The Beginning of the Rest of My Life~Part 1

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Spoiler:

Keiro sat on a dead tree feeling the bark underneath him shift every time he tried to find a comfortable spot to sit his behind on. It was a futile attempt for anyone else but Keiro did not seem to mind. No, the idea of actually trying to find a comfortable spot to sit on was simply great to him. He couldn’t blame the tree for making him feel miserable. No, in fact he was thanking the tree for letting him sit down on itself and not fall on his ass on the earth. It was a simple thing really. Being in prison for a long time puts the simple things in life into perspective seeing the world not as a place to walk all over but rather as a living entity and everything should be value.

Value did mean something. It not only meant that he had to take care of the life around him but his own self as well. He looked at his hands palms out and saw the clods of dirt and matted in grass deep within the slits of his palms. The sensation was odd at first. The prison of his life sentence was made of the most ridiculous concrete he had felt in his entire life. He had rubbed accidently against that type of concrete before only to be annoyed that it scratched the surface of his skin. Living with it constantly however with a shitty mattress that almost seem to amplify the surface of the concrete didn’t make prison a trip to a fancy hotel. Then again, it was prison and its objective was in no favor of his.

The ground of the forest was a tad better way of training than a concrete floor that would cut his skin from time to time. His skin did toughen over that time frame despite the concrete’s attempt to kill him via scratches. It gave his palms that coarse callus skin that felt as if he had been holding onto a brick all of his life. But the one thing that he did not as a whole perspective was the fact that he was exhausted. Being in prison for six years and trying to keep the body in shape was not only difficult but also the most nerve racking thing he had ever experienced. Living in a cube with a limited amount of space was like someone asking him to make a house on a four foot by four foot island. It’s probable but it can work…somehow.

The freedom now almost basked him with the delightful smells of the forest and the calming winds that came in from the east. It was a fresh sensation to feel on his sore muscles. As achy as it he may be, he was feeling pretty good about himself right about now. The adrenaline hadn’t stop coursing through him and the day, although getting late, was still fresh in Keiro’s mind. He decided it would be best to start again with what he was doing.

Getting up off of the trunk, he did the necessary hand signs creating a shadow clone. It appeared right in front of him, the exact likeness with the same beat face as if someone had punched him square in the jaw, the chin and eyes a few too many times. His eyes traverse to his hands where he saw the bloody knuckles of a man either beating on another man or beating on a harden wall. Keiro hadn’t see his knuckles till then but now he realized that it was probably a good idea to bandage these bad boys up when he was done with this.

“I suppose we’re going to do the same thing over again.” The clone pronounced in which Keiro nodded his head. It was funny how the clone reacted because he shook his head like his father did whenever Keiro had decided it was best to move on impulse rather than logic itself. “This is going to hurt us a lot you know that?” The real Keiro nodded again, only conserving his energy by moving very slightly in these very moments.

As insane as it sounds, the plan was simple. Keiro would create a clone that would intentionally beat on him continuously, without break until Keiro gave the signal, a signal that would definitely begin with shouting and cursing, and the clone will stop and disappear. He told himself-and indirectly his clone-that he could do anything to his body as long as it didn’t kill him. The clone would know the limitations of course but Keiro still put caution up whenever there was a potential thing that could kill. If that wasn’t a sound of an idea, after he would beat him up, he would then proceed into sprinting up a long hill until his legs could not proceed to move.

“All righty. Here we go again…” the clone then cocked his arm back and released a heavy punch into Keiro’s solar plexus. Instantly, Keiro was on one knee and coughing up the combination of both spit and blood. The clone then proceeded to axe kick him on the back dropping the real Keiro flat on his face, his mouth now full of grass and trace of dirt Keiro felt heavy there, the weight of his own body felt as if he was holding onto weighted clothing and then someone vice gripping the clothing over his skin. Geez I hit fucking hard his mind let out like a kick to the gonads lets out air.

It didn’t even stop there. The clone clearly knew that in the back of his own creator’s mind was that the limit was not to kill him but to beat him well enough for him to feel as if his body was filled with lead. The clone grabbed his entire neck and picked him up. Then, the clone took two steps and threw him up into the air. Keiro’s stomach sunk maybe three levels in his entire body as he could feel the intensity of the throw as he felt the wind ride off his body.

The theory was this to Keiro. He understood that in order to push past his current state, he would first have to push past the limiters his muscles had set after being in that prison cell for too long. The lack of conditioning had put him in a position where he would not only have to retrain his body’s physical attributes but he would also have to improve it for the coming days. He remembered as a child that his father would take a wooden pole and would swing at his abdomens. Why at the time did his father decided it was a generally good idea to swing at his body with a god damn pole was behind him. The thought flew right past him as the pain submerged him whenever his father increased the intensity of his swings. As a child, the idea of crying was scared out of him by his father’s teachings. He never really yelled at him; he never truly scolds him because of his weakness or because of the fact that he was a child. His father had a way of getting in his head without necessarily getting loud with his voice or beating him to an inch of his life without calling it child abuse. The idea was to feel no pain, no feeling of the body. The idea was to not to ignore pain but to embrace for when it is embraced; one can no longer feel the sting of pain.

“Embrace the pain my son for there is no other teacher like pain. Fall in love with pain for there is no other lover better than pain. Do not loathe pain for it is nothing to hate or to grievance over for it is like a father who teaches their offspring with love and kindness”

It still sucks…

Perhaps that was what he would have said if he had the mindset he had now as a child. If he had the mindset as a child, his body would probably be in more pain than it was now. He could not turn his body around but the momentum and the way his clone had thrown him made his body slowly turn as he began to lose speed during his travel upward. He saw the clone bounce up the trees with as much grace as a leopard silently moving among the jungle to catch his prey. He wasn’t all there really, no, the pain had numb him to a point where all thought was now just a big cloud of jumble words brought together with glue and duct tape. The only coherent thought was the fact that the clone was moving surprisingly well for someone who was a part of him. Had the clone gotten faster or was that just a matter of perspective? Or rather is it because the clone had gotten faster because Keiro had grown in speed with his unethical training.

Thought all ceased when the clone was up above him, just two feet. The clone had drawn his leg up high and outstretched before bringing it down onto Keiro dropping him once twenty-three feet into the air back onto earth. The fall was immediate and swift; the forest echoed the fall signaling to anyone nearby that a tree had fallen. The clone had disappeared when the impact was made which Keiro was sort of glad to know.

“God….” He had intent to finishing it but everything got dark and he was embraced in exhaustion.

He didn’t know when he woke up. For a short moment, and a short moment that escape just a second, he didn’t remember exactly as to how he got into the predicament. He felt pain, oh yes, he felt a heaping amount of pain that no man should really go through onto himself. Maybe with a partner, another person to at least watch over the stupid ideas he had but nonetheless a person to look over him. He knew well enough that he went high in the air and felt someone kick the living shit out of him. Suddenly the memories flowed in and he realized that it was his own clone that kicked the living hell out of him. He would have to congratulate his clone-well, he suppose he would have to congratulate his own self for making a clone that had kicked his ass nicely. He thought he was still asleep when his eyes open but then he realized that he was actually face down in the dirt. He lifted his face up off of the ground and saw that the mid-afternoon sun was now hugging the earth creating the sundown in the forest. He heard the pest of the forest create the beginning of their nightly noises which all but comforted the incredibly sore Keiro.

He slowly, and Keiro knew it was slowly, got up from the small impact crater his body had made for his lovely fall. He felt that everything was sore from head to toe as he found a way to stand up on two feet.

“I didn’t think you were alive” a voice broke in with all of the forest noises being created. Keiro heard the voice come from the left of him. His head turned in an almost grinding fashion to face towards the speaker. The voice was heavy, burly even that gave the indication of a man who was large, the size of two people fit into one who had a strange country twang that spoke both the nature of the world and the wisdom of a sage. The man was older, late sixties or early seventies from the looks. He had kept himself in good shape, Keiro concluded, even with his big tree trunk of a man. His body had supported maybe 280 to 290 pounds of a six foot seven man who have seen more stacks of meat and pancakes in his life than he’s seen women. He had a very hard face and Keiro meant hard like a sculptor had shaped his jaw line and then an artist decided to brush the colors of brown and green on his face while a barber decided to glue hair around his chin and call it a beard “You looked pretty dead from the looks of it and believe me I’ve long enough to know when someone is dead.”

“I’ve seen corpses” Keiro replied in a beaten, hoarse voice “Corpses usually don’t usually come back from the dead unless they are a zombie…but that is science fiction.”

“Ah” said the burly man “Science fiction has never been too far from reality. Don’t ya know? Once mankind thinks it, it becomes reality. And sometimes science fiction hides the true nature of what is real and what is not.”

“Right…” Keiro said, having not the slightest clue of what he was talking about “I would ask who the hell you are but I’ve found myself in a predicament of me training and in the process of resting. So….” He slowly began to move to the tree trunk and sat himself down on the dead log “If you’re here to create philosophical remarks on zombies, I kindly ask you to stop.”

The burly man turned his head “Oh my, you’re quite the serious one ain’t ya?” He crossed his arms “Can’t have much fun can you?”

“No sir, I can’t have this much fun. I’m trying to condition my body once again after getting out of prison not even a few weeks ago. You’re fucking asking me about the aspects of fiction and reality while I just woke up from maybe a three maybe four hour nap of unconsciousness. I’m sorry that I’m not a comedic act for the peanut gallery.” Of course he didn’t say any of this. His eyes traced the outline of the burly man’s body and then he looked back at the ground. “No, I’m just tired is all.” Keiro said softly. “I don’t care if you do say anything just….” He waved a hand at him.

“Wow, you must be tired. Did you train yourself that hard?” Keiro nodded his head. Keiro had a deep, almost instinctive feeling about this ‘chance’ meeting. It just seem too much of a chance for someone to be here out in the forest, albeit dead nowhere in the forest where this part of the country had little to no civilization to speak of in a 100 kilometer radius and here is this grizzly bear of a man with a cheery smile on his face wondering if he was dead or not. Had this man been watching him this entire time? And if he has, why has he not of sensed him or given any clue of his whereabouts? Black ops perhaps, some sort of special forces. There was a slim chance that there would be black ops around the entire area trying to round out the last Nukenin around the area but the likelihood of that happen was slim to almost non-existent at this point. No, this man…this man had something hidden. He was waiting for the line “Well that makes things easier for me.” Or his personal favorite “That must be some tough shit to experience when you’re about to die.” He didn’t know why people say that, it sounded utterly ridiculous to him and was probably one of the lamest one-liners besides “You must be an angel…” to pick up a woman.

He didn’t get that. No, not at all. What he instead got was his eyes met the boots of the giant man at his feet. Keiro raised his head up immediately seeing a giant arm pulled back and ready to crush what would be his skull down into the dirt. “That’s new!” his mind shouted. His reaction made his body shift into overdrive. The soreness, the tear of his muscles were now numb and a third rush of adrenaline was pulsing throughout his body like rushing water running through a pipe. He dodged swiftly by rolling backwards on his back and he continued to roll till he was about eight feet away from the giant man. He didn’t see the giant man crush through the dead tree trunk but he heard his hand crush through it shattering the entire tree like plaster. He had ran his fist through it so hard that he actually went through the trunk and into the ground.

“Oh yeah, that’s definitely new” he said before getting on his feet and got up and made a dash into the forest. He did look back to see that the man had already recovered from his assassination attempt and began to chase after him. The man was fast, for a big man who looked as if he was overweight had the swiftness Keiro had and maybe more. That was not fat underneath that big body but pure muscle that was built to chase people down like Keiro. Keiro’s feet moved with ever swiftness dashing in-between the trees and brushes of the forest. He could feel his leg muscles wear and tear on him, his body was literally on fire as he was trying to run from this bear of man who was not only gaining on him but still had that ridiculous smile on his face. He didn’t know whether this was insanity or pure and ever delight. Keiro turned around and saw what the man was smiling at. He was maybe six feet away from a large tree about eight feet long and probably seventy feet high. The quickest and instinctive thing he did was concentrate chakra to his feet. The moment it was presumed that Keiro would hit the tree, he leapt up into the air and his feet ‘magnetize’ onto the bark of the tree before sprinting upwards. He caught a second wind as he sped up the

“Haha!” the wild, burly assassin cried “Clever and sleek my friend, clever and sleek.” The burly assassin stopped and reached into his back pouch drawing out ten shuriken. With precision and a bit of chakra, he threw them all at once yet the trajectory and the speed of each shuriken was different.

Keiro was only seven feet from the top. That gut feeling occurred again for him to turn around occur and he listen to it. He saw the shuriken coming at him with almost pin-point accuracy and surprising speed. His eyes scanned the area looking to see if there was a way to avoid. He saw no way to leap without making it a blind one at that. He would have a better try if he could drop down a few feet and lose him in the branches.

He turned around hard, making the bark off the tree peel up and sprint towards the shuriken. He saw them each coming with spinning decision to hit their mark. Keiro had openly decided to move slightly to avoid two of the shuriken. One shuriken had decidedly moved past his left shoulder almost grazing it while the other moved past his right cheek. Three more moved toward the center of mass which was his chest which wouldn’t be able to slightly move there. He would have to jump.

He saw the perfect opportunity to leap forward onto a branch and leapt through the window of opportunity. The three shuriken breezed past his feet as he made his leap of faith and he grabbed hold of the branch spinning around it until his feet was placed soundly on the top branch. He then didn’t listen to the gut instinct and look down and decided it would be best to sprint until he was covered in the darkness. He made leaps onto the branches sprinting and jumping with the intent of getting far past his assassin. When he felt as if he wasn’t being chased anymore, he jumped off a branch and rolled onto the ground where he proceeded to run even more. He had vaulted over dead tree trunks then precision jumped over a creek bed to get even further. He hadn’t imagined it when his clone almost seemed to appear in front of him when it kicked the crap out of him, he had gotten faster. Whether this was just the adrenaline or not, he wasn’t going to continue to ask, he was just going to continue running.

The forest was now covered in darkness. Keiro’s eyes had adjusted earlier to see the starry sky light the night but the moon was not out today. Maybe it was a blessing that the moonlight didn’t reveal his path today. Maybe it was just waiting for the inevitable to happen. Either way, he did not think the man had followed him. Not entirely. Keiro had moved through the forest with means of tricking his opponent. Even if he was tired, even with his body feeling like his muscles were replaced with rocks and his blood was now liquid concrete, he did not stop to think as to where he had to go. He just knew that he would have to trick him. Moving through the brush of the thick forest lush and creating paths that weren’t meant to be paths, he believed he had truly lost him-for now. His body was heavy, truly heavy of the weight that was burdening him from before had now become evident. He was exhausted, truly and almost utterly exhausted from this ordeal. He would have to find a place to rest he thought. Perhaps this tree would suffice him…

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