There Were Plenty of Ways Outside the Rules

Shisui's face flushed bright red.

He was kind by nature, and he couldn't stomach this sort of thing.

But even with murderous intent all but spilling from his eyes, he didn't actually leap to his feet.

Ultimately, this was the Hyuga's internal business, and his surname was Uchiha.

The Hidden Leaf had its own rules.

The Hokage had authority over the village and the shinobi officially serving it.

Only during a war did he have the right to reach into the shinobi clans and requisition their members.

Each clan had the final say over its own internal affairs.

That bastard from the Hyuga main family was disgusting, but he held no official position in the Hidden Leaf.

Even during wartime, the Hyuga main family stayed put inside Uchiha District.

However furious Shisui was, he couldn't reach past the Hyuga's doorstep.

If he insisted on intervening, he would be openly declaring war on the Hyuga Household.

At this point, he could only pin his hopes on Kazama Nara.

As he'd said before, the Nara Household had the cleverest minds. Maybe Kazama could work out a way.

Kazama didn't take the bait. He shrugged, helplessness written all over his face.

"Captain, what do you take me for?" Kazama Nara's voice was full of resignation. "We have no way to intervene in the Hyuga Household's affairs."

"Besides, with the Caged Bird Curse Seal binding her, Aya doesn't even have the right to refuse."

"The best I can come up with is to secure a long-term posting outside the Land of Fire before the war ends."

"And it would have to be a job that absolutely requires the few of us."

"Only under those circumstances would the Hyuga Household have to bow to the Hokage."

"Pulling that off would be next to impossible."

"Even if we managed it, we'd only be putting things off."

"Every assignment ends eventually. None of us can get around that."

"This is a dead end."

Everyone fell silent.

No one thought less of Kazama for having no solution.

The situation was a tangled mess, and deep down, they all understood that perfectly well.

Aya Hyuga smiled instead.

"Don't look like that, everyone. This is just the branch family's lot."

"I accepted it long ago. I'm grateful I got to meet you all."

"That's enough for me."

Her expression softened, and despite the bitterness at the corners of her mouth, she began comforting them.

It was plain to see.

Just as she'd said, she had long since accepted her fate.

Jin Uchiha stayed tucked off to the side, without saying a word.

His eyes flickered, but he still said nothing.

This was a damned tricky problem.

Worse still, even if he sorted it out, there was precious little in it for him.

And, harsh as it sounded, Aya Hyuga's future might be miserable, but at least she'd still have her head attached to her neck.

What about him?

The dark cloud of the Uchiha massacre was still hanging over his head.

And it wasn't just him.

Shisui, Kazama, the others...

They all had their own mountain of troubles. None of them was in a position to laugh at anyone else.

While he was brooding, Shisui moved.

He abruptly turned toward Jin Uchiha, his tone heavy as iron.

"Jin, I want to do something about Aya."

"You must have a way. We've been through life and death together."

"Help Aya out."

There wasn't a trace of humor on Shisui's face.

That was right.

He'd only spent a few days with this fellow clansman, but he'd already gotten some measure of him.

For all his constant laziness, for all that he looked utterly ordinary in a crowd...

That was all just surface appearances.

Shisui truly couldn't suppress the fire in his chest over Aya Hyuga's situation.

Kind to his very bones, he genuinely wanted to help.

As soon as Shisui spoke, Kazama and Aya fixed their gazes on Jin Uchiha's face.

Shisui's position went without saying.

Kazama had some idea of what Jin Uchiha could do. He watched him thoughtfully now, wondering whether his partner could produce a more effective solution than his own.

Aya Hyuga's expression, meanwhile, was rather interesting.

She paused, then looked at Jin Uchiha in bewilderment.

That was right.

She couldn't quite wrap her head around it.

She'd spent three days with Jin Uchiha too, and honestly, she hadn't noticed anything special about him.

He was perfectly ordinary, with nothing that stood out.

She truly couldn't understand why someone as exceptional as Shisui would pin his hopes on the unremarkable Jin.

Jin Uchiha: "..."

His mind went a little blank.

Especially once everyone's eyes turned toward him at once. The corners of his mouth twitched so badly they hardly felt like his own anymore.

Well, damn.

What the hell does any of this have to do with me?

Still, he really hadn't expected Shisui to be this kindhearted.

He turned it over in his mind and quietly began thinking.

He genuinely hadn't intended to wade into this mess, but now that he'd been put on the spot, even if Aya Hyuga wasn't reason enough, he couldn't refuse Shisui that courtesy.

With that in mind, he slowly spoke.

"If you want to call this difficult, it really is. If you want to call it easy, it's not much of a problem."

"You can't find an opening because you're still thinking in terms of moving pieces on the board."

"Flip the board over and look at it from outside, and there are more solutions than you can count."

"I'll toss out a few."

"First, frame him."

"The Hyuga main family doesn't have to go to war, but he can't spend his entire life holed up in Uchiha District, can he?"

"Once he leaves Uchiha District, find an excuse to get him into a fight and have him accidentally kill a few ordinary Hidden Leaf civilians. Then we blow the whole thing up and rally the civilians to protest outside the Hokage Building."

"Even if he's from the Hyuga main family, as long as he isn't someone absolutely vital to them, the Hyuga Household won't dare protect him at all costs."

"As for getting him into a fight, there are so many ways you'd get sick of hearing them. The easiest is to control him with the Sharingan, or knock him out and hide him, then use the Transformation Technique to act the whole thing out."

"If you think that still leaves loopholes, we can be more direct."

"Disguise ourselves as Hidden Cloud Village shinobi, slip into the Hyuga compound, kill him, take his Byakugan, and leave."

"With Aya, a Hyuga branch family member, on our side, finding a hole in their defenses shouldn't be too difficult, no matter how tightly they guard Uchiha District."

"If that still doesn't feel reliable enough, we don't alert anyone. We use the Sharingan to plant a thought in that main family member's head: spending his whole life in the compound is suffocating, and the Hyuga compound is practically a cage."

"Let him grow restless on his own and start wanting to sneak out of the Hidden Leaf Village to see the sights."

"Once he's out, we abduct him, silence him, and dump his body on the black market."

"We can pose as Hidden Cloud Village shinobi, rogue shinobi, or bounty hunters. Take your pick."

"Basically, there are plenty of ways."

"As long as you stop boxing yourselves in with the label of Hidden Leaf shinobi and snap that little thread in your heads telling you to obey the rules. All of us are Hidden Leaf shinobi, and we even have someone from the Hyuga Household among us."

"How hard could it be to find an opening?"

"The Hyuga Household is tightly guarded. Even if the other shinobi villages covet the Byakugan, it really is hard for them to get their hands on one."

"But don't forget."

"We're thieves on the inside. With careful planning, there might be a few bumps along the way, but our odds of success are very high."

"Once that Hyuga main family member dies, Aya's problem resolves itself."

"..."