"The next match is shaping up to be so great that it's almost unfair – Shinki from Sunagakure VS Boruto from Konohagakure VS Gennai from Konohagakure!" Konohamaru turned for his fellow commentators while the trio of genin gathered and positioned themselves in the arena.
"As regrettable as it is not getting to see the original opening match, I'm sure that seeing two sons of Kage clash against one another is more than a suitable replacement!" Moegi agreed with her friend a vigorous nod.
"Actually, I don't think that description is fair at all. Examinee Gennai is completely unrelated to any Kage, examinee Shinki is only an adoptive son of Kazekage Gaara and examinee Boruto wants to have nothing in common with his father, or so he'd like it to be known…" Udon objected. "Although I believe that one shouldn't let one's eyes off of the underdog in this match – Gennai, I cannot deny that this isn't a simple outstanding match."
Farther in the elevated platform that separated the esteemed figures seated inside from the rest of the audience by a crystalline window which, while bright and shimmering, was impenetrable to the vision from outside trying to peek inward, a red-haired man with a burgundy stubble turned to the Seventh Naruto, making a face of acted surprise.
"Lord Seventh, you seem to be distraught by this match somehow. Is something the matter?" Akasuna Mugao wondered.
"This is a tasteless move, you know…" Seventh Naruto closed his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest as he let his body language express his disbelief. "Marketing on what should be a fair and random match."
"This lowly self apologizes for the disgusting situation with the Iwagakure boy. This lowly self assures that the matter shall be investigated after the exams are over, that she does," the Fifth Raikage pressed her palm to her chest and bowed. The appearance of an honest leader never left Samaya Imasu, if she truly was some mastermind looking to further the agenda of her village everywhere around the world, she was doing the best job faking it that anyone's ever done.
"That is unlikely to soothe Lord Seventh's troubles, though I wouldn't have thought you'd have been the one to criticize what the village has managed to achieve given the sudden stick in the wheel…" Uzumaki Midoben grumbled giving Naruto a wayward look. The two Seventh Hokage didn't quite see eye to eye on many matters and that was becoming more and more apparent though the exam was almost over and the two did their best to gulp down their discontent for how the other ran things.
"It's an interesting match-up, I'll give you that," Sasuke muttered from Naruto's side. "A boy that's quite vocal about his perceived softness of Naruto's Konoha. One might almost think that someone is trying to say something with this match."
Midoben did not look at Sasuke nor did he make any sort of effort to confirm or deny Sasuke's baseless pondering. Words like that were just that – vocal thoughts until the accused party took responsibility for the issues being raised without being accused directly. By doing that they themselves took a stand in before the spearhead without needing to hear any accusations. Sasuke was sly to try and poke Lord Seventh that way just as Midoben was too experienced to not fall for it.
Shinki settled in the north-western side of the arena, static and apathetic as usual. Just his rugged, black coat rustling in the air in an unnatural, almost stiff manner. Like a dance of tiny needles, clanging against one another. Boruto couldn't stop focusing his stare on the young man that was making him nervous more than the other guy, whereas Gennai looked equally overwhelmed by everyone in the arena and just flat out in over his head.
The moment that match started Boruto created a Shadow Clone out in front of him. The duplicate jumped up and kicked off of the palms of the original who focused and transformed his chakra into a Wind Release tunnel that blasted the clone right at Shinki. Despite a weighty thud, the clone achieved nothing with a head-on collision with Shinki's cloak. A hammer-arm strike from above by an arm made out of grains of black iron crushed the clone to the ground.
"That's not a cloak at all!" Gennai yelled out with a freaked expression when a black drizzle of iron submerged Shinki inside all the way up to the boy's head and formed a separate shape with arms as large as a man with enough wallop to them to smash a witless assailant.
"Scoping my abilities?" Shinki mumbled, addressing Boruto. "Poking at me from a farther range so that you can come up with a proper plan on how to approach the battle. Competent but so bland…"
A four-pronged jolt of lightning extended past Shinki's armor, connecting the chunky shape to a pair of detached arms as they floated over Shinki's head like fist-shaped missiles. The Black Iron Fists propelled themselves riding the lightning streams at Boruto. The Iron Sand scattered in a shapeless, airborne cloud after impact, sending Boruto rolling back and out of the range of where Shinki could have pursued him.
"Hey, stop ignoring me!" Gennai yelled out, pulling out a pair of shuriken in his hand and showing them to Shinki who only offered a brief glance in his direction.
"Then do something worthwhile…" Shinki dismissed the young man and focused his eyes back at Boruto who was slowly picking himself back up. Despite having none of his father's supernatural stamina and vitality, this kid did display a matching will to persevere and go on in a match.
"Damn it!" Gennai yelled out. "Take this!"
A handful of shuriken buzzed in the air in Shinki's direction. The dispersed Iron Sand hurried back to their master in order to form a defensive wall around him. A popping noise spread from Boruto's direction, Shinki's eyes raced toward the only opponent he wanted to defeat in this match. However, where Shinki expected to see Boruto he could only see a well-endowed blonde striking a suggestive pose his way. Despite it being only because his mind could not compute being attacked this way, Shinki could not draw his eyes from the son of Hokage he meant to expose.
A fleshy scratch lauded through the arena. Its volume bolstered by the meaning of the injury – mere shuriken scratching a seemingly invincible genin. Boruto was quick to undo his transformation and tease his opponent with a grin.
"You're not like the Kazekage, I mean. You need to concentrate and control your sand. When you're not in control, even a loser like Gennai can hurt you, I mean." Boruto declared.
"I'm… Right here…" Gennai's hand twitched in self-loathing.
"You're hardly your father as well…" Shinki dismissed Boruto's attempt at a verbal attack though the grungy tone and accelerating rate of words spoken in higher volume suggested that he was somewhat successful at the biting venture.
"That's fine with me, I mean!" Boruto threw his arm back and concentrated chakra inside his open palm. "I don't mean to be my old man anyway, I mean!"
The boy formed the technique made famous by his father in his hand, all while not pulling his eyes away from his prize standing right in front of him. Shinki's glare at the spiraling sphere of chakra in Boruto's hand said more than he would have cared to speak himself. They were mere children perfecting techniques invented by Kage of their respective villages.
"Rasengan!" Boruto yelled out, flinging the sphere from his hand and letting it vanish. Shinki's eyelids clapped a pair of times before he gathered the Iron Sand in a pair of raised hands to block an invisible strike coming right at him. The iron dust scattered in a petal-like mosaic upon impact though was quick to reassemble.
Gennai turned around and dashed toward the forested area of the arena. Shinki turned his attention toward his fleeing opponent for a second, one of his arms rustled like a scorned beehive before changing its shape and settling on an obsidian version of Shinki himself. The clone darted off after his opponent. Before the adoptive son of the Kazekage considered that weakling to be just a bother to get in his way but undeserving of his attention. Nothing changed on that front, except the part where he drew Shinki's blood due to Boruto's distraction. He still stood no chance but it was now personal.
"That jutsu was part Lightning Release, wasn't it?" Shinki asked. "You're a Lightning Release user then?"
"I can use a lot more than just Lightning Release, I mean!" Boruto clenched a fist in front of him.
"I see… It would have been embarrassing if you couldn't. I use electromagnetism to control my Iron Sands, your Lightning Release would only empower my attacks," Shinki stated with a blunt expression. "Taijutsu and Lightning Release, have you nothing else to show?"
One hand seal substituted another until Boruto's combination was complete. The young man drew a deep breath and kneaded chakra inside of his stomach, transforming it at once as a Fire Release user performed their array of techniques. Instead of a fireball, however, Boruto expelled a notable surge of water from his mouth of comparable size and intensity to the Great Fireball technique of the Uchiha.
"I still have this, Water Release: Surging Sea, I mean…" Boruto cheered on himself, seeing the sizable mass of water crash into something heavy on the other end which betrayed a successful impact.
Despite the fact that a staunch, obsidian wall stood in between Boruto's washing wave of water and Shinki, the chipper mood of Naruto's son did not fade away or reduce one inch. The defensive and offensive potential alike of Shinki became weaker when he split a portion of his Iron Sand off to fight Gennai. That meant that his Water Release jutsu just delivered a nice blow to the weakened enemy. He did feel something, of that Boruto couldn't doubt, one of Shinki's feet stood behind him, positioned for better balance and support.
A crust fell off of Shinki's face. It turned into a sip of Iron Sand and joined the airborne cloud. The damaged Shinki began fracturing and falling apart. Boruto freaked out and stumbled back, as far as he was aware, he shouldn't have been capable of dealing anywhere near this much damage. It was only when the fallen bits and pieces began turning into more and more Iron Sand that the boy realized that he was not fighting the real Shinki all this time after all.
"So you've left your clone to take me on and went off to chase after Gennai yourself instead, I mean…" Boruto growled. It was not the fact that his honest attempt to injure his opponent just hit an iron wall that threw him off-balance but instead the sharp prod of the offense taken from the fact that he was deemed someone that could have been held at bay by a clone.
"H-Holy crap!" Gennai's shouts echoed from further toward the east. Boruto turned his attention to the forested area only to see a black sphere emerge and ascend from the leafage. Various Gennai's limbs stuck out from the sphere though the entrapping technique had constricted the genin entirely into a makeshift coffin of Iron Sand.
"Surrender now, surrender, I mean!" Boruto yelled out at Gennai. He had seen this jutsu during various stages of the exams and he knew that Shinki was more than capable of crushing his opponent once they were at his mercy.
"No way! I've worked really hard and I'm not gonna quit now!" Gennai tried wriggling his barely sticking out face as he struggled against the spherical encasement. "I-If I can… Just…" the trapped ninja looked desperate to force his left hand to bend in front of him in a hand seal position.
A fierce explosion ripped through the trees, forcing Boruto to cover up and get clutch so that he could withstand the blast without falling down. Once recovered from the overwhelming shockwave, Boruto glared at Gennai in disbelief. This dweeb who considered throwing a handful of shuriken haphazardly a valid attack had totaled half the arena with his explosive trap.
The Iron Coffin that floated suspended over the wreckage bubbled while lightning crackled around it. A telegraph of the fact that the user of the jutsu was injured and struggled to maintain their hold on the technique. Gennai was the luckiest bastard to have ever been conceived – he managed to catch one of the scariest opponents while half of his Iron Sand was dealing with Boruto and the other half had him subdued in mid-air.
"Enough!" Shinki's roar echoed from within the chaos of fallen trees and rocky platforms. The Iron Coffin compressed to an utterly dreadful degree to imagine being enclosed within him, containing the blood-curdling screams that would have normally followed but not the chilling, crunchy sound of tendons and bones churning and twisting out of intended position. Gennai fell limp onto a broken tree, as a final flick of humiliation, his body leaned out of shape backward and stayed in an awkward hang until a staff member promptly flickered away with his body.
"You see? No Konoha ninja can be ruled out, I mean!" Boruto tilted his forehead protector feeling proud of his village after having just seen someone he thought of as a hopeless loser having injured the opponent most genin dreaded the most in this exam.
"This doesn't change anything, he's not one of Lord Seventh's, he's one of Lady Fifth's. If anything, Gennai proves my point further. He's managed to do what you could not – make a commendable effort," Shinki stumbled out from the wreckage and let the Iron Sand lingering in the air reassemble around him. Boruto grunted and readied himself for another attack.
He wanted to prove Shinki wrong, he wanted it so much that it overpowered any feeling of dread when facing such a frightening opponent and yet… He couldn't think of a way to actually damage him with all of that Iron Sand floating around him. With a hint of hesitation, the boy tilted his hand up to his face and bit his thumb, going through a bunch of hand seals before planting his hand to the ground.
"Summoning Jutsu!" he yelled out.
"What is the meaning of this, you irritating brat!?" a husky, tremor-inducing hiss echoed throughout the arena. Its ill-temper and certain dread soaking every word served to inspire fear into every member of the audience capable of hearing it and that was before a colossal, red snake with black rings running down its body appeared from the cloud. One of the snake's eyes carried excessive scarring that covered the entire eye in scar tissue.
"I'm really sorry but, I've got nothing on this guy and I really don't like the idea of him winning, I mean…" Boruto clapped his hands and winked at the serpent as if asking it for some assistance nicely. Judging from the looks of it, the two were not on the best of terms, or, rather, their terms were just fine though whatever partnership the two shared had been concluded. "Even if you want to just rampage around a little, that's fine by me, I mean…"
"Hmph… That's your attempt? A half-blind snake? You must be kidding me…" Shinki mumbled with an almost inaudible voice though it seemed to freeze the looming snake in place and drive it to slowly turn its scarred head at the Iron Sand user.
"Do you imply that I wouldn't be able to crush you, loathsome human?" Garaga hissed, forming a sharp and screeching tunnel of howling winds from the air leaving its mouth that drove Shinki to form a cloud of Iron Sand around him to cushion the effect on him somewhat.
"You do appear powerful. Perhaps you would prove too daunting to overcome though with the honor of the Kazekage name being on the line, I will not falter," Shinki declared, forming as large of an Iron Sand cloak around him as possible and forming a pair of fists fully capable of hurting even someone of Garaga's size.
"Perhaps? That does it, I'm devouring this human whole!" Garaga hissed diving in a mad charge and looking to coil around Shinki though the Sunagakure prodigy was just as fast to extend his Iron Sand hands to the sides and hold the serpent from crushing him. The entirety of Shinki's cloak reshaped into one, massive fist as it arrowed toward Garaga's face and hit the serpent directly in the snout.
"Why you!" Garaga did not take long to recover from the hit. Coiling back into striking formation right after getting knocked down and opening its mouth for a shower of poison. Shinki's suit of Iron Sand reshaped into wings that carried him away but the stream of venom proved too quick to outrace and hit the young man square in the back.
The fallen adopted son of the Kazekage grunted in pain but continued to fight back, kicking and elbowing at his winged armor of Iron Sand that has now become his prison as the venom did not poison him but instead hardened and began petrifying all that it touched, even something as unnatural as the Iron Sand.
"Hey, Garaga, that's enough, don't eat him, I mean!" Boruto yelled out at the snake he'd just summoned to give him an upper hand though it just sneered at its summoner with one of its functional eyes.
"Shut up, annoying brat, as if I'd ever let you boss me around! Sure, we've partnered up once and I don't regret it but you're letting this partnership of ours get way over your head," Garaga hissed with a momentary glance back at its summoner. That temporary hesitation of finishing his opponent off proved to be perilous to him as a pair of featureless puppets flashed in over its head and thrust their blades at the serpent.
Despite the swords failing to penetrate Garaga's scales, the snake thrashed around in pain, sending the puppets flying away like meaningless ragdolls. Shinki rose from being knocked down as the blue flare around the strings he used to control his puppets faded away. Blood trickled from Shinki's forehead and had it not been for his burnt off Sunagakure vest, Gennai's trap might have proven to be his downfall.
And yet, Boruto could see that Shinki was more than just mean words and undeserved power. Underneath that coat of black iron burnt eyes full of heart. Heart of someone that deserved every bit of the power they've acquired. It took that sort of heart to stare at Garaga that way after having just pissed it off and spent out most of one's arsenal while standing back up from being knocked down, hungry for more.
Protecting the flawless image of the Kazekage name meant just as much to Shinki as proving Shinki wrong did to Boruto. That was one thing that the Seventh's son was not used to sharing with his enemies as they usually lacked any of his guts and willpower.