Blood & Hidden Leaves

Nori and Kusuri turned to each other and, almost immediately, Nori sighed and made her way over to their sensei.

Kusuri on the other hand, walked over to Taga, hands already in the middle of performing hand seals.

Despite Nori being next up to bat, Takeshi's eyes followed Kusuri. He had assumed that Kusuri was simply going to check on his friend, that was until he saw the hand seals Kusuri was forming. That left Takeshi in a state of utter confusion, something that was highly visible on his normally composed face. Moments later, Nori stepped into his peripheral vision, and, without turning to her, Takeshi decided to get some clarification.

"What is he doing?"

"Medical Ninjutsu. What else would he be doing?" Nori answered nonchalantly.

In an instant, Takeshi swiveled to look Nori directly in the face, shock visible, and continued his inquiry.

"He already has that much chakra control?!"

In response, Nori just shrugged.

"To be honest he does weird stuff so often that I just don't question it anymore. Like the time he tried to make homemade food pills and almost poisoned himself. Or the numerous times he's filled out entire lecture notes packets on chakra theory before the teacher has even said a word. Or the time when he — no joke — tried to figure out whether or not chakra had mass. He failed, obviously, but not after some very, very thorough testing. He claimed it was due to, and I quote, 'a lack of precise measuring equipment'".

After hearing this, Takeshi continued to stare at Nori, then blinked a few times, finally regaining his composure. He turned to look at Kusuri once again, seeing him heal some of the last remaining bruises on Taga's lower abdomen.

"Huh," Takeshi thought to himself, a smile creeping onto his face, "Maybe Kakashi didn't get all the luck".

----------

Having finished making sure Taga would survive till lunch, Kusuri sat down on the fresh grass beside him.

He fixed his eyes on the fight about to unfold before him, hoping to gain some insight into their sensei's skill level.

Especially since, unfortunately, the only things he had learned from Taga's fight were that their teacher was fast and that Taga was dumb enough to try a Hyuga Jonin hand-to-hand.

As far as Kusuri was concerned, open or not, Taga had been screwed the moment he got into melee range.

That was the reason he suspected Nori would do much better. While she wasn't a necessarily better combatant, she was certainly better at mid to long-range.

This suspicion was validated by Nori's much safer opening move.

Quickly jumping back, she formed a half-dozen hand seals and shouted, "Earth Release: Stone Shuriken!"

She then slammed her foot on the ground, launching up a large chunk of dirt and rock, and thrust her palms forward, causing it to burst apart and fly at her opponent.

If you were looking at Takeshi however, you would've thought it was a particularly annoying flock of birds, especially since he batted the projectiles out of the way in a manner quite reminiscent of them.

With a literal wave of his hand, what felt like a mighty gust of wind came forth, scattering the malformed shuriken as Takeshi calmly announced, "Eight Trigrams: Partial Palm Rotation".

Nori, however, was not done yet, as not a second after the shuriken were parried she called out a second jutsu with far more confidence than the first.

"Earth Release: Lesser Earth Flow Spears!"

Upon hearing it, Takeshi just smirked.

"A diversion, huh? Not bad for a genin," he thought, casually leaping up into the air to dodge the erupting earth, "Not good enough, but pretty good".

He spun around in a manner one could liken to a dance, and placed the soles of his feet against the surface of one of the spears, bending his legs into a jumping stance.

Then, to everyone's surprise, a sound not unlike a gunshot resounded as their sensei rocketed toward Nori at blistering speed!

He slammed his palm into Nori's stomach, whizzing past her.

He ended up going over eight meters past her before finally stopping himself.

Looking down at his now defeated student, he sighed.

"Well, at least you longer than he did," he said, vaguely gesturing towards Taga.

----------

Nori sustained far lighter injuries than Taga, as she mostly just had the wind knocked out of her, but was still ordered to rest alongside him.

By that point, Kusuri had long finished healing Taga, so he was mainly just resting as well. 

Takeshi and Kusuri, however, were nowhere near either of them.

"When you asked for a specific fight location," Takeshi called out to Kusuri, "This wasn't what I was expecting".

The two were currently on opposite sides of a large pond, not on the bank, but standing on the open water.

"I also wasn't expecting you to already know water walking. Most people learn that at least a few months into being genin, if not later. I'm rather impressed. Now then," Takeshi said, grinning ear to ear, "Let's see what else you can do".

The battle began in a manner similar to Nori's, with Kusuri leaping back while forming hand seals and Takeshi just standing there watching.

Seconds later, it diverged.

"Water Release: Making Waves!"

As soon as the jutsu was finished, Kusuri's feet once again impacted the water's surface, sending ripples out in all directions.

Ripples that got bigger...

And bigger...

Until they were nearly three feet tall.

The pond's surface instantly became rough and uneven, making water walking much harder.

Not that it affected Takeshi at all, as even someone with barely passable proficiency in the technique could easily keep stable footing.

"Either I'm underestimating him," Takeshi thought to himself, "or he's underestimating me".

A short time later, the waters became much calmer, and Takeshi, having let his student make the first move, prepared to counterattack.

So, as the mist knocked into the air settled, Takeshi scanned the pond.

Only to find himself alone on its surface.

"What the," he said to himself, out loud this time.

The waves had, now quite obviously, been a diversion.

They did little more than kick up large amounts of mist, which was exactly what Kusuri needed to hide the technique he followed it up with.

"Water Release: Diving Bell," he had said to himself, the sound muffled by the noise of his previous technique.

Immediately after, he purposefully deactivated his water-walking technique, falling into the water with a nifty water bubble to supply him with air.

"I am really glad I picked this up, it is super useful. Although I do wish it supplied me with more air."

As the jutsu was only D-Rank, it supplied him with a measly two minutes of air, which, while enough for combat, gave it poor overall utility. Not that it would stay that way for long if his research projects had anything to say about it.

Refocusing himself, he began quietly maneuvering himself under the water, keeping low in the water to be harder to see as well.

Takeshi, on the other hand, was still quite shocked.

He was quite impressed that his student had managed to hide himself so effectively. Doubly so by doing it in a place where most ninja's abilities were weakened significantly.

He could've been more impressed as he would've likely found him and sniped him out of the water if he had his Byakugan active, but impressed nonetheless.

Then he heard a splash as a hand rocketed out of the water, grabbed his ankle, and tried to pull him into the water!

Emphasis on tried.

After two or three tugs, each with less effort than the last, Takeshi reached down, grabbed Kusuri by the wrist, and yanked him out of the water.

Trying to keep himself from laughing, he gave Kusuri a once over.

He was sopping wet, and also seemed rather embarrassed at the current set of events, like a kitten that had just been picked up by its scruff after a bath.

"Can I please just surrender?" Kusuri asked pleadingly.

"Yes".

"And can you maybe refrain from telling the others that this happened".

"Oh, absolutely not".

"Damn it".