Summary: A series of one-shots featuring Uchiha Itachi babysitting the Hyuuga Heiress.
Hinata hit the training log in repetitive motions.
She preferred the public grounds as opposed to the Hyuuga Dojo.
At the Hyuuga Dojo, her typically unobtrusive family couldn't not sharpen their tongues and those who remained silent had had sharper disapproving eyes which Hinata couldn't seem to escape from with the Byakugan allowing a 360 view that could penetrate walls and bodies.
Thus led Hinata to search and find this training ground where few, let alone her family would venture.
Only Ko had cared enough to know of her secluded training place, and even then, she wasn't sure if he personally cared, or if it was just his sense of duty as her caretaker and never wanting to disappoint her father.
It was Hinata's sharp vision that allowed her to see Uchiha Itachi even though he was standing over 20 meters behind her.
Stopping mid stride, Hinata righted her posture and turned around slowly while deactivating her blood line limit.
"Uchiha-san," Hinata greeted with a bow.
Hinata's speech was a work in progress, she had the tendency to talk quicker than she thought and so her first words seemed to stumble as the lag time between what words her traitorous mouth was spewing and what coherent thought she decided to vocalize.
Hinata had been taught at a young age that not all thoughts and beliefs were meant to be expressed in public and occasionally with certain members of her clan. So Hinata struggled thinking between what she thought, and what would be proper and polite to say.
Her shyness never helped out in this respect, so Hinata appeared rather incompetent to her fellow clansmen and to certain critical villagers.
"Hyuuga-san," Itachi replied in greeting with a curt bow, it'd be rude to not bow back.
"I'm sor- I apologize for not greeting you sooner," Hinata said, "I was in the middle of training."
While Hinata's mind and body might not be as prodigious as the more elite members of her clan, her eyes saw better than them, she merely lacked their criticalness of bodily habits to judge as they did, she didn't like the being in the role to judge others so blatantly.
"Forgive me for interrupting your training session," Itachi said, "It's just that I usually train on these grounds."
Out of politeness, Hinata offered, "I-if you'd like, we can share the training grounds, I don't mind."
Itachi paused in thought before deciding to accept her offer before the two went off doing separate training.
After 2 hours passed, Hinata knew it was time to go home, she was drenched in her own sweat and the sun was beginning to set.
"You're right handed, correct?" Itachi asked, noticing Hinata was about to leave.
Hinata nodded, not trusting herself to not stutter, she'd forgotten about him as she deactivated her Byakugan a while back, as it was draining on her chakra network and she wanted to work on her physical strength.
He was in a simple black tank top but Hinata was able to see the subtle swell that indicated muscle, not noticeable to civilians but Hinata was from a Shinobi family that prided itself on sight, there was little her eyes didn't discern.
"Put more emphasis on your left," Itachi suggested before leaving the clearing.
It only took Hinata a couple of moments to decode his meaning.
Most ninja focus on their dominate side of body, but to have as much precision and strength in a ninja' non-dominate side would only be an asset, especially when facing right handed ninjas who were only used to fighting right handed ninja.