Another early day before the sun had risen and Kaori was pulling things together for a long trek and training regimen. Today would be different. There wouldn’t be targets per se, not in the traditional sense any way. She had a pack that she filled with a few things she could snack on if need be, as well as bottles of water. And just in case, there were also a few camping supplies in case she got stuck somewhere and of course a medical kit. All she had planned was an extended hike but if she got stuck somewhere she knew she’d have to have these things with her. Technically she wasn’t going alone, she knew Nobu would be tagging along, though whether he realized she had heard him say that she wasn’t certain. He had grown fairly protective of her as of late. She knew he found her to be reckless at times and so he had tried to figure out when and where she trained, that was why she kept running into him by some ‘coincidence’. More than once she’d let slip where she’d be. What she had at first found annoying by him following her around, she was slowly finding endearing. She couldn’t help admiring the fact that at least he didn’t try to stop her. He seemed to understand that she was doing what she did in order to become stronger for the sake of herself as well as her village and her family, he simply did what he could to watch out for her.
She set out from the house, a cabin like home that wasn’t in the middle of the village but more on the outskirts itself. This made it much easier to begin her hike from the moment she left the doorway. She had to adjust her pack, already feeling it pull at her shoulders in an uncomfortable way. If the weight wasn’t shifted properly that was simply going to become a massive problem as the hike went on. Naturally the goal of the day was to test her own endurance and push herself further, but it was not a goal to actually injure herself in the process. Once her pack was appropriately adjusted, she set herself to a fairly brisk pace and started walking. Taking a well worn path down between trees and a hill, the start of her walk was simple and would take her between clan compounds and down towards the village proper. She’d make her way towards the gates and try to ignore the enticing smells of the market. It wasn’t all that close, but just close enough that she could smell a couple of the restaurants as they prepared themselves for the day already and she began to salivate at even a thought of what sorts of things they were preparing.
At the gates she’d simply show her papers and explain her purpose for the day before setting out into the forests. Of course, she wouldn’t be
entirely alone. They’d let her think she was, allow her to step out into the forest to begin her miles long hike and trek through the trees. She wouldn’t see nor hear who was tailing her but she fully expected to have a tail. That was just the way of things. She wasn’t just a genin after all, she was the Hokage’s own child. If she didn’t have one of her father’s own ANBU guards following her, either Toshiaki or Masuru who had become familiar to her over the years, she knew Nobu would be following her out of sheer curiosity and concern for her safety. She didn’t try to get a sense for who was following her, or check, she knew they’d let her know if they wanted her to and instead tried to focus on the task at hand.
The canopy of trees overhead provided a fantastic cover from the sunlight. While some rays here and there shone through, it was just enough to see by but not really enough to burn her. Yet still she warmed rather quickly as she walked and found herself brushing her bangs out of her face as she walked along. It wouldn’t be too far down her chosen path, a route that would take her around the entire village if she managed the entire thing, before she was pulling a strip of cloth from her pocket and tying her hair back out of her face. It wasn’t often she pulled her hair out of her face, but during a hike seemed like the perfect time. Sweat ran down the sides of her face, but with the breeze running through the trees it felt almost refreshing. It cooled her skin and her core, the young woman taking deep breaths as she walked at a fairly quick pace to try and keep her breath and heart rates up for the duration of the hike.
She watched critters scamper away from the path ahead of her, certain she saw a deer bound off into the trees for a moment and suddenly wishing Takeshi was with her.
’His bow would be perfect for hunting that deer… make for a great meal at a camp tonight…’ Naturally similar thoughts kept crossing her mind as she saw other wildlife as she kept moving. She saw rabbits and hawks, she saw an eagle or two, as well as an array of other wildlife. Her mind wandered over the creatures she passed and for a moment she wondered about the possibilities of shinobi pets. She remembered her mother talking about one she’d had when she was younger, a hyena of some kind. It made her wonder if she might see something like that during her hike since the animal had probably been released in the area. Yet still her mind wandered to other creatures as the sun was clearly still rising and she could hear the birds singing now. She forced herself along, her feet beginning to ache and she could feel the stretching of the tendons in her ankles already as she pushed herself forward. She know these pains would only rise and get worse but still she forced herself forward as she went on.
The path turned and wound through the trees, though not necessarily clearly marked by signs it was clearly visible as it had been walked by so many others before her and likely for this very same purpose. Every step kicked up just a bit of dirt and dust due to nothing growing on the path anymore. At some point she looked to her left and noticed something moving through the grass with it at nearly the same pace. She couldn’t quite tell what it was, as it seemed to be smaller than the height of the grass. Though that wasn’t all that hard since the grass on that side of the path was almost as high as her knees. It distracted her from the pain of her walk for a bit though, and so she watched it keenly. When a break came in the foliage she saw to her surprise it was a very young skunk. It didn’t seem frightened by her presence and only walked along the pathway next to her. Kaori just quietly started talking to it as if it were some dear friend as she walked along, hardly caring if that made her look strange or not.
”I guess I can take this as a sign that animals like me as much as they like my Dad…” she started out, glancing at the small skunk out of the corner of her eyes to make sure she didn’t scare him. But he seemed unperturbed. And so she continued on.
”I wonder what he’ll think when I tell him that a skunk joined me for my hike… my butterflies are strange enough. I can’t imagine how he’d react if I tried to adopt a skunk for a companion.” She looked at the skunk again but immediately shook her head.
”Yeah no… I’m not risking you spraying me even once. No thanks.”
She found herself picking up her face for a few meters to try and get ahead of her new skunk friend, suddenly feeling a bit nervous. It was a little young looking, where was its mother? Would the mother be so relaxed if it saw a human so close to its child? Doubtful. That was enough for Kaori to find herself pushing forward and trying to move away from the creature. Once she was sure she had put enough distance between herself and the skunk, she slowed her pace to a normal, but still brisk, walk just shy of what a jog might be. Her pack was pulling at her shoulders a bit and she could feel the strain of it now, but of course ignored it as she knew this was a necessary part of what she needed to do in order to get a bit stronger. She had to get as strong as her brother again, he was starting to push past her and she had to do better. She brought her hands up and held onto the straps themselves, her fingers digging under the straps for a good grip as she sighed heavily and forced herself to keep moving forward.
Her mind wandered a great deal as she kept going and she found herself missing her brother Yozei all the more. As upset as she had become about him letting go of the Natsuki name and moving away, he was still her brother and she loved and missed him dearly. With a heavy sigh she couldn’t help but wonder,
’Is it time to finally go see him?’ She remembered the day he left and how upset she had been. She hadn’t said it then, she had buried her feelings on it and simply let it stew, but the feelings had been there. He’d written her of course, but she hadn’t written back yet. She hadn’t been sure what to say to him. He seemed happy where he was, and she just couldn’t bring herself to express anything but sadness and an emptiness now that he was gone. Yet as she walked along on the hike she found thoughts of Yozei only clouded her focus, and her eyes. Lifting a hand to wipe away her tears quickly, she returned it to the strap she held before pushing herself forward again to try and get back to the pace she had set for herself and sighed heavily. If she couldn’t hold that pace, she felt like she wouldn’t get any stronger, and what use would she be if she couldn’t get stronger?
Her mind shifted to another brother, back to her twin Takeshi. His newest set of scars were emblazoned in her mind and she just couldn’t shake the sight of them. She hadn’t admitted it to him yet but she’d been having nightmares of how he might’ve received such nasty wounds ever since. Every night she’d woken up in a cold sweat, terrified that he might have died. Of course in those nightmares, he received those scars because of something she did, because she was holding him back or got in his way somehow. It was half the reason she was out here now, pushing herself along the dirt path between the great trees of the Konoha forest. She had to be stronger, for her Twin. She couldn’t allow herself to be the reason he was harmed any longer, she had to be a source of strength, not one of weakness. The girl found herself growling under her breath as she trudged along.
”No, I will not be what makes him weak anymore… Normal or not, I won’t be weak.” she muttered, shaking her head vigorously. Though perhaps taking her eyes off the path wasn’t the best course of action as she did so. Her foot slipped into a hole and she yelped as she fell under the weight of her pack and her own body onto her backside and onto her foot.
Hissing through her teeth she forced herself up into a seated position and took off her pack, curling her leg up under her to look at her ankle for a moment. Slowly she rotated it and could feel pain echo through the joint. But she could move it at least.
”I don’t think it’s broken…” she muttered, glancing around and shaking her head stubbornly. If someone was following her, she didn’t want to stop what she was doing for healing right now. She forced herself up to her feet and picked her pack up again to pull it on, and forced herself forward. With every step she whimpered, feeling pain shook through her ankle, her foot, and her leg. But with every step it got just a little more numb.
”I can do this… I can push through this pain…” she told herself.
”I’ll finish on my own two feet damn it…” she added, that time making it more clear she was speaking less to herself and more to whoever might be tailing her.
It would take her some time to push herself enough to get up to her normal pace again. She limped along for several feet before the pain started to give away to an oddly throbbing state of numbness that she knew probably wasn’t good. She could almost hear the lecture she’d get when she got home afterwards, and it didn’t matter who it came from, she knew she’d hear it. It could be her parents, or either of her brothers, she’d hear it. But the good thing about the strange state of numbness was she found herself starting to walk normally on it. The limp was fading and a smile came back to her lips.
’I can push myself on this way and finish, I think I’m already halfway there anyway…’ She looked up through the canopy of trees to try and catch a glimpse of the sun’s position in the sky and was surprised by how much it had risen already.
’Have I been out here over an hour already?’ She reached up a hand to wipe her forehead with the back of her forearm and was stunned when her arm came back absolutely soaked with sweat. She had gotten so accustomed to sweating that she had simply stopped noticing it at some point during the hike.
With a grunt of effort, Kaori paused long enough to resituate the position of her pack and get comfortable again before she started walking once more and pushed herself forward. Her mind once more wandering though she tried to keep it more on the here and now in the moment. She forced herself to look at the foliage around her again as she walked, looking for animals and critters around her to watch again as she walked. She saw a few rabbits again, smiling as she spotted a group of babies take off into their hole while the mother watched over them attentively, specifically watching her as she walked on by. There was also another deer, a doe this time with her twin fawns which of course somehow brought Takeshi to mind again and made Kaori chuckle.
She thought again back to his mission over a three day period when she hadn’t even known he was gone, how he’d come home with new scars but also with a story of a mysterious medic. He’d refused to talk about her at all and had only given up a part of her name when she’d first asked about her. Even that much had been a mistake on his part and it still made Kaori giggle when she thought about it. She wondered if her brother had a crush now, and wondered who the mysterious woman might be. Already she was wondering if Nobu might know something about it and filed the information away to ask him about next time she saw him. She glanced down at her foot again as she walked and realized how little she felt from the joint as she walked and frowned.
’I really hope I didn’t actually break it… I’m going to get more than a lecture for walking on it afterwards if I did…’ she thought to herself, suddenly realizing that if Nobu heard something about it too he might have a fit. She frowned heavily and sighed.
’Ugh, that’s the last thing I need… but I’m pretty sure if I broke it I wouldn’t be walking right now at all… right?’ She suddenly realized how little she knew about Iijutsu and medical techniques and questioned if perhaps her brother was right after all, was that something she should delve into soon?
Still moving forward down the path she found it curving slightly again and began to wonder if she was coming close to the end yet, sighing as she realized she indeed was not. She tried to force herself not to think about her ankle and how much it should be hurting, though that did cause her to realize how much other parts of her were beginning to hurt from the hike. The pack pulling on her shoulders was causing pain beyond her shoulders now, she could feel it into her neck now and silently wondered if that was going to turn into a headache. The pains that had been in her feet were up into her calves now, as if the muscles in them were slowly being pulled apart from one another. She groaned as this all set into her mind and she found herself suddenly wanting to give up altogether. But she had set out on this task alone, and even if she was certain she was being followed like every other moment of her life, she had no plans to take advantage of it in such a way. With a grunt and a growl under her breath she forced herself to go forward.
”I will prove I’m not useless.” she muttered under her breath.
”I’m not just a spoiled child of some Kage.” she grunted.
”I can be more, I am a shinobi.” It was like she was giving herself a peptalk even as she forced herself forward.
Yet again she found herself adjusting her pack as she kept walking, though this time it simply hurt to readjust it, causing the muscles of her shoulders to oddly pull at her neck. Groaning at the pain of it, she tried to give up on readjusting the pack and simply looped her fingers into the straps and held onto it, pulling at it to try and pull some of the pressure off of her though it really didn’t help things at all. Her entire body was starting to ache under the time she’d spent walking under the weight of the pack, which she was slowly realizing she probably should have actually weighed before leaving rather than packing full of random stuff she wasn’t even going to end up using. The idea of camping out tonight after the hike suddenly didn’t appeal and all the girl could think about was a night in her own bed and perhaps a hot bath to try and relax every muscle in her body as well. Every part of her ached for relief and the pain in her ankle was slowly returning. Even the heat was returning to her body, she could feel her cheeks reddening and not from embarrassment. Her core temperature was up, she could swear but still she pushed forward and tried to put her mind somewhere else to distract herself.
Of course as she tried to seek out a mental ‘happy place’ her mind went straight to Nobu. She kept thinking of the day at the training grounds she had run into him again. He had been a good friend growing up, both to her and her brother, and seeing him again had been a bit of a relief. She had been working on Katon techniques all day and managed to burn herself pretty good. Her right hand had been blistering all across her knuckles and across her forearm, she knew tears had streamed down her face as she leaned against a post and tried to take breaths to calm herself. She had just been trying to calm down enough to go to the hospital when he had shown up and she’d nearly jumped out of her skin. She hadn’t even heard him approach. She’d hardly recognized him even when he’d started channeling the familiar shade of green chakra that betrayed the use of Iijutsu when he’d gently taken her arm into his hands and started working on healing her. Of course, she hadn’t been able to take her eyes off his face the entire time and could hardly even thank him. At most she’d been able to do was squeeze his hand afterwards and mumble awkwardly. The entire interaction still left her blushing as she thought about it.
But at least the memory was a good distraction from the pain in her body in that moment. Taking a deep breath and letting it out slow… had seemed like a good idea at the time. But almost immediately she felt a sharp pain at her ribs and some difficulty breathing from the strain of the hike combined with the extra weight she carried. Grumbling under her breath she forced herself to keep taking deep breaths until she could breathe again normally against the side-ache and kept pushing herself to walk forward. She felt her eyes start to water and reached up a hand to quickly wipe them dry, refusing to let herself cry.
’How would it look if the Hokage’s daughter forced herself on this hike around the village, and then returned with a face full of tears? Stupid. Weak.’ She chastised herself silently over her moment of weakness, grunting as she yet again resituated the weight of the pack on her back and yet again realized how foolish it was. The pack only felt heavier every time she tried it and it simply wasn’t helping her. It hurt, her shoulders felt like they were made of bruises, and the small bruise from her spar with Takeshi just the day prior wasn’t helping matters either. Granted it wasn’t being pressed by the pack but its close proximity to the same area somehow made it all hurt again.
Kaori grunted in frustration, shaking her head lightly against her own thoughts. The path curved again and she found the village gate coming into view again. She wasn’t sure if she had actually made it all the way around or if this was just another entrance but after a glance to the sky and realizing she had been at it for at least three hours, maybe more, the girl realized she didn’t care. This was her stop, she couldn’t push herself much farther and she still had the walk home to make. As she got close she realized she was practically panting and had to force herself to a normal pace of breath before she showed her papers again to the shinobi at the entrance to get back in the village from the forest. Once she was past their line of sight she didn’t much care anymore, she didn’t mind panting or even gasping for breath as she started up the hill back towards home. All she could think about was her bed and that hot bath. The closer she got to home, the more she realized everyone would be up now and with her mother officially in retirement the woman would probably be about and fixing food of some kind.
Yet Kaori found herself simply not hungry. She made her way up the back steps and walked past a rather surprised Awai Masuru on the back porch who either hadn’t realized she was gone or hadn’t expected her back yet. Or perhaps her very sweaty and disheveled appearance threw him off. She simply dropped her pack in the kitchen haphazardly and heard a yelp from her mother in the kitchen. The Hyuuga woman shouted after her daughter but Kaori didn’t hear it, she simply walked straight back to her room and flopped face first on her bed.
4044/4000 Endurance (4 Stats)
