walked out to the nearest training grounds. It was
crowded. Really crowded. So crowded that if someone dared to breathe in there,
the place would overflow. Ok, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it was very
crowded. It was no exaggeration that there were flying jutsu and kunai
everywhere, with accidental attacks, hits, and close shaves of the type found
in the Pink Panther series. I began stumbling back to the entrance, eager to be
out of that massive brawl, but I tripped over an academy student who had
previously gotten hit by a puppet with a boxing glove. The academy student was
as a result in a bad mood and took offense. We traded blows, clobbering a
nearby tree and a taijutsu specialist, but we were both swept away by a weak
pressure damage (it was only a strong gust, as opposed to a mighty blast of air
that could level the training grounds along with all of its occupants). I
thankfully was flung out into the relatively safe river filled with sharks. My
splashy entrance scared them off (the sharks in question were about an inch
long), and I glanced back at the unintended battlefield. Bodies were collapsed
all over the place, the owners apparently having collapsed from exhaustion. My
former opponent was angrily punching a large fern, which apparently was being
controlled by a puppet master and was striking back, by painting camoflauge
colors all over the attacked ninja's uniform.
I swam away down the river, looking for a training spot. I didn't find one. At
least, not an official one. I did find a clearing at one point that seemed
deserted. I mentally noted its location, and then started clambering up a tree,
my goal being to get to the top and locate my village (I was thoroughly lost).
I clambered up the tree, and my mind began to drift away as I climbed, having
nothing better to do. I idly clambered up the tree, at one point sticking my
foot in a hole in the tree. Ignoring this incident, I continued up the tree,
only to be grabbed by the ankle.
I glanced down, as I was dragged off of the tree by a wood pecker. The two of
us landed on the ground, with me on the bottom. Speaking of bottoms, while I
lay stunned face down on the ground, the woodpecker started jabbing me there
with a pointy twig it had found nearby. I jumped to my feet, cursing and
rubbing my bottom. The woodpecker renewed its attack, this time concentrating
on my shins. Seeing that its attacks weren't as effective (I kept moving my
legs around to avoid its stabs) against a moving target, the woodpecker
switched tactics. It tossed the twig at me (I caught it inches from my face)
and replaced the twig by picking up one end of a large branch instead. This was
just ridiculous. A tiny woodpecker, which definitely didn't weigh more than a
pound, picking up with apparently no effort, a 30 pound branch. Maybe it was a
taijutsu specialist. I stood there with my jaw hanging open, until the woodpecker
smacked me in the shins with the end of the branch. I yelled, and jumped 20
feet in the air, all the while clutching my shins.I landed on the ground, and
immediately rolled, the end of the branch crashing where my stomach was a split
second earlier. I rolled away and onto my feet, and the woodpecker barely
missed getting me in the noggin with the branch. I backed up slowly, as the
woodpecker advanced menacingly. The woodpecker darted forward, swinging the
branch like it was one of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist. For several minutes
I danced around the clearing, pursued by the woodpecker.
I figured the situation couldn't become any worse. I was wrong. A second
woodpecker came flapping along, saw the first one, and flew down. The two
woodpeckers began chattering away, then the new woodpecker also picked up a
large branch. Together, the two of them advanced. I turned and ran, pursued by
the two woodpeckers. I tripped over a bear, managing a spectacular face plant
as the ends of the two branches swung through the spce where my head had
previously been. The bear got up, just as the two woodpeckers launched another
attack, hitting it between the legs. Judging by the bear's change of expression(its eyes bulged out and it looked very paained), and
its pawing between its legs, I would assume it was male. The bear charged and
the woodpeckers started taking turns smiting him, only further enraging the
bear. I took this all in in amazement. I realized, eventually, after ten
minutes of this exciting show, that I had a chance to escape, so I backed away
slowly, unnoticed by either side
I backed up into something. I turned around, and jumped ten and a quarter feet
into the air. Then I did a double take. A chicken? I was scared of a chicken? I
started to laugh as I fell back to the ground, then I did a triple take. It was
not just an ordinary chicken that you would find in a farmer's chicken coop.
This chicken was MASSIVE. It towered over me, its beak several feet above my
head. I gulped. Behind me, I heard the woodpeckers and the bear disengage from
each other, and I felt their eyes boring into my back, almost literally. I felt
a gust of wind approaching at high speed and dived to one side. The woodpeckers
and bear both sailed through the air where I had been moments before, and ended
up simultaneously tackling the hen. The hen was not pleased. The bear and
woodpeckers were very confused. They were more so when the chicken shook them
off its legs and then kicked them into the underbrush. The woodpeckers (one
still clutching its tree branch) and bear staggered out of the underbrush. They
looked bewildered. I understood perfectly. They were fighting opponents they
would have never fought ordinarily, and to cap it off they were now fighting
together against, of all things, a chicken. The two groups glared at each other
before laughing themselves back into the fray. The fray (with no rope) began to
devolve into a rolling roiling dust cloud, filled with flailing limbs, cursing
(the air began to turn black and plants began to wilt), and a lot of inflicted
bruises. I stared in fascination as the struggle slowly approached and before I
realized what was happening, the fight lunged forward and enveloped me as well.
Inside the scuffle, it was utterly chaotic. The combatants hit themselves as
often as any of the other combatants. The scuffle (still with me trapped
inside) slowly moved toward the river, where everyone tettered on the edge,
frantically flapped at the air (why the woodpeckers didn't simply fly away I
don't understand), and then toppled into the river. The blast of cold water
snapped everyone out of it, and we all climbed back out and flopped onto the
beach, exhausted. I took the opportunity to roll back into the river, and was
carried away from the other combatants.
I climbed out onto the river bank a few minutes later. Finding an
inconsequential piece of money on the ground, I stumbled off to the actual bank
in the distance, only to discover (when I was going to deposit the
inconsequential piece of money) that someone pick-pocketed it from me on my
way. Oh well.... I headed back to the river bank to think on my next move. I
decided to start training, the classic way.
I dropped to the ground to give 50. Then I realized that dropping to the ground
was pointless since I had already collapsed on the ground from exhaustion.
Darn. I picked myself up and then dropped to the ground again just to be
proper. Then I started doing push-ups. I slowly lowered my body towards the
ground, and, grunting with exertion, started to push my body back up. Someone
else happened to be nearby and got annoyed at my bad technique and form, so I
spent the next few minutes being lectured by that guy, and helped with my
technique (arms wider, hands facing forward, bottom LOWER, bend the arms to 90
degrees when you lower your body, etc.) before I was on my own again. I
restarted the set (not that I had done many) just so I could do them all
properly. I began the first push-up again. I started lowering my body to the
ground until my chest touched the ground, and started lifting back up. Urk....
That was heavy. So this was what a push-up was like. This was going to be
painful, doing 50 push-ups. I struggled back up to the starting position,
resisting the urge to do the "worm" push-up (this is where you rest
your stomach on the ground, and push-up part of your body at a time, first your
chest, then your stomach, then your legs), and started gasping for air. I
needed a long breather, after the excruciatingly painful push-ups (ok, push-up,
since I only did one so far) so I stumbled off to the river, and had a good
long drink. Then I started to get sleepy so I dunked my face into the water to
wake myself back up. I dried my face on someone else's towel (the someone in
question was bathing and didn't notice), and then headed back to where I had
done the previous push-up.
I mentally steeled (after going through bronze, copper, tin, and many other
softer metals) myself for the next push-up. I took a deep breath and took the
plunge. I slowly lowered my body until my chest was touching the ground again,
and then, very quickly, picked myself back up. The reason for my haste is that
when I lowered my chest to the ground, something (on closer examination an ant)
bit part of my chest when it touched the ground. I got up, rinsed the part of
my body where the ant had bitten me, and started a third push-up, after
scanning the area to make sure nothing was gong to bite me like last time. Time
passed, and so did several more push-ups. Eventually I started to get very
tired, though, in the thirties, and I started to slow down on the way up, a
lot. I had a funny idea. I went looking for an ant hill or the nest of some
other animal. I found a badger den (occupied by a small badger). I got into
push-up position, with my chest centered over the opening of the den. I then
dropped down into the push-up, and quickly got back up. I barely made it in
time, as a pair of jaws snapped shut where my chest had been before. I did it
again, again narrowly avoiding the set of jaws. On the third such push-up,
however, I was a little too slow, and a paw raked my chest, tearing some of my
clothing. Ouch! I cleaned the wound, bandaged it, and resumed. This time I
spent almost no time touching my chest to the ground - as soon as I touched I
started frantically pushing back up, eager to avoid getting bit again. In this
manner I completed the rest of the 50 push-ups in record time (only five
minutes, twenty nine and a quarter seconds).
For a change of pace, I started stretching out my muscles, while walking
around. I started to let my mind drift as I swung my arms around in circles. I
happened to accidentally hit a ninja dog. The ninja dog started growling and I
apologized for accidentally hitting it. The ninja dog continued growling and I
decided to try a different tactic. I started doing muscle-man poses, and
flexing my muscles, and attempted to intimidate the ninja dog with my (lack of)
huge muscles. The ninja dog was not impressed and leaped at me. I then
proceeded to set one of the top times for turning, and running at a hundred
miles an hour. I happened to bowl over a second ninja dog and ran over it
(literally). I scampered away as the two ninja dogs began chasing me (or so I
assumed). I frantically fled wildly away from the pursuit. I ran and ran,
quickly running out of energy. Eventually I collapsed, but my speed returned
when I heard the crashing through the undergrowth. I continued pedaling along.
I had a bright idea. Why not, to shake off pursuit (I could hear the two ninja
dogs close behind, and closing in rapidly), I go through that ultra crowded
training ground. Proud of my quick thinking (it only took me half an hour to
come up with the idea), I scampered off toward the training ground. I found the
wrong one first. I saw a clearing and scampered toward it and promptly got
knocked flying by a ninja practicing "Chidori". I almost got skewered
by the ninja (his hand ended up next to my head). I got to my feet as the ninja
dogs burst into the clearing. We were all swept away by a (non-dangerous) blast
of air that sent us all tumbling, well, through the air. The three of us landed
some distance outside the clearing, and I set off, as the pursuit had caught up
to me. Behind me the chase was resumed by the twon ninja dogs.
I continued to pedal around the forest until I eventually did find the clearing
I had gone to originally (after nearly getting squashed by a giant toad
summoned through another summoning jutsu, almost getting fried by someone
practicing their "False Darkness" jutsu, artfully dodging a giant
water dragon, and nearly being roasted by the biggest fireball I have ever
seen). I burst into the clearing and froze, as a kunai whizzed right by where
my nose would have been if I hadn't stopped. I saw a flicker and ducked and
someone practicing raiton armor blasted through the target behind me, away,
into the underbrush. Yikes. I looked around. The clearing was more crowded than
before, with bodies collapsed all over the ground and more slumped in the
trees. I cautiously started to inch towards the other side and a flying
landmine almost took my right hand off when it exploded nearby. Fortunately
someone between it and me happened to be practicing earth armor with the art of
expansion and they made a human shield that protected me from the blast. The
two ninja dogs burst into the clearing behind me and I resumed my flight
through, my plan becoming to lose the two ninja dogs in the chaotic struggles
and get away, sneaking out the entrance on my tip-toes. I pedaled around
through the brawl. Someone used "Searing Migraine" but messed up, and
I collapsed, having a massive headache for a few seconds until the jutsu
dissipated (instead of the giant fire blast that was supposed to explode and be
very scary). The two ninja dogs were almost on me but they decided to get
through a sand controller (not a wise move). The sand user began buffeting the
two ninja dogs with sand and they retreated behind a uchiha practicing his
"Susano'o". The resulting melee spread and soon there was a mini
ninja war broiling in the training grounds.
I dashed to the side of the clearing, and surveyed the scene. I looked, but
couldn't find the two ninja dogs who had been chasing me earlier. Suddenly, I
was jumped by the two ninja dogs from behind. The two dogs began clambering all
over me, and I started blindly stumbling around. I fell into the clearing
again. I thrashed about, covered in the two biting and snapping ninja dogs, I
got hold of one and tossed it away towards the middle of the training grounds,
just as someone was preparing a Forward Lotus. The poor ninja dog got caught in
the attack instead of the intended ninja who was happy to take the opportunity
to attack someone else. The other dog managed to pin me down on the ground, I
flailed around, helpless, until someone practicing throwing boomerang managed
to club the ninja dog. Stunned, it collapsed, and I threw it into the path of
an oncoming "Human Juggernaut" attack, and the poor ninja dog got
steamrolled, literally. Delighted at my deliverance from my pursuers, I noticed
a very shaky-legged ninja dog (it was the one who got caught in the
"Forward Lotus") stumbling toward me. I started to back away but
someone had launched a "Konoha Hurricane" and it hit me in the arm,
sending me flying. The ninja dog got blasted by someone with Bakuton (the bomb
type, not to be confused with the landmine fist type Bakuton) and it was sent
flying away.
I staggered to my feet, and got hit by another "Konoha Hurricane",
this time in the face. That hurt. I tackled the user, and the two of us rolled
around, kicking, punching, clawing, and biting. The other guy was obviously a
taijutsu specialist, so he won. I was eventually left beaten up on the side of
the clearing. The other guy started to walk back to the fight but someone
imitating Kakashi grabbed his ankle and yanked the guy underground. I got up
and stumbled towards the clearing, but I saw something scuttling towards me. I
picked it up. It was a stray insect bomb from the Bakuton user. Hmm.... I
pocketed the bomb, thinking it would be useful (it never crossed my mind that
it might explode at any moment). I saw the Bakuton user preparing to detonate
his bombs, so I slung the one I had picked up. It exploded in mid-air next to
the Bakuton user, blasting him off his feet. The Bakuton user landed on a
porcupine who began running in my direction. Uh oh. I turned and fled the
battleground, followed by thje panicking porcupine.
I scampered in circles around the training ground, with the porcupine
apparently in hot pursuit (in hindsight, it probably thought I knew the best
place to hide). I was unable to shake it no matter how hard I ran (as the
porcupine would redouble its efforts to keep up). Eventually I collapsed again
from exhaustion, and the porcupine behind me tripped over a log. As it fell to
the ground, it rolled up, bracing itself for impact. A large number of its
quills made their way to my bottom when it landed. I think I jumped straight
into the top of the nearest tree, where, away from the fighting down below, I
carefully pulled out dozens of quills. When I finished, I looked for the
porcupine. It was still curled up, but it had rolled a distance from when and
where I had jumped, and I could see a bald patch where a large number of quills
had been pulled off of it. I spent a few minutes swearing (the quills HURT),
and then I hopped down onto the ground.
I saw a number of rogue shinobi creeping through the underbrush towards the
traiing ground, but when they saw the massive fight going on, they turned and
fled. I don't think it had anything to do with the guy practicing pressure
damage a lot. It certainly didn't have anything to do with any of the other
ninja duking it out on the field. It most certainly did not have anything to do
with the hailstorm of A to SS rank jutsu bombarding the training grounds. It
definitely didn't have to do with the fact that they were outnumbered and
outskilled by a lot (these guys barely made genin, some of them anyway, the
rest were disgruntled former academy students) of the ninja present. No, it was
because I happened to land on the ground in front of them and yelled BOO!. I'm
pretty sure that scared them off, not the Susano'o weilding Uchiha who was
charging towards them, sealing sword at the ready.
The rogue ninja scampered off into the underbrush, as I realized my headband
was missing. I spotted a headband on the ground, in the middle of the
unintended battlefield. I dived toward it without a second thought. Another
ninja saw the headband on the ground, and, upon realizing he was missing a
headband too, got into a scuffle with me. I won the scuffle, and grabbed the
headband, but I noticed that there was someone else's name written on the
inside of the headband. I looked at the headband and then at the ninja I had
just beat up, and noticed the name tag on the ninja matched the name on the
headband. I apologized, dropped the headband on the guy's face, and scampered
off in search of my headband.
I eventually found the headband floating away downstream. I jumped in, not
heeding the piranha, and grabbed the headband. I got chomped on an arm by a
piranha, so I leaped out of the water, and wrestled with the piranha. The two
of us rolled on the ground, and the piranha eventually opened up its mouth after
I hit its head several times on a rock. I grabbed the piranha by the tail, and
it hung there limply, until I looked away, at my headband lying on the ground
nearby. While I was distracted, the piranha took the opportunity to recover
from the earlier defeat I had somewhat handily handed it. It twisted its head
up, and chomped down on my arm. I noticed. I screeched, and started wildly
waving my arm around, trying to throw the piranha off. A number of tourists
from another village were hiking nearby, and obviously thought I was a dancer
who was demonstrating an exotic dance. They stopped and started watching in
fascination. Eventually the piranha released its grip, and I grabbed it by the
head this time. I collapsed on a rock, exhausted, but the tourists thought my
act had ended so they started shouting for an encore. The piranha took notice.
It heard the tourists cries and began to slap me in the face with its tail. How
humiliating. Getting beaten up on land by a sea creature. The tourists howled
with laughter. I tried to push the piranha away but it slapped my face back and
forth so fast I got dizzy and couldn't balance well - I fell over and the
piranha fell out of my hands and into the water where it happily began
splashing around, steadily working its way deeper until eventually it was
washed away downstream. I lay on the ground where I had fallen over, gasping
for breath. The tourists thought this was all very funny and applauded
enthusiastically. They tossed coins at my feet (on closer examination the coins
turned out to be chocolate, so I ate them as a snack).
I limped off towards my village, and sat down in the park. I took a nap on a
bench, and woke up feeling like doing some more exercise. I started doing squat
jumps around the park. I managed several laps before I got bored, and started
hopping up and down on a bench. This worked great until I tripped, jumping up.
I tripped over a crack in the bench, so I went over, face first, onto the
ground. There I was, face planted on the ground, with my legs, just above the
knees, stuck on the bench, my back stuck in a painful arch. I lay there,
stunned, for a while, before getting up and deciding that I had had quite
enough of this jumping up and down.
I clambered up a tree, shook a branch, and, like the well known Rock Lee,
jumped down, and tried to catch all the falling leaves before they hit the
ground. This did not work as I was nowhere near fast enough. I managed to
barely catch one leaf before it hit the ground. I decided to give up on that
excercise for the time being, and I clambered out onto a thick branch hanging
near a walkway. I dangled by my hands from the tree branch and started doing
leg lifts. The first time I pulled my feet up, someone came around the walkway
from the other side of the tree, and I accidentally kicked him in the head.
This resulted in a fight, which I won due to my thread body. I walked off,
leaving the other guy collapsed over the tree branch.
At home I practiced breaking boards. I planned to break boards until the entire
four thousand words of training I needed to do were used up. I continued
chopping away for about 20 or so words, and then I switched to using my feet,
in an attempt to get the remaining few words over with faster. Just to make
sure I had definitely over four thousand words, I practiced breaking extra
extra boards, despite it being dinner time, until I was sure I had done more
than enough training. Then I put away all the broken boards in a nearby
landfill (digging the hole myself) and then I figured I had done enough
training so I stopped after running home.
I decided to try for the chunin exams as soon as possible.
The next day, I decided to train with weapons. I went to a training ground
with practice weapons (which swing like the
actual weapons but can’t hurt anything). I swung them around for a while, but I
got bored, and decided
to get the real thing.
I walked over to the weapon shop
(which had a sign advertising that people could try out weapons in
their new training yard). On the way I got into a minor scuffle with another
academy student. Handily
winning the fight by making him smack his head into a wall (thanks for the
idea, Shikamaru) I continued
into the store.
Inside, there were all kinds of
weapons! I was completely overwhelmed, reduced to staring around me
in wonder. That clunk was my jaw hitting the floor. My mind went blank. I
gulped, and recovered my
composure. I started browsing. There
were the gold old straight swords. The straight swords became
katanas, which gave way to machetes, then giant two handed swords, then dirks,
then kopesh. After
that, daggers, throwing knives, and and rapiers. The conventional blades
section ended and I began
to see other common weapons. Quarterstaffs. All manner of axes. Shuriken.
Needles. Spears. Then
the standard Chains. From there, the weapons got more interesting and strange.
Razor wire. Sickles.
Bisento. Katar. Tonfa. Clubs (you would think those would be considered
redundant since they had
quarterstaffs too). Nunchucks, whips, meteor hammer s, flails, double bladed
swords, pickaxes (also sold
at the mining shop), chain sword, multi-section staffs, halberds, dagger axes,
rope darts, chain swords,
warhammers (also could be considered redundant), scythes, mauls, tridents, hook
swords, zanbato,
executioner swords, brass knuckles (for the gangsters), caltrops, gauntlets,
Korean fans, parasols, and
many other things I couldn’t recognize.
I couldn’t decide what I wanted to
try out first. The attendant at the counter said I could try out any
number of weapons, but only one at a time, and in the training yard. I asked
what was the most popular.
He replied that the shuriken and kunai were the most popular, but everyone uses
them, so that made
sense. He asked me if I wanted to try them. I asked what was different about
them, as they felt strange
in my hand. The attendant replied that the kunai and shuriken were made of a
special metal that could
absorb the user’s chakra. I decided to try them out.
I walked out into the training
ground. The pristine looking training ground was about one hundred feet
in each direction, it pretty much the inside of an old formerly abandoned
warehouse. There were all
kinds of dummies, windows, puppets, and sections of buildings for people to
test weapons on. I went
wild, hurling shuriken everywhere, in one case paralyzing a centipede when the
shuriken touched its
shadow. I picked up the shuriken, and asked the attendant how much the kunai
and shuriken sold
for. His reply had more zeroes than I had fingers. I politely said I would
start saving, and asked to try
something else. I changed my request to wanting to try everything in the store.
The attendant told me to
take as long as I needed.
I decided to do this the methodical
way. I started from the entrance, and grabbed a sword, and tried
swinging it immediately, knocking over a rack of battleaxes. The attendant came
rushing over and
politely asked me to please test out the weapons in the training grounds where
messes would be much
easier to handle. I obliged, the attendant watching with a strained smile as I
accidentally took a slice out
of the doorway. Once in the training area, I started imitating various members
of the swordsmen of the
mist. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, and dummy parts to be flung around
haphazardly. Windows
were smashed. Targets got shredded. No two things had been chopped or broken in
the same way. I
got bored, turned around to put the sword back, and saw the attendant staring
openmouthed at the
destruction caused in the now trashed training ground. I handed the sword to
the attendant and said
that swords were probably not for me.
I asked the attendant if he had any
recommendations for easy weapons to learn for inexperienced
people. I thought I could hear him say “I can tell”, but I didn’t figure out
what he was referring to until
someone else explained it to me (thanks Judai). The attendant glanced towad the
war hammers and
gulped. I took this to mean that I should give it a try. I picked up the
biggest one there, and headed
outside, before the stunned attendant could protest. I experimentally swung the
war hammer, and it
flew out of my hands, and made a big hole in someone’s nearby front door. Come
on now. Why did they
leave that door in the way? I walked over and pulled the war hammer out, and
opened the door to see
if what the building looked like inside. Inside, a family was frozen, mid-meal,
all staring at the hole in the
door. I apologized for the damage and disturbance, and told them to put the
damage on the weapon
store’s tab. I walked back to the store and replaced the war hammer on the
rack.
I looked around, and the first thing
that caught my eye was the maul. I charged back into the training
room. I hefted the maul, and swung it, ripping through several brick walls.
Dummies were sent flying.
Windows left their frames. I found I couldn’t stop spinning due to the mauls
massive momentum.
Several times I almost fell over,
but eventually I managed to stop spinning completely by ramming
the maul into the ground, making a large crack in the floor. I returned the
maul to the attendant,
commenting that the maul had this quaint habit of trying to destroy everything
it touched.
To test the scythe I went out to a
nearby abandoned empty field. I rhythmically swung the scythe back
and forth, cutting down lots of bushes, and saplings growing after a recent
fire prematurely. I had
problems due to the scythe cutting more trees than I intended, and that it
would sometimes get stuck in
the ground. I left after hundreds of saplings had been cut down. So they wouldn’t
go to waste, I hauled
them all off to the paper mill (other people giving me strange looks as I
walked by), and left them piled
right in front of the front door. I then returned to the weapon shop.
I put the scythe back, and grabbed
the double bladed sword. I twirled it over my head, and almost
knocked over the group of quarterstaffs leaned against the wall. I swung the
sword, and the attendant,
realizing that the sword’s path would take it right through the rack of
nun-chucks, grabbed the nearest
weapon to him, a flail, and blocked my swing. I thought at the time that the
attendant wanted a little
friendly sparring so I obliged. A furious duel ensued, with very short pauses
filled by my battle cries, as
the attendant getting very visibly tired. Back and forth the two of us fought,
with the obviously even
more inexperienced attendant hard pressed most of the time. I later learned
that our struggle was
heard a mile away, and people avoided the shop door in case anything flew out,
like the war hammer.
Eventually the attendant managed to beat me back with a somewhat mighty swing
of his mace, and
managed to get in a few words to the effect of “hold up”. I replied that there
were no breaks in duels or
sparring and raised my weapon again. The attendant raised his flail defensively
and quickly stammered
that when he used the flail to block my swing, he was trying to keep me from
knocking over a rack
of nun-chaku. He did not want a duel. We lowered our weapons slowly, and looked
around. Almost
all the racks of weapons had been knocked over, or broken. I heard the
attendant mutter sadly, “I’m
going to be in so much trouble for this”. I felt sorry for him so I helped pick
up all the weapons. As I did
so, I noticed the meteor hammer and thought it might be fun to try out. As I
picked up the last of the
weapons, the attendant collapsed on the floor.
I took the meteor hammer, and walked
outside. I swung it in a circle. As the meteor hammer swung
faster, I started trying to twirl it. My hands became a blur as the meteor
hammer moved faster and
faster. I had never done this before however, and the chain started to become
more and more lopsided,
eventually flying free of my hands (almost braining me), and wrapping itself
around a pole. Crap. I
could reach part of the chain, so I tried tugging on it. The chain remained
tangled. I continued to tug,
when suddenly the pole shifted. I know it wasn’t my imagination. The pole
shifted. Uh oh. I stopped
pulling and shimmied up the pole instead. I know, I know, it is not the smartest
decision to climb up
what is obviously an unstable structure. As I got higher, the pole shifted more
and more, but did not
fall. I hurriedly untangled the chain and dropped to the ground, and pushed the
pole back to its original
position, shoring up its base with loose dirt on the ground. I put the meteor
hammer back in the weapon
shop and headed home, brushing past the attendant who had his face in his
hands.
I had to fix all the damage and
replace the targets, dummies, and windows (took care of my training for
the next few days) on top of my missions for the next ten days. All this time,
my reliance on my eyes to stay alive, avoid trouble, and defeat opponents was
increasing. Without my sharingan, I would probably not have survived any of my
encounters. I was so… weak. So helpless. I NEEDED STRENGTH. And I got it.
[WC: 6053/6000 requesting 3 tomoe]
- Kalix Terumi (Wuwu)Citizen
- Ryo : 0
Approved for Sharingan Training, But from now on train in the third person. Not the first.
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