Author's Note: (2016-11-01) I've altered the discussion of male Naruto having the "transformation bloodline" slightly so that it makes more sense. It got a little garbled between revisions.
"Bite!" Naruto heard a vaguely familiar voice command. He bit down until he felt resistance. It felt like a person's flesh. He started to release it.
"Bite, Tsunami-chan," the voice commanded. "I can heal people when they bite me. It's the only way I can stop the bleeding without cauterizing your eyehole."
She remembered the forest, her cousin Karin, and that smug jerk Kabuto stealing her eye. She tentatively bit down again.
"Harder," Karin commanded.
She bit until she felt her teeth pierce Karin's flesh. She felt a warm energy enter her and the pain in her eye stopped hurting.
"Stop!" Karin commanded. "Let go. I need to help the others too."
Tsunami immediately let go and the warmth ended. She opened her eye and saw a concerned Karin rubbing her arm.
"Normally, I can only safely heal one person a day," Karin said. "I think I stopped you soon enough that I can heal your friends."
Karin proceeded to do the same thing to Hinata and Sakura with Tsunami helping her. They each glowed with chakra while they were biting Karin. If their situation were not so serious, Tsunami would be amused at Karin trying to get each of them to bite her. She frowned at the fleshy emptiness in her teammates' eye sockets.
Tsunami wondered how much chakra it would take to replace her eye—certainly more than replacing her finger. Her teammates were handling their disfigurement differently. Sakura looked worried and more than a little angry. Hinata was looking more and more depressed.
"What happened here, girls?" Karin asked. "I knew that guy was suspicious, but I never expected this!"
"The smug jerk said he was working for Orochimaru," Tsunami said.
"Why would he tell you that?" Karin asked. "Did he expect you to die before you could tell anyone? That seems incredibly sloppy."
"He said he would be outed anyway since his teammates were ordered to attack another Konoha team," Tsunami answered.
"Sasuke-kun!" Sakura exclaimed. "We have to help him!"
"I don't think any of you are in any position to save anyone," Karin said. "It will take a lot of training to be able to fight effectively with only one eye."
"You could save him, Nami-chan," Sakura said. "You can grow back your eye, like your finger, can't you?"
Karin turned to her, wide-eyed. "You can do that? Do you have the Healing Bite Technique too?"
Tsunami stilled herself. She wanted to trust her new-found cousin, but she was technically a foreign shinobi. This made her irritated with Sakura for outing her. Although she figured that Karin would find out sooner or later, assuming she had enough chakra to fix her eye.
"I have a rare Uzumaki healing bloodline that's pretty powerful" Tsunami admitted. "I've never heard of the Healing Bite Technique before now, so I don't know if I can do it."
"Do you know the limitations of it?" Karin asked curiously.
"I think the only limitations are that I need to be aware enough to use it and I have to have enough chakra to use it."
"You have a lot of chakra," Karin said. "I mean more than anyone else in Konoha—substantially more than the Hokage even." She paused. "Do you think you could replace your eye more than once? I could transplant an eye from you to your teammates. Kusa taught me surgery techniques."
"They taught you healing techniques?" Sakura asked. "Why did you have us bite you if you could do that?"
Karin snorted. "Why would they bother to teach me something like the Mystic Palm when they can just bite me? It's not like they cared about the poor foreign shinobi. They used my mom up until she died and were planning on doing the same to me."
"Don't bother transplanting an eye for me," Hinata interjected sullenly. "My shinobi career is over."
"Why are you giving up, Nata-chan?" Tsunami asked. "Even with only one eye, you could still be a shinobi—look at Kakashi-sensei. I bet with your Byakugan it would hardly be a disadvantage."
"The clan council will brand me with the Caged Bird Seal and then never let me leave the clan compound," she said, growing quieter as she talked. Traces of her old stutter were creeping back into her speech.
"They would do that without giving you a chance to prove yourself?" Sakura asked.
"They already think I'm weak," Hinata said bitterly. "Losing an eye would only confirm it beyond all doubt. It would give them an excuse to move the time table up and sequester me to remove the stigma of the failed heiress from the clan."
"Your father. . ." Sakura started to say.
"My father agrees with them," Hinata said, her bitterness increasing, "and even if he didn't, he wouldn't waste political capital in the clan on me when he has another daughter who fulfills everyone's expectations."
All three of the other girls stared at her in horror.
"The Hokage. . ." Tsunami said.
"The Hokage would be sympathetic, but he can't afford to alienate the Hyuuga clan," Hinata said.
At that point no one knew what to say to her. The silence was depressing and awkward at the same time. Naruto began to think about her transformation ability. There was something about it that niggled at the back of her mind. Her mother had thought that she could transform into a girl because either the Kyuubi was female or because she and Mito were female and so the Kyuubi's chakra understood female. She could replace her finger because she knew what it was like with it there. Could she duplicate a Byakugan eye if she knew what one was like? If Karin transplanted Hinata's remaining eye into her, could she make another? The odds were that she would destroy her other eye. The odds were also very high that this would out her as Naruto. She looked over at her dark-haired teammate. All the work that she, Sakura, and Kurenai had put into making her more confident had evaporated in moments. In fact, she seemed worse than she had ever been. She had to make the offer. Even if she hated her for pretending to be a "real girl," at least she could escape the fate she had outlined.
"I think I know of a way that might replace your eye, Nata-chan," Tsunami said. "I don't know if it will actually work, but we can try if you want to."
"I'll try anything," Hinata said desperately.
"My healing bloodline isn't really a healing bloodline," Tsunami said quietly. "I can use it for healing myself, but it's primarily a transformation bloodline. It has some limitations in that I can only transform into things that I understand. I can make an eye that looks like a Byakugan eye, but I can't make one that works like a Byakugan because I don't understand it."
"Having a fake Byakugan would not work," Hinata said. "My clansmen would notice when the veins in my left temple do not protrude."
"Why aren't you an infiltration specialist?" Karin asked.
"Because I don't want to be," Tsunami said. "I really don't have the temperament for it. Plus, some of the things that infiltration specialists do. . ." She shuddered. "The Hokage likes me enough to humor me. Please don't spread my bloodline around though. If others knew about it, the Hokage might not be able to ignore it."
She took a breath and turned back to Hinata. "If Karin-chan transplants your remaining eye into my empty socket and then I use my bloodline, I might be able to duplicate your eye because my body would understand it after using my bloodline. There's a risk that it would make your remaining eye a normal one without me learning how to make Byakugan eyes. Of course, if it works, you'll be giving the Byakugan to someone who is not a Hyuuga."
Hinata closed her eyes, the remaining one and the empty socket, and remained silent for a long time. Finally she said, "The Hyuuga clan needs to change. I love my sister, but she is not the one to change it; she has become invested with the Hyuuga concept of strength. Most of the problems the clan has now stem from paranoia about losing control of the Byakugan—or at least using that paranoia as an excuse for control. I would rather give the Byakugan to a loyal friend than to have the Hyuuga clan remain a cold, dysfunctional family." She paused and then smirked. "Plus, I really, really don't want the Caged Bird Seal."
Tsunami snorted. "You had us going there with your noble considerations for your clan's future, Nata-chan."
"I would make the sacrifice if I thought it was good for my clan," Hinata said seriously, "but since I don't think it is, I don't have to make the sacrifice."
"I hope it works for you Nata-chan," said Sakura before turning to Tsunami. "So Naruto-san could look like a girl, even if he weren't fully functional? He has the same bloodline, right?"
Tsunami froze. This discussion was what she was hoping to avoid.
"I've seen Nami-chan us her transformation technique and it doesn't change her chakra signature, Kura-chan," Hinata said. "I can tell if it were him at a glance—even without seeing internals. You both use your boodline rather than the standard Disguise Technique, right, Nami-chan?"
Tsunami nodded dumbly. She felt incredibly guilty for not telling her friends the truth right then. However, dropping that bombshell while they were in the middle of a life-or-death struggle seemed like a bad idea. She resolved to tell them when the situation was less life threatening.
"Naruto-kun?" Karin asked. "Who's that?"
"Nami-chan's brother," Sakura answered.
"Is he cute?" Karin asked.
"Nata-chan thinks so," Sakura said wickedly.
"Kura-chan!" Hinata protested. Both she and Tsunami both turned bright red.
"Does Hinata-san have a boyfriend?" Karin asked teasingly.
Hinata turned even redder, before drawing herself up and visibly calming herself. "I think Naruto-kun would make an excellent boyfriend," she said regally. "However both our situations do not allow for that to happen right now, if ever."
"So you don't mind if I chase him, do you?" Karin teased.
"Karin-chan!" Tsunami protested. She was almost as flushed as Hinata had been. "You don't even know him!"
Karin looked at Hinata who pressed her fingers together. "I don't have any real claim on him; you'll have to talk to Nami-chan about permission."
Karin smirked and turned to Tsunami. "So do you think your brother would like to restore the clan with me?" She adopted a sultry pose.
Tsunami finally realized that Karin was hamming things up in order to get their minds off of what had happened. She laughed. "You got me. Just don't make me think about my brother like that anymore, okay?"
The other girls all joined her in laughing.
"I think we ought to find a place to hide out," Karin said. "I'd be happy to do the surgery for you guys, but it should wait for tomorrow. I've used up quite a bit of my chakra with the Healing Bite. I'd like to have some in reserve, just in case."
"That's a good idea," Tsunami said. "But before we leave, we should try and figure out how Kabuto got the drop on us so that it doesn't happen again."
"I've figured out some of it at least," Karin said. "There's a dead area in the ground here. I can't sense any of the insects and worms that are always in the ground here. I usually don't pay any attention to that, but I've been trying to figure out how his clones just appeared out of nowhere. There's a distinctive chakra surge when a clone is created and that didn't happen here. While we've been talking, I flipped over a few stones. Look."
She pointed toward where she had flipped over a stone. Some pill bugs and earthworms were visible.
"Even seeing them I can't sense them," Karin said.
"You can sense bugs?" Tsunami asked, feeling a little bit awed. "I'm no where that good a sensor."
"I have a really strong talent as a sensor," Karin said proudly. "Normally I could sense bugs if I concentrated, but these are invisible to me."
"She's right," Hinata said. She had her Byakugan activated. "There's something in the ground that's blocking my Byakugan. He must have used a technique to shield the ground from sensing techniques and then hidden clones underground."
"Then he got me with a technique that destabilized all my contingency clones before they could rescue us via Replacement," Tsunami said.
"What kind of technique could hide him from the Byakugan and Karin-san's exceptional sensing technique?" Sakura asked.
"Has to be a seal if it's still active," Tsunami said. "Can either of you find the center of the 'dead area?'"
"Yes," both of them said.
After a moment of wandering around, Karin said, "Right here." She pointed to a medium-sized rock.
Hinata nodded agreement.
Tsunami flipped over the rock. Underneath it was a card, which had a seal array on it. The only thing that she recognized off the top of her head was a self-destruct sequence with a time delay on it.
"This has a time-delayed self-destruct on it," she said. "That's why he didn't bother to collect it."
"That's too bad," Sakura said. "Something this might be useful to you if you could figure it out."
"Who says I can't?" Tsunami said with a smirk. She picked it up and placed it in a special storage seal. "I put it in a stasis seal. Now the countdown timer is halted."
"Smart," Sakura said with an answering smirk.
"Alright, Nata-chan," Tsunami said. "Find us a good hiding place to spend the night."
"Okay," she responded.
Hinata found them a large tree that had a hollow in it that was barely large enough for the four of them. It looked like the hollow had been made by aspiring chuunin many years earlier using various elemental techniques.
After they had settled down, Tsunami said, "I'm going to send out 20 Shadow Clones to see if I can't find Sasuke-san's team. Between them and my sensory technique, I should be able to find him within a couple of hours."
Karin said, "Before you found me I sensed a very large and very foul chakra signature to the northwest. I bet it was that Orochimaru guy."
"Can you still sense him?" Tsunami asked.
She shook her head. "If a skilled shinobi suppresses their chakra, I can only sense them when they're nearby. I could only sense him from far away because he was using chakra."
"Thanks, Karin-chan," she told her cousin. "I'll start my search over there."
She formed 30 Shadow Clones. Ten of them she kept nearby in order to guard their hiding spot, the rest she sent looking for Sasuke, Kiba, and Shino.
An hour later she received memories from a clone of the clone that had found them. She formed a clone and dispelled it to tell ten of her clones to converge on Shino's location and dispel the rest.
"I found them," she told the others.
"Are they alright?" Sakura asked.
"Sasuke-san and Kiba-san are unconscious, but still alive," Tsunami answered. "Shino-san and Akamaru-chan are watching them." She hesitated. "Kiba-san will recover in a day or so. Shino-san isn't as sure about Sasuke-san. Orochimaru did something to him and he's running a pretty high fever."
"We have to do something!" Sakura exclaimed.
"I am doing something, Kura-chan," Tsunami said. "I've directed ten of the clones I sent out earlier to go help Shino-san. He's very competent. I'm sure they'll be fine."
"Maybe Karin-san can go heal Sasuke-kun?" Sakura asked.
Tsunami shook her head. "It's not a normal illness. My clone looked him over. The traitor put a seal of some sort on him. It's too advanced for me to do anything about it, but I don't think Karin-chan can do anything about the symptoms without removing the seal first."
"That's correct," Karin said.
They tried to get some sleep, but they were all anxious for what the next day would bring.
The next morning after a silent breakfast, they prepped for the surgeries. First was removing Hinata's remaining eye and transplanting it into Tsunami's empty socket.
"Are you ready for this, Hinata-san?" Karin asked.
Hinata nodded and said, "Put me to sleep, please. Don't wake me up until I have two eyes again—one way or the other. Being blind is a particular phobia for Hyuuga."
Karin performed a technique that put Hinata to sleep.
"Are you ready, Tsunami-chan?" she asked.
"Yeah, put me to sleep too, Karin-chan," Tsunami responded.
The next thing she knew, Karin was telling her to bite again. She took a brief "snack" of her cousin's chakra.
She blinked both eyes. Karin's Healing Bite made her recovery from the surgery almost instantaneous.
"That looks so odd, Nami-chan," Sakura commented. She held out a compact mirror for Tsunami to look. She took the compact and looked at her face in the mirror. She agreed that she looked odd with mismatched eyes.
"You ready to see if you can activate the Byakugan?" Karin asked.
They had all agreed that Tsunami would have a better chance of replicating Hinata's eyes if she could activate her bloodline ability first.
"Yeah." Hinata had said that most Hyuuga activated the bloodline without seals or with just one, but she had taught Tsunami the set of seals that were taught to Hyuuga children for use when they were just learning to activate the bloodline. She went through the hand seals: Horse, Tiger with lifting just index fingers, Boar with nearly straightened fingers, Hare, Rat, Dog, Horse, Dog, Hare, Rat, Boar with nearly straightened fingers, and Snake with the right index finger lifted straight up. She sent chakra to her new eye as she did the last seal. The world opened up to her. She had a hard time comprehending what her new eye was showing her, but after a few moments she could focus on individual parts of the vision field.
"Whoa!" she said. "That's intense!"
"It worked?" Sakura asked.
"Yeah," she responded. "This part of it definitely worked. Now for step two."
She concentrated and transformed into Sakura.
"That's kind of freaky," Sakura muttered.
"Stand side by side!" Karin said.
They did so.
"Tsunami-chan looks a lot like Sakura-san," Karin said, "but she's still a little taller and her figure is a little bit fuller. The face looks amazing though."
"Nata-chan's eye changed then?" Tsunami asked.
"Yep!" Karin answered.
Tsunami took a deep breath and said, "Time for step three."
She concentrated and transformed back into herself, but focused on having Byakugan eyes like Hinata's.
"They look like Hinata's eyes," Sakura said.
Tsunami ran through the sequence of hand seals again. The world opened up to her view again. This time she had an easier time focusing on individual objects in her view.
"The veins on both sides of your temples are engorged," Karin said. "I think it worked."
Tsunami heaved a sigh of relief while Sakura raised a fist into the air and uttered a wordless shout of joy.
Karin put Tsunami under again. She woke up to a dull ache in her eyes and Hinata hugging her and repeating, "Thank you!" over and over again. They had decided to forgo having her bite Karin again to conserve Karin's chakra.
"You're welcome, Nata-chan," she said. "It's the least I could do for my dear friend."
Her eyes sockets were bandaged shut to cut down on the bleeding and reduce the risk of infection. It was odd to think that she was currently blind and without eyes.
After Hinata composed herself, Tsunami used the transformation technique to give herself eyes. She felt drained—like she had just created more than a hundred Shadow Clones. That was taxing, even considering her reserves.
"Are you alright?" Karin asked. "You just used a huge amount of chakra."
"Yeah," she said. "Just a little tired. Unwrap my eyes please."
Someone carefully unwrapped her eyes. She opened them to see Karin's smiling face.
"Amazing," Karin said.
"Give me an hour to recover before the next surgery," Tsunami said.
"I can wait," Sakura said. "I'm just happy you're able to do this for us, Nami-chan."
Tsunami smiled and said, "Like I told Nata-chan. You guys are my friends."
While they waited, Tsunami wondered if she could change the way the Byakugan looked and still keep its function. She concentrated on making Byakugan eyes with green irises and black pupils and then did her transformation technique. She peered at her eyes with Sakura's compact. They looked like Sakura's eyes. She ran through the Byakugan hand seals and sent chakra to her eyes. Success!
"What are you doing, Tsunami-chan?" Karin asked.
"Experimenting," she answered with a grin. "Notice anything?"
"You copied Hinata-san's eyes again," Karin answered.
"Not exactly," she replied.
"Hey," Sakura said. "Those eyes are the same color as mine!"
"Nata-chan?" Tsunami asked. "Do you mind if I give Kura-chan your Byakugan too?"
"I don't mind," Hinata answered with a smile. "You two are more like family to me than my own clan. You both will just have to be very careful not to get caught using it."
"Do you think that Shino-san would let us know where he gets his sunglasses from?" Tsunami asked with a smirk.
Author's Note: The hand seal sequence for the Byakugan activation is taken from Narutopedia.