It was still fairly in the morning, the sun had yet to fully rise and yet here Ryuko was inspecting the training grounds which had just been installed fairly recently. Finally a place to hone her skills that wasn’t the academy. The amount of room they had their had been limited at best and she’d always had to hold back in fear of breaking something important.
Here, here she could cut lose and not have to worry about it. She couldn’t have been the only one to think this way because despite being only open for couple of weeks some of the practice rocks had been pot marked with numerous scratches from kunai and shuriken alike while others where toughly scorched and blackened from being exposed to heat and electricity.
Today she was wearing her usual shine priestess outfit but with the addition of a crown of flowers on her head consisting of lilies, a flower symbolizing humility and devotion two tenets she tried hard to live her life by.
She’d been fortunate to be born into a well to do family, but she didn’t think of herself as anyone particularly special. Just because she had noble blood and some wealth didn’t make her any better then a peasant who had neither of those things. It was somewhat blasphemous to say but in her mind prehaps the peasant was better because he’d had to work for whatever he had rather then being handed most of it on a silver platter.
About the only thing she’d ever really earned herself was her skill as a warrior. Her clan, hailing from a group of knights that had crossed the seas after being exiled from their homeland viewed combat training as as almost a necessity. Nearly everyone had some form of military training or another, though not all of them bothered to put it to use.
From the beginning she’d been told she had no potential at this. That no matter how hard she worked, no matter how hard she’d trained she would never be anything better then mediocre at best. The type who was doomed to serve as nothing but cannon fodder if she ever set foot onto the battlefield. To give up on being a ninja and focus her energies on finding a wealthy husband for the sake of the clan.
And now here she was, still a gennin but certainly not an average one. With strength, stamina, endurance, speed, coordination, perception and intelligence all measured at least C level she was good enough to give the average chunnin a run for their money. The only real reason she wasn’t one herself yet was her lack of experience.
In the long months since she had joined the active duty roster she’d only been out for one mission and due to a verity of reasons she hadn’t really gone on any outside of that, at least officially. Some of her other activities like fending off the man in the red suit at the gates and finding the silver egg could be loosely constituted as missions as well but overall even with those counted she was still fairly green.
Thinking about what she was lacking was one of the reasons she was here today. Better weapons? Sure it never heard to have those but they could only do so much if the user themselves wasn’t good enough. Better armor? Her under suit was complete but the main set to wear over that was a work in progress that would require a lot of money to build.
That left techniques. She had a large verity of them but as expected of someone of her rank none of them where particularly high level. Frankly speaking with her stamina level most A and S ranked moves weren’t really worth it. Wasting a large chunk of your reserves on one move was a risky gamble.
On the other hand the amount of mid level moves she had under her belt was praiseworthy. She even had a special secret combination of them that she liked to call Overdrive mode that when used would allow her to fight at B class level at nearly in every stat other then endurance and stamina for a limited time.
The armor she was making would help cover for her own bodies limitations when it came to taking blows but but their wasn’t much she could do for the later other then train, train and train some more. Her combat focus being so physical helped since punches and kicks took a lot less energy then breathing out a fireball or throwing a lightning bolt. If she fought well it wouldn’t be hard to create the illusion that all of her stats where B even if that wasn’t the truth.
The only thing she really lacked was her own finishing move. Something you could use to take down an enemy decisively after a long fought battle. The closest so far was her Dragoon Dive which was fine in the right situations but not enough to be a general clincher.
So today she was here to add something that could hit hard and hit fast. Something she could use from a distance that most wouldn’t expect from a martial artist to have. She’d heard whispers that someone had managed to use air pressure with sheer strength in the past so why not her?
Shifting into the arhat fist stance boosted her strength to B level for even the most basic of strikes. If she focused it properly she could even reach A level. Punching something directly with strength so far above her normal limit actually stung more then a bit. If her endurance was any lower she would be in danger of breaking her own arm. Making her move range based was a bit to avoid that problem.
Putting effort into her fist she hit the air hard generating an almost invisible shock-wave that crashed forward for a few meters before dissipated. Putting a bit more effort she tried again then measured the difference between the two results and using that data to dial in the right amount of force that would have to be applied for the effect she wanted.
Finally with a grin she turned towards the practice rock and punched as hard as she possibly could generating so much force she would have blown herself over if she hadn’t braced herself in anticipation. She caught a brief glance of a small pocket of visible air pressure in the but it vanished from her sight before she could even blink.
Traveling the short distance between her and the target so quickly that it seemed almost instant to her senses a loud boom filled her ears as her attack plowed into the rock and bore straight through the other side as if the stone had been made of mere tissue paper and contiuned on for several more meters before finally dissipating.
“By Hakkin’s breath.” exclaimed Ryuko as she surveyed the damage. The hole she generated was modest sized by ninja standards, only about the same as her actual fist. But if one punch could do that to a stone it certainly had lethal potential against another human. She was going to have to be very careful about how she chose to actual use it in the future.
Here, here she could cut lose and not have to worry about it. She couldn’t have been the only one to think this way because despite being only open for couple of weeks some of the practice rocks had been pot marked with numerous scratches from kunai and shuriken alike while others where toughly scorched and blackened from being exposed to heat and electricity.
Today she was wearing her usual shine priestess outfit but with the addition of a crown of flowers on her head consisting of lilies, a flower symbolizing humility and devotion two tenets she tried hard to live her life by.
She’d been fortunate to be born into a well to do family, but she didn’t think of herself as anyone particularly special. Just because she had noble blood and some wealth didn’t make her any better then a peasant who had neither of those things. It was somewhat blasphemous to say but in her mind prehaps the peasant was better because he’d had to work for whatever he had rather then being handed most of it on a silver platter.
About the only thing she’d ever really earned herself was her skill as a warrior. Her clan, hailing from a group of knights that had crossed the seas after being exiled from their homeland viewed combat training as as almost a necessity. Nearly everyone had some form of military training or another, though not all of them bothered to put it to use.
From the beginning she’d been told she had no potential at this. That no matter how hard she worked, no matter how hard she’d trained she would never be anything better then mediocre at best. The type who was doomed to serve as nothing but cannon fodder if she ever set foot onto the battlefield. To give up on being a ninja and focus her energies on finding a wealthy husband for the sake of the clan.
And now here she was, still a gennin but certainly not an average one. With strength, stamina, endurance, speed, coordination, perception and intelligence all measured at least C level she was good enough to give the average chunnin a run for their money. The only real reason she wasn’t one herself yet was her lack of experience.
In the long months since she had joined the active duty roster she’d only been out for one mission and due to a verity of reasons she hadn’t really gone on any outside of that, at least officially. Some of her other activities like fending off the man in the red suit at the gates and finding the silver egg could be loosely constituted as missions as well but overall even with those counted she was still fairly green.
Thinking about what she was lacking was one of the reasons she was here today. Better weapons? Sure it never heard to have those but they could only do so much if the user themselves wasn’t good enough. Better armor? Her under suit was complete but the main set to wear over that was a work in progress that would require a lot of money to build.
That left techniques. She had a large verity of them but as expected of someone of her rank none of them where particularly high level. Frankly speaking with her stamina level most A and S ranked moves weren’t really worth it. Wasting a large chunk of your reserves on one move was a risky gamble.
On the other hand the amount of mid level moves she had under her belt was praiseworthy. She even had a special secret combination of them that she liked to call Overdrive mode that when used would allow her to fight at B class level at nearly in every stat other then endurance and stamina for a limited time.
The armor she was making would help cover for her own bodies limitations when it came to taking blows but but their wasn’t much she could do for the later other then train, train and train some more. Her combat focus being so physical helped since punches and kicks took a lot less energy then breathing out a fireball or throwing a lightning bolt. If she fought well it wouldn’t be hard to create the illusion that all of her stats where B even if that wasn’t the truth.
The only thing she really lacked was her own finishing move. Something you could use to take down an enemy decisively after a long fought battle. The closest so far was her Dragoon Dive which was fine in the right situations but not enough to be a general clincher.
So today she was here to add something that could hit hard and hit fast. Something she could use from a distance that most wouldn’t expect from a martial artist to have. She’d heard whispers that someone had managed to use air pressure with sheer strength in the past so why not her?
Shifting into the arhat fist stance boosted her strength to B level for even the most basic of strikes. If she focused it properly she could even reach A level. Punching something directly with strength so far above her normal limit actually stung more then a bit. If her endurance was any lower she would be in danger of breaking her own arm. Making her move range based was a bit to avoid that problem.
Putting effort into her fist she hit the air hard generating an almost invisible shock-wave that crashed forward for a few meters before dissipated. Putting a bit more effort she tried again then measured the difference between the two results and using that data to dial in the right amount of force that would have to be applied for the effect she wanted.
Finally with a grin she turned towards the practice rock and punched as hard as she possibly could generating so much force she would have blown herself over if she hadn’t braced herself in anticipation. She caught a brief glance of a small pocket of visible air pressure in the but it vanished from her sight before she could even blink.
Traveling the short distance between her and the target so quickly that it seemed almost instant to her senses a loud boom filled her ears as her attack plowed into the rock and bore straight through the other side as if the stone had been made of mere tissue paper and contiuned on for several more meters before finally dissipating.
“By Hakkin’s breath.” exclaimed Ryuko as she surveyed the damage. The hole she generated was modest sized by ninja standards, only about the same as her actual fist. But if one punch could do that to a stone it certainly had lethal potential against another human. She was going to have to be very careful about how she chose to actual use it in the future.
