Saturday morning, nine o'clock in the morning. The eternal summertime of the Village Hidden in the Leaves and its surrounding environs had started early today. The blazing Sun beat down on the village from a sky devoid of clouds, and the air was suffocatingly still.

Humming a sweet tune to herself, Kaida danced proudly in her tiny apartment, looking down at the little wonders she had wrought. This was the first skill she had taught herself since coming to Konohagakure, and she liked to think it was coming along passably. Her creations tasted good, were crispy along the edges but soft in the center, and a pleasant pale golden color. She packed them into a set of small boxes along with her lunch and dinner and wrapped everything up to travel with her. She packed a backpack full of tools, complete with ropes and wooden dowels for some kind of construction, as well as several metal dowels each with an eye on one end.

Kaida arrived at the Administration Building and walked inside, looking around as though she were a tourist there for the first time. Spotting a message board by the mission docents' counter, she jogged over to it and set down her load for the first time since she'd left her apartment. She retrieved a letter from her pack, unfolded it, and pinned it up to the board. It read:

To any interested nin,

My name is Horikita Kaida. I am a young genin of Konohagakure. I am in need of fire release training with a partner or sensei. Please see me at the Konohagakure Training Grounds if you are interested. I look forward to meeting you. Thank you for your time.

* * *

She reached the training grounds within minutes of leaving the Administration Building. Several more ninja were here: primarily genin and chunin, honing their skills with each other. Kaida hoped to be a part of one of these cells soon. They seemed to get along so well. She wondered what her possible teammates might be like, and if this ad were a good way to meet someone who might be interested in forming that kind of professional relationship with her.

Finding a set of trees with the right dimensions and arrangements for her plan, Kaida put herself to work on setting up her daily training. She fed a rope through the eye of each metal dowel in her backpack, arranged a rigging and pulley system for each rope, and hung the dowels up from the trees in positions that would swing down to strike a target along a set path.

Today was katon. The goal was to push heated chakra through her body and let it out in vents from her hands and arms to move the dowels and reposition her body as they swung toward her. If she was right, she could make jets that would not only help her move more quickly but also help her to avoid strikes and set herself for stronger attacks.

She pulled on the tagged rope by her starting point and turned around. A metal dowel dropped from a nearby tree, quickly followed by one, then two, then three others. Each swinging dowel came for her in a cascade, and she remembered back to how the wolves had moved when she was training in the cave, not three days past. Fluid motions and muscles surging with power. As the first one came near, she strode past it, and waved her hands in circles in front of her, letting out jets of barely-controlled flame. Her first attempt could have gone better. In the end, she hadn't managed to divert one dowel. She would have to work on her control before she could even attempt this exercise.

There was no place in her heart for self-pity, however. Just a calculation of her expected outcome and her actual outcome, and a grading on how she had performed the movements. Marking herself fairly, she had to say that this was not a passing grade.

675

N'Jobu tossed and turned in his bed, resisting the grasp of the sunlight peering through the blinds of his window. After realizing the futility of his fool's errand to remain in bed, he threw the covers off of himself  and rolled his body groggily out of bed. Today would be a day for training and it was a beautiful day to do so. He looked out his window to see the wonderful weather outside and opened it to get a better sense of the temperature. The air was still and the sun was shining without a single cloud in the sky as the breeze carried along the sweet smell of the summer. After taking in the beautiful scenery outside his window, he grabbed his clothes from his dresser and began to dress himself for the day. He draped his Basotho blanket over his head and grabbed his bow to head out the door. He would make his way through the village to head towards the Administration building first to see if there were any sparring partners available. He needed a bit of a challenge as training by oneself does have its limits.

After about 10 minutes of so walking through the village, he finally arrived at the administration building where he walked in to check out the message board. After scanning over it, he stumbled upon someone looking to train for the day.

To any interested nin,

My name is Horikita Kaida. I am a young genin of Konohagakure. I am in need of fire release training with a partner or sensei. Please see me at the Konohagakure Training Grounds if you are interested. I look forward to meeting you. Thank you for your time.

"A Katon user of all things...Well, I guess it will be a good time to figure out counters to my weakness..." he muttered to himself as he ripped the notice on the board and headed out towards the training grounds. They weren't too far from the administration building so he reached them relatively quickly. When he arrived, he found several pairs of shinobi honing their skills. Unlike the others however, a young girl stood over by a pair of trees with a make shift targets rigged between them. She appeared particularly focused on what she was doing, trying to do some sort of jutsu to hit her targets out of the air. He watched her for a few moments as she tried to make small flames appear from her hands. "I suppose that is her..." he contemplated to himself as he walked over to her. He wasn't sure whether she had noticed his presence so as not to startle her, he announced himself. "Hey...I saw your message on the message board. I will train with you if that is Ok with you". He would wait a few moments to see if she agreed to his proposition, if not he would simply walk away and begin training on his own.  

WC: 502

"Hey," someone called to her. She wove around the last few bars for this run, her chakra somewhat depleted from the effort. What she was doing, she wouldn't have called it improving. More like... achieving flukes more often. She had succeeded in deflecting about every one bar out of five, but often not in the direction she had intended, or with the strength she wanted. Once the falling bars weren't plaguing her anymore, she turned to face whoever it was.

He was... not that bad looking, all things considered. She had been prepared to receive an applicant lacking something major, or not see anyone for the first few days, but this guy was punctual and he seemed alright. She especially liked the markings on his face; it showed in her expression. "I saw your message on the message board," he explained. "I will train with you if that is ok with you." He waited for her reply.

A memory crossed her mind, and it flickered across her face for just a fraction of a second. It was like recognition, but for someone who was clearly new.

She was twelve again, just weeks after the nameless man had taken her from her family. They were out in the mountains around Kumogakure, late in the evening. The nameless nin had been training Kaida in basic chakra control, starting her lessons from scratch. He had recognized that she'd been trained before, and by several shinobi, but her education had been so scattered and piecemeal that she had effectively become an unfocused dabbler.

Putting it gently, Kaida had expressed a desire to return to her family home. The nameless nin told her she could leave whenever she wanted if she could get past him and survive the journey back alone. He had been a proper nin once, and though that was no longer the case, he still remembered everything that it meant to be one. They spent many long hours together, honing her control over her chakra until she could produce a single flame.

Why had this boy reminded him of the nameless man?

Kaida registered where she was, bringing herself back to reality, and smiled for what felt like the first time in days. She waved the strange boy closer. "Sure, sure," she said, trying to muster a friendly voice. "I'm Kaida." She held up her hands in front of herself in an almost-juggling position. Doton ores formed within her right hand, and assisted by katon heat and carbon, produced a stream of steel that flowed into her left hand, where it disappeared back into her body. "I'm a part of the Kongo clan, and I need to work on my koton, but until I can improve my katon control to produce hotter flames with more even temperatures, I won't be able to make the alloy I need for stronger steel. So, I need someone to help me with katon control.

"What about you?" she asked, putting her hands behind her back to clasp them together as she spoke to him. She started to walk around him, looking him up and down all over, nodding to herself. "What kind of skills would you bring to our partnership?" Her voice was the soul of professional interest, with a nearly clipped but clearly interested inflection. Would he pass muster? She certainly hoped so.

565/1,240

Taken off guard by the boy's sudden predilection to combat, Kaida swiveled around to face him, eyes wide. He drew his bowstring back and took aim at the horned girl. "3..." he began counting down.

Grace under fire, hm? She could handle that. Maybe. Without time to center herself, she turned to look at the target. How would she manage this? She'd never had a knack for ninjutsu, but perhaps she could manipulate her chakra flow in such a way that she could make an arc of flame from herself to the target.

Visualizing the flow of chakra within the body, she lifted her hands toward the target and took up a steadying stance. Kaida turned up the heat and the pressure within her and then vented off the chakra from her hands, creating powerful but erratic jets of flame that nearly threw her off-balance. Katon streamed outward from her hands in a chaotic storm, and she fought back hard against the force of it, which threatened to blow her away. Still, no matter how she twisted or pushed the katon within her, the delivery of "range" just wasn't within her. The flames she produced swirled and sputtered, never extending more than a few scant feet from her body.

Focus, she told herself. You've got to do better than that. She recalled back to her training with the nameless man in the mountains. He'd made the trek to Kumogakure to acquire chakra-sensitive paper so that they could determine Kaida's nature. When he had promised to train her, she didn't think they'd be starting her shinobi education over from scratch, but apparently, her mother's methods for raising a ninja had been unorthodox enough that her new guardian wasn't comfortable with figuring out what she was and wasn't missing.

Her affinity was straightforward. As soon as the paper touched her fingertips, it burst into flames and turned to whitest ash before crumbling away. Fire nature. Katon.

So then why was it she was struggling so much, now?! She twisted the katon within herself into tighter whorls and constricted down on the vents from her hands. The fire she sprayed from her hands took on new forms, but its length would simply not increase. Unconsciously, she knew she'd be long out of time by now, and her body tensed up in anticipation of the arrow or whatever other punishment her new partner had in store for her.

210/250:

418/1,658

Bugs. Tiny, horrible bugs. The "arrow" struck her just as she threw up her hands, sheathing her body in hot, fresh steel. None of them got in under the armor, but it was still a horrible experience. They sizzled when they came into contact with searing armor on her body, and her partner shouted something about katon. Gee, really? she asked herself, thinking almost loudly enough to be heard.

Covered in nightmarish insects all over, she gritted her teeth. Every time. Every time she tried to reach out to someone, this is what happened. Well, maybe not swarms of tiny bugs from some sadistic Aburame genin, but it never went well. She was starting to think she might be cursed. She just had to come up with a new way to meet new people, because the shinobi who showed up to answer her daily summons were crazy!

Some small part of her brain concentrated on these things, keeping a semblance of her mind calm while the bugs roamed over her armor. Logically, they could not harm her. In reality, however, she fought to keep herself calm. Only with a calm mind would she be able to channel her fiery chakra onto her skin. Ordinarily, such a thing wasn't even possible for shinobi, but moving katon through the carefully shaped doton ores in her body was part and parcel to the formation of koton. Venting flame from somewhere other than her mouth or nose was really just that without the ores.

She fought off the urge to panic, letting the cold, rational side of her mind steer the situation. Centering herself, the horned girl rushed the katon through her body, letting it out of her skin in spikes and small explosions. The Aburame swarm insects burned readily, popping like popcorn when exposed to her better-crafted jets. That was what she focused on, and not the extreme grossness of the situation.

Visualising the flow of chakra within the body, she turned up the heat and the pressure within her and created vents wherever insects happened to skitter and flow. This tactic worked well; her control over her chakra allowed her to create jets of flame close to where she wanted them. And fortunately, when working with this kind of heat, close was good enough for now. Whenever she created a jet, her limbs moved with the force of the flame, and she was forced to balance these forces against each other to avoid falling down. Slowly, her wild flailing almost turned into a kind of dance, but by then, the insects had all been taken care of, as well.

Kaida slumped in front of N'Jobu, panting with fatigue as she glared upward at him. "That... was terrible," she panted crossly, scolding her new partner. "But good idea. I should be good for at least another one before I run out of chakra." She took a breath and then straightened out, waiting for his response.

495/2,153

Chakra Usage:

He watched carefully as he anticipated the insect arrow he had shot at the girl would likely hit its target. As anticipated, the arrow crashed into the girl who threw her hands up in front of her face to shield it. Her skin turned dark as the smooth look of steel crested over her body, protecting her as if she were some sort of metal goliath. “Interesting…” he thought to himself as he watched his insects fizzle out from the heat of the newly formed steel across her body. He was always saddened when his insect died, but he knew their sacrifice would help future generations become stronger and more capable in combat. “I’ll have to find a way to deal with that, a frontal assault probably won’t do me any good against steel skin,” he mused to himself as he continued to watch her. She was a bit more aggressive by this point, causing little steams of flames to erupt from her being at various points on her body, roasting the insects unfortunate enough to get caught in her crossfire. The power of the jets appeared to be enough to be knocking her to and fro, as if she was dancing to the rhythm on the insects swarming around all over her body. He would chuckle a bit as she moved around, spewing fire until all of his insects were either scorched or had simply moved on from her and returned home to the swarm.

The girl would slump over, out of breath and struggling to keep up with the “training” he was helping her with. "That... was terrible," she would cry out as if to try to scold N’Jobu for his less than friendly method of training, "But good idea. I should be good for at least another one before I run out of chakra." She quickly tried to gather herself and stood up straight preparing for his next attack. “Well then…let’s see. Let’s put you to the test,” he said with a smirk on his face. He quickly formed a tiger seal and sent a swarm of insects into the ground, and ordered them forward underneath her feet. As soon as she moved, they would engulf her lower body and restrain her. This time she would have to work quickly, or they would easily drain her off all her chakra without remorse. “Come at me! Hit me with your flames if you can. I won’t move from this spot. You’re free to move if you wish, well rather if you can…” he said menacingly.

WC:435

Chakra | Hive Count:

Kaida made a face, not moving from where she stood. This, the technique she was working to develop now, was a propulsion technique. It occurred to her as N'Jobu tried to provoke her, that he wasn't challenging her to hit him, but to reach him. Something would be wrong when she tried to move, but honestly? That might be best. What she needed was a single goal she could focus on to the exclusion of everything else. He's an Aburame, she told herself. It's probably bug-related. Cringing as her body began to move already, she committed to a step in front of her. At the very moment that her foot touched the ground, tiny bugs sprang out of the earth like insectoid lightning, rushing around her lower body nearly faster than she could react.

Had it not been for the skin of steel she had already encased herself in, it might have been rather painful. Many miniscule claws scrabbled across her armor, trying to find purchase and scratching loudly against the metal. A shiver ran up her spine as her mind wandered into the terrible places. She was covered in these tiny nightmares, eyes wide and panicked. She shivered, trying to fight down the sensation and focus on the task at hand? Why was she freezing up now? They were just bugs. A thousandth of her size or so? Yes, not something a steel-clad Kongo warrior had to worry about.

But why then was she still not moving? Her mouth pressed into an uncomfortable line, and steam rose up beside her eyes where they tried to water through the hot steel on her skin. She couldn't do it. Not today. She had come here to meet someone new, maybe make a partnership, and to train her abilities.

Training, yes.

First, she extruded the steel shapes onto her legs. Second, she positioned katon vents so that they lined up with these shapes. And third, she pushed as much chakra as she could muster, at the highest temperature and pressure she could manage, through those vents. The effect was immediate and disappointing. A thin, weak wall of flame rippled up her back as an uncontrolled spiral conflagration sputtered violently at the back of her legs and whipped the lower part of her body forward into the net of insects, which held firm. Kaida's balance, however, had not.

She careened over backward, squeaking loudly, onto the swarm of bugs. Her back impacted with the ground just as she realized where she was landing. She could never sure of whether it was the shock of the impact or the realization that had done it, but she lost her focus on her steel armor at that moment. Its steel shattered around her, and those sickening little bugs rushed into the spaces it left behind, and she thrashed about, shrieking in embarrassment and disgust.

Jets of fire, sporadic and unstable, formed all across her body in several erratic cascades, cleansing her of many of the bugs as more piled in to replace them. She was going to be sick. Fighting relentlessly to escape, she looked up at N'Jobu, distraught, as tears streamed down the sides of her face. More flames raced across her body. The bugs did their jobs well; devouring her precious chakra even while she seared them all into oblivion.

When Kaida was done and there were none left, she pulled herself up from the ground and looked away from N'Jobu. Her feelings about him were... mixed. Hadn't he only done what she asked? It wasn't his fault it went so poorly, and she couldn't bring herself to face him. Voice strained onto the verge of tears, she spoke. "I brought you something. Snickerdoodles. They're with my things, there," she explained, pointing to the lunch kit she had put together. For the training day. Without pausing or giving him to consider what she was saying, she went on, announcing, "I'm sorry. I just-- I'm sorry. I have to leave." Immediately, she crossed the space they occupied and went to her things.

She was so embarrassed. She was supposed to be a ninja! How could she freak out like that over little bugs? What was wrong with her today? What would her mother say? She stopped on that last thought, ignorant of anything N'Jobu could say at this point, choked up and left the scene.

[EXIT]

747/2,900

Chakra Use:

WC Usage: