Owl You Handle This, Then?


Naruto and Sasuke both looked out over the crater in front of them.

"I think that went well." Sasuke remarked.

"Yeah; me too." Naruto agreed.

There was a rustling in the trees, and they both turned to see Itachi drop to the floor behind them. "You two are gonna wanna-What the Hell was that?" He stopped to look aghast at the crater.

"We threw our new murder jutsu at each other." Naruto explained, easily. "They exploded."

"...Right." Itachi blinked a few times, shaking his head.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine; just, upping your collective threat level a little."

Naruto glanced across at Sasuke, who wasn't really paying attention. "So...what did you want?"

"Oh yeah. Orochimaru's dead."

"Orochima-" Naruto stopped. Grinned. "Hinata!"


In one of the great forests of the land of fire, not too far outside Konoha, in fact, an owl flew purposefully over the treetops.

Following that owl, not half a kilometre back, was a trio of ninja.

"We're gaining on her!" Kudos reported, flying alongside them.

"Are you sure we should be doing this?" Jugo asked. "We were headed to Konoha, weren't we?"

"We were." Hinata agreed. "But now Neji is here."

"Are you going to fight him in your state?" Karin asked, looking her over worriedly. "Look at you! Now isn't the best time to go for 'most Akatsuki killed in an hour'."

"He's not getting away from me this time." Hinata shot back, stubbornly.

"For the love of..." there was a rustle of cloth. "Here."

Hinata turned to confirm what her Byakugan had just shown her. Karin held her bare arm out. "If you're doing this, you're not doing it running on empty."

"I can't-"

"It isn't weakness to rely on your teammates, Hinata." Karin told her, tone brooking no nonsense. "You're not forcing me. Bite the arm."

Hinata glared for a moment, but relented.

"I still think this is a bad idea." Jugo warned them both, as Hinata leant in. "It has trap written all over it."

"Mmblrghlhrmph." Hinata replied.

"What?"

She took her teeth out of Karin's arm. "I said there's only so much he can do. I have the Byakugan. The only thing he could surprise me with is senjutsu or sage creatures, and I have one of those."

"Yeah, but...he knows that." Jugo tried to explain.

"As do I." Hinata replied, simply.

"That's...I mean won't he make his plans with that in mind?"

"Perhaps, but I will t-"

"She's stopped!" Kudos called, stopping the debate in its tracks. "And, uh, there's-"

"I know. I see him." Hinata focused.

A few hundred metres in front of her, presumably having just been summoned in by the owl, stood Hyuuga Neji.


"Where is he?" Hinata demanded, landing on a tree branch.

"Where is who?" Neji replied, idly scratching the beak of an owl to his left.

"Don't fuck with me." She shot back. "You're a clone."

"Really? What gave it away?" Neji didn't turn to look at her.

"The lightning chakra in your body. You're rigged to explode."

"You noticed? I'm glad, I was keeping it subtle. You have made progress."

"Oh you're patronising me now? Cute."

Hinata crossed her arms as Kudos, Jugo and Karin landed behind her. "Are you planning on telling me where the real you is, or do you just intend to taunt me? Let me know if it's the latter, I'll need to decide whether to work my frustrations out on you or just leave."

"You certainly didn't learn that sass from Orochimaru." Neji mused. "Who taught that to you, I wonder?"

"A better person than you'll ever be." Hinata replied, quietly.

"Well, probably." Neji whistled, and his owl desummoned. "You want to know where I am."

"I do."

"Are you willing to work for it?"

"More tests?" Hinata raised an eyebrow. "With every reason for you to turn tail and pop the moment I'm finished?"

"I promise that I have every intention of giving you my location upon your completion of the following trial." He replied, simply.

Oh.

"You're telling the truth." Hinata tilted her head.

Neji smiled. "I am. And you've just proven that your eyes have improved."

Shit.

Hinata allowed the white of the Gokei to spread across her eyes and face. "They have. And now you have nothing else to hold over me."

"Nothing except experience, skill, and power."

Hinata considered rolling her eyes, but realised it probably wouldn't be visible. "We can gloat at each other for eternity. Nothing matters until one of us kills the other."

Neji had the nerve to smile at her. "Your words are betrayed by your body, cousin. Your heart rate is high and your muscles are tensed. You're afraid of me."

"And you're apparently a total creep." Karin mumbled.

"Looking with the Byakugan's not weird." Hinata and Neji both replied immediately, in unison, before turning to look at each other awkwardly.

Jugo tried not to laugh.

Neji sighed. "You know what? Let's just skip to the test. Fight the owl."

"Fight the who?"


"So you're certain she's here?" Naruto asked.

He, Itachi and Sasuke were all sprinting through the great forests outside of Konoha.

"Nope." Itachi replied, simply. "I'm certain that we're on the straight line between Konoha and the hideout Orochimaru last lived at. Are you certain she'd come straight here?"

"Yeah. Duh." Naruto replied, as though it was obvious. "She promised."

"Then odds are that she'll see us before we see h-"

They were all interrupted by a subsonic boom that shook all the trees around them.

The trio stopped, all looking forwards.

"Uh." Naruto squinted. "Am I seeing things or is that a-"

"Giant fuckoff owl? Yeah." Sasuke finished.

Off in the distance had appeared a massive navy-blue owl, looking a lot like what Naruto remembered of Kudos.

Itachi was similarly gobsmacked, muttering to himself. "Icarus? What the hell, he's not supposed to be here-"

"Why not?" Sasuke asked, tilting his head at his brother. "Things not going to plan?"

"What do you mean plan?" His brother defended, adequately. "I'm surprised because that's Neji's summon. What's he doing here?"

"Twenty ryo says fighting our teammate?" Naruto pointed out. "So maybe, you know, we go bail her out?"

"Agreed." Itachi replied, eyes hard. "I think me and my old teammate need to have a chat."


The first attack came almost before Hinata could react.

One moment there was nothing, the next there was a giant monster in front of her and it was swiping it's wing sideways and a maelstrom of sharp feathers were being launched at her and her party.

She remembered one of her first missions with team seven, when attempting her rotation had thrown all of them away from her. Crap.

"Eight trigrams, sixty four palms; protective!" She declared, moving into her custom kata that incorporated the vacuum palm into its movements.

Jugo and Karin both flinched, but all the approaching projectiles were blasted off course, with a plethora of loud booms.

The hail stopped, and Hinata sucked a breath in.

"Charmed." She remarked. "You'll be Icarus, I presume? I've been waiting a long time to meet you."

The large sage creature sat back and looked down at her. "Hyuuga Hinata." It replied. "The feeling is mutual." He looked a lot like Athena, understandable given their sibling status. He too wore a bow slung over his back, though both his eyes were intact.

"I have been asked to test you." He said. "I trust you are prepared?"

"You didn't feel the need to ask that last attack." Hinata pointed out, annoyed.

"Hmm. True." It spread its impressive wingspan and reached them backwards. "Buffeting wind."

Oh fuck-

Hinata dropped into a sprinter's start and ran.

Icarus beat his wings and an enormous gale picked up, deafening everyone present, uprooting trees and stones and sending them hurtling through the air.

Hinata minimised her surface area, head barely a foot off the floor as her legs powered her forwards through the wind. She darted left past a boulder, slid under a tree trunk that would have decapitated her, and suddenly there were no other obstacles between her and Icarus who had claws-

"Heavenly spin!" Hinata felt her feet dig further into the floor as her dome withstood Icarus stomping down towards her, then with a roar she jumped and shoved his talons away.

He staggered, for a moment, then recovered and looked down only to see a blur launch up and strike him under his beak. He beat his wings in a jump backwards, and looked up. His sharp eyes easily picked out Hinata against the sky.

Curse mark glowing, she flapped her own wings, holding herself aloft at Icarus' eye level. Then, with a battle cry, she tucked them and charged for him.


To Itachi's genuine surprise, Sasuke was the one to spot Neji's approach first.

"Incoming!" The younger Uchiha shouted, and then there was a blur of motion as a kick collided into Itachi's forearms and Sasuke was catching a bolt of lightning aimed a Naruto and Naruto was flexing his fingers and setting up a web of sealing chains in front of the trio.

Two Neji dropped to the ground before them.

"Oh no. Someone else that uses your bullshit technique." Sasuke whispered.

"You and Itachi both use shadow clones!" Naruto hissed back.

"What's up shithead." Itachi called. "Fancy seeing you here."

"I was about to say the same thing." One of the Nejis spoke up. "I'm a little busy back there, if we could maybe do this another time?"

"Busy killing our teammate?" Sasuke confirmed.

"Well, yes, essentially."

"Ah. See we can't exactly let you get away with that."

"A shame." And the Nejis moved.

Itachi clashed with one of them, and they both vanished somewhere else into the forest, leaving the other to jump elegantly through the net of chains and charge for Naruto and Sasuke.


"What the fuck is this?" Itachi hissed, mid punch, when they were far enough away from the others. "Not that I'm not happy to see you, but you're supposed to be dead!"

Neji blocked, and then slammed his fist through a nearby tree for appearances sake. "I was. Things have changed." He grimaced. "Which one of you idiots sicced Jiraiya on Pain?"

Oh, Fuck. Itachi fired off a fireball jutsu. "He wasn't supposed to engage, he was scouting! Shit, is he still alive?"

"Pain is. And that's just about all you need to know."

"Dammit, Jiraiya." Itachi grimaced, redirecting a vacuum palm. "So how does that affect the plan?"

"It affects it because Pain is pissed. He's going to attack Konoha." Neji warned.

Itachi frowned, throwing a string of kunai. "What, just Pain? Attack all of Konoha?"

Neji made a heavenly spin and deflected all the projectiles. "He can do it. Or at the very least, my eyes say he's certain he can do it. He's not even afraid."

"And we still don't know what he does?"

"Clueless."

"When's he coming?"

Neji grimaced. "I don't know."

Oh, FUCK. Itachi stopped fighting entirely. "You don't-"

Neji shook his head. "Any time. He said he needed to wait for his chakra to recover and 'make preparations' but i don't know if that'll take hours, days, or he's already on his way."

Itachi sagged. "We...I've got to get back there. Warn them. Tell them you let something slip, I don't know-"

"Do it, if you think it will help." Neji shrugged. "But...I can't let Hinata get involved."

"That's why you're still alive." Itachi realised. "You're baiting her away from Konoha."

It was selfish. Selfish, and Hinata would hate Neji for it, but at this point that was par for the course.

"I feel obligated to ask that you stay away as well," The Hyuuga started-

"Don't even fucking try. I'm gonna die anyway, Neji. May as well do it trying to take this guy down. I can throw out a few more Amaterasu at him before going blind."

"Hmph." Neji smiled. "That's so like you." he put his hands together. "I'd say 'stay safe' but we both know you won't. So good luck." He vanished.

Itachi sighed, and ran back to his squad.


"Shadow clone jutsu!"

"Chidori!"

Hinata conjured a doppelgänger and charged it with lightning chakra. It practically became the chidori, blitzing downwards towards Icarus trailing electricity.

The owl was undeterred, unslinging his bow and swinging the thing like a staff.

It had a diameter bigger than any tree Hinata had ever seen, and easily punted her clone out of existence.

Then Icarus flicked his wrist, bringing out another of those sharpened feathers and quick-firing it from the bow.

"Vacuum palm!"

Hinata, still flying, cast her counter, but the momentum in that feather was significantly higher than the ones he'd simply flung at her. She was blasted out of the sky, landing in a crash on the forest floor.

This could be going better.

"Hinata! Are you-"

"I'm fine." Hinata grabbed the offered hand, letting Jugo haul her to her feet. "He's just...so big."

"Bow-chika-bow-wow."

"Can it, Karin." She looked over at Icarus. He was almost half a kilometre away from her, but for a summon of his size that was still easy bow range.

"And you're the cousin of my summoner?" He tutted, picking at his beak with one wing. "How unimpressive. I'll end this quickly."

He brought both wings to his bow. "This is a derivative of a technique once used by ninja Jesus' brother. Enjoy. Indra's arrow; miniature."

Icarus drew the bow.

There wasn't actually anything in it, at first, but as he pulled the thing taut a sparkling mass of glowing purple electricity formed and stretched. It was easily as long as the Hokage faces in Konoha were tall.

"That is the miniature?" Karin's mouth fell open. "What the hell does the full technique look like?"

"Not sure." Hinata squared her shoulders. "Let's kill him in case we have to find out."

"You're going to try and top that? How?" Karin pointed, emphatically.

Hinata responded by activating her Gokei.

"...Will that work?"

"I have no idea." With that, Hinata charged.

Five hundred metres wasn't much for her, either. Hinata had long surpassed fighting at the speed of sound, and she crossed the distance quickly, hoping to destabilise the technique before Icarus could fire it.

Icarus noticed this, and fired it.

With a sonic boom, the string of the bow snapped back into position, and the arrow blasted towards Hinata, who was flying straight at it.

She stared down the approaching death bullet, and stretched her palm out to it. Hiragekoma.

The world exploded into new colour, and Hinata realised straight away that there was no way to snuff this out like she had Deidara's bomb.

That hadn't actually detonated yet, but this already had enough energy to power Konoha for a year, and it had to go somewhere.

Hinata flicked her chakra and the entire technique disintegrated, its rigidly controlled structure falling apart into a mass of individual particulates of purple lightning.

They all collided perfectly so as not to hit Hinata, and she felt her feathers prickle uncomfortably as they all ionised her exterior, passing her by.

And then she was through, and a massive wave of electricity was washing across the forest behind her towards Karin and Jugo.

Meanwhile, Icarus wasn't quite so shocked as to lose his composure, and was swinging his bow at her with every intention to thwack her out of the sky.

She grimaced, and shut her eyes. Funny thing about bloodline techniques; since they were obtained naturally instead of carefully constructed, you basically had to come up with their names on the spot.

Uh, paralysis, medusa, crystal, freeze... Her eyes snapped open. "Kesshotoketsu!"

Icarus' bow stopped in place as great swathes of crystal sprung into existence around his wing, spreading across to envelop the right half of his body and then down to the floor, where it affixed itself to the earth and effectively stuck the summon in place.

With some heaving, Icarus was able to shatter the crystal, but by that point Hinata had already flown up and above his head.

Now there was the raging lightning wave to deal with.

She conjured up a shadow clone, and with her eyes it easily substituted with some debris nearby Karin and Juugo. It faced the energy unflinchingly.

"Heavenly spin; Lionfists!" It declared, arms blazing blue with fire forming a giant sphere. Disorganised and shattered as it was, the remnants of the Indra's Arrow was easy pickings to have it's chakra absorbed by the flames.

In the centre, the shadow clone screamed in pain; there was just so much chakra, and it immediately formed a scalpel from lightning and pierced its own heart, popping.

Now, where does all that chakra go?

Hinata, falling straight towards the recovering Icarus, had already formed a chidori, and as the energy poured into her, she in turn channeled all of it into the technique, causing it to blaze into a giant cracking bolt larger than her, trailing electricity like a comet behind it as she blitzed down and struck Icarus right in the forehead.

There was a flash that made the sky look black and the sun look dim.

And then Icarus was gone, and Hinata fell, right arm blistered and smoking, to crash down onto the floor.


Naruto was...winning. He had no idea what to do about it.

Neji's shadow clone was damn good, easily as proficient at taijutsu as Hinata had been, and she'd been using the first gate. But he and Sasuke had been panic-training how to double team someone like him, and that was paying off.

Fifteen clones dogpiled Neji, he countered with some variant of the Heavenly Spin that popped all of them, then other clones wrapped the sphere up in chakra chains, and then suddenly Neji was out of the dome but being stopped by Sasuke's sword, and then the real Naruto was swinging his wrecking Rasengan at Neji's back, to which the Akatsuki member pulled off some throw that put Sasuke in the way of the spinning ball only for Sasuke to vanish and be substituted for another Naruto clone, this one rigged with an explosive tag that went off immediately and should have killed Neji if he hadn't immediately substituted with a tree across the clearing, which Sasuke then lit aflame with a fire jutsu.

All within one second.

Naruto could hardly believe he was following what was going on, never mind participating, given the last time he'd encountered Neji Hyuuga he'd been speedblitzed immediately.

Looks like that training trip with Jiraiya was useful after all. Huh.

"You two have certainly come a long way since I last met you." Neji seemed to agree, continuing to survive their attacks unflappably. "But I'm afraid that you're still not enough for me to let you near your cousin."

"Oh you do not have the right to tell anyone what they can do with your cousin!" Naruto snapped back, still attacking. "Actually, I got a lot to say to you. Do you have any idea what you did?"

"I created an avenger?" Neji shrugged.

"You fucked up a perfectly good Hinata is what you did! Look at it! It's got anxiety!"

"It's been hard enough dealing with my family drama and his abandonment issues!" Sasuke joined in. "Whatever brand of crazy she has is just icing on the fucked-up-team cake!"

"Well. That is a lot of pent up aggression." Neji slid to a stop and looked at them both. "You two genuinely care about her, don't you? Even after all the times she betrayed you? Do you truly think she wants to return to Konoha?"

"She's our teammate." Naruto replied. "But I guess you don't know what that means."

Neji looked to the floor. "I do. More than you realise."

"Noting that suspicious line down for future reference..." Sasuke levelled his sword. "Then you know we're going to go get her, even if we have to tear through you, and the rest of your merry band of sociopaths to do it."

Neji paused, then nodded. "Yes, actually. I do." He made a hand sign, and popped out of existence.

Wind blew through the clearing.

"Huh." Sasuke remarked. "I can't say I expected that to actually work."


"...nata! Hinata! Come on, you in there?"

Groaning, Hinata shook her head as Karin and Juugo pulled her to her feet. Beyond the pain, there was something wrong she couldn't quite place.

"Feeling a little dull?" Neji's lightning clone replied, leant casually against one of the few trees still standing. "Like your sense of touch or smell is limited? Lost feeling in your fingers or toes?

Ah. That's it. Hinata glared at him, but didn't answer.

"It's the consequence of using the Gokei." Neji continued, and Hinata knew he was telling the truth. "You'll notice much of it revolves around what I call Ivory. The more you use the Gokei's powers, the more the Ivory spreads into you. Mine hasn't quite reached my heart yet, but I'm relatively certain that when it does, it's game over. Consider that a precautionary warning."

"Where. Are you." Hinata gasped out, filing the information away but in no mood for more games.

She looked to either side, taking in her two friends, both relatively unharmed but shaken. I nearly got them killed.

"Yes, fair enough; I did promise you a reward." Neji replied, standing up properly.

As he did so, Hinata worked her smarting chakra reserves to channel some power into her byakugan, trying to get it back up after that last chidori had almost emptied her. What she saw almost made her gasp.

Naruto and Sasuke were right there. Only two or three kilometres away, and moving fast towards her through the forest. They'd...they'd come for her...

She was interrupted as a genjutsu poked at her mental defences, not trying to disguise itself. She allowed it and received a flood of information; the location of a small fortress, elsewhere in the forest.

"This is where I am." He told her, which was a lie, "Or rather, this is where I will be-" that was better, "-in one week's time. I want exactly what you want, Hinata, one final fight. Come alone in seven days, and you can-"

"No."

"...Hm?" Neji tilted his head at her.

Hinata looked up at him, and smiled. "No. No, I don't think I will."

He frowned, and she knew he knew she was telling the truth. "You'd rather do a different time? I could reschedule, if you'd like-"

"Listen, cousin." She told him, simply. With a pat on Karin's shoulder, she stood and bore her own weight. Suddenly, it felt like she'd gotten a lot lighter. "I'm tired. You have been stringing me along my entire life. 'Do this, do that, get stronger, and maybe oh maybe I'll let you get your revenge'. I've had enough of it. I'm not playing your games anymore."

"This is a one time offer, Hinata." Neji warned her. "I don't plan on giving you this chance again."

"I don't care!" She laughed, pointing a finger behind herself. "My teammates are coming right now. My teammates, who still believe in me, despite all the excuses I've made and all the times I've hurt them. I'm going to go back to them, and I'm going home. And maybe, after that, we'll team up and come and find you, and then we'll beat you. But we'll do it together. And no amount of vengeance or justice is going to change my mind."

Neji stared at her, for a long time. After a few seconds, he started smiling, and Hinata would have sworn it was genuine.

"Wow." He told her eventually. "That...you have no reason to value this statement, but I am immensely proud of you."

"Thank you."

"Which is why I feel really bad about having to undermine the whole thing."

"Come again?"

"I stole your bird."

"You st-" Hinata scanned her Byakugan and gasped. "KUDOS!"

"That fortress. Seven days."

"YOU BASTARD!"

"No going back to Konoha, no talking to your friends, you come alone and we fight." His words slammed into her like punches. "Do that, and I'll release him alive and healthy at the start. Fail to comply and I'll kill him."

"You bastard..." Hinata shook, he was telling the truth "you evil, manipulative bastard."

"Yep." He smiled. "Toodles!"

With a pop, and a brief flash of lightning, the clone vanished.

Hinata staggered on the spot, choking back a sob.

"What do we do?" Karin asked her. "Hinata, what-"

"Go." Hinata pushed her away, and instantly regretted it. "Go, back to Leaf, show everything that just happened to Naruto and Sasuke-"

"Hinata-"

"Go!" Hinata screamed it. "Just...Stay safe. I'll be back in a week, I swear, just one more week, no more delays please believe me-"

"We believe you." Juugo put his hands on her shoulders, looking her in the eyes. "Go. If you're not gone when they get here he might say the agreement's void. You go recover, and then you kill that bastard, you understand?"

Slowly, Hinata nodded, regaining some control of herself. "I will. Thank you. Tell...tell Naruto and Sasuke-"

"Whatever it is? They probably already know it. Get gone." Karin told her, smiling.

Hinata nodded again. Then she turned, and once again ran. Ran away from her team, and towards Neji.

Again, it made her sick.


"We're getting close!" Naruto shouted, running past the first of an increasing number of destroyed trees.

"Make some clones to take point!" Sasuke called back. "That big owl's dead but the real Neji might still-"

"Stop!"

They stopped.

Itachi appeared behind them, exhausted. "Change of plans. We're going back to Konoha. Right now."

"What?" Naruto looked at him like he'd grown a second head. "But Hinata's-"

"Leave her. We need to go now." Itachi was visibly shaken.

Sasuke turned to face his older brother, and was glaring at him outright. "You go off and chat with your old teammate, and suddenly you're leading us away from him? What the hell's going on, brother?"

"I Am Your Superior!" Itachi snapped, and there was genuine killing intent radiating off him. "And when a superior gives you an order in the field; you follow it. We're leaving now. Am I understood?"

For a second, Naruto and Sasuke looked at each other, genuinely weighing up open rebellion, when a sound from deeper in the woods caused all three to drop into a combat stance. Appearing out of the trees was a girl with long red hair, and a boy with short orange, arms raised in surrender.

"Okay, first of all." The redhead grimaced. "Hinata is really sorry."


Rule one of writing: if your characters aren't suffering, you aren't doing it properly. That's actually bad advice, don't follow that, but it applies here.

The name of Hinata's new power is some mashup of google translated Japanese, just like the other one, and I hope you like it. It took an obnoxiously long time for me to come up with the damn thing...

Next chapter: One week will pass. And then...