Chapter 35

"Prepare yourself, Hyuga-san! I, the blazing lightning of Konoha Academy, will have my revenge! The wrath of the heavens rain down upon you!" I yelled like a moron, shinai in hand. Despite my best efforts, Hinata deftly turned aside all of my clumsy sword strikes. Likewise, without my practice weights, I was fast enough to evade or block her Gentle Fist strikes with my bamboo practice sword, although Hinata rarely took opportunities to attack me.

"Why are you talking like that?" Hinata shouted. The effort needed to maintain the Byakugan was apparent in her voice. "It makes you sound like a moron."

I broke off and put some distance between us to speak, "That's the point. It's called banter. Now you're supposed to shout back something like "You're going down!" or "We've only just begun!" or "Take that!" as you continue to attack."

Again, Hinata was dressed in the formal Hyuga combat robes which were many-layered clothes of various shades of white. The cloth wrappings that obscured most of her face except for her mouth hid her eyes, forcing her to use the Byakugan to see. It was honestly frightening to see on an opponent, even though I knew it was Hinata underneath.

"Can't we just spar normally?" she whined. Her dour attitude reflected in her stance. That would not do. Maybe it would help if she had some kind of motivation to fight?

"Absolutely not. This is a duel of honor! We must show utmost respect for tradition as we test both our bodies and our minds," I declared.

"I still think it's kind of stupid," she muttered.

"How about this...If you manage to defeat me, I shall permit you to ask of me any request which I will then fulfill to the best of my abilities. Should you fail, however, you will have to dye your hair red and wear pigtails for a week!" I managed to catch myself before I accidentally blurted out 'I shall permit you to date me.'

The girl in white hesitated. As her focus shifted from the battle to what she would ask of me, I charged with my shinai ready for an overhead strike.

I heard Hinata shout, "Gentle Fist: Eight Trigrams Sixteen Palms." After being stabbed in the torso about a million times in a few seconds, I was finally allowed to slump to the ground.

"Oh, God, just let me die."

Hinata crouched down. Worriedly, she asked, "Are you okay, Haru?"

To reassure her, I wheezed nonchalantly, "I'll be fine. Just let me lie here for a minute." As I dismissed my chakra, the pain started to fade from my chest.

There were a lot of problems with trying to fight without chakra. It felt like swimming in molasses compared to average ninja speed. And my body felt extremely fragile, like an ordinary punch would tear through my bones like paper. And it was either on or off. I couldn't shut down chakra to specific body parts. It did have one nice, unexpected benefit; I found in my after-class session with Kurenai that it essentially immunizes you to genjutsu when you locked up enough of your chakra. But as it was, I couldn't use it in a fight.

Hinata began to remove the wraps from her face. By the rules of our match, I had fallen first, meaning Hinata had won. I asked her, "Alright, dark-haired warrior. Name your prize."

"Ah, um, are you sure I can pick anything?" Hinata pushed her fingers together and avoided looking me in the eye.

I stood up and dusted myself off, already considering my plan for next week's duel. "Sure. I don't mind."

"Haru, will come to my home tomorrow?" Hinata continued to look away.

"That's simple enough," I thought to myself. "Sure. When do you want me to come over?"

"Um, is noon okay?" She smiled, but still stared at the ground next to her.

"Yeah. I'll see you tomorrow! And don't forget, I want a rematch same time next week." Both of our 'duels' had taken place on the last day of the Academy school week, meaning that tomorrow was our one day off from school.

I picked my training weights off the ground and limped home, ignoring the pain caused by the circulation of chakra necessary to lift them. At least it was much less than before.

I was lying in my bed, staring at the tiny black jar Kabuto had given me. I wondered what the seals meant, whether there were actually Uchiha eyes inside, and who they might have belonged to.

When I told Sasuke I wanted the Sharingan, I had been joking around by assigning an impossible request. Looking back, I had been so unjustifiably angry at the kid. He hadn't really done anything wrong, other than being impertinent and having terrible timing. Objectively, I couldn't fault Sasuke for jumping at the first opportunity to catch up with his brother.

I had mentioned Shisui's eyes because I definitely didn't want anyone to have those. And if I had Itachi's eyes, I'd give them to Sasuke to unlock his Eternal Mangekyo sooner. If I ever had Sasuke's eyes, maybe Itachi could use them. I certainly didn't want them for myself.

I had no idea how I could get an eye transplanted secretly in Konoha. Even having a genuine Sharingan eye was damning evidence of wrongdoing. Every time I left my apartment, I was scared someone would search it and accuse me of bloodline theft.

Not to mention, the Sharingan was an insane chakra expenditure if you weren't an Uchiha or had Hashirama's DNA. At this point, I wasn't sure the benefits outweighed the cost. The only way I could think of to conceivably make use of the eye for myself was to defect to Sound and nab some Hashirama goodness for myself from Team Orochimaru. But it would kill me to be under the Snake Sannin's thumb, figuratively and probably literally. "Sorry, Kabuto."

So at this point, it was nothing more than paperweight. I couldn't ask about it because didn't want it to disappear into some evidence locker where Danzo could add it to his future collection, but I couldn't use it either. And personally, I just really hated the Sharingan. The cause of so many problems in this world, and nearly impossible to fight, I didn't think I could ever bring myself to install one in myself. It just wouldn't be...fun.

I stuffed the small container into a jar of grape jam that had been languishing in the door of my fridge and hoped that wasn't a commonly known ninja trick here. I liked strawberry preserves on my toast more anyways.

In the morning, I headed to Yamanaka Flowers. I could already see Ino behind the counter through the open doorway, flipping through a magazine. She seemed so young to be looking over the store by herself already. Maybe her parents were in the back? Then again, I had been entrusted with the same job when I was even younger.

I stepped inside and was greeted by the pleasant smell of flowers and Ino's lazy greeting, "Welcome to Yamanaka Flowers...Haru?"

"Hello, Ino. How are you?" I said happily.

"Your clothes!" she exclaimed.

"Does it look okay? I haven't worn these in forever." I thought it would be rude to show up at the Hyuga compound with a hood over my face, so I had worn my red kimono and white hakama. When I had bought them, I had gotten the largest size that would fit properly. Since then, I had grown enough that my training weights showed under my sleeves, and the hakama didn't quite hide my footwork properly. Otherwise, I thought the outfit still worked fine. I left out the scar, however, since they were Hyuga and would see through the genjutsu.

"You look nice," Ino said, lifting the magazine off the counter to continue reading it more closely. Looking over the top of the magazine, she asked, "So what brings you here, Haru?

"Ah, these ones mean 'friendship', right?" I asked, picking some white flowers with delicate, dark tipped stamens.

"Right! Oh, are you here as a customer? Are you running an errand for someone or...?" Ino put down her magazine and walked around the counter to take my selection.

"Actually, Hinata asked me to come to the Hyuga compound today. I didn't want to show up empty handed so I figured I'd stop by here and buy some flowers. Ino, can I ask you for a favor? Ino? Are you okay, Ino?" Ino had stopped wrapping my flowers and was just standing motionlessly, staring at the flowers in her hand.

"Haru...do you like Hinata?" she asked slowly.

"Hm. It's more like I think she has a lot of potential." I answered honestly. "I don't know if that makes any sense to you."

"It doesn't," Ino replied, handing me a finished bouquet.

I handed Ino enough cash to pay for the flowers. "Ino, I'm going to enroll in the Hospital's medical program," I informed her.

"But what about Academy?" she asked with a shocked expression.

"I'm going to do both. The Hospital has a set of classes I can take at night. That's why I asked if you wanted to get stronger. I think it would be good for you and me," I told her. "And it might not be so bad if I had someone join with me. Like with kunoichi class." It would be nice to have a friend with me to endure the workload together. The idea to invite Ino was only slightly influenced by the jar of eyeball in my fridge.

The blonde girl seemed intrigued by the idea. "I'll think about it."

I plucked one of the flowers from the bouquet and handed it to Ino. "Here, this one is for you. Also, Ino, I wanted to ask you for a favor. Can I leave something here and pick it up later today?"

"What are you talking about?" Ino wanted to know.

I unfastened my training weights and gently laid them on the floor behind the counter. "I hope you don't mind."

"No problem," she said sardonically. She looked at the lone flower in her hand. "What are friends for?"