Abandoned Training Grounds

*Kojima had been wandering around the sand village, still a bit uneasy here, wondering when they might return to Konoha when he stumbled upon what appeared to be a training area, though it was clear it had not been used for some time, lying on the outskirts of what appeared to be a slum district. He chewed his lip as he thought to himself. Matsutsu still seemed to consider Kojima superior to him, but looking back, Kojima had not improved much at all. Excelling in the academy, he was now only mediocre as a Genin, and it was only a matter of time before the outgoing and determined Matsutsu left him in the dust. Not to mention Chieko, who was already far beyond him in the area of using Ninjutsu. A part of him wanted to practice his ninjutsu further, but to what end? In time, he would reach the limits of his Ninjutsu capabilities, due to his Taiki Kekkei Genkai, and they would surpass him again. The more Kojima thought about it, the more the answer was clear. Since his limitations were based exclusively on his chakra, he would have to excel in an area that required next to none. Taijutsu. So when Kojima mistakenly found the abandoned training area, he decided it would be a good place to begin training, free of disturbances. Looking around he saw a few stumps sprouting from the ground, random beams and boards placed all around, likely to work on maneuverability and balance, and other random primitive constructions. Deciding to work on this after a quick warm up, Kojima buttoned up his shirt and fell forward, catching himself with his hands in the sand and began to do push ups, which he noticed were a bit more difficult with the sand beneath him offering less resistance than solid earth*

*As the added flow of chakra in Kojima's system from his breathing also minutely boosted his physical energy, it was hard for him to grow tired. Nevertheless, after nearly twenty straight minutes of push ups in the sand, the burning in his arms began to grow out of control, and each additional one became challenging. Allowing himself to collapse for a momentary rest in the cool sand under the moonlight, he took slow steady breaths to try and recover himself. After resting, he stood up, stretching his arms again, and began doing lunges and squats, to warm his legs up as well*

*Kojima continued until the stinging pain in his legs spread and became an all encompassing dull burn, that didn't hurt so much, just sapped his strength. Eventually his leg gave out and he sat in the sand for a while while the feeling subsided, taking slow, easy breaths. He sat for five minutes before standing again and stretching his legs out then began to move through the one form he knew, hitting all his stances and strikes with excellent form. He had the moves down perfectly by now, but the problem was applying the basic movements in the form to actual practice, and being able to take the small bits and pieces and rearrange them as needed, calling upon the necessary blocks and strikes individually, instinctively. Kojima needed to work on this more than anything, the defining factor that made it a martial art, rather than a martial science.*

*After running through the form a dozen times, Kojima decided he ought to move on. The movements were natural to him now and doing them any more wouldn't help anything. He walked over to one of the stumps and hit a basic fighting stance in front of it. He began to kick at the stump repeatedly. His form and execution were nearly flawless, as usual, but he noted there wasn't much power behind it. Biting his lip he began to kick harder, wincing slightly at the harder impact*

*after wearing out one leg, he repeated the process on the next. As long as he didn't bruise himself, this would be good conditioning. Responding to the supposed weakness of the area that cause such pain and trauma, the body would automatically toughen the skin and bones of the part taking the impact, in this case, his shins. thereby slightly increasing his defense and offense at the same time, each time he conditioned. once his second leg was wore down he began with punches. first the knuckles, and then his forearms on either side, until hours had passed and he was laying on the sand, body sore, limbs reddened and puffy.*

*What seemed like an eternity had passed before Kojima felt well enough to get up without aching, but the night was still upon him, so it couldn't have been too horribly long. Rising slowly to his feet, he brushed the sand off his clothes with a scowl before looking around. A few yards away there were four poles rising about eight feet off the ground, and connecting them in a square with an x in the middle were six beams of wood, all at the top. Running over to it and jumping onto one of the beams, he stretched for a moment. He had good basic knowledge of taijutsu, but every time he had tried something particularly tricky, he had to strain himself for it. Time to get a little more than basic, he thought, leaping forward from one bean to one of the beams in the middle, catching himself on his hands with it, doing a handstand as long as he could before his already weakened arms began to tremble, and he fell back. He continued to practice this for a while till he was able to do front hand springs off of the beams one to the next, as well as walk along them on his hands. He finally jumped down letting out a long sigh, body all but inoperable, the sun coming up over the rooftops now.*

*The next day, Kojima returned, as Washi sensei was still busy around the village. Arriving at the abandoned training area, Kojima did a few stretches to loosen himself up before the warm up. After doing so, he dropped to the ground and began doing push ups again, keeping his breathing slow and steady throughout the process*

*Kojima was able to do near 500 push ups in one set before his arms grew too tired and worked despite his steady breathing. Standing up, he began to do lunges and squats just like the night before. He did another five hundred for each leg before he needed to give his legs a break. Laying on his back, he began to do crunches. The angles of his body made it harder to breath normally while doing this, but he was still able to hit near a thousand before he had to stop to catch his breath. An hour had passed already, and he was just warmed up. Standing again he began to run through his form a couple times before moving on to the real training.*