Hot dang! Another chapter! Neji's murderer(s) revealed! A bit of SasuNaru! Crazy mutant icky thingies! Random annoying exclamation!

Hinata rushed to see what exactly she had shot. She gasped as the figure came into view.

It was only vaguely human, with glowing, bulging, pupil-and-iris-less eyes. The remnants of what might once have been a nose jutted out from a partially decayed face. Its mouth was barely a small gash near the chin, half sewn shut. Its whole body had a grayish pallor, and it was painfully thin. The thing's ribs, instead of being inside its body, were splayed out in random angles from its sides, giving Hinata a disgusting view of its innards. Suddenly, the thing roared, reaching for Hinata's leg. Another shot echoed through the cold night, not from Hinata's gun.

"Gaara! You came back!" she yelled over the howling wind.

"Of course I did!" he yelled back. "There are more of them in the jungle! I already killed three. Come on, the things are following us!" He grabbed Hinata's hand and pulled her along. She resisted. "Come on! We'll get killed if we don't go!"

"Where...? Where is there to go?" she asked warily.

"ANYWHERE!! Let's just go, before we're dead." He tugged even harder at her hand, and this time, she followed, grabbing their bags just in time.

"Sakura!" Naruto was shaking her shoulder frantically, but Sasuke knew she had stopped breathing minutes ago.

"It's no use," he said finally. "Naruto, get something to bury her with. She's gone."

Naruto gasped. "No, she can't be! She was... just... fine..." Tears came into his eyes, and Sasuke held him close before he knew what he was doing. Naruto sat there limply for a while, tears slipping down his face. "She... just..." he choked.

"I know," Sasuke said, trying to sound comforting. He just sounded on the verge of tears. Ino barely moved. She was huddled up into a ball, sobbing quietly.

"I've been to too many funerals in my life," were the only distinguishable words that came out of her mouth.

"It's okay," Sasuke muttered, trying to reassure, but failing miserably. "It's a-all gonna be okay..." He sniffled quietly. "It's all..." he stopped, and a tear leaked out of one of his eyes. "G-going to be..." Sasuke turned towards the jungle, just waiting for something, anything, to happen. "All right." The storm saw no end in sight, and that was good in Sasuke's book. That way, nobody could distinguish the rain from the steady stream of tears running down his pale face.

Something leaped out at Hinata, and she pulled the trigger on the handgun as Gaara pulled her along. "What if I missed!?" she asked in a frenzy.

"No time for that, we have to get as far away from here as possible!" He kicked out at a lobster, sending it in (what he hoped was) the direction of one of the things. There was a muffled roar as the lobster hit its mark, and a corpulent thing came barreling out of the jungle, wailing in a very deep tone. Unintelligible nonsense streamed from its mouth as Gaara pulled out a machete and slit its throat. "Keep running!"

"How do I keep running if the things eat me?" Hinata half-yelled.

"I don't know and I don't care, just run or else you'll die!"

Hinata shrieked as a female thing -with its eyeball dangling from its socket and a bird head dangling from its lips- barreled towards them. She pulled the trigger and shrieked again as the thing kept coming.

"Shoot it in the head!"

"I'm out of ammo!"

Gaara replied by slicing the thing's head off. He dug around in his messenger bag until he found a box of ammo. "Hurry!"

"N-nothing seems to be after us..." Naruto ventured to say. It was raining, and he looked horribly bedraggled. He tried to wrench himself out of Sasuke's grip, but he eventually stopped and remained still.

"They probably got Shikamaru and Gaara and Hinata. They're probably not hungry," Ino said dismally.

Naruto wiped his nose on his arm. "It's getting lighter. Maybe we should go look."

"Better wait 'till it's completely morning," Sasuke whispered. "It'll get completely light in about an hour." He was shaking.

"Yeah," Naruto said. "We should wait."

Hinata finally collapsed on the ground. It was getting lighter. The jungle was getting thinner. The things had stopped attacking.

"You're a slow runner," Gaara said quietly.

"What... do you mean... by that?" Hinata panted.

"Exactly what I said."

"Um... well..." Hinata stuttered, flustered. "Do you know what a-attacked us?"

Gaara leaned against a tree, rubbing his temples. "I don't know, and I don't wanna know." He whacked his way through the rest of the jungle with a machete, and gasped. "Hey, Hinata? You'd better have a look at this..."

What did our darling Gaara-kun see? What exacly are those... things...?

If you review... MAAAYBE I'll write more. Maybe.

Okay, okay, I'm joking! Please don't kill me... I'll write more...

But review, okay?

Wow, Sasuke-kun was kinda OOC, now that I look back...

Sasuke: You got that right.

beanpaste-chan: Well, emo people are s'posed to cry, right? I mean, I read after this one opera came out, it made it fashionable for men to cry. (Ha, after I read that, I put on my best surfer dud accent and said, "Duuude, look at how much I cried today!!" Really, I read that guys used to collect their tears in vials. Stupid, ne?)

Sasuke: Well, I'm not like that. (sob sob)

beanpaste-chan and Sasuke: REEEEVIEEEEWWWWWW!!!!