Fandom Squad Shithead: A Naruto AU

[Pine]

Tetsuo's head snapped back to the door at the bang that could be heard from within. He frowned and pinched his brow together, somewhat concerned that whoever was on the other side had fallen. His worry was relieved as he heard shuffling, so at least he knew this person was mobile.

As time dragged on, a great impatience built within Tetsuo. He could only bide his time so much by checking over his shoulders, just to stay alert in this area, and it came to a point where he had heard so much random activity on the other side he began to wonder if this Miya person had any intention of answering the door at all. Just before he committed to knocking again, more forcefully this time, the door finally clicked and cracked open.

He did not have the best angle to get a good look at the woman that had answered, but from what brief glance he got of her, he was not impressed. Her hand was unsteady as it clutched the doorframe, and the now all-too-familiar sour fumes of alcohol hit and made his nose wrinkle. This was the woman he'd been sent to fetch? It was very easy to piece together what Yuri had meant by her comment about the woman's condition, so it wasn't hard to believe he'd found his mark. The question was why.

But Yuri had tasked him to bring her to the hospital no matter what. The Hyuga girl said that lives depended on it, and that was a claim he was not willing to doubt.

"There's an emergency," he told her quickly. "You're needed at the Sakura Haruno hospital right away."

 

[Gilzar]

Miya's eyes nervously dashed around Tetsuo upon hearing the news of an emergency at the hospital. She then closed her eyes and buried them beneath her right hand. A small groan escaped as she dragged her hand down her face, staring shamefully at the wall next to her. Slowly, Miya's eyes worked their way back to Tetsuo. But she wouldn't look him in the eyes, instead opting to stare at his feet instead.

"Could -" She stumbled awkwardly away from the door, having lost her footing for no apparent reason. "Could you please tell me what's going on...while I get ready?"

Miya then pulled open the door completely to invite Tetsuo in. The inside of her apartment was as run down as the rest of the building. Water stains were visible on the ceiling, and parts of the old white walls. Any wood paneling on the cabinets or counter space was either peeling off or missing noticeable section. All of the carpet was faded in color and was covered in various stains despite an obvious effort to clean them.

While the apartment was surprisingly tidy given its rough condition, there was one notable type of junk that could be found scattered throughout the apartment: Empty containers of alcohol. From the kitchen to the living room, empty cans of beer and half-filled bottles of liquor dotted the counter space and filled the trash cans. Only one spot of the apartment was free from the clutches of Miya's drinking habit: A small bookshelf not too far from the entryway, just between the living room and open-concept kitchen. Unlike the rest of the place, it was clean and of good quality.

Various framed photographs lined the bookshelf, all relating to Miya's life in some manner. Most were random family photos of Miya when she was younger, however two photos presented at the top shelf may have caught Tetsuo's eye. To the left was a newly printed academy graduation photo of none other than Tetsuo's estranged teammate Mizu Kimura. This was just a standard issue graduation photo, no different than the one Tetsuo had to take upon graduation. It was neatly tucked away into a black frame. On the opposite side of the top shelf, was an artsy black and white photograph. With the dim lighting of the room the subject matter would have been difficult to make out a glance. However, a closer inspection would yield a shocking and scandalous discovery. The photo was a self portrait of a young adult Miya affectionately leaning her back against none other than Soruto Uzumaki. Both looked into the camera with loving smiles. If not for the taboo subject matter, it would have looked no different than any other couple's photos. Much like Mizu’s photo, this one was also preserved inside a black frame.

Miya hastily jogged across her apartment, despite being on unsteady feet to a small closet in her living room. Sliding open the door to the closet was her medical uniform. Even in her inebriated state she was obviously aware there wasn't time for her to change out of her violet long pajama pants and light grey shirt. Instead she walked back-and-fourth across the room gathering only what was important. For the moment, she was paying little attention to whatever Tetsuo may have been doing on the other side of the apartment.

"What's going on?" She asked as she scrambled to find her keys.

 

[Pine]

Tetsuo's lips were pressed in a thin, serious line as the woman covered her face and groaned. Once again he became antsy for a real response from the woman, preparing in his head what he would do to persuade or otherwise force her to come back with him in case she refused. Eventually, she seemed to reluctantly accept him call to duty. She invited him in so that he may talk more about what he knew was happening at the hospital, and he really wished she hadn't. Nevertheless, he followed her in.

There was no hiding the look of judgment on Tetsuo's face as he surveyed the state of the apartment. He hung well behind her and slowly picked his way through the unit, searching for any shred of evidence justifying why he had to go fetch her of all people. This Miya woman could barely walk in a straight line. It was a wonder why anyone would trust her with a scalpel.

The unit was in bad shape. He saw how rundown the building was all throught his eight story-long trek up to her residence, but Tetsuo had not thought the damage would've extended to the interior, at least not to this degree. At first he wondered if this was the direct result of such a messy woman taking residence, but after a moment, it occurred to him that most of this kind of damage could only be the result of wear and tear from an old building going unmaintained. It was a wonder anyone rented out with the units in these conditions.

The accumulation of emptied beer cans and liquor bottles, however, was undoubtedly wrought upon by her own doing.

The thought crossed his mind whether this was what Katsuro's place of dwelling looked like. Tetsuo was unsure, because as much as he'd beared withness to the jonin-sensei drinking an ungodly amount of alcohol throughout a given day, it seemed to effect his performance very little, unlike Miya. He felt a wave of frustration as he realized, for the second or arguably third time today, the adults he was forced to subordinate under were favoring alcohol over their own responsibility. With a woman as timid as Miya was, it struck him as cowardly.

He considered briefly making a passive-aggressive comment, that Tuesdays were trash collection days, but he decided against it. There was no real reason for him to antagonize this woman, especially when he was coming to her for help in things he could not do.

As he walked down the hall, he kept glancing up at the ceiling to avoid any dark spots, just in case it decided to leak droplets when he was standing directly under it.

"There was a bombing in a nearby village," he told her somberly. "A ton of people are in critical condition, and they're only bringing more in." Tetsuo did not feel the need to wax poetics about the situation. That should be enough information for her, he thought.

Naturally, he gravitated towards the bookshelf at the end of the hall. It was the only place in the unit that did not gross him out in one way or another. He would've suspected, while not as convenient to leave a bottle on a bookshelf as it was to leave on a living room end table or a kitchen counter, there would've at least been one she'd have forgotten to pick back up in passing. Instead, the bookshelf was made to look like a shrine amidst the pigsty that was the rest of the unit.

His curiosity not yet abated, he searched among the framed pictures for any clues to past or present prestige. Tetsuo thought, maybe, he could catch a glimpse of her pictured next to an influential figure, or maybe some special award or certification of some kind. On each shelf, he found no such evidence. In every picture were generic faces he would never recognize in a crowd. He saved the top shelf for last, and it was only in that moment he found what he was meant to see.

Mizu, stoic-faced in professional lighting. It was the academy's graduation photo. He doubled down on furrowing his brow. This wouldn't have been taken more than two months ago, yet it was here, the only picture he saw her in. His eyes quickly scanned over the rest of the top shelf's lineup. It took him a moment to lock in on the final incriminating photo. The lighting was tricky and he had to grab the framed picture off the shelf to get a better look, but after he did, there was no mistaking what he was looking at: this woman, Miya, infinitely more put-together and snuggled close to the late Hokage, Soruto Uzumaki.

Tetsuo's eyes widened with shock. He whipped his head to look back at the woman fumbling through the living room to gather her things. Everything clicked. The straight, brown hair. The olive skin. What he knew before but was impossible to doubt now - the connection to Soruto.

He blurted without thinking, regardless of whether he would've been interrupting her or not.

"You're Mizu's mom."

 

[Gilzar]

Miya instantly froze in her tracks upon hearing Tetsuo call out the name of her daughter. Her head darted over to the boy, who was standing next to her carefully selected assortment of photographs in the hallway. There were other photographs scattered around the apartment of Mizu and herself, but any photograph that had made it to that bookshelf held a special place in her heart.

She awkwardly stood in place, expecting the strange child in her apartment to add something to his observation. Yet he never did. For a moment, her dull drunken gazed sharpened to a sober state. They desperately looked into Tetsuo's, as if searching for something. The way that Tetsuo spoke her daughter's name was unlike most people. Most people never brought up the topic of Mizu around her. It was a subject as taboo as the forbidden relationship she had with the hokage, so long ago. Those that did bring her up almost never said her name with such familiarity.

"You...know Mizu, don't you?"

Miya's eyes then retreated away from Tetsuo's, as if the look he gave back was all the confirmation she needed. She eyed all of alcohol scattered across the apartment, and her figure began to shrink under the judgement of Tetsuo's gaze. She eyed the door of her bedroom. Though Tetsuo may not have known it, she was seriously debating about locking herself away into her room until he would leave. It was worse enough having someone seeing her in this state, but the idea of someone who knew her daughter on a first-name basis seeing her like this left an unbearable weight of pain on her shoulders.

"Please...don't tell her you saw me." Miya pleaded as she stared down at the floor.

 

[Pine]

The way Miya froze and locked eyes with him gave Tetsuo all the confirmation he needed to know.

The boy covered his mouth with his hand so as to conceal his expression, because in that moment, he was livid. Internally, he cursed Katsuro's name up and down. His punishment was never about community service at the hospital. It was about this, meeting her.

Katsuro had specifically said this was meant to be a lesson in empathy, as punishment for the incident with Mizu. This was the jonin-sensei's way of continuing their conversation from inside the Tekara estate walls. It was meant to be the ultimate gotcha to force a new perspective on Mizu. He had pawned this pitiful woman as an underhanded means to somehow say 'I told you so'. What infuriated Tetsuo the most was that it was working. He was at the heart of how Mizu came to be, and now he was taken by an insatiable need to know that he had not known he'd had before. Everything he'd seen up until that point was too jarring for him to ignore.

He resolved then he would not tell Katsuro a thing about his volunteer experience. In fact, he would do everything he could to pretend as if he had spent the entire two weeks working the emergency wing without so much as seeing Miya a single time. He would not let Katsuro think he had won.

More pressing now was the sobered recognition in Miya's eyes. Tetsuo, without realizing, had outed his connection to her daughter.

If Mizu had told this woman anything about him, it wouldn't be anything good. She would've told her that she had this pale, scrawny teammate and to watch out for him, because just like she'd done with Katsuro, she'd twist the narrative and tell her he'd almost gotten them all killed. There was no way a mother would take kindly to this revelation, and likely would refuse to comply with returning to the hospital with him. He could not have that happen.

Tetsuo tried to neutralize his expression behind his hand as he racked his brain for excuses to explain everything away. He could claim that everyone knew who Mizu was - and this was true, but by this point he had spent so much time cupping his hand over his mouth he could no longer play his reaction off as scratching some sort of itch.

But instead of Miya turning on him, lashing out or otherwise giving any sort of indication that she knew who he was, the woman almost seemed to fold in on herself. Then she did the last thing he expected her to do: she begged him not to tell Mizu.

Immediately, Tetsuo's face softened. He dropped his hand from his mouth and gazed upon her, both perplexed and pitying. She seemed so desperate to keep something about this from her daughter, whatever it was, that Tetsuo felt bad for even letting her think he would do such a thing that would hurt her.

"Um," he began, then shook his head and looked down at the floor for a moment as well. He replaced the framed picture that had still been in his hand on the shelf. "Don't worry, I'm not going to tell her." Then he added, "I promise."

Tetsuo was being sincere with this. With as little as the two voluntarily spoke to each other, it would not be a hard promise to keep. He did not understand the reason for her request in that moment, whether it had something more to do with Miya or with him, but he had sworn himself to secrecy with her now, and it was something he intended to keep.

An anxiety suddenly spiked in him. It hurt him to see Mizu's mom like this, desperately avoiding eye contact with him and hanging her head in some sort of shame. Without thinking, he fell into what he always did in situations like this.

"Hey," Tetsuo said, speaking gently as he stepped out of the hallway and into the living room. "Were you still looking for something? Maybe I could help you find it."

 

[Gilzar]

Some of the anxiety visibly quelled in Miya, both from Tetsuo promising he'd never speak of this to Mizu, and from seeing him put back the photo of her and Soruto back on its shelf. That photograph was over a decade old by now, and it still held a special place in her heart. It was one of the few photographs that existed of the two of them together. Its memories were a drug almost as potent as alcohol. Gazing into its black and white visage brought back thoughts and feelings from better, simpler days. Before the world found out about the two of them, before accidentally having her daughter, before she screwed everything up... before Soruto's death. Knowing that photograph was safe, as well as all the other memories lined along that book case was precious to her.

Tetsuo offered to help her, his kind tone bringing her head back to the reality of the current situation. Slowly she gazed back over at everything she had collected with all the focus her foggy mind could afford. Some time passed before she came to the conclusion there was just one key item remaining before they could depart. Luckily she knew exactly where they were.

"...I just need my keys." Miya said as she stumbled across the room to the kitchen counter. She looked over the kitchen counter at one particular spot, right under the Calander and once again froze up. Her keys weren't in their usual spot. She awkwardly turned back over to Tetsuo.

"I uh...." Her eyes awkwardly scanned around the room. "I'm going to need some help finding them..."

 

[Pine]

Though Tetsuo tried not to make it too obvious, a concerned frown crossed his face seeing her stumble over clear carpet to get to her kitchen counter. It was a wonder she hadn't tripped and fallen yet. The anxiety in him built, now worrying over the logistics of how the hell he was going to make it back to the hospital with her still in tact. It was difficult not to doubt that she would have any use at all in the emergency wing. Maybe Yuri had sent him to fetch Miya just to get him out of the way.

He was not surprised to hear the keys were not where she thought they were. Tetsuo gave her a small nod of acknowledgement then set to work.

He first searched the most obvious place to look. He shuffled the various cans and bottles that lined the coffee table, listening for any conspicuous jingling while he looked. Having no luck there, he moved on. The next step was to tackle the number on spot he had to look for and find Soto's lost toys: the couch. Tetsuo knelt down on his knees, wincing a little from the painful reminder that his body desperately wanted to rest, before shoving his hand between the cushions. As he rifled around, tracing his hand along each cushion, he could only pray that he didn't touch anything sticky. There was no such thing, thankfully. Only the typical bits of crumbs and dirt that naturally fall in these spots over time. Unfortunately, he did not find any keys either.

Still not convinced, he peeled off each cushion to set on the ground. In his carelessness, the corner of a cushion tipped a half-filled liquor bottle dangerously towards the end of the table, but he caught it in time, and the weight of the liquid sloshed back to anchor the bottle to the table once more. He noted with some mild irritation just how much all those cans and bottles could get in the way.

As he leaned to thrust his entire forearm into the couch's frame, he noticed that there was no evidence of Mizu living here. In fact, there was no evidence of anyone else living here at all. There were no spare bedrooms to house multiple guests or residents, and once he saw past the collection of half-consumed alcohol, it became more clear to him just the distinct lack of stuff in the unit. It made sense, he supposed, with how cramped the place felt with even just the two of them there now, and now that he thought about it, he had only ever heard Mizu talk about her uncle, never her mother. There was no universe in which two adults and one child could all share this space while keeping it as tidy (if he could call it that) as Miya was able. Tetsuo could make a few educated guesses as to why Mizu would not have been able to live with her father, but the reason for being separated from her mother was unknown to him. He knew from his own experience that Miya's apartment would not have passed the village's standards for a suitable environment for children today, but which had happened first? Mizu's separation, or Miya's descent?

Tetsuo sighed through his nose, having no luck with finding the keys in the couch. He had thought for sure that they would be in there. After replacing the cushions, he laid on his side to fish under the couch. Once again, no luck.

He straightened himself up and sighed again. Tetsuo rested his fists on his knees and looked around the room for another suspect spot they might be, for the moment stumped. His eyes landed on the closet she'd retrieved her uniform from earlier. Tetsuo got to his feet and crossed the room to the closet. Briefly he turned to Miya and indicated the closet before asking, "Do you mind if I look in here?"

With her permission, he slid open the door and began to fish inside every pocket available to him. He shortly after found them in the pocket of one of her scrub trousers.

Tetsuo would've thrown them to her, but he doubted with her coordination right now that she'd be able to catch them. So instead, he walked up to her and dropped them in her hands and said, "Here."

Almost immediately he regretted doing this. Now he imagined the next ten minutes of his life were going to be spent watching her fumble to lock a door. His heart-rate picked up with each passing moment, the boy hyperaware that every second they were delayed, one more person that didn't get the immediate medical attention they needed could lose their life. In spite of his trepidation and building anxiety, he waited to see what pace Miya was able to set leading them out.

 

[Gilzar]

Miya stared blankly at the keys once Tetsuo dropped them into her hands, dumbfounded that they were actually within her workpants from the day before.

"Oh..." She muttered out, embarrassed that even in her current state she didn't think to check there.

With her keys located, Miya stuffed them into her pocket and grabbed the rest of her things. Well aware that there was no time to waste, she hastily exited the apartment as quickly as she could with Tetsuo. Locking the door to her apartment turned out to be far less complicated than Tetsuo imagined it would be. Afterall, this wasn't the first time Miya drunkenly stumbled out of her apartment in the middle of the night. Miya only needed a few seconds to execute the motions needed to lock her door. A loud clicking noise followed, signaling the cheap door was secured.

Without any warning to Tetsuo, Miya dashed down the catwalk toward the staircase. For a drunk woman, Miya moved surprisingly quick, shifting across the tenement and hopping down the stairs at a speed just faster than a jog. Once they reached the streets below, Miya sped up from into a full-on drunken run. She tumbled through the streets as she tried to maintain her pace. The trip to the hospital was mostly uneventful, minus Miya running into a trashcan and landing flat on her face. Luckily, in spite of the nasty crash she just got right back up and ran the rest of the way to the hospital.

Breathing heavily from her exhaustion, Miya stumbled into the emergency room lobby with Tetsuo at her side. By now things were calmer, albeit still hectic in the lobby. All of the victims from the bombings had been transported to the hospital and were out of the lobby by now. Medical shinobi and their assistants were still frantically scrambling through the hallways. All around the lobby, the muffled shouting of medical personnel could be heard through the various hallways. Victims were being shifted from room to room. Hauntingly, one body completely veiled by a white sheet could be seen being pushed into a doorway by a defeated looking doctor.

Once again from out of a nearby hallway, Yuri came walking back out to the reception area, still spattered by fresh blood stains. By now the old stains had dried into her uniform, while new ones still shimmered under the hospital lights. Upon spotting Tetsuo and Miya, she halted her advance toward the desk and sprinted back into the hallway from where she came from. After roughly a minute, she came running back into the lobby with something in her hand.

"You got her!" Yuri called out to Tetsuo.

"Miya we need you treating victims as soon as possible." The Hyuga girl said to Mizu's estranged mother.

"I don't know how much help I can be right now..." Miya shamefully admitted, eyes locked down to Yuri's feet.

Yuri however didn't seemed bothered at all by Miya's drunken admission, or by the stench of alcohol on her breath. Instead, she brought up the item in her hand, revealing a small syringe.

"By no means is this ethical." Yuri stated as she slid up the sleeve on Miya's shoulder. "But desperate times call for desperate measures. This stimulant is going to sober you up."

"Wha-?!" Before Miya could state her confusion, Yuri had already injected the syringe into her shoulder. As the stimulant coursed through her veins, a wave of energy hit Miya. Her pupils rapidly dilated to her surroundings, and her posture straightened.

"You're needed in room B7. We have a patient in critical condition you need to treat."

Yuri then turned back to Tetsuo. "I don't know your name, but I'm going to need your help once again. Go with Miya and help her however you can!"

Yuri then walked back to the receptionist desk, leaving Tetsuo and Miya to their own devices.

By now Miya had recovered from the headrush of the stimulant flowing through her system. For once, she seemed alert and attentive, though she couldn't help but quietly groan from the massive headache in her head.

"Come on. Let's see what we can do." She said clearly to Tetsuo without slurring or drawing any of her words. Miya made her way through the maze of corridors, guiding Tetsuo to room B7. Without any hesitation, she flung open the door to the room and immediately got to work.

In the small room laid a bloodied hidden cloud shinobi. He looked to be in his mid-30's, though it was hard to tell from the severity of his wounds. Burn marks and shrapnel dotted the entire left side of his body, including his face. The medical staff had given him just enough treatment to temporarily stabilize the patient, but he wouldn't be well much longer. The wounds beneath the bandages were starting to blood once again, as the shrapnel had yet to be removed. Third degree burns still festered across his body, though the severity was hard to tell. He still had what was left of his uniform on.

Miya picked up a clipboard set jus beside the cloud shinobi and eyed it over.

"Things really are bad here...the staff did just enough to keep him alive for a few more hours. Then they moved on to treat victims with more serious injuries...All they did was sedate him and give him light bandaging. They didn't even have time to fully evaluate his wounds."

She tossed the clipboard back onto table, then turned to Tetsuo. In the background, the steady beeping of a heart-rate monitor could be heard.

"Please...put some gloves on and remove his clothing while I start preparing his treatment. He has third degree burns so we can't pull anything off of him. You'll have to cut through his clothing and gently slide off what you can."

Miya then began to open various cabinets and drawers, bringing out a medical tray and stacking various cutting tools on it. She placed the tray down on the night-stand next to the victim, then went back to cabinets and started preparing various medicines and syringes.

 

[Pine]

As the two of them stepped out, Tetsuo wondered idly just how much security the flimsy door provided for a unit in this section of Konoha, but he heard the unmistakable click of her successfully locking the door. Then Miya took off. The young genin was caught off-guard by this, but after a second's hesitated shock, he dashed after her.

To both his surprise and relief, the woman made it down all eight flights of stairs without incident and hit the streets at great speed. It was an odd sight, seeing her careen unsteadily from side-to-side, and yet she managed to avoid all but one of the many obstacles dotting the path to the hospital. Tetsuo creased his eyebrows with concern and came to a halt, wondering if this was the end of her oddly coordinated sprint, but the woman picked herself up and kept going before he could even check on her.

Without needing to concern himself with managing Miya or any wasted time, Tetsuo fell into his own thoughts. Mentally, he prepped himself for what was to come.

Last time, he had not been prepared to be in the hospital. He had known that only the worst of injuries would cross the threshold into the emergency wing, but he had not taken the time to process what that truly meant or would look like, nor would he have ever imagined so many victims coming in at once. He wondered about the nature of these bombings - it hadn't been the first, according to the hospital staff, and it seemed to do very little work as to discriminate who their lethal force was being used against. He'd seen flak jackets and headbands from all different nationalities, but even though these were meant to target shinobis, he had seen several civilians injured in the second wave.

If he was going to be allowed to help, he couldn't waste anymore time being shocked and scared. It made him queasy, but Tetsuo forced himself to think over every gruesome detail he'd noticed in passing so as to numb himself to what he had and would soon see again.

By the time they reached the hospital, Tetsuo felt as though a mental gear had shifted in his brain. He was as ready as he would ever be.

The alarm from before was still going, but much of the frantic energy had been shifted deeper into the hospital. Immediately, his eyes locked onto the figure hidden beneath the white sheet, and his face took on a grave expression.

As they came to a halt in the lobby, Tetsuo realized, to his mild exasperation, that Miya did not seem to automatically know what to do or where to go. That left finding Yuri, who had sent for her in the first place.

Thankfully, he did not have to search for her for long, as the Hyuga girl stepped into the lobby as if on cue. Just as soon, however, her whited out eyes seemed to lock onto them, and without a word she sprinted off.

Tetsuo furrowed his brow in confusion. Were they supposed to wait? Had he been mistaken and she didn't notice them at all? Or was he wasting time waiting for guidance he was not meant to receive? He looked to Miya, hoping for some insight, but in her inebriation he only found vacancy in her stare.

Enough time passed for him to get antsy. Tetsuo stood, dragging his nail over and over against his calloused fingertips, but luckily, before he forced some attempt on his part to navigate this unfamiliar territory, Yuri returned and headed straight for them.

His frown deepened as the Hyuga girl brought out the syringe, and without waiting for any form of consent, injected the stimulant into Miya. He stared at Miya with mounting concern as the drug had a visible effect on her. He had never heard of such a thing as what Yuri used, and with his anxiety ramped up as it was, he half-expected the excess of chemicals in the frail woman to overwhelm her system and kill her on the spot.

Tetsuo looked uncertainly at Yuri as she gave him the instructions he'd been waiting for. He managed to nod back at her, but his mind was elsewhere. His panic abated with every moment that Miya didn't just drop dead next to him, but it was a process. He understood Yuri's reasoning for doing this. If he had known such a thing existed, as well as known what the possible risks of taking the stimulant, he may have even suggested that very course of action. Even with this silent acknowledgement within himself, the young genin still could not help but feel disturbed by what he had just witnessed.

He looked back to Miya with the same concerned frown on his face, but whatever drug that had been forced into her seemed to have sobered her up officially. Aside from a quiet groan, he found no indication in her that she was distressed by the recent turn of events. Instead, she accepted her duties without complaint and turned to lead him to their assigned room.

Tetsuo should not have been as surprised as he was, he thought, that the room they entered was solely occupied by a foreign shinobi, not a Leaf Village shinobi. He had already seen the different headbands and uniforms sported by the various victims that had been brought in, but it still caught him off-guard. His team's run-in with the Sand Anbu had been something that felt like it could've happened almost anytime - they had incidentally had a common enemy. Crowded in this tiny hospital room, this wounded man completely immobilized and at their mercy, felt like the first true example of cooperation between nations that he would have firsthand experience with. Even though the treaty had been instated over two years ago, it felt surreal. For most of his lifetime, a man like this would've been considered an enemy, and instead of Tetsuo trying to save his life, this stranger may have been doing everything he could to try to end his own.

Tetsuo hesitated for a second given this. How many Leaf shinobi had this man cut down? How many families had been torn apart, violently dispossessed of one father or one mother? How many were neighbors to him?

Miya reviewed the notes from the clipboard. By her tone and immediacy in her actions, she appeared completely disconnected from the moral dilemma cycling through his head. As Miya entreated him for his assistance, Tetsuo squeezed his eyes shut. He breathed in for a second, then out. He set his jaw, then resolved to do what he came here to do. "Alright," he said.

It took him a second to find the gloves she'd referred to on the counter, but once he did, he pulled them out and slid them on obediently. Next, he surveyed the various tools for cutting Miya had laid out for him. After a moment, he grabbed the trauma sheers. Tetsuo pulled his fingers apart to separate the sheer's blades and examined their serrated edges. It may have just been due to the lack of pockets, but at a glance, the flat, off-white flak jacket of the Cloud shinobi's uniform looked like a thinner material than the dark green Leaf Village vests he was used to seeing. The sheers would be more than enough, he thought, but to get a feel for them first, he started with the easier target that was the man's headband.

Tetsuo slid his thumb beneath the metal plate on his forehead to gently lift some of the material and give better access. He cut a straight line across the band with ease. He pushed the plate so that it was laying on the bed out of the way before, gingerly, he tested peeling back the band's fabric until it got caught by the wound. He trimmed around the site as well as he could before moving onto the jacket.

The jacket was more difficult to cut into, but Tetsuo tried to keep a firm grip with his other hand so as to minimize jostling the burns, and with enough care the material gave way to the path his sheers carved. More and more of the Cloud shinobi's injuries were revealed. Patches of the man's dark skin had been charred black, and in many spots where Tetsuo was able to slid off the man's jacket and undershirt, the epidermis had cracked open to reveal pink and blood.

He saved the pants for last not for ease, but to put off what may have ended up being a compromise of this stranger's dignity. Luckily, from what he was able to tell from the burns on his face and bare torso, the injury did not extend beyond his pants leg. Tetsuo pinched the fabric and cut a crescent shape across the man's thigh. Just as before, he tested peeling back what he could until the fabric resisted, then trimmed around that shape.

Throughout, Tetsuo erred on the side of being tender, and was unwilling to take risks he thought may have exasperated the wound. After he finished these initial cuts, he looked to Miya for feedback.

"Is..."

He spoke just to get some of her attention. He felt the implicit question 'is this okay' would be obvious to her without him needing to say as much.

 

[Gilzar]

Miya paused her work upon hearing Tetsuo's voice. She looked back at the man, then at Tetsuo. The boy's work with the cutting tools had impressed her. All of the foreigner's brutal wounds were now visible to the both of them, and there was no indication of any carelessness on Tetsuo's part that would have worsened the injuries. His work with a cutting tool looked almost like that of an experienced medical shinobi. Impressive as it was though, there was still work to be done. Tiny bits of shrapnel were still lodged across his body. Before any more work could be done they needed to be removed, else the healing process wouldn't be complete.

All she gave Tetsuo was a simple nod to confirm that his work was satisfactory. She then went back to her counter to grab the syringes she had been preparing. Medical ninjutsu was flashy, however it wouldn't cover the potential infections such as tetanus. Injections from these syringes would have to be used for that. Walking back over to cloud shinobi, Miya injected a few syringes into his shoulder that wasn't covered in burns. The syringes were then disposed of in a red marked box meant specifically for used needles.

Once again she retreated back to the counter space, although this time she came back with yet another metal tray and tweezers of various sizes. She handed the tray to Tetsuo.

"Now we need to get the shrapnel out of his body so I can heal him...could you please use the tweezers and start pulling out the metal? Then I can heal those areas to stop his bleeding."

Miya made a quick handsign with one hand, and held out her palm with the other. A familiar glowing green aura accumulated at the base of her hand. She'd heal any spot that Tetsuo removed the shrapnel from.

 

[Pine]

With Miya's look of approval alone, Tetsuo felt just that little bit more confident in his work, as well as more comfortable with working beside her. He nodded back at her instructions, then once the tray of tweezers were laid out, set to work.

He started with the torso. Tetsuo found a chunk of metal no wider than a pinky nail that looked easy to dislodge. He grabbed what seemed to be the most appropriately-sized tweezers. With his non-dominant hand, he started to reach to pull open the skin around it for easier access but then thought better of it. He set his palm on the man's belly where the only injury were some light scrapes, then pulled the metal out. Immediately, blood began to pool at the wound's exit. Tetsuo's eyes flitted to the man's face. Though he knew he was sedated, he wasn't entirely sure if that meant whether the Cloud shinobi would be able to register pain or not.

He repeated the process with several other pieces of metal of similar size and position, making small adjustments with the way he steadied his hand in order to do so. It was an unsettling feeling, feeling both the resistance and how slick it was simultaneously to pull these foreign objects from the man's flesh. These were small, safe and easy removals, however. Up until that point, he had avoided any chunks larger than a chestnut, which were the real agitators for this man's condition.

"What do I do for these?" he asked, gesturing to a piece of shrapnel that was lodged deeper, and from how the skin swelled up, seemed larger than its visible part. They were not something that could simply be pulled out without causing greater injury to the man. The worst of them were bandaged from the initial first aid medical shinobi had applied to him before.

 

[Gilzar]

As Tetsuo pulled out the shrapnel, Miya immediately followed up by treating the area with her healing technique. Upon pressing the glowing green aura into the wounds, all bleeding caused by Tetsuo removing the shrapnel seized. Slowly the skin surrounding the wounds would heal shut before their eyes, and any nearby burns would lighten in color. Occasionally the man could be heard grunting from the metal being plucked out of his skin, and his heartrate on the monitor would intensifyalong with his breathing. But he was so sedated that he never woke up from his comatose state. Once Tetsuo stopped pulling out shrapnel, Miya stopped her Jutsu.

She leaned over Tetsuo to examine the shrapnel wound of concern. Tetsuo was right to have called her over, as these were larger pieces of shrapnel that had swelled over. One wouldn't be able to simply pull the chunks of metal from these wounds. There were several approaches that would traditionally be taken for this. If the patient was in strong enough condition, surgery could be performed to remove the shrapnel with extra incisions. Otherwise, they could wait for the swelling to go down over the next few days. Each decision would be a tedious process that would take the average medical ninja a great deal of time to do. Miya was no typical medical shinobi, however. In fact, she was one of the few members of the medical core with the chakra control to utilize the technique she had been using. With this technique they could skip waiting all together and get the shrapnel out now.

"Could you please make a small incision to widen the wound? That would give you the space you need to get the shrapnel out of this spot and the others. I can then heal the area before any serious blood loss occurs."

She paused, looking over a few of he serious shrapnel wounds once more. Over the short amount of time that passed, a small alarm rang out over the heart rate monitor

ALERT: BLOOD PRESSURE DROPPING

Miya's head jumped over to the monitor. A small gauge symbolizing the patient's blood pressure was slowly falling. It looked like they had just minutes to act before the gauge fell down to dangerous levels. Blood pressure dropping this quickly could mean only one thing...

"He's bleeding internally! Something must have lodged itself in deeper while we've been treating him! Hurry and dig out all the shrapnel you can so we can stabilize him!"

 

[Pine]

Tetsuo nodded once again as Miya explained how to approach the more troublesome wounds. He switched the tweezers to his other hand and looked back to the tray of cutting tools his superior had left earlier. He had just enough time to pick up a scalpel before the heart monitor's alarm went off, underlaid by the pulsing alarm of the greater hospital that could still be heard from their room.

His head snapped up at the same time that Miya's did. He read the alert on the monitor and blanched. Had he done something wrong?

Miya had his undivided attention as she explained to him with urgency what was happening. Tetsuo knew enough about first aid that foreign objects should not be left in the body, but he had never given much thought as to the why of it. He had always assumed it was just to avoid infections and discomfort. Now he was living through just how wrong he was, and it was putting their patient in critical condition.

Again, no matter how much he had tried to prepare himself for the horrors he'd face on the way back to the hospital, stabilizing someone with internal bleeding was not something he could've anticipated. The reality of it made him stomach turn.

Tetsuo readjusted his position to get a better angle for where he needed to make the incision for the aforementioned wound. His process before had been meticulous in detail, but he couldn't worry about making the Cloud shinobi uncomfortable anymore. He held the scalpel with the grip he'd hold a kunai with and dragged it in as straight of a line as the swollen skin and his unsteady hand would allow. The incision may have been a little longer than necessary, but he didn't want to waste any time going over it again. He switched the tweezers for a set he could better grip these larger pieces of metal with, pinched this piece with them and shimmied it up and out from where he'd split the skin.

Tetsuo tried to match this speed with the next piece, just fast enough that he knew he wouldn't accidentally stab the man with the scalpel. For every site these incisions were necessary, blood had welled up sooner and faster than with the other, smaller pieces, spilling onto his skin before he could even take the piece out halfway.

Without even realizing, Tetsuo had begun to cycle his breathing with deeper inhales and longer exhales. During his time with his previous squad, his old jonin instructor had tried to make him do this so many times. Takashi was a man who liked to open up as many meetings as he could with a ten-minute meditation session. Oftentimes, when there was conflict within the squad, he would try to interrupt and separate the agitated parties, then get them to take a moment to breathe. This usually just made Tetsuo more angry, and he frequently refused the collective meditations because he found them pointless, and he resented the faux camaraderie he felt Takashi was trying to impose on himself and his old squadmates with group exercises like that. As much as he tried to fight it, there were also times where he had been too tired to resist, and though he would never admit it, he had wanted that quiet start in the mornings.

Now, with intention in his breath, just as when he'd tried to come down from his state of being following the bear-in-minefield incident, some of the tension fell away from his body. His scalpel hand began to steady. Tetsuo shut out all extraneous thoughts, and his focus sharpened, singularly attentive to the task at hand. He picked up speed, and soon he had removed all of the obvious pieces in his torso and head that had required this extra step of cutting into the man first. Tetsuo switched his tools so the tweezers were back in his right hand as he moved onto the smaller pieces of shrapnel once again.

 

[Gilzar]

As the Tetsuo dug the knife into the cloud shinobi's torso, his breathing intensified. Occasionally a small grunt of pain would force its way out of the shinobi, but the anesthetic he was on seemed to keep him unconscious. Miya followed Tetsuo's calmed yet hasty efforts, healing each spot he pulled shrapnel out of as fast as she could. For the larger pieces of shrapnel that he had to cut open, she had to be more stringent with her technique. She pressed the glowing green aura of her hands firmly against the wound in order to stop any internal and external bleeding. Once the bloody wounds had sealed, she'd quickly move onto the next one Tetsuo had dealt with. It was hard to believe the boy had never had any medical training given how well he had removed all of the shrapnel.

After a four-minute-long struggle, all of the serious shrapnel wounds appeared to have been dealt with. The sound of the alarm stopped, as did the dropping of the blood pressure gauge on the monitor. Though the man was a blood-soaked mess, it appeared that Tetsuo and Miya's struggle had paid off. With the shrapnel dealt with, his condition was now reliably stabilized. All that remained now was to deal with the third degree burn marks lining his body and face. Unfortunately, burns of this magnitude weren't easy to deal with.

Miya kept her medical ninjutsu going, and gently waved it across all of the burned portions of his body. She started with his face, and worked down to the rest of the body. Although she wouldn't be able to completely heal his burns, as it would be too costly for her chakra, she was at least able to treat them at the surface level. The charred black areas returned back to its normal brown pigment, but the ripples of the burns were still indented in the skin. He would likely be blind in one eye, and bear the burn scars over almost half of his face and body the rest of his life. But he would survive this ordeal, and that was all that mattered to Miya right now.

Miya released the handsign from her free hand, and the glow of the medical ninjutsu slowly faded away. She focused on breathing, exhausted from the technique and the concoction of drugs in her system. Once again she pressed her hand into her skull, trying to ease her headache with some pressure. Even though they had just saved a man's life, the achievement didn't seem to have had any impact on her. She still looked as torn up and saddened as when Tetsuo first laid eyes on her. Slowly she walked back to the counter, grabbing some bandages from a drawer as well as a wet cloth from the sink. Walking back over, she set the bandages down next to Tetsuo. They were white, with a small tinge of green to them and a sweet smell-like flowers.

"These bandages are covered in a special burn cream." Miya quietly said as she gently cleaned the blood off of his healed wounds. Once she finished wiping off all of the blood off of their patient, she looked back up at Tetsuo. "Could you please cover his wounds? I need to report that we've stabilized him...then we can move on to the next room we're needed in."

Miya quietly trudged out of the room, leaving Tetsuo to finish up tending to the cloud shinobi. As he was about to apply the bandages, a loud series of coughs roared out of the cloud shinobi. His eyes shot open, one milk-white in color from his injuries, the other bright and amber in color. The one good eye he had scanned the unfamiliar room, as any veteran shinobi would. He tried to sit up, but groaned in pain as the sedatives prevented him from moving. Breathing heavily, his left eye locked onto Tetsuo. Specifically, he eyed the hidden leaf headband Tetsuo wore, before looking over the rest of the kid.

"You..." He said between heavy breaths, "Konohagakure shinobi...Where am I? What hospital is this?" His deep, hurt voice called out to Tetsuo.

 

[Pine]

As focused as he'd been on the task at hand, it took Tetsuo a moment to decipher what had changed in the room's atmosphere. He looked back up at the heart monitor to see an absence of flashing text, and belatedly realized the alarm had cut off.

He let out a long sigh, relieved.

Tetsuo took a step back from the patient so as to grant Miya easier access, although the close quarters between them seemed to have done very little to disturb her work. With nothing else to do, he tried to check back over his own work and see if he had missed anything, but now that the immediacy of danger had been quelled, and he was left staring at a very bloodied man, he was finding it difficult to focus on anything. He simultaneously felt like he had done nothing and everything. Exhaustion begged to overtake him. Steadily, as he tuned back into his surroundings, he felt the aching in his limbs again, and he became aware once more of the hospital's alarm that was still going on. By now, he found the sound of it grating. He wished it would stop.

Tetsuo was only dully aware of Miya's own state as she finished. In the periphery of his attention, he did not think much about her affect other than that she must've been tired, just as he was.

He looked over as Miya set the bandages on the cart near him. Seeing it, he finally set the tweezers down on the tray. He did not have to wonder for long whether the medic-nin was explaining them just to keep him informed, or if he would be tasked with the charge of dressing the wounds.

After Miya left the room, Tetsuo swore under his breath. He closed his eyes and, still wearing the gloves, pushed the backs of his hands against his eyes. After everything they just did, there was still more to do. Not only that, but after they finished here, there were more patients waiting for them. He knew it needed to be done, and it was important to him that he saw his duties out to their completion, but if he were to be completely honest with himself, he just wanted to sleep. He allowed himself one more sigh before returning to work. He rolled off and threw away the gloves he'd had on and replaced them with a pair free from any specks of blood before picking up the fresh bandages. He got as far as peeling up the sticky end of the tinted bandage when the Cloud shinobi woke and started hacking.

Tetsuo immediately stopped what he was doing and flinched. His brow furrowed and his eyes widened in surprise. Even though the Cloud ninja had grunted and reacted in small ways throughout the period that they'd treated him, Tetsuo was completely caught off guard. Never once had he considered the patient regaining consciousness to even remotely be a possibility.

As the man tried to gather his bearings, Tetsuo quickly realized just how much he wished this man had stayed unconscious. He did not want to talk to him. Not only was he the only person available to catch this stranger up on what had happened, but seeing the man move so animated, even just by talking, made it all too real that, in spite of all the effort put into saving his this man's life, there were still scars left, and there was no way this man's life would ever be the same again after tonight. It was an extremely grim thought for a time where Tetsuo was not wanting to think at all about anything.

He grimaced, because he was unlucky enough that the guy was now speaking to him. He let out the breath he'd been holding, trying to not sound too annoyed when he said, "You're at the Sakura Haruno Hospital in the Leaf Village." Tetsuo tried very hard to keep in mind this man had just woken up, and he couldn't expect the Cloud shinobi to make any split-second deductions at the time.

He continued, "I'm going to need you to stay still. I need to put these bandages on you."

Tetsuo reached out with his free hand for the man's arm to see how he would react. He wouldn't try wrapping before reassurance this man would be compliant, he thought.

 

[Gilzar]

"I'm in the Leaf Village?!" His pained voice asked in confusion. The only good eye he had continued to look around the room, and his entire body stiffened. It was likely that both the drugs and the trauma from the blast was hindering his memory.

"Why am I...wait..." He paused, with his eyes widening as realization overcame his hazy memory. His body suddenly began to relax. It seemed that Tetsuo's words were having some sort of impact on him, and he was beginning to accept the situation. Rather than continually circle the room to try and gauge his surroundings, his eye finally rested on Tetsuo in a much more calm manner.

"Do what you must. But please...answer me this. I remember there was a hostage situation...but how did I end up here? What happened, do you know?"

 

[Pine]

The hand Tetsuo had been reaching out with instead lowered to the edge of the examination table. He sighed through his nose, disappointed, but not surprised, that the man still had questions after he had been given his extremely vague reply. He afforded the man what very little patience he had to offer and waited as the reality of his situation seemed to sink in with the Cloud shinobi. Apparently this paid off, as the stranger not only calmed, but he also verbally permitted Tetsuo the access he needed.

For a moment, his eyebrows raised with surprise at the man's question, then fell back down as he began to answer. "I... did not know there was a hostage situation," he said, looking disquieted. "I just heard this was the second bombing that had happened nearby."

Tetsuo ached to know more. What had happened with the hostage? Had appropriate forces been sent out to deal with them? The situation seemed very bleak given that this attack had managed to surprise so many shinobi as it was, and seeing how every one of them must have been more experienced than he was.

Regardless, there was nothing more he could do at the moment to get the answers that he sought. Maybe this man's memory would recover enough to remember these kinds of details about the event, but Tetsuo would be long gone from the room by then.

With the Cloud shinobi's compliance, the young genin resumed his work. Gently, he guided the man's burned leg to bend at the knee, then began wrapping around the man's calf with the better access he had now.

 

[Gilzar]

"A bombing?" the burned cloud shinobi asked, taken back by the answer. Once again, he reflected on Tetsuo's words, visibly lost in his thoughts. "That would explain the flash...the last thing I remember was a bright flash of light. Then I ended up here."

Although their interaction was brief, Tetsuo's insight seemed to be enough to put the injured shinobi at ease. He fully rested his head back into his pillow and closed his eyes. He didn't speak another word for the rest of the time that Tetsuo worked on him.

As Tetsuo finished up working on the man, two voices could be heard conversing in the hallway outside. The voices steadily grew louder and louder, until the muffled conversation could be clearly heard on the other side of the door.

"Here is the patient Miya's been working on..." The muffled voice of Yuri Hyuga said just outside of the door.

The audible noise of the doorhandle turning filled the room for a brief moment, followed by the door swinging open. Yuri walked into the room, still in the same blood-soaked attire that Tetsuo had first seen her in. From behind her, the familiar face of Ginji Hyuga walked into the room with a casual demeanor. Once Tetsuo came fully into his view, Ginji halted in his tracks, and a puzzled expression replaced his once indifferent look as his white eyes glared at Tetsuo.

"And here is the boy I was telling you about, father." Yuri said to Ginji as they both white-haired Hyuga clan members looked over Tetsuo and his work.

"I never got your name?" Yuri asked to Tetsuo.

"His name is Tetsuo Ayane." Ginji said, answering the question in a stern tone before Tetsuo could. He walked up the resting cloud ninja, carefully examining his condition. Without a word, the veins around his eyes bulged as he activated his byakugon, looking closely at how every wound was treated. Miya was one of the best medical shinobi they had, but in her current state Ginji wanted to be sure her work was good. That, and he was skeptical that her unknown helper could be relied upon. Now that he knew the boy's identity was none other than the troublesome Tetsuo, he definitely wanted to be sure the work was up to his standards.

"You're the one Katsuro sent?" She paused, watching her father Ginji pour over Miya and Tetsuo's work. "That explains why you're here then..."

It didn't take long for Ginji to completely look over the man. In spite of Miya's current condition, and Tetsuo's inexperience with medical procedure, the patient had been treated properly. All of the shrapnel had been removed from his system, and each burn had been treated and bandaged. Even after a long night of drinking Miya hadn't lost her touch, but she couldn't take all of the credit. Even without his byakugon, Ginji knew what the incisions of a medical shinobi looked like compared to a normal ninja. Tetsuo's cuts to get the shrapnel out weren't perfect, but they were precise enough to get the job done, and that was all that mattered.

The veins around his eyes relaxed as Ginji deactivated his byakugon. A small grin grew across his face as he looked over at Tetsuo, contrasting the stern expression he had with the boy when he first came into the room. Tetsuo had impressed him with his work here, which was not something he had expected given his first impression of the kid. Katsuro was right, this brat is full of surprises.

"I hope you know you just helped save a man's life." Ginji's gravely voice complimented Tetsuo. "You seem to handle yourself well in the ER. If you ever want to learn medical ninjutsu, let me know."

Satisfied with the situation, Ginji walked back over to Yuri. "I don't agree with Miya working in this state...but I suppose the end justifies the means. If you keep supervising her and Tetsuo then I'm fine with them working..."

Ginji paused, licked his fingers and started rubbing them against the blood stain in Yuri's hair. "You really should wear a hat..."

"Father..." Yuri said with an annoyed glare.

Ginji chuckled. "I know. I'll stop." He then left the room, vanishing into the maze of hallways just outside.

With Ginji out of the room, Yuri shifted her attention back to Tetsuo.

"Thank you for getting Miya. Normally I don't let her work when she's drunk but I had to make an exception tonight. She's one of the best medical shinobi here."

Yuri let out a sigh, eyeing the room Miya occupied at the opposite side of the hall. She hated seeing her like this. Miya had actually been sober for three months before the news of the Hokage's death hit the village. This was the first time she'd seen her since.

"There are still a few more patients I'd like you and Miya to work on. Don't worry, they're all in much better condition than this man was. After that you can go. I'll let Katsuro you were a big help here."

Yuri then directed Tetsuo to the room Miya was currently working in. The rest of the night was uneventful compared to what he had just went through. He mainly just had to hand tools to Miya or deliver forms back and forth to the receptionist's desk. What remained of his punishment for the next two weeks would also be relatively mundane. Tetsuo would spend the rest of his time between the emergency room and the intensive care unit. Most of the time he would be doing odd jobs, such as changing bed pans, mopping hallways, or helping the receptionists with their paperwork. Occasionally, he would work the late shifts in the ER with Miya Kimura. Unlike their first encounter, she was completely sober. Miya barely spoke to Tetsuo as she moped through the hallways, only talking to Tetsuo when she needed him to do something.

-------------

Although the brutal training regiments made it feel longer, all three of the genin had completed their first week of training. By now all three instructors had split into different training areas and the teammates were rarely seeing one another. Tetsuo and Katsuro continued their exhausting training to improve Tetsuo's offense at their original training grounds. Similar to the first day, Katsuro would start the morning off with hard sparring before switching to some drill needed to improve Tetsuo's offense. While the nature of these drills varied greatly, Katsuro pushed them at an extremely exhausting pace in order to push Tetsuo to improve. With the second week beginning today, Katsuro would continue to push Tetsuo in order to improve his taijutsu.

Similar to Tetsuo, there wasn't a single day of Mizu's training that wasn't brutal. Each day Ginji would take Mizu to a different part of the village to do a different series of exercises while bearing the encumbrance of her training weights. Mizu was faced with an exhaustion the likes of which she had never faced before. In all of her years training under her uncle she had never been pushed like this. Every minute of every workout was a mental battle. Even getting out of bed in the morning to willingly slide the weights back on proved to be a challenge. But the girl endured, and by the end of the first week walking around with all the extra weight was slightly less difficult than when they first began.

Even though Haruki's training wasn't physical, that didn't mean it was easy. Each day Haruki had to channel his chakra in ways he had never practiced before. Matsuda used her sharingan to give him the best advice she could, but her words could only help so much. Burns were beginning to form on his hands from using so much chakra every day. Using that much chakra was physically and mentally draining. Even though he was given adequate time to rest, the frequency of training never made it seem like it was quite enough.

------------

Today was Monday, marking the start of the second week of training between Matsuda and Haruki. Like the day before, the two of them met at the canal just next to the hot spring. However, today was an unusually warm day for this time of the year. It seemed the village would have one final day of the intense summer heat before the fall weather was forecasted to finally begin next week.

Matsuda came well prepared for the heatwave, ready to make the most out of the last hot day they'd have in a while. Today was technically her day off, even though she had agreed to train Haruki, so she dressed for the occasion. Rather than dawning her normal Jonin attire, Matsuda instead wore a stylish sage-green colored romper. The top portion of the single-piece outfit was sleeveless, with a deep V-shaped that led down to the brown wooden buttons at the center of the outfit. Below, the lower portion consisted of baggy short-shorts that almost resembled a skirt at first glance. In the center of the romper was a cloth belt of the same sage-green colored romper to tie outfit to Matsuda's figure. To top the outfit off, she wore simple sandals and black sunglasses.

In Matsuda's arms was a color and folding chair. She walked to the stairs leading down into the canal just next to the walking bridge. Matsuda set the folding chair up on top of the stone-stairs that led into the waters of the canal below, so she'd have the best view of haruki.

"Good morning, my shining pupil!" Matsuda cheerfully exclaimed to Haruki as she sat down on her folding chair and set her cooler on the ground next to her. "Why don't you show me how far you've come along with the technique we've been working on?"

 

[Pine]

Bandaging the patient posed a few challenges that Tetsuo had not expected when first assigned this task. The main problem was how to get the wrappings all the way around the man’s torso. Because of the sedatives, the Cloud shinobi was unable to sit up on his own. Tetsuo had to find the button to raise the back of the examination table then prop him up the rest of the way on his shoulder. Wrapping his face was less challenging, but Tetsuo felt bad for not being able to think of a way to cover his injuries other than wrapping his entire head. To alleviate some of this guilt, he took the extra time to adjust the bandages around his eyes, nose and mouth, trying to make the wrappings as comfortable as he knew how.

It was at that point he heard the voices in the hall. Without being able to make them out very well at first, he assumed Miya had returned with one of the doctors he’d heard earlier. He eventually made out the steadfast speech of Yuri, but when the door swung open, Tetsuo was taken aback to see not Miya, but Ginji in company.

The boy stopped what he was doing and stared wide-eyed at the senior shinobi. The resemblance between the two was glaringly obvious now that they were standing right next to each other. He felt stupid for not making the connection that they might know each other sooner, given what he knew about Ginji now and his involvement with the Leaf’s medical shinobi. In his conversation with Katsuro, Tetsuo had gotten it in his head that he wouldn’t see the Hyuga man again until maybe tomorrow morning, and so to see him standing in the same room as him now took a second for the younger boy’s mind to recalibrate.

This encounter, evidently, caught Ginji off guard as well. This manifested in a face he made at Tetsuo that was both shocked and upset.

According to Yuri, they had already been talking about him, though he had never given a proper introduction. When the preteen girl prompted for this, however, Ginji cut in without giving him a chance to respond.

Tetsuo immediately bristled at this. Katsuro had been right. Ginji had forgotten nothing of their interaction earlier, and now he spoke his name as though it was worth nothing but scorn.

Every gesture and inflection of tone made by Ginji was interpreted as a nearly palpable hostility to Tetsuo. Even though he had not been trying to hide anything, Ginji said his name as if he had been. As if Tetsuo would not have willingly given his name, and so Ginji had to step in before he lied or avoided the question. It felt like such a vagrant misrepresentation of his character and intentions, it made Tetsuo’s blood boil.

To make matters worse, Yuri apparently knew Katsuro, and by association she knew it had not been voluntary that he was here. To her now, nothing Tetsuo had done came from a genuine desire to help. In fact, he was certain that Katsuro would have smeared his name, describing him as some problem child who only thought about himself or any number of other colorful insults the jonin had used on him in the past. Somehow, this impression left on Yuri may have bothered him more than anything.

Tetsuo drilled a hard glare into Ginji, even as he backed away from the examination table to allow better access to the patient. At any given moment, the young genin expected an insult or critique that he would have to defend himself against. Vividly, he imagined Ginji picking up on some asinine marksmanship of imperfect technique he would point out just to attack the younger shinobi’s ego.

That was why, when Ginji instead evaluated the patient’s stable condition, smiled and gave praise, Tetsuo’s expression became that of disbelief. After everything that had happened, he could not believe this man would spend the energy to compliment him, and yet that was exactly what had happened.

Tetsuo simply did not know how to respond. He was overwhelmed with emotion, such that he felt his face turning red and he had to find some random other point in the room to turn his furrowed gaze to.

Tetsuo barely processed any of the remainder of the exchange between Yuri and her father. He gathered enough to hear a father doting on his daughter, and the exasperation she had in response. He heard Ginji’s retreating footsteps and the door click as he left the room, and it was only then that Tetsuo began to relax.

He turned his attention back to Yuri. If there was any animosity she felt towards him now, she hid it completely. If anything, she was continuing with the trend of giving him positive attention, thanking him for bringing Miya back to them and telling him this would be passed onto Katsuro. Even by that small expression of gratitude, Tetsuo still did not know how to react. The whiplash from feeling as though he were the subject of contempt to instead only be looked upon favorably was enough to make him reel. It was something he was not used to. He wished it would stop.

Graciously, she spared him from anymore of this and began to lead him from the room they were in onto the next one with Miya.

As he followed her between rooms, he kept his silence and continued to reflect on everything that had just happened. Not only had Ginji found his performance in his work with the Cloud shinobi exceptional, but he had offered to train Tetsuo personally, should he so have the desire to ever pursue medical ninjutsu. Or, if not him personally, then it seemed he would help to set him up on taking that path. In less than a minute, an entire avenue in his life had opened up, presenting uncharted possibilities to him.

For a brief moment, Tetsuo tried to picture what that would look like, him training under Ginji in order to become a medical ninja. Reaching the end of his contemplation as he entered the next patient’s room, he thought to himself, There was no way in hell that would happen.

- - - - -

After all of the excitement from the first day, the rest of the two weeks almost felt too easy. Tetsuo was bogged down the first five days by the physical exertion he’d pushed, but even though Katsuro did not waver in the relentless nature of his drills, the sore feeling in his muscles had started to fade into background noise by the sixth day. That was when the mundanity of his ‘volunteer’ work really began to set in, when stooping to change a bedpan no longer caused him excruciating pain.

The strangest part was when he saw Miya. From how coordinated and clear-headed she was for the remainder of his time at the hospital, it almost felt like he had imagined the entire encounter he’d had with her at her apartment. But he knew what he had seen. It could not be chalked up to simply one bad night of binge drinking. What he had seen had been the accumulation of weeks’ worth of alcohol. If ever he went to her apartment to summon her again, she would meet him at the door and do nothing to give him a chance to really glance inside to see the state of her unit.

She had gone stone cold sober, but the unmistakable cloud of general melancholy hung over her. It reminded him of his own mother, and for reasons Tetsuo was unable to identify, it made him want to avoid her.

Miya had plenty of opportunities to ask him about Mizu or his connection to her. He had thought after her timid request to keep secrecy between them and their meeting, she would at least want to know how her daughter was faring, but she never gave an inkling that she even thought about speaking to him. Was she trying to hide from Mizu altogether? Were they separated because she didn’t want to see her? Or was it all just a pretense so that she may act as if the two of them never met if ever questioned?

These were all things that Tetsuo found himself slipping into musing during every smoke break Katsuro forced them to take. He didn’t want to dedicate the brain power to think about this, but after he planned out how to arrange his day in order to get all of his chores done and still allot the time needed to show up to the hospital, there was very little else he had left to think about. Yuri could not tell him anything more about the bombing than what he’d already learned from the Cloud shinobi, and in the absence of Matsuda and Haruki, he had nothing to be annoyed by other than the occasional nagging from Katsuro. Even though he continued to pretend as if the meeting between he and Mizu’s mother never happened, he still tried to parse exactly what it was that Katsuro had been trying to make a point of by bringing them together, but with Miya’s shutdown from all of the vulnerability she had first displayed, he was stuck.

- - - - -

Haruki’s training for the next week was nothing at all like what he first imagined when he had volunteered to train in ninjutsu.

It was extremely mundane and repetitive. All of the excitement from going to the hot springs with Matsuda had been thwarted by, what had not only been a minor upset that his tutor had not done much to change her wardrobe the way that he had, but also what he perceived to be a frustrating lack of process. As Haruki had imagined it, he had pictured thrusting a tidal wave of his own to rival Matsuda’s own by day three and the rest of the time would be spent refining his epic new jutsu in different ways to brutally crush his enemies… but this was far from the case.

While each morning he was able to see visible improvement in his technique, Matsuda still would not let him pass the first step. Their routine was him standing in the canal’s water for hours each day performing what was almost a meditative practice and he came to hate every minute of it. It simply was not enough things for him to do with his hands. Frequently, he found himself wishing for a third arm that he could at least text with.

It was nowhere near their first meeting, but Matsuda’s consistently chipper attitude and sole focus being on him eventually made him grow comfortable around her once again. His complaints grew in theatrics, but each time it took no more than a nudge from the kunoichi to set him back to work.

- - - - -

Haruki had dragged his feet to the canal just as he had every morning since their training, mostly because his parents got up early enough to bribe him with breakfast then shove him out of the door. This day he had gotten there before Matsuda. His phone buzzed with texts from his friend Taro, and though he would usually jump at the opportunity to answer them, the exhaustion from training all week was really starting to get to him.

Haruki laid with his back flat against the boardwalk, arms splayed out and legs draped over the edge, feet idly kicking at the water. His eyes were closed shut and his head buzzed with weariness. The sun felt pleasant on his skin, but he hadn’t yet made the connection that to have it be this warm so early in the morning meant the heat would be brutal for the rest of the day starting in less than an hour. For the time being, there was no foot traffic, and the peace of no more interruption than a small fish bubbling the waters surface of a bird landing further away from the bridge made him wish he could sleep here.

When Matsuda arrived and shouted her bright greeting, Haruki jerked from his state of rapture and looked to her. His eyes widened a little as he propped himself up on his elbows to see that she had finally changed into a different set of clothes this day. It was just as chic as he imagined her day-to-day to be. He himself was sporting new swimming trunks with slices of watermelon patterning his legs, but this was a true exhibition of fashion. It was enough of a break in what had otherwise been the same exact regimen they’d had going for the past six days to light a small spark of excitement in him.

“Yes, ma’am!” he said.

After he set his phone to the side, Haruki clapped his legs together, wriggled his bottom to edge closer to the lip of the bridge then slipped the rest of the way into the water. Although his feet planted in the same spot he’d been able to stand and train in all week, he bend his knees to submerge himself fully into the water before springing back up and shaking the water from his hair.

Stationed now, he breathed in deep through his mouth to try to prep himself for focus and held the air in his cheeks. Haruki made the half tiger seal, and after a couple of beats, blew the air from out of his mouth and out of his lungs. He dipped his free hand into the water and summoned the chakra within him. Yesterday when he attempted this, it the small wave would form, but only after a startup period, and as the wave progressed forward, it would unnaturally peter out and sink back into the water’s body. This time, the water responded without hesitation. From where his fingers touched, the water’s surface folded over, and the swell of water rolled forward, holding shape and clearing a path against the canal’s gentle current.

 

[Gilzar]

As soon as Haruki had made the wave, Matsuda sprung out of her chair in excitement. Finally, after an entire week of drilling the basics of water manipulation, Haruki had finally done it. A perfect wave rolled through the canal, flowing seamlessly against the current of the river. It was a perfect wave, signaling that Haruki was now capable of manipulating a water source.

"Well done Haruki, that was perfect!" Matsuda cheered as she rushed down the stairs entered the water next to Haruki.

There was now two paths they could go with the training. Either Matsuda could teach him how to create water with his chakra away from the source, or she could move forward and teach him how to use the technique in a water source. In only a few quick thoughts, Matsuda opted to move forward with the technique. If Haruki could master crushing wave then forming water away from a source would come easy for him.

"Now we can move onto the next step: mastering the technique itself." She instructed to the genin, "In order to do that we'll have to master the six handsign combination. Utilizing these six handsigns, you'll be able to mold your chakra to release the technique properly. Pay attention, I'll show you the hand signs."

One at a time, Matsuda showed Haruki each hand sign needed for the technique. She started the technique with the tiger seal, followed by the boar seal, dragon, dog, bird, and finally ox. Unlike the first time she demonstrated the technique, Matsuda did not slam her hands into the water to finish the technique. Rather, she paused, then repeated the sequence of hand signs multiple times for Haruki to memorize. Matsuda did this because during her time working with Haruki, she had noticed his attention issues. Had this been one of the common techniques she showed him, she would have made a laminated sheet of paper for him to reference. But since this was an uncommon technique, and Matsuda wanted to keep it that way, she would not print anything off nor allow him to take any notes.

"Why don't you give it a go now? String together the hand signs for me."

 

[Pine]

After so many close calls where Haruki thought he had gotten it right but Matsuda insisted his waves needed tweaking, he had no idea the wave he had made would finally pass the jonin's inspection. He beamed at her praise and he straightened his posture a bit. Finally he had done it. He had never worked so hard at learning a jutsu — it had taken him completely surprise when one day that week, he had woken up with burns on his hands. Now all of his hard work had finally paid off, and the excited confidence he felt showed plain on his face when Matsuda came into the water next to him.

This same confidence began to falter when the kunoichi, with the same enthusiasm that got her to spring out of her chair a moment ago, informed him that he had only gotten down one step in this process. The corners of Haruki's mouth pinched as he tried not to let that disappointment get to him. As Matsuda continued to weave the signs over and over again, Haruki pepped himself by reminding himself that, even though this looked like a lot of handsigns to do all at once very quickly, he knew the handsigns! And he'd learned all of the basic jutsu that the academy taught them and how to apply them even though this was a lot more handsigns in a row than he'd ever had to do before.

"Yeah, I can do that," Haruki said with now-faux confidence. "Should be no sweat!"

Quickly, the young genin wove what was a rough approximation of the handsigns Matsuda had shown him. The first sign of tiger was done easily, and he followed up with the strong hold of the boar clamped in formation. Everything after that was out of order, or otherwise had been bastardized with improper form from how quickly he was locking his fingers together. Then, in spite of Matsuda doing nothing following her own sign weaving, Haruki slammed his hands into the water with a, "Hup!"

Predictably, the only thing he was able to produce was a petite splash.

Haruki sucked his lips back into his mouth and hummed to himself in a mild, impatient frustration.

 

[Gilzar]

An awkward silence brewed as the water splashed from the failed technique. Matsuda just stood there, waiting for Haruki's frustrated humming to reside so that she could explain what went wrong. It wasn't hard to see, she didn't even need to bring out her sharingan to closely examine what had happened. Haruki had used the wrong hand signs, and thus nothing happened. There was a small bit of disappointment festering within Matsuda. She was hoping that he'd get the hand signs done first try, though she hid this perfectly behind her usually friendly demeanor.

"Let's try that again...Focus on getting the hand signs right before you finally follow through with the technique." Matsuda explained.

Once again Matsuda went through the motions of the technique. She went through each of the hand signs once again, this time at a slightly slower pace for Haruki to copy.

"I know you're eager to use the technique." Matsuda explained as she repeated the cycle for a second time. "But if you can't remember the hand signs now, how will you ever remember them in the pressure of a battle? Learn these hand signs by heart so you won't have to think about them later."

 

[Pine]

At the same time that Matsuda was showing him the hand signs, Haruki watched and mimicked each one, only lagging behind a little as he tried to process each one of the signs. After they finished, he tried to string the order of signs together faster, only half-listening as the jonin tried to remind him of the importance of being patient. Once again, he started to fumble around the fourth sign. Haruki pouted his lips, then tried again. The result was the same.

The boy let out a groan. Just as Matsuda had seen many times earlied that week, Haruki rolled his eyes, swung his arms back and flopped onto his back, evening his weight so that he floated up on the water's surface. "This sucks," he said. "Why does there have to be so many signs? Other jutsu aren't like that. Isn't there a shorter way to do it?"

 

[Gilzar]

Matsuda closed her eyes behind her black sunglasses, and softly shook her head. By now she had grown used to Haruki's attitude toward the mundane nature of this training. "Nope, there aren't any shortcuts with this technique." Matsuda replied back.

"Crushing Waves already uses the bare minimum of hands needed to use it. There's just too many components to the technique to set it up otherwise." She explained to her impatient student, "You have to form the wave, then you have to manipulate the wave, then you have to accelerate the wave, maintain it, and control it. The hand signs, when done properly, prepares your chakra to accomplish those steps. Other techniques don't have all those handsigns because they don't have to do so many things."

To keep Haruki motivated, Matsuda playfully flicked Haruki's forehead with her pointer finger, followed by an exaggerated wink that would be visible even behind her sunglasses. "Besides, once you get these memorized we can finally practice the real technique."

She put her hand on his shoulder and leaned her face in closer to his. "Think about all those people that hang out here on their lunch break." Matsuda said in a quiet, playful tone. "You'd look pretty cool making tidal waves that reach the top of this canal. I bet everyone would watch...especially the women."

Matsuda brought her head back and rested her hands on her hips. "And all you have to do to get there is memorize these six hand signs."

Once again she went through the handsigns, hoping she would have his full attention once again.

 

[Pine]

Haruki, once again, began humming a single tone to himself as Matsuda gave him the answer he did not want. As she explained all of the 'how's and the 'why's for the technique, he imagined the word 'boredom' rotating in his mind on a spit, rotisserie-style. Idly, he wondered if it was too late to change his mind and ask to learn one of the other water-style techniques she had offered before. Then he remembered his imagined, extremely unpleasant sensation of forming the water necessary for ejecting an offensive maneuver directly from his mouth.

Just before he got too caught up in wallowing in his own misery, Matsuda surprised him by with a playful flick of her fingers and a wink.

Haruki blushed lightly, and he covered the spot on his forehead that she'd touched with his own hand. He rubbed at the spot, partly to cover where he felt his cheeks coloring as Matsuda tempted him with the prospect of impressing bystanders on or near the pier. He pouted his lips, thoughtfully this time. Then he asked, a tad conspiratorially, "You think I might be able to splash them from here?"

Haruki mulled everything over for a moment more, letting the gentle waves of the canal rock his body up and down. In an instant, he swung his legs up then back into the water, propelling himself back onto his feet. "Okay! I'm gonna' try it again."

- - - - -

Thanks to Matsuda's patience, and her own willingness to adapt and try different methods of getting through to Haruki, her temporarily designated pupil was able to adequately get the handsigns down by the next day. After that came drills for the actual technique. For the first several days, it was difficult to stay motivated and not be discouraged as he fumbled through combining every element of the jutsu at once. So often the little mound of water he managed to raise up would just as soon cave in on itself to be nothing more than a mere ripple, the wave would fail to maintain a speed that could hold its shape, or otherwise its direction would swing out of control and turn to submerge him beneath its wave.

Nearly midway through their last week together, Haruki had yet another moment where things seemed to click together for him. Suddenly, every individual component was a facet he could tune simultaneously, and the beginning of a respectable wave had started to form. As his excitement mounted, an explosion of progress was made. The regiment of handsigns had been drilled so thoroughly into him, he no longer thought about them. When his hands touched the water, it lapped up obediently. In two days' time, Haruki had elevated a wave that barely reached his sternum to pulling up to his shoulders, growing only from there as it accelerated down the canal's way. It was taxing on his chakra reserve, just as Matsuda had promised, but seeing and feelings the effects of his efforts were rewarding in a way he wasn't sure he'd ever experienced.

After that second day, however, Haruki seemed to run out of ideas on what he could do from there, and it seemed as if all momentum had been lost. There was very little headway he was making to refine his waves into the sharp edges of Matsuda's own. By the end of the week, it seemed the jutsu would be usable within specific contexts, but the power differential between himself and his tutor was stark.

- - - - -

On the day of their mission, they met directly in front of the Hokage's office. Tetsuo had easily arrived with several minutes to spare. Ever since his volunteer work with the hospital had ended, he almost felt as if he had too much time on his hands. Soto had been much more demanding of his attention since he'd gotten back from his first mission, but the mudanity of child's play and the hours after he'd put her to bed instilled a sort of restlessness in him once more. Tetsuo had considered for a moment that he may want to try volunteering at the hospital again, but he just as quickly dismissed it when he realized almost two full weeks had passed without an iota of the excitement he'd experienced on his first day working there. It would not be fulfilling in the way that he needed.

His training with Katsuro had provided exactly what he'd wanted — the lag between his reassignment from his last team to his current one, as well ad what he deemed as ineffective training under his previous instructor, had left him feeling dull in his speed and power. After three weeks of almost nonstop grinding, he almost felt revitalized, as if he'd come into himself again, but with the addition now of feeling better able to lead an offensive charge. While he felt clearer in mind and body, he the urge to use it more and more only grew.

Four weeks, it felt, was entirely too long between missions. This was a complaint he would've made long ago too when they had first come back from the Land of Birds, but he'd been too hungry and exhausted to think of it at the time. But while he wanted to change his routine from training and get on with a new mission like never before, his early arrival had been in some vain hope that everyone else would be there early, and so they could get started even sooner. The idea of seeing the rest of his squad all together again filled him with dread, but he endured the best he could with great impatience.

- - - - -

Haruki arrived just on the cusp of being late, dragging his feet behind him. He still felt the effects his training the past few weeks had on his body. If that wasn't enough to exhaust him, his parents had kept him out for what they considered to be yet another landmark achievement. He had finished his first official round of training since becoming a genin, and this had been cause enough for his parents to get plastered and keep their son up well past midnight. Now, with not enough sleep, he felt his eyes stinging every moment he left them open or forced them shut.

While he was not looking forward to starting a new mission right after the night he'd just had, a part of him was excited to see Mizu again. After not seeing her for so long, and having what he felt like was a repaired relationship between himself and Matsuda, it had completely slipped his mind that he'd still felt an awkward-resentment the last time he'd seen her. For now, though, he would do no more than give a wave and a yawn upon his arrival. The dirty look their other teammate cast briefly his way had been completely lost to him as he shut his eyes and waited to hear his next instruction.