Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Jyuuken ❯ Bones ( Chapter 6 )

Author's Rambling Incoherence: FWAAAHAH! I finally got the time, motivation (lack of anything else to amuse myself with), and not-totally-broken-afide copy of Word 2007 to finish this chapter. Hooray for a weekend free of parties and money, and yippee for online troubleshooting forums!

There, that's my excuse for taking so long- now where's your excuse for not leaving reviews? …No excuse, you say? YOU SCOUNDREL!

But that's ok, I used other people's fanfiction as a substitute to spark my creative flair. And my writing rock.

Now ENJOY OR… Or…be…um…e-ENJOY!

 

Disclaimer: I will personally shank anyone who says they own Naruto or any characters therein. Unless they happen to be named Kishimoto Masashi, but what are the odds of that, right?

 

According to Tsunade's research, the Kaguya clan were a bloodthirsty, warmongering bunch of psychopaths. That was common knowledge, at least. More in-depth reading of her medical journals shed some light on the secret abilities of their bloodline.

Apparently, most of them had been able to manipulate their own bones to a certain extent, and nearly always had a naturally superior rate of regeneration to cope with what this ability would undoubtedly do to their muscles and skin, assuming it didn't mess around their organs as well. But Tsunade suspected that this passive ability might be the cause of the debilitating illness that the apparent sole survivor of the clan had been struck by.

From her examinations, she had concluded that the problem with his lungs was the formation of a mass of tissue that was growing exponentially, and without any real reason. This was commonly known as a cancerous growth. It could have started as an incorrectly copied cell in the lung, or it could have been his regenerative abilities going haywire. It was hard to say.

Unfortunately, she couldn't find many cases of a cancer in the lungs being removed successfully. So, she'd probably just have to wing it, and that was NOT something a medic should ever say.

Another possibility about the cause of the cancer lay on the skin above his sternum. One of Orochimaru's Cursed Seals. Kimimaro hadn't exactly gone out of his way to deny what it was, but she would have figured it out even if he had. She wasn't too sure about what it was supposed to do, but she'd sooner cut the damn thing out and replace the skin than risk having another tumour form because of it.

How he ended up having a Cursed Seal was a subject of intense interest, but she couldn't draw any conclusions yet.

He was turning out to be full of surprises.

 

-----

 

Now this was a slight deviation from the norm.

Hinata was generally quiet -a little more so recently, granted- But she had never actually fallen asleep while visiting him. Had he been a more frivolous man, he might have felt moved to play a trick on her innocently sleeping form. Like…drawing on her face, perhaps. Somewhere, deep down, he did have a small urge to do so, but he easily dismissed it as nonsense. Besides, what would he draw?

He watched her sleep, slumped in an uncomfortable-looking seated position, and tried to make sense of the odd coherent word she mumbled. As far as he could tell, she was dreaming about butterflies. Curious.

As a somewhat related subject, Hinata herself was…a “nice girl.” He didn't much care for that particular wording, but it seemed like the most suitable way to sum her up. She had saved his life for no apparent reason, even though she was a shinobi. Their function was supposed to be the opposite, in theory.

On the other hand, she didn't seem to be particularly weak, either. The Hyuuga family was famous as one of Konohagakure's most powerful clans, so her being weak would be unusual. Certainly, she wasn't just some trash shinobi.

His interesting train of thought was briefly interrupted by Hinata mumbling again.

Butterflies and someone eating honey, perhaps. She seemed intent on stopping that person from eating said honey, due to the danger posed by the bees guarding the nest. At least that's how he interpreted “nno…nodont…buzz…” He briefly wondered who it was that was trying to eat honey, before Hinata jerked awake, possibly because she had just backhanded the corner of his bedside table.

`Aaaaah…!' she whined slightly, massaging the metacarpals of her hand sleepily. Kimimaro diplomatically ignored the onset of thought about the prestige of the Hyuuga name being somewhat diminished at that moment.

Before Hinata had a chance to grasp the situation she was now in, Kimimaro reached out a hand -with some difficulty- and patted her hand in a…he wasn't sure what manner of action he was performing, but he did know what his ulterior motive was. He wanted to recreate that…sensation. That tingling, warm feeling.

To her credit, Hinata reacted quite well to being touched suddenly after just waking up.

`U-hu-ahuaah!'

She didn't quite fall off the chair.

Kimimaro blinked at her in a meaningful way, disappointed at not experiencing the feeling again. Maybe it was because she had wriggled her hand away in a frenzy of un-coordinated jerks, or maybe it just didn't work when he did it.

Catching his expression, and failing to understand it only because she lacked the ability to read minds, she turned a shade of red or two and began apologising.

`Ah, Kh-Kimimaro-kun, I didn't mean to- I was as- I just- a-eh-um, I'm sorry!' she squeaked in an uncertain flow of half-considered sentences. None of them were bad choices, per se, but a half-sleeping mind can imagine that all sorts of options are wrong ones.

Using the hand he had tried to placate her with, he tried to indicate to her that there was, in fact, nothing to be sorry about. She seemed to understand. This was fortunate, since he didn't have much energy.

Just then, the door slid open quickly, rebounding off the doorstop and settling in a half-closed position. The opening was still wide enough for Sakura, bearing a single daffodil, to slip inside, greeting the occupants of the room cheerfully as she did.

And then she stopped. She looked at Kimimaro, looking lethargic and ill, and she looked at Hinata, still slightly dazed from waking up suddenly.

Using the amazing powers of selective observation, Sakura ignored Kimimaro's sickly and Hinata's frazzled appearance, replacing them with her mental image of the two in a more pristine state, and framed the results as seen through rose-tinted glasses.

`…Ohh…You two look good together.'

 

-----

 

To someone uneducated in the ways of the Medical Ninja, the sight of a room full of creamy-white-clad, intelligent-looking people staring at a large scroll nailed over the entirety of a wall and whispering various sections of it aloud might have looked a bit strange. To those familiar with it, it would seem like something very tricky indeed was about to be done.

These medics were experienced, and as such, their concentration could have burned a hole in a rock. If you could burn a hole in a rock just by staring at it, that is. They settled for burning the words on the scroll into their retinas.

Someone educated in the ways of the Medical Ninja, and in a position to have been observing the roof from above, would have noticed that they were very subtly divided into groups of about four or five. They might have also noticed that each of these groups was focussing on a particular area of the scroll.

Tsunade had spent quite some time deciding on the teams, and which rolls or shifts they would be taking to ensure things went smoothly. Lungs were delicate things- and she wasn't completely sure what would happen when they tried to remove the Cursed Seal. It couldn't hurt to be careful.

She had already given them the pre-procedural run through of what they would be doing, so all there was to do now was let them memorise as much as possible.

 

-----

 

`Making first incision…' the scalpel, reinforced with the medic-nin's chakra, carved through Kimimaro's Sternum steadily. The Manubrium was separated from the Gladiolus and the Xiphoid process and from the flexible costal cartilage on its right side, as not to disturb the Cursed Seal while they worked on his lungs.

While the Chakra Scalpel technique allowed surgery without external trauma, sometimes you just had to open them up so you could see what you were doing.

`Pulse steady.'

`Isolating left lung.'

`…Breathing steady.'

`Team Two; begin regeneration.' When the quiet muttering from all corners of the room had synchronised, the scalpel moved again and, quite cleanly, removed a large chunk of Kimimaro's left lung.

The patient's fingers twitched almost imperceptibly when this happened, which was nevertheless noticed by a medic standing to one side for the sole purpose of noticing such things.

`Easy, now…'

With just as much accuracy and finesse as before, but with a little more delicacy, the scalpel sliced off another piece of lung tissue. The empty space left by the departure of the first piece of lung was slowly being filled by an orange, jelly-like membrane. It jiggled slightly as it expanded to fill the gap.

The process of systematically removing lung tissue continued for over an hour before the entirety of the lung up to the windpipe was entirely composed of the orange jelly. With support from Team One, Team Two carefully realised the image of the new lung. After a little scrutiny from Tsunade, it was accepted as a job-well-done, and Teams One and Two were excused, and quickly replaced by Teams Three and Four, who set about work on the right lung.

It would take time for the lung to become fully useable, but it was already at least as good as his old lung had been, so he was able to breathe with it while the right lung was shut off. It was an improvement, no matter how you looked at it.

Apart from a fairly tense couple of seconds where a member of Team Three fought a sneezing fit before emerging victorious, the procedure on the right lung went as smoothly as the left.

Before they could stitch him up, however, Tsunade intervened. She hadn't gone into much detail about this phase of the operation, so they were taken slightly off guard when Tsunade warned them to keep an eye on the patient's joints, took a scalpel in hand, and removed the epidermis, dermis, and hypodermis in which the Cursed Seal was contained.

Kimimaro screamed.

 

-----

 

The following day, Kimimaro woke…gradually. Far removed from the sudden waking (as from a nightmare) and equally far removed from the groggy, incoherent, confused and erratic waking, (as from a long night at the pub or heavily-medicated hospital stay) he woke up easily and without discomfort.

Until he tried to move, anyway.

A tingling, burning pain ran along the contours of his collarbones, lower ribs and sternum, and completely covered a certain patch of skin above the sternum. His lungs also felt as though they were stuffed with cotton wool… It's quite amazing how the human mind can imagine sensations.

Of minor interest to him was that Hinata was absent. He had been expecting her to be asleep in a chair beside the bed, but he supposed that had been a one-off occurrence and also that he had been getting too accustomed to her company. Now there was something he had never expected to suppose before.

Such things happened, he guessed.

As no interesting event or mildly distracting conversation seemed to be forthcoming, Kimimaro briefly pondered the wisdom of sitting up. Given the nature of what had been done to him only a few hours before, sitting up suddenly probably wasn't the best idea. Deciding that he was not in possession of all the facts, he tried to sit up anyway.

And was interrupted by the untimely arrival of the pink-haired Sakura. Masking his displeasure at being denied his child-like act of self-brutality, and welcoming an alternate activity, he waved unenthusiastically as she came into view.

``Morning, Kimimaro-kun!' she said, with the same fake enthusiasm she normally had when she entered his room. It may or may not have had something to do with the other people she visited before stopping to chat with him, but he couldn't be sure.

Pointedly ignoring the vague gesture Kimimaro was making with his hand instead of saying “hello,” Sakura crossed the room in a few easy strides and filled the vacant chair by the bed. For some reason, the nurses -secretly in conjunction with Sakura- seemed intent on keeping only one chair in his room, so Sakura rarely stayed in the room for long when Hinata arrived, preferring to stand on the occasions she did stay.

`So?' she started, leaning forward with conspiratorial interest, clearly not acting her enthusiasm anymore. `How are you feeling?'

`Fghiere-' Kimimaro blinked, seeing the same confusion on Sakura's face as he was feeling himself. He cleared his throat and tried again. `Fine.' Not to be fooled by this deceptive verbal dodge, Sakura immediately probed further.

`What does “fine” mean, exactly? That could mean anything coming from you. Do you feel better or worse than before?' Kimimaro considered this for a moment.

`…Different.'

`Hey, now. I've thought so for a while, but you really don't talk much, do you?'

`No.'

`Right, stupid question' she said, sighing.

`…' The room fell, once more, into silence. Having come to a conversational dead-end, Sakura was frowning in a manner that suggested she would have liked to go back and ask something different. Kimimaro wasn't exactly helping the situation, either. He was staring at the ceiling while quietly experimenting with his breathing. After a few tries he figured out the point at which the burning, tingling pain mutated into intense, stabbing pain. Tsunade hadn't gone into great detail about what they were going to do to his lungs, but whatever they had done, it was extensive. The intense, stabbing pain must have momentarily shown up on his face, and inspired Sakura to ask a slightly more precise question.

`Is your breathing alright?'

Kimimaro thought about this for a moment. His breathing was certainly better than before, so he answered “Yes.”

`That's good,' Sakura said, smiling with the radiance of someone with the ability to pretend that the last few spoken exchanges had never occurred, and that Kimimaro had, in fact, answered her initial question.

Kimimaro and Sakura both paused in unison when they heard the sound of someone trying not to make any noise in the hallway. And, as expected, the hallway discharged a slightly fatigued Hinata into the room. She looked as though she had run all the way to the hospital and then tried to catch her breath on the way to his room. After seeing that he was awake and, presumably, in good shape, she looked somewhat relieved.

Sakura looked from one to the other a few times before deciding something to herself. `I'll go get another chair,' she said, indicating that Hinata should use the one that she had been occupying until that point and heading past Hinata to the door. Hinata sat down quickly and proceeded to ask Kimimaro something that he had already been asked that morning.

`How are you feeling?'

Sakura must have heard, because Kimimaro had the feeling that she was glaring at him through the door. He ignored the feeling, and answered the same way as last time.

`Fine.' Unlike Sakura, Hinata found this not only an acceptable answer, but a reassuring one also. She nevertheless found it a little difficult to express this.

`Um, I…I'm…glad,' she said in a voice as tall as a mouse before Sakura's reappearance caused an easy subject change.

`I wonder why there's only ever one chair in here,' she lied. She had asked the nurses only keep one chair in the room to give Kimimaro and Hinata some time alone, but there was no need to trouble either of them with information of her involvement. `But I guess it's ok. It gives you two a little more Alone Time.'

`S-s-Sakura-san…!' Hinata's reaction was unworthy of attention. Sakura had seen enough blushing and stuttering to know that she liked Kimimaro, at least a bit.

Kimimaro, on the other hand, was a book written in another language, with half the pages ripped out. And if the price of deciphering some of those pages was to embarrass Hinata a little, then it was easily worth paying.

Alas, those precious pages were blocked from her sight by that damn hard cover of a face. The blank face that only told her he didn't understand the significance of what she had said.

She slumped her head in disappointment and lay a hand on Hinata's shoulder in sympathy. Hinata looked confused, but worried that Sakura might say something even more revealing. Kimimaro raised an eyebrow in question. He lowered it again when no answer seemed forthcoming.