[X] As hard as she can
-[x] Wisely, not foolishly. When the body is exhausted, she would train the mind. When the mind is exhausted, Hinata would cultivate the will. When the will is exhausted, she would rest. There is no gain in self-destruction, and there are advantages to being the heir of the Hyuuga, after all - there are no better masseurs in the village, and nothing better than the truly gentle caress of a Hyuuga after a hard day's work. Normally, Hinata wouldn't bother them, but now the occasion merited using all advantages. And maybe she would see something in how they used their art on her, something of potential use in the exam and later.
So, more analysis:
1) Hiashi knows, or thinks he knows, who Naruto's father is, and actually approves of Hinata's crush on him. He does seem to doubt his mother's identity, which is strange. I don't know how to explain his hesitation before calling Naruto an Uzumaki.
Naruto is supposed to be a Namikaze as his father was. They're properly married and by customs he'd follow his father's name.
Either way, Hyuuga + Uzumaki + Namikaze blood is greatly in Hiashi's favor(obviously since one is a no-name orphan and the other is a noble this would be matrilineal, or so he thinks).
2) Hyuuga compound has no electricity. This is... Astonishingly stupid. Because if you don't want to depend on others, put a f*cking generator on the property! Sasuke has TV. Naruto has a refrigerator. Hyuugas definitely don't have the former (unless they peek on others watching TV using byakugan), and probably have to dedicate a ninja to keeping objects cooled, if they can do it at all (ice release being a bloodline). This has to affect Hinata's life.
He's the ultra-traditionalist. It is not surprising that he prefers to make minimal use of technology, and probably factoring in that any Hyuuga worth the name won't need much light, would have better things to do than watch television, etc, etc.
Running water is possible without modern technology however. They got prime real estate from the founding years, I wouldn't be surprised if they had a river to draw upon.
3) I was wrong. Hiashi still doesn't think Gaara is a jinchuuriki. I think he divined something along the lines of "spirit of his mother sealed inside him" and became far less alarmed.
4) Jyuuken is confirmed by its master to be the counter to Gaara's defenses. We need to dedicate time to training it.
Hiashi thinks the Jyuken can shatter the chakra constructs of a mere ghost.
He is correct.
Hiashi does not think the Jyuken would work on a Jinchuuriki's constructs, or he would not be alarmed when Hinata raised the concern.
6) Mote restoration rate - we used more motes in a single clone than were regenerated after a good night's sleep. We need to know if we actually respire motes or are dependent on prayer / cult / some other mechanisms of mote restoration
This is normal for Exalts without mote reactors. It can take a while to top up if you burn out.
[X] As hard as she can
-[x] Wisely, not foolishly. When the body is exhausted, she would train the mind. When the mind is exhausted, Hinata would cultivate the will. When the will is exhausted, she would rest. There is no gain in self-destruction, and there are advantages to being the heir of the Hyuuga, after all - there are no better masseurs in the village, and nothing better than the truly gentle caress of a Hyuuga after a hard day's work. Normally, Hinata wouldn't bother them, but now the occasion merited using all advantages. And maybe she would see something in how they used their art on her, something of potential use in the exam and later.
He's the ultra-traditionalist. It is not surprising that he prefers to make minimal use of technology, and probably factoring in that any Hyuuga worth the name won't need much light, would have better things to do than watch television, etc, etc.
Running water is possible without modern technology however. They got prime real estate from the founding years, I wouldn't be surprised if they had a river to draw upon.
Still leaves the issues of food storage (refrigerators) and processing (I'm not sure if microwaves existed in Naruto setting, but electric kettles did for sure). Indoor heating might not be much of a problem, but other concerns still exist. Like Hyuuga need to buy fuel for their lamps and stoves.
This was the difference between Naruto and her father:
The first lesson Hinata'd ever learned from her father was this: 'Do not lose.' The first lesson Hinata'd ever learned from Naruto was: 'Don't give up.'
When, inevitably, she lost, the fault was hers. Not fast enough, not smart enough, not tough enough, not strong enough - her qualities were a long list described by lack and she knew each and every one. From this, Hinata learned not to make excuses. Any weakness was hers and no one else's.
Upon learning of this, Kiba's opinion was: 'Your dad's a dick.'
Shino had given a less colorful, if more complete opinion: 'Parents should not set impossible goals for their children. Why? It can only hurt them.'
"But I am weak," she'd pointed out, nibbling at her thumb.
"You're twelve," Kurenai had responded dryly. A burst of spidery chakra across Hinata's thumb made her squeak and put it away. "And the boys are right, too much pressure is no good for anyone, even geniuses."
"I need to be stronger," Hinata had repeated. "Much, much stronger."
----
The Forty-Fourth Training Ground looked as massive and imposing as the first time she'd seen it, a monument to what was possible when the Mokuton bloodline went truly wild. In contrast, the chain-link fencing, tall as three or four of her, looked wholly inadequate for keeping the forest out, more a perfunctory nod than a security measure.
Kurenai-sensei stopped her, about fifteen feet out.
"Are you sure you're ready?" Her jounin-instructor asked again. Kiba, who'd gotten impatient, was already at the tent, busy signing away his family's right to sue (or at least stridently complain) if he died in there.
He was an Inuzuka. They took it on faith that they wouldn't.
Hinata nodded.
"I feel ready."
More than that, she felt like she had to be ready or she wouldn't be anymore. She'd mastered a technique she shouldn't have been able to, defeated a foe she definitely should not have been able to, spoken to her father and held her ground. It felt like a spell. At any moment it'd break and she'd turn out to be the weak, ugly, no-talent girl that she really was.
She didn't dare rest any longer.
Kurenai frowned at Hinata's expression, and then her gaze went lower, focusing on her arms, then legs. Her frown intensified.
"You're moving a bit stiffly. You're not doing something silly like wearing weights when going into the Forest, right?"
"N-no," said Hinata truthfully.
"Hinata! Ya comin' in or what?!"
"Coming!" she replied, tugging the sleeves of her sweater down and jogging to the tent.
Kurenai sighed and followed her wayward children into the tent to sign off for them.
-----
Team Eight was a good team.
People didn't always think it when first meeting him, but Kiba was an excellent team leader. He had a good head on his shoulders, solid battlefield instincts and an odd facility for making any team he was a part of mesh better. It was as much his sense of humor, as it was the implicit belief in his comrades and his fierce loyalty to them, but Akamaru's puppy dog eyes certainly didn't hurt.
Shino was quiet and… different. But not in a bad way. He just didn't see the world in the same way that she did. And it wasn't the Byakugan she was talking about. Shino looked at people and saw how best they fit into something bigger than themselves. He didn't always, of course, and could be incredibly petty, but he was still one of the calmest, most impartial judges of character she knew. He was a comforting presence, and she trusted him to plan and pursue just as much as she trusted Kiba to make the right decisions.
She was the useless one. The one that failed.
But when she was with them she felt like she could be better than she was.
"Holy shit! Way to go, Hinata!"
Hinata smiled, panting slightly as the the lightly scorched, venomous coati twitched spasmodically on the tree limb. Like lightning-quick raccoons, the creatures raced through the upper boughs of the Forest and god help the poor unfortunates that encountered them. A bite brought on weakness, then paralysis and, if no one was around to help you, death.
What made them worse was that they were technically endangered (ninja being fond of their poisons), so you couldn't kill any of them.
Shino stopped at the bough she was at, landing lightly. His sunglasses glinted as he examined the body.
"You learned an elemental release? Impressive."
Hinata nodded, breathless, trying to control her chakra.
While it wasn't quite a jyuuken technique yet, injecting lightning-natured chakra into someone was a paralysis technique so simple that normal shinobi did not even need to have the Byakugan to use it. Normally, a haphazard injection of chakra to the body was met with an equal and opposite resisting force, the two canceling out, and usually to the detriment of the attacker who lost more chakra than the defender. The gentle fist was like threading a needle through the eye of another needle - except not, that was the analogy Hyuuga used to explain it to non-Hyuuga and their inferior senses - instead of metal skittering off metal, you achieved penetration.
Elemental chakra skipped the complicated bits. Wind cut. Fire burnt. Lightning shocked.
"I only know one real technique," she murmured.
"Nice!" said Kiba, who leaped to another branch, Akamaru dogging his heels. "You'll have to show it to us once we get out of here. Shino! We almost there yet?"
The Aburame looked windward. "Not quite. Last known sighting of the target is another three point two kilometers due west."
"Then let's go!"
From what Hinata understood, their target was a species of Giant Raven that had become the animal kingdom equivalent of a serial murderer. Perhaps it was stress brought on by the chuunin exam and an absurd number of ninja running around underfoot, perhaps it was some sort of disease.
Regardless, they were to take care of it. It'd be an interesting challenge for all of them: none of them were long-range specialists and the Giant Raven was undoubtedly a flier.
Its aggression would help. If they were reduced to tracking it, they could probably spend the whole day watching it flit from location to location.
As it was, it took hours.
Hinata felt herself tiring easily, going through her canteens of water at an alarming pace. Kiba and Shino stopped and slowed for her, assuming it was the lingering effects of chakra exhaustion. In truth, it was not.
Hinata might not have had Lee's weights, but Kurenai-sensei was right in that she was doing something silly. Though she'd never taken advantage of the fact before, Hinata had access to an entire household of experts. One was a sealmaster. Early in the morning, she'd asked Old Habomai to write a weak Seal of Resistance on her.
She was going to do everything she could to train. She didn't want any regrets.
It'd weaken her, siphoning her physical energy to clash against itself. It was painful, not brutally so, just… painful. An hour into the forest and her legs felt like jelly and her arms like bags of soup.
She just hoped it'd be enough.
When they found the bird, Hinata was too worn out to help fight it. She watched as Shino weakened it and Kiba and Akamaru turned into twin tornadoes, cutting it to shreds. Black feathers flew about the forest.
They had to help carry her out.
"I'm- I'm sorry, I slowed you down," she told them, gulping. "I - I -"
"Ah, s'nothing. You'll do better tomorrow, right?"
Hinata subsided into a miserable silence.
----
Jiraiya took her aside, later, when she went to meet up with Naruto. She knew she looked like a wreck. Her muscles trembled, her hands were clammy, her face pale.
He sighed. "Lemme see it, then."
She blinked at him.
"The seal, kid, the seal. I know a training seal when I see it, there are maybe three people in all the world that are better at seals than I am, and two of em' are dead. Show me yours."
She lifted the forehead protector off her forehead. Lord Jiraiya groaned.
"Seriously? Are the Hyuuga capable of nothing else then variants on-" muttering complaints and dire imprecations, Hinata watched as his fingers began to glow.
"Try not to blink."
She nearly screamed as a feeling of molten metal slammed into the coils of her head, chakra raging against chakra, and then it was over, and she was on the heated stones of the hot springs, staring upwards.
She felt lighter.
No, it wasn't lighter - it was the absence of pain that had weighed her down.
"I turned it into a bastardized Suppression Seal. It'll last until you want it off - if you do, flare your chakra three times - once long, twice short: it'll unlock itself. I left the other seal intact, but maybe get rid of my seal before you show off the new design, sealmasters need to step lightly around other people's work."
Hinata frowned, working her way through the implications. The resistance seal was built along the same lines as…
She sat up.
"Lord Jiraiya, can you affect the Cursed Bird seal?"
He looked furtively about him. "Noooooo. I definitely did not say that. Naruto, did I say that?"
"Huh?" said Naruto, who was busy focusing his chakra while water walking, and like a man trying to pat his head and his tummy at the same time, was totally incapable of anything else.
He turned back to her. "See, I did not say that."
"Lord Jiraiya-!" she had not been sure before, fuinjutsu was not her area of expertise, but Jiraiya's reaction-
"Nope, didn't happen," at this angle, Hinata realized just how tall the Toad Sannin was. He truly loomed over her. "Because, if the Hyuuga Clan discovered that a sealmaster had worked out how to suppress the Cursed Bird Seal by the time he was like, twenty-two, twenty-three tops, things would get, mmm, how do I put this kindly… hectic. You're a good kid, but your Clan ain't in the healthiest place right now and I am not dipping my fingers into any of that crazy."
"But, if you can suppress the seal, then-"
"One, I've never tried; two, don't ask me to."
Hinata bit her lip. He was right. But Mom's dream, well, maybe her dream, at the very least a fond hope, to see the Clan united once more…
Still.
"I… I won't. I apologize for my mistake."
"Thanks. Now go help the brat. And, why not, here-" he tossed a book at her. "Read this at the same time."
She caught the book with clumsy hands. With her physical energy being suppressed it felt like she was wearing oversized gloves.
"How am I supposed to-"
"Use your brain. Literally. Aren't Hyuuga supposed to be aware of everything around them? You gotta be able to multi-task better than that brat if you want to do that."
She looked down at book. It was called: 'The Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi'.
-----
And that became her routine.
In the mornings, Team Eight would go to the Forest of Death and she'd hunt with them until she collapsed and they dragged her out; in the afternoons, she'd accompany Naruto while Jiraiya would give her odd tasks to do that seemed like yet another crazy request with no point to them ('now juggle these apples with one hand, read with the other, and try to make Naruto laugh - remember, I got my eyes on you') but did seem to help her, if ever so incrementally.
Then, one day, she finally managed to catch and kill one of their Training Area Forty-Four targets.
It was a bit anti-climatic, really.
Shino had weakened the giant demonic ostrich thing with a well placed bug clone that had enveloped it in chakra-sucking kikaichu, and then Hinata had fallen onto its back, slammed both fingers into its neck, and watched its heart explode. When she took her fingers away, something silvery leeched out from the corpse and entered her hands.
As exhausted as she was, she didn't think much of it.
----
The next morning, she woke up looking like a giant demonic ostrich thing.
-----
Positive Mutations: Large +3, Glider +4, Flier +4, Swift +3 (flying), Deadly +2, Acute Sense (sight)+6 = Total +22 Negative Mutations: No Thumbs -6, Fragile -6, Greedy -3, Sensitivity (cold) -2 = Total = -17 Overall Cost: +5
How do the people around Hinata react to this completely unforeseen event?
[x] Hanabi walks into her sister's room, expecting to call on Hinata for their weekly spar and instead discovers her sister's been birdnapped.
[x] Naruto wakes up and freaks out because there's a giant bird thing pecking at his window wtf.
[x] Neji and TenTen are up because Gai is being Gai and discover that there's a giant bird in their training area having what looks to be an emotional meltdown.
[x] Neji and TenTen are up because Gai is being Gai and discover that there's a giant bird in their training area having what looks to be an emotional meltdown.
The possibility of getting Gai's reaction on this is not to be missed.
*Thinks on the creatures we glimpse in Naruto like genjutsu using Tigers and leeches the size of a person* *Thinks on the monsters in Exalted* ... Seems legit. I didn't even blink when I saw it.
[] Hanabi walks into her sister's room, expecting to call on Hinata for their weekly spar and instead discovers her sister's been birdnapped.
I don't think Hanabi deserves the shock.
[] Naruto wakes up and freaks out because there's a giant bird thing pecking at his window wtf.
Naruto would freak the hell out, but he has adapted to weird shit before.
[x] Neji and TenTen are up because Gai is being Gai and discover that there's a giant bird in their training area having what looks to be an emotional meltdown.
Neji would probably figure out this is Hinata pretty quickly. He's the only one that's seen Lunar essence up close with a dojutsu before.
[x] Neji and TenTen are up because Gai is being Gai and discover that there's a giant bird in their training area having what looks to be an emotional meltdown.
[x] Neji and TenTen are up because Gai is being Gai and discover that there's a giant bird in their training area having what looks to be an emotional meltdown.
@FixerUpper question: do we write a stunt for Hinata or for Neji/Tenten here?
[x] Neji and TenTen are up because Gai is being Gai and discover that there's a giant bird in their training area having what looks to be an emotional meltdown.
We already hung out with Naruto a few times, are expecting to meet up with Hanabi so thinking it would be more interesting to interact with Neji's team. Really looking foward to interacting with Gai and Teneten in thin scenerio.
[x] Neji and TenTen are up because Gai is being Gai and discover that there's a giant bird in their training area having what looks to be an emotional meltdown.
I'll be writing at least part of the update from the perspective of outsiders looking in, so stunt for whomever you want, but Neji or Tenten would be more fitting.
Literally the only slightly monstrous bird thing I found after typing 'fantasy bird' onto bing's search engine. Don't blame me for using bing, blame google for not being available.
[x] Neji and TenTen are up because Gai is being Gai and discover that there's a giant bird in their training area having what looks to be an emotional meltdown.
[x] Neji and TenTen are up because Gai is being Gai and discover that there's a giant bird in their training area having what looks to be an emotional meltdown.
[x] Neji and TenTen are up because Gai is being Gai and discover that there's a giant bird in their training area having what looks to be an emotionalmeltdown.
