"Naruto Uzumaki against Neji Hyuuga!"
Naruto grinned and hopped the railing, landing in an easy crouch. "Dattebayo!"
"Naruto!" Kakashi yelled. "Don't go overboard."
Naruto considered that for a moment. "I don't know how to do that, Kakashi-sensei!"
"Maybe we should retreat to a safe distance?" Sakura asked.
Naruto's opponent shook his head as he entered the arena. "Foolishness. You are fated to lose against me."
"That right?" Naruto said, turning around to face Neji. A cold light danced in his eyes and he cocked his head slightly.
"You were a failure in the academy. You will always be a failure. My eyes see all." Neji sighed and leisurely set himself into a juuken stance. "Surrender and save yourself the embarrassment."
Naruto brought a hand up and cracked his knuckles. Frost flowed from his fingers, the air condensing into icy mist as he let his chakra flow. "Sounds like you need to be iced down."
Guy nodded to Kakashi. "You have taught him much about the fires of youth, my rival! But his one liners need work!" Kakashi ignored him.
"Begin!" Hayate hacked.
Naruto looked to the dying proctor. "Are you sure you're not going to hock up your spleen or something?"
"Byakugan!" Neji called, running towards Naruto. The failure's distraction only brought fate closer to what the hell was that!?
Naruto turned a cocky grin towards the boy with weird eyes who was staring at him with a dumbfounded expression even as he brought a hand in to deliver a palm slap. Naruto swung his own arm to deflect the blow while the other hand balled into a fist, using momentum from the parry to deliver a punch.
Kakashi glanced at his genin. "The Byakugan is a dojutsu not unlike your Sharingan, Sasuke," he told them. "However, while the Sharingan is better at watching active chakra and learning new jutsu, the Byakugan can see all chakra. The Hyuuga attack a ninja's own chakra system with their taijutsu. Right now, Neji can clearly see Naruto's chakra and knows what he's up against."
"Hnnn," Sasuke commented.
"That explains why he looks so confused," Sakura said.
Neji recovered just in time. Naruto's chakra pathways were abnormal, but comprehensible. It was almost like he had three chakras. The normal chakra at his core ran pure, but it shifted partly to ice chakra as it traveled his pathways. His tenketsu were developed and primed, even those few ninja even among the Hyuuga could freely access. And under all that, there was a strange red chakra, powerful but separate and barely visible. Sealed? No matter. Even deflected, his palm was still able to seal tenketsu on Naruto's arm. He deflected Naruto's strike and sealed more tenketsu as he did. After a few exchanges of blows, Naruto would be unable to mold chakra in his arms, and even with his chakra system, that would dramatically hinder his effectiveness.
Naruto jumped back from Neji, frowning. "What did you do?" he accused.
"This is the supreme art, the juuken," Neji said. "You are fated to fall before it."
"Yeah that's not going to happen," Naruto growled. Then he…did…something.
Neji watched as the chakra in Naruto's body flowed faster. It pushed through the tenketsu all up his arms, weaving into a lattice half an inch thick and alive with chakra. Ice chakra, he realized, as the air froze. The lattice enveloped even the sealed tenketsu, forcing them open…not in the violent, painful way Neji was familiar with but in a torrent of chakra that ate away the seal until there was nothing left, gradual but disturbingly efficient and apparently painless. The Ice Dragon Talon formed, burying Naruto's arms in articulated ice. Neji even saw the wind chakra sharpening the claws.
Naruto just felt his arms heal under the flow of chakra and made sure he wasn't going to take a hit like that again. "Okay, round two."
Neji's eyes narrowed. He would need to step up his game. "Eight trigrams," he called, setting himself in the correct pose for the high-speed kata.
Naruto rushed in. An obvious, graceless attack. Neji noticed that the wind chakra was gone, and had ground the ice talons to have dull ends. Nonlethal. Well, he'd repay the favor by not killing him. If he could help it. "Two palms!"
Naruto caught both palms on his ice arms and used the momentum to spin into a kick. Neji spun with him. "Four palms!" Naruto felt his leg tingle with whatever he was doing to it. "Eight palms! Sixteen palms!"
Dammit, how fast was this guy? Naruto waved his hand and a thin wall of ice broke Neji's rhythm, allowing him to jump away again. He knew his leg was going to collapse if he put weight on it, so he sprawled himself on the floor and rolled, pouring out chakra and leaving a trail of slippery ice to buy time. He pushed off the floor and flipped onto his feet. He wrapped his leg in chakra and solid rods of ice formed around it, anchoring him down. The circulating chakra ate away at the blocks or whatever Neji was doing. This wasn't a fight he was going to win at hand to hand.
Neji watched as Naruto's chakra enacted repairs, amazed. If you had very good control of your chakra, you could do that. But it had to be control beyond what almost all ninja considered useful. And this kid didn't look like he even realized what he was doing. Was he some kind of genius, too? No. He was a failure. Fate had decreed it so. His chakra was changing again, gathering in his…lungs? Whatever, he hadn't woven signs yet. He'd be in close range before Naruto could unleash the jutsu.
"Ice Dragon Breath!"
Neji realized too late that Naruto hadn't used a single handsign yet. This jutsu combined intense elemental chakra with instinctual chakra manipulation in a way he'd never heard about! But that was merely academic; much more relevant was the tornado of ice spiraling at him. He hadn't learned the rotation defense of the Main House yet. It wasn't going to be necessary for this part of the exam. It shouldn't have been!
It was.
Naruto grinned as Neji was thrown backwards. "Ice Dragon Pillars!" he shouted. He punched a bunch of the ice columns into existence around Neji, pinning down his chest, his hips, his knees. "It's over."
Neji struggled and hit the ice pillars with his arms, which were still free. They shattered, partially, but in return Neji's hands were suddenly encased in ice and trapped with the rest of him. "What!?"
Naruto stood freely, his tenketsu healed, his hand outstretched towards the pillars, glowing with chakra. He grinned. "When you broke the ice I refroze it with your hands surrounded by the bits. You're locked down for real now."
Hayate gave Neji time to struggle and shrugged when it proved to be futile. "Winner, Naruto!"
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(Posted Wed, 16 May 2012 18:45)
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