治癒の心臓

     I fully intended to be here the last few days, but one of our pets got really sick, and...tonight we had to take them to the vet to be put to sleep. On top of that I’ve had a really bad migraine, which...crying has only made all the worse, of course. 

     I’m gonna try to be here soon, ish. Got a project I wanna get done tomorrow, and just...take a little time to recover both emotionally and physically. Once I feel up to it I’ll try to be back here. 

     Otherwise I’ve been more active on Discord, mostly in the RP server I set up. It’s just been easier for me than trying to sort through the mess I have here. 

“Yes, I would not want anything to be lost. Although, I kept this story on my laptop. It’s a pity that grandfather rarely uses his laptop, otherwise everything would be much easier!”

She had heard the story of how Jiraiya once lost a draft of his book due to a broken laptop. Since then, he rarely trusted technology and wrote his books the old fashioned way with paper and pen. And he also prefers to send messages using toads or a falcon when he is far away. It’s really very old-fashioned, but that was the whole grandpa. Usagi had shown him how to save her files to portable hard drives and flash drives on more than one occasion, but it seemed to be useless.

“The main thing is that words come from your heart! It’s a really great hobby.”

     “Well, he’s just old-timey,” Ryū laughs. “He’s still used to an era of sending coded messages with toads, after all.” Even Ryū herself likes a lot of the old ways. Sure, email with work is faster - the hospital has a lot of technology now. But sending letters to friends, she’ll still send Fubuki...though she is getting on in years, now. The poor summon probably needs to retire soon.

     Still, she gives a soft smile at Usagi’s reply. “Yes, that’s a good point. All things creative come from the heart, ne?” Though...maybe some of Jiraiya’s books come from...other places. 

     She tries not to think about that too much.

“Hi.” The sudden return to the familiar went some way to setting Minato at ease. He’d resisted wiping the palms of his hands on his jeans, despite the nerves, and honestly? Seeing Ryu in her best civilian outfit - like his, it was clearly just comfortable things she had lying around rather than something specifically purchased for the occasion - made him smile, though.

“You look great.” He said, both by way of conversation and because it was true. “Ready to go?”

     ...okay, maybe he didn’t notice her little jump in pitch, there. Good! A relieved-yet-still-nervous grin flickers her lips upward. “Thanks...I think I need to invest in a wardrobe update, though...” Hands smooth at the skirt, which...yes, while ankle-length, almost seems more like floodwater style. “I think I’m having a growth spurt...at least since the last time I wore this.” Which, to be fair, was for her coronation into the medical corps proper.

Areas to avoid in Konoha. Minato blew out a deep breath as he thought. 

“Depending on how sufferable you find the noble clans - the Uchiha and the Hyuga especially - getting a place near their compounds can be worth it.” The areas around the Uchiha compound, for example, tended to be cheaper than elsewhere in the city - because no-one wanted to live with the Uchiha nearby. Ryu wasn’t subject to the same prejudice as the rest of the village, though, so maybe she’d be happy with that.

“Failing that, the old Uzumaki district is a very tight-knit community. They’re mostly descendants of the retainers that came with Mito-sama when the village was founded. You could do a lot worse than an apartment there, though the building are some of the oldest in Konoha.” They weren’t unsafe - far from it, actually, since they’d been erected by Hashirama Senju himself to house his wife’s extended family. But that meant redecoration of any kind was… frowned upon.

     At Minato’s first comment, Ryū can’t help a blink. In truth, she...knows very few people within Konoha’s so-called ‘noble’ clans. She’s seen them in the hospital, of course, but hasn’t really...spoken to any outside of treatment. With the one exception being when she and Minato went to the Uchiha to report an incident between them and other village youths. Hyūga, she will admit, seem mostly...high-brow, but the Uchiha she spoke to - while blunt, maybe a little gruff - were still fairly decent. No posturing, just...talking.

     And thought not conscious of it as Minato is, she would not mind being someplace where others are less likely to tread. For...obvious reasons.

     Greys go wide, however, at the mention of the Uzumaki. “Oh, wow...really? That’s amazing!” Some of the original village architecture...? “I might have to go look just to...look!” Maybe a bit...intimidating to actually live there, but she’d love to see the buildings. Maybe remind herself of home, a bit.

Well, he may have used the wrong words here or there, but Minato had finally gotten this waif out of the stack of crates. Wary of the eyes of passers-by - he could feel the curiosity, the annoyance in their chakras - he made a quick decision.

“Alright, well. If there’s nowhere you want to go, I am going to get some food. I haven’t eaten since before dawn.” Evening was starting to creep over the village, and Minato’s stomach had decided  it was making decisions for a little while.

“There’s a takeaway two streets over. Let me escort you there so I can get some food whilst you think were you actually want to go?”

     Her own eyes watching their surroundings warily, Ryū (unknowing what a sensor is, let alone that she is one, given her tight-lipped nature since being brought to Konoha) can vaguely tell much the same. But they move to Minato again as he speaks. Not since dawn...? A flicker of buried concern sparks in her chest.

Fully into combat mode, Minato’s brain was just a whirl of chakra signatures, terrain scanning, positional review… and tactical analysis. All of Konoha’s forces were together again, though there was a barrage of shuriken coming in. Other shinobi threw up jutsu, earth and air and fire, to deflect them.

Minato took the half-second’s reprieve to take some kind of charge. He had no idea is there was someone else here who outranked him - it wouldn’t be surprising for them to have been a priority target, after all - but a chunin in the field outranked a jonin who didn’t know what was going on. 

“Back to point D!” He called out. Point C was where he and Ryu had joined with the rest of the team, point D was about halfway between here and there. It’d get them out of the combat zone, at least.

“Come on, Ryu.” Minato paused as the rest of the team started to move out. “Time to go again.”

     Once they reach the rendezvous point, Ryū mostly uses her moment to breathe to...literally breathe, chakra too exhausted to risk using on barriers to help with the onslaught. Things are moving too quickly for her to know if anyone is hurt, how badly, and what she needs to do about it. Better to conserve for that (hopefully) upcoming moment of quiet to dispel what she can, and what she needs to.

     This...definitely isn’t going how they planned, but while they’re used to have to improvise, the variables of this particular fumbling have her very much looking forward to getting it all over with. As she’s sure Minato feels. Their inability to sense has this all the more overwhelming.