"I can do this."
Rain poured down on Suzaku's face, falling from a sky that was uncommonly shrouded in dark storm clouds that rumbled ominously. He'd been waiting for this day for weeks because of how uncommon it was for such storms to come through the region and when it had finally arrived he'd grabbed his gear and headed up to the roof of the Takahashi estate house. Fingers of lightning stretched across the bubbling black underbelly of the storm as he stood in the pelting rain, his training clothes soaking in their entirety and sticking to the surface of his skin as he stood with his eyes on the sky.
He'd heard the stories about how his father used to push his limits during his training by undertaking exercises which could not be described as anything other than complete insanity. Uncle Zangetsu used to call it training under critical conditions and described it as a type of training where the body and mind were forced to slam into the limitations which had been set for them and overcome them.
Or else.
He'd been too young during his days growing up in Shadow's Heart and for all of his strict and merciless training, Master had never let Suzaku attempt something like this before due to the risk that it posed to his well being but there was nothing stopping him now. Master, Mother and Zangetsu were miles away and Sousuke, the man charged with checking Suzaku's youthful indiscretions, was out of town on business making this the perfect opportunity.
The perfect storm, one might say.
Each crackle of lightning was met with a jump of Suzaku's nerves. He'd already cleared the majority of bizarre metal objects which might draw the storm's ire away from him which were set upon the rooftop but as each moment went by his apprehension grew. There was no guarantee that he could tempt the storm enough to throw a lightning bolt his way even if he were prepared to dodge the blast and that alone was a huge "if". That of course went without saying what would happen if he failed to execute and let himself get struck by lightning. The way that the Tenseiken technique circulated chakra throughout his body would protect him from some of the harm by blunting the internal damage that an event like that would cause but it was not a technique that was primarily concerned with defense and there was only so much that a breathing technique could do against a force of nature.
Another vibrant flash of light overtook the sky for a heartbeat before the subsequent peal of thunder buried the sound of the falling rain and Suzaku likewise buried his doubts under a fresh wave of conviction. He had to do this. Not for his father or for anyone else but for himself. Because he wanted to.
In the cold of the pouring rain, Suzaku's now measured breathing began to pour out in puffs of heated vapor as the temperature of his body spiked with the coursing chakra throughout his system. He was going to need to be faster than he'd ever been before to accomplish this feat and he knew it. Master had always told him never to push the limits of what the Tenseiken breathing technique could do for his body due to the lasting damage it could cause but he needed every ounce of what his body could accomplish for this. There was no other option if he wanted to succeed even if that meant grave harm since after all failure meant he would be grievously wounded anyway. The sound of the rain was soon matched by an equally rhythmic sizzling noise as each drop of rain that fell upon the surface of his skin disappeared in a pop of evaporation, cloaking him a cascade of steaming puffs that swirled and twisted around his body alongside bright crackles of his own chakra.
Purpose. Conviction. Willpower.
He repeated each step of the mantra that Master had created to help Suzaku focus his thoughts on loop in his inner monologue. They served to clear his thoughts of invading ideas like the consequences of failure or the dangerous nature of his task. He didn't need fear or anxiety in a moment like this. There was only the task and how to overcome it.
Purpose. Conviction. Willpower.
One of Master's favorite sayings had always been that "words have power". Suzaku hadn't always really understood what that meant until he'd met Takahashi Sousuke. Sousuke was a man that was extremely skilled and unfailingly precise in many things but clumsy in a variety of social matters and Suzaku was surprised to learn that the Steward drew strength from something as mundane as words. Sousuke believed in the words of his family, the Takahashi Family, to his very core and spoke about them often.
"We Are King's Men", he would say.
He often remarked that it was important for a family to have words to rely on when things got hard. That in the darkest of nights, a person of noble birth could rely on those words to keep their focus and overcome diversity. Suzaku had words like those but they only meant anything to him as a memento from his Master. The mantra of "Purple, Conviction, Willpower" served both as a lesson in concentration from Master but also had the looming spectre of Master's approval behind them. He'd only created the mantra as a method for focusing Suzaku because Suzaku had struggled to rein in the power that the Tenseiken breathing technique cultivated in his body.
"We Are King's Men", he heard Sousuke say again even though the Steward wasn't with him upon the rooftop. He felt his concentration waver as thoughts of Sousuke broke through his thoughts and a feeling of apprehension once more washed over him in tandem with a peal of thunder from the storm and in that moment he felt the internal force generated by his breathing technique strain against his body, threatening to rip him to shreds from the inside out.
"Your father was... he was more than a man. Everybody knew about his ability to control the storms but what they never realized was that he didn't just control them. When he was angry, the skies were furious. When he was sad, they mourned with him. He didn't just bring the storm, he was the storm."
He could hear his mother's words as he curled his fingers into fists tightly enough to cause his knuckles to whiten and small trickles of blood to pour forth from his hands which instantly joined the tumult of vaporous rain and breath around him due to the heat of his skin. He wasn't his father. He couldn't bring the storm like Katsuo could. The storm didn't care about what he wanted or what he felt.
"Every family should have words they can rely on."
"Purpose. Conviction. Willpower."
The moment finally came and Suzaku wasn't ready for it. The area around him suddenly lit up brighter than the middle of day and time slowed to a fraction of a fraction. This was the moment between moments that meant success or failure. Suzaku wasn't his father but that didn't mean he was destined to be a failure either.
"He was the storm."
Energy from the lightning strike slammed into Suzaku's body and was met with resistance from the internal force that he'd generated through his breathing technique causing there to be an external lightshow of coursing green-gold energy as the two forces battled for supremacy. The internal force of Tenseiken wanted out of Suzaku's body and the electrical current of the lightning bolt wanted to pass through Suzaku to get to the surface beneath him. Straining against the forces that felt like they were pulling every atom of his body in various directions at chaotic intervals, Suzaku grabbed hold of his internal force and used it to corral the force of the lightning strike before taking a step forward and throwing his right hand upwards and with it thrusting all of the collected energy upward back into the sky. For Suzaku it had seemed like minutes had stretched into hours but in real time only a heartbeat had passed and in the second after the lightning strike happened a second bolt of light split the sky and carved a large hole in the sky overhead as it blew the cloud cover away.
Triumphant but exhausted, Suzaku simply fell backwards onto the hard surface of the Takahashi estate roof with his body trailing vapor from his rapidly cooling skin. The storm quickly recovered from Suzaku's retort causing the clouds to close in once more and the rain resumed falling upon the rooftop but Suzaku barely noticed it as he was too wrapped up in his own head. He hadn't dodged the lightning bolt like his father had always managed to do but he'd still beaten it and he'd done it his own way.
There was a feeling of nostalgic disappointment that hit him as he remembered what it had been like waiting for "his powers" to manifest so that he could control the skies the way Katsuo had and what it had been like to eventually come to terms with the realization that those powers which had made Katsuo powerful were truly unique to him, or at least it had seemed that way at the time. Laying there on the roof of Sousuke's house, his right arm surely broken in several places and with a handful of internal injuries likely with the way his body ached, Suzaku finally understood that just because he didn't have Katsuo's powers didn't mean that he couldn't achieve the same things. He wanted to carry the torch that his father's memory had passed down to him and he didn't need Katsuo's powers to do that. He'd found a path to master the storm in his own way.
Sousuke believed that every family should have words that exemplified them. A saying which could tell a person all about their family without needing to say anything else. Grinning like an idiot and laying out upon the Steward's rooftop with pain coursing through every inch of his body Suzaku found the words for the Sunahoshi Clan, given to him by his mother and inspired by his father.
[MFT]
Rain poured down on Suzaku's face, falling from a sky that was uncommonly shrouded in dark storm clouds that rumbled ominously. He'd been waiting for this day for weeks because of how uncommon it was for such storms to come through the region and when it had finally arrived he'd grabbed his gear and headed up to the roof of the Takahashi estate house. Fingers of lightning stretched across the bubbling black underbelly of the storm as he stood in the pelting rain, his training clothes soaking in their entirety and sticking to the surface of his skin as he stood with his eyes on the sky.
He'd heard the stories about how his father used to push his limits during his training by undertaking exercises which could not be described as anything other than complete insanity. Uncle Zangetsu used to call it training under critical conditions and described it as a type of training where the body and mind were forced to slam into the limitations which had been set for them and overcome them.
Or else.
He'd been too young during his days growing up in Shadow's Heart and for all of his strict and merciless training, Master had never let Suzaku attempt something like this before due to the risk that it posed to his well being but there was nothing stopping him now. Master, Mother and Zangetsu were miles away and Sousuke, the man charged with checking Suzaku's youthful indiscretions, was out of town on business making this the perfect opportunity.
The perfect storm, one might say.
Each crackle of lightning was met with a jump of Suzaku's nerves. He'd already cleared the majority of bizarre metal objects which might draw the storm's ire away from him which were set upon the rooftop but as each moment went by his apprehension grew. There was no guarantee that he could tempt the storm enough to throw a lightning bolt his way even if he were prepared to dodge the blast and that alone was a huge "if". That of course went without saying what would happen if he failed to execute and let himself get struck by lightning. The way that the Tenseiken technique circulated chakra throughout his body would protect him from some of the harm by blunting the internal damage that an event like that would cause but it was not a technique that was primarily concerned with defense and there was only so much that a breathing technique could do against a force of nature.
Another vibrant flash of light overtook the sky for a heartbeat before the subsequent peal of thunder buried the sound of the falling rain and Suzaku likewise buried his doubts under a fresh wave of conviction. He had to do this. Not for his father or for anyone else but for himself. Because he wanted to.
In the cold of the pouring rain, Suzaku's now measured breathing began to pour out in puffs of heated vapor as the temperature of his body spiked with the coursing chakra throughout his system. He was going to need to be faster than he'd ever been before to accomplish this feat and he knew it. Master had always told him never to push the limits of what the Tenseiken breathing technique could do for his body due to the lasting damage it could cause but he needed every ounce of what his body could accomplish for this. There was no other option if he wanted to succeed even if that meant grave harm since after all failure meant he would be grievously wounded anyway. The sound of the rain was soon matched by an equally rhythmic sizzling noise as each drop of rain that fell upon the surface of his skin disappeared in a pop of evaporation, cloaking him a cascade of steaming puffs that swirled and twisted around his body alongside bright crackles of his own chakra.
Purpose. Conviction. Willpower.
He repeated each step of the mantra that Master had created to help Suzaku focus his thoughts on loop in his inner monologue. They served to clear his thoughts of invading ideas like the consequences of failure or the dangerous nature of his task. He didn't need fear or anxiety in a moment like this. There was only the task and how to overcome it.
Purpose. Conviction. Willpower.
One of Master's favorite sayings had always been that "words have power". Suzaku hadn't always really understood what that meant until he'd met Takahashi Sousuke. Sousuke was a man that was extremely skilled and unfailingly precise in many things but clumsy in a variety of social matters and Suzaku was surprised to learn that the Steward drew strength from something as mundane as words. Sousuke believed in the words of his family, the Takahashi Family, to his very core and spoke about them often.
"We Are King's Men", he would say.
He often remarked that it was important for a family to have words to rely on when things got hard. That in the darkest of nights, a person of noble birth could rely on those words to keep their focus and overcome diversity. Suzaku had words like those but they only meant anything to him as a memento from his Master. The mantra of "Purple, Conviction, Willpower" served both as a lesson in concentration from Master but also had the looming spectre of Master's approval behind them. He'd only created the mantra as a method for focusing Suzaku because Suzaku had struggled to rein in the power that the Tenseiken breathing technique cultivated in his body.
"We Are King's Men", he heard Sousuke say again even though the Steward wasn't with him upon the rooftop. He felt his concentration waver as thoughts of Sousuke broke through his thoughts and a feeling of apprehension once more washed over him in tandem with a peal of thunder from the storm and in that moment he felt the internal force generated by his breathing technique strain against his body, threatening to rip him to shreds from the inside out.
"Your father was... he was more than a man. Everybody knew about his ability to control the storms but what they never realized was that he didn't just control them. When he was angry, the skies were furious. When he was sad, they mourned with him. He didn't just bring the storm, he was the storm."
He could hear his mother's words as he curled his fingers into fists tightly enough to cause his knuckles to whiten and small trickles of blood to pour forth from his hands which instantly joined the tumult of vaporous rain and breath around him due to the heat of his skin. He wasn't his father. He couldn't bring the storm like Katsuo could. The storm didn't care about what he wanted or what he felt.
"Every family should have words they can rely on."
"Purpose. Conviction. Willpower."
The moment finally came and Suzaku wasn't ready for it. The area around him suddenly lit up brighter than the middle of day and time slowed to a fraction of a fraction. This was the moment between moments that meant success or failure. Suzaku wasn't his father but that didn't mean he was destined to be a failure either.
"He was the storm."
Energy from the lightning strike slammed into Suzaku's body and was met with resistance from the internal force that he'd generated through his breathing technique causing there to be an external lightshow of coursing green-gold energy as the two forces battled for supremacy. The internal force of Tenseiken wanted out of Suzaku's body and the electrical current of the lightning bolt wanted to pass through Suzaku to get to the surface beneath him. Straining against the forces that felt like they were pulling every atom of his body in various directions at chaotic intervals, Suzaku grabbed hold of his internal force and used it to corral the force of the lightning strike before taking a step forward and throwing his right hand upwards and with it thrusting all of the collected energy upward back into the sky. For Suzaku it had seemed like minutes had stretched into hours but in real time only a heartbeat had passed and in the second after the lightning strike happened a second bolt of light split the sky and carved a large hole in the sky overhead as it blew the cloud cover away.
Triumphant but exhausted, Suzaku simply fell backwards onto the hard surface of the Takahashi estate roof with his body trailing vapor from his rapidly cooling skin. The storm quickly recovered from Suzaku's retort causing the clouds to close in once more and the rain resumed falling upon the rooftop but Suzaku barely noticed it as he was too wrapped up in his own head. He hadn't dodged the lightning bolt like his father had always managed to do but he'd still beaten it and he'd done it his own way.
There was a feeling of nostalgic disappointment that hit him as he remembered what it had been like waiting for "his powers" to manifest so that he could control the skies the way Katsuo had and what it had been like to eventually come to terms with the realization that those powers which had made Katsuo powerful were truly unique to him, or at least it had seemed that way at the time. Laying there on the roof of Sousuke's house, his right arm surely broken in several places and with a handful of internal injuries likely with the way his body ached, Suzaku finally understood that just because he didn't have Katsuo's powers didn't mean that he couldn't achieve the same things. He wanted to carry the torch that his father's memory had passed down to him and he didn't need Katsuo's powers to do that. He'd found a path to master the storm in his own way.
Sousuke believed that every family should have words that exemplified them. A saying which could tell a person all about their family without needing to say anything else. Grinning like an idiot and laying out upon the Steward's rooftop with pain coursing through every inch of his body Suzaku found the words for the Sunahoshi Clan, given to him by his mother and inspired by his father.
"We Are The Storm."
[MFT]