Chapter 6

Whatever she had expected to come with the morning, she wasn't fully expecting what did.

Although, she should have been expecting it.

Shizune was woken by tapping on her window, which startled her quite a bit. It was very lucky that she slept in nightclothes, because she sat very quickly, tossing her sheets off of her. It only took her a moment to locate the source of the tapping, and she wrinkled her nose in irritation as she saw the Anbu crouch on the roof outside of her window.

She flipped the latch on the window, pushing it open. "Yes?" she said, trying to keep any and all annoyance out of her voice, despite the fact that being woken up at five in the morning was incredibly annoying, and, really, she enjoyed her sleep, so this had better be important.

The Anbu operative passed a hand through the opened window, a rolled up piece of paper held out to her. "Headquarters is requesting you for a mission. They want you there in ten minutes."

Shizune blinked, the general fog of just waking up clogging her though process. Then she reached out, plucking the paper from the Anbu's hand. She unrolled it, hearing it crinkle as she smoothed the paper. She scanned over it quickly, then glanced back up.

The operative was already gone.

Scowling slightly, Shizune closed her window, locking it securely. She then rose from her bed, not even bothering to pull the covers flat and to make it look as though she hadn't slept in it.

Ten minutes.

That was barely enough time for her to do anything, and she only managed to grab a roll of bread—just about the only bit of food she had in her apartment—before she raced out the door.

Ten minutes was no time at all.

In the end, though, she made it in time, though she was still buckling on her arm guards as she met with the team she had been assigned to.

Their mission was simple enough: locate an Anbu team, provide them with medical assistance, get them back to the village. Simple, although there was always the chance that something could go wrong.

The team was made up of four Anbu, those four including herself. There was one other with the unpainted white mask of a medic, a man with short, scruffy black hair. The two remaining members had the characteristic painted masks that most people associated with Anbu; a woman with long dark hair who sported a mask made to depict a feline of some sort, and a man with wild brown hair and a beaked mask reminiscent of a bird of prey.

Medic, Cat, Hawk. And herself, another medic. They had names, of course, but they were unimportant at the moment, as they quickly checked over weapons, as Hawk barked out orders, and as they moved out of the village, passing through the shadows and over the wall, and from there out into the forest.

There was a certain aspect to waking up in the morning before the alarm had sounded that was incredibly disorienting, and particularly annoying. For Genma, who happened to wake up like this far too often, it had become the simple routine of opening his eyes and staring bleary eyed at the red digits of the alarm clock for a moment, before reaching out and turning of the alarm, and then burying his head under the pillow once more.

Of course, this did practically nothing about the fact of having to actually get up, but it spared him the incessant beeping that came along with the time changing to six thirty-seven in the morning.

He didn't much like the alarm clock, and often times he felt the urge to throw it across the room, though this urge was always stemmed by the notion that throwing a piece of hard plastic against the wall might result in some damage to the wall, and repairing that was not something that he wanted to. So the daily routine of wake up, roll over, hit clock, roll over again, grumble, and then finally get up persisted. Occasionally, when he didn't wake up until the alarm sounded, the rather high pitched erratic sound would cause him to nearly flip in his startled state, due to the abruptness in which the noise would jerk him out of slumber, and not nearly counting the amount of paranoia that noises like that could cause.

That particular morning, he woke well before the alarm, when the brightly lit numbers declared the time to be six seventeen. He didn't wake up in the most pleasant way, more so in the long hair having found its way into his mouth and attempted to choke him sort of way. So he rolled over onto his stomach, clearing the hair out of his mouth and pushing it out of his eyes before glancing over at the clock.

Seeing the time elicited a muffled curse from the half asleep man as he allowed himself to fall face down into his pillow.

Sleep was a precious commodity to any shinobi, especially those who had spent their lives seeing enough horrible things that sleep often brought along dreams in which the faces of long dead people—friends, enemies, family—danced through one's head and left them with restless nights and reoccurring nightmares that kept once from even wanting to fall asleep. Any sleep without the attached nightmares was to be treasured.

Genma had not been sleeping well recently—though he had been before he had woken up well before he needed to--and if he wanted to, he was sure that he could pinpoint the source of all unsettling visions and memories and dreams that had begun to plague him.

And the problem with the problem was that the source of the problem was nothing that he wanted to have a problem with.

And the problem, the source of it all, was Shizune, with her unexpected return and her familiar mannerisms and her way of making him remember so much that he'd tried to push down and just forget, but because so much of it was attached to her, one way or another, everything just came bubbling back to the surface in a fragmented, disjointed way that made him uneasy and unsettled and not able to sleep through a night. And then, when everything blended together, into something that had never happened as such, but had happened in bits in pieces, it became all the worse.

So there were little dreams and memories attached to Shizune, some directly to her, some just triggered by her presence, or her way of mentioning something that just dug things up and pulled them out into the open. Like their sensei and blood and bandages and broken bones.

It was still dark outside, just the slightest amount of light filtering among the buildings of Konoha and into his room. Not wanting to fully wake yet, Genma lay on his stomach for about five minutes, before deciding that it was pointless to try to fall back asleep when he'd just have to get back up again shortly. Kicking back sheets, he forced himself up. Then it was just the matter of avoiding certain objects that littered the floor—flak jacket, shirt, not yet activated exploding note—as he stumbled barefooted to the bathroom, where a face full of cold water woke him completely.

"Stupid morning," he mumbled to himself, seeing his face and the dark circles under his eyes as he glanced into the mirror. A wet hand pushed back messy hair and he yawned, shutting off the tap with his other hand.

It was a fairly automatic routine that he went through in the morning. Wake, wash, eat, dress, and get the hell out the door. Shirt goes over head, weapons get checked, stove doesn't burn down house. Easy, simple, monotonous. Routine.

Of course, there were the times when Aoba stopped by with a mission all ready to do, or Raidou showed up in Anbu gear, telling him that he'd overslept and didn't he remember that they were getting deployed on a month long recovery mission? Or Anko would stop by, for whatever reason, and would knock on his door until he opened it up and had to fight to keep from yelling at her to be quiet. But those occurrences were becoming rarer and rarer as missions became long and more frequent. Half the time, none of those people who would break up his morning routine were actually in the village.

Genma knew, of course, that it was imperative that the village keep up its image. He knew that they needed to keep taking on all the missions that they could. Their reputation had been battered enough as it was—and Genma hadn't fought and nearly died half a dozen times when he was barely into his teenage years to see it all fall apart now.

Their target was about five miles out from the walls of Konoha, and so they were able to make it there fairly quickly. Anbu were used to moving fast, and so well within an hour they had found the team they were supposed to aid.

Hawk took no time in ordering them about, his words clear and audible even from behind his mask.

"You two medics, get to the wounded. We'll secure the area."

It was a standard four person team that they found—standard four person Anbu cell, to be specific. Four people, two of which looked to be in less than ideal shape, one who really looked to be in less than ideal shape.

Shizune was used to acting fast—that was how Tsunade had trained her. She knew how to assess on sight, how to use the ability to sense another's chakra to determine if there was any problem. She knew how to prioritize the victims—the tallest of the team was standing to attention, scanning the area. He was conscious and breathing, with no visible signs of injury or sickness. Of the three others, one—a woman of slighter build—was doing nothing more than favoring her left leg. The other looked a bit bloodied and bruised, but was conscious and breathing as well. The third--

She was at his side within a moment, dropping down to her knees beside his prone form, and it one swift motion had collected her chakra to her fingertips. He was unconscious, breathing very shallowly—she angled his head back, making sure that his airway was clear. The fingers of her right hand touched at his throat—not for a pulse, but to touch the the scant inch of skin that showed so that she could best thread her chakra through his system.

His lower leg was bloodied, she saw, the heavy cloth of his pants ripped and torn. Nothing else seemed wrong—ah! Her chakra, as it flowed through his body, found the poison in his bloodstream, an invader within his body.

She needed to cleanse his bloodstream, and quickly. There were two methods—no, there were more than two, but she most certainly didn't have the time or resources needed for any more than two. The first was to administer an antidote—one that she most likely wasn't carrying. And so it left direct removal. And for that, all she needed was skin to skin contact.

From working in Anbu so long, she knew the best way to cut off the chest guard—slice down the seam on one side, cut each strap—and so she had it off within moments. The shirt took even less time, the material tearing easily. Then, after making sure that he was still breathing, she set both her chakra laden hands palm down onto his ribcage.

When she was younger, Tsunade had taught her how to remove poison from a body using water as a medium. It had worked well—Shizune had understood it, executed it as perfectly as someone just learning it could (meaning somewhat competently and very slowly)--and Shizune had been proud. As had Tsunade. But even as Shizune was smiling over her accomplishment, a thought entered her mind and her smile turned into a thoughtful frown.

"Tsunade-sensei," she said, looking up with large eyes at her mentor, "what do you do if there' no water?" There was a pause, a hesitation, and Shizune thought that Tsunade might not have understood her. "I mean, what do you do if there's no water around to use? Out on a battlefield or something? Or, what if there's only contaminated water? I can't imagine that a medic would used contaminated water—wouldn't that just be counterproductive? And--"

But Tsunade was smiling. "Ah, Shizune, you caught that quickly! It's harder, I'll tell you, to not use water—and by no means used contaminated water!--but it's very possible. You simply have to be very focused and very much in control of your own chakra."

And she was focused, now, her chakra flooding through the man's veins, searching out the poison. She could only take small bits at a time, only send so much of her chakra into him, but she knew how to work fast and effectively, knew how not to harm the patient with her intruding chakra. She'd seen it happen before, where a medic worsened the condition of the one they were trying to heal due to poor chakra control and lack of concentration. Hell, she'd done it before; sent her own chakra into another's body and suddenly found the man going into shock. Tsunade had been what had saved her that time—Shizune had been so rattled by it that she had jumped back, withdrawing her chakra too rapidly, too sloppily--

She caught up the last of the poison that she could safely remove under the circumstances, caught it up and deposited it onto the ground beside her, far enough away from both her and the man that it wouldn't touch either of them. He was still breathing—good. She checked him again with her chakra; nothing truly critical left. She just had the leg to fix--

"The area's secure," she heard Cat say off to her left. "We've recovered Anbu unit 5 and are tending the wounded. Expect to be returning to base shortly."

Ah. Good. She could spare herself from further chakra usage. The leg wasn't bad—bleeding, but the cuts were shallow. Digging into her medic kit, she removed cloth bandaged, applying the appropriate amount of pressure and wrapping the cloth around the leg.

"He's stable," she said, looking up at the surrounding shinobi. "Ready to be moved."

Cat gave a sharp incline of her head. Shizune looked to her side, to where the other medic on the team had already finished tending the other team members.

Nothing too serious, other than the poison. Good thing she had been there.

"Nothing too serious," Genma said with an expression on his face that was trying to be a smile, but was only really a pained grimace. "Just poison. The doctor says I'll be fine--"

"Just poison?" She wanted to yell, really, but she didn't, just said the words in her normal soft tone of voice. "Just poison?" she said a little louder, her eyes snapping to his. "You could have died."

"Yeah, well..." He shrugged, then winced. "Okay, I banged up my shoulder pretty bad, too. But I'm fine. Really. Stop worrying."

Later, after the mission was over, she stood before the mirror in the Anbu headquarters bathroom, washing her hands thoroughly in the sink. There was no blood on them this time, but that didn't stop her from making sure that her skin was as clean as possible.

Her mask was off lying, laying on the sink's edge, and Shizune looked into the mirror to see her face reflected back at her. She looked tired—not exhausted, no, not that—with shadows gathering under her eyes.

I need more sleep, she thought to herself, passing a cold, wet hand over her face and through her short hair. Lots more sleep.

The door to the bathroom opened with a small squeak, causing Shizune to look up. The woman from her team earlier—the woman who wore the cat mask—walked in. Her mask was off now, dangling from her hand. She looked to be younger than Shizune by quite a few years, with slanted dark eyes and long dark hair. They were both silent, regarding one another, and the woman stepped to the sink beside her.

"You did well today," the woman said softly, hot water from the sink running over her hands. "I'd read your files, but I hadn't expected you to work quite so quickly."

Shizune allowed herself a small smile. "Thank you."

There was silence again, as though neither woman knew quite what to say. Then, the long haired woman spoke again.

"We weren't introduced properly before," she said, her voice still quiet. "I'm Uzuki Yuugao."

Shizune's stomach dropped just a little. She'd heard the name before, recently. "You're Hayate's...?"

"Yes." Yuugao gave a very small, very sad smile. "I was. And you are his cousin?" Shizune nodded. "I thought so. You both look so similar...he talked about you often. I had...wanted to meet you."

"Oh," said Shizune very softly. There was a sudden twinging in her chest, a pressure behind her eyes. Don't think about it. Don't think about him. "I...see." She was at a complete lose for what to say. And what could she say? "I'm sorry I wasn't around to see him when he was alive?" "I'm sorry I disappeared for so long and completely missed the fact that my cousin was going to be married?" They sounded completely horrible in her head, and so they didn't make it any further than that.

Yuugao suddenly swiped a hand at her eyes, dashing away tears that there threatening to spill over. "I'm sorry; I have work to finish. It was very nice to finally meet you, Shizune." She tied her mask back onto her face, hiding any and all emotion that was playing over it. Then she nodded to Shizune and left as quickly as she had come.

Shizune bit down on her lower lip, closing her eyes for a moment. Then, certain that she wasn't going to cry, she left the bathroom as well. She had work to do as well; Tsunade would be expecting her soon.

Her stomach, however, had other ideas, telling her quite loudly that she needed to eat. Sighing to herself, she hurried out of the building, slipping into the morning traffic on the streets unnoticed.

It was later than she would have liked when she finally got to Tsunade's office, but short of completely rushing through a small breakfast and running through the streets, she couldn't have managed it faster. And, of course, there just had to be something else that held her up before she could make it inside.

Not that it was an entirely unwanted disruption.

She had made it perhaps halfway up the outside stairwell of the Hokage's building when she looked up to see Genma walking towards her. She smiled up at him, albeit a bit tiredly--after all, she had been working since early in the morning, and healing by use of chakra did take a lot out of a person--and was rather delighted when he smiled back. It was something that she hadn't realized until recently that she had missed. Genma's smile was something that she had always loved when she was younger, but she had near forgotten about it in her years away; the lazy was that one side of his mouth would draw up just a bit more than the other side, with just a glint of white teeth showing between his lips.

"Morning, Shizune," he said, just a bit of a slow drawl to his voice.

"Good morning, Genma." Perhaps her general weariness came through in her words, or perhaps it was something in the way she looked, for Genma's eyes flickered over her face and he gave the slightest of frowns.

"Late night?" he asked, his head turned just a bit to the side. "Or, early morning?"

Shizune gave a short laugh. "Ah, early morning. There's far too much to get done around here; I don't have much time for resting."

"To true," Genma murmured. Then he looked away from her, out over the town. "I'm going to be gone for a while. Maybe a couple of weeks, maybe a month. Outer fences patrol, you know." He then surprised her by giving her a rakish grin. "Though I should let you know before I took off." And then he moved past her, raising a hand in goodbye. "See you in a month!"

And left Shizune standing there, feeling just a bit miserable. The last comments stung, because she knew they were very much pointed at her absence from before.

He must be just as upset with me as everyone else, she thought inwardly, resuming her climb up the stairs. I...I suppose I don't blame him...just that that was rather uncalled for right now!

So, she decided to be annoyed at him for awhile. And then she'd spend some time looking at exactly what she could do to make everyone much less upset with her. And then maybe she'd go talk with Namida and Raidou--unless they were both out on patrol as well--and find out a bit of what had happened in Konoha over the past eight years. Goodness knew that she had gone through a lot in the past eight years; she was certain they all had as well.

And then she was abruptly remind of everything else that she had to deal with as she walked into Tsunade's office and saw the new Hokage surrounded by piles of papers work--and, sitting on the window's ledge, a petite pink-haired girl reading an overly large medical textbook.

She supposed that this was going to be a very long month.

A/N: Well, that's far too short for an update, and really doesn't do much at all. But you do get a bit from Genma's perspective this time, which hasn't happened before. I suppose it sets up for the next few chapters, which are a bit more transitional in nature. I can't tell you when there will be another chapter--I think it's been proven by now that I'm horrible with keeping a quick update schedule, and I'm currently working on an original novel of my own. I don't plan on abandoning this story, however, so there will be an update. Eventually.

If you see an errors, please point them out to me. I welcome feedback and critique.

And, of course, thank you to everyone who has read this story, to everyone who has reviewed, and to everyone who will still read this, even though it has been four days over a year since I last updated.

Raven