Naruto : Path of Wind

"This is ridiculous," I growl, propping the crutches under either arm. "I can walk fine by myself. You just saw me walk out of the bathroom two minutes ago!" The civilian doctor crosses his arms over his chest, watching me with the unsympathetic eyes of a hawk.

"Be thankful that we're allowing you this much, Uzumaki-san," he says, his tone dripping with disapproval. "After the scare you gave us not once, but twice removing your IVs without consent from myself or my colleague, we should have you strapped to that bed for the rest of the week."

Like hell- they're lucky I've stayed this long. It's been a day since Sakura's meltdown, which lead to me stumbling through the hospital and eventually bumping into the old man having a discussion with an Uchiha sporting a swath of bandages over his right eye, among other injuries.

He'd agreed to getting me out of the hospital quickly enough after I explained Sakura's behavior, but the hospital staff retaliated by needling one more overnight for observation out of him. And so I'd spent most of the night staring up at the ceiling wondering what in the name of all nine Bijuu that skeleton of a shinobi could have done to my teammates that didn't involve genjutsu to shake them up so much.

"At least they're letting you keep your clothes," Sasuke says, smirking. He'd showed up early this morning, having apparently spent the day and most of the night training with Kakashi before passing out back at my apartment, the lucky bastard. He actually looks a lot better for it, to be honest. He's still got the bags under his eyes, but he doesn't look as weary anymore.

Did my mini coma really have that much of an affect on him? Sasuke's never been the emotional type, but then again neither of us have ever been out of commission for this long either.

"Honestly, I'm not even sure how you can do this much right now," The doctor continues to babble. "Your muscles had sustained severe raiton damage when you were first brought in; you shouldn't have been able to shuffle into a wheelchairfor at least another few days, let alone walk. And that's not even taking into account the chakra exhaustion, which-"

"That's everything, right?" I ask, gesturing with my crutch at the backpack in my teammate's hands. He nods. "Let's get the hell out of here, then."

"Just one second now," The doctor protests indignantly. "You still need to take a final physical examination and complete some paperwork before you can be discharged, Uzumaki-san."

I groan. "Amazing."

A few lifetimes later I gimp my way out the front doors of the hospital, into the morning sunlight. The sweet, natural, not-white sunlight. I inhale deeply, relishing in the smell of the trees and the wafting scents of the various delicacies being put on sale one distract down. I set off in that direction, Sasuke faithfully slowing down to match my crippled pace.

"Hey, my money is in there, right?" I ask. Sasuke nods, and after a bit of rummaging hands me over my bright green frog wallet. "Thanks. So what sounds good for breakfast?"

We end up deciding on a stall harking a wide variety of fruits imported from the capitol along with freshly baked sweet rolls. Sasuke grabs a couple of the former, and I grab a few of both. He gives me an odd look as I shuffle away stuffing my face, but the food tastes far too good after my eating hiatus for me to care. He can be as prim and proper with his fruity fruits all he likes, but I'm hungry.

"Alright, that was amazing," I say contentedly when it's all gone. Sasuke hums in agreement, taking the final bite out of his pear and tossing the core into a nearby alley. Gesturing for him to follow, I head for a back road leading to training ground seven, bypassing the bustling crowd of civilians and shinobi alike crowding the market district.

Apartment buildings tower on both sides of us, tall and colorful and echoing with the chatter of children and adults alike. It's still the quieter of the two options, though.

"Okay," I say, gaining Sasuke's attention. "So on a scale of one to ten, how close an eye have you been keeping on Sakura while I was out?"

He shifts his eyes away from me, considering the ground. "One being the lowest?"

I growl. "You've got to be kidding me."

"Look, it's not that I didn't want to-"

"She's been traumatized, man! She had a mental breakdown yesterday when I tried asking her about what happened. How in the hell have you not been helping her out?"

"I didn't know how, okay?" He snaps. "I never saw what he did to her and Tenten, I only saw their reactions. I don't know anything at all about what she's been through, except that I can't possibly sympathize with her about it! I don't know what to do." His foot lashes out and kicks a rock, sending it whistling through the air out of sight. And I realize that maybe it wasn't just my coma that was stressing him out so much this past week.

"I think you need to tell me what you saw," I tell him quietly. He closes his eyes, and the soft crunch of the dirt under our feet and the chatter above overtakes us.

"It wasn't- There was nothing overt about it. One moment Sakura and Tenten were both unconscious, and the next Sakura was clawing at her throat and gagging, like she was choking on something. She made this voice in the back of her throat, I can't-" He shudders.

"She started twisting around, trying to reach something on her back, but there wasn't anything there. She... She opened her eyes then. It might have been the light, but they looked almost gray." He shakes his head, blowing a frustrated breath out of his nose. "It was so strange, I can't describe it. It just felt wrong.

"She just curled up into a ball after that, and started sobbing. She wasn't crying tears though, she was crying blood. That's when I broke out of the genjutsu he'd placed on me."

"That's when you killed him," I say. He nods silently. I consider the balconies peppering the buildings above me, and see a little girl run past one, giggling. "I'd have killed him too." Sasuke hesitates, but nods again.

"After I came back in the house and woke her up, she seemed fine. She wiped the blood off her cheeks and asked me where you were. She was shaking and stuttering a little, but I figured that was understandable," he explains.

"What about Tenten?" I ask.

"There was blood on her cheeks too when I checked her, but I couldn't wake her up. I think whatever he was trying to do to Sakura, he did to her first," Sasuke says, scowling fiercely at his feet.

"That fast?" Sakura and Tenten had only been gone for a minute before that Raiakuzu showed up.

Sasuke shrugs helplessly. "It's the only thing that makes sense. I don't know of any kind of genjutsu capable of doing so much in so little time, though."

"Probably because it wasn't a genjutsu."

He looks sharply at me. "What?"

"Sakura told me before she ran away yesterday," I explain. "That was about the only thing I managed to get out of her."

"But that's not- What could it have been?" He asks, bewildered. I give him a shrug of my own.

"Ninjutsu would be my guess. Probably kinjutsu as well, if it managed to do that much in that little time."

Sasuke chews on that for the rest of our walk, and I leave him to that while I do the same. I didn't manage to come up with anything that made sense last night, but I might as well keep trying. Eventually we escape from the throng of apartment buildings and make for the many-faced training ground district.

A trio of genin from our Academy class go shooting by in training ground twenty-four and holler a hasty greeting, but otherwise the grounds are near deserted. Terrains morph as we go, from mountainous to level and much in between, until we come upon the familiar forested regions housing grounds one through twelve.

When we make it to the little bridge connecting to training ground seven, I spot Kakashi and Sakura, the former perched on one of the three stumps embedded in the middle of the little clearing and the latter sat cross-legged and hunched over a scroll on the ground. The silver-haired jounin's head suddenly perks up, and he waves cheerfully at us.

"Good morning you two! It's good to see you up on your feet, Naruto," he calls. I blink, startled.

"Uh, thanks," I call back cautiously. I gimp to a stop a couple feet from them, eyeing Sakura warily. Sasuke drops my backpack down by a log and makes for one of the training dummies attached to the trees.

"Just a second, Sasuke," Kakashi says. Said Uchiha cocks a brow, but returns obediently to our little circle. Sakura makes a wide brush stroke on the scroll, hesitates, then follows it through. "Now that the three of you are all here, I believe it's time I briefed you on what the next couple weeks of your lives are going to be like."

That doesn't sound ominous at all.

"Your teammates may have already told you this, but I've been focusing on training them individually since we got back from our mission. That's going to be a theme for a while. That mission served a few purposes, but the main one was allowing me to get a stronger idea of what your strengths and weaknesses are."

Sakura taps the wooden end of her brush against the ground erratically. I lean forward, but her hair is obscuring her face and the scroll both. "Now we're going to make those shine and stamp them out, respectively."

"So no more team exercises?" I try to sound disappointed. I really do.

Kakashi smiles. Sakura makes a little dash. "Not to worry, Naruto. We won't be able to do two a day, but we'll still be doing team training every day after lunch."

Curse you, Hatake.

"Now, I've already given Sakura and Sasuke theirs, so here's your scroll." He hands me a plain scroll, about as thick and long as my fist. "That should cover the gist of what I'll be drilling you on until our next mission. Look it over before training tomorrow." And with that he hops off the log, forms a few seals, and is enveloped in a cloud of chakra smoke. When the smoke clears, there are two Kakashis instead of one. Both of their eyes curve up deviously.

"I'd suggest you start now."

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