[Log] Visiting Hours [Jimaiya, Naruko, Leigh]
((Backdated to before Kakami's birthday.))
If Jimaiya could be anywhere in the world right now, Konoha's hospital would certainly not be in her top ten list of choices. Nothing against the hospital itself, it was a very nice hospital as far as hospitals went, but just the situation in general left something to be desired.
One of these days, she swore to herself, she would walk into this hospital for a happy reason. But that day seemed all too far away, and right now, Jimaiya figured she should be thankful she were only there for a visit, and not something a little more morbid.
She didn't even bother to knock before she barged in, letting the door nearly rip off its hinges in her wake.
"Getting into trouble again, brat?" Jimaiya sighed, looking down at the girl on the bed with tired eyes. She sighed dramatically. "You're giving me worry lines, you know..."
"'m sorry." Naruko scrubbed the sleep out of her eyes. Funny, she didn't think she'd ever fallen asleep after one cup of instant ramen before. "What's up, ero-sennin?"
Jimaiya's lips curled distastefully at the nickname, but decided to let it go for the time being. "Maybe you could tell me," she said, a little huffily, and drew her arms across her chest. "I come back to hear my pupil's been hospitalized, and no one will give me the entire damn story."
"Um..." Naruko scratched the back of her head, laughing nervously. "Well, y'see...I don't remember much after we left Suna, an' Leigh-chan hasn't been by, but the nurses said I was the only one hurt...Mmm..." She trailed off, plucking at the blankets. She didn't even know why she couldn't remember anything.
Jimaiya's expression cleared a bit, hearing the (somewhat embarrassed) sincerity in the girl's tone. All she said was pretty much all Jimaiya had been told, but the Toad Hermitess would be damned if she would leave it at just that.
She obviously couldn't get anything out of Naruko, not without some (slightly illegal, heh) coercion anyway. They all mentioned this Leigh, however, and Jimaiya could vaguely remember a little green bundle of energy following Gaia around that went by that name. She'd have to make plans to seek this girl out later.
Right now, though, her pupil was looking more than a little unlike herself, and if there was anything more disturbing than a non-bouncy Naruko, Jimaiya didn't know what it was.
"Stop frowning," Jimaiya said bluntly. "Frown lines are just as bad as worry ones."
Naruko blinked up at the sannin, then gave a shy grin, running her hand over her short hair.
Jimaiya couldn't help but smile slightly. "Better," she said with a slight nod. A moment passed before the woman sighed, and proceeded to drop herself on the nearby chair, tilting back and placing her feet up along Naruko's bedside.
"Life's never boring with you, is it, brat?" Jimaiya grinned slightly. Naruko shook her head, a true smile breaking out.
"No, not really." Naruko paused, thinking hard. "Why would Sachiko's sister be after me, anyhow?" She tugged on a tuft of hair, a poor replacement for her usual habit of tugging on her pigtails, but Naruko hardly noticed as she tried to think it out.
Almost instantly, Jimaiya's grin faded. "Indeed," the older woman murmured thoughtfully. So the rumors about Akatsuki were true after all... And Jimaiya had a pretty good guess about their motives, if all Naruko was the only one they'd bothered to attack.
She slid her eyes to the window thoughtfully, knowing she'd have much research to do later.
"Have you been resting like you should be?" Jimaiya said after a while, hoping to distract the other girl from thinking too much about her teammater's sister. "I hope you're not embarrassing me with any wild pranks."
"I haven't been doing any pranks!" Naruko's cheeks puffed up indignantly, which quickly degraded into a sulk. "Yes, I've been resting. And who's embarrassing who? You haven't been peeping while I was gone, were you?" She glared at Jimaiya, which was at odd with her sulk, but she managed it somehow.
Now it was Jimaiya's turn to bristle indignantly. "It's called research, brat, and I'll have you know I do more than just that when I'm not publishing." She gave Naruko a look of pure childishness, just short of sticking out her tongue. "I'm a very important person, in case you've forgotten."
"Uh-huh. Sure you are. So important you write perverted books and ditch whenever gramps sounds like he might want your help." Naruko did resort to sticking out her tongue, mostly because she was partially teasing.
"Ass deserves it," Jimaiya sniffed defensively. "And besides-- it builds character." She ignored the part about the perverted books though.
Mostly because Naruko was right.
Today was a bit of a casual day for Leigh. Instead of her normal spandex training suit, because if she wore that she would have the undeniable urge to train and training was the last thing Nejiko and Tentsuke wanted Leigh doing until the Hokage had decided Leigh had rested enough, the young chuunin was having a bit of a casual day. Loose dark green pants that covered up her weights, and a white tank top under an open long-sleeved button-down shirt that matched her pants. Her hair she had chosen to wear loose today, not wanting to braid it because it was another thing that kind of had her subconsciously preparing to train. Otherwise, the blue shinobi sandals still adorned her feet and her hands were, as usuall, wrapped to just before the elbow.
She'd gotten quite a few odd looks from, well, most everyone on her way to the hospital for her daily visit to Naruko and didn't understand why. She couldn't know it was because not very many people had ever seen her in civilian-type clothes, and even less had seen her hair out of her braid. But Leigh was long used to odd looks so she paid them little mind. She carried a bouquet of daffodils in one hand and a vase in the other. Now that Naruko was in a room that wasn't so restrictive but still in the ICU ward, Leigh wanted to give her some flowers so she could have something cheerful in the room.
The nurse was another one to greet Leigh with friendly surprise, but other than that she was directed to Naruko's new room. Risu sat on Leigh's shoulder and looked around curiously, nose twitching constantly at new smells. Leigh knocked on the door and let herself in, stopping short when she saw Jimaiya-sama. She opened her mouth to greet the Sannin when she saw that Naruko was awake. Instantly Leigh's expression brightened tenfold.
"Naruko-chan!" she cried. "You're awake!"
"Leigh-chan!" Naruko perked up immediately, and almost threw her arms up in the air, but the pain in her muscles stopped her before she could. "How're you an' Risu?"
That was fine, because as soon as she'd put the flowers in the vase (she'd add water in a minute) Leigh went over to Naruko and hugged her but not too tightly, and careful of the IV. "Oh, we're fine, just resting. Tsurude-sama and Sensei and Nejiko and Tentsuke all want me to take it easy for a while, which is fine, I guess, but I'm so bored because they won't even let me train so I've been spending my time copying down from memory all my recipes into a new cookbook since my old one kinda got lost. I'll have to see about reacquiring the recipes I picked up in Suna, however, since I didn't have those memorized. How're you doing? We've been worried," she continued as Risu launched herself from Leigh's shoulder to Naruko's lap. Leigh gave her friend a large smile. "I'm glad you're looking so well, now. You should be up and out of her in no time!"
Jimaiya blinked. ...the heck just happaned?
Frowning a little to herself, Jimaiya straightened in her seat and cleared her throat, wishing to make herself known (because, apparently, the two younger girls had forgotten she was in there. Really, how rude). "So you're Leigh," said the Sannin critically. Funny, she was sort of expecting someone.. greener.
Shrugging to herself, Jimaiya stood from her seat to get a better look at the young girl. The resemblance between her and Gaia were frightening, to say the least.
"Yosh! I'm Rock Leigh, the Azure Beauty of Konoha and student of the terrific Maito Gaia!" Leigh declared, clicking her heels together and saluting. You'd almost never think she'd worn herself out to the point of near-dropping from sheer exhaustion not too long ago, but there were still faint smudges under her large round eyes. "You're Jimaiya-sama, Naruko-chan's teacher and Tsurude-sama's former teammate." She purposely left off the third Sannin's name. She didn't want to think about how Sakurai-kun was in Otogakure, not right now.
Jimaiya's frown thinned out slightly, satisfied that the girl at least knew her name. "Perhaps you could help me then," she said then, getting straight to the point. She would have much rather done this without Naruko in the room, should there be some things the younger girl was better off not knowing at the moment, but Jimaiya seized the oppurtunity while she could. "Naruko here seems unable to remember a thing about your.. incident," she said, frown returning. "But I was told you did?"
"Wait, what?" Leigh asked, looking confused as she glanced at Naruko before turning back to Jimaiya and then returning to Naruko. She blinked several times and furrowed her brow. "You don't remember anything, Naruko-chan?"
Naruko shook her head slowly, blue eyes wide. "No..."
Well, it had been a pretty traumatic experience from Leigh's point of view, but Naruko should at least-- "Naruko-chan," Leigh started slowly, "what's the last thing you recall?"
Naruko thought hard for a moment, running a hand through her hair. "Leaving Suna...and a little bit of Tsurude-gramps talking, but that's about it."
Leigh blanched. Risu, sensing Leigh's distress, jumped from Naruko's shoulder to Leigh's shoulder and leaned against the side of Leigh's head and put her fuzzy tail against Leigh's neck. Leigh shifted her gaze to the tiles on the floor, holding her elbows tightly. "We were ambushed by two of Akatsuki just outside of River Country. Hoshigaki Kisa and Uchiha Itae. They were after you."
Naruko paled, they'd managed to escape from Akatsuki? How'd that happen?
Turning the information in her head, Jimaiya's hard gaze on Leigh remained unwavering. "Can you recall what techniques they used against you?" she urged, "Anything that stood out or you found odd? Aside," Jimaiya added as an afterthought, "from the obvious, I mean."
"Hoshigaki Kisa used a suiton that flooded everything," Leigh said after a moment. "The surface was about three and a half meters above me. I didn't exactly see all what Uchiha did, because she and Naruko-chan were fighting on top of the water, but there was this... fireball that completely engulfed Naruko-chan. It was really weird. I've seen people use the goukakyuu no jutsu and... this wasn't it. The fire looked like it had come from inside, like Naruko-chan had spontaneously combusted. It was red too, and it didn't burn her clothes, just her skin and hair. She collapsed." Her hands tightened on her elbows. "It was at that point that I started chucking my weights at the two enemy to get them to back off just enough. I'd already lost my pack in the suiton's giant wave, so I didn't have anything to encumber me. I swam up as fast as I could, grabbed Naruko-chan as I broke the surface and slung her pack away. I hit the water sprinting--I can move fast enough without my weights to keep from sinking--and ran for home. I didn't stop running until I got to Tsurude-sama's office, which was I think about ten hours later.
"My memory gets a little fuzzy after that, though I remember Kiba and Tentsuke and Nejiko, and then waking up in my bed with Tentsuke nearby telling me that I was to rest, Hokage's orders."
Jimaiya nodded, eyes clouding over slightly in thought. The 'red fire' would be Kyuubi, of course, but it didn't surprise Jimaiya much that Leigh was not informed of it. It was none of her business, of course, and she trusted Naruko to know her friends well enough to be able to tell who she could trust with the information or not. In any case, it was not the Sannin's place to correct Leigh; let Naruko deal with that when she wanted to.
Smiling softly then, Jimaiya inclined her head politely to the bright-eyed girl. "Thank you, Leigh-chan," she said, "you've been a very big help." She turned to Naruko then and reached out a hand to tousle the fair hair on the girl's head. "Don't think too much, eh, brat?" she teased affectionately. "You don't want to give yourself a bigger headache~"
Naruko pouted, cheeks puffing. "Ano-sa, ano-sa, I'll stop getting headaches when you start training me properly instead of dragging me off for research, ero-sennin."
Very quickly, Jimaiya's affectionate pat turned into a light bop to the head. "That is training," she sniffed self-righteously. But the kid had a point, and the necessary mental note was made; Jimaiya was not about to let something like that incident happen again.
If Jimaiya could be anywhere in the world right now, Konoha's hospital would certainly not be in her top ten list of choices. Nothing against the hospital itself, it was a very nice hospital as far as hospitals went, but just the situation in general left something to be desired.
One of these days, she swore to herself, she would walk into this hospital for a happy reason. But that day seemed all too far away, and right now, Jimaiya figured she should be thankful she were only there for a visit, and not something a little more morbid.
She didn't even bother to knock before she barged in, letting the door nearly rip off its hinges in her wake.
"Getting into trouble again, brat?" Jimaiya sighed, looking down at the girl on the bed with tired eyes. She sighed dramatically. "You're giving me worry lines, you know..."
"'m sorry." Naruko scrubbed the sleep out of her eyes. Funny, she didn't think she'd ever fallen asleep after one cup of instant ramen before. "What's up, ero-sennin?"
Jimaiya's lips curled distastefully at the nickname, but decided to let it go for the time being. "Maybe you could tell me," she said, a little huffily, and drew her arms across her chest. "I come back to hear my pupil's been hospitalized, and no one will give me the entire damn story."
"Um..." Naruko scratched the back of her head, laughing nervously. "Well, y'see...I don't remember much after we left Suna, an' Leigh-chan hasn't been by, but the nurses said I was the only one hurt...Mmm..." She trailed off, plucking at the blankets. She didn't even know why she couldn't remember anything.
Jimaiya's expression cleared a bit, hearing the (somewhat embarrassed) sincerity in the girl's tone. All she said was pretty much all Jimaiya had been told, but the Toad Hermitess would be damned if she would leave it at just that.
She obviously couldn't get anything out of Naruko, not without some (slightly illegal, heh) coercion anyway. They all mentioned this Leigh, however, and Jimaiya could vaguely remember a little green bundle of energy following Gaia around that went by that name. She'd have to make plans to seek this girl out later.
Right now, though, her pupil was looking more than a little unlike herself, and if there was anything more disturbing than a non-bouncy Naruko, Jimaiya didn't know what it was.
"Stop frowning," Jimaiya said bluntly. "Frown lines are just as bad as worry ones."
Naruko blinked up at the sannin, then gave a shy grin, running her hand over her short hair.
Jimaiya couldn't help but smile slightly. "Better," she said with a slight nod. A moment passed before the woman sighed, and proceeded to drop herself on the nearby chair, tilting back and placing her feet up along Naruko's bedside.
"Life's never boring with you, is it, brat?" Jimaiya grinned slightly. Naruko shook her head, a true smile breaking out.
"No, not really." Naruko paused, thinking hard. "Why would Sachiko's sister be after me, anyhow?" She tugged on a tuft of hair, a poor replacement for her usual habit of tugging on her pigtails, but Naruko hardly noticed as she tried to think it out.
Almost instantly, Jimaiya's grin faded. "Indeed," the older woman murmured thoughtfully. So the rumors about Akatsuki were true after all... And Jimaiya had a pretty good guess about their motives, if all Naruko was the only one they'd bothered to attack.
She slid her eyes to the window thoughtfully, knowing she'd have much research to do later.
"Have you been resting like you should be?" Jimaiya said after a while, hoping to distract the other girl from thinking too much about her teammater's sister. "I hope you're not embarrassing me with any wild pranks."
"I haven't been doing any pranks!" Naruko's cheeks puffed up indignantly, which quickly degraded into a sulk. "Yes, I've been resting. And who's embarrassing who? You haven't been peeping while I was gone, were you?" She glared at Jimaiya, which was at odd with her sulk, but she managed it somehow.
Now it was Jimaiya's turn to bristle indignantly. "It's called research, brat, and I'll have you know I do more than just that when I'm not publishing." She gave Naruko a look of pure childishness, just short of sticking out her tongue. "I'm a very important person, in case you've forgotten."
"Uh-huh. Sure you are. So important you write perverted books and ditch whenever gramps sounds like he might want your help." Naruko did resort to sticking out her tongue, mostly because she was partially teasing.
"Ass deserves it," Jimaiya sniffed defensively. "And besides-- it builds character." She ignored the part about the perverted books though.
Mostly because Naruko was right.
Today was a bit of a casual day for Leigh. Instead of her normal spandex training suit, because if she wore that she would have the undeniable urge to train and training was the last thing Nejiko and Tentsuke wanted Leigh doing until the Hokage had decided Leigh had rested enough, the young chuunin was having a bit of a casual day. Loose dark green pants that covered up her weights, and a white tank top under an open long-sleeved button-down shirt that matched her pants. Her hair she had chosen to wear loose today, not wanting to braid it because it was another thing that kind of had her subconsciously preparing to train. Otherwise, the blue shinobi sandals still adorned her feet and her hands were, as usuall, wrapped to just before the elbow.
She'd gotten quite a few odd looks from, well, most everyone on her way to the hospital for her daily visit to Naruko and didn't understand why. She couldn't know it was because not very many people had ever seen her in civilian-type clothes, and even less had seen her hair out of her braid. But Leigh was long used to odd looks so she paid them little mind. She carried a bouquet of daffodils in one hand and a vase in the other. Now that Naruko was in a room that wasn't so restrictive but still in the ICU ward, Leigh wanted to give her some flowers so she could have something cheerful in the room.
The nurse was another one to greet Leigh with friendly surprise, but other than that she was directed to Naruko's new room. Risu sat on Leigh's shoulder and looked around curiously, nose twitching constantly at new smells. Leigh knocked on the door and let herself in, stopping short when she saw Jimaiya-sama. She opened her mouth to greet the Sannin when she saw that Naruko was awake. Instantly Leigh's expression brightened tenfold.
"Naruko-chan!" she cried. "You're awake!"
"Leigh-chan!" Naruko perked up immediately, and almost threw her arms up in the air, but the pain in her muscles stopped her before she could. "How're you an' Risu?"
That was fine, because as soon as she'd put the flowers in the vase (she'd add water in a minute) Leigh went over to Naruko and hugged her but not too tightly, and careful of the IV. "Oh, we're fine, just resting. Tsurude-sama and Sensei and Nejiko and Tentsuke all want me to take it easy for a while, which is fine, I guess, but I'm so bored because they won't even let me train so I've been spending my time copying down from memory all my recipes into a new cookbook since my old one kinda got lost. I'll have to see about reacquiring the recipes I picked up in Suna, however, since I didn't have those memorized. How're you doing? We've been worried," she continued as Risu launched herself from Leigh's shoulder to Naruko's lap. Leigh gave her friend a large smile. "I'm glad you're looking so well, now. You should be up and out of her in no time!"
Jimaiya blinked. ...the heck just happaned?
Frowning a little to herself, Jimaiya straightened in her seat and cleared her throat, wishing to make herself known (because, apparently, the two younger girls had forgotten she was in there. Really, how rude). "So you're Leigh," said the Sannin critically. Funny, she was sort of expecting someone.. greener.
Shrugging to herself, Jimaiya stood from her seat to get a better look at the young girl. The resemblance between her and Gaia were frightening, to say the least.
"Yosh! I'm Rock Leigh, the Azure Beauty of Konoha and student of the terrific Maito Gaia!" Leigh declared, clicking her heels together and saluting. You'd almost never think she'd worn herself out to the point of near-dropping from sheer exhaustion not too long ago, but there were still faint smudges under her large round eyes. "You're Jimaiya-sama, Naruko-chan's teacher and Tsurude-sama's former teammate." She purposely left off the third Sannin's name. She didn't want to think about how Sakurai-kun was in Otogakure, not right now.
Jimaiya's frown thinned out slightly, satisfied that the girl at least knew her name. "Perhaps you could help me then," she said then, getting straight to the point. She would have much rather done this without Naruko in the room, should there be some things the younger girl was better off not knowing at the moment, but Jimaiya seized the oppurtunity while she could. "Naruko here seems unable to remember a thing about your.. incident," she said, frown returning. "But I was told you did?"
"Wait, what?" Leigh asked, looking confused as she glanced at Naruko before turning back to Jimaiya and then returning to Naruko. She blinked several times and furrowed her brow. "You don't remember anything, Naruko-chan?"
Naruko shook her head slowly, blue eyes wide. "No..."
Well, it had been a pretty traumatic experience from Leigh's point of view, but Naruko should at least-- "Naruko-chan," Leigh started slowly, "what's the last thing you recall?"
Naruko thought hard for a moment, running a hand through her hair. "Leaving Suna...and a little bit of Tsurude-gramps talking, but that's about it."
Leigh blanched. Risu, sensing Leigh's distress, jumped from Naruko's shoulder to Leigh's shoulder and leaned against the side of Leigh's head and put her fuzzy tail against Leigh's neck. Leigh shifted her gaze to the tiles on the floor, holding her elbows tightly. "We were ambushed by two of Akatsuki just outside of River Country. Hoshigaki Kisa and Uchiha Itae. They were after you."
Naruko paled, they'd managed to escape from Akatsuki? How'd that happen?
Turning the information in her head, Jimaiya's hard gaze on Leigh remained unwavering. "Can you recall what techniques they used against you?" she urged, "Anything that stood out or you found odd? Aside," Jimaiya added as an afterthought, "from the obvious, I mean."
"Hoshigaki Kisa used a suiton that flooded everything," Leigh said after a moment. "The surface was about three and a half meters above me. I didn't exactly see all what Uchiha did, because she and Naruko-chan were fighting on top of the water, but there was this... fireball that completely engulfed Naruko-chan. It was really weird. I've seen people use the goukakyuu no jutsu and... this wasn't it. The fire looked like it had come from inside, like Naruko-chan had spontaneously combusted. It was red too, and it didn't burn her clothes, just her skin and hair. She collapsed." Her hands tightened on her elbows. "It was at that point that I started chucking my weights at the two enemy to get them to back off just enough. I'd already lost my pack in the suiton's giant wave, so I didn't have anything to encumber me. I swam up as fast as I could, grabbed Naruko-chan as I broke the surface and slung her pack away. I hit the water sprinting--I can move fast enough without my weights to keep from sinking--and ran for home. I didn't stop running until I got to Tsurude-sama's office, which was I think about ten hours later.
"My memory gets a little fuzzy after that, though I remember Kiba and Tentsuke and Nejiko, and then waking up in my bed with Tentsuke nearby telling me that I was to rest, Hokage's orders."
Jimaiya nodded, eyes clouding over slightly in thought. The 'red fire' would be Kyuubi, of course, but it didn't surprise Jimaiya much that Leigh was not informed of it. It was none of her business, of course, and she trusted Naruko to know her friends well enough to be able to tell who she could trust with the information or not. In any case, it was not the Sannin's place to correct Leigh; let Naruko deal with that when she wanted to.
Smiling softly then, Jimaiya inclined her head politely to the bright-eyed girl. "Thank you, Leigh-chan," she said, "you've been a very big help." She turned to Naruko then and reached out a hand to tousle the fair hair on the girl's head. "Don't think too much, eh, brat?" she teased affectionately. "You don't want to give yourself a bigger headache~"
Naruko pouted, cheeks puffing. "Ano-sa, ano-sa, I'll stop getting headaches when you start training me properly instead of dragging me off for research, ero-sennin."
Very quickly, Jimaiya's affectionate pat turned into a light bop to the head. "That is training," she sniffed self-righteously. But the kid had a point, and the necessary mental note was made; Jimaiya was not about to let something like that incident happen again.