Down By the Water [solo,flashback]

At some point, Kozura decided to visit the ancestral land of her tribe. Not the Holy Land... that was something else entirely. She wasn't quite ready to go there... yet. Nay, this was the ancestral land. It was mostly something that the nomadic tribe liked to return to every few years. Given its nature, it was a great place to bear children, to raise them, and to stock up for another trip around the desert. It was a time to get in touch with the more gentle side of the desert. Naturally, the ancestral land was a rather abnormally large oasis.

The Holy Land was a more of a wasteland, however. Not really a desert proper, but something else. Something that Kozura, even now, was a little intimidated by. Nevertheless, that's not where she was headed now. As a matter of fact, getting to the Ancestral Land from Suna was a little tougher, so it'd be good to practice using chakra in her combat maneuvers rather than just he punches and kicks. She supposed that the way she was planning on using them was a sort of kick, but that was irrelevant, wasn't it? Kicking the ground, pushing off from the ground, it was all the same to her.
[1/5]

Kozura got her documents together (at least, what few there were), and set off, traditionally barefoot, across the desert sand as the sun had just set. The desert at night was her city, as it were. Few in the village could hope to have the same level of skill in traversing the sands for as far as she wanted to go today. There were some dunes around here that were particularly treacherous. Hell, she remembered that some of the bigger ones had beasties that hid inside them and waited for prey to try and climb up. Fools, she thought to herself as she picked up the pace. They should know better than to think that something so out of place in the desert would be innocuous.
She gave a little leap, and bounded over the next dune entirely. Within the past seven years or so, her body had grown much, much stronger. She grimaced slightly as she realized that in a year or so, puberty would hit her full force, and she’d have to change her styles accordingly to fit a woman’s body. Her tribe had ways to deal with this as well… most importantly, she’d have to go to the Holy Land to claim adulthood in the tribe.
[2/5]

She gazed back at the dune she’d hopped so gracefully over. Not too bad, she thought to herself, but she could certainly do better. Hell, if she were to open the eight inner gates, she could probably hop on the air itself, and traverse the skies that way. But now wasn’t quite the time for that. She knew full well that to created the shaved motion that her clan used to evade attacks needed far more training than what even she had gone through. To create an illusion as if one were merely a streak of color, to look at if you were walking one way when you were moving much more rapidly in another… that was what she would probably aspire to in a few years now, after the fat in her small body had redistributed and the growth of her bones had completed. At the moment, though, without a proper healer to back her up, she couldn’t really do much unless it was an emergency. The inner gates had their cost, and it could be dire at times. There was the final gate, the Gate of Death, which destroyed the user’s body completely as a result of using it. Sure, it assured destruction for the opponent, but was it worth it?
[3/5]

She focused chakra into her legs and feet, and felt a slight throb. Mmm, without that painkilling thrill that the gates gave, she was a little bereft. Still, the joy of running through the desert could be matched by few others. Then again, it wasn’t like Kozura had visited many other environments. Mountains, maybe. She’d been to the ones in the north once or twice, and she didn’t really like them. Cold places could suck it, if she was being quite frank. She’d also been to a savannah grasslands once, which was alright, but grass tickled her toes and made her uncomfortable, so it wasn’t all good.
Pulsing more power into her legs, she raced at an ever faster pace across the land, sending smaller animals running as they instinctually sensed that there was no way in hell that they would stand a chance if they tried to get close to her. Even the large predators, especially the ones that had witnessed her kill that crab like creature, kept a respectful berth. Ha! If only they knew that she could kill them, too, with but the tip of her pinky. Hell, she could probably take one some of them with her hands tied behind her back, though her legs were a force to be reckoned with as well.

[4/5]

When she finally did reach the Ancestral Land, she found that it had changed little. It infuriated her, somewhat. She could easily see that it was still being used regularly, which meant that some other tribe had started taking up regular residence here. Fuming silently, she stalked into the oasis. On the other hand, she did suppose that it was the way of the desert, but it had been her tribe. And her tribe still lived on in her. This was her place, and none others’. Releasing the chakra from her legs, she felt the ache come on in full force now.
Removing her clothing and slipping into the nice pool in the middle of the oasis, she relaxed and felt the fatigue evaporating from her muscles. What could possibly go wr-
“W-wow!” She heard a voice, and looked up sharply to see a man gaping at her.
While her brain processed who he was, (obviously some Northern Nomad asshole straggler, trying to catch up with the rest of his tribe), her hand moved, sending an air bullet (thwip) through his head. Tch. With that blood spilled, this was her land once again. Without dispute, without challenge. Nobody else among the tribes could stand up to her now.
[5/5]