Dark Phoenix of Konoha by White Angel of Auralon

Part 10 - Team Sparring

Team Sparring

Team ten was not amused that their sensei had arranged for a sparring match with another team. Ino was annoying Shikamaru with her blabbing about impressing Sasuke and showing up Sakura.

"Just make sure you aren't too loud. You know how Naruto will react." Shikamaru warned her.

Ino obviously remembered the incident at the academy well enough from the look on her face.

"Why are we even doing a sparring match with another team so early into our training? We didn't learn that much yet." Choji asked.

"You were just unlucky to be the first ones that will have those matches. Kurenai, Kakashi and I decided that it would be good for the developments of the rookie teams if we had them spar against each other regularly to get you all used to multiple fighting styles." Asuma explained. "Once you have got more experience we will probably also ask some older genin teams to be included."

"Troublesome." Shikamaru said.

Then they saw team seven appear from the entrance of the training ground.

"Hello, Asuma." Kakashi greeted.

"Hello, Kakashi. It's really strange to see you nearly on time." Asuma replied.

"Well, you know how that is. So much to do with the team to get them up to snuff. No time to be properly late." Kakashi sighed.

Asuma grinned. He knew Kakashi was ordered to be more punctual because he needed to get his two male students improved in the mental area. And that meant keeping them busy. He wondered just what pace Kakashi had set for his team.

"Okay, how do you want to do this? Three against three or one-on-one fights?" Asuma asked.

"I think for now one-on-one fights will work out better. It will take some time until they can work as a coherent unit. After all, they just trained a bit more than a week under us. Too little time to get them trained on team formations." Kakashi answered.

Asuma had expected that. He would make sure the next match against team seven would be team-fights; that was the strong area of his genin team.

They drew the matches. Shikamaru had to fight Naruto, Choji Sasuke, and Ino Sakura. First Naruto and Shikamaru were up.

"What a drag." Shikamaru complained.

Naruto decided to just go with taijutsu. Shikamaru was no match for his speed and he still needed to work on his shadow possession. Even if he got caught in it, Shikamaru couldn't hold it for long yet. When Asuma started the match, Naruto shot forward, always keeping an eye on the shadow, but as Shikamaru needed to be stationary for it to work, Naruto had the advantage. He quickly kept Shikamaru busy in a taijutsu match. Naruto was clearly superior in taijutsu and nailed Shikamaru to the ground with a kunai to his throat after a short time.

"I yield." Shikamaru hurried to say. Naruto nodded and helped Shikamaru back up. "Geez, you were holding back even more than I already thought Naruto. So troublesome." He said.

Naruto just grinned and let the next two take his and Shikamaru's places. Sasuke won the match against Choji, though he noticed that the resistance seals slowed him down considerably compared to his former speed at the academy. It took him more work to defeat the physically strong Choji. As he didn't want to use harmful jutsus in a simple training spar against a boy who was weaker than him, he kept it to taijutsu and the basic three academy jutsus. Having trained under Kakashi had shown him the great possibilities of them, especially the replacement jutsu. Soon Choji got frustrated with Sasuke always switching places with logs, tree branches, stones and whatever else he thought useful. Finally Sasuke managed to tie Choji up in ninja wire and place a kunai at his throat.