Tengoku's orders.

Taimtasu stood legs spread knees bent. His shirt discarded to the side and. Pants rolled up to his knees Infront of him a tree with the bark stripped and the wood caved in a small bit from continuous strikes. Sweat dripped from his face and with one last punch he hit the tree again. He would huff and puff for a moment before turning and walking over to his shirt picking it up. He would use it to wipe his face before taking a seat on the ground. He then spoke to himself mocking Tengoku "Time to go train again but i won't be joining you. Go to the training grounds and strike the tree two hundreds times." he finished with a grunt of annoyance "I don't care if this is to strengthen my punches and hands. My hands just fuckin hurt now" he said to himself as he laid backwards.

He just laid there for a while staring at nothing as he caught his breath he eventually stood up and walked about twenty feet from the tree. He looked at the spot he was punching and threw a shuriken at it missing where he was aiming. With an annoyed sigh he raised his hands and looked at them as the trembled. "How the hell is this helpful!" he shouted out as he walked and retrieved his Shuriken from ground

Ever the eager student, Xia had decided to use some of her free time to go train. She was interested in working on the ‘flashy’ Taijutsu that Tengoku had mentioned earlier. She didn’t really have any solid ideas, but she never really did. With her creativity it was all about how she felt not what she thought. And to her, taijutsu was an art - almost like a dance. There were waves and beats and a flow. To highlight that fact she was wearing a set of blue and orange loose fitting overalls with a dark green tube top. The ensemble was flashy while still allowing her full range of movement as she trained. Her attire also left her tattoo mostly uncovered, the delicate lines of a scaled beast that wove itself across her back and down her right arm plainly visible. Her hair that day was a platinum blonde, but she left her eyes untouched and they were still the cloudy white that was characteristic of the Hyuga clan. On her waist she had her five kunai and strapped to the small of her back was her jade Kama.


She didn’t expect to have the entire facility to herself, but she was surprised to see someone, well. . . hear someone there so late in the evening. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but there was definitely someone training, and they were definitely unhappy with it. Rounding a corner and making her way into the forested training area she spied a lone man standing in front of a very beaten up tree. She knew that frustration, as a Hyuga she’d felt it herself. The old ‘go punch a tree until it stops hurting’ training. Which she was still unconvinced was an actual training method. It did build character, if the character that was desired was angry and pain filled yelling. Xia would walk up towards the man, not attempting to disguise her footfalls, the last thing she wanted to do was startle an already annoyed person.

Once she thought she was in respectable talking distance she would call out to her fellow shinobi, keeping her voice light and friendly. “Hey there, you doing okay? I heard some yelling and I was just coming to train for a bit, but I have time if you wanna vent or something.” If the man turned to look at her he would see a friendly smile from the short woman as she leaned up against a nearby tree.

Matsu would slowly turn his head to face the woman who was trying to talk to him. His eyes at first glance filled with anger as he turned to face her. His expression instantly changed as he looked at her. With a nervous smile and the scratching of the back of his head he spoke kindly "Ah sorry about the yelling." he said as he took a breath to calm himself down "I'm just annoyed that my master Tengoku thought it was a good idea to well. Thrust me out of bed so early in the morning. To come 'train' by punching a stupid tree. All it's doing is hurting me and annoying me" he finished as he walked over to where his shirt is layed and grabbed his water bottle taking a drink.

He dropped the bottle to the ground before walking over to the woman. With a warm smile he held his bruised hand out "Names Taimatsu Kotōshura. You can call me Matsu for short. Pleasure to meet ya" he said as his eyes closed and smile grew larger. Others would call him scary cause of his appearance but truth be told Matsu was a warm loving spirit and he hoped she felt the same

Xia could tell that the guy was pissed, but not with her. As soon as he turned around to look at her the anger in his eyes faded away, she thought he maybe even looked a bit shy or embarrassed. “Don’t worry about it, if punching trees was fun everyone would do it.” She quipped back at his apology with a light hearted laugh, she knew that pain and she did not envy him. She did perk up at the name ‘Tengoku’ though. As far as she knew, there was only one Tengoku in the Village, possibly even the entire world.

“Hang on now, did I hear that right? Your sensei is Tengoku? Like. . . the Tengoku? Recently promoted to Hokage Tengoku?” It would be a complete lie for Xia to say she wasn’t just the tiniest bit jealous. While being in Tengoku’s squad didn’t exactly give her full dibs on who he trained, she halfways wished that it had been her that had been given special training. Even if it was punching a tree.

She watched as the man walked over and got a drink from his water bottle, and then walked over to shake her hand. She noticed the bruising on his outstretched hand, so she tried to shake his hand without injuring him further. Her handshake was firm, but she attempted to position her fingers so that she wasn’t grasping at his injury. She smiled up at him as he introduced himself, taking a second to admire his brightly coloured hair. “Nice to meet you Matsu. I’m Xia. . .” She would sigh a bit as she drew in breath to repeat her entire name. “Xia Pangfua Daiyu Hyūga. But please, just call me Xia. I love my parents, but they were enthusiastic when they named me.” She would grin as she slowly attempted to turn his hand over in hers to get a better look at the bruising. “Maybe we should get some ice? This won’t get better on its own. I only say that as a fellow puncher of trees.” There was concern in her expression but also a great amount of mirth. Xia liked Matsu, he was friendly and he punched things. That was pretty much all it took to win over a Hyuga.

With his free hand Matsu scratched the back of his head with a nervous smile at her response to him being tengoku's student. "Yeah... He kinda took me in from the orphanage cause. Let me move in with him and took me under his wing. He's kinda like a father figure to me" he finished with a smile as he took his hand and gently shaked it. She told him her name and boy was she right. Her parents where enthusiastic while naming.

She then turned his. His instinct was to pull away from lack of interaction with most people but he fought that feeling and let it happen. She was kinda and gentle he knew he'd need to ice his hand but at the same time he didn't want to disappoint Tengoku, even tho he was annoyed with him. "Yeah i know i need to ice my hand. Still not as bad as the beat i received on mission with Tengoku" he said with a chuckle as he looked down seeing the concerned look on her face. He didn't know how to react besides his crude humor

Xia immediately regretted asking about Tengoku as she learned that Matsu was an orphan. It was not the smoothest transition to friendly conversation she’d ever done, not that most of her ramblings were ever very smooth. She would blush and look down at her feet for a second, biting her lip as she tried to think of how to fix her blunder. Reminding the man of something terrible from his childhood had not been her intention at all. As luck would have it though, he still shook her hand anyway and offered her a smile, to which she smiled back gratefully.

When she mentioned icing his hand, he chuckled and reassured her it wasn’t as bad as the beating he’d received before while on a mission with Tengoku. Her look could only be described as one of abject horror as she kept holding onto his injured hand. “You’re. . . you’re joking right?” She hoped he was joking, but something about the ruefulness of his smile told her he absolutely wasn’t. “I’ve never been on a mission before, basically fresh out of the Academy. Sort of. And I don’t want to. . . uh, I don’t want to get beat up.” The tiny Hyuuga looked up at Matsu, her expression still filled with questioning and fear and her hands still cradling his injured one. “We could um, get some ice for this and I could train a bit while you tell me about this mission of yours. If you want.”

Matsu was blown away by her smile smile. He always thought it'd be hard to talk to women but here he was letting anything fly out of his mouth to keep talking to her. "I'm not definitely not kidding" he said letting out another chuckle as he pulled his hand away. Lifting up his right arm and with his left hand pointing at the scar where a shuriken stuck into his side. Some bruising stil around the area from the broken ribs. "The mighty Taimatsu single handedly took down four bandits. Protecting the doctor and medicine from the attackers" he said obviously joking as he flexed in a ridiculous pose.

He stopped before looking at her with his warm smile "jokes aside. I am fine and I'd love to tell you while you train. Besides i need to train some more myself" he said as he walked picking up his water again. Taking another sip before discarding it once more. He turned his head to look at Xia "Um... You don't mind if i smoke right" he asked with a dumb look on his face. Pulling out his messed up pack of smokes and lighter wanting to make sure it was okay with her

Xia’s eyes were still wide as Matsu assured her that he was not joking about the mission. Her eyes got even wider as he pulled his hand away to point at the scar left by a shuriken in his side, as well as some bruising that was still left there. Xia was genuinely concerned about how that had all happened, but as Matsu struck a pose she would chuckle along with him and join in on the fun. “Single handedly? That’s incredible!” There was mirth in her eyes as she joked along with him.

She watched briefly as he changed the subject back to training and took another drink from his water bottle. She heard him say that he was fine, but she’d looked at his hands herself and they didn’t look fine. But she wasn’t about to tell him he was wrong or anything; if he wanted to carry on as if everything was fine then that was fine with her. It was his hands after all. Turning away from him briefly she carefully placed her weaponry down beside a nearby tree after taking her kunai and kama off her hips. She set her stance and started her breathing exercises as her hands came up in front of her to begin training. Well, training by punching a tree, but still training. She would pause as Matsu asked about smoking and look towards him with a smile, shaking her head. “No, I don’t mind. As long as you don’t mind me punching this tree here while you tell me more stories.” She laughed at her own fairly lame joke and accentuated it with a single hard punch to the tree trunk in front of her. The punch landed with a satisfying ‘crack’ noise, followed by the hiss of Xia inhaling suddenly to try to lessen the pain of punching a tree. “Oh yeah, just as wonderful as I remember.” Looking down at her hand she could already see the swelling and one small cut on her knuckles. This was going to be rough.

With her reply to his question. He wasted no time lighting a smoke. With a long exhale of relief he would turn and watch her as she punched the tree. He'd cringe as soon as she made contact. "Your sure you don't want to get your hand checked out" he said with a chuckle. With another inhale of his smoke he began to explain more of the mission"You should have seen Tengoku. He was amazing! There was one bandit that tried to sneak throw a kuni into the back of tengoku's head and without even seeing it. He moved and caught it" as he described it. Matsu's expression lit up with excitement

He would go on explaining just how blown away he was by Tengoku's strength he had shown. He'd go to explain his battle with the attackers. How he defended himself against three of the four Shuriken that were thrown at him and how he successfully defeated three and as he was getting ready to finish explaining the fight his face filled with shock as he realized how long he's been at the training grounds "I am so sorry to have to leave like this but i am late to head to the Festival!" he said before running over and grabbing his things and running towards the entrance "It was a pleasure to meet you! Hope to see you again. Later!" he would shout with a wave as he ran out the door

EXIT THREAD

Xia laughed sheepishly at Matsu’s comment about getting her own hand checked out. She really didn’t like the whole ‘punch a tree’ training technique, it was not as zen as it sounded. “Maybe I should, I probably will, honestly I don’t think I’m as resilient as you appear to be.” Taking a break from, well, training. . . Xia would turn away from the tree and listen as Matsu explained the mission he and Tengoku had been on together.

The tattooed man’s explanation was animated and Xia found herself getting excited, and almost inspired her to sign up for her own daring mission. Almost. She knew that she was ready yet, but oh boy was she pumped up for it. However, after the single punch she’d thrown at the tree, she was pretty sure that a mission filled with bandits that were trying to hurt her wouldn’t go so well.

She listened intently until suddenly Matsu announced he was late to head to the Festival. He rushed off and shouted a goodbye and Xia was left mildly confused. But that was pretty par for the course, Xia wasn’t exactly the sharpest cookie in the kitchen sink. “Oh, uh, goodbye! Hopefully see you later too!” After he’d left she looked over at the tree, then back at her bruising hand, then at the exit of the training facility. She eventually gave in to her whims and grabbed her jacket and ran out the door as well. She could punch more trees tomorrow.

[Exit Thread]