Ch6: Proud Papa Hiashi

Being 3 years old in the cadet branch with a new slave seal on my head was a bit different than the main branch. While Hinata went through the motions, I was placed in a spare against bigger, more experienced kids.

Jiro Hyuga, one of many 8-year-olds, had no problem showing me the ropes.

A jab to my sternum knocked me on my ass; it had been too fast and coated with chakra. I barely defended myself before another blow rolled me over.

"Get up and get back into a stance. I'm not finished giving you pointers." Jiro said.

Jiro's version of pointers was to move faster than I could react and jab me. I was quite sure he only knew a single attack. Complicated plans like stopping the Uchiha massacre or even Hinata's kidnapping weren't really possible in my current state. Phantasmal Form was hard to practice when the entire Hyuga clan was glaring at me, searching for a mistake to iron over.

I moved slowly to my feet.

Jiro Hyuga lvl5

Description: A child that revels in the feeling of superiority that comes with disciplining juniors. He is a tool used to ensure conformity.

I had only been awake for a few hours when this mess started. Neji, only a year older than led me to the branch family sparing room, where Jiro started beating the crap out of me. It was rather disconcerting going from fighting an eldritch goat to an 8-year-old with a sense of entitlement.

He moved again; this time, I fell into my stance and managed to block his initial poke. I wanted to drive a kunai in his eye and kill him off. Being a child again must be affecting me, or maybe it was the chest pains from this kid's pokes. Instead, I cast an illusion of sensation.

Illusions weren't mechanically local Genjutsu, and it didn't care about people seeing through chakra. I inflicted pain in his thigh similar to arthritis; he shifted at an inappropriate time, and I nailed him. Jiro's eyes widened, and he yelled for the instructor.

"He cheated with Genjutsu," Jiro claimed.

"I saw no Genjutsu. Do you have proof?" The 8-year-old glared, thinking.

"My leg hurt but doesn't anymore," Jiro said.

"Do you require pointers?" Kaito, the older Hyuga, asked.

Jiro shook his head quickly, and the instructor's lips twitched before he returned to his position. The young boy returned to his stance, and it seemed we were going at it again.

Getting out of the compounds was impossible until I joined the academy. My mother saw no reason for me to leave, and my stepfather preferred to glare at me or smoke when he wasn't on missions. I was, for all intents and purposes, a prisoner.

"You could always let me out, and we could have so much fun together. Think of all the xp you'll earn when I slaughter this village. It's not like you care about them. Come on, let big sis show you a good time." My eldritch horror said.

She started calling herself big sis ever since I gained my Shota perk. On the bright side, regen and learning were 10x faster; on the downside, I had 1/10th of my stats on hand. So, after a long day of sparing, I understood there was only one solution to my problems.

"Instructor, is there a way I can get chakra weights to help me get stronger?" I asked.

The fanfiction trope existed for a reason. If they existed, I should be able to requisition them to help my training. My stats would thank me, especially when I figured out the constitution cheat.

"No one uses them, so we were going to throw them out anyway. Training with such weights is antiquated compared to receiving pointers from you seniors." The instructor smirked. "Go ahead; you are a little on the frail side and need all the help you can get." The man said.

How was bullying the key to Hyuga growing in power? Wait, was that why Hiashi was so hard on Hinata. Did Hinata put on an act to get all the gains? Was the cage bird seal actually a form of Hyuga's secret strength training? Was that where the BDSM Hinata came from?

There were so many questions I didn't have the beginning of answers for. I slipped on the weights and made my way to a training post.

"Please have mercy. I will change my ways." The Hyuga were a wealthy family, even among ninjas of the hidden leaf. What did that mean? Well, Mr. Bandit had been taken covered in restraints and parked on a post for young ninjas to cut their teeth on living, breathing targets. "I have a family. I only got into this to feed them."

My training post was a man with a shrunken stomach that exposed his ribs covered in sours. He must have thought I couldn't read. Tattooed on his face were the words pedophile, rapist, and murderer. On his chest, the bored Hyuga tattoo artist had added a bunch of highly stylized dicks. Normally, that wasn't the kind of thing to have around children, but with eyes like ours, we saw them all the time.

I threw a jab at a pressure point, and my finger didn't stop at the skin. I felt my finger drill a hole down to his degenerated chakra coil. Blood coated my finger as I pulled back and continued my drill. Blows rained on the poor, unfortunate guy as I tried hard to learn more about my fighting style.

Observing The skill gave me some insights.

Gentle Fists lvl3: A fighting style designed to attack an opponent's internal chakra network and vital organs.

I wasn't aiming to incapacitate this guy or even kill him yet. No, and the more I struck, the more I noticed the penis tattoos had the urethra at the chakra points. The artists were incredibly bored.

While I could grind and brute force it, my idea was to move more toward vital organ destruction than pure chakra network fuckery. Everyone and their grandma could overcome plugged chakra points later, but what if I could do something crazy like make their bodies explode Fist of the North Star style.

"Yes, blood and guts for slurping delicious meat." Nightmare said.

"I will never understand your sense of taste." Eldritch Goat said. "Call me big sis. I think I have an answer for your constitution problems. All you have to do is dress the training dummies up in armor and beat them until your hands are meat, let them regenerate, and do it again. Now say thank you, big sis; I need to hear you say it." Big Sis said.

"Thank you, Big Sis," I said.

The goat in my head seemed to have the equivalent of an orgasm in my mind. Still, that wasn't a terrible idea. My hands would recover, and I wouldn't receive too much damage if I reinforced them with chakra.

…

The mess with May had happened in a moment of weakness, and it had taken time for his wife to forgive him. Seeing his son receive the cage bird seal had been harder than he thought it would be. The way the boy turned and even looked at him had clutched at his heart, similar to Hinata. Even the clan head had limits to their power. Hiashi knew it nepotism hadn't kept his nephew from receiving the cage bird seal. How could Hiashi face his brother if he protected his son from the act?

As for the boy, he had already chosen a shinobi life; pointers were a necessary tool to give children the hunger to become proper shinobi. The training dummies were another traditional step taken by their ancestors to ease their children into the life. Despite their presence, they were rarely used and more a part of the scenery and tools for bored seal journeyman to practice their artistry. Rarely would a child choose to assault one of the dummies and would prefer to spar with children closer to their ages.

It had taken Hiashi aback when he had his hand on the door, ready to cross to the branch training compound to defend his son from overly aggressive pointers. As if that could be allowed to happen to three-year-olds too often. Enough pointers were needed to establish a hunger but not so much to make victims out of the young and promising. Cruelty was an active ingredient in making a successful ninja, but like adding salt to any dish, too much will ruin it.

The head of the Hyuga clan returned to his work after the instructor admonished young Jiro. Once he made a sizable dent in his daily pile of paperwork, he checked in again. Hinata was playing instead of training Sage; he wished he could introduce her to her brother; she looked lonely. Checking up on his son again made him rise up from his desk.

The boy had found some old plate armor from the clan-era reenactment club. It was important to reenact certain battles on stage to give the younger generation an idea of where they came from and why this village system was worth it. The plate was historically accurate, with chakra steel plates fully capable of turning gentle fist strikes. What was the boy doing dressing a bandit up in armor?

What was the instructor doing? Hiashi saw that the man was merely watching the show. That deserved some punishment. He signed up to watch the children for the day instead of taking another mission because his wife was soon to give birth. If this was the way he took care of children, perhaps it was early for him to be a father. Hiashi placed a hand to his mouth and coughed.

The action would have gained the attention of the man if he was paying him any attention since when was the clan head mere background. No ninja would let their guard down unless they were truly distracted by something as insane as what his son was doing. Perhaps he was wrong, and the man was merely paying extra attention and letting his son do the equivalent of touching a hot stove to learn a lesson. That should be one of the reasons why a Jonin instructor who survived the nine-tail attack would sit idle.

He checked on Hinata; she was still looking lonely, playing with dolls sensibly, not dressing bandits in ceremonial clan-era armor to practice her gentle fists on. It was one day after his son received the cage bird seal, and he was already getting into trouble. The exact opposite of his nephew. Neji appeared to be the perfect practitioner and respectful young member of the clan, a future pillar of their community. It wasn't fair; his son was only three, and he remembered getting into trouble with his twin when they were younger.

"What are you planning?" Kaito asked.

Hiashi could read lips like every Hyuga eventually developed. With omnidirectional vision that could see through walls and chakra in all forms, the skill came quickly. The instructor's question pissed the Hyuga's head off.

"I'm going to toughen my fingers and palms." Atom said.

That was the response he expected from a 3-year-old admittedly slightly more articulate than anticipated. His son immediately fell into form and started striking the armor with abandon while the bandit suffered. The expected broken bones didn't happen; instead, his son miraculously used chakra to cushion the bones between his ligaments. The feat of chakra control should have been beyond a normal child, but of course, Atom would be another prodigy.

His son was far too bold and talented. For a moment, Hiashi wondered what could have been if he allowed nepotism to prevail. Neji would be free of the cage bird seal, and perhaps his brother would hate him less. His son would be next in line to be clan head and best friends with Hinata. If he had allowed his heart to prevail, perhaps life would be so much brighter.

The Hyuga head put on his disapproving clan head face and prepared to ruin his son's fun and force him to conform for his own safety. If the clan elders saw a branch family member becoming too bold, they would strike to kill with that accursed seal.