Meanwhile, ever since the battle erupted everywhere, Kanae also faced Shinsuke alone on some fractured plains for more than an hour.
The air between them constantly shimmered with ash and heat, the burnt scent of scorched soil mixing with the faint metallic tang of blood.
Shinsuke, the ANBU Commander himself, Hiruzen's eldest son, stood across from her.
He was supposed to be far stronger and more experienced.
And yet, fortunately for her, she noticed the subtle hitch in his movements, the faint distortion of chakra around his chest, right from the get-go.
Everything started from where they first came across.
...
"Injury," she thought coldly at the time, her Byakugan tracing the web of disrupted chakra there. "Upper ribs, pierced through, Ryusei's clone must've done that at the Daimyō's palace."
It all made sense.
Shinsuke had been among the group that rescued the Fire Lord before teleporting here with Hiruzen and Hisamichi.
He was still half-healed, relying on sheer will and experience to keep pace.
But what unsettled Kanae more was the familiarity with the individual in one particular uncomfortable memory of hers.
This was the same man who had once stood before her in those dim ANBU corridors, more than a year ago, right as the war began.
His face had been hidden behind a blank mask, his voice sharp and hollow, hinting to her the order that had haunted her ever since, not just to monitor Ryusei anymore, but to be ready, alongside Renjiro, to eliminate him directly, in some sinister way, once the war started.
Only recently did she learn the full truth, that he was the Hokage's eldest son, from Ryusei, who found it from Orochimaru or Tsunade.
Remembering that moment in time still made her chest tighten.
That was one of the darkest and most helpless points of her life.
Because now, with everything she knew, she finally understood what that mission really meant.
They had wanted her to kill the very person she… liked.
The one who had already partially saved her from the cage they'd all built around her later.
Back then, she'd thought of him as intimidating.
Now, she only saw hypocrisy and wanted some payback.
She felt like she was finally facing one of her own captors and inner demons herself, and she knew it was also possible only thanks to Ryusei.
'Tricking me into being used as some disposable tool...' she thought hatefully again, her hands shifting into the Gentle Fist stance. 'And all while pretending to offer protection.'
She had once somewhat believed in Konoha's structure, believed that service and obedience might bring her freedom someday.
But Ryusei had torn that illusion apart.
He'd explained to her logically how their system also only used the Side Branch, bled them for labor and talent, and only added another layer of chains.
And the irony was clear: that same young boy they'd told her to betray had given her more direction and tangible results in such a short amount of time than the ANBU and village higher-ups ever could.
She owed Ryusei everything now, the insights that let her, for the first time, see how to turn the cursed seal's pain into strength, her growth, her will to fight, and to finally let herself free.
Shinsuke's voice broke her thoughts.
His tone carried that same faint superiority she'd once tolerated.
"Serving a rogue instead of your village. I expected more discipline from you, Kanae Hyuga."
'Such a good tool, wasted,' Shinsuke thought bitterly as their jutsu clashed again.
'All that talent, all that potential, and she chose to follow that youngster instead of ANBU. My subordinate, my asset… taken right from under me.'
His jaw tightened as he dodged another burst of her chakra.
'What a humiliation for me. I will surely make you pay today, at least, little girl.;
She didn't answer.
The ground beneath her feet glowed faintly, her chakra flaring as if the earth itself responded to her anger.
Then he struck.
"Fire Release: Ash Binding Field!"
A wave of smoldering ash exploded from his palms, spreading in a wide circle.
It clung magnetically to her chakra, thickening around her ankles.
In seconds, the ash hardened like molten stone.
However, her chakra erupted in a sharp, explosive pulse, surging from the tenketsu along her legs in perfect, controlled streams.
The hardened ash around her shattered instantly, fracturing along invisible lines of force.
Shinsuke followed instantly. "Ember Serpent!"
From the lingering ash, burning serpents slithered across the field, their bodies hissing, coiling, and reigniting with every movement.
They sought her like living traps, driving her toward their master.
Kanae leapt back, spinning midair.
Her body twisted gracefully before she landed, hands weaving.
"Eight Trigrams: Heavenly Rotation."
Her chakra spiraled outward in a perfect sphere.
The serpents collided with the barrier and vaporized in a hiss of smoke and molten sparks.
Shinsuke clicked his tongue. "You mastered Rotation… without Main Branch training? Out of just that fragment we gave you at that time?"
Her expression didn't change. "You're surprised? I've just had better teachers lately."
She struck forward, releasing a barrage of special, recently mastered Vacuum Palms next.
"Gentle Fist of Overgrowth!"
Her palms glowed faintly gold, pulsing with that same mutated Yang chakra.
But this wasn't nurturing energy anymore.
It was excessive, unstable, and vitality turned corrosive. What should have healed broken instead forced healthy cells into rapid, uncontrolled growth, tearing them apart from within.
She'd now learned how to incorporate it not just into her Eight Trigrams pressure-point basic physical strikes, but even into her more advanced Vacuum Palms and Rotation techniques.
Shinsuke tried to weave aside as he was preparing his own next jutsu, but eventually, one of the blasts barely clipped his shoulder as he didn't take it seriously and was already injured.
The effect wasn't instant, but within seconds, the skin around the wound began to swell and split, blood seeping through as his chakra flow spasmed violently.
He gritted his teeth, using his own chakra to suppress the spreading effect before it could cripple him further.
Kanae exhaled sharply, clicking her tongue.
It still wasn't enough.
Even with that precision and fusion, the destructive Yang essence wasn't dense enough yet.
Too much of it bled out mid-projection.
It could injure, but not cause as much overgrowth as if to kill in one strike with just a small graze.
"You—used regenerative energy… as an attack?" Shinsuke hissed, staggering. "How?"
Kanae replied, stepping closer. "You'll die without knowing."
Shinsuke's jaw clenched.
His chakra flared again—scarred but still vast.
"Eternal Ash Ruin!"
Suddenly, a dome of choking black ash expanded from him like a storm.
A few clones helped him create it by providing other nature releases, fire, earth, yin, and yang at the same time.
The smog was dense, almost alive, burning the skin and numbing limbs.
The ground trembled, ash clinging to everything, leeching chakra away.
Kanae immediately noted that it was a very strong jutsu with her Byakugan.
Her eyes also constantly tracked everything, every particle, every vibration, every shift of chakra within the cloud.
Her Byakugan didn't waver.
She started weaving another one of her own variations of Gentle Fist immediately, now infusing her strikes with fine streams of wind chakra that cut through the smog and ash, which she also began learning how to do recently, but basically, she only now polished it in battle for the first time today.
The added pressure created gaps in the field, allowing her to move again.
The air around them shrieked as ash met wind, creating razorlike drafts that bit into the battlefield.
Shinsuke frowned, realizing she'd adapted mid-fight.
"Wind Release, too? Since when does a Hyūga—"
"Since I stopped listening to your rules," she interrupted, her voice sharp.
She rushed forward again, a blur of chakra.
Her rotation shifted seamlessly into attack form, combining spinning momentum and Gentle Fist precision, her hands striking faster than his eyes could track.
Each blow was infused with her unique corrupted Yang chakra.
Shinsuke's ash dome fractured from within.
The serpents he had created disintegrated.
Shinsuke immediately knew that he couldn't let her get any closer again, not even for a moment.
But her Wind Release and Gentle Fist mix gave her too much freedom inside his Eternal Ash Ruin, allowing her to disperse the choking ash and move through it enough to be unhindered.
So he shifted tactics, layering other elemental jutsu to keep her at range, creating pockets of pressure and distance, to confuse her, while his most chakra-intensive ash field worked to wear her down in key moments.
But Kanae wasn't the same shinobi they'd once known.
With every exchange, she adapted, her movements sharpening, her chakra control refining.
She began weaving Wind Release even into her Rotation and Vacuum Palms, slicing through his ash clouds with precision.
In a sense, she was already breaking one of the Hyūga clan's greatest limitations.
Their style had always been close-range and linear, but Kanae was changing that.
She'd become dangerous from a distance, her Wind-infused strikes reaching farther than any Gentle Fist should, while still using her close-range techniques defensively, as some kind of a dynamic barrier, with flawless precision.
Her unique "micro-rotations", subtle, selective bursts of spinning chakra used to deflect attacks, blended seamlessly into her defense.
Combined with the constant flow of wind around her, it was borderline insane, fluid, unpredictable, and nothing like any Hyūga before her.
That rate of growth unsettled Shinsuke.
Meanwhile, Kanae's own mind burned with quiet urgency the entire time, not only due to the pressure her enemy brought, but because of something else as well.
In the distance, she could feel and see Kiyomi's current chakra, vast, oppressive, dark.
The black Susanoo rising like a mountain, and fighting with the Third Hokage himself already, was proof enough that Kiyomi had awakened her Mangekyō Sharingan.
They had recently been quiet rivals of multiple sorts.
But now, that gap between them had widened too quickly, and too astronomically, seemingly in only one battle.
She was already taking care of the father of the man Kanae struggled with, currently in a sense.
So, Kanae's jaw tightened.
She refused to be left behind and stagnate, even if her current progress might seem slower.
Even if she couldn't match that, she would at least not be a burden for anyone else currently and wait for their help.
Driven by that thought, her strikes grew sharper, and she forced the battle into a stalemate.