Game of Shadows by Adrian King1

Chapter 142

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto nor The Gamer. I own nothing, really.

Cover Art: Kissuli.

Chapter 142

[Years Later]

"For all your power and smarts," Kabuto said, making Eiji smile. Mainly because he knew more or less what would follow. "You are pretty stupid."

"Am I?" he asked, very sure that he wouldn't be able to convince the mednin. After all, he'd barely convinced Tayuya as it was. The rest of the squad had been firmly against his decision, but it was his decision, and they followed it. Especially Kabuto, even if he had been the most vocal about the whole thing. "This'll speed up your work, Kabuto. I know you and everyone else are giving Tayuya's and my recoveries a lot of your focus, but this will make it go even faster. You are the only one that can actually give it full focus as is," he explained, and the mednin knew he was right, but that didn't mean he liked it.

"I hate it when you make sense with your insane ideas," Kabuto grumbled, making Eiji smile. "At least it's over," he sighed.

"Was gonna say, a little late to keep complaining, right?" Eiji asked, chuckling as Kabuto looked away. "I appreciate that you care, but Tayuya and I are fine and we still have plenty of time. We can afford to push this a year or two if it'll increase our chances."

"But what if you can't?" Kabuto said, snapping the pencil he'd been working with. "What if waiting means you won't recover?"

"You think you'd have progressed that much faster without their help? Because they do what they can, but it's not that much considering their situation," Eiji replied, drawing a grimace from his mednin. "I believe this is the right call and I get why you don't, but I'm grateful that you followed through with what I asked. Can't have been easy."

"You can say that again," Kabuto muttered under his breath. "You got any idea how difficult it was to focus on this while knowing that I could be making progress to heal your lost lifespan?"

"I have an idea, yeah. Tayuya and I had to wait for each other's recovery, after all," Eiji answered, making the man sigh.

"I'm sorry, I just..." Kabuto mumbled, struggling to find the right words for a long moment.

"I get it," Eiji reassured with a soft smile. "Tayuya and I talked about this a whole lot, even after we decided to follow this path. At the end of the day... It wasn't all that long, even if sometimes it felt like it. What's a year and a half, in the grand scheme of things?"

"Besides," his redheaded girlfriend started then, meeting them in one of the halls at their base in the Land of Rain. "I prefer to get this out of the way as quickly as possible. We definitely can wait a bit to recover our normal lifespan, if we can."

"You can," Kabuto corrected resolutely, getting mirrored smiles from the couple.

"We appreciate that, Four Eyes, but you don't know that," Tayuya said before palming the guys' arm. "Let's get this out of the way, yeah? That way you can stop complaining and can actually get to work on that damn cure, yeah?"

"When did you become reasonable?" Kabuto asked, receiving a punch on his arm. "That's more like the Tayuya we all know and... Yeah, the one that we know."

"Fuck you, Four Eyes."

"Very original, Tayuya, very original indeed."

"Children, in the past, now and forever," Eiji mumbled to himself as the three of them started walking. Behind him, he heard a chuckle coming from both people. "Tayuya's not wrong though, let's get this out of the way."