"Damn it… damn it! Why is the Hidden Mist lying in ambush here?!"
Hyuga Hisanobu fled through the forest in a sorry state, pushing his body to the limit. His Byakugan was already active, and in its pale gaze he could see the Mist-nin closing in fast. Despair twisted his face.
As a member of the Hyuga Main House, he'd always resented how the clan elders smothered him with protection. So he brought a pair of guards and marched onto the battlefield between Konoha and Kirigakure, determined to prove himself.
At first, everything went exactly as he imagined.
He was already a tokubetsu jōnin, and out here he finally had room to shine. The Hidden Mist's signature technique—their concealing fog—was meaningless before the Byakugan. Teammates praised him. Admiration followed him like a cloak.
And his vanity drank it in.
But today, he'd been assigned a simple mission: rendezvous and escort allied shinobi to safety.
That was when the nightmare began.
He reached the meeting point and found no allies waiting—only eleven Mist-nin.
And among them… three jōnin.
They'd stayed far outside the range of his Byakugan's usual sweep. By the time his vision caught the faint traces of their chakra, the net had already tightened around him.
If the two Branch House guards he'd brought hadn't thrown themselves in the way—clinging to those three jōnin with suicidal stubbornness—Hisanobu wouldn't have even had a chance to run.
But he'd only been granted tokubetsu jōnin for the specialty of the Byakugan. As a Main House heir with barely any real battlefield experience… how could he possibly shake a pack of Mist chūnin elites who lived and breathed war?
He watched—helpless—as the distance behind him shrank, meter by meter. His expression flickered wildly, caught between panic and calculation.
They still hadn't tried to kill him outright. If they had, he wouldn't have made it this far.
Which meant their goal was obvious.
"…The Byakugan."
Hisanobu pulled a kunai, raised it toward his eye—then froze. He tried again. His hand shook. The blade hovered, but he couldn't drive it in.
Just a little longer. Just a little longer—his distress signal was already out. Maybe Konoha reinforcements were close. Maybe someone would arrive—
When the Mist-nin closed to within fifty meters, Hisanobu's Byakugan finally caught something else.
A chakra signature.
Familiar.
"—Yuu!"
That chakra surged forward like a spear, crossing hundreds of meters in a blink and appearing between them.
Hisanobu's face split with sudden, frantic joy—only to harden into entitlement the moment the Mist tried to re-form their line.
"Stop them!" he barked. "I'm Main House. You'll protect me with your life!"
In that instant, Hyuga Hisanobu had never been more grateful for the weight of his bloodline.
The newcomer was a boy—fourteen or fifteen at most—bearing the same pale eyes and the same Byakugan.
But not the same status.
Hisanobu was Main House.
Hyuga Yuu was Branch House.
So even if—by Hisanobu's understanding—Yuu was also only a tokubetsu jōnin, it didn't matter. A Branch House shinobi existed to die for the Main House.
What Hisanobu didn't think about—what he didn't want to think about—was why a Byakugan-bearing tokubetsu jōnin would be alone on this battlefield, without teammates, without formation… without anyone at all.
Hyuga Yuu landed just outside the enemy's striking range. He heard the order, and the corner of his mouth lifted into a faintly strange smile. With the Byakugan, he confirmed that no one else was coming within two kilometers.
Then, silently, he whispered in his heart:
Eight Gates Technique… Fifth Gate: Limit—open.
Eight Trigrams: Sixty-Four Air Palms!
In an instant, an overwhelming torrent of chakra erupted from Yuu's palms—condensing into sixty-four compressed shockwaves that hammered forward.
The Mist-nin, still braced for a chase, didn't even have time to react.
Their eyes widened in shock.
Then they were struck.
Blood sprayed from mouths. Bodies snapped backward as if hit by invisible battering rams, crashing into trees and dirt—landing without another sound.
"…Huh?"
Hisanobu, who had already half-turned to flee again, stood frozen. His mind simply refused to process what he'd seen.
That was Eight Trigrams: Air Palm—no, it wasn't.
It felt like Air Palm… but the structure, the rhythm, the number—
A fusion with Eight Trigrams: Sixty-Four Palms?
Impossible.
The Branch House wasn't allowed to learn Sixty-Four Palms. And it couldn't possibly carry that kind of power. And the green vapor curling off Yuu's body—
"AAAAAGH!!"
A wave of agony tore through Hisanobu's thoughts like lightning.
Only then did he realize: his arms were gone.
Both severed at the same time—cleanly removed from his body as if they'd never belonged to him at all.
"To keep you from activating the Caged Bird Seal," Yuu said calmly, "the first thing I did was take your arms."
Hisanobu stared at him, disbelief turning slowly into horror.
Hyuga Yuu looked back at him the way someone looks at a lab mouse—curious, amused, unbothered.
"What luck," Yuu went on, smiling. "Those two Branch House guards fought harder than I expected. I thought I'd have to spend more effort."
His voice stayed light, almost conversational.
"From the moment you stepped onto this battlefield… I've been waiting for today."
He leaned slightly forward, eyes pale and bright.
"My first Main House test subject."
"Hyuga Hisanobu."
…
A few minutes later, three Mist-nin arrived, glanced over the scene, and exchanged tight looks.
Without a word, they gathered up the dead and withdrew swiftly into the trees.
Ten minutes after that, a Konoha squad finally arrived—Hyuga Yuu among them.
The original succeeded.
With a single glance at the traces left behind, Yuu understood everything. Outwardly, he lowered his voice and spoke with a grim steadiness.
"Captain. There are signs of Eight Trigrams: Air Palm."
Uchiha Kōtarō, the squad's jōnin leader, frowned and lifted a hand—ordering the others to spread out, keep watch, and search for further clues. Then he nodded for Yuu to continue.
"Based on the cracking in the ground and the damage pattern," Yuu said, studying the shattered soil and scarred trees, "the Hyuga who used Air Palm was far stronger than I am. It was probably a clan jōnin."
He paused, then added evenly:
"And as far as I know, there are only two Hyuga jōnin on the Kirigakure front."
A jōnin was elite in any clan—never something you had in surplus. If Hyuga Hisanobu hadn't insisted on coming, those two Branch House jōnin wouldn't even be here.
After all…
Yuu's gaze flicked toward his captain.
Right now, Konoha's strongest clan—the Uchiha—had been sent to this battlefield in large numbers by the village higher-ups.
Having fire-style specialists fight water-style specialists was, in Yuu's opinion, absurd… but Konoha's leadership making baffling decisions wasn't exactly new.
The Hyuga elders didn't want to draw attention or compete with the Uchiha's bloodline advantage and risk making enemies for no reason. So the Hyuga presence here was merely "enough," not impressive.
Uchiha Kōtarō's expression darkened.
Those two Branch House jōnin had been tasked with protecting a Main House member. If the Byakugan fell into Kirigakure's hands…
That would be a disaster.
"Captain," a chūnin called from the perimeter, "we found a severed arm—Konoha's."
He held up two severed arms. One hand was still clenched around a kunai so tightly the fingers looked locked in place.
Yuu and Kōtarō shunshin'd over at once.
Kōtarō examined the wound, eyes narrowing. Yuu's voice turned quietly analytical.
"Judging by the break… it was snapped off by brute force in the same instant. The victim didn't even react. Whoever did this had the strength to kill immediately—yet chose only to cripple both arms…"
A trace of grief surfaced on Yuu's face. Around them, the squad fell into heavy silence.
This was the worst-case scenario.
Shinobi fights were built around lethal efficiency. If someone deliberately disabled resistance first, there was only one reason.
They wanted the Main House Hyuga alive.
Which meant the Main House member hadn't taken his own life… and had been captured.
How ridiculous.
The Branch House lived under the Caged Bird Seal, controlled by the Main House—but because of that very seal, their Byakugan couldn't be stolen. No one hunted them for it.
But the Main House… an incompetent weakling, swaggering onto a battlefield like a target painted in blood.
Uchiha Kōtarō glanced at Yuu, then back at the severed arms, and cursed under his breath.
If you insisted on coming to war…
Why didn't you carve a Caged Bird Seal onto yourself too—so you could at least protect your own damned eyes?!