Naruto Hatake

Recovery

                                                                              ~~~~~

He was bored, that pretty summed up Naruto's feelings for the moment. He was sitting in this hospital with bandages over his chest just staring at the plain white ceiling, the walls or the empty beds. He was glad that they let him keep his mask at least, but he really wanted something to do but he could barely walk. Some doctor called it chakra exhaustion and when he explained it Naruto didn't get a lot of it until his dad had summed it up as that he just used too much chakra and doing that leaves you weak.

Why couldn't the doctor just explain things simply like that instead of using long winded words?

He had asked his dad that and he just shrugged and said it was most likely how doctors made themselves feel smart and important. Naruto smiled at the memory, but that had been hours ago and now he just wanted someone to talk to. He wouldn't have minded if someone else was in the same room as him but he had the room all to himself.

So he just sat there looking out the window trying to keep himself busy.

He lost track of time when he heard his door open and he looked and his day suddenly got a lot better. There was Hinata with what looked like some flowers for him with Sakura, Ino, Choji, Shikamaru and even Neji. The four that hadn't seen him before had wide eyes at the sight of him in the bed, until that moment they had a few doubts just how serious the injuries were but there were the bandages over his chest where Hinata had told them where he had been stabbed.

"Thank god you guys came I was going out of my mind here alone," Naruto smiled behind his mask.

They came forward as Hinata blushed as she laid the flowers next to his table, "T-t-these a-are for you Naruto-kun."

"Hey thanks Hinata-chan, so how are you doing?" He asked seeing the bruise on her face, she saw what he was looking at and turned her face to hide it. She told him that she was fine and she was touched that despite his injuries he was more worried about her.

Sakura stepped forward a little worried about him, "Does it...you know hurt?"

"What this? Nah, it's just a scratch."

"A scratch?" Ino nearly yelled out, "You took a kunai to the chest you should be dead! You have any idea how lucky you were, what were you thinking?"

Naruto cringed a bit, Ino kind of reminded her of Anko when she was pissed. "What was I supposed to do? That guy was trying to take Hinata and I had to do something!"

"Personally I think that's pretty cool," Choji smiled while opening a bag of chips, he took one out and thought about something, "Here want the first one?"

"You bet, the food here sucks!" Going to the bathroom that was the real embarrassing thing that he would never ever in his life tell anyone about. He brought it up to his face and then noticed the looks he was getting, they were all waiting to see him without the mask.

Naruto just about to reach for it when his eyes grew wide as pointed out the window. "Oh my god someone just jumped off the building!"

Everyone looked to the window and when they heard the crunch they turned to see Naruto munching on the chip with his mask on. Everyone sweat dropped at that feeling like an idiot falling for that, Neji had only cast a quick glance since he had already seen Naruto without the mask and had to smirk at Naruto. Ino had this eye twitch thing going on and made a resolve to one day see the boy without that mask on no matter how long it took her.

"Troublesome," Shikamaru muttered as he pulled out something from his backpack. "Well if you're bored you wanna play a game of shogi?"

"Is that like Go? My dad taught me that and we play it at times, well that and a few card games." Naruto asked as Shikamaru explained the game as he set up the pieces. The others began asking all kinds of questions about what happened and Naruto loving the spot light couldn't help but brag a bit on his exploit. Hinata had guessed at a few things but when Naruto started to exaggerate she felt a sweat drop forming. Shikamaru was focused on the game, Naruto wasn't that good since he started but he seemed to be learning, plus he figured that when Naruto adding in giant fire ball justus he was laying it on a bit thick.