Twin Regrets [Solo]

It was warm in the morning in spring, not the type of heat that scolded you for being near it, but the type of heat that was prone to seep deep into your skin, clothes, and body. The humid kind of heat after it rained for a few days and the sun decided to instantly evaporate whatever was once returned from the sky back down to the earth so the large world containing all living things could feed its children with its food and supply a vaster majority with the rain that soaked it’s large inverted womb of fertile soil. Shikamoa was thinking this as the tall, lanky boy moved outside his home and walked off into the beginnings of the forest, the cooled half dried dirt clasping the heels of his feet as he moved past soft patchworks of grass, his face had a blank, almost scary expression on it. Those who knew him would come to find this was just the dead expression in his eyes. His head was upturned towards the early morning sky staring at passing clouds in the open sky, and even as he entered the trees he had learned where to look for the clouds while searching for his family's marker for where he and his older sister's were to train. It was a daily chore of his to search for the marker, a long black cloth with a cutout of the Leaf Village symbol in it, before his sister’s found it. Finding it was a… huge pain. Because it was only findable when the early morning light would shine through the trees tops down through the cloth to make a long shadow with Konoha’s leaf village symbol shining down in the middle a bright light in darkness.
  “This is such a load of crap.” Shikamoa said as he sighed and began looking down, his vision scanning for the cloth in the surrounding circumference. Moving forward in very slow circles he made sure he saw nothing resembling the Leaf before he left. He shivered as he remembered what his sister Pain had said earlier that morning before his sister’s went to shower. If he didn't find it before they arrived he was going to have to take three hits from both of his sisters without dodging. Shikamoa remembered he barely lived that before, but not today. Today he was going to find it; today he would live! As he turned around a tree, his eyes narrowed, it was here, the leaf symbol elongated on the bare cold ground. He was saved, but first he had to collect the cloth before his sister's arrived. Taking off his over short he began to scale the tree with the bare skin of his hand and feet, the bark feeling like cracked earth on his skin as he pulled himself up the large tree, his hands gripping firmly in the crack around the great tall trees bark, slowly pushing his body up, he couldn’t wait until he could jump from tree to tree and higher than fifty feet. He imagined being able to fly through the trees like a proper ninja, but for now he could just swing. As he reached the tree's lowest branch he pulled himself. Standing against the base on the thick tree branch, Shikamoa looked over at the cloth with a determined dead eye look.
  Flattening his body against the branch he began to slowly move along the branch. Wriggling his way across the rough wood without a out loud word of complaint. Honestly he wished he could just go back to bed, but he sisters would hurt him. The young Sourifoji member reached and grabbed the cloth in one hand and began crawling back to the base of the tree. Patiently moving back down along the hard bark Shikamoa brought the cloth down tied to his arm. As he reached back down to the moist dirt ground the young Sourufoji member sat down and leaned on the tree staring up as the glimpses h could catch of the passing clouds. That was, at least, until his sisters arrived. Soundless, they had reached the destination where their kid brother was currently cloud gazing. Pain, the younger of the two twins, gripped her fist shut, and opened her palm swiftly shifting her left arm shoulder height, her palm skyward. Bringing her right arm to her elbow and grasping tightly she closed her left fist and flew at her brother, her arm going up in a puff of smoke that dissipated quickly to reveal a gauntlet ending in a long curved blade.
  Hearing the whistle of the wind as it blew, Shikamoa jumped out of the way as fast as he could, landing in a position akin to a sitting frog staring right at his older sister, though the looked like a black blur.
  “Haaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuu. First Ring Directional shift!” He heard his sister yell and gulped. She was definitely pissed at him this time. Diving to the right of where he had positioned himself he felt his sister fly just past him, but not before she caught him with her left fist. Spitting a small spray of spit he flew backwards and flew right into a tree trunk.
  “You idjit! You’re not supposed to fall to that weak of a blow stand up before I beat your lazy ass into the ground.”
  “Hi Nee-san. L- lovely morning no?” Shikamoa said standing up rubbing his back where he hit the tree, slightly hunched over from the pain, murmuring as he straightened it. Squinting he looked to the side in time to see Sekoia, his oldest sister, Looking at the both it was like a mirror had reflected on itself, only one side was inherently evil and the other one was…
  “Shishi come on don’t make Pain mad, otherwise we have to hurt you.” Sekoia said through the purest of smiles as she leaned down to talk to her younger brother. He gulped, feeling the dangerous intentions of his older siblings. This was the first of many similarities between the twin’s known as Jemini no Akuma no Rifurekushon, “Gemini’s Demonic Reflections”. Shikamoa had come to always hate these two’s hot-headed and passive aggressive natures. Sighing he, looked between the two.
  “So what’s first?” Shikamoa asked. He instantly regretted asking.

Word Count: 1051 words

“Alright little bro, you done with the one hundred pull ups?” Pain called up the tree unable to see her younger brother in the tree above.
“Eighty-five!” Shikimoa called back down to his older sister, as he curled up again from his position hanging from the tree branch near the canopy of the forest trees. He continued to work through the pain knowing he would be doing hundreds more of these and many other exercises before the day was over it was actually quite frustrating to deal with. A pain in his back almost as figurative as it was literal. He started to daze off in thought again as he reached ninety-six, he felt a shiver on his back and he came back to reality as he got to one hundred. Shikimoa flipped off the branch he was on to a lower branch as he was used to doing in these practices, Hearing this Sekoia sent a flurry of kunai up at her brother to tell him to hurry up, he, of course, reacted. Leaping down to lower branch he guessed this was his punishment for climbing the tree and not jumping down earlier, or maybe something else he wondered. As he reached the lowest branches he jumped down and landed on the ground painfully as a shock ran up the nerves in his legs.
“Good job little bro. Now you can meditate in the proper state to summon your soul shape.” Pain said slapping him on his back hard enough to knock him back to the ground he had just recovered from.
“Wait, but Ane-san you said you were going to teach me basic juts-” he was cut off by a hand coming down to hit his head, “Ow!” Shikimoa exclaimed rubbing the growing welt on his head as his older sister Pain lifted her hand back up.
“Shikimoa! I told you not to call me Ane anymore… it is embarrassing to have you call me old when I’m only nineteen.” Pain said with a bit of a blush over her angered face. He had always called her that.
“Okay, so what kind of meditation are we doing today?” Shikimoa asked.
“Forge Meditation. Call upon your soul shape and show us its starting form.”
“But Father said-” Again the you boy was cut off.
“I don’t care what dad said, I want to see what he’s making you hide. You know our soul shapes and we’re all family here.” Pain replied.
“We’re just curious as your older siblings Shishi, that is all.” Sekoia spoke softly as Shikimoa had begun to reply again, “We will teach you the basic jutsus as was promised in a bit okay?”
“I guess…” Shikimoa trailed off, sitting down with his legs crossed he began to focus inwards, feeling the faint flow chakra reach deep down into his body and grab hold of his soul, and poor into it as it began to float to the surface and come out of him. A cloud of smoke and dust appeared and out came the long polearm shaft. Holding it horizontally he grabbed the shaft as if he knew exactly how to hold such a weapon.
As the smoke and dust cleared his sister’s looked extremely happy to see it, like kids in a candy store, they both stare at it with bright emerald eyes that shined with happiness.
“You have a strong soul shape little bro, I’m proud of you,” Pain said leaning down, “it may not be much now. Your soul shape is definitely a strong on though, we can feel it can’t we Sekoia?”
“You would be most correct Pain. It must be at least half his chakra to pull it out right now with how large it is.”
“Hey, I know that you two are well-known for your knowledge of soul shapes, my sisters, but how do you know it’s not useless?” Shikimoa asked between the two, unsettled by the compliments and the eery guessing that he was half dry right now.
“That’s for us to know and you to find out later in life.” Pain replied rubbing his hair roughly.
“You can unsummon your soul now Shishi, we still have more training to do and jutsu to teach you. Unless you aren’t interested anymore in things like basic jutsu.”
“But you two promised to teach me.” Shikimoa said, his mind thinking Sekoia was trying to get his older two siblings out of teaching him.
“Alright, alright come on pipsqueak, we got work to do then.” Pain said grinning, pulling her little brother up as he desummoned his soul shape.

Word Count: 767
Total: 1,818