Ryu took off from the house he was living in for what had now been more than fourteen years, almost fifteen. The young boy was already quite excited though nervous in regards to the first mission he was to be assigned, and he sure had quite some pressure as his father truly believed that he could complete it easily. He said himself that it would be only a few days, maybe even tomorrow, that the Hatake would finally receive his first assignment as a Kirigakure Genin. He couldn't wait for much more time, but surely training wasn't over yet.

It was a late afternoon, almost five o'clock, and the clouds were covering the darkened blue sky; it was a typical weather for a village of such, after all, what should he expect anyway? However, this situation was perfect in order to finally sum up the results of all of his training. If the decision was to maybe come tomorrow, he had to be ready and most of all he had to know what his limits were, so that he could surpass them as soon as possible. He needed to know what were his abilities when deployed to a full extent, starting from things like his speed, agility, reflexes but also to test all of that while in a situation where he didn't have all of his chakra to start with. He would begin with the physical and stamina tests in order to tire himself out a little bit, before making a water clone of himself against whom he would spar and try to defend or dodge most of the attacks the clone would throw at him. He finally reached a lake, a natural source of water and a perfect environment where he, descendant of the Yukki clan, would clearly be in his element; almost literally, in fact. Time for the training to start.

He started with a five-minute run around a small pond that was near the lake, a pond with a diameter of maybe eighty, ninety feet. This five-minute run was more of a jogging for him really, as it was mostly preparation before he could test out his speed for his weekly sprinting test. These were tests he gave himself every week in order to see how fast he could be after running for quite a moment, so that he could judge his stamina and speed abilities all at the same time and compare his scores/results with those of the weeks before. Today, he had to make it to the other end of the pond ten times non-stop as fast as possible so that he could know what his sprinting speed was. He created a water clone of himself that would calculate the time he took, a smart move that he did when his father wasn't here to monitor his training. He focused some chakra in his feet in order to quicken them during his moves and concentrated other chakra in his lower body, from the hips to the toes. He sighed for a moment, before suddenly leaving his original position and starting running from every end of the pond. His speed was improving every week and his motivation was doing nothing but growing, helping him into reaching his final goal. He was a fast individual already for his age, and pace/speed was something quite important for someone who wanted to obtain full mastery of the Ice Release after all. It would turn out quite useful in whatever fight he may be engaged in, so naturally it was the first thing he wanted to train. After nearly a minute, Ryu finished his tenth rep and took a deep breath, ready to see his score whilst his feet used some of his energy to help him walk closer to the water clone who had a large smile on his face. As he stopped and fell in the cold water (losing control of his chakra pulse in his feet after intense effort), he was quite happy to see that he had beaten the past week's record by a few instants after leaving the pond, which was still an improvement however small it was. Now though wasn't the time to take a break yet. It was finally time to show some fighting spirit; in fact, that was the reason why the water clone seemed so happy. A spar with himself, he would be able to judge his abilities in two ways; both by analyzing his weaknesses as he was fighting himself; but also noticing his own by sparring with someone else. A win-win for himself, call it a double win?

As he stood up and got out of the water, his clone stepped back a few meters to the other end of the pond and got his katana out. Technically, the clone was supposed to be a lot weaker than him (it was made up of only a tenth of Ryu's chakra after all) but the Hatake had already done some fitness and running beforehand so that the spar could be at least a little more fair. A good strategy technically, but obviously the level of skill demonstrated in the spar would certainly not be as high as he may have hoped. The katana made out of water (that though seemed real enough) left the clone's back, whereas Ryu left the pond's reserves and stood on the water, adopting a different posture and claiming his weapon with his right hand, whilst his feet started being more concentrated with chakra. The two identical shinobi looked at each other and at the exact same moment, started running towards the center of the pond. The clone sent two shuriken flying towards the real one, who easily blocked them with the edge of his blade, that was also concentrated with chakra (wind chakra to be more precise, as it would cut easily through water; the clone's material). The clone's shuriken fell on the surface of the water and went back to their natural state, as the blades of both Ryu's clashed together. The both of them started screeching their teeth together, then used their other hand to get a kunai from their holster and attack their opponent with it, though in the end both of their small assaults neutralized each other. They both backed off and jumped twice, thrice, backwards. The real one sighed as the clone did the same, before they would come again at each other. This fight was going to be a short one Ryu knew that from the beginning, and now he didn't have a lot of chakra left so he'd rather just end it quickly, as quickly as possible. The clone started running towards the real Hatake, who started running a little late. And at the moment where the opponent's blade was meant to slice his right arm in two, Ryu preferred just jumping in the air, leaving his opponent confused as to what the Hatake was going to do. As he was falling down, he threw a kunai at the fake (who easily dodged it with the help of his weapon), while Ryu used this opening in the opponent's defense to finally slash him. Successfully enough, he landed on the ground and sliced his opponent in two as a rather large smile appeared on his face that was now all wet; not cause of sweat, but because of the heavy rain that began falling down upon him. It was time to call it a day then; not that he disliked the rain, not at all, but he was tired and didn't felt like swimming or doing any kind of other stamina-challenging or fitness-improving test.

He took his katana and put it back into its original place behind the Kirigakure genin. The route from the large lake he was located in to his house in that safe little neighborhood of the Village Hidden in the Mist was quite long, unfortunately for him. He sometimes overthought things too much, sometimes was a little reckless, and just as he was right now he was sometimes stressed or nervous about certain things he shouldn't be. He already had a quantifiable amount of training during all these years and had shown to be a proficient genin that would serve very well his country in whatever mission they may assign him. One of his fears at the moment was to either have a difficult mission in which he would eventually fail due to all the stress he had on his shoulders, or either they would have a relatively bad mission of incredibly low rank like catching cats or cleaning a house or something else. He wanted a challenge that he would be at the level of, not a mission that would be too easy for him or too hard for him (though the latter would not be too much of a problem knowing how much he liked challenge). But for now, he didn't want to be all worried with something as "futile" as that. He clearly could not change anything by now, and it was not going to be his decision the mission he would get. Overthinking was only going to be bring him inner pain and mental health problems, that he was sure of. He would just have to wait for the Mizukage's decision before he would finally take off for this first assignment he would do wearing the Kirigakure pride, his own forehead protector. First time he would represent Kirigakure, as a real shinobi. He left the lake and took off in direction of his house, ready to eat a little something before one final training session.

As he was making his way towards that place that he called home for so many years, Ryu noticed had gotten at lot more "dangerous", if he could say so. Not that it really was dangerous, but it seemed like a small glaze storm would happen anytime soon. It was still a relatively cold weather that was enveloping the large territory of Mizu no Kuni, so the surprise wasn't that great, but Ryu knew that he would have to cover up for a bit and rest in a safer place before taking off again. Even if he was of Yukki blood, Ryu was also half Hatake and didn't really like the feeling of glaze hitting on his face either, especially knowing he had clothes, and that no one wanted to get wet without clothes (at least, not in that way). He stopped his jogging after he finally saw a small grotto where he could possibly stay for a few minutes. The weather and the tempest outside was too strong for him to continue, and even if he would continue he would end up quite sick from the cold, if not worse. He felt embarrassed as he started resting in the grotto, making sure they were not any other animals or such around. After a good thirty minutes of resting where the storm calmed itself for a moment, Ryu finally left the grotto and started taking a faster rhythm in order to reach his destination faster. All he wanted to do at that point was to eat something warm like a good hot soup or maybe even just resting in a hot spring before taking a good night nap. But he still had some training to do right after dinner, so the faster he reached there, the better it would be for him and his sleeping time.

It only took him half an hour to make it past the darkened forest and to reach Kirigakure, and an additional three minutes to arrive home. He opened the door slowly, making sure to not make any disturbing noise, though all his doubts left his mind when he heard his father saying (though shouting would be a more appropriate word for that) his name as soon as he heard a noise coming from the doorstep. "Yeah that's me", the young ninja said, as he entered the house where he found his father serving himself and his son two bowls of soup. He knew what was happening outside, that must be why he made a hot meal, because he usually didn't. Ryu wasn't gonna say no to that though, that was for sure. "Hi son, where've you been? I know there was a storm outside so I got a little worried but you still were a little late even so..." Ryu gave himself permission to take the bowl of soup as he made his way towards the living room, waiting for his father to come along with him so that he could tell him what exactly happened. Ryu sucked at explaining well in details though, so he chose to just summarize it up by using a couple of words from his own colloquial vocabulary. "I just rested for a while after training, nothing major really. I'm here, so you don't have to worry now, do you?" He chuckled slightly as he saw his father joining him so that they could share this meal. It was his final meal under the mentoring of his father; as of tomorrow he would be an independent Genin, and that was all a decision of the Hatake jounin.

Ryu's feelings were oscillating between nervous excited. The young boy's emotions could all be easily read just by looking at his face; at least, that was to the eyes of his father, who shared his blood and probably his character too. Ryu always felt like he looked a lot more like his father than his mother, even though he had the Aisu Clan's kekkei genkai, the Ice Release. It was even quite contradictory, since his Aisu lineage could easily be countered by the Hatake's favorite element, that is to say the Raiton. Even Ryu's Suiton was of no use against the Raiton; yet even with his little shinobi heritage from his father, he still inherited most of the physical traits of the grey-haired jounin; the long uncolored hair, the same metallic blue eyes, a morphology that was evidently similar to his father's: there was no doubt about it, Ryu was indeed his son.

Nevertheless. Ryu looked up to his father, who nodded slowly, indicating that they could finally start eating (or would one say drinking?) their soup. Ryu nodded back, and in only a couple of quiet minutes haunted by the dead silence of their room occasionally broken by the clinging of their bowls and their spoons together, the father and son finished their meal. They have not spoken a single word to each other, not because they took care of a bad father-son relationship but mostly because the both of them had their own problems to think, to reflect on and about. On one side, there was a still young Ryu who was not exactly ready for his first mission as a Kirigakure shinobi, yet for all he knew he could be looking for small black cats in the suburbs or go track an S-Rank rogue ninja in the Village Hidden in the Cloud. On the other hand, his father was to complete a top-secret mission that only he, out of everyone in the village, knew the existence of, a mission that would require him to be out of the nation for more than a week, meaning Ryu would have to take care of himself and his training all by himself for this set amount of time. He was in a bad position, so it was only silence between the two of them. They were not rancorous, after all it was their duty as shinobi of the Mist, just... would nervous be a convenient enough word?

Everyone in the village could still hear owls doing that sound they usually made at night. It was surprising for most people that came at Kirigakure; the fact that they even had owls there, in what was considered as the coldest village in the shinboi world. The Aisu were known to wield a better power in these conditions however, as their body was well acclimated with the cold, so only hot humidity with a high temperature would really have any negative effect on their chakra reserves. Apart from that, they were literally in their element in the Village Hidden in the Mist, and undoubtedly had their place in this country lead by the great Mizukage. The rain outside suddenly stopped, after a long thirty minutes it was not so surprising to see that it went from small droplets to a pure nothingness falling from the sky that was still darkened by the night's spirits.

As for the young Hatake, he contemplated the atmosphere that was outside, sitting on the edge of one of the stairs, looking passionately at the moon and reflecting on what he should do. His mind was cleared, at least that was what he thought, but he still had so many things to worry about that would be way too complicated for a being that was naturally as nervous as him to eliminate all the stress in his mind all of a sudden. Because of that, no one expected him to be on point tomorrow as it was his academy instructor who would decide of the mission he would be given after all, and he knew Ryu more than anyone, exception made to his father. But no, what was really on Ryu's mind was his mother. He obviously stopped thinking too much about her, after all he did not even know if he had one or not (though everyone scientifically had a mother, which explained all his reflection problems). He wanted to know the truth, the whole truth, and if his mother was of Aisu descent (which would then explain the chakra prowess of the young boy with Hyouton techniques). He wanted to know where his mother came from, where his mother was, if she was dead in battle as a shinobi or if she was even a shinobi. So many questions that he asked himself regularly, at least every once in a while, on a weekly basis. For many people it was tough to be put in his shoes; most kids of his age at least had parents to take care of them and to tell them about their past (Ryu's father never did, he usually just asked the boy to go train or in bed, or would just ignore the question as soon as it would be said). The other category of kids lost one or the both of their parents, though at least they knew they were dead, and people told them how they were dead; cowardly, courageously, obliviously... The Seven Bells had a great impact on the village, and often kids of the age of Ryu had lost their parents at this point in time. But why did anyone not tell Ryu of the fate and past of his beloved mother? Why did anyone not tell him about even the fact that he had a mother? The only time he really heard a single word coming from the mouth of his father after his son asked the question, the jounin replied with a sigh, before saying that Ryu would "discover in due time". This always left a blank in the young genin's mind, as to when would be due time. It was just like in movies, in fact; the protagonist was trying to learn something about his past, yet no one is here to support him in his quest (at least, no one that would be considered knowledgeable enough to answer his questions) and he ends up knowing everything when he becomes someone a lot more mature. But Ryu was already one of the most mature teenagers of his age, and he knew that because of the incredible number of goofballs that were present in the academy or in the rest of the village. It was hard to clear all these thoughts because even if he wished to, they would come down to haunt him again. For now, he just needed to stop reflecting too much; that would cause a huge mental pain for him, a stress overdose and possibly... no, he would rather not think about that. For now, all he had to do was to relax, and take a possible thinking break, go inside, eat or drink something (since that was what everyone did when they were too stressed about something, was it not?), and go get a good night sleep before tomorrow. Ryu stood up, stretched for a moment and walked up the few stairs above him, opening the door gently and slowly (hoping to not make any noise and to not disturb his father). He stepped in the residence calmly, shaking his head and clearing his mind off. He had to take a break and have himself a good night sleep. Tomorrow bas a big day, he better be ready for it.

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