Chapter 20: Hinata shows hard work!

I've added chapter 19, so it should be correct now.

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Oden had started Hinata with a tree walking exercise, but it turned out that her father had already taught her.

He had put leaves on her while she walked on walls, so she would further train her chakra control.

But it didn't even take a few hours for her to be proficient in that.

The next day Oden taught her the water walking exercise. it took her 3 days to learn it. Then he put her through harder and harder chakra control exercises. she would sometimes stay over until very late until she learned everything.

The first week and a few days had been spent on chakra control.

Then Oden showed her the technique again with her Byakugan activated. And he started teaching her the starting method.

"Will I be able to do it? There's only one week left." Hinata said with a little despair.

Oden looked around the garden and found lots of broken plates everywhere.

"You're getting the hang of it, you can already make a 1 centimeter needle, you need to make it smaller, just a few millimeters so that you can touch the plates without destroying them." Oden said.

The idea was to make the Hinata realise the diameter of the needle. The smaller it was the harder it was to maintain.

So first make sure she can produce the thinnest needle, only then raise the output of the chakra so that the needle becomes way longer but still keeps the diameter.

So they kept working hard until only two days were left for the last chunnin exam.

"Eh... I.. I think I did it?" Hinata spoke with uncertainty.

Oden was sitting near her with a water balloon in his hands. the water had dust and sand in it, and Oden was trying to control it using chakra to better his chakra control.

"Hmm, use your Byakugan to see if there are any holes on the plate." Oden said.

"Ah.. there is a hole in the plate." She said disappointed.

Suddenly Oden jumped up and took the plate.

"Hmm you're right, that means you've succeeded."

"I did?" Hinata asked, She at first thought that she failed because there was a tiny hole in the plate.

"Yes the goal was to make a hole without destroying the plate, only them is the diameter of the chakra needle small enough." Oden explained plainly. But he was thinking about something.

At first he didn't believe that she could pull it off, learning the advanced ninjutsu in only one month, he had only hoped to better her chakra control to the level that she can use substitution jutsu with such ease that she could dominate most of her opponents with simply that and her gentle fist.

But she had surprised him, she was really a genius, but her meek personality really hid her brilliance.

"Truthfully, I only wanted to raise your chakra control to the point that you could use substitute jutsu fluently enough that your opponents would be able to touch or harm you, the. you could use your gentle fist to defeat your opponents...Learning this jutsu in just under a month... you're probably more of a genius than Sasuke at this point." Oden said, with the bare minimum of suprise showing on his face.

Hinata just stood there trying to understand what he had just said.

"..."

"EH?! N-No way, I was just lucky!" Hinata tried to negate her abilities.

"No that's not possible, you can't be lucky in such a hard jutsu to learn. This is raw talent. Now that you still have the memory fresh in your mind, make sure you put a hundred holes in the plates without destroying them." Oden simply told her as he want back to his place to sit.

"Raw talent? " Hinata whispered as those words had stuck with her. she went back to her training.

By the time that it was midnight, Hinata was breathing hard, and she had finally done her assignment.

She just fell on her butt tired, she had worked harder in this month than she had ever done. in the last few days she had even taken a few days off from her training with her jonin sensei.

Her jonin sensei taught her a few good techniques but had agreed to let Hinata train on her own as Hinata told her who was training her.

Her teacher hadn't met Oden yet, but she was still aware of him as he was her senpai technically, as he became a jonin before her.

"Good job Hinata, you can stay here tonight use the guestroom on the second room." Oden said as Mina suddenly arrived near Hinata with a towel and water.

"S-stay h-here? No I can't I have to return h-home!" She said completely red faced.

"I already sent a message to father in law that you're staying here, he agreed to it." Oden stated ash he walked inside.

"Mina show her to the guest room." Was the last he said.

"Don't worry young matriarch. Just follow me so you can rest." Mina spoke kindly she was very fond of the future matriarch.

"Thank you..." Hinata said, she felt very shy both at the fact that she was staying over Oden's place for the first time and the fact that she was just called matriarch.

As the sun rose, Hinata woke up feeling well rested. She slept really good as she had really exhausted herself.

She heard some slight movement from the outside so she walked towards her window that was towards the garden. She opened it and found Oden, shirtless training his form with a staff.

She found it mesmerising, so she just stood there staring at him as he practised his martial arts, almost looking like he danced.

Oden had noticed her but kept on practising, until he felt like she had stood there a bit too long looking towards him... even he started feeling shy so he suddenly stopped.

Hinata saw Oden turn towards her looking her dead in the eye, then he mouthed the words "Time to train."

seeing how she was caught staring she hurried closed the windows before falling into her bed again.

It took a while for her to find her courage to face Oden again.

"Now that you've finally gotten the technique down, there only one thing to do. Slowly raise the output so that the length becomes longer, but do t allow the needle to become thicker." Oden said.

Hinata tried a few time but failed as the needle would become unstable every time.

But Oden wasn't afraid she would run out of time as this was the easiest part of the training.

in the end, she finally succeeded making the needle longer. And then they continued training until midnight again.

"Well done, with this you can defeat almost everyone tomorrow." Oden said with a smile.

Not only had she reached 30 meters, she was also able to become very proficient with hitting targets from a long distance.

"For some reason, after 30 meters it becomes way harder to make the needle longer, I stopped working at it after 40 meters as I found it useless. But to you this is a very good fit, so train it in the future." Oden said. He felt genuinely happy, first because his jutsu would see new light.

He had created this jutsu long ago but it wasn't very useful in his hands, but Hinata could do some real damage with it using her Byakugan.

As for the other reason he's so happy is because he found out how good Hinata really is. She wasn't a talent on his level, but he was definitely up there with Neji, Sasuke and their calibre.

Hinata also showed a happy smile, she had gained a lot this month. Not only had she trained with her father, then her Sensei and then finally Oden.

She was excited to show everyone tomorrow how far she had come.

"Go to sleep. tomorrow will be a big day." Oden said.

Hinata nodded and walked inside.