The sun glared down on Huan's face. The boy was looking up at the bright blue sky, one hand cupped over his eyes to shield them from the intense sunlight.

It hadn't been long since he had gotten into the Land of Earth. His desire to improve more upon his Katon had been heavily dampened by the sight that had greeted him in the Village Hidden in the Stones. While it was true that apart from the Land of Wind and the Land of Fire, the Land of Earth was also a good place to practice one's control over their fire chakra due to the heat, training up his already good control over fire was merely a side objective of Huan's visit to the hidden village. His main goal of taking a look around town had been hindered when he realised that, unlike the information he had been fed, the town's people were not up and bustling with richness. Rather, quite a few were still homeless and poor. Well, he knew one informant who was going to die within the next week, that was for sure.

That was why he was now headed to the Land of Water, or more specifically, the hidden village found there, Kirigakure. It was time to get back on track and to head to the one village that would benefit him at the moment. The trip to Kirigakure had been put aside in favour of visiting Iwagakure, not because Huan favoured the latter more than the former, but merely because he had thought that training in Iwa would help him greatly in the war in Kiri. However, now that he had decided to leave Iwagakure on an early note, heading to Kirigakure to participate in the war was the next thing to tick off his list of to-dos.

But, the question was if he should help them, or not. It wasn't too difficult to take advantage of the situation to loot several small villages surrounding the larger one. That would surely cripple their attempts at fighting back Seven Bell's forces when they decided to expand their ground, only to find that the surrounding villages had been pillaged of their goods, leaving their ninja with insufficient supplies. Of course, Huan didn't think he alone could pillage all those villages, but one village would still make the village of Kiri suffer greatly, if just in terms of morale.

On the other hand, if he helped them, Kiri would be in his debt. Of course, there would be hundreds of other ninja who Kiri would be greatly indebted to, most of which belonged to major villages and had major powers supporting them, things that Huan didn't have, and most likely wouldn't have in the short term. However, to be on good terms with a ninja village was already good enough on its own. They would certainly be able to lend him some help, in one way or another, whether it was jutsu or missions. It would certainly gain him a little name in the ninja world, something mercenaries needed in order to survive.

Huan was brought out of his thoughts when his feet brought him to the gates of the fishing village he was in. He would arrange with one of the local fishermen to take him out to sea on a motor boat, circling through the Land of Lightning and then making a beeline south for the Land of Water. It would certainly be faster for him on land – as a ninja, his speed would overtake a motor boat any day, especially since he specialised in that portion of taijutsu – but Huan wanted to conserve his energy. Plus, with him there, he was confident he would be able to help out in some way to help  push the boat so it could go faster. Or, he could just sit back and use the time for training. Or maybe relaxing. Yes, relaxing sounded good...

Huan neared the sandy shores of the village, with the sun still glaring down on him as if he had killed the sun's pet cat. He searched around for an old man, one he recognised easily as a fisherman due to the net he was holding and the stench he was giving off. After a short discussion, they managed to strike up a deal without too much trouble. That was good, in Huan's mind. He would have hated to have had to threaten another person's family just so he could get to pay for transportation. The last person he did that to ended up reporting him to his neighbours, and Huan was forced to flee the village. Of course, being Huan, he had fled it with a grin on his face, reveling in the fact that they couldn't catch up to him.

The boat was scheduled to leave in an hour, so Huan decided to go down to the sandy beaches, to the imaginary line where the water met the beach. There he stood, letting the waves lap gently at his ankles, feeling the warmth of the water from the sun. The large orb of fire in the sky was already making its steady descent, inviting the moon to take its place, but the sea had yet to lose the warmth granted to it. With that, Huan spun himself in a circle, descending with each second before stopping in a cross-legged position, facing the dropping sun.

He felt the heat of the sun hit him straight in the face as his closed eyes turned to look at the fiery orb in the sky. He placed his hands on his knees and lay there, focusing and meditating. He reached out for the heat signatures around him. He had heard of a clan that was centered around the very idea of manipulating the thermal energy around them instead of actual fire, and he had taken their concept to sketch out a warm up method to his training. Through this method, he would be able to enhance his affinity for his fire element, allowing him to train with maximum efficiency and results.

He had been sitting there for thirty minutes, no doubt getting the curious glances of whatever villagers passed by his location, when he decided to up and train. He stood up slowly and turned back so the sun no longer looked him in the eyes, and then prepared a jutsu. Before he could exhale his Phoenix Fire Jutsu, however, he heard the familiar yet new voice of the fisherman call out to him. He turned around and saw the man already on his motor boat, waving out to him and calling him to hurry up. It seemed that there was a slight change in plan, and they would be leaving half an hour early. Huan suppressed the smile that threatened to tug his lips upwards. Despite being interrupted in his training, he would still be able to get something good out of this. After all, he would be arriving in Kirigakure sooner than he anticipated, and that was exactly what he needed.

Time for some action.

Only then did Huan remember how he was getting there. Time for some action... sun bathing on a motor boat.

With that thought in mind, Huan walked straight to the man's boat, walking on water to save time and also to get some training in. Wherever he was, Huan seemed to be able to construct a method for training, and in this case, it was using the Supernatural Walking Jutsu that he had learned from his father, and one he was sure other ninja would learn in their first few years in the ninja academy, to walk on the irregular and bobbing surface of the waves beneath him. It had become a necessary trick to know even for academy students, because some hotshot from some hotshot village had realised that allowing the jonin senseis to slowly teach their genin these techniques would be a waste of time, when it could be learned in the academy instead through a slightly more rigorous programme. Huan didn't complain. He didn't go to any academy, and his father had been patient enough to help Huan through it, so he was the same either way.

The fisherman, on the other hand, seemed awestruck that Huan was walking on water. It was as if the sixty-year-old man had never seen a ninja in his life. Of course, that wasn't entirely impossible. While Iwagakure was actually quite a famed village with many good ties with the smaller and lesser villages surrounding it, unlike some other villages he had heard of, the fishermen village he had chosen to go to was extremely off course. It wasn't close to the border of the Land of Lightning, nor was it located close to the mining villages in the north. This village was merely a small fishing place where it couldn't even hope to supply a quarter of Iwagakure with food for a day, with what it got in a week. Huan guessed it shouldn't have come to him as too much of a surprise – he did choose this place because it was somewhat isolated.

Huan reached the edge of the boat and vaulted over, landing inside said boat. It was quite warm inside. Huan almost did a double take. He wasn't sure if it was just him, but lately, he had been associating almost everything with heat all around him. Perhaps it was just the warm climate of the Land of Earth, comparative to the Land of Lightning where he had spent a large amount of his time in the past, or it could be the intensive training he had been focusing on for taming his fire chakra. Well, it seemed that he would get to continue his training within this boat, with the man occasionally turning back to look at the meditative boy behind him, while trying to focus on steering the vessel.

Word Count: 1681

Travel Thread [Iwa -> Kiri] 600/600
Training [Wind Release: Great Breakthrough] 900/900
Training Katon [B -> A] 181 + 1697 = 1878/3000