It's in his blood: The Training of Akares

[Drizzt_13]

Index page

Akares In training

The homecoming: Sucess (http://www.narutochaos.com/forum/showpost.php?p=523511&postcount=2)

Learning the bloody basics:
Hell (Morning (http://www.narutochaos.com/forum/showpost.php?p=523512&postcount=3) Afternoon (http://www.narutochaos.com/forum/showpost.php?p=523513&postcount=4) Evening (http://www.narutochaos.com/forum/showpost.php?p=529482&postcount=5))
Aches and pains (morning (http://www.narutochaos.com/forum/showpost.php?p=544231&postcount=6) Noon (http://www.narutochaos.com/forum/showpost.php?p=547068&postcount=7))

[Drizzt_13]

It was a cold night but Akares cared nothing for the cold air, his cloak covered the entire body, and he had long gotten used to the chill of the desert night. He walked through the many domed houses of sunagakure elated from his earlier success, and from the fact that a shinobi headband now hung around his neck. The lights of the main part of the city did not reach the street he was on, this was not the kind of street a stranger would want to be on, but Akares was no stranger. In fact he lived here and the light on in the second story of the building on his right told him that his father hadn’t gone to the bar that night.

He surveyed the street one last time before opening the creaky wooden door, the stairs up to his apartment smelled like urine, the people on the lower floor were too lazy to take their dog out so it peed on the stairs. He ran up, hoping to avoid too much of the scent that filled the stairs and knocked on the door. A voice growled from within “I’m bleeding son” Akares groaned in response but knew if he did not answer his paranoid father correctly it would be assumed he was a hostile “Then let it flow freely“ Akares whispered in reply. The door opened to reveal the scarred face of his father, Martell, starring out, “get in” he snapped.
Akares did as he was told stepping in and shutting the door behind him, Martell walked back to the table and picked up a beer that had been resting there, he took a swig and set it back down. Akares walked over to the stove and began to cook some ramen noodles. It was a special day in his mind so he added a few beef strips to the ramen. When t was finished he grabbed two of the bowls that were only slightly dirty and poured some of the noodles in them. Handing one to Martell he sat down and ate.
“so you passed” the scarred face remarked, “Sunagakure gave you their headband, I hoe you know where your loyalties really lie boy”
“With the clan of course, only there do we have a chance for survival” Akares replied as if reading a script
“good boy” Martell growled “you’re a genin now which means both your clan and your village will want your services , you have to be ready. So tomorrow I’ll start training you for real” Martell sipped his beer. “You’re mother died for you and you’re to be every bit as good as she was, you’re a Ketsueki, I will not tolerate failure from you,”
“yes sir” Akares replied. He finished his ramen enjoying the beef strips and went to bed, if he knew anything about his father; he would need the sleep for tomorrow.

[Drizzt_13]

Morning

“UP NOW!” the voice screamed in Akares’s ear, he leapt up and saw his father there in the door. A second later his clothes hit him full force in the face and Martell left the room as Akares hastily donned his clothes, grabbing his cloak from the hook and running after his father out the door. Martell sprinted down and opened the door, he ran out and stood in the dirty allyway as Akares ran after him.
Akares now noticed that the sky was still mostly dark and the edge of horizon was just beginning to turn pink. Martell whispered, “we are going to run to the edge of the city there is a spot in the desert where there is a small oasis. You will keep up with me, if you fall behind I will gibe you weights to carry got it?”
“yes sir” Akares muttered, he knew his father made these workouts nearly impossible on the first run, in a couple weeks though he’d have it down.
Martell started running at a steady pace that Akares was easily able to match, in the city the streets were paved, out in the desert however the sand would slow them down. The pair rounded a corner and Martell picked up the pace, Akares could still keep up but it took some effort now. They passed the ninja necessities store, which was closed this early in the morning.
The pair turned onto the main street of sunagakure and Martell again upped the pace into what seemed like a sprint to Akares who tried to keep the pace. His heat was beating fast and his lungs gasped for air but nonetheless he was keeping up with his father something Akares was proud of. He saw a few other early goers out that morning, the baker was lighting his fire and one or two of the bouncers for a couple of the late night taverns were just finishing the job and throwing the last drunks out.
They dashed on and Akares began to tire but knowing that giving in would just make it harder, ran on. Sweat ran down his bald head but was absorbed by the headband he had tied on earlier this morning, it fit him well and though it didn’t go with his shaved head he liked the feel of the cool metal on his forehead.
“Oh crap” Akares swore under his breath, while had been thinking about the headband his father had gotten a good five paces ahead, doubling his speed to catch u with his father who despite the packs he carried was running as fast as Akares but without any of the signs of strain Akares was showing.
Martell had made it to the edge of the city with Akares only a pace behind, he pointed to the cliffs off in the distance and somehow managed to find the breath to talk while still running “it’s near there”. The road began to become less and less firm now as it gave way to desert sand. Akares tried to keep up with his father but was losing ground, the sand gave when he stepped on it so he couldn’t push off as hard. Martell seemed unaffected by this keeping the same pace as he had on the hard road and leaving little puffs of sand in his wake.
Akares tried to keep up but he no longer could hold the pace, he fell behind Martell slowly until he was about fifteen paces back. Martell stopped all of a sudden and tripped Siajan as he came hurtling past. “Weak!” he screamed “keep up with me, you are Ketsueki you do not tire! Now carry this and follow”. Martell dropped a long cylindrical pack at his feet and ran off.
Akares retrieved it and ran after him, the pack wasn’t that heavy but it did slow him down a little and the sun was higher now, beating down on both of them. Again Akares fell behind, again he was knocked over and told to carry more, which in turn slowed him down continuing the vicious circle.
By the time they had reached the cliff Akares was carrying all the packs except for one, was bruised and battered and felt like his body was about to burst. They reached the oasis at the foot of the cliffs and Martell dropped his one remaining pack at his feet . Akares dropped them all at his feet and sat down in the sand.
“you can have a rest while I unpack, but don’t get comfortable we’ve still got the whole day ahead of us” growled Martell with a wicked grin.

[Drizzt_13]

Afternoon

When Martell had finished setting up the tent and firepit he turned to Akares and handed him a small package. Akares opens it to find strange metal objects roughly the shape of his finger, while picking them up he grabs one by the wrong end and is immediately cut by the razor sharp blade.

Martell: they’re sharp so be careful, they are attached to the tips of the fingers so that the blade hangs over it by a small amount.

Akares arranged them again making sure not to touch the tips and slid them over his fingers, it felt like he had fake nails on but all and all they fit him very well.

Akares: they’re sharp but the blade is only slightly longer then my finger nails how is this a useful weapon?
Martell: It’s not for cutting your opponent it’s for cutting you, you know our clan uses blood, how did you think we got it out of the body?
Akares: well I though we carried it around in bottles or something like that
Martell: some do, the problem is that trying to find the right amount to donate at the correct intervals is a pain. Before I teach you clan techniques you have to learn a few things about safely drawing blood.

Martell pulled out a small drawing of the human circulatory system and laid it on the ground.

Martell: you will need to learn the location of the arteries first so you don’t accidentally cut one when drawing blood. Study this map and begin to memorize the arteries I will be back shortly.

Akares: ok lets start with the neck and head down from there, seems like there’s the carotid artery there then the pulmonary artery next to the heart….

Akaes began to look closely at his own body looking for the veins, he began to find the locations of various artery’s on his own body, using the gaa’l ran to leave small cuts near them so he would remember them later. After nearly an hour of such study his father came back

Martell: I hope you studied well, we are now going to work on both the artery’s and taijutsu. We will fight, you will try to hit the general area of each artery with your fist, I will go easy on you while you are on the attack, after a minute ( martell sets a stop watch) I will hit you on any artery you missed, I will not go easy when I am attacking you. I will expect you to say the name of the artery after you hit it.

Akares wasted no time lunging forward in an attack right before Martell finished speaking lunging forward wand lashing out towards the center of martell’s chest, with great speed martell intercepted the punch with one hand and then moved his other hand to catch the other fist as it lashed towards his right arm. Akares leaned in with his left elbow forcing martell to block it with his hand that had previously blocked akares’s right. Using the now free hand Akares delivered two quick blows to the upper arm of his father.

Akares: subclavian and Axillary artery!

know he came in low with a punch jabbing at martell’s thigh which was eaily caught. Quickly akares’s arm flashed out and grabbed martell’s left hand allowing him to deliver a powerful kick to martell’s arm followed by two quick jabs.

Akares: brachial, radial and ulnar artery!

The jabs came at the cost of having both his arms immobilized by Matell’s strong grasp. Akares recognized that Martell was leaving him an opening so that he could test his knowledge of the artery’s. He brought his knee up and slammed it into hard into Martell’s thigh.

Akares: (thought) oh crap I know it’s the external and internal Iliac artey but what was the third one…. Dang it!

Akares: external and internal iliac artery!

Stopwatch: Beep!Beep!Beep!

Akare’s heard the stopwatch go off and immediately began to ready himself for defense, before he could however he heard a dull thwack of flesh on flesh and the voice of his father calling out. A moment later pain shot through his thigh in the exact spot of the artery he had forgotten.

Martell: Femural artery!

Akares vaguely saw a fist lash out towards his chest and raised his arm to guard, the fist hit his arms and with two blows knocked them aside allowing the second fist to deliver four hard blows to his chest.
Martell: Pulmanory, hepatic, splenic and renal artery!

Akares began to fall back now not even keeping up the vestige of defense, a roundhouse kick to his thigh knocked him off his feet and he began to fall.

Martell: Superior mesmeric Artery!

He hit he ground hard, and then a foot hit him harder crushing his hand into the ground unleashing waves of agony that seemed to take their time in rolling up his arm and into his head. The final blow a single slap to his neck came as a surprise to akres who had thought the barrage had ended . His body tensed awaiting the new furry of blows but went limp after hearing his fathers voice, akraes stared up into the face of martell, the last traces of a smile fading away from his scarred visage.

Martell: The common iliad and the common carotid artery. I’m disappointed you stopped trying to block very early, you gave up. Now get up we’ll do this until you get it right!!

[Drizzt_13]

OOC: I didn't want to go into further detail about training the arteries, I fell I have put sufficient detail into the beginning of it that I should be able to leave it a cliffhanger. This in no way means That i have finished training the artery's I just wanted to move on to the next part of the training. Pretty Much everything in Day 2 will be trained further in day 3


Day 2: Night

Akares staggered into the camp, every part of his body was bruised and many were bleeding, he had taken a serious beating from his father but by the end he had gotten most of the artery’s down, it had gotten dark and they had to stop. He slumped down by a fire his father had lit, and lay there quietly hoping only to be allowed some food and sleep. Martell sat down next to him and handed him a bowl full of ramen which Akares began to devour.

Martell: before you get to sleep there is one thing you have to do, you need to learn a little about your blood. While you are eating I want you to put some chakra into your bloodstream, get used to the cells that make up your blood, the plasma the platelets the hemogoblin, I’ll let you work on that for a while.

Akares did as he was told knowing that failure to comply would be punished. He used some of his last reserves of energy to form chakra which he put into his bloodstream. He focused hard on the feelings he encountered, the chakra flowed easily into the stream but when he began to try to mesh it with specific parts of the blood he began to encounter problems. The red blood cells took it in easily the same way they did oxygen so he would have no problem with those but the platelets, being the dead parts of the thrombocyte refused to absorb it.

Martell came back to the fire holding a small jar and a syringe

Martell: give me your arm and hold still

Akares did as he was told, martell jabbed the needle gently into a vein in his forearm and extracted a small amount of blood. Then he extracted the needle, causing Akares to flinch, and poured the blood into a small tube.
Martell: Many ketuseki Jutsu require use of only one of the many substances found in the bloodstream. To successfully perform them you need to be able to separate the blood into three components, the plasma (the actual fluid) , the red blood cells and the platelets.

Martell paused and made a small handsign over the bottle, the liquids swirled around until the majority of the bottle was filled with clear substance, the plasma, and the bottom was mostly red, the cells that gave blood it’s color. After looking closely Akares noticed a thin layer at the bottom of a gray substance, he figured they must be the platelets.

Martell shook the vial causing the blood to remix and tossed it to Akares

Martell: you can’t come into the tent until you’ve done it!

Akares grabbed the vial and sat cross legged on the sand holding the vial in both hands, he began to pour chakra through a small hole in the lid of the vial, letting it flow through and be absorbed by the blood, it was harder then putting the chakra into his veins since the blood was not flowing it took more energy to fill all the blood with chakra. Akares tried drawing the chakra upwards bringing the blood with it, having failed to perforate the platelets he pulled only the plasma and red blood cells upwards.

Akares: ok, so it seems I can’t control the platelets yet so I will have to separate them by removing everything else.

He pulled upward with greater force and all the plasma and red blood cells began to rise leaving the platelets at the bottom, when all the liquids were at the top of the bottle, being held there by his chakra which he was using up rapidly, when the chakra in the blood ran out, the blood fell back to the bottom. Akares examined it closely, the layer of gray material was at the bottom but the plasma and red blood cells were still mixed.

Akares paused to think, he needed to conserve what was left of his chakra, so he had to go about this right. Akares thought back to when he first put the chakra into his blood, the red blood cells designed to carry oxygen seemed to hold his chakra rather easily.

With that in mind he set to work pouring the last of his chakra into the vial, last time hea pushed hard forcing it in to the blood, this time he just let it flow, applying the least amount of force possible. The chakra wasn’t being absorbed so he pushed a tiny bit harder, then a little harder and finally began to find it was being absorbed. It was hard to keep the slow pace but he did it.

When all the red blood cells had his chakra in them he pushed downwards, gently so that they didn’t displace the platelets. When he was done the platelets were on the bottom, the red blood cells in the middle and the plasma on top. Akares sighed, sealed up the vial and crawled into the tent. There he collapsed and slept like the dead.

[Drizzt_13]

OOC: I’ve been looking at the geography thread
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Martell woke Akares up early, the sun was just beginning to warm the sky and the two of them rekindled the fire for warmth. Martell was looking at a map while Akares chewed some bread.

Martell: eat fast Akares we should be moving soon

Akares: we just set up camp yesterday why do we need to move now?

Martell: I plan to make it to the border of sunagakure, Uncle Vigor lives near the Eikongwa rapids, before Shishio was the leader and we all lived in the villages I trained there. It’s a good spot for that, it’s only a short journey but we’ll be stopping to train a long the way so it should take a few days. Now pack up your gear we’re leaving.

Akares finished off the bread and began to pack up , when he was done Martell shouldered most of the packs leaving Akares a single backpack. They kicked sand over their firepit and scattered most of the burnt wood. Then they faced northeast, and began to run

Martell: same rules as the last time, keep up or you carry more weight!

With that he started jogging, Akares had to make a dash to get parallel with Martell so that he wouldn’t be blinded by the large puffs of sand he kicked up. Akares tried to keep up and was able to do so for a while, Martell just didn’t seem to be affected by the sand the way Akares was, it didn’t slow him down all and his feet didn’t leave very deep marks. That paid off when they got tired, Martell didn’t have to push as hard as akares and got a good distance ahead. He stopped and turned, wordlessly dropping a sack to the ground. When Akares caught up and picked up the satchel they continued on.

On their first day they had traveled only a short distance east of town and then trained the rest of the day, the object of their short journey had been to work on their stamina, now they were actually trying to cover some ground. Because of this martell was being uncharacteristically merciful, he had slowed down the pace and after Akares had been given two other packs martell stopped giving him more so they would keep up a decent speed.

Akares jogged a short distance behind him for most of the journey watching his feet to see what he was doing to kick up the sand, he wasn’t able to see anything unusual, so he gave up on that. The sun got higher in the sky beating down harder on the pair as they ran, sweat trickled down Akares brow, but was kept out of his eye’s by the shinobi headband he wore. His calves felt ready to burst from the strain, and his breath came hard and ragged, Akares tried to focus on just one thing so as to block out the agony his body was going through. He counted breaths trying to fall into a steady rhythm where he could lose himself, for a while it worked, but soon the sheer heat of the day drove him back into his misery.

At noon they passed the outskirts of a slum called sunaville Martell pointed to the river ahead

Martell: the Kanshaii river lies behind the town we will camp there tonight and train there the rest of the day, yo are obviously tired stretch and have a short break.

Akares: Thanks

Using the last reserves of energy that come when the end is in sight Akares picked up the pace running faster then before and reaching the river quickly. There he strerched out his legs before diving in to cool off.

[Drizzt_13]

OOC: wow I feel kind of depressed about this

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When he was finished stretching and cooling off in the river martell gave the scroll that showed the positions of the arteries to Akares.

Martell: today will be much like yesterday, we will do the same excersise, and you will improve. I will be back in ten minutes.

As soon as martell left Akares went to work trying to memorize the locations of the artery’s, some were still fresh in his mind from yesterday and others he was reminded of because of the bruises left there by martell’s fist.

Akares: crap how in hell am I going to do this, just got to focus and get past his guard, I know most of the locations because I can feel where he hit me and I remember a lot of the lets just focus on the names of the one’s I missed last time.

In an attempt to remember the artery’s in conjunction with their location he began to memorize them in order starting with the one’s on the neck moving down the right arm and so forth.

Akares: ok so common cartaroid artery is on the neck followed by the brachial, subclavian and axillary artery’s on the upper arm…

After about ten minutes martell came back, took the scroll from Akares and rolled it up and then planted it in the sand nearby. Martell looked towards Akares, held up the stopwatch, showed it’s face to Akares and then let it drop

Martell: go!

Akares ran for him with a distinctly martial set of movements, arms raised and poised for attack. His left fist lashed out for martell’s upper arm but was parried easily, martell slid his left foot back and began to throw Akares over his shoulder and then grabbed his leg with his other arm tossing him in a spin over his shoulder. Though he had only small control over his body he swung with the arm martelll hadn’t used to throw him and when he passed by martell’s neck he reached out and smacked martell on the throat.

Akares: Common cartotid artery!

He spun and hit the ground hard rolling across the sand, aware that he was loosing valuable seconds Akares used the momentum of his spen to propel himself back up and once more ran at martell. Once again his fist lashed out and was blocked by martell’s ever present fist. This time however when martell had grabbed both of his arms he raised his knee and delivered a powerful blow to martell’s chest forcing him back and giving Akares a brief opening. Knowing that he would have only a short time to take advantage of this opening Akares delivered 3 quick jabs to the upper arm of martell and then did a quick spin to dislodge his other arm from martell’s grasp.

Akares: Brachial axilliary and subclavian artery!

Completing the spin he pushed off the ground and slammed his head into Martell’s jaw causing him to stagger once more and then followed up with an elbow to the chest, grabbing martell’s arm Akares delivered two quick blows to the forearm and then, placed one foot behind martell’s leg and kicked hard with the other leg sending martell sorwaling to the ground.

Akares: Pulmanory artery, then Radial and ulnar arteries and last the internal and external iliac artery’s as well as the femoral artery.

When martel hit the ground Akares was already standing over him delivering three quick punches while reciting the names of the arteries he hit

Akares: Superior mesenteric artery, common iliac and renal artery!

He was poised to deliver a fourth blow but a slight noise distracted him, the beeping of the stopwatch. In an instant martell kicked out from his prone position landing a solid blow on Akares arms which forced him back. Then martell rolled executing a sweep with his legs that made Akares leap in the air to avoid it, then rolling over so his front faced the ground he lifted himself up on hands and knees and delivered a powerful kick into Akares chest. From there he lifted himself up into a handstand and then flipped over landing on his feet.

Martell: all you missed was the splenic artery, very good. We will most likely not repeat this excersise again, you have good knowledge of the artery’s and it seems you know there locations, you just ran out of time. Therefore we will probably be working on weapon skills tomorrow. Anyway We’ll start on a basic jutsu soon so take a little break.