He spun, and with incredible force, he hurled the shuriken not at Naruto, but at me.
Time seemed to slow. In the original timeline, this was the moment. Naruto would push Iruka out of the way and take the giant shuriken in the back.
A sacrifice that would finally earn him Iruka's unwavering faith and the headband he craved.
But I was not Iruka. And I would not allow Naruto to be a shield.
The fuma shuriken whistled through the air, a death promise spinning towards me. I didn't dodge. I stood my ground. My chakra flared, and the world became a landscape of flowing tenketsu.
"Eight Trigrams: Palms Revolving Heaven!"
I spun. A perfect, violent vortex of chakra erupted around me, a shimmering blue dome of pure defensive power.
The giant shuriken struck the dome and was instantly shredded, its metal fragments scattering uselessly to the ground.
Mizuki stared, his face a mask of disbelief. He had never seen anything like it. The Revolving Heaven was a main branch secret, the ultimate defense of the Hyuga. A technique a genin had no business knowing.
Before he could recover, Naruto was on him. His clones swarmed, a tidal wave of orange jumpsuits and determined faces. But Mizuki was a trained shinobi.
He fought back with desperate fury, kunai and kicks dispersing clones left and right. But for every one he destroyed, two more seemed to take its place. Naruto's stamina, amplified by Kurama, was proving to be a formidable weapon.
Still, Mizuki was landing hits. A kunai grazed Naruto's arm. A kick sent a clone flying. Naruto was fighting with courage, but he was still a kid in a real, life-or-death battle.
It was my turn.
" Naruto-kun, fall back!" I commanded, my voice cutting through the chaos.
He hesitated for a second, then, trusting me implicitly, he and his clones leaped back, creating a wide circle around Mizuki and me.
Mizuki's eyes darted between us, trying to track the greater threat.
He saw me, a small girl, and dismissed me. His mistake.
"Now you die," he snarled, and charged at me. He was fast, but not fast enough.
I met his charge. My Byakugan saw everything. The slight tension in his shoulder before he threw a punch. The shift in his weight before a kick. The flow of chakra to his legs as he prepared to leap. He was an open book.
"Eight Trigrams: Thirty-Two Palms!"
My hands became a blur. Jyuuken. Hakke. Ni juu ni hou. Two strikes. Four. Eight. Sixteen. Thirty-two precise, devastating jabs, each one closing a tenketsu.
I wasn't aiming for vital organs. I was systematically dismantling him, turning off his chakra network one node at a time.
He staggered back, gasping. His movements became sluggish, his chakra flow erratic. He tried to form a seal for a jutsu, but nothing happened. He looked at his hands in horror. He was becoming a normal person, stripped of his shinobi power.
"What... what did you do?" he rasped.
"I showed you what true strength is," I said, my voice cold as ice. "It's not about a forbidden scroll. It's about discipline. Control. And the will to protect what is precious."
I raised my hands again. This was it. The end. No witnesses. No loose ends. The Yamanaka wouldn't find the mind of a traitor to probe.
The Ibiki Morino of Torture and Interrogation would have nothing but a chakra-dead shell. The village would see a traitor killed by a genin in self-defense.
A tragic but closed case. My Naruto-kun would be safe.
"Naruto-kun, avert your eyes," I said softly.
"Hinata...?" he started to ask, confused.
"Eight Trigrams: Sixty-Four Palms!"
I surged forward. Hakke Rokujuu Yonshou! Two. Four. Eight. Sixteen. Thirty-two. Sixty-four.
My hands danced a deadly ballet, each strike a nail in the coffin of Mizuki's life. The final two strikes were aimed directly at his heart and lungs. With a choked gasp, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed to the ground.
He wasn't dead yet, but he was as good as. His chakra network was shredded beyond repair.
His body would fail within minutes.
I stood over him, my breathing calm, my posture perfect.
The clearing was silent. The only sounds were Naruto's ragged breaths and the gentle rustle of leaves.
"Hinata... you... you killed him," Naruto stammered, his face pale.
"I protected you," I corrected, my Byakugan deactivating.
The world returned to normal color, the faint veins receding from my temples. "He was going to kill us. And then he was going to frame you for the theft of the scroll.
You would have been branded a traitor. Hunted. Or worse." I walked over and knelt beside him, my expression softening. "I couldn't let that happen. I will never let anyone hurt you."
I looked into his wide, blue eyes. He saw the sincerity. He saw the devotion. But he also saw the cold, dead efficiency with which I had just executed a man.
He was scared. And intrigued. And, most importantly, he was safe. Because of me.
Then a new presence. A powerful, familiar chakra signature. Iruka. He burst into the clearing, kunai at the ready, taking in the scene with a single, horrified glance: Naruto, surrounded by a small army of dispelling clones; me, kneeling over the body of a fellow instructor, the Forbidden Scroll lying nearby.
"Mizuki! Naruto! Hinata! What in the world is going on here?!" he yelled, his mind struggling to process the impossible tableau.
"He tried to kill us, Iruka-sensei," I said, my voice calm and steady. "He tricked Naruto into meeting him here. He planned to steal the scroll and murder Naruto to cover his tracks."
Iruka looked from Mizuki's still form to Naruto's terrified face to my unnervingly placid one. He saw the truth in my eyes. He saw the dead man on the ground. He saw the proof of Naruto's jutsu, the power he couldn't have possibly learned without the scroll. The pieces clicked into place with a sickening finality.
"Naruto..." Iruka breathed, his heart aching for the boy who had been betrayed yet again.
But this Naruto was not the same boy. "I'm okay, Iruka-sensei," he said, his voice stronger than Iruka expected.
"Hinata... she saved me." He looked at me with an expression that was a tangled mess of awe, fear, and a rapidly growing dependency. "She stopped him."
Iruka walked over and knelt, checking Mizuki's pulse. He found nothing. He looked up at me, a question in his eyes. He wasn't asking if I did it, but how. The technique was far beyond anything an academy student should know.
"He was a traitor to the village," I stated, as if that explained everything. And to me, it did.
Iruka stared at me for a long moment, then at Naruto. He saw the headband that was still tied firmly to my own forehead, a symbol of my new status.
He saw the proof of our abilities scattered around the clearing. And he made a decision. A decision based not on rules, but on the raw, brutal truth before him.
He stood up, walked over to Naruto, and took the headband from his own pocket. The one he'd been saving for this very moment. He reached up and untied the old, worn cloth from around Naruto's neck and tied the new, cool metal plate in its place.
"Naruto Uzumaki," Iruka said, his voice thick with emotion. "By demonstrating the skill and the will to protect your comrades and face down a traitor, you have passed the final test. You are now a genin of Konohagakure."
Naruto touched the cool metal of the plate, a slow, disbelieving smile spreading across his face. "I... I did it." The words were a reverent whisper.
My own smile was hidden, a private, triumphant thing. It was perfect. Better than the original timeline.
Naruto had earned the headband, but the narrative was different. It wasn't about a desperate, last-ditch act of accidental power. It was about a calculated, strategic victory.
And I was the author of that victory. I was the reason he stood there.
***