His Little Bird [A Naruto Fanfiction] [Shikamaru x OC]

[13] Free at Last!

AN: I'm back again! Y'all must be getting tired of me :P

Anyway, enjoy this chapter. It probably won't be very eventful or long or anything, because it's setting up for some big stuff, but hopefully it's not too terrible :P

The photo is of Sen's father - I suppose it's a little late to be introducing him now and he doesn't have much to do with this chapter but...meh. Better late than never! I know he resembles an Uzumaki, but that's sheer coincidence. Maybe. BWHAHAHAHA >:D 

<3 A

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A week later, Sen was finally out of the hospital. She had started rehab a couple of days after waking up, and was already in pretty good shape, all things considered. The nurses claimed she had an amazing healing rate, but Sen had laughed it off, calling it luck and telling them if they wanted to see someone who healed fast, they should see her little brother. The kid could tear his knees up to high heaven, and be up and sprinting around thirty minutes later like nothing happened. She didn't think the kid ever scarred, either.

She walked out of the hospital, a slight limp still marring her gait as she moved out into the city. It had been a long time since she'd seen anyone other than those who had come to visit her in the hospital, and she missed the bustling of the city. People were smiling and laughing, and it was quite some time since she'd seen anything but the worried glances of her friends and family, or the charred remains of a battlefield. It was so nice to be home. 'Say, Go, Akai. You never told me. How was the Land of Birds?'

'I can say for sure that you would have -' Before Akaihane could finish his sentence, however, he was cut off by someone yelling something. 

"Oooooi! Sen!" A boy in orange came sprinting up to her, arms waving. "Oooooi!"

Sen laughed and threw her hand up in the air, waving back. "Ohaiyo Naruto!" She shouted back, her eyes closed as she smiled.

"I thought we were going to get ramen when you got back?!" He exclaimed as he skidded to a stop before her.

Sen wilted a little bit at this, feeling bad for not keeping her end of the bargain, even though there was nothing she could do about it. "I'm sorry Naruto, I just got out of the hospital. I got hurt during the mission pretty badly and they put me in a coma for about a week."

Naruto stopped moving for a moment, his eyes bugging out, "What?! What happened to you?"

Sen grimaced and began listing off all of the injuries she had sustained during the fight, causing Naruto's head to spin. "Look, I don't really get any of that stuff...but I'm glad you're okay!" Suddenly, Naruto perked up considerably. "Now that you're awake, we can go get some ramen!" He grabbed her by the arm - the one she had broken, of course - and practically dragged her all the way to Ichiraku, Sen swearing at him all the way. 

When they arrived, Team 10 was already chowing down. Thankfully, Ichiraku still had two seats open and Naruto plopped down in the first one he saw. Sen slid a little more gracefully into hers, positioning her in between Ino and Naruto. The girl was still bandaged up because of the burns she had sustained and Ino nearly fell out of her chair when she caught sight of the other girl. 

"Sen!?" Ino yelled, arms flailing. "Is that you? What happened?" 

Sen laughed sheepishly, grinning a little. "I got hurt on a mission. The Hokage sent us on a C Rank and it turned out that some S-Rank guy in the Land of Stone's Bingo Book showed up. We thought it would just be bandits, but no one dreamed a rouge ninja would show up. We all got pretty banged up, but I was the worst off." Shikamaru and Choji stared at her wordlessly, and Choji even had noodles hanging out of his mouth. The sight caused the young girl to giggle and Choji flushed bright red, quickly slurping up his food.