With the preliminaries over everyone was allowed to leave the tower and the Forty-Fourth Training Ground. All foreign teams had permission to stay inside of the village until after the tournament though, which meant the likes of Dosu and Gaara freely roamed the streets. Under normal circumstances they would most likely have been assigned an ANBU tail, but with Orochimaru around it was more important to guard Konoha's secrets as well as the foreign dignitaries that arrived early.
Haruka decided that in the unlikely case she ever got to be the head of a village, she wouldn't allow civilians inside of it's walls. Ninja might be used like tools, but they were still people, and shouldn't be expected to risk their lives for anything and anyone. After all, if a good shinobi died to keep one unimportant civilian safe, wasn't that a net loss? Training a ninja took time and money, and not everyone had what it took to become a good shinobi. Didn't that make their lives worth more than those of some random farmer, baker or librarian?
"Hey Haruka-chan?" Naruto interrupted her musings. "You said you were fine with what I am, but you've been warning us away from that Gaara guy because he's like me…" The blond trailed off, looking at her with wide, unsure eyes. She shook her head at him.
"He is the same thing you are, but he is nothing like you Naruto. You've seen his fight against Lee. He kills for fun, not because it's the only or even just the easiest option. You on the other hand have sworn to avenge Hinata, but you didn't mean you would kill Neji, did you?"
"What? No! Of course not!" He hastily answered. "I just like… wanted to hit him a few times? Like you know… so he listens and sees that even someone like me can beat him?"
"Well, you'll still have to do the talking, but I promise to hit him for you," she grinned and the blond answered with a tentative smile. He sometimes had a hard time understanding why she acted the way she did, but he tried and so in turn Haruka did the same. She held no grudge against Neji, even if she didn't agree with the way he blamed Hinata for all of his problems, but she'd try to help because it meant something to Naruto.
"Hey, is Kakashi-sensei training you too? I know he's training Sasuke, but I just got this super pervy guy as a teacher," the blond complained.
"No, he didn't even find a teacher for me so you're actually lucky," Haruka mused. Naruto gaped at her, and then exploded a second later.
"What? What a lazy bastard! You can totally come to train with me, even if the teacher is stupid."
"Don't worry," she told him. "I made my own arrangements. Also, you need to find yourself a Bingo Book and look Kakashi up."
"What's that?"
"Ask your teacher," Haruka said with a smile and then body flickered away in typical Kakashi manner. Unlike her sensei she couldn't risk being late.
***
Hinata was already waiting at the gate of the Hyuga compound when she arrived. Haruka immediately bowed and apologized. She actually still had a minute before she was late, but she wasn't about to risk offending anyone when she was asking for help.
What she achieved instead was only marginally better though. Hinata was terribly embarrassed by having given the wrong impression and assured Haruka at length that there was no need to apologize. They got a few curious looks from some of the clan members when the Hyuga heiress led her to a private training ground, but nobody stopped them.
The whole compound looked incredibly boring. Every house was very traditional, black roof, walls made of wood and paper. The lawns were perfectly even and trimmed to perfection, the walkways nothing but straight lines and right angles.
The training ground itself was in an inner courtyard and consisted of nothing but white sand and a single willow tree. It looked isolated, but that didn't mean much with the Hyuga's kekkai genkai. Hinata had assured her that it was considered terribly impolite to use the Byakugan within the compound for anything other than training, Haruka highly doubted that the heiress would be left completely alone with an outsider though.
"I don't know how helpful training with me will be against Neji-niisan Haruka-san," the girl said. There was no hint of a stutter, but she still sounded very unsure.
"From what I could tell you don't have his mastery of your clan's style, but you also moved a lot more fluidly. I think you'd actually be stronger than him if you had the same amount of speed and weren't afraid of hurting anyone," Haruka reasoned and before Hinata made to reply she added: "And you held back didn't you?" She didn't think Hinata would have won, even had the girl given it her all, but she would have been able to deal a lot more damage.
"How?" The heiress breathed, eyes wide. "Not even Neji-niisan noticed." Haruka smiled at her.
"Well, he was kind of distracted, and my sensing abilities are a little better than average. You also spread your chakra wide when you hit him, whereas he concentrated his only on a tiny area. At first I thought your control just wasn't very good, but then you kept your chakra perfectly even after the fight was over to avoid further damage to your organs and pathways and that would have required a lot more control."
And so Hinata began to teach Haruka what she could about the Gentle Fist style without giving away clan secrets. She wasn't actually in any condition to spar yet, but they had a month and there was a lot of theory that needed to be covered first.
Haruka had learned a lot about the human body from Orochimaru and later Ibiki. She knew where the important organs and arteries were. She knew just how deep a wound needed to be to kill or cause suffering for hours or even days. How best to break a bone, dislocate a shoulder, or where to cut a sinew. But for all her chakra sensing ability, her theoretical knowledge of the chakra system was embarrassingly basic when compared to Hinata's.
The timid girl had her learn the Hyuga katas as well as the locations of all three-hundred-sixty-one tenketsu and how they were connected to each other. That alone would give Hinata more than enough time to heal, and hopefully provide Haruka with the necessary knowledge to avoid major injuries in close combat with Neji. Initially her plan had been to defeat him by relying on long and mid ranged combat, but Hinata quickly shot that idea down by explaining that techniques such as the Eight Trigrams: Palm Rotation existed to make exactly that impossible. As far as she was aware her cousin hadn't mastered it yet, but he too had a month to train.