Birds chirped in the nearby trees as the team of shinobi travelled in the land of fire. Everything seemed to be peaceful, a perfect situation to complete any type of mission. Luckily for the ninja, no rain fell on their heads as they travelled to their destination. However, that did not mean their journey on the way back would be as warm and as quiet.
The village that the four ninja were required to go to was located on the outskirts of the border of the Land of Fire. It was known as the Hachō village. The village was a very peaceful one and therefore didn't require many ninjas. This means that they relied on other villages such as the leaf village whenever it came to missions that had the possibility of running into trouble. But this mission was surely not like that. It was a very low ranked mission which meant little to no danger for the shinobi. Because of this, Rin was certain that they would experience no danger entering the village.
When Rin and her genin handed the scroll over to the village, they were lucky enough to be offered a nights stay in a hotel in the village. Of course she accepted; The sun had began to set and she doubted that Naruto, Sasuke and Hinata would want to start heading back straight away without a break.
By the morning of the next day, all four genin were ready to leave the Hachō village. Rin has acquired a scroll to deliver back to her own village in the morning -most probably a reply to the scroll given to the village the night before. By the time the villagers had began to wake up, Rin and her team had already left.
"This mission was so boring. I wanted to fight some bad guys." Naruto sighed and yawned as he started to travel back to the Leaf Village.
Rin raised an eyebrow and looked behind her at the Jinjuriki. "I can guess how you wanted this mission to turn out but the majority of missions don't involve fighting enemies." She shook her head and looked forward again. "Besides, if you're so eager to fight then I'll train with you when we arrive back at the village."
Naruto glanced away from his Sensei and muttered, "It's not like I can attack you with full force during training since you're a girl."
Rin stopped leaping forward and rested her feet against the bark of the tree. She turned herself around on her heels and squinted at the Uzumaki. "Because I'm a girl? So if we were attacked by some 'bad guys' and they were women would you rather be killed or attack them?"
Unfortunately, Naruto didn't notice Rin had stopped moving and hit right into her back. If it wasn't for the slight chakra control he had, he would have fallen right off the branch. "What!? Uhmm oh err.." he took a few steps away from Rin and slowly looked up at her. "Well that's not really relevant, ya know."
"How is it not relevant." The jonin lent forward a little. "If you do-" Rin fell silent when she heard some rustling in a bush a couple hundred feet away. She looked over at Hinata and nodded over to the slightly moving bush.
If it were anyone else she had nodded to, they would have thought she was asking them to go over to the bush to inspect it. But Hinata didn't need to move to thoroughly inspect it. She placed her hands together to create a hand sign to activate her byakugan. She look over to the bush and gasped. Despite this sound of shock, it wasn't what was near the shrub that she was concerned about - It was Naruto.
Naruto had jumped towards the next branch to get a better view of what was in the bush. However, he nor Rin or Sasuke could see what Hinata could see. "No, Naruto-kun! Watch out!" The Hyuga hurled herself towards Naruto and grabbed hold of him, making them both fall to the ground instead of landing on the branch.
"What the heck was that for Hinata!?" Naruto whined and complained as he stood up. His question was then answered when an explosion was heard. As Naruto looked over to the direction of the explosion, his face went pale when he realised that Hinata saved him from, most likely, probable death.
"Hinata! Where are they?" Rin gave the two genin little time to get back onto their feet before she requested the information. She was almost certain that the movement in the bushes was just a trick. No. A trap.
As Hinata got back onto her feet, she quickly looked around the area in search for the culprit or culprits. "Ah! They're coming this way. There's three of them and they're about a couple of hundred metres away from you from behind."
Naruto slowly stood up after his saviour. Luckily, none of them landed on the floor in an awkward way that would have damaged any muscles or bones. He couldn't help but sence the adrenaline pumping through his body despite it being mixed with fear. He was reminded of the time in the forest with Mizuki.
The heart rate of the jonin began to increase. She bit her bottom lip and muttered, "shit." Why were these ninja's attacking them? What could they possibly want? Rin's eyes widen in slight fear at the possibility of them wanting the Tailed Beast. Yes, the secrecy of Naruto being the Jinjuriki was kept to it's best in the village but this didn't stop villagers telling acquaintances in other lands about the identity of the Nine Tails' Jinjuriki.
Before Rin could finish with her thoughts, the Uchiha next to her activated his sharingan and went in the direction that Hinata had informed them that the ninja were approaching them from.
Not even a glimpse of their attackers was seen by Sasuke before his jonin appeared in front of him and grabbed hold of him. She forced him to go back to the other two genin with her. Sasuke was shocked at her speed; she seemed to appear as fast as the Hokage or a Uchiha that he had known to have speed close to The Yellow Flash.
"Are you really that foolish Sasuke?" Rin glared at her student slightly. "These three ninja could be of jonin level of higher. You can't just jump straight into battle when knowing nothing about the enemy. So to begin with, we'll be more defensive than o-" A chill travelled through her spine and she quickly turned her head around. The enemy had arrived.
The byakugan had been deceived. There was not three ninjas but five. Hinata looked at the five strangers in confusion and fear whilst she thought to herself, 'I can see all five of their chakra systems but I could only sense three of them earlier. I... I had no idea that it was possible to trick the byakugan like this. But how did they do that?'
One of the ninja stepped forward. None of them wore a ninja headband, suggesting that they were a group of rouge ninja. The ninja smirked and held his hand out as he looked at the team of three genin and one jonin. "Hand over the byakugan and sharingan and no fighting will have to take place."
Rin looked at the head ninja shocked and slightly disgusted. "Is there any point in giving a command like that? No one would agree to something so ridiculous." Rin gritted her teeth. So it wasn't the Nine Tails they were after, it was the visual power the team held instead.
The man shook his head and chuckled. "It was worth a try. I was allowing you to chose an option where no blood had to be shed. But it seems that you are some kind of sadist." He grabbed hold of one of his kunai and ran towards the jonin.
Rin made hand signs as fast as she could when she realised the ninja was running towards her. "Water style: Water Bullets." She concentrated the chakra to the back of her throat then released they heavily concentrated chakra in the form of water.
Each bullet of water was dodged by the man. He ducked and swayed side to side when he needed to. He then took a lunge forward and slashed his kunai against Rin's throat.
Blood spilled out of the wound out of the wound whilst Rin's eyes widened in shock. However, to little surprise to the ninja, 'Rin' disappeared in a could of pure cloud and appeared as a log. She man smirked and looked around him as he realised all four of the ninja had gone. "If you had forgotten, there was another four sets of eyes watching you four whilst I attacked. You won't be able to hide for long." All five rouge ninja dispersed into different different directions to look for the ninja.
Eventually, each rouge had found each member of Team 8. One rouge each had found a genin and the other two, luckily, were Rin's problem. But surely Rin did not allow her team to leave each other's sight. Could it be that they lost sight of each other?
Hinata gulped and trembled as she tried to look intimidating towards the man, with brown hair and a scar across his forehead, who she was destined to find. Even if she found the rest of her team with her byakugan, she had ran out of time to try to reach then.
The man smirked as he stared down at the Hyuga. "My my, I didn't know that I would be so lucky today. Who would have thought I would be the one to give the byakugan to Saso-" He covered his mouth. "Whoops, I almost gave away the name of my master. Silly my."
Beads of sweat began to travel down Hinata's cheeks as she positioned herself into a fighting stance. She still hadn't said a word to her opponent.
The man chuckled. "My name is Gin by the way - I think it's necessary for you to know the name of your killer. But you don't need to tell me your name, Hinata." He smirked as he grabbed two kunai and two shiruken.
Both of the kunais and shiruken were thrown in the direction of the Hyuga. However, whilst they were in midair each item multiplied, then multiplied again. Instead of four weapons, there was now 16 sharp objects hurdling their way to the girl. Gin must have used some sort of doppelganger jutsu on the weapons before throwing them.
Despite this sudden change in amount of weapons, Hinata was prepared. She began to move her hands in multiple directions which made her chakra leak out in the form of countless, thin, blue lines. "Protective Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms."
As each kunai and shiruken came into contact with the shield, they dropped to the floor effortlessly. It was as if the lines of chakra absorbed the impact the weapons caused and left them with no energy left."
"Are you sure that was a wise decision? You used all of that precious chakra to deflect a few pieces of metal." Gin chuckled and shook his head as he picked up one last kunai and tossed it into the air.
As the mere kunai was thrown into the air, it multiplied in amount by twenty. But it didn't stop there, as each kunai froze in midair to re-position itself to aim towards the Hyuga's chest -they were being controlled like puppets.
Hinata knew what to do straight away. As soon as the weapons gained momentum, she once again formed the defensive lines of chakra around her. She was hoping that the rouge ninja couldn't use this unknown jutsu on a larger scale. This was because as the amount of objects needing to be reflected increases, the movement of her hands had to increase. However, she was already at her limit at how fast she could move her hands. If Gin were to throw anymore kunai simultaneously, it would mean that Hinata's projective shield would threaten not being able to deflect every single object.
"Checkmate." After Hinata had stopped her jutsu, Gin appeared behind her. He quickly grabbed her and held her with his arm around her neck which left her in a defenceless position. He sighs and smirks. "However, you're in luck! I've been told specifically not to harm you more than needed. So I'll have to carry your living body instead of dragging your dead body."
The Hyuga looked up at the strange man in fear whilst her heart threatened to rip out of her chest due to how hard it was pounding.
Sasuke blocked every hit the rouge shinobi delivered to him. In addition to this, the rouge ninja also blocked or dodged every attack Sasuke created. Both ninjas were in stalemate.
The Uchiha swung a kick towards the stranger's chest but it was blocked with his arms. The stranger attempted to take advantage of the situation by trying to grab Sasuke's leg. Despite the quick movement, the ninja failed because of the power of the sharingan. Sasuke quickly hurled himself backwards so the rouge ninja didn't grab a single hair off him.
As the rouge ninja landed swiftly onto the ground. She chuckled softly. The woman, who was known as Ikumi, held her hand out to the Uchiha. "Surely you've realised I've been holding back this whole time. I'll warn you one last time: just come with me and all this pointless fighting will end."
"I think it is I who has been holding back." Sasuke gritted his teeth and quickly formed the hand signs to activate a jutsu. "Fire Style: Fire Ball Jutsu." He inhaled and concentrated his chakra into the back of his throat, just like Rin did earlier. However, it wasn't water that was released from his body. Instead, a magnificent ball of flames surrounded the area where Ikumi stood.
After a few seconds, the ball of fire dispersed and left a few plants to burn in the aftermath. There was no sign of Ikumi. Surely the ball of fire didn't completely disintegrate the rouge ninja. Whilst that thought ran through the boy's head, a chill stabbed into his back despite the immense heat left by the fire.
"Surely you didn't think such a cliché Uchiha jutsu would catch me off guard?" Iukmi pressed her hand against Sasuke's back which caused the boy to be hurled forward a few feet and then fall to the ground; a large amount of chakra was obviously built up in the woman's hand and then released all at one moment to make Sasuke fly forwards.
Straight after the blow, Sasuke attempted to get back onto his feet. However, his body now felt like it weighed a hundred times more then it did a few seconds ago. Whatever move Iukmi just used, it seemed to do more then just repel the Uchiha forward. Sasuke was now defenceless, he couldn't even lift an arm as he lay down on the dirt.
Naruto swung a kick at his rouge ninja. Then a punch to the chest. Then an elbow to the face. His use of he Shadow Clone Jutsu had improved quite a lot ever since he became a genin - he could now control how much chakra each clone received when he created them. Right now, the rouge ninja was fighting three Narutos simultaneously.
No substitution jutsu was used, the rouge ninja was directly hit by Naruto. He grunted qnd gritted his teeth as he glared at the Jinjuriki. He grabbed him by the leg and threw him towards a tree.
A crack was heard as Naruto's back hit against the tree. Fortunately, it was just a mere clone. Naruto and his last remaining clone looked up at the rouge ninja.
Naruto's opponent, Jinta, snarled at the young genin. "You're really starting to piss me off. Do you really only know that one jutsu?" He clenched his fists. His orders were to capture the yellow haired brat but not kill him; Jinta found this extremely difficult with his short temper.
"No, I know a few more. But I can use the shadow clone jutsu the best so I think I'll keep with it for the time being." However, like all ninja, Naruto did have a limit to the amount of chakra he could use. It was clear to him that he was becoming more dangerously close to that limit. If he were to exceed that limit, it was rumoured that death would be waiting for you. But as he had a Tailed Beast inside of him, not many people could even comprehend what would happen after be used up all of his chakra.
Jinta smirked through his anger. He knew straight away that the boy was running low on chakra. He defiantly had the upper hand in the situation now. All he had to do was wait for the fool to exhausted himself then knock him out cold with one hit.
In another unidentified area of the forest, Rin was panting heavily as she slumped against a tree. If she was having this much trouble with these two rouge ninjas, then it was most likely that her genin were facing the same difficulty. She held her arm and panted heavily, exhausted from her failed attempt of a offensive attack which consequently forced her to retreat and hide from the two rouge ninjas that were hunting for her.
Hinata, Sasuke, Naruto and Rin. All four of them were in a troubled situation with no apparent way of achieving a victory. The rouge ninjas had them either exhausted or trapped. They may have said their motives were to collect they visual powers contained in the team but it was more likely that their lust for power was focused on something much more dangerous; a beast that would work well alongside one of the visual powers the seemed so determined to collect.