[continued from Here]

Tsuneko made her way to the Battle Plateau with her newly purchased katana strapped to her back. Her thoughts were elsewhere, and she let her feet lead her; this path was well worn in her memory from her adolescence. As a Ryuzoji, she had been drilled in Kenjutsu from a young age and had often trained with her mother upon this plateau. Now that she was older and striving to embrace the shinobi life, she didn’t feel like she should always be leaning so heavily on her parents. Eventually, much of her training would likely be done with members of her team or other shinobi, but for now, she would be doing this solo. Which was probably for the best, considering that she had a brand new….well, brand new to her… sword to get used to.

When she arrived at the Battle Plateau, there were a couple other people using the space, but they were all self-contained, so it was not difficult to find her own area to train in. She tied her black hair back into a functional ponytail. It wasn’t particularly cold out, but her muscles needed a warm-up. She began with several dynamic, limbering movements. Gently, she started swinging her arms, first small, just in and out, and then larger, her wrists crossing one another in front and behind her as they met. She repeated this, moving her arms forward and back until she built up to large arm circle, which she repeated going the opposite direction. Lightly steadying herself on one of the practice dummy’s many arms, she began warming up her ankles and working through her feet. She transitioned into leg swings, starting small front to back before building in height to get a bit of a stretch and then repeated the process using lateral motions to warm up her hips. Her extremities properly warmed up, she moved into working on her core with a plank. Balancing between her palms and her toes, she held herself in as straight of a line as her anatomy would permit, her abdominal muscles held tightly. The young woman remained in this position for a few minutes, breaking up the time by doing push-ups every thirty seconds or so. When sweat began dripping onto the plateau, she pushed herself up into a downward facing dog before bending her knees to lower herself into a child’s pose, stretching out in different directions.

Finished with her warm-up, she used her sleeve to wipe the sweat from her face. As she stood up, she dusted the dirt off of her hands. The young woman didn’t do anything for a moment, allowing her mind to focus inward on what her intention was for the day. ‘It’s just about getting familiar with your new katana. You need to get used to the weight and the feel. Nothing fancy. You can do this.’ she gave herself a bit of encouragement and faced the dummy that she had been leaning on earlier. The dummies were set up for shinobi to practice on and were specially made to take sword blows without being damaged… atleast at her strength-level. The dummy had multiple arms which would swing around and hit the user if one didn’t react quickly enough.

Drawing her Rusty Katana, Kameko took a stance before the dummy. Without consciously thinking about it, the training from her adolescence took over and that stance was practically perfect, in a technical sense. Starting slow, she tried out a gentle swings, her sword lightly connecting with various parts of the dummy. The dummy was well-crafted and with even those light blows, different parts of it began to slowly swing towards her. As she blocked each one, it would cause another arm to begin moving. Gradually, she began increasing the strength of her blows and, by doing so, increasing the speed at which the dummy would swing back at her. She was able to get to a normal, unhurried pace without being struck by any of the moving arms. Jumping backwards out of reach, she waited until everything stopped spinning.

Taking a moment to catch her breath and stretch out her arms and back, she thought, ‘Alright, let’s try this up to speed.’ Darting in, she began attacking the dummy for real. Her strikes were not devastating, at her skill level, but they were enough to send the arms whirling around at the same speed that a Genin might attack at. ‘Strike, Duck, Hit, Duck, Dodge, Strike, Duck, Dodge, Dodge, Hit, Duck, Dodge, Dodge, Stri—‘ Losing track of all of the moving parts, one of the arms thunked her solidly on her exposed side. She was able to block the head-height arm, but took a blow to her thigh. She managed to flee backwards, out of reach, as, breathing heavily, she waited for the dummy to settle down again. Kameko resheathed her katana as she checked out where she’d been hit. Stretching in different directions, her side felt fine. Moving to her thigh, she rubbed the sore area; she knew that it would bruise, but it wasn’t painful enough to inhibit her movement and keep her from trying again. She walked around a little as she caught her breath, thinking over her mistakes.

After a few minutes, Kameko was back at it. The unforgiving dummy was a good teacher and after a few more bruises, she finally got a consistent rhythm going. Taking pride in her progress, the young woman began to smile as she continued to attack the dummy. ‘I can do this. Look at how much better I am already! I’ll catch up in no ti--’ Her feet lifted off the ground as one of the arms swung around and hit her square in the chest. Landing hard on her back, the wind was knocked out of her along with her pride. The young woman clutched at her chest as her diaphragm spasmed. Every moment seemed to last hours as she struggled to take a deep breath, tears leaking from her bright blue eyes. Eventually the muscle relaxed and she shakily took several deep breaths.

As the instinctive fear eased, Kameko slowly sat up. The dummy’s arms had stopped swinging, and it stood there looking all innocent. She glared at it, and then sighed. Doubt started creeping in on the young woman. ‘Young’ was only by normal people’s standards. For a kunoichi, she was actually on the old side to be a Genin. Her decision to spend a few years working in her father’s company had broadened her horizons, and she had learned a lot. She’d even had a bit of a knack for it. She left that life because she craved accolades that came along with being a high-level shinobi. Kameko understood that it would take work to get to that level… but it was still hard to ‘start over’ years behind her peers. There were Genin who weren’t even in their teens, and Kages who weren’t that much older than herself. Sure, there were also Genin who were years older, but she was far too ambitious to be content with mediocrity. ‘And you have better things to do than lie here feeling sorry for yourself. You could have stayed, happy and safe, until you inherit Dad’s company, but you chose this. Now get up and quit embarrassing yourself.’

Coughing as she got to her feet. “I think that’s enough Kenjutsu training for you, Kameko,” she declared, done with her little pity party. It still hurt a little bit to breathe, but that wouldn’t impair her chakra abilities. Picking up her katana from where it’d fallen from her hand, she sheathed the blade and dusted herself off. Closing her eyes, she turned her focus to her ever-present Current Perception. Upping it to the Tracking Range, she was able to ‘watch’ the movements of the other ninja training on the plateau. She spent several moments just doing this; confident in her self-imposed blindness because she trusted fully in her Kekkei Genkai to warn her if any living being was approaching. Sensing the electric impulses traveling through people was very different than regular sight, it was sort of like watching miniature laser shows in every living being, and it could be very disorienting if not used regularly. The short-range of her passive Current Perception, she was used to. There were never very many beings within range at one time. The Tracking Range was a different matter, however, as the plateau had other shinobi on it and birds flying by as well as a plethora of small bugs and other creatures. When she first activated it, she had a hard time filtering all of the ‘noise’ out, but eventually she was able to just watch just the other humans that were sharing the plateau with her. She began to feel connected with those individuals, although she didn’t know any of them. When she severed the jutsu and opened her eyes, it was a little sad to realize just how weak and blind those eyes were, despite them having 20/20 vision.

Next, she moved on to other jutsu. Starting with one that she was very comfortable with, she practiced her Wave of Inspiration. Turning away from the other ninja, she focused on molding chakra into her dominant right hand. Forcefully moving her hand in a slicing gesture, she released a wave of Raiton into the air. It crackled as it traveled ten meters before dissipating. Smiling to herself, she moved on to the Shock Bullets. Finding a sturdy rock on the plateau, she backed away to her max range, twenty meters, and began molding chakra in her hands once more. Once the molding was complete, she raised both hands in the shape of guns, aimed at the rock, and began quickly firing off shots. Fifteen in all, she emptied her ‘magazine’ and then went to check out her handiwork. Her aim wasn’t perfect, but there were fifteen little scorch marks from the lightning on the rock; she would get better and for now was just content with every shot hitting the target.

There was one more jutsu that she had on her agenda to practice, but it was one that she left for last for a reason. Suiton was her secondary element, and although she was fully-capable of using it, it simply didn’t feel as natural as Raiton…yet. She knew that she needed to be able to fully utilize all of her abilities to succeed, so she’d need to regularly use this one until she got more comfortable with it. She took a deep breath and then began molding Suiton chakra. When she felt that it was ready, she held her right hand up to her mouth, as though playing a trumpet, and spewed a forceful jet of water out of her mouth. After about twelve meters, the water dropped to the ground. ‘Well, check that one off the list.’ Having thoroughly exhausted herself physically and practiced her Ninjutsu, Kameko decided to call it a day and went home to hit the shower.

Chakra: 110/150: