It started off as a small shift, just enough to make you plant your feet and wonder what was going on.
“Hinata?” Naruto questioned, heading towards her.
He had almost reached her when the snow really started to move. The entire sheet of snow they were standing on started to slide off the face of the mountain. Naruto reached out and grabbed Hinata’s hand as they began to fall. She screamed and pushed her way up against the snow.
“Push out! Push out!” Sora yelled, as she turned herself so that she was parallel to the cascading waterfall of snow. She bent her knees and pushed off, sending herself sailing off into the open air. Twisting around, Naruto grabbed Hinata around the waist and they pushed off as well, shooting out away from the mountain. They watched in awe as a third of the mountain slid away.
“The snow’s still going to be moving when we land! Try to stay on top as best you can! Use chakra! ” Sora yelled as loud as could over the howling wind in their ears. Hinata looked down at the snow moving along the ground underneath her feet. She gulped, closed her eyes, and concentrated her charka on her feet.
They hit the snow at a dead run. The second the snow made contact with their feet it would break away, leaving them once again with nothing to stand on. The snow smashed into their bodies and faces, completely whiting out their world. Only the fact that Sora had made them walk though rapids kept them from completely losing their footing. It was almost like walking on air. Naruto’s arm started to slip from around Hinata’s waist and they fought to keep in contact with each other. Naruto had to turn his back against the snow to keep them from getting pushed down.
And that was when he saw it. Through the rivers of snow whipping past them, he could just barely make out snow that was going up towards the sky and back towards them. It arched over their heads, and he was willing to bet anything that it was coming back down to hit them again.
Shit. This wasn’t an avalanche; this was an attack. It wasn’t going to die down eventually if they just tried to ride it out. It was just going to keep coming.
He looked to his left and was just barely able to make out Sora struggling against the snow a few feet away.
“It’s coming back!” he yelled, for lack of a better way to describe it.
“What the hell do you mean it’s coming back?” Sora yelled back.
Naruto pointed behind them. Sora looked towards the upsweeping snow. “Aw, SHIT!” She started trying to move towards them. “We’ve got to counter it somehow!”
“How the hell do we do that?” Naruto yelled.
Hinata yelped as she lost her footing. Naruto gripped her hand as hard as he could and tried to pull her to him, but instead he got yanked down with her and they both went tumbling through the snow.
He managed to get his hands around her waist again, pulling her back against his chest and curling around her. Damn it!
“Hold on,” he heard Hinata say, hunching her shoulders and trying to make space between them for her hands. She pushed her palms together and started forming seals, fighting against the pounding of the snow. They kept sliding farther and farther down the mountain, pushing desperately with their feet to keep themselves from being swept under the snow.
Finally, she finished the last of the seals and jumped up to wrap her hand around his neck. Realizing what she was trying to do, Naruto grabbed Hinata tightly and lifted her up higher, so that she was leaning slightly over his shoulder.
She raised her hands to her mouth. “Phoenix Fire no Jutsu!” she yelled, and blew over her fingers, sending a ball of flame into the air. Instantly, the snow around them began to melt. Water rushed past them, carving out pathways in the snow while white swirls of steam rose above them. The fire effectively cut the snow, clearing a path for them to stand, although the banks of snow around them seemed to rise higher and higher.
Then, suddenly, the pounding of the snow simply stopped. They stared for a second, not believing it was over, before Hinata finally slid down to the ground. Slowly, they looked around them. They had apparently melted not only the snow coming around them, but the snow underneath their feet as well. The water from the melted snow had run through the banks behind them, cutting out a thin gorge with high walls.
Walking over, Naruto tested the walls of snow with his hand. It crumbled away easily under his hand. “It’s not going to support our weight,” he said, looking back at her over his shoulder.
She bit her lower lip and nodded. “So we’re stuck?” she asked.
Naruto rubbed the snow out of his hair. “Of course not!”
“Then how are we getting out?”
He grinned sheepishly. “I haven’t quite figured that out yet.”
She sighed and looked up at the walls of the ravine. The sky showed clear and blue above them.
“Such a pity,” a silky voice said.
Naruto and Hinata turned to look down the length of the ravine. Standing about a hundred feet away were two men; one slender, the other huge.
Naruto’s breath sucked in as he looked at the men’s coats; black, with dark red clouds swirling around them. They had evaded them for so long that it almost seemed impossible that they could be here, but there was no denying who they were.
Akatsuki.
“I must say that I didn’t really expect that little trick to kill you or your sister, but I had hoped that it would rid us of that little friend of yours,” the man continued. It was impossible to see his face; the collar of his coat met the brim of his wide straw hat almost perfectly. His companion was hatless, wild black hair sticking out from his head in every direction. His nose was hawkish; his eyes deep-set and dark. He stared down at them from his great height wordlessly, but with a face full of contempt.
The man with the hidden face continued to speak in his soft, lilting voice. It was almost hypnotizing. “Allow me to introduce us. This is Nadare, formally of the Hidden Village of Stone.” Ha paused, lifting one hand to indicate his companion before bringing it back up to his own chest. “And I am Shiraku. I suppose you could say that I was from the Hidden Village of Cloud, but I was there for such a brief portion of my life, it hardly seems relevant.”
Hinata desperately started searching through her mind, trying to remember if there had been anything in the bingo book about either of them. Only the name Nadare rung a bell, and then only vaguely.
“Haven’t heard of us? It isn’t all that surprising. Our home villages aren’t terribly found of talking about us for some reason.”
“HA! I know why!” Naruto said, startling Hinata, who had started to get drawn into his voice. “You guys must not be worthy of being heard of! You must not be that strong!”
“Naruto!” Hinata breathed. How many times had she and Sora tried to pound it into his head that he shouldn’t start fights by telling the opponent how bad they were? She looked over at two men standing there. If they were Akatsuki, then they weren’t in the bingo book because they chose not to be, not because they weren’t worthy.
Shiraku reached up to grab the brim of his hat, sweeping it down off his head as he tilted his face down. “Ah, don’t underestimate us!” He spoke quietly, almost in a whisper, but with an intensity that sent shivers down their spines. His hair was rod straight and steely gray. Hinata could almost swear there was a light blue sheen to it where it reflected the light. It fell forward, just long enough to hide his face from them. “After all,” he started to tilt his head, hair moving back to uncover his face. “You don’t even know what we can do yet!”
Hinata’s eyes widened as she stared at the man. He was absolutely the most beautiful man she had ever seen, almost feminine in appearance. His features were fine and narrow, almost surreally so. As if he wasn’t quite human. At first the man seemed to be ghostly pale, almost white in color. But then he moved his face slightly and she realized that it was not just his natural skin tone.
The man was tattooed. White symbols had been inked in all over his face, just barely visible in his already pale skin. They covered his face almost completely, running in fanciful designs up and around the ridges of his eyes, swirling down onto his cheeks before plunging down towards his neck and disappearing into his high collar. Naruto grimaced. Why would anyone want to do that to themselves?
The man smiled icily. “You think you can beat us? You’ve only been allowed to roam free for as long as you have because we let you.”
“What do you mean?” Naruto demanded.
Shiraku laughed. “Do you think we haven’t been able to keep track of you for two and a half years? Are you so naïve that you think the Akatsuki THAT incompetent? We’ve had our eye on you for a long time.”
“What do you mean ‘you’ve had your eye on us’?” Naruto yelled.
His smile widened. “You never did figure out why the tower collapsed on the Lady, did you?”
Naruto and Hinata’s jaws dropped. Were they saying that they were the ones who…
“No,” Hinata whispered. But that would mean they had known where they were for a year! How much of their training had they watched? How much about them did they know? How could they fight people who were so skilled that the three of them didn’t even know they were being followed?
Shiraku laughed again. “You really are amusing. For all your training-“
“Shiraku.” The man behind them finally spoke, his expression never changing, his eyes never leaving them. “Can’t we just get to it?”
The slender man looked annoyed for a second and then sighed. “You’re right, you’re right, go ahead and get them.” He turned to walk away, waving his hand in a dismissive gesture.
Nadare brought his hands together in front of him, his left hand wrapping his right fist. He breathed in deeply, then exhaled with a rush of breath. Naruto and Hinata backed up a pace, trying to figure out what was going to happen. Nadare turned and slammed his fist into the wall beside him. It began to shake, snow starting to break away from the tops of the ravine, falling onto them in huge clumps.
“Shit! We’ve gotta get out of here!” Naruto yelled. Bending their knees, they jumped as high as they could onto the wall of snow and started trying to work their way up. The snow crumbled under their hands as they tried to keep their charka spread wide enough to keep them moving.
The walls continued to shake harder and harder as they went up, seeming to bend in illogical ways. They found themselves sucked in with the wall as the snow fell around them, closing out the sun.
“Naruto!” Hinata screamed and reached for his hand. Their fingertips just barely made contact before the snow buried them both.
It was cold, it was dark, and it was difficult to breath. Naruto turned his head slightly, and tried to calm his breathing. There wasn’t much oxygen in the snow, and every breath he took depleted it more. He reached out with one hand trying to find Hinata. Finally, he managed to brush the tips of her fingers and hook them with his just up to the first knuckle. He could feel her shaking.
He pushed his other hand down into the snow a little, trying to make room for him to move it freely. He had never been so grateful that he knew how to use one handed seals. Without them we would be stuck. With them, he had a small chance of survival.
He started to feel himself go slightly lightheaded with lack of oxygen. He started to run through three quick seals, then opened his palm flat down. “Wind of Fire no Jutsu,” he whispered.
The hot air blasted out of his palm, melting some of the snow and almost burning his skin. But with it came much needed oxygen. Naruto turned his hand to blast the snow from under him. As the snow underneath him gave, he fell to his feet and turned the blast to the snow under Hinata. He pulled her towards him and she came crashing through the last of the snow, landing on his chest with a shriek and a thump.
He closed his hand, ending the juts, while she panted hard and clung to him. Two more seals and he had a small ball of chakra glowing like a light bulb over his hand. He looked around the little room he had made. The melted water had frozen again, turning the walls and floor to glittering sheets of ice.
“I think we have enough air to last us for a bit.” He reached up with his free hand to rub along her shoulder blade. “You okay?”
She nodded into his shoulder and then pulled away slightly to look up at him. “Thank you,” she said.
He squeezed her with one arm and then looked up at the ceiling. “So theoretically, if we go straight up, we’ll get out of here.”
“But we don’t know how far up it is. Plus, we don’t know if we’ll destabilize something and end up crushing ourselves again,” she protested.
“Well, there’s got to be some way out of this!” he said crankily. “Maybe we can signal Nee-chan somehow.”
“How would we keep from signaling the men too?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but we have to do something!” he yelled. She winced and took a step backwards.
“Hey, hey!” he said, slightly panicked-sounding, hauling her back up against him. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to yell.” He tilted his chin to run his cheek across the top of her head.
She chocked back on the tears that were threatening to come out of her eyes. “I know, it’s just…I don’t see how we’re going to get out of here!”
“There has to be a way out.”
“But how do you know that? How can you be so sure?”
He grinned down at her, almost apologetically. “Because if things are still the same as last time, they want me alive.”
Her eyes widened as she stared up at him. Then she set her features and nodded firmly. “Let me see what I can see,” she said, backing up out of his arms. She turned to one of the walls and activated her Byakugan then the echoes. Instantly, her world was transformed into one of colored lines and shadows. She could see the remains of the chakra from Naruto’s jutsu around her, filling the cavern. Focusing her eyes outward, she tried to see what lay beyond the walls of snow.
The snow itself was full of chakra lines. She squinted slightly, trying to make out exactly what form they were taking. Waves, she realized; two different types of them. Not the kind of wave that went up and down while it moved forward, but also the kind that pushed things together and then pulled them apart, like the waves the Sound Nins used.
She suddenly became even colder. They weren’t up against Sound Nin, were they?
“Hina-chan?” Naruto’s voice cut through her thoughts. “Can you see how far it is to the surface?”
She blinked at him and then turned off the echoes and looked into the layers of shadows surrounding them. There was solid snow around them on three sides. One direction seemed to offer air if you dug. “We’d have to go through about 50 feet that way,” she said, pointing.
“What about up?”
She tilted her head towards the ceiling. “About twenty…” Her voice trailed off as the shadows seemed to shift slightly. Her brow creased and she tilted her head slightly, trying to get a better idea of what was going on. Raising her hands, she turned the echoes back on again.
“Hina-chan?” Naruto asked, as her eyes went wide.
“Move!” she yelled. “There’s something coming through-“
But it was too late. A large glob of snow landed right on top of his head, covering him almost completely. Light streamed into the caverns from the large round opening. Sora stuck her head in upside down.
“Okay, so I understand that you two haven’t gotten a lot of time alone with each other recently, but isn’t this a bit much?” She grinned.
“Dammit!” Naruto burst out of the pile of snow. “Did you have to do that?” he yelled at Sora.
She had already started to climb out of the tunnel. “Sheesh! If I’d known I was going to get that that kinda reaction, I would’ve left the two of you down here longer!”
He growled at her, the tension still coursing through his veins. Hinata laid a hand on his arm. She smiled slightly. “Can you give me a boost?” she asked.
Still scowling, he bent his knees and threaded the fingers of his hands together. Lightly placing her hands on his shoulders, Hinata put one foot up into the cup of his hands. Making sure his feet were firmly planted, Naruto threw her up through the tunnel Sora had created. She landed with a soft crunch in the snow.
Leaning over the edge of the tunnel, she watched as her boyfriend climbed up the wall, still grumbling about sisters. She smiled and reached out to offer him a hand over the edge.
“Great, now that we’re all done playing in the snow, let’s try to figure out what the hell just happened and get on home,” Sora said, turning to look at the snowy horizon.
Hinata and Naruto looked at each other questioningly, then back to Sora. “Onee-chan, you didn’t see them?” Hinata asked.
“See who?” Sora asked, turning to look at them over her shoulder.
“The two men! The Akatsuki!” Naruto yelled, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Sora’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, Akatsuki?” she asked through clenched teeth.
“Ah…I believe he means us,” a voice said.
Turning back towards her front, Sora looked at the two men standing before her. “And you are?” she asked.
Shiraku rolled his eyes. “I already went through all of this with your young companions. Is it really necessary to go over it again?” he asked, as if he were some type of long-suffering martyr.
“Well, why not? Honestly, you don’t seem like the type of man who would really mind introducing himself over again.”
“Really?”
Her smile had an edge. “Well, you know, with your whole look…” She let her voice trail off.
“What whole look?”
It took Hinata a minute to understand exactly what the hell Sora was doing. She was trying to give them a chance to figure out what the hell to do. They knew nothing about these guys, and fighting blind had the potential to get them into a whole lot of trouble. Hinata continued to watch with rapt attention, as if captivated by spectacle that Sora was making, while secretly activating her Byakugan)and the echoes.
Sora kept right on talking. “The whole ‘I’m a big bad guy’ look. Seems like you would be like most other villains in the East, most of whom seem to be thrilled to introduce themselves over and over again. At least in my experience. Honestly, what is it with you guys in the East? I mean, I was looking through that bingo book thing that you guys use over there, and it was, quite frankly, rather disappointing.”
Shiraku arched one eyebrow high up on his forehead. “Disappointing? I must confess, you have peaked my interest. I hope that you are able to elaborate on that subject.”
“Well, you guys lack unique characteristics.”
“Unique characteristics?” The eyebrow arched impossibly higher. Behind him, Nadare started to growl, although it was uncertain if it was directed at Sora or his partner.
There was something funny about the echoes surrounding the tall, thin man. The other man’s were fairly straightforward. He reverberated with the kind of waves that she had found in the snow. If he was from Rock, then it must be some sort of earth-related ability. Earthquakes, or something like that. But the other man’s echoes didn’t make any kind of sense. Almost every echo that surrounded him had the characteristic marks of a scroll, the combination of twisted strings; solid chakra patterns that suggested lifting part of the power from marks of some sort, and the twisted knots that came from using blood. Hinata gulped. Those knots were everywhere.
Sora’s voice was calm and patient, as if she was talking to little children. “See, in the West, we have villains with large personalities. One walks into a bar, everyone knows who he is. He has his own trademarks; his own special things that he does that make him different from all other villains out there.”
She dropped her voice to a low whisper. “You certainly wouldn’t catch them dead wearing matching coats.” She shook her head, as if still disappointed in the idea. “Honestly. Matching coats are for gangs, clans; that sort of thing. Not for a collection of high class criminals. It takes away from your individuality. Yasu and I certainly never wore matching outfits. And we almost never had to introduce ourselves.”
Hinata focused in on the echoes of one particular jutsu whose echoes were still fairly strong. There were the knots caused by the blood, but they didn’t seem to form a pattern of binding, so he wasn’t using it for summoning. She tried looking at the base of the pattern, the solid frame that gave the jutsu its basic structure. It was too regular, too perfect to have been created at the same time as the rest of the jutsu. It had to have been lifted from somewhere else; a scroll or some other type of drawn pattern…
She gasped lightly and took an involuntary step back.
Naruto turned to look at her. “Hina-chan?” he asked quietly. She turned to look at him. Her eyes were filled will a myriad of different emotions: confusion, horror, disbelief; they all played in her wide pale eyes.
“Well, that is an absolutely fascinating theory you have on how to be a villain, and I must say that you certainly have a rather unique view of things, but matching coats aside, I have to say that you exhibit a rather disappointingly limited view.”
“Limited view of what?”
“Of ways to handle you enemies.” He laughed. “Did you think that I would not realize what you were doing? I have been trailing you for months now. I know how the three of you do everything. You stall by making an idiot out of yourself while she evaluates what’s going on using that nice little scanning thing.” He grinned wickedly at Hinata. “Go on, little girl, tell everyone what you’ve learned.” Hinata just stood staring at him in horror. “Cat got your tongue? Well, I suppose I can just demonstrate.”
Shiraku reached up and took off his coat.
There were half a million jokes that Sora could have made about the situation in front of them, but something held her back. Maybe it was the fact that this situation had now gone well beyond the realms of bizarre. She almost wished she had time to haul out her camera and take a couple of good snapshots of this guy; even with corroborating witnesses, no one was going to believe her when she described him.
He was wearing a loincloth, for heaven’s sake! Or maybe a miniskirt was a better description. Whatever it was, it wasn’t covering much more than the bare essentials, leaving the rest of his body out in the open air. He seemed to be striking some sort of pose, like a model in some sort of macabre fashion spread. It would have been absolutely hilariously funny if it wasn’t for the fact that he had just established himself as being the one in control of the situation. The enemy knew all about them, down to how much information they were going to be able to collect.
It turned out that his face had only been the beginning. His body was completely tattooed. Every inch of skin was covered in white markings, forming patterns all over him.
Sora tilted her head slightly to one side looking at the marks. Maybe she shouldn’t have made the cracks about lack of individuality.
He grinned, sending a shiver down all three of their spines. It was just plain creepy.
“Now, perhaps you will learn how to look beyond the coats,” he said, his silvery-blue hair shifting over his shoulders. Out of nowhere, a kunai appeared, spinning around in the fingers of his right hand. Suddenly, he grabbed it firmly and sliced across the fingers of his left hand.
He was starting something. But what, they didn’t know.
Sora turned to look over her shoulder at the pair standing behind her. “Hinata!” she yelled.
“I think it’s the tattoos. I think he utilizes them like you would a scroll and uses them to bump the power of his jutsu,” she said somewhat hesitantly.
“You think! You can’t be more specific?” Sora questioned.
“I’ve never seen anything like it before! I can’t be sure of exactly what he does!”
“Oh, you’re quite right about what I do, little girl.” His smile broadened. “Allow me to demonstrate.”
He raked bloody fingers down his arm.
“Lighting Storm no Jutsu.”
This site is published by Samizdat Express, Orange, CT
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