Naruto : Monsters

"Get up."

The voice commanded harshly, piercing through the ringing that filled my head.

"Get up, Hikaru-sama. The fight is not over." It repeated, not even a hint of inflexion in its voice. Just cold detachment.

Jeez, I get it already.

Obediently I set my hands beneath me and shoved myself onto my hands and knees, ignoring how pain flared through my body when I did. Blood dripped down my split lips and spilled onto the ground, staining the tightly packed floor crimson.

With another solid push, I managed to force myself onto my feet though I had to keep my hands on my knees to stay up. After one more push, I managed to straight up, though I did end up wobbling for a second before I found my balance. I reached a hand out to gently probe my throbbing jaw, but quickly snatched it away when it flared with pain.

Raising my face so that I looked ahead of me, I saw the cause of my bruised jaw trying and failing to hide a superior smirk behind an impassive mask. At the age of nine, the kid still hasn't mastered the art of the Hyuuga poker face that we were all apparently infamous for.

Seeing me back on my feet, the boy, I had no idea what his name was, took up a stance. Ignoring the bone-deep weariness that filled my body, I lifted my arms and took a mirroring stance, feeling as if my limbs were cased in blocks of concrete.

Before I could so much as blink he charged me, his hand streaking towards my chest. Yet for all of its speed, I could see it. I could tell exactly where the blow will land, on the right side of my chest, precisely three inches below my shoulder. I could even picture the proper response, a sweeping strike to the side-left wrist with my right, knocking the blow-off course. Then a counter to his side while he was still knocked off balance.

Yet no matter how well I could picture it in my head, reality was something completely different.

I raised my hand to deflect, but even as I moved I could tell I wouldn't make it. For all of the greater distance he had to travel, his strike will hit my chest before I could stop it. No matter how fast I tried to move I, along with everyone else watching, knew that he would be faster.

Having no choice, I aborted my attempt at a parry and tried to dodge the blow instead. Pulling my shoulder back, pivoting on my back leg to avoid the blow, and I succeeded if barely. I managed to pull back far enough that the strike missed me by an inch. But at the moment I was so off-balance that I could not avoid the following blows.

I folded over double as a hand buried itself in my belly before I was sent tumbling backwards by an open-handed uppercut hit on my chin.

The world went spinning around me as I was sent tumbling along the dirt-packed floor, almost reaching to the edge of the sparring circle before I bled off enough momentum to stop.

"Get up, Hikaru-sama" The instructor commanded scarcely a second after I had skidded to halt, not even bothering to check up on me.

As I once again forced myself to my feet, ignoring how the world continued to spin, I thought back to how I had gotten myself into this mess.

It was customary for children of ninja clans, or at the very least the Hyuuga clan, to begin their training at the age of four. Though calling it training was a bit of a stretch, as they were more of a practice run than the real thing. Other than stretches, all the other so-called training exercises were hidden in the form of games.

Ever play cat's cradles? That's hand signs training. Hide and seek? With a bit of helpful instruction and a couple of minor tweaks to the rules, it became a stealth and tracking exercise. Overall there was nothing that would have made you think of ninja training just by looking at it. 

If I hadn't known any better I would haven't realized there was anything off about all the games they encouraged us to play. Apparently it was deemed too detrimental in the long run for children to start any strenuous training before the age of six.

Though they seemed to be willing to make an exception when it came to me.

Just a few weeks away from my fourth birthday they had separated me from the other children my age and tossed me in with the rest of the six years old. At first, there were some concerns that I may have been too young to start sparring but they were all put to rest after the first session.

I had beaten them all.

Not that it was anything to brag about. Ninjas in training or not they were just kids. Most of them didn't even know how to properly kick a ball let alone make a proper fist, and the few that did telegraphed their punches so badly that I could see them coming a mile away. One time all I had to win was side-step a punch and stick my foot out. The poor kid actually broke down crying after he tripped.

It wasn't my proudest moment.

So they decided to up the ante.

And that's how I ended up getting my ass kicked by a nine-year-old.

"You're thinking too much Hikaru-sama." Our instructor and the current referee for the match informed me. He stood outside of the ring drawn into the ground, and stared impassively at me, uncaring for my bleeding, injured state. "While your form is excellent and your responses to your opponent's strikes are the proper ones, your reactions are too slow. You spend too much time thinking and not enough moving, you must learn to move without thought."

I know. Jeez, do I ever know.

I had already figured out my problem since my very first spar with these kids.

I had no reflexes, no muscle memory. Even though I haven't been slacking off these four years everything I trained for was mental, not physical. I had watched fully grown ninjas train every day for the majority of my new life until I reached the point that I could see and understand their movements. Compared to them these kids might have been moving in slow motion.

But it doesn't matter how slow these kids moved in my eyes if I moved even slower than they did.

To think, that when I was first brought here I had been so sure of myself that I had all but swaggered into the ring of my first spar, confident in my victory. Well that all changed when not even a second later a palm strike to my face broke my nose along with my arrogance.

I had realized my mistake almost immediately. My mind may have known the correct response but my body didn't. Whenever I wanted to block the blow I had to consciously move my arms into position, whenever I wanted to dodge a strike I needed to consciously command my feet to move. 

And there lies the problem; the lack of any proper reflexes slowed me. It was only a minor delay, barely even a split second in reaction time, but that split second made all the difference when a match was decided under a second.

It had been a week since that first loss and I hadn't won a single spar yet. Hell, I don't think I was even able to get in a solid blow against any of these kids. Even against the least talented of the bunch, the size advantage was simply too large for me to gap. Their arms gave them far better reach, and their longer legs made them faster.

All in all, I was getting my ass kicked.

Repeatedly.

By – and I cannot possibly stress this enough – nine-year-olds.

This was 8th-grade karate class all over again.

I felt warmth pool in my mouth and spat out the blood that had gathered there as I stood up again, though my legs wouldn't quite hold me up and I kept swaying. Though we weren't allowed to use the proper Gentle Fist for now, only the chakra-less version of it, it still hurt like you wouldn't believe.

That's why the clan always had at least one medical-nin available at the training fields at all times. The good thing about medical ninjutsu is that you can get the crap beat out of you and they'll fix you back up in time for your next fight.

Lucky me.

"Are you stopping Hikaru-sama?" The trainer asked when I failed to take up a stance. At first, the words didn't properly register in my mind, so foreign were they to my train thought that I couldn't even comprehend what he was saying.

"Stopping?" I repeated dumbly, turning to give the trainer a questioning look. He was staring at me with the same detached gaze he always wore, his face nothing but a serene mask of apathy, but his eyes told me a different story. The way they lingered on my bleeding lip before flickering over my bruised form gave lie to his false indifference.

"Are you stopping Hikaru-sama?" He asked again, and this time I had no trouble hearing the concern hidden behind the coldness of his tone. He wanted me to stop.

Something clicked in my head and I understood.

"No, Sensei." Though I tried to sound respectful, the words came out as a snicker. I felt the cut on my lip split open and dribble blood down my chin as I responded. "I'm not done yet."

Maybe I took a bigger blow to the head than I thought, or maybe the entire week of pain and exhaustion finally caught up to me, but at the moment I found his words so damn absurd. I knew that I could have walked away from this. That with a single word of complaint I would have been sent back with a younger group of kids. 

My father and many of the clansmen may have had high expectations of me but they were not sadistic, even they would not force me to continue this training if I had asked them to stop. Some of those who occasionally stopped by to watch me 'train' actually seemed to hope that I would after seeing the results.

But I never said a single word of complaint…

Because this was exactly what I had wanted.

...

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