The Hyuga compound sat on the edge of the village, not too far from where Mo Ke had chosen to live. It was no surprise that a little girl who slipped out on her own could wander as far as the training grounds.
Night had settled. Hyuga Hiashi knelt by a low table, eyes on a steaming cup. Hinata knelt beside him, carefully brewing tea. Earlier that day he had convened a clan meeting. He relayed the village's message about Naruto and then announced something that sent ripples through the room.
Hyuga Jun would be demoted to the branch family for bullying a civilian child and betraying the Will of Fire.
Jun had accepted it. He knew that refusing the brand meant death. The Main House elders, especially the great elder, had howled. Hiashi had anticipated his lack of authority and secured a written Hokage order.
Sarutobi Hiruzen, his reputation already dented, signed the decree without a fuss.
Hiashi savored the memory of the great elder deflating at the sight of the Hokage's seal. A lifetime of tucking one's head eventually makes the turtle real. Strong at home, small everywhere else.
Across the room, Hizashi and the branch members had shed their usual gloom. Whispered conversations, stolen smiles. Hiashi watched and thought.
Must the divide between Main House and Branch truly be beyond remedy?
He had asked Hinata to attend. Mo Ke had summoned him for a nighttime chat, and Hiashi wanted a buffer. The man had been openly gentle with Hinata; perhaps her presence would soften the edges.
Hinata had just filled Hiashi's cup when a young voice rose from the empty cushion across the table.
"Perfect timing. Hinata, pour me one too."
Mo Ke sat where no one had been a heartbeat earlier, the hint of a smile in his eyes as he glanced at Hiashi. Bringing Hinata, were you. Clever. But not clever enough to take a first move off me.
"Okay, Mo Ke onii-san." Hinata's voice turned bright as she tipped the pot.
Mo Ke took a sip. He was no tea expert, but the Hyuga would hardly serve poor leaves to a guest. He clicked his tongue softly, then grinned at Hinata.
"You should call me uncle. You are the same age as Naruto."
"I do not want to. You look young. Only people around Father's age are uncles."
So the shy girl could tease. Mo Ke let it pass. Call me big brother, I call your father little brother; everyone smiles and no one dies.
Hiashi could not wait longer. The boy in front of him looked sixteen, seventeen at most, yet carried a depth that made veterans hold their breath.
"Lord Mo Ke, may I ask why you asked to meet?"
"Nothing heavy." Mo Ke rolled the cup between his fingers. "Two matters. First, I want Hinata as my disciple. I will train her myself."
Hinata, ready to withdraw, sat down again at once, small fists clenched in hope. Hiashi's face turned cautious. Mo Ke went on before he could speak.
"White-eyed Princess is not flattery born of favoritism."
He glanced at Hinata starting to steam with embarrassment and shifted an inch away.
"Hinata's Byakugan is the purest in your clan. Even among the ones on the moon, her eyes merit the title princess."
He tilted his chin toward the bright disc above them. Hiashi's expression twisted into a perfect comic gasp, and Mo Ke felt very pleased with himself.
"Secrets are only secrets to the weak. When your power climbs high enough, you discover the shinobi world has no secrets.
"The old toad atop Mount Myoboku sees the future because its chakra is immense. There is even a place in this world where one can step through past and future."
Mo Ke remembered the line he had once read in a fan note about the Great Toad Sage's foresight being born of chakra volume. True or false, it sounded good here. He also wondered if his arrival had already bent that prophecy. He would pay the mountain a visit.
"Your clan is too closed. The weak should not fear the sky falling. A mere Tenseigan will not end the world, and you flatter yourselves to think it could."
He watched Hiashi's face perform every shocked panel in the book. The Caged Bird mark's official tale was to guard bloodline purity, but fear of Tenseigan likely lurked in the root. Someone on the moon had to have records about how to assemble it; they would not have offered up eyes on a whim.
And the monument there held more than one set. It had been there a long time.
"Did you know the Rinnegan has reappeared? Did you know a Tenseigan has already been born? Do you know how many pairs of eyes, not far from Madara's quality, the Uchiha hold right now?"
He let the bombs fall one by one. Hiashi looked stunned.
"Only the Hyuga congratulate themselves. You bound your own line with a caged brand and called it wisdom. If the Byakugan were pushed to its limit, even without reaching Tenseigan, opening the eyes wide would yield a pressure like what you felt from me yesterday."
Hiashi could accept some of it. But question the ancestors' decree, and the dutiful son in him rose at once.
"Lord Mo Ke, the Caged Bird was set by our founder. Please mind your words. As for Hinata's apprenticeship… when I first heard, I was moved. Truly."
Hinata beamed. The next line wiped the smile thin.
"But the Hyuga are a pillar of the village. The daughter of the clan head taking a master outside the clan invites dangerous guesses. I must ask you to understand my position."
Byakugan that could crush an elite by will alone sounded like telling stories. Even the famed Hyuga Tennin had not done that. And how could Mo Ke know the weight of a clan's politics. Hiashi, who had once mastered Rotation as a youth, stiffened inside. He knew what his eyes could do.
Mo Ke let the cup spin, then drained it in a pull and set it down with a click.
"Hyuga Tennin himself might not beat me. He and I stand on the same ledge. If he returned to life right now I would still tell him where he erred."
He leaned forward.
"How many generations since the Hyuga produced a true Kage-class. Your census is largest. Your bloodline is the most stable because you marry inside. By rights you should be the greatest. But the ones who ruled this world never once treated you as rivals. Did you chant first-clan so long you started believing it."
He flicked the sting away with a smile.
"As for Hinata, I do not ask the village to approve my disciples. But for her sake, we keep it quiet a while. She will stay home a bit longer and build foundation. When the time is right, I will make it public."
Hiashi's shoulders eased. He could not cross the village, and the village could not cross Mo Ke. If nothing would be announced yet, the pressure dropped further. He rose to fill Mo Ke's cup and asked, curious now:
"And your second matter?"
Smart man. "Lord" had replaced "sir" without anyone noticing.
"What do you think of the Caged Bird," Mo Ke asked softly. "Not the tale. Your true thoughts. What do you think of the widening crack between Main House and Branch."
"This…" Too much, too fast. Clan matters belonged inside the clan.
"Do not worry." Mo Ke's tone warmed. "I have no designs on the Hyuga. But Hinata is my student now, and she will be your next clan head. I do not want her inheriting a ruin."
It was not the whole truth. The first door he had come to knock on was Hyuga because of Neji. A prodigy trapped in a cage, who recreated Rotation by himself and died at eighteen. In a world where a moon noble might have chosen him as a brother, fate had pinned his wings.
Hiashi weighed the boy's gaze and nodded. "You likely know our state. I will not pretend. I have doubts about the Caged Bird, and the current distance between Main and Branch troubles me."
Mo Ke understood. In the original history, Hiashi already knew it was not fair. Hizashi should have been clan head. Strength bent by rules dulls all edges.
"Then your remedy?"
Hiashi's fist tightened, hope and resignation warring. He was the head of the Main House and yet to move even an inch was to sink into mud. To brand Jun he had needed the Hokage's banner. To change the law, even a Hokage could not help him. Villages would not suffer leaders to rewrite families.
Mo Ke saw the man who would one day kneel to Neji and apologize, trapped by a machine older than him.
"The brand is not all evil," Mo Ke said. "For the weak, it is a shelter. For your blood, it is a net that held."
"The problem is not restriction. It is fairness. Perhaps in the beginning Branch truly lacked the Main's talent. But the world moves. A Branch child can outshine your Main. A Main child can be a waste. Caging birth and not merit rots a house. Let the brilliant rise and the dull descend, and the brand becomes what it should have been: a shield for the weak and a boundary for your secret, not a blade for your own."
A total repeal was fantasy. Send Hyuga out without any safeguard and every C-rank mission would become A-rank by risk. The Byakugan was too valuable to everything from duels to war rooms, and others could implant it without paying the Uchiha's price.
"I understand," Hiashi said at last. "But the elders who hold the reins will never accept a world where their children may wear the seal. Even if their children are wastrels."
Hinata looked shocked to hear her father speak so plainly. A beat later she realized he was right. Among the Main House children her age, she was the only one who trained in earnest.
"Leave that part to me," Mo Ke said. "From today, pause all brands. Two or three months will do."
Hiashi blanched. "Lord Mo Ke, they are stubborn, but they have served the clan. I worry that…"
"What are you imagining. Do I look like a butcher. At most, a few will die. The Hyuga's strength will not suffer."
He had heard the fear in Hiashi's voice and laughed under his breath. To the clan head, hand it to Mo Ke meant cutting throats by night. Of the lot, only the great elder truly needed to be removed. The rest could bend or be broken more gently.
The shape of Hiashi's mind satisfied him. The man had wanted change once; he had been ground down. With weight at his back, he might lift again.
Mo Ke tossed back the last of his tea and stood.
"That is enough for tonight. Do not worry. When the moment comes, choose rightly."
The moment, the choice. Hiashi repeated the words in his head and rose to see him out.
Hinata could not hide her reluctance. "Mo Ke onii-san, can I visit you later?"
"Call me teacher in private from now on," Mo Ke said, tapping her nose. "A teacher's house is always open to his student. Naruto is your age. Get to know him."
He nodded to Hiashi and walked away. His outline thinned as though a brush were erasing ink, until he vanished into the night like a stroke fading into paper grain.
Hiashi stood frozen. Even disappearing without trace would not have shocked him. But to see a man fade by degrees, like a painter's trick, shook him. He set a hand on Hinata's hair.
He believed a little more in what the boy had promised.
______________________________
If you're enjoying this story and want to read more advanced chapters, you can support me on Patreon: patreon.com/PurgatorialPoet. Your support helps keep the translations coming faster.