Secret Treasures of the Uchiha
by TimeLoopedPowerGamer

Disclaimer: Naruto isn't mine.

Summary: An AU story from the moment Sasuke decides not to get up again in his first encounter with Itachi, after the Chūnin Exam finals and invasion. Instead of spending a couple of months in a coma while Naruto is off finding Tsunade, he explores the abandoned Uchiha compound, finds a hidden storehouse, and gets dragged kicking and screaming by Hiashi Hyūga into clan politics and an arranged marriage.

Warnings on content: Rated M for face-stabbing levels of violence and also some mature content, mostly consisting of frustrated teens not getting any. So, really more like immature content. Also, foul language, and lots of it.

Chapter Four

The start of their second match had looked promising. He had once again been surprised to see her return, the very next day after their first spar and her complete defeat.

Hinata didn't say a word, just walked directly to the open field, hands clenched at her sides. She took a stance then waited for him to take his place at the other side of the clearing, Byakugan activated, her face a mask. This time, she was wearing an equipment pouch and seemed more ready. Her stance was firmer and she looked determined.

She had also apparently learned from her first session. The moment he said "begin," she charged him with a kunai drawn. She'd deflected most of the shuriken and almost reached him when he simply shunshined away and resumed pelting her with senbon and shuriken. She continued to run around on the ground at sadly slow speeds, chasing after him and attempting to close.

"Maybe she isn't able to use shunshin in combat yet?" he thought. There were also no kawarimi attempts, the obvious counter to some of his ultra-fast, high-volume ranged attacks.

After about three minutes of being used as a pincushion, she simply threw down her kunai and stumbled out of the training ground. She had been bleeding from several moderately deep shuriken hits, but he hadn't been putting any chakra into either the blades or his arm to strengthen his hits, so nothing would have been seriously damaged. Still, they were real weapons and left real wounds. He wasn't expecting her the next day.

So of course she showed up the next day, ready to spar again. Her hands were wrapped in white bandages, as were her ankles and lower calves, the bandages disappearing up under her pants and down her arms and under her coat. Her neck was wrapped as well, with some medical tape covering cuts on her face.

Hinata had dark circles under her eyes now and she moved like she was sleepwalking. As well as being covered in bandages, she seemed to be limping a little. Sasuke decided he'd try some close combat again – there was no point in a repeat of yesterday. Activating his Sharingan he sighed. It might be that bad anyway, it looked like a strong breeze would knock her over. She wasn't even holding her kunai this time. He took out one of his own, intending to force her into a knife fight.

He said "Begin" and she was suddenly two feet in front of him. His eyes had tracked her shunshin, three quick bursts of speed, with her hands folded into the single seal. In his sped-up vision, her hands were slowly separating, snapping toward his body, two striking snakes. Her eyes were as fully activated as his now, veins standing out on her face. He could see time slow down and stared at the sight before him.

Chakra slowly leaked out of her eyes, pumped by the bulging veins on her temples. Her short hair was streaming out almost horizontal behind her, whipping in the wind of her impossibly fast travel. Hinata's mouth was a thin line, lips paled, and her brow was furrowed in concentration. Deadly hands were slowly, painfully slowly, reaching out to his shoulders, glowing with chakra – a combo strike to end this fight instantly. He could see his own defeat looming in the perfection of her technique.

For the tiniest fraction of a second, his new curse mark burned on his neck like ice and fire and poison, dark power trying to pry against Kakashi's seal and almost causing him to flinch. Weeks of training took over and he instantly reasserted his will – no damn snake Sannin pervert's hickey was interfering with his fight. Itachi hadn't had to use someone else's power to grow strong and nether would he. He would find a way to win on his own and prove his strength!

It was too late to shunshin away – she was too close and there wasn't time to mold the chakra. Hell, she might be fast enough to intercept anyway. A kawarimi similarly needed proper preparation – he still couldn't do one instantly and without seals, like Kakashi, without planning and molding chakra ahead of time. He also couldn't slip away with chakra enhanced traction having been caught flat-footed. But she was slightly, ever so slightly, over extended. His kunai was still in his hand. Quick, almost instant calculation: yes. He could do this. This first strike was a strong one, but he could survive it. The problem was her follow up at close range. He didn't have a shot at a truly disabling body blow – even if a fatal blow with his knife was allowed, it wasn't a sure thing – so preventing that inevitable second, follow-up jūken strike was his goal. It was possible but it would hurt, hopefully her more than him. His Shringan spun wildly, showing him his way out.

Once again, Sasuke twisted his body, avoiding and blocking one strike with his off-hand while fully expecting that arm to be disabled with the follow up. The kunai in his left hand whipped up and he stabbed Hinata's striking right hand, holding onto the blade now anchoring her in place and reducing her maneuverability. Thus held, he had one last strike to make before he lost use of his right arm, so he made the only move he had time for: he throw a zero-windup right jab straight into her left tit, as hard as he could.

The idea for that strike wasn't a very chivalrous one, true, but he'd seen how effective it was in his last year of the Academy during sparing practice. Chōji, goaded into actually throwing punches for once, was sparing with Ino. The 12 year old girl wasn't exactly well developed in the chest area compared to some of the older genin teenagers, but was still considered "rookie of the year" among the females in his class with what she did have.

Poor Chōji had accidentally tagged her on her boob, a complete mistake as most of the boys were a little leery of striking their female classmates anywhere but the arms, legs, and shoulders. Not very good practice, but the fear of being embarrassed or worse, being ripped apart by angry young kunoichi for taking advantage of them in a spar, was greater than both their and their instructor's common sense.

Chōji's eyes had actually been closed and it was not a very strong strike, but Ino still yelled in shock, body hunching around the injury immediately. Then the instructors had to keep Ino and the rest of the girls from beating a confused and scared Chōji unconscious. Sasuke didn't think the fa-...err, "husky" boy even understood what he'd done wrong.

Interestingly, Hinata's coat seemed to have been obscuring hidden...attributes. Resisting pausing to grope someone in the middle of a spar was not officially part of his Academy training, but didn't seem like a good idea. However, it was obvious she was much better developed than he had expected. Not that any of that mattered to the him as he was about to lose function and feeling in that arm.

The expected disabling strike still took out his right shoulder, but then she immediately tried to pull away from the knife stabbing into her hand. Her entire body jerked back from the blow to her chest and her shoulder rolled reflexively to protected her abused breast. All thought of follow-up attacks left her mind as a look of shock exploded on her face. Sasuke heard her gasp and say something that sounded suspiciously like "fuck!" as her un-stabbed hand went to cover the lesser, but more insulting, injury.

Letting go of his kunai, still embedded in Hinata's right hand, Sasuke finally had the opportunity to take a couple of chakra enhanced slides back, giving him the space to survive. Reaching for a special pouch, he pulled out his secret weapon. Hinata was regaining her balance and starting to make moves toward him again, pulling the kunai out of her hand as she ran. Time to shut that down.

Seven kunai with ninja wire attached flew from Sasuke's left hand in quick succession but his right arm now hung useless at his side, slowing down and complicating the move. Hinata wasn't so out of it that she didn't dodge all seven, but she appeared to be too distracted to notice the hidden danger. Taking her hand off her bruised breast, breath ragged and an actual snarl on her face, she started to make the shunshin hand seal again. If he hadn't been about to win in less than a second, Sasuke might have been intimidated and even impressed.

Grabbing one set of the hidden wires in his mouth, stomping another into the ground with an eighth kunai he'd dropped earlier, and holding the third in his left hand, he yanked on all while quickly dashing back again. The wires attached to his kunai whipped around, briefly confusing even the Byakugan with the complex net of metal. Hinata shouted and thrashed briefly as her body was wrapped in the ninja wire trap.

Sasuke cursed quietly, seeing her right arm was still free. He couldn't send fire down the wires (far too dangerous) nor electricity. No killing strikes possible due to the rules of the spar and she was still on her feet, so he couldn't even claim a knockdown point. He couldn't hit her with anything else without letting go of the wires. "Shit!" he thought, seeing her start to saw through his ninja wire with her bare hands. That shouldn't be possible!

Hinata's free hand moved blisteringly fast, not cutting the wires around her body but the ones behind her, attached to the ground and keeping her in place. With those cut, she started running straight at him again without interference, one arm still bound at her side but rapidly being freed with her other hand, blue chakra flickering over her fingers.

Taking a deep breath, he dropped the wires in his still-functioning left hand and pulled out a full brace of a half-dozen flash bombs, setting them to a single second delay with a burst of chakra. But by that time, Hinata had closed most of the distance to him and had both arms free again with her hands forming the shunshin seal.

He meant to throw the bombs next to Hinata while closing his eyes to avoid the blinding flashbomb explosion, but he couldn't do that with her on the move and ready to shunshin. His mind raced and his eyes spin, but he didn't see how he could win this fight without blinding both himself and Hinata. So he simply dropped the bombs at his feet, eyes still wide open. Hinata shunshined within two feet of him before they hit the ground.

The bombs went off, chakra and specialized fireworks blinding both chakra senses and normal vision. Hinata screamed. Someone else, him maybe, was also screaming but in a much more manly way. "Good Kami," he thought, "that really fucking hurts!"

Everything was white and he couldn't see Hinata now but he knew where she was less than a tenth of a second ago. He struck out with his left leg, hitting her a glancing blow on the shoulder. Sharingan still active, he found he was able to predict a rough location for her face and blindly sent his working fist at it, connecting with the side of her face. As predicted, he thought, starting to smirk.

And then both of her fists started slamming into his head, one after the other, each blow followed by a whimpering grunt from Hinata as she hit him as hard as she could. Not jūken strikes, just basic, Academy-approved closed-fist bricks to the side of his head. "She's actually surprisingly strong," he thought, head ringing from the blows he wasn't able to deflect with his arms, "but it is time to finally end this."

Again using some minor part of the Sharingan, he found her location based on the way she was beating on his face – the vectors of force showing his mind's eye (his physical ones were still burning in pain) the general location he needed to hit. Wrapping his left hand and arm around her right arm as she predictably came in for another strike – a problem with regular and organized blows like this was the Sharingan could predict them quite well – he stepped in with a devastating rising knee to her stomach. Not waiting to see how effective it was and still half-way off the ground, he continued to slide his working hand up to the collar of her coat, griping it firmly. He then blindly brought her head down into his other knee with a jerk and immediately felt her nose crunch against his leg. Slightly off target, but still disabling. Pushing off her awkwardly with on leg, he flipped backward and away. Somehow, he got his feet under himself and managed to land with only a slight stumble.

Trying to remember exactly where he was, he skipped back a dozen steps and waited for his sight to return, leaving the Sharingan on in case it could help him pick up some clues from his other senses. Standing perfectly still, he heard a body hit the ground with a thud. He'd won the spar, he guessed.

Standing there, feeling blood drip down his chin from a split lip, he reviewed the fight in his head. The perfect Sharingan memory, at least up to the point he blinded himself, was telling. He had almost lost that one, even though Hinata had looked and moved like shit. "Woo, go me," he thought sarcastically, "I beat up a half-dead, flower-loving, weak little kunoichi and only almost lost the fight." If this had been a real battle, her teammates would have killed him, he knew. Standing there blinded, he would be dead in moments.

Sighing as his vision finally started to return, he looked over to where Hinata lay on the ground in a heap of ninja wire and dust. The Sharingan told him she was not unconscious but he couldn't immediately tell what she was doing or how injured she was. She was folded on her side, legs akimbo on the ground, arms hugged to her body.

And back heaving.

Because she was crying silently.

"Damn it. Ninjas don't cry, little girls cry. Fuck," he realized, "I beat up a little girl and made her cry. Now what?"

Author's notes: This chapter was entirely fights and comes in a little short. Posting along with the next chapter for some plot development goodness. I've also got some notes on my style choices in my Profile. Interesting, but plot and character discussion free.