It was not a good fall. Her hands were numb: she couldn't catch herself and her face banged against the ground with jarring force.
She lay there, dazed, then coughed, once, twice, and forced herself to rise, trembling, fingers leaving a tracery of blood against a block of limestone green floor. Above, in the sparsely inhabited stands, the only spectators were her fellow genin, the judges and the instructors. They were deathly quiet.
"Why do you stand?" cousin Neji asked.
Hinata sucked in a greedy breath and rose slowly, creakingly up past her knees. Her limbs were aflame as she took up the classic stance: muscles deprived of chakra acted very nearly like muscles deprived of oxygen; her eyes, meanwhile, were painfully hot, coils pulsing with pent-up energy. Breathing hurt. She knew what a healthy heart looked like. Hers was not. It beat sluggish, irregular, too many associated tenketsu plugged, pressure uneven and dangerously unsteady.
When she coughed, the spittle which dribbled down her chin was bloody.
"If you keep pushing yourself, you'll die," cousin Neji said.
Maybe, thought Hinata, trying not to gasp for breath. But the difference was today was, someone important was watching her. The difference today was-
"YOU CAN DO IT, HINATA!!!!"a blond boy screamed from the stands.
-the difference today was, she wasn't going to give up.
She smiled as her opponent ground his teeth, annoyed.
They rushed at each other once more, two users of the gentle fist. It was almost a dance. Strike, block, strike, block, back and forth, no strength wasted, no savage blows, just violence and energy exchanged with painful precision. With her own chakra mostly inaccessible, she could not attack, but she could deflect. Three exchanges passed, then four, then, upon the fifth, when hope had stirred, when she began to think of what she could do with the tools at hand, she felt a blow spike through her guard, hit her chest and something went ba-dump and ruptured.
Once more, she felt a moment lacking weight, followed by a bruising impact against the ground. Her heart stuttered agonizingly in her chest.
"You don't understand anything," her opponent said, coldly contemptuous. "From the beginning, your attacks have done nothing."
'I know,' she wanted to say. 'That's not the point,' she wanted to say. 'I need to change,' she wanted to say. 'I have changed,' she wanted to say. Instead, she struggled back to her feet, taking long, long seconds to pick herself up. Her vision wavered.
"It's not over…"
His eyes were cold. "It is. You can barely stand. You can only push yourself so far. It is time to admit it: you are weak, Hinata Hyuuga. You are weak and this will not change. People do not change. That is your Destiny. Let go of your suffering."
Her knees buckled. She wanted to. Truly, she did. What would Naruto say? Probably 'That's crap!' or 'If that's Destiny, I'll beat it to a pulp!'
But she couldn't refute cousin Neji. Not like that.
"Aren't you…" her voice cracked and broke into a long series of bloody coughs, echoed by the proctor. "Aren't you the one suffering the most… cousin Neji?"
Neji snapped, hands blurring with a blue haze of chakra as he sprinted towards her.
Four jounins leaped to stop him.
Inconceivably, they failed. The blow stopped her heart, and sent her spinning to the ground, in so much pain all she could do was try to breathe. Four jounin were wrapped around him and spoke in that very calm, very even way that suggested they were fine when they most definitely were not and even cousin Neji seemed to be in shock.
As she struggled, Hinata wondered, distantly: 'I hope… I…'
Then she took her Second Breath.
It was like breathing in the world.
Energy suffused her limbs while wild, impossible memories attacked her mind's eye. She coughed, spraying blood across the ground. A cold, silvery heat kindled itself near her heart. She didn't know how, but the world changed.
Fingers slammed into stone.
"It's… not… over…"she panted.
"Hinata," Kurenai said, as alarmed and relieved as she had ever heard her jounin-sensei, turning away from Neji whom she held, "you need to-"
The words died away, stillborn.
Hinata rose. Leaking through the pores of her skin, silver light eddied from her like smoke out of a pipe. Her chakra coils, usually a soft lavender, had been choked off by Cousin Neji's barrage of attacks, began to be overlaid by a network of silver that started near her heart and quickly spiraled throughout her body.
It was chakra, but not. Something else. Something more.
With a sound like a cork popping, she felt one of her tenketsu flare open, the plug formed by Cousin Neji's chakra unable to stay closed in the presence of so much raw power. Then, like it had released the floodgates, one by one they all started to go. Cousin Neji's eyes widened.
"Maa, this is embarrassing," said Naruto's jounin-sensei, a book in one hand, the other clamped around Neji's wrist.
She took an unsteady step forward. The jounin-senseis relaxed, let go.
"It's not over," she growled.
"FUCK HIM UP!" Kiba shouted excitedly while Shino whispered encouragement, below his breath.
"GET HIM! HINATA!!!!" screamed Naruto.
She wiped the blood beading at her lip, smiled and set herself back into her familiar stance.
Silver and lavender fire poured out of her soul.
----
The first blow knocked Neji off his feet and nearly into the stands.
There had been no art to the blow, just simple, decisive strength.
"You-"
She didn't give him time to voice the mingled fear and outrage in his eyes. Always, she had fought him on the back foot, one step behind, too weak, too timid, too slow.
Not anymore.
She jumped – too far, too fast – the ground beneath her feet rising in a cloud of expanding yellow-brown dust, pelting her feet with shards of the great big cobblestones that underlaid the arena. Wind and noise howled into the stands, blowing back hair and loose clothes, and causing several of the spectators to put their arms up to shield their eyes.
Their loss.
She hit him again.
It had been an impossible blow, delivered before the consequences of the last had been fully realized, from a distance that exceeded Hinata's physical reach, from a position one could at best call ridiculous.
Neji deflected it.
They landed, near simultaneously, in the stands: Neji gracefully, feet alighting on the fenced railing, chakra permitting him stand perpendicular to the floor, herself crashing through it to land with bruising force on the wall, cracks radiating from her feet, shards of plaster and dust speckling her clothes.
"Holy shitting-" said a heavily bandaged sound genin, the last man standing in his team, his one eye widening visibly as he reared – oh so slowly - away
Before she could apologize, Neji was upon her, forcing her to guard as his fingers slammed into her suddenly upraised arm, a plug of his chakra seeking and failing to find purchase among her tenketsu. Her leg swept out instinctively moving to deny him his ground, he hopped over it, sending another barrage of gentle fist strikes her way as he did so.
"Cousin Neji," she bit out, fist shining with argent light, blood dribbling down a corner of her mouth, canines sharper and longer than she remembered, "that - that will not work anymore."
His eyes widened, then, as if caught in such a disgraceful act, narrowed in concentration.
She punched.
Distantly she saw the Sound-genin, caught in the wake of her attack, get blown backwards as parts of the fenced railing crumpled, dry paint and plaster cracking off the wall in fist-sized chunks, the sheer physical might of her blow an attack all of its own.
Neji caught it again, deflecting it sideways, his blue-white chakra hazing the air. Passing air ruffled his long hair.
She stared.
He punished her for her audacity to spend her limited attention so frivolously, his hand curled up into a fist as it slammed into her solar plexus. Air exploded past her lips as she sailed out of the Sound stands: his punch had nowhere near the strength of her own, but he was a genius and his jounin-sensei a superlative taijutsu master. His form was perfect.
She tried to re-orient herself and choked back a cry as, in mid-air, another blow thundered into her back.
This time, when she hit the ground, she felt something crack.
Blurrily, she saw his feet as he landed lightly before her.
Somewhere, Naruto and Kiba were cursing Neji until they were blue in the face, but that was somewhere else, somewhere far, far away, where her heartbeat didn't thunder in her ears, and her own whirlpool of chakra didn't threaten to overwhelm her. Her fingers extended, claw-like, scrabbling slowly at the ground, silver lingering upon her fingertips.
It wasn't over.
It wasn't over.
"You are n-"
The height of rudeness, not to let him finish, not when he had so graciously given her the opportunity to collect herself, but she still launched herself at him.
He was ready for her.
"Kaiten!"
This time, it was her turn to go flying, a pebble caught on the edge of a hurricane. For all his fatalism, for all his hatred, for all his cruelty, she could not help but feel admiration towards her cousin. For Neji to master the heavenly spin, the Hyuuga's ultimate defense without the tutoring of a main branch member, his genius was as vast as hers was shallow.
She flipped in mid-air, landing on her feet, skidding nearly twenty feet as she bled momentum.
Neji regarded her, calm and unperturbed, one arm raised, palm towards her, the other at the level of his waist, the classic beginning pose of the Eight Trigrams Stance.
"I was… wrong. You are not weak, Hinata-sama. If you push yourself any further, I will no longer be able to hold back."
She grinned. Somehow it felt like the chains of the past dozen years had fallen away, leaving her both exposed and liberated, her weaknesses scoured by her new strength. "P-please do not trouble yourself on my account, C-cousin Neji."
"Ha! You tell him!" Kiba shouted.
"Very well. Prepare yourself."
The ground cracked beneath her feet as she shot forwards, her passage digging a furrow into the ground. Neji moved with more grace and less power, the flight of a swallow to her fusillade of fire and thunder.
But that did not make him slower than her. Sometimes a swallow outflew the storm.
While not every blow she dealt left shattered concrete and howling winds in its wake, each had more than enough power to end the fight, whereas his blows were all perfectly normal, all perfectly, painfully average, two users of the gentle fist, forced, for different reasons, to rely on the brute force of a strong fist style, one of them clearly more suited to it than the other.
But for all her strength and fury, she could not touch him.
"You… truly are… amazing… Cousin Neji," she said.
He grunted, dove under another earth-shattering blow, and clipped her chin with a lightning palm thrust that she only barely dodged, before transitioning to a half-kaiten that she was forced to leap away from.
"Why do you rail against your Destiny?"
Their exchange of blows was by now a constant staccato of violence, different from an Academy spar only in their volume and consequence.
"I-" she began. "I… like I said... I want to… change."
A flash of silver fire accompanied her words and fist, following him through an impossible twist in space which he neatly dodged.
"People cannot change."
"You-!"
He kicked her in the midriff, doubling her over and interrupting her outburst. He followed the kick with another: she hit the ground rolling, and made it to her feet in one smooth motion.
"For all your sudden strength you remain the same person. You do not wish to fight, merely impress."
His disgust was very nearly a physical thing, roiling off him in waves.
"No, I-"
"Allow me to show you the difference between us." His stance changed, hands and arms sweeping into a new formation, one she had seen so many times before. Still, there was something subtly different, subtly off about it.
"You are in the range of my divination."
Hinata frowned. "Th-that won't-"
She was struck twice.
Her eyes widened.
Four times.
A dull ache had begun to throb where Neji had hit her.
Eight times.
Pain, minor, annoying, fatally disruptive, erupted like noxious blisters over the surface of her skin.
Sixteen -
Her fist slammed into the side of his face, but not nearly deep enough and by now every move she made tingled with phantom pins and needles as if her limbs had fallen asleep one and all. Still, it interrupted the barrage, forcing him to dance back as he spat a glob of bloody saliva, his sneering smile full of crimson teeth.
"Is this how the Heiress of the Main House fights?"
Hinata didn't answer. She could barely squeeze close her fist it was trembling so badly.
He hadn't blocked her tenketsu, which were as bright as ever, so what was it that Cousin Neji had done?
She breathed in.
Did it matter? She could still move. That meant it wasn't over.
She breathed out.
Slowly, her fists relaxed into open palms. Licking her lip, she swept a shaky leg backwards, raised one hand palm forwards, and kept the other one low, at her waist.
Her cousin breathed deep, flaring his nostrils.
They both kicked off the ground, hurtling towards each other.
-----
Kakashi had both eyes open.
They weren't both his, but life was a bitch like that sometimes. Besides, he could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he had found it instructive rather than amusing to watch two genins fight.
That the current fight was both, well, that just gave him incentive.
He was one of the few, he knew, who could make out the shape of the young Hyuuga's seething silver chakra, both dark and deep, ancient in a way Naruto's passenger was ancient, horrifying in a way that made Gato's jibe about Zabuza being a baby devil very nearly true, a thing of twisted moonlight and tarnished silver with far too many hideously overgrown teeth and milk-blind eyes.
Curious.
At his side, the Leaf's most surprising genin was busy yelling equal parts encouragement and trash talk while his teammate alternately dunked on him and tried to join in.
Team Gai, despite having an actual teammate down there, was comparatively quiet, Lee watching in rapt attention whereas Tenten was holding on the railing hard enough to make her forearm muscles stand out and leave her knuckles white.
Next to him, Gai said, low: "She has the strength of a Sage."
Kakashi nodded. It was a perfectly fair assessment, if unforgivably incomplete. Like the slug princess on a drunken bender the sheer strength the Hyuuga heiress was mindlessly tossing around was almost as visually impressive as it was excruciating to watch.
In her defense, she did have her moments.
"Have you noticed…?" he began.
A slight, indignant nod of his head – of course he had. Below them, Hinata's fist flickered, folding time and space like an old shirt in its quest to reach her opponent.
At first, he had been certain it was a genjutsu of some sort. As he had continued to watch, it became increasingly clear that every fourth or fifth blow from the Byakugan Princess involved time-and-space taijutsu. He shook his head, sighing to himself. If it had been anyone else…
"What a waste."
Gai tapped the side of his nose knowingly. "I think not."
"Mm?"
"Hers is not the conviction of an idler. It is the raging passion of youth in full bloom!"
Gai's voice, not easily suppressed, was on the upswing when, fortunately, it transitioned into a topic everyone had learned to reflexively ignore.
"Yeah, she is!"
…nearly everyone had learned to reflexively ignore.
Kakashi watched with mounting horror as Naruto and Gai turned towards each other, looking like they would begin the worst sort of alliance. With surgical precision, he cut through their budding bromance.
"You trained your student well," he said, pointing down towards the long-haired Hyuuga, who was currently spinning like the world's most dangerous top.
"You're that bastard's sensei?!" squawked Naruto who could really work on honing his basic observation skills a bit more.
Gai shrugged. "I am. He is much like your sensei was at his age."
Naruto transferred his outraged look to Kakashi. "An asshole?"
Gai coughed into his fist. "A genius."
"I think I was both those things," put in Kakashi thoughtfully. "It's curious how often they overlap."
Naruto gave that answer a look of such utter contempt that Kakashi probably would have felt hurt if not for the fact that he had confronted Orochimaru not fifteen minutes prior. Good luck getting through that mental trauma, kiddo.
"You're a lazy pervert!"
Owch. Touche, brat, touche.
His fellow jounin-sensei shot him a blinding, twinkle-eyed grin as he then turned to Naruto and said, solemnly: "You would know better than I, my hip and youthful rival's hip and youthful student!"
Naruto seemed oddly embarrassed by this, ducking his head down and gazing back at the ongoing match. A good thing too: the end was approaching. Neither of the two fighters below could maintain this frenetic output: one way or another the battle was going to end.
When it did, with a stupidly fantastic finale, blowing out half the lights in waves of shattered glass and leaving a crater in the middle of the arena that would do credit to a ninja taking their jounin exam, he sighed.
Life was about to become really, really stupid.
-----
Ino had never seen Shikamaru so at a loss for words before, and she'd been there for when Chouji had told them that he was going to teach them his clan's secret techniques in a transparent attempt to trick get them to go to more barbeques.
"What the fuck," he finally said.
"Language," she admonished. Despite her best efforts, there was maybe a shade more spite in there than there should have been. Dear, sweet, forgettable Hinata had gone and left not only the kunoichi, but the rest of their graduating class in the dust. Her own tie with Sakura had become, in one stroke, something of an embarrassment.
Not that she wasn't proud of Forehead Girl – there was a lot to admire there. Konoha didn't raise no quitters.
He sighed, massaging the bridge of his nose. "This is going to be trouble."
"Why?" asked Chouji, good stress munching on chips in the half-dark.
"Well, first, the jounins messed up, stopping the fight before it was actually over."
Oh. Yeah, they had, hadn't they? Even Asuma-sensei, who didn't usually jump the gun like that. Or at all.
"Second," he gestured towards the opposing stands, "I think Hinata accidentally took out the last Sound genin when they were fighting in the stands."
"There isn't actually a rule against attacking a competitor other than your opponent while fighting in the preliminaries," Ino pointed out.
Of course, that was because under normal circumstances, the jounin-sensei in charge of their genin would make you spit your teeth through your nose if you even looked at their students funny. Sound's jounin-sensei had mysteriously and conveniently absented himself, which was unexpected good fortune on the part of the two Hyuugas, but didn't make what they'd done any less ballsy.
"Maybe. But it means we're down to three remaining contestants. Lee, that crazy sand guy and Chouji. If it's the redhead-"
"Not fighting him," Chouji mumbled between increasingly frantic munches. He took a fresh bag of chips out of a pocket he'd secreted it into.
"Good boy. Third, the arena's toast. Not a big deal-" as he spoke, the Hokage slammed his cane into the ground. There was a flash of gold, then a wave rippled out from the impact point, washing through the arena, restoring everything but the most cosmetic of damage in a display of power more impressive than that which had wrecked it. "Okay, apparently not a deal at all, scratch that."
"Fourth?"
"The Hyuugas tied."
Ino thought back to that ridiculous final exchange.
"So wh-"
Before he could answer her question, the screen announcing the match-ups flickered to life, displaying the names of the next round.
Gaara of the Desert vs Chouji Akamichi
The bag in Chouji's hand popped explosively, scattering bits of chip everywhere.
-------
Hinata woke.
A mistake. It was like every one of her muscles was screaming at her: she couldn't even breathe without it hurting. She cracked open a bleary, painfully hot eye.
The fluorescent lighting of an unfamiliar hospital room stabbed into her retinas. There were flowers by her bedside. Sunflowers: her favorite.
So she'd lost, then.
It was… over.
She swallowed past a sudden, thorny lump in her throat. Tears, hot and thick, crept into her eyes before running down her cheeks. Sitting up, she felt her muscles knot and spasm rebelliously as sweat broke out on her brow and the world swam with alarming blurriness. A clumsy hand found the edge of her bedside table and knocked over a jug of water, shattering it.
She closed her eyes, swaying and shaking.
Then, letting out a quiet, high-pitched scream of frustration, she slammed her fist into the wall.
It broke.
Exactly half a second later, a startled Shino-Kiba duo thundered into her room. Hot on their heels, medical personnel followed, in full ANBU gear, animal facemasks at the ready, flak jackets hidden beneath lab coats, looking less ready for a medical emergency and more ready for war.
The surprisingly martial medical personnel took in the scene: four (4) cracked and damaged windows in the private hospital suite, one (1) broken wall, cracks radiating from a hole that a child could fit through, three (3) startled patients looking in from the other side and one (1) heiress of a major clan babbling apologies and three (3) jackass teammates doing nothing to help.
Well, no, that was inaccurate, Shino was covering the hole with a sheet being maneuvered into place by his kikaichu. Kiba and Akamaru, however, were alternately trying to give her a fist bump and a slobbering lick.
"-an! That fight rocked!"
"U-um?" she replied intelligently.
One of the ANBU shooed Shino away, hands blurring into seals before slamming both hands against the wall. It slowly began to reform, wooden slats growing to patch the hole.
"Are you kidding me? A mutual K.O. against that guy?" He leaned over, finally punching her shoulder when it was clear that she was too distracted to return a fist bump. "You were amaz- oh shit, my bad."
Biting back a grimace, Hinata smiled weakly as her teammate backed away. "It's – I think it's chakra exhaustion." Which didn't feel close to true, but was the only thing that really made sense.
Then the full import of his words hit her.
"W-wait, m-mutual…?"
"You really threw your all into that fight, huh?" Kiba asked sympathetically.
"I- I- I don't understand. Mutual K.O.…?"
"You tied with your cousin, the result much like the match with Haruno and Yamanaka," put in Shino who was quietly holding out a tissue. She took it quickly, wiping her face.
"I… I did?"
"Oh yeah, it was nuts. But you were the last one standing," put in Kiba loyally. He threw an annoyed look at the faceless ninja behind him who had not dispersed and were instead sort of hovering behind them like ninja chaperones, before continuing on: "You blew that bastard into the wall."
She blinked again. "R-really?"
"Oh yeah, but then you kind of fell over, so, hence, the mutual K.O."
Hinata nodded, frowning. "Ah… hah?"
She could see the curiosity on their faces – even Shino's, but with the audience, her teammates knew better than to ask sensitive questions like: 'How did you become so strong?' Or 'What the heck was that? I thought the gentle fist couldn't be countered!' Which was all the good, because she didn't know the answer to them either.
When Kiba did ask a question, it was not any of the ones she'd expected.
"So what's with the uh," he gestured vaguely, before tapping his forehead, right above his nose.
"Uh?"
She touched her own brow, confused. It felt like there was a bruise there, or even a wound, skin opening directly up on bone. She opened her eyes wide, then squeezed them shut, grimacing: activating her Byakugan would be a bad idea.
"I…what is it?" she managed.
"Here-" said Kiba, picking a mirror off the bedside table and handing it to her.
She stared. There was a pure white, softly shimmering stone, maybe the size of a grape, embedded in her forehead.
An instant and an eternity passed as she stared at that bewildering, damning brilliance.
Then, she turned to her teammates.
"So w-w-what about the final test? Did you already d-do it?" The mirror cracked as she clumsily returned it to the bedside table. Uncharacteristically, Shino looked towards Kiba, who also looked towards him, both hesitating. Finally, Shino spoke.
"The final test is another tournament. Two weeks before it occurs, you will have to fight your cousin in another match. Why?"
"Because the jounin-senseis effed it up," Kiba said, a little too brightly.
"Because," Shino said, "the results of your match were invalidated due to interference on the part of our senseis. The winner will fight in the final tournament, held a month from now."
"I'll fight c-cousin Neji a-again?"
Again, they traded looks.
"Not… exactly."
-----
"This is ridiculous," said Kurenai flatly.
A while after the preliminaries to the Third Test had concluded, the jounins-senseis and test proctors had retreated to the observation room in which they'd watched the second test, accompanied by no less a figure than the Hokage himself. Behind them, the feeds of the various cameras that had been set up in the Forest of Death played in fuzzy black-and-white on television screens.
Once upon a time, Kurenai had dreamed about being here, of having access to the ears of the mighty, of taking part in things that mattered.
Now that she was here, she had to admit, the things that mattered were surprisingly petty.
"Group combat?" she continued, trying and probably failing not to spit fire. "Hinata vs Neji vs Dosu vs Lee? This is blatantly unfair."
"I have to agree," said Kakashi. He pointed his ever-present book in her direction. "That girl of hers is going to steamroll her opponents. At least give her a bigger handicap."
She shot him an irritated look that said: 'I will kill you. Slowly.'
His visible eye creased annoyingly in reply.
"Neji and Lee would never act so dishonorably as to gang up on a peer during an honest competition!" Gai said, protesting loudly. Then he added, unconscious of any contradiction, nor, apparently, the stunning lack of group cohesion he had instilled among his team: "Also, Lee has declared Neji to be his eternal rival: he would only aid Neji insofar as he could fight Neji at his full strength!"
It was tempting to just say: "See!" and be done with it, but Kurenai resisted.
"What I want to know is why this farce of a chuunin test is taking so long," asked Anko. "Because c'mon, a month until we get to the final tournament matches? That's way too fuckin' long. Just have the finals take place right after the last preliminary match in two weeks and be done with it."
Thanks for nothing, Anko.
"I understand why Hinata and Neji should fight again," Kurenai said, with what she considered admirable patience, "and I understand too why the sound genin should be allowed the opportunity to fight with Lee, but why put them all in the same match? To have three of the leaf in the same match as just one of the sound, you know how people are, they're going to read too much into it."
"Perhaps they are meant to read into it," said Asuma, who was tapping his unlit cigarette on the table, staring hard at the Hokage. "Because Yuuhi's right, the most reasonable course of events would be to simply redo their matches, not suddenly upend the format. Worse, having two of the contestants from the same team, even without the genin from sound, it reeks of partiality. What's really going on, Lord Hokage?"
All eyes turned to the man in the big hat, who had put it down in favor of working a lit match into his pipe.
"Officially," he said, shaking out the match before taking a few puffs, "the format favors Team Gai's pupils because they have shown themselves to be most worthy of advantage. The match was interfered with in Hinata's favor, while the sound genin Dosu was knocked out due to his own carelessness."
Kurenai frowned. The way he had worded that…
"That's the official story?" said Hayate, clearing his throat.
"Well, no," said the Hokage irritably, waving his pipe, "make something reasonable sounding up, the official story is for the genin to piece together for themselves – or not. It's a chuunin test. Besides, all three of the leaf are worthy of inclusion into the final tournament, I see no reason not to the let them show off a bit."
"We could do it normally, one on one," Asuma pointed out. "The Hyuuga are prickly enough as it is and this matchup is…"
"Going to make them look astonishingly good," the Hokage said dismissively. "Besides, we can't do it normally, not without robbing the final tournament of its impact. This… let us call it an exhibition match, is meant to whet their appetites for the main event."
Which was on the face of it more than a little ridiculous, Neji and Hinata were solid candidates for strongest genin, period, there wasn't going to be a match that outshone theirs. Having added participants was hardly going to dim or polish the luster of their fight.
"And unofficially?" preliminary test proctor asked, coughing into his fist.
The Hokage puffed his pipe one more time, before setting it down on the table before him, eyes suddenly hard. "We are going to see how Sound reacts."
Ah, thought Kurenai.
"You have heard, of course, of Orochimaru's interference."
"Yeah, we agreed that if it was valuable enough for him to attempt sabotage, it was valuable enough for us to continue," said Anko, looking none-too-pleased by her own words. "Which is gonna bite us in the ass, you mark my words."
"Yes, well, Kakashi confirmed that there are traitors in the Leaf," said the Hokage heavily. "Another attempt was made on Sasuke Uchiha earlier today – the three ANBU stationed to guard him in the hospital were killed – by one of our own."
Ice crawled up Kurenai's spine. Before this, Orochimaru's actions had been covert enough that they did not actively go past the established norms of routine sabotage and espionage that were part and parcel of chuunin exams – even the cursed seal placed on Sasuke Uchiha was not so horribly far out of the normal that it could be considered an act that might trigger the outbreak of another Great War.
This, however, represented an escalation that could give a Great Village like the Leaf cause enough to crush Sound. And once that happened, regardless if the Leaf made good on that or not, the carefully laid truces, alliances and treaties that had supported the peace of the past decade would all come crumbling down.
"And I presume the culprit escaped?" asked Ibiki, frowning. "Who was it?"
"Kabuto, one of the genin taking part in the exam," said Kakashi insouciantly. "Slippery fellow. Take him seriously."
That he had gotten away from Copy-Eye Kakashi was all the warning needed, really.
"There will be others," said the Hokage. "Before the tournament begins, they must be rooted out and destroyed. Gai, you have least experience with counter-intelligence work, as such, I hope I can trust you to lend a hand training any of the leaf genin who might require it."
"Of course! And if I can't I will train the entire Academy in the way of-"
"I'm sure you'll do fine," said Kakashi hastily. "So, given Sasuke appears to be Orochimaru's target, I'll take him somewhere fun and see who else crawls out of the woodwork."
The Hokage nodded.
"I'll go through the records again," sighed Asuma. "Accounting for Kabuto, this time. Though I doubt anything will turn up."
"Then I will observe the foreign shinobi," coughed Hayate. "It is unlikely that anything will turn up, not with such heavy monitoring of their activities anyway, but… it is another route Orochimaru might take."
"I'll go at it from a different angle," said Kurenai who was, she had to admit, better suited to this type of work than the majority of the jounin at the table. Minus Kakashi, but he was being his famously lazy self, so, still her. "Orphans and orphanages seem to be something of an obsession of Orochimaru's – I'll start there."
"Give the lady a cookie, I'll start there too," said Anko. "It'll be like a trip down memory lane."
"I will follow up on Sound and how they react to the news," said Ibiki.
"And I shall train the genin to flow with the power of youth!" said Gai, fist-pumping.
"Excellent," said the Hokage. He rose, and with him seemed to rise a great mountain, ready to spew ash and fire. "With your help, I will hunt down Orochimaru."
"Now get to it. We have, at most, a month."
-------
The clock ticked.
In the silence of Hinata's hospital room, empty now, except for her, the noise was shatteringly loud. The broken windows had been boarded up, and the lights turned off, leaving the room half-shrouded in shadow. Something tickled her palm, she looked down: a single kikaichu crawled up her thumb: she smiled at it, weakly, before tucking it away in her hair.
Next to her bed, the broken mirror shone weakly with jagged, reflected light.
She moved to push it face down, then stopped, hand trembling.
Do not deny the truth you see before you because it is undesirable.
"I know," she murmured.
A half dozen fractured Hinata's mouthed along with her, the light on their brows evidence of her… she didn't know what it was. Injury? Mutation? Poisoning?
She turned away.
She had heard that in other countries, bloodlines were revered. And in others, abhorred to the point of death. Not so in the Leaf. In the Leaf, you were something not quite monster, and not quite man. And now, now she was not quite a Hyuuga.
She was forced to clamp a hand around her wrist, which badly wanted to shake.
Cousin Neji might get his wish after all: Father had never bothered to hide his disdain for his eldest daughter. An excuse such as this – and it was arguable if it even was an excuse, there were rules, passed down since time immemorial, as to who was worthy to inherit – would be more than enough to disown her.
Frustrating. She had – she had power now.
But so did many others. That did not make them worthy of inheriting the Clan.
And this pittance of power would hardly be impressive enough to overturn the traditions of two score and more generations. And worst of all-
'-remain the same person. You do not wish to fight, merely impress.'
-it was a power shackled to her.
Before she could think it through, she brought her hand up in the modified snake seal, veins bulging across her face and around her eyes.
"Byakugan!"
Her vision expanded, taking in the length and breadth of the Konoha General Hospital for just an instant, leaving her half-formed impressions – pigeons roosting on the roof, an orderly tripping over a poorly placed extension, an ANBU operative absently petting a dog, a young boy with a breathing mask over his face – before they narrowed in on the room, then narrowed further, focusing on the single shining figure within it.
If she could blink, she would have. She was definitely not suffering from chakra exhaustion.
If anything, she had too much.
The chakra at her hara, her navel, where chakra was molded and formed, was astonishingly solid, a bar of pure light where there was usually a mere suggestion of lavender energy. She'd only seen such vigorously developed chakra coils before in senior ninja… and Naruto.
She saw her coils pulse and quickly moved on from that thought.
She followed the flow of her chakra from her hara up the governing meridian to the branching meridians in her skull, then down to those in her limbs. Besides the obvious strength of the chakra pathways, it was, in all respects a normal, healthy, well-developed chakra system. Even the strange stone upon her brow seemed to be composed purely of organic matter and normal chakra.
Had her… she wasn't sure what to call it - second chakra seemed so childish and insubstantial a name – integrated with her existing chakra network? She could see the faintest traceries of silver, but strangely enough, it existed outside of her chakra network, residing instead within her musco-skeletal system. She looked closer: magnifying her vision, watching as the traceries became a string and then a rope and then a road, flowing from cell to cell, permeating each to such an extent it became hard to tell whether it was something foreign to her cells, or being produced by them.
She wished, briefly, that she had fought harder to learn the skills of a medic-nin, even if it was not seen as a proper occupation for an heiress to the Main House. She'd at least know enough to know whether or not to be concerned.
She focused closer on the stone, looking closer, looking deeper, there seemed to be something there, something that looked like –
She blinked.
Neji stood in front of her, bruises purpling the arm not covered in bandages. She nearly stumbled – she was standing again. Around her, the glare of the stadium-grade lights shone down from the ceiling. Around her was the arena, the Sound observation area devastated, the grounds cracked and broken in places, evidence of sudden, too violent motions.
"You are in the range of my divination."
"What?" she said.
She was struck twice.
Her eyes widened.
Four times.
A dull ache had begun to throb where Neji had hit her.
Eight times.
Pain, minor, annoying, fatally disruptive, erupted like noxious blisters over the surface of her skin.
Sixteen -
Her fist slammed into the side of his face, but not nearly deep enough and by now every move she made tingled with phantom pins and needles. He jumped backwards, spitting a glob of bloody saliva, his expression full of crimson teeth.
"Is this how the Heiress of the Main House fights?"
Hinata didn't answer. She could barely squeeze close her fist it was trembling so badly.
Even so, she was faring better than her cousin. How had she not noticed it before? One of his fingers had swollen to twice its usual size and now that she was looking for it, it was clear the bones in both his arms had been cracked, one badly enough he had been forced to reinforce his muscles with chakra, using them as a makeshift cast.
With aching slowness, her fists relaxed into open palms. Licking her lip, she swept a shaky leg backwards, raised one hand palm forwards, and kept the other one low, at her waist.
Her cousin breathed deep, flaring his nostrils.
They both kicked off the ground, hurtling towards each other.
He struck first.
It was a masterful blow, aimed at the base of her neck, seeking to end the fight. It was thus both a triumph and a tragedy that he succeeded.
It was here her conscious memories of the fight between them stopped.
Her body, however, had not.
Even as he struck, her palm lashed out, argent chakra crackling around the outline of her hand, nearly too bright to look at, before slamming into her cousin's upraised arm. It deformed, the chakra hastily sent to reinforce the bandages he'd wrapped around his forearm doing little to protect flesh or bone.
He slammed into the ground and rolled to a limp, messy stop, injured arm hanging low.
In response, she merely stood there, neither attacking nor retreating.
He set his teeth and attacked again, sweeping forward, middle and index fingers pointed forward so as to strike with his jyuken.
She matched him. She could see with every step, every blow, every motion, her every spar with her father, and her every night spent training, body flowing with the power of pure muscle memory, no will or intent required.
Gai-sensei might have been a superlative taijutsu master, but there was none better at the art of the gentle fist than her father.
Her form was perfect, and her actions, if without passion, then also without fault. They fought, then, trading blows using the strongest taijutsu style that existed within the Leaf.
The strongest and, in many ways, the cruelest.
The Hyuuga excelled at defense. Even without the kaiten to defend herself with, Hinata knew, objectively, that only a handful of genins exceeded her in this area. To fight Neji, whose injuries had grown increasingly numerous and increasingly severe as their bout went on, while he had but a single arm, and not attack was like letting him dash his remaining hand to pieces against the walls of a mountain. Every blow he delivered she returned, not bothering to hit his tenketsu with the jyuken, merely slapping his arms away with enough force to tear them from his body.
It was a replay of the beginning of their fight, reversed. To the uninitiated it would appear like he was dominating, his attacks dictating the pace of their engagement, with her only barely able to respond.
And yet, when his second arm fell limply to his side, his breaths coming in in short, sharp rasps, victory - if you ignored the fact that she'd technically been unconscious for the last minute or so of their bout - was clearly hers. Still, just as the fight had never gone out of her eyes, they had not gone out of his. And her body, somehow, was still suffering from his efforts, she could see it in the very slight shudder of her palms, and in her movements which were ever so slightly off.
He was affecting her, just not through her chakra network.
Neji said something, words vague, distorted. She saw her own expression split into a grimace of pain, then anger. She saw, for the first time, her body begin to gather chakra.
"No!" she wanted to say, to shout, but this was a memory.
Her body flowed forwards, movements full of deadly, liquid grace. Low, beneath his defense, beneath the broken arms which still, somehow, had straightened and were seeking the power of the kaiten. Her palm went up.
It was a movement aimed for his chin, but missed him entirely, the chakra released through her palm so thick and concentrated it flew through the air instead of dissipating, slamming into the ceiling blowing through the lights, raining glass shards and sparks all over the ground.
Neji, caught in the periphery of the attack, was blown away, hitting the ground in a roll which didn't so much stop as shatter against the wall, burying him in it.
His arms twitched, once, then twice, but he did not get up.
Slowly, she watched herself fall, upraised arm banging against the ground as she finally rushed down to meet it.
The fight was over.
------
QM Note: So, let's try this again.
The vote is to select which charms she retains past the moment of her exaltation. Note that since mechanics are not being prioritized, charms basically operate off of a 'what would this look like in Naruto-verse?' logic. Body-Optimized Pursuit is a form of superspeed, monstrous force technique is superstrength - don't worry about the numbers so much except in a relative sense.
Hinata starts with the following physical stats: Str 3.5, Dex 3, Stamina 3. At chargen, i.e. right now, for each charm chosen of the appropriate attribute, she gains .5 in that attribute. For the sake of comparison, part 1 Kabuto has roughly the same baseline physical stats, having Str 3, Dex 3.5, Sta 3. Note that superior physical stats does not mean she can beat him: part 1 Rock Lee is running off Str 3, Dex 4, Sta 3.
Ninja are roughly analogous to DBs and should be treated as such, jutsus being their charmtech. While Hinata cannot learn every possible jutsu, any jutsu that a ninja is capable of is at best equivalent in strength to something Hinata herself could accomplish. Certain lunar charms are thus going to be strengthened, e.g. Naruto's shadow clone technique is far and away better than the TAW Monkey's Brother Method.
Naruto ninja of jounin grade are treated as having dragonblood-like excellencies, being able to add dice up to a cap of their abilities and specialties (abilities being nin-gen-tai and the specialty being the grade of the jutsu). These excellencies must be purchased for each jutsu, making most ninja specialists of a handful of techniques.
Ninja considered prodigies can use dragonblooded excellencies as written, running them on abilities as opposed to specialties.
Truly exceptional ninja, such as Tsunade, have learned how to mimic the overwhelming might of the lunar exalted and may have a single attribute running on the equivalent of a lunar excellency. This is the TAW excellency which means Attribute+Ability dice cap.
The jinchiruki can access a tailed beast mode that increases their strength and replenishes their chakra: in rough terms, they gain access to excellencies and a mote reactor. Lunar exalted have a mote reactor too, and of superior quality that starts when they flare their anima.
Hinata is a lunar, whose might defies reason. She begins play with the Second Strength Excellency - Essence Assured, Memory Mansion Method (+.5 int), World-Enduring Evolution (+.5 sta), essence 3, the kerisgame mote reactor and two of the following charms:
[x] MEMORY MANSION METHOD (LOCKED IN - do not vote for this)
The corridors of the mind are scattered with the neglected relics of experiences. Witches explore this archaic mindmanse like a dusty temple. This Charm plunges the Lunar into a meditative trance essentially identical to sleep (though she may remain standing) for an action, during which she relives one full scene from her past.
[x] WORLD-ENDURING EVOLUTION
(LOCKED IN - do not vote for this)
Gods and kings have been been cast down and slain, but beasts survive. While this Charm is active, the Lunar dramatically accelerates her natural healing processes. However, the Lunar's internal biology shifts in strange ways to better rejuvenate her, making it more difficult for others to heal her. The Lunar can activate this Charm even when she is inactive.
[x] BLOW FOR BLOW (STRENGTH)
Futile attacks are deflected by the hides and blades of Luna's chosen, aggression the defence they need. This Charm is used in response to an attack, allowing the Lunar to use her Strength in place of her Dexterity and allows her to ignore all penalties that apply to her ability to block an attack. If an attack is successfully blocked, the lunar throws her foe backwards, her sheer might tossing her first back even as it jars and disorients her foe.
[x] SKY BOUNDING MIGHT (STRENGTH)
The strength of the Moon's Chosen batters the ground beneath them, forcing it to aid in their elevation. While this Charm is active, the Lunar can jump to absurd heights. This is accompanied by an Obvious display of terrain deformation, the ground cracking or rippling under the force of her leaps. She suffers no damage from falls; it is instead inflicted on the ground where she lands.
[x] BODY-OPTIMIZED PURSUIT (STRENGTH)
Shifting her chakra flows and her muscles alike to claw out as much speed as she can, the Lunar becomes leaner and sleeker, a thing of horrifying rapidity and raw power. She adds her Strength to the pool she uses to calculate her Move and Dash actions.
[x] OBJECT IN MOTION TECHNIQUE (STRENGTH)
Muscles bulging with power, the Lunar charges forward. Anything in her way only has itself to blame. This Charm allows the Lunar to make a single reflexive attack against any inanimate object she comes into physical contact with while moving in a dash or jump. If that attack reduces the object into its damaged health levels, her passage is unimpeded and she completes the jump or dash without slowing, shattering a new path. Attacks should be appropriately resolved against the obstructing object; if she is obstructed by a tree branch, damage should be resolved against that rather than the tree as a whole.
[x] MONSTROUS FORCE TECHNIQUE (STRENGTH)
The Lunar's blows shift to hit harder and faster, a blur of violent motion ending in a flash of animalight as their foes are sent flying. This Charm supplements a physical attack, greatly increasing its raw power and blasting the lunar's foe away.
[x] HERD SHREDDING HURRICANE (STRENGTH)
The wrath of the Lunar Exalted tears through enemies and unfortunate bystanders. The Lunar's furious strikes unleash a fleshpulping shockwave that affects all objects and characters within a short distance of herself. The Lunar may freely exempt any targets she has a positive intimacy towards, and neither she nor objects she owns is ever a target.
[x] SUDDEN SNAP SHADOW (DEXTERITY)
With a flourish, the moonchild casts out the darting reflection of a deed. This Charm enhances any instantaneous Dexterity-based action undertaken by the Lunar, allowing her to pierce through space itself to reach her foe.
[x] MONSTROUS VITALITY MANIFESTATION (STAMINA)
It was a creature out of a fantasy, a monster from off the edge of the map, and it simply would not die. When incapacitated the lunar's body continues to fight independently of the lunar as if it were at full health. This seeming excellence is a lie though, the lunar has no conscious control over their body, and despite the show of vigor, it is exceedingly fragile. It completes the last know intent the lunar had and immediately falls over. Examples of such intentions include: defeat this foe, destroy this bridge, defend this passage, flee from this battle, etc.
Now please choose one of the following gentle fist charms. Although Hinata does not start with one, she will develop it over the course of the first arc. You should probably not argue based on practical merits, but which one would make for the most impactful scenes. Her skin growing scales that disperse the force of her father's kaiten, the Hyuuga compound's walls blown down, family members scattered like ninepins, permanently crippling a major foe, that sort of thing.
Please note that no stat will increase based on this choice.
Among the arsenal of techniques that the Hyuuga have developed over the course of their many years of warmaking, the gentle fist's sole concession to long-range combat are the variations of the vacuum palm which, in any case, was developed by accident, the grandmaster who created it intending instead to mimic the furiously spinning chakra of a mighty beast he had witnessed.
After spending a moment to gather energy, a transparent cone of pure concussive force emanates from Hinata's palm, sending her foes flying in an awesome display of power. Depending on how much energy is fed into the technique, it can cover a greater and greater amount of area. In this cone of devastation, the air itself screams before being replaced by absolute silence, chakra constructs, unattended and fragile objects are blown away, while hardier structures are reduced to their damaged health levels.
Similarly, those who are struck are blown away. Ninja who are of lesser essence than the user are knocked out, those who are of equal essence are conscious, but unable to use their chakra for up to an hour, while those of greater essence are merely physically flung away.
[x] HINATA-STYLE GENTLE FIST STRIKE (DEXTERITY)
The Hyuuga's reputation grew ever more fearsome as they learned how to affect the chakra network of others, damaging internal organs with but a touch. The lunar is kinder: what she brings is not pain, but death.
The introduction of toxic lunar essence to the average chakra system destroys it. Upon a successful strike, instead of damage, the limb is permanently crippled, capable of neither physical movement nor molding chakra. Normal essence users recover after about a day. For chakra-users, this can be mitigated by being of higher essence than the lunar, being a sage or jinchiruuki, or having a medic-nin whose essence is higher than the lunar's heal you.
The greatest constructs of chakra are mere phantasms compared to the essence of the world, let alone the essence of the sun, moon and stars. Whereas the Hyuuga have learned to keep the world at bay through the Heavenly Spin, the lunar knows how to imbue their anima and body with the permanence of the ever-changing moon.
This Charm can be activated whenever the Lunar's body, mind, spirit or traits would be affected by a chakra-based technique, rendering it Obvious to her. If she wishes to reject it, her anima flares with brilliant light, countering it completely. She is, for that scene, immune to that technique. If she wishes to be immune to other techniques, subsequent uses of this charm manifests a single mutation of her player's choice appropriate to the rejected chakra effect – This protection – and the mutation it is associated with – naturally fades at the end of the scene.
Alternatively, the Lunar can use this Charm at a cost of one Willpower to remove any mutation affecting her. These removed mutations are added to her form library, though they are not associated with any particular shape.
This charm cannot be used to dispel chakra effects that are based on chakra whose source is other than the chakra naturally generated by the human body. Sage techniques, bijuu chakra, lunar charms, and so on are thus not valid targets for this charm.
Chakra effects are specific and must interact directly with Hinata in order for her to be able to activate this charm. An earth jutsu that creates a rock out of thin air to strike Hinata would shatter against her anima, but an earth jutsu used to soften the dirt she is standing on would still make her sink and an earth jutsu that throws existing rocks would still need to be dodged or endured. As a limitation, this charm only functions if Hinata understands how it is she is being affected by the chakra. If, for instance, she does not realize that the Nara's Shadow Imitation Technique depends on her shadow linking up with the user's, she cannot reject it.
1. There will be no mechanics. Like, sure, there might be a character sheet but it's going to be about as important as the character sheets you see in Fate Stay Night (so kinda, until the story says nah).
2. I'm running with this as if it were a story. You will have input as to the general direction and playstyle of the character, but write-ins are not by default allowed and sometimes Hinata will lose or make non-optimal choices and that's okay.
(Sometimes, she'll get an inexplicable powerup and that's okay too)
3. This is a drama-free quest. Don't come in here with the mindset that Hinata really needs your vote to win or the quest will burn down and everyone will die because a) that's never helpful, b) I used to like it when my threads blew up dramatically but I'm past that age now, c) I'm still debating bad ends, but if there are any bad ends, you'll be allowed to reset. So just be cool.
[x] OBJECT IN MOTION TECHNIQUE (STRENGTH)
[x] HERD SHREDDING HURRICANE (STRENGTH)
[x] HINATA-STYLE MOUNTAIN SHATTERING VOID PALM (STRENGTH)
Herd Shredding Hurricane seems like it is both useful in combat and hilarious in spars. Hinata keeps ruining the floors and training areas and causing noise complaints.
The real hilarity is in combining it with Object In Motion Technique though, as the combo results in Hinata just fucking detonating her way through everything in her path: tree branch in her way? Explode everything near it. Small rock in her way? Explode everything near it. Enemy raises up an earth wall? That sounds like more explosions. Dangling cloth doorway obstructing entrance? More explosions. Actual doors? MORE EXPLOSIONS! Plus each obstruction hit damages other nearby obstructions, making it easier to keep going further.
Regarding Hinata-Style Mountain Shattering Void Palm, have I mentioned how much I like shy and gentle Hinata to be made of explodium? Hers is clearly the gentlest of fists.
You all misread the character gen rules. We get TWO charms PLUS the start of a Hinata-Style charm. And the locked in charms
I just wish I could also fit in Sudden Snap Shadow because it adds a lot of neat utility for things like pick-pocketing at range. And it only gets more versatile when you consider Hinata can see through walls and for long distances, so she could potentially steal from someone or sabotage them without even bothering to get out of bed. But that same broad range of utility seems like it'd suck the fun out of the narrative
[x] OBJECT IN MOTION TECHNIQUE (STRENGTH)
[x] HERD SHREDDING HURRICANE (STRENGTH)
[x] HINATA-STYLE MOUNTAIN SHATTERING VOID PALM (STRENGTH)
Herd Shredding Hurricane seems like it is both useful in combat and hilarious in spars. Hinata keeps ruining the floors and training areas and causing noise complaints.
The real hilarity is in combining it with Object In Motion Technique though, as the combo results in Hinata just fucking detonating her way through everything in her path: tree branch in her way? Explode everything near it. Small rock in her way? Explode everything near it. Enemy raises up an earth wall? That sounds like more explosions. Dangling cloth doorway obstructing entrance? More explosions. Actual doors? MORE EXPLOSIONS! Plus each obstruction hit damages other nearby obstructions, making it easier to keep going further.
Regarding Hinata-Style Mountain Shattering Void Palm, have I mentioned how much I like shy and gentle Hinata to be made of explodium? Hers is clearly the gentlest of fists. Plus it rounds out her Attributes to nice even numbers
You all misread the character gen rules. We get TWO charms PLUS the start of a Hinata-Style charm. And the locked in charms
I just wish I could also fit in Sudden Snap Shadow because it adds a lot of neat utility for things like pick-pocketing at range. And it only gets more versatile when you consider Hinata can see through walls and for long distances, so she could potentially steal from someone or sabotage them without even bothering to get out of bed. But that same broad range of utility seems like it'd suck the fun out of the narrative
Now please choose one of the following gentle fist charms. Although Hinata does not start with one, she will develop it over the course of the first arc. You should probably not argue based on practical merits, but which one would make for the most impactful scenes. Her skin growing scales that disperse the force of her father's kaiten, the Hyuuga compound's walls blown down, family members scattered like ninepins, permanently crippling a major foe, that sort of thing.
Please note that no stat will increase based on this choice.
Anyway now that I have a little time, I could put a bit more thought into the options:
[] BLOW FOR BLOW (STRENGTH)
Counterattack and flurrybreaker. This is essentially DESIGNED to counter the Jyuuken Trigram attack, it just plain gets shut down because it triggers counters and then Neji the Hyuuga opponent is tossed across the room within the first couple of counterattacks hammering them.
[] SKY BOUNDING MIGHT (STRENGTH)
Mobility. Jump like Hulk. Mainly useful against the Shukaku fight I think,, where you can't hit any relevant target without big air or colossus climb.
[] BODY-OPTIMIZED PURSUIT (STRENGTH)
Extreme linear speed.
Combos with Sky Bounding Might(which shouldn't increase the maximum total distance you travel) to jump far and high
[] OBJECT IN MOTION TECHNIQUE (STRENGTH)
Juggernaut Run.
Great against Doton, or any kind of barrier, but also potentially stuntable to destroy projectiles you charge into.
Combos with Sky Bounding Might to punch through multiple floors to reach the surface/roof.
Combos with Body-Optimized Pursuit to maximize the number of things smashed in one motion.
[] MONSTROUS FORCE TECHNIQUE (STRENGTH)
Raw impact power. Most Naruto ninjas aren't THAT tough, this would pulverize their everything on a direct hit AND send them flying away.
Combos with Blow For Blow in that attacking you is punished, likely terminally.
[] HERD SHREDDING HURRICANE (STRENGTH)
AoE shockwave. Useful against multiple foes, swarms, invisible or opponents based on parrying. ALSO useful against restraints and the like.
Combos with Monstrous Force Technique to also blast everything away.
[] SUDDEN SNAP SHADOW (DEXTERITY)
Extendo-arms. Useful for a couple of surprise hits, but otherwise a little niche.
[] MONSTROUS VITALITY MANIFESTATION (STAMINA)
Fight on after KO. Extremely badass.
Also extremely risky of course.
This should combo with Monstrous Force Technique to go Plus Ultra. Other than that its straightforward. Things in cone are out of the fight if they don't get out of the cone.
[] HINATA-STYLE GENTLE FIST STRIKE (DEXTERITY)
Savage limb annihilation. Combos with Sudden Snap Shadow(to land the crippling strike by surprise) and possibly Blow For Blow(to shut them down with a counter)
[x] HINATA-STYLE TECHNIQUE-DENYING ADAPTATION (STAMINA)
Being invulnerable is pretty neat. just imagine the reaction of everyone if she choose to be immune to Juuken while having a training spar with her father...
[x] MONSTROUS VITALITY MANIFESTATION (STAMINA)
Basically a reroll. Rerolls upon failure are always great.
[x] SUDDEN SNAP SHADOW (DEXTERITY)
precious gap closer. Invaluable for a melee fighter.
Also, i kind of dislike the STR approach.
Adhoc vote count started by Ayashi on May 6, 2019 at 7:06 AM, finished with 16 posts and 8 votes.
Speed, movement through solids, and ranged attack. Skirmisher-ish build I guess.
The adaptation is tempting, but is 'impactfulness' will depend on against whom the narrative take us and for now I'm sure how to read the narrative ahead. Meanwhile I like the imagery of Void Palm, yes, its basic, but basic works. And the narrative/Hinata can always stunt her own spin to make it more impressive. Its 'impactfulness' is less narrative dependent, one way or another there sure will be a chance in the plot for Hinata to Void Palm Cannon Smash something with oomph
So moving around in high speed, taking advantages of solid obstacles to go in and out of reach, as well making unorthodox movement route. Ranged attack for when: 1) speed don't cut it, 2) combined with speed to smash opponent from safe distance, or 3) when she need bigger smash.
Edit: misread what snap shadow did. Eh no matter. Still sticking to it.
I think its important for Hinata to improve her ability to move, to close the distance and engage or enemies, or even to retreat from a foe or make some distance.
Sudden Snap Shadow ignores distance.
Body Optimized Pursuit is speed.
Technique Defying Adaptation allows her to simply decide your bullshit isb't affecting her any longer. Genjutsu? Poison? Paralysis techniques? Killing intent?Jyuuken? Hinata can simply decide to ignore it at cinematically appropriate moments.
Herd Shredding Hurricane seems like it is both useful in combat and hilarious in spars. Hinata keeps ruining the floors and training areas and causing noise complaints.
The real hilarity is in combining it with Object In Motion Technique though, as the combo results in Hinata just fucking detonating her way through everything in her path: tree branch in her way? Explode everything near it. Small rock in her way? Explode everything near it. Enemy raises up an earth wall? That sounds like more explosions. Dangling cloth doorway obstructing entrance? More explosions. Actual doors? MORE EXPLOSIONS! Plus each obstruction hit damages other nearby obstructions, making it easier to keep going further.
Regarding Hinata-Style Mountain Shattering Void Palm, have I mentioned how much I like shy and gentle Hinata to be made of explodium? Hers is clearly the gentlest of fists.
