The Wind At My Back

It was gonna be a long night again. Kiigan sat out in the dark, made even darker by the persistent mist of his home village. His back was to a practice dummy, taking a break from general body training. He had some goals tonight. Something that was said in the Zeel incident still bothered him. The three pillars are coming. At the time he'd brushed it off, but now that he'd had time to process the implications, it was a legit concern. He'd been all but useless in that fight, having to rely on June awakening her spiky bone ability. He was dissatisfied, so here he was, in the cover of darkness to hide the fact that he now cared enough about being an effective shinobi enough to train intensely. He had a slacker bad-boy reputation to uphold, after all.

First on the list: Wind. He'd learned in academy that wind could supplement fire and make it more powerful. Since he had an affinity for fire, it seemed like wind would be good to add. Making the appropriate hand signs, he kneaded his chakra into the strange feeling element. When he thought he'd done it, he inhaled and blew, much like he would a fireball, but with the new element. A small gust formed, but dissipated quickly.

As he tried again, he could feel it getting easier, more familiar. He gave the wind chakra longer to build this time, unsure how long it should take before it would garner the force of an actual attack. Was it weird that he chose wind instead of water? It was already weird that he gravitated toward fire naturally, but that was probably caused by Matatabi's presence. Being from the Land of Water, most here were attuned to water jutsu. Most secret techniques were water and mist based, which made sense. Yet here he was, kneading wind chakra. Water felt unnatural, but that was probably due to it being the opposite nature of fire. Fire was weak to water. Wind felt next natural for him. You want to make your campfire burn hotter and bigger? Blow on it. Jutsu seemed to be the same way.

Ready to try again, he inhaled and blew. Dust and grass kicked up into the gust, swirling and blowing out into the misty tendrils. Better, but still not enough. Regulating the chakra was always the hard part for him. Even in school, he'd usually given up because he either put too much or too little chakra into his moves, and he didn't have the patience to fine tune it. He was much older now than he was then, and while he was still an impatient man, he was starting to get better chakra control.

Regulate. He needed a good amount of wind chakra, but not so much that he blew half the forest away. He visualized what he wanted it to do against the thick gray screen in front of his eyes. Somehow, it felt like breathing helped it all make sense, seeing as how it was air and was coming in and out of his lungs. The wind chakra felt the same way, building and ebbing like the wind during a storm. This sort of training was kinda boring, but he'd come to terms that it was necessary if he was going to protect himself, let alone anyone else.

Okay, this felt about right. One last time, he inhaled, then blew an appropriate blast. Strong enough to stoke a fire and deflect some projectiles. Hard enough to possibly knock someone over. With some work, he was sure he could learn some jutsu a little more deadly for when fire wasn't on the table, but right now this would do.