Standing at Sasuke's front door were none other than a thoroughly bored-looking Shikamaru, carrying a bento basket, and beside him, Choji, crunching away at a bag of chips without pause. They'd clearly come to visit.
"Shikamaru?! What are you doing here?"
Hinata's pupils contracted ever so slightly. The pineapple-haired boy across from her scratched the back of his head with open irritation. "You think I wanted to come? Mom said you've been buying medicine from the shop nonstop lately, so she made me bring over some nutritious rice balls. But your family said you were out, and I figured this was the only other place you'd be. As for this guy—"
He jabbed a finger into Choji's plump cheek. "Ran into him on the way. He had nothing better to do, so he tagged along."
"Hm??"
Hinata tilted her head slightly. First off, Shikamaru didn't appear to be lying. In this world steeped in Japanese cultural norms, she'd been patronizing the Nara family's pharmacy for quite some time now. A gesture of goodwill from the shop owners was simple courtesy—especially since Hinata was Shikamaru's classmate. His mother making rice balls as a gift was perfectly natural.
The problem was... how had this guy figured out she'd be here? The Uchiha compound was a place virtually nobody dared set foot in on a normal day.
"So we've been found out..."
At this thought, Hinata drew a quiet breath and spoke in a flat, expressionless tone.
Meanwhile, Naruto and Sasuke had already gone pale.
"Ahhh... Shikamaru and Choji saw everything... which means... Sakura's going to find out soon too... ugh..."
Naruto clutched his head and half-collapsed to his knees, looking as though life held no further meaning. Sasuke wasn't quite that dramatic, but the young heir's fair cheeks had flushed so red they could've been mistaken for a baboon's backside. His inner turmoil was plain to see—he was mortified enough to die.
The sensation was akin to a student moonlighting in adult films to earn money. You didn't mind working with strangers. But being caught by classmates who knew your face? That was a shame beyond words.
"Shikamaru, Choji. What did you see?"
Hinata brushed her bangs aside with one hand, posing her final question. Shikamaru's expression instantly sharpened. He could feel it—killing intent. The same feeling he got at home when his mother blew her top.
"N-no no no~ We didn't see any—"
Shikamaru scrambled to respond with uncharacteristic panic, like a man who'd just sat on a needle. But before he could finish, Choji—eager to be helpful—beat him to the punch, hand raised high.
"Naruto looks really pretty in his girl outfit~ And Sasuke's guy look is super cool! Are you guys filming something?"
Needless to say, the temperature in the room dropped several degrees the instant those words left his mouth.
Shikamaru, one hand still outstretched in a futile attempt to cover Choji's mouth, went ashen. In that moment, he understood with absolute clarity what a deadweight teammate really looked like. But it was obviously too late.
"No choice then..."
Hinata rolled her wrist with a crack, her voice dripping with menace through the sound of grinding joints. "Silence them. Both of them."
Naruto—teeth clenched—and Sasuke—face burning—both turned around. Their shadows, stretched long by the sunlight, fell across Shikamaru and Choji. Cut off from the sun, the latter two immediately felt a damp chill wash over them. Choji, realizing his blunder, began to tremble.
What came next was like a spark igniting an explosion. The awkward silence shattered in an instant.
"Too late to run now!"
Naruto, being the all-brawn-no-brains type, launched himself forward in a full-body tackle.
"Accept your fate! You saw what you shouldn't have!"
Sasuke, teeth gritted and cheeks ablaze, reached behind him into his tool pouch. Two gleaming shuriken whistled through the air and thudded into the wall behind Shikamaru and Choji's escape route. Steel wire threaded through the shuriken's ring holes stretched taut like an invisible barrier, cutting off their retreat.
"Wait~ I have zero interest in your business—ow~!"
Shikamaru waved his hands in a last-ditch attempt to explain, but Naruto was already on him with a cross-arm chokehold, slamming him to the ground. Not that Shikamaru had any intention of fighting back.
"Shut it! Save your excuses for after we've silenced you!"
At Hinata's sharp bark, she closed in on Choji's left side. A clean sweep-and-trip sent the pudgy boy crashing face-first into the ground. Choji groaned from the impact. "Ow~ Hinata, you spilled my chips~"
Before long, the captured Shikamaru and Choji found themselves tied to a wooden pillar in the corridor. Naruto sat nearby, irritably stuffing his face with the rice balls Shikamaru had brought, and mumbled through a full mouth: "So, what now?"
"Like I said—we silence them."
Hinata chewed on a rice ball of her own. This was clearly Shikamaru's mother's handiwork. The flavor wasn't anything spectacular, but it was certainly a cut above what the shops in town sold.
"B-but... we can't actually, um, kill them, right?"
Ino, still maintaining her Transformation Technique, spoke up nervously, beads of sweat rolling down her forehead. As Shikamaru and Choji's childhood friend, she naturally didn't want anything bad happening to them. Then again, this whole affair involved Sasuke's dignity, so... it was a tough call.
"Exactly... we couldn't care less about spreading this around, okay?"
Shikamaru, tied to the pillar, had already relaxed again. The ropes binding him and Choji were barely tight at all—a small detail from which he could easily read Hinata's true intentions.
And of course he could. Even at her worst, Hinata couldn't actually off Shikamaru and Choji. Setting aside the fact that both were future members of the Konoha 12, they were the next-generation heirs of the Nara clan and the Akimichi clan respectively. Lay a finger on them, and not even Hinata's status as eldest daughter of the Hyuga main house would save her.
"You're all idiots, you know that? 'Silence them' means exactly what it sounds like—making sure they absolutely can't talk. Naruto, I believe you're quite familiar with how that works? It's how you and I became bound to each other in the first place, isn't it?"
Hinata looked up with a wicked grin. The sight of that smile sent an immediate shudder through Naruto. The blond went pale and swallowed hard, his earlier bravado gone, replaced by the timid voice of a bullied little girl. "Y-yes... I... definitely remember..."
"Shikamaru, Choji. We're classmates, and I do trust that you're not the gossipy type. However—"
Hinata walked over to Shikamaru and wagged her index finger. "Rules are rules. Since you've stumbled onto our secret, you have exactly one option: become part of it."
"Tch... what a drag. I finally had a quiet afternoon, and I'd rather not spend it tied to a post."
Shikamaru pouted, and Hinata shook her head with mock regret. "Honestly, that lazy attitude of yours won't do. Choji, talk some sense into him. If you both cooperate nicely, I'll treat you to barbecue tonight. How about it?"
"OHHHHH!! BARBECUE!!"
Choji's eyes blazed with fire. His arms surged upward with a crack, and the pillar he was tied to split with visible fracture lines. Shikamaru, lashed to the same pillar by the same rope, turned blue as the loop strangled him. "GAAAH—I AGREE, I AGREE! Make this idiot let go!"
"Ahahaha~ That's the spirit~"
Hinata covered her mouth with a dainty laugh, then briskly began forming hand seals. These were the signs for the Transformation Technique—though she wasn't planning to use it on herself.
In ninjutsu, having someone else form the hand seals on your behalf was a recognized practice, generally used when the caster's own arms were incapacitated. In such cases, a substitute could form the seals while the caster only needed to release chakra. The Transformation Technique worked the same way—just as Naruto and Gamabunta had used substitute seals during their fight against Shukaku, the substitute could transform the caster into whatever image was in the substitute's mind. Here, Hinata was forming the seals for Shikamaru, while Shikamaru released his own chakra. So long as Hinata completed the hand seals and touched Shikamaru's body, he would transform into whatever image she held in her mind.
This kind of cooperative ninjutsu casting was part of the standard Ninja Academy curriculum. The technique wasn't difficult.
"Transformation Technique!"
Hinata finished the final seal and placed her right hand against Shikamaru's forehead. As Shikamaru released his chakra, a puff of smoke exploded outward—and where Shikamaru had stood was now an entirely different person.
A tall, voluptuous, dark-haired beauty. The high-slit oiran-style qipao exposed nearly the entirety of her smooth, luminous thighs. A traditional hime-cut hairstyle pinned with a black wooden hairpiece lent her an air of regal opulence. And yet beneath that gorgeous exterior, a pair of dead-fish eyes—virtually identical to Shikamaru's—added a languid, world-weary allure.
To complete the picture, the Nara clan crest adorned the qipao at the waist. Anyone who knew Shikamaru well enough would have no trouble recognizing him from these details alone.
Click~
Hinata snapped the shutter and admired the resulting photo with satisfaction. Perfect. Shikamaru's lazy, listless temperament was ideally suited for portraying those languid, glamorous mature-beauty roles. She'd been needing an oiran character, and had been planning to seek Shikamaru out to negotiate. She hadn't expected him to deliver himself right to her doorstep.
"Take a good look, Shikamaru. If you breathe a word of this to anyone, I'll send this photo straight to your mother. What do you think she'd make of it?"
Hinata flashed the photo at Shikamaru with a predatory grin. She knew the Nara household dynamics from the original series well enough—chief among them being the fact that Shikamaru's mother was a legendary terror known throughout all of Konoha. If she saw her son using the Transformation Technique to turn himself into some saucy oiran beauty, well...
"...Mom would dig a hole and bury me alive on the spot. I have absolutely zero doubt about that."
Even Shikamaru's lip twitched at this. "Hey... that's a seriously low blow, you know?"
"You've got to be ruthless to get things done~ Now then, Choji~ As long as you keep your mouth shut, I'll treat you to good food from now on. Deal?"
Hinata sighed breezily and turned to Choji, whose eyes immediately lit up like twin stars. "Okay okay~! As long as you feed me good stuff, I absolutely won't say a word~! I swear!"
"Hey—the double standard is ridiculous! Why does my version involve blackmail photos while his version is free food?"
Even someone as unflappable as Shikamaru was rattled by the disparity. Hinata shrugged and waved his glamour shot. "Can't help it. Different assets, different leverage."
"She's right... Shikamaru and Naruto are okay, but if you used the Transformation Technique on Choji to make him look like a beauty... urgh... that mental image is physically painful..."
Sakura, looking faintly green, quickly patted her own chest to banish the horrifying vision. Whether it was a chubby boy suddenly morphing into a gorgeous woman, or a gorgeous woman reverting to a chubby boy—either scenario would be visually catastrophic.
"Good~ Then we're all partners in crime now! Untie them."
Hinata cracked her knuckles and nodded with a smile that didn't reach her eyes.
"Now that we've got enough manpower and actors, it's time to give some serious thought to where our story goes next."