LIGHTNOVELSTORY Chapter 3: Chapter 3-The Reality of War!
Chapter 3
KATO SHIZUNE
Kato Shizune returned to the hospital after finally taking a night off, after several weeks. She had been covering the night shifts for days now, the hospital was always in need of capable healers with the war in full swing, and she was one of the best, having been trained under the Slug Princess herself, making her expertise rather invaluable to the hospital.
Tsunade-sama herself had still not recovered from her haemophobia and had taken over the more administrative portion of the hospital's management. Her mere presence was enough to lift the morale of the village's shinobi, who needed every advantage they could get.
It was safe to say that the war was not going in their favor if there even was such a thing. Both Kumo and Iwa had turned their swords towards them, and with the overreach from Kiri, it was becoming very difficult for Konoha to keep all these enemies at bay.
And now there were whispers of a massive offensive from Iwa being planned, one that would involve a ten thousand Iwa nin. People in Konoha were becoming nervous about it, and so was she.
She would, on the other hand, do her own part, in helping run the hospital and saving as many lives as she could. As she entered the Emergency room, she was taken aback by the calmness of the room and the lack of the overload she had been expecting because of her absence.
The room was packed of course, but still most of the patients seemed to have had their procedures done, and were under supervision and as she scanned bed after bed she was surprised as hope bubbled in her head.
'Could it be?' she thought as she rushed towards the incharge's room.
"Shiba-kun," she called out to the senior iryo-nin, who was sipping tea while looking at reports, and his eyes lit up as he saw her.
"Shizune-sama, you are back," he greeted her. Shiba Kurosaki was a thirty-eight-year-old iryo-nin, one who made up for his lack of talent through sheer hard work. And though he may never become the best, his attention to detail made him a rather good iryo-nin.
"Who treated all the patients in the ER?" she asked and saw his mouth widen at her question.
"Ohh, after you went out, Izuna-kun returned to the hospital," and that was a name she had not expected to hear.
"He offered to help me run the ER and took over the Operations. If it wasn't for him, the ER would have been loaded right now," he added with a sigh as her mood soured. It seemed as though her hope had been in vain.
"Where is he?" she asked and saw his eyes widen as he replied with an apologetic expression.
"He is still there," and her mood soured further as soon as she heard those words and with a disappointed sigh, left the room and made her way to the ER's operation theatre.
The hospital had three sets of Operation theatres. One associated with the ER for more emergency treatment, then a second set for complicated operations, and then one for elective procedures used to treat the villagers.
Izuna Uchiha was her own student in some ways, even though she hesitated to call him that. The young shinobi had come to them after his whole team had been slaughtered in their first mission away from the mission, where it had later come out that they had been targeted especially for him—the Uchiha heir.
The boy that had come to the hospital was small, barely seven years of age, and she had not expected him to succeed at the intricate art that was iryo-ninjutsu. But she was wrong, she had underestimated both him and the prowess of the Sharingan.
Izuna Uchiha had been hailed as a prodigy before this massive tragedy had struck him, and his genius had carried on when it came to iryo-ninjutsu. The village had decided to give the seven-year-old some time to hone his skills given that their enemies seemed to be targeting him specifically.
And so, the boy was placed into the hospital. His request for a specialisation in iryo-ninjutsu and fuinjutsu had been passed by the higher-ups, and so he had come to the hospital ready to learn. Initially, she had been doubtful about how much she could teach to a seven-year-old, and she was surprised.
Six months. It had taken the boy six months to learn the very techniques and knowledge that had taken her over half a decade to learn, and though she dwarfed him in terms of experience, in the six months since his arrival he had become one of their finest medical ninjas period.
And as she entered the operation theatre, the reason for that meteoric rise was visible, for there he stood on the stools as the whole abdomen of an adult man lay open infront of him, as he pinned and prodded through it as the Sharingan glinted in the darkness.
None before him had ever thought to use the Uchiha clan kekkei genkai like this, and the boy's three tomoe Sharingan made him an excellent medic.
"What are you doing, Izuna-kun?" she asked as she pushed the medics beside him to the side and began to monitor what he was doing.
"He got hit by a massive landslide from an Iwa nin that tore through his guts and liver, I am trying to resect the necrotic parts while trying to preserve as much of his liver as I can," he added and indeed the man's organs were a mess, and she looked around and could see the sheer exhaustion on the faces of the rest of the staff.
"How long have you been here?" she asked, and he looked up at her.
"What time is it right now?" and that was answer enough as she made up her mind and a green hue covered her hands as she asked for a pair of clamps, and magnifying glasses.
"You need to get out of here now. It's the morning, it was supposed to be your day off to spend time with your family and yet you have spent it all here in the hospital," she admonished the kid, and despite his skills and maturity he was just that.
A kid. One who had been through a rather traumatic experience.
"I am fine," he retorted but she did not budge.
"Get out of here, Izuna-kun. And if I see you in the hospital again, I will send a complaint to your sensei and let her deal with you. " That did the trick, as the boy sighed and pulled back. As he stepped back, she saw him stumble for a second as their senior helped him stand up as she shook her head.
"Get him out of here, and someone help him to his home..."
"No," the boy cut in sharply, and that was answer enough.
"I will be fine on my own," and with that, he walked out of the theatre, leaving her to operate on the injured shinobi as she turned to her colleagues.
"For how had he been going on?" she asked, and saw the nurse hesitate as she answered.
"He had been operating without any break for over eight hours. Most of us here took a break, but he has been seeing one patient after another," she added, making her sigh. And despite being his sensei, she was in no place to help him.
Though thankfully, she knew only the person who could do that.
"As soon as we are done with this get me a scroll, I need to send a message to Uzumaki Kushina," she added as she began to inspect his handiwork, and found herself impressed by how meticulous he had been.
He had been able to save off more than twenty percent of his liver and had cleared up the rest, and all of this had been done while ensuring minimal blood loss. No, he had been manipulating his bone marrow to increase production of blood cells.
"Interesting..." she whispered as she began to continue his work, and with every passing second found herself being more and more impressed.
.
.
.
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As Izuna Uchiha sat alone in a training ground meditating, his younger brother, Itachi Uchiha, found himself on the battlefield surrounded by the travesty of war beside his father, Fugaku Uchiha.
"So, this is war?" he gasped as he stood there, his body stilled by the destruction and death around him, questioning everything.
"Water..." he heard a plea. Looking down, he saw an injured shinobi pleading for water. His body rushed towards him as he took out the water bottle and brought it to his lips.
"Here," he said softly as he helped the injured nin take a sip. Just as he turned away from the man, he saw him jump up, kunai in hand, and try to attack him.
And in that moment, Itachi's body moved on its own, as in the blink of an eye, his hands moved to his pouch, retrieving kunai as he swung it at the older nin's neck, cutting off his carotids in a single smooth motion.
"GUGH!" the man grabbed his neck, and he fell down, and smudges of blood fell onto the young four-year-old's face, who only then turned to look at the man whom he had helped before, the very nin who had then tried to kill him.
And the young nin watched the life drain out of those eyes as Fugaku Uchiha walked upto him, both in worry and trepidation.
"Why did the man try to kill me?" the young Itachi asked, and the man behind him was quiet for a few seconds before he answered.
"Because this is war, and reality of war is that people who know nothing of each other will try to kill one another," his father's ominous voice came from behind, and he felt it darken as he continued.
"Even children," and he was reminded of his own brother and what had happened to him, and realised the dark reality of the world beset around him. The dark reality that was to be his own future.
And as he looked down at his hands and saw them covered in scarlet, he found himself questioning everything.
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