This here is not the whole chapter as I planned it. I don't know if I'll ever write again, but I promised to post even the little pieces of this story that I already had, so I will, and hopefully not feel too self-conscious as I do.

I will answer any questions you might have – as well as spoilery ones. I will probably keep posting fractions worthy of reading along the way.

My apologies to those of you i have dissapointed by letting this story die. I love writing it. I'm not sure I will ever be able to go back to the emotional place i was when i wrote it.

To recap: We left Team Seven, Ibiki and Hinata, along with retired thief Yakuza, travelling to a Research and Development center in Kumo. Their mission is to infiltrate its high-profile security system and steal something (and they don't yet know what since they only have a vault number) of high value, clone it and exchange it for Yakuza's family. In the mean time they also have to find the mole in this same R&D center who has leaked out the top secret information (this part is especially important to the leader of Kumo). Parameters of the mission are strictly covert; while Hinata steals whatever it is she is meant to steal, Ibiki's role is to get information out of the mole they will have to flush out; leads which Ibiki will pass to Team's Seven, whose secondary role is to chase down (and eventually dismantle) this organisation that has ordered the theft, and who might be planning a biological attack. Hinata's role in this chase is what she has been training for: high-caliber infiltration and data gathering deep behind enemy lines.

19. Freefall: The taste of your blood

When Hinata came in, Uchiha Sasuke and Sakura were huddled around the schematics of the building, going over the timetable of their plan. Ibiki sensei had been drilling them nonstop about the importance of timing in situations like this. Seconds could make the difference between life and death and Hinata could not agree more. She would be the first to drop if they were late.

But something else that Ibiki sensei had been impressing upon Hinata ever since she started training with him over a year ago was the importance of information. Which was why Hinata did not hesitate to interrupt.

"I have something." she said as she pulled off her cloak and threw it in the back of a chair, drawing everyone's attention. "One of the guards on the first level of the north wing has been replaced. The new one is a Hyui."

Sakura immediately drew up the blueprint of that floor, to find the position of the new element.

"How sure are you?" Was the Uchiha's immediate question. It was irritating, but not surprising, that he was the first one to doubt her.

"Very." Hinata said firmly as she got closer to the table where they had their maps and notes and picked up a pencil, sketching the features of the new guard. "I just saw him leave the R&D facility. I followed him into one of the local teahouses, watched him shooting darts."

She finished the quick sketch of the guard's face and pinned it on their board.

"How does that matter?" Sakura asked when it became obvious that she was the only one who did not catch the importance of such a fact.

"The Hyui are a northern Kumo clan." Sasuke explained in his monotone. "Greatest blade yielders in the country. Their techniques are very unique, as well as deadly."

"It makes for an adversary with a very distinctive style. Easily recognisable." Hinata added without looking up from her work. It was no art, but it gave the general idea of the man so that her teammates might recognise him.

"Even when he's just throwing darts?" Sakura asked and Hinata nodded absent-mindedly.

"Does this make a difference to us?" the pink-haired medic asked again.

"Not particularly. I'll just have to steer clear of him when I'm inside." Hinata said with a shrug. "Is Naruto with Ibiki sensei?"

Sakura nodded as she handed Hinata a cot cup of tea to warm her up. "They are scouting the area. Naruto is placing clones in different spots to keep a wider profile and secure the various escape routes just in case."

Hinata nodded her understanding.

"We were discussing our search for the mole before you came in." Sasuke said drily just as Hinata sat herself down by Sakura's side. "Or rather, the fact that we still don't have anything to go by."

Sasuke's words made Sakura twitch for two reasons – because of the way he spoke them and because he was lying: they had not been discussion the mole. And Sakura didn't like what Sasuke was heavily either: unearthing their mole was Hinata's job, given to her by Ibiki even though Sasuke had wanted to take over on that particular task, but Ibiki had denied him flat out. Having worked with both Hinata and Sasuke and knowing their tactics, Ibiki's refusal was a clear indication that he deemed Hinata better at it… and Sakura knew Sasuke enough to know that the Uchiha's competitive edge did not take kindly to that. Now, Sakura was aware that Sasuke wasn't exactly one for the warm and fuzzies - there was always a hint of mocking in his tone for everything he disapproved of - and he had never liked Hinata for reasons that Sakura didn't even want to get into. But though Hinata bore that distaste (and its consequences) with her usual grace, Naruto on the other hand did not possess his girlfriend's patience. Sasuke's attitude towards the Hyuga heiress was still a sore point between her two team-mates. In fact, Sakura was relieved that the blonde was not with them to hear this: he got royally pissed whenever Sasuke addressed Hinata in that I'm-oh-so-superior tone of voice, as if he was accusing her of something.

In truth, it irritated Sakura as well. How Hinata bore it was a secret that the pinkette would never understand.

But when she spoke, Hinata was ever so calm and soft-spoken, as if she knew where this was going as soon as Sasuke had opened his big fat mouth… and maybe she didknow. It was not beyond the probabilities; after all Sakura knew perhaps a little better than the other two boys of her team just what Hinata was capable of: she had been Hinata's personal medic throughout the heiress' training with Ibiki and the ANBU. Sakura had cured injuries that ranged from bruises to broken bones and internal bleeding, hypothermia to severe dehydration. Had seen the Hinata through a thick one way glass, monitoring her as she got through the dry-runs, as the ANBU called them: behavioural tests where they shot you full of drugs and then intense interrogation preceded to break you down… if they could.

Gods, those two days were definitely on the top five of Sakura's 'worst days of my life' chart. She had never been able to look at Hinata the same after that.

"I know who you suspect. She's not our mole." Hinata said quietly as she sipped her tea, but there was such assurance in her tone that it was really a far cry from the gentleness of her tone.

"You have been sounding awfully sure of that for days. How do you know?" the Uchiha immediately asked.

Hinata took a deep breath before she responded. Nevermind that they had had this conversation before and that she considered it an exhausted topic, or that chances were they would only be able to get to the mole after they had captured the men that they were supposed to drop their stolen good to. She had told him that they had to get to the nodes before they were certain of anything… but Uchiha Sasuke had selective hearing.

So Hinata took a deep breath, and explained it even more in detail than she had two days ago.

"She lacks any of the fundamental characteristics that would read her as a mole. Her belief structure is all wrong for it: she sees herself as part of a system, she works hard and respects the rules. Her briefing timetable is impeccable, she shows no behavioural signs of isolation, her patters of spending are never higher than her salary. She has three kids and a husband who was a hero in the war, no prior inflictions, no contacts of any kind with anyone outside her village, no problems that would increase her stress-load and no signs of strain in any area of her brain… As the assistant of a very powerful man she had the means and opportunity, but that alone cannot mark her as a spy."

"Why not? She could have built her life as the perfect cover." Sasuke said and even though his tone was as bland as ever, Hinata felt his insistence. Somewhere inside her, she twitched in annoyance.

"You are speaking of a deep cover, one that takes a lifetime to build - one that the nature of this operation precludes. The organisation that this whole thing may lead us to, is too recent to have such agents; it has to be. Before the war, Akatsuki had the monopoly on almost all terrorist activity worth noting, they did not take to competition lightly. So whoever they have, got turned recently."

"Than this woman could simply be very good at faking." Sasuke said evenly.

Hinata sighed. Why wouldn't he even try to listen to her when she spoke. She had said all this once before!

"I suppose she could. But I doubt it. A deception is still a self portrait; if there were any discrepancies in her, I would have noticed them; and if I'd missed them, Ibiki sensei wouldn't have." Hinata crossed her arms over her chest, thinking it over again. It wasn't so bad really that the Uchiha forced her every time to get a new perspective on all their targets. She just wished he had more to offer than this. "People lie all the time, but nobody is that good."

Because she had not told them in detail, but few were those that could lie to her. With the Hyuga eyes and Ibiki sensei's teaching, Hinata was well on her way to becoming a living lie detector…

"You are." The Uchiha said suddenly, and the implication snatched her attention away from her line of thought and into the argument once more. Hinata stared at Sasuke with a frown. For the first time she started getting the feeling that this was not simply about his insistence on his own opinion, or his conviction… or even his inexplicable dislike towards her.

Was he trying to play her?

As soon as the idea filtered in her mind, Hinata immediately stopped seeing him as a teammate and started assessing him as a target.

"What do you mean?" she asked him, evenly, not letting anything transpire on her face or in her tone.

"If you had to do what she does, would there be discrepancies?" The Uchiha asked. Hinata knew better than to think this was just another aimless question, but she answered it as if it was. If he wanted to play, he would find no easy game in her.

"Not at first, but eventually, yes."

"Perhaps she's better than you are." Sasuke added then, with half a smirk.

Hinata sighed. "Perhaps, but that is not the point here either. People cannot be understood only within a set of evidence Uchiha-san; you have to take their lives as context."

But Sasuke didn't seem so convinced.

"You can't rule out a spy just because she's a mother and lives within the rules. I understand your instincts as a woman may be towards empathy, but you're here in kuinochi capacity."

Hinata's eyes snapped to his and held, unflinching not caring anymore if it was rude or not. From the very beginning of this mission, Uchiha Sasuke had stepped in on her field and told her off, trying to teach her how to do her job and Hinata was tired of explaining herself every single step of the way like he was her commanding officer. But that was not why she felt such an emotional upheaval at the moment. She was not angry, not really; it was indignation that she was feeling. The Uchiha had always given Hinata the impression of a manipulator. He held himself at a distance and pulled the strings until he could feel safe getting closer. Knowing his past, Hinata could understand that; she did not resent him his defence mechanisms – everyone had them. But she also knew that baiting people for the satisfaction of watching them fit into the categories he built for them, was just another way for the Uchiha to validate his own opinions and stoke his own ego. The genius-pathogen, she had once called it: they loved being right all the time.

It was no big deal to her because Hinata had grown sure enough of herself to know she could handle him. But if Uchiha Sasuke thought that she would let him play mind games on her when she was in the thick of one of the most tricky missions of her career so far, he would find he had another thing coming! No matter how much Hinata disliked conflict, she would face it head on if she had to: she was a kuinochi on a mission; she didn't have time for any other bullshit on the side, let alone a self-absorbed Uchiha wonder that liked to think he was always the most intelligent person in the room!

"Uchiha-san… I know you have a very high opinion of your every single thought, but it would be beneficial to this mission if you at least tried to see beyond that for a single moment." She had a good idea of how glacial she sounded. This was her best Hyuga voice - the way she had been trained to speak ever since she could utter her first word and had only lately been able to master. "This is what I do and I'm very good at what I do, as I have proved time and again. But if it's me you don't trust, than trust Ibiki sensei."

The Uchiha smirked. "I didn't know you'd grown so arrogant as to be unable to accept another's opinion but your own, Hyuga."

But Hinata saw through it in an instant and her eyes flashed with understanding. That he lied to her face was an insult to her abilities – he knew very well that arrogance had nothing to do with this.

"On the contrary, I appreciate and value your input, as would any shinobi with any kind of aptitude; but I would appreciate it more if your considerable brain-power was turned towards something more productive than being a detriment to my work simply because you don't like me. As it is, you are just being annoying and unprofessional."

Heavy silence followed her words and Hinata felt the full weight of them on her shoulders. Sakura was looking at her with surprise slapped on her face, as if she had never seen Hinata before in her life, while the Uchiha simply his depth-less black eyes on her without blinking.

The meaning of what she had just done and said sunk in and Hinata felt its weight immediately.

Oh…

She'd snapped.

She'd lost her temper, and she'd just told off one of her teammates. Rudely. Arrogantly even. The stress was getting to her, Hinata realized. She hadn't known the full extent of her tension until this moment.

Hinata took a deep breath with her eyes closed and a hand went up to rub the bridge of her nose.

"I should not have spoken that way." she said slowly, newfound calmness pervading her little by little, because she willed herself to. She had accused the Uchiha of childishness but she too was showing the same symptoms.

"You taking it back then?" The Uchiha immediately offered, mocking.

Hinata looked at him with hard eyes.

"Not a single word." she said quietly. He should know better than to think she'd back down in any way. "But it was the tone I regretted - though it was not uncalled for, nor undeserved, Uchiha san."

The Uchiha scoffed. That might even have been amusement in his eyes.

"If everyone got what they deserved all the time, we wouldn't be here having this conversation."

Hinata said nothing. Only an imperceptible sigh was her reaction. She felt weary… Uchiha Sasuke was an intense person, and tiring, because he couldn't seem to get it to his head that she did not need or care about either his approval or the games he tried to play to get her to submit to his judgment. But this was a circus Hinata had to run because Sasuke was part of Naruto's life and so was she: they intersected where Naruto was concerned, whether Sasuke liked it or not. But it was exhausting because unlike most teams, Team Seven was not just closely knit; they were utterly exclusive, their bond impenetrable and finding footing on their strange little world was a work of patience and steel nerves. One that sometimes got exhausting even for Hinata. Even Sakura was difficult at times, though her protectiveness over Naruto was not expressed as hostility towards Hinata, as was the case with the Uchiha.

Either way, at the moment Hinata had better things to think about, codes she had to break and algorithms to decrypt, escape routes and guard shifts and… oh, it was too much even without the Uchiha's brooding presence, so Hinata decided she would put the boy in the 'deal with later' compartment of her mind.

"Tea?" she offered, polite disinterest on her face.

His lip twitched and he nodded (Hinata herself knew she wanted to laugh at the way Naruto and Sakura were staring at them…) Hinata proceeded to pour them all some before she sat down again.

"Shall we go over the timetable again?" she invited.

oOo

Hours later, when Ibiki and Yakuza were back from their lookout and they had wrapped up their preparation, Hinata found herself walking back and forth in front of the boards where they had pinned their data, going over the schematics of that building again.

"Are you learning those things by heart?"

Hinata smiled very faintly at the sound of his voice. "I already know them by heart." And she did.

Naruto opened his mouth, hesitated, and Hinata knew what he would say before he said it.

"Sakura told me… I'm sorry about the teme…"

"Don't. It doesn't matter." Hinata was quick to point out. For some reason Naruto took upon himself the responsibility that Sasuke refused to acknowledge.

His foxy smile was one she recognized. "You really knocked him down some. I don't think Sasuke has ever been properly scolded by anyone in a long time." He snickered.

He had been angry beyond himself when Sakura had told him. He was so very proud that Hinata had finally put the bastard in his place for once, but seriously, when this was over, he was so smashing Sasuke's face in for his bad timing. Hinata had enough on her place right now; a round with the teme was so not what she needed!

Naruto may have been oblivious to Hinata before but now he could sooner ignore her than he could stop hope to survive underwater. He had not been blind to the strain that the heavy workload of the past days had been taking on his girlfriend. She was quieter than usual and even when they pulled out for the night and were supposed to be off duty, her eyes were vacant, as if she was still planning and analysing stuff in her head. He had always known Hinata had singular dedication for everything she took up – it really was her unflinching perseverance, rather than born talent, which made her shine, so Naruto did not find it surprising that during a mission she could never truly switch off completely. He respected and admired that about her, but he could not help but notice the toll it took: he saw her strain in the imperceptible signs that her body and her eyes gave him, and that anyone who did not know her as he did, would have missed. Saw her impatience with Sasuke's passive aggressiveness in the blankness of her face, the rigidity of her shoulders.

No it was no wonder at all that she'd spoken back. Not even Hinata's patience ran limitless! But the teme was still getting a facial rearrangement as soon as they pulled out though, on sheer principle.

Hinata on the other hand, was not thinking about anything so trivial as Uchiha Sasuke at all. Instead she was focused on Naruto… and how different he looked with his hair so dark. It was as if he was a different person. Without his forehead protector, his hair fell on his eyes a little, framing his face. It was getting long, she noticed absentmindedly as she brushed a few bangs out of his face. But those eyes, always so alive, were the same: an electric blue unlike anything else she had ever seen.

Naruto caught her hand as she drew it away from his face and nuzzled her palm, kissing the centre of her had because he wanted to, and because he knew just how that made Hinata feel. Their eyes met, the stillness between them cackling with accumulated tension… and in the same moment she thought about closing the distance, he was already there - and it was emotion in motion, the way they instantly fit and found each other in a kiss that was painfully subdued for both. They couldn't do what they really wanted to do with the others one room away… but resisting everything, even that contact that to them was the first and the most natural, was more than they felt they could ask of each other.

She held on, breathed him in and tasted his lips firmly before opening up to the kiss completely, trying as hard as she could not to push, not to demand anything more than could be had… and still shivering like water in his hands when the feel of him - against her, around her – was not an overwhelming of the senses anymore, but the beginning of complete surrender. She knew the edge of it well enough by now to know that she had to pull away from him… and when she did, his lips followed hers with the tiniest breath of complain, one Hinata couldn't resist; so she let herself be caught, again… with a relentlessness that was so sweet it was impossible to defend against. But when she felt the back of her thighs connect with the edge of one of the tables, Hinata shivered and regained some form of rational thought. She pushed with her palms flat on Naruto's chest and he did give her room to take a breath… but not enough to back away.

"Naruto…"

And it was the softest warning he had ever heard, but it worked. He felt her hands sooth circles around his shoulders, his neck, his chest. That one didn't work that well – all it made him want to do was lean in that small inch that separated them and kiss her lips again, and then her neck and every other inch; a desire that he couldn't indulge in, not right now. And even if he could have, it would only have been a distraction from something else that was pressing in his mind.

They would go in tomorrow. They had to, time was running out. And yet…

"We still haven't found the blank spot that I'm supposed to get you through." He said with a heavy sigh, close to enough to her face that she could breathe in the words.

Hinata sighed. She had known he would not have let that one go. He had been on edge all this time; she had felt it, the restlessness in him that seemed to grow as the day of their break-in grew closer.

"We have a plan B for the exit, you know that." She said looking at Naruto in the eye when she spoke, trying to transmit to him every bit of confidence and calm she felt.

But even as Naruto nodded he was frowning, and he wasn't so late to tell her the reason why. "You're going to jump down an air-duct, fall for the length of five stores and into a furnace."

The words themselves seemed to darken his mood him.

"Naruto…"

"I know the plan." He said firmly. He knew every freaking detail of that god dammed plan, but… "You're gonna fall a long way down a metal duct of 800 degrees, Hinata."

And the moment the words left his mouth he felt stupid. As if she didn't know that!

"I have ways to control the fall, you know that. And my Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms will protect me from the heat."

Her ultimate defence. Nobody had ever thought it would work like a shield againsteverything, but it did. It really did, Naruto had seen it with his own eyes, but…

"For about five minutes." Naruto specified. "Not even you can hold it for longer than that without pause."

She couldn't. Not yet.

"It will be enough. Five minutes is more than enough time for you to get in and open the incinerator door for me."

Right. The door. Not just any door, because apparently this system was so far up its own ass that even an incinerator had to have an armoured door with no handle, meaning Hinata couldn't force it from the inside and she couldn't blast through it because the whole furnace was double-plated reinforced steel. The strength it would take to blow it apart would set off every alarm in that godforsaken building. Naruto was the one that was going to open it for her. If he was late, even if only by a second, she would burn alive in there.

Naruto felt her take a step closer, her hands on his forearms.

"Everything will be fine, Naruto." Hinata said softly, her lips brushing the words in over his chin as she made herself comfortable in his arms. "You have to believe it."

He had smiled at her and nodded, the way he knew he should… but later that night, when everyone was asleep and he was sure nobody would sense him, he moved through the shadows of the room and sneaked into her bedroll, the quiet broken only by a snickering at his expense inside his head – one that none but he heard, so it didn't matter. Hinata woke with a harsh breath but knew him before she even turned. Her eyes shone like pale pearls in the dark and they questioned him, but when he wrapped both his arms around her and drew her back firmly against his chest, aligning them together, Naruto felt her relax with a sigh. She shivered when he buried his nose in her hair, breathing her in, holding her tight.

This wouldn't help him sleep any, but he was sure he wouldn't get any sleep at all if he stayed at the other side of the room when she was right there, alone. And by the way Hinata fell right back asleep in his arms, Naruto gathered that it wouldn't be a problem if he stayed there till morning; that she didn't mind who saw them. He wanted to turn her and kiss her then, long and deep, until he stopped feeling like such a whoos.

He used her heartbeats to lull himself to sleep

oOo

Hinata ducked into the alley, Naruto right along with her. They did not move with the usual stealth of shinobi – they were walking very close, holding hands and Naruto was reaching to kiss her neck while Hinata giggled freely at his antics. Once they were out of sight thought, she only gave him a peck on the lips before she turned and they both slid through the open window of the building to their right, with the agility of two felines.

"We're in." Hinata breathed in her com as she shed the thick coat and started braiding her hair and pinning it up securely in a bun as Naruto adjusted his weapons and began the sealing process of the western wall. He worked quickly and with a sure hand, and for a moment Hinata was mesmerized looking at him. They said fuijutsu was a lost art (and though Naruto was a patient teacher, Hinata still struggled with it), but Naruto didn't think it so obscure: he was a natural at it, the best sealer Hinata had ever met. And though that was not exactly saying something, she also knew he was the best sealer most people had ever met. People kept saying that it was no surprise: that it was in his blood from both mother and father and with a teacher like Jiraya sama, it really could not have gone another way. It had been Naruto's idea to draw up this back-up plan.

"I'm in position." The Uchiha said in a clipped tone. Which meant he had snatched one of the workers, taken his appearance, entered the building, bypassed the scanners and was now a private office, about to hack into the system and manipulate it long enough for her to have an opening.

Hinata looked at the vent on ceiling. She'd have to crawl through them and into the other building, the moment Sasuke opened one of the conducts for her by disabling security on the area. She'd have to be quick…

"Alright. I'll be in position to breach the perimeter in eleven minutes approximately." Hinata said back as she took off her sandals and put on a pair of soft-soled boots.

"Wow Hinata-chan, you look hot."

Hinata stumbled a little as she checked her thigh-holsters, meeting Naruto's eyes with a startled look. She was sure she was blushing, but he winked at her and Hinata's alarm instantly muted. So, it was not her he was trying to play then.

The answer came in the form of Sakura's growl through the earpiece.

"Idiot, this is not the time."

It made Naruto grin like a fox, and Hinata shook her head as she looked away and put on her gloves.

There, she was ready.

"But she does!"

In any other occasion, his words and the way his eyes lingered on her from the top of her head to the tip of her feet, would have made Hinata blush like mad, but this time she just shook it off. She knew he was trying to lighten her up a bit. It was always his way of saying 'see you later'.

"That body suit is awesome by the way. Is it a zip-up? How come I've never seen it before, Hinata-chan?"

Sakura however did not know the way they spoke to each other through hidden words and she was in no mood for Naruto's antics.

"Naruto… I will stab you in the neck." Sakura growled. It almost drowned out Sasuke's 'Hn'… almost.

"Oh, by the way Sakura chan, remember that bottle of ink that I asked you to keep in your backpack for me?"

"…yes." Came Sakura's hesitant reply.

"Don't get mad… but I think I might have spilled it this morning."

"You what?!"

Hinata hid a smile even though Sakura was not even there to see it. Such was Sakura's rage that she did not even need to scream for her feelings to carry – even her hiss pierced the Naruto's ear like a senbon and he winced, though he was still grinning.

"That was almost ten ounces of ink, you moroon!"

"Oh come on it wasn't that much." He said in a placatory tone that he knew would only set Sakura's temper on fire more. And though he kept talking, not once did his brushstrokes falter. He was sure as she worked and Hinata was glade to watch him as the complex seal took form. Earth, water, fire… why wind though?

She didn't ask him – Hinata trusted Naruto to know what he was doing when it came to fuijutsu. It wasn't like there was anyone around who could correct him.

"If you have stained my clothes I will rip your lungs through your nostrils!" Sakura growled.

"Sooo dramatic!"

"You are so doing my laundry for a month!" she ordered.

"Seriously?!" but his indignation was all fake: he was smiling, looking satisfied.

"Better believe it, you dumb blonde."

Listening to Sakura's voice in her ear, even Hinata could tell that the medic was calmer now, more steady, as she spoke, and not because the argument with Naruto was drawing to a close, but because of the argument itself. Hinata might not understand a lot about Team Seven but she did know that they all acted as each other's stabilizing agents when occasions called for it. And Sakura had needed a measure of normalcy because she had been on edge all morning, perhaps feeling out of her usual comfort zone… and Naruto, he had known exactly what she needed to bring her on familiar ground.

"Ok, I'm done." Naruto announced as he put the brush down, bit his thumb and drew the last character in the centre of the seal with his blood, but was just about to transfer some of his chakra to the seal, when Hinata stopped him.

"Wait. Take your earpiece off, the energy transfer could scramble the channels." She gently reminded him.

"Oh, right… And don't mind Sakura, Hinata-chan. She'd just jealous cause if she wore something like that she'd look like a stick."

Hinata's eyes widened. He might not have his earpiece on but Sakura cold hear him just fine from Hinata's.

And in fact, as if on cue…

"Hinata… please tell Naruto that once this is over, I'm going to break every bone in his body." Sakura spoke evenly.

Hinata couldn't help the chuckle.

"Sakura-chan says hello, Naruto-kun." She refered. Sakura scoffed.

"All done." Naruto announced, turning serious eyes to Hinata.

Only a fraction of a second passed between them before she nodded and jumped up, balancing herself with on hand on the wall and the other on a nearby shelf, and then sliding her body forward into the vent.

"I'm inside the air-ducts." She recounted just as she began crawling forward.

"Alright, enough fucking about." Ibiki snapped, his voice buzzing in Hinata's ear and sending a wave of adrenaline in her system. This was it. This was where it started. "Uzumaki, take your position and stand by. Uchiha…"

"I'm ready."

"Good. Haruno, is the perimeter secure?"

"Yes sir."

"Excellent. Kid… good luck."

They all knew who he was talking to.

"Thank you, sensei." Hinata whispered softly. Five minutes afterwards she found herself looking at chakra sensors, motion detectors and temperature sensitive alarms.

"Sasuke-san…"

The moment she said his name, Sasuke deactivated the entire thing long enough for Hinata to slide through. She fell on the ground with the softest thud and looked around. Grabbing a white coat and taking out a pair of glasses from her thigh-holster, she put them on and took a deep breath.

"Alright…" She said, as much to herself as to the others listening. "I'm in."

oOo

Hinata ran down the hall, heartbeat in her ears. She could see that just around the corner three guards were running towards her and behind her there were two others. She hid in a corner, between a door and a set of shelves, masked her presence utterly with her newest jutsu and stayed still, not even daring to breathe as the two groups of guards joined not ten feet from where she was hiding.

"Infrared, now!"

One of the guards held up a sensor while the other performed a few hand-seals and looked around, scanning his surroundings.

They picked up her clone running down the hall two floors down. Hinata saw the satisfaction in their faces at having matched her chakra signature. The strain of keeping her clone in such a level of complexity was starting to show, but Hinata gritted her teeth and concentrated on the task. She could not fail, she could not.

"Alright, spread down to the left. You two, to the right. Lets catch this guy and get this over with, quietly - I don't want ANBU poking their nose into this."

She saw them spread out and empty out the hallway and allowed herself a breath.

It seemed so strange to think about it now, but everything had been going fine until she made it to the vaults. With Sasuke opening the doors she could not crack herself and confusing the system from time to time, Hinata made it there without incident, hiding behind her Invisibility jutsu every now and then.

It was once she tried opening the safes that everything was shot to hell.

She had the algorithms on the base of which the codes of the doors were supposed to be cracked. They were the same ones that controlled the encryptions on the vaults. Up to that point they had all been accurate and Hinata had managed to crack them without incident… except the fact that, when she tried to open the vault she had been commissioned to rob, Hinata had had tripped the alarm.

She'd barely made it out before the room automatically closed: when she had jumped out and rolled on the floor, one of the bars had almost snatched her leg. It had taken Hinata a moment to get over the shock.

She remembered the strain on the Uchiha's voice as he asked her what happened… the shame in her own as she told him she did not know.

"I must have made a mistake. I must have…"

But how? How? She had learned everything down to perfection, her concentration had not faltered once! Not once!

The Uchiha was quick to correct her.

"No. Your decryption should have worked. It was correct, as it was the times before."

There had been some scrambling, and it was precisely Uchiha Sasuke to confirm something that Hinata had started suspecting: the algorithm of that vault, the one they had been supplied with from the stolen blueprints, was wrong; it did not match the one she was supposed to crack. It had been a deliberate mistake on the part of whoever has supplied that data.

Hinata didn't have time to make sense of it, she had to run and hide because suddenly the building came alive and she was its prime target. But even though she was utterly concentrated on surviving, her brain worked out what had happened on its own: this mission was never meant to succeed. Whoever had commissioned it had wanted Yakuza to get trapped like a rat in a cage down there. They had wanted him to fail.

So what was the point?

That was an answerless question for now; but the second conclusion right after it was that whoever had tried to get yakuza to do this job had just double crossed him. Or he had been the one to betray them somehow.

It didn't not matter really: the whole thing stank of foul-play.

Yakuza was the first suspect of course, but both Hinata and Ibiki knew it went deeper than that. Either way, Sakura had been ordered by Ibiki to knock the ex Kiri nin out.

But all that was only a peripheral problem to Hinata.

Her main issue was that she was trapped. She knew she was trapped because once she made it up to the ventilation shafts that were supposed to get her up to the last floor, where she would jump into the incinerator and get out… she found that her path was blocked.

"Shit."

"What, what is it?" Ibiki immediately asked. Hearing profanity from his proper-mannered student was a rarity that demanded his attention.

"Laser tripwires." Hinata whispered, her breathing barely controlled.

"In a ventilation shaft?!" Naruto's anger radiated even through her earpiece.

Hinata sighed. "Nevermind, I'm gonna have to reach it the traditional way."

"No need. I have just found a hole in the system." Sasuke intercepted quickly. "Last floor, the Head of the Administration office: off the grid, no sensors of any kind. That was good thinking dobe."

Hinata breathed a sigh of relief. The Uchiha sounded calm and sure of himself and Hinata took heart from that. For a moment she had lapsed, when she thought that she had just screwed up one of the most important missions she had ever gotten so far, but now that she knew it had not been her doing and remembered that she was not alone, Hinata felt marginally better. It was easier to collect herself. She had a great team on her back, he could do this.

"Hinata, can you get there?" Was Sakura's immediate question.

"I will." She did not want to put that up for discussion. Though Naruto had been silent Hinata knew he was listening and she wanted to sound as sure and in control as Sasuke had sounded, and give Naruto the same reassurance that the Uchiha has inadvertedly given her.

"What's the play kid?" Ibiki asked her.

"I will climb out of the window and to the roof. I'll jump down if I have to." And she would.

"Very well. I will take care of coordination with the rest of the team. You just get there safe."

"Yes sir."

"Uzumaki, stay alert." Ibiki ordered. "That window might not be such a clean escape, so when the opportunity opens up you might have to get her through it."

"I will."

Naruto's sounded tense, ready to snap, but his tone was sure and he spoke those two small words as if they were a solemn promise. Hinata knew she was not imaging the fact that in Naruto's mind, he was probably speaking directly to her.

Still, bad as things were, the shit didn't truly hit the fan until she dropped out of the shaft and on her feet, only to be spotted by a guard. There were a few minutes of quick scuffle, where Hinata used the surprise and the close quarters to immobilise her opponent and then knocking him out… but not before he send her a chakra pulse that almost smashed her to the wall, and that scrambled the frequency of her transmitter completely.

Breathing heavily after she hid the body in one of the closets and secured the door, Hinata was met by only silence from the other side, and she knew that she had lost communication with her team.

Her heart skipped a beat.

She was stuck in a lobster trap, with no way out and no communication with her team. The seriousness of her situation just got from alarming to downright hopeless.

"Oh… I'm in trouble."

oOo

"What the hell happened? What happened to Hinata! Where is she?!"

"Uzumaki. Calm down." Ibiki snapped. He was going through eh files they had collected until he found the one he wanted. "Everyone get to your designated positions and hold. We will wait, for now."

"What? Wait for what? This mission was a trap from the start – you realize what that means for Hinata?" Uzumaki's tone was quickly growing out of his shock and into anger. And of course Ibiki realized what it meant for his student: if this failure really had been planned from the start, and Hinata was caught in there, she was not merely going to be detained. She would probably be killed on sight: it was part of tying loose ends in jobs like this.

"We already have a plan and Hinata knows what she is doing. Uchiha, what's the status."

"The security system just upgraded to a phase 1 lockdown. I'm keeping it from going upwards for now." The boy answered back readily. They are combing every floor with scanners and chakra-readers and then locking them down."

Ibiki's mind worked furiously, trying to find a solution.

"We have to find her, get in contact with her again." Naruto insisted. "Sasuke!"

Ibiki almost snapped at the blonde hero, but the Uchiha beat him to it.

"Dobe, the entire building is looking for her; I mean a the actual, physical building." Even over the communicator Naruto could feel the strain of Sasuke's glare. "Anything I do to actively search for the Hyuga will translate to the system knowing where she is as well and that will lead every security guard straight to her position."

"God dam it!" Naruto almost felt himself sizzle with repressed anger and frustration.Think, think dam it!

"There has to be something we can do." Uzumaki growled and not for the first time Ibiki wondered at the intelligence of taking him along. Two teammates being involved was never the prelude of something good.

"The fact is there isn't, Uzumaki." Ibiki told him, repressing his frustration and keeping himself calm. "We can't find her. She will be the one to send us a signal and hopefully, we will get to her first. For now we follow the plan."

"Dam it!"

"Enough! We're shifting to an alert state so keep your heads in the game. Haruno, guard Yakuza with your life." the fucker was either a target or he lied from the start. Either way, he was their only lead to making some sense out of this fuckup. "Uzumaki, you're in charge of the perimeter now. We don't know what's coming so keep a lookout and a low profile – anything out of order, even if this so much as a fly on the wall, you tell me. And stop busting our ears; Hinata knows what she's doing."

oOo

Sasuke had been listening to this exchange in silence as he monitored the progress of the security system's search for the intruder, when the phone in the office where he was holed rang. Sasuke looked at it doubtfully before he picked it up.

"Yes."

"It's me." The Hyuga's hurried whisper filled his ear and Sasuke almost felt relief. "You see the charts moving around the cubicles, delivering post – put a spare earpiece in an envelope and send it to cubicle 36. I got 2 minutes."

The line went dead immediately and for that Sasuke was thankful because if she had not hung up she would have been traced in another 10 seconds. As he followed the Hyuga's instructions and relayed the development to the others Sasuke couldn't help but acknowledge her quick thinking. It would save everyone else the trouble.

Where Ibiki said nothing and Sakura merely sighed in relief, Naruto was not so subtle.

"Alright! Now let's get her outa there!"