As Shino and Hinata emerged from the maze, its walls gave a low rumble and collapsed, leaving nothing but a few low berms of earth, just a few inches high. Even those began slowly shrinking as the displaced earth and stone slowly melted back into the ground they'd been summoned from.

"Hinata-chan, Shino-kun, you're all right!" Naruto called, bouncing down from the tree he'd been standing in. Dozens of clones pushed in close, hugging both of the blond's teammates as their Prime forced his way through the crowd. Before he could get there, Shino swept Hinata up in a hug of pure relief. The girl returned it in surprise until he finally, reluctantly, set her back on her feet as Naruto finally reached them.

"Naruto-kun, you're alive!" Hinata said, her voice harsh and raspy. She threw herself into Naruto's arms, hugging him so hard the breath whooshed out of him. "I thought Sachi killed you!"

"Oh...ah, heh," Naruto said, rubbing the back of his head and looking like he wasn't sure what to do with his arms.

Hinata leaned back, glaring at him. "Don't you ever do that again, Naruto-kun!" she said, poking him fiercely in the nose to emphasize her point. "I'm just glad it wasn't you!"

Naruto smiled weakly. "Yeah...about that," he said. "It ah...it actually, well, was me."

"What?!" Hinata and Shino demanded at once.

"Well, I finally figured out that contingent kawarimi trick," Naruto said. "I mean...sort of? I can't actually do the manipulation the way sensei showed us. If I do it the way she taught us, with all the focusing, then I can set it up, but I can't keep it stable. It always bursts after five or ten seconds. I can just brute-force it, though; if I burn enough chakra I can throw one together on the fly. It'll only last for a couple of seconds, but that's enough time to build another one, and so on. It's a little distracting, but I can make it work. So, yeah, Sachi got me good, but I had a contingent kawarimi set up and it switched me with one of my clones just as she stuck me."

"That's...," Hinata said. The thought trailed off.

"So, Shino-kun!" Naruto said quickly. "I found you, I see!"

Hinata looked at Shino in confusion, clearly unsure what Naruto meant. Shino hooked his thumb over his shoulder at the sea of blonds that surrounded them. "Them. Some of the ones that Naruto-san made while you were jumping through the sky came and found me, told me what was going on. Others had stationed themselves along a trail leading to you so that I knew where to go."

"I'm glad you did," she said. "This would not have gone nearly as well without you."

"I'm really glad you're okay, Shino-kun," Naruto-Prime said, finally reaching them. "Where's Anko-sensei? I sent some of me to find her too. Wasn't she with you?"

Shino nodded. "She was, but she sent me on ahead. I believe she—"

"—figured the three of you could handle it on your own," the woman in question said, kawarimiing in beside them. "Right now, this was a spat between some rambunctious genin, and the Sound kids bit off more than they could chew—plus, you were fighting in self-defense. If I had gotten involved, it would have been a foreign jonin putting the beatdown on some local genin, and he"—she gestured to the woods behind them—"might have disapproved."

Orochimaru stepped forward out of the woods a dozen yards away and sauntered towards them, his lips crooked in a tiny, tiny, and very smug smile.

Hinata stared at him in shock. "How...I didn't...where...how?!" she croaked.

"Hm?" Orochimaru said calmly.

"I brought him along to make sure that there weren't any repercussions once you finished smacking those kids around," Anko explained.

"Yes, it wouldn't have done for people to have learned that you'd killed ninja from Sound," Orochimaru said with heavy irony. "Since I watched it happen, however, I can confidently state that it was a fair, albeit rather one-sided, battle that was instigated by the foolish genin of Sound and that you were merely defending yourselves."

"How did you...?" Hinata asked, still dumbfounded.

"In any case," Orochimaru said, ignoring the young girl's shocked questioning. "I will spread the word among my ANBU that you have committed no crime and are not to be arrested or otherwise bothered. I will also personally inform the parents and sensei of the children in question that they died because of their own stupidity."

"Please don't, Orochimaru-sama," Hinata croaked. "Losing their children will be hard enough, don't allow them to suffer that shame as well."

Orochimaru raised an eyebrow disapprovingly. "Are you telling me how to manage my village?" he asked, his voice soft and completely neutral. The utter absence of killing intent was far more terrifying than its presence would have been; no ordinary ninja could seem so totally threatening while completely masking their intent.

Anko paled. "I think she just meant that—" She stopped talking instantly when Orochimaru snapped his fingers and pointed at her. Never once did the legendary ninja look away from Hinata's eyes.

"N-n-n-no, O-o-Orochimaru-s-sama," Hinata said. "I just m-m-m-meant than it s-seemed h-harsher than was n-n-necessary. P-p-please, don't."

The silence hung in the air as even the wind seemed to hold its breath.

"Very well," Orochimaru said finally. "We shall bargain, child of the Hyuuga. I have long wished to study the capabilities of the Byakugan. You will spend a day in my laboratory, giving your full cooperation to my experiments, and I shall tell the parents of those ridiculously stupid children, as well as all their comrades and teachers, that they died a heroic death on a mission of vital importance to the village. And that, despite their sacrifice, they were successful in this nonexistent yet critical mission. I will even arrange for their names to be added to the Wall of Honor."

"No way are you going to experiment on—" Anko began hotly.

Orochimaru jabbed a finger into a nerve complex in Anko's shoulder, cutting her words off in a gasp of pain. "Your mouth is moving, little bird," he said calmly. "You should look to that." He studied her for a moment, waiting calmly as she glared at him while clutching her numb arm; despite her obvious fury, she didn't speak. After several seconds he nodded, his point made. "Don't worry, the experiments will be neither invasive nor overly painful."

He looked back at Hinata. "I shall expect you at my quarters at six tomorrow morning. Eat breakfast; it will be a long day."

He turned to look over the battlefield, eyeing the ruined bodies of the dead genin for a moment with his lips pursed thoughtfully. "I see that I shall need to improve the training of our next generation," he said. He flicked a glance towards Hinata. "Also, may I suggest that the young lady get to a medic? Her throat must be quite sore." He shunshined away.

Anko frowned at the last sentence, then looked around more carefully, studying the bodies of the three Sound genin that lay revealed by the slowly subsiding walls of the maze. Her gaze lingered on the body of Sachi, whose head and throat were burnt to charcoal.

She turned back to her student, one eyebrow raised threateningly. "Something you want to tell me, young lady?" she asked.

"Eep!" Hinata said, before breaking down into a fit of coughing.

In the privacy of his own mind, Shino growled to himself. He, Naruto, and Anko were going to be sitting here for a while before the medics finished healing Hinata's damaged throat—fortunately the girl had used a far-less-than-full-strength version of the Grand Fireball or the blowback would have killed her as well as her victim. Which, come to think of it, was exactly the right word. The group of kikai that he had assigned to watch over Hinata during the battle had reported on the details of her fight, and they were shocking. Sachi had been utterly helpless; Hinata hadn't killed her in battle, she had crippled her and then executed her. It was unusually ruthless for the shy and innocent girl that Shino was familiar with.

He dragged his wandering thoughts back on track. When they all seated themselves, Naruto had settled next to him; Shino didn't like having the other genin so close, but there was nothing to be done about it. More importantly, this was a good time to talk; he wasn't thrilled about the idea, but not helping Naruto improve his effectiveness would be stupid and irrational, as it would only serve to weaken the team.

"Naruto-san," he said. "I noticed that the walls collapsed at the end of the battle. Was that a conscious decision?"

"Um, sort of?" Naruto said, rubbing the back of his head. "It requires a tiny bit of chakra to keep the walls up. Not enough to matter, but when I stopped paying it, they collapsed."

Shino nodded thoughtfully. "I see. When you say 'tiny bit', is this tiny in terms of your inhuman capacity, or in terms that a normal human could sustain?" Inwardly, he winced a little. That had come out more spiteful than he'd intended. He sighed to himself. As painful as it was to admit, he was letting his jealousy interfere with his judgement. He needed to get control of himself.

"I'm...not really sure?" Naruto said hesitantly. "I mean, it's not like I've ever had anyone else's chakra capacity, so I don't really know. It feels really, really minor to me, though."

"I see," Shino said. "How quickly could you raise the walls?"

Naruto thought about it. "Pretty much as fast as I feel like, at this point," he said. "I've practiced the technique enough that I can do it without seals or words if I focus. Beyond that, it's just a question of using enough chakra. Pretty sure that if I dump enough chakra into it, I could raise them as fast as a sword stroke."

Shino nodded. "And you can control their position and dimensions, yes?" he said.

"Yeah, within limits," Naruto said. "They're held together with chakra, and it requires more chakra to sustain a form that isn't balanced or couldn't normally stand up on its own. I can do it, but it gets hard. Why?"

"Shino," Anko said quietly, "if you're discussing battle techniques, do it elsewhere."

Shino nodded in embarrassment. "Yes, sensei," he said. He'd been keeping his voice down, but it was possible that there could be a ninja in the area with unusual abilities that allowed them to hear the conversation.

"You two should take this chance to record the details of today's training," Anko said aloud. "I'll expect not just a record of the details, but also a full post-battle analysis, done in proper format."

The two genin groaned but pulled out their journals as Anko produced her own.

Anko wasn't writing, just doodling. With a start, Shino realized that the doodles started off as the kanji of Konoha battlecode, before extra lines were added that turned them into pandas, pagodas, or various abstract shapes.

Genin report allies, said the first set of symbols.

Allies secure enemy underground, Shino wrote. So far undetected.

Anko snorted softly and sketched a quick line that, if you knew what you were looking at, was a raised eyebrow.

Believe allies so far undetected, Shino wrote, chastised.

Time of latest report query.

Last night. Seek report query, Shino wrote.

At discretion. Avoid detection.

A single kikai crawled out of Shino's pant leg and into the baseboards, off to communicate with the group of kikai that he'd left behind in the hidden underground laboratory the first time they'd been in this hospital, when Naruto was receiving his life-saving surgery. Shino was very careful to pay no attention to the creature as it departed.

"Shino, walk with me," Anko said. "Naruto, keep practicing the earth jutsu. You need to be able to elevate the walls at speed even while in close combat. Hinata, keep practicing with the chakra ribbon. Remember, you're protecting a teammate."

"Yes, sensei!" Naruto shouted. Two of his clones came at him; he plunged into a fast taijutsu battle with them, all the while causing walls to shoot out of the ground at random points around the field.

"Yes, sensei," Hinata said quietly, flicking the ribbon out to catch the fist-sized rock that one of Naruto's clones had just thrown at the nearest training post.

"Go, Hinata-chan! Go, Hinata-chan!" chanted four more Narutos, pumping their fists and swaying from their position on the sidelines. "You rock!"

"Yeah!" the rock-throwing Naruto shouted. "You rule, Hinata-chan!"

"Oy! That's enough out of you!" Anko snapped, turning back. "You're supposed to be trying to hit the post, not cheer Hinata on! I expect you to do your best!"

"Aw, but sensei...!" the Naruto whined.

Anko looked thunderous. "Really?" she said, hands on hips. "I thought you cared about her. Why are you trying to get her killed?"

The Naruto clone paled. All of the other Narutos did as well; they all stopped what they were doing to look at their teacher in horror.

"Sensei, I didn't—"

"—make her work as hard as possible?" Anko said, interrupting. "That was obvious. You're cheating her out of good training time by making it easier than it needs to be. You should be throwing rocks continuously, and as fast as you can. If you don't, she won't improve as quickly as she can. You want her dead in her next fight, you just keep slacking off."

The Narutos all gulped; immediately, every clone snatched up whatever was to hand—rocks, kunai, even clumps of dirt—and sent it hurtling at the training post. Hinata yelped and started flicking the chakra ribbon back and forth, slapping projectiles out of the air as fast as she could manage.

Anko watched for a moment in satisfaction, then turned and walked off, Shino trailing in her wake.

Anko led him some distance back into the trees until they were out of both normal sight and Hinata's Byakugan range from the training area. She found a place where, long ago, a large tree had fallen over and taken down several smaller ones in its wake. She brushed off one of the fallen trunks and sat down crosslegged, gesturing for Shino to sit opposite her. The young Aburame sat down, not saying a word.

"You've got a problem, kid," Anko said without preamble. "You need to do something about this crush before it gets even further out of hand."

Shino's forced his breathing to remain even as his heart pounded in his chest. "Sensei, I'm not sure what you mean...?" he said.

She looked at him as though he were too stupid to come out of the rain. "Please," she said in disgust. "Don't even try. You're crushing on Hinata so hard it's disgusting. I didn't say anything when it started, but now you're letting it affect your relationship with Naruto, and that's where I draw the line. You mess with the working on this team, I will crush you, capiche?" She glared at him.

Despite his best efforts, Shino gulped. "Yes, sensei," he said.

She eyed him for a moment longer, then relaxed. "Good," she said. "Now, with all the threats properly delivered, how can I help you with this?"

"Sensei?" Shino asked, taken utterly aback by the question.

Anko laughed. "Kid, you're hardly the first thirteen-year-old boy to have a horrible crush and trouble dealing with it," she said in amusement. "So, what do you want? Advice on how tell Hinata about your feelings, see if you can start something with her? Suggestions for ways to slip laxatives into Naruto's food without being caught?"

"Ah..." Shino trailed off, uncertain of where he'd intended to go with that thought. He gathered himself up and tried again. "Putting laxatives in Naruto-san's food, while amusing, would be childish and counter to the interests of the team maintaining an optimal readiness state."

Anko shook her head. "'Maintaining an optimal readiness state'?" she said. "Kid, you really need to relax. You talk like a mission report." She picked a bit of moss off the bole of the tree they both perched on and broke it idly between her fingers. "Don't think of it as counter to team readiness," she said with a smile. "Think of it as implementing a direct order from your sensei to participate in readiness testing. Your mission, young genin, is to cause Naruto some mild but embarrassing accident within the next twenty-four hours."

Shino studied her carefully, looking for signs of mockery. "You are ordering me to...prank Naruto-san?" he asked disbelievingly.

"Yep," she said, smiling. "Your choice on how mean to make it. If you need a distraction, let me know, although I won't abuse my authority for the purpose."

"Oh," Shino said. He thought about it for a moment, then laughed. "I will see what I can do, sensei."

"Good," she said. "Now, back to the original topic: how to deal with this crush. I'm guessing that Naruto figured it out?"

"Yes, he did," Shino admitted. "How did you know?"

She sighed. "Ninja much? Infilitration expert, genjutsu mistress, highly trained at noticing microexpressions and reading body language? Any of this ringing a bell?"

"Oh," Shino said, feeling embarrassed.

"Talk to me, kid," she said. "It's what I'm here for. I'll keep your secrets, I promise."

"I...find that Hinata-chan is very...ah, special to me," Shino said, stumbling over the words and looking away from his teacher in embarrassment. He pulled out a kunai and poked it into the tree trunk, idly prying off bits of the bark to give himself an excuse not to meet his teacher's eyes.

"Why?" Anko asked.

"What?" Shino said, looking up at her in surprise.

"Why is she special to you?" Anko repeated. "What about her is so appealing?"

"She is beautiful, and strong, and nice," Shino said. "She is modest, and kind to everyone around her, even those who are unkind to her." His eyes darkened at the thought. "Her loyalty to her family, despite the horrible way they have treated her, is..." He wound down, clearly struggling to find the words to express his thought.

"Shino, is it possible that you have a bit of a white-knight complex?" Anko asked.

"What?" he asked in confusion.

"A white-knight complex," she said. "Part of your self-image is that you are a good person who helps and protects others. You see that Hinata is suffering and want to protect her; the idea of of being the strong man who can offer that protection, that comfort, feels good, and that feeling gets conflated with your actual feelings for her."

"No!" Shino said. "That's ridiculous!"

She nodded. "Okay, just checking. Is it possible that you have an obsessive-compulsive desire to paint pictures of her, and that desire is being conflated with your actual feelings for her?"

"What?" he said, staring at her in irritated confusion. "Where would you get that idea? I have no particular desire to paint pictures of anything."

She shrugged. "It was just a thought. Next question: why were you angry at the first suggestion, but only confused at the second?"

Shino's mouth clopped audibly shut.

Anko considered him sympathetically. "Look, Shino," she said. "You've got a tough row to hoe here. Regardless of where the feelings come from, you have them. Honestly, I think you and Hinata would make a pretty good couple. She would help calm you down and loosen you up, and you would give her an island of stability that she could depend on." She raised a hand to stop the hope blossoming on Shino's face. "Before you say anything, I think she and Naruto would also be a good couple. His constant cheerleading is good for her self-image, and her unconditional approval is good for his. There's issues there—his rocky self-image means that he'll be looking for ways to earn her approval, so he'll show off more and act even wilder in order to impress her. Overall, though, they'll be good for each other."

Shino said nothing, too busy trying to process the emotions that were churning inside him.

"Let's say you decided you wanted a relationship with Hinata and were going to actively pursue it," Anko said. "What would your biggest obstacle be?"

Shino's mouth worked as though he'd eaten something bitter. "She's in love with Naruto-san," he said.

"Right," Anko said. "How would you deal with that?"

"What do you mean?" Shino said. "How could I deal with that? I can't magically make her feelings for him go away."

She shrugged. "Really? C'mon, kid, you're a ninja, you've had seduction and infiltration training. Let's make this an exercise: two genin here in Sound—call them Haruka and Natsuo—are in a relationship. They're both thirteen years old. You need to convince Haruka that she's in love with you in order to recruit her as an intelligence asset, but she's in love with Natsuo. What do you do?"

Shino recoiled. "I'm not going to use infiltration techniques on Hinata-chan!" he said. "That's disgusting!"

"Okay, so you aren't willing to break them up or assassinate Naruto," Anko said. "Is that what you're saying?"

"...Yes," Shino finally said. He sighed. "I really have no chance, do I?"

Anko shrugged and put a hand on his shoulder comfortingly. "It's not a good place to be," she said. "Right now, when they've just started their relationship, and there's all this NRE flying around? You're very unlikely to be able to insert yourself at this point. I can think of a few things you could do, but I doubt you'll like any of them. Do you want to hear them?"

"Yes, please," he said.

She eyed him carefully. "You sure?" she asked. "Like I said, I don't think any of these suggestions are going to make you happy."

Shino sighed. "'It is better to know the unpleasant truth than to live with the comforting falsehood'," he quoted, sounding as though he was trying to convince himself.

Anko nodded. "Well, here's the way I see it," she said, ticking off her left index finger. "You could decide that you have no chance and work on getting over these feelings so you can be around your teammates without any of you suffering. Difficult, unpleasant, but possible." She ticked her second finger. "You can go to her and confess your feelings, ask her to leave Naruto and be with you. It would cause a lot of drama and I'd say there's essentially zero chance of it working." A third finger joined the first two. "You could wait. Most first relationships don't last. In a few months or a year, the two of them will probably break up, at which point you could make your move. Concentrate on being Hinata's friend now; if the two of them break up, you're in a great position to start something with her, and if they don't then you get the satisfaction of being there for her as a friend. Unpleasant, painful, but workable."

She considered him for a moment before raising her pinky finger to be with the others. "Final option: you could approach them both and see if the three of you could work as a triad. On the one hand, your personalities would mesh quite well—your stability and Naruto's wildness would balance each other, Hinata would make an excellent peacemaker to keep things stable, and all three of you could support each other in overcoming your emotional issues.

"On the other hand," she continued. "None of you have had a romantic relationship before and you're all teenagers, with the emotional maturity and hormones of teenagers. The attendant lack of experience would make it hard to get through the difficulties that come with any relationship, much less a poly relationship. If you did make it work, I think all of you would end up very happy and stronger for it, but honestly I give you less than even odds of making it work."

Shino said nothing, his brain frozen at the sheer audacity of the suggestion. Anko studied him for a long moment, then rose smoothly to her feet and hopped off the log. "I think I've blown your mind enough for one day," she said. "It's a lot to think about; chew on it and come to me when you're ready to talk more about it. In the meantime, let's get back to training."

Early the next morning, a healed and nervous-looking Hinata was admitted to Orochimaru's office.

Orochimaru glanced at the clock on his wall. "Excellent, you're on time," he said. "I respect punctuality. Follow me."

He led her out a door on the wall opposite the one she'd come in, through a few twists and turns, to a large, high-ceilinged room; unlike most interior rooms, this one had walls made of thick wood instead of the normal paper. Those walls were covered in dramatic landscape murals, there were abstract sculptures affixed to the walls, and there was a small shrine against the front wall, but the room was otherwise empty.

Hinata looked around in puzzlement. "I thought we were going to a laboratory?" she said.

"This is a laboratory," Orochimaru said. "Stand in the middle of the room."

Nervously, she took up the indicated position.

"Don't get hit," Orochimaru said calmly. A dozen clones of him appeared around the room, launching a barrage of blunted training kunai at her from all angles. The original Orochimaru leaned calmly back against the door, arms folded across his chest as he watched the young Hyuuga scramble.

"Thank you, that was most enlightening," Orochimaru said politely, handing the sweat-soaked and thoroughly exhausted Hinata a towel and a canteen of water. "There's a light meal waiting for us in the next room; let's eat, and then we can resume." He pushed the door open and held it for her.

Hinata moaned in despair and collapsed to her knees, panting. Orochimaru waited patiently, the door still open. After a moment, Hinata pushed herself to her feet and dragged her bruises into the next room. She knew from experience that when your teacher told you to eat, you ate, no matter how little you wanted food. The only thing worse than training under Anko—and, evidentally, Anko's former teacher—was training under one of them on an empty stomach.

"So, have you given any thought to my offer?" Orochimaru asked in a tone of polite interest.

Hinata flipped backwards to avoid a kunai heading for her nose. "Three!" she yelled, pointing over her shoulder at a clone who had very subtly flicked three fingers. "One!" she yelled, twisting to slip between two more shuriken and pointing to her right at another clone with his hands clasped in front of him. With a smile, the clone opened his hands to reveal that yes, one finger had been extended.

"OW!" Hinata yelped, grabbing her butt where a senbon needle had just pierced her. Orochimaru produced another and twirled it between his fingers for a moment.

"Do I need to repeat the question?" he asked calmly.

"No, Orochimaru-sama! Four!" she shouted, one finger flicking towards another clone even as she dropped into a split, chest pressed to the ground so that a multitude of shuriken could pass over her at various heights. A kunai slammed into the floor right between her fingers, fired by one of the clones who was clinging to the ceiling. She eeped and rolled backwards, handspringing to her feet before a group of kunai could stitch themselves across her calf. Two of them passed close enough to leave thin cuts that oozed blood.

"Well, have you made a decision?" Orochimaru asked, idly flicking another senbon needle at her. She pivoted aside just in time to avoid it. "Oh, new exercise. Read aloud each word that the clones look at." The clones all produced scrolls, holding them in their left hands while continuing to hurl weapons at the Byakugan user with their right.

"Horse!" she shouted, leaping onto the wall and running several steps to pass over the chain of the manriki-gusari that one of the clones had hurled without warning. She spent several seconds dodging before calling out, "Enemy! House! Cat! Hel..." She hesitated for a moment, frowning in confusion. The pause was just slightly too long; the manriki-gusari flicked out again, cracking her painfully in the shin. "Ow!"

"Stop," Orochimaru said. The barrage of weaponry came to a halt and Hinata gratefully collapsed, panting in deep breaths. "Yes?"

"I don't know the word, Orochimaru-sama," she said. "What is a he-lic-opt-er?" she asked, sounding out the unfamiliar term.

"Helicopter," Orochimaru said, correcting her pronunciation. "Don't worry about it. Take a break, have some water. Oh, and stop dropping your right shoulder before turning clockwise; it's a bad habit. Now, you were going to answer my question?"

Hinata gratefully stumbled over and accepted the canteen from him, sucking down half of it in one long pull before dumping the rest over her sweat-soaked face. He took it back, used a minor jutsu to refill it with ice-cold water, and handed it to her. She took a long drink before speaking again.

"I have considered it, yes, Orochimaru-sama," she said. "I think..." She hesitated, shifting her feet uncomfortably and looking away from him. "I think...I would like to accept," she said, her voice a tiny thread of a whisper.

"I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that?" Orochimaru asked politely.

Hinata took a deep breath and forced herself to look directly at him. She bowed deeply. "Orochimaru-sama, I would like to accept your offer. I wish to immigrate to Sound."

"Excellent," Orochimaru said. "I shall contact the Hokage and begin the process. Now, let's get back to work."