"Mmm... I will do it..."
In the end, Hinata agreed.
Bound and crushed by the water python, the frail girl had no strength to resist. Only when her face had gone blue, her Byakugan bulged, and death loomed close enough to taste did the child sob out the secrets of the Gentle Fist's Eight Trigrams.
Gentle Fist, Eight Trigrams.
A bloodline-grade taijutsu born from the Hyuga clan's piercing Byakugan and exquisite chakra control.
The Eight Trigrams divides along two currents.
Yin and Yang.
Yin covers forms used against taijutsu fighters, such as Tenketsu strikes, Gentle Step Twin Lion Fists, and the Gentle Fist: Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms.
Yang covers forms used against ninjutsu users, such as Eight Trigrams Vacuum Palm, Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven, and Mountain-Crushing Strike.
Gentle Fist: Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms.
When striking with the Gentle Fist, chakra is primed along the meridians of the hands and held there. The instant the palm touches flesh, chakra bursts into the opponent's tenketsu and organs, wrecking structures from within. It is a vicious art.
A shinobi's combat depends on the flow of chakra. Once struck, one's ability to fight is essentially severed. Worse, the Eight Trigrams harms meridians and organs, delicate places that ordinary medical ninjutsu and natural healing rarely mend.
Such cruel precision depends on the Byakugan.
Within the clan there is a traditional training atlas, one hundred and twenty-eight plates in all. The masters who created the Eight Trigrams used the Byakugan to draft power diagrams of bone, muscle and movement.
Each plate corresponds to a flaw an enemy might expose.
By exhausting every common human opening and abstracting them to images, the Hyuga built a library of weaknesses. Memorize the plates, watch an enemy's muscles with the Byakugan, and the moment the body aligns with a charted posture, that enemy has stepped into checkmate. From there you simply follow through and chase them with Eight Trigrams strikes.
Take one clean hit, and the rest cannot be evaded.
Soon the meridians and viscera are in tatters. The victim may live, but life will not be kind.
Revolving Heaven and Vacuum Palm differ from the above.
Chakra is condensed to a high density and vented through every tenketsu. Add rotation and you have Revolving Heaven. Gather it to the hand and release it in a single blast and you have Vacuum Palm.
Neither requires hand seals. Both combine offense and defense and are lightning fast.
They exist to prey on ninjutsu types who need space and time to weave signs.
With a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree Byakugan that laughs at ambushes, with Gentle Fist that punishes taijutsu, and with Revolving Heaven and Vacuum Palm that punish ninjutsu, and with a natural resistance to most genjutsu, the Hyuga have tools to counter every kind of shinobi. No one naturally counters them in turn.
To defeat a Hyuga, you must simply be stronger.
Their taijutsu truly has no gaps.
Konome's heart leapt.
The power Hinata described was everything she had hoped for. Yet a few careful questions later, Konome let her eyes fall shut in disappointment.
Hinata had not even mastered Tenketsu and the Palms sequence. As for Vacuum Palm and Revolving Heaven, she had only heard the names. She had never trained them.
Useless to a terrifying degree.
Konome fixed Hinata's place in her mind.
The Hyuga's Yin and Yang Eight Trigrams are a radical simplification of Kaguya Otsutsuki's abilities.
Yin at its apex becomes Rabbit Hair Needle.
Yang corresponds to the Eighty Gods Vacuum Attack.
Their ancestor took Kaguya's powers and pared them down, then sharpened them for specific enemies. If the Senju stand for Yang and the Uchiha for Yin, the Byakugan is already a genjutsu bane. Yang Eight Trigrams, being overwhelming taijutsu, naturally targets Tailed Beasts and the Mangekyo's Susanoo. Yin Eight Trigrams that ravages the five organs clearly targets the ironclad vitality of the Senju and the Uzumaki.
Strike Yin with Yang, restrain Yang with Yin. The Eight Trigrams truly earns its name.
"C... can I go now?"
Hinata's eyes were wet and pleading.
"Before the final bell, write out the specific training regimen for the Eight Trigrams and hand it to me."
Tears would buy her nothing.
Konome did not fall for that.
Once the training method was in writing, Hinata's handwriting would be proof of leaking secret arts, a chain she could never shake.
Threaten, coerce, leave a handle to hold. In one sweep, Hinata ceased to be a danger and became a conduit for Hyuga resources.
Raised young and trained well, a nature like Hinata's is perfect for a obedient hound.
"Understood..."
"Answer yes."
"... Yes."
Hinata straightened, corrected herself, and submitted more quickly.
Satisfied, Konome wasted no more time.
It was still class, and this was a public restroom. A teacher might walk in at any moment.
"Clean yourself up."
She tossed the line over her shoulder. Konome's true body erased every trace with Water Release, restored her human guise, and left the scene at an easy pace. The rest would fall to "School Konome," who would soothe and handle Hinata, then collect the Gentle Fist methods.
The real Konome had more pressing work.
The shinobi academy had been founded by the Second Hokage to cultivate civilian ninja and extend the clans' control. To secure numbered shinobi status for their own, and to compete for Konoha's power and resources, every clan had to send promising talents into the academy to vie with the heirs of the other clans.
At the same time they had to protect their autonomy. They could not flood the academy and allow the Hokage's hand to close over them. The candidates each clan sent were carefully chosen.
Exceptions happened.
Uchiha Obito, for example. Chosen to represent the Uchiha at the academy, he never escaped the tail-end label thanks to a lack of wits, even if his fighting spirit was decent, and the clan despised him for it.
Each Hyuga generation sent at least two to study.
One was the main family heir. Every clan head's successor had to attend. That rule was the Second's, and none could break it.
The other was the brightest prodigy of the branch family.
This time that prodigy was Hyuga Neji, the branch-house heir.
The original story's first tragic pawn, and the only Rookie Nine to die.
If even Hinata had activated the Byakugan, a genius like Neji certainly had. He was a year ahead of Konome, his classes and floors just above. With a Byakugan's vast field of view, a bored glance in the wrong moment could lay Konome's secrets bare.
After Hinata, Konome would not rely on luck again.
That had been far too passive. Hinata had been frightened into silence. This kind of fortune would not repeat. This time Konome would move first and strangle the danger in its cradle.
Not by killing Neji.
That would be too loud, and besides, a branch-house prodigy shackled by the Caged Bird was born her natural ally.
Hinata was already under her thumb. If she could bring Neji to heel as well, both heirs of main and branch would be hers.
A sinner's blood cast out by the Hyuga would become their true master. The picture alone delighted her.
Neji's pride ran deep.
You could not handle him as you did Hinata.
Konome thought it through, vaulted the academy wall, and by the time she hit the street she had a plan.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don't forget to add this story to your Library, drop a review, and leave a Power Stone if you enjoyed it!
Craving more chapters? Join my Patron to unlock advance releases and dive deeper into the story!
[email protected]/_theon
Change @ to "a"