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ᙃꙆᖇƮƳ ᒐꙆƮƮᒐᙓ ᔑᙓᙅᖇᙓƮ	By : Sessakag Category: Naruto > Het - Male/Female > Naruto/Hinata Views: 8443 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: Don't own Naruto, just this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter Three
Team 8

January 14, 2020
They broke through the outer parameter of Shino’s kikaichū smoke screen, then sprinted into the dense surrounding forest in the direction of their abandoned camp.
They leapt soundlessly from branch to branch, using the shadowy under canopy of the tall tress as cover, and bounding silently across vibrant, crisp grass when sturdy tree limbs ran thin. Their impromptu escape had left her no time to dress, or dry herself, and the speed at which they ran chilled the wind passing over her wet skin.
Hinata barely felt the cooling temperature, or the uncomfortable pebbling of her damp flesh.
It was less than negligible compared to the maddening throbbing in her arms.
She likened sensation to a little slice of hell, reminiscent of millions of searing pin needles burrowing inside her nerve endings, ripping and tearing and gnashing her sensitive sensation receptors over and over again.
She suffered in silence.
Gritting her teeth in a desperate bid to stifle any stray sounds of hurt; fiercely grateful Shino was a few steps ahead of her and couldn’t see the grimace painting her features as pain beat an agonizing rhythm across her tenketsu.
A second wave raked across her forearms, then gripped her biceps in a vice that nearly left her breathless.
She pressed her lips tightly together as her muscles knotted, but forced herself to smooth her features into what she hoped was her normal expression of polite detachment.
That she struggled this much to mask her torment was shameful in itself.
Hinata was no stranger to holding her composure in the grips of pain.
She’d had her body trained to absorb, process and function beneath the most grueling of punishing conditions.
Her mind hardened and forged to endure the most brutal of hurts.
And yet, to this date, she knew of no way to do the same for her tenketsu and keirakukei.
They remained vulnerable.
Sensitive.
Weak.
Another surge bloomed, spreading across her slender shoulders.
Sinking pearly whites into her bottom lip, Hinata reached for one of the fundamental pillars of self-control.
Distraction.
Clutching her clothes tight to her naked bosom, Hinata forced her thoughts to the man that interrupted the late night rehab that would have mitigated a sizable amount of her current misery.
Naruto Uzumaki.
He had changed.
Significantly.
Keeping abreast of the many milestones the blond reached or surpassed, even before their initial encounter three years ago, was an important part of her duties as a shinobi.
Naruto Uzumaki was the only child of the current Uzukage, after all.
And, unbeknownst to many, one of Uzushiogakure’s greatest, most feared weapons.
Made a human container to the universally dreaded Kyuubi on the day of his birth, Uzumaki presented a significant threat to Konoha and it’s allies, and many would go so far to say, to the world at large.
The power of a Jinchuuriki was truly a terrible thing to encounter.
Hinata hadn’t yet left her mother’s womb when the first successful invasion of Uzushiogakure took place, however, the event had been apart of her education, and while this was commonly known to be the catalyst of the current war, few knew of the monster Uzushio unleashed that fateful night.
Hinata had been told.
In graphic detail, in terms of the sheer number of casualties not on the side of Uzushio, she had been told.
After the second invasion, Hinata had seen for herself the horror that was a Jinchuuriki in the enraged, grief stricken Kushina Uzumaki.
An unbidden chill swept her spine.
What she felt that night could only be described as pure, unadulterated power steeped in malice.
Naruto Uzumaki held the same potential of destruction, and while his mother was bound to remain within the walls of the village, he would not have such restraints.
Deploying a powerhouse of that caliber to the battlefield would turn the tides of the war in mere days.
Fortunately for Konoha, for the Allied Shinobi Forces, the possibility of an active, mobile Jinchuuriki had remained just that for two decades, a possibility.
While Hinata had grown up training every moment of her childhood, preparing for the front-lines of war, for the underbelly of shinobi life, the newly anointed Jinchuuriki had quickly gained a reputation as an infamous prankster within the Village Hidden in Whirlpools during his.
As a young girl, Hinata remembered her father’s disgust as rumors of the ‘demon brat’s’ disgraceful behavior reached them.
How he’d go off on a tangent when discussing the state of the ‘Jinchuuriki problem’ during his intelligence briefings with her.
Many of these moments were seared into her mind; memories of her father turning to her following one of his tirade about the Uzumaki, the revulsion glinting in his eyes as he spoke, she knew, was personally constructed for her, as he informed her, in no uncertain terms, that her own cowardly behavior was no better than Uzushio’s monster.
‘Clownery seems to be a common flaw in this generation. The Jinchuuriki’s pathetic sire may tolerate such shameful behavior, but I will not have it from you, girl.’
The tales had only worsened as time wore on, scaling up in severity as the Jinchuuriki grew from a prank happy child into a rebellious teen, angry at the world.
That was who Hinata met three years ago.
The hardheaded, impulsive and easily enraged adolescent rumored to try the once thought endless patience of his father, the ever calm, ever magnanimous Minato Namikaze.
The sloppy, unpolished shinobi who’s lack of self control and combat finesse was certainly no match against her surgically precise strikes and iron clad discipline.
Now, however, that slovenly teen had become a man, and, more dangerously, a fully fledge shinobi.
There had been speculation as to what was happening with the young Jinchuuriki during Uzushiogakure’s three year lockdown following the death of the Uzukage’s sister. The consensus amongst those on the outside looking in was that the Uzumaki Clan had closed ranks to grieve their lost, secure the island and train before rejoining the war efforts, though there hadn’t been any way to verify their assumptions. News of Naruto Uzumaki, of the village, had remained frustratingly scarce, their best spies unable to glean even general observable daily activity in the Village of Longevity during that time.
The lockdown had been even tighter, even more isolating than one that followed the first invasion twenty years ago.
That all changed four months ago, when skirmishes involving more than a handful of Uzushio shinobi rekindled.
The Uzumaki returned full force, stronger than ever, confirming suspicions.
And today, Naruto Uzumaki had finally reappeared, further solidifying their supposition.
Hinata herself was a ninja forged in hellfire, shaped and molded beneath the intense discipline of her father; rarely was she ever caught off guard, even without her Byakugan activated, that the blond Jinchuuriki had gotten so close to her was both an uncomfortable highlight of her shameful inattention, and a frightening testament to his training.
That looming premonition that hung for years over their head had finally come to fruition.
The power of the Kyuubi was now in the hands of a competent, capable Jinchuuriki and soon to be at the disposal of the Shinobi Resistance Coalition; a direct result of her first and, until tonight, only failure.
How fitting that her mistake three years ago had led to her second today.
Kami help her when father found out…
Sickened at the thought, Hinata gazed down at her throbbing, shaking arms, silently willing her pained appendages to still. They trembled and ached in defiance of her efforts, radiating with a pain only a thousand, scorching, serrated blades gnashing beneath her skin could create.
If only-
“Hinata!”
Startled, Hinata snapped to attention, turning her eyes to the the jacketed shinobi running ahead of her. Shino, like her, rarely ever yelled, and while he’d been just shy of it now, she knew he’d only elevated his volume in response to calling her more than once.
Unacceptable.
Distractions, especially on a mission, were unacceptable.
“Yes?”
A brief pause ensued, one in which she was sure he wondered what had her mind wandering considering the circumstances and the seriousness of their objective.
It wasn’t like her at all.
“We should be far enough away,” the Aburame jonin informed her as he came to an abrupt stop in a thick line of trees and shrubbery, “hurry and dress.”
Abruptly reminded of her situation, Hinata dropped her footwear to the ground and unfolded her shorts.
Humiliation threatened to to topple her entirely as she quietly re-dressed herself, too embarrassed to take more than a peek at the silent profile of her teammate.
Shino stood watch, his back full turned to her, and yet she felt like he was staring right at her.
As though a thousand eyes had witnessed her blunder at the lake.
That she was being judged on the spot and found severely lacking.
Among her sea of imaginary accusers, one pair of hard, disgusted, painfully familiar white eyes stood out above the rest.
A scolding stare from past memories, rather than conjuring of fiction.
Pushing aside images of the revolted glare that would be, undoubtedly, in her future, Hinata hurriedly wiggled into her dark shorts then clasped the button before unfurling her blouse and threading her arms through the sleeveless material.
She cringed internally as her sore limbs and joints protested the quick movements.
“You were far from the reconnaissance coordinates,” the Aburame noted quietly, “what happened?”
Pausing midway through zipping up her lavender top, Hinata steeled herself against the whispers of anxiety bleeding through her tenuous control.
Shino’s tone was far from accusatory, they had known each other long enough for her to realize his voice was leaning towards curiosity, but to her, the question felt like an indictment.
She mulled over her answer in the brief silence, wanting to choose her words with care.
Lying would be much easier than word gymnastics, but she couldn’t abide falsehoods passing her lips.
Omission, misdirection, and avoidance, that was as far as she ever wanted her deceptions to go. Perhaps that was foolish, father certainly thought so, but to Hinata, it was a boundary she needed to be able to look honest people in the eye.
To look herself in the mirror and to live with the woman reflected back at her.
“I completed recon a while ago, and sent my report through the messenger insects you gave me. I found the lake during the sweep earlier in the mission and wanted to bathe off the grime of the last two days,” she replied, zipping the high collar of her blouse.
That wasn’t the whole truth, but it wasn’t a lie either.
She had wanted to get clean after two days of bird baths in narrow creeks.
And who could apply a definite measure of time to the phrase ‘a while ago’?
One person’s definition of ‘a while ago’ differed from the next…
“I chose the wrong place to do it. There was a barrier around the lake, completely undetectable to my Byakugan…” she continued, hoping he’d take the incident as nothing more than a case of wrong tine, wrong place.
It truly had been.
“Are you decent?”
She eyed his back, assessing his body language for telltale signs of acceptance or rejection of her half truthful story.
It was nearly impossible to discern from someone like her Aburame teammate.
He was too much like her.
Trained to contain every little non-verbal telegraph of the human body; hardened against things like the relieved minuscule drooping of shoulders, the slight contemplative tilt of the head, the defensive crossing of arms or the tapping of an impatient foot.
There was no tension in his stance, no disputation in his passive presentation.
His body was mute.
She answered none the less.
“Yes.”
She steeled herself as he moved, resolved to keep her face blank but chastened, clear of guilt and physical discomfort.
Forcing fluidity into her limbs.
He turned, snaring her eyes with the dark lenses of his shades, his usually impassive face disrupted by the frown etched on his lips.
That uncomfortable sensation of failure bled through her composure, bubbling in her tummy and urging her to hide from its ugly reality.
It took everything she had not to look away.
And even more to ignore the nervous energy tingling in her fingers.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized quietly, truthfully, “it won’t happen again-”
“What happened tonight, is it your Byakugan?”
Hinata held herself punishingly still, though everything inside her recoiled.
He didn’t say anything more, didn’t clarify what he meant by that, but they both knew that he didn’t need to.
His tone, threaded with concern, carried an undercurrent of certainty.
There would be no feigning ignorance, no word smithing that could redirect what he knew.
Quiet tension filled the space between them, the air around them taking on a mutually menacing hue.
Hinata took a mental inventory of her physical condition, quick counted the weaponry currently strapped to her body and ran through her chances of engaging in a fight considering the state of both as one question reverberated through the alarm bells ringing in her head.
How?
How had Shino come to gain the dangerous knowledge she knew burned behind his dark reflective glasses.
Not a single soul outside her Clan knew about her condition, and very few within knew.
Hinata could count them all on one hand.
Father would never speak of her shame to anyone outside the Hyuuga.
Uncle Hiashi would never put her at risk in such a manner.
Umeko wouldn’t-
“Neji told me.
Her world stilled, clarity piercing her state of alarum.
“He is…concerned for your health. Team 8 has been deployed on more and more dangerous missions since the increase of SRC aggressions, Neji worries that your condition will place you at greater risk,” Shino explained, the added quietly, “as are Kiba and I.”
That warm, wonderful ache she so rarely felt bloomed in her chest even as dread sent her stomach plummeting.
Neji…
Perhaps she should have suspected her pseudo-sibling the moment the words left Shino’s lips, the two cousins had been extremely close as children and while duty had forced her to build a wall between them, Neji had never accepted that separation. Even so, she would never have even considered for a brief second that he would breech the dictum of the Clan; for all his discontent with her father’s mandates, with their roles as Main and Branch, Neji had always maintained a strong pride in the Hyuuga legacy, striving to embody the values of their lineage whether he agreed fully or not.
That he would endanger himself and her by speaking of her predicament at all, let alone with an individual outside of the Clan, was baffling.
It was unfathomable.
The Hyuuga were extremely private, raised from birth to hide away weakness and strengths from the outside world, both Main and Branch equally forced to bear the brunt of the Clan’s heavy secrets and strict customs.
Father would accept nothing less.
A Hyuuga that could not seal their lips willingly, would have them sealed forcefully.
And yet…
Could she fault him?
Neji…cared about her.
He knew more than anyone the extent of the damage, he knew the intensity of her suffering, the true depth of her…disability.
He had seen her at her worse.
At her most vulnerable, her most disgraceful-
“Your eye strain, how bad is it now?”
The question rebounded inside her head, snapping her abruptly to full attention.
Eye strain…
Understanding dawned.
Several knots in her stomach unraveled.
Neji hadn’t revealed the full extent of her condition, not even close.
Thank the Sage.
That information in possession of anyone but a Hyuuga was dangerous, having it in Shino’s possession was far worse than dangerous…
“My eyes are fine now,” she replied quietly, pressing chilled, gently throbbing fingertips just bellow her aching right eye, “my condition is easily treated with a few moments of rest. Neji may have worried more than was warranted considering my flare ups are very rare…”
He nodded, “when you need to rest your Byakugan, tell us, Hinata. My kikaichū, Kiba and Akamaru’s nosea are just as effective in pinpointing enemy positions.”
She didn’t doubt that.
Both men were exceptional trackers.
Something Neji also knew and was using to her advantage.
Her cousin had set the stage for her well; giving her an excuse to rest her Byakugan, to ease her burden, at least when she functioned as a member of Team 8, without exposing her or him more than necessary to achieve his goal.
This was the last resort he spoke of last they talked.
“This will go no further than us,” Shino told her.
Tension returned, coiling between them.
Made up ailment or not, the fact that she truly was compromised physically remained an open, exploitable vulnerability in the hands of an outsider.
“I know you will not trust that,” he stated.
Trust was not a part of her training, nor was it of his.
“We are both of ROOT, but…we are also teammates,” he continued, as though the term was supposed to mean more than the textbook definition of their official dynamic.
“I…yes, we are teammates,” she conceded warily.
“Friends,” he whispered, as though they stood in the halls of ROOT headquarters, where uttering that word would see them both severely punished.
Though she had not let the term pass her lips, her own tongue burned.
Friends…
Before the taint of ROOT, they had been the best of friends, and as wrong as it was, as ill-advised as it was to hold such a sentiment, even privately, Hinata could not help but silently agree that they still were.
He could sense her feelings, she could see it in the subtle drooping of his shoulders, feel it in the easing of his frown.
No longer mute, his body spoke the words he wouldn’t allow to pass his lips.
That he’d allow her to see genuine softening spoke volumes.
She felt echoes of that warmth from earlier fluttering in her chest…
…and discomfort settle hard in the bowels of her gut.
His head snapped south abruptly, moonlight gleaming against his lenses as he stared off into the distance.
“They’re coming.”
Shino’s lack of defensive or offensive posturing told her who ‘they’ were.
The other half of team 8 eased from the shadows of the surrounding forest moments later, heading quickly but stealthily in their direction. They turned to watch man and dog approach, both wordlessly agreeing that their current line of conversation was over, that it was time to return to their roles as teammates, in the very literal sense of the word, as they had many a time before.
Hinata re-composed herself, easing back into her persona, simultaneously preparing for the brutal honesty that was their final teammate.
Kiba Inuzuka was not of their world, not of ROOT, and it showed.
Far more expressive than her or Shino, his body language was an open book, telegraphing every stray thought and loud emotion, he was a bit overwhelming at times if she were honest. He was largely unchanged from the way he’d been as a child and stuck out like a sore thumb to those that paid close attention to their team.
Hinata found his innocence…nostalgic.
“Looks like you found her in once piece,” the feral Chunin commented the moment he reached them.
Shino gave a nod, then said, “we are compromised. The encounter was brief but now that they are aware of our presence, we will have to consider the mission a failure. We’ll disassemble camp and regroup with the others.”
Nervous energy tingled in her fingers.
Failure…
Their mission was a failure…
…and it was her fault.
“I’ll take the fall for it, Hinata,” Kiba told her, dark eyes fiercely determined and unabashedly worried.
She opened her mouth, denial on her tongue.
“Don’t argue with me,” he interrupted, stepping closer to her.
Invading her space and setting her on edge.
“You know ma doesn’t give a shit about a mission going wrong, and its not like I don’t have plenty of fuck ups on my record, one more won’t hurt it,” the feral male reasoned, “we all know what your old man is, eve worse, we know how fucked up your is Clan. Like goddamn circling sharks if there’s even a hint of blood. You have enough shit to deal with, you don’t need your asshole dad-”
“Kiba…” she objected quietly.
The Inuzuka clicked his teeth, annoyed with her age old defense of a man he, and a lot of people, despised. She wasn’t blind to reality, she knew better than anyone in the world that her father was far from saintly, but…he’d given her a chance to be of use, to be worth of the name Hyuuga.
“They treat you like shit no matter what you do,” the Inuzuka growled, “I don’t know why you-”
“Kiba,” Shino warned.
Kiba turned, glaring at their team lead.
“Now is not the time,” Shino reminded him, “I have already sent a message regarding the mission, no one is at fault. The enemy lay in wait for us long before we arrived, there was brief contact before a successful retreat.”
That was enough to soothe Kiba’s ruffled feathers, his tense shoulders ears, and the measure of fierceness left his harsh features.
Hinata wouldn’t tell them that the altered report wouldn’t make a difference.
Father would learn the truth.
He always did.
Kiba moved on to his next worry, “what about-”
“We’ve spoken about it,” Shino interrupted, angling his body to include her in the conversation, “when her eye strain hinders her ability to use the Byakugan, we will take point instead.”
Satisfied, Kiba nodded, Akamaru whining low agreement.
“Well, now that the cat’s outta the bag,” Kiba stated, fixing his eyes to her again, “let us know when you need help. You’re always so closed mouthed about shit. You never let anybody in. We’ve all been friends for forever, but you always try and go it alone. We’re your friends, ya know, friends are supposed to help each other.”
“You do not have to hide your troubles from us, why? Because we are teammates,” Shino added.
“Yeah, that too,” Kiba injected, “you can open up to us. Don’t shut us out, Hinata.”
“I know,” she replied softly, “I just…”
…can’t help it.
The idea of ‘opening up to them’ made her skin crawl.
⨳ ⨳ ⨳
So I know I said Prey was due next, but this was on my brain, and honestly I can’t fight this damn brain of mine. Currently I’ve got a whole host of stuff that’s making it hard to write and I’m not sure when it’ll ease up unfortunately. My head is so foggy and disconnected, also, I had move PA back to one of the worst states ever, my birthplace of Florida, and my environment is so freaking chaotic and loud, like omg. I do have moments though, where I can put word to paper, so that’s what this is, the dark clouds parting.
Now, about this chapter, a lot of things are very different than canon. ROOT is not the same as it was in the show. You’ll learn more about the way it’s constructed and functions later on. Also, Konoha is a VERY different place than the show and again, you’ll see how later.
I’m gonna try to finish Monster this year still, that fic is so ready to be finished it’s ridiculous.
I’m not sure what I’ll have ready to upload yet, I’ve been working more on Butterfly though.
Let me know what you think of the chapter. Please review! See you!
Laters
~Sessakag
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