The morning air in the Hyuuga compound was a thing of meticulous order. It smelled of damp earth from the raked gravel gardens, the clean scent of oiled wood, and the faint, almost imperceptible fragrance of morning dew on bonsai pines. Servants moved with silent, practiced efficiency, their footsteps whispers against the polished floors. It was a symphony of serene, disciplined life, a world Hinata had known since birth.
Seated alone at the low, lacquered table in the main dining hall, Hinata finished the last of her breakfast, a mountain of rice, three whole grilled mackerel, a steaming bowl of miso soup large enough for a family, and a small platter of sweet tamagoyaki. A deep, contented purr, a vibration she felt in the very marrow of her bones, was the only sound from her internal companion. Venom was pleased. And Hinata… Hinata was basking. A soft, persistent blush warmed her cheeks, and a small, secret smile played on her lips as she recalled the night before. Her entire body felt… alive. A pleasant, humming ache resonated deep in her muscles, a phantom echo of powerful hands gripping her hips, of a frantic heartbeat against her own, of a primal, world-shattering release that had left Naruto's cheap bedframe a splintered wreck.
She had been concerned her absence would be noted, that her father would demand an explanation for a Jounin of her stature being away from the compound all night without any notices. But the morning had been blissfully, blessedly silent on that front. It seemed she had gotten away with it. Her smile widened. The thought of repeating the experience, of feeling Naruto beneath her again, of hearing his breathless cries…
"I didn't see you come home last night, nee-san."
The voice, crisp and familiar, sliced through her reverie. Hinata didn't flinch, her external composure a fortress built over two years of brutal training and symbiotic integration. She calmly placed her chopsticks down and turned to see her younger sister, Hanabi, standing in the doorway. Hanabi had grown, her genin attire fitting snugly over a lean, wiry frame. Her eyes, pale lilac, were sharp and far too perceptive.
Darn it, a frantic voice screamed in Hinata's mind. Of all the people in this compound, it had to be her.
"Jounin affairs," Hinata replied, her voice the usual calm, stereophonic harmony. She took a slow sip of her tea, buying a precious second for her mind to spin a plausible narrative. "A late-night report with Tsunade-sama that dragged on longer than expected. The situation in the neighboring country has… complications. I returned very late. I did not wish to disturb anyone."
Hanabi blinked, accepting the logic but not the premise. She padded silently into the room, her gaze analytical. "A 'report'," she repeated, the word laced with a teasing, knowing skepticism. She leaned forward, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. Does this… 'report'… have anything to do with a certain blond in an orange jacket who just got back to the village?"
The direct hit sent another jolt of panic through Hinata. Her external calm remained, a placid lake over a churning maelstrom, but her mind was racing, scrambling for a deflection, an excuse, anything. She was saved by an interruption. An older branch-house woman appeared in the doorway, bowing deeply.
"Hinata-sama, my apologies for the interruption," the woman said, her voice respectful. "Two Chuunin are at the gate for you. A boy and a girl. They say you have all been summoned to the Hokage's tower for an urgent matter."
Relief, pure and potent, flooded Hinata's system. She had never been so grateful for a summons in her life. She rose from the table in a single, fluid motion. Her head brushed the paper of a low-hanging lantern, a constant reminder of a body that had outgrown its ancestral home. "Thank you, Etsuko-san. I will be there momentarily."
She turned to her sister, who was now pouting, her line of questioning so tantalizingly close to a confession. "I must go, Hanabi. Duty calls."
With a final, polite nod, Hinata swept from the room. She had to consciously dip her head to clear the doorframe, a practiced gesture she barely thought about anymore. As she moved hastily down the long, silent corridors, a subtle, practiced tilt of her shoulders allowed her to navigate around the ceiling-mounted light fixtures, a giantess moving through a world built for smaller people. She allowed a small sigh to escape her lips. That was far too close. Hopefully, a few tedious D-rank missions would be enough to scrub the curiosity right out of her sister's mind.
Hinata emerged from the cool, shadowed halls of the Hyuuga compound into the bright Konoha morning. The world outside the clan's walls always felt louder, messier, more alive.
Standing just beyond the gate, were Naruto and Sakura.
Naruto's face lit up the moment he saw her, a brilliant, thousand-watt grin that was immediately followed by a wave of thermonuclear blush. He took a half-step forward, his mouth opening, then closing, a fish gasping for conversational air. He looked… incandescently happy, deeply embarrassed, and satisfied, all at once.
"H-Hinata! Good morning!" he finally managed, his voice an octave too high. He tried for a casual wave, but the gesture was stiff, a jerky movement that betrayed the chaotic storm of hormones and memories raging behind his blue eyes.
Hinata felt a blush of her own creep up her neck, a warm tide that was equal parts mortification and a deep, possessive pleasure. She gave him a small, knowing smile. "Good morning, Naruto-kun. Sakura-san."
Sakura stood with her arms crossed, her expression in a clinical suspicion. Her sharp green eyes flickered back and forth between Naruto's frantic, awkward energy and Hinata's serene, blushing calm. She didn't know what had happened between them, but her finely-honed instincts for social dynamics were screaming that something happened between each of them. A heavy, charged silence descended.
Finally, Sakura sighed, her professionalism asserting itself over her curiosity. "Enough standing around," she said, her voice sharp and focused. "Tsunade-sama's summons sounded urgent. We need to go. Now."
The spell was broken. Instantly, the awkward teenagers vanished, replaced by three shinobi of Konoha. Their postures straightened, their expressions hardened into masks of duty. Without another word, the trio turned and raced towards the Hokage tower.
The air in the Hokage's office was thick with a tension. Tsunade sat behind her desk, her expression grim. Shizune stood beside her, her face pale with worry. And, to the immense surprise of Naruto, Sakura, and Hinata, Kakashi was already there, leaning against a wall, his single visible eye sharp and alert. He had been on time. This was serious.
"We received a message this morning," Tsunade began, her voice devoid of its usual boisterousness. She slid a small, tightly-rolled scroll across her desk. "An encrypted message bird from Sunagakure." Her eyes landed on Naruto. "Naruto. I trust you're aware of Gaara's new station."
Naruto's usual bravado was absent, replaced by a focused concern. "Yeah! Pervy Sage told me he became the Kazekage! I was so happy for him, I was gonna send him a letter!" His expression tightened. "Did… did something happen to him?"
Tsunade's gaze hardened. "The Akatsuki attacked the Sand Village."
A collective intake of breath sucked the air from the room. Sakura's hands clenched into fists. Naruto's face went slack with shock.
"They defeated Gaara," Tsunade continued, her words landing like hammer blows. "And they took him. Sunagakure is officially requesting our assistance in retrieving their Kazekage."
"How?!" Naruto roared, slamming his fist on Tsunade's desk, rattling everything. "How could they just walk in and take him?! He's the Kazekage!"
"How could two S-rank criminals assault an entire hidden village and successfully extract a Kazekage?" Sakura asked, her voice a low, analytical murmur that cut through Naruto's rage. "Their defenses should have been absolute."
"According to the report, it was a multi-pronged attack," Tsunade explained, her fingers steepled before her. "It suggests there was internal sabotage that delayed their response. The primary attacker, initiated an aerial assault. He used massive explosions to draw Gaara out and force him to divide his attention between fighting and protecting the village below."
Hinata's mind was racing, processing the tactical data with cold efficiency. An aerial assault. A single point of overwhelming force to neutralize the village's greatest weapon. It was brutally effective. But one detail felt wrong. "Tsunade-sama," she began, her doubled voice a low, resonant hum. "Temari-san was in Konoha just yesterday for the Chuunin Exam planning. Has she been informed? Why isn't she here?"
"She departed for Suna yesterday afternoon," Tsunade replied, her eyes meeting Hinata's. "She's on the road, completely unaware of what's happened to her home. Or her brother."
The Akatsuki, Hinata thought, a cold fury coiling in her gut. The memory of Itachi and Kisame, of their casual, predatory arrogance, flashed in her mind. They had come for Naruto once. Now they had Gaara. Soon, they would come for Naruto again. The thought was not a fear. It was an unacceptable outcome. A violation of the natural order. Deep within her, a silent, ancient hunger stirred in perfect, venomous agreement.
Kakashi pushed himself off the wall, his posture shifting from relaxed observation to lethal readiness. "Mission parameters, Hokage-sama?"
Tsunade nodded, her authority absolute. "Team Kakashi is hereby reactivated. This is no longer a simple retrieval. The Kazekage has been abducted by an organization of S-rank criminals. The political stability of the entire region is at stake. As such, this mission is designated S-rank."
She let the weight of the rank settle in the room before continuing. "Your objective is to travel to Sunagakure at maximum speed. You will rendezvous with Temari en route and inform her of the situation. Once there, you will assist our Sand allies in any and all efforts to track the Akatsuki and retrieve the Kazekage." Her gaze settled on Hinata. "Your sensory abilities will be the main part of this operation. You are their eyes."
She leaned forward, her expression iron. "I will be deploying Team Guy as reinforcements as soon as they are available, but you are the vanguard. Do not wait for them."
She stood, her voice ringing with command. "This mission begins now. You are dismissed!"
The four shinobi vanished in a flurry of movement. Outside, on the roof of the tower, the morning sun felt unnaturally cold. Kakashi surveyed his newly formed team. Sakura, her expression a mask of grim determination. Naruto, vibrating with a potent mixture of rage and worry. And Hinata, a towering pillar of serene, lethal calm. He felt a flicker of pride.
"You have thirty minutes," he stated, his voice calm and steady. "Pack for a multi-day, high-speed pursuit. Rations, medical supplies, combat loadout. Meet at the main gate."
He didn't wait for an acknowledgment. With a faint swirl of leaves, Kakashi was gone.
Hinata arrived at the main gate. She wore her combat armor, the helmet retracted, allowing her long, midnight-blue hair to cascade freely down her back. The world seemed to part before her, the usual gate traffic of merchants and returning genin teams giving her a wide berth.
Naruto was already there, a vibrant splash of orange against the muted tones of the village wall. He was pacing, a coiled spring of impatient energy, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. He was radiating a storm of worry and righteous fury, a personal hurricane just waiting for a direction to unleash itself.
He spun on his heel as he sensed her approach, his mouth already open to demand what took so long. The words died in his throat.
His eyes, wide and sapphire-bright, went from her face, down the powerful column of her neck, over the sculpted plates of her chest, to the impossibly narrow waist, the flared, armored hips, and the long, powerful legs. They traveled all the way down to her steel-toed sabatons and then all the way back up again, his jaw hanging slightly agape.
"Hinata… what in the world are you wearing?" he finally breathed, the words a mixture of awe and confusion.
She saw the raw tension in him, the frantic energy of a boy who felt powerless and was desperate to act. A flicker of her old shyness was instantly quashed by a wave of warm, possessive confidence. He needed an anchor, not a wallflower.
"My old vest was… restrictive," she explained, her voice a calm, resonant harmony. "So I had this commissioned. The design is a collaborative effort. Between me… and my partner." The mention of her 'summon' was a practiced, easy deflection. Seeing his frantic energy momentarily forgotten, replaced by stunned admiration, a mischievous spark ignited in her glowing eyes. She smiled, a slow, deliberate curve of her lips that was both impossibly beautiful and deeply predatory. "Do you like it?"
Before he could answer, she made a slow, deliberate spin on the ball of her foot. The movement was liquid, silent, the perfectly articulated plates of the armor shifting with a faint whispering sounds, catching the morning light.
Holy crap.
That was the only thought that managed to form in Naruto's scrambled brain. The armor was a work of art. It was a terrifying, beautiful second skin forged from midnight and lightning. The color was a deep, iridescent blue, almost black in the shade, but it shimmered with oily purples and greens in the sun, like a raven's wing. The plates were segmented, layered over each other in a way that looked both insectoid and impossibly advanced.
It was brutally functional, every line and angle screaming of lethal purpose, yet it did nothing to hide the fact that it was built for a woman. For her. The chest plate was molded to the magnificent swell of her breasts, flowing down into a series of smaller, overlapping plates that cinched tight at her ridiculously narrow waist, before flaring out again to form powerful, protective hip guards that emphasized the perfect, dramatic curve of her rear. The metal leaf of her Konoha forehead protector was seamlessly integrated into the plate of her right pauldron, a permanent declaration of her allegiance.
It made her look even taller, transforming her from a surprisingly tall girl into a genuine, larger-than-life valkyrie. His mouth felt dry.
A flicker of movement from the side broke the spell. Sakura arrived, her expression a mask of grim focus, her medical pack already secured to her back. A moment later, with a soft swirl of leaves, Kakashi appeared beside them, his single eye taking in the scene with a calm, unreadable gaze.
The air changed instantly. The flustered boy and the confident, teasing woman vanished. In their place stood two focused, disciplined Shinobi. Hinata's smile disappeared, replaced by a serene, predatory readiness. Naruto's awe was banked, his posture shifting into that of a warrior awaiting orders.
Kakashi's eye crinkled in what might have been a smile. "Ready?"
Naruto's voice was hard, laced with his unbreakable will, answering for them all. "We were born ready, Kakashi-sensei! Let's go get our friend back!"
With a final, shared nod, the four shinobi became blurs of motion. They shot past the gate guards, a streak of orange, pink, silver, and midnight-blue, clearing the massive village walls in a single, powerful leap. They landed on the road beyond, their feet kicking up dust as they accelerated into a ground-eating run. The mission to retrieve the Kazekage had begun.
The forest was a green blur of rushing leaves and dappled sunlight that whipped past their faces. They moved as a fast, their feet barely seeming to touch the forest floor. Hours bled into one another, marked only by the shifting angle of the sun and the burning in their lungs.
And then, she saw her.
Hinata's Byakugan, locked onto a single, slow-moving chakra signature miles ahead. It was Temari. Her gait was steady, almost leisurely, the massive folded fan on her back an incongruous sight in the heart of the woods. Hinata relayed the position, and their course shifted, their pace accelerating from a frantic run into a silent sprint.
They intercepted her in a quiet grove. The words were few, brutal, and efficient. Naruto's voice, tight with worry. Kakashi's, calm and grave. Sakura's, sharp with clinical urgency. Temari's face, a mask of sun-hardened confidence, shattered. It crumbled into a disbelief, then horror, then a terrible, focused rage. Without a word, she spun on her heel and took the lead, her leisurely pace now a desperate, frantic race towards her home.
The trees thinned, giving way to the vast, unforgiving expanse of the Land of Wind. The sun was a fire, the air a furnace. The sand was a grinding, endless sea that stretched to a shimmering horizon, each step a battle against the sucking grit. Guided by Temari's anxious, desperate knowledge of the land, they pressed on. Hinata's senses were a constant, silent sentinel, her Byakugan piercing the heat haze, her symbiotic senses tasting the wind for any hint of their quarry.
Finally, a line of darkness on the horizon resolved itself into the colossal walls of Sunagakure. As they drew closer, the damage became horrifyingly clear. A jagged wound had been torn in the cliff face that served as the village gate. Blackened craters pocked the sand-colored buildings, and splintered ramparts spoke of a violent, overwhelming assault.
Sand shinobi, their faces grim and stained with dust, met them at the makeshift gate. There were no formal greetings, only a shared, desperate urgency. "This way," one of them rasped, "to the hospital."
Temari stormed through the corridors of the Sand Village hospital, her face a thundercloud. "Baki! Where is he?! Where is Kankuro?!"
Hinata, Naruto, Sakura, and Kakashi followed in her wake, their own exhaustion forgotten in the face of the immediate crisis. Baki, his face etched with weariness, met them halfway. "Temari… you're back. It's… Kankuro. He pursued the Akatsuki after they took Gaara. They defeated him. He's been poisoned. The medics… they're doing all they can, but his condition is critical."
Sakura pushed past Naruto, her expression all business. "Let me see him," she commanded, her voice ringing with an authority that made the veteran Sand Jounin blink. "I'm a medic-nin, trained by the Godaime Hokage herself."
As they rounded a final corner towards the intensive care unit, a blur of movement erupted from the side. An elderly woman, her face a roadmap of wrinkles and her eyes blazing with ancient fury, launched herself at Kakashi, a kunai flashing in her hand. "White Fang of Konoha!" she shrieked, her voice a reedy, murderous cry. "You will die by my hands!"
"What the hell?!" Naruto yelped, moving with pure instinct. He appeared between them, his own kunai deflecting the woman's strike in a shower of sparks, his body set in a protective crouch before a completely bewildered Kakashi.
"Sister! Stop!" another elderly man, her twin in age and stature, hobbled out, grabbing the woman's arm. "That is not him! The White Fang has been dead for years!"
Kakashi shifted awkwardly. "The White Fang… was my father."
The old woman froze. Her murderous rage evaporated, replaced by a look of dawning, horrified embarrassment. She let out a high, cackling laugh that was utterly unconvincing. "A test! Yes! Just a little test to see if Konoha's shinobi were still sharp! A joke! Hahahaha!" She introduced herself as Chiyo.
Naruto, Sakura, and Hinata simply stared, blinking in unison, their minds struggling to process the jarring shift from mortal peril to senile comedy.
"Where," Sakura said, her voice a blade of pure focus that cut through the awkwardness, "is the patient?"
The scene at Kankuro's bedside was grim. He was pale, his skin an ashen grey, and a network of faint, black veins pulsed just beneath the surface. His breaths were shallow, each one a desperate, rattling struggle. Sakura immediately took charge, her fingers flying as she scanned his charts and questioned the exhausted-looking Sand medics.
"We don't know what it is," one of them admitted, his voice heavy with defeat. "We've tried every antidote we have. Nothing works. All we can do is give him painkillers and wait."
Sakura's eyes narrowed as she placed a glowing green hand on Kankuro's chest, her expression a mask of intense concentration. "This isn't a simple organic toxin," she declared after a moment, her voice echoing the lessons of her master. "It's refined. Heavy metals, laced with a chakra-disrupting agent. An antidote won't work. It has to be physically extracted." She looked up, her command absolute. "I need bowls. Clean water. Now."
As the medics scrambled to obey, Hinata stepped forward. "I can help."
The Sand medics, who had been so focused on Sakura, finally seemed to notice the towering, armored giantess in their midst. Their eyes widened, and they unconsciously took a step back, giving her a wide berth.
Sakura looked up, her expression a mixture of surprise and relief. "What can you do?"
"I can see it," Hinata stated simply. "I can pinpoint its exact location in his system."
"Do it."
Hinata placed a gauntleted hand on Kankuro's shoulder. She closed her eyes for a second, then they snapped open, her irises now blazing with a luminous, cerulean glow. The intricate, silver patterns beneath the skin of her face and neck pulsed with the same brilliant light, her entire being humming with a focused, analytical power.
"The highest concentration is in the upper thoracic cavity, clinging to the lining of his lungs," she began, her doubled voice a calm, clinical report. "A secondary cluster is forming in the liver, and smaller deposits are beginning to crystallize along the primary arteries of his left arm."
Sakura nodded, her hands already glowing with a more intense green light. "Hold him down. This is going to hurt."
What followed was a brutal, agonizing process. As Sakura's chakra-infused water entered into Kankuro's body, he began to thrash, a raw, strangled scream tearing from his throat. The Sand medics grabbed his legs, while Hinata, with a calm, unshakable strength, pinned his shoulders and torso to the bed. Sakura worked with a feverish intensity, her brow slick with sweat, her hands moving with a surgeon's precision as she followed Hinata's real-time guidance, drawing out a viscous, dark purple fluid into the bowls.
Finally, with a last, shuddering gasp, Sakura pulled her hands away. The last of the poison swirled into the water, and Kankuro collapsed back onto the bed, his body limp and drenched in sweat, but his breathing was already deeper, steadier. The black veins were gone.
A collective sigh of relief filled the room. In the corner, Temari, who had been watching with a silent, iron-willed terror, slid down the wall, slumping to the floor in a boneless heap of pure emotional exhaustion.
Sakura wiped her forehead, a weary but triumphant smile on her face. She looked at Hinata, her eyes filled with a new, profound respect. "Thank you, Hinata. I couldn't have done it without you."
Hinata simply nodded, her glowing eyes fading back to their normal cerulean blue as she returned to stand beside a stunned Naruto and Kakashi. She could hear Sakura in the background, her medic's mind already back to work, demanding samples of the poison for analysis, but Naruto's voice cut through the noise.
He was staring at her, his expression one of pure awe. "You and Sakura… you were both so cool."
The desert night was falling, painting the sky in deep indigos and bruised purples. In the sterile white light of Kankuro's hospital room, the discussion was a low, urgent murmur. Naruto paced, a caged tiger of righteous fury. Kakashi leaned against the wall, a pillar of calm amidst the storm. Temari and Baki stood over Kankuro's bed, their faces etched with a mixture of relief and renewed anxiety. Elder Chiyo sat on a stool, her eyes closed, as if listening to a conversation far beyond the room. Sakura, having just finished a final check-up on her patient, joined the grim council.
Only Hinata remained separate. She stood by the large, plate-glass window, a silent, armored silhouette against the dying light. She hadn't spoken a word since Sakura had saved Kankuro, her back to the room, her gaze fixed on the endless sea of sand outside. Her cerulean eyes glowed with a soft, internal light, reflecting the first pale stars in their depths. She seemed to be in a world of her own.
"…and that's the problem," Baki was saying, his voice rough with frustration. "One of them, is Sasori of the Red Sand. One of our own. A master puppeteer and a traitor. He knows our land, our tactics."
"But they could be anywhere by now," Kakashi countered, his voice a calm, logical anchor. "The Land of Wind is vast. They have a head start. Tracking them in this terrain will be next to impossible."
A weak, rasping voice cut through the discussion. "Not… impossible."
All heads snapped towards the bed. Kankuro was awake, his eyes barely open but burning with a feverish intensity. With a pained grunt, he reached for the shattered remains of his puppet, Crow, which lay on a nearby table. His fingers fumbled with a hidden compartment before pulling out a small, tattered scrap of dark cloth.
"I got… a piece of him," he coughed, his voice a raw whisper. "I snagged it… before he got me."
Naruto's head shot up, a blaze of hope in his eyes. "That's it! Kakashi-sensei! Your dogs! With a scent like that, they can track them, right?!"
As the hopeful energy surged through the room, a vast shadow fell over the assembled group. They stopped, their words dying in their throats. Hinata had turned from the window. She stood before them, her towering, armored form eclipsing the low hospital lights, her face an unreadable mask of serene stillness. The sheer weight of her presence was heavy, a sudden drop in atmospheric pressure that made the air feel thick and heavy. Sakura and Temari felt a prickle of unease. Baki and Kankuro tensed instinctively. Chiyo opened her eyes, her gaze sharp with a sudden, intense curiosity.
Naruto, however, felt only a surge of confidence. "Hinata? You got something?"
Hinata didn't answer immediately. She glided forward, her movements silent despite her armored bulk, and gently took the scrap of cloth from Kankuro's trembling hand. She held it before her face, her glowing eyes fixed upon it with an unnerving intensity.
For the past hour, she hadn't just been staring out the window. She had been searching.
Her consciousness, accelerated and augmented by Venom, had expanded like a shockwave, her Byakugan's vision pushing far beyond its normal limits. She saw the village as a living network of pulsing chakra, a chaotic symphony of life. She was cataloging everything, every flicker of energy, every anomaly, every lingering trace.
Her senses had evolved. It was more than just seeing chakra pathways and biological data now. A new layer of perception had bloomed, something she had no name for. It was like seeing the echoes of a soul, the faint, residual imprint a person's spirit left on the world, a footprint in a dimension she was only just beginning to understand. And then there was Venom, adding its own alien senses to the mix, feeling the electric trails, hearing the subsonic vibrations of distant movements, processing it all with a speed that was utterly inhuman.
Now, she focused that entire sensory apparatus on the tiny scrap of cloth. The data flooded her mind. The lingering, faint traces of a unique chakra signature. The scent of aged wood, of polishing oils and metallic dust, the unmistakable olfactory signature of a master puppeteer. And beneath it all, that strange, spiritual trace, a fading footprint that felt… hollow. Cold.
But there was another trace, too. Faint, but distinct. It smelled of earth, of minerals, of a specific type of clay supercharged with explosive chakra. It was the scent of the second attacker, the bomber. She made a mental note. This new form of tracking required refinement, but its potential was limitless.
She placed the cloth gently back into the puppet's broken hand and glided back to the window, the silent gazes of everyone in the room following her every move.
The data streams are chaotic, Venom's voice purred in the back of her mind, a low, resonant hum. But the anchors are clear. One target signature is… an anomaly. Both dead and alive. A vessel. The other is vibrant. Volatile. Alive.
The mental co-processor whirred. Using the two distinct traces as a filter, they began to sift through the vast amounts of sensory data she had collected from the village. The background noise, the chaotic energy of thousands of shinobi, faded away, filtered into irrelevance. What remained was a single, shimmering thread, a faint trail of spiritual and elemental residue leading out from the shattered gate.
She focused her vision, pushing her Byakugan along that single, glowing path. It was still there, a faint but undeniable trail stretching out across the darkening sands. The way was clear.
She raised her gauntleted hand and pointed a single, armored finger towards the distant, darkening horizon.
"They moved in that direction."
The silence that followed was absolute. It was Temari who broke it, her voice cracking with a desperate, fragile hope. "Are you… are you sure?"
"I believe her." Naruto's voice was firm, an unshakable declaration of faith. Hinata's eyes flickered towards him. She saw that he, too, was staring out into the desert, a faint, shimmering aura of natural energy gathering around him. He was reaching out with his own senses, in his own way. And he was finding the same answer. Good.
Kakashi stared out into the night, his mind calculating. "That direction would take them towards the Land of Rivers. A neutral territory. It's a logical route for them to take to avoid patrols."
"Then we have to go! Now!" Naruto insisted, his voice raw with urgency. "We're running out of time!"
A grim consensus settled over the room. "Team Guy should be deploying from Konoha as we speak," Kakashi stated, taking command. "With luck, we'll be able to rendezvous with them."
"It will take us time to muster a full pursuit squad," Temari said, climbing to her feet, her exhaustion replaced by a cold fire. "But we will follow you as soon as we can."
"Pakkun can handle it," Kakashi said, already forming a hand sign. "I'll send him to guide Team Guy to our position, and then have him double back to lead your forces. He's going to demand a lifetime supply of premium shampoo for this…"
"Then I'm coming with you."
All eyes turned to Elder Chiyo. She had risen from her stool, a new, grim determination on her ancient face. The Konoha team stared, surprised.
"I may be old, but I am not useless," she said, her voice like grinding stones. "And besides… I have a score to settle. It's been a long time since I've seen my grandson."
After a few more moments of hasty, whispered planning, the new, strange alliance was forged. A few minutes later, five figures slipped out of the Sand Village's wounded gates. The legendary Sannin's student, Konoha's Copy Ninja, the Fifth Hokage's apprentice, the Hyuuga's monstrous prodigy, and a living legend of the Sand. They melted into the vast, silent darkness of the desert, the hunt for the Akatsuki truly, finally, underway.
The five shinobi moved as a single, fast entity. Their feet kicking up plumes of sand that were instantly whipped away by the wind. They ran in a tight diamond formation, Kakashi at the point, Naruto and Sakura on the flanks, Chiyo in the protected center, and Hinata at the rear.
After several hours of this relentless pace, Kakashi came to a smooth halt. He bit his thumb, slammed his hand on the sand, and in a puff of smoke, a small, pug-nosed dog appeared, looking thoroughly unimpressed.
"Yo, Kakashi."
"Pakkun. I have a mission for you," Kakashi said, his voice all business. "Head back towards Konoha. Intercept Team Guy. You know Guy's scent. You'll find them. Guide them to our position. We're heading towards the Land of Rivers."
Pakkun sighed, a world-weary sound from such a small creature. "Right, right, find the green spandex enthusiast. Got it. This is gonna cost you extra on the belly rubs, you know." And with a final, disdainful sniff, he vanished, a blur of brown fur racing back the way they had come.
The oppressive heat of the desert gave way to the humid, cloying air of the Land of Rivers. They moved now through a dense, ancient forest, the canopy so thick it plunged the world below into a perpetual twilight. The silence, broken only by the soft thud of their feet on the damp earth, began to feel heavy.
It was Sakura who finally broke it, her voice a low, thoughtful murmur that didn't disrupt their pace. "Hokage-sama said the Akatsuki are hunting jinchūriki. But why now? They could have come for Gaara years ago, when he was younger and less experienced. No offense to the Sand," she added, glancing at Chiyo.
"Jiraiya-sama's intelligence suggests the organization has been… occupied," Kakashi speculated, his visible eye scanning the canopy. "Orochimaru's defection likely caused a significant disruption to their operations, forcing them to spend years restructuring and planning before they could begin their primary objective."
"And it's not like you can just walk up and snatch a tailed beast," Naruto added, his voice uncharacteristically serious. He was jogging backwards for a moment to face them. "Gaara's got the One-Tails. I mean, they're called jinchūriki for a reason. Whatever they're doing, it's gotta take a lot of power and a lot of prep to rip a monster like that out of a living person."
Hinata's attention, which had been focused on the path ahead, flickered to Naruto. Jinchūriki. She had heard that word before, in the whispers of ANBU, from Tsunade-sama, and in the fragmented reports she'd reviewed. She had done her own research, cross-referencing ancient texts in the Hyuuga library with the scraps of intel she'd been given. The picture she'd pieced together was terrifying.
"You are surprisingly knowledgeable on the subject, boy," Chiyo commented, her ancient eyes fixed on Naruto.
Naruto shrugged, turning to face forward again. "Thanks, granny. I guess you could say I've got a bit of first-hand experience." He said it so casually, so matter-of-factly. "I'm the jinchūriki of the Nine-Tailed Fox."
Chiyo's eyes widened, just for a fraction of a second, a subtle tell of her shock. Sakura, however, gasped audibly. "Naruto! You can't just—!"
"It's okay, Sakura-chan," he cut her off, his tone reassuring. "I was gonna tell you. On our own time, in a calmer place. But things aren't calm right now. Everyone here needs to know what they're fighting with. And what we're fighting for."
As they discussed, Hinata's focus remained absolute. Her glowing cerulean eyes traced the faint, shimmering spiritual residue left by their targets, a glowing thread only she could see. But there was something else. A strange feeling, a distortion, a flicker of presence at the very edge of her perception. It was like a whisper you couldn't quite hear, a movement you only caught out of the corner of your eye. It was deeply concerning.
Something… watches, Venom's voice rumbled in her mind. Something that is neither alive nor dead. A distorted presence. We do not like it.
Hours passed. The sun began its descent, casting long shadows through the trees. Suddenly, Hinata stopped. Her entire body went rigid. The team skidded to a halt around her.
"Contact," she stated, her voice a low, doubled hum. "One target. Stationary. He's waiting for us."
Everyone tensed. "Can you identify them?" Kakashi asked, his hand already on the pouch of kunai at his back.
Hinata's eyes narrowed, the glow within them intensifying as she focused her senses. A flicker of recognition passed through her. "The chakra signature… it's Itachi Uchiha." A pause. "But… it's wrong."
"Wrong how?" Naruto demanded, stepping closer to her.
The external chassis and chakra frequency are a perfect match for the Uchiha traitor, Venom analyzed with cold, machinelike precision. However, the total chakra volume is approximately one-third of the original's. An anomaly.
Hinata's own, stranger senses provided the rest of the picture. The spiritual trace was a pale imitation, a hollow echo. It was less a person and more a… vessel. "It looks like him," she explained, her words clipped and efficient. "It feels like him. But the body… it's like a living puppet. Flesh molded into his shape. His chakra levels are far too low. I can see a spiritual thread, a tether, connecting it to a source that is miles away."
"What kind of jutsu is that?" Naruto wondered aloud.
"The Akatsuki know we're on their trail," Sakura deduced, her mind racing. "This has to be a stalling tactic. To buy the real ones more time."
"Contact in ninety seconds," Hinata updated, her gaze fixed on a point in the forest ahead.
"We don't have time to mess around with some puppet!" Naruto growled.
He didn't need to say more. An unspoken agreement passed between Kakashi and Hinata. She took a half-step forward, her stance widening. That unsettling presence was still there, watching. She wouldn't reveal her trump cards, not yet. But this… this abomination would be cleansed.
"We will engage," she declared. "I will open with fire."
Her Klyntar markings pulsed, the silver filigree on her arms and chest flaring with a brilliant, cerulean light. Small, impossibly bright spheres of white-hot fire coalesced in her palms. With a sharp, outward thrust of her hands, she unleashed a storm. Hundreds of fireballs, ranging in size from a fist to a beach ball, roared from her hands. Some arced high into the air, a deadly meteor shower descending on the target's position. Others shot forward horizontally, a blistering volley of incandescent ordnance. Her eyes saw it all. The fake Itachi was already moving.
The world became a maelstrom of white-hot death.
BOOM! FWOOSH! KA-BOOM!
The fake Itachi moved, a blur of black and red, weaving through the horizontal volley while simultaneously calculating the descent vectors of the aerial barrage. The fire was unnaturally bright, forcing his dojutsu to work overtime. He sidestepped a large, slow-moving orb, only for it to detonate with a deafening blast, the shockwave forcing him to pivot. As he corrected his footing, a colossal, iron-studded cudgel, as thick as a tree trunk, filled his vision, swinging with a monstrous WHOOSH that promised to liquefy granite.
In the split second before impact, his Sharingan identified the wielder, Naruto, he threw himself backwards. He flicked a kunai at the attacker. POOF! A shadow clone.
Another series of explosions forced him to leap to the left, directly into the path of three more clones, their wind-wreathed kunai hissing through the air with a sharp whistling sound, forcing him to parry and dodge, the enhanced weapons carving deep gouges in the earth where he had just been. A larger, blindingly white explosion detonated directly at his position, forcing him to jump further back to escape the blast radius.
It was a fatal mistake.
While airborne, his Sharingan registered a horrifying sight. He was now surrounded on all sides by dozens of Naruto's clones, their hands a blur of signs. In perfect, terrifying unison, a sound like a rising hurricane filled the air.
WHOOOOOSH!
Roaring gales of wind shot towards him from every conceivable angle. Some of the blasts slammed into him, tearing at his body, but most were aimed in front of him, striking the still-expanding dome of white fire. The wind fed the flames, turning the explosion from a simple blast into a raging, all-consuming firestorm that engulfed him with a hungry VWOOOOM! The sensory overload was absolute.
Then, a sound like a thunderclap right behind him, KRAK!, and the world tilted. A titanic, crushing force slammed into his back, the impact a sickening CRUNCH that sent him hurtling into the heart of the inferno. He caught a fleeting glimpse of pink hair and a fist wreathed in green chakra. As he flew, his mind worked at impossible speed, his hands flashing through the seals for a counter-jutsu.
Suddenly, the firestorm collapsed. It imploded, sucked into a single, screaming point of light.
And from the silent, superheated air, a new sound was born. It was a sound of grinding glass and tearing metal, a high-frequency shriek that tore reality apart at the seams.
SHREEEEEEEE!
A spiraling shuriken of pure, condensed wind, now supercharged with the stolen white flames, emerged from the chaos. It screamed through the air and slammed into him.
As the jutsu hit, followed by a final, definitive, world-ending explosion.
A flash of blinding white light, and then the pain was absolute, a white-hot agony that was strong. The feedback raced up the invisible chakra thread, a searing jolt of pure torment that forced the distant puppeteer to do the one thing he had been ordered not to: he severed the connection.
Hinata watched, her glowing eyes missing nothing. She saw Naruto's Wind Release: Rasenshuriken, in it's devastating form, act as a perfect vessel. It cut through her fire and absorbed it, contained it, and turned its chaotic energy into focused, rotational annihilation. The puppet that looked like Itachi Uchiha was ripped apart.
And with her other sense, she saw the long, spiritual tether that had animated it snap, whipping back into the void like a broken rubber band.
The immediate threat was gone. But the forest was now deathly silent. And that other presence, the one that watched from the shadows, was still there.
They found what was left of the Itachi-puppet in a charred, steaming crater at the center of the clearing. Kakashi surveyed the scene, the sheer destructive synergy his students had displayed. "Excellent teamwork," he said, his voice calm but laced with an almost startled respect. "You anticipated each other's movements perfectly."
The sun had finally bled out below the horizon, plunging the forest into a deep, inky blackness. With a soft flick, a small, perfectly stable sphere of white-hot fire bloomed in Hinata's palm, casting the grim scene in a stark, dancing light. The puppet's body was a mangled ruin of incinerated flesh and shattered bone, but its head, thrown clear by the final blast, was eerily preserved.
"That's not him," Naruto stated, his voice flat. "Not even close."
"Then who…?" Sakura murmured, the rhetorical question hanging in the sudden, heavy silence.
"I know this face." The voice was ancient and filled with a weary sorrow. Elder Chiyo stepped into the light of Hinata's fire, her wrinkled face a mask of grief and betrayal. "This is Yuura. One of our most trusted Jounin." She knelt, her hand hovering over the dead man's face. "He was in charge of the outer perimeter defense. He vanished right before the attack."
"The saboteur," Kakashi concluded, the final piece of the puzzle clicking into place.
Hinata stared at the body of the traitor, but her senses were cast far wider. That unnerving presence, that cold spot in the universe, was still there. It had retreated, keeping its distance, but it was watching. Always watching.
Calculations are inconclusive, Venom hummed, a low thrum of processing power in the back of her mind. The entity emits no discernible chakra, heat, or bio-electric signature. It is a ghost. A statistical impossibility. Our threat assessment models are… struggling.
Without a word, without breaking her gaze from the corpse, Hinata made a subtle gesture with her free hand, a series of quick, almost imperceptible flexes of her fingers. Watcher. Distant. Unidentified.
Kakashi's eye narrowed slightly, the only sign he had seen and understood. Chiyo gave a slow, deliberate blink. They were veterans, and they understood the language of silent warnings. Naruto and Sakura, however, blinked in confusion for a moment before the gravity of Hinata's silent message settled in. They schooled their features, their postures relaxing into a practiced, deceptive ease.
"Does this mean Team Guy is being stalled by another one of these things?" Sakura asked, her voice steady, playing her part perfectly.
"Perhaps," Kakashi replied, his tone casual. "But I have faith in Guy. If anyone can defeat an opponent through sheer enthusiasm, it's him."
"We need to go," Naruto said, his voice tight with urgency, his gaze snapping back to the trail ahead. "They're getting further away every second. It's not like he'll just be weak... they'll kill him! If they rip that thing out of him, Gaara dies!"
No one argued. The grim reality of their mission settled over them again, heavier than before. Without a word, they turned from the traitor's corpse and melted back into the shadows, a silent, five-person pack on a desperate hunt.
Several hours earlier, and many miles to the north, the arid land had been turned into a churning, miniature ocean.
"Suiton: Dai Bakusui Shōha! (Water Release: Great Exploding Water Colliding Wave!)"
A moving lake, a tidal wave of churning water, surged through the lands, commanded by the gleeful, shark-toothed grin of Kisame Hoshigaki.
"Useless!" Neji Hyuuga roared, a whirlwind of pale energy. "Hakkeshō Kaiten!" He became a spinning top of pure chakra, deflecting the brunt of the watery assault.
Might Guy and Rock Lee, their green jumpsuits stark against the chaos, were blurs of motion, their feet skipping across the surface of the roiling water as if it were solid ground, closing the distance on their colossal opponent.
But it was Tenten who met him head-on. With a furious battle cry, she launched herself from ground, the twin Kiba blades in her hands crackling with a furious, white-hot lightning.
"Raitōjutsu: Raiga! (Lightning Sword Art: Thunder Fang!)"
KRA-KOOM!
Her electrified blades met the monstrous, scale-covered surface of Samehada. Steam hissed, and lightning arced in every direction, the air tasting of ozone. Kisame didn't even budge, his grin widening as he looked down at her.
His eyes narrowed, a flicker of genuine surprise in their depths. "Those blades… The Fangs of the Hidden Mist." His grin became a predatory sneer. "How does a little leaf-brat like you come to possess them?" He applied pressure, effortlessly forcing her back. "No matter. I'll be taking them back… after I pry them from your cold, dead hands."
Kisame's chakra exploded outwards, a vast, oppressive wave of killing intent. Samehada writhed in his grip, its bandages beginning to peel back, revealing the hungry, living scales beneath.
"Lee! Tenten! Neji!" Guy's voice boomed over the roar of the water, a beacon of pure passion. "Let us show this overgrown fish the true power of youth!"
The world bled into shades of deep grey and black, the moon a sliver of bone high above. Even with their chakra-enhanced vision, the forest was a labyrinth of shifting shadows and unseen roots.
Kakashi raised a single, gloved hand. The team came to a smooth, silent halt. "We break here."
"What?!" Naruto protested instantly, his voice a harsh whisper. "We can't stop now! We'll lose them!"
"We have been moving non-stop since Konoha, and then again from Suna," Kakashi stated, his tone leaving no room for argument. "We expended energy on the Itachi-puppet. It is pitch black. A few hours of rest to restore our stamina is a tactical necessity, not a luxury."
"But—!"
Naruto's protest was cut short by a familiar, gentle weight settling on his shoulder. He glanced back, and his line of sight was immediately filled with the sculpted, midnight-blue plates of Hinata's armored chest. A flush of heat crept up his neck. He tilted his head back, craning his neck to look up into her face. Her cerulean eyes were glowing softly in the dark, serene and unshakable.
"He is right, Naruto-kun," her doubled voice was a soft, calming murmur that seemed to push back the oppressive darkness. "A few hours will not change the outcome. We will be faster and stronger for it."
He looked away from her, his blush deepening, and his gaze fell on his teammates. Sakura was leaning against a tree, her shoulders slumped, the lines of exhaustion clear on her face even in the gloom. Elder Chiyo, for all her iron will, was breathing heavily, her age finally showing. He let out a long, frustrated sigh, the fight draining out of him.
"Okay… you're right," he mumbled, his voice small. "Sorry."
They made a small, smokeless camp. While the others rested, Hinata stood a silent watch, her senses cast out like a vast, invisible net. She felt Kakashi's subtle gaze on her and, with an almost imperceptible shake of her head, signaled that the area was clear. That strange, watching presence was gone.
For now, Venom commented from the quiet depths of her mind. We are still processing the data signature of that… anomaly. The lack of quantifiable information is… infuriating. It is possible the entity has shifted its observation focus to the reinforcement team. We require more data.
Hinata moved to sit near the fire, her armored form settling beside Naruto. He glanced at her, a quick, furtive look, before turning his gaze back to the crackling flames. The frantic energy had finally bled out of him, replaced by a grim, focused calm.
It was Sakura who broke the silence again, her voice a low, analytical hum. "We know one is Sasori of the Red Sand. What about the other one? The bomber?"
"Kankuro said he wore a scratched Stone Village forehead protector," Kakashi replied, his eye never leaving the shadows. "The Bingo Book has a potential match: Deidara. He was a prodigy from Iwagakure's Explosion Corps. A terrorist for hire who deserted the village years ago. Our relationship with the Stone has always been… complicated. Details are scarce, but it seems the Akatsuki managed to recruit him."
They rested in a tense, shared silence for a few more hours. Then, as the first, pale fingers of dawn began to creep over the horizon, they were moving again.
The pace was renewed, faster than before. As they ran, a strange and familiar sensation prickled at the edge of Hinata's awareness. The ambient energy of the world, the very life force of the forest, was shifting, flowing towards a single point. Without turning her head, her 360-degree vision confirmed her suspicion. It was Naruto.
He was running with his hands clasped together before his chest in a meditative seal, his eyes closed. He was gathering the natural energy around him, a vast and ever-growing volume of it, and carefully, painstakingly, weaving it into his own chakra. The fusion was making his own power swell, becoming denser, stronger. His eyes snapped open, and for a moment, they were no longer blue but a brilliant, burning orange, the pupils elongated like a toad's.
At the same time, Hinata pushed her own senses forward, the spiritual thread of their quarry pulling them onward like a compass needle. Her vision flew, a disembodied eye soaring over miles of forest, until it found them.
The trail ended at a massive cave, its entrance sealed by a monolithic boulder set into the side of a wide riverbed. She could see the faint, glowing lines of a complex sealing jutsu radiating from the boulder, connecting to multiple anchor points hidden in the surrounding cliffs. But it was what she saw inside that made her blood run cold.
There was a statue. A colossal, grotesque outline of a humanoid figure with nine closed eyes, its hands outstretched as if in a horrific supplication. It was a corpse, a thing of pure void, devoid of life or chakra. And standing on each of the statue's huge, stone fingers were figures. Most were blurry, indistinct, projections. But two were solid. Sasori. And Deidara.
And between them, levitating in the air before the statue's monstrous face, was Gaara. A shimmering, violet stream of energy was being pulled from his body, his chakra, his very life force, siphoned away and fed into the dead statue. The entire scene felt wrong.
"Contact!" Hinata's voice cut through the air, sharp and urgent. "They are in a cave, two kilometers ahead! They're extracting the tailed beast from Gaara now! There's a giant statue… and others are there, but they look like projections."
Naruto's head snapped up, his orange eyes wide. "She's right! I can feel it! All the nature energy… it's being sucked into a void up ahead! Something's wrong! Really wrong!"
A wave of dread washed over the team. In Hinata's mind, Venom was strangely, terrifyingly silent, its vast, alien intellect running at maximum capacity, processing this impossible new variable.
They pushed harder, their speed doubling. Minutes later, Hinata's senses picked up another set of signatures, familiar and welcome. "Team Guy is closing in," she announced. "Kakashi-sensei's ninken has them on the right path."
They met in a clearing, the two teams merging seamlessly without breaking stride.
"Kakashi! My eternal rival! It is good to see your youthful face once more!" Guy boomed, his grin a force of nature. Lee echoed his enthusiasm, his own smile just as wide.
"Naruto-kun! You have grown!"
Neji offered a formal, respectful nod. Tenten, panting slightly, managed an awkward but genuine smile.
"We ran into one of your new friends, Kakashi," Guy reported, his tone shifting to serious. "I think I've met him before."
"It was a fish-man from the Water Village," Tenten interjected, her voice tight with annoyance. She instinctively tightened her grip on the hilts of the Kiba blades strapped to her back. "Kisame. He threatened to take my swords."
The two teams, now nine strong, burst from the tree line. Before them lay a wide, placid river. And in the center of the far bank, a single, colossal boulder, marked with a stark, crimson seal, blocked the entrance to a dark and yawning cave. They landed silently on the surface of the water, nine powerful shinobi, their reflections staring back at them from the still, dark surface, ready for the battle to come.
The nine shinobi stood on the still, dark water of the river, a silent council of war before the monolithic boulder. A single, complex paper seal was plastered to its center, the crimson ink a stark wound against the grey stone.
"It's a Five-Seal Barrier," Naruto stated, his voice tight with concentration. He recognized the calligraphy from Jiraiya's exhaustive lessons. "To break it, we have to find four other seals hidden in the area and remove them all at the exact same time as this main one. But it's probably rigged with some kind of trap."
"Do you know a counter-seal?" Sakura asked, her mind already running through tactical possibilities.
"Making one would take hours we don't have," Naruto shook his head, his frustration palpable. "It's faster to just rip them off and deal with whatever they throw at us."
"I have them," a calm voice cut through the tension. Neji's Byakugan was active, the veins around his temples bulging. He pointed. "One is on a cliff face, two hundred meters north. Another, beneath the roots of that ancient cypress tree, southeast. The third is adhered to the underside of the riverbed, directly below us. And the last is high on the canyon wall behind us."
While they plotted the physical assault, Hinata was already deep behind enemy lines. Her eyes, blazing with cerulean light, pierced through the stone, through the darkness, and into the heart of the Akatsuki's ritual.
It was just as she had sensed. A colossal statue, a petrified nightmare of some long-dead god, dominated the cavern. Her Byakugan saw it as a void, a hole in reality that consumed light and chakra. The blurry, projected figures of the other Akatsuki members stood serenely on its outstretched stone fingers, each one a conduit. She saw the shimmering tethers of their chakra flowing from their bodies into the statue, a horrific, cooperative jutsu that was tearing Gaara's very soul from his body. Her gaze locked onto Deidara, the bomber. The tether was not coming from his body, but from the ring on his finger. It was an interface. A key.
This is not a statue, Venom's voice was a low, awestruck whisper in her mind, the first time she had ever sensed anything akin to reverence from her partner. It is a creature. The biomass is… alien. It shares no common markers with any terrestrial life form we have ever analyzed. It is… a Husk.
A torrent of ancestral Klyntar knowledge, of memories not her own, flooded Hinata's consciousness.
A vessel, Venom continued, its thoughts racing. A colossal, dormant organism, built to contain an immense and chaotic energy. A prison forged from flesh. It is… disturbingly similar in function to our home. A pause, filled with a gravity that chilled Hinata to her core. Partner. We must consult the hive-mind after this is over. Immediately.
Agreed, she thought back, her own mind reeling. A strange, inexplicable feeling of closeness, of kinship with the dead thing in the cave, resonated deep within her. While Venom's co-processor ran at maximum capacity, recording every signature, every frequency, every scrap of data from the alien Husk, Hinata focused her own senses on the Akatsuki.
Her gaze swept over the projections and landed on the one with the strongest, most stable tether. A figure standing at the very center, his posture regal, his power immense.
And then, the world stopped.
The projection's head tilted. Its eyes, a pattern of concentric, lavender rings that seemed to pull in the very light of the cavern, shifted and looked directly at her. Through miles of solid rock, through the dimensional veil of his own projection, he met her gaze. The eyes were alien. And yet… they felt so horribly, terrifyingly familiar.
There was a flicker, a blink. And the scene shattered.
The chakra tethers connecting the projections to the Husk snapped. The horrific suction ceased. Gaara's body, no longer suspended by the jutsu, fell to the cavern floor in a limp, unconscious heap. And with a faint shimmer, the colossal statue began to fade, summoned away to a place unknown.
"They've stopped!" Hinata's voice cut through the tense silence of her teammates. "The extraction is cancelled! The statue is gone! Only the two Akatsuki members and an unconscious Gaara remain inside! They're going to move him!"
"Not on my watch!" Naruto roared.
"Guy-sensei!" Neji called out, already pointing to the seal locations he had identified.
Might Guy's grin was a force of nature. "Excellent! A race against time to overcome an impossible challenge! The fires of youth burn brightest in the face of adversity!" He tossed small, in-ear devices to everyone. "Short-range communicators. We will synchronize on my mark!"
"My clones will help!" Naruto added, flashing a hand sign. In a series of soft POOFs, four groups of three shadow clones appeared, each group immediately running to join one of the designated seal-removal teams.
"Team Guy, with me!" Guy commanded. With Naruto's clones at their heels, Neji, Lee, and Tenten became blurs of motion, rocketing off towards their assigned targets, their forms melting into the twilight.
With the seal-removal teams dispatched, the four remaining shinobi faced the monolithic boulder.
"I will breach the entrance," Hinata declared, her doubled voice cutting through the tense silence with absolute authority. "The blast will be… significant. I suggest you all stand back."
Without waiting for a reply, she took a step forward. Naruto, Sakura, Kakashi, and Elder Chiyo exchanged a look and then moved, spreading out behind her in a wide, defensive crescent moon, their gazes fixed on Hinata, in which she is about to become an impossible weapon.
She raised her right arm, palm facing the boulder. A low, organic hum began to emanate from her, a sound that seemed to vibrate in the very air. From the impossibly fine seams of her articulated armor, a living, liquid obsidian began to flow. Tendrils of black matter, shimmering with an oily iridescence, slithered and coiled around her arm, weaving together with a silent, terrifying speed.
She was growing a weapon.
The biomass molded itself, elongating and hardening, shifting from a chaotic mass into a sleek, biological accelerator cannon. It was a masterpiece of alien bio-engineering, a seamless extension of her own body that stretched a full meter from her shoulder. It looked like it is something that looked like polished, black bone and chitin, inscribed with intricate, silver channels that pulsed with a soft, inner light.
VMMMMMMMM…
A low, rising thrum filled the air as she began to channel her chakra. Two impossibly bright serpents of energy, one of white fire, the other of crackling white lightning, crawled from her shoulder, spiraling down the length of the cannon. They converged at the base, feeding a growing, unstable sphere of pure, incandescent plasma. A miniature, captive star bloomed in the heart of her weapon.
"Whoa…" Naruto breathed, his previous urgency momentarily forgotten in the face of the sheer, terrifying beauty of the display. "Hinata, that is… that is the coolest thing I have ever seen in my entire life."
Sakura could only stare, her analytical mind struggling to even categorize what she was witnessing. "The level of shape and nature transformation required for that is... it's impossible."
Elder Chiyo's ancient eyes were wide with a rapt, academic intrigue. "To mold one's own body into a weapon of such a scale… I have never seen such a jutsu."
Kakashi said nothing. His single eye remained fixed on the target, his focus absolute.
A faint crackle came to life in Hinata's ear.
"SEAL ONE IS IN POSITION! THE FIRES OF YOUTH ARE READY TO ERUPT!" Guy's voice boomed through the communicator.
"Seal two is ready, Guy-sensei!" Lee echoed.
"Seal three, prepared," came Neji's calm, precise report.
"Seal four, set and waiting," Tenten confirmed.
"HEY! WHICH ONE OF YOU ATE THE LAST SOLDIER PILL?! I'M STARVING OVER HERE!" one of Naruto's clones yelled in the background, followed by a chorus of indignant shouts.
Hinata allowed the corner of her lip to twitch upwards. She raised her free hand. "On my mark. Countdown from three." Her voice was calm, steady, the eye of the storm.
"THREE!" Guy roared.
"TWO!" the others chorused.
"ONE!"
"NOW!"
Hinata's entire body tensed, her voice a command that bent reality to her will.
"Kōseiton: Hoshi no Shisen! (Stellar Release: Gaze of the Star!)"
There was a sharp, deafening CRACK-HISS as the contained energy was unleashed. A silent, instantaneous streak of pure, white light, no thicker than a needle, shot from the barrel of her cannon.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened. The beam crossed the distance in a timeframe too small to measure, leaving a shimmering trail of superheated air in its wake.
Then, a faint TINK sound echoed from the face of the boulder, right where that seal was placed.
A single, hairline fracture, glowing with a white-hot intensity, appeared where the beam had struck. Then, with a sound like a thousand panes of glass shattering at once, the crack spiderwebbed across the entire surface, a cacophony of sharp CRACKING sounds that tore through the silent forest.
The monolithic boulder un-made itself.
The solid rock seemed to lose its very cohesion, its molecular bonds dissolving in an instant. The massive stone barrier, which had stood for who-knows-how-long, crumbled, into into a silent, cascading waterfall of fine, grey pebbles.
With a soft, final shussssh, the mountain of dust and pebbles flowed into the newly opened maw of the cave, revealing the dark, waiting passage within.