By now, after half a day of quiet experimentation, Miyuki had built a solid working understanding of his Stand, "Kaguya-hime."
First: only he could see her. Nobody else, not even Hyuuga with an active Byakugan. He'd confirmed this at the banquet earlier by asking one of the clan elders to show him the Byakugan, then quietly summoning Kaguya-hime behind the man's back. Nothing. Zero reaction.
If the Byakugan couldn't detect her, then the Sharingan almost certainly couldn't either. Whether higher-tier dojutsu like the Mangekyou Sharingan, the Rinnegan, or the Tenseigan could pick her up was still an open question. But for now, she was invisible.
Second: in her intangible state, Kaguya-hime couldn't be seen or touched by anyone. But when she attacked, she could shift into a physical state, making contact with objects and people. The tradeoff was obvious. If she could hit things, things could hit her back.
Third: she understood and followed his commands, but she wasn't smart. Not yet. She wouldn't initiate conversation or act on her own. Complex instructions went over her head. Simple, direct orders were all she could process.
So far, aside from the untested "Tidal Moon" ability, Miyuki had mapped out just about everything Kaguya-hime could do. And the picture wasn't great. Her base stats were rock-bottom. In her current state, she was practically useless in a real fight.
Except for one thing. Breaking genjutsu.
As Miyuki understood it, shinobi genjutsu worked by using sensory channels — hearing, touch, sight — as vectors to inject chakra into the target's system, trapping them in an illusion.
Breaking free was straightforward in theory. Either you disrupted your own chakra flow from the inside, or someone else disrupted it for you. Like dropping a wrong note into someone else's melody. The harmony breaks and the illusion collapses.
There was also a more advanced method: using foreign chakra already present inside your body. Jinchuuriki, for example, could rely on their Tailed Beast's chakra to shatter genjutsu almost instantly. And Kaguya-hime, as a manifestation of Miyuki's life energy that existed separately from his normal chakra network, fit that same principle.
So the moment Darbi had raised his palm toward Miyuki's forehead, Miyuki had already issued the command. The instant his mental state shifted into anything abnormal, Kaguya-hime was to flood his system and overwrite the foreign chakra with her own. The genjutsu had activated and collapsed within the same breath.
But the situation was still ugly.
Darbi was sprinting through the compound with Miyuki slung over his shoulder like a sack of rice, and they were almost at the outer perimeter.
If this kept up, Miyuki's physical safety wasn't really the concern. Hiashi would notice eventually, chase Darbi down, and kill him. Just like the original timeline.
And that was exactly the problem.
Darbi had to stay alive. If he died, his death became the leverage Kumogakure would use against Konoha. "Your clan head murdered our diplomat during peace negotiations." The same shameless extortion play that had gotten Hizashi killed in the original story.
Think about how insane that logic was. You send your own guy to break into someone's house and kidnap their kid, he gets caught and killed, and then you have the nerve to demand compensation? Miyuki still couldn't wrap his head around where Kumo found the audacity.
But that was the political reality. Two conditions had to be met simultaneously: Miyuki had to be safe, and Darbi had to survive. Anything else would trigger the same chain reaction.
Based on our position and his speed, he'll clear the compound walls in about a minute. I need to act now.
"Kaguya-hime! Activate ability — Tidal Moon!"
He whispered it so quietly that only he could hear. And in that same instant, the tiny figure floating beside him snapped her head upward, her pale white eyes locking onto the full moon hanging in the night sky.
It started immediately. White light began bleeding from Kaguya-hime's body, flickering and pulsing like fireflies scattered across the dark. The glow intensified, wrapping around her small frame in rippling waves.
There it is. This is Tidal Moon.
Miyuki felt the change before he saw the numbers. Something inside that delicate little body was filling up fast, like a dam about to burst with raw, compressed force.
About five seconds later, the light stabilized. And when it did, Kaguya-hime's stats had transformed.
Before — base state: Destructive Power E, Speed E, Range E, Persistence E, Precision D, Growth Potential ?
After absorbing the moonlight: Destructive Power C, Speed C, Range B, Persistence B, Precision C, Growth Potential ?
The jump was massive. Several times over across every category. Range and Persistence had spiked the hardest.
At E-rank Range, a Stand could barely separate from its user at all. D-rank allowed movement within about five meters. C-rank pushed that to ten. And B-rank meant roughly thirty meters of operational freedom.
In other words, Kaguya-hime could now move freely within a thirty-meter radius. And she had real offensive capability now. As for how much punch that C-rank Destructive Power actually packed...
CRASH.
Just as Darbi was about to clear the last stretch of the compound, the roof directly above his head exploded. Tiles and timber blasted outward in every direction, the sound ripping through the quiet night like a thunderclap.
The Hyuuga compound was traditional Japanese construction. Wood frames, open corridors, wide courtyards. Sound carried far in a place like this, especially at night. A noise that loud would reach every corner of the estate.
The compound's shadow guards, the Hyuuga's elite hidden security, were stationed around the perimeter at all times. A toddler crying in the middle of the night? They'd ignore it. But a detonation that sounded like a jutsu impact? That was a completely different situation.
"What the hell?! Where did that come from?!"
Darbi's narrow eyes went wide as he stared at the obliterated section of roofing above him. He hadn't seen anyone attack. No hand signs, no chakra signature, nothing. The roof had just... detonated.
But whatever had happened, his plan to slip out quietly was finished. The shadow guards would be converging on this position within seconds.
Good. Kaguya-hime's destructive power is solid enough in this state. At least at this level.
Miyuki had seen everything clearly. At his silent command, that tiny white figure had rocketed away from his side, blitzed toward the roofline, and backhanded it.
One slap.
That single strike had punched a hole in the roof big enough for a person to climb through. Shattered wood and clay tiles sprayed in every direction like shrapnel.
That kind of force, applied directly to a human body, would do serious damage. To a civilian, anyway. Against a trained shinobi with chakra reinforcement, the results would be less dramatic. But it was something. It was more than nothing.
And for Miyuki, "something" was the difference between total helplessness and having a card to play. Without Kaguya-hime, a three-year-old had exactly zero options against a jounin. With her, the game changed.
Damn it. I need to get out of here before they box me in...
"Hm? What was that noise over there? Move, now!"
Voices. Coming from the rooftops, closing in fast.
The Hyuuga shadow guards were top-shelf. ANBU-equivalent fighters, every one of them. The only reason Darbi had gotten this far in the first place was years of deep-cover intelligence work. In a straight fight against these people, he didn't stand a chance.
All or nothing! "Raiton: Raigenshin!"
The moment Darbi sensed those presences converging, he knew stealth was no longer an option. He activated his strongest Lightning Release technique, flooding his body with electrical chakra and pushing his movement speed to its absolute limit.