Chapter 157: Tsunade: Starting the Favorability Grind
"What?! What is this thing? That's so disgusting!"
Ino regretted it. At this moment, she wished she could gouge out her own eyes.
Just a second ago, she had been thinking that Sakura absolutely must not show up, or she would snatch away her "training materials" for medical ninjutsu.
Now, Ino desperately hoped Sakura would hurry up and appear, and quickly rein in the monster that had come out of her team.
"Rin, don't stop me."
Kushina rolled up her sleeves, ready to rush down and beat someone up.
"Kushina-neesan, I'm not stopping you."
Rin raised both hands innocently.
"..."
"IDIOT NARUTO!!!"
Fortunately, someone stepped in for Kushina.
Sakura had come to find Ino, planning to tell her that she had just seen Tsunade on the street.
Tsunade was no longer drunk and decadent. She seemed to have recovered. Sakura wanted to go visit Tsunade together with Ino and ask her about all the doubts they had accumulated during training these past days.
But the moment she arrived, she saw Naruto using that obscene technique again.
If he had simply transformed into a woman or a man, that would have been one thing. But why did it have to be a man wearing women's clothes?
Originally, the Reverse Harem Technique was actually effective against women, but Naruto's custom-made version targeting Kakashi was truly eye-opening.
Unless someone had very specific tastes, anyone would just find it perverted.
Sakura smashed Naruto's two clones with her fists, then, like an enraged tyrannosaurus, glared at Naruto's main body, who was hugging Kakashi's ninja pouch, and slowly walked toward him step by step.
"Sakura-chan, yamero! This is all Kakashi-sensei's fault. He was the one who grabbed my raffle tickets first…"
Naruto hugged the ninja pouch and collapsed onto the ground, trembling.
"Naruto, how could your sensei grab your things? I was just trying to help you keep them safe."
After snapping back to his senses, Kakashi looked at the scene in front of him and began speaking in a lecturing tone.
"Besides, even if I did take your raffle tickets, you can't use your Transformation Technique to defile the dead. That was a hero who sacrificed himself for the village, the Fourth Hokage…"
"What? The Fourth Hokage?"
Sakura, who was advancing toward Naruto, paused in surprise when she heard Kakashi's words.
"No wonder he looked kind of familiar. Turns out it's the Fourth Hokage from the Hokage Rock that we see every day. Naruto, you've gone too far. You absolutely need to be restrained!"
Sakura rolled up her sleeves.
Originally, she was beating Naruto out of pure anger. Now, Sakura suddenly felt an added sense of mission, a sense of justice.
"No, it's not my fault! Kakashi-sensei forced me! I already warned him that I'd use any means necessary…"
Naruto was beaten senseless.
But what surprised everyone was that even while being beaten up, Naruto stubbornly clutched the ninja pouch to his chest, vigilantly guarding against Kakashi getting close.
No joke. He had already taken a beating. If the raffle tickets were taken away too, wouldn't that mean he got beaten for nothing?
While Naruto was getting beaten up, Kakashi took his own raffle tickets and went over to Ino to draw.
Unfortunately, he only got a consolation prize, a few fashionable pieces of junk.
That only made Kakashi want the raffle tickets in Naruto's arms even more.
"Using underhanded methods is fine, but you're not allowed to use them on your comrades. Do you hear me?!"
Sakura was starting to get tired from beating him. After warning Naruto, she finally stopped.
But the moment she stopped, Ino immediately ran over and began using the Mystical Palm Technique to heal Naruto.
"Huh? Ino, you care that much about Naruto?"
Sakura looked at Ino in surprise.
"It's not easy to get someone to test how far my medical ninjutsu training has come. I can't let you take him."
Ino explained as she healed him.
"Oh, right."
Sakura froze for a moment, then reacted as well, and hurriedly began healing Naruto too.
"Ino-pig, move aside. I beat him, so of course I should be the one to heal him!"
"Oh."
What Sakura didn't expect was that Ino actually obediently stopped and handed the injured Naruto over to her.
"You really just let me have him?"
Sakura couldn't help asking.
"Because I suddenly remembered that Naruto recovers really fast. Once he's healed, I won't even know whether it was me who healed him or if he just recovered on his own. So I figured, forget it."
Ino shrugged slightly.
"By the way, Sakura, did you come to find me? What's up?"
"Uh… ah."
Being reminded like this, Sakura suddenly realized that was indeed the case.
She simply stopped healing Naruto altogether.
"Well, I just saw Tsunade-sama earlier. Want to go find her together?"
"Huh? Has Tsunade-sama recovered? Then let's go…oh, right, wait a second."
Ino turned around, carried the raffle machine back into the flower shop, pulled down the shutter, and after finishing all that, she and Sakura happily went off to find Tsunade.
Naruto, half-healed and covered in bruises, crawled up from the ground. Looking at the raffle tickets still safely in his arms, he let out a few silly laughs.
"Awesome! My limited-edition ramen, here I come!"
Whoosh!
A cool breeze blew past.
There was no one around.
Seeing that Ino, the person in charge of redeeming prizes, had left, Kakashi decided to take his things and go home first.
In front of the closed flower shop, only Naruto was left behind.
Standing there, lost in the wind.
"Hey, at least let me finish drawing my prizes first! How can you be this unprofessional?!"
Naruto grabbed his hair, on the verge of a breakdown.
As for Kakashi, after returning home and putting his things away, he realized that the two bouquets he had bought earlier had fallen to the ground when he was shocked by Naruto's technique and were now dirty.
In order not to sully the friendship of the past, Kakashi decided to buy two new bouquets.
However, Ino's family flower shop was already closed, and he knew that.
The two girls had gone to find Tsunade and wouldn't be back anytime soon.
So Kakashi could only pick two bouquets of heather flowers from his own balcony, which he had originally prepared for Sasuke, and brought them to the Memorial Stone, placing them in front of Obito's and Rin's names.
The only hot spring inn in Konoha had been booked out today by the Hokage to entertain distinguished guests.
After finding Tsunade, Sakura and Ino were drafted on the spot and told to go inside and use their medical ninjutsu techniques to give Shiromo a massage.
Of course, it was a proper relaxation massage.
Tsunade herself had been putting off interacting with Shiromo because she was worried that, in her eyes, Shiromo, who had negative favorability toward her, might open with a single "old hag" making the atmosphere incredibly awkward.
So she figured it would be better to let two young girls help build up some favorability first.
The massage was, of course, a proper massage, even though Sakura and Ino had changed into white bathrobes.
The two were very nervous when they entered, but when they discovered that there were other people inside besides Shiromo, they immediately relaxed.
"Sigh, I really want to soak in the hot spring too, Kushina-neesan."
"You think I don't want to?"
Rin and Kushina, two dead people, sat on chairs by the hot spring, full of envy.
The Impure World Reincarnation bodies had no sensation. Even if they went into the water, it would be meaningless.
As for why the two of them were here?
It was because both Kushina and Rin had things they wanted to ask Shiromo, the super strategist acknowledged simultaneously by three Hokage, to help clear up their doubts.
(End of this chapter)