A/N: Hello guys ;) Welcome to the newest chapter of "A Brave Kunoichi". I hope you all liked the previous chapters and in this chapter I'll give Hinata some screen time as she reflects on herself and her feelings for Naruto, as well as what she thinks about Sakura. Of course her loyal companion and teammate Shino will be there to see her throughout the whole process. Will Hinata reach a decision? Also another battle will break out, and this time the curtains will entirely be different. Read and find out!

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or any of its characters. They are the sole property of Masashi Kishimoto.

Insecurities

Team 8( Hinata & Shino)

Aburame Shino was sitting on the ground crouched on his knees. There were beads of sweat that were running down his face from his hairline and he was breathing a bit faster than normal. All around him were bodies of White Zetsus, more than two dozen of them. They all lay lifeless, unmoving on the ground. A good number of them were covered with Shino's bugs, while the remaining few spotted injuries from what looked like various ninja weapons. Cuts, burns and slices were all over their bodies, and the area around them was clearly transformed by what had happened there a few moments earlier.

Shino ran his eyes throughout the pile of bodies that lay in front of him. His breath was slowly steadying, but he still kept his guard up, lest more of those white humanoid figures came out of the shadows with a surprise attack on him. He was still a bit flabbergasted by the turn of events that had unfolded in front of him. Truthfully, he had expected the fight with the main body to take as short time as possible, since looking at it with one glance he could tell that it was pathetically weight. Deciding not to take too much time so that he and his teammate Hinata could go and rejoin the rest of the rescue team at the other hideout, he immediately used his Secret Technique: Insect Sphere on the foe in front of him. In mere seconds, it was encased in a flurry of Shino's insects. Shino could feel it struggling under the pressure of so many insects, but it was all pointless. Even though this technique wasn't as flawless as Gaara's Desert Coffin, it could still do quite some damage to the foe encased in it. Shino immediately enclosed his hands together and the insects rained upon the Zetsu in there, effectively crushing him. Shino heaved a sigh of relief, and was about to retreat with Hinata, when all hell broke loose.

The ground beneath them immediately began caving in, and for one crazy second Shino thought that they were going to be swallowed up by the earth. He immediately reached out his hand for Hinata's waist, so that they could ascend into the trees that were behind them, but all of a sudden the shaking stopped. There was a cloud of dust, and once the cloud of dust cleared, what met Shino's eyes made him a bit startled. In front of the Team 8 duo, there was a large number of white Zetsus, all of them looking ready to draw some blood. Shino looked at Hinata, and noticing that she wanted to join in on the fight, held up his hand to her to stop her. Hinata looked at Shino, and immediately understood what he was trying to say. He didn't want her to join in on the fight since it was still his revenge for his precious bugs, and sue to the fact that Hinata was sort of a medical ninja. If Shino did get injured from the onslaught and Hinata was also injured, there would be no one to heal his injuries and that could prove to be a worst case scenario, seeing as they were on enemy grounds, he could be ambushed any minute and die.

Hinata retreated a few steps backwards, to stay clear of her teammate's range of attacks. Shino looked at her appreciatively, then immediately began walking towards the horde of Zetsus that was in front of him. They began rushing towards him and just before the two sides could clash, Shino took the moment to observe the ground that was beneath his enemies. He saw human sized openings, and immediately surmised that was where the new enemies had popped up from. Wondering how on earth they had all appeared at the same time, he suddenly heard Hinata speaking behind him, "Shino-kun, there are chakra pathways leading from the body you just killed to these new ones. I think it was some sort of trap that was set to activate the moment you had killed the main body. Chakra was sent from the main body to these sub-bodies, so they emerged from the earth and managed to almost land a surprise attack on you, if you were still staying in the same position that you were in a few minutes before." Shino immediately understood, and did not need to be told that Hinata had obviously activated her Byakugan to observe what had just transpired. Feeling a bit encouraged that his teammate was watching out for him, Shino immediately dashed into the crowd of incoming Zetsus, and began his merciless attack on all of them.

Several minutes later, Shino landed a kunai into the throat of the last Zetsu, effectively silencing it up once and for all. He had used his bugs for most of the enemies, and he was a bit surprised at how hard it was to take down at least one of these new enemies. Being forced to use his most lethal attacks, Parasitic Destruction Insect Technique and Secret Technique: Insect Sphere, he managed to clear out most of the battlefield. The white Zetsus were a bit different from the original one, in the fact that they could absorb chakra. This proved a bit difficult for Shino to manage at first, but he soon managed to catch up with the fact that using techniques which ate up most of his chakra, he could feed the enemies with more chakra than they could manage to absorb, thus causing them to collapse from the overload of chakra in their systems. This method did prove to be effective, but it wasn't 100% effective, as there were still enemies that were left standing. He was almost at zero chakra at this point, so he decided not to use any more attacks. He reached into his weapons pouch and took out a kunai and a shuriken set together with explosive tags, and began his long-range and short-range attacks of his enemies.

It took awfully longer than Shino had expected, but finally he emerged victorious. Looking around to ensure that there were no more enemies that were waiting to attack him, he allowed his body to collapse to the ground from the extreme fatigue. Landing on his knees, he prepared his upper half to follow suit but felt a pair of arms grabbing him to steady his fall. Weakly, he looked up to meet the white eyes of Hinata, and smiled a little before allowing Hinata to place him in a comfortable position. She mouthed a feeble, "Good work," to her teammate, and immediately began to treat his wounds.

Hyuuga Hinata was not an accomplished medical ninja like her fellow kunoichi, Yamanaka Ino and Haruno Sakura. She spent most of her time training with her cousin, Hyuuga Neji, to perfect her Jyuuken and this training did indeed bear fruit. She had managed to perfect her Gentle Fist: Sixty-Four Trigrams to a certain extent, which was only till the 32 trigrams part. For some odd reason, she had not managed to reach the 64 palms point, no matter how much she trained with Neji. Neji told her that it would probably require being unlocked in battle, so there was no need of fretting about it at that point. Hinata used the rest of her free time to perfect her chakra control, so she tried mastering medical ninjutsu. She did have some adept mastery of it, but realizing that she didn't have as much time left till Naruto came back to the village, she decided to continue training in combat. Besides, she did have some pretty useful ointments, such as the one she gave Naruto after his fight with Kiba, so she made a mental note of carrying a batch of ointment with her on every mission she went on.

This time was a bit different however. Shino barely had any serious injuries, since he sustained very few physical attacks on his body. What was really the pressing issue here was his chakra depletion. Slowly, Hinata applied the ointment to Shino's bruises and it worked magically. The wounds closed up in mere seconds, and Hinata marveled at the effectiveness of her work. Now the difficult time had set upon her. She placed her hands on Shino's back, and then using all her might, focused her chakra on her hands. She closed her eyes to help further her attention, then after a few minutes she felt the warmth of something on her hands. Slowly opening her eyes, she sees the familiar green chakra she was used to seeing with The Fifth Hokage whenever she was performing her medical ninjutsu at the hospital. She had actually managed to accomplish the difficult task. Beaming at herself, she proceeded to restore Shino's chakra levels to normal.

"Thanks Hinata," Shino spoke up, his voice a bit stronger this time. Hinata took that as a positive sign that her healing was working, so she poured more chakra into the process. She realized that her chakra was almost max since she had not really used it for anything else other than the Byakugan, so she could afford to use most of her chakra in healing Shino. Hinata figured that she would have her chakra restore itself as they were heading to regroup with the others, so she replied, "No problem, Shino- kun. You fought pretty well yourself. For a moment I was a bit scared, and thought I would have to jump in and help you." Shino nodded his head a bit then said, "I know what you mean. When I saw that huge number of enemies I thought that we should retreat for a moment. I was actually a bit surprised at their chakra absorption ability, but other than that nothing really stood out that much for them. Weird, actually, if you think about it. Why would the enemy intentionally put weak enemies at this hideout? Wouldn't it be better to split their group into two units then leave one at each hideout?" Hinata pondered a little over Shino's inquiry, and then said, "You have a point, Shino –kun. I was also wondering the same thing. I think the reason they did this was to intentionally stall time for the team which would come here. I mean, thinking about it closely, if we came here and found an empty hideout, wouldn't it be easier to just go back and regroup with the others? That would make them get a bit disadvantaged since we would have more numbers than them. So by holding us here, they are weakening our forces considerably and also giving themselves a better chance of finishing us off."

"I think you're probably right about that, Hinata. If that's the case then, we'd better hurry up and regroup with the others. Are you done healing?" Shino asked his teammate. Hinata withdrew her hands from Shino's back, then replied, "That's the best I could do. Sorry I'm not as good as Sakura-san in medical ninjutsu." She had a sad expression on her face, which Shino didn't fail to notice. He tried standing up, and realized that his body felt way better than it did at the end of his skirmish. It wasn't at exactly 100%, but he could manage to move around. "Don't apologize, Hinata. I feel way better now and it's thanks to you." He tried smiling reassuringly at Hinata, who managed to smile back. Feeling reassured, the kunoichi picked herself up from the ground. Turning her back to look at the trees behind her, she then said, "Gai-sensei and Ino-san went towards that direction." "Then it's decided. Let's be off then." Within a flash of a second, the two had leaped into the trees and were heading towards said direction.

As they hopped from one tree to another, Hinata observed Shino to ensure that he was 100% okay. He seemed to be leaping well from tree to tree, and his breath had steadied considerably. She then focused on moving forward herself, and immediately her thoughts shifted to her blonde-haired love. Hinata began worrying about whether Naruto was safe or not, and if the others had managed to rescue him. She tried convincing herself that since Kakashi and Guy were there with them, everything would be okay, but then remembered something which had set her a bit on edge since the mission had began. It was what Neji had asked Sakura, whether she was in love with Naruto or not. Truthfully, that particular question had been on her mind the whole time but she decided to ignore it and focus on the mission at hand. However, now that they were about to reach where Naruto was, she found herself constantly thinking and wondering about it. Was Haruno Sakura really in love with Uzumaki Naruto?

Hinata had known for a long time now that Naruto had feelings for Sakura. From their academy days, she watched him daily as he tried to get Sakura's attention, and was a bit disheartened. At that time, she herself was too shy to go and talk to her crush, so she had to be content with watching him from afar. She knew that Sakura herself had only eyes for Sasuke, so she paid Naruto no attention. This made Hinata a bit happy, since she had a feeling that she had a chance with Naruto (albeit it made her feel a bit guilty inside).

Then, Sasuke left the village to join Orochimaru. The news hit Hinata as a shock, since she always thought the Uchiha was a calm, level-headed person who wouldn't be tempted by the offer of getting more power. She then heard the nees of how her teammate, Kiba, and a group of other genin including her cousin, Neji, and Naruto, had gone to try and rescue him. They failed and almost perished, but luckily they managed to be saved in time by Kakashi and the shinobi from the sand. Hinata felt bad for Naruto and thought about going to comfort him, but she saw Sakura and Shikamaru plus the Fifth coming out of his hospital room, so she thought that they had already done enough. Then it hit her.

Sakura and Naruto were the last remaining members of Team Seven. At first Hinata thought that this wouldn't be much of a problem since she knew that Sakura still held feelings for her raven-haired teammate. However, the dynamics between her and Naruto began to change. They went on missions together and spent an awful amount of time together even within the village. Sakura seemed to be smiling and laughing every time she was with Naruto, and Naruto seemed to be having the time of his life around the girl he had always pined for. He still loved her, even after all that time being apart from each other. Hinata felt more disheartened, but decided not to give up. Then she watched as Sakura hugged him in front of the whole village after his victory against Pain. She honestly did not expect it, and was a bit shocked, but decided not to display any of her fears there since they were all in a happy mood. Naruto's face of shock also added to her fears, since she realized that he was also caught off guard by the hug. Then a possibility occurred to Hinata's mind. That maybe, just maybe, Sakura was falling in love with the boy that she also loved.

Hinata confided all this to Shino, who paid close attention to each and every word that came out of her mouth. After she had finished explaining what set her at unease, she watched Shino slowly pick up what she was saying. Shino knew that even an idiot would understand what Hinata was trying to say. There was a chance that she was losing her chance at being with Naruto, and she felt terrible that she was being jealous of Sakura. Hinata and Sakura were not really as close as she was with her team, but they were generally on good terms. To feel this way towards one of her friends made Hinata feel terrible as a person.

"I understand what you mean, Hinata. I think anyone would feel the same way if they were in a position like yours, so I don't think you should beat yourself up too much. After all, you're human too. Did you tell Naruto how you feel?" Shino asked Hinata. Hinata was caught a bit off guard at this question, and a light blush appeared at her cheeks. "Y-Yeah. I told him when I went to save him from Pain. So he knows what I feel about him now," she stammered her reply. Shino then proceeded, "So what did he say in return?" Hinata said, "He didn't really give me an answer. I mean we were in the middle of a fight, so I don't think that he really had the chance to give me a proper reply. I'm not really worried though. For now, I'm okay with him just knowing how I feel. I know that he still has feelings for Sakura-san, so I don't want to push him into giving me an answer." Shino looked at his teammate for a while before saying, "I think you did the right thing Hinata. I personally think it would have been better if you asked him for an answer as soon as the whole ordeal with Pain with over, but if you're willing to wait then it's okay."

Hinata felt the burden on her chest lighten a little after her talk with Shino. She had not exactly told him or Kiba about her feelings for Naruto, but it was pretty obvious with the way she kept on blushing around him. Heck it was amazing how Naruto himself hadn't noticed how she acted towards him meant something more than friends, but he was an idiot for things just like that. She didn't exactly feel ashamed that her teammates knew about it, on the contrary it made her feel a bit better since she had someone to confide in. Shino had actually helped her more than he thought, so a smile formed on her face. "Thank you, Shino-kun," she thanked her teammate. Shino then remarked, "You're welcome, Hinata. Anyway, keep your guard up. Seems like we've arrived." Hinata immediately knew what he was talking about. In front of them, a cave similar to the one they had come from lay. Their teammates were somewhere in there.

"I'm okay, Shino-kun. Let's go." The two then stepped into the cave, hoping, praying that they would succeed.

A/N: Sorry, if this chapter is a bit shorter than the previous one. I originally planned to lengthen it a bit with a fight, although I feel it would ruin the part with Hinata and Shino, so I will push it forward to the next chapter. I hope you guys like this chapter though. Thank you all!