Todai {Completed}

After a long week of complete and utter missions Eiji was as tired as can be, he felt like a sloth, lazy and slow, although he was just that little bit close to being a Chuunin. Eiji couldn't wait to be a Chuunin it was one step closer to his life's goal based on his subconscious desire to be one of the most powerful water jutsu users in the ninja world, but sadly even being a Chuunin was such a little step that he didn't at all like to think about it. But being a Chuunin would give him that extra little confidence boost that he needed to do all the missions towards Jounin and once he reached the high ranking of Jounin he would have another confidence boost and the strength to go beyond that. At that point he might possibly have a chance at becoming one of the strongest water jutsu users, after all he was a member and descendant of the legendary Hozuki Clan. Attempting to keep the good thoughts of encouragement in his head he finally decided to go home and sleep. After walking all the way across town to get home he was even more tired, so according to Eiji since he had walked and done missions, he was, “double tired”. He walked up to the door, he stuffed his hands in his pockets looking for the key, and he couldn’t find the key. After checking the rest of his pockets, left and both back ones, he started to get worried. Not able to find his key and more tired than anyone could ever be he was contemplating whether to sleep on the grass or not, but he decided the latter because he wasn’t that lazy person who did no missions anymore, he was the cool kid the academy students looked up to, well at least three of them. And they only praised him based on the fact that he had tricked them into picking up all the garbage around Komogakure, they thought he was smart, cunning and the girls obviously found him attractive with the obvious blushing each time they talked to him. But he didn’t have them here to cheer and for what anyways, a lost key? He decided, after taking in all his thoughts, that he should start back tracing to look for his key, where was the last place he had gone? He couldn’t think straight, but he had bits and pieces of images in his mind and the most recent one had been at the Ramen Shop. So he stopped spacing out and started a slow walk towards the place where he had most likely eaten dinner, the usual Beef Ramen with pork buns on the side. “I wonder if I will ever find my key or even be able to go into my house again. Maybe someone stole my key or it fell out of my pocket and a dog ate it. No, that can’t be it…” he thought to himself not noticing he had started speeding up after thinking about the possibilities and had reached the stop. “Hey, you are back so soon!” called out the shop owner, “Are you here for a late night snack or just to say hi to your favorite ramen store owner?” “You are my favorite shop owner, but that is not why I am here. I am here because I was stupid enough to lose my house key and now I am on a crazy search back-tracing what I did today to find it,” retorted Eiji. “Oh, I see, but sadly I have found no keys or any personal belongings from anyone today in my shop, it seems most people are remembering to keep track of their things,” he replied glaring at Eiji. “Thanks for the useless help old man. I hope I hope you burn your face in your distasteful ramen.” Eiji thought, but not meaning it he was just angry and anxious. He now decided to think back to the next last thing he had done, it was still a little bit fuzzy, but he definitely remembered stopping by at the fountain for some Hozuki training earlier, he remembered it like it was just earlier that day, which it was. His Hozuki training was a little secret he had been keeping to himself, it was an attempt to be able to better control his water transfiguration abilities, what he would do or did, was create different objects with his has then disperse them and immediately drain some more water from the fountain to keep transfiguring with no break. This was mostly a practice used to increase the speed at which he could transfigure his arms. The first transfiguration he had done that day was a katana, or at least a make shift katana. The katana, obviously made out of water, came out of his arm only half way down probably where his elbow would have been, then he practiced creating a mini shield with his palm by expanding it with his technique, and to finish the rotation off he attempted to learn one of his clan’s most interesting techniques, Water Release: Water Gun Jutsu, which he obviously failed at not having clearly enough chakra or ability to use such a thing, but wanting it so badly he kept trying until he ran out of chakra and was so exhausted that he passed out on the cobblestone pathing. Maybe someone had stolen it while he were out cold, no, that couldn’t be possible because the moment he had lost his chakra his body had dispersed into a clear blue puddle of water. The feeling of being in his water form was actually refreshing to him and also it allowed him to keep consciousness while in that form. He started walking to the fountain to check and see if it could possibly be there, although he seriously doubted it. The fountain wasn’t too far from the Ramen Shop so it didn’t take him very long to get there. Once he arrived he decided to search in the fountain first since he was standing inside during his training, maybe it had fallen out of his pocket in the process of transfiguration or maybe not, but he checked anyways. Just as he thought it wasn’t there and he had also checked around the outsides of the fountain and it was not there either. Some luck, he had, at this point he had deemed himself the unluckiest man in the whole ninja world, even though he knew that wasn’t true because he was fairly lucky, this was just one of those times where even the luckiest man in the world could help him as far as he was concerned. He had finished all his searching from the beginning of the day until the end, it was midnight and he had given up and decided to walk home as depressed as can be. Just as he was about to try and puddle his way underneath the wooden door he slipped backwards on his doormat landing flat on his back in the patch of grass in front of his house. “Maybe I should sleep here, I am already laying down and I don’t think I can get in under my door there isn’t even enough space for air to get through so how could water possibly bypass that?” he thought. Just as he was falling asleep he felt uncomfortable so he rolled over his head now looking at where the doormat used to be and just lying there inconspicuously was his house key. His face turned red with rage and anger building up in him, he was extremely frustrated that he had forgotten he had put the key under the doormat so he “would” remember where it was when he came home from training. He probably had forgotten about it when he blacked out and hit his head on the cobblestone, out of all the things in the world the partial memory loss had decided to choose the only way to get into his house to forget? After letting out all his anger my constantly throwing the key in the dirt and screaming curses at it he picked it up and smashed it into the key hole almost breaking the door knob. He twisted the knob to the right and pulled the door open. “God damn, finally some peace. Home sweet home,” he yelled out into the empty home. He trudged all the way to his bedroom, flopped on his bed and almost instantaneously fell asleep.

Eiji was running down a hallway. He kept running and suddenly something caused him to trip, what felt like minutes later to him he opened his eyes and saw man waiting at the end of the hallway for him. The man was about average height, he had a light skin tone, white shaggy hair with a blue-tint and big purple eyes, it was him. He saw himself waving at him to come over as his second self walked around the corner. He tried to get up and walk, but it was as if he had suddenly forgotten how to walk. He tried dispersing, but that was a failed attempt too. He dragged himself all the way to the end of the hallway, he turned and all he saw were two doors, trying to think quickly so his clone wouldn’t get away he went for the right door and pulled himself through. Once he was through the tiled ground collapsed beneath him and he kept falling and falling as if there were no end to it, then all of a sudden he was suspended in mid-air as if he were caught on a puppeteer’s strings. He looked around at his surroundings, they had changed from nothingness to the Komogakure forest, there were tall trees in every direction that seemed to go on for miles and miles. Each of the trees was detailed the bark was imprinted with flower designs and each tree seemed as if it had a thousand different kinds of fruit hanging from it, red, blue, yellow, any color fruit you could think of was there on those trees. There was a loud rustling noise coming from behind him, him jumped forward immediately and turned around. It was his clone. “Hello, how are you doing Eiji?” asked the clone. Frightened Eiji got into a fighting stance and yelled, “Who are you? What do you want with me and why do you look so much like me?” “I am you, Eiji, just not the physical you.” “What the hell are you talking about? I don’t understand what is going on, am I dreaming?” replied Eiji. “Yes, you are dreaming, in a way I guess. Well, that’s not why I am talking to you. I am here to warn you Eiji,” said the clone. “What are you talking about?” retorted Eiji as he took a step back obviously not realizing that he had just been answered that he was actually in a dream. His clone looked up at him, “Eiji, listen to me and listen to me clearly. The time is going to come when someone will ask you to go with them, but before then you need to train. You need to train as hard as possible to become as strong as possible for anything that might come your way. And as for your training it begins now.” Eiji could hear a bell in the distance ringing, it distracted him long enough for him to not notice the clone charging at him like a bull. “Keep your guard up at all times, Eiji!” the clone yelled as he blasted his arm at Eiji, almost as if he had extended his arm with transfiguration. Eiji barely crossing his arms in time changed completely from normal to battle mode. “Fighting myself won’t be that hard right?” he thought to himself, “He can only be good as I can.” After skidding across the the dirt backwards from the sheer force of the punch Eiji squared himself and was ready to fight. The clone charged once again, but this time instead of running Eiji did the ram hand seal using his Body Flicker Technique He dodged the punch with ease and moved to the clones side and tried the extended fist punch and it seemed to work until the clone just vanished and Eiji looked up to see him standing upside down on a tree branch. “Wow, you are really, slow I can’t believe I… Nevermind that, let’s continue,” the clone said as he dropped down. Eiji looked at his surroundings, he needed to get familiar with the biome and area he was in if he was going to fight this want-to-be him. He looked left, there were two large oak trees with the weird fruit and a couple bushes. He looked right, there a large rock and another oak tree. Then he looked forward, there was a creepy clone of him who was apparently as fast as lighning and a wall, wait a wall? He hadn’t seen a wall there. This was weird it was as if everything was changing, all his surroundings. He looked left again and the trees were gone there was a wall and same on his right side another wall and probably one behind him too. He was now in what looked like a fighting arena, it resembled the Chuunin arena, perhaps Eiji was having so many urges to become a Chuunin that subconsciously he changed the battlefield. He took in the new surroundings quickly before they could change again, but it was too late the clone had disappeared and everything around him was spinning into a vortex, then all of a sudden he woke up.

“Wow, it was all a dream,” he thought, “But why did it seem so real and familiar? Maybe it is a sign for something, but what? Was the sign to take the Chuunin exam? Or was it to train hard?” he had no idea, but then he remembered what his clone had told him in the dream, to train and someone asking him to leave, this sounded preposterous to him coming from a dream, but somewhere in the back of his mind he believed it. It was morning, but he was tired, as if that fight with the clone had been real or something like that. So Eiji decided to take his time this morning. He pulled his warm wool blanket off of him then his sheets, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed as to get up. He tried to get up, but he just fell back down on his butt, he didn’t think he was this tired, but he had slept really late at that too. He thought, “Maybe if I make myself some breakfast I won’t be as tired. Hmm…What should I make? Maybe I will make bacon, eggs and a glass of milk.” He finally got enough energy and he stood up. He picked out a black pair of shorts and slipped them on. Then he put on a blue sleveless t-shit and some socks and made his way to the kitchen. He turned the stove on a medium low fire, then put a pan above it so it would start heating up. He got a bowl set it on the table and went and opened the fridge. “Let’s see, two eggs, four strips of bacon, milk and cheese,” he said to himself. He set everything on the counter except for the eggs and cracked them both into the bowl, he then took the cheese poured some in the bowl with a little splash of milk. He stirred up the mixture until the egg yolks were no longer visible and he poured it all into the pan. After the eggs cooked a bit he brought it up with a spatula and placed the bacon underneath it to cook. While he waited for the bacon he poured himself a glass of milk and got a fork. By then the food in the pan was cooked and put it all on a plate for himself. After throwing the cheese and milk back in the fridge and the pan in the sink he took his plate, milk and fork to the table and gorged it down like he had not eaten in years then washed it all down with the milk. “God,” he thought to himself, “That was the best breakfast I have eaten in a long time.” After an hour he took a little stop to the bathroom and then decided he was going to make this an even better day and go train a little bit and hopefully find someone to spar with and by someone he meant Mack. Before he went down to the training grounds he had to do a couple things. The first thing he wanted to do was apologize to the Ramen Shop owner for being disrespectful the night before from tiredness, so he opened his front door and started a light jog to the shop. Finally arriving at the shop he looked for the shop owner, he was in the back room counting money. Eiji did a light knock on the door and walked in. “What do you want from me? More lost keys?” the shop owner asked in an annoyed tone. “No mister, I just wanted to apologize for the night before. I was really tired and I don’t know what got into me,” Eiji said. “Huh, well okay then, I’m counting money leave me alone,” said the shop owner obviously oblivious to the apology. Eiji rolled his eyes and tried to think of the second thing on his list, he needed to do some cardio training so he decided to run around the village jumping from building to building. He started with a light jog, then he started to speed up to a run, and eventually he sped up to a sprint weaving in and out in between village locals he was coming near the fountain and he decided to do some Hozuki water phasing training so he sprinted straight into the fountain and with a splash he exploded. Then on the opposite side of the fountain he reformed in a running position and kept on going as he was laughing to himself. He jumped off some random villager’s vendor stand and hopped up onto the roof he jumped from building to building until he noticed an alley, he dropped down and made a few winding twists then he noticed that someone was coming from the other end of the alleyway not wanting to stop Eiji, in mid run, put his arms on the man’s shoulders and vaulted himself over the man. He continued to do these acrobatics all the way to the training grounds. “So many areas to choose from,” he thought. Then he decided to go to the place where he had gone before and met Mack, maybe Mack would show up there again, at least Eiji hoped so he really liked Mack as a partner. Once he found his training ground, he started doing stretches. After a run like that he needed to, he lunged forward with his right leg then lunged forward with his left. That felt really good to him. He had not run for such a long time he was surprised with his amazing endurance. Now to do some work outs. He needed to do a series of things though he started out with push ups. He dropped down to the ground and started doing push ups, after twenty or so he started to do clapping push ups and he continued this for another 10 minutes or so. Once he finished his push ups he started to do jumping jacks to get his arms warmed up for pull ups. He then jumped used his Tree Climbing Technique to climb up a tree and a grab a branch. He hung there for a minute getting a good grip on the bark then started, up down, up down, he was doing pull ups incredibly fast, he was definitely strong and once he finished all his exercises he decided to take note of his surroundings, it was pretty much the same as the first time. There were puddles everywhere in a barren looking biome with a couple trees here and there, but mostly just tree stumps all cluttered on the ground. Once he got a good look around he started to meditate until his partner showed up. He would show up Eiji had this feeling in the back his mind that always gave him a little buzz when he thought right. It wasn’t much of an ability it was more like an instinct or a sixth sense, some people call it luck, but Eiji calls it pure skill. His goal to become the most powerful water using ninja would come true if Eiji had anything to say about it. He waited and waited, but no one came so he gave up and just went home. Mack was probably just busy.