Naruto: God of Shinobi

Chapter 42: The Caged Bird

Hinata descended the stairs.

Each step was a decision. Each step was a refusal. Her feet were heavy on the stone and she felt the weight of everyone watching but she kept her eyes on the floor below and she kept moving.

Neji descended from the opposite side. His feet were silent. His face was blank. His pale eyes were fixed on the floor below like it had already told him everything he needed to know.

They reached the bottom at the same time. They walked to the center of the floor. They stopped. They faced each other.

Kiba's blood was still drying on the stone between them. Neither looked at it.

Hayate stood at the edge of the floor with his hand raised.

"You fight until one of you cannot continue. You may not kill your opponent. If I determine that continuing would result in death, I will stop the match."

He looked at both of them.

"Begin."

No one moved.

Neji looked at Hinata. His pale eyes were cold in the particular way they had always been cold when they looked at her, not hateful, not angry, just dismissive. The cold of someone who has already done the calculation and is waiting for the room to catch up.

"Hinata," he said. "Withdraw."

Hinata's hands were shaking. She pressed them against her thighs. The shaking did not stop.

"I will not withdraw."

"You cannot win. You have never been able to win. You were born weak. You will always be weak. That is your destiny."

Her jaw tightened. Her pale eyes met his.

"Destiny is not everything Neji, and I wll prove it to you this day."

Something moved behind Neji's eyes. Not anger. Not surprise. Something without a simple name.

"No," he said. "It is the only thing."

Neji did not rush. He did not need to. He walked toward her with the unhurried pace of someone who has already decided, his hands coming up into the Gentle Fist stance. Open palms. Fingers together.

Hinata fell into her own stance. The same stance. The same open palms. The same fingers together. The same technique, trained into both of them since before they were old enough to understand what they were being trained for.

The difference was what the training had built them toward.

Neji had been trained as a prodigy, the branch family genius whose talent exceeded everyone's predictions and changed nothing, who bore a seal on his forehead that the main family could use to destroy him, who had been told his whole life that his ceiling was fixed and his excellence was decorative.

Hinata had been trained as the heir, the main family successor who was supposed to be strong, who was not, who had been failing that expectation long enough that it had stopped being a surprise and become just the shape of things.

Neji struck. His palm hit her shoulder. The chakra went through her arm like cold water, targeted, surgical, and her tenketsu closed and her arm went limp at her side.

Hinata did not cry out. She stepped back and raised her other arm.

Neji struck that shoulder too. Her other arm went limp.

He struck her leg. Her knee buckled. She caught herself. She did not fall.

He struck her other leg and she went to her knees on the stone with both arms hanging useless and both legs barely holding her up.

Neji stood over her. His pale eyes looked down.

"Give up."

Hinata looked up at him.

"No."

She pushed herself up. Her legs screamed under the effort, her arms contributing nothing, and she stood.

Neji watched her.

"Your chakra is blocked. You cannot move properly. You cannot fight. What are you going to do?"

She did not answer. She raised her hand. It was shaking badly, the fingers not closing the way she wanted, but she raised it.

Neji struck it down. Her arm fell.

"Give up."

"No."

She raised it again.

He struck it down.

She raised it again.

The hall was silent. The kind of silence that falls over a room when everyone has the same thought at the same time and no one wants to say it out loud. On the balconies the genin watched, some with their hands over their mouths, some who had turned slightly away and turned back because they could not stop.

Hinata raised her hand.

Neji looked at it. Then at her. At the blood on her knuckles from the stone. At the tears on her face that she was not crying, they were simply there, without her permission.

"Why?" Neji said.

Hinata looked at him.

"Because you are my family," she said. "Because I will not give up on you."

Neji stood still.

His face did not change. His eyes did not change. But his shoulders shifted, just slightly, and his hands lowered a fraction, and that fraction was the most visible thing he had done in the whole fight.

"You are a fool," he said. Quieter than before.

"Maybe," Hinata said. Same as before.

Neji raised his hand. The Gentle Fist stance. He held it for a moment.

Hinata did not close her eyes. She watched him.

He struck.

The palm connected with her chest. The chakra went through her and her heart stopped, just for a moment, just long enough, and she fell. Her body hit the stone and she did not move.

Hayate looked at her. He looked at Neji. He raised his hand.

"Winner. Neji Hyuga."

Neji stood over her. Her chest was rising and falling. He looked at it for a moment.

Then he turned and walked toward the stairs without looking back.

On the balcony, Kurenai's hands were white on the railing. Her red eyes were fixed on Hinata's still form on the floor.

"Medics," she said. Her voice was tight and controlled. "Now."

The medics came fast. They checked pulse, breathing, chakra network, the same practiced sequence as after Kiba.

"She is alive. Her tenketsu are closed. Her heart stopped briefly. She will recover."

They lifted her onto a stretcher and carried her off the floor.

Naruto watched from the far end of the balcony. His arms were crossed. His face was blank. His eyes followed Hinata's stretcher until it passed out of sight.

His face did not change.

Sakura stood beside him. She had been watching him watch.

"Naruto."

He did not look at her.

"What are you thinking?"

He was quiet for a moment. His eyes moved to the floor where Hinata had fallen, then to Neji climbing the stairs.

"He could have killed her," Naruto said. "He chose not to."

"He was holding back," Sakura said.

"Yes."

"Why?"

Naruto watched Neji reach the balcony and walk to the far end of it and put his back against the wall and cross his arms and close his eyes.

The same posture. The same stillness.

"He hates her," Naruto said. "There is something else there that he is not saying."

Sakura looked at Neji. At the blank face. At the closed eyes.

"What?"

Naruto did not answer. He was still watching.

"Interesting," he said, quietly, to himself.

Lee stood with his arms crossed and his face pulled into the serious expression he wore when something mattered to him.

"He did not have to hurt her that much," Lee said.

"She would not give up," Tenten said. "She kept standing up."

"Exactly, she kept standing up," Lee said. "That is not weakness."

Neji opened his eyes from across the balcony. He looked at Lee.

"You do not understand, Lee. You were not born into a cage."

"I was born without talent," Lee said. "I was told I could never be a ninja. That was my cage. I broke it."

Neji looked at him for a long moment.

"Your cage was an idea," he said. "Mine is carved into my forehead."

Tenten looked at the band around Neji's forehead. She had never asked. She had not needed to. She knew what the seal under it meant.

Shikamaru stood at the railing with his arms crossed and his face doing the thing it did when he was actually thinking rather than pretending not to.

"The Hyuga have two branches," he said. "Main family and branch family. The branch family carries a seal. The main family can use it to cause pain. Or to kill."

Ino looked at him. "That is horrible."

"Yes," Shikamaru said. "It is."

Choji was eating again, slowly.

"Neji is branch family," Choji said. "Hinata is main family. He hates her for something she did not do."

"And she loves him for something he cannot accept," Shikamaru said.

Ino was quiet for a moment. "That is sad."

Temari stood with her arms crossed, watching Neji.

"That one is dangerous," she said. "He did not even try."

"He was proving a point," Kankuro said. "That is worse than trying."

Gaara stood apart. His sand was still. His eyes were on Neji.

Temari looked at him. She did not say his name. She had learned when to and when not to.

Gaara did not look at her. He was watching Neji.

Kurenai stood at the railing with her hands still on it, still white.

"That was cruel," she said.

"Neji has never lost a sparring match," Guy said. "He has never been pushed to his limit.

He does not know how to hold back against someone he does not respect."

"Does he respect anyone?"

Guy was quiet for a moment. "I don't know," he said.

Kakashi stood nearby with his book in his hand and not reading it.

"The branch family seal," Kakashi said. "Designed to control. To punish. The main family can activate it at will."

"Every jonin knows about it," Asuma said, cigarette between his fingers. "Neji's father died because of it. Died in place of the main family. That is not a rumor. That is just something no one talks about."

The Third Hokage stood at the edge of the balcony with his old eyes on Neji.

"The Hyuga have their own laws," the Hokage said. "The village does not interfere."

"Perhaps it should," Kurenai said.

The Hokage did not answer.

Naruto stood against the wall. His arms were crossed. His eyes were closed. Not sleeping. Thinking.

Sakura stood beside him.

"She kept getting up," Sakura said. "Even when she could not fight. Even when she could barely stand."

Naruto opened his eyes. He looked at the floor where Hinata had fallen.

"She is not weak," he said.

Sakura looked at him. "You called her creepy."

"Staring at someone for years is creepy. Getting up when you cannot stand is not weakness. Both things can be true."

Sakura was quiet for a moment.

"You are complicated," she said.

"No. I am just honest."

He closed his eyes again.

Sakura looked at him. At the blood still drying on his knuckles. At the blank face. At the way he was standing.

She looked at Neji across the balcony. Exactly the same posture. Arms crossed. Back against the wall. Eyes closed. Like two people who had arrived at the same place by completely different roads.

"You and him," she said. "You are similar."

Naruto did not open his eyes.

"I know," he said.

He had been thinking the same thing. Neji was someone who had been put in a box and told the box was forever, who had decided to be something inside it anyway, who had contempt for weakness because weakness was what the box was built on. The anger under all of it, the real anger, was not aimed at Hinata. It was aimed at the box itself.

Naruto understood that very well.

He filed it away. This place was rotten in ways that went deeper than any single fight, and he had no intention of letting it stay that way. But that was a longer game. Neji was a piece worth knowing.

Hayate looked at his list. He coughed once.

"The next match. Gaara vs.Rock Lee"

---

Next Time: Clash of Dreams – Leaf Hurricane

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