Paks' house (Guys, don't post in here. These are just various stories character development and all.)

[Paksennarion]

Paks walked back towards her home after training with the Kazekage. He had to go do some errands, and she was supposed to take a break. Paks hated breaks. She always wanted to train, more and more and more. Paks shook her head, it didn’t matter what she wanted. desires are weaknesses Paks crossed the street and stood at the gate to her house. She looked through the chain links in the fence, the houses inside the complex were plain. There was nothing distinguishing them from any other houses in Suna. Paks watched the wind stir up some sand and send it swirling, almost like it did leaves. She opened the gate and moved forward the few steps to the door of her house. Paks entered quietly, taking her shoes off. She spotted her Fathers shoes in the getabako. He was home then. Paks hadn’t heard his voice when she came in.

She strode down the main hallway. At the end of the hall was the kitchen. When Paks got to the doorway she saw that he was sitting and drinking tea. He looked up when she paused in the doorway. Paks bowed.

“Paksennarion, good. I was looking for you,” he motioned for her to stop bowing, “Since you are now a Genin, I believe that it is time for you to learn one of our great Clan jutsu.”

Paks eyed the ground. A Clan jutsu? This was good, knowledge of Clan jutsu was a mark of how highly you were held in the Clan hierarchy. So far she knew the very basic Clan bloodline jutsu, but everyone knew that one. “Thank you Father. I would be honored,” she intoned.

He nodded sharply. “Of course. Now, we should do this inside. Follow me.” He put set down his tea cup and stalked off. Paks followed behind him. He went down one of the side hallways until they reached a medium sized room with wooden floors and nothing in it. He stepped inside the room and gestured for her to follow. Once she was inside he closed the door with a small ‘click’. The room was dim, with only one window but there was more than enough light to see by.

Her Father looked at her evaluating. Waiting for her to situate herself. She looked over at him before glancing down. “The jutsu I will teach you is called Doku Men’eki,” Paks wordlessly mouthed the name, tasting the way it felt, committing it to memory, “It is one of the great achievements of our Clan. It allows the user to cure any poison that they have been exposed to before,” he paused incase she wanted to ask something. Paks didn’t.

“Now, I will show you how it is done.” His nin-snake, a big black adder, lifted its heavy head from where he had been lying curled around her Father’s neck. He slithered forward at a deceptively lethargic pace, and then quick as lightening struck. Paks watched as he sunk his fangs into her fathers upper arm, injecting him with his venom. Her Father calmly went through four hand seals, even as the area around the bite was turning black as the venom ate away at his skin. He tapped his nin-snake after having preformed the hand seals and his nin-snake bit him again. Close to the first bite. The black stopped spreading. Paks realized that her heart was pounding. This jutsu… depended highly on the amount of time between the injection of the venom/poison and the use of it. Her Father’s skin was still injured, but the poison was gone. The nin-snake curled back up around her Father’s neck.

He shook out his arm, and then moved to grab a kunai. “At the moment the only poison you have been exposed to is your own blood, but this jutsu does not work in that regard,” he brought the kunai to his wrist, cutting swiftly. Before Paks could really react, he grabbed her left arm and splashed some of his blood on her. Paks hissed, his blood was much, much more potent than hers. He watched her as he quickly bound up his wrist. “It is your turn,” he turned and started to walk out of the room. When the door shut behind him Paks sunk to her knees. It hurt. A lot. More than anything she could remember. Paks angrily shook her head, pain was not supposed to matter. She was a shinobi. Paks held her arm out in front of her, the blood was already eating away at her skin at a steady pace. Paks recalled the hand signs her Father had used. Relieved that they had been so few in number. She preformed them and molded her chakra almost like she would when using Healing Hands. Then Paks called her nin-snake forward. She slithered down her arm, and bit as deeply as she could into Paks’ arm, near where the blood was. Paks winced, the pain didn’t stop. Angrily Paks looked down at her arm. The blood was still working, she had failed. Paks ran through the hand seals again, molding her chakra with an iron hand. She would succeed. Paks’ nin-snake bit her again. Nothing happened. Paks shook, at this rate her arm would be seriously maimed. Blood slipped down her arm to pool on the wooden floor. She ran through the signs again and again. The fifth try, she felt something change. Looking down she saw that the blood on her arm had stopped sizzling. It still hurt, a lot, but Paks was pretty sure that that was just the injury it had left behind not because it was still eating away at her.

Paks ripped off part of her sleeve from her other arm are carefully wiped the blood off. She winced as she touched the open wound it left behind. She couldn’t get the blood off, her blood just kept pouring out. Paks started to feel lightheaded. She ran through some more hand seals and tried to use Healing Hands on the open wound. She was almost out of chakra, but slowly, her flesh grew back, even slower, her skin began to form over the wound. She couldn’t keep it up though, and her chakra faltered out, ending her jutsu. Her wound was still missing large patches of her skin in several places. Paks got to her feet, swaying slightly, and walked to her room. She got there quietly and pulled out some gauze. Paks wrapped the wound tightly, flinching at the pain. The first few layers of gauze bled through so she wrapped layer after layer tying it off snuggly.

Paks looked down at her clothes and noticed that they were covered in blood on the left side. She quickly changed clothing, throwing the old clothing away. She went back to the room and cleaned up the blood on the floor. Paks wasn’t sure if she felt accomplished or not. She had learned this jutsu, but not as quickly as she should have. So had she made progress, was she stronger, or was her attempt too pitiful to be called progress? She returned to her room and lay down, thinking about which one it was.

[Paksennarion]

Paks sat in her room, legs crossed leaning against the wall. Hazy light filtered through the window to splash across the floor, but it did nothing to illuminate the room which remained dim. Her nin-snake who had taken to calling herself Nagi for some unfathomable reason, slithered along the length of the bed before doubling back as if pacing. Paks watched this out of the corner of her eye, she was more focused on her thoughts though.

A few days ago she had overheard some Clan’s members talking about one of the Clan jutsu. It was the jutsu that you would learn after Doku Men’eki. Paks knew, by the length of time that had gone by without her Father talking to her, that her Father was not going to follow the normal pattern and pass this jutsu on to her. This made Paks inclined to think that he might not at all, and she knew that she needed to somehow prove herself as capable again. If her Father decided to neglect her training she was not sure what she could do. She needed to learn the Clan jutsu. Maybe by showing him that she was capable enough to figure things out on her own he would ignore her failure earlier and oversee her training once again. Paks hoped so, because she was not sure how else she could make amends.

This led her to her position now. She knew the basic idea of the jutsu she was trying to learn, it created antibodies in the bloodstream that would cure the poison they were created for. Paks had spent some time studying antibodies, and she had a good idea how this would work theoretically. But she had to improvise the hand seals since she had no idea what they were supposed to be. Going on the end result of the jutsu and the level she had deemed it she was able to work out what seals she would need to mold her chakra correctly, and she had tried to take into account the way the seals overlapped and interacted when forming the seal sequence. She also had to estimate the amount of chakra she was supposed to be using. Paks had gone through several sheets of paper while writing down these equations and formulating. But she finally came up with what she believed to be a somewhat solid, if still shaky, idea. This would have been easier if she had ever seen this jutsu used before, but sadly she had not, and the members she heard talking about it had only skimmed over the general idea.

With that all in mind, she stared down at her final paper, with all of the end results of her calculations. It should work. She felt a stirring of something, that if she was to allow herself to recognize, was close to apprehension. Paks ruthlessly pushed the emotion down and away. So what if there was a risk with trying out experimental jutsu. She had heard plenty of stories about shinobi harming themselves when they created new jutsu, but she had taken everything she could think of into account. She could not have miscalculated. Besides, she needed to do this to gain back her Father’s acknowledgement.

Nagi hissed mockingly at her, as she paused in her pacing. “You’ll fail, and you know it. Just ask sssomeone else already.”

Paks shook her head, “You know I can’t do that. Father would find out and then I would not have a chance of gaining back what I lost. Besides, no one else in the Clan would help me, they all understand why I am being ignored.”

Nagi curled and uncurled, agitated, “Ssso what? You don’t need thessse Clan jutsssu anyway. You can become ssstrong with your sssenssei, or other teachersss,” she said. This was one of those few times that Paks could remember when her nin-snake was kind in any way. She sounded sort of… reassuring? Paks would have laughed, the idea seemed so absurd, if Nagi wouldn’t have taken offense to it.

Instead of replying, Paks leaned forward and glanced at the paper one more time. She resolutely squared herself as best as she could, and then pushed her right sleeve up, revealing her arm but also the brace that held several poisoned senbon. She carefully plucked one of the senbon out, as Nagi twitched her tail ominously. Paks deftly switched her grip on the senbon, and plunged it into her upper arm. Immediately her arm began to feel a creeping cold from around the area where the senbon protruded. It didn’t bleed though, and Paks took that as a good sign. She tried to still her heart beat and movements, so as to prevent the poison from spreading further than it was going to. After a minute her whole arm felt cold, and stabs of pain were spreading up towards her shoulder. Paks began to think that maybe she should have stabbed herself somewhere farther away from her head and heart. She watched with a clinical sort of detachment as her arm began to shake, increasing in intensity as time wore on. Paks was not really sure how long she was supposed to wait, but she knew that she was supposed to let the poison effect her before proceeding. Another minute passed and Paks was shivering uncontrollably. Her teeth were chattering even though her head felt hot to the touch when she pressed the back of her left hand to it. The area around the senbon was turning a shade whiter than her skin normally was, which was slightly alarming because Paks normally had very pale skin.

Paks waited a few more seconds, but deemed it time to continue on. With shaky hands she preformed the hand seals for Doku Men’eki and commanded Nagi to bite her. Nagi seemed to do so with much more relish that Paks thought the situation called for, but she was just happy that Nagi listened to her without arguing. She felt the cold recede somewhat as the jutsu when to work. Paks glanced at the paper in front of her one last time and then ran through the hand seals depicted on it. She carefully focused her chakra making sure that her control was not compromised by the poison affecting her. When she had finished the hand seals, she had to stop herself from cringing slightly. But instead of something blowing up, or pain or whatever else she had thought would happen from a presumed failed jutsu, there was a pleasant glow-y like feeling, that spread through her limbs and intensified around her right arm.

Paks watched as her skin returned to its normal pallor, and the pain and feeling of coldness disappeared altogether. She reached out tentatively and wrenched the senbon from her arm. All that was left from her pre-meditated poisoning was the wound from her senbon. Although that healed too before her eyes, leaving a white circle surrounding the tiny scar.

Paks had not realized that she had been tense this whole time, holding her breath. She slowly let it out, and relaxed her muscles. Nagi flicked her tongue out, slightly annoyed at being proven wrong.

Paks eyed her, “We’re not sure yet. I still might have messed it up.” She took the senbon and pressed the point against one of her fingertips, creating a small wound. She felt the same rush of cold as last time, but it ended almost as soon as it came.

Paks looked back up at Nagi. She was staring at her, then she barred her fangs and hissed in just such a way that Paks translated as slight approval. Snakes generally did not look back, and Paks knew that that was as close as she was going to get to an apology for the comment earlier. Paks smiled, and leaned back against the wall. She allowed the smile to remain on her face for longer than she should have but there was no one else there to see.

[Paksennarion]

Paks quietly walked through the main hall of the house. She tried to mute her footsteps as much as possible. Paks had just returned from her first B rank mission. Her first failed mission. Although it was a B rank, it had been relatively simple in nature. And yet she had caused the mission to fail, succumbing to a novice mistake! Any shinobi worth their title would have checked the terrain before moving, especially when trying not to be noticed Paks harshly admonished herself.

Paks stilled her mind as she reached the door leading into the sitting room. Her parents were no doubt in there, talking. She knew that they had most likely received word of her failure earlier, but it was her duty to inform them in person. Slowly Paks reached out and rapped on the shoji door, to announce her presence, before sliding it open.

Her parents were sitting at a table drinking tea. Paks kept her eyes on the floor, bowing low. Her Father let her wait, before motioning for her to rise. Paks did so, keeping her eyes lowered. Her mother, whom usually ignored these meetings, got to her feet, she looked pointedly at Paks’ Father and then walked out, brushing past Paks without saying anything. Paks withheld the instinctive flinch, if her mother refused to be in the same room as her, then this was just as bad as she had first thought. Her Father gestured that she could speak, so Paks did so. She was not about to try and excuse her actions, which she knew were inexcusable. Besides, it was not like this wasn’t her fault to begin with.

“I was assigned a B rank mission today, along with the Jounin,” Paks quickly scanned her memory for Kaname’s last name, “Chi-san. The mission failed because of my actions.”

Her Father slowly set down his tea cup, “I was made aware of this earlier,” there was nothing in his tone to show his reaction, that alone made Paks tense, “You realize that it was a great honor for you, merely a Genin, to go on a mission so highly ranked, correct? It was surely a sign of how favorably the Kazekage looked upon you,” he said softly, still lacking any inflection. “And yet you proceeded to fall short on what is debatably one of the easier B ranks to date. This dereliction shows badly upon the Clan, and our family. I had assumed that you understood my position in this Village, as a council member, but it appears that you were unaware,” Paks blinked, why was he saying that? Truthfully she had failed while knowing this, his comment would imply that she had merely not known, which would be more forgivable than the truth. “I did not think that you would disappoint us thusly and force my hand in this matter, but we cannot allow this incident to spawn more such occurrences, and as such we must act preemptively.”

He stood, and motioned for Paks to follow him as he left the room. They walked down several hallways until it became apparent that they were heading for the same room as before. The one with wooden floors and nothing else. This time it was darker due to the later time of day and Paks had to wait a second for her eyes to adjust. Her Father left the door open so that light from the hallway could seep in. Paks waited patiently for whatever he was going to say, standing a few feet in front of him. He caught her eyes and stared, intently, as if he was trying to see if she possessed some quality. Paks tried to maintain her straight face, she did not want to be found lacking.

Finally, at length, he looked away. “I would hope,” this time there was emotion in his voice, and Paks was relieved even though it sounded like derision, “that you would be strong enough to survive this. If you don’t it will be your lack of ability that is to blame.” He started going through a set of hand signs rapidly.

Paks tried to process his words and their meaning. What was he talking about? She watched him with a growing sense of wariness. Suddenly he finished his string of hand signs and his arms shot out too quickly for her mind to process hitting her on the arm. The force pushed her back and she fell, and then there was a burst of white hot pain and Paks was unable to control her bodies reaction as she reached out with her right hand to clench her left wrist tightly. Trying to press on the pained area, as if that would ease the pain somehow.

“You should not forget your purpose. It seems that lately you have been acting disreputable. I have heard about your less that strict adherence to the shinobi protocol. How you came to entertain these notions of acting otherwise, I cannot fathom, but it shall stop here. Remember, that you are only a shinobi, a tool of Suna. Do not become pretentious. If you subsist, which at the moment seems unlikely, that this shall make you stronger.”

He left and shut the door behind him, closing off the second to last source of light. There was still faint illumination coming from the one window, but it was late and getting later. Paks clasped her left wrist tighter as the pain increased slowly. She managed to get to her knees before a new surge of pain sent her sprawling forward, clutching her wrist to her stomach and resting her forehead on the ground. She felt a strong leeching sensation, as if something was sapping her energy slowly. Paks tried to take deep breaths and calm down, she would not panic. Shinobi did not panic. Slowly Paks sucked in another deep breath, her fingernails cutting into her skin with the pressure she was exerting on her wrist.

[Paksennarion]

The room has slowly gotten darker and darker until it was pitch black. As the light ebbed, her pain intensified. Paks sunk her teeth through her bottom lip, but she didn’t feel anything so extreme was the searing pain in her wrist. She felt so tired, as her chakra continued to be drain away. She didn’t have enough energy to move, but focused instead on clutching her wrist tightly, trying to expel the pain. Her senses were overloaded with bursts of pain. She had never felt anything like his before, it was as if her blood was boiling. Paks screamed.

~.~.~.~.~.~

12 hours ~ 11 CK

[Paksennarion]

Ithurtithurtithurtithurt. Paks couldn’t form a full sentence as her brain focused on the acute suffering of her body. She was so tired, yet even under the constant drain of chakra and intense pain, she was unable to slip into unconsciousness. It hurt so much! Paks couldn’t focus on anything, except the pain. She writhed, sobbing, as her body responded. And still she was cruelly denied the mercy of unconsciousness, it was as if whatever was draining her chakra left just enough to keep her in this state. It hurt! Her body thrashed about, more violently now, contorting. Paks stopped thinking in general, her mind shut down, focusing only on processing the pain that racked her body.

~.~.~.~.~.~

18 hours ~ 6 CK left

[Paksennarion]

Paks lay there, on her back. Her head was tilted to the side staring despondently at the floor. Pale light filtered in from the window, casting shadows on the far side of the room. She noticed absentmindedly that she had never really gotten that bloodstain out of the wood from earlier. The light from outside was slowly growing brighter. Dust motes could been seen floating slowly through the air. Paks let these thoughts float through her head; they were safe thoughts. She felt a strong weariness set in, making her too tired, too impassive to care about anything else.

When the light from outside became strong enough to overcome the shadows sheltering her eyes she knew that she would have to move. It took a great effort for Paks to roll to her knees, much greater than it should have. Shakily Paks reached out and pushed herself up, pointedly looking away from her wrist. The pain had dwindled until all that was left was a dull ache spread throughout her body. Paks painstakingly got to her feet, lurching somewhat. She made her way to the door, leaning heavily on the wooden frame. Paks slowly pushed open the shoji screen, dully noting that no one was in the hallways.

She stepped out, and with a single-mindedness proceeded to stumble to her room. She managed not to fall until she got to her room, staggering to her bed. Paks vaguely remembered wrapping her wrist in bandages, still managing not to look at it, before she passed out.

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