Into the Woods

The second day of confinement was, for the most part, uneventful. Ino stopped by for a brief visit while making deliveries from the flower shop. Sakura and Naruto acted like nothing had happened the night before, and Tsunade stopped by to see how things were going. Everything seemed to be fine, except for Hinata. She was acting more reclusive then usual, seemed thirsty all the time, and was unusually run down.

Now early morning on the third day, the blonde Hokage watched her intently, chewing on her lower lip while assessing the situation. After their return two days ago she had sent a messenger bird back to the mist to check on their status. As of yet she still hadn’t received a reply. She was starting to get concerned that there was something terribly wrong, and had to keep yelling at herself to be calm and rational. Sakura had told her of finding Naruto on the floor, sweaty, pale, and holding his head in the middle of the night. But looking at him now, sitting to one side and apparently meditating ‘I didn’t know he did that’, he seemed to be fine. Was it maybe just a side effect of that second dose of the medicine? But then why wasn’t Hinata getting any better?

She let out a long sigh. The only way to be sure would be to go in and run tests on the girl, and if they were going to be running tests it would be better to move her down the hall to the level 4 containment unit that had entry/exit hatches and more equipment, but was far less comfortable then her current accommodations. And if they moved her there they would have to pull more medical personnel in here to run the tests and monitor her 24 hours a day. She turned to Sakura, who was already waiting with a respirator, gloves, and a phlebotomy kit on standby.

“Let’s wait one more night...if she doesn’t show any signs of improvement by tomorrow morning, we’ll assume the worst and move her to 4. I’m trusting your judgement on this....if you at any point before then feel that we need to act sooner, we’ll do it.” Green eyes nodded back solemnly. “I’ll be in the hospital making preparations and getting the staff set up if you need me. Even if she just sneezes funny, I wanna know.” She smiled back at her mentor.

“Hopefully I won’t need you.” Tsunade smiled back quietly at that with a nod, then left to see if any word had come back yet from the other village.


~*~


‘God it’s hot in here....don’t they have air-conditioning in this place?’ she thought as she pushed herself upright. She felt heavy and sticky as she freed herself from the bedclothes and got onto her wobbly feet. Hinata made her way to the refrigerator, pulling out the bottle of milk. She opened it and downed it quickly, a slight dribble making it’s way down her chin. After draining the entire half gallon, she dropped the empty container, gasping for breath. The cold felt good and she wanted more. She grabbed the bottle of OJ next and emptied it in similar fashion. She leaned into the open door, letting the cold air blow out over her, trying to catch her breath. Suddenly, a soft voice called from behind her

“Hinata? Are you alright?”

‘I wish people would stop asking me that...’ she thought angrily. “Why on earth is it so hot in here? Honestly it feels like...” her voice caught as she turned to face them, not ready for the horror before her. Standing in front of her was Sakura and Naruto, but the entire room was filled with flames.

“Like what?” They smirked at her darkly, as the fire seemed to creep towards them, licking their clothes and skin lightly, almost seductively kissing them till they caught as well. She collapsed onto the floor, pushing herself back away from the encroaching tempest, pain shooting through her legs as her feet began to burn and singe. Her flaming friends laughed, reaching for her, pulling her into the smoke and the ash until suddenly....

Hinata screamed as she hit the floor, startling herself out of her nightmare. She lay still a moment, fighting for air, her eyes scanning the room for any sign of smoke or flames. When nothing appeared, she pulled herself upright. She was soaking with sweat, and unable to bear it she pushed herself to her feet and stumbled to the bathroom. Once inside she threw on the shower, climbing in without bothering to turn on the lights or remove her clothes. She stood there in the freezing spray, her face pressed against the cold tiles. Her head throbbed as if her eyeballs were going to burst out of the sockets from the pressure, and she sobbed softly.

‘Why can’t I get any relief? What’s wrong with me?’ she cried to herself, her legs starting to give out from under her. Hinata pushed herself out of the falling water and stumbled to the door ‘I have to find Sakura...I can’t act like there’s nothing wrong anymore...I have to...' but everything went black as the floor rushed up at her.

~*~

Naruto had spent all of the previous day thinking about what Kyubi had said to him, wondering if he could be right. ‘What do you mean could be? You know for most of it he is...but I’m not afraid of him. That’s the biggest load of shit I’ve ever heard......’ he sighed. ‘Or is it?’ As many times as he’d used the demon chakra, there had only been once that he had managed to call it forth himself at will...and that time wasn’t one that he was proud of. Jiraya told him time and time again that he needed to take advantage of this power...so why didn’t he? Why was it so hard for him to do it? Maybe it was time he started spending some more time with the beast. But the question to that one was...how? It only ever happened when he needed it, how does one go about starting conversations with their inner demons?

He thought back on the time Kakashi-sensei had tried to teach him to meditate. It had been more of an attempt to get the boy to calm down, actually. He was getting a lot of complaints from the others of Naruto always flying off the hook and tearing off without thinking. When he finally had a few days off between missions, he found our obnoxious friend and promised him some exclusive one-on-one training time.

“So what kind of awesome technique are you gonna teach me today, Kakashi-sensei?”

The silver haired jounin smiled beneath his mask. “One I’m sure you’ll find most interesting, and I don’t do this with just anyone. In fact, you’re the only person I ever have, and ever plan to do this with.”

Naruto laughed remembering that line. He had fallen for it completely at the time.

The first day was easy...once he had figured out how to sit still for longer then 5 min. That took up the first 3 hours of the day. After that the copynin had simply sat across from him, and with a smile said “I want you to sit here till dinner time, and then you’ll tell me what you learned.”

“Eh? What am I supposed to learn by sitting here?” came the expected reply.

“You’re a ninja right? So gather information!” and at that Kakashi closed his visible eye and sat very still, seeming to barely even breath. Naruto had no idea what kind of information he was expected to get, so he sat there, watching the clouds and the birds and listening to the trees. After a few hours, the mischievous eye popped open again and waited patiently for his answers.

“Well...there’s a starling that keeps hanging around the large oak tree across the clearing...”

“Why?” Kakashi interrupted.

“Well I dunno. And there is something that keeps making an odd crying sound in the woods just east of here...”

“What is it?” his sensei broke in again with a smile.

“Beats me....and something somewhere nearby is giving off the most interesting smell...”

“But where is it coming from?” he asked again, trying not to laugh at the increasing look of annoyance the boy was giving him.

“Well how the hell should I know?”

Kakashi leaned over and thumped the boy fondly on the head. “Baka. That’s the point of this exercise.”

He then spent the next hour and a half explaining to his student how if he used his individual senses, combined with a little chakra, instinct, and practice, he would be able to know everything that’s going on around him at all times. It was hard to explain in words, he said...you just needed to clear your head of all the noise and clutter and just do it.

“But it takes patience and a calm heart, Naruto. I’m not sure our #1 hyperactive ninja would really want to master such a dull and time-consuming chore...I mean really...who cares if it would make it nearly impossible to catch you off guard and make intelligence gathering a simple task...” at which point of course he was loudly interrupted and begged to teach it.

For the next 4 days the two worked together in near silence, speaking only when Kakashi needed to correct or guide him, or Naruto was giving his report on what he discovered. As they broke on the 4th day, Kakashi looked proudly down on his student.

“You’ve done well these past few days. I need to leave on missions again, but I want you too keep practicing on your own. After a few years you’ll be able to do it instinctively. But don’t worry about that for now. In a few months I’m dragging you out here again, and I expect you to be able to tell me everything.” he ruffled the young mans hair, then took him out for ramen.

‘That was six months ago...’ Naruto thought with a smile. ‘And I still haven’t gotten to show you what I’ve learned to do since.’

Now was a perfect time to work on this. He closed his eyes and emptied his mind so the only things he was aware of where the beating of his heart and sound of his own breathing. He adjusted his breathing so that he was taking fewer breaths per min, slow and shallow as if he were sleeping till he was barely aware he was doing it. Next he slowed his heart down as well till it to was only beating calmly and quietly every few seconds. Then drawing his chakra, he reached gently outward to explore the hospital.

He carefully reached in on Sakura across the hall. He found her warm glow exactly where he expected it. She was sitting at her desk, working on paperwork and sniffling to herself. She had been crying it seemed, and she was fighting herself to stop. His heart ached, wishing to be able to talk to her and find out what was the matter. He had a sinking feeling that it had to do with the other night, though why she was so distraught he was still as clueless as ever. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever understand women’ he thought to himself.

You probably won’t....I’m over 900 years old and I still don’t understand them myself.

Naruto was so startled by this he almost lost his focus. Letting go of the image of Sakura, he turned his focus inward, trying to figure out where that exactly came from. ‘Kyubi?’

-chuckle-very good..you’ll finally listen to me. That’s a good step.

‘What do you mean finally? You mean you’ve been trying?’ Naruto could suddenly feel it, like a smouldering red coal deep inside his being. He carefully drew it closer to the surface, finding the voice a little easier to hear.

A few times. You normally keep yourself closed off, lost in your own thoughts and actions. You finally opened yourself enough I could break in. Normally I can only seem to get through to you when it’s important though. I wonder if this is another of those times.

‘What do you mean? What’s wrong?’

Something’s wrong with your vixen. I’ve been checking on her now and again...she doesn’t feel right...

‘What do you mean by feel right?’ Naruto fought to stay calm over that, not liking the sounds or implications of it. One thing he’d learned was if he let his emotions take over, he would loose his focus and be unable to discern anything. He couldn't risk breaking this connection just yet.

Check on her yourself

With that the Kyubi pushed itself away again, leaving Naruto to look outward. He reached out to Hinata, gently probing into the darkness for the soft glow of her own chakra. He was startled to find it dimmed and weakened, but the fire that seemed to come from it. She was burning inferno, her heart racing frantically and her breath hard and labored. It was too much for him and he lost it, the image of her on the floor fighting to get up sent tears to his eyes and pain through his chest. As his eyes shot open he jumped up from the floor and ran to the call button, screaming for Sakura to hurry.

~*~

Sakura jumped at the frantic screaming that crashed through the silence like a bull in a china shop. She hurriedly wiped the tears from her flushed cheeks and ran to the door to see what was the matter. She saw Naruto at his window, yelling hysterically so she could barely understand him. He was waving his arms and gesticulating wildly towards the other room and going on something about Hinata.

‘What on earth is he going on about?’ She thought, turning to look at the monitors. Her heart caught in her throat as Hinata’s room looked vacant...save for an arm sticking out behind the bathroom door that appeared to be clawing weakly at the floor. She grabbed her respirator and ran across the hall as she tried to get the gloves on fast enough. She just got her mask in place as she reached the door, unlocking it and pulling it open in one motion, throwing it hard into the wall as she ran to the figure on the floor.

“Hinata! Hinata it’s me what happened???” she yelled at her as she dropped to the ground next to her. The girl was soaked, her clothes clinging damply to her flushed skin. Sakura brushed the wet hair off her face, cradling it upward to look at her. She was horrified at the heat she could feel coming off her skin through the thick latex gloves. Hinata’s eyes lolled around, having a hard time focusing on her pink haired friend. She moaned softly.

“Hinata! Please, answer me if you can hear me....I need to know what happened!” she yelled at her again. For a moment their eyes met, then the answer came in a voice just barely a whisper.

“G..gomen....Sakura-san....please....help me...”

The pale eyes rolled up into her skull as her small body began to tremble and quake.

‘Dear god no.....’ Sakura screamed in her head as she watched helplessly while the tremors took over her friend

___________________________________________________

and on that note...you get stuck with a cliffhanger!

*evil gryn*

~Teaser