Tetsuya Hyuga

Tetsuya Hyuga had never imagined he would one day fight for a village outside Konoha.

He was an utterly ordinary member of the Hyuga Clan's Branch Family. His talent was unremarkable; without the Byakugan he had been born with, he might not even have qualified to become a Chunin.

In Konoha, his clan connections gave him a more comfortable life than civilian Ninja had. But whenever he saw someone from the Main Family, he would have gladly given up what little comfort he had.

The way those people looked at him still made his skin crawl. It was not the way anyone looked at a human being.

He knew why. The Caged Bird Seal. Such a lovely name, yet the blood behind those words often jolted him awake at night.

He had once watched a child from the Branch Family get tortured half to death simply because, while playing, the child had not handed a ball to a Main Family child immediately.

The child's father could only kneel and beg, knocking his head against the ground again and again. Blood from his split forehead stained his Caged Bird Seal, but it won him no mercy from the Main Family.

From that day on, Tetsuya Hyuga learned to keep his head down. He lowered it when he walked and when he spoke. He even breathed with care. He came to see his Byakugan as a lifelong mark of shame.

Tetsuya Hyuga thought he would drift through the rest of his life like that, until some mission finally killed him.

He had not expected that day to come so suddenly. He and more than a hundred others were sent to attack a small village whose name he had never heard.

He thought the mission would be over quickly. Instead, the village had