The leaves on the trees shimmied and swayed like jingling verdant wind chimes. It was the Hidden Leaf's signature symphony, a naturally orchestral melody that had persisted since the dawn of time. "I do not... think I like nature," Kaiji Kyudoka said in the midst of the braying breeze. "Green is not... my colour. Hmm." Kaiji shuddered. The lanky, pink-haired teenager stood poised stiffly. His fingers twitched to and fro, almost invisible sparks of chakra surging within them. "Kyudoka Art!" Kaiji barked, voice gruffer than his appearance would lead one to believe. An intricately decorated recurve bow, crafted from Kaiji's own chakra and honed via his Kyudoka Kyujutsu mastery appeared in the boy's left hand. The ranged chakra-borne weapon was an extension of Kaiji's own body, lengthening his limb and responding to his will. He released a breath with a whoosh, exhaling to steady himself for the training session ahead. A steady set of follow-up breaths trailed after that initial one. Kaiji had always practiced breathing exercises as a way to reach a calm and collected state. One day, he hoped to achieve nirvana itself through careful breathing, but it seemed a far off goal at this point in time. Speaking of goals, inner peace was but one lofty ambition that Kaiji Kyudoka strove for. Besides that, he wanted to know friendship and come to understand what it meant to have true comrades. But, above all other things, his true target was awakening the lost dōjutsu of his clan, the eyes of the hawk, Takamegan!

Unlocking the Takamegan was no simple process though. As with most kekkei genkai of the eyes, there were always certain circumstances that had to be met, milestones to achieve, and sometimes, even great losses that had to be experienced. "Tch! I will not falter in my quest. Those eyes--my eyes, will soon transcend the mundane!" In a flash Kaiji Kyudoka raised his recently created recurve bow level with his torso, drawing it back as an arrow composed of his own chakra formed, nocked and at the ready to be fired. "You're mine!" he called out, releasing his hold on the taut string and sending the projectile soaring. It was a nigh silent exchange, until the thunk of the arrow meeting its intended target rang out, interrupting the blowing wind and chiming leaves on the surrounding forest's trees. Kaiji Kyudoka had placed many a target around the area, mostly on trees, some on rocks, others in more precarious, hard to locate positions. The first target had been a tree, approximately 35 meters to Kaiji's left. It was a flat-out bullseye; the arrow was still vibrating gently as it began to fade and revert to chakra that blew away in the gust. "Too easy... I need, I need... What do I need?" Kaiji pondered. A second target, 5 meters from the previous one, but this time obscured by other trees, lay in Kaiji's line of sight. "Again!" he cried, nocking another arrow and letting it fly. The missile seemed to stretch through time and space, one moment at Kaiji's whim loaded in the bow, and the next, piercing a tall tree's bark at the center of a set of painted on concentric circles.

Kaiji smiled, not with happiness or any emotion really, but he was accomplishing what he knew, all that he knew. He hugged the bow to his body and it disintegrated to nothingness. The Art of the Kyudoka had been expelled. Considering sitting in the grass but deciding against it as he still couldn't come to terms with this whole 'nature' thing, Kaiji Kyudoka instead ventured to a nearby stone, preferring its smooth, cool surface to the wriggling grass possibly full to the brim with insects and other creatures. He kept up the smile for a bit longer, but it too waned. Kaiji's frown was a real one, the emotion of sadness was true. He knew his limits and though he trained and trained and trained relentlessly to overcome them, he simply could not surpass the cap of his jutsu, his archery, and his eyes that had been established. "Will father be... disappointed in me? I-is the Takamegan but a myth?" There was no way in heaven or hell that Kaiji could return to his father a failure, with dim eyes that saw practically nothing. "Okay," the young archer sighed, "More training equals a better chance of awakening, it simply has to." And so, Kaiji Kyudoka trained until his muscles felt like limp noodles and he began to go cross-eyed from all the strain on his eyes. He was now lying flat on his back in the grass, nature be damned, he no longer cared. "It is... no... use..." Kaiji panted, huffing and puffing and red in the face. "Wh-what else... is there... to do..?"

Overhead, a hawk passed by, screeching as it had located its prey, a field mouse that seemed an impossible distance from the hawk's current location. Despite this, the hawk swooped down low, razor-sharp talons extended, and grasped the small rodent while it was running to find cover. Kaiji Kyudoka sat bolt upright, eyes wide in amazement at the feat he had just witnessed, though it had not even been a feat really, just the everyday practice of finding prey in order to survive that the hawk had honed since learning to fly. It was all in the eyes really. Kaiji had read in a book of the rare non-fiction rather than fantasy genre, that hawks possessed eyes that could see eight times more clearly than even the sharpest of human eyes. This was a testament to that. The dark pink-haired student of kyujutsu was in awe. "Nature, huh?" he said, more of a whisper full of amazement than a mere remark. Thinking back, Kaiji was reminded of a simpler time, when his goals were less strenuous and... mother was still around.


"Kaiji, honey!" a voice sweeter than the pet-name she'd used rang out. The woman climbed the stairwell to the upper story of her home, making her way towards her child's bedroom. "Kaiji, dear," she paused in the doorway, "Wouldn't you rather go outside to play? It's ever so nice, here look," she said, pulling the drawstring to a nearby window's blinds in order to open them. Beams of radiant sunlight shone into the young boy's room, nearly rendering the child blind.

"M-m-mum, n-no, I hate outside. Hate, hate, hate!" he shrieked, scrambling beneath his bed, open book in hand.

"Oh phooey, Kaiji! Come out from under there this instant!" Kaiji's Kyudoka's mother yelled. Her previous sweetness had soured. She had lost what little patience she had left for the reclusive boy. Kaiji's mother took a deep breath to cool down. "If you don't crawl out from underneath that bed before I count to three, I'm getting your father, and he'll be the one to deal with you. Do you understand me!? One," she began to count. Kaiji was shuddering so intensely that the bed he was hiding under was shaking as well.

I'm going to die here, he thought. "C-c-coming!" Kaiji Kyudoka, introverted, book-loving boy, said frantically. He shot out from under the bed's frame like lightning. "I-I-I'm sorry, m-mother," still shivering and shaking like a small dog.

"Now, as I was saying before you got difficult, GO OUTSIDE!" Those words from his mother were all it took to send the boy running down the stairs and out the front door of his home into the yard. Once there, Kaiji looked left and right, up and down, to make sure he wasn't being watched like a hawk by his hawkish mother, and then he made his way to the side of the house, traveling towards the backyard where a tall tree stood. When he was sure that he was hidden from his parents' view and sufficiently out of any of that meddling sunlight, Kaiji pulled the book he had been reading out from under his shirt. He'd hidden it while under the bed, and this had been his plan since then.

"Ah, this will do, I think." Before diving into the pages and immersing himself in a fantasy world full of wondrous magic and monsters, Kaiji took note of the tree's cool bark and the soft grass he was standing upon. "Nature's so... gross. It's nothing like my room, bleh. I'd much rather be—" Screeeee! He heard the bird's cry before he saw it's form. A shadowy figure rained down from above, talons and feathers and screaming beak on the attack. "Aaaaahh!" the Kyudoka boy cried, in tandem with his assailant. He raised his novel above his head as a makeshift shield and felt the creature's force knock it to the ground. "Now I'm really going to die!" Kaiji broke into a sprint, heading back towards his home, failing to take notice of the bird's nest he had been standing next to: the most likely reason for being assaulted. After he'd made it back to his house's backdoor, Kaiji turned to ensure he was no longer in any danger. The bird, a hawk now that he was able to get a good look at it, was perched atop a branch next to a woven basket full of featherless chicks, squawking and chirping hungrily. Kaiji continued to watch as the mother hawk ascended to the clouds, circling the area before dive bombing straight for the ground and pouncing upon a mouse and returning to its nest of babies. In a mix of fear and amazement, Kaiji spoke a solitary word. "Wow."


"It is... so clear. Why, how did I not think of this before? I have to be like the noble hawk to be able to use its eyes." Kaiji Kyudoka traversed his way through the forest, across a babbling brook toward a nearby hilltop. At the top of the hill on the peak devoid of trees, he filled his lungs to burst with clean air and released the breath as the wind whistled around him. "Art of the Kyudoka," the archer said, voice even and without stutter. A shimmering recurve bow materialized in his hand. "Arrow Art," and a chakra arrow formed along with it. Nocking the arrow and raising the ranged weapon, Kaiji held the image of a hawk in his mind, and attempted with all his might to flow chakra to his eyes. Blood vessels spread across his dark scelera as he raised the bow. Be like the hawk, he repeated over and over in his mind. The forest lay below him. On the trees, the leaves rattled. Wind whipped at his hair and face, but Kaiji Kyudoka did not falter. He scanned the environment, taking note of each and every minute detail. At once, his eyes closed, and he drew back the bowstring til it was taut. Breathe in, breathe out.

"Takamegan!" Kaiji reopened his eyes, irises now adorned with a limbal ring like an angel's golden halo. His vision extended twice beyond its normal limits. He was seeing things much farther and more sharply than he ever had before. His eyes, the eyes of a hawk, felt stronger, more powerful. "There!" he shouted, letting the arrow fly free. It jumped the space in seconds, nailing a scurrying squirrel to a painted target right on the bullseye many many meters away. Kaiji Kyudoka's eyes closed again, chakra leaving them and returning them to their base state. He was shivering, the leaves were shivering, the world was shivering. "I... I did it. The Takamegan, it slumbers no longer." The fledgling archer's bow faded away in his hand. Sitting down in the grass, at the hill's peak, Kaiji exhaled and smiled.

[Exit Thread]

WC: 2012

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