Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Authro's Notes: Finally! The continuation. I'm sorry this is late. My brain was consumed by read The Girl from Whirlpool (which you should read!) and I forgot to update. Yes, it's that good. Also, I didn't want to update until I had replied to all the reviews, and with my internet connection being as wonky as it is that took a while...

Thanks to all who reviewed!

oOo

"I'm not shy, I'm just quietly plotting your imminent doom." -Unknown

oOo

"I needed to think about it," Naruto mimicked in a high falsetto, weaving in and out of traffic on his way home. He laid on his horn when a semi tried to cut him off, and nearly got his bumper clipped for his trouble. "I just wanted to make sure."

He punctuated that word by screeching onto the off ramp and sweeping around the corner, accelerating down the bright street four miles to home.

"You haven't even apologized," Naruto snarled, slamming his car door and stomping into the house. He slammed the garage door behind him too, shaking the wall. "Well I'm not sorry, and she's not going to get an apology that—"

"Not sorry for what?" Sasuke asked, straightening from his perusal of the meager contents of the fridge. He opened a yogurt—a yogurt!— as if everything was calm and natural and good in the world.

Jerk. Stupid Sasuke. Stupid yogurt. Stupid world.

With a put-upon sigh, Sasuke set his yogurt aside and leaned against the fridge. "What happened?"

"Hinata," Naruto snarled. What more explanation did anyone need? The woman couldn't even explain herself! "Stupid Hinata."

"Hn," Sasuke grunted. "How long did you drive around before coming home?"

"A few hours," Naruto admitted, stomping into the dining room. He threw himself into a chair, laid his head on the table, and glared at the wood. The grain made weird patterns. They had a weird table. They should get a new table.

"The time frame fits then I guess," Sasuke said, taking a seat next to him. "I've already heard the run down on your little tet'a'tet, so don't bore me with details."

Naruto looked up, outraged, fully ready to rip Sasuke's tongue out, to see a piece of thick, expensive paper with gold cursive script dangling in front of his face.

"Hinata got out of your car after saying she didn't need your protection. The system you have set up to make sure Orochimaru doesn't get her snapped after she refused the protection you gave her. This came twenty minutes ago. They've had her longer than that."

Naruto's brain kicked into overdrive, crunching up the information and shelling out the necessary bits. Protection broken. Hinata vulnerable. Orochimaru has her.

I'm going to kill him.

"This is a trap you know," Sasuke said, tucking the note in his pocket and standing to follow Naruto out to the car. "They're going to try and kill you."

"You coming or not?" Naruto asked shortly, glaring at Sauske over the roof of the car.

Sasuke smiled that smile that had the Vikings pee their pants and run in the other direction. "Oh, I'm definitely coming. Wouldn't miss this for the world."

oOo

Hinata's bare feet slapped painfully against the cold concrete as she ran, skirt hitched up around her hips so that it wouldn't get caught on the tumbled pieces of metal and rock clogging the floor and dripping from the walls. The only light came from the occasional spill of moonlight and streetlamps from dirtied windows. Many of the windows were broken, leaving sharp shards of glass to add another treacherous element to the already tricky terrain. Already she had a few cuts on her feet, but she only understood them in the terms that it was leaving a blood trail for Orochimaru to follow.

When he deigned to follow. He was herding her as surely as a shepherd herded his sheep, popping up with his tongue lolling out of his mouth and screaming boo! whenever he felt she needed to turn. She didn't understand how he kept getting ahead of her. Or how when she was running so quickly, her breath hammering as hard as her heart, she could only hear him walking behind her and he never seemed out of breath when he stepped in front of her.

She looked over her shoulder, and there he was, stepping over a fallen bit of concrete like he had all the time on the world, yellow eyes trained on her. He licked his lips.

She turned forward again, setting her shoulders. So he was herding her, and every step she took brought her closer. She might as well turn and face him now. The one chasing her may be some kind of illusion, to make sure she didn't turn around, so that the real one could pop up in front of her. She knew the one that popped up was real. She had run into him too many times for him not to be.

She rubbed at one arm in remembered disgust. He had licked her.

The dark shadow of a doorway was ahead. Another chance to steer her somewhere. She scanned the ground for a weapon, any kind of weapon, and chanced upon a thin steel rod that looked light enough to lift. She snatched it up as she ran, straight to the door, and at the last moment she doubled back and swung with all her might.

It connected with a resounding clang against Orochimaru's hand. He had closed the gap between them in the time it had taken her to pick up the pipe and turn. He squeezed, and the metal shrieked in protest as it was crumpled into the shape of his fingers.

What kind of freak is he?

Hinata jerked back, and he let her keep the rod with a chuckle. He nodded to the door behind her. "Through there. That's the way out."

She didn't dare glance behind her. What if it was some kind of old furnace, or just a black hole? What if had someone hiding in there, ready to bash her head and set her up for another run from a different part of the factory? Is that what they meant to do with her? Chase her around like a rat in a maze until she was too tired to move? What would they do then?

"Through there," Orochimaru repeated, putting his hands on her shoulder and turning her around. He shoved her, and she stumbled toward the door. Now that she had stopped running, she realized how tired she was, how much her feet ached. "Go on."

What choice do I have? Hinata thought. Maybe if she caught him by surprise, but hurrying in and finding a place to hide…

She ran, stumbling, and once again his laughter followed her as she jogged into a room even bigger than her original holding cell, but cluttered with long metal assembly lines and a tower of boxes along one wall. Other bits of machinery she couldn't name were jumbled all together in here. Lots of hiding places.

She hurried to the nearest plausible one, an old air conditioning unit with the grate torn off. It looked like a good place to catch her breath.

She climbed inside, and tried to calm her breathing, listening. He had given her a five second head start again. She could hear him come into the room, leather shoes clicking on the floor and humming something.

She was pretty sure it was the Darth Vader theme song, but she was afraid if she thought about that too closely she would break down into hysterical giggles.

"Hide and seek," Orochimaru mused, moving around the room. She could see him as a faint shadow on the far side, moving slowly and pausing only to let his tongue taste the air.

Like a snake. She shivered.

"Come out come out wherever you are!" Orochimaru sing-songed. Something brushed against Hinata's cheek, and she froze. It had felt like… scales…

She slid her eyes to the side, trying to see what was touching her in the darkness, and saw a slitted yellow eye half the size of her own staring back from not a foot away.

The snakes tongue rasped against the corner of her mouth, and it's tail slithered across her back.

Hinata screamed, not caring that Orochimaru heard it, pushing herself away and smacking her head on the metal. The snake hissed as it dropped to the floor. It opened its mouth, fangs sharp and glistening. Hinata screeched again, and hit it on the head with her fist as hard as she could. Then she grabbed it by the tail, thinking nothing but that she had to get it away from her.

She snapped the snake like a whip, getting at least its head away from her, but to her great surprise there was a popping noise, and the wriggling body went limp. The snake's head had snapped off, and blood spattered against the side of the air duct. She could see its glazed eye, staring at her from outside, neatly severed from its body.

With one last screech, Hinata threw the body away and scrambled out of the tight metal box, climbing on top. There could be more snakes in there. Even Orochimaru had to be better than snakes.

Almost immediately, she was proven wrong as a thick tail batted her down from atop the box, and sent her sprawling across the floor. Something cut her arm, and hot blood flowed from the gaping wound. She half-cried out, but cut it off with a jagged sob.

She crawled away one-handed, clutching her arm to her chest. Something slithered next to her, and she rolled just as the tail of the biggest snake she had ever seen slammed into where she had been.

With an eye larger than Hinata's body, the snake coiled away for more than a hundred feet, its dark scales seeming to absorb the light rather than reflect it. Its head rose high above her, and its fangs were easily as long as her legs.

"Well," it said, in Orochimaru's voice. "I didn't think you would kill one of Naga's children."

The snake is talking to me, Hinata thought. In Orochimaru's voice. And Orochimaru isn't around which means Orochimaru just turned into an impossibly large reptile. …That's it. I've snapped, I've gone insane. I'm going to be shoved in a white coat and strapped to a table where they'll do horrible shock therapy to help my delusions…

"Stay still," said the Orochimaru snake patronizingly. It lowered its head, opening its jaws wide.

At that moment, Hinaat remembered the really horrible fact that snakes ate their prey whole and then let their stomach juices dissolve them. Dead, that would be bad enough. Alive…

She screamed as the mouth descended, and at the same time there was a screech of tires on road and the wall exploded inward. A second later a car slammed into the snake, sending it rolling.

"Hinata!"

Naruto.

Hinata didn't think she had ever seen a sweeter sight than Naruto jumping out of that car and running to her. Didn't think she'd ever heard a more joyful noise than the terrified yell of her name as fell to his knees in front of her. Never felt anything more perfect than when he pulled her into his arms and held her.

"Everything's going to be okay," he said, smoothing her hair from her face tenderly. "He's not going to hurt you anymore."

"You came," Hinata said, and honestly nothing else mattered to her more at that moment than the fact that Naruto had come to get her. She didn't care how he had found out or how they were going to get out, all that mattered was that he was here. "Oh, Naruto. I'm so glad to see you. I love you, and I feel really bad about earlier, and I love you, and I'm really glad you're here."

"What?" Naruto asked with a shaky smile. "It only took a giant snake about to devour you to admit that? I should have stopped by a pet store ages ago."

Hinata laughed, or maybe she cried. Little flecks were beginning to bounce around in her eyes. She felt disconnected and cold, exhausted and hurt—exultant. Naruto was here.

There was flash and a bang in the background, and she thought Sasuke might have grown wings, but that didn't matter either, and then everything drifted away like she was a balloon and all her strings had been cut. Up, up, up, into the night sky where everything was darkness and tiny points of light. Higher still, up and up and up, until everything faded away.

oOo

Waking up was a miserable experience.

Hinata's head ached, her legs ached, her arms and feet burned… in fact, it seemed the only part of her that didn't hurt was her fingernails and the tip of her nose. She also had a nasty taste in her mouth, and she could smell the bitter tang of blood and sweat.

Why was she like this? She struggled to remember. She had been… kidnapped? That sounded right. She had escaped, but someone had seen her and come after her and then… she had fallen? Was that how she had hurt herself? She couldn't remember.

What she did remember was that Naruto had come to rescue her. That part was hazy, though. He had driven through the wall and hit the snake—no, the man—why had she thought of a snake? Especially a snake that was well over a hundred feet long and could talk…

She knew that was impossible, but something inside of her insisted it was real.

"Hey, are you awake?" Naruto asked. Hinata blinked open her eyes and smiled at him. He beamed at her, and settled into a chair beside her bed. "How are you feeling?"

"I hurt," she croaked honestly. "But it's not too bad. Could I have some Motrin?"

"Oh, yeah, sure," Naruto said, scrambling around for a few moments. He handed her a glass of water and four pills. Hinata downed them in one swallow.

"So… how much do you remember?" Naruto asked, taking her hand in both of his, running his thumb back and forth across her wrist.

"Not much," she said. "It's all kind of fuzzy. I remember being kidnapped, waking up chained to a pipe, but I escaped and had to run and then… it gets really fuzzy then, and after that I remember you. You came to get me."

"And you admitted you loved me," Naruto reminded her. "No take-backs."

"That part," Hinata said. "I remember perfectly."

Naruto's smile was blinding, and as he kissed her Hinata had the uncomfortable reminder that she was, well, gross.

"Um," she said, pulling back. "Naruto. Well, that is…" How was she supposed to tell him that she was pretty sure she smelled bad, and tasted bad, and that she would really like a shower? And breakfast. Breakfast sounded divine.

"What?" Naruto asked blankly.

"I kind of need… well, a shower wouldn't be…"

"Oh!" he exclaimed. "Right! I'll bet you're hungry too, huh? Granny is fixing pancakes, I think. Are you sure you can get up?"

"Yes," Hinata said. Granny's? Is that where I am? His grandmother's house? Why in the world would he take me to his grandmother's house? She shifted under the covers, and blushed at a sudden and horrifying realization.

"Naruto," she said, trying to keep her voice steady and conciliatorily. "Where are my clothes?"

He stared at her for a moment, his eyes flicked down to the covers and back several times, and his mouth gaped. She waited patiently, but no sound came out.

"I think you broke his brain," someone announced drily. A blond woman, who couldn't have been any older than her late thirties, flounced into the room and plopped herself on the bed. She wore sweats and a bathrobe, her hair in two girlish pigtails, her large breasts all but falling out of the flowered cotton. "Hi, I'm Tsunade. I'm your doctor."

"Oh!" Hinata said. "I hadn't realized… thank you. I'm sorry, I'm Hinata Hyuuga. It's nice to meet you."

Naruto seemed to finally recover, and scowled at Tsunade. "Hi, Granny."

"Granny?" Hinata asked.

At the same time Tsunade snapped: "Don't call me that you little brat!"

A quick scuffle ensued, which Naruto lost, and Tsunade kicked him out of the room, slamming the door in his face and flashing a victory sign.

Hinata watched silently, trying not to smile and failing. Tsunade quickly wiped that off her face by bullying Hinata out of bed and into a shower, leaving a set of clothes on the counter and a warning not to strain her arms too much. Her feet were mostly fine now, just a little tender, but the stitches in her arm shouldn't be put under too much strain.

Hinata obeyed, carefully unwrapping her arm and showering. The hot water felt fantastic against her tender skin, and the soap helped scrub away the nasty mess she had become.

By the time she emerged from the shower she felt like a new woman, clean and fresh without any of the terrors of yesterday prowling over her shoulder. Breakfast was even better. The pancakes were the best she had ever tasted.

But even surrounded by the light atmosphere of Tsunade ragging on Sasuke, and Naruto laughing, and being clean and safe and fed, Hinata couldn't shake the feeling that she had forgotten something important—that there was something the rest of the table wasn't telling her.

But then Naruto was leading her into the living room and snuggling her into his lap, and Hinata happily forgot everything else except the feel of Naruto's arms around her.

oOo

Author's Notes: And thus we see that changing a person's memory is not only unethical and cruel, but also extrememly annoying!

I hope you liked this, but if you didn't I want to know. So... please review!