"I heard you're pretty good at Taijutsu, good enough to take care of an idiot like Mamushi without using Ninjutsu." Saya gestured with her chin toward Mamushi, who was hunching his shoulders behind her. Then she looked back at Shira and smiled. "We're bored anyway. How about you come play with us?"
Sana chimed in from the side. "It's an honor for you that big sister wants to see what you can do!"
Play? Shira frowned almost imperceptibly. He knew full well that the "games" of these great clan scions often meant trouble.
"Sorry, I'm training." Shira tried to decline politely.
"Training? Playing with us is the best training there is!"
But Saya refused to let up. She gently stroked the doll's hair, a sly gleam flashing in her eyes.
"How about this? If you can hold out for three minutes against me, Little Na and Mamushi together, I'll admit you've got some skill. Otherwise, you'll have to tell me what that steamy Taijutsu of yours is all about."
She proposed a condition that seemed fair but was actually extremely challenging, driven by curiosity to uncover Shira's secret.
Before Shira could refuse again, Sana had already formed Hand Seals. "Ninja Art: Sandstorm Jutsu!"
Whoosh-!
A small but unusually fierce whirlwind of sand and dust sprang up in an instant. The attack cleverly obscured Shira's vision and senses, disrupting the rhythm of his breathing!
At the same time, Mamushi reluctantly steeled himself and charged forward. Venomous snakes emerged once again from the cuffs of both sleeves, hissing as they coiled toward Shira's lower body in an attack meant to tie him down!
"Tch." Shira was displeased, but his opponents had already made their move. As it happened, he also wanted to test his current strength.
He did not activate Second Activation, relying solely on his normal Taijutsu to keep them at bay.
This was also a good chance for him to learn about their abilities in advance, making it easier to deal with them in the upcoming Chunin Ninja Exams.
He moved nimbly, dodging Mamushi's snake attacks while judging the movements within the sandstorm by the sound of the wind and the flow of air.
Hey! Ghost Shadow Perplexing Track Step! Slippery moves, activate the ghost blade and I'm invisible~
His Taijutsu fundamentals were exceptionally solid, allowing him to barely cope with the two of them harassing him even with his vision obstructed.
Saya did not directly join the attack. Instead, she stood a little way off like a spectator, gently tugging at the hair of the doll in her arms with her fingers. Its hollow glass eyes remained fixed on Shira, while a chilling mental fluctuation constantly tried to disrupt his state.
Shira held his mind firm, resisting the interference with the tenacious will he had forged through daily training.
At that moment, most of his attention was focused on dealing with the visible physical attacks and the annoying sand and dust.
However, that was precisely where Saya's tactics showed their cunning!
Just as Shira made a swift leap backward, precisely avoiding a snakebite from Mamushi and a sand bullet fired from the side by Sana, a small lock of his hair, lifted by the airflow from his rapid movement, was caught up in the current of sand and dust that Sana had carefully controlled and silently carried to Saya!
A sharp light flashed in Saya's eyes, and a triumphant smile appeared on her lips. She reached out with two fingers, pinched that strand of hair with extreme precision, and swiftly wound it around the fingertip of the doll in her arms!
"Cursed Doll Performance: Body Manipulation Jutsu!"
Saya murmured the words, and a powerful, bizarre surge of Chakra instantly traveled through the connection between the hair and the doll, crossing space to pierce Shira's mind!
??
Shira's mind suddenly went blank, as though an icy needle had stabbed deep into his consciousness. Immediately afterward, control over his body was stripped away in an instant.
His hands and feet, his sight, his breathing-none of them obeyed his commands anymore. Like a real puppet, he was frozen stiff in the position he had landed in after his backward leap, unable to move so much as a finger. Only his conscious mind remained trapped inside that shell, experiencing a terror unlike anything he had ever known.
"I... it worked!" Sana cried excitedly, looking at Shira, who stood frozen in place.