"Continue the Test."
The words cut into Sakura Haruna's back were as clear as could be even beyond their direct meaning.
One of the medical shinobi turned about and walked out of the room to address the Hokage where he stood beside Anko. Another special jonin had taken her place proctoring the remainder of the second exam for now as the Hokage asked for her presence.
"We took this out of her via stomach pump," the medic said, showing a partially digested snake. "That's the source of the infection."
"Is this the end of it?" the Hokage asked.
"She is showing an erratic rate of mutation," the shinobi said. "The eyes and facial marks are probably only the first signs. We can hold it off, but truly stabilizing it is beyond us. The bulk of the infectious material has been removed, so it will be slow, but all we've done is delay the end result."
"And that is?" the Hokage asked.
"Most likely?" the medic said, looking toward Sakura. "Insanity, pain and death."
The Hokage nodded.
"That bastard was always looking for the perfect genesplice," Anko muttered bitterly.
Sarutobi remained quiet as to his own thoughts on the matter and turned to look at Inoichi Yamanaka as the man came out of the room. The blonde jonin looked toward the medical ninja and Anko, remaining silent as he did so.
"I'll be heading back to the se..." Anko started to say, getting the Yamanaka's hint.
"Stay here, Anko," Hokage said. "You, go to the jonin lounge, look for a blind woman and her servant and tell them that the Hokage requests their presence."
"Yes, Sandaime Hokage," the man said quickly as he hurried out.
That done, the Hokage turned toward Inoichi.
"Anko is going to be taking charge of this girl for the foreseeable future," he said. "She needs to know what you found. In that matter, I suspect that Inoichi is going to be revealing something he considers a clan secret, Anko, give that due consideration. I imagine this has something to do with her two spirits?"
Inoichi simply stared openly at the Hokage and wondered just how the old man had learned about that. He hadn't even known that the Haruna girl had two spirits until his daughter had told him.
"Two...what?" Anko asked.
The Hokage glanced toward Inoichi and gestured for him to explain.
"It's an occasional phenomena," he said. "Twins are conceived, but one does not survive to birth. If it is early enough, the living twin absorbs the dead one. This sometimes includes a second spirit."
"The ghost of her unborn twin sister is possessing her?" Anko asked.
"Not quite," the Hokage said. "They typically do not recognize each other as separate entities, for all intents and purposes they are the same, and as they grow older, they become more and more unified. I'm guessing this has upset the normal routine?"
Grimacing again at the man's knowledge.
"They still recognize each others' thoughts as their own," Inoichi said. "But they're not even closely agreeing any longer. The result is confusion and dissonance that's making everything else worse. Fortunately, while it's bad, it would have been worse with anybody else."
"Why's that?" Anko asked.
"Because then the snake would have had a complete hold over whoever was infected," the blonde said. "Not my daughter or even I would have been able to separate them, much less seal them away."
"What was done to her?" Anko demanded, narrowing her eyes.
"Orochimaru didn't do this over the course of a couple of hours," he said. "He's been in her head several times over at least three days. There are several genjutsu blocks throughout her mind, most to keep her from going for help it seems or from figuring out that she was even being manipulated."
"She's our extra," Anko said. "He slipped her in as a distraction, and now we're focused on controlling and helping her so we can't interrupt him. What about her behavior afterwords? Genjutsu?"
"No, her aggression has been enhanced and her memories are feeding her muscle memory," the mind reader said. "Something of a poor man's Sharingan, I guess. Not much use without the ability to see chakra, but it lets her perform taijutsu to a much higher degree than she used to have."
"So the killing was her choice?" the Hokage asked.
"Yes and no," Inoichi said. "Her second spirit has been more affected than the primary, and it probably feels like it made the decision, but as long as the snake had a hold, the instincts had free run of the body."
"Can the snake be removed?" the Hokage asked.
"Lessened, weakened, tamed," Inoichi said. "Removed, no. But if the medical shinobi can control the physical mutation, my clan can help her with the mental problems."
"Who's in control right now?" the Hokage asked, looking out toward the sedated ninja.
"The aggressive personality," Inoichi said, glancing the same way. "Sakura herself is too shell-shocked to take charge."
Anko didn't need the man to say anything more to know that he didn't consider that healthy either.
"Is there a difference as to who's in control?" Anko asked.
"The second spirit isn't a full person, just an echo of the dead twin as imprinted by the living one," he said. "It's a caricature, not a fully functioning identity. Extended control by it is dangerous. It's not equipped to do more than spur the primary on some things. Control like this is an emergency measure."
The Hokage nodded.
"Do what you can for her," he said, dismissing the man.
Anko waited until he was gone.
"I'm in charge of her?" she repeated.
"As of the moment I said it," he explained. "No one here knows better what it is to go through what she has. I'll speak to her parents with you."
"Thanks for that, sir," she noted.
Kashou took up at some distance and pulled himself into a shady patch nestled between the closely grown trunks of two of the great trees, one of which was great and healthy while the other had died the expense of the successful tree.
It was a place steeped in the flow of yin within the plethora of yang that filled the great and lively forest. Pushing himself back into that niche served to conceal him in the energies that were counter to the wild and savage abandon of the plants and animals throughout the forest.
He sat down and entered a stance, letting the flow of chi through him with each breath, adjusting himself to breathe in time with the trickle of yin he had immersed himself in.
And then he let his soul ride out on the currents, holding tight to the chi that flowed into and out of his body.
Swiftly, he let his mind be pulled along the currents of chi drawing closer to what he was seeking, switching from one thread to another and remembering always the path back to his own body.
He came to a tree killed by unhealthy poisonous chi, radiating out from an impact of immense physical force and the touch of some sort of fire.
From there it was easy to be drawn toward the one who had done this.
And what he found confirmed the rumors.
In most people, either the Yin or the Yang were dominant naturally. Someone with training to could flush one sort of chi for another, but it would merely alter which was dominant for the moment. Only masters with years of study reached such a level that they could hold usable levels of both yin and yang at the same time.
Masters that had done long study and a handful of particularly lucky bloodlines. Though even they needed training to make any use out of that natural trend.
"Well, well," he said as he let himself drift back towards his body. "Someone will be interested in this. It seems there's an extra Saotome walking about."
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(Posted Fri, 17 Sep 2010 13:08)
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