Falling behind, and getting ahead

[Kanade]

Ayago pounded on the mind of Kasuri, mentally awakening her at the appointed time. Ever since the selection where Ayago had awoken her abilities with Ayago, Ayago had become an impromptu alarm clock. She stretched and went through the rigamarole of Ayago asking the history of her peoples, doing simple math questions such as if a kunai was flying at her at thirty meters per second and it was hit by another kunai traveling at twenty meters per second from a perpendicular angle, where would she need to stand in order to catch the second kunai. It was all basic things, but keeping her willpower, her mind, and her body in top condition was the goal of the training. Ayago had said that Kasuri was a letdown, and she was going to rage against the woman if she didn’t get her way, and would leave her.

While Kasuri found the older, and more poised woman rather an irritant, she couldn’t think of a future without the nagging blowhard and so, she was stuck here, listening to Ayago name off people from history which she would be quizzed on in a rapid-fire rote memory style while she opened the cold-box to see what could be done about getting something to eat.

She hadn’t even dressed yet, looking at the wall, the droning lecturing voice of Ayago was drowned out by a sudden panic that Ayago herself had picked up on, “The exam is only in a month!” Kasuri blinked and looked blearily at the weapon.

Ayago was sitting in a corner, next to her bed where she had left her, and if a bow could look smug, she certainly did.

“I thought that I told you that I wanted to enter next year’s chuunin exam three months ago!” Kasuri groaned and wiped the sleep from her eyes before closing the cold-box, completely forgetting breakfast and hurrying to her room to find something that was at least not completely rancid from training in the dojo. She pulled her hair back with both hands and fought with a hair tie to get it untangled with the teal strands from yesterday.

“You’re rather undignified, you do know that right?” Ayago assailed her again in telepathy. It wasn’t like Kasuri minded having her there most of the time, but this morning especially, she felt like Ayago was speaking rather loudly into her brain, “Fuhen killed which kage in the battle for the crown?”

“Uhh, the water one, the M-” She hesitated, “Mizukage.” Kasuri answered through clenched teeth, holding her hair tie as she struggled to get her tresses in a less tangled bun on the crown of her head.

“Correct.” Ayago shot a couple more questions at Kasuri. All she wanted to do was go back to sleep, but with only a month to go for training, she had only a small amount of time to train. Perhaps there would be a higher ranked samurai there that would be willing to assist her with her day to day training regimen, and give her some pointers on how to quickly get stronger.

“Strength comes from perseverance, and perseverance comes from hard work, and hard work starts with not being drunk every night.” Ayago railed on her again, telepathically.

“Yes, yes, it is true. But can you blame me?” Kasuri was part of a village that had no grand-shogun, the other countries were at war, and she was stuck in the lowest rank of heart’s forces. She would be enlisted if she moved up in the ranks, which both thrilled and terrified her. She would be facing off against Kirigakure no Sato ninja, on their own turf, most likely, and would be one of the many masses that was defending her home, her freedom from the people who pitted their children against one another just to prove who was strongest.

“A barbaric tactic, but it is also one that is tried and true.” Ayago assailed her with another question, which came down to a shogi game, where she was supposed to win within three moves, with the board set up in her head. She struggled, missed her foot with her sock, kicked the foot of her bed instead, and ended up sending herself into her closet in a cascade of clothing.

“Can’t I train after I get dressed!?” Kasuri complained.

“Get dressed, and while you do we’ll work on the easier questions.” Ayago was laughing, actually laughing.

Kasuri, heading off to the training grounds, fully clothed and everything now, hoped to find someone there to train with her, she’d take pretty much anyone at this point. The sun was just cresting the horizon as she looked around for either a sparring partner or a friendly face for sparring.

[+1 willpower: 790 words/500 with training redux this month]

[Nick]

Suzuko had been training her little heart out since before the Iron Banner festival had even begun, and it was exhausting, but she didn't feel like she could stop. Especially not when Goro had told her that not only was she supposed to be representing the Empire on this pilot program, going to meet members of the other great nations, but he was signing her up for the international Chuunin exams whether she wanted to or not. He said something about how it'd be good for her to see what other people her age were really capable of, especially after she'd been so moody from not having placed in the top three for the 'world's strongest' competition that he'd also entered her into without her permission. The jerk.

All this meant that she was here stuck once more in one of the academy's public training grounds, sitting cross-legged with a small frown on her face as she concentrated and focused as hard as she could, which of course made focusing and concentrating even harder. Today she was working on her chakra passageways, seeing how difficult it had been to learn some of the ninjutsu during the festival even with the aid of some of the people her age helping to teach her, and other adults around offering helpful pointers, chakra wasn't the most natural thing to control for her, which made sense if you considered that her mother had probably never manipulated chakra in her life, and her father primarily let his chakra do the work for him rather than the other way around.

She could feel chakra coursing through her body, and as she paid attention, she could feel it coursing OUT of her body as well at a rate that felt... Well, more natural than molding chakra into ninjutsu did, at least. It wasn't like it was all that much, either, at least not here in this otherwise empty training ground, and the more she focused on it the harder it became to track and pay attention to, like a squiggly on your eye that just moved out of sight every time you tried to look at it. Visibly, that's a lot what it was like too, as these tiny threads of chakra that left her body were just that, threads that were looking for something to attach and weave themselves into. Suzuko could make them go away by paying attention to them, but that wasn't something that would work longterm, and especially not in the middle of combat.

Paying attention to them on and off, however, she did notice as one of them pulled itself more taught, just slightly. She followed the thread with her mind and found a resolution point, but couldn't tell what it was attached to. Her brows furrowed, and her frown deepened, before she opened her eyes to see a woman approaching the training grounds. She was older than Suzuko, but she looked familiar, like maybe she'd seen her in some of the Akibushi classes, and the large bow on her back made her even more recognizable, but the girl couldn't quite put a name to the face. She gave a polite smile and a nod, acknowledging her presence, but said nothing, taking a deep breath and trying to trace that thread back to the approaching woman once more.

[556 Words] CP +1

[Golnax]

Being a bonafide prodigy with Imposter Syndrome was constantly exhausting in multiple ways. For starters, any and all positive progress one made was immediately humbled by the persistent, nagging thoughts that, no, in fact, you were not doing excellently, or even well for that matter, and that one wrong move would expose you as the fraud you were and the carefully crafted facade you had somehow managed to convince everyone into believing would come crashing down and then they'd all hate you for effectively lying to them! Secondly, it meant that any sort of new or original thing you came up with was held under constant scrutiny as you hold yourself to an impossible standard of competency, particularly when that standard was being held in a field of expertise you actively knew very little about, that was impossible to see from any other angle.

That was the sort of daily mental struggle that Shiun Kinoko out herself through whenever she was training and not distracting herself with this thing or that. Today, as the announcement of the international Chunin Exams had been passed out to all ranked samurai, with the express promise of the potential of a promotion depending on how well an Akibushi samurai performed, the Amethyst Deciever felt compelled to once again pick up the grind and get prepared for whatever lay ahead! In this particular instance, Shiun, prodigy that she was (regardless of how she saw herself) was actually working double time in the progress department. For the moment, she was working on strengthening her body. Simple. How was she doing that though?

By lugging around an easily fifty pound lump of gold that she'd made herself, that's how.

Shiun held the lumpy hunk of metal in both hands, underneath the shining metal chunk, torso tilted backwards, and was walking. Given the fact that this thing weighed quite literally almost half of what she weighed, her every individual forward was an impressive fear in of itself! Even if every step was Shakey, she was soaked in sweat from head to toe, her cheeks were visibly red and her every breath felt like it might be her last and, oh yeah, she was frequently having to stop to set the thing down, catch her breath and relax her muscles. So that was the first angle from which she was working to ready herself.

The second was from the creation of the lump itself. At the academy, when the teachers had tested the students for their altitude in the fields of ninjutsu, Shiun had tested fairly well in a lot of categories! She had a natural talent for iijutsu, no surprise there considering the Kinoko were known to be healers, ninpou came fairly naturally to her and, apparently, she has the capability for sensory ninjutsu (though she hadn't figured that one out yet). The one area of ninjutsu she seemed to struggle with was elemental ninjutsu. Shiun apparently, according to her teachers, had a natural inclination towards doton ninjutsu, but for some reason that inclination never seemed to click for her. She quite literally knew zero doton ninjutsu and didn't have the slightest idea of where to begin learning.

But an entirely different, new type of elemental ninjutsu which was intrinsically connected to doton on a fundamental level? Oh yeah, that was apparently easy for her.

In her efforts to figure out doton, Shiun had, somehow, stumbled upon creating metal instead - specifically gold, it seemed. She didn't know how exact, what the properties of this ninjutsu were or how to reliably recreate it yet, but, in attempting to just make some mundane rocks she had, instead, made a big ol' lumpy ball of gold, which, on the one hand, technically made her immensely wealthy on the spot (she didn't realize this and had absolutely no intention of making this a financially positive venture), but on the other hand, technically, once again made her an immense failure in her own eyes for being unable to make a rock but, oh, somehow, perfectly capable of making this shiny hunk of crap!!!

Let no one say that Shiun did not ultimately have a positive attitude, though, because despite failing upwards she had decided that, if she couldn't make progress towards ninjutsu like she wanted to, she could at least build her body up by taking advantage of said failure. Which is where she was now. Lifting an immensely heavy, for her weight class, hunk of metal, taking a step, maybe two if she was feeling particularly rambunctious in the moment, setting/dropping said hunk down into the ground, loudly and nonverbally complaining about how awful this was, and repeating the process. Over and over again. Walking in circles. Heart Empire's very own Sisyphus.

She just hoped that no one saw her struggling like this, or else, again, the facade of capability she'd built up would come tumbling down and everyone she cared about, especially Suzuko, would hate her for the rest of her life for not being able to long distance carry a big chunk of valuable metal she had spontaneously created with her chakra by mistake. That'd be awful, yeah?


861/750 - Strength +1

[Kanade]

Kasuri looked around the training grounds and saw someone that was familiar to her, at least, now that she had performed that mission that they had totally gone on together that was the boat race. She waved to Shiun, “Shiun! Over here!” She called, “Want to train with me?”

Who is the current Mizukage and Hokage? Ayago asked her in quick succession. It was a struggle to talk to people with Ayago constantly bombarding her mind with questions and expecting rapid-fire answers on top of it all. The answer, of course, as Kasuri read them out in her mind was that there was no current Mizukage, with the Shogun’s victory and gathering of the crown he could be the Mizukage, but he, in his benevolence, had held off on assimilating the peoples of Kiri into Heart because they were too much out of touch with the tenants of Heart and the Samurai way. The second answer was a trick one, there was a Hokage that she knew about that was named Takeo, but there was a rumor that was spreading that he was dead and that the Tsuchikage, Tatsuo had done it. He was succeeded by the man known as Fanho, which was strangely close to Fuhen, phonetically that was.

“Do you know anyone that would like to train with us?” She called over to the purple mushroom capped girl, grinning. She wanted to make as many friends to train with as possible, having dropped behind in her training in the last months.

[Wp training 253 words + 250 left over from post 1, +1 WP]

[Nick]

As she traced that thread of chakra over to the blue-haired girl, something about it felt odd, as if the thread split off into two right at the connecting point. She truthfully had no idea what that meant, or if it even meant anything at all, and filed it away categorically as an oddity and nothing more. She sensed a profound sort of annoyance from the girl, internally, as if she were arguing with herself and mad about it. Suzuko understood that, at least, or thought she did, as she often did the same sort of thing, having full conversations with her internal self to solve problems, or sometimes just to make herself mad. Everyone made themselves mad sometimes, whether it was on purpose or not, and really nobody was all that happy with themselves.

And then another thread popped up, one she was all too familiar with, and caused her head to turn and her eyes to reopen immediately. Shiun was there, doing her Shiun thing... Well, wait, this wasn't her usual Shiun thing. What the heck was she doing? Was that a... giant gold nugget? Was she being crushed? The young empath blinked, and her friend's chakra string informed her of intense distress. Her face turned from one of quiet concentration to one of concern and panic almost immediately, and she shot to her feet to run towards Shiun. "Ohmygoshareyouokay" She flooded out the words all at once as she made a fanning motion towards her friends face with her hand, a tiny trickle of fuuton chakra giving a pleasant breeze for the overcooked mushroom.

She had to concentrate pretty hard to get just the right amount of chakra so as to not cause any sort of destructive breeze, especially with fuuton's natural cutting capability that could theoretically make it even more dangerous to use in such a capacity. Suzuko was careful, though, as she felt the chakra flow through her body in its basic blue form, before being filtered through her tenketsu to take on the light green hue familiar to fuuton. From there she needed to focus harder to perform what was effectively a jutsu without handseals, something that was difficult, but about as natural as one could expect from a young girl who had been practicing this sort of thing for years. The gentle fuuton chakra had to be controlled carefully so as to eject itself from her palm and fingertips as she fanned her hand back and forth, and the hardest part was keeping the flow of chakra low and constant so that she wouldn't blast her friend with a deadly dose of wind blades straight to her face. But hey, all in a day's work for a fellow prodigy, right?

"What are you doing with this... Shiny lump?" She asked her friend, turning briefly to look at the other girl approaching who seemed to know Shiun as well. "Oh hey! Another friend of Shiun's?" She asked and tilted her head, keeping the flow of fuuton going throughout, even though holding a conversation while doing this was even harder!

[518 Words, Control +1]

[Golnax]

Shiun's concentration was abruptly ended by the sound of a familiar voice calling out to her. Her eyes snapped open and she turned to look at the approaching Kasuri. "Ah! Kasuri!" Shiun called out in surprise, the worst coming to pass as one of her friends saw her struggling so much! More than that, though, the lapse in concentration caused her to mess up her stance and hold the lump of gold for too long, her arms wobbling like jello for a moment before he grip gave out and she dropped it - right on her foot!

The purple Kinoko let out a sharp, suddenly cry of high pitched pain, standing straight up, her arms shooting down to her side, like a bolt of lightning had shot up through the ground from her foot! Oh, the pain. Ooooooh, the pain! Luckily the shock gave her the mental clarity to assess her damage from a medical standpoint, her training in anatomy and iijutsu kicking in. From the feel of things, she didn't think her foot was broken, but the bones would definitely be bruised. That was going to be awful to walk around in for the next few weeks. She'd need to go see a medic about this, and -

Right. Kasuri was there. Had to keep the facade up so that her friend didn't think she was a complete joke that she actually was! Doing her best to relax, Shiun's shoulders dropped along with her posture as she brought a sleeve up and wiped some sweat from her brow. "Kasuri, hey! Yeah, I'd love to train with you! We could get -" She broke her sentence off as her voice cracked from the pain coming from her foot. Ooooh, that was so smarts !! More than the pain, though, Shiun was cut off by yet another voice speaking up and coming over to her - none other than Suzuko! The one person more than anyone else she didn't want to be seen by like this!

"Ah! SUZUKO!" Shiun cried out, stiffening up all over again as her empathic friend came over and starting waving air into her face. That... Felt nice, actually. A cool breeze against her over heated skin was a much needed reprieve, from the hot air at least. It was a much appreciated gesture that went entirely thankless because, again, p a i n. "H-hey, Suzuko! What, this? she asked, gesturing to the torture device on her foot. "This is just uh... Hunk of gold I... Found... Made... I made it. You know, practicing jutsu and such! Eheh, hehehe... Heeeeeeeh..."

She trailed off. The pain was starting to get the better of her. With one hand she gestured back and forth from the heiress and the woman she'd worked with previously. "Suzuko, Kasuri. Kasuri, Suzuko. I met her first at the Iron Festival, w-when you ditched me! But we've actually worked on a contract together since then. She's really swell! Uh... Uhm..."

"... Can you guys help get this off my foot, please? It hurts," Shiun finally admitted sheepishly. She didn't like it, but, she didn't think she'd be getting this off herself. Not without causing a lot more pain than she was willing to deal with in that moment, anyway.


551/500 - Endurance +1

[Kanade]

"Pleasure to meet you uh, Suzuko." She looked the girl up and down that was helping Shiun already, "I um, I don't know what to do for this, we could cut it off I suppose." She held out her hand and Ayago manifested as a knife, "The gold should be malleable enough that we can pries it open and you can slip your foot out.” She frowned, thinking, what was good for bruises?

“Maybe we could make a small incision and drain the blood out of your foot so that the swelling doesn’t squeeze your foot off. I have heard that there are fighters that cut their bruises in fights, like black eyes, so that the swelling doesn’t affect their vision.” She nodded, switching the grip of her hand on the handle of the knife. She frowned once more in thought, “I uh. I can ask Ayago if you would like? Right now she is running me through mental drills about what kages are ruling their countries right now, and what their abilities are,” She made a motion with her hand like a goose opening and closing its mouth while she crossed her eyes and made a ‘yak yak yak’ facial expression with her tongue out.

“I mean, unless Suzuko has another idea that doesn’t involve bringing the swelling down.” She thought for another moment before she snapped her fingers, “I have it, we can just both grab the gold from either end and try to rip it off, down the middle, peeling it like an avocado.” She looked to Suzuko, wondering whether the girl would agree to this or not.

[strength training: 271/500 words]

[Nick]

Suzuko could feel her friend's pain, which made the ridiculousness of Kasuri's suggestion all the more humorous. The young girl wasn't exactly a sadist, but humans didn't have full grasp of their emotions at the best of times, and kids especially had so little experience processing their own emotions that processing the emotions of others was likely too much to expect. Suzuko especially had hard times processing all that was going on in her own emotions and emotions of those around her, because the family that 'raised' her did not treat her like much of a child, and more like a regal pet than anything, which was something that she pushed back as deep into her mind as she could because the implications of being considered a pet weren't positive ones.

"I uh, yeah nice to meet you, uh, Kasuri." She said incredulously with a little smile on her face to show she was holding back laughter at Shiun's expense. "I'm not sure we need to do all that, it's... Well, not really that heavy I think..." She said slowly, looking over the lump of gold, and flashing her hands through a small set of handseals before hovering one hand over a bit of her leg that wasn't totally underneath the boulder, numbing it to give her purple friend some much needed relief. "I could probably lift it myself..." She squinted and looked at Kasuri, making a judgement call. "But if you wanna help, we'll just set it down over... here?"

The girl indicated a spot on the ground, and assuming Kasuri was helping, lifting fifty pounds would be a very easy task considering their combined strength, the numbness in Shiun's leg and the consistency of lifting would make the process relatively painless as well. With a grunt, she'd set the boulder down a bit away from Shiun, freeing her from being trapped underneath the golden rock. "Doing okay down there?" She asked, kneeling down so that she didn't have to stand up, unsure of how severe the problem was. Another set of handseals flashed in front of her, and her hands hovered over Shiun's leg with a warm green glow emanating from her palms. "I don't think it's broken... Can you stand?" She asked after her diagnosis jutsu finished, already starting to sweat from the chakra expendature, and also because she forgot to breath while doing it.

"Here, lets help her up." She said confidently to the older woman next to her with a smile, standing back up and reaching down to grab one of the mushroom girl's arms, not letting go to make sure she was able to stand okay. "I don't know how to do bones yet, so if it really hurts we'll have to get you to a medic." It was odd to see Suzuko have such confidence in anything without sounding pompous at the same time, but this kind of thing was really her element, moreso than most of her samurai duties ever had been, and in that moment her emotions felt under control, and she didn't even notice that her extreme amounts of sweat were starting to stain through her clothing already.

[536 Words, Control +1]

[Golnax]

Shiun was pretty sure that Kasuri was joking, but that didn't make her suggestions any less horrifying! It was a big hunk of metal on her foot! Why was she talking about amputation and blood letting!? Just lift it off! Getitoffgetitoffgetitoff - she wanted to tell but, again, the facade. She'd already let the mask slip by asking for help in the first place, she wasn't about to start freaking out in front of her friends!

While it was unclear if Kasuri had any medical training based off of her suggestions, Suzuko, thankfully, was just as much of if not a more prolific healer than Shiun herself was, and she quickly got to work, numbing her leg first which was a good call in her part. Making the pain go away immediately made Shiun calmer and she managed to sit down in the ground with a sigh. For once she was acutely aware of her emotions and how they must be affecting Suzuko on some level - the pain, the embarrassment, the relief - it was a weird cocktail to have to swallow she had to assume!

As the two other samurai got the hunk of gold off if her sandaled foot Shiun let out another sign of relief and leaned forward to examine her toes. Yeah, there was some bleeding under the nails alright, and if she took her sandal off the top of her foot would probably be bruised, too. Suzuko's quick medical work meant she felt no pain and that likely some of the damage had been dealt with thanks to her use of iijutsu, as told by the green glow of her chakra, but again Shiun was certain the bones were bruised. "Yeah that's a good idea, we should probably hobble me over to see a medic..."

She trailed off slowly as the mice running around in wheels in her brain finally managed enough rotations to turn a light bulb on. "... Is what I WOULD say if we actually needed one! Check this out!" Shiun cried out suddenly, excited that she actually had an opportunity to try this out! She looked up to Kasuri and Suzuko both first before she started looking over herself, trying to find a suitable location... Ah, there! Her leg would do just fine.

Pulling up the bottom of her dress slightly, enough to expose her shorts and exposed mid night, Shiun began to channel her chakra, focusing it into a point just a bit above her knees where, suddenly, a mushroom would begin to sprout! Thick stalked, white, looking a bit like an oyster mushroom, the fungus would emerge from her flesh rather quickly, unfurling from itself like a blooming flower. Shiun was all smiles about the display, not even really contemplating how this might be in any way gross or disturbing for the other girls to witness. As a Kinoko, this was just a natural function of her body. It was almost like breathing.

Once the mushroom was fully formed Shiun reached down and simply plucked it off of her leg. No muss, no fuss, no pain it seemed. She just gave it a little twist, lifted up and bam! It was like there had never been a mushroom growing out of her skin in the first place. "Back home in Gold, we Kinoko have been medics and healers for as long as we've been a clan! A huge part of our culture is being medically available for others, and this mushroom particular is a major part of that!" Shiun explained cheerfully to her friends right before she brought the mushroom up to her mouth and took a bite of it, chewing away and taking more bites. Once again, any possibility of this being weird or gross went right over her head, just like the possibility that this was technically self cannibalism in the eyes of others. Not hers though. She knew there was a big difference between human flesh and fungal flesh, a very important one at that.

Speaking of normal human flesh, though, consuming the mushroom made Shiun's body glow a dull green color as though she were channeling iijutsu chakra. As she ate the mushroom would do it's work, the chakra she'd put into it circulating through her blood stream via immediate digestion and working to heal her body - specifically, her foot! The bruising in her toes would gradually start to fade and were she actually able to feel pain in that moment she'd be relieved to find the pain was fading, too. Minor injuries like that were no match for the healing power of Kinoko mushrooms!

After her final swallow Shiun would look back down at her toes, wiggling them. She let out a little giggle of joy! "And just like that, all better!" she declared, pushing herself back up onto her feet, having to shift her weight over to her not numb leg as she clapped her hands together and looked back between Suzuko and Kasuri. "Now then! You guys wanna do some training together? Did you guys hear about the international Chunin Exams? We're all going to participate right? Right? So we've gotta be ready for whatever comes!" she once again declared, pumping her fist up into the air and clapping her other hand over her bicep for emphasis. Wow, those mushrooms really must have worked wonders. She wasn't even acting like she'd almost broken her foot just now!

Jutsu TrainedShow

~Elizabethan Mushroom
C-ranked Kinojutsu
Prerequisite: 10 Endurance
The user gathers Mycorrhiza and creates a thick, white mushroom from their body. Upon consumption of this mushroom, the body will begin to heal itself in a regenerative fashion. The rate of regeneration depends on the user's Control stat, as specified by the standard regeneration table. This mushroom is only capable of healing Moderate wounds and lesser.

976/1120

[Kanade]

Kasuri did, in fact, help lift the gold off of Shiun. She huffed, and strained, but the other girl, her name was Suzuko. Ayago helped. Right Her name was Suzuko, she didn't even seem to strain lifting the heavy thing. She wondered what kind of monstrous training regimen the other girl had gone through. Kasuri felt not only like an old woman in the face of these two, but also like she had better catch up before 5 year old children were able to better suit the name Samurai than her.

Part of this feeling was that Ayago was actually screaming those words into her head, giving her mental jab after jab and telling her that the samurai blood had diluted to such a point that it was synonymous with river water. She managed a smile to the other girls, "Yeah, that should do it." Since Shiun was obviously putting on a front, she decided that she may as well do it too.

She rolled her shoulders and looked at the sky for a brief moment, only to look down and see that Shiun had picked something, she had missed what, off of her skin and was now eating it. "N-no!" she reached for the girl, but it was too late she had swallowed it. Giving a half-disgusted, half-concerned look with her eyes widened she watched the girl tap her foot on the ground and said that she wanted to train.

If your eyebrows go any higher, you'll lose them in your hair-line. Ayago prodded, and then steered Kasuri's attention back to the conversation at hand. She shook her head, the teal strands tousled by the movement, "I uh, yeah, what um. What did you eat, and how did it heal you?" She hadn't ever heard of something that could be consumed to help with bruising. It was always applied topically.

Wasn't it?

[326/250 words for strength training +1]

[Nick]

Suzuko watched her kinoko friend grow and eat a mushroom from her body quickly, and her eyes stared wide and sparkled. Having been around the girl as long as she had, she'd seen it before, but it was always interesting to watch all the same, especially the various effects that it could have on the area around them, or her body! She was a little too squeamish to try the mushrooms for herself, and in fact since meeting the Kinoko, she'd pushed any mushrooms for dinner off of her plate despite previously being a favorite part of any dinner. It made her feel a little icky to consume mushrooms, her mind always tracing back to the giant mushroom cap atop her friend's head.

As her toes seemed to fix themselves from the effects of the mushroom, Suzuko's eyes sparkled even more, and she made a little "Oooh!" sound before giving a little clap. Her eyes caught Kasuri beside her looking even more amazed than the empath, and she giggled politely, giving Shiun a moment to answer Kasuri's question before the important question was raised.

The young girl made a face, the chuunin exams were coming, and she knew all too well as she'd been signed up without her permission by Goro, that bastard. The keen-eyed may have noticed that face, as it lasted for just long enough, to show extreme displeasure with the idea of the chuunin exam, before her mask went back up and there was Suzuko the smug noble again. "Pshaw, of course!" She said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "We're all at about the same class grades, it's time to do promotions anyway!"

Of course, Suzuko wasn't sure if she wanted that promotion. When an Akibushi 'graduated' the academy, they were given the choice to enter into a military contract as a Fuyubushi, or to go off from the military structure and do... basically anything else. Her prospects were fairly slim outside the military, despite being noble born and raised, she didn't own any lands, businesses, or otherwise. In reality, the young noble was really only such in title rather than in lands or deeds, as she was much more a stranger to these lands than anyone, despite them being the only home she really remembered beyond a few passing moments swaddled in cloth as a babe.

"I've got a little bit of insider intel, too!" She said with that same smirk, arms folded across her chest and looking as smug as possible. "I dunno if I should share it with the two of you, though, we may be facing eachother!"

[Golnax]

Shiun's eyes lit up as Kasuri showed interest in what she'd just done! She wasn't necessarily one to brag about what she could do, if anything the Kinoko would readily underplay her accomplishments as she saw them as not being a very big deal. But even she couldn't resist educating people about her clan whenever the opportunity presented itself!

Wiggling her toes again, though they were still sore her foots condition was very much improved, Shiun would bring her hand up to her face next to her eyes fingers extended in a peace sign over her right eye, left eye shut, smiling at Kasuri as she explained. "Just the Kinoko special! It was a mushroom I ate, a special kind that can heal your body! It's part of my Kekkei Genkai, being able to make mushrooms from my body I mean, and that one is super useful! It's practically the signature mushroom of my clan!" she enthusiastically divulged, and it was true, in a sense. With what little people did know about the Kinoko, more and more learning about them every day really, the Elizabethan Mushroom, as it was known as, was perhaps the most widely created fungus by her clan besides regular edible 'shrooms. Granted that was because of untold decades of systematic abuse by an aggressive people that used their mushrooms as a quick fix to wage their raids against other people's in neighboring countries, but, well... It was a good thing that these mushrooms could be out to better use these days in the Heart Empire than they ever had been in Plains and Sea.

As Suzuko spoke up about the upcoming exams, Shiun turned to her friend with an equally vibrant but fundamentally different spark in her eyes. "Huh? What? Inside Intel? Suzukoooooooo!" the purple Akibushi complained, giving the heiress a light slug to the shoulder. "You gotta tell us! C'mon! We're all doing this together, right? It doesn't matter if we end up going ahead of each other, we've all got the same chance at promotion regardless yeah? Yeah?"

The young Akibushi turned to Kasuri and reached out to touch her, placing her hand in the older woman's shoulder and patting it a couple of times. "C'mon, Kasuri, help me out here! You totally want to know what she's talking about right? Right?" she demanded to know. Man, that mushroom really must have been something. Suzuko could feel nothing but excitement radiating off of Shiun now, and it should have been more than obvious to both of them by how she was acting that the pain in her foot had already vanished from that heavy hunk of gold. Kekkei Genkai, right? How unfair!

1428/1120