Gonna Bust Some Boulders [Invite]

Song: I'll Make A Man Out Of You Artist: UCLA ScatterTones
Template Credit: [THEFROST]
Words: 859

Leopold hadn't been out of the squad hall in the past few days, hell it may have even been a week by now. He had been so busy with formalities and renovating the place that he hadn't gotten the chance to do much else, but it had finally happened. He had finally received some free time that could be utilized in any way he saw fit, and considering that during most of the renovations he was just messing around and playing games, it was time to do something active. There was certainly going to be some training on this fine day. Not a single cloud in the sky as he transitioned from the guild hall, to the rest of Seireitei and then from there to Rukongai. He darted from rooftop to rooftop as he went straight in one direction. Inevitably, if he kept going he would eventually reach the outskirts where there would be open area, or perhaps a forest within which he could train. It didn't take long with his decent speed in running, and he was soon in a hilly area riddled with large rocks of substantial weight.

It was a rather interesting sight, as he hadn't been in this area before. Rock after rock after rock dotted the horizon in all directions except from whence he had come. It had a rather serene feeling. Leopold took a squat right on top of one of the rocks, and took in a deep breath of fresh air. It was a little chilly, and his lungs tingled as he exhaled. Nothing like a nice breath of untainted air. As far as quality went, it was light years better than the filthy smog that seemed to envelope you in the living world. How could they stand to live in such crap? Simply unbelievable, but each will have as they will. If they were content to torture themselves, that was up to them. After one more chilling breath, Leopold halted his critical thinking, and focused on the task at hand. Training. He needed to think of what he needed to work on as far as his skill set, and then he needed to think of how to augment that skill. The one thing he wanted to do was some heavy lifting, but there is no way that his strength was what he needed to increase. He was already quite adept in that department. No, he needed to work on his weaknesses. Particularly, what came to his mind when thinking about his weakness, was spiritual control.

He typically just pumped out as much power as he could, and let its sheer volume do the talking, but that is exceptionally wasteful and draining. With more control, and a better sense for it, he could conserve his energy and last longer in fights. Or he could coordinate much more accurate strikes, and still expend the same amount of power, to make a truly devastating attack. Either way, he needed to master control, and the only way to achieve that was live action. He couldn't just read scrolls, and mull over technique. He had to actually use Kidō. In the past, he had considered Kidō to be silly tricks, and things for the weak, but he had become a bit more mature after his recent promotion. He needed to set a good example for all the younger shinigami, and that meant excelling at everything equally. So far, he had always sucked in the use of Kidō, but the last time he had seriously tried using it was back in the academy. Perhaps, after all this time he would finally be successful. Looking around the area once more, Leopold realized how useful this place might actually be. With all the hundreds of boulders, he had many thick, and durable targets to practice on. Even if he destroyed every single rock he touched, it would only be a fraction of the total amount in this area. A small smile crept across his cheeks.

While his goal was to get better at all Kidō , he couldn't exactly perform sealing techniques without people to seal, but he could certainly blow things to pieces with Hadō. This landscape was doomed to be coated in craters and char marks, and littered with small bits of rubble. Pointing his hand at one of the nearby stones, Leopold began muttering an incantation. He finished with a loud shout, stating the name of the technique so he didn't forget what he was doing. "Shakkahō!" A perfectly spherical orb of red energy formed just in front of his palm, but from the get-go, something appeared to be wrong. The orb began to undulate, and like a liquid, small red drops seemed to drip from the surface towards the ground, hissing as it singed the surface of the rock upon which he stood. "Ah, shit." After a moment of haphazard shifting, the entire orb seemed to cascade down like a small waterfall, and the collision with the ground below him resulted in a loud boom. Standing in roughly the same spot, Leopold was completely unfazed by the blast, though he was now tinted a dark grey.

Song: I'll Make A Man Out Of You Artist: UCLA ScatterTones
Template Credit: [THEFROST]
Words: 838

It took an entire 10 minutes of constant rubbing to get the smoke stains off of his body, and that was 10 minutes he could have spent doing something useful. Why in the hell did he have to neglect his Kidō studies so much? This was just pathetic. For a captain of his stature to be unable to successfully use Shakkahō was just shameful. After another short pause, Leopold was once again ready to try again. Lifting his right arm, he held his palm forward and directed it towards another stone. He was going to take it nice and slow, and pour a lot of focus into this one. Leopold began the incantation for Shakkahō and knowing how he had screwed up last time, he knew what aspect to focus on. In his previous attempt, the surface had been weak, and all of the energy had lost form, causing it to fall down and explode on him. It was a distinct lack of control that had caused the mishap, so Leopold was going to pour all of his concentration into keeping a solid shape.

The red orb began to form in front of his palm, and the exterior remained solid. The sphere was perfectly round, and slowly grew until it was just the right size to fire off, but it kept going. Leopold was focusing so much on the shape, that he wasn't paying attention to regulating his flow of reiatsu, which is another thing he already had trouble with. The orb changed color from a light pink, to a ferocious red as the inner sphere began to swirl in an ominous manner. The sphere swelled, and grew until it was the size of a pumpkin, or large watermelon. At this point Leopold began to notice that something was wrong, and tried to fix it. He began slowly condensing the energy to try and get it back to the correct size. The sphere began to shrink, as the well-formed exterior that he had worked so hard on began to slowly press in. It went from a large melon to the size of a typical baseball, and Leopold thought he had done well with reducing it, until he noticed the color. The orb itself had gone from pink, to dark red, and was now a violent black. The sphere emanated a treacherous feeling, and Leopold knew that it was dangerous.

With a strong whipping motion, he threw his arm up towards the sky, just as he began to lose control of the orb. With a panicked yelp, he released the orb, sending it screaming towards the heavens, flying at an incredible pace. Within moments of leaving his hand, it was already several meters above him, and then it happened. The orb seemed to vanish for a moment, followed by a deafening roar. The sky went from clear blue, to a vivid blood red as all the energy seeming engulfed the sky. From far below, Leopold could feel the intense heat of the blast, and was just starting to comprehend the sheer devastation that such an attack could cause if it hit something. It was a far too dangerous way to be using Shakkahō, and put not only himself in harm’s way, but any of his allies who happened to be near him should he ever use it. This event only deepened his resolve to gain control of his Kidō, because he wouldn't be able to bear the guilt of harming one of his comrades.

After a solid minute of waiting, and watching the spectacle from below, the sky returned to its normal state, and the heat had dissipated. Leopold could feel slight traces of his reiatsu from where the blast had been, but it was mostly gone now. Jumping down from the rock he was on, Leopold paced back and forth deep in his thoughts. He needed to find a way to properly temper his abilities, but he couldn't think of any. If he tried to balance his use of Shakkahō, he couldn't control its shape, and it just blew up on him. If he only focused on shape, he would lose control of flow, and it would get way too large. If he tried to force that overflowing reiatsu into the right size, it became far too dangerous, and uncontrollable for him to adequately use in a combat scenario. He had only tried twice so far, but he felt as if everything he did was useless in the long run. He tried imagining a few different scenarios on how to do it, but after coming up blank, he got a bit frustrated. With a brisk motion, he took a breath, and brought both hands up to slap his cheeks. "Welp, got a long day ahead of me, gonna keep going until this thing works." With no idea how he was going to regulate himself properly, he figured he would just keep going until he got it right. Then he could just repeat whatever he did that had worked.