"Wait," Tsunade reached forward and stopped Karin and Sakura from pulling Naruto away from Kakashi, the Blonde now passed out with his head on the edge of the mattress.
"Lady Tsunade?"
Karin spoke, casting a worried glance at Naruto. Not liking seeing him in pain, she had never, not once in the years she's known him, gotten sick; right now he looked miserable, and it hurt her heart.
"We can't be sure that separating them won't cause a backlash. Wait until their chakra calms down, then we can get him, ok?"
Tsunade spoke gently, well aware of Karin's emotions and the unspoken romantic tension between the two.
"Your boyfriend will be fine; just wait."
Tsunade teased, watching the girl's face match her hair, Sakura's face matching her master's own teasing expression.
The three silently waited for the chakra of the student and sensei to calm down, the process taking a full 20 minutes before the hand Naruto had placed on Kakashi slipped off, Karin there before the rest of Naruto's body could fall to the side.
'Hehe~ how cute.'
Sakura thought with a grin, her inner Sakura fist pumping as Tsunade walked out.
Tsunade returned a couple of minutes later with a folded hospital bed, unfolding it and setting everything up.
"Karin, bring Naruto over here."
Karin nodded, lifting the scorching Naruto up and gently laying him on the bed.
"Sakura, go get the equipment; we need to monitor Naruto's condition properly."
"Yes, sensei," Sakura replied before rushing out of the room.
She returned quickly with the required equipment and hooked Naruto up to the monitors. The machines beeped to life once plugged in, immediately displaying Naruto's spiking vitals on the screens.
Tsunade leaned over the monitor, her eyes scanning the data as Naruto's body temperature continued to climb. Beside the bed, Karin kept her hands clenched, her sensory focus locked entirely on the intense, shifting chakra network currently rewriting itself inside Naruto's system.
"He's okay, right?" Karin asked, Sakura hugging the redhead as she stared worriedly at the sweating Naruto.
Tsunade unzipped Naruto's jacket, putting it on a nearby table, before she pressed the call button on the bed and ordered a bucket of cold water and a few rags.
Sakura stepped up to the side of the bed, her hands already glowing with green medical chakra as she pressed them firmly against Naruto's chest. The moment her energy entered his system, her eyes widened. She wasn't just dealing with a standard bodily fever; Naruto's cellular biology was actively working at a speed she had never seen before.
Under the heat of the invading energy, his cells were rapidly breaking down and reforming, rewriting his pathways to accommodate the sudden influx of the Sage-like chakra. His heart rate spiked on the monitors, a rapid, erratic rhythm that would have caused a normal shinobi's organs to fail from sheer exhaustion. Yet, for some unknown reason, Naruto's body kept pace, forcing his vitals to stabilize even as his core temperature climbed to a dangerous level.
A medical assistant rushed into the room, setting down the requested bucket of cool water and rags before slipping back out. Tsunade immediately grabbed a cloth, dunking it into the water and wringing it out before pressing it firmly against Naruto's burning forehead. Steam practically hissed off his skin as the cool cloth met his forehead, the rag warming up within seconds.
"Keep the medical chakra steady, Sakura," Tsunade commanded quietly, dunking the cloth again to refresh it. "We need to support his heart while his pathways finish adapting. His system is doing the heavy lifting; we need to keep him from burning himself out from the inside."
"Yes, sensei," Sakura murmured, adjusting the frequency of her healing chakra. She focused entirely on soothing his racing pulse, marveling at how his network didn't just contain the raw heat, but seemed to welcome it actively, molding the new energy into his existing pool with a strange, ancient familiarity.
For the next couple of hours, Tsunade and Sakura monitored Naruto's condition, Karin having pulled another chair into the room to sit next to Naruto's bed.
With Naruto stabilizing and no longer needing immediate monitoring, Tsunade and Sakura left the room. They left Karin sitting by the bed, with Tsunade instructing her to press the call button if anything changed. Karin nodded seriously, not planning on missing a single detail about Naruto's condition.
The room grew exceptionally quiet, with only the steady hum of the heart monitors and the soft breathing of the three sleeping figures filling the space. Karin leaned forward in her chair, her eyes shifting from Naruto's resting face to the medical screens, keeping a watchful guard over Naruto, Sasuke, and Kakashi.
- Chapter End -
Very short chapter; I've already expanded it as much as I can naturally. It would be difficult for me to make it not jarring. So, when you read this, it'll be with a double upload.