The gravel bit into Tsukihiko's knees, a familiar agony after seven months of predawn torture. Spring rain had given way to summer's oppressive humidity, then autumn's chill, and now the first frost crusted the training ground. Three years old felt like thirty. His body, still ludicrously small, screamed under Hiashi's relentless demands.
Crack!
Hiashi's cane found the gap between Tsukihiko's shoulder blades as he faltered in the Hakkeshō Kaiten preparatory stance. Pain, sharp and instructive, radiated down his spine.
"Fluidity, boy!" Hiashi's voice was a whip. "The Rotation is the clan's shield. Your hesitation is a death warrant."
Tsukihiko gritted his teeth, tasting iron. Seven months. Seven months of mapping chakra pathways in a body too underdeveloped to channel them efficiently. His adult mind understood the precise angles, the centrifugal force required, the tenketsu activation sequence. His three-year-old nervous system fumbled the signals. He visualized the blue networks flaring – distribute chakra laterally, anchor through the spleen meridian – only for his foot to slip on frost-slicked gravel.
Hiashi's Byakugan pulsed, veins like cracked ice. "You dissect like a medic-nin. A Hyuga heir must become the technique. Instinct over intellect on the battlefield. Thinkers die first, their scrolls bloodstained confetti." He yanked Tsukihiko upright, the grip on his small arm bruising. "Again. Fail, and you spend the night on this post."
The threat was real. Tsukihiko had spent two shivering nights exposed last month. He forced his trembling legs into the stance, channeling not just chakra, but seven months of accumulated frustration and fear. The frost beneath his feet felt like the cold horror of war waiting.
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Konoha's vibrant greens faded into the skeletal greys of late autumn. The war's shadow stretched longer. Tsukihiko, permitted brief respites from the brutal training, became a silent observer in the clan's undercurrents.
He saw Hizashi's stoic facade crack once – finding him staring blankly at a sealed scroll, fingers tracing the Branch family insignia, grief raw in his usually impassive eyes. The weight of the imminent seal pressed down.
He overheard hushed arguments between Elders Noboru and Kimiko near the koi pond:
Noboru said hissing: "Seven months Hiashi coddles the heir! The frontline bleeds! Renjiro's sacrifice demands—"
Kimiko stated in cold fury: "Demands we brand infants faster? Noboru, your grief blinds you. Rushing the seal risks crippling their chakra coils permanently!"
Tsukihiko's blood ran cold. Takashi's stability theory wasn't guaranteed. The seal was a gamble with children's lives.
Most chilling was the day he saw Itachi Uchiha, barely four but already radiating unnatural stillness, observing Hyuga training from a distant rooftop with his father, Fugaku. Their eyes, dark and assessing, met Tsukihiko's across the compound. Itachi gave the faintest, almost imperceptible nod. Acknowledgment? Or a predator noting prey? Seven months hadn't dulled the unease of that shared, terrible potential.
Hiashi found him watching the Uchiha. "See the prodigy, boy? Remember this: The Uchiha flame burns bright, but consumes itself. The Hyuga endure. Cold. Precise. Unbroken." His hand clamped Tsukihiko's shoulder. "Your time for endurance training ends soon."
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The journey east into the Land of Rice Fields was a descent into hellscape on foot. Lush paddies were cratered battlefields. Burned villages stood like blackened skeletons against the sky. The air hung thick with the cloying stench of wet ash, decay, and chakra residue. Shinobi moved swiftly but warily, carrying supplies or wounded on stretchers between squads using Body Flicker to scout ahead. Tsukihiko struggled to keep pace, his small legs churning through the mud churned up by countless boots before him.
Hizashi moved close to him, his Byakugan constantly scanning the ruined landscape, shoulders tense. He pointed silently to a section of road swallowed by a massive sinkhole, edges still crumbling. "Iwa Earth Grinders," he muttered, his voice flat. "Two days ago. They took out a whole patrol. Just... swallowed them. No bodies recovered." Tsukihiko saw fresh cracks snaking through the earth nearby.
Refugee caravans clogged the side paths – hollow-eyed civilians fleeing the ever-shifting front lines, their meagre possessions piled on carts or their backs. A child, maybe five, stared blankly from the mud, clutching a filthy, headless doll. Tsukihiko looked away, his insides twisting.
They passed a recent skirmish site marked by shattered trees and scorch marks. Konoha medics worked frantically amidst the devastation. A medic-nin, her Byakugan veins stark against her ashen face, desperately pressed glowing hands to a shinobi's crushed leg, trying to stem bleeding from pulped flesh and splintered bone. The soldier's face was grey, his breath shallow gasps. The smell – mud, blood, ozone, and the faint, sweet odor of gangrene – was overwhelming.
Hiashi halted the column, forcing Tsukihiko to look. "This is the cost, Tsukihiko," his voice was a cold knife in the humid air. "This is what your seven months bought: the privilege to see the butcher's bill before you pay it. Remember the stench. Remember the sounds. They are the only tutors on this field."
Hizashi shifted subtly between Tsukihiko and the worst of the carnage. "The bill comes due too often here," he murmured, almost too low to hear, his eyes fixed on the dying shinobi. "For everyone." Ahead, the Konoha forward camp emerged from the mist and smoke – a desperate fortress of mud walls, sharpened stakes, and tattered banners, ringed by the watchful, hostile hills.
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The Konoha forward camp hummed like a wounded beast. Rain drummed on leaky canvas while distant thumps of Iwa artillery vibrated through the mud. Inside the command tent, the air hung thick with the smell of wet wool, stale sweat, and tobacco smoke. Behind a table strewn with maps marked by crimson circles, Jiraiya stood – his usual flamboyance replaced by granite focus. White hair plastered to his forehead, he stabbed a finger at a map position deep in contested territory.
"Their main camp's here," Jiraiya growled, ash from his cigarette scattering over the map. "Burrowed into the eastern bluffs like ticks. They're moving under the mud – Mole Hiding Technique." His eyes, sharp as senbon, swept over the Hyuga contingent. "Your eyes can see through everything. I need a deep patrol here." He tapped a narrow valley marked 'Willow Marsh Approach'. "Find their tunnels. Mark their exits. Don't engage."
A bloodied Hyuga Jonin, the one representing the clan till now, slumped nearby, cradling a broken arm. "Squad Four... wiped out there yesterday," he rasped. "Earth Flow Spears... ambushed from below..."
Jiraiya's jaw tightened. "Which is why we need your eyes," he said, turning to Hiashi. "See what others can't."
Hiashi gave a curt nod. "As you command."
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Tsukihiko stood at the edge of camp, rain needling his face. The stench of mud and blood mixed with a jonins's tobacco smoke still clinging to his clothes. "Their eyes see through everything." The Toad Sage's words echoed, merging with the dying chuunin's gasp and the refugee child's hollow stare. Seven months of training crystallized into this: walking towards burrowed enemies who turned earth into graves.
Hizashi materialized beside him, gaze fixed on the eastern bluffs. "The Mole Hiding Technique leaves faint chakra residues," he murmured. "Like worms under soil. Your Byakugan will see them. Focus on texture shifts in the mud." His voice held no comfort, only grim instruction. "We move at dawn."
Somewhere in those rain-lashed hills, Iwa shinobi waited underground, masters of the very ground Konoha walked on. Tomorrow, Tsukihiko would hunt them through walls of dirt.
He traced the hidden kanji under his sleeve: 抗.
Resist. The earth itself felt like the enemy now.