Author's Note: Happy New Year to everyone. Twice happy to everyone who reviews. Here I humbly present to you the next chapter of my story. I hope you'll enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. It will probably be a long time before I update again.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

Just what did you expect?

Kakashi slowly regained consciousness. He immediately wished he didn't. Every single part of his body hurt like hell. Strange. He didn't remember going on any dangerous missions lately. Certainly none that could leave him feeling like this. So what did happen to him? The last thing he could remember was talking to his student, Naruto.

He slowly opened his eye. A white ceiling slowly came into focus. It didn't take him long to recognize it as belonging to the Intensive Care Unit of the Konoha Hospital. So he had been wounded badly. But how did it happen? He was just talking to Naruto and then she told him... and then he asked... and then... Oh, now he remembered how did it happen. He scowled. Ungrateful students.

"So you are finally awake?" a familiar voice asked from close by. He turned his head and saw Jiraiya sitting on the next bed, bandaged from head to toe, but still scribbling diligently in his notebook.

"Jiraiya-sama! What happened to you?" Kakashi exclaimed.

"Tsunade-hime happened," the Sannin answered. "She wasn't as glad to hear the news as I thought. And what happened to you?"

"Naruto happened," the jounin replied with a grimace.

"Oh. I'm sorry to hear it. It seems like her hormones are going haywire already."

"Yes," the one-eyed man nodded sadly. "I don't understand why she would have done it otherwise. It was just an innocent question."

"That's the mystery of womenfolk," Jiraiya sighed sagely. "You can never know what is going through their heads, you can only observe and wonder."

"Too true," Kakashi nodded. "And she didn't even answer me."

"Women tend to get like that with personal questions."

"It wasn't even personal. I just asked about your next book," the masked ninja complained.

"She never liked them," Jiraiya shook his head sadly. "I don't understand why. So what did you want to know?"

"I wanted to know whether it's in the book she gave me. You know, you two."

"No," the Super-Pervert shook his head, "it was already at the publisher's by that time, but it's going to be in the next one."

"Really?" Kakashi perked up. The excitement was enough to make him forget about the pain from his injuries.

"Really," the Toad Sage nodded. "It's been such a great inspiration I'm still writing about it."

"Can I read it?" the jounin didn't even notice that he was now sitting on his bed and some of the tubes sticking from his body were threatening to fall out.

"And just what do you think you are doing?" an all too familiar voice interrupted them.

"Tsunade-hime!" Jiraiya grinned. "So nice of you to join us."

Kakashi only blinked. He didn't even notice the Hokage enter. The busty woman walked over to him and pushed him down on the bed. Jiraiya watched it intently and scribbled furiously into his notebook while Tsunade adjusted all the tubes on Kakashi's body and performed a quick examination.

"Everything is healing well," she announced.

"Really? But everything hurts," the silver-haired man objected.

"Well," Tsunade shrugged, "the painkillers are expensive and the budget for the hospital is tight, so we give them only to the patients who really need them."

"But I do need them. I have multiple fractures," Kakashi argued.

"Me too, and massive internal injuries," Jiraiya added, not looking up from his writing.

"There are people who need them much more," the legendary medic informed him.

"Like who?" Kakashi asked.

"Like the old lady who broke her hip. The genin who got caught in his own trap. The child who scraped his knee. The girl with the stomach ache."

"Those aren't serious injuries!" Kakashi protested. "They don't need the painkillers!"

"Don't they?" Tsunade raised an eyebrow. "I am the one who decides who needs them and I decided that you aren't getting any."

"So cold, Tsunade-hime," Jiraiya sighed.

"But you seem to be hot. Aren't you running a fever?" The Super-Pervert immediately recognized the dangerous tone in her voice.

"I'm fine, really," he answered. Ignoring him, the blonde walked over to him and peeked into his notebook. The change in her demeanor was immediate. For somebody who didn't know her as well as Jiraiya, nothing would be apparent, but because the Toad Sage did know her, he nearly wet himself. Tsunade was pissed.

"It seems like you are running quite a fever," she stated.

"No, I'm perfectly fine," the heavily bandaged man objected.

"I'm the doctor here!" the Hokage snapped. "And if I say you have fever, then you have fever. And you have a nasty one. That might indicate infection in your wounds. And it seems resistant to regular remedies. Fortunately I have just developed a new one, I just didn't have the opportunity to test it properly. The last batch had some unpleasant side-effects, especially when applied to males, but I've tweaked the formula since then. That should have taken care of the worst side-effects. Probably. And I'm nearly certain it didn't cause new ones. Maybe."

The other Sannin gulped. This really didn't sound good.

"Isn't it a bit harsh?" Kakashi asked. Jiraiya rolled his eyes. Didn't Hatake learn anything?

"Now that I look at you, you look a bit feverish too," Tsunade mused aloud.

"You just said I was healing well!" Kakashi reminded her.

"I performed only a quick exam, some problems might have gone unnoticed," she informed him.

"I'm sure a medic as competent as you would never do such mistake," the jounin tried to talk his way out.

"Even the best of the medics cannot be sure enough. I'm bringing the medicine for the both of you. And that's final." She turned on her heel and left.

"Now do you see what you have brought upon yourself?" Jiraiya chastised him the moment the door slammed close. "It looks like hiding your mouth isn't enough. You should wear a gag with the mask too."

"And it looks like breaking your arms isn't enough. Did you still have to write in front of her? You could have spared yourself a lot of pain," Kakashi retorted. Jiraiya grinned.

"Pain is the second best inspiration."

"What is the first one?"

"Women."