Training

"Left! Right! Left! Right!" With each word shouted out Hinote threw a punch, and a satisfying thunk resounded throughout the area. Her instructor for what would have been a cruel and sickening amount of time to a regular child had been shouting out these same exact orders. 'Luckily I'm not a regular child, or well - any Sarutobi who will pass this training isn't one either.' 

"No slacking! Left! Right! Left Right!" It was a cruel, but necessary training. She could feel her flesh slamming against the dummy, could feel her skin's bruises worsening with each blow, and how her bones groaned. Yet, such pain was necessary. 

Minor wounds to toughen the skin and bones - but far more importantly, so that when one punched another in the midst of combat, you would not flinch from the sound, nor the pain. "Left! Right! UPPERCUT!" The sudden command had her in a micro-second adjust her movements, a step forward, her body lowered, and in an instant, her left hand slammed upwards!

"Good reaction time! Right! Left! Right!" Alas, as with any child, her attention wandered, but luckily the Sarutobi clan teachers were used to such things, and so were quite 'inventive' with their sudden shouts of commands, and the punishments that would occur if one failed to react in time. 'Sadism has to be a requirement to teach Shinobi... I know it!' 

"Alright! That's enough: five minutes of warming down, thirty minutes of meditation, and then we move onto Kunai!" 

"Hai Sensei!" Her punches stopped on a dime, and she slowly walked around doing the occasional stretch so that her muscles didn't pinch or spasm. 'Rote training like this truly does get boring after a while, but I suppose it makes sense you ingrain it so young that by the time there's no one watching over a clan shinobi, they just do it instinctively anyway. Like checking Discord or Twitter when you're free. Heh. Fill the void of no social media with training, sounds productive at least.'

Five minutes passed quickly like it always did, and she found herself sat on a straw mat, her eyes closed. 'Breath in, the air flowing through my mouth, down my lungs, and coiling to my left pinky toe. Breathe out, the air flowing up my body, through my lungs, and out my mouth. Breath in, the air coiling down towards my right pink toe.' 

Indeed, this was the meditation exercise taught to her for use after workouts. It was admittedly from an outside perspective quite unwieldy but; 'Truly useful. It allows one to focus on each individual body part, to feel it, and to connect with it. But, I suspect it also has use for chakra.' After all, 'air' flows into your lungs, and then one was to imagine it flowing to each body party? It certainly sounded, at least to her, like a precursor to learning how to direct chakra to each body part! Or even, dare she say it - teaching a prospective shinobi how to do so passively/instinctively. 'I guess this is the benefit of having such an ancient and aged clan - at least ancient and aged among shinobi kind.' 

Hinote's meditations continued under the watchful eye of her Sensei, she herself was at most in her very early 20s, yet a Chunin vest was hung tightly across her frame. 

Exactly 30 minutes after her meditations began, Hinote's sensei called out. "Times up, get up, and grab the training Kunai. I want five clean draws in a row with the right hand, then three clean draws in a row from the left hand."

As she went and grabbed not only the thigh-holster that held the Kunai but also the other one that held Shuriken, Hinote barely held back a sigh. Coming into this training, she had originally thought it would be the easiest part. After all, drawing a Kunai without knicking yourself should be as simple as just drawing it - but there was so much more to it.

With both holsters strapped to her thighs, Hinote walked over to the center of the training ground. Her place taken, Sensei's honey-brown eyes looked over both holsters and then nodded in approval. Swiping an errant brown hair behind her ear, she leaned against a tree. "Start when ready." 'Alright, don't overthink it. This has to be instinctive.' 

With one quick motion, Hinote's hand reached down, snuck into the holster, and dragged out the Kunai, her fingers twitched, her wrist subtly flicked, and the Kunai in a mere blink of an eye went from inside of her holster to a ready position to be thrown. Yet, the soft, yet grating noise that echoed out from her pouch alerted Hinote to her failure. 'The Kunai scraped against another one, delaying the speed and the noise possibly alerting an enemy.' Not even waiting for her Sensei to say anything, she shoved the Kunai back into its holster, reset her hands, and did it again. Then again, and again, and again.

It was only twenty-five minutes later that her left hand's fingertips coated with red paint sheathed the final Kunai. "Good, you were faster this time. I can tell you've been practicing even when we aren't training together. Now swap to the Shuriken. Same amount.

The Shuriken for various reasons where significantly harder. They had blades in all directions, were smaller, and arguably just as important - her hands weren't as fresh. There were minor cramps, spasms, and the like. Another key, yet subtle part of training that wasn't outlined was the endurance that you trained in your hands to wield, draw, and inevitably throw weapons for an extended period of time, on top of the ability to deal with unfortunate situations such as cramps and exhaustion. 

'At least, I think so. I haven't got there yet. I'm definitely struggling too much with these cramps, and my movements are far less precise.' It showed too. After all, it was only forty minutes after she started on the Shuriken that she had finally finished with her assigned goals, hands aching, and the occasional spasm caused red paint to fly everywhere. 

Yet, her Sensei had an appreciative smile on her face as she sauntered over. "Good job Hinote. Only a few more training sessions and I think we can move on to throwing. I know the standards we've set for each stage of your training are high and may seem excessive. But trust me when I say this. We don't train Genin, we train for the goal of all of our Shinobi one day, including myself reaching Tokujo - even if many don't reach it, we set our standards there always, and so you know what that means?"

Hinote nodded. "Yes, Sensei! That means that everything is taught to me for now at the expectation of when mastered reaching the level of a Chunin, and whatever I decide to focus on will be taught to me by the clan at the expectation when mastered to be at the Jonin level."

A kind, yet proud smile crossed Sensei's face. "Good girl. Now why don't you run home and clean up, I'll fix up the training ground, okay?"

"Okay, sensei!" With a ruffling of her hair from her sensei, Hinote dashed off back home. 'Sensei can be so nice when she wants to be! But I wish she didn't ruffle my hair so often.' Cheeks puffed out mid-sprint, and a chuckle eventually escaped from Hinote. 'But that was fun, yet exhausting like always! Now time for the best time of the day, the second shower!'  

Time passed, and she found herself dressed in a pair of cute little monkey pajamas, sat on her bed, a contemplative look on her face. 'I need to do something outside of just training and 'playing'. Eventually, I won't be able to 'play' anymore, and I need some kind of hobby. Something to focus on in tough times, but also something to have fun with. But what?' 

It had been something she had been struggling with for a while now. It was after the reality of her future life had sunk in that the realization struck her. Being a Shinobi wasn't just a career you could simply retire from, and IF you did, the horrors of the 'career' would stay with you forever. Let alone PTSD and Flashbacks, instincts ingrained in decades of training and fighting, constantly controlling your speed, and making sure not to harm the people you come into contact with would always stay with even the oldest of Shinobi. 

Even in his 70s, Lord Danzo was a Kage-level Shinobi. Lord Third in his sixties once he snapped out of his funk could fight off one of the legendary Sannin AND two Reanimations of the venerable First and Second Hokage. 'Let alone someone like Onoki who was so old, and yet stronger than all the other Kage.'  So, she needed a hobby - something she would learn and grow to love, and something that could distract her, keep her sane, and help death with stress. 'But... what?' 

It was to this question, like many nights before, Hinote fell asleep.