Hinata sputters blood and drops bonelessly on the ground. I activate my sharingan and use the hiding like a mole jutsu. Use the shadow clone jutsu for five clones and send four out to scout out what has just happened. Kakashi is fighting three enemy shinobi. Another is chasing Sakura. I rush towards her and manage to reach her before she gets caught.
Popping out from beneath I try and split the woman in half, she leaps backwards. A shadow clone jumps from the earth behind her, lunging for her back. I try to take advantage and take a swipe at her. She dodges the clone and grabs my arm, pulling and throwing me towards the clone. The clone performs a quick kawarimi with myself and tries to use a jutsu. While flying away I see Sakura desperately trying to heal Hinata with the mystic palm, with no success.
I receive the memories of the clone. It tried to use a jutsu but got a flying knee in the stomach, popping it. Shifting my eyes towards the jonin reveals her to be rushing towards me. I set her on fire with Amaterasu. Kagutsuchi sends them inside of her throat, immediately killing her.
With the jonin dead I rush towards Hinata and Sakura. Sakura is still desperately trying and failing to regenerate Hinata. When she notices me she instantly begins yelling "Sasuke please. I need you to listen to me and follow exactly what I say. Cut my left leg from the hip downwards. Avoid the arteries!" I don't waste any time and do just as she said "Now do the same for Hinata!" I do that. "Cut the femoral arteries of both of us." I do that "Hold the ends together and use the mystic palm to meld them!" I do that. "Same for the femoral vein!" I do that.
Sakura now seems to have relaxed, focusing on stopping the bleeding from Hinata's heart. "Is she going to live?". Sakura bites her lip, drawing blood "She has to".
I continue helping Sakura however she asks. Not questioning anything she has me do. After hers and Hinata's conditions appear to have somewhat stabilized (Thank god) she gives me the good news "Hinata will live. When we get to our outpost I am going to transplant a heart into her from one of the captives, their bloodtypes match.". She still seems somewhat stressed, so I ask her "And what is the bad news?". She gulps "It's not a guarantee the transplant will take. Until we manage to either clone her a heart or make an artificial one her body will almost certainly reject the transplant at some point. It can happen immediately, one week from the transplant or even years afterwards.".
I collapse on the ground next to them "The good news is she is alive. I'll stay with you until Kakashi is done with his fight. If he loses, let's hope I can manage to kill those jonin, carrying both of you in a hurry is too risky right now". She gulps and goes back to using the mystic palm on Hinata.
At some point a blood drenched Kakashi shunshins in front of me. We both silently pick both Sakura and Hinata up, taking tremendous care not to pull on their merged arteries and veins, and proceed towards our outpost.
—
When arriving we immediately take Sakura and the still unconscious Hinata directly towards the captives. Sakura immediately begins to give me instructions on what cuts to do, where to use the mystic palm and when to use the mystic palm. Two hours later the heart of the bald guy sits and beats inside of Hinata's chest-hole. Another hour is spent delicately separating their merged circulatory systems.
Sakura, Kakashi and I are all dead tired, we all just take a soldier pill and continue healing Hinata throughout the night. When morning arrives we finally managed to close the hole in Hinata's chest. Halfway through the night she thankfully woke up, but she went back to sleep after an hour. Sakura told me not to worry, she did not reject the transplant. All she needs now is bedrest and further treatment. Kakashi offers to keep a lookout while Sakura and I sleep. Neither of us can refuse.
- two days later
Hinata is much better now. She is still bed-ridden but Sakura says she should have her out of bed in around four days, with another week left afterwards until she can start fighting or training again.
Kakashi informs us about how we got ambushed. They used the lightning lances to try and take out Hinata and him. Apparently that jutsu takes a long time to use and is only useful for long-range assassination, one of the Byakugan's few weaknesses.
Sakura and I have brought Monopoly-Catan and are playing it with Hinata now. I roped Hirogi and the sisters into playing with us. While we're making small-talk, the sisters keep on glaring at Hirogi.
Hinata rolls her dice, gets snake eyes and groans in disappointment "What do you want to do now? Once I recover we should move our outpost. We're probably not that safe here."
Sakura nods "Yeah, we discussed this with Kakashi too. As soon as I consider you can run without anything happening to you we are ditching this place. Rigging it to blow and fucking off"
I roll my dice, two and four. "Pretty much. Kakashi told us we're going towards the ruins of Uzushio. There's nothing of note there so Kumo patrols should be minimal there. The plan is to spend three months training and recovering before we redeploy."
Sakura throws her dice, six and six "We were way too aggressive. By hitting so many villages so quickly one after the other we made them search for us. After failing just now they will do so even more now."
Hinata nods "If you ask me we should just train until we are all capable of taking on at least a single enemy jonin on our own. Then we won't be as vulnerable."
Sakura and I give her the news "Kakashi said the kid gloves are off. He's going to train us and push us to our breaking points and beyond. If we aren't capable of taking on a jonin by the first month then he swore he would take us back to Konoha. Orders be damned"
- four days later
Hinata is out of bed now, she says she feels just fine but Sakura insists on her not pushing herself just yet, to let the transplant properly take. Kakashi and I both make sure she doesn't try to push herself, excluding her from the nightwatch entirely. Kakashi has already begun training Sakura and I, not wanting to waste any time.
- one week later
We are leaving. The outpost has been rigged to explode. My shadow clones are carrying Hirogi, Kurari, Karari and Hinata. When we arrive it will be night-time, we will camp and create the outpost the next day. Afterwards our training begins.
-one month later.
I finish the last push-up and immediately rush towards Kakashi. He is currently dismantling both Sakura and Hinata's Taijutsu, each strike followed by a prompt and short lesson. He ducks under my lunge, grabs my arm and smashes me into Sakura. Hinata tries to take advantage and swipes towards his neck, misses, and gets kicked hard enough to fly.
We all quickly get up and rush towards him again.
—
Every time before we go to sleep Kakashi has us almost completely empty our chakra reserves. This makes us extremely nauseous, thankfully it's almost gone by morning.
—
Hinata's project is complete. It's a bow made out of chakra metal. She has had Hirogi help her heat up the chakra metal so she can shape it. Kakashi has her learning Lightning and Wind release after seeing it. The arrows are made out of regular steel, with her keeping two chakra steel arrows as a hidden ace.
-one month later.
Hinata fires the arrow from the bow. It pierces clean through seven thick trees before going through the mountain. Afterwards the seals release the jutsu inside of them and proceed to collapse the side of the mountain, throwing large pieces of molten stone everywhere and causing a gargantuan landslide.
-two weeks later.
Kakashi gives us some good news. There are talks of a cease-fire between the fire and lightning daimyos to negotiate a peace between the villages. If negotiations fall through then civilians will become acceptable targets for both sides. We all collectively agree to continue training through the cease-fire. If a peace-deal is reached then we just go back to Konoha. If there isn't then we rest for a week before we start to cause chaos.
-a week later
Kakashi tells us the cease-fire is announced. When I ask him how he knows these things so fast he tells me he is receiving orders through summons. After revealing that he shrugs and says "Oops, I forgot I wasn't supposed to say that. Just pretend i didn't" and flips a page in his smut like nothing happened.
The next day he begins teaching us how to open the first gate. He gives each of us a manual on how to train to open the rest. The part of the manual that handles opening the eighth gate has its pages ripped from it.
-two weeks later.
Negotiations failed. Kakashi told us he has been re-assigned on the front. We have orders to remain inside the land of lightning. Any further orders we will receive via Kakashi's summons. He tells us to take care of each-other and not take any unnecessary risks. Before leaving he rustles the hair of all of us and quietly shunsins away. The next day while rigging the outpost to explode we find his smut collection. Complete and utter degenerate that one.
Arc 2 over - Loss of innocence.