Third person pov

It becomes very apparent, very fast that Naruto isn't all that good at chakra control.

The book is full of exercises and vital information, even if it doesn't all click at first. Naruto learns that the glow of medical ninjutsu is green, and it can accelerate the healing process if done right. It requires extensive knowledge of the human body, its chakra pathways, its nervous system, and an immense level of control over one's own chakra reserves.

He forces himself to wrap his head around the basics before he goes further. To be able to look at medical ninjutsu and say, at a base level, what it is and what it does. He needs to know how something works before he can begin trying to throw himself into it. In his experience, that'll get him nowhere fast.

For all Naruto can feel everyone else's chakra, he's got little sense of his own. Even when he holds his breath and turns his focus inwards he can't get a very good feel of it. It's a problem, but not a world ending one.

Eventually he'll figure it out. He knows that if he chips away at something long enough, it's bound to give. Naruto's determined like that. Him not being able to do something, if he tries hard enough, isn't the problem here.

The issue comes from the fact that whilst learning all this takes time and that's all well and good, time isn't something Naruto has. The simple fact of the matter is that this guy? He's going to get a little better before he gets far, far worse if Naruto can't give him what he needs.

Naruto's read about it in the books he's already gone through. A last gasp-- the body kicking into overdrive and performing just above the expected bar before it gives out under the stress. He fears every day that the Stranger will enter that state, and Naruto will come home to find him already passed away.

Naruto's too far in to give up on the Stranger now. The temptation to let one of the masked ninja follow him back home, just because they might help, is strong. It would probably be easier. He could wash his hands of this Stranger and be done with it, and the teen would probably be better off for it.

Naruto's not the epitome of medical care. He's seven years old. Nobody likes him, and though he's far from naive, he doesn't have a solid basis of world knowledge either. Not like adults do. Naruto has accumulated experience, but not in any applicable way in terms of this situation.

It would be painfully easy to let someone discover the Stranger. The ninja that smells like dogs and rain-- he'd probably do something.

But then... no. Then, Naruto remembers what the Stranger looked like when he first saw him. Mangled in the water, bleeding from empty sockets. The image still haunts Naruto in the sparse moments when he drifts off. He can't risk it. Not this far in. He won't.

Maybe the ninja of dogs and rain would help. Maybe he'd even mean well. But what if this Stranger is known? What if Naruto telling leads to him being killed, even if he does get medical attention for his wounds? It's a paranoid line of thought, but realistic. Naruto has seen enough of the world to know it's not kind.

Naruto can do this. Naruto will do this. Once he's decided to do something, he does it. That's his nindo-- and no ninja worth half their salt goes back on that. Iruka-sensei had said so, and though he doesn't particularly like Naruto, that doesn't mean he's not smart all the same.

Naruto doesn't even realize the disarray Konoha has fallen into overnight until he goes into the village for more books on chakra control. Everyone seems to be bustling about, unable to sit still for too long. Chatter is high and loud in the streets, tinged with a special kind of grief that rattles Naruto's bones. So much so that he feels it before he even breaks the tree line.

Even the academy has been halted for the time being. The entire Uchiha clan has been wiped out, the villagers gasp tragically to one another. It's the biggest genocidal massacre Konoha has ever seen. Committed by one of their own, too.

Nobody focuses on Naruto. He doesn't blame them a bit for it. There are bigger things for people to worry about. The Uchiha were strong, unbending in their resilience and zeal. They were a prideful and old clan, and even someone as absentminded as Naruto had known that.

Naruto thinks of his classmate Sasuke Uchiha and his throat closes up. The only survivor, apparently. The entire clan, slaughtered by his brother, the well-known Uchiha prodigy said to be next in line as the head. Pity and grief sings heavy in the air.

The librarian sees Naruto come in this time. She is too busy talking in hushed tones to the owner of the bakery next door to care.

The concept of an entire clan being wiped out like that, in a single night, is astonishing. The strength it must've taken. That, and the sheer inhumanity. If Naruto had a family, he doesn't think he could ever, ever consider even the mere idea of what Sasuke's brother has done.

Naruto feels a little dazed. The masked Shinobi are apparently too busy to follow him, because he feels none of them as he wanders back off into the woods with his haul of books. From beginner and up, he's going to do this.

Somehow, the slaughter of the Uchiha clan only spurs Naruto on more. All those lives were lost in a single night, gone in one fail swoop. The least he can do is save one, single person. Because people—

People aren't bad. Most, in fact, are rather amazing. They are kind and good, and they support each other with smiles and love abound. They are all unique, so vast and contrasting in their personalities. Human beings are resilient and in many ways, absolutely stunning.

It's Naruto that's the outlier. Something in him brings out the ugly in everyone else. Maybe he deserves it, maybe he doesn't. Either way, he knows they're scared of something. And people do rash things when they're scared.

And that's fine. Fine, because one day Naruto will prove himself a great ninja. He'll rise up and be Hokage, and everyone will realize that he was never a threat to them to begin with. They'll see that he means no harm and that he's not to be harmed, and he'll protect them with everything.

It's a distant future. Naruto's resolve is steel, and for now he tells himself that this is going to be it. He's always been a fast learner. He picks up on things fairly quick. Sure, chakra control is a whole other beast, but it's not like he doesn't have motivation.

"I'm back!" Naruto skids into the cave. The teen hasn't moved, but his chakra is there in greeting. Less of a candle's lit wick and more of a small torch now. "I got more books! It says here to start by sticking a leaf to my palm. Sounds easy enough, right? I'll be able to heal you in no time! Believe it, Mr. Stranger!"

Easy enough. Sure.

His first time trying, the leaf falls off. That also happens the next one hundred thirty-two times, but who's counting. Then, through reading the same two paragraphs four times over very slowly, he finally figures there's not enough chakra. So he focuses on it as best he can and pours some more in.

The leaf blows up. Literally blows up. It rains green confetti down on the cave floor with a faint pop, and Naruto stares at it for a solid minute before turning to his unconscious companion. As though to incredulously ask what that just was.

He obviously gets no response, but said unconscious companion seems thirsty. Naruto gets him some water and takes the opportunity to get not just one more leaf, but a whole pile.

It's frustrating. Naruto gets so upset at one point that he genuinely contemplates, once again, giving up. It would be the easy way out, but he's only seven, going on eight now. He's a kid. This sort of stuff— they haven't even begun learning it at the academy yet.

It's when he feels these moments of waning doubt that Naruto looks at the Stranger again and feels that chakra flame, and he figures they're maybe not as different as they seem. Naruto has never been an almost-corpse left to bleed out in a river, and he's got two eyes in his head, but he knows what it's like to be alone and hurt.

This guy was probably terrified. Blinded, likely shoved off one of Konoha's rocky cliffs... nobody has come down the river to try and find him that Naruto has felt. He's all by himself, and Naruto knows exactly how that feels.

Naruto won't abandon him. He wants to know his name, and where he came from. He wants him to live.

He feels the chakra in the leaf, tongue poking out between his teeth in concentration. His chakra is wobbly as it presses into his palm. The barest amount, just slightly more than the chakra in the leaf.

It sticks. Naruto's whoop of victory scatters every bird in the nearest half mile.

~~~~

After he sticks it the first time, every other time seems to come easy after.

It's not all fun and games. He sets a few on fire trying to stick them to his forehead like the books says to, and another blows up against the sole of his foot. The sailing isn't as smooth as it could be, but it's movement forward. Another step.

Reading helps. Naruto finds himself enjoying it more and more as time goes on. Knowledge is more of a reward than he'd previously considered it to be, and it's worth the struggle he sometimes has with words. His first dictionary is joined by a second, this one full of more "scientific" terms.

He has to look up the words in some of the definitions of the second dictionary. A big chain— reading a medical book, then the medical dictionary, then the normal dictionary— but at least he gets it in the end, he guesses. Nobody ever got anywhere worth much without a little bit of hard work, and Naruto committed himself to this the moment he decided to pull the Stranger out of that river.

He's getting smarter, he realizes. Naruto likes knowing things. He hadn't realized how little actually knew until now. If he'd grown up with typical parents, Shinobi or otherwise, he wonders if they'd have taught him things like this by now. If they'd have cared enough to.

He likes to think they would've. His parents are nameless, faceless figures to him. Somehow, it makes him feel closer to the idea of them to learn like this.

He spends the next day after his breakthrough covered in leaves. He sticks ones of every shape and size all over his body until none of them start to smoke. He breathes in slow and easy, focused even as he cooks his fish for dinner and brings water to the stranger, mixing in sugar and crushing up some of the vitamins he found to hopefully help keep his body from completely weakening.

The village is still in disarray the next time he goes in, the death of the Uchiha still a looming, heavy spectre. In some ways the atmosphere is a relief. Naruto feels like a bad person to find light in the dark of this, but he's not sure he's ever had a time in which he's been able to walk through the village without eyes cutting into him before.

He wonders where Sasuke is, and if he's okay. He's not close enough to him to go find him and see for himself.

Antiseptic cream is a find he clutches close. If anyone thinks him crazy for having a leaf stuck to his forehead the whole trip, well, they probably thought he was crazy before anyway. So it hardly matters.

There's talk of the academy starting again soon. The village is sluggish but still moving. For as big a cog as the Uchiha were in Konoha's working machine, they were not the end-all-be-all. Even if learning to function without them will take time, and even if their absence will leave a permanent, gaping hole.

Naruto rushes the whole way home. He washes himself up to his elbows with the half full bottle of antibacterial soap he found in the trash before he applies the cream he found to the Stranger's wounds. He doesn't know if it's okay for eye wounds, but he figures the guy's already blind anyway, and an infection so close to the brain would probably suck.

He'll need more bandages soon, but Naruto doesn't want to risk going into town so soon again. Instead, he tries running up a tree.

"It's really hard. Like, super hard." Naruto tells the Stranger, shoveling more fish into his mouth as he does. "I got blown flat on my ass! But I think it's because I put too much chakra in. I've gotta keep it even, like with the leaves. It sorta helps that I can feel it inside the tree itself, believe it. No idea how I'm gonna do water, though. It's not like water has chakra to feel."

There's no response, but the Stranger's chakra is a smidgen stronger than it was the day before. Naruto gives him more sugar water. He's getting skinnier, but Naruto grimly knows there's nothing he can do about that.

Trees are doable. They're solid and their chakra is consistent throughout the entire trunk, old and steady. Naruto takes time to stop at the base and practice sticking just one foot before he tries climbing like the diagrams in the books he took display.

Part of the problem is that Naruto is a visual learner. Chakra in and of itself does not exude itself as a visible energy though— not at this level of expenditure. He does not need so much that it glows. He'll just get blown off the tree if he tries that.

His chakra is not the same as the tree's, too. It is natural that they should repel one another and not want to intermingle. It will take a very specific amount to get them to stick on the surface, not sink into one another so much so that they start to deny the connection.

He has to reread a few more times to get it, and it takes all evening just to compute some of the more complicated parts, but by the end of it he knows what a chakra system is and what parts of the body his runs through.

It helps to know where the branches within him circulate. He traces along the bottom of his foot with a finger, focusing on feeling each individual route, and then with a marker so he doesn't lose his visualization. The marker is half dry and not very pigmented, but the red of it still shows up enough atop his bare feet to act as a guide.

It's strange. Naruto'd never thought too hard about how things like jutsu worked. Having an understanding of why something may not do what it's supposed to, and the knowledge to theorize ways to fix it, was odd. He wasn't used to having things click on his brain, but it was... It was actually really nice.

He felt better about himself. He felt less useless, less like the knucklehead all his classmates laughed and said he was. All this learning was rough and sorta sucked, but there was a personal victory at the end that gave a sense of fulfillment, similar to the high he'd gotten upon first realizing he'd really found a safe place to call home.

He sees Shinobi walk up buildings and trees all the time. In his ventures to town, he takes care to pay more attention. Naruto is fairly absent minded, with a quick enough reaction time that it didn't matter if he zoned out, but now he forced himself to seek certain things out.

If he sees a Shinobi climbing something, or leaping from roof to roof, he pays attention. He focuses in on their chakra and how it moves and melds, and sometimes seeing someone do something is all he needs. Sometimes, demonstration is enough.

He goes home and walks straight up that tree less than a week after setting out to do so to begin with. He doesn't stop grinning for days. And when we finally stands on water after days and days of falling into the shallower part of the river he found downstream?

He rushes home to tell the stranger, soaked to the bone and laughing. He skids to a stop in the mouth of the cave and opens his mouth. He stops.

The couch cushions... they're empty.

~~~~

It only takes Naruto thirty seconds of panicking and gaping to realize that The Stranger's not actually gone.

His chakra flame is weaker again, though not so much as it was the first time Naruto found him. He'd fallen, and Naruto can see red staining the bandaging on his side. He'd made it out of the cave, looking as though he used the wall as a guide. Naruto can tell, with a crinkled nose, that he'd been trying to use the bathroom. And he'd sort of succeeded.

He'd just... fallen on top of it after. Partially. Which is about as great as it sounds, if you were wondering.

He's heavy, but not as heavy as before. Naruto gets him back into the cave and the Stranger doesn't come to again. Naruto curses the fact that he wasn't even here to see the guy rouse, grumbling to himself as he splays a new sheet over the couch cushions.

It's stained-- pilfered from the donation bin-- but clean. Naruto had scrubbed the entire thing down himself. It's as good as they're going to get out here.

Naruto's out of bandages by the time he finishes the ones on the Stranger's side. It's a small miracle he hadn't knocked his head on his way out, or when he fell. The bandages around his eyes remain thankfully undisturbed, and Naruto's throat grows tight the longer he stares at his slackened face.

How painful must it have been to wake up without eyes, with a giant gash in his side? Naruto could imagine it must've been terrifying. Somewhere cold and smelling a little moist, the floor cool stone. Nobody around to respond if you call. Just you, by yourself alone, injured and blind—

Naruto has to get painkillers. He needs to hurry and figure out this chakra control crap too. Standing on water is great and all, but he needs to... revive a fish. Or something.

This is where it gets well and truly complicated. Healing chakra is a special kind. You can push chakra out all you want. You can coat your body in it if you have enough, but it's gonna be blue. Naruto knows this because the first time he tried to channel it, all he got was a full aqua glow.

Healing chakra is different. It's meant to be green, for one thing. It's also meant to be drawn out from a person's heart, their core, and channeled in such a way that it is not being expelled but instead transferred. It's supposed to rest on the surface of one's skin like water, ready to seep into whatever it's pressed to.

Transferred isn't even the right word-- not in the context that it sounds. Transformed is more like it. The chakra-- it isn't supposed to be shoved into another person's system. It's meant to target damage and fix it, but nothing more than that. Transferred to the targeted area of the body, scanning and knitting whatever needs to be mended, but never, ever actually dipping into the chakra stream of the patient.

This blue chakra isn't hovering, or transformed. It's burning off into the air, expelled and not held onto. It'll burn what touches it if it's too strong. It's trying to grab— it's the stuff that lets Naruto stick to trees and land on water.

It's more of a barrier, something he could probably punch pretty hard with if he wanted to, and it would likely do a ton of damage if all the craters he blew in trees are anything to go off of. Naruto's got chakra coming out of his ears. He can only imagine what would happen if he really let it loose.

That's something to think about later, though. He needs chakra that knits. Medical ninjutsu doesn't have a specific nature, like— like that water jutsu he saw a chunin do at the training ground once, or the little mud jutsu Iruka-sensei showed them that made them all ooo and awe.

Medical ninjutsu is a purified form of chakra, concentrated out very, very carefully.

Naruto, as it were, isn't a very careful person.

He's brash and loud. Avid in what he does, but this takes a delicacy that walking on water doesn't. Walking on water, or up a tree, or sticking a leaf to you— all that is like learning to ride a bike. Once you know, it's like second nature!

This is going to shift and change depending on the person and injury, according to the books. It's going to take a keen eye and even keener mind. Someone who can adjust to the slightest of changes at a moment's notice.

Naruto reads over and over again. He reads exactly how you're supposed to do it. Not unlike walking on water, he needs to let his chakra ripple and wave. The only difference is that he needs not to push it out, but to open the way for it to come leak out on its own. It's there if he just lets it.

It's just a little confusing. He gets it in theory, but not in practice. It's a frustrating roadblock. With no one to ask for advice, Naruto has little to no choice but to go out in search of more information. He'll get nowhere at this rate otherwise.

He's off trying to get new books when he's intercepted. His chakra is focused near his hands even as he walks, trying to get green to spark. He's just got so much, and the medical ninjutsu calls for so little to coat the hands.

Iruka-sensei steps out of seemingly nowhere. Naruto freezes in place, eyes growing wide. His teacher's lips thin out into a narrow line, his eyes peering down at him in disdain.

"You haven't been in class, Naruto." His voice is clipped. Naruto swallows thickly. "With me, now."

Iruka-sensei can (somehow?) catch him if he runs, so Naruto doesn't. He knows there's no point. And besides, it's not like he's wrong. Naruto has been skipping class. The academy has been back in session for... how long now?

He hasn't been keeping track enough to know. He's had more important things to worry about, like finding more bandages and supplies, and getting food, and training, and reading, reading, then reading some more.

He slouches after him anyway and crosses his fingers the Stranger will be okay. In the trees, he feels the masked Shinobi appear for the first time in what feels like forever. Two of them, one the man that smells of dogs and rain. Their chakra seems starker now, but maybe Naruto is just more aware of it.

Iruka-sensei's chakra feels stronger too. Perhaps Naruto's becoming more attuned to his surroundings in general, and the people in them. The Stranger's chakra is so low all the time that Naruto has to really, really focus to keep tabs on it when he's outside the cave doing other things: like fishing, or washing clothes.

It's not until he gets to the academy and is begrudgingly plopped down in his seat that he looks at the board and sees the date. He blinks, staring at it.

It's his birthday. Eight years old. Sitting in his seat next to a dreary, exhausted, withdrawn Sasuke, he doesn't feel much like celebrating.

~~~

The nurse's office is a wealth of resources he never thought to consider.

They're a school of Shinobi children. Accidents happen, and they need supplies on hand for if it does. Not to mention that, according to the signs on the door he'd never bothered to read before, apparently this is an emergency checkpoint. In case of an attack or catastrophe, this is a shelter civilians can come to.

As such, there's storage. And during lunch Naruto finds exactly what he needs in multitude. He could cry, looking at it all. His paper list of needed supplies to keep an eye out for shortens right before his very eyes. Bandages, ointment, antibiotics, medication of every kind. It's all here.

It takes some digging, but he also finds something else that the Stranger desperately needs— ninja-grade nutrient supplements, an expensive and impossible to simply find asset.

Naruto's careful. He loads most of it into a single box and unlocks a window so he can come back later. He can't get caught. He could be kicked out of the academy if he was, or at the very least he'd be barred from coming here again. The supplies could be locked up or moved.

He crawls up the wall and along the ceiling with his recently-acquired chakra control, out one of the upper windows. Nobody sees him as he does. He breathes a little easier.

Naruto spends class antsy and ready to get out of there. He can't pay attention even with his apparent newfound love of learning. They're talking about history, something about the first war, he doesn't know or care. He's too focused on his hands.

Chakra pulses beneath the surface of them. He struggles not to just shove it out. He's too conscious of it for it to just flow out like medical ninjutsu calls for. It's like when you become aware of your own breathing, and suddenly you have to do it manually or not at all.

His thoughts stray to the Stranger again. He was probably thirsty by now. Naruto had said he'd be back soon, and instead he was stuck here. The least he could do was try to and get some semblance of—

Was something smoking?

Naruto blinked, looking down. He ripped his hand off the top of his desk, eyes growing wide at the scorched handprint left in it's place. His head shot up, alarm painting his expression. Sure enough, Iruka-sensei's face was turning a concerning shade of red.

"Naruto." He growled out. Above them, the sprinklers flipped on, the fire alarm beginning the wail.

Naruto winced, tucking his hands under his thighs as frigid water washed over him and the room erupted into shrieks. At least he knew where to get medicine if he caught a cold, he guessed.

~~~

The Stranger is still there when he gets back, and Naruto gives him plenty of water, breathing a sigh of relief when he feels his chakra thrumming strong.

He'll have to start going to the academy every day and he knows it. They'll come looking if he doesn't. Already it had taken him almost an hour to lose the masked Shinobi. Running up the stream had helped cover his tracks some, but going back into town for the supplies would be a risk later.

He wishes he could leave The Stranger a note of some kind. But people without eyes typically can't read, so it would be a moot point. Naruto just doesn't want him to wake up here alone and think he's in danger, that's all.

He hates that he's stuck. He reads again over the same material. He takes more notes, makes sure he fully and truly understands. He learns all about the construct of the chakra routes and branches in his arms-- not just where they are like before, but how they form and function. He forces himself to process them in their entirety.

He's got too much chakra, which he'd known, but he hadn't thought that would be all that was stopping him. That has to be it though. After all, that's why he kept exploding off the tree running up it, why he keeps causing giant splashes of water to careen into his own face. It's why his desk had begun to smoke, and why those leaves had exploded or caught fire.

Even channeling as little as he can, it's simply still too much for medical ninjutsu. He'd known that before. But now he understands it. And that's... it feels like a step in the right direction, at least.

Naruto tries to narrow it more. He spends hours sitting there as he drifts off, zeroed in on his own body and the chakra rushing through it. Less. He needs less, and he needs it to be smoother. He needs to let it seep.

It just sorta won't. Naruto knows he's pushing and not opening but he just cannot figure it out. Once it clicks, it'll click. But until then this is all he can do.

He dedicates every waking minute of every day to it. If he's writing with one hand at the academy, he's channeling chakra into the other. If he's reading, he's trying to spark a green glow in his fingers as he does. It doesn't matter where he is-- if he's walking, or running, or trying to fall asleep. Naruto doesn't stop for even a moment.

Naruto gets the supplies from the academy two days after he first gathered them, overly cautious of the masked shinobi. The first nutrient supplement he crushed and got down the Stranger's throat brought with it a new flaring of chakra the morning after.

The Stranger's breathing was stronger. He moved a little in his sleep, twitches of the hand and shoulders. Naruto continued to talk to him-- apparently people in comas could hear you sometimes when you did-- and he kept with what treatments he was sure he understood enough to administer.

Antibiotics were thrown into the mix, and after even more reading and confirmation that Naruto wasn't going to poison him with anything conflicting, so were low grade painkillers. He had no idea if the Stranger was allergic to anything but figured he hadn't died yet, so that was something.

Knowing he had a plethora of supplies to draw upon lessened the stress on Naruto's shoulders. It was nice not to have to go out as much as the days grew colder and shorter, October's biting chill deepening enough that he eventually rigged a thick, makeshift curtain to hang in the mouth of the cave, if only to keep out some of the wind threatening to tunnel in.

"It's Naruto! I'm the one taking care of you." Naruto greets, just as he has every morning since he found the Stranger collapsed outside. In case he's listening. "You're in the cave I call my home. I found you in the river a while back and fished you out, and I've been doing my best to patch you up, so don't panic if you wake up. If I'm not here, I'm probably at the academy! Believe it!"

Naruto piled more blankets, most stolen off clothing lines, atop the Stranger as he recited this. It was the same thing day after day, but it was better than nothing at all. Maybe he'd hear and not panic so hard if he did wake up again.

It was... odd. It had been some time-- time enough that Naruto didn't think the Stranger was in immediate danger of dropping dead any more, so long as he didn't move a lot-- But his chakra should've been restored by now.

Yet, it felt like it wasn't all that much higher than it had been the first time she found him. Sure, there'd been a significant improvement in its strength, as well as in his pulse and breathing, but the actual level of it was still on the middle side of achingly low. It didn't make any sense.

Naruto cracked open another book in search of answers. Maybe it had something to do with the Stranger's lack of needing to use the bathroom. He'd gotten up that one time, but hospitals had like, bedpans and crap. This guy hadn't had any... er, accidents. Not that Naruto could tell.

He reads under his desk during his days at the academy, tuning Iruka-sensei's drawl lecture about math out and focusing on the text before him. Sasuke shot him a few glances but was mostly distracted and subdued, scowling and gazing out the window in a distant manner that spoke to the recent trauma he'd endured.

Naruto doesn't really get it. The lack of chakra building isn't great, but it's not dangerous either-- in fact, the books he reads seem to indicate it's... maybe... normal? It's hard to say. Half because the book isn't clear and half because Naruto spends most his days some level of confused when he reads these things.

It's not like Naruto has the Stranger hooked up to any of the complicated machines they have at real medical facilities. There's no surefire way to run any technical tests, or to keep him hooked up on an IV like he almost certainly needs to be.

His chakra must be expending itself as quickly as its replenished. It must be compensating for the injury. It's keeping him steady, keeping him from deteriorating, but it's slowing everything else down. That's why he hasn't needed to use the bathroom. That's why he's not incredibly gaunt.

That's also why his wounds haven't closed up, and why his bruises are still there. The Stranger's body is so focused on keeping its vital organs going that it can't focus on fixing all the extra issues. That makes it even more pertinent for Naruto to hurry up and get his ass in gear with this medical stuff.

As soon as he does, he can heal the damage. And then maybe the Stranger's chakra can finally replenish. He won't be so suspended, so stuck in place. He'll be better, and he can wake up, and--

Well. Naruto isn't actually sure what comes after the waking up part. He can only hope he gets the chance to find out.

~

Hopefully I paced that right y'all idk. Is he learning too fast? I feel like he's younger and has less chakra= he is able to better learn medical ninjutsu. When he's older, he has too much chakra to realistically learn at that point, but if he learns young and can grow with it.... idk, medic Naruto feels criminally underrated