1 Still A Long Ways To Go [ Tré | Invite Only | No Kill ] Thu Jun 16, 2016 2:18 am
Aqua
D-rank
Aqua sat cross-legged in a large field of grass, flatlands for as far as the eye could see before it disappeared into a wall of trees that formed a semicircular barrier to the northern edge of the environment, roughly twenty meters in radius. This was Training Ground 314, just one random training ground arbitrarily picked from a deluge of available choices to hold her training session with, if her sensei hadn’t been joking with her, another Genin of the Leaf.
He’d approached their team last night, while they’d been eating at one of the ramen stands in Konoha. They were still in a rather uplifting mood, still riding the wave of their recent victory against Team Mihoko, extending their winning streak by yet another game of Capture the Flag when their opponents had fell for a simple ploy, diverting their attention to the objective while leaving the team itself divided and easily conquered by Aqua’s own. While the actual game itself hadn’t played out as perfectly as they had imagined it to during their planning, they’d still somehow managed to clinch a victory by the hair with Aqua returning with the piece of cloth which made up the banner she was supposed to retrieve. While Aqua did feel slightly bad for her sister, whose team she’d one-upped, she’d managed to put it out of the way for the time being, allowing her to fully revel in the moment – one of a rare few with her team – before Sumimoto Kyudoka had dropped in. Her sensei had gently pulled her aside, leaving her two male teammates to joke around between themselves about the fight against Hirotsugu that they almost always seemed to play up.
‘I’ve signed you up for a spar’, he’d said last night. With who, exactly, he hadn’t specified. Or, more accurately, even he hadn’t know who she’d be pitted up against. All she knew was that he’d asked the Konoha administrative board for permission to test her against another budding Genin of Konoha, and their reply had been a blunt and vague ‘Approved’. There had been no further information as to who she’d be up against, what clan they’d be from, or even what gender her opponent would be. The only detail her sensei had been left with, and so had been able to pass onto her, had been the knowledge that the spar would be scheduled for ten in the morning, which was fifteen minutes from now.
She leaned back against the middle of three wooden poles, each standing at two meters tall, and each arranged in a line with a three meter gap between them. The three posts were placed in the center of the clearing she found herself in, and she waited patiently for her sparring partner to arrive. As she did so, she contemplated the reasons her sensei would suddenly, just out of the blue, pull her aside for a spar against another Genin, not even one of her team. Most of the time, the only other sparring partners she’d receive would have originated from her sister’s squad, and it would have occurred in a Capture the Flag game where she could take into account tactics, strategy, and numbers that would help her squad get the upper hand. It would never be a one-on-one match. Ever. What made her Sumimoto’s proudest pupil of the three he had under his wing was that she didn’t charge into a fight like her other two teammates, but she couldn’t say that the circumstances when it was an equal one-on-one fight would permit her to exercise her advantages as she had in the past.
Regardless of anything, however, she calmly waited for the minutes to tick by. Ten o’clock in the morning was her appointment, and she patiently sat, cross-legged, in Training Ground 314 for her partner.
WC: 667
He’d approached their team last night, while they’d been eating at one of the ramen stands in Konoha. They were still in a rather uplifting mood, still riding the wave of their recent victory against Team Mihoko, extending their winning streak by yet another game of Capture the Flag when their opponents had fell for a simple ploy, diverting their attention to the objective while leaving the team itself divided and easily conquered by Aqua’s own. While the actual game itself hadn’t played out as perfectly as they had imagined it to during their planning, they’d still somehow managed to clinch a victory by the hair with Aqua returning with the piece of cloth which made up the banner she was supposed to retrieve. While Aqua did feel slightly bad for her sister, whose team she’d one-upped, she’d managed to put it out of the way for the time being, allowing her to fully revel in the moment – one of a rare few with her team – before Sumimoto Kyudoka had dropped in. Her sensei had gently pulled her aside, leaving her two male teammates to joke around between themselves about the fight against Hirotsugu that they almost always seemed to play up.
‘I’ve signed you up for a spar’, he’d said last night. With who, exactly, he hadn’t specified. Or, more accurately, even he hadn’t know who she’d be pitted up against. All she knew was that he’d asked the Konoha administrative board for permission to test her against another budding Genin of Konoha, and their reply had been a blunt and vague ‘Approved’. There had been no further information as to who she’d be up against, what clan they’d be from, or even what gender her opponent would be. The only detail her sensei had been left with, and so had been able to pass onto her, had been the knowledge that the spar would be scheduled for ten in the morning, which was fifteen minutes from now.
She leaned back against the middle of three wooden poles, each standing at two meters tall, and each arranged in a line with a three meter gap between them. The three posts were placed in the center of the clearing she found herself in, and she waited patiently for her sparring partner to arrive. As she did so, she contemplated the reasons her sensei would suddenly, just out of the blue, pull her aside for a spar against another Genin, not even one of her team. Most of the time, the only other sparring partners she’d receive would have originated from her sister’s squad, and it would have occurred in a Capture the Flag game where she could take into account tactics, strategy, and numbers that would help her squad get the upper hand. It would never be a one-on-one match. Ever. What made her Sumimoto’s proudest pupil of the three he had under his wing was that she didn’t charge into a fight like her other two teammates, but she couldn’t say that the circumstances when it was an equal one-on-one fight would permit her to exercise her advantages as she had in the past.
Regardless of anything, however, she calmly waited for the minutes to tick by. Ten o’clock in the morning was her appointment, and she patiently sat, cross-legged, in Training Ground 314 for her partner.
WC: 667