A/N: Hey guys! Sorry it took me so long to update. I've had this completed for a while, but my step-brother thought it would be funny to see how a laptop reacted to being dropped in a sink full of water. Needless to say, I was waiting for my new laptop to come in. Thankfully, my memory cards were okay, so I didn't have to rewrite this chapter. After a long wait, here is the next installment! Enjoy!(:

Hidden Away

Chapter 8

Shino, Kiba, and Sasuke had made it through the village, past the gate, and into the woods without being spotted. This was the best case scenario; if somebody had seen and reported them to the Hokage, they could have been detained and kept from going on their mission. Their mission: find Hinata and bring her back.

Shino and Kiba were worried that Sasuke wasn't as dedicated to the mission. Being Hinata's teammates, they wanted to save her as soon as possible and bring her home. Sasuke, on the other hand, only viewed this mission as grounds for training. Still, at least that meant he would try. The question was, would trying be good enough? Would trying be enough to save Hinata's life?

While the trio descended into the woods, Kiba's thoughts centered around regret. He wished that he would have never left the clearing that day. Maybe he could have found Hinata, assuming she was still nearby during the fights. Maybe, if he hadn't left, Hinata would be home right now.

Then, Kiba looked to the side towards his teammate, Shino. Maybe, if Kiba had stayed a second longer, that extra second would have been too long for his teammate. Maybe, if Kiba tried to save Hinata, too, Shino would have died. Was it really worth trading one teammate for another? Kiba wasn't sure. He couldn't change the past, but he could decide his future. He would correct his mistakes. He would find Hinata.

Then, a peculiar thought popped into Kiba's mind. What if, on the off chance, Hinata didn't want to be found? It made sense. While Hinata was never the strongest, she should have lasted longer than ten seconds in the battle in the clearing. She was taken out much to soon. What if Hinata had simply . . . left?

Shaking his head, Kiba dismissed the thought. No, Hinata would never purposefully leave the team nor the Leaf Village. She was a better person than that. That was one thing about Hinata. What she lacked in strength, she made up for in kindness.

Kiba was snapped out of his thoughts when his comrade spoke up. "Hey, Sasuke," Shino said. "You might want to activate your Sharingan. See if you can spot any unusual tracks, any sign of ninja or Hinata."

"I don't need my Sharingan for that," Sasuke said as he stopped. "Listen. Don't you hear that?"

Kiba and Shino halted right behind Sasuke. They didn't say a word as they strained their ears to hear any sound. "I hear it!" Kiba exclaimed as he heard a faint noise, but his two comrades quickly shushed him. Disgruntled, Kiba complied.

The sound was faint and far away. If Sasuke hadn't brought attention to it, Kiba may not have noticed the noise. It was a faint clinking sound every now and then, like metal hitting metal, and screams of people fighting. They were quiet though, which Kiba thought meant that they were far away.

"It's a fight," Shino speculated.

"Why does this always happen?" Kiba wondered out loud, but hushed up as Sasuke gave him an evil glare.

"We should go check it out," Sasuke ordered.

Kiba laughed. "Because that worked out so well last time, right, Shino?"

It was Shino's turn to glare at Kiba. "We are Shinobi. We will enter battle whenever needed to protect the ones we love and strangers. If you are not prepared to do so, you may head back to the village."

"Of course not!" Kiba exclaimed. "I'm always up for a fight," he added with a smile. Akamaru, resting in his jacket, confirmed this with a bark.

Sasuke smirked. "You had better be because it looks like a fight is exactly what we are going to get." With that, Sasuke continued to run towards the fight. Shortly behind him were Kiba and Shino.

It took no time at all to reach the fight. There were four figures attacking in a dead-lock. It was obviously one versus four, the one steadily losing the advantage. And who could blame them? It wasn't exactly a fair fight.

As the trio got closer, they could see the faces of the four men fighting.

"Hiashi," Shino realized with a start. He was fighting three opponents at once.

Sasuke looked at Kiba and Shino. "So what do you guys want to do? After all, this is the man who left Hinata to die."

"What are you suggesting?" Shino asked in shock. "That we leave him to die, too?"

Sasuke shrugged in response.

Shino shook his head in disapproval. "No, we will join the fight and help Hiashi."

Kiba agreed with Shino. "If after we make it home, Tsunade wants to deal with him, great, but we can't make that decision. We will fight." Kiba frowned. "Sorry, Hinata. Getting to you may take a little longer than planned."

OoOoOo

Akira and Kenji plunged deeper and deeper into the forest, pursuing the girl. It was easy to track her; she was careless and left footprints and scuff marks everywhere she went. It was child's play following them. Akira almost felt sympathy for the girl. After everything she had went through, she was still clinging to every last chance, to the very end of her rope. Well, Akira had news for her. Her grasp on the rope was going to end and it was going to end now.

"What do we do now?" Kenji asked his master. "The footprints have ended."

Sure enough, the girl's tracks had ceased to exist. That meant either one of two things. One, she was right here, nearby, and was hiding. Or possibly, two, she had become aware that she was being followed and hid her tracks. Akira didn't think that the girl was smart enough to cover her footprints, though. Even if she was, he doubted that she would have the energy nor the time to cover them effectively. That meant she must be nearby.

Akira told Kenji what he had just figured out. "Split up. If you find her, let me know. If you do not find her soon, come and find me." With that, Akira left the brown-eyed, dirty blonde assistant behind.

Akira thought that he needed a way to find a girl besides just searching blindly. Deciding that now was just a good time as any, Akira began to use the new hidden-jutsu that he had learned from a stolen scroll.

"Chakra Visibility Jutsu!" he said as his hands flew through several complicated hand signs. Then, all of his surroundings went gray. "It worked," he mumbled with a smirk. If he saw anyone's chakra, it would look blue, as would the person wielding it. Looking at his own hand, Akira concluded that another aspect of the jutsu. If he saw his own chakra, it would look black. The rope that bound the girl previously was infused with his own chakra, which should still linger on the girl. That meant that all he had to do was look for any black chakra spots.

Akira stepped into a nearby clearing. He looked around for a few seconds and smiled as he saw a figure surrounded by blue . . . with a faint amount of black.

"Found you."

OoOoOo

Hinata was resting by the bush when the figure startled her. She knew that he was there, but she hoped that it would be a friend, not foe. Guess luck wasn't on her side today.

On the bright side, while Hinata rested, she was able to replenish a good amount of chakra. The cuts were still there (for some reason, they would not heal) though. But maybe, just maybe, she could fight.

"Found you," the figure said. Akira.

When Hinata looked up at him, she smirked. It wasn't an "I'm happy" smirk, it was a "I know something you don't know" smirk. Hopefully, that would put Akira on his toes. Make him think Hinata had some secret up her sleeve. Which, of course, she didn't.

When Hinata stopped smirking and glared at him straight in the eye, he cocked his head to the side and furrowed his eyebrows. "Aren't you going to run?" he asked, genuinely confused.

Hinata didn't answer. She didn't want to run. Fighting would be hard. She hurt immensely from the cuts, but she knew that running would hurt her even more in the long run since Akira was much faster than her and would easily catch her. Instead of fleeing, her hands formed a sign as she whispered, "Byakugan." Instantly, the veins around her eyes became visible. Her three-hundred sixty degrees of vision was now on. She leaned forward, one hand pointed towards the ground, the other forward, palm up. Her knees and legs formed a fighting stance.

"So you want to fight," Akira observed. "Interesting."

Hinata didn't say anything. She didn't want to make herself appear weak by stuttering an answer.

"Well, let us begin." With that final thought, Akira disappeared into thin air, a cloud evident where he previously was. Hinata moved her head left and right, shifting her blind spot so she could see everywhere.

Akira was nowhere in sight. In sight . . . that made Hinata think. She looked down at the ground and realized not a second too soon that Akira was right underneath her feet. She jumped up in the air, narrowly avoiding a chakra-enhanced punch. A good thing, too. That would have hurt.

Akira charged forward at Hinata, his fist infused with chakra once again. Using the same technique Neji used on her in the Chunin exams, Hinata grabbed his arm and hit a chakra point, then another chakra point, and one more chakra point before he was able to leap away. It wasn't like Hinata's grip was very tight.

Akira gripped his arm with one hand and scowled. "It doesn't matter. I could beat you with just my foot if I had to."

Before Akira could continue talking or charge once more, Hinata charged forward herself. She jumped into the air over-top of him. As he threw a kunai at her, she performed a substitution jutsu, appearing on the other side of him. He saw this coming though and sent a kick towards her stomach. Hinata parried the blow with her arm and jumped on top of his leg, pushing off of it to get any extra power she could. Using the extra power, she kicked Akira in the head. Hard.

As he went flying in the other direction, Hinata leaped after him. "Eight trigrams; sixty-four palms!" she yelled loudly. She then proceeded to hit all of his chakra points, eventually backing off as he hit a tree and slumped down. Hinata smiled. She did it.

In a flash of clouds, Akira was gone. "A s-shadow c-clone!" she exclaimed. He had just let her think that she was winning. He let her think she could beat him. Hinata had used up a lot of chakra trying to take Akira out, when it wasn't even the real him. When she felt cold metal against her neck, she knew she had been outsmarted. Akira was standing behind her, holding a kunai to her neck.

"Game over," he said.

Hinata closed her eyes, waiting for the final blow that never came. When she no longer felt cold metal against her neck, she turned around to see Akira on the ground and a few flakes of sand floating in the air.

A/N: That's it for this chapter! I have a small question for all you readers (it will benefit you, don't worry). Are the length of my chapters okay, or would you rather them be longer? Answer along with your review if you don't mind; it's easier to have everything in the review section than have them in multiple PMs. That way, it's all in one place. Make sure to tell me what you thought and review!