Sasuke had been beaten to a pulp.
The preliminary diagnosis: mild electrical burns to both hands plus muscle tearing, minor gastric hemorrhage, and two cracked ribs in his back. So the edgy boy who usually kept a cool, aloof facade found himself wearing an expression of undeniable embarrassment.
The fight against Hinata had gone well—right up until the very end. He'd bitten through an early tactical blunder, weathered her explosive-tag carpet-bombing, clawed his way back to the verge of a reversal, and even leveraged his Sharingan to successfully acquire the Yami Barai.
But his mistake had been precisely that. The Sharingan was formidable, sure—copy a technique, mirror it back, theoretically unbeatable, right? Then why had so many Uchiha shinobi still died with their blood soaking the sand?
The overwhelming majority fell for the same reason Sasuke just had: a copied technique wasn't necessarily one your body could safely execute. And even if you could execute it, there was no guarantee it wouldn't carry consequences.
Think of the human body as computer hardware and jutsu as software. The Uchiha could certainly pirate the enemy's software, but whether their own hardware could run it was a potentially fatal question.
If the copied program's system requirements didn't exceed your specs, fine. But if the program demanded an 8GB graphics card and yours barely scraped 1GB, then forcing it to run was going to end badly. Best case: blue screen, total freeze. Worst case: the tower catches fire and the GPU detonates.
That was why even someone as cautious as Kakashi flatly refused to copy enemy jutsu at random, reserving the Sharingan's duplication for only the most opportune moments.
And in the shinobi world, "never casually use an enemy's weapons or tools" was the most basic rule of all.
Without question, Sasuke had been schooled by Hinata yet again—this time learning a Sharingan commandment the hard way: never blindly deploy a copied technique unless you are absolutely certain your body can handle it.
But there was a second lesson waiting for him too.
"KYAAAAAAH?!!"
Sakura and Ino shrieked in unison. These two girls, each ordinarily quite confident in her own looks, had just taken another devastating blow.
Sasuke knelt on a tatami mat in a woman's kimono. Just like Naruto before him, the rules of punishment forbade the Transformation Technique—only basic makeup was applied: a change of clothes and a touch of understated, pale-hued lipstick on his lips.
Whether by coincidence or by the same logic as Naruto, Sasuke was also doing his best to adopt feminine mannerisms. After all, as Naruto had put it, "if you're going to cross-dress and still look like a dude, that's somehow even worse."
Even so, the shame and fury left the Uchiha boy with his head bowed low, hands pressed tightly to his knees. Combined with the flush coloring his cheeks—how to put it? He was every bit as devastating as cross-dressed Naruto had been a week ago.
"What on earth... is going on... Hinata?"
A trembling Sakura, on the verge of tears, turned to Hinata for answers. She'd spent a full week crawling out of the emotional crater left by female-Naruto, only to walk in today and find something even more crushing—and it was the boy she liked.
"Why... even Sasuke..."
On the other side, Ino chewed on her sleeve with tears streaming. At least with Naruto you could rationalize it—the boy practiced the Sexy Technique constantly. And neither of them was interested in Naruto anyway.
But why? Even the perpetually cool Sasuke looked like... and as a girl, she wasn't even as pretty as the boy she had a crush on. What kind of nightmare was this?
"It's simply the penalty for losing a challenge. Those who start fights must take responsibility for their defeats."
Hinata didn't look up from the report in her hands, deaf to the two girls' wailing. Her statement, meanwhile, left even Kakashi at a loss for words. He agreed with the principle—understanding that provocation carries consequences was a valuable lesson—but the punishment method was a bit...
Is this corrupting public morals, or... improving them?
"Speaking of which, you're a Jōnin. Is it really okay to just loaf around here doing nothing all the time?"
Shikamaru eyed Kakashi curiously. In his understanding, Jōnin were essentially the village's elite operatives. Someone like Kakashi, staying with this crew for this long, was a genuine oddity.
"Well, I'm kind of a special case. There are plenty of people who handle routine missions better than me, so I'm taking it easy for now."
Kakashi raised a hand with a breezy smile. "Besides, when things really do get busy, I'll probably just vanish in a poof."
Easy for him to say. In reality, Kakashi was currently executing a mission to monitor the Hinata Group. The Third had originally classified it as A-rank, but after the recent incident where Naruto accidentally manifested a tailed beast form and was swiftly subdued, the mission had been upgraded to S-rank.
And in all likelihood, the classification would only keep climbing.
"AHAHAHAHA! Serves you right, pretty-boy Sasuke! Your turn now!!"
Naruto was rolling on the floor clutching his stomach, convinced that divine justice was alive and well. The stoic show-off who did nothing but strike poses and hog female attention had finally gotten his—truly, the heavens had eyes.
"Hmph!"
Burning with humiliation, Sasuke turned his face away, refusing to look at the cackling blond dead-last. The road ahead was long. They'd see who laughed last.
"Um... are the punishments here always like this?"
Kiba, who had only recently joined the Hinata Group, stared at Sasuke with a distinctly green complexion, then sidled nervously toward Shino. "We sit next to each other, man. You gotta look out for me..."
"There is nothing to worry about. As long as one does not make mistakes, punishment is avoidable. Moreover, the penalties involve neither money nor physical harm—only a psychological penalty. This is highly beneficial for helping team members recognize errors and accept discipline."
Pushing the bridge of his glasses up, Shino turned to regard Kiba with a tone that carried an invisible weight of authority. "If you wish to know why, I can tell you. This... is the system."
The robotic precision of Shino's answer sent a cold sweat trickling down Kiba's back. Swallowing hard, the dog-boy stammered, "So... how exactly do I avoid making mistakes?"
"It is quite simple. If you wish to know why..."
Looming over the visibly shrunken Kiba, Shino's glasses caught a flash of reflected light. "Simply never defy the leader's wishes or orders, and carry out every assigned task diligently and wholeheartedly. That is the proper way to avoid mistakes."
Watching the Shino-and-Kiba show from the side, Choji sighed through a mouthful of chips, his tone dripping with sympathy. "Poor Kiba. Shino's really mean for scaring him like that. Think he'll be okay?"
"Tch. What a drag. He already knew this was a pain-in-the-ass outfit before he joined, didn't he?"
Shikamaru fished a chip from Choji's bag and tossed it into his mouth, thoroughly unbothered. Bottom line: resisting Hinata was a non-starter within the Hinata Group. Naruto and Sasuke had both demonstrated that firsthand. So if you couldn't fight it, you might as well enjoy it.
Such was life.
"All right, enough chatter. Let's get to business."
Hinata cut through the murmur of private conversations with practiced efficiency, flicking a corn kernel with unerring accuracy into the forehead of Naruto, who was still making faces at Sasuke. The pale-eyed girl set down her documents and spoke evenly.
"I've called everyone here today because there's a critical strategic pivot I want to discuss. While the past two issues of Fox Tales have been enormously profitable thanks to the rights reversion, the external situation has become increasingly concerning.
"First: our distribution point in the Land of Wind was attacked by unidentified assailants. The entire stock of art books slated for sale was burned. On top of that, our outlets in the Land of Lightning, the Land of Earth, and the Land of Water have all faced various forms of harassment and sabotage. Every single one of these incidents occurred after the Fox Tales rights were formally returned to Konoha."
Hinata's expression didn't change, but a spark of genuine anger burned in her eyes. The report visibly sobered everyone in the room.
Arms crossed, Kakashi's eyes narrowed. For him, this development was anything but surprising.
The five great nations and their shinobi villages maintained a surface-level peace, but covert rivalry and friction had never stopped. The shinobi world was brutal—missions routinely pitted ninja from different villages against each other, breeding hatred that fed more competition.
Previously, while the Fox Tales rights still belonged to a Land of Fire publisher rather than Konoha directly, the other villages had been content to look the other way—the art books weren't funneling profits straight into Konoha's coffers. But now that the franchise had been reclaimed by the village, complete with the Konoha Publishing Factory as a dedicated production arm, every copy sold put tax revenue directly into Konoha's treasury. Under those circumstances, the other villages were naturally going to push back.
That was the root cause behind the sudden wave of attacks on what had been perfectly functional distribution channels.
"What a mess. We're stuck inside Konoha, not even graduated yet—there's no way we can retaliate against those people directly. Other than adding more escort personnel, I don't think anything else will make a difference."
Even Shikamaru had turned serious. As a future shinobi and the son of a shinobi, he understood exactly how messy and complex this situation was—which was why, in a rare departure from his usual apathy, he was openly urging Hinata to let it go.
"He's right. You're still kids. It's better not to get involved with something this complicated."
Kakashi nodded in agreement. He admired Hinata's business acumen, but he also knew she needed protecting. These were matters best left alone.
"You both make excellent points. Which is precisely why I've gathered everyone—to solve this problem."
Hinata straightened in her seat, a cold smile playing at her lips.
"In a way that cannot be suppressed or sabotaged."