Okuri, leaning comfortably against a rock in his courtyard, gnawing the last bits of meat off a deer femur, overheard Inuko screaming at his younger brother. Something about him ‘watching her the whole time’. As he heard her enter a different room, he returned to his own thoughts.
He had the feeling that someone was out to get him. He was very much used to this, as there had barely been a day in his life where someone didn’t want to smack him upside the head, if not kill him. He stood up, threw the bone away and resumed his training. He was working on a technique he referred to as ‘wind walking’. In his days as a ninja, he had seen skilled shinobi from other nations walk on ‘the Wind Path’. Doing so allowed them to merge with the wind, make every move necessary, and become solid again the moment they hit their target. The result was an almost instant strike, faster than almost anything else in a ninja’s arsenal. He had also seen users standing on air. Now Okuri was attempting to so the same thing……using no hand seals.
Well, no ninja hand seals. The twelve hand seals based on the Zodiac were strictly forbidden. However, the Ram, Dog, Serpent, Rat and Tiger seal often slipped through as local hand seals developed for the purpose of building up chakra. Perform more than one and you’d be caught. So Okuri planned to use one personally developed hand seal, the Wolf seal (which appeared similar to the Ram or Tiger seal, except the right fist from the Dog seal was transferred to the left hand) to help him perform wind walking. Eventually he would learn to do it without the aid of a seal.
He tried again, smacking his fist into his palm to form the Wolf seal and repeating what he had heard when he first saw the technique in action: “Kaze Do!”* He moved forward quickly, and his kick destroyed the wooden target. No. He canceled the imperfect technique. It wasn’t good enough. He hadn’t ‘merged’ with the wind.
He repeated this process for about an hour or so until he picked up an unfamiliar scent on the wind. It was smoky, and reminded him of burnt flesh. Trying to forget about his first and final attempt at cooking, he paid more attention to the scent, from which he could pick out 3 individual human scents. He shifted his head to the source of the scents. Yes, they were hiding in behind that tree. It was sort of pathetic; now that he was looking in that general direction, these spies where quite easy to see.
The spies huddled behind the tree, dressed from head to toe in black. On their heads, they wore a strange fiery emblem. They wore no armor and carried no weapons. That was their greatest mistake, and it would cost them their lives.
“Kaze Do!”
This time, he completely merged with the wind, invisible until his fist made contact with the first spy’s chest, causing his ribcage to cave in. The second did not see Okuri’s foot before it caused his face to implode. The third was picked up and thrown over the castle walls.
“Hn.”
That was all Okuri could say. This wind walking technique was very effective, but he knew that wasn’t its limit. Still, Okuri had managed to impress himself, and he spent the next hour or so practicing triggering his wind walking abilities.
* Kaze Do = Wind Path/Way
