Naruto and Sasuke lay on the ground catching their breath.
Naruto was still in her transformed state—short pink kimono, fishnet stockings, sandals, twin tails gone slightly chaotic. Sasuke was his usual self.
Hanabi's bells had always been numerous; now there were even more. When she arrived, she brought a cascade of clear ringing with her.
"Ah—Hanabi." Naruto cracked one eye open.
She lifted a hand from where she lay and waved, weakly, at Hanabi sitting in the branches above.
"Heh heh!"
Maintaining the Transformation Jutsu had taken everything she had—she was past speaking. But that wide, unguarded grin said everything words couldn't.
Sasuke didn't say anything either, but his face wore the same quiet, confident smile.
"It looks like you both made it."
Honestly, Hanabi had half expected this to take two weeks, maybe more—with no pressure from Zabuza like in the original, there was nothing forcing the pace. But the reality was that these two had matched the original timeline even while under load restrictions, with Naruto also sustaining her Transformation the whole time.
More than that: they were doing half-day patrols in the morning before training in the afternoon.
That was genuinely impressive.
And the two of them seemed to be pushing harder than she remembered from the source material. Like they were quietly competing.
——Was it because of me?
That wasn't self-importance talking.
Every time she'd watched Naruto and Sasuke training, there was a specific undercurrent to it—something slightly pointed in how they watched each other.
Then again, maybe it wasn't about her at all. Naruto had been running her drills in full girl-mode the entire time—who knew what that had done to Sasuke's head. Or maybe it was simply that alternating rest and effort outperformed brute exhaustion. Either way.
Hanabi tilted her head.
"Congratulations~ You both made it." She clapped, and the bells at her wrists chimed along.
She was rather enjoying the sound.
"Take tomorrow off. Leave the mission to me and Kakashi-sensei."
"Finally—it's over? Ha—ha ha ha ha! I was first!"
Naruto's laugh was breathless.
"Idiot. I made it up first." Sasuke said flatly.
"No way, it was me. Hanabi, you saw it, right!"
"It was simultaneous." Hanabi dropped down from the branch. "Your sync was actually quite good. But rest is only for tomorrow—training isn't finished."
"What, still?!" Naruto's eyes went wide.
She'd been holding the Transformation Jutsu for a solid week. Was it seriously going to continue?
"Tree-climbing is done. Which means the next module—water-walking—is about to start." Hanabi said.
"No, come on!"
Naruto let out a strangled wail.
"Mm?"
At that moment, Hanabi noticed it: the danmaku had appeared again.
——Another insert scene?
[First!!]
[Let's gooo~]
[Swimsuit episode! We NEED a swimsuit episode!]
[My wife!! That's my wife!!]
[Look at all that rope, my hands are itching]
[Isn't that the person who was doing the kikkou art in the comments...]
[Master, are you taking disciples?]
The broadcast wasn't live. It was playing back footage from earlier.
And it wasn't starting with Naruto and Sasuke—it was starting with her.
That surprised Hanabi a little.
The Stage was being surprisingly generous with her screen time.
The Hanabi in the frame was braiding rope—winding the material she'd prepared for her "ninja-tool version" ODM harness. Then she looked up toward the window.
Only after that did the camera follow her gaze across to Naruto and Sasuke's training ground.
"Damn it!"
They crashed down from the tree. Both of them gasping.
[Naruko best girl!!]
[What if—and hear me out—Naruto isn't just the male lead but also the female lead. And Hanabi and Sasuke are actually the supporting cast 2333]
[...that tracks actually]
[Wait, is he actually a genius?]
The two of them ran at the trunk again. They slid back down again. They ran again. Their breathing was ragged and they showed no sign of stopping.
Set against the rising BGM, there was something unexpectedly stirring about it.
"AAAAAAH!!"
The light had gone gold by the time Naruto and Sasuke finally screamed their way to the crown of the tree. They looked at each other and shared a smile.
Then the cut—to the two of them lying in the dirt.
Clear, bell-like sound. Then applause.
Hanabi had arrived.
[???]
[Did she get some new accessories?]
[Bells and rope]
[Wait—what's that at her neckline?]
The audience spotted the change before Naruto and Sasuke did.
It wasn't subtle, in hindsight. When Hanabi clapped, her wrists were exposed—the red rope wound up her forearms and the bells she wore had considerable presence.
[Don't tell me she's actually wearing the rope under there]
[Oh my god, they're going there in a shonen anime]
[Shonen is having a rough time these days, huh]
[My theory: she's been preparing some new gear, and these last two episodes are setup—there's something big coming next arc]
Rational analysis from one corner of the comments.
The rest of the comments were considerably less rational—a wave of people screaming "wife," throwing out terms like hishi and kikkou, the kind of vocabulary Hanabi recognized from the comment section's more colorful corners.
But the numbers were moving. Hanabi's popularity gauge, which had bottomed out entirely, was now climbing fast—several thousand points and still going, almost reaching her debut episode peak.
"The bells make noise when you move," Sasuke said, stepping in with a very helpful observation. "How are you supposed to hide your presence wearing those?"
"Oh, these~"
Hanabi shook her wrist again.
The bells stayed silent.
"These are ninja tools." She smiled. "Don't tell me you've been thinking they were just accessories all this time?"
——They had absolutely thought they were just accessories.
But Hanabi was retroactively adding justification to elements that had existed purely as decoration, giving the audience a reason to believe the "foreshadowing" had been intentional all along.
It was working. And it landed without any out-of-character awkwardness.
Perfect.
She drew out a length of wire, raised her hand, and let it fly—it adhered against a branch above her. Then the wire contracted, and she was up in the tree.
"Watching the two of you work so hard, I figured I'd better put in some preparation of my own." She said from the branch.
"Oh yeah, you look a little different than this morning..." Naruto squinted up at her. "More accessories!"
"All ninja tools." Hanabi said. "Let's just say I upgraded my loadout from before."
Her popularity gauge had started dipping. She decided to do something about that.
"Specifically—I upgraded the rope armor undergarment I wear underneath."
[Wait, "undergarment" means...]
[I always assumed Hanabi was wearing nothing under the kimono like in the traditional style, so I thought—]
[Okay but—rope ARMOR?]
[What's the big deal, these ninja already wear chainmail under their clothes. Chainmail exists. Why is rope armor the line?]
[Bro, it's not the logic, it's the mental image]
[I'm the impure one here. I'll take the blame.]
[Am I seriously the only one clocking her mobility just now? That rope armor is basically an exoskeleton—she's using it to augment her movement]
A wave of danmaku rolled through.
A substantial portion of it had veered into territory Hanabi would charitably describe as creative.
To be fair, she had phrased things deliberately. It wasn't quite a misdirection—more like she'd simply declined to direct anyone.
The real fanservice was something only Hanabi and Hyuga Hinata would ever know about. The audience was welcome to use their imagination.
Hanabi's popularity spiked hard. It blazed back through five digits in short order, and she was flush again.