Mituko has had such a long day. She's hiding in a stairwell for a few minutes to take a breather, pulling her long silver hair back into a proper ponytail since half of it fell out in the chaos. She knew it was important work, and she was a fairly good medic for her age, but it was still so exhausting to be surrounded by so many buzzing people.
Working in the Konoha hospital was almost always busy, being a ninja village and all, but this was a bit further than normal. There was a border patrol gone wrong, and they were almost double their usual workload. Mitsuko would have been only the errand girl a few months ago, limited to grabbing supplies and running orders and notes to various medical personnel.
"Mitsuko-chan! I need more bandages and saline over here!" "Someone bring more epinephrine, he's flatlining!" "CHIBI-CHAN, hurry up! I asked for the portable EKG's like ten minutes ago, are you even trying?"
Yeah, Mitsuko does not miss those days. Instead, after graduating the Academy pretty early with the purpose of being a medic in training rather than joining the frontline fighters, she instead was placed in the thick of the triage and left to try to heal superficial traumas. Some stab wounds, quite a few slit tendons and slashed muscle groups. She left the more complicated impalements and blunt force head traumas for the more experienced medics in the group. It's quite a bit of responsibility for a six year old, no matter how mature.
Things had been so busy with the Third War in its fourth year. It feels like it was a lifetime ago when it started. It may have well been one, the way life had been before and after. Both her and Nii-chan had changed so much. It came with the territory of losing your parents young, she guessed.
She had spent the morning bent over various shinobi and kunoichi, using her modified Mystical Palm jutsu to close any open wounds. While she wasn't the best at internal medicine or diagnostics, she was slowly making progress on having her own original iryo-ninjutsu. Having a raiton chakra nature came in handy sometimes. She at one point was trying to heal a woman's leg, but the wound would not stop reopening. She had clamped her glowing, slightly sparking hand onto the woman's leg, but the six year old wasn't the physically strongest still being a small child. Mitsuko could feel her eyes watering on reflex, as her default reaction was still crying when overwhelmed.
"Kunoichi-san, I need you to stay still please!" Mitsuko frantically pleaded. The Kunoichi continued to squirm, making it quite a bit more difficult to stop the bleeding of the slash on her calf. It looked like whoever she had been fighting aimed for the achilles tendon a bit lower down. The woman was lucky they missed, she wouldn't have been able to walk had they hit their target. Mitsuko took a moment to be proud of herself for speaking up for once, normally too shy to say anything that could seem like a complaint. At least this patient wasn't trying to make things more difficult on purpose, unlike a certain sibling of hers. She always had to scold her Nii-chan to get him to let her patch him up after a mission.
"Hai, Hai, I know! But it still tickles, I can't help it chibi-chan!" The woman forced out between her betrayed giggles. She looked very unhappy with her body's reaction to the Raiton, clearly trying her best to stay still and failing all the same. Mitsuko appreciated the effort, the nickname a bit less.
She was told people call her that because she was a cute kid, her big blue eyes and chubby cheeks doing her no favors. It was hard to feel like she was an actual kunoichi when it seemed like nobody else really thought it. She found if she wore her hair in a plain ponytail or bun instead of her normal twin braids, people took her a bit more seriously. Not much, but some.
After a good ten minute struggle to stop the wound from reopening every time the woman moved before finally being able to close it, Mitsuko was allowed a five minute break before her next patient. Thankfully, most of the patients from the border patrol gone wrong had been taken care of by this point, leaving those left who either had training injuries or needed post-mission checkups. Sometimes both. She practically specialized in quickly treating minor injuries, with how she had come up with her modified Mystical Palm jutsu.
When the body heals a wound naturally, a stab wound for example, it requires a certain amount of energy to be able to regenerate the damaged tissue. Normally, it would take that energy from either calories eaten, fat cells, or muscle groups. It also was only able to work slowly, due to the time and effort it took to convert all of it into a usable form, but also due to the amount of heat formed when creating these new cells.
However, when using the Mystical Palm jutsu, the medics' pure spiritual chakra was able to replace the needed energy. The medics were able to encourage the regen rate of the damaged tissue by giving purified spiritual chakra, replacing the energy needed from other sources. It had to be done slowly though, as using too much at once could overwhelm the patient's chakra coils to the point of stressing them. If the patient's chakra coils were put under too much pressure, they could easily burst leaving the patient incapable of manipulating their stores ever again.
What Mitsuko had found, after extensive research and experimenting under the watchful eye of an older medic, was that if she didn't use pure spiritual chakra and instead let in just the right amount of Raiton she could enhance the rate of regen even further.
She had the theory it was because Raiton was capable of transferring more usable energy to injured cells, ie; wasting less energy in the process than purified chakra while not creating excess heat, but if you used too much it would cause the cells to overheat from working too fast, which is what stressed a patient's coils. A patient's chakra coils bursting normally happened when the synapses where the chakra pathway of the body intertwined with the central nervous system were 'burnt out', losing any control of the release of chakra from nearby tenketsu points. So, if you were able to have enough control to keep a steady ratio while monitoring the regen carefully, she could almost double the normal healing speed.
At least, that's what she thinks is happening. Mitsuko doesn't really have the most self confidence, and especially when it comes to her own skills. She can't really be sure without more extensive studies on it, but is too shy to even think of asking for help. So she works on it by herself, which is her preferred way to train, honestly. The only person she really feels comfortable asking for help from is her Nii-chan, who thankfully almost always was able to make time for her if asked. She never understood the rumors about how little he cares about his fellow Konoha-nin, but maybe it was a bit of hero worship for her last living relative.
When her mother had given birth to Mistuko, it was a month or two earlier than expected. Their mother hadn't lived long past that, her brother spending the first few years of Mitsuko's life anywhere she wasn't. She wasn't sure if he blamed her for their mother dying, she knew she did though. It had been one of the things that had started her on the path of learning about medicine. Not to mention the fact that since she was born early, and was a fragile child because of that, she would never be able to be a frontline fighter. She got sick rather easily, with frequent issues with her lungs. Not to mention she would most likely always be on the smaller side, a few inches shorter compared to other children her age. So Mitsuko started training the day she learned about what happened to their mother, intent on becoming the best medic possible even, if it was just chakra control for the moment.
The thing that had both brought the siblings together and shattered their world was Tou-san committing suicide. Mitsuko had been home, sleeping in for once when she normally would have been at a training ground by then. Just because she wasn't a super prodigy like her Nii-chan didn't mean she couldn't work hard. She also knew that you needed to take breaks every once in a while, to avoid burnout. She was peacefully dozing in her bed, when there was some odd noise in the living room that woke her up. A mix of the loud thud of something dropping to the ground, something dripping, and the gasping sounds of pain that had Mitsuko fully awake in seconds. Sprinting to the living room, she found her Tou-san unresponsive on the floor, a sword through his middle.
Being a terribly small child with only the slightest grasp on emergency medicine, she of course failed to save him. She was three, with the only thing she knew to do was stop bleeding. There wasn't a way she could have saved him, but she didn't know that. All Mistuko knew was that her Tou-san was bleeding and she couldn't get him to wake up. She didn't know what to do about the sword impaling her father, or the way his breath had been getting more ragged and strained by the second. It took less than two minutes for it to stop all together. She couldn't do anything but cry quietly while clutching Tou-san's hand.
Mitsuko knew her father was dead when she couldn't feel him buzzing anymore. All people buzzed in some way, she could normally guess where people were based on it. Her Tou-san once told her that the buzzing was chakra, which was in all living people. She had lit up like the sun when her Tou-san told her she was a sensor, something special. But was she really that special if she had let her father bleed out while she did nothing but cry? If he didn't buzz anymore, that she no longer could hear anything at all from him anymore, doesn't that mean he's dead?
Mitsuko spent the next few hours catatonic, sitting on the ground next to Tou-san, still holding on to his hand hoping he would squeeze hers back like he always did when she was upset. It wasn't until her Nii-chan came home from the Academy and found the two of them that Mitsuko did more than stare at Tou-sans still form. That was the day the both of them lost the innocence of childhood. Her brother graduated early, with the intent of becoming a legal adult. It didn't matter he was only six, if you had the hitai-ate to show, you were a legal adult in the eyes of the village.
He did this so they wouldn't get separated, Mitsuko would have been sent to an orphanage while her Nii-chan would be living in a student-apartment. When he realized that Mitsuko was the only person he had left, he went from emotionally and physically distant to her awkward but trying Nii-chan. It was just them against the world, and he didn't want to lose his last family member. As long as he was a legal adult, he would be allowed to be Mitsuko's guardian, keeping the siblings together. He wasn't the perfect older brother, but he loved her and tried his best so Mitsuko loved back him all the same.
So Mitsuko tried to help too. When it finally came time for her to attend the Academy, she worked her hardest to progress as fast as possible. While she had been planning on not graduating early at first, she knew it would make her Nii-chan's life easier. She would be a legal adult as well, along with being able to earn small mission pay to supplement their household income. It was expensive being a new shinobi or kunoichi. The grocery bill alone could get pricey, needing large amounts of food for the growing children. Mitsuko had learned to cook to avoid having only take out, her brother was many things but not a talented cook. She found she enjoyed making bento's for both of them, tending to make onigiri pandas and hotdog octopi. They were a bit cutesy, but her Nii-chan didn't seem to mind too much. After demonstrating to her teachers where she actually was in her progress, since she had been trying to hide it to avoid the attention her brother got as a prodigy too, it wasn't too difficult to get bumped up to the graduating class. It helped that their family had a history of producing geniuses.
A loud buzzing broke her from her thoughts, she hadn't realized how long she had been hiding in the stairwell and from the agitated chakra of one Nagano Etsuko, the current Lead Medic of the ER, Mistuko could tell she was needed. Etsuko-san, as she insisted Mitsuko call her by her first name, was a rather brusque woman who still had a soft spot. She wasn't the most feminine or dainty, with a bit a potty-mouth too. She was in her early twenties, short and strong and a somewhat scary kunoichi. The woman insisted her nindo consisted of "Do no harm, but take no shit." Mitsuko was intimidated by her sometimes, but still thought highly of her.
Mitsuko takes a deep breath, before exiting the stairwell and navigating her way back. She can still hear some commotion echoing down the halls, guessing that it was still busy but with only the more complicated injuries left. Etsuko-san tracks her down the moment Mitsuko is within her sensing range.
"Mistu-chan! I need you!." The woman calls out, power-walking towards her. Her light-brown curly hair sways behind her at the movement. "The shit-show of the border patrol has mostly been patched up, but we don't have the medic's to spare for the smaller injuries." Etsuko-san dumps a pile of patient files in the young girl's arms who swayed at the weight, clearly intending for her to be the one to do it. While Mitsuko had only been an official medic for a few months, it was clear the stress of the war was stretching medic-nin too thin. The fact that a six year old was being put in charge of patients, them being smaller training injuries aside, showed the strain the hospital was under.
"I, um, don't think I am quite ready for this, Etsuko-san!" Mitsuko managed to squeak out, clearly starting to panic. "I only graduated a few months ago! I had thought medics-in-training would only do solo appointments after a few years!" The young girl's eyes started burning, she just knew that she was moments away from crying. That wouldn't do her any favors in earning her patients respect, as it was already hard enough. Why did she have to have crying be her default response to stress? She wished she had Nii-chan's poker face at times, how he was able to keep his cool through everything.
Etsuko-san shook her head quickly, already turning back around to get back to work. She called over her shoulder as she went, "You were an early graduate for a reason, Mitsu-chan. I know you can handle these, and we need all the help we can get!" The woman picked up speed, until she had rounded the corner again. The young girl let out a quiet sigh, since even when frustrated she couldn't bring herself to make too much noise.
Etsuko-san has too much faith in me, what if I mess up? I don't want to be the reason someone doesn't get to go home to their families! I don't think I am ready for this. Mitsuko thought frantically. She had already been making her way to the exam rooms, for her first patients, but she was slowly getting more anxious over the thought of failing. The walk over felt like an eternity, until she was just outside the room of her first solo patient. Mitsuko takes a deep breath, braces herself, and then opens the doors. The first thing she notices is the rather noisy argument that two of the rooms occupants were having. Maybe a Genin team? They both only look a few years older than me, maybe they are still trying to get along? The young girl watched from the doorway for a few more moments, curious when they would notice her.
"This is Bakashi's fault, not mine! It's not like I chose to break my arm!" yelled out a boy. He had short dark hair and annoyingly bright orange goggles. Mitsuko wondered how he managed to see anything through them. He also sounded a bit petulant, clearly upset about their missing third teammate.
A young girl, presumably the token Kunoichi of the team, continued to scold him. "I don't care, you still have to be more aware of your actions! Imagine what could have happened if Minato-sensei hadn't caught you in time?" She was giving him a look that was a mix of "I am disappointed in you" and anxious worry. Mitsuko couldn't help but notice the purple face tattoos the girl had, it looked nice against her pale skin and framed with dark brown hair.
The third and last occupant of the room was a blond teenager falling asleep in the corner. Mitsuko felt sorry for him, his genin team must be a handful if he was managing to sleep through this noise. If the hospital didn't have silencing seals on exam rooms for privacy, she was sure the children arguing could have been heard across the building.
You can do this Mitsu! Fake it til you make it! She thought to herself, before speaking with false confidence to get their attention.
"Good afternoon everyone, who will I be seeing today?" Mitsuko asked politely. Even though it was obvious that her patient would be the boy clutching his left arm to his chest, she didn't want to assume. She immediately felt the weight of three different sets of eyes.
"Eh? What's a brat doing in here?" The boy blurted out, seemingly unthinking. Mitsuko immediately deflated, any chance at trying to be confident washed away with that comment. His teammate looked promptly horrified at his manners, having already spotted the Hitai-ate Mitsuko wears around her neck. It was their teacher that broke the awkward silence.
"Obito, be polite. She earned her Hitai-ate, don't be rude." The blond chided his student, before turning to the medic in training. Mitsuko hadn't even noticed that he had been awake the entire time, and he had a knowing look in his eye when he turned to her. "My student fell wrong during a spar with his teammate, I'm pretty sure he broke his arm from the noise it made when he landed." The blond sounded both resigned and worried relaying this info, resigned he had trouble makers for students but worried all the same. Supports my theory of a relatively new team, at least. Mitsuko mused to herself.
Mitsuko nodded at the shinobi, before turning to the boy. His face had a flush to it, but she wasn't sure if it was from embarrassment at his blunder or from pain. Either, she pretended not to notice. Mitsuko started by asking the boy to move his arm in a few different motions, watching his reaction closely. From the way he winced at certain positions, she had no doubt he injured at least something. She spoke again, turning to the boy. "Genin-san, would you please remove your jacket?" The boy nodded slowly, clearly unsure why.
With just his t-shirt left, Mistuko was able to begin the process of healing him. When her palms lit up, lightly sparking from her modified Mystical Palm, she could feel the gaze of their teacher sharpening. She hoped it was just because she was younger than most who knew this particular jutsu. It required an insane amount of chakra control after all, that most wouldn't get close to until they were teenagers. Given that Mitsuko was currently six, she could understand why it must seem odd.
What really made her uncomfortable, was the way the two genin reacted.
"Wow! I didn't know that medics could start so young!" The boy, Obito according to his teacher, sounded gobsmacked. "I didn't even know so many people graduate early, I thought Bakashi was an outlier." Obito eyed her hitai-ate, grumbling under his breath about their missing teammate. She didn't even blink at the name, too focused on trying to heal his arm. The kunoichi was sending shocked and slightly envious glances at the jutsu the younger girl was using. The way both of them looked at Mitsuko made her want to squirm and fidget. She instead tried to focus on her work.
She could feel the cracks of a fracture along his Ulna and Radius, the pattern it followed made her think he had tried to catch himself, but the awkward placement of his weight on his arm and wrist caused them to fracture. She also thinks he might have sprained his wrist from the decent amount of swelling and bruising it had too. Her attention fully on her healing, stubbornly ignoring the conversation around her, led her to miss the door opening at first.
When the boy she was healing started to rant at their formerly missing teammate, she finally looked up having just finished. Just to see her Nii-chan in the doorway, who was surprised to see her too. Not that he showed it much, she only could see it because they were so close.
"Nii-chan!" She called out happily, going from shy and quiet to slightly louder and energetic. After the mess of a morning she had, she was very excited to see her older brother. She felt the smile blooming across her face. The three other occupants of the room had differing reactions. Their teacher smiled, clearly having recognized who she was before Kakashi-nii had joined them. His kunoichi teammate let out a quiet gasp of surprise. But Obito managed to get even louder, blurting out, "Since when does the teme have a sister!?"
Mitsuko barely registered all of this, having dove to her brother for a much needed hug after the stressful morning. Kakashi-nii didn't seem to mind too much, even if he was flustered at the commotion. He just let out a sigh, wrapping his arms around his younger sister a bit awkwardly. He doesn't give perfect hugs, but he's trying. Mitsuko thought to herself. She was so grateful she had her Nii-chan, and she didn't know what she would do without him.
Kakashi-nii clearly wasn't as enthusiastic in his response to his teammate. "Dobe, I have had a sister the entire time, it's not like she was born yesterday. Just because I don't talk about her often," His complaints turned into quiet grumbles. Her brother knew how much she hated conflict, she got anxious rather easily and negative emotions make people buzz even louder. She appreciated that he tried to keep any conflicts away from her, even if it was just a petty argument with a teammate.
Their teacher cut in, both to move the conversation forward and to stop their bickering. "It's about time we met Kakashi's imouto!" The blond, who Mitsuko realized must be Kakashi-niis sensei Minato, who then went on to tease her brother. "I was starting to wonder if we ever would, looks like it took some outside intervention." Her brother's sensei seemed to be pleasantly surprised, but his teammates were shocked. Mistuko pulled herself off her brother, but was still latching onto Nii-chan's hand like normal. She wondered why Kakashi-nii's teammates were giving their clasped hands weird looks, but ignored them.
"Nii-chan, I have a few more patients I have to see before my shift is over, but after could we go out for ramen?" She sent a bright smile at her brother. There was a stand near Hokage tower that had such good Tonkatsu, and she desperately craved some comfort food. Kakashi-nii just sighed, and quietly nodded his agreement.
That seemed to shock the others the most, including their sensei. Was it really that odd for her brother to agree to going out for dinner?
Kakashi-nii firmly ignored their actions, quietly asking "Does your shift end at the same time as usual, Imouto?" She nodded happily as reply. "We can meet there soon then, you have more work to do I'm guessing from the way you are hiding out here longer than necessary." Kakashi-nii gave her a knowing look, as Mitsuko had a bad habit of procrastinating anything that made her nervous.
She gave him a small pout, her big blue eyes watering slightly. She knew the expression was particularly effective in getting her way with people. As always, it seemed like her Nii-chan was the only person who was able to resist it. He gave a small snort, before wryly saying, "Nice try Mitsu-chan, add in a bit of a wobbly lip next time." He was clearly unaffected, as usual. She gave him an honest pout this time, before leaving the exam room they were all in.
"Meet you there in an hour Nii-chan!" She called over her shoulder, already hurrying off to finish her work. She didn't bother with a proper goodbye, as her brother knew she would be rushing now to get things over with. Nothing was going to stand between her and a bowl of heavenly Tonkatsu Ramen after the day she had, even if it meant she had to do more solo sessions.
If it wasn't for the privacy seals in each exam room, she would have heard the commotion that came from his teammates' reaction to the change in personality Mistuko's brother had around her. Not that she really noticed that to begin with, the hero-worship she had for her older brother made her a bit blind to those things honestly.
Years laters, Mitsuko would think back on this interaction with fondness. There probably were better ways to meet her brothers Team 7, but she wouldn't change it for the world. It was the start of a new chapter looking back, and at least it started well. They wouldn't have as much luck later on.
