A/N: Lots of thanks to the lovely LuteLyre and plathgirl! Without their help, this never would be finished. Check out their great works!

Characters: Hinata, Kiba and Akamaru, Shino

Warnings: Some bodily fluids.

3 Cell

Shino struggled against his bonds, but the chains were chakra draining and each movement increased the weight upon his muscles. Where were they taking him? What did they want with him, and how could he escape?

He barely had enough time to contemplate possible future actions when someone covered his face with an oxygen mask. Shaking his head harshly from side to side did nothing to prevent them from strapping it on and one of the men in cloaks grabbed his head in a cold vice.

Rough fingers tore away his sunglasses and his clothes as Shino told off his captors, but the oxygen mask drowned his words. The cloaked figures remained impassive as if they chose not to notice what he said. Being ignored annoyed him further.

Time for other measures. He concentrated on his chakra and the kikkai inside his body, telling them to attack the people around them because they were in danger. Blood rushed to his ears as nerves seized him, but he had to be better than that. Aburames were calm, in control of their emotions, and logical, because that made their movements unpredictable.

The cloaked men were prepared for his jutsu. How? They must have gathered intelligence on Konoha and the ninjas' missions, targeting them from the beginning. As soon as he sent the kikkai from him, a strong wave of air started to suck all the insects in the air. Shino commanded them to get away from forcefully, but the suctioning force was more powerful than he had ever felt. Already he sensed more than a handful ripping away from him.

If he tried to use an insect clone, it would just be sucked into oblivion. He tried to slip his hands out of the chains and send several Destruction Bugs to bite through the metal in the meanwhile. His kidnappers held him down, to keep him from struggling and he was not strong enough to fight five shinobi. Shino furrowed his brow and grimaced; he was furious.

Yet another person cut his clothes from his body and stripped him down to his undergarments. Shino's hands tightened into fists at the humiliation. Perhaps he would take his chances with the insect clone, if he could gather enough chakra. He began to summon half of the kikkai he had in his body, chakra holes opening, but by then it was too late.

He saw small tubes rushing towards him and tiny claws shot out from the ends to embed themselves in his skin. He groaned softly as he failed to suppress his reaction to the pain.

The vacuuming continued, the kikkai leaving him in waves of sharp needles running along the underside of his skin. The suction's force pulled his flesh so hard that he thought it'd rip skin from bone. He grit his teeth, his compound eyes following his poor companions up the tubes. They were sensitive to motion, but also to light.

He squinted against the lights above and to see more clearly. Damn their removal of his prescription sunglasses. Once again, futilely, he pulled against the chains around his hand, shifting it somewhat. A few centimeters more and—

Thick, choking gas filled his lungs, pumped through the oxygen mask. He thrashed his head from side to side and then a burning sensation overtook his body. Numbness soon followed. They were paralyzing his chakra coils from the inside; the kikkai's exit holes just made it easier for them to do so.

A hot bolt of metal pierced him at the base of his skull. A strangled noise rose from the back of Shino's throat and he lost consciousness.

The cloaked men threw the bruised Kiba into a small and dingy stone cell, taking Akamaru with them to probably chain him up in another one. The sudden fetid stench in the cell brought him to full alertness. He pinched his nose, but it was too overpowering to stop him from vomiting in the corner of his cell.

He was surrounded by shit. There had to be some other substance in the mixture, rotten eggs, or perhaps something acidic. It was so bad, Kiba worried his sense of smell would be ruined forever. Akamaru was missing, to make matters worse. Kiba had a feeling he was still alive, because he had a hunch and his instincts about Akamaru were hardly wrong.

Chakra draining chains bound him tightly and kept him a close distance to the wall. Even if he could perform a jutsu, he wouldn't have enough space to do damage to the stone. Maybe.

The odor sustained his nausea, but he had to think of what to do next. "HINATA! SHINO!" he yelled. "AKAMARU!" Kiba heard nothing. What the hell did he do now?

"Byakugan," murmured Hinata so no one would hear what she was doing. She had to find where Shino and Kiba were, even in her weakened state. A desperate hope lingered in the back of her mind that she'd be able to see Kurenai coming towards them, wherever this was. She had little time before the cloaked men returned and started to pay attention to her. Kiba… five hundred meters north. Fighting the men in cloaks had drained her of her energy and she was unable to look at him for long. She breathed a sigh of relief as she saw his chakra system still moving. Just before she began to analyse the exact details of his cell, she heard the doorknob turn and she deactivated her Byakugan.

Learning the guards' schedule, rotation, and numbers would take time. She believed that Kurenai would find the three of them, but Hinata could not just rely on that hope. So she began to watch.

Kiba was not much of a thinker. This, however, was a serious situation so he had to consider his options. He was not able to disrupt chakra systems like Hinata, or turn into insects like Shino, so he had to resort to either breaking the chakra -eating chains or slipping out of them. Using force was noisy and had the potential to alert the guards, so he needed to break the chains and somehow leave the cell quickly, or worm his way out of the bonds.

An option appeared in his mind, a disgusting one. Shinobi had to work with the tools at hand and at present, Kiba had… shit. Literally. He grimaced as he bent forward as much as he could to grab a handful of the stuff. First, he started to smear a coat around his bare ankles, just underneath the chains. He finished with his legs and moved to his wrists and lower arms, a grimace etched across his face. This had to be one of the most disgusting actions he'd ever taken. Necessary to survive, he told himself, but that did not make himself feel any better.

Time to start to twist his limbs out of the chains with the help of the "lubricant." Each movement or struggle sapped that much more strength out of him. He just had to make enough progress in the next few hours and hope that Akamaru, Hinata and Shino were all right.

Shino awoke and felt hollow. The absence of the kikkai meant that he was more alone now than he had ever been. Even worse, it was his stupidity that caused the death of his beautiful insects. He failed to be an acceptable host. In the history of the Aburame clan, no one had been unintelligent enough to lose all of their kikkai. Having to tell his father – Shino screwed his eyes shut as he imagined the look on Shibi's face.

His teammates were imprisoned, possibly dead, and he had yet to create a strategy to escape. Everything seemed hopeless. He picked at his cuticles and tore off strips of dried skin on his thumbs. Time passed and he picked off skin around his fingernails until pinpricks of blood appeared.

Shino continued, digging his right thumbnail into the thin, bloody crevice next to his left thumb's nail until it hurt. Drops of blood stained it and yet the pain from his hands and aching body was not enough penance for his mistakes. He disliked looking like a crumpled mess on the floor, but he lacked the strength to pull his body into a somewhat dignified position. At least no one was there to see his humiliation.

A faint presence in the far corner of his cell caught his attention. He had honed his ability to sense the location of insects since he was almost five, satisfactory for an Aburame. A spider crawled along the stone floor, towards a better place to spin its web. Shino hoped that it headed in his direction – he attempted to guide it over with chakra strings and found his strength lacking.

Help me, he asked the spider, sending out the feeling of need as much as he could. The spider moved towards him and crawled up his leg. Shino rose to a sitting position slowly so he did not scare the spider away and projected the image of Hinata. Find her. Where is she? Hinata's Byakugan would locate Kiba, Akamaru, and an escape, and her Gentle Fist might be the only weapon they had to break the chains. This was, of course, if she was not imprisoned—Shino doubted it because Hinata's bloodline ability was well known and much more advantageous than his or Kiba's. (He could admit this to himself, but not to anyone else.)

The spider moved off of him and towards the door. He needed to consider his options if the spider failed. Wallowing in self-despair because they drained his energy and Destruction Bugs was not conducive to strategizing his escape. Shino narrowed his eyes, determined, and began his contemplation.

Three hours later, Kiba's hand moved three centimeters from the confines of the chains. Progress was slower than he'd hoped. He grit his teeth and tried his best not to lose his temper. He made things worse when he did.

'I hope you're all right, Akamaru.' The thought of what their captors might do to his canine friend worried him. If he found out they hurt Akamaru, Kiba would tear their throats without a second thought. Anger flooded his veins and Kiba yanked his hand hard. The chain rubbed his skin raw, but he ignored the pain for now. "I'm going to find you, Akamaru," he muttered. That was fact.

Five minutes, a guard happened to walk down the hall and Kiba had to cease his action just in case the man looked into his cell. He was right—a helmeted face opened the narrow metal slot to check on Kiba and closed it after a few seconds. Kiba exhaled to calm his heartbeat. Looked like it was time to be extra cautious, though it wasn't really his style.

Six guard rotations passed and the sun rose and set once; two days probably. Hinata gathered a little more information with her Byakugan, as much as her chakra would allow. Four guards each rotation, spread about the prison. She managed to discover this the first day before the men secured those chakra draining chains around her again. She was only able to move around for a limited time each day, when they took her above a few floors to spy on a compound kilometers away.

While she spied on the details of the bank, she searched in desperation for any sign of Kurenai. None yet. Doing both exhausted her and her Byakugan vision blurred. They beat her back with a bamboo cane to force her to tell them more, but she couldn't – wouldn't. Their torture became more inventive, with curled knives and flicks of whips, but she was determined not to be broken so easily.

That night, she lay on her side and clutched her knees to her chest with one arm for warmth. She remembered when she trained with Shino and his dedication, Kiba and Akamaru running through the forest smiling lazy grins, Kurenai's gentle encouragement, and how the three of them collapsed on the grass, watching the stars.

Hinata closed her eyes. The happy memory was her gentle guide to sleep.

The loud creaking of her prison door woke her and she gathered enough strength to sit up to face her captors. A cloaked man released her from her chains and Hinata gently brushed a spider off her arm before she pulled herself to her feet. She made a point never to harm insects out of respect to Shino.

"Time to get to work," said the main. His voice was raspy and closer to a growl, though Hinata accustomed herself to it. He grabbed her arm and dragged her out of her cell. They walked in a different direction than their usual path and Hinata peered in through each of the prison doors' windows. She had to do it quickly to maintain the guard's pace. Her eyes widened as she passed the fifth cell down to her right.

It was Akamaru.

Darkness crept and swirled around him. Shino was lost in a sea of nothing and as he surveyed the empty space for an exit, dying screeches from his kikkai reached his ears. A hundred painful jolts burst inside his body as he felt them die, provoking him to run towards where he thought they were. He would rescue them; they just had to wait a few moments more—

The voices disappeared and he fell to his knees in horror.

Shino awoke. The chakra chains increased his fatigue and need to sleep, so he had been drifting in and out of consciousness. He knew that this was not to be the first time he'd have nightmares. His breath was rapid as he gathered his wits about him and repressed the panic he had felt. No more of that, he told himself. Why? Because his emotions were not his friend and he had little time to be idle.

A presence appearing in his cell caught his attention and Shino recognized it as the spider he had sent as a scout. He forced himself to gather enough chakra to bond telepathically with the spider and to his relief, he saw that it had found Hinata.

Akamaru had thought that the three humans were gone. Dead. He hoped that they weren't and seeing Hinata fueled his motivation to escape. Ever since the strange and bad-smelling men captured him, he pretended to be weaker than he really was. They had not chained him with strong, chakra-draining chains and that was their mistake. Soon after he saw Hinata, he began to bite through the chains holding him. First, his front limbs – he managed with two bites. It was painful. Careful. He rose once he was free and rammed against the door to break it down. It cracked and broke, so noisily that he had to run down the hallway as he tried to search for Kiba's scent. Finally, he found it, faint, but there.

Kia still struggled to get out of his chains. Progress was slow. He wasn't going to quit now. He paused at a familiar sound, a distant bark coming from the right. Akamaru? Kiba whistled to lead him towards the cell. He heard Akamaru's nails click against the stone and then the bark right outside the cell door meaning, 'I'm here!'

Hope bubbled within Kiba. "Quick, break the door!" he called as loud as he dared. They wouldn't have much time anyway because his escape was going to be noisy and messy. Akamaru slammed against the door and it didn't take long for it to shatter into pieces. Kiba grinned at how lucky he was to have a strong canine on his side.

Akamaru leapt into the cell and stopped right in his tracks with a whimper. 'Kiba, you stink,' he protested with another whimper.

"Yeah, I know," Kiba said with a dismissive shrug. "See if you can bite these chains. Careful, they drain your chakra." Akamaru made his way gingerly over the lumps of feces to Kiba and bit the chain. It fell off and Kiba almost got a headache as the chakra draining chain's pressure disappeared.

He pulled himself to his feet as quickly as he could, swaying on his feet. Feeling weak was not an option he had now. Kiba looked at Akamaru to indicate he was ready to move and the two of them dashed down the hallway.

'I can smell Hinata up ahead,' Akamaru told him in a bark.

Kiba tried to confirm it and failed. "Being in that cell screwed up my sense of smell. Not for long, I hope." He didn't want his strongest assest to be ruined when it meant so much to him and his clan. They continued to run and he hoped that they hadn't alerted too many guards to their positions.

Akamaru turned to the right and ran around the corner with Kiba close behind. A minute later, he stopped in front of a cell door. Hers. Kiba was still tired as hell, but he reached out to break the lock.

The door swung open and Hinata looked up from where she sat in surprise. "Kiba-kun!" she exclaimed softly. She crinkled her nose for a second and knit her eyebrows together in confusion. "What happened to you?" That was her polite way of saying he smelled like shit.

He was now very aware of the brown crusty smears around his wrists and up his legs. "They stuck me in a cell full of shit. I can't smell anything now," he stated. "Come on, we have to get out of here! Gentle Fist the chains." He was sure she could. The look on her face told him that she didn't believe her own ability. He thought he heard footsteps approaching their hallway and knew that they didn't have much time. "Hinata," protested Kiba as Hinata continued to hesitate.

It seemed to prod her into action and she gathered what chakra she could to shoot out of her hand into the chakra draining chains, disrupting its process of sucking up her chakra. Her eyes widened in surprise as if she hadn't expected that to work so easily. Kiba wanted to think that she wouldn't have been able to summon the strength to do that if he hadn't been there.

She got to her feet shakily and Kiba wanted to extend a helping hand before he realized how dirty his was. Their speed was slow because they were still shaking off the effects of the chains. That meant everything would be more dangerous.

"Where's Shino?" Kiba asked. Hinata concentrated and used her Byakugan, slower than usual. A few agonizing seconds passed and then it was too late, he heard footsteps coming dangerously close. They had to go.

"Guards," he told the others and they started to run down the hallway. Hinata guided Kiba and Akamaru down the maze of corridors. Shouting came from behind them. The guards had seen them. Damn it, Kiba thought as he grew more tired with each passing second. Stupid chains sapping his energy.

Hinata's running slowed and her breathing grew heavier – Kiba figured she was just affected by the chains as he was. Her pace almost came to a standstill, but Akamaru moved so she could jump on his back.

She told him the directions when it was time to turn and a little while later, they stopped outside a cell door. Hinata deactivated her Byakugan, her face paler than usual, and swayed slightly on Akamaru. Kiba's heart hammered in his throat and summoned a good portion of his strength to mini-cyclone down the door.

What he saw shocked him: Shino, without his jacket or sunglasses covering himself. Kiba had never seen his teammate's eyes until now and it was weird. No, what was weirder was how deflated Shino was.

At the sound of the door breaking, Shino straightened his sitting posture and dropped his hands to his legs. Insect-like eyes turned towards the three of them. He didn't speak – shock, maybe – but at least that wasn't new to Kiba.

Akamaru took Hinata over to Shino right then so she could destroy the chains and doing so seemed to drain almost the rest of her strength. Shino struggled to get to his feet, as much as he tried to mask it. "Shino-kun," Hinata murmured and gave him her tattered jacket to wear. Shino accepted it with a slight nod of his head before putting it on himself.

"Your odor is repulsive," Shino stated with a pointed look at Kiba.

"Yeah, thanks." Kiba rolled his eyes. "Look, we have to go now. They're right—" His words fell flat in his mouth when Shino rushed past him and a crunch sounded. Kiba turned his head to look at what had happened, only to find a guard lying on the floor with a broken neck.

Shino grabbed the guard's kunai in the next moment and lunged forward to the next man not too far behind them. He slit the guard's throat in one fluid movement. No way was Shino getting to attack everyone. Kiba moved to throw punches at the men's faces. They weren't as strong as normal, but he was tired. The other two men dropped and Kiba led the way down the hallways with Hinata's guidance.

They reached a long corridor with several doors and the three ninja opened one each. Kiba's door led to a bare room with only a table in the middle. He thought he saw something familiar on the floor and stepped over quickly to inspect it. Several of Shino's kikkai lay on their backs with their legs curled and Kiba bent down to pick them up, sliding them into his pocket. He was out of the room in the next second.

Hinata called out for Shino and Kiba to join her and they hurried to see what she found. Kiba inhaled a deep breath to regain a little more strength. Turned out Hinata had found a small stock of weapons and they each grabbed what they could before they left the room.

The room led them to another hallway before a cavernous chamber and as soon as they entered it, the doors closed behind them. Cloaked men appeared from the corners to surround the four.

Kiba looked at Akamaru to signal him to leap into the fray with him and his canine companion huffed in agreement. Kiba lunged forward, but found he wasn't the only one who did. As he swung his fist to hit a cloaked man nearest to him, he saw a flash of silver to his left. Shino shot out his hand to stab his own opponent's eye and yanked the knife back to tear it from the man's face. Kiba kicked the man he fought away from him, Akamaru knocked him to the ground, and Shino speared his opponent's other eye as the man paused for a moment to deal with the pain.

Shino had never fought with decisive ferocity before, but Kiba noted his teammate was not using his kikkai. 'No insects left,' Akamaru told him in a bark, sensing his bemusement. There was no time to be confused. Kiba glanced at Hinata and saw that she was surrounded. Hell, they all were.

One of them was running towards her with a mace and Kiba rushed to grab the back of his cloak and pulled it towards him. His strength was almost gone, but he seized the man's neck and dug his sharp fingernails into the flesh as hard as he could. The man dropped to the floor and gave Kiba a clear view of Hinata smacking her palm against a cult member's chest, causing him to collapse.

Her eyes burned with anger. Definitely the second surprise today. The four of them were on the verge of losing consciousness, but they had to keep fighting. We're not going to lose to these losers, Kiba thought with a clenched jaw.

A low rumble from underneath the floor put him on alert and he tensed. He tried to back away when the ground shook, seeing the tiles pull back to form a circular hole. Strange purple flames crackled and roared some distance below in the center.

"Behold, the ceremonial pyre!" boomed a voice from above their heads. What does he want, applause? Kiba almost rolled his eyes at the flashy statement.

Speaking aloud was not wise for what had to be the cult leader because Kiba and Akamaru's hearing was still excellent. They gathered their strength to jump up to track the voice's location. Both of them heard the frantic footsteps of the man as he tried to run away from them. He had an advantage over them because Kiba's chakra was depleted, but that wasn't going to stop Kiba.

The Leaf shinobi ducked to the right and Akamaru barked to signal he had the man. Yes! Kiba lunged, Akamaru pinned him, and Kiba knocked him unconscious. The two of them carried the man to the balcony, where they saw down below that the others were still fighting.

"HEY!" Kiba shouted. "We have your stupid leader right here!" That sure as hell got the cult members' attention. They froze in place and looked up at Kiba and Akamaru. "If you don't want anything to happen to him, lower your weapons!" Almost half of the men did so, while the others hesitated and looked at each other.

"What do you want?" one of the cult members asked loudly, though Kiba didn't need the volume increase.

Where to start? "First, why did you kidnap us?" Kiba replied. "What has your leader—" His words stopped in his throat for the second time that day as Shino appeared to his right.

With a sweep of his arm, Shino's kunai slit the leader's throat and he tossed the body into the chasm and flames below. "Run," he told Kiba and Akamaru, "now."

Kiba stared at him with wide eyes. "But Hinata—" His hesitation was lost as he glanced around to see Kurenai standing in the distance, with her hands together in the last of her genjutsu's seal. He started to run, though it took every last ounce of his strength to move forward towards a door he hoped was an exit.

The hallways blurred into each other and he opened a door to white light, no, grass and safety. Kiba ran for a few more paces before he fell to all fours. His lungs strained for air and he could not concentrate on anything but his own breathing. His vision darkened around the edges, but he felt Akamaru's comforting soft fur against his face and a gentle hand on his shoulder. Kiba saw the blurry figure of Hinata crouching besides him and he stood on his knees to pull her close into his arms.

Hinata's cheeks flushed as Kiba wrapped his arms around her, shifting him around so he could lean against her more. They were fortunate Kurenai arrived when she did, using Shino's distraction to place the clan members under a genjutsu.

Turning her head, Hinata saw Shino stagger and sink to his knees. She wanted to see if he was all right, but her wounds from earlier and drained chakra made it difficult. A groan from Kiba caught her attention and she looked down at him. "Kiba-kun," she said. "Are you all right?" Her voice was weaker than she intended. The worry in his eyes was apparent as he looked at the wounds on her arms.

"You're cut all over. What happened?" he wanted to know.

Hinata bit her lip and looked away for a few seconds. She wasn't sure she could answer, but this was her teammate. "They wanted to use my Byakugan to determine a bank's layout, but I wouldn't give them any information. So they…" She trailed off and Kiba frowned.

"Damn psychos. They shouldn't have done that to you. I should have been there to help," he said, a deep frown etched on his face.

She shook her head. "There's no reason to apologize because we're all alive. And Akamaru helped us all." That was true. Thank goodness for Akamaru, Kiba thought.

Kiba pulled himself to a proper sitting position and reached into his pockets. He unfurled his fist to show several lifeless kikkai. Shino stared at the insects his teammate showed him so intently, his lips pressed together. He edged himself closer to Kiba and picked up the kikkai from Kiba's hand.

"I found these on the floor in a room. What did they do to you?" asked Kiba. Hinata looked at Shino and a grim expression appeared on his face.

"They bound me and drained me of all my kikkai with a strong vacuum. I was a liability or they desired to use them for research. I do not know." Shino's hands tightened into fists and without the sunglasses covering his eyes, Hinata saw how much he furrowed his brow. Her vision was weak after fighting and using her Byakugan without much time to recharge, but she noticed how tense he was.

An idea popped into her mind and she moved gently from Kiba's side. "We should hold a funeral for them," she suggested. "It is only right, after they helped our team so much."

"Thank you, Hinata." Shino's voice wobbled with emotion, her name somewhat choked as he said it. Kiba and Akamaru started to dig a grave for the kikkai and Shino placed the kikkai's bodies into it with gentle fingers.

Hinata tried to think of the right words to say, but Kiba spoke before her. "Your kikkai were strong and loyal ninja companions," he remarked. "They died an honorable death, protecting you. If Akamaru died, I don't know what I would do." He turned his head to look at his canine companion, frowning, and then patted Shino's shoulder.

"Thank you for being such good teammates," Hinata added with her hands folded in her lap out of respect and turned her head to look at Shino. "You taught me to respect insects and I would never have known how unique they are otherwise."

Shino was silent at that and as he leaned over to fill the small grave with dirt, a tear streaked down his dirty cheek. Hinata might not have noticed it if it hadn't reflected light. He sucked in a loud, deep breath through his nostrils before raising his gaze to his teammates. His expression was more vulnerable than anything she had seen on his face before and she knew how much he appreciated it.

Hinata reached for Shino's hand and then Kiba's, holding them gently. "We'll be all right," she said as she saw Kurenai running towards them. "I'll make sure of that."