What Else Is There To Do? [Training, Invite Only]

Espi's eyes opened slowly at the feel of the hot sun on her face: they hurt. They were red and puffy from spending half of the night crying her eyes out. She had cried so hard and for so long that eventually the tears had just dried up and stopped coming. Even then she had cried. She had cried for nearly eight hours straight until, completely and totally exhausted, she had passed out.

Blinking caused her to wince which led to more pain. However, the young female child forced her eyes to remain open so she could glance over to her right, to the clock on her bedrooms bedside table. According to the digital read out it was two o'clock in the afternoon. The last time she had looked at the clock, which had been about fifteen minutes before she passed out, it had been roughly four in the morning: that meant she had slept for a little over ten hours. Wonderful, the day was almost gone.

Espi sat up and reached up her right hand to scratch at her head: her hair was matted and nasty, but that was because she hadn't bothered washing up since her parents had been killed – just thirty five hours ago. Espi dropped her hand when her itch was taken care of and she sniffled: she felt like utter and complete crap. But, she knew she had to soldier on, even if she felt like she were on auto pilot at the moment.

Espi untangled herself from her sheets and blankets which took quite a few minutes to accomplish and got up and out of bed. As her feet hit the floor she winced: it was hot due the sun having been hitting the same spot of wooden flooring for likely the past hour. After a toe wiggle she was up on her feet and crossing her room. She stopped at her dresser and pulled out the necessary clothing: panties, shorts, and a tank top, all of which were a light purple in color.

Sniffling once more she moved over to the wooden chair that her towel always hung over and picked up her bath towel after it. With her clothing in her hand and her towel now slung over her left arm as well she went over to her bedroom door. She reached for the door knob as she had done time and time again throughout her life living in the house, but found herself stopping. Her heart began to beat quickly in her chest, and she felt herself nearing a hyperventilate state: Espi had personally tried to clean the blood off of the walls, her parents blood off of the walls, because the ANBU hadn't bothered. She had done a good job too, but in her minds eye each and every time she had to walk down that hallway it was torture, because even though it wasn't there physically, it was there in her mind.

Espi closed her eyes, wincing from the action, and then forced them open. She squared her shoulders and reached forward, roughly yanking the door open before she could think twice and stop herself. She hurried down the hallway, not running per say but walking so fast she might as well be. She nearly slipped when she turned to the bathroom, but made it inside regardless. She slammed the door shut behind herself and locked it. Her clothing and towel dropped from her left arm as she rested her back against the door, breathing heavily.

Word Count Medical Ninjutsu D – C Training: 596 / 2,000

As Espi kept breathing heavily she closed her eyes, trying to force herself calm. However, now that her eyes were closed all she could see, all her mind produced to fill the blackness, was the last few minutes of her parents lives: her father being knocked unconscious through a pressure point that one of the ANBU used, and then their throats being slit wide open. Breathing even heavier now Espi's eyes flew open: where was the happy child she had been for so long? Why couldn't she just go back to being that person?

”Come on Espi. This isn't like you. Snap yourself out of it. Where's your smiles? Where's you're happiness?”, she talked to herself, hoping that her mind would offer up the answers. Nothing came to mind, and nothing helped. Feeling like she was lost, and utterly hopeless, the child opened her eyes again and just shook her head. She couldn't just stay in the bathroom for forever, she had to move on, she had to find something else to focus on, something that would clear out her mind.

Sighing again Espi bent down and picked up her clothing and her towel. She put her clothing on the sink counter and her hung her towel from the door knob after double checking that it was locked: now that her parents weren't in the house any longer she never felt safe enough. She went over to the bathroom tub and turned on the hot and cold water taps, playing with them for a moment before she got the perfect luke warm temperature that she was looking for. When her water was situated just perfectly she pulled the stopper that started the shower up, and after another quick adjustment it too was perfect.

Before she stripped out of her clothing she relieved her bladder, unable to remember the last time she had done so. She then stripped out of her clothing and put them in the dirty clothes basket. She pulled the shower curtain back and stepped carefully into the tub before shutting it behind herself. She stepped underneath of the showers spray and closed her eyes, allowing the water to fully saturate her hair and well as fall down the rest of her small frame. She stood there for nearly five minutes before reaching for the special shampoo that her mother always bought her: it was specifically made to allow the special color of her hair remain without fading. She poured a small amount of the shampoo into her hair before closing the lid and putting it back on the tub's shelf. She lathered it into her hair carefully, feeling herself falling into the usual routine. Once her hair was rinsed out thoroughly she followed with conditioner: allowing it to soak into her hair as she grabbed her purple colored bath poof. She applied body wash to it and gave herself a good scrub: starting at her face and working her way down her body to the bottoms of her feet and toes. Once she was fully scrubbed up she rinsed her body and face off and then rinsed out her hair until all of the soap and conditioner was gone.

She knew she would have stayed in the shower longer, but she knew enough time had already passed because the water was beginning to turn colder. She bent down and pushed down the shower stopper, allowing it to switch over to the tub faucet. She then shut the water off, opened the shower curtain, and stepped out. She grabbed her towel off of the door and wrapped it around herself. She stood there for a moment, simply dripping on the floor mat while she hugged herself – listening to the droplets hit the mat over and over again as she did so. The house was far too quiet now...

Word Count for Medical Ninjutsu D – C Training: 650 + 596 = 1,246 / 2,000

Espi ended up standing there so long that she ended up drip drying the majority of the way before she shook herself out of her thoughts – or lack there of. She finished drying off what was left of her body that needed it and then wrapped her hair up in the towel. She picked her panties up off of the counter and slid those on first, following which she pulled on her tank top and then her shorts. When she was dressed she gave the towel in her hair a good squeeze before removing it. She towel dried her hair a bit by rubbing her towel through her shoulder length hair, and when she finished she stared at herself in the mirror.

Her hair was completely messed up and her eyes were definitely still red and puffy: the rest of her was sickly pale. The scariest part of her the whole ordeal was the fact that she wasn't smiling: or perhaps it was the fact that she felt no reason to do so. Sighing Espi felt like punching the mirror and shattering it, but refrained. She picked up her hairbrush and pulled it through her hair roughly. She felt the tugging and pulling and could almost hear in her mind her mother's voice telling her to be more gentle with her hair before she ended up going bald. Espi felt a slight uplifting of her cheeks, but as soon as she realized she was about to smile over a simple memory, the urge to smile was gone as quickly as it had come.

She finished brushing her hair and then placed the brush back down. She gathered up her towel and squared her shoulders as she mentally steeled herself for opening the door. Her hand trembled as she reached for the handle but she simply forced her way through it. She wrenched open the door and practically ran through the hallway as she had done before. Once her feet crossed the threshold of her bedroom she slammed the door shut behind herself.

She turned to the wooden chair that she normally hung her towel over and hung it flat over the back so that it would dry without getting an odd smell to it. When she was done she looked around, hugging her arms around herself. She took several deep and calming breaths in and out, inhaling and exhaling slowly as she did so. After a good two or three minutes of doing this she felt her accelerated heartbeat beginning to slow and found herself calming down both mentally and physically: Espi knew deep down she was going to have to move, even though she had never known any other home before. She had lived in this house since the day her parents had brought her home from the hospital.

Espi stopped the thoughts from coming: the more she thought about her parents the angrier she began to feel, and she didn't like to feel angry. She just wanted to go back to her happy self. That was all. She just needed to figure out how to get herself there, how to get herself to that point.

Shaking her head to mentally break herself out of her funk she went over to her dresser and removed the small bag of weapons she had there: it had her basic kunai and shuriken in it and she didn't like to go anywhere without it, even when she was in the village. She attached it to her right leg as she often did and ensured the strap was secure so it wouldn't slip, while also ensuring it was in the perfect position so that she could access her weapons easily if she needed to. Once satisfied she grabbed her small back pack off of the dresser as well and double checked that her game boy, games for the game boy, and plenty of batteries as well as assorted other items were inside: they were. With her back pack on her bag she turned towards her bedroom door again...

Word Count for Medical Ninjutsu D – C Training: 685 + 1,246 = 1,931 / 2,000

Espi stared at her door for several minutes, not knowing if she had the strength to go through it again. Each time she went down that hallway she risked causing herself to hyperventilate and start to freak out and the last thing she wanted to do was waste another eight hours crying her eyes out and into a more raw and painful state then they already were. As it was they were still sore, and would likely hurt for a while unless she could figure out how to heal herself – that had been her plan for today before all hell had broken lose, to learn how to heal.

Espi's lavender colored gaze focused onto the window; the very one where the sun had been pouring through all morning and all afternoon long. Biting her lip and thinking quickly she went over and pushed her bed out of the way a few inches, and then her bedside table in the opposite direction – effectively clearing a path for herself to the window. She opened it, climbed out of it, and then closed it behind herself: thank god her room was on the first floor, or else it would have been quite a drop for the already tiny female. Several of the neighbors looked at her strange as she stepped out of the flower bed and she simply waved and forced a smile on her face, a smile that disappeared the moment she was out of sight of them.

Not wanting much to do with the rest of the population of Yokuchi, especially on a day like today in the frame of mind she was in, she took back alleyways and short cuts that she knew all to well. She was simply allowing her feet lead her where they may, with no real direction in her mind: she just knew she couldn't stay in the house any longer, and she knew she was supposed to train.

Espi walked slowly but walk she did, and after nearly twenty minutes of the aimless wandering she found herself in front of the gates to one of Yokuchi's less used training grounds. There was a man-made lake that was constantly fed with water in it, as well as an assortment of fish. Espi bit her bottom lip again as she often did when thinking hard and then walked in: perhaps she should train, and she had enough knowledge of medical text to know that it was a sort of right to practice on fish, so that made this place simply perfect for her.

She walked around this man made lake, quite surprised that it didn't evaporate or something, but figured that perhaps that had something to do with the man made part of it. Once she was far enough away from the gate that she didn't have to worry about prying eyes she found a shaded area where a smaller pool was fed by the larger one. This smaller pool had fish in it as well and so Espi made quick work on blocking the little channel from the small pool to the larger one: this would keep her from having to chase down more fish when the rest scared off, and it would also make it easier for her to grab the fish.

Espi settled in at the edge of this smaller pool on her knees, ignoring the water that seeped up onto her knees: she didn't care about getting a little wet. Instead, she focused on the colorful fish, watching them swim around for several minutes: the effect was rather calming.

Word Count for Medical Ninjutsu Training D – C: 607 + 1,931 = 2,538 / 2,000
Remaining Words: 538