Doodle Champion Island Journeys!

18.

Running nonstop while firing a fury of arrows, rolling and leaping, shooting stationed target might not be the closest to the real test against Yoichi, but the exercise did one way or another improve their skills in this specific sport. One of Yoichi's men was in charge of training Lucky, Morgan and Vanille, who, taking advice from the Champion himself, went to the dojo in hopes of honing the qualifications that the challenge called for within at most five days - before the Championships ended. Although so far they'd only been repeating the same actions all over: wielding a bow while constantly moving, representing mobile targets. They had to beat a stopwatch, plus beat each other through the process due to an instinctive competitiveness between them. Simple yet effective, Lucky had learned to observe a wide ground instead of focusing on one objective as she usually did, the same way Morgan improved his accuracy and Vanille improved her counter speed.

For a young athlete, Lucky was fast to learn and finished her own training before the other two, so she excused herself to the balcony for some fresh air. It was comforting, as always, to be enveloped in nature's breeze and take the world in view, all at once, when her amber eyes spotted something odd in the distance. Maybe it wasn't there yesterday, maybe she just simply missed it because of her viewpoint, still, in the middle of summer, where winds blew freely and clouds scattered and light reached everywhere and everything, a thick, rainy cloud hanging atop the bamboo forest was suspicious. Last time she checked, that hill only had powerful winds, not heavy rainfall. And the grey cloud showed no sign of going away, either.

Strange.

The more the feline observed the scene, the more concerned she became. Even across the island, she could see the bamboo trees shaking furiously. No, more like being violently bent under extreme pressure. Bamboos were well known as a resilient, enduring kind, yet Lucky was afraid that they were to break into half any moment now.

There's no way she's gonna stay still like this, not gonna do. The rematch could wait. As if Yoichi would disappear the moment she left anyway, but her heart refused to ignore this seeming problem.

She took a leap down from the balcony, successfully landing on the edge of the platform on which the dojo was built before quickly hopping down one of the large boulders by the edge of the waters, then to the ground, and ran southeast.

Lucky reached the central road in no time. These north parts were rather silent. After all, the main attractions were the Bridge Garden, Tanooki City, even the Marathon Beach, all located in the south. There was only one sole sound that drowned out everything, the rumbling sound of the waterfalls descending from the mountains of Champion Fukuro. Droplets of water splashing from the fall sprinkled on her body and had long wetted the grass. The waterfalls went alongside a steep fleet of stairs leading upwards to a Torii, where you were supposed to challenge the champion, yet the look of it made it seem like a pathway to heaven. Wonderful sight, no kidding, it almost caught her off guard.

Soon leaving behind the roar of water, Lucky continued her little trip to the bamboo forest. The feline was now standing in front of the Torii lying at the foot of the hill. This feeling, it was like deja vu. Just yesterday, she was standing right here, with Kitsune and a husky, side by side they stepped up and challenged Champion Tengu, and were taken on an absolutely unpleasant flight to their competing spot somewhere in the forest. But to an energetic girl such as Lucky, and in an eventful place such as Champion Island, a day felt like forever. She won her first scroll here, and while still hadn't got all seven, she was back, and it wasn't that bad to return. Without any competitive spirit that had her eyes locked on her opponent and without the nervousness of first impression, she could spot things she hadn't noticed before. The path leading to the Table Tennis Torii didn't simply end there, it sidetracked and went into the grove, before going straight up.