1 Serendipity (Plot, Social, Training | Invite) Thu Aug 16, 2018 4:02 pm
Kaida
D-rank
It was deep in the evening. Scattered clouds flew softly over the dense forest surrounding Konohagakure, and the bright gibbous moon lit the forest floor in patches. A light breeze rustled through the trees in the otherwise quiet night.
A fine night for a romantic walk with a handsome boy or girl, but Kaida would never have noticed. She had personal business out the woods tonight. She found a small clearing between four large trees and unpacked the canvas she'd brought with her. It took several minutes of work to hang them all up, but there was no sign of interlopers. Still, better safe than sorry.
Kaida climbed one of these trees and reaching a branch near the top, bid steel from her hand. She gave it a sharpened serrated edge, lined her hand with it, and then checked her surroundings for other people again. Finding none, she began to cut through the base of the branch. In short order, it cracked away and fell through the tree, striking the ground with a tumble.
Welp, that would do it. If there were anyone nearby, they'd come for her now. Cursing her lack of foresight, she made her way back down the tree and examined her catch.
Eight feet long, several inches in girth, and easily more than two hundred pounds of wood. Not bad. She set into the wood with her saw-like hand again, cutting the branch apart into several pieces, each about the size of her torso. Standing at various points in her makeshift enclosure, she noted several locations in the boughs of the trees she could see from her little room. No one up there, either. Good.
Five minutes later, the wooden sections she'd collected were gone, and Kaida finally felt a little safer in the clearing she'd selected. It now sported canvas walls on all sides, and left Kaida with several routes of escape, should she need them.
She took a deep, cleansing breath and let it out slowly, attuning her senses to the forest around her. Now she could begin.
Kaida withdrew a scroll from the pouch on her side and laid it out on the forest floor. A series of fuinjutsu seals kept even more scrolls within this one, but those weren't storage scrolls. They were her family's jutsu scrolls and other secrets that she had made away with during that night. With any luck, she'd find the secrets to unlocking the katana she'd taken among these.
She released the first scroll and began to read.
* * *
The scroll she had selected was long. It went on and on about the history of some kind of art, but there was nothing in it on unsealing clan weapons. Patience was never one of Kaida's virtues. She spent equal parts of the evening reading from the scroll and banging her head against the trunk of a tree, groaning about how long it takes to read. She had no envy for whoever had to write this garbage.
That was until she got into the meat of the treatise when the scroll mentioned a kind of chakra she'd never heard of before. Her interest piqued, she immediately went back and started re-reading the scroll in front of her, trying to glean more on the mention of this strange chakra. The text was dense, written by someone who'd clearly never heard of writing organization. She caught her eyes skittering off the page several times, but at some point late in the night, long after the moon had disappeared behind the clouds and Kaida had swapped to a more modern light source, she finally grasped what the scroll was talking about.
The realization did not come with a click or a eureka moment. It was a slow, grinding process that forced Kaida to re-write most of what was there to get a second perspective on the information. "Okay," she breathed. "I can do this," the young kunoichi told herself. She sat down in the middle of the clearing and took a long breath in through her nose, held it for a moment and experienced stillness, and then let it out from her mouth. Meditation was something her mother had her learn when she was very young, and she had practiced it every morning before the morning meal was served.
In. Stillness. Out.
In. Stillness. Out.
In. Stillness. Out.
Eventually, her breathing changed, and she became more still than active. She could hear the early morning calls of the birds and other animals nearby, just on the other side of her canvas walls. "Nature" chakra. According to the scroll, it was all around her, she just needed to tap into it somehow. It made sense. All living things were supposed to have chakra. Why shouldn't the world itself? It could be considered alive.
Before that, though, she had to find it.
829
A fine night for a romantic walk with a handsome boy or girl, but Kaida would never have noticed. She had personal business out the woods tonight. She found a small clearing between four large trees and unpacked the canvas she'd brought with her. It took several minutes of work to hang them all up, but there was no sign of interlopers. Still, better safe than sorry.
Kaida climbed one of these trees and reaching a branch near the top, bid steel from her hand. She gave it a sharpened serrated edge, lined her hand with it, and then checked her surroundings for other people again. Finding none, she began to cut through the base of the branch. In short order, it cracked away and fell through the tree, striking the ground with a tumble.
Welp, that would do it. If there were anyone nearby, they'd come for her now. Cursing her lack of foresight, she made her way back down the tree and examined her catch.
Eight feet long, several inches in girth, and easily more than two hundred pounds of wood. Not bad. She set into the wood with her saw-like hand again, cutting the branch apart into several pieces, each about the size of her torso. Standing at various points in her makeshift enclosure, she noted several locations in the boughs of the trees she could see from her little room. No one up there, either. Good.
Five minutes later, the wooden sections she'd collected were gone, and Kaida finally felt a little safer in the clearing she'd selected. It now sported canvas walls on all sides, and left Kaida with several routes of escape, should she need them.
She took a deep, cleansing breath and let it out slowly, attuning her senses to the forest around her. Now she could begin.
Kaida withdrew a scroll from the pouch on her side and laid it out on the forest floor. A series of fuinjutsu seals kept even more scrolls within this one, but those weren't storage scrolls. They were her family's jutsu scrolls and other secrets that she had made away with during that night. With any luck, she'd find the secrets to unlocking the katana she'd taken among these.
She released the first scroll and began to read.
* * *
The scroll she had selected was long. It went on and on about the history of some kind of art, but there was nothing in it on unsealing clan weapons. Patience was never one of Kaida's virtues. She spent equal parts of the evening reading from the scroll and banging her head against the trunk of a tree, groaning about how long it takes to read. She had no envy for whoever had to write this garbage.
That was until she got into the meat of the treatise when the scroll mentioned a kind of chakra she'd never heard of before. Her interest piqued, she immediately went back and started re-reading the scroll in front of her, trying to glean more on the mention of this strange chakra. The text was dense, written by someone who'd clearly never heard of writing organization. She caught her eyes skittering off the page several times, but at some point late in the night, long after the moon had disappeared behind the clouds and Kaida had swapped to a more modern light source, she finally grasped what the scroll was talking about.
The realization did not come with a click or a eureka moment. It was a slow, grinding process that forced Kaida to re-write most of what was there to get a second perspective on the information. "Okay," she breathed. "I can do this," the young kunoichi told herself. She sat down in the middle of the clearing and took a long breath in through her nose, held it for a moment and experienced stillness, and then let it out from her mouth. Meditation was something her mother had her learn when she was very young, and she had practiced it every morning before the morning meal was served.
In. Stillness. Out.
In. Stillness. Out.
In. Stillness. Out.
Eventually, her breathing changed, and she became more still than active. She could hear the early morning calls of the birds and other animals nearby, just on the other side of her canvas walls. "Nature" chakra. According to the scroll, it was all around her, she just needed to tap into it somehow. It made sense. All living things were supposed to have chakra. Why shouldn't the world itself? It could be considered alive.
Before that, though, she had to find it.
829