4.
"Where is she?!"
The servant involuntarily shivered under her master's gaze, desperately trying to muster up the will just to speak clearly. "We don't know, Hiashi-sama, we have already searched the whole compound, the festival, the whole village! She is nowhere to be found!"
Hiashi was angry- no, he was downright furious. Some third party had to be involved! There was no way a four (on the verge of five) year-old could be able to escape detection from the all-seeing Byakugan. But who? He couldn't call anyone to mind. If the child was really outside the village, there had to be foul play afoot. He couldn't call to mind anyone who would do this to him or his daughter, not anyone alive or locked up anyway. But even if they could have been there, they had no means of being able to sneak into a compound filled with people able to see through walls, kidnap his daughter and sneak her out of a shinobi dominated village without the tiniest bit of suspicion. But what'd happened had happened and there was no undoing it. They had to pick up the pieces, relieve some Hyūga guards because of incompetence and find his daughter!
"Alright, that's enough Kuya," Hiashi said in a huff to the nervous branch member as he made up his mind on his next option. "Return to your duties." Hearing this, the frazzled branch woman was relieved as she had thought that she would have been punished for bringing bad news. While Hiashi did not practice using the caged bird seal, like other main branch members, particularly the elders, he was… unpredictable at times of great adversity and this was certainly one of those times.
He wasn't generally unkind, but he did look especially in the mood to be.
=X=X=
"I am here to see the Hokage." His normally stern (and flat tone) and was marred with worry and anger, and likewise was his face. She allowed him to go upstairs and informed him to knock on the Hokage's door once there, and he did so with markedly more hurry than she'd ever seen a Hyūga in.
"Come in," the muffled voice from behind the door said. Hiashi turned the knob and pushed it open to find the Hokage dressed up in a simple blue kimono. Apparently, the man was just about ready to leave himself to attend the festival.
"Hokage-sama, a moment of your time. I have an important request."
"You just caught me, Hiashi," the wizened Hokage said coolly, though his mentality was rapidly settling into crisis mode. "By all means, Hiashi-san. What is it?" the old Hokage inquired.
"My daughter's missing. I wish for you to locate my daughter, Hinata, so I may know her whereabouts," the slightly frowning Hyūga replied bluntly.
"But isn't this a clan problem? Even more so, this should pose no problem for the Hyūga's dojutsu."
"That IS the problem, Sarutobi-sama. We cannot locate her within the village walls, dojutsu or not. It's-" Hiashi hesitated, trying to choose his next word, "disconcerting."
Well, this suddenly went from bizarre to upsetting. "This is serious." It was an easy assumption that Hiashi wanted him to use the crystal ball to find his daughter; made more sense than mobilizing a couple dozen ninjas. Without the prompt being spoken, the Hokage got out the crystal ball and started the technique. Soon, an image of two men appeared, one of which held Hinata against his chest while the other held a man over his shoulder. The unconscious man on the shoulder was recognized as the ambassador he was speaking with earlier. Hiashi and the Hokage saw the one with Hinata about to knock at the door that the two black-clothed men stood in front of. However, the man with Hinata hesitated, and seemed to argue with the other before then poising to knock.
"Where is that?" Hiashi asked.
"It seems…familiar…Is that our door-"
Both Hyūga and Sarutobi froze.
At the same time of the image of the man knocking at the door, they heard a knock at their door.
Both Hiashi and Hiruzen shared an uneasy look, and the Hyūga nodded to him as if saying to let him in, not as an order or request, but as a plea. The elderly Hokage then flared his chakra twice to tell the hiding Anbu in the room of a potential threat before he welcomed the men inside as clearly as he could manage.
"Come in."
The door pushed in to let the two men in, along with their human baggage but the one who carried Hinata entered in the lead. Hiruzen took in their description thoroughly. Wearing a black trench coat not unlike Ibiki's, with black full length pants along with black shinobi sandals some sort of kanji he couldn't see clearly. He also wore gloves that exposed the tips of his fingers with protective metal plates on the back of the wrist. The man's head was covered by a hood that was complimented by a face mask that came up to the bridge of the man's nose and his eyes were shadowed by the hood of his clothes. Both men were similar in appearance, leading the Hokage to believe that one of them was a clone of the other.
"Who are you?" Hiashi asked the hooded man tensely, bordering on the edge of threatening.
The man, either not noticing the tone, or ignoring it, replied in an even tone."Just a hungry man passing through. I was looking for somethin' to eat when I saw this guy and decided that… you know…" He tried to think of a lie, if only for the Kyuubi's sake, "intervene." He didn't mention his own name either. Just the mere mention of it would draw every single Anbu in the area to try to kill him. Furthermore, given by how vague he was, everyone realized that he didn't care to tell them his name, and chose to ignore that fact.
"Explain yourself. We wish to know what transpired." The Hokage requested, now calming seeing the mysterious man as no longer a threat; not now anyway. His Anbu were still on standby, but he didn't tell them to stand down. He himself wasn't relaxing either, and he was sure that Hiashi was the same.
"Simple. This, your daughter-," he gestured to the sleeping girl. "Was kidnapped by this man-," he nodded at the still unconscious man. "- and I stopped him before he reached the border. Judging by he said, Kumogakure was just after the Byakugan dojutsu."
Hiruzen interlocked his fingers in interest. "Could you describe what happened?"
"We stopped him, that's all you need to know," the 'clone' said, speaking for the first time. The clone then handed the sleeping girl to her father, who cradled her to his chest relieved.
"Then I challenged him," the original continued with mild gusto, suggesting that he was prideful person, "he ran at me and I knocked him out. That's it."
"Oh, so he was exhausted then, I take it?" Hiashi asked.
"No. Just weak, or at least to me. He only used one B-ranked raiton technique, and was a user of swift release." Both Hiashi's and the Hokage's eyes widened at this relation, though the latter didn't allow his surprise to show as much as the former. Knowing of the incredible speeds that came with this release as well as the added perks that came with having a kekkai genkai, plus the fact that it was a certainty that the ambassador was a skilled shinobi…
The man before them was powerful. Period.
"Seeing as you intervened in our favor, I take it you're affiliated with Konoha then?" the Hokage asked almost rhetorically, trying to look for anything that could tell him of who he is. Or was.
The stranger stroked his chin in mock thought. "Nope. Ain't got no allegiance, especially to this village. To be honest, it's my least favorite-"
"A missing nin?!" Hiashi was alarmed. His Byakugan activated, ready to act. Also on their own way of thinking, before Hiruzen could cue them otherwise, the Anbus in the room leapt from hiding and attempted to incapacitate the strange man.
Attempted to.
A magenta colored barrier appeared in front of the clone and the unmoving man that electrocuted the two Anbus into unconsciousness. The men looked down at the Anbus briefly before back at the Hyūga and Kage. "Konoha is such a grateful village," the clone said sarcastically. "You know, maybe I should've helped Kumo after all... they appreciate guys like me up there. I'm just a good hack." He laughed for a moment, wondering if he even believed the words that were coming out of his mouth. "Fire-shadow, reign in your animals. I can still sense them… they don't like me much."
"At ease." At the Hokage's order everyone relaxed. Hiashi stared at the man for a few seconds more with his Byakugan active before deactivating it.
"But then why help us? I want to know why. You don't know us, work for us or even against Kumo. You had no reason to." Hiashi said, trying to get over the fact that the man disabled two Anbu without even moving. Among his many other off-putting characteristics.
The clone cocked his head in apparent curiosity. "So you'd prefer I assist Kumo, I take it?"
"No!" Hiashi almost outright exclaimed, "however, I am grateful to you sir. You have my gratitude for returning my daughter; gratitude and well wishes. If there's anything I can do to repay you-"
"Careful!" The man said cheerily, "or I might have to take you up on that."
"Would you like to work for Konoha?" the Hokage asked, wanting to have such a powerful ninja in his ranks. Or at least have a friend instead of an enemy.
"Damn, old man, weren't you listening? I don't like Konoha!" He made a show of shrugging his shoulders, trying to get it across that he didn't wish to rebuff the man, only to refuse his offer. "So no thanks. In any case, take the man." The stranger dropped the ambassador as if he was nothing more than garbage, (and yet unwillingly), and started to turn to leave. The clone had already left, no one was sure when.
"I hope you'll never need my help again, 'cause I'm not a huge fan of helping. But about what you said about being grateful to me, I dig that; me thinks I'll take a favor later on if I need it. Fire-Shadow… Hyūga" He nodded to both men in farewell, but it for some reason, it was somewhat impolite when he did it to the Kage.
The original stepped backwards to a shadow in a corner of the room and was gone.
"I don't sense him. Hiashi?" Hiruzen whispered. At the prompt, Hiashi walked to the corner and felt it and his hand came away with nothing. "Why didn't you use your Byakugan?" the aged Kage asked.
"Remember when I had my Byakugan activated earlier?"
"Yes, of course."
"When I looked at him with it, he vanished. I could only see him without it."
The Hokage was baffled. "That is unheard of! Who is that man?"
Valete!