Chapter 3

Kiba snorted.

"You know nothing about looking good." Kiba scoffed. "Is this guy passé or what?"

Mizuki regarded Konoha's ninja team condescendingly, sighed in exaggerated disappointment, and finally shook his head. His corpulent jowls quivered.

"Children." He gazed at their faces individually, as if appraising them. "They send children to distract me. Foolishness merits their destruction. You guys are like…what? Seventeen? Eighteen?"

"Actually," Kiba cut in, repressing the impulse to attempt to lunge at him. "I am eighteen, and I exercise every day. You're only one year older than me, and I'm still in more shape than you."

"Hilarious….for a kid in his last moments of seeing light." Mizuki replied humorlessly. "Maybe you're wondering why you're not dead yet?"

"Natural generosity?!" Naruto piped in. He gazed worriedly at Ino. There was something caged in her eyes, wild and desperate. Things would have to progress faster, or Ino was likely to get herself murdered. Hopefully Mizuki would hurry things along.

Their captor chuckled.

"Not quite, idiot. Nice try though." Mizuki smirked at them, tucking his hands in his pockets.

"I know," Sasuke sneered. "As a paid-up member of Maniacs Anonymous you want a chance to boast about your master plan, and brag about how it's going to be when you're ruler of Konoha, master of all survey and all that crap, and you need an audience to admire you. Too bad it has to be a captive audience."

"How very perceptive," Mizuki observed. "Maybe I'll kill you last."

"You're just a cliché, Mizuki," Sasuke continued. Screw around with their vanity, he remembered from the academy. Stab their sense of self-importance. Get them pissed off. "You're just an entry in a textbook, Konoha's dumbass."

But Mizuki didn't seem swayed by Sasuke's speech. He lifted his hand out of his pocket, which was grasping a cigarette packet. He withdrew a lighter and inhaled the smoke, flooding the eyes of them.

"What I am..." He darkly glared at them through the smoke. "Is the future. When my bombs erased every single vestige of your degraded and decadent culture from the face of Konoha I'm building my own society from its pathetic ashes. A place owned by me, doesn't that seem wonderful?" He mocked Sasuke by blowing more smoke in their direction.

"A bit drug addicted them." said Kiba.

"And that's why you guys are still alive and in my presence, to witness it happening. To make you suffer from watching everyone you know die in front of your eyes. Technicians!" Mizuki squared his shoulders. "Let the bombs loose!"

"Sasuke!" Sakura desperately cried.

The technicians' fingers sped across their consoles. All at once, the three screens before them, displayed the missiles launched, rising from their concealed silos and cutting the air like knives. In minutes they would reach their respective targets, and Konoha would enter a new dark age. Unless Konoha's team could stop them.

"Hinata," Naruto whispered. "What do you think?"

"I've seen enough." Hinata whispered. "I can bring them down."

"Awesome, because I've had it with this guy."

"Wait for it, Naruto." Cautioned Sasuke.

"Hold them!" Mizuki demanded. The guards gripped Konoha Team's arms more tightly. The guard even bore a scar on Sakura's wrist. "Wait for what? A miracle?" Mizuki inquired lazily.

"No, stupid." Naruto growled. "The mistake you've just made." Sasuke's eyes narrowed.

"Let's give these jokers the shock of their lives." A crackle of electricity charged the air. The demon guards holding them recoiled and yelped as the electric current surged from the material of the teenagers' suits and jolted through them. Some fell at once, but others needed encouraging from fists.

"In case you're wondering," Kiba supplied, as he jabbed his claws at one man, and threw another over his shoulder, proving himself unassailable. "They're called shock suits. They're not a available in shops but if you send a check to Konoha, you'll never know your luck." He devilishly grinned.

"Stop them!" Mizuki demanded. "Guard the computers!" The remaining guards waded in, but in lack of wide ranges, the rifles and guns were useless. They dropped like flies. There were a sequence of blows from Ino and Naruto ended the technicians' interest in the evening's proceedings.

This gave Hinata the advantage of seating herself at a console and work with breathtaking speed at the keyboards. This was another talent that she far surpassed the team, her wizardry with all things technological. The others watched Mizuki or finished off the demon guards as she devoted her eyes to the systems.

She began to assimilate and memorize the mechanics of the technicians' works, to girding herself to break the codes and destroy the missiles before they reached their final destinations. She tapped a final combination.

"Success!" Hinata cried. The bright casting of the first missile blistered and burst, almost a second sun in the sky. The screen collapsed into a blue fizz with it. There were two bombs left. Hinata fiercely glanced at the counter. Apparently, she ate two minutes of time.

Mizuki's expression was impassive as his dreams died around him. He glared at Hinata, at the screen, and then back at her. His steel grey eyes narrowed.

"Hey!" He hollered to a conscious but dazed guard who still seemed to have hold of his rifle. "Shoot her!" At least one of his bombs should be able to get through at that point. It wouldn't be fair, otherwise in his opinion.

The guard took an uneasy aim, and fired. A violent scissor kick from Sakura pummeled into his stomach. Mizuki exhaled the smoke from his cigarette, his eyes narrowed. he threw it down. Sasuke and Naruto charged at him from behind, his rasengan bright, his chidori flashing.

Mizuki fell, vermillion blood screaming agony raked across his back.

"What's happening?" Hinata cried, keeping her temptation from averting her gaze from the screens.

"We'll deal with it," Naruto assured. He watched her, for a moment lost in past memories with her. He shook out of his trance. What was that all about? "Just get rid of those bombs."

"Yes, sir!" She punched another code. A second dazzling display of lights across the sky. The second screen plunged into darkness. Hinata clenched her fist in triumph. There was only one missile left now. Sixty seconds left. Hinata saw it arc, descent, and accelerate.

Below the missile, not so far below, there was Konoha, people oblivious to their imminent fate. Hinata grit her teeth, and redoubled her efforts and speed. The few remaining guards dropped their weapons and held their hands up. With Mizuki gone, there was no point fighting on. Who would pay them?

Sakura and Kiba herded them together as Sasuke stood over Mizuki's body. He felt like shouting for joy. The mission was on the brink of success after all. How they'd applaud him back at Konoha. Hinata was about to destroy the final missile, and Mizuki was….

Alive.

Just.

And grinning, blood trickling from both corners of his mouth. He didn't seem to have much to grin about, considering the gaping wound in his back, but maybe the control pad in his hand had something to do with it. In the pad, he was punching numbers. Sasuke kicked it from his grasp, and sent it skittering across the floor in a flurry of lights.

"Too late." Mizuki smirked at him. Above him, the black metallic ball began to descent. "Even if you win, you lose." The green lights, one by one, were turning red. "That's another bomb, to big to evade, kid. So we do to hell together, right?"

"Crap." Sasuke wasn't aware that Mizuki's closed gray eyes and lolling head meant he was dead or not. He had one more troublesome priority. "Everyone get over here! Everyone but Hinata!"

"What is it?"

The ball paused some five feet off the floor. A number display was counting down from sixty. Inexorably, unstoppable.

"That thing's a bomb. It's going to blow. Hinata can't help us."

"I can!" Hinata cried out. "I'm almost there, I'm nearly…." She could see Konoha before her, its buildings basking in the peaceful sunset. She could see its victims.

"Do something, Sasuke!" Sakura urged.

"Alright, relax. The class we had in bomb defusal…." He snatched a laser rifle from a dead guard and shot at the lower part of the metal casing. Hinata jumped, for a second, distracted. There was less than sixty seconds now, and this was long enough. For the first and fatal time, her fingers faltered.

The faces of Konoha she didn't know were gazing up from pavements and parks, the bomb above them like the apocalypse. She screamed uselessly.

"Too slow, I'm almost there!" The screen showed impact. Mushroom clouds branched into Hinata's eyes.

"This can't be happening!" Sakura wailed. "There's no way…." Tears fogged her eyes. She grasped Kiba's shoulder, and he held her reassuringly.

The guts of the metal bomb were exposed, its array of cables and wires. The number display was at thirty-four, thirty-three….

"I know this type of bomb," Sasuke claimed. "We studied it for class. It's really basic, simple. These two wires…." The others saw them, deadly, fragile. "Red, blue. Red detonates the bomb at once. Blue defuses it. So the only thing I need to do now," Sasuke's fingers fluttered.

"Hell no!" Naruto seized Sasuke's arm in a viselike grip.

"What the heck do you think you're doing?"

….Twenty, nineteen….

"You're wrong, Sasuke, it's the other way around." But Sasuke jerked his arm away fiercely, and shoved Naruto. "What do you think you're doing? I'm always right"

"Hinata!" Sakura pleaded. "Get over here!" But Hinata was helpless, her deep eyes staring blankly in front of her.

"Trust me, Sasuke, this one time,"

"No!"

….nine, eight….

"Will one of you do something?" Ino shouted. "Naruto!"

….four, three….

"No! Naruto's not the leader, I…."

…one…

"Who would believe it?" Kiba moaned.

….zero….

The world turned white.

It stayed white, empty and blank as the mind of an amnesiac.

"So this is death," Kiba observed. He felt his shoulder blades, and passed a hand above his head. "No wings, or halo either. Guess we didn't make the grade as angels." Sakura's tears were hard to decipher. She closed her eyes.