The defensive posture was to be expected, Sasuke reflected, given that he'd totally forgotten about common courtesy out of curiosity, and he very belatedly offered -- "I'm Sasuke."

They'd shared a class long enough that he remembered her name (and it was hard to forget hair quite that colour), but there was no telling if Haruno Sakura would be able to pick his face out of a sea of Uchiha; it probably would have been less alarming if he'd introduced himself first. Still, the information matched both his initial assessment of the jutsu's essential structure and the likely source of it. Sasuke had seen Shirakumo's work on a very few occasions, mostly through chance observation in the training fields.

"Is Shirakumo-sensei your teacher?" He strode more fully into the clearing as he spoke, inspecting the damage that the attack had left. A good start, he could see it already, and with more precise shaping of the chakra, perhaps ... more neutrally, he added: "Adapting for earth from wind-based techniques is unusual."