Chapter 21:
Hinata wasn't surprised when the other team she was supposed to be meeting up with was running late. She wasn't even surprised that those that did show up were missing a few members, but she was surprised, and saddened, that the only civilian they had with them was a toddler. She didn't ask where the others were, didn't have to, as several minutes after the first half of the group arrive, the rest of it showed up on the edges of her vision as she kept her bloodline limit active to make sure that those coming really were the people she was waiting for.
"They are close behind you, maybe five minutes out at the most."
All she got in response was a nod as the three in front of her each turned in order to better guard her. She had been alone, but one glance at her using her Byakugan had been enough to ensure they knew who she was. They would take time to find out where the rest of her detail was once they were in a more secure location.
The child on Lee's back sniffled a little and Naruto immediately turned towards her, smiling slightly as he offered her a bit of a ration bar. She blinked at him cutely and tiredly before accepting and quickly eating the food. She snuggled down into Lee's back and fell asleep once more. Hinata kept her attention on their surroundings even if she wanted to coo at how cute the little scene was. She was only human. Ino hid a smile of her own before turning back to Hinata and signing a question.
'Are there any others coming in besides Kiba and Shino?'
Hinata's fingers tapped out a negative response, never taking her eyes off the incoming duo. Once they'd arrived and had a moment's breath, the slightly larger group set off, Hinata in the lead. She kept her bloodline active as the others fanned out behind her, Lee still held in the middle of the group with the child on his back.
-Scene Change—
Hanabi is really starting to wonder just why she had been saddled with this mission. Some of her age mates had mentioned that this was either a high honor or a slight against her family. She had tried to keep herself from making similar statements, even if only to herself, when she was first given this task. She was trying very hard to keep negative thoughts out of her mind at this point and was failing more than she thought she ever would.
Dealing with an Uchiha was always difficult, she had heard that this was so from some of the elder members of her clan even when she was a child and there had been many Uchiha in the village. Dealing with Uchiha Sasuke in particular seemed even worse.
"Is there a reason that I can't leave the compound?"
"Yes, Uchiha-san, you were made aware of this when you first were placed in residence here."
"Why am I here and not at home?"
"This is your home now, Uchiha-san." She tried to keep her voice level, but this was a conversation that they had several times a week. If it was a particularly bad week, they would have it every day. This didn't happen often, but Hanabi wasn't in the practice of needing to have patience when not in a combat situation. Having to keep your temper around someone that had turned traitor to your village made it even harder.
Some days Uchiha Sasuke was able to work through some backlog of reports that would have crossed his hands should he have ever taken up the mantle of Head of his Clan. Every decision he made was reviewed by a small collection of people from different Clans, Great and Small. They would do a simple review of the decision and then would pass it on if they found no problems with it. They hadn't needed to step in and withhold a judgment or send the decision back to be remade in several weeks, just over a month. Most of those were during bad weeks, but every so often, in the beginning, they would crop up during his good times. They were evidence that he had never really had to consider making these kinds of decisions on a consistent basis. He was getting better at those, but only when he thought about why they had been returned and read any notes that had been written on the returned decisions.
He would likely never have the full authority of being a Clan Head, especially not of a Great Clan in a village that he had betrayed. No matter the reasoning or even any outside influence such as the Cursed Seal. He just wouldn't be trusted by people whose lives revolved around being a shinobi and all that entailed. He would never be fully trusted ever again, but he would be allowed to help build up the village in any way he could.
"When will I be allowed to live in my own apartment?"
"…" Hanabi's eye twitched ever so slightly, "As soon as you pass your psych eval."
Why had she been chosen for this torture? Did she do something that had insulted the Hokage or someone she cared about?
"Why do I need a psych eval!" Uchiha sounded so insulted by the implication.
She wondered if she would get into trouble if she knocked him out using his tenketsu, but only the ones that would give him a…peaceful sleep. She wouldn't do any permanent damage and he would probably not remember that it was her.
…She'd probably still get into trouble for it. Her dad had been watching her a lot more closely lately, even before she'd been given this babysitting excuse for an assignment. She wasn't sure what had happened to make him do so and she wasn't going to ask. He had his reasons and he was the Head of her Clan as well as her father. He always knew what he was doing and that was enough for her to know. That was all she would have needed a few weeks ago.
She wanted to know why now, after having put up with the Uchiha that had turned traitor on their village. She knew that she was like him in a lot of political ways. She was the second child of a major Clan head and she had worked very hard to get her father to pay her any attention during her years before and then during the Academy. That was where any similarities between them ended. Her elder sibling hadn't been the apple of their father's eye and then gone rogue and slaughtered the whole lot of them. If anything, Hanabi would be more like the Uchiha's elder sibling in this.
Hanabi had activated her clan bloodline at a very early age, though still not as early as Uchiha Itachi had activated his. Hanabi's sister had taken longer to activate her own eyes even if she had before she'd graduated the Academy.
"…What do you do?"
Hanabi didn't startle, but she did blink before turning her attention back on the slightly older teen in front of her. He was staring at her in curiosity, much like a small child would.
"What?"
There was something different about his eyes, something that hadn't been there during any of the previous days that she had watched him. He just stared back at her, not really understanding what was wrong with his question. He shouldn't have asked the question at all; it wasn't something that he had ever asked before, nor cared to know the answer. He knew that she was in charge of watching him even when he didn't know much else.
He had never asked after her personal life either.
Without taking her eyes of off him, she flared her chakra just enough to disrupt a genjutsu but not quite enough to summon any additional backup, yet. Backup came anyway, but stayed on the periphery of her vision.
-Scene Change—
The Godaime Hokage withstood the temptation to reach for her one (allowed) hidden bottle of sake. She had been hoping that things would turn out better, a foolish hope, but one that some ninja had anyway. It was something her grandfather had taught her after her mother had died. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. Come to think of it, most shinobi clans had a saying like that.
"So you're telling me that not only do we have an ongoing war with a psychopathic Sannin, a war that while we aren't losing, we certainly aren't winning either," she took a deep breath before continuing, "We have a prisoner of war who might as well be a confused little boy for all the good he is to us and last but not least, we have proof that Orochimaru has succeeded in restarting the Uchiha Clan under his village's banner."
No one says the ridiculous, that this could be the first successful attempt. That this could be the only attempt. To say such things would be stupid enough that Tsunade would probably have the person saying it dismissed from service. If they continued to say it, she might just have to put them in prison for being that criminally stupid.
Orochimaru doesn't do single experiments. He doesn't stop trying different variations even when his experiments succeed.
"The only good news is that we not only have one of the children from his experimentation, and she seems to have an attachment to several Konoha shinobi, but we also have the one man in our service that could probably defeat and also train others to defeat, a Sharingan wielder."
There was a long moment of silence in the council room. No one really wanted to be the one to say it.
"It looks like we're going to be sending just about everyone who's free into extra training with Gai-sensei."
Tsunade met the Head of the Hyuuga Clan's eyes. If the man had ever looked more terrified then that moment, it was probably when he had held his first child in his hands. The accompanying awe that had been with that event was absent at this moment. She didn't say anything to him and he didn't say anything to her as the meeting ended.
After everyone had left, Tsunade sat at her desk with the war reports lying in front of her. They were already gone through and had her orders attached. Shizune would not be along to sort them out, but her replacement would be. The man was a small man who had great skills when it came to keeping papers in order and making sure that everything in the Tower ran smoothly. He was a lot better at it than Shizune had been.
Even still, Tsunade missed seeing her ersatz-niece and protégé several times a day.
She didn't reach for the sake, merely picked up the next papers that required her attention and continued with her work.
-Scene Change—
She should have been punished longer.
She probably would have been too if the tide of the war hadn't started changing.
She figures that it's partially because of the child she 'let' get away. She also figures that another part of it is because He hadn't been able to create another viable offspring from the Uchiha. He had created plenty and spliced DNA into others of his subjects, but none of them are able to continue their line. All other attempts at 're-starting' the Uchiha sharingan don't so much as fail as the subjects somehow end up sterile. This wasn't too big a problem as far as resources went, until they lost their donor.
Without Uchiha Sasuke on hand to 'donate' genetic samples to use, they have no way of continuing the project if they can't produce a subject capable of having offspring. The one that had gotten away and was even now in the 'clutches' of Konoha wasn't the only success, but it was the one that has survived the longest.
Somehow, the other subjects have been found dead, mostly from natural causes. Some from not so natural causes.
She doesn't have any suspicions about who or what has caused the death of these 'experiments' of her master, but she is grateful for it. She doesn't wish her existence on them.
She is being utilized more and more for missions that involve her going in with a small unit and attacking before running back out without getting caught. They are not always successful in these missions, but that is becoming rarer if she is a part of the missions themselves. She doesn't pay as much attention to the others in her groups as they aren't really teammates so much as people who have been sent on the same mission. They work with one another, but they don't really work with her. They ignore her presence as much as possible.
"Do you think we'll win?"
She paid very little attention to the duo that was setting up a small camp during the latest mission.
"I don't know. At the beginning, I thought that we had a pretty good chance, after all, we have the best of the Sannin with us, leading us." The male that was with their group was pulling out a few rations, they weren't going to bother with a fire, "What, with the enhancements Orochimaru-sama has been giving so many of us, I thought we'd at least have taken and kept some land by now. All we seem to be doing is attacking and then withdrawing."
The female in their group accepted the bar thrown to her and snorted at her companion's naiveté. "This is a war between shinobi, stupid. We don't take and keep land as if this was a war between daimyo or samurai."
She did not take part in their ensuing argument. They did not offer her food and she did not take any out for herself.
Part of her current punishment was that she was only allowed food when injured or when she was in one of her master's bases. It didn't affect her performance, or if it did, her master was far too angry to care.
His need to hold onto his emotions was going to cost him this war, of that she was certain, if she was certain of anything.
She turned abruptly to the still arguing pair, "Silence."
They didn't hear here, so caught up in their argument that they weren't even as aware of their surroundings. At this rate, they would bring down the patrols of Konoha. Though they were not near the hidden village they were still well within its territories.
"Be silent." She hissed, her fingers darting out between them.
They started away from her and both drew a weapon, the female a kunai and the male a shuriken. Both kept their silence as they listened to the forest around them. They did not wait for the patrol to finish making its way towards them. They did not look back and they heard nothing more than the whisper of the wind in the leaves as they leapt from tree to tree. They would hear nothing more than that. The shinobi of Konoha are raised in the trees of their forest and know how the wind moves within them intimately.