Dark Phoenix of Konoha by White Angel of Auralon

Part 29 - A Much Expected Fight

"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."