Chapter 3: Believe it

-o X o-

"Well done, Hinata sama."

I could hear Neji's six-year-old voice as I passed by the main branch's training compound on my way to the village. Turning on my Byakugan, I saw Hinata breathing heavily as she faced off against her older cousin, who patiently waited for her to recover before helping to adjust her stance for the next spar. Hiashi sat a short distance away with a very young Hanabi, stoically observing his daughter and nephew.

I could see the entire scene in perfect detail now, despite the thin, opaque walls of the training compound separating us. Neji had his Byakugan activated as well, and his eyes narrowed as he noticed me. "Let's take a small break, Hinata sama, lest unwonted eyes peek in on your progress," he said coldly. "It appears someone does not know their place, straying too close to where they do not deserve to tread."

Hiashi activated his own Byakugan in surprise, but seemed to relax when he realized that Neji was referring to me. I kept walking, and deactivated my Byakugan once I was out of range of the compound. Neji had stared me down the entire way.

Oddly enough, Neji seemed to have no ill will towards Hiashi, Hinata, or the rest of the main branch in this life, instead harboring an intense hatred for anything and everything associated with Kumogakure. Unfortunately, in his eyes, I fell into that category, despite the fact that I had never met my father. I tried to talk to Neji a few times after his father's funeral, to explain that I had no attachments to Kumo, that I had nothing to do with what happened, that I missed his father as well. But he refused to hear me out.

Surprisingly, the changes in Neji's life seemed to work wonders for Hinata's self-esteem. She tried her best against Neji, and since he held no resentment towards her, Neji didn't go out of his way to destroy and degrade her at every opportunity. Neji was friendlier and more instructive during their spars, boosting Hinata's self-confidence and performance. She could not defeat him, but this was not disgraceful in her father's eyes. Neji was a genius, and everyone knew it.

I remembered that in the original storyline, Hinata would primarily spar against two people: Neji and Hanabi. Neji would ruthlessly beat her down in their spars, never letting Hinata show any skill or signs of improvement, which caused her father to doubt her ability. Those doubts seemed to be confirmed when Hinata lost even to her younger sister Hanabi, since no one knew that she was holding back in order to spare her sister from the Caged Bird Seal. But now, Hiashi seemed content, even pleased, with his elder daughter's progress as she held her own against her prodigy cousin, and showed marked improvement week after week.

It would have been heartwarming to watch, if Neji didn't glare daggers of ice at me every time I passed by their training sessions. Not to mention, Hinata's success didn't bode well for young Hanabi, and I self-consciously rubbed the cloth headband I wore to cover my own seal. There could only be one heir to the main the branch. The other would be branded, just like Hizashi sama.

It was midmorning by the time I got to the village. As was my custom, my mother and I had risen before sunrise to start our training, and then she had left for a mission. She occasionally took multi-day missions now, since I could better care for myself, and the higher pay allowed her to spend more full days with me when she was in the village. And honestly, I didn't mind the freedom while she was away.

I exited the Hyuuga clan property, trying to shake off the brief encounter with Neji as I walked towards the village proper. I couldn't let him ruin such a wonderful day- the sun was up and shining now, not a cloud in the sky, and a gentle breeze was drifting through the street. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and smiled. I felt much better when I opened my eyes again, and looked towards the Hokage Monument. Then my jaw dropped in astonishment.

Words could not express the magnitude of the defacement. The Hokage Monument was huge, and somehow the whole thing had been covered in graffiti. An entire mountainside. I knew who the culprit was, but how could a five-year-old possibly do so much in one night? It was a whole mountain worth of work, and Naruto wasn't even a ninja yet! He couldn't wall walk or make shadow clones or anything. Whatever he did to pull off that stunt was genius, and tenacious. I couldn't fathom how I would possibly go about such a task if I wanted to imitate it.

A moment later, I saw an orange blur tearing through the streets, an angry mob of non-shinobi villagers in hot pursuit. I quirked a grin, turned on my Byakugan, and started following them. I had planned on exercising in the park today, but this called for a change of plans.

I treated it as a stealth mission of sorts. The goal was to always keep Naruto in range of my Byakugan, while staying far enough out of the way that the villagers didn't even notice I was there. To my surprise, I was able to spot a few Anbu in stealthy pursuit as well, but simply monitoring the situation rather than trying to apprehend the little orange hoodlum. If they had stepped in, I knew it would have been over in a flash. I felt mildly surprised when I realized I could see right through their masks. I don't know if a seal existed that would block Byakugan sight, but if so, they weren't utilized to protect Anbu identity. Even though I could see their faces, I didn't recognize any of the masked elites.

I hadn't been pursuing for long when I noticed the Anbu themselves started signaling to each other and pointing to me. Apparently, they had realized I was pursuing as well, and were deciding what to do with me. A few seconds later, a new Anbu appeared before me in a body flicker. I skidded to a halt in surprise- he seemed to appear out of nowhere. He must have been staying out of my range of sight until he decided to appear less than ten feet in front of me.

"Ah, hello Wolf-Anbu san," I said, smiling nervously. I instantly recognized this Anbu, with his mismatched eyes and a second facemask underneath his Anbu mask. His hood concealed his trademark vertical grey hair, but he was easily identifiable as Kakashi Hatake to my Byakugan. I courteously didn't try to look under his second mask.

"Hyuuga kun," he said seriously, "may I ask why you are out and about on your own, pursuing an angry mob running through town?"

I shrugged. "Well, my mother is on a mission and my father is probably an enemy of Konoha," I said casually. I felt an unusually confident at knowing the identity of the man under the mask, and it made me feel a bit cheeky in my speech. "And I wasn't pursuing the angry mob. I was pursuing the little blonde genius who managed to accomplish that," I said, pointing to the vandalized Hokage Monument.

I saw Kakashi's eyebrows raise in surprise. "The genius?"

"Don't look so surprised, Wolf-Anbu san," I said, smirking. I relished the fact that I could see under his mask, and was inordinately pleased at the moment with the benefits of the Byakugan. Kakashi just stared at me dryly, so I continued. "How would you graffiti an entire mountain in one night, assuming you couldn't use chakra at all? No wall walking, no shadow clones, no jutsu, nothing. I know I couldn't do it. But with just a five-year-old body and an apparently genius intellect, that blonde kid somehow managed to pull it off. I want to meet him. With a mind like that, his own face might end up being carved into the mountain there someday." I continued to grin at the masked man.

"You just want to meet the kid, huh?" Kakashi said, a bemused expression in his eyes.

"Yeah, who wouldn't want to meet a future Hokage?" I said confidently. "By the way, Wolf-Anbu san, why do you wear a mask underneath your mask? Isn't that kind of useless? If someone like me can look under the first mask, I could look right under the second one too."

Kakashi eye smiled. "Oh? Well, to be a greatninja, you do have to look underneath the underneath, you know. Why don't you try it? We can see if you are a great ninja already."

I smirked and quirked an eyebrow. "Fine, I can just… WHAT?"

I squinted my eyes and focused, looking underneath his facemask, just to find… another mask. And beneath that, another… and another… and another… no matter how deep I looked, all I saw was mask after mask. "That's… impossible!"

Kakashi continued to eye smile. "Ah, sorry chibi Hyuuga kun, guess you aren't a great ninja yet. But I'll give you tip," he leaned in close, bringing his mouth closer to my ear, as if preparing to divulge a secret, and I realized his Sharingan was staring directly into my left eye. "If you see an eye like this one, don't look directly into it," he whispered.

"Genjutsu?" I asked, eyes widening at suddenly realizing what happened. Then I frowned indignantly. "Wait a minute, did you cast a Sharingan genjutsu on a five-year-old kid for no reason? How rude!"

"For no reason?" Kakashi scoffed, affronted. "You were using you're Byakugan to look under my mask. That is rude. If you hadn't looked through my mask, I wouldn't have made eye contact with you. So really, you put the genjutsu on yourself, if you think about it." He nodded his head, as if the argument was decided.

I scowled. "Whatever. Just break the genjutsu! This is ridiculous."

"Hmm. Nope." Kakashi relied glibly. "I think I'll leave you like that until you learn to break it yourself. Consider it a ninja lesson. You can call me Wolf-Anbu sensei from now on. But I think we need to wrap up our little training session, and you'll have to find the little blond hooligan later. We've let him run amok for long enough, and it's time to take him to Hokage sama for his punishment. He'll probably be busy all day and half the night cleaning up his own handiwork."

My eye twitched. "Wolf-Anbu sensei?" I said indignantly, to which Kakashi nodded happily. "You didn't even teach me any- you know what? Never mind. I'll track down the blonde kid later then, Wolf-Anbu sensei. When I graduate, I hope I get a jounin sensei who is more reasonable than you."

Kakashi just shrugged and stepped back into the shadows, instantaneously vanishing out of my vision range. He was good; I didn't even see which way he went. Since Naruto himself was also long gone by now, I shut down my Byakugan as I walked away, heading for the Hokage monument.

I took the long way around to get to the top, knowing I didn't yet have the chakra to walk straight up the sheer cliff face. I had developed pretty good chakra control over the past two years, having practiced sticking leaves all over my body and holding them in place with my chakra. The Byakugan helped immensely in regulating how much chakra I expelled from any and all tenketsu, allowing me to quickly master the leaf sticking exercise. Moving on to tree walking, I had discovered the chakra needed to stick my whole body to a tree was considerably more than what was needed to stick a tiny leaf to my body. So, despite having the necessary control, I was still fairly limited by my childish chakra reserves. There was only so much I could do to increase that, but I took consolation in the fact that I had a little more chakra than most children my age, even the other clan kids.

Naruto, of course, was one of the exceptions. In the short time I pursued him through town, it was easy to see that he blew everyone else his age out of the water, in terms of raw chakra. And as far as I could tell, it was all his. I didn't know what the Kyuubi's chakra would look like, but I figured I would be able to differentiate it from Naruto's normal chakra when I saw it. His chakra today looked completely homogeneous.

I made it to the top of the monument, and decided to practice walking up the trees in the nearby forest while I waited for Naruto to show up to start his punishment. My mother said that using your chakra regularly helps to build your reserves, kind of like working out a muscle, as long as you don't overdo it. Pushing oneself to complete chakra exhaustion sends the body into a kind of chakra shock, and the body barely heals itself rather than grow stronger from the ordeal. The key was to wear yourself out, but not to exhaustion, and allow plenty of rest between training sessions. It was an easy task for a Hyuuga, since we can visibly see our own remaining chakra level to a precise degree, unlike others who had to rely on just the general feeling of being chakra depleted.

I was walking back down a tree for the third time when I noticed Naruto and the Hokage approaching the area. Hiruzen's eyes flicked to me briefly, but he conveyed no surprise or emotion at seeing me there, and instead continued to lecture Naruto about the importance of respecting the Hokage who had sacrificed so much to protect the village. Naruto was begrudgingly listening.

I quickly debated whether I should approach now, or wait until the Hokage left before talking to Naruto. Essentially, did I want to play bold and introduce myself to the most powerful man in the village? Or play shy and nervous, waiting for his departure? The latter was perhaps safer, but fortune favors the bold. I hopped off the tree to drop the last ten feet to the ground and anxiously started approaching the two.

Hiruzen stopped his lecture for a moment to turn to face me, which prompted Naruto to look over and see me as well. "Hello, Hyuuga kun. A beautiful morning to train, but you are a bit far from your clan compound, are you not?" he asked kindly. His demeanor was so gentle. If I didn't know anything of the man, I wouldn't have thought he was dangerous at all. But his hat told another story.

"Greetings, Hokage sama," I said, with my best bow of respect. Being a Hyuuga, it was quite a good bow, if I may say so myself. Just because I didn't like the clan's formality didn't mean I was incapable of utilizing it. "My mother is on a mission, and some of the others in my clan are less than friendly in her absence. So, I prefer walking through the village and finding other places to train. The view of the village from here is worth the effort of the journey."

Hiruzen frowned minutely, barely noticeable. But I was a Hyuuga, and therefore I noticed such things. "I see. Well, it is a beautiful place to train. I even dabble in painting up here sometimes, when time allows for such frivolities. Have you met Naruto kun? I dare say he is about your age," Hiruzen said, changing topics.

Naruto didn't seem to pay attention about our conversation regarding the view of the village, but perked up at being introduced. "Yeah, I'm Naruto Uzumaki, the best prankster in the whole village, and future Hokage! I'm going to be the strongest in the whole history of the world, believe it!" He thrust his arm into the air victoriously, and stared at me as if daring me to challenge him on it.

I smirked a bit, which caused him to scowl. "After seeing you at work, I think I do believe it," I said, taking great pleasure in the way Naruto's jaw dropped comically at my agreement. Even Hiruzen blinked in surprise, not expecting my quick support of Naruto's ambition.

"You… what?" Naruto asked, not used to such a response.

"I have no idea how you managed to pull off such a large-scale prank in one night, let alone undetected," I explained. "Unless you can make clones of yourself, or walk on the wall, or have some other crazy ninja trick, I don't know how you did it. It's ingenious. Once you start training as a ninja, I bet that you will become scary strong. Strong enough to even be the Hokage eventually."

Naruto continued to stare at me open mouthed, before looking up at Hiruzen, and back to me, before his voice finally returned. "Uhh, yeah! You got it… um, what was your name again?" he asked, rubbing the back of his head.

"My name is Tedashi Hyuuga. It is nice to meet you, Naruto san," I replied, gracing him with another perfect Hyuuga bow, though not as low as the one for the Hokage. He still looked distinctly uncomfortable at the show of respect

"However clever his methods," Hiruzen interjected, getting our attention, "it was still a disrespectful act, and your punishment still stands. You have to clean the entire monument, until all the graffiti has been removed. However," he turned his face towards me, looking thoughtful, "perhaps we could get dinner with young Tedashi kun tonight as a break. What do you think?"

Naruto leapt in excitement, saying something about ramen, but the question was really directed at me. "I would be honored, Hokage sama," I replied. "If it seems advisable to you, I will stay here to train today, since my mother won't be back from her mission tonight. You can come collect Naruto and I at your leisure this evening."

The Hokage stared at me for a short moment, his face showing more open curiosity now rather than mere warmness. "Very well, that seems good to me. I will come by this evening. Naruto, I expect to see major progress when I return, or else we'll have nothing but salads for dinner tonight," he threatened.

Naruto looked aghast. "Yes, Hokage-jiji!" he affirmed.

Hiruzen smirked, gave us each a nod of farewell, and headed back down the mountain.

"Well, you better get to work," I suggested, bumping Naruto with my elbow. "I don't want to eat salad tonight either. Maybe Hokage sama will buy me barbeque, and only make you eat salad if you don't get enough done in time."

"What! Do you think he would do that?" Naruto asked incredulously. Apparently, the only thing worse than eating salad for dinner was to have to watch others eat more delicious food while you did it.

"Yep, I wasn't the one who defaced the monument," I said casually. "It was definitely brilliant, but also pretty dumb. People seemed to know it was you right away. You gotta get sneakier."

"Ah, ha ha," Naruto chuckled, a bit sheepishly. "Yeah, they saw me right as I finished, and started chasing me through town. I almost lost them, until that super-fast masked ninja caught me again. I have to train to get faster. What are you training for today?"

I shrugged nonchalantly. "Probably throwing weapons today, mostly," I said. "It doesn't take chakra to throw stuff, so I'll alternate between that and chakra exercises."

"Woah, could you teach me?" Naruto asked eagerly, on the balls of his feet in excitement.

"Not today, you gotta finish cleaning up first," I pointed out. He had the attention span of a goldfish. "But when you finish, I'll teach you. Maybe tomorrow or the day after."

"Yatta! I'm going to clean this wall in no time!" he exclaimed.

I chuckled, and headed back to the forest to start target practice. I had gotten pretty good at basic throwing accuracy, but I also remembered Sasuke and Itachi had a cool little trick of hitting a thrown kunai in midair to change the trajectory to hit an otherwise impossible target. I hadn't made any progress on that technique, but I had my Hyuuga pride. If the Sharingan users could do it, so could I. Time to get to work.

-o X o-

Dinner that night was eaten at Ichiraku's, to no one's surprise. Naruto had done an admirable job at the cleanup, though he would still have to spend most of tomorrow finishing up. It was a lot of mountain to cover.

Naruto was inhaling his Ramen like a vacuum, and the Third Hokage took the opportunity to address me. "So, Tedashi kun, I saw you were training hard earlier today. Why do you wish to become a ninja?" he asked curiously.

I thought about it for a minute. I figured that answering because I want to survive when S rank ninja come to destroy the village wouldn't be a very tactful answer. "I want to impress my clan," I said. It was an honest sentiment. "Many of them look down on me because of my heritage. I want to prove myself to be a powerful shinobi, so that they respect me."

"I see," the Hokage replied thoughtfully. "The need for acceptance is a fundamental human desire. However, being respected and being accepted are not quite the same thing."

I looked at the old man, and noticed Naruto had paused with a mouthful of noodles to do the same.

"You should think about what others want from you, what they want you to become, how they want you to act," Hiruzen continued. "This is how you gain acceptance. But you also need to think about what you want, and even more important, what kind of person you wantto become. You also need to decide for yourself if their acceptance is worth pursuing. Are you willing to become what they want in order to gain their approval? Or are you willing to endure their rejection in order to become the type of person you want to become? It is better to strive to be a certain kind of person, and see who accepts you as such when you get there. They will become your precious people. Physical strength alone will not lead to true acceptance."

Some of the noodles fell from Naruto's mouth, back into his bowl. "Really? I thought if I was strong enough to become Hokage…"

Hiruzen shook his head. "I, the Hokage, have many adversaries, even within the village. Even if I am the strongest ninja in all Konoha, there are some who disagree about who I am, about the decisions I make. They do not like me, even if they respect my strength. You two are very young, but I hope you can understand this. No matter how strong you are, there will be some who disagree with you, who perhaps even hate you. As a ninja, it is important to be strong, but it is more important to be the right person, to do the right thing. Be the type of person who values others, who stands up for his friends, who protects his comrades and village, who always does what is right. That will make you a man of strong character, and I assure you that the right people will accept you for that strength more than any physical power you may possess."