Understanding And/Or A Lack Thereof ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ "Thanks for letting me stay here for the night, Makoto." It was a startling little turn of events. From what Ibuki had seen of the girl before, this 'Makoto' didn't strike her as someone this selfless. Even though Makoto was alone in the Rindoukan Dojo right about now, there was nothing forcing the tomboy to allow Ibuki to stay there. Makoto and Ibuki relinquished their fight just as the rain began to pour down on them outside in the courtyard. It was unfortunate. But both fighters were willing to put the battle on hold until they could finish it off when the rain died away. Unfortunately, the rain didn't die away until night fall. And that wasn't a good time to start fighting. So Makoto allowed Ibuki to spend the night at the Rindoukan Dojo. By now, Ibuki had stripped herself down to her normal street clothes. Her ninja garbs and kunai was all packed up in a scruffy brown sack that Ibuki carried with her to make a quick change every now and again. The two had spent most of the time until now talking over the fight. It was the usual stuff. What techniques they had used, where and how they were learned, what they could do to improve on them. This information was of more use to Ibuki than it was to Makoto, however. Something she was beginning to understand. Though Makoto still had a ways to go before she reached any seriously powerful level, all around she was a rather talented fighter in her own right. Ibuki was different. She was still in training at the heart of it all. The two girl sat a dinner table that had been purchased about three months ago during an intense training session. Makoto realized then when she trained too hard, her muscles got sore. Especially her legs muscles. So attempting the Seiza* whilst eating was a bit of an annoyance. So she used some of the finances generated by the few students that pulled into the Dojo every now and again to buy a western-style dinner table. One that had been left inside the kitchen. Ibuki sat across from Makoto on the other side of the table. Both had a rather bland-looking bowl of Kitsune-Soba in front of them. While the ninja-in-training looked down at her food with some concern, Makoto ate it healthily. Ibuki fiddled with her chopsticks. "...You're not much for variety, are you?" "...What... do you mean?" Makoto spoke between bites, "Is... there something... wrong?" To that, the longhaired woman heaved a sigh and just follow suit with the eating. "Nothing, I suppose. But it is nice to just relax for a bit. Passing all my tests can be a bit of a chore when you have to do 'um back-to-back." Makoto lowered her chopsticks. "...Well what kind of tests do you have?" She could do better than answer that outright. Ibuki reached into the back pocket of her denims and pulled out a piece of paper. She then tossed it to Makoto over the table. The karateka grabbed it before it drifted off and opened it up. "What is this?" Asked Makoto. Ibuki gestured to the paper. "Just read it." "Okay," She began reading, "Number one, track and kill seven wild boars. Number two, master use of Shuriken. Number three, produce twenty smoke bombs under self-direction. Number four, learn and master the Yoroi Doushi attack. Number five, defeat a fundamental martial artist... what is all this?!" "My tests..." Ibuki smiled, "...pretty excessive, huh?" Makoto noted the twenty more assignments Ibuki had on the sheet. "...Yes! Dash from Tokyo to Yokohama on foot in under three hours, climb a thirty-foot tree without the use of the hands, survive for three nights in the wild without provisions, scale 1/5 of Mt. Fuji... defeat a Sennin...?!" Ibuki giggled at that last one. "...Yeah. That's the final test. I made an attempt on it a couple weeks ago and faced off with this old guy with his arm tied behind his back. Needless to say, the dude kicked my ass. I think he was a little annoyed that I wanted a battle instead of a date at the time. But he was fairly polite about his win and didn't take things too far. In some ways I actually think he still took it easy on me, even though I could hardly keep up with him anyway. It was the first time I met an old man who could move as fast as I could. Go figure." Makoto looked up with disbelief. "...You don't actually try to do these things, do you?" "Well sure," The kunoichi replied, "Aside from the Sennin thing and the fundamentalist one, I've completed and survived them all. They were really tough, annoying and boring, but I've got most of them done. As soon as I beat you and find another Sennin to fight, I'll have it all done." "If you don't like this, then why bother?" The other girl questioned. "...So I can be a normal girl." Ibuki pulled a dreamy smile, resting her chin on her palm, "The ninja life is really exciting outside of all that mindless training and those tests. But I wanna be a normal kid, y'know? I wanna go out on dates, listen to music, go shopping and have fun with my friends. I can't tell you the amount of times I've had to turn down guys who wanted to go out with me all thanks to my ninja life. But I knew what my village elders would say. 'A shinobi-in-practice-if-not-yet-by-name must conduct herself with only the prosperity of the village's ninjutsu style in mind' Old buzzards. So once I pass my tests and become a fully-fledged ninja, I can put all this aside and be normal. Understand where I'm coming from?" Actually, Makoto did understand. It was just a matter of self-expression. The only difference between herself and Ibuki was that Ibuki wanted to shy away from combat for a normal life. While Makoto wanted to escape her own humdrum life to fight the fights that would re-stoke her fighting spirit. And allow her to restore the reputation of the Rindoukan Dojo, and thus honouring her dearly departed father. Two parallel opposites with a shared will to achieve an aim. "I think I do." Makoto replied. "Exactly," Ibuki went back to the whining, however, "By the way those old fuddy-duddies at my village act, you'd think I wasn't hot enough to get a date or something. It's nonsense, am I right?" Well that was a bit of an unexpected question. Makoto blinked a few second and then looked downwards to her bowl, one of her bare feet curling over the other under the table. "...Uh... well, I..." And Ibuki produced a confused expression as Makoto was suddenly stuck for words. "...Is something wrong...?" Makoto blushed deeply, her eyes fixed on the table. "...N-No..."
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