(A/N: HI! I've got the next chapter of MC for you guys (and gals)! Not much to say up here today, most of the note is at the bottom. (: I hope you enjoy tonight's installment!

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, nor do I make any profit from this or any other story of mine.)

Mysterious Captivation: Chapter 25

Shikamaru watched the clan leader grow tense as they approached the Hyuuga's trading partners. "Hyuuga-sama, something is obviously wrong. What is it that you see?"

"It's nothing. I just don't want to enter and find that they've been cheating my clan," the man stated, narrowing his eyes and relaxing his shoulders. "They've done it before, and the last time we had a representative out here, they were not happy about being found out."

Shikamaru made a noise of acceptance, making sure to keep his own eyes opened for any trouble that may be lurking in the shadows.

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"What do you think we should do, Kisame-san? My father is obviously going to the same place that we are headed, and he has brought Shikamaru-san with him. I wonder why they are going to the business whose owner we are supposed to assassinate. Who is he?"

"I know he supplies goods to Konoha, but I don't know why your father would be this far out here just for Konoha supplies. I'm not sure of his name; I never cared to ask," Kisame answered, shaking his head.

Hinata thought heavily on this for several more minutes as they continued toward the home of their target.

Suddenly, she stopped, almost shouting for Kisame to do the same, but catching herself just in time to call out a quiet warning that she had quit moving.

When she saw that he had turned around to come back to her side, her eyes widened and she nearly panicked. To hide it, she looked down at the ground, almost ashamedly. "Our target is the man who supplies all of the goods to the Hyuuga household! If we go in there now, there will probably be several branch-house Hyuuga guards, and they'll immediately know that I'm the heiress and that I've fled the village. I can't go in there or we'll both be killed immediately!" She began to babble, but stopped herself when Kisame bent down toward her, lifted up her chin and put a finger to her lips to silence her.

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"I didn't know that they supplied the Hyuuga, but I highly doubt that any of your family could get through me. Look at my chakra system and tell me that you could kill me right now. Even if it were your father and cousin, I highly doubt they could injure me so severely that the both of us would be killed," Kisame attempted to reassure her shaking, unsteady form.

He had known that she had extreme self-confidence issues several years ago, when he and Itachi had covertly entered Konoha to study the ninja of the Leaf. However, he had no idea that they were all rooted in her family.

All her low self-confidence, stuttering, and panicking had been linked to the way she was raised behind the walls of the Hyuuga Compound.

He frowned, lines marring his forehead and lips thinning as his mouth angrily set into an unhappy expression. "Listen to me well, Princess. You and your healing skills are valuable to the Akatsuki, especially now that the one who knew all of the basics is gone. You are powerful in your own right, or Leader-sama wouldn't have given you a position in his organization, nor would you have been allowed a field mission. The moment you return from your first successful mission as a full agent of Akatsuki, you will be given a ring and a position in the group," he gently reassured her of her own power, hoping it would help restore some of her previous poise.

He watched as the whirling emotions in her eyes began to calm. He heard her take a deep breath, then watched as the wall behind her eyes was rebuilt. Soon enough, she had her wits gathered and was as closed off from her emotions as the way Itachi had trained her to be.

It was almost frightening, the way her facade resembled the deceased Uchiha's when Kisame took the time to look down into her face. "That's better," he complimented her. "There's no reason to panic just because there are Hyuuga there. If they see you alarmed, then they will think you're still the weak heiress you were when you left them.

"If you're calm and collected, though, they may fear you. They'll know that you're not the person you once were, and they will be thrown into doubt about how much stronger you've gotten."

Kisame saw the steely resolve that entered her eyes even before she spoke, but he was proud when her voice was the most level, unhesitating tone that he'd ever heard from her. "You're right, Kisame-san. Let's do this. Now, what's the plan?"

"Well, we should make sure to get there before your father and his partner. If they meet up with their supplier, and then he disappears, then it will raise the alarm and we won't have enough time to escape without a fight. We don't want to get caught, remember? If we can infiltrate the building under henges, then the man won't even know you're a Hyuuga and we're both Akatsuki. The fact that his guards are Hyuuga makes this much easier, because you can attack him, and as long as they can't identify whose chakra killed him, the guards will be blamed. Can you let them take the blame for this?" He asked her upon noting that her face had gone absolutely ashen when he mentioned the guards taking the blame.

"I thought I could deal with this, but I'm not sure I can anymore. All of these guards are marked with the cursed seal, to keep people from stealing their Byakugan when they die. If they are blamed for the murder, then the seal will be activated and they will be in great pain as it causes their brains to disintegrate. It's the worst form of torture imaginable because there is no escape until the branded one dies, or the one activating the technique stops it." Hinata explained in a hesitating, halting voice that was so quiet, Kisame almost missed it.

Thinking on Akatsuki techniques and tortures, he realized that he had been wrong about the girl's clan. They were ruthless, and they were methodical, but they were not the family he had thought they were. The main branch were turncoats, people who couldn't even let their own family live freely. The seal wasn't to keep people from stealing secrets, it was for control! He would never tell Hinata the truth he had discovered; instead, he would ease her troubled mind about the branch members. However, the news he had realized made their mission a failure from the start, but it still needed to be completed.

"If Hiashi is here, he probably already knows we're here, also."

Hinata's eyes widened and she let out a silent gasp of air. "I can't believe I didn't realize that. That means we've already failed our mission, doesn't it?" she asked as tears began to blur her vision, obscuring Kisame's compassionate look that was very out of place on his shark-like face.

"Yes, but we still need to take our chances and kill the shipping leader. If we don't, the Hyuuga will continue to receive supplies, and they will only continue to grow stronger without you. As long as your father knows we are here, he won't blame your branch members, especially if he sees us enter the house. I'm pretty sure he already knows where we're headed," Kisame shared his suspicions.

"That just means we need to move quickly, then," Hinata stated, surprising the Hoshigaki with her quick acceptance and willingness to press forward in the face of defeat.

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Hiashi motioned for Shikamaru to stop as the sun began to set. "I can see rather well in the dark, but you can't, and there's no reason for us to rush through this," was his only response to the Nara's unasked question.

Said man grunted an acceptance, then sat his pack on the ground and began to unpack his sleeping roll. The Hyuuga leader did the same.

Inconspicuously, he was watching his daughter and the very large, shark-like man with her. When Hinata stopped and looked like she was beginning to lose her nerve, the man turned around and came back to her. Hiashi saw his daughter's shoulders move as she began to shrink into herself, and he knew she was reverting to the way he had always known her. I knew it was all a bluff. She was just faking her confidence in front of our ninja. He thought, feeling slightly disgusted with himself for feeling relieved at the realization.

When he reached down to the female Hyuuga, Hiashi tensed, thinking that the man, who was more than a foot taller than her, was going to hit his daughter.

Hiashi was nearly floored when the man – an Akatsuki, of all people! – took her chin in his hand, placed a finger to her lips, and started speaking to calm her down. He had never seen his daughter react so quickly to words before, and he began to wonder if he was wrong about her for all the years he had sent her away from him to train and grow up.

He watched as her shoulders straightened, and she stood with regained confidence in herself. The male Hyuuga wondered where it had come from, and what had been said to her.

By that point, though, camp had been set up, and he could no longer justify to Shikamaru the benefits of keeping his Byakugan active, so he was forced to cut the chakra to his eyes and join the younger man for a cold dinner.

The tents had been prepared with a mind to the cold weather, so each bid the other a quick good night as they crawled into their respective resting places.

It had been previously decided that the Hyuuga would take first watch, and since he had the Byakugan, he took full advantage of it. He stayed as warm as he could without a fire inside his tent, while still being able to keep watch on the outside world and my daughter and the murdering S-class ninja with her.

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Stumbling slightly on the icy tree branches beneath her feet, Hinata caught herself using chakra, then continued on behind her partner. The wind was gusting in their faces, and she was having trouble keeping up with the seemingly inexhaustible Hoshigaki.

After slipping again on her unsteady feet, she almost shrieked when she realized that she couldn't catch herself. Kisame must have heard the lack of footsteps behind him, because he quickly seized her hand.

Pulling her onto the branch beside him, he seemed to change his mind. Instead, he turned from her and knelt down, offering the chance for her to rest while he travelled for them. "I can't possibly! I don't want to inconvenience you and make it difficult for you to travel!" She responded to the silent offer indignantly.

He turned his head around to look at her with a skeptical look. "The only way you could inconvenience me is by continuing to travel on foot. You move too slowly, and I have to keep glancing over my shoulder to make sure you're still behind me," he pointed out, though not unkindly. "This way will be much quicker, you will get to rest a little, and it will be a great cover story. All you need to do is go ahead and put on your henge, and I'll do the same."

She nodded firmly, and a change washed over her body as she formed the necessary balance of spiritual energy, physical energy, and seals.

Her eyes turned a deep, velvety blue, almost akin to the night sky. Her hair faded from its typical midnight hue to a simpler, lighter brown color. She could almost hear Kisame's fascination as her skin darkened to a tan that made her look as though she belonged at the beach, rather than in the snow.

She watched his transformation with an equal amount of fascination. He had chosen to create a much less frightening look than he normally possessed. His yellow eyes darkened into a honey-brown color and his blue skin faded until it was pale and white, looking like he had spent little time in the sun. His hair, he left mostly alone, though he did lighten the color slightly in an effort to make it look dyed. The roots of his hair turned dark brown, as though the dye had been put in several weeks earlier.

Overall, neither would have recognized the other had they not seen each other's physical appearance change.

"Now, climb on my back and we'll make it to the house before your father," Kisame ordered her; she noticed that even his voice changed, and she made certain to memorize the sound of it for the mission.

The rest of the way to the shipper's home was uneventful, and Hinata was able to rest for a short while as the Hoshigaki carried her. Leaning her cheek against his shoulder, she allowed the motion of his travels to put her to sleep, knowing that was what he had meant for her to do.

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Hiashi nearly flew from his tent in a rage when he saw the two Akatsuki members change their physical forms. He should have known that they would do that, and acted accordingly.

He had allowed his love for his daughter to get in the way of his mission. Now, he was certain that the two of them were going to visit the Hyuuga's supplier, and that by the time he and Shikamaru made it to the man's house in the morning, he would be dead by one of their hands. The two of them were travelling too quickly for the Konoha ninja to catch up in time, even if they didn't have to clean up camp.

Sighing, he stood to wake Shikamaru and report his findings. He wouldn't specify who the two of them were, just that they were Akatsuki. Nodding to himself, he used his Byakugan to watch as his daughter was picked up by the almost six and a half foot man and carried the rest of the way through the trees at twice the speed they had been moving.

Indignant, he saw that his daughter had accepted the ride; he hadn't forced her to let him pick her up. He watched her lay her head on his shoulder, then saw the man smile at her in a brotherly way, almost in the way Neji had smiled at her in the months just before she abandoned Konoha.

He clenched his fist, turning away from the sight as he cut off the chakra from his eyes and left his tent. He woke Shikamaru, reported that he had seen two Akatsuki members in the distance, heading for the supplier's home, and the two quickly moved to pack up camp and hurry to their destination.

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Sasuke followed the cat, feeling like he was travelling across the country. "This would be so much quicker if you would stop second guessing me," the cat told him from where it stood, licking its paw in a very dignified manner.

"Just answer my question. Why is the scent doubling back toward Hi no Kuni, but veering northward. Why don't we just follow it to their hideout? That way, we'll know the Akatsuki's location, then we can find Hinata," Sasuke asked, beginning to get frustrated with the cat's inability to see his reasoning.

"Because you summoned me to find Hinata-chan. That's what we'll be doing, not going on a wild goose chase for some hideout that we probably won't find."

Sasuke growled at the cat, but relented. "Let's just find her, then," he sighed.

The cat let out a purr, meowed, and moved back toward the country from which they had come, though on a more northerly route.

(A/N: There ya go! The 25th chapter of MC, and it's still continuing. I'm honestly just as surprised as you guys are at the way things are turning out. This chapter gives a bit of insight into what Hiashi is learning about his daughter now that she's abandoned him and the rest of Konoha (even if he is quite a bit OOC, I still tried). Shikamaru was getting suspicious, but now Hiashi has told him about the two Akatsuki. Next chapter, they'll all be meeting up, and we'll see the fun when it happens. The only definite thing about this story right now is the ending, which I have firmly set in my mind. All the events leading up to that moment are just as much of a surprise to me as they are to you because I have no idea about them until I actually sit down and start typing them out. (: But that's okay, it's more fun this way because it's like I'm writing the story and reading it eagerly to find out what happens next, both at the same time! I hope you enjoyed this installment of Mysterious Captivation, and don't be shy to drop a review! Even the smallest review is a great encouragement to me and helps me keep these creative juices flowing!)