A third step and the sand along the ground started to hiss and shift once more. Neiji brought his hands up, rear foot sliding back to prepare as he watched Gaara settle his weight, still grinning that wide unhinged smile. His eyes were drawn open so wide that there was easily visible blood vessels where the white was showing, pupils contracted tightly. Byukugan active let Neiji see that, see how as with that third step distributing Gaara's weight completely his grin stretched even further. An almost grotesque mask.

A fourth step, this one to settle shoulder width apart parallel to his last foot and suddenly there was a roar of chakra and the air seemed almost to give a bestial scream. Neiji whirled, twisting, looking around and cursing his long hair that obscured that tiny bit of his otherwise nearly perfect view granted from the Byukugan. Gaara had not been making hand seals this entire time, nor was he calling out his attacks to give the Hyuuga prodigy any sort of warning of what may be coming his way. Eyes rapidly trying to assess the situation, he found himself in a chilling situation.

Sand was everywhere. Rushing about in violent winds without actual breeze doing the movement, the only sound besides the wailing screams of gale force winds carrying the surprisingly sharp particles that were stinging his flesh and making Neiji bring up his hands, glad the Byukugan could see through flesh as he needed to shut his eyes tightly to protect them. The only sound? Completely maniacal laughter.

Gaara used his laughter as a tool, one that despite being fully aware of why it was being used -besides the fact that Gaara was a weird little shit and had issues- still made Baki a little nervous. Because Gaara was using his laughter to intimidate and disorient his opponent. A chakra-less and yet highly effective process that was working even on many observing the battles. Only high level nin seemed to catch on because it was the sort of thing you thought of when you hit A-ranked missions and every scrap of chakra was to be conserved.

"Oh? He's using Sand storm. Really bad match up for Konoha this." Temari remarked softly as she leaned over, eyes fixed on her younger brother now. It was brilliant of him really, because that attack would render most effectively blind and trying to find a way to breathe or protect themselves, an innate reaction. It was an unconventional use of wind chakra such as she enjoyed for her fan but paired with Gaara's sand it left the area heavily saturated in chakra particles that would only obey Gaara. Chakra that was the equivalent of turning on direct sunlight to the Hyuuga's energy sensitive vision and rendering him helpless to see what was coming next. It wasn't an attack they were able to see often, by taking the four steps Gaara had slowly leaked out chakra in a way to pressurize the air behind him, 'pushing' down on it with each motion and building it up so with the last step it lashed out, having been held down by the sand Gaara had liberally spread out in the location. It was very useful for ensuring you couldn't be tracked especially in places like Suna. A modified version was what he used to disorient people whenever he then would shift locations. Shunshin that also displaced any observers balance ever so slightly so by the time they may have thought to track the sand user, he was long gone.

Really, being around someone who couldn't use chakra had been good for all the Sand Siblings because Sute would ask questions or tease them since she didn't know how it was done. Like the fact that Kankuro was working on how to not only use chakra threads but isolate elemental capabilities with them so that he wouldn't need wire or such to channel other attacks. It would be even more lethal for his puppets to be able to leave 'thread traces' on others if he had prepared them ahead of time or isolate poisons and powders Sute could prepare that then when the chakra was removed from the threads Crow could safely plant on an opponent took effect. There was a wide range of ideas.

"That screaming wind, makes me feel at home." Kankuro agreed with a grin. "Well and the laughter."

"And the laughter." Temari agreed with a snicker, they both remembered the frankly disturbing weeks of Gaara trying to perfect it. Something of all things their father had encouraged. That was about when Kankuro had learned about the war paint and Temari had a few extra scrolls given to her that she was still attempting to decode. When she did though, she'd get a nice B rank technique. Suna shinobi family bonding moments were on the slightly skewed to insane side.

Within the sandstorm Gaara had formed clones since the Hyuuga could no longer track or observe and uncaring of the observers, proceeded to safely beat the other boy to near unconsciousness using them. Without anyone able to see he could toy with his prey. Experiment with hitting him in different ways and blows all the while giving abrasions from the sand. It was interesting how without his eyes it seemed the instincts of a fighter all but left the Hyuuga. He didn't dodge blows, he was overly reliant on his eye sight and it made Gaara bored. Swiftly. He let the sand begin to still so the victory would be witnessed.

It wasn't as though beating up someone weaker was of much interest and he couldn't kill him. As soon as Neiji's body collapsed to the dirt, still panting for air, the proctor called the match in Gaara's favor but lazily all the red head did was cross his arms. Fine. He had a point to make.

"You should thank your cousin, Hyuuga." Gaara stated as the sand fell to the earth, the dark haired boy's resolve visibly collapsing along with it, trembling and breathing hard with what would swiftly become a body entirely covered in bruises. "If you had listened to her perhaps you could have given me a good fight, I had passed on information to do so but it seemed in your arrogance you overlooked one key point of being a capable ninja." Gaara kept his voice bland, deadpan and mimicking his father.

"However, it is also thanks to her befriending my medic and keeping them out of my hair that you are still alive." Well, more it was because otherwise it would be an inter village headache of the sort Suna did not need but it wasn't like the prodigy needed to know that.

Also the jab at his not being a real ninja wasn't off base. It was a ninja's job to learn everything they could about an opponent and target. To just train was what you did when you didn't have a mission, it showed awful forethought on the Konoha nin's part and would doubtlessly please the adults 'supervising' him. The careful wording so it seemed as if Sute was just a random useful component without any personal value to him was also done so they wouldn't need to have any other sort of 'incidents'. "You weren't worth my time, or my chakra."

So saying, the shorter nin turned and began to walk away, leaving most the fallen sand for his next battle there. They had better actually give him a challenge or he was going to kill them unless it was yet another political no win situation. Then he'd just maim them.

Temari turned to greet him as he entered the 'waiting area' and snickered, ignoring the visible trembling and fear radiating off many of the other genin. "You are going to hear it."

Gaara raised a non existent brow even as Kankuro began cackling.

"You are!"

With a heavy sigh Gaara just took his spot on the wall, glaring those who had been using it into backing far away. Eventually his siblings would speak up, until then they had a few matches to observe.

"Dull." He cut the cackling hyena duo he was related to off.

"Well yes, though nice to see you use that Sand storm, didn't know you had it so finely tuned." Temari nodded and grinned.

"What."

"You monologued." Temari pointed out and Gaara pinched his nose. "Sute is so going to harass you over it."

She would too. For some reason that they made speeches after battles struck the not quite ninja as just as weird as anything else and she never hesitated to look at them like they were crazy. Gaara would have to distract her so he didn't need to hear about how foolish he sounded. Or worse...

"Come to think of it, your father would be proud of that little speech." Baki piped up and then there was a few whimpers in the waiting area at the sudden flash of killing intent from Gaara. Sute had told his father once that he seemed like he'd paid attention to the Kazekage's speeches and been roped into helping his father rehearse ever since.

Politics. He hated them. When not in his favor.

"I gotta ask you though Gaara.." Kankuro piped up and grinned. "How funny was the Hyuuga's expression when he realized he couldn't freaking see with his fancy eyes!?"

If the other waiting nin moved far away from the weirdly laughing trio from Suna, well, they were clearly crazy.