The Argent-Eyed Heiress (Naruto/Exalted)

"I could carry a message to Young Master Jiraiya," came a deep, yet feminine rumble.

The three genin turned towards Naruto's summoned toad who had somehow crept up on all three of them without their noticing, expressions on their faces ranging from pleased surprise to avian dismay.

"Young Master Jiraiya?" Naruto asked, face looking like he'd just been offered a bowl of Ichiraku's in the middle of the jungle. "Do all the toads call him-"

There was a weird, digging sound - abruptly Hinata realized she'd been scratching restlessly at the ground with her foot. She hadn't meant anything by it, but Naruto coughed and visibly composed himself, his expression turning intensely serious, voice lowering gravely. "But, uh, this means we're going to infiltrate into the Tower, right?"

He didn't even once crack a smile - and she could see how much he wanted to. A for effort Naruto, A for effort.

"...yes," said Hinata, voice studiously neutral.

She could see the feelings welling up inside him, the smile hiding inside him struggling to break loose and now in three… two… one…

"Yusssss!" said Naruto, unable to restrain his emotions, fist-pumping before he ran off towards the front door of the Tower, sandals flapping beneath his feet.

The three of them watched him go. Shino was the first to recover from Naruto's display of typical Naruto-ness and took over what should have been Naruto's responsibility, walking himself in front of the toad.

"How fast will you be able to contact Lord Jiraiya?"

The toad turned to him, looking bemused. "Minutes at most, unless he's in a high-priority op."

"If he is, um, what will happen?" asked Hinata.

"Young Master Jiraiya has left instructions in that regard - those instructions, however, are classified," the skin around the toad's eyes crinkled and then she did something awkward with its mouth, curling the edges upward - a parody of a human smile using a mouth not designed for such, but it still somehow put Hinata at ease. "Please trust me when I say that word will be passed on, young genin."

She had to say, she was impressed. Most toads struck her as impressively straightforward: powerful, but in the same way a boulder was powerful.

This one, however, was sharp. ANBU-calibre if she were any judge.

"You are to deliver two messages to Konoha authorities," said Shino. "The first reads as follows: 'Allies detected. Message: The heart-'"

Shino was really good at concise mission reports - a result, no doubt, of his hives being the mainstay of inter-team communication - so Hinata left him to it, her long legs taking her over to Naruto who was bouncing back and forth on the balls of his feet, stretching one arm, and then the other, behind the back of his head staring in determination at the doors that sealed the tower away from the outside world.

She took a deep breath.

She was the squad leader and some things, no matter how difficult, needed to be said. She dropped her head so that their eyes were level with one another and stilled her feet which wanted to claw nervously at the ground.

Now, how to approach this…

"N-N-Naruto, this mission - this part of the mission is going to be e-especially dangerous," she began.

"Yes…" his brow furrowed, then he laughed, throwing a companionable arm around her relatively thin neck. "Of course it is! It's an A-ranked mission, Hinata!"

"I - I know."

There was a pause where she was devoutly glad she had feathers.

Er, she was already losing the initiative, not to mention her train of thought. She tried again. "When you attacked the flower monster… " his expression brightened, making her heart twinge with guilt, "I n-need you to not do, um, th-things like that, okay?"

He blinked.

Then his expression… shuttered. From open to closed in the time it took to breathe. Even his chakra shifted, from a self-satisfied swirl to a sullen, sluggish crawl.

Just before he pulled away, arm moving off her neck, she saw a younger Naruto peek out from behind his eyes, a child desperately hoping for recognition, taking the graduation exam at the first possible opportunity. He so desperately wanted a pat on the back for what he'd done. And in fairness, he'd been more than awesome - performing to a much higher standard than any genin could reasonably expect to achieve, but, in a way, that was part of the problem. It didn't let him see how reckless he'd been.

"I was awesome," he mumbled, jamming his hands in his pockets.

She wanted to agree then and there but stopped herself in time.

"I know - but you and Shino decided I was going to be s-squad leader, right?"

His eyes darted away from hers and even though she'd expected it, the answer still hurt.

Insight. One of the byakugan's many gifts. And yet the better you understood people, the less of an advantage it seemed to be. Brigands became men and women made desperate by fear or hunger, a father who was her father did have good intentions at heart, and Naruto, Naruto hadn't really meant it when he'd said she should be the squad leader.

He'd voted for her because, because - Hinata looked away too, gaze dropping to her feet.

"R-right?" she asked again, voice small.

After a long, painful pause, where what could mostly be heard was Shino making the toad repeat his instructions verbatim, he said: "…yes."

"Right. So. Um." Her next words came out in a rush, awkward, stilted. "I know I'm not your real squad leader, and I - I don't know everything you can do, but n-next time, please at least t-tell me, what you're going to do before you d-do it, okay?"

"Um - y-yeah! Of course!"

As his face broke into a grin, Hinata's conscience smote her painfully. Technically, he had told her what he had been about to do. But 'I'm going to punch it' wasn't nearly good enough. What she needed was for him to think about his actions before committing to them. What she needed was for him to -Hinata tried to force the next words out, but in the face of his obvious relief, couldn't.

Trust me.

She exhaled. With an attempt at cheer she said: "You, um, you were awesome, Naruto."

He turned back towards her, expression glowing, windows to his soul flung back back open. Like an overgrown puppy, his chakra vibrated in his coils and he smiled up at her. "Right???"

"Y-yes, I didn't even kn-know that you could use shadow clones like that, to make more kunai -"

"Yeah! Um, uh - super cool, right?"

"Can, um, can you do the same with explosive tags?"

He waggled his fingers. "Sort of, but it's more a pop than a boom, so-"

There was a small explosion followed by a puff of smoke: the toad had just left. She glanced backwards. Looking at Shino, she felt a spike of guilt, at some point during the conference with the toad he'd splinted and bandaged his own arm.

She should have been the one taking care of that.

"Ume has gone to report," Shino said in a brisk, business-like tone. "What is the plan?"

Hinata eyed the Tower. The dark chakra within moved sluggishly, but still defied her sight.

In the back of her head she could hear its call of distress.

"We go in," she said, "then find and destroy the golden chakra orchid. B-but if I give the signal to retreat, we retreat, fast as we can."

Naruto, who had probably been on the verge of saying something like 'yeah!' turned it into a nodding "Right."

"Understood," said Shino.

"Naruto, screen us."

Two dozen Narutos popped into existence, flanking them, looking determined.

Hinata walked up to the front doors, took a deep breath, gripped one of the handles with an enormous, taloned foot and-

The doors blew open, knocking Hinata over. A great draft of cold air howled out of it, as did a gale of dust, or maybe ash, getting into her eyes, into her feathers, stinging, irritating. Some of the cloned Narutos poofed into smoke and all of them waved their hands or wings in front of their face, hoping to clear the air-

Hinata blinked rapidly, confusion settling in.

There was no dust. The air was clear. The door had only creaked open slightly, letting out a wisp of warm, damp air. But the Narutos had dispersed, even now, wisps of smoky chakra heading back towards him.

"What the heck was that?"

"Genjutsu?" murmured Shino.

"...maybe," Hinata said, without conviction. Kurenai-sensei was one of if not the preeminent genjutsu expert in Konoha and had made it to jounin-sensei on the merits of her genjutsu alone. Her students had all been drilled half to death in at least recognizing illusions.

What had just happened had none of the hallmarks of an illusory technique. She could detect no foreign influence on their chakra system. No chakra in the air either, beyond the usual bits of darkness that represented spores.

"Are you familiar with genjutsu canceling techniques?" Shino asked Naruto as Hinata pushed the door open a little further. The Tower's fluorescent lights had all been shut off, leaving the tower in utter darkness. Slowly an arc of light from the open doorway began to push through, revealing nothing more than a bare stone floor.

She couldn't see it, couldn't feel it, but something… something wasn't right here.

"Uh… no?" said Naruto behind her.

Shino nodded. "Then stay close to Hinata. Why? She will be able to break you out should you succumb."

"I won't-"

"Kurenai-sensei once made me believe I was a duck."

Naruto was briefly struck dumb. Then, in a very respectful voice, that somehow indicated he really, really wanted to know how to do that trick: "How did she, uh…?"

"Genjutsu."

"It-it's true, Naruto," said Hinata who'd finally opened the door completely. The entrance was suspiciously empty. "We-"

Darkness slipped into reality's corpse like a knife. Sound vanished, muffled. Ash floated in the air, thin as rice paper, nearly translucent. It shone in the light of the tower, incandescent bulbs either burnt out or sparking fitfully, badly illuminating the blackened and putrefying vines that crept across the interior of the tower. A trail of gore - that of a body dragged across the ground - disappeared into depths that the Tower shouldn't have possessed.

And then, like a man recovering from a momentary stumble, reality reasserted itself.

The sun shone. The river babbled. Shino's swarm buzzed around him in noisy agitation.

Hinata sucked in a breath that she hadn't known she'd been holding.

"Holy shit," whispered Naruto. "What the hell was-"

"What did you see?" asked Shino.

"Uh, snow - but like, not really snow, and it was dark as-"

Hinata listened to the two boys compare notes, hunt down inconsistencies or other evidence that would prove it was a genjutsu. She knew what the conclusion would be before they came to it.

She paced restlessly. It was their last chance to turn back. Despite her concerns over what was happening to her clan, Hinata didn't suggest it. Maybe some of Naruto's recklessness was rubbing off on her. Or maybe…

No, she had to be decisive.

"S-stay close," said Hinata.

"Right."

Together, they entered the Tower.

-----

Hinata sent the first wave of Naruto's shadow clones ahead to scout, much like Shino might employ his swarm.

Results were inconclusive.

"Nothing," said a Naruto among the twenty-or-so-odd-others, back ramrod straight.

"Nope," said another who was squatting, picking his nose and then examining the result disinterestedly.

"Nada," was the strange linguistic contribution of the third.

"It's too dark, dattebayo," complained a fourth.

"Yeah!"

"Definitely!"

"I get the picture," Hinata said to the troop of Narutos, struggling not to rub her temples. She was not used to having no idea where the objective was. And for all his good points, Naruto was no tracker. Worse, having so many Narutos around made stealth irrelevant: one Naruto could be trusted to be somewhat stealthy, a flock of them naturally jockeyed for status and made a significant din, no matter how clear the instructions.

Not that she was sure she needed to retain her bird henge. She had seen her silver chakra had adapted to the chakra orchid's infection.

But better safe than sorry, right?

They put together a torch and sent more light-laden Narutos to explore the Tower.

These ones… didn't come back.

"I keep getting whacked," Naruto complained, after the tenth or so time his eyes changed as memories barreled in. He bit his bottom lip, expression screwed up in concentration. "There's gotta be someone else here with us. But I can never get a good look."

The three of them stood in the antechamber, comfortably within spitting distance of the open door. While the antechamber of the Tower was huge enough to comfortably house her, the hallways would not be so accommodating to her avian body.

"Not a human, I would have seen them," said Hinata confidently. In all the surrounding darkness, the three of them stood out like bonfires.

"What about an infected ninja - like that Zaku guy?" asked Naruto.

They considered this.

"Personnel is stationed at the Tower," Shino said slowly. "It is how the ecosystem is monitored and requests sent out to cull or protect certain populations."

"Chuunin at a minimum, then," said Hinata.

"Yes. If they were all infected, that adds anywhere from three to a dozen enemy combatants."

"Then why didn't they help that Zaku guy outside?" Naruto pointed out.

"...a very good question," said Shino, frowning. "I do not know."

Hinata pondered. The presence of enemy chuunin automatically turned any mission lead by genin A-grade (unless accompanied by a jounin-sensei whereupon it was merely B-grade). Zaku had been empowered by the thorns, if similar could be accomplished with experienced chuunin… how confident was she?

Naruto, one hand punching the other, said: "Well, they can't be any tougher than Zabuza."

She must have heard that wrong. "Um, wh-who?"

Naruto cocked a thumb at himself and thumped himself on the chest. "Zabuza was this uber-tough ninja guy. I fought him in the Land of the Waves - there's a bridge there named after me now!"

Hinata was saved having to comment on this absurdly unlikely event by Shino who said, with unusual vigor: "You mean - one of the Seven Swordsmen? The Demon of the Mist?"

And Kiba had made fun of him for already reviewing the village bingo book.

"Yup! Well, mostly Kakashi fought him, but I totally freed him from Zabuza's water prison jutsu!" he said, justifiably proud.

Shino glanced sharply towards her: she nodded back at him. Naruto was telling the truth.

Even so, with that many potential enemy chuunin-level combatants in the Tower…

Wait. Naruto really only knew two techniques, if you discounted the Academy stuff. And of those techniques, summoning toads was something he was still in the process of learning.

So… if he'd fought Zabuza and had made a relevant contribution…

"Just how many clones can you make, Naruto?" she asked. She probably should have before, but they were technically in a competition - she hadn't wanted to abuse his trust like that.

He shrugged, guilelessly unaware of any such concerns. "I dunno. Maybe a thousand? Couple hundred for sure."

Hinata closed and opened her mouth.

"Oh," she finally said.

-----

This was later.

Not much, maybe ten or so minutes.

Hinata eyed Naruto worriedly. Sweat dripped from his temples. His eyes were closed and his breathing fast and shallow. Every now and then he would rock backwards as if struck before grumbling and muttering under his breath.

It was equal parts of awful and wonderful, relying on Naruto to this extent. Two hundred clones were rampaging through the tower, throwing up a ruckus. While his chakra was as ludicrously strong as ever, Hinata suspected that the mental cost was far higher than he was used to given that he still wasn't used to obtaining his clones' memories.

And all she could do here now was wait and watch as clone after clone vanished, speared through by strands of perfect darkness.

"I-is your hive okay?" she asked Shino once the tension became to much for her.

"They are fine," he said briefly.

"So, um, how do you think they died? The first time you sent them i-in."

His eyes blinked behind his broken glasses. "I… am uncertain. There appears to be no-"

Naruto's eyes flared open, interrupting him with a startled, hissing: "It's in the-"

Hinata saw it. She was already moving when the wall next to them shattered, cracks crazing the surface as a a golden vine broke free, dripping with some noxious-smelling oil, gleaming thorns prominently displayed as it shot itself towards Naruto. Hinata snapped her beak out, slicing it off, tasting something incredibly bitter before moving onwards.

The ground erupted with more golden tentacles. She blocked two, talons crushing and slicing them off at the base, but then another two wrapped themselves around her wings, trying to drag her to the ground - she clawed through one, and then the other, but there was always one more, and then one more after it. With no other choice, Hinata broke her henge, shrinking through suddenly lax golden loops, fingers once more full of deadly liquid grace.

Naruto was filling the air with clones, Shino in a whirlwind of kikai bugs carrying explosive tags-

Her fingers jabbed the closest vine. Silver light stabbed through the darkness, a perfect moonlit needle threading through its corrupted veins reaching to pierce the-

Like a shinobi sacrificing an arm, the connection was cut.

The vine hit the ground with a crackly thud, black spreading through the gold, the body of it already dried out and disintegrating, pieces of plant matter flaking off. The rest of the golden vines retreated, burrowing back into the walls and floors.

One of the Narutos tried to grab a vine and was smashed to smoke for his trouble.

There should have been a hole, or some means of following the tangle back to the source. But as the orchid retreated, the cracks and holes in the Tower slowly filled themselves, plaster smoothing away, stones retreating back to where they used to be. In moments, the antechamber was pristine and empty, save for the panting presence of three genin, some voluble clones, and the remnants of the dead vine. It looked…

Reality flickered.

When they came back, the dead vine was gone, vanished. It had matched the appearance of the vines in that… other place astonishingly well.

"Hinata! Don't you need to be a-" he flapped his hands a little.

Oh. Right.

Feathers sprouted across her body as she ballooned upwards, once more twice as tall.

"Okay," said Naruto, eyes darting between the walls and floor. "Now can anyone explain what the heck is going on?"

Hinata would not consider herself a botanist, but she was probably the closest thing their team had to an expert in matters related to flora. She hazarded a guess.

"I think… I think the golden chakra orchid's can communicate telepathically. Maybe it's sending us its, um, thoughts. That's what we keep seeing flashes of."

Naruto made a face. "So, what, it's thinking about dying?"

"It -" she wasn't sure where her certainty was coming from, actually: most plants weren't telepathic nor had they roots that could go through walls that then repaired themselves, it was like something out of a myth, "I think it might… actually be dying."

Shino shook his head. "Dubious. Why? If such were the case, this mission would be resolved with a simple controlled burn, the infestation would die out on its own accord."

"N-not if it has an accelerated life cycle: many plants live only to propagate."

Shino nodded, acknowledging the point. Then he frowned, frustrated, colony buzzing beneath his coat. "I am afraid I will be of limited use. The plant appears to excrete an insecticide of some sort, my kikai bugs die whenever they come into contact with it. More than that, I suspect the chakra itself might be poisonous."

There was a moment of silence as his two team members processed that.

"So… more explosive tags?" Naruto inquired, as if the removal of Shino's principle avenue of attack was no more than a minor nuisance.

Shino shrugged. "No. But should you have ninja wire, I would be grateful."

He scrambled at his pockets. "Uh, yeah - yeah, sure! Sasuke goes through it like you would not believe."

The two of them traded materials, and after a moment of silent bemusement at their surprisingly unruffled calm, Hinata also offered her own supplies for Shino to look through.

"If it is dying," Naruto said thoughtfully, it took moment for Hinata to realize that he was referring to her earlier point, "it'd make this whole mission kind of stupid."

"Um?" said Hinata intelligently.

Naruto shrugged. "Didn't old bandage guy say this was a Village emergency? If the last time there was an emergency, the okra survived a day tops, wouldn't they have just left it alone this time?"

True… but, Shino had just made the same point. Clearly Naruto hadn't been listening. Or hadn't understood the implications of what she had said.

She ordered her busily clamoring thoughts which had, by this point, moved on to the tactical implications of Shino being unable to engage with the greater part of his arsenal.

"Some plants," she explained patiently, "exist seed-to-seed. Many desert, plants, in fact, grow quickly, die and spread their progeny, they're called thereophytes and-"

Naruto was already looking at her with a befuddled expression, whereas Shino made a subtle 'hurry up,' gesture.

Hinata colored.

"When it dies, maybe it'll spread its seeds - like, um, like peas!"

Naruto scratched his head. "The gold chakra okra… is a pea?"

She gave up. She'd bring this up later, right now their priority was still stopping the golden chakra orchid. "If it - it dies on its own, um, there will be more."

"So we just have to kill it first, right?"

"Yes, exactly," she said, trying to ignore how pleased he looked. The route her chakra had taken when she had attacked had been blazed into her mind. "I think I know where its main body is. Shino do you…" he gave her a communicative look, one eyebrow raised, "right. L-let's go find it."

-----

The goal was the Demonstration Hall where the preliminary tournament had been held. It wasn't far.

But like a bad light, reality kept… flickering.

For every minute they spent in the normal stone corridors, lit by the silver chakra that rose from her feathers, there'd be a second or two of an eerie Otherworld where walls had been smashed apart and dead, rotting flora crawled across exposed surfaces and floated in the air.

The more the Golden Chakra Orchid tried to fend them off, the more she retaliated by sending her chakra through its vines - the more frequent these blips became. As they continued the attacks grew more vicious, more desperate. Thorns burst from the floor, ceilings collapsed, vines whipped through the air, poison misted through rooms, rubble was lashed towards them, walls closed in -

But between Naruto's inexhaustible chakra reserves, Hinata's gentle fist and Shino's unerring instinct for danger and surprisingly flexible combat applications of kikaichu even absent direct contact, they countered or avoided each attempt to murder them. And with each attack spent there was less it could do, less energy it could harness.

It was dying, she was sure of it.

But it wasn't dying fast enough. In this war of attrition, three genin were bound to lose - would have lost, in fact, if Naruto had not possessed truly monstrous reserves and exploded into a flurry of clones whenever he felt pressed.

Apparently he'd kept this up for an entire night during the Second Test, fighting off a bunch of Rain genin that had him and his teammates trapped in a particularly difficult to pierce illusion.

Even so, they hadn't traveled far - like hacking through a jungle, each step took time and effort. They spent their explosive tags, their kunai, their chakra- and then, just before the final flight on the staircase leading downwards, Shino stumbled.

She was next to him in an instant, light chasing away the shadows, wingtips leaving crackling afterimages behind. He hadn't been injured, his chakra seemed fine, if a little dim, but he didn't recover from the stumble, dropping to his knees.

She refocused her eyes. His insects - something was happening to his kikai bugs.

"Naruto!" she called.

"Hinata!" Shino rasped, his kikai bugs rising to a fever pitch of agitation within his coat. Even so weakened, he was still dong some-

The wall exploded.

Chunks of it went flying, blackened and smoking. Roots emerged through the gap, boiling with shining, furious activity. It struck like thunder, less weapon than force. The solitary line of ninja wire that Shino had somehow strung in front of them was torn aside like flypaper, the explosive tag muffled, buried beneath a sharp avalanche of living gold.

Hinata had just enough time to wrap her wings around Shino before they were engulfed.

Pain, phantom pain, nothing more than the expectation of the real thing made her screw her eyes up tight, but even in her weakness, she was a Hyuuga, and a thin patch of skin, no matter its origin, was not going to hide the world from her eyes.

And before them the world… slowed.

Time, so precious, was given given to her in abundance.

She saw the Golden Chakra Orchid slam into her suddenly chakra-dense feathers.

She saw Shino's swarm was beginning to erupt out of his coat, suicidally enraged, buzzing furiously.

She saw Naruto was turning, expression caught in the transition between point between exultation and fear.

She'd heard of this phenomenon before. The calm that took you, when your adrenaline peaked, to a place of perfect serenity where the world was like ice and every action could be measured in fractions of a heartbeat. It had been rendered far more poetically than that in her training, something about a moving meditation, but she knew of it, had even wished for it, once upon a time. It was a mindset necessary for several of her clan's higher level techniques.

Ironic, then, that having attained it, this attack would probably kill her.

Her defense was not the kaiten, merely basic bodily reinforcement: she could not possibly guard against such an incredible heavy offense. The roots bowled her over and she finished her trip through the air with terminal abruptness, smacking up against the wall, wings cracking like fine china, feathers scattering through the air, roots ripping into her back.

And despite it all, something within her sang, exulting in how close she was to death.

It was as if generations of her forebears surged within her, buoying her, leading her to the solution that was her birthright. For in the end, didn't every Hyuuga exist for a single, awful purpose?

The bird fell away, leaving behind a girl in a tattered sweater, standing guard over her teammate, and then the girl fell away, leaving behind the weapon.

She struck without breath, without even thought.

It was a palm thrust. A simple motion. A half turn, one foot anchored to the ground while the other feet slid in a half circle to face the enemy as the roots angled and suddenly found themselves tearing through empty air, momentarily devoid of prey.

Her hand slipped up, so naturally it might have been the unseen edges of the moon, present only in their absence.

Skin met wood.

Chakra surged - not a knife this time, but a spool of silver thread, dyed in darkness. Up it traveled, a leaf whirling through the forest, unnoticed, unseen, the most perfect strike Hinata had ever struck.

Like every other weapon, every bloodline limit, the Hyuuga were bringers of death - and though there were those that could kill with a look, or with piercing cold or stunning heat, it was only the Hyuuga that killed with a mere touch. She knew, instantly and instinctively, if not an assassin by temperament, then certainly by blood, that there would be no returning from this strike.

She knew, too, that it had already been dying. The Golden Chakra Orchid was hardy beyond belief: under normal circumstances, she was not sure if anything short of setting fire to every root and rootlet would actually kill it, and maybe not even then. But here and now, it had teetered upon the precipice, and she'd just pushed it off.

A shiver convulsed through the roots. They spasmed - and then exploded outwards, all at once, striking out in every direction. The gold flaked away, gilt crumbling beneath the strain, revealing the rotten, silver-black flesh beneath, less flora than fish.

So fast did it happen, Hinata's strike, then the Golden Chakra's dying counter-strike, that Naruto, who had blinked, missed the exchange, and saw instead the spray of blood as a root took Hinata in the shoulder and flung her against the wall so hard she left a zigzagging crater in it.

For Hinata, elation and serenity fled, giving way to a mind-numbing pain: her left arm collapsed, inert, shoulder suddenly dripping with warmth. Something darkly, richly red was protruding from it, and then her hand, so small, so weak, was clumsily touching, grasping, pushing at the protrusion: as if it were a simple matter of forcing it out the way it'd come.

Shock. She was going into shock.

Her fingers slipped on her own blood, scrabbling against the gleaming, silvery-dark wood beneath. Her internal energies went mad as the orchid tried desperately to invade, literal roots extending from the root in her shoulder, burrowing through dense, chakra-reinforced flesh.

As if waiting for a signal, the thorns from Zaku's attack pulsed - and grew.

Not thorns, Hinata realized with mounting horror.

Seeds.

Panic-driven strength let her rip the root out of her shoulder, but left her quickly when another sank into the meat of her thigh, and a third drove itself through her hand. The seeds and the golden chakra orchid were trying to make contact.

She couldn't let them. She wasn't sure why, but she really couldn't let them.

Hinata had not trained any of her tenketsu except those in her hands to expel chakra. She blew them anyway, wincing as they predictably overstressed and then cracked.

Though the seeds and roots were dislodged, it wasn't enough to force them out.

In her peripheral vision, she saw Naruto stand up: he'd been hit by one of the indiscriminate attacks, a long, bloody furrow cut into his face and what looked to be a hole straight through his foot.

Naruto's chakra exploded, vaporizing sharp roots and questing vines. Heat washed over her, as if she were standing in front of a furnace. A feeling of dark malice, endlessly deep approached, making her hair stand on end.

N-Naruto? She blinked, not sure if she could trust her own eyes.

There were furrows on his cheeks and as with Kiba's beast-human techniques, his canines had enlarged, and his eyes changed. He growled, all but flying over the stairs, his clones clutching their stomachs, looks of agony upon their faces before they poofed out of existence.

In Hinata's back a root met a seed for a fraction of a second.

Naruto struck a heartbeat later.

Where her attack had gone unnoticed, his… didn't. Stone shattered deafeningly in the wake of his passage and wind barreled after him, late. The staircase itself began to fall apart as he tore through wood and vine and stone, his untutored taijutsu suddenly awful in its feral intensity. Hinata felt her hair press backwards and her clothes flatten against her body. Red chakra bubbled out of him, covering him like a cloak.

Beautiful, she thought, unsure if it was delirium brought on by her wounds or her actual thoughts. And then, absurdly, she amended: No… handsome.

Delirium. Definitely delirium.

Somewhere in her hara, the seat where her chakra was created, she felt her power unlatch itself, just a little. Silver power began to flood throughout her body. Slowly, she stood, wavering and weak but not unwilling.

She took a step forward on the broken, rocky ground.

If Naruto was fighting then… she had… as well…

A moment later she noticed another explosion, more felt than heard, and saw a frog appear out of thin air, maybe the size of her head. It opened its mouth and vomited forth a giant of a man, his white hair and red geta clacking to the ground in a spray of water, his expression thunderous.

Ah.

Finally.

The veins around her eyes relaxed. Her mouth settled in a peaceful smile.

Hinata let herself slip away.

----


-----

When she woke, the world was a very different place.

Bright sunlight and fresh air filtered through an open window of the Konoha General Hospital. Everything hurt, but she felt… refreshed, somehow, her chakra bright and strong, the silver and white overflowing in gushing, spiraling streams throughout her chakra network.

Wounds that should have left her in a hospital for a month seemed to have already faded to mere aches and pains - whoever had treated her had to have been among the best of the best. She had thought that she would miss the tournament - no, she had thought she would die, the tournament had never really been an issue - she could only hope that Shino had received similar quality of care.

She raised her arms - one stiff at the shoulder where bandages wrapped it to the point it could barely move, the other with a hand in similar straits - and stretched, yawning prodigiously.

Then she remembered Shino.

Hand looking for the pager - amazing, with eyes that saw all, what could get lost in the shuffle, when she felt a familial gaze settle on her and then snap away. About ten seconds later, and her having finally located the white clicky stick with the red button that'd summon a nurse, the door to her room opened.

"F-Father," she said, surprised: it had not been his gaze she had felt. And he had never visited her at the hospital either. A belated moment of silence passed before she remembered to rise.

"Stop," he said.

She did, freezing in place.

His eyes lingered and Hinata flushed, realizing what he must be seeing: every bandage, every wound, every disordered hair. And this after he had put in the time to train her personally and had told her to focus on the tournament. It must have seemed like a deliberate repudiation of all his hard work.

No.

No, she couldn't think like that. That was - that was the Father she had built up in her head. This had been an A-rank mission, a Village-wide emergency. But still she looked down at her lap.

There was a long, loud silence.

Finally, he said: "I was given a copy of the report written by the Uzumaki boy. It was… you did well, Hinata. Heal quickly."

He turned to leave. Normally, she wouldn't dare, but concern worried away at her self-control.

"D-do you know how Shino is?"

His spoke, back still turned to her. "The Aburame boy? Recovering, I am told. You will be able to visit once you yourself are better."

Relief robbed her of speech. She silently thanked every god she knew.

"Is there anything else?" Father asked.

She licked her lips. There was… one more thing. "And - and what about the clan?"

He turned his head, one hand still on the doorknob. "I do not understand?"

"Well, um, I sent a signal flare, but no one was watching for it, I-I…I thought that perhaps an emergency involving the clan had occurred and after Baiko I was - I was worried."

"There was a minor issue," he said slowly, "but not one that required any to abandon their duty to assist the Village, nor their duty to you. I will look into it, but I suspect that it was a momentary, if unacceptable, lapse in the surveillance net. Those responsible will be identified and their training re-doubled."

"Ah," she bowed her head, "thank you, Father!"

But when she raised her eyes, he was already gone, leaving nothing more than a thinning cloud of chakra and a few swirling leaves.

It was only later, after Hinata had painfully tottered to the bathroom - embarrassingly, it had required help from a nurse, that she noticed the doorknob had been slightly compacted, shallow grooves driven into the metal, shaped like fingers.

-----

Her next visitor was a doctor.

She was old, crabbed, and tiny. From the looks of her, she might have been older than the Hokage himself, hunch-backed, her face an old apple, filled with scars and wrinkles and covered in stunningly coiffed, if wispy white hair. Her little T-shaped cane, wood as ancient and gnarled as she, clacked against the tiles of the room. There was a small, faded dot upon her brow.

She took her chart from the end of the bed and then wandered over towards her, rheumy eyes magnified to an absurd degree within her spectacles. Hinata ventured a hello.

"Eh?"

"I, um, I said hi."

"Eh?!"

"I said… hi?"

"Speak up, kitten."

"H-hi!"

She gave Hinata a lowering look before her mouth curved up into mischievous smile that lacked all its teeth. "If you're going to be a ninja, you will have to practice speaking louder, young lady - you are lucky I have my spectacles on!"

"Y-yes?"

"Now, normally I would badger you to keep it down since you'd aggravate your injuries - but," she tapped the chart and then flipped it over, presumably so Hinata could read it and be impressed by how little she understood, "since it looks like you have more sense than the norm, I'll tell you this: it looks here like you're well on your way to recovery. At this rate you'll be out within a three days, if not less."

She bowed her head, amazed. That had been better than her most optimistic hopes. "Thank you, doctor!"

"Don't thank me," the old woman said, waving a hand. "Your sensei brought me out of retirement because nobody could make heads or tails out of you and no one could afford to let you bleed out on their operating table. Honestly, I could barely figure it out myself. That technique you are using to promote healing is so sharp it'll cut you. Who taught it to you?"

"Technique?" Hinata asked.

She nodded impatiently. "It's a Meditation, isn't it? A bastardized version of the Five Virtues Path, perhaps?"

Hinata stared at her, puzzled. "Um?"

The doctor stared at her for a few more seconds, then shook her head, disgusted. "Another quirk of your bloodline, I suppose. A gift for a girl already showered in them."

She hunched her shoulders, feeling obscurely guilty. The doctor sighed.

"Do not take it so personally, child. I had merely hoped you had stumbled upon something of real worth. Enough to justify me coming out of retirement anyway. Your wounds were such that even at my best I would consider your odds of recovery one in five. And yet here you are, less than a day later, the worst of your wounds gone already despite a minimum of intervention. You will even be able to participate in the tournament everyone is so excited about."

She bowed her head again. "Thank you!"

"I just said-" The doctor sighed. "Well, you're welcome, I suppose. Just try not to scare people like that again."

"I - I will. I mean - I won't!"

The doctor sighed again. "There's a young man who wants to see you and I have been putting him off all day." She waved her cane at the door. "You can come in now, you eavesdropping scallywag."

That Hinata's mouth hadn't dropped open was probably due to her muscles going rigid with shock. The 'young man', hat of office held respectably to his chest, liver spots speckling his face, was the Hokage.

"Ms. Hyuuga. Dr. Kurama. I hope I am not intruding-"

"You most certainly are, and if this were any other patient I would throw you out on your behind: she was in such a critical state last night that even the most skilled of Yamanakas might have killed her trying to make contact."

"But she is not, any longer, I trust?" the Hokage said lightly. There was a warning, however, in his steely eyes that even Hinata did not miss.

"No," Dr. Kurama said.

"Then please, have my gratitude."

And go, went unsaid.

"Of course, of course, Mr. 'God-of-the-Shinobi'."

Despite this manifest incivility, the Hokage merely smiled. When they passed each other, one coming, the other going, she whispered something up at him, so low and brief Hinata could not even begin to make it out without her Byakugan.

The Hokage nodded, then bowed to her departing back.

Once she was gone, he walked over to Hinata and sat down on the chair next to her bed and sank into the cushions. He took out his pipe and then thoughtfully examined the end where tobacco would go, rolling it over in his fingers. Without looking at her, he said: "Did you hear…?"

She stared at him, mystified.

After a moment, he nodded, as if she had spoken - and to him, perhaps she had. It was easy to underestimate the Third - an old man, without a bloodline limit, but as so many knew, while his body might have deteriorated, his mind had not slackened one whit.

"It is just as well. Hinata… for what it is worth, I apologize."

She was confused. "Sir?"

He stuck the pipe in his mouth, puffing on it thoughtfully despite it being empty. "Do you know how the mission ranking system was developed?"

Blinking at this non-sequitur she simply shook her head.

"A pity. It is one of the more enlightening bits of historical trivia," he settled back, making himself comfortable on the wooden chair. "During the Warring Clans era, entire clans hired themselves to the highest bidder, much like we see so many missing ninja do today. Perhaps you can see the problem with this system?"

He shot a glance towards her, but she stayed silent, a student waiting for her teacher to finish.

His patience greatly outlasted hers.

"It was too expensive?"

"In some ways, yes, but in others, no. What you must understand is that because money purchased the sum total of a clan's services, it provided an incentive to spend that service as recklessly as possible without actually giving offense to the clan. The resulting bloodshed was very great. It became a mark of a coward or a genius, to reach the age of adulthood without at least one major injury."

"One day, a ninja - and not a very good ninja at that, what we today call an 'accounting ninja' presented a policy to the man that would become the First Raikage. A simple system, providing a sliding scale of pay depending on the danger of the service. From there it spread on to all the elemental countries."

"The only person responsible for saving more lives is quite possibly Senju Tsunade."

Hinata blinked. "Were you…?"

He shook his head ruefully. "No, no, though I would dearly love to take credit for introducing it to Konoha. As the good doctor reminded me, I have become as reckless with the lives of my ninja as those generals of old with the lives of his mercenary ninja. So I find I must apologize to you."

"Me?" she replied. "I v-volunteered. You couldn't-"

"Any and all A and S-ranked missions bear my stamp and signature. I knew you were going. It is my job to know that you were going. I had hoped to… well, never mind that."

Aghast, she watched the old ninja, most powerful man in Konoha, lower his head to her.

"P-please don't!" she sputtered, waving her hands.

He raised his head, a smile on his lips. "If it makes you feel better, consider it a lesson."

"Um?"

"You will be a leader too, Hinata. By virtue of your birth, if nothing else. But while I do not hold it true that power should go to those who desire it least, I do believe you will make a fine clan head. And one day, should you fail one of yours, I hope you will remember this old man, lowering his head to even a genin."

That… did make her feel better, actually. "Oh."

"With that out of the way…" his expression turned serious, his tightly leashed chakra suddenly hideously present, a mountain looming over her. "Strange things have been happening in my Village: what happened in the Forest of Death?"

-----

During the ensuing interrogation, the Hokage reveals one of the following tid-bits:

[x] [SL] The Nature of the Tower

Heroic Path. Bonus to the 'Elseworld Explorer' Storyline.

[x] [SL] The Death of the Golden Chakra Orchid

Heiress Path. Bonus to the 'Cursed Child' Storyline.

[x] [SL] The Origins of the Golden Chakra Orchid

Horror Path. Bonus to the 'Golden Gardener' Storyline.

-----

The rest of Week 2 and 3 will be downtime as Hinata recovers from her injuries.

What does she focus on during this period? (Pick 5)

At most you can pick 2 combat-related options. Hinata's supposed to be resting, after all.

-----

Heroine options.

[x] Naruto's Party

Naruto has never had so much money before - he's throwing a feast and of course you're invited! The fact that you need to be wheeled out in a wheelchair is hardly going to stop him. Cannot be taken with Team Eight Retreat option.

[x] Team Eight Retreat

Kurenai-sensei wants to take everyone on a secret Team Eight retreat. Naruto's been invited as an honorary member, but he says he can't go, he's organizing a party! Hinata reminded him he has shadow clones and he went: "OOOOOOOOH MY GOOOOOOOOD." Truly, a monster has been created. Cannot be taken with Naruto Party option.

[x] Mote Reactor (combat)

After the fight with the Golden Chakra Orchid, Hinata's silver chakra bubbles under her skin, unleashing itself in gushing torrents at the slightest provocation. Unfortunately, her body cannot keep up with such power - it might be a little reckless, but maybe she should try meditating on it to keep it contained?

[x] Near Death Experiences (combat)

-[x] Hinata meditates on her experiences in the Forest of Death to develop one of the abilities. Though they are not accessible now in a combat-ready capacity, they will be treated as present during a suitably dramatic moment. Each charm counts as an action.

--[x] Shapeless Body Unblemished (personal healing charm)

--[x] Secret Path Step (short-range, personal teleportation charm)

-[x] Uncanny Sight Practice (sense enhancer)

Note on USP: Combined with Hinata's bloodline, it will permit Hinata to use a low-level version of the Byakugan (telescopic sight + chakra sight up to 500 yards, but no X-ray) without any chakra input. With chakra input, it will permit Hinata to distinguish even those sources of chakra which are 'dark' to her senses and to distinguish shapes even in complete darkness and absent chakra.

Heiress options.

[x] Family Matters

Father's reaction to the lapse in the Hyuuga surveillance net was distressing. Perhaps there is a way to moderate his anger? Also, what was the 'small emergency' that Father referred to?

[x] The Gentle Fist

She had felt her blood awaken during that final fight with the Golden Chakra Orchid. She might not be able to practice the techniques, but surely she could at least observe? (each technique counts as an action)

-[x] Vacuum Palm (ranged gentle fist attack - chakra is expelled in a visible wave of force)

-[x] Moving Meditation: The Empty Room/The Empty Castle/The Empty Country (Greatly enhances the user's ability to respond to attacks. Normally, this technique tree is the prerequisite to the Kaiten)

-[x] Sixteen Palms: A quartered version of the Hyuuga's famous 64 palms.

[x] Consult Jiraiya

While there's not much investigating she can do from her hospital bed, Jiraiya will come see her. Perhaps she can ask about Baiko.

[x] Duties of a Leader

Just as the Hokage is responsible for the Village, Hinata was responsible for her squad - and Shino was badly injured doing a task that outstripped his abilities. Make time to see Shino's parents and apologize. At the same time, apologize to Shino.

Horror options.

[x] The Stone Kunai

Well… Lord Jiraiya had given it to her as a project, right?

[x] Golden Chakra Orchid Form

Experiment with shapeshifting. This is a great idea with no possible chance of anything going wrong. Technically not a combat option.

QM Note: If there are major issues that need fixing I will be unable to address them for around a day.