Kiyomi grunted taking another painful step forward, she was rushing it. She felt like Mana was in trouble and felt responsible for helping her friend out. She didn’t quite know the source of that responsibility, she barely even knew her friend, hell, they didn’t even start off that great. Still, getting almost killed together twice in two days makes even the shakiest of friendships get hardened fast. Mana revealed herself and dumped her advantage back when they were fighting Hachi, Kiyomi’s well-being was more important to this girl than victory, than her own life. She’d rather risk her safety and life than have Kiyomi suffer and that notion surprised the Yamanaka.
There weren’t that many people like that. This world was a world of bastards. Bastards everywhere one went, ready to place their leg in front of you to trip you over, ready to drive a stick into your wheel to make your carriage flip over. That was just the human nature, in this world the death and suffering of one meant advancement of the other’s position. When one ninja died, others got their work. If a ninja messed up their assassination that work was not only transferred to another, the other one had to pick up their assignment and they had to do it faster, before the target successfully managed to strengthen their security and destroy the chances of mission’s success. That made the mission rank higher, that made it grant the ninja who completed it great fame and higher reward. It was a sick society where loss of one was a victory for everyone else.
Mana was different, she sacrificed everything and was willing to sacrifice more, she lamented not the fact that she gave everything up for the well-being of others but because she didn’t have more to give them. Every time she gave everything up so that someone else could live better she felt bad because she didn’t give them enough. If a person lived because of her actions, she was sad because that person didn’t live a better life or because they had to suffer in the first place.
It wasn’t even that she was delusional. The strange case of Nakotsumi Mana was that she perfectly realized the nature of the world around her. She didn’t have naïve illusions that everything around her was made of cotton candy like everyone thought, she knew it was sick and messed up. There was no surprise in the face of this magician when Hisako yelled out her tirade of how sick this world was before going into the tent of Hachi’s, no, Mana was almost bored by those words, she just looked back at the woman with a confused and slightly angered look. She knew how it really was, somewhere deep inside, she did know everything. Yet she didn’t change one bit of herself. She was kind and giving by choice, with full awareness that this way of life had nothing but suffering and loss for her. People like this didn’t deserve to fight their friends and their enemies and die, they deserved…
What did they deserve? Did they deserve to be in charge of the whole thing? Did they deserve the whole world for being like they were? Probably not. That’d diminish the meaning of Mana’s mentality. The magician was kind not because she wanted to be in charge, she wanted to be that way because she wanted everyone else to be more like that. She saw the problem and decided to change herself so drastically that the others would only take a small fraction of her mentality and that fraction would still be enough to change and solve the problem. She was a hero of overacting with the kindest of intentions. Kiyomi wasn’t sure of what people like Mana deserved, all she knew for certain was that it most certainly was not death.
“Do… Do you think Mana died?” the Yamanaka asked, her voice whimpered.
“Not sure, she’s a dumb brat but if she’s one thing, that thing’s slippy like a bloody viper. I’m not sure if she can even die, every time I think she dies it’s just a stupid trick or some ploy or…” the Quack spoke, for a moment there Kiyomi saw some speck of emotion in his voice. Usually he spoke in this incredibly indifferent and sarcastic tone but now he did have some desire to get there in time. He helped Kiyomi walk down the steps, much slower than Mana must’ve in her crazed rush to save everyone but they would get there in time, they had to!
“Yeah… She may be crazy but in my experience silly people are sometimes the ones you wanna be around the most…” Kiyomi smiled thinking back on Hanasaku, her silly sensei who was probably busy filing papers currently. Knowing that a person who couldn’t count to thirteen without losing her track and focusing on a squirrel somewhere above was handling the logistics of the village was scary but at the same time strangely hilarious.
“I think why her dumb antics work so well is because she’s a martyr, at least tries to be. She always tries to get killed, throwing herself in danger and so the enemy is supposed to take from it that she wants to die, so when she apparently kicks the dust no one expects her return… For a medical ninja people like that is the worst plague ever” Quack smiled again, he was really getting into this emotion thing, Kiyomi couldn’t turn her eyes from the man’s smile, not because she fancied him or anything but because she had rarely seen him smile unless it was the smile of the sarcastic kind.
“Good thing you’re not a medical ninja then. For a Quack people who get injured are the best, aren’t they? I mean you guys get paid for treatment by the contractors, you’re like an independent medic for those who can’t go to the village hospital so people like Mana pay for your food” Kiyomi replied finally witnessing the end of this horrible shortcut. It wasn’t a shortcut at all, it actually took them at least ten times longer to get to the basement the way that they chose, they wasted even more time because Kiyomi was still injured and only had some stitching work and basic medic work done on her, some battlefield operations and quite skilled patching work but very spontaneous and erratic nonetheless.
“By the way, you don’t really need to hold me, I can walk by myself perfectly fine…” the blonde squinted at the Quack suggesting some dirty play from his part.
“Nonsense, lovely, if I don’t hold this lymph node here on your chest it’s going to metastasize into your thyroid and you’ll die of Huxley fever” Eiju smiled slowly moving his hand from the suggesting position it was situated in.
“That doesn’t make a nick of sense and you know that” Kiyomi angrily pushed the man back and applied some pressure on her aching ribs slowly moving forward. The Quack rubbed his elbow angrily having bumped it into the wall.
“Jeez, if all ladies are so smart in the village I’m gonna have a problem, usually most rogues are around my neck the moment I say “subdermatoglyphic”…” Eiju sighed.
The eyes of both shot wide open in surprise seeing a little kid trying to slowly book it right at them. He was stumbling, must’ve been pretty cut up, blood was everywhere on his clothes and he had some pretty nasty bruises but the fact that he was booking it meant that the other two were either down or dead. The boy pulled a long and slim blade preparing himself to slash through the two, Eiju evaded his thrust and pinched an area on his thigh, also adding a slight thump on the top of the boy’s knee sending him down on the floor screaming like he was getting murdered.
Kiyomi looked at the Quack pretty impressed, usually quite a large portion of Quacks were just that “ actual quacks. Most of them were self-taught or taught by people who were self-taught medics. It appeared that Eiju may have been a Quack who knew his way around some medical things and also used some of the more unconditional Quack methods. He was the best of both worlds. He even knew how to work pressure points apparently.
“Holy shit, we should’ve taken you with us…” Kiyomi looked at Quack surprised after she tied the boy down and went on to examine the place.
“Nah, I’m pretty glad I didn’t go, danger isn’t really my thing. I only fight disabled or elderly when I have at least four mates to back me up. That’s the medical ninja way. There are some dick rules about that for the village medical ninja, to stay behind the fighting ones, right?” the Quack asked examining the dents in the walls and blood all around the room. The signs of a very large scale battle taking place were apparent: the perfume boxes were busted so the place reeked of blood and the perfume combined making that vomit inducing combination. Any Inuzuka would’ve been disabled just entering this room alone.
“Yep” Kiyomi nodded finally noticing the hole in the middle of the room, the lack of decent lighting in the area made it really hard to notice.
“Well then, that’s my kind of a rule already, just kick back and relax while everyone does the bloody murdering for you…” Eiju placed his hands behind his head, acting as if he was already relaxing on a soft pillow of air. Kiyomi’s face paled all of a sudden and she dived down almost instantly, she was shouting incomprehensible things. She couldn’t be blamed “ she saw something horrible and she was afraid!
“Oy, blondie, so what are we singin?” the Quack shouted loudly into the dark hole, hesitant to jump in, letting the girl do the checking of how deep the hole was and what’s below for him. “We singin the “Ol—’s” or “God Bless the Dead”?”
“Get your lazy ass down here right this instant!” Kiyomi’s angry voice came back at Eiju “ she was bloody furious. Seeing how Eiju still wanted to keep her as a list of possible dinner mates later on the young man just shrugged and leaped down.
The view there was horrible, dark and smelly, that hole however only reeked of blood, there was none of that perfume mixed in which was a welcome change. Kiyomi was kneeling and pressing her head close to Mana’s bleeding face, occasionally checking her chest for a heartbeat or trying to desperately cover up the girl’s bleeding wound. The Quack knew how it looked, that stab wound looked dangerously close to the girl’s heart, it may have been nicked even…
“So, the three really did kick each other’s asses up… Sad. I like ladies more when they’re making out but that’s just me and every other sane male individual…” the Quack slowly walked up to Hisako feeling her pulse, examining her with his eyes was stupid, the room was dark enough to make specific details too hard to comprehend but just tempting enough to try it, still, wasting time was not good for anyone in medical profession. He was in it for some time and he knew when stuff was going to fail.
Quack’s hand carefully rubbed around Hisako’s body, sight was tricky, with this deceitful shade around him he needed to use touch for his diagnosis just like that blind medical guy in that one mercenary band he served on. He didn’t feel any fleshy wounds and those few he did feel were well covered by her own chakra augmentation. He had a specific diagnostic technique in his arsenal but he decided to save that for the magician girl “ she was undoubtedly in the danger of dying so he had to get the lesser attention grabbing case off his shoulder first.
“Yep, the hot one with the scars is alright. She’s got a motherlode of all concussions though, may as well not recognize your ass from the Hokage, her eyes are late to respond and she’s got a small puddle of vomit near her head, she’s knocked out for good but she’s gonna make it…” he gave Kiyomi his diagnosis for Hisako. Usually a concussion of this magnitude would’ve been dangerous but the woman was a ninja with a healthy instinctual chakra augmentation response, her body was already recognizing the injury and doing its best to self-solve all the life threatening or life-altering problems.
“That bitch is the least of my worries, she might choke on her vomit for all I care! She almost killed Mana!” Kiyomi yelled back trying her best to give any first aid she was taught to provide in the Academy. It didn’t look good, Mana looked completely knocked out with the parts of her skin that weren’t covered in blood pale like the moon, which having the girl’s complexion in mind didn’t look remotely good.
The Quack gently flipped Hisako over onto the side so that she didn’t choke on accident, she was lucky to somehow spill it all out on the first go. He then rushed to Mana and felt her up, he felt multiple cuts and bruises, several pretty deep flesh wounds, on one instance his fingers went completely into her flesh which scared him. Eiju took his hands up and moved them on top of Mana’s face, he weaved a hand seal, he still had juice for this one technique, this one technique that’d help him determine just how badly the girl is injured, he can’t diagnose it properly from where he is and moving her might be too dangerous and take too long.
“Diagnosis Jutsu” Eiju mumbled as his hands lit up with bright blueish glow, he moved them all around the girl’s body examining her injuries and getting the horrendous full view of exactly how badly injured she was.
“Not nearly, lovely, the bitch did kill her…” Eiju sighed feeling the girl’s relaxed muscles. She wasn’t dead yet but she was getting there.
Kiyomi’s eyes went through a myriad of emotions, they shifted from sadness, grief, to anger and that lovely looking bloodlust that the Quack enjoyed seeing in the eyes of young women.
“Wait… Aren’t you at least… I mean…” she tried to say something but her emotional state was just too crippled.
“I can’t, you two made the decision to move in before I regain my chakra, I can’t heal her, even with my full chakra I doubt I could take care of these injuries. There’s some extent of injury even a hundred percent of a medical ninja’s capacity cannot take care of and usually the rule is ten percent per patient. You two made the call, you have to accept the consequences, I know it sucks, consequences are the least favorite part of adult life personally, right up there with alimony and mercenaries hunting your ass for gambling debts. Who am I kidding, I don’t pay my alimony and I always poison those I gamble with…” Quack kept mumbling to himself, standing back up and rubbing his stubble that formed over the couple of days, he looked back at Hisako wondering if the last remnants of his stamina and attention should be diverted to the patient that can still be saved.
“But… She’s just been stabbed… People survive getting stabbed, I get stabbed all the time, I even keep on fighting after that! Why isn’t her own chakra dealing with it? I thought body augments its regeneration factor during extreme cases!” Kiyomi yelled back at Quack grabbing him by his collar and dragging him back to Mana forcing him to sit closer to her and look at her again.
“It does, hers doesn’t. Something went wrong, she must’ve abused chakra augmentation, it’s not something young and inexperienced ninja should toy with “ her chakra network is all messed up now. It doesn’t work at all, I didn’t sense any bodily regeneration from her, she may as well be just an ordinary civilian girl getting stabbed through the chest, I’m surprised she isn’t dead already” the Quack explained looking Kiyomi in the eyes and gently holding her head so that she looked him right in the eyes and saw how serious he was.
The Yamanaka burst into tears and almost collapsed, Eiju hugged her and pressed her head against his chest. He lowered his own eyes, was he an actual human being? He was reporting to a young woman that her friend was dying and all he cared about in his own head and gut was how good it felt having her head on his chest. That was the part he hated about being able to heal people, of making it his job and business, it made him eccentric, it made him completely indifferent and objective towards what were lives of actual people. The man pushed Kiyomi’s blonde head gently removing his pills and popping them. If he had any dignity he’d have swallowed a dozen and been done with it. Then again, assholes like him fit perfectly into this world, the world of bastards.
“There has to be something you can still do…” Kiyomi whined, jumping back at her friend, shaking her lifeless body, trying to slap her awake and then searching Mana’s pouches for something. The magician probably carried around medical food pills, those may have healed all of her wounds if she still had some but after a brief search the blondie gave up.
“Do you think so little of my word!? I told you, lovely, watch my lips closely! She’s-going-to-die! Nothing I can do bout it!” Eiju yelled back at Kiyomi surprising the blonde. He articulated the last part like the worst kind of indifferent bastard. The Quack was so mad that he was helpless, no, that wasn’t even it. If he was mad because he couldn’t help a dying girl in front of him he’d be fine, it was because it wasn’t even the reason he was mad because of. It was because he finally realized how horrible of a person he was, it was because deep inside he knew that Kiyomi wasn’t his soulmate, because he was messed up and if he did indeed love her more than a tavern whore he’d have pushed her away from him because a sick bastard like he was would’ve only hurt her.
“What do you fucking care if she lives or dies?! Who the hell is she for you!? You just met her some days ago, why do you show all that older sister bullshit for her? She’s not your sister, she’s not your anything, she isn’t even that important to the village. Out of the three of you she’s the least paid one: she’s not a part of a clan, she’s still a genin and the least experienced one out of the three of you. You caring for her doesn’t make any logical sense!” the Quack exploded, he started punching and kicking various objects over. He was so sarcastic, so calm and indifferent, why was he acting so weird all of a sudden?
“There’s something you can do, isn’t there? You’re holding something back, there’s something you can do to save Mana’s life but you don’t want to do it…” Kiyomi realized looking at the guy she let touch her and even tend to her wounds with horror and disgust. Finally he revealed himself to be the criminal scum that the blonde should’ve always taken him for, and to think that in her deepest corners of her heart she honored fantasies, joke scenarios, that maybe the two of them could work in some alternate universe, that maybe she and this ragtag rogue could say “fuck everything” and just escape the clutches of her clan, just do whatever the hell they wanted. Be happy together with this chemistry of love-hate between them. Why was she ever so dumb to give a criminal Quack hope for redemption?
“Answer me! There’s something you can do, right!?” Kiyomi yelled out with the loudest her voice could, she stood up back on her feet ready to beat the living shit out of this scumbag if he answered the way she predicted it. She hoped, begged whatever forces oversaw this Universe that he wouldn’t flip his miserable viper tongue the way she doesn’t want him to, that he doesn’t prove himself to be the worst kind of scumbag, that he doesn’t completely destroy the faith Kiyomi still had in humanity.
“Answer me…” she whispered softer, still angry but now more of the grieving and depressed kind of anger.
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