CHAPTER FOUR
FURY
A/N UPDATED: Apparently when I first uploaded this chapter something went wrong with it. Massive thanks to Fallenwolf20 for picking up on it so quick and letting me know! Hopefully this fixes it!
A/N Another one bites the dust!
Thank you for all the wonderful reviews, you guys have given me some motivation to write in these incredibly busy days.
This chapter is an important one, telling the story of what happened to Hinata (well, a figment of the story), but hopefully isn't too boring for you. I think you guys will find that this story will get more and more graphic as the chapters go on. I like the idea of creating an image of a perfect Konoha and a perfect Naruto and Hinata and watching as that image is slowly destroyed by one tiny event. (Don't freak out though, I promise there won't be a horrible ending!)
So there will be more action, more story – and a few twists for you all – as the chapters continue.
Look forward to it, I certainly do!
Well, that's enough from me. Enjoy chapter 4!
CHAPTER FOUR
_FURY_
Reappearing outside his house, Naruto's eyes widened at the door hanging wide open, a chair fallen over only visible through the opening. Ino and Choji were already there, but one look at their Hokage and they bit their tongue and didn't say a word. He was clearly in shock. And they weren't quite sure it was a good idea to knock him out of it yet – there was no telling what he would do.
Instead, Ino and Choji, shortly joined by Sakura followed silently as the Uzumaki assessed the damage. He reached out to grip the handle to his front door, and the only way the three followers could see the Hokage's inner anguish was through the singed hand print left behind on the door handle in his wake. When Ino went to grab it and follow, it finally gave way. The door fell from its higher hinges, splintering and crashing onto the wooden doorway with a thud.
All three Konoha ninja cringed, eyes darting to the Hokage in case the noise broke him out of his strange trance. It didn't. He was so focused on the sight in front of him, he didn't even seem to remember that they were even there.
He stepped slowly, one foot in front of the other, through the house. Eyes darting across the hallway, living room, kitchen, taking note of damage and destruction. He couldn't think. He felt numb. He wasn't even sure if he was breathing, his breath caught tight in his throat.
Sakura remained a step behind him, worried glances at his eyes that continued to flicker from red to blue and back again as if his thoughts were illustrated through his eyes. The darkest blue like a storm on the horizon flickering to hellfire red, promising destruction. Sakura wasn't quite sure what she'd do when he inevitably snapped, but she hoped he could direct himself to the culprit, and they could find Hinata before he destroyed any villages.
And Naruto didn't appear to be doing too badly, Sakura watched as he continued to walk through the house. The eye flickering – and the door handle – were the only illustrations of his torment that she saw. He seemed to be processing what was happening at least. Sakura almost took a sigh of relief when the Hokage stepped into the bedroom he shared with his wife.
The bed where he tightly tucked in his pregnant wife what seemed like moments ago.
Tension in the room thickened suddenly, like a layer of thick smoke spreading across the room. Ino almost choked on her breath, instantly taking a step back from the Hokage.
He was radiating, as if fumes of chakra were bursting from his pores. Sakura, Ino and Choji stood tense and alert, waiting for his next move.
"Where is my wife?"
He almost sounded normal.
He clearly wasn't.
The three shinobi stumbled over each other to try and reply. Sakura blurting out the story of how she found the house overshadowed by Choji mumbling about the idea he had and Ino quietly staring at the destruction.
"Stop."
His voice, quieter than they'd ever heard him, cut through the sound like a knife. Naruto turned around to look at his friends, his eyes a solid red like metal at boiling temperature. Choji and Sakura were silenced instantly, and Ino's eyes darted back up to the blonde.
People had argued Naruto didn't have the dominance to be a Hokage, but this definitely proved otherwise.
"Can any of you help me find my wife?"
There was a threatening edge to his voice that made Sakura turn to Choji immediately. She opened her mouth to try and get the man to say something that would somehow calm the Hokage when Ino spoke:
"I can help you find out what happened here."
Ino held her breath when Naruto's eyes sprung to her, pinning her like an arrow through her head. He held her eyes and she couldn't look away, feeling the temperature in the room rise like she was being pulled into the smouldering fire in his eyes. "There's chakra remnants throughout this room. They must have used a lot of chakra to try and get to her." She pretended she didn't see Naruto flinch, and felt horrible for her choice of words. "I should be able to follow its path and get an understanding of what went down." She studied the devastation. "I won't be able to find out who took her, but I can find out what happened here, and which direction she headed." The words came out faster than she intended; however, Naruto seemed to catch it as he nodded quickly.
"Do it."
Ino took a breath, and started creating handsigns. She hadn't completely mastered this technique yet and felt the pressure of everyone in the room staring at her. This was an emergency though, and she simply could not let her Hokage down. She couldn't let her friends down. She couldn't let Hinata down.
"Sensory Jutsu: Chakra Memory."
The room went a shade darker as the jutsu fell across the four shinobi, and Ino concentrated on the chakra signatures in the room, finding it more difficult than usual considering Naruto's current chakra spikes. She took the four back to when she felt both Naruto and Hinata in this room, and let the story play out.
Choji instantly noticed the two chakra signatures of Naruto and Hinata in this room, and felt like a voyeur as he saw Naruto tightly wrap Hinata up in the bed sheets, tucking her in tight as they laughed and teased one another. Neither him, Sakura, Naruto or Ino could see the forms of Naruto and Hinata in front of them, only their chakra forming ethereal bodies moving around the room.
Sakura watched Naruto from the corner of her eye as his chakra form left the room reluctantly, and the real Hokage's fist tightened at his side as he watched himself leave the room. Leave his wife tucked in bed, asleep. He watched the room, waiting for the inevitable rest of the story to play out.
Hinata didn't wake up when he felt another two chakra's enter through the front door quietly, which was strange. The two new chakra signatures walked through the house, obviously looking for his wife while she remained asleep.
"Why is she still sleeping?" Naruto asked, taking a step closer to her bed as if it was really her in that bed and not just the memory of her chakra. "Is it-"
"It's not normal." Sakura interrupted before he could start worrying about the baby again. "Her chakra is slightly off too." She noted, stepping forward and pointing at the flow around her forehead as the two intruders continued to walk throughout the house. "You said she was tired today. I think it was more than the pregnancy that was putting her to sleep today." Sakura explained, "Her chakra is flowing slower than usual, which is unnatural during pregnancy. Usually chakra works harder because its looking after the baby, leaving Hinata tired from exhaustion rather than… this sort of inhibited state she appears to be in now."
"They're here." Choji's gravelly voice interrupted the two as he watched the chakra of the two intruders enter through the bedroom door. Ino remained silent, focused on her jutsu and worried for her friend as the intruders appeared to be talking to each other before turning to the sleeping woman.
Naruto watched her chakra carefully after what Sakura had said, and noticed a sudden change, "She woke up." The tiny spike and chakra caught his attention, and the four shinobi looked between Hinata and the two intruders.
No one dared speak as the scene played out in front of them. Hinata was awake but remained still, obviously trying to keep up appearances for her unexpected guests. The men walked up to the bed and ripped the sheets away from the Hokage's wife.
They obviously expected her to be asleep. So asleep that they appeared not to care for the noise they made either. Hinata continued not to move as the larger man reached down to haul the woman into his arms.
It was then she moved.
Throwing her arm out, she gripped onto the lamp on her bedside table, swinging it against the face of the man holding her. The film surrounding the lamp through off in the process, the bulb bursting against the intruder's temple.
The intruder sprung back in shock, dropping the woman back onto the bed, while the other man appeared spooked, and threw the kunai he was holding at the woman. Hinata rolled out of the way, but seemed confused, or somehow slower than usual, as she tried to pick up the kunai that embedded itself in the bed beside her.
"She was drugged." Ino blurted out the obvious as Hinata fumbled around the kunai and the larger chakra signature reared back from getting hit with a lamp and grabbed the kunai first, pulling it down the bed causing stuffing and springs to fly from the gaping hole.
Lunging for the door Hinata reached for the skinnier man, who appeared too startled to move as she flipped him over her shoulder and toward his friend. She didn't have the strength that she had expected, and the man fell short, instead falling through the edge of the bed, breaking a leg and bringing the whole bed leaning to its side.
Hinata ran to the door, and Naruto followed her, watching carefully as the two intruders followed her example as she hit the door hard, trying to open it as the two closed in on her. Her chakra hadn't been activated the whole time, and Sakura couldn't tell whether it was because she was drugged or because she was restraining herself for the sake of her baby. She clenched her fist and knew that Hinata wouldn't do anything that would put her baby in danger, so either way she was in trouble.
All four shinobi froze as a hand reached out and grasped the woman by her upper bicep, ripping her away from her grasp on the door and swinging her into the wall beside it. The doorway splintered and the door burst open at the hit, Hinata hitting the ground with a thud. The thinner, seemingly more nervous intruder seemed to be jumping around freaking out over the woman, while the larger man threw her over his shoulder and carried her into the dining room.
Naruto lunged after the chakra figures, fist clenched as he walked past the doorway where his wife hit the edge. Choji watched with quiet sympathy as the Hokage let out a growl and embedded his fist into the wall, cracking the doorframe further and destroying the plaster. "FUCK!" Ino and Sakura flinched at his voice, waiting for him to do anything before they followed the chakras into the dining room.
Naruto breathed loudly for a few moments, looking like he wanted to punch the wall a second time before ignoring the urge and stumbling through the doorway so he could follow the battle. There was so much damage in the rest of the house the fight didn't end here.
He breathed loudly to himself as he watched his wife's chakra signature fight against the arms of the intruder she reached for anything within her reach and picked up the fruit bowl on the bench, upending the bowl to smash it on her kidnapper's head.
If the man didn't have a concussion, he would have after that.
"Is it a man or a woman?!" Naruto was yelling now as he followed the chakra signatures, his wife falling to the ground, protecting her pregnant stomach and grabbing hold of a cupboard door to haul herself to her feet.
"I'm not sure, it's hard to tell with old chakra signatures." Ino stumbled through, trying to answer his question as quickly as possible as she followed the danger with her eyes.
"The larger one looks like a man," Sakura tried, "He has a larger chakra, and doesn't seem to be using it to do any of the heavy lifting, so he must have a large muscular frame. It's hard to tell with the thinner one."
Just as she spoke the smaller one seemed to take a larger part in the fight. He or she seemed more hesitant until now, running at the woman and tackling her back into the ground. Her head hit the cupboard on the way down, and she certainly would have a concussion now if she hadn't before.
Naruto growled louder, running to his wife and crouching next to her as if he could touch her chakra presence. He reached out to her as she kicked the thinner intruder away from her, pulling herself back to her feet.
He couldn't touch her.
She leaned over to the set of kitchen knives they had on the bench, throwing them one after another at the two intruders. Naruto wished he could hear something, understand what they were saying. But he heard nothing as the intruders dodged the knives, seeing the aftermath of cutlery embedded in their couch.
She seemed desperate, and Naruto tried to commit their chakra signatures to memory, but couldn't get a strong enough handle on them. It seemed the memory of the chakra was too old to give an accurate read. He growled at the sight of his wife leaning against the kitchen bench, obviously out of cutlery and exhaustion coming on as the smaller man kicked her legs out from underneath her, holding her down on the ground.
There was a slight struggle, but Hinata was trapped. The larger man picked up a knife from the ground and held it to his wife's stomach, causing her to falter and still immediately. Naruto couldn't hear what they were saying, but obviously someone was talking as there was no movement for a long while.
Eventually, the smaller chakra reached out, chakra flaring slightly as they hit a pressure point behind his wife's neck, and her own chakra smoothed out, unconscious.
The larger man reached out and kicked the woman in the ribs, despite her current state and Naruto froze still at the movement.
"The baby's fine." Sakura spoke quickly, sensing the Hokage's wrath and watching the chakra surrounding Hinata's stomach during the whole ideal.
Silently, the shinobi watched the larger man pick up the woman, kick a chair as he walked past the kitchen, and head to the front door as if he was not afraid of the people of Konoha on the street outside.
He should be afraid.
Naruto muttered to himself as he watched the duo leave the front door aggressively, only stopping long enough for the larger signature to reach out a punch the photo of him and Hinata in the front entrance, cracking the frame and causing it to smash onto the wooden floor before exiting his home.
Naruto bit his tongue as the two men and incapacitated Uzumaki fled, chakra presences disappearing in the crowd of people outside, the chakra memories dissipating into a crowd of people. Ino stood, the jutsu finally disappearing around her and the natural light seeping back into the shinobis vision.
Naruto was silent again.
The picture of Hinata and himself on their wedding day lay crushed under shards of glass and broken picture frame. Naruto stared blankly at the image of the two of them on the happiest day of his life – that is, just surpassed by the day Hinata told him she was pregnant. Pregnant. He took a deep breath, finding it harder and harder to remember to oxygenate while his brain was ticking over a million miles an hour.
He should be afraid.
Choji took a deep breath, "What do we do now, Narut-?" He spun on his feet, looking for the Hokage.
Naruto was gone.
"Shit!" Choji blurted, turning to the two girls, "What do we do?!"
"I think he finally lost his cool." Ino muttered turning to Sakura, "We have to help find her."
Sakura nodded, "We need to alert everyone. We need as many numbers as we can on this."
Choji agreed.
"We need to find her."
_FURY_
A/N: And the story continues. Where did she go? Who has her? What will happen next? Thoughts? Ideas? Any guesses to where this story is going? If anyone actually guesses what is happening here or where I am going with this I will be incredibly impressed, because my tiny hints leave a lot to be desired.
Let me know what you think.