Jigoku
"Tsunade-sama."
The Hokage grimaces. The day has been long enough with people flying in and out of her office like flies in a barn and she still has that council meeting to attend, she really doesn't need the interruption right now. But the young girl standing in her doorway is none other than one of the two people the council meeting is about, and Tsunade rubs her eyebrows and waves the girl in.
"A meeting has been scheduled to handle the matter. I thought I made that clear."
"You have, Tsunade-sama, it's just that..." Ino grapples with a way to phrase her thoughts. She must choose her words carefully, must get her point across without it seeming like she's trying to override the Hokage's power. "I was wondering if there wasn't an alternative solution. Without involving the village elders."
The Sannin's face is unreadable for a beat before she closes her eyes, breathes deep, and speaks.
"...There may be. Danzou has made a proposition. Under his care, your child would be enlisted in ROOT, and there the matters of clan and who the child's parents are would be of no issue."
Ino visably recoils. Already, Danzou was a step ahead. The bastard was worse than she thought! He didn't want to abort the child; he wanted the kid for himself. The thought sent shivers down Ino's spine.
"With all due respect, Hokage-sama, I decline. We decline. If I may, I do have another idea."
Tsunade watches Ino with interest, marvelling at the boldness of a girl with limited choices. ROOT was not an ideal place for anyone, really, but it was better than leaving the child's future up to chance. After what the village went through with the rivalry of the Uchiha and Senju clans, Tsunade knows the elders are unwilling to risk any chance of civil war. They would do anything to prevent it; anything up to and including taking an innocent life.
"Go on."
"I request permission to apply my talents to the situation. My pregnancy may be common knowledge, but few know for certain the truth of the matter. My Shoukyouseishin no Jutsu is strong, I can remove the memories of those involved without them ever knowing I have done so. With no memory of Neji's involvement with me, there would be no grudge from the Hyuuga clan. And the elders still haven't been briefed on the details of the meeting, have they? That leaves only a handful of people; a trade of a small bit of their memories for one life. For the sake of a member of Konoha's next generation of shinobi. From this perspective, isn't it a small price to pay?"
The Godaime nodded, taking it all in. Clearly, in the short time the since mindwalker had become pregnant she'd learned to think like a mother.
"Granted. You may proceed with removal of memories from Hyuuga Hiashi, Neji, and Tenten. As for Sakura, Sai and Danzou, I'll seal the records and declare a confidentiality order. But Ino,"
"Yes milady?"
"Once this is initiated, there will be no going back. Five, ten, fifteen years down the line, you will still have to live with this decision. Any requests for an appeal will be denied."
"I understand."
"Alright. Commence your objective within the night. Dismissed."
Ino targets Hiashi first. He is milling around in the lower levels of the Hokage Tower, waiting for the meeting to start when Ino approaches him from the front. She wants him to see her coming. She wants him to still feel like he has the upper hand in every way. She asks him if they can have a chat in private, and though he regards her with a careful eye, he indulges her. They walk into an empty lobby and take seats on plastic couches - her with a grip on the armrest as she lowers herself down. Getting up and sitting down have become harder with the bulk of her weight in her midsection. Hiashi breaks the ice.
"Please understand, Yamanaka-chan, I mean no disrespect to you or your clan. This is simply an unfavorable situation."
"I agree. That's why I've come to discuss options."
Ino starts off talking about the possibility of her child splitting time between both clans and neither having full custody and then smoothly transitions into clan rites of passage and by the time she starts asking about how Neji performed during his, Hiashi's mind is relaxed and ripe for harvest. Ino concentrates hard; it's difficult to both carry on a conversation and invade someone's mind without them detecting your presence. It's even harder when you're searching through the memories of that mind for a specific period of time. She works gradually as she talks, Hiashi adding comments of agreement or disagreement occasionally, and by the time she has run out of busy-talk all that's left to do is wipe the beginning of their conversation from his mind. She gets the opprotunity when he stands up and she struggles to get to her feet.
Hiashi is, after all, Neji's relative and a man of good breeding. He offers Ino a hand and with that single contact, all traces of what he knows about her and his nephew are gone. She can tell by the odd look in his eye that he has already forgotten why he is in the Hokage Tower, or even what they were just speaking about. Ino thanks him for helping her up and asks him if he's come to the Tower to see the Hokage. Hiashi replies that he is on his way out and Ino watches him leave.
Tenten is harder to access. There is no chance of another conversation with her and Ino has to climb four flights of stairs to reach Tenten's floor. Outside her door, Ino can more easily pick out Tenten's mind from all of the others, and when Tenten settles down for dinner Ino activates her jutsu. Unlike Hiashi, Tenten has no clue of Ino's presence and the process is easier with an unguarded target she doesn't have to distract with words. It is not, however, faster. Tenten's suspicions go much further back than Hiashi's, and Ino must be careful to only pluck pieces of memories from the past year. She clears them out with no resistance, leaving the brunette with the fuzzy memory that she and Neji had broken up but no solid reasons as to why.
Of course she saves Neji for last. Deceiving him would be a challenge, so she doesn't. She meets him at the edge of the Hyuuga compound and he greets her with warm arms and soft lips. Ino melts into it, prolongs it. In a moment, she is going to erase every one of these instances from his mind. In a moment, she is going to take away everything that has made them them. This will be the last kiss he ever gives her, and Ino wants to remember as much about it as she can. It ends after a while and it takes conscious effort for Ino not to burst out crying then and there.
Neji's mouth settles by her ear and he whispers "Don't worry." She wants to tell him that he should be the one worrying. All of his defenses are down and she is about to betray his trust by taking full advantage of that. One minute she is revelling in his warmth and his love, the next she is plunging into his mind and steadily attacking his every reminiscence of her.
Of course, Neji will not let them go easily.
Ino finds his mind to be the most resistant by far and in spite of her mastery of the skill, she is not able to erase a single memory of herself. This has never happened to her before. Normal people do not cling so strongly to their memories, do not preserve them so crisp and clearly. Then again, Ino has never before attempted to erase someone's memories of a person they loved. Unable to do what she has sworn to the Hokage, she is forced instead to set in place a mental block. Ino walls off his memories of her, puts walls around those walls, and seals them all with a hefty lock. No amount of torture or invasive technique could unlock what lies behind them; she's triggered the memories to scramble if anyone tries. As long as Neji doesn't strain his brain too hard trying to remember what was hidden, the block would hold. He stiffens in her arms as her jutsu is completed and pulls back to regard her with a confused frown.
"Yamanaka,"
She cuts him off. Whatever sterile words he has for her, she doesn't have the strength to hear them. A tear slides down her cheek.
"Sorry, the hug was probably too much. Thank you for listening to my problems, Neji."
He looks as if he doesn't quite buy her cover story, but Neji can come up with no other explaination as to why someone he barely knows was hugging him or why he allowed it. It doesn't feel like the full truth, but he accepts it.
"You're welcome."
And quietly, with no shouts of protest, Ino walks out of Hyuuga Neji's life.
"Your motivation is admirable but it seems unwise to rush through the mission. Have you forgotten your patience, Nara?"
Neji can't quite put his finger on it, but Nara Shikamaru has been short with him since the moment they left Konoha on their joint mission. He'd dare wager that the shadow-nin dislikes him, severely, although whenever he tries to pinpoint why that may be, he comes up with nothing. He does not recall Shikamaru being so curt with him even back when they tried to rescue Sasuke, and Neji is sure he was much more worthy of his scorn back then. It's worse than dislike, really. Dislike implies a level of toleration. Shikamaru has been as hostile as he's ever seen him, only interacting with Neji when absolutlely necessary. If Neji didn't know any better, he'd swear he offended him somehow.
Shikamaru only scowls and moves faster. The sooner they finish this, the sooner they can return to Konoha and he could make sure Ino was fine and go back to passionately ignoring the Hyuuga's existence.
But Neji is soon proven right. In his haste, Shikamaru overlooks the tiniest of details and all of his careful planning and timing is shot to hell when they move in just a second too soon. The enemy's numbers are low, but their skill level is high and the fights drag on much longer and bloodier than intended. He criticizes himself again and again as he hauls Neji back to Konoha in dire straits, praying all the way that the older ninja doesn't die, that his coffin won't be on Shikamaru's conscience.
He should have known. He should have known Ino would be waiting at the gates for them to come back. Goddamnit, why didn't he think of that? Of course she would, it's him and him and she probably hadn't caught a wink of sleep since they left. He hates himself for thinking it, but he tries to think of an alternate route inside the village so she can avoid seeing this. He hates himself more when his brain concludes that the quickest way to the hospital is a straight line; directly past Ino. She spots them approaching and his heart twists at how her face turns anguished. He has failed her. He has let his contempt for this man overshadow his bond with her.
Ino is big as a watermelon but still manages to half-jog at his side, tears streaming and hands glowing with desperation to heal him. He can almost hear her prayers that Neji makes it to the hospital, underneath her terrified demands of "Come on, wake up! Say something!". He can almost hear her heart breaking.
Neji comes to, briefly. He squints blearily and while he can't concentrate on much through the agony wracking his body, he has enough consciousness to note that the heavily pregnant Yamanaka girl is crying over him and saying things that make no sense. He's fatigued beyond words and succumbs to the darkness soon after, and maybe it's for the better because the poor girl looks so distraught that she'd probably shatter if he asked why she was all over him. He swears he sees her mouth form the words 'I love you' but then everything goes blank, and he thinks no more.
Chouji has to pry Ino off of him when they make it to the hospital. Neji lives, by grace of Konoha's talented medical corps, but Ino remains moody for the rest of the month. Shikamaru stays by her side, intending to face her rage like a man, but she doesn't scream at him. She doesn't even question how things went wrong. Somehow, to Shikamaru, that's worse.
There are days when Ino cries herself to dehydration; when she misses Neji so much and her heart is just so pained that she thinks she might just die. It's too much for one person to take. It's too hard to go through by herself. But everyday the sun rises and sets and Ino still wakes up in the morning, ruined heart still pumping away in her chest. Every day she's able to block just a little more of the pain, like a stopper in her heart. She feels less and less until she convinces herself she feels nothing at all. Or, at least, she loses the will to challenge her newfound apathy. Sakura keeps a close eye on her; thinks she's handling it better since she's crying less. Shikamaru and Chouji worry over her. She smiles for them.
They see right through it.
Ino's son is born in a room with two beaming grandparents and two tearfully happy godfathers. Between the four of them, it's nearly an hour before Ino gets to hold him for the first time. She takes it in stride, using her hour to rest and watch the faces of people so happy to meet her child. This child who has no father and no last name at least has a group of people who love him dearly. Other faces pop in to visit: Kurenai and Asuka, Konohamaru, Sakura, Shikaku, Chouza. Every face but the one she really wants to see. Everyone is there to say Ino, he's beautiful but there's nobody for her to turn to and say he was worth it, wasn't he? Just minutes before she's discharged from her room, one last face comes to pay their respects. The old man leans on his cane and looks at her and her bundled baby with his free eye and the last of Ino's guests trickle out. She meets his gaze with the eyes of a lioness and Danzou smirks at her.
"The offer still stands."
"Not interested."
He stands there another moment, sizing her up. She's a clever kunoichi but she's foolish if she thinks this is over. Parenthood is hard and single parenthood is harder. Her parents will not be there forever to help her and when she's cracked and coming apart at the seams from job stress and trying to raise a kid, he'll be right there. Waiting.
He walks off, finally, but Ino knows the threat is not yet gone. Still, she is unafraid; neither she nor her father will hesitate to mentally incapacitate him should he try anything stupid and her mother knows her way around a frying pan. Her mother is, after all, best friends with Yoshino Nara.
Things get better, if only for a while. Seeing her son's face and hearing his voice are enough to keep Ino from withdrawing entirely and she builds her days around caring for him. He gives her something to focus on and motivates her to be her best self. By the time he's six months old his wardrobe is bigger than most five year olds, he's grown to recognize everyone Ino socializes with, and he's been to every child-friendly part of Konoha a number of times. At one year old he has a box full of toys he scorns in favor of digging in the grass and dirt with thin twigs. Inoichi buys him a small spade and is rewarded with Hiroto's first clear word: "Dirty!"
But sooner or later motherhood isn't enough to keep Ino happy. She misses the thrill of combat, misses seeing new lands, misses the sense of accomplishment that comes from winning. Motherhood is rewarding but not exciting, and just after Hiroto reaches eighteen months old, Ino starts back in Torture and Interrogation. On occassion, people gather the courage to ask her for dates. Ino turns down each one.
The years slip by.
To the surprise of few, Neji and Tenten reconcile their forgotten differences with the latter moving back into the house. Hiashi is pleased at last when they welcome their first daughter Nana into the world. Two years later they welcome a second: Nonoka. Despite the hesitance she felt in her first pregnancy, Tenten flourishes in motherhood. She takes to her new role in life like a duck to water and as much as he likens his nephew to his brother, in having sired two daughters, Hiashi can't help but to think that perhaps Neji is a little bit like him as well. Their happiness as a family is plain to all, but there are moments behind the scenes that none can imagine.
Sometimes, Neji feels he is forgetting something. He'll catch himself watching the kids and expecting to see three small bodies instead of two. He'll look at Tenten and be confused to see brown eyes looking back at him as something in him whispers that his lover's eyes were different, once. Somehow. His hands feel strange when he patches up his injuries and lets them heal the natural way - his body recalls the sensation of a cool breeze blowing through him, but that familiar longing makes no sense and Neji dismisses it.
Sometimes, Tenten feels like she has forgotten something. Something heavy and excruciating that gnaws at her psyche and screams to be remembered. There are days when she's short-tempered with Neji and she doesn't know why. Days when she'll suddenly have the irrational fear that he's going to meet some cute girl and leave her. There are days when she'll glimpse blonde hair and cry.
In an elaborate display the whole village comes out to see, Tsunade steps down from office and Naruto inherits the title.
Ino works hard in the Torture and Interrogation division, rarely leaving the village, and it's not long before her father steps down and hands her the reigns. It comes as a shock then, when Naruto is working through the mountains of paper on his desk one day and comes across an application for AnBu from none other than Yamanaka Ino. As a long-standing rule, he is required to test every applicant before either accepting them or rejecting them. Ino passes the test in half the given timeframe without a single flaw. When Naruto consults with Kakashi about her score, his ex-teacher reveals that her marks are almost the same as his were some twenty years ago. Kakashi recommends her, and so Naruto accepts Ino into the ranks of masked shinobi. Ino finds her perfect balance there : high pay rate, low mission frequency that's just enough to sate her sense of adventure and leaves plenty of time for motherhood and Interrogation. She has almost everything.
Sometimes she wonders if 'almost everything' is worth the cost of the love of her life.
As it turns out, Hiashi never approaches the Yamanakas about their pale eyed heir. Despite the fact that the child is obviously of Hyuuga descent, try as he might, Hiashi can't pin down who the father is. He has questioned every male member of the clan - twice - and all have claimed innocence. Even in his old age he is still extremely skilled at reading people, and none of them come across as lying. Without a definitive suspect, he cannot seal the child. Should the father be a member of the Main House there will be serious consequences as far as clan politics go. He gets the feeling that his daughters may know who the child's father is but both have grown into strong, confident women with skills approaching his own and neither will surrender a crumb of information.
Hiroto asks his grandfather why the pale eyed people look at him funny. Inoichi introduces him to Hinata, who shows him tender smiles and brings him trinkets to play with.
"Taichou! Orders?"
The Bear mask looks to her, body tensed and one hand gripping the katana over his shoulder. She can hear desperation creeping into his voice and beside him Monkey is eerily quiet, knuckles balled into tight fists at his sides. She can hear the chorus of their thoughts shouting the words Is this the end? In this moment, they are counting on her. They are betting with their lives that she is every bit the exceptional kunoichi rumors paint her to be. Maybe they even believe the hype around the missions she's done. She hopes they do. She hates to think they'll leave this world without believing in anything. The Boar mask exhales long and slow. She has narrowly beaten the odds too many times to think that luck is on their side.
Yes, she almost replies. If they want answers from her, she'll give them. Better to die knowing the truth than believing in lies.
Instead she tells them that if they have any regrets in life, now is the time to let go of them. The three of them are quiet for a long moment - a moment of silence for the memory they will become, perhaps - when Monkey speaks up.
"Permission to remove our masks, Taichou? I want to see the faces of two of the most outstanding shinobi I've ever had the pleasure of knowing."
One by one, they remove the one thing shielding their identities. Bear reveals blood red eyes to go with his mess of curly black hair; hallmarks of the Yuuhi clan. It stands to reason the genjutsu specialist on their team would be such. Monkey has long auburn hair and dark eyes that Ino thinks she recognizes from the rookies who graduated the year after the Rookie Nine. She removes her own mask, and the three share a hug before Ino at last gives orders for their last-ditch plan to complete their mission.
They are dazed when they survive the encounter, just barely scraping by with their lives. It's an extremely close call, but just one more time Yamanaka Ino cheats death. Five weeks later find her in Naruto's office; a scroll the Hokage is reluctant to hand out sitting primly on his desk. Ino is unintimidated.
"What is it this time, unicorn blood? Mermaid tears?"
She tries to lighten the mood but it doesn't work. No matter what she says, nothing is going to get Naruto past the fact that the predicted chance of survival is only 10%. The mission requires the destruction of a dangerous relic so highly protected that it is damn near possible just to get a look at it. And getting in was the easy part. Success in infiltration would immediately result in the sealing of escape routes. Naruto would do it himself, but his face is too recognizable among the shinobi nations.
Ino taps her foot.
"You have to send somebody, Hokage-sama. Would you really rather send Sakura? Konohamaru? Hanabi? You know I'm the best you've got, no one else would have a prayer."
He grimaces, pinching the bridge of his nose and wishing to heaven he were smart enough to find an alternative solution. She is right, of course, on both accounts. Someone would have to take this mission and if he were being honest with himself, sending anyone else was tantamount to forced martyrdom. He wonders if that was what she's aiming for and sighs. He knows in his bones with morbid certainty that if he hands her the mission scroll that he will be sending her into the waiting jaws of death but he has no choice; only someone of her caliber has any chance of at least completing the mission. He can try and talk her out of it with a speech about how she means more to Konoha than any singular mission, but she is Yamanaka Ino and she'll just talk herself right back in. Round and round they'll go.
As much as he hates himself for it, when it's all said and done Konoha must come before friendships. He hands over the scroll.
The nagging ache between his eyes only abates when she returns four days later, worse for wear but victorious nonetheless. He doesn't know how much more of this cycle he can take as he slowly watches one of his comrades self-destruct, powerless to help.
She can feel it. Yamanaka Ino wakes up late one weekend afternoon and she can feel it. Her room is the same, floor is the same, walls are the same. She runs her fingers along the walls as she walks the hallway, relishes the feel of the stiff, worn carpet beneath her feet and breathes in deeply the air of her home. It's whispering in her muscles. It's humming in her veins. She can feel it, and she smiles bright as a summer day when an AnBu drops by with a scroll. She accepts it, taking the time to thank the masked shinobi before they disappear and she tucks it under her arm.
She prepares a large breakfast, much too big for a child barely in his fifth year of life, and watches with undivided interest as he devours as much as he can. She plays his favorite games with him, watches him smile, and listens to his laughter. One day, this day will be a memory. The least she can do is make it a strong one. She kisses his cheeks until he squirms and complains; he's saved when his grandfather drops by. Inoichi entertains him as Ino pulls on her armor and equipment, her mask hanging at her hip. She leaves after a hug from her father, one that grows firm when she allows him a peek at her thoughts.
Ino reaches out with her senses as she trails the rooftops of Konoha with her mask in place, feeling for a particular chakra signature and finding it absent. It figures, a part of her mind snarls moodily. It's just as well, her inner kunoichi declares. In her path ahead, her senses pickup a different, unmistakable signature she recognizes without effort. At twenty-five years old, Nara Shikamaru is almost the spitting image of his father. Even from a distance, she can read him like a book just as he knows her better than his own shadow. They know each other well enough to know the coming conversation is a moot point, but the words will still be spoken. They wouldn't be Shikamaru and Ino if they didn't. Her sprint slows to a stop in front of him and Shikamaru stares past AnBu operative Boar and into the eyes of the girl behind the mask.
"Don't do this. Please Ino, don't."
He begs. He has never had too much pride to beg for his own life and he certainly doesn't have too much to beg for hers. His eyes water with the force of his emotions. No scroll gets handed out without him knowing about it, and had he known that scroll was going to Ino...
"Take care of yourself, Shikamaru."
"Ino, this is insane!"
His heart is breaking; some faded piece of his childhood dying. Not for the first time, his brain screams there's no justice in the world. She lifts up her mask and smiles at him.
"I'll miss you too."
He can't. He can't let this happen. Damn the rules and damn her fury, he is not going to lose Ino. He initiates the Kagemane jutsu without handsigns, not giving her the option of evasion-
...but when his shadows fail to attach to anything around the Yamanaka, when his shadows find no shadow to bind, the Shougi master realizes Ino is five moves ahead. He reaches out a hand forlornly and it passes right through her. He has been talking to a projected image in his mind and the girl it resembles is already long gone, may have been gone before he even spotted her. For the third time in his life, Shikamaru cries. The sky is cloudless and harshly beautiful.
Whatever else people liked to say about Yamanaka Ino, they could all agree on one thing: she was damn good at her job. In two months' time she'd completed over half of her mission objective; a mission with a projected duration of six months. She'd successfully infiltrated the headquarters of a crime ring in Wave Country, even going as far as to become the right hand woman of the ring's commander Kotobuki Toshi, and memorized the entire layout and future plans. It was all going remarkably well until one night Toshi strolled into the hideout with four Sunagakure-nins in bounds trailing behind him. It is the day, the breath, the moment her body has been warning her of since she left home. Toshi doesn't keep prisoners alive for long and Ino can't bear to let them be tortured; Sunagakure still maintains a strong alliance with Konoha and Naruto personally swore to Gaara that his people would never let Gaara's people die. Even if it means her blowing her cover sky high.
It takes her four hours to find a suitable distraction for Toshi and five more minutes to take care of the guards, then she is making her way to their holding cell in a gown so sheer that it whispers against her skin like a butterfly's kiss. The group is worn from hunger and exhaustion but there is not time for rest and Ino springs them free, pressing her AnBu mask into the hands of the leader. She gives them a detailed description of how to escape and leaves instructions that her mask be given to Gaara. She doesn't have time to learn their names or watch as they leave, Toshi has a notoriously short attention span and Ino needs time to construct an alibi for her whereabouts.
In the end, Toshi doesn't care where Ino or her brainwashed supporters say she was. He is angry and somebody must pay. She takes down two-thirds of his goons with her.
As word spreads, villages everywhere finally get to cross out a picture in their Bingo Book. A week later Konoha officially retires the porcelain boar mask, only worn by nine people, and replaces it with another. Safe in a padded box, the mask is sent to the house of a blue-eyed man raising a white-eyed child.
"When are they going to start?" Tenten whispers into his ear as they both stare down into the empty arena, the pit where the fights will take place. "Did it always take this long to start after the opening ceremony? Do you remember?"
It was exactly one month since the end of the preliminary chuunin exams concluded and now the semi-finalists were going to face off. Their eldest daughter, Nana, had been the only one of her team to make it to this round. She'd used the month to practice even harder : unlike the random assignment of the preliminary matches, the semi-finals were decided with great care and the list of who would be fighting whom had been public knowledge for weeks. Neji himself had gotten involved in Nana's training to assure her defenses would provide sufficient resistance. At just eleven years old, Nana is easily the youngest of the competitors. Even Hinata and Hanabi have come out to watch her fight.
A young man with spikey brown hair leaps into the ring from one side of the arena and an even younger girl, just barely a woman, leaps down from the opposite side. Neji quickly identified the male as Sarutobi Konohamaru. The female at his side looks to be Kurenai's daughter. Though only one of them bears the standard flak jacket it is clear the two of them will be the exam proctors for this round. They signal for the crowd to quiet and begin reading the rules of the exam. On Neji's other side, Nonoka squirms in her seat.
"Is onee-chan really going to be okay with just her tonfa?" she asks with concern coloring her face and Neji knows it is not out of thinking her older sister weak. Nonoka's Byakugan is weak, but even a weak Byakugan is an edge over her sister's coffee colored eyes. Nana is an adept meelee fighter and even better with her handy tonfa, but both may well be her undoing against her selected opponent. Asuka and Konohamaru finish reading at last and call the first pair down into the pit. Neji observes as Nana emerges from a door at one end while a blonde haired boy enters from another.
Nonoka frowns in disappointment. "That's the brain-hacker? He doesn't look like much."
Somewhere, on the surface, Neji agrees. Deeper down he feels the echoes of a lesson well-learned. The boy was not a Yamanaka officially, but he was of the bloodline and Neji did his best to train his daughter against any mental assaults. Down in the pit the match begins, both gennin watching each other with sharp eyes. The microphones in the walls around them are sensitive and pick up every scuff of the foot. The large monitor opposite of the kage viewing box makes it easy for everybody to see the participants clearly and close up. Nana bares her teeth at the boy, anger blazing in her eyes as she twirls her tonfa.
"Don't think you're going to win with those counterfeit eyes of yours. Someone like you shouldn't even have them; you're not a Hyuuga! You're not even a Yamanaka. You're nothing."
Hiroto squares his jaw and keeps his body facing her but does not reply. Annoyed, Nana advances on him in an arc and swings at the back of his head. Hiroto dodges at the last possible second and leaps backward. Nana follows with a flying kick combo, refusing to grant him any ground. Hiroto blocks her feet and evades her tonfa before retreating even further.
"Stop running, coward!"
His taijutsu is good but Nana is confident hers is superior - she trained with Hyuugas as her mother had once done at her age. Even though she lacks the eyes required for the Jyuuken style of fighting, she is more than enough against most other styles. Hand-to-hand combat is her specialty and she knows many fighting forms to alternate between. She makes two clones and attacks again, but Hiroto knows which is the real her and pitches a smoke bomb at her. Nana slides back, far enough to be outside of the cloud of smoke and watches it with a tense expression as she uses the terrain to her advantage and climbs atop a small boulder, hoping to get an eye on him from above the smoke. The kunai that comes whistling at her almost causes her to fall as she twists to dodge it. Nana abandons her vantage point and stands a distance away on the ground as the smoke clears.
The more she sees of Hiroto's face, the angrier she gets.
"Come on, use your stupid mind techniques. You can't win just by blocking hits! I'll prove to you how a real Hyuuga fights."
She goaded him on, hoping he would fall for it. Though it hadn't been tested, her father had shown her a meditation technique that Nana was hopeful could keep Hiroto out of her mind. All she needs is for him to try and when he struggles to gain entrance into her mind, then she would use her best attack.
"Do Hyuugas fight by running their mouths?"
He surprises her by responding and Nana feels her mouth gape just a little.
How. Dare. He.
How dare some bastard stand there and mock her! She created clones again, three this time, and attacked with a fifteen hit combo. Hiroto ignored the clones and dodged every last blow. Up close, Nana could see the veins at the sides of his eyes puffed up.
Fine, so his Byakugan was functional. Nana still had the advantage: Hiroto didn't know Jyuuken and Nana knew where his blindspot was. She would use that to her advantage and put the impudent blonde in his place. Hiroto went to retreat again and Nana anticipated it, maneuvering herself behind him and going for the one hit he wouldn't see coming.
...except that Hiroto dipped into a stance all too familiar to Nana.
One strike to the chest forced Nana back, sealing some of her tenketsu, and all she could think of was How? If she had known he knew Jyuuken she would have surely strategized better, but how could he know Jyuuken?
In the spectator stands, Neji watched with rapt attention as his daughter had tried again and again to close the distance and fight Hiroto up close. Time and time again the blonde had eluded her, effectively keeping her away from him without an offensive strike. It seemed as if he didn't want her to get within a certain range of him. The situation was oddly reminiscent to Neji in a way he couldn't explain. Words from other people, another time fluttered across his mind quick as lightning. Too fast to hold on to.
'So you won't forfeit? I'm not responsible for what happens.'
'Tenten's skill and dexterity are far superior, but that girl's clever.'
'I had it under control, I didn't need your help. I don't need-'
Neji clenched the armrests with a white-knuckle grip, his heartbeat just a little above normal and the beginnings of a headache forming near his ears. For a boy of questionable origins, the blonde strategized much like Neji would expect from someone familiar with the Jyuuken techniques. He stays exactly sixty-four feet away from Nana at all times - the precise length of a beginner's striking range. It makes perfect sense and yet it doesn't : why keep track of distance when neither of them have the training to take advantage of it? He watches as the boy activates the Byakugan and his veins swell. Looking at his face there's something achingly familiar in the lines of his features. Something known to him in the way the boy smirks every time Nana misses him.
'I already know where your heart is.'
'What do you want from me?'
'We should end this.'
The boy is like his mother, of this much Neji is sure even without knowing Yamanaka Ino. But there's something else there, too. Someone else. Hiroto has a Hyuuga lineage so perhaps it cannot be helped, but are mannerisms so strongly inherited? Neji finds himself contemplating the mystery of Hiroto's father, wondering who could keep quiet on such a matter for so long. It has been two years since Hiashi's passing and Hinata's ascension as leader. Why has nobody claimed him?
Nana charges with aim to the boy's upper back, just below his neck and Neji watches as Hiroto quite distinctly uses a Jyuuken strike to send her flying. Someone has been teaching this blonde child. Somebody knows something. Neji's gaze inadvertently falls on his younger cousins and for the first time, he wonders if Nana is not the one they have come to watch fight. Back in the pit, Nana's face betrays her pain as she tries to stand and Hiroto looks at her with an air of boredom.
"Don't look so surprised," he chides her in a voice much more gentle than the tone she'd used with him, "you were reckless. Recklessness will always lose to discipline. You go on and on about clans and techniques when the one without a kekkei genkai is you."
He turns his back on her to walk away and Neji sees the rage bubbling up in his daughter's face. She jumps to her feet and races at Hiroto. She will wipe that condescending look from his face, will put out those illegitmate eyes of his! He blocks her attacks, as expected, but when Nana flings off a bit of her tonfa to reveal the blade inside and makes to slash his neck, the bodies of Konohamaru, Asuka, Hinata and Inoichi stop her.
'The person lost and suffering within the destiny of the main and branch houses is you.'
All at once Hyuuga Neji is struck with the answer of who Hiroto reminds him of, and as the flood of memories crash into the forefront of his consciousness, his eyes catch the motion of a sparrow as it sets off into the sky.
-End part I-