"No. Way." Hotaru glared at the scowling Inu, folding her arms, despite the pain the action brought. "Have you gone insane?!"

"We need to get back to Konoha as soon as possible! Who knows if the Akatsuki will attack us again? And with you in your current state, you'll just slow us down!" Kiba reasoned, and the redhead growled viciously at him.

"No way in hell am I letting you carry me!" she yelled, and Kiba finally lost his patience.

"Do you really want to be taken by the Akatsuki again?! Who knows what they'll do to you! Your brother probably had to make up all sorts of stuff just so that he wouldn't be killed, let alone to stop them coming after us!" Hotaru went to yell again, but stopped.

"Asshole.." she muttered, but he was right. Darn mutt-bastard had used her weakness, though.

Kiba just smirked, knowing he had won. As she went to turn around, his eyes caught on something red. Since she was wearing her ninja gear now (see book cover), not the white t-shirt and black jacket that were her pj's, her bandaged stomach was revealed, and a red patch of blood was slowly expanding.

"You might want to change those bandages before we set off." Kiba pointed out, and the kunoichi cursed, extremely tempted to punch her stupid, hindering body.

"Yeah, yeah." Hotaru sighed, then made quick work of removing her scarf and undoing the corset ties on her shirt. She dropped both items to the floor, while Kiba just stared at her, shocked and seemingly unable to move. Hotaru went and rummaged in her bag, pulling out some bandages, then smirked.

"See something you like, dog-boy?" she said, still searching for bandages with her back to him. Kiba blushed and scowled, turning away and folding his arms stubbornly.

"What is there to see?" he retorted, and the redhead snickered.

"I dunno, you tell me. You were the one staring." they threw insults back and forth as Hotaru unwound her bandages carefully, then tipped some water out of her canteen onto a tissue and used that to clean the blood away. She hissed in pain, breaking the argument, and making Kiba turn to her once again. He was immediately torn, between turning back away, or helping her. But he knew she'd never accept his help, so just turned back away and pretended he hadn't noticed. Pretended he couldn't smell the blood.

The wound seemed to have stopped bleeding now, which was good, because, any more and Hotaru would be dead. She sighed, and started to wrap the fresh bandages around her torso, sensing eyes on her again. She smirked, then picked up a can of antibacterial spray, and threw it. She heard as it hit it's mark, and bit her lip to hold in a snicker.

"Hey! What was that for?!" Kiba demanded, and Hotaru just gave him a sideways glance.

"I know you were looking at me." she was satisfied to see the Inu-nin blush and look away, scowling.

* * *

"I can't believe I agreed to this..."

It was a rather difficult situation. She had to hold onto the dog-boy, or she would fall, but at the same time, she was trying to keep as much space between them as possible. It didn't help that the air was so cold, and he, well.. he was really, really warm.

Hotaru was halfway torn between punching the Inu-baka and cuddling into him; she was so cold! Freezing, in fact!

Sadly, her pride was in the way, so she just kept her head facing in a different direction, though it was difficult since her arms were around his neck.

"Yeah well, don't think I'm enjoying this... I just wanna get home and away from you." Kiba retorted, and Hotaru glared at him.

"Well, at least you aren't the one being carried! I'd much rather be the one doing the carrying!" the kunoichi hissed in reply, and Kiba glared back at her.

"Well then you shouldn't have got injured, should ya?!" Hotaru grimaced. It was annoying to admit, but he was right.

There was silence for a few minutes, and then a sudden jerk as something slammed into Kiba. Hotaru suppressed a squeak and clutched tighter onto the mutt, forgetting anything she'd said before about keeping distance. After all, she didn't particularly want to fall from being in the trees and die.

"Akamaru! What was that?!" Kiba demanded, and the dog just grinned, seeing the girl huddled tight to his master. He had accomplished his goal.

Neither shinobi seemed to notice how close they were now; Kiba was concentrating on his path, and Hotaru was concentrating on not being dropped. So neither made to move away from each other.

After a little while, both noticed, but were reluctant to move. Kiba for some unnameable reason, and Hotaru because she finally wasn't freezing cold. So both just said nothing and hoped that the other hadn't noticed.

Hotaru fought away the blush of embarassment that threatened her cheeks, hiding her face in the Inu's neck. He actually smelled pretty good.. but she'd never tell him that. She'd never hear the end of it! Hotaru was finding it hard to get comfortable, now... Kiba's arms held her just a little too close to him, and while it was keeping her nice and warm, there was something wrong about being so... cuddled up, with her number one enemy. It just felt so weird!

Hotaru knew that she'd have to bear with it, though... so she just pretended that it was Sasori, and shut her eyes.

* * *

"So there was only one of you, hm?" Hotaru and Kiba both snapped their heads to the voice, and saw the blonde man standing on the back of a big, white bird.

Hotaru's eyes narrowed. "Deidara."

Deidara smirked, and Kiba stared at Hotaru, astounded. "You know that guy?!"

"He's an Akatsuki." realisation lit in Kiba's eyes, and he glared up at the smirking blonde. "Put me down."

The Inu-nin gave the redhead a look of confusion, "But-"

"Just do it." Kiba glared at the stubborn female a moment, before doing as he was told, and setting her on her feet. They were standing in a shallow river, and the water came just under Hotaru's ankle. She pulled out a kunai, and glared up at Deidara, who rose an eyebrow in return.

"You're going to attempt to fight me, even though you're injured?" Deidara sniffed in contempt, "You really are Sasori-danna's sister, yeah... combined with the determination of Leaf shinobi... hm." he sighed, "It would be easier if you just came with me, but that won't happen, will it?"

Hotaru just glared at him in reply, then yelled, "What do you Akatsuki want from me?!"

Deidara looked at her with a surprised expression. "Actually, I'm here of my own accord... yeah. I want to see if the person that makes Sasori-danna strong is a worthy opponent.. but you're injured, so we can't have a proper fight... hm. So I'll just have to take you back to base and fight you at a later date."

Kiba growled, stepping up. "Like hell you will!" Akamaru yapped in agreement, growling also. Hotaru stared at them in shock.

"You want to stop me taking her, hm?" Deidara smirked, "Fine then, yeah."

Then the battled commenced.

"Mizu!" Hotaru shouted, sending a powerful jet of water up at the bird. It swooped out of the way just in time, and Hotaru cursed.

"Tsuuga!" Hotaru stared as Kiba and Akamaru tunnel-dived at Deidara.

The battle went on for a long time, until eventually, both Konoha-nin were almost out of chakra. Deidara smirked. He had a few scratches, but nothing serious.

"You Konoha shinobi are quite the adversaries. However..." he grinned as he opened his palm, and a small clay bird sat in it. "You've lost this fight, yeah."

He formed a hand sign, and threw the bird. It expanded to about five times it's original size, and flew towards the two Leaf shinobi.

It started to glow, and Kiba cursed, as beams of light shot out of it. Damn, that was going to be one powerful blast.

Hotaru watched the bomb in horror as it started to smoke. This was it... they were finished.

She gasped out as something knocked her back onto to floor, just as a loud bang resonated through the clearing. Kiba hung his head to hide his pained expression as the shockwave from the explosion hit into him, followed by hard debris that were flung into his back with needle-like hits.

He then brought his head up, to meet the wide hazel eyes of the girl he had shielded, and just stared at her, both breathing heavily from exertion.

Hotaru stared in shock at the pained Inu-nin. He just stared back, their faces mere millimetres apart, so close that she could feel how heavily he was breathing.

He was the one that knocked her to the floor. He had shielded her with his body.

Kiba just stared at her with a blank expression, and then the sounds of battle reappeared as their backup arrived.

"Now... we're even.." he murmured breathlessly, and Hotaru seemed unable to form words, her brain had yet to register the facts.

Then he rolled off of her and just lied in the shallow water, trying to steady his breathing as Akamaru sniffed weakly at his master's side.

"Are you guys okay?! We rushed out to meet you as soon as we got the message!" Hotaru could barely bring herself to move her eyes and look at the newcomer.

"S.. Sakura.." she mumbled, then moved her arms and slowly edged herself to stand. Sakura rushed to help her.

"Easy, easy! You're severely down on chakra! Ino, help Kiba!" the blonde girl nodded, and did as she was told. The male shinobi was unconscious, but Ino managed to get him up and carry him to where Sakura had taken Hotaru behind a boulder on the bank of the river.

Hotaru hissed in pain as Sakura began to heal her, the feeling of flesh reconnecting weird as always. So she instead focused her attention on what Ino was doing to Kiba.

"H.. how is he?" she asked, and Ino glanced up at the redhead before looking back down at what she was doing.

"He's all right. He just used a lot of chakra, and has a few bruises." Ino said, focusing on keeping the green glow around her hand steady. "What happened?"

Hotaru looked down, her features cast in shadow for a moment. "He protected me."

The two trainee medics shared a look of surprise; so that was why Hotaru seemed so concerned. But it was weird for either of them to do something like that for the other. They hated each other! Or at least, everyone thought they did.

* * *

Hotaru laid back on her bed in her flat, folding her arms behind her head. Tsunade had said no strenuous exercise until the wound had fully healed, and it finally had, so the redhead had spent the whole of that day at the training field.

She cast a glance around the photo's in her room, she had many. She had moved out of Sasuke's house a long time ago, wanting her own space, but at the same time, the photo's kept everyone close. She had photo's of pretty much all of her friends; shots of her with Naruto and Sasuke, of all of the Genin, of her and Gaara when they were little, of her team. Her eyes fell on the team photo that Tsunade had in her files; the one with Hinata looking worried, Shino stoic, Kurenai sighing, and her and Kiba glaring at each other. She laughed a bit, remembering. She had been so irritated when she found out that she was on a team with him, so she had poured glue in the hood of his coat. It was safe to say that he had not been happy, though apparently both his mother and sister had found it very funny when Kiba came home with his hood stuck to his head.

However, Kiba had then returned the favour by putting glue in Hotaru's favourite hat that she wore every day at the Academy. Hence why Hotaru's shinobi outfit was now hat-less.

Good times.

Then she thought of how he had shielded her from the explosion with his body, and the smile fell, replaced by a frustrated frown.

Why would he do something like that?! It's the sort of thing that friends do for each other, and they most definitely weren't friends. Were they?

She thought about it. When he had came close to drowning, she had been worried about him. When she was kidnapped by Akatsuki, he came alone to save her.

She smiled a little bit. Yeah, in their own, weird way, they were friends. He still irritated the hell out of her, though.

Running a hand through her hair, she frowned at the ceiling. She was still annoyed.

While she was grateful that he had saved her, she was annoyed by it at the same time. She hated this feeling of.. being indebted, to him. It made her feel weak, and that was something that she could not stand.

Standing up, she went to the picture of her, Sasori and Granny Chiyo. Chiyo had said to come back and visit...

She put the picture down with a sharp snap, a determined smirk on her face. She knew what she had to do.

---

Meuurhh, cliffy!! Sort of.

What do you think she's gonna do?

What's with the chapter title?

And what do you think of Kiba saving her? Hehe, so many questions.

Well you shall have to wait, my darlings!

I will try to update again soon. But in the meantime, fan, vote, and comment! :3