50 Shades of Sand

Chapter 7 - A Personal Failure

                  "Where is he?" I shouted at the young nurse behind the desk. She coward behind her clipboard.

"W-who, miss?" she stuttered out to me. Ugh, I don't have time for this.

"Choji Akimichi of the Leaf, what's room is he in?" Shikamaru lazily asked. She gave a sigh of relief and looked at her clipboard. I began to grow impatient watching her. I was about to make another remark but Shikamaru placed a firm hand on my shoulder and glared at me. I rolled my eyes in response.

"Room 23." She stated in a hush tone. I quickly turned and headed towards the doors, not waiting for Shikamaru to follow me. As I began walking through the halls, my feet moved faster. Before I knew it, I was in a complete run.

"Ino." I heard Shikamaru's faint voice behind me as I made my way into the room.

As I walked in, Asuma-sensei was leaning against the window. He turned to look at me as I entered. I walked to Choji's bed and saw him lying there, unconscious. I bit my lip as tears formed my eyes. I closed them tightly to fight them back.

"What happened to him?" I spoke just above a whisper as I sank to my knees.

"You don't need to worry about whispering. He's in a coma right now from his chakra being drained completely." Asuma stated to me. I bit my lip even rougher as I fought back more tears. Shikamaru walked in as he mumbled something along the lines of "troublesome, woman", but I could see in his eyes he looked worried about our teammate.

"We were attacked when the sandstorm began as we were all caught off guard by it as well. We couldn't see who the ninja were but Choji must have been close to them when we heard him yell. We rushed to his body and carried him off. He was unconscious as he was completely drained of chakra. We stuffed a soldier pill down his throat and rushed him to the hospital, which was difficult due to the storm. They were able to restore some of his chakra, but he won't be waking up for a while." Asuma finished replying to my previous question.

"He could be out for at least a week." I barely spoke above a whisper. I looked at my hands and sighed. My medical training, I started this because of situations like this. If I wasn't able to help my teammates in battle, I would sure help them by healing their wounds. I wasn't even there to protect my teammate. I'm just a failure.

"Ino." I looked at Shikamaru's hand that was extended towards me then up at him. "Don't get on yourself for this. You weren't there when the attack happened, so you shouldn't be blaming this on yourself." He muttered as he waited for me to take his hand.

I gave him a shy smile and I took his hand and he pulled me up from the ground. Shikamaru is always the one to see right through me and help bring me into reality. Times like this I really miss having with him. He kept his distance from me a lot, especially when he was with Temari... I shook my head slightly to dismiss the thoughts and reverted my attention back to Choji.

"Asuma, Ino." Shikamaru spoke. I turned my attention to him. I knew what he was doing. He was going to begin figuring this out and planning. "As far as we know, these ninja attacked us but my guess is we didn't have something, or someone, they were looking for. They took out Choji since he was nearby to distract us from following them. Their jutsu was able to completely drain Choji from his chakra so these ninja are dangerous. We need to plan who they're looking for and what village they belong to. My guess is the Kazekage but why, I don't know yet. And we probably won't know until after their meeting. Maybe they have something valuable of their time, or they could just have a country against the Sand village. Now I believe, tomorrow we, including the Kazekage, should all travel together to some part of the village to see if they will appear. Even if we won't confront us in battle yet, seeing where they come from can be a major advantage."