Sound. It Hertz.
Pain. That was what woke her up. It was a constant, throbbing agony that occasionally spiked and pulled her out of the unconscious. Usually she just shuffled and fell back into her slumber, but this time she refused, trying to get an arm under her and open her eyes. That hurt, but everything else already hurt, so she ignored it.
"Hinata?" Came a voice. It was a lovely voice. She looked up and spotted a flash of yellow.
"Naruto." She breathed, relieved.
"Crap, hold on." Naruto shuffled around, then held something out to her. "Drink."
She acquiesced, because it was Naruto. Whatever it was tasted like ash, but she gulped down as much as she could, coughing up a little at the end.
"How...how long?" She gasped.
"Bout three days?" Naruto replied, tentatively. "It's the middle of the night. Sasuke's been up twice, this is your first time. We're in a cave somewhere in the forest, and the exams are still on. Here, eat."
She complied. "It's cold." She mumbled around whatever he had just fed her.
"Couldn't risk a fire." He apologised. "Tomorrow, maybe, but I've spent the last day recovering from the fight, I couldn't get into a three-vs-one."
Well, that was problematic. Hinata tried to think, and came up with a very elegant solution. She crawled over and collapsed on his lap.
"Uh..."
"Warm." She explained, snuggling closer. The pain eased, just a little bit.
Naruto sighed. "Great, you're crazy too. Sasuke started mumbling about an alternate world where his brother turned evil and left the village, then he confused me with his brother and tried to kill me. But he still pretty much couldn't move, swore vengeance...it was awkward."
Hinata tried to run that through her head.
"You don't like me being here?"
"No, no, you do you." He replied, shifting underneath her.
"You hate me." She started crying.
"No, no, I don't, you're great!"
"You should." She sniffed. "I betrayed you."
"In the same was as Itachi joined some terrorists?" Naruto laughed. "Sure." She loved his laugh.
"No." She shook her head, which had the side effect of wiping her face all over his shirt. "In the written exam. I was going to ruin it all."
"You were?" He asked.
"Mmhmm." She nodded. "I was going to forfeit the exam."
"Oh yeah?" Naruto still didn't sound convinced. "Why was that?"
"I though you were going to fail the last question and get banned from becoming chunin." She explained. Now he thought she was a horrible traitor who was horrible, so she may as well tell him everything. "I was going to forfeit to keep us all back a year. I was going to betray you all."
"...but you didn't."
"But I thought it!"
"Hinata." Naruto sighed. Tentatively, he put a hand on her head. "It's okay. In the end you didn't stop us, and even if you did, it was because you cared about us, right?"
"I guess." Hinata mumbled. Had she been fully awake she would have been freaking out right now, but as was she just thought Naruto made a very comfortable pillow.
"Then there's nothing to worry about. I forgive you, and Sasuke will too." He absently started stroking her hair.
Hinata purred, which made him pause for a moment before continuing. "I'm also sorry I went and attacked the snake man and got Sasuke hurt." She felt like adding, to make the slate clean.
"That's...a little worse."
"Nooooooo..."
"But it's okay!" He reassured quickly. "Just...don't do it again, okay?"
"Okay." She nodded. Comfortable, she promptly fell back to sleep.
Once again, Naruto smelled the attack coming before he saw it. He was pretty sure this was another sign of the demon fox trying to take over and kill everyone he loved, but this once he was thankful for it. He slowly shifted Hinata off himself and stood, stretching his arms and cracking his neck. When the three genin dressed in black and grey dropped down outside the cave mouth, Naruto was stood there in front of them. If he'd had a mirror, he would have noticed that his eyes were red, and his whiskers a little more pronounced than usual.
"You're the team from hidden sound, right?" He greeted, keeping his voice cordial. "Uzumaki Naruto. How's your day?"
"Dosu." Greeted the lead ninja. "And pretty good, pretty good. Just come across some easy prey, so mood seems to be on the up and up."
"Fair enough." Naruto shrugged. He gestured into the cave behind him, pointing at one of the satchels. "You're an earth team, right? We have a heaven scroll. We aren't in much shape to fight."
They had two, actually, theirs and the one from the grass team that had tried to ambush them. He'd give both away if he had to, but he didn't plan to give up on passing just yet.
"What's to stop us from just taking it and eliminating you as a threat?" Tested one of them, a girl.
Naruto laughed easily. Wow, acting on point today.
"Do we look in much position to cause a threat? Well, maybe I have twenty shadow clones hidden in the forest. Who knows?"
"You don't have the chakra to summon twenty shadow clones." Laughed the other boy in the group.
"The point is." Naruto continued. "Either you can take the heaven scroll, beat the exam in another hour and go take a nap, or you try to beat up me, probably succeed, but risk getting one or more of your members injured in the process. And I should probably warn you there's an S-class missing-nin wandering around the forest."
"We know."
"And-what?"
"We know." Dosu shrugged. "Orochimaru. He's our boss."
Naruto paled and the sound ninja laughed. "I'll admit, if I'd been after your scroll you would have convinced me. But I'm here for your two teammates."
The fox stirred again. "Well you can tell your boss," Naruto grit his teeth. "That they both refuse his invitation."
"Oh I'm not bringing them to him." Dosu waved his hand dismissively. "You think we want our master to have some new favourite pets? It's bad enough with Kimimaro and the sound four. No, we're going to kill them both."
"This has been a rollercoaster of a conversation, but still no." Naruto summarised.
"Alright then." Dosu shrugged. "I was going to offer you a chance to ditch them both and live, actually."
"Those who fail their missions are scum." Naruto quoted. "But those who abandon their teammates are worse than scum."
"Have it your way." Dosu replied. "Zaku, sicc him."
The other male pointed his arms, but Naruto was already moving. A direct, visible threat for the three to focus on, that's what he was. Perfect for distracting them from the twenty shadow clones (which were about the most he could create at the moment) that were really there, and bombarded the trio with kunai. The sound trio vanished before he could reach them, and in the split second it took him to realise what 'vanished' entailed he already began to get the memories of shadow clones popping. Then there was a boom from the trees and a sonic blast ripped towards him, catching him in the stomach and launching him back towards the cave. Zaku walked out.
"You used clones to spring my trap." Naruto muttered.
"We're sound ninja. Your clones aren't that quiet. And I'll be killing you while my team is killing them." Laughed Zaku. He pointed his wrists at Naruto again. "See these? These gauntlets fire compressed sound waves of pure concussive force."
"Why would you explain what they do?" Naruto asked, confused.
"For drama, of course!" Zaku explained. He fired. Naruto ran forwards, got caught up in the blast, and thrown backwards again, but by then he had completed his hand seals. The substitution technique swapped him with a kunai behind Zaku, and he turned and punched him in the back. Zaku went sprawling. He went running after him, ready to slam his head into the floor and put him out of the fight, but another grey ninja appeared in front of him. "Not so fast." Sneered the girl. The following taijutsu spar was fast paced and vicious, Naruto forgoing his usual morals and her having none in the first place. She was agile, launching quick jabs and sweeps, but Naruto was used to fighting Hinata. Finally engaging a speed-type who wouldn't disable him with a single hit, he took one punch to the shoulder in order to get his arms around her and squeeze, making her cry out in pain, then tackle her to the floor. He punched at her face but Zaku fired a sonic blast from the floor, hurling him off his injured teammate.
Annoyed, Naruto put his hands together and summoned a new cohort of shadow clones, one of which grabbed his arm and flung him back at the girl. Dosu intercepted him, catching his flying kick on an arm brace and knocking him back. "How many can he make?" The girl asked.
"As many as he needs." Dosu growled. "He gets the chakra back every time we dispel them. Zaku? Get up. Kin, stop time-wasting." He pointed his bracer. "My turn."
A high pitched screech shot out of it. Naruto fell to the ground in pain, ears actually bleeding. The kyuubi chakra bleeding out to improve his animal senses made this attack even more debilitating than usual, and he was practically defenceless as Kin ran towards him. She did not expect to be clotheslined. Naruto's shadow clones gangpiled her, brutally kicking and punching only to be disintegrated by Zaku's arm cannons. "The fuck is this? Why aren't the clones in pain?" He fired in arcs, disintegrating them all, but not before three had jumped Dosu, bludgeoning his metal gauntlets with reckless abandon that would make any real person's knuckles bleed.
"Who cares about pain!" One shouted.
"We do our job!" Yelled another. Dosu's gauntlets buckled, and the noise stopped. Naruto shook his head, grinned, and attempted to make the shadow clone hand seal, but had to dart away from a kunai thrown by a bleeding and bruised Kin. She didn't have the time to throw a second, and his fingers formed the seals. The bell on her first kunai jingled. His new group attacked, and the battlefield became a chaotic mess of fistfighting. Naruto realised something was wrong when he smacked Dosu full in the face, only for him to poof into smoke. Then Naruto received the memories of Dosu punching him in the face. He put it together. "Genjutsu!" He cursed. Now he was clearly clued in, his opposition cut the subtlety. His vision became distorted and strangely coloured, the terrain lurching beneath his feet. He then began getting the memories of shadow clones attacking each other, all mistaking each other for their mutual opponents. That confusing mess sent him to his knees, hands cradling his head as he growled to himself.
"Aww, looks like this one works on the shadow clones." Laughed one of the Zaku.
Kakashi had drilled them on Genjutsu. Naturally Naruto's poor chakra control made him useless at it, but Kakashi had taught him the defences. You had two options, identify and pick apart the opponents illusion with your own skills (nope) or perform a basic dispelling technique (more like it) that removed outside influences through a brute force chakra overload of your own systems. Not that he could be sure that would work, and there was no way to know how they had cast the technique or if they could just do it again-
The red chakra rose, uncoiling itself within Naruto's belly, and he viciously clamped down on it, trying to keep a clear head. His friends were in danger, dammit. Save Sasuke. Save Hinata. Save Sasuke, Save Hinata. Repeating the phrase like a mantra brought a degree of order back to his thoughts, even as his last few clones were executed. With that clarity came his answer. Sound based ninja. The Bells. Closing his eyes and shutting out his ears, Naruto rose to his feet and performed the shadow clone technique. A kunai took him in the shoulder, likely in an attempt to disrupt him. He ignored it. Three clones appeared around him, and as one, he and they moved to face four different directions. "Buffeting wind jutsu!"
The gust blasted through the forest. One of the four managed to hit the bell and it began ringing loudly, disrupting the Genjutsu somewhat and revealing its location. One clone substituted with it, and another grabbed it and crushed it in its fingers. The illusion stopped altogether. Naruto opened his eyes and looked back at the sound trio, who looked like they were quickly reappraising their threat assessment of him.
"So, did you set up more traps while I was disabled, or did you keep wasting your time?" He asked.
"Wanna come find out?" Kin taunted.
Naruto bared his teeth.
He sent in his shadow clones first, and it turned out team Dosu had set up a few razor traps while hiding from his wind attack. They took out a few clones, and the rest continued on, undeterred. After that, it was only a matter of time. Even in his diminished state, he had more chakra than any one of the trio. They knew all his tricks, as he knew all of theirs, but they didn't have an adequate counter to his. Dosu's gauntlets were busted and the clones were careful not to let any of Kin's kunai go unintercepted. Zaku's sound blasts were still effective, but shadow clones could just be replaced, and Naruto himself just grew more angry every time he was caught by it. Team Dosu hadn't realised they were one-trick-ponies until that moment, and now they were caught in a taijutsu brawl against an unlimited number of opponents.
Dosu himself saw which way the winds were blowing, and when he saw something from within Naruto's cave he seemed to decide that he had had enough. "Zaku! Breathing room!" He yelled, and did something with his gauntlet. The damaged machine exploded, letting out a screech of even greater intensity than before that elicited a similar howl from Naruto. Zaku fired his gauntlets in an arc and cleared out most of the clones, and while the few remaining stopped their assault to make more, the trio jumped backwards and fled into the trees. That was when Naruto took the time to yank the kunai out of his shoulder.
It bled.
He ignored it.
He wanted to chase after them but he remembered there was some reason he was supposed to stay in the cave...oh right, his teammates. There they were though, on their feet and ready to go. Both Sasuke and Hinata had strange black markings spreading from their necks out across their bodies. Both had dojutsu active.
"Who." Sasuke asked, tone flat.
"The sound team." Naruto shot back. "Orochimaru's guys."
"Then lets go get them." Hinata proposed, stretching her arms out and looking into the middle distance.
Naruto made a feral smile.
A pack of animals ran through the forest. At their head, a demon fox, the other two no less dangerous and no less ferocious. One's eyes could see their prey through the trees, one's nose could smell them from anywhere in the forest.
Team Dosu never stood a chance.
Naruto hit Zaku in the back with a double kick that sent him flying into a nearby tree, while Sasuke came up on his left and caught Dosu by the ankle, promptly throwing him through a branch with enough force to snap it in two. That is, snap the ankle, then the branch. Hinata appeared in front of Kin and struck her with the sixty four palms before she could even make a fighting stance. The girl fell, limp, to the forest floor. Zaku hit the ground next to her not much later, and Sasuke carried his prey down by the throat, walking Dosu slowly towards his teammates before throwing him limply at them.
"That's everyone." Sasuke said, breezily. "What do you want to do? I could fireball all three no problem, but if you have one in particular you want to gut you go right ahead."
Naruto considered it, then frowned. There was something wrong with this. He tried to figure out what was bothering him. It wasn't the teamwork, he always liked teamwork, had he made any tactical errors? Not that he had noticed...did he have a problem with killing them for some reason?
Oh.
Oh.
OH.
When, exactly, did I lose control of the kyuubi chakra?
He could almost hear the fox laughing darkly as the red light fled his eyes and his body stopped blocking out all the pain he was in.
"The earth scroll." He told Dosu, trying not to let his pain show. Maybe it was the two cursed ninja flanking him, but they didn't spot it. "Give us the scroll, then get out of here."
"I knew we forgot something." Sasuke sighed.
Dosu nodded silently, one visible eye very wide, as he fished out a black scroll and tossed it forwards. Naruto caught it, as Dosu and a very injured Zaku picked up the paralysed Kin and ran again.
"You want to chase them down again?" Hinata moaned at his side. "It's getting boring."
"Hinata." He walked up to her, desperately. "You're not yourself."
"I'm fine." She waved a hand dismissively. She was not fine. The symbol on her neck was pulsing red, and the black markings on her skin were shifting angrily.
"Hinata, we don't kill people."
"We don't?"
"Hinata, dammit, remember this morning? Last night?" Naruto tried to think of what would snap her out of it. "We were talking and you were, well, pretty much drunk and then you climbed on top of me and-"
Hinata's eyes widened. The curse mark warred with a much greater force, her own embarrasment, and was defeated, the black marks glowing red and receeding back within the original spiral on her neck.
"That was," she stammered. "We were just...wha..." she fell unconscious on the floor.
Naruto turned to Sasuke, similarly afflicted, who seemed to be dealing with his problems on his own. Now the battle was over and his bloodlust was quieting down, his own markings were disappearing from his skin. "Naruto? What the fuck just happened?"
"You got a hickey from a snake dude and turned evil for a moment-don't pass out I am not carrying you both again!" Naruto caught Sasuke as he fell, but the latter waved a hand dismissively and was able to get to his feet. "I'm fine, I'm fine, fuck I'm not fine oww that hurts." He grimaced. "Does this thing only stop hurting when I turn evil? Because that's some solid motivation right there."
Naruto started massaging his temples. "Dammit, Kakashi said this would be less stressful than the deadly mist jonin. Can you help carry?"
"I'll be lucky if I don't need carrying." Sasuke grumbled. He eyed Hinata suspiciously. "She enjoyed that violence way too much."
"You weren't very saintly either." Naruto cautioned. "Alright, shadow clones it is then. Hey, smile!"
"Why?"
"We got the earth scroll!" Naruto waved it in the air. "Unless someone else attacks us with murderous intent, I think we just passed round two!"
Sasuke sniffed at that and looked at the sky. "Well, we're still pretty far out from the centre. And we've only got, what, two hours?"
"I thought we had another day?"
"Midday on the fifth day, Naruto. We have two hours."
Naruto blanched. "Right, two hours, shadow clones, go. Go!"
Fluff! Edge! Combat! Comedy! Or, FECC, as I like to exclaim. The most important elements of any good Naruto fanfiction. Yes, I do think this Naruto could solo team Dosu, especially if he was tapping the Kyuubi and especially if he was fighting to protect his friends. This was a bit of a demonstration of his abilities in this story, and an opportunity for some more Hinata character development. I love it far too much. Next chapter we finally, FINALLY, get onto the chunin exam fights. And I'm excited. Oh boy am I excited.
