"So you've stopped bickering and followed us… Good." Neji nodded in bitter approval upon seeing Kiyomi and Meiko enter the abandoned and gloomy hospital building. These three clearly have been waiting for Team Hokage for they had extra time to enter the hospital and find their supplies and yet they still hung out around the entrance.
"Do not fret…" Rock Lee winced in pain, still hanging on his teammates' shoulders. "I know that it felt like abandoning your teammate and there's nothing that feels more despicable, but Naruto expressed his wish to protect you and sacrifice his participation for the team. It would have been far crueler to deny his request and have all three of you be eliminated…"
"Can we hurry up, find the medical supplies and get out of here?" Tenten looked around with a distressed expression. Evidently, she did not enjoy this unsanctioned visit to an abandoned hospital building on the verge of the evening with no electricity.
"If we've come here, we might as well traverse through the hospital and leave on the western wing exit. That way we'll cover a decent handful of blocks of the street indoors. We've considered using the hospital for a similar purpose before we were attacked." Kiyomi suggested.
"That sounds smart." Neji agreed. "Unless, of course, you wish to go back and rescue Naruto right after taking care of yourselves."
"Yeah… That's what we'd rather do." Meiko nodded.
Kiyomi continued to hang her face angled at the floor as if she tried to peek through the layer of blood clotted over her closed and wounded eyes. Her silence brought up implications that Meiko didn't even like to entertain.
"No! We're going back! If it was Mana or me, you'd go back!" Meiko lifted Kiyomi up by her collar and shook her a good couple of times in the air.
"For you - sure…" Kiyomi muttered.
"Hmph… It's a pity that I've never had the opportunity to work with you, Kiyomi, was it?" Neji looked up at the scene with a smirk. "It's rare to see someone of your age that knows how things get done. This is just the kind of mindset this exam is trying to cement and test in its competitors. It must not be your first…"
"That's cruel, Neji…" Tenten objected with hesitation to her voice. It was not tough to make out that arguing with her de facto team leader was not something that this young lady did often. "It's true that they don't know if Naruto can even survive such odds but…"
"Please, it is unlikely that these clowns will go for the kill." Neji snickered.
"No, Meiko-chan is right!" Rock Lee looked up with a swollen right eye, meeting Meiko's own determined gaze. "If there's one ninja capable of surviving such odds, it is indeed Naruto!"
"That is true, he does seem to be difficult to put down…" Neji closed his eyes in a solemn note of his teammate's point before shrugging. "Either way, that is not our problem to work out. We will gladly work together to uncover the medical supplies with you guys, whether you choose to return and save Naruto or work with us further, that is all on you."
Meiko and Kiyomi nodded, they didn't do so in sync, given how Kiyomi couldn't quite make out when exactly Meiko was nodding. Out there on the field, she could make out darkness and light, even some vague human shapes. Here, she was completely blind. Then again, pretty much anyone was operating under these circumstances.
"Neji, you're a Hyuuga, right? Could you please scan this building for chakra signatures? It is likely that other teams might have stumbled here or some party of hunters decided to camp here and set a trap inside a well-known landmark of the village." Kiyomi requested.
Neji placed his hands together in a hand seal and closed his eyes. "Byakugan!" he chanted out while activating his own ocular technique and running a quick visual scan through the building, penetrating walls and different manmade barriers with great ease.
"I see a massive chakra signature three floors up, in the resting ward wing. It's oddly familiar but… No, it couldn't be… Naruto…" Neji mumbled.
"N-Naruto!?" Meiko took a few quick steps. "We have to confirm that! Are you sure it isn't just a hunter using Transformation Jutsu?"
"It isn't. As I've said, the chakra signature is considerable enough to match Naruto's. Also, his Nature Affinities seem to be the exact same as Naruto's. The signature seems distinct in some ways but the similarities are striking." Neji replied. "Whether it is your Naruto or a different Naruto, I am not sure, but it would seem unlikely for another Naruto to be in the exact same place. We've lost visual on him a few minutes ago, it isn't entirely impossible that he might have given his enemy the slip."
"Can you look back and make-out Naruto's signature in the main street?" Kiyomi wondered. Neji looked back.
"Yes. It is still there… Overflowing with chakra, straining even his vast chakra network. Blinding almost. I could make such a signature out from even far larger distance than the Byakugan's maximum range." Neji replied.
"Then it is not our Naruto. Even more, it might be a trap set by a hunter. From what we have learned Naruto is a well-known ninja in his universe. We are best to tread carefully and avoid contact with him." Kiyomi surmised.
Tenten turned to Neji who closed his eyes and canceled out his Byakugan before nodding in agreement.
"It is rare that Neji finds himself in agreement with someone else." Rock Lee smirked before wincing in pain again, struggling and wriggling in the grasp of his teammates to clutch for his aching ribs.
"Watch it, Lee!" Neji grunted, irritated.
"We better hurry up and find those supplies," Tenten stated the obvious. "Neither of us is a medical ninja, I wonder how useful these medical supplies can truly be…"
"It doesn't matter, I'd imagine that if the cube has recreated Konoha as it was, the items located in the hospital should be replicated. Given the appearance of the Hokage Mountain, I would imagine that the village copy is based on our version of Konoha. That means that there should be food pills in the warehouse and in just about every ward." Kiyomi explained her reasoning.
"Food pills? What use could those be to us?" Tenten placed one of her free hands by her hip.
"I see that food pills in your universe work a tad different compared to ours…" Meiko smiled. "You see, food pills can accelerate the natural bodily processes. Blue food pills can make you recover used chakra quicker, green, red and yellow ones can give a jolt to how fast a body heals."
"In that case, we better look for them quick." Neji reacted to this revelation with the same cool vibe he gave out to pretty much anything anyone said. "I would normally suggest stacking up on them but I would imagine that they have some adverse side effects?"
"They do. If you take too many of them too quick in between one another, they can break your body and shut your organs down just as well as they can restore its integrity." Kiyomi nodded. "Taking an indigo one is always a danger and should be done only to protect the patient from imminent death, a green one a day is all that one should take. Two yellows in a couple of days should be just fine and you can be a bit more liberal with red ones. Black ones are comparable to indigo ones but aren't as dangerous, may as well rub your wounds with black caviar though…"
"That is useful information." Neji nodded in gratitude without having it in him to actually thank Team Hokage. "I will keep my Byakugan active and stay on the lookout. It might strain my eyes some so I'd appreciate a blue and red pill if you can find some."
"Wait, we can't split up." Meiko objected.
"It would go faster but… You're right. There's no use in me keeping my eyes open if I'm not around you. Fine, let's go together." Neji nodded.
The two teams proceeded through the entryway hallway. They hadn't even begun to consider the wide array of bumps in the road they'd hit with the entire hospital being abandoned. Neji approached the elevator and pressed the button a couple of times before the dreadful silence reminded him that the power was out. Meiko approached the door that led into the access stairway but the doors refused to cooperate.
Just as Meiko stepped back to ram the door with her shoulder, Tenten stopped her and laid Lee down by the wall. The girl in pink kneeled down by the door and checked one of the multiple pouches she had by her waist, pulling out a couple of lockpicks. Even in complete darkness, operating solely through the noises that her tools made and the subtle dance of resistances and further movement, trial and error, Tenten unlocked the door in a shroud of silence that made one hear their own heartbeat.
"I thought you guys had it memorized – noise means hunters on your tail." Tenten scolded Meiko.
"The entire thing about us being able to fight the hunters was a trap…" Rock Lee lamented while Tenten and Neji picked him back up and pulled him through the doorway while Meiko held the door open on the other side with her foot.
"Yes. They were quite deceitful to throw the fact out that we could fight any hunter in here with a possibility of success, as long as we're skilled enough. Every genin considers themselves skilled enough, every team thinks they are better than the average. Naturally, most of us would be able to beat those hunters given their limited exposure to this universe's factors but… Fighting, the racket, it attracts more and more hunters, fighting is a ceaseless cycle and while our stamina and chakra are boosted here, they are far from infinite." Neji grit his teeth. Something told Meiko that Team Guy learned this the hard way.
"Hmm… There is another team of genin in this building." Neji stopped in the middle of the ascent and examined the upper levels with his impressive eyesight which even walls proved to be no obstacle to.
"Yeah… There sure is…" a voice that didn't sound like it belonged either to Team Hokage or Team Guy confirmed Neji's information while the baffled pair of teams turned for the corner of the ceiling on the second floor. From a dark patch in the ceiling, both feet attached to it, utilizing the shadowy corner to its fullest, shimmered a pair of red eyes.
"That voice…" Kiyomi growled. "Naruto!"
"Tsk, how did you sneak up on us!?" Neji grunted, defiant of his failure to keep up with the enemy, even though his Byakugan has been otherwise occupied for a brief time just before this new player emerged on the board.
"You've only made sure to follow the real me, the main one. This entire building is full of me, you thought you could keep up with me with those eyes of yours, just because you could track that other me but you've never met anything like me before." Naruto dropped down from the ceiling and crossed his arms over his chest.
"So you're not our Naruto then?" Kiyomi asked for a confirmation.
"Something's wrong, look at his eyes…" Meiko let go of Kiyomi and gently placed her injured and blinded teammate behind her, standing with her broad shoulders and chest buffed out to protect Kiyomi at all costs. Meiko was right to focus on this select feature of this new version of Naruto for the whites of this Naruto weren't white at all, instead, his eyes were like black coals with only the irises standing out with their macabre, red gleam.
"You're disappointing me, Meiko…" this darker version of Naruto proclaimed in a hollow and sad tone. "You were one of the few I kinda liked here. Here you are though, judging me like the rest of them. So I've got different eyes, so what!?"
Without much more warning, Naruto lunged at the whole group, his hands pressed by his side and his claws bent out, ready to swipe and claw everyone's eyes out in an instant. Meiko jumped up, letting the chakra seals in her boots flare up and throw her over the entire group just in the right degree of elevation so she could meet Dark Naruto halfway and block his strike by entrapping his entire arm. The chakra jets in her boots changed direction, blasting flares of chakra to the right so that Meiko could spin and fling Naruto right through the sidewall of the building. Once the clone of this dark, nightmarish Naruto popped, she looked back at the rest.
"Move! Naruto receives intelligence from his clones once they disperse…" she warned the rest. Kiyomi might have known that but this version of Team Guy may have been too young to be familiar with this fact.
"What was wrong with Naruto!?" Rock Lee cried out with curiosity that rivaled the desperation he felt. "Why did he attack us? What have we done to scorn him?"
"I don't think that was our Naruto at all, or any other version of Naruto, for that matter. This Naruto was a hunter." Kiyomi declared.
"Hmm… Back then, during the battle, Naruto's eyes did flash red and his facial features turned almost bestial. This Naruto also had crimson eyes but his chakra… Everything else felt so different, so dark!" Neji bit his lip, even if he did not consider Naruto much of a challenge normally, it didn't take a people person to realize that Neji wouldn't mind never meeting another clone of this Dark Naruto ever again.
"I cannot even track his clones at all! It's like they're not comprised of chakra at all…" Neji added to the complete handbag of troubles.
"In any case, we cannot go back now, we need those medical food pills." Meiko focused on the dash ahead and forced herself through the nearest ward. The redhead rushed to the first bed in her way and ripped open the drawer to check it for food pills. It had a whole bunch of someone's personal items but no food pills whatsoever.
"Hey, hey… You don't look like you're even trying anymore…" Naruto's voice, twisted by some unruly emotion corrupting his entire essence, informed both teams that another Naruto clone was blocking their exit.
"Also, to answer your previous whining, Neji, we really aren't made of just chakra," Team Hokage and Team Guy looked up at the ceiling of the hospital ward they burst into only to see it littered with Naruto clones, all showing their canines and clutching their fists for a charge at the enemy. "We're made out of hatred!" one of them declared while the entire bunch charged all at once.
Neji placed his foot forward and tried turning his body around but realized he was still holding Lee, which prohibited him from performing the move. Kiyomi felt a numbing sensation in her jaw, she could feel the rough floor underneath her and the taste of blood in her mouth didn't come until a bit later, when the numbness went away and she could check if she hadn't lost any of her teeth from the punch or kick, she was unsure which, she took from the attack of Dark Naruto clones filling the building.
Kiyomi's hand raced across the objects around her, looking for something sharp to protect herself with, she wasn't sure if the enemy was standing above her, for all she knew, Naruto could have been sneering at her with a kunai knife in hand, ready to plunge it down and without her sight it would have been tough to measure out the exact moment to augment her body to withstand the attack. Even then, she may have withstood fifty stabs with just shallow scratches but her augmentations would have broken eventually.
There was racket everywhere, were the others fighting? Kiyomi's hand stumbled onto a bed cover and, without thinking, she pulled it over her. Then she realized – she had a bed cover over her! Hoping that the smell of blood from her own busted nose and cracked lip won't make her belch underneath the thick, autumnal bed cover, Kiyomi weaved a hand seal and performed the Cloak of Invisibility Jutsu to disguise her from the enemy.
The room was dark, she knew that much, even if one clone had his eyes on Kiyomi, they'd have had trouble making out where she'd gone in all this chaos, plus, it wasn't like Naruto was the brightest person out of the bunch. If this nightmarish force that corrupted him could have picked a person as its champion, there were some advantages that it picked Naruto.
Kiyomi wasn't sure for how long she laid underneath the cover. She tried reaching out for the others with the mental link, it wasn't too difficult. Meiko's mind was right there. Once the connection was established, Kiyomi took a moment to just bask in the warmth of Meiko's inner world and not say a thing. Until she said anything, Meiko wouldn't even know that the two were connected.
"Where are you guys?" Kiyomi wondered mentally. Finally gathering the bravery to think about anything but how sickening breathing in nothing but carbon dioxide mixed with a puny stench of her own blood underneath the covers was.
"Where were you? We bolted from the room, didn't want to dispel the clones because that'd have told Dark Naruto where we were." Meiko's reply rung in Kiyomi's head, judging from the volume of her thoughts, the blacksmith had been worried.
"I camouflaged on the floor when the clones attacked. I'm… I'm not sure if it's safe to come out…" Kiyomi tried to hide the fact that she was about to throw up and beginning to feel claustrophobic underneath the bed cover but the possible nightmares wearing familiar faces outside frightened her far more. Tried being the keyword since thoughts had the tendency to shake and quiver even more noticeably than one's own voice when they were panicking.
"Stay down then, there are a bunch of clones all over that wing, they're all rushing there after the clone I destroyed. I'm coming back for you!" her teammate's reply rung loud and adamant. Meiko and her determination…
"N-No… It's too dangerous. Make it out of here. Somehow… We didn't go back for Naruto, don't come back after me. I'll… I'll find a way to heal my eyes and then I'll join you." Kiyomi issued a different order. Her shaking hand crawled up from scratching at the floor to clutching at her chest to try and soothe her racing heart. She signed a check with her thoughts that her ass might not have been able to cash. The young woman turned over on her front, careful so that she didn't disturb her camouflaging bed cover and letting it stay on her back.
Blind, surrounded by swarms of enemies wearing familiar faces of a teammate she chose to abandon until the more immediate mission was completed. There were better odds, there were less disturbing ways to go too but this was her life. Kiyomi bit her lip and reached her hand out to feel the floor underneath the hospital bed out. She'd need to examine the area in front of her before she could crawl. Even if she was invisible for the moment, there were Dark Naruto clones everywhere, at any point she might have made too much sound or accidentally grabbed one of them by their heels and…
"Just shut up and keep moving…" Kiyomi thought, making sure to keep it to herself. "Naruto is fighting to reconnect with us, I won't just keep laying down and let Meiko leave me behind either."