better left unsaid

Chapter 32: Adrenaline Dump

Hours after the chunin exam tournament came to a close… and everyone wound up at the hospital. By everyone, all of Team 10 and all of the Suna team wound up at the hospital. Ino, to go with her bruised ribs from the other day that had not been done any favors by the day's fighting also had a crushed right hand due to her connection to Kankuro and her failed sneak attack on Gaara in the boy's body. Shikamaru had chakra exhaustion, deep cuts all over his person, a busted eardrum, and torn muscles in both of his calves and thighs from complete overuse. Naruto had chakra exhaustion to an absurd degree due to how difficult it was to actually exhaust him, his broken ribs from earlier in the day were still on the mend, and his overall blood loss from the day was pretty high… not enough to need a transfusion to survive though. Not even close.

On the Suna side of things Kankuro's hand was crushed because of Ino and had burns all over. Temari had a fractured jaw, multiple first and second degree burns, a dislocated shoulder, and a concussion. Gaara had chakra exhaustion, massive burns, internal bleeding that had eventually given way to external bleeding on many areas of his body, and a torn ACL, MCL, and a dislocated patella.

It was kind of hard to tell who won if you had no idea the results of the fight.

"I'm bored…" Ino groaned while laying in a hospital bed, her hair down and dressed in a patient's gown with a few small bandages on her face, "I don't even know why I'm still here. You two are the ones that are messed up." She said, crossing her arms over her chest, her right one in a cast up her forearm.

Naruto was laying flat on his back in his bed, staring at the ceiling, "Ino-chan you can't even stand up without your knees buckling because you hurt so much." He turned his head towards Shikamaru's bed to see that he was asleep with a large protective cover over his ear, "See, Shikamaru has a good idea." He hadn't even tried to make conversation after they shoved him into bed. Shikamaru just went right to sleep and gleefully did so.

Ino rolled her eyes and lay back in her bed against the pillows with a sigh, "At least they stuck you all in here with me. It would suck to be alone right now." She admitted before turning her gaze towards Naruto, "So you kicked his ass like I told you to did you?" She said with a grin on her face.

"Right up until he tried turning into the full-on demon version of what he looked like when he hit you." Naruto said, moving his arms behind his head slowly due to the jelly feeling that they had, "I didn't know we could do that."

"We?" Ino said in a questioning voice as she raised a delicate eyebrow.

"Jinchuuriki." Naruto said, explaining in one word what he meant, "I just thought we got powers or something from the biju, I didn't know we could actually turn into them. How the hell did he do that? I want to do that."

"No you don't."

Ino and Naruto looked at the door to see Fuu standing there leaning against the frame looking at them both before she gave a slight wave, "Hi. I heard people came to visit other people in the hospital and my teammate is here too so I kind of had to show up anyway."

"Fuu!" Naruto said, actually excited to see her as he didn't know if the her helping him to the battlefield was a one-time thing, "I'd get up to hug you or something but I can't feel my legs… or my arms either really."

"What is with you and the hugs?" Fuu responded with a strange look on her face, "If you hug me again I'm still going to squish you just so you know. The last one was your only freebie."

"Freebie?" Naruto said, returning Fuu's look with one of his own, "I had to seal off your chakra to get a 'freebie' so it wasn't really that free… it sucked my chakra like a vacuum."

"Enough about that." Ino said, trying to direct the conversation back to what she was actually interested in, "Why would it be bad for Naruto to be able to turn into the Kyuubi like Gaara can with the Ichibi? He'd be huge and scary, and he'd have all of that chakra to use, and-."