As the late morning light shone behind him, Yasu slowly entered the open-roofed cave where he had trained for just over two years. It had been a few days since he had been accepted by the academy, and he hadn’t had time to spare to attempt to train his Santaru abilities since then. He glanced at the log propped up against the cave wall with a target carved into it- he hadn’t had a chance to use it for anything, since he could still only make a few sparks on his hands. He picked it up and stood it up in the center of the room. Now that he was an academy student, he figured that he should begin training in other areas of combat and chakra control instead of his previous, low-result methods. He pondered his wooden punching bag for a moment, wondering what to focus his training on. He eventually reasoned that most of the other academy students grew up knowing how to fight, whereas he usually stayed away from big groups of kids around his age. On one of his trips to the library, he had come across a book about different types of Taijutsu, particularly the unarmed form. Using what he could remember from the diagrams (which wasn’t much), he assumes a fighting stance facing the wood dummy and visualized a tree monster lunging forward at him. He was pretty sure that his clumsy sidestep wouldn’t count as a successful dodge, and resumed his stance to try again. ~ About two hours and countless tries later, Yasu deemed his efforts in this area satisfactory. He glanced at the still-untouched log with a pensive look on his face. He had heard stories of shinobi who could punch and kick with lightning-like chakra gathered around their hands and feet, and wanted to try the technique for himself. Focusing all of his energy into his right hand, Yasu launched his fist into the hollow, brittle wood and heard a loud ‘THWUMP’ sound. He looked down at his hand, and was somewhat disappointed to find that it looked completely normal; he hadn’t managed to gather his chakra into a physical form that would last long enough. Returning to pick up and set aside the log dummy, which had a slight dent in it, he resolved to focus for the rest of the day on trying to focus and control his chakra and possibly make a few more sparks. He sat down in the middle of the cave, closes his eyes, and focused his energy again around his right hand, this time laying with its palm to the sky. Concentrating on the image of the flowing blue energy in his mind, just how his father had described it to him, he moved the life-force out of his hand and onto his palm. Suddenly, every memory he had of his father came rushing back to him like a tidal wave. His emotions flashed brighter as he remembered why he was training in the first place: to become strong enough to protect his village. Fueled by his willpower, his chakra ignited into a small spark of lightning. Yasu, opening his eyes, waited for it to fizzle out and disappear, but it didn’t. He smiled a triumphant grin, turned to the propped-up log, and hurled the spark directly at it. As chakra connected with wood, the spark split into hundreds of smaller sparks, which all eventually went out. The boy stood in front of the slightly-damaged log, grinning from ear to ear. He barely even noticed the sun beginning to set on the horizon as he bolted home to tell his mother and get some rest for the next day. He promised himself, as he ran home, that he would train as much as possible in order to turn his spark into storm.
Word Count: 641
Word Count: 641