A/N: I'm still grinning like a maniac every time I look at the stats page for this story. Once more, thank you all very much for your contributions, even those who merely browse through.
Special thanks to Yumetaka Kourui, Crystalzap, Imperial Dragon, Bobboky, and Friglit ! I really appreciated your views on the story!
Sarutobi simply stared as one of the three Sannin and his former personal students glanced over towards him for a moment before looking away and toward the rest of the office quickly, apparently embarrassed for some reason. Yamato grimaced at the older mans tone and words, still unable to accept his attitude toward things even after their time spent together so far.
Slowly blinking and closing his mouth, the Hokage gathered his thoughts together and voiced them. "Jiraiya-san... what are you doing here in Konoha again?" he questioned. The Toad Sage shrugged.
"Can't a man come back to his home village once in awhile?" Jiraiya asked in turn. Sarutobi blinked before carefully masking his features, not quite sure what to make of the others words but suspecting Naruto had a hand in this somewhere. He was quite sure Jiraiya hadn't returned to Konoha for many years to come in the original timeline from what the other had told him a month ago.
"Hn." the Hokage agreed quietly. "Yes, well. I was surprised to see you, I suppose... do you have anything more to contribute toward our response to Suna?" he asked.
"Not in particular." Jiraiya stated. The Hokage nodded once before he turned back toward Yamato and gestured with one hand for him to continue. Summoning up a long tablet of wood the former Root member handed it over.
'After we left Suna, Naruto suggested we make a short side-trip. I wasn't sure of his intentions after what had just occurred previously, but he swore he knew exactly where he was going and that we would be back in Konoha before the week was out. Somehow I doubted this, but he had known his own way to Suna and even made a couple of adjustments toward my own intended path there earlier.'
'As I later learned, we were searching for the Sannin member behind me. We would have been here sooner if we had found him in the first sake bar, or even the first town. Unfortunately it wasn't until long after that and many days spent drinking in the process of trying to draw out information from various locals, that we stumbled onto him.'
Sasuke was the first to return to his normal tone of voice and such, quickly shaking the surprise away from his face, and he asked in a low tone that nevertheless carried his dismay "And how do you expect to do that? I've got two different jonin's giving me regular supplies of chakra, and I'm still no further along then this after a month."
He had expected the other boy to shout out some ridiculous statement as he was want to do, but instead Naruto frowned and glanced around quickly. "What type?" he asked. Sasuke blinked.
"Huh? What do you mean what type?" he questioned. To both of their surprises it was Rock Lee who contributed the answer in a slightly rushed tone.
"I think.. he means what element? Some people work better with certain elements than others, Guy-sama told me." the unexpected answer left the Uchiha staring at his eternal rival with surprise etched onto his features for the second time in as many minutes.
"Well said, Lee-san." Naruto told him with a firm nod before turning back to his future team mate. "I'm pretty sure they'd have checked your compatibility with it, but... the villagers can be jerks a lot of the time without giving it much thought; they might be sabotaging your coils without even knowing it, simply because no one else ever told them that it mattered what element you were getting." he stated.
Sasuke's eyes widened at that thought, and he might have dismissed it if not for the fact that apparently Lee knew about this too. Instead he grimaced and looked down at his stomach where the needles were always inserted, and he tried to feel if anything was different with his body from usual for it.
"You're probably a fire affinity, right?" Naruto asked even though he knew the answer. Sasuke nodded slowly, assuming he would be like the rest of his family usually was. Naruto closed his eyes in concentration for several seconds with his hands resting on the end of the bed to help him remain still enough.
"What are you doing?" Lee wondered, but gasped when orange marks appeared around the blonds eyes. When Naruto opened them they had changed to a sharp gold with the pupils oddly turned to the side into horizontal slits.
Sasuke looked up and saw what had startled his eternal rival and felt a sense of unease enter his stomach, which only increased as Naruto stepped around the side of the bed and raised one hand toward him. "What are you doing?" the Uchiha repeated Lee's question with more tension in his voice.
Blue energy gathered around the inside of Naruto's palm. "I'm about to speed up your recovery by roughly ten times." and, before any of them could state anything more, Naruto pressed his hand to Sasuke's chakra center and pushed his Senjutsu energy into it.
The Uchiha heir arched off the bed as the alien chakra roared through his system. It pushed into the most damaged areas quickly, and where as before he had damaged them from forcing too much through for too long, the balanced nature of Senjutsu chakra soothed instead of inflamed.
But unlike the injections, where the alien chakra was slowly bled in and mixed together with his own to keep it from rejecting, this new and different chakra was over riding his own and in effect, absorbing it instead of the other way around.
At first there was sharp and constant pain as the overloaded areas of his legs were flooded again for the first time in nearly a month, but then a cool feeling began to spread. He could feel his muscles tightening and relaxing again, spasming as they grew used to having energy flow through them properly again.
When Naruto carefully drew his hand away after nearly a minutes time he let out a weary sigh. My own wind affinity should balance out between his fire and lightning nature chakra shortly, if what Yamato and Kakashi told me some time ago is still true. I mean, sure, it's going to beat on one of them but it only helps out the other, and it should help his own growth respond to that. he thought.
Sasuke leaned back against his mattress panting as the final cycles began to slow down. He could feel his legs. They were somewhat cold, but he could feel them again. A toe twitched on it's own and instead of sending agony rolling through his body, he just felt a slight numbness toward it.
Reaching down with one hand he gripped his left knee and slowly squeezed. He could feel the muscles underneath the flesh and the bone around them responding normally, even though it was again somewhat blunted.
Sasuke pushed up and stared down in disbelief when his legs slowly obeyed the command to move to the side. Naruto smirked at his success and gave the shocked Uchiha and his eternal rival a thumbs up. "You should be just fine later on, once the numbness fades and your own chakra begins forming again naturally." he stated matter-of-factly.
"How did you do that? How did you even know it would work?" Lee questioned him quietly but fiercely when Sasuke gave little sign he had even heard Naruto. The tone caught the jinchuriki's attention and he frowned a bit.
"I used to know... a medic-nin." he began and then frowned deeper as he remembered Sakura, and realized he didn't have any plans to deal with her just yet.
"She told me her master had explained some of the finer details once and why people didn't die when they had chakra shoved into them on the battlefield, to close up wounds and stuff y'know? I figured I could duplicate the effect with the right type of chakra, since his damage was all internal and already being prodded with a metaphorical stick." he explained.
Lee grimaced. "And if you had failed?" he asked.
"I would have felt that since the chakra I used was special. She told me that when a body's that badly mangled in battle the coils and stuff are already going to be damaged, but pushing healing chakra into it is still substituting your own for someone elses lack of it, so shouldn't the system reject it?" he asked the other boy.
Lee remained silent, so Naruto carried on. "Surprisingly enough, no. A healthy person might if they have enough to counteract with, but a sick or injured body will just absorb it in with their own and slowly break it down in the most damaged areas. Eventually the alien chakra is turned into the owners, even if it is far larger than what that person normally has." he stated.
"But what about your question over the type earlier? Guy-sama told me chakra affinities can damage you if you aren't compatible with them! You agreed!" Lee protested. Naruto nodded his head again.
"You're mostly right. That's why it's important to know what the victims type is before you try anything, because if I had an affinity that was weaker than his and a smaller amount of chakra to push in it would have just been fought off. But someone on the battlefield is already almost out of chakra, so it doesn't matter if their natural affinity is stronger or not since it would not be able to fight off the larger amount of weaker chakra." he explained.
Shaking his head in confusion, Lee slid off the chair and hefted his backpack into the air again and onto his shoulders. "I need to talk to Guy-sama again..." he trailed off, trying to wrap his mind around the whole process. Naruto stepped out of his way and the other boy began a slow jog toward the doorway as he got used to the weight again and tried to find his rhythm.
With the meeting concluded the Hokage was left to digest the news he had been given, while Yamato went off to track down his subject. Jiraiya stayed behind for a few moments as if considering saying something, but at last he too turned and headed for the exit.
The Sannin member certainly had things to accomplish, if what Minato's kid had told him was true. Wherever you are, fourth, I hope you know what a screwed up family you gave your son. he thought in a semi-prayer, a wry if slightly sad smile on his face as he remembered the conversation that had unfolded earlier in the month.
Me as the godfather, Sarutobi as acting grandfather, Kushina as his mother, and of course you for his dad. It's no wonder he's turned out this way. Glancing up as his feet carried him toward a sector of Konoha where the house he needed to find was located a few blocks up, Jiraiya focused and pushed aside those thoughts.
He shunshined up to the rooftops and began silently leaping forward until, at last, he had the location in sight. He slowed down and carefully scouted out the walls for anything obviously rigged, which ruled out any of the nearby bushes or trees. Aha. he thought in triumph as he threw himself toward a corner and clung to it where his hands hit.
Silently and quickly he pulled himself along the wall to the back of the building and up to a window that was partially cracked. With his feet planted firmly in place and one hand holding on as well, he dipped one hand into a pocket and drew the two objects within out.
Flicking the top off his pen, he began appreciating the view afforded down into the woman's side of the Konoha Hot springs with a sly grin on his face, jotting down notes happily all the while.
Yamato found Naruto sitting down in the Uchiha's room of the hospital. He was surprised to see them talking quietly with four unconscious chunin guards on the floor mere feet away, and the raven headed boys feet swinging back and forth slowly.
Tapping Naruto on the shoulder to get his attention, Yamato scowled down at the jinchuriki with his arms crossed. "Ah, hi Yamato-taicho." he greeted without a trace of concern. Yamato crouched and stared at him with wide eyes and a stark expression. "Urk! Sorry!" Naruto exclaimed as he pulled away from the disturbing look of his mentor.
Sasuke blinked and leaned back a few inches from it as well. Yamato slowly relaxed his features and gestured out the door. Naruto nodded his head quickly. "I'll see you around, Sasuke." he told the other boy as he dropped to his feet and began walking toward the exit.
A short time later and they were standing inside of Naruto's apartment, the jinchuriki sitting on the couch as Yamato collapsed into bed. This has been far too long in coming. I don't care if the Hokage himself showed up and knocked on the door, I'm not moving from this bed until I've had a proper nights rest. he thought tiredly.
Losing his voice had been difficult to cope with. He still wasn't used to it, and at times all he wanted to do was shout out his frustration. His wood nature abilities and his chakra had certainly grown since being paired up with Naruto three and a half weeks earlier. After-all, have you ever tried to hold a conversation in which one party has to carve out each letter of their response or query at a time, rapidly, multiple times a day if not hour?
No, Yamato would have collapsed into exhaustion if he had been assigned this task three years ago. He felt weariness paired with a simple joy of resting again, with a wary sort of concern over what trouble Naruto may have gotten into after dashing off to the hospital when they got back.
In the front room Naruto finally felt his own tiredness beginning to settle into place. He yawned and leaned back into the seat with his legs stretched out on the wooden table Yamato had created for him, thinking about what all he had accomplished in just a month of time in the past. He drifted off with a smile on his face.
When Kakashi arrived roughly twenty minutes following Naruto and Yamato's departure, he stared in disbelief at what his visible eye was telling him. The Uchiha heir standing on both legs and walking back and forth slowly. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he demanded.
Sasuke jerked to a stop as he looked up at his teacher. "I'm healed." he stated simply. Kakashi tugged his hitai-ate up and brought out his Sharingan to see how this was possible and watched with a slack-jawed expression at the way chakra was somewhat densely compacted into his apprentices legs and lower coils, the pathways themselves still not fully healed but certainly recovering at a remarkable pace.
"How?" the Jonin asked. Sasuke shrugged. "Someone came in and injected me with more chakra. It hurt as badly as it did when I first injured them before fading to numbness." he answered carefully.
"Who injected you?" now concern for the boys well being was returning in spades. "A silver haired man in strange red cloths. He looked ugly, but he had strange markings around his nose and eyes that faded when he was done." he repeated what Naruto had asked him to say before Yamato arrived.
Silver hair and markings? Could it be... trailing off Kakashi stopped his Sharingan and but left the hitai-ate out of it's usual place. "I see. You were unwise to accept his help without myself or the Hyuga here, Sasuke, but I am glad to see you've recovered. Nevertheless, so long as you are under my guidance, do not ever accept the aide of an adult who looks so out of place. This time you were lucky to survive." he warned the boy.
Sasuke scowled. This better be worth the trouble, Uzumaki. he thought silently. "Okay." he responded aloud. Kakashi pulled up the paperwork for Sasuke in the desk drawer and left his signature along the bottom next to the mark for 'discharged'.
"I've got some meetings to attend today so you're free to wander, but under no circumstances are you to train your chakra while I'm gone." he instructed the Uchiha. Sasuke nodded his acceptance and followed after Kakashi as they departed the hospital.
When they neared the Jonin's home Kakashi said "Oh." and dug into his pockets for another book. "I was going to give you this to pass the time, but now you can read it more freely to keep yourself entertained." he stated. Sasuke accepted the black book and flipped it open to the first few pages, scanning the contents list.
"'String-theory in battle'?" he questioned. Kakashi confirmed it.
"I figured with the chakra threads you can already create, you should start to utilize that with your basic training. Throw a kunai, whip the kunai back around and stab the enemy in the back- or back of the head." the Jonin answered.
"Hn." Sasuke looked back to the book and began thumbing through the early pages.
End Chapter Twelve.