The roar was loud. It was a solid wall of sound that slammed into Hinata from all sides, a tidal wave of human emotion—anticipation, bloodlust, excitement—that vibrated in her bones and echoed in the vast, open-air coliseum. Tens of thousands of people, a seething, faceless ocean of humanity, packed the stands, their voices merging into a single, thunderous entity. The air was thick with the scent of roasted nuts, and sweat, a heady, overwhelming perfume of public spectacle. For the first time in her life, the timid girl who once would have been paralyzed by such attention felt nothing but a profound, serene calm. She was a predator, and this was her hunting ground.
…A fitting audience for the demonstration of our superiority, Venom's voice was a low, satisfied rumble in the quiet cathedral of her mind. So many soft, screaming things. Their adoration will be… adequate fuel.
Hinata stood on the sun-drenched grass of the arena floor, a still point in the brewing storm. Her eyes, glowing with the faint, silver-lilac light of her symbiotic power, swept across the crowd, her Byakugan effortlessly dissecting the overwhelming sensory input into clear, organized data streams.
High in the stands, she saw them. Kurenai-sensei sat beside Asuma-sensei, her usual crimson eyes, a slash of defiant confidence against her pale, focused face. Her gaze was locked onto Hinata, and in it was a fierce pride. Beside her, another group huddled together, a small, vibrant island of familiar energy in the vast sea of strangers. Kiba was on his feet, punching the air and yelling something she couldn't hear but could easily imagine. Choji was happily munching on a massive bag of chips, his calm presence a comforting anchor. Ino and Sakura sat side-by-side, for once not arguing, their faces a mixture of fierce loyalty and profound anxiety for their respective teammates. And next to them, looking slightly overwhelmed but resolute, was Karin, her red hair a splash of defiant color. Her hands fiddling nervously with the sleeve of her shirt, and she is wearing Konoha-issue forehead protector. The sight of her, safe and whole and one of them, sent a pulse of quiet warmth through Hinata.
Then, her gaze traveled higher, to the section reserved for the great clans. She saw them. Her father, Hiashi Hyuuga, sat with the rigid, emotionless posture of a living statue, his face a mask of cold, appraising neutrality. He was not looking at her as a father would look at a daughter. He was looking at her as a clan leader would look at his single most valuable and terrifying weapon. And beside him, Hanabi. Her younger sister was leaning forward, her hands gripping the railing, her own Byakugan active, her young face a mask of pure, unadulterated awe. The rivalry was dead. In its place, something new and fragile and full of hope had begun to grow. Hinata gave a slow, deliberate blink of acknowledgment, a silent message sent across the roaring stadium.
Finally, her attention returned to the arena floor, to the other seven souls who had survived the crucible. They were a tableau of simmering potential. Shikamaru stood with his hands in his pockets, his posture a study in calculated sloth, but his eyes were sharp, missing nothing. Shino was a pillar of quiet confidence, his very stillness a declaration of his readiness. The Sand Siblings stood apart. Kankuro flinched and pointedly avoided her gaze, the memory of his broken arm a phantom ache. Temari, however, met her eyes with a look of wary, professional respect—the acknowledgment of one storm recognizing the power of another.
Sasuke was a tightly coiled spring of dark energy, his entire being focused with singular, obsessive intensity on the boy standing a few feet away from him. He was a predator who could only see one piece of prey.
And then there was Naruto. He was practically vibrating with a mixture of nervous energy and pure, unadulterated excitement, his brilliant orange jumpsuit a beacon of chaotic, life-affirming energy in the center of the arena. He bounced on the balls of his feet, his blue eyes wide as he took in the roaring crowd. Then, as if feeling her gaze, his head snapped around, and his eyes met hers. The nervous energy vanished, replaced by a grin so wide, so brilliant, and so full of genuine, unshakeable confidence in her, it was like the sun breaking through the clouds. He gave her a sharp, encouraging nod and a thumbs-up. The simple gesture sent a jolt of pure, liquid warmth through Hinata's chest, and a deep, contented purr rumbled through her, a sound only she could feel. She returned his gesture with a small, soft smile of her own, a silent promise.
Her gaze finally fell on the last figure. Gaara of the Desert. He stood utterly still, his arms crossed, the sand in his gourd swirling with a faint, restless energy. He was not looking at the crowd or the other competitors. His dead, turquoise eyes were fixed on her, and in their chilling, emotionless depths, there was no rivalry, no passion. There was only a promise. A promise of annihilation. He was a quiet, patient abyss, and she knew that, sooner or later, she would have to step into it.
A sudden hush fell over the crowd, a wave of silence rolling down from the highest tiers as two figures appeared in the Kage box. The Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi, looked out over the stadium, his aged face a mixture of grandfatherly pride and weary resolve. Beside him stood the Fourth Kazekage, his face obscured by his traditional veiled hat and robes.
But Hinata saw more. Her senses, now a perfect fusion of human intuition, Hyuuga perception, and Klyntar analysis, registered an immediate, jarring anomaly. The Kazekage's chakra was… wrong. It was layered, a thin, frail shell of energy wrapped around a core that was vast, cold, and ancient. And beneath the heavy incense of his robes, there was a faint, almost imperceptible scent. The smell of shed skin, of damp earth, and of a cold, predatory hunger that she remembered all too well from the forest.
…The serpent wears a new skin, Venom hissed in her mind, a sound of pure, cold recognition. …He is here. He plays with the little cattle before the slaughter. How… theatrical.
The Hokage stepped forward, his voice magically amplified to fill the entire stadium. "Welcome!" he boomed, his voice resonating with warmth and authority. "Welcome, esteemed guests, shinobi, and citizens, to the final stage of the Chunin Selection Exams! Today, you will witness the culmination of weeks of grueling trials. These eight exceptional genin have proven their strength, their intelligence, and their will to survive. They represent the future of our villages, the next generation of protectors and warriors! Let the final matches… begin!"
The proctor for the finals, a stoic jounin named Genma Shiranui with a perpetually unimpressed expression and a senbon toothpick clenched in his teeth, gestured lazily with his hand. "First match: Uzumaki Naruto versus Uchiha Sasuke. Will the other participants please clear the arena."
The order was a formality. The moment the names were called, the world had shrunk to the two boys standing in the center of the field. A palpable, electric current passed between them, a rivalry so intense it was a physical presence. The other finalists filed out, a quiet procession of warriors retreating to the designated viewing balcony, but Hinata's attention never wavered. Her glowing lilac eyes were locked onto the small, brilliant orange figure, her every sense attuned to him.
The balcony was a simple, stone platform that offered a perfect, elevated view of the arena. Temari leaned against the railing with a bored, analytical expression. Kankuro fidgeted nervously. Shino stood as still as a statue. But Hinata stood at the very front, a silent, lavender-clad sentinel, her hands resting lightly on the cool stone, her entire being focused on the unfolding drama below.
The pack mates are posturing, Venom observed with a clinical, detached amusement. A classic dominance display. The dark-haired one projects an aura of arrogant confidence, a mask for his deep-seated insecurity. The orange one… his energy is a chaotic, joyful storm. He is not fighting out of fear or hatred. He fights for the sheer, glorious thrill of it. He is the superior specimen.
Down on the field, Naruto and Sasuke faced each other across ten meters of sun-drenched grass. The roar of the crowd was a distant, irrelevant ocean of sound.
"So," Sasuke said, a small, arrogant smirk playing on his lips. "It finally comes down to this, usuratonkachi."
Naruto's grin was wide and utterly fearless. "You bet it does, teme! I've been waiting for this! I'm gonna wipe that stupid look right off your face!"
"Hn. You can try," Sasuke retorted, his smirk widening.
Genma sighed, looking profoundly bored by the pre-fight banter. "Are you two done? Good. Begin!"
He vanished in a swirl of leaves, and the fight was on.
There was no wasted motion, no tentative first strikes. They exploded towards each other, two opposing forces of nature colliding in the center of the arena. It was a blur of orange and blue, a furious, breathtaking display of pure taijutsu. Sasuke was a vision of Uchiha grace, his movements fluid, precise, and lethally efficient. His kicks were sharp, clean arcs designed to break bone; his punches were a piston-like flurry aimed at nerve clusters and vital points.
But Naruto was no longer the clumsy brawler from the Academy. His training had forged him into something new. He was a chaotic, unpredictable storm of movement, his style a wild, joyous dance of pure, unadulterated instinct. He ducked under a high kick that would have taken his head off, his body bending at an impossible angle. He parried a lightning-fast jab with the back of his hand, the force of the blow sending a shockwave up his arm that he simply absorbed and redirected into his next movement. He was learning, adapting, his body a sponge soaking up the rhythm of Sasuke's style and countering it with a raw, unpredictable ferocity.
Hinata watched, her Byakugan dissecting every movement. She saw the perfect flow of Sasuke's chakra, the years of clan training evident in every precise motion. But she also saw the subtle shifts in Naruto's form, the way he now planted his feet for more power, the way he used his opponent's momentum against them. It wasn't graceful, but it was brutally, wonderfully effective.
The exchange ended with both boys leaping back, their chests heaving. A flicker of genuine surprise, quickly masked, crossed Sasuke's face. The dobe was faster, stronger than he had anticipated. His smirk vanished, replaced by a look of focused, predatory intent. With a flick of his wrist, a shower of shuriken flew from his hand, a swarm of deadly metal insects humming through the air.
Naruto didn't even flinch. He met the attack head-on, deflecting the shuriken with a series of perfectly timed kunai strikes, the CLANG-CLANG-CLANG of steel on steel echoing through the arena. He was not just reacting; he was anticipating, his movements sure and confident.
Then, he went on the offensive. With a roar, he formed a familiar cross-shaped hand seal. "Multi-Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
The arena floor erupted in dozens of identical poofs of smoke. In an instant, Sasuke was surrounded, a lone blue island in a sea of snarling, grinning orange.
Hinata felt a surge of pride. This was it. The true genius of Naruto's training. She watched, her analytical mind absorbing the beautiful, chaotic perfection of his strategy. The clones didn't just swarm him randomly. They attacked in waves, in coordinated patterns that were both complex and breathtakingly efficient. Three would launch a low attack, forcing Sasuke to jump. As he was airborne, two more would strike from above with a diving kick. As he landed, a half-dozen would launch a coordinated frontal assault, while another group circled to his flanks, cutting off his escape routes.
It was magnificent. Each clone was an extension of his will, and the experience of a thousand clones training together for a month had forged them into a single, cohesive hive mind. They were a perfectly coordinated army of one.
Sasuke was a blur of motion, a testament to his own prodigious talent. He moved like a dancer in a hurricane, ducking, weaving, his fists and feet a whirlwind of destruction that sent clones dissipating in puffs of smoke. But for every one he destroyed, two more took its place. The sheer, relentless pressure was beginning to wear him down. He was breathing harder, his movements a fraction slower. He was being overwhelmed, not by superior skill, but by an impossible, inescapable volume of force. Frustration and a flicker of something that looked dangerously like panic flashed in his eyes.
With a furious snarl, he leaped back, creating a precious few feet of space. He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, and when they opened again, they were no longer black. They were a deep, predatory crimson, a single tomoe spinning lazily in each eye.
The Sharingan.
The world seemed to slow down around him. The chaotic, overwhelming storm of orange clones was no longer a blur. He could see every movement, every feint, every subtle shift in weight. He could see their attacks before they were even launched. The odds had just been evened.
The transformation was instantaneous and absolute. The moment Sasuke's Sharingan flared to life, the entire dynamic of the battle shifted. The chaotic, overwhelming sea of orange that had been drowning him suddenly became a clear, predictable, and utterly solvable equation. He no longer saw a swarm, he saw individual attack vectors, telegraphed intentions, and a thousand fatal openings.
He moved. His taijutsu, already sublime, became a thing of impossible, terrifying beauty. He was dismantling Naruto's army with a surgical, contemptuous precision. A clone would lunge, and Sasuke, seeing the attack a half-second before it was even fully formed, would sidestep with an almost lazy grace, his elbow striking the clone's neck and dissipating it in a puff of smoke. He would spin, his leg scything through the air, taking out three clones at once with a single, perfectly executed sweep kick. He became a vortex of precise, economical destruction in the center of the orange hurricane, and the number of Naruto's clones began to dwindle at an alarming rate.
From the balcony, Hinata watched with a calm, analytical focus. The crowd roared with every clone Sasuke destroyed, thrilled by the display of Uchiha prowess. But Hinata saw something else. She saw Naruto adapting.
The initial, full-frontal swarm had been a blunt instrument. Now, facing an opponent who could see the future, Naruto was being forced to become a strategist. His clones stopped their direct, predictable assaults. They began to use the environment, their own bodies, as weapons of misdirection. One clone would throw a kunai not at Sasuke, but at the ground in front of him, kicking up a cloud of dust to momentarily obscure his vision. In that split second, another clone would attack from the opposite side. Two clones would grab a third and literally throw him at Sasuke like a human projectile, a tactic so unorthodox and idiotic that even the Sharingan's precognition seemed to struggle with its sheer stupidity.
But Sasuke was still an Uchiha. He adapted too. His Sharingan-enhanced reflexes allowing him to counter even these bizarre, multi-layered attacks. He was still winning. Still dominating. The field was littered with the fading wisps of dispersed clones.
And then, Naruto found the answer.
It was a moment of pure, chaotic genius, an idea so fundamentally simple and yet so brilliant, it could only have been born from a mind like his. Hinata saw it happen, her Byakugan tracing the subtle shift in his strategy. The clones stopped trying to attack him all at once. Instead, a single Naruto clone would charge forward. Sasuke, his Sharingan easily predicting the simple, linear attack, would move to intercept, his hand striking out to disperse the clone with a single, efficient blow.
But at the exact moment of impact, as his hand passed through the dissipating puff of smoke, a second clone, which had been running directly behind the first, perfectly hidden from view, would explode from the cloud, its fist already halfway to Sasuke's face.
The first blow landed. A solid, meaty THWACK that sent a spray of sweat from Sasuke's cheek and snapped his head to the side. The crowd gasped. The Uchiha prodigy had been hit.
Sasuke recoiled, a look of pure, furious disbelief on his face. He hadn't seen it coming. The smoke from the first clone had created a momentary blind spot, a single, crucial frame of sensory input that his Sharingan had missed.
And Naruto, having found the key, began to turn it. The strategy evolved with a beautiful, frightening speed. The clones formed lines, each one running directly behind the other, creating a living, breathing projectile of pure, sacrificial misdirection. The first clone would charge, acting as a living smoke bomb. The second, exploding from the smoke, would force Sasuke to block. The third, exploding from the second's smoke, would land a solid kick to his ribs.
It was a war of attrition, not against Sasuke's stamina, but against his perception. He could see the attacks coming, but he couldn't see through the constant, roiling clouds of smoke and dissipating chakra that now filled the air around him. He was fighting phantoms, his perfect vision rendered useless by a low-tech, high-volume smokescreen of pure, idiotic bravery. He was forced onto the defensive, his elegant Uchiha style breaking down into a series of desperate blocks and frantic evasions. He was missing. He was getting hit. A solid kick sent him stumbling back. A wild punch grazed his temple. The infallible Uchiha prodigy was being beaten by the village idiot, and he was doing it with a strategy that was as brilliant as it was humiliating.
From the balcony, Hinata felt a slow, predatory smile touch her lips. …The orange one learns, Venom purred, its voice filled with a deep, teacherly pride. He has weaponized his own disposability. A masterful tactic. He is forcing the Uchiha to fight not just one opponent, but the very concept of overwhelming, unpredictable data. We approve.
Sasuke, his face a mask of cold, seething fury, clearly came to the same conclusion. His taijutsu was being nullified. He needed to change the rules of the game. He needed to clear the board.
He leaped back, creating a wide berth between himself and the advancing line of clones. He brought his hands together, his fingers flying through a series of complex seals with a speed that was a blur to the normal eye. "Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu!"
He inhaled deeply, his chest swelling, and then exhaled a massive, roaring sphere of fire that tore across the arena floor. The wave of clones in its path was instantly incinerated, their brief existence ending in a flash of orange flame and dissipating smoke. The sheer, concussive force of the blast sent the other clones stumbling back, the heat wash so intense it warped the very air.
The arena was quiet now. The surviving clones, perhaps a dozen of them, stood in a loose, wary circle around the original Naruto. Across the field, Sasuke stood panting, his crimson eyes blazing with a mixture of triumph and exhaustion. He had bought himself space. He had reset the battlefield. But he knew it wouldn't last. The dobe would just make more. He needed to end this.
His hands began to move again, another, more complex series of hand signs. He was gathering his chakra, a massive amount of it, for a larger, more devastating attack. The air around him began to shimmer with heat. He was preparing another, greater fire jutsu, one that would wipe the entire field clean.
"It's over, Naruto," he breathed, a cruel, triumphant smirk returning to his face. "This time, I won't miss."
But as he brought his hands to his lips, ready to unleash the inferno, Naruto, who had been standing perfectly still, suddenly grinned. It was a wide, sharp, and utterly confident grin. And then, he raised a single hand.
From his open palm, a swirling, invisible vortex of pure force erupted. It was a sudden, violent, and utterly unexpected gust of wind, a localized hurricane that shot across the field with a soundless, terrifying speed.
Sasuke's eyes widened in pure, unadulterated shock. The wind jutsu slammed into him a fraction of a second before he could unleash his own attack. It wasn't a cutting blade of wind, it was a hammer, a solid wall of pure concussive force. It didn't cut him, but it threw him off balance, staggering him, and more importantly, it completely disrupted his chakra flow, extinguishing his nascent fireball before it could ever be born. He stumbled back, his Sharingan wide with a single, disbelieving thought.
Wind? Since when does the dobe have a nature transformation?
The hammer of invisible force stunned Sasuke for only a moment, but it was enough. Naruto seized the opening not with another direct assault, but with a fundamental shift in the battlefield's nature. He became a blur of motion, his remaining clones fanning out, their hands flashing through a simple, shared hand seal.
From their palms, they unleashed thin, sharp blades of air—Wind Scythes that hissed through the stadium, cutting shallow gashes in the earth. Sasuke, his Sharingan blazing, moved with a frantic, renewed grace, dodging the volley of invisible blades. He countered with his own fire, launching smaller, faster fireballs not at Naruto, but at the clones, trying to whittle down their numbers.
A chaotic, violent symphony erupted in the arena. It was a cacophony of roaring flames, hissing wind, the sharp clang of deflected kunai, and the constant, percussive poof of dispersing clones. Hinata watched, her entire being focused on the dance. She saw it immediately. Naruto wasn't trying to overpower Sasuke's fire. He knew the elemental hierarchy. Wind fueled Fire. Instead, he was using his new art with a cunning that bordered on genius.
A clone would launch a Wind Scythe not at Sasuke, but at the ground beside him, the force kicking up dirt and making him flinch. Another clone would use a broad Wind Palm to deflect the trajectory of Sasuke's own shuriken, sending them spinning harmlessly away. They were using the wind as a thousand tiny hands, pushing, prodding, and disrupting every move Sasuke made, creating openings for the other clones to land quick, harassing jabs and kicks.
The battle of attrition dragged on. The sun beat down, and sweat streamed down both boys' faces. They were exhausted, their movements growing ragged. Sasuke's fireballs were smaller, his aim less precise. Naruto could no longer maintain dozens of clones. Only a handful remained. The Uchiha prodigy was making mistakes now, his frustration a palpable energy. He misjudged the arc of a wind blade and it sliced his sleeve open. He lunged at a clone that was already dissipating, leaving himself open to a clumsy but solid kick from another.
Then, Hinata saw the shift in his eyes. His gaze, which had been darting between the clones, suddenly locked onto a single Naruto standing near the back, one who seemed to be directing the others with hand signals. It was a classic command-and-control setup. It was the lynchpin. And Sasuke, his pride raw and his patience utterly exhausted, decided to shatter it.
He roared, a sound of pure, primal fury, and charged. He ignored the other clones, bulling through them, his fists and feet sending them dissipating in clouds of smoke. He threw a final, desperate volley of kunai, not at his target, but high into the air. The decoy Naruto, as predicted, looked up for a fraction of a second, his focus broken.
It was the opening Sasuke needed. He was on him in an instant. The air filled with a sound that made Hinata's blood run cold, a high-pitched, piercing screech like a thousand birds shrieking at once. Sasuke's right hand, which had been at his side, was now a contained, crackling star of pure, violent lightning. White-hot tendrils of electrical energy danced around his arm, illuminating his face in a ghastly, beautiful light.
Hinata's breath caught in her throat. She didn't know the name of the jutsu, but her senses screamed at her what it was: a focused, armor-piercing killing technique. Her hands clenched on the balcony railing, the stone threatening to crumble under the unconscious surge of her own strength. Every protective instinct in her body roared, but she was trapped, a spectator to a potential execution.
"It's over!" Sasuke screamed, his voice strained with the effort of containing the violent energy. He lunged, his body a thunderous projectile, his hand a spear of pure lightning aimed directly at the Naruto's chest.
The impact was silent. Utterly, terrifyingly silent. Sasuke's hand plunged forward, the sphere of lightning crackling… and then the Naruto he struck dissolved into a harmless, apologetic poof of smoke.
The stadium, which had been roaring, fell into a state of stunned, absolute silence. Sasuke's own momentum carried him forward, his eyes wide with a look of pure, system-crashing shock. He had staked everything on this one, final, perfect strike. And he had hit nothing.
It was in that moment of stunned, forward-drifting inertia that the real Naruto appeared. He was in front of him, having used the final, ultimate misdirection, a clone of a clone, to place himself perfectly in the path of Sasuke's failed attack.
And in his hand, a new sound filled the silent arena. It was a low, grinding, whirring noise, the sound of a contained hurricane. In his palm spun a perfect, swirling sphere of pure, beautiful, and terrifyingly dense blue chakra, its surface a maelstrom of chaotic, rotational power.
Hinata didn't even have time to process what she was seeing.
Naruto's feet were already planted. With a final, guttural roar that was not of triumph, but of pure, desperate effort, he slammed the spinning sphere of chakra directly into Sasuke's chest.
The impact was a grinding, explosive transfer of immense rotational energy. For a split second, Sasuke's body seemed to contort around the sphere as it drilled into him, and then he was launched. He flew backwards across the arena, spinning like a top, a human meteor trailing a spiral of blue energy. He hit the far wall of the stadium with a sickening CRUMP that echoed through the silent crowd. He just… stuck there for a moment, plastered against the stone, before slumping to the ground in a boneless, unconscious heap.
Silence. A profound, absolute silence held the entire stadium of tens of thousands of people in its grip. Naruto stood alone in the center of the field, his chest heaving, his arm trembling from the sheer force of the jutsu he had just unleashed.
Genma appeared beside the crumpled form of Sasuke. He knelt, checking his pulse, his neck. Then he stood, his perpetually bored expression for once replaced by a look of something that might have been quiet awe. He raised a single, steady hand.
"Winner," he declared, his voice calm and clear in the echoing silence. "Uzumaki Naruto."
For a beat, there was nothing. And then, the dam broke. The stadium erupted. It was a single, deafening, explosive roar of pure, incredulous applause. The crowd was on its feet, their cheers not just for a victor, but for the underdog, for the dead-last who had, before their very eyes, defeated the last loyal Uchiha.
On the balcony, Hinata didn't cheer. She didn't move. She simply let out a long, shuddering breath she didn't realize she had been holding. The iron band of terror that had been constricting her chest shattered, and in its place, a wave of pure, soaring joy and profound relief washed over her. A slow, radiant, and utterly beautiful smile spread across her face, and a single, happy tear traced a path down her cheek. He had done it. He had won.
The roar of the crowd was a physical force, a wave of sound that washed over Naruto, cleansing him of his exhaustion. He stood, chest heaving, arm trembling, and let it soak in. For the first time in his life, that deafening noise was for him. It was a chorus of approval, of shock, of respect. He had beaten Sasuke Uchiha. He had won. He grinned, a wide, triumphant, and utterly exhausted expression, and raised a victorious fist to the cheering masses before a team of medics swarmed him, checking him over with brisk efficiency.
Cleared of any lasting injury, he began the long, walk towards the participants' balcony. Each step felt lighter than the last. The world seemed sharper, brighter. He climbed the stone stairs, his heart hammering in his chest not from exertion, but from a profound, giddy sense of accomplishment.
The moment his head cleared the top of the stairs, his eyes found hers. In the midst of the congratulatory chaos, Hinata was a point of serene, absolute focus. The relief and joy that had been building in her chest finally overflowed. Her body moved on its own, a pure, instinctual reaction. She took a step forward, her arms beginning to open, her entire being yearning to close the distance and wrap him in a hug that would convey everything she couldn't say.
And then she stopped.
The memory, sharp and mortifyingly clear, slammed into her. The forest grove. The sweet shop. The thousand clones. The public. A furious blush bloomed on her cheeks, and she froze mid-motion. With a heroic effort of will, she reined in her instincts, her half-raised arms closing, her hands clasping elegantly in front of her. The overwhelming urge to hold him was transmuted into a look of profound, radiant pride and a voice that was a soft, resonant melody.
"That was a magnificent victory, Naruto-kun," she said, her doubled voice a perfect, steady harmony. "You were… brilliant."
Naruto saw it all. He saw the initial, explosive movement, the beginning of the hug, the way her arms had started to reach for him. And in that split second, his brain short-circuited. A part of him, the part that was still a flustered, awkward boy, was flooded with a panicked terror at the thought of a repeat of the sweet shop incident in front of the entire stadium. But a much larger, more honest part of him, the part that still felt the phantom warmth of her embrace in the forest, felt a pang of deep, profound disappointment when she stopped. He had wanted it. More than he was willing to admit, he had wanted that hug.
He masked it all with his signature move. He rubbed the back of his neck, a goofy, bashful grin spreading across his face. "Heh. Thanks, Hinata. It was nothing!" he said, his voice a little too loud, his eyes not quite meeting hers.
The tender, awkward bubble was promptly burst by a long, drawn-out groan. "You finally won one," Shikamaru drawled, not even bothering to look up from studying the clouds. "What a drag. Now everyone's going to expect you to do it again. So troublesome."
Shino adjusted his collar, his own form of congratulations delivered with the cold precision of a lab report. "Your application of misdirection utilizing disposable chakra constructs was... logically sound. A statistically improbable but effective strategy. Congratulations, Naruto."
Naruto just laughed, a bright, genuine sound, clapping his lazy and his stoic friend on their shoulders. "Thanks, guys!"
As the celebration continued, Hinata's gaze drifted to the other side of the balcony. The two remaining Sand Siblings were not relaxed. They were coiled springs of tension. Kankuro kept fiddling with the bandages on the large bundle on his back, his eyes darting nervously towards the Kage box. Temari stood with her arms crossed, her knuckles white, her jaw tight. They were not watching the arena. They were waiting for a something.
Their biological markers indicate heightened stress, Venom noted with a cold, analytical hum. They are not preparing for a match. Something is amiss.
As if on cue, Genma's amplified voice echoed through the stadium. "Will the next competitors please come to the arena floor! Aburame Shino versus Kankuro of the Sand!"
Shino gave a curt, professional nod and began to move towards the stairs. Kankuro flinched, his eyes darting one last time to his sister, who gave him an almost imperceptible shake of her head. He raised a hand, his voice strained. "I forfeit."
A wave of boos and disappointed groans rolled through the stadium. Hinata's eyes narrowed.
The puppet-user is a coward, but not a fool, Venom's thoughts were sharp, precise. He would not surrender a chance for promotion without a superior imperative. He is preserving his strength. For what?
Genma looked thoroughly unimpressed by the development. He shrugged. "Winner by default, Aburame Shino. Next match! Nara Shikamaru versus Temari of the Sand!"
Temari's tense posture instantly vanished, replaced by a look of predatory, confident glee. She smirked, hefted the giant fan on her back, and with a single, powerful leap, vaulted over the balcony railing. She landed in the center of the arena with the graceful, solid impact of a hawk landing on its perch, a cloud of dust swirling around her.
On the balcony, Shikamaru groaned, a sound of pure, existential suffering. "Seriously? Can't I just forfeit too? This is way too much work. I'm exhausted just watching you people."
Naruto, still buzzing from his victory, was having none of it. "Get down there, you lazy bum!" he yelled, grabbing the back of Shikamaru's jacket. "You can do it! Show her what you've got!"
"I've got nothing," Shikamaru mumbled, trying to dig his heels in. "I've got a strong desire for a nap. That's what I've got."
With a final, encouraging shove, Naruto sent his friend stumbling down onto the arena floor. Shikamaru tripped on the last step, catching himself with a clumsy, unenthusiastic stumble, and looked up at his opponent. Temari stood there, her fan resting on her shoulder, a wide, dangerous, and deeply amused grin on her face as she looked down at the laziest boy in Konoha. The game was afoot.
The moment Shikamaru set foot in the arena, the atmosphere shifted from a tense rivalry to a farcical mismatch. Temari stood with the coiled, confident power of a sand viper, her massive fan resting on her shoulder, a dangerous smirk on her face. Shikamaru, by contrast, looked like he had just been woken from a very satisfying nap and was deeply annoyed about it. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and sighed, a sound of profound spiritual exhaustion.
"Let's just get this over with," he muttered to himself. "What a drag."
"Begin!" Genma called, already looking bored again.
Temari didn't hesitate. With a flick of her wrist, she snapped her fan open, revealing three large, purple circles—the "moons." "Here I come!" she announced, her voice full of predatory glee. With a single, powerful swing, she unleashed her first attack. "Wind Scythe Dance!"
A massive, turbulent gust of wind, laced with cutting chakra, roared across the arena. It was a chaotic, swirling vortex designed to be impossible to predict or dodge.
"Go, Shikamaru! Dodge it!" Naruto yelled from the balcony, pumping his fist.
Shikamaru, however, just stood there with a bored expression as the gale slammed into him. He was sent tumbling backwards, rolling across the grass like a discarded piece of laundry before coming to a stop. He lay there for a moment, staring up at the clouds.
Hinata watched, her Byakugan active. She saw that Shikamaru had channeled a thin layer of chakra to his feet just before the impact, anchoring himself just enough to control the tumble. He wasn't hurt. He was thinking. He was measuring.
"Is that all you've got?" Temari taunted, her smirk widening. "I haven't even used my second moon yet!" She swung her fan again, another, more powerful gust tearing towards him.
This time, Shikamaru moved. He pushed himself to his feet and began a lazy, unenthusiastic jog, his hands still jammed in his pockets. He wasn't trying to outrun the wind, he was letting it chase him, guiding it, his path seemingly random but always keeping him just ahead of the attack. He was mapping the battlefield, his mind is calculating angles, distances, and the slow, inexorable march of the sun across the sky.
The battle became a strange, one-sided dance. Temari, growing increasingly frustrated by his evasiveness, unleashed a torrent of wind attacks, her powerful jutsu carving great gouges in the arena floor. Shikamaru, with an infuriating lack of effort, would simply sidestep, or duck, or use the terrain—like the shallow crater Sasuke's landing had made—to his advantage, always keeping a safe distance, always watching his own shadow.
Hinata saw his strategy unfold with a quiet, appreciative clarity. He wasn't fighting Temari. He was fighting the sun. Each of his movements was designed to subtly reposition himself, to force Temari into a spot where his shadow, elongated by the afternoon sun, could finally reach her.
"What are you doing, you coward?! Fight me!" Temari roared, her patience finally snapping.
"Too much work," Shikamaru mumbled, but his eyes were sharp. He saw his opening. He took off his flak jacket and threw it into the air. It unfurled, a makeshift parachute that cast a large, dark shadow on the ground. As Temari's eyes were drawn to it for a split second, Shikamaru's own shadow, now connected to the jacket's, shot forward with a sudden, impossible speed.
Temari gasped and leaped back, narrowly avoiding the grasping tendril of darkness. But she had jumped directly into his real trap. Her new position was exactly where he had wanted her. His shadow stretched, thin and black as ink, and latched onto her feet.
She froze, her body locked in place. The Shadow Possession Jutsu was complete.
"YES! HE DID IT!" Naruto roared from the balcony, jumping up and down. The crowd erupted in cheers, assuming the match was over.
Temari struggled, her face a mask of furious disbelief, but she was a puppet on a string, forced to mirror Shikamaru's every lazy movement. He yawned and stretched his arms. She was forced to do the same.
But Hinata wasn't cheering. She was watching Shikamaru, and she saw the truth. His chakra, which had been a small, steady pond to begin with, was now little more than a damp patch of mud. The prolonged use of the jutsu, the constant, subtle maneuvering—it had drained him completely.
…Tactical objective achieved, Venom stated calmly. …However, his energy reserves are now at critical levels. He can maintain the paralysis, but he lacks the requisite chakra for any follow-up offensive maneuver. It is a stalemate of his own design.
Shikamaru slowly walked forward, his shadow-controlled puppet forced to walk backwards towards him. He led her to the center of the arena, right up until his shadow began to recede as he drew closer. He stopped, leaving them ten feet apart, both perfectly still. He had her. She was helpless. He had won.
And then, he slowly raised a single, lazy hand.
"I give up," he announced, his voice carrying clearly through the suddenly silent stadium.
The silence was followed by an explosion of pure, confused outrage. Naruto's jaw hit the stone railing of the balcony. "WHAT?! SHIKAMARU, YOU IDIOT! YOU HAD HER! WHY WOULD YOU QUIT?!"
Temari stared at him, her face a thunderous mask of pure fury. She had been completely, utterly, and publicly outsmarted, and then denied the satisfaction of either a victory or a defeat. It was the ultimate insult.
Shikamaru just shrugged. "I was out of chakra," he explained to the dumbfounded proctor. "I figured I could hold her for about ten more seconds. I ran through about two hundred different plans in my head, but none of them were gonna work. I'm done. Too troublesome."
Genma stared at him for a long moment, then sighed, a thin trail of smoke curling from his senbon. "Winner, due to forfeiture… Temari of the Sand."
Temari let out a furious snarl, snapped her fan shut, and stomped off the field, radiating an aura of pure, murderous frustration. A few moments later, Shikamaru shuffled up the stairs to the balcony, looking completely unfazed.
"WHAT WAS THAT?!" Naruto screamed, grabbing him by the front of his shirt. "You had her! You totally had her! Why'd you give up?!"
"I told you, I was out of gas," Shikamaru said with a yawn, gently prying Naruto's hands off him. "Plus, even if I had the chakra, beating her would mean I'd have to fight in the next round. And the round after that. That's way too much work. My part's done. Now I can just watch." He ambled over to the wall and slid down into a sitting position, his eyes already closed. "Wake me up when it's over."
Naruto stared at him, speechless, his brain unable to process a level of strategic laziness so profound it bordered on the sublime.
The crowd was still buzzing with confusion and disappointment when Genma's voice cut through the noise, a calm, final note in the chaotic symphony.
"Will the final competitors for the first round please come to the arena."
A sudden, intense hush fell over the stadium. The air grew heavy, charged with a new, terrifying anticipation.
"Hyuuga Hinata of the Leaf," Genma called, his voice steady. "Versus… Gaara of the Desert."
The world narrowed to two names. Hinata's name, and the name of the monster. A quiet, predatory thrill, cold and sharp as breaking glass, shot through her. It was a feeling that was not entirely her own, a shared hunger for the coming storm.
At last, Venom's voice was a deep, eager thrum in her soul. The appetizer is finished. Now, for the main course.
She turned, her body a coiled spring of serene, contained power, ready to step into her destiny. But a hand, hesitant yet firm, caught her arm. She stopped and looked. It was Naruto.
He stood before her, his face a mask of forced, cheerful confidence. He was trying to grin, but it was a brittle thing, and his blue eyes were wide with a worry so profound it was a tangible presence. He was terrified for her. And the sight of his poorly-disguised fear was the most beautiful, heart-wrenching thing she had ever seen.
"Hey," he said, his voice a little too loud, a little too strained. "Good luck, Hinata. You got this. Just… be careful, okay?"
She knew what he wanted to say. Don't get hurt. Don't end up like Lee. Please, come back. He was trying to be the strong one, the encouraging friend, but she could see the truth as clearly as she could see the chakra flowing through his veins. Her heart swelled with an emotion so warm and fierce it momentarily stole her breath. She reached out and placed her hand gently over his, her touch both a reassurance and a silent promise.
"I will, Naruto-kun," she said, her resonant voice a calm, steady anchor. She gave him a smile, a radiant, confident expression that banished the last of the shadows from his face. "Do not worry."
Then, she turned to face the arena. With a single, explosive push from her legs, she launched herself over the balcony. She flew, a graceful, lavender arc against the blue sky, landing in the center of the field with a soft, silent impact that barely disturbed a single blade of grass. It was a statement of absolute, effortless control.
The roar of the crowd, which had been a dull murmur, swelled again as they took in the two combatants. The collective gaze of the stadium fell upon Hinata, and a fresh wave of whispers and shocked murmurs rippled through the stands. They had seen her earlier, but the sight of her standing alone on the field—so impossibly tall for her age, her form a breathtaking sculpture of feminine power and athletic grace—was still a shock to the system. She looked less like a teenage girl and more like a goddess of war who had deigned to walk among mortals.
Up in the stands, the Konoha genin were a knot of nervous energy.
"Alright, Hinata! Show 'im what you're made of!" Kiba yelled, his voice hoarse. "Just one good hit! That's all she needs!"
"But… look at him," Sakura whispered, her hands clasped tightly, her eyes wide with remembered horror. "What he did to Lee… he's not human."
"Human or not, he's never seen anything like Hinata," Ino shot back, her gaze sweeping over Hinata's form with a mixture of envy and awe. "Seriously, is she even real? The height, the shoulders, the… everything. It's not fair. She's like a supermodel and a Kage rolled into one."
"She's strong," Choji said simply between mouthfuls of chips, his assessment uncomplicated and absolute.
Karin, however, was pale, a fine tremor running through her hands. "You don't understand," she breathed, her sensor abilities feeding her a constant stream of terrifying data. "His chakra… it's a screaming, hateful storm. But hers… hers is a quiet, deep ocean with a black hole at the bottom. It's not a fight between people. It's a fight between monsters."
In the Hyuuga section, the reaction was just as divided. An old, wizened elder stroked his beard, his face grim. "Such power… it is not the Gentle Fist. It is a perversion of our art."
"It is victory, honored elder," a younger, more pragmatic clansman countered, his eyes gleaming. "She brings honor and fear to our name. She is the future."
Hiashi remained silent, his face an unreadable mask, but Hanabi was practically vibrating with excitement. "Break him, Nee-san," she whispered, her knuckles white where she gripped the railing. "Show them all."
Kurenai watched, her hands clasped so tightly they ached. "He's unstable, Kurenai," Asuma said quietly beside her, a cigarette dangling from his lips. "That kid is a bomb waiting to go off."
"I know," Kurenai replied, her voice steady, her faith absolute. "But Hinata… is the one person who might be able to defuse it."
On the participants' balcony, Naruto was a one-man cheering squad. "ALRIGHT, HINATA! LET'S GO! YOU'RE THE STRONGEST GENIN THERE IS! GAARA DOESN'T STAND A CHANCE! YOU'RE WAY COOLER, AND STRONGER, AND… AND YOU'RE THE BIGGEST! YEAH! THE BIGGEST AND THE BEST! BELIEVE IT!"
Shikamaru, who had been attempting a nap, groaned and covered his ears. "So loud… so troublesome…"
Kankuro's eyebrow twitched in pure, unfiltered annoyance, but Temari just stared, a look of profound, secondhand embarrassment warring with her irritation. She couldn't decide if the orange-clad idiot was a fool or just pathologically loyal.
Down on the field, a vortex of sand swirled at the arena entrance. From it, Gaara emerged. He didn't leap or run. He walked. His steps were slow, deliberate, each one a silent, grinding footfall of impending doom. The sand in his gourd was churning violently now, and a low, guttural growl seemed to emanate from the very air around him. His turquoise eyes, wide and unblinking, were twitching, a vein pulsing at his temple. He looked like a frayed wire, a contained explosion about to breach its casing.
He came to a stop twenty meters from Hinata, the two of them a perfect, terrifying study in contrasts. The raging, chaotic storm versus the calm, serene eye of the hurricane.
Genma appeared between them in a swirl of leaves, took one look at the two inhumanly powerful children, and sighed, looking as if he would very much rather be anywhere else.
"Final match of the first round," he announced, his voice flat. "Ready?"
Hinata gave a slow, deliberate nod.
Gaara just stared, a broken, chilling smile beginning to tug at the corner of his lips.
"Begin!"
The word "Begin" was a gunshot signaling the start of a hurricane.
Gaara didn't move. He didn't have time. Hinata simply ceased to be where she was. In the split second it took for a normal shinobi to even register the start of the match, she had crossed the twenty meters of open ground, her form a silent, lavender blur that the eye couldn't properly track. She aimed for his defense.
Her first strike was a simple, open-palm thrust aimed at the swirling shield of sand that perpetually guarded him. But the impact was anything but simple. It was not the soft, precise tap of a traditional Gentle Fist. It was a detonation.
BOOM!
A localized thunderclap of pure kinetic force erupted from her palm. The sand shield, which had effortlessly blocked Rock Lee's lightning-fast kicks, shattered like brittle glass. The concussive shockwave sent Gaara stumbling back, his eyes wide with a disbelief so profound it bordered on system failure. His sand had never failed him. It had never been broken.
But Hinata was not done. She gave him no time to recover, no space to breathe. She was on him, a whirlwind of devastating, graceful violence. She pivoted on her heel, the elegant grace of a Hyuuga master married to the brutal, overwhelming force of a falling mountain. Her other hand, balled into a tight fist, hammered into the sand again, another concussive BOOM rocking the arena.
She was faster than Lee. Much faster. Her movements were not the linear, predictable fury of the Eight Gates. They were a liquid, three-dimensional storm, a constant, flowing assault from every conceivable angle. Her Byakugan saw every frantic, desperate attempt by his sand to reform, and her strikes were always there a fraction of a second before, shattering the defense before it could even solidify. The thin, hardened layer of sand armor that coated Gaara's skin, his final, desperate line of defense, began to crack under the relentless barrage, spiderwebbing fractures of dark, compressed sand appearing on his arms and chest. With a final, contemptuous backhand strike, she sent him flying, a small, red-haired rag doll tumbling across the grass.
From the balcony, Naruto was a roaring, ecstatic madman. "YEAH! GO, HINATA! HIT HIM AGAIN! YOU GOT HIM! YOU TOTALLY GOT HIM!"
The cheers of the crowd, the frantic joy in Naruto's voice—it was all a distant, soothing hum in the back of Hinata's mind. Her focus was absolute. She saw the cracks in his armor. She saw his erratic, panicked chakra. He was losing.
Gaara scrambled to his feet, a low, guttural snarl ripping from his throat. The last vestiges of his cold logic shattered, replaced by pure, feral instinct. He was being humiliated, beaten in close quarters by a power he couldn't comprehend. He needed distance. He needed to bring his true power to bear.
The sand at his feet erupted, lifting him into the air, a makeshift pillar raising him twenty, then thirty meters above the arena floor. "I'll crush you!" he screamed, his voice a broken, childish shriek of rage. He thrust his hands forward, and the sand responded, forming and firing a hailstorm of razor-sharp sand shuriken, a deadly, wide-spread barrage meant to overwhelm and shred.
But from his elevated vantage point, he learned a terrifying new truth: he still couldn't track her. Down below, Hinata was a phantom. She moved in a series of impossible, zig-zagging bursts of speed, the sand shuriken churning up the earth where she had been a second before. To him, she was just a lavender smear, a ghost that was everywhere and nowhere at once.
Then, she leaped. A single, powerful bound that carried her soaring into the air towards him. The Klyntar biomass flowed over her hands in an instant, her fingers elongating into wicked, black talons that crackled with a furious, white-hot lightning. Her Raikō Sōga (Lightning Claw Fang) flared to life.
She met his sand shuriken storm head-on, not dodging, but dismantling it. Her lightning-wreathed claws were a blur, deflecting and shattering the projectiles with a series of sharp, electric CRACK-CRACK-CRACKs. She tore through his offense and reached him in the air. He tried to form a sand shield, but her claws raked across it. The lightning broke the sand. The electrical current flashing through the chakra-infused particles and directly into Gaara himself.
He screamed, a high-pitched sound of pain and shock as the voltage seized his muscles. His control over the sand pillar faltered. The lightning-laced talons raked across his chest, tearing away a large chunk of his cracking sand armor, and for a fleeting, beautiful instant, Hinata saw a patch of pale, unarmored skin beneath. Then, his pillar dissolved, and he plummeted from the sky, crashing hard into the arena floor.
He lay there, twitching, the raw, furious hatred boiling inside him finally reaching its peak. He had been beaten. He had been broken. He had been made to look weak. The quiet, sandy voice in his head was no longer a whisper. It was a deafening, all-consuming roar. KILL HER!
Gaara pushed himself to his knees, his head thrown back, a silent, guttural scream tearing from his throat. His chakra exploded from him, a tidal wave of raw, monstrous power. The entire arena floor began to tremble as the sand, all of it, began to rise. It was no longer a shield or a weapon. It was the entire world, a roiling, churning sea of grit and death. A giant, roaring, grinding tsunami of sand, a hundred feet high, rose up, casting a monstrous shadow over the entire stadium. It was an attack of impossible scale, a force of nature unleashed.
Hinata landed lightly on the grass, her eyes wide, analyzing the impossible wave of destruction roaring towards her. Even as it came, she was already coiling, preparing her Klyntar Kaiten, ready to meet the storm head-on. But the sheer volume, the sheer, overwhelming mass of it, was beyond anything she had anticipated.
The wall of sand crashed down. It hit her. it swallowed her, a colossal, sandy maw engulfing her completely, burying her from sight under thousands of tons of raw, elemental fury.
On the balcony, two voices screamed out in perfect, horrified unison.
"HINATA!"
"NEE-SAN!"
The world became a grinding, crushing, suffocating weight. For a fraction of a second, Hinata was suspended in a vortex of grit and overwhelming pressure, the roar of the sand a deafening, physical thing against her skin. A normal defense would be ground to dust. A normal body would be pulped into a fine red paste.
But she was not normal.
The pressure exceeds acceptable tolerances, Venom's voice was a blade of cold, analytical calm in the heart of the chaos. Standard Kaiten is insufficient. Execute Protocol: Raikō. Now.
Hinata didn't need to be told. She was already moving. "Hakkeshō: Raikō Kaiten!" (Eight Trigrams Palms: Lightning Drill Revolving Heaven) she roared, her voice a doubled thunderclap that was somehow heard even within the crushing roar of the sand.
From the outside, the massive, silent mound of sand that had swallowed her suddenly bulged. A web of brilliant, white-hot light, like cracks in reality itself, spread across its surface. And then, with a single, deafening CRACK-BOOM!, the mound detonated. A perfect, grinding sphere of pure, white lightning erupted outwards, not just pushing the sand away, but atomizing it, turning thousands of tons of grit into a cloud of superheated, glassy dust.
Hinata stood in the center of the newly-formed crater, untouched, her body wreathed in the fading, crackling aura of her ultimate defense. Gaara, still reeling from the sheer expenditure of chakra, stared from across the field, his jaw agape, his mind utterly unable to process her survival.
She gave him no time to recover. Her left hand shot out, palm open. In it, a fist-sized sphere of screaming, rotational lightning, a Shō-Raikōsen (Small Lightning Drill), formed in an instant. With a sharp, guttural cry, she launched it. The projectile tore across the field, a screaming drill of pure energy.
Gaara's sand, what little he could command quickly, rose to form a clumsy, desperate shield. The lightning drill slammed into it. It ground into it, shattering the sand defense and continuing onward to slam into the cracking armor on his chest. While the drill dissipated before it could pierce his skin, the kinetic and electrical shock was immense. Gaara cried out, a jolt of pure voltage seizing his muscles, and he stumbled back, his control over the remaining sand flickering wildly.
Now the true storm began. Hinata became a blur of relentless, multi-vector offense. She used short, explosive bursts of speed to constantly change her angle of attack, making her an impossible target.
Target: Left shoulder, Venom's voice was a calm stream of tactical data in her mind. Armor integrity at sixty-four percent. Firing solution calculated.
Two sleek, black Klyntar tendrils erupted from her back, each one crackling as a small, fast Raikōsen (Lightning Drill) formed at its tip. She fired them simultaneously, a two-pronged assault that forced Gaara to erect a shield to his left. But it was a feint. As he defended, Hinata, now on his right, had already formed a larger drill in her own hand and launched it, slamming into his exposed flank and shattering another large piece of his failing armor.
He roared in frustration, lashing out with a thick, clumsy tendril of sand. Hinata simply leaped over it, her movements fluid and impossibly graceful. As she sailed through the air, her hands became a blur of black, lightning-wreathed talons. Her Raikō Sōga (Lightning Claw Fang) raked across his back as she passed, tearing away more of his defense and sending another jolt of paralyzing electricity through him.
She landed, spun, and fired again. A constant, grinding barrage of lightning drills, small and large, hammered his position from every conceivable angle. He was a predator who became prey, caught in a thunderstorm of his own making, desperately trying to shield himself from a foe who was everywhere at once. The sand armor covering his body was now a pathetic, crumbling ruin, great patches of it blasted away to reveal the pale, trembling skin beneath.
The humiliation, the pain, the sheer, unadulterated fury finally broke him. The monster within, the voice that had been screaming for blood, now demanded survival.
With a final, desperate roar, Gaara slammed his hands on the ground. A colossal wave of sand erupted, not as an attack, but as a wall, a battering ram designed to force her back, to create distance. Hinata leaped clear, landing lightly a hundred meters away as Gaara used the opening to retreat to the far side of the arena.
He stood there, panting, his body trembling, his face a contorted mask of pure, murderous hatred. And then, he began to change.
The sand from his gourd, from the very floor of the arena, began to swirl around him. It was clinging to him, coating him, layer by agonizing layer, building a massive, silent, and terrifying sphere. A cocoon.
Hinata stopped her assault, her glowing Byakugan flaring to its maximum intensity. She looked past the sand, past the physical form, and into the soul of the boy within. What she saw made her breath catch.
His chakra network was a raging, chaotic tempest, a system on the verge of total, catastrophic failure. But it wasn't just his energy. There was a second presence, a vast, ancient, and impossibly hateful well of chakra, and it was violently tearing its way out, overwhelming his own, consuming him from within.
"His chakra is… unraveling," she whispered, her voice a mixture of awe and dawning horror. "It's not him anymore."
The host is failing, Venom confirmed, its voice cold and final. The parasite seeks to assume direct control. A flawed, inefficient process. Prepare for escalation.
Hinata stared at the rapidly growing sphere of sand, at the monstrous transformation taking place within. "The thing inside him… it's trying to get out."
The rapidly forming sphere of sand was not just a defense, it was a womb. Hinata's Byakugan pierced through the layers of grit, seeing the chaotic, hateful energy within coalescing, preparing to birth something monstrous. A simple barrage wouldn't work. The shell was too thick, and it was constantly regenerating from the sand on the arena floor. She needed to punch a hole through it, a single, devastating breach, and she needed to do it now.
His structural integrity is increasing exponentially, Venom's analysis was a cold, sharp spike in her mind. A singular, high-yield impact is required to compromise the outer layers. But a single impact will not be enough to neutralize the entity within. The force must be… continuous.
A drill, not a hammer.
Hinata planted her feet, the grass around them hissing as her chakra flared. She brought her hands together in front of her chest, a river of white-hot lightning pouring from her body into the space between her palms. The air crackled, the sound of tearing silk filling the stadium as she formed the largest, most powerful Raikōsen she had ever attempted. It was a roaring, miniature sun of pure, grinding plasma, a Kyodai Raikōsen (Gigantic Lightning Drill) as large as a carriage, and it screamed with contained fury.
"Take this!" she roared, her voice a doubled thunderclap, and thrust her hands forward.
The colossal drill of lightning shot across the field, leaving a trail of scorched, glassy earth in its wake. It slammed into the sand cocoon with the force of a falling mountain. The impact was deafening, a titanic CRACK-BOOM that shook the entire stadium. A massive, crater-like chunk of the sand sphere was obliterated, blasted into a cloud of superheated dust, revealing the furious, swirling energies within.
But it wasn't enough. The hole began to close almost instantly, fresh sand pouring in to fill the gap. The monstrous chakra signature inside, momentarily disrupted, surged with a renewed, hateful vigor. The transformation was accelerating.
Hinata's eyes narrowed. A bigger drill wasn't the answer. She needed a better drill. One that didn't just hit once, but one that would grind, and grind, and grind until nothing was left. And she had one.
She began to spin.
On the balcony, Naruto jumped to his feet, his hands gripping the railing. "What the heck is she doing?!" he yelled to no one in particular. "That was a great shot! Why'd she stop?! She's too far away to hit him now!" He turned to the person next to him. "Shikamaru! What's she doing?! Is this some kind of Hyuuga thing?!"
Shikamaru, who had been slouched against the wall, was now on his feet, his usual lazy expression completely gone, replaced by a look of sharp, intense, almost fearful concentration. "Shut up and watch, Naruto," he said, his voice quiet, his eyes locked on Hinata. He saw it. The rotation. The gathering energy. The impossible, insane, and terrifyingly logical conclusion. This wasn't a defense. It was a wind-up.
In the Hyuuga section, the elders murmured in confusion. "Kaiten? From this distance? It is a defensive technique. What is the girl thinking?"
Hanabi, however, leaned forward, her own Byakugan blazing, seeing the impossible vortex of chakra Hinata was creating. "No," she breathed, her voice filled with a dawning, terrified awe. "That's… that's not a shield."
The rest of the Konoha genin were just as baffled. "What's the big idea?" Kiba barked, pointing. "She's just spinning in circles!"
Sakura watched, her brow furrowed in concentration. "The rotation…" she muttered, her book-smart mind trying to connect the dots. "The rotational energy from Naruto's new jutsu… she saw it. She's trying to replicate the principle, but… what for?"
It was Karin who felt it. Her whole body was trembling, her sensor abilities screaming at her. "It's not just chakra," she gasped, her face pale. "She's… she's compressing it. The pressure… the sheer, contained force in that sphere… it's… it's wrong. It's like she's trying to hold a star in her hands."
Hinata was a blur now, a spinning top of lavender and black. But as she spun, she channeled her Raiton nature into the rotation. The air around her ignited, the blue sphere of a standard Kaiten replaced by a chaotic, grinding vortex of pure lightning. It was a screaming, jagged, and utterly terrifying sphere of pure, disintegrating force. Hakkeshō: Raikō Kaiten. A grinding vortex of starlight and fury.
Then, the final pieces clicked into place. Two vast, leathery Klyntar wings erupted from her back, their black membranes taut and powerful, catching the air. They were not for flight. They were for propulsion.
She stopped spinning, but the sphere of grinding lightning remained, a self-contained, screaming hurricane held in her hands, its raw power making her own hair stand on end. She crouched, her body a loaded cannon, her glowing silver eyes fixed on the cracked, healing surface of Gaara's cocoon.
The wings beat once, a thunderclap of displaced air that flattened the grass for fifty feet around her.
And the star that was Hinata Hyuuga shot across the field, a living meteor aimed at the heart of the monster's shell.
The collision was an erasure. The sound was a grinding, high-frequency shriek of matter being torn apart on a molecular level, followed by a deafening CRACK-BOOM that dwarfed every sound that had come before it. A blinding flash of white light bleached all color from the stadium, and for a single, breathtaking moment, the only thing that existed was the sight of a living star meeting an immovable object.
The object moved.
The sand cocoon was obliterated, atomized, its constituent particles blasted outwards in a superheated, expanding cloud of glassy dust. The force of the detonation hurled Gaara's battered, half-transformed body backwards like a stone from a catapult. He flew across the entire length of the arena, a broken red comet trailing sand and fury, and slammed into the far stadium wall with a sickening CRACK of stone and bone that echoed through the now-silent stadium. He hung there for a moment, embedded in the crater his own impact had made, before slumping to the ground in a heap of torn clothes and bleeding limbs.
Hinata landed lightly in the center of the field, the whirlwind of lightning around her dissipating into harmless, crackling motes of light. The wings on her back receded into her form. Her chest heaved, the massive expenditure of chakra leaving a hollow ache in her core, but she was victorious. The monster was defeated.
Across the field, Gaara stirred. He pushed himself up, his body trembling, his mind a fractured mess of pain and confusion. The hateful, sandy voice in his head was gone, replaced by a profound, terrifying silence. He looked down at his arm, at a deep gash left by a piece of flying shrapnel from the wall. A thick, crimson liquid was welling from the wound, tracing a path down his pale skin. He stared at it, his turquoise eyes wide with a horror that was purely, chillingly human. It was red. It was warm. It was his.
"My… blood…" he whispered, his voice a broken, trembling thing. The sight of it, the undeniable proof of his own vulnerability, his own mortality, shattered the last of his monstrous composure. A raw, terrified, and utterly childish scream tore from his throat. "IT'S MY BLOOD! IT'S COMING OUT OF ME!"
He scrambled backwards, crab-walking away from his own wound, his mind completely broken by a reality he had never been forced to confront.
Hinata watched him, her predatory focus softening into a kind of grim pity. The fight was over. Now, all that was left was to end it. She took a step forward, her body coiling, ready to close the distance and render him unconscious with a single, merciful touch.
But she stopped. Something was wrong.
The silence. The roar of the crowd, the shocked gasps, the panicked whispers—it had all vanished. The entire stadium, tens of thousands of people, was utterly, completely silent. Not a peaceful silence, but a heavy, unnatural, and deeply unsettling quiet, like a recording that had been abruptly cut off.
Her head snapped up, her Byakugan flaring as she scanned the stands. And she saw it. A hazy, green film of foreign chakra, a vast, insidious blanket, had settled over the entire civilian population. Their own chakra pathways were being subtly lulled, their consciousnesses gently rocked into a state of placid, waking sleep. It was a mass-scale genjutsu.
…Neural dampening field activated, Venom's voice was a cold, sharp alarm in her mind. The cattle have been sedated. The hunt begins.
Her eyes darted to the jounin sections. They were stirring. Kurenai, Asuma, Kakashi—they were on their feet, their own chakra flaring as they broke the illusion's hold. But it was too late. The trap had already been sprung.
Her gaze shot to the most important place in the stadium. The Kage box. Her vision pierced through the wood and plaster, and her blood ran cold. The ANBU guards at the door were slumped, their animal masks askew, their lives already forfeit. Inside, the Kazekage stood, but it was not him. It was Orochimaru. The serpent. And in his hand, he held a kunai to the throat of the Third Hokage.
Before Hinata could even process the image, before she could even form a warning on her lips, a series of explosive tags that had been hidden on the box's supports detonated.
A deafening BOOOOM ripped through the unnatural silence, a ball of fire and black smoke engulfing the Kage's balcony in a declaration of war.