Kimimaro was already cutting across rooftops toward the Hyūga compound, ready to tear into his second objective, when his sensory field rippled.
He stopped mid-stride, pupils narrowing.
He had already caught hints of another presence earlier, one that didn't belong to anyone in Konoha.
A lone figure had stood atop the Hokage Rock, watching the stadium and the chaos below with unnerving stillness.
Twice, its awareness had swept over him as well, cold and methodical, like a sensor probing the air.
And the residue it carried… that peculiar organic hum, half-chakra, half-plant, it was unmistakable.
Hashirama's imprint.
A signature threaded with artificial life.
Kimimaro didn't need confirmation.
Obito was here. He got the memo.
Additionally, as expected, the four girls had reached Orochimaru and were successfully carving through Konoha's defenders exactly as ordered.
Their movements were sharp, coordinated, lethal.
Meanwhile, Danzō and Root finally woke up the moment the four girls joined the battle, ending their very impressive streak of doing nothing.
'Well... Hiruzen had already been turned to meat paste, so I suppose Danzō thinks it's his time to shine...'
Kimimaro noted dryly, amused by the old man's "strategic inactivity" thus far.
He could also already imagine the spectacle that must have erupted at the stadium at this point.
But then another presence swept in from beyond the village walls just now.
No… three.
Signatures he didn't recognize at all.
And chakra that didn't behave entirely like normal chakra.
Kimimaro's jaw tightened.
This definitely wasn't 'canon' anymore.
And while those three unknown signatures swept toward Orochimaru's battlefield, another thread in the web shifted.
Kakashi.
His chakra suddenly lurched, warped for a heartbeat into something foreign.
A surge that didn't belong to him at all.
Then, layered atop it, came a second distortion.
Obito.
Moving directly toward Kakashi at the exact moment the copy-nin's chakra was beginning to twist under pressure… as if reacting to a crisis Kimimaro hadn't yet seen.
Two anomalies overlapping in the same breath.
Something had changed around Kakashi, and Obito had responded instantly.
This village… this world… isn't following the script.
Something was making things move the way they shouldn't.
In his past life, he'd assumed the canon story was a flawed, inconsistent text written by a distracted author.
But now, watching Konoha move in ways it never had before, more prepared, more layered, more irregular, he understood the truth.
The real world simply had its own depth, its own hidden strata.
And today, some of them were moving.
He resumed running, but the ease was gone.
His earlier thrill from stealing the jutsu had evaporated.
The exhilaration of outplaying Konoha's systems and slipping through Hiruzen's legacy had faded into a colder calculation.
Not to mention that this clan might not resemble the one he knew at all.
He felt his heart grow heavier with each step.
He needed to finish the Hyūga job fast.
But for the first time today, the path ahead no longer felt very predictable.
However, he soon cut off the noise of distant fighting and steadied his senses fully on their estate.
A pattern emerged immediately.
Too quiet. Too contained. Too clean.
Compared to the other clans, the Hyūga had barely moved.
A few side-branch squads scattered around the village, but not a single main-branch signature had stepped past the threshold of their walls. Typical. When danger came, they always folded inward like a fist around their own pride.
But Hiashi… Hiashi was the lone exception, putting on a very theatrical show in a clearing just outside the compound.
Kimimaro sensed him trading 'majestic' strikes with a handful of Suna fodder, exactly like the original timeline described.
His lips curved faintly.
"So the patriarch is out here playing hero," he murmured inwardly. "Convenient."
His attention was fixed entirely on his performance.
After all, whatever ancient tricks Hiashi might be hiding in the depths of that clan, the current Hiashi wasn't anything Kimimaro needed to take seriously. Compared to him now, the man barely registered.
He was suppressed so thoroughly that Hiashi didn't even sense his presence… yet Kimimaro sensed him with perfect clarity.
So why not use the opening?
The patriarch was a short distance from the compound, posturing as a village pillar while swatting at Suna fodder.
Perfect timing. Kimimaro could slip inside, take what he needed from the main branch, and maybe even be gone before Hiashi even realized anything had happened, depending on how long he was allowed to 'pluck' unobstructed.
And besides, if Hiashi really possessed some ancient Hyūga mechanism, and he could awaken some power Kimimaro suspected lay beneath that clan's traditions, then there would have to be a cue and reason for him to activate and enter it.
Better to seize several pairs of Byakugan before the man caught on and had a reason to evolve.
Kimimaro's conclusion was simple.
Strike now. Take the eyes first. Let Hiashi figure out the disaster afterward.
Five Gates opened.
He didn't bother with the front approach.
He carved diagonally from Hiashi, across the compound.
The few Hyūga who did notice something, side-branch mostly, felt nothing more than a pressure shift before the drilling bone rounds erased them mid-signal.
Inside, the estate pulsed with chakra, steady, refined, unmistakably Hyūga.
And among them, he could distinguish the clean purity of main-branch eyes from the dull, sealed pulse of the side branch.
Just as he expected, the highest concentration currently lay in buried inner chambers at the heart of the estate.
Secluded vaults. Shrine.
The Hyūga liked their traditions neat.
Kimimaro accelerated toward it, weaving between hallways, through sliding doors, occasionally taking the direct path and carving straight through walls with a flick of the Willow.
As he advanced, one chakra signature glinted brighter than the others.
Young. Precise.
Almost too pure for her age.
Hinata.
Toneri had valued her highly in the original timeline, which meant her eyes were likely a genuine treasure as well.
If even the last Ōtsutsuki descendant had seen worth in them by addressing her as the "Byakugan Princess", then they were more than sufficient for Kimimaro's purposes now.
Hanabi, by contrast, was sealed alone, as he could sense, buried far deeper within the compound, locked inside the most isolated and heavily sealed sections of the main residence.
The patriarch's quarters, where she was likely held, were layered with unfamiliar, even more intricate protections.
She was out of reach. For now.
So he settled for the next best thing.
Or maybe not "next best" at all?
Maybe Toneri simply couldn't bring himself to carve the eyes out of his future wife? Hard to plan a dynasty when you start by hollowing out your own bride's skull. Even he had limits.
He adjusted course, setting his sights on what was accessible instead.
Tracing Hinata's chakra, he cut deeper into the compound, angling with precision toward the fortified vault where she was confined.
"Thank you, Hiashi," Kimimaro thought dryly.
"For stepping outside to pose at exactly the right moment."
Ahead, he felt layered seals tightening the air, many main-branch signatures gathered inside, and a ring of even more side-branch guards posted outside, all clustered protectively around the central vault.
Exactly where he needed to be.
And he struck toward it like a falling star.
Kimimaro slipped through the last turn of the corridor and felt the entire atmosphere thicken. A sealed hall.
And inside it, a few dozen signatures were already turning toward him.
And in the innermost space, gathered near the emergency evacuation altar, a few of the main-branch youths, Hinata among them, her chakra flickering with exhaustion from earlier events in the stadium.
She had barely recovered from witnessing Neji and Naruto's clash.
A little shaken, heart beating too loud, her Byakugan still strained.
Her lavender eyes widened the moment Kimimaro stepped through the broken entryway. It was the worst possible timing for the Hyūga… and the best possible timing for him.
One of the main-branch elders stationed there, mostly to protect himself as well, hissed, voice sharp with panic,
"An intruder? Inside this chamber?! Impossible!"
Another snapped, "Side-branch, forward! Protect the heirs!"
Kimimaro didn't slow.
He flicked his wrist, and the Willow spears slid out along his forearms, long and thin, humming with killing intent.
Thin, clean slashes.
Enough to force a gap.
He darted in.
Five Gates open, White Bastion humming at his spine, water-pressure microjets flaring in bursts along his ankles.
He slipped through the first defensive arc before any of them saw the movement.
Dozens of side-branch shinobi stationed at the outer ring finally reacted at once, surging forward with the only techniques they were ever permitted to learn.
No Rotation, no advanced techniques, just sharp, disciplined Gentle Fist basic strikes, fingers, and palms driving toward his tenketsu in rapid succession.
However, the closest ones barely did anything or got into forms before a rain of rapid Endless Finger Drilling Bullets punched through them almost instantly.
The others shouted at once.
"Reinforce the barrier!"
"He's using body modification—some kekkei genkai!"
"Don't let him into the inner ring!"
Two came at his flanks, one straight at his centerline.
All precision, no wasted motion.
Kimimaro admired it for exactly one heartbeat.
Then dismantled it.
A Willow blade extended from his knee, catching the Hyūga in the shoulder as he spun past in the air.
Two more elites struck in tandem, attempting to close his tenketsu.
He answered with Larch mid-air.
A sudden skeletal bloom, jagged spines erupting outward for half a meter.
The Hyūga palms shot forward, then stopped mid-thrust as bone skewered forearms and elbows.
They screamed, and he stepped past them as they fell.
"Monster—!"
"Fall back! Evacuate the heirs!"
"Activate the secondary seal!"
They tried.
The room began to shift, walls sliding as hidden mechanisms engaged.
The evacuation altar was reacting to danger.
He didn't let them finish.
Kimimaro blurred into the center of the room, bone spears carving half-circles through the air.
Main-branch finally realised that relying on the side branch alone here would be certain suicide.
Their control was tighter, steps sliding in perfect Hyūga rhythm, palms glowing with refined chakra.
Two elites leapt back, and another tried to palm strike his spine.
Yet, eight bone tendrils, thin, whip-fast, shot out from Kimimaro's ribs and wrapped around the man's wrists, then jerked him forward.
He struck the Main Branch Hyūga in the throat with surgical precision.
Not hard enough to kill.
Hard enough to paralyze.
Then, with the same cold efficiency, Kimimaro gripped the man's jaw and pried open his eyelids.
The room froze.
"You— you dare—!"
"Stop him! Stop him now!"
"Protect the Byakugan!"
He didn't answer with words.
A sealing formula bloomed across his palm, a tri-spiral pattern Ashina had helped refine.
He pressed it to the man's eye.
Light flickered, chakra vacuumed inward, and the Byakugan dissolved into the seal.
The Hyūga's scream echoed off the walls.
Kimimaro stepped back, and the eye reformed inside the large scroll strapped to his hip, floating in a bed of stored yang chakra, preserved perfectly, alive.
The chamber erupted in hysteria.
"He's— plucking them—!"
"Call the patriarch! NOW!"
"He's a demon—!"
Kimimaro moved again.
He dismantled four more in seconds, disarming their stances with bone hooks, cutting tendons only when necessary, rendering them helpless before sealing their eyes one by one.
They dropped like puppets with strings cut, clutching their bleeding sockets, wailing.
The side-branch line also finally buckled under the pressure.
Kimimaro eventually cut them all out through Clematis, Vine weaving into Flower, and vice versa, bind into break, and back, each motion clean and merciless.
His movements had the cold precision of machinery, no hesitation, no disruption in rhythm.
Their eyes held no value to him, so he didn't bother with restraint.
Dozens fell in moments, collapsing in a neat, awful sequence, as if the room itself had decided they were already dead.
No wasted motion.
No indulgence.
Just pure, lethal efficiency.
The remaining main-branch fighters now realized distance was their only hope.
How could they close his tenketsu, or damage anything inside, when every attempt risked a bone spike erupting straight through their own palms and tendons?
How do you strike a tenketsu when the tenketsu strikes back?
For the first time in their clan's history, they were facing a perfect natural antithesis to the Gentle Fist.
Even their revered Sixty-Four and One Hundred Twenty-Eight Palms had become suicide techniques, guaranteed to shred their own hands before touching him.
He was, without trying, the greatest anti–Gentle Fist weapon ever born, and Kimimaro knew this as well.
"Vacuum Palm!"
So, he wasn't surprised when a chorus of sharp exhales filled the vault next.
A barrage of compressed-air strikes burst toward him, dozens overlapping, perfectly layered in Hyūga formation.
Yet, he still didn't slow.
He understood what they wanted to do.
His Yang Seal flared open across his forehead, markings spreading in black, branching lines.
An additional dome of bone unfolded over him.
A smooth, dense, ivory shell shaped by Shikotsumyaku and reinforced by Yang Release from the seal, growing outward in layered arcs like a blooming skeletal flower.
The Vacuum Palms slammed into it.
They didn't disperse.
They cracked, deflected off the curved bone surface, redirected by the Frame's micro-pressure channels, and reinforced cellular density.
The Hyūga recoiled.
"That— that's not chakra—!"
"He's armoring himself with bone!?"
"What kind of monster—?!"
Kimimaro kept walking, the dome moving with him like a rolling shield as more Vacuum Palms collided uselessly against it.
When he was close enough, the dome peeled open in segments like petals retracting, reintegrating seamlessly back into his armor.
And then he attacked.
Every step forward cracked the tiles beneath him.
They tried again.
"Keep pressure! Don't let him close the distance!"
But Kimimaro had already raised an arm.
Willow.
Larch.
Two variations of the Falling Branches technique erupted at once, long aerodynamic spears curving in slicing arcs, shorter dense spikes firing straight like bullets.
The main-branch Hyūga were forced to split their focus just to avoid being impaled.
A few panicked.
"Rotation!"
Three of them spun into full defensive domes, chakra bursting outward in a whirling sphere.
Kimimaro tested them with a second volley.
The Willow spears curved around, scraping and ringing off the rotating barrier.
The Larch spikes struck with enough force to leave pressure dents in the chakra shield.
Endless Finger Drilling Bullets erupted from his hands like a machine-gun burst.
Hyūga tried to dodge, but one Rotation barely deflected half before the rest shredded into shoulders, legs, and ankles.
Those few who had truly mastered Rotation closed ranks around the rest, their spinning domes overlapping into a makeshift shield.
Crude, desperate, but enough to buy them all a moment.
However, Kimimaro felt this had already dragged on for too long.
So, his stance flowed, bones realigning as he slipped into another form.
"Then try this."
Clematis: Blooming Lance.
The bone lance twisted into existence, a spiraling projectile that tore the air as it launched.
It struck a rotating Hyūga dead-center, the force overwhelming the spin and driving straight through his torso.
Rotation met something faster, heavier, and simply lost.
"That's it..." Kimimaro's hand then touched the floor a heartbeat later.
He had already identified the quickest, cleanest way to end the exchange.
Localized Dance of the Seedling Fern.
Bone spikes erupted from the tiles beneath the disrupted Rotation, striking the Hyūga from below, the only angle their dome could not perfectly defend.
The man screamed as the ground pierced upward through the weakest point of his defense.
And as he fell, Kimimaro was already at his side.
A hand seized his jaw.
A sealing array flickered across Kimimaro's palm.
The Byakugan vanished into the scroll.
He then moved to the one he previously impaled and collected his as well.
The other Hyūga froze in horror.
"H-he's still taking the eyes mid-battle—!?"
"Protect the main line! Don't let him— Agh—!!"
Another Larch spike severed tendons.
Kimimaro caught the falling Hyūga, sealed both eyes, and let the man crumple.
Another Rotation user tried to backpedal toward the wall.
Kimimaro blurred behind him, shattered his stance with a Willow strike to the spine, and sealed his eyes before the man could even scream.
His movements never faltered, White Bastion deflecting stray blows, Yang Seal sustaining the chakra dome, techniques flowing seamlessly together.
Each Hyūga lasted seconds at most.
Some he killed when their eyes were useless to him, but the main-branch?
He pinned them.
Neutralized them.
Plucked their Byakugan cleanly, sealing each pair into the special big scroll.
The vault was quickly becoming a graveyard.
And then—
Ten.
His fingers brushed the last main-branch fighter's temple, sealing formula blooming like a cold flower.
The man collapsed beside the others, empty sockets trembling.
Ten Byakugan.
Exactly as intended.
Only the wounded remained now, Main and Side Branch alike, scattered across the floor in broken clusters.
The Main Branch elders who'd hidden behind them were cornered, pale with dread.
The Main Branch youths huddled near the altar, trembling.
And Hinata… her chakra flickering like a candle on its last breath.
Kimimaro's smile sharpened.
She was the final piece.
His own Byakugan.