"What's happening?! How could your Wind Style possibly damage my puppet?!"
Sajin's heart skipped a beat, but upon closer inspection, he exhaled in relief. His puppet hadn't actually been damaged by the Wind Style itself. Instead, several senbon had somehow become wedged deep into the exposed joints.
Was it when he waved his hand?
Recalling Tatsuma's hand movements just before the jutsu, Sajin realized the truth. That extra flourish hadn't been a nervous habit or a stylistic choice; it was a distraction to mask a concealed projectile throw.
Once the realization set in, however, Sajin's relief turned into humiliated rage. He had been played by a child. Again!
Recognizing that a few senbon couldn't truly disable the machine, Sajin yanked his chakra threads with violent force. Noterabo's joints groaned, the sheer torque snapping the needles like toothpicks.
Back in action, the humanoid puppet erupted with full speed, lunging toward Tatsuma.
Tatsuma heard the whistling wind behind him and pursed his lips. With a sharp mid-air pivot, he briefly shook the puppet off his trail before accelerating once more, charging straight for Sajin.
"It's useless! You're far too slow!" Sajin barked, seeing the boy's desperate struggle.
Tatsuma ignored him. His hands were already blurring through a set of seals. As his fingers locked into the final Tiger Seal, Sajin's brow furrowed.
"Jorogumo, defend!"
Sajin shifted to a one-handed control for Noterabo, using his other hand to pull Jorogumo into a defensive perimeter. The spider-puppet curled its limbs around Sajin, forming a protective cage of reinforced wood and steel.
But Tatsuma suddenly slammed on the brakes. Spinning in place, he thrust his right hand forward. A swirl of chaotic yet ordered chakra converged in his palm, and in the blink of an eye, it condensed into a brilliant, golden sphere of chakra.
"Rasengan!"
BOOM!
Tatsuma slammed the Rasengan directly into Noterabo's open maw. The moment of impact shattered the technique's containment; the turbulent, grinding chakra tore through the puppet's internal mechanisms, shredding its head into splinters and scrap metal.
"Who said you have to release the jutsu that matches the seals?"
A flicker of mockery crossed Tatsuma's face. Sajin's decision to split his focus between two puppets—while simultaneously obscuring his own vision with Jorogumo's defensive shell—had provided the perfect opening.
It was an opening only Tatsuma could exploit. No-seal ninjutsu were incredibly rare; in the heat of battle, very few shinobi would ever account for an opponent possessing a technique that required no hand signs at all.
Even Sajin, who had seen the Rasengan once before, had fallen for the trap. During their first encounter, he hadn't been prepared, and he hadn't been entirely sure if the move was truly seal-less. He had preferred to believe Tatsuma was using some specialized method, like one-handed seals. He had only caught the motion of Tatsuma's right hand that day; his left had been a mystery.
Now, as the dust settled, Sajin stared at the ruins of Noterabo—now little more than a headless mannequin offering a hollow embrace.
The muscles in Sajin's face twitched. He was beyond furious. He loathed this feeling of being outmaneuvered at every turn.
This was the fatal flaw of being a scion of a noble house. Since childhood, Sajin had never lacked resources or high-level instruction. He had never needed to scrape, claw, or scheme to win. He simply followed the curriculum, trained under masters, and passed his evaluations. While he had completed many missions, he had always relied on overwhelming power to crush his enemies. He had never encountered someone as tenacious, deceptive, and flat-out "weird" as Tatsuma.
It was precisely why he had sacrificed so many subordinates just to gather intelligence. The "shroud" around Tatsuma's abilities made Sajin feel like he had no clear path to victory.
Perhaps if he hadn't started this engagement with the intent to play games—if he had simply ordered his entire unit to swarm the boy from the start—none of this would have happened. But there was no medicine for regret. He had to swallow the bitter pill of losing yet another puppet.
Sajin abandoned Noterabo. Without its poisoned fangs, the puppet was just a wooden training dummy to someone like Tatsuma. While the puppet's material made it resistant to standard Taijutsu, Tatsuma's mastery allowed him to dance around it effortlessly.
Moreover, controlling two puppets simultaneously was mentally taxing. Tatsuma had proven that Sajin lacked the "multitasking" talent required to handle both under high pressure—at least not in front of a monster like him. To continue would only lead to more openings. Sajin decisively cut the chakra threads to the humanoid.
Tatsuma shook his head slightly at the sight. In his opinion, Sajin's design and control of Noterabo had been a failure of imagination.
Even without knowing puppetry, Tatsuma could think of a dozen ways to make it deadlier—like a self-destruct mechanism. If the puppet were packed with explosive tags, even a destroyed head wouldn't matter; the moment it grabbed an opponent, it could end the fight in a blaze of glory. Very few people could survive that kind of point-blank trauma.
Pushing the thought aside, Tatsuma turned his gaze to the bristling limbs of Jorogumo. A smirk played on his lips. Compared to the brawling Noterabo, he had identified Jorogumo's weakness much earlier.
The spider was a precision instrument. And in the world of engineering, precision meant fragility. The tighter the tolerances, the lower the room for error. It was a masterpiece of craftsmanship, but it wasn't built for the chaotic grime of a battlefield.
The previous explosive tag blast had already caused a delay in its response time. He just needed a repeat performance—on a much larger scale.
Tatsuma didn't hesitate. He wove a set of seals, and a puff of smoke heralded the arrival of a Shadow Clone. Both Tatsumas began weaving seals simultaneously, though their hands moved in different patterns.
Sajin's irritation spiked. He had no idea if Tatsuma was faking the seals again to unleash a different jutsu. Despite his frustration, he stayed cautious, pulling Jorogumo back into a tight defensive ball.
Suddenly, both the original and the clone inhaled deeply and exhaled at once. The original spat out a massive torrent of burning oil, while the clone unleashed a violent, howling gale.
"Fire Style: Great Flame Bullet!" "Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!"
Wind fueled the fire, and the fire rode the wind. A fireball dozens of times larger than his previous attempt slammed into Jorogumo.
BOOM!!!
The collision of oil, flame, and high-pressure wind created a massive flash-vapor explosion. A pillar of blinding, scorching heat erupted, forcing even Tatsuma to retreat several steps to avoid the backdraft.
The Shadow Clone dissolved into smoke, its chakra completely spent, its remains instantly scattered by the shockwave of the blast.
Tatsuma breathed a sigh of relief as he watched the flames. The explosion hadn't spread to the surrounding canopy, avoiding a catastrophic forest fire. In a region as dense as the Land of Rivers, a wildfire would be nearly impossible to extinguish, and with so many Konoha shinobi operating in the area, it would have been a disaster for his own side.
The inferno died down as quickly as it had begun. As the smoke cleared, the forms of Sajin and Jorogumo reappeared. The spider puppet was a wreck, lying on its back with its eight limbs twitching uselessly in the air.
Sajin's clothes were reduced to charred rags, and his skin was mottled with burns and blood. But Tatsuma wasn't looking at the injuries.
His eyes were locked on the ground around Sajin's feet... where a stream of sand was beginning to flow and swirl like a living thing.
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