Elvensong was in a nice big field, enjoying the cooling breezes on a hot summer day. She was here with a purpose. The Shinigami student was there to train her Shunpo.

It was the one area she’d found herself excelling in naturally.

Mind you, there were plenty of students who surpassed her natural ability there. Being rather competitive in nature, Elven was determined to make up for the difference by practicing. Hence, a wide open space without anything to bump into.

First, she began concentrating her reiatsu. Everything began with that. Some people had a great natural upwelling of reiatsu... some had a natural gift for managing it precisely... Elven was on the lower side of reiatsu generation, and because of that she needed to be careful with expenditure. Which was fine with her. Control struck her as being a greater power than pure power anyway.

Breezes teased her hair this way and that until she had grasped a comfortable degree of reiatsu. And then she gazed into the distance, set her footing and let her Shunpo go.

She nearly hit the side of a building.

That wasn’t supposed to happen! She was a trainee, there was no way she could have covered the WHOLE field... except, she glanced back over her shoulder, she had.

The woman blinked, rechecked the distance and scratched her head.

Well, who would argue with a natural gift? Seemed that, for now anyway, Elven’s greatest need was control. She would train the other elements of Shunpo later.

She pulled herself together. Tried to loosen out of the shakes she’d gotten, and began to pull her reiatsu together again. This time she aimed, not for the distance, but for a particular section of the field. Carefully she triggered her Shunpo. Right now she wasn’t going to care if another could have beat her speed, or her distance... at the moment she needed precision above all else.

And she missed the mark by about forty yards.

THAT would not do at all! Meh.

She continued her training through the afternoon, and during successive days. Resting at times when her reiatsu was low, but always getting up and, day after day, trying to manage exact distances for each flash step.

And it was working. From forty yards, she cut her misses down to a reliable twenty. From twenty down to five. Whether she chose a target close to her, or far far away, she learned how to manage it precisely. She got good enough that she could hit her mark every time she started practicing on her way around the Seireitei and academy. Some other students did so as well, and to Elven’s smug delight, they got scolded for knocking into things, people and wrecking the occasional wall.

Oh yes, Elven was a competitive little twit at times, and she loved nothing more than flash stepping past another dazed student who had overestimated his or her abilities.

Approved +2 in speed. Realy stop making good posts me giving you plus two's is gona' look like favouritism.

(ooc: Favouritism? For me??? Woohoo! Bring it ON!

Ahem, what I mean is, Of COURSE you would never favor me unduely! )

Elven was back in a field again. She had already posted flags around the place at various distances, sometimes absurdly ambitious distances, but what the hey? She looked at her work and nodded.

The afternoon sun was hiding behind thick clouds today, and it looked like it might just rain. She'd found the field in a remote section of the Rukongai. She needed more room for today’s work so she’d come out here. The field was full of weeds and uneven footing. A few trees dotted the landscape here and there. It wasn’t the nicest place ever, but that made it perfect for her purpose.

Hopefully the rain would hold off until she was done for the day.

She felt good about her current level of control of the Shunpo... and if she wanted to excel it was time to start pushing the speed of the shunpo itself, and the length of her reach as well. Possibly rapidity of repetition might be useful as too, a thought that had occurred to her recently. Of each different element of the Shunpo, she guessed that was more likely to cause her grief than anything. Still, only a real world test would tell. But she was determined to master every element, her competitive juices had been tweaked and she wasn’t going to settle for second place to anyone.

It had also occurred to her that, in battle, you can’t kill what you couldn’t hit. When you were working with low natural spirit pressure like she was, well, that became a concern.

Unless you were REALLY stupid, that was.

She took her time assessing her environment, pinning each of the flags down in her memory. Also marking where the ground dipped into a streamlet, where it rose to a hill, and the boulders that poked belligerently out of the ground. No, it wasn’t the nicest place around, but the challenge of the space was exactly what she wanted.

She pulled together her reiatsu, picked a challenging far off target and let her Shunpo loose.

The field blurred, and objects seemed to leap out of the terrain to cause her grief. But she managed to avoid tripping. Just. Yes, she definitely needed to manage her speed better, as well as increase it. When her shunpo fell apart, she assessed her progress with a bit of disappointment. Her goal flag was still a fair distance away. A quick visual estimate put her reach at about two thirds of what she had aimed for. And she was bent over, hands on her knees panting like a dog on a hot day.

Well, the challenge was the point, after all.

Moaning and whining about every little ache, she pulled herself together. Pulling up her reiatsu felt like scraping the sides of an echoingly empty barrel. Using broken glass, no less.

Still, she managed. Again she assigned herself a goal, slightly less than the last target. No need to push herself stupid, after all. As far as she could push the Shunpo, she was still short by about 100 yards. Elven felt like crying. She stood there, bent over and huffing like mad, trying to give herself a little pep talk. After all, in this form of training, she was a total newbie. Stamina and skill would follow effort, and she’d only just begun. She knew that.

But she still felt like crying.

It didn’t matter, she still turned and faced her next target... concentrated her energy, remembered her form, let loose and... made it to within five yards.

Better. Tired as she was, she was still managing to extend her distance. But after all of three Shunpo she was wiped out and overstrained. If she kept pushing this element of the spell she was going to pass out.

Instead, she picked two relatively close flags. Darting from one to the other in fast repetition.

This had a far more pleasing result. Yeah, the hoping around the Academy and Seireitei had put her in good stead her. She could feel the strain creeping up on her. But she was far more resistant to wear and tear here. It felt... good. It felt like after a bit of healthful exercise, compared to the nasty debilitating tremors that the distance Shunpos had left her.

Well, that was telling. It meant she was going to be training far more heavily for distance than for repetition. But at least she had an exercise she could use when she was edging too close to exhaustion.

The only thing left for her to test out was speed. Even when she and the other trainees were throwing out their best Shunpo, the teacher could bypass them like they were nailed to the street. It was a bit humbling. Her ragged horde of Shinigami all had a secret yen to beat Sensei at her own game, but none of them even came close. It was clear that there were shunpo and there were SHUNPO.

But, oh, wouldn’t it be nice to surprise sensei some day? And that day had it’s roots right here in this field.

Inspired by that thought, Elven drew herself up to her full height, swept her field of flags with a masterful gaze, and started letting lose repeated Shunpos.

She varied her target elements with various flags, challenging terrain and random goals. She already could feel her breath coming more easily and her reach was definitely extending, although that was her weakest element.

When the rain did finally let loose, she didn’t want to leave so she just kept on. It was strange, in the middle of her Shunpo steps the raindrops seemed to slow... hesitate... even halt altogether. One little corner of her mind supposed that the uneven speed of the rain meant she was uneven herself. But for the most part she didn’t care. Wet and getting chilled, she just let herself experience the day.

It was one of her happiest training moments, out alone in that field with the rain keeping her company. She learned to cherish every moment of it, even the bleak despair after her first Shunpo of the day.

Even the days you wish would go on forever will come to an end. She left the flags up, and dragged herself home, exhaustion soaking through every muscle group she owned. But for all the agony her body complained of, her spirit was definitely on a high. She had a goal. She had the means. She was on her way.

She collapsed into her cot with the promise that tomorrow after class she would spend some quality time in that field... to whet her ambition.

She fell asleep with a rather wicked smile on her lips that night.

Approved +2 for speed, damn nice post.

You have reached ten in speed, well done.

Thread locked