Ch. 5: The Next Day

"RISE AND SHINE!" I jerked awake as a loud voice shouted in my ear.

"What the heck!" I muttered through gritted teeth, looking around to see that Deki was snoring away, and Kazu and Kaida were nowhere to be found.

"What, we're hungry!" Washi whined.

"You're a big boy, you can feed yourself. Go get some food from our supplies or something."

"There's just one problem with that…" Yumi said, her voice getting higher in pitch at the 'one'. "Kaida dropped the scroll with our supplies and it disappeared."

"WHAT!" This time it was my turn to scream. "You all still have your personal storage scrolls with clothing and everything?" Yumi nodded.

"But they have no food in them!" Washi complained.

I sighed loudly. "Fine. I'll go get some food. Yumi, make some ice for Deki - he's bound to be sore. By the way, I forgot, is the cut on your shoulder okay?" She nodded again and showed me the thin scab. "Alright, Washi, start a fire. But DON'T set the whole forest on fire. Here, I'll show you where."

I led them both to a small clearing a little away from our hiding spot. "They were rogue ninja..." I pondered aloud the events and information from before. "No wonder Deki didn't stop Kaida when she started lopping off heads." I turned around to find Yumi a sickly shade of green. "Oh, right, sorry, visual mind, right?"

She faintly nodded, then shook her head to rid herself of the thought before saying, "I need water to make ice."

I mentally slapped myself, then said, "Go find Kazu." She nodded yet again.

After a few trials and errors, I found some edible tubers. I walked back to find a pan from Washi's personal stock (don't ask) set over the fire he had made, and Yumi was sitting next to a now awake Deki in our natural shelter. Deki was holding some ice to his side while chatting with Yumi.

I smiled and turned around to prepare the potato-like tubers for cooking. I pulled over a flat rock slab and started cutting the tubers into thick slices with my kunaii. I threw the tuber slices into the pan to fry. I had just flipped over the first batch when I heard someone landing lightly behind me. I hadn't spent seven years on the same team with him for nothing, so I knew it was Kazu. I stayed silent, waiting for him to speak first.

As I added in a few crushed herbs and some honey to add taste, he spoke up.

"Hey, Tomoko?" he said slowly, as if he was thinking. "Is Deki going to be okay?"

It was hard for me to keep myself from reassuring him immediately. Deki was his best friend after all. I thought for a bit about how to word my answer, then decided that lying to him would just make it worse. I turned to face him.

"I'm not sure. He will probably make it, but I don't know how healthy he will be. He's suffered a lot of blood loss, an organ may have been punctured, and he never was that strong in the first place."

"Compared to you, you mean," Kazu said, smiling. "But then, there aren't too many people as strong as you," he added, finally sounding like his usual clueless but cheerful self again. "Say, maybe you should be a med-nin!" he said excitedly.

"And miss kicking you and Deki's butts during training? Think again!" We laughed together, and turned to find Deki and Yumi laughing with us. Kaida appeared out of nowhere as always, and Washi rushed into the clearing, proclaiming, "Do I smell French Fries?" with a wide smile on his face.

"Shut up and sit down, Warami," Deki said rolling his eyes.

I passed around the crispy tuber slices, before commenting, "Deki, I know you were hurt, but was it really nice to say those rogue ninjas were poo?"

Everyone looked at me strangely.

"What? He said, 'Gosh, they're getting smarter. They're—POO!' Remember?"

"You mean when I was going to tell you they were getting used to our attack styles? And then I got hit so I yelled 'SHIT,' is that what you're talking about?"

I nodded happily.

"Oh. You're really weird," Washi said.

"Thanks!"

"…Wasn't a compliment…"

"Ah, but then you'd be insulting yourself, right?"

And as if on cue, we all laughed at the ongoing joke, and as the six of us sat around the 'campfire', we remembered and laughed about other old times and memories.

We continued to enjoy ourselves as we went around picking acorns for the next day, and joked around with each other as I instructed them in grinding them up, soaking them, then laying them out in the sun to dry. And a fun water-fight afterwards couldn't hurt either, right!

Things were certainly looking up.