"Come on Kurai, get up! Today I will show you a new exercise."
"Hoot!" She had just gotten good at holding the leaf, she didn't know why he wanted her to now start something new. She had a bad feeling about this.
"That was only the first exercise, I will show you the next one. It's the same way I used to learn how to manipulate chakra!"
Begrudgingly she relented, ready to try out whatever it was that he had in mind.
Kuroichi walked over to a large tree that was close by, standing in front of it, ready to give her a demonstration. He easily stuck to the trunk of the tree, walked a few paces and then looked over his shoulder to where Kurai was, "Did you see what I did? It's similar to what you had to do with the leaf before, but now it's you sticking to the tree instead of the leaf sticking to you."
Kurai watched with curiosity, she had of course seen him walk on a tree before, but honestly hadn't given it much thought before.
She hopped over to the tree, ready to try it herself, however, the moment she channeled her chakra to try and stick to the tree, her talons pierced straight into the bark.
Crunch
"Hoot?"
She let out a confused hoot, this wasn't what she imagined would happen. She looked over to Kuroichi, maybe he'd have a suggestion, but he just gave a her look that said: Come on, you can't just give up after one try!
When she tried again, she controlled the strength in her talons, not wanting to pierce straight through the bark again, but the results were much the same.
She either clung too hard and stabbed into the tree, or held back her strength but then slid right off. The idea of delicate chakra control simply didn't match with her instinctive movements when scaling a tree.
As he observed from the side, he thought, 'Maybe she just isn't built for this, after all, her talons are weapons, not soles of human feet, they aren't meant to walk flatly on the ground.'
Kurai had walked up the tree a few steps by using her own strength and then tried sticking to the tree using only chakra, but she didn't even get that far. Kuroichi watched her trying to hang horizontally, and saw how her body sagged and twisted awkwardly to the side.
"Yeah… you're missing the muscles humans use to stay upright like that, let's stop this here, this isn't really appropriate for you. It still looked very funny though. Haha!"
"HOOOT!"
"HAHAHAHA!!"
He enjoyed joking around with her like this, he couldn't even be frustrated that she didn't manage the tree walking exercise if he wanted to.
Using the way he learned chakra and making Kurai do the same was only a rough idea of his in the first place. Hardly realistic in the later stages either way, because Kurai didn't even have fingers she could use to form hand seals.
'If we're already at it, I might as well try to get her to give water walking a shot too.' Kuroichi considered, as he thought about what else he could teach Kurai.
"Alright Kurai let's try something else, I have another way of improving chakra control. Let's go to the river, you can fly ahead if you want to."
Both of them made their way over and quickly arrived. As they stood before the stream and Kuroichi explained what he wanted her to do, Kurai's mind short-circuited for a split second.
She could already imagine it in her mind; her landing on the water and how she'd immediately start sinking, her wings flailing about as she tried hard to simply paddle back to shore.
"Hoot?!?"
She let out a disbelieving hoot, clearly wondering if Kuroichi was right in the head if he thought she'd voluntarily fall for this trick of his.
He tried to give her some encouraging words, but they all fell on deaf ears. She wasn't taking any chances. She even refused to look at the water, turning around and giving him the stink eye.
Pfft
'What a diva,' Kuroichi shook his head while his lips twitched slightly at the sight before him.
It was clear Kurai wouldn't be trying out water walking today, so he rummaged through his mind, musing about other things he knew that she could train in.
"Alright, new plan! You know, I think I've said it to you before, but since you are a bird I bet you have a wind affinity."
He pulled out a leaf, held it up and explained the leaf splitting exercise, the way he remembered from the anime. The exercise was definitely too advanced, especially if Kurai were a human, but since there wasn't anything else for her to practice and she could potentially benefit from it, he thought it was the best option available.
"This exercise will probably take you a long time to master and maybe it'll only let you create a nice cool breeze on a hot summer day in the future, however, on the other side, if you work very hard, you could perhaps also learn how to summon the harshest of winds to shred your enemies to pieces, after all, this is the best exercise to get stronger wind jutsu. What do you think?"
Her disinterested attitude from when he started his explanation made a complete 180 turn. Her eyes went wide and her feathers puffed up a bit as she bounced around, circling him excitedly.
'Controlling the wind really would be perfect for her, let's hope it doesn't take her 20 years to learn.' Kuroichi thought before he spoke, "Oh, now you're motivated huh? Alright, then we can both start, I'll also train for another hour or so."
She gave an excited hoot and stared at the leaf in his hands as he held out his palm for her to take it. Snatching it from his hands with her beak, she flew upwards and landed on a branch, perching comfortably while carefully holding the leaf with one of her talons in front of her. Even though she knew the mechanics of the exercise, when she tried, nothing happened.
Slightly miffed, she tried over and over. She expected slow progress, since Kuroichi told her it may take a long time for her to see results. Even though she did the leaf holding exercise previously, sitting and doing the same thing again and again without any success, could quickly become too boring for anyone, but the allure of strength kept her from giving up.
Both of them practiced together, one focused on splitting a leaf, the other flickering around the area, continuously getting better at and more comfortable with the jutsu.
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