PRAISE

CHAPTER 15

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple . . . From base to head, these colors represented the flow of chakra in the human body. This was common knowledge, one of the first lessons taught in the classroom. Where each color represented an emotion, a particular state of being, Hinata felt that if every chakra vein in her body were burning red. This was especially true for her back. After being blasted through several sheets of drywall and brick, it was amazing she could still walk, let alone fight.

Every part of her ached. Her chakra was low. The flat of her palms felt like they'd suffered third degree burns. This fight definitely put her two months of training to the test, and just as before she was ever grateful to Sasuke for his help. If she'd had time to worry about him, she would. But this was a matter of survival now, and things weren't looking too good. "Tired?" asked the shinobi. A tone so bland and unconcerned alarmed her. Wasn't he tired, even a little bit?

If this continued any more, her Byakugan would deactivate on its own. The strain was making her eyes blurry. If she survived, there was a very good chance she'd wake up blind by tomorrow morning. In her father's less experienced years, when he was in his teens and had been prone to rigorous training at the insistence of his own father, this was something that happened relatively often. He'd told her that himself.

Hinata had yet to experience this. Her father would say it's because she never trained hard enough, but this right here . . . if nothing else accomplished it, this would. For the moment she deactivated it.

They faced each other in the abandoned streets. This was a part of Konoha which had burned down half a year ago, and without the finances to rebuild it the inhabitants had just moved on. There was no one here to see her fall. Even so, when the moon smiled from behind a break in the clouds, shining blue light on the poor dilapidated square, it almost looked pretty. The momentary calm opened up her senses, and it surprised her when she caught a whiff of gin and rosemary. She recognized that smell.

"Why are you attacking the village?" Hinata took the opportunity to ask, and cleared her throat. "Why did you kidnap me? I-I'm of no use to you." That was more or less true. Even if her father deigned to retrieve her, he already had his heir.

"That is not important," the shinobi said. "The only concern you should have now is for your life. Or have you resigned?" Hinata's brow drew tight, eyes going wide. The blurriness disappeared and her shoulders jumped, as if being stuck through the back with an electric pike. 'Resigned?' It was her voice, and then it wasn't her voice.

'Are you giving up?' Sasuke.

Training, fighting, worrying . . . had that all been for nothing? The fractals of improvement, the seemingly insurmountable tasks, and the dreams! Did they mean nothing to her now? She heard Sasuke saying these things. 'If this is all you're going to give, then I was wrong about you Hinata. You weren't the student I thought you were. It looks like all the time we spent together . . .'

She smiled and put her index fingers together. "Byakugan!"

'was for nothing.'

"Never," she said quietly. The shinobi's mask shifted with a crease of his brow. "I owe him—everyone—enough not to give up. You probably wouldn't understand. If you want to stop me, then please kill me. Otherwise, defend yourself."

Loving Naruto hadn't been for nothing. She wanted to see him again. A ninja never gives up. If there was nothing Sasuke and Naruto liked about each other, even if there was nothing they shared in common, it was this one thought which linked them together. The three of them. Hinata braced herself with the Gentle Fist.

Thrusting herself on the curve of her toes she sprang to meet her enemy. She let the throwing stars from her holster fly in front of her. He leapt into the air to avoid it, pulling out a kunai of his own. She could see quite clearly the paper bombs that were attached and split herself into four.

Naruto.

Each bomb hit one of her shadow clones, exploding into white smoke which swept through the square. When it cleared, a whole army of kunai were raining down on her. She was quick with her battle stance. "Eight trigrams sixty-four palms!" Each kunai went sailing away from her body, stabbing the walls of abandoned shops and twisted trees.

Neji.

The shinobi met her again for close combat. He used a weapon this this time—a sword. The needles of chakra shooting from her palms formed into blades. She sliced and stabbed and countered with her hands, sending sparks of blue chakra flying everywhere. This went on for what seemed like forever, until her enemy started using his feet as well, which she dodged with springed jumps and cartwheels.

Kiba.

The sword sliced the rib of her jacket. She counter-blocked with her blade of chakra, right at his wrist, and the sword spinning into a half-collapsed window. It left her open to receive a blow to the stomach and another to the chest, which in turn send a spurt of blood from her mouth. Her recovery was quick. Attack, dodge, attack, dodge, attack, attack, attack. Endurance.

Sasuke.

But she was not a machine. Her pace did begin to slow down. Her strikes became dangerously inaccurate. As she continued to exchange blows she had to deactivate her Byakugan. That just about blinded her. The transition from light to dark was too much, and she wheeled.

The next blow was executed by two fingers dug into her abdomen. The chakra blazing from those fingers was every bit as potent as a steel blade, and she flew backward. The instantaneous sever of chakra flow was one of the most painful things she had ever experienced. It was customary for all Hyuga's to willingly submit to this, to know what it felt like, to know the full extent of the pain they delivered with their own hands, but this was not the same. As she lay there on her back unable to move and unable to breathe, she genuinely thought she was dead.

The sky tilted on an angle. The ground felt like it was gliding her along, like an ocean. The moon peaked out from behind another cloud, filling her blurring eyesight with light. She squinted and turned away sluggishly. Darkness shadowed over her again, a relief, but when she opened her eyes the shinobi was leaning over her. His hand hovered in the air, twitching spasmodically. When she had landed the blow that sent the sword flying, she knew she had severed the chakra flow in his wrist. A last resort. "You did not do poorly," he said.

Hinata smiled and coughed. Blood speckled her lips. "Is . . . that so?" she replied coarsely. "I'm very glad to hear that. You've never praise me before . . . father."

*AN*

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A bit of trivia: I dislike writing fight scenes