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!)

27. Chapter 27 - Longing for the Dawn

It has been ages, but I'm back!

You guys don't know how glad I am to finally push this out… and I'm really, really sorry for what I'm pretty sure was the biggest gap between updates!

My excuse this time is a sad story. And long too, but keeping it brief, my boss got a contract for a big job back in September, that was much bigger than anticipated, but outsourced it to a bunch of doofuses. He couldn't give it to our department cuz we have a monthly schedule to take care of, but… by late October one by one my team was pulled into this black hole that invaded our personal lives. No weekends off, and as soon as we get home after 6 PM we were expected to work from home too.

We lost over a month to this extra job (it ended on December 1st), and are still struggling to get back on schedule to this day, four months later… I didn't have the time to spare for this story until December, but I was so worn out I just couldn't do it. It was only in January when I resumed work.

But the bad times are over, and thanks to my wonderful new beta NPCrusader (as well as jerniman who applied to the job and kindly helped out with one scene before we realized our schedules didn't match well), things are back on track! And hopefully will get better, the Coronavirus outbreak made my team switch to home office and if everything works out this will be permanent! And I'll have more time to write.

There was also a change to last chapter. It was small, but for anyone with good memory or that has (re)read this recently, Sasuke and Sakura no longer got a backpack from the team they fought before Orochimaru. The backpack now went to the guy Naruto fought, and it got crushed to death with him. Ouch.

Now, I hope you guys enjoy this final part of the second exams!

---

The Chunin Exams arc

Chapter 27: Longing for the Dawn (v1.1)

---

'Dammit Anko… you just had to mess up, didn't you? You idiot!'

With that self-deprecating thought—one of the many that had crossed her mind in the past few minutes—Anko forced her weary body from the ground into a sitting position, using one of the nearby trees for support. She then tried to get up fully, but her legs felt like lead and jelly at the same time, completely refusing to cooperate. It had taken her long enough just to sit up because her arms weren't much better.

"Fuck." Groaning and resigning herself to her fate, Anko slumped against the tree, whose shade hid her from the afternoon sun's punishing heat.

All she could do was wait for backup, and the lashing out she knew she was going to get for attempting that pursuit solo.

Eventually, her senses picked up a group's approach. She only paid enough attention to figure out it couldn't be a genin team—too many people, and too quiet, just barely enough for her to make out some words at the end.

"—her trees, perhaps?"

"It must be, let's hurry!"

She smirked, knowing help was on the way… but it vanished when Hiruzen Sarutobi landed in front of her, wearing his battle gear and helmet while flanked by various ANBU.

"H-Hokage-sama?"

Hiruzen motioned to one Anbu, who wore a bizarre mask that Anko couldn't identify the animal it was meant to be. The ANBU crouched and began to heal her while the others scattered.

"Now, Anko, tell me what happened and why you though going after Orochimaru by yourself was a good idea."

Anko looked away from Hiruzen's stern glare, feeling like a stupid child that didn't know better rather than the responsible adult she was supposed to be.

But then again, maybe that was just the truth.

"I found him in that cave behind us, or what's left of it. Almost as soon as I engaged he dropped the whole cavern on me and a few genin that already there… and possibly other people in the lower levels."

"You engaged him with genin nearby?!"

"I had no choice! He was doing something to them! I didn't get a good look at what, or who the genin were, but coming from him it can't be anything good. I tried to move him away from the kids but I never thought he'd try to collapse the whole thing on us."

There was a brief silence as Hiruzen considered her words, which the medic ANBU soon broke. "No serious wounds, Hokage-sama."

"I see. Thank you."

The ANBU bowed, and Anko barely managed to mumble a thank you before he was gone.

"You chose to continue your pursuit rather than protect the genin, Anko."

She felt the accusation in Hiruzen's words but didn't cower. Rather, they drew her ire.

"Hokage-sama, you know him! You know what he did to me! I… I had to try to stop him before he could capture anyone else and experiment on them or gods know what he was planning!"

Yet however true her words were—and she meant every last one of them—she couldn't deny the other, selfish reasons behind her actions.

It left her shaking her head at herself, looking down at the ground. "Not that it did a lot of good either way."

"…He fled long ago, didn't he?"

"Not that long ago, but… yeah. I don't think your men will catch him," she sighed. "He defeated me and just… walked away. He wasn't feeling threatened at all."

Then, Anko thought, perhaps defeated wasn't quite it. Toyed with was the more accurate term. Orochimaru, unlike herself, was surprisingly happy to see his old student again…no, not surprisingly. He didn't give a damn about her per se, but the results of his past experiments on her, that he did care about.

And once he became satisfied, he just activated her seal, completely denying all the growing she had done these past few years. All the skills she had accumulated, the tactics ingrained in her mind from years of experience in the field…

All of it completely worthless when her chakra became tainted with his venom, her muscles locked up and everything flared up in pain as her body fought to resist the invasion and lost, surrendering itself to him almost instantly.

She had never felt so frustrated and frightened in all her life.

Her thoughts halted when an old, wrinkled hand entered her vision. She only hesitated for a second before accepting the Hokage's help, rising to two feet despite the wobbly numbness in her legs.

"Thank you, Hokage-sama."

Now at eye level with him, Hiruzen gave her one long, hard look… and even if Anko could mask her feelings, she knew it would be futile.

"Listen, Anko. I won't condone your actions anymore, but don't blame yourself for allowing him to escape."

She gave him a small, pitiful smile. "Ah, Hokage-sama… you know we both can't let it go that easily when it comes to him."

"…Yes, I know."

Hiruzen didn't bother trying to mask his guilt either. Maybe to most other people he would have, as the Hokage should, but he had already shown this particular weakness to her before. Many years ago, in a hospital room, when a young girl finally fought through the coma she had been left in by the person she had trusted the most…

She almost wanted to laugh. So much time had passed, and there she was, thrown aside like trash once more.

"Anko, did you get any information out of him? You know how talkative he is during battle."

Her eyes went wide. She had been so busy kicking herself that she almost forgot!

"There's something, yes! He wanted me to pass a message to you."

Hiruzen's gaze hardened.

"He said that you are not to cancel the exams or interfere in any way. If you do, he will know and… he said he'd raze Konoha to the ground."

"An empty threat," the Hokage shook his head. "If he could, he would have done it immediately."

"Yeah, I think so too! But he had a goal here, Hokage-sama. It has to have something to do with the kids he was with, but…"

Anko turned around. She knew every detail about the mines, as part of her preparation for being a proctor, but the area before her was unrecognizable after Orochimaru destroyed the foundation. The exit she had used was completely blocked off.

"How many?"

Anko lowered her head. "I think there were two to three teams in there."

Hiruzen closed his eyes, drowning them in silence and furthering Anko's guilt.

Had she doomed those kids…?

"We need to understand what Orochimaru is planning and hopefully how far his connections here go," Hiruzen eventually said. "He must have help from inside to have gotten in undetected. For now, I'll… accept his terms. If all goes well, the knowledge we will obtain should lead us to him."

"So we aren't going to send out someone to rescue the genin?"

"No, Anko. Not now." He placed a hand on her shoulder. "Orochimaru has to be the priority in this case. And if he did something to any of those kids, he must want them alive. He wouldn't bring down the cavern on them if it could jeopardize his experiments."

'He could have just taken a blood sample or something,' she countered in her mind, knowing the Hokage must have been aware of that. Clinging to Hiruzen's theory was far more appealing, and there was some truth to it. Orochimaru didn't kill for fun and even if he did, it wasn't a good reason to invade Konoha just to kill random kids.

"…There's that possibility I guess," she finally admitted, yet she couldn't hide the worry in her voice.

Mercifully, even though he had no obligation, Hiruzen gave her some peace of mind.

"There's a chance for an international incident should we be seen tampering with the exams, but I'll have my men scouring over this area for the children as soon as we either find Orochimaru or end up with no leads. For now, you should head back to the main gate. There's a medical squad stationed there. "Hiruzen began to walk away. "If you think you need further healing please ask for it. Sheep knows only enough to get by."

'…Sheep? That's what that mask was supposed to be? The hell?'

She dispelled the thought, scratching the back of her head. "I think I could use another dose of healing, yeah… I'm not wounded but still am sore. I'll get started on a report as soon as I can, too."

"Excellent." Hiruzen walked past Anko, stopping a little distance from her. "The medics will brief you on the other teams I sent in case it proves necessary. For now prioritize the exam, as long as the report is done before the night ends."

"Yes, sir," Anko saluted him, and a moment later her mind caught up with the fact that Hiruzen wasn't moving. "Hokage-sama, are you… staying here?"

Hiruzen didn't answer. His eyes were locked to the wreckage that Orochimaru had brought down.

She couldn't stare for long. In the spur of the moment she had easily chosen Orochimaru over those kids, but the Hokage made that decision calculatedly. One could've argued him being angry over her making such a decision was hypocrisy, but she had a real choice, and she knew she made the foolish one.

Hiruzen, however, had a duty to make one choice over the other.

'Weighting people's lives like this, constantly… being a Kage must be hell,' she scowled.

With that thought, Anko chose to leave her question unanswered and disappeared.

For better or for worse, she still had an exam to manage.

---

The first thing that drew Hinata back to the world of the living was an indecipherable sequence of sounds.

Something being broken over and over, perhaps, she couldn't be sure of much in the endless black her drowsy mind was submerged into. Her nose was picking up a foul smell, and her entire body felt… heavy, and there was dull, unpleasant throbbing everywhere.

Two areas her particularly hard: her skull and one shoulder. It was if someone was bringing a hammer down on her over and over again.

The crashing sounds stopped suddenly, and she heard a somewhat muffled voice.

"Naruto? Hey Naruto! Do you hear me?!"

Something about those words made her slightly more alert. Or maybe it was because her body began to shake—or more accurately, whatever her stomach was pressed against was shaking.

"Damn… he's out. Because of course he is."

The voice ceased and the crashing sounds returned, growing ever closer to her. Suddenly the weight that was against her left foot disappeared, and she heard a gasp.

"A foot? Then this means…"

The crashes grew frantic and more and more of the weight around her legs quickly disappeared.

"Just as I thought," the voice said, frustrated. A boy? "Hinata, are you hearing me?"

The voice insisted a couple more times and Hinata was beginning to grow frustrated with her own unresponsiveness.

Then someone wrapped their hands around her ankles and pushed—she screamed immediately.

"Ah shit, I forgot about her shoulder…!"

She instinctively curled up on herself, limited by the weight still immobilizing most of her body. Still, however stinky, she noticed she was pressed up against something soft…

As the weight around her began to lift in pace with the sped-up crashing noises, her pain started to recede to bearable levels, and Hinata relaxed a bit, uncurling, and finally managed to open her eyes.

There's wasn't much light but she could see rocks almost everywhere and orange fabric, unmistakable, however stained it was.

Naruto's pants.

The upper part.

The front part.

The temperature around her face rose so violently Hinata was sure her brain was boiling inside her skull.

"There we go," the voice said just as the weight above her head disappeared. With nothing to block the sound, she easily identified Shikamaru's tone. "You okay there, Hinata?"

"I-I-I'm fine," she sputtered out, still shaken between embarrassment and pain.

Mostly the pain, though.

"Sorry I forgot about your shoulder, I didn't mean to hurt you. Hold still for a bit, I'm just about done getting this rubble out of the way. You're basically atop a little mountain of rocks."

"Okay…"

As Shikamaru went back to work, Hinata retreated to her mind. 'So those sounds were him throwing rocks but… oh, of course,' she frowned as her memories cleared up. 'The cave-in… we're alive somehow.'

That thought brought way less comfort than Hinata would have liked.

When her earthen shackles disappeared, a dirty-looking Shikamaru carefully helped her get up, but the world immediately became a jumbled mess. Hinata almost fell if not for his quick reflexes, and miraculously he balanced them both on the rocky terrain.

"Whoa, hey, what's wrong?!"

"D-Dizzy," she managed to whimper out. Everything was spinning and dark.

Shikamaru silently supported her for a few moments until they both felt she was fine again.

"Are you hurt? More than before, I mean. The bandages over your forehead are caked with blood," he said, frowning.

"I-It's just my head, yes," she muttered, preferring to omit how her entire body was sore. 'Nothing feels broken so I should be fine… right?'

Her whole body pulsed painfully, almost in reply.

She tried to ignore it as she took in her surroundings. There was a mess of rocks piled up everywhere making small rubble mounds of various sizes, yet there wasn't actually a lot of space around her. Far less than in the chamber she had been at before.

'Waking up in an unknown place again… this is getting old fast.'

"You're wondering where we are, right?" Shikamaru asked, drawing her attention only to motion to the ceiling with his head.

Hinata looked up and her eyes widened. She could see the blue sky, slightly tinted in orange…

It looked so, so far away.

"Whatever jutsu that woman used made the entire area collapse, but you remember those stone pillars, right?"

She bobbed her head once. The image of a pillar crumbling away like sand was unforgettable.

"They apparently held up a lot more floors than the two we were in. We're still in the same area, but on a much deeper floor of the mines."

"I see… n-no, wait, I don't! H-How did we survive?!"

"The ceiling wasn't that thick you know? Well, I guess you wouldn't, but I went up there before to lay out some traps. The weight shouldn't be enough to fatally crush anyone—especially people with developed chakra systems like us—but we still got really lucky the rocks didn't cause any significant damage or block out enough space to suffocate us."

Her chest suddenly felt tight. "Then the others…"

Shikamaru looked away, frustration etched in his features. "I don't know. I tried to tip the scales in our favor by throwing an explosive kunai at the ceiling just before it fell so there were fewer rocks falling around. But I could only affect where us four were more or less."

"Us four?"

Her head turned. She could see only see Naruto, sprawled where they had left him, and quickly averted her eyes lest shame crept up on her again.

"I was with Sasuke, remember? I kind of hid him behind those rocks for now," Shikamaru replied, pointing at a nearby chunk of rubble. "He doesn't look good…"

Gulping, Hinata cautiously made her way to where Shikamaru indicated, taking care not to trip or slip on the various rocks scattered everywhere. Once she saw Sasuke, propped up against the rocks and half-hidden in their shadows, she realized that Shikamaru had put it very mildly.

Sasuke was white as a sheet—a ragged and dirty sheet at that, not that she thought she looked any better. Upon coming closer she also noticed his skin was drenched in sweat, and though unconscious his breathing was labored and his body twitched slightly at seemingly random intervals. She could also spot some bruises.

"It's almost like he's in a nightmare and sick at the same time," she observed. "But… wait."

Gulping, she placed a hand on his forehead.

"Oh no, he has a fever!"

"What?!"

She glanced beside her to see Shikamaru bringing Naruto to where they were, and he rushed over, only stopping to lay Naruto beside his teammate before verifying her words.

"Dammit, why didn't I check for that…! He's burning up!"

Shaking his head, Shikamaru checked Naruto as well. "Well, at least it's just one. Naruto just seems to be out…"

Hinata didn't spare Naruto a glance. "We need to lower his temperature."

"Right," Shikamaru rose. "I'll grab some water, there must be some in Naruto's backpack."

"A-Actually," she motioned for him to halt, "I can take care of this. We shouldn't waste that water."

"What do… oh, I see. Your affinity, right?"

She nodded. "I have chakra to spare… can you take off some of his clothes for me?"

Shikamaru's eyebrows shot up. "His? We could just use my coat if it's to get something wet over his forehead…"

A blush crept up her cheeks—did he think she was some kind of pervert?

"W-Well, ideally he'd need a cold bath so we can keep his temperature in check but… we don't have the resources for that. Taking off some layers is the best we can do right now, I think.

"Huh… troublesome," he shook his head, making Hinata frown. "I get it, gimme a moment."

Hinata backed away to give Shikamaru room to work, knowing that she'd only be a hindrance.

She hoped her idea was correct. It had crossed her mind to just shoot a lot of water at him, which could work in the short term, but being wet and exposed to the elements could worsen his condition in other ways in the long run. Especially with the night drawing ever closer, and with them having no idea how much longer they'd spend in the mines.

Soon enough, Sasuke was left just in his shorts to preserve his modesty and his wet shirt over his forehead. Even his chainmail was removed, as they both grimly agreed that if they got attacked it wouldn't be helpful at all, and it revealed the bruises Sasuke had accumulated during the test.

To her surprise, Shikamaru let out a brief chuckle. "You know, it's kind of funny. You're the only girl in our class that never bothered with him, and probably the first girl to see him shirtless."

'And the first girl to have dinner alone with him too,' she noted with no amusement while placing Sasuke's now-wet shirt on his forehead.

Getting so close to him, she spotted something black near his neck. She was so taken aback by his fever it escaped notice before.

"This mark…"

"I saw that too," Shikamaru came closer, bending over to get a better look. "I'd bet my bed that this is what's making him sick."

"That woman did it to him," Hinata recalled. "She bit his neck, can you believe that?"

He frowned. "What the hell…"

Hinata, too, frowned while trying to decipher the mark. "I think this is a seal of some sort."

Instinctively she lifted a finger, but Shikamaru batted her hand away before she could touch it. "Don't go touching seals at random like that. It's dangerous."

"Oh, um… okay. S-Sorry," she muttered, cheeks reddening. How old was she anyway? Five?

"I don't think we can do anything for him anymore."

Hinata suppressed a sigh. 'He's right. If only I had the Byakugan… then maybe I could've done more.'

Her discussion with Kiba flashed in her mind. Her eyes focused on Sasuke's wet shirt.

'That… has to be enough.'

She forced herself not to dwell on that and finally moved away from Sasuke to see if Naruto demanded attention.

While Sasuke had clearly been afflicted with something, Naruto merely looked to be asleep. The rise and fall of his chest were rhythmically even, and his expression was peaceful.

But then her eyes trailed down. His shirt and jacket had been torn at the bottom, openly showcasing his bare stomach and the big seal that stained his skin.

'So this is it. The source of all of Naruto-kun's problems…'

She felt a weird lump in her throat and forced herself to drop that line of thought.

"Naruto doesn't seem ill in any way, but this thing worries me too," Shikamaru remarked over her shoulder. "I bet that woman did this as well."

"Yeah…"

Hinata wasn't very knowledgeable about seals. Beyond basics the academy taught, she had gone out of her way to look up her family's seals and ended up with massive headaches and far more questions than answers.

She did, however, feel that some of the characters might be related to the Eight Trigrams Sealing Style that her family preferred. Knowing she was far below the skill level for any of the related techniques, she had never pursued them as she now felt she should have, but had casually come across enough drawings and diagrams over the years that she felt the theory held up.

That only drew more attention to the outer layer of the seal, which felt like a different style. Not that she could decipher it, but the five swirly shapes in particular stood out.

"You know," Shikamaru spoke up, "I actually get the feeling this is two seals in one."

His finger hovered over some parts of the outer layer, being exactly the ones that Hinata had felt were out of place.

"These are slightly different in color. Dark brown and not black."

Hinata blinked.

"Oh. Y-You're right! I was so focused on the shapes and symbols that…"

Her frown deepened.

'If this really is a second one, then that woman definitively tampered with Naruto-kun's original seal. We aren't dead yet so it mustn't have been to free the Kyuubi… meaning she must have tried to suppress it somehow. So maybe this is meant to make his seal stronger? But what would she stand to gain from that?'

Her head began to ache harder.

"So you can read these?"

She shook her head. "Almost nothing."

"Then we are stuck."

"Yes," she sighed as she got up. Casting one more forlorn look at her unconscious friends, she turned her back on them. "What should we do next?"

Shikamaru scratched his head, looking conflicted. "The way I see it, we should just stay put and hope for the best. We can't move those two and we're in no condition to fight anyone, let alone while protecting them. But more importantly, it's easier for the others to find us if… well."

"If they're still alive," she completed for him, lowering her head.

"Yeah… that. Between Shino, Kiba and Ino, they should be able to find us. Eventually."

"…"

Hinata didn't know what to think. The idea that she could lose so many of her friends in one fell swoop, just like that?

It was too much, and it took all her might to suppress her tears.

Shikamaru must have seen her struggle and placed a hand over her good shoulder. "Don't dwell on that, okay? I'm sure they're fine. As things are, the fall was probably the more dangerous part, so if we survived so did they."

She appreciated the effort, the cold logic that should be grounding her.

But she just couldn't do it.

"…Right."

With another sigh, she moved away from Shikamaru and her eyes fell back on her two other friends. Sasuke was still squirming and had never looked so frail to her. While Naruto was so still that it was off-putting.

Hinata couldn't escape her bias, though. Sasuke's condition was what her mind worried about the most, but her heart?

'I hope you're okay, Naruto-kun…'

---

Unbeknownst to Hinata, Naruto wasn't unconscious like a normal person.

After all, there was one very specific thing that would forever disqualify him from being normal.

"Unnhhhg…"

With a groan, Naruto opened his eyes. His mind hadn't yet caught up with him, though.

Only when he recognized a wet sensation all around him that he jolted awake, getting up to his feet in one clean motion.

Bewildered, his gaze darted all over the place as he tried to find a clue of what was going on and where he was, but that was for naught.

"What the hell is this place…?"

Naruto found himself on some sort of cramped tunnel-like passage. It was dark, and he almost thought it was underground but there was a faint light coming from somewhere, bathing the entire area into a gloomy atmosphere. The two ends of the passage were completely black voids, so his only theory is that the pipes flowing around the ceiling were lighting up the room somehow, even though they didn't appear to be the light source.

More annoyingly, the entire floor was a pool of tepid, stinky water and he was not much better after waking up on it. His clothes and hair were wet and clinging to him uncomfortably, but those were the least of Naruto's worries.

'I'm… not in the exam anymore, am I? This doesn't look like the type of place I'd find inside a mine.'

Naruto's first theory was genjutsu, but if he truly was in an illusion it was not one he could break out of. Faced with no other option, Naruto chose one direction and braved the tunnel. At first, his pace was slow and careful, but then he broke into a frantic run as memories flooded his mind.

At the forefront, it was Sasuke and that woman that so effortlessly wiped out all his friends. But it was not her actions that stood out to him, but her words.

"You'll be mine, Sasuke-kun."

Naruto didn't know what exactly about that made something inside him snap. Maybe it had to do with how he had been forced to watch that woman taking down his friends because Shino held him back until he simply couldn't… or the malicious possessiveness of her voice. Naruto truly didn't know, but those feelings raged back in as he ran.

The sewer-like area he was in was not a simple straight passage. It didn't take long for the empty void in front of him to branch out, forcing Naruto to choose one path and risk being wrong. Under normal circumstances that would have given Naruto pause, he'd stop and spend a while trying to decide on something before remembering his Shadow Clone Jutsu allowed him to kind-of cheat that kind of dilemma.

But Naruto didn't hesitate nor did he create clones. There was an intense sensation flooding his body, pulling him to specific directions each time the path ahead split off into two and even three directions. He simply kept running and running…

Until he finally was forced to stop.

His mind suddenly felt clearer.

"Dammit… seriously? Is this a cage?"

Naruto glowered at the set of vertical gigantic, thin metal bars blocking off the pitch-black path forward as he slowed down. His mind began to consider ways he could attempt to destroy it, but he stopped once he spotted two things.

The first was a big paper tag with the word "seal" on it, plastered across the center of the metal bars.

The second was what he saw glowing from beyond the darkness: a pair of impossibly big, glowing red eyes with slit pupils…

"So you are the brat I got sealed into."

'…Oh shit.'

Mouth hung wide open, Naruto watched the dreaded Kyuubi emerge from the darkness, looming over him.

The creature wasn't much different than what Naruto expected. A fox, but with nine tails and much, much, much bigger than the few foxes he had seen before in his life. The only thing that stood out besides its oppressive aura were the eyes, and the feral intelligence they betrayed… well, that was for physical appearance only. The cage—seal?—that stood between them did very little to reassure Naruto of his safety.

Thanks to Haku, Naruto was already aware that his eyes changed when the Kyuubi's chakra overwhelmed him before, but seeing it in person…

"Oh, scared, are we?"

Naruto's eyebrow twitched at the fox's smug, fanged smirk.

"I'm not scared of you, you big furball!" he said, crossing his arms. "Not like you're real anyway. I'm probably in a dream right now."

There was a beat of silence, and the Kyuubi's smirk faded. "Dream? …I suppose I shouldn't have expected an ignorant child to have a grasp on what chakra and seals are and how they work," he said, shaking his head.

"Who you callin' ignorant?!"

"You, runt," the Kyuubi growled. "Listen carefully because I'm only explaining this once: this isn't a dream or even an illusion, yet this isn't exactly reality as you know it."

Though that ended up confusing Naruto even more, it made him curious enough to actually listen to the tailed beast, despite his instincts telling him to just run the hell out of there.

"You are currently unconscious in real life, but it just so happened that occurred while you were drawing some of my power and whilesomeone messed with this seal. So instead of your consciousness locking up, for now it's stuck in the spiritual link between us and you ended up here: a subconscious representation of this link between our chakras."

He began to scratch his head, not really understanding much of anything in that last half. "Uh, okay. I do remember your power flowing out but not exactly what did me in this time…"

"Doesn't matter," he cut him off. "My understanding of chakra is good enough that I can feel what happened. Let me show you."

The fox raised a gigantic paw, setting one of its impossibly sharp nails between two of the bars. It fell down until it clanged against something hovering in midair… a set of dark purple metal chains that had escaped Naruto's notice until now thanks to the chamber's poor lightning.

Focusing, he saw that they crisscrossed over the entire span of the cage, and oddly enough were shaped like snakes.

"Chains?" His pointed finger drifted toward the self-proclaimed seal tag near it. "But I thought that w—"

"You thought correctly for once," the Kyuubi interrupted again. "This lock your last foe added to the seal doesn't keep me inside your gut like the actual seal. Instead, it's keeping my chakra from mixing with yours."

"Huh? Isn't that what my seal was supposed to do?"

The Kyuubi closed its jaw, stared at Naruto… and then laughed.

"W-What you're laughing at?! This isn't funny!"

"Ah but it is! You humans, always overestimating yourselves…"

With a loud crash, the Fox threw himself against the cage, making Naruto fall on his butt and giving him a very close view of its sharp teeth and hateful eyes.

"Do you honestly believe a puny creature like you could fully contain someone like me with no consequences?! You imbecile!"

Naruto gulped, and he only dared to speak when the Fox took a step back. "W-Well, yeah. I thought that was what seals did, and, uh, since it was the Fourth Hokage who made it and all that…"

The Kyuubi said nothing to that, but Naruto could feel its disapproval. It oddly enough reminded him of his academy days, and all the times he was left feeling like a stupid clown for not understanding things.

That had never once stopped him from questioning them when he actually felt the need to, and it wasn't going to be a gigantic genocidal demon fox that would change that.

But he did hesitate a little bit.

"So, err… what would happen if I did nothing about this?"

A devious smirk slowly spread across the fox's lips.

"You explode."

"WHAT?!"

The Kyuubi then began to laugh at his stupefied expression. "It would be quite the sight, wouldn't it?"

Something about its smugness sparked a fire in Naruto. "Yeah, you'd like that, huh, you dumb fox. If that happened then you'd be free! As if I'd let you!"

The Fox rolled its eyes, unthreatened. "Your insufferable village should still have a few sealmasters running around. In your current state, you'll slowly but surely build up my chakra and give the entire place more than enough warning about my return. And in my current state, they're more than able to seal me into something else."

That last part piqued his curiosity but the Kyuubi was kept going before he could question it.

"Or instead they could take the easy route and simply fix your seal, which is why I brought you here once I felt your presence."

With wide eyes, Naruto realized the cause behind the impulses leading him through the sewers.

Those eyes then narrowed at the fox. "You know that this just sounds like you're trying to trick me, right? It doesn't make sense for you to want to stay here."

"Of course I realize it, you duplicitous worm."

The insult gave Naruto pause. 'Dup what?'

"You don't have anywhere near enough knowledge to mess with your own seal. I could trick you into believing my lies but if you'll need help from someone that does know about fuuinjutsu, they'd see through it immediately and I'd be no closer to freedom than I am right now."

Giving him one last dismissive look, the Fox turned around, letting the cage's darkness swallow it.

"Unlike your kind, I don't dabble in falsehoods. Whether you believe me or not is of no consequence to me, but fortunately for you, I made a promise and I intend to keep it!"

'A promise? The hell it's talking about?!''

The Kyuubi continued before Naruto could make sense of those words. "Our chakras are connected, and when you recover consciousness you'll see that your meager chakra control will be even worse. If you intend to survive, seek help. But if you die, know that I don't give a damn about it."

Before Naruto could even manage a reply, a pressure wave crashed over him, ripping his consciousness apart and leaving nothing in its wake.

"…"

Curling up on the floor, the Kyuubi let out a frustrated sigh. "In so many ways, he's worse than I expected. And yet…"

He shook his head. Then, he let his eyes wander, landing on his seal's new snake-shaped decorations.

'Just what was your enemy trying to accomplish with this, brat…?'

---

When the Kyuubi expelled Naruto from their shared mindscape, he remained asleep in reality, to the misfortune of Shikamaru and Hinata who had to drag him and Sasuke to a safer place than where they woke up in.

Said safer place was but a small, hollow hole in the cavern's wall. It didn't offer much protection by itself, but with all the rubble around them, it was reasonably hidden from sight and just big enough for all four to stay in without invading each other's space very much.

As Hinata worked—despite her head and shoulder's thundering protests—she listened to Shikamaru's account of what happened before the floor shattered. For the most part it was nothing that she was terribly surprised by. Though she had only caught a glimpse of the woman's abilities, thanks to Naruto rushing her down, Hinata had seen and felt enough that she easily agreed with Shikamaru's theory about her being a jonin at minimum.

What did surprise her was Shikamaru's actions while she had been knocked out. She would've never thought of using an explosive kunai as a shield, with the blasts helping minimize the amount and size of the rocks that crumbled directly above her. Shikamaru not only protected himself and Sasuke, but he also attempted to help her and Naruto which were the closest people to him at the time.

Though he argued that the explosion probably didn't reach them, because the floor was already crumbling beneath his feet, Hinata was still grateful. Who knew? Perhaps if not for his quick thinking she'd actually have perished under the weight or from a blow worse than the one that knocked her out. Her body ached enough as it was, and she welcomed the opportunity to sit on the floor and rest after Naruto and Sasuke had been moved.

Those explosions did leave them with less defenses then, however, as Shikamaru only had a couple tags left. Most of his team's explosives were spent on the various traps around the cave and its entrances, and he managed to hear many of those going off as they fell.

Unfortunately, if Shikamaru's theory on the woman's identity was correct, no amount of explosive tags would protect them from her if she returned.

"O… Orochimaru…?"

The name left her lips in a shaky breath, her brain reeling from the implications.

The rouge member of the Sannin, the legendary team trained by the Third Hokage himself. Their exploits were part of Konoha's history, so intrinsically connected to wars as they were, and the academy couldn't ignore that. Just the same, it couldn't ignore the events that tore that fabled team apart, and that too had been part of her lessons at one point during the academy.

It mildly surprised her that Shikamaru recalled such a thing.

"I'm not completely sure," he replied as he sat down as well, keeping his volume closer to hers. "From what our books covered, Orochimaru is a man, not a woman. But the proctor seemed pretty sure it was him… and the guy was famous for using snakes.

She remembered, the monstrous reptile her friends had defeated. If it was someone's summon then its presence in these exams made sense. However, what worried Hinata was the other thing Orochimaru was famous for—or rather, infamous.

Her eyes fell to Naruto and Sasuke's sleeping forms once more.

'Could these seals be part of some experiment? If that's the case it makes some sense that he just left without finishing us off or anything, but… that would mean he has to see the results at some point.'

The thought made her shudder.

"But either way, we can't know for sure," he continued, then cast a morose glance at the other boys. "And right now… it's not like it even matters."

She sighed at his words, curling up so she was hugging her knees, which hid most of her face from him.

"And now we wait… right?"

"…Yeah."

He, too, sighed, and the two spent the next few minutes in tense silence.

Their eyes sometimes wandered around the poorly-lit chamber beyond their little hole, but most of the time they both ended up focusing on their unconscious friends.

Sasuke in particular. Without any noises around them, his small whimpers and pained moans felt unbearably loud whenever they happened, only adding to Hinata's urge to do… something.

Anything except uselessly waiting for help while contending with her fierce headache.

She settled for checking Sasuke's temperature every few minutes, placing a hand over his wet forehead and then comparing it with Naruto's own. The results were comforting at first, but as his forehead dried, her hand felt his skin grow hotter with each attempt.

"He's not improving, is he?"

She looked over Shikamaru, shaking her head slowly.

"Tsk," he scowled and looked away.

She didn't bother to add what she found out, knowing her expression must have said it all.

Shikamaru waited for her to settle against the stone wall again, before speaking up again. "Listen. I may have an idea… but it's risky. I'd rather not do it but if Sasuke keeps worsening then I need to do something or we'll run out of supplies."

The idea made her gulp. "W-What is it?"

"Do you remember what the technique that… woman used was like?"

Hinata frowned a bit. It was all a blur in her mind.

"Thought so. Well, it felt to me like it was some sort of quake meant to do structural damage. It directly attacked the cave's pillars."

"…Okay. But what does that mean?"

"It means that maybe the small part of the cavern we made our base up above could be intact. At least partially. I might be able to retrieve one or more of our bags if I climb up there before other teams find the courage to come over here or before it gets dark outside."

"But Shikamaru-kun—"

Hinata stopped herself as her mind caught up.

Shikamaru was smart. Really smart. He began by saying it was risky—he knew he would be extremely vulnerable and likely had already thought of dangers she hadn't even realized yet.

More importantly, they needed those supplies. They couldn't move Sasuke and Naruto and were completely unable to hunt down other teams for resources. They'd need more food and water than the supplies Naruto had been carrying could provide, sooner or later.

She swallowed. "W-What if the others have the same idea?"

Shikamaru raised an eyebrow. "I highly doubt they would go after the supplies instead of us. Kiba has the others's backpacks anyway, they should be fine if they got out."

"Oh."

She hadn't realized Kiba had taken a backpack but that didn't matter. She should've known better to assume their friends would prioritize the supplies.

She shook her head at herself. What a poor argument.

"How… long do you think you'll take?"

He seemed to relax at her lack of resistance, and peeked outside, head angled up.

"It was a long fall, but not all of the floors above are completely ruined. I don't need to climb it all at once like earlier today, and can probably jump to reach certain areas… I dunno, maybe ten minutes. Getting down could actually be more troublesome. And…"

He looked away.

"I might find evidence of what happened to the others if I climb up. For better or for worse."

Hinata let her head hang, almost burying it between her knees. While her friends were undoubtedly stuck on the upper floors, meaning the fall itself was less likely to have killed them since she and Naruto survived, they might be under far more weight or have been bludgeoned harder by the debris or even...

Too many outcomes she didn't want to come true.

"But I might not find anything," Shikamaru added. "With Sasuke like this I can't spare the time to look for them blindly. I knew you and Naruto should've been close enough to me that I could find you, but the others…"

He just clicked his tongue and looked away, frustration marring his features.

Hinata sighed, fully able to empathize. "We wouldn't be able to get them down here even if you found them."

"There's that too. It would be very difficult. So… then you agree with my idea?"

She nodded once.

"But are you sure? You're in no condition to fight, so if something happens…"

Hinata raised her head and stared at him right in the eyes.

"If something happens I'll fight. My shoulder's still not good but I can move through the pain. My Gentle Fist will hurt them more than this wound can hurt me, and I don't truly need the Byakugan to make it work."

She halted after seeing Shikamaru taken aback by her words, and her moment of fierceness ended, leaving her to look away while feeling bashful once more.

"P-Plus I can still try to use jutsu and throw shuriken… I-I'm not defenseless."

It took Shikamaru a long moment to reply. Just long enough that Hinata felt a horrible blush creeping up on her—just what was she thinking, saying such bold things!? She wasn't strong at all to begin with, but hurt like she was, how could she claim such a thing? How well would she be able to move with her battered body, how well would she be able to throw weapons and make hand seals with her pierced shoulder?

How well would she be able to use taijutsu, her main strength? Even without the Byakugan… sure, she could still land debilitating blows and mess up someone's chakra flow while at it, but it wouldn't be as effective if she couldn't strike the right parts of their chakra system. If the pain made her too slow, if her form was shaky, if her memory was off...

That moment stretched endlessly, but when it ended, it wasn't with Shikamaru laughing at her or begrudgingly changing his mind because she needed protection like the weakling she was.

"I guess you have a point. Even hurt like this you should still be way better in a straight fight than me. Sorry for doubting you," he said while getting up.

She blinked once.

Then again.

'Wait, what?'

"Then I'll leave those two in your care. Just don't be reckless okay, if something happens to you then even if I survive these exams, our friends will kill me," he shot her a little smirk and left.

Hinata couldn't help but gape.

Normally, she'd spent the next couple minutes replaying any significant interactions she had with Shikamaru because… just how did he get such a high opinion of her skills? It had to be some sort of mistake, didn't it?

But she never got to muse about that, because not even two seconds after Shikamaru left she heard him say: "Shit!"

His voice carried a tone of urgency that Hinata dreaded discovering the origin of, but she immediately pushed herself up, ignoring the spike of pain that shot up her shoulder and her entire body as she rushed out.

Shikamaru was staring at something up above, and following his gaze she saw… two enemies.

She couldn't make out their headbands from where she was. All she could see was they both were dressed in similar purple and white clothes, with a mask-like cloth over the upper half of their faces. The only big difference was in how while both wore glasses, one was transparent while the other was pitch black like Shino's.

Perhaps if she hadn't made the effort to avoid everyone's eyes before the second test started she could've recognized them, but that's what she had done and so even though the pair was suspicious-looking, they didn't ring a bell.

"I guess he was right, eh, Yoroi?" one of them spoke up.

"Yeah. Let's get started Tsurugi!"

Shikamaru glanced over at Hinata, who hurried to stand by his side.

Now she had to put her money where her mouth was.

It all began with a rain of kunai, which Shikamaru and Hinata barely dodged. But their enemy's opening move had a second purpose: it was sent between them so they jumped in opposite directions, and the two masked ninja followed one each.

The one with the dark glasses chose Hinata, and though her body screamed at every movement, the adrenaline surging through her veins let her focus and dodge around her foe's blows and try to land her own better than she imagined.

Part of that was the man's fighting style, though. She had never really implemented grappling moves into her repertoire, but they were a small part of the Gentle Fist's teachings and she could easily recognize his attempts as they danced around each other.

To what end he was risking trying to grapple a Hyuuga, she couldn't say, but the Leaf emblem on his forehead meant he likely did know what he was likely getting into.

'He must have a powerful technique if he's sticking to this kind of taijutsu,' she thought while hopping back to avoid a grab. In that brief pause, Hinata decided to shift gears. If both of them were fighting defensively they'd get nowhere fast, and worn out as she was, Hinata knew she'd make a mistake sooner than her enemy.

Yet her style was one of low commitment—if she played her cards right, she should be faster than his counterattacks.

So she closed in, rushing him down.

One blow.

Two blows

Three blows.

"Dammit," her foe grunted, leaping back above one of the piles of rubble to disengage before she landed a fourth.

Hinata wince from the exertion, resisting the urge to craddle her shoulder or just curl up on the floor.

She had almost pursued. A taijutsu duel in such unstable terrain… with her Byakugan she would have gone for it. Without it, her confidence wavered, and instead she took the time to weave seals and gather chakra-based water in her lungs.

That proved to be a mistake.

"Tsurugi, switch! She's a Hyuuga, be careful!"

The next moments were a blur to her. Her attack missed just as an explosion rang out not too far, spraying rocks and smoke all over the place and forcing Hinata to cover her face briefly.

When her arm went down, the other enemy genin was running at her.

"Hinata," she heard Shikamaru call out behind one of the mounts of rubble, "that guy can stretch!"

'He what?'

Confused, Hinata reacted a bit too late to her new foe, who closed the distance and challenged her to another taijutsu duel.

His style was completely unrecognizable to her, and in her rising panic, she went on the offensive without thinking, and the pain pulsing from her thoughtlessness only made her attacks more chaotic and imprecise.

Her foe dodged, bending and twisting in an impossible way as if he were a snake and the next thing she knew…

Her eyes welded shut and she was screaming as the pain spiked to level beyond Hinata's imagination.

"Hinata!"

Her voice completely drowned Shikamaru's.

The agony came in tidal waves, crashing over her as her enemy coiled around her like a snake and began to crush her harder. Her whole body hurt but the only thing her mind processed was how her shoulder was going to disintegrate.

Had that not overwhelmed her, perhaps Hinata would have paid attention to what was happening just in front of her.

"Okay, fine, we give up! You guys want our scroll right?"

Shikamaru's opponent, the grappler, laughed. "The scroll? Boy, all we were—"

The conversation died as a deathly cold aura spread all around them.

It was strong enough that Hinata noticed it despite the intense pain, and commanding enough that her brain couldn't ignore it.

'This feels like that woman's killing intent but weaker! Is she back?!'

Hinata forced her eyes open, scanning the area erratically—barely noticing Shikamaru was on the ground with a scroll in hand—until they landed on the little hole she had been occupying.

And emerging from it was Sasuke. His skin was peppered with weird black marks and chakra leaked wildly off him in dense strands of purple, visible even to her now-normal eyes.

"Let go of my friends or I'll kill you."

The cold fury warping Sasuke's voice, the madness blazing in his Sharingan… Hinata's body trembled.

This wasn't the Sasuke she knew.

"Ah, so there was another brat huh?" the man that was coiling around her spoke up, his hold relaxing slightly.

It made a world of difference for her.

"Of course there was," the grappler muttered and ran toward Sasuke.

But the Uchiha burst forward, a purple blur that moved far faster than she thought Sasuke could, only stopping when his leg slammed against the grappler's body and sent him crashing into a rock pile, splattering rubble all over the place.

"Yoroi!" the man holding Hinata hostage yelled.

A maniacal smile spread across the boy's lips. "So be it, then."

"Dammit," Yoroi snarled as he rose, almost too late to dodge Sasuke rushing at him.

Even with the pain dulling her perception, Hinata kept up with the brawl enough to realize this Yoroi had held back against her. His speed increased, both for offense and evasion… yet he simply couldn't keep up with the Uchiha's newfound power.

Sasuke had no problem adapting to his own increased speed, and with what seemed to be extra strength as well, in no time he exploited an opening and landed a devastating taijutsu combo into his foe.

'This isn't like his usual style,' Hinata managed to observe... 'Sasuke-kun is always ruthless but his attacks are so very calculated… this…'

It reminded her of Naruto's moves in the two times she saw the Kyuubi's manifested chakra. Wild, raw strength. Sasuke's core instinct was too refined for it to truly be like Naruto's, but the resemblance was there.

She then let out a wordless scream as the man holding her hostage—Tsurugi, by process of elimination—tightened his hold on her without realizing it and stole her breath.

Her vision flashed white and wet with tears. Shikamaru was screaming something at Sasuke, but his words were lost on her.

The spike of pain passed just in time for her to hear Yoroi try to reason with Sasuke mid-fight.

"Kid, stop! We were only testing them, we aren't here to truly harm them!"

Sasuke halted.

"T-That's true!" Tsurugi stammered in agreement.

"Like hell I'm believing you," Sasuke spat before diving towards Yoroi again

Yet there was someone that was willing to give them a chance.

"Hey," Shikamaru waved at her—or better, her captor. "Is that really true?"

"Yeah, we—"

"Then fucking let go of her already," Shikamaru hissed.

Dazed, the stretchy man retracted his limbs and Hinata almost fell if not for Shikamaru rushing to steady her again.

"With all that chakra he's leaking, I doubt my jutsu's gonna hold him for more than a few seconds," Shikamaru told her in a low voice as he steadied her. "You think you could cripple him if I gave you an opening?"

Somewhere behind her, she heard Yoroi yelling in pain.

"Are you stupid?!" his teammate bellowed, his voice dripping with fear. "Don't try to drain that chakra!"

While one small part of her mind realized that was why the guy fought like a grappler, a much bigger part was processing Shikamaru's question.

Was she fast enough, and precise enough to land the debilitating blows she needed before Sasuke killed a fellow Leaf ninja?

It couldn't be her.

She was hurt all over, and between the shoulder wound, her battered body and her unavailable Byakugan how could… no. They clearly couldn't count on this Tsurugi fellow. He either didn't care for his partner or was too scared to attempt a rescue, if not both. Shikamaru had no hope in a close-range brawl.

It had to be her.

"I can stop him."

Shikamaru's eyes went wide, then he gave her a harsh look to match her own fierce, tear-stained one. It was more than he had asked her to do, but despite frowning and likely severely doubting her, he nodded and crouched.

"Get ready," he said.

She turned around to see a disturbing echo of something she had seen right before their fall: Sasuke held Yoroi by the neck, strongly enough to lift him off the floor as best as their height difference allowed.

The Uchiha let out what Hinata could only possibly describe as an evil laugh, and she set off the moment the shadows began to move in front of her.

"You are pitifully weak, not even a challenge," Sasuke remarked with a crazed smirk, ignoring the man's attempts at freeing his own neck. He, instead, began to crush it.

The smirk vanished the moment Shikamaru's shadow connected with him.

The Nara had been wrong. Sasuke broke through the shadow's hold almost instantly, yet the instant his body began to turn, he reeled forward.

'One, two… Four!'

Hinata's sight was blurring even harder as she kept striking Sasuke's back a few more times.

That was a variation of her clan's most famous offensive techniques, which used fewer strikes but was limited to knocking out the target. It was very niche, as it could only work if it was landed on the target's back, where there weren't key organs, muscles, fat and bones protecting the vulnerable spine and its closest, critical chakra points.

The second after Hinata stopped her attacks lasted much longer than that.

She had worked purely with her memory of how people's chakra systems looked and the few times she had trained this move months earlier, after finding it in a scroll. Had she managed to do it correctly?

Sasuke wobbled in place but she sunk to her knees first, her mind going blank as pain almost overrode her senses.

Her gaze was at the ground, and hearing Sasuke falling like a sack of bricks made her head turn up a bit. The purple chakra and the black marks began to vanish, and relief flooded her system even though she couldn't think straight.

Her sense of time was warped. Through the blazing pain, an annoying, tingling sensation blossomed from her shoulder to her hand, where her hazy vision made out a crimson trail that began to stain the ground.

She heard voices, male voices. Shikamaru's was clear to her and noticeably worried… she could also faintly hear the two men they just fought, but there was a fourth voice.

That voice's owner was a mystery only for a little bit, as a person with a mop of white hair and glasses suddenly appeared in front of her.

Her vision refocused a bit.

She knew him!

'Yakushi-san?'

"Where does it hurt?" he asked, firmly.

"Uhh… s-shoulder...?" she muttered, dazed.

"Then please excuse me."

His hand whipped toward her shoulder and, with a yelp, Hinata reflexively recoiled and fell on her butt, jostling her shoulder once more and stealing her breath.

"Wait, calm down! Look," he said in a gentle tone, showing his hand while keeping a distance. It glowed bright green. "I'm just going to patch you up, okay?"

Shakily she nodded. "I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean to…"

"Don't worry," Kabuto came closer, looking sheepish. "I took you by surprise, I'm the one that should be apologizing."

His palm hovered right above her wounded shoulder, and Hinata felt a refreshing, cold energy seeping into the wound. The cold then shifted to warmth, and Hinata felt her tissues knitting themselves back together.

The suffering finally, finally ceased.

"There we go," he smiled, drawing back. "Should be as good as new!"

Wide-eyed, Hinata flexed her arm, rotating it. For once her body didn't disagree with the motions. Even the bruises she felt around that area were gone!

'Healing jutsu never ceases to amaze,' she thought in awe.

"It looks like you had some bandages around that wound, you'll need to take those off and clean the blood that seeped through," Kabuto informed her. "The blood on your hand probably comes from that wound but I can check if you want to."

"Oh no, no!" Hinata waved her hands off. "I-It's fine, I wasn't cut or anything…"

She was not taking off her coat in front of any boys unless she absolutely needed to. Her body was still hurting all over, mainly where her armored coat didn't protect, but it wasn't anything important… unlike her head. She had to speak up, but Kabuto was faster.

"Do you need me to heal this as well?" Kabuto asked, pointing at her forehead. "Those bandages are pretty bloodied," he noted with a frown. "You'll need to clean that up too."

"Y-Yes, please," she replied while removing said bandages. "If it's not too much of a bother…"

Kabuto's frown only deepened when he brought his soothing chakra to her skull. "This could've been dangerous if left untreated, but it'll be alright now. Is there more?"

Hinata hated to impose, but there were wounds far more important than her pierced shoulder and battered skull.

He seemed confused at her request. "These scratches? But they… oh, I see. They're impacting your dojutsu, of course."

Kabuto touched the skin beside her eyes for but an instant. She didn't even feel his jutsu.

"All done," he chuckled a bit as he stepped back.

What to him had been a trivial patch-up changed everything for Hinata. Her Byakugan activated and she immediately began to poke at the veins surrounding her eye.

Her fingers came out slightly sticky and in a panic she swapped off to normal vision again, only to relax when she realized it was just the ointment Ino had put on her, not blood.

"Thank you Yakushi-san," she said, bowing low.

"Think nothing of it," he said, then took but one step in Sasuke's direction before Shikamaru stood between them. "Ah, Shikamaru-kun. Are you hurt as well?"

"He shouldn't be," Yoroi piped up, arms crossed. "I canceled his technique and knocked him down but I didn't rough him up."

"Yeah, I'm fine," Shikamaru said. His tone was… different than what Hinata was used to. "What's going on here?" he said, eyes shifting to Kabuto's teammates before refocusing on him.

"We felt a lot of killing intent and then heard a huge crash coming from here," Tsurugi explained. "We decided to take a look, and found out a hole someone had been using as a base on the uppermost floor."

Kabuto then held up a little black container, making Hinata gasp.

"My ointment!"

"Thanks to this," he pointed at the Hyuuga Clan's emblem, "we knew it was likely that some of our own were involved. While I continued to scavenge your base, these two then dropped down to investigate."

"And you split up just like that?" Shikamaru questioned. His voice was still off somehow, and Hinata was growing unnerved by the slight tension in the air.

It was Tsurugi that answered him. "Kabuto's basically useless in combat, so it made little difference."

Kabuto wilted from that. "Unfortunately, as you just saw, I'm more of a support-type. And while that's useful for the second and sometimes the first exam, the finals are always solo combat which is why I'm still stuck as a genin," he let out a laugh, tending more toward shame than humor.

"Regardless," Yoroi shook his head, "we agreed to not go all out against any team from Konoha. We'd take them out if we saw they were weak lest a foreigner team killed them instead, and we were going to do the same with you. But it looks like your circumstances aren't normal, huh?"

"None of you are in the same team," Kabuto remarked, glancing at the hole they left Naruto in. "I applaud you for deciding to tackle this test as a large group but… it looks like it didn't quite work out."

"You could say that again," Shikamaru said with a small groan… which Hinata didn't hear over her own gasp.

"The others!"

Her vision flashed again.

"Wait what, they're here?" Shikamaru asked.

"…"

Nobody said a word for the next few seconds while Hinata searched as far as her Byakugan could.

"…I don't detect any other chakra signatures in the area," she said, shaking her head as color returned to her world.

"So the other rookies all died then?!"

"I-I-I dunno," she said to a shocked Kabuto. "When we die, the chakra in our bodies lingers for quite a while even if it's weakly… I should've been able to see any corpses."

"Then they escaped somehow," Shikamaru said, finally relaxing.

"That doesn't mean your friends are still alive," Tsurugi frowned. "Not every team out there is kind like us."

Hinata shuddered. Her experience with the team from the Sand would not let her forget that.

"Yeah, well," Shikamaru spoke up, and Hinata noticed he was tense again. "We thank you for your help, but I think you guys should be going right now."

"I believe we do," Kabuto nodded. "But at least let me heal your other friends fi—"

"They are just unconscious," Shikamaru interrupted, both verbally and physically as he continued to block Kabuto from reaching Sasuke. "They'll be fine, we can handle it from here."

Hinata's jaw fell.

"W-What?! Shikamaru-kun, what're you saying?!"

He gave her a look she couldn't decipher, and she felt like maybe he was hoping she would stay quiet and follow his lead but… how could she?

Instead, she turned to Kabuto. "Yakushi-san, if you and your teammates don't mind spending a few more minutes with us—"

"A few precious minutes, which you could put to better use by hunting down another team."

Hinata felt her eye twitch when Shikamaru cut her off.

"The kid is right," Yoroi said. "We still have to find a scroll."

"W-Wait, no! Please!"

She approached Tsurugi and Yoroi, bowing as low as she could while standing up.

"Our friends need help! We got attacked by a really strong ninja, and, and that person put some sort of seal on them and... w-well," she motioned to Sasuke.

Kabuto frowned. "A seal? That's what caused that outburst of dark chakra then? I'm not sure I might be able to help…"

"B-But Sasuke-kun had a fever… I-I don't know if or how that's connected to the seal but maybe it's not?"

The three older genin shared a look.

Yoroi threw his hands up. "Bah, do whatever you wish! You're too soft-hearted Kabuto. That's why you're still a genin. I'm going to eat something," he said while moving away from the group to get one of two backpacks Hinata hadn't realized were propped up against a wall not too far from there.

"I guess I'm kinda hungry too," Tsurugi shrugged and followed. "Just hurry up okay?"

"Well, I… will try," Kabuto muttered uncertainly as his gaze switched from his teammates to Shikamaru, who had yet to budge.

Hinata scowled.

'I don't believe this!'

Driven by anger, before she knew it she caught Kabuto's hand with her own and all but dragged him toward Sasuke. Thankfully Shikamaru had the good sense to get out of the way lest she used her newly-healed shoulder to push past him.

Because that was exactly what she intended to do.

"Okay then, let's see what we've got."

Kabuto crouched and rolled Sasuke so his back was flat on the floor, then placed a hand over the boy's forehead. "He does seem hot," the medic-nin said, his hand then flashing green for a few seconds before he shook his head.

"My apologies, but there isn't much I can do about that. His fever isn't caused by anything my Diagnosis Jutsu can pinpoint… meaning it's not a poison or a chakra illness. So, as you said, it must have to do with that mark."

Hinata glared at the ugly black dots.

"I don't think it is wise to mess with that," the medic-nin continued, catching her gaze. "If that shroud was caused by this seal, I suspect the fever is his body reacting to that foreign chakra invading his system. I don't have enough experience with seals to risk meddling with it, unfortunately."

"I… I see," Hinata muttered, sighing.

"I can't cure the cause, but I can alleviate his symptoms for now and heal his bruises," he said as he began the treatment.

The two of them then chatted a bit about how to care for someone in Sasuke's condition, and Hinata was relieved she and Shikamaru had the right ideas for the situation.

The situation was the true problem.

"Ideally, I'd give up on the exams," Kabuto advised. "You don't want to risk this fever growing worse or, well, another outburst as we saw just now. If you'd like, I think my teammates would agree to at least help you back to the upper levels."

"Thanks but we refuse," Shikamaru said from somewhere behind her.

Hinata closed her eyes and forced herself to be quiet.

"It's way too dangerous. If we get into a fight up there, we'd be outnumbered and with two people to protect. Plus our other friends might come back for us."

She supposed that was reasonable, and Kabuto seemed to agree as he rose.

"Well then, if there's someone else…"

Hinata led him to Naruto, making a point not to meet Shikamaru's gaze as she passed by him.

Unfortunately, there was nothing Kabuto could do to help Naruto. But, fortunately, Kabuto confirmed Naruto was truly just knocked out. There were no concussions, broken bones or anything of the sort for Kabuto to cure and he just needed to wake up naturally. He was just bruised, which given her own condition surprised both Kabuto and Shikamaru. Hinata turned away at that moment to wipe her bloodied forehead and arm as an excuse to not face them, lest her lack of surprise give something away.

The medic-nin did take a few moments to examine the complex pattern over Naruto's stomach, but ultimately commented nothing on it, instead choosing to remark about Naruto's horrid smell.

She bowed low to him, again. "Thank you very much, Yakushi-san!"

"Just doing my job as a Leaf ninja, no need to thank me," he laughed awkwardly for a moment. "But listen, while most of this place is a wreck, the little cave you guys were using is surprisingly intact. If you two want, I can convince my teammates to help you four up."

"No thanks," Shikamaru said before Hinata could do anything. She turned just in time to see the Nara lowering Sasuke to the floor of their newer base. "That place is much cozier than here, but we don't have space to fight anything if we need to."

"Hmm, good point," the older genin scratched his chin. "Most of the floor is gone, you would be easily cornered."

"Kabuto, you done already?" Yoroi called from a distance, his voice leaking irritation.

"Ah, yes, yes! Just one minute."

Kabuto faced Hinata and smiled. "Well, this is where we part ways. I sincerely hope to see you guys safe and sound when these exams end, good luck!"

Waving, Kabuto then turned and dashed back to his team.

Hinata leaned against the wall, closing her eyes while slowly letting her body slide down until she was sitting on the floor.

She barely heard Shikamaru settling on the opposite side, as well as Kabuto and his team discussing something before they left.

After a few moments, Hinata activated her Byakugan and set to search the area. She watched the older genins until they left her range.

"All clear?" Shikamaru asked as soon as her vision normalized.

She nodded, frowning. "Where did that backpack come from?" she asked in return. Propped up near their unconscious friends were two backpacks, yet they had only one when they fell.

"Kabuto had it with him. I guess you didn't hear anything when he dropped down, but apparently, it's the one we left in our other base."

Shikamaru glared at the backpack as if it had insulted him.

That action had only one consequence: it made Hinata shoot him a glare of her own.

"Shikamaru-kun."

She paused to steady her breath.

"…What is it?" he murmured, sounding not the least bit curious and eyeing her with exasperation as if he knew what was coming next.

Her eye twitched. She was done now.

"What in the world was that?! Why were you trying to stop Yakushi-san?!"

The Nara let out a long, weary sigh.

"Shikamaru-kun!"

"I heard you, I heard you. Calm do—"

"No! I'm not going to call down! You were about to throw away his help when you know they needed to be healed, especially Sasuke-kun!"

"If you keep yelling like that then—"

"Nobody's around," she interrupted him again as her Byakugan flashed again to back her up.

Nonetheless, she took a second to breathe, so she could lower her voice.

"Okay… listen," he spoke up. "It's not that hard."

Hinata had to clench her teeth, hard.

"Those guys are from Konoha, sure. Nice. But they can't be considered our allies here. Don't you think what they said about testing us was super fishy?"

She shook her head. "I can't accept that. You saw how Yoroi-san moved much faster when Sasuke went out of control. They were clearly holding back."

"…Yes, they were," Shikamaru agreed. "And yet all that spiel about testing us goes against how they acted. Kabuto's teammates didn't really seem to give a damn about us, did they? One didn't even make an effort to hide it, and the other? I guess you didn't hear yourself screaming when he grabbed you and didn't release you."

Hinata didn't soften her expression, but she try as she might there was no denying it.

"W-What about Yakushi-san?" she asked, her voice wavering alongside her argument.

"That guy… tsk," Shikamaru shook his head. "He apparently doesn't fight, and his teammates don't seem to like him much. But they were clearly following his lead, especially since those two didn't complain when Kabuto gave back our supplies."

"Then that explains why the other two were acting like that," Hinata said. "And maybe they follow his lead because he's more experienced.

"…Yeah. Thought of that too."

Her eyes narrowed again. "So it's with him you have a problem, then?"

Hinata couldn't help being defensive about this. Kabuto had been nothing but kind to them, offering free information before the first test, returning one of their supply backpacks that his team could have used instead, and even healing them, all for free!

Having her arm working right again and being able to use her eyes… those things could end up the difference between failure and success during the test, if not life or death. She now owed a debt to Kabuto she knew would be difficult to repay in full one day.

This is all without considering Sasuke and Naruto's precarious situation.

Shikamaru had been silent, staring at the rock ceiling as if it were one of the first test's complex math problems.

Just when she was about to press him again, his eyes settled on hers.

"Alright, Hinata. I didn't want to tell you this, to be honest, but it doesn't look like you'll give me a choice."

Her frown deepened at those words, at his tone.

Shikamaru straightened his posture. "There are some things about that guy that really, really don't add up. Hinata, I know you don't exactly like me, but just hear me out okay?"

Her eyes grew wide and a gasp almost escaped her lips.

'He… knows?'

Before she could even attempt to counter that statement, Shikamaru moved on.

He told her, in detail, the things he had realized about Kabuto right before the first exam began, the things that stood out, that didn't make sense… the dots he connected, and the ones he couldn't.

It was chilling, to say the least.

Mercifully, Shikamaru went silent then so she could gather her ideas rather than reigniting their argument.

It was somewhat for naught. The way Shikamaru phrased his thoughts, she was sure he had reached a very negative conclusion yet he didn't share it. There was not enough evidence after all…

But it was now clear to her: there was something wrong about Kabuto Yakushi.

The part of her that was thankful for all his help wanted to believe that, whatever role he played, was for their village. Even if he had information on other villages that even jonin shouldn't have access within Konoha, that didn't mean he was an enemy. Not necessarily.

Yet there was no denying that his presence not too soon after their attacker was too convenient. Especially given his role in the fight she was just in…

Minutes passed.

Her head hurt almost as if she hadn't been healed.

"So," Shikamaru finally spoke up. "Even if you don't agree with me, do you get it now? Why I acted like that?"

She nodded unhappily. "I do. And… I-I'm sorry for lashing out at you."

He offered her a small smirk. "Don't worry. I couldn't exactly tell you all of that while Kabuto was right here, I know it looked weird from your end."

"Yeah."

She activated her Byakugan then.

No one else was in the area but themselves. Naruto and Sasuke's chakra systems still looked normal, too, but Hinata knew that didn't mean Sasuke was free from whatever that purple chakra was. Her eye's insight might have been just weak enough that she failed to spot it.

"All clear," she reported.

"Good."

The conversation died.

Hinata spent a few minutes looking after Sasuke, since Naruto was actually fine. She couldn't lie, Naruto's condition did worry her as well, as Kabuto couldn't identify why he was sleeping like that. Her own eyes told her that chakra exhaustion was an impossibility, so it went unsaid that the seal had to be the cause… but then there was literally nothing she could do about it other than watch over him.

Once she settled back against the wall, though, all it was left was to wait.

She wasn't frustrated this time, though. Just… anxious.

Shikamaru was the opposite. He rested with his eyes closed, apparently trusting that her Byakugan now provided enough security that he could relax.

'I hope he's not trying to sleep,' she thought with a bit of a frown. First at him, then at herself. '…He knows I don't like him.'

A familiar pressure settled on her psyche. The nervousness that came when she knew she had to say something, but the words refused to leap out of her throat.

Different than most conversation partners she had, Hinata knew Shikamaru wasn't expecting more from her. Silence was enough for him.

For once, it wasn't enough for her.

"Err…"

He popped one eye open, focusing on her.

She had to swallow before trying again.

"Um, Shikamaru-kun… I-I don't want to bother you but, I…"

He raised an eyebrow and she evaded his calculating gaze.

"I-I think I should be a-apologizing to you," she finally managed to say.

"Don't trouble yourself over it," he muttered. "I don't mind it. We don't need to be actual friends just because we share some and work together at times."

Her eyes widened at how well he read her. "But… but I must have treated you badly somehow if you… uh, you noticed it!"

"You never treated me badly, at all. Though I think you wanted to, back there with Kabuto."

Her face glowed and her voice disappeared. The way Shikamaru smirked in amusement spoke to her surely dumb expression.

"All I noticed was that you really go out of your way to care for everyone else in our group. I'm the only one you treat normally. And that's fine," he shrugged.

Hinata's body relaxed with a sigh. 'Ah, thank goodness. I was afraid I was rude to him without noticing.'

"I guess someone else in my place might be offended that you'd treat your cousin better than me when he treats you like trash, though."

"Oh. Um, that's… i-it's complicated," she muttered, but thankfully Shikamaru just waved her off. The last thing she wanted to think of right then was Neji.

"I bet it is. Not my problem though. And again, don't worry about this." He then let out a small chuckle. "I've been told you're a worrywart, so I don't know if you'll listen. I guess that even though you're quiet you can be just as troublesome as the other girls, in your own way."

He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes immediately after, missing her miffed glare.

She let out a silent sigh.

'…Worrywart, huh? I guess I might have been bothering Kiba-kun and Shino-kun more than I realized if they've been complaining about me to him,' she thought, shaking her head.

Her eyes fell back on Shikamaru, who was peacefully relaxing again.

'I wonder… do you actually suspect you're wrong?'

Hinata now had no doubt Shikamaru thought she merely didn't like him, as in being neutral to him.

In truth?

Hinata genuinely disliked him.

In many ways, Shikamaru felt to Hinata as if he were her very opposite. He was a genius, but he only ever tried the bare minimum needed which caused no end of complaints from their academy teachers in the past few years, and mostly—as far as she was aware—because eventually his mother's nagging got too much for him to handle.

He had so much potential, yet willingly stopped himself from using it out of sheer laziness, regardless of the pressure his mother and perhaps others in his family or clan put on him. He just shrugged it off and slept during classes.

Hinata knew it had nothing to do with her, but it all felt like a slap on the face just the same.

She was someone that always struggled to keep up, because she had no talent and wasn't very clever. Her relationship with her father crumbled apart and though she now knew Hiashi had a lot of blame, Hinata also knew that it would've been far better if she was at least a competent kunoichi. They both were trying to repair that bond now, but the damage that caused could never be undone.

And yes, while she became lax in her training at some points of her life, it had been rooted in despair. She just wasn't good enough, so why keep trying so hard? If not for Kurenai maybe she still would be thinking like that all the time. That mentality still gets to her sometimes but she can fight it now.

Seeing someone that actually could accomplish so much fail constantly because he simply didn't want to bother… it was maddening.

She frowned at herself.

These feelings always bothered her… this resentment mixed with envy. Shikamaru was well within his rights to lead a lazy life if he wished to.

'And I suppose I need to give credit when it's due. Shikamaru-kun hasn't been slacking off like before now that we are actual ninja, especially in times like these.'

His sharp mind was always reliable. On the other hand, that was his crutch. Hinata knew that in a vacuum Shikamaru was considered a very poor fighter. His taijutsu was lacking and his jutsu repertoire was small, powerful but not without proper setup. If he devoted himself none of these things would be weaknesses, but his keen planing let him overcome those weaknesses in many scenarios.

But his strategies could fail, or he might not have the chance to come up with something like in their fight with Kabuto…

Her frown became a scowl.

She was not blameless for their loss there, and let out a frustrated sigh.

That caused Shikamaru to open his eye for a second. She froze as their gazes met, but he went right back to resting as if nothing happened.

'…I wonder if I'm being too harsh on him. Looking back, ever since Naruto-kun told me about the Kyuubi, I think I stopped restraining myself as much as before.'

She once felt horrible for what, in her mind, hadn't been far from the treatment Naruto got from most people. Yet… there was a difference. She didn't dislike Shikamaru for things that were beyond his control. And even putting aside their contrasting histories, the Nara's dismissive and even whinny attitude wasn't really pleasant.

'He is right. I don't need to like him… but maybe I can treat him better,' she reasoned. 'I suppose I'm nowhere as subtle as I thought.'

With a jolt, she flashed her eyes again.

Still nothing.

'That was close… I was so lost in thought I almost forgot to do this,' she thought as her vision normalized.

If Hinata could have slapped herself without looking crazy, she would've.

---

Minutes passed by as a cycle repeated itself for Hinata: wait, worry about their friends, fuss over Sasuke and Naruto, wait, worry some more, use the Byakugan to find nothing, keep waiting, keep worrying…

It was dreadfully boring. And taxing. She felt like entire days were passing by, but it couldn't have been more than a few hours.

The only interruptions were when either of them needed to eat rations, drink water or more rarely, to relieve themselves, however mortifying it was for her to just announce that aloud to Shikamaru.

She could only fight her body for so long before she was forced to swallow the shame and excuse herself, though.

Things began to change during one such instance. Hinata had left the boys to find some privacy in the furthest corner of the chamber, behind the burnt remains of the tree that had been at the cavern's ceiling once. As she returned, depressed over the suboptimal hygiene she was forced to contend with, Hinata glanced at the big opening that let light shine down even as deep as where they were.

She no longer saw any blue. Just orange giving way to purple.

'This… really isn't good.'

When she crawled back into the little hole they had been hiding in, Shikamaru seemed wide awake for once.

"Hinata, we need to talk."

"Oh. Uh, sure."

"I've been trying to think of how to handle this test from here on forward, but I'm at a loss."

She gulped.

"It will be dark very soon, and there's still no signal of the others and these two haven't woken up yet. We've been lucky so far that Kabuto's team was the only one gutsy enough to approach this area, but sooner or later someone else will get here, and if they come at night we will be in deep trouble."

"I… I know. I might not be very strong but with my Byakugan—"

"Hinata, you're going to need to rest eventually too," he told her with narrowed eyes. "The shadows might be helpful for my jutsu but in pitch-black darkness I can't hit what I can't see."

"But I can see in the darkness," she argued. "Shikamaru-kun, I can go without sleeping, and if anyone tries to attack us in the darkness I'll have the upper hand."

However weak she saw herself as, it was hard to ignore how powerful a Hyuuga could be in that scenario. Even a failure like her.

"You're not wrong, but consider an attack anytime else. If you're worn down and tired in broad daylight when you won't have this advantage, you'll be vulnerable. I'm not as good as you in a straight fight—if you get taken down there's no way I can hold the fort alone."

'…That's true,' she considered.

"We need to think about how to handle the night in case the others really can't find us. The only thing I thought off was… you waking up Sasuke. But that could go wrong really fast."

She nodded. She could force Sasuke awake with the Gentle Fist, as he was only knocked out because she altered his chakra flow in a very specific way.

"I… I don't think we would be in actual danger unless this weird seal triggers," she said, glancing at the black mark on the Uchiha's neck. "But as long as we don't know what causes it…"

"Exactly. I know I'm springing this on you all of a sudden, but do you have any ideas?"

"Let me think about it for a minute."

"Sure."

Hinata let her eyes wander to a random spot in the ceiling. 'Alright Hinata, focus. How would Shino-kun go about solving this?'

That was an almost depressing question for her to ask herself. Shino's bugs were incredibly versatile, and they could scout ahead even while Shino slept. His methods were impossible for her.

'I can't secure our surroundings permanently like he can. But… hmmm.'

And inkling of an idea formed in her mind. After mulling over it in her head, she gathered the courage to poke Shikamaru's leg.

"I-I think I have an idea."

"Alright, let's hear it then," he said, and she was glad his tone was a serious one. He was legitimately willing to listen to her, all she had to do was not disappoint.

"We've been hiding here for a while because we can't transport them to a safer place, right?" she motioned to Sasuke and Naruto. "But the problem is them, not us."

Shikamaru narrowed his eyes. "You want to move out and scout the area, don't you…?"

She held her hands up as if to calm him. "I don't plan to go far! I'll climb up and search what I can while still keeping you three in my range. I know, anything could start moving after I'm done, but this should give us some breathing room, no? I-I can see far enough that I could spot you from our old base, so I can scan all around each floor as I climb up and down. I can see a lot farther into the floors if there's not as much rock to see through," she said while knocking on their hiding spot's low ceiling.

Shikamaru began to scratch his chin. "Hmm, that would actually map out a lot of the cavern then. It's not perfect but… I think we could do that."

Hinata blinked at him. "Uh, really?"

"What, aren't you confident on your own plan?"

She looked away. "I-I just didn't... think you'd agree this easily."

He shrugged. "It's a solid plan. Just be careful; I'll keep watching over them."

"Oh, um… okay…"

Somewhat dazed, Hinata crawled out of the hole. She expected Shikamaru would point out flaw after flaw or shoot her down outright but…

She shook her head. "Focus Hinata!"

"You okay?"

"Ahh!" she yelped, pivoting in an instant.

Shikamaru stared at her with a raised brow while her face blazed red. "Never mind. I just wanted to say that you should grab a rock or something."

"W-What for?"

"If anyone does try to come closer where we are separated, you'll spot them. Throw the rock down here and I'll know to be on guard, and if it comes to a fight you could ambush them from above. Oh, and if you can get to our old base, maybe there's other stuff Kabuto didn't bring down that could be useful, I dunno."

She nodded, her expression growing fierce with determination. He truly was counting on her. "Okay. I won't let you down, Shikamaru-kun."

He smirked a bit at that and waved her off.

She turned her back on him and made her way to the room's center while her vision flashed. The colors faded as her field of vision expanded to reveal once again that nobody was close by.

…The clock ticked and once again Hinata was stuck in a cycle. Search for a good spot to jump to and from each floor, explore a little of any passages she might come across, go back to what was now the cavern's main chamber. Rinse and repeat.

It took her a good fifteen minutes before she finally managed to get back to the floor their original base was at, and she deactivated her eyes to search around it. To her surprise, the base was still intact, but there were no supplies to be found there. Whether Kabuto took some with him or not she didn't know.

'Perhaps it's a good idea to check that once I get down.'

She had also failed to spot any other human being around the cavern while climbing.

'The killing intent and the explosions truly scared everyone off. Or, well, almost everyone,' she thought, accounting for Kabuto's team.

With a sigh, Hinata decided to accept defeat and leave. Making her way to the entrance, her Byakugan flashed again and she had to stifle a gasp.

'Definitively not everyone!'

At long last, she saw other people.

Three figures running at full speed through the passages one floor below her, at her opposite side.

Her eyes narrowed. As silently as she could, she slowly retreated further into the base all while her hand went into her back pouch, where she kept the chunk of rock Shikamaru told her to carry. It wasn't big, but it would certainly make a noise…

She kept watching the figures. As they got closer she altered the chakra flow in her eyes, hoping to maybe identify the possible enemies… and to her surprise, she was able to.

'That team from Sound that attacked Kabuto-san… this really isn't good. If they have sound-based techniques they could figure out where I or Shikamaru-kun are easily.'

The trio finally made their way to what was now the cavern's main chamber, and stopped to talk to each other. Hinata took that chance to appraise their gear, but the only thing she discovered was that the female carried senbon, and only some of which had bells on them. One boy appeared to have metal pipes inside his arm, ending at the palm… and finally, the other boy had a weird gauntlet, which she had seen previously, but the Byakugan told her nothing about how they worked.

It was this last one that worried her, the mummy-like genin. He could be dangerous in a close-range fight judging from how his blow against Kabuto affected the older genin without even connecting.

'At a longer range than my gentle fist too… if that was sound-based, could it have been a genjutsu? Hmm… no. If anyone there uses genjutsu it has to be the girl. I don't see anything else that could explain why there aren't bells on every senbon. It has to be a trick.'

Eventually the trio stopped talking, nodded among themselves and swiftly began to jump down while Hinata's heart sped up.

She threw the rock, only pausing for one second to angle it really high so it curved upward before descending.

'Please… please…'

The three Sound genin all jumped when the rock sailed past them, but it hit none of them and instead continued to fall until it crashed on the surface of the second-lowest floor.

At the edge of her vision, Hinata's eyes caught Shikamaru tensing up, and she made sure to stand very, very still. The Sound trio were wary, but after a few seconds they seemed to believe Hinata's deception and shrugged it off as just a random rock from the ceiling.

They lingered for a few moments and Hinata noticed a weird fluctuation on the bandaged genin: an abnormal focus of charka around the sides of his head.

'He must be listening for movement… mine or Shikamaru-kun's.'

The chakra flow normalized and he gave a signal. The other two nodded and they leaped to the area's bottom, unaware of Hinata following their movement from high above.

'I need to hurry, but I can't be so fast as to alert them…'

Instead of jumping, like she had done to climb back to the first floor, this time Hinata decided to walk on the walls. She didn't want to but she even deactivated her Byakugan so she could monitor her own shadow lest it gave her position away.

She began to hear voices. The Sound team was talking to Shikamaru, who had come out from his hiding spot which was behind some rubble.

Unfortunately she was too high up to really decipher their words, so Hinata went faster, hoping the conversation would muffle her approach. She kept watching, noting everyone's aggressive postures and how Shikamaru seemed to be negotiating with them, using one of their scrolls as a bargaining chip.

One of the genin—the one with pipes in his arms—suddenly began to laugh.

'Oh no! Hurry up Hinata!'

Finally, when she was but two floors away from them, she managed to overhear a full sentence.

"Let me handle this one, Dosu. You guys didn't let me have any fun last time."

The mummy-like genin began to step back. "Very well, Kin. Come Zaku."

"Bah," the other boy threw his hands up and followed. "You better wrap this up fast or I'm getting in, you hear? You only missed out last time cuz you're slow."

"Shut up," the girl snarled at him, only to then focus back at Shikamaru and grinned wickedly. "I've been longing for a fight."

"Yeah? Well, I wasn't," Shikamaru grumbled, pocketing his scroll. "But if that's how you wanna do things…!"

In one movement the girl drew and threw a bundle of simple senbon, forcing Shikamaru to leap sideways while weaving seals.

"Shadow Imitation Jutsu," he called out as he landed in a specific pose, his own shadow shooting forward alongside the ground.

Kin jumped away, dodging the shadow whip with ease and leaving it to continue past her. She then smirked at her opponent. "Hah, what was that even supposed to… h-huh?! I-I can't move!"

Now it was Shikamaru who smirked, and Hinata couldn't help her smile as she continued to make her way down. From her vantage point, she easily saw Shikamaru curving his shadow behind the girl. Had it not been for the cavern's lack of light, his shadow probably wouldn't even reach her.

"I see," Dozu muttered. "He's using the shadows to his favor."

"He's dead that's what he is," Zaku growled and readied his arm. Hinata's eyes flashed back to the Byakugan just in time to see a build-up of energy flowing through the tubes in the boy's arm.

"Whatever you're planning will kill her as well," Shikamaru warned, smugly. "Our bodies are connected."

It was a bluff, Hinata knew. She also knew the sound genin couldn't be aware of the Shadow Binding's nuances to safely attack Shikamaru without harming the girl.

However… Zaku began to laugh.

"Too bad I don't care!"

Zaku took aim.

"Air Cutt—ugh!"

A burst of energy exploded from his arms, and shooting across the cavern and exploding somewhere behind Shikamaru.

Hinata had no time to focus on him.

Zaku was on the ground, Dosu hovering beside him.

"What the hell Dosu!? Why did you push me!?"

"You're an idiot," the bandaged boy grumbled. His uncovered eye was locked on Hinata as she landed a small distance from them and assumed a fighting stance.

Zaku's expression was one of surprise, until he noticed the kunai buried where he had been. "You sneaky bitch…! I'll k—"

"Zaku you bastard!"

The two boys leaped backward to dodge another hail of kunai, except this time…

"Kin!?"

The Sound girl ran toward the two boys, but her head was turned in a weird angle—the same angle Shikamaru's head needed to be at so he could fight through her body.

"I'm not in control, dumbasses! But if I get to punch your stupid face, Zaku, I'm not exactly complaining!"

As if to abide by the girl's wish, it was exactly Zaku that Shikamaru picked a fight with, striking at nothing so Kin's blows could land.

That left Dosu for Hinata.

"Those eyes..." he muttered, frowning with his sole exposed eye. "I admit, after I heard enough to know three people were down here, I grew careless. I only noticed you when you threw those kunai… but I won't make that mistake again."

With that promise, the boy shot forward.

He moved fairly fast—faster than when going after Kabuto the day before, just enough to catch Hinata off-guard, yet he came with a wound-up punch that was far too easily telegraphed to hit Hinata, who danced around him and readied a strike of her own…

Only to halt, gasp and then explode.

In her place was but a chunk of rock.

"Substitution with rubble of all things," Dozu growled turning around and blocking another wave of projectiles with his gauntlet before dashing toward Hinata once more.

What he didn't know was just how much information those two exchanges gave her.

'I saw it! So this is how his technique works…'

It was her luck that Dosu had been foolish enough to attack Kabuto the day before. If not for that she would've never prepared that substitution before engaging him in taijutsu. But her ploy worked and now she had the information she sought.

When Dosu's punch had hit, a thin sphere of chakra had spread all around his arm, just enough to engulf half of Hinata's body. And within that sphere a bright, wavy trail traveled from his fist to her head—he was using sound as a vehicle for his chakra to cause internal damage.

'No. It wasn't when he hit me… it was when his gauntlet shook hard enough to make noise. Even if I can't hear it, he can still use the sound waves.'

That explained it all. The windup, Kabuto, and even the chakra she saw when Dosu blocked her shuriken. The pieces fit.

She stood still, as did Dosu for a moment. They stared at each other in silence, if not for the slew of curses coming from his teammates and the sound of wind blasts.

Hinata took one instant to check on Shikamaru, then focused on her fight again.

"Intriguing," the boy muttered and dashed once more.

This time Hinata was ready.

Dosu came at her with his other hand now, poised for a faster, safer strike. Hinata knew it was a bait, but humored him, weaving around his punch. Dosu then pivoted for a kick, just slow enough to invite her to block it.

Hinata hopped back, narrowly avoided it… and eagerly waited for when he spun with his momentum and readied his gauntleted hand for a heavy strike.

'Now!'

Had she focused on Dosu's masked face, she'd have seen his victorious smirk when she darted in the same direction he swung, so close to his fist.

The smile faltered a second later when she didn't falter.

"Grah!"

Dosu was thrown to the ground by the force of Hinata's palm thrust, landing on his back. He raised his head, staring at her with incredulity while cradling his midsection.

"But… how!? How are you still standing!?"

Hinata had never used her altered Gentle Fist in a true fight, but when Dosu's hand flew by she touched his arm, dragging her fingers across it and taking away his chakra only to shoot it right back at him when she buried her palm on his stomach.

His technique still went off, but sapped of its chakra, the sphere he manipulated sound with was so small that the technique might as well have failed.

Not that Hinata was going to disclose any of that to Dosu, who then vomited a mix of food and blood on the floor through his bandage mask. She didn't think twice: she drew more shuriken and tossed them as Dozu, who screamed when they pierced his legs.

Hinata smiled. Not at his suffering, but at her success.

'Father was right! This… this can be useful too!'

She enjoyed her victory for all but one second.

"Damn, she took out Dosu!" Kin yelled. Her head had been angled just right to watch their fight while Shikamaru used her as a puppet against Zaku.

Unfortunately, even with the generous supply of shadows around them, Shikamaru's control could only handle so much. Hinata could see the chakra woven into his shadow growing fainter and erratic.

Then it snapped, and their shadows split.

"Go handle her, I'll take down this bastard once and for all," Zaku ordered and then rushed at Shikamaru while charging more air.

"Tsk," the girl scowled. "I'll be the one finishing him off, but for now…"

She turned to Hinata.

"You seem to be actually serious about being a kunoichi, even though you'd probably be cute if you weren't this dirty."

Hinata made sure to glare at the other girl to hide the extreme confusion and discomfort she felt at that moment.

"Sorry but I'll be killing you now. Whatever trick you used on Dosu won't work on me!"

Kin drew a single senbon and shot at Hinata, who hopped to the side to let the needle get stuck on the nearby rocks.

The soft sounds of a bell invaded her ears.

'And there it is,' Hinata thought.

Once more, she saw it: similar to Dosu's technique, the energy Kin hid in the bell before her shot was but a vehicle for chakra. A genjutsu, more specifically.

Without an ounce of fear for herself, she let illusion take hold.

"Ha, let's see if you can find me!"

Kin's voice was everywhere.

"Which one is the real me, huh?"

'Good for me that you like talking so much,' Hinata remarked to herself. That off-hand taunt was just what she needed to know what the visual part of the illusion was without experiencing it.

She drew a kunai from her back pouch while moving her eyes around the area—not that it changed her view in any way—and ran at Kim's general direction, not in a straight line.

Hinata let her kunai fly.

"You missed, so sorry," Kin smiled while readying more needles … and then Zaku screamed.

"Gragh!"

Kin gasped and turned to see her teammate with a kunai on his left shoulder.

'Hope you can use this opening Shikamaru-kun, because I will!' Hinata thought, slamming her hand on Kin's belly. The Sound girl crumpled and Hinata swiftly chopped at her head.

Kin fell to the ground, unconscious.

As she watched her opponent fall, Hinata also paid attention to the other foes. Dosu was still struggling on the ground, down but not incapacitated. Zaku on the other hand, was standing up but completely unable to move, courtesy of Shikamaru.

"Thanks for the help, Hinata," Shikamaru said with a smirk, doing weird poses which forced Zaku to do the same. "This troublesome idiot was hard to pin down."

"Don't underestimate me, you trash!" Zaku roared while mirroring Shikamaru's seemingly silly. He grimaced with every movement thanks to his shoulder wound.

Enemy or not, Hinata could empathize even if she didn't want to.

"Chill out. It's over, man. Hinata, can you search him up for the scroll?" Shikamaru said to her, patting his leg pouch and, indirectly, Zaku's. "You might need to move some stuff out to get a good look"

She frowned.

"…Of course."

She hurried over, gathering chakra in her palm.

"I don't have the scroll, dumbass."

"That's what anyone would say," Shikamaru pointed at him with his right hand, and then turned his head to Hinata. "Don't you agree?"

Zaku was pointing at Shikamaru.

And he made no effort to hide his murderous smile.

"Die!"

…If only Zaku had paid attention to Hinata, he might have stopped himself from charging up his Air Cutter. But he didn't, and by the time he felt her poking his arm and the sharp burn of her chakra on his system, it had been too late.

"AAAAUUURGH! MY ARM!"

Hinata had been faster than him, sending her chakra down the metal tube on his arm with enough force that it crashed against Zaku's attempt to do an Air Cutter. It pulled chakra from his body into the tubes at a slow, steady rate, so Hinata easily overpowered the flow in there by shooting hers into him, flooding his system with chakra.

It could not handle the strain and burst.

"You hot-blooded types are always so predictable," Shikamaru shook his head as his shadow retreated and Zaku crumbled, howling in pain until he blacked out.

"Glad you understood my plan, Hinata."

She, of course, had scanned Zaku's belongings from afar and had noticed before their fight that the scroll was on Dosu. But Zaku didn't realize the silly movements weren't just to taunt him and cause him pain—he was sending signals to Hinata, code language specific to the Leaf that they had been taught at the academy.

"Was this really needed though…?"

"This guy's not the type that we can trust to run away without trying to do something stupid."

She said nothing to that. Perhaps Shikamaru didn't realize the extent of the damage she caused.

"Your assessment is not inaccurate…"

Shikamaru and Hinata both turned to Dosu, who had finally managed to get up. One hand was cradling his stomach, and in the other, was the sole scroll on his team's possession.

"I admit defeat, and will give up this scroll if you allow us to retreat…"

"Hand it over."

Dosu tossed it to Shikamaru, then sluggishly made his way to Kin, slung her over his shoulder. Meanwhile, Shikamaru and Hinata regrouped and put some distance between them and the Sound genin. Hinata fell into a fighting stance, whereas Shikamaru had kunai at the ready, just in case.

Finally, and with much difficulty thanks to his internal wounds, Dosu picked up Zaku as well and turned to the two rookies that had outplayed his team. "This time you won, but the next time it will end very differently."

Shikamaru scowled. "Get out of here before we change our minds."

Glaring at them, Dosu jumped high into the air and finally left. Hinata's eyes followed his every movement. Only when he reached the passage Hinata had first spotted them on that she allowed her body to relax.

"It's over, Shikamaru-kun…!"

"Finally…" With a great sigh, Shikamaru wiped the sweat from his forehead. "That was really troublesome."

For once, Hinata agreed wholeheartedly with his complaint.

"Hey, Hinata. I hate to ask this of you when you've done so much already but..."

She smiled at him, hoping it didn't look too creepy with her Byakugan on. "Don't worry, I'm on it."

Mirroring Dosu, Hinata began to climb, repeating her movements from right before their scuffle started except much faster. She once more found no other souls besides the Sound team, and thankfully they were truly fleeing from that place.

"Well, it's not like they'd be very difficult to handle with those wounds…"

Minutes later she was back at the bottom, and found Shikamaru tending to Sasuke.

"No changes. Honestly, I don't know if I should be happy with this or not," he told her, frowning. She faced the same dilemma herself, but not knowing what to say she simply moved on.

"I saw nobody else but them, and they're running from here like promised," she reported.

"Good. I'm hungry, you want a bar?"

As bland as ration bars were, Hinata could not deny her body's needs and just nodded, deactivating her Byakugan so her eyes could rest.

They ate in silence for a few minutes in the ever-darkening cavern, and Shikamaru spoke up not long after they were done.

"How much did you hear before you began to attack?"

"Not much," she admitted with a frown to match his. "Why?"

"Those guys were after Sasuke."

Her eyes went wide.

"I don't know why, but that was their objective here. Their orders."

"It... must have been to steal his eyes."

"Maybe that too, I didn't consider that angle," he shook his head. "But… honestly? I think they're with Orochimaru, or whoever that thing that attacked us was. It's too much of a coincidence. Another one. But in that case, I don't get why they would send a team so much weaker."

Hinata didn't know how to reply to that. Her head hurt from considering all those possibilities…

And then they both jolted from hearing someone landing right outside.

"My apologies for interrupting your conversation and exam."

It was a male ANBU, with a lion mask… but Hinata flashed her Byakugan just the same.

Her wariness vanished when she saw a very familiar chakra pattern around the ANBU's eyes, making her gasp.

"You're a Hyuuga too!"

"Exactly, Hinata-sama," the ANBU bowed low to her. "As I said, forgive the interruption, but—"

"Does this have to do with Orochimaru?"

The ANBU froze from Shikamaru's question, and Hinata clearly saw the surprise behind the man's mask.

"…I see. It seems you both are witnesses, then."

Hinata felt herself growing fainter. "S-So it's true?"

"I'm afraid it is, Hinata-sama. That snake wormed past our security to meddle with the exams somehow. We need all the information we can get to understand what his goals are and where he could be hiding right now, so I'll have to ask you to accompany me to the central tower."

Shikamaru frowned. "So are the exams being interrupted, or did we just get disqualified?"

"The exams will likely continue as normal for the others, but for those involved in this incident I have no information."

"Um, Anbu-san? I-I know you're just doing your job but we need your help!"

"Do not worry, Hinata-sama. I'll see to it that your two friends," he motioned to Sasuke and Naruto, "will receive medical attention. My partner is already on the lookout for the other genin that complete your three teams, as I assumed they were involved as well."

"Unfortunately," Shikamaru muttered, looking cross.

The Anbu then made a single, familiar hand seal, and two clones spawned to his sides. "Now, please come outside. We will transport you and your friends to the tower."

A few seconds later, the ANBU and his clones had picked up their bags. One clone took the two unconscious boys, Shikamaru was on the back of the second, while the original predictably was the one carrying Hinata herself.

"We will be there shortly, please hang tight."

And then, finally, Hinata and her friends could say goodbye to that accursed cavern.

---

A/N:

And that's a wrap!

Guys, all I have to say right here, right now, is that I'd very much like to hear from you all.

This fic has over 1000 followers, yet Chapter 26 barely got 10 reviews.

It feels like most of those followers and favorites are just from people who have dropped the fic and no longer read it, putting those big numbers into question.

Your feedback is really, really important. Not only does your words let me improve—I can realize what's working and what's not, and consider new ideas—it's also an incredible motivational boost. I am doing this for myself and now my characters, but it really helps to see people's reactions and thoughts about the story, it would mean the world to me if you leave a review.

Between the fights and the interpersonal struggles in this chapter, there's a lot that can be talked about… anyone that has reviewed this story once already—thanks again for that!—can attest to how I really like to chat about this story with my readers.

Either way, thanks for your time, regardless of the review. I hope you enjoyed this chapter!

And one last shoutout to Ozy whose feedback as a beta from earlier chapters has helped shape up scenes in this one.

---

Guest Review Answers:

Guest (sep 29): Thank you!

Happy Guest: Glad you've been enjoying this! I don't think I ever seen Hinata be considered a perfectionist either, but this is the kind of character she has shown to be in my fic. She, like you and most other readers I bet, simply didn't realize it. It took a while for me too, to be honest, but it adds up, no?

Ooh, the Orochimaru fight. I'm glad that turned out like intended, it's so hard to get the… atmosphere of that encounter without the creepy music and visuals.

As for Naruto, yeah, never count the Sexy Jutsu out! And indeed, slowly but surely he's getting a picture of who Hinata is. She's still an enigma to him in many ways, but he understands her more than he realizes. (And don't worry about your review not appearing—this is generally FFnet fucking things up. They always reappear soon enough, as was the case here)

BR Guest (jan 1): E ai! Sempre interessante ver um review PT-BR, haha. Eu tenho a mesma crítica das histórias NH, eles perdem o que faz eles serem tão fofos muito cedo, geralmente já namoram logo na parte 1. Não concordo! Obrigado pelo comentário e a rec, ainda não tive tempo de ver mas está na minha lista! (e ouch, mais demorado que a minha...)

AULover: I'm glad the revisions are holding up. It pains me that I can't go back to fix Chapter 6+ right now, but those are truly harder to write than normal chapters. Thanks for the encouragement!

---

Changelog:

v1.1 (06/27/20) - Added more details to the Yoroi/Tsurugi fight to make Hinata's pain more present and intense. This was a point that my beta has drawn attention to, I worked on it, but as time passed I felt it just wasn't enough. Also fixed one typo, courtesy of MPChess.