.


Everyone thinks of changing the world,

nobody thinks of changing themself.


Jiraiya watched Tsunade down another cup of sake, her fourth of the night.

They were situated in some near empty, hole in the wall bar. The entire place reeked of body odour and alcohol with a spritz of festering urine to round out the palate, and the table looked like it hadn't been cleaned in at least two weeks.

But it was for the best. The fewer people around, the better. This wasn't the kind of conversation that he wanted anybody to overhear, not with the village in political disarray.

The three other people scattered around the room were all civilians. It was unlikely they were listening or even knew who he and Tsunade were. The town was far away enough from Konoha that the civilians knew next to nothing about ninja, beyond the basic "horrifying murderer people who go bump in the night" shtick. But he knew better than anybody how valuable a perceived non-threat like civilians could be for spying in on conversations, how dangerous anybody could be, so Jiraiya had thrown down a few privacy seals for peace of mind.

Tsunade scoffed at him. "If you want a different answer from me then say something to change my mind," she said, wiping her mouth with her arm. "Spouting the same crap you've been peddling for the last couple of days isn't going to cut it, Jiraiya."

"This 'crap' as you're calling it is just the facts," he said dryly. "The village is hurting for Hokage candidates. You're the best one there is."

"Oh, please. You or Shimura are perfectly capable of leading that village. If I never set another foot in that place, it'll be too soon."

"You don't mean that."

Tsunade puckered her lips and scrunched her nose like she smelt something foul. Which, given their surroundings, might very well have been the case. "Does it matter? You have my answer. I'm not moving on this."

"You know I can't take the hat," Jiraiya said. "That's not me. I'm useful out in the field, gathering intel, not sitting behind a desk."

"Shimura."

"No."

"He's the one that Hiruzen would have wanted to go after him, I can guarantee it," she said. "Which isn't a ringing endorsement, realistically, but it's still better than nothing."

"Yeah, and that's half the problem."

Tsunade cocked an eyebrow.

Jiraiya sighed. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a stack of papers from one of the bottomless pockets lining the inside of it. He dropped them onto the table, leaned back in his chair, and scowled at Tsunade.

"What is that?" Tsunade asked.

Jiraiya gestured at it with an overdone, sarcastic flourish.

Tsunade rolled her eyes and grabbed the papers. She started to leaf through them, and her expression went from annoyed to surprised to amused, which wasn't what Jiraiya hoped for but was about what he expected.

"Well, I'll be damned," Tsunade mused. "Looks like the old slimeball was trying to slip out of his leash, huh?"

"More than that," Jiraiya said, "Shikaku Nara thinks he might have had a hand in orchestrating the invasion."

Tsunade paused, her gaze darting up from the papers for a split second, her hand freezing mid-page turn, and snapped back into reading. "Is that so?"

Jiraiya made an annoyed noise in the back of his throat. "Would I say it if it wasn't?"

"Then how is he still a candidate?"

"We have zero proof that he actually had anything to do with it. There's a lot of shit that looks suspicious, but nothing definitive." Jiraiya scratched at the stubble starting to poke through on his chin, his lips curling downwards. "Not to mention that he's got the Daimyo and the Council vouching for him."

Tsunade frowned and dropped the papers. She considered Jiraiya, and he wondered what kind of gears were turning in her head.

"I'm not going to sit here and act like orchestrating Hiruzen's death isn't treason in the best of lights," Tsunade said, leaning her elbows on the table and steepling her fingers together. Her gaze was as hard as the steel Jiraiya had once seen her crush in her fist like it was made of putty. "But you have to admit, Danzo might make a half-decent Hokage."

The worst part was that she was right.

Being Hokage wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. You had to be ready to order your soldiers to their deaths, mark targets for hits, and wade your way through the monstrous ocean waves of the political world like you're in the kiddy pool. Danzo could do it all, of that Jiraiya had no doubt.

But that wasn't all being a Hokage entailed, and that was where Jiraiya knew Danzo would fail the village. Danzo saw weakness in what Jiraiya knew was Konoha's biggest strength—the fact that she at least pretended to see her ninja as more than mere faceless soldiers. That was the spirit under which the village was founded.

"Call me a bleeding heart optimist, but I don't think I want to live in a Konoha where the Will of Fire has all burned out," Jiraiya said. "Danzo would dump water all over it and freeze the remains to harden them, and you know that."

Tsunade didn't soften.

Jiraiya gave her a grim smile. "I doubt Dan or Nawaki would approve of him, either; Danzo's not the kind of Hokage who would care about allocating one medic-nin to all four-man squads."

It was a low blow, even for him, but he couldn't bring himself to feel bad about it. If twisting the knife was what got Tsunade to finally crack, so be it.

Her expression closed off, which Jiraiya knew would happen. She wasn't the type to break for somebody else. She had to come to the decision herself, in her own time—all Jiraiya had to do was prime her to make the choice.

Jiraiya swept up the documents and shoved them back inside of his coat. His privacy seals dropped. With a grunt, he hauled himself to his feet and stared down at Tsunade.

She glared at him coldly, her jaw set. Their conversation was over for the night. Tomorrow night, maybe, he'd give it another shot. But he had one more thing he needed to say, one last twist of the knife.

"Really, seriously think about this," he said. "You have the chance to do what both of them wanted to do, right at your fingertips. You're the one who has to sleep at night if you waste it."

He walked out before she could reach across the table and punch him.


I yawned, raising a hand to cover my mouth, and tilted my head back to stare out the open window of the hospital room with something of a tired yearning. A stray handful of bright red and white birds fluttered across the sky's blue expanse, pops of colour on an otherwise clear canvas. I'd insisted that the window be kept open so I could hear the sounds of people going about their days without care and feel the crisp breeze wash over my skin every now and again. I needed something to bring me a reprieve from the stale air of the room.

I was on day six of my hospital stay and slowly losing my mind.

In one second, I was running mental circles trying to figure out the various problems that had presented themselves thus far. The whole Hokage situation was right up there at the top of my mind, seconded by the Gaara situation. Token considerations were given to what Sasuke was up to and why in the fuck Karin was in the village, still firmly stationed in the building where the foreign ninja were staying during the exams, vacant except for her. All fun things, all impossible for me to resolve and puzzle out on my own.

The Hokage situation, dire as it was, was completely out of my hands. Worrying about it was a waste of energy—what was going to happen was going to happen, though I didn't want to imagine what this world would look like if Tsunade's hands weren't the ones to shape it. But I ended up pushing it out of my mind, for now, let it simmer until Jiraiya returned and I had something to go on.

The Gaara situation was in about the same kind of boat. Like Karin, his signature had been in the same location since I woke up. Every once in a while, some other signatures would wander over to join him—one was a Yamanaka, I was certain because I knew the distinctive feel of their chakra, though the other signatures were foreign to me. But it was always the same three, keeping him company down there doing who knows what.

And Sasuke? Well, Sasuke. Sasuke was an interesting one. When I gave myself a few precious moments with my chakra sense wide open, I could feel Sasuke's signature flaring in a way that signalled chakra exertion. Which was not a surprise. Sasuke was the type to train himself into a hole, so of course, he was training. Except that, more than once, I felt another familiar signature in his direct vicinity—Gai. Gai and Sasuke seemed to be training together. The how and the why were so far beyond me that after first realizing it, I refused to pick that thought up again because I knew it'd drive me insane.

Karin, too, was a bit of a pointless afterthought. Nothing was interesting there. With Gaara, there was the intrigue of who else was around him, what they might be doing, why his signature seems to be so deep underground, muffled by layers of chakra-tinted earth. The whole Sasuke and Gai situation spoke for itself. But with Karin, there was nothing there except her mere presence. Which raised questions of its own. How did she live through the exam? Why was she still in the village? But there wasn't anything particularly monumental about her presence, not in the way everything else was, so I let it go.

All of it had to be let go. I was stuck standing beside the poker table, watching as the cards were laid out and everybody else placed their bets and made their moves while I had no chair to take. Worse was realizing that with how different everything seemed to be going, even if I could take a seat I might not have had much money left to bet with.

Frowning, I put my attention back on the book in my lap. Off to my left, Shikamaru stretched a little in his position strewn sideways on the chair, then went limp again. He'd been reading, too, but he conked out half an hour prior, his book laid out over his face.

He was the one who kept supplying me with books to try and ward off the boredom. He and Ino would drop by at the same time, though Ino tended to bring in the flowers and dip out while Shikamaru hung around for a while longer. I appreciated the company since there was nothing else for me to do here other than visit with people and read. I couldn't even people watch—the hospital was as busy as ever, too busy for me to pick out individual signatures, much less follow them around for any amount of time.

So my life had become a continuous journey of laying in bed, reading, and hoping that people would come and distract me from my ever-churning thoughts for a little while.

I scoffed. It was no wonder so many ninjas had a habit of skipping out of the hospital early.

"What's so funny?" Shikamaru asked, lifting the side of the book so that he could look at me.

"My life, the universe, your face," I answered. "Take your pick."

"None of the above."

I made a buzzer sound. "Not an option."

Shikamaru snorted. His hand dropped and the book flopped back down over his eyes. Knowing him, he was back asleep in seconds. He was one of those annoying people that could sleep at the drop of the hat—better known as the literal worst kind of people.

I tried to read again. I stared down at the words on the page and willed myself to do more than skim. And I failed, miserably.

Something about being aware of boredom makes it so much more difficult to occupy yourself, in the same way that watching the seconds tick by on a clock makes it feel like time is stretching beyond the bounds of reality. And the book, some stupid guilty pleasure civilian romance novel, was the slowest clock I'd ever had the displeasure of watching.

Without looking, I reached over to the bedside table and grabbed one of the random objects sitting on top—the rough plastic of a pen scratched my fingertips. I rolled it around in my palm.

I was too petty to suffer alone in my boredom.

I could only move my arm from the elbow down, but I figured that would be enough. All I needed to do was hit Shikamaru in the head. That would wake him up again.

When I turned to throw it, however, I found Shikamaru was staring at me, his head hung over the armest. The book was now held in one of his hands while the other rested on his chest, rising and dipping in time with his breathing.

His eyes were clouded in a way that I couldn't quite read, and not for the first time in the last few days since he started visiting me. I couldn't figure out what it meant.

"What?" I asked.

Shikamaru blinked. The look passed.

He stretched out again like a cat in a particularly pleasant sunspot and yawned, setting the book back on his face. "Nothing," he said. "Just zoned out."

Nothing my ass.

Something wasn't right and hadn't been right since he started visiting me. And of course, there was the clear line to be drawn between that look and the fact that our visits were taking place in a hospital. There was something there. I understood why—if the situations were reversed, I would be feeling some type of way, too.

And I had every intention of pressing him on that answer until I felt something dangerous and horrifying brush against my chakra sense that made my voice wither in my throat, strangled out of me. That signature, cold and sharp, right outside of my room.

I swung my gaze around to look at the door as it opened and Kabuto fucking Yakushi walked in.

His silver hair was pulled up into a bun with a pair of senbon stuck through them, the polished metal glistening in the sunlight. His usual outfit was gone. In its place, he wore a dark green t-shirt and black cargo pants. And the pièce de résistance: a Konoha forehead protector sitting around his neck like a scarf.

Kabuto smiled at me. I was too busy choking on my spit to smile back.

There was a shift in Kabuto's signature—it was miniscule, dampened by the fact that he was already holding his signature in an impressively tight grip, but unmistakable. I didn't know what it meant, but my gut told me it probably wasn't anything good.

That was the moment where I knew that I had dug my own grave.

I tried to recover and school my expression into something more neutral than its current dumbfounded horror, but wearing a mask had never been one of my strengths. The attempt was slow and clumsy and there was no way in hell that Kabuto bought it for even a second.

"Ah," he said, pausing a couple of steps into the room. "Am I interrupting something?"

"It's fine," I managed.

Kabuto's gaze slithered between me and Shikamaru like a predator assessing its prey.

I saw Shikamaru stir in the corner of my eye. He sat up, the book falling onto his lap, and frowned at me.

I didn't meet his gaze. I refused to look away from Kabuto. After all, one of the most important things they teach you in the Academy is to never turn your back to an enemy.

A thousand different questions swarmed my mind at once, all of which struggled for supremacy over the chorus of screaming that was already overloading my brain. What was Kabuto still doing here, and why was he in the hospital? How come he hadn't gone back to regroup with Orochimaru?

And why was he in my hospital room, of all places?

"Good, good." Kabuto pulled the clipboard out from underneath his arm and tapped his pen against the paper. "I just need to do a quick check-up, won't take long at all."

Shikamaru, likely picking up on my unfortunate initial reaction, had a wary look to him, his eyes narrowed and his shoulders tight. "You don't look like the usual medic."

Kabuto laughed sheepishly. "Right, yeah. Sorry, I should probably introduce myself—my name's Kabuto Yakushi. Yori Amane is occupied right now with other patients, so I was reassigned to this case," he answered. "There was an influx of patients last night. A bad mission, I think. But it means that some of the better medics were pulled off of their current cases and reassigned where their skills were needed."

"Is Yori going to be back?" I asked, hoping this would be a one-time thing.

"It's unlikely," Kabuto said. "All of the patients who came in last night were in critical condition and aren't likely to be recovered for at least three weeks, by which point we expect you'll be discharged."

And thus, Kabuto had conveniently been reassigned to my case. That answered one question, at least.

But why?

I had a connection to Orochimaru, to an extent. In so far as nearly being killed by somebody can be counted as a connection. That was the only logical reason I could see for Kabuto having any kind of interest in me, and I assumed he did. There was no chance that he was here by coincidence. You'd have to be naive to think that ninja, in general, did anything by coincidence, least of all somebody like Kabuto.

All that I knew was that a week ago, Orochimaru had been in northern Land of Wind. Was he under orders from Orochimaru? I tried to do the math in my head while also keeping track of Kabuto as he got himself settled in the room, making a show of reading the clipboard at the end of my bed. At full speed for jonin, the trip from where we had been in Wind to Sound was a solid three days, and the trip between the Sound and Konoha was a day, maybe a day and a half. From what I had been told, it took Jiraiya, Sasuke, Naruto, and I three days to get back to the village after the Orochimaru encounter. So, theoretically, if Orochimaru went straight back to Sound, he would have gotten there around the time we got back to the village. If he got back and took some time to strategize—say, a day—and then relayed orders to Kabuto, Kabuto would have had about three or four days to act on those orders.

I cleared my throat and forced down the bitter taste in my mouth. "So," I said, trying to keep my voice casual and conversational. "How long have you been a medic?"

"I'm still pretty new," he answered. He wheeled the chair over so that he was right beside me in all of his slimy glory. "I started in the hospital about a month ago." He tapped at his chin. "A month and a week? Something like that. I was offered a position after they saw some of my handiwork, and I decided to take it."

Alarm bells blared in my head.

About a month and a week ago would have been right around when the second part of the exam ended for him. Meaning that his presence in the hospital, overall, wasn't a direct result of the whole Orochimaru situation. Why the hell would he have taken the position then?

And worse, I didn't see anything I could do other than roll with the situation, even if I would rather toss myself over a ravine.

It wasn't like I could oust Kabuto as a spy. What would I say? Hey, so, I know this dude has technically done nothing wrong and I have zero proof that he's a spy, but his chakra signature is super creepy and I think he's definitely up to some shady shit, so you should kill him.

Yeah. That would go over well.

The sound of Kabuto pushing down the bars on either side of the bed startled me, and my head jerked around to watch him.

Kabuto nodded. "Ah, sorry! Didn't mean to startle you," he said. I doubted that. "I'm all ready to start the examination, but I just need your friend to leave while we conduct it."

"Why?" Shikamaru asked, his eyes narrowing.

"It's just hospital regulations," Kabuto said. "It's for patient confidentiality, and all of that."

"At the discretion of the patient. I only have to leave if she wants me to."

Kabuto shrugged and turned to me, coming off as annoyingly harmless. "It's up to you."

I bit the inside of my cheek to stave off an incredulous laugh. Kabuto was an S-rank threat of questionable sanity, and being alone with him when I couldn't even try to run away if things went sour sounded like the type of nightmare a Tsukuyomi would dredge up.

"Shikamaru can stay," I said.

The check-up was quick and routine. Alongside a steady stream of innocuous small talk, Kabuto checked my vitals, examined the mending of the joints and soft tissues in my back, and made sure that I wasn't in any pain from the injuries. And at the end, he gave me an estimate of how much longer he thought I would take to heal—two and a half weeks, if all went well.

Kabuto sat in one of the chairs near the window and jotted something down on the clipboard after that, humming to himself. Then he looked up and clicked the pen shut. "Alrighty," he said. "Any questions for me?"

"None," I said.

Get the fuck out of my room.

"Then it looks like we're done here!"

I tried for a smile, though it probably looked more like a grimace. "Great, thanks."

"You're welcome," he said, walking towards the door. "I'll be back tomorrow morning!"

He left my room with a smile and a little wave over his shoulder.

I closed my eyes and for a handful of seconds, as long as I could without giving myself a massive headache, I followed his signature float away, off towards the other side of the hospital. I heaved out a breath.

"So," Shikamaru drawled. "You know him?"

"I've seen him around the village before, but I've never met him."

"Uh-huh."

"I'm not lying."

"I know you're not, but I don't know why you were so freaked out by him."

I cracked one eye open to look at him in the corner of my eye. He wasn't looking at me, though—he had his eyes shut and his fingers pressed together into his 'thinking pose'.

"Something, something, emotional trauma, something."

Shikamaru scoffed.

It was, again, another situation where coming clean was not an option. But I had to say something. My reaction to Kabuto was undeniable, and that was my fault.

"It was his chakra signature," I said, settling on a half-truth. "Everybody's signature has a feeling to it. It's influenced by their yin chakra, which—"

"Is a reflection of the soul and means that the feeling of their signature is tied into their personality," he said. "Right?"

"Exactly."

"And?"

"And I don't like how his signature feels. I noticed it before, back during the second part of the Chunin Exams, but it…" I frowned. "It weirds me out."

"You think he's bad news?"

"I don't know," I said honestly. "I mean, he's working as a medic, so like, probably not. I'm just being paranoid, I think."

"Uh-huh."

I groaned. "Do me a favour and pretend this never happened, okay?"

He broke from his pose and stretched his arms above his head. "Sure."

"I mean it."

"Yeah, yeah." Shikamaru yawned. He settled himself back down over the arms of the chair and put the book over his face. His voice was muffled as he muttered, "How troublesome."

"Shikamaru."

He waved his hand. "You're so cranky today," he said. "I'll drop it."

I rolled my eyes and ignored the unspoken 'for now'. He'd leave it be, but he wouldn't forget. I'd take it; I had more important things to worry about.

Kabuto was going to be coming back tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, until I was discharged. He had a vested interest in me, for some reason. I couldn't fathom why. And while I doubted my little display helped matters, given that he had put himself in a position to see me every single day for the next couple of weeks or so before ever meeting me, he had walked in with some kind of suspicions towards me.

I hoped that it was a fleeting interest, that once he had whatever he wanted from me, he'd move on.

Anything else? Well, that could get problematic.


"He won't do it."

"Kid's got another few days, don't count him out just yet."

"And he's only halfway to getting it right. He'll never do it by the end of the week."

Jiraiya cocked his head, grinning. "This is why you're such a piss poor gambler—poor luck aside, you've no idea how to make a good bet."

Tsunade scoffed. She took another swig from the sake bottle in her hand and set it back down on the grass. "Not a chance. This is the best bet I've made in years."

Naruto, who had been laying on the ground, exhausted, dragged himself back to his feet with a groan and a few swear words. He immediately went back to work.

"I'll give him one thing, though," she murmured. "He's damn resilient."

Jiraiya shrugged and snagged the sake bottle for himself. "Yeah, well. I gave the kid some additional motivation."

He managed to get a couple of sips before Tsunade snatched it back.

"Tell me you didn't promise to show him porn, or something."

"What? No." Jiraiya rolled his eyes. "Kid can see that for free, for all I care."

"You're disgusting."

"Proudly."

Tsunade narrowed her eyes. "So, what did you do?"

"Remember that run-in I told you about, with Orochimaru a few weeks ago?"

"Of course I do, you idiot."

Jiraiya waved his hand, saying, "Yeah, whatever." He grinned. "You see, the kid's teammate ended up getting hurt to save the Uchiha during that mission. She's been in the hospital for a while, a taijutsu specialist with a severe back and neck injury. Not too great. The medics think they can probably get her patched up, but there's bound to be some complications once it all heals up. Naruto knows this."

Tsunade frowned, and he knew she was starting to pick up on where he was going.

"I told him that if he can prove that he's cut out to be Hokage, it might be enough to get you to change your mind about taking up the hat. And if you change your mind and come back to the village, then you'll be able to heal up his little friend far better than any of our current medics can."

"Misleading him like that is cruel, even for you."

Jiraiya shrugged her comment off. "I made him no promises. Just told him there was a chance," Jiraiya said. "And from what I know about this kid, well. He's made do on less than a chance in other situations. Besides, it's not a complete lie. You're the best healer in the world. By default, if you did heal her, you'd do better than anybody we got right now."

He tried to gauge her reaction. She watched Naruto through weary eyes as he got a little further than his last attempt, managing to get the wobbly ball of chakra to spin a few rotations before it fizzled out.

Jiraiya was pretty confident that he knew what she saw, and he hedged a bet on it.

"He reminds me a lot of Nawaki."

This time, Tsunade didn't snap at him or grow angry. She just kept staring. The only reason he knew she registered his words was from the way her grip on the sake bottle tightened, a handful of hairline fractures appearing on its surface.

"A lot of this new generation do, in their own way," Jiraiya said, forging on. "Each striving to protect each other and the village as well as they can. They'll be the best generation of ninja the village's produced so far."

"And you truly think that this brat will be the strongest of them? Able to lead them one day?"

"With every fibre of my being."

Tsunade gave a single, slow nod.

He hadn't won her over yet. But he could see her starting to open up. Now he had to hope he was right—that the added motivation would be enough to push Naruto to succeed, and that the sight would be enough to get Tsunade to his side.


On the last day, late in the evening, Naruto stood out in the expansive grassy field, a fully formed Rasengan hovering in his hand. He was grinning like a fool.

Jiraiya had on a grin of his own that he aimed towards Tsunade. She stood by with her arms crossed over her chest, visibly annoyed. But Jiraiya thought it was mostly a front. She was too proud to concede on the outside, even if internally she had accepted the loss for what it was.

"Go on," Jiraiya said, jerking his head towards one of the nearby trees. "If it can take that tree out, I'll count it."

"Yeah, yeah!" Naruto said. "I'm on it!"

And Naruto ran headlong towards the tree. At the last second, he shoved his arm forward and plunged the Rasengan into the tree's trunk. Bark and wood flew everywhere. A decent chunk of the tree was burned away by the Rasengan, and what was left was too weak to hold up the rest of the tree's weight. With a mighty groan, the remnants of the tree toppled over. The force of it sent out a gust of wind that knocked Jiraiya's coat and hair around.

Naruto laughed, pumped one of his fists in the air, and passed out.

Tsunade caught him before he hit the ground.

"Told you," Jiraiya said. He wandered over, his hands shoved in his pants pockets. "Kid's a force of nature when he's been motivated properly."

Gently, Tsunade eased Naruto down onto the grass. She sighed. "I lost to a damn brat."

"Just your luck," Jiraiya said.

She pulled the necklace off of her neck and laid it out around Naruto's. "Yeah," she said, staring down at Naruto. "So it is."


I was asleep when Naruto came back from his adventure.

Was being the keyword because the first thing he did upon returning was barge into my room and wake me up.

"Hey, hey!" he said. "Kaka!"

I groaned, cutting my eyes towards the window—the sun was barely peeking up above the horizon, illuminating the brilliant orange hues of dawn. The clock on my bedside table read 5:42 in bold blue numbers.

"Hi, Naruto," I mumbled. I rubbed at my eyes. "Why are you waking me up at the asscrack of dawn? And how did you get in here?"

The look on his face was comical. He froze. Slowly, he turned towards the window, then looked at the clock, and he seemed to realize what he'd done.

"Sorry!" he said, laughing nervously. "I, uh… snuck in through the roof access thingy. I'm just really, really excited! You'll never guess what happened!"

The new necklace he had on was a pretty strong indication that things had gone off without a hitch, despite the lack of interference by Orochimaru. Which was about the best result I could have hoped for.

Over a yawn, I said, "You learned a cool technique and brought back the new Hokage."

Naruto gaped. "What? Hey! How'd ya know that?"

"I'm psychic."

That, of course, garnered no reaction. Naruto bounded over to the chair by my bed. "Whatever," he said. "I'm still gonna tell you what happened!"

He told me about leaving the village, starting to learn the Rasengan on the road, finding Tsunade, and taking her bet. It was all pretty par for the course, which made me wonder how exactly things had ended the way they did. And then Naruto got to a conversation he and Jiraiya had the night Naruto made the bet.

"And I mean, I didn't know who the old woman was," Naruto said. "Her name was kinda familiar, but… yeah. So, so, I didn't even know she was a medic! And then Jiraiya said that if I won the bet and showed her that I'm gonna be Hokage one day, she'd change her mind and be Hokage! And that if she came back to the village to be Hokage, she could heal you!"

Naruto gave me a blinding grin. "And, yeah. After that, I knew I really, really, really had to win. I wasn't able to help you when you got hurt, so I made sure that I could help you get better, yeah!"

And damn it if that didn't get me a little choked up.

I cleared my throat and grabbed Naruto's hand, squeezing it. "Thank you, Naruto."

He waved it off and went on with his story as if that were nothing but a footnote for him. He told me about how long he worked, all the ways he thought to improve himself, and how, on the very last day, at the very last minute, he managed to master the Rasengan and took out a tree with it. As he told that part, his hand reached up and grasped the necklace.

It took me a second to wrap my head around the outcome.

In the show, Naruto had managed to pull through at the very last minute and form the Rasengan to save Tsunade from Kabuto. But this time? That last little bit was covered because Naruto wanted to help me.

That was just how Naruto was.

Brash, annoying, reckless. They were all things that could be used to describe him. But he was also the somebody that helped others with as little thought as breathing. It scared me, sometimes, that somebody with that amount of innate kindness in them existed in a world like this, after all the shit he'd been through. Because for anybody who didn't have the same raw power as Naruto did locked up in the seal in his belly, printed into his genes by his parents, that kindness would be a death sentence.

I still thought that one day it might be his. I only hoped I was wrong. Because honestly? It didn't feel like it was my place to try and show him otherwise, anymore.

.

.

Tsunade and Shizune dropped by at a more humane hour that morning.

Naruto was asleep beside me, snoring. His head was tipped back and a line of drool leaked out from the corner of his mouth. It was kinda gross but in a cute way, like watching a golden retriever puppy fart, or something.

From the look on Tsunade's face when she walked in, she didn't feel the same way. She regarded Naruto with a look of mild disgust.

Shizune laughed.

Tsunade shook her head and sighed, turning her attention to me. "Hello," she said. "You're Kasumi Kurosawa, I presume?"

"The one and only," I said.

"I'm Tsunade Senju." She gestured to Shizune. "This is my apprentice, Shizune."

Shizune bowed, saying, "Nice to meet you."

I ducked my head, which was as close as I could get to a bow.

Getting down to business, Shizune reached over and busied herself with examining the chart at the end of my bed.

"Since the brat's here, I'm guessing he's filled you in and you can guess why I'm here," Tsunade said.

"You're going to get me out of this hospital room?"

"Hopefully."

Tsunade peeked over Shizune's shoulder, her eyes scanning the papers. Then she approached me and her hands lit up with green chakra. "How are you feeling?"

Her hands started to wander around the point where my neck and back met.

I shrugged. "I'm alright."

"No immediate pain?"

"Not really. They've been keeping it contained with some kind of medical jutsu, so I can't feel much of anything," I said. "I've just got a bit of stiffness that I can feel."

"That's a good sign," Tsunade said. "Whoever's been tending to you has gone a good job—a lot of the legwork has already been done. Kabuto Yakushi was the medic who's been treating you recently, right?"

Before I could stifle it, my lips turned down in a scowl.

She raised an eyebrow at that.

Thankfully, Shizune caught her attention before anything could come of the moment. "Lady Tsunade," she said, motioning Tsunade over.

Tsunade stared at me for another long second before she obliged, taking up her position behind Shizune's shoulder once again.

Shizune pointed her finger at the papers and Tsunade frowned, muttering something I couldn't hear. They had a quiet conversation. That was the thing about ninja—enhanced senses meant that they could hold conversations in hushed tones that were inaudible to the mortal ear.

Thankfully, I had a few tricks up my sleeve, as well. I put a tiny bit of chakra into my ears to listen in. As a cover, I grabbed one of the pens on my bed stand and started doodling on Naruto's hand.

"... could be finicky," Shizune said. "Four of her upper thoracic vertebrae are still damaged. T1, T3, T4, and T6. But it says that the tears in the column were repaired and that work has been holding up, so I'm not worried about any of the discs rupturing. It should be easy enough to repair what damage is left in that respect." Shizune bit her lip. "What I'm worried is about the facet joints up in her thoracic," she pointed at something on the page, then drew her finger downwards, "and down in her lumbar region. The damage seems to have been pretty bad on a few of them, especially the lumbar."

Shizune flipped through a few of the pages. "They think the thoracic damage was from Orochimaru, and the lumbar from when she hit a rock on the way down that stopped her momentum—the fact that her entire spine wasn't destroyed is a miracle."

The line I was drawing jerked into a squiggle at that.

Sure, I had heard it was bad. I spent the first three days of consciousness having everybody tell me how stupid what I did was, how easily I could have died, vague allusions to how messed up my back was, all of that. But nobody had outright told me what the damage specifically was, not even the medics.

"Looks like it was close, though," Tsunade muttered. She blinked. "Oh, huh."

"What?"

"Nothing important, just… she's got six vertebrae in the lumbar. That's pretty unusual." Tsunade hummed. She moved back a few pages and tapped her finger on the sheet. "The facets have been their biggest concern, haven't they? That's the kicker for her mobility, especially because the worst of it is in the lumbar. If the fractures in those are repaired improperly—or heal wrong on their own naturally—she'll have a hard time rotating her upper body and moving her lower body properly for fighting. Not to mention that she'd be severely limited in how much weight her body is capable of carrying."

"Exactly. How do I go about mending the fractures without overdoing it and accidentally fusing the joint? One mistake and the joint loses its flexibility, and that's not the kind of mistake that can be undone."

Another line went awry. The rose I was drawing looked a bit like somebody had stepped on it.

"You won't," Tsunade said. "I will."

Shizune's eyes widened. "Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure."

"But what about—"

"I can treat this externally. No surgery needed, so no blood," Tsunade said dryly. "I'll be fine, if a bit rusty."

Interesting.

So, Tsunade got to the village and took the hat, but unlike in the show, she hadn't yet lost her fear of blood.

"Right," Shizune said. "Sorry, Lady Tsunade."

Tsunade waved her off. Instead, she side-eyed me. "You got any comments, Kurosawa?"

Busted.

I licked my lips and asked, "What are the chances of something going wrong?"

"If I heal it? Realistically, I'd say about ten-to-fifteen percent."

"And how about if it's left to heal properly?"

She took a second. "With about seven damaged vertebrae and ten facet joints that have fractures in them? Among other small areas of damage? I'd say you've got a seventy percent chance that something is going to have issues healing."

I frowned.

"Let me put it like this," Tsunade said. "If I go through with the procedure, there's a one in ten chance of something going wrong. And if something goes wrong, it might be more a more severe issue than if something healed wrong naturally." She held up a finger. "But, if you leave it and hope that it heals well on its own with a bit of medical chakra encouragement, there's a much higher chance of having multiple small issues that compound into something more severe.

"You should consider, too, what that damage will look like. If something in your lumbar gets severely messed up, you're looking at a hit to both your mobility and your ability to carry heavy objects." Tsunade eyed me, her face neutral. "Depending on how everything decides to heal, something going wrong could limit what kind of movements you can do in regards to taijutsu, what weapons you can carry, and your ability to train with weights, if it doesn't outright eliminate them. If something in the thoracic goes wrong, you're more likely to experience issues with your ribs, specifically the ones that aren't linked up to your mid-chest bone. That can be as simple as giving you a cough sometimes or shortening your breath, but it can also make blows to your chest far more severe than they would be. The whole stability of that area can be compromised."

It was a lot to take in.

I stared, unable to find my words.

"You don't have to do it today," Shizune said. "You can think about it, talk to your parents."

I winced at that.

"I'm sure they'll have good advice for you!" she said, apparently misreading the wince.

With the earnestness in how she said it, I didn't have the heart to correct her.

Tsunade shrugged. "Take a few days to sleep on it. It's not like I'm going anywhere."

Should I sleep on it? Maybe. Should I talk to Shikaku about it? Also maybe.

My fists bunched up in the covers.

Was I going to? Nope.

I had to be in top fighting shape. I always strove to be strong enough to defend myself and now, I knew that that could one day involve me facing off against Orochimaru again. Later down the line, it could mean being strong enough to fight a god. If there was even a chance to get out of this with as little damage as possible, then I was going to take it. Half-assing things wouldn't cut it.

"Do it."

Shizune knitted her eyebrows together. "Are you sure?"

I nodded, my jaw set. "Absolutely."

"Then let's start," Tsunade said. "I'll go make the preparations."

.

.

In truth, there wasn't a lot to prep. Shizune hefted Naruto over her shoulder and took him home, Tsunade ensured there was a room they could use that would facilitate the procedure, and they went ahead with everything.

Tsunade put me to sleep so that they could work without any chance of me moving and messing everything up, and when I woke up again, I was back in my room, Tsunade sitting in a chair at my bedside. That was the first thing I noticed. The second was that my body was no longer locked away from me.

Immediately, I tried to push myself up into a sitting position.

Tsunade rolled her eyes. "Go slow," she said. "Honestly."

But she didn't try to stop me. She watched as I painstakingly hauled myself up using the bars on the side of the bed. I didn't exactly feel great, but I could move.

"Everything went about as well as I could hope for," she told me. "One of the joints caused a bit of trouble, but I left it alone rather than push it so I'll have you follow up with me in a week to see how that's healing on its own. Other than that, no complications."

"Holy shit," I muttered.

Tsunade barked out a laugh.

I experimented a little. Rolled my shoulders, turned from one side to another, reached my arms above my head. Everything seemed to be in order.

While I was still limited in my bed, I turned to Tsunade and gave her a more proper bow. "Thank you, Lady Tsunade. This is incredible."

"You're welcome," she said, leaning back in her chair. She was unreadable, from her face to her posture. "Though I think you ought to thank Naruto more than me. He's the one who got me here."

"I'll do that."

"Good." Tsunade drew herself up and brushed invisible bits of dust from her pants. "A medic will be by later to check you over. If everything is still well, you'll be discharged by this evening."

The door clicked shut behind her, leaving me behind in silence.

I clenched my fist and held it out in front of me.

I got out of trouble, this time. I would be able to fight again. But that was due to a lot of luck and a lot of other people having to carry me the rest of the way.

Preventing injuries entirely was impossible—it was going to happen again, especially with what this world had in store for me. So, what could I do? Prepare.

I had two years before the next major event was going to happen. Things were screwed up a bit, but I didn't see any of it interfering with the major threats building behind the scenes. Right now, time was on my side.

And I was going to make use of it.