Red Is A Pretty Colour

123

Hiko's pov

The next morning we moved on to the next village. Again there were no results and we began looking for the next lead. We had stopped to get some sleep before we continued the mission.

"Hinata!" We heard Naruto scream from the river not far from our camp.

Shikamaru and I both shot to our feet, ready to react to whatever had just happened.

"You wake up Sakura and Sai and catch up, I'll go on ahead." I said.

"Okay, be careful you troublesome woman." Shikamaru said.

I took off in the direction of the scream and quickly saw the issue. Toneri was flying away with Hinata and Naruto was chasing after her.

I joined the chase, throwing explosive tag covered kunai at the platform he was escaping on. I activated the tags and three explosions went off one after the other. The explosives didn't do anything and I stopped, concentrating on creating chakra chains to try and grab Hinata from the platform.

As soon as the chains got close to them Toneri used some kind of jutsu that caused the the chains to explode. I fell to my knees panting, completely exhausted because of the amount of my chakra Toneri destroyed. Multiple of Sai's birds suddenly swooped by, one of them coming coming down beside me to help me up onto it.

"Are you okay?" Shikamaru asked in concern as his bird began circling around the platform with Hinata and Toneri on it.

"I'm fine, just exhausted." I replied, leaning back into Shikamaru's chest, resting my head on his shoulder.

Shikamaru, Sakura and Sai continued using paper bombs to attempt to destroy the platform while Naruto fought with Toneri. The explosions still did nothing and Toneri continued to escape.

Time skip

Naruto ended up getting hurt pretty badly and Hinata was taken by Toneri. A few days had passed since then and we were still waiting for Naruto to wake up. I was sitting with Sakura who was exhausted from keeping Naruto alive, just keeping her company while Sai and Shikamaru were out looking for Hinata.

"Sakura!" Naruto called, drawing our attention to him and Shikamaru.

"Naruto?" Sakura asked groggily.

"Sakura, I'm so sorry." Naruto said ashe approached us.

"You better be." I said, crossing my arms.

"Will you depend on Sakura to heal your body and to also heal your heart?" Sai asked as he joined us too.

"Well, can you do it Sai?" Shikamaru shot back.

"Fair point." Sai said and I laughed.

"Oh come on Sai, you could be my brother in law." I joked.

"No thank you." Sai said before hurrying off.

Shikamaru and I laughed before Shikamaru left as well.

"So what's this about healing your heart?" I asked.

"I told Hinata I loved her and then she left." Naruto replied, looking down at his hands folded in his lap.

"I see. I never thought you'd confess your love first. It seems so long ago now but, do you remember when you said you loved me? I wonder, did you only say that because I loved Sasuke?" Sakura said. "You didn't want to lose to him. But it's real this time, Isn't it Hinata is a great person. Honestly she's almost too good for you."

"Almost? She's definitely too good for him." I said.

"Yeah but, it's over now. Hinata left me, she went off to be with Toneri." Naruto said solemnly and I shook my head, he really was an idiot.

"You are an idiot. It's obvious she had a reason she just couldn't reveal to you." Sakura said. "When a girl falls in love and it'strue love, her feelings don't change that easily. Honestly they can't change. I understand just how she feels."

"You and Hinata have always been chasing after the men you love. I'm kind of jealous, you've always known where your heart was." I said.

"You got what we always dreamed of, you were the one with the man chasing after her. Shikamaru has loved you as long as i've loved Sasuke." Sakura said.

I felt my face heat up and I turned away from her.

"I know." I said softly. "I'm going to go and see what the boys are up to. You have fun with his moping."