49. The plot(ting) trundles along. Sakura, being a person of science at heart, can never let go of some things. And honestly, despite chakra, Sakura tries her very best to think her way to accuracy.
Dear morpheusandmuse (Guest),
Thank you for reading! I'm glad you enjoyed it. I continue to write with those hopes, of course :)
"There will be quite a lot of blood, Hokage-sama, but the operation should go smoothly," she tells her village leader calmly.
Sasuke who has signed the forms laid out on the table, Itachi who has summoned his crow for inspection, the creature that guided them in the darkness both is and is not a summon, Sensei who leans against the wall. Three of them without leaving any room for uncertainty.
Tsunade stamps her seal to release the samples, waving her off, "You are presenting me another of your plans, Sakura, another fait accompli. I hope the power you are trying to give to them will not be the end of you."
Sasuke gives his teammate a look of alarm, the mild warning does not go unheard. "Of course, that would be my hope as well, Hokage-sama."
The Lady Hokage leans back in her chair that reclines back just enough to allow the rising sun to peep over the crown of her hair. "Shizune will arrange an operating theatre for you within the week. Just in case the news leaks somehow, we will have done the transplants before anyone can raise a complaint."
Sakura bows in reply. "I will attend the next council session," Sasuke suddenly mentions, and Tsunade arches an eyebrow. "As you wish, young Lord Uchiha," comes her curious reply, inviting him to say more.
"I will stand on your side in a quid pro quo situation. My brother and I would like to thank you for what you have done for our clan."
Before Kakashi or Itachi can intervene for the usual political reasons, Tsunade laughs, accepting his promise. "It will be good to have an honest council member for once. I will count on your vote, even if I am to propose something that no one will like."
"You have my word," the young clan head of one says it like a ninja's honour is worth some weight in gold.
"I am curious to hear of your unpopular proposal, Hokage-sama, but I will ask after the operation," Sakura says liltingly. Tsunade bobs her head, "For that is how the politics rolls, Sakura. Go, then. I wait for your good news. Bring the young lord with you as your patients recover."
"When she calls me a young lord, does she mean to belittle me?" comes Sasuke's slightly chagrined question as they walk for once down the long spiral of the Hokage Tower.
Sakura twists a lock of her hair idly as she responds, "It is not with respect that she calls me by name, Sasu-chan. Though many council members may well call you the same if that is how the Lady Hokage addresses you. Many a council member has called me 'young' while decrying my policy suggestions. Maybe it is an insult. In another world, I might have said that it was a compliment."
"A compliment?"
The young Haruno Head looks to her right, only to have to look slightly upwards – ah, Sasuke's grown that much taller. "Yes, a compliment for I who will outlive them," and she gives him a small smile.
There's a flash of something there in her teammate's eyes, a darkness that reminds her that they are all growing up faster in a military state where people live and die by the act of battle. "In the end, it is us who will outlive them, huh…"
Sakura looks over the bannister down to the bottom of the rotunda. Once, she had only been able to look through the gaps into the darkness of a lower corridor. Now she sees Sensei and Sasuke's brother waiting for them at the door.
"Who would you like to outlive, Sakura-chan?"
"I'm not sure, Sasuke-chan. Since I live for people whom I love, like you."
Sasuke smacks her on the arm, "You are being a sap again, Naruto would shed tears for it." Sakura giggles, "If it is the truth, I cannot help but say it."
Then he is holding her arm, firmly and seriously. "Once the orange-masked man is gone and Naruto is safe again… I would like to live for living's sake."
Sakura hugs him warmly, reaching up to let him rest his chin on her shoulder. "Then let us outlive him, Sasuke-chan. Why else would I have made all these plans? Not to play you all like puppets but to make sure that we will outlast them."
"I trust you, Sakura-nee," he says quietly as his hands come up to hug her back, "Let us outlast them to see a peaceful future."
She hums. "Peace is a difficult thing, Sasuke. Difficult to attain, and even more difficult to keep. After every peace comes a war, it's impossible to avoid as time tends towards infinity."
"I will fight to protect the peace. The three of us will, nothing will stand in our way and the past will not repeat itself."
The youngest Uchiha can feel her warm breath, her satedness seeping out with the tension in her shoulders, "If that is what both of you would like, then I will fight with you. But even in a world without chakra, I know war is inevitable. I do not want to lose any of you."
She says it like she's certain and Sasuke replies, "Then in that alternative, don't you think chakra is a blessing?"
His teammate reaches up to pat his cheek, green eyes misty in thoughts that Sasuke wants to hear – "If a weapon of war was a blessing, yes, Sasuke. If you could use your Chidori at a distance, or if Naruto could throw his Rasengan over mountains. A distanced war that means you see no dead bodies and only smoking buildings. Sometimes I have these dreams and they surprise me…"
She shakes her head as his mind's eye constructs the image for him, his throat closing up. "But those are far off developments," she says like they are in inevitable future, "Even sensei would not think of them. We may yet live to see such things happen."
Sensei has gone back to his latest Icha-Icha, oblivious or otherwise to Sasuke's quiet queries as all of them make their way towards the hospital.
"But such things, Sakura, can you make them?"
"I have given you the idea, Sasuke-chan. You already tried teaching me the Chidori but beyond Electromagnetic Murder channelled through my chains, my abilities with lightning are no good. If you want to try the things in my dreams, I would help you."
"Would it be a good development?"
Sakura laughs, clear and unhindered. "Sasuke-chan, there is no world where increasing your own power is bad."
"Then you should try throwing a Rasengan with Naruto. He's taken to taunting me with your progress with his father's legacy, even though I told him your lightning release is the problem."
The medic hums, "Then you and sensei can try to make the Chidori into a long-ranged attack as well."
The hospital doors before them, the seals lighting up because they register Sakura's chakra, an automatic process of recognition, recorded down in the Lady Hokage's master scroll.
(sometimes it is truly odd. The development of spying tools to control your own citizens rather than to track the enemy. The encompassing eye of the state with its overarching powers. Sakura is surprised it took so long.)
Shizune-san, waving them over and all of them are neigh ignored in the calm of the hospital workflow.
Doing the standard blood tests and checking Itachi and Sensei's eyesight – Sakura frowning as she murmurs, "Left pupil reflex diminished for Itachi," and Shizune records it down dutifully.
Sasuke supports his brother as if Itachi hasn't been walking fine for the past month.
"I'll wait for the test results, but from the looks of it, Itachi-san, we'll transplant only your left eye first. No other changes. No medication for the rest of this week, please don't fall sick, and I'll let you all know when Shizune-san has an operating theatre for us."
The operation goes off without a hitch, there are no whispers or leaked secrets. Tsunade finds that for once, maybe, her concern when it comes to these things that Sakura does was unwarranted.
Transplanting an eye, of all delicate organs, the Lady Hokage is a medical professional before she is the leader of this village – if after the operation, Kakashi can deactivate his Sharingan, they have made the next great leap forward in medical advancements.
Both the patients are resting in the secured room as Sakura sleeps on the futon Naruto pulled out of a storage scroll. The young Uchiha is keeping vigil by his brother's bedside, even though he knows that Shizune has put Itachi into medical rest.
Tsunade picks up the clipboard that detailed the process from start to finish, accounting for the whole eye transplant process. "Shizune, what dosage of anaesthetic did you prepare?"
"Exactly as recorded in the notes, Tsunade-sama," and she almost frowns, circling the recorded dosage with her pencil.
"Kakashi went under with such a low dose of general anaesthesia?"
"Not at all, my lady, Sakura did the surgery with both of them awake. She has them ascertain that they could see after she reattached the optical nerve."
Tsunade nearly whistles. "Did she also check to see if they could channel chakra? I didn't see any notes on that finding."
"She decided against it, though she did mention it would be good to have a Hyuga come by to check on their chakra system, on the back page, I believe she wrote her additional comments."
Tsunade skims over the rest of the document, allowing herself to chuckle while waving the last sheet at Shizune, "With her tired chicken scratch, I'll get her to copy lines. Doctors cannot have such horrible handwriting."
Her faithful niece shares her smile. "When she wakes up, I'm sure she will have even more thoughts to pen down, neatly."
The Hokage bobs her head in agreement, bending down so she can touch the pink-haired teenager's forehead. Nowhere close to the age where Hanzo called the three of us the Sannin and this child is already… a medical prodigy. Not a mere child.
Naruto eyes her like a hawk, his legs tucked back under his chair as he leans forward. Tsunade does not understand entirely, why is it that these children growing up in a time of peace seem to have grown just as fast as a generation in war.
Three children, all orphans in a time of peace, ironic.
She commands forth her healing chakra, allowing it to wash over Sakura's head and shoulders, watching as the girl relaxes, the crease between her eyebrows disappearing into her high forehead.
In another time, it would not have been unthinkable that she would have taken Sakura on as her disciple. Tsunade shakes this lingering regret off as she gently pats the girl on the shoulder before standing.
A medic who doubles up with aggressive teammates and violates the basic rules she laid down for all Leaf medics. "Watch over her, Naruto. She's a precious one," she half remarks, half orders, setting the clipboard to the side and gesturing for Shizune to leave together.
Naruto salutes brightly, "You got it, baa-chan!" Tsunade rolls her eyes, "Brat."
To be honest, among the things that baffle Sakura are how medical advancements are possible when chakra is introduced into the equation. Reverse xeno-transplantation like the way Shisui-san's Sharingan was put into Itachi's crow shouldn't work.
Not to mention, the chakra drain and the crow's inability to deactivate the Mangenkyo Sharingan should have killed it.
Even when things are not as medically farfetched, they still are. It was an absolute miracle that Kakashi-sensei's teammate was able to transplant the Sharingan into his eye out in the field such that he could see, let alone use it or not get it infected. They were incredibly lucky with the blood types alone – sensei is type 'O', just like Obito-san.
The world she was born again into has always made her relearn things. Because of that, she wants to push things and push at the boundaries, further and always.
Orochimaru-sama always gives her an appraising look when she comes by; she gives him ideas, he calls them her "requests". But a Sharingan eye, brought under the careful dissection of a knife is only somewhat different from an otherwise, textbook standard eye.
Sasuke mulls over the diagrams and frozen cross-sections that would have made his clan elders weep. "Then basically, the cause of my brother's blindness was not the whole eye, but just this portion at the front?"
She hums, "That's right, Orochimaru-sama has already helped to confirm it. Unfortunately, for us to have confirmed that means we've lost the sample which I hoped to keep for you, someday."
"Have you found an explanation of how the evolved form works? Do you think that's possible, Sakura-chan?"
She shrugs, "Everything is possible with chakra, it seems, Sasuke. But I wouldn't go taking out the evolved versions for such research. As it is, we don't know how stringent the blood closeness requirement is for the evolution to occur. How your ancestors did these a hundred years before, I have no idea."
Her teammate gives her a wan smile. "I don't think they had much of a choice, Sakura-chan. It was their long shot in the dark. But that's fine, we have more information now. So, explain to me again, how the different blood types work, and why an eye transplant is supposed to be so difficult?"
Sakura laughs, "Right, I'll show you with some of the samples."
The Snake Sannin makes a small sound of displeasured approval as she looks towards him. "Thank you, Orochimaru-sama, I'll ask them to restock you another day."
"Sasuke your blood type is AB, and mine is O. There are most commonly, four different blood types…"
As she drips blood from bottles into glass petri dishes, Sakura wonders if it will take so long to check if rhesus factors exist in this world. Perhaps they truly do not. Somehow, she doubts it.
(Anyway, it doesn't take very long to prove that there's an extra factor that distinguishes blood types. After Orochimaru-sama double-checks the clotting going on between sensei's blood and Sakura's blood, he 'tsk's. "This is going to be hell for Tsunade-hime to check, you know?"
Sasuke's turn to shrug as Sakura smiles. "For progress, didn't they all say it was? Not insanity, but science. Maybe we'll have a breakthrough in blood research. Or maybe the hospital tested either sensei or I wrongly. Probably me – we did give sensei a bag's worth of 'O' blood yesterday, you know."
It's a complicated process, if they relied on her memory alone she would only have remembered the history behind the naming of the factors. After rhesus macaques that don't even appear in this world. But there are more factors to blood than just the big groups. And it always begs the question as to where the English alphabet appeared in this world for them to use them to name blood groups and mission ranks. Sakura doesn't quite know what to make of all of this. There's no answer that she can find.)
Sasuke, Itachi and Kakashi-sensei are out in the training grounds, getting a grip on the abilities of the upgraded Sharingan. Sasuke for one is a dutiful observer, taking down notes and recording the time they can each keep their eyes activated.
Sakura is, as Lady Tsunade is, very pleased to note that sensei can now deactivate his Sharingan. Naruto jokes that now he can keep his headband up instead of covering his eye in faux coolness.
Sensei grumbled a little, before ruffling his hair as he pulled his headband up to reveal the inactive eye from who they guessed was Obito's nephew once removed.
The distance in the blood relation doesn't seem to have had much of a problem – Sakura suspects the qualifier that it was a sibling's eye was due to the need for a blood type compatibility.
She brings this up with the Lady Hokage who grimaces in slight discomfort. But reassuringly, her village leader nods, "Yes, that's possible given that our understanding of organ transplantation remains uncertain. Orochimaru also brought me the proofs of your…" Tsunade-sama gestures, "I suppose we'll have to think of a name for it."
Sakura cocks her head aside, "Were you able to see the demonstration, Hokage-sama?"
The blond gives her a close-eyed smile. "Not the one in the hospital. Shizune and your senior Yakushi recreated a small-scale version that they're piloting from next week onwards. My tolerance for blood is still…"
The younger female nods lightly, "I understand. It's just that without your expertise, I don't think Orochimaru-sama and I have enough medical knowledge between us to isolate…" she gestures, "the new factor the way you managed with the A and B antigens."
Tsunade cracks a smile as she cracks open one eye to see Sakura's amused look, "I wouldn't have expected flattery from you, Sakura. But believe me, I have been trying with this fear of mine for a while."
Sakura stays there, quite still and quietly, waiting. The Lady Hokage clears her throat and asks, "No complications so far?" There are none.
"What is the blond brat up to these days?" "Jiraiya-sama has been having him over, I believe they're working on the Rasengan." Tsunade threads her fingers together, "Right, completing the Yondaime's legacy."
"May I know your plans for the next council session?" "Do you have enough offensive skills?" Their questions come to one another at the same time, belying where the other's mind wanders.
There's a marked exhale when her leader pulls a slim scroll from the pile and tosses it to her. "You can have a read, share it with the young Uchiha Lord. I want to catalogue the Kekkei Genkai in the village."
Sakura nods, tucking the scroll away into the storage seal Naruto placed on her weapon pouch. "Offensive skills are not my specialisation, Hokage-sama. But if it counts for very much, Naruto has taught me how to form a Rasengan. Sensei has trained me in some ninjutsu, though our natures do not overlap."
"I suppose that is within what I had expected. If one of the other ninja villages hostile to us, like Kumo, attempted to kidnap you, do you think they would succeed?"
Sakura blinks, "If it was just me alone, and I were far from backup, I suppose they would have a decent chance."
"Have a think through once you read the proposal. I want you to head it and figurehead it as well. The council will resist much more if Orochimaru is placed on top alone, but regardless of where you are put in the hierarchy, Sakura, you are famous in the medical world for your neural reconstruction technique. Anyone with two brain cells will be able to tell that you are key personnel. Once word gets out that Kakashi can deactivate his Sharingan, and we publish your findings on the new blood type factor, there will be no more doubt as to your legitimacy as a doctor."
"You have to sell me to be able to place me there. But selling me and placing me there also endangers the entire project." "And we must put you there. I have never seen your level of subconscious chakra control. If it is the Kekkei Genkai we want to shed light on, only you will do."
Sakura gives Tsunade a look of curiosity, pleased despite herself, "If not for the vote of confidence, Tsunade-sama I would have thought flattery never to come from you. But if what you are serious about is cataloguing the Kekkei Genkai, I would wonder if you have planned how to convince the clans to give up their secrets."
And that's the end of one more segment, which is the plan-to-take-down-Tobito segment. Our Kakashi and Itachi have their Eternals, Sasuke will make his Chidori stream, Naruto will do something with his Rasengan, though not the Rasenshuriken because he doesn't have Sage Mode. Jiraiya has a hand in Naruto's development, of course, plus Naruto's side gig in seals!
Sakura tangles with her chains in making a Rasengan, but the little scientist is more interested in re-discovering blood types and pioneering medical techniques. So what does Lady Tsunade have to say about that? Politick everyone's way to a bloodline limit research project, wrangling the clans and feeding Sakura's interest. Also Orochimaru's.
I'll try to think of some ways to power up Sakura as she does research – but she'll be doing background research, the focus now that the science conundrums are sort of here? but not? is her own training to become a stronger ninja.
Remember to drop by and say hi, especially if there's something you'd like to see!
Kayo
