The Sandaime frowned at the report which had been set before him. Naruto was now visiting two people in the hospital whom he'd claimed as friends. Oddly enough, both Nakamura had ended up with disturbingly similar injuries on their admittances to the hospital shortly after meeting Naruto. Injuries that were consistent with being crushed.

According to the report he'd received from Kakashi, the new Mr. Nakamura had made a popping sound upon being hugged by Naruto that had been nearly identical to the one that the first Mr. Nakamura had made when Naruto had hugged him. He'd known that Naruto could hug someone hard enough that they had trouble breathing, as he'd been on the wrong side of one of those hugs before, but he hadn't known that Naruto had been capable of doing something to this degree. He would have to have a talk with the boy about the use of a proper amount of force before some disaster befel an innocent that Naruto cared for such as him.

He wasn't too concerned about the tragedies that had befallen either Nakamura, as they had obviously been in Naruto's apartment for nefarious purposes. Perhaps their experiences would serve as a deterrent against further instances of trespassing from either them or those who learned of their experience. He should probably put a sign up on the building, "All Trespassers Will Be Declared Naruto's Friend".

He looked down at the scroll that had "magically" appeared on his desk courtesy of a Root ANBU with a slightly faulty concealment Genjutsu. If he hadn't laid off of a certain weed that grew wild in the nearby forest years ago, he would have sworn that he'd been hallucinating when the flowering shrub appeared in his office and snuck towards his desk.

"Thank you Shin." he said as he opened Danzo's latest missive. "I won't be mentioning your little Genjutsu malfunction to your boss."

The Lilac bush slumped in relief before doing an about face and slithering out of his office.

The scroll turned out to be request from Danzo to be allowed to take over the rest of Naruto's training since he'd "been doing so much of it already".

He sent back a reply telling him on no uncertain terms, the answer was NO, and that if he tried anything, he would tell Naruto who his generous benefactor was, and that he was another friend of his.

&!&!&!&!&

Tobi groaned as he awoke to a loud "Okay, I'll be quiet." that sounded familiar for some reason. The last thing he could clearly remember before crawling to the civilian hospital since the Shinobi one did thorough checks on people's I.D.s and drugged and detained anyone they regarded as "suspicious" whether or not they were actually so had been falling victim to a completely unexpected attack that had come out of nowhere before he could activate his ultimate defense and allow his attacker to pass through him, leaving him unharmed. As it was, his ultimate defense was probably why he left the Kyuubi Jinchuriki's apartment alive.

He now knew why Madara-sama was in the hospital. He would not underestimate the Jinchuriki a second time.

"I made you some cookies as a get well present." the little blond menace who contained the most powerful of the Biju said when he reached a point that was between his and Madara-sama's beds. "The Invisible Underpants Man helped"

The little brat held up a platter of round discs that were a shade between a bit overcooked and "charcoal". Against his better judgement, he took one of them. He'd been trained from early childhood not to refuse food when it was offered, because sometimes you never knew where your next meal would be coming from.

He would have given the object that was probably only just on this side of edible by a very thin margin a cautious sniff, but he was suffering what seemed to be a head cold on top of everything else, and his sinuses were blocked, greatly reducing his sense of smell. He gave the thing a cautious nibble instead.

It almost tasted like burnt...peanuts.

He was allergic to peanuts!

&!&!&!&!&

The Doctor who was in charge of the ICU sighed as he grabbed an EpiPen. Had it been the other Nakamura, he would not have lifted a finger to help. He had lost the woman he had been going to marry to the Kyuubi, and the instant he'd realized who had been brought to his ward, and that the man had most likely been the one to turn the Kyuubi loose on the village, he realized that he had his chance at revenge.

Allowing the Kyuubi's jailor to kill the man by inches for him was very closely skirting the edge of "do harm". All he really needed to do was allow nature to take its course and "offer no help". The Kyuubi's jailor had as much reason to get revenge on the man as everyone else in the village who lost someone.

Both of the boy's parents were nowhere to be found, and as he had seen a belly button when the child had lifted that filthy shirt of his to wipe his nose with the edge of it, it was obvious that the child had been attached to an umbilical cord at some point. He, like many medical professionals before him, had been unable to find a birth record on the boy at this or any other hospital or medical center. Rather than leaning towards believing the boy to be the Kyuubi incarnate as he had been before he'd actually met the boy and watched as all of his gestures of friendship ended in disaster, he was now leaning towards the belief that the boy had been a home birth that had ended in tragedy during the initial part of the attack.

The Yondaime had needed someone to seal the Kyuubi into, and a child who had no parents to object could be considered the perfect vessel. Nobody knew where the Yondaime had found the child. It is possible that he could have picked him up out of the wreckage of his home on his way to the front lines. There were stories of children being miraculously found alive in the rubble a couple days after the Kyuubi attack, children whose parents had died in the same attack.

After casually walking over to the bed of the second Mr. Nakamura who was obviously an accomplice of the first as he both looked to be related, and were using the same name on their I.D.s, he jabbed the EpiPen into the asphyxiating man's leg. Soon, the anaphylaxis began to recede, and the man started breathing normally, or as normally as a man who had had several broken ribs and a collapsed lung upon arrival could breathe.

He had no idea what that man had been thinking, nor did he care.

After his shift was over, he was going to invite Yashiro out for a drink. The other man would likely refuse considering how long ago that bridge had been burnt, but he was determined to rebuild a bridge across the chasm that had widened over the last eight years, one plank at a time if he had to. In his pain, he had done his friend wrong, and this was his payment. He lay the blame for this at Madara's feet.

&!&!&!&!&

Itachi sighed. He'd been waiting for Madara at their appointed meeting place for over an hour beyond the scheduled time, and the man hadn't showed. He couldn't waste too much more time. He had a mission coming up soon, and the time he'd allotted for today's training was half over already.

Sighing once more, he turned around and headed home.

"...Swears that Madara is at the hospital under the alias of Nakamura." his cousin Yashiro whom he'd thought of as a kind uncle when he was younger as the man was five years older than his dad was saying when he'd reached the house and found him and his dad conversing on the porch. "He thinks that the guy he's got in the ICU was responsible for the Kyuubi attack. I know that it sounds nuts, but he really seems to believe it."

Madara was at the hospital? Well, that would explain why he didn't show up for training today. Considering the fact that his noble ancestor was very old, it probably shouldn't have been too surprising. He must have had a heart-attack or something.

He would have to go down to the hospital to visit him.