Naruto laid on the ground, panting. He didn't know how long it'd taken for Hinata's fever to calm down, but it was long enough to tire him out. Naruto turned his head, looking at the igloo coating Hinata.

'Seriously, what was up with her fever? I didn't know they could go that high. Though I've never had one...'

Naruto sat up, and looked at the girl. 'What happened to her?' scooching over closer to the girl. He reached out to check her temperature when he noticed a faint marking on her forehead.

'Huh, I didn't know she had a scar, weird.' Naruto shrugged his shoulders, and checked the girls' temperature.

Naruto sat with his back against the wall, Hinata to his right and Sasuke to his left. His legs were tucked into his chest, and his head rested on his knees. It had been three days since he woke up, by his count of day-night cycles, and Naruto had come across a problem.

He was hungry.

When he rounded up everything him and his two teammates had, it was mostly weapons and medical supplies that he'd already nearly used up. When they packed that morning, or rather the morning they packed, they hadn't been going on a long journey, and they had expected to be back at Tazuna's house by the end of the day, so they hadn't brought any food to the bridge.

Naruto decided to always carry some type of food with him at all times, regardless of what was happening. Going three days without eating wasn't fun.

He could leave the cave to hunt, but he was worried he'd get lost, or that he'd succumb to the cold, so he'd decided to wait out the storm, but to his dismay the raging blizzard never let up. In fact, the day he'd woken up was the most tame it'd been the entire time.

So, Naruto encountered a dilemma. Leave the cave to get food, and possibly starve to death, or stay in the cave, and definitely starve to death. He couldn't wait much longer to decide either, he was only able to function normally for four days without eating, any more and he'd not be able to leave the cave.

Naruto looked to his right, and left, and made his decision. If it was just him, he'd wait the extra day. But with these two, he couldn't afford to wait out the storm.

He got to work preparing himself to exit the cave for the first time, tucking his clothing into itself to keep snow out, and any area that he couldn't tuck he used the half of the tape he hadn't used on Sasuke to wrap up, and to cover and bare skin.

When he looked around for his headband to use, he realized it was missing, as were the other two, and sucked it up to go outside without the extra fabric.

Naruto looked himself over once more, making sure he didn't have any gaps in the wrappings on his hands, between his fingers, or around his feet and ankles. Once he was certain he was wrapped up properly, he grabbed a weapon pouch and filled it with Kunai. He packed it with six, a quarter of their total supply.

Naruto then looked at the cave's mouth, swallowed, and moved to exit the cave.

Naruto sat in a tree, his hands shielding his face from the winds as he scoured the area for any sign of food. He thanked Kakashi mentally for teaching him how to cling to surfaces with chakra, allowing him to travel through the trees rather than the knee-deep snow that sat on the ground.

He had so far seen two signs of movement, but wasn't sure if they were animals or just a weird gust of wind, the ground being pure white with snow and the wind blowing around more white snow made seeing anything nearly impossible.

Naruto went over the area again, his eyes going back and forth across the ground trying to see anything, animal or plant, he could eat. When he didn't see anything, he jumped forward, the snow on the branch falling down, into the winds flying away in a white haze, never touching the ground.

Leaping through several trees, covering enough ground to be in a new area, Naruto pulled out a kunai and marked the tree he stopped on with a large X so he'd be able to find his way back to the cave.

He was putting away the kunai when he saw movement, his eyes flickering to the source and tracking it. He watched as the small rabbit ran, and readied a kunai, only to watch as a large bear leapt out from the ground and bit the rabbit in half.

'Well, guess that's more meat.'

Naruto jumped to a closer tree, needing a better angle to kill the bear in one hit, and waited for when it was just about to go for the remaining half of the rabbit to strike.

He held his breath, watching the bear chew the rabbit, before swallowing it and bending over for the rest of it. Naruto's arm tensed, his hand squeezing around the kunai, readying to be thrown. The bear opened its mouth to finish the rabbit, and Naruto threw the kunai.

The metal flew fast and hard, blurring through the air and hitting the bear in one of its eyes, sinking down to the handle.

Naruto cheered in his mind, the bear was dead, or would be soon. A knife that deep in the eye was sure to have reached the brain. Naruto watched as the bear stood up and roared, turning around and running away.

'Gah! Don't run away, I need to bring you back!'

Naruto jumped, following the bear as it ran. His focus on the bear and the bear alone, not on the trees beneath him. A few seconds into the chase, Naruto landed on a branch and went to kick off to the next one, only for it to break beneath his landing and he found himself tumbling down to the ground.

He landed in the snow, and sank into it, breaking his fall slightly. Shaking his head as he lifted himself up, dazed from the fall, Naruto stood back up.

Naruto brushed some snow out of his hair as he thought, 'Stupid trees and their stupid branches, breaking and making me fa-'

Naruto was brought back to reality when the bear swung it's paw at him, hitting him in the chest and sending him flying into a tree. The wood splintered and cracked from the force, snow falling from the tree onto Naruto.

Naruto gasped for air, his chest burning from the claw marks that ran across it, his blood freezing to his chest. 'What… What was that?' Shaking his head, Naruto stood up, his feet uneven and his stance dizzy.

Naruto looked up as the bear walked forward on its hind legs, towering over him, it's one eye focused on him with animalistic rage. His hand went into his weapon pouch and he pulled out a kunai, sipping the blade around so he held it in reverse.

'This is bad…'

Naruto jumped to the side, avoiding a swing of the bear's paw, and watched in awe as the tree he impacted was ripped in half, the bear's paw ripping the wood apart like wet tissue paper.

'How is it that strong?!'

Gasping for breath, Naruto looked down at himself. Three long red marks ran down from his neck to his lower body, red crystals of frozen blood covering them. 'At least I'm not bleeding.'

Naruto jumped away again, the bear decimating the area he was just standing in. Pain arced through Naruto's body, and his vision darkened.

Small and fast clouds left his mouth, his breathing quick and labored. Naruto watched as the bear pulled its paw out of the ground, a small cloud kicking up as it freed it's limb. 'Think Naruto, you huge idiot! What can you do to get out of this situation!'

Another swing of the bear's arm blew apart another tree, and Naruto jumped away again.

'I can't climb a tree, it attacks too fast for me to get up one, and it could just knock them down. So I have to stay on the ground and fight…'

Rolling under another attack, Naruto reached out and stabbed the bear under it's outreached paw, the kunai sinking into the fur.

Dashing away from a swing with the other paw, Naruto pulled out his kunai, and saw it was barely red on the tip. 'It's fur is thick, so I can't cut it.'

Naruto gasped for air, his lungs crying out in pain from the too fast intake of the frigid air. He looked at the kunai, then the bear's eyes, where it still had blood flowing, then his chest where his blood was frozen.

Naruto's eyes sharpened, and when the bear next swung, he jumped up, going over the limb, and running up it, towards the bear's face.

"TAKE THIS YOU STUPID BEAR!"

Naruto stabbed out, sinking his kunai into the bear's remaining eye, and relished as it roared in pain.

"But wait…!"

Naruto put both his feet down on either side of the bear's head, and grabbed the kunai with both hands.

Then, he twisted the kunai.

"THERE'S MORE!"

Naruto wretched the kunai out, and jumped away from the bear, landing a few feet away. Naruto panted, his lungs hurting more and more. "That's…" His head was swimming, and his body felt warm. "What you… get…" The world around him seemed to spin around, and he felt lightheaded. "For messin.." Naruto started falling backwards, his vision blacking out.

In the back of his mind, he heard a voice call out his name.

The bear roared, and swung out blindly in the direction it smelled Naruto in, it's paw blurring forward toward the falling child.

Then, Naruto's eyes opened, red and slitted, and he wasn't falling backwards, but dashing forwards, his hand flying out, fingernails growing, sharpening, as he raced under the bear and past it, blood trailing from it's neck to the ends of his fingers, as he breathed out, the air radiating with heat.

Then, Naruto's eyes went back to normal, and he fell over, face planting in the snow, the bear following a beat later.

All that could be heard in the clearing was the howl of the wind.