Chapter 5 -

Sasuke, Genma and Hinata were now walking towards the Hyuuga Compound, it was almost 1.00 am and none of them were in a particular good mood.

Kakashi had decided not to show up, and at a certain point, they had all decided it was enough, Genma figured he should probably bring Hinata home before about 50 aggressive Hyuuga nin would be jumping around Konoha to get their Heiress back, and punish the one responsible.

Thus, leading to them all walking there now, Hinata of course, felt like a burden, she tried to argue that she didn't need anyone to walk her home, she was after all a jounin, but the soft-spoken Hyuuga could not resist such a persistent male as Genma, who would hear none of it. And Sasuke had to, of course, come along because of his punishment.

It was chilly outside, Hinata wrapped her arms around herself and didn't think of it any more, she only payed attention to the stars. It was something she often enjoyed doing, gazing at the stars was one of the things she did very often, her thoughts often leading back to her mother, who was the first one to show her the fascinating world of stars. After her mother passed away, Hinata often continued watching while softly talking to herself, as if her mother was there to listen to her. It was one of the only times she allowed herself to think about her mother, only when she was utterly alone. It was something she was very keen on, to keep that part of her a secret, even though many of the people she knew, knew about it. It was something very private to her, and no one would disrupt that, especially no relative.

Hinata continued gazing at the stars, recognizing a few that her mom had pointed out to her when she was a little girl. No one spoke while walking in silence, after about 10 minutes Hinata did a quick scan with her Byakugan around the surroundings and she repeated it every now and then, a habit she got from going on mission, where she always played a major part of defense when in foreign countries.

No one would watch their back, so they made sure she checked the surroundings now and then, so they woudln't be surprised by low class ninja, of course, since she couldn't check the surroundings always (Saving chakra ppl!), it was basically more like a filter. Filter away the unworthy rogue nin, the thieves and the low class criminals. Sometimes they still needed to battle those, but they were usually very easy to get out of the way, especially since Hinata knew they were coming, and could warn the rest of her group members, who would then be prepared to take them out quick but silently.

Sasuke walked, slouching with his hands in his pocket, with a scowl on his face. He really didn't understand why he specifically had to come here, I mean, he came back to Konoha on his own accord right? So shouldn't they trust him on not running away immediately. Well he wasn't about to argue with that bastard of a Shiranui, thinking he is so almighty to have a bit of power over him, and being all cuddly with the Hyuuga. Maybe it really wasn't a dumb implication of the nature of their relationship, the kind of stares he kept giving the unaware heiress. (Protective brother, it is after all 1.00 am)

"shit!" Hinata cussed lowly, alerting Sasuke and Genma immediately, since she never ever cussed.

Genma seemed to understand the situation immediately because he ran forward to Hinata and took her arm, asking her where they were, how many and how far-

The questions didn't make sense to Sasuke who then took a better look at the Hyuuga, noticing she had her Byakugan activated, and seemingly stared into nothingness, while speaking in a soft tone to Genma, so soft that Sasuke who was a few meters from the two could not hear what she said.

He found himself actually interested in what she was saying, since it seemed to be upsetting her a bit, Sasuke tried listening in, but he didn't want to seem interested, or anything like that. He had a reputation to keep. He just stood there silently observing the two, seeing the Hyuuga heiress put her messenger bag on the ground, while continuing speaking with the older nin.

Sasuke started guessing about the nature of the interuption of their quiet walk and reached for his katana, only to realise he did not have it. 'Fuck this stupid punishment, well I can manage without, Kami they really have to make it hard to like it here, don't they?" Sasuke silently cursed to himself.

In the distance Sasuke saw Genma nod quickly, affirming he heard Hinata. Already busy fiddling with a few senbon in his mouth, and taking out more weapons in the process. Sasuke felt a wave of air coming towards him, and he quickly raised his hand to take the kunai flying towards him, stopping it only a few inches from his face.

He looked up, narrowing his eyes when he saw where it came from, he gave a glare at Genma, waiting for an explanation for the sudden attack at him.

"Hinata has spotted nin closing in on us, 12 of them, they come from the cloud, enemy nin. I don't have a katana, I know it's your favourite, but a kunai will have to do to protect yourself, if you even think about running away, I will hunt you down and bury you alive, so be aware."

Before Sasuke even had the chance to acknowledge what Genma had said, they were interrupted by a soft voice speaking sternly. "They are here."

Both men moved into their unique fighting stances, both seeing Hinata already standing in her gentle-fist stance.

Withing seconds after they had positioned themselves, they found themselves surrounded.

Sasuke immediately recognized the rain-insignia on the men's forehead protectors, there were 12 men in total he quickly counted. About four men each.

'It shoudln't be too hard, they look to be about jounin level though, I know Shiranui can probably handle his own, the only problem would be the Hyuuga-girl, she is probably barely Chuunin level, thus she will need assistance, fuck..., Well it is a way to get into her good graces, and maybe she can tell the Hokage of my 'good behaviourä in saving her... fine, it might be a convenient situation for me... so troublesome' Sasuke thought quickly, analysing the situation.

"What is your business here?" Genma asked with a voice of authority.

The men just stood there and stared, waiting for their leader to speak. One of the men stepped forwards after a few seconds, the man was wearing the rain-insignia on his clothes and his forehead protector. He wore the rain's regular ninja gear, grey sweatpants and a dark green shirt, instead of the traditional chuunin-vest which was common in the leaf and sand he wore a short-sleeved jacket, which was zipped up about halfway. Sasuke noted that the Leaf-ninja had a much better choice of gear.

Not that he really cared anyway. But if you are gonna kill, you better kill in style, was one thing he always believed in.

"If you value your life, I suggest you better hurry off and leave the girl here, then we won't do harm to you and the boy." The man who was obviously the leader spoke.

'Shit, they want the Byakugan again, didn't they learn anything from their last attempt? Well they don't realise that we have an Uchiha here, that will give us an advantage.' Genma quickly thought.

He gave a quick glance towards Hinata and saw that she had an indifferent expression on her face, looking as she did not just hear that the large group of men, currently surrounding them, were after her.

"I believe you are the ones who should get out of here, before we crush you to pieces, and don't you dare ever come back and show your faces again." Genma said with a growl to the men surrounding them, some of them started to chuckle while their leader merily raised an eyebrow, one hand reaching for his ninjaken, which was sheathed on his back.

He brought out the ninjaken, with an incredible speed, but nothing the Konoha nin weren't used to, the man didn't stop his movement and the Ninjaken was almost connecting with Genma's shoulder, before he suddenly dropped the lethal weapon and cried out in pain.

All his subordinates turned their heads quickly, checking out what was wrong with their oh-so-powerful leader, and what they saw shocked them all. Their leader had a kunai embedded in his wrist, the point sticking out on the other side.

They all turned to the direction where the kunai came from, and realised it came from the center of the circle, where they saw one of the raven haired teenagers stand their with a face so indifferent they might have believed that he had not just witnessed the whole scene which had just been, much less caused it.

"Don't you dare lay your hand on a Konoha nin" The raven haired teen spoke through gritted teeth, which was the only thing betraying that he was not completely indifferent.

Inwardly both Hinata and Genma were surprised, who would have thought that the last Uchiha would actually stick up for Konoha nin, and not just save his own little butt.

After this everything happening was such a big blurr that no one could really tell what was going on, except in their immediate surroundings.

The group of ninja surrounding the three Konoha nin, quickly dispelled and started attacking in groups on the three nin who were already in their own unique battle stances.

Four nin quickly approached Sasuke as he activated his sharingan, his eyes glowing a dark red. He ducked as he saw a foot coming in the direction of his head, and grabbed the foot in mid-air twirling it around and kicking the attacking nin right in his stomach, sending him flying into a tree. 'One down' he quickly thought, more time he did not have before the other three nin approached him.

He decided to take things into his own hands, figuring it was better to start attacking instead of waiting for them to do something. He approached one of the enemy nin, who backed away, frightened of his red eyes with the swirling tomoes. The man was quickly backed into a tree, where Sasuke approached him with his inhuman speed, quickly pressing a few fingers into the neck of the enemy nin, whereafter the nin fell to the ground.

At that exact moment the other nins had had enough and Sasuke dodged three shiruken which were flying through the leaves of the tree, right after he had dodged them, he had to jump to avoid the man coming from beneath the ground. The man still sitting in the tree, made a few hand signs, not unoticed by Sasuke.

The man who was just avoided by sasuke, the one coming from the ground, was quickly taken care of as Sasuke got in a well aimed punch, and the man was knocked out, unconscious.

The raven haired teen was now becoming frustrated, he only knocked out his opponents, he kind of didn't mind if he actually harmed them a bit more, also in the back of his mind a voice whispered to him that he should check on his guards (or supervisors as Tsunade would like to call them.)

He ran over to the tree where the shiruken which were thrown previously had hit. He pulled the three out, and turned around to search for the chakra signal of the last of the nin. A grey fog had come into the clearing, probably the work of that fourth nin Sasuke thought, finding it really stupid since his sharingan would help him anyway.

He looked around, quickly finding the fourth nin, hiding in a small bush about 30m from the tree Sasuke was standing at. Sasuke threw the shuriken, only to appear right behind the other nin, he used the shuriken as a distraction to come right from the back of the nin, who was now quickly jumping backwards, right into Sasuke, to avoid the shuriken.

"Got ya, this will teach you not to mess with Konoha" Sasuke growled, and then grabbed the enemy nin's head from the back, and twisted it quickly, hearing a snap and then letting go, satisfied with his work.

He walked back to the road where they had first been attacked, realising that he had gotten away a little bit. He breathed in a few times, ready to battle some more ninja, it had after all, barely taken 5 minutes for him to take care of those nin, and he must admit that he fought very slow and below his standard doing it.

Returning to the road, he had to quickly mask his surprise at finding both Hinata and Genma leaning against a tree, with all the other nin lying either unconscious or dead on the ground. Genma was breathing a little heavy, but to his major surprise the Hyuuga was barely out of breath.

He looked around at the site of the battle, seeing a small crater with around it 6 unconscious/dead ninja (he couldn't determine if they were all dead from that distance), there were two more bodies lying around, one against a tree, and another lying on his stomach with his head distorted, leading Sasuke to believe that the man had suffered a quick death by getting his neck snapped, much like the way he had treated his last nin himself.

Deducing from the sight before him, he figured that the two nin separated from the rest of the nin was Hinata's work, and the other six were victims of Shiranui's technique, it made sense to him that the nin would try and get rid of the elder nin first, before going after the weak heiress, what he couldn't quite comprehend was, what kind of technique would leave a crater and also blow away six nins in one go, for that must be what had happened.

Hinata and Genma had now noticed Sasuke's return and Genma continued their walk towards the Hyuuga mansion, Hinata followed soon after and both expected Sasuke to follow after the both of them.

The rest of the walk was silent, while all of them were concentrating on their own thoughts.

Hinata on how she would tell her father that Cloud had once again made an attempt on her life, and her eyes.

Genma on how this would lead Konoha into an international conflict.

Sasuke on what kind of technique Genma had, figuring it would be worth copying with his sharingan.

As they walked in silence, they all shared similar thoughts. 'Damn (or in Hinata's case, "Too bad") we have to deal with the Hokage about this...'

I know it is a bit late, and Im just not going to say a specific date for my next update, but I hope this chapter was ok, Im not really sure if I liked it myself, Im not good in fighting scenes, this chapter was quite useless, but its important for later, the whole conflict with Cloud and also Sasuke's thoughts about Hinata's strength.

Please review, it makes me happy!:D

Take Care (and oh yeah! Happy New Year everyone; Better late then never right?)