AN: I OWN NOTHING
It was finally time to spar at the academy, good, Sasuke hadn't had a good spar in a week, he and Naruto had been training solo doing their best to master the jutsu that they had been taught in that small amount time.
Sasuke felt that his Grand Fireball jutsu was pretty good, he could get it as big as his dad's was if he pushed a little more chakra than normal into it. He still hadn't reduced the number of required hand seals yet but that would come with more practice.
He even got Itachi to teach him a Genjutsu, Sasuke was a bit of a natural in the field. He was taught the False Surroundings technique, and the theory behind it. Genjutsu, it seemed, was one of the more flexible ninja arts, there was a lot he could do by just learning the theory of that technique, he had already started working on a modified version of it to work in tandem with a new technique he was working on but didn't have completely worked out yet.
The class stood outside, a wide circle in front of them. Iruka and Mizuki were in the middle they were discussing who would be sparring first. They came to a decision rather quickly.
"When you boys get to the center, make the seal of confrontation and then start when we say you can. Mizuki and I will demonstrate the seal." Iruka said as he and Mizuki went to the center and stood a little apart and made the seal.
"After the spar, you are to make the seal of reconciliation." Iruka continued as they moved to demonstrate again. After that they moved out of the ring.
"Okay, Kiba and Naruto will start for us. First one to put the other on a position where they can't carry on wins." Mizuki said.
As Naruto and Kiba made their way to the center of the ring most of the class was murmuring things about how Naruto couldn't win against a clan kid. Naruto steadily ignored them, they would see soon enough, he hoped that Kiba would at least be a challenge to beat.
Naruto stood across Kiba, it was his first real spar in a week. He'd been practicing his jutsu and would spar against his clones. He was getting pretty good with the Earth Flow River jutsu and Shisui had taught him, Earth style: Subterranean Voyage two days ago. It was a neat jutsu he could use to travel underground. So far his range was ten meters the maximum of the jutsu was fifty so he had a long way to go.
He stood across Kiba, the brown haired boy had a smirk on his face, oh how Naruto would enjoy this.
"You should give up now, loser, you can't beat me." Kiba said with the same annoying smirk on his face.
Naruto scoffed, "You should watch how you talk to your future Hokage, dog breath." He was trying to rile the other boy up and judging by the look on Kiba's face it was working. They made the seal of confrontation.
"Begin!" Mizuki shouted.
Naruto stood calmly waiting for Kiba to attack, "What's wrong, dog breath, scared?" that did it Kiba came at Naruto as quick as he could, anger written all over his face. The other boy was fast, Naruto noted, a little bit faster than him but not as fast as Sasuke so this would be easy.
Kiba came at Naruto with a wild, right swing. Naruto just dodged by leaning left, he stepped forward and with as much force as he could he landed a palm strike on the other boy's sternum.
Kiba's eyes widened as he was thrown back. He rolled into a crouch his chest aching. He charged again, this time he'd be more careful, he threw two punches both of which the blond dodged easily. He went for a kick to the ribs, but Naruto just caught his kick with one hand and gripped his leg with both hands. The next thing he knew he'd been spun around three times and was thrown.
Naruto watched Kiba roll to a stop, he sighed, this was really disappointing, 'Time to finish this.' He thought. He charged for Kiba, as he got up, and kicked at Kiba's head, the brown haired boy blocked the kick, winced and skid to the side a little.
Naruto didn't give the other boy even a little time to recover before he was on him again going for a kick in the same place. Kiba's arms were already there from the previous block, the kick connected and Kiba skid back even more.
Naruto was on him again, a left hook to the jaw, a right jab to the nose, Kiba stumbled back and Naruto was determined not to let him catch his breath.
Naruto sent a kick to Kiba's ribs, he connected yet again, he saw Kiba going to defend them and sent another kick to the arms that were blocking, it would be good to slow them down. He sent a kick to the other ribs which was hastily and sloppily blocked.
He went for a left hook to the jaw again, Kiba blocked very slowly. Naruto smirked internally and quickly spun on his heel and delivered a devastating kick to the right side of Kiba's jaw with his left heel.
The last thing Kiba saw were cold blue eyes and Naruto's expressionless face before his world became dark.
There was a stunned silence, everyone but Sasuke was openly shocked, even Mizuki and Iruka had a hard time not showing their surprise. It was silent for about fifteen seconds then Kiba started waking up, "Damn, he hits hard." Was the first thing he said.
Kiba looked at Naruto, his eyes weren't the same cold blue he'd seen, if anything he seemed worried and offered him a hand. Kiba took it, he got up, he felt a little dizzy but other than that he was fine, "I'm not going to lose to you next time, Naruto."
"We'll see about that." Naruto said, as he made the sign of reconciliation. He supposed that the Inuzuka clan was like their animal familiars, you just had to show them who was boss and they would respect you.
Naruto was still disappointed in the fight. He supposed that Kiba did have potential though. He walked to the outside of the sparing circle and stood next to Sasuke again.
"Not even a whole minute, well done. I might just have to work up a sweat to beat your time" Sasuke said grinning at his friend. He would have to wait a while before he was called.
Most of the fights before his fight were boring. That Shikamaru guy just gave up, Choji could have ended his fight sooner but he seemed not to want to hurt his opponent. Ino was good but nothing special she fought Sakura the girl had potential it seemed but she was just very weak at this point. Shino fought mechanically and efficiently enough. The fight that caught their attention was Hinata's fight.
The Hyuga was set to fight some purple haired girl named Ami, who seemed to think of herself as some queen bee, in reality she was just a bully.
"You clan kids aren't so tough, you're probably just a spoiled little princess Hyuga." Ami spat the clan name out with venom. "You guys think you're so high and mighty, but you're nothing but a bunch of freaks and I'll put you in your place." She continued, she really seemed to have something against clan kids.
Hinata just stood there with no expression on her face but her eyes were narrowed.
Mizuki had enough of the taunting, it was good to let the kids get in a few insults, they would have to get used to being insulted during battle so that they don't lose their cool easily, "Begin!" He said and allowed the match to start.
Hinata darted towards the other girl and got her with a palm strike to the chest, as Ami skidded back Hinata lunged at her again, Ami tried raising her arms up by her chest in an "x" like fashion, Hinata just crouched low and used her left arm to push on Ami's elbow as she was raising her arms, causing her to have that arm above her head, making her block useless.
Hinata used the opening she had just created to land an upper cut with her right palm, Ami fell over and Hinata's follow through palm strike stopped right by her nose. It had nearly been fifteen seconds and she had been beaten.
It didn't come as a surprise to anyone, what did surprise them however was how ruthless and efficient the Hyuga was. Naruto watched her as she made the sign of reconciliation with a bitter Ami and grinned, he wanted to fight her.
Sasuke's spar was the next and last for the day, he smirked and said lowly so that only Naruto could hear, "Naturally, they'd save the best for last." His fight was against a civilian boy named Kenchi, he had brown hair and eyes, he was a bit tan like Naruto.
Sasuke stepped into the ring with Kenchi. He looked at Kenchi he would end this quick, he wanted to beat Naruto's and Hinata's time. Kenchi didn't look impressive, Sasuke waited for the signal to start.
Mizuki gave the signal to start and Kenchi ran towards Sasuke and was about to punch him with a wild swing when his world turned upside down and the next thing he knew there was a fist in his face.
Naruto saw every moment of the short lived fight. Sasuke had just grabbed the arm that poor Kenichi was using to punch and flipped him. He winced at the thud of the impact of Kenchi's back hitting the floor. Sasuke got on the boys chest using his knees to pin down his arms.
"Simple but effective, very well done Sasuke." Mizuki said.
"OK everyone, that's the end of spars for the day, this was just to test everyone's level. Tomorrow we'll begin physical conditioning and taijutsu practice, we'll hold spars twice a week starting next week to see everyone's improvement. We'll be going inside shortly to learn chakra theory." Iruka said, giving the kids a run down of what to expect from now on.
The things they learned in class weren't very great if you asked Naruto but hey he had wanted to be a ninja so he guessed if this was taught then it would eventually come in handy. The Uzumaki hardly paid attention as Iruka spoke on things he'd already known about, no doubt Sasuke was using this opportunity to meditate. The bastard was so good at acting like he was really listening.
He listened to Iruka again, who was talking about different ways to use chakra. The man caught truly his attention with what he said next.
"So besides taijutsu, ninjutsu and genjutsu there is another field in the ninja arts that isn't as popular, not because it isn't powerful but because it is time consuming and extremely difficult, it takes forever to learn as well, fuinjutsu." Iruka said to the children looking over them, he saw a hand raise, "Yes, Naruto?"
"Sensei, will we get to learn any fuinjutsu here at the academy?" The blond asked with excitement in voice.
"Unfortunately, Naruto it isn't part of the curriculum." When he saw the blond deflate at his answer he quickly added, "You can however check out the library, we have books that have the basics on fuinjutsu as well as beginner level seals." Iruka was glad to see his student brighten up after that.
Sasuke had a horrible feeling that he'd be spending lunch and some time in the library from now on, he supposed it wouldn't be too bad to have some knowledge of seals, Naruto was probably all hot and bothered because the Uzumaki were fuinjutsu specialists, Sasuke very much doubted Naruto would have the patients for it though.
After school Sasuke was dragged by Naruto to the library, books on seals were rare and few it seemed but they did find a couple, they were beginner books but that was exactly what they needed. Naruto was determined to save up so he could buy more advanced books for himself.
Sasuke knew when that the next time they visit the library, which would likely be tomorrow that he'd want to look at the chakra control section, he and Naruto needed ways to make the leaf exercise more demanding.
As the days went by Sasuke and Naruto would spend lunch and thirty minutes after school learning about seals, then they would go and train. Sasuke had a suspicion that Naruto would soon quit on seals, progress was slow and quite frustrating. In other areas though, progress was steady and quick at times.
In a month Naruto had mastered the Earth Flow River and Great Breakthrough jutsu. Now all he needed to do was get to the point where he could use one hand sign to perform the techniques. His Body Flicker was okay as well and he was steadily making progress when it came to the Subterranean Voyage jutsu.
Sasuke had mastered the Grand Fireball jutsu and his genjutsu technique, to the point where he could do it with a single hand sign and use it to enhance his original technique, though he hadn't quite gotten that down yet, it was simple in concept but really hard to perform it almost frustrated him as much as seals frustrated Naruto. His medical ninjutsu was coming along a little slow but he could heal himself properly and not just on the surface level like when he first started practicing his Grand Fireball jutsu.
At the academy they hadn't faced each other in a spar yet and they hadn't faced Hinata either. They won their spars pretty easily, it was almost a joke, they would always spar with each other after fuinjutsu study to keep sharp though.
As another month was going to pass by, Naruto began losing his patience with fuinjutsu and looked like he would give up, like Sasuke had previously predicted, but then a week before they began their second month in the academy something happened to Naruto. It was a very subtle shift in demeanor, if Sasuke didn't know him he wouldn't have noticed. The biggest change however was that Naruto had thrown himself back into fuinjutsu with an incredible determination and took Sasuke along for the ride.
Sasuke tried to ask his friend what was wrong but the blond would brush it off. He supposed it was fine as long as it wasn't self destructive behavior and it helped them get stronger but he couldn't help but worry, his blond friend that used to be full of energy and excitement now seemed a little skittish around people.
AN: Thanks to those who took the time review and especially to Redtaro for the advice, I hope it makes it a bit easier to read and I hope you can see what I'm trying to convey in the fight scenes.
