[Hōzuki Keneō]

To say that the past weeks had been eventful and taxing would be to spill into the world the single greatest understatement of the year, perhaps of this century. Where the death of his grandmother had been the biggest point of sadness for him this year, the fact that Taiso had ended up getting himself killed but a mere three weeks ago had done a lot to add to his overall sadness and moodiness. When his grandmother died, it marked the passing of an old woman who had lived a rich, full and long life, surrounded by her loved ones. While on her death bed, she had mentioned feeling sad for having to say goodbye to those that she would be leaving behind, but also happiness over getting to see those who had departed again.


People such as Keneō's uncle, as well as his mother and father, which to his grandma meant that she would get to see two of her children again that had passed away before her. He had often heard her discuss the matter with his grandfather, as well as being one of the few things he remembered of his parent's funeral after the Sanbi had rampaged through the village. When she finally fell asleep and stopped breathing, Ken wondered whether or not she would be able to see his parents and uncle again. For her sake, he really hoped that she would be able to, though he himself wasn't the religious type. In his experience, when people died, that was more or less the end of the story, which made the concept of death that much more difficult to deal with.

[Hōzuki Keneō]

There were no second or third chances, there were no do-overs, there was no reincarnation or anything of the sort. There was only the moment when one's lights went out, and their body just started rotting until there was nothing left over the span of a few years. In that sense, he felt incredibly sad when his grandma died, though he knew that he shouldn't as she had been given the chance to make the most out of her life and live it for all that it was worth. More often than not, the young Hozuki found himself wishing that his parents and uncle were given that chance to. His uncle so that he would have been given the chance to father any potential children, and his parents so that they could actually be parents to the child that they had, the one they had died protecting.

But when it came to Taiso, the way he felt about all of it was a whole lot different. While he put Kagewani into its scabbard after giving it a proper cleaning, Ken attached it to his waist before putting his footwear on and leaving for the training yard. This time however, he would not be going to the public training yard, but rather found himself walking over to the Hozuki clan compound so he could use the one they had there. Since a few weeks had passed since Ken had been the one to find the lifeless body of Taiso while out on a mission, word had been spreading among the rank and file about how a Genin had been killed, yet the killer remained at large. Understandably, this had been the leading cause of both fear and anger.

[Hōzuki Keneō]

Fear for the younger shinobi who no longer considered themselves impervious, anger by others who wished to find out who had done Taiso in, so they could do the same to him as what he had done to one of their own. And since Taiso had been the only other squad member of Team 3 alongside Ken himself, whenever he went out to train, he was confronted by people quite regularly as they were trying to make sense out of what had happened while also checking in to see how he was doing. It had been the reason why he had decided to seclude himself, finding that the Hozuki clan's compound was usually nice and quiet with people tending to their own business without butting into that of others such as Ken's.

While he understood that people wanted to have their questions answered and their feelings acknowledged, them believing that Ken would be the right person to do this for them seemed somewhat stupid. After all, he had been the one that had found the body and had to lift it back all the way to the hidden mist. Not too long before that, that same body had told him that he wanted to create a world where people would be able to smile and laugh together. A world where there were no looming conflicts and wars, a world Ken himself had told him was impossible to create due to humanity being its own worst enemy. But that had not been able to shift his goals, as the fool had even kept himself from learning any kind of harmful techniques.

[Hōzuki Keneō]

Taking out one of three scrolls he had borrowed, rolling them open and giving them a proper read, the aura around Ken seemed to be one of calm serenity, one of peace. But as he was reading through the scrolls as his own leisure, that vibe could not be further from the truth. He was furious. The scrolls he had brought were somewhat of a distraction as they all contained a form of Kenjutsu he believed might aid him once he got around to actually wielding Kagewani, which was something he had been holding off on. Kagewani was one of the weapons that had been recovered from his dad's body after the incident, and had been in his grandfather's care up until a week or two ago.

Ken had been against wielding the weapon and had actually been bringing a training sword along so he could use a weapon for self-defense purposes, as well as to take out opponents with a blunt weapon. He had been wanting to see the best in people, unless they had done something that was utterly irredeemable like kidnapping children and using them as human shields to hide behind while going about their despicable actions. Other criminals he however, he wanted to just bring in alive. But after one of their own had been killed by what may very well have been a very average criminal, Ken had begun to take up Kagewani while simultaneously bringing up his level of skill with martial tools such as the wakizashi and katana.

[Hōzuki Keneō]

They were a means of self-defense and potentially ending threats to himself and the village without the need to exert large amounts of chakra and damage a lot of stuff in the process. That to him made the use of weaponry, particularly the melee variety of weaponry into such an effective and worthwhile something to include into one's repertoire. That, and if he ever got to find the person who had murdered his former teammate, he very much wanted to use this particular weapon to sever and slice until the sheer pain caused the man's body to shut down and die. While it wasn't a very shinobi-esque way to think while at the same time being highly out of line as far as police methodology went, he honestly didn't care.

There were no rules when it came to the murder of friends, which was what Ken considered Taiso to be at some point. The ashen haired youngster was also well aware of the fact that he had looked up to him, in spite of the Hozuki being the younger of the two. That was because Ken was the more gifted of the two, as well as the one that had seemingly been working the hardest ever since they had passed the academy exam with their bodies and sanity still intact. When Ken had been helping him with controlling his chakra better so that he might be able to walk on water too, they had talks about how they would both be taking part in the Chuunin exams if all went well. And if it didn't, that Taiso would be tagging along and rooting for him from the stands.

[Hōzuki Keneō]

But now that he had died in such a stupid and preventable manner, all of his hopes and dreams for the future had died along with him, leaving Ken as the only member of the seemingly cursed Team 3. They had no third member, they had no Sensei, all they had was the two of them in order to push them along and to make one another stronger. But to put things into perspective, it was mostly Ken trying to make Taiso strong while the latter was making bad jokes and observations while struggling with what it meant to truly be a shinobi. The fact that he had been allowed to take on a C ranked mission by himself wasn't something that was wrong, as Ken had been doing a whole bunch of them by himself at this point.

It was the fact that Taiso had likely done so to try and show Ken that he could do the same thing was what got to him. So when he started reading the contents of the first scroll, which seemed to be about something called an Unabating River Fang, the imagery captured within the scroll made it seem like nothing more than a series of high paced and somewhat reckless attacks performed within close proximity to the target, which made it perfect for the wakizashi. But as he was reading into the actual functionality of the core technique, it seemed that this Kawarakiba style stuff was a lot more about reading one's opponent and making use of their flaws and openings before unleashing said high paced attack patterns upon them.

[Hōzuki Keneō]

Whether it was the wise thing to try and learn such a style when he was also still getting into the style Sora had been using, which was something he was doing solely from recollection based on their sparring session from some time ago, the boy imagined that his mind was capable enough to dabble in multiple schools of combat without getting flustered. In fact, it allowed him to channel his energy into something that was actually productive, rather than just trying to find new and inventive ways to avoid having to talk to people that caught a glimpse of him. The move was in and of itself rather simple after all, as all it really did was throw a strike at a target while instantly moving up for a secondary attack.

Aiming to lessen or outright remove the delay between the initial strike and any follow up moves, based on how capable the user was, it was the kind of thing that could really push someone towards the defensive while allowing themselves the opportunity to call dibs on offense. For that reason, the Tsuikaga techniques seemed to be right up his alley, especially when he could utilize it along with his hydrification technique in order to avoid counterattacks to some degree, granted the opponent wasn't versed in the use of lightning natured ninjutsu. Thanks to his own lightning chakra, he had come to experience the pain of being hit by lightning while liquified, which was a far better warning than the verbal warnings he had been given by his grandfather.

[Hōzuki Keneō]

In fact, as it were, it seemed like he was the only Hozuki at this point in time that actually mastered lightning style to a degree where they'd be able to utilize a technique as advanced as the Chidori. To be able to utilize such a technique along with his kenjutsu seemed like a distant dream however, as he could not yet utilize any one handed techniques at this point in time, while the use of Chidori in and of itself was still so difficult for him that it essentially turned him into a lightning-imbued battering ram that was only good for one thing and one thing only. To rush forth in a flash of light and crash into the first tangible object in his path, utterly destroying it while barely seeing any of the things he passed along the way.

Truly, tunnel-vision was the primary issue he faced when using the Chidori, which was exactly why he would refrain from utilizing it during the upcoming Chuunin exams. Honestly, it was a shame that he would not be able to enter into the exams along with his other team mate, as it would have been a fun display for the both of them, as well as a proper race to see who would be able to get the furthest before they'd end up either flunking or passing. Hell, it would have been nice to have the guy in the stands rooting for him, as he imagined it would be the only person that would have bothered to come around for his sake. After all, his grandfather was too old to make the trip to Amegakure, and everyone else he knew was more or less taking part in the actual exam or seemed busy.

[Hōzuki Keneō]

But that was something he had grown accustomed to. Or rather, it was something he had sought for quite some time now, the chance to stand on his own two feet and to look after himself in a way that would allow him to see whether or not he could be his own 'man'. In spite of being a teenager, living by himself, cooking healthy meals, heading to and from bed nice and early so he'd get lots of rest, as well as holding onto two jobs at the same time was something many considered to be fairly admirable. Hell, he considered it to be quite a feat himself, though he wasn't about to let something like that get to his head. What mattered was the fact that he was quite adept at being by himself and taking care of himself, so that would be what he would focus on.

After all, it seemed almost like that was the lesson this village was trying to teach him by having him go through rather specific trials and tribulations. The death of Taiso was just one thing that came at the end of a long line of such 'trials'. The fact that their team was the only one that did not have a teacher or a leading figure had been rather telling, there not being a third member to fill out their team making it feel even more like the two of them had just been left to their own devices. Perhaps if they had had a sensei, someone like Taiso would have been kept from taking on any missions beyond D rank by himself, and maybe that would have kept him alive long enough to learn that offensive techniques were a must in this line of business.

[Hōzuki Keneō]

But as he kept practicing the foundation of this technique by cutting forward before coming right in with a secondary strike to follow up on it in an attempt at not leaving a window for counter attacking, Ken knew that having a sensei likely wouldn't have mattered much. In many ways, he himself had been the problem. Cutting against the training dummy before attempting a secondary cut within a second at a different location, he pretended the dummy was somehow sentient, picturing an enemy that did not exist trying to attack him after his own initial assault. This kind of mental imagery training helped him make the most out of his exercise without having a need for actual training partners.

But that was one of the many reasons why he had thought to himself that he had been the problem within their work relationship. Ken had adapted to being by himself. He had figured out ways for him to get stronger without having to rely on other people because the village he had been dedicating himself to had failed to present him and Taiso with a suitable sensei. In response, he had been using his intellectual prowess in order to figure out what he needed to do to keep himself ahead of the curve, which had him taking on a lot of missions at this point, and perhaps even more training exercises such as the one he was currently taking part in. But all of that solo training meant that his other team member was more or less on his own too.

[Hōzuki Keneō]

So while he was more than welcome to tag along, Ken just functioned on a higher level, and rather than letting himself get dragged down, he just started working harder so he could still do his own things but also had time to train and undertake missions along with his team mate. And the more Ken kept improving, the more Taiso likely felt like he was being left behind, incapable of keeping up with the growth of the other. And in his rush to keep up, he had bitten off more than he could chew, and died as a result of the culmination of his own choices. Choices that had, for better or worse, been amplified to a nominal extent by Ken's own actions leading up to that point.

And while he was still very much angry over what had happened and held a grudge against the person that ended the life of his team member, he wasn't so much feeling sorry for himself or for Taiso anymore. As the days turned into weeks with the Chuunin exams rapidly approaching, the boy was starting to figure out what life was truly like. He was starting to figure out what he was truly like, and what it would mean for him to move forward as a shinobi of the hidden mist. For him, shinobi life had started without a guiding hand from a sensei, which had forced him to take his own growth into his own hands, thus causing him to plant the seeds of his own advancement and making him more capable of standing on his own two feet.

[Hōzuki Keneō]

He did not need to count on anybody else, aside from those few missions that were likely still looming over the horizon that required a task force for them to be undertaken properly. And that was something he could live with, though he didn't think that acting as a part of a task force and nothing else would sit with him all too well. The life he had adjusted himself to required a great deal of personal freedom and the ability to undertake missions of his own without any oversight or people weighing him down. Striking the dummy several more times as the technique itself started settling into his hands a good deal better, Ken was certain that he had it down to the point where he could utilize it properly in a fight.

It was after all one of the basic techniques that belonged to the style itself, and was relatively easy to perform with a sword that had a shorter blade such as a wakizashi. In a way, it almost felt like cheating, though if there was one thing Ken had come to accept, it was the fact that adjusting something to work out better for you wasn't directly cheating. It was ensuring that the techniques one learned could be utilized to their fullest, so he felt like it was okay to move onto the next technique. But rather than continuing along with the same scroll, he instead reached for one of the others, sat himself down and began reading into it. Again, this might have seemed odd to a lot of people, but it was perfectly normal for him.

[Hōzuki Keneō]

Ken had always been the type that wanted to learn the fundamentals of something before he would go delving deeper into it. One such example had been when he had been struggling to learn lightning style ninjutsu, which he had been training almost non-stop for fourteen days. Then when he got more accustomed to the feel of it, he first learned how to use it to incapacitate another person through a low ranking technique, followed by him delving deeper into the more advanced stuff that caused him to develop the Chidori technique for himself. So when he had learned the first Ittoryu technique, his goal had not been to go through the entire style and systematically learn all that it entailed.

No, quite the opposite. It had made him want to learn the basics of various other techniques in order to create the foundation for a style that was entirely his own. But to come up with a highly personalized style of combat, one that was perfectly suited to his needs and blended in with his own strengths and weaknesses, he would need to figure out which styles would function best as a foundation. A stepping stone of sorts. Because the Ittoryu school had a lot to offer that worked out well with his more innate Hozuki skillset, while this Kawarakiba stuff worked out well with his weapon of choice and the fact that he could evade a lot of threats with the previously mentioned set of skills he already possessed.

[Hōzuki Keneō]

Which was what took him into this next scroll, one that described the basics of a style of kenjutsu that went by the name Ten ken-ryū, or heavenly sword. Whenever he read these sorts of things, he often wondered who came up with such grandiose naming schemes. Because to call something 'heavenly' meant that it had to be something that transcended this earthly plane and reached into the realm of the gods, making all other sword styles gravely inferior to it. And that was something he could not help but doubt, though he was willing to let himself be surprised. Which was a good thing, as this core technique wasn't anything like he had expected.

As it turned out, this technique was one that would allow him to recall his sword to his hand if it were to be disarmed, though that was just as basic purpose. In Ken's head, this kind of thing already went far beyond this simple approach to swordsmanship, leading him to think up ways that would allow him to throw his sword and then use this technique as a means of recalling it back to his hand. In fact, if he could figure out how a technique such as this one functioned, he might be able to apply it to other kinds of thrown projectiles as well in order to create what could essentially be considered a double assault where he could throw something once and then call it back around for a secondary attack from behind.

[Hōzuki Keneō]

The applications for these sorts of techniques seemed endless, which made it that much more worthwhile for the young Hozuki to not get stuck on a single sword style, but use what time he had to figure out the fundamentals and basics to a bunch of them and then move on from there. One thing he noticed about these sword training sessions was that it managed to let him take his mind off of the Taiso situation and the amount of people he was hiding from at this point in time. It also worked as a perfect means through which he could vent all of that extra energy and frustration, which when merged with his own intellectual prowess helped him to quickly grasp new concepts such as these styles.

Channeling his chakra into Kagewani, he threw it into the training dummy from a distance of roughly five meters. Since he wasn't a physically strong individual that could accurately throw a weapon with the size and weight of a wakizashi with enough force to penetrate a dummy, this distance would have to do for the sake of the training. As the blade passed into the dummy, its sharp blade pushing itself through cleanly, Ken held out his hand. Focusing himself on the chakra he had left inside of the weapon, he mentally pictured himself reaching over to grab the weapon by the handle and rip it out before tugging it back to himself. At first, very little happened aside from the weapon wiggling back and forth inside of the dummy like a fish on dry land.