The Dogs of War: Team Eight
Chapter Seven: The Dogs Do Dare Dream and Devote!
Akamaru balanced on Kiba's head as he walked out of the door of the vet. The dog opened his mouth and shook his tail in enjoyment of the fresh air breeze. The young pup barked. "You're too old for that." The dog barked again. "Not in public, I don't want to sing right now." Kiba said. Akaramu insisted, so he put his dog down on the table and took both front paws in his hands. Akaramu stood up with Kiba's support. "Ok. Do you remember your lines?"
The dog barked twice. "This used to be fun for me too when the girls had paid attention to this routine." Kiba scowled. They both started to hop from one leg to the other. "How much is that doggy in the window?" He sung. Akaramu added: "Woof, Woof!"
"Huh?" Sasuke stopped so he could interject. Kiba looked over to Sasuke. "You said you only did that for the girls."
Before Kiba could explain his excuse, Sasuke had walked away from them. Kiba got so close to Akamaru that there was a noticable twitch in his right eyebrow. His dog cowarded. "Did you know what just happened to us?" He said in a mencing low tone. He stood back and pointed a finger at his dog. "We dropped down a whole peg!" His hand opened and Akamaru jumped in Kiba's fold. "As long as you're by my side."
Akamaru returned to Kiba's head. "We need a new song." Kiba put a hand over his chin. "Hmmm? I got it. Bark twice after every line." Kiba started to sing. "The dogs of war don't negotiate /The dogs of war won't capitulate, /They will take and you will give, /And you must die so that they may live /You can knock at any door, /But wherever you go, you know they've been there before /Well winners can lose and things can get strained /But whatever you change, you know the dogs remain."
When they finished singing, they arrived at the hospital. In the hall where Shino's room was, Ino sat on a chair with a snowball cactus on her lap. "What are you doing given Shino a cactus?" Kiba asked standing next to her.
"Well, hello to you too!" She snapped and then leaned back in her chair. "Akamaru."
"I hate it when she acknowledges my dog but not me." He reflected. Shino's father entered the hallway from his son's room. "So, how is that bed bug?"
"He will endure. Alas, his bugs have departed from him and so has his personal memories." He explained. "With the contract our clan has with the bugs, they store memories to give us more capacity to control the bugs."
"Ah, I was wondering why Shino had a lack of personality." Kiba stated.
"Umm... I am going to have to write that down." He spoke and walked down the hall. "The bugs have left his room, so you can visit him now."
"Tell me more about your clan." Kiba demanded and followed the leader of the clan. Ino breathe sighed in relief and entered the room. Shino lied in bed with a respirator over his mouth and nose. Fog covered and disappeared from the inside of the clear plastic dome. Small red blemishes draped his body. She took a seat next to his bed on the side of his broken arm that casted in a sling.
"Why didn't you tell me?" She asked. She got up and walked to the door then turned around to him. "You wouldn't be able to answer that. You wouldn't remember me, and you wouldn't remember your promise to me."
A-------------------
Kiba departed from the old man when Hinata's room put a crossroad in their path. His dog entered the room first. "Hey, Hinata!" Kiba said. Hinata looked at him with her fully filled blue eyes. "Glad to hear you got your eye sight back."
"I'm happy that the doctors got the bugs out of my eyes too." She remarked. Akamaru pawed Kiba's leg and barked.
"You're right!" Kiba nodded to Akamaru and left.
Hinata rushed to the door. "What is he right about?"
Akamaru planted his nose to the ground. "Where are they dog?" Kiba asked. He continued leading until he got to the first floor where a doctor in a light teal garment picked up a mental tray. Kiba blocked the guys path and peered into the tray. "They're here." He scooped them up in his hand. "I wonder what memories they hold?"
The door to the elevator opened and Ino bumped into Kiba. "Yeah, Ino." Kiba said. "Have you ever entered the mind of an animal?"
"Sure, for one mission..." she attempted to tell him the whole story but it would have to wait for another time.
"Great! How about entering into Shino's bugs?" Kiba opened his hand.
"I guess it wouldn't hurt." She caught the bugs in her vision then used her hands to make a triangle and focus in on one. "Body replacement jutsu!"
She stumbled but recomposed herself quickly and entered the other bugs. "How did these bugs survive?"
"Shino must have ordered them to hide in Hinata's eyes." Kiba guessed.
"Wow!" She lended towards Kiba and looked into his palm crawling with the four bugs. "What commitment! Be careful to give these back to him."
"What memories are they?"
"One memory is about Kurenai telling him the function of a team. The next one I saw was based in the Academy where you said that you were the leader. And third one possessed a private moment between Hinata and him." Ino stated. "The last one is sort of weird. I don't know what relevence it has." She tapped her foot impatiently. "Eureka!" Her hand brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. The insight prompted her to gloat to herself: "Shikamaru would never have figured this out. Shino had better remember his promise."
"Ino?" Kiba said.
"Oh." Ino stated. She rubbed her nose and then pulled a kleenex out of her pocket. "You should blow your nose."
"What?!" Kiba grabbed the kleenex from her and blew. His body slanted back when she took the Kleenex from him. She handed him another one. "Ok."
She took the kleenex again. "You're okay now."
Kiba exited the elevator. Ino pressed a button and the doors slid close. Kiba looked in his palm then crushed the bugs in his fist.
B-------------------
Kurenai stepped to the side to allow a group of ninjas to pass her in the hall, chatting about their new missions. "I did what I had to do," she convinced herself.
The red doors were shut. She tighted the knot of her head protector. Her slow action to open the door caused a creak and when she slid through the small gap she had opened, the door slammed shut with a loud bang, drawing attention of the people in the room. She walked to the front and sat down in front of the Hokage whose face draped in smoke from his pipe. "You have put your team at risk that belongs to another group of ninjas." Hokage had his hat off, showing his wrinkled bald forehead and white hair that held on to the sides and back of his head. "Geez, today, ninjas are notably insubordinate and still most precious to me." He emptied his pipe in an astray. "Considering your team's position, I need you to capture an S-class ninja and bring her back to the hospital. Here is your briefing."
He handed her a scroll. "Who will train my team?"
"Due to the lost of the memory of Shino, Master Aburame will instruct your group." He responded.
"Wouldn't it be safer if the group came with me on my mission?" She asked.
C-------------------
In the front yard of the Hospital, Hinata rested Shino against a tree. She kneeled down next to him and felt his pale forehead with her hand. "Shino you shouldn't fight Sasuke right now." Hinata pleded. "He is willing to wait until you heal."
Sasuke stood still opposing them. He affirmed his conclusion he had on Shino, "Foolish!"
Shino's grey overcoat was snipped up half way so that he could have move for his broken arm. "I am without a self. What fortune or disaster can cling to me?" Shino asked. "This opponent says that he has unfinished business with me, and I can bring him harmory." He looked up and recalled Sasuke's comment: "Shino, I have always been the one who accepts the challenges of others, but today, for the first time, I challenge another. This is you, we will fight and finish what we started when you're ready."
Shino slowly got up with the help of Hinata. He held out his good arm towards Sasuke. Sasuke's spine shuddered. "He can't be serious!" Sasuke remarked. Shino stood in a slump and waited for Sasuke to fight. "WHAT is he hiding from me?!" He shook his head. "I give up."
Shino collapsed against the tree. "Had he defeated himself, what value would he place on me?"
D-------------------
Restraints wrapped around Shino to keep him in his bed. He reflected on his memories, the one that he had engraved to his own mind:
The early morning following the battle had carried Shino noose around the neck to a windy plane where the Loner had thrown him on the ground. Shino had held his neck coughing for relief. The maggots of him that had dispensed along their path would return to reveal that none had followed.
"When I was your age, I had fought in a battle between two villages." Spoke the Loner. "Ordinary soldiers exalted from the fields let slip their blood to fix the tear of a promise of bond untreated. The lords of the villages promised to marry their children, but this had not happened."
"If you are the origin of my clan, why had your numbers been so small?" Shino had inquired regaining his breath. "It has been many generations."
"I have had to rebuild by the fold from the pursuits of ninjas coveting my immorality." He had said. "I need an Aburame member to stop this, but you do not surrender. You are not the first I have taken, but be the last."
"My bugs can kill the larva," Shino had stated, "though I refuse to kill a person belonging to my clan."
"You have not had as long as I have to think about it." The loner had replied. "I do not have that problem."
A hive landed in Shino's lap and errupted with a swarm of bees. "Release your bugs."
E-------------------
Kiba and Hinata sat on a stone. In the red glow of the early morning, Kiba raised his rough hand up to his mouth and yawned. Their teacher had left them again, and this time she would not have them participate. Hinata slipped on the straw of her juice box and patted her fingers against the cardboard. Appearing before them, kneeled down showing a short spherical gourd balancing on his back, Shino's father stood up and looked over Kiba and Hinata through his dark black glasses. "Ciao." Shino's father said.
"You're are teacher!" Kiba stood up and grabbed into his hair.
"Good morning," Hinata said, "What is your name? What should we call you?"
"My name?" He pulled out a notebook out of his pocket that fit into his palm. He flipped through the pages. "I have yet to find where I wrote my name. Sage should suffice. It has been what people have called me."
"How can you be a sage when you don't even know your own name?" Kiba asked.
"Kiba, on what do you stand?" The sage asked.
"A rock." He replied.
"Do you think the rock named itself?" The sage retrieved a treat from his pocket, and with the other hand raised it down to direct Kiba to sit. When he complied, the sage tossed him the treat. "Good boy."
"This is going to be fun," Kiba stated while chewing on the treat. Hinata removed herself from her daze and nodded with a smile. Kiba swallowed. "Can I have another one?"
"I have something better for you." The sage pointed off into the forest. "You will find the antidote in that direction."
"Antidote?" Kiba puzzled.
"For your poison." He clarified. Kiba yelled and jumped over Hinata who fell to her back. She rolled off the rock and followed him. "They are well motivated."
E-------------------
The moonlight poured through the trees and glittered in the rippling waters of a shallow stream shedding from a trickling waterfall. Kiba pooled water into his cupped hands and slipped. Hinata dropped her burning face into the water. When she pulled out, she wiped the side of her eyes with her sleeve. Two red splots lined with small blue veins shelved her eyes. "Give up, Hinata," Kiba urged her. "He had put the antidote too far away for us to get it."
"No," she said. A peel of skin covered her sleeve. She felt her pulsating face and blood covered her hands. Her eyes cracked and split. She crawled over to him and dragged him out of the water, scraping her shins and knees on the icy unsmooth stones. She sat him up and put his arm around her back. Picking him up, the stones under her feet unbalanced her but she managed to hold Kiba. "Now walk."
"Wait," he reached into his pocket of the outside of where Hinata held him, and she had to dig her shoulder into his rips to hold him. He displayed two soldier pills in his hands. "Take them and save yourself."
Kiba fell over and knocked Hinata down into a stalk of dry tall weeds.
Hidden in the bushes over the waterfall, the sage watched Hinata draw herself towards Kiba. "I've gone too easy on them."
Hinata opened Kiba's fist and removed the pills. She opened Kiba's mouth and placed it under his tongue and swallow the other one. Her ears filled with a flood and she clasped her hands around her head. "There was never poison in the treat." The sage said. Kiba, who had stood up and forced his breaths with a long deep rattle, clutched his teeth and sprang at him. The sage departed in a mass of bugs. Kiba crushed two stones that he landed on and looked around to see that the sage had surrounded them. Each sage held throwing stars ready to throw. The ambush was released and when Hinata opened her eyes, she notice Kiba protecting her. She rolled him off of her and saw that the next batch was coming.
E-------------------
Hinata and Kiba woke up on the stone with Kurenai standing where the sage had stood. The two held eachother. "ENOUGH!" Kurenai yelled. Kiba slowly pushed Hinata away and saw that she had no injuries.
"Genjutsu?" Kiba said.
"Correct," the genjutsu master Kurenai revealed. "Shino's father will be training you two tomorrow, and I have given you a glimpse of his method."
"That's why he didn't say his name, because you don't know it." Hinata hinted.
"That is true," Kurenai crossed her arms, "but he did tell me that he had lost his name. If you don't want to go through something similar, but more real than today, then give up being a ninja. The sage will demand more from you. I have a mission to attend to, I hope that I will be returning to my students."
Kurenai disappeared. "Woah." Kiba wiped his eyes. "I wouldn't expect training to be so hard."
"Yeah," Hinata said.
F-------------------
"Had you done as I required of you?" The sage asked Kurenai as they sat at a table outside a tea shop.
"I do not agree with it, but yes I had."
"They will come to me." The sage remarked. "Confucius said, 'To live along the benevolent is good. To choose not to be with the benevolent... of this I know not!'"
"Kiba and Hinata may not think you benevolent." Kurenai laughed.
With two dry chuckles, the sage said, "But what of themselves? Will friends willing to scarifice for one another ever have their bonds broken?"
-------- End of Chapter Seven ------------
Next Chapter: Next day, Hinata and Kiba will have to endure what the sage has set for them. Other questions will be revealed, like about what the forth surviving memory had been. Kurenai will also start her mission.
Notes: Kiba was singing "Dogs of War" by Pink Floyd.
There you go, if you want to know Shino's father name, he doesn't know either. Maybe one day he will find the slip of paper on which he wrote his name.
Predictions: The episode with the Loner will be cleared up as well as why Shino has lost all of his bugs and memories. I think it is pretty clear already, but there is nothing really to predict, except that a fanfiction by me, which follows along the line of this fanfiction, will be focused on team ten (Shikamaru, Ino, Choji) and you should go and read it.
Chapter Seven: The Dogs Do Dare Dream and Devote!
Akamaru balanced on Kiba's head as he walked out of the door of the vet. The dog opened his mouth and shook his tail in enjoyment of the fresh air breeze. The young pup barked. "You're too old for that." The dog barked again. "Not in public, I don't want to sing right now." Kiba said. Akaramu insisted, so he put his dog down on the table and took both front paws in his hands. Akaramu stood up with Kiba's support. "Ok. Do you remember your lines?"
The dog barked twice. "This used to be fun for me too when the girls had paid attention to this routine." Kiba scowled. They both started to hop from one leg to the other. "How much is that doggy in the window?" He sung. Akaramu added: "Woof, Woof!"
"Huh?" Sasuke stopped so he could interject. Kiba looked over to Sasuke. "You said you only did that for the girls."
Before Kiba could explain his excuse, Sasuke had walked away from them. Kiba got so close to Akamaru that there was a noticable twitch in his right eyebrow. His dog cowarded. "Did you know what just happened to us?" He said in a mencing low tone. He stood back and pointed a finger at his dog. "We dropped down a whole peg!" His hand opened and Akamaru jumped in Kiba's fold. "As long as you're by my side."
Akamaru returned to Kiba's head. "We need a new song." Kiba put a hand over his chin. "Hmmm? I got it. Bark twice after every line." Kiba started to sing. "The dogs of war don't negotiate /The dogs of war won't capitulate, /They will take and you will give, /And you must die so that they may live /You can knock at any door, /But wherever you go, you know they've been there before /Well winners can lose and things can get strained /But whatever you change, you know the dogs remain."
When they finished singing, they arrived at the hospital. In the hall where Shino's room was, Ino sat on a chair with a snowball cactus on her lap. "What are you doing given Shino a cactus?" Kiba asked standing next to her.
"Well, hello to you too!" She snapped and then leaned back in her chair. "Akamaru."
"I hate it when she acknowledges my dog but not me." He reflected. Shino's father entered the hallway from his son's room. "So, how is that bed bug?"
"He will endure. Alas, his bugs have departed from him and so has his personal memories." He explained. "With the contract our clan has with the bugs, they store memories to give us more capacity to control the bugs."
"Ah, I was wondering why Shino had a lack of personality." Kiba stated.
"Umm... I am going to have to write that down." He spoke and walked down the hall. "The bugs have left his room, so you can visit him now."
"Tell me more about your clan." Kiba demanded and followed the leader of the clan. Ino breathe sighed in relief and entered the room. Shino lied in bed with a respirator over his mouth and nose. Fog covered and disappeared from the inside of the clear plastic dome. Small red blemishes draped his body. She took a seat next to his bed on the side of his broken arm that casted in a sling.
"Why didn't you tell me?" She asked. She got up and walked to the door then turned around to him. "You wouldn't be able to answer that. You wouldn't remember me, and you wouldn't remember your promise to me."
A-------------------
Kiba departed from the old man when Hinata's room put a crossroad in their path. His dog entered the room first. "Hey, Hinata!" Kiba said. Hinata looked at him with her fully filled blue eyes. "Glad to hear you got your eye sight back."
"I'm happy that the doctors got the bugs out of my eyes too." She remarked. Akamaru pawed Kiba's leg and barked.
"You're right!" Kiba nodded to Akamaru and left.
Hinata rushed to the door. "What is he right about?"
Akamaru planted his nose to the ground. "Where are they dog?" Kiba asked. He continued leading until he got to the first floor where a doctor in a light teal garment picked up a mental tray. Kiba blocked the guys path and peered into the tray. "They're here." He scooped them up in his hand. "I wonder what memories they hold?"
The door to the elevator opened and Ino bumped into Kiba. "Yeah, Ino." Kiba said. "Have you ever entered the mind of an animal?"
"Sure, for one mission..." she attempted to tell him the whole story but it would have to wait for another time.
"Great! How about entering into Shino's bugs?" Kiba opened his hand.
"I guess it wouldn't hurt." She caught the bugs in her vision then used her hands to make a triangle and focus in on one. "Body replacement jutsu!"
She stumbled but recomposed herself quickly and entered the other bugs. "How did these bugs survive?"
"Shino must have ordered them to hide in Hinata's eyes." Kiba guessed.
"Wow!" She lended towards Kiba and looked into his palm crawling with the four bugs. "What commitment! Be careful to give these back to him."
"What memories are they?"
"One memory is about Kurenai telling him the function of a team. The next one I saw was based in the Academy where you said that you were the leader. And third one possessed a private moment between Hinata and him." Ino stated. "The last one is sort of weird. I don't know what relevence it has." She tapped her foot impatiently. "Eureka!" Her hand brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. The insight prompted her to gloat to herself: "Shikamaru would never have figured this out. Shino had better remember his promise."
"Ino?" Kiba said.
"Oh." Ino stated. She rubbed her nose and then pulled a kleenex out of her pocket. "You should blow your nose."
"What?!" Kiba grabbed the kleenex from her and blew. His body slanted back when she took the Kleenex from him. She handed him another one. "Ok."
She took the kleenex again. "You're okay now."
Kiba exited the elevator. Ino pressed a button and the doors slid close. Kiba looked in his palm then crushed the bugs in his fist.
B-------------------
Kurenai stepped to the side to allow a group of ninjas to pass her in the hall, chatting about their new missions. "I did what I had to do," she convinced herself.
The red doors were shut. She tighted the knot of her head protector. Her slow action to open the door caused a creak and when she slid through the small gap she had opened, the door slammed shut with a loud bang, drawing attention of the people in the room. She walked to the front and sat down in front of the Hokage whose face draped in smoke from his pipe. "You have put your team at risk that belongs to another group of ninjas." Hokage had his hat off, showing his wrinkled bald forehead and white hair that held on to the sides and back of his head. "Geez, today, ninjas are notably insubordinate and still most precious to me." He emptied his pipe in an astray. "Considering your team's position, I need you to capture an S-class ninja and bring her back to the hospital. Here is your briefing."
He handed her a scroll. "Who will train my team?"
"Due to the lost of the memory of Shino, Master Aburame will instruct your group." He responded.
"Wouldn't it be safer if the group came with me on my mission?" She asked.
C-------------------
In the front yard of the Hospital, Hinata rested Shino against a tree. She kneeled down next to him and felt his pale forehead with her hand. "Shino you shouldn't fight Sasuke right now." Hinata pleded. "He is willing to wait until you heal."
Sasuke stood still opposing them. He affirmed his conclusion he had on Shino, "Foolish!"
Shino's grey overcoat was snipped up half way so that he could have move for his broken arm. "I am without a self. What fortune or disaster can cling to me?" Shino asked. "This opponent says that he has unfinished business with me, and I can bring him harmory." He looked up and recalled Sasuke's comment: "Shino, I have always been the one who accepts the challenges of others, but today, for the first time, I challenge another. This is you, we will fight and finish what we started when you're ready."
Shino slowly got up with the help of Hinata. He held out his good arm towards Sasuke. Sasuke's spine shuddered. "He can't be serious!" Sasuke remarked. Shino stood in a slump and waited for Sasuke to fight. "WHAT is he hiding from me?!" He shook his head. "I give up."
Shino collapsed against the tree. "Had he defeated himself, what value would he place on me?"
D-------------------
Restraints wrapped around Shino to keep him in his bed. He reflected on his memories, the one that he had engraved to his own mind:
The early morning following the battle had carried Shino noose around the neck to a windy plane where the Loner had thrown him on the ground. Shino had held his neck coughing for relief. The maggots of him that had dispensed along their path would return to reveal that none had followed.
"When I was your age, I had fought in a battle between two villages." Spoke the Loner. "Ordinary soldiers exalted from the fields let slip their blood to fix the tear of a promise of bond untreated. The lords of the villages promised to marry their children, but this had not happened."
"If you are the origin of my clan, why had your numbers been so small?" Shino had inquired regaining his breath. "It has been many generations."
"I have had to rebuild by the fold from the pursuits of ninjas coveting my immorality." He had said. "I need an Aburame member to stop this, but you do not surrender. You are not the first I have taken, but be the last."
"My bugs can kill the larva," Shino had stated, "though I refuse to kill a person belonging to my clan."
"You have not had as long as I have to think about it." The loner had replied. "I do not have that problem."
A hive landed in Shino's lap and errupted with a swarm of bees. "Release your bugs."
E-------------------
Kiba and Hinata sat on a stone. In the red glow of the early morning, Kiba raised his rough hand up to his mouth and yawned. Their teacher had left them again, and this time she would not have them participate. Hinata slipped on the straw of her juice box and patted her fingers against the cardboard. Appearing before them, kneeled down showing a short spherical gourd balancing on his back, Shino's father stood up and looked over Kiba and Hinata through his dark black glasses. "Ciao." Shino's father said.
"You're are teacher!" Kiba stood up and grabbed into his hair.
"Good morning," Hinata said, "What is your name? What should we call you?"
"My name?" He pulled out a notebook out of his pocket that fit into his palm. He flipped through the pages. "I have yet to find where I wrote my name. Sage should suffice. It has been what people have called me."
"How can you be a sage when you don't even know your own name?" Kiba asked.
"Kiba, on what do you stand?" The sage asked.
"A rock." He replied.
"Do you think the rock named itself?" The sage retrieved a treat from his pocket, and with the other hand raised it down to direct Kiba to sit. When he complied, the sage tossed him the treat. "Good boy."
"This is going to be fun," Kiba stated while chewing on the treat. Hinata removed herself from her daze and nodded with a smile. Kiba swallowed. "Can I have another one?"
"I have something better for you." The sage pointed off into the forest. "You will find the antidote in that direction."
"Antidote?" Kiba puzzled.
"For your poison." He clarified. Kiba yelled and jumped over Hinata who fell to her back. She rolled off the rock and followed him. "They are well motivated."
E-------------------
The moonlight poured through the trees and glittered in the rippling waters of a shallow stream shedding from a trickling waterfall. Kiba pooled water into his cupped hands and slipped. Hinata dropped her burning face into the water. When she pulled out, she wiped the side of her eyes with her sleeve. Two red splots lined with small blue veins shelved her eyes. "Give up, Hinata," Kiba urged her. "He had put the antidote too far away for us to get it."
"No," she said. A peel of skin covered her sleeve. She felt her pulsating face and blood covered her hands. Her eyes cracked and split. She crawled over to him and dragged him out of the water, scraping her shins and knees on the icy unsmooth stones. She sat him up and put his arm around her back. Picking him up, the stones under her feet unbalanced her but she managed to hold Kiba. "Now walk."
"Wait," he reached into his pocket of the outside of where Hinata held him, and she had to dig her shoulder into his rips to hold him. He displayed two soldier pills in his hands. "Take them and save yourself."
Kiba fell over and knocked Hinata down into a stalk of dry tall weeds.
Hidden in the bushes over the waterfall, the sage watched Hinata draw herself towards Kiba. "I've gone too easy on them."
Hinata opened Kiba's fist and removed the pills. She opened Kiba's mouth and placed it under his tongue and swallow the other one. Her ears filled with a flood and she clasped her hands around her head. "There was never poison in the treat." The sage said. Kiba, who had stood up and forced his breaths with a long deep rattle, clutched his teeth and sprang at him. The sage departed in a mass of bugs. Kiba crushed two stones that he landed on and looked around to see that the sage had surrounded them. Each sage held throwing stars ready to throw. The ambush was released and when Hinata opened her eyes, she notice Kiba protecting her. She rolled him off of her and saw that the next batch was coming.
E-------------------
Hinata and Kiba woke up on the stone with Kurenai standing where the sage had stood. The two held eachother. "ENOUGH!" Kurenai yelled. Kiba slowly pushed Hinata away and saw that she had no injuries.
"Genjutsu?" Kiba said.
"Correct," the genjutsu master Kurenai revealed. "Shino's father will be training you two tomorrow, and I have given you a glimpse of his method."
"That's why he didn't say his name, because you don't know it." Hinata hinted.
"That is true," Kurenai crossed her arms, "but he did tell me that he had lost his name. If you don't want to go through something similar, but more real than today, then give up being a ninja. The sage will demand more from you. I have a mission to attend to, I hope that I will be returning to my students."
Kurenai disappeared. "Woah." Kiba wiped his eyes. "I wouldn't expect training to be so hard."
"Yeah," Hinata said.
F-------------------
"Had you done as I required of you?" The sage asked Kurenai as they sat at a table outside a tea shop.
"I do not agree with it, but yes I had."
"They will come to me." The sage remarked. "Confucius said, 'To live along the benevolent is good. To choose not to be with the benevolent... of this I know not!'"
"Kiba and Hinata may not think you benevolent." Kurenai laughed.
With two dry chuckles, the sage said, "But what of themselves? Will friends willing to scarifice for one another ever have their bonds broken?"
-------- End of Chapter Seven ------------
Next Chapter: Next day, Hinata and Kiba will have to endure what the sage has set for them. Other questions will be revealed, like about what the forth surviving memory had been. Kurenai will also start her mission.
Notes: Kiba was singing "Dogs of War" by Pink Floyd.
There you go, if you want to know Shino's father name, he doesn't know either. Maybe one day he will find the slip of paper on which he wrote his name.
Predictions: The episode with the Loner will be cleared up as well as why Shino has lost all of his bugs and memories. I think it is pretty clear already, but there is nothing really to predict, except that a fanfiction by me, which follows along the line of this fanfiction, will be focused on team ten (Shikamaru, Ino, Choji) and you should go and read it.