Naruto felt doubly determined to retrieve the new Godaime Hokage after Gai had informed him of Kakashi's current condition and made his request. It seemed that the man wasn't certain that the medics at the hospital would be able to help Sasuke and Kakashi who had also fallen victim to Itachi's Genjutsu. How the man had come to this conclusion, he didn't know. It was possible that the Medics had said something along those lines while Kakashi was being examined at the hospital. Tsunade had made a name for herself outside her position as one of the Sannin as a top flight Medical Ninja. It was said that none could match her skill in the medical field. Konoha needed her now. Most importantly, one of his precious people needed her now. He would bring her back, or he would die trying.
Despite the somewhat dismal situation, Maito Gai was almost as cheerful as always. It was almost relieving to have just a little bit of normalcy in his life after what had happened recently, even if it was the dork that constantly spouted off about the "Flames of Youth". He accepted the jumpsuit from Gai in the spirit it was given, as an acknowledgement of his existence and an offer of friendship. After seeing the look on the white haired pervert's face when he received the rather tacky garment, he had almost been tempted to wear it throughout the entire trip. Almost.
He would be saving it for when he ran out of clean laundry. That, and the moment it would be most embarrassing for the white haired pervert to be seen with someone wearing such a thing.
He and Jiraiya walked for a while until they reached another town. There was a festival of some sort going on when they reached the town, and Jiraiya sent him off to play. On the surface, this seemed rather irresponsible, but beneath that was something else. While the festival was going on, people from all over the region would be coming into town and widening the pool of information Jiraiya could gather. Sending him off would allow Jiraiya to go places that didn't allow "Children" and meet with recalcitrant contacts who would not speak in his presence. Beneath that was the surface however, and the possibility that Jiraiya would be off playing some adult games. There was no reason why the man couldn't do both while they were here, especially if the search for Tsunade was going to take as long as Jiraiya seemed to think it would.
Jiraiya had rather greedily looked at his wallet which contained his savings from several missions, and had actually tried taking it by bullshitting him about the "Three Shinobi Vices" when he'd made the mistake of pulling it out of his pack in his presence. He managed to keep Gama-chan and its contents safe however. He'd already had the lecture on the Three Vices from Tetuso-sensei, and as he hadn't borrowed the money or stolen it from an ally, there was no problem there. It was his to spend however he pleased, and donating it to the white haired pervert's hooker and booze fund didn't please.
Jiraiya had then tossed him his own pack with some line about the toads being able to find it if he got lost, and turned him loose. Understanding the need for downtime, especially in stressful times, he took the opportunity he'd been given. While he was still sad about the Old Man and the state Konoha was in, he wasn't about to wallow in misery, as there was no point in doing so. He would follow the old saying, "Live while you can. You can die at any moment". That was part of his nindo which included "Don't go back on your word unless there is absolutely no way you can fulfill the promise you made".
Even though he did his best to "Live while he could", there were still days when he was overwhelmed. Today fortunately wasn't one of them, despite the fact that one of his teammates had been injured on his watch, and one of his precious people was badly injured. It was strange really, he would have thought that if something like that had happened, he'd be having another one of his "Bad days" as Konohamaru called them. Perhaps he'd finally learned to deal with such things, as the others had said he would. Perhaps it was the distance between him and the situation making it seem less real to him, and therefore less painful. Gai had been the one to carry his injured teammate back this time. Perhaps it was the jovial atmosphere that was elevating his mood. Everyone here seemed happy, and nobody was giving him That Look. That Look was always worse on the "Bad days".
The festival looked like a great deal of fun, and he planned to enjoy it the best he could. There were booths with everything from food to balloons, and a wide variety of games of luck and skill. There was even a puppet show that was detailing a ninja battle, and he could almost swear that he recognized the ANBU puppet. After stuffing himself with a little of everything, he started on the games. While he couldn't use ninjutsu, he could use his training some of the Chakra control exercises he'd learned over the years to his benefit if he was discreet about it. As long as an off-duty or retired ninja didn't rat him out, he should be fine.
Eventually, after he'd played every game available and watched one showing of the puppet show from the beginning, getting a good laugh over what was apparently a comedy rather than a fight, he went to the grilled squid stand and got something for Jiraiya since he was almost certain that the man was getting his fill of booze rather than food whether or not he was actually working like he was supposed to be doing. In the time he'd known the man, he'd struck him as a borderline alcoholic, actually, he was almost certain that the man really was an alcoholic. It was a common enough affliction amongst shinobi that it barely rated commenting. Career shinobi like Jiraiya were much more likely to die in the field by the age of 35, rather than of say liver failure at the age of 50 or so.
When he finally found Jiraiya, the man who had holed himself up in a bar somewhere had finally lost his patience with some wannabe mob boss who had been hassling him over a serving girl or something. Using a rather unusual Jutsu that he didn't recognize, Jiraiya knocked the man into next week, destroying one of the balloon stands that littered the town in the process.
"Hey Jiraiya, I bought you some squid." he said when the man finished apologizing and paid for the damages using the wallet that the wannabe mob boss had handed over.
"Thanks." Jiraiya said as he stuck the adult sized fried squid on a stick in his mouth as he grabbed the bags of water balloons and balls that the stall owner had salvaged from the wreckage.
As they turned to leave, he could have sworn he'd heard the wannabe mob boss say "Oh god, he's training another one."
They made their way out of town, and Jiraiya informed him that he would be spending the afternoon teaching him the Jutsu he'd used on the wannabe mob boss which was called the Rasengan. He watched as Jiraiya combined elements of the two basic Chakra control exercises - tree climbing and water walking - to burst one of the water balloons that he'd carried away from the shattered stall.
He watched this closely as he was certain that it could not be quite as easy as it appeared. Fortunately, he possessed some sort of talent or extreme good luck that had allowed him to get some of the higher level Jutsus in a much shorter amount of time than was expected, and that had been before the Kage Bunshin were taken into account. Kakashi had been amazed at the speed in which he'd learned the Kage Bunshin a couple years ago. The man hadn't expected him to get it in the week that he'd allotted for the task, and instead, he'd managed it by the morning of the third day. He'd spent the rest of the week finding out exactly how many Kage Bunshin he could summon. He'd hit about a thousand before he'd nearly killed himself with Chakra Exhaustion.
With his Kage Bunshin, he could learn things that could take other individuals months or even years to learn in a much shorter period of time. He was almost certain that he'd gotten the Wind element mastered, but he wasn't a hundred percent so as he hadn't been able to spend much time with another Wind Affinity. Asuma was rather busy with his own team, and he didn't know anyone else with that affinity which was rather rare, especially in Fire Country where the main affinity amongst the ninja is Fire.
The reason why the main affinity for ninja in Fire country is Fire was the same reason the main affinity in Wind is Wind, and Water is Water and so on is because shinobi with that such affinities tended to group together in the countries that bore that name, creating a wider gene pool for that affinity. The reason this seems to have happened, according to the study he'd read was that each country had an environment where a particular affinity would be slightly more useful. In Wind Country, a Wind affinity could be useful in creating a wind to counter the wind of a sandstorm creating a protective barrier that kept the flying sand from flaying you alive. In Earth Country, the Earth affinity could allow a user to create usable farming soil out of what had previously been a couple inches of dirt over about a hundred feet of bedrock, or to burrow away from the hot sun. Fire Country had been mostly forest before it was torn up by centuries of war, and had become forest again after Konoha had been built. In such an environment, Fire was useful for clearing out underbrush in controlled burns, as well as creating an instant campfire. All elements were of course useful in battle.
"Can I use Kage Bunshin for this?" he asked Jiraiya. Tetsuo-sensei had agreed with Kakashi that as long as he was working alongside his clones, it would be fine to use them to learn new things. If he tried to run off to play again, Tetsuo-sensei would come down on him hard. The punishments Tetsuo-sensei could devise were things that he would do his best to avoid.
"Sure, why not?" Jiraiya said as he settled himself against a nearby tree.
"Thanks." he said as he summoned about a hundred Kage Bunshin and set about trying to figure out how to pop a water balloon by rotating his Chakra.
Jiraiya looked slightly amazed by this for about half a second before he went back to his sake. Even though people already knew about the "Thousand Kage Bunshin" incident, they were still quite surprised when he summoned more than about ten Kage Bunshin at a time. Jiraiya's reaction was quite tame compared to some.
&!&!&!&
Maito Gai sighed as he settled himself next to Kakashi's bed. Lee who had been injured during the invasion, and Neji who had been further injured when he went to retrieve his cousin who had been kidnapped during the invasion despite the fact that he wasn't up to full strength were both already out of the hospital. Lee would be on leave for a while since he'd managed to break his leg in several places, nearly shattering his tibia. The Medics who had been swamped and rather pressed for time had considered amputation, but fortunately for his student who had been unconscious at the time, he'd nixed that idea.
He'd been out retrieving the Uchiha boy when Asuma's summon had come and informed him that they had taken Kakashi to the hospital, and that the Medics hadn't been able to do more than put Kakashi in a bed and hope he woke up on his own. If Kakashi did wake up, his mental state would be uncertain. People who suffered through particularly traumatic Genjutsu sometimes suffered breaks from reality and would witdraw into their own little worlds to protect themselves. It might take years of intensive therapy and treatments with the Yamanaka the hospital had on hand to bring Kakashi back to the person he had been only hours ago. The Uchiha boy would most likely be in the same state, as he had suffered from the same technique.
He hoped that Jiraiya and the Uzumaki boy would bring Tsunade-sama soon. The longer this continued, the worse the prognosis would become. Tsunade was a legendary Medic, and it was said that she could cure almost any ailment under the sun. That wouldn't do Kakashi and his pupil any good however if there was nothing left to cure.
While he waited for Tsunade to come, he would have to hold to the two things that had gotten him through every difficult situation so far, patience, and the faith that things would improve.
"Kakashi, you better get well. If you don't, I-I'll...I don't know what I'll do." he said. "Despite that annoyingly "Hip" attitude, you've always had my back, and I should have had yours."