Working in the hospital had its ups and downs.
On the one hand, Sute had to appreciate the stability and routine it provided. Shinobi hospitals had no shortage of work for the medics, especially in Kiri where the academy preached violence above all else. "Shinobi" was really just a glorified term for "hired killer and soldier," a value especially true in a place called the Bloody Mist. Iryo-ninjutsu, useful as it was, simply wasn't as appealing to a bunch of budding sociopaths as epic death matches.
Which, to be fair, hospital work could get boring and tedious at times. But in reality, the hospital could be home to some of the most violent and gory images people would ever see.
Take today, for instance.
"Okay, kid, just... calm down," she muttered, trying not to sound too exasperated. "Just take a seat, or... something. And stop staring!" The trainee next to her didn't seem to hear her, his wide eyes focused on the still form being carted away by her fellow medics.
This guy's death had been one of those inevitable ones. Combat-oriented chuunin, carted in two days ago with severe third-degree burns after running into enemy forces on a mission. Bad prognosis, not expected to survive the week, kept alive only long enough for T&I to try to get information about his mission from him even though any medic could tell them there was no point. Not exactly a common occurrence, but certainly far from rare either. They'd at least taken pity on him and kept him on the nice pain killers.
The trainee who currently looked ready to hyper-ventilate had been doing his rounds delivering lunches, and unfortunately stumbled into the room right before the patient went into cardiac arrest. Poor kid had then tried to attempt standard CPR procedures—which, horrifying to do with someone with burns of that level—before other medics arrived and declared the time of death.
With a sigh she grabbed his shoulders and gently steered him out of the room, pointedly heading in the opposite direction from the morgue while silently bemoaning the loss of one of their few trainees. Seeing as all Kiri medics had spent their lives up to this point training to actively kill people, she'd expect them to be able to handle a dead patient better. Even if a trainee went straight to the hospital, they'd have seen a corpse at some point during the academy.
Alas, that was not the case though. It seemed even here Sute was an anomaly because she couldn't form the necessary levels of attachment to necessitate the sort of shock from losing a patient, especially cases like this trainee who was about to have a breakdown despite being absolutely inculpable for the death of a guy who seriously should have been declared dead on arrival.
Or maybe it had to do with the fact some of the guy's skin had come off during CPR and stuck to his hands. Sute could sympathize with that reason, at least. Gross.
After situating the kid in one of the break rooms with a medic from another division, Sute quickly made her escape and took off to find a different trainee to handle the rest of the cleanup. The patient might be dead, but there was still plenty of work to be done in the now-empty room. Floors needed to be scrubbed and disinfected, the sheets had to be stripped and washed... Or burned. Burning them would work too.
Either way, that work was too menial for the fully trained medics to bother with. Knowing the lunch rush was on hand, she headed for the kitchen and pushed open the door while skimming the room for the gray smocks reserved for trainees. Sure enough she found one of the two remaining trainees (because let's face it, that other kid was guaranteed to drop the program and enter regular forces now) hunched over the dishes away from the cooks. Sute wasted no time crossing the space towards him, calling sharply, "Oi, trainee."
The boy stiffened at her commanding tone and spun to face her, standing at stiff attention. He looked just a little incredulous when he saw her, no doubt wondering about her young age—he looked like he was only two or three years younger than her—but he showed no outward signs of disrespect. "Yes, ma'am?" he asked.
"Drop the dishes and follow me," Sute told him briskly. "Patient just coded in Room 114." The cooks looked a bit disgruntled at having one of their lackeys pulled away, but the disapproval faded upon hearing the room number. Everyone had been aware of the lost cause in Room 114, and no one envied the poor soul that had to clean his room.
Her orders given, she turned and stalked out, and she could hear the clatter of dishes as he scrambled to follow her. He had to run to catch up to her, trailing close behind. "Any special tasks beyond routine procedure?"
"Strip the bed. Separate whatever sheets can be salvaged for laundry, set aside the rest for disposal." Pausing, she glanced at him sideways and asked, "Just to check, have you eaten lunch yet?"
He seemed a bit startled by the question. "Uh... yes?"
"Then grab an extra bucket from the janitor's closet. Be prepared to follow standard disposal procedures for bodily fluids. If you feel upset, do not come to me," she added with a pointed look. "Grab Sagawa or Mio instead."
The trainee looked very incredulous at that, and just a little pale. "Uh, y-yes, ma'am... Understood." He nodded and quickly scurried away, looking a bit more apprehensive now. As he ran off he nearly bumped into another trainee just walking around the corner, jumping to the side to skirt around the other boy before continuing on his way. The new arrival watched him dart out of sight and then turned to look at Sute curiously.
"Amuro-san seems on edge," he commented. "Is something wrong?"
"He's just off to clean one of the rooms," Sute replied with a nonchalant shrug, silently filing away the name of the other boy for future reference. As she spoke another medic—Sagawa—turned the corner where Amuro had just disappeared from, his blue eyes instantly lighting on her.
"Ringo," he greeted. "There's a patient asking for you."
"...Seriously?" she asked, staring at him in mild disbelief. Not many people specifically requested her. Running over the brief list of patients who didn't mind her brisk bedside manner, she guessed, "One of the Swordsman?"
"Nope," Sagawa denied blithely, and while she puzzled over that he glanced at the trainee. "And you, if you're not doing anything right now, get to laundry duty. There's a backup."
"Yes, sir," the boy said with a nod, and quickly turned and headed off to get to work. As he left Sute watched him closely, her mouth tugging into a small frown. Something about him felt... familiar.
For the time being she shelved the thought, turning her attention to Sagawa who gestured for her to follow. "So if it's not a Swordsman, then who is it?" she asked curiously as they walked down the hall.
"Eh, I don't want to spoil the surprise," he responded with a wry smile, and she pouted at him but didn't press him further. After working with together for the past five years, Sute knew Sagawa wouldn't tell her if he didn't want to. She'd developed a pretty good rapport with the black-haired man despite their ten year age gap, and he'd been the one to take her under his wing when she first started between deployments.
"Can you at least tell me how bad it is?"
"Nothing major, just typical post-mission checkup," he summarized. "Shouldn't take too long." Sute hummed in acknowledgment and decided to drop the line of questioning for now.
"By the way, any idea what's going on with Maki-san?" she asked. "His office was empty this morning." Maki was one of the higher-ranking medical ninja in the hospital, her direct supervisor and a career medic who'd had this office longer than she'd been alive.
"You haven't heard?" Sagawa asked blandly. "He decided to retire." Sute paused, considering that. People did not just suddenly "retire" from being medical ninja. Maybe in her old world doctors would suddenly decide to enter early retirement due to medical malpractice or lawsuits, but in the shinobi world? Shinobi hospitals needed every damn medic they could get, even the shoddy ones could at least be trusted to do some petty menial tasks to lighten the work load for the others.
And in Kiri, "retire" took on an especially unique double meaning.
"He tried to steal medical records and run, didn't he?" she asked flatly, and Sagawa merely arched an eyebrow.
"I am not at liberty to say what transpired, exactly," he responded simply, which was basically as blatant as he could get in confirming it.
"Yeah, yeah, I know," she sighed, running a hand through her hair. "No speaking bad of the military dictatorship and all that." As Sagawa shot her a slightly alarmed look she just sourly resumed her march, grumbling under her breath, "I swear, why do all the best ones turn out to be traitors?"
Considering she had plans to desert Kiri within the next two years or so, Sute was perfectly aware of how hypocritical that statement was.
Still, that wouldn't be for some time yet, so for now she focused on her job and pushed open the door to the examination room Sagawa had been steering her towards. Her sour expression lifted though when she saw who was waiting for her. "Mei-chan!"
"Hello, Sute," the auburn-haired woman greeted, dipping her head with a small smile. Terumii Mei had to be one of Sute's favorite people in Kiri. Beautiful and deadly, she fit the image of the femme fatale perfectly, the kind of woman with an eye-catching face and body outshined only by her lethal skill on the field. Sute always felt frumpy and ugly with her, just like that one Yuki woman from her platoon, but she didn't particularly mind. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"
"More than two months," Sute agreed as she closed the door. "Last I heard you were on a long-term mission in Hot Water for another two weeks." Currently the beauty was leaning against the exam table, wearing a beaten-looking uniform suggesting she'd just come fresh from the field.
"I was. We found the target rather fast so it didn't take as much time as we expected, though I took a nasty blow during the fight. It's still sore, so I thought it'd be safer to check it out after reporting to the Mizukage."
"Smart woman," Sute mused as she walked over. "So, where'd you get hit?"
"Let me show you," Mei responded, and even as she spoke she began peeling off her shirt, making Sute's eyebrows disappear into her bangs. Modesty didn't really matter to medical ninja, but it was still a bit surprising to see someone acquiesce so easily to stripping in front of her, especially someone as jaw-droppingly beautiful as Mei. When she removed her shirt it just made her curves all the more obvious, her torso probably the thing of wet dreams save for the ugly bruising below her right breast.
"Ah, yeah, that looks bad," Sute commented wryly, eying the dark patch with a critical eye. "You probably have a fractured rib. Shouldn't be too hard to fix."
"Thank you, Sute-chan. You're a life-saver." Mei smiled at her kindly, and she huffed but didn't object as she raised glowing green hands to Mei's ribcage. For all her beauty Sute knew she'd never have any competition for the right to tend to Mei, all because the older woman had been born into a clan of kekkei genkai users.
Mei was one of the rare bloodline users who hadn't been chased out of the village. Not only that, she possessed not just one, but two kekkei genkai, giving her the ability to both produce lava AND create corrosive acid mists that could melt just about anything it touched. And more than that, she knew how to use them. Which was the main reason she hadn't left yet.
At this point Mei was one of the very few Mist ninja to sport an S-rank in the bingo books—a feat claimed by even fewer kunoichi from any village. Her mere presence in their ranks added weight to Kiri's name, which, combined with some of her undeniable heroics during the war, made her safe from the majority of the purges. Sadly though, that didn't spare her from the prejudices. While Mei had definitely earned plenty of respect, Sute was one of the few medics willing to treat the woman.
Mending broken bones took a bit more effort and training than other forms of healing, due to all the complicated scientific knowledge needed about how bones formed and mended. Larger, messier breaks could be near-impossible to heal with chakra alone, Tsunade had earned her reputation for good reason. Fortunately, Mei's rib had only a minor fracture, just a partial crack with no bone chipped away, which would be rather simple to fix.
While Sute couldn't see Mei's rib she could feel the bone respond to her chakra, subtly shifting and repositioning so the broken edges lined up perfectly and pressed together. It took only about ten minutes of intense concentration before the bone had fully recovered, and after that it didn't take long for the purple bruising to fade too. "All done," she declared as she lifted her hands from Mei's now perfectly unblemished skin. "Congratulations, your potential career as a bikini model is still intact."
Mei barked out a sharp laugh, her green eyes twinkling with delight. "Oh, Sute-chan, you're too cute," she giggled, pulling her shirt back on. "Thank you again, I feel better than ever, as always. I should repay you sometime."
"I'm literally doing my job," Sute deflected with a shrug. Then, "But I wouldn't be opposed to a spar."
Mei smirked at her, her eyes taking on a more dangerous gleam. "Sweetie, you might be good, but I'm S-rank. I don't want to accidentally break you."
"Worth a shot." Sute shrugged as she headed for the door, and Mei smiled.
"Really, though, I do want to thank you," she mused. "Maybe a spa day? We could go to the onsen and get massages afterwards."
Sute paused, and then smiled thinly. "Thanks for the offer, but I'll have to pass," she said with a small bow. "Unlike you, I am currently caught in the throes of puberty and I do not want to show off my naked body to any strangers."
"Blunt as ever, I see," Mei hummed, giggling into her hand. "Alright, cakes at that little bakery by the weapons district?"
"Much better. Next time we both have a day off?"
"It's a date," Mei agreed, and Sute opened the door with a smirk.
"Funny, I didn't think I was your type," she replied dryly, referring to the older woman's common moaning about marriage. The older woman playfully batted her shoulder.
"Ha ha, very funny. I'll see you later, Sute-chan." She waved as she headed off, leaving Sute to watch her disappear down the hall while rubbing her sore shoulder. Only after Mei disappeared did her smile fade, shoulders slumping with a sigh.
"Damn, now I really want to try a hot spring," she grumbled, slipping into English almost unconsciously. Fourteen years of living in Pseudo-Japan-Ninja-World, and Sute had yet to engage in one of the most popular Japanese amenities. Visiting an onsen sounded so appealing, especially after hearing other kunoichi talk about how relaxing it was to spend time there with friends, but she just couldn't.
Ameyuri's words echoed in her mind, softer and smoother than the quiet rasp her voice had been reduced to in her final hours. "Never show your bare back to anyone."
Sute still didn't know what made her bare back so special—she'd never been in the mindset to look at it when she had access to a mirror, and she couldn't see anything when turning her head—but she wouldn't ignore her guardian's warning. Ameyuri's other final words told her she had known and kept perhaps Sute's greatest secret, and that alone gave her reason to trust her.
After Mei took her leave, the rest of the day passed pretty uneventfully. A few more patients trickled in over the course of the day for reasons varying from training accidents to old battle wounds flaring up, but all in all it was a standard shift with nothing particularly worth noting.
Sute ended up feeling pretty good when her shift ended, having a bit more energy than she'd expected. Good enough to maybe do some fuinjutsu experiments tonight, she'd gotten a few new ideas from one of the cases. She was halfway home and mentally bemoaning Kiri's pesky policy about wanting access to any experimental seals and poisons when s familiar voice drew her from her musings.
"Ringo." She turned to find Zabuza leaning against a stone fence, one of those default "cool guy" poses that males in this world seemed to adore so much.
"Momochi," she greeted, raising her hand in greeting. "Yo." He pushed off the wall and strode towards her, falling in step as she continued on her way.
"We have a mission tomorrow," he informed her gruffly, and she snapped her head to look at it.
"A mission?" she repeated, looking at him with renewed interest. "As in, an actual mission and not patrol?" Zabuza snorted and rolled his eyes.
"Yeah. The Mizukage just briefed me on the basics. There's been reports of possible foreign ninja entering the Land of Water. We sent a team out to investigate last week but they haven't sent any word back. The Mizukage is sending a second team to follow up on it."
"Let me guess, I'm on medical detail in case we find the first team?" she surmised dryly. Kiri did not really care about its forces' well-beings like Konoha did, but it did need all the manpower it could get. They'd lost too many shinobi during the Third War, and with the constant looming threat of civil wars they couldn't afford to waste any of their resources.
"That, and we don't know what we're up against," Zabuza confirmed with an incline of his head. "Don't know who all was sent out, but the Mizukage seems spooked. This team has three powerhouses on it." Of course he included himself in that count. "Far as I can tell, the only reason we're setting out tomorrow instead of now is because the other guys just got back from a mission and he wants everyone to be properly rested."
"What, no mention of my hospital shift?" she asked dryly, and Zabuza snorted.
"Yeah, that too. He sent a messenger to the hospital to let them know you're off the roster. We meet at the gates tomorrow at dawn, so go home and get ready."
"Yeah, yeah, I'm on it. So what, did you look for me just to tell me we're working together?" She eyed him curiously as she spoke. Sute and Zabuza didn't exactly have an overly close relationship. They worked well together and had a decent professional relationship, but they didn't really seek each other out to grab lunch or just hang out. Most of their interactions were strictly professional, and it was strange for him to find her even if just to inform her of their upcoming shift instead of letting a messenger do it.
Come to think of it though, they'd been working together a lot lately... She perked up at the thought, eying him curiously. "Hey, don't tell me..."
Zabuza scoffed at her implied query, recognizing the direction her thoughts went and rolling his eyes. "Tch, yeah right. I haven't been asking the Mizukage to work with you if that's what you're thinking, it's just been working out that way. The only reason I'm the one telling you is because I happened to see you on my way home, you'll probably find a messenger waiting for you at your place."
"Oh, fair enough." Sute nodded, and then added thoughtfully, "Hope he didn't trigger any of the traps. It'd be a pain to have to drag them to the hospital when I just left."
"Don't waste any chakra healing them if they did, save your energy for tomorrow. Like I said, the Mizukage's spooked enough to delay the mission so we're all in top shape."
"That's definitely a bad sign," Sute agreed lowly. Kiri normally did not particularly care to keep its forces in fighting condition before sending them on missions. If the Mizukage wanted them to be properly rested, he must have a good reason to suspect dangerous enemies. "And you said we don't know what we're up against?"
"No idea. Like I said, the initial reports suspect it's foreign agents. The higher-ups want us to do refreshes on the big names just to be safe."
"...I don't have a bingo book," she pointed out flatly. After the war ended Water had largely closed its borders with most missions restrained to the country, so most Mist ninja hadn't really needed them. The only ones she'd seen were a special edition listing local missing-nin, and even then usually only hunter-nin had those but Kisame had let her glance through his.
Zabuza scoffed. "Right. Forgot you're not ANBU. Forget it then. Doubt another village would send someone big enough to get in one anyway."
"Good point." Infiltrating Kiri easily translated as a suicide mission. Everyone knew Kiri did not return prisoners, getting captured meant a death sentence. All visitors to the Land of Water received intense scrutiny, even (and sometimes especially) harmless-looking civilians. It'd be wiser to send someone unknown to infiltrate it, but at the same time, the more talented shinobi tended to be the ones who ended up in bingo books.
At this point, if Sute managed to identify someone undercover in Kiri, she had half a mind to leave them alone just out of respect for their survival skills.
"One more thing," Zabuza continued. "If there are any, we'll be aiming for live captures though so we can pump them for information." Sute perked up at that, flashing a sharp grin of her own.
"Live captures?" she repeated, green eyes glinting with anticipation. Live captures had been one of her earlier ideas for specialization before she'd graduated, and she still relished the idea of being a capture specialist. Naturally, Zabuza knew this perfectly well since he'd submitted to her request to test her knot-tying skills on him during their first meeting. His arrogance had been his undoing back then, though to be fair no one would expect a six-year-old to know how to securely hog-tie a person, including their thumbs.
...She'd carried over some really weird skills from her first life.
She had a feeling Zabuza still hadn't gotten over that incident. Even now, eight years later, the older teen seemed to cringe and grimace. "Yeah. That's the other reason you're on this mission, you're probably one of the only people here crazy enough to train in non-lethal takedowns. Just... don't go overboard, I guess."
"No promises," Sute sang, grinning at him excitedly. Zabuza just scoffed and stalked off, leaving Sute to return home alone in a much brighter mood. She still had a lot to do before she could leave—finding a greenhouse-sitter on short notice was always so annoying—but she didn't care. For the first time in three months she was finally getting out of Kiri and back into the field. She didn't know what the mission would entail, but she was already relishing it.
At the same moment in the hospital, a certain trainee walked down the halls, pushing a fabric-sided cart full of dirty sheets. He slowed to a halt as he spied an open door, turning his head to look inside curiously. Another trainee knelt on the floor with a bucket of water, busy scrubbing down the tiles with an intense look of concentration. The bed itself was bare, the sheets piled atop the mattress.
Smiling, the boy rapped lightly on the wall next to the door and poked his head inside. "Sorry to disturb you, Amuro-kun, but I'm here to collect laundry," he announced cheerfully. The other trainee jolted slightly in surpirse and quickly straightened, turning to face him with a nod.
"Oh, of course. I just stripped the bed, give me a sec to wash my hands and I'll just toss them over."
"No need to wash your hands. It's going to the laundry anyway."
"...Good point." Amuro nodded and grabbed the crumpled-up sheets from the mattress, tossing it towards the cart. He misjudged his aim and the mass started to descend short of its goal, but the other trainee quickly shot his arm forward to catch it before it could hit the newly-cleaned floor.
"Careful, you don't want to start over," he chided good-naturedly as he dumped the load of sheets into the cart. Amuro laughed sheepishly, flashing a gap-toothed grin.
"Heh, yeah, starting over would suck balls. This stuff is so lame, I want to get to the good stuff."
"I know, laundry is such a bore. But I guess everyone has to start somewhere. I should get back to my rounds, hopefully you can finish the room soon. You should probably wash your hands one more time now that you've touched the sheets."
"Yeah, I should." Amuro nodded, sighing as he turned to the attached bathroom. "See you later, Kabuto."
The silver-haired boy just nodded and continued on his way, pushing the cart with a pleasant-looking smile.