Upon returning to the Ishidatami School, Jirou had to hide his shame at returning without the Emperor’s gloves. His teachers at the dojo expressed their disappointment as well, but that faded quickly when Jirou redoubled his efforts to improve. While recounting the battle with one of the instructors there, Jirou mentioned that he wished he had had more options for ranged combat.
The teacher nodded sagely.
“There is a reason,” he finally spoke. “That the samurai of old combined the arts of both sword and bow.”
The man paused. Jirou looked on expectantly, waiting for his sensei to continue his thought. When he didn’t, Jirou interjected.
“Are there-”
“This is a sword fighting school,” the man continued, plowing straight through the question Jirou had begun to ask. “And as such, we focus on the art of the sword. On how the sword and the unarmed arts can be combined into the Toryu style. Still, as a martial academy there are options to expand one’s frontiers. In fact, such cross training is an explicit part of our program. If I recall correctly, while here you have taken some small instruction in both Iaido and wrestling, correct?
“That’s correct, sir,” Jirou responded. He had mostly focused on the wrestling courses. His foray into training Iaido in Pebble Country had been mostly a waste of time. He had attended a single class and found that Ishidatami’s Iaido instructor was much worse than any of his instructors back in Tea Country, and was about as skilled as he was. Wrestling was much more his speed, and felt more directly impactful on his Toryu training. Not only was it already a part of the curriculum, but his strength and size proved advantageous.
“Again, if I recall correctly, there are options to train in archery here. The next time you are given an option for cross training, seek out the archery instructor. Again, this is a sword school, so do not expect her instruction to make you a master archer, but it should teach you enough to be dangerous at a distance.”
Jirou nodded vigorously.
“Thank you, sir!” he beamed. “I’ll find the archery teacher!”
The next time the Ishidatami School’s curriculum made room for cross training, Jirou ditched his usual friends in the wrestling course to seek out the archery one. In a small patch of empty land at the edge of the school’s grounds, a small, impromptu archery range had been set up, and students were filing in. Jirou recognized a few of them, but none were people he knew well.
“Well well well, looks like we have a new student today!” a voice called out. Jirou turned to see who it was and spotted a woman who looked like she could be a shrunken Kisama: dark skin, red hair, wiry and well-muscled, but very short.
“Yes, my name is Jirou-”
“Have you ever shot a bow before Jirou?” the instructor interrupted.
“Um,” Jirou was suddenly embarrassed. “Yes, but I never hit anything.”
The instructor let out an amused exhale. “Alright then, grab a bow and see if you can draw it.”
She looked Jirou up and down.
“I would guess you shouldn’t have too much trouble there. I’ll come help you out once I have everyone else settled.” She gestured over to a rack with several bows – already strung – ready to go. “Oh, and watch your forearm.”
Jirou did as he was told. He grabbed a bow and practiced drawing it back. He’d been taught a little of how to use a bow during his military training, but as he’d told the instructor: he wasn’t very good. Several minutes passed with Jirou practicing drawing the string back and gently letting it back into its resting position.
“Alright, time to whip you into shape!” the instructor’s voice made Jirou jump. All of his concentration had been on his simple exercise with the bow.
“Wow, jumpy today!” she chuckled at Jirou’s reaction.
Over the course of their time there, the instructor rushed Jirou through the basics of archery. She gave him pointers on how best to hold the bow, how to knock an arrow and pull it back straight. She stood behind him and positioned his head so he could look down the arrow and aim his shots. The first few arrows he loosed either flew wide or plonked uselessly to the ground far short of the target, but by the end of the lesson, Jirou had at the very least hit the target at least once.
Over the course of weeks, Jirou continued to attend the archery class and made steady improvement. Soon, he found himself able to hit targets with ease and was able to move on to more advanced ranges, including one with makeshift moving targets pulled along on a clothesline.
As he improved his archery, Jirou also invested in a new technique of his own. Instead of drawing arrows from a quiver – which took time and necessitated carrying around an unwieldy item in battle – Jirou thought that he could instead make use of his Oudouchi bloodline to create arrows. His first attempts were clumsy, awkward, and resulted in useless arrows: either too heavy or overly curved to fly straight and hit their targets. Still, he did not give up. Even outside of his archery lessons, Jirou practiced this new arrow technique, and soon he could reliably make straight, useful projectiles.
In class now, he found himself able to spit arrows out of his wrist and into his hand, then fire them. It wasn’t a smooth motion, but it was marginally faster than drawing an arrow normally. As he practiced his accuracy (and learned more, less basic techniques) Jirou also found himself practicing the speed at which he could nock an arrow he had created. Soon, he was preparing a new arrow as he prepared to draw the string. Then, he began to draw the string back the moment the arrow was ready. When he reached that point, every new draw was a challenge: make the movement smoother, faster. Now it was time to try and draw the string before the arrow was done and sync the movement up at the end.
Getting the two movements to the same terminus at the same time proved to take almost as long as the rest of the invention of his technique. When it happened for the first time though, Jirou felt a sense of excitement that he once thought would be reserved for sword practice. The teacher, too, had been watching Jirou’s progress with an impressed air. Not only had he learned to shoot, and shoot well, in record time, but he had found a way to integrate his bloodline technique into his archery just as he had his swordsmanship. He was far from a master archer now. As the first teacher had said: this was a sword school, not an archery academy. He was competent at it, maybe even a little talented, but the teacher could tell that it was a skill that would serve him well.
While she watched, Jirou let out a bellow of joy at his successfully pulling off his new trick. It was so loud that it scared several of his fellow students and caused at least five arrows to miss their marks. Still, most of his classmates forgave Jirou when he showed them his technique. He was the only Kisama in this school, after all.
Jutsu LearnedShow
WC: 1400/700
*[Flawless Aim Style • Tracking]
D-Rank Taijutsu Discipline
After much training and study, the practitioner has learned how to read an opponent's movements and adjust their aim accordingly to compensate without penalty. This Discipline allows the practitioner to accurately hit moving targets, though sudden changes in the opponent's movements will still affect accuracy.
Oudouchi
Arrow Creation
D-Rank Taijutsu Stance
By focusing blood to their wrist and hand, the user can create an arrow of strength [Strength] that sprouts from the base of their hand. This precludes the need to draw an arrow, and lets the user fire an arrow by simply drawing back the bowstring, cutting the user's firing time to a fraction of what would normally be possible. While in this stance, the user has +3 Speed for the purposes of firing arrows, but the concentration and hand positioning makes hand seals difficult, leading to -3 Control.
*[Flawless Aim Style • Tracking]
D-Rank Taijutsu Discipline
After much training and study, the practitioner has learned how to read an opponent's movements and adjust their aim accordingly to compensate without penalty. This Discipline allows the practitioner to accurately hit moving targets, though sudden changes in the opponent's movements will still affect accuracy.
Oudouchi
Arrow CreationD-Rank Taijutsu Stance
By focusing blood to their wrist and hand, the user can create an arrow of strength [Strength] that sprouts from the base of their hand. This precludes the need to draw an arrow, and lets the user fire an arrow by simply drawing back the bowstring, cutting the user's firing time to a fraction of what would normally be possible. While in this stance, the user has +3 Speed for the purposes of firing arrows, but the concentration and hand positioning makes hand seals difficult, leading to -3 Control.