Plans Come Together

Hinata busied herself with putting the cleaning things away in the utility closet off the kitchen. In the distance she could see the lights from Konoha as darkness settled over the village with the purple of twilight fading into the deeper color of the night. Overhead the first few faint stars were replaced with a more liberal sprinkling as they dotted the sky above her. It was a beautiful evening. She went out onto the porch to look for Shikamaru who had not yet returned inside.

Standing on the edge of the porch she breathed in deep the late summer scents of the night, ripe fruit on trees and fresh mowed grass that she'd managed to get Shikamaru to do earlier this morning. A chorus of crickets chirped heavily just off to her right. With no people active about in this area there were no sounds to compete with them. All in all the place gave her a deep feeling of contentment despite it's sorrowful history. As if to echo her feelings of peacefulness a graceful deer stepped to the edge of the lawn from the forest and nibbled slightly at the grass before bounding across the lawn and disappearing into the trees on the other side.

Idly she wondered if it was one of the Nara deer that had roamed over into these lands. That turned her thoughts back to Shikamaru - where could he be?

"Shikamaru?" she called out.

"Yeah. Be right there," he answered her and emerged from the trees. "Just checking some things out."

"Did you see anything?" she asked unsure if he was worried about something in particular or if this was just more of his overly solicitous nature lately.

"Nah," he said, not wanting to alarm her and not really sure he had seen anything anyway.

"Do you want me to check?" she smiled pleasantly pointing at her eyes.

He rolled his own eyes. Of course he had remembered her Byakugaan. There was simply no need. He thought he'd seen something when there wasn't anything there. "Don't worry about it," he said not wanting her to waste her efforts. "Come on, let's get packed up and get back to Kurenai's."

"Okay," Hinata agreed. "Just help me put these last few things away."

They both returned to the kitchen and stowed the remaining buckets and rinsed the rags, hanging them over the edge of the sink to dry. Just as Hinata turned off the tap they heard a rattle from outside.

"Was that one of the buckets falling?" she asked as Shikamaru stood listening.

"Probably just a raccoon. Have you or Sakura left any food outside?" Since they'd been here all day he reasoned they had probably eaten lunch and dinner in the area without bothering to return to town.

"No," Hinata shook her head, her long dark locks waving slightly at her shoulders. "We've treated it like a mission, packing in and out what we need."

Shikamaru yawned and tried to sound nonchalant even though there was a definite uneasiness running down his spine. Once was just a trick of the evening light on his eyes, but twice...

"Stay here," he instructed her, "I'll check outside once before we go."

Reluctantly, Hinata agreed. Shikamaru darted outside and into the deep velvet of the night. Suddenly the crickets no longer sounded so reassuring. Their singing could be masking any one of a number of other noises.

The Nara heir slowly patrolled the edge of the unruly overgrowth that encroached on the house left unattended for so many years. The area he had managed to cut for her today was small, only a tiny yard. The forest butted up very close to the house now, much closer than he remembered as a child when he played here with Sasuke. But the forest was his home, and he was at ease there.

The moon was out, the silver orb providing a fair amount of light. Still the shadows could play tricks even on him. A faint breeze stirred the air and there was a flicker of motion in the distance once again and he froze. He waited for what seemed like several moments peering toward the source of the motion. When it didn't appear threatening he approached slowly as it continued to sway faintly with the breeze.

What the hell?

Shikamaru reached out to touch a paper tag fluttering in the evening air. A spider-web thin line ran from it and he followed it to another tag. His tags. His missing tags from the stores area where he had been inventorying recently.

What in the hell was going on here?

"Shikamaru?" he heard Hinata's voice from the porch again. "Shikamaru is everything okay?"

"Hinata, go back inside," he yelled realizing that there was some kind of trap set.

"What is it? Do you need help?" she called back, concern rising in her voice. "Let me see..."

Shikamaru's blood ran cold and he turned back to this house yelling, "Hinata, don't...!"

"Byakugaan," he heard her melodious voice as she invoked her clan's jutsu.

And all hell broke loose.

The paper bombs went off, coordinated by the shared fuse. Several dozen high intensity, high luminosity paper bombs exploded right in front of Hinata's fully engaged Byakugaan.

Pain seared along her optic nerves and Hinata crumpled to the ground completely consumed by it. The shock and disorientation were so complete she retched, overcome by waves of nausea. Byakugaan was integral to her entire chakra system and she felt synapses overload and flare out all through her body as she struggled to get to her hands and feet where she had been lying face down on the floor. Weak as one of the recently wrung-out rags she collapsed once more face down on the fresh scrubbed floor of the porch.

"Hinata!" Shikamaru's voice was full of alarm as he dashed back and dove down beside her. His hands were large and gentle as he eased her back up into a sitting position. Hinata's head was pounding, she raised both hands to her temples as she tried to catch her breath. "Sh-shikamaru? What's going on?"

"Step away from the girl, Nara. I have no quarrel with you. Just give me the Hyuuga and you're free to go."

"Who's there?" Shikamaru asked, squinting into the fading light from the dwindling paper bombs as he knelt beside his friend. He had to stall whoever was behind this long enough to figure out a plan. Or to at least wait until the village patrol made it over to the Uchiha side of the Leaf. That light must have been seen throughout all Konoha. Whoever set the trap certainly didn't mind the entire village knowing about it when it went off.

"Just shut up and get out of the way," the impatient voice belonged to a red-haired woman stepping into view. By the now-fading light he could see that she was adjusting her glasses. Karin.

She laughed and bent over him. "Poor pretty little Hinata's coming with me. She has something I want. Don't get in my way."

"Shikamaru - who is it ? What's going on?" Hinata asked.

"Karin," he replied as much to answer Hinata's question as to address the woman in front of him. He fairly spat the name out. He should have followed up on his hunch about her, should have pressed Ino for more information about her background when he had the chance this evening. "What do you want with Hinata?"

"Like I said, shadow-boy, she has something I want. And we all know what that is, don't we? She's coming with me and you're in no position to stop me. Some protector you are, what good are you at night? You're as weak at night as she is right now. So don't interfere and we'll be out of your way in no time."

To an extent Karin was right. He did need the sharp contrasts between daylight and solid objects in order to produce the sharper shadows that were easier to control with Kagemane. There were plenty of shadows all around at night but they were diffuse, running into one another. Moonlight was not nearly as effective as sunlight for performing his jutsu. However, he hadn't come completely unprepared.

"Don't look," he hissed at Hinata.

"Move!" Karin kicked toward him.

Shikamaru set off one of his own hi-luminosity bombs catching Karin off guard. He grabbed her foot in mid-swing toppling her to the ground. Disoriented and temporarily flash-blinded she still wasn't physically incapacitated as Hinata had been by the overwhelming display earlier. She rolled away from his attack but was unprepared when he caught one wrist with the Kagemane halting her.

Karin was quick though jerking her arm back while he still had the Kagemene engaged pulling him off balance as well. As they struggled together both shinobi had kunai drawn. Shikamaru felt his graze her side but winced in pain as he felt hers slice into his upper thigh. Blood-soaked they each sought advantage over the other. Hinata felt blindly around for a weapon she could use herself in case the unthinkable should happen to Shikamaru. Where was the village guard? Surely Konoha had seen the blast!

With relief she heard two heavy sets of feet hit the landing of the porch. Ninja were usually silent unless they were in a hurry and not needing to worry about being discovered. The village guard had arrived!

"Karin, you bitch. What the hell are you up to?" A gruff voice rumbled behind her.

That voice! Hinata thought she recognized it but it couldn't be.

Karin dropped her kunai and scrambled backwards. Shikamaru groaned on the ground realizing his wound was far more severe than he had initially thought. Blood pour out of his leg. She must have nicked his femoral artery.

"Sasuke!" Karin gasped. "Sasuke you got my message. She's here. She's right here. We can take her and..."

Sasuke looked at the pathetic woman in front of him in disgust. He once had considered this a teammate?

"Sasuke, she's going to have a baby, your baby, our baby. Once the baby gets here we won't need her anymore we can..."

Hinata gasped. How had anyone known but her innermost circle of friends?

However, still groaning on the ground as his life seeped out from him the pieces started to fall into place for Shikamaru. What was it Ino had said - Orochimaru being a monster? Had he altered...damaged Karin so that she couldn't have children of her own? And once the genetic material was recovered...once Karin herself led them to it... had she planted the idea into the mind of the council with her own goal in sight? To provide Sasuke with the greatest chance of having a child that would inherit the Sharingan? To...use Hinata to further her own goal of having a child vicariously with Sasuke?

Shikamaru struggled to hold onto consciousness. He was disabled, Hinata was disabled. Where were the guards, the nightly patrol? Grimly he realized that Sasuke may have already taken them out. They were alone. He and Hinata were alone and he had been outwitted by a pathetic lovelorn kunoichi who had manipulated everyone around her. She had manipulated the council over its past sins and she had manipulated Hinata's basic insecurities. And he himself had taken her for granted. Gah. Women were the worst trouble in the world. But even as the last glimmers of wakefulness faded from him he was haunted by one particular pair of female eyes.

"Sasuke, take her, take me, we can both come with you. When she has the baby it will be our baby, you'll see. You won't need her then. I'll be its mother and..."

"Shut up!" Sasuke slapped her so hard she sprawled on her back. He loomed over her menacingly and muttered, "You disgust me. This whole business disgusts me. Get out of my sight!"

Stupidly Karin looked up at him from where she now knelt in the dirt at his feet. "Please, Sasuke," she circled her arms about his legs and looked up at him. "Oh, please, Sasuke, don't you see, we can be together..forever...we can be a family just like..."

"I told you to shut up!" he peeled her off and tossed her aside. "You don't know anything about family. About my family. I don't ever want to to see you again."

Stunned, Karin sat sprawled in the ground looking up at him. "Sasuke..." she pleaded.

"Go! Utter one more word and you're dead," he commanded.

And Karin scampered away like a rat in the night. He just needed time, she rationalized to herself. He just needed time to realize that they could be the perfect family, Sasuke, her and the baby. They only needed Hinata for a little while. Once the baby got here they could get rid of her. There would be plenty of time. The baby wouldn't be here for nine more months.

The air around her was suddenly quiet. Hinata sat huddled in a corner. Shikamaru? What had happened to Shikamaru? She whispered out his name.

"Bring him!" Sasuke ordered Seito. No one else knew they were here. He didn't feel like out and out murdering Nara in cold blood. But if he left him here to die there was a chance that the village idiots would find him in time to save him. Then Nara would tell them that he and Seito had been here as well as Karin. If he brought both Shikamaru and Hinata with him, it would look like Karin was responsible for it all. Especially when she turned up missing tomorrow.

Large hands grabbed Hinata roughly by her shoulders but they were not nearly as gentle as Shikamaru's had been earlier. She was yanked up to a standing position, unable to support herself on her own two feet she sagged limply into Sasuke's arms.

"On your feet, you little Hyuuga whore! You're coming with me!"