Kidou sat alone in Training Ground 71. Like many other training grounds in the Village Hidden in the Leaves, it was dominated by a large, clear grassy field, with trees at the edges and the sounds of a river flowing through the training grounds originating somewhere fromt he cardinal north. His face was fixated on several birds that were chirping and flying around, landing in their nests on the trees and either building it up or feeding their young with crushed worms.

He loved how nature worked. It seemed so… natural. He chuckled at that thought. Well, of course it was natural. Hence, it was in the name. He admired how this one scene seemed to personify what he liked, and what he hated as well: life. Or, rather, he loved life, and hated the loss of it. It wasn’t even death that left a bad taste in his mouth, just the loss of life. There were many ways that life could be lost, and not all of them required for it to be done in the traditional way of actually dying or being killed.

No, loss of life could take place in the form of losing one’s identity. After all, if one lost their identity, they didn’t really have a reason to live. They didn’t have anyone to live as. Subjugation of another person’s will was also a form of loss of life, since you were killing someone off and having them act on your behalf with no say on theirs. This last thought brought an interesting notion to Kidou. As ninja, they were expected to be extensions of their villages will, tools to be used by the Kage to further the cause of the village to ensure their future survival, and then their future prosperity. By this notion, he should hate villages, yet the irony in that was he actually held a deep love not just for the village of Konoha, but for the concept of villages as a whole. He would never want to see them gone. With no villages, there would be far too much chaos, and loss of life would become too widespread and chaotic, uncontrollable.

He supposed that was the way life worked. Just like the birds in front of him, lives had to be exchanged. It was… nature, he supposed. Lives were lost, and lives were gained. Like with the birds, worms were killed for their young to be fed. Like with humans, animals were their prey for sustenance. Loss of lives, gain of lives… But maybe that was one that was uncontrollable? Was that any different than how ninja killed each other to ensure their own survival, and the survival of those they cared about?

Kidou was left to ponder these thoughts, ultimately still revolving around his love for life, as he stared at the birds and their happy family, so unlike his own.

His own family was already broken, though he supposed he was the one responsible for that. He left his family to preserve the status quo that he knew so much about. His parents had always loved his brother more and showered him with greater attention than they did Kidou, and he was fine with that, since it allowed him to do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. The loss of this freedom when he became a ninja, due to their shared worry that he would fall in the line of duty, had tipped the scales of their family too much for his comfort, and seeing his brother without said attention, even if the latter had said it was fine, had spurred him into leaving.

Well, he got his wish, he supposed.

618/618

Training Ground 71. They said that that place was often deserted because high level ninja loved to use that place as a sparring grounds. While it wasn’t in a worse condition than the other training grounds (the janitors and other Genin in charge of fixing up the training grounds after their higher-ranked counterparts were done playing around saw nicely to that) it was also not the best training grounds for normal Genin to choose. The reason was simple: one never knew if Jonin were actually fighting there, or when they would be fighting there. The damage they caused was simply too quickly done and too spontaneous for anyone to have any prior warning, unless you were a Jonin yourself. Sure, the Jonin responsible for the annihilation of a group of Genin would probably be trialled and hung, but it didn’t bring back the lives of the dead.

Just like his Jonin sensei.

Shuuya couldn’t help but think about his sensei even as he walked towards Training Ground 71. His sensei and his team had been on a field mission. It was a simple courier mission. Nothing could go wrong on it. Until something did. A group of bandits, with some high-leveled missing-ninja thrown into the mix, had screwed up their entire mission. Even up till now Shuuya was unsure whether they had been specifically targeted, or if they had just bumped into those missing-nin by mistake. The courier mission shouldn’t have made contact with any hostiles even remotely possible, but they did, and considering the intel was never released to even the team that lost their Jonin-sensei, who was technically still categorised as missing-in-action (good, that meant Konoha still had to look for him every now and then), he never knew if the intel was truly worth it.

It would never be, in his opinion.

He was currently walking to Training Ground 71 despite the dangers because he wanted to get rid of all the depression welling up inside him. He was mad. He was angry. He was sad and grieving. He didn’t know what to do. His Jonin-sensei had been lost, missing-in-action with no one in Konoha even caring the slightest bit about him. To his knowledge, they’d all but forgotten about him and they could care less if one of their hundreds of Jonin went missing in the fields. To them, it was an occupational hazard that his Jonin-sensei had been all too ready to take, and with his two Chuunin teammates relocated to teams that needed their expertise more, Shuuya had never felt more alone. It was why he didn’t give a damn if two Jonin suddenly showed up and blasted him to bits.

It wouldn’t change anything.

But apparently the appearance of a kid at the supposedly empty and perilous training grounds did. He had planned to exercise some of his more dangerous techniques here, maybe destroy a tree or two so that he could release some of his pent up anger and frustration that his village wasn’t doing anything to help its own members, to help his comrades! But here sat a boy dressed in black and garbed in white, sitting on the ground looking at some trees. He approached the boy, and asked.

“Hey, what are you doing here? You don’t seem like you’re looking for a spar, so if you aren’t, I’d appreciate it if you could let me practice my techniques in peace.”

Perhaps it wasn’t the most diplomatic way to go about things, but Shuuya… he didn’t care right now. He wasn’t in his right mind, and frankly, he couldn’t care about others when he himself was breaking apart.

Breaking slowly, but surely, apart.

Kidou was meditating alone in Training Ground 71, though not exactly closing his eyes and sitting in a cross-legged position while focusing on the calm of his mind, like most people would associate the act of meditating to be. It was almost funny how it was culturally understood that the act of meditation required one to be at complete balance with their surroundings, when it was in fact one of the more extreme forms of meditation. Of course, it wasn’t as extreme as starving oneself within a cave with a blocked entrance, but it was still up there as one of the more extreme cases of meditation.

Instead, the type of meditation that Kidou was now practising was simply that of clearing his mind. He found that a fairly effective way of calming his mind turned out to be watching nature, and watching life grow. He loved life; that he could not stress enough. To see someone throw away their lives was almost as painful to Kidou as feeling the knife stabbed through his heart as well as theirs. He had a connection to other people, a level of empathy that few others demonstrated, and that a ninja most definitely shouldn’t have, but it was a level of empathy that he completely embraced.

Of course, he understood the ramifications of having such empathy towards life. They were ninja; it was in their job and nature to kill, take, and destroy. Kidou had those moments in his life, where he shut out his wants and feelings, and took the lives of others mercilessly. Granted, it was fortunately not a human, but taking the life of a rabid dog as part of a mission had still left him feeling somewhat hollow and regretful after the act. He didn’t dare imagine what it would be like to take a life and then reflect on what he had done. In fact, his very first kill and the circumstances that surrounded it would very well make or break his career as a ninja, depending on how he took it.

It was as he was contemplating this that someone called out to him.

“Hey, what are you doing here? You don’t seem like you’re looking for a spar, so if you aren’t, I’d appreciate it if you could let me practice my techniques in peace.”

Kidou turned to face the newcomer, and noted that it was a boy with pink hair, dressed in black and white, with gold trimmings adorning his outfit. His pink, wild hair looked odd, but it was really the look in his eye that told Kidou the man was serious. It was also the look that reminded Kidou of the ninja he had seen go out on missions, whether they were from the Nara clan or not, and came back insane.

He did not want to see that happen if he could stop it, and something told him he could stop this newcomer.

“If you want, I could help you practice your techniques. Who better to practice them on, than a fellow shinobi to simulate an actual combat?”

Kidou wouldn’t take no for an answer, regardless of anything the boy might say in refusal, and would instead walk to one end of the training grounds before turning to the boy. He would expect him to take up arms on the other side of the training ground, such that the river split the training ground in half, and ran straight between the two of them.

“Come at me,” Kidou challenged, though the challenge was addressed more so to himself than the boy in front of him. Yes, it was a challenge to make him see the worth of life, and it was one that he must not fail.

634/1252

As soon as Shuuya had asked his question, the boy had turned to face him from his position sitting on the ground. He had looked at him weirdly for a few moments, before standing up.

“If you want, I could help you practice your techniques. Who better to practice them on, than a fellow shinobi to simulate an actual combat?”

Shuuya couldn’t believe his ears. There were so many things wrong with that sentence that he didn’t know where to begin, though it was mostly only obvious to him because it went against his creed of attacking his allies. This boy in front of him may have been a complete stranger, but this boy was also a ninja of the Village Hidden in the Leaves. Shuuya wasn’t going to attack a fellow comrade just to test out the strength of his new jutsu, and he was sure that none of his parents or his friends would have taken kindly to him accidentally injuring a fellow ninja. This may have been a spar, but with Shuuya’s mind in the gutter as it usually was in recent weeks, Shuuya couldn’t really assure anyone, least of all himself, that it would stay just a friendly spar.

On the off chance that this was a foreign ninja, however, Shuuya also didn’t want for it to cause any international incidents. Attacking a foreign shinobi, whether in their lands or yours, was tantamount to a declaration of war, and yes, once again, this was supposed to be a spar, but Shuuya was once again aware of the fact that he wasn’t actually in the best state of mind to be thinking of such things. He needed to test out his abilities in private, not where they wouldn’t be stolen but where they wouldn’t do something he didn’t want them to to someone he didn’t want them to. It was really self-preservation here, both to preserve himself and whoever was stupid enough to walk up to him demanding a fight.

Nevertheless, before Shuuya could answer, the boy had already gotten up and walked to the other end of the training field. Sighing in defeat, Shuuya could only hope that he himself would not be too overcome by the adrenaline of the fight - he knew himself that he could easily get carried away by the beauty of a fight, though since those were fist fights with his friends, he hoped he could make sure that the same didn’t happen when the two of them were throwing shuriken, kunai, and jutsu around. He took his place at the opposite side of the training grounds, with the river now bisecting the imaginary line that connected the two of them.

“Come at me,” the person had warned, and Shuuya heard him loud and clear from across the clearing. Gearing himself up, he ran at the man, taking note of the kunai and shuriken in his pouch, but not quite taking them out yet.

The man was running at him.

Kidou was always lazy, so he had learned to use senses other than his instincts whenever responding to a battle, and right now he was using his sight to analyse his opponent’s fighting style.

It turned out, however, that there wasn’t much to analyse, since his opponent seemed to take his offer to attack to heart, now charging straight at him, but not exactly taking out any weapons to fight Kidou with.

‘Does he want to make this a taijutsu match?’ Kidou thought. ‘I thought he had several techniques to practice. Or were they taijutsu techniques? Or perhaps close-ranged techniques?’

Regardless, it didn’t change the fact that the boy was trying to get in close, and Kidou wondered if he wanted that to happen. He had agreed to help the boy practice his techniques by being a living target, but was freely giving him a shot in also the same as training him in its use? Or should he try to dodge it? Or perhaps, counter it?

He wondered if he should use his Shadow Armor technique, before hypocritically deciding that it was still too unfinished to be used in combat, not really because he didn’t want to injure his opponent, since it was likely the offer to practice techniques was also extended to him now that he was a combatant in this fight, but it was just that such a technique still had risks to his body that he wasn’t willing to take in a spar, and until he was able to work out exactly why the chakra wasn’t staying on his body and was instead fluctuating all over the place, the technique wouldn’t be anything more than a concept, let alone combat ready.

Nevertheless, Kidou ran in as well, now that the boy had cleared half the distance between them across the river, and then met him in the middle, throwing his right hand at the boy’s head. It was unlikely it would hit, but this would give Kidou some indication as to what kind of fighter he was up against, and allow him to decide on whether a passive or aggressive approach would be most beneficial.

374/1626

Shuuya sped past the clearing, each leg bringing him closer to his opponent, who remained still as he crossed his half of the clearing.

'Why isn't he moving?' Shuuya wondered. 'Is he even taking me seriously?'

That thought brought fury to Shuuya's face. His eyes narrowed and he subconsciously activated his clan's Dojutsu, the Burning Eye, with eyes turning red and turning into vertical slits, almost like a reptile's, with the adrenaline that now fueled his body displayed further when he leapt across the two meter river in a single, simple jump and continued to speed towards his opponent.

He focused his vision back on his enemy, seeing the world around him now in almost black and white, with slight patches of red where heat was radiating off of living objects. There was a large mass of red in front of him, where his opponent was standing, and while a part of him realised it stopped him from accurately depicting his opponent's moves, it also kept him aware of any tricks that he was likely to pull, solidified by the fact that he was just standing there, likely with something up his sleeve.

It was at this point that his opponent decided to come at him as well, running towards him and...

'A right hook?' Shuuya thought, registering the action immediately from his years of hand-to-hand combat.

"That's not going to work on me!" Shuuya said, ducking under the attack and swinging an uppercut at the man's head.

145/150:

It was what he could only call a fist fight.

Kidou had thrown a punch at his opponent with his right hand, and it was seemingly dodged with ease.

"That's not going to work on me!" his opponent had proclaimed.

Kidou hadn't expected it to. It had been meant to gather more information from his opponent so he could adjust his strategy accordingly. When his opponent had ducked, it had informed Kidou that his opponent was at least a proficient close combat fighter, not retreating from an attack but moving in for a counterattack, a trait that could have proved lethal if he continued going in close.

It taught him that much, and he was also aware of the danger of remaining this close to his opponent. As such, he prepared himself to jump back from the uppercut that was queued directly after his attack had been dodged.

Unfortunately, when he had looked down to better anticipate the uppercut, he saw the eyes of a dragon.

Shocked as he was, the punch hit him in the chin, sending him flying backwards.

What was that?

He could recall seeing slits, pupil slits, in the middle of a sea of orange fire. They had seemed so much like the eyes of a dragon. He couldn't be sure, but with the fury that was written across the boy's face, as if he had been angered for some reason, he was almost sure that he had been staring into the eyes of a legendary, mythical beast. 

Standing up from his position, he decided to take the battle more seriously, deciding on a more defensive fighting style. He prepared himself for his enemy's next attack, building up chakra within him to react with his clan's signature Shadow Jutsu. 

299/1925

Shuuya's uppercut connected, and the boy smirked when he felt this.

Sure, he was fighting a comrade here, but this was a spar that the two of them had agreed to, so it was only natural that they went all out, and Shuuya was beginning to feel some of the victory of the last hit go to his brain as he let the smirk show on his face, underneath his two glowing red eyes that now resembled a dragon's.

He would jump back and wait for the person to attack, but seeing as his opponent still refused to attack him, instead bracing himself for something, Shuuya would instead go in to the fight again, this time aiming for another right hook like his opponent had done just now, hoping to end the fight with his fists as soon as possible to teach his enemy that he was making a mistake underestimating him.

130/150:

OOC: Sorry forgot to add the activation cost.