Neji didn't want enlightenment.
He wanted a bath that didn't sting, a bandage change that didn't pull, and eight consecutive hours of unconsciousness without Naruto Uzumaki's fist showing up in his dreams like a rude bell that refused to stop ringing.
His ribs still complained every time he let his lungs fill too deep. The bruise on his jaw had turned that late-stage, ugly yellow—like even his skin was tired of hearing the story. He could still feel the audacity of that fight in his bones. Not just the pain. The idea of it. Naruto's refusal to accept a verdict Neji had spent his whole life memorizing.
The streets between the arena district and the Hyūga compound were packed with the usual after-event spill: vendors hauling boards and baskets, spectators lingering like they could stretch the day out by refusing to go home, children begging for sweets with sticky fingers and loud hope.
Everyone acted like violence was just another attraction.
Neji moved through it in a straight line, head down, posture correct. He was still in his formal clothing—still a Hyūga, still wearing the family's neatness like armor—only now the armor had cracks and bruises under it.
A little boy darted too close, almost colliding with Neji's hip.
"Sorry!" the child chirped, already running again, laughter trailing behind him like a ribbon.
Neji didn't answer. He didn't need to. The world didn't ask the Hyūga for warmth; it asked them to be useful.
He made it three streets.
Then the air changed.
It wasn't a sound at first. It was pressure—subtle, but unmistakable. The kind of tightening you felt right before a storm broke, the moment when the whole world seemed to draw a breath and decide not to let it go.
Neji didn't activate his Byakugan. He didn't have to.
Chakra moved wrong in the distance—too coordinated, too sharp-edged. A ripple ran across Konoha's skin like someone had dragged a blade lightly over it just to test where it would catch.
A heartbeat later, the first alarm bell screamed.
People froze in that stupid, fragile way civilians froze when they didn't want to believe their lives could change in an instant. Some laughed nervously, looking around like it was a performance cue. Someone even clapped once—quick and uncertain—then stopped when no one joined them.
The second bell hit deeper.
Urgent.
The nervous laughter died so fast it was almost swallowed.
A plume of smoke rose over the rooftops on the far side of the village. Not cooking smoke. Not festival smoke. War smoke—dark and thick, climbing like it had purpose.
Neji's feet stopped without him asking them to.
His stomach went cold.
Around him, the crowd broke into clumps of panic. A mother grabbed her son by the collar and dragged him hard enough that the boy stumbled, crying out. A shopkeeper threw a tarp over his goods with shaking hands, as if cloth could hide anything from an explosion. Someone shouted "Sand!" like it was a curse word you could throw at the sky to make it back off.
Neji's hand twitched toward his bandaged shoulder on reflex.
Not my problem, an old part of him tried to say.
The part that had lived neatly in a cage and learned to call it fate.
Then another voice slid in—quiet, factual, infuriatingly gentle in the memory.
Your father chose.
Hiashi's voice. From that conversation that had cracked Neji open and left him raw and furious and, worst of all, uncertain.
Neji's breath caught.
He turned.
He ran.
Not toward the Hokage Tower. Not toward the stadium. Not toward the loud center of heroism where people got to die publicly and be remembered properly.
He ran home.
Roofs blurred past. His ribs flared pain with every impact, and he ignored it with the practiced ease of someone raised to treat his body as a tool. The sky overhead had begun shifting from clear blue to a bruised copper, sunlight filtering through distant smoke until everything looked stained.
He vaulted the outer wall into the Hyūga district and landed in the inner yard with a controlled thud.
The compound should have been orderly right now. Calm. Guard posts manned. Servants moving like shadows. Clan members responding with quiet discipline the moment the bells rang.
Instead: silence.
Not peaceful silence. Not "the Hyūga are unshakable" silence.
Predatory silence. The kind a house held when something uninvited was moving through it.
Neji's eyes narrowed.
His chakra tightened—not into a cage.
Into a spear.
He activated the Byakugan.
The world peeled open.
Walls thinned into paper. Rooms became boxes. Veins of chakra lit like lanterns. Hyūga signatures flickered in their proper places—guards converging late, servants clustered in safe rooms—
And there.
Three. Four. Five signatures moving low and fast along the outer corridors.
Not Hyūga.
Their chakra had a crackle at the edges that didn't belong to anyone raised under Konoha's rhythm. Lightning nature—sharp and impatient. Foreign discipline. Familiar arrogance.
Kumo.
The name landed in Neji's mind like a stone.
He didn't have time to ask why. The village was screaming. The bells were still hammering. Someone had used the chaos of invasion to slip a knife into the Hyūga's ribs.
The intruders were cutting toward the main house.
Not the vaults first. Not the archives.
Toward the women's wing.
Toward the girls.
Neji moved.
He didn't run like a child sprinting from fear. He ran like a blade being drawn from its sheath—clean, silent, inevitable.
Paper lanterns swayed in the hallways, reacting to distant concussions like the compound itself flinched. A far-off explosion rattled a frame. Dust sifted from a ceiling beam in a slow, lazy fall that didn't belong in a place this controlled.
Neji rounded a corner—
Hinata's door was half open.
Two figures were already inside, moving with the quiet confidence of people who believed the world owed them. One held a kunai angled wrong—not for a fight, but for a grab. The other's hands were bare, chakra crawling over their fingers in faint arcs that made the air feel thin.
Hinata stood near her bed, still in light wraps under her clothing, eyes wide and too calm—the Hyūga training trying desperately to override fear. Hanabi was in front of her.
Hanabi's stance was wrong in the way only a child's courage was wrong: too straight, too bold, like she could bully the universe into behaving.
"Move," one of the intruders said, voice low.
Not yelling. Not threatening. Just stating a fact they expected the room to accept.
Hanabi bared her teeth. "No."
Hinata's voice came out thin. "Hanabi…"
"Shut up," Hanabi snapped—at Hinata, not the enemy. "I'm not letting them—"
The kunai-hand shifted.
Neji didn't think.
He appeared.
His palm struck the intruder's wrist with clean precision. Gentle Fist wasn't about strength. It was about permission—one touch, and the body no longer agreed with itself.
The kunai clattered to the floor.
The intruder's eyes widened. "—Neji?"
The name came out like annoyed recognition, as if they'd read a report and now the report had the audacity to fight back.
Neji didn't answer. His second strike clipped the elbow, then the shoulder. Chakra points shut like lanterns snuffed with two fingers.
The second intruder moved—fast.
Lightning chakra flared around their feet and they slid in with a kick that would have taken Neji's head off if he'd been slower.
He wasn't.
He pivoted. The kick grazed his sleeve, burning fabric. Static snapped against his skin.
Hinata gasped.
Hanabi made a sound that was almost a growl.
Neji felt more chakra signatures converging.
The old fatalism rose in him by reflex, whispering its familiar poison: You can't win. This is bigger than you. This is politics. This is what your bloodline is for.
Then he saw Hanabi's small shoulders squared like a shield, and Hinata behind her trying not to shake, and something inside him answered back—raw, ugly, alive.
Then I'll choose anyway.
A third intruder hit the doorway. A fourth flashed across the hallway toward adjacent rooms—toward the archive wing.
They were splitting. Efficient. Prepared.
Neji's jaw clenched.
"Hinata," he said, voice like a blade. "Take Hanabi and go."
Hinata blinked like she hadn't expected to be addressed as a person. "Neji—"
"Now."
Hanabi opened her mouth to argue.
Neji didn't look at her. He just said, "Hanabi."
That was all it took.
Her eyes flicked to his—angry, stubborn—and then, unbelievably, she nodded once.
Hinata grabbed her sister's wrist and pulled. They moved quick and quiet—good. Hyūga training saving them the way it was supposed to, for once.
The lightning-foot intruder laughed under their breath. "Cute."
The hallway filled with motion.
Neji raised his hands.
And then the air shifted again.
A new presence stepped into the corridor—dense, controlled, cold.
Hiashi.
The clan head moved like the house was an extension of his body. He didn't waste words. His Byakugan activated, veins at his temples bulging, gaze snapping across the intruders like he was counting debts.
One of the Kumo shinobi stiffened. "Hyūga Hiashi."
Hiashi's voice was flat. "You came back."
Neji felt it—strange and unwanted, like a mirror being held too close.
Their stances aligned without trying. Same foot angle. Same hand position. Same breath.
For one heartbeat, Neji hated it.
For the next, he used it.
Kumo didn't bother pretending after that. They attacked.
Lightning chakra crackled along forearms. Kunai flashed. A palm strike came in fast enough to blur—someone who'd studied the Gentle Fist just enough to disrespect it.
Hiashi met it with a counter so clean it looked lazy.
Neji slid in behind, cutting off retreat angles, shutting tenketsu with ruthless efficiency. A Kumo shinobi tried to slip past him toward the girls' escape route—Neji's hand snapped out and struck the shoulder blade point that made the arm go dead.
The intruder hissed, furious. "We don't want to kill you."
Hiashi's eyes sharpened. "Then leave."
They didn't.
The hallway became a storm.
Neji took a glancing hit across his ribs—right where the old bruise lived. Pain flared bright and mean. His breath caught, but he stayed upright because falling was a kind of permission and Neji refused to give it.
Hiashi struck twice—thump, thump—two tenketsu sealed in a blink.
One intruder tried to disengage, hands flashing through seals.
Neji felt chakra gather and moved to interrupt—
And then he saw Hanabi at the far end of the hall.
She'd turned back. She was watching.
She shouldn't have looked. She shouldn't have hesitated. Hinata was pulling her and Hanabi's stubbornness had dug its heels into the floor for half a second too long.
The lightning-foot shinobi saw her too.
Their body pivoted and suddenly the strike wasn't aimed for Neji anymore.
It was aimed for the child.
Time did what it always did in fights.
It went mean and slow.
Neji registered Hanabi's eyes widening. Registered Hinata yanking harder, too late. Registered lightning chakra condensing around a palm, the air around it tightening like skin before a slap.
No.
Neji moved.
He didn't think about the seal on his forehead. He didn't think about the branch family rules, the quiet humiliations, the way the main house had owned his father's life and death like it was property.
He didn't think about how easy it would be, how satisfying it would be, to let the main house bleed for once.
He just chose.
The strike hit Neji instead.
Lightning flashed across his shoulder and down his arm, searing pain like boiling needles poured into his nerves. His body tried to lock. His muscles tried to forget they belonged to him.
Neji didn't let them.
He used the pain like a hinge, twisted with it, and drove his other palm into the attacker's chest.
Chakra points shut.
The lightning sputtered out like someone had smothered it with bare hands.
The intruder staggered back, eyes wide now for a different reason.
Hiashi's head turned a fraction.
Not surprise.
Recognition.
Neji's arm shook violently. His fingers clawed reflexively, trying to remember how to close. He forced them into a curl, biting down on a sound that wanted to escape.
Hanabi's face went pale. "Neji—!"
Hinata clapped a hand over her sister's mouth and yanked her backward, eyes shining with terror and something else—something like seeing him, finally, as more than a rule.
The remaining Kumo shinobi hesitated.
That hesitation was death in a Hyūga hallway.
Hiashi stepped forward. The air in front of him felt like pressure before a storm—calm, murderous, controlled. A blade behind glass.
One intruder spat, "This village is on fire. You think your walls matter?"
Hiashi didn't answer.
Neji did, breath tight through pain. "They matter to me."
It came out harsher than he meant.
Like an accusation.
The Kumo shinobi's eyes flicked to Neji's forehead seal for half a second, and their mouth curled.
Then their leader—taller, scar across the lip, lightning humming under the skin like a restrained snarl—took a slow step back.
"This isn't over," they said softly. "Lightning never strikes just once."
Neji's lips twitched despite himself. He surprised himself by letting a sound out—almost a snort, almost human.
"It also never strikes the same place."
Hiashi's gaze cut sideways to him.
Not approving.
Not warm.
But something shifted—some small internal recalculation, like a balance being adjusted.
The intruders retreated in tight formation, disciplined even while backing away. They melted into the compound's shadows and vaulted the walls like they'd never been there at all.
Neji stood in the hallway with his arm shaking and his breathing shallow, copper sky light flickering through the slats like a sick heartbeat.
Far off, the village trembled under another impact. The bells continued their relentless screaming.
Hanabi and Hinata's chakra moved deeper into the compound now—escorted, fast, alive.
Neji stared at the place where the Kumo leader had stood.
He waited for fatalism to flood back in and claim the moment as inevitable.
It didn't.
What came instead was quieter and worse:
A realization that he'd just defended the people who had hurt him…
…and he didn't regret it.
He flexed his fingers. Pain lanced again.
Neji exhaled through his teeth and murmured, almost to himself, "Troublesome."
He didn't know where the word came from.
It felt wrong in his mouth.
It also felt… real.
Hiashi watched the last foreign chakra signatures leave the Hyūga compound and forced himself not to pursue.
Instinct said: finish them. Remove the threat. Make an example.
Leadership said: do not chase an enemy into Konoha's burning streets and leave your home hollow. Chaos was how villages died. Chaos was how bloodlines were stolen.
His Byakugan stayed active as he scanned the compound.
Servants huddled in side rooms, chakra trembling like candles. Clan guards converged from inner posts, late and furious. The archive wing showed scuff marks near seals—someone had tested, but hadn't had time to commit. Hinata and Hanabi's signatures moved deeper now with escorts, small and quick.
Safe.
For now.
Hiashi let out a slow breath and turned his gaze back down the corridor.
Neji stood there like a Hyūga ought to stand—still, composed, refusing to show cost.
Hiashi saw the cost anyway.
Neji's right shoulder chakra network snapped with residual disruption—lightning's ugly signature lingering where it did not belong. His breathing was controlled, but shallow. His jaw was clenched hard enough to crack teeth.
And beneath that, in the pattern of his chakra itself, something had shifted.
Not softer.
Less locked.
Like a door unbarred a fraction.
Hiashi hated soft thoughts during war. Soft thoughts got people killed. Still—
Neji had moved without hesitation when Hanabi was targeted.
Neji, who had every reason to let the main house suffer, had chosen otherwise.
Hiashi spoke, calm because calm was the only shape of emotion a clan head was permitted.
"You're injured."
Neji's eyes flicked toward him, then away. "It's nothing."
Hiashi almost corrected him. Almost said: don't lie, I can see every thread of damage. Almost said: do not devalue your body, because your body is a weapon the clan cannot afford to lose.
Instead, he said, "You took that strike deliberately."
Neji didn't answer right away.
When he did, his voice was tight. "She's a child."
Hiashi nodded once.
Outside, the copper sky pulsed redder, smoke thickening. Distant explosions walked across the village like a drumbeat.
Hiashi's fingers curled and then forced themselves to relax.
"Their timing is not coincidence," he said. "They used the invasion."
Neji's mouth hardened. "They've wanted our eyes for years."
Hiashi heard the bitterness and did not argue with it. It was earned. It was also dangerous. A blade you could accidentally hold by the wrong end.
A guard arrived at a run, breath sharp. "Clan Head—reports of fighting near—"
"I know." Hiashi's gaze didn't leave the compound's perimeter. "Lock the inner gates. Triple the patrols around the women's wing and the archive. No one enters without being seen by the Byakugan."
"Yes!"
The guard vanished.
Hiashi looked at Neji again.
Neji's posture held defensively, as if he expected punishment for having existed loudly in the wrong place. For having bled where it wasn't sanctioned. For having spoken.
Hiashi did not offer comfort. The Hyūga were not built for comfort.
But he could offer something else—respect, properly shaped.
"Your response," Hiashi said. "To the Kumo leader."
Neji's brows twitched. "What."
"The words," Hiashi clarified. "Lightning."
Neji's eyes narrowed, suspicion sharp. "It was just—"
"It was yours," Hiashi said, and meant it.
Neji stared at him, startled enough that the mask cracked for a heartbeat.
Hiashi turned away before he had to see what came after. War did not wait for reconciliation. War did not care about guilt.
He widened his Byakugan's range beyond the compound.
Konoha's skyline was an ugly silhouette now—smoke, fire, figures leaping rooftops. The village's chakra field churned like water in a pot.
Enemies could smell blood. Opportunists always came when they did.
"They will return," Hiashi said, voice like stone.
Neji's answer came immediate and rough. "Let them."
Hiashi didn't look back, but he registered the difference.
Not bravado.
Not suicidal pride.
Resolve.
"Go to the medic wing," Hiashi ordered. "Have the disruption treated. Then report back."
Neji hesitated.
Hiashi added, quieter, "That is an order."
Neji bowed, crisp and formal. "As you command."
He turned, and for a second, the branch seal on his forehead caught the red light from the burning sky.
A mark.
A cage.
And yet Neji walked away like someone who had just tested the bars and learned they could bend.
Hiashi watched him go.
Then he tightened the compound's defenses and kept his Byakugan turned outward, because lightning never struck just once—
—and because this time, the Hyūga were not going to let it land cleanly.