"You know the rules," Mari-sensei said, glancing back and forth from Team Uplift to Team Kurenai. "Nonlethal only, no broken bones, no maiming, nothing that would keep any of you from going to the Exams. Kurenai and I will be judging; if one of us thinks that an attack would have been fatal or disabling then we'll call you 'out.' If you're called out then you drop to the ground immediately and you don't interact with the fight until it's over. No moving, talking, or techniques—Shino, that includes using your insects. Keiko, if you're called out then any pangolins you've summoned need to go to the side of the field immediately. They can watch but can't do anything else."

"Also, stay on the field," said Yūhi Kurenai, co-referee for the match and jōnin-sensei for Team Uplift's sparring partners. "Try to avoid setting the forest on fire, but if it happens don't worry about it. If Mari or I say stop, you stop immediately. Other than that, treat this like a real fight. You don't do yourselves or your teams any favors by going easy. The better you fight, the better the chances that you'll all win the Exams. Got it?"

"Understood, ma'am," Hazō said. Noburi and Keiko, flanking him on left and right, nodded seriously.

"Yes, sensei," Aburame said, not looking away from Hazō's face. A tiny frown had been creasing his forehead since they met on the field.

"Something wrong, bug boy?" Hazō asked, allowing Mocking Grin #2 to spread across his face. "You really should buy me dinner if you want to keep eye-fucking me like that." Inwardly he cringed; Mari-sensei's lessons in psychological warfare had been incredibly uncomfortable to listen to, but putting them into practice was even worse.

"Do not be rude, Hazō," Keiko said. "His inability to speak to girls does not necessarily imply that he is a homosexual, however much he behaves like one. It may simply be the company he is forced to keep that has put him off the idea of intimacy." She studied Inuzuka distastefully, trying and failing to pretend that she was scratching her nose instead of pinching it shut.

"Wouldn't have put me off," Noburi said, giving the Hyūga girl a slow and very obvious up-and-down and a smile that spoke volumes. The pale girl turned beet red.

"You shut your mouth, you filthy bastard!" Inuzuka shouted, pushing forward past his teammates. His dog was right beside him, a ripping growl in his throat.

Aburame caught the boy's arm. "Be calm, Kiba," he said. "Remember, this should be treated as a real fight. They are applying psychological warfare tactics. How? Attempting to embarrass Hinata and anger me, thereby provoking you through your well-known loyalty and desire to protect your friends. The ideal situation for them would be if you attacked during the moment that Hinata and I were too rattled to back you up."

"He's right," Hazō said, rubbing his neck in embarrassment. "Sorry about that." He turned to his grinning mentor. "Pay up, sensei."

The redhead laughed, pulled a twenty-ryō coin out of her belt, and tossed it to Hazō. "Good job, Aburame," she said. "Inuzuka, Hyūga take the lesson to heart: words are just words and you can't let them get to you."

"For the record, she told us to do that," Noburi said, ducking his head in apology to Hyūga. "I'm really sorry."

Mari-sensei rolled her eyes. "Sage's beard, you lot are too polite to live. Go on, get to your sides. Let's get this party started." She flapped her hands at them as though shooing birds.

Both teams retreated to opposite sides of the field and readied themselves. Hazō took the right flank, Noburi the left, with Keiko in the center and two paces behind, where she could fill the enemy with the pointy metal she held in each hand. Noburi's Water Whip was active, his free hand clutching a seal. Hazō had seals in both hands and a song in his heart. This was the first field test of their new tactics!

"Begin!" Mari-sensei said, slashing her hand downwards and jumping back to the perimeter of the grassy arena to stand beside Yūhi.

Said sparring partners raced forward, spreading out slightly. Hyūga went right, aiming to close with Keiko. Aburame and Inuzuka headed straight for Noburi; Hazō found himself feeling slightly resentful of the implied threat estimations. Speaking of which, the cloud of insects surging out of Aburame's sleeves definitely counted as a threat.

Unfortunately for Team Kurenai, the field was wide enough that they couldn't reach their opponents fast enough. Without a word exchanged, the boys knelt down to emplace the Air Dome seals—

—only to recoil in horror as insects boiled out of the grass in which they had been hiding and swept over all three genin. The creepy feeling of tiny legs surging back and forth across Hazō's face, pushing into his mouth and attempting to get in his eyes was horrifying, but even worse was the way they were sucking chakra out of him like a Swamp lily sucking blood through its spears.

He forced himself to focus enough to activate the training tag he'd held ready in his right hand, setting the timer to barely a moment and tossing it just in front of himself. The blast hit like a hard punch across the entire surface of his body, knocking him back and crushing most of the bugs. He left himself fall and then rolled on the ground to get the rest.

"Hazō, you're out!" Mari-sensei called. Hazō cursed but lay still. It wasn't a fair ruling, he felt; it had only been a practice tag, intended for distraction and not actual wounding. Still, maybe she felt that the bugs would have taken him down. Either way, he was out and protesting would get him nowhere. He'd be better off to spend the time figuring out a counter to this tactic.

"Inuzuka Clan Technique: Fang over Fang!"

Behind him, the air was split by a high-pitched whirring scream, followed by the sound of wood shattering and water hitting the ground. Hazō sighed; they'd better come up with a counter to that as well.

o-o-o-o

Shino was careful to maintain the calm expression of the clan, but it was hard. The great Gōketsu clan, humbled in their first spar! Their mockery thoroughly avenged! Granted, the mockery had been employed only as a tactic on orders from their teacher and had been apologized for. Still, victory was sweet.

"You pre-seeded the grass with your allies while we were still talking," the Gōketsu girl said. "An admirable ploy, although not something that would work outside of a spar."

Shino shrugged. "Under the circumstances it seemed reasonable. Why? Because we were told to treat it like a real fight."

"Won't work a second time," growled the one that Shino had mentally dubbed 'Tubby'. "And, seriously, what was with targeting the barrel?"

Kiba laughed, pointing to his own chest with one thumb. "That was my idea. Seemed like if you carried the thing with you all the time, probably a good idea to take it away."

Tubby sighed. "Just glad I wasn't using the real one," he muttered. He shifted slightly, twisting his shoulders to check that the replacement barrel was settled on his shoulders and properly secured. It was a perfectly ordinary barrel, pulled from one of the ridiculous number of storage scrolls that the Gōketsu kids carried in their backpacks. Seriously, it looked like their packs had nothing but storage scrolls and packs of seals the size of an Akimichi sandwich. It was insane.

Stolen novel; please report.

"Everyone ready for round two?" Kurenai-sensei asked with a grin. "Mari, you want to go double or nothing?"

"Are you kidding?" the redhead said with a smile. "What's this 'double' nonsense? I'm betting triple this time."

"Cool, that'll cover my groceries for the month. Okay, kids, get to your corners."

The Gōketsu team glared at Team Kurenai and retreated to their side of the field. They didn't go to the same spot, and they took precautions to ensure that they would not be caught by another surprise insect-based assault. Specifically, they each hurled a dozen full-strength tags around and exploded absolutely everything.

The fact that they were each carrying a dozen full-strength explosive tags, and were willing to use them in a mere spar, said a great deal about the wealth of their clan.

"Begin!" Yūhi called.

This time, the opposition team was faster. The boys knelt, slapped down a pair of seals, and activated them before Shino had taken more than three steps. His allies were on them seconds later, but they simply bounced off an invisible dome and milled around, trying and failing to find a way inside. Their master slowed to a halt, raising an arm to signal his teammates back.

The Gōketsu girl watched them closely while her teammates emplaced another pair of seals inside the dome. The moment they were ready, the enemy team leader looked over at Shino, flipped him a mocking salute, and activated them. A wave of glowing chakra surged up from each seal, arcing over to meet its mate and spreading out into a dome. There was a brief flash and the dome vanished, leaving red granite in its place.

"Kiba, entrench," Shino said, not looking away from the barrier.

Kiba never enjoyed using Fang over Fang for digging—unsurprisingly, he disliked the taste of dirt—but it worked great for creating a shallow trench that the team could hide in. A camouflage blanket spread out over top gave them some concealment, although the tailings sprayed around meant that it wouldn't take an observant opponent more than a few seconds to localize them.

They slithered into the trench and waited.

"Hinata, what are they doing?" Shino asked.

The girl cocked her head, the bulging veins around her temples revealing the use of her all-seeing Byakugan bloodline. "They've used some justu to create a wall inside the domes. The girl just unsealed an oil lantern from a storage scroll. They seem relaxed; they might be thinking that because the domes are chakra constructs I won't be able to see through them." She paused, browing furrowing in curiosity. "Interesting. Hazō and Keiko have put their hands in Noburi's barrel, and their chakra is moving out of them and into the water. Noburi has barely more chakra than a civilian, but I think he's using what's in the water."

"Clever," Shino said, nodding. Kiba grunted disapproval at the idea of praising enemies, but said nothing.

"That explains why he went down so easily when I broke his barrel," the Inuzuka boy said thoughtfully. "We'll definitely want to target that again." The rest of the team nodded.

Hinata's frown deepened. "They've each taken some seals out of their packs." She blinked, her physical eyes widening. "Oh my. That is a lot of seals, and I don't recognize most of them."

"Um," Kiba said nervously. Absolutely no one enjoyed the idea of giving an enemy sealmaster time to prepare...not that any of the kids were likely to be sealmasters, of course, but when someone was carrying enough seals then the difference was a bit academic. "You know, Jiraiya is one of the best around with seals. You think he's outfitting them?"

The other two took a moment to appreciate the monumental problem it could pose to be facing seals made by someone of Jiraiya's stature.

"He can't be," Hinata said. "There is no way he's got time to be making this many seals while still being Hokage."

"Well, seals aren't going to save them from the ass-kicking that we'll lay down once they crack that dome," Kiba said. "They've got to come out eventually, and when they do, we'll be ready. Shino, get your bugs around the dome and jump them the minute they open up. Hinata, you take out the weapons-user again, and I'll punch out Tubby's new barrel. Without any chakra, he'll drop just as easily this time, seals or not."

Shino considered for a moment and realized he didn't have a better plan. The fight was non-lethal, so even if it was as bad as he feared it could be, it wasn't really too risky.

"All right," he said, sending a fresh wave of his allies out to settle around the base of the outer dome.

With that, there was nothing for it but to settle in and wait.

o-o-o-o

"The leader just vanished into the ground," Hinata said suddenly. "The other two are standing ready, although based on where they're looking they don't know where we are. The leader went down about five feet...now he's moving to the right...coming back up." She frowned. "He's reaching up, just his hands above the surface, groping for the seals that make up the two domes."

Shino poked his mirror up over the lip of the trench so that he could see without exposing himself. He was just in time to see the granite dome dissolve into nothingness. A chest-high granite wall remained, the three Gōketsu kids standing behind it.

"Hiding in the Mist no Jutsu!" shouted the barrel-wearing Gōketsu scion. He cut some handseals and gestured; mist exploded from his hands in all directions, blanketing the entire field. He clearly wasn't good with the technique, because the mist was in no way dense enough to provide real concealment.

"Move!" Hinata shouted, hurling herself out of the trench. Shino and Kiba didn't wait for an explanation, throwing themselves after her. True to their training they each went in a different direction in order to avoid presenting a bunched-up target for explosives—

—like the ones that were suddenly raining down from absolutely everywhere. The first explosion went off right over the trench where they'd been a moment ago, delivered express on the handle of a kunai thrown by the girl. A fraction of a second later there was a stuttering crash as what sounded like a dozen more explosions detonated back near the Gōketsu; an instant later they were going off everywhere. A wave of fire and force marched up and down the training field like an army of wrathful demons on maneuvers, tearing the ground asunder. Shino was picked up by the first blast and thrown into the second, and the third. Not even Lee could punch that fast, although the effect was remarkably—

...consciousness swam unwillingly back and Shino forced himself to sit up. His clothes were ripped and torn and absolutely every inch of his body was covered in bruises and scrapes.

"What did you do?" he moaned, clutching his aching head.

"Like it?" Hazō said with a grin. "We call that one 'the Kagome Maneuver'." Both Gōketsu boys laughed, and even Keiko smiled. Team Kurenai just moaned and fumbled blankly in their medical kits for the willow bark.