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Muma VII: Put On Your Red Shoes And Flee




This is the dream she tells to Lady Tsunade: running through the forest, leaving bright red footsteps behind, her bare feet crusted with mud and blood. She pants as she runs, great harsh wheezing breaths that scrape at her lungs and burn her throat but she pushes herself on: faster, faster, mustn't be left behind.

Home is at the end of the white path between the trees, the path that she is embroidering with blood and breath but the forest seems endless and she is running on borrowed time. Sure enough, the beast is behind her even as she speaks and she wonders briefly if Tsunade can see it too. Sometimes it is dark and furry; other times it wears a black cloak and a mask and once it even had a snake's head, but its shape is not very important. It slips through the trees as if they are water.

The beast lopes behind her, staying at her heels, patient, never overtaking her. This is a true thing as well: when she ran in reality, he simply followed until she could be run to ground in the dry lake-bed. Betrayed once again by her weakness, her raw feet opening him a path. The light ahead suddenly brightens and Hinata knows that this dream is coming to an end.

She skids and stumbles in the mud, blinded by the light, but she makes her way to the far end and turns to face him before he leaps. She must always see him face to face, mustn't turn her back, mustn't ignore. Facing forward, she goes down in a tempest of mud and fur as he begins to tear the flesh from her body.

"Oh, I knew it, I knew it all along," she cries out in equal amounts of terror and triumph as he takes her to pieces. "I always knew that this is how you really are!"



Lady Tsunade is far too quiet after Hinata tells her this, but Hinata is still dozy and half-dreaming, pressed close against Lady Tsunade's warmth and doesn't particularly care. She dreamily decides not to mention that Kabuto sometimes held her like this, her face to his shoulder, his hands on her thighs. The day before the last one, when she had climbed the broken staircase to see him at his perch in the leaning watchtower, her belly wracked with the menstrual cramps that made each step torture, but she'd done it and his remote expression briefly changed to one of approval before he pulled her onto his lap, hands sending away the pain. It was silly for her to be shy, considering what she'd promised him only two days before and the way they had lain together last night, but the kiss he'd pressed to the top of her head nearly made her jump.

Silly, weak girl, she'd scolded herself but Kabuto was still staring out at the trees and didn't seem to notice, or mind.

Hinata thinks for a minute, then asks Lady Tsunade if there are any jutsu that can see inside a person's mind.

"...A few," the Hokage replies after a heartbeat, her tone carefully neutral. "Most are meant to help people out of deep psychological trauma. Or cause it."

She mulls that over for a bit. So, there aren't any that can reveal a person's truth? she asks, feeling disappointed. What they're really thinking?

Tsunade's mouth twists with suspicion and maybe a little bit of disapproval. "One or two, but if the person is exceptionally skilled at concealing their true thoughts, then their effectiveness takes a pretty sharp nosedive," she says. "And people lie all the time to themselves, you know: if they truly believe something it'll register as truth even if it isn't. There's a...the only way to really know anything would be if you slipped inside someone's mind, merged with their consciousness almost completely. You'd have to practically become them. Needless to say, that jutsu is extremely dangerous, both to the caster and to the recipient."

The Hokage shifts for a bit, then adds: "So don't get any ideas."

"I don't think I have the power to perform anything like that anyway," Hinata whispers. For some reason, tears are filling her eyes: she blinks them away and presses closer to Tsunade, hiding her damp face in the curve of the Hokage's shoulder. "Though, I think...that it would be good for him to have to tell the truth for once."





Everything about this escape attempt was far too simple, but people had been done in by their own cleverness before, and Hinata was too desperate to give up even a bad chance if it meant she might escape.

At Sound, a week had passed: at least, Hinata guessed it to be a week. Her days slid by, identical beads clacking on a string: she woke when the light outside was still thin and grey and slipped from bed to use the bathroom, bunching her robe as close to her body as possible and trying very hard not to think about spyholes and watching eyes. While she was in the bathroom, her breakfast was brought and left on the table by the bed, the bearer always gone before she came back, the food plain but filling. Rice and beans, water to drink. Sometimes broth or a dumpling; she guessed Otogakure felt generous on those days and wondered what the catch was. Hinata ate, stacked the dishes neatly in place and sat for a while with her knees to her chest, arms wrapped closely for warmth, pondering poison and watching the light from the window move slowly across the cold floor.

Once she survived another meal, she would rise again and move through her forms, a cloud of breath following her through the chilly air, and practice until her muscles ached and sweat poured down her back. She was still shuddery and weak from her injuries, fearful and enervated but she set her teeth and worked for the time she could escape, hands cutting the shadows around her as her feet turned on the floor.

Lunch arrived not long after she ended her exercises, brought by the same person every day; a hunchbacked dwarf with wild white hair, wearing something that might have been a lab coat or--from certain angles--a straitjacket, torn to shreds at the hem and shoulders. He, too, followed a pattern: with a grunt, he'd set the food down on the table with a smack that sent the dishes clattering, wave a hand at her dismissively and shuffle out, slamming the door behind him. Hinata had twenty minutes to eat before he returned to take the dishes away (the first time, she'd been too slow and he'd pushed her away from the food so hard she'd fallen: he'd taken her unfinished food with a snort of annoyance and then snickered when he noticed her lying at his feet) and then more hours to fill with practice until the sun set and dinner came.

She'd tried to talk to the dwarf, once. "I-I'm really very sorry, but if you could...could you just tell me which day it is...?" she'd whispered as he bent next to her to gather up the dinner tray, eyes looking not at him but somewhere off to the side in case someone outside was watching. "I-If you c-could...if you c-can 't, I understand..."

His hands slowed and she saw him turn to look at her, then turn back to the dishes, shuffling them back and forth on the tray as if he was telling a fortune with them. After a moment of rattling dishes, he seemed to come to a decision and tapped her abruptly on the shoulder, making her jump. "Y-yes...?"

"Hnnuhhh!" he roared, and opened his mouth wide.

The dwarf's tongue was nothing more than a blackened stump set far back in his mouth: he couldn't have spoken if he wanted to. Grinning hugely at her stricken expression, he waggled it back and forth a few times for emphasis, then made another hnuh sound, but this one was softer and more satisfied. Patting her shoulder, he showed her three fingers, collected the dishes and strode off, closing the door gently behind him.

Hinata sat frozen, hands clasped tightly together in her lap to hide their shaking. Three? Three what? Three o'clock? That didn't seem right. It couldn't be March 3rd yet, could it? It had been February...February 15th when they'd left Konoha, hadn't it, and so much time couldn't have passed yet, it just couldn't have...

(She never spoke to the dwarf again after that and tried to be out of the room when he came, but she had only one other place to go and he seemed to have an instinctive knowledge of where she was (or else he was spying on her before he came inside, something Hinata did not want to think too much about): every time she stepped out of the bathroom after staying in there for as long as she dared, he came stomping in, smirking at her downcast eyes.)

The issue of time pressed down on her all the rest of that day and into the evening: she lay awake when she should have been sleeping, staring at the faint bands of moonlight on the wall. Kabuto hadn't been in once to see her since he'd taken her to bathe and that had been several days ago, if not a full week past. It was impossible that he would let the chance to examine her eyes slip by; even if by some miracle they meant to ransom her back to Konoha, he would take all he could from her eyes first. She would forever go down in the history of the clan as not only the weakest Heir, but the one who had let the secret of the Byakugan out. A disgrace; maybe she would even be stricken out of the records like the Heir who had gone against the family and run away to marry a woman the clan deemed unworthy, then killed himself along with his wife rather than return to the family when the clan tracked them down. Disgraceful. Disaster. Her uncle Hizashi's death would be for nothing. Hinata's palms were sweating so badly the moisture soaked through her robe and left a hot, wet patch on her stomach. She couldn't stay here like this.

I have to escape.

She was still weak though, still without her chakra and escaping without some kind of weapon for backup under these conditions seemed like a very bad idea. She had no idea of Otogakure's layout aside from the small glimpse she'd had on the way to the baths, no clue about where guards might be stationed or doors might be locked. The window showed her what looked like part of a forest, empty of people, but the window was solidly barred and for all she knew, the scenery was simply an elaborate genjutsu meant to confuse her. There was nothing in the room aside from her bed and the table: the stool had been taken out early on and the table was rickety and small, the legs crooked spindles that looked like they would break if the wind blew on them too harshly. Three small candles sat high on the wall next to her bed for illumination at night, but they were completely covered with thick, shatterproof safety glass and Hinata could see where the back panel was hinged so someone outside could replace the candles without coming into the room. It's...clever, really.

Her fingers clenched again and again, the muscles spasming. Centuries of Byakugan users, descended from the princess Suzume and the God in the Forest, from their son Hikaru the Mighty, all unbowed, eyes inviolate. Kabuto wasn't only getting his hands on one of the most powerful bloodlines in the entire world, he would also have the distinction of being the first outsider to break the secrets of the Byakugan wide open. And for who? Orochimaru, who wanted the destruction of Konoha almost more than he wanted his immortality. Konoha, which had been built on Hyuuga land. Hinata shook, soundlessly.

Even death...even dying won't stop him. I must escape. I must. But I don't know how...

...If Kakashi-sensei couldn't stand up to them, what chance do I have? What could I possibly do, even most jounin would be frightened out of their mind here and I'm just a chuunini'mnotstrongenoughwhatcanido...

STOP IT! Acting like this won't help anything!

Just stop, just stop, oh please, just stop.

The tremors wouldn't stop, but her shivering muscles made Hinata think of something, a memory tugged out of hiding with the stories of her ancestral line. It was possible, she vaguely remembered hearing, to unseal blocked chakra points through willpower alone. The chakra in her body hadn't been erased: it was simply bottled up, waiting for an opening. Someone with good chakra control--like a Hyuuga--could push at the trapped chakra, move it around the body without releasing it and finally channel it against the blockage until the sheer force snapped the tenketsu open. She knew exactly where her tenketsu were: it was something of a rite for Hyuuga to map them out for themselves once they achieved a Byakugan skilled enough to see them. Her eyes weren't Neji's, but they were much improved. She knew her chakra lines. Her power wasn't gone, merely stilled. If so...

She breathed out, flexed her cramped fingers and closed her eyes.



Flow. Fingertip to palm and back again. Flow. Fall with me and rise again. My lifebeat, my heartbeat, such as you are. Come with me. Flow.



When the sun rose, Hinata forced herself out of bed and stumbled into her morning routine, doing her best to pretend she hadn't been awake all night undoing the seals upon her body. She trained and ate with fingertips that prickled at odd moments like a tiny swarm of bees traveling over her skin and waited all day for someone to say something, for Kabuto to suddenly appear and remark on the bags under her eyes or the dwarf to look at her with suspicious curiosity instead of grim amusement. Nothing.

She went to bed and slept for a few hours, then woke and went at it again, tapping and tugging on her tenketsu as if they were stubborn children. Tiny fires sprouted under her skin but her gates remained firmly closed, without even the tiniest chink to encourage her.

In the morning, her hands were covered with red spots.

Feeling sick, she went to the bathroom and lifted her robes; in the dim light, the blotches on her thighs and stomach were hard to make out clearly but quite obviously there. She dropped her skirts and felt all over her face; to her relief, the tender soreness that came with the spots was nowhere to be found. Hinata looked down at her hands again and counted, one, two, ten, thirty: the folds of the kimono would conceal her body but her hands wouldn't be so easily hidden. The dwarf would notice as soon as he came with her lunch, notice and tell Kabuto, who would examine her and realize--

"I-I guess...I'll just h-have to think of s-something," she said and wished, not for the first time, that she was Shikamaru.




Once outside, she mimed shivering, hands drawn up into her sleeves: she'd already pulled her thin socks up as far as they would go and they covered the gap between her hem and skin nicely. "Why is it so cold in here today?" she wondered aloud (though softly) and put her whole heart into pretending that the temperature had suddenly dropped five degrees. It was an incredibly foolish and simplistic plan, but it was the best she could come up with under such limited conditions: staying in bed and acting sick might bring Kabuto, so she stuck to her usual routine and trained, staying in the deepest shadows, then retreated to her bed to wait for lunch, sitting with her legs drawn up to her chest and her hands tucked behind her knees for "warmth".

Please, just let him bring the food and leave without noticing anything. There's nothing to notice here. Nothing at all. The wall is more interesting than I am. The door latch rattled and her heart sped up.

I'm nothing, nothing, honestly nothing. Please, just do what you have to and go. Her palms were sweating and she tucked them more firmly under her robes; more sweat ran down her back. She leaned against the wall for camouflage: the cold stone against her spine helped her heart to slow. It's okay. Everything will be okay. Think of this as just another kind of training. I only need to control myself for a minute.

The latch clicked open and she held her breath, then slowly let it out. I can do this. She fixed her gaze on her feet, not wanting to compound her unusual behavior by looking at the dwarf directly and heard him step inside, the door shutting immediately behind him: rods tumbled back into place, metal grinding against metal as he shot the bolt home.

Fear nipped at Hinata's heart. Since when did he close and lock the door behind him....? Someone cleared their throat, gently: she looked through her lashes and noticed the shadow on the floor was much taller than it was supposed to be.

No. Oh, no, no.

"Good morning," Kabuto said in his usual gentle tones and smiled his sweet smile. "It's been a while, hasn't it, Miss Hinata? I'm sorry I haven't been in sooner, but things have been rather busy as of late, and I just couldn't spare the time...is something wrong? You're whiter than usual."

All of her courage had dried up and blown away, leaving her husked and empty, held upright only by the wall at her back.

"Miss Hinata?" He took a step closer. "Are you all right? You look like you're in pain. Or ill."

She fumbled up some words for him, anything to keep him away. "N-no...I-I'm just c-cold, t-thank y-you, b-but shouldn't the d-dwarf be here....m-my f-food...?" Her voice shook, then died out entirely when Kabuto moved even closer to her, frowning.

"Oh, he'll be along in a bit, don't you worry. Now, are you absolutely certain that everything's all right? It doesn't feel cold in here to me at all, and you're so pale--" His hand brushed the hair away from her forehead, then lay against it, checking her temperature: his skin was hot and dry, the calluses on his fingers pulling slightly at her skin. "Though, you're always pale, aren't you? The Hyuuga are just made that way, I suppose."

"Y-yes," she croaked, barely able to think with the weight of his hand on her head. She tried not to look at his eyes, tried not to do or be anything other than small, harmless and normal. Utterly normal. "I'm fine," she said, more strongly this time. "Truly."

"That's a relief," he said and stepped back, but not before smoothing her hair down, patting it into place as if she was a kitten he was petting. "I would hate for everything to be thrown off schedule, especially since I have so little time as it is," Kabuto added, and grimaced slightly. "I really can't afford any delays."

Something about the look on his face made her afraid to ask but Hinata steeled herself and spoke anyway: information is more important than fear. "S-schedule? Delays?"

He smiled down at her. "To get started on your testing, of course."



Don't look that way. You'll hardly feel a thing.

Hinata lay doubled-up in bed that night, shivering for real, her fingers clenched so tightly on the mattress that her nails bent back. Surely you didn't think that you were being kept simply here for ransom? No, you're smarter than that: I always thought so. Lord Orochimaru needs the secrets of the Byakugan, after all, and you're the only specimen we have at the moment. It won't really hurt, I promise you.

She was being boiled alive with fear, tears and sweat threatening to drown her. Her thoughts wouldn't line up correctly: they bounced and drifted and spun so she couldn't get a good grip on them.

She was going to die.

I'll see you in a few days. We have a lot to discuss before I can start the preliminary testing.

You won't be awake for most of it. You won't feel a thing.

I promise you.

Hinata wished for someplace warm and dark and quiet where she could scream.



When she couldn't eat the next day, the dwarf laughed at her, then pulled out a filthy pad of paper and a pen and wrote: /he'll be angry if you dont eat, you cant waste away here, so dont even try it/, and waved it in her face for emphasis.

Hinata ate.



She watched the sunset and tried to stamp the way the light thickened and dimmed from gold to orange to red into her mind, turning her hands over and over in her lap. Much light, little warmth. The red spots on her hands had almost entirely faded but in the light they were briefly rekindled, and Hinata looked down at them, thinking of blood and fire and chakra.

Chakra brings blood, but blood can't bring chakra. I can't undo what was done to me.

I am weak and probably going to die.

...Why can't I be strong enough, just this once?

The light on her hands was silvery now and Hinata looked up at the moon, feeling a brief pang of wonder. It's so beautiful, even here.

I wish I was on it.

Her palms itched and she scratched them idly: there was a slight flurry of pain when she went over the spots. I feel so odd now, so calm. Am I already moving away from myself? I guess this is what happens when everything drains out of you and you're left with just the framework of yourself. Right now, I'm not even scared.

I can't just give up. But I don't know what more I can do. Her palms itched again, more strongly this time and she scratched harder in response. My tenketsu won't open, despite all my work. And my hands just won't stop itching...

There was something wet under her nails. She lifted her hands, held them flat to the light: drops fell, flashing silver, to dot her thighs and soak through the thin fabric of her robe, leaving warm patches against her skin. Blood, spangled crimson and silver, snaking through the lines of her palms.

Hinata stared at her bloody hands and her palms throbbed gently in response, the pain so mild she could scarcely feel it. Now that she was paying attention she could see long furrows tracking back and forth along her palms, gouges left by her nails in her skin. I...what is this? Why doesn't it hurt? I cut myself over and over and hardly feel a thing.

Shouldn't I feel something?

A flicker and sputter beneath her breastbone: she thought it might her heart, waking up.

I thought everything was just from fear, but...

Did he...put something in my food to make feel this way? To keep me subdued?

Hammers pounded: it took her a minute to realize that the thudding belonged to her heart and she put a hand over it for quiet. Kabuto might hear.

His doped and obedient lamb to the slaughter. No.

No.

Why does everyone assume that I'll die so quietly? That...that they can just put their hand and crush me into nothing?

No.

She looked at her palms, gleaming silver with the moonlight. Her tenketsu under all this blood, tiny portals for her light. If Hinata squinted, she could see it glittering just below the skin.

"I need you," she said aloud and wiped her hands on her robe: Kabuto would probably give her a new one anyway, just to keep up appearances. "I need your strength. Please, for me." Her hand remained dark.

"For me," she whispered. There was a string of tenketsu across her hand like small full moons: she thought of them and concentrated until her sight went, sweat pouring down her body and her muscles twitched and ached, as she tried to condense herself down into a web of chakra, a being of pure light.

She dreamed of pounding on stone walls until her hands broke and bled, yet she continued to rake at them with her fingers, shredding them down to the bone. Her right arm was on fire: she swallowed back her screams and let it burn, hoping that the seals would be purged away in the flames. She calmly and carefully pried away the briers someone had trained to grow around her arm, working out the thorns embedded in her flesh. Once the last thorns were out, blue light streamed free but the brier twisted up again to block it and she had to entice the thorns away with her heart, pulling apart her ribcage to show the naked organ inside. The thorns abandoned her arm and clung to her heart gladly, bringing a pain beyond anything Hinata had ever known, but at least her arm was free and light poured out like water from heaven.

When she woke, a new robe lay across the foot of the bed and someone had cleaned the blood from her hands.



Hinata spent the next day laying quietly, careful to keep her secret. She pretended to be sick with terror and kept mostly to her bed, eating little and testing her tenketsu under the cover of sheets. Only the ones on her right arm were open, but few had opened all the way. It was better than nothing: she had a weapon now, even if it was a dull and rusty one. The only thing left was to chose her time.

/Soon/, she thought as she drifted out to sleep that night. It will have to be soon. I don't know when he'll come for me.

...Tomorrow then, before Kabuto comes. And before I lose my nerve.

She rose at her usual time and trained again, putting on a brave show for anyone who might be watching. Everyone knows Hinata Hyuuga doesn't give up/, she thought as she went through the traditional Hyuuga warm-up exercises. /I don't give up and I don't run away.

Her right arm prickled but she didn't look at it, concentrating on her footwork instead. Today I'm going to modify that a little. She washed up after her training was done, then sat down to wait for the dwarf and lunch.

When the door rattled, Hinata stood up slowly and walked to stand on the other side of the door, feeling lightheaded and short of breath. If Kabuto was out there again...but the door opened and the familiar squat figure walked through with the tray, stopping short once he realised she wasn't in her usual place.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I really am."

The dwarf wasn't a shinobi and she was far stronger than him, despite her lack of chakra and imprisonment. It was easy: grab the short arms with her left, hit the tenketsu point in the neck that disrupted the blood flow to the brain with the chakra with her right. Another push and he fell, cracked his head against the table and lay still.

"I'm sorry," Hinata said again, pushing away a brief flutter of guilt: blood dribbled down his cheek as she knelt beside him, ready for any sudden movement. With shaking hands she carefully pushed aside the reeking folds of his coat and felt for the metal ring. Once found, it took several hard tugs before the ring came free of the cloth, the keys jangling in her hand like temple bells and she was so frightened her heart was preparing to stop.

She looked at the dwarf once more before leaving: there was a small pool of blood forming by his left ear and she wondered how long it would take him to wake and if he would be punished for allowing her to escape. If she did escape. If she wasn't caught and killed on the spot by the masses of Sound troops she was almost certain waited for her outside the door. /Move, move, move/, she chanted inwardly and stepped forward with her eyes closed.

When she opened them a heartbeat later, there was a wall in front of her and perfect silence, aside from the pulse pounding in her ears. She stepped forward again: there was a hallway to her right, empty. Another step took her into the hallway where she wavered for a moment: right or left? Right disappeared into darkness; left grew brighter as it went along. Left then, she decided, and went, the keys clenched in her fist to muffle any noise.

The tile floor was cold and gritty underneath her socks and she moved in a kind of half-shuffle, half-crouch, ready to turn and flee to the shadows at the slightest movement or noise around her. It was too dark and too quiet, though Hinata could hardly hear anything past the beat of the blood in her ears and the faint skittering rustle of her feet on the ground (it was her feet she was hearing, wasn't it?). She needed shoes, though she'd walk barefoot to Konoha in fifteen foot snowdrifts if she had to. Her robe was thin and worn: she needed a coat too. Fire Country never grew as cold as, say, Rock in the winter, but temperatures did sometimes dip below freezing at nights. It would be very funny if she escaped only to freeze to death a few miles away from home. She bit her lip hard to hold back the laughter. Very funny indeed!

How like her/, the elders would say, their faces a fretwork of wrinkles as they sipped their tea and glanced sideways at each other. /How very like her, to die so stupidly. Though, to be honest, we never really expected anything else.

Pebbles rolled under her feet as she neared a bend in the corridor and her steps slowed automatically. As quietly as she could, she moved to the wall and pressed herself against it, feeling damp rock through her robes: her fingers found moss and mold. I hear nothing. Trickles of dirty water from above ran down her cheek and dripped off her chin, soaking into her collar. Is it raining outside? Are we...could we be underwater?

Fear, sweat and dirty water: I must smell like a swamp under all this stone. If any of the Sound nin have a nose like Kiba-kun's, I'm in deep trouble.

Despite the silence she hemmed, curling her fingers at the very edge of the bend, uncertain about going further. Quiet meant nothing: it was both shield and weapon to the skilled shinobi and traps made no noise until they were sprung. However, the longer she waited, the greater the chance of someone coming along and finding her, the more likely the dwarf was waking on her cell floor and running for his master...

She moved, sliding forward until one eye watched rock and one looked down a corridor as dim and empty as the one she'd just come through. The corridor bent again about seventy-five feet down but she could deal with that when she came to it. Relief trembled through her and she took a step out.

"Man, I hate this...come on, there's--"

"I know it sucks, but sheesh, you do nothing but complain...once in a while..."

"Come on--"

Hinata stopped dead. Sound nin, about five hundred feet ahead of her and coming her way, at least two of them, maybe a third: the voices were too indistinct to tell. Hide, run, fight? Drop to her knees and pretend to be a servant, cleaning the corridor? Head back the way she'd came and pray it remained empty? Fight? Don't be ridiculous, you have maybe five tenketsu open and three men will tear you apart. Her vision was blurring at the edges, going soft and crackly and dark with fear. Be strong! Be a shinobi! There were doors set here and there in the walls: one, a little ways down, had light underneath. Would the keys open them? What if someone's inside?

"Kabuto-sensei--"

Calmdowncalmdowncalmdowncalmdown.

There were too many keys on the ring and they clanked loudly as her trembling fingers sorted them. Too many, she'd never figure this out before being recaptured and killed. If she only had her Byakugan...but she didn't...

I need it! I need it! Come to my call! Naruto-kun did it before, he did it when Neji-niisan sealed off all his chakra, he did the impossible...

She raised her shaking hands to her temples, brushed chakra into the points behind her eyes: the keys hit the floor and slid sideways into the dark. Chakra! Unseal it! Help me! Her vision flickered and she felt the veins on her cheeks begin to lift and stretch. Do it!

Byakugan!

The world around her changed.

It was not a proper Byakugan that she had called, but a smeary, wavering grey version like charcoal drawings left to run in the rain. It was not a proper Byakugan, but it was enough: it showed her three Sound nin flickering closer, the dropped keys to her right and an unlocked door that led to a room with a window inside it. Daylight streamed in to patch warm squares on the floor and there were even cabinets that held supplies. She bent and grabbed the keys with a muttered sob (her weak Byakugan was giving her a fierce headache, one that felt like tigers eating at her brain) and fled to the room, retaining just enough composure to softly shut the door and turn the bolts behind her.




Deep breaths, deep breaths.

The Sound nin had walked past without a glimmer of suspicion, their voices rising and falling in a natural rhythm. Kabuto had not been among them, and Hinata was split between relief and anguish: he could pop up anywhere, at any time, then. For now, she released her bloodline limit, knelt on the floor and breathed through the pain her imperfect Byakugan had brought, forehead resting on the pillar of her knees.

She couldn't spare time for this. As her head continued to pound (the pain, she noted uneasily, was situated right in the center of her forehead, exactly where the Curse Seal was placed) she rose and went to the window, squinting up at it through the light. The sunlight that had seemed so welcoming in the dark hallway was actually thin, grey-white and watery-looking in a way that promised snow. Light was light, she reminded herself, and would help her find her way but it would also make it harder for her to move unseen.

That was the first troublesome thing. The second was that this window had no bars or grills to prevent outside access; the only security measure was a small, simple-looking bolt that didn't even require a key. Standing on tiptoes, she peered out cautiously: the vague shadowy scenery she had glimpsed with her Byakugan revealed itself as the slope of a hill, thickset trees standing leafless, scrub bushes to the right and left. No Sound guards in sight, no defense systems, not even a gate. Just land stretching on until her sight gave out, empty of threat.

Hinata turned away and went to the cabinets, shivering a little. Three things in her favor: the unlocked door, the unbarred window, the lack of patrols and barriers. I am not this lucky. Someone had left a old happi coat among the neatly folded linens stacked inside the first cabinet she came to: it was thin, but she needed every extra layer she could find against the cold. She shook it out and put it on, checking first for anything that might have been left inside, like a stray pin or needle. Nothing: she tied it closed.

If there is anything here for my feet, I will really start to panic, she told herself as she checked the other cabinets for potential supplies: weapons were too much to hope for. For this is all too, too convenient.

"Even so, I have to try," she whispered and saw her breath wisp into the air before her. "But...you know that, don't you?"

The bolt came undone at the first try, with an ease that suggested recent oiling. She put her hands out the window first, then slowly eased her head out as well, each breath an agony to her parched mouth and throat, and miserably certain that a kunai would smash into the side of her skull at any moment. She breathed, and nothing. Her feet pushed at the wall, boosting her forward and her shoulders and torso slipped out to the fresh air: nothing. She gripped the ground, digging rocks and dirt into her palm and pulled forward: a twist of her hips and she was free for the moment.

Nothing moved, even as she stared blindly against the sky.

Trembling, she turned and carefully pulled the window closed, then scurried up the forest slope on her hands and knees, leaving Otogakure behind her.


For a long while she simply ran, trying to put as much distance between herself and Sound as she possibly could, having resolved to stop and get her bearings once she was a safe distance away. Leaving at a run wasn't the choice a shinobi would normally make when escaping--she was certain that there was a long, plainly marked trail of passage winding behind her--but true stealth was impossible without chakra and she needed to hold on to the tiny bit she had access to. The wind snapped at her hair, bitterly cold and Hinata started running with one hand over her mouth and nose, trying to keep some warmth for herself. It's so cold! Fire Country doesn't usually get like this. I wonder if it's just because I'm not suitably dressed?

Trees went by in a blur and the only sounds in the forest seemed to come from her, small under the trees: the hiss of her breathing, the stamp of her feet on the cold hard ground. Birds weren't calling. She heard water in the distance once, but kept to her path.

Everything ached: her feet, her lungs, her blue-tinged hands but she ignored them all and pressed on. She could worry about frostbite and shelter once she covered a long enough distance, though she couldn't even dream of calling herself safe until she was back home in the Hyuuga compound. How far? she wondered, but a stabbing pain bit suddenly into her side and she faltered. Just a stitch, nothing to worry about, she chided herself but her feet had other plans and she slowed to a walk, panting and a little shaky. Maybe I should slow down just a little bit though and check myself. I can't keep running if I exhaust myself at the first go and I'm hardly in the best physical condition. Plus, I won't know what direction I need to go to get home until I figure out where I am.

She turned and took another look down the way she had just come: by her best reckoning, an hour (or even more) had passed since she'd left Sound. Surely someone had found the dwarf by now: surely someone had realized she had escaped and was getting a pursuit together. Her chest continued to ache. She wasn't this lucky (though Kabuto had taken his own sweet time coming to see her and implied that his "testing" wouldn't start for another few days...perhaps the dwarf really was a fairly unimportant servant whose absence might go unremarked for days at a stretch...and she really had to stop thinking like this: it would do her no good at all, being positive).

A bird called sharply, the first she'd heard all day; she lifted her head and scanned the branches above for it, saw nothing. Now that she had stopped, new pain started to creep up on her, no longer dulled by the distraction of escaping: her legs ached as if she'd been beaten and her feet felt like they been stripped to the bone. Hinata leaned against a tree for support, lifted one foot and saw blood and dirt: the sole of her sock was completely worn through. She put it down again and swallowed. /I'll just have to make do/, she thought and began to tear strips off her robe to bind up her feet.

Something thumped quietly next to her ear and strands of her hair drifted down to lie at her feet. Hinata turned her head very slightly, touched her cheek to metal still warm from someone's body and looked up.

Kabuto was perched on a branch above her, another kunai ready to go in his hand.

The kunai flashed past her but Hinata was already gone, running through the trees on her bleeding feet, pushing branches away with frozen fingers. The land dipped slightly: she stumbled down onto a new path but kept moving. Unable to help herself, she risked a glance behind her and nearly collapsed with shock: Kabuto was keeping pace with her, close enough to stick her with a dozen kunai, close enough to reach out and touch...and he did. He stretched out an arm and laid his fingers lightly on her sleeve: Hinata sobbed before she could help herself, jerked her arm away and somehow managed to run even faster.

I don't care. I'll run until I drop dead if that's what it takes! I won't give in to him. I won't!

The ground was growing soft and slippery: mud pulled at her legs but felt strangely good on her tortured feet. She kept running as best she could, arms out for balance and the path began to widen, the trees thinning and the light growing stronger. Another kunai whisked past her ear: more strands of hair fell and her cheek stung. I won't.

A piece of her right sleeve fluttered away with the wind.

I won't.

The land sloped downward. Hinata picked up speed, trying to ignore the way her chest burned. If I can just keep a path...If I can just... There was a cluster of trees ahead, tilting into the path and narrowing it sharply but it looked like there was space enough for her to slip between them, which might slow him down...

"Watch out," Kabuto called sweetly, suddenly, and Hinata stumbled and fell into the light as the path dropped out from beneath her.

Pain bolted through her; hands and feet, hips and knees. For a moment, she couldn't move, even with Kabuto so close behind. The path she had been counting on had led her into ruin, a dead-end in the form of a dried-out lake that looked to stretch for a mile, with sides too steep to climb.

"We drained this a while back, with the intention of putting a satellite base here," Kabuto said from above her. "Our current base is a bit cramped, if you hadn't noticed. Not nearly enough space to conduct proper research. Storage is really a problem..."

There shouldn't be a lake of this size here. I know Fire Country. All of our large lakes have villages right by them. The scenery doesn't match either. This isn't right. I...don't know where I am now.

"Are you ready to give up?" His voice was quiet and level.

Hinata pulled herself up, trying to wipe the sweat and tears out of her eyes with a mud-smeared fist. Keeping her back straight she waded on, walking further into the mud until it came past her ankles, then stopped and looked around. No village, not even the ruins of one. She turned to look back at the path (/dry streambed/, her mind corrected) and saw that Kabuto had jumped down through the trees and come forward a little to meet her. They faced each other, a thousand feet apart.

A smile tugged at his mouth but quickly went away: he was trying to look serious. "Satisfied? You're not at home anymore."

Her lips were chapped and her face was bleeding, making it very difficult to talk. "Y-You're lying."

He spread his arms wide, half-turning to sweep in the scenery around them with a wave of his hands. "Didn't you notice, didn't you think that things didn't seem quite familiar? You didn't see that the trees were all strangers and everything was out of place? Honestly, I expected much more from a member of Leaf's premier tracking team. We left the Fire Country a long time ago, Miss Hinata. While you were sleeping, we left."

"I-I don't believe you." You're a liar, everyone knows that. You lie with your eyes, you lie with your mouth, every bit of you lies. "You're trying to trick me..."

His face was full of an annoyance softened only slightly by pity. "From here to the Fire Country, it's three weeks hard walking and your feet are bare to the stones." He took another step closer, then another while she tensed. "No chakra, no supplies, no warm clothing...You'll never make it, not as you are."

She stepped back, the mud sucking at her heels and shifted her weight in preparation. For an instant, she wondered which of them would be the first to strike. "I-I'll m-manage somehow. I'll n-never go back with you."

Kabuto sighed and adjusted his glasses, the lens briefly catching the weak light, then releasing it to show his eyes again, grave and dark. "Please, /enough/. Your "do or die" act was cute the first time, but now...Stop being ridiculous and come back quietly, and I'll--"

"N-no! No! You're the...you're the one who's being ridiculous if you think I'm j-just going to l-let you take me back t-there!" By the end she was shouting, her fists clenched and her body a little shivery with the shock of being so loud. I've never yelled like this at anyone before. "I won't go with you! I'll never willingly go with someone like you!"

The wind rose. Her shout went with it, swaddled in a crush of air, but Hinata could see by the change in Kabuto's face that he'd heard ever word she'd said. "Fine," he said evenly. "On your head be it." His hand lifted, adjusting his glasses once more and he looked at her through his fingers with an expression that pretended to be regret.

Hinata dropped into Juuken stance and watched his hands move through seals so quickly she could scarcely see them, all the while hoping very hard that he wouldn't be able to tell that her tenketsu were open on her right arm. If she was lucky, if she could get one good hit in...

"This won't take long," he said, and sprang at her.