Dlisclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
They had been practicing for two hours and Hinata started to feel a little bit tired. At first she could not believe that the other said yes when she asked him shyly if he would be so kind and became her training partner.
"Are you okay, Hinata?" Naruto asked, jumping down in front of her with his 12 clones behind himself.
"Yes, just a little bit thirsty," the young heiress of the Hyuuga clan said. As an answer, Naruto grinned at her and motioned towards a billet. As she was watching the other thirteen years old, a question popped up in her head. "Naruto-kun, why are you holding yourself back?"
"What do you mean?" Naruto asked, cocking his head to the side. Hinata blushed a little bit, but pushed back the urge of playing with her fingers. The sudden silence made the boy more curious.
"You see, Shino-kun and Kiba-kun always attack me with their strongest techniques and I know that shadow clones are not your most powerful jutsu," Hinata started talking so fast that Naruto had to lean closer to understand every word from her babbling. "Please, use your strongest jutsu against me, Naruto-kun!"
Naruto's eyes widened. He knew Hinata was strong. Hell, the fight between her and those bug users was one of the coolest fights he had ever seen, but when he imagined his Rasengan and what would happen if Hinata could not block it properly…
"I can not do that!" He protested, jumping up from his seat. Seeing Hinata's questioning look, he took a deep breath. "I can not do that, because you are Hinata." Hinata did not answer, only stood up and walked away into the direction of the village. "Huh? Hinata!" Naruto shouted after her, feeling quite helpless.
"Well, you really screwed this up, kid," he heard a too familiar voice.
"ERO-SENNIN! Where have you been and what the hell are you doing here?" Saying the young ninja was angry would be an understatement.
"It is not important where have I been right now, but what have you done," Jiraiya said, poking the middle of Naruto's chest. "Say, Naruto, do you think Hinata's weak?" The vigorousness with which Naruto shook his head made Jiraiya's mouth twitch.
"Of course not! Hinata is one of the coolest people I know! We had a mission together a few weeks ago and you should have seen it, Ero-sennin! She beat a really huge killer bee totally by herself! It was incredible!" Naruto's cheeks became red because of the excitement.
"Did you tell her that?" The question got the young boy off guard. "You see, the only thing Hinata had heard that how weak and useless she is and she is unworthy to be the leader of her clan." Jiraiya saw as Naruto's eyes narrowed in anger. "With your declaration about you did not want to attack her because she was Hinata, you made her feel that you think she is weak as well."
Hinata was sitting at Ichiraku's, playing with her food. She still could not believe it. The most important person in her life called her weak. So, his words about how incredible she was were lies too? She perked her head up when she heard her name being shouted.
"HINATA!" Hinata stepped out of the restaurant, finding herself face to face with a panting Naruto. She did not have time to ask anything, because the boy jumped to her and grabbed her shoulders. "I am sorry, Hinata, I did not mean to hurt your feelings!"
"Naruto-kun, wha-"
"You are one of the kindest people I have ever known and I think you are really strong too! The reason why I do not want to use my strongest technique against you is," Naruto rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment, "my Rasengan is really strong and I can not want to imagine what would happen with you if you would not be capable of blocking it." He took another deep breath. "You are important to me, Hinata and I do not want to lose you because of something like that."
If Naruto could not handle his feelings a few minutes ago, you could imagine how surprised he was seeing a passed out Hinata in his arms.