Naoya hadn't bothered visiting the Hyūga compound until well after the invasion had settled. When he finally did walk through those gates, the welcome waiting for him made it abundantly clear why he'd been in no hurry.
The boy he had been reborn as was not the heir of the clan or a high-ranking member of the house either; he had been reborn inside the body of a side branch member.
Him… Zenin Naoya. It was clear Naoya wasn't happy.
So when he was summoned before the main house elders within the hour of setting foot on clan grounds. No congratulations for surviving an invasion that had killed a Hokage and two visiting Kage. No acknowledgment of the fight against Kiyomi Uchiha that had apparently made him the single most discussed branch member in a generation was given.
Just a formal sitting room, five elders arranged in a loose half-circle facing a single cushion clearly meant for him, and the particular flavor of condescension that came standard with people who'd spent their entire lives being told they were superior by an accident of birth.
He didn't sit.
"Sit," the eldest of them said first, a wiry old man with a voice like dry paper. Hyūga Hoheto, if Naoya bothered to actually remember it, which he didn't intend to.
"I'll stand," Naoya said, folding his hands nonchalantly as he leaned against the wall. "Better view of all of you this way."
A ripple of visible confusion moved through the room. That was not the reaction they were expecting. Hoheto's jaw tightened, but he pressed forward anyway, apparently deciding the insult wasn't worth derailing the actual point of the meeting.
"Explain yourself," he said instead. "The speed you displayed against the Uchiha girl during the exams was well beyond anything the branch family has ever produced. Beyond what most of the main house has produced, for that matter. And the technique that ended the match — whatever that was — appears nowhere in our archives. Not in three centuries of recorded Hyūga history. Where did you learn it?"
"Hmm… so that's why I'm here. Let me guess, you… no, I mean the clan needs those techniques. Right!," Naoya said, entirely unbothered, examining his own nails like the conversation bored him.
"Ahem… we require an explanation," a second elder pressed, an older woman with a permanently pinched expression. "That level of ability does not simply appear in a branch member overnight, boy. Someone taught you this. Or you stole it from somewhere. Either way, this house is owed the truth."
Naoya let the silence stretch, just long enough to be its own kind of insult. "Do you," he finally said, "actually believe you're owed anything from me?"
"You are branch family." Hoheto's voice sharpened. "You answer to this house. That has never been in question, whatever delusions of grandeur the exams may have given you."
"Hahah…"
That earned an actual laugh, short and humorless. "Well, certainly you weak fools have that going here," Naoya said, "funny how you hide your weakness by putting on airs of family and main branch and side branch." A wolfish grin appeared on his face. He looked around the half-circle slowly, contempt bleeding into every word. "But say, what would you main family rots do when a really strong one is born in one of the side families, I wonder."
"You forget your place," Hoheto snapped, temper finally cracking through decades of composed authority. "The branch exists to serve the main house. That includes surrendering whatever technique you've developed, for the clan's benefit and the clan's alone."
"Surrendering," Naoya repeated, tasting the word like something spoiled. "You want me to hand it over. Like a good obedient little branch dog wagging his tail for scraps." A snarl left his face.
"That is precisely what you are," a third elder cut in — younger than the others, though no less venomous, a man Naoya vaguely recalled being introduced once as a cousin of Hiashi's. "And frankly, it would have been a mark of shame for this clan if a woman had managed to defeat you in that match. Fortunate, then, that the Uchiha girl lost. It would have been an embarrassment beyond words for a branch member to fall to some girl playing at being a shinobi."
Naoya actually smiled at that, slow and genuinely delighted. "Now that," he said, "is the first sensible thing anyone in this room has said. Seems like there is hope for this rotted clan after all…" He grinned.
"Boy… careful what you say," the woman from earlier stated, her eyes also lingering on the third elder who had said that.
Naoya snorted at that. "Women belong several steps behind men in every discipline that actually matters. Credit where it's due — you got that much right, even while being wrong about literally everything else."
A few of the elders exchanged glances at that, some grim, mutual satisfaction passing between them at finding unexpected common ground with the insufferable branch member currently mocking them.
It didn't last.
"We are not here to debate women standing in the clan in this meeting. Hyūga Neji, hand over the techniques you displayed in the Chunin Exam and we will forgive your insolence for what you have done until now," Hoheto said again, done entertaining tangents, patience visibly fraying. "Or we remind you exactly what that seal on your forehead exists to do."
Naoya's eyes flicked toward him, something colder settling behind them. "Hmm… you know what, do it," he said. "I'd genuinely love to watch you attempt it."
That actually surprised all of them; of all things, they weren't expecting that.
Hoheto felt like his blood pressure was increasing. He thought it would be easy to get those techniques out of his branch family runt as long as Hiashi didn't know about it, but the boy had repeatedly challenged the elders and the main branch authority.
He didn't hesitate anymore, with anger clear in his consciousness, his hands moved through the seal sequence with practiced ease, chakra flooding out toward the mark burned into Naoya's forehead, the same mark that had kept generations of branch members obedient without exception.
Nothing happened.
Confusion flickered across Hoheto's face. He tried again, more chakra behind it this time, jaw set with visible effort. Still nothing. Naoya stood there completely unaffected, arms loosely crossed, watching with open amusement as color started draining out of every face in the room.
"That's — that's not possible," the pinch-faced elder whispered, staring at the unmarked, undisturbed expression on Naoya's face. "The Caged Bird Seal has never failed. Not once, in the entire history of this clan."
"Guess there's a first time for everything." Naoya rolled his shoulders, the last traces of boredom finally bleeding out of his posture into something far more dangerous. "Shame you had to find out this way."
Others looked like they were constipated. None understood why this was happening. The curse mark was impossible to remove; there was no way to remove its effects. Not until the person had died…
And there was their answer. Neji Hyūga did die. The moment that happened, the curse seal on his forehead had destroyed his Byakugan and reproductive system so that even his semen was no longer extractable.
However… Sukuna's Reverse Cursed Technique was far more potent than many gave it credit for.
RCT, once Naoya took over Neji's body, completely healed all the damage done to either Neji's Byakugan or his reproductive system by the seal.
Right now… Neji's, or rather Naoya's, Byakugan was as pure as any other main branch Hyūga.
As for Naoya himself, he himself wasn't aware of these facts. He just knew that a simple seal couldn't possibly stop someone as strong as him. Those side branch Hyūga were nothing but weak; there was no comparison between him and them.
And with that confidence, he moved before a single one of them could react.
Hoheto barely registered the blur crossing the room before three fingers found his shoulder, chest, and side in rapid succession, each strike landing with surgical precision on points the old man's own Byakugan should have seen coming and simply hadn't, the speed too far beyond anything his decades of experience had prepared him to track. Tenketsu sealed shut one after another, his own chakra network strangled in the span of a single breath, and Hoheto collapsed mid-syllable, whatever protest he'd been forming dying unfinished in his throat.
"Impossible—" the pinch-faced elder started, already scrambling backward, Byakugan flaring wide in a desperate attempt to track movement that refused to be tracked.
She lasted less time than Hoheto had.
Naoya closed the distance using Projection Sorcery layered directly under Gentle Fist's own footwork, the combination folding distance in a way pure taijutsu never should have allowed.
"64 Palms," Naoya grinned, having fun using Gentle Fist on his own clan members.
He vanished again, appearing at her flank a full step before her activated bloodline finished registering where he'd actually gone. Two strikes, precise and economical, and her right arm went dead from shoulder to fingertip, tenketsu along the entire limb sealed in one motion.
"You can't—" the third elder tried, already backing toward the door, dignity abandoned entirely in favor of simple survival instinct.
He didn't make it. A palm caught him square in the chest, chakra points along his spine and ribs shutting down in sequence, and he folded to the floor gasping, lungs suddenly fighting a chakra system that no longer wanted to cooperate with basic breathing.
The remaining two elders tried to coordinate a joint defense, Byakugan blazing, palms raised in proper Gentle Fist stances that would have meant something against literally any other opponent their age had ever faced. Against Naoya, wielding a body he'd spent an entire invasion learning down to the last tenketsu point, paired with reflexes that had known speed was power since the day he was born… everything was useless.
He was through both their guards in under one second, 24 movements. Neither of them fully understood what had happened until they were already on the ground, twitching, several dozen points along both their chakra networks sealed with a precision that bordered on cruelty.
Within the span of perhaps six seconds, every single elder in that room was on the floor. Groaning. Some barely conscious. All of them staring up, in genuine disbelief, at a branch family member who was supposed to know his place.
"This… this is impossible."
Naoya stood over the wreckage of them, entirely unbothered, straightening his sleeves like he'd done nothing more strenuous than a brisk walk across the compound.
"Anyone else have questions about my technique?" he asked, almost pleasant about it, glancing around the room at five main house elders who'd governed unquestioned for decades and currently couldn't stand. "No? Good."
He turned toward the door, pausing just long enough to look back over his shoulder.
"By the way… I need that old hag out of here. Show me your face again and I'll deliver the entire head in pieces to her family," he added. "Also, put some girls who know their place as my personal maids, pretty faces and nice racks. That's non-negotiable."
He walked out, leaving all five of them exactly where they'd fallen, and not a single one of them found the strength — or, more tellingly, the will — to call after him.
"Call Hiashi, right now."
xXx
A/N : I had fun writing this one, Naoya vs Hyuga Elders was inevitable at this point. And of course this is not the end of this. Would be fun writing this further.
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