The Forest of Death.
On the open ground at its eastern edge, rain threaded the air so thickly it felt like mist.
Hyuga Neji shook the wet from his sleeves, tossed his schoolbag beneath a tree for shelter, and picked out a trunk scarred by long practice. He brought five fingers together, palm up. Beneath the white band at his brow, fury pooled in his clear Byakugan until it seemed almost solid.
"Lucky it was not a member of the main house."
Those had been the exact words of Hyuga Kage, elder of the main line. He had said them to his three-year-old son, Hyuga Mirai.
"Who taught you to say that."
"Everyone says it."
The boy's voice had been guileless, no malice, no mockery, only the cold statement of how things were.
It was enough to choke a man.
Rain soaked the white cloth at Neji's brow. The cold threads of water could not soothe the burn of the Caged Bird, just as the band could not hide the brand of his servitude.
A snarl he could not swallow rolled in his chest. Heat flared in his palm as chakra gathered.
"Die."
He struck. Chakra surged from his tenketsu as the glowing palm smashed the trunk.
Thump.
The battered trunk groaned and split anew.
Not enough.
Byakugan, open.
Veins writhed around his eyes. Chakra rioted through his network.
Gentle Fist, Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms.
His shoulders shook. The killing intent in his heart became a storm of palmprints that hammered the trunk, denser than the rain itself.
Bang, bang, bang.
Bark flew. Leaves shredded. Chakra light flickered in the mist, water and wood dust bursting under the shaking force.
Sixteen, thirty-two, forty-seven.
Crack.
Another palm landed. The glow bled wide in his hand. The sound from the trunk was not a tight thud but a slack smack.
Leaves ceased falling. The trunk did not budge.
"Hah, hah, hah."
Neji's palms were scarlet, his arms trembling, his chest heaving.
Forty-seven again.
Sixteen in one breath meant entry. Thirty-two was the ceiling for most branch members. Only when a man could drive sixty-four in one breath was he considered to have truly mastered the art.
Only branch family who had won the main house's favor were granted the right to learn the full sixty-four.
They said the clan head, Hyuga Hiashi, could strike one hundred twenty-eight palms in a single breath and pulp a taijutsu jōnin where he stood.
He was still far off.
He ground the tremor down into a fist and opened his arms again into the Gentle Fist stance. The trunk before him showed yellow heartwood through the flayed bark. It was proof of how long he had worked.
He did not know why he worked so hard.
To break the Caged Bird.
No matter how strong he grew, the Caged Bird would not come off. Every branch member knew it.
They were tools, servants. The stronger they became, the hand that used them found a better grip.
Some in the branch line had resisted by refusing to train. Neji had watched a prodigy of the branch waste himself to mediocrity under the pressure of the seal. Sometimes the boy even came to the field to cajole others into slacking off.
His end had been ugly.
Even those who loafed could reach jōnin through sheer blood, but when the Caged Bird flared the prodigy had rolled on the ground clutching his skull and begged.
His father's choice to die in another's place, the prodigy's high, cracked pleas, these were the deepest fear in Neji's heart.
Blue light rose in his palms again. His tenketsu swelled and left red pinpricks in his skin. The pain was not sharp, but it dulled the ache inside. As long as there was the smallest chance to break the Caged Bird, even if it was a dream, he would not quit.
He did not know how strong he had to be to break it.
He knew only this. If he stayed weak, there would never be hope.
He was still young enough to hope, not yet the despairing genius trapped by fate.
Again.
His gaze hardened. Chakra lit his hands and the Eight Trigrams cascaded into the trunk once more.
Thud, thud.
Deep in the trees, a middle-aged man under a blue umbrella watched from afar, faint light humming in his eyes.
In his sight a black-haired boy in white, rain-soaked, vented his fury on a tree. He still had chakra to spare, but his muscles were engorged with fatigue.
Good.
Konome Taketori admired the smooth flow of Neji's Eight Trigrams. At this age he had driven it to the forty-seventh strike. That already put him miles beyond a certain dunce who could not even memorize the plates.
Yes, she meant Hinata.
Hinata had managed barely a dozen plates and her Eight Trigrams was pre-school level. Neji, only a year older, could already use it in earnest.
No wonder Hyuga Hiashi was disappointed in her.
Even Konome, after seeing Neji, lowered her estimation another notch.
So much the better. This was the kind one could recruit.
Watching the anger show plain on his face, Konome felt her plan would meet little resistance. Emotion was the hardest thing to master in oneself and the easiest handle for others to grab.
She did not know the exact spark of Neji's rage, but it would be the same old triad, branch, main, and the Caged Bird.
Konome was the only non-main Hyuga blood who had slipped the cage. If Neji wanted free, he had only one road, work with her. There was no second choice.
When she finished assembling the atlas and needed field practice, Neji would make a perfect partner. Later, when she learned main-house Gentle Fist secrets, he would be a fine sparring mate.
With Shikotsumyaku braided to the Byakugan, Konome learned anything fast. She counted herself an unrivaled prodigy. Only when Wind Release nature change stymied her had she felt how much of that pride was fluff.
Gentle Fist could not be cheated with Byakugan.
Good. Let her see what her talent amounted to among those for whom Byakugan was ordinary, and whether she could surpass the greatest genius among the twelve.
Thud.
Crack.
Wood chips flew. "Hah, hah." Neji leaned on the trunk, soaked through, long hair in tangles. It was hard to tell where sweat ended and rain began.
Rustle.
The rain-carried breeze worried the leaves into a hiss.
Snap. Snap.
Branches broke under weight. The tread on the loam had a bear's heaviness.
Neji jerked upright, breath checked, and turned.
Not far away, a figure under a blue umbrella stepped through fallen twigs. He let the umbrella fall. The rain that had drummed on the nylon did not fall on him at all, it sloughed aside and slid past.
He came to a stop in front of Neji.
Not a single drop touched him. It was as if even the sky were wary.
Neji found himself stepping back. The danger coming off the man set his chakra on edge.
The man looked at him, smile faint, the calm eyes shot through with unsettling ash.
"Hyuga Neji, care to talk."
"About the Hyuga, the branch and the main, the Caged Bird, and your Eight Trigrams."
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