Disclaimer: I do not own the series Naruto or any of the characters or concepts within it. I don't own Onimeno-sensei either; he's from another series entirely, and is merely twisted around to fit the premise of this story.
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The Eyes Have It
Chapter 21: Obvious
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"No, 719-C," Onimeno said blandly. "Her eyes can't control the vicissitudes of fate and fortune." He gave Kiba a strange, strange look. "How the fuck would that even begin to work? I'm not sure anybody has enough chakra to control all the different factors."
Kiba bared his teeth, though he still looked a little intimidated. He had been like this since they had first been sent to the hospital. Kurenai and Genma were giving the Hokage and council a full report, but the genin would have their own appointment later on. In the mean time, Sakura had been instructed to see Onimeno immediately, and Shino and Kiba had been disinclined to let her out of their sight for the past week.
It had felt weird, introducing her teammates to her doctor, and not just because Kiba had been subdued and bizarrely cowed in the man's presence. Sakura suspected that had something to do with pack dynamics and the fact that Onimeno still looked fairly terrifying to anybody who had never seen his adorable little wife beat him with a wooden spoon for trying to sneak food before dinner.
"It was the most apparent conclusion we could reach, given the limited amount of time we spent training and testing the parameters, which in the end turned out to be a most fortuitous happenstance." Shino said. His voice was a bit stiff. "Why? Because our clientele were revealed to be Kumo-nin, and meticulously uncovering the mechanics of Sakura-san's doujutsu where they might have been able to catalogue it would have been…unfortunate."
Onimeno froze, his pen shattering in his grasp and spattering his palm and clipboard with ink. He very slowly turned away from his desk towards the three of them: Sakura in her chair with a teammate on either side of her.
"Say that again, 719-B." He requested in a deceptively calm and polite tone of voice. It creeped Sakura out on multiple levels when he played at being courteous. Nothing good ever followed. "Please, do, because I could have sworn you just implied you were travelling with shinobi from Kumogakure for the duration of your time away from the village."
Sakura and Kiba swallowed, and even Shino looked a little discomfited. But the Aburame acquiesced. "We were," he affirmed. "Why? Because they were trying to root out a traitor in their midst. Sakura-san was briefly held captive alongside—"
Onimeno was suddenly on his feet, stool overturned and leaking killing intent like a broken pipe. "WHAT?" he bellowed.
Sakura winced and slunk down in her chair. "It really wasn't as bad as it—"
"As it what?!" Onimeno began pacing, raking a hand angrily through the ruddy mess he called hair. "As it sounds? Because it sounds pretty goddamn bad, 719!" He whirled on her teammates. "Out of all of you, you decide to let the adolescent female doujutsu user get captured by a rogue enemy ninja?! In what backwards, insane reality does that sound like an acceptable result? Please, tell me." He sneered.
"It wasn't their fault!" Sakura shot back hotly, but the damage was done. She had elected not to mention the more…delicate matters she learned about with Onimeno, so she had never exactly drawn their attention to the fact that if she was abducted she might suffer a fate even worse than that of the average kunoichi in enemy hands. Shino had somehow managed to go even paler than he was already, and Kiba actually swayed on his feet in horror as the implications finally registered.
Onimeno noted their responses and struggled with his fury for a few moment until he had it under control, for the most part. They could at least breathe a little easier, with his killing intent properly leashed again. "Dammit…and of course it had to be fucking Kumo-nin. Of course." He blew out a long, frustrated sigh. "Okay. Okay. You said 'briefly' held captive. Did they touch your eyes? It's too much to hope that they didn't see them, I can tell by your expression."
Sakura was grimacing. "Their leader was…younger than us—"
"Fuck," Onimeno groaned. "Of course they wouldn't train you to suspect kids, we're the nice village."
Sakura puffed her cheeks out, then reluctantly continued. "Their leader had his chakra sealed away, and was posing as the client and target. I was closest when the attack finally came, and we were both abducted. We were alone for a certain amount of time, and he saw my eyes." She elected not to mention that she had actively shown him them as a gesture of goodwill and friendship. "I didn't tell him what they did, though. And we never mentioned it when we were with any of them."
"…okay," Onimeno admitted reluctantly after a short pause. "That actually isn't as bad as it first sounded."
"See?" Sakura relaxed a little, but her teammates still seemed a little ill. "And it would have gotten out eventually. As it is, I don't think they'll scream it from the rooftops, since they don't know anything about it."
"…did the old man know about the Kumo-nin ahead of time?" Onimeno asked, his tone disturbingly thoughtful.
"Yeah," Sakura said slowly, wondering what he was getting at. "Hokage-sama did. Why?"
"Well," Onimeno's voice was dry. "Considering the fact that in the last two decades, those creepy bastards have tried to kidnap two young girls from us, one with special chakra, and the other a member of the Hyuuga Clan's Main House…"
Sakura felt a small shiver travel down her spine. "…you think he might be testing the new administration?"
"I think he wanted to make a statement about the strength and confidence of the village, while making a gesture of limited trust and goodwill," Onimeno corrected her. "After the Hyuuga fiasco, they have to know that we'd keep our doujutsu on a tight leash around them. So you either had backup in the shadows, or he wanted them to think that you did."
"ANBU?" Shino clarified.
Onimeno nodded. "Probably. I doubt the old man would toss a bunch of green genin into a situation like that. Ugh." He scowled and kicked his stool upright, sitting down heavily. "Fucking politics. Anyways…" He scratched his neck. "What's this about 719-C having immunity to your non-luck-altering doujutsu?"
"Yeah," Sakura nodded, still reeling from the sudden blast of anger. "It was pretty weird. It worked on Shino and Akamaru and a bunch of civilians…"
Onimeno let out a mean bark of laughter. "Nice. I'm sure you had a grand time, sewing chaos and discord in your wake." He slapped his palms down on his thighs and stood, now in much better spirits. "Alright, brats. It's fieldtrip time. I want to see these 'lucky' little stars in action."
Kiba let out a wounded noise as Sakura glared death at the man. "We have gone months," she hissed. "Months without going there. And you just wrecked that. I hope you're happy now, jerk."
"Downright ecstatic." Onimeno grinned with offensive brightness.
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Sakura and Kiba squared off, carefully keeping pace as they circled one another. Onimeno had somehow wrangled an open training field for their use and was watching carefully from the sidelines with Shino.
"Get moving," he prompted, folding his arms across his chest. Sakura had seen him without his white coat before, but he always looked so strange in just his normal clothes. Like a normal jounin, instead of a foul-mouthed, ill-tempered doctor. For a moment, Sakura wondered what it would have been like if he was the instructor for Team Eight. Then she shuddered, shook her head, and channeled chakra to her eyes in an effort to purge that scary thought from her mind.
Kiba darted forward, sweeping up a kick. Sakura brought an arm up to block it, but it turned out to be unnecessary. Kiba rolled hi ankle and stumbled, nearly tripping face-first into the ground. Sakura blinked.
"Looks pretty damn effective from where I'm standing," Onimeno said.
"It…It didn't work before!" Sakura protested helplessly as she helped Kiba regain his balance.
"…why don't you re-enact what happened exactly," Onimeno said, in the tones of someone who had an inkling of what would come next.
Sakura racked her brain back to the night they first noticed Kiba's strange immunity, then slowly took off her glasses and set them aside. Kiba followed suit, and they resumed their former position. She took a breath and stared into his eyes as they blurred forward, and he didn't stumble with the first blow. He didn't during the second, or the third, or the seventh set of attacks they exchanged.
"I've seen enough," Onimeno decided after a few minutes.
Sakura and Kiba straightened and separated, replacing their glasses and moving back towards their teammate and the doctor. "So, how does it work?" Sakura asked, with a touch of impatient eagerness. He would mock her for it later, she was sure, but at the moment she just wanted a little of the mystique surrounding her stupid eyes dispelled.
"Well, first off, they don't have a damned thing to do with luck," Onimeno said pointedly. "You're basically sending a spike of chakra into your target's system. And the system feels that intrusion and basically propels your chakra out through the easiest avenue: the muscle system. Basically, you fuck with their motor skills a little bit."
"We can use that," Shino said, voice dripping with a dark and terrible purpose..
"Why was Kiba immune, then?" Sakura wanted to know. "And…now too. I mean, shouldn't full-on eye-contact just mean a bigger disturbance?"
"Oh right," Onimeno mused. "I never showed you the chart." He tapped his temple pointedly. "Alright, so you're a clever little brat; you know that the eyes are the shortest chakra-path to the brain. But what you don't know is that there's something called a Chakra Gate very close to the brain. Chakra Gates are essentially what keep your chakra from burning itself out, to keep things simple. The Gate takes your injected chakra as a 'donation' and refines and combines it with the target's chakra—your actually giving your opponent a miniscule energy boost."
"Thanks," Kiba grinned, then yelped when she kicked him in the shin without looking away from Onimeno.
The doctor snorted. "Anyways, with that trace amount of your chakra in his system, when you use your doujutsu it registers as an 'infusion' instead of an 'intrusion' and gets absorbed instead of repelled through his muscles. But your chakra won't be circulating through his system forever."
"Once it's used up," Sakura realized. "His immunity is gone too!"
"Exactly," Onimeno nodded, looking darkly amused.
Shino, at least, seemed to catch the backhanded humor of the situation. "So, in essence," the Aburame said slowly. "What you are telling us is that the strategy to overcome Sakura-san's doujutsu is to do the exact opposite of what the basic response to an unknown doujutsu is."
"Quick on the uptake, aren't you?" Onimeno remarked with a hint of approval, but Team Eight's attention was firmly tied up in the wicked, wonderful possibilities such a stipulation would afford them.
"We can use that," Sakura said with a slow, slightly wicked smile.
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Chapter Word Count: 1,860
Total Word Count: 40,997
Targeted Word Count: 35,000
Sakura's doujutsu, finally explained! It's about time, haha.
Thanks to Haze Be It, Pickles, Netag Silverstar, Alyn the Miracle, Sumiku Agaishi, Wandering the Arid Sea, Andelevion, eirame, LadyDream3512, maplehoof the 5th, Anonymous, nayuta, Chibified-chan, Twisted Musalih, romantiscue, Lazalie, wintersalad, ChicFreakSistaFierce, morpheusandmuse, Mengskhunter, Higanbana.4, and Gasanechi for the reviews!
See you all tomorrow!