Kuroichi woke up when it was still dark outside, the sun not having risen yet. Before, he would only wake up when the sun had already risen, but by now his biological clock had gotten used to interrupted and short sleep.
He knew that in a few short minutes his "room-mate" would wake up and start getting hungry again, even though he had just fed it like two or three hours ago in the middle of the night.
Kuroichi did a big stretch before he quickly got up and left his shelter to make some fire outside. The night's in the forest weren't really cold, but they weren't warm either. The embers from last night's fire were still hot, so he only had to put some new branches and logs into the pit and wait for a while until the fire got going again.
He went hunting yesterday and brought back two relatively large rabbits, so he still had some meat that wasn't cooked, dried, or smoked yet. He cut some of it up, and put some aside for when the chick woke up.
Slowly the sun's first rays of sunshine seeped through the tree canopy, lighting everything a orange reddish hue.
It had been about 20 days since the little chick hatched. For Kuroichi, who's sleeping schedule, as well as his training schedule, completely changed, the time had been a mixture of stress and fulfillment.
He had built a little nesting area for the chick in one corner of the shelter. He created a sleeping space, made with small branches and lined with softer parts of cloth he had to make it comfortable.
At first the chick stayed inside it most of the time, content with sleeping and being fed, but as it started getting bigger and more curious about it's surroundings, Kuroichi encircled a little larger, but still small, area with stones and put some things inside with which the chick could play and entertain itself.
Cautiously it started getting bolder as time passed and these days, Kuroichi could often see the little creature flopping around and playing with small sticks, ripping up the bark with it's little talons and acting like it caught it's prey. Kuroichi chuckled as he thought about it, content to stay and watch the little thing as it slowly woke up.
Since he couldn't leave the area around his shelter for prolonged periods of time anymore, Kuroichi had instead started focusing on his non-existent taijutsu proficiency in the mean time.
He started slowly, by learning each of the different kata one by one. He made sure to be able to correctly perform each one with precision and no wasted movements. Only when he was sure that he could do them perfectly going in slow-motion, when he didn't have to worry about the time it took him to perform them, did he start increasing his speed.
In order for him to truly learn how to fight with this taijutsu style he'd need real opponents eventually, to gain fighting experience, but being able to perform all the movements while only imagining his opponents mentally worked for him, for now.
Kuroichi's movements when performing his kata started off as clumsy, but he quickly gained some initial proficiency. If one were to observe closely it would've almost been possible to see a shadow of the efficient, brutal yet incredibly fluid fighting style he'd use in the future.
Of course, Kuroichi also kept up his chakra manipulation training, but the only time he really left the vicinity of his shelter was when he went hunting, so even though he wanted to already be working on water walking, he had to keep it on hold for now.
Whenever he took a longer time hunting, the little chick would become incredibly loud, screeching and squeaking for him to come back. He was wary that the noise would attract some kind of predator, since usually owls would be more or less safe in their nests that were high up in the trees.
Whenever he returned from having gone hunting and heard the noise the chick made he was relieved, but also really looking forward to it being all grown up and him not having to worry about things like these anymore.
In the evenings, when it would be dark out, he'd hold the little chick and start circulating his own chakra through it. He didn't know whether this would have any positive or negative effects on the little thing, but he didn't notice any signs of either so he kept on doing it.
It was also interesting for him to understand how his chakra interacted and worked with his other's bodies. He remembered that in his half conscious state, when he was attacking the mother owl of the chick, he instinctively used chakra to physically enhance his body, making him stronger and quicker in that moment.
He couldn't achieve the same efficiency he had at that moment when he tried to replicate it, but he steadily improved in being able to use chakra in that particular way.
Otherwise, he also started learning to use the leaf balancing exercise while simultaneously doing the tree walking exercise. It was double the concentration effort and was a really challenging way for him to pass the time right next to his shelter.
In the future, if Kuroichi wanted to be able to use the terrain to his advantage during fights, he'd have to be able fight, analyze, use jutsu and generally be able to operate normally while standing on water, or perhaps a cliff etc., exemplifying how important it was to be able to use chakra without even having to think about it.
Sometimes, when he was training right by a tree in front of his shelter, he'd feel the eyes of the owl chick on him, which made him wonder whether the owl already had some sort of level of intelligence, but he'd also quickly dismiss that notion. Even human babies only lived on instinct the first few weeks or months of their life, and he didn't think the chick already had properly developed mental faculties to become somewhat self aware.
Other than his enhanced version of tree walking for chakra manipulation, and the kata for his physical exercise, he'd also do simple strength exercises that did not require him to do much running. The forest had pretty much become his personal gym as he'd use different sized logs to do all kinds of pushups, or he'd climb a tree normally, doing pull-ups for good measure.
He'd also play around with different exercises that might have seemed weird at first, but helped him out in unexpected ways. One example were spider crawls he incorporated into his warm-ups. He'd crawl on all fours, and worked his way up to only using his fingers eventually, which improved the dexterity of his fingers, as well as the total strength his hands could unleash. Whenever he was practicing the speed of his hand seals, he noticed that he had more control and that it became easier to form them quickly.
Like this, Kuroichi juggled the responsibilities of raising the little owl chick while also being careful not to neglect his own training and improvement. It was exhausting for him, but since he always had something to do, something to occupy him the time flashed by without him even really noticing it.
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