Waiting for the storm [Nejiko, open to people in the Hyuuga compound]

[weighted_wings]

[set immediately after One's Duty]

The training grounds Nejiko chose were as far away from the nearest building as she could get without traveling beyond the thick stone walls. She wasn't sure what was worse - the fact the Elders were pushing this issue, or the fact she could understand the reasoning behind it. All Hyuuga knew their duty. Duty

Comments

[hizashiko]

The summoning of her daughter hadn't gone unnoticed by Hizashiko. It could have been nothing, but something nagged in the back of her mind. She'd felt restless, during when Nejiko had been gone, and when time passed and her daughter didn't return... Well, she'd grown tired of waiting. The young woman was most likely still in the meeting, but it wouldn't hurt to go and look for her, to make sure everything was all right. If she couldn't find her (had it been a sudden mission?) then she would go to her sister. Thankfully, she did find her

[weighted_wings]

Nejiko could glimpse her mother standing at a safe distance, with the aid of Byakugan. However she still felt too volatile to be civil and so continued spinning in place. By now the kaiten's radius reached half-again what she usually employed to protect herself in combat. The strain of maintaining the sphere already made itself known. Her body added to the conversation in the way air scraped her throat and her muscles ached from physical exertion.

Only when she felt certain that her energy was expended enough to keep from doing anything stupid but not enough to be too much of a hindrance, she released her will and slowed down. Without her hold on the chakra combined with centrifugal force, the kaiten fell apart. Chakra dissipated into the air in feathery strips that left only wind as a marker of passage.

At the center of the calf-deep crater Nejiko let herself fall forward onto her knees while keeping her torso straight and head held high as she looked at Hizashiko.

"Momma," she said quietly, voice roughened from inhaling

[hizashiko]

It was only once Nejiko was done spinning, when the chakra was gone, and when was addressed in a rough voice, did she start to move towards her daughter. Steps slow and deliberate, Hizashiko felt no need to rush over. Though she breathed faster then normal and had fallen to her knees, she was fine. She was a big girl, could take care of herself. Hizashiko knew this now, and strove to remind herself of it, when it was still hard to separate the small girl she used to hold with the young woman on her knees before her now

[weighted_wings]

The crater Nejiko knelt in was sufficiently big enough that she had to push herself up to her feet. She paused, mostly from habitual instinct, before reaching out her own hand to grasp Hizashiko's and get a little help getting up out of the crater. "Thank you," she said quietly. Muted and not-quite distant anger shone in her eyes, but its target wasn't Hizashiko.

In fact, Nejiko worked up a momentary, faint and rueful smile. "I only wish I could show you how to do it." But she was banned from teaching any member of the branch.