Disclaimer: Naruto isn't mine
Last time
Hinata and Team 10 get attacked with no clues as to who's behind it. Naruto had yet to get any sleep.
Talking
Thinking
Kyuubi Talking
Kyuubi Thinking
"Strange, I didn't have a nightmare last night" Naruto thought, and he was extremely glad he'd gotten a bit of sleep. He'd dozed off minutes after speaking with Asuma, even though he hadn't meant to. He sat up and yawned widely. "You're up dobe, hurry up and eat before we leave without you" Sasuke ordered, throwing the last ration bar at his head.
Everyone else had woken up hours before but they hadn't wanted to disturb Naruto since he'd been so tired. While they waited they'd speculated about what sort of abilities the person attacking them had and packed up their stuff so that it wouldn't go missing like Team Ten's find had.
"Back off teme, I needed my sleep" Naruto shouted, barely catching the flying food and eating it quickly. Everyone winced at the volume, "He's feeling better, how troublesome" Shikamaru muttered, though he was relieved they wouldn't get killed due to Naruto's sleep deprivation, though not very relieved because he guessed he'd probably get killed by whoever was targeting them if they couldn't figure it out in time.
As Sasuke had said, they started on their search right away. Kakashi had decided to split up the teams, needing to make sure that there was the right amount of assistance on each team given that each team had a different skill they specialized in.
He placed Ino, Chouji, Hinata, and Asuma as on team. Then he made a team of Sasuke, Kiba, Shikamaru, and Kurenai. The last team was himself, Naruto, Shino, and Sakura. Kakashi only kept Naruto on his team because, even if Naruto said he was rested, he had to make sure he would be okay, especially since Naruto was Kakashi's responsibility as a member of Team Seven.
With that being done they set off in their groups to search, each given a different set of streets to begin with.
With Asuma's group
Hinata was using her Byakugan to search and finding nothing that could help them with any of their search. They went past house after house quickly using this method. It wasn't long before they'd finished the street they'd been on and moved onto another.
With Kurenai's Group
They were using Kiba and Akamaru to track scents to determine if there was blood or not. Kurenai was searching for if there was any hidden genjutsu that she might be able to find, knowing the feel of the genjutsu or whatever it had been that had been placed over the doll. Sasuke was using his sharingan to search as well. Shikamaru was also looking, but he wasn't the best at this sort of thing so he wasn't much help to the search process.
With Kakashi's Group
Shino's kikai were moving in swarms throughout the houses since they knew the feel of whatever had been attached to the doll like Kurenai did, and Kakashi had his sharingan uncovered and was using it similar to the way Sasuke had been.
"This one's empty, come on, let's go to the next" Kakashi finally said in the first house, covering his eye and turning to leave with Shino and Sakura following when they determined there was nothing left to find.
Naruto ignored them and made his way to a room, trying the door which swung open readily with the slightest amount of a push. They hadn't visually checked it because Shino's kikai hadn't found anything after going under the door to explore.
Naruto shivered as the door seemed to be caught by something before it hit the wall and moved back towards him slightly.
He went inside warily and then turned to notice the others weren't following him. "Come on you idiot, we have to hurry and find out what's going on, we don't have time to explore" Sakura shouted at him, running into the room with an irritated look on her face when she saw he wouldn't listen to her. Kakashi and Shino turned to look at the two as well, not noticing Naruto had gone back until Sakura had said something.
The room Naruto had entered was a storage room, there were canned foods stacked on the shelves and bags of what he guessed were flour on the floor. Naruto turned back to her and gave a wide smile, "I'm sorry Sakura-chan, I think we missed something, and I wanted to make sure we didn't" he told her, continuing deeper into the room.
Sakura growled a bit and grabbed onto his arm, "I said we don't have timeā¦" she started but was cut off.
There was the loud slam behind them, causing them both to flinch as the door was forcibly closed. A moment later they heard the pounding of fists on it. "Naruto, Sakura, are you alright?" Kakashi called into the room, not having entered before he'd been locked out. Shino hadn't followed either. Sakura was on the other side, tugging on the handle. "It's stuck sensei" she shouted back, starting to become afraid.
She'd dropped Naruto's arm in her panic and he went further into the room. There was the sound of glass breaking which made Sakura jump. She turned to see Naruto with his leg covered in liquid and one of the canned food jars at his feet.
"Sorry" he said sheepishly, leaning down to shake out his pant leg. "Forget about it, help me get the door open" Sakura ordered, continuing to tug on the handle.
Naruto frowned and was going to walk towards her when something caught his eye and there was a shuffling behind one of the shelves. "Sakura-chan, there's someone here" Naruto told her urgently, fear creeping into his voice. "What? We don't have time for that, I already told you we need to get out of here" she said, ignoring his words and continuing to pull on the handle.
Naruto moved towards the sound, tensed and ready for an attack. He pulled out a kunai to ready himself and quickly moved into the aisle. Naruto sighed in relief when he found nothing there and was about to pocket his kunai and turn to leave when he saw a large white cloth lying on the floor, presumable covering something. Curiosity getting the better of him, he moved until he stood right next to it.
"Naruto" he heard shouted in irritation from Sakura but ignored it, reaching down and pulling on the sheet.
Naruto shouted in surprise, falling onto his butt and moving backwards using his hands to speed him up. The sheet fluttered to the side and landed against one of the sets of shelves.
"Honestly Naruto, what is it now?" Sakura asked, rolling her eyes. She froze when she turned around, seconds before screaming loudly.
"Sakura, what's going on" Kakashi's voice called through the door. Sakura couldn't answer, too afraid to say anything. Though she wasn't attempting to as she stared at what had caught her attention.
What Naruto had uncovered had been a body of a person, that wasn't what had freaked them out though, what scared them was the fact that as soon as Naruto had uncovered it the thing had stood up. Naruto continued to back away and finally hit the wall behind him.
The body, or what was left of it, was completely devoid of skin and the muscles were torn up. Blood dripped from the corpse onto the ground below as it walked towards Naruto slowly.
Naruto thought quickly and threw a kunai at it, hoping to kill it. The weapons went through flesh and came out the back of the corpse, having absolutely no effect at all due to the fact that it was already dead.
The man/Naruto walked down the stairs and followed the hallway into the storage room filled with canned food. "Jiro, come out" he called. "No, I don't wanna leave" the boy cried and the man/Naruto turned the corner to see a little boy sitting there, "Come on, we have to get out" the man/Naruto said, moving to grab the boy.
The man/ Naruto picked him up and held him. "It doesn't matter" the boy said calmly, "It's too late"
The dream that had suddenly taken over ended at that point and Naruto snapped back into reality. The body was much closer now and reached out a hand to him, "Naruto" Sakura cried, finding her voice. Naruto didn't acknowledge her as he tried to keep backing up, only to find he was as far back as he could go, he'd run into one of the walls.
"Sakura, step away from the door, I'm going to destroy it" Kakashi called through the door. Sakura did as she was told. "Okay sensei" she called back, the body now had Naruto's arm held tightly as he shook and struggled against the hold.
Naruto quelled the urge to scream like a little girl when his struggling did nothing and the body put its mouth next to his ear. "Get out while you still have a chance" it told him, collapsing lifelessly, well more lifeless than it had been before, on top of him.
Naruto looked up just in fear as he struggled to get the body off of him, just in time to see the door be completely destroyed and the lightning encased hand of his sensei coming through it.
"Sensei" Sakura shouted, pointing to where Naruto was urgently, trembling in fear.
Kakashi wasted no time in pulling the corpse off of Naruto. Once it was off Naruto shot to his feet and moved quickly away from it, shaking and trying to get the blood off. "The eyes were taken, and his skin was ripped off" Kakashi said after his inspection of it, not as scared as his two students.
"Like Hinata-san was saying" Shino commented, entering the room. They were unable to tell if the sight of the corpse disgusted him or not due to his emotionless voice and sunglasses hiding his eyes. "Yes, I'm thinking this was one of the villagers. I think that whatever Hinata saw was what happened to the people who went missing" Kakashi stated with a frown.
"So what do we do? It's obvious that someone's targeting us, and they have to be here to be doing all these things, but we haven't seen anyone, can't we just go back to Konoha and have them send someone else?" Sakura asked, pleading for this mission to be over.
Kakashi shook his head, "Of course not Sakura, we'll need to solve it before we can leave, besides, so far we've been fairly safe and we're going to have back-up soon" he said giving an eye smile to try and reassure her. In his mind though he knew that she was right and this would be very difficult for them to solve, especially with an unidentified enemy.
He was right though, when Shikamaru, Ino, and Chouji had been unconscious they would have been easy targets. The fact that they were still alive gave him some hope of surviving this ordeal.
Also they had taken two weeks to get there, it would be three or four days before back-up would get there, even if ANBU were sent. In the meantime they needed to get as much work done as possible. They would all stick together so that hopefully none of them would die.
"Explain what happened" Kakashi finally requested, knowing his words weren't calming their fears. Sakura and Naruto started to describe everything.
"Well we'll leave it here for the time being, it's a bad idea to bring it outside" Kakashi said when they were all finished, looking down at the body one last time. "Would it not be wise to keep searching? If we keep searching, then we will certainly find something that we have missed since we could not detect this" Shino said reasonably.
"That's right, we probably will have to go over everything again, but first let's find the other groups, we need to make sure that they do this as well and don't waste time like we've been doing" Kakashi told the boy and they all left to find the others.
Thanks for Reading
Please Review
