Honing skills for things to come [Open/Training Thread]

[Randamu Kyarakuta]

He was at the academy again but this time, he wasn't there to break kids into the life of child soldiering. Today, he was here to push his skills, as it was the only available training ground still standing. So, with a large dummy in each arm, he walked to a corner where it was most empty during the day and set them up, they were hard metal of some description, his family making. They were meant to withstand the harsh training of his fathers design. Then he walked some distance away and slid into place, his left foot sliding back and his hand gripping the hilt of his sword, he made deep breaths in and out, charging energy into his sword and making a kiap noise, unsheathing the blade sending an energy wave out to the dummies, causing an explosion on impact and when the dust cleared, they'd still be standing, a huge gash in the earth behind them. This would continue for a few hours, he would need to prepare for the day he would have to defend himself against those who would wrong him. A lot had gone wrong, through his existence, but he'd gotten past the way he felt, shiori helped him through that. Now, he needed to get back into fighting shape, better than the person he was before he was ostracized. This would be a long few weeks, ones he would have to prepare for almost without rest, it was a good thing his father had trained him in such a way that a couple days out of the week without sleep was no big deal.

[WC: 272]
[MFT]

 

[Michi]

Shiori was ambling these hallowed halls of learning. Her long, red tresses replaced her dark hair. This was her actual form, the form that was thrust upon her when that old woman intervened when she should have 'died'. Death was a temporary state for the ancient, she did not fear it because the desert could never die. Still, she suffered greatly at the hand of her enemy. Her shoulder refused to heal through conventional or unconventional measures. It was as if her wounds refused to heal, the 'blood' crystallized where his living blade dug into her. She hid her injury under cap sleeves and a mandarin collar. Her arm worked well enough, the elbow bent where a human's elbow should and her hand did the wiggly things a hand also should.

She was not working, she was seeking. Her heels clicked the tile floor, showing her all who sought respite here after-hours. Faces and hearts all unfamiliar, all less one... A heavy-bag and a bevy of dummies his silent witnesses. She tried to kill him the other day, she failed to do so. She was not sure if she was thankful or terrified, there was a terrible consequence for survival. That dark energy imbued into a human pushed their body beyond what it was intended, granting power to those who could survive and killing those who lacked the durability.

She 'saw' him, likely before he saw her. Standing there, practicing against an imaginary enemy. Shiori looked at the door left ajar and frowned as her hands ran through a series of handseals to melt the handle as she watched the door swing closed behind her. She waited, in silence while her former friend trained. She had no use for a fair fight, their last encounter left her unconscious and her care in the hands of a stranger she never had the chance to thank. She was conflicted, she wanted him dead but she did not want very much want him alive or at least in an excellent state of health. She really did not know what she was going to do, but the door was broken. Oops...

"Practice makes perfect..."

Shiori made her presence verbally known if Homura has not sensed or noticed her presence before. Her back to the hopefully only exit she eyed her target. Most of the rumors surrounding his clan were not well-known, even to Shiori's sensitive ears so she did not know of how he had butchered his own clan but he was well-aware of his affiliation with the Cabal. Time and circumstance changed him, back in the bar with new eyes she did not know him. Part of her wondered if she would have done things differently if she knew what she did now. She wanted to take him alive, although part of her wondered if in doing so his traitor-fate would be worse than a swift death at her hand. If he came in direct conflict as a unit or even alone, she would not be able to intervene. The threads of fate prevented intervention in conflicts even if she was affected indirectly. Seeking vengeance and harboring a vendetta, however, seemed to be something she was capable of. She wondered where the tipping point was if he or anyone were to come to arms, when her intervention would be prevented. How such a senseless rule could even exist.

She did not know it, but there was a reason it was the Lord of the Fire Court who had to cut out Orochi's heart and not her.

"I did not expect you to survive..." It was the only killing-move she knew, well the only one she could utilize. To allow the fates to decide, to allow ones will and fortitude to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds. A skill humans possessed in abundance it would seem.

 

[Randamu Kyarakuta]

Waves after waves of energy blasted from his sword toward the dummy, one might wonder how he was doing it so much. It was pretty simple, it was the first technique he'd learned when he was trained. The school, that he had recently been teaching in, had once housed him as a student, a kid who picked up everything pretty fast, but he never really got to practice what was taught there, his clan over riding it at every turn. He had felt Shiori's presence but not in the way one would expect. He didn't feel the chakra, he didn't hear a bump or anything. He felt the dark energy in him shift, as if responding to her getting closer. She had done that to him, it only made sense that it would pulse in his eye as she got within some undefined range. However the energy wasn't hers anymore, it had fused with him, and he had taken time to learn to control it. If anything, she sharpened the sword that is his body to be even deadlier. Attacking him again would be suicide, but it appeared not to be her reason for being here. He would keep training, ignoring her presence until she spoke.

"Practice makes perfect..."

He threw one more energy wave, as it traveled to the dummy he disappeared, and as soon as the wave hit the dummy, he was above it covered slightly by the ground debris. Striking the dummy on the head with the hilt on the sword, it would sink down into the ground, only its head sticking up out of it. When the smoke cleared, he'd be standing on it's now dented head with sure footing, facing shiori as his blade clicked into the sheath.

"I did not expect you to survive..."

"Nobody ever does..." he said, stepping off the dummy, pushing two fingers up in the air, a burst of air launching the dummy out of the ground as he walked toward her, it landing with a thud a few feet to the right like some kind of missile. His non-dominant hand rested on his sword as he approached her, getting within arms length. Perfect distance for her to strike, but the perfect distance for him to maneuver. He put his hand out for a hand shake, "Shiori...".Plus this was a much more open battlefield than before, and he had a heads up on what he was dealing with. "...What happened to your face? It's different than before, not bad...but different." he said, asking the first obvious thing that needed to be answered. He found no use in being angry and lashing out, not yet. He had been keeping himself busy, and had tried to keep their meet up in the bar in the back of his mind, and now that it was here looking him in the face, he was trying to keep it together. Anger always lead to mistakes, another lesson drilled into him by his father.

[MFT]

 

[Michi]

"I died,"</B><i></i> she admitted with uttermost honesty. She had told Sousuke similar, he responded in disbelief and then in panic when she proved her words to be true. So much in fact she had to resort to this charade that she was the woman he once knew. "I tried to disarm a bomb in the communications center... failed," she explained simply. That was far from the whole story of course but what she is and what she was sounded more like a children's tale better left to one's imagination. She only had months to 'live' in her deteriorated state, her vital sands were escaping her each and every day. The Cabal supporter might have cause her to suffer that mortal blow, but she had been in the process of dying for months already. Ever since she woke up in that hospital bed, riddled with scars and tubes, her liver in failure. She spent those lonesome months in the hospital while everyone else's lives went on. Sousuke found someone to share his life with, her old friends and acquaintances lived their lives and some such as Homura made new, dangerous friends. Everything changed and it terrified her, how in the passage of centuries the world changed so little when it was so large but now that her life was so small and limited in the blink of an eye nothing was the same.

"Someone brought me back, but I do not know why but when I did I took another's face." The old woman's sacrifice was in vain, she would not have stayed dead if she was allowed to pass away into the dark of night -- it might have taken her decades to recover, but the one thing the earth does is endure. Her face twisted and stretched to resemble who she once was, it was a simpler time then with that face. The worst pain she knew was ignorance, but such seemed like bliss now."But you have changed much as well, Homura." A cruel name to give a child, to name him after the Flame Court Ancient Lord. Homura, a tyrant even in his own time despite the affections she had for brother Homura. He was a subjugator of humanity who enjoyed to toy with lives of men and witness their victories and defeats in the most visceral of ways. Even she who desire nothing more than to see her brother's resurrection did not remember him fondly, but did know him as a brother. She looked him up and down, she did not recognize him that night in the bar. That night when their fates would finally clash.

"Your blade cuts refuse to heal,"<i></i> Shiori commented as she pointed to her covered shoulder where his great sword broke through her. Beneath that satin sleeve was a hollow space where tissue and tendon refuse to unite hidden away. "What did you do to me?" She was not a good medic by human standards, despite having learned every healing technique known to man; a simple task as sealing a wound should have been a sophomoric task but even without a healer's touch her body should have recovered from such peripheral grievances by now. He was not scared of her, that was obvious. He had found power in her curse <B>"Further, what are you?" Shiori finally inquired, that being the real reason she sought him. She should have and could have reported him, his scent was all over her from that night at the bar. Someone could have tracked him down by now easily enough had she wanted to involve outsiders but that would have also required that she make several admissions of her own that she would rather not. He should have died without outside intervention, as that terrible curse history called a blessing pervaded the body it had a terrible toll on the soul. It should have ripped him apart from the inside, but in his case he... like the progeny of Primus seemed unscathed, Homura seemed fortified by her taint. Primus had always been considered a paragon of human potential, their survival still a shock to the ancient when her curse became a generational blessing that followed the line for centuries. What allowed HIM to endure without intervention?

She was a hypocrite, giving him the look she did. She saw him as a traitor, not that she was any better but her affiliations were less public and thus far not acted upon. He betrayed his own people and allied himself with those anarchists. The anarchists that she thought took Sousuke's life but rather merely locked him outside, yet he returned broken in a way she could never mend. She wanted to blame them, blame HOMURA for his pain. She wanted to blame someone and he was just as good as anyone else to hate. Her eyes were fixed on Homura's weapon, she was within range for an attack and there was something inherently different... dangerous about Homura's weapon. She wanted to tell him to leave, to run. She wanted to look the other way and hope he could find a life outside of Sunagakure before his trespasses came back to haunt him. "You really 'ought to run."<i></i> She warned him.

 

[Randamu Kyarakuta]

"I died," she said flat out, he'd be disarmed, but with the things he saw in this village, a dead shiori standing before him was the least creepy thing. "I tried to disarm a bomb in the communications center... failed," his eyes widened, it wasn't quite how he expected, his thought was drank to death or tripped wearing a high heel and smacked her head off something. "Someone brought me back, but I do not know why but when I did I took another's face."

"Ouch, I always thought you had an explosive personality..." he joked, probably not the best time for it, but he was hardly, if ever, appropriate.

"But you have changed much as well, Homura."

The focus shifted to him, and his face went from a joking smile to a serious blank face, one that let her know, that he was well aware of such things. His life had been hard, in no small part to himself making poor decisions for good reasons. Joining the cabal wasn't a choice made lightly, but one he made for altruistic reasons. "Yeah, I tried to diffuse an invasion...and failed." he repeated her tone, but it was indeed serious. The whole point of getting close to the cabal was to find the bombs, and how to diffuse them. She lost one of her lives cause he couldn't do it in time. She would then point to her shoulder, it was time to get into the dirt.

"Your blade cuts refuse to heal, What did you do to me?"

"I was just defending myself, I wish I had the answer. It hurts me to see you still in pain, and I'd fix it if I could." he tried to console her for the injury. He really didn't want to fight her, specially once he realized who he was against. Push the feels aside Homura, push them aside.

"Further, what are you?"

"I ask myself the same thing every time I look in the mirror...I have more mirrors than I want, but less than you'd hope." he continued to joke, reflecting with humor as people are known to do.

"You really 'ought to run."

"We both know I won't do that. Whatever I have coming, I deserve it. Don't worry, I can weather the storm."

 

[Michi]

Bad puns and a tough guy act, the kind of things that would get a guy like him killed if he was not careful. Shiori let out a frustrated sigh, she was not getting any answers. She had already broken the door, not that such a feeble barrier could truly prevent his exit or the entrance of a curious populous if things went sour but the momentary delay would prove sufficient. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. "You really can't," Shiori warned in a low voice. "I have no idea why you are out of prison even now," she snapped in an astringent tone. She did not know what game her friend was playing, but his name was far from cleared and it was an utter mystery to her why he was not being hunted down. If they caught him, he would not likely survive transport to the Obsidian. Too many people died at the hands of the Cabal for one to be so easily forgiven. His dalliance with Naganisa was common gossip, their affections were rather public. She might have been the first to try to take his life, but she would also not be the last.

"That mark I gave you will make you strong because it did not kill you. It might even affect your kids and their kids," She warned. What she gave him was a veritable curse in many ways, much like the Sunahoshi who she defeated centuries ago but they had not realized it yet then. Power corrupts utterly and completely. "Ethics seem to apply to those who have to submit," she explained as she shook her head. Time would repeat itself again, perhaps in a mortal span this time. Homura may claim he was on Sunagakure's side, but in the end his life (as it should have been) was a priority. The masses were never warned, not by him at least. She was where the warning call was announced and it was not by him. She did not hate him for it, she could not blame him for following his self-preservation instinct. She wondered now of what legend would he be remembered by - a hero's tale or that of a tyrant. She would not be able to intervene at these crossroads, something somehow always prevented her eerily so.

She did not turn her back on Homura's weapon as she took a step back towards the door. The handle was broken, melted away rather. She balled her small hand into a fist and attempted to strike above the handle without looking. There was no weapon to be had within or beyond the door, she was seeking departure as she had given the warnings she had intended.

 

[Randamu Kyarakuta]

"You really can't, I have no idea why you are out of prison even now," she stated, sounding rather somber.

"I've made a deal with more than one devil in my time." it wasn't really an answer, but how does one really explain he'd joined forces with the second worst thing since the cabal, a fancy businessman with delusions of being able to take over the world one business at a time? That he'd jumped in bed with another monster, to reclaim his honor. Did honor even mean anything anymore? He was feeling the pressure weigh down on him, but nobody could be allowed to see it. If someone sees your armor crack, they know where to strike.

"That mark I gave you will make you strong because it did not kill you. It might even affect your kids and their kids," she stated in a more serious tone.

"I probably won't live long enough to see that happen. I thank you for the gift, it'll help in the time to come." he said, refusing to see it as a curse. Power corrupts yes, if you let it. He seemed to have a solid head on his shoulders, despite it's sometimes poor decision making skills. Like a wise author once said, with great power comes great responsibility. Regardless, she would beat a hasty retreat, as if only there to get information and/or size up Homura.

"Before you go, can you give me any info on the cabal? Who survived?" he said, using a more serious tone. She hadn't been there in the fight, she didn't see him try to slit Naganisa's throat, or how Yume sided with her cabal brethren in combat. He wanted to know how strong they still where, for when it was time to kill them.

 

[Michi]

"I've made a deal with more than one devil in my time."

Chikara's statement was ominous. She wondered who or what else he had allied himself with in her absence. It saddened her in a way, she did not like change but she could tolerate it if it was for the better. Whoever this man was, he was not the gentle kind-hearted, silly fool she used to know. He was cold now, dark and distant. He had gotten stronger too, much more than she would have ever anticipated if she were to try to look ahead. He was going to hurt a lot of people in his time, but for now there was nothing Shiori could do in her damaged state. She could tell Sousuke, but it was likely he already knew. Homura seemed to make no attempt to hide his face or his identity, it was a sad statement regarding her tracking skill that it took her this long to find him but in her defense who would have thought he was at school. "What the hell happened to you Chikara, you changed." Shiori stated, announcing the obvious.

"I probably won't live long enough to see that happen. I thank you for the gift, it'll help in the time to come."

The time for what was the million dollar question. A question that she did not dare ask. He could easily lie and even if it was the truth she would never know until the time had already passed. Her wariness perhaps understandable, mortality was not something an Ancient was forced to consider. She did not fear death, death was nothing more than a transitional state to an Ancient. Eventually she would return in one form or another, perhaps if destroyed utterly without the attachments she once had - a clean slate. It was almost enticing, but only almost. She was not a fatalist, she coveted her experiences past and present, even the memories bloodied with pain and regret. They were hers and they made her into what she was. She did not want to kill an old friend, she wouldn't unless she had to. She was not sure if she could if it came to it of course, both in terms of capacity as well as desire to do such. Eventually he would die, every human does. When that day came, hopefully he would be an old man who has found peace with his demons.

"Before you go, can you give me any info on the cabal? Who survived?"

Shiori paused, her fingertips lightly touching the door. She was not going to start a fight while she tried to depart, he was healthy. Completey so it would appear. That was troublesome and left her pondering what propensity he might have or what else he housed to make him capable of surviving her curse without intervention. Their first tussle she had the advantage in that she was the only one sure that they were going into combat. In this case, the battlefield was level. Without the element of surprise and the consequences of inebriation as well as the lusty hopes of an addled man should have been sufficient but he was prepared. Shame was something Shiori lacked, playing the role of the whore to get the advantage was not underneath her as it would be her brethren. Pride was the shadow's fatal flaw. "I do not know,"<i></i> Shiori admitted. It would be easy enough for her to find out, but since their encounter she had been thrown off her game as well. "I only know about the crazy head-head that was guarding the gates," she added. "Last I knew he was being tortured," she sighed. Her form and her lies were troublesome at least and with time she would likely forgot what she told that man and then she would be held accountable. As for the others, she did not personally know of their fates and even if she did she did not know if sharing that information with him would be in her best interest. He was a traitor, at least in the eyes of the village. How would implanting yourself into such a terrible group be a good thing she did not know, but she would need more than a passing statement from a man she barely knew anymore. It could be for the sake of his lover that he was curious, their unusual pairing was on the tips of many tongues. Beyond that mostly rumors from what she had heard, some more outrageous than others. She shook her head, she did not want to see Homura share Shouki's fate due to the friendship they once had.

There was so much that neither of them could ever hope to understand. "Just take care of yourself Chikara," she frowned.

 

[Michi]

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