Those of you lucky enough to still have their lives, take them with you! However, leave the limbs you've lost. They belong to me now...except you Sofie!~ from Kill Bill, Volume One
Chapter 1 : Peripheral Vanity
"Izumi dear, you don't have to try so hard," sighed her current mother figure. The woman gently pulled the brush out of her hand and set it down on the table in front of them, next to the black ink pot. "There's no need to push yourself."
The full-blooded Uchiha meant for it to sound soothing, Izumi knew, but it didn't change the fact that it ticked the halfling off.
"Haven't you seen the way that they look at you- us?" the young Uchiha girl seethed. "What does the clan have against civilian outsiders!" This she asked in reference to the woman's marriage to her current father figure.
Sakuya, still holding onto Izumi's hands, patted them down with her left hand and squeezed them with her right. "It isn't so much outsiders but civilians in general, Izumi dear. I- I let the clan down with tekisei my lack."
"Tekisei?" Izumi muttered.
"My lack of potential."
Then it clicked for the girl. Sakuya lacked the aptitude for the ninja lifestyle. The clan in turn deemed her a waste of space. That same courtesy extended to Izumi since she was of civilian stock; fathered by an outsider.
"I let them down with my lack of aptitude," Sakuya repeated, drawing Izumi away from her thoughts. The woman was hunched over as if it were some great shame.
"Then that just means it'll feel all the sweeter when I do succeed," Izumi said resolute.
oOo
The flickering of light brought Izumi back to the waking world. Blue curtains brushed her nose from time to time whenever the wind decided to brush past her. The tranquil ambience clashed with the aggravated squawking of seagulls outside.
"Ooooceeeaaan…" the Uchiha wheezed. Her parched tongue poked the air in search of moisture.
She should have been more concerned about waking in an unknown place. Shinobi protocol dictated it, but she couldn't muster up the effort to care. Then she felt it. A sharp pang that rippled down her lower back. It caused her to tense briefly before her stomach twisted into a knot. The release that followed felt like someone had snatched back a retracting bungee cord somewhere on the lowest part of her torso. Something warm crawled down from between her legs. It slithered out over her thigh. Izumi followed the sensation out onto the floor with her eyes. Hanging on a stand next to her were two bags. One was for urine and the other strapped on the very top of the stand screamed IV at her. The tube connected to that clear liquid bag descended to the area under her blanket that was closest to where she assumed her left arm was.
She was in a room near the ocean. It did not make any sense. Konoha was a landlocked area surrounded by forestry, and even if it was near the ocean, the village hospital would still prioritize shinobi lives over that of civilians during an attack.
Izumi's ponderings over the mystery came to an end when the room's door opened. In stepped a man in a doctor's coat. A silver stethoscope was wrapped around his neck, and his loose checkered green shirt and blue denim jeans clashed horribly with the pink and white teardrop patterned bandana over his head. None of that mattered though. Not even the chipped forest green geta on his feet could garner her attention for long. No, what put her on edge was a combination of russet facial features and the silver blond hair found on the person's visage.
The man paused in his movements and sighed. "Look," he said, raising his hands in a gesture of peace. "I'm not a pirate despite what your parents may say. I'm not even from 'pirate land'."
Izumi's eyebrows rose in confusion. She did not know what being from the Land of Lightning had to do with being a pirate. Was the Land of Lightning really responsible for generating most of the Mizukiri Sea's pirate population? It would have made much more sense for island nations such as the Land of Water or even Wave to be the ones responsible for the molding of seafaring bandits.
The wizened girl was about to say as much as soon as she got her body up, but the words died on her lips. Her arms and legs would not budge. All the Uchiha could do was squirm in her blankets. The movements ceased when she heard the first clacks. The stranger was getting closer; his geta's clacking turned into creaks when he neared the right side of her bed. In that time Izumi's face turned red. The blankness of her expression crumpled under the weight of a full on bowel movement.
The doctor cringed and pinched his nose. "You went… didn't you?"
Izumi could not meet his eyes.
"I'll get the nurse. Nothing to be afraid of," he said, trying and failing to sound reassuring. "A week long coma will do that to you."
oOo
After sitting helplessly through a thorough scrub down, Izumi could safely say that she knew enough about the various nurses around the clinic to blackmail them for days. Why that was the first thing that came to mind when she was released she could not say. At least she found out where she was and how she got there. She was the talk of the town after all.
Apparently, she arrived on one of the Land of Wave's many riversides in a burst of flames. That river happened to be where the local women gathered to wash the day's laundry while the men prepared to set sail out to sea. The nurse that was there when it happened described her arrival as that of the emergence of an onyx flaming fire pit that sucked in all of the sun's warmth. Once the fire vanished people began panicking at the sight of bodies with second degree burns on them. Izumi had raised her eyebrows at that. She hadn't expected her near death experience to end with her pulling a Dumbledore.
She moved her ardent eyes around in an attempt to relieve the tension behind them. The feeling of a burning pressure had not been a dream after all. She was not in Konoha anymore. That itself was proof enough.
"I want to see them," Izumi told the doctor.
"Hmmm?" the doctor hummed distractedly as he flipped through the papers on his clipboard.
"Those bodies that arrived with me; I want to see them," she clarified.
The doctor jerked his head back. His hazel eyes sharpened on her form. "Who told you?"
"Nurse gossip."
He snorted. The response did not seem to surprise him at all. "Of course." he set the clipboard down on the counter next to him and turned to face her more readily this time. "I'll take you. Be warned though, patients don't look their best when wounds are still fresh, Little Sakuya."
~FootNotes~
{Chapter completed on} August 3, 2018
{Explanation}
適性 Tekisei translates to Aptitude.
Izumi isn't fluent to the point where she can understand everything all at once. Sometimes she takes a couple of seconds to minutes to translate things in her head. She's expanding her vernacular as she goes.
水切り Mizukiri translates to Watery End.
It's the name of the sea between Fire, Lightning, Water, and the lands beyond Water for this story(not canon a name).
{P.S} I'll increase the length of the chapters as time goes on.