Private Where the Fuse Meets Bone [Solo]

[Ryuu Nozomi]

The only thing Nozomi could not shake is the cold. Where she stood did not offer the polite chill of high Kumo mornings, but the kind of chill that bites down into bone and turns breath to glass. Rei and Nozomi are currently high above the village proper, on a narrow stone ledge carved into the side of the mountain. Wind clawed past them, tearing at hair and clothes. The whole world she knew was barely even visible beneath the clouds that suffocated vision up here. It served as a constant reminder of just how far she had already come. The mountain here held a steep stair cut into the rock that climbed and climbed until it vanished into mist. They made camp here in an out cove and it served as her training ground.

'Again!'

She snapped awake in fright. Even in her dreams Rei's commands clung to her psyche. The sun was rising and she knew that she must make it to the top of the stairs before Rei or she would be forced to do it again. She was allowed no chakra, no clay, just muscle and a healthy dose of stubbornness. It was the first time in the near month they had spent that she arrived to the top first. Upon arrival, she did not hesitate to grab a narrow wooden bar that had been pushed into the rock by her teacher. By the time she lifted herself once Rei was present but made herself unknown. Repetition was the point. It was a thing that built over time and taught a lesson to the point that it was instinct and no longer required active thought. Nozomi had been broken and rebuilt over this time already, but today would be a culmination, proof that she had what it takes.

Nozomi lifted herself as well as the weights placed within each of her pouches and backpack forty times. Each time she lifted herself stung her muscles harder than the last, and yet she would hold each count for five seconds at the top before letting herself drop. There was no wasted motion, her core and upper body held until the thirty-seventh rep. Her hand slipped just a fraction as blood gushed from a callous that split open from the pressure. She inhaled too much cold air and it stung her lungs, she was going to die if she fell. All of the words Rei had spoken previously flooded back to memory.

'Again... Your elbows flare. Your grip weakens.'

'Again... That's wasted motion. Refuse to give up.'

'Again!'

With strangled breath she managed to pull her chin over the bar, shoulders screaming, her core locks. For a heartbeat she holds here at the top. She thinks how this is thirty eigh... No. There are just two more.

'Again... Struggle to feel pain. Pain is Data.'

'Again!'

With tears dripping down her face she struggled for the last two reps and held herself at the very end. At this point she knew Rei must be watching, and so she held.

"Forty."

Nozomi swung herself to safety at the word from her teacher and her body trembled as the pain roared in her ears. She lifted herself up as her legs shook and her arms felt like pieces of meat.

"You have hit the minimum acceptable level to continue. Congratulations."

The words both felt like praise and a stab through the heart.

Rei stepped forward and tossed Nozomi a canteen. Even the metal container felt painfully cold against her torn-up hands. Nozomi drank only in measured sips, she had already learned the cost of drinking too fast. Everything with Rei was a lesson and Nozomi has learned that everything has a cost. As she drank, her breathing slowly leveled out. Her mind, rattled by exertion, began to clear. Rei’s gaze was on her, always gathering data. She observed the tremor in Nozomi’s arms, the tension in her shoulders, the way exhaustion pulled her spine inward. Rei never said so aloud, but Nozomi was beginning to truly understand the structure of her teachers thinking. Rei read bodies the way others read scrolls. Muscle fatigue, breath patterns, and pain tolerance are lines of text in a language Rei was fluent in. The training Nozomi endured was not merely physical, it was diagnostic.

When Nozomi finally stood again, even with the world tilting faintly around her, she moved toward the edge. The village could barely be seen spread below them, a cluster of lights and metal that through the clouds and distance seemed like a world away. Almost a fragile thing from this vantage point. She still heard the question in her head, the one Rei posed to her the first day she agreed to follow this training.

'Why are you here?'

It was something she answered with every bead of sweat and still she struggled with it. Why was she here as a Ryuu girl whose blood promised brilliance and ruin in equal measure? The truth lived in Nozomi’s own thoughts only as she still had not yet manifested the words. At least not until now. Exhaling, she would turn back towards Rei and answer the question that rang in her head.

"I am here because I can become something dangerous and precise. I intend to survive this curse and not break to it. I struggle to become a weapon for the village that can think, adapt, and bend the battlefield with strategy rather than raw talent or instinct. I am here to survive and to ensure others have the same luxury."


[WC: 929, Marked for Training]
[Part 1 of future Kinjutsu Application. Parts 2+ coming soon.]

 

[Ryuu Nozomi]

The next step of training was to incorporate the new knowledge of the body with the infusion of chakra.

Chakra, that previously patched weakness, was now utilized to excel on its own. Nozomi learned very quickly that chakra used this way felt very different. It was not the obedient warmth she had once known or the steady pulse she had beaten into submission through weeks of merciless conditioning. The power now had teeth and could be unleashed in a way that she never truly anticipated.

It normally arrived thin and sharp, like cold metal drawn slowly across the nerves. Now, was different, her body was growing accustom to the channels being as wide as a river. It no longer scraped by requiring attention to force it past resistance. Instead, it was a flood that wished to burst free. It made the simplest techniques feel treacherous as they threatened to overflow beyond her control. Still, Rei made her work anyway.

The ledge in which the pair claimed temporary residence had ceased to be merely stone and wind. It had become their crucible. A piece of land scarred, brutalized, and reshaped by repeated violence. Shallow craters pocked the stone where detonations had landed too close. The cliff face bore shrapnel scars like calligraphy written in fractured rock. Every gouge, every burn mark, and every ripple in the stone meant something to Rei. To Nozomi, it meant only one thing...

'Again'

Her footing adjusted on the gravel and the cold continued to bite through the soles of her boots. Wind shredded past her in screaming sheets, but she had finally grown accustom to it.

Nozomi raised her arms without waiting for instruction this time. Her palms angled inward and shoulders squared. The mouths sunken into her palms opened despite wanting to remain closed and chatter due to the temperature. They were a grotesque piece of living flesh folded into her hand where natural born seals lined the interior to connect it properly to the rest of her bodies circulatory system. As such, chakra slithered through her arms like a second nervous system, electric and alive. It was part of what made her unique. The clay shaped within those mouths did not feel inert, but now grew with an ever expanding river of chakra that throbbed faintly as it grew, shaped by will and hunger.

Within her hand was the workshop of an artist. Things of true beauty were crafted within and sent forth to explode and make their mark upon the world. She would blink, and the first explosion tore outward in a tight, disciplined bloom of dust and concussive force. The blast hit the rock face and collapsed into controlled turbulence. Not wide or sloppy, but the kind of detonation that spoke of restraint rather than instinct.

The shock rattled her teeth and the second explosion came faster. She barely locked her stance before the third detonation kicked her knees inward. This one had not been planned to go off so quickly, and so closely to Nozomi. She braced but took a large brunt of the blow. Still, Rei did not shift, flinch, or interrupt. She simply watched as Nozomi's chakra began to hemorrhage.

Not a dramatic torrent, but every cycle stripped something vital from her reserves. Every bomb forced instability and precision into the same narrow channel. Two violent systems being welded together inside one body through force of repetition. Her hands began to tremble between blasts, and the first loss of control was not painful. It was a thing that came quiet, and yet Rei knew it all too well when it reared its ugly head. It was her hair.

At first, Nozomi did not notice it herself, as if it was just a cruel joke. The strands near her temples lost their color in small patches, as though winter were creeping inward from the edges. White bleeding into natural blonde like frostbite spreading under skin. A chill poured down her spine that had nothing to do with the mountain air and cold sweat soaked through her clothing.

Her vision narrowed as she began to lose control of her thoughts, and perception. Shadows began to overlap within her vision, but she did not stop. Instead, she continued to detonate anyway and Rei was unable to stop her in time. Rei had moved as soon as it could be seen and it still wasn't enough. Blast after blast triggered in succession that no-one would have been able to walk through alive. Nozomi knew the cost of this training, but Rei did not expect it to come so soon.

Perhaps thirty detonations went off before one went off too close. An implosion went off where the recoil struck both Nozomi and Rei like an invisible hammer. The young girls body snapping backward into the cliff wall with a sickening sound as something broke. Her sanity for certain, but now her body as well. She felt like she was floating for a second and the world went numb as she realized she was resting in Rei's arms. What happened next, was mostly a blur.

Most of what Nozomi could remember was static, like the white noise from a screen with no signal. This is what time felt like for days, or perhaps months, she wasn't sure. The pressure of the Ryuu curse had taken its toll and what was left of Nozomi's consciousness fought against the madness internally, as it was all she could do.

When awareness of the world came back to Nozomi she was no longer suspended between stone and wind. Instead, she was bound by medical restraints, white light, and a steel cage of sorts. The smell of antiseptic burned her nose, and beneath it there was something strange in the air. A smell of lingering burnt chakra residue, something strange, and it felt wrong. She very quickly realized that this was no longer training, it was triage, and she was the patient.

"Rest Nozomi. You're alive." She could hear Rei's voice, and so she did. She closed her eyes to the flashes of painful memory as they quickly came back to her scene by scene of what transpired to allow her to make it to this point.

----------------

By the time Rei got Nozomi back to safety the Ryuu curse had begun accelerating at an unstoppable pace. There were very few options with any sort of successful outcome, and Rei had just one idea. A direct infusion of natural energy into the very lattice of bone and marrow in the core of Nozomi's body. Every major bone and structure in her body needed to be able to infuse chakra from the natural world with the cursed chakra in order to allow the girl to maintain control. It was a task that no-one but Rei would be able to manage. Architecture of the entire body had to be discovered and rebuilt so that the flow of natural energy was embedded into the very fabric of her being. The reason for this, is that the curse would fight to take over at even the cellular level, and so it had to be matched at such a level.

Hours of operation went by, and Rei was losing Nozomi. She was not taking to this experiment well, and death was the likely outcome. In a final moment of desperation, Rei thought that what Nozomi's body needed was a level of independence. To be a lone-wolf and have her DNA structure this ancient fight of curse and natural energy into a seamless path of pain and destruction. It was a last ditch resort, but she chose the resilience of the Inuzuka. A particular candidate's blood who was known to be stubborn and fierce.

It was this instinct, that once grafted into the marrow itself became the binding agent for this entire process. Nozomi's natural Toujigikou abilities taken to extreme levels by the Ryuu curse, harnessed with worldly natural energy into the very fiber of her bone marrow like a Kaguya, and then driven by this new-found solidarity of the Inuzuka clan.

During this process her bones sang with relentless heat and agony. Every breath scraped through metal and flame. Every motion felt like grinding broken glass through joint and sinew from the inside outward. Yet, it held. The curse did not break through but rather remained contained. Rei stood beside the medical frame long after Nozomi stabilized. There was no triumph in her posture, still calculation.

----------------

It had been weeks of recovery where Nozomi stared at the ceiling, and just now finally understood the shape of what she had become. Her body was now a constant battlefield, and pain would never leave her. There was a war that was raging inside her blood and bone. A thing that must be kept at bay and would torture every moment of her existence. It was a thing that would not dull, and would never vanish.

Yet, she learned to reinforce the natural energy and blunt the pain so that she may exist. Though no path forward would be easy, for every path required using these abilities, and with every drop of power came an ounce of pain.

Still, there was only one path forward, and she could not hesitate.
For to hesitate now, would mean to collapse forever.
To collapse now, would admit that she is broken.
She is not broken, fractured perhaps, but she would be whole again.

[Marked for Training, WC:1575] [End of Topic]