Chapter Ten: Explanations

This whole waking up in a hospital thing is getting to be a really bad habit for me.

It hadn't taken long for my father's rescue to succeed in killing twenty-three shinobi and scare off the rest. I couldn't exactly blame them, though. Even knowing intellectually what my father was capable of was nowhere near enough to prepare me for the sight of it. I was terrified, pure and simple. Terrified of my own father. Nothing in this world should be able to wreak that kind of carnage, and the power itself had felt… malevolent. Evil. Like an unending scream of agony and rage, and it hadn't felt controlled. Not by any human mind, anyway.

In the end… he'd looked at me, and it wasn't him. Those eyes were gold, with slitted pupils. They'd looked at me and registered only another target, and then I open my eyes and find myself here. If it wasn't for the injury to my spine, I'd be thinking the entire thing was a nightmare. Is still do, but now I know it's not from my own mind.

It was a long, long day with my thoughts, the only relief coming when a doctor came in to check my injuries. Of course, only the best could check spinal wounds, and Uchiha Sakura was the best. Thus, I saw the stunned, unbelieving look on her face as she saw what she saw, and quickly checked her previous notes.

"Sakura-san, what is it? Will I recover?"

"That's… not it. Shien, have you ever talked to your father about his childhood?"

"Yes, but not in too much detail. To him, his life really started right about the time he married Mom."

"He would think that way, wouldn't he? Well, your injuries are all recovering swiftly. Maybe not with Naruto's legendary overnight swiftness, but far faster than usual. If I know my old teammate, he's coming in here later tonight, and I'm not going to be able to stop him. One thing you should know, though."

"What is it?"

"You've had a few more visitors than you might expect. Sure, both of your parents have visited daily, and the same goes with Hiromi and Kentaro. However, Neji-san has been in here at least as often. Something's going on in the Hyuuga compound, and you are somehow involved."

"Tell me about it. When I get out of here, I'm taking the good fight to my dear grandfather. It's because he interrupted my training with Neji-sensei that I received this injury at all."

"Is that it? That would explain a few things. I have other patients that need my help, so you're not going to be seeing me again until tomorrow. Until then, rest well. You're going to need it."

I didn't exactly have too much option in the matter. Then again, I probably wouldn't have objected anyway. For the first time in a week and the last time for more than a month after, boredom was my only foe. That blissful condition managed to last for about four hours, until Neji made his next visit to my hospital bed.

These eyes of mine see many things, and the brain behind it was trained by the best in Konoha. When I saw the look on his face, much as he tried to conceal it, I almost laughed out loud. Nervous? Since when, short of facing the combined legions of every underworld ever dreamt by man, is Neji-sensei nervous? "Neji-sensei, it's good to see you again. I wish I was allowed to stand up and bow, but you know how Sakura-san is about spinal injuries." The last, said with smile on my face, one that would have betrayed me had it not been for the dry tone of voice behind my words.

"Shien, it is good that you are awake. I have something that I must ask you, in the name of the entire Hyuuga house."

Here it comes. He wants my story on the mission, and Hiashi-sama's reputation will never recover from it.

"What are your intentions with my daughter?"

Say WHAT? "I… don't know exactly what you're asking, sensei."

"You didn't even realize it, did you? You called my daughter Hiromi-chan in front of every major clan representative of the Hyuuga house. There have been several rather heated debates over the past month as to whether to allow your claim to continue."

Of all the… well, nothing for it. Thrashing Hiashi's reputation will have to wait for this to resolve, since they will all be too preoccupied with the destiny of their lower-house scion to listen to anything I want to say. "You can get off of that train of thought right now, sir, and please bring the main house with you. Hiromi is my teammate, and one of my closest friends, nothing more, nothing less. In any case, I'm a bit young to be considering anything permanent. Give me four years and my first legal taste of sake, and then you can start worrying."

"That, Shien, is what I was afraid of. You are probably going to want to reconsider your stance."

For once, can a conversation with someone important to me just go predictably? Just once? "I'm sorry, sensei, but why?"

"Because, much as she would like to hide it, her feelings for you are far stronger than you profess yours are for her. One thing I know is that she is far less patient than your mother was, and a four-year wait will either kill her or you. And young as you are, you are more than old enough to consider such matters."

"You've given me a lot to think on, sensei, and I know my response was probably lacking. But, I thought that you were here to ask about my mission, or to deliver news about it. I was ill-prepared for the tidings you brought."

His face went hard, a look I'd only seen once before, just before he'd sent a man insulting his family to the hospital. "Shien, this should show you something I've been trying to get through your head for a long time. You are good, but you are far from omnipotent or omniscient. Stop underestimating your adversaries' capabilities, and stop overestimating your own. I can tell you this much, the results of the mission were judged to be a failure, and you will not receive another chance at Jounin for another year at least. Though you succeeded in bringing this important information home, you did so in such a way that will almost certainly lead to war. I will continue to train my daughter, and once you get out of here I suggest you do the same. There has not been enough time for the old battle lines to erase themselves, and you will probably be finding yourself on the front lines of the coming conflict."

He left, then. He left me to the worst punishment he could, my own mind. At first, I could feel absolutely nothing, numb to the core of my being. I just couldn't believe it. Then came the rage. I had risked my life and almost lost it several times to bring home that the information my team had gathered, and for what? Nothing. A failed mission, a loss of honor, a denial of the greatest opportunity I had ever received. Why? I had done nothing wrong.

But did you, Shien? Did you do everything absolutely perfectly?

Yes! I did it all exactly the way I should! I was trained by the best and born to the best, and I lived up to both!

That is not the point. You could have done things differently. You could have opened your sealed directives the night before you got there, or even an hour before. The information there was critical, and you didn't have it until far too late. You and your team could have done much better, there.

But I opened them before we got to the city!

And not before you sent your friends and yourself scouting the area, blind. And what about the fights? There is far more blood on your hands than is needed. The initial attackers need not have taken any deaths, you saw them coming from far enough away to scare them off, if you'd have noticed how pitiful they were before they came into combat range. You know that is going to be the flashpoint excuse for the coming conflicts. And the eight masked attackers? Why, they...

My thoughts and demons left me no peace, continuing in that vein through the day. I barely touched the food that was brought to me, never even noticed who brought it. I don't know how long it was until a knock at my door knocked me out of the circles of thought. Whomever it was didn't wait for my response before opening the door, and my first clue as to who was coming in was the sight of the formal robes and veiled hat of the Hokage. My father had come to visit, and the look of pain on his face stated plainly that I was not going to enjoy this conversation any more than my previous one.

Interlude Ten: On the Recent Mixing of the Clans

Traditionally, the larger clans married exclusively within themselves. Each one, from the Hyuuga and Uchiha down to the Yamanaka, preferred their own to the others. This greatly facilitated the development of clan techniques, and also encouraged a certain secrecy to those outside the clan, and created very distinct and recognizable shinobi. As recently as fifteen years ago, for example, anyone seen with a slightly feral cast to their features could be assumed to be an Inuzuka, and that there would be a dog nearby that would fight at their command.

However, recent years have changed all of this. Starting with the marriage of Hyuuga Hinata with Uzumaki Naruto, and that of Haruna Sakura to Uchiha Sasuke, the entire generation of Konoha's finest have had an inconceivable rate of union outside of their own clan. Quite literally eighty percent of the shinobi married in the last nineteen years have done so.

What this means for their children, the newest generation of Konoha's shinobi remains to be seen. In most cases, the child will prefer one clan's style over the other, and follow it in the old traditions. However, about a quarter of the time, the child ends up fighting in a fusion style. Perhaps the best example of this is one Uzumaki Shien, son of Uzumaki Naruto and Hinata. Though he carries the Byakugan and uses the basics of the Jyuuken style, his fighting style shows the extreme unpredictability of his father, and is known to have used, not to mention refined, the Rasengan.

Further complicating the matters here is the fact that the bonds of friendship among the Hokage's generation have allowed them to sidestep many of the more traditional barriers. For example, it is know that the Hokage's son, the earlier mentoned Uzumaki Shien, has trained with no fewer than nine separate tutors, all from the class of Naruto himself.

At this point, no known bloodline limits have been crossed. Seeing the latest trends, though, many consider it only a matter of time before wielders of two distinct bloodline limits marry. What will result from this is anyone's guess, and no two theorists quite agree.