The Konoha Hospital had descended into a state of controlled chaos, struggling to accommodate the influx of over thirty wounded shinobi.
Inside a private room, Hyuga Hizashi had long since regained consciousness.
He simply chose not to open his eyes.
From the moment Shura's kick had sent him spiraling through the air, Hizashi had opted to play dead. It was a cynical surrender, yet even in his state of feigned unconsciousness, he had remained acutely aware of the shifting tides of the battlefield.
Shura had swept through the compound with crushing, overwhelming power, moving with an arrogance born of absolute strength. Even the Third Hokage and his elite vanguard had been left helpless as the intruder departed at his own leisure.
Only after the medical ninja finished their treatment and retreated from the room did Hizashi finally allow his Byakugan to focus.
He stared at the sterile white ceiling, the scent of disinfectant biting at his nose. His mind was a projector, obsessively replaying the carnage in the Great Meeting Hall. Shura possessed a mysterious ability that could bypass the legendary insight of the Byakugan—a feat unheard of in the centuries of Hyuga history.
Then there were the nine summoned beasts, creatures of such caliber they had suppressed the Hokage himself.
Initially, Hizashi had feared a massacre. But as he lay there, he overheard the medics marveling at a strange fact: despite the intensity of the clash, not a single person had died.
To wage a battle of that magnitude and still exercise such surgical control over the casualties...
Just how deep is the well of Shura's power?
Drip. Drip.
The sound of rain pattering against the windowsill mingled with a sudden, cool breeze. Hizashi bolted upright, his gaze snapping toward the source of the sound.
A familiar silhouette leaned casually against the window frame. The moonlight struck the white, three-eyed fox mask, casting a chilling, almost divine radiance across its surface. The cloak behind the figure fluttered in the night wind, radiating an aura of suffocating mystery.
Hizashi's throat tightened. He lowered his head, his voice stripped of its usual pride as he spoke with newfound deference.
"Thank you... for showing mercy, Lord Shura."
Without even realizing it, Hizashi had adopted the honorifics of a subordinate.
Tap.
Menma hopped down from the windowsill, his footsteps silent as he approached the bed.
"I believe I told you during our last encounter," the low, muffled voice vibrated from behind the mask. "I hoped that by our next meeting, you would have an answer for me."
Shura had provided ample proof of his divinity. Whether it was infiltrating Konoha twice as if walking through a garden, or the solo annihilation of a Kumogakure raiding party, the message was clear: Shura possessed the power to suppress a Great Nation.
His prestige was beginning to echo the legends of Uchiha Madara and Senju Hashirama.
If a powerhouse of this caliber offered protection, the threat of Konoha's pursuit squads became trivial. Hizashi knew the stakes; this wasn't the Warring States period where clans stood alone. The Branch House was part of Konoha. If he led a faction away, the village would hunt them to the ends of the earth.
He had everything to lose—and everything to gain.
"I have a few lingering questions," Hizashi said, his bare feet touching the cold floor. His posture was no longer that of a defiant captive, but a seeker. "Would my Lord be willing to enlighten me?"
"Ask," Shura replied. His robes seemed to ripple with a life of their own.
Hizashi thought he saw something shifting beneath Shura's white fur collar, but he pushed the thought aside, his voice turning solemn.
"First: What is the true connection between you and the Hyuga clan?"
"Second: Do you intend to use our Byakugan to synthesize that... giant eyeball?"
These two questions were the pivot points of his soul. He refused to lead his people out of one cage only to be herded like livestock into another.
"My fiancée shares a deep lineage with the Hyuga," Menma said, tilting his head slightly. The empty eye-sockets of the mask seemed to flicker with a faint, predatory red light. "Is that reason enough?"
Hizashi's breath hitched. A thousand possibilities raced through his mind. Was this mysterious man's betrothed a member of a lost branch? A runaway from the Main House? Or perhaps she belonged to that ancient clan that once hunted the Byakugan?
He couldn't find the answer, no matter how hard he racked his brain.
"As for your second concern..." Menma raised a hand, producing a glass vial. Inside, a pair of Byakugan floated in pale green preservative fluid.
"Rest assured, I do not share Orochimaru's obsession with live experimentation. The number of eyes required to stabilize a Giant Tenseigan is far beyond what your dwindling population can provide."
So, that massive sphere of eyes is called a Giant Tenseigan... Hizashi mentally filed the name away.
As if reading his mind, Shura turned his gaze toward the moon hanging outside the window. "In a few years, I intend to seize that Giant Tenseigan for myself. If your strength remains as pathetic as it is now..."
His voice grew ice-cold. "You will not even be worthy of standing on that battlefield."
Seize the Giant Tenseigan?
Hizashi's heart hammered against his ribs. He recalled the "history" Shura had shown him through genjutsu—the devastating beams of light that could erase mountains and vaporize armies of thousands.
Whoever guarded such a weapon were surely monsters in human skin. Hizashi had never seen these "hunters" in the records, nor met them in the world, but a conflict of that scale could not have vanished without a trace.
Where are they hiding? For the first time, Hizashi realized how little he truly knew of the world.
"Then, one final question." Hizashi took a deep breath, his Byakugan focusing on the mysterious pattern on the back of Shura's cloak. "The upheaval in the Land of Bears... now known as the Land of Stars... and the sudden change in Hoshigakure. That was your doing, wasn't it?"
The "Star Country" incident was an open secret among high-level shinobi. As the twin brother of the Hyuga Head and a leader in his own right, Hizashi had access to the reports. When news arrived last year that Hoshigakure had slaughtered the Land of Bears' Daimyo and his nobility, Hizashi had suspected a puppet master.
Shura clearly had the power to seize a village and decapitate a nation's ruling class. But to what end?
"Correct," Menma replied. Since he intended to "recruit" a portion of the Branch House, there was no longer a need for total secrecy.
"If you want to know my goal: It is to unify the shinobi world. To end this pathetic, lingering shadow of the Warring States. Is that sufficient?"
"Senju Hashirama brought an end to the era of warring clans. He had the power to crush the other nations and achieve true unification, yet he chose to stop. It was his greatest regret, and his most foolish decision."
"Think, Hizashi: If Hashirama had unified the world back then, would there have been three Great Ninja Wars?"
Hizashi felt as though a lightning bolt had struck his soul. Shura's rhetorical question tore down the walls of his reality.
He followed the logic: the transition from clans to villages was supposed to be a step toward peace. But Hashirama had stopped halfway. In just fifty years, the world had bled through three world wars, each more devastating than the skirmishes of the old era combined.
And more importantly—if Shura succeeded in unifying the world, then Hyuga Hizashi, the man who brought the Byakugan to his side, would be a founding father.
The moonlight stretched their shadows, causing them to overlap and merge on the hospital floor.
Hizashi looked at Shura's back. He took a long, trembling breath, sweat beading on his forehead, and slowly dropped to one knee.
He chose to seize this chance to break the Caged Bird.
This was no longer just a defection. It was a high-stakes gamble with the fate of his entire bloodline as the chips.
If he lost, they would die as nameless traitors, their bones forgotten within a century.
If he won, he would be the new Patriarch who led the Hyuga Clan back to true greatness.