Hm. Chouji requests. Okay, here's one: a face to face with that kid who said any team with chouji on it would lose, in the aftermath of Pein's invasion.
had to actually watch… some Naruto for this to like… see what Chōji got up to…. sorry in advance for anything i got wrong lmao
for once not exactly DoS compliant bc i don’t know if you’ve read it? everyone else who follows me will be alarmed and confused but yknow DoS is still in the timeskip so it would have been too much guesswork anyway.
did use some of SQ’s details tho, like naming that kid Youbirin and probably some other stuff idk
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There had been streets. Alleyways. Parks and shops and training grounds and trash pickup and long shadows cast by eclectic architecture and it’s the silliest thing in the word, the most useless anxiety, but as Chouji slogs through the rubble — the mud and the dust and the wreckage of a whole village, the whole thing — he worries that the new village, when it’s built, will lose some of its Konoha-ness.
Will the buildings each look the same as the others? The same age, the same colors, the same timbers and siding and roofing? Will the streets be carefully planned, the alleys and balconies and courtyards arranged with aforethought? What if the kids have no good places to play ninja, with nooks to hide in and crannies to jump out of?
In particular Chouji thinks of this because the children will need places to play ninja, still, and he thinks about that play-pretend game from childhood because the medic coming towards him is Youbirin.
It had been Youbirin who had invited and then, ultimately, disinvited Chouji from the play-pretend games in the civilian neighborhood wedged between the Nara and Akimichi.
Chouji hasn’t seen Youbirin since the Academy — clearly because Youbirin had gone into the medical program. Chouji wonders if that was his first choice or if he’d failed his jōnin-sensei’s test… but that kind of thought is useless spite. Mean-spirited at a time when they really can’t afford anything but solidarity.
Youbirin looks exhausted like Chouji feels. Not just tired but a little numb.
Literally numb, even, in some areas: Chouji is here because after hours of moving debris, one of his fellow chūnin had noticed his hands bleeding sluggishly and sent him for medical attention. Chouji can’t even remember the chūnin’s name. Sotatsu, who works Main Gate sometimes and lost an embarrassing amount of money in a card game with Ino? Michio, from the Mission Desk? It should matter but it kind of doesn’t. Not at all.
Chouji holds his hands out. The palm of one is sliced open by rebar or something, from when he was using partial Multi-Size technique to grow his hands and arms big enough to hold up some of the larger pieces of rubble, letting his teammates dart in underneath and check for anything that could be scavenged or salvaged. It’s a nasty cut, but he hadn’t even noticed. His knuckles are rubbed raw.
Youbirin sighs, but doesn’t say anything. His hands light up with medical chakra and Chouji can feel it tingle and prickle along the cut and his knuckles, cleaning the wound before his flesh folds itself back together. Good as new.
“Do you have any other injuries?” asks Youbirin. “We’ve been instructed to save our chakra, so we’re not doing standard diagnostic checks unless absolutely necessary.”
He says this in the professional tone you’d speak to a stranger, but Chouji knows that Youbirin recognizes him, just like he recognizes Youbirin. They’ve both changed, but not very much. It feels like there should be more to say. A reconnection. A reconciliation. They are not strangers.
Youbirin had once gone out of his way to hurt Chouji, as publicly as possible. Youbirin had taken the game of ninja away from Chouji. That day, the sun bearing down on them and Youbirin’s scornful words… nothing in the village had looked the same once he was banned from the neighborhood games. Where, Chouji had wondered, might I be banned from next? And what was the real reason Youbirin had done it, since he’d sworn up and down the week before that Chouji played just fine, that it was just fun, that winning wasn’t the point?
That had been Youbirin, you know, kind in private and scathing in public. Maybe that’s still Youbirin.
“I’m good,” Chouji says. Chouji dredges up a smile. Not a good one, but it’s there, and he adds, “Thanks, Youbirin. Take care of yourself.”
“Ah,” Youbirin says, and now he looks… embarrassed. Shamefaced. “I was… I was hoping you wouldn’t…”
“It doesn’t matter,” Chouji says, with a wave of his hand, like he could really brush aside their history.
Youbirin is quiet, but unsettled. Chouji doesn’t want Sakura (or possibly Tsunade-sama) accusing him of sabotaging the medics if it leaves Youbirin so off-kilter, so it seems like he does have to say something.
Chouji says. “This feels like a good time to reflect, because everything is awful, but it’s better to worry about the future.” He keeps his voice low so that maybe no one else will hear. Not because he minds, but because he thinks Youbirin might.
And maybe Chouji is thinking about about what Kakashi-sensei had snapped at him just before the Deva Path had revealed itself to still be functional: Save the crying for later! he’d said. Reflect later!
But Youbirin doesn’t need the context. The blood on Kakashi-sensei’s face. Dad unmoving. The horrible clanking and squishing of the Deva Path coming back together from Kakashi-sensei’s Raikiri. The long recovery Dad is facing. That’s on Chouji’s mind, the incredible pressure of that moment and everything that followed afterwards, but Youbirin doesn’t need to know. Couldn’t possibly understand, because he isn’t even a field medic.
“I see,” says Youbirin. He nods. “You take care of yourself, too, Chouji.”
“We’ll take care of each other,” Chouji says, and leaves.
He puts Youbirin out of his mind the moment he steps outside and throws himself into his little worries, building the possible details of the new Konoha they’ll build up in his mind while he deals with what’s left of the old one. Shikamaru and his dad will work out all the big worries, anyway.
