Hoo boy... long chapter. Mostly filler and setup in my opinion, but now the way's mostly paved for some wall-to-wall action and mystery. Enjoy.
I don't own Naruto and never will. So sad, cuz let's face it, I could revitalize it...
Naruto was as anxious as could be the next day. He hadn't felt such a rush since his first encounter with Silence. Who knew being caught would be so… exhilarating? His restlessness manifested itself in a constant bouncing of his right leg against the squeaking floorboards under his seat at the Academy.
"I knew someone was down there!" he exclaimed mentally as he reviewed the odd chain of events the previous night. "Now the question is who could it be? That guy we saw didn't have any obvious headband… an operative, maybe? Perhaps a spy? Nah, a spy would wear a mask or something; this guy made no real attempts to blend in. If he's an outsider, what's his occupation? Then again, if he's from Konoha, what was he doing down there? Gah… all this speculation's giving me a headache…"
Higher up in the stands, Hinata's thoughts possessed similar content. "Now THAT was an adrenaline rush," she speculated on being discovered, "I wonder if that's what couple's feel when their 'caught in the act'?" She giggled at the unusual comparison before recalling the face of the individual who found them. "Let's see… he didn't have a village headband, but then he wasn't wearing an ANBU mask either. That means the tunnels really are a secret from most of Konoha since he felt no need to hide his identity… but if he was ANBU that might have been his base of operations." She shook her head at the last thought; she had located the special force's main structure some months ago and, while it also had an extensive tunnel system, it wasn't connected to the mysterious hive she and Curse had been exploring. "Wait a minute!" she realized, "The ANBU black-ops are an offshoot of another organization, uh… what was it… ROOT? Yeah, that's it. But it was disbanded some time ago… wasn't it?" She shook herself from her inner monologue when she noticed Iruka, yet again, berating the blonde boy. Per usual, she giggled a bit at the boy she was supposed to have a crush on and began to wonder if there would ever be anyone for her…
Her utmost respect laid with Curse even if he was her rival in the prodigy department, but what would happen if the guy was much older than her and only appeared younger due to his short stature? Such a thing shouldn't matter, but the Hyuuga couldn't bring herself to contemplate such thoughts; after all, she was still a girl.
As Hinata stewed in silence over her depressing future prospects, the blonde genius sat back in his seat and mentally planned out his day. After classes he would have to spend several hours pretending to practice with shuriken and such; he still had an image of the village idiot to uphold. Afterwards, a trip to Ichiraku's ramen stand would be in order, seeing as how their noodles were freakin' great and the old man's daughter was kinda cute, even if she was 'too old' for him…
This last musing caught him unawares on a subject he skirted around quite often. He would tell himself that he was still twelve years old; romance in his life was still a long ways off, but the simple idea that he would eventually want to settle down one day bothered him. Interestingly enough, it wasn't the notion of having a family that disturbed him rather than who he would be having it with. His ideal girl was, first and foremost, at least intelligent enough to hold a decent conversation with him. Strangely enough, he considered looks to be secondary as long as she wasn't a complete circus freak. After a few solid minutes of daydreaming he banished such thoughts from his overactive imagination and continued his plans on what to do about the now inhabited secret tunnel system.
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As the blonde 'failure' drilled ninja stars into wooden targets, Hinata performed her ritualistic stalking of the boy. Occasionally, if the location was rather populous, the Hyuuga would decide to exercise her skills in stealth and easily sneak by large crowds of people undetected. Today, however, was not one of those days. She made no obvious effort to stay hidden from her 'crush' should he ever decide to turn around.
As usual, Naruto felt her presence behind him anyway. He thought it sad that her life was so oppressive that she secretly leaned on his visage of a moron for emotional support, but what could he do about it? He hammered away at his piss-poor training, almost wincing every time he missed the target, which was painfully often. It angered him to no end that his own village would potentially look down on him despite the fact he was the greatest thing to happen to them since sliced bread, figuratively speaking.
When a shuriken finally stuck into the bulls-eye, he cheered as he usually did and pulled another projectile from his frayed pouch. As he prepared to launch the next ninja star he chuckled slightly at the notion that his target was Sasuke's brooding face. He decided to show off a bit and expertly launched the weapon dead on, striking the center of the wooden post right next to his previous scoring hit.
The blue-haired girl observing the scenario frowned ever so slightly at this. The Uzumaki boy was notorious for being unskilled as a ninja, but she would notice every so often that he would do something brilliant, even if those moments were brief enough to be attributed to luck. She wondered over this for a moment before deciding the she had stalked the boy enough for the day and started towards home. She had made leaps and bounds in the development of her energy weapon since its first field test and she longed to work on it some more.
The blonde genius felt the girl's presence depart and decided to hang around a bit longer to ensure no one else was watching. When this turned out to be the case, he gathered his weaponry and headed for home. There was much work to be done.
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The third Hokage was drowning in paperwork as he usually did. "I'm a master ninja for God's sake," he complained mentally, "Not a damn accountant. Why do I have so much paperwork?!" When he peered up from his desk from what seemed like days he noticed that the natural lighting in the room was waning. The earth's star was setting, leaving behind a brilliant pallet of oranges and yellows that illuminated all they touched. Deciding that a break was in order, Sarutobi strolled over to his living quarters within the central tower.
When he reached his private room and took a seat on the comfortable couch, he refilled his pipe and took a deep whiff of his oral fixation. He blew a pristine stream of smoke out and began formulating his thoughts on a curious… incident from the previous evening.
Sometime late last night he felt a disturbance of some sort. The ground didn't shake and even the vast majority of the village's elite shinobi noticed nothing, but a seasoned veteran such as he felt it nevertheless. If he were to describe it he would have likened it to a shockwave, albeit one of chakra as opposed to vibrations in the air.
His exceptional ANBU ninjas reported nothing out of the ordinary, which worried him to no end. How could the cream of the crop in the shinobi world not feel something that strong? Even more disturbing was that his former teammates, Homura and Koharu, also claimed that they experienced no odd sensations. He knew the Council was full of shit on this matter, seeing as how their views tended to be narrow minded at times. "In fact," he produced a frightening thought while sucking in another mouthful of tobacco smoke, "They might even be in on it. Only question is: what is 'it'?"
As the elder Hokage continued enjoying his free time, he had another scary idea. "What if that was the demon fox? It would certainly describe the aura surrounding it… Then again, the nine-tails is capable of much more power. The entire village would have felt it if it was releasing chakra…"
Deciding to take cautionary measures, Sarutobi made his way back to his office and summoned one of his former ANBU captains, Kakashi Hatake. Breaking routine, the jonin actually arrived rather quickly given his reputation of being chronically late.
"You called, sir?" the high-level ninja said as he puffed into existence.
"You're on time for once."
"Your message said 'urgent', so I figured it would be good to make time for once."
"Noble," he brushed the revelation off, "Did you feel anything strange last night?"
Kakashi's lone eye furrowed in a mixture of thought and confusion. "No sir."
"Hmm… you too." the lead ninja sat back and murmured to the side. "Kakashi, I have a special assignment for you."
"Sir."
"The parameters are rather vague, so I'll give it to you straight. Last night I felt a… presence of some sort. I don't know whether or not it is hostile or not, but I want you to keep your eyes open for anything out of the ordinary."
"Such as…?"
"I don't know; people not being where they should be, unusual amounts of chakra in places where it doesn't belong, just anything that seems unusual to you."
"With due respect sir, these orders seem…" the copy ninja paused while trying to think of an appropriate way to phrase his concern.
"Crazy?" he cut him off. "Yes, I know I sound like a senile old man right now, but I have a feeling that erring on the side of caution is necessary this time. Any questions regarding your mission?"
"How long is the mission to last?"
Sarutobi didn't respond for a moment. Even he barely knew what to look for, much less how to assign it to someone else. "Indefinitely. This mission is merely to be tacked onto your daily routines, so it shouldn't be difficult. If anything turns up, report to me immediately."
"Yes, sir!"
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Hinata sat in her makeshift lair underneath her room in the Hyuuga mansion tinkering with her energy weapon. The field test the previous evening informed her of a multitude of issues with the amazing device.
First off, she was grateful that she and Curse were interrupted and had to end the skirmish because the battery she installed in the curved handle was bone dry. "This thing takes a ton of power," she mused. "I'm gonna have to improve the batteries or something. I don't really see how I can reduce the energy consumption without also reducing the charge. Maybe if I built a small generator…" Her young intelligent mind began working out the mechanics of such an electrical machine. "Small my ass! There's no way around it, is there? Well, maybe if I repurpose Yin and Yang…" She unconsciously reached for her lethal top before stopping herself; she always left that nifty little weapon in her main lab. "Well, nothing else to do…" she thought as she climbed up the short shaft up into her room.
She exited her secondary workplace and began resetting all her safety measures over the gaping hole before closing it off and placing the ordinary floor mat over the metal door. The moment the mat left her fingers and fell into place with a soft 'thud', Hinata was startled by a sudden opening of her door. Her head shot over to regard the visitor with wide eyes. "H-Hanabi?!" she cried, standing up more swiftly than she thought humanly possible.
"What are you doing, sister?"
"Uh…" she responded, so surprised that an immediate excuse didn't form in her mind. "I- I tripped on m-my sandal…"
"You're clumsy, but not that bad…" the younger girl retorted. Damn her and her attitude. "Was the mat pulled up?"
"Huh?" she tried to maintain the illusion of an ignorant klutz by gazing at the mat behind her. "M-maybe. I m-might have tripped o-over it…"
Hanabi gave a look of dissatisfaction before giving up on the argument. "Father wants to see you."
"O-okay," the undercover genius replied as she passed her sibling and started for her father's chamber.
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Naruto was anxious in his hidden room. Not only was he frustrated at the fact that Silence's newest weapon forced him to rely on the fox for defense, but also by the sudden interruption of the unknown man in the tunnels. His stomach stirred uncomfortably every time he thought about the stranger.
"I can't deal with this right now." He concluded his evening session and scaled the hidden vertical passage into his room. After properly resealing all the locks, barriers, and traps to his hole, he boiled some water for some instant ramen. After a passable meal, he turned off the lights and lied in his bed, images of days gone by running through his head uncontrollably.
"C'mon," he whined to no one as he tossed and turned. "I just wanna sleep a little." Even so, slumber still avoided him and he succumbed to reviewing all the thoughts in his mind.
He remembered the first days that he now knew were milestones in his intellectual advancement. One day many years ago, he was playing by his lonesome self when he accidentally released a bit of chakra against the sand under his feet. This mysterious occurrence intrigued him so much that he brought it up to old man Hokage who, recognizing the effects as basic chakra manipulation, informed the young child that he had real potential. Excited by the prospects of learning even greater things, the blonde continued to hone his small skills on his own.
When he was of proper age, he enrolled himself into Konoha's Ninja Academy. He had learned off the bat some extremely basic chakra exercises and tried them out in the privacy of his own home, and that was when things changed.
The third time he tried a simple exercise in control was his first brush with the demon fox sealed within him. It wasn't so much an encounter as it was him happening by a strange voice in his head that spoke independently from himself. At first, Naruto thought it was normal for ninjas to hear things, but then his interactions with the other students eventually led him to understand that this was not the case. After this revelation, the budding prodigy believed for a while that he was going insane, as the strange deep voice in his mind would constantly berate him and suggest he perform incredible acts of cruel torture and heinous murder.
Then one night, the Uzumaki genius finally confronted the foreign voice. When it responded to his questions and demands, the boy finally realized that this spiteful entity was none other than the nine-tailed fox itself. Once he understood that he housed the powerful demon, he wept hard that evening in the knowledge that that was why he was treated with such disdain from everyone.
He thought about bringing it up with the third Hokage but decided against it. In his years, he had learned that, somehow, people heard everything regardless of how quietly it was spoken. If the villagers knew that he was finally aware of what was in him, they might try to kill him in a bout of vigilante justice. That would not do.
On that night so long ago, Naruto vowed to himself to become the greatest shinobi in the village, nay, the world, and prove to everyone just how vain and conceived they were to assume his worth based on events beyond his control. The fact that his brilliant mind absorbed knowledge like a sponge was merely an aid for his goal.
With that memory, the boy's eyes could stay open no longer and he drifted off into the unbiased arms of slumber.
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Hinata was returning to her room from her overbearing father's chamber. She was fuming inwardly at his incessant negative remarks; he summoned her merely so he could order her not to fail the Genin exam coming up in the next two days and nothing more. "I'll show you one day, old man!!" she shrieked mentally, "I'll show all of you how big an asshole every one of you are!!"
She checked her ranting in favor of going to bed when she slid open her door and found a sight horrifying to her lavender eyes.
"Hinata, what is this?" Hanabi asked as she pointed to the metal door leading to the older Hyuuga's secret lab.
"I-I don't know…" she replied with as much shock as she could muster. Her mind was in a mix of panic and rage at her snobby sister.
"Why is it in your room?"
"I-I have no idea, Hanabi." She tried to sound nervous as she approached her younger sibling while drawing a small syringe from a pouch in her clothing.
"Does father know about this?" the small girl asked while gazing at the floor.
"I don't think so," she responded before leaning next to her sister and sticking the needle into her neck. As soon as she injected the cocktail into Hanabi, she continued, "And neither will you."
The genius Hyuuga moved swiftly to shut the door to her room and replace the mat before attending to her drugged sister. She propped the little girl against the wall and stared straight into her drooping eyes.
"You will not remember this," she spoke eerily to the child. "You will wake up and everything will be normal. Do you understand?" When the question was met with a dozing nod, she said, "Repeat what I said."
"Everything will be fine tomorrow," the youger sister replied like a quiet drunk. "There is nothing wrong."
"You will forget about all this; it is a bad dream."
"This is just a dream. I'll wake up from…" She trailed off before she could finish her statement and fell into a deep sleep.
"Alright, let's get you to bed," Hinata said with resolution as she hiked the snoozing girl onto her shoulders and quietly made her way to the sibling's room to deposit her. "Urg… I hope this hypnotism stuff works."
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As Danzo dismissed a handful of his ROOT followers, Koharu and Homura approached him in his desolate office. The room was devoid of character, as furniture consisted of a single desk and chair. Filing cabinets or fixtures that otherwise stored documents were nowhere to be seen, as the very nature of the organization was unofficial, and publicly holding records of its actions was unheard of.
"Any news on the presence?" Homura began.
The old war hawk shook his head. "Not as of yet, but my subordinates have found traces of another."
"Another person?" Koharu interjected.
"Yes, although there is a significant lack of information on them as well. All my forces can find is evidence of two combatants and no more. Nothing to indicate identity."
"I see… any word from our associate?"
"Just our standing orders. It appears he has not taken these intruders into account in our plans…"
As if the elder people's minds were read, a ROOT member shimmered into view before them in a kneeling position. "Sir!" the masked ninja stated, "A message for you." He held out an envelope and, upon being relieved of it, disappeared from the secured room.
Homura's brow furrowed at the means of which the letter was stored. "An envelope? Why does he insist on using such arcane forms of delivering messages? It sticks out like a sore thumb."
Danzo ignored the observation while he silently read the folded letter from the package. Upon finishing, he handed the letter off to the elders and said, "It appears we now have new orders regarding these two."
As Sarutobi's former teammates simultaneously read the paper, Koharu voiced the important bits. "'Recruit said involved individuals upon discovery or, should their will be not for the common good, terminate their terms of employment and proceed with the operation as planned'." Once she saw the dated signature at the bottom she followed protocol and burned it with chakra-induced flames. "Danzo, I would appreciate it if you would inform us of new occurrences before reporting them to him."
"I'm sorry…?" the old shinobi said with mild confusion.
"He knew there was more than one intruder."
"What is disturbing about that is I have not submitted a report to him yet. He has somehow figured out the presence of another all on his own."
The elder Council members merely furrowed their brows in concern before exiting the hidden office. Their 'associate' was proving to be more than met the eye…
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Shiori and Ichirou had been busy for what seemed to be forever. Apparently, they had been working for several days, as their Mistress had informed them she was taking a day off for 'preparations' after a sizeable workload. Usually that meant she was taking a breather from her time-consuming work, but this day was being set aside for acts of espionage. The reassembled Hyuugas noticed quite a few camera signals being set up on their concealed line and immediately knew what their leader was up to.
As they brought new monitoring equipment online, tapped them into the new cameras, and began the extensive recording, they also performed the task given to them that took high priority as of one day ago. For some reason or another, Hinata had ordered them to sift through the many radio signals from Konoha in search of anything 'out of place'. They heartily obeyed their savior and got to work on it, but nothing unusual reared its head. There was the normal chatter from all the ninja teams operating within the village, the confidential messages being broadcasted from the intelligence department and ANBU headquarters, and the occasional civilian contractor barking out irrelevant things.
They honestly had no idea what their Mistress wanted so they saved all the classified stuff in the hopes that they would be useful one day. "Hey, Shiori," Ichirou whined, "I'm bored! Let's do something!"
"Shut it stupid! We have to follow Mistress's orders!"
"But I gotta live sometime!"
"You're not alive to begin with!"
"You're so mean…"
"It's the truth!"
As the two's argument degraded into something totally juvenile, the recorder on one of the low-frequency radios picked up a quiet scratch of a conversation. When a pause in the reassembled Hyuuga's 'discussion' was filled with a codename foreign to their ears, they broke off and listened in.
After several minutes, the static-ridden conversation ended and Shiori turned to her partially-alive comrade with a look of triumph. "See? That'swhy we hang around!"
"Fine…" he conceded defeat and sat down to filter through the recording and decipher as much as he could.
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When the Genin exam finally rolled around, Hinata and Naruto were unconcerned about it; not so much out of confidence in their abilities but rather their preoccupation with other more important matters.
The Uzumaki, as he predicted, failed the test for the third time. Truthfully, he didn't care all that much about the results, mostly because he was physically incapable of performing the useless technique of making non-corporeal clones. "Figures," he mused, "Just my luck that the deciding move would be one I can't manage. I'm tellin' ya, it hurts like shit trying to compress my chakra down to a damn clone that can't do anything!" He shook his head to clear his complaints while sitting dejectedly on the swing outside the Academy. "Anyways, I've got bigger things to worry about. Since I failed, there's not much use in training tonight, so I think it's time for a little extra exploration…" He was broken from his thoughts by one of the teachers, Mizuki.
The Hyuuga was disinterested in the new headband that was tied around her neck. Everything in the Academy was so incredibly simple that it would be impossible for her to not pass its simple test, but even so, she was thinking about the work she had set up for that evening. Out of the corner of her lavender eyes she noticed Naruto seated on a swing, looking as glum as a human could. "Poor guy," she felt sorry for him. "He works so hard but is held back every time… I mean, c'mon, there are other students who've passed without being able to use ninjutsu or genjutsu…" Her eyes narrowed when she noticed the blonde boy vacate the scene with Mizuki but she dismissed it without a second thought. "Either way, I've got a lot of crap to sift through tonight. May as well get started."
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It had been a long night for the demon container. He was just getting home from his 'alternative' exam, also known as assisting that bastard Mizuki betray the village. On the plus side of everything, he learned that his benevolent teacher, Iruka, was far more sympathetic than he had initially realized, going so far as to take numerous hits for him. His respect for the man skyrocketed that evening.
To accentuate the benefits of that night, the blonde boy had also gotten a good look at the forbidden scroll. He had learned the incredibly useful 'Shadow Clone' technique, which proved surprisingly difficult to learn without assistance, and also taken a gander at a few other moves' instructions, although he didn't have enough time to try them out. Things were definitely looking up.
He was disappointed that all this great stuff had burned through his evening and robbed him of a chance to further explore the hive beneath Konoha, but he was satisfied at a job well done nevertheless. He decided to eat some instant ramen and hit the hay.
Unbeknownst to Naruto, Hinata was also having a breakthrough, albeit of another variety. After sending Shiori and Ichirou on their routine patrol, she had sat down to sift through a variable mountain of data her subordinates had collected in her absence. While there was no lack of notable points, such as some ANBU assassination missions and an assignment to cover up an affair the Fire Lord had been having, there was nothing that pertained to what she was really looking for. Many hours had passed since she began and she was about to call it a night when she came across a transcript that had been buried in the pile.
"Dammit, Ichirou," she mumbled. The document was incorrectly filed, an action which screamed of the male reassembled Hyuuga. "I gotta teach him that this isn't… how…" Her complaints were silenced as she began to read through the thing. She suddenly tore through the handful of pages to find the documentation on the radio conversation. Upon locating it, she leaned across her expansive desk and pulled the recording that corresponded with the written statement then played it back.
Much of the conversation was garbled and interrupted by long bouts of static, but the audible portions were understandable. Her lavender eyes widened when she realized it was a report of some sort.
"…Dual to… base," the recording crackled as Hinata read along in its incomplete transcript. "…come in."
"HQ… dual… report. Over."
"No sign of… Zeta class threat. Over"
"Copy. Any… else? Over."
"Roger. Traces… more than one… individual…"
"Copy that. Your shift… yet?"
A third, gruff female voice interrupted the dialog. "Keep… line clear, fuck…"
"Yes, commander."
"Yes, ma'am."
The 'leader's' authoritative voice spoke one last time. "Dual, return… HQ… the double… more work from lord… over."
"Yes, ma'am. Over."
While there was more chatter on the recorded channel, the Hyuuga genius found this tidbit far more revealing than the rest of the captured transmission. "Iknew it!" she exclaimed as she slammed her hands on the table and rose with a look of triumph. "Those guys are taking orders from someone, and something's going down!"
After her moment of victory, she placed all the documentation back where it belonged and trudged back to her oppressive home to catch some Z's. Genin teams were going to be announced the next morning and she didn't want to be dead tired. Besides, she had an image of a prim and proper shy girl to uphold.
Just who are these people on the radio?!
Who's orders are they following?!!
And why is the rum gone?!!!
Sorry, couldn't resist. Just ignore my stupidity in text format.
Anyways, I would like to know if you folks are enjoying where this is going. The first chapter got a shit-ton of reviews that kinda tapered off... I feel unloved (sarcastic weeping ensues).
Seriously though, how am I doin? Is there anything you think I could improve upon at this stage? It's still rather early, but still... I base a lot of weight for ideas on how you guys react. Later!