“Now let’s just take a look here and see what we can find,” Nyrax said to himself as he looked across the Suna landscape. The desert was well named, as there was hardly anything in view other than sand some sand, and more sand! Ironically, this would actually work perfectly for what Nyrax wanted to do. He needed to build up his endurance before anything else. Nyrax remembered his training, how his master had wanted him to make sure that he was ready for a fight before he went out to complete real mission. No matter how strong or fast someone was, it was all basically worthless in the end if you couldn’t last longer than five minutes from tiring yourself out.

The body as a whole was like a giant muscle, just made of smaller muscles that helped it stay together. That wasn’t quite how Nyrax’s teacher had phrased it, but that was the closest Nyrax could get to it from memory. Either way, the point was that he needed to work his entire body, heart, and lunge to increase his natural endurance to fatigue and pain. If you taught your body to move through pain, it would eventually learn to not recognize it. Nyrax hadn’t been able to feel pain or pleasure since he could remember, but he could still get tired.

That was what had brought him out here in the first place, to tackle the challenge in front of him. HE could have just taken a run down the roads of Suna, but he wanted to make sure that he was being trained in the kind of conditions he’d have to face in the real world. There would be tough terrain, hills, rocks, and all manner of other wilderness. For now, he’d use these sand dunes to make sure that he was able to face the toughest the world had to offer him…

Or at least get a little stronger. Yeah, he could settle for that right now.

“Alright, not point in waiting any more, let’s go” the genin said to himself before he started to run forward. He had picked a line of sand dunes that seemed connected. He’d run up one, down the other side, and after a few moments of flat terrain (or at least as flat as sand ever got) he’d start moving up another one. There were five sand dunes in a row. IT wasn’t professional equipment by any means, but without a team or sensei to start with he’d need to make do with whatever he could come up with.

Nyrax began moving, his feet starting to carry him against the uneven flow of the sand, moving against the weight of the gravity and shifting ground. Already, he could tell that moving through the first line of four sand dunes wasn’t going to be as easy as he thought it would. Most of Nyrax’s training had been in seclusion, he actually hadn’t dealt with un-ideal circumstances like this. It was enough to make the kid feel like crap for sure, but it also meant that he knew he was starting in the right place.

After crossing the second dune, he could already feel sweat starting to beat against his forehead. Nyrax reached up to wipe it away, catching a glimpse of the sun as he made the movement. The sudden light caused the boy to stumble, making him slide down the dune rather than down it, and also getting a fairly decent amount of sand in his socks. The boy cursed to himself, for having broken his concentration so easily. His master had warned him about things like this. He needed to be more willing to stay focused! He couldn’t let every rock or tree just be an obstacle. Nyrax needed to learn how to be one with them and use them to his advantage.

“Come on you jackass, you can do this,” Nyrax muttered before standing up and regaining his footing. He pressed on, moving up the third and fourth dunes before turning around and starting the whole process over again from the other side. The boy was becoming more familiar with the sand, but he was feeling the pressure that his body was creating upon itself. Each step was getting heavier, but he was pushing harder and going as fast as he could make himself go. It wasn’t a perfect run by any definition, but he was pushing his body with each step.

It was about an hour later when Nyrax couldn’t do any more. “God damn” he uttered as he looked back at the sand, trying to keep himself from falling down on to the sand again. It seemed like such an easy thing, and yet the boy knew that if anyone came to fight him now he’d barely have the energy to take a punch without passing out from the heat or something else. Nyrax took a few minutes to regain his breathing before standing up and smiling.

“Just the first step. I’ll show you old man, I don’t need your program to become someone important. Like you always said, everyone that was ever truly great started as nothing. I’ll rise and become somebody. I’ll be remembered” Nyrax said before turning and walking to the next spot he had picked out.

((WC: 885))

Endurance E -> D 750/750

After all the running, Nyrax decided that a bit of a break would be needed before he did something too physical again. He needed to take this time to work on his perception skills. His teacher had always told him that he had a bit of an eagle eye, but that didn’t mean that Nyrax could just ignore it and expect it to improve over time. He needed to make sure that his eyes were up to the task, especially since that bow he ordered had been on backorder. It was going to be there in the next few days, which was something at least.

This would be more of a mental test than anything else, something that he didn’t have to run around or lift anything heavy for. It would be a good break after that tiring run. There was still plenty of daylight, and Nyrax wanted to make sure that he was able to get through the rest of his training without there being any desire to stop. For the record, this was a shift in gears, not to be confused with a break. Nyrax’s mentor was against every losing time. “If you’re awake and can move, you can make progress if you put some effort in to it. Allow yourself to stop, and things just get hard. Don’t become addicted to sleep Nyrax, it’ll only make you softer than you already”

Yeah…that guy was kind of an ass, but Nyrax had to admit that he knew what he was talking about for the most part. As long as Nyrax could move, he could do something to make sure he got closer to achieving his goals. Nyrax wanted so badly to just change the world, it was all he had ever wanted. To do that, he had to be better.

Step two for today, was training his senses. He was going to start with his eyes, try to work them to be better than they were now. Nyrax reached in to his bag and pulled out a smaller bag within. The bag jiggled with the sound of multiple contents in the bag. Upon untying the seal, a large array of marbles of various colors and sizes could be seen. This would be the test that would help Nyrax test his senses.

“Now if I just count all of these up we get to….forty, as expected” Nyrax said to himself before shutting his eyes. He turned the bag over slowly and was able to catch all of the marbles within his two hands. After taking a deep breath, Nyrax threw the marbles in to the air. He kept his eyes shut, refusing to let him get even a clue to where any of them were.

Except the one that fell right back on his head. Nyrax had a feeling that one was pretty close by.

Nyrax opened his eyes. While he saw a few of them that were closer than expected, he had a feeling that he had done a good job of scattering them all far enough to let the experiment work. “Alright, one down,” Nyrax began as he picked up the marble that landed right by his foot, “thirty-nine to go”

Yeah, that wasn’t going anywhere near as well as planned. Throwing marbles in to an uneven and sandy area was actually a rather good idea for training, but bad in practice. Thankfully, the marbles were mostly glass and often shone a bit of reflected light when the sand blew off of them in the right way. Nyrax continued to wander around, knowing that if he didn’t hurry he’d lose some of his collection. While the wind revealed some marbles to the sun, others it just caused to bury even deeper in to the earth. Nyrax had gotten about thirty back so far. As a matter of pride though, he wanted to find the others.

“Okay, I’m not that strong…if I threw them it’s not like they’ll be miles away, they gotta be at least somewhat close” Nyrax muttered as he stopped to get a better look at his surroundings. Upon turning around a few times, he noticed about five more and was able to collect them. The other five were nowhere to be found though.

He turned around one more time and noticed a little dune that rolled of at a strange angle. His eyes started to follow the path down…and sure enough, five marbles rested at the bottom of the well. “Haha! Victory is mine!” Nyrax shouted as he jumped over the sand wall and skid down to where the marbles rested. He quickly scooped them off, dusted off the sand, and finally slipped them back in to the bag he originally procured them. He smiled, actually happy that he was able to find every single one.

His teacher may have been an ass, but he had always given Nyrax something on his birthday despite it being “against code”. Nyrax smiled at the memories, this bag of marbles reminding him of the last time he saw his master.

“I’ll do you proud boss, I promise” the boy whispered.

Feeling rested and ready to get back to something physical, Nyrax decided it was time to work his muscles.

((WC: 872)

Perception E -> D 750/750

“Gotta set up some markers, make sure that I can set a base line” Nyrax muttered to himself as he stabbed the long stick in to the ground. It took a bit of effort to make sure it stuck in to the sand, but it was worth it. The only way he was going to test if he got faster was to set up a test and try to perfect it. A simple foot race was going to be the best way to do that. Running on sand was also going to prove difficult, but Nyrax had at least been able to find a bit more of a flat terrain to make his course on this time. Right now he just had two poles set up on opposite ends. He’d run from one to the other and back, using the first as his baseline and would just aim to improve from there.

After doing some base measurements, Nyrax knew that it was time to get running. “Alright. Get ready…get set…GO!” he shouted to himself as he began to run. His perception training had allowed the genin to rest up, allowing him to go on and run at his best. While he started at a fairly decent pace, Nyrax made the biggest mistake he could have: he pushed himself too hard in the beginning. Before Nyrax even got to the other end of the sand, he felt himself growing tired from the exertions of his muscles. The boy kept trudging though, not allowing himself to stop despite the pain he was pushing through at the moment. He continued and made his way through the rest of the course, finally hitting the first pole he set up only a few minutes ago. “That was awful” the genin remarked to himself as he looked back at the racing course.

Why had he done that? It was just a stupid decision, and yet it was the kind of thing that kept him from progressing. Out of anger, Nyrax kicked the sand at his feet, causing a small burst of sand to fill the air. The wind picked it up and carried most of it away, though a single grain managed to lodge itself in to the boy’s eye. For someone growing up to be a shinobi, it was amazing how stuff like this bothered Nyrax so much. He just expected better of himself, and he hated that he never seemed to be able to deliver on anything.

Nyrax worked and struggled to try and get the sand out of his eye. He clawed and tried to get at it before it got lodged in there for good. The more he tried though, the more he seemed to jab his own eye rather than anything else. Nyrax finally just squinted his eye, feeling like he was doing more harm than good at this point. He needed to stop and think…and that was when he remembered back to his master’s teachings.

Nyrax had originally been taught problem solving when his training first began. They couldn’t train the boy how to kill before he could walk properly. Training of the mind though, they could work with that. They had given Nyrax a number of puzzles, wanting to increase his problem solving skills. As an assassin, you often had to outthink your enemy rather than deal with them head on. The puzzles were simple, but they were meant to start creating a mind that could see different solutions to the problems that life would give him.

“Patience Nyrax. Often a keen eye and mind are the key to victory. Hold to your course at a pace you can handle. Solve one piece of the puzzle at a time, not the whole thing”

A pace that he could handle. God, Nyrax’s mentor really was a genius, even though the boy had been frustrated with the teachings at the time. He needed to just hold back and move at a pace that wouldn’t kill him. Sprints were fast, but running at full speed for a few seconds to come to just a crumbling halt was just a good way to get yourself killed.

With his master’s teachings in mind, Nyrax took to the course again. He kept control of his lungs like when he had been running over the sand dunes just a few hours ago. HE controlled his movements, running to the first pole. Already the boy could tell a difference as his body picked up in speed and time. He smiled to himself, though his breathing stayed even. It was amazing how a simple piece of advice like that could really make you rethink a situation.

Nyrax tapped the pole before turning around and heading back to the starter pole. He hit the top of it and slid himself to a stop. He couldn’t wipe the grin off of his face if he tried to. He was making progress. Sure it wasn’t much, but it was enough to see the wheels moving. Good things were going to come, but he had to put that doubt behind him. Nyrax was alone now, he had to push through any challenge he had alone.

((WC: 863))

Speed E -> D 750/750