[So twins are a Hyuga tradition, huh]
[Something about these two brothers feels… off]
[Got a bad feeling about this]
[The Hyuga clan has been foreshadowed before—just waiting to see when that thread gets picked up]
Down in the arena, Hinata and Tenten had already begun their fight.
Tenten struck first, hurling a volley of kunai at Hinata.
Hinata deflected them with her hands.
Compared to the ninjutsu battle from earlier, this was a clash of taijutsu against ninja tools.
"Hm?!"
Tenten was a weapons specialist, and she could hear it.
"There's metal inside those bandages? So they're not ordinary bandages."
Before Zhuixia's upgrade, Hanabi herself had used metal wire wound into cord.
Building on that concept, Hinata had custom-made special bandages reinforced with metal lining.
These metal-lined bandages let Hinata grip blades barehanded and go toe-to-toe with ninja tools, even without a weapon.
On offense, they worked just as well for regular taijutsu exchanges or Gentle Fist strikes, and they doubled as armor.
"This was training specifically against me, wasn't it? That Neji…"
Tenten couldn't exactly blame Neji—Hinata was his sister, after all.
"In that case—!"
Tenten pulled out a scroll, leaped into the air, and spun. The scroll unfurled in a spiral beneath her as she drew weapon after weapon from it and sent them flying.
A rain of kunai, sickles, shuriken, and more came crashing down toward Hinata.
[Nebula Chain!]
[That hang time is insane]
[Don't overthink the ninja stuff]
[This is basically a gear check]
[There's a wuxia vibe to this]
[Bun-head training-outfit energy, for sure]
Unfortunately, Tenten's projectiles were all swatted aside by Hinata, scattering across the ground.
"The Byakugan, huh? Just like Neji—the ultimate observation eye. I expected it might shut me down, but I didn't think the gap would be this wide."
[Wait, during the second exam, wasn't Tenten a perfect shot? This performance gap is huge]
[Completely seen through by the Byakugan]
[Hanabi explained this before, right?]
[The Byakugan is the ultimate observation eye—if it can't even handle projectiles, why call it the strongest?]
[Hard counters beat everything. Bonus damage trumps gods]
"In that case."
Tenten drew two scrolls and formed hand signs.
"Twin Rising Dragons!"
She vaulted skyward, soaring high, and unleashed a torrent of shuriken and weapons from above.
"It won't work, Tenten-san!"
Hinata had seen through every attack.
More to the point—if the Byakugan couldn't handle this level of projectile barrage, it had no business being called the strongest observational dōjutsu.
"I'm not done!"
Tenten flung out her hands, and the wire strings attached to her fingers went taut. Every weapon scattered on the ground lurched into motion.
"Hinata's in trouble!"
Naruto shouted from below.
"Calm down, Naruto. I could see those wires with my Sharingan, and the Byakugan's way better at that." Sasuke had spotted the wires trailing behind every weapon Tenten had thrown.
If he could see them, there was no way the Byakugan couldn't.
"Protecting Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms!"
Hinata thrust her hands forward. Chakra poured from her bandaged palms in radiant beams.
Those beams of Chakra cut through every wire around her like lasers. The weapons Tenten had just yanked into the air crashed back to the ground.
"What?!"
In a single instant, every wire was severed. Tenten lost her balance completely.
"It's over!"
Hinata closed the distance in a flash.
"Gentle Fist Art: Eight Trigrams Thirty-Two Palms!"
Hinata couldn't yet perform the full Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms. The Thirty-Two Palms was the incomplete version—and the Protecting Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms was Hinata's personal variant of Revolving Heaven.
Tenten had walked straight into a first-encounter kill. She'd never imagined that every wire on her weapons could be cut simultaneously, and the resulting loss of balance left her wide open.
"Ugh… Damn…"
After taking the Thirty-Two Palms, Tenten's body immediately started going numb. Her Chakra perception plummeted.
"Tenten…" Lee watched her struggle, tears brimming. "Why does it have to be this way?"
"Hinata saw the wires from the start, but she deliberately waited instead of cutting them immediately. She severed them at the exact moment Tenten pulled—the moment of maximum tension." Neji explained to Lee from the side. "It's like a tug-of-war rope snapping mid-pull. Of course Tenten couldn't keep her balance."
After all, this was his student. Seeing Hinata execute so fluidly, Neji couldn't help but let the corner of his mouth turn up.
This was the result of his teaching.
With her Chakra pathways sealed, Tenten had lost the ability to fight. She had no choice but to surrender.
"Oh my—the Hyuga clan wins the second match that quickly!"
"The other Hyuga-versus-Uchiha match must be even more spectacular, right? I hear both of them are prodigies…"
The spectators buzzed with excitement.
"Hinata-sama has grown." Hizashi watched Hinata with a touch of emotion.
"She's still far behind Hanabi." Hiashi was already thinking ahead.
"Pressure from the elders?" Hizashi's expression darkened.
"Yes."
"Then Neji's fate is likely coming for him soon, too."
"Hizashi…" Hiashi hesitated—words half-formed, then swallowed.
The brothers' relationship was amicable enough. But the relationship between master and servant was something else entirely.
So although right now the two of them felt almost like brothers again—close and familiar—there was also an undercurrent of resistance and wariness.
But both pairs of eyes had already been drawn back to the arena.
Sasuke had jumped down into the arena.
After being trained in rotation by both Kakashi and Uchiha Hikari, Sasuke felt like a different person.
"Let's go, Hanabi—today, I'm going all out!"
The odds weren't in his favor—but if he gave it everything, surely there'd be an opening!
"Ara, ara~ Don't be so hasty, Sasuke."
A ripple shimmered through the air, and Hanabi's form materialized from the distortion.
Kimono and red umbrella.
Elegant and exquisite.
"Ohhh!"
Hikari was already on fire. She shot to her feet and ran to the railing.
"Is that Body Flicker?"
Kakashi guessed from beside her.
But something didn't quite fit.
Hanabi had been at the contestants' area one moment, and the next, her figure vanished from that spot entirely—the spatial ripple appearing simultaneously below. The ripple itself seemed to be her usual light-refraction technique, but the way she'd materialized down there was harder to explain.
Because every step was cloaked in Genjutsu, Kakashi couldn't be certain.
"Don't tell me she's learned Sensei's technique too…"
(Hinata learns this technique in Episode 151)