The Argent-Eyed Heiress (Naruto/Exalted)

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"I can help," she said.

Uncle Taiki looked at her, really looked, with the sort of calm, milky-eyed stare that spoke plainly of his doubts.

"Can you?"

"I - I can." She allowed herself a moment to breathe and gather her thoughts. "I sh-should be immune to the disease-"

"Shoulds are not enough. Are you or aren't you?"

Hinata imagined other members of her clan, of her family, dying while she sat safe at home and felt her nails digging into the palms of her skin. When she relaxed them, they left no marks.

"There are t-tests, right? To see if I'm immune?"

Uncle Taiki frowned. "…yes, there should be."

"I want to take them."

He looked at her, then nodded slowly.

That was how she found herself looking up at the front of Konoha's hospital, the 医 character for medicine prominently emblazoned in red upon the exterior facade, staring down at her without need for elaboration. She was surrounded by the three veteran Hyuuga who accompanied her father whenever he went out - not because he needed them, but because tradition demanded the leader of the Hyuuga went with an honor guard.

She hadn't been so accompanied last week, but today Father was with her.

It was easy, sometimes, to forget his status. It sounded silly - how could she forget that? - but that did not mean it wasn't true.

To her Father was… Father was Father, and for the most part Father was bigger than a title and the most prominent voice in council meetings. While she was aware of the rest of the clan, the truth was, most days, she worried more about his opinion than theirs. Father could be harsh, scary and terrible, but he was still hers and cared about her, wanted what was best for her.

The leader of the Hyuuga, however, was a different person. He was at need cold and stark, and then calmly serene. Silence, like ink dropped in clear water, spread its tendrils as he passed, and in his wake, a low buzz of murmuring ensued.

Briefly, she glanced up towards him, then quickly back down towards her feet. She'd been staring in the footwards direction for the past half hour as they had - with an agonizing lack of speed - walked through the Village to the Hospital. Father hadn't said anything to her stuttering explanation of wanting to help beyond: "…it is worth considering." Not while they were leaving the compound, nor during the long walk here.

It was unnerving, and for more reasons than her usual anxiety at traveling in retinue and feeling like she was announcing the embarrassment of her existence at full volume from the rooftops. Father was not one to lecture her outside the walls of the compound, but Hinata could generally read his mood, be it disappointment, anger, disdain, or even joy. Here all she could perceive was a carefully formed lack of feeling, too obvious to be anything other than political act.

She was having difficulty not twisting her thumbs together, and had caught herself biting her lips twice.

When they finally made it through into the Hospital, she felt she could breathe again. People spotted them, but in a hospital, if you stopped to gawk at anyone vaguely important who went in nothing would get done. Of course, it was still the leader of the Hyuuga, so they were offered glasses of water by the receptionist, but after some hemming and hawing mostly what it amounted to was being told to wait.

"The doctor will be with you presently," the pleasant chubby woman said chipperly, seeming unabashed by the presence of Clan royalty. Her voice was curiously grating. "I must say, you are much more polite than I expected! The last fellow didn't even bother to call ahead, he just waltzed in here like he owned the place."

Father nodded gravely. "Courtesy is the soul of civilization."

"Is that a quote from somewhere?" she asked. "It sounds really wise."

"Perhaps. I heard my father say it often enough."

The receptionist laughed a well-practiced laugh that might have even verged on the sincere. "Well, I'll remember it! Have a nice day, Mr. Hyuuga!"

"You as well."

They settled in to wait.

Hinata tried not to fidget. She knew her father could be a charming, gracious host, if not exactly warm, than not cold either. It had taken her a long time to realize that between the person he was in public and the person he was in private, the public one was more… false. Something he wore at need and removed at will.

It had taken her slightly longer to realize the truth: neither was true nor false, each was merely a different facet of the same person. There was still a part of her that yearned desperately to know why Father had shown her the face that he had, who wasn't content with the explanation it's for your own good.

After a few moments of silence, a familiar swirl of leaves accompanied the appearance of an old, eccentric-looking doctor who enthusiastically shook Father's hand. He was short but broad, only a hand taller than her, with a faded scar across his broad, beefy neck that spoke of work in the field, a thin, scattershot beard, an impressively luxuriant mustache and wore spectacles that seemed half-goggles and half-glasses, tinted opaquely green. He met the Hyuuga delegation like a small, white-haired barrel in a labocat and when he shook Hinata's hand in turn, she felt a cloud of nicotine settle over her and had to suppress a cough.

"-you must be Hinata! I am Doctor Aburame."

…this man was related to Shino?

He laughed at her expression. "My great-nephew tells me good things about you - and Taiki, there you are you weaselly son of a bitch, it's been too long!"

"It's been two days, Sensei," said Uncle Taiki, currently caught in a bear hug.

"Ah! But two days can be an eternity," said the bear who finally released him. "Come now, we already have a young man who is being tested so all the equipment is ready."

----

The young man being tested was Uzumaki Naruto.

He was in a blue, transparent sphere of chakra-forged glass, looking for all the world like he was trapped in a giant hamster-ball. There was a hose at the back connected to some sort of machine. When he saw her, he waved and yelled something excitedly, but the chakra glass prevented anything he said from getting out.

She stopped to stare through the glass window even as the rest of her family and Doctor Aburame went through the door.

For a moment she was almost alone, and tried to read his lips.

'HEEE… NA…'

oh.

"I told him repeatedly that it was airtight," a familiar voice told Hinata mournfully. She looked sideways and up to see an unfamiliar man, sixty-or-so who wore the years well as did his fitted suit. The word 'dashing' seemed unusually fitting. "But he's still an idiot."

Hinata waved back to Naruto, her smile a little artificial - she had yet to really apologize for Hanabi's behavior yesterday - and hissed sideways: "Lord Jiraiya?"

"Yes - now shush, junior detective, I'm doing this incognito. You're here to deal with the chakra orchids as well?"

"Yes."

"Your father's going too?"

She shrugged helplessly. "I don't know."

"Try to get him to stay home then."

"Lord Jiraiya?" she asked, confused.

He patted her on the shoulder. "No time, Princess, best you go in. Remember what I said! Tell the brat that if he can summon frogs, he should. I've reminded him, but his brain's like a sponge at the bottom of a well. Someone's going to tell him - well, nevermind."

And then he was gone.

There wasn't even the faintest whisper of chakra or swirl of leaves.

She breathed deep, then went in.

-----

The world behind the glass was tinted blue. It was a strangely surreal color.

Now Naruto was outside, and she was in. Her father was talking to him, and astonishingly neither of them were looking to be the least bit antagonistic. After what had happened between Naruto and Hanabi she had worried that- The transmitter in her ear crackled, cutting her from her thoughts.

"All comfortable in there?" asked Doctor Aburame jovially.

She held the microphone descending from her ear uncertainly. Father frowned on technology such as this, but he could hardly gainsay a doctor in a hospital. "Y-yes?"

"Good. Like I told the kid, Chakra Orchids are a parasites. Spores released by the orchids can infect mammalian life. This includes humans: you breathe it in, it plants itself in the mucous membranes of the throat and eventually germinates and takes over the CNS whereupon, well, the host dies and the plant takes over - please, stop me if I'm going too quickly."

She tapped the microphone cautiously. "Errr. No. N-not too quickly."

"Good. No artificial filter has been found that is fine enough and hardy enough to last longer than minutes at a time. There are three known methods of defense against infection. There are those naturally immune such as the Aburame. Secondly, certain elemental armor jutsus can be useful. And, finally pinpoint chakra control - the basis of certain of your clan's techniques where you expel chakra out through your tenketsu but instead throughout your respiratory system can provide immunity."

"Of the three methods, the last is the least reliable. Young Naruto here falls into the first category whereas Taiki tells me you fall into the second. Can you activate your technique?"

Hinata concentrated -and turned into a bird.

She'd never actually tried it until discovering it necessary because she was trapped in a ball roughly six feet in diameter, but this time she aimed for a smaller bird than usual - and managed it! A much smaller, if appropriately proportion crimson eyed bird stared out through the glass bubble.

"Innovative," said Doctor Aburame. "I'm going to release spores that have been engineered to be harmless."

The machine behind her whirred to life and then she could smell something coming up out through the air.

Then she waited for Aburame to use diagnostic jutsu after diagnostic jutsu on her.

"It appears you are immune," he told her after maybe five minutes. "Congratulations, I wouldn't have guessed it. It's perishing difficult, getting a transformation technique to that level of mastery: your father must be proud. Stand by for decontamination."

The machine whirred against, clanking and clonging and then another gentle mist shot out that made her eyes water and sting.

-----

There were seventeen combat-ready ninja ready to enter the Forest of Death. Her clan would not be joining her, instead, they would be patrolling the borders of the Forest ready to intercept anything that had been infected and made it out.

You could exhale chakra from your tenketsu, but only for so long.

Seventeen ninja. It was a disturbingly low number: this was supposed to be a Village-wide emergency, right? Naruto had also summoned a toad, but it was, well, the size of his head and probably not much use in a fight for all that he was an amusing fellow, quick to quip and needle the blond boy.

An old man was here, half his face and body wrapped in bandages, leaning heavily on his cane, not with the exaggerated effort that some people she had known had done, but with a business-like, economical motions. There was an x-shaped scar visible on his chin and despite his apparent wounds, a sense of cold, unshakable confidence emanated from him.

"I am Shimura Danzo," he said. His one visible eye swept the crowd of assembled shinobi sternly. "Many of you are too young to know of me. That is fine. I have mentored some of you. That is also fine. That you do not see the Hokage standing before you does not make this any less of a village emergency. Twenty years ago we had five times our current numbers and still lost over a quarter of those shinobi to this blight. Not only will you have fewer in the way of numbers, you are commanded to do so speedily before the…" his nose wrinkled like he'd tasted something foul, "visiting Villages come to suspect anything."

"In your favor is this: when last we fought the Chakra Orchids, it was during a time of war where we did not have the luxury to choose our soldiers, nor did we understand the enemy we faced. Today we do. It takes over bodies: very well, you have all been tested and vetted, you will not succumb to the infection. It uses the bodies of the infected to spread its infection: so be it, we will let none escape. It is smart: that means we will not underestimate it. You are all veterans of some standing or candidates promising enough that very senior ninja have recommended your inclusion in this mission. It is A-ranked and will be remunerated accordingly."

Naruto whooped. Danzo ignored him so pointedly that Hinata was surprised he didn't spontaneously start bleeding.

"Symptoms for those that have been parasitized are as follows: a cough, followed by fever, pain, delirium, death. A flower then blooms, usually at the base of the neck and the body now a part of the chakra orchid hivemind. The varieties we know of are as follows: the blues are workers, the whites warriors, the reds seed-bearers and the silver the leaders. All should be mere wildlife at the moment and as such they matter little next to our main concern which must be the main plant which is gold and often heavily defended. No doujutsu has ever managed to seek it out and so we are left with covering ground the old-fashioned way. Identifying and destroying the main plant is your priority. Root it out and burn it to nothing."

He nodded.

"That is all, dismissed."

----

They broke into groups. The sole ANBU ambled towards them, his cat-faced mask slightly preposterous.

"I'll be watching you three." He held out a hand. "My name's Kinoe."

The three genin dutifully chorused their names. "Uzumaki Naruto." "Hyuuga Hinata." "Aburame Shino."

"Nice to meet all three of you. You're genin, talented genin, but still genin, so we'll be handling the less pivotal parts of this mission. State your abilities and your specialties."

Shino was the first to answer. "Let me be the first to answer. Why? It is a legitimate use of resources and a reasonable request. I am an Aburame and specialize in the mainstay of our clan's arts and resources. My combat capability is considered chuunin already."

"I can make like a thousand shadow clones and summon frogs," said Naruto. And then he added, like it had been a more impressive accomplishment than either of those things: "Oh! I can also walk and water."

All three heads turned to her.

"I - u-um, I can turn into animals that I kill. And I can use jyuken and see up to a kilometer away, though not clearly. I'm going to be a bird for this mission."

Kinoe nodded at this like it was the most normal thing in the world. "Cool. Let's find you kids something to-"

There was a crash in the forest. It was a tree, falling.

Then a bear, massive beyond belief slowly began to rise from the forest floor. It was strangely wooden in places, the pads on its paws thickly garlanded with thorns and leaves and a veritable wreath of white flowers at its neck. At its full height it must have been nearly thirty feet tall.

It howled at the assembled shinobi, fell down to its feet in a crash of sound and dirt, and charged.

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Options

[x] Stay to help fight the bear.
[x] Help patrol the perimeter for more fleeing infectees.
[x] Help hunt for the golden Chakra Orchid.