Shinki raised and spread his arms out, a drizzle of the Iron Sand washed away around him like a wave, halting Garaga's devious thoughts of devouring the boy whole as they pelted at the serpent and pushed it back. The Iron Sand gathered over the entire battlefield, sinking the entire arena in the shade as they filtered out the natural light from the sun.
"Iron Sand: New World Order!" Shinki grunted, driving his arms down. Responding to his command the Iron Sand dust formed branches and rods too numerous to count and any attempt to rationalize their numbers would have ultimately proved fruitless for their descent would have spelled out doom to anyone.
The branching spikes continued to skewer and penetrate the ground, sewing it like a needle through the cloth and covering it all. Its touches were subtle yet gentle. No trees fell from being shredded to bits, instead, they remained standing all cut up and filled to the brim with holes. The ground did not rumble once, there were only puny grunge sounds where the dirt gave way to the iron spikes ravaging it slowly. That slow and steady overtaking of the land below reminded of a killer that was passionate about ending its victim.
The red snake poofed away, receiving a handful of grievous cuts and lacerations from the Iron Sand it finally had sustained enough damage to cancel out Boruto's Summoning Jutsu. A term in their contract, as was the case with all of the contracted Ninja Animal summons. Boruto popped into a puff of smoke too, dispelling the shadow clone he had left behind him while he dashed for safety.
"The entire battlefield has been transformed by these iron spikes!" Moegi gasped on commentary. "We can only hope that examinee Boruto is okay."
"He must be. We've got sensors observing the state of the battle at every twist and turn and if they felt like the chakra signature of examinee Boruto has been running low, they'd have interfered. Our best assumption now is to believe he is hiding to make his next move," Konohamaru replied.
"Indeed, though making any kind of move in this forest of merciless, Iron Sand will be difficult," Udon nodded his head. "Not only that, but we've also seen that the Iron Sand, when its formation is broken, serves as a shapeless cloud that rushes to its master's defense when needed. It is indeed a troublesome ability to have to deal with as a mere genin with few years of experience to devise a powerful arsenal of one's own different fighting styles."
Shinki's eyes raced across the forest of Iron Sand, like a deadly spider lurking on its web, the boy had sensed strong vibrations on a remote branch of iron spikes, meaning that his enemy was, at last, making his move. Slick and shapeless puppets raced across the battlefield, racing across the entire thing with relative ease that no living being could match due to their unnaturally thin build and artificial joints that allowed them to fit through any gaps and move without worrying about human limitations such as joint dislocation and skeletal fractures.
The puppets thrust their blades at where Boruto had caused vibrations to resonate through the battlefield. The exact spot was not difficult to spot as it was flashing with electricity and had handfuls of shuriken scattered across. Boruto grunted in pain as a few of their thin blades had cut him in the arms and one of them penetrated his shoulder.
"I told you your Lightning Release is useless against my Iron Sand. The electromagnetism that comes as a secondary effect of your Lightning Release techniques only serves to keep the dust particles closer together, it hardens the structure instead of damaging it," Shinki grumbled.
"Why do you care, I mean!?" Boruto's voice reached him from another space in the mad forest of black iron. Shinki's attention turned to that spot and he sent his puppets after the fleeing target. Judging by a blood-curdling grunt, they had the boy pinned down.
"I care because… It is tough to admit it but… This is the farthest I've ever been pushed in battle. You Konoha ninja appear weak and seem to talk big and show nothing of value but when push comes to shove… Even someone like Gennai can injure me, something very few of even higher ranking ninja in Sunagakure have managed to do," Shinki replied.
Boruto's eyes that were beginning to look hazy and slowly shut opened back up in surprise of what he had heard. He did not expect to be commended by a guy like Shinki. Plenty of people were critical of his old man and the way he did things and they were quick to lump Boruto in with that which they hated just because the old man and his boy were related. None of those people admitted they were wrong in public so that Boruto could hear it. The boy had heard stories of his father changing people in the past, changing them for the better though this was the first time he had truly seen it in action.
Ever since he was born and while he grew up, his father already had the rest of the world enthralled, the only critics that remained seemed determined to hate him no matter what and Boruto thought that Shinki might have been a lot like that too. How? Just how was Boruto proven to be the narrow-minded one here?!
A surge of Lightning Release sent tremors through the puppets, forcing them to twitch uncontrollably like a handful of corpses with intense electric current running through them. Shinki's eyes raced across the battlefield in panic, dissolving the battlefield of iron he had formed and recalling all of the Iron Sand back to him. The current smashed into Shinki with violent force, causing an explosive chain reaction that sunk the area the young Sunagakure ninja stood on in dust while his puppets collapsed, looking lifeless.
"Examinee Boruto used his ability to coat weapons with chakra to channel Lightning Release chakra through the swords of the puppets he'd been cut with, through the puppets themselves and their threads, all the way back to their master! What an innovative method of attack!" Udon exclaimed on commentary.
"Indeed, it seems to be something that his father would do in theory, due to Lord Seventh's unmatched stamina!" Konohamaru pitched in.
"Though Lord Seventh isn't known for his chakra coating abilities. This one's quite unique, I have to say…" Moegi spoke her mind.
"Amazing…" Shinki chuckled, emerging from smoke with an Iron Coat of black on his entire lower body, insulating him from damage. "I didn't see that coming at all…"
"Yeah… Well… Now that that dumb forest is down, I can really put the hurt on you, I mean!" Boruto rose from the ground, the blood soaking his jacket. The boy pulled the cut-up top off of him and threw it aside. The white t-shirt underneath was similarly soaked in blood from his injuries though due to its color the damage was much more apparent now. Judging from Boruto's tone, his courage might have just been false bravado.
"Before we conclude this, you have to know that I felt a bit frustrated before this match. I was placed against someone I could compete, someone I thought could be half-decent at elevating me in a match and someone to play off of and earn my promotion. Then my opponent failed to show up and… It began seeming like it was all in vain, you know. All the trials and tests," Shinki looked at his trembling hand as the Iron Sand dispersed off of his body and floated in a cloud, ready to take whatever shape its master required on a whim.
"Yeah… Everyone worked pretty hard, I mean…" Boruto nodded, panting from the creeping weakness of blood loss as only his chakra augmentation served to sustain his combat ability now.
"It's not that. Someone of my caliber, a ninja representing the Kazekage clan had little trouble with these challenges, these games. It's the idea that the successor of Kazekage's dreams and will would fail at his first Chuunin Exams that annoyed me, that I would bring dishonor to Kazekage-sama's name like that. Those cruel things I've said about you and your village, I did believe them at the time though it was a difficult time of desperation. It felt suffocating, the expectations… And thus I sought to suffocate in return," Shinki rubbed his neck and then took a neutral, tall stance in front of Boruto.
"That's stupid, I mean!" Boruto yelled out and reached back with his hand, forcing the Wind Release chakra to hurl into a rotating chakra sphere. "The only name that matters is your own! The only name you're out to put dirt on is your own and there's nothing that makes your name look dirtier than hiding behind someone else's skirt, I mean! Now take this and fall over, dammit!"
Young Boruto swung his arm, like pitching a ball and made his attack vanish in thin air. He did not intend to hit Shinki with his Vanishing Rasengan, not just that. He had revealed that jutsu and how it worked already earlier and even then it didn't do too well against the Sunagakure ninja. Now came the difficult part – to survive until the next phase of Boruto's plan. The blond-haired ninja created three shadow clones around him and stood his ground.
"Hmph, I've seen this jutsu already! This time I won't even let it reach me," Shinki decided and moved his arms in a rhythmic motion, commanding his Iron Sand to take a single, controlled shape of a stream and rush at Boruto and his clones. The Seventh's son dashed, vaulted, and rolled aside, losing one clone in the process and he felt the hurt that would befall him if he allowed Shinki to hit him. Every single dust of that sand felt like a sword, the collective ripping through felt like being dissolved in anguish and it was not something Boruto felt like experiencing.
"Take this!" Boruto yelled out, flinging a kunai at Shinki with a paper tag dangling on the bottom end. The successor of the Kazekage clan urged his sand to return to him and defend him in a whirlpool of multiple interconnecting streams. A fierce howl ripped through the public's eardrums as an explosion of vicious proportions and brutality sent even Boruto who planned it out and stood at a safe distance from it, or so he thought, rolling aside.
"What an innovative method for attack! The Vanishing Rasengan is a Wind Release technique and even though examinee Boruto does not possess Fire Release in his arsenal of moves, he has some explosive tags in his pouch, as most ninja do. Wind Release tends to power up Fire Release and flames in general, resulting in this brutal firestorm we are witnessing right now," Konohamaru proceeded to explain Boruto's plan to the masses that were uneducated in the art of violence.
"Even as examinee Boruto's mentor, Konohamaru, you're underselling this accomplishment. Vanishing Rasengan erupts at a specific point, blasts, and blinks away. Examinee Boruto had to rely only on his intimate knowledge of the technique and its velocity to predict when it would reach examinee Shinki and fling his explosive at the right time to ride the wave of the Vanishing Rasengan's detonation," Udon pointed out.
"So examinee Boruto is not only very innovative but he also is no slouch in terms of flawless execution too, huh?" Moegi smirked while summing it up.
Shinki stood unharmed, this was almost enough to reduce Boruto to tears at once but he had noticed another curious detail – he didn't just stand unharmed, he was dazed and out of it! His Iron Sand was down, the Sunagakure prodigy was open for an attack and it was unclear when such an opening would make itself known again.
"Now! Uchiha Style Shurikenjutsu: Lightning Triplet!" Boruto yelled out as he twisted in mid-air to enhance the speed and damage that his shuriken would inflict while coating them with Lightning Release chakra. Struggling against his confusion, Shinki slipped out a kunai from his pouch, lacking to focus to form one out of his fallen Iron Sand, and raised his knife to block one shuriken while the two others sent Shinki down on his gut.
Shinki grumbled and coughed some blood up, recovering the control over his Iron Sands he had the stream of it pick him off the ground and get the Sunagakure ninja back on his feet. He took some heavy wounds and as he had stated it before, he wasn't used to that. Boruto felt his resolve and awareness slipping too but where he'd have collapsed and given up before, now he saw a chance to win against unbeatable odds. Chances like that did not come often and the boy didn't feel like letting go of them.
"Cut right through my kunai, huh…" Shinki spoke through the bitter taste of grievous battle damage.
"That was a nice move, didn't block my Triplet but you'd have gone down for sure if you didn't tilt that one shuriken up and just an inch past your body, I mean…" Boruto chuckled, commending his opponent himself.
"Uchiha Style Shurikenjutsu, huh? So even the esteemed Uchiha clan has acknowledged your prowess then… That's too bad. For you that is. Defeating someone like you will bring the Kazekage clan unmatched honor and against someone like you I will absolutely not fail!" Shinki yelled out, battle madness filtering what he saw and said. His head was in the game, too deep so.
"Still clinging to that stupid clan name, huh? Guess I'll have to punch it out of you, I mean!" Boruto clenched his fist and turned it behind him, letting it crackle with the blue glow of Lightning Release.
"The legacy of the Kazekage clan is vast as the grains of sand in the desert, I will not be the rotten grain that spoils the golden wave, my legacy, my will, my honor, my meaning will wash you away!" Shinki extended his arms, concentrating all of his Iron Sand drizzle over his head. Not only that, but dust of iron also began racing across from all over the place, meaningless iron items dissolving into dust and moving in to support the waterfall of the Kazekage legacy that Shinki meant to crash into Boruto with.
"Iron Sand Waterfall!" Shinki yelled out, pushing his body to its very limit as he sent the supermassive volume of the black wave of iron like a tsunami of miniature blades that he would grind into Boruto to put him down.
"I'm not gonna cover and run from your damned legacy, I mean, I've gotta make my own!" Boruto grit his teeth and weaved a one-handed hand seal to create a pair of clones behind him, jumping on their grip and letting them send him flying with a Boruto Stream, a tunneling gust that directed him right at the crashing wave and then took a drastic turn right by its peak.
"He's surfing the tsunami of Iron Sand! Incredible!" Konohamaru hammered the table his microphone stood on with his free arm in awe. "He can do it, examinee Boruto can do it."
"Take this! Lightning Release: Thunderclap Arrow!" Boruto growled out when the surfing motion across the crashing tsunami allowed him to move over the wave and fling the handful of lightning jolts at his enemy as a projectile-type attack. A hefty spike budded from the tsunami wave, blocking the damage off and absorbing Boruto's technique. The spiky-haired boy ended up rolling downhill over the wave, having no control over where he fell now.
An arm of black iron appeared from the washing wave and erected itself as a barrier in front of the boy. In a disgusting manner, Boruto slammed right into it at high speed. The arm of Iron Sand wrapped around Boruto and squeezed. Before it could break the boy's ribcage, however, the arm, still clutching to Boruto, submerged under the wave, back from where it came. After these finals twists and turns, the washing tsunami of Iron Sand completed its downward fall and wash without a hitch, washing up an unconscious body from underneath.
"Examinee Boruto is unconscious, examinee Shinki from Sunagakure is the winner of the triple threat match!" a proctor appeared and checked Boruto's life signs first before raising his arm in the direction of the panting Shinki that could barely rise off of his kneeling position. For a decent while after the match, the young man continued to stare at his trembling hand and feel the sweat on his forehead mixing in with blood from his wounds in a sense of disbelief.
"Rise, Shinki, you've done great. The arena will need to amended again though…" a husky, masculine voice was the only thing that could have broken through to the dazed youth.
"Kazekage…sama…" Shinki's eyes looked hazy and the boy looked like he was about to go to sleep at any moment.
"You're not used being driven to the very edge of your limits, aren't you? It is a valuable experience, one that comes hand in hand whenever you deal with Konoha ninja. That is why I've come to appreciate them so much, you see…" Gaara of the Sand helped the young man by surrounding him with a cocoon of sand and floating him beside him. "Your chakra… It was close to running out, that proctor in fact rushed in to check on you. If you did not knock Boruto out with that last attack, he'd have eliminated you, you know."
Gaara waited for a reply but he didn't get one, troubled he looked to his side at the fallen young boy but then had to smile softly when he noticed the boy had fallen asleep. He waved the handful of Chuunin Exam staff off, telling them that he'd take his successor to the infirmary himself.
Up in the Ninja Council platform, one Seventh Hokage turned to the other. Examining the face of the Seventh Naruto and looking pleasantly surprised to see no ire or wish to punish someone for the injuries his young boy had sustained.
"Your son is a remarkable ninja, Lord Seventh, it is a pity he came up just one inch short to victory against one of the most sparking prodigies of these exams," Uzumaki Midoben spoke to his counterpart.
"I don't think he did, you know. I think Boruto exceeded all expectations and surpassed his limits. He wanted to carve his own path, to form his own legacy, distinct from that of my own and I think he did just that," the Seventh Naruto smirked after closing his eyes and letting out a sigh of relief that this nail-biting match was finally over.