Naruto: Ren the Sealmaster

"So... are you going to tell me what happened?" Ren asked, looking at Hinata with an unamused stare. 

It was Saturday so he hadn't seen the girl the whole day. And when she came to the training today, she was a mess. She tried to valiantly hide it but the small wince whenever she stepped on her left foot was plainly visible to Ren's eyes. As was the badly covered bruise with make-up on her right cheek. Or the fact that breathing seemed to hurt her.

Hearing the question, Hinata ducked her head in embarrassment. "My father wanted me to have another match with my sister." She said in quiet distaste before looking up at Ren with feigned confidence, "It's okay. I am fine. I can train today."

"Oh? Really?" Ren pleasantly smiled as he poked Hinata's left cheek, right on the badly disguised bruise, making her yowl in pain, which quickly turned into a gasp as a flare of pain from her lungs hit her.

"Are you truly fine?" He asked in concern. He was quite demanding during her training but he never injured her to this extent.

"Mhm. A medic said so." Hinata mumbled, and that was that. Ren didn't know medical ninjutsu. He tried to learn it in the past but when he saw the mountain of medical texts he would have to read first... let's just say he did not get to the part where he was supposed to learn the technique before he bailed out.

"Alright then." Ren exasperatedly said. "Is your sister always this brutal with you?"

That question made Hinata sad as her expression fell and she nervously clutched her hands together in a habit, "Only since she was declared the heiress. She is under a lot of pressure." She said with sad eyes and Ren had no idea how to cheer her up so he only awkwardly pulled the girl close into an awkward hug.

She stiffened for a moment before leaning on him and holding onto him for her dear life, hugging the stuffing out of him.

How was he supposed to comfort a teenage girl again? They didn't teach this shit in the academy!

"Have you ever thought about using your eyes to learn Kaiten?" He awkwardly asked after he felt her calm down, making her finally release him from her death grip of doom, "Or some other main house technique? To at least protect yourself."

"I already know Kaiten." Hinata wetly sniffed and wiped away a tear from under her left eye.

"You don't say." Ren hummed in a way that told Hinata she was in trouble and her face became slightly redder as she realized this was something she was supposed to mention way sooner, "And you were going to inform me when exactly?"

"I... I was just afraid you would tell father." Hinata mumbled, averting her face away from Ren in shame.

With a sigh, Ren understood her reason for keeping quiet. He didn't like that she didn't trust him. But... "I see. If you learned Kaiten without anybody teaching you, they would put you in the same category as Neji."

People said that Neji was a genius. Ren said that it was bullshit. Neji just wasn't a freaking idiot. Ren was certain that the boy simply used his Byakugan to observe the main branch members practice and learned their techniques that way.

That didn't mean it was easy to learn techniques via simple observation. Neji probably took several months. Ren was actually quite surprised that Hinata already managed it. Then again, this was the girl who in canon created her own defensive technique on par with Kaiten because nobody bothered to teach it to her.

Honestly, it was stupid how much the Hyuga clan limited themselves in the name of tradition. They wouldn't use their eyes to learn techniques because that's not their way. They don't practice ninjutsu because it's not their way. They don't practice medical ninjutsu because that's beneath Hyugas.

They were lucky Ren didn't want to become Hokage. Because he would have executed half of that dimwitted clan for being stupidly stubborn the second he got the position.

They had one of the best bloodlines in the world. A bloodline that lets them see the chakra in extreme detail, causing their chakra control to be superb by nature. That lets them see through objects and gives them an almost 360-degree field of vision. That lets them see for kilometers. And what do they do with it? They decide to focus on close-combat taijutsu.

It was no fucking wonder they never produced an S-rank ninja since the founding of the village.

They were like that one idiot in the multiplayer RPG game who joined your party as a damage dealer mage but invested all his points into strength so his spells barely did anything.

And they were proud of it too!

"Brother Neji?" Hinata's eyebrows furrowed at that as she inwardly wondered why Ren mentioned the boy.

Ren realized that he had blundered. Neji hadn't even graduated yet, so if he knew Kaiten already, he wasn't showing it to anybody anytime soon. 

"Doesn't matter." Ren just waved the question away, causing an awkward silence to spread through the surroundings for a few moments.

"You really don't want your sister to be sealed, do you?" Ren eventually said, putting into words the reason Hinata let herself be beaten like this. He sparred with the girl. There was no way she would be having trouble with her sister as she is now.

Hinata wordlessly shook her head, clearly not comfortable with the direction of their conversation.

"Do you want to get sealed?" Ren asked with a raised eyebrow but Hinata had no answer for that so she just ducked her head again, staying silent.

He sighed once again. This girl was just so troublesome. "As I see it, there is just one solution to this problem." He told her, making her give him a wide-eyed look. She had probably already accepted her 'fate' and did not see a way out. That didn't mean she liked it. "You have to become really powerful. Enough that your clan elders won't be able to mess with you."

Thanks to her father, she was in a unique position. Hyugas were sealed as children. It did not matter how strong they became in their adulthood. Once they had that seal on their forehead, even a Jonin could be brought to knees with a simple hand seal.

But if Hinata became a Jonin-level ninja before she was sealed? Good luck trying to put that seal on her. It wasn't a foolproof plan but it was the best Ren got.

"Is that really possible?" Hinata quietly asked as she clutched the hem of her jacket. She still wore it every time she came into the training field, but she always diligently took it off for her training just as Ren asked of her.

"You won't know unless you try. And you have one advantage that just might make it happen." Ren pointed out.

"What advantage?" Hinata asked in a puzzled tone.

"You have me as your teacher." Ren proclaimed in feigned arrogance, even going as far as smirking at the girl and raising his nose high into the air.

It got the desired result and Hinata giggled. The tension left her shoulders as she relaxed.

"So, wanna try?" Ren asked her and his smirk melted into a small supportive smile.

Hinata's cheeks flushed as her lips stretched into an involuntary happy smile of her own, "I'll be in your care, teacher."

Now then... Ren started to wonder how to tell the fourteen-year-old teenage girl that he would have to see her naked in order to paint gravity seals on her.

That was going to be a 'fun' conversation, wasn't it?

---

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