Training Spar

[Zardoch]

[OOC: As the title says, this thread is going to be a spar and thread for training my abilities with the help of Psiko. Anyone not involved may not post or interrupt in anyway.]

Beauty, tranquility, harmony, and gracefulness; these four things are what defined the imperial garden of the Beijing palace with it's endless amount of evergreen trees and shrines dedicated to the God's of ancient China. With the morning sun peeking its head over the side of the opened ceiling, this hall of Garden was the perfect place to be able to sit and find oneself through deep meditation of hums; a hall designed to calm the mind and relax the body in perfect enlightenment. Yet it was silent to the sounds of shouting emperors or children's happiness, however, with the palace emptied of all royal family centuries ago, its desolate landscape now home to wild plants just stretching their arms out to cover all they can and consume what little nutrition is there. The sound of buzzing bugs and whistling birds painting this place to be more of a forest than a garden as one would assume. It was no longer an oasis of simplistic pleasantries with the royal family, but a shelter to poisonous creatures and strange auras of unsettled spirits waiting for the chance to strike to living.

Despite all that, it never came to the mind of a lost soul of sorts as a man walked through the halls of the palace searching for the simple necessities of life. He searched not for the treasures and antiques of this famous place, but rather the room that he may call home for the night. It was a rare find to discover such a large place in the middle post-apocalyptic world without being destroyed and even more amazing that it still stood. This man that knew not where he was going marveled at everything he passed with such great works of art.

This man was Ryu, an immigrant from another country who constantly roamed the world in search for food and water and above all, life. He had found himself the perfect place to stay for the day and there was even some growing food in the garden he noticed he'd be able to make a breakfast out of and then some. Luck seemed to be on his side as he wandered next to a tree and sat his back against it, sliding down to sit and rest from such a long journey.

The strangest thing about this young man though was that even if was Japanese, he showed little Japanese characteristics. His short messy hair was a bright blonde, almost bleach and his skin was a shade of peach that sat in-between the normal pink color and a dark tan. If anything he looked more American with a taller body of five foot seven inches and a semi-stocky build with defined muscles; even his clothes which were nothing more than an armless ripped black shirt, sagging ripped black sweatpants, and worn light tabi boots.

Unconvincingly, however, he was indeed part Japanese. Father was British, mother was half-American half-Japanese, and grandfather was full Japanese. Thus he had only one third of Japanese blood in him and was named Ryu for reasons he wasn't exactly proud about. He thought being named Blanka would've been more interesting than a muscle-head-like Ryu who irritatingly resembled the same kind of life this character went through. Ryu just dozed off for a minute with his head leaned down.

Suddenly, his caught the sound of running water crashing into a pool of itself and like it was a natural instinct, leaped up and turned towards it to see a fountain with sparkling water that didn't look unnatural for once. Ryu ran over to it and quickly cupped his hands together to gather the water from the stream, gulping it down quickly hoping it lasted indefinitely. His eyes widened when he saw a snake or two slithering through the water and jumped back in response. For a minute, he just stood there waiting for the snakes to do something, but they didn't seem to notice he was there, just swimming past him without even an acknowledgment. Carefully moving forward, he cupped his hands again to get more water, but this time his eyes followed the reptiles’ movements to be cautious.

In this garden, he was going to have to stay focused to stay alive.