Kodachi walked into the hospital behind Mokya with a frown on her face. The medic had asked for her to come right away, more specifically her and her assistant. Her immediate fear was that Ryoko had been harmed somehow, but she was disabused by that as she came among the collection of large bulges in the chi flows that implied beings of strong chakra.
"Ahh, Kodachi-san," the Hokage said respectfully. "I am glad to see you here."
He walked to a door and opened it, altering the flow of chi significantly as it was now free to flow into new places. What came out of the door disturbed her as Mokya took her hand and led her to it.
"Can you feel anything?" the Hokage asked.
"There is a girl there, Mistress," Mokya clarified for Kodachi who shivered at the pain, rage and confusion cascading out of the form in the other room. "She's been hurt and..."
Kodachi squeezed Mokya's hand and nodded gesturing for the girl to move forward.
"I'll examine her," Mokya said. "Though I cannot do much."
Kodachi nodded and pulled out of the room to look for a table to sit down. She straightened herself and then pointed toward her chest and shrugged expressively.
"Why you?" the Hokage asked before glancing over toward Ibiki.
"Your blood tests indicate markers for schizophrenia," Ibiki said. "You have shown some eccentricity, but only mild symptoms compared to what we expected. There is no indication of any controlling medications. Kakashi's report indicates that your assistant has medical knowledge and we were wondering if that might not be a source."
Kodachi took a deep breath and mimed a pencil in hand.
Prepared, Anko brought over a notebook and pencil to the woman, who immediately began to write and pass notes over.
It was an old problem for her, her...imbalance. And to date the only solution she'd found was to regularly flush her yang and operate on yin for as long as she could, despite the fact it wasn't her natural balance.
Given that she didn't have the mastery to achieve unity or even fully adapt to yin, it came with a number sacrifices. The most obvious being that she had been denied the impressive feats of gymnastics she had been able to achieve while in the grip of her family's madness.
It was a sense of lost freedom that was always tempting her. Like alcohol for a drunk.
However, the main problem she faced was that she couldn't heal while steeped in yin until she gained better mastery over her ability to adapt herself. In the face of injury or illness, she was entirely dependent on Mokya for healing and treatment.
Or else be forced to awaken her corrupt yang for longer than she liked.
There were ways to cleanse the yang, letting the yang flow through her in a controlled pace and chipping away at the corruption piece by piece, like a river cleaning away a dead tree fragment by fragment over time. However, her cleansing had been interrupted for six years when she was in that unnatural place, and she'd backslid.
In addition, she'd lost both her teachers on the path to further mastery of her chi.
Akane-sensai...well, she supposed she could still find Akane-sensai, but not given her current responsibilities.
And Herb-kun was...taken from her. Or she was taken from him.
In either case, she was stuck where she was. Half of what she could be.
She passed on some of the technical knowledge in her writing, leaving off some of the emotion.
Mokya frowned in mercy as she felt the chi flows through the girl, and let her own chi flow into the girl to ease some more of the hurts. The chi came out raw, heavy and violent, full of aggression.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I am only an initiate, your knowledge of the body is probably greater than mine. What is wrong with her?"
"There is an infection in her genes," the doctors said, directing Mokya's attention to a sample of tissues and view screens showing the infections progress. "It is spreading through her cells like a virus or a cancer, and once it finishes, it reinfects the changed cells and changes her again. This cycle has continued in the smaller sample until you can't distinguish individual types of cells."
Mokya flinched as she followed the description realizing what it meant. It was like her mistress's treatment in reverse, instead of the river chipping away the rotting material to rejoin the flow, it was depositing the trash bit by bit into a single place.
"There is someone who might be able to produce a permanent treatment," one of the medical ninjas said idly.
"Wishes aren't going to help," the leader said. "By the time we found her, the girl's brain and body will have mutated beyond the point of no return. She might be dangerous, she might just be dead."
"So, you need a way to delay the infection," Mokya said. "Can you not kill enough of the infected cells to reduce the chance of reinfections?"
"The same problem," the head medic said. "The person who has skills precise enough to target just the infected material well enough to delay things is not here. We could apply poison therapy, but it would weaken her totally and might even speed up the infection."
"What about a master of destruction at its most precise?" Mokya asked, pointing to her mistress through the window. "Would that give you time to find this healer?"
"How precise?" the doctors asked.
The volunteer, one of the Anbu guards, was confused as Kodachi merely reached out to lay fingers on his chest and seemed merely to breathe deeply while moving her other hand carefully for a minute before stepping back and nodding.
"Is that all?" the Anbu asked with a laugh.
"Gather chakra," Mokya suggested.
With a shrug, the Anbu took a breath and started to bring his chakra in, only to suddenly be wracked by a series of harsh coughs. He waited until the coughs calmed down and tried again, only to be wracked again with the coughs.
He stared up at Kodachi after this second wrack with a look of shock.
"Your rank was Disciple you said," Ibiki asked. "And that it was roughly equivalent to a special jonin or low jonin?"
Kodachi nodded.
"A dangerous opponent indeed," the Hokage said, even she qualifies her lack of mastery in some regards.
Kodachi covered her destroyed eyes then and shrugged while shaking her head.
"It is called Chu Chi," Mokya said. "It is of limited use against those that focus on taijutsu or kempo, as our school calls it. Individuals such as that Gai would barely notice, even if they drew on chi."
"So only ninjutsu or genjutsu, are effected," Anko reasoned. "Many opponents would remain dangerous."
"I assume this stops chi use as well?" Sarutobi asked.
"Hai, but it would last for some days at least, possibly a week or more, and a chi master might be able to inflict it quietly," Mokya said.
"Assuming a lack of chi awareness in the target," the Hokage said.
"You're free with telling us this," Ibiki noted.
"The Redeemed School does not consider such things secret," Mokya said. "Our predecessors used this knowledge to harm many and we would not have that repeated."
"Forewarned is forearmed," Anko said.
"Gimu," Mokya explained. "Responsibility."
"This is the only thing that may be done?" the Hokage asked, assuming it was not.
Kodachi held her hand out to the Anbu and gestured slightly.
"She asks if you're prepared," Mokya said.
"This is reversible?" the Anbu asked nervously.
Kodachi nodded and mimed a mouth toward Mokya.
"Of course Mistress Kodachi of the Musk would not be so irresponsible," Mokya declared loudly. "For she is the Black Rose of the Iyoku line! OHHHH-HOHOHOHOOHOHOHOHO!"
The Anbu sweated nervously.
Then Kodachi reached out with her hand and gestured downward stiffly. Almost immediately, the Anbu dropped down to his knees. Kodachi lifted her hand, and the man stood, stiffly this time. When the Black Rose gestured for him to approach her, he held off the effect completely and stepped back.
Which was when Kodachi shifted through a sequence of motions and thrust toward the distant Anbu with a twist at the end.
The gasped in pain as his knee collapsed underneath him. Another gesture and he was clutching at his wrist. Finally she pointed toward the man's mask, and stopped.
"As long as the enemy remains infected with hostile chi," Mokya said as she moved forward to set right the damage her mistress had done to the volunteer. "A master of the destructive nature has free reign."
"What are the defenses?" Ibiki asked.
Kodachi mimed dragging feet.
"Yin masters are slow," Mokya explained. "Yang is needed to drive the body to the same speeds as chakra, and large amounts of it channeled constantly. Only a true master can use both yin techniques and yang techniques at once."
Kodachi cleared her throat.
"True masters, and a handful of families," she corrected herself.
"Will this be precise enough to control the girl's infection?" the Hokage asked the medics.
"It should be, given the precision displayed," the head medic said. "This could be the delay we need to find a more permanent solution."
"Does returning her to a normal balance of chi remove the illness?" Sarutobi asked.
"It has to be deliberately healed," Mokya said.
"Do it," the Hokage said, drawing a nod from Kodachi.
The blind woman nodded and turned toward Mokya, indicating the girl she lead the way to the door and Sakura.
Sakura snapped awake almost all at once and scanned about the room narrowly.
"Where am I?" she demanded as she tried to move, only to find herself restrained.
"This is the hospital," a woman said, and Sakura turned to see the proctor from the second phase of the chunin exam.
"Let me go or I'm going to tear you to pieces," Sakura hissed.
Anko moved in toward Sakura and leaned in.
"Get a hold of yourself, kid," she said narrowly. "Or the only thing your going to tear apart is yourself."
Sakura's snake eyes glared into Anko's and Anko decided that she must be talking to the secondary spirit that Inoichi had discussed.
"They're calling your parents in," Anko said. "Is this how you want them to see you?"
Sakura flinched and then tried the restraints again.
"Get the right part of you forward," Anko insisted.
"What are you talking about?" Sakura asked.
Anko leaned back and shook her head with a sigh before retrieving a kunai from somewhere and holding it against the back of her arm in front of the pink-haired girl.
Slowly she drew the blade over her arm, causing red blood to welt up.
Immediately, Sakura's eyes were fixated on that line of blood.
"I know all about this," Anko said quietly. "And I learned how to control it."
Sakura knew exactly what "it" was as Anko spoke.
"I don't need to control it," Sakura said, almost in a trance.
"Yes, you do," Anko said. "And I can teach you how. After all, I got mine the same place you got yours."
Sakura's eyes widened and she looked up toward Anko's face then, surprised.
"And one of these days," she said. "One of his experiments...one of us, is going to finish him for good."
Sakura smiled at that.
"Now," Anko said. "Let the right part of you out."
Sakura still had no idea what exactly Anko was talking about, but she could feel her shoulders shaking as the rage she'd been feeling up to then, against everything and everybody, faded into the background and all the despair rose up to the surface.
Anko watched tears starting to gather at the corners of the girl's eyes and reached forward to pat her comfortingly on the shoulder in a comradely manner. Sakura, even in her restraints, leaned forward into Anko's shoulder and let all the stress that had been sealed up in her flowed out.
"Umm, yeah..." Anko said, not expecting the reaction at all. "Right, it'll be...uh...okay."
Hesitantly the proctor wrapped one hand around Sakura and patted her back carefully, avoiding the still tender cuts there.
"As to the test," Ibiki said. "Word is that the majority of the teams are in. Tomorrow the preliminaries of the final round begin. Assuming we continue the test."
"Provoking Orochimaru before we know the extent of his plan is a poor move," the Hokage said. "We'll let the test continue."
"Understood," the interrogator noted. "We'll take measures to investigate the situation. He would not be acting in this manner with subordinates."
The Hokage nodded.
See other episodes by Thrythlind
(Posted Sun, 19 Sep 2010 10:23)
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