Naruto: Cautious Ninja

The jinchuriki stopped in his tracks and spun around, glaring back at his teacher with what everyone immediately saw as anger, "WHY THE HELL SHOULD I?!"

Iruka flinched at the volume in his voice and recoiled a bit when he got a good look of the boy's eyes. Naruto's irises were shimmering with unshed tears and the amount of rage he was shooting towards him was almost suffocating. The Chunin backed away at the sight of his stare alone and didn't say another word afterwards, merely looking back silently with a bewildered gaze. Because of his lack of response, the teacher and the rest of his bewildered class could only watch wordlessly as the jinchuriki walked away from the clearing and disappeared around the next bend.

Once Naruto was gone, every able person in the vicinity returned their attention to Sasuke, who was still standing in the exact same spot in the middle of the ring. Seeing opportunity for audience with the last of the Uchiha, all the girls in sight rushed to his side, with Sakura and Ino being the ones to lead the charge from the lines. They crowded around him bubbling with excitement and flashing him their most approving and flattering gazes, all of them looking forward to fawning over the boy's magnificence.

"That was amazing, Sasuke-kun!" Sakura exclaimed.

"Yeah! Did you see what you did?" Ino asked with equal enthusiasm while leaning towards the genius with her cutest smile. "You scared the loser away without even trying! Th-That was… incre-…"

All of a sudden the girl's remarks stopped, as did every other girl's exclamations. The Yamanaka and the rest of the troop stared at the boy for several moments in silence, wondering what exactly was wrong with him until they all backed away in shock and alarm bells started ringing. Sakura was the one that brought the rest of the audience to the attention of the problem with a gasp and a wave of her hand.

"Iruka-sensei! Come quick!" she screamed.

Hearing the fuss as well as his name being called, the Chunin detached himself from his notes and pushed his way into the ring. Shortly arriving at the scene of the disturbance with the boys, Iruka gave a frustrated sigh and looked down at the Uchiha, figuring this to be another waste of his time. He completely overlooked the fear struck looks on every girl's face.

"What is it now?" he asked while looking down at Sasuke, to which he too noticed the problem. Blinking in surprise, the Chunin dropped to his knees and stared right into the boy's gaze searchingly.

It took the rest of the class and Mizuki a while to notice, but when it eventually clicked the sight had everybody thunderstruck.

Sasuke was standing in the exact same spot in the exact same pose not because he was trying to act cool, tough or empowering like he unconsciously did, but because he was out cold. The boy's face was frozen in a look of dazed disbelief and, not only did he have a trickle of blood running down from his nose, but his right eye was swollen shut. The instructor was astonished that he didn't notice it sooner and quickly began performing medical checks to see if he was okay.

Concern increasing by the second, Iruka waved a hand in front of the raven haired boy's face from left to right, attempting to coax some sort of responses out of him. He then clicked his fingers several times and upon receiving zero life signs in that manner, checked for a pulse.

"Holy crap…" Iruka murmured, ignoring the whimpers and worried comments being made by the students now crowding behind him. "Naruto didn't want to fight anymore because he was bored; he stopped because he realized his opponent was out on his feet… and from ONE punch!" With this in mind, Iruka's head snapped in the direction Naruto had walked off in and, though he had nothing but the best of intentions in letting the jinchuriki know of his astonishing win, stopped short when he remembered he was already long gone.

The instructor's expression then dropped considerably more when he also remembered what he'd said to him just minutes ago.

"Damn it," Iruka groaned and grabbed his chin. Yup, he knew he screwed up this time. In all good conscience he felt like kicking the shit out of himself for not seeing it sooner and instead acted out irrationally. "Naruto wasn't dancing around his opponent to draw attention to himself; he was trying to wind him up and tire him out. After getting Sasuke to chase him around and burn up his stamina, he would then hit him when he was weakened and too exhausted to react in time to counter. He was biding time, fighting smart and moving evasively, waiting for the right moment to strike."

The fact that he yelled at the boy and threatened him with failure had he continued jumping around the way he had been only had Naruto hasten the process of his victory. Though he didn't carry it out the way he probably wanted to, the jinchuriki was still able to succeed, and what a win it was. Sasuke probably didn't even see the attack coming or realized exactly what it was that hit him until after he had lost consciousness.

That was an incredibly terrifying thought.

After a few minutes of Iruka stressing over how he responded to Naruto's approach in his fight and female students making a fuss over the condition of their Sasuke-kun, the boy in question suddenly awoke from his dazed state of oblivion with a shout of terror. Students and teachers alike jumped back in shock when the Uchiha stumbled out of his reverie, waving his hands in front of him like he was trying to ward off flies or punches before stopping altogether.

Panting and looking around at the bewildered faces surrounding him in paranoia, Sasuke gulped deeply and asked the question that pretty much had everybody scratching their heads, "W-What just happened?"

Kiba gaped at the Uchiha, "That's… kind of what we'd like to know, pal…"

OOO

Two hours later…

Naruto, frustrated and irked from his shambles of an academy lesson, decided to take a hike outside of the village's suburbs and cool off the best way he knew how; by beating the crap out of random inanimate objects. Fortunately enough, instead of taking his wrath out on the village streets or the villagers themselves, he opted to head out into the woods to kick some tree logs and boulders around. There were plenty out in Konoha's forests, so what harm was there in knocking in a few extra hours of training to relieve the tension?

The taijutsu portion of the day for him had been way too unsatisfying. Being the battery pack that he was Naruto needed a proper outlet. He was still burning adrenaline like crazy on top of the fuel stemming from his disappointment, and he needed to flush it all out as quickly as possible. So, hashing together some massive tree logs to create pendulum traps, he started off the first hour ducking, dodging and swaying between five simultaneously swinging tree trunks blindfolded. Doing this with eyes covered in a heavily wooded area was one of the many ways he was able to increase his flexibility and sense of timing, which was damn near close to inhuman already.

There was a boatload of other shit he did in his free time as well, but he wanted to space those exercises out as much as possible.

Following a grueling session of avoiding falling logs with the potential to crush him should he get hit, he then moved on to heavy lifting and hitting the posts. Really, he was doing anything he could to get his muscles to work since his fight against Sasuke didn't. Though he did admit there was a time he had once been on the ass end of an ass-kicking from a lot of the students including the Uchiha, this all happened before he realized he needed to be smarter and more creative when it came to fighting. How the hell was he able to get through all those fights he got into with tough guys on the streets and manage to slip away from Chunin and the occasional Jonin every time they came after him?

By being just as unpredictable as he was creative, that's how. He was a very flexible character so it was no surprise.

Anyway, after managing to work up a sweat and getting his knuckles filed against a post to a satisfying degree, Naruto then took to the forest to follow-up on one of his other favorite pastimes; foraging. Though he didn't seem like the type, as of late it has become one of the jinchuriki's many acts of habit.

After making friends with much of the wildlife surrounding his village and getting to know the 'ways of the woods', Naruto had been able to absorb more skills and knowledge in the forests then he had been able to in all his time spent at the academy, mostly for a fact that what he did was actually fun. Iruka was all talk and theory in his lessons. The jinchuriki was more of a hands-on approach kind of guy. The amount of free time he was able to spend with the monkey tribes and animals of Konoha's lands taught him many things; like a lot of the moves he used in his freestyle taijutsu style, how to survive with nothing at all, what plants were good for eating, what weren't, what things could kill you, what things could save your life, and by extension the ability to talk to a lot of creatures that hadn't developed the ability to commune through human speech.

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