Even the most oblivious person could have heard the thick contempt and mockery dripping from Hinata's words. Sasuke, sensitive by nature, clenched his jaw almost instantly. Whatever had gotten into this girl, she clearly had no intention of leaving quietly as he'd demanded.
"Sasuke, your grades at the Academy are—if I'm not mistaken—first in the entire year, correct? Heh."
She took a single step to the left. Her words might have sounded like a compliment, but that little heh at the end completely inverted their meaning.
Utter disdain. Absolute mockery. All concentrated into that single syllable.
Rage surged through Sasuke like molten lava, rising from his gut to flood his chest. He stopped talking—and let his actions speak for him.
Three shuriken screamed through the air like hunting herons, arrayed in a perfect triangular formation and aimed at Hinata's eyes and throat. This kind of precision was beyond most ordinary Chūnin, but as an heir of the Uchiha—a clan legendary for their shuriken mastery—Sasuke had already perfected this technique at his age.
Unlike the target-practice throws taught at the Academy, this was a killing technique.
And this wasn't even his full attack. After releasing the shuriken, Sasuke didn't follow up in close—instead, he hopped back a step, and his hands began forming seals at blistering speed.
Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu. The most advanced technique Sasuke currently possessed. Classified as a C-rank ninjutsu, it typically required Chūnin-level chakra reserves to perform. But Sasuke, universally acknowledged as a prodigy, had mastered it before even graduating from the Academy.
Unlike the basic Clone, Substitution, and Transformation Techniques taught in class, the Fireball Jutsu was a technique built for killing.
Snake—Ram—Monkey—Boar—Horse—Tiger!
The seal sequence flowed through Sasuke's mind with practiced ease. While the minimum requirement was completing all six seals within three seconds, years of drilling had whittled his time to under two. If Hinata dodged those shuriken, he could hit her with the devastating fireball the instant she cleared them—
Before the thought even finished forming, his vision blurred. A searing bolt of agony punched through his left side, scattering his gathered chakra in an instant. Nothing remained but raw, horrifying pain radiating outward from the impact point to every extremity.
Hinata's formerly delicate mouth was now twisted in an undisguised snarl. Her right index finger was extended, the other four fingers curled together, jabbing into Sasuke's left flank like the barrel of a pistol.
The fury on Sasuke's face slowly crumbled. The pain in his ribs felt like a white-hot needle being driven deep into his flesh—so acute and intense that his consciousness began to blur at the edges.
"Oh my~ Were you actually trying to kill me just now, Sasuke? I felt a lethal amount of chakra building up inside you."
Hinata withdrew her finger from Sasuke's ribs. Without the support, Sasuke crumpled to the ground, gasping. His left lung felt like it had been punctured—every breath dragged thin, needling jolts of pain with it.
He forced his head up and met the eyes looking down at him.
On either side of the girl's smooth, porcelain-white face, thick clusters of grotesque veins had swollen into prominence. Those previously soft, white irises had shifted to a ghastly blue-white, projecting malice so sharp it felt like being physically stabbed. You could almost believe her gaze was a blade piercing flesh.
The Hyuga clan's unique Kekkei Genkai—one of Konoha's two great dōjutsu—the Byakugan.
This ability granted its user a full three-hundred-sixty-degree field of vision with zero blind spots. It could grant both long-range sight and X-ray vision, combining a maximum visual radius of one kilometer with the ability to see through solid matter and perceive what lay within. Internal musculature, the chakra network, the flow and concentration of chakra itself—nothing escaped the Byakugan's sight. And because it could directly perceive chakra, Hyuga clan members were naturally immune to the vast majority of visual genjutsu.
For a ninja, the flow of chakra through the body was essentially the prelude to every move. Even basic physical actions required chakra to reinforce the relevant muscles and meridians. If that entire process was laid bare, it was functionally the same as telegraphing your every move to your opponent.
Sasuke's combat sequence had been textbook—use shuriken to create distance and draw the eye while buying time to weave the seals for a finishing Fireball Jutsu. Against the vast majority of ninja, this would have been flawless.
But Hinata's Byakugan had already spotted the massive surge of chakra pooling in Sasuke's chest and abdomen. She immediately recognized it as preparation for a jutsu released from the mouth. Rather than waste time dodging the shuriken, she ducked low and lunged forward, driving a single strike directly into his exposed flank.
"D-damn... it...!"
Gasping raggedly, Sasuke pressed his face into the dirt, burning with shame and frustration.
It was the Hyuga Kekkei Genkai—that was why he'd lost. If his Kekkei Genkai had awakened, he never would have—
Consumed by rage and bitter humiliation, Sasuke's consciousness finally buckled under the combined weight of his emotions and his injuries, and he blacked out.
"Well, at any rate, things have quieted down."
Hinata tilted her head slightly and deactivated her Byakugan. The grotesque veins at her temples smoothed away.
"W-w-wait—Hinata, did you just... kill Sasuke?!"
Still strung up behind her, Naruto—still in female form—swallowed hard. Pranks were one thing, but murder was pushing the envelope a little far, even for her.
"No. I avoided the vital organs. Though he'll definitely be coughing up blood for a few days."
Hinata's face settled back into its default blend of irritation and indifference. She walked back to Naruto—still in female form—and slashed the cords suspending her with a casual flick. The blonde tumbled to the ground, coughing, and with a puff of smoke the transformation dissolved, revealing Naruto's true form.
"C-coughing blood? Isn't that really bad?"
Naruto peeled off the shrine maiden outfit, his voice carrying its natural tendency toward alarm. "I mean, even so, you didn't have to be so—"
"Naruto, are you blind? Sasuke was trying to kill me just now. Did you see the hand seals he used? That was the sequence for the Fireball Jutsu. If I hadn't dodged, I'd be a charred corpse right now. So tell me..."
Hinata seized Naruto's chin, forcing eye contact at point-blank range with those evasive blue irises.
"When someone is trying to take your life—what are you supposed to do?"
"But... even so... why do both Sasuke and you have to be so... vicious about it?"
Having his chin gripped by a girl roughly his own height, Naruto broke into a cold sweat. If what Hinata said was true, then that meant...
"Both of you just used..."
He swallowed audibly, his throat producing a loud gulp. No amount of cheerful optimism made him immune to fear, and right now he felt it closing in like an invisible monster.
"That's right. True ninjutsu."
Hinata released his chin and watched with amusement as the blond boy instinctively backed away.
"You didn't actually think 'ninjutsu' meant those laughable Three Basic Techniques they teach at the Academy, did you? Real ninjutsu—the most fundamental purpose for which it was created—is the elimination of one's enemies. In other words..."
Black malice and a feral grin bled from those still-pristine white eyes, staining her words like ink.
"True, unadulterated ninjutsu."