MTLNOVEL Chapter 11: Chapter 11
11Haruka kept sending small doses of chakra to her soles, to give herself the momentum needed to jump from tree branch to tree branch, in the cover of the night. It was an exercise she had done countless times during the past eight months, and had become like a second nature to her. Her chakra reserves were much larger now and this new way of traveling didn't cost her too much energy. And it was always better than simply running.
Autumn and winter had come and gone, and they were now in the middle of spring. Spring in the shinobi world meant fighting. Every clan had spent months sharpening their tools, making new jutsu and simply holding their breath until the moment they could spill blood again. And she was now a part of this bloody madness. Her mind kept going back over the past few months, trying to figure out how they had gotten there.
Once her apprenticeship started, life in the house of the Uchiha clan head became a predictable routine. Waking up, making breakfast and bentos, having a meal as a family and then leaving each to their own occupation. Misuki, the widow who helped around the house, came every morning to clean (properly, like Haruka had taught her), do the dishes and the occasional laundry. She was a lovely woman with one daughter, younger than Izuna and Haruka. The problem was that she wasn't a born Uchiha, and her shinobi husband died after only a few months of their wedding, so a lot of the clan members were wary of her. Haruka learnt that letting her work in the clan head's house, instead of the widow's cooperative, was Himiko's way of showing everybody that they could trust her as she was family now.
Haruka's mornings were spent with her brothers and their little group in the training grounds. They trained really hard every day in every aspect a shinobi ought to master. Madara and Izuna were clearly ahead of the group, but she had earned everyone respect too.
As everybody already knew taijutsu, the only practice they did was a twice a week tournament to keep everybody on their toes. She was always fourth, Madara first and Hikaku and Izuna were always fighting over second place.
Kenjutsu (swords fighting) was clearly not her cup of tea. She did her best to learn, but had already decided that using those heavy swords wasn't her thing. She preferred the freedom and mobility that throwing weapons gave her. At the end, instead of the big katana that both her brothers had hanging at their belts, she picked a simple light sword that looked more like a knife, and called it a day. It was almost comical to see Izuna walking around with a sword almost his size, and she would have laughed if she hadn't seen him use it with the dexterity of a seasoned samurai. He probably trained even in his dreams.
Ninjutsu was another thing. It took her a while but she had finally mastered the Gokakyuu no jutsu, even if its shape still weirded out the other kids. However, she struggled with more complex Katon techniques. It was Madara who came to her help this time around.
Apparently, it wasn't written in stone that fire should be the primary affinity of all the Uchiha. He himself had a Futon primary affinity, but ignored it and worked twice as hard at Katon. And so after doing some weird paper test, they discovered that she had a Raiton affinity. The problem was that none of the teachers knew Raiton jutsus, and so they had to hunt down other shinobi, who had this same affinity, between missions and ask/beg for them to teach her. After a couple weeks she had compiled a small booklet of information on the use of Raiton. Believe it or not, that was the first written manual in the history of the Uchiha school and after she was done, it was kept in their small library along with more complex scrolls on high level jutsus. In the months that will follow, more manuals were produced by the teachers on every type of affinity, and the students started relying on them heavily, even making their own copies to take home.
Unlike Madara, she kept to her affinity, mastering three Raiton techniques so far. The first was actually something both Izuna and she had learnt from Tajima. He had shown them how to coat their weapons with chakra of their affinity, to make them deadlier. It wasn't costly in chakra, as metal responded well to Izuna's fire and to her lightning, but the weapons used in these techniques could not be used anymore. Izuna's fire shuriken had a wide range and her lightning senbons were so fast they could kill you before you realized they had left her hand. The second one was trickier and required a lot more concentration. She concentrated the chakra in her fingertips and sent a continuous stream of it to form long threads of lightning that she could manipulate with her mind to use as bindings or to kill. The technique could be used as a last resort in a fight, but it still needed some work. The last one had more of a medical use. She didn't exactly have a defibrillator in here, and so after some work, she had managed to find a way to coat her arms in a small, non-concentrated layer of Raiton chakra and use them instead. Everybody thought that she had brought a guy back from the dead when she used it for the first time, a couple of months back.
And finally, they trained in genjutsu. That was Hikaku's field of expertise. The first time he had thrown her in one of his jutsus she had thought she was drowning. This field required an innate talent, even for people who had the Sharingan, and so she preferred working on mastering how to avoid being caught in one. Her perfect chakra control had helped her a lot in stabilizing the disturbance in chakra flow that caused the illusion and so, after months of training, even Tajima's second in command, their most eminent genjutsu specialist, struggled to keep her in it more than a minute at a time. Hikaku had looked dejected that his art could be beaten by a now six year old, but when she pointed out that he could practice making stronger genjutsus that might trap her someday, he went back to work with a new vigor.
She had her lunch with Touko before they got to work.
The very first thing they had done was to work on a proper anatomy book. After Touko had helped her decipher all the gibberish written in the books they had, she had decided that it was unacceptable. So she started working on her own book.
First they weeded out all the information that she knew was wrong. Second they compiled the rest into two sections: true and to be proven. The only way to get the information was to perform some proper autopsies. She had waited until Tajima had his mouthful of rice before asking him for cadavers, and watched gleefully as he and the boys choked on their food. He was skeptical at first, but when she explained why she needed them he told her that he would come up with something. She wasn't expecting to get the body of an Uchiha as the clan wasn't familiar with the concept of donating their body to science. And she knew that they wouldn't be going around killing people randomly to let her study them. But the Uchiha had a bit of disdain for anyone who dared to try and fight them, and so after a week or so, after a confrontation with the Sarutobi clan, a squad brought her three bodies to study. They had stayed to watch curiously as she used the salves, she had prepared beforehand, on them to slow putrefaction.
She was aware of the rumors that had started going in the clan after her weird ask, but she didn't care. Touko had long since started saying to everybody that she was a medical genius and she knew that everybody was more curious than anything about the strange daughter of the clan head and her new quirks. She was also thankful that she hadn't gotten the body of a Senju because, if the rumors about their freakish bodies were true, it would falsify her results. But she hoped to be able to study one in the future. Maybe she would pierce the secret of their extraordinary healing capacities.
The practice of autopsies wasn't new in this world. But it had a bad reputation. The body of a shinobi was full of secrets like kekkei genkai for example, and so some people had gotten into the business of looting bodies to get their hands on these secrets.
At first Touko had wanted nothing to do with the process, and so she had left the lab as Haruka was putting on her new leather gloves, face mask and hair cover, and started lining up the freshly made tools she had designed for the blacksmith. It wasn't exactly a proper OR but it was something. It took her more than seventeen hours to get through the first body, but she had compiled more than a hundred pages of description and notes and sketches. She had also collected tissue samples hoping to find a way to study them later. When she was done, she was so exhausted that she just crashed in Touko's apartment. The boys were already aware that she might not come home for a while and Misuki had volunteered to cook for them instead of just letting them survive on dry foods and eating out. She only slept for five hours before she got back to work on the second body. Even with the help of the salves she made, the bodies were starting to rot and she already knew she would have to give up on the third one. Hopefully when it snowed during the winter she could get more autopsies done.
On that second day, Touko had come to help. While Haruka was still sleeping, she had taken a look at the notes she had made and finally, her scientific curiosity had won over her puritanical values and she joined in. Haruka took her time explaining what she was doing and why she needed to compare the results of multiple autopsies to correct bias and get more information. By the end of the afternoon, the old healer was the one taking the notes while she dictated.
They spent the following week working on a complete first version of an anatomy book that they presented to the clan at the first monthly assembly she had attended. They didn't really understand the work, but everybody was aware of the value of such a book. In a world where knowledge was scarce in the field of medicine, every new addition was a treasure. And their book with the many novelties she had discovered was invaluable. That had gotten them enthusiastic promises from the young shinobi to bring more cadavers when possible to help with their research, despite some elders scowls. Clearly, the young generation had had enough of the preventable deaths and, more importantly, the Senju superiority in that field, and were willing to help anyway they could.
During the winter, even when the fights were considerably less she got three other bodies: a Shimura, a Senju and a Hagoromo whose body had been discreetly brought back in the cover of the night to avoid angering their ally clan. The Shimura and the Hagoromo were quite similar to the Sarutobi and she was starting to get the general aspect of the anatomy of the humans in this world, but the Senju's body presented some oddities, and she started wondering about how each kekkei genkai influenced the anatomy of its wielder. Clearly this was a field on its own but she had no time to dwell on the specificities. When she came across them, she would add them in what would be the third version of the anatomy book that seemed to never stop growing. She also hoped to get to study an Uchiha someday, and the Sharingan more importantly, but she didn't want to push her luck.
When they weren't working on their anatomy book, they had gotten into botany and making drugs. Haruka's knowledge about plants and mushrooms was extensive and Touko had nothing to be embarrassed about, especially when it came to plants that were specific to this world. They took multiple trips to the forest that surrounded the clan to gather samples, and with the help of the books that Touko had, they started the same process they did with the anatomy book and wrote several volumes on plants, their specificities and their uses. It wasn't exactly an important job as both of them already knew all that, they just did it for the future generations, so they only got to that when they had no other project going on, and the clinic was empty, which didn't happen a lot.
They had multiple projects going on. First they started their own herb garden. Haruka had insisted that their reliance and buying what they need from the outside world or getting it from the forest was not enough, and so after multiple tantrums, as she had discovered that the secret to getting Tajima to agree to anything was to loudly disturb his peace at random times of the day, they had gotten a small patch of land right outside the wall surrounding the compound, and had started a greenhouse there. She knew how to take care of plants, and after a while some of the more curious girls of the clan came to learn gardening from her. When some plants who didn't mind the weather had started to grow and were used to making some of the medicine, the results of their hard work had started to show. Uchiha Taka, the newest member of the elders council had even proposed to make gardener an official job in the Uchiha clan, mainly because his granddaughter was one of the most enthusiastic girls who came to learn from her. And so three girls were selected to be the official gardeners of the Uchiha greenhouse, with salaries and everything. She left most of the work to them after she was sure they wouldn't screw up, and went back to her work at the clinic full time.
Their second project was making new drugs. The Uchiha relied heavily on salves and decoctions, and while she had to admit some were effective,especially the ones bought secretly from the Senju, it wasn't enough. After getting the blacksmiths to make some of the equipment she needed, they could start on experimenting. It took a while, but after getting used to the equipment, or lack of it actually, they were able to start working on real medication. They didn't exactly make pills nor were they able to isolate the right molecules, but they had made some potent powders and syrups for the more common illnesses. They had to rush the process as winter was coming and people had started getting cases of the common cold and even pneumonia, but they were able to make it in time.
People were hesitant at first and didn't want to use the new weird medicine, but after they started noticing how fast and effective it was, they all looked at Haruka with weird shining eyes that gave her the creeps. The work at the greenhouse and on the drugs was doing great, but it was still in its early stages and she knew it would be years before they could become self-reliant and as advanced as she would want them to be. Still it was a good start.
The last thing they worked on, and probably the most important was diagnostic. Not to look down on her "sensei" or anything but she clearly didn't know what she was doing, and it didn't matter if they could make the most powerful medicines, if they were treating for the wrong illness. And so she had started teaching her the proper procedures.
If anyone had walked in on a five year old giving a pop quiz to her supposed sensei, they probably wouldn't have stepped foot in their clinic ever again, but so far they had managed to keep the things discreet. People were noticing the changes in the clinic and had made the connection that it had something to do with her, but so far the explanation that was going around the clan was that Haruka had a talent for medicine and that Touko, ever the good teacher, was helping her in every way she could in honing her skills and gaining more knowledge. A shinobi who was stationed at the old Chinoki compound, turned new Uchiha base, even collected some scrolls about medicine he had found in their old infirmary and brought them back to her without being asked. That's why she loved the Uchiha. They might be an introverted clan and not like mingling with others like the Senju, but they loved their own clan members a lot, and treated each other like a really huge family of more than a thousand members. And in a sense, they all were related to each other one way or another with how much they chose to marry within the clan. Cases like Misuki were an oddity.
She had taken to making small flash cards that had the name of the illness, its symptoms and how to treat it. She also taught Touko about stitching, even if they both agreed that using chakra healing was more effective, but they practiced it anyway to avoid any surprises or if they ran out of chakra. Burns treatment was also a must. It was important when you were the doctor of a clan that liked to spit fire every now and then. They had come up with some pretty powerful anesthetics, both local and general, using mushrooms they were now growing, and some numbing creams. Open heart surgery wasn't on the schedule, but some more simple procedures were, like fixing a burst appendix or saving the life of someone who had managed to get stabbed in the gut. And finally they got to fixing broken bones. That was an incident worth mentioning.