Naruto : Chapter 31

Team eight was waiting for team seven on their training ground. Kurenai had expected for Kakashi's team to be here, but was surprised to find them away with a note that the team would return at two for the sparring matches.

Now it was five minutes before that time. Well, she would have to wait. One minute before the planned time Kakashi appeared in a body flicker.

"Hello Kurenai, good to see you and your team are already here. My team should also arrive any moment. I am having them train sealless replacement. I just need to place the logs in place." Kakashi said, unsealed three logs and placed them on the ground.

The first to appear was Naruto, who didn't look like this exercise was very hard. Two minutes later Sasuke appeared. Sakura didn't get it done sealless, but didn't want to have team eight waiting any longer and used the jutsu with seals but nearly no smoke.

"We will train that more in the future and it will be your homework for the weekend to get at least one sealless replacement jutsu working." Kakashi told her.

"Yes, Kakashi sensei." She answered, hating that he made her look bad in front of Sasuke.

"Okay, did you inform your team about the process, Kurenai?" Kakashi asked.

"Yes, I told them last week. They are eager to find out how far they have come so far." She answered.

"Okay, I guess then we start with drawing matches." Kakashi said and held out a tin with three papers in it. He had team eight draw first, then his team followed.

Shino and Sakura got the one, Naruto and Hinata the two and Sasuke and Kiba the three.

"Okay, first match, Shino vs. Sakura, match two Hinata vs. Naruto and match three Kiba vs. Sasuke. Shino, Sakura you have the field." Kurenai said.

The other four sat down on the side. Hinata was close to fainting. Why in the world did she have to fight Naruto? She didn't want to have to fight against him.

"Don't hold anything back in our fight. Don't worry about me; I can take all you can throw at me, Hinata. This is meant to see what we should work on in our training.

I know you don't like hurting people, but if you hold back on your comrades in training spars they don't get the feeling for a real fight and it could lead to them getting careless in the field.

You don't have to target vital areas in training, but target non vital areas and let your team-mates feel how much your taijutsu style can hurt.

They will be more careful in your next spar." Naruto told Hinata.

Hinata was shocked. She never had thought that her holding back because she didn't want to hurt people was hurting them more for the future. She didn't have much time to dwell on the thought though, because Shino had taken out Sakura extremely fast.

She had run screaming from his bugs until they had shut her up by sucking out her chakra.

"Kakashi, please tell me you are working on her bad habits." Kurenai begged.

"I am; I have my team training the whole days. But I have to agree that that was simply embarrassing." Kakashi said sweat dropping. If Sakura continued like that his team would lose points for her continued losses, even if Sasuke and Naruto won. Well, for the first month he was safe from that part of the bet.

Then Naruto and Hinata took their positions. Naruto decided to go with the Namikaze style as the Hyuga's gentle fist style required a style based on speed to counter it properly.

He also was best using his bastardised version of the gentle fist with the cheetah style of his father's clan. Hinata obviously tried to hit him and was more determined than Kurenai had seen her before. She should have seen that Hinata's problem was that she didn't want to hurt others.

Naruto's simple words had helped her seeing a problem and got her working on overcoming it. It wasn't perfect yet, that would need more time. Hinata still hesitated using her full power with the strikes, but she at least used the chakra when she hit Naruto.

But in the end Naruto was simply too fast. He disabled Hinata's legs with quick simultaneous strikes and she fell down, which he used to get behind her and hold a kunai to her throat. When he was declared winner, he helped Hinata up again.

"How do you know gentle fist?" Hinata asked confused that somebody outside her clan could use one of their techniques.

"I don't use the gentle fist. My style is a combination of a taijutsu style and a bastardised form of chakra scalpels like medic nins use.

I guess the principle behind my chakra scalpel bastardisation and the chakra shots of the gentle fist is similar enough, but I only can attack anatomy. I can't use it like a Hyuga to attack the chakra network." Naruto explained.

Then he seemed to sink in thought. Sasuke and Kiba took their positions for their fight. Naruto looked at Kurenai.

"Kurenai sensei, did you already test your team for their elemental affinities?" Naruto asked.

"No, I didn't, I think that is a bit early. Why do you ask?" Kurenai asked while still keeping an eye on Kiba's and Sasuke's fight.

"I have the feeling something is off about Hinata's taijutsu. I know that some taijutsu styles have been developed to suit a certain group of elemental users, like the strong fist for lightning elementals. Lightning is an explosive and fast element, just like that style.

I have the feeling from the forms Hinata showed that the gentle fist could be based on earth users. But Hinata doesn't seem to be an earth user and therefore had problems." Naruto said.

He knew the gentle fist was an earth style. It had been in the scrolls he had taken from the rubbish bins and copied for his selection, but nobody could know that. Better they believed he had got the idea from watching.

Kurenai was shocked. That sounded like a more than probable theory why Hinata couldn't seem to get a grip of the gentle fist style. Water was weak against earth in the elemental circle. So if Naruto was right and Hinata was a water elemental she needed to adapt her taijutsu to get it to work for her.

"Naruto could have a point there. I know from Gai that the gentle fist is indeed an earth style. You should test your students for their elements and if Hinata is indeed a water elemental or has another element that disrupts the gentle fist by its nature, you should work with her on her own style. You are a water element aren't you?" Kakashi asked Kurenai.

"Yes, I am. I will take the suggestion and take them to Jakonato's after the sparring is over. Thanks for the insight, Naruto. I was aware that something was off, but as I am not a taijutsu specialist, I didn't know what could be done to help Hinata." Kurenai said.

"No problem." Naruto said.

"Yes, thank you, N-Naruto." Hinata said.

Naruto smiled at her, making her face take a very deep red colour.

"Hinata, are you okay? Your face is so red." Naruto asked, putting his hand on her forehead to see if she had a fever.

The contact and the concern Naruto showed her was too much for Hinata and she fainted.

"Hinata? Hinata!" Naruto exclaimed concerned. "Kurenai sensei, Hinata needs a medic." He said.

"Don't worry, Naruto, she will be better soon." Kurenai said, finding it quite funny that a smart boy like Naruto had no idea how much Hinata liked him.

Sasuke had some problems with Kiba's feral fighting style, but thanks to his speed with the replacement jutsu he didn't get hit often and managed to tire Kiba out. In the end he won by nailing Kiba with some shuriken to the ground for a few seconds, tying Akamaru up with ninja wire in those seconds and using the dog as leverage to make Kiba forfeit.

"Shit, you are really fast." Sasuke commented Kiba's performance.

"And you continually replacing yourself with things is extremely annoying. Just you wait, next time I will win." Kiba said, disgruntled that he had been forced to forfeit, but Akamaru was more important than a victory in a training match. And with the way Sasuke had tied his dog up getting him a power boost by food pills wasn't a good option.

"In your dreams." Sasuke said.

Sakura was still out cold, so Kakashi decided it would be a good decision to bring her home and give Sasuke the afternoon off.

Sasuke gladly accepted his free afternoon and after hearing team eight would go to Jakonato's to get some chakra paper to test the genin's elemental affinities, he just accompanied them, intending to get some sealing scrolls and look what else was offered there. He would be better prepared in the future for whatever ideas for exercises Kakashi got next.

"Kakashi sensei, do you have time for me to test how much I can do in a fight with my resistance seals released?" Naruto asked after the others had left.

"Sure, Naruto. Just let me get Sakura back home and get used to your full speed for a while. Then we can have that fight." Kakashi said.

He lifted Sakura from the ground and disappeared in a body flicker. Naruto released his resistance seal and started going through some movements to get used to his full speed again. Kakashi returned ten minutes later, not in a good mood.

Sakura's mother had thrown a fit about the condition of her daughter and demanded to know how it happened. So Kakashi told her that in a training fight against Shino Aburame she was shown just why the Aburame clan was feared. He had left before Isami could get in a row.

"Ready, Naruto?" Kakashi asked.

"Yes, Kakashi sensei." Naruto answered.

He was standing in the opening stance of the Uzumaki style, the tides' fist. Contrary to the cheetah fist that was mainly based on speed, the tides fist was a flowing style. It had a change between fast and strong attacks like the flood, and flowing, slower attacks that were not meant to cause damage, but distract an opponent.

Naruto had also added his bastardised gentle fist and therefore increased the damage the style could deal an opponent. Kakashi started attacking Naruto with a fast attack, but Naruto avoided the punch, directed to his torso. He took off with his full speed and the fight was on.

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