Ch-6

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"You may begin."

Without hesitation, I pushed my fist towards my opponent's torso. My first struck the boy's chest with force, making him cry out in pain. I didn't stop to make sure he was alright and pressed forward with my attack, feigning a strike towards his legs and then attacking him in his stomach. To my opponent's credit, he managed to reflexively block my feint but wasn't fast enough to block the punch to his gut.

The male first-year student, who had blue hair and green eyes, staggered backward from the blows. However, he was surprisingly tenacious as he rocked forward for a counterattack. He let out a flurry of rapid, but weak punches in an attempt to overwhelm my defenses. Despite the size of my body, I was fairly strong and fast for my age, and I used this to my advantage to block and dodge most of the hits. I endured the few that went through, but I persisted and waited for an opening. The punches stung, but none of them were solid enough to knock me off balance.

Finally, after observing his attacks and stance, I blocked a punch heading towards my neck and swung out my elbow to hit him in the face. The elbow made contact with his forehead and the boy fell, stunned from the sudden blow. Seizing upon this opportunity, I grabbed his shoulder and pinned him into the ground.

The chunin overwatching our fight came in between the two of us and separated us. "Winner is Hiroyoshi. Good work to the both of you. Return back to your classroom, you're finished with sparring today."

I nodded wordlessly and held out my hand for my opponent to shake. Despite being roughed up, the boy smiled and shook my hand enthusiastically. While the chunin had told me to return to the classroom, I knew there was still a bit of time left until the next class started. Instead of returning right away, I opted to remain behind and watch Shikaku and Mikoto spar, who were sparring in different rings around the courtyard.

Since I entered the Academy over a year and a half ago, I trained and studied tirelessly to achieve my future goals. Thanks to my adult mentality and memories, I breezed through most of the coursework. As a first-year Academy student, I was stuck in the classroom during the majority of my time at the Academy. My class and I did go out to exercise every other day, but they were usually just basic conditioning programs to help build up endurance and strength. Despite the lack of physical training at the Academy, I trained independently during my free time: practicing katas and doing additional strength training. Thus, when my classmates and I started sparring after becoming second-year students, I was considerably ahead of the others.

During this time, I discovered that my two closest friends in the Elemental Nations were just as studious and motivated as I was. While Shikaku was similar to Shikamaru in many ways, he was a tad more driven and ambitious compared to his future son. I found out that the Nara was the clan heir and would immediately become the new clan head once he reached the rank of jonin. As a result, he had no problems studying and training with me on a daily basis. Even though he seemed reluctant at times, I knew that in his heart, he was eager to improve. He was still somewhat guarded around me and Mikoto, but he was slowly warming up to us.

On the other hand, Mikoto was much more open and friendly to me and Shikaku. Unlike her future children, Mikoto was cheerful and bright. She did try to act serious when she was studying or training, but the Uchiha heiress was generally outgoing and friendly. Despite her carefree attitudes, I saw glimpses of her facade as the Uchiha heiress leak out at times, mainly in front of adults and civilians. Thankfully, Aina's warnings turned out to be false as no one from the Uchiha clan attempted to stop me from hanging out with her. In fact, Mikoto preferred training and studying with me and Shikaku instead of returning to the Uchiha District, which was something I never asked her about. If she had her reasons, then she would tell us in the future. The last thing I wanted was to intrude the privacy of a child.

When I looked around to find either of my two best friends, I found Shikaku just as he finished up his spar. While Shikaku was slower than I was, his strikes were more surgical. While I relied on strength and speed to beat my opponents, Shikaku was able to find the smallest openings in an opponent's defense and exploit it to his advantage. I watched him block several punches and kicks and strike back with a palm to his opponent's throat. Soon afterward, he followed up with locked his right leg onto his adversary's legs, sweeping the student off his feet. Once he was declared the winner, Shikaku bowed to his opponent and turned towards me, "How did I do?"

I rolled my eyes as I patted his shoulder, "Great, like always. Your leg sweep looked a bit off balance and you took too many hits before you counterattacked, but other than that, I didn't see any glaring flaws during your fight."

Shikaku rubbed the back of his neck, "I still have ways to go before I can catch up to you in sparring. Do you mind sparring with me after school?"

While Shikaku was talented in his own right, I was better than him when it came to taijutsu. On the first day of taijutsu lessons, I was paired up with Shikaku and knocked him onto the floor within a minute. Since then, the two of us had grown in stride, but I still held the upper hand when we sparred. Thankfully, Shikaku didn't hold a grudge against me for beating him in spars; if anything, the spars motivated him to practice harder.

"Sure! We haven't received a lot of homework today, so we can go to our usual training place," I answered with a reassuring smile.

The Nara heir nodded slowly and looked at another fight that was occurring some distance away, "Looks like Mikoto is about to beat up her opponent."

I turned to look at Mikoto and her opponent and almost laughed due to the facial expression. Mikoto was extremely serious during fights, and her facial expression clearly showed. Her usual smile was replaced by a rigid scowl as she relentlessly let out a torrent of assaults to overwhelm her female opponent. The fight ended when the Uchiha's foe forfeited the match, sporting a colorful array of bruises on her arms. Mikoto's face relaxed and her trademark smile reappeared when she spotted her friends, "Hiro-chan! Shika-chan! You guys finished really early!"

"Well, it's because we decided to actually beat our opponents instead of using them as punching bags," I teased, gesturing to Mikoto's unfortunate opponent. The girl was sitting on a bench with a medic, who was healing her arms as best as she could.

Mikoto blushed as she joined us in stride, "I was trying out the new katas that I learned from father. I'm still practicing them, so I was getting a few of the movements wrong."