Hey, everybody! Here's the beginning to that new one I mentioned at the end of my last Naruto fic, The Blind Tigress. Check that out if you haven't seen it. I really didn't plan at first for this to seem like a direct continuation from the end of TBT, but that's how it turned out in post, so... xD Oh, well! No harm or anything!

I'm really hoping this goes as well as TBT did. TBT was a short little idea I started writing for off the top of my head. This is something that I'm actually going to think out and take my time with as I go along. The basic concept of the story is loosely inspired, actually, by an ecchi manga I read some years ago called "Yomeiro Choice". You can, uh... look it up if you want. x3 It's nothing incredibly graphic, but it's about as saucy as it gets, while still being quite funny to me!

I'm not going to promise three chapters a day the likes of which you saw in TBT. I do, however, promise that I'll put these chapters out as quickly as I'm capable of! I'm really excited to start this, and really excited to see how it's received! Now, without further ado~

Snow was rare in the Land of Fire. About this time every year, the most that the Hidden Leaf Village would see were grey cloudy skies looming overhead and blanketing the earth below with a neutral dim light, which is what Naruto expected to see when he got up to peer sleepily out of Hinata's bedroom window that morning. To his surprise, he finds cottony flakes drifting to and fro in front of the window, dancing and twirling as they fell out of view. And from where he could see, the roofs of some far-off buildings were already lightly dusted in the icy fluff.

"Whoa… Hey, Hinata. Hinata?" Naruto grins and turns his head toward his slumbering lover, curled up under her sheets and cutely facing away. He takes a moment just to gaze at the beautiful curve of her hip and her bare shoulder as it rises and falls with each soft breath, before stepping up to the side of the bed and gently shaking her.

"Mmph nreh tmmh…" she mumbles, and Naruto can't help but laugh lightly at the way she mutters his name when she rolls and sinks her face into her pillow.

"Hinata, come look! It's snowing!"

Slowly, the Hyuga heiress opens one eye and stares at Naruto for a moment. "…You're kidding…"

Naruto's toothy grin widens and he points at her window. Slowly, Hinata brings herself up to her knees, covering herself with her sheets as she tilts her head and squints at the glass. Her eyes widen again, and she looks back at Naruto.

"W-Wow, it is… I don't think I've seen it snowing here since I was six years old. My mother found out she was pregnant with Hanabi, and we were all so happy." Hinata rubs her eyes and smiles. "You're not thinking about going out in it, are you?"

"Aw, what kind of question is that? Of course I'm going out in it!" Naruto replies, biting his lip when Hinata squints and brings a finger to her own lip for him to quiet down. "I just need to go home and get some gloves, boots, and my other jacket. Should we meet back somewhere?"

Naruto steps over to the edge of the bed to retrieve his pants, looking around for his shirt as Hinata sloppily redresses in her silken nightclothes and begins pulling the sheets off of her mattress. "I'll knock on your door," she says with a nod. "Just give me some time to get ready."

The both of them freeze solid and look at Hinata's bedroom door as the knob rattles, and Naruto's face goes completely pale when he hears Hiashi Hyuga's calm, eloquent voice behind the locked door. "Are you awake, Hinata?"

Oh, shit. Naruto looks around frantically, and Hinata chews briefly on her thumbnail before pointing Naruto quickly toward her bathroom. "Y-Yes, Father, I'm awake! How are you?"

"I'm fine… You don't usually lock your door. Is everything alright?"

Naruto creeps as silently as he can toward the bathroom and holds his breath as he silently closes the door and curls up in the corner beside the door, listening. Hinata drops her sheets back on the bed and fixes her nightclothes as she answers her father, trying to keep herself as calm as possible. "Yes, Father, everything is fine. Did you see that it's snowing?"

"I did. May I come in?"

Hinata gulps and looks at the bathroom for a moment, hoping her father wouldn't notice or detect anything out of the ordinary and grill her about it. "Yes, Father! Just a moment!" Hinata makes sure she's not disheveled, patting down her hair and reaching for her dresser to spray her neck with some of Ino's flowery perfume she gave her, hoping the fresh, relaxing scent would mask the stale odor of sex clinging to her body... Clearing her throat, she unlocks her door, swinging it open and smiling innocently up at her father, and down at Hanabi standing beside him, already clothed and bundled up to go out in the snow.

"…Have you just woken up? It's eleven o'clock, Hinata. You never sleep in," her father notes, raising a stern brow. "Are you sure everything is alright? You're not ill from night chills?"

Hinata shakes her head, relieved that her masking attempt worked. "No, father, I'm just fine. It's just that I was up until after midnight the other night, after all. I think I'm still readjusting back into my regular sleep schedule. I promise I'm fine."

Hinata notices her sister's silent smirk of amusement out of the corner of her eye. She doesn't have an inch to give to nervousness. If something seems off, her father will catch it. She keeps her gentle smile and tilts her head at her father's next question.

"Why are your sheets off your bed?"

"I was changing them."

"You changed them three days ago."

"Well, I've been having a hard time trying to get the dye out of my hair… I thought I finally washed it all away, but I found streaks and spots in my sheets just now, so I'm just going to scrub them out and replace them." Technically, it wasn't a lie.

Hanabi's smirk only grows wider, and a bead of sweat trickles down the back of Hinata's neck, thankfully out of her father's sight.

Hiashi nods slowly. "Hm. Well, whenever you're finished handling your business, I'd like for you to take your sister out for a walk in the snow. I have business to attend to with the rest of the Main House, business you need not concern yourself with."

"Of course, Father," Hinata says with a nod and a respectful bow. Hiashi bows slightly as well and leaves without another work. Hanabi, however, remains where she is, setting her gloved hands on her hips. Hinata frowns. "Hanabi, we had a deal. You can't say a word to Father."

"Oh, I know. I won't say a word," Hanabi tells her, whistling uncharacteristically as she steps away from the door and goes back toward her room. Hinata sighs and closes the door again. "It's safe, Naruto."

He exhales his held breath and steps out of the bathroom, wiping his brow as he quickly finishes redressing and opens Hinata's window. "I guess I'll see you and your sister later?" he asks with a little chuckle.

Hinata sighs deeply. "Yes. Go quickly, Naruto. We'll meet you at your house."

Naruto nods once and pulls Hinata in to give her a deep, long kiss right on the lips. She flutters her eyelids for a couple of brief moments before closing them completely and hugging her arms around his shoulders as his hands coil around her waist. They stay held there in each other's arms for what feels like forever, before Naruto pulls away with a playful pat on the tush, leaping out of her window and into the snow.

OoOoOoO

Sakura really should be more excited than she is. Certainly, everyone else in the village is pleasantly surprised at the sight of snow on the ground, and she is, too, somewhere deep down. But as she sits against the wall on her bed and gazes about at the dancing flakes spiraling toward the ground, she just can't help but think of that moment, standing with Naruto amidst the snow, and believing that she was lying when she told him she loved him.

It did start out as a lie. She selfishly deceived him and tried to draw him off the path he'd set for himself years before then, and he saw right through it and turned it on her. Her selfishness and stupidity nearly got herself killed, if it wasn't for him and his timely arrival. It was then, when Team 7 had reunited again, albeit on uneven ground, that she began to wonder in the back of her mind if she could really still say that she was lying to herself.

And that little spec in her mind grew and grew and swelled and quivered in her heart, and what a perfect time for it to overtake the majority of her thoughts completely. But those feelings were hidden behind the façade that she still wanted to be just his closest friend. And they had to be. She knew Hinata's feelings, and she knew that Hinata deserved him more. Knowing the truth doesn't keep it from hurting, though.

"Sakura?" comes the voice of her mother as she opens the bedroom door. "You're not going out in the snow? Almost everyone else is just amazed! …Something the matter?"

"No, Mom, it's nothing. I'm still waking up. Hard going to sleep last night," she says. It's not a lie. "I know, the snow looks great, and I'll probably go out in a few minutes. Just got to get ready."

"Well, don't go without eating! I left breakfast on the table for you!" her mother says with a smile before she closes the door again. Sakura runs her fingers through her rosy pink locks and stares once more at the snow outside before climbing off her bed and heading for her shower.

OoOoOoO

It only made sense that weird things would start happening on the day it starts snowing in the Hidden Leaf Village, and thankfully, the ANBU were always prepared. Three masked figures touch down in the village marketplace, listening around at the concerned, confused murmurs. The purple-haired woman in the center adjusts her mask and looks at her two companions.

"Towa, you're with me. Komachi, take the roofs and keep watch and cover."

"Yes, Yugao," the blonde ANBU says before she leaps away. The brown-haired male in his bird-like mask nods to his partner and heads with her into the marketplace, looks around briefly, and takes immediate note of the disturbance.

Near the center of the main square of the market is what appears to be a flickering yellow orb held still and suspended in the air, glowing dimly and steadily. Yugao squints, finding the orb itself incredibly hard to look at… It looked as if reality itself was caving in, warping, bending, and flowing into and around this small orb. As snow fell near the anomaly, it seemed to spiral into the orb and either disappear completely, or spit itself back out in a random direction in the air. It was a difficult thing to describe, and it was certainly not normal.

"Everyone stay calm," Towa calls out as Yugao approaches the orb. It makes her eyes hurt, and she's forced to look close to it instead of directly at it.

"What happened here?" she asks, looking over at some of the onlookers. A shaken woman sighs and answers.

"I-It just appeared… Everyone heard a deep, unnatural sound all of a sudden, and I felt like the world was falling away from under my feet. I almost fell down… Some people actually did. Before anyone knew what was going on, someone yelled out and pointed at it. No one saw where it came from. I-It just…"

"Appeared," Yugo finishes repeating the woman's first statement, turning back toward the unnatural anomaly. "It sounds dangerous. No idea what this is, but we should get a containment team here and-"

Yugao stops suddenly as her stomach lurches and she suddenly retches. She clutches her gut and reels slightly, grateful that her stomach was empty. After lifting her mask slightly and spitting on the ground, she looks around to see that the citizens were panicking. Some had vomited on the ground, and Towa looked woozy and unsteady. The shaken ANBU grits her teeth and looks back at the orb. It was growing. And before long, it wasn't even an orb anymore, but an expanding golden ring of unnatural, incredible energy, surrounding a yawning pit of swirling darkness and harsh, crackling stormy lights. Yugao backs away quickly from the swelling ring, then stares in surprise and shock as something flies out of it and rolls across the ground before coming to a halt, face-down on the ground.

The ring collapses quickly and silently, vanishing from existence as if it was never there. Yugao and Towa turn their attention to the blonde-haired girl on the ground, approaching her still body.

"She's breathing," Towa notes. "But it looks like she might be out cold."

Yugao frowns and kneels over the girl, ignoring all the frantic murmuring around her as she rolls the girl over and looks at her face, blinking behind her mask as she takes note of her features…

"She looks like…" the ANBU murmurs to herself, then shakes her head and scoops the girl into her arms. "Never mind. Let's go. We need to get her to the hospital and alert Lord Kakashi immediately."

And so it begins. Thank you all for reading! Leave a favorite, a follow, a review, or all of the above if you enjoyed it! The next chapter will be up soon!

~M.H.C~

May all your

Hearts beat with

Calamity!

Till next time!