"This is Neji. No sign of the target in my vicinity."
"This is Hanabi. Nothing on my end either~"
"This is Hinata. Target not sighted here."
Hanabi had prepared a gold sculpture somewhere in this search area ahead of time.
As for where the gold came from — well, she'd have to thank Lord Cardo for his generous donations.
Hanabi wasn't hurting for money, but using it as a commission piece was a convenient excuse.
The Byakugan's search radius was vast, so Hinata and Neji were stationed far apart. To communicate across that distance, all three had to use radios.
When Hanabi wasn't actively using her Byakugan, her passive chakra sense could only map out the immediate space around her. Up close, she could read minute detail; at longer range, she was blind without opening the dōjutsu herself.
Because of [Curse Bind], she'd been trying to avoid using her eyes whenever possible lately — holding back, letting the power build until it hit peak potency.
In a sense, this search was training. Hanabi had even buried decoy objects throughout the area to complicate things.
A way to sharpen Hinata's and Neji's Byakugan detection.
Today, she hadn't actually intended for either of them to find the "Blue-Eyes White Dragon" sculpture.
"Is the target even out here?" Neji's voice crackled through the radio.
What he meant was: was this commission real? Was the target real?
Neji knew Hanabi had a plan. He just didn't know the specifics.
Whether this commission was something Hanabi had fabricated herself, or something genuine that she'd simply chosen to exploit — that much was unclear.
Hard to say, really.
What was clear was that, so far, no one had ever seen through one of Hanabi's disguises.
"Of course it's out there~ My, my — surely my dear elder brother isn't looking for excuses because he can't find it?"
"I… please don't call me that. Hanabi-sama."
They'd escalated into competing formality.
"Um—"
Hinata's soft voice came through the radio.
Neji and Hanabi both fell quiet.
"I think I may have found something. I'm not sure if it's the target."
"Location?" Hanabi asked.
"Over this way…"
Hinata read off a set of coordinates.
"…As expected of you, Onee-sama."
Somewhat surprising.
Hinata had actually found it. On the first day.
Not that it changed anything. The plan could continue regardless.
The three of them made their way to the meeting point.
"Oh my."
Ahead was a sheer cliff face.
"There are traces of artificial construction." Neji caught it immediately. "The target is up there — no question."
The sculpture was lodged halfway up the rockface, clearly having fallen from above.
"Is that… a boar carcass?"
Not far off, a dead beast was being picked over by scavengers.
A leather strap still dangled from the boar's ear.
"So the boar ran up the mountain with the sculpture somehow attached to it, and then fell off the top and died?" Hinata ventured.
"The boar's been dead less than a day — yesterday, most likely." Neji glanced at Hanabi. "If we're working from 'normal' logic, the boar dragged the commission piece here sometime yesterday or before. Maybe the case got snagged on it. Or the thing itself attracted the animal somehow."
If one were working from "normal" logic.
The scene, of course, was staged.
The boar had been driven here by Hanabi. The sculpture had been placed by Hanabi.
Being a great director was harder than it looked.
Still—
"Byakugan!"
Neji swept the surrounding terrain.
There.
Inside the cliff face — the faint outline of something architectural.
And a chakra signature. Strange. Very strange.
It read like a living presence — vital, pulsing — and yet saturated with the weight of the dead.
An altogether unsettling sensation.
Something about it set every nerve on edge, stirring an unease that had no clear name.
"—Don't look. Sister, don't use the Byakugan either."
Hanabi stopped Neji mid-observation.
"That thing over there—" But Hinata had already been pulled by the pull of it.
This place was wrong.
On the surface: nothing. But the surface was a lie.
Fortunately, all three of them could see through it clearly.
This was where Hikari Uchiha had been sealed. Much of what the eye wanted to rest on here was misdirection.
What Hanabi hadn't anticipated was Hinata zeroing in on Hikari's exact location quite so quickly.
"I'll go take a look. Stay here, Sister."
Hanabi stepped forward. The red cord at her waist stirred on its own, sweeping aside a scatter of debris that had materialized out of nowhere.
Then a mark appeared — visible to all of them at once.
"Is that the Senju crest? The First Hokage? Or before him?"
Neji recognized it.
"Right. This is the place."
Hanabi slipped through the tunnel entrance — the garbled static of whatever seal-noise lingered in the air dissolving behind her.
Inside, the seal.
Within the seal: the Uchiha clan's weapon, as the Senju had left it.
In the era of the Warring States, a girl named Hikari Uchiha had awakened the Mangekyō Sharingan.
The dōjutsu she'd awakened — called "Yachimatahiko" — was devastatingly powerful, powerful enough that the rest of her clan had decided she was more useful as a tool than a person. And since tools didn't need names, they gave her one that said as much: "Uchiha Nanashi." The Nameless.
The power eventually grew too great even for the Uchiha to manage, so the Senju and the Sarutobi clans joined forces to seal her here.
Without Hanabi's intervention, she would have been released in the era of Boruto by an antagonist, triggering a chain of events — though that chain had ultimately been unmade when Boruto reversed the timeline.
"Hmm. If Boruto no longer exists, that timeline never happens. And if it never happens, her fate never changes."
Hanabi turned it over.
"Which means, in a way, this is my fault. If that's the case — I'll see it through to the end~"
She'd been here once before to study the seal structure, but hadn't touched it. Now, examining it carefully, she could see the full shape of it.
"How cruel."
Inside the seal, Hikari Uchiha's body was suspended in something close to stasis.
Close to — but not quite. Her body had degraded: worn, broken in places. Yet her mind had not stopped entirely.
Time had left its marks on her. Only there.
To be locked in a dark room for decades — possibly centuries — with nothing but that. Madness would be the expected outcome.
"And now," Hanabi said quietly, "it's time."
She removed her mask and slipped off her blindfold.
She couldn't let the audience see — but she intended to do this properly regardless.
Through her Byakugan, the chakra currents threading the seal spread out before her in full.
She extended her hand. The wire from [Zhuixia] moved like a surgical instrument — precise, incremental — teasing the seal apart one filament at a time.
Then something cracked. A sound like shattering glass.
The seal came apart.
A girl slowly opened her eyes.