"I'm still not sure what you're searching for, Nee-sama."
The familiar younger voice broke across the records just as Hinata reached the bottom of a marriage register. She sat in the only chair before the table, a broad, reinforced piece made specifically for her, wearing her sleeveless black top and dark shinobi trousers. Unfurled scrolls and open notebooks covered nearly every handspan before her. Her glowing eyes ran over the brushwork at high speed while Venom memorised names, dates, unions, and repeated phrases in their shared memory. Six black tendrils extended from her shoulders and sides. They held more scrolls open above the crowded surface and kept separate sheets where she could see them. The table had been built large, yet her tall frame made it look small. Her knees already rose above its underside. Her thighs pressed against the edge whenever she shifted, and the position had grown uncomfortable some time ago. Thankfully, the archive ceiling stood high enough for her to straighten.
Hanabi came down the narrow aisle between the shelves with two more scrolls balanced across her forearms, and Hinata's attention followed her through the room. The Hyuuga clan's private archive had the ordered clutter of a library. Cedar racks held scrolls of varying age, from clean recent copies to brittle bundles protected inside fitted cases. Separate shelves carried bound books and rows of notebooks left by clan heads, physicians, tutors, and record keepers. Hinata had asked her father for access that morning so she could check a suspicion. He had listened, asked which records she required, then handed her the archive key when she answered that she needed all of them.
"These were behind the eastern family registers." Hanabi placed both scrolls in the last open space near Hinata's right hand and slid a notebook on top of them. "I brought the medical index too."
Hinata turned her luminous cerulean eyes fully upon her sister, and the silver lines visible along her bare arms and above her high collar shifted with the movement, their soft glow travelling from her wrists toward her neck. "Thank you, Hanabi. I am tracing my entire ancestral line, and every family that joined our clan through the paternal and maternal lines. As far back as the records permit." The doubled resonance beneath her alto vibrated several loose papers against the wood.
"Why?" Hanabi planted one hand beside the new scrolls and looked over the spread without touching Hinata's arrangement. "We already know most of our lineage. Every Hyuuga learns the principal families."
"There should be something here that we missed." Hinata rested two fingers on the oldest register within reach while the tendrils above her kept the other records motionless. "I cannot describe it properly yet. I think our lineage contains something the clan has forgotten."
Hanabi's brows drew inward, and Hinata's gaze dropped to the medical index between them. Sasuke's lightning dragon still remained in her thoughts. She and Venom had absorbed it together, but for less than a breath something else inside her had stirred and helped. It had not come from Venom. Pressure had gathered behind her forehead and eyes, her brainwaves and eye tissue had changed, and then both had returned back before either of them understood what had happened. Other strange things had emerged from her body over the years besides Venom's enhancements. Her ability to drain another person's chakra was one of the simpler examples, and even Venom could not separate every part of it cleanly into Hyuuga or Klyntar.
"Is this connected to your eyes changing color?" Hanabi asked, watching the glow that had replaced Hinata's pale irises long ago.
Hinata blinked once and drew the two new scrolls toward her. "Yes. That is another reason I am searching."
She opened them across the older family records and resumed comparing names. The recent generations followed clear lines of birth, marriage, and death. The farther back she went, the stranger the entries became. Several names read as titles rather than names given at birth. Three old records depicted the clan's founder as a moon disk, a pale circle placed above the first recorded families. One damaged passage claimed he had "come down" after a great calamity, but offered no description of the calamity. Several descendants were called children of the pale founder. Another scroll described the Byakugan as an inheritance brought from somewhere else.
The damage to the records was not entirely natural. Hinata could see where ink had been weakened, where a careful hand had scraped selected marks from the fibres, and where later copies preserved every part of a passage except a name. Age had made the losses permanent. Most of the missing marks could not be restored, even with Venom retaining every visible fragment while Hinata tested one possible stroke after another.
One name had survived enough of the attempt.
She drew the damaged prayer scroll from beneath a family register. It appeared to be the oldest record in the room, its edges brittle and its centre crossed by pale scars. Venom had memorised the remaining brush marks while she compared repeated lines from later prayers. The reconstruction had produced one name.
Hamura.
Nothing on the scroll explained who he had been.
"Look here." Hinata placed her left hand across three records, one finger beside each matching line, while a tendril lowered a fourth document into the remaining space. "These accounts suggest that the clan divided into two. One part remained here. The other 'returned to the first sanctuary.' This copy says they 'followed the founder into the night sky.' The division predates the Main and Branch Houses."
Hanabi bent over the table far enough that her hair almost brushed the nearest scroll, then caught it behind one ear while reading each line. "It sounds like a legend."
Hinata answered with a small nod and kept her fingers beside the matched passages. Hanabi's doubt was reasonable. Even if every phrase were literal, the records did not say where the missing line had returned. The moon was the obvious answer only because the founder had been shown as a moon disk. That answer created its own problem. Hinata and Venom had examined the moon long ago. Its surface was barren and airless, with no visible place where people could live.
They could have built a sealed habitat with air, water, food, and waste systems, Venom said inside her mind. Its disdain tightened along her spine. It would consume an absurd quantity of resources. Abandoning a living world to hide on a dead rock sounds stupid.
Ridiculous or not, it still belonged in the notes. Hinata marked both phrases, shifted the prayer scroll to the left, and opened the medical index Hanabi had brought. A thin trail ran through those records as well. Scattered across long periods of clan history were reports of Hyuuga experiencing changes in their eyes under extreme conditions. Some recorded pressure behind the forehead and eyes. Others mentioned altered colour. The accounts were vague, singular, and separated by generations, so each had been filed as an isolated condition and largely ignored. None gave Hinata enough to name what had happened inside her, but together they were too close to dismiss.
"Nee-sama, I see less of you now." Hanabi had straightened at the other side of the table. Her hand remained against the medical index, holding Hinata's place. "Since your missions became longer, I mean. Even when you are in the village, you spend most of your time with that orange-wearing Naruto boy."
Hinata raised her eyes from the old reports. The crease between Hanabi's brows had deepened, and her mouth had settled into the same firm line she wore whenever concern had to disguise itself as criticism. "I do. Naruto-kun and I are helping Hokage-sama with a great deal of work. Is there something about him that you dislike?"
"I have tried to find something." Hanabi lifted her chin and considered the question with proper care. "I cannot. He is loud and sometimes rude, but he treats you well." Her fingertips tapped once on the paper. "You chose him. I trust your choice."
Warmth settled beneath Hinata's ribs, but Hanabi's narrowed eyes warned that she had not finished.
"Father and I are still waiting for him to come here and speak formally about being with you." Hanabi moved the medical index away from the edge before one of Hinata's tendrils could catch it. "Avoiding Father is irresponsible."
"That day will come." Hinata's smile softened, and the lines at her wrists brightened with it. "We are both very busy at present."
"You still seem to have plenty of time for each other."
Hinata raised one eyebrow. "How do you know?"
"You return late. Sometimes you do not return at all." Hanabi leaned closer and lowered her voice despite the empty archive. "You spend hours alone with him, and then you come home looking far too pleased with yourself. I notice things." Colour touched her cheeks, though curiosity held her gaze in place. "Is Naruto really that good to be with?"
"He is." Hinata answered without lowering her eyes or softening the truth for her sister's embarrassment. "My time with Naruto-kun is wonderful and very pleasant. He pays attention to everything I enjoy, and very persistent when he wants to satisfy me."
Hanabi's colour spread to her ears. She pulled her hand from the medical index and tucked it into the opposite sleeve before clearing her throat. "He is very different from our clan. Our clansmen are restrained and dignified. They think before they speak. They care how they look." Hanabi counted the differences against her hidden fingers, recovering a little more authority with each one. "Naruto is loud, brash, impulsive, blond, blue-eyed, and dressed in bright orange. I only wondered whether he was equally wild in private."
"You may have mistaken which of us behaves more wildly in private." Hinata let her smile deepen while the silver lines at the base of her throat warmed toward violet. "Naruto-kun is often the one concerned with privacy and restraint. Several of our less careful moments happened because I wanted them to."
Hanabi's eyes widened. Her mouth opened without producing a word. Venom's smugness pressed through Hinata's body in a satisfied curl.
"S-so perhaps he suits you because he is different from the clan." Hanabi forced her shoulders level and tried again. "That does not excuse him. He still needs to speak formally with Father. Soon. B-being suitable does not make that optional."
"He will." Hinata drew the medical index back beneath her hand. "Once our present work permits it, Naruto-kun and I will arrange the meeting."
"Good." Hanabi restored her composure, and she turned toward the older shelves before it could fail again. "There are two more boxes of medical records behind the treatment indexes. I will bring them."
Hinata watched her disappear between the cedar racks, then lowered her glowing eyes to the damaged prayer scroll. Hinata lowered her glowing eyes to the scroll and placed one finger beside the reconstructed name, Hamura. The small clock near her notebooks showed that her next task at the Hokage's tower was drawing near, and she needed to prepare for that.
She began gathering the open scrolls into separate stacks.
The archive returned to order quickly, and after leaving the scrolls, registers, and notebooks in their proper places, Hinata gave Hanabi a brief farewell and crossed the Hyuuga compound with a large folder held flat against one palm. She needed to be at the Hokage's tower.
Several more days at the operating base had gone into compiling everything taken from Orochimaru's scattered facilities before Konoha finally rotated them home. The captured records had exposed supply routes threaded through several countries, black markets tied into one another, corrupt officials, rogue shinobi, and names that Intelligence suspected belonged to agents of other hidden villages. Orochimaru had stretched his hands into too many places, and when his grip failed, the whole arrangement had come loose at once, leaving Konoha, and perhaps half the surrounding nations, with months of missions to cut apart what remained.
The political consequences had arrived before the last Konoha units withdrew. Kusagakure, the hidden village of the Land of Grass, condemned Konoha's campaign inside Grass territory until captured records began yielding the names of Grass shinobi who had joined Orochimaru, deserted him, and turned their weapons on their own country. Once the Grass feudal lord publicly backed Konoha and accused his village of incompetence while his people suffered under the snake's operations, Kusagakure's anger quieted, its leaders spending more effort saving face than challenging Konoha. The Land of Rivers responded in the opposite fashion by welcoming the destroyed bases, opening its records to Konoha investigators, and cooperating before formal requests reached them. Both countries had allowed Orochimaru room to settle and regretted it now, though they had chosen different ways to clean the stain from their hands.
Hinata crossed the compound wall in one jump and landed on the tiled roof beyond without breaking stride, her hair streaming behind her before drawing itself close against her back as she leaped above a crowded street. The folder remained steady on her palm. Akatsuki could finally receive Konoha's full attention, information from bases had a lot of data about them, but that did not make the rest of the work disappear.
While another roof passed beneath her feet, she glanced at the folder containing the first survey of supply chains inside the Land of Fire for the armor factory. Dozens of meetings waited behind those pages, along with permissions, contracts, and enough paperwork to keep several departments occupied. The old records from her clan waited as well, marked by ancestors who had scraped away names and weakened selected passages while leaving Hamura behind as an answer to nothing. She would press the elders for whatever they had kept outside the archive, even if her expectations remained low.
The Hokage's tower rose ahead, clean and straight again after the destruction caused by Danzo's summon. Hinata dropped from the last roof and landed before its entrance, the fresh timber running through the repaired upper floors, and the replacement windows shining above her. Akatsuki might be the single enemy now before them, but factories, foreign villages, and Orochimaru's broken networks still waited behind it. She adjusted the folder against her palm and entered.
No orange crowd met her in the hall. Naruto's clones had once filled the place from wall to wall, running in every direction at once, but today the entrance remained merely busy with clerks moving between counters, shinobi waiting beside assignment boards, and messengers slipping through the traffic with scroll cases held close. Hinata found Naruto's bright chakra immediately, nearly all of it concentrated on the upper floors in the Hokage's office, and headed for the stairs while several faces turned to follow her. One man walking beside a kunoichi looked up, kept looking, and nearly collided with a pillar before his companion caught his sleeve, while two women at the mission counter watched Hinata's hips sway until she glanced their way, at which point both quickly looked away and pretended to study the notice in front of them.
Two pieces of Naruto's chakra came racing down as she climbed, the first blond head appearing around the turn above with a second peering over his shoulder.
"Hinata-chan!"
"Hey, Hinata-chan!"
They stopped several steps higher than her, bringing their faces close to level with hers, and neither clone made any attempt to hide the bold delight behind his wide smile and bright blue eyes.
Hinata smiled back. "Good afternoon, Naruto-kun. Both of you."
"Boss is in Granny Tsunade's office," the clone on her left said, leaning one shoulder against the rail. "They're finishing some preparations, so you gotta wait a little bit."
The other clone snapped his head toward the lower landing, peered over the railing, checked the corridor above, then leaned far enough around Hinata to search the stairs behind her before cupping both hands around one eye like a spyglass. Finding no witness, he straightened and gave his partner a sharp nod beneath Hinata's watchful gaze.
"That is fin…" she began.
The left clone closed the gap before she could finish, sliding his arms beneath hers and locking them around her upper back as he rose onto the next step and pressed his mouth to hers. Hinata's glowing eyes widened at the heat of his lips, then closed as the folder creased under her tightening fingers.
"Mmmh!"
Naruto deepened the kiss, and Hinata opened for him, her tongue unfurling between their lips to coil around his shorter one as its soft ridges dragged over him. His hands slipped forward beneath her arms and spread across the heavy curves of her breasts through the black fabric of her top, while the second clone closed in behind her, circled strong arms around her waist, and pressed his chest to the back of her hips. His face settled into the deep inward curve at the base of her spine, just above where her ass began to swell beneath her trousers, and both hands closed over its firm globes.
After so many hours alone together, Naruto no longer treated every desire as something he needed permission to admit, and his clones carried the same lessons into every stolen angle, roaming hand, and unfair advantage. Neither Hinata nor Venom had ever asked him to stop. The clone before her kneaded her breasts together while his thumbs rubbed across the firm points rising beneath her top, and behind her, ten fingers dug through dark cloth into the dense curves of her ass, pulling her back against a hard body until her breath quickened into Naruto's mouth. Silver lines beneath her skin warmed through cerulean and began pulsing violet along her arms, throat, and the strip of abdomen left bare above her trousers.
"Nnnhm!"
Venom stirred through her nerves, wakeful and eager, while Hinata allowed the kiss one more breath before placing her free hand against Naruto's chest and easing him away. Their lips separated wetly, her long tongue sliding from around his and slowly drawing back into her mouth as she inhaled beneath the attention of both clones, who watched the violet light moving beneath her skin.
"Naruto-kun. We are working." Her doubled voice had dropped into a warm, resonant purr that made both of them blush harder. "We will do this later."
The clone in front grinned. "Sure, Hinata-chan."
Neither Naruto moved until Hinata raised one eyebrow.
"Right. Later." He released her breasts with obvious reluctance as the clone behind her gave her ass one last slow squeeze, and they peeled away together, retreating down the stairs backward with their grins fixed on her until the turn hid them. By the time Hinata smoothed the bent corner of her folder and resumed climbing, the violet pulses beneath her skin had faded toward silver.
The young woman at the desk outside the Hokage's office asked her to wait while the meeting finished, so Hinata acknowledged her and chose the wider of the two sofas against the wall. Its cushions compressed beneath her broad hips, the edges rising around her thighs as her bottom sank deep into the seat. She shifted once in search of a position that neither forced her knees high nor pressed the low frame into the backs of her legs, earning an unhappy creak from the sofa.
Without looking through the wall, she brushed her senses across the office and found Tsunade behind the desk, Shizune off to one side, and Naruto's original burning among the many smaller copies of the same familiar light. The subdued movement of papers and footsteps gave no indication of danger, and soon the office door flew open.
"Hinata-chan!"
The secretary jerked in her chair and slapped one hand down on the paper before her as Naruto filled the doorway with his grin. "Sorry I made you wait. We were gettin' some preparations sorted out, ya know, but it's good now. Come on."
He crossed to Hinata at once, caught her free hand with his, and leaned back while she rose carefully enough not to pull him off his feet. The sofa cushions dragged at her trousers before releasing her with a soft whump.
Naruto stepped aside and waved her through first. "After you."
Hinata ducked beneath the doorframe and entered, while Naruto stopped behind her with his eyes fixed on the sofa. Two wide, round hollows remained where she had been sitting, both pressed so deep that the cushions had not begun to rise. He blinked at them as red climbed across his cheeks and pulled the corner of his mouth into a helpless grin, then hurried after her and shut the door.
The room beyond had become a paper workshop, with Naruto's clones occupying several additional tables arranged across the floor. One checked forms against a ledger while two more sorted folders into piles, and another carried signed papers to Shizune as she spoke quickly to a clone with ink on his cheek and three different lists in his hands. Pages turned, brushes scratched, and low voices overlapped beneath the steady movement, while Tsunade sat behind her desk with fewer papers before her than Hinata had seen there in months and satisfaction softening the set of her mouth. Hinata approached the desk with Naruto beside her.
"Hokage-sama." Hinata inclined her head, her voice carrying its gentle second harmony through the busy room. "I have brought the initial supply-chain survey for the manufacturing initiative."
She placed the large folder before Tsunade, who opened it, skimmed the first sheets, and turned several pages with increasing approval. "Good. Thank you, Hinata. This is enough to start with." She shut the folder beneath one hand. "There are going to be a lot of meetings just for this."
"Hokage-sama, what are our next actions against Akatsuki?" Hinata asked. "The information recovered from Orochimaru's bases indicates that we should move quickly."
"We should." Tsunade leaned back as the satisfaction left her face. "During the last several days, I've already assigned nearly half a hundred missions to deal with the filth our campaign uncovered." Hinata's brows rose, and Tsunade tipped her chin toward Naruto. "He helped."
Naruto rubbed beneath his nose, grinning. "It's no problem, Granny. I can keep helping with this stuff."
The nearest clones nodded without pausing in their work, and Tsunade's eyes moved over them with the calm of someone who had grown accustomed to handing one man the work of a department and receiving it back quickly.
"The missions are the simple part," she said. "The deeper review found worse things. Intelligence is pulling people from several divisions, including the section both of you have been participating in. Over the coming days, we'll be planning our next strategic moves against Akatsuki and deciding how Konoha deals with the countries tangled in Orochimaru's network."
Open conflict sat behind those words. Grass had already accused Konoha of invasion, while agents from other villages hid among Orochimaru's lists, some of them perhaps still serving their original masters. One wrong movement could turn an operation against Akatsuki into something wider.
Tsunade placed both forearms on the desk. "I expect something tangible from both of you at those meetings."
Naruto answered before Hinata could. "We won't let you down, Granny. You or anybody else."
One of Tsunade's eyes twitched, but Naruto's grin held, and Hinata kept her own mouth still. "What are we doing now, Hokage-sama?"
"Orochimaru's curse marks." Tsunade tapped one finger against Hinata's folder. "Jiraiya has made the necessary preparations. We still need final checks before we attempt the first removal from a living patient." She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. "Anko has been nagging me about it every time she sees me."
Shizune lowered her face behind the papers in her hands, though not before Hinata caught her smile.
"Both of you are expected at Intelligence," Tsunade continued. "Ibiki is already waiting."
"Understood."
Naruto nodded. "Got it."
They began to turn together.
"Naruto."
Naruto stopped with one foot pointed toward the door. "Yeah, Granny?"
"Leave another couple dozen clones here." Tsunade gestured around the room. "We still have staff to onboard, and most of them haven't learned the new paperwork pipeline."
Naruto stared at her for one beat, sighed through his nose, and brought his hands together, filling the office with rolling white smoke as another crowd of orange-clad clones sprang into place and reached for the waiting stacks.
Naruto lasted three streets before throwing both hands behind his head and walking on with his elbows spread wide. "Why is Intelligence waiting for us all the way out here? We were already at the tower. They could've met us there, ya know."
Hinata shortened her stride to match his as the buildings thinned behind them and the eastern slope beneath the Hokage Monument rose through the last scattered roofs, dark green branches showing between them where the forest began to climb over the ridge.
Naruto squinted toward the approaching forest, kept his arms hooked over his head for another three steps, then brought one hand down to point at the trees. "Seriously, what do they have waiting for us out there?"
Hinata said nothing because she had found the chakra waiting near the trees, and with it came the memory of a red-haired girl against a tree. A few years had blurred the smaller details of that mission, but not the girl's fear or the humiliating mistake that had ended their fight. Ibiki stood at the forest edge with his scarred head above the high collar of his coat, broad and motionless enough to look like a planted there, and Naruto's other arm dropped as his loose walk tightened. Hinata's attention narrowed with his while they crossed the remaining distance.
Ibiki swept his eyes over Naruto, then lifted them to Hinata's face. "Uzumaki. Hyuuga."
"Ibiki-san," Naruto said.
Hinata inclined her head. "Ibiki-san."
"Follow me." Ibiki turned before either of them answered and stepped between the trees.
The path disappeared within thirty paces. Ibiki kept to the ground, moving through without disturbing anything, while Naruto and Hinata followed in silence and her Byakugan opened the forest around them. Shinobi occupied the branches on both sides, some crouched behind dense screens of leaves while others moved in short transfers between posts. One passed above without a sound as another waited inside the fork of a tree with a suppression tag ready between two fingers, and Naruto's eyes flicked toward an apparently empty branch before moving to another farther ahead, he had noticed them too. Hinata had expected a prisoner to be kept behind walls, not in the middle of the forest.
"I read the reports from your operations in the Land of Rivers," Ibiki said without looking back. "The interrogation of the captive your team took in the market town was especially interesting."
Naruto glanced up at Hinata as she answered, her doubled voice travelling softly beneath the branches. "I made the captive talk while Neji-niisan and Karin monitored his responses for deception."
"How?"
"Ibiki-san?"
"How did you interrogate him?" His pace did not change. "The distinction is important."
Naruto and Hinata looked at each other for one short step. "I overwhelmed him with my killing intent. It made him experience an illusion of falling through space toward a giant, storm-covered world."
Ibiki stepped over a root. "Impressive." Nothing in his voice said whether it was praise. "It was also risky," he continued. "Interrogation without the proper knowledge works until it doesn't."
"Super Bushy Brows-sensei was there," Naruto said. "If Hinata-chan went too far, he could've stopped it."
"And if he wasn't?" Ibiki asked, and Naruto went silent.
"Detecting a lie does not make the information true," Ibiki said. "A prisoner under enough pressure may begin constructing an answer for you. With more pressure, he may convince himself that answer is real. Your sensor hears conviction. Your interrogator hears what he wanted. You send a team after it." He pushed a low branch aside, held it until Naruto passed, then let it rise before Hinata reached it, leaving the leaves to brush harmlessly against her shoulder. "False information is worse than no information. It wastes resources. Sometimes it wastes lives."
Naruto's brows drew together. Hinata had seen the captive's chakra twist around every answer and Karin catch each false turn, but she had also seen terror reduce the man to whatever words might make her stop. The distinction had seemed cleaner inside the tent.
"You're both newly ranked Jounin," Ibiki said. "Take lessons with my division before you attempt it again."
"Yeah," Naruto said after a moment. "All right."
"I will," Hinata said.
Ibiki walked another dozen paces before turning his head far enough to put both of them at the edge of his vision. His face gave nothing away. "There is another reason this work stays with specialists. A darker one."
Naruto's expression tightened with enormous effort, his eyes narrowing and one cheek pulling upward while the tip of his tongue appeared at the corner of his mouth, as though a sufficiently serious face might squeeze the answer out of the air. "Another thing…" he mumbled. "What else would there be…?"
Venom shifted beneath Hinata's skin, winding around her ribs and pressing forward along the underside of her sternum while its curiosity sharpened every movement ahead. Hinata watched Ibiki's shoulders and then the shinobi in the trees.
"Some people would use interrogation as permission to torture someone," she said.
Naruto fell silent. Ibiki's expression softened just a little. "That's right," he said, turning back to the path. "Some "interrogators" hurt prisoners because they enjoy it, and claim it's necessary. Others truly think it's the only way. Either way, you end up with needlessly harmed prisoners and bad information." Naruto's face grew serious as he listened. "How you question someone depends on who they are. The captive we have now requires different approach."
Venom's coil tightened with impatience, a line of pressure wriggling across Hinata's abdomen before withdrawing. Ibiki raised one fist, stopping Naruto and Hinata behind him.
"We're close."
The trees opened into a wider stretch of forest with trampled ground and clear lanes between the trunks. Shinobi crossed above them in quick blurs, one landing long enough to exchange two hand signs with a guard below before vanishing again, while two familiar heads turned near a folding field table.
"Karin! Sakura-chan!" Naruto called.
Karin's face brightened at once, and she hugged a thick folder against her chest with one arm while waving with the other as she hurried over. "Naruto! Hinata-sama!"
Sakura followed with a folder tucked beneath one hand and acknowledged them with a small smile, though worry remained clear in her face. Naruto and Hinata had spoken with her about Sasuke before leaving the operational base, and Sakura had listened to every word, asked careful questions, then spent the rest of that evening silent and too distracted to focus on her work.
Karin stopped before them and pushed her glasses higher with one finger. The brightness in her posture settled into professional focus when Ibiki approached. "Sakura and I completed independent medical examinations of the patient. We compared our findings afterward. Naruto and Hinata-sama still need to perform their sensory checks."
Sakura held out her folder. "Vitals, chakra circulation, tissue response around the seal, and the last three readings from Jiraiya-sama's test array. No acute changes."
Ibiki took it, skimmed the first pages, then closed it. "Good." When his eyes shifted to Naruto and Hinata, they nodded and moved on, leaving him with the two medical kunoichi.
Bushes thickened beyond the checkpoint. Naruto pushed through first, holding a branch aside until Hinata passed, and several more trees concealed the rising ground until the last screen of leaves fell behind them. A grassy hill opened beneath the sky, its far side dropping into a broad view over Konoha, tiled roofs spread below and the Hokage Monument watching from across the village. One bench stood near the crown with a red-haired woman leaning forward upon it, elbows on her knees while one heel beat tap-tap-tap against the earth. Her hair had grown longer, wearing dark rust-red tank top with charcoal trousers and plain civilian sandals.
Naruto and Hinata approached from the right, their shadow reaching the bench before them. Tayuya's heel stopped, her shoulders jerked, and a shiver ran from her whole body before she forced herself upright.
"If this is another damned checkup, you can shove it up your…" She turned, saw Naruto, then followed the shadow higher until her eyes reached Hinata's face, where her mouth remained open as shock held her for one breath and anger crushed it on the next.
"YOU!" Tayuya launched off the bench to the left, landed three paces away with bent knees and both hands raised, then remembered she had no weapon and curled her fingers into fists instead.
"Calm down," Naruto said. "You recognize us?"
"Of course I fucking recognize you!" Tayuya stabbed one finger at him. "You're that little shithead who chased us!"
Naruto's serious calm remained, though one eyebrow twitched. "I'm taller than you now, ya know."
"Like I give a shit." Her finger swung toward Hinata. "And she's that overgrown bitch who…" Tayuya's mouth shut hard. Heat flashed across her cheeks as her eyes dropped for one treacherous instant to Hinata's hands. "Who attacked me."
"You're forgetting the part where you and snake bastard started everything, and we beat you and your buddies," Naruto said.
Naruto began to move around the front of the bench, and Hinata moved with him calmly, until Tayuya noticed both of them closing from the right.
"Grrh!"
Tayuya circled the opposite way to keep the bench between them, matching Naruto until Hinata's longer steps carried her around the end and forced Tayuya to shuffle faster. She glared over the backrest while the three of them completed one ridiculous rotation.
The girl Hinata remembered had been injured, exhausted, half transformed by a seal burning through her body, and full of enough spite to spit blood at the person standing over her, while the woman before her carried none of that damage. No old bruise darkened beneath her skin or poorly healed fracture changed her movement, muscle covered her arms and shoulders without the stringy hollows of hunger, and her scent held ordinary food, soap, and clean cloth. Ibiki's department had kept her well.
However, her emotions were in complete disorder. Hinata's enhanced senses detected anger and constant anxiety, along with fear directed mostly at her and, to a lesser degree, the hidden guards. Tayuya also carried a stubborn hope that had survived her years in captivity. When she glanced at Hinata again, that mixture gained embarrassment, hatred, envy, and a brief burst of happiness? The happiness quickly became arousal before Tayuya tore her eyes away. Hinata nearly missed a step at the realization that Tayuya had missed her, even while the old attack remained in her nerves as something her body remembered and her pride hated. What a wreck of a person.
"Why the hell are you here?" Tayuya demanded.
Naruto and Hinata raised one eyebrow at the same time. Like really? Demanding something from the people who captured her? Tayuya's scowl deepened. "Don't do that!"
"Relax," Naruto said, amusement edging into his voice. "We're checking your curse mark. That's all."
Her eyes narrowed. "What kind of checkup? I've had plenty."
"This examination requires more detailed readings," Hinata said. The second harmony beneath her alto rolled across the bench and raised another visible shiver along Tayuya's spine.
"Great. More poking and prodding like I'm some prize cow."
Naruto stopped circling and dropped onto the bench, leaning back with both arms behind his head and his knees spread in the casual ownership of someone settling into his favorite seat. Tayuya stared first at him, then at the strip of bench still available, and back again. That had been her bench, and the offense landed almost as hard as their arrival.
Naruto looked over the view. "So what do they let you do all day out here?"
Tayuya hesitated, trying to pick proper words. "I… just sit. Eat. Look at trees. That's it. Same every day."
Naruto nodded as though she had given him a mission report. "They feed you okay?"
Suspicion creased her face. "The food's fine. Better than the garbage we got in Sound, actually." Her eyes widened a fraction. "Not that it's any of your damned business. Don't act like you give a shit."
Naruto blinked. "I'm just asking."
Tayuya searched his face, found nothing there to strike, and became angrier for it as she paced once behind the bench. "Well, stop asking. This place is bad enough without you acting normal." Her hands opened as the words gathered speed. "I can't go anywhere without watchers. I can't take five steps without some masked bastard appearing over my head. They watch me eat. They watch me sleep. They even watch when I…" She stopped with red climbing from her throat to her hairline. "Forget it."
Naruto tilted his head. "When you what?"
"WHEN I SHOWER, YOU DUMB SHIT!" Tayuya threw both arms wide. "Every single time! There's always some fucking creep somewhere pretending they can't see through it! I can't even wash my ass without half the damned place making a security report!" Her shout rolled off the hill and sent two birds fluttering out of a nearby tree, but she froze with both hands still spread as the red in her face darkened. Her mouth twisted, fury turning inward before snapping toward Naruto, and she pointed at him so hard her arm shook. "Don't fucking do that! Don't sit there acting friendly like we're goddamn buddies! You're the enemy. All of you!"
Naruto lowered his arms without flinching from the finger aimed at him. "We're not your enemies." The playfulness left his voice, but not its warmth. "That stopped when the fight stopped. What happened between us was years ago, ya know." Tayuya closed her fists and looked away toward the village.
Our primary male partner is good at taming wild ones. This one bares her teeth and circles, and still she comes closer every time he speaks. Venom's approval moved through Hinata's chest in a warm curl before its attention hardened.
We are wasting time on that broken shell. Grab her. Overload her senses again. She will become compliant immediately.
Hinata blinked as the warmth under her sternum contracted into a dissatisfied knot. That would be another kind of torture. No. Naruto-kun is already close to succeeding.
Silence lasted long enough for the leaves below the hill to settle. "Doesn't matter anyway," Tayuya muttered toward the village, quieter than she had spoken to either of them, the words worn smooth by repetition in darkness. "Lord Orochimaru will come for me. He wouldn't leave me in this shit hole forever."
Naruto's eyes dropped, then lifted to meet Hinata's. Orochimaru's dead white coils lay between them without a word, along with Sasuke's signature threaded through every dormant seal and the soul fragment waiting inside Tayuya's body. Hinata narrowed her eyes by a fraction, and Naruto looked back at Tayuya. "A lot has changed. We'll see what happens."
He held her gaze while she searched his face for mockery and then cruelty, her scowl becoming less certain when she found neither.
Hinata stepped toward the bench. "We need to begin."
Tayuya's body tensed before her anger caught up, a shiver passing from the mark at her neck through her shoulders as her feet shifted left, away from Hinata. Her jaw locked on the betrayal, and she crossed her arms. "I'm not sitting anywhere near either of you."
Hinata stopped and waited while Naruto patted the bench beside him, thump-thump. "Sit down. Nobody's gonna do anything weird."
Tayuya glared at him, at the bench, then up at Hinata, who stood between her and the easiest path back toward the trees without having intended to block it. Her eyes measured the space, rejected it, and returned to the bench. "Fucking stupid, useless, spying, bench-stealing bastards…" She stomped around the left end and dropped onto the seat as far from Naruto as its length allowed, arms crossed, back rigid, and murder promised to anyone within reach. "This is bullshit."
Naruto glanced at the narrow gap between them. "See? Plenty of room. Nice bench."
Tayuya's head snapped toward him, a vein standing out at her temple. "Say one more word and I'll shove you off the hill."
Naruto raised both hands to calm her down without losing his grin, while Hinata approached Tayuya's left side. "Turn your head forward."
Tayuya obeyed with a disgusted click of her tongue. Her fists settled on her knees, clenched hard enough to whiten the knuckles, while Hinata activated her Byakugan fully and looked through skin, muscle, chakra pathways, and the dark mark at the back of her neck.
The curse seal lay quiet, its outer formula nested through the surrounding tenketsu in hooked layers designed to draw from the host and open deeper channels under stress. A second sealing array had been laid around it, closing every route through which Tayuya could feed chakra into the curse mark and trigger its transformation. Some pathways had withered after years without use while others remained intact, and at the center beneath the visible curved tomoe, a small spiritual structure clung to Tayuya's network like a spike embedded too deeply to pull free by force. Sasuke's signature occupied its channels like cold lightning written over the dead snake's path, suppressing Orochimaru's old imprint so completely that it could no longer reach Tayuya's network. Far beneath that cold tone, however, a distant thin echo lingered, carrying the same serpentine wrongness Hinata remembered from Orochimaru. The fragment Jiraiya had described remained dormant there, folded into itself without being gone.
Venom crowded toward the sight, biomass shifting under Hinata's ribs and pressing toward the skin nearest Tayuya as its curiosity narrowed through her arm and fingertips. It memorised every branch of the formula while Hinata traced where the seal touched chakra, nerve, and spirit.
Tayuya stared straight ahead with her lips flattened into a hard bloodless line, each breath entering shallowly and stopping high in her chest without her looking at Hinata once.
Hinata let the Byakugan fade and stepped back. "My examination is complete."
Air left Tayuya's nose, not yet relief, while Hinata nodded to Naruto and he shifted closer along the bench. Tayuya's shoulders rose as the gap narrowed, but she remained where she was.
Naruto brought his hands together, closed his eyes, and drew natural energy into stillness around him. When he opened them, orange ringed his irises and horizontal pupils cut across their centers, settling Sage Mode over the hill with enough quiet weight to make Tayuya flinch.
"I need to check the spiritual side," Naruto said. "You might feel some pressure. It won't hurt."
"It better not."
Naruto lifted one hand toward the mark at the back of Tayuya's neck and stopped two fingers away, his palm hovering beside the red hair she had pulled forward over one shoulder as natural energy gathered between his skin and hers. Hinata watched it pass through the gaps in the suppression array and flow around the curse mark's outer formula without disturbing either seal, Tayuya's fists tightening against her knees. Naruto's face remained neutral until the current reached the dormant center, where the corner of his mouth flattened and the orange in his eyes sharpened before his gaze touched Hinata's for less than a heartbeat. One small nod confirmed the reading without giving Tayuya a word she could seize.
Naruto withdrew his hand and let the orange fade from his eyes. "We're done. We got everything we needed." His tone had lightened, though his eyes had not.
Tayuya released one sharp breath, her shoulders dropping with it before she shot to her feet. "Good. Then get the hell away from me, and don't come back with more checkups." She paced from the bench with her hands cutting through the air and her voice climbing at every step. "I'm done with the tags, the tests, waking up with somebody outside my room, and sitting on this stupid hill because your people decided a prisoner needs fresh air like I'm a fucking houseplant!" Naruto rose and stretched both arms above his head while she turned toward the opposite side of the hill and started away from them.
"Tayuya." Hinata spoke her name once, her doubled voice calm and quiet, and stopped her mid-step. Tayuya's back remained turned while a shiver ran visibly down it, the old memory travelling faster than whatever order she gave her legs and leaving both fists shaking beside her thighs.
Naruto hooked one thumb toward the bench. "Where are you even going? You already did the hard part."
Tayuya looked over her shoulder without taking another step, and as the seconds passed, her shoulders lowered before her head dipped and red hair slid forward around her face. Nothing waited in the direction she had chosen except the hidden line of guards and another path they would not let her take. "Just… leave me alone already."
Naruto's grin was gone when Hinata looked at him, though the warmth remained beneath something heavier. "We'll check on you again."
Tayuya gave no answer as she walked back to the bench on her own and sat facing Konoha, her arms folding around her middle instead of across her chest.
Naruto waited near the right end. "Next time I'll bring ramen. The village has really good ramen."
"Shut up," Tayuya muttered without turning, the word carrying none of its earlier venom.
Naruto and Hinata turned toward the trees and walked without speaking until the bushes closed behind them and the hill vanished from Hinata's sight. Naruto's hands slid into his pockets, his head remaining lowered for several steps.
"Hinata-chan," he said quietly. "When they take that seal out, is it gonna hurt her?"
"I do not know." Hinata kept her answer as plain as the truth. "Jiraiya-sama's preparations are thorough, but this procedure has never been performed before."
Naruto nodded once and continued walking until they found Ibiki at the wider checkpoint. Hinata delivered her findings first, mapping the dormant outer structure, the Sasuke-toned channels, and the inert fragment at the center, while Naruto added what he had sensed in the spiritual layers without embellishment. Ibiki listened without visible reaction, asked three short questions about depth and stability, then passed both reports to a masked shinobi who disappeared into the branches with them.
"Good work," Ibiki said. "Especially in making her comply. We were considering postponing today's examination."
Hinata looked back toward the concealed hill. "I expected her to be isolated. This resembles house arrest."
"Traditional confinement and direct interrogation do not work well on her," Ibiki said. "She meets pressure with high resistance, including pressure that harms her. We give her limited freedom under more guards than she can detect, while keeping her in high alert, and the balance has produced usable intelligence that we could verify against independent sources."
Naruto's gaze drifted toward the trees before returning. "What happens to her after the seal comes out?"
"First, the Yamanaka division performs a complete mind-reading sweep. After that, her fate remains undecided." Ibiki's flat delivery made each possibility land alone. "Execution. Transfer to a specialized remote prison. Continued detention here. Rehabilitation and eventual integration into Konoha is also an option, though an unlikely one."
No one spoke as leaves stirred high above and another patrol crossed the checkpoint. Ibiki turned toward the village, and Naruto and Hinata fell into step beside him, leaving the field table and hidden guards behind. Naruto kept both hands in his pockets while the thoughtful crease between his brows deepened all the way through the forest, only breaking his silence when sunlight showed between the last trunks.
"Looks like we're gonna end up deciding another person's whole life."
Hinata glanced down at him. "Do you think Tsunade-sama will delegate Tayuya's fate to you?"
"Yeah. Maybe not all of it, but enough." He kicked a fallen cone off the path and watched it bounce once into the brush. "Granny's already making me decide missions and money and who gets sent where. She'll put this in front of me too."
"We have time before the seal can be removed," Hinata said. "I will help you decide."
Naruto's shoulders loosened as they walked another few paces, and the corner of his mouth began to rise. "Thanks, Hinata-chan. One problem at a time, I guess."
"Naruto! Hinata-sama!"
Karin's voice came from ahead, where she stood just outside the trees waving one arm high while holding her folder against her side. Sakura waited beside her with her own folder closed between both hands, quiet but no longer staring through the ground.
Hinata's expression softened into a smile. "Karin appears to be in a very good mood today. She is also very eager to be with us."
Red touched Naruto's cheeks and made his step falter once before it steadied. "We're coming!" he shouted, raising one hand as they quickened their pace toward the two women.
Sakura took Karin's folder halfway back to the village, tucked it beneath her own, and split from them at the first street leading toward the Hokage's tower. Tsunade needed the medical findings before the curse-mark preparations could advance, so Sakura took to the rooftops and disappeared toward the tower.
When Sakura vanished behind a tiled ridge as Karin let out a long breath, tipped her face toward the sky, and stretched until her shoulders gave a quiet pop. "Checking that swearing girl has been so exhausting. She threatened to bite me twice. Not because I hurt her. She just hated the thermometer."
Hinata looked down at Karin's relieved smile, bright and unguarded, then glanced across her red hair to Naruto. He met Hinata's gaze, looked at Karin between them, and smiled before drifting to Karin's left while Hinata moved closer along her right. Karin blinked, her gaze flicking from the orange sleeve beside her to Hinata's lavender jacket on the other side.
"At least we got some free time now," Naruto said, cutting through whatever she had been about to ask. He laced his hands behind his head and grinned over at her. "No folders, no checkups, no swearing prisoners."
Karin pushed her glasses into place and went on. "Yes. Exactly. The last days have been nonstop work. Reports, examinations, more reports about the examinations, then checking whether somebody else copied the reports correctly. We have today free, and I am going to use it."
"A new shop opened in the food district," Hinata said in doubled voice softly vibrating through each word and drawing Karin's attention at once. "They sell frozen drinks made from an exotic fruit brought from an island far to the south. We should try them."
"Is that the new fruit everyone has been talking about?" Karin asked, her eyebrows rising.
Naruto blinked once as he caught up, then slapped one palm against his stomach. "Oh, yeah, that one. I'm already thirsty, ya know."
"No ramen first?" Karin asked. "You always want ramen."
"Nah." Naruto's answer came easily, his smile gentler when she stared at him. "I'm not hungry right now."
Karin missed one step, her heel scuffing the road before she recovered and looked at him as though he had announced that the Hokage Monument had stood up and walked away. Naruto merely shrugged, still smiling, and she turned forward again. "Fine. Frozen juice. I want to know whether it deserves all that gossip."
Venom wriggled through Hinata's middle in a quick, delighted coil, following every mention of fruit, ice, and sweetness with growing attention, and the promise of large portion of sugar sent a second ripple beneath her ribs while they entered the busier streets. Naruto filled the walk with a complaint about one of Tsunade's new procurement forms, acting out the clerk who had returned it because one box was marked in black ink instead of blue, that made Karin snort into her hand. Hinata listened from Karin's right, close enough that the loose sleeve of her open jacket occasionally brushed the girl's arm, while Naruto occupied the same distance on the left. Each touch lifted a little more colour into Karin's cheeks, but she never widened the space between them.
Hinata smelled the food district before the first row of stalls came into view, mixing beneath awnings stretched over both sides of the street. Vendors called daily offers across one another while a cook slapped dough onto a hot plate, someone farther down split ice with a wooden mallet. Civilians and off-duty shinobi filled the lane between the counters, slowing around menus painted on hanging boards and carrying bowls toward the shaded benches. Her height drew the usual glances, though most people returned quickly to their food. She ducked beneath a low shop banner without interrupting her stride, guiding her prehensile hair against her back before the cloth could catch it, and found the new drink shop by the bright line gathered outside. It occupied a narrow storefront between a dumpling stand and a spice merchant, its signboard covered in painted cups heaped with shaved ice and pale fruit pulp. Beyond the small crowd waiting beneath the awning, four familiar young chakra signatures stood in a loose half-circle. "Is that Konohamaru and his group?"
Naruto leaned around Karin. "Yeah, that's them."
Konohamaru stood with Udon, Moegi, and Yuukimaru, none of them looking at the drink counter, their attention fixed instead on the white-haired man standing in front of them. Suigetsu had recovered enough weight that his ribs no longer showed through his shirt, though he remained lean and a little too pale, and a Konoha chuunin stood several paces behind him with his arms folded, keeping watch. Suigetsu had closed his eyes and pointed one finger importantly toward the sky while his other hand rested against his hip.
The crowd between them swallowed Suigetsu's words, though his moving mouth, lifted finger, and self-important expression made the lecture clear enough. Konohamaru's face had frozen halfway between disbelief and offense, Moegi leaned away with both eyebrows raised, and Udon's mouth hung open beneath his glasses while Yuukimaru stared at Suigetsu in stunned silence.
Karin stopped so abruptly that Naruto took one more step on her left before turning back, her earlier ease vanishing behind narrowed eyes as she jabbed a finger through the crowd. "What the hell is he talking to them about? And why the hell is he walking around freely?"
Naruto's smile faded as his brows drew together, though his shoulders remained loose. "We're gonna figure it out right now." Lowering his hands from behind his head, he stepped into the crowd with Karin immediately at his right and Hinata closing behind them. People yielded to Naruto's shoulders and Karin's sharp elbows, then hurried farther aside when they looked up at Hinata, opening a path just as Suigetsu reached the grand conclusion of his lecture.
"…and that is how children are born."
Suigetsu folded his arms across his chest and let the lesson settle before opening his eyes, satisfied that he had given the children something clear, honest, and educational enough to remain in their heads after every boring academy lecture had leaked out. Four silent faces greeted him. The boy in the scarf looked personally betrayed, the girl beside him had both hands clamped over her mouth, the one with glasses had gone rigid enough to pass for a board, and the smallest boy's wide eyes had not blinked once.
Suigetsu's grin grew around his pointed teeth. Tough crowd. "Now, if there are any ques…"
"STOP IT RIGHT THERE, YOU CRIMINAL SCUM!"
His eyelid twitched at the obnoxious, familiar voice before he looked past the children and found red hair shoving through the crowd, followed by the annoying face beneath it and glasses flashing over narrowed eyes. The blond boy from Konoha's camp came beside her in an orange jacket, older and broader than Suigetsu remembered but impossible to mistake, and then the crowd opened another step for a woman who made everyone else look badly scaled. She wore no armor this time, only a lavender jacket hanging open over black and dark trousers following legs long enough to cross half the street in a few strides. Midnight-blue hair flowed to her back, pale silver patterns shone along her hands and throat, and Suigetsu knew her at once because there could not be two people that tall. There might not be one other person that tall anywhere in the world.
Karin stopped in front of him and planted both fists on her hips. "What the hell were you telling these children?"
Suigetsu rolled his eyes toward the awning. "Important truths. Somebody has to teach them useful things."
The scarfed boy retreated first, bringing the others out of their stunned silence as they gathered behind the giant woman's legs. The girl peeked around one long thigh at Suigetsu and vanished again when he caught her, while the blond moved beside Karin without joining her outrage, rested one hand on the scarfed boy's shoulder, and looked Suigetsu over. "Don't you have anything more important to do than scaring kids?"
"He's a complete weirdo, Boss!" the scarfed boy shouted from behind him.
Suigetsu groaned and flapped one hand at the lot of them as if they had become too tiresome to keep in focus. "Yeah, yeah. Fine. Maybe I could've picked a better audience."
The blond gave the boy's shoulder a small squeeze before letting go, his voice carrying none of Karin's heat. "How're you doing?"
Suigetsu nearly checked behind himself for whoever the question had been meant for, but the blond's eyes stayed on him, moving once past his shoulder toward the two chuunin standing farther down the street before returning with the same easy calm.
"And how's your probation going?"
"I'm fine." Suigetsu lifted his chin and resisted the urge to straighten his back too quickly, since his strength had returned in miserable little pieces and sudden movements still pulled weakness through muscles that should have obeyed him. "Passed most of the checkups. Most of the…" He raised both hands and crooked two fingers on each. "'Interviewings.' I just need time to get back to full form."
"Do you plan to join Konoha?"
The giant woman's question left a faint buzz in Suigetsu's teeth. She had walked up beside the blond without him noticing, and he blinked before he could stop himself, caught between her ridiculous height and the impossible sound coming out of her. He recovered at once, closed his eyes, and tipped his chin higher. "Maybe. You people seem pretty strong." A pointed tooth showed at the corner of his mouth. "I might be considering it."
The blond chuckled. "Sure. As long as you don't cause any problems, Konoha could be your new home." He turned his back as casually as if Suigetsu had never been dangerous in his life and looked at the children. "Hey, you guys want cups of fresh frozen fruit juice? I'll pay."
"Hooray! Sweet juice!" the children cried, their shock dying instantly beneath a stampede toward the counter.
"Hey, don't shove!" The blond caught the scarfed boy by the back of his shirt before he could shoulder ahead of the smaller one, steering all four into the waiting line while the giant woman turned after them. "There's enough for everybody."
One smooth step carried her past Suigetsu, and another took her through the space the crowd hurried to clear as her hair drew close against her back before it could brush the hanging banner. She dipped her head beneath the awning and followed the blond, leaving Karin alone with Suigetsu.
She folded her arms across her front. "You should be more modest around them. Especially Naruto. He's the reason you're allowed to walk around the village like this."
Suigetsu answered with a short grunt, which only made her look at him over the top of her glasses. "And if you're going to join us, he may end up as your commander."
"Oh, come on." He turned one shoulder toward her and shoved his hands into his pockets. "I need time to get my full strength back, that's all. Besides, I don't think he's strong enough to command me. I could beat him."
Karin looked at him flatly for one long beat before pointing her thumb toward the drink shop. "He killed Kisame."
Suigetsu's mouth closed, and Karin gave him just enough time to swallow whatever answer he had been about to make. "With her. And he's her boyfriend."
Laughter burst from the shop front, followed by Konohamaru shouting, "No way! Hinata-neechan, the whole thing?"
Suigetsu followed Karin's thumb and found each child holding a tall, narrow glass of yellow juice, their straws and drinks forgotten as they stared toward the center of the awning. The giant woman stood there with both hands around a glass jar that nobody honest would have called a cup. It was the size of a bucket, filled to the top with yellow juice and a mountain of crushed ice, and she drank from it without pause while the level slid steadily down and the silver lines across her fingers, wrists, and neck brightened toward cerulean.
Naruto stood beside her with a large cup in one hand and his mouth hanging open. "Whoa! Hinata-chan, you're already halfway done!"
Konohamaru jammed his straw between his lips. "I can do that too!"
His cheeks hollowed as he sucked hard enough to make the ice rattle, but three swallows later his whole body jerked and one hand flew to his forehead.
"GAAAH! My brain's freezing!"
The other children doubled over laughing while Naruto nearly spilled his drink, but the giant woman kept drinking with the same calm, unbroken rhythm as the juice fell past the last third of the jar.
Suigetsu stared. "Oh."
Ice shifted inside the enormous glass as Hinata tipped it higher and Naruto slapped Konohamaru between the shoulders, still laughing. Suigetsu watched the yellow level vanish. "Okay."
"Poor guy."
Karin's thumb lowered. "What do you mean, 'poor guy'?"
The last of the juice disappeared before Suigetsu found his answer. "Is she even human?"
"Nah." Karin's mouth curved as she looked toward them. "Everyone thinks she's a kaiju that turned herself into a human and now walks among us."
Hinata lowered the empty jar with a wet mound of crushed ice remaining at the bottom, and Naruto raised his own cup toward her like a man saluting an achievement beyond his understanding.
"Karin!" he called. "I bought you one! Come here before the ice melts!"
Karin's smile escaped before she turned and crossed toward the shop. "I'm coming."
Naruto reached behind him to take another glass from the counter. "Hey, Suigetsu! You want one too?"
Suigetsu looked from the offered yellow drink to the children crowding around Naruto and Karin slipping into the open space beside them. The giant woman bent slightly so the smallest boy could hold the empty bucket against his own body and marvel at its width, and for one strange moment nobody at the shop looked like a captor, a guard, or an interrogator.
"I'm not that thirsty right now," Suigetsu called back. "I think I'll look around somewhere else."
He pulled one hand from his pocket, waved without turning it into a farewell, and walked down the street with both chuunin falling into step behind him.
Some time later, the children had gone their own way, and Karin walked between Naruto and Hinata with the last sweetness of the frozen fruit still lingering on her tongue. Naruto kept to her right, hands folded behind his head again, while Hinata's long stride carried her easily on the left. The sun had dropped behind the roofs, leaving the western sky red through the gaps between buildings, and shopkeepers were lighting lanterns beneath their awnings as the streets darkened.
"We really need to buy those computers," Naruto said. "I'm gonna take it to Granny and make her approve a few. All these forms are getting annoying."
Karin turned her head toward him. "Those computers really made an impression on you."
"Naruto-kun has been doing a great deal of paperwork lately," Hinata said from Karin's left. The voice passed through Karin's ribs as softly as distant thunder. "He thinks they will shorten the time it takes."
"They will." Naruto dropped his arms and started counting against his fingers. "Right now, somebody writes a whole page, notices one mistake, and then they've gotta do the whole thing again. Or they hand it to somebody else, and that person copies it wrong, so they do it again anyway. With a computer, you just fix the bad part. I'm gonna solve at least that much."
"Until somebody types the wrong thing and doesn't notice," Karin said.
Naruto pointed at her. "Still only one wrong copy."
Karin laughed, and the breath came out deeper than she intended. Naruto's chakra burned beside her like a white-hot stove with its door left open, bright enough that her senses kept brushing it no matter where she directed them. Hinata filled the other side, not with heat but with a vast, cold depth that spread far beyond the limits of flesh. Karin could feel the calm upper current, the crushing dark below it. Walking between them should have been unbearable. Instead, she kept taking slow breaths and fighting the warmth creeping into her cheeks.
The apartment building appeared ahead before she had fully noticed which streets they had taken. Karin pushed her glasses higher and followed them through the entrance, then up the stairs toward the floor she shared with Naruto. Her own door waited farther down the corridor, close enough to reach in a few steps.
Naruto stopped at his apartment and worked the key into the lock, click. Hinata came to rest behind him, her broad shoulders and midnight-blue hair rising above the top of the doorframe. Even without armor, she looked built for a larger world than the building around her.
Naruto opened the door and looked back, first at Karin and then past her toward Hinata. "Hey, Karin, wanna come in? I bought this new kind of tea, and I've got a whole lot of chocolate cakes."
Hinata's luminous eyes narrowed with her smile.
"Sure," Karin said without thinking much. There was still plenty of evening left, and sitting alone in her apartment would be boring. "Why not?"
"Great." Naruto stepped inside, and Karin followed him over the threshold.
He flicked on the lights. Warm yellow filled an apartment so clean that Karin stopped after two steps and checked the room again for evidence that she had entered the wrong one. No clothes lay over the chairs. No bowls had been abandoned beside the sink. A wide sofa occupied the wall near a low coffee table, and beyond it stood a bed enormous enough to take nearly the entire width of the room. Its thick frame was dark metal, with cross braces beneath it and reinforced posts at every corner.
Karin knew Naruto and Hinata slept together.
For one hot instant, the neat blankets vanished beneath tangled orange, lavender, pale skin, and midnight-blue hair. Karin crushed the image before it could acquire movement and looked sharply toward the kitchen. There were more new things than she remembered from her last visit.
"I'll get everything," Naruto said, already hurrying through the kitchen opening. "Make yourselves comfortable."
Karin took another two steps while Hinata leaned forward behind her, lowering her head and shoulders to fit through the shorter frame. Through the kitchen opening, Karin caught sight of a new refrigerator taking up almost half one wall. It was at least four times wider than Naruto's old one, with two tall doors and another broad compartment beneath them.
Why did one man need that much food storage?
The answer ducked into the apartment behind her, straightened carefully beneath the ceiling, and drew her hair away from the door before it could snag.
"Karin."
She blinked toward the sofa. Hinata had already settled onto its right side, though settled was generous. Her hips and thighs occupied the entire right half, the cushions pressed low beneath her weight, while one long arm rested along the back. Silver patterns showed at her throat and across the hands emerging from her lavender sleeves.
"Please, sit with me."
"Y-yes, Hinata-sama."
Karin crossed to the sofa with too much awareness in every step and sat beside her, leaving what had seemed like a sensible amount of space until the cushion tipped beneath Hinata's greater weight and drew Karin a little closer. Even seated, Hinata towered over her. One thigh beneath dark cloth looked nearly as thick as both of Karin's together, and the curve of her shoulder remained above Karin's head. Karin had just begun to steal a glance upward when Naruto pushed out of the kitchen.
"Got it!"
He carried a broad tray holding a glazed kettle, three cups, and a saucer piled with biscuits and small chocolate cakes. The tray touched the coffee table with a soft clack.
"Thank you, Naruto-kun." Hinata reached at once for one of the chocolate cakes, lifting it delicately between two fingers before taking a bite.
Naruto dropped onto Karin's other side and leaned forward to pour the tea. "Buying that huge fridge was such a good idea. I can keep all kinds of stuff I wanna eat now."
Hinata's smile deepened as she finished the first cake and reached for another. "I always thought you only wanted to eat ramen, Naruto-kun."
Her melody had grown warmer, the deeper voice beneath it curling through the words until Karin felt each one along the nape of her neck.
Naruto glanced across Karin at Hinata, grin turning playful. "I still wanna taste other things."
Karin took a deep breath.
The sofa had placed her between them again, only now Naruto's heat pressed close enough to warm her right arm while Hinata's immense chakra rolled against her left side in a slow, dark tide. There was nowhere for her senses to turn. Every breath brought Naruto's familiar scent and the faint trace of chocolate surrounding Hinata. Every tiny shift of the cushions carried through Karin's legs.
Why was Hinata-sama here?
The answer should have been obvious. Hinata and Naruto were together. When Hinata came to this apartment, they slept in that massive bed. They did more than sleep in it. Karin had sensed the changes in both of them often enough afterward, the relaxed warmth, the intimate mingling of scent and chakra that no shower completely erased.
Naruto's knee touched hers.
Karin flinched. She did not move away.
Her sensing flared. Naruto's chakra burned close and bright, threaded with nervous anticipation. Hinata's vast presence gathered on her other side, its cold depths held carefully back. Their attention rested fully on her. They wanted her, but neither pressed closer. The space to leave remained open.
Her fingers tightened around the untouched teacup. She turned her head toward Naruto, ready to demand an explanation, and Hinata's voice reached her first.
"Karin. You already know what you are sensing."
The words came soft and gentle despite their deep resonance. Hinata's hand settled over Karin's left hand, warm palm covering her knuckles without closing around them.
Karin's thoughts raced through every look she had caught that afternoon, Naruto drifting to one side of her and Hinata to the other, the invitation, the chocolate, the sofa, the enormous reinforced bed waiting across the room. The pieces struck together all at once. Heat flooded her face so fast that even her ears burned.
She looked at Naruto.
He scratched behind one ear, blue eyes darting toward the kettle before he forced them back to hers. Nervousness fluttered through his chakra, bright and impossible to mistake. He did not pull his knee away.
Karin looked up at Hinata.
No denial waited in the luminous cerulean eyes above her. Hinata's thumb moved once across Karin's knuckles.
"We want you with us tonight. Both of us." Violet began to warm the silver lines across Hinata's fingers. "Only if you want it."
Naruto swallowed and gave Karin a small, crooked smile. "Yeah. What she said."
Karin stared at them, her face burning red. Her mouth opened.
"Oh."
Her fingers closed around Hinata's.