"Got you, girl. Be good, don't resist, and nobody needs to get hurt."
Hinata heard from one of the four Kumo ninjas surrounding her from all sides, and couldn't help but feel her lips twitch in amusement. What kind of kidnapper tells their victim that?
Seriously, these people...
Halfway through her and her friends' run to the Tower, Hinata suddenly noticed six Kumo ninjas gaining on them. She recognized them as some of the Jonin accompanying Kumo genin teams and instantly wondered how the hell they managed to sneak into the Forest.
But she didn't have much time to think about that and had to act. She gave her teammates and Team Seven some quick excuse before dashing away from them, recognizing that she was the target of the Kumo ninjas.
Fighting the six of them alone was one thing, but fighting them while also needing to protect five kids was quite another thing entirely. She was confident she could come on top even against six Jonin as long as they were not the Elite of their village.
Considering she did not see anybody famous in her pursuit team and had memorized the Bingo Book, she doubted that was the case.
She did have faith in her teammates and Team Seven. When two Jonin split from the main group and went after her friends, Hinata wasn't overly panicked. She did worry. But she knew her friends were capable enough to handle them.
That was, however, in a fight where they had a numerical advantage, fighting five versus two. If she had faced the Kumo Jonin with her teammates, it would have been six versus six. Somebody from her friends would definitely get at least hurt, if not outright killed, in all the ensuing chaos.
So, Hinata decided that handling the Jonin on her own was for the best.
Which led her to this situation. She didn't want to leave too far away from her team. She was barely seven hundred meters away from them right now, and with her Byakugan, she could still keep an eye on their battle.
Unfortunately, wanting to stay with them within the visual range of her Byakugan meant she could not really run away from her pursuers.
"You are quite dumb, aren't you?" Hinata gave the man who spoke an incredulous look. "Are you really a Jonin?"
She understood that the man was simply trying to get her to come with them willingly. She reckoned not having to fight and subdue her would have made their mission much easier. It was a sensible move.
Just as trying to make her opponent angry was a sensible move on her part. That said, she didn't ask only for fun. This whole thing was very sketchy.
Surely, the Raikage was not stupid enough to think he could do this kind of thing without any consequences. This whole thing made no sense.
The previous attempt to kidnap her was, loath as she was to say it, smart. It was during an important diplomatic event between Konoha and Kumo. And it was planned well.
It almost succeeded, too.
But this? This was an event between more or less all major and minor villages. If it became known that the Raikage had his Jonin ninja interfere and try to stage a kidnapping during the Chunin Exams, his village would be done and dusted on the diplomatic front for several years to come.
No matter how she looked at it, Hinata had to admit that the risks were not worth the reward, so she wondered what was going on.
"Look, girl." The ninja started to sound exasperated. "You are surrounded and have nowhere to run. We will also have your friends either captured or killed in a few minutes. Come with us willingly, and we might spare them."
Hearing him, Hinata hummed.
Oh, well. It's not as if this most recent stupidity of Kumo mattered right now.
She unsealed her teddy bear, sending the four ninjas into alert, only for them to feel foolish when they saw her hugging the plush toy. Hinata then proceeded to sit cross-legged on the grass, with Mr. Doom in her lap.
"Hurt me?" She tilted her head with a gentle smile as she slowly spoke. "I think you are misunderstanding something, gentlemen. I am not trapped here with you. You are trapped here with Mr. Doom."
She said, and her hands let go of the teddy bear.
Yet, nothing happened as she let her words hang in the air for a few seconds, giving her opponents the time to properly register what was said.
The Kumo Jonin exchanged a few glances before the lead ninja, the one who spoke to Hinata, sighed, "Hard way it is, then." He wryly smiled and was about to attack Hinata with the intention of knocking her out.
Well, he had at least decided to be gentle about it.
Sadly for him, he put his guard down, thinking that she was just an arrogant, sheltered genin who hadn't seen what's out there in the world just yet.
So, when the teddy bear suddenly appeared in front of his face, about to deliver a spinning kick to his nose, the Kumo ninja could only watch in mute astonishment, his eyes slightly widening, for the split second before the plushy limb smashed into his head with a great momentum... cracking it like a grape and showering the ground in chunks of his brain, bone fragments, and blood as the chakra metal threads within the plushy toy made it much harder than even the best quality steel.
Not expecting the surprise attack by a plush toy, the three remaining Jonin froze as the corpse of their comrade fell lifelessly to the ground.
But Hinata's loud, "Go Mr. Doom! Woooo!" instantly woke them up, and Hinata suddenly found an onslaught of elemental attacks heading her way.
Smiling to herself, she had decided how to deal with these people.
A flicker of lightning chakra zapped around Mr. Doom for a moment before he was enveloped in the stuff, electrically-charged chakra protectively coiling around him like an armor.
With a loud 'bzzt' noise, Mr. Doom disappeared from his place... and all the elemental attacks were suddenly punched through, seemingly at the same time as he appeared, punched, and disappeared again at barely traceable speeds, making him look as if he was teleporting.
The three Kumo Jonin saw it happen and paled, unable to believe what they were seeing.
"Lightning Chakra Armor." One of them muttered in fright, cold grip of panic creeping into his voice. They couldn't fight that! They could not even rea-
Hinata's smile became sharp.
In a surge of lightning, Mr. Doom disappeared again.
And the fight was over.
...
"Hinata-chan! We are here to save you!" Naruto loudly shouted as he fiercely flew out of the tree line with wild abandon, only to stop in his tracks with a slack jaw when he saw the pieces of broken bodies of four Kumo ninjas on the ground, full of electrical burns and other physical damage.
Hinata was happily sitting on the grass in the middle of all that carnage, cheerfully humming a tune while looking Mr. Doom over.
Blinking, mostly for a show, Hinata turned her face toward Naruto with visible amusement shown in her expression, and raised her eyebrow at the boy, causing him to flush in embarrassment.
"Idiot! Why do you have to scream while we are trying to ambush people!?" Sakura landed behind Naruto and yelled out, furiously punching the back of his head, making him face-plant the ground.
Chuckling, Hinata turned her attention back to Mr. Doom, and her good mood slightly soured.
'Haa~.' She inwardly sighed when she saw the damage her Lightning Chakra Armor variant wreaked upon the plushie's insides. 'I am still not good enough, heh?'
There was no snowball chance in hell she could don it on her body when only a short few minutes of usage would demolish her organs in a similar manner it destroyed a lot of Mr. Doom's insides.
Then again, this was a great way to practice the technique. There was no risk of bodily harm, and because Mr. Doom was connected to her only through the chakra strings, it took much more effort to prevent the self-inflicted damage from the Lightning Chakra Armor.
Hinata firmly nodded to herself. Once she mastered this without damaging Mr. Doom, it was going to be much easier to use the technique with her body.
While Hinata was pondering that, Kiba, Shino, and Sasuke awkwardly exited a nearby bush after seeing that there was no one left to ambush.
Sasuke walked toward Hinata and asked. "Are you fine?"
Hinata nodded, "Yeah, they were not particularly impressive." She idly commented, not noticing how Sasuke's heart felt as if hit by several arrows at that admission.
Here, he and his team struggled against two people while Hinata alone handled four of them.
Rage abruptly pulsed through his body, only for him to notice Hinata's carefree smile, and suddenly, the ugly feeling was gone as quickly as it appeared, while Sasuke was left standing there, feeling at a loss.
"Yeah!" Naruto exclaimed, not one to be discouraged. "We dealt with our opponents, too!"
Kiba scoffed. "One of the two managed to escape, though." He told Hinata.
"Alright. That's fine. We should continue on our way, then. The sooner we reach the Tower, the safer we will be." Hinata, not paying attention to Sasuke, stood up from the ground and patted her legs to get rid of any grass that stuck to them.
With that, they were again on their way.
Thirty seconds after Hinata and her friends left the place, another Hinata, a clone, suddenly emerged from the ground and looked toward the north, watching the fleeing last remaining Kumo Jonin, the man who fought with Team Seven. He was already one and a half kilometers away. Hinata's lips pressed into a thin line.
With a sigh, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a simple coin, putting it into a flicking position in her fingers before she took aim.
"Forgive me, but I can't have you return to Kumo." Hinata murmured in an apologetic tone as lightning surged out of her hand for the next twenty seconds, building up all the while she was slightly moving her hand, correcting her aim.
Suddenly, the surge of lightning chakra stopped, and the eyes of Hinata's clone gleamed.
'Railgun!'
She flicked the coin.
...
Back in the Tower, Ino was with her team in their assigned room. Shikamaru was on the bed, as usual. Choji was eating, as usual. And Ino had just come out of the shower, feeling a bit lonely.
She usually had her showers with Ren, and that quickly led to some juicy hanky-panky. She was missing it. It just wasn't the same without Ren there with her.
She tried to push these feelings away by spending the last hour brushing her hair, and she was proud to say she attained perfection.
Clad in her pink bathrobe, Ino opened the window and stretched her arms with a contented sigh that quickly transformed into a smile as the pleasant rays of the sunshine landed on her face.
"What a nice day we are havin-"
Suddenly, a deafening roar swept through the Forest of Death as a blindingly fast, massive blue flash of lightning chakra beam tore through the Forest right in front of Ino's eyes, decimating everything in its path while leaving an empty gash through the forest, where it burned away all it passed through.
But the flash was over almost as fast as it appeared, only for the shockwave to hit a split second later.
Ino was almost blown away. She only barely managed to brace herself and stick her feet to the ground with her chakra as she lowered her center of gravity, resisting the force trying to send her flying with gritted teeth. Her robes wildly flapped on her body under the frenzied wind, and her hair fared no better, but she held her ground while ducking her head and covering her face with her forearm.
Choji was not so lucky. He didn't expect it, and so the shockwave slammed into his body, lifting him from the bed and ramming him harshly into the wall, where his body was held until the pressure passed.
Shikamaru hunkered down on the bed after the loud, rude awakening, holding on for dear life as the shockwave washed over him.
The unopened windows loudly rattled, and for a moment, Ino worried they would break, but the reinforced glass they were made from held.
A moment later, the shockwaves finally ceased alongside the deafening booming sound, and Ino could let out a relieved breath as she looked outside the window, seeing that quite a few trees that were previously in the distance were now simply gone.
'What the hell is the bitch doing over there?' Ino idly wondered with an unamused deadpan, blowing a bit of air from her mouth to get some strands of her now utterly messed up hair from her face as she straightened.
That, however, caused her bathrobe to slide down her right shoulder, and she had to scramble to catch it, because it felt so loose, Ino was afraid it was going to slide off her body altogether.
She quickly fastened the bathrobe around her body and turned around, only to freeze when she noticed that their room was an absolute mess. Especially her things, because she was the only one who put in the effort to unpack. Her clothes and necessities were on the bed, neatly folded on the bed before the mini-hurricanes swept through their room.
Now, they were all over the place, wrinkled and creased, and... Ino suddenly blushed as she saw Choji awkwardly staring up at the fan where quite risque, red panties hung on one blade.
Disappearing in a body flicker, Ino quickly grabbed the panties and stuffed them back into her wrist seal, her cheeks deep red as she huffed and turned her back to her two gaping teammates.
'Hinata.' Ino closed her eyes. 'I am going to make you suffer for this. I don't know how, but I will. Just you wait.'