In the beaker, the blood looked extraordinarily vivid—like a cut gemstone catching the light, every facet luminous. Though it was already beginning to cool, it still held that quality. She believed it came from the purity of the one who had given it.
The Chimera Technique. As forbidden techniques went, its concept was practically elegant. It could fuse any two living organisms into a single hybrid, combining the advantages of both—and further allowed the practitioner, centered on their own body, to absorb the resulting hybrid and acquire all of its capabilities. According to the technique's description, it could theoretically shatter the natural limits of a human body entirely, allowing its user, like a monster, to enjoy renewed youth and immortality. In practical utility, it arguably surpassed even Orochimaru's Living Corpse Reincarnation.
None of that made it without risk.
Biological rejection between distinct organisms was innate. Even ninjutsu used to force a merger couldn't guarantee complete integration. Under ordinary circumstances this might go unnoticed—but during intense combat, when chakra activity spiked dramatically, the strain could trigger cascading cellular collapse and kill the fusion subject outright.
Danzo, being the kind of man he was, had run extensive trials upon acquiring the technique—and had ultimately shelved it, finding the success rate far too low to rely on. His caution in warning Hinata away from experimenting on herself had been genuine.
Hinata understood this perfectly. Her knowledge spanned two worlds, and she knew exactly how catastrophic gene rejection could be in documented medical cases. Even in a world with chakra—that near-universal energy—the fundamental incompatibility between different bloodlines could not simply be dissolved.
So she had no intention of using her own body or Haku's as a trial subject. Not until she had a viable method in hand. Since she wasn't experimenting on a whole body, using a fragment of one was acceptable.
She cut a small piece from the First Hokage's left ear and dropped it into the beaker alongside Haku's blood. Then watched.
"Then let's see it, First Hokage-sama—what the cells of the strongest shinobi in history actually do."
She said it half to herself. Hinata opened her Byakugan, pressed her hands together, and ran through the seals with precision. The Chimera Technique ignited, supported by the pale-eyed girl's chakra—and the blood and tissue in the beaker convulsed simultaneously, like two sleeping beasts startled awake at the same moment.
Then the fusion began.
Hinata frowned.
In a proper mutual fusion, both elements should have shown activity—movement toward each other. What she saw instead was the First Hokage's tissue operating like a sponge: absorbing every drop of Haku's blood in moments, then expanding rapidly, throwing out tendril-like offshoots from every surface, multiplying like sprouting seeds. Even after Hinata cut off her chakra supply, the tissue kept growing—autonomous, as if driven by its own will.
"As expected. The First is not one to compromise."
She confirmed what she had witnessed, then let her right hand ignite. Without ceremony, she plunged the flames into the beaker. The tissue made a horrible, high-pitched squealing as it burned—like something alive protesting its own destruction—and it didn't stop fighting back for several minutes before it finally carbonized.
One experiment. It was enough.
The First Hokage's Sage cells were, by any measurement, aggressive beyond comprehension. At the cellular level, they didn't fuse with foreign material—they consumed it. Haku's blood, despite carrying the Ice Release Kekkei Genkai, hadn't been able to compete in the slightest. It had been absorbed rather than integrated—feeding the First's cells rather than joining them.
In the original story, there had been a passage where Danzo, losing control of his chakra near the end, found his Hashirama-modified right arm beginning to devour his own body. If it hadn't been severed in time, the cells would have consumed him entirely.
Which meant that unless another element could actively counter the First's cells during fusion, any attempt would simply amount to feeding them.
This was, Hinata thought, like trying to mix paint. If the goal was a new color—neither of the original two—both components had to be present in the right proportion. If one overwhelmingly dominated the other, the result wasn't anything new at all; it was just the stronger color with the weaker one dissolved inside it.
Formidable as the First's cells were, however, all cells operated under a minimum fusion threshold. If before that threshold was reached the First's cells hadn't fully consumed the other cells, they would themselves merge into those cells—forming new, combined tissue.
Danzo's approach had been to crudely graft the right arm containing the First's cells directly onto his own body. Under those conditions, his body tissue could never achieve proper fusion with those cells—which was precisely why losing control meant being consumed.
The Chimera Technique, though it appeared more sophisticated than Danzo's method, was functionally similar—a matter of forcing disparate bodies together through a forbidden scroll, rather than achieving genuine integration. This approach carried the same enormous risk of catastrophic loss of control.
So Hinata had no intention of using either approach. Her real plan was to achieve perfect fusion at the cellular level itself. If the cells could successfully merge at that depth, the resulting tissue would be inherently unified—no rejection, no collapse.
But to accomplish this, she first needed to find a precise ratio—one that would allow the First's Wood Release cells to merge cleanly with Haku's Ice Release cells.
From what had just happened, though, Haku's cells were clearly nowhere near the First's in competitive force. Pitting Haku's cells alone against the First's would be an uphill battle by any measure.
Hinata closed her eyes. For problems that didn't involve pure mathematics, she found she could solve most things by substitution and analogy.
Imagine building a functional team. You have Player A—aggressive, overwhelming. And Player B—fragile, but gifted. Player A will simply dominate Player B if paired directly. That combination doesn't hold.
So you need Player C: slightly weaker than A in raw force, but smarter; slightly stronger than B, but less uniquely gifted. Player C isn't dominated by A, and doesn't fall so far behind B as to be irrelevant. A mediator—not to override either, but to keep both in a working configuration. Like a well-matched middle tier.
That meant...
"Is what I need a third bloodline—one capable of mediating between the First's cells and yours, Haku?"
Still with her arms crossed, Hinata opened her eyes. She looked at the girl sleeping in stillness across from her. A strange smile curved her mouth. She already knew the answer.
Her own blood. Hyuga Hinata's.
In the original story, Hyuga Hinata had been nothing more than the protagonist's devoted supporting character—her combat record wasn't worth dwelling on. But her bloodline, her status as the Hyuga heir, had been hinted at repeatedly throughout the original work, always in oblique terms: the Byakugan Princess, the purest Hyuga bloodline of this generation.
And from where Hinata sat, inhabiting this body, she had noticed it herself. Whatever else could be said, the Byakugan opened effortlessly—as naturally as breathing, with no conscious chakra gathering, no onset delay, no eye fatigue. It was a tool she could activate at will. Among the entire Hyuga Clan, this was extraordinary. Outside of a rare handful of acknowledged prodigies, most Hyuga members could not fully command their Byakugan without deliberate effort—and prolonged use brought eye pain.
That kind of ease, for a bloodline-type Kekkei Genkai, meant one thing: the bloodline purity was exceptionally high.
Tracing the lineage further confirmed it. The Hyuga Clan descended directly from Hamura Otsutsuki—Kaguya's younger son and the origin of the Byakugan bloodline. And across thousands of years of succession, the Hyuga had maintained an extremely high regard for bloodline purity, producing almost no branches at all. In practical terms, the Hyuga Clan today still constituted a nearly unbroken line.
This stood in stark contrast to the Sage of Six Paths' descendants—his bloodline had begun fracturing from the moment his two sons each inherited a piece of it. The Senju, the Uchiha, the Uzumaki—all confirmed branches, all generations of dilution. And even the First Hokage, who had inherited the Sage's Sage Body through the Senju line, was operating with a diluted lineage. In terms of raw bloodline concentration, he could not match the Hyuga.
Using the kunai, Hinata cut her wrist and let her blood flow into the beaker. It met Haku's blood and merged instantly, seamlessly, the way two identical pigments would. No resistance. No hesitation.
"Now I understand. A being like you—something this refined—was never going to survive without someone strong enough to protect her. Your soul chose Zabuza. You chose to leave with him. So be it. But the body you left behind—I'll protect it. And use it."
She placed another small piece of the First's tissue into the beaker. In the dim room, Hinata's pale eyes burned quietly—two still flames, silent and unshakable.
"Forbidden Technique!! Chimera Technique!!"