Kuroichi was diligently practicing the water wall jutsu he learned a few days prior, repeating the technique over and over until he almost fell to the damp ground in exhaustion.
He was back in his brutal routine of a workout plan and was giving it his all each and every day. Whenever he successfully cast the jutsu, his chakra spiraled outward, pooling together to form a semi translucent wall of water that could shield him from potential harm.
While the jutsu couldn't compare to the B-ranked Earth Release: Mud Wall Jutsu in defensive might, it was definitely superior over not having any defensive capabilities at all. He steadily improved his proficiency in the technique, gradually refining his precision and control over the water.
Suddenly his heartbeat spiked and an instinctive alertness washed over him. His eyes snapped toward the direction of his shelter, where Kurai was supposed to be.
For some reason, he could feel a distinct chakra presence that just emerged from that direction, and he couldn't be sure whether it was a predator that snuck into camp, or Kurai herself.
Worriedly, he ran back to the shelter as fast as he could, darting in between trees and dodging obstacles in his way left and right. Concerned about what was happening, he ran even faster, arriving only a short while after the chakra presence announced itself in the first place.
Relief washed over him as he saw Kurai curiously inspecting herself, also realizing that something within her had changed. She seemed totally fine, ecstatic even, about awakening her chakra.
Whether her awakening had something to do with the chakra infused flesh of the fogveil civet or not, Kuroichi didn't know, but he thought that it definitely gave Kurai that final push for her to awaken her chakra.
While he was happy for Kurai, he also noticed how he himself reacted to the new chakra presence in his vicinity. Without a doubt, he itched to unleash his dark release chakra to satiate the instinctive hunger that came with being close to a foreign chakra source.
He resisted his urges, however, clenching his fists to distract him. First he'd let Kurai breathe, acclimatize and slowly get used to her new state of being. During that timeframe, he'd have enough time to practice and improve his control over his own mental state even more.
While he wasn't even sure about how chakra development worked for the human body, he had even less of an inkling of an idea of what a chakra beast's development looked like.
Did they learn their techniques by themselves, coming naturally and instinctively, or do they need to be trained from the ground up? Maybe a bit of both?
He couldn't be sure, so he thought it'd be better to just observe Kurai for the next few days to weeks to see if anything unusual happened.
Kurai turned out to have an incredibly relaxing next two weeks. Her every need was cared for by Kuroichi, who had been carefully observing, without much interference, whether any changes were happening to her body. She spent her time being pampered, playing, eating and sleeping.
To her it felt like a dream come true, before, she wanted to spend more time with Kuroichi who had been busy training so much, but now he spent much more of his time around her.
However, every good thing has to come to an end eventually. One day, Kuroichi decided that she had enough time to get used to chakra and should start training with him.
He was being cautious before, wanting to see whether Kurai developed any ability by herself. Nevertheless, she didn't during this time.
He wasn't sure whether that was because she needed to be in a fight to instinctively learn any new ability she may have had, or simply because she didn't have anything special going on like that fogveil civet.
'Arghh, this is annoying! If she has any special ability she will figure that out sometime in the future, for now I'll simply train her as if she were human!'
And he did. It started with him having her train in the leaf balancing exercise. He had explained the process of how it worked to her, and thankfully, with her intelligence, she understood the process without issues.
Even so, she had never trained in anything like this before. She obviously disliked having to stay still and focus for a prolonged amount of time. Whenever the leaf fell, she kept trying to peck it, before using her wings to flick it away in another direction.
"Again."
She tried again and again, failing each time. She was ready to simply stop and end this farce.
"Again! Kuroichi yelled from the side, as he was observing. "Even chakra training needs patience, Kurai, like learning anything else. You may hate it now, but in the future you'll understand why these boring lessons are so important."
Kurai hooted in protest, but what could she do? If she were human, she would've been pouting for sure, instead, she just Huffed and got back to work.
After a while, she flopped onto the floor, totally exhausted. She had spent most of her chakra on the exercise, and was dangerously close to using everything she had. With her wings spread out and panting heavily, she looked up to where Kuroichi was.
"Good job Kurai, you did well today." He had a warm smile on his face as he ended the training. "Your chakra pool will grow with time, trust me."
As time passed, Kurai steadily improved. She wasn't anywhere near as fast as Kuroichi at learning new things, comprehending them and then putting it into practice. She was definitely talented though, a lot, even, from as far as he could tell. However, she definitely needed more time.
Kuroichi remembered Kurai being so frustrated whenever the leaf fell, as well as her puffing up her chest in pride as she tilted her head in slight confusion when she made her first visible improvements.
While Kurai was starting to just train her chakra, Kuroichi wasn't being idle, he had learnt to use the water clone jutsu during this time. The jutsu didn't pose a challenge for him to learn, it came easy, especially because of the similarities between the normal clone and the water clone jutsu.
He only had one more normal jutsu to learn from the scrolls, namely the body flicker. There were still two genjutsu and more fuinutsu for him to learn, but after that, he'd be on his own. Without a doubt, he'd need to figure out a way to learn more advanced jutsu eventually.
Inevitably, both of them bonded through their shared time spent training together. Even though they were working on different things, they still spent almost every waking second with each other.
While Kurai was still miffed about being forced to train like him, she quickly got used to it. Being sore and exhausted each night was like torture at the beginning, but once the body and mind got used to it, it became just another Monday.
She did, however, develop a new and incredibly annoying way to get under Kuroichi's skin. Whenever she was really annoyed with him because he pushed her too hard during training, she'd get back at him by using the classic Bird Jutsu: Poop Drop.
The first time it happened, she chirped triumphantly, flying in a lazy circle right above him, as if to mock him. "You little…." He laughed, though it was more like a disbelieving, half-angry, half-amused laugh. Looking up, he yelled, "I see you've still got too much energy, seems like you need more training!"
After that first time, whenever she did use the kinjutsu, it was luckily close enough to the river to quickly clean off. Her moves were too well-timed to be accidental, and he made sure that Kurai got back what she deserved each time.
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Drop some Power Stones pleaseee
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