Chapter 7
Previously: It is near the end of the "timeskip", shortly before Naruto Part 2 begins. As the last step of her training under Tsunade, Sakura learned the super-secret reincarnation jutsu. In Tsunade's case, it messed up her life but granted super strength. In Sakura's case she remembered her previous life as someone named "Saotome Ranma." She knows Ranma's techniques and secrets, but still needs to retrain her body. Her first problem: ki is not chakra, and gaining ki may have messed up her chakra. Her second problem: a new viewpoint has helped her realize that she's been truly rotten to Naruto. He's not her love, but he was supposed to be her friend. So she's set out to help Hinata and Naruto get together. Her third problem: The Hyuga clan doesn't appreciate interference from outsiders, and they handle problems the same way any good ninja would: through assassination!
"You want to start your own clan?" my mother shouted the question as if I were some sort of lunatic.
"Well why not?" I demanded. "Every clan was started by someone. Where do you think they come from?"
"Not from teenage girls who can't even manage their own love life!"
"Oh, that was a low blow, mother!" She was starting to make me mad. "This has nothing to do with Sasuke!"
"No, what it has to do is making your mother look like a fool in front of anyone influential in this village. I do good work here! You think the city rebuilds itself, when we suffer something like the Exam Invasion? Hell, no! It takes the planning, sweat, and toil of all the regular people in this village, working together for the common good. You think reinforced roofs build themselves? You think the streets turn into a maze of entrapments all on their own? To do my job, I have to negotiate with the clans, the merchants, construction, and practically every trade in the city. I can't do that when you're off making our family into a laughingstock!"
"You didn't complain when I became Tsunade-sama's apprentice!"
"That's because you were helping me, back then! But you told me that you're dropping that, too!"
"I'm not breaking off with her! I finished my apprenticeship. I'm moving to take on more field work." I managed to rein in my voice, trying to bring this back to a manageable argument.
"Well, fine!" my mother said. I was hoping the argument would settle down, but she had to get in a last dig. "Maybe with you out of the village, you won't be embarrassing yourself so badly."
"Oooooh, that's it Mother! What is your problem?"
"My problem is this whole 'clan' fiasco. Haruno Clan? What a joke! You don't know the first thing about putting together a clan! Where are you going to get the money? Do you know how much it costs to buy even the tiniest estate in the Clan District? How are you going to get the respect of the other clans? How are you going to negotiate with them? Do you expect to have a representative on the council? For that matter, who's going to be in this so-called 'Haruno Clan'?"
I decided then and there that whatever happened, once I formed my clan (and I would!) that maybe I wouldn't call it the 'Haruno Clan', just to spite her!
"Well," I said sweetly, "the clan would consist of me," My mother rolled her eyes at that. "Hyuga Hinata, the former heir of the Hyuga Clan – perhaps you've heard of them?" Mother looked shocked at that. She should have known better when my tone got all sugary. "Uzumaki Naruto. I don't know if you've heard of him. He's been training with one of the sannin. Additional membership is still being discussed."
Considering that the whole point of the exercise was to find some way to let Hinata marry Naruto, it didn't make much sense unless they were both in the clan. And I went along because… well, because it was my idea. Besides, I was the one who would pay for it. And probably set it up, and make it work. Ugg.
Mother was skeptical, but no longer sounded quite so shrewish. Jeez, I hope I hadn't picked any of that up from her!
"And you're telling me that some Hyuga Clan elder actually went along with this?"
I tipped my head back, as if thoughtfully considering. "Hmmm, does Hyuga Hiashi count?"
"He agreed to this?"
"No," I admitted. "I would describe our discussion as 'early.' As you know, Hyuga-sama is a rather impressive negotiator. He hardly went out on a limb. The best I could say that he agreed to was 'plausible' and 'if you can impress me, we'll talk.' That's why I haven't been saying anything about a new clan. So I don't know where you heard your rumors."
She narrowed her eyes. "So all you have to do is impress Hyuga Hiashi."
"…and the Hyuga Clan elders," I admitted.
"And how, exactly, do you expect to do that?" she demanded.
"By beating Hyuga Neji in a match." I enjoyed the look of shock on her face. "In front of those same clan elders. I'm afraid I can't go into details – high clan secrets – but while they don't exactly involve a bloodline limit, it's something of that nature. Hence, the need for a clan."
"But… you don't have a bloodline limit," she said, dumbfounded. "I'm your mother. I'd know! And, defeating Hyuga Neji in combat? That's impossible! Especially for someone like you!"
"Maybe I'll surprise you. Now if you'll excuse me, I've been training all day, and I'm exhausted."
I did manage to remain standing long enough to walk upstairs, but only because I was energized by rage.
oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo
A good night of sleep and a few large meals had me fully recovered. My muscles were trembling in eagerness, my ki was literally bursting to be used. That had me up early and out at the quarry not too long after dawn. Lee and Hinata wouldn't be here for a few hours, and there were other aspects of my training that I'd been neglecting.
The first order of business was kick and punch training. This is the most basic of the basics, but whenever you change significantly in power or capability, you really want to go back and work though things from the very beginning. It's like a musician tuning their instrument. No matter how advanced you are, you still need to do your scales.
Even back at the Tendo Dojo, we'd had the traditional training posts set up. Small phone poles worked well, or ten-by-ten posts could do. You then wrapped those with centimeter-thick manila rope. The post served as a target, and you could throw punch after punch into it. They were good for kick practice, too, particularly high kicks.
There are a lot of valuable things you get from this simple exercise. The rough rope helps in body toughening, increasing the strength of the skin where you perform kicks and punches. Beginners start with soft hands. Experts gain a thick layer of callous. Ki masters return to hands that appear soft, but become more durable than steel when needed. The exercise helps you get your whole body moving right, so that you put your arm into the punch, and your shoulder, and hips, and even legs. The rope has enough give that it helps reinforce that you're not punching the surface, but rather you're aiming for a place five or six centimeters inside the surface.
There are other substitutes you can use. Lee generally performed this exercise on trees. Back in the Tendo Dojo, even Akane could punch her way through a phone pole. If we were lucky, a pole would last for an entire training session. That girl always went through her training supplies far too quickly.
I found myself in a quarry, with slabs of naked basalt on every side.
Perfect.
I hopped out of my pit for a moment, and set up the metronome. This was an exercise I'd modified from something Oyaji used to teach.
Tick tick tick tick
Punch punch punch pucnch
In perfect time with the metronome, I began my punches, slamming into the basalt. It didn't take many hits before I was making gavel, but the tricky footing only made things more interesting.
Tick tick tick tick
Kick kick kick kick
The rhythm of this type of training pushes a lot of serious fighters into a pattern that was as regular as clockwork. My school was Anything Goes. A fundamental principle was that any pattern was a weakness to be exploited. I released myself from the conscious constraints.
Tick tick tick tick
Punch knee punch kick kick elbow
I had been training so long that my form was perfect – at the start of training, at the end of training, even at the end of a fight when I was dropping from injury and exhaustion. Perfect and without conscious thought. Not only that, my patterns were random. Again without conscious thought. If my opponent was a metronome, I was random static, unpredictable noise. My movements would throw off their patterns, producing faults and holes. You couldn't block me in one spot, you had to block me everywhere. The only predictability lay in the fact that I had to close for elbow and knee strikes, and that close strikes came faster. But that was simple physics.
This corner was starting to crumble too fast, so I hopped over to another corner, moving my metronome.
Ki and chakra were very different. Chakra would allow you to move your body and limbs at incredible speeds. But it did this by creating a burst of power, which simulated a muscle contraction, only more powerfully. You could pre-program these, creating combination moves faster than humanly possible. In some cases, they were faster than ki movements allowed.
Well, perhaps Cologne or Happosai could have beaten them.
Ki was different. It took the body and improved it, replacing muscle and bone with some sort of hybrid muscle and bone that were powered and reinforced by bio-energy. The nerves and reflexes increased in speed; the muscles pulled harder and contracted faster. Even under a special technique like the amaguriken, your reactions and body movements sped up. It didn't have to be a pattern.
Tick tick tick tick
Knee, 53-punch, 29-kick, elbow, head bash, kick
The main problem with this sort of training was you had to keep moving, because if you put any decent strength into the training, you ended up wrecking your training facilities pretty quickly.
"Holy #&!"
I froze, one leg raised in preparation for a kick.
"Hinata? You're early. And when did you learn to swear like that?"
"I rushed in faster," she explained, "when I heard someone using explosive tags at our training ground. I didn't realize… Are you punching stone? With your fist?"
"It's no big deal." I slammed my knuckles into the basalt slab next to me, fracturing it into ruble like a crate of oversized cabbages. "This is just basic stuff. If you want impressive you'll have to wait until I get trained up on the bakusai tenketsu. Anyway, this is hardly a good test." I reached down to pick up a cabbage-sized rock in my right hand, then squeezed. "This isn't the best quality basalt. Too crumbly." I let the bits of gravel sift through my fingers.
Hinata let loose with another string of vulgarities that primarily linked sacred phrases with a catalog of excrement, for a somewhat disturbing overall effect, particularly coming from her.
"I have fallen in love anew!"
I realized belatedly that Lee had also witnessed my little demonstration.
"Please sensei, I'll do anything if you will teach me your secrets!"
"You'll be my first student, Lee," I promised. "But you'll have to wait for a while. I'm still getting the basics under control. I need to get really trained up and comfortable in my mastery before I accept my first student."
His eyes could not get rounder, but they did get wider. "You mean… there's more?"
"Uh, this is the start of my training. You know that, right? This is just so I can fight Neji. Real training takes a bit longer."
"I'm suddenly feeling much more nervous about our sparring," Hinata admitted.
oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo
Despite her nervousness, Hinata was no slouch. Hinata being Hinata, it took forever to drag the story out of her. Naruto left for several years of training with the Toad-hermit sannin. I'd been learning medicine from Tsunade, another sannin. And, of course, Sasuke had been learning whatever he could from Orochimaru, the third and most dangerous of the sannin.
Hinata had known most of that, though she hadn't seen the pattern until I discussed it. In a way, Naruto, Sasuke, and I were under the most pressure. As if learning from the legendary three wasn't enough, stepping into their shoes and assuming their legendary status, we all upped the ante. Sasuke had gained a cursed seal with mysterious powers. I was learning martial arts and ki mastery from a long-lost world. And Naruto? Apparently he had learned the neko-ken somewhere. That explained the cat-whiskers on his cheeks, and how in dire straits he would turn bestial and then suddenly win the fight.
Hinata hadn't seen the whole pattern until recently, but she'd seen enough to worry about being left behind in the dust. Being both clever and determined to be worthy of her love (I sure sympathized with her there) she had taken the pinnacle of Hyuga Clan arts, and improved on them.
"If Neji is defending," she said, "you might see him use the hakkeshou kaiten – the Eight Sign Heavenly Spin. He will use his hands and feet to block in an intricate pattern, while spinning. He will have 360 degrees of vision. His blocks will be faster than the eye can follow. Nothing, nothing can get through. It is the ultimate Hyuga-style defense, and it has withstood every challenge for generations and through many shinobi wars."
"A perfect defense never allows you to win," I pointed out.
"True," Hinata agreed, surprising me. "Which is why I improved on the technique. My shugo hakke rokujuuyonshou – the Eight Sign, Sixty-four Palms – combines the heavenly spin with other attack techniques. Not only do I block everything, anything that comes inside my reach is immediately sliced to bits."
"That still sounds like mainly a defense…" But I wasn't so sure, this time.
"Yes," she agreed demurely, "unless the enemy can be lured or goaded into attacking. I can also move forward, though I prefer not to."
"I don't really want to get my arms sliced off," I mentioned.
"I can lower the amount of chakra I use," she suggested. "In return, I'm hoping that you won't use your full strength."
"Of course not!"
oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo
Sparring with Hinata was a learning experience. She's so cute and shy that you don't really expect her to be the deadliest killer ever produced by the foremost clan in a village of assassins.
Perhaps that's an exaggeration. She and Neji seem to be neck-and-neck in the running for the top spot. Here's a clan that's had generations to perfect their own specialized taijutsu. And now, in a single generation, two separate practitioners have created brilliant new extensions. Hinata took the old "heavenly spin" and turned it into "heavenly spin plus vegematic". I swear, you could chuck a bag of potatoes at her and wind up with julienne fries. Meanwhile, Neji had created the "air palm". This allows him to sit in the middle of his well-defended circle, while he uses semi-solid columns of air to punch at you from a distance.
Only the creators had mastered the new techniques so far, so I couldn't train against the air palm. Managing the heavenly spin was enough.
But that was before I tried the amaguriken.
oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo
For lunch, I brought up a new subject.
"I, uh, talked to my mom about the new clan," I admitted. "Well, not really a talk, more like a screaming match. She seems to think that we can't even think about forming a clan unless we can afford to buy an estate in the Clan District. And we'd better be able to swing enough council votes to let us in, and we'd better be able to swing them granting us a seat on the council, or it's all moot."
"Oh," Hinata said. "I hadn't really thought about that."
"The Hyuga Clan must have archives," I mused. "Maybe you can find out what they did, when they got started."
Lee was munching his sandwich with a quiet dedication. Now he forced himself to swallow, almost choking. "I have a history of the Inuzuka Clan," he revealed. "Kiba gave it to me as a gift. It has all sorts of letters back and forth from the founding members."
"Perfect!" I gushed. "We particularly want to find out what sort of promises and treaties and political negotiations they needed to become a clan."
"How will this affect your ambition to become an Uchiha?" Hinata asked. "They were one of the major clans. And while they haven't been officially disbanded or taken over, you know people are just waiting for those lands and assets to come free."
"I don't know," I admitted. "I… I don't really want to think about that right now. One thing at a time, okay?"
oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo
And so passed the remaining days of my training. Sparring with both Hinata, who knew Neji's style and could duplicate most of it, and Lee, who regularly sparred against Neji. I'd practice my form and timing, we'd do sparring, and plot strategy during meals.
Poor Neji had never even seen my moves.
oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo
When The Day arrived, I had one big question: Slow or fast?
No matter how much his uncle had prepared him, Neji would be surprised by some of my moves. He had to be. Most of his moves, in contrast, had been either explained to me or I had actually sparred against them. I was confident that I could beat him, as least for this first match. But more than beating him, I needed to impress the clan elders. So the question was, which would accomplish that better? Making the fight seem like a long, drawn-out struggle? Or a quick smack-down?
Before that, though, was the pomp and ceremony at the clan compound. That passed in a bit of a blur before me. I was focused on the fight to come. I do remember one thing clearly, and that's the emotions shown by the clan leader Hyuga Hiashi. Or perhaps I should say, the lofty tone that he chose to display. The key word here was "disdain."
We were escorted into the clan compound by a set of Hyuga guards. Deep inside they had a walled training field, with a square of false trees marching around the field's perimeter. Along one wall was a set of bleacher seats, with an audience of older and elderly Hyuga clan members in attendance.
On one side, we had Hyuga Hiashi, and standing beside him like a blank slate was Neji.
On our side was me, Hinata, and Lee, who was dragging a cart with some equipment.
"I thank you for your indulgence this morning," Hyuga-sama said, speaking to the stands. "Challenges to the clan arrive infrequently enough. Whether for honor, or vengeance, or merely to test our strength, we have long considered it our duty to accept open challenges. Occasionally, these have provided new insight, allowing further refinement of our arts. Usually, it provides a greater lesson for the village, and those who would challenge our supremacy. Either way, it serves to educate and improve the clan, the village, and our way of life.
"Today's situation is particularly remarkable. The challenger is the Hokage's apprentice. Though known for her medical talent more than any combat skills, Haruno Sakura has been undergoing intensive training this past week at the hands of Hinata, with whom you are all, of course, quite familiar.
"Haruno-san," I thought there was the slightest ironic jab, as he pronounced the honorific, "will be seeing how long she can last in single combat against Neji, with whom you are also, doubtlessly, quite familiar."
Hyuga-sama then turned to me. "Does the challenger have any words?"
"I will let my actions speak for themselves," I called out. "Once I have defeated Neji I will have more to say, and then we'd like to give a small demonstration."
That raised more than a few eyebrows. Not the demonstration part, but the automatic assumption that I would beat Neji.
Lee and Hinata moved behind a barrier on the far side, leaving me alone with Neji in the center of the field.
Hyuga-sama had moved up to the Hyuga stands.
On Hinata's face, the large blank eyes that are the Hyuga birthright look soft and caring. Perhaps that's just me, adding in my personal bias. But when you take in the expressions, vulnerability, and concern that is so evident on Hinata's face, her eyes seem to take on even more of that, becoming gentle pools that reflect a delicate soul.
Neji is something different. Neji was scarred by his childhood, as so many of my friends have been. He grew up with seething resentment and the absolute knowledge that all things Hyuga were clearly superior to anything else. Those two together had led him to almost kill Hinata in the chunin prelims. Then in the final exam, Naruto gave Neji a wake-up call.
Maybe he's been backsliding for the last couple of years. Talking to Lee and TenTen, the guy had started to come out of his shell for a while. Maybe the clan clamped down or something, because he'd been a lot more sullen lately.
Now, facing him in the sands of the practice arena, I brushed a strand of hair back and wondered how he wanted this fight to go. His eyes, unlike Hinata's, were a blank slate. I searched his face for meaning, but all I could see was the reflection of my own guesses. Lifeless and robotic? Maybe. Uncaring? Furious and hiding behind a mask? Friendly, and hiding it under an even stronger mask? I couldn't tell. His clothes didn't give much of a clue, either. He'd given up the bulky clan coat in favor of light grey robes not unlike a gi. Over that he had a darker waist cloak, giving his arms maximum freedom of motion. As ever, his forehead protector covered the slave seal on his brow.
I'd chosen to dress conservatively – my red shirt-skirt with the black shorts underneath. Heh. Good old red top and black pants. Even across multiple lifetimes, some things never change. This was an outfit that I wore for a lot of my duties as the Hokage's apprentice, so I figured the elders couldn't possibly be offended.
Shows what I knew.
"How do you want to do this?" I called softly to Neji. "A friendly spar? Brutal and hard?"
He dropped into the Juken stance. "You realize that I am a jonin now? Anything less than a brutal takedown will be seen as negligence on my part."
I nodded. I was in the classic Anything Goes doesn't-look-like-a-stance. "One warning, Neji. Don't judge me on what you remember of me. Treat me like a complete unknown."
He nodded with a quick jerk of his chin.
"Begin!" Hyuga-sama called.
And with a move almost too fast to follow, Neji blurred forward, striking for my vitals with juken jabs that had a tingle of energy glowing forward from each fingertip. His thrusts blurred inward, the index and middle fingers tight together and spearing for my vitals – heart, throat, abdomen, shoulders.
But to me, he might as well have been in slow motion. As I'd done with Ryoga, a lifetime ago, I caught his jabbing fingers between my index and middle fingers. Back when I'd developed this block, Ryoga had mastered the bakusai tenketsu, the "breaking point." One touch of the breaking point explodes a rock like you'd placed a full stick of dynamite in the rock's center. At the time, I thought it could explode people the same way. So to avoid the lethal fingertips, I held Ryoga's fingers like a bored socialite would hold a cigarette. Now I blocked Neji the same way, and he was getting just as pissed by the seeming disrespect as Ryoga had gotten.
Scowling, now, he began to move faster, using chakra to accelerate his limbs faster than humanly possible.
Still I blocked him, and more. I slipped my first punch through his guard.
"What—?"
Despite using chakra to anchor his feet, the strength of my hit shoved him back almost three meters.
"I told you not to judge me by my past," I reminded.
He blurred forward again, striking for my tenketsu points. This time I had to go all out to block. Neji's problem was that he had a strong rhythm, allowing me to anticipate and slip in counterstrikes. Slowly, I began to push him back.
But Neji had a bit of a smile as he gave ground. Something stabbed my danger sense, and I leapt back away from Neji, moving at the same moment he did.
An explosive tag erupted, cratering the ground where we'd been standing.
"Neji," I said in admiration, "you sly devil! And here I thought you were going to be stuck with just the clan styles!"
His smile was grim. "You pick up a thing or two, on the way to becoming a jonin."
He made a quick seal, then clenched his hand like a claw and pulled it back. Then he shoved forward, shouting, "Air palm!"
Despite the fact that Hinata had briefed me on this, it was surprising to see. It reminded me of Kuno, from a previous life. He'd done the same thing with ki, stabbing forward with his bokken so hard that it created compressed columns of air. Bolts of air that had held enough energy to shatter stone. Neji's move was much like that, but wider and faster. And I wasn't quite up to the level I'd been at, back when I'd dodged around Kuno's strikes.
The first hit got me while I was still in the air, knocking me for a loop, literally. But like a cat (I can smile at that, these days), I always land on my feet. I smirked at Neji – this was the sort of challenge I lived for! Fists clenched at my sides, grinning like a maniac, I launched myself forward, moving and dodging at nearly full speed.
As expected, Neji saw the first move and changed techniques.
Using chakra is so much different from ki usage. Personally, I believe that the "spiritual" component of chakra is something akin to telepathy, or some sort of mental control field, perhaps. I know that when a user creates an advanced chakra technique, it is usually necessary to create complex visualizations. For just a moment, the pattern of movement and mental circuitry must be utterly sharp within the mind. Some visualizations even involve other senses, given a scent or mood or even music to the mental patterns. But strangest of all is that experienced chakra users can often glean just a flash of those internal images when an opponent sets them up. So it was with Neji, and the Heavenly Spin.
In less than an instant, I had the impression of a complex set of movements, and the image of actual kanji floating in space – I thought I saw trigrams from the I-Ching. Then, Neji began to spin, hands moving faster than the eye could see. A globe of chakra wound like a ball of yarn began to expand outward, and everything near Neji was blasted away as I saw the next best thing to a perfect force field snap into existence.
I slammed against that bubble and bounced, once more somersaulting in the air to land on my feet. I wasn't worried, though. Hinata had mastered the same technique, and I had trained against it. Even better, I had a counter!
"It's good, Neji," I admitted. "But even a perfect defense can't win a fight."
The spinning figure within called out, "No? Then perhaps you haven't seen my new addition – Air Palm!"
And with scarcely a blink, the bubble flickered and an invisible something was shooting toward me!
I dodged to the side. "Can't hurt me if you can't hit me!"
Thanks to ki, my eyes were fast enough to make out the features on Neji's face, even as he spun. And strangely enough, he was smirking.
My danger sense suddenly spiked, hard. Behind me!
All at once, I understood. After this fight, Hinata and I planned a small demonstration. We would use some of the equipment used for training clan members. I had already used ninja training devices intended to launch small tennis balls. I'd upgraded them to throw rocks. Hinata had eventually revealed that the Hyuga Clan had similar devices, intended to train the Heavenly Spin. They launched senbon needles, kunai, and even fist-sized rocks, at extremely high speed. From Hinata's description, I knew that the Heavenly Spin, when performed by a master, could deflect them all. To reach that level, there were projectile launchers around the entire circumference of the arena. And I realized that Neji had maneuvered to place himself in nearly the exact center of that arena.
His Air Palm strike hadn't been aimed at me, it had been aimed at the launcher behind me, triggering it! With Neji to my front and incoming missiles at my back, he had me pinned, receiving threats from front and back simultaneously. And even if I dodged this time, he could continue the tactic indefinitely. His Heavenly Spin would deflect the barrage almost without thought, but I was trapped between a rock and a hard place. Or rather, between Neji's impenetrable bubble, and a hundred mechanical archers.
In other words, it was my perfect opportunity.
I flexed my knees once, and launched myself into the air.
Neji looked up in surprise. He had time for a quick Air Palm, before he was forced to return his attention to the Spin, to ward off the swarm of incoming kunai. As an indication of his skill, he managed to deflect many of them in my direction.
I flipped in the air, legs over my head. I judged the Air Palm and twisted aside to avoid it. Mid-air combat has always been a specialty of Anything Goes. We learn dodges that some would claim are impossible. I twisted to the side and felt the globe of semi-solid air pass by me. Upside down, I was in the perfect position to intercept the incoming kunai, catching them and flinging them back.
I touched down on the far side, while the launcher was still flinging kunai at Neji.
The tables had just turned. Now he was defending against his trap. He was spinning, defending from every side at once, but he couldn't drop the Heavenly Spin without taking a buckshot cloud of kunai. And the main weakness of all the Hyuga techniques was a pattern that was almost musically precise. I suspect that if Konoha ever formed a band, the Hyuga would all end up as drummers.
And I could exploit any pattern.
The Heavenly Spin created a bubble of pure chakra force, but ki could disrupt chakra, burning it away like a glowing red fireplace poker pierces through a rice-paper wall.
I made a set of quick seals: horse, tiger, dragon. I didn't mold chakra. This was pure deception. If people puzzled over how I could make chakra do this, that was fine with me! I formed the deceptive seals and spoke a quick word: "Amaguriken!"
Neji spun toward me, fast even to my ki-enhanced eyes. My hands shot forward. I moved fast enough to reach through fire, without being touched by heat. My hands were slick enough to reach through water, without ever getting wet. Now, shielded by a microscopically thin film of ki, they pierced through the chakra veil of the Heavenly Spin without even slowing. As Neji's hands spun down through their pre-set pattern, my fingers flashed out, using ordinary impact applied to vital pressure points: Wrist, inner arm, back of elbow, shoulder. The paralysis sequence was complete, and both of Neji's arms dropped uselessly.
Neji barely had time to scream in pain, as he clenched his eyelids closed. I knew from testing with Hinata that using the byakugan to look at ki created a terrible burning pain in the eyes. I'd used my medical skills to check her, and short-term exposure didn't seem to be harmful, but it was definitely painful. And since the byakugan allowed the user to see in every direction – the entire globe of space around them – using ki anywhere in the vicinity was enough to cripple the Hyuga gift.
At the same time, the bubble of the Heavenly Spin seemed to ignite. Pierced by that film of ki, the chakra and ki alike erupted like so much gasoline.
My hands were saved by two things. First: I had encountered this with Hinata, and learned to compensate. I was pumping extra ki into the amaguriken, constantly regenerating my film of ki. Honestly, the corrosive effect of punching through chakra was only a little worse than punching through water, and that's how I had first learned the technique.
Second, I was moving so fast that the heat never had a chance to touch me.
Neji was suddenly dealing with three crises at once. His Heavenly Spin was disintegrating into raw energy, fracturing apart like a shattered bowl, with each fragment disintegrating into a tiny but vicious dust devil. Second, he was temporarily blind and in agony. Third, both is arms had just dropped like dead weight.
I stepped in through the disintegrating glove of the Heavenly Spin. Neji didn't even notice. I reached behind him to the back of his neck, and pressed and held the point there. That little pressure point had taken me two months to master, originally, but it was worth it. Neji's body went loose, as he collapsed into unconsciousness.
The Heavenly Spin had almost finished unraveling. I swept Neji into a hold and leapt for the sky, barely avoiding the next wave of kunai. We touched down lightly to the side, out of the line of fire. I spotted the launcher and launched a kunai of my own, hitting the "off" lever. The dammed thing had been designed for remote activation.
I laid Neji's unconscious body down in the sand, then turned to face Hyuga-sama and the elders, assembled in their gallery.
"This is not a loss," I spoke loudly, "this is a victory for the Hyuga Clan!"
I waited for the assembled elders to finish rubbing their eyes. Most had been using the byakugan to watch the fight. After a few moments, they blinked and peered at me, apparently not believing that I had beaten their unbeatable Neji.
"I am a medic-nin," I said, sowing further misdirection. "And I have found a secret. Not a bloodline limit – not yet, not exactly. Call it a hidden technique, like those used by the Inuzuku Clan, or the Nara Clan. " Yeah, I'll admit, my speech was a bit pompous. It's not like I'd gotten a chance for showing off like this, before. "My technique can work directly against the byakugan, as you've just seen. And yet, I say to you, this is a tremendous victory for the Hyuga Clan!"
I paused for effect. "Why? Because the Hyuga Clan is not the only clan to use dojutsu! With the betrayal of Uchiha Itachi, the sharingan is now a tool in the hands of an enemy. Other hidden villages have their own eye techniques. What happens when a Hyuga must face another eye technique? It becomes a long, drawn out battle. Or worse, some of the other techniques require eye contact, but once such contact is made, they can transmit pain or illusions or worse. Suddenly, Konoha's pride, the all-seeing eye, becomes a disadvantage.
"Which is why this defeat is actually an opportunity in disguise."
I held out my right hand, summoning as much physical energy as I could. Enough to waver at the edge of visibility. Unlike a concentration of ki, the energies of chakra are nearly invisible. Meanwhile, I summoned spiritual energy in my left hand.
"I have here two separate and different energies. Spiritual on one hand, physical in the other. You might claim that one energy is enough, that it can eliminate any obstacle. But it is only when we combine them—" I molded the chakra, being careful to keep it outside my body. I created a glowing blue field of healing energy. "—only when they are joined do these energies become something unstoppable, something miraculous."
I waved Hinata forward.
"We've only had a few brief days to begin learning what synergies were possible. But imagine a two-person team, a Hyuga and myself or one of my clan members. Imagine that we were in Earth Country, and we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by enemy dojutsu users."
I beckoned Lee, and he raced around, placing human outlines around the perimeter of the area. They were wooden shuriken targets, borrowed from a genin training field.
"And imagine that the Hyuga clan had allied with my clan, and we had long experience coordinating together. I suspect that Konoha's response would look something like this…"
Hinata and I moved to the center of the field. She began the moves of the Heavenly Spin. I used all my speed to hold position, pressed back-to-back with her, spinning as she spun. I found my center and gathered my ki, still inside my body where it would not blind Hinata.
Outside, Lee raced around the perimeter. He began triggering the launchers, firing clouds of weapons toward us – kunai, shuriken, senbon needles, rocks. But as with Neji, the Heavenly Spin was proof against all of these, deflecting everything as Hinata spun and twisted her arms and hands in this dance of defense.
She hadn't been going more than three seconds before she snapped out, "Now!"
That was my cue. For one moment, Hinata knew that the bubble was stable. For that one moment she dropped the byakugan and clenched her eyes shut. And I acted. A hidden weapons pocket opened, and I held three dozen senbon needles. I gathered and shot the tiniest amount of ki – the size of a BB. It flew straight at the target directly in front of me; directly behind Hinata. In its wake followed a dozen senbon – reinforced with ki in the weapons equivalent of the iron cloth technique. I knew they'd pierce just about any chakra shield. It was complete in an instant, and Hinata's eyes flew open again, filling with energy once more. But at the speed I had fired, the needles and ki-pellet had already struck. Anyone in the area using chakra eye techniques had been blinded worse than someone staring at a flashbulb. Anyone but Hinata, who had clenched her eyes shut for the crucial moment.
Seamlessly, without interrupting the spin, she continued to announce at one-second intervals: "Now!" "Now!" "Now!" "Now!" "Now!"
We spun, and at random points around the perimeter, the human targets exploded. Their heads exploded in blinding ki blasts; their hearts were pierced through with senbon needles. (Next time, I vowed, we'd get thicker targets.) Hinata spun down to a stop, a scant twenty seconds later. Outside the crater formed by her technique lay several barrel loads of weapons, scattered haphazardly on the field. The targets had each been demolished, blinded, killed, and exploded. And inside the crater, we were untouched and unharmed.
I raised my arms for attention.
"There are other dojutsu clans! With your all-seeing eyes, the Hyuga Clan is uniquely susceptible to some of them. But together, none of them will ever dare question the supremacy of Konoha, or Konoha's greatest bloodline."
I had learned from Hyuga Hiashi. He'd never actually promised me anything.
"Fight Neji," he'd said, "and we'll continue from there."
"Convince the clan elders," he'd instructed, "and then you'll have the power to negotiate."
He'd never promised, never even implied really, on what we might negotiate or "continue with." But I had just finished giving the best presentation I knew how to give. Neji lay unconscious and unmoving, but also unharmed. Hinata and I had shown how we could work together, and I had given clues on how the Hyuga could use this to achieve supremacy in the realm of eye techniques.
Anyone with half a brain has noticed how every joker with an eye bloodline thinks he's the hottest thing the world has ever seen. I was hoping the Hyuga would leap at the opportunity to overpower the other eye bloodlines.
So I funneled a little extra ki to my ears, hoping for a bit of a hearing boost. Which allowed me to make out the elders' frantic reaction. They were buzzing like hornets!
"Piss in a barrel! The pink-haired girl is right. After this, we'll never have to worry about the Uchiha again!"
"You fool, the Uchiha are dead."
"There's two left!"
"But they're traitors, both of them. No threat to Hyuga."
"What about that Rock Country clan? They gave us enough trouble."
"Yes, and there was that Cloud clan, too."
"What about Neji? How could she hurt Neji?"
"It's because of that traitorous heir that Hiashi's trying to foist on us. I told him she was too weak! Now she's gone and betrayed our secrets to this pink-head."
"Shhh! She's the Hokage's apprentice."
"I don't care if she wipes the Hokage's withered butt! She couldn't do a thing if she hadn't learned the secrets of the Heavenly Spin!"
But just then, Hyuga-sama rose and shushed them all.
"Haruno-san, thank you for providing us with a superb demonstration. You have our thanks and gratitude, and have given us much to discuss. If it suits you, the Clan will be officially in contact with you in a few days."
He bowed graciously, and waved the guards forward. Lee had already collected the targets. Now he, Hinata, and I prepared to leave and discuss everything that had happened.
"Hinata," her father called, "you will remain here."
"Y-yes Father." Her stutter was back.
Lee and I looked at her helplessly, but sympathetically. Unfortunately, in the center of the Hyuga compound, surrounded by Hyuga guards, there was nothing we could do. We left Hinata there, alone in her home. We left, and headed for the world outside.
oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo
And that night, a surprise visitor arrived in the dark.
END OF CHAPTER 7
Author's notes:
I've re-edited the earlier chapters, taking out most of the author's notes, so the story will flow better. The current chapter (whatever it is) will contain review responses and many comments, but I'll edit them out as I move forward.
Responding to reviews for chapter 6, I was gratified to see that my false clues about assassins fooled people. (Surely the same trick won't work twice, though.) Hopefully, it's now obvious why there was no build up, clue, or hint on the assassin attack. Sakura got her chest blown up when she (internally) molded chakra. If you look back, she hasn't done a whole lot of chakra molding in this story, and a good thing too! The few times she did mold chakra, it was either before she was glowing with ki, or when she'd trained until she'd exhausted most of her ki.
HolyKnight5 suggested (last chapter) that the unnamed man that Tsunade picked up her reincarnation from (discussed back in chapter 1) was Sagara Sanosuke, from Rurouni Kenshin. Now OBSERVER1 wants to see a side story showing that discovery. Unfortunately, I haven't seen enough Rurouni Kenshin to make the character right. Anyone else want to spin this story? Heck, even multiple people (it could have several amusing takes on it). If one or more people want to try this, send me a reference once you have it posted on and I'll post it in this story, so everyone can go over and look.
Next chapter: Hyuga assassins! No, I mean it! This time for sure!
