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.

Author's Note: My Profile page has a link to my fan forum on this site. Chapter update progress reports and story discussion takes place there, as well as any whiny excuses for my updates being late.

On plot: This is the last "action" chapter for the Find Hinata arc, but there will still be a sexy after-action bit for Chapter #22 to close things off and lead into the next part of the story. I'm still working on the plot for the next arc, which may result in some...interesting things in the next few chapters if I don't finish my planning in time. I wonder what the people working on the anime did when they didn't have canon from the manga, ready to turn into new episodes...ahem. Anyway, I'll let everyone know what I come up with in the notes for #22.

EDIT: Added a forum post to answer some early reviews for this chapter. I'll try to mention it next time as well. Additional answers and future chapter reviews responses will be added to the same thread, as well as the usual updates on my progress (or lack thereof) on the next chapter (see my Profile for links to the forum).

Chapter Twenty-One

A blast of air hit Sasuke from the huge impact as the screaming sound of chakra on chakra-enhanced bone filled the battlefield. He couldn't see clearly through the dust, but it looked like Naruto was simply trying to tear through the Sound shinobi with his bare hands. Then the red-cloaked boy was flying back through a tree and Kimimaro was standing alone, panting and bleeding from a dozen wounds.

"Ah, the Leaf jinchūriki shows up at last. Impressive," Kimimaro said, his curse seal having hit what must be the second level. Huge bone horns now projected out of his back and over his shoulders. His skin had darkened and no curse marks were visible but he had large, black patches over his eyes, giving him a much more threatening and aggressive look. Most worrying of all was the huge, thick, spiked tail he now had, which had batted Naruto away so easily.

Through his powerful new Sharingan, Sasuke could see his foe's movements had slowed, but if anything he was now more dangerous looking. Kimimaro's second release form was bulkier, appeared stronger, and his bone plates seemed to have thickened even more. Possible strategies filled his mind, but Sasuke still didn't see a path to victory himself. Maybe Naruto could help with his new powers, but that brought additional complications.

Sasuke was worried now. Could that idiot Naruto really be a jinchūriki, like Gaara? Was this his special power, how the idiot had always seemed to manage to fight and win against such strong foes, ones Sasuke himself couldn't defeat? Considering how Gaara had ended up losing strategic focus, going nuts, and trying to kill everyone around him including his siblings, whether or not Naruto was really in control of his powers was rapidly became a serious concern. Of course, Kimimaro had just handily knocked him through a ten-foot thick tree. But long experience seeing the blond idiot kicked around the battlefield at the start of every fight and his new, even more powerful eyes suggested Naruto wasn't even close to finished yet. Sure enough, his chakra was spiking again.

"Still, not enough to-" started the smirking Sound ninja, then his body was flying through the air, propelled by a red blur. A slow-motion series of images lingered in his mind, captured by the incredible power of the Sharingan, showing Naruto shoving a glowing, rotating ball of energy into Kimimaro's stomach at insanely high speeds. His mind fast-forwarding back to real time, he saw them hit the ground several hundred feet away, digging a trench into the ground and throwing up more dirt and dust. Sasuke could just barely see Naruto pounding on something on the ground, his fist covered in glowing claws that seemed to be raking his foe with every strike. A second fiery red tail was now whipping above his head as he beat with both hands on his fallen opponent.

After almost a minute of uninterrupted and savage one-sided violence, Naruto reached down and started pulling on something. His red chakra pooled around his arm, along with both of his whipping tails, assisting him with whatever he was grabbing. A sickening snap was heard as far back as where Sasuke still unsteadily stood, then Naruto tossed something high in the air behind him as he moved to stand once more over the still body. Sasuke's perfect eyes could now see Kimimaro's tattered form, entirely empty of chakra. Naruto had done it – the impossibly strong shinobi was dead.

Sasuke still tracked the shape through the air, predicting exactly when and where it would land. With a dull thunk it landed and rolled several times before coming to rest a dozen feet away from him. It was Kimimaro's right arm, torn from it's socket.

Grimly looking around, Sasuke saw that Tayuya was still unconscious (continuing to live out the horrors he'd planned for her), Neji was still unconscious, Hinata was still dead, and...shit, now Naruto was stalking toward him, the grass burning around his feet. Both tails whipped behind him and there was little awareness in his eyes. It seemed that the demonic power he'd been using in the fight wasn't retreating and it wasn't at all clear that Naruto was still in control of himself.

Sasuke took a deep breath and tried to ready himself to disable his rampaging teammate before anyone got hurt. Quickly thrusting his ninjatō into the ground again, Sasuke freed his hands for quick hand seals. Maybe he could end this before things got even more out of control.

Naruto crouched down on all fours, readying himself for another thunderous leap. The claws on his hands and feet dug into the soft ground and his tails whipped behind him. Then they briefly stilled and Sasuke could see the coming attack in his mind's eye – possible responses started leafing out in his mind as he searched for the correct action to take to save his teammate's life while stopping him. Without warning, a cage made of giant rib-shaped bones shot out of the ground and crashed down again around Naruto's glowing body, crushing him flat and leaving him clawing against the dirt. Kimimaro climbed out of the earth behind him, unharmed and with both arms intact.

"Foolish little boy," he said in a low, rasping voice. "Trash like you could never defeat me. I will complete my mission for master. But first, you die." His "corpse," still lying in a shallow ditch in the ground, dissolved into loose pale dirt, along with the arm in front of Sasuke. Some type of Earth clone, switched out to trick Naruto and the Sharingan. Damn.

Kimimaro's left arm started growing spikes that merged together, flowing like water and forming a larger weapon. Now wielding a long spear attached to his arm made of his massively overgrown arm bones, he stalked towards the cage where Naruto still thrashed around. Sasuke cursed under his breath as he jumped into action, still empty handed and trying to move his wounded leg faster despite it failing to respond as he demanded. Kimimaro moved in a flash, striking out with the massive spear at Naruto where he still lay raging against the chakra-enhanced ribs which were slowly, far too slowly, dissolving under his ferocious attack. Sasuke once again realized he would get there too late, his eyes showing him the bone already piercing his teammate's chest in grisly detail.

Then his eyes almost whited out from a huge wave of chakra coming from behind him, over the edge of the forest. A fraction of a second later, both he and Kimimaro were blown off their feet. Sasuke skidded and rolled along the ground, almost to where Naruto was still caged on the ground. Pieces of trees and entire sections of ground were torn lose by the enormous gale and a huge rumbling boom, a veritable wave of sound, shook the ground. Kimimaro had thrust down and dug in with his giant spear and was now riding out the storm, which was centered around him.

The grass field was suddenly and rapidly filling with flying locusts. The bugs, clearly not natural and imbued with faint chakra, were blown around by the whipping wind, but still crowded the air with a cacophonous noise, their tiny bodies collectively impossibly loud. Looking up at last, Sasuke saw a young woman hovering above him, six gigantic insect wings on her back slowly flapping. There was a Leaf ninja headband tied around her arm.

The wings beat far too slowly to actually keep her up but a single glance with his Sharingan showed the story – they were chakra constructs, with a similar glowing appearance to Naruto's red tails. She to was covered in a cloak of chakra – hers a bright, smooth, eye-searing orange, much like that idiot's stupid jacket and pants. It wasn't the horrible color but the intense, crushing weight of it that impressed and, he was hesitant to admit to himself, intimidated him. He could barely stand in its presence and even Kimimaro seemed affected.

The still red-cloaked boy froze under her stare. Her eyes locked briefly to Naruto's then she spoke in a lazy, oddly crackling voice. "Mind your friend, yeah Uchiha? He's not fully in control right now, dude." Then she was gone, her incredible speed and the roar of the wind from her flight whipping at his body. Sasuke leaped back to where his sword was still stuck into the ground and watched the fight across the field.

Kimimaro disappeared in a haze of deadly-looking Wind jutsu, the flying woman barely visible even to his advanced Sharingan. He couldn't track her hand signs, even with his Sharingan, as she swooped and circled rapidly, firing down on her foe relentlessly. The power display was incredible and she didn't seem to be tiring. Though he knew the Sound ninja was well armored, these attacks were obviously designed to wear away his armor. In fact, with her distance from the slow, close-range shinobi, it looked like she had won this battle. Kimimaro couldn't reach her and she wasn't tiring at all. Once again, Sasuke saw that no defense was truly unassailable.

Distracted by the flying kunoichi, Sasuke almost missed when the bone cage collapsed around Naruto, suddenly freeing the wild-eyed boy – who, of course, instantly made a snarling beeline for him. There was now a huge cloud of dust around the enemy shinobi, where he was still being targeted by the unknown Leaf kunoichi's attacks. Not able to check whether this technique failing meant that Kimimaro was dead, Sasuke went with the same plan as last time – catch the idiot in a powerful genjutsu. He didn't want to use Tsukuyomi on the idiot, though, just knock him out or stun him long enough to restrain him.

Running his Sharingan to full strength, he hurried to meet Naruto's eyes, pouring as much chakra into the technique as he felt he could without becoming dangerously drained. The world shivered strangely, then all was blackness.

Sasuke opened his eyes. He wasn't sure when he'd closed them. The result was...disconcerting. He couldn't see clearly and felt a dizziness that seemed to last forever. It couldn't actually have been more than a second though before something almost audibly slid into place in his head and he was seeing clearly again.

His Sharingan was still slowly spinning (or at least felt that way) and he could see everything here was made of chakra. But it felt...distant, like he wasn't actually physically present. Searching deep inside himself, he found a connection between this place and his real body where he was once again frozen in time. This place must be inside Naruto's mind.

He stood in the middle of a wide hallway, a huge gate in front of him and, taking a quick glance over his shoulder, a series of dark corridors behind. Pipes came out of the ceiling in the shadows and ran down the various passageways, but the wider hall he was in was clear of them. The walls were rough cut stone and the ludicrously large gate was made of iron. Unlike the walls, it was finely decorated, filigreed, painted, and engraved like a rich mansion's entrance.

It seemed out of place in the slightly scruffy looking surroundings. There was no lock on the gate, which seemed to swing open in the middle, but there was a large, hand-sized paper tag high up on it. On it was written "Seal" and it covered the gap between the two sides of the gate. Sasuke got a very sudden and deep, emotional sense that so much as touching it would be a...bad idea. A very, very bad idea. His eyes showed him, even through this connection he had with Naruto's subconscious, that the seal as well as the gate and the hallway, were entirely made of chakra. Naruto's chakra, mixed in with the red chakra as well. He must be inside a conceptual representation of Naruto's chakra system, projected through his subconscious mind. How annoying.

Furrowing his brow, he glanced down. He was standing in ankle-deep water, which figured really. It was unsurprising that Naruto's subconscious was a damp sewer. He was surprised, however, to see Naruto floating face down, wet from head to foot and apparently unconscious. Reaching out with his foot, Sasuke kicked his stupid teammate's internal mental representation over onto its back and waited.

It was breathing. He sighed. It figured that his teammate was too stupid to correctly remember he couldn't breathe water in his own mind. It could be worse – at least Naruto wasn't imagining himself drowning. Even with his genjutsu experience, Sasuke wasn't sure what would happen if you thought you had drowned, in your own mind, because you were just that dumb. Naruto wasn't waking up anytime soon, it seemed, and Sasuke wasn't here to talk to him anyway. Stepping over his teammate's mental avatar, he kept walking towards the out-of-place gate.

As he approached, he suddenly felt a huge killing intent, a pressure that threatened to bring him to his knees. Peering into the darkness, he still saw nothing. Then he looked up. There was a huge muzzle, like from a giant animal, and two gigantic glowing slit eyes that stared down at him. It was surrounded, no, made from the same red chakra that covered Naruto.

The huge creature opened its horrible mouth in a wide, toothy grin as nine tails of malevolent, glowing red chakra waved in the inky darkness behind it. Then it spoke.

Sasuke-san, that mean, arrogant, cruel genius had come. For her. Hinata didn't know exactly how she felt about that, but she would not allow her unasked-for fiancé to die before she figured it out. She knew she owed him for helping to save her but more importantly, she now realized the ultimate truth of Naruto-kun's ethics of hard work and never giving up: she would do anything, no matter how dangerous or difficult,to prevent her precious people from coming to harm. And now, she realized, Sasuke-san was definitely one of those people.

She had finally reached the battlefield her Byakugan had showed her, almost a kilometer away from where she'd woken up. Hiding at the edge of the clearing, she paused with her back pressed against a tree. Working with Sasuke-san had shown her to never, ever rush into an unknown situation without careful scouting, even in the heat of battle. She took a deep breath and readied herself. Sasuke-san had been fighting someone, something, horribly powerful in what had appeared to be a losing battle. From the sound of it, someone was still fighting, and it was very, very noisy.

Her stomach was already hurting from that unique, mystical internal pull of an abused chakra system. The rest of her body was a mess of rapidly purpling bruises and barely functioning chakra paths. She would not stop moving so long as her arms and legs still responded but if she focused, she could probably see all the damage she'd done in the last twelve hours to her delicate internal chakra system. She only hoped she hadn't crippled herself for life, but that was something to worry about after her life and Sasuke-san's were significantly more safe.

Wishing with all her heart that she was in time to save him, she once again turned on her all-seeing eyes, using up more of her precariously small amount of remaining chakra. Sasuke-san was still standing. His chakra was low, his bright internal glow beginning to fade, but he was still alive. The feeling of a knife shoved into her heart eased a little. Taking a deep breath, she reviewed the rest of the battlefield. That horrible bitch Tayuya was down, but not dead. A shame. And...oh no! Cousin Neji! He was still breathing, thank Kami, and he didn't seem too badly hurt. There was still an unidentified thunderous noise from somewhere nearby. She widened her view, then stopped breathing for several seconds.

An orange streak was moving impossibly fast through the air. Hinata was still a little dizzy and it took her longer than it should to identify what it was. Wings, orange chakra: the strange kunoichi from Waterfall, the one with the demon inside her. Fū, that was her name.

The Sound shinobi with the monstrous chakra was being pounded into a crater in the ground by her aerial Wind element jutsu. Hinata wasted another second staring at the thunderous barrage. That was when she noticed the air was full of chakra-infused bugs and Naruto-kun was glowing with red chakra and trapped in a bone cage.

She didn't get a chance to figure out what this meant, as everything started happening at once. The Sound shinobi's chakra flickered and he started sinking into the ground, expanding strangely. Naruto-kun's bone cage cracked and snapped and he rushed straight at Sasuke-san.

He was still glowing red and his slit eyes seemed...wild, out of control. He didn't seem to recognize Sasuke-san, or if he did, he still wanted to kill him. She jumped around the tree, eyes still blazing and feet gripping the ground with chakra, trying to move fast enough to intercept Naruto-kun before he hurt anyone. She gasped as Naruto-kun crouched suddenly then leapt towards Sasuke-san, crossing the distance in an instant.

But the raven-haired boy simply stood there, calmly tracking Naruto-kun, then he ducked as the blond's now unresponsive body flew over his head to land hard at the edge of the clearing. Her hero hit the ground bonelessly, the chakra around him dissipating as he rolled to a rough stop, unconscious. She didn't turn her head, of course, and neither did Sasuke-san. Obviously too "cool" to look back at Naruto-kun, Sasuke-san kept staring straight ahead and reached for his sword, thrust into the ground at his side. Hinata kept running at full speed, eager to get to Sasuke-san's side, when she happened to notice what was happening underground.

Usually, Hyūga ignored the bottom hemisphere of their vision when at ground level. It was a bad habit that most civilians never concerned themselves with as nothing "down" was never interesting. Even the professional ninja from the branch house didn't pay attention to "down" unless they were specifically looking for traps.

Seeing everything was tiring and ignoring what was under their feet when they weren't flying through the trees saved them half of their attention. Most of the time, even for a ninja, it also didn't matter. Nothing usually found underground had chakra or was a threat. Sure, if one was on a mission in enemy territory and looking for traps or hidden enemies, an attentive professional would turn their attention there. But even cousin Neji, considered a genius by her clan, had apparently forgotten this and allowed brave Naruto-kun to ambush him during the Chūnin Exam finals.

Hinata, however, was not your typical Hyūga. Unlike most branch house members, she had had a very boring, very lonely childhood. With no childhood friends, not even among the other main house kids, she was isolated after her mother and uncle died, with only her baby sister to keep her company. Even cousin Neji didn't like her, didn't talk with her other than guarded formally or quiet scorn. Her only hobby, the only activity she had other than study and training, had been tending to the simple garden around her rooms and making her herbal medical salves from the results.

But even when not working among the herbs and flowerbeds with her sleeves rolled up and dirt under her fingers, aching from Jūken practice, she still used her Byakugan to track her plants progress. She found that if she looked closely enough, she could see even the developing seeds under the ground. She took to watching them grow every day, even from inside her room. When out on missions, she liked looking at the complicated root systems of the huge trees around Konoha and usually took a look at plants around the village while training or just taking a walk.

Unlike her relatives, she made it a habit to pay attention what was that hidden under the ground every time she had her eyes on, never wasting an opportunity. So she immediately saw the burst of chakra near where the Sound shinobi had gone down and the explosive growth of shadowy branches of bone, reaching for Fū-san and Sasuke-san.

"SASUKE!" she screamed as the first spears struck at the orange-cloaked kunoichi, nearest to the center of the event, but her voice was drowned out by the horrible sound of the ground breaking under the final jutsu of the powerful Sound shinobi. Fū-san took a heavy blow from the thrusting spears that seemed to bounce off her glowing chakra, sending her spiraling into the air. Apparently unhurt, she simply flew further away, avoiding the fractal shapes of the branching bone forest growing underneath her feet. But Hinata could see the branches reaching out under Sasuke-san, who was still staring at the bone thrusting out of the ground in front of him as he hopped back several quick steps. Right into the bone roots waiting underground behind him.

"Look out!" she shouted at him, just as a bone tree exploded up, rapidly generating new branches and stabbing Sasuke right through his stomach from behind and lifting him off the ground. Hinata pulled again on her burning chakra system and shunshined next to him, grabbing his ninjatō out of the ground. The trees of bone infused with chakra continued to explode from the ground around the two of them, but she couldn't safely get Sasuke out in time and more spears were heading for him as well. Every branch sent more, smaller branches out to attack them, multiplying the threat the longer they grew. She didn't have enough chakra left to even consider a Kaiten, a technique she'd never fully successfully used even in training, so she'd have to try something else.

Channeling her remaining chakra through the sword, shifting it painfully to Fire element and leaving just enough to run her Byakugan, she used its now blazing blade to slice easily through the branch spearing Sasuke-san into the air, right where they entered his back. She caught him carefully with her other arm before he hit the ground hard and aggravated his horrible injury. He was alive at least but she didn't have the attention to spare to check him further. Twisting and spinning to the ground, she waved the flaming sword through multiple bone trees in a circle, severing their trunks and thicker branches, then lay Sasuke-san carefully onto the ground she'd cleared.

Off in the distance, she saw Fū-san turn and dive, firing down at the main chakra source (which must be the Sound shinobi's twisted, chakra-filled body) with earth-shaking blows. Hinata had to return to dodging and removing the trunks of the bone trees as they appeared, a horrible, deadly trimming of a terrible forest. She didn't let any of them got close to Sasuke-san but she took several glancing blows to her arms and legs from the smaller branches as she chopped out their base, the sharpened bones leaving long gouges.

Her chakra was rapidly running out and she was having to leap around more violently to catch fully emerged trees from growing too large around them. Just when her eyes started to flicker off, she saw the source of the strange technique explode and dim. All at once the underground bone system stopped growing and its chakra rapidly started fading. Hinata stumbled to a halt, the flames on the straight sword now extinguished and her eyes off. She was leaking blood from multiple cuts and was feeling faint, but she still kept spinning, looking wildly around for another foe, another threat. She saw Fū-san circling above, this time directly with her unactivated eyes, but she had stopped firing at the ground and was coming in closer, obviously to land near Naruto-kun. She heard a groan nearby and her eyes flew to her raven-haired fiancé.

"Sasuke-san!" Hinata screamed, rushing over to where he still lay with a huge bone spear through his gut. She managed to turn her Byakugan on again just long enough to see it had missed his spine and his heart was still pumping. He groaned, obviously in great pain. Hinata slid to a halt next to him, her hands feathering just over his body as she tried to find something she could do to help.

"Leave it in," Fū yelled from the other side of the clearing where she was crouching over Naruto-kun, "removing it will only increase bleeding and tissue damage, yeah? Just don't be stupid and move it or him and the medics will be along in a few minutes to take care of him and stuff. I passed them on the way here along with the Uchiha crows."

Sasuke-san obviously hadn't heard her or was too far out of it to care. He was starting to move his hands to the long piece of bone, obviously in an attempt to pull it out himself. "No!" Hinata shrieked, moving quickly to hold down his arms. He kept struggling, however, and seemed completely out of it.

Clenching her teeth, she activated her eyes for one more pain-filled second, then jūkened both of his arms numb and motionless, hitting all of the correct pressure points as fast as possible. Collapsing to her knees next to him, she sat panting for a minute, then shifted closer, bowing until her head almost touched the ground and her face was next to his.

"You came for me," she whispered into his ear, still bowed deeply beside him. His eyes were still closed in pain, but he seemed to have stilled to listen to her. "I d-don't understand why, but you risked so m-much to save me. Please. Please don't d-die, not because of me. I'm n-not worth it."

"Heh," Sasuke-san coughed, grimacing with his eyes still closed tight, "like I would, ugh, like I would die from something like this." Opening them, he glared at her, his eyes deep black jewels, cleared of the Sharingan at last.

"And who are you to judge me or my strength? You are," he stopped to hack and cough up blood for several seconds. "You are one hundred years too early to judge the worth of me or anything of mine. So shut up." Hinata started softly sobbing, her tears dripping onto the ground.

Taking a gasping breath, she lunged forward and clutched at his shirt with one hand and placed the other behind his head. She then carefully leaned over more to tightly hug his head to her soft chest. Sasuke was still unable to move with his arms disabled, so he simply lay stiffly in her arms. After a few moments he relaxed and sighed deeply.

She faintly heard more people reaching the edge of the forest. Haruno-san and Yamanaka-san were yelling something and she also heard what sounded like a lazily shouted reply from Nara-san. "So...annoying," she heard Sasuke-san say weakly into her breasts, but she didn't care and ignored it. He didn't seem to really have his heart in it that time.