9. Aftermath
"Where am I?" Naruto murmured as his eyes opened to the inside of a canvas tent.
He attempted to sit up, but his body was sore and it moved sluggishly. Still, he moved his head around to get a good look at the tent that he was apparently in.
A quick survey of the tent confused Naruto further though.
He was lying on the table in the center of Sakumo Hatake's tent, though the mat of a cot had been placed under him for comfort.
"What in the hell's going on?" Naruto asked weakly as he tried to sit up again.
"Don't move around too much," Minato Namikaze said as he brushed the canvas of the tent's opening aside and walked in. "General Hatake sent me to check on you. You nearly died."
"Why am I here then?" Naruto asked. His voice was no louder than a whisper.
"The medics' tent is full," Minato replied. "They were able to spare a medic to see to you though. Do you know how much poison you were hit with?"
Naruto shook his head.
"Each needle had some kind of poison that was potent enough to kill a grown man in such a small quantity. You were hit by about ten needles," Minato said, looking at his friend seriously. "Luckily, the poison was used in the Second Shinobi World War, and Lady Tsunade of the Sannin created an antidote. If not for that antidote, you'd be dead."
Naruto smiled and said, "Even if I had died… it would have been worth it."
Minato shook his head at his friend's statement. "I appreciate that you saved Kushina from that attack, but sacrificing your life for hers isn't necessary."
"It's what any Leaf ninja would do," Naruto replied with a small smile. "Plus, we're family, aren't we? Maybe she'll actually consider me to be worthy of the Uzumaki name if I keep it up."
"There's no need for that. I already do."
Naruto turned his head and looked past Minato at the feminine voice. Standing behind his friend was Kushina Uzumaki.
"Minato, I need to speak to Naruto alone," Kushina asked, looking at the older blond as she spoke to the younger one. "Can you give us a few minutes?"
Minato hesitated for a second, but he nodded his head. "There's work to be done anyways. General Hatake was asking for volunteers to collect the bodies."
"The bodies?" Naruto asked faintly.
Minato nodded. "We lost a hundred men. It's estimated that the Sand ninja were killed to the last man though."
"We lost one man to ever ten the Sand lost then?" Naruto asked. He did not like the thought of half of his comrades dying, but it was a relatively good thing to only lose that many men.
"Yeah, but that's mainly because you took out about five hundred Sand ninja. Some of our men started calling you 'the Wind Dragon' and 'the Army Killer,' but General Hatake brought that to a stop very soon," Minato explained. "You certainly won't earn a moniker any time soon though. There were no witnesses left alive, after all." He noticed the look Kushina was giving him and suddenly cleared his throat. "I'll be heading out now."
With that, Minato departed and Kushina approached Naruto.
Fighting through the pain, Naruto sat up and looked at Kushina.
"Why did you save me?" Kushina asked. Her voice was quiet, but it was filled with strong emotion that rang out clearly to Naruto. It seemed that she was truly conflicted by his actions.
Naruto frowned at the question. "I thought I explained it. We're comrades… and family," he said, looking in her eyes with determination. "You can hate me for being alive instead of the family that you knew when you were little if you want. That doesn't mean that I will ever turn my back on you though. As long as my heart still beats, you will never come to harm. That's a promise… and I never go back on my word."
Kushina was struck speechless by Naruto's words. What could she say in response to that? She truly did not know.
"I don't have time to just sit around here though," Naruto said as he slid on the mat so that his feet were hanging off of it. "I need to see the battlefield."
Much to Kushina's surprise, Naruto landed on his feet and did not make a sound. The look on his face made it clear that he was in pain.
"You're suffering from severe chakra exhaustion," Kushina said, not wishing to see Naruto hurt any further. "That technique you used… you shouldn't use it if it uses up so much of your chakra."
Naruto's next action shocked Kushina even more.
He started laughing.
"That clone that I sent to attack the Sand ninja had half of my chakra. That wall that it created used up a quarter of my clone's chakra. The rest of its chakra went into the other clones that it created," Naruto said once he regained control of his vocal chords. "I used less than half of my chakra in that Wind Dragon Jutsu. The only reason that I'm so low in chakra is because I overdid it. And I still have more chakra than I did when I showed up in the village. Don't try to tell me that I'm suffering from chakra exhaustion, because this is nothing."
Kushina was beginning to see just what kind of person was standing before her. She seemed to have a bad habit of wrongfully making assumptions about people. She had considered Minato to be flaky and weak when she first met him. And as far as she had been concerned, Naruto had been a worthless excuse of a person.
The person before her was not worthless by any means though. He was strong of character and had a Will of Fire that burned stronger than anyone that she had ever met. In addition to that, he was powerful.
"I hope we talk to each other again soon," Naruto said as he walked past her. "I'd like to become friends. I'll understand if that can't happen though.
With those words, Naruto left Kushina in the tent by herself.
"The Battle of Bloody Rivers… an apt name," Naruto said as he stood at the western opening of the camp about half an hour later.
The ground where the battle had taken place earlier that morning was stained red by the blood that had spilled.
'I'm the one that stained the ground with their blood,' Naruto thought. It was his final jutsu that had actually stained the ground with blood. Finely cutting humans into such small pieces… that was what the Wind Dragon Jutsu had done. Such an action could not be performed without spilling a large amount of blood.
"Kushina told me you were up."
Naruto glanced over his shoulder and saw Mikoto Uchiha approaching him from behind.
"You're Kushina's friend, right?" Naruto asked, still looking over his shoulder. He saw her nod before he returned his gaze to the battlefield. "What do you want?"
Mikoto kept walking until she was standing to his right. Once there, she said, "I wanted to apologize to you for the way I treated you since you showed up. I was being unfair to you, as was Kushina."
"Shut up," Naruto said simply, stunning her. As she was stunned, he turned to face her. "I don't give a shit how you treated me. I don't give a shit how your friend treated me. That's in the past, and we're in the present. We're all Leaf shinobi. We're all comrades. So before you try to make amends, stop yourself. I don't need to hear apologies. You're doing it for yourself- not for me."
Much as Kushina was earlier, Mikoto was baffled by Naruto's words. She recovered much quicker though. That did not mean that she could say anything about it though.
"Well said, Naruto," Sakumo Hatake said as he approached them from behind. "Mikoto, I am going to speak to Naruto alone. Go help the others."
Seeing that she had no choice, Mikoto walked away as quickly as she could.
Once she was out of earshot, Sakumo asked, "How in the hell are you still standing? You have less chakra than anyone in the camp right now."
Naruto gave him a grin at that. "I keep food pills on me. I took a few once I was outside of the tent. That's the only reason I was able to walk here without collapsing."
Sakumo sighed. "Food pills are dangerous. You shouldn't take them when you don't need them."
"The life of a ninja is dangerous," Naruto said as he gestured to the crimson splattered battle field. "I'll take my chances with a few food pills. They're better odds than the ones we were up against earlier."
Sakumo found himself nodding before he realized what he was doing, which caused him to let out a deep sigh. "Fine… I won't try to stop you from doing it in the future."
"Smart move," Naruto said with a grin of satisfaction. "Now, we need to talk."
Naruto immediately thought that he was on a role. For the third time since waking, he had stunned someone with his words.
"I don't want you to press the issue of my promotion when we get back," Naruto said simply.
"How in the hell did you know that I was going to try to get your promoted?" Sakumo asked in further surprise. "And why the hell don't you want me to press the matter?"
"You're predictable," Naruto said with a small laugh. "But anyways, I don't want you to press the matter because the Hokage would give in."
"And that's bad how?" Sakumo asked. He was starting to see the boy before him as an enigma.
"No one but you and the men here trust me right now," Naruto said with a heavy sigh. "I've learned certain things lately. Amongst those is the fact that promoting me to full jonin based on my first battle is going to rub certain people wrong. We can't have instability in the village, and that will definitely happen if I'm promoted to jonin once we get back."
Though Sakumo would have liked to tell Naruto that he was not such a big deal as to do that, he found himself agreeing with the blond. Naruto would be the subject of skepticism and distrust for a little while longer at the very least.
"And you expect no one else to try to push the matter?" Sakumo retorted after a few moments.
"Why would anyone else push for it?" Naruto asked rhetorically. "I did exactly what was expected of me. As a special jonin in the field of wind style ninjutsu, why wouldn't I have an incredibly devastating wind jutsu? Why wouldn't I use said jutsu against the enemies of the Leaf? Why wouldn't everyone think that you ordered me to do it when you were right next to me, out of earshot of the others, when I used it? No, they won't push it."
Sakumo's eyes narrowed as he looked the blond over carefully. "You are nothing like Lord Hokage said you were."
Naruto chuckled at that. "Lord Hokage doesn't know anything about me, and neither does his ANBU. I kept secrets from them, despite the fact that he had me watched so long," he said. "I spent three months with nothing to do but sit in an empty house and six months doing chores. For someone as active as I used to be, that's a life changing experience."
Sakumo nodded absently as he thought about what Naruto said.
"Well, look at the bright side… we'll be doing a lot of sitting around. We just took out a tenth of the Hidden Sand's total forces. They won't be coming at us anytime soon, especially with the war just started, them down a kage, and with them fighting the Hidden Rock Village."
"I hope so," Naruto said with a sad smile. "This type of thing shouldn't be a common occurrence… not even during war."
Sakumo had to agree with the blond there.