Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Naruto Shipuuden or Boruto or….

I know the byakugan's range is supposed to be quite shorter then it is here at first, but I can't be bothered to nerf what I wrote.

Almost one month had passed since I awakened my byakugan, and even if I did think seeing 360° around me was going to take a bit of adaptation at first, then Oh boy was I not prepared enough.

This, plus a bit of procrastination honestly, led me to only focus on that for the whole month, but with good results as I could now see a hundred meters around me, and while that may seem small, keep in mind that it represents roughly 30 thousand square meter in total area, and that's only by imagining the world as a flat 2d plane. My discovery of the byakugan done, I now had to find a way to acquire chakra paper without anyone knowing, as I fully intended to stay concealed. Sadly, even if konoha wasn't a village full of shinobis that were on guard 24/7 because of the war, managing to get out of the compound was in itself a challenge.

Not because of my parents mind you. My mother, while still warm toward me, couldn't care less what I did of my days, and my father was transferred one week prior to the battlefront. Of course, the whole hyuga clan didn't really care what one 2 year old branch member was doing, but it was precisely my age that played tricks on me, as the last time I tried going out a guard told me I was too young to just go out like that and asked me who my parents were, upon which he promptly dropped me back at my home.

This fact was actually what made me able to conduct my plan in the first place, but for this plan I had to be able to do at least one shadow clone and of course, to buy chakra paper inconspicuously, henge. Shadow clone ended up easier to do without keeling over if I just focused on my coils with my byakugan and made sure to waste no chakra at all. My chakra expenditure beeing quite constant during my byakugan experiments, my reserves had also gone slightly up. The real problem was the Henge now, I had absolutely no idea what hand seals it used, and even then, I didn't even know how to do hand seals. This solved itself after a week of nagging to my mother about learning hand seals and basic techniques, with the excuse of wanting to be ahead of my peers for when the academy started. Hand seals were pretty hard to do, and I only focused on the ones useful for the Henge.

One week later, I was ready.

My plan was simple, do a shadow clone, have him leave, let the guard guide him back home and while the guard is distracted, I'd go outside and once outside I'd henge into any nondescript civilian I see. This plan, which I was really proud of by the way, proved itself useless, as my clone just walked out of the doors of the compound… and nobody stopped him. The incredulous look on my (the clone's) face was worth it, but I did feel quite scammed.

Part one the plan was done, now part two was stealing money from unsuspecting civilians to complete the meager amount I had managed to scrounge from around the house. This wasn't hard as civilians really are too pure and innocent for this rough world and I managed to net myself a pretty impressive amount. The real challenge was finding a shinobi shop which wouldn't easily see through my henge, and it was only one hour after leaving the compound that I found an emporium specialized in luxury goods, and as chakra paper was quite high-end, for civilians at least, I had no trouble buying a small sheet which even let me keep a bit of what I had stolen.

After getting back to the compound, I wanted to go and test my affinity fast, but as soon as I set foot inside I was swept in my mother's arms, and had the first wake up call of this world.

My attitude till now had been akin to playing a game. I didn't see anybody die, I never imagined anybody close to me could die, I only ever saw the cool sides of this world. The headband of my father, along with the Jounin delivering it, broke that dreamy world.

To be fair, I wasn't exactly extremely attached to my father, and I know he wasn't particularly strong either, only mid-chuunin level. But that could be me in the future. If I didn't prepare well enough, that would be me in the future.

Only three weeks had passed since my father left the compound for the frontline, and three weeks was all it took for him to be just another corpse.

My mother was never the same again. And I started fearing for her life. Only two months later, she took her own life with a kunai.

If I could I would have just continued on with my training (I wasn't close to my parents and my own death had desensitized me quite strongly to death in general) but you might imagine, and quite rightly so, that the hyuga elders as cruel as they were, were not going to just let a 2 year old who had lost both his parents in the span of a few months to live alone.

That was why I was currently headed to see Hiashi.

When I entered the room, I immediately saw that Hizashi was also here, which surprised me quite a lot. The two brothers for sure weren't cold to each other but as far as I knew Hizashi had no official duty in the clan.

"Hiashi-sama, Hizashi-sama, Hello."

I wasn't sure what would end up of me at the end, but I wanted Hiashi to have at least a good opinion of me.

"You are named Riku, am I right?"

"Yes Hiashi-sama"

If cold could be described in a voice, Hiashi would be the prime example. I had no double that he had somehow managed to woo Hinata's mother, but while acting as clan head he was the perfect representation of a wall.

"I called you here to discuss your future living arrangements, you will stay in your home, and my brother Hizashi will come once every two days to confirm everything goes well. You will receive a stipend every two week, from which you will be able to give Hizashi money for him to do groceries. If you don't know how to cook, we can arrange for you to eat with other branch members on lunch. This is final."

Forget what I said about the elders, dumping a child in a two room apartment, even in a family compound, and telling him "cook for yourself, just do your thing", seemed quite surrealist even for the naruto world. Which led me to believe they didn't care much about me and would maybe even be relieved if I somehow got myself killed.

Even while vexed from their lack of care, I felt relief at the independence I would be able to acquire.

"Thank you for your generosity, Hiashi-sama."

"You may retire"

"Good evening"

After getting back home, I immediately put all thoughts of uncaring clan heads aside and decided to test my chakra affinity.

I was feeling far too giddy for my age, but blamed it on my baby brain, and finally injected chakra into the paper.

The result was somewhat surprising. I expected lightning, as there are a few in konoha and it was my mother's affinity, but having wind on top of it was a very pleasant surprise.

I had three years before the academy would take most of my time, so I needed to learn fast.

I had pretty streamlined plan, try to make myself stand out only slightly, while still making everybody underestimate me. For that my dual affinity will come in handy, as this plan resolves around me developing two separate fighting styles.

The first, and the one I will be publicly showcasing, will be the formal hyuga taijutsu, with a little twist from my lightning attribute. The other, and I must admit that this one is more of a personal fantasy then anything else, will use my wind affinity as well as a peculiar weapon I've loved since I was but a wee kid.

Of course, all of these talks of the future aren't going to make it come true by themselves, so now let's get going to cutting leafs and waterfalls (hopefully.)

Cutting leafs wasn't necessarily hard, the hard part was not cutting my hand as well as the leaf, a small trick that I managed to learn in a few months using shadow clones. This was slower then what I anticipated, but my progress was of course quite slow as I preferred not butchering my hand every step of the way. As for my Super Secret Weapon Training, I resorted to using a stick, which was the closest I could get to my weapon of choice, a spear, without people asking questions I did not want to give the answers to. The proper way of learning martial art should probably be by first studying a style and then having real combat to learn how to use what you learned before hand. As I had no way of getting a scroll for spearmanship without alerting the shinobi forces that I knew the henge and subsequently getting caught ( I wasn't stupid enough to go for the shinobi library, yet), I decided that I would first get used to swinging something roughly my height, and engage on one-on-many fights using clones. Awkwardly, I couldn't make more then one clone for the moment, but getting the feel of the spear (or stick at least for now) was at least a good step of the journey. Since my spear training wasn't yielding as much result as it could under better circumstances, I resolved myself to properly learn hand seals, and thankfully it wasn't as hard as you'd think. Once you learn how to transition between them, it all becomes quite easy the more you practice. I wasn't foolish enough to think I had the dexterity of someone like Kakashi, but I wouldn't struggle with basic techniques for now. Since my plan to hide my true worth (if I even manage to accrue any) by standing out slightly, I'd need this to be better then my academy peers.

My third birthday had finally passed, and I could tentatively say that I was becoming friends with Hizashi. Well of course, as much friends as a late twenties/early thirties adult can get with what he perceives as a three year old, but I was happy to be at least on cordial grounds with one person in the clan. Don't get me wrong, losing both my parents ironically made me the object of pity for most of the branch members, but as they now pitied me I ended up being nothing more then the poor child that they could show nothing but pity to. My whole identity revolved around my background for them, a fact that could have annoyed but which thankfully served my goals of being left alone.

I could now make two shadow clones! Meaning my plan of learning how to fight with a spear just by fighting instinct could now start. The accuracy training which I had started at my first birthday was now extended to the spear as well, as with the byakugan it could prove to be a fairly good combination. I couldn't cut waterfalls using wind chakra yet, but I suspected it had more to do with chakra capacity more then anything else. I didn't really know if the waterfall thing actually has its use for nature transformation, but it was the only exercise I remember naruto doing except the leaf cutting thing, and as long as I don't get a scroll on the matter, or discover by myself, I won't know better.

This is actually the reason I wasn't rushing to learn lighting manipulation as well. My attention was probably better used on one thing at a time, but I also had absolutely no idea how to go about it.

The best option was getting my future jounin sensei to train me, as I would not be able to use it in fight if I can't justify where I learned it. My plan was to be the textbook example of a clan kid 'prodigy' (which is considerably easier considering natural chakra capacity and preemptive training which every clan does), and as long as the hyuga don't start spreading stories of the poor child who lost both his parents, which I am sure they won't, I will be just another brown haired white eyed hyuga child in the eyes of the village.

For now, my focus remained on my spear training, which would remain so for the next year, my only free year left as the clan would proceed to train us from our fourth to fifth year, to have a better standing in the academy (or so Hizashi told me). Of course the training would continue during the academy. You don't get good at the gentle fist in one year when you're four, but the training would be different considering the talent you showed during this year and during your academy years. As such this year was more of a trial run, but an important one none the less.

Nature transformation was going to have to wait a bit as I had far too few intel and felt like I was smashing my head against a wall. My waterfall training wasn't yielding much result, and the only options were that I was doing it wrong, that I was just that bad or that it really wasn't an optimal training tactic for someone with so little chakra. The yellow flash was starting to get know, which told me we were near the end of the war, and to be honest I was quite happy about that. Needless deaths were just that, needless. These shinobis didn't die for their personal morals, whatever they might think. They died because their kages decided to have power plays all through the elemental nations.

Getting my head out of these depressing thoughts, I focused back on the stick I was wielding and created another two clones. I wasn't using the byakugan as I wanted to really get an instinctual fighting sense and not rely too much on it. This wouldn't learn itself, so effort was needed. It's a good thing this medieval world bores me so much I have basically nothing else to do.

This chapter was slightly longer then the last one and I felt like, while still very badly written in parts (especially when I digress a lot), it was better then the last one. I think I might just be getting better at this writing thing.