Kakashi's Teammate, the Lightning Goddess

Beds

*edited*

The first thing I heard when I woke up was shouting.

                “What did you say?!”

                It sounded like Naruto.

                My eyes snapped open as memories floated back to me. What had happened after I’d fallen asleep?

                ‘You blacked out,’ Amaterasu corrected. I rolled my eyes, as more shouting commenced from downstairs. Who was that idiot arguing with, anyway?

                I went and found the spot that was hurting the most, which was just below my rib cage, slightly to the left. It was heavily bandaged, and the bandages seemed clean, so I didn’t mess with it.

                I struggled to sit up, propping myself up with my elbow before pushing myself up. I was pretty sure that Zabuza hadn’t hit a vital area, but it still hurt, and I didn’t like it. My head spun as I sat upright, and I sat there for a while, trying to get it to stop spinning. When it finally did, I grabbed the doorframe and propped myself upright.

                That took way too much effort.

                I followed the sound of people talking, uncertainly making my way through the long hall. Just as I saw light spilling from the room in front of me, a small boy ran out, running into me and sending me crashing to the wall before I could react.

                “Ow!” I hissed, having stubbed my toe. At least I’d crashed on my good side.

                “Kira?” I heard Kakashi say, but it was Sasuke who appeared in the doorway in front of me. He wasn’t all that much shorter than me, and swung my left arm over his shoulders, letting me use him as a crutch until we got to the dining room… which was approximately two feet in front of me. I had been so close.

                “Kira-sensei!” Sakura exclaimed happily. I smiled and waved at her.

                “Kira-sensei, you missed the rude little boy! You won’t believe what he said to me!” Naruto said, clearly still angry. Ah, so he must’ve been arguing with the little boy when I had woken up.

                “Sorry about him,” Tazuna said. “He used to be a really happy little boy, but then things changed…”

                Sasuke just had to sit me down next to Kakashi. Leaning against the wall behind me, I said, “I’m assuming that whatever Gato did affected your family in a negative way?”

                Tazuna was silent for a moment. “Yes.”

                As I wasn’t very physically mobile at the moment, I challenged myself to figure out the mystery before Tazuna could tell me. The most obvious thing was the photo hung on the wall across from me, where one person’s face had been ripped out. His hands had been on the boy’s shoulders, and beside him was the young lady in the room, who I presumed to be Tazuna’s daughter. Beside her was Tazuna. All of them were smiling.

                Something had happened to that man, clearly. Was he Inari’s father?

                Tazuna launched into his story, telling about how the man ripped out of the picture had been very close to Inari, like a father figure. The man had been killed by Gato after saving people in a flood, which I didn’t understand. But it didn’t matter, I realized, glancing back to the hallway where Inari had disappeared. What mattered was that he needed someone to show him that the world was not hopeless.