Quick Money, Fast Feet, and Too much Chakra [Toshiro, SC training]

Age : 48 Posts : 1036

Spoiler:

For the past three months, Hinamori Toshiro had been training himself into the ground. With only a week left before he would have to start heading back to Konoha, the soon-to-be-chuunin had decided to take a short break and restock his supplies in the closet town. The break would would give him a chance to see if the document currently riding in the inner pocket of his last usable shirt was the real thing. After all, it wasn't every day one finds a literal treasure map folded up in an old journal you claim as spoils of battle. Personally Toshiro was more inclined to think it was the usual fake but one detail had kept nagging at him - why go through all that trouble. What were the odds that someone would map a make a map on what to even untrained eyes was obviously old paper and surround it with an entire tower of defenses for a joke? Tiny, a small part of Toshiro's mind kept saying every time something came up. To put that nagging part to rest he intended to see just what this "map" (really little more than a crude drawing with a starting point and a bunch of somewhat cryptic directions) would produce. If it didn't produce anything, he would get a decent walk and a story to tell Kimiko out of the trek. If the list that had been scrawled on the back was accurate though he would have another tool in any upcoming conflict with his sisters. As Hinamori and "main family" members, even if not in favor, each of them could claim a sizeable inheritance when they turned eighteen or at sixteen if they reached the rank of jonin. The list on the back though had listen an amount considerably greater and the best part was it would come completely out of the blue. A perfect war chest should the need arise. That had been the final factor in convincing himself to give the map a try.

The tower had been the first mark and "one thousand paces from the door with the sun to your back" had been simply enough to understand. Nor was the ground there particularly difficult to cover even at a normal persons pace. After his one-thousandth pace Toshiro found himself at the edge of a brook with several large water-worn stones forming a partial damn. No doubt the were the remnants of some long-ago landslide and proof that given time even earth would fall before waters relentless stealthy assault. Setting aside his musings that the Academies teachings on which "elements" trumped which ones could use a few qualifiers, Toshiro reached into his pocket and pulled out the map. "fifteen hundred paces with the rising sun as your shield from the broken dam." Taking the reference to the broken dam to be the fallen stones and the "rising sun as your shield" to meant to the north, Toshiro looked in that direction and scowled. It seemed he would be getting his feet wet since east from the stones mean in the river. He just hoped it wasn't too cold but Toshiro wasn't going to bet on that. Resigned to getting cold feet no matter what he did, Toshiro stepped out into the brook and suppressed a shudder as he began counting off the paces. The water wasn't cold... it was positively glacial. 'This had better be worth it.'

--[Six hours later]--

"Two hundred seventy, two hundred seventy-seven. Three hundred paces following the wall. Two hundred eighty-five. Easy for you say - if there is nothing at the end of this I am going to have your dragged back from the dead just so I can kill you again whoever you are. Two hundred ninety-six" was the only thing Toshiro could say after seeing where the directions were next taking him. If he hadn't been a ninja this last obstacle might have been the last straw that made him give up. The wall reference had been easy enough since the sheer cliff to his left was a pretty good approximation. The three hundred paces wasn't a lot either - he had already covered at least a dozen kilometers since setting out. No the annoying part was that from the base of the "wall" out for nearly a dozen meters was a bramble thicket. Hence why Toshiro was currently walking along the wall parallel to the ground. He was just happy he had one pair of decent sandals left since the exposed side of the cliff was covered in a slime that had an... unpleasant smell. Still he was almost to the end of this particular section and there was only a single line. Then he could see if almost getting frostbite in the dead of summer, looking something like a pincushion after an encounter with a porcupine, and a host of other experiences was going to yield more than a few laughs at his own expense.

As he counted down to the final step, Toshiro stopped and began looking around one last time. If the directions were right, there should be some sort of marker to indicate where the last step was hidden. It took him several minutes of searching but eventually he realized that what at first had looked like a fracture in one of the boulders strewn around was actually something else. A deeply carved and very weathered arrow pointing down to be exact. With that guide Toshiro jumped to within a few yards of the indicated spot and set his pack down. Reaching into it he pulled out a folding camp shovel, wishing he had sealed away a full-size one but mindful that he would have to make do, and got to work digging while being mindful of potential traps. The map hadn't specified that such were present but Toshiro was taking no chances. If he had buried a fortune, he wouldn't trust it's safety to just secrecy so why would anyone else? It was that precaution that kept Toshiro from blowing himself into pieces when he stopped his shovel bare fractions of an inch from cutting a wire buried almost five feet down. If he hadn't been alert he wouldn't have noticed the reflected gleam from an errant raw of sunlight in the dirt. Feeling his adrenaline rise in anticipation - after all a trap meant that something was indeed buried here - Toshiro used his hands to carefully uncover the rest of the wire. Parts of it still coated in glass, it was slow work and he got a few cuts for his trouble but soon the wire and more important it's ends was revealed.

At each end the wire ran into a box nearly a foot on a side and made of wood that had petrified from it's time under the ground. Toshiro had no doubt that inside of those boxes would be a considerable quantity of black powder with the wire connected to a particularly nasty type of detonator. Put tension on the wire and you would pull a spring-loaded pin out which would allow another pin, this one's tip being coated with iron pyrite to produce sparks, to shoot forward to scrape against a steel plate. The resulting sparks would ignite a small amount of powder which would in turn set off the main charge and boom - no more treasure seeker. The same result would happen if you cut the wire - in that case the release pin would shoot back from the spring being countered by the wire and again whoever did so would have a find their day coming to an explosive conclusion. Making things worse was that if they had used a conventional explosive, then even touching the boxes could be bad if they had gone unstable from over a century in the ground. Fortunately for both Toshiro's curiosity (he wanted to see what was buried now) and health (explosives, like good sake, could gain potency with time and demanded respect) there was a good supply of sticks available.

Sticks? Well yes - you see while the trap was quite ingenious it had one fatal flaw. That being that the trap could only tell the difference in tension on the wire but not it's length - ten inches or ten feet were the same to it as long as the amount of force on the wire remained the same. Thus Toshiro had made use of a frequently over looked resource combined with his own supply of wire and some creative knot tying to disable the trap by splicing the original tripwire with his own and routing the entire thing around his digging site. Impediment removed, Toshiro resumed digging with a slightly crazed look to his eye. It would just be another hour and about a foot deep that he heard the distinctive sound of steel hitting something large, solid, and hollow. Sporting a grin like a mad-man as he dug at a furious pace, Toshiro soon uncovered not one but three large wood crates. Checking them as best he could for traps and finding none, Toshiro inserted a kunai into the latch of the uppermost one and with main force and a number of choice swearwords snapped it. By now his hands were trembling with excitement but Toshiro still managed to resist the urge to simply flip the lid open (and possible trigger another trap), instead carefully lifting it up. Once he caught sight of the contents though restraint went to the wind as did the lid. Sitting in that crate and gleaming butter-yellow even in the weak sunlight was gold bars. Lots of gold bars. Bars that bore the unmistakable mint stamp of Lightning Countries mint - just like the map had hinted. Giving in to the nigh-universal human reaction, Toshiro threw back his head and yelled his joy to the skies. "Yaaahhoooo!"

It would take him another six hours of digging and sorting before Toshiro was sure he had accounted for everything on the list. In addition to the first box of gold bars there was an other one holding that much again in silver bars with the stamp of Wind Country and two more crates hold a fortune in gold and silver coins of obvious age. The final crate, much smaller than the others and nearly overlooked at the bottom, had been the biggest find though. Among it's contents was a large sack of uncut gems ranging in size from the size of a fingernail to a handful the size of a respectable birds eggs and even a darkly red ruby the size of Toshiro's fist that seemed to sparkle with an internal fire. There had also been several land deeds and what had obviously been a blackmailers ledger holding detailed information on the skeletons of at least half a dozen prominent families within several nations.

It would take Toshiro another hour to seal everything away into the storage scrolls he had brought along. Once that was done he would walk into the town the next day and being the process of converting a part of that wealth into usable currency that would be stashed away in various accounts he would open under his real name or an assumed one. Located in Rain and Grass as well as Fire Country, these accounts would be his trump card if he needed funds that couldn't be traced.

[Word Count: 1901/ 600]

Age : 48 Posts : 1036

Spoiler:

That particular morning in Toshiro's little corner of Rain Country saw Toshiro up early. In fact he was up so early that he could hear Tonbi's snoring, something that was rather rare given that the pheasant was an early-bird (something Toshiro still found disgusting). Taking the time to put on a pair of camouflage shorts that had once been pants (until a run-in with an especially nasty thorn bush) and a grey sleeveless shirt, Toshiro went about getting ready for the days training with as much stealth as he could. Today he would be working on increasing his already above-average speed. The start of that would be yet another endurance run and following that hours of sprints and free-running to build up his raw-speed. When he had finished his preparations by devouring a "breakfast" of a ration bar and water, Toshiro set off to his "training ground."

Jogging into the small forest clearing, Toshiro immediately fell into a routine of exercises to stretch out muscles still stiff from sleep. A routine that consisted primarily of stretches as well as several hundred crunches and push-ups plus a good two hundred chin-ups using a convenient tree limb. Why all that exercise? Because while running was the most important part in getting faster, getting the rest of the body fit enough to handle that constant activity was just as important. Not doing so could result in injuries ranging from a pulled muscle to broken bones. When he had finished that routine, feeling his muscles burning from the strain, Toshiro immediately took off down one the game trails that were hidden in the forest. Limiting himself to a loping stride that ate up ground, Toshiro couldn't help but exalt in the feeling that came from running like this. No need to worry about someone else stumbling into his path, no having to stay in a training grounds boundaries - just the feel of the breeze and the burning of his own muscles. It took him nearly an hour to cover the distance he had set for himself, but cover it Toshiro did plus some as he took less time than before to cover the original distance. Happy at that progress, he turned his mind to the next part. Running flat-out on clear ground was one thing.

The key to using that speed in battle was being able to suddenly change direction or completely stop when you wanted to. To learn that the first time Toshiro had simply set up a series of targets he had to reach and strike with a sword before a weapon hit the ground. That wouldn't work for what he was trying to do here though. He needed much greater control or he could seriously injure himself trying to stop. So now he
Tonbi and himself had spent yesterday setting up a rather unusual target range. One that consisted of numerous targets hanging from branches, wedge into tree trunks, and otherwise put in places that made them hard to find. A Hyuuga would have called it a course to improve one's ability to see targets with teh Byakugan despite cover while an Uchiha likely would have thought it was a coarse used to start training the Sharigan in picking up potential threats faster. Neither was the true purpose of the course though. No, this particular training course had been laid out so that it was effectively impossible to hit the next target without moving a respectable distance. The key part was that if a target was nailed it would drop a weight (usually a rock) and the person running the course had until that rock hit the ground to find their next target, move into range, and hit it or they would have to reset the whole thing and start over. The key to beating this course was not only being fast, but being able to control that speed. Something that Toshiro felt he was close to achieving.

Armed with that eagerness as well as a ten kunai, ten shuriken, and ten sebon, Toshiro took his position at the starting spot. Tonbi, having woken up an hour earlier and completed his own training in stealth and tracking which consisted of shadowing any Hidden Rain patrols in the area without being discovered, stood by the rope that would start the first target's "timer". Held in one anthropomorphic wing (he had gotten better at using his wings like hands since the "featherwriting" incident) was a stopwatch and in the other a notepad and pen. Since they equipment was very much a cobbled together affair, timing these runs was the only way to double-check that Toshiro was getting faster and that the course wasn't flawed. Lifting the watch in a silent query to see if Toshiro was ready, when his summoner nodded ever so slightly the pheasant started this particular run. "On your mark," caused Toshiro to shift his weight to his finger tips and toes while "get set," had him raising his hips for the all-important explosive burst of speed, and "GO!" sent him dashing towards the first target in a blur as Tonbi pulled the wire connected to the first target while turning on the stopwatch.

Moving at the limits of his ability, Toshiro could see the first target coming up - a plank of wood sticking out of a bush in front of a tree. Sending a sebon into the plank that caused it to shift, Toshiro leapt to the trunk and then pushed off as he looked around for the target Tonbi had selected as the second one. That was one of the quirks of this course - instead of allowing Toshiro to get familiar with it every time Tonbi reset the timers he would also change the painted tags that dictated the order in which the targets needed to be taken down. 'There,' thought Toshiro as he spotted the next tag in the distance. Dashing across the uneven ground he could see his target hanging from a high branch in a tree. Just as he was nearing the target his instincts screamed for him to jump - which is exactly what he did. Going into a forward flip Toshiro sailed over the padded log beam that swept through the space his gut had occupied just a fraction of a second before. That was the other "quirk" to this course. To really test Toshiro's ability to move Tonbi had added a number of (fairly) non-lethal traps that would be randomly disarmed to keep his summoner ready to react at a moments notice. Sailing under the target, Toshiro sent a kunai into the plank of wood then tucked his body into a roll that allowed him to keep a portion of his forward momentum as he dashed off in search of his next target.

For the next ten minutes Toshiro would keep that process up - striking each target with a thrown weapon or sometimes a bare fist or foot and moving on to the next one. As he came to the last target Toshiro had to wince. This was the worst of the lot. The target itself was simply hanging by a rope from a tree limb. What made this one the most difficult target was the approach. No doubt intentionally, the only way Toshiro could hit this target after his last one and still beat the falling rock was to jump across a relatively small (as in he probably wouldn't break any bones if he missed a step and fell) gorge using a number of helpful protruding rocks that partially overhung it and in the middle of one of jumping from one rock to the other use his last throwing weapon (a shuriken - his least-favorite such weapon) to hit the target. Still it had to be done and so Toshiro picked up his pace. Moving down the slope at a pace that even the majority of ninja would balk at try, when Toshiro's foot hit the first of the rock he completely bent that knee then his waist to absorb the impact. Then he converted that stored energy into an explosive burst of movement that carried high into the air and towards the second rock, where a front-flip allowed him to repeat the process only this time he sailed under the target and with the aim that came from nearly sixteen years of carrying and using weapons he sent his last shuriken spinning to the target. Then he was falling towards the third and last rock where yet another flip allowed him to land relatively safely and still have enough momentum left that he was able to take the few steps the available space allowed and jump off the rock. Sailing through the air once more, Toshiro reached the apex and twisted his body into the roll that would let him land safely. As he did so he realized something very, very important. All the times when this had been the final target he had barely cleared the gorge and by doing so had been able to avoid the trap set a few steps ahead. Somehow he had enough force in that jump that he was headed right into it's trigger area.

Desperate to avoid what that particular trap did, Toshiro tried his best to speed up his roll - slowing down could be truly fatal so that was his only option. Regrettably it wasn't enough and as Toshiro landed he felt the trigger break. Instinctively cringing in anticipation Toshiro still couldn't help the girlish shriek that came out as several gallons of ice cold water that had that morning been snow from one of the higher peaks in along the ridgeline poured onto him. Shivering as his body fought off the shock of going form nearly over-heated to nearly hypothermic, he had barely stood up before a large ball of brown and black feathers plowed into him while shouting exuberantly. "Toshiro! Toshiro! You did it! You didn't just beat your best - you blew it apart! Thirty seconds - you beat it by thirty fox-loving seconds!" Hearing Tonbi say how by how much he had beaten his past best for the course Toshiro couldn't help but share his summoned euphoric state of mind. He had done it - now it would just be a matter of regular training to keep that speed but that was the easy part compared to getting it.

[Word Count: 1736/ 1200]

Age : 48 Posts : 1036

Spoiler:

Sitting in the middle of a quite clearing Toshiro was doing something that he rarely did - meditating. Now why was a genin who freely admitted to finding little that couldn't be gotten by a more productive route participating in that activity? It wasn't that he had suddenly come to appreciate the "art" of it and he most certainly hadn't suddenly been struck by religious impulses (he knew there was more to the world that just this one and that was enough for him). The reason Toshiro was currently sitting still was currently focused solely on clearing his mind of everything was to balance his chakra. The weeks of intense physical activity had had a pronounced impact on the balance of mental and physical energy that made up chakra and he intended to correct that. Otherwise his chakra control would go to hell in a hand basket and that was unacceptable to him. Since it would be impossible (and highly undesirable to ) "detrain" his body to produce less physical energy, the alternative was simple - he needed to train his mind to produce more mental energy. At least that was the theory in a nutshell. It was a pity that no one had ever told Toshiro just how much a bitch putting that theory into practice actually was. Reaching a state of meditative relaxation had been incredibly easy since he had learned to do that at when his clan's weapon-master, who happened to be his great-uncle, had begun teaching him to use weapons. Hinamori Roshi had been adamant that he "would not allow a temperamental brat to make a mockery of my teachings by swinging a weapon like some thieving Uchiha with a new favorite jutsu".

No, the hard part was reaching beyond that calm state, then using that "centered" position to expand his mental reserves. It had taken Toshiro nearly eight hours every day for the past three days, stopping only for physical training to maintain his edge there and necessary food and rest, to do the former. Currently Toshiro was at a point where he could almost, but not quite, sense what someone proficient in mind-based techniques or a jinchuriki would called a mindscape. Toshiro wasn't there yet though and instead had focused on pushing at the limits that he had come to recognize as the "walls" of his mental reserves. 'Move, move... grow. Come on. I can feel you wanting to grow so stop fighting.' With another mental heave Toshiro could feel the wall expand slightly and might have even grinned (at least mentally) at his first success had the "wall" not almost instantly snapped back. With a growl that would never leave his mind Toshiro sat back on his mental haunches and began to ponder. That was the third time this had happened and it was obvious that simple mental force wasn't going to do the trick. He needed something that would stretch those annoyingly elastic walls until they stayed in place. Something like... a storm. But what would create something like that inside his own mind. 'Wait... Roshi-oji said that you can't enter your mind until you calm your "storm" of feelings. If I bring those out now that I'm inside... Sporting a grin at the idea he had just concocted based on a few words spoken years ago, Toshiro set up violating one of the core principles of meditation - bringing emotion in instead of pushing them aside.

At first nothing seemed to result and Toshiro thought that maybe he would need to come up with yet another way but then he felt something. It felt... like a breeze? Yes, it felt like a breeze. Sensing that maybe he was on to something, Toshiro began to pull on various memories. The good times with his sisters, parents, and other family near and distant. At that he could feel the "walls" start to stretch and stay that way. Realizing that he had indeed stumbled on a way, his way to expand a part of his reserves he dragged out more emotionally-charged memories until instead of the calm center in his mind he was in the centre of roaring wind. As he filled his mind with the memories he began to push at the walls. Like before they gave but this time when he stopped pushing at them they remained in their new positions, held there by the wind that his feelings generated. With that Toshiro resumed pushing those mental walls further apart and this time they stayed put, creating an empty space filled with a wind of mental energy in the form of emotions. When he reached what seemed to be a balance Toshiro stepped back and admired his "work" before pulling himself back into the real world.

Looking up the now darkening sky, Toshiro had to grin in triumph. He could feel his chakra starting to rebalance itself. In the process his reserves would expand and cover one of the more annoying problems he confronted - the tendency to find himself running low on it in the middle of a fight.

[Word Count: 848/ 600]