Paks breathed shallowly, her chest moving up and down almost imperceptibly as she savored the scent of fresh growing things. Dew still clung to the leaves and blades of grass, leaving her skin moist in the passing. If she looked up, Paks would almost be able to see the sun rising up from behind the sheer cliff side, shimmering rays of sunlight casting the crags into brilliant relief. As it was, Paks noticed the approaching morning when the shadows thickened, slim umbral stalks reaching out towards her from underneath the stems of foliage.
She took one last cleansing breath, before glancing assessingly towards the sun. Nearly morning by anyone’s standards Paks calculated, releasing the air in her lungs slowly as she began to make her way downward, clinging to the cliff side until she reached bottom. Paks glanced around the area that seemed so removed from humanity. It was hard to imagine that just a few minutes travel away was a Village bustling with life and people. Down here, Paks couldn’t even smell the traces of humans in the air. Everything was clean, and pure.
She had stumbled on the location almost by accident, wandering around the outskirts of Konohagakure one day while looking for a private place to train. She hadn’t wanted to use one of the training fields in fear of being seen, because really, what was the use of training if everyone knew your capabilities? And so she had set out on a quest to find some hidden plot of land, perhaps a copse of dense trees or something like that.
After meandering, she had begun walking westward and all that stopped her from suddenly plummeting as the ground crumbled out from beneath her feet were her quick reflexes. Paks managed to leap back, landing on stable ground. When the ground finally stopped moving, she carefully edged towards the break in the earth and peered down. There were many large boulders and rocks obscuring her vision, but she could make out a slim crevice in the earth. A fissure that seemed to go on forever, and it took several minutes for the stone she dropped down to make a sound as it hit the floor. Intrigued now, because earth didn’t shift itself every day, she concentrated chakra to the soles of her feet as well as her palms and began to carefully make her way down the side of the sheer cliff.
Only a person that was as small as Paks was, and that had the flexibility that she coveted could have maneuvered themselves past all the scree, and through the incredibly narrow fracture. After a while of hard work, the space beneath her body seemed to open up and she carefully shifted until she was clinging to the top of what appeared to be some sort of cavern. Working her way down to the floor, Paks glanced around in interest.
It was as if someone had carved out a oval shaped hole in the earth and then covered up the entrance with debris. It was an enclosed cave, the walls circling around to meet each other without any branching off corridors. The walls of this cavity were smooth and a brilliant white that seemed almost to glow in the meager light that seeped down from above. Upon glancing upward, Paks could barely make out the incision in the earth where she had slipped down from. It was a smaller cavern, but off towards the side near the opposite wall Paks could spot a trail of water that seemed to escape through the wall and disappear. Upon closer inspection she saw that some of the water was covered in a thin layer of ice due to the incredibly low temperatures.
After that discovery, Paks had decided to utilize this secret cavern for her training. No one else would be able to find it, and it was so deep down in the earth that no trace of her actions would be heard or sensed. Besides, the ethereal white walls drew her in just by their sheer aesthetics. It was obvious that the limestone cave had somehow been sealed off from water, and without the liquid to slowly dissolve the calcium-carbonate and thereby eat away at the walls that the calcite had instead crystallized to create this pure white coloring to the walls.
And luckily, today she had no other concerns and simply an ample amount of free time. Just the correct amount needed to get in some training. Paks edged towards the narrower side of the cavity, peering at the stalactites and stalagmites that reached towards the roof and floor respectively. Jagged rocks and dips in this part of the cave made for an extremely good obstacle course.
Smiling grimly, Paks gathered her concentration before starting off with a burst of speed. Heading straight towards the columns of rock she deftly swerved around them at the last minute, avoiding the tightly placed pillars. If it had just been dodging stalactites and stalagmites, then this practice wouldn’t really be all that hard. But this deep down in the earth, the ground was hardly even and not all that smooth either. While keeping a steady pace, and avoiding the random jumble of sharp stone edges in such close quarters she also had to watch her footing to make sure she was keeping her balance as well as avoiding the blade-edged ground.
Paks nimbly made her way past the obstacles, pivoting quickly before she reached the back wall and looping back the other way around. Ducking under a low hanging outcropping, she danced to the side to slip around a stalagmite before skirting a dent in the floor and gracefully leaping over patch of broken rock. She continued in this pattern, quickening her pace every so often. Every once and awhile, when her concentration slipped or when the tight control over her movements failed, Paks ended up with a dark bruise from crashing into something with full force, or even a handful of ugly gashes when her body strayed too close to a sharp edge.
Panting quietly, Paks was fully absorbed in her task. Intent on gaining just that much more motor control and agility through this task. She finally stopped when she began making more mistakes than not, once her body was that exhausted there was no point pushing past it. You wouldn’t achieve anything expect perhaps greater injury.
Breathing heavily, she rested her back against one of the walls and waited to regain her breath. She glanced down at herself, eying the scratches and cuts that were seeping blood sluggishly. Most of them were along her arms, when she forgot to move them correctly, or when they hadn’t been tightly held against her body on the sharper turns. Grabbing a few bandages, she quickly wrapped up the worst of them, wincing at an ache spreading in her thigh. No doubt by morning that leg would be a mass of dark bruises.
Satisfied with her results, she shifted and made her way towards the middle of the cavern, slowly climbing back out and into the brilliant sunlight of midday.
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OOC - Uhm, I’m not quite sure how this training thing works. Do I get to specify what stats I want to train? And if so, how many can I specify, etc.?
Subject: Paksennarion's Training 
Thu Sep 03, 2009 4:28 pm
