Post by Tako on Jun 30, 2015 21:08:13 GMT
It had taken Tako a full day to scale the mountain, and now that she was finally close to reaching the peak of it, she could feel the ache in her limbs, the exhaustion settling over her body. It was certainly one of the tallest peaks she had ever come across, and though she could have chosen to simply fly up it in a tiny amount of time, she’d decided that the journey was worth experiencing on foot. At the time, that decision had seemed like a sensible one. Now? Now she was less certain of that decision. Sweat drenched her clothing, her energy was at its limit and it was all she could do to haul her body up and over the final rocky ledge, to roll herself to the top of the mountain and lay beneath the starry sky.
The sky above was a dark curtain, studded with tiny pinpricks of starlight. The moon – just a few days ago so dominant in the sky – was now starting to fade, no longer a glorious disc but instead starting to wane into a more muted darkness which stopped that dazzling light from being too overwhelming.
For long moments she lay there, exhausted and struggling to think of anything at all beyond the tired ache in her limbs. As she brought air back into her lungs, though, and as the fatigue was slowly banished from her muscles, she was able to appreciate the magnitude of what she’d done. Yes, the journey had been incredibly difficult – needlessly so, really, as she could have taken an easier path at any time… but she hadn’t. She’d struggled up the side of the mountain, and now that she had finally made it she could look up at this clear, quiet night sky without any hindrance, and if she could just…
Yes!
Forcing herself up onto her elbows was a challenge in itself, but then she could see the wonderful view laid before her. Miles upon miles of countryside, studded with tiny villages and forgotten townships. From here, in the morning, she’d be able to consider what it was she wanted to do next; where the next leg of her journey might take her, though she had no real idea where that might be, that was part of the joy of it. Nobody – not even she – knew precisely where she was going to go next. That kind of freedom was a rare joy all of its own, and it was worth any hardship to obtain… even if that meant that she had to slow herself down by bullheadedly refusing to take a perfectly sensible shortcut around a seemingly-insurmountable obstacle. The mountain had risen before her, and she had conquered it on its own terms; that was something that she could undoubtedly be very proud of.
As she slumped back against the ground, Tako thought for one horrible moment that the stars were winking out above her… but as the rainbow-haired girl’s eyes slowly closed, she realized that no, that wasn’t it at all; it was just that the challenge had been met and defeated, and so now she could allow herself to relax… and in her relaxation, sleep.
The next morning, Tako arose with little memory of the dreams that had come the night before – which was not, in itself, all that notable. Tako rarely remembered her dreams, which she always thought was largely because she lived so much in the moment – dwelling on the past was of little help in journeying towards her future, and it was the future that always interested her more than the present.
What awoke her instead was a riot of colour, brilliant and glorious, which splashed across the horizon in a flare of brilliant oranges and yellows, hot pinks which gradually, as she watched, melted into the soft blues of the early morning. Birdsong rang out from the forest beneath her, and the girl felt her lips quirk up into a smile unbidden by her conscious mind; to see such a glorious thing written out in the landscape before her… any doubts that she might have had that this was a useful and worthwhile journey were banished instantly from her mind. How could anyone fail to be inspired when confronted with such beauty? It was as though she were watching the planet awakening from its slumber along with her, and as she rose and banished the night chill from her bones, the girl gathered enough ki energy about her to melt the frost, and began to get to work on her morning routing: katas for the next hour, then it was time to try and find something she could eat for breakfast!
Breakfast turned out to be a particularly unfortunate and slow-moving mountain goat. Not a traditional breakfast, perhaps, but she hadn’t been able to stop for dinner the night before and it didn’t take long for the creature’s roasting flesh to smell impossibly good to her. As she ate, she watched the sun creep higher on the horizon and mused about the possibilities laid out before her. She could see all sorts of well-worn paths through the wilderness; it would be trivial to jump down from the mountain and join any of them, but, somehow, that didn’t feel very tempting to her. Instead, there was some temptation to staying atop the mountain to continue her training. This far away from any civilization, it might be worthwhile to practice some ki techniques that would risk being too damaging to practice elsewhere. The last thing she wanted to do was accidentally cause a big explosion and start a forest fire or something awful like that – and she’d seen enough scarred wasteland in her travels to suspect that such things were very definitely possible. The question, then, was where to start.
Ki energy is the energy in all living things, and so she began as she always did; by gathering her strength. Power flowed from within her. Ordinarily, she’d focus it around her in a shell, or perhaps into her arms or legs when she was striking – though that was usually more an innate thing than something entirely conscious on her part. She knew the basics though, and she began by reiterating them to herself. Draw the energy into her hand, project it forwards, and a small flare of yellow power shot forth, striking a rock and causing it to burst in a shower of shrapnel. That got a firm nod from the girl, and she set her jaw as she narrowed her eyes seriously. Okay, that was the basics. What if she just tried to ramp the basics up a bit?
Tako’s feet dug into the earth, and her lip curled up as she started to focus her strength. Bright yellow power surged around her shoulder and coiled in a twisting spiral down her arm as she gathered it into her hand. There, rather than releasing it immediately, the girl braced herself and flexed her fingers. The power grew and grew, slowly at first, and swirling into the middle of her palm until a tight ball formed. It didn’t stop there, though. She kept on going until the ball had grown into a decently sized sphere of surging yellow power – and then, only then, did she release it.
The detonation took her by surprise, and she was flung from the top of the mountain, struggling to catch her feet beneath her as her flight instinct came back. Her heart beat faster in her chest, and she looked down at the top of the place, where she had made her camp the night before – it was … an impressive hole she’d made there, the crater smoked gently in the aftermath of it, and the girl shook her head… okay, that was pretty cool. Now she just needed to be able to do it in less than a minute.
From below, the villages and towns were left to wonder who was setting fireworks off from the top of the mountain during the day. Rather than risk continuing to burst ki against the mountaintop itself, Tako had taken to firing them up into the air, where they travelled high up until they finally burst, harmlessly, over the mountain spire. The result was a whole new type of training for her. Where she’d trained how to deliver crushing punches and kicks, swift sword-blows and preordained blocking movements over the years, she’d rarely trained her ki in anything like as systemic a way. Now, she had found something that worked for her; and it felt good, but it also felt… intimidating.
Physical strikes were very simple, you either pulled them off in the proper way or you didn’t, there was little room for variation; the artistry came in knowing which attacks and defences should follow from each other, where precisely she should be aiming on her opponent and how to counter their style with her own. Energy had nothing at all to do with anything so simple. The more she called upon her energy, the more she came to realize that it was her spirit; her willpower, emotions and fighting strength which determined how successful she was in calling forth the power and shaping it in the proper way.
It was fascinating how different it felt to learning a really good uppercut, but it was also a little intimidating. Tako had punched out soldiers before; she’d even decimated advanced battle suits… but that had all been in the heat of the moment. The skills she’d learned were for practicing martial arts, not destroying her opponents utterly. Tapping into this energy in such an overt and violent way felt like a real step forward, and it was both surprising and frightening how easily this power came to the fore. If she wasn’t careful with it, she understood almost immediately, she could cause untold destruction with it… it was a gift, and she was going to have to be very careful how it was she chose to use it.
At the same time, she felt as though there were new depths within her that she could start to plumb. When she used the Kurei shielding techniques, for instance, she knew that there were three distinct levels she could call upon; the easiest, the more difficult, and one which she had only ever successfully managed to employ during times of extreme need. Perhaps it was that she could sharpen this technique by simply trying to take it beyond the quick stage and towards something that relied upon more power?
She finished off the rest of the goat for lunch whilst she mused these thoughts, and by then she could sense that there was a small crowd of curious locals who had managed to gather near the bottom of the mountain and were wondering what on earth was going on at the top. That was fine, as far as she was concerned. Let them watch – she enjoyed putting on a good show, even if that wasn’t exactly the point of her training. The point was to see how far she could go before she ran up against her inner limits; now was the time to try and discover that limit.
Once again, Tako braced herself against the floor of the mountain, and this time, when she started gathering power it wasn’t just the ‘easy’ power that she called to herself, it was power from within her very heart. Tensing, Tako’s teeth ground together, and she could feel the difference before it even started to manifest. Sweat stood out on her brow in thick beads, and brilliant, blinding white light surged across her arm in wild sparks. Her left hand clamped down tight around the right wrist, and she took a deep breath, trying to stabilize the strength.
There was only so much she could do on that score.
It was like trying to wrestle fire. Every time she thought she had a grasp on it, it shifted and changed its form, evading her attempt to control it. The girl’s eyes squeezed shut tight, and her breath was heavy in her lungs, her heart pounding in her ears as arcs of shocking white burned against the floor, crackled on the air with the sharp scent of scorched ozone. It was … it was difficult! But she’d never allowed herself to be defeated by something just because it was difficult before! She refused to be defeated now!
The girl was vaguely aware of the sound of screaming, and it was only when she felt her throat starting to get raw that she realized that the sound was coming from her own mouth. Her whole body felt numb, but she could feel the power surging through her fingertips, tingling on her palm and up and down her entire arm.
It was with a final, momentous, effort that Tako was able to finally force the power into something like a coherent shape. The blinding white light was still painful to look at, forced between her fingertips in a rough sphere, the energy within sparked wildly, and with a final, desperate effort she flung it forwards.
The elation that Tako felt as she watched her attack form into a round shape and streak away from her was almost immediately replaced with a sense of dread and horror. She hadn’t aimed it carefully enough! The attack flew forwards from her palm, and impacted the mountain before she could even begin to stop it.
At once, Tako’s energy surged to answer the detonation, her fatigue banished in an instant. The girl’s focus came to her as the explosion blew an enormous hole in the side of the mountain; not just a crater, but vaporizing a good portion of the landmark. Her eyes widened in shock and terror, and she could already see rocks tumbling towards the ground – and the people – below her.
She’d caused a landslide. What the hell was she going to do?!
It was a horrifying moment. This was exactly the kind of situation she’d hoped to avoid, and her clumsiness had brought it upon her! In slow motion, she could see the rocks arc neatly through the air, and the growing realization on the faces of the people below her as they stared down tons of earth and dirt. There was only one thing she COULD do to try and save it – she had to call up as much as she could as quickly as possible.
This time, it was pure instinct – no thought, no planning, no strategy. Tako reached into the very pit of her soul, and from there, she did what felt right. No thought, pure emotion.
“SUPAH! NOVAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”
The echoing cry could be heard for miles around; more impressive still was the perfect orb of brilliant orange light which erupted from the girl’s outstretched palm. The energy within was bright orange and yellow, mottled, like the surface of the sun and just as intense to stare at. People below were forced to look away as the perfect sphere flared and spat, seated directly in the path of the oncoming rocks.
This time, Tako didn’t let it go. This time, she held it carefully in position. The moment that the landslide struck it, the supernova detonated, and this time, it was a truly legendary explosion. The earth shook, and a mushroom cloud stretched high into the sky.
Tako held it together long enough to see the mushroom cloud, and allow herself a small smile. Whatever did scatter on the crowd below would be nothing more than dust and tiny shards; nothing that they would actually be endangered by… and then the pressure wave hit her, and the girl was knocked clean out of the sky, all her exhaustion rushing back to hit her like a freight train, right between the eyes.
That was more difficult than climbing a mountain; harder than scaling any peak she had ever scaled before.
At least, she thought, as she tumbled through the air in an almost peaceful fashion, she’d definitively found the limit of that particular technique.
And then she hit the ground, and Tako didn’t think anything else until the next sunrise came to wake her from her slumber.
The sky above was a dark curtain, studded with tiny pinpricks of starlight. The moon – just a few days ago so dominant in the sky – was now starting to fade, no longer a glorious disc but instead starting to wane into a more muted darkness which stopped that dazzling light from being too overwhelming.
For long moments she lay there, exhausted and struggling to think of anything at all beyond the tired ache in her limbs. As she brought air back into her lungs, though, and as the fatigue was slowly banished from her muscles, she was able to appreciate the magnitude of what she’d done. Yes, the journey had been incredibly difficult – needlessly so, really, as she could have taken an easier path at any time… but she hadn’t. She’d struggled up the side of the mountain, and now that she had finally made it she could look up at this clear, quiet night sky without any hindrance, and if she could just…
Yes!
Forcing herself up onto her elbows was a challenge in itself, but then she could see the wonderful view laid before her. Miles upon miles of countryside, studded with tiny villages and forgotten townships. From here, in the morning, she’d be able to consider what it was she wanted to do next; where the next leg of her journey might take her, though she had no real idea where that might be, that was part of the joy of it. Nobody – not even she – knew precisely where she was going to go next. That kind of freedom was a rare joy all of its own, and it was worth any hardship to obtain… even if that meant that she had to slow herself down by bullheadedly refusing to take a perfectly sensible shortcut around a seemingly-insurmountable obstacle. The mountain had risen before her, and she had conquered it on its own terms; that was something that she could undoubtedly be very proud of.
As she slumped back against the ground, Tako thought for one horrible moment that the stars were winking out above her… but as the rainbow-haired girl’s eyes slowly closed, she realized that no, that wasn’t it at all; it was just that the challenge had been met and defeated, and so now she could allow herself to relax… and in her relaxation, sleep.
The next morning, Tako arose with little memory of the dreams that had come the night before – which was not, in itself, all that notable. Tako rarely remembered her dreams, which she always thought was largely because she lived so much in the moment – dwelling on the past was of little help in journeying towards her future, and it was the future that always interested her more than the present.
What awoke her instead was a riot of colour, brilliant and glorious, which splashed across the horizon in a flare of brilliant oranges and yellows, hot pinks which gradually, as she watched, melted into the soft blues of the early morning. Birdsong rang out from the forest beneath her, and the girl felt her lips quirk up into a smile unbidden by her conscious mind; to see such a glorious thing written out in the landscape before her… any doubts that she might have had that this was a useful and worthwhile journey were banished instantly from her mind. How could anyone fail to be inspired when confronted with such beauty? It was as though she were watching the planet awakening from its slumber along with her, and as she rose and banished the night chill from her bones, the girl gathered enough ki energy about her to melt the frost, and began to get to work on her morning routing: katas for the next hour, then it was time to try and find something she could eat for breakfast!
Breakfast turned out to be a particularly unfortunate and slow-moving mountain goat. Not a traditional breakfast, perhaps, but she hadn’t been able to stop for dinner the night before and it didn’t take long for the creature’s roasting flesh to smell impossibly good to her. As she ate, she watched the sun creep higher on the horizon and mused about the possibilities laid out before her. She could see all sorts of well-worn paths through the wilderness; it would be trivial to jump down from the mountain and join any of them, but, somehow, that didn’t feel very tempting to her. Instead, there was some temptation to staying atop the mountain to continue her training. This far away from any civilization, it might be worthwhile to practice some ki techniques that would risk being too damaging to practice elsewhere. The last thing she wanted to do was accidentally cause a big explosion and start a forest fire or something awful like that – and she’d seen enough scarred wasteland in her travels to suspect that such things were very definitely possible. The question, then, was where to start.
Ki energy is the energy in all living things, and so she began as she always did; by gathering her strength. Power flowed from within her. Ordinarily, she’d focus it around her in a shell, or perhaps into her arms or legs when she was striking – though that was usually more an innate thing than something entirely conscious on her part. She knew the basics though, and she began by reiterating them to herself. Draw the energy into her hand, project it forwards, and a small flare of yellow power shot forth, striking a rock and causing it to burst in a shower of shrapnel. That got a firm nod from the girl, and she set her jaw as she narrowed her eyes seriously. Okay, that was the basics. What if she just tried to ramp the basics up a bit?
Tako’s feet dug into the earth, and her lip curled up as she started to focus her strength. Bright yellow power surged around her shoulder and coiled in a twisting spiral down her arm as she gathered it into her hand. There, rather than releasing it immediately, the girl braced herself and flexed her fingers. The power grew and grew, slowly at first, and swirling into the middle of her palm until a tight ball formed. It didn’t stop there, though. She kept on going until the ball had grown into a decently sized sphere of surging yellow power – and then, only then, did she release it.
The detonation took her by surprise, and she was flung from the top of the mountain, struggling to catch her feet beneath her as her flight instinct came back. Her heart beat faster in her chest, and she looked down at the top of the place, where she had made her camp the night before – it was … an impressive hole she’d made there, the crater smoked gently in the aftermath of it, and the girl shook her head… okay, that was pretty cool. Now she just needed to be able to do it in less than a minute.
From below, the villages and towns were left to wonder who was setting fireworks off from the top of the mountain during the day. Rather than risk continuing to burst ki against the mountaintop itself, Tako had taken to firing them up into the air, where they travelled high up until they finally burst, harmlessly, over the mountain spire. The result was a whole new type of training for her. Where she’d trained how to deliver crushing punches and kicks, swift sword-blows and preordained blocking movements over the years, she’d rarely trained her ki in anything like as systemic a way. Now, she had found something that worked for her; and it felt good, but it also felt… intimidating.
Physical strikes were very simple, you either pulled them off in the proper way or you didn’t, there was little room for variation; the artistry came in knowing which attacks and defences should follow from each other, where precisely she should be aiming on her opponent and how to counter their style with her own. Energy had nothing at all to do with anything so simple. The more she called upon her energy, the more she came to realize that it was her spirit; her willpower, emotions and fighting strength which determined how successful she was in calling forth the power and shaping it in the proper way.
It was fascinating how different it felt to learning a really good uppercut, but it was also a little intimidating. Tako had punched out soldiers before; she’d even decimated advanced battle suits… but that had all been in the heat of the moment. The skills she’d learned were for practicing martial arts, not destroying her opponents utterly. Tapping into this energy in such an overt and violent way felt like a real step forward, and it was both surprising and frightening how easily this power came to the fore. If she wasn’t careful with it, she understood almost immediately, she could cause untold destruction with it… it was a gift, and she was going to have to be very careful how it was she chose to use it.
At the same time, she felt as though there were new depths within her that she could start to plumb. When she used the Kurei shielding techniques, for instance, she knew that there were three distinct levels she could call upon; the easiest, the more difficult, and one which she had only ever successfully managed to employ during times of extreme need. Perhaps it was that she could sharpen this technique by simply trying to take it beyond the quick stage and towards something that relied upon more power?
She finished off the rest of the goat for lunch whilst she mused these thoughts, and by then she could sense that there was a small crowd of curious locals who had managed to gather near the bottom of the mountain and were wondering what on earth was going on at the top. That was fine, as far as she was concerned. Let them watch – she enjoyed putting on a good show, even if that wasn’t exactly the point of her training. The point was to see how far she could go before she ran up against her inner limits; now was the time to try and discover that limit.
Once again, Tako braced herself against the floor of the mountain, and this time, when she started gathering power it wasn’t just the ‘easy’ power that she called to herself, it was power from within her very heart. Tensing, Tako’s teeth ground together, and she could feel the difference before it even started to manifest. Sweat stood out on her brow in thick beads, and brilliant, blinding white light surged across her arm in wild sparks. Her left hand clamped down tight around the right wrist, and she took a deep breath, trying to stabilize the strength.
There was only so much she could do on that score.
It was like trying to wrestle fire. Every time she thought she had a grasp on it, it shifted and changed its form, evading her attempt to control it. The girl’s eyes squeezed shut tight, and her breath was heavy in her lungs, her heart pounding in her ears as arcs of shocking white burned against the floor, crackled on the air with the sharp scent of scorched ozone. It was … it was difficult! But she’d never allowed herself to be defeated by something just because it was difficult before! She refused to be defeated now!
The girl was vaguely aware of the sound of screaming, and it was only when she felt her throat starting to get raw that she realized that the sound was coming from her own mouth. Her whole body felt numb, but she could feel the power surging through her fingertips, tingling on her palm and up and down her entire arm.
It was with a final, momentous, effort that Tako was able to finally force the power into something like a coherent shape. The blinding white light was still painful to look at, forced between her fingertips in a rough sphere, the energy within sparked wildly, and with a final, desperate effort she flung it forwards.
The elation that Tako felt as she watched her attack form into a round shape and streak away from her was almost immediately replaced with a sense of dread and horror. She hadn’t aimed it carefully enough! The attack flew forwards from her palm, and impacted the mountain before she could even begin to stop it.
At once, Tako’s energy surged to answer the detonation, her fatigue banished in an instant. The girl’s focus came to her as the explosion blew an enormous hole in the side of the mountain; not just a crater, but vaporizing a good portion of the landmark. Her eyes widened in shock and terror, and she could already see rocks tumbling towards the ground – and the people – below her.
She’d caused a landslide. What the hell was she going to do?!
It was a horrifying moment. This was exactly the kind of situation she’d hoped to avoid, and her clumsiness had brought it upon her! In slow motion, she could see the rocks arc neatly through the air, and the growing realization on the faces of the people below her as they stared down tons of earth and dirt. There was only one thing she COULD do to try and save it – she had to call up as much as she could as quickly as possible.
This time, it was pure instinct – no thought, no planning, no strategy. Tako reached into the very pit of her soul, and from there, she did what felt right. No thought, pure emotion.
“SUPAH! NOVAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”
The echoing cry could be heard for miles around; more impressive still was the perfect orb of brilliant orange light which erupted from the girl’s outstretched palm. The energy within was bright orange and yellow, mottled, like the surface of the sun and just as intense to stare at. People below were forced to look away as the perfect sphere flared and spat, seated directly in the path of the oncoming rocks.
This time, Tako didn’t let it go. This time, she held it carefully in position. The moment that the landslide struck it, the supernova detonated, and this time, it was a truly legendary explosion. The earth shook, and a mushroom cloud stretched high into the sky.
Tako held it together long enough to see the mushroom cloud, and allow herself a small smile. Whatever did scatter on the crowd below would be nothing more than dust and tiny shards; nothing that they would actually be endangered by… and then the pressure wave hit her, and the girl was knocked clean out of the sky, all her exhaustion rushing back to hit her like a freight train, right between the eyes.
That was more difficult than climbing a mountain; harder than scaling any peak she had ever scaled before.
At least, she thought, as she tumbled through the air in an almost peaceful fashion, she’d definitively found the limit of that particular technique.
And then she hit the ground, and Tako didn’t think anything else until the next sunrise came to wake her from her slumber.
