Journey of the Three Failures

Chapter 2: Snake in the leaf

Chapter 2

So sorry for the wait! My computer seriously messed up, and we ended up getting a new one because it couldn't be fixed. Just so you know, I do plan to continue, and there won't be near as long a wait for the next chapter.

A huge thanks to everyone who read, reviewed, favorited, alerted, etc! I appreciate your support!

Sorry, we don't see much of the three failures in this chapter, but some really important stuff happens back in Konoha. So...

Oh wait! Disclaimer: No, I do NOT own NARUTO. I know. Can you believe it? It's really true.

Journey of the Three Failures

Two: Snake in the Leaf

Hanabi ハナビ

I could hardly feel miffed as I should that Nee-chan had been able to incapacitate me in one blow. I could not even be angry to find she had definitely gone easy on me in sparring. What really got me was that she had deliberately deceived me, taking advantage of my desperate emotions so that I wouldn't detect her lies – and because I had blindly fallen for it, she was gone.

I was alone. And somewhere out there, Hinata was, too.

"Enter!" someone called. I stood from the bench and grunted, a hand immediately covering the sore pressure point. I composed myself in a moment and stepped into the meeting room.

Father and several stern-faced elders were seated around the box shaped room for the emergency meeting; as I entered, all white eyes focused on me.

"Hyuuga Hanabi," one elder said in his gravelly but clear voice, "What is your account of the events regarding Hyuuga Hinata's disappearance?"

I took a deep breath, prepared to tell my story – but tale might be a bit more accurate...

/ When I finally recovered and got to my feet, I just stood there, an arm folded across my middle, staring in a daze.

She's ... gone...

Yet I couldn't feel angry at her. I just felt a little ... abandoned.

In ten minutes of shivering I shuddered violently and realized I was freezing; it was cold out, wind was rolling down the empty streets, and I was still in warm weather clothes. My head low, I turned and stiffly began to walk toward the Hyuuga estate.

Great, I realized, what am I going to tell Chichi-ue?

My head jerked up as an explosion roared in the near distance; I heard a wind chime ring softly at a shockwave. I looked up to see two people shoot over the alley I was on – from one rooftop to another so quickly I could have imagined it – in the opposite direction of the explosion. I formed a seal and activated my bloodline trait to glimpse two boys, very different in appearance but both oddly dressed in their own respective ways. The next moment they had vanished beyond my thirty meter range – the greatest distance my eyes could see clearly while looking through solid objects, in this case, the building.

I let my dojutsu deactivate. "What in the world...?" \\\

In a short minute of investigating afterward, I had gleaned a vital bit of information off a conversation in the cheerful crowd of ninja and civilians gathered on one side of a demolished and burning house: '...two birds with one stone,' I'd heard a man say, 'Can you believe our luck? The demon and the demon-friend, dead and gone...' A few seconds after, I had realized two things. First, having been by chance in the right place at the right time, I knew something crucial that the village did not: Uzumaki Naruto and Rock Lee were alive.

Second, I had something to tell the clan.

So, with a stern face and the skill of a practiced composer and teller of lies, I began my tall tale.