Unlocking Her Potential (Personal Training)

[Santaru Kaede]

Daenerisu runs out of her room still putting her arms through the sleeves of her jacket. As she sprints past the kitchen, her grandfather looks up from his morning coffee. She almost reached the door before he could say anything.

“Hold up! I cooked breakfast, come sit down and eat before you head out for the day.”

With a sigh, she shuts the front door and stomps back to the kitchen. After pulling out her chair and sitting down. She begins swinging her feet as she eats her breakfast, but mostly just pushes the food around on her plate. She keeps shooting glances out the window, noticing the nice day passing outside, and then over in the direction of the front door.

Her grandfather sighs and shakes his head as he tries to prevent a smile from spreading across his face.

“Finish your eggs and toast, then you can go outside. I’ll clean up.”

Startled from the sudden conversation, Daenerisu sits up right and looks at her grandfather. A big smile crosses her face as she shoves the last bit of eggs in her mouth and grabs the toast. “Bye grammmmphhss!” She bolts out the door still chewing on the last bit of her breakfast.

Running, ducking, and diving, Daenerisu runs through the crowd rather ungracefully bumping into people and knocking over the occasional sign board. “Sorry… sorry… sorry!” She hastily picks up signs and bags putting them back where they belong, before bolting off again. As she approaches the park, she glances down an alley and momentarily takes her eyes off the street in front of her. She trips over her own two feet and rolls over a stack of boxes outside of a store front. She notices a bit of blood on her arm and a skinned knee, but it didn’t look like enough to worry about. She was used to those kind of cuts. As she wipes the blood away, she fails to find the source of the cut. Shrugging, she dusts herself off and takes off back towards the park. Arriving, she waves at her friends and rushes over, oblivious to the closing wound on her knee and the fresh, pink skin replacing the scab.

WC: 369

 

[Santaru Kaede]

Daenerisu stands in the middle of Konoha’s training field across from her grandfather. Both hold their sheathed sword at their sides by the by the base of the holder.

“Remember, the strength of the Nanjirou fighting style is in drawing, attacking, and sheathing in one fluid motion. This leaves are hands free for jutsu and using tools. Let me show you one more time.”

Her grandfather turns and faces the training dummy set up next to him. He takes a low stance gripping the the sheath with his left hand firmly. As his right hand reaches for the hilt of the blade, his left thumb flicks the guard pushing it just a hair out of the sheath. A blur of motion follows and, in a blink, he is pushing the blade back into its holder from the base of the hilt with the palm of his hand. Danii looks at the training dummy amd notices a small diagonal cut across it.

“Plus, the quickdraw in the hands of a Nanjirou can allow us to hide one of our most dangerous attacks.”

As he talks, he holds up his hand making a seal. With a small crack, the chakra he left as part of his swing dissipates and the top half of the training dummy slides down to the ground.

“I think that's enough of the demonstrations today. Show me what you learned.”

The two take a similar low stance holding their sheathed blades to the side. The old man allows her to make the first move and she charges in. They both appear to draw at the same time and she feels metal clash against metal before being pushed away. Watching him sheath his sword, she does the same and winces as she notices a small cut in her sword arm.

“Remember, not every attack needs to be a kill shot. Master your blade, and even shallow cuts will cause them to bleed out."

She nods and charges again as she is met with the same results. Draw, parry, counter, separate. Another cut appears on her arm and a small trickle of blood stains her arm. Gritting through it, she pulls on an inner reservoir of power hidden deep within herself and chooses to try another route. Taking a more defensive stance, she stares down her grandfather who charges in. As he swings out, she reacts quickly and ducks underneath the strike. Instead of drawing her blade, she punches out towards him as a blade of water shoots out from the back of her wrist forming a hooked sword of water. As she pulls back her arm, she manages to leave the smallest of cuts on him and he holds up his hands.

“That's enough for today. You've shown me that you have been listening to my lessons, but next time can you remember that some us don't recover as quickly as others.”

She looks down at the little stain of blood that seems to have appeared from nowhere as the cut had already closed. She shrugs and looks at him with a big grin.