Because I Love You - Chasing After You

by The Flare Blade

Hiruzen knew that Tazuna's request was much more dangerous and important than it first appeared to be. He needed experienced ninja for the mission, but his hands were tied because of politics... until he sees a loophole. Using an educational project as cover, he will send two teams to Wave! A Naruto retelling with Hinata as a main character but with canon teams. (Ch1-5 revised!)

26. Chapter 26 - The Dreaded Tempest

First of all, my deepest apologies to every guest reviewer since Chapters 24. The replies to your reviews will be at the end of this chapter. I was in such a rush to post Chapter 25 that the reviews slipped my mind.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, I offer my deepest thanks to everyone that has been with me so far. I never imagined my story would go as high as 1000 folowers, but here we are.

I wish this chapter had come faster, but working around a certain snake proved more troublesoem than I imagined... and I was already expecting trouble. Hinata also decided to take more spotlight than I accounted for, but I think this was for the best. Hopefully you all will agree with me!

One final note: this is Ozy's last chapter as a beta. T'was a good ride!

Remember to prepare that sandwich! This one's long... didn't want it to be, but here we are.

---

The Chunin Exams arc

Chapter 26: The Dreaded Tempest (v1.1)

---

'Unngh… oww…'

Hinata woke up in a daze, her senses assaulted by unfamiliarity and a dull pain ringing within her skull. Her surroundings were dark and unrecognizable, the area had a thick scent that made her frown, and she heard no noises at all. Faintly, she realized she was in a bed of some sort.

'No,' she patted the surface, 'this seems to be just a mattress. An old one, at that.'

Her eyes soon got used to the faint light she could see from a nearby… torch? She had to stare hard at the object to make sure. Its flame was small but enough that she could see her sleeping place was nothing more than a mattress on a rocky surface.

"Where am I?"

Her volume had been as low as usual, but it drew attention anyway.

"Hey, you're awake!"

Hinata barely contained a gasp as Kiba emerged from a dark corner.

"Kiba-kun!? W-What are—aaah!"

A sharp pain blossomed from her right shoulder.

"Whoa there, be careful," Kiba rushed to her side and gently helped her to sit up, before doing the same. "You're wounded, remember?"

"...Wounded?"

Frowning, she examined the source of her pain: her right shoulder. There was a hole in the fabric, with a dark stain surrounding it. 'Blood, probably.' She couldn't see the armor she knew was woven into her jacket, but she could barely make out dark-colored bandages over her skin.

A light touch proved the area was still sensitive, and her hand recoiled as if she had poked a kunai's point.

"Don't do that," Kiba chided with a little laugh. "Don't move too much either. It's not too deep but you gotta take care so it heals properly."

"Kiba-kun, I don't understand… what's going on?"

The humor left Kiba's face as he explained the situation and helped jog her memory about their fight against Kankuro and his puppet Crow, and her part in it.

"So I… passed out from poisoning?"

"Yup, you've been out for a couple of hours. We ain't sure how exactly you got hit though. The gas might've gotten through your open wounds or maybe the water didn't get rid of the poison that time. But the important part is that Shino fixed you up before it could do anything serious."

"Shino-kun?"

Kiba looked away uneasily. "Well, his bugs did…"

Her face scrunched up in disgust. Hinata felt she had made good progress in getting over a decade's worth of aversion to insects for Shino's sake, but sometimes the old feelings slipped by. It was unfair of her, she knew, as the bugs most likely saved her life, so she tried to stomp down the feeling by focusing on something else.

"And where are we?"

"In a random cavern Shino's bugs found a while before we fought that guy. Looks like that ninja clan the proctor spoke about really lived inside the mine," he said, patting Hinata's mattress. "There's very little furniture around and it's not well kept. Actually, it's probably from Konoha since this is a training ground now."

"I… see. Is this place really safe?" she asked, giving the nearby torch a wary glance.

"No worries. The floor that led to this part of the cavern was completely wrecked. The entrance is a hole high up a wall and pretty out of the way of anyone just walking around. Plus, I'm keeping track of what's going on around us," he pointed to one ear. "It's not that hard when the noises echo off the walls here."

Hinata's relaxed her stance and took a moment to gather her thoughts, which Kiba seemed to use to focus on his sensory abilities.

"Looks Shino and the others are getting back here right now. They just entered the cavern again."

"Ah, I'm glad..."

Hinata blinked.

"Wait, others?"

Kiba's face contorted with worry. "Shino thought ahead sent some bugs towards Team 10 so they could reach us while we were fighting, and they bailed us out at the last second. Ring any bells?"

She frowned. Her last clear memory was of jumping out of the poison gas cloud…

Kiba took her silence as an answer. "You passed out right after, so I guess there's no way you'd remember that."

"Sorry…"

"Don't be," he chuckled a bit. "The others are outside making sure the area is clear. Shikamaru thinks this is a good spot to bunker up with Team 7 once we reach them. And I agree with them, there's not a whole lot of space, but it's enough for most us to crash while one or two stay on watch."

"But… this room isn't that big?"

She looked around again. Her eyes got used to the low lighting and she could make out the area's walls and the darkness beyond the only entrance. It could fit everyone, but only barely.

"This place has another room. It's all dark so you can't see, but it's more open. Just lacks any sort of bed… this is actually the only one here. But don't worry, you're probably going to keep it unless someone takes a bigger injury out there."

Hinata winced at that.

"Speaking of which, how are you feeling?" he asked, a guilty smile on his face. "I probably should've asked earlier, sorry."

She shook her head, then lightly placed a hand on her wounded shoulder. "I just feel tired. And my shoulder is sore now, but I wasn't feeling it when I woke up, I think."

"Well, you fainted because of poisoning. I'm not surprised you're still off. You weren't exactly resting."

Her head fell then, and her hand went up to her face. With feather-light touches, she felt the bandages that covered the rashes from when Kankuro dragged her into the rocky ground.

'My Byakugan…'

Fear welled up in her heart.

"Kiba-kun. Can I… ask you something?"

"Like you've been doing since you woke up?

"Oh! Er… y-yes."

He began to snicker at her embarrassment, earning him a miffed half-glare.

"Sure thing. Shoot."

She paused and took a deep breath to calm her nerves. The air was musky and unpleasant, but it did the trick. "Why did you stay here with me?"

"To… keep you safe?" he replied with an arched brow and a confused tone. "I can watch out for threats and take you to somewhere else faster than any of the others if needed. Why are you even asking me that?"

"Oh no, no. I understand that part. It's just… was that all?"

Kiba stared at her for a while, forcing Hinata to turn her head away.

"What do you mean, Hinata? Is there any other… oh."

She focused on him again, only to see a mix of shock and panic across his features.

"Look! I swear I didn't do anything creepy while you were asleep!"

Her head tilted to the side. "...Creepy?"

"Wait, no! No!" He waved his hands frantically. "Forget I said anything!"

An image of Kiba wiggling his eyebrows suggestively back when they met Anko popped in her mind.

Hinata narrowed her eyes at him.

"Kiba-kun."

She hoped her lips weren't trembling too much.

"No! Argh, I know I look guilty as hell but I just kept watch! Honest!" he then covered his face with one hand. "Gods, I swear I'm gonna kill that damn Yamanaka for even bringing that up… huh?"

He raised his gaze to see Hinata struggling to bottle up her giggles. But he caught her, so she gave up and just burst out laughing.

"Dammit," Kiba shook his head, an embarrassed smile on his face. "Me and my big mouth, huh?

Hinata nodded eagerly between laughs.

"Seriously though, I'd never do stuff like that to you. You know that, right?"

"Of course I do. I trust you, Kiba-kun."

"Heh." His grin got wider. "Glad to hear someone does, but enough of that. I don't understand your question from earlier," he said, his features becoming serious. "What did you think I wanted to do?"

"I… uh. Well." Her smile vanished, and she looked away. "It's… nothing."

"I don't like that expression. Come on, out with it."

She swallowed dry. It felt silly to bring it up after joking around carefreely like that, which was almost an answer by itself… but she knew Kiba wouldn't take a no, and relented.

"I… I was going to ask if you were… mad at me."

Though her voice was almost a whisper, he practically recoiled from her words. "Mad? At you? But why?"

"I-I was just… l-look, forget I said anything."

It was Kiba's turn to narrow his eyes at her. "I know you, Hinata. Even if I forget about it, you won't." His gaze then softened. "Just tell me what's bothering you. You know I don't bite."

Her head fell, her short bangs hanging over her eyes like a curtain. "…Isn't it obvious? I'm talking about that fight."

"What? Why would I be angry with you about that? You helped me and Akamaru out multiple times back there and almost beat that guy all by yourself at the end!"

Hinata didn't know if it was Kiba's words or his incredulous tone, but something inside her snapped.

"T-That's exactly the problem Kiba-kun! I only almost beat him! And look at what happened," she motioned at her wounds. "I-I can't use the Gentle Fist, can't use ninjutsu, and even m-my Byakugan I can't use!"

She felt tears welling up and closed her eyes, willing them away. In the darkness, she couldn't see Kiba silently observing her.

"It's just like that fight we had in Wave," she continued. "We could have won. We could. But then I… I…"

"You messed up."

Kiba's accusation was almost cold, if not for the traces of anger Hinata could hear in his voice. It was what she had expected when she first probed him about it, but that did nothing to prepare her for how much it hurt to feel that Kiba truly was upset because of her failures.

She couldn't look up, nor really force her voice to work. A small, shaky nod was all she managed.

"You messed up, except you weren't the only one."

Hinata felt her body go rigid.

"Did you forget I was there too? That Ice-user caught us both off-guard back in Wave, not just you. And that puppet asshole? I couldn't even land a single hit on his damn toy until you found me an opening! Do you remember any of that?"

"…"

The weight of her shame was almost too much for Hinata.

She was sure that, from her words, Kiba believed their fight against Haru had been bothering her for the past few months. However, between discovering Naruto's secret and dealing with everything her father had shared with her in the cemetery… it had mostly faded from her mind. There had been a few times where that thought lingered and even nightmares she had about Kiba falling to his death, but she kept that at bay by focusing on her goals.

Maybe it all bothered her more than she had actually been aware until then.

"It's not just you," Kiba repeated. "I've been trying to not let it get to me, but… sometimes it still does."

Faintly, she recalled Shino commenting to her about how Kiba was taking training more seriously shortly after their return from Wave. She had noticed it herself, too. 'He… was suffering and I never noticed it.'

She winced. It had been months. She had failed him far more than she realized.

"Look at me, Hinata."

Her neck refused to budge. But in a rare show of patience, Kiba waited for her, and in time—however much that was—she gathered the courage to meet his eyes.

To her surprise, he was looking at her in concern. "I'm not going to lie to you, you messed up. But the same goes for me. And… you know what helped me these months? I remembered that back then, we were way over our heads. That girl was definitively around chunin level, and so was that puppet guy! Heck," he let out a little laugh, "I think it's actually impressive we got so close to winning."

Hinata wasn't amused, yet a little, hollow laugh escaped her.

"So close to winning? I think you mean so close to dying! B-Because that's what almost happened. I-If it wasn't for Kurenai-sensei at the bridge, we would have drowned. If Shino-kun hadn't called back-up... that Sand team would have killed us."

"Hinata, but that didn't happen! We're still alive!"

The anger in his tone drew out her own ire.

"But we still almost died! Almost!"

By then Hinata was hunched over, struggling against the weight of her failures. The urge to just let go and cry was strong, yet she still managed to resist her tears somehow, even though her voice trembled and was all over the place.

"It's like every time we need it the most, I can't do it. I almost hit Zabuza in the chest, but he caught me and broke my legs. I actually hit that girl in the chest, but it did nothing and I didn't see her attack coming. I couldn't get you up the bridge. Just now I got dragged to the ground by a move I actually knew the enemy could do and should've seen coming, then I got stabbed and poisoned because I couldn't focus hard enough. Every time I just ended up being a burden."

That last word left Hinata's mouth so bitter she almost wanted to vomit.

"Even back then during that test Kakashi-sensei gave to us, all I did was force you and Shino-kun to fight him by yourselves and—"

Kiba banged his fist against the mattress.

"Damn it, Hinata! You didn't listen to a single word I just said."

She turned so brusquely that her shoulder screamed at the motion. "W-What?! But I was listening!"

"No! You aren't! Or instead you lied to me when you said you trusted me. That's even worse!"

"How can you say something like that!?"

The accusation hurt too much for Hinata to even try keeping her tears at bay. They were tears of anger, too. She trusted him with her very life! How dare he question that?!

If her tears bothered him, Kiba didn't show. He stared her down as if they weren't there.

"Hinata, you need to stop. What about all the times you saved our asses during missions or was just helpful to us in general? Do you remember any of those times?"

The question shook her. For one moment she tried to focus on what he said yet her mind was drawing a complete blank.

"I remember," Kiba continued. "I remember a lot of times in these past few months, including today and that mission in Wave you're hung up on. Hinata you can't just focus on where you went wrong all the time like that." His expression went back to one of concern. "I remember what you said about how you grew up, back in Wave. I… can't say I really get what it was like to be in so much pressure ever since our academy days, but… we aren't like your clan, Hinata. As long as we make it through at the end of the day, it's okay to… not be enough, sometimes."

"But what if it's not just sometimes?!"

That was a question she didn't have the courage to ask. It almost escaped her mouth, but in her fear, she stopped herself.

Instead Hinata settled for baring a forearm and drying her tears on her own skin, drowning her sobs.

Kiba soon took that as a cue to keep going.

"You know something I've noticed about you, Hinata? You're never satisfied until you get the perfect results."

She froze.

'…What?'

Kiba actually chuckled a bit at her dumbfounded face. "Yeah, I first noticed it thanks to your food. There were a few times you said you slightly burned something or didn't put enough salt or whatever, and it was still really good but you had those storm clouds hovering over you and kept apologizing." His tone then grew soft. "When it comes to training and missions, too. You're always beating yourself over anything and everything you did wrong or think you did wrong. Like earlier today before the test."

Her eyes shifted to a random spot in the cavern's darkness. She was self-aware enough to know she hated disappointing others.

But a perfectionist? 'I… never thought of myself that way.'

"Did you notice how hung up you were about an "almost"? I'm not saying it's bad to strive to be better or that you should ignore where you went wrong. I think Guy-sensei even told us it was a good thing to make mistakes so we can learn from them. But… how can I say it?" Kiba asked himself, gesticulating awkwardly. "It's like you… always expect way too much from yourself. And then you let those expectations crush you when you don't meet them, even though many times it's not only you who made the mistakes. Or the moment you get something right, you immediately aim higher and suddenly what you achieved is just not good enough for you anymore. That's… not healthy, Hinata. It's really not."

"…"

Hinata had no rebuttal.

"Just think about it, okay?" Kiba gently rubbed her good shoulder, as if to comfort her. "The others should be here soon."

Kiba then rose from the bed and left Hinata alone to struggle with her thoughts.

On a purely logical sense, she could see that Kiba was right.

Yes, not everything was her fault.

Yes, she's not always the only one to blame.

Yes, she had high standards for herself and sometimes unreasonably so.

Yes, she allowed herself to dwell on her mistakes for far too long.

But… Hinata never really was the most logical person.

She still felt useless and like a burden.

She still felt like if she was the genius she was supposed to have been, she could have avoided all those setbacks.

That if it were Neji in her place, he'd have succeeded. He'd have won all the fights she lost, and at that very moment he'd be out, scouting the area and combat-ready.

Not wounded and useless like she was.

Again.

"I… can't think like that," Hinata said to herself. She tried to ignore how her voice lacked any conviction.

She sighed, and only in that moment she noticed how sluggish she felt.

'Looks like I'm still not fully recovered from that stupid poison...'

Hinata adjusted her position on the mattress, propping herself against the wall.

'Shino-kun and the others are coming back soon, so I shouldn't sleep.'

She closed her eyes to rest just a little bit... and before she knew it, she nodded off.

---

"Tsk."

Sasuke scowled, looking down at the unconscious genin by his feet in disgust. "I could've done better than this…" he muttered to himself while trying to steady his breath in the aftermath of his fight.

He and his teammates hadn't chased down the team Naruto's clones had spotted fast enough to make an elaborate ambush. However, thanks to certain tactics that Asuma and Kakashi had drilled on them during the past few months, they didn't need to do more than have Sakura cast a genjutsu from a distance and send some of Naruto's clones to get a fight started on their terms. All that was left was to follow up appropriately.

It turned out that, at their level, many genin were unfamiliar with the Shadow Clone Jutsu, and with the right genjutsu it was fairly easy to fool the team from Waterfall, even if the illusion was easy to notice—which was intentional on Sakura's part. Taking advantage of their enemy's ignorance and confusion, Sasuke used the clones and their smoke clouds as cover and snuck between his foes, rushing at one of the genin with a barrage of physical strikes that quickly knocked him out before leaping back to safety, trusting the clones to stop the enemies from exploiting his own openings.

Unfortunately, the supposed numbers advantage didn't remain for long. Their enemies quickly regained their bearings and withdrew medium-sized swords, and from that point the clones began to fall like flies, unable to match to the enemy's blades. Naruto's taijutsu had improved a fair bit since their academy days, but having him deal with such opponents in close quarters was far too risky.

However, Sasuke soon regretted ordering Naruto to fall back and support from a distance with Sakura, who kept tossing shuriken from afar. One of the genin was experienced in Earth Release and raised up a big, crude-looking rock wall that travelled all the way to the nearby rock incline and split off both teams. The one responsible for the wall remained with him and Sakura, leaving Naruto alone with the other swordsman.

His enemy was fast. Not too much to keep up with, but paired with his extended range it was enough to cause trouble even with the Sharingan active. Sakura had trained with him to fight together like that, him on the front at melee range and her with kunai and shuriken on the back, but it was made clear that their training was insufficient still if they couldn't easily dispatch a fellow genin in a 2-on-1.

Perhaps it was simply that his enemy was too skilled, but the amount of time it took for them to win that fight was almost embarrassing to Sasuke, even if in his mind he justified it in how he had to be extra careful around a swordsman. Their winning move had been to subtly turn their enemy around, using Sakura's presence and projectiles on top of Sasuke's own attacks to eventually leave the Waterfall genin with his back to his own Rock Wall. It cut off his potential avenues to escape from the pincer attack that he set up with Sakura, and between a Great Fireball and the girl's projectiles, their foe got wounded badly enough that Sasuke could finally close the distance safely and win.

'I could do better than this,' he though with a grimace, staring down the fallen genin as he took a second to regain his breath.

He snapped back to reality when he saw Sakura dashing to the genin they had first struck down. "Help me search them!" she called out to him. "The guy fighting Naruto might give up if we have the scroll."

"Right."

Sasuke crouched and searched over his former foe's belongings. Their other teammate had the backpack, which hopefully would slow him down enough that Naruto would survive that fight.

He smirked. 'Naruto's no longer a prankster but he still has creativity to spare, he should be—'

An explosive tag sounded off, the loud blast cutting his thoughts as if to oppose them.

"That came from where Naruto was," he noted to Sakura. 'And it doesn't sound too close from here…'

"Then let's go. Yhis guy doesn't have the scroll."

He scoffed and rose. "Neither does this one. Come on, let's help Naruto out."

"That Naruto, I swear…" Sakura grumbled as she got up. Despite her words, she wore a little amused smile. "Always getting himself in trouble, isn't he?"

"Heh."

And with that, they chakra jumped to the Rock Wall's top, only to be greeted by a seemingly impossible sight…

"Sakura, are you seeing what I'm seeing?"

"You mean a giant snake?" she replied, uncertainty dripping from her voice.

"So I'm not going crazy then…"

In the distance, sliding around the ground, they saw a massive snake abandoning the area. It headed into one of the nearby caverns, leaving both genin utterly stupefied.

"The proctor said most animals here died off ages ago," Sakura noted with a frown. "Even if it could get up here it would never find enough food to sustain itself. Not with that size."

Forcing himself to ignore the snake for a moment, he scanned the area and soon found evidence of the explosion he had heard before. Cracked, scorched stones, and not too far away was the last of the enemies they had fought.

…Or what remained of him. Most of his body was a mere paste, a disgusting mix of fabric, armor, his backpack, blood and guts. Sasuke only recognized him because of the sword by his legs, which still seemed whole below the knee.

When Sakura gasped beside him, he knew she had spotted it too.

"L-Look!"

She pointed at the body.

"I know. He's dead."

In his mind Sasuke only mourned their scroll, which surely was lost in the bloody pulp that was once a fellow genin. But then he wondered—

"No, not that!"

He frowned at Sakura and followed her gaze more carefully.

"Hn. So the snake crushed him to death…"

There was a faint blood-red trail that started from the genin's remains, almost unnoticeable compared to its origin, but still clear evidence of how he had met his end.

That was one question solved, but it wasn't the one that mattered and it only raised more.

"At least that's not Naruto. I'm not sure this is good or bad though," Sasuke admitted, using the wall's height to search all around himself. 'Your opponent is here, but where are you? And where did this snake come from...?'

"Do you think the snake… well," Sakura gulped, "ate him?"

Sasuke didn't answer. His eyes continued to dart around, and his search yielded nothing. Naruto had no reason to hide himself from them, and if a third team had decided to attack Naruto then they would have attacked Sakura and himself by then.

At the moment, a quote from one of the detective novels he was reading lately came to mind.

"When you eliminate the impossible, then whatever remains must be the truth…"

"Huh?"

He turned to Sakura, taking her bewildered expression for a moment before motioning for her to follow him. "Come on. Let's see if we can still take that guy's scroll and let's kill that thing," he said, and then leaped to the ground.

Sakura landed beside him a second later, but before they could approach the mangled mess that was once Naruto's opponent…

"Are you looking for this, perhaps?"

Sasuke and Sakura both whirled around, kunai drawn. The maneuver proved unnecessary, for their newest foe ignored the chance the strike while they were unaware.

It was a woman—another Grass genin if Sasuke's eyesight wasn't failing him—who seemed content to remain perched high up a tree that sprouted directly from the mountain. She wore simple clothes in tan and black. More noticeable were the straw hat atop her long, black hair, and the thick purple rope that went around her waist like a belt, tied up in an elaborate knot behind her back.

What truly stood out to him were her eyes, however. Though a common black, they were eerily lifeless. 'Like a corpse,' Sasuke's mind supplied for him, and he struggled to suppress the shiver creeping down his spine.

Far more importantly, the woman openly displayed a Water scroll in one of her hands.

"I happen to be looking for something you have," she said.

"We're not going to let you take our scroll," Sasuke shot back firmly, narrowing his Sharingan at her. It caught every little detail of the amused smile she let out at those words.

'Confident, but where's her team?'

He diverted his gaze for a moment to give the area the fastest scan he could manage, but there were no traces of anyone else in the vicinity.

Not even Naruto.

"There's no need to worry," she spoke again. "We are alone now. There are no other brats around, your orange teammate included."

"What did you do with Naruto?!" Sakura demanded, but not once did the woman's gaze leave him.

"You must think you're something special to take us on by yourself," Sasuke narrowed his eyes at the woman, but his words were actually meant for Sakura. They couldn't let Naruto's situation distract them.

"Ah, I'm not the one that's special here, Sasuke-kun."

His eyes widened, and the woman let out a quiet, creepy chuckle.

"How do you kn—"

And then Sasuke and Sakura died.

---

Hinata jolted awake at the sound of laughter.

"Easy there, partner. I don't need a bath just yet!"

"We're back," she heard Ino. "Missed me?"

"As if," Kiba snorted. "Found anything? You guys took a while to come back after entering the cavern."

'Oh... they're back,' Hinata realized as she struggled to clear her mind. 'How long was I asleep?'

"Yeah," this time it was Shikamaru's voice. "Shino mapped out these caverns and what's just outside, and we put traps all over the entrances. Plus some fake tracks for anyone that gets past those to be misled into more traps on the inside, which took some time. I think we have a solid base here."

"All that hard work left me so hungry," Chouji spoke up in a tone of depression. "But all we have are those plain ration bars…"

"Ugh, I know what you mean," Kiba agreed, and Hinata tuned out their chat.

Even the one thing she was consistently good at, cooking, was beyond her reach. It was stupid—if they were given rations then nothing around them was safe to consume, clearly—but she couldn't shake the feeling.

With a morose sigh, she decided to join her friends. She got up, using only her good arm for support and taking care not to jostle the other.

The other room was still in sight, so she wasn't surprised when Shino approached her. "I see you have awakened. How do you fare?"

She smiled at him. "I'm fine, just a little tired."

"I am… very glad to hear that."

Hinata's eyes went wide. Shino always made an effort to keep his tone as emotionless as he could, so she couldn't be sure, but she picked up on something heavy. Something she didn't like.

"Shino-kun?"

He jolted slightly, as if he hadn't been focusing on her.

"What's wrong? Did something happen to you while we were escaping?" she asked with a frown, one born both of worry and confusion. The moments before she passed out were a blur to her, and she had no idea how Shino had fled from the Sand genin.

"Not at all. Perhaps you weren't aware, but I formed a bug clone before coming down to assist you and Kiba, so I easily escaped from that situation."

'Oh. Of course Shino-kun would have had a contingency plan. And not only he had an escape route, but he also brought back-up!' she thought, awed by her friend's tactical skills.

She opened her mouth, yet closed it when Shino shook his head. "It was the least I could do given it was my mistake that led to this."

Her eyes went wide. "Y-Your mistake…?"

"I assumed that the puppet would be a non-factor if when my Kikaichu had reached it. If our enemy connected his strings to it, they could feed on the chakra to cut-off the connection. Yet I never considered that a simple substitution was fast enough to overcome such a strategy. My focus should have been in disabling the puppeteer, not the puppet. And the one who paid for my lack of common sense was you."

It was guilt, she realized. That's what Shino failed to keep from his voice.

"I understand that you and Kiba hold my opinion in high regard, and even if we are equals, you both defer to my leadership when we have no superiors. As such—"

She tuned him out as Ino's voice rung louder in the next room, and instinctively Hinata looked that way only to find Kiba leaning against the entrance, with Akamaru resting atop his head. His face was neutral, but Hinata was all too familiar with that glint in his eyes, as if he was expecting something from her.

When her attention returned to Shino, she saw his head hung a bit low, just enough to fully obscure his features under his high collar.

"—merely hope you can forgive me for so carelessly putting your life at risk."

Hinata almost wanted to ignore Shino and ask Kiba if this had been planned somehow. That would be silly, but… it was a ridiculous coincidence that she'd be having this kind of conversation again.

Except she was on the other side. Neither her mind nor heart could blame Shino for what happened, but was telling him that enough?

For her, it hadn't.

She closed her eyes for a moment, and in the next she stepped forward. Her good arm went around Shino's back, pulling him into an embrace.

"I was told it was your bugs helped with the poison, and that it was you who guided Team 10 to where we were. So… thank you, for saving my life."

Hinata knew ahead of time Shino wouldn't answer and would instead just tense up. She wasn't very fond of being hugged out of a sudden herself—or at all, really, with Hanabi being the one exception—so for his sake, she didn't linger and quickly broke the contact.

"She's right you know?" Kiba approached them. "You saved us three at the end, man. If not for you, Akamaru would have been a meat skewer with poison sauce." The puppy growled at Kiba, who laughed for a moment before facing Shino again. "We don't blame you for anything, man. We made some mistakes, but we made them as a team."

Perhaps to enforce his point, Kiba looped one arm around each of his teammates, pulling them together…

"Aaah!"

… and making Hinata scream from the brusque movement.

"Whoa!"

He jumped away by instinct, but it was already too late.

"You idiot! That's her wounded shoulder!"

Ino dashed into the room and shoved Kiba away before the boy even processed his mistake.

"W-What? Hey! What are you doing?!"

"This is why I didn't want you alone with her! Get out of here!"

Hinata barely paid attention to the ruckus, stunned by her own pain. Kiba had pressed against her shoulder when he pulled her closer, and her shoulder's insides felt like tearing apart. Maybe it had been adrenaline, but she couldn't remember the actual stab hurting like that.

The next thing she knew, Shino was carefully guiding her back to the worn-out mattress she had woken up on.

"I appreciate your concern for my teammate, Ino," he said, "but should any of our foes have the right sensory abilities, such as Kiba's, being this loud would still draw attention to us even if the immediate surroundings are clear."

"Sure, sorry," she said dismissively as she returned, to which Shino frowned. "I'm gonna check up on her, can you give us some room? Go ahead and start discussing our next moves without us."

The Aburame glanced back at Hinata, and she mouthed a simple "It's okay." Her voice had been down to a whisper, but when Shino nodded back to her, she felt that despite her simple wording he understood her true message.

Now she only had herself to convince of it, apparently.

"And no peeking—I can sense you guys!"

She heard Kiba groaning from beyond the other room as Shino left. "Will you drop it already?! I told you she's like a sister to me!"

Hinata couldn't help her smile. Kiba's appreciation left her heart warm, yet Ino merely rolled her eyes at the comment, as if she didn't believe him. Her features softened when she came closer, though, and Hinata noticed she had one of the test's backpacks on her.

"Is it hurting a lot?"

"N-Not that much." The last thing Hinata wanted was to give more fuel to the fire.

Ino just shook her head and frowned though. "You don't need to lie to me. I saw your wound."

"Y-You did?"

The blonde winked. "Who do you think bandaged you? The boys?"

'Ah. That makes sense considering Kiba-kun's comments,' Hinata thought.

"It was a bit difficult to take your coat out safely. I couldn't cut the sleeve because of the mail. but it's not like I was going to call any of them handle you. They'd be too… distracted," Ino pointed at her own chest.

Hinata whimpered, folding upon herself as her good arm went to cover herself. Even in the dark she was sure her cheeks were bright red if Ino's giggles were any indication.

"I decided to be better safe than sorry and managed to put it back on afterward," she said while reaching for something in her backpack. "I think this will go more smoothly now that you're conscious though. Aha!" She drew out a bundle of bandages, and a familiar little pot of cream. "Shall we?"

After slowly maneuvering out of the coat, Hinata noticed her simple black shirt no longer had a right sleeve. All that covered her shoulder were some bloodied bandages.

"Sorry for the shirt. It was easier to cut it than undressing you fully."

"Oh no, it's alright. Uh… you used my ointment?"

"I did! Shino told me its effects. I'm not sure it will heal before the exam is up… but as for good news, it shouldn't leave a scar as long as you get it healed when we're done! Even if we take all five days."

"That's… nice."

Even if she cared much about a potential scar—and having zero sleeveless outfits made Hinata not care at all in this case—that would never outweigh the "bad news".

Her apathy towards the scar seemed to catch Ino off-guard. The blonde looked surprised for a moment then a little lost, as if she had expected to continue with that topic.

For once, Hinata had a way to move on with the conversation herself.

"What about this wound?" she asked, lightly caressing the bandages around her head.

"Oh, that rash? I'm sorry, but I don't know for sure," Ino replied with a frown. "Kiba told me you wouldn't be able to activate your Byakugan because of it. It's very superficial, but I'm not sure how long it will take for it to resist your dojutsu's strain. Oh, why don't you take a look? Let me show you something cool I bought last month! It was pretty cheap too."

Ino then handed her a kunai… made of glass. "It's a mirror that doubles as a weapon in an emergency! Isn't it nice?"

Hinata could only stare at the girl incredulously. She couldn't believe she needed to point something that obvious but: "I-Ino-san, this… would break at the first impact. Glass is rather fragile…"

"Oh… oh. Well, the edges are still pretty sharp so it should work as a throwing weapon. I think." The blonde crossed her arms, frowning. "I suppose it was cheap for a reason…"

While Ino appeared to be reconsidering her purchase, Hinata took the mirror-kunai for a spin She wasn't surprised to see her hair was messy and awkwardly stuck together thanks to the dried blood, but her wound seemed to be recovering. It wasn't big nor deep to begin with and it had mostly scabbed over already, in part thanks to the cream Hinata could still find traces of in her damaged skin.

The reflection frowned at her. 'But will it heal in time…?'

She sighed.

It took a few minutes, but with fresh bandages and a new layer of ointment covering her wounds, Hinata squeezed back into her jacket with her friend's help.

"Alright!" Ino beamed at her. "Now let's see what the boys have been up to, shall we?"

She didn't wait for Hinata, and didn't see the girl sighing again as she got up.

'I'm still just a burden in this state, but…perhaps there's still something I can do?'

Though Hinata knew the answer to that question already, Hinata followed Ino into the cavern's other room. She could make out hushed conversation, but it ceased when she stepped foot into it.

"Hinata," Shikamaru gave her a small nod. "Looks like you've improved a bit."

"I-I suppose so," she said, gazing around the mostly-empty room. Aside from a shoddy-looking table and two unoccupied chairs, there was nothing but rock and the torch she saw Kiba messing with earlier.

In contrast to his friend, Chouji greeted her with a wide smile. "It's a relief to finally see you up again. It was really scary seeing you like that."

The confession pained her, and she averted her eyes to the floor. An apology almost escaped her mouth but Ino was faster.

"So what did we miss?"

Shino adjusted his glasses. "I have fully mapped out this area of the exams. There are a few other rooms like these scattered in this cavern, however, this is the most easily defensible one. Having all of us in the same space could be unpleasant, yet it's also the safest course of action."

"It would be a little cramped," Ino agreed with a frown. "Guess we don't have much of a choice though."

"Indeed. However, my bugs have discovered no passages leading to the central tower, so eventually we will need to abandon this place."

"Never mind we need to hunt down other teams for their scrolls too," Shikamaru added, showing his Fire scroll to the others. "But that's a worry for later. We need to find Naruto's team first."

Hinata's eyes went wide. She had almost forgotten her friends's other friends, but now? Her hand went to rest above her heart as worry flooded her system. 'We almost died just a few hours ago… and they are still by themselves out there.'

In contrast, Ino just smiled smugly. "Oh, so we're doing my plan after all."

"Of course," Shino nodded. "It's the most logical option. However, we will need to split up for the time being if we are making this cavern our base of operations. That's what we were discussing."

"Since all this darkness gives me a bunch of shadows to work with," Shikamaru said, "I will be staying here to help guard the base, and Hinata. Shino and Kiba are going to track Team 7 and get them back here safely."

"I could go in either team," Chouji shrugged. "It's up to you, Ino."

"Hmm… I'd love to go out there to meet Sasuke-kun, but I think I'll stay."

"Alright then! Shino, Chouji, let's go already! The sooner we meet up with Team 7 the sooner we can get out of here."

Kiba only spared a moment to wave goodbye to Hinata before dashing away.

"I can't wait to ditch this place," Chouji agreed as he went to follow, leaving Shino to sigh before turning to the girls and Shikamaru.

"Some of my bugs are patrolling the cavern," he said, opening his hand to reveal a singular kinkaichu, which gently hovered to Shikamaru's hand. "Should anything happen, this one shall warn you of the danger. But there is only so much that they can do by themselves so please remain on guard."

"Don't worry Shino," Ino shook her head. "We'll be careful."

With that, the Aburame took his leave.

'I hope you can reach them before anything bad happens,' Hinata thought to herself, and then sighed almost silently. 'To them or to any of us.'

She was surprised that Shikamaru echoed her actions, albeit far louder. More of a groan than a sigh. "Why did I let myself get roped into this?"

"If you're going to start complaining just shut up now," Ino narrowed her eyes at him. "I can't yell at you but I can make you regret pissing me off."

The Nara muttered something under his breath, to which Ino shook her head before turning to Hinata with a pleasant smile. "Feel free to rest some more, we'll keep watch."

Shikamaru sighed again, eyes trained on the ceiling as if searching for something. "How lucky," he said as he took one of the chairs and sat down. "I'd kill for a chance to actually rest…"

Whatever scathing reply Ino had to that, Hinata didn't hear it. It took all of her willpower to clamp her jaws shut, mimicking her trembling fists.

She knew herself too well to linger in there and, silently, she chose to retreat to where she had woken up on.

The temptation to snap at Shikamaru had been great. But she already had failed to keep her composure with Kiba, and she knew doing so again would be even less helpful than it had been back then.

To her luck, Ino didn't follow her.

She sat on the bed again. Ino's glass kunai was still there, forgotten until she reached out to it and gazed at herself once more.

"You still look pathetic," she told the girl on the other side. "But we can't stay like this forever… right?"

The reflection smiled back, as if encouraging her to go forward. Satisfied, Hinata pocketed the pseudo-weapon without really thinking, and went to rest a little more so she'd recover sooner.

It was all that she could do. But, remembering Kiba's words, she decided that for once it was going to be enough.

It had to be.

---

Sasuke had already fought people stronger than him before.

In some cases, like when he trained with Kakashi or Lee, and even in his duel with Haku back in Wave, he simply felt challenged. Victory always felt just close enough that he could taste it, yet it would not come unless he worked for it, which only made him give his all to win. He was thankful for these experiences despite how his weakness frustrated him to no end… especially against Haku, where he thought he was going to die after being outmatched at the end.

In other cases he only felt like a mere toy, a source of amusement for someone that was so above him that he never stood a chance. Only three times that had happened to him: his duel with Kakashi during the bell test, his brief engagement with Zabuza back in Wave, and the illusory Itachi that Kurenai brought to haunt him and his team when they first met. While he only felt strongly about one of those events, all of them left a bitter taste in his mouth when he reflected back on them. The taste of humiliation.

But he had never once felt like prey.

There really was no better word for it. From the moment the woman had made him and Sakura witness their own deaths with nothing but her killing intent, he knew his role in their fight.

Thankfully, as part of Kurenai's training with genjutsu was specifically tailored towards this situation, he and Sakura managed to snap out of it before the woman could get too close. He was quickly becoming convinced it didn't matter one bit.

She had seemed to want to kill him when he was immobilized, but now that they were actually brawling, Sasuke knew that she wanted something else.

From him, that is. Sakura had been quickly batted away every time she had tried to interfere at close range, and any projectiles she threw had been casually parried. The woman didn't put enough effort to knock Sakura out or worse, at least, but the girl appeared to have given up on helping him.

He couldn't blame her. His Sharingan easily kept up with the woman and his eyesight was such that it was obvious to him that she held back, both when attacking and defending. Especially telling was how her own eyes spotted his counters and openings almost instantly, yet she only acted at the last possible second. The same went for the stance, her musculature tensing up clearly to his eyes, yet she didn't move until she had to.

Sasuke couldn't tell if that was a good thing. It was taking everything he had to keep up—truly everything. He had practically exhausted his arsenal of techniques, be them complex taijutsu sequences, elaborate traps with projectiles and strings, and various jutsu… but it never led to anything. The woman was incredibly evasive and her skill with ninjutsu was terrifying, with Wind blasts that blasted the floor and walls with the potency he'd expect from a high level Fire jutsu, and perfectly executed substitutions with Mud Clones that were so fast, his Sharingan never even traced the flow of her chakra until it was too late. Her taijutsu was equally incredible, giving Sasuke no range where he could be safe.

The only thing Sasuke had yet to use was the Sharingan's genjutsu, but regardless of his inexperience with that there simply hadn't been a chance. For all the woman was letting him come to her when she clearly could have killed him whenever, she was taking him seriously enough to avoid eye contact at all costs.

She was from the Grass but she knew. She knew who he was and what he could do.

Briefly came the thought that the girl he and his team had spared, Karin, could have played a role but he quickly discarded that theory.

It… didn't feel right.

Much like his duel. It had lasted for far too long already, his lung was on overdrive and his muscles ached from the exertion almost as if he had spent the entire day training under Guy, while his chakra was running low as if he had been testing his new Lightning techniques for hours on end.

As much as Sasuke prided himself on his self-control, he knew he was beginning to lose it.

'Nothing I do works! No matter how fast or strong my attacks, no matter how I try to trap her… she's always coming out alive at the end,' he thought with gritted teeth, making full use of the few seconds he had to rest. The woman periodically disengaged and by now Sasuke was fully convinced it was for his sake, to give him a slight chance to breathe.

She was testing him, that much he was sure.

But to what end? What did he have to do to pass? What would she do with them after getting the answers she sought, whatever they might be?

Such questions bounced wildly inside Sasuke's skull, driving him mad.

The woman allowed him to fight back, but he was fully at her mercy. And so was Sakura, for that matter.

Before he could think better, his eyes sought her, yet his teammate was nowhere to be found.

Had she fled?

One second later a fist smashed his face and he was sent flying.

"A rookie mistake," the woman remarked, her tone silky and off-putting. "But, an otherwise impressive performance Sasuke-kun. Color me impressed."

He barely heard her as he rolled on the ground, and as he spun a sharp pain blossomed in his ankle. When his momentum died, Sasuke found himself struggling to rise in the shadow of the Rock Wall from his last fight. Even though its caster had died when the woman had used him to switch out from a Great Fireball earlier the structure still remained, tethered by the land's own power.

His stance was unstable from whatever had happened to his ankle. A sprain? A fracture? Sasuke couldn't know. His adrenaline halted the pain too much, all he was sure of is that something was busted.

"It seems I made the right choice regarding you," the woman continued, letting out the creepiest chuckle Sasuke had ever heard in his life. "Yes, you'll do well..."

Her eyes, more so than ever before, glinted predatorily.

Sasuke felt his very soul freezing as the woman began to calmly step forward, each soft noise her sandaled feet made on the ground echoing in his ears as the tick-tock of a clock.

His time had come.

"Earth Release: Mud Wall!"

Before his very eyes, a barrier of mud rose from the ground. It was nowhere as wide, tall or thick as the Rock Wall he was propping himself against, but it fully blocked the woman from his view.

His head snapped up at the voice and he finally saw Sakura, crouched on the sideway-sprout tree that they first saw the woman at.

He then heard the woman chuckling quietly from behind the mud, but no footsteps. "Most curious. What did you hope to accomplish, child? He has nowhere to run, and you must realize by now I can easily destroy such a feeble barrier."

"The barrier wasn't meant for you."

His own confused eyes locked on to Sakura, following her motion before she had even executed it thanks to his bloodline. From her pouch she drew a kunai, and she let the weapon fly.

At him.

He wouldn't be concerned with the projectile normally, as his Bloodline Limit easily pointed out that the blade would miss.

…Except the Sharingan also told him it wouldn't, thanks to the explosive tag that trailed behind the kunai, its sealing array visibly disturbed from an external source's chakra.

Incredulous—betrayed—he peered up back to Sakura, only to see her wobbling on her feet as a surge of chakra left her body.

Her eyes closed and she fell.

"Sakura!"

Once more Sasuke was in motion before he could command himself, and injured leg be damned, he dashed and threw himself on the ground to catch Sakura.

He almost managed to question her out of useless instinct, but the loud blast of an explosion silenced him again.

The boom was followed by rocks crumbling, and Sasuke saw that his former enemy's Rock Wall had a hole blown into its center, leaving the whole thing to fall apart like dominos and raising up a cloud of dirt and smoke.

His head snapped back once the cloud dissipated just enough to reveal the woman, and only then did he understand what Sakura had been aiming.

The woman was motionless and looking at nothing.

His eyes widened.

'…Genjutsu?'

An opponent trapped in a genjutsu was an easy kill. However, though Sasuke's hand immediately dove into his weapons pouch, it returned shaky and unsteady.

The woman was clearly a jonin; how much time did he have to aim before she freed herself? Pain was one of the things that could disrupt an illusion; if he struck her in a non-lethal area or without enough power…

Sasuke had never before doubted his aim with shurikenjutsu. But when the woman flooded the area of killing intent, much stronger than what Sasuke had been experienced thus far… even though she seemed to still be in the illusion, Sasuke unconsciously made his choice.

Before he knew it, he was running. Cradling Sakura in his hands and pushing his wounded leg to the limit, he fled through the hole in the Rock Wall like a scaredy cat.

---

Humming thoughtfully, Hiruzen Sarutobi jotted down a few more notes on the only piece of paper that was directly in front of him, contrasting heavily with the various stacks that littered the other spots of his desk and the tea set arranged in the center.

"I see," he said, refiling two of the cups with hot tea, and then offering a plate with one of them to his guest. "And that's your final opinion on the matter, Danzo?"

The person before him was one of Hiruzen's oldest comrades. Danzo Shimura: a friend, a rival, in many ways both his right hand and his greatest opponent when it came to managing the village. He had short, unruly black hair that only barely touched the bandages around his head, which covered the man's right eye and only made his sharp features harsher to look at. He also wore a simple dark robe over a white shirt.

The outfit, together with the cane that Danzo always carried, made it easy to picture him as a frail, defenseless old man.

One could not make a greater mistake.

"Indeed, Hiruzen. And thank you," Danzo said, accepting reaching for the plate with one hand, and then bringing the cup to his lips with another. His features softened a bit at the taste of his favorite tea—Hiruzen always treated his guests as best as he could—but they tightened once again when their eyes met.

"He is an undeniably skilled jonin, but emotionally unstable given the recent passing of his daughter. Perhaps in a few years it might be worth reconsidering the ANBU promotion, but you know as well as I do that these upper echelons of the ninja hierarchy expose one to much of the darkness of our world. Those that aren't fully prepared to bear that weight will only be a hindrance in the long run."

"Yes… I'm afraid I must agree," Hiruzen sighed, looking over the file again. Though he had many ideological conflicts with his old friend, he knew the man was one of the sharpest minds when it came to assessing other people's strengths. Danzo's opinion was something he always greatly valued when it came to promotions, shifts in squad compositions and similar matters, even if in this particular case it was merely a confirmation of his own thoughts.

The file Hiruzen was looking at was the records of one of the many ninja in his roster, a jonin that had just been recommended by an acquaintance to join the ANBU. The man in question had displayed a notable growth in his battle performance as of late, but Hiruzen had his suspicions that putting all he had into his training was simply the coping mechanism he had found to deal with his daughter's death to illness. With no other family in the village, his job was all the poor man had left.

'I wonder… Tsunade, were you here, could this little girl's life have been spared?' Hiruzen pondered, regretting his actions toward one of his students for what must have been the millionth time, and far from the last one.

"I can see his situation still troubles you," Danzo remarked, sipping from a cup of tea. "For the moment, since he has refused therapy, I suggest putting him on less stressful missions such as border watch and eventually give him a genin team."

"Oh?" Hiruzen smirked. "That was a surprisingly thoughtful suggestion."

"It would not do to have his talent wasted," Danzo shot back, dryly. "He can impart his knowledge and skills to the next generation, and after such a loss he will defend his team fiercer than most sensei would."

His old rival favored—or most likely, still favors—rather extreme methods of conditioning people's behavior, methods Hiruzen never agreed with. That didn't mean Danzo didn't know how to work in the way Hiruzen preferred, though, even if it took years of butting heads to get to that point.

"But perhaps you should wait on that last part," Danzo said, making Hiruzen's eyebrow rise. "Rather than taking a team, he might be better suited for that academy pet project of yours. You chose some of our finest specialist for this testing phase, so to speak, but we'll need to be more practical about it if it develops as you hope. It would not do to have their talents wasted either."

Hiruzen put the file into a small stack of similar files, which he had separated to discuss with his advisor. "Perhaps," he finally answered, vaguely, fiddling with his pipe.

He knew Danzo was worried about not having seasoned ninja like Kakashi as available as they should, considering their skills. But he also knew Danzo couldn't see the finer details of why he arranged these combinations of genin and jonin-sensei, and frankly Hiruzen preferred not to disclose those to him.

Nonetheless, he wasn't going to bank on Kakashi, Guy and his son to work full-time on his project if it were to expand. Kurenai might, if he asked her to, but Hiruzen had yet to make up his mind about that. Hiashi's pleas were still fresh on his mind…

"I suppose it is too soon to worry about future logistics on this matter," Danzo sipped his tea again. "These exams will make or break your project."

Hiruzen laughed. "Indeed, we are getting ahead of ourselves."

"I admit, I'm still surprised you chose this trial by fire. The younger ones, in particular, only a couple stand out as potential chunin candidates at this point. And even that would be a stretch."

"You aren't wrong. But I'm confident in this batch," Hiruzen smiled, leaning back on this chair. "They don't necessarily need to promote either. Nor do all of them need to put forth a strong performance: how much they have grown is what I need to know from these exams."

"They need to survive first and foremost," Danzo reminded him. "Though seems we are getting ahead of ourselves again. We'll have an answer soon enough," he said, rising from his chair. "I assume those were all the matters you had to discuss with me?"

Hiruzen quickly went over his mental checklist. "Yes, you're dismissed. I apologize for taking more than the one hour I promised."

Though subtle, Hiruzen caught traces of irritation in Danzo's otherwise neutral mask. "Don't apologize. You're the Hokage. My time is of little consequence."

Before Hiruzen could reply, the doors of his office swung open and a man wearing a chunin vest barged in.

"Hokage-sama! M-My apologies, but i-it's an emergency!"

Hiruzen rose instantly. "What happened?" he asked, his features hardening and not matching his otherwise calm tone. "You are one of the chunin I assigned to help Anko with the exams today, are you not?"

"Yes, sir! Mitarashi-san urged me to reach you as fast as possible."

"Report."

"A genin team from the Grass has been found dead in the woods surrounding the Firewater Mines."

"…And how exactly would that be an emergency?"

The question was cold, but while the incident was regrettable, it would be easy to cover up to avoid an incident with the Grass, however weak they might be comparatively.

"I… frankly, don't understand it myself. Mitarashi-san ordered me to report without explaining the situation further."

Beside the chunin, Danzo shook his head. "Give us more details. Something must be able to speak for itself if she sent you in such a hurry."

"Well, the three genin… their faces had been ripped off their bodies."

Hiruzen felt his heart stop for a brief moment.

Masking his surprise, he shared a brief look with Danzo before calling a select three ANBU that were hidden around the office. All of them were given orders to build squads. The first was to bring a team of medical ninja to the mines. The second was to bring some of the strongest men he had, and those were to follow him to the mines directly. The last one's duty was to organize tracking teams to sweep all around the mines, reinforced by more combat-focused shinobi, and only that ANBU received any additional orders when they asked for what their target would be.

His response was very simple. "A snake."

The ANBU was all too aware of what that simple word meant and vanished instantly.

With his guards gone, Hiruzen's allowed his shoulders to sag, his guilt almost crushing him alive.

Worst of all was that Hiruzen knew the weight was only going to increase. Every action has a consequence, and his were about to unfold. "I always knew this day would come."

In his peripheral vision, he caught Danzo shaking his head. Wearily, he turned to his old friend, whose gaze was harsh and judgmental, not an inkling of sympathy found in his dark eyes.

"I trust that this time, Hiruzen, you'll do what needs to be done."

Hiruzen didn't dignify that with a reply. Instead, steeling himself, he rushed out of the room, leaving Danzo alone in the Hokage's office.

"…"

In silence, Danzo calmly walked around the office, stopping by one of the windows. His sights were set on the mountainside, where four heads were carved in stone. His thoughts swirled, his face baring no hint of the wildly different emotions each of the four likenesses brought sparked deep inside him.

Danzo didn't allow himself to linger for long, and as he made his way out of the office, only one carefully neutral though remained in his mind.

'It seems an opportunity has finally arrived.'

---

That day was not Naruto's lucky day, it seemed.

"Dammit," he ducked under a blast of water, letting it sail past him and hit something he couldn't see in the darkness of the cavern he was at. "These guys don't let up!"

With a hand sign, he brought forth a few more clones despite knowing by now that wouldn't save him much time. Still, anything he could do to keep it from being a 3-on-1 fight/chase, the better. He had chakra to spare at least.

"These dumbass clones again? Just give it up already kid!"

"Yeah! Just leave that backpack and your scrolls with us and save us the trouble!"

"It's not like you even have a team to pass the test with, right? C'mom, work with us here!"

Naruto gritted his teeth and tried to ignore the remarks from the three Rain ninja that were hot in his heels. The bloodthirsty expression his clones saw right after dying told him that even if he were to give up—and like hell he would!—they wouldn't let him leave that place alive.

As for how Naruto got in that mess? Well…

It all began with the Rock Wall that had split him from his teammates. The Waterfall genin he dueled with carried a sword, and as someone that primarily relies on taijutsu, his situation already didn't look good from the onset.

He and his clones did their very best to hold him off with kunais, often attacking with two or three at once, but he could barely keep up with the guy. To make matters worse, the swordsman was fast enough that Naruto couldn't create enough space to do any ninjutsu by fighting him out… but then an idea struck him: what if he made the guy back off by his own volition?

Taking inspiration from that girl from Grass that he had met earlier, Naruto drew one of the explosive kunai that were on her backpack and activated the tag. A well-timed substitution with a clone bailed him out of the explosion, and he was ready to flip the tables on his enemy and dish out a good dose of ass kicking when, suddenly, out of nowhere…

A giant snake dove in his direction, its massive jaw easily allowing it to swallow Naruto whole.

It was dark, sticky, fetid and impossibly tight inside the snake's… stomach, or whatever it might be called. Naruto didn't know. The only thing he had been sure of is that he needed to get out of that genjutsu, and fast!

So he tried. And tried, and tried, and tried… his stubbornness got the best out of him, and Naruto wasn't sure just how much time he wasted trying to dispel the illusion through chakra control. He had been convinced it was just a matter of him not doing it right, after all, no animals were supposed to live in those mines. The damn snake had to be an illusion, right?

Eventually he was forced to admit defeat, and though the snake's inner musculature fought him he eventually managed to shift his position enough to grab a kunai and stabbed himself in the tight just deep enough to snap him out of most illusions.

Only when that did nothing to change his situation that he realized the snake was, in fact, part of his reality. Though completely baffled, Naruto easily worked out an escape plan and exploded the snake through his Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu.

What he found out as soon as he was freed, though, was that the snake had been moving around the entire time he had been stuck in its gut. Naruto had absolutely no idea where he was. He looked around, hoping to find any sort of landmark, but even though he was on the outside of the mines, not even the central tower was in sight.

That ended up becoming a hint to his next course of action. If he couldn't see the tower, all he needed to do was to climb up the nearby rocky hills to spot it once again, and from there it wouldn't be as hard to reach his team again.

Things weren't as easy as he hoped, unfortunately. Midway through his climb a team from the Rain spotted him, and that's when Naruto did a critical mistake: he saw a passage leading deeper into the mines and took it without a second thought.

The reason this was a mistake was a lack of space. Inside the cavern, Naruto didn't have much room to dodge incoming projectiles, and his clones couldn't be used to mask his escape because there was only one path forward and they couldn't surround the enemy team.

This forced Naruto to just keep running and popping clones, constantly looking over his back in the gaps between memories of fallen clones to avoid the kunai and ninjutsu his enemies kept throwing at him. The clones were just as affected by the tight corridor as he was, and they never lasted more than a minute.

Naruto honestly didn't know what to do besides hoping to run into wider space deep underground, or a dark enough area that he could try hiding. Between all the other entrances to the area and cracked parts of the ceiling, there was just enough light flowing in that he couldn't escape detection…

"Waah!"

But not enough light for him to spot a rock in the floor. With all the grace of a master ninja, Naruto tripped over it and fell, sliding across the rough ground of the cavern thanks to his momentum.

He fell right above one of the bigger cracks on the cavern's ceiling, and the sun shone down on him, almost as if creating a spotlight…

"Hey, you should be more careful, friend," he heard one of the enemies saying, his mocking tone barely hiding laughter.

'Shit.'

Naruto tried to get up, but the fall knocked the wind out of him thanks to the heavy backpack he had on him.

"But after all this running I guess he must be tired," another spoke up. "Maybe we should let him rest."

He was on one knee, and the voices were coming too close, too fast.

'Shit!'

"Yeah. Rest in pieces! I've got just the right jutsu for you, wimp!"

He was on his feet, however unsteady. Yet he knew it was too late—he had nowhere to hide, nothing to swap places with, no way of blocking anything, and with the lights on him, there was no trick he could pull off unnoticed.

There was no escape, and no fighting it out.

An idea bloomed in his mind.

"Oh look," one of them—the one that spoke last—smirked when Naruto turned, his hands frozen in a specific hand seal. "Whatever jutsu this is, it can't beat mine! Lightning Style: Electri—"

Desperate times called for desperate measures…

The three rain genin ceased moving. Their jaws went slack, and their arms became limp as they beheld an incredible sight: a tantalizingly gorgeous blonde woman, tall, toned and completely naked with only smallest wisps of smoke hiding the forbidden details, yet leaving exposed skin everywhere else that nothing was left to the imagination.

"Hey cuties! Wanna hang out with me for a bit? Teehee!"

Blowing a kiss, Naruto made sure to move exaggeratedly to put a little bounce on his newest weapons as he approached the three, and just like Iruka and Hiruzen, he saw the three poor fellas had their eyes glued to his chest, following its every motion.

He didn't really get why, but if it works then who cared, right?

Certainly not the Rain genin, who didn't even notice when Naruto used the remainder of his transformation's smoke to hide his hands and…

"Aw, leave some for me, sis!"

"Yeah! Three guys for just one girl isn't fair! But three guys for three girls…?"

Naruto and his two transformed clones giggled.

He would never admit this to anyone, but he was proud of his girlish giggle, especially when it had its intended effect and left the three Rain genin even more dazed than before, surrounded by three beautiful women.

'Alright, it worked! Time for step two!

Though his enemies couldn't see it, the Narukos weren't actually naked. They were all wearing panties, in which Naruto's untransformed back pouch still hung loosely from. The trio of fake women all subtly drew weapons, aided by the lingering smoke, and then….

"AAAH! Bugs! Bugs! Get them off me! GET THEM OFF ME!"

One of the Rain genin began to scream and flail around wildly, seemingly shaking the other two from their stupor and leaving the Narukos stunned just before they could pounce.

His confusion disappeared when a figure emerged from the shadows an instant later, calmly walking towards him from the same path he had just been running on.

Naruto smirked, and with a glance at the Rain genin, just as he expected, he saw a thick layer of bugs crawling all over their skin. By that point the other two noticed it as well and were also panicking, though not as hard as the first one who was rolling on the floor in a desperate attempt to rid himself of the pests… which ultimately made the others trip on him and crash on the ground.

"Looks like one of them has a fear of bugs, huh, Shino?"

"Indeed. Likely a trauma."

As one, Naruto and his clones, still transformed, rushed at the three and swiftly knocked them out with attacks to their heads.

"Hmph, that's what you get for messing with Naruto Uzumaki!"

His clones high-fived each other, cheering in the background.

"You are aware that they would have passed out from chakra exhaustion soon, correct?"

"Oh yeah," Naruko nodded. "But I wanted to do that. Thanks for the save though! I'm not sure my plan would've been enough," he admitted, scratching his head.

To Naruto's disgust though, the clones began jumping and cheering. "Our hero!"

He dispelling them immediately. He hated when the clones abused their minuscule lifespans to do embarrassing things and leave him to clean their messes. "Little shits."

"I would appreciate if you returned to normal," Shino said, looking up now that the height difference between them went the other way. "That jutsu of yours will never cease to be unsettling."

Naruto crossed his arms. "I don't want to hear that from you."

Nonetheless, he did as requested.

"What are you doing here anyway? And... just you?" Naruto looked around, frowning. "Where's Hinata and Kiba?"

"It's… a long story." Shino then motioned to the fallen Rain genin. "Help me get their scroll and supply bag, I'll explain things in the meantime."

"Sure."

A cloud of bugs rose from the three genin, and they all swiftly flew back to Shino's sleeves.

"My team has met up with Team 10 a few hours ago. We've teamed up, as per Ino's suggestion earlier, and after securing a base of sorts we began to pursue your team." Shino then rose, showing Naruto the team's Fire scroll and slinging around their backpack around his shoulder.

"Ooh, a base? That's cool!"

Shino just nodded, and motioned for Naruto to follow him deeper into the cavern. "It's in another part of the mines. We'll need to go outside first and then enter another underground passage. We should hurry while there are still no other foes nearby."

"Wait a sec, we need to find Sasuke and Sakura first! We got split up, you know? We were fighting another team but they were fighting together and against just one guy, so I'm sure they are fine, but they can't find the way by themselves."

There was a slight moment of pause before Shino gave a reply. "We have already found them. Sasuke had been fleeing from someone, and he had an unconscious Sakura in his arms—simple chakra exhaustion," he stressed upon seeing Naruto's expression contort in worry and surprise. "We have… taken them back to the base already."

Something about Shino's continuous hesitation gave Naruto a particularly bad vibe.

"So Hinata and Kiba got them there already, huh," he asked as he began to follow Shino.

"Not exactly, but yes. While Sakura seems stable, I am unsure about Sasuke. He was… panicking, for a lack of better word."

"He was what?"

Naruto had never seen the unflappable Sasuke panic before. Not even when they had been about to die against Haku—from their perspective anyway.

"It seems that whatever enemy he had been fighting had scared him deeply, on top of forcing him to flee," Shino said, frowning hard enough that Naruto could spot it despite the bad lightining. "He was limping slightly and clearly had been in quite the fight from how disheveled he was. His account of the events was rushed, but very strange, too."

"Strange?"

"You see…"

Naruto's eyes went very wide as Shino finished to relay Sasuke's words.

"Sasuke seemed certain that this woman he fought was going to give chase and was very distressed. We tried to calm him down, and when that didn't work Kiba simply knocked him unconscious," Shino said scowling deeply. "He suspected Sasuke had fallen prey to a genjutsu at some point but I feel there was more to it. Regardless, with Sasuke out cold, Kiba and Chouji went to carry him and Sakura back to our base, and since you were isolated we decided I would keep looking for you."

"But by yourself?"

"You began moving away from my position soon after, though, so it took more time than planned," he explained. "It was a gamble, but you were alone too. And as you just said, you wouldn't be able to find us. It was also a risk for Kiba and Chouji, but we saw no choice but to take it."

Shino eventually led Naruto to a wall and began to walk up to it. Naruto stopped for a moment, spotting a hole in high up, being one of the few sources of light in the area. It just big enough for a human to squeeze through.

Naruto then sent chakra to his feet, and debated with himself for a few seconds. Shino was a very intelligent person, so Naruto felt like he might have missed a detail but soon concluded otherwise.

"Hey. But what about the others? Hinata, Shikamaru, Ino…?"

"That is another long story."

Naruto wondered if it was just him or if Shino sounded weary.

Soon enough, they both left the cave thought the opening in the wall, and just as Naruto had theorized, he could see the central tower again.

"We need to travel in that direction," he pointed somewhere to the left of the central tower. Everywhere just looked like a mass of rock to Naruto though, but he didn't ask for more directions. "The entrance is not very far from here, although the path inside the cavern is far from a straight line."

"Sure," he said as they began to move. "…Hey, Shino?"

"Yes?"

"What about the others?" he asked, again.

If he hadn't been looking closely, Naruto would have never caught the way Shino's expression twisted for a second at Hinata's name, but he spared no thought to the reaction.

"Naruto. Do you remember that team from the Sand that you and Sasuke asked Kabuto about? More specifically, the one clad in purple?"

"The cat-ear jerk," Naruto snarled, his features twisted in anger. "Yeah, I remember him alright. What ab... w-wait, did you guys fight him?"

"Indeed. But only him—his team had split up. We believed that the odds were in our favor and engaged him, but he ultimately overcame us. We were forced to flee when his teammates arrived, and only managed to escape thanks to Team 10's efforts."

His eyes went wide. "Damn…"

Naruto hated to admit it, but it seemed like the puppeteer's confidence wasn't unfounded if he could fend off an ambush by himself, especially knowing Team 8 as well as he did.

"So you three lost… did anyone get hurt?"

Shino hesitated again.

"Unfortunately, yes."

The Aburame then told him how the fight had played out in more detail, and though he had mercifully began by noting that she out of danger, hearing what happened to Hinata still made Naruto… Worried? Angry? Scared? Sad?

Perhaps a bit of everything and more, mixed with a weird numbness. Naruto honestly couldn't tell, as was the unfortunate norm when it came to Hinata.

What he did know, is that he almost lost his friend. And that he realized was wholly unprepared for such a thing, despite about a decade's worth of warnings about how fleeting life could be, especially for their profession.

Not that he really needed the reminder. The incident with Haku and Sasuke was still vividly fresh on his mind—emotionally speaking, at least.

'But Hinata's fine. Sasuke and Sakura-chan are fine too. Right? There's nothing to worry about for now,' he told himself, and then tried to focus back on Shino's explanation just as a cavern's entrance entered his view, looking small thanks to the distance.

"—and that's how we decided on how to split up. I'd rather have Kiba behind to secure our base and protect Hinata, but I needed him with me here as well, unfortunately. The traps we left behind will have to be enough until we return."

Naruto was surprised that he could tell Shino was worried through the boy's monotone. Not that he could blame him.

"Aw, c'mon Shino. You said you guys trapped the enitre place, right? Don't worry about them." Naruto smirked. "And Shikamaru inside a dark cavern full of traps, that's not something just any old genin team could get through."

"I suppose."

"And don't worry about the others either. Dog boy is all bark and no bite, but he's got a good nose on him," Naruto smirked. "He only gets into trouble when he wants to cause trouble. They'll be fine."

"You are talking from experience I take it."

"Heh, of course."

Kiba always did a good job at avoiding angry teachers back in their prankster days, Naruto could vouch for that much at least.

"I'll take your word on it, then."

"Believe it!"

The two continued their journey in silence for a while, both as alert as possible to make up for possible gaps in Shino's scan area. By himself, Shino wasn't really the best option for preemptive scouting, but neither were too worried about their situation. Naruto had only gotten into trouble before because he got startled and did something stupid, but now with backup it was easier to keep a clear head. If any foes came after them, it would be a simple matter to cause a diversion between his clones and Shino's bugs, then flee and regroup.

Hopefully. He didn't want to put that to test if he could help it.

Instead, what began to worry Naruto as they traveled and the silence stretched on was… Hinata. And not in the physical sense.

"You know, I bet Hinata's not taking this very well," he eventually said aloud, frowning openly.

"Are you talking about having to stay back with the others?"

"That too, I guess."

Despite their growing bond, Hinata still mystified him on many levels. There were things he was already certain about her, though. One was that she was a hopeless worrywart, and as much as she trusted her teammates to do their jobs well she would still worry too much unless she was up there with them.

It was cute, he had to admit. Hinata was, among them all, the one that most openly showed how much she cared about her friends. 'Kiba and Shino sure got it nice.'

That hadn't been what Naruto had in mind though.

"Ah, I believe I know what you mean," Shino rubbed his chin. "Unfortunately I didn't have a chance to speak with her for too long, and when we did talk she… assisted me instead. If not being able to contribute much from here on out is bothering her, she didn't show it. But I would make the same wager as you if I had to regardless. That's just how she is."

Naruto found himself nodding at that. After his panic-inducing talk with Hinata the day before in his apartment, he knew that burdening her teammates weighted heavily on her mind. If the mere possibility that helping him would've gotten her team in trouble already had stressed her enough to the point of tears, however brief…. how badly was she taking the news that she couldn't fight anymore or even scan her surroundings?

Never mind how she lost to Kankuro, which Naruto was also sure she would also be fretting over endlessly. It was the root cause of her troubles after all.

He shook his head. 'I should talk to her when we get back, as soon as possible!'

But try as he might, he couldn't escape the bad feeling that was festering on his heart…

---

Naruto hadn't been wrong about Hinata.

She had woken up feeling less tired than before, and though her fight with Kiba made her put real effort into halting her self-depreciative thoughts, instead of beating herself up over her own shortcomings she was left with only one thing to do:

Worry.

There really was nothing else to do. She had quietly peeked into their little base's main room as soon as she woke up. Ino was on the ground, eyes closed and in a meditative stance. Hinata knew the girl had to be focusing to sharpen her sensory abilities, and if Hinata couldn't pick up the slack since her Byakugan was off-limits, the least she could do was not bother Ino.

Then there was Shikamaru, who was lying around in a corner of the room, oddly enough having forfeited the chairs by the table. The Nara was awake and alert but bored to death as was painfully visible in his semblance despite the poor lightening. She could have talked to him, but she didn't want to.

Her last option had been to rest some more, but while her body was still somewhat lethargic from being poisoned, she had recovered enough energy that attempting to sleep would be fruitless. Still she lied down, carefully because of her shoulder, and watched the nearby torch burn in anticipation of her team's return.

Were they alright?

Had they found Team 7?

Was Team 7 alright?

Such cruel questions bounced inside her skull endlessly, for what felt like hours. She even, if only for an instant, wished Shino had left the poison in her body for a while longer. Her body still felt weak after all, and being more tired would mean she could return to sleep more easily… but she quickly banished such ridiculous thoughts from her mind.

The invisible clock kept ticking by her ear ever so slowly, until eventually…

"They're back!"

"Finally," Shikamaru yawned.

"Hmm… but wait, I'm not sensing… huh."

"What is it?"

Slowly, Hinata rose from the bed, feeling dread overcome the brief spark of relief she had felt. She took a deep breath and spent one last moment to compose herself before daring to join her companions.

Ino had been the first to notice her and, bless her soul, she immediately went to ask about Hinata's condition. But Hinata waved off her concerns—her friends were far more important.

"I'm only sensing five presences," Ino clarified. "One is definitively Akamaru, and of the other four one is low on chakra and another is very, very low. Dangerously so."

"This isn't good," Shikamaru frowned deeply. His eyes then settled on Hinata. "We're going to check it out, okay?"

She knew better to assume that he meant all three of them, and bobbed her head once. There was little point in trying to hide the concern from her features, so she didn't, which earned her a sympathetic look from Ino, but nothing more. The blonde chose to hurriedly follow Shikamaru, sparing no comforting words to her friend.

Then Hinata was left alone.

She sighed.

There was nothing more vexing to her than standing in the sidelines, being able to do nothing but watch as events unfolded while she was unable to influence the tides. That wasn't news to herself, even if her fight with Kiba had put some of her own behavior in a different perspective.

Instead of wallowing in self-pity or her worries, Hinata chose to try to be as useful as she could. Earlier, she had found no answer when questioning how she could be helpful, wounded as she was, but things had changed.

Moving across the rooms as fast as she could without risking her wound opening, Hinata quickly collected the first aid supplies Ino had used on her, as well as her own team's, and left everything on the small table that was on the base's main room. Then, with far more difficulty than she had expected, she placed a couple of their sleeping mats back in the room she had woken up in, just in case her friends were in a bad enough condition to need to lay down.

As she had up until then.

"Kiba-kun had said it in jest, but I truly hope nobody will need the mattress more than I did…"

With her task complete, Hinata paced around both rooms and, reluctantly, concluded there was nothing else she could do but wait.

Thus, with a sigh of resignation, she strode to the entrance to peer at what was beyond their little den. The area was fairly wide, and to her surprise there was far more light than she expected thanks to a couple of holes near the ceiling. The holes were sizeable, but most of the space was blocked off by the thick tree trunks that curved into it from the outside, and what would normally be treetops were actually upside down, bathing most of the chamber's surface in a veil of shadows.

Despite the astonishing amount of light, Hinata had no fear of being spotted. Their base was located high up a wall—very high up—and the foliage from the trees hid the entrance quite well, giving her an excellent perch to scan her surroundings safely.

"Ah!"

Hinata almost fell from the entrance's edge, taken by surprise when the entire cavern shook, making the trees in the ceiling bounce, raining down leaves to the floor.

Though she steadied herself with her good arm fast enough, what gave her fear was why the small quake happened.

She knew exactly why—she heard it.

'Explosions… lots of them.'

The blasts began anew, followed by familiar voices at a much lower volume. Not enough for Hinata to understand the words, but enough to carry their tone of urgency.

Her heart rate doubled.

'This isn't good!' her mind unhelpfully supplied, and one hand clenching over her chest.

The next few seconds passed by agonizingly slow, but soon she began to make out the voices.

"—hadn't knocked me out!"

"It's not like you were cooperating!"

"Shut up and run you two!"

That screech was undoubtedly Ino's, and it was followed by other hushed tones Hinata couldn't decipher.

Finally, she saw people emerging from one of the narrow passages down below: Ino, Chouji, Shikamaru, Sasuke, Akamaru and Kiba. Sakura was there too, seemingly unconscious and cradled in Sasuke's arms. And if her eyes weren't fooling her, the Uchiha was limping a bit…

"We'll only have one shot at it," Shikamaru called out to them. "Are you guys ready?"

'Ready for what?' Hinata thought, biting her lip. It was too far for her to see any meaningful detail on her friends's clothes, such as blood, yet she tried anyway… until her question answered itself.

To her complete bewilderment, a giant snake emerged from the same path her friends had come from. She hardly had time to question the sight, as the reptile slid forward with surprising speed, chasing down her friends, who kept running until one of the pivoted and crouched.

It was Shikamaru.

The snake lunged for the kill but large tendrils of shadows emerged from all directions, clamping down on the snake at various points and holding it in place… only for a couple seconds. The animal began to trash violently, and Hinata knew it would soon overpower Shikamaru's jutsu.

"Guys, do it!"

"Alright! C'mon boy," Kiba yelled, crouching and passing a pill to Akamaru. Beside them, Chouji's whole body inflated, shaping itself like a ball.

Chouji went first, rolling at full speed. He did not go straight at the snake like Hinata assumed, instead he curved around to hit the snake from the side.

The snake screeched in a nightmarish way that Hinata was sure would haunt her at night, but not more than what was to follow.

The Meat Tank Jutsu hadn't been enough to crush it to death, yet instants later, Kiba and Akamaru rushed forward, spinning into their clan's most famous technique.

…And entering the snake though its open mouth, killing it from the inside in only a few moments.

"That does it," Shikamaru heaved, releasing his jutsu and wiping his forehead.

The cavern trembled lightly again. Not from an explosion, but from Kiba and Akamaru's technique as revealed when they emerged from the ground a few meters away from the snake's corpse.

"Good job, boys!" Ino said, walking over to a deflating Chouji to high-five him, but when she went to Kiba she gave up hallway thought. "Dude…"

The Inuzuka just muttered something in disgust as he inspected himself. Blood and sticky fluids clung to his body and to Akamaru's fur as well, who unhelpfully shook himself and spread the nastiness to everyone else.

Besides Hinata of course.

'I… suppose there's one advantage to my situation,' she couldn't help but think as she kept watching from the distance.

The four conscious genin then began to talk among themselves. With the fight over, they lowered the volume and Hinata couldn't make out all the words but, from their gestures, they were talking about the snake. Expected, since she too remembered these training grounds were supposed.

The discussion was short-lived, thanks to Sasuke. "Enough chit-chat. Let's get out things and get out of here," he said while moving briskly in her direction, not giving anyone a chance to object.

Sasuke met her eyes as he walked, offering a brief nod of acknowledgment that she timidly responded with a small wave. Her own eyes were locked down on the girl he held in his arms, however.

'He doesn't seem worried about her, so… she has to be fine, right? Ino-san did say that someone seemed out of chakra… and I know Sakura's reserves aren't the highest.'

Feeling somewhat confident on her logic, Hinata ducked back into the base, tuning out everyone's voices. Sakura and Sasuke would have a place to rest comfortably for a while, and the others didn't seem to need it. In order to stave off thoughts of Naruto and Shino, who weren't with the others for some reason, Hinata instead began to prepare things for the ones that were there.

Everyone looked fine enough so Hinata withdrew some of the first-aid supplies that were on the table and replaced them with a few canteens of water and ration bars, all while cursing herself for not thinking of that before.

That only took a few minutes, but nobody had joined her up above. Frowning, she went back to the entrance, but before she could peek at her friends…

She heard something.

"Is… someone clapping?"

It was the sole noise echoing off the cavern's walls. A slow clap, almost sarcastic if Hinata had to guess.

Curious, she made towards the base's entrance.

Or at least, she attempted to.

The temperature suddenly dropped to a freezing degree, a deathly cold mist assaulting her body and fogging her mind, worming its way down to her lungs in an attempt to suffocate her.

At the same time a wave of pure pressure crashed down on her, making her knees buckle and sending her to the ground.

She screamed, breathlessly, as her wound flared up in pain, leaving her vision muddy in the darkness of the cavern.

By instinct she had tried to support herself with her arms, but putting weight on her shoulder only lead to her curling up in a feeble attempt to withstand the pain, but that was all the movement she could muster. It was if her entire body was chained down to the ground.

She knew this sensation all too well.

'This is killing intent! But… but this feels so strong!'

There was no way any of her friends would be capable of exuding such an overpowering aura, with the indirect exception of Naruto. Yet Hinata already had been exposed to his prisoner's brand of killing intent, and it felt very different. There had been a palpable… fury, in there. Something eerily warm.

This was completely cold and emotionless. It felt fake somehow, almost contradicting its own intensity.

Which meant her friends were still in danger.

With that thought giving her strength, Hinata dragged herself across the ground as best as she could, using her good hand to grip the rocky ground and push herself. Eventually—nowhere as fast as she'd like—the room's table was within reach.

Her hands shot out towards one of its legs and she gripped them as hard as she could, using it as leverage to rise. The piercing pain no longer paralyzed her, rather, it fueled her will to get through the heavy bloodlust.

Yet when Hinata rose and finally made her way back to the entrance, struggling through every step as if she had been walking underwater, one word eventually popped in her mind.

'Why?'

Her efforts were destined to amount to nothing. She couldn't fight. She couldn't scout. Why did she struggle so hard when the only thing she could do was watch?

Her lavender eyes were taking in the scene before her as she questioned herself. Perhaps it didn't matter she was an invalid, because it already seemed too late to help.

All across the area she could see evidence of a fight—most notably one of the ceiling trees was on fire, bringing light to the entire cavern. More importantly, her friends's fallen forms littered the cavern.

The only one still on the fight was Sasuke, who was shaking like a leaf. His back was turned to her and Hinata could only imagine how terrified he must have looked like. Directly behind him was Sakura, whose condition hadn't changed at all. And standing a few meters in front of Sasuke was…

A woman.

"So our little game finally reached its end, Sasuke-kun."

Her voice alone gave Hinata chills.

"I must say, I didn't expect this to take so long. Your teammate still isn't interesting at all to me, but I have to admit her control is top-notch if she was able to successfully cast an illusion at someone like me."

She didn't seem pleased at that, Hinata noticed.

"Nowhere as impressive as you, though, Sasuke-kun…"

A sadistic smirk spread across the woman's lips. She began to step forward, closing the distance between herself and Sasuke… who made no movement to escape.

Hinata heard his voice but understood nothing beyond the terror he felt, which was carried vividly by his trembling tone.

"Oh, I don't want much," the woman said in reply. "My only goal here is to give you a gift… of power."

Hinata's eyes almost bugged out of her skull. Before she knew it, the woman had bit Sasuke's neck—from a distance. It was almost as if her neck had become a snake itself, stretching like lightning towards its prey.

It couldn't have lasted more than a couple seconds, but when Sasuke fell to his knees, screaming desperately and practically convulsing, Hinata knew there was far more to the bite than what it looked like.

The woman then crouched to his level, staring him at the eyes. Her voice was just loud enough for Hinata to understand in spite of Sasuke's screams.

"Today you ran from me, but when the time is right you will be the one seeking me out."

The screams suddenly ceased, and Sasuke slumped to the ground.

The woman began to chuckle and Hinata was dimly aware that her own lungs weren't working for a while already.

"You will be perfect for my plans, Sasuke-kun."

To Hinata's surprise, the woman produced a familiar blue scroll from her sleeve and tossed it at Sasuke.

"Yes… you will be mine."

Then, a roar.

Not from the woman, but…

"Naruto, no!"

Her mind barely recognized Shino's voice before an orange blur tackled the woman.

'Naruto-kun?!'

At that moment, Hinata felt it. Masked by the woman's deathly cold aura was the fiery rage of the Kyuubi. Subdued compared to when she first felt it in Wave but unmistakably the very same energy.

But the difference between their auras was so palpable to Hinata that Naruto's presence only added to her turmoil.

True to her bad feeling, while Naruto was stronger and faster than she was accustomed to seeing, it wasn't enough. He forced the woman into a taijutsu duel, and while his ferocity and the initiative gave him an edge at the start, the woman steadily began to overpower him, dragging him further away from the base as they fought. His wild unpredictability was, perhaps, the only reason he even lasted more than a few seconds.

Her attention wavered when she saw Shino motioning at her from below, as if to call her. Without an ounce of hesitation she leapt, using her good hand to keep her wounded shoulder from jostling too much when she landed.

It still stung.

"Shino-kun, what is it? D-Do you have any idea of what's going on?"

He was scowling beneath his sunglasses. "I don't, but what I do know that this woman is far above our level, and while she doesn't seem interested in any of us besides Sasuke," he then pointed at the ceiling, more specifically the tree that was aflame, "that will draw everyone's attention here thanks to the smoke."

She caught on fast, features hardening. "We need to get everyone out of here."

"Exactly. I realize you are wounded but everyone else seems to be unconscious besides Naruto."

There were two immediate problems with that plan. "But are we just going to let Naruto-kun fight by himself? W-We can't carry everyone out!"

"I… I know. But I have no other plan, Hinata."

Hinata felt her throat locking up at that. If not even Shino could offer a solution…

It would have to come down to their instincts.

Her eyes darted to Naruto again, who was now taking far more hits than he could land back. The chances of making him stop the fight to help them out were almost zero, and even if they could, unless the woman backed off it would be meaningless.

'At least Naruto-kun drove her away from everyone.'

With that thought giving her focus, Hinata hurried to her other friends. She could hear Shino dashing off the opposite way.

Her steps took her to Sasuke who, being below the burning tree, had to be her priority even disregarding what had happened. The boy kept contorting, visibly in pain, yet his eyes remained closed. After attempting to rouse him and failing, her eyes landed on a trio of black tomoe etched on his skin, right where the woman had bitten him.

If not for Sasuke trashing around, the sight would have distracted her. Instead she grabbed one of his arms and, putting extra chakra into her own, dragged him away. Out of the corner of her vision she saw Shikamaru, and to her immense relief he seemed to be waking up.

"Shikamaru-san! Help!"

Her desperate cry worked and the usually lazy Nara was spurred into action from the urgency in her voice. He stumbled, but quickly joined her and took Sasuke himself, even if he looked a bit lost as to what else he was supposed to do.

"We need to get everyone and run," she told him in a hushed, panicked whisper before he could question anything.

Shikamaru didn't answer and instead briefly took in the scene before him. His eyes darted between his fallen friends, Shino propping Sakura up against a wall, but when they reached Naruto they went wide.

At the same moment, the Kyuubi's aura dissipated and Hinata knew it would be a mistake but she did it anyway: she followed Shikamaru's gaze.

Only to see the woman holding Naruto up by the neck. His shirt and jacket were torn at the bottom, and for the first time in her life, Hinata saw his dreaded seal, even if it was from a distance.

The woman was drawing her hand back, almost as if she had slammed it into Naruto's stomach, then she tossed him unceremoniously at the ground as if he were trash.

"Now then…"

Then, for one heart-stopping moment, the woman's eyes fell on Hinata, locking her into place as if she was bound by ice-cold chains. It couldn't have been more than a second before the woman focused on Sasuke again, but Hinata had never been more frightened in her entire life than at that moment.

"I suppose my business here is done."

With that statement, the woman mercifully ceased to emit killing intent, and Hinata could finally breathe normally again for a moment, before her senses were assaulted by other things.

The growing smoke and rising temperature from the fires, for one.

A much lighter—but noticeable—wave of killing intent was the other, preceded by fast-paced footsteps echoing from one of the nearby openings in the cavern.

"I'm not letting you escape, Orochimaru!"

Hinata couldn't hope to keep track of a jonin's speed, but between the voice and a flash of purple…

"The proctor is here," Shikamaru completed her thought, grimacing. "Ugh, this is only getting worse!"

"R-Right!"

She tuned out Anko's fury-laced battle banter with the woman as she dashed towards Naruto—though not before noticing that Kiba had awoken too and was helping Shino drag Chouji away, towards Ino and Sakura.

Much like with Sasuke, Hinata tried to rouse Naruto when she got to him. They were both dangerously close to where the proctor was fighting, but Hinata knew that their best hope of successfully escaping was by using Naruto's clones.

Unfortunately, her efforts were in vain, and she had to vent her frustration through her nose.

"Come on Naruto-kun," she told her fallen friend, preparing to drag him like she had done to Sasuke. "We need to—"

And at that moment… even though Hinata had tried to filter out what Anko and the mysterious woman were talking about as they dueled, her brain latched on to one thing the latter exclaimed:

"Earth Release: Rock-Lodging Destruction."

Hinata screamed, as a shockwave ravaged the entire area and stole her footing. She fell right into Naruto, giving her an ultra-close look at his seal that she never even processed because her shoulder flared up again, almost dominating her senses.

'No Hinata, don't be a weakling again! You need to keep moving, you idiot!'

At her inner self's urges, Hinata scrambled to rise, placing one hand on Naruto's thigh and then pushing herself up.

"…Oh no."

Her face was inches away from a stone pillar, and time seemed to slow down for her as she saw deep cracks across its surface, spreading upwards furiously like a disease.

Dust and small bits of rock invaded her sight, and the cavern rumbled out in a deafening boon.

She now understood exactly what kind of technique the woman had used, and despair seized her heart.

'The cavern is… going to collapse…'

Her thoughts were hazy, as part of her couldn't believe what was going to happen.

Her neck craned up just in time to see a fist-sized piece of rock crumbling out of the upper-most part of the pillar, just as it crumbled inward. And as the pillar ceased to be, that one piece of rock fell from high up, casting the smallest of shadows across Hinata's face.

The shadow grew larger and larger in the span of a second until the rock slammed against her skull, and to the darkness Hinata returned…

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A/N:

...Oh boy, I can finally leave this ordeal behind. Whew. Still not too sure about the chapter's flow, but I feel the scenes couldn't be arranged in any other way.

Our heroes are in trouble now, and I purposefully left some questions behind about both future and past events. I'm sure Orochimaru being struck by a genjutsu won't sit well with some of you, especially for "so long", but it will all be explained next time.

Hopefully still this year, I don't see the rest of the second exam being very long. Not a lot of events left on my checklist... but remember: the next chapter will come out much faster if I have a beta helping me out every step of the way!

Be it because of this job offer or because of the story's events, please do leave a review! This chapter almost killed me and I really need to hear how you guys felt about it! Between the action, Hinata and Sasuke's inner struggles, Danzo... there's a lot to leave a review about, even if it's just to finishwhat the chapter couldn't. I already have a grave reserved just for me in the nearby cememtery.

And not because of the fic. I made the bad decision of trying to play two gacha games at once so Mario Kart Tour is now demanding my attention alongside Heroes. And I stilll have much work to do in Three Houses too (an amazing game, storngly reccomed to everyone), so please excuse me while I try to end my own existence, lol...

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Guest Review Answers:

mattywilkss: I suppose you've long since ditched this story because of that, but chapters 4 and 5 have since been revised and explain how the characters took what Kurenai did much better than the version you read. I knew it would be a controversial move, but I'm sticking to my guns.

GunbusterXL: This perosn here just said my fic is better than Team 8, everyone. Like, wow. Highest praise ever, haha... I'll take it with a grain of salt since I have'nt re-read it, as stated before, but thanks a lot! Glad you liked my work so much! (And I guarantee you, there are more than enough grammar mistakes scattered all across this fic, waiting for me to get back to purge them. I sometimes read this while on the move and, unfortunately can't do that as I find them)

Guest (Ch 25, May 13th): I hope you enjoyed Nightdreams! And I'm glad the action had you hooked, I worked really hard on those scenes.

Happy Guest: Glad you enjoyed it that much! I try my best to make the interactions as fluid and consistent as possible... and I love the NH dynamic here too. The way Hinata continues to confuse Naruto with almost everything she does has yet to get old for me, haha.

Guest (Ch 3/6/21): I'm sorry the A/Ns are bothering you so much, "Im trying to be less wordy with those. But regarding Ch 21, I completely disagree. Sorry.

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Changelog:

v1.1 (20/03/2020): Fixed a couple of typos Happy Guest pointed out. There was also a slight plothole in how the team that Team 7 fought had two backpacks. Not exactly impossible since Team 7 had two at that point, but I changed so there was only one. The backpack with the guy Sasuke and Sakura fought was Thanos'd, but the guy Naruto was crushed to death with his backpack... so Team 7 won nothing from that exchange.