She doesn't get it the next day, or the day after. Sensei tells her to keep thinking about it on her own time and has her learn tracking from Kakashi.
Kakashi shows her how to avoid leaving obvious tracks in greater detail than the Academy curriculum did, and how to actually double back to plant false trails. He also teaches her how to make and break camp and make it appear as though it were never there.
When she's passably good at that, Sensei teaches her the wordy Hiding Like a Mole Technique. There's a bit of arguing about hand seals and nature transformation versus shape manipulation, as well as maximum density and permeability. She agrees to disagree and learns how to do it her own way.
"That is not how the technique works," Sensei complains to Minato, since she's not listening to him anymore. "She cannot just cram the dirt into the ground around her and pull it apart again as she moves away. Condensing that much earth would create stone and pulling stone apart will not yield dirt! Not to mention the chakra required for such an endeavor is substantial…"
Minato scratches his head, equally stumped by the apparent conundrum that is her utilization of the Doton jutsu.
"Maybe it's more like Earth Release: High Density Tunneling and Reverse Tunneling Technique?"
Sensei radiates disgust at Minato's naming sense, and she pops her head out of the ground to intervene. If they're going to declare it a new jutsu, she's not letting Minato call it something weird.
"How about Doton: Tōkatsuchi no Jutsu?"
Sensei pushes her head back under with the toe of his sandal. Rude! She grabs his ankle and attempts to pull him under, but he counters her by channeling chakra into his feet.
He's slowly getting over her casual redesign of the jutsu he favors. It's not worth arguing over, probably. (She doesn't know why he favors it—making the ground sandy and having to move through it? No, thank you.) She thinks he might even be amused by the whole situation, feeling mischievous even.
Without warning, he kicks his leg up and plucks her out of the ground like a carrot. The force almost sends her flying, but she clings to his ankle with a chakra enhanced grip. When he lowers his leg, she lets go and rolls over backwards, staring at the spinning clouds in a daze.
"Orochimaru-san, I think you frightened the life out of her." Minato says.
"She will get over it."
She spars with Kakashi for an hour every day, both to practice the new techniques they're learning and to hone their reflexes. And, in her case only, adjusting to protecting her blindside and learning depth perception from visual cues only.
Kakashi is skilled enough to get in her blindside and kick her ass—but he doesn't. He's sticking to her right side—only occasionally striking on her blindside. When he does, he barely even taps her.
He's holding back.
He's holding back, and she hates it. They used to go all out and have fun while sparring, and now he's treating her like someone… less.
Another pass and another pathetically light tap on her left side—she drops into the ground and sits. Kakashi takes a stance and guards for a long minute, expecting her to pop out any second or grab his ankle and attempt to drag him under. She hasn't quite managed it yet.
Stubbornly, she remains where she is. There's actually quite a bit of air underground, if you know how to separate it from everything else.
After three minutes of tense silence, Minato and Sensei notice something is up, something that isn't one of her and Kakashi's usual standoffs, and come over to investigate.
"What'd you do, Kakashi?" Minato asks, already feeling concerned for her. "Did you hurt Honōka-chan?"
"I barely touched her!"
Sensei scoffs. He considers the situation from top to bottom and every angle in quick succession, settling on the actual issue in record time. He walks away, leaving Minato and Kakashi to muddle through the problem on their own. At least Sensei understands.
Minato knocks on the ground. "Honōka-chan, is everything alright? Why don't you come out and we take a quick break?"
Something snaps inside her at his tone. She's tired of being handled with his kiddy gloves.
She grabs Minato's hand and yanks him down to the shoulder, locking it in a vice grip with the surrounding earth. He yelps, startled as she pops out of the ground and uses his back as a springboard.
She lands on Kakashi, feet first. He wasn't expecting the sudden and unorthodox assault and they tumble across the ground, sprawling. Kakashi gets up first and she tackles him at the knees, unbalancing him again. He falls on her with an elbow to the back and she rolls over to grapple him.
If there's one thing she's learned from fighting with Obito, it's that fighting close quarters means no holding back. Kakashi deftly pins her arms and she headbutts him so hard that they both recoil, pain shooting through their skulls and down their necks.
Kakashi holds his bleeding forehead, hitai-ate lost during their scrap, and Honōka raises a fist to slug him in the face.
A cool hand catches her wrist and twists her arm behind her back, pulling her off Kakashi and shoving her face down in the dirt. Firm pressure applied on her spine forces her to stay down.
Minato frees his arms from the packed dirt and rolls his wrist after he helps Kakashi sit up.
Silences.
She bites her lip. Kakashi's staticky presence is jumpy—confused, angry, hurting. Minato is outwardly calm while checking Kakashi's injuries. Beneath the surface, his mind is in a state of turbulence—emotions cycling between caution and general uncertainty.
Sensei is blank. He lets up on the pressure of his knee on her back and when she does not struggle, lets go of her arm and balances next to her on one planted foot and knee.
"…"
"What triggered this 'fit'?" he asks.
Surprised understanding from Minato, then worry, then pity. An ugly feeling burns in her throat and she wants to get up, swinging, but she's tired now. And Sensei will probably sit on her if she tries.
"…"
"Honōka-kun," Sensei warns, softly. "There is a time and a place for anger. In a spar with a friend is not one of them. Did you want to hurt Kakashi-kun?"
"…no."
"Then what happened?"
"…" She doesn't know if she can explain it. One moment she was just sulking, and the next moment she was like a flipped switch. She didn't think, just reacted. "I'm… I'm not broken."
An unexpectedly painful emotion spikes from her sensei, raw and cutting—heavy—then gone so fast she doesn't know how to even begin unpacking it. But it's not Minato's pity or Kakashi's careful watchfulness. She sits up.
"Everyone acts differently since this happened," she says, pointing to her left eye. "Rin, Guy, Obito; even Minato and Kakashi. It's like everyone thinks I'll appreciate their pity or that I need to be treated gently while I heal. That's stupid. He broke my fingers, and he broke my eye, but he didn't break me. And Tsunade-san made sure I came out in one piece, so I don't see why everyone thinks I'm weaker for having survived.
"It's weird, or maybe I'm weird. It happened, and it hurt, but I'm happier now than I was before. But everyone keeps thinking it's the worse thing that's ever happened to me. It's not—it's really not."
There's a pang of guilt from Minato and Kakashi, and that's not what she was trying to accomplish at all. She doesn't know what she wants them to feel, or if she even wants to know how they feel about her at all. Sometimes she wishes she could turn whatever this is off—but she can't. Even Shōkyo, the technique the Second Hokage developed to silence the world and disappear for a bit, does not help her.
"I… It hurts more, knowing how everyone feels… about me. I'm not pitiable or unfortunate. I'm happy just the way I am."
She takes a deep breath. She might as well rip the band-aid off now that she's here.
"Minato… san… you think my empathy is a handicap—that I'll never be able to function as a proper shinobi with it. I think someone told you to kill your emotions when you became a shinobi, or else they would get you killed? But I think that line of thought is what's truly dangerous."
Minato swallows. She's not wrong, she can feel the truth he faces in her words. Someone either told him those exact words or something very similar. Words he never questioned.
"Kakashi, sorry, I lied. I didn't beat Obito up because he called my taijutsu style stupid. I beat him up because he called my taijutsu style stupid and thought I was weak." She scowls. "You didn't think I was weak before all this happened. You were even jealous sometimes. And yeah, depth perception is still hard; having a huge blind spot is hard too. But I'm never going to learn how to overcome those issues if you don't help me. So stop going easy on me. It's not helping me, and it's not helping you."
Kakashi is still fuming about the smack he took to the forehead, but also grudgingly coming around to her point of view. He gestures at Sensei.
"What about Orochimaru-sama? Are you going to tell him off too?"
She frowns and Minato inspects Kakashi's bump again. It's going to be quite the lump.
"No?" she says. "Why would I tell Sensei off? Sensei gets me."
That she startles a genuine laugh from her sensei is the highlight of her day.
…
Getting chewed out by Tsunade-san for giving her friend a concussion is not.