.:Telepathy:. -:Ch7:-

Chapter 7 – Initial Assessments

            After break, they went through some simple mathematic and literacy skills tests, and although Sasuke found very little too tricky in the papers, when glancing around the class after he was finished he was a little surprised to see so many people looking stumped at the exam. Cautiously looking behind him while the teacher was sorting the papers for the next test, Sasuke had seen that Hinata and Datsuko were finished more than ten minutes before the end of the assessment. They appeared to be some of the more intelligent people in the class. Turning back to his own desk, he resisted the urge to smirk when he saw the boy next to him – Inuzuka Kiba – was stuck on a multiplication question and was counting on his fingers, mouthing the numbers as he went.
            After lunch, the assessments continued. However, these ones were of more practical skills for ninja: stamina tests, shuriken throwing and sparring.
Firstly, they were lead back into the playground, getting a sigh from some of the students. Koimaru then marked out a twenty-five metre length in the courtyard, and told all of them to run up and down as many times as they could at a reasonable pace. Some of the boys dashed off, Naruto and Kiba included, and Sasuke saw Datsuko shake her head out of the corner of his eye as he set off at a moderate pace, smart enough to know he would wind himself if he ran too fast. However, some of the students did the opposite, ambling reluctantly along until they were ordered to run.
            After a few lengths heading the group of sensible runners, Sasuke started to pull ahead as the rest started to slow down. Looking around, he realised that the only one of the students who dashed off was still running: Naruto. The others were all sitting at one end of the track, bent over with stitches and trying to catch their breath.
            Soon, only Sasuke and Naruto were running, and Sasuke was trying not to admit that he was impressed by the blond's stamina, when said blond punched the air, shouted, "Twenty lengths!" and tripped, falling flat on his face. The class burst into laughter, with the exceptions of Hinata, who looked appalled; Datsuko, who glared at the teacher when he calmly noted down the total and summarily ignored the boy; and Sasuke, who was too out of breath to do anything but run if he was going to beat that clumsy twit.
            Naruto lifted his face, grinning and laughing with the rest of the class. Then he rolled himself over so he was sitting, and closed his eyes.
            Sasuke drew to a stop. "Twenty-two," he told the teacher breathlessly, and as Koimaru noted it down and started to shepherd the applauding class to the target range, he just stood next to the blond, trying to catch his breath.
            Naruto tried to get up to follow the class. As he tried to put weight on his right leg, it twisted under him, his knee slamming back down on the ground, and as Sasuke straightened up he saw a grimace of pain cross the previously smiling face.
            Sasuke looked at him, feeling a little sorry for Naruto, and extended a hand. The blond blinked as the hand entered his field of vision, but after glancing up at the owner he looked away stubbornly. "I'm fine, teme, I don't need your help!" He tried to get up again, but this time before his leg gave way Sasuke grabbed his arm.
             "Moron. You don't have to be so stubborn, you'll get hurt."
            The whiskered face stared up at him, looking as surprised as he felt at what he'd just said. Then Naruto scowled. "Oi, teme, I'm not a moron!"
             "Only a moron would try and walk on an injured leg and refuse help."
             "Oh yeah? Well… hmph." Naruto looked away again, but Sasuke could see a smile twitching the corners of the boy's mouth upwards.
            Sasuke hid his own smile and sighed. "Come on," he said, tugging Naruto in the direction the rest of the class had gone. "Or they'll start without us, …dobe."
            "Teme."
            "Whatever."
            Sasuke helped Naruto around to the back of the school building, where the teacher had just finished explaining the assessment. As the Aburame boy stepped forward onto the range, Sasuke let go of Naruto's arm, given that his injury seemed to have vanished already, and looked at Datsuko questioningly.
"Six shuriken, that target, try and hit a bull's-eye," she said.
Sasuke nodded, and repeated the instructions to Naruto, who hadn't noticed her or her words and was about to yell at the teacher to tell him what was going on. Naruto shut up and grinned, probably eager to show off what he must presume to be his 'awesome ninja-skills'. Snorting softly, Sasuke turned to watch as he waited for his turn.
            The process went fairly slowly, as Koimaru had to total up all of the scores and make notes on each student's technique. A cheer went up from the class whenever anyone hit a bull's-eye or close to one, although nobody really noticed when Datsuko was called up and hit a chance one, her other five shuriken landing in the outer circles. The teacher looked completely stumped, both when he called out her name from his list, and when it came down to writing notes. Is she really that hard to notice? Sasuke wondered as he saw Koimaru's puzzled expression. However, the teacher totalled up the points scored, wrote it down, and called up the next student. As Datsuko came back to stand between Sasuke and Hinata, he gave her a pointed look.
            She shrugged. "I told you they need prompting and hardly notice me anyway," she said, a neutral expression on her face. Sasuke frowned, but went back to watching the other students.
            "Uchiha Sasuke!"
            Sasuke walked forward, taking the practice shuriken from the teacher. Settling into the textbook throwing stance, he paused a moment, testing the weight of the projectiles – slightly lighter than the ones Itachi-niisan let him use, he thought – and ignored the twinge in his left ankle reminding him of the last time he practiced throwing dangerous objects the day before. The he collected himself, and threw all six shuriken in quick succession, each one making a satisfying thok as the points buried themselves deeply in the target. A tight but pleased smile on his face, Sasuke turned to go back to his place, two bull's-eyes and four near misses behind him.
            After a moment of stunned silence, the class burst into applause and whoops. The teacher gave Sasuke an approving smile before shushing the class and calling Naruto up. The blond scowled a little at Sasuke as he walked past, but Sasuke merely smiled at him.
            The class sniggered as Naruto comically tried to imitate Sasuke, failing magnificently. Even Sasuke smiled a little at how awful the clown was. Then, with a flourish, the blond threw his shuriken forcefully at the target. He paused as only two of the six throwing-stars hit the target, and only one of those was anywhere near the centre. Then he turned to the class, a grin on his face and scratching the back of his head. "Eheheh… I meant to miss that! All of them hit where I aimed, 'cos going for more different targets shows I'm an awesome ninja!" The class laughed at that, although the teacher looked disapproving, and Naruto joined in as well, sucking up the attention. Sasuke shook his head, pretending to be annoyed with the blond, when a genuinely serious face caught his eye.
            Datsuko had her eyes narrowed as she watched Naruto laughing, although she didn't look angry, just… thoughtful. Sasuke nudged her. "What is it?" The girl's eyes narrowed further, but then she shook her head and put on a neutral expression.
            "Nothing, don't worry about it."
            Sasuke did worry about it. But he didn't say anything.
            Once the last person had taken their turn, Koimaru-sensei announced that the last part of the assessments would be a two-minute sparring session with another student in the class. Punches were to be pulled, and no serious damage was allowed to be inflicted, but otherwise there were no rules, other than that if one person gave up the other must stop fighting immediately.
            Some of the fights were… interesting, Sasuke mused. Some were quite dull, like most of those between the girls, although he became somewhat uncomfortable when the self-declared 'winners' started looking over at him, trying to get his attention. He tried to ignore them, but they creeped him out. He was not interested in girls.
            However, some of the matches were interesting to watch. His newfound companions Datsuko and Hinata were paired up, and while neither of them exactly landed a hit on the other, their styles of fighting were mesmerising. Sasuke knew about the Hyuuga's Jyuuken style, but had never seen it in action before, and marvelled at how fluid and fast it was, even more surprised when he found out afterwards that she'd only been learning for a few months and was still very slow. Datsuko's style… wasn't a fixed style that Sasuke could think of, and seemed more like improvised dancing. Whatever it was, it was fast and, when developed, looked like it could be pretty deadly.
            The other match that piqued Sasuke's interest was the one between Naruto and the Inuzuka boy. They seemed to fight quite similarly, both going for hard fast moves, quite wild really. Kiba seemed to employ more wrestling techniques though, while Naruto used his legs for kicks more. The two seemed matched overall in skill, although in different areas, but it was fairly clear that Kiba was stronger and had some experience of fighting. The fight ended after two minutes, Naruto having taken the worst of it despite the rule of pulling punches.
            Sasuke's own fight was unremarkable. He clearly outmatched his opponent, and landed several 'strikes' while guarding against attacks. On each 'hit', several people whooped, and one or two of the girls called out encouragement to him. He ignored them.
            After all fifteen matches, the bell rang again, and Koimaru dismissed them for the day.