Hiashi and Hoheto had been running through the emerald-tipped forests for what seemed like ages, heading in a zigzag pattern that loosely ended at the coast of Fire Country. Hiashi had insisted that in order for their mission to be successful, they were going to need to cover a lot of ground – and fast… that much was obvious by how much he was pushing the poor child to his breaking point.

After an excruciatingly long amount of time, Hiashi finally slowed to normal walking speed, and directed them to a large tree with roots that stood several feet from the ground, cocooning a small area of the forest in a defensible shroud.

"Let us stop and rest," the Hyuuga head said. "You are nearly out of chakra, Hoheto."

"I…" The boy gulped down air, bending over to rest his hands on his knees while he tried to recover enough to form a full sentence. "I know."

"I do apologize; the distance we must travel is far too great, and our target far too fast to warrant an easy journey," Hiashi replied, pulling a small sealing scroll from his bag and seating himself comfortably in the nook the tree provided. "This is an espionage mission… a task we the Hyuuga pride ourselves over above almost everything else." He passed a small current of chakra through the seal's release, and a pair of water bottles and ration bars manifested themselves in his lap. "To be an effective shinobi in our clan, you are going to have to be up to tasks such as these at a moment's notice… such as what just happened."

"Yeah," Hoheto breathed, throwing himself down beside the other root, across from Hiashi. "Yeah, I know. I'll be fine, I promise, Hiashi-sama."

A bottle of water and food suddenly sat in his lap. "Eat that," the jounin said coolly, nodding at the rations. "It will help considerably."

His eyes flickered in what Hoheto could only assume was amusement, but the expression was gone as fast as it had come. "Although… the taste leaves quite a lot to be desired."

Hoheto shrugged, breaking a decent chunk of the bar off into his mouth and chewing ravenously.

Then, he blanched; freezing mid-chew.

This time, Hiashi's smile was completely unhidden, as his genin student quickly began to chase the awful-tasting substance down his throat with the majority of the contents of his water bottle.

"I told you. Regardless, it will help you build strength." As if to prove his point, Hiashi took a sizeable, yet dignified bite out of his own ration bar, grimacing slightly before swallowing it.

They sat in silence for a few moments, each simply enjoying the peace and the rest. After what Hoheto felt was a respectable length of time, he perked his head up and asked the question that had been egging at the back of his mind since they had veered off course earlier in the day.

"Um… where are we, exactly, Hiashi-sama?"

Hiashi nodded, looking down at the boy. "Currently, we are 10 miles away from a small fishing village on the coast."

"Is that where we are heading?" Hoheto asked.

"Indeed it is," Hiashi nodded. "They are most likely undersupplied, and in need of transportation to the Hidden Mist village." He frowned. "If that is truly where they are headed."

"Oh, I see." Hoheto turned back to his unfinished ration bar, satisfied with his answer.

Apparently, the Hyuuga man took that as a sign of preparedness, because he raised to his full height and began to reseal his canteen and the packaging of his rations.

"I suggest you finish that before we leave." He pointed down at the bar in Hoheto's hands. "Which is now. So hurry up."

"Y-yes, Hiashi-sama," Hoheto said, leaping to his feet and cramming the bar into his mouth as he watched his teacher activate his Byakugan and begin scanning the horizon.

"Wait… two blonds," he muttered to himself, his eyes narrowing in concentration. "I've found them. They're in the village, as I suspected."

Hoheto finished choking down his food just as Hiashi leapt for the trees. "Come, Hoheto! We've no time to waste. They will be gone by sundown, that much is certain."

"Aww, do I have to wear this?"

"Yes, you do, Boruto. Where we're going, it's going to be both wet and cold. And our clothes are shredded."

The blond boy picked at the eggshell-white cloak that was wrapped around him with obvious disgust, frowning at the way it billowed out towards the bottom in such a way that made it quite obvious the garment was much too big for him. "But I liked the way the shredded clothes looked. It was kinda cool, y'know."

Naruto smirked, looking over at his son out of the corner of his eye as they walked at a leisurely pace down the winding gravel path that ended at the coastline just up ahead.

"Just be lucky that we found someone in that village who was willing to sell us these," Naruto said. "Otherwise, we would've been miserable later on down the line." He looked down on himself with a shrug. "It may not be as nice as my official work cloak, but I think it'll do fine for the time being."

Boruto 'hmph'ed, and crossed his arms underneath the fabric.

They continued to walk for another half of a mile or so, before the trees around them slowly started to thin out, and the bitter smell of salt began to drift through the air.

"We're almost there anyways," Naruto said, nodding towards where the path supposedly ended just up ahead. "All we have to do is find someone who is willing to take us across the sea, and we'll have arrived."

Boruto tensed slightly, but otherwise said nothing as they moved onwards.

The path briefly began to climb as they walked, the slight inclination betraying all of the other signs Boruto used to orient himself. If they were approaching the coast of Fire Country, shouldn't they be going downwards instead of up?

His confusion was quickly replaced with awe when they reached the end of the path, which abruptly cut out right at the edge of a very steep, and very tall cliff side.

Far below them, the dull roar of crashing waves echoed up the side of the veritable mountain. The ocean had never looked quite so stunning; Boruto couldn't believe that a sunset could be so awe-inspiringly beautiful. A colorful palette of reds and purples and yellows and oranges painted the water that dipped below the horizon, morphing in the receding sunlight into different shades and hues in a fluctuating phantasm of life.

The winds roared like a steam engine around them, spraying them with a very subtle ocean mist; the taste of salt in Boruto's mouth before had merrily been a drop in the bucket compared to the real thing he now stood before.

"Uhh, I wasn't exactly expecting that," Naruto stated from beside him, looking down the side of the ledge with a frown. "Well, I guess we're going to have to find a way down, then."

He cracked his neck, turning on his heel and looking back towards the treeline. "Isn't that right… Hiashi Hyuuga?"

For several moments, nothing happened. The wind whipped past him and into the forest, the trees dancing in the evening breeze as nature continued to run its course.

Then, suddenly, a flickering pair of shuriken caught the light, descending upon them with the haste only an experienced ninja could elicit.

Boruto yelped in surprise, but otherwise did nothing to stop the spinning blades as they slammed into their flesh, blood spewing everywhere-

-Before both Naruto and Boruto disappeared in a plume of smoke.

Hiashi blinked from the trees, Byakugan active. He hadn't realized they were clones… how was that possible?

"You're probably wondering how I managed to slip past your eyes," a voice whispered in his ear.

In an instant, Hiashi spun through the air, lashing out with a hasty Gentle Fist strike. When he struck nothing but air, he quickly executed a shunshin, retreating back to where he had told Hoheto to hide while he scouted.

Much to his surprise, he found Hoheto held at knifepoint by the same blond boy from before, as well as his father behind him. The boy was reasonably pale in the face – as if he was quite uncomfortable holding a kunai to someone's neck… and he was staring at Hiashi in what looked like awe, as if the man had grown a second head.

Standing beside him was the other target, the one-armed man… who looked to be the boy's father, if the hair and birthmarks were any indication. He stood there with tired, sunken eyes – and a small smile on his lips.

Whether it was malicious or not had yet to be determined, the Hyuuga jounin thought bitterly.

"Hello, Hiashi. I suspect the Hokage sent you to follow me?"

Hiashi steeled himself, standing up straight with all the dignity that the head of a powerful clan could muster. "The Byakugan is all-seeing. And yet I could not detect your presence." He narrowed his eyes. "How is such a thing possible?"

The blond man, which the Hokage had named "Naruto" in the orders he had received, let out a snort and nearly rolled his eyes. "Please. Hiashi, we both know that's a lie. The Byakugan is as weak as the Sharingan, or the Wood Style, or the Hiraishin, in the sense that if you rely on it too much, you won't get far." He gave another small, knowing smile. "Let's just say… that I've had quite a bit of experience working with and against the Byakugan."

Hiashi sighed. "I see. Well, I won't pretend I know why or how, but I'll just accept that I made a mistake in coming in as close as I did." He raised an eyebrow at Naruto. "Although I had to admit that I was curious to see exactly what it was that had Lord Hokage so worried."

Naruto let out small chuckle. "Worried about me, eh? That's nice of him." He turned to the blond boy, who looked like he was about to starve his fingertips of oxygen with the way he was gripping the kunai at Hoheto's neck. "Alright, you can drop the act, Boruto. They're not going to hurt us."

Boruto visibly deflated, jumping away from the other boy as quickly as he could, eyes wide and worried. "You… you weren't gonna make me kill him… were you, Dad?"

Naruto frowned down at his son, shaking his head slowly and deliberately. "What? No. Of course not."

Hiashi watched as the boy gulped, nodding his head as he stared down at the ground. 'What an interesting family dynamic. Either the father is rather harsh on the son, or the son has quite the inferiority complex.' He raised an eyebrow. 'Perhaps his father has something to do with that as well, yet he's not aware of it.'

"How can you be so sure that we aren't going to kill you?" Hiashi stated evenly once Hoheto had scrambled back to his side. "You just allowed your primary bargaining chip to slip through your fingers, and you did it on purpose. Are you truly that confident in your abilities?"

"Yes," Naruto said, without any hesitation in his voice, or the nearly indetectable wobble of the vocal cords that usually indicated someone was lying.

'He truly believes it,' Hiashi realized.

"But that's not the point." Naruto maneuvered his hand through the folds of his cloak, running it through his short hair. "I know you aren't going to hurt us because those shuriken you threw were not aimed in such a way that we would die from the injury. And they weren't truly meant to do more than incapacitate us for long enough for you to escape." He smiled. "And I appreciate that. And although the Hyuuga primarily focus on taijutsu as opposed to weapon-based combat, you still used shuriken instead of something much more deadly."

Naruto's eyes flickered to his hands, then back to his face; it was so subtle that Hiashi doubted even the man had realized he had done it. But the Hyuuga man had long since grown accustomed to detecting subtleties in body language such as those, and it stood out to him like a sore thumb.

Internally, Hiashi was reeling. There was a chance, however minute, that this man knew of one of his most ruthless techniques – the Air Palm. It was an incredibly difficult and highly revered jutsu that was passed on through the Main Branch of the clan, and very few outside of the Hyuuga compound's walls even knew it existed.

The Fourth was right. This man was most certainly a worrisome individual indeed.

Naruto just smiled again. "Alright! Let's get going, then. We've got a lot of ground to cover before we can get to the Hidden Mist village. And I want to be there by tomorrow morning."

"You… you're taking us with you?" Hoheto blurted out from beside Hiashi, and instantly recoiled when he realized he'd spoken aloud.

Naruto began to walk from the small clearing, back towards the path. "Of course. That's why I stopped and waited for you to catch up in that village. We might need your eyes in the future."

Hiashi blinked. How had he known…?

"Just what, exactly, do you intend to use us for?" Hiashi said coldly. "I don't particularly revel in the idea of being some sort of missing-nin's puppet for an afternoon."

"Relax," Naruto said, waving him off. "You've got nothing to worry about. We're just running an errand, then heading back to the Leaf. It won't take more than a day or two, if everything goes according to plan."

"What plan is this?"

Naruto stopped, sighing. "Alright, I suppose I should run this by you anyways, if we're going to be working together."

"Who said anything about working together? Aren't we doing this against our wills?" Hiashi asked.

The blond stopped, frowning. "What? Of course not. We're all shinobi of the Hidden Leaf, here. I'm just performing a mission that the Hokage may or may not have permitted us to take." He waved his hand in a placating manner. "Look, there's no hard feelings for the shuriken, or for the hostage thing. Okay?"

Hiashi narrowed his eyes, but said nothing. Naruto took this as a sign of affirmation, and continued moving onwards to the coastline.

"Right! The plan," he suddenly said after a few moments of silence, as the four shinobi walked along at a reasonable pace. "Well, I'm only going to tell you the basics, because some of the details are…" he coughed into his hand, "…well, they're not exactly something even the Hokage's privy to quite yet. But he will be pretty soon.

"We're going to the Hidden Mist Village because their Mizukage is sick," Naruto continued. "And I can help. I'm hoping to run into a couple people I know, and can trust… but we'll see." He narrowed his eyes at the horizon. "My memory's… a bit hazy."

"The Mizukage is sick?" Hiashi asked. "And just how do you know that?"

"He is a jinchuuriki," the blond man answered. "They're all in trouble. And I'm in the process of helping them all right now."

Hiashi blinked at the blunt honesty… or at the blatant lie. He couldn't tell, even with his Byakugan, which was quite off-putting. "I… I see," he said finally, before falling silent again.

Not once did Naruto mention just how he would be 'helping' the Mizukage, nor did he say just who it was he was hoping to encounter in the Mist. From what little Hiashi remembered of the Leaf's spy networks, there were few to no long-term espionage missions in the Land of Water… but by that same token, Hiashi could have simply been left out of the loop for matters of national security. Being a clan head only got you so far in a military dictatorship, after all.

The lack of detail in regards to Naruto's plan was a bit… worrying, to say the least; but Hiashi knew they didn't have much of a choice in the matter. They had failed their mission, and now they were going to face the music.

Hiashi just hoped that things would turn out alright. He missed his wife-to-be.