Naruto would return tomorrow.
Ringo stood in the middle of the training ground as steam receded from his right hand. It was not that he had stopped training; he had finished. Over two years, the card slots had grown from a pile of fragments into a tree, steam had changed from a weapon into a breath, and he had gone from an orphan no one noticed to a candidate for Hokage. But today, he had not come to train with steam. Today, he had come to wait. To wait for someone—for the person who had stood at the entrance to the training ground two years ago and said, "I'll become stronger," for the person he had believed in for two years.
Behind him, a chakra signature locked onto him.
It was not an attack, but a declaration. A declaration that someone was approaching from behind, that someone had improved, that someone was no longer the Hyuga Hinata who stood in the corner with her head lowered, too afraid to look at anyone. The Byakugan had no blind spots. She stood three steps behind him, her palm already thrust forward. It was not a sneak attack, but a display. A display of the results of five hundred strikes a day for two years, a display that she was no longer the girl who could only stand behind him.
"Ringo—dodge!"
Ringo did not dodge. It was not that he could not; he simply did not want to. He turned and watched Hinata's right hand thrust out from her waist. Chakra was not released from her palm—it burst from every chakra point across her body at once, converging in her palm into a pillar of light. It was not Gentle Fist. It was Vacuum Palm. Chakra shot like a bullet through the spot