Chapter Text
Kiba isn’t sure what the disgusting chakra to the far east of the forest is, only that Akamaru wants to rip it to shreds and run for cover at the same time.
He sniffs again as he looks to Hinata and Shino, perched across from in him in their own trees, face scrunched up in disgust. A horrid, putrid scent unlike anything he’d ever smelled before wafts through the forest. He reaches and channels a touch extra chakra to his feet, the rancid smell of rotting flesh and snake skin nearly making him lose concentration as it assaults his senses.
Opening his eyes again, he looks eastward just to feel a wash of killing intent, only tempered by distance; carrying with it an undercurrent of fake strawberry, metal and pure, unadulterated rage.
Kiba goes still - he has a sinking feeling he knows who that chakra belongs to, that scent full of hurt and malice. He prays he’s wrong.
“Hinata-chan, Shino, come on let’s go already.”
The oppressive atmosphere has him itching to move, either to go far away or towards it and fight, anything other than just sitting like a duck. Hana had trained him to be able to move through killing intent, he and Akamaru subjected to many days of Inuzuka training hunts to trap and capture designated prey within the compound. Kiba jumps a few branches over before noticing the rest of Team 8 are not following.
He turns to find that while the Inuzuka had taught he and Akamaru how to deal with killing intent in a combat situation, the Hyuuga and Aburame had apparently let it slip. The two heirs crouched, lost to the world, frozen, stuck fast to the branches like gargoyles. Hinata’s blue eyes are blown wide and mouth slightly ajar, while Shino’s kikaichu skitter under his sleeves with concern for their still host.
“Aw crap, not now,” he says as he jumps back over to them, Akamaru looking over in concern. He reaches out and shakes Hinata’s shoulder.
“Hey! Hey, snap out of it Hinata-chan!” Kiba waves his hands in front of her eyes but they don’t contract. Not now, not now, he thinks, and he’s totally going to badger Kurenai-sensei into more intense survival simulations if they make it out of here. Shino thankfully seems to be coming back on his own, Kiba guessing his kikaichu had something to do with it, as the young Aburame rocks back on his heels and minutely shakes his head. The kikaichu that have flown out of his collar to buzz around his face retreat back into his trench coat.
He’s not getting through to Hinata, she’s paler than her usual pale and Kiba’s running out of tricks in the bag. They’ve already used a bunch of their supplies against another team and even though he knows Shino won’t hesitate to carry her through the rest of the way – Kiba’s never on carry duty because even though he’s faster, Shino has better chakra control - Hinata clamming up here doesn’t bode well for however long they’ll still be in this damned forest.
“Yo, Akamaru, help out Hinata-chan will ya?” Kiba asks as he forces his worry down and fights to keep it out of his voice. Akamaru yips and bounces down to Hinata’s prone from, sinking his small claws into her thigh; too shallow to bleed but deep enough to be sting through her paralysed state. Byakugan eyes suddenly activate as she gasps, Kiba and Shino moving to support her on both sides.
Kiba braces her weight against his side, moving his head to try and meet her gaze. “You good, Hinata-chan?”
Hinata just nods and stutters out a small “Yes, Kiba-kun, I’m… I’m okay, I think,” but diverts her now-deactivated eyes as she shifts to stand properly, looking down towards the forest floor as she shivers.
Kiba’s not willing to admit he’s little more fraught than he should be, he doesn’t know, doesn’t want to think about what might happen later if she freezes this easily to killing intent at this distance… actually, he reassesses that, considering that this is the snake sennin’s chakra (he doesn’t want to think about that either, but he’s never gotten a scent wrong before) and most genin would be hard pressed to stay cool in a room with him – he’s suddenly much more grateful for his sister’s gruelling exposure-to-killing-intent training.
Shino interrupts his thoughts. “Kiba, we should not follow them. Why? Because we cannot aid more than we may drag them and ourselves down.”
He pauses, forcing Kiba to wait for the rest of his statement even though he’s itching to help Team 7 facing off against someone that is clearly not a genin, or even a high-level chuunin. Kiba didn’t notice before but underneath the snake smell is the metallic tang of blood.
“We have our heaven and earth scrolls. We should continue to the centre and send help from there.”
Kiba refuses to look at him as his jaw clenches - he knows that objectively, it’s a good plan, but they have no idea how far away the centre of the forest is, and help could be far too late by the time anyone gets there.
“We don’t have time for that, that’s Team 7 and Orochimaru! We can’t just leave them, they’re Konoha shinobi too! Pack!” he hisses at Shino and turns to jump through the trees, checking his weapons are secure before a leap, a bound and upwards through the dense canopies. He barely spares a glance behind him as Hinata hesitates, then follows immediately. Shino is close behind and to her left. He can imagine Shino’s dislike for his choice to help, but those are Konoha shinobi and Kiba will be damned if he has to tell his mother he abandoned his village-mates in the name of completing this stupid exam.
The killing intent doubles, triples and doubles again as he dashes through the brush towards its source, Akamaru a dash of white in a sea of green and brown ahead of him. God, mum is going to kill me, and Hana is going to burn my corpse if we get out of this, he thinks to himself. Don’t be smart, just complete the objective and scat, they said, and yet here they are, barrelling through the trees against one of his mother’s few direct orders – do not engage S-rank missing nin without help. A stupid order, but sometimes common sense has to be spelled out to Kiba.
While Konoha hasn’t had any sizeable threats in the twelve years since the Kyuubi attack, his mother had briefed him on what nearly every shinobi in the village smelled like, past and present, missing nin or otherwise.
“Now listen here kid,” she had said very sternly one time when he was just back home from the Academy, “The Sannin are not to be messed with. Are you listening to me? Tsunade will smell like sake, slugs and bamboo and you will not get in her way, in a hospital or the battlefield, or she will punch you through a wall. Got it?”
Kiba had nodded half heartedly, not paying full attention as Akamaru weaved between his ankles, eager to go out and play. Tsume had looked over at Kuromaru, heavy and menacing on the kitchen counter, sighed and continued.
“Right, pup. This shit’s important, mind you,” she arched an eyebrow at him, and Kiba suddenly felt very small again. Hana always said he was too impatient to get talking over with, even when it was important.
“Jiraiya will smell like frogs, steam and just unsavoury in general thanks to his stupid books. He’s also a taijutsu and sealing master so watch your back around him, even if he acts like a fool he’ll still stomp you until you’re up to scratch.” Tsume continued and Kiba nodded again, not trusting himself to interrupt with Kuromaru’s single beady eye trained on him.
She leaned against the counter and fixed him with a hard stare. “Now listen Kiba, Tsunade and Jiraiya might whoop your ass if you get in their way, but as it stands they are still comrades to Konoha. They won’t kill you unless you deserve it, but if you get to that point you would have worse things to worry about. Like me.” Kiba was a little afraid of what she’d say next, if this was the warning for the two good guys of the Sannin, what was his mum going to say about the last one?
“Orochimaru is the last of the three Sannin, and is currently a missing nin. Hokage-sama was disgusted by his experiments – rightfully so, the bastard was experimenting on children - so he left Konoha and hasn’t popped up since. The slimy prick is still out there though, so listen. He smells like snake, acid and most importantly, like rotting flesh. Kiba, listen to me. Unless it’s absolutely necessary or you have a bloody competent squad with you, you do not engage him. You do not go hunting him. If you smell him, you go the other way. The shit that was found in his labs, I wouldn’t put that on anyone’s kids. I don’t want you to end up there too. You hear me?”
Kiba had looked down with a soft “Yes, mum,” and went in for a hug. His mother smelled distressed just thinking about it. As he closed his eyes and breathed in her comforting lemon and bone scent, he promised himself he’d never let that bastard near his mother or sister, or the rest of his pack.
God, his mum was going to kill him dead.
He jerks to a halt as a kunai flashes past his face, embedding itself in the tree trunk beside him. Hinata and Shino stop just behind him, rustling the leaves above their heads as they crouch down on the thick branches. Kiba looks over, expecting to see Sakura or maybe Sasuke hiding from the gross, slimy chakra permeating the air, but instead he meets eyes with a small, mouse-brown haired genin from Iwa. He and his teammates, two kunoichi partially hidden by the thick leaves, shake their heads at him, eyes sharp with fear. Kiba could feel his fear for Team 7 getting sidetracked, who were these punks to tell him what to do? Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura are from Konoha, his village, his mother had always said village means pack, Kiba, and these Iwa shitstains had the nerve to tell him to stand down?
Seeing their teammates’ warning wasn’t well received, one of the kunoichi slowly places her hands in front of her, palms facing forward towards them in the most obvious unarmed and placating gesture before hopping a couple branches closer. She stops a few meters away, long black ponytail swishing over her shoulder.
“Don’t get any closer and he might let you guys go, but their scroll is ours!” she whispers as she clings to the trunk. Behind her, Mouse-brown seems to recede even further into the leaves, clearly not happy with Ponytail’s aggro stance against Team 8. Kiba’s eyes narrow and he seizes on their disagreement.
“Oh yeah? Why shouldn’t I just mince you now, bitch? They’re Konoha nin, why would we let an Iwa team keep their scroll? I don’t see you out there fighting for it, you cowards. Gonna steal Orochimaru’s leftovers, huh?” Kiba tries to ignore the fact that he’s beginning to lose his steam, if he stops to think about it too long he might just go with Shino’s plan to get help and hope for the best.
The kunoichi doesn’t respond for moment, then tilts her head up haughtily as her eyes narrow. “Fine then, how about you go get it then? It’s dog eat dog in here, and I certainly don’t see you sticking your neck out for them either, dog boy.”
Further ahead of them, there’s a sickening crunch as wood creaks and fractures under some giant weight, Kiba doesn’t want to know what it might be, what something that is large enough to crush the dense forestry under its weight could do to him, could do to his teammates.
A distant shriek of “Naruto! Sasuke-kun!” from a high pitched voice, and the fake strawberry scent now smells less like worry and concern and more like absolute fear.
Kiba’s hair prickles as Akamaru’s does, we don’t have time for this he thinks, eyebrows drawing together as he snarls at her. “Listen, Ponytail. If you don’t get out of my way right now, you’ll find out just how dog-like I can be - when I piss all over your fucking corpse. Move, bitch.”
Somewhere, tucked away behind his rage, Kiba thinks his mother would appreciate that insult a lot more than this girl. One does not piss on potential food unless it’s truly vile.
Another yell from the direction of the stench, this one’s not a word but an exclamation of pain and the red rage fire burn smell cuts off abruptly, leaving what smells like a gap of sizzling ozone behind.
The other Iwa kunoichi seems to realise that Kiba is a shade too close to seriously carrying through with that threat, and calls out to her teammate. “Tasumi! Leave them, let’s just go bully a Kumo team or something and get away from these Konoha guys.” Ponytail hesitates for just a second to consider it, and as she does Kiba seizes her split focus with a wild growl, bursting forward with a chakra powered pounce, shoving her off the branch and sending her tumbling through the greens below. She disappears out of sight.
He doesn’t stop moving, using his momentum to press on to find Sasuke, Sakura, Naruto. Behind him he hears Mouse-brown’s dismayed cry of a name followed by frantic rustling as they followed Ponytail down to the ground, possibly helped along by Hinata and Shino.
The greenery blurs as he speeds through the forest, stress mounting higher all the while. It’s been a good few minutes since he first caught the scent of decomposing bodies and he’s desperately not thinking about what could have already happened.
He had smelled Orochimaru before he could hear him, and now he can hear him before he can see him. Enhanced ears catch a creepy, lilting voice that crawls its way into his head, and whatever rationale he has left is banished to the corner of his mind as he streaks towards the voice, towards his pack.
“I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way, Sasuke-kun.”
He starts channelling chakra for a fang passing fang combo before he can even see Sasuke, Akamaru gearing up beside him. Not his best technique, but it’s the fastest, most destructive one he knows.
He’s barely touching the branches underfoot now, flying through the brush and somewhere behind he senses Shino and Hinata getting quieter, further away, flagging, struggling to keep up with him. He’s caught in a moment of clarity - if he reaches Team 7 without the other two he might as well feed himself to Orochimaru on a platter, but if he waits for them it sounds like he might find three bodies instead of three genin.
“Let me leave you a little gift before I go, Sasuke-kun. I will see you again soon, but next time, you will come to me.”
That’s all Kiba needs. The moment is gone and he bursts through the final branches obscuring Team 7 and Orochimaru from view and Kiba has only fractions of seconds to calculate what he’s seeing, to get this snake bastard away from his friends.
A clearing that he’s willing to bet didn’t exist before this exam. Wooden debris and shattered trunks lie around the edges of the empty space, with a large, acid green scaly body wound throughout. Crushed stumps and a smattering of shuriken, kunai and flecks of red – the blood of my pack, Kiba can feel his pulse in his ears – and to a far corner there’s a starburst of blood and guts and gore next to a massive snake head. He twists his body, nails turning to claws, and time seems to slow down as his eyes rove over the clearing.
Sasuke and Sakura are on their knees, side by side on wide trunk to his left, and Sakura is shaking, Kiba can taste the salt of her tears in the air. Sasuke looks a little better but he’s bleeding from somewhere, droplets of blood turning brown on his white arm protectors and his Sharingan are spinning furiously beneath his hitai-ate speckled with blood.
There’s something fleshy and pale stretching its way across the distance towards Sasuke, and as Kiba twists into the first rotation of their fang jutsu he catches a glimpse of something purple and a body, standing still with its hands clasped in a seal, skin bubbling and melting from its shoulders as the neck stretches more, further, closer, towards Sasuke, who isn’t moving.
Akamaru is beside him, twisting into a blur as he does and Kiba aims himself to collide with whatever’s on the end of the neck reaching towards the Uchiha, aiming to shred and score through whatever flesh is in his way. As he completes the first full turn, out of the corner of his eye there’s a splotch of orange against the greens and browns of the forest and Kiba feels his heart stutter.
He can only see him for a fraction of a heartbeat, but it’s enough. Naruto is still, pinned up on trunk by a kunai and his jumpsuit. There’s red around his mouth, and the tattered, orange fabric around his midsection is crumpled up towards his chest. Kiba can’t see the details at this distance or speed, but the ripples of purple and black on his stomach cut through his feral need to protect Sasuke and Sakura - Konoha nin his people his pack – like a blade through ricepaper.
It’s not well known, but ninja summons and ninja animals are completely different entities. The first can interact with nearly anything a that a shinobi can, but the latter have a whole different set of rules. As he twists his body through a second rotation and world melds together even more, he can hear what his mother drilled into him the day he met Akamaru, he can see what happened to Kyoryo.
A cousin called Kimura. A village-bound chuunin who helped out in the vet clinic, Hana’s first mentor when she went in to do her 3 month placement. His sister would tell a young Kiba about the ninken she treated – colds, ticks, bone diseases, chakra system dysfunctions and even parasitic infections where an Aburame would get roped in to help. At the end of the 3 months, her final task was to take a look at Kimura’s ninken, Kyoryo. Kiba saw his cousin’s partner that day when he went to pick up his sister.
He was about the height of Kiba’s ten-year-old shoulders, with shaggy, grey fur that seemed to cling in patches to his emaciated frame. His head was kept low and panting as he struggles stay standing on the operation table. As he peeks through the window of the op room looking for Hana, a gentle hand guides Kyoyro to turn around on the table, giving him a clear view of his left side. Grey fur had been shorn off to reveal a giant, sprawling inky mess etched into his skin, reaching from behind the shoulders, across his flank and down the left hip. Characters are blown in proportion and twist out of their designated spaces as they curve and stretch over the dog’s frame. Blackened skin was scabbing around the dark lines, and the outermost edges seemed to be a broiling purple as Kyoryo shifted on the table, legs skinny like twigs and whatever muscles that hadn’t atrophied strain under the weight of his skeleton.
Hana later tells him that Kyoryo has been in solitary confinement for nearly 8 months, after he had taken a simple weight-inducing seal that had been meant for Kimura’s neck.
He remembers something vague Kimura had told him when he’d asked a few months later, something to do with difference in chakra systems and shinobi not knowing enough about seals, but it’s irrelevant at this point. There’s no time, he has to make a choice right now or Akamaru might be in the way, and he thinks of Kuromaru and his lost eye and ear, Kyoryo and his inability to channel chakra, and Kimura, now stuck helplessly seeing his ninken’s pain on a daily basis—
He isn’t going to take the chance that Akamaru might end up like that.
Kiba can feel gravity squeezing against him on all sides, and shifts his shoulders to throw more of his momentum into the next turn than he should. He can’t see Akamaru at this point, but he can smell him, smell the sudden confusion from his partner. This isn’t how the jutsu is supposed to work. He closes his eyes and the sun flashes behind his eyelids as he rotates—
I’m sorry, buddy.
He lashes out with a leg towards his ninken, the change in the centre of gravity straining his bones in their sockets. There’s a huff and pained sound at the moment of connection and his head is still spinning so it sounds like it’s everywhere, and somewhere below his panic he hopes that Akamaru is flying in Hinata’s direction so she can hold him tight as he throws himself with abandon at Orochimaru’s trajectory.
Then the thought is gone because there’s a face in his claws and he can’t even see the head but long hair is tangling in his limbs and Kiba yanks, pulling it into his chest as fights to change his arc, careening down towards the hard, packed earth.
In the brief eternity where gravity is inverted and the light spills everywhere it’s all Kiba can do to grip the skull his grasp, as he feels the neck curve and strain through the spin of his body, all he knows in that moment is don’t let go and the neck fills the space where Akamaru should be (it hurts knowing he’s not there, but it would be worse if he was), thrumming and pulsating in a spiral helix ready to burrow and tear through the earth in their way—
(Kiba doesn’t feel it, the momentum is too overwhelming and he’s still young and hasn’t learned how to temper his senses while using this technique yet, so he doesn’t feel it when a pair of sharp teeth sink into his forearm, he doesn’t feel something, deep, dark, corrosive spill into his veins—
Or maybe he does feel it but his mind is alight with fear, adrenaline and anger as gasoline and as far his body’s concerned he’s holding something in a dead man’s grip and for the love of Akamaru, his mother, Konoha, anything— he will not let go.)
Sun and light and warmth disappear and he isn’t in control anymore, not really, and his muscle memory takes over and floods his chakra through his body so fast his pathways burn to make up for having to pull off this stunt alone, with a deadweight clutched to his chest between his elbows instead of the beast partner he should have.
A crash, a crumble - something solid and unforgiving gives way to his hands. He’s still twirling, mind lost to the movement.
Darkness and compost smell surround him, dense earth cold and sapping his strength and Kiba isn’t really sure when or where he’ll come up for air but it doesn’t matter anymore, he just has to keep moving. His legs scrabble at the torn soil in the path behind him and if he kicks into something solid and fleshy, well, he aims to kick there again and again and again because this bastard had hurt his people.
The head against his chest seems to suddenly burst with life for a last, final stand; starting to thrash against his ribs, hitting what Kiba thinks is a forehead against his sternum over and over.
Even if his eyes weren’t shut, he wouldn’t be able to see underground anyway moving at such speed, so Kiba takes an educated guess and a wild risk and sacrifices his right hand from clawing at the dirt around him to sink his claws into Orochimaru’s head and wrenches it a half twist clockwise before tugging the claws free again, only to slam them back down and in around where he hopes something squishy will be.
His right hand hurts and his thighs are burning but he pushes and pulls and rakes across where the face in the dark should be and he doesn’t stop spinning all the while or he’ll be buried alive. One, two, three, five, seven strikes over the organic matter and then he’s stunned by light again just as the neck, now twisted and warped, taut between his knees and sandals, gives out with a final sickening stretch of skin, and the last bit of resistance to his cyclone technique falls away.
A brief moment of stillness but still moving (Kiba guesses he’s above ground and in the air but he’s not sure where his calves end and his arms begin at this point), then lungs are suddenly whoomped and emptied of air as he collides with the ground a second time, except now he doesn’t break the crust of the earth and instead skids on his side through the dust. His body rolls to a halt next to a giant tree, crumpled between wayward roots.
He won’t open his eyes (he doesn’t remember anything past his pounding heartbeat in his ears but his body does, his body says no we do not look at the sun and so he doesn’t), his hearing is still off buzzing and unbalanced after playing cyclone but his nose, his nose is functioning perfectly; whatever’s left of his sensory processing parses the smells as blood dead snake metal strawberry insects lavender fox, and that recognition of familiar scents is enough for Kiba, and he falls through the other side of consciousness, claws still clutching a mangled head full of long black hair.
In an oxygen-deprived mind, Kiba dreams of Hana, standing over the kitchen counter in her new chuunin jacket as she makes him a bento for the Academy, while his mother moves deft fingers through his hair to trim it with the kitchen scissors.
“Remember pup, now you’ve got your tats, you’ve got to uphold the clan nindo. What’s the nindo, kid?” Tsume asks him. She sets down the scissors on the countertop and spins him on the barstool to face the mirror.
Young Kiba looks back at himself and grins at his reflection, small sharp incisors framed by red triangles as bright as they’ll ever be on his round cheeks, and he meets his mum’s eyes in the mirror after a quick glance at his sister.
“Inuzuka are pack, teammates are pack, Konoha is pack and Konoha is home. We don’t leave pack behind, and we protect the Leaf!” he cries out happily, and for once his mum doesn’t reprimand him to use his inside voice, she just smiles down at him with soft but steady pride.
“That’s right pup,” she finishes quietly, ruffling his hair.
“We don’t leave people behind, and we defend our home.”
The moment was peaceful, and in that instant Kiba was too small to understand what he felt, and he’s still too young to understand why it’s so important, but now he understands at least a little better.
He has home, and he has a pack. He’ll be damned before he lets either go without a fight.
When he comes to, the first thing he feels is a gentle tug on his arms, trying to pull them away from his chest. The next thing he feels is a burning, seething sensation on his arm which he quashes down to focus on his nose. His eyes are still shut but his nose picks up leaves bugs lavender before the seething under his skin demands to be felt and his eyes fly open as he cries out.
The hands around his arms jerk away as his he sits up, panting.
“Kiba-kun! Are you alright?” comes from Hinata on his left. Shino’s presence is silent as usual on his right, although Kiba can smell the undercurrent of concern rolling off him in waves. Before he answers he claps his left hand over his right forearm, grunting as another pulse of pain moves through him. The worry scent gets stronger, but Kiba can only grit his teeth against his nerves being set on fire as his eyes screw shut.
A few moments of silence, the pain recedes, and now that Kiba’s paying a little more attention to his ears he realises he can hear more than just three sets of breathing in the clearing beyond the crackling of a fire in front of him.
This time when Kiba opens his eyes again he looks up to see another three people gathered in front of him. Sakura, Sasuke and Naruto are all sitting crossed legged on the other side of a campfire, Naruto and Sasuke with an assortment of bandages while Sakura seems to be rather ruffled but without major injury. He struggles to find something to say, and so promptly looks up to avoid their gazes only to find the leaves above his head melting together with an inky black sky.
It had been mid-morning when on the second day when they had chased down Team 7.
Crap. How long have I been out for? Why are Team 7 still here?
Kiba reflexively presses down harder on his inner forearm as pain sears from it, though he manages to stay silent until it calms again. For some reason, there’s a resistance to movement from his hand.
“Ugh. How… how long was I out for?”
When no one answers, he looks to Hinata, who is looking at his lap while looking paler than her normal Hyuuga colouring.
His eyes fall down to see what she’s looking at, and it’s only then that he realises his right hand still has claws, and those claws are still lodged in a bloody, mangled head.
It takes a second for it to sink in, that his hand is stuck in the front of a dead person’s dismembered head, that the lukewarm feeling between his fingers and under his palm is actual flesh and blood.
He thinks he might puke.
Kiba flexes his hand to try and remove it from the gruesome mess, which makes his arm twinge as the potent scent of congealing, day old blood rushes directly up his nose. Bile rises up in the back of his throat as he scrambles to his feet to fling the disfigured lump away from him, briefly panicking as the hair tangles around his elbows when his claws pull free with a disgusting schlop. After desperately shaking his arm for a few moments, the head finally falls free of his limbs and Kiba stumbles backwards into a now-standing Shino’s chest, breathing heavily as it plops to the ground.
Relative silence reigns over the clearing once again, and Kiba is vaguely aware of his taciturn teammate’s hands on his elbows, holding him steady.
He hadn’t even realised he was shaking, eyes watering from the strength of the dead flesh smell and still glued to Orochimaru’s head as it sat still in the orange glow of the fire.
No one says anything until Sakura clears her throat. His looks at her, and Shino takes this motion as permission to manoeuvre him towards sitting down on the ground next to Hinata. The Hyuuga offers him a full water bottle, and he gulps down half of it immediately, grateful for the way the lukewarm water soothes the dry scratch in his throat.
“You were out for about eight hours, Kiba. We tried to move you, but you were running a fever, and… and you wouldn’t, um, let go of the…” she trails off, motioning towards the lump.
“Sakura-chan and Sasuke said you saved them, so I said we’d wait for you and your team for until you woke up!” Naruto pipes up, brightness only sounding a touch forced.
“Idiot! Don’t say it like you were useful, you got knocked out and did nothing either!” Sakura suddenly growls at her teammate, barely keeping her volume in check. Kiba has a sudden dawning that while it’s a pain to try and get Shino or Hinata to say anything at all sometimes, he doesn’t think his ears would survive being on a team with Sakura or even Ino if they don’t know how to keep it quiet, or even balanced between vocal pitches.
Shino settles on the ground next to him. “We were worried about you Kiba. Especially Akamaru,” he says, even as concern shows in his tone, and Kiba’s eyes move over from Sakura and Naruto’s verbal spar to a silent Sasuke, and a small white patch of fur curled up small on the ground next to him. Akamaru’s head tilts up to look at his, and a pair of wet eyes and nose reflect the orange light.
“Akamaru,” he breathes. “Come here, buddy.”
The small dog gets up and slowly walks towards him, and his hesitance breaks Kiba’s heart - even though he knows he was right, he was right to hurt him to keep him safe.
Kiba leans forward to pick him up off ground and cradles him to his chest. He presses his nose into Akamaru’s grimy fur, and he can finally feel his claws receding in the wake of his partner’s comforting scent.
“I’m so, so sorry Akamaru. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t have you in that, that bastard’s grip. I’m so sorry.”
There’s a sound of crinkling fabric as Sasuke shifts uncomfortably behind the campfire, Kiba can smell his uneasiness and confusion - and maybe something else underneath that - but he doesn’t have the energy to address it. Shino and Hinata both know how important trust is between Inuzuka and their ninken, and he knows Naruto is aware of it too after being somewhat friends in the Academy, pulling pranks together when Akamaru was even tinier than he is now, and he’s willing to bet Sakura read it somewhere, but Sasuke seems… offset, by this display of trust and apology.
Akamaru whimpers, and moves to press his nose against Kiba’s. He closes his eyes with the contact and all Kiba can think is thank god. Trust bond issues rooted in combat are the last thing they need, especially when they’re still stuck in a death forest with enemy nin from other hidden villages.
The grubby white ninken pulls away and curls up in his lap, head resting on his thigh. As he threads his still-bloodied hands through Akamaru’s fur, he gets a proper look at what’s on his arm. Shino and Hinata lean into his shoulders, initially for comfort and solidarity, then to see what he’s looking at.
On the inside of his right forearm is a small set of three dots, with tails flicking out in a circle a little like a ring of tadpoles. Right now they’re plain black, but as the three of them are looking at it Kiba’s arm stills as he feels another roll of pain coming through, not as intense as before but still burning, and the dots flicker purple for an instant before settling.
Sakura and Naruto have stopped bickering in the background.
“Kiba? Are you ok?” asks Naruto over the fire.
Kiba assesses his pain, then shakes his head and cricks his neck before replying. The waves are getting further apart and less painful, so he decides he’s going to tough it out until he gets his pack out of here. And then, he thinks, we’re gonna find out what the fuck that asshole meant when he said Sasuke will come to him. Because that would make Sasuke a traitor, and while he didn’t know the last Uchiha that well, he was still pack, and pack deserved protection as well as a team – no traitors allowed.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine. I think Orochimaru stuck some weird seal on me and it hurts like shit, but I’ll get it fixed when we’re out of here.”
Even though he was aiming for reassuring and casual, Naruto’s face pulls tighter at the mention of a seal.
Crap. I forgot, Orochimaru fucked with Naruto’s seal too.
“A seal? D’you mean like, like my seal?” The worry in his tone is palpable, and Kiba feels touched that even though their graduating class has drifted in the months between becoming genin and entering the chuunin exams, Naruto obviously still cares about them. His mother had told him to watch out for Naruto, saying that even though he didn’t have a family, he still had a pack. Kiba hadn’t understood a lot of things about that statement, like why couldn’t they just take him in if he didn’t have a family or why she’d bother to mention him in specific; now he’s glad he kept an eye on him back then. Everyone deserves pack, especially someone as bright-hearted as Naruto.
Lost in his moment of thought, Shino answers before he can.
“Yes and no, Naruto-san. Yes, a seal like yours, because it is a seal and most likely stores something. No, not like yours, because yours contains a tailed beast as an entity, and as a result is larger and stronger than Kiba’s.”
All three of Team 7 freeze at the casual admittance of Naruto’s jinchuuriki status, although Sasuke hides it much better than the other two. An icy, uncomfortable quiet rises, at odds with the warm fire. The forest seems to loom and encroach over them.
“But… but Orochimaru messed with it, with my seal… Aren’t you worried that I’m… that I’m the demon fox?” Naruto’s voice get smaller as he finishes and casts his gaze down into the fire, and Kiba is dumbstruck by his own disgust and anger at the people his mother and sister fight so hard to protect.
(A small voice in the back of his mind reminds him that he fights for them too as much as he fights for and with his fellow shinobi, that he’s gunning for chuunin now, he’s not a little Academy student anymore, but it’s overrun by his mini internal fury.)
Sakura and Sasuke don’t say anything, but they do shift a little closer to Naruto, and some of Kiba’s irrational anger spills over at them as well.
He bites himself down, giving either of his own teammates a chance to talk, but when he realises their voices aren’t forthcoming - Shino is nearly always quiet, usually waiting for Kiba to put his foot in his mouth before helping him pull it out, and apparently sometime between the chase of Orochimaru and the eight hours he was out, Hinata has remembered her raging crush on Naruto so of course she won’t speak up – the proverbial dam bursts.
“Of course not Naruto! Just because those stupid civilians don’t know any better doesn’t mean we don’t!”
A small waft of Sakura’s strawberry scent carries an undertone of anger at his accusations of civilians being stupid before Kiba remembers that Sakura is civilian-born, but he doesn’t care. There isn’t blood on his hands and in his hair for this, he didn’t barge through an Iwa team in training ground 44 for this, he didn’t decapitate a sannin for this shit to rip his pack and his home apart from the inside.
Naruto looks up quickly, and Kiba is baffled by the amount of surprise present on his face, before that too is added to the fire like so much flammable oil.
“If you seal a kunai in a scroll, it doesn’t make the scroll dangerous like a kunai, does it! No it doesn’t! The only thing that makes it dangerous is the strength of the seal and the strength of the scroll, and the Yondaime made that seal so I bet it’s damn strong! And you, Naruto! You’re the scroll, if you make it stronger it only makes it better, not more dangerous! Those bastards out there don’t understand that, and even if they don’t they still shouldn’t treat you like shit because you’re from Konoha too dammit, you’re their pack and you don’t leave pack behind!”
He’s barely kept his voice below shouting, and is only being held to the ground by Akamaru’s weight on his lap and Shino’s steadying hand on his shoulder, Hinata stroking Akamaru’s head still on his knee.
Naruto’s face has scrunched up in a funny way, and Kiba actually has to check with his nose that it’s relief coming from him, even though it makes him seethe more because he shouldn’t have to be relieved, people treating him right should be normal. Then his eyes refocus and shift to the other two, and a draught over the fire makes it crackle and spit flecks into the air.
“And you two! Why haven’t you told him you don’t think of him like that? You’re his team, his direct contact! He should know that you trust him, that you know he’s not the Kyuubi!”
“Because he knows that! He knows he’s not the Kyuubi and we know he’s not the Kyuubi, what else should we say?” Sakura cries out, and while Sasuke doesn’t make any move to verbally concur, he gives a very slight, small nod of his head. Naruto turns to look at his teammates in shock, first at Sakura’s hard-set face and Sasuke’s usual blankness.
“See! He doesn’t know, his reaction just proved my point! Did you ever actually bother to tell him, or did you just stick it under the rug like dog shit and hope the smell would go away?”
At that, Sakura at least has the grace to look abashed as Sasuke just turns his face away from Team 8 and towards the dark forest. Kiba sighs inwardly, his anger giving way to exhaustion, but at least it was a start.
He pulls himself back, and revels in the small amount of pride radiating from Hinata as he puts a leash on his feelings. They’ve been working on that for a while, between Hinata coming out of her shell and Shino coming forth with his emotions, a little sidetrack in his mind is happy that they’re noticing his progress in controlling his hair-trigger temper even a little better.
He breathes out a long breath through his mouth, and starts again. “Look, you guys. I’m an Inuzuka, yeah? So that means I have my clan nindo, right? The clan nindo is to protect the pack, and protect the home.”
A pause for breath, and to check that Team 7 is paying attention. Naruto, for once, seems fully on task, and Sakura has managed to make eye contact again. Sasuke’s face is still extremely guarded, now looking at all of Team 8 expectantly.
He probably needs to hear this the most, Kiba suddenly realises, and it feels like a bucket of ice water just got dumped on his rage-fire. After his clan, and Itachi… Naruto had no one, but Sasuke lost everyone. Shit, and the Hokage stuck them on the same team?
“So. Who’s the pack? Where’s my home? Well, the Inuzuka are my pack—”
Sasuke’s eyes harden and his mouth goes thin, but Kiba forges on.
“—but Team 8 are also my pack, Shino, Hinata-chan and Kurenai-sensei. And as well as them, there are you guys, and Shikamaru and Chouji and Ino and all the other Konoha nin like Iruka-sensei or the chuunin in the mission room or the vet clinic, or the jounin who do the big A-ranks, and even the ANBU and Hokage-sama, they’re all part of my pack too.”
Hinata is nodding along beside him and Shino squeezes his shoulder. They’ve heard this all before, but the surprise radiating from the other three genin around the campfire shows that someone clearly forgot to tell them, or at least tell them in a way that mattered to a civilian no-one, a doomed heir to a founding clan, and an orphaned jinchuuriki.
“And then there’s all the civilians, people like your Teuchi-san and Ayame-chan at Ichiraku’s, or the lady that works in the library, or the old man who runs the butcher shop, all of those people are pack too. Because they’re part of Konoha, and that’s my home.
“Yeah, okay so I live in the Inuzuka compound and spend most of the day eating dirt with Hinata-chan and Shino in training ground 11 or 12, but Konoha is my home, and it’s full of my pack. So I’ll fight for them, that’s the Inuzuka way.”
Hana would laugh so hard at this, Kiba thinks absent-mindedly, there was barely any swearing at all.
The quiet returns, and Team 7 seem a little stuck. Kiba struggles not to roll his eyes, and nudges Hinata to get her to back him up - he could try and get Shino to do it, but Hinata’s softer nature would probably be better than Shino’s directness here.
She lets out a little eep as Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura all look at her.
“Kiba-kun is right,” she says softly, not making eye contact with any of them and fiddling with the hem of her cream Hyuuga jacket – but she’s not fiddling with her hands, and her voice is fairly steady so Kiba counts that as a win, “Maybe we don’t all say it the same way, but we… we fight for the same thing. I have my sister, Hanabi-chan, and Neji-kun, and all the Hyuuga clan, main and branch families… and I have Kiba-kun and Shino-kun and Kurenai-sensei, and… and you guys too, and Team 10, and the all other nin as well. We’re Konoha shinobi, so we should stick together.” That’s a strong finish for her, and Kiba noticed the distinct addition of both Hyuuga family lines (so did Shino, by the way Kiba can smell his pride too), and Kiba wraps a proud arm around her in a side-hug.
Out of the other three, Sasuke shows the least amount of emotion. To Kiba, he smells floored. He tries not to be too smug about it, even though there’s a sting underneath that he’s only now realised that they’ve left him alone for far longer than he should have been. Looking at the other two, Sakura seems very thoughtful but definitely less grim than she did earlier, and Naruto… Naruto just smells a little confused but predominantly happy, and Kiba allows a small grin on his face even as he makes a promise to himself in his head.
Now, even as the quiet still lingers, it’s more of a comforting blanket of forestry critters and tousled leaves to Kiba’s ears than the oppressive atmosphere of earlier in the day, Orochimaru’s vile chakra nearly completely dissipated and killing intent nearly forgotten.
Shino lifts his hand from Kiba’s shoulder and makes to pick up soggy leaves from between the roots of the trees.
“We should put this fire out and take shifts. Tomorrow morning, we can head to the tower together, since we all have the scrolls necessary to pass. Sasuke and I should take first shift, then Sakura and Hinata can take the second. Why? Because Naruto and Kiba were the most impacted by the fight, therefore they should rest the longest before moving again.”
The Aburame wanders off before anyone gets a word in edgeways, but even then, none of us have any better ideas, Kiba thinks to himself. As much as it irks him, his teammate’s plans are usually sound. Sakura gets up to follow him to find damp leaves to stamp on the dwindling fire, and Hinata and Naruto start to sort out their packs for the morning; Hinata very clearly avoiding Naruto’s side of the camp.
Sasuke pauses, then snags a sealing scroll from the side of his pack and walks over to where Orochimaru’s head is lying still in the dirt.
“We sealed his body up while you were out, as well as his summon’s head. We would’ve sealed this earlier, but you wouldn’t let go, so,” he says blankly, kneeling down and smoothing out the paper before biting a thumb and smearing his blood on the seal, and the skull with whatever was left of the snake sennin’s face disappeared into the paper with a small pop of chakra.
Kiba just nods his thanks in Sasuke’s direction before he flops back down on the ground and unrolls his bedroll from there, Akamaru stumbling up from his lap to lie across his chest, head tucked under Kiba’s chin against his neck.
“Hey, why doesn’t Kiba have to help clean up? He’s been asleep all day!” Naruto suddenly whines, and Kiba huffs out a laugh at his petulant tone.
“Because I saved all your asses today, idiot!” he shoots back, although there’s no heat in the insult.
“But we didn’t ask you to!” but Naruto is half laughing and Kiba can smell the relief from his direction, so he isn’t worried about it.
“Yeah, well tough shit! I did it, so there!” and no one touches the elephant in the forest that equates I did it to I killed a sannin for you, but that’s a discussion for another time, when we’re not half-delirious with exhaustion, Kiba thinks.
Sleeping bag now open, he rolls into it and Akamaru shuffles in beside him. The embers of the fire are rapidly dying, and he can hear Shino and Sasuke settling down on a branch high above for first watch, and a few of Naruto’s shadow clones bound away, henged into a variety of the six of them.
Kiba tips his head up and closes his eyes, and goes over his new promise in his head. He’d held fast to the one about keeping Orochimaru away from his pack, and now the bastard was dead, so by his reckoning it was time for a new one.
I’ll make my pack stronger than ever, so that way nothing will hurt them, from inside or out. And if the pack is strong, then Konoha will be strong too, and I won’t leave them behind.
His mind flashes back to what that Iwa kunoichi had said when she was in his way of getting to Team 7, nearly 12 hours ago.
“It’s dog eat dog,” she had said. Well, it wouldn’t be if Kiba had anything to say about it.
I will protect my home with my pack, and I will make them stronger.
(He knows in the back of his head that that’s a lot easier said than done, and that really he killed Orochimaru because he underestimated a bunch of genins and sheer luck rather than skill, but he’s too tired to care, and too happy that every one of his pack made it through the altercation alive that he barely notices the seal pulsating weakly on his arm, and he slips into sleep with a smile on his face, blood and grit under his nails and a promise between his fangs.)