After the Birth - Taijutsu Training

Solo Training Session - Kumiko Kyoko - Taijutsu Training

 After her break
Kumiko found herself ready for the next step of her training. In the reality of
it all it was her absolutely weakest aspect of her character. Something she was
going to have to really work on increasing, as it made her weapons skills invariably
weaker. What she traded higher intelligence for, had resulted in her having a
lowered Taijutsu skill. That might also be attributed to the fact that her clan
only wanted basic Tai because they felt it was the mark of a savage to rely on
your hands to beat someone. It wasn’t something her clan was particularly proud
of, as they had touted that the mind was the greatest weapon. But Kumiko, being
an intelligent Kunoichi, knew that she had to increase her tai skills in order
to survive.

She had a new purpose in mind, and that purpose was to make
sure that Kaiiaki and her family remained safe. Kumiko had no one here, but she
could make herself into someone that defended others. She could bring herself
to being the kind of person people could rely on. That was what she was
striving for, to be the person people could turn to for help. She wanted to
make sure that nothing ever happened again, like had happened a few days ago.
She knew that hand to hand might come up at some point, and being the intelligent
woman she was – she knew that increasing her hand to hand was the only result.
She had spent some time, on her brake, using Ikken to view – like a movie or
reading a book – some of her ancestor’s hand to hand uses. So it was basic
work, mostly martial arts, which every Shinobi learned.

It seemed that the aspect of united mind and body had faded
in her clan over the ages, as they kept pushing the power of the mind. Kumiko
was going to do just hand to hand, so she brought herself up to stand before
the movable training dummy. It was the kind with many rotating rings and arms
that stuck out. Her goal would be to fight against it to the best of her
ability. Which would likely result in the woman attaining many injuries in the
process. Her Taijutsu was not the best, and she knew that she needed to
increase her skills not just for her sake –but for the sake of the genin she
would teach. Though her mind was her greatest weapon, her body could be as
well.

She started the first series of strikes, pushing the rings
of the dummy around and using her body to block dodge and roll around it. She
was hitting it at a variable speed, working her way through procedures and
typical Taijutsu hand to hand maneuvers. It was nothing like a Hyuuga, but she
did have basic training in Tai. She was going to change that, and that’s
exactly what she was doing. Kumiko let her mind focus, as her mind morphed the
training dummy into a ghostly figure of her older brother. Daiki, the bastard
she had slaughtered when he laughed about the death of Masaki.

She had approached them, her mind remembered in a ghostly
way, after she had found Masaki dead in the apartment she and him had shared.
Her hands moved striking and increasing in speed as she seemed to start to
dance around the dummy at a higher rate, the anger radiating from her. This was
a cathartic training, as she realized she was releasing pent up frustrations at
the same time. She remembered that moment, when she approached her father and
brother. Her palm moved out flat to slap the top tier around, ducking down and
pulling her legs up at the same time to avoid the lowest tier that she had
kicked at a moment after doing the top tier. She dropped and then rolled around
the dummy, and found herself moving faster.

Maybe training wasn’t that difficult, but what was difficult
was the emotions in her heart. The feelings, and the memories. Watching the
smug look on her father’s, and her brother Daiki’s, face as they told her that
yes they had made sure that Masaki Kurama would no longer be a chance to sully
their blood. She gave a small sound, that turned to a cry of outrage as she started
to strike the dummy at a higher rate. Jumping back and diving in, her body
moving around it as she ducked and rolled – dodged and cried.

“It’s all your fault, you couldn’t let me be happy. I didn’t
care that he was a Kurama, I didn’t care that his family didn’t have a lot of
money. I loved him, and you took him from me.” She cried out in a half choked
whisper. The tears dancing in her eyes as she stood in front of the dummy and
started to pant, the cry wracking her body for a moment as she clutched her
arms around herself. She dropped down to her knees, her hands stilling the
dummies rotations as she used her hands to make all the tiers stop. Her
forehead pressed to the wood as she found her body wracked with rather
strangely quiet cries .The tears still coursing down her cheeks as she let her
body rest against the dummy.

When pain is locked up for too long, it manifests in various
ways. It seemed that Kumiko was being forced to take a break, by her own body,
so that she could calm down enough to continue the rest of her training. But it
really sucked, for her, that her body was doing this at this time. It was the
birth, the birth of Yukio Namikaze that had awakened these memories in her.
Seeing that young couple and their baby, and the family that surrounded them. A
place Kumiko didn’t belong, a place Kumiko could never belong. The pain was a
pulsing ache in her chest, because she could have had a family like that, if
her father and brother had not taken the man she loved from her.