The Way Through Stone Village (Naruto)

91: Strange Help

[OP: "Pale White Horse"--The Oh Hellos]

Hanabi was scanning the inside of the hospital with her eyes--though it was hard to do with contacts in.

But she judged by the amount of people in it that it might be harder to slip away from them, and what if Tsunade was not inside? She didn't see her chakra signature at all.

She didn't want to get trapped in the hospital.

"You can get out all right?" she whispered to Suigetsu. "Turn into water or something?"

"Sure I can, but what're you doing?" Suigetsu asked.

"Meet me in one of the streets then," Hanabi said. "I don't want to risk them locking me up in there if they realize I'm not sick or anything. I'm going to run for it and hide in the alleys. Catch up to me."

"Hey, are you sure that's such a good--?" Suigetsu began but Hanabi began to leap and scream, "I don't want to get infected!"

And then she ran like she'd lost her mind, waving her hands frantically, into the street next to the medical center.

No one stopped her, as they all thought she'd been exposed too closely anyway.

Suigetsu was moved inside by the medics as if he was made of glass--or soiled underclothes or something they didn't want to touch. Really, it was rude. Karin was like that, but that was just her bad manners. You'd think an official medic would be more professional.

He hoped Hanabi didn't immediately get herself caught... He had a feeling Hinata would be more formidable if he came back alone...plus he kinda liked the kid, so he didn't want anything to happen to her.

* * *

Hanabi saw no one was following her from the medical center, but her luck didn't hold out.

Once she got a few streets away from it, she saw some more bandits--or so she assumed, anyway.

They looked at her and seemed to realize she'd just been running, and that made them suspicious. They started to move toward her.

Hanabi didn't waste any time ducking into the next small side street and running along it.

Now she was scared for real. Her heart was pounding.

"After her!" she heard a rough voice yell behind her from the street. "That girl was up to something!"

"Well, hurry up yourself then," someone else called at them.

Hanabi didn't think they had any jutsu, but then the ground under her suddenly turned into something like one of those whack-a-mole games. The ground jumped up at her.

One hit her hard in the thigh, and she fell over and tumbled into the wall.

That would bruise later.

"Got her," someone said. 

Adrenaline kept Hanabi from feeling the pain of the injury as much as she would later, and, realizing her bones weren't broken, she leapt up and scrambled up the wall.

That was risky because they could all see her now, and she heard them say, "Hey! That's a ninja then!"

She only hoped and prayed her chakra grip didn't waver this time like it had on the mountain. This was no time for her rookie mistakes.

If she could just shake these guys, she could go back to spying again, she was sure, with Suigetsu, but shaking them would be the hard part.

She dashed over the roof, slipping on a piece of it, but she didn't care as it shattered.