As he often did these past several months, Beeko found himself feeling a bit like a loser among his peers. He thought that graduating from the academy and receiving his Hitai-ate would be a turning point for him, to finally feel like he had for real made it. After all, The Hitai-ate was what visually set him apart from the academy students, signaled to the rest of the village that he was a shinobi, officially. He also hoped that the rest of the Senju clan would finally stop treating him like a little kid. It wasn't his damn fault that he didn't grow up in Konoha from a baby, constantly having jutsu and tHe WiLl Of FiRe drilled into his head every damn minute of every damn day.
And he did feel accomplished- for a time. Seeing his Hitai-ate in the mirror every day, and even some of the citizens around the village started to treat him with more respect. But after several months of seeing the other genin, many of them 2 years or more younger than him, performing techniques that he could barely wrap his mind around... it really started to wear the genin down. He could see it on the faces of the elder members of the Senju clan, the disappointment. After all, he was the kid with a wooden arm and leg. They brought him to the village because he was supposed to be special, or whatever. That and because his dad was a Senju, so it was, like, his birth right or whatever. He knew he should feel grateful for the opportunity he had been given, for being allowed to carry the Senju surname... but it still did not quite feel right. He didn't feel like he belonged, and he could tell that many of his clan members felt the same way. He thought every day of the great Wakunochi, which, according to his mom, had great plans for him. But Beeko didn't exactly think that being constantly shown up by 12 year olds really fit into that plan.
He had one of the Senju training rooms to himself today, which was exactly why he was there. He hated working on this shit with other people around, constantly having to worry about academy students getting in his way or old men yelling at him for training rEcKlEsSly. Beeko didn't usually feel at home with the Senju clan, but he sure did love having access to their amenities: a large, 20 square meter room with total privacy. Additionally, the room was constructed entirely of Mokuton wood which he felt helped him better connect with his chakra. Perhaps that was just in his head, but he felt that it helped nonetheless. Beeko knew that one of the biggest hurdles for him to overcome was his inability to precisely control his chakra. Until he mastered this he would never be able to produce the awe inspiring Mokuton jutsu that his cousins were able to conjure. It seemed to come so naturally to them...
Beeko closed his eyes and tried to focus on the chakra flowing through his tenketsu, pulling the chakra through his body and down his legs to pool at the soles of his feet. This was one of the first techniques he ever learned- Act of Tree Climbing, the sort of thing that should be EASY for a member of the Senju clan. He could feel the chakra adhering his feet to the floor, almost like a magnet snapping into place on a piece of iron. He focused on the amount of pressure that his body was applying to the floor, and in return, the amount of pressure that the floor was applying to the bottoms of his feet. He jogged in place for a moment to get a feel for it, the sensation of his feet connecting and disconnecting, the chakra collecting and dissipating. He had to release the chakra just before lifting his foot and focus it again just before it reconnected with the wooden floor. If he released the chakra too late, his foot would stick and he would trip and fall on his ass. If he released the chakra too early, he would not have enough momentum and he would slip and fall on his face. He had to be careful about not leaving both feet disconnected for too long, or gravity would pull him right down to the floor. Momentum would be very important, and misjudging it would certainly cause him to lose his footing. There was also the matter of chakra conservation- if he left his chakra focused for longer than he needed to, he would use more chakra than necessary which, in the heat of combat, was his most precious resource. Even a small amount of wasted chakra could be the difference between success and failure, living or dying. God, he was even starting to think like them, measuring himself by success and failure, living or dying. No one back home ever had to think like that.
The genin took off running at the wall, mindful of the chakra he was pooling into and releasing from his feet - connect, disconnect, focus, release - planted his foot on the wall before smashing into it - connect - pushed off the ground - disconnect - with his other foot to shift his body weight onto the wall. Beeko always found the transition from floor to wall to be the trickiest part. Once he had shifted his weight, he had to pivot his foot and push off at exactly the right second so that he was now moving forward along the wall, parallel to the floor. This is where he always used to mess it up, the single motion of shifting direction and momentum to transition to running along the wall. The angle, timing, pacing, momentum, and of course the chakra control were all potential points of failure. But he got it right this time, and was now jogging at a good pace - focus, release, connect, disconnect. He was starting to get kind of good at this. Hell yeah.
He did two full laps around the room to get his bearings, setting a rhythm for where he could and could not step - he had to jump over windows, juke around sconces, duck under the occasional support beam - before breaking into a full on sprint. At these speeds, the entire process became much trickier. The window for connecting and disconnecting his foot to and from the wall was much shorter and he had to be much more mindful of his pacing and foot placement so that he could appropriately avoid all of the obstacles. Of course, all of this made it more difficult to maintain his chakra focus. Beeko still wasn't quite used to the sensation of running along vertical surfaces, feeling like he was going to fall every time he lifted up his foot. These sorts of things were just as much mental as they were physical and spiritual, he'd been running around on the walls for over a year now and it still felt pretty weird.
He was several laps into his sprint before he messed up- he pivoted around one of the several wall sconces and but spun a little too hard and brought his foot down at the wrong angle. He was able to correct and right himself, sort of... but this altered his pacing just enough that he wasn't able to plant his foot in the proper place to push off and make it over the next window. He maybe could have altered his gait but Beeko didn't react quickly enough, he had to choose between disconnecting and putting his foot through the glass- He let out an audible "Ah, shit!" as he crashed into one of the wall sconces, tearing it off of the wall, before falling to the ground with a large thud. Slightly out of breath and sweaty, he rolled onto his back and took a few deep breaths. He had made it roughly 12 and a half laps around the room before falling, a full lap better than his last attempt. Not bad.
After giving himself a moment to catch his breath, Beeko jumped back to his feet. Couldn't let himself get discouraged just yet, he had to figure this out. The genin reminded himself that his mom sent him all the way to Konoha because she believed that he had important work to do. And the Senju clan, in spite of looking down on him for being an outsider, had high expectations for him as well. Sometimes he felt like he wasn't cut out for this life, like maybe he would be better off if he just went back to his little village to look after the forest with his mom. But he didn't want to let her down, so he'd keep trying. But first things first, he needed to fix what he broke or the old men would have another reason to yell at him. He picked the sconce off the ground with his left hand and stuck it into the hole he had left in the wall, and placed his right hand against the wood. He channeled chakra through his wooden arm and into the wall, creating some new wood and forming it around the wall sconce to hold it back in place. He took a step back and crossed his arms to admire his work- hell yeah, totally nailed it. Well, except for the fact that his Mokuton wood was purple instead of brown. And the fact that the sconce was pretty crooked. And the fact that the flame went out when he knocked it down, which meant that someone would need to relight it, which would mean that they would notice his repair job. And since the wood was purple, they'd immediately know it was him that broke it. Actually, it looked like shit. Whatever.
His shoulder hurt like a bitch from where he landed on it, so Beeko rotated his shoulder a few times to stretch it out. While he did that, he started to do a little more jogging in place before switching to little hops to practice connecting and disconnecting, slowly increasing his pace until he was jumping several feet into the air. Alternating between focusing chakra to stick himself to the floor, and then releasing the chakra right before jumping again. After a few moments of this, he felt sufficiently warmed up and did a really big leap to launch himself all the way to the ceiling. The important part was to jump high enough so that he could touch the ceiling, but just barely, otherwise he'd risk snapping his elbows. Just before he reached the ceiling he stretched his arms out so that his palms were just barely touching the ceiling and - connect - focused chakra into his hands just as he had done with his feet so that he stuck to the ceiling.
He found using his hands to be a little bit easier than using his feet, as if his chakra was just more connected to his hands. He figured it was because he used his hands to make seals, so he already had more practice focusing chakra through his hands. Beeko focused on the chakra that was binding his hands to the ceiling, and started to slowly redistribute it- letting it dissipate from his palms and concentrate into his finger tips. This was difficult as it required him to maintain 10 distinct points of focus. He held that for several minutes before removing his right hand, dissipating the chakra from his left. He hung from his right hand for about a minute before switching to his left - connect, disconnect - and started to alternate about every minute, dissipating and refocusing his chakra to the other hand each time. Even though focusing chakra in his hands felt easier than his feet, there was still a distinct challenge to this as he was not as used to his arms and hands supporting his entire body weight for extended periods of time. It felt easier in someways, more difficult than others... but that was the importance of this exercise, so that he could accustom himself to using chakra in various ways, varying amounts, and different circumstances.
And then it was time for the real challenge- he chose to use his left hand since he always had an easier time of focusing chakra through his wooden hand on his right side, and his goal for the day was to really push the limits of his chakra control. Similar to how he had shifted his chakra focus from his palm to his finger tips, he slowly began to release the chakra from all of his fingertips except for one, while refocusing chakra into the single point at the tip of his index finger so that he was hanging from just the single finger. This required a great deal of focus, maintaining one dense point of chakra to support his entire body weight was more difficult than using all of his fingers and definitely more difficult than using his entire hand. He closed his eyes and tried to block out any thoughts aside from the single point of chakra- the goal was hold on as long as possible. In addition to the increased chakra focus this required, it was also an immense strain on his arm muscles to have so much of his weight hanging from a single finger, which in turn made it even more difficult to maintain his chakra focus.
To help himself focus, he started counting his breaths- One, two, in, out, five, six. The more he counted, the more the muscles of his forearm started to burn. It didn't help that he had fallen on his shoulder earlier in his training session, having all of his weight hanging on that arm was definitely starting to cause him some discomfort. One of the hardest parts was resisting the urge to flow more and more chakra into his finger. The point was to use the smallest amount of chakra possible to maintain the connection, any more than the bare minimum and he would be pointlessly burning his chakra for no gain. It was important that he push himself to his limit in this regard, so that he could learn to use his chakra more efficiently. He started to release chakra from his finger tip in the tiniest amounts, testing the limit of how little chakra he could use to maintain adhesion to the ceiling- two thirty seven, two thirty eight.
Every time he released a small amount of chakra, it felt like gravity started to pull him harder to the ground, the burning in his forearm was becoming nearly intolerable, his shoulder felt like it was going to slip out of socket, the knuckles of the finger he was hanging from felt like they would separate, he could feel the tension pulling against every tendon. And it wasn't just the muscles of his arm, but his entire chest had started to feel it, the burning tension spreading down his rib cage. It felt almost like the skin across his entire body was being stretched to its absolute limit. The chakra in his fingertip felt like it was beginning to flicker in and out, he started trying to increase the amount of chakra focused at his finger tip incrementally- four eighty four, four eighty fi-
He lost it, ah hell, ah shit, the chakra in his finger slipped away and Beeko fell to the ground. At least this time, he was oriented so that his feet hit the ground instead of his shoulder. His arm was still burning so he flexed his fingers to try and work out some of the tension, closing his hand into a fist and opening it again repeatedly. The goal was to be able to do these control exercises in a meditative state, completely block out all other thoughts. But he knew that was going to take a very long time. God dammit, he felt like his arm was going to fall off.
Luckily, the next phase of his chakra control training regiment did not require the use of his arms. Similar to the start of his previous exercise, Beeko began hopping up and down, escalating more quickly this time since he had already done his warmup. After a few solid jumps, he did a huge leap back to the top of the ceiling- except, this time, he did a half flip as he moved so that he made contact with the ceiling using his feet rather than his hands, focusing chakra into the soles of his feet right at the moment of contact. He let himself hang from the ceiling for a moment to acclimate to the feeling, and then released the chakra so that he fell back to the ground, flipping around again so that he landed on his feet. Upon landing he bent at the knees and jumped again, flipping again in midair, making contact with the ceiling, focusing chakra to his feet so that he stuck to the wood, bent at the knees to follow with the momentum of his jump, pushing off, releasing the chakra, doing a half flip to connect to the floor, bending at the knees- he repeated this process several times, trying to increase his pace with every jump, mindful of his timing, momentum, and chakra usage.
This was one of Beeko's favorite exercises because the rhythm of it helped with his focus. The wall running required him be aware of his surroundings, which was a distraction from the chakra control. The finger hanging put a constant physical strain on a large part of his body, which was a distraction from the chakra control. But this- once he got going, it felt like he could do it endlessly so long as he didn't - Ah, shit! - mistime focusing the chakra into his feet as he connected to the ceiling, which caused his weight distribution to be wrong, which caused his feet to slip out from under him, which caused him to face plant into the ceiling before falling back down to the floor right on his ass.
Whatever. He was about spent on chakra anyways, so he just laid there on the floor for awhile, sweaty and panting, staring up at the ceiling, trying not to focus too hard on the pain in his arm, or the pain in his face, or the pain in his tailbone.
Training:+4 Control