Ino and Sakura in a worse shape

The first sign of Narutos awakening was a slight fluttering of his eyelids. With a groan, he opened one of his eyes and after he had adjusted saw to the light, saw his blonde girlfriend sigh in relief before briefly turning away from him. "Sakura! He's waking up!", she called out and a moment later, Sakura entered his vision as well.

Slowly, Naruto regained consciousness and his speech, too. "Ino-chan! Sakura-chan! What's wrong, you don't look too good.", he noticed that Ino had a bit of dried blood trickling from her mouth while Sakura just looked like she had been stomped over by an elephant or some other big animal.

He himself felt a dull pain in his stomach, but he paid no mind to it. After all, if Ino and Sakura got hurt, it didn't matter how hurt he was, he would protect them no matter what.

But other than physical wounds, he also noticed that Sakuras hair was cut. It used to nearly reach her ass, but now it was only reaching down to her shoulders. "Sakura-chan? What happened to your hair? Why're you crying? Was it Sasuke-teme again? I'm gonna beat the crap outta that guy!", he yelled as he jumped up.

Only then did he noticed that both girls were crying. Of course, Naruto only assumed something bad had happened to them. "Where is that guy anyway? And that creepy Grass ninja? And what about Haku-chan?", he asked, frantically looking around.

And while he didn't spot either the Grass ninja or Haku, he saw Kiba and Shikamaru who stood over a sitting Sasuke. That surprised him. How long had he been out that they were here now? "Shikamaru! Kiba! What are you doing here?!", he exclaimed.

Shikamaru looked up to see Naruto being up on his feet again. Sasuke was still on the ground, rubbing his forehead for some reason. The Nara boy however just sighed, as he usually did when something was 'troublesome'. "We came to find Sasuke after he got lost. Seems like we arrived just in time, too.", he said with a nod towards Sasuke, an act that somewhat puzzled Naruto.

He saw Kiba offering Sasuke a hand and pulling him up to stand. "Come on, we need to head to the tower!", Kiba grunted as he supported Sasuke to stand up.

"Huh? Don't tell me... you already have both scrolls?", Naruto gawked at his friend.

Confirming his suspicion, Shikamaru pulled out two different scrolls. "While we waited for Sasuke to come back, we stumbled across a team from Kusagakure. Fortunately, they had the Earth Scroll, so now we have both of them and can head to the tower.", he explained.

"I see... ", Naruto said. That reminded him... they had lost their scroll, right?

He was pulled out of his thoughts by his friend. "Oi, we're taking Sasuke with us. Sorry for the bother he caused you.", Kiba yelled over to him as he and Sasuke holding onto him jumped into the forest, but not before Sasuke glared at him and Naruto returned that glare right back at him.

Still, he was glad to see that at least his other friends were not out to kill them. "See ya later, Shikamaru! Kiba!", he waved his friends off.

"Naruto, one last thing... don't try to fight that redhead from Sunagakure. Believe me, you don't want to face him.", Shikamaru told him, with an expression Naruto hadn't seen on him before. He was being dead serious here. So, all Naruto could do was nod. Satisfied with his apparent understanding, Shikamaru also left to follow Kiba and Sasuke.

Now, he and the girls were alone again. As he turned around, Ino and Sakura were wiping away their tears of relief, which still perplexed Naruto somewhat. So he just had to ask. "W-what happened while I was out?", he inquired.