(A/N: And here comes another chapter! Super exciting, right?! Well, get ready to have your socks knocked off your feet, cause there's a new development coming up soon (: You'll have to read on to find out what, though. I'll give you a hint, if you like. Don't read the next line if you don't wanna know.
[I'mintroducinganewcharaceter]
So, I've had a very busy little three weeks here. I've had very little free time, and even less inspiration. BUT! I buckled down today and sat and thought about all kinds of stuff I could do to make this chapter/story better, and finally came up with something. Yes, it will prolong the story a bit, and yes, I will do my best to keep the update every three weeks schedule. So nothing much will change, but the plot line has shifted, now!
Hope you enjoy this chapter lots!
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.)
Mysterious Captivation: Chapter 18
Hinata quietly shut the door behind her, scanning the halls before allowing her blood-shot, puffy eyes to center on her blonde companion. "They've made up. I don't want to press them for my team assignment anymore. We can find out about it later," she told him, stepping forward.
Deidara nodded. "Okay. Whatever it is that you want to do," he replied compliantly. His previously darkened eyes lightened at the acceptance in her voice.
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Upon arriving through the gates of Konoha a full week after they had left the presence of the Akatsuki, exhausted, bedraggled, and bloody, Jiraya, Kakashi, and Naruto made their way silently through the ninja district.
Many years ago, the village elders had realized the need for a separate gate for ninja coming home from missions and the rest of the population of the village when a young man had collapsed in a bloody mess at the foot of a very young civilian child. It had scarred her for life, and the village elders had refused to allow ninja through that gate anymore, immediately commissioning the building of the North and West gates into the city.
Wearily, the trio climbed the long staircase to reach the Hokage's office.
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The short, less-than-stellar sounding knock upon her door caused a deep-set fear to nestle its way into her stomach. "Come in," she said, loud enough to be heard through the oak wood door.
She watched the remains of the party she had sent to Akatsuki territory as they trudged through her door, trailing both blood and dirt across all materials with which they came into contact. The dirty, smudged print of a fist had been left behind from the knock.
"What happened to my ANBU?" She ordered, eyes meeting Naruto, Kakashi, and then sticking to Jiraya's newly dirt-darkened grey hair.
"Each one is dead," Kakashi stated hollowly. "Kisame killed Panther and Otter, Itachi murdered Horse, and Dragon and Fox were killed by Konan and Tobi respectively," he reported.
Tsunade's brow furrowed for a short moment; he had named only five ANBU. "What happened to Gazelle?" She asked, wondering at the pained look that crossed Naruto's face the moment those words left her mouth.
After several long moments of silence, Tsunade repeated her question.
The almost whispered reply, given by Naruto, was at first thought by Tsunade to have been misunderstood. She asked him to repeat it, shaking her head in denial.
"Hinata did," he said, slightly louder as his eyes roamed the ceiling as though it were the most interesting thing he had ever seen.
"Hinata killed Gazelle," Tsunade repeated, unable to connect the words with the shy, passive girl whom she had watched grow for nearly four years. Upon the sight of nods from both Jiraya and Kakashi, she whistled through her teeth and sat back in her chair. Sighing, she stated, "Hinata must now be considered an S-class missing nin. We must label her as a kill-on-sight target, as the rest of Akatsuki has been labeled."
None of the four looked happy about the new development, but the outside observer who had come to greet the team looked devastated. She knocked shakily on the door. Without waiting for permission, she slipped into the room, utter hopelessness in her crimson eyes.
"You can't allow her to be a kill-on-sight missing ninja! She gave eighteen years of her life to this village. One murder committed by her cannot take the place of that!" Kurenai said irrationally, voice cracking as she realized how slim of a chance there was to save her student. Her argument wouldn't even have caused her to agree, she knew.
"Be that as it may, I cannot order anything different. You need to go home and rest, Kurenai-san. The others of you need to go check into the hospital so that you can be healed, and then I want each of you to write up and turn in your mission reports. I'll have nothing less."
Three of the four ninja nodded with a frown. Naruto was strangely silent, gloomy even, as Tsunade closed her eyes and heard them file out the door of her office.
She rubbed at her temples, feeling an impending migraine, and wishing that Shizune had not found her secret stash of Saké the day before. She laid her head on her desk, hoping that if she ignored the other person in the room, he would go away.
"Tsunade," Jiraya spoke the moment the door closed behind the others. She groaned inwardly, then sighed outwardly. He hadn't decided to let her mope.
"What is it, Jiraya?" She questioned in response. She really wasn't in the mood for any more bad news, nor did she want to hear about his latest 'research'.
"Gazelle killed Uchiha Itachi," he deadpanned.
That brought Tsunade's head back up to its proper height. Her hazel eyes were wider than normal. And I thought nothing could surprise me anymore. She sneered at herself. "How did she manage to do that?" She asked in wonderment. Not even Orochimaru had been able to accomplish such a feat.
"He jumped in front of Gazelle's katana that was meant for Hinata," the white haired man exposed with eyes narrowed and cast toward the ground.
"He committed suicide, then," Tsunade concluded with a marveling shake of her head. It was a wonder he had lived as long as he had, tortured his little brother to the point where the younger Uchiha felt he had to leave the village, and then jumped directly into an attack that he knew would kill him because he obviously did it for a reason. She just couldn't fathom it.
A shadow passed through her features as Jiraya shook his head negatively.
"What, then?" She demanded in frustration, standing, and crushing her palms against her desk. A loud creak sounded from beneath them before she realized that she was gripping the edges of it so roughly that she had left hand prints.
"He was protecting her," he responded; Tsunade swore that she had heard sympathy in his voice, but it had been so long since she had heard anything of the sort from him that she couldn't be sure.
The blonde woman fell back in her seat, pinching her thumb and pointer finger around the bridge of her nose. "He loved Hinata," she deduced. "He loved her more than his own family, didn't he?"
Jiraya nodded, turning his face away. "I almost feel bad for what we've done to him and Hinata. It's a pity that Konoha's most prestigious clans are the ones that produce the most powerful criminals. After all, who wouldn't go insane with all the pressures that they put on their children?"
Tsunade's eyes turned and met his sharply. "I'm not so sure about that, Jiraya. I think that every single one of our Uchiha defects are perfectly sane. And so is Hinata. I've done psyche checks on Hinata, and other than several inconsistencies with self-confidence, her mind has been perfectly healthy. I can only assume that the Uchihas are the same way,"
Now it was the toad sage's turn to look frustrated. "Why do you say that?"
"If they were insane, they wouldn't have lived this long. An insane person would have been captured or killed by ninja years ago. They would have gotten sloppier in their work the further from their minds they were driven. Their chakra control would have degenerated along with their brains. The only reason that Orochimaru lived as long as he did was because he was able to switch bodies before his brain cells were destroyed by his madness," she told him, the knowledge of the technicalities of being insane the only thing stopping her from agreeing with her once-teammate.
"So they truly dislike Konoha as much as they say they do," he sighed, beginning to rub at his temple also.
I really need to stop letting him in my office so often. He's picking up my habits. The asinine thought entered Tsunade's head, but she soon figuratively shook it away.
"What are we going to do about them?" He asked her after several moments of silence.
"One of them is dead. That leaves Hinata and Sasuke, right? If Sasuke learns of his brother's death, what do you think will happen?" She prompted, a malicious grin stretching her lips in a grimace.
"He will want revenge on the person who took his life's goal from him," Jiraya answered slowly, as though patching Tsunade's plan together for himself. "When he learns it was a Konoha ANBU, then he'll come here. But how will he react when he's told that it was Hinata who killed Gazelle?"
"I don't know. But it would be better for him to be angry with Akatsuki still, rather than us. After all, there is no way Naruto would let us kill Sasuke and still look on us with good favor. At least if Sasuke attacks the Akatsuki, we have a chance of him leading us to them and killing some of their members."
Her white haired conversation partner nodded his head in agreement. "I'll talk to some of my sources, tell them to get the word out,"
Tsunade also nodded, confirming his plan. "Go now."
He disappeared from sight, off to speak with his spy near the border shared by Oto and Hi no Kuni. She wasn't sure exactly where on that border it was located, as much as that infuriates me, because he refused tell her and possibly cause his informant 'unnecessary trouble.'
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Approaching the training room of their current lair, Deidara heard the soft pants and snicks of a training ninja. He frowned, knowing exactly who it was that was training. He let his chakra flare to obvious, unignorable levels, then opened the door and spoke. "Hinata, you can't keep pushing yourself like this. If you do, you won't be fit for missions," he admonished her, shaking his hair out of his eye as it fell out of its messily done-up ponytail.
"I have to get better as quickly as possible, Deidara-san," she said, not breaking from her katas as she fluidly snapped a kunai from her target, only to hit it dead center with a senbon mere seconds later.
Deidara watched her as she panted. Even still, she was graceful and noiseless as a ghost, aside from her breathing. She had been training during all free time since she had gotten her partner assignment a week ago.
She was paired with Kisame.
The blonde explosives artist had thought she would be paired with him, and Tobi shoved off as Kisame's responsibility, but it hadn't happened that way.
Hinata hadn't given him the reason, though he knew that she knew why. I wonder why she won't tell me.
He had been tempted to question Leader-sama, but then thought better of it. He knew that, with Kisame, she would at least be safe. If he couldn't be her partner, then the Hoshigake, as little as he liked to admit it, would be his second choice.
After all, the shark-like nin was powerful, nearly impossible to kill, and had seemingly endless amounts of patience. He did, after all, deal with Itachi for years, and that's no easy feat.
Ever since Hinata had gotten her partner assignment, though, she had been training relentlessly. She would keep herself up into the early hours of the morning, sometimes even staying up all night long.
During the nights, she would rarely get more than four or five hours of sleep before she was awake again, and back in the training room. The young ex-Hyuuga woman had already destroyed more training dummies than he cared to number.
She didn't even break to eat more than two meals a day, even when she was awake for the full twenty-four hours.
"Hinata-san, if you keep doing this to your body, you aren't going to be able to survive much longer," he tried to appeal to her wish for strength.
"This is how Tsunade trained the medical ninjas' chakra system to be able to handle the stress of the battlefield, and it's also how she helped their reserves grow. Considering that she is the most powerful kunoichi there has been in many years, I will follow her program. No offense Deidara-san, but I think she would know more about it than you," Hinata responded harshly.
He frowned in return as he approached her. Her temper had been incredibly short lately. It was almost as though the midnight haired woman was turning into a completely different person. Maybe I should ask Konan about it? He wondered to himself, before dismissing the thought. If the younger girl found out that he went to her about this, he had a feeling that she wouldn't speak to him for a long time.
When the ex-heiress did nothing to slow her training or acknowledge his presence any further, he sighed, knowing that he would have to hurt her to get her to see reason. He just hoped that she would forgive him. "Hinata," he spoke roughly, dropping her suffix and reaching out his hand to catch her wrist in a nearly bone-crushing hold.
She turned cold opal eyes to his face. "Let go of me, Deidara," she responded, following suit.
"If you keep pushing yourself to exhaustion like this, we will have no more use for you because you will be unfit for missions," he growled, sneering at the younger girl before dropping her arm and turning his back to her in disrespect.
He crossed the room to leave, throwing a self-righteous glare over his shoulder. It took all that he had not to turn instantly around, rush over to her, and apologize. He crushed his emotions into a deep corner of his mind as he had done so many years ago.
Grinning at her unapologetically on the outside, he saw the only spark of life in her eyes for a week dim its light before her eyes closed.
He watched her waver on her feet. She stumbled for a small moment, as though her body was unused to standing still and needed to keep moving to stay standing.
Suddenly, she went limp and her body fell forward. "See, Hinata-chan, look what you've done to yourself," he whispered as he caught her unconscious body before it hit the ground. He hefted her into his arms, jostling her to get a better grip on her dead weight, and carefully carried her bridal style to the room he hadn't been in since the night she and the others had returned from Itachi's makeshift grave and the preceding battle.
He gently shifted her in his arms when he saw her bed, which looked cold and uninviting at the moment. It was unadorned by its usual lavender sheets, pillows, and blankets. All that it had was a thin sheet of coarse material and an emaciated, roughly used pillow.
Sighing, he turned and backed out of Hinata's room, and walked across the hall to his own, much more comfortable one.
He placed her under his covers, gently brushing her hair away from her face. Even in sleep, it appeared, she was not relaxed. Another whispered sigh passed his lips, "What have you been doing to yourself? What's driving you to do this, Hinata-chan?"
Knowing she would give him no answer, even had she been awake, he stood from her side and walked to the kitchen to find some food for when she awoke, knowing that she would be ravenous. It's only a matter of actually getting her to eat. He bowed his head, rubbing his hair-shadowed left eye.
"Deidara?" He heard a voice question from behind him. The explosives artist heard the underlying question that the other had been too prideful to directly ask: Are you okay?
"It's nothing," he bit out, turning to the blue-skinned man behind him.
The Hoshigake nodded acceptingly, and it would have been considered uncaringly had he not gone against his personality and asked in the first place. "Have you seen Hinata-san anywhere?" He asked.
Deidara narrowed his eyes at the man. "Why?" He responded suspiciously.
"I haven't seen her all week, and I need to tell her that Leader-sama has given us a mission,"
The blonde's visible eye stayed its regular size, but he allowed his hidden one to widen. "When do you two leave?"
"Tomorrow morning. Since you obviously know where she is, just let her know for me." Kisame ordered, turning away with an unexpectedly cat-like grace.
"She's sleeping. Were you aware that she's been training herself ragged for these past few days? She has gotten maybe twenty hours of sleep this past week, along with training almost to the point of passing out and only two small meals a day. Did you say anything to her about her strength that would make her do that?" He demanded threateningly, a large accomplishment, considering the stature and looks of the man whom he addressed.
With each passing action revealed, the large Hoshigake shrunk dimensionally. At the accusation, however, his powerful physique returned. "I would never do anything like that!" He roared in a whispered voice, then continued guiltily, "I had no idea she was doing any of that. Hinata-san is my partner, now, so that means I need to make sure she's okay. I guess I just figured she didn't need anyone other than you," he finished, turning the blame to the ex-Iwa ninja.
It's not like I don't feel bad enough about it already. Deidara thought sarcastically, maliciously sneering at the shark-nin. "Well, you shouldn't assume so much," he caustically replied. "I have other business to attend to sometimes, and I have the feeling that she didn't really want to see me at all. After all, it was me and Itachi that she was torn over. Losing the Uchiha hurt her, and seeing me would obviously remind her of him! Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to grab some food for her to eat when she wakes up."
If she'll forgive me for my horrible insult.
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"What did you say?" His icy-cold voice spoke upon hearing a name mentioned as he passed a young man on the street.
The civilian man turned to look at him before stuttering out a repetition of what had been previously stated to his friend. "I-I said th-that I heard f-from my d-dad that U-Uchiha Itachi, th-the Akatsuki ninja, h-had been k-killed th-the other d-day."
"That's what I thought you said," he said, his raven hair falling into his face as his head bowed. The young man blinked, and suddenly the one he'd been speaking to was gone.
He always had liked the expressions on their faces when he did that to the oblivious civilians. A cruel smirk twisted his features for a moment, then dropped to the ground. He is finally dead. He thought, emptiness curling in his chest in response to his stolen life's goal. I must find his killer and destroy them for stealing the one thing that could have put the Uchihas at peace forever!
(A/N: Ah! I'm pretty sure that everyone knows who I'm talking about in this last section, but if not, it'll make much more sense in the next chapter. I hope you enjoyed reading this installment of Mysterious Captivation, and I sincerely hope that you liked it enough to come back and read the next one! (: Review if you'd like! If you do review, let me know how you liked it, what you didn't [if you didn't], and what you'd like to see me improve/change! See you in a little while!)