[1st POV]
Sasuke and I faced each other, a few meters standing between us. The match took place at the center of the training ground. There was a white circular line drawn on the sand to indicate where the fight should take place.
"Make the seal of confrontation," the referee, a teacher from the lower-year students, said. Sasuke and I both made the hand signs.
The match was supposed to be a pure Taijutsu match, no ninjutsu or genjutsu allowed. I took off the weights on my legs before I returned for the afternoon test, so I was feeling very strong and energetic.
Honestly, Sasuke did not stand a chance against me in my current state. I was only slightly behind him when I never trained, but after the intense training I went through during the past week, I should be much stronger now.
The progress I made was, for the lack of a better word, absolutely disgusting.
"Begin!!" the referee declared with a wave of his hand.
Sasuke moved. He moved faster than you would like to believe. The show did not do justice to how supernaturally strong shinobi actually were. Perhaps it was the limit of the manga and animation medium. Even the Academy students could easily speed-blitz professional fighters back in my world.
I did not make a move, taking up the standard Leaf Shinobi Taijutsu stance. Although I was lazy, my parents forced me to train with them sometimes. There was a reason why I was ranked number two right after Sasuke. With an active Jonin Shinobi father, I could throw hands pretty well, whether I wanted to or not.
But I was always behind Sasuke, which made sense because I was a lazy, talented student, and he was the Uchiha heir consumed by the need for revenge, so he trained a lot.
When Sasuke reached me, he did a 360 spin and threw a nasty high kick toward my face. The attack had enough power to render any type of defense void. You couldn't really block it; the only way out was to evade.
He probably expected me to duck under the kick, and he was already preparing a combination to piece me up from that disadvantageous position.
But contrary to all expectations, I brought my hands up to block the attack.
*Pow!!*
His kick landed on my forearm with a loud thud. It sounded like a slap due to the sudden stop of force.
Sasuke's eyes widened in surprise. But he wasn't the only one who was surprised because I widened my eyes in pain too. The kick was a hundred times worse than expected, to the point it almost made me regret blocking it.
"Ouch," I blurted out but moved immediately. I caught him by the ankle and stepped back, pulling his whole body with me.
Sasuke hopped on one leg to balance, so I decided to take that out by throwing a front kick at his standing leg. Sasuke saw that and reacted with a clench of his teeth.
He jumped with one leg and spun. His other leg immediately came at my head again. This time, his heel was closing in on my face.
I ducked under the spinning back kick and pulled his other leg down with me. With no feet on the ground, he was completely at my mercy.
I turned, throwing him over my shoulder with a heave. My physical training bore fruit as I was able to ragdoll him like he weighed nothing.
*Slam!!*
He slammed his back on the ground. I saw his eyes roll back until there was only white, and spit flew out from his open mouth.
He was knocked unconscious but only for a split second. I threw a punch at his face to knock him out completely. I did not hold anything back. But Sasuke was able to parry in time, making me miss my attack as I punched the ground right beside his face.
Then his hands snaked up and grabbed me behind the neck. He pulled me down while trying to escape from the side. I reacted in kind, trying to resist and pin him down.
But I made a wrong judgment. He was not trying to escape. The moment he pulled my head down, his head came up. The result was a nasty headbutt. I reacted halfway, shifting my head so that we clashed forehead to forehead instead of forehead to nose like he intended.
Unfortunately, there was no forehead day in my training regime.
I fell on my butt after the brutal headbutt. I felt dizzy immediately, and that gave enough time for the enraged Sasuke to roll backward and out of my hold.
We stood up at the same time and charged forward. Sasuke used the famous Uchiha style, and I used the standard Leaf style. He had better technique than me, but I was stronger than him now.
We exchanged blows after blows. I made up for the lack of skill with superior strength and speed. A shinobi was strong not only because of muscles but also from chakra control. Example of this was Tsunade and Sakura. I was leagues above Sasuke in terms of chakra control, so I used that to enhance my body better than him.
He was fast. His attacks came in an unrelenting blur. A jab here, a right cross following up almost immediately, followed by a small pause before a low kick that turned into a high kick when blocked.
Although fast, his attacks were moving at the speed of a turtle compared to my training, where I tried to react to the speed of the Body Flicker, a jutsu so fast it was considered teleportation.
Sasuke came at me, his back hunched as if he was going to start piecing up my body now. But I did not get fooled. Shortly after, he jumped, both feet off the ground. He threw himself at me horizontally, both legs curling before they exploded outward as a double kick.
His anger had caused him to attack as hard as he could. A grave mistake because I was faster than him. He should have known that by now, but anger blinds us all.
I stepped to the side, turning my body sideways while I was at it, and then I delivered a full-powered kick at his body. Sasuke was thrown sideways, his body spinning from the sheer force before he crashed on the ground.
I closed the distance immediately and rained down a hammer kick. He rolled out of the way in time, so I planted my foot on empty ground.
But by the time he got up, I already turned that hammer kick into a two-step back kick. He put his arms in an X to block, but my kick already had enough momentum to send him flying back once more.
He rolled on the ground until he was out of bounds.
That gave him an unfair advantage as the referee stopped the fight briefly for Sasuke to get back up and come inside the circle again. He walked back to me while clutching the forearm with which he blocked my kick.
His eyes glared at me hatefully.
"Begin!!"
I charged this time. Although he was given a few seconds to recover, he stood no chance at this point. Everyone knew that, but he knew it best; that was why he was so angry.
I threw a low kick aiming for his legs. The Uchiha style relied heavily on the legs, so I thought it best to take that out. But Sasuke stepped back and blocked my kick.
Wait, no, it was not a block. Sasuke simply lifted his leg off the ground for me to hit. I thought if he wanted to get kicked, I would kick him hard.
I landed the kick on his shin. The sound of bone crashing on bone was heard. But completely blowing me away, Sasuke gritted his teeth through the pain and used the momentum of my kick to spin once more.
!!!
I leaned back, and his toes barely scraped my face, his toenail actually making a line across my cheek. Like I said, Sasuke had much better technique than me, but my superior speed filled that gap.
But it seemed that was his last effort to take me down. When Sasuke tried to stand on the leg I kicked, it collapsed under him.
I thought it would be over at that moment, so I took a brief pause. But Sasuke, from his crouching position, executed a backflip with his remaining leg and threw a kick from above my head.
I did not even know what that attack was called.
I moved away from the kick that was all attack and no precision. I slapped his foot down even harder to the ground, and my other hand went for his head.
I did not punch, although I could have. Instead, I grabbed a handful of his spiky hair and pulled his face toward me.
*Pakh!!*
His face slammed into my knee, breaking his nose and nearly caving in his face. His body immediately went limp afterward.
I continued clutching his body up by the hair before throwing him on the ground.
"Stop!! The fight is over," the referee said. "Suyou is the winner!!"
Iruka-sensei and one other supervisor immediately came toward Sasuke. The other person seemed to be a medical ninja because her hands glowed, and she began healing Sasuke's face after laying him on her lap.
Iruka looked at Sasuke with worry before he turned to me. By that point, the whole ground was completely silent.
"That was a bit too far, Suyou," Iruka said with a firm look.
I did not know why everyone seemed so wronged. I was merely replying to his violence, hate, and aggression with my own. I was sure if given the chance, Sasuke would have been more brutal with me since he had a bone to pick ever since I beat him in the Shuriken test.
But I apologized all the same.
"I'm sorry, Iruka-sensei," I said with a bow.
His eyes became a little softer after that. There were murmurs amid the crowd afterward too.
Not even a minute later, Sasuke came back to life. He was still heavily injured on his face, but he was forced to walk toward me as we had to make the seal of reconciliation.
It was tradition — a seal of confrontation to agree on a fair match and a seal of reconciliation to affirm that although we fought, we were still comrades.
I held out two fingers with my right hand as the victor, and he held out his left hand as the loser. Our fingers connected in a shake.
"Thank you for the match," I said. Sasuke did not return the words.
I turned to leave the scene. The whole test also ended shortly after.
But as I was about to head back to the Academy and check on Naruto in the infirmary, Sasuke ran up to me. I braced myself, ready for a fight, although I turned my back and walked away from him.
Sasuke caught me by the shoulder and forcefully turned me around to face him.
"How!!" he asked.
"I'm sorry?"
"How did you beat me? You never beat me, ever!!" he asked even louder, immediately getting the attention of the other students and the teachers who were already dispersing.
He was angry, but more than anger, he was dying to know how that match ended in my victory.
I thought for a second, recalling all the times Sasuke had beaten me. I was never hardworking or motivated. Even in our first sparring when Sasuke still had parents and we were on equal skill level, I let him win because I could not motivate myself to get back up after I was knocked down.
But it was different now. I was not that same kid.
"I tried this time," I gave him my answer.
His angry expression melted away into a baffled face. The hand on my shoulder loosened until it fell off limply. It seemed my answer had a very big effect on him.
"I have to go now," I said, leaving him to head to the infirmary.
But Sasuke remained in his place there, his head eventually lowering toward the ground as he clenched his teeth and hands.
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