Dark Phoenix of Konoha by White Angel of Auralon

Part 29 - A Much Expected Fight

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.

"Damn, he was definitely the dominating one. I've never seen him show off that much in a fight." Sakura commented.

"True, I wonder how we would do against him." Sasuke mentioned.

"I fear it would be a really hard fight." Sakura said. "While I know that we have grown a lot stronger since the academy, he has done the same and he was leagues ahead of us then."

Sasuke hated admitting that, but it was true. He knew that he by now had the strength and skill of a solid chunin, perhaps some of his skills were scratching low jonin level, but with Naruto he was mostly solid jonin and in some areas high jonin level. And don't get him started on fuinjutsu, Naruto was a demon with them.

"So only one fight left in this round." Sakura said. "Do you think Shikamaru will fight properly?"

"Yes, since that simulated mission against Naruto he has seen what can happen if he doesn't. I wouldn't have thought that slacker had it in him." Sasuke replied.

Down in the arena Shikamaru was now facing Temari for the last fight of this round. He could deduct that she was probably using wind jutsus from the war fan on her back. He had asked his Dad about known specialisations from Suna and had found out that those that had wind element often used suitable weapons to enhance their abilities. War fans required a powerful affinity and one of the most famous war fan users had been Temari's mother Karura when she had still been an active kunoichi. So Shikamaru had to be on guard.

"The last fight of the first round of the chunin exam finals: Shikamaru Nara of Konoha versus Temari Sabaku of Suna. Begin." Hayate declared and cleared the arena.

Temari didn't waste any time and opened her fan fully and swung it with power, creating a massive gust of wind. Shikamaru quickly took cover behind a tree.

"Is that all you can do? Hiding? Man you Konoha ninjas don't seem all that great." Temari taunted.

"Troublesome." Shikamaru mumbled.

He really didn't want a long fight. He wanted to get this over with and preferably without getting hit too much. He had a plan, but it would take some time to implement it. Well, time to start. He made the standard seal used for the shadow possession jutsu and hoped that Temari hadn't done as much research as he had. Sadly it seemed she had and she was running away from his shadow, trying to get enough distance between her and the shadow. Shikamaru decided to use that and pretended that his shadow couldn't reach farther than ten metres. She even drew a line onto the ground, measuring the distance. Perfect.

"So that is the limit of your shadow. As long as I stay out of it I don't have to worry too much." Temari said.

Shikamaru kept his poker face. He started throwing a flurry of weapons, which were all reflected by Temari with weaker wind boosts. They now lay around her with perhaps a metre distance for the closest ones.