136 -=Humiliated Hyuga=-

Neji's consciousness returned to him slowly, immediately infuriating him, who at this point, we all know has already gone crazy

But before he could stand up in rage and go chase Sasuke in Naruto's stead, he heard people talk around him

"Yo, who's the weirdo sleeping in the middle of the ground?" Someone asked

"His headband... is he a ninja?" Someone else asked

"Pffft what's that written on his face?" Someone tried to contain their laughs, not doing a great job

'Are they... talking about me?

...

ARE THEY LAUGHING AT ME!?' Neji thought in pure rage as he abruptly stood up with an angry face

the people around him, just common people, just averted their eyes from him and pretended they didn't even see him there

as they kept talking with whoever they were talking to, Neji heard their laughter, and thinking it was aimed at him, he stormed out before he literally shut them off... permanently

Maybe it was a bit of his sanity that was still there

he immediately ran to the Hyuga compound, to ask the elders to... wait

to ask someone to help him beat Sasuke up for humiliating him

young master Neji, huh?

Well, Amnesia must suck, because he forgot that it was HIM who actually 'hurt' Kaede first, Giving Sasuke, the current Uchiha patriarch, have a definite reason to beat him up

he was actually lucky to have just been put to sleep, but he obviously ignored that

Instead of the anger, he expected to see on everyone's faces for his humiliating defeat, he saw them laugh as soon as they saw him

This infuriated him even further

Barely containing himself, he remembered someone say something was drawn on his face, so he went inside his house and immediately washed it, not even looking to see what it was

the cold water brought his burning fury down a notch, but he was far from calm

he stormed toward a training dummy in his backyard and started attacking

no better way to deal with rage than beating something up...

...

okay, that's not really a good way to calm down

with each consecutive hit, the dummy shook more and more violently, as Neji kept delivering blow after blow

1 hit 2 hits 4 hits 8 hits 16 hits 32 hits 64 hits

the dummy was barely standing, but in his rage, Neji pushed his limits over even the technique he knew and kept going

128 hit

*Crash*

The dummy broke into lots of pieces, as Neji stood there, breathing heavily

"Huuuf... huuuuf... huuuf..." His eyes still looking angrily forward, not that the direction his eyes looked at mattered, as his Byakugan opened by itself a while ago

but even seeing nearly 360° around him, he still failed to see a shadow behind him... smiling?

"Hehehe... what a good find..." The shadow said in a way that not only Neji didn't hear it, but also the reader could understand what it said

how thoughtful of it!

And just like it came, it went away, leaving behind the normal shadow, now a bit less dark, but still leaving no signs of its presence ever being there

Neji slowly rested from overexerting himself, not even aware that he dit 128 strikes as he wasn't counting at the time

but, he was still a tad bit mad, so he decided to try to keep his mind away from all this trouble he was having in the village by going on a mission

of he stayed in Konoha, he would see Sasuke, Kaede or hear someone recognize him as the guy who was sleeping in the middle of the street, and that would make him explode, so he decided to leave for a bit

when he came back, he could deal with all of those, and maybe everyone would even forget about him (The villagers, not EVERYONE, ok?)

(A/N: Also... now that I think about it, are the Minecraft villagers descendants of the Uchiha clan? or maybe their ancestors? because they both know the HN language... food for thought)

Neji's idea was good, there was only one problem with it

he was a Gennin, not a Chunnin

what does that even matter for?

Gennins CAN NOT go on solo missions outside the village

not that it would be a big deal, if not for the fact that this made him remember Kaede's words about Naruto being even more privileged than him, linking that to Naruto's talk no Jutsu about freedom, only made him angrier at the hypocrisy

which, is not wrong

when Naruto made all that speech about how fate isn't real and we decide our own fates, and later on he was fated to fight Sasuke, fated to beat Kaguya, fated to go take a dump, fated to befriend the bijuus

seriously, maybe he was even fated to like ramen, that's absurd

but... knowing Teuchi... there must be his hand on the ramen part, that's for sure

anyway, now you must be questioning

"Uhm, why did Neji not turn into a Gennin when Naruto, Sasuke, and Luna did?"

And for that my friend, there is one really good explanation

protagonism

Just kidding, they are not the main characters of this fic

The reason is simple, Naruto is favored by Tsunade, the son of Minato, and has connections, namely Hiruzen, who made it easy for him

Sasuke is the patriarch of the Uchiha clan, if they didn't let him at least turn into a Chunnin, he would go berserk

and, it was easy to give him the title to create a feeling of belonging to the village on him

As for Luna? She is Tsunade's disciple if you know what I mean

"Sigh..." Neji sighed deeply

there was no use getting mad about this, it was just an empty title

albeit he wished he had this empty title, but moving on