Chapter 28: Chapter 27
Hinata Hyuga found herself perplexed. It had been near over 20 minutes since the fighting had stopped. At the very least she expected some sort of fight to break out with the remainders of Gato's forces. Based on what Sensei-kun told them, there would be a fight with them, but oddly enough the Konoha group had gotten no whiff of that. Surprisingly it wasn't Kiba who lost all patience towards this development.
"What the hell is going on?" Sasuke Uchiha voiced his discontent. He had displayed why he was at the top of his class today. Despite her improvements, there was still a gap and Hinata could've sworn she saw Sasuke's eyes turn red today. The Sharingan. Her father had told her about the Uchiha's Kekkei Genkai, how the entire clan was once feared by all the other nations until Sasuke' older brother turned on them. It was a real shame.
"We're supposed to wait here, Uchiha," Kurenai answered. "Kakashi is going after Gato, and Naruto will go after Zabuza and the Hunter. You did hear that at the briefing."
"What I heard was that Uzumaki would be separating Zabuza and the Hunter," Sasuke continued. Hinata did not like the way he addressed her fiancé. "We were going to fight the lackey while he confronted Zabuza. This is not going according to plan."
"Calm down, you bastard," Kiba said from the side. She was sitting and seemed quite relaxed. "The guy's a jōnin. He knows what he's doing."
"He could be dead." Sasuke's words didn't horrify Hinata. Instead, it angered her. Without realizing it, she had activated her Byakugan and Sasuke felt her eyes on him. The Uchiha looked at her dead in the eyes. "What the hell are you looking at?"
"Alright that's enough," Ino broke it up and took Hinata to the side and sat with her. "Damn, Hinata. I thought for a second you were going to attack Sasuke-kun."
Hinata felt embarrassed. She usually didn't feel this impulsive. "I wasn't going to attack him, but I…I just felt so angry. Why does Sasuke-kun always talk like he's better than everyone?"
"Cause he is?" Ino said it as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Besides, Sasuke-kun does have a point."
Hinata couldn't help but sigh. There was no point in talking about this. Ino and Sakura, not matter what Sasuke did, would always view him like that. Still she couldn't help it. "And you didn't feel a bit annoyed about the way he talked about our sensei?"
Ino sighed this time. "Okay, yeah." The Yamanaka had done something out of the blue today and Hinata really wanted to talk to her about it. "Sometimes Sasuke-kun can be difficult to talk to."
"Sometimes?" Hinata asked her again. Sakura was sitting not too far away from them. "He's always like that."
"He went through a lot, just give him a break." Ino didn't seem to have any other argument other than that. Hinata decided to leave it, but the reason why it bothered her was because she'd been seeing the way Ino had been recently looking at her Sensei-kun recently. Those eyes didn't hold just admiration and based on what Naruto's clone had relayed, Ino maybe, just maybe, liked her sensei 'that' way.
Hinata talked with Ino a bit more before she went and sat with Sakura. "Hey, Sakura."
"Hinata."
"You alright?" She asked her pink haired teammate who seemed visibly shaken.
"I guess." Hinata wasn't the most loquacious of people, or a beacon of hope and support, but Sakura was—for all her flaws—a teammate. A friend. She placed a hand on the pinkette's shoulder.
"It's alright, Sakura," the Hyuga assured her as she noticed tears slowly forming at the end of her emerald eyes. "You did what you were supposed to do."
"I killed them," never in her life had she heard Sakura's voice sound so hollow, so scared. "I killed so many of them." Hinata let Sakura lean against her as she felt the poor girl's tears staining her shoulders. Killing was never easy, whether it was killing someone or watching someone else being killed. Had it not been for witnessing her uncle kill the man who tried to kidnap her all those years ago, she too would've felt like this. Another 30 minutes passed and Hinata by now was beginning to wonder just what was going on in the building.
Then the glass shattered from the second floor.
A body hung from the broken window, glass shards embedding deep into the corpse which hung with a noose around its neck. Byakugan, she thought as nerves jolted her enhanced vision to life. She zoomed in and pale lavender eyes found that the dead man was bald, pudgy, fat and grotesque. He had cuts and wounds all over him and only one person fit this criteria: Gato.
Then through the flames two figures emerged. One of them was around the same height as her, a masked fellow wearing full sleeves and the other one was masked too, but he was large and hulking, a gigantic sword rested on his back. Sasuke Uchiha immediately rushed to them and brought out his kunai. The clash of steel rung as the hunter ninja stood in Sasuke's way.
"That's enough." Kakashi Hatake was the next to emerge from the destroyed floor.
"They're our enemies."
"Not anymore." He looked sharply at Sasuke and the Uchiha backed off. He looked to the rest of the group, his voice lacked that seriousness it did a few seconds ago. "Good work, everyone. You've successfully freed the Land of Waves."
Hinata Hyuga felt relieved. The mission was over, but she felt uneasy. Zabuza Momochi, one of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen, and the Hunter Ninja were right there. These two had reportedly tried to kill Team Seven. Just seeing them stand there without any consequences left a bitter taste in her mouth. She could tell it was definitely Kakashi sensei, his chakra print was the same, as was everyone else there, so this was no deception. It really was over.
A gust of wind emerged, from Gato's former quarters as the flames in the ground floor were lulled to sleep. Naruto Uzumaki emerged not a single strand of hair out of place as he yawned a bit. He smacked his lips a bit and threw a scroll towards Zabuza. The hulking tall man caught it and inspected it.
"Keep up your end of the deal." The rogue shinobi's voice was rough and threatening. "Otherwise you're a dead man, Naruto Uzumaki."
"Zabuza," her sensei smiled. "You couldn't fathom the amount of dead men behind me." Hinata felt a chill in the air. It washed suddenly all over her like cold, sharp rain. She could tell that everyone else felt it too. Naruto's lone blue eye seemed to gleam with a sinister, burning like ice.
The swordsman grunted and turned around, walking away. "Haku, let's go." The Hunter ninja nodded, but before she left she bowed her head a bit at Naruto Uzumaki. Sensei-kun just waved the shinobi off.
"What a well mannered boy," Naruto remarked as he sat down on the ground and looked around. Corpses to the side. Blood on the floor. Traces of explosion charring the path black. He sighed for a long time and breathed in relief. "What a patriotic sight. I almost feel like planting a tree here."
"Dude," Kiba spoke first. "The heck is wrong with you?"
"Trust me, genin," Naruto said with most casual of tones. "By the time you get to jōnin, you get used to an awful lot of shit. You did good today. All of you."
"What the heck happened up there?" Sasuke Uchiha asked. He looked straight at Naruto who raised a brow. "One moment we're fighting the grunts, and those two emerge. And we're not supposed to engage them? And let them go? They tried to kill us."
"Yeah, they 'tried', but they didn't." Naruto smiled awkwardly and squinted his eyes. "As for what happened. To summarize, I told Zabuza to not fight us in exchange for money. Money that Gato had, money that Gato was going to use to oppress the people here. SO, I paid him more than Gato was supposed to and he walked away. Great, isn't it?"
"You can't be serious," Sasuke seemed affronted. Hinata could understand, didn't mean she agreed with him.
"He is," Kakashi Hatake interjected. "The more you grow older, you'll find out that you're going to have to do things you don't like. You'll be put into situations where the best outcome comes at other expenses. You're going to make the hard choice. You're going to be a shinobi."
No more words were uttered afterwards regarding the matter as the Konoha group made their way out of the Compound. They chose to make an announcement of Gato being dead to the village. Never had Hinata seen such happiness in people. She wondered to herself if they knew that their joy had stemmed from bloodshed.
...
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