Snowfall [Taigakai's Solo Training]

Taigakai was bored. There wasn’t much to do today and he was just lazing on his bed. Seiko was hiding in her ‘laboratory’ and Mei was probably off somewhere with her dragon and sword crystal stuff. Taigakai looked at his palm, poking at the toughened pads and squishing them a little. It was a strange trait his mother said came from being a Kaironokuma.

He let out a groan, still bored. He wouldn’t be entertained longer than a few seconds squishing the pads on his fingers. Taigakai rolled on his bed, staring at the wall and figuring out what he could do today. There wasn’t much of anything he could think of. He rolled more, falling out of bed with a thud and an “Oof!” He was apparently in potato mode. Man, wouldn’t Chandra be proud of his laziness. Well, outside of actually training to better himself.

He put his hand on the gourd, leaving a white series of marks that matched the pads on his hands. A second later, the gourd budged slightly and rocked before settling again. He reached out and put his hand on the gourd to shake it a little again. Maybe he could just mess around today. There wasn’t much of a motivation to train, even though he probably should.

Taigakai looked back at his hands, they were usually hidden under normal attire he wore for missions so he never really got to look at them unless he wasn’t out or in a bath. He often paid more attention to his hair than his hands too. As of right now, the skin on his hands were slightly off in terms of texture. It looked like skin, but it also didn’t. At least, it was starting to look less like skin and more like something fabricated to mimic it. But, that was kind of the intent. He was just starting to learn the process of Glacial Infusion, so this was just the first bit of many to alter his flesh into a frigid pseudo-flesh.

He sighed and slipped out of the room. His mother was there, figuring out something in regards to an outfit. She took after her aunt Kori like that, having a knack for outfits and taking a partial approach to the thin fabrics used for skating uniforms.

“Morning.”, Taigakai greeted.

“Oh, Taiga! There you are! You doing okay? Going to go visit Seiko or do some training?” His mother was a bright and cheery person, always super supportive of Taigakai too.

“Nnnnnot today. I can’t seem to really get in the groove for much.”

“Oh, well that’s okay. Sometimes you need to take a bit of a break.” She understood shinobi life was hard, not from her personal experience but from her mother and aunt both. Though her mother seemed to take that kind of hit the hardest. Things like that probably stopped Taigakai’s mom from attempting the shinobi lifestyle. Well, that and aunt Kori taking her under a fashionable wing. She did try to keep things upbeat so that there was some light for Taigakai during his darker moments.

“Yeah. It just doesn’t feel great when I do take breaks though. I feel like I’m getting further behind.” He really didn’t have to add to that for her to know she was comparing himself to his cousin, a girl literally named ‘Success’.

“Taigakai, I know you’re using your peers to gauge where you should be, but you shouldn’t let it be something to make you feel bad. Sometimes it takes a bit more time to get there and that’s okay.”

“Yeah, I know but I can’t help but think about it.” Seiko was already capable of basically being a one-person army with crazy strong golems. He laid down on the floor on his stomach near some of the sewing stuff his mom had out, taking a pin cushion and rolling it around on the floor back and forth between his fingertips and the bottom of his palm.

He would catch up to her and the others someday. Today just wasn’t that day. He toyed around with the pin cushion some more, rolling onto his back and holding the cushion up. He used the push technique on it to just toss it in the air without him having to throw it, only for him to catch and repeat doing so a fair few times. Each time the cushion seemed to fly a bit higher in the air. His mind blanked out while doing something so mindless.

Where did his mind wander? Into nothing really. It was just out there. He didn’t really snap out of it until the expectation of a weight back into his hand didn’t come back. His mother must have caught the pin cushion during one of the times that it was in the air. She was nice about it though, giving him a smile that he knew all too well just matched with her laid back attitude. “I do need this to keep my pins and needles in one spot.”, she said, although it was entertaining to just watch the progress happen from a small bounce to the object nearly hitting the ceiling in a matter of a few minutes.

“Oh, right. Sorry about that.” She didn’t seem to mind, but his mom really was pretty cool about it like that. “I think I’ll go out to the markets and pick up stuff for dinner.” That at least gave him something to do.

“Oh, in that case, could you stop by and get me something for snacks? I’m running a bit low on them. Thanks!” She spoke practically as if they weren’t a parent and child duo, rather like roommates. It was kind of nice that things were a bit more open like that though.

Taigakai sat up and stretched before exiting the room and looking for his wallet so he could go shopping. He figured he would get something for Seiko too for the next time he dropped by to visit.

Push Training Weekly 1/5:

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Today was another low energy day. Nothing to do, nothing Taigakai really wanted to do. He decided it was a good idea to look into those old scrolls that had relation to the Toketsu clan line. They were strange. Something marked about these techniques being forbidden. Though, at the end of it, he guessed it made sense why.

Taigakai shrugged, and read over them again. There was a thought of turning his flesh to ice, a cold crystal, that caught his attention. Of course, it brought along a new weakness to fire but he felt like there was more to do if his body shared an element with his chakra nature. His mother, Zera made mention that her mother and aunt also practiced that technique to a degree, Kori relying on her eyes with it and Yuki relying on more of the physical attributes to stack on her attacks. Taigakai figured he was going to end up like his grandmother in that regard, but without knowing it, also like his grandfather. The man himself was a flesh-furnace that produced iron and Taigakai was on the path of doing something similar but hopefully less personally destructive.

While the scrolls seemed to give the preface that the Toketsu naturally turn to ice on their own, these scrolls were made in notation to catalyse it and make the process faster. He sighed and rolled the scrolls up and put them away. He did kind of have a ways to go to make this happen faster didn’t he?

Taigakai sat down on the floor and closed his eyes. He placed a hand in the other in a way that one hand’s fingers rested in the palm of the other while the outer hand rested along the backs of his knuckles. A breath in and and a breath out, the air slowly grew colder. It wasn’t much of a noticeable change at first, much like Winter’s Breath. There was only a vague chill in the air. But as the room grew colder, exhales brought forth a puff of mist. Taigakai didn’t seem to notice it though.

Frost crept on the glass panes of the windows and mirrors in the room, fogging them up before a crystalline layer of ice crept on top of it. Whatever moisture was in the air became frozen. The air’s chill crept onto other surfaces too, lightly coating things in a thin layer of dew and freezing over. Fabrics grew slightly more stiff. Taigakai’s hair had some thin layer of rigidity to it now, but he wouldn’t notice without moving.

The room’s temperature dropped drastically, further than any air conditioner unit could produce at this point. How much time passed? Without checking, he had no idea.

Cold air seeped out of the room and down the halls, out the windows into the air outside. Taigakai kept still though, focusing on his chakra and just general meditation though. Things were layering in ice now that there was a soft but audible crackling from it. Along with the room, Taigakai’s skin started to grow a layer of ice on it. Though, with the starting practice of glacial infusion, something felt a little different about the ice layering over his skin.

Rather than it stacking, it almost felt like it was compressing itself. He could feel a cold creep into his skin all over, forcing him into a shiver that responded with a crunch from several fractures in the icy layer of skin made. An eye barely opened to see his hands glistening in dim light. Both eyes opened and he looked around the room. There was a lot of ice to clear off. Thankfully it wasn’t a thick layer, or he might be in a little bit of trouble. Taigakai got up and wiped the windows down before opening them. The outside air was much warmer and should combat the colder air produced in the room. Should.

Even if he was no longer sitting still, the air continued to grow colder. He figured that he activated his winter’s breath on accident during his small bit of meditation. Whoops. Though in his defense, it was slightly out of his control. Slightly in that this almost completely happens subconsciously. As long as he could clean it up and there wasn’t too much ice that would melt and cause water damage, things were fine. Considering this house was also built with a few generations of Toketsu in it, there were some precautions already in place to help prevent ice and water from damaging the house too much.

Back to the crinkling noise of the ice on his skin. It was a weird sound. A soft crunch like fresh snow at the joints, but larger stretches along his back, arms, and legs seemed to have a sound more like a crack. But when he looked at his hands and arms, there wasn’t much to see at first glance. The layer on his skin must have been thin to go that unnoticed despite the small noises made when he moved.

He turned his hand and arm, observing the skin with the light angling off it, only catching shallow refractions every now and then. It seemed like the ice on his skin was more ice embedded into the skin. At first glance, there wasn’t much change. Skin cells turning into ice and filling gaps only changed so much when starting out. He figured it might have a larger effect later though, when more of his skin was turned to ice. That did make him curious as to what it’d do though, and he had a feeling Seiko’s likely to have a shared curiosity on that as well but maybe not for the same reasons.

After a bit of looking at his arm, he noticed something. It was faint but Taigakai could have sworn he could barely see through his skin at the right angle if he looked close enough. That thought led into another thing… If his skin was in fact semi-transparent… Then maybe…

He walked over to a mirror, wiping the frost off of it and then unzipping his clothes from the back. After slipping the sleeves off, the rest of it fell forwards and from first glance didn’t seem like anything really changed all that much. However on a closer inspection, he could find the faintest view of his innards.

"Oh man, that's kind of freaky.", he said to himself. A closer look revealed the faintest outlines with tinges of reds and yellows of his muscles that covered over his organs. The outlines were faint and he figured that if his muscles turned to ice, that would show his organs next. Freaky.

Taigakai stepped back and flopped on his bed, taking a moment to settle down. It wasn’t every day you’d be your own glass animal study and it was a little bit unsettling to see something internal externally. He wasn’t sure what direction to really take that, it was so strange. On the one hand, it was cool in a twisted way, definitely something great for a mednin to study. But on the other, it made him uneasy, more than exposed guts would on a dead body. Perhaps it was because he was still alive, that this involved a live body, and watching things move under his skin was somewhat unsettling on a primal level. Who knew. All he knew is that he needed a moment to gather himself so he didn’t make himself sick from the sight of something like that.

He closed his eyes and focused on breathing again so his gut would settle. Taigakai never figured that he was going to be the squeamish type but here he was, not able to handle seeing moving flesh under skin. Though, he should be able to get over that right? Probably. He felt the ice in his skin, the cold of it creeping in almost felt a weird mix of natural and unnatural.

The natural portion was more the transmutation happening. But the unnatural portion of it was that it was creeping in so fast. Things actually felt cold to him. It still wouldn’t be to the same degree as someone who wasn’t able to fend off the cold with heat or some kind of resistance, but he figured this was just a small taste of something that others felt when winter’s breath was active. Though, the slightest chill he could feel brought a shiver and shivering was weird. There was a feeling that this kind of cold would come back if he kept going through with glacial infusion, but that was really just a side effect of that practice without speeding the natural process that happened anyways.

Taigakai took in a deep breath and sat up, staring back at his palm. The layer of ice was more apparent, but maybe that was because he knew what to look for now. It glistened slightly, even with the dimmest light, a sign that his skin wasn’t really fully flesh anymore. It retained its pale tone that granted the illusion it was still skin. It even retained its elasticity. He couldn’t really wrap his head around how that worked but Taigakai honestly didn’t even want to try. It was cool though that he was now closer to an element he was born familiar to.

A curl of his fingers and a silent series of cracks whispered in the air, indicating the ice-skin fracturing and then reforming itself to align with the joints. He hoped that this wasn’t going to make his joints stiff, but it probably didn’t if he kept active, right? He straightened his hand out to see slight disruptions in the skin, flakes of thin shards of ice at the joints of his fingers melting back into place and smoothing over. Taigakai did this a few more times, just curling his fingers and straightening them out to watch the ice shards shrink into almost nothing. He figured that meant at least that portion of his icy skin was now accustomed to that kind of breaking and bending. At least, it was for now and with no injuries to disrupt it yet. Of course, this was only on his skin, so that didn’t have too big of an extreme on his physical attributes yet. On the flip, because it was just his skin, that also meant that there was a bit more work to be done when the ice spread further into his body too.

Taigakai got up off the bed and gave a stretch, extending his arms upwards and leaning back. A series of small cracks sounded, the loudest going up his back and straying to the left just beneath his shoulder blade. He looked behind him to see a sheet of actual ice that layered over his back cracked off and fell behind him onto the bed. It was a fairly large piece but it was also thin. Without much thought, his hand wandered to the spot where his back was and he just felt skin. It was overly smoothed but he figured that was just the ice portion of it competing with the softness of his remaining cells. Towards the spine, he felt only the slightest bump where the rest of the ice sheet was, a paper thin layer from what his fingertips told him. His other hand moved up to his face, bringing hair back and then scratching the side of his head. He picked up the sheet, careful to not break it and tossed it out the window. Taigakai put his clothes back together, slipping the upper half back on and zipping it up. Well… At least the new self discovery of turning his skin invisible certainly made the day more interesting. Thankfully it was easy to conceal that factor from most. He didn't really wear clothing that was revealing. If anything, there was almost always a layer of thin, black fabric that covered his body all the way up to his neck, so the most that could give it away was if someone had a really good look at his face. That almost never happened though.

Very High Ice Affinity [Spec]
Word Count 2020/2000

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