"Morning, Kiba," Sakura said, smiling at the boy as she walked past him. "Are you feeling better today? Gōketsu really hit you hard; I was worried that you might not be able to talk after the way he punched you in the throat."

Kiba snarled. "He just got lucky! We were going easy on them after the way we spanked them in the first round."

"Absolutely," Sakura said, nodding soberly. "Lucky shot."

Kiba shot her a suspicious look. "Damn straight!"

"And those seals he used in the second round? Totally cheating. I mean, sure, it completely punked your whole team, but that's hardly fair. How are you supposed to match up to a clan that's richer than yours and has a legendary sealmaster as its head?" She hesitated. "Oh, actually...well, I guess Gōketsu Hazō is also a sealmaster, isn't he? He probably made a lot of those seals himself, so it's not entirely unfair for him to use them. Still, hardly the sort of thing to pull out during a spar. It's not like you guys had a real shot at countering it, you know? What were you supposed to learn from getting smacked around like a bunch of chumps?"

"Hey!"

"She is baiting you, Kiba," Shino said, adjusting his glasses. "Why? Because you make yourself an easy target."

"He really does," Sakura said cheerily. "Hazards of being stupid as well as ugly, I guess. Well, time to go get ready. See you on the field, Kiba—and don't worry, I promise I won't punch you in the throat." She hooked a thumb over her shoulder. "That's her job."

"Sakura, be nice!" Akane said. "This sort of cattiness is not youthful." She paused. "Although it's true that melee combat is my role on this team so I suppose that yes, actually, punching people in the throat is my job." She smiled comfortingly. "Have no fear though—I feel that throat punches are most unyouthful, so I will instead punch you in the face."

"Hey!"

Sakura laughed and skipped onto the field before Kiba could marshal a proper comeback.

o-o-o-o​

"Team Kurenai versus Team Clanless! Round one, fight!" Kurenai-sensei slashed her hand downward and then leaped back to the edge of the field.

Kiba charged, splitting left as Hinata went right, her lithe grace allowing her to sprint ahead of him as always. Shino kept to mid-range, most of his insects going up and forward. It left the enemy no good options, surrounded on three sides and above.

The Clanless kids—and didn't that name just say everything you needed to know!—split, their fighters going to meet their opposite numbers while Sakura-the-weakling just stood there, looking at him with fear on her face. Sage's saltlick, what a pain it would be to have a useless lump like her for a teammate! She couldn't fight worth a damn and could barely pull off two jutsu without falling over from chakra exhaustion. She'd made it through the Academy purely on tricks and traps and book smarts, and those didn't work so well outside the classroom.

He came together with Haru in a furious but indecisive clash, both of them smashing at the other and both blocking everything. They maneuvered for advantage, the fight shifting around the field as each tried and failed to land a meaningful blow.

Haru was just starting his next attack when Sakura suddenly cut a Tiger seal and yelled "Water Element: Water Clone!" She promptly fell to her knees, gasping, apparently having put all of her energy into the technique.

Kiba didn't have a lot of time to notice Sakura's discomfiture because he suddenly had bigger problems in the form of another Sakura rising out of a puddle beside and slightly behind him, coming into existence with her leg chambered for a front kick. Fortunately, the girl had screwed up by making the clone just a little bit too soon. Had she waited another fraction of a second the clone would have been fully behind him and he wouldn't have seen the kick coming; she'd probably been more concerned about making sure the clone got a swing in instead of focusing on perfect placement. He frantically dove forward and rolled, curling tight to ensure that Akamaru didn't get squashed and to finish the revolution faster because Haru was already on top of him and mid-roll was a very bad place to be.

Very privately, and very grudgingly, he had to admit that the clone was a slick and gutsy move; he'd noticed the small puddle in the dirt as he came forward but hadn't thought anything of it. Now he had a sneaking suspicion that Sakura had planted it there just so she'd have a water source to use to make a clone, since a surprise assault was the only chance she had of making a positive contribution against ninja of Team Kurenai's quality. Maybe tricks could sometimes work outside a classroom.

He was out of the roll and rising to his feet when Haru leapt. Lightning sprouted from his fists as he came down, shaping itself into a pair of studded bucklers, one on each fist. The first caught Kiba across the face and knocked him sprawling, but he turned the motion into a backroll that took him just out of reach of Haru's vicious axe-kick followup. Kiba struggled back to his feet, the effects of the lightning leaving his body far away and spastic. He staggered, gasping at the pain and throwing out defensive strikes that were never going to land but just needed to hold the little shit off for a second and holy crap that guy hit hard.

Rage burned through him, washing the pain away. There was no way that Haru was good enough to match Kiba in a straight-up fight, but the fact that he got one lucky shot in (only when helped by Sakura's stupid trick!) meant that Kiba was going to get razzed by his teacher and his family for months. Fine, let's see how the festering turd liked being on the receiving end! Time to show him what it meant to face off against the greatest member of the Clan of the Hound's current generation!

"Man-Beast Ultimate Taijutsu: Fang Over Fang!"

The world vanished into a spinning smear, the shriek of Akamaru's fangs splitting the air as the two of them revolved. They'd need to be careful not to actually kill this little piece of crap, but he wasn't going to the Exams so it was okay to mess him up a little if—

The world slammed to an agonizing stop as the enemy twisted aside from the incoming strike and smashed one of his lightning bucklers into Kiba's chin with an uppercut so powerful that it reversed his spin. The impact left him hanging face-up in midair for a split second before Haru twisted back with a vicious Earth Crusher strike that slammed the studs on the fucking lightning buckler into Kiba's hip and slammed his body down into a vicious rising knee to the liver.

Kiba hit the ground hard, the pain making the world white out around him. Years of unrelenting discipline forced him to roll aside and a burst of chakra repulsion allowed him to bound six feet away and onto his feet, giving him the single instant he needed to gather himself again and get back into the fight. Maybe this guy wasn't a complete chump, maybe—

All thought vanished as something smashed him in the side of the head and the world went black.

o-o-o-o​

Akane shifted her weight, eager to get started. This would be her first serious team-on-team spar and she was nerv...er...anxious to show off her youth! Yes! Definitely, what she was feeling was anticipation and delight at the opportunity to be youthful!

"Stay cool and follow the plan," Sakura muttered, not moving her lips and keeping her eyes locked on Kiba where he stood on the other side of the field. A glance at her teammate left Akane feeling alarmed at how scared Sakura looked...or it would have, if they hadn't been planning and rehearsing this for the last two days, right down to the facial expressions. (Watching Mari-sensei drilling Sakura had been hilarious. Akane had forgotten just how mischievious her redheaded teacher could be.)

Kurenai Yūhi stood between the two groups, one hand upraised as she looked back and forth to make sure they were both ready. When she got nods from both sides she slashed her hand down, shouting "Team Kurenai versus Team Clanless! Round one, fight!" before bounding to the safety of the field's edge.

The enemy moved just as Sakura had predicted they would; Kiba went right as Hinata went left, Shino four steps behind them in the center with his swarm climbing up and over. Hinata was the fastest, her face completely calm and the bulging veins in her forehead showing that her bloodline was active.

"By the power of YOUTH!"

Akane's battlecry catapulted her forward to meet Hinata, the joy of battle surging in her veins, all nervousness forgotten now that battle was joined. Hinata was by far the most dangerous member of her team and she needed to be put down fast if Team Clanless was going to have a shot. Putting her down was Akane's job.

Hinata was just as good as her reputation, her footwork flawless as she slid away from each of Akane's strikes. She used no opposition and barely any deflection, opting instead for evasion. She moved the barest minimum, each strike missing her by the width of a hair, and each evasion was paired with a chakra-infused jab at the striking limb. The jabs hurt, foreign chakra sending pain through Akane's legs and arms. Cold, heat, pressure—the sensation was unrecognizable but briefly agonizing. Akane found herself grinning; Hinata was brilliant! What a perfect opponent, her youth shining forth in a display of skill so great it managed to make an insanely difficult art seem effortless! No wonder she had dominated most of her peers in the Academy.

Unfortunately for Hinata, this wasn't the Academy and Akane wasn't her peer.

Two years ago, before fleeing Leaf, Akane had been mediocre, barely squeaking into the top half of the class. But now, after two years of intensive daily practice with Hazō, Mari-sensei, and the others? After fighting for her life every day against foes beyond the imagination of a Leaf genin? Now things were different. Very different.

She ignored the pain and pressed forward. Brilliant as she was, Hinata was overmatched and she clearly knew it. She was giving ground constantly, the fight twisting across the field as she frantically tried to regain the initiative. The tiny hits she was managing to get in were hurried, too imprecise to jam Akane's tenketsu closed, and she was paying in kind for each of those hits. For every agonizing spike of pain in her wrist Akane delivered a punishing blow to the body. For every excruciating strike into her thigh or calf, she gave Hinata another bruise on the face. Neither of them were landing anything definitive, but pain was an old friend of Akane's and it wasn't going to get the job done. Hinata's calm was starting to crack as she visibly realized she wasn't going to win this fight as it was. Akane saw the instant that Hinata realized that, but wasn't fast enough to stop the changeup.

"Hey!" Akane yelped as Hinata ducked under an elbow smash and disengaged, racing towards Sakura. Akane blurred after her.

Hinata's hands flashed in a Gentle Fist combo that would have left Sakura on the ground and helpless had it landed, but the pink-haired girl threw herself aside, using chakra repulsion to bounce in an unpredictable zig-zag that kept her just ahead of the rush.

She stayed ahead of Hinata's attack for the half a second that Akane needed to get there and then she turned away, trusting her teammate to take care of it. Instead, Sakura turned to where Haru and Kiba were just coming together.

"Water Element: Water Clone!" Sakura shouted. She strained, all her strength clearly pouring into the technique, before falling to her knees gasping. For a moment Akane was alarmed; her teammate hadn't really cast a water clone, had she? That wasn't the plan, but that really looked like someone on the edge of chakra exhaustion.

She didn't have the time to check, because just as she was about to re-engage Hinata the world went dark. A sleeting, buzzing cloud of insects swarmed over Akane's body, pushing into her ears and nose and trying to get into her eyes and mouth. The erstwhile member of Team Uplift fought down panic and forced herself not to yell in fear. She slitted her eyes, swiped at her face to clear the bugs away, and jumped back away from the Gentle Fist strike that she knew was about to wreck her if she didn't get out of the way.

The swarm moved with her, but she managed to get close enough to the edge to see more clearly. From the corner of her eye she saw Haru smash Kiba's hip in and slam a knee into the smaller boy's liver. Akane winced; the liver hurt, a lot, but hip injuries were almost as painful and far more dangerous. They slowed you down, and a slow ninja was a dead ninja. Haru might be enjoying this chance to beat on clan kids just a little too much.

Quickly, she raised a hand and triggered the topmost macerator seal in her blast ring. A chunk of metal half the size of her fist slashed across the field and slammed into Kiba's head, dropping him to the ground like a sack of potatoes that had had their granupositors cut off.

Sparing the attention was costly, because Hinata was on her again, seeking to take advantage of Akane's momentary distraction. Akane threw herself aside from the double-fist strike to her chest, barely blocked the two-finger strike into the nerve cluster on her deltoid, ignored the pain from the crane's beak to her mastoid, and punched Hinata's head off, barely remembering to pull the blow.

The white-eyed girl was knocked back and out, hitting the ground hard. The veins around her eyes receded as her bloodline automatically deactivated. No sooner had she stopped moving than the insects swirled up and away, zipping back to where their controller was struggling under the impact of Haru's killing intent.

Akane checked to make sure that Hinata was breathing steadily, then bounded off to help her teammate, although she suspected—yup, Haru had it well in hand. The boy wasn't rich, wasn't a lot of fun, and was too serious, but he could fight. He had an up-close-and-personal style that often took 'personal' way too literally. His form was ragged in a few places and he occasionally overextended, but he had a single-minded brutality and a bottomless well of killing intent that made up for it. Even in a spar his ferocity and lethal purpose battered at the mind, making it hard to focus, hard to stay with the smooth ebb and flow of movement that kept defenses strong and made attacks effective.

Shino clearly felt the impact of that killing intent, because he was slow to dodge. Haru's first strike landed, a solid hit to the chest and head that sent the insect-user skidding backwards and dropped him to the ground. Haru pounced, only to have to stumble to a clumsy halt when Shino raised his hands in surrender.

"I yield!" Shino said.

o-o-o-o​

Haru stood motionless, outwardly calm as he waited for the fight to start. Inwardly, he was struggling to keep the smile off his face. Today was a good day. The weather was nice, the sky clear, and he was going to get to kick in the teeth of a clan kid and not just one but two clan heirs.

Well, one. He had no illusions that he could stand up to Hinata. He'd seen her spar, and she was better than he was. Even before you considered the bullshit powers that had been granted to her through a happy accident of birth, yet still allowed her to believe she was morally superior to anyone who hadn't been so blessed.

Kurenai Yūhi stood between the two groups, one hand upraised as she looked back and forth to make sure they were both ready. When she got nods from both sides she slashed her hand down, shouting "Team Kurenai versus Team Clanless! Round one, fight!" before bounding to the safety of the field's edge.

Haru lips skinned back in a snarl of vicious delight and he leaped forward to meet Kiba. Of all the clan kids, Inuzuka Kiba was the one Haru was most looking forward to grinding into the mud. The little asshole thought he was the second coming of the Sage, strutting around with his chest puffed out and brags on his lips. Everything handed to him, everything easy. Trainers since birth, plenty of food and plenty of clothes, family power smoothing his way at every step.

The distance between them vanished and he let himself revel in the joy of strike and counter. For just a moment, he wondered if he could take the punk on his own without need of help. How satisfying would it be—

No. Discipline. Stick to the plan.

He shifted, giving ground in order to lure Kiba to the wet place where, well before dawn today, Sakura had dumped out several gallons of water. He watched for the water out of the corner of his eye, maneuvered Kiba into the perfect spot and got ready for his chance.

Behind him, Sakura shouted the powerless words to a jutsu she didn't know as a cover for the genjutsu taught to her by that laughing, brilliant, wonderfully evil red-headed witch. Kiba's eyes flicked to the side and back, widening at what he imagined that he saw. He threw himself forward into a roll and Haru went up, cutting handseals and banging his fists together to summon forth the power that was his by right of pain and sweat and effort instead of gifted to him by birth. Kiba was barely back on his feet when Haru smashed his right-hand buckler through the little brat's face with the entire strength of his body and force of his leap behind it. He took care to aim for the jaw instead of the temple; worst case, the kid would be eating his meals through a straw for a few weeks instead of having his head caved in.

He'd give Kiba this; the kid was tough, and skilled. He saw the blow coming and threw himself back, slipping the majority of the impact and ducking his head so that most of it hit his shoulder instead of his face. Haru spun the lightning around the rim of the buckler; the rage that he kept chained in his soul bared its fangs in delight as Kiba staggered back, muscles spastic and body off balance. Haru followed close, not giving the enemy time to catch up. He needed to put Kiba down fast if he wanted to have a shot at Shino before Akane got to him.

He wasn't quite fast enough. Kiba managed to make just enough space to regain his balance and go back on the offense with a shouted "Man-Beast Ultimate Taijutsu: Fang Over Fang!" The dog on his head barked and the two began to spin, faster and faster until they blurred together. The blur launched itself at him, the air screaming as it was torn apart by secret clan jutsu.

Haru imagined he could feel the world slow around himself as the man/dog whirlwind flew at him. He swayed aside and dropped, coiling himself up and then unwinding into an uppercut that blasted Kiba out of his technique. Haru twisted, turning his hips and pulling down with chakra adhesion as he smashed the studs on his buckler deep into the bones of his enemy's hip. He twisted his hand on impact, ripping the wound wider. The liver was wide open and perfectly placed for a knee but the body mechanics were against him; a knee strike wasn't going to have force behind it.

Well, not if you fought like a civilian.

Chakra repulsion sufficient to jump ten feet straight up, all directed through one foot, sent his knee up like a festival rocket. Kiba cried out but didn't stop; he rolled aside from Haru's followup stamp and back to his feet. He was weaving like a drunkard and there was already a bruise the size of a lemon on his face, but he was obviously still ready to scrap. Haru grinned and moved forward—

One of Akane's lead shot hit Kiba in the head and dropped him like a string-cut puppet.

"Damnit, Akane, I had it!" Haru shouted over his shoulder as he flung himself at Shino. He allowed the rage to flare up within himself, letting it reach out with blood-drenched claws that tore into the clan scion's brain with whispered promises of death and pain, of shattered bones and crippled hands, of eyes spitted on red-hot forks and tongues ripped from the mouth.

Shino staggered under the impact and waved frantically at his swarm, pulling it away from Akane and sending it at Haru in a buzzing column so dense it blocked all sight.

"Lightning Element: Lightning Bullet!" Haru shouted, dismissing his lightning bucklers so he could cut the actual handseals for an actual technique that really did exist and which Haru had no idea how to actually perform. He thrust both palms forward, bracing himself as though pushing a massive weight. He felt utterly ridiculous and could only pray that Sakura would be on her mark.

She was.

Shino screamed and staggered, jaw gaping open in shock and pain as his eyes, overriden by Sakura's genjutsu, told him that his entire swarm had burned to a crisp in a crackling burst of lightning, their ashes drifting to the ground in its wake. The scream made his actually-unharmed swarm hesitate, swirling in confused circles for a moment. Haru was past the bugs and on Shino before the other genin could recognize what had actually happened. A leaping knee to the collarbone and a 12-6 elbow to the head threw Shino back and down. Haru was on him before he hit the ground, hand cocked to punch right through his smug, condescending, clan-privileged fa—

"I yield!" Shino said, raising both hands.

Haru was so surprised he barely managed to abort his punch and ended up sprawling clumsily to the side. Damnit!

"A most youthful performance, Haru!" Akane said, bounding up with a wide smile and a hand extended to help him up. He took the hand, a part of him still marveling at the insane strength in the girl's solid but not blocky body.

"Indeed," Kurenai said from behind him. Haru turned quickly to find the jōnin kneeling over the still unconscious Kiba. "You really did a number on him, kid."

He gave a small but respectful bow. "He was a tough opponent, ma'am." He kept his face calm and his voice level while inside the rage snarled and gnawed on its own leg. You always had to kiss ass with the clans, especially when you'd just beaten one of their precious kids to a bloody pulp.

Kurenai snorted. "Not tough enough, apparently. I'm going to get my team to the hospital, so I don't think we'll be having a round two." She flicked a series of handseals and three clones appeared; seconds later the two unconscious genin were loaded onto stretchers produced from a storage scroll. A few seconds more and all traces of Team Kurenai and their teacher were gone, except for some blood spatter on the grass where Kiba had gone down.

Haru looked at the spot thoughtfully. Kiba would be fine; he'd been breathing well and Kurenai had shown no particular alarm after checking him over. Haru was glad to know that; the Will of Fire would not allow him to seriously injure another Leaf ninja, not even a clan member. Still, the rage in his soul, temporarily sated into introspective quiescence, felt that the red accents on sun-dappled green made for a lovely picture.