Naruto : Chapter 78

You could nearly cut the air with a knife. The villagers of Konoha had waited to see this fight for the last month. Nearly none of them had seen one of the competitors in this one since the start of the chunin exams. Many were torn in their feelings.

They had hated the boy for years and now, suddenly, he was revealed to be the son of the man they revered more than nearly any other ninja in their village's history. The only one holding the same amount of positive feelings in their minds was the Shodai Hokage.

Naruto Namikaze, formerly known as Naruto Uzumaki, was the container of the Kyubi, a secret that they couldn't talk about under pain of death. Nearly nobody knew really that much about him.

His team had certainly not been around a lot in the village. While those interested in the finalists had looked up the mission history of the teams, there was little to say what kind of missions they had done. Anything beyond C-ranks and their number was qualified under orders of the Sandaime Hokage.

So while they knew that Team Seven had taken a surprisingly large number of C and D-ranked missions, they didn't know much about the abilities of the team that had been trained by the Godaime.

The other two members of the team had shown impressive skills and creativity. Of course many thought that even if Naruto was the son of their beloved Yondaime he couldn't be that strong, their dislike for him was simply too big. Others reasoned that the dead-last of his class couldn't be that impressive.

The only ones really interested in seeing how strong the boy really was were the ones from ninja families. Especially the clan ninjas knew that Naruto had hidden his abilities during his time at the academy and had only stopped doing so after he had graduated completely.

Those whose children were part of the training group of the three rookie teams were really looking forward to seeing his true level.

...

Naruto stood calmly opposite Shino. He knew that Shino would have come up with some creative tricks, but it would still not be his most difficult opponent.

He had after all researched all the clans of Konoha and knew that for their bugs to pose a real danger to him they needed to make contact with his skin first. And Shino knew that Naruto knew that point.

In their previous spars Shino had never managed to win against Naruto, but he had been one of the stronger ones. And Shino was very smart, just a bit less than Shikamaru. So this would be interesting.

...

Shino watched Naruto closely. He didn't show an ounce of nervousness. He didn't expect him to do so. Naruto was the strongest of their group, but it would be foolish to expect him to be overconfident.

Naruto never messed around in a fight. He even took all their spars in training serious. He was the most difficult opponent in the finals. Not even that psycho Gaara could change anything about that.

After all, getting hits on a mentally insane person was easier than a smart opponent that was fully in control over his impressive set of skills. And Shino seriously doubted that Gaara would stand a chance against Naruto.

The proctor gave them the signal to start. Shino had already sent a good number of his bugs through the ground. He needed to set the location to have a chance. He saw Naruto taking his stance.

That was the faster of his two styles. That would be a problem. Shino let a flurry of shuriken fly to not let Naruto get into his rhythm too fast. Naruto as expected sped to the right and quickly set to closing the distance between them.

Shino just hadn't expected him to be this fast. He must have deactivated at least two levels of his resistance seals. And nobody truly knew which level they were normally at, only that Naruto's were years older than theirs and that he had his some levels over them.

Shino barely got his defence up before the first hit from Naruto connected. Shino tried blocking and dodging. Sometimes he succeeded, but many hits got through as Shino wasn't the best at taijutsu. Still, he let his bugs use the contact to go over to Naruto. After a fast exchange Naruto jumped back and to Shino's surprise he grinned.

"Nice try getting your bugs on me, Shino, but I have prepared for this." Naruto said and activated something that looked like a layer of lightning on his body.

Shino saw how his bugs got zapped by the lightning.

"I would advise you to find a better way in weakening me. I can zap your bugs easily all day without tiring out." Naruto stated.

Shino knew that to be true. Naruto had exceptional chakra reserves. So he had to change tactics. He went through some handseals.

"Earth style, earth spikes." Shino exclaimed and kicked the ground with his foot.

Naruto had to jump up to avoid getting hit. He dodged the spikes for a while.

"Good try, Shino." Naruto complemented when he dodged the last one. "Last time you didn't have this much control over this jutsu."

"Thanks, Naruto, but this isn't all I worked on during the last month." Shino said and gave a mental command which made his bugs break out from the spikes that surrounded Naruto.

He had planned to combine two attacks for a while now. To be precise since Naruto had told him that as an Aburame people that knew a bit about Konoha's clans would expect his insect based attacks.

So he had decided to work on some surprise tactics. Earth spikes was a C-ranked jutsu and didn't take too much chakra from him, which was always a problem for an Aburame.

But instead of combining his bugs with a weapon like Naruto had once suggested, he had trained them to flow with his earth jutsus. They knew his chakra perfectly after all, so it was no difficulty to make themselves part of his jutsu. So now Naruto was suddenly surrounded by a sphere of Shino's bugs.

Still, he was on guard. If there was one opponent that could get out of that attack it was Naruto. And indeed he soon found himself attacked again by the fast blond.

"Impressive, Shino, if I didn't create some clones before my first taijutsu attack on you, your trick would have cost me a lot of chakra." Naruto said after kicking Shino towards the wall of the arena, which Shino just prevented hitting by turning around in the air.

"So you mastered your shadow clones without a handsign now. That's something I'll have to keep in mind from now on." Shino analysed. "Not to mention the same seems to hold true for substitution."

"Very good analysis, Shino, I didn't expect anything less from you." Naruto said before going through a few handsigns of his own. "Wind style: Tornado prison."

Shino suddenly found himself dodging tornadoes coming from all sides. He had to dodge because the one time he tried passing it he got his sleeve shredded. After a few seconds he saw that he was trapped inside of eight roaring tornadoes. And Naruto wasn't done.

"Water style: Sea of puddles." Naruto said and spit countless water bullets out of his mouth all around him that turned the ground of the arena into a landscape full of countless puddles. Shino wondered what Naruto could have planned with this manoeuvre.

...

In the Kage box Kakashi was really impressed with the level the two showed. And not only him.

"That's really impressive." The Sandaime commented. "To hold up one high-level jutsu while performing another."

"Indeed. That's not something you normally find in a genin, not even a chunin. The most many can do is keeping up a basic jutsu like transformation while doing another jutsu. Anything beyond a D-rank jutsu is nearly impossible for most." The Kazekage commented.

"He's worked a long time to master that." Kakashi said. "But Shino also showed some impressive tactics. I think he's also a good candidate for chunin."

"True. He has a good mind and isn't taking unnecessary risks while still doing his best to hit his clearly stronger opponent." The Sandaime stated. "Though I think that the fight will soon be over. Naruto has set the stage for his deciding technique."

...

Shino seemed to have come to the same conclusion as the Sandaime and raised his hand inside the wind prison.

"Proctor, I forfeit. I know that with the way the arena looks now, the only thing Naruto has to do is performing one lightning jutsu, which I know he is capable of, to shock me and my bugs into unconsciousness." Shino called out.

"Winner by forfeit: Naruto Namikaze." Hayate declared.

First the audience was silent, then loud applause and cheers erupted. The fight had been great and they had seen two very capable boys. While Naruto had clearly been the stronger one, it had looked as if Shino had had him once with his trap. Naruto deactivated his tornado prison and walked over to Shino to shake his hand.

"Good fight, Shino." He complimented while Shino took his hand.

"Likewise, Naruto. It seems I'll have to do a lot more work to catch up to you." Shino stated.

Naruto nodded. It wasn't necessary to point out how much training Naruto had done over the years.

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