-Chapter 38-
After a solid fifteen minutes of working, Sakura yanked her wrists apart and heard a satisfying snap. She glanced at her wrists and noticed that the rope was broken.
She fist-pumped with a hiss of "Yesss!"
She looked around at Ino. "You wanna go next?"
"Boy, would I ever!" She enthusiastically agreed, holding out her hands.
Sakura got to work, striking the sharp edge of the rock against the rope.
Across the shack, someone's phone dinged. When she looked up, she noticed Shikamaru among the number, boredly checking his phone.
"Oh, hey Shikamaru!" She greeted. "Is that help?"
Surprisingly, he nodded, walking over to show her. "Yeah. It's from my dad."
She peered at the screen, pausing for a moment in her work to read. "Shikamaru, help is coming", it read.
"That's awesome!" She cheered, causing a couple of other kids to look towards them. "What happened?"
"He got ahold of the police force," Shikamaru replied, holding up the phone. "Luckily the bastards didn't take my phone when they nabbed me, so I texted both Ino's dad and my dad for help."
"And they got ahold of the police," she guessed. "In other words, Sasuke's family."
"Yeah, some of them." He briskly nodded, sitting back down. "They're bringing backup. Someone who's done this before."
"By 'this', what do you mean?" She asked, giving him air-quotes.
He looked around with a slight frown before leaning in. "Apparently, this has happened a time before," he murmured. "Back when Mr. Namikaze was heading the camp."
"Oh," she said. She went back to ripping at the rope with the rock. "Hopefully it's not the same person."
"It can't be, because he's still in prison." Shikamaru said nonchalantly, leaning against the wall again.
She paused once more, thinking about it, before it hit her. "Ohhh! You mean Orochimaru?"
"That's the name." Ino chimed in. "My dad was stuck on that case for three weeks before they caught him running."
With that bit of information stringing her along, she went back to striking the rock with greater fervor, excited that help was coming.
"Will it come soon enough?" She thought. "I hope they can find us."
-line-
Tsunade held up a hand as they scoured the beach. She squinted, finding the shack to the left.
She turned to her posse. "Alright, you know what to do. We're to get the kids out, no matter what!"
Suddenly, her instincts began screaming at her to duck, and when she did, she narrowly missed a knife aimed straight for her neck.
She whirled around and met the blow with her own, pulling out a small sword she'd kept for emergencies.
"It's a trap!" Someone shouted, and enemies descended upon them. The kids darted around the adults, throwing shuriken, punching, and kicking at them.
One girl let loose a war scream as she kicked a guy in the crotch, and when he went down she jabbed him in the throat. He gurgled in surprise as he went down, holding his body in agony.
...
Hinata heard a commotion a ways away and tensed, looking around.
"What's going on...?" She wondered aloud.
Ushio began to fidget next to her, and when she turned to gaze into the cave, she narrowly missed a blade aimed for her back.
She turned in surprise, holding his arm tightly in her hand. "What are you doing?!"
"That's the signal," he answered, giving her a biting grin as he grabbed for her throat with his other hand.
"I don't understand!" She cried as the other kids began shouting, hinting that they were attacked. "Do you work for them?!"
"You could say that," he laughed as she blocked his hand. He chose that moment to yank his arm back, going in for another swipe. "I was never on your side to begin with!"
They began fighting, Hinata hesitant, but countering each jab with her own. She counted herself lucky that her father had been so insistent on her learning their family's method of self-defense, an ancient form of martial arts known as the Gentle Fist.
He took advantage of her reluctance to hurt him and managed to stab her with the blade, causing her to cry out in surprise.
He pulled the blade back, giving another sick smile. "See? You're too weak! You're so concerned that you're gonna hurt me, but you should be worried about yourself!"
"I don't want to fight you, Ushio," she pleaded, readying her stance again. "Please, just stop this! I don't want to hurt you!"
"Like you could land a hit," he jeered. "You're so busy fretting over that Naruto that I could easily overpower you."
She tensed a little, but shrugged it off. "Don't speak to me that way."
"Oh, wook at me, I'm a wittle giwl who's in wove wiff a twoblemakew, uwu!" He mocked with a mean bark of laughter. "You're so absorbed in your stupid little crush that you've let it blind you! Naruto's so stupid, I don't know what you see in him other than his money!"
"Stop this!" She insisted, her hands clenching and unclenching. "You don't know what you're talking about!"
"Oh, do I?" He cackled. "Naruto's such an idiot, he failed an entrance exam! To second-grade! How stupid do you have to be to fail a knowledge test at the age of eight? He's always going around crushing on other girls, and you still hold out for him? How stupid can you get?"
She forced herself to calm. She regulated her breathing, closing her eyes for a moment before opening them and staring him dead in the eye, her face completely blank.
He chose that moment to attack again, lunging toward her to tackle her to the ground. At the last moment, she side-stepped, and when he hit the ground with a grunt, she rose her leg and stomped down hard with the full force of her foot, directly onto his spine. She heard him scream in pain, and when he tried to get up, she did it again. And again. And again.
"Geez, you're a bit slow on the uptake for someone so 'enlightened' about others, aren't you?" She mocked, yet with a reserved tone. She leaned in, putting her full weight onto her leg, and said, "You may be smarter than Naruto, you may be quicker than Naruto, hell, you may even be stronger than Naruto, but you know what you're not?"
He merely wheezed in reply.
She leaned in and grabbed the knife from his hand, using it to stab through his shirt, pinning him to the ground weakly.
"It's a shame, really. At least Naruto will grow to be a far better man than you'll ever be." She whispered in his ear, her tone polite, but with a threatening undertone to it. "That is, if you even grow to see it at all."
Subdued, her fury may be, but it was also cold. Hinata Hyuuga was never a pleasant girl when you pushed her off the edge, and he'd all but shoved her off it in his haste to assert his dominance.
Another kid close to them saw this and shivered, his opponent sharing in his unease.
"Never make fun of Hinata's crush on Naruto," he murmured to the enemy with a haunted look. "Just don't."
"Agreed," the other boy nodded, and they went back to fighting.