Heartwarming / Kakashi Hiden: Lightning in the Icy Sky

• Kahyō realizes that Kakashi is right: by killing civilians, they really have gone too far and lost whatever moral high ground they held—if they even had it in the first place—when they took over the airship. So, she helps him save the remaining hostages.
• In the epilogue of this novel, when Kakashi hits Naruto for spreading a rumor about him and Kahyō, Hinata openly goes over to Naruto and lends out her hand to help him stand up, and then she actually scolds Kakashi for hitting him^note Although, as it turns out, the Konoha 11 deliberately put Kakashi in a trap so that he could apologize to Naruto for not including him on the mission and then treat everyone to ramen at Ichiraku's. This shows that Hinata has become comfortable enough around Naruto to do that without stuttering or blushing, which implies that they've been hanging out together after the War. Then the next novel, Shikamaru Hiden, which takes place a year after this novel and a few months before The Last: Naruto the Movie, has Sakura state that Naruto and Hinata have been hanging out a lot together, which confirms what was implied in this novel. While it did end up being a bad mixture of very minimal Show, Don't Tell (this novel) and then explicit Tell, Don't Show (Shikamaru Hiden), at least it was illustrated that Naruto and Hinata did develop a closer friendship after the War, which fits well with Kishimoto's statement in a post-series interview that Neji's death brought them closer together after the War.

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