Here is the final chapter of this story. I'm honestly fucking tired and have nothing remotely interesting to say, so on that note, please read and review. Hope you like it. If not, then humor me and say that you did :3

Game of Death

Chapter 8

Madara smirked with satisfaction as his eyes wandered back up to the screen. Less than ten minutes remained on the timer, but there was only one student's name without an 'X'.

"Uzumaki Naruto," he mused, finding himself rather unsurprised. He'd never met anyone more stubborn than that loud-mouthed blond kid, and the end result of that game had proved it. "Well, it looks as though we have ourselves a winner," Madara spoke calmly into the intercom with a small chuckle. "The following students are no longer taking part of this game. Hidan. Temari. Shikamaru. Hinata. Which leaves us with only one player left. Uzumaki Naruto, please report to the main gate immediately. Do not keep me waiting." He turned the speaker off and leaned back in his seat.

The armored guards had been sent away, as he had no need for them. He could handle that brat himself without their assistance. A handgun was tucked away inside his blazer, which he would use to finish Naruto off once he returned.

"There is only one winner of this game. And that winner is me," the raven-haired man snickered to himself. Too bad he hadn't been able to witness each and every death for his own eyes, but he was content enough with the outcome. He'd never intended to allow a single student walk away from this location alive. It was all just a plan to give them a small glimmer of hope that they just might regain the freedom that he'd stolen away from them. And it had given them motivation to kill each other off that much more quickly. It was quite a shame he hadn't been forced to cause the collars to self-destruct, but shooting at least one of them would give him more gratification in the end. "Hope he gets here soon. I can't wait to congratulate him."

There was a single camera installed directly outside the door that allowed him to view through his computer screen. Madara waited patiently, his excitement growing as he waiting on Naruto's arrival. He didn't know just how far away the little bastard was, but he doubted it would be long. After a few minutes, he could see Naruto slowly approaching the open gate. However, Madara realized that Naruto was carrying someone in his arms. He recognized the indigo-haired girl once Naruto had walked close enough to the camera. Hyuga Hinata.

With a sigh, Madara pressed the button on the intercom just as Naruto stopped right outside of the door. "Put the girl down, Uzumaki-san. Only you are allowed to enter."

"No." Naruto's voice was firm and unwavering. His face was streaked with dried tears, and his clothes were saturated with blood. More blood dripped from Hinata's body and onto the ground. "I refuse."

"As stubborn as always I see. Fine, I suppose I'll give you that much at least." Shaking his head with annoyance, Madara pressed a button that opened the door, and he waited for Naruto to step into the room.

Naruto glowered at him with sheer hatred. "I'll fucking kill you for this! Because of you, all of my friends are dead!"

"They are dead because of their own actions," Madara replied stoically. "All I did was put all the pieces in the right spots. And let's be honest, Uzumaki-san, not all of them were your friends. They were mere pawns."

"You asshole!" Naruto snarled, taking a step forward. "You really don't give a shit about anyone, do you!?"

The older man smirked. "Of course I don't. Why would I give a damn about some smug, little delinquents? The world is better off without the likes of them. And I hope you learned a valuable lesson from all of this."

The blond had to restrain himself from attacking his former headmaster. "How the hell can you say that? Hinata never did anything to deserve this!" He glanced down at her mournfully, then hugged her tighter against him. "None of us did! Not even those students from the other schools. You're just a crazy sadist who's on a damn power trip!"

Madara stared at him carelessly. "I did it to teach you all a lesson. And it appears that you still have much to learn. Now, put that girl down and I will remove the collar from your neck. It will detonate in only a few measly minutes, and I'm sure you don't want to be wearing it when that happens." He would put a bullet in the kid's head the moment he put the girl's body on the floor.

"No, I'm not letting go of Hinata!" Naruto snapped, holding her protectively.

"Stop being so stubborn. Put her down. Now." Madara growled when the teenager refused to budge and moved towards him. The kid was being ridiculous and getting on his nerves as well. "Fine, I'll take her from you myself." With that, he moved to yank the girl from Naruto's arms.

However, just as Madara was about to grab hold of of her, Hinata suddenly turned towards him and pressed the taser up against the side of his neck. Before he even realized it, Madara felt jolts of electricity shoot through his entire body and let out a choked scream. Stunned, he collapsed to the ground and found himself immobile as his body was temporarily rendered useless. The gun clattered out of his blazer and landed a feet away from him. He watched with shock as Naruto carefully laid Hinata down on the floor, whom was holding her other hand against a wound on her side.

She's not dead? Madara gaped at the teenagers, his fingers twitching slightly. But how?

"Surprised? You sure as hell look it," Naruto mused with a faint smirk. "I'm guessing that you can't really talk right now, but I'll save you the trouble of having to ask questions by simply answering them for you. I'm assuming that your computer or whatever told you that Hinata was dead. This entire time, Shikamaru was trying to hack into the system to disable the collars, and he died soon after I killed Hidan. I don't know just how much he was able to to accomplish, but it looks as though he was able to disable at least some of the collars before everything was destroyed in that explosion. Since Hinata was the first girl, hers was probably one of the first to disable, which made it appear as though she was dead since it wasn't working properly in your system anymore."

Madara numbly looked over at the screen, then back over at Naruto. It made sense, as much as he hated to admit it. He'd known about the old, abandoned equipment that had been left in the decaying little cottage, but he'd never imagined that anyone would've been able to get it to work again.

"Hinata was still alive when you announced her name, so we knew that Shikamaru had at least accomplished that much. So instead of me being forced to kill her, or wait for our collars to explode, I decided to bring her here with me. It worked extremely well I must say," Naruto said with a humorless chuckle. "And as you can see, the tables have turned..." Noticing Hinata's labored breathing, he scooped up the gun and pointed it at Madara's head. "I honestly wish I could draw this thing out a little longer, but getting Hinata out of here is more important than getting even with you. So this will have to do." Naruto pulled the trigger and fired a single bullet into Madara's head, shooting him right between the eyes.

Without wasting another moment, Naruto walked over to the desk and found the key that would unlock his collar, watching as Madara shuddered and made sickening noises. The man would be dead soon, but not before he suffered for a short while until he succumbed to his wound. The blond quickly removed his collar, then rushed to Hinata's side and placed her head on his lap. He hurriedly removed her collar as well, worried about how much blood she'd lost and was still losing.

"Hinata, just hang in there. I'm going to get you to a hospital, okay?" Naruto brushed some hair out of her face, his fingers trembling lightly over her soft, pale skin.

"Okay," she murmured softly in response, feeling extremely tired. The taser fell from her hand at the same moment that Madara choked out his last breath, as if signalling them that their hell was finally over.

Naruto removed his blazer and wrapped it around Hinata's petite body, then carefully picked her bridal style. He had to get her to a hospital as soon as possible, but how the hell was he supposed to do that? Hopefully there was a car nearby that Madara had been using that he could take. However, before he do anything else, the door busted open and he was greeted by a rush of familiar faces. Kakashi, Asuma, Kurenai, Gai, and Iruka were all there, as well as several police officers and medics.

The blond gasped in surprise as he gazed at his teachers. "What are you doing here?"

"We knew something wasn't right when none of us were sent on that trip with you," Kakashi explained. "But by the time we realized what was going on, we'd already lost track of where you guys had gone."

"It took us awhile to even find this place," Asuma added.

Kurenai stared at their bloody clothes in horror. "What exactly happened? What on earth did Madara do to you? And where are the others?"

Naruto looked at them gravely, his shoulders slumping. "Everyone else is...gone."

"Gone?" Kakashi gazed at them with disbelief, the other four teachers looking just as shocked.

Hinata nodded in agreement, her expression somber. "It was horrible..."

"Well, let's get you two in an ambulance to take you to the hospital," Iruka told them. "The police are searching the premises for everyone else. Maybe with any luck, there are other survivors."

Naruto and Hinata did not protest his optimism, as he would find out for himself soon enough.

"Come on, let's get you out of here." Guy ushered Naruto outside the confinement room and led him out through a gate that brought them away from the gaming area. Several cruisers and ambulances were parked with their lights flashing, and Naruto carried Hinata into one of the ambulances. He laid her down on a stretcher and watched as the medics hurriedly tried to slow down the bleeding.

"Shit," one of them muttered as he inspected the deep gash in her side.

"Is she going to be okay?" Naruto asked worriedly, then looked at the man who was trying to check him for any wounds. "Never mind me, take care of Hinata! She's the one bleeding and-"

"Naruto-kun," Hinata calmly interjected. "I'll be fine. You need to make sure that you don't have any serious injuries."

The blond sulked. "But-"

"No complaining," Guy cut him off sternly. "Let them do their job." He gazed over at the area where the police had swarmed into a part of the gaming area. How many bodies would they find in there? Not only were his students in there, but he'd heard that teenagers from other schools had been brought to this location as well. He almost didn't want to know the answer.

The ambulance closed its back doors and began to drive away from the scene, blaring its sirens. Naruto scooted closer to Hinata and took hold of her hand, their fingers coated with dried blood. Fourteen of their friends were dead. But they'd miraculously made it with their lives. Still, losing that many of their classmates was beyond devastating, and Naruto leaned down and rested his forehead against Hinata's.

The two medics were almost tempted to tell Naruto to back up a bit, but decided against it as the two teens embraced each other in grief. Hinata cried in Naruto's arms, her tears wetting his shirt as she buried her face in his chest. Naruto did not let out any sobs, but tears slid down his cheeks and he closed his eyes with a sigh.

"What happened in there?" One of the medics asked sympathetically, pressing gauze against Hinata's wound.

Naruto didn't know how to answer that question. How could he explain to them about what they'd gone through? How could he describe the panic when you learn that there is no way to escape? The paranoia of being attacked at any moment? The fear of your certain, unavoidable death? The grief of losing your friends one by one? The anxiety of being forced to kill in order to survive? The faint, unrealistic glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, somebody would come along and free them of their doom?

Noticing Naruto's grim expression, the second medic spoke up. "Well, the important thing is that you made it out alive. Both of you. Whether it be fate or just plain luck, you two weren't meant to die today."

Hinata wiped her eyes, feeling Naruto's lips brushing up against her forehead. "I'm sorry..."

"For what?" The blond asked with confusion.

"For asking you to do that earlier," she murmured tearfully, unable to look up at him.

Naruto chuckled softly. "Don't feel bad about it. I probably would've done the same if I had been in your position. But I promised you that I'd make sure we got out of there alive. And I kept that promise." He leaned down and pressed his lips against hers, ignoring the watching eyes of the medics. "And we'll get through this together, too."

Hinata smiled up at him and nodded slightly in agreement. "It'll be tough...but we have each other."

He kissed her again softly. "I love you, Hinata."

"I love you, too."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The teachers watched with sorrow as bodies were brought out of the gaming area. One by one, the corpses of high school students were taken out and put inside of body bags. Kurenai had to look away from the grisly sight, fearing that she'd simultaneously throw up and have a panic attack. Iruka and Guy, who had rejoined them, also stood by and witnessed their deceased students being carried out, as well as the teenagers from the other schools.

Chouji. Sai. Matsuri. Kiba. Gaara. Tenten. Neji. Sasuke. Sakura. Shion. Lee. Ino. Shikamaru and Temari's bodies had been buried underneath the shack after it had been blown up, their skin partially charred from the explosion. Fourteen of their students had been lost that day.

"It's too bad that Madara is dead," Guy muttered, tears running down his face as he looked away from the accumulation of body bags. "He deserved worse than what he got."

"That may be true, but at least it's all over. He can't do this to anyone ever again," Kakashi replied somberly.

Asuma growled, both furious and grief-stricken as he pulled Kurenai into a comforting hug. "Still, I would've liked to stick one of those collars on him and blow it up myself. Seriously, what the hell was wrong with him? What drove him to do this?"

"Who knows? We'll probably never find out the truth, but it might be better this way. Let us hope that nothing like this ever happens again," Iruka murmured as he bitterly wiped his eyes.

The five teachers waited until all twenty-three of the students' bodies had been loaded up into the ambulances. Madara's had been properly bagged up as well, though Asuma felt as though they should've just left him there to rot.

Whether Madara had truly felt as though his methods would actually work, or if he'd just completely lost the last thread of his sanity would remain a mystery. Maybe he had been convinced that it would've taught a cruel lesson to delinquent teenagers and install fear into them once again to keep them in line. Or perhaps he had just lost all care and compassion and simply wanted the high schoolers to die. If he'd been successful, then others may have wound up with the same fate of being pitted against one another for another game of death. Either way, Naruto and Hinata had been fortunate enough to escape with their lives. If they could get through a situation like that, then they could make it through anything. Especially since they had each other.

Ending was kinda corny/lame, but I don't care. Now that I'm done with this story, I can move forward in life by starting another story. Probably take a week off or so before I get back to writing, since I'm burnt-out from work and just can't think properly. Hope you liked this story and there will be more to come. Upcoming stories include that HidaHinasequel I've been talking about for months, as well as another NaruHina. Details to appear on my profile in the somewhat-not-so-distant future.