Depth

A NaruHina Fanfic

Chapter 1: Stolen

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This is dark. Angsty. Brutal. And yes it's got plenty of lemons too so definitely not for the kiddies.

Disclaimer: No

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The jonin stealth team eyed the sleeping girl wearily. They were deep in enemy territory, the four expert ninja cramped into the small tent that was the temporary residence of the girl they had been sent to kidnap. The opportunity had been too great for their Kage to resist, the girl's village reduced to rubble, most of her clan away on missions, the remaining ninja in turmoil trying to repair their home. And to top it off, the girl's body guard was actually being looked after by her after he suffered a wound in the battle. His sleeping, bandaged form had already been taken care of, with a silent kunai slicing his jugular and a hand clamped over his mouth as he was wrenched from his dreams to find himself choking on his own blood. This warm substance had splattered on their targets face the next pellet over, and while she twitched in her sleep, it wasn't enough to wake her.

The leader, his forehead protector hidden in the darkness, raised his hands to signal his men. They leapt even as he started signing. As soon as they touched her, her eyelids snapped opened, pale eyes glinting in the moonlight. She started to cry out only for calloused hands to clamp over her mouth and flailing limbs. Unexpectedly for the three jonin holding her, chakra started to spike out from her body, giving them chakra burns and damaging the muscles that came into contact with it.

However, being hardened veteran jonin, this was nothing to them. They held on the second longer it took for their leader to finish his jutsu. He looked directly into the blank eyes staring back in panic, and crafting his chakra down the paths set by the seals, whispered "Paralysis dream jutsu."

The girl immediately went limp, her eyelids again hiding the precious eyes they had come for. The leader signaled one last time. The team rushed out of the tent, the unconscious girl slung over one's back. As they stepped out of the tent, moonlight struck them, revealing the symbol on the headband of the leader.

Kumogakure, the hidden Cloud village, had infiltrated the decimated remains of Konoha. The dull purple on the girls jacket revealed who they had just captured, the Hyuuga heiress, the only unsealed Hyuuga in Konoha at the moment, and now in their hands. Hinata Hyuuga.

Then, they vanished into the darkness, back to their homeland, finally triumphant in their victory that took 12 years to achieve.

'Oh, but it will be worth it. Finally.' The leader thought menacingly as they leapt into the dark shadows of the trees.

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"Hey Hinata, you gonna come help me and Akamaru clean up training ground 8 today?" Kiba said as he stepped into Hinata's tent, which she shared with her injured bodyguard Ko. The words died in his mouth as he came upon the sight of Ko's bloody, slashed throat, blood sprayed up the wall of the tent and onto the empty pellet beside him. The EMPTY pellet.

"Hinata!" he cried, now only just picking up the scent of foreign ninja that was covering the area. "SHIT!" he sprinted away, in search of whoever the hell was nearest.

He saw Naruto first, running around doing errands for the village, his golden blonde hair rivaling the sunlight coming down through the scattered trees to leave dappled speckles of light littered throughout the clearing where Konoha had set up a temporary medical base.

"Naruto!" he shouted hoarsely, his voice choked in panic. Akamaru woofed uncontrollably beside him. The blonde turned to the feral duo.

"Hey Kiba, whats up?" he asked in blessed innocence to what Kiba had just found out.

"Hinata" he gasped out. "She's been taken!"

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"Ok, they've got to have discovered it by now, she's the Hyuuga heiress, she can't be gone very long without anyone realizing" a black clad Kumo jonin told his leader.

"You're right." Came the gravelly voice. "Set up a decoy, but remember, she is not the only tracking kekkei genkai in her village. Fool them. Her jacket will cover the scent, but find other way's too. It must convince them, we don't want them pursuing us all the way back to Kumo. When we're their, the Raikage can protect us, but until then, we're on our own."

"Hai!" the man holding Hinata said, overly enthusiastic, then roughly yanked off Hinata's lavender jacket.

"Heh heh." He grinned perversely when he saw what was hiding beneath the bulky clothing. "You think we could start breeding her now?" he said with a lecherous spark in his eye.

"Baka!" One of his other teammates hit him over the head. "We're currently being hunted by who knows how many Konoha ninja, and you want to take a time out to rape this girl!"

This certain teammate was a girl, so she obviously took offense at this. "When we get her back to our village, I'm sure you can have your turn at her, as will practically everyone in the village, but for now… GET THE FUCKING DECOY DONE!"

With that the other three members of his team took off, carrying the unconscious Hyuuga. "Hmmph" he said to himself, then took out several storage scrolls and began preparing. This was his specialty after all.

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Naruto, Kiba, Akamaru, Shino, Neji, Ino and Sakura leapt through the forest at breakneck speed, following Kiba's scent trail. They had been the only ninja in the immediate area, so scrounging them up had been all Naruto and Kiba had time for before their worry got the best of them and they took off after Hinata. Naruto was in turmoil.

'How could this happen?' he thought. 'Just when we thought we were safe!'

He hadn't had a lot of time to think about what Hinata had done for him and what she had said, but it was enough for him to realize she had done the most selfless thing that anybody had ever done for him in his entire 17 years. Now, as he raced through the forest, his mind was finally working with surprising clarity.

'Hinata, she said she had always loved me. I can see it now, she never, ever laughed at me, shunned me, hurt me, but she was too shy to say it. That why she was always blushing and fainting. So cute!'

So when she had finally found the courage and confessed, all he could do was stare flabbergasted while she fought to the death for him. And now, before he even had a chance to say anything, she was gone! 'HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN!' he started getting angrier and angrier, but was ripped out of his thoughts by Neji's choking gasp.

He looked back to where he saw Neji's byakugan filled eyes fixed on a clearing ahead. He sprinted past Naruto, crying out his cousins name in dismay. Naruto felt his heart leap strangely at that strangled cry. It was definitely not one of joy. He surged ahead with the Hyuuga, the others following. But what they came upon instantly stopped them.

Trees were blown apart, their splinters accompanying rocky chunks that littered the crater filled clearing. But what caught their eye was the prone lavender and blue form in the middle of the clearing, splashed with blood, the bright red in sickening contrast to her normally unassuming colors.

"Hinata!" the gathered shinobi cried in terror, running up to the girl. She was lying on her side, facing away from them. Naruto reached her first and knelt beside her, gently pulling her over. She came without resistance, flopping onto her back, completely limp. Her face was unnaturally pale, even for her, and her eyelids closed. There was blood splattered all over her face, but most heavily concentrated around her closed eyes.

"What did they do to you?" he whispered. Sakura and Ino screamed when they saw the girl, Kiba and Shino stopped short in their tracks. Neji, however, had done this halfway across the clearing. He was staring at Hinata with his byakugan, piercing her clothes and skin to view her health state. What he had seen had instantly brought him to a halt.

Her chakra system was simply not there. Gone. He could see where the lines should be, but there was no blue, life giving chakra flowing through them. It was blank, dark. He surveyed further and found exactly what he never wanted to find, her still heart. Hinata Hyuuga was dead.

He sank to his knees in disbelief. This kind of stuff just didn't happen to their little group. Even with Pain, she had survived. But this, there was no uncertainty in this. His cousin, who he now saw as a little sister, and the only Main House member who had always been nice to him as a branch member and a slave, was dead. Gone.

All her hopes, her dreams, her aspirations, her now not so secret love for Naruto, gone.

Said Naruto saw the look on his comrades faces and knew what it was. He looked back at Hinata, no longer seeing the face of the one he had such confused feelings for, but the face of a dead person.

He wouldn't admit it. He couldn't let one of his most precious people be dead. "No!" he screamed, hitting the ground by her head. "No! She's not dead! Sakura, Ino, fix her!" he screamed more, yanking the two helpless girls down by the body.

They hesitantly placed their hands over her body, and after a flash of green chakra, they slumped back, both quivering and shaking their heads repeatedly. Linking their chakra to a dead body scarred them. They scrambled away in fear when they then saw Naruto's rapidly distorting features. His hair was growing wilder, his teeth protruding to fangs, his whisker marks becoming rougher and jagged.

Even as they watched him, red infected his eyes, slowly claiming the brilliant aqua blue. His pupils lengthened into slits, and suddenly two tails of chakra ejected from his back.

"Naruto" Sakura pleaded. A sudden thought came to her. "Hinata wouldn't want this."

The girls name had instant, miraculous results. Hearing again of his precious person, the Kyuubi chakra was banished. He turned back to the girl in his arms.

"This can't be Hinata" he whispered, still in denial. "Kiba, Shino, Neji, it just can't be" One by one, the three shook their heads.

"She has a genuine chakra system." Neji confirmed. So did Kibab (oops, typo, but haha Kebab. (sorry to put a joke in such a serious situation :/ )). "It's her scent Naruto" he said solemnly. "And it ends here. So does their trail. Completely."

He shut off the yet to be argued pursuit, he had already thought of vengeance, but the ninja had covered their scent well, they were out of range of the byakugan, and Shino's beetles couldn't track that far. Her murderers were gone.

"Shino?" Naruto whispered hopefully, the quite Aburame his last resort. "Why would they just kill her like this? There's no point to it…"

Shino slowly shook his head. "Why?" he said in his strange way of speaking. "All they came for were her eyes. They were obviously Cloud ninja because, as you can see, her eyes are taken."

Naruto looked at her closed eyelids, and for the first time noticed the lack of solid behind them. He couldn't force himself to open them to see the empty sockets that were once such beautiful eyes, but he could see well enough, there was nothing underneath those eyelids.

He slowly, gently stood up, his heart broken, the body in his arms bridal style. "Let's get back to the village" he said, the mist from his breath a silent frost.

They all noticed the lack of emotion in the normally hyperactive ninja's voice, and Sakura acted on it. "Naruto" she said gently, putting a hand on his shoulder. He jerked away from her and jumped into the trees, but not before decimating her with an extremely chilly "Fuck off Sakura."

They silently followed him back to the village, each in their own thoughts of the shy, extremely cute, gentle wallflower that had just been ripped from their lives. As they made their way back, they started to fully realize how much she had impacted them; even though they had thought she was just in the background, never noticed, never missed. Oh the irony, how she was missed now.

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There go, second chapter coming soon