Naruto: Pain

Naruto stared blankly at the ceiling above his hospital bed. He had only been back in the village three weeks since the misranked mission to Wave and this was his fifth hospital visit. In the bed to his right Sasuke was dead to the world, eyes covered by a layer of bandages. Sakura's chakra was a familiar presence two rooms down the hall where her dislocated wrist and elbow were being tended to, alongside her broken fingers.

All three genin had made meteoric progress in the past three weeks, although admittedly said progress was largely driven by fear: Kakashi-sensei made a point of terrorising them into forgetting their limits every five days or so. The inbetween time was spent recovering in the hospital, studying like mad and driving themselves into the ground trying to improve. They were getting better, Naruto knew, but their jounin-sensei had almost two decades worth of experience on them and pounded them bloody every single time.

We made him work for it this time, though, Naruto thought with dark satisfaction. He had finally managed to call up the one-tailed chakra cloak Yoko was teaching him to use and had successfully protected both his team-mates while Sakura healed the stab wounds Sasuke had received while defending the kunoichi from their crazy sensei to the best of her limited ability. The jounin had resorted to an S-rank sharingan genjutsu to incapacitate the blond, by which point Sasuke was well enough for Sakura to turn her considerable displeasure on their sensei.

Naruto was glad he hadn't been on the receiving end of Sakura's latest genjutsu; he had awoken to the nauseating sight of Kakashi vomiting uncontrollably through his mask while his two team-mates hustled him off in search of high ground. The jounin had made them pay for the experience, of course, but the bloody scratch on the back of his neck testified to the uplifting fact that today marked their first win.

It had also marked Sakura's induction into the select group of ninja aware of Naruto's status, but the kunoichi hadn't made a fuss.

"I don't care; you're too much of a doofus to be a demon," she'd said grimly as the sky overhead had blackened with storm clouds summoned by their vengeful sensei, "now use that power to prevent Kakashi from slaughtering me!"

Naruto had done his best but Sakura had still had her fingers, wrist and elbow brutally dislocated by the end of the exercise. Today Sasuke had taken the most severe damage: Kakashi had fried his optic nerve with a lightning jutsu and broken his shin on top of the usual wounds and bruises. Naruto had a cracked skull, a full set of freshly healed ribs, burnt femur, wide, angry and fading scars all over his back and arms and more memories of clone-death than he cared to count. The major advantage of the chakra cloak was that flesh wounds healed instantaneously, but it exhausted him afterwards to the point he could barely stagger to the hospital afterwards. Never mind that Kakashi-psycho put a three-inch hole through my thigh with a lightning jutsu trying to get at Sakura.

A groan from Sasuke roused the blond from his contemplation.

"What- where am I?"

"Easy teme; we're in the hospital. The doctor took a look at your eyes -he was dead pissed at sensei for frying them- and they should be healed, if sore, by tomorrow morning. You're not allowed to take the bandages off before then though."

"Sakura?" the black-haired boy rasped.

"Sensei dislocated and broke three of her fingers and dislocated both her wrist and elbow as well," Naruto replied grimly, "but the medics are doing their thing. Sensei got a nice through-and-through chakra burn to the shoulder from me for that; only thing that stopped him from breaking more bones. That'll teach him to underestimate my range."

"Hatake is evil," Sasuke grumbled, gingerly fingering his bandages. "Naruto?"

"Hai?"

"If we fail the chunnin exams the one responsible will die."

Naruto sighed. "Aa. At least now we know he has a reason for pushing us this far this fast."

"He'd do it anyway," Sasuke muttered darkly. "He thinks it's fun."

The blond winced. "Let's... not go there, okay? How're your ninja-to lessons going?"

"I think I'm half-decent now. Sensei says I'm 'not completely pitiful anymore' which is an improvement. Having the sharingan helps and I've got a second tomoe in my right eye now as well as the third in my left I got last week."

"Just one to go then," Naruto said encouragingly. "Sakura's getting good with her genjutsu, isn't she?"

Sasuke shuddered. "That vomiting jutsu was just," he shuddered again, cheeks going slightly green, "eurgh. It made me queasy just seeing it. Her taijutsu with those gauntlets is vicious enough but her genjutsu is worse." The Uchiha paused for a moment. "How's your training going dobe? Anything in particular?"

"I'm well into the next sealing book -trap seals- kaa-san says I'm adequate enough with a tanto in my off hand to wield two weapons in the field soon and you know how much better my taijutsu is."

"You're damn good."

"Arigatou teme; you're good too, especially with Mantis. It's hard to believe you've only been learning for a month. Sensei's drilling me on chakra control when we work together and teaching me low-level ninjutsu which need a high degree of control and elaborate chakra manipulation. They're fiddly and require stupid amounts of concentration but the results are worth it. That's how I managed to put a hole in Sensei's shoulder. The shadow clones help, of course."

"Wish I could use shadow clones."

"You may possibly have enough chakra to do one; if you could it could do your reading for you while you concentrate on the physical stuff." Naruto thought about it. "Don't make the attempt unsupervised though. Death by chakra exhaustion would be embarrassing."

"Dobe," Sasuke growled.

Naruto was about to reply when nine unpleasantly familiar chakra signatures entered his range. "Teme, the fan-club are here."

Sasuke hissed angrily, quickly lay back on the pillows and slowed his breathing until he was successfully mimicking sleep. Naruto copied him; If they looked asleep the nurse wouldn't let the girls in.

The door opened, there was a brief pause and then it closed again. Naruto let out a shaky sigh as the nurse's chakra signature hustled the others away. "They're visiting Sakura instead," he whispered.

"Good," Sasuke grunted; "She can genjutsu them into catatonia for all I care."

Naruto didn't bother to answer him, keeping his eyes closed and letting himself drift. The past three weeks had been rough but the last for days had been worse: one of Benihime's clients had failed to return from a routine mission. Reports suggested the special jounin had run into a nukenin somewhere in southern River country. Team nine -Lee's team from last year's graduates- had supposedly been in the area and reported a bandit gang including someone wielding one of Kiri's infamous seven swords.

Naruto had dealt with the guilt of killing before but the grief of losing someone you knew was different. More than anything else it felt like something had been ripped out of his chest, leaving a hole. That local rumour suggested she had likely been buried alive did not help.

He had spent half the day after hearing the news crying on kaa-san and the other half beating up shadow clones. It didn't hurt as much now but it was still more painful than the physical wounds Kakashi-sensei has inflicted on him. Benihime had helped deal with the misery by working on how to channel water chakra through her fans as well as creating a number of unpleasant tough-activated genjutsu. The relentless chakra control exercises Naruto was doing seemed to be benefiting her as well.

Naruto had recently discovered that his primary affinity was wind and hoped that -now they'd actually won for once- Kakashi-sensei would teach him how to use it. If not then he was going to work it out by himself. Now he could actually access the library he was learning a lot of very useful stuff.

A/N: While Kurosuki Raiga does not appear in the anime until much later, I thought I could pop him in at this point since I'm working from the Manga timeline. He is unlikely to appear in person but may be mentioned again later.

Team seven is improving nicely, although Kakashi is pushing them a little too hard for my liking. This is mainly because at their age he was a chunnin, borderline jounin level and barely remembers his genin days at all. He did get his comeuppance this time, though. Go Sakura!