11 Chapter 11: Time Marches On - pt. 2

As their fourth year at the Academy was beginning Hikari was already starting to become somewhat proficient in everything she was originally bad at. She could finally use shuriken and kunai with an acceptable level of skill though she wasn't nearly at the level of Sasuke and Sai. Naruto and her also started working on the next step of chakra control training to walk on water. Jiraiya mostly focused on teaching Naruto proper taijutsu and making sure he had the fundamentals down since Naruto generally lacked proper focus. He was already ranked fourth among the boys in taijutsu and like Hikari had greatly improved with kunai and shuriken. Though unlike her, he put heavy emphasis on it as he was determined to beat Sasuke and Sai.

Her mother deemed her basic taijutsu training complete now that she was reflexively able to use her higher than strength in tandem with burst of chakra for devastating blows. She began almost exclusively working on nothing but medical jutsu under her mothers tutelage. It had surprised her classmates a lot when she showed up to class with a purplish diamond shaped mark on her forehead. This especially worried Hinata, as she had only ever seen seals on someone's forehead used as punishment and control over them. It took some time to explain it was just a chakra seal her mother taught her called Strength of a Hundred and even had Hinata promise not to tell anyone what it really was since it was technically a clan secret. She was actually a bit confused as to why she was required to have it since her own reserves plus Kokuo's were quite large. Her mother explained that it was never a bad thing to have access to more chakra and that it was an emergency resort that would allow her to access a great deal of chakra all at once without digging into her own reserves. In order to learn it she had to form a contract with Katsuyu, her mothers slug summon. The bright side was it also helped her with chakra control as she had to precisely and slowly pour the chakra into the seal over a long period of time.

For her personal training she had continued using the needle to strand out and stick to her fingers managing to complete the exercise with her left hand but only three out of five fingers for her right hand. The other thing she focused on was using boil release with Kokuo's help. It was painful the first few times she misjudged distance with speed and tripped or outright ran into a tree, fortunately for her she was quite sturdy by now. By the end of the fourth year she'd completed her training for water walking and needle training. She also took top spot at the academy in taijutsu as no one wanted to spar with her anymore. She had accidentally broken one of the guys arms now when he blocked and even though she was able to set and mend it only the top guys in the class could go against her. Even then she had almost the same skill level as them now but significantly more power.

At the end of the fifth year when she attended the graduation examinations with everyone else. She noticed there was a new face with them. His name was Shin and he was older than them by two years. Apparently he had been sick for a while and only got cured within the last year. He was pretty friendly with Sai and when questioned about it by one of the other girls found out he was actually Sai's big brother. He had a cheeky outgoing personality that reminded her a lot of her own onii chan, Naruto.

For her taijutsu test she was put up against a jonin instructor since no one wanted to be her partner for the test. She did her best, but the jonin instructor afraid of getting injured ended up reflexively putting her down before long. She got an instant perfect mark for making him go all out. For shuriken and kunai test she gave them the stink eye as she only got six out of ten missing all the trickier throws. She easily passed the ninjutsu test and then moved on the extra curricular medical test. Since she was not an actual student in the class she had to hand them a note saying she was allowed to take it from her mom, though the note was official and signed as the head of medical division Senju Tsunade. She crushed the competition earning perfect marks in it as well. Surpassing what some chunin level medic ninja could do. She also managed to do passable in the kunoichi only exam. By passable the teacher blatantly pointed out that, Hikari, as one of the prettiest girls she'd ever seen somehow got the worse passing grade she'd ever given out. Another round of cursing at the goddess ensued since every other person in the room could hear the embarrassing remark.

At the end of the day she was sitting in the kunoichi classroom waiting for everyone to be dismissed when she overheard the other girls going off about Sai and Sasuke again. She was going to ignore it but it kept on for over thirty minutes especially since teams would be announced tomorrow. She ended up yelling at them to shut up, that any other guy would be better than those two who acted haughty towards everyone. When questioned about who would be better she instantly said Kiba as he was technically her best mate when it came to ditching class, and was going to list more before they instantly broke out in ooo's, and aah's. Realizing she'd thrown herself into a trap and more irritated than before stormed out of the room. Once again cursing the goddess for this crap she had to deal with at times.