Let's start this from the beginning

Kabasawa Mines

X

As it turned out, all of his students had come out of their fights victorious. More or less unharmed, too.

Hinata's wounds had been superficial for the most part, with the senbons that had hit her having neither been deep enough to do serious harm nor actually hit any of her vital spots in the first place. Her exhaustion had mainly stemmed from depleting pretty much all her chakra.

From what the ANBU members who had observed her fight had told him, she had performed well. Maybe even better than Itachi had expected. Overcoming her initial fear and hesitation, using what he had taught her while keeping a cool head, and finally overcoming her opponent with clever application of a Genjutsu – one, he might add, he hadn't even been aware she had mastered to such a level yet – that not only took the missing-nin's advantage away but actually turned it against her was no small feat indeed.

It was of particular note that in the end, Hinata hadn't hesitated for even one second to use the Gentle Fist to put her opponent out of commission. Considering how troubled by its inherent lethality she had been in the past, that was a big step forward.

Shino and Kiba's fight had been notably more difficult. Apparently, Itachi's clone had been inclined to step in several times only to always stop itself at the last second when it turned out that it wasn't quite necessary yet.

This indecisiveness was understandable, however. After all, it wasn't every day that the member of a clan that was supposed to be extinct showed itself. The last member of the Kesshō Clan had supposedly been killed during the waning days of the last war, and it had been a great relief for everyone who had the questionable honour of encountering them on the battlefield before. They had made themselves many enemies, and their Crystal Release was feared all over the continent for its lethality.

Itachi's best guess as to how Gouzen happened to possess the clan's Kekkei Genkai was that he was some bastard born outside the village that Iwagakure knew nothing about, although there were technically some other possibilities as well. He could have successfully faked his death to avoid persecution, for example, or Iwagakure could actually know about his existence but chose not to make it public knowledge in hopes of getting their hands on him before anyone else realized that he existed.

Gouzen might very well be the last person capable of passing on his clan's bloodline, meaning not only Iwagakure but every village would love to get their hands on him – or, at the very least, make sure no one else would.

That being said, Shino and Kiba fought valiantly. Their notoriety aside, Gouzen's abilities were nothing too impressive, with only his usage of the Crystal Armour Technique being truly worth mentioning. That alone was enough to give Itachi's students a hard time, of course, but it wasn't enough to could simply overwhelm them. That, in turn, allowed them to come up with a strategy to ultimately come out on top even if it was a bit closer than Itachi would have preferred.

Combining the Gatsūga in conjunction with the Earth Spear Technique Itachi had copied from Kakuzu in the previous timeline to harden his skin and increase his attack's impact power was something he had been teaching Kiba and Akamaru for a while now, but he hadn't expected them to use it while transforming into a gigantic two-headed wolf - which also was a technique he hadn't been aware they had mastered yet, Itachi might add.

The effect had been impossible to miss, breaking through Gouzen's armour and doing some serious damage.

And then Shino followed in both his teammate's footsteps and also used a technique Itachi hadn't been aware of, using his Kikaichū in a manner he had never seen before to finish the missing-nin off.

Well, at least almost. Gouzen would probably have been able to kill them before falling unconscious himself had Itachi not intervened, but that was beside the point. The important take-away from this was the more-than-just-a-little impressive performance they had put on.

Of his two male students, Shino had clearly been the worse injured. Where Kiba had come out of the fight with only bruised and general exhaustion and tenderness as a result of his transformation, Shino's throat and ribs had been subject to quite some damage. Nothing too serious and certainly nothing that some rest wouldn't heal, but for sure the worst wounds he had ever received.

Fortunately, Itachi had become rather proficient in medical Ninjutsu over the last few years, so neither Shino nor his other students had to deal with what would otherwise have been a weeklong rest period. By the time they woke up on the second day after their fights, all that remained from their laments was some exhaustion and soreness.

It was this that made it possible for them to depart on the morning of the third day after Neishin's ploy had been foiled. Akihito had urged them to reconsider and stay a bit longer, but as far as Itachi was concerned, they had stayed at the mansion for long enough already. It was time to go home. Furthermore, he wanted to talk with his team about all that had happened and thought it would be better to hold that conversation somewhere that was not the setting of the incidents.

That had been many hours ago. Right now, the sun slowly but surely began to set, and Itachi thought it might be about time to find a place to rest. They could continue to run through the night, of course, but there was really no reason to. They had made good progress throughout the day, especially considering they hadn't hurried as much as when they first set out from Konoha nearly three weeks ago and Itachi had given his mission report to the ANBU team that had gone ahead to take Neishin and his three missing-nin back to Konoha, so he could take it a bit easier for now.

Thinking about the traitorous adviser also reminded him of the bits Hikan had let slip regarding Sunagakure's involvement in all of this. Itachi hadn't had the time to conduct an in-depth interrogation, so he hadn't much to go from with his suspicions, but the little bit he knew was more than enough to be concerning.

For some reason, Suna was interested in interfering with the Kabasawa Mines, and Hikan, who was a missing-nin, was the one they hired to enforce their will.

Now, it wasn't exactly unheard of for hidden villages to hire missing-nins to do their dirty work for them. In times of war, they usually didn't even bother to try and hide it. While the ANBU usually took over most covert missions that no one was supposed to know about, villages sometimes wanted to make absolutely sure certain actions couldn't be traced back to them and thus hired mercenaries to do the job. After all, even if they got captured, it wasn't as if their testimonies were worth much – not every village had the Yamanaka Clan to verify them, after all.

It was rare, though, and it certainly never involved hiring a missing-nin from their own village!

And yes, Itachi himself had technically been such a case when he infiltrated Akatsuki, but that was due to rather unique circumstances that really couldn't be generalized.

It was this fact that brought up another possibility:

Hikan might never have been a true missing-nin to begin with.

Having a person be publicly known as a traitor meant that the home village they came from couldn't be held responsible for their actions. That was obviously an attractive opportunity for many. After all, wouldn't it be useful to have an agent in the field that could cause problems for the village's enemies without fear of facing any repercussions for it? Without fear of retribution? Because of this, every village had at least a small number of shinobi they officially branded as missing-nins even though they were in fact still loyal members of their homes.

That was a delicate game to play, though. At the end of the day, there were still consequences to having traitors in their ranks regardless of whether they were real or not.

Being publicly known for having many missing-nins was bad for business, for one thing. Potential customers seeking their village's services would be deterred and might seek out someone else, losing the village money and, ultimately, power. It would also make them look weak in the eyes of their rivals for losing so many of their own and might even motivate them to try to exploit this perceived weakness.

Thus, a village couldn't have too many of such fake missing-nins, which in turn meant the ones that played the role must be strong and talented enough to be capable of fulfilling as many different tasks as possible. Of course, that was a problem in and of itself as "losing" someone capable like that also took a hit on their prestige.

Also, the person in question must be willing to do it in the first place. If not, it would be all too easy for them to become real traitors after they left the village.

There were obviously not all too many people interested in such a thing. Yes, it was possible to fake their capture or even death after a few years and then give them a new identity, but usually, they never saw their home again and everyone was aware of that.

All this was to say that every single such fake missing-nin was a valuable resource to their village, used only when absolutely necessary and for nothing short of the most essential missions.

It would be truly concerning if Hikan turned out to be such a case as that would mean Sunagakure thought it essential to do something at Konoha's most important iron mines.

Itachi was snapped out of his thoughts when he noticed Hinata had abruptly stopped in her tracks, body tense and Byakugan activated. She spoke up a moment later without him having to ask what was going on:

"Sensei, there are people fighting ahead of us!"

Immediately, the atmosphere around them grew heavy, but Itachi remained calm. Hinata's sight didn't reach that far, so if the people in question were outstandingly strong, he would have noticed them himself by now. It didn't mean they couldn't be a threat, but it at least meant that he would most likely be able to protect his team without much trouble no matter what was going to happen. "Can you recognize whether they're shinobi or anything that identifies their affiliations?"

Some kind of emotion flashed in her eyes, but he had no time to think about what it might have been before she dropped the bombshell.

"Most seem to be normal bandits, but the ones they're fighting are Konoha-nin." She hesitated for about half a second. Then, "It's Team 7, Sensei."

Hinata wasn't quite sure what she was supposed to feel now that the mission was over.

On one hand, she was glad that they were finally going home. They had been away from Konoha for almost three weeks now, and while they didn't have a set return date in mind when they first set out for their mission, none of them had expected this mission to last very long. After all, with Kiba and Akamaru on their team, finding some boars had sounded like a piece of cake, and eliminating them once they found them didn't sound like much of a problem either.

In all honestly and with the benefit of hindsight, Hinata was sure she and her teammates would have found this mission rather boring were it not also their first C-Rank mission ever.

With all that had happened, however, the one to maybe two weeks she had privately expected had turned out to be a gross underestimation. By the time they returned to Konoha, they would have gone for almost an entire month! She was glad she had told Hanabi that she had no idea how long this mission could take. Her sister was probably missing her regardless, but without a particular date to look forward to for Hinata to miss, she should at least not get too worried about her.

On the other hand, a part of her was actually sad that it was over. Yes, it had been quite stressful, and yes, knowing that she had technically never been in danger because her sensei had someone on standby in case she lost kind of took something away from all of it, but at the end of the day, none of that really mattered. She hadn't known that she wasn't actually in danger, she had stood her ground even when she thought she might die, and ultimately, she had won!

It wasn't an understatement to say this had been the most important victory of her life.

In a way, it proved that Itachi-sensei had been right when he told her that the only thing holding her back was herself. That all she needed to do to become stronger was to believe in her own potential and stop holding back.

It felt as if a weight had been taken from her shoulders. As scared as she had been during the fight, the elation she had felt after the victory had been entirely worth it.

These were the kinds of thoughts Hinata had as she silently walked behind her teammates, vaguely aware that there was much less chatter than when they had first set off from Konoha in the direction of the Kabasawa Mines but not thinking about it too much. Shino and Kiba and clearly just as much going through their heads as she did, so it was only natural that neither of them was in any mood for conversation.

It was hard enough to pay enough attention to their surroundings anyway. Focusing on anything further than that was all but impossible. Unfortunately, none of that mattered anymore when she spotted something that made her forget all about the previous mission.

"Sensei, there are people fighting ahead of us!"

"Can you recognize whether they're shinobi or anything that identifies their affiliations?"

"Most seem to be bandits, but the ones they're fighting are Konoha-nin." She hesitated for just one moment. "It's Team 7, Sensei."

They were vastly outnumbered, although Hinata didn't think they were very bothered by that judging from how Kakashi-sensei wasn't even participating in the fight but sitting in a nearby tree out of sight to enjoy the show below. That being said, while Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura seemed to do well enough, they were outnumbered by a large margin, and while she didn't think their enemies were shinobi, they did have more chakra than a civilian had any right to have.

They seemed to be fine on their own, but as fellow Konoha-nin, only standing by and not helping them just seemed wrong. Sure, there was probably no danger with someone like Kakashi Hataka there to protect them should it become necessary, but that didn't make it right to just leave them to their own devices.

Evidentially, Itachi-sensei agreed with her on that.

"Let's go."

No further comment was needed for them to jump into action, and a quick glance at her teammates proved that they, too, had pushed any unnecessary thoughts aside to focus entirely on the here and now. After all, a fight wasn't the right place to be distracted.

Now rushing forward at high speed, it was only a matter of seconds before they began to hear the sound of people fighting each other, and it took only a few more seconds after that for them to reach the scene:

Kakashi was still sitting on a tree branch with one hand in his pocket while holding an orange book with the other, only visible to Hinata due to her Byakugan but otherwise completely out of sight. Furthermore, she could also see that he wasn't actually focusing on the pages in front of him but instead watching his students' fights, making her wonder why he even had it out in the first place.

Then there were Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura, fighting against their enemies not too far from each other and demonstrating admirable situational awareness by helping each other out whenever one of them struggled for one reason or another.

Or, well, at least Sasuke and Sakura were doing that. Naruto, on the other hand, clearly moved further and further away from his teammates with each passing second, too absorbed by fighting with whoever was right in front of him to notice that he was slowly but surely getting separated from them. It wasn't a problem yet considering he was still winning, but all it took for it to backfire was a single mistake, so there was no way to know for sure how long that would last.

However, while he might have gotten a little overzealous in his pursuit of his opponents, Naruto's situational awareness wasn't necessarily worse than his teammates', so he noticed them at the same moment Sasuke and Sakura did, and it nearly cost all three of them dearly.

Having a friendly team appear out of nowhere was quite a surprise, after all. Enough so to distract them and briefly break their concentration, even.

Hinata and her team acted quickly, though, ignoring the various exclamations thrown their way in favour of jumping into the fight.

Kiba and Akamaru rushed towards Naruto, the former blocking a knife slash aimed at the other boy's back while the latter threw the assailant back with a powerful kick to the chest, catapulting him right into a second incoming opponent and consequently thwarting that attack in the bud.

Hinata and Shino, on the other hand, ran towards Sasuke and Sakura. Reaching the two in time to block the – due to the distraction their team's sudden appearance had caused – lethal attacks aimed at them was impossible, but a pair of thrown shuriken were more than enough to slow the pair of bandits down and give their fellow Konoha-nin the chance to notice what was going on themselves. As a result, the bandits were already defeated by the time they reached the two of them, Sasuke having twisted his assailant's arm before throwing him over his shoulder and Sakura having knocked hers out with a quick double ear slap.

"Hinata?" Sakura exclaimed from Hinata's right while simultaneously blocking another incoming attack. "And Shino too? What are you doing here?"

"Much more importantly," Sasuke added tersely from the left without stopping his own fight, "what were you thinking, jumping into the fray like this? That distracted us just as much as it did them!"

Thankfully, Shino answered before Hinata had to, although she really wished he would have proceeded a little bit more, well, diplomatic. "We merely happened to pass by on our way back home and decided you might need a helping hand. It's not our fault you let yourself get distracted this easily."

"You-"

"Guys!" Sakura interrupted the two boys before they could start fighting each other as well. "Can you leave this for later and focus on beating the people attacking us, please?"

Much to her relief, neither of them tried to argue, accepting that course of action even though they looked similarly displeased with it. Hinata supposed it was a good sign that they had enough energy to spare to waste on such meaningless things, but she was still relieved they focused back on the fight at hand and that Sakura had beaten her to put a stop to their behaviour. Shino, she could have calmed down easily enough, but Sasuke was an unknown element she found hard to judge, so having the other girl settle this was truly the best possible outcome.

Afterwards, things proceeded relatively smoothly.

Thanks to her Byakugan, Hinata was able to observe the entire battlefield with ease, which allowed her to watch Kiba's fight without losing focus on her own opponents. For once, he wasn't using his clan techniques and instead relied on more traditional Taijutsu.

He swatted away a punch, broke through his opponent's guard, and rammed his elbow into his gut before quickly falling back again, yanking the bandit along behind him with an iron grip on his arm and then using the momentum to throw him into an approaching group of three. Following that, Akamaru appeared, using Kiba's shoulders as a springboard to propel himself onto the face of another bandit.

The impact of that was enough to throw that one to the ground, but Akamaru didn't stop there and continued to jump onto a second and then a third opponent before rushing back to his partner's side.

Now, while the second one had fallen to the ground as well, the third one had somehow managed to regain his footing. Not that it did him much good, mind you.

"Gotcha!"

The man had no time to react before Naruto connected a flying kick to his face that sent him flying. Not stopping there, Naruto also threw a kick to the face of the second bandit Akamaru had felled a moment earlier and who was just about to sit up as he ran past him, knocking him out cold in an instant. Then, to finish things off, he jumped into the air with an excited yell before landing with his knees in the stomach of the third one.

Hinata's own fight proceeded just as successful.

Compared to Yuwaku or even the various opponents she had faced during training sessions in the past, these bandits were dreadfully slow, meaning she had no trouble countering their attacks and incapacitated them before they could even react.

A quick jab with her finger and the arm of the bandit in front of her went limp, consequently making it impossible for him to offer any resistance when she grabbed the limb to throw the man to her side where Shino made quick work of him.

One low sweep resulted in two bandits falling to the ground, and her subsequent heel kicks did the rest.

Breaking through another bandit's guard, she quickly finished him off with half a dozen feather-light palm strikes before using his body as cover to do the same with a second and a third.

To her right, Shino was taking care of several opponents of his own, using his staff to keep most of them at a distance only to quickly flash forward and knock one of them out before the rest could react.

One punch was easily redirected towards another bandit with a graceful motion of the staff, briefly forcing these two to stop their attacks and therefore allowing Shino to jerk the other end of his weapon straight in the face of a third attacker. A moment and one horizontal swing later, the other two joined their comrade on the ground, quickly followed by a fourth one when Shino twirled his weapon around himself without turning around to knock another assailant out that had tried to sneak up on him from behind.

Unfortunately, it was then that things became a bit more complicated.

"Hey, watch out where you're going, idiot!"

Having seen what had happened meant Hinata was not as confused by Naruto's sudden exclamation as the other Genin probably were, but she thought calling Kiba an idiot was a bit too much. Yes, he had kind of gotten into Naruto's way and even almost hit him with an attack meant for one of the bandits, but it was at least partly his own fault for not anticipating where his ally would be. She understood that the Inuzuka fighting style was wilder than what most people were used to and thus a bit harder to predict, but it really wasn't that complicated. Besides, Naruto and Kiba had been friends for years, hadn't they? He really should have known better.

Hinata didn't have time to think about that much further, however, as something else that required her immediate attention caught her eye, and half a second later, the clang of clashing metal could be heard when one of her shuriken collided with one of Sakura's that had come far too close to Shino for her liking.

"Sorry!" the other girl quickly yelled over her shoulder. "I didn't mean to!"

Now, Hinata understood that a fight like this could be chaotic, especially for someone who doesn't possess the Byakugan, but she also thought one should really pay close enough attention to make sure they didn't accidentally hit their comrades. Sakura sounded genuinely apologetic, though, and it was ultimately up to Shino to decide whether he was cross with her or not, so Hinata, generally not fond of starting fights in the first place, decided to let it slide.

"Dammit, Shino, where are you even aiming with that thing?!"

Sasuke had a point. As much as Hinata would like to defend her teammate, this time, she had no choice but to acknowledge that the fault lied mostly with him. After all, Sasuke had been standing still and weaving hand seals while Shino pursued a retreating opponent and almost hit Sasuke in the process. The only reason he didn't was that the Uchiha had noticed him just in time and took a step back to avoid that.

What she could fault Sasuke for, on the other hand, was not checking what was in front of him now that his position had changed before he used his technique.

"Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu!" (Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique)

All of the sudden, the thing Hinata had to worry most about wasn't the bandits in front of her but the wall of fire that was quickly heading towards her, and it was only due to the advantage her eyes gave her that she could dodge it with ample time to spare.

She usually disliked excessive profanity, but for once, the insults she could hear Kiba scream at Sasuke felt gratifying. Her unscheduled evasive manoeuvre had landed her in the last major group of bandits left, and while they didn't pose any noteworthy threat, the abruptness of the situation meant that she currently didn't have the attention to spare to do it herself, so having Kiba do it for her was quite nice.

Not that she would actually have screamed insults or anything like that, of course. Her father would disinherit her if he heard she had acted like that. However, she did feel peeved at Sasuke's carelessness, so it was probably for the best that she didn't get in a position where she could be tempted to act inappropriately in the first place.

Although nothing major happened after that, it was minor incidents like the ones before that marked the closing minutes of the fight; people getting into each other's way, them almost hitting each other instead of the remaining few opponents, and thrown weapons threatening them nearly as much as they did the bandits.

Nobody was hurt, but by the time all enemies were beaten, the mood of everyone involved was at rock bottom.

Then, in a puff of white smoke, Kakashi-sensei suddenly appeared next to them.

"Well," he said in a painfully upbeat tone, "that sure could have gone much better. However, it also could have gone much worse! None of you was hurt, right? Some of those attacks came awfully close!"

Judging by the expressions on Team 7's faces, the mood was made even worse by his arrival.