A/N: Hello, people!
I don't own Naruto.
I have no beta.
ENJOY!
CHECK ME OUT ON TUMBLR. HELLY-WATERMELONSMELLINFELLON.
~A scene in this has been in my mind since before I started writing. The gender reveal during class was one of them, but this was another. I thought, 'wouldn't it be funny if she got stabbed in the heart and then ends up competing in the prelims, perfectly fine anyway? Wouldn't her attacker be surprised as hell and confused af?'
TAGS: Drama, Blood and Violence, Humor, Angst, Character Growth.
WE'RE HOUSED FOR NOW! The house had no heat or hot water for the first couple months. And we went half a month without internet. We have run out of food. The house is dilapidated, and we can only stay here if we fix it up while we're here. But it's not permanent, and the walls of my 'room' are falling apart around me. There's a huge crack that stretches halfway across the ceiling and the walls are full of bigger cracks and holes. The ceiling in the next room over collapsed.
When Naruto had heard about all the details that the Second Exam contained, he had been really excited. Sasuke had given him their scroll right from the start, and then Naruto proceeded to make like fifty Kage Bunshin which he then had Henge into copies that he placed in different locations all over his body and the surrounding area, while hiding the real one in Sakura's pouch without her knowing.
He was sneaky like that.
The plan was to go into the forest and randomly drop scrolls in different places, and then leave people to find a horrible surprise if they went to grab any. No matter what happened, Naruto was still a prankster at heart, and he still liked to mess with people. And this was the perfect opportunity to do so!
A little pink paint and glitter never really hurt anyone after all, but it would make him laugh! And it would hell to wash out!
What Naruto did not expect was being ambushed several times within the first hour by people trying to replace him to trick his teammates! Now, he wasn't a braggart or anything, but Naruto would like to think that he was unique enough that he could not be easily imitated. Even if people came away from a first meeting with the assumption that he was a total idiot, surely there was enough about him for them to not do a realistic enough impression?
Either way, it was incredibly flattering how fast Sasuke was able to tell every single time that it was not a real Naruto in front of him. Between him and Sakura, Sasuke was the one who noticed each time, and it was heartening in a sense, to know that Sasuke paid that much attention to him!
Unfortunately, their time in the Forest of Death did not improve from then on. They encountered many teams who wanted to start a fight and then quickly understood that they were no match and would flee. But it was a lot of time wasted when they could have been doing other things that were more productive.
By the end of their first night in the forest, Naruto had seen all manner of carnivorous animals and bugs and had already seen the unfortunate remains of a few Genin teams. One of them had been rendered into pools of blood. Their weapons and tattered clothing being all they left behind in death. Naruto did not want to know what Jutsu existed that could do something like that to a person's body.
By midday on the next day, they were finally halfway to the tower and had even collected a few scrolls by then. However, it was there and then that they found themselves attacked by a serious foe.
It was a snake the size of a house. And all Naruto remembered was being swallowed by it as it ran through their group. Distantly, he could hear Sakura screaming, and the sound of her voice getting further and further away rapidly. Either the snake was still moving, or she'd somehow been knocked into the distance. Or both.
Naruto didn't even know what happened to Sasuke which was the worst thing ever!
Thankfully, he and Yuuki had done a lot of training together and Yuuki had made him do homework. The kind of homework where she threw a question at him and made him write down all the possible ways in which he could solve the problem. You know, thinking outside the box and stuff. And yes, she made him write it all out to help improve his reading and writing skills.
One of those questions had been to ask him what he would do if he was ever swallowed by a massive animal. Naruto's original idea was to just cut his way out with a kunai, but then Yuuki had to go on a whole explanation about how many animals, especially those that were big enough to swallow a person, were incredibly tough to kill, both inside and out. Some were even completely impervious to weaponry or types of metals, while others had a natural resistance to certain poisons. So how would he go about saving himself while in that situation?
If cutting it open and poisoning it were not a possibility, what else could he do? And that was when Yuuki told him that he could either give the animal indigestion or overfill its stomach. With Kage Bunshin.
It took very little effort for Naruto to summon over a hundred copies of himself. And the snake that had swallowed him whole was not capable of handling the sudden swelling of its insides from every direction. It burst outward, showering a small section of the Forest of Death with its goopy innards. The smell was like something had died and been left to fester for weeks!
With no shortage of disgust, Naruto made his way back along the massive trench the snake had ended up digging in the ground with its body, knowing that he would find his team somewhere along the way. He was pleased to note that both Sakura and Sasuke were alive and relatively okay upon arrival. If 'okay' meant scared on Sakura's end and bleeding on Sasuke's.
Unfortunately, it seemed that Yuuki and her team had come upon them while Naruto was trying to get back, and all of them were facing off against a single Shinobi. Someone powerful enough to give their collective group a hard time judging by the blood on Sasuke's leg and the fact that Yuuki's teammates were already unconscious.
The forest had been turned into a battlefield, and there were chunks of rock and destroyed trees in every direction. And yet it still felt as if the oppressive containment of the massive trees was pushing in on them from all sides. The Forest of Death was the biggest training facility in the entire village, according to Yuuki. It felt like being in a bowl with no real way out. The trees just continued to stretch high into the sky until they almost completely blocked out any light.
It was because of the Shodaime Hokage's Jutsu, he was pretty certain.
Naruto's chance to take in more information was ruined because the foreign Shinobi moved.
Nothing in his life would have ever prepared him for how quickly they had crossed the entire distance between where they stood and where Sasuke was protecting Sakura. Sasuke took a punch directly to the face and was knocked completely into the distance, but that didn't seem to be a problem because the strange Shinobi's head seemed to detach from their shoulders and go flying after him even as their body remained stationary!
He threw himself into the fray, hoping to intercept the attack at the very least!
Thankfully, Yuuki had the same idea, and her fist met the stranger's jaw just in time before he could land an open-mouthed bite on Sasuke's exposed throat! Something broke very loudly and echoed through the area.
Naruto's body collided with the man's neck, but he was met with ease and somehow thrown off course. Something sharp and burning slammed into his stomach the same moment he noticed Yuuki taking a kunai to the chest!
The burning in his stomach filled his whole body, and Naruto couldn't understand what had happened, or how to even stop it! It just hurt.
Both he and Yuuki hit the ground hard in different places, and he tried to roll over to see her better, but something sharp slammed into his skull, and all he knew from then on was darkness and Sakura's screams of terror.
The person was gone. The Shinobi who attacked Sasuke was gone, and everyone else was completely down for the count, leaving Sakura as the only able-bodied person around now.
Sakura sank to the ground, trying to catch her breath as her shaking limbs finally got back under her control. She hadn't even been targeted that entire time, besides the initial attack, and yet she felt as if she'd run a marathon! As if the whole world had come crashing down on her shoulders all at once!
Both Sasuke Naruto were completely unconscious. And even Yuuki's teammates were unconscious! And Yuuki was just lying there and not moving after getting stabbed!
What was she going to do?! She didn't know how to handle this kind of thing! Nothing in the Academy prepared them for a scenario such as this during survival training! They'd trained for so many scenarios but nothing prepared them for situations like this!
"Sakura…"
She jumped, not expecting to hear anyone but herself. Who and where?!
It was Yuuki! She was alive?!
Yuuki was sitting up! Yuuki was holding her chest!
Yuuki was covered in blood all down her shirt! There was a kunai just lodged in the lower part of her chest and the entire front of her shirt was drenched in red! Her face had become wan as a gash across her cheekbone continued to bleed in lazy streaks of red down her cheek and throat and soaking into the collar of her shirt.
Sakura scrambled on over to her position, trying to think of what to do or what to say. Instead, she just ended up panicking uselessly, hands flapping at her sides as she tried to make sense of things.
"Oh, my gods! Sage above! What are we supposed to do!?" She didn't have the training necessary for this! She started working at the hospital like three or four weeks ago!
"Sakura!"
"You're gonna bleed out and die!" And then what would Sakura do with herself?! In the middle of the deadly forest, alone?!
"Sakura!"
"I'm only allowed to clean bed pans; I don't know about this stuff yet!"
"SAKURA!" Yuuki yelled, forcing the other girl into shocked silence. She hadn't ever heard Yuuki yell before. It never seemed like something she was capable of. "I refuse to believe for one second that you haven't been doing any extra reading and practice about medical stuff. You can heal basic injuries already, yes?"
The pinkette sputtered in both embarrassment and defensiveness. "On myself! I don't have any kind of medical license to perform anything on anyone else!"
"Well, what better way to acquire experience than field training?" Yuuki said jovially even as she winced in obvious pain. "I am not going to die, but I am in a lot of pain, and I need an extra set of hands that belong to someone with good Chakra Control and good muscle control."
It was obvious that Sakura was scared. She was shaking terribly from head to toe and was honestly on the verge of tears. At this moment in time, however, Yuuki needed her to be present. Their teammates were all unconscious and for them to be useful, they had to help themselves first. And Sakura wanted to prove that she was a good teammate and that she too could be useful!
But she was so scared!
Nothing had ever been like this. Not even in Nami no Kuni had it been this bad!
"Okay," Yuuki sighed. "I need to explain the basics of what has happened so that you can understand where I currently am at. I was stabbed with a kunai. The enemy was aiming to go through the heart directly, but thanks to extenuating circumstances, he missed the meat of it."
That still sounded incredibly terrible. Yuuki sighed when she realized that Sakura wasn't placated in the slightest. "He still managed to hit my heart, but not in a place that would directly kill me instantly. Have you memorized what the human body looks like on the inside? As in, can you visualize where the heart rests in the chest cavity?"
Sakura nodded nervously. The entire layout of the human body appeared before her in her mind. Her vision zoomed in on the torso, specifically the area where the heart resided.
"I want you to envision it in your mind, and then imagine if it was flipped to the other side. I have a condition known as Dextrocardia Situs Inversus. Basically, my heart is facing the opposite direction." The heart on the diagram in Sakura's mind instantly flipped over, and the bulk of it faced the other direction as a result.
"And any Shinobi worth their salt would know that if they wanted to stab somebody in the heart, instead of going directly for the center of the chest area, they would actually aim a bit off toward the side, so that their weapon would go straight through the center of the heart itself. However, because my heart is inverted and is facing the other direction, instead of going through the center of my heart, my enemy nicked the very side of it instead. I am still injured, and this is still a dangerous wound to have, but it won't kill me immediately."
It took Sakura a few more moments to compose herself. But finally, she was able to put Yuuki's words into a proper order and understood what exactly it meant. Yuuki was not dying at the moment, and she had enough medical knowledge to know that she could handle this situation with one extra person to help.
Technically, Sakura was the only other person around who could help, but there was something to be said about the fact that Yuuki believed that Sakura was actually capable of helping in the first place. Sakura wanted to prove that she could handle these kinds of situations, and she was somebody that her comrades could place their trust in.
She took a deep breath to try and shove away her lingering nerves, and asked, "W-what do you need me to do?"
Yuuki grinned encouragingly, not unlike an older sister would, Sakura realized, and said, "Okay, I am keeping the kunai in place because I will bleed out if we remove it right now. This is currently the one thing that is stopping my blood from really going everywhere. However, because of how dangerous that is, I have had to manually force my blood to flow differently than is standard. This way I'm still getting oxygen to all the necessary places and can still function like normal."
The fact that Yuuki could so casually talk about such a horrible injury, while experiencing said injury, impressed Sakura so much. There was a weapon currently lodged in her chest, and she had to physically hold it in place to make certain that it didn't ruin anything else!
"What I need you to do, is I need you to take the other end of this kunai and very carefully under my direction, extract it. It is still touching my heart, and I need to repair that before doing anything else. I am funneling Chakra into the entire injury from every angle to encourage healing as quickly as possible, but the most important thing is making certain my heart is healed perfectly."
Sakura had been doing a lot of reading up on different types of healing for different injuries. Internal organs were incredibly delicate. Even if they were nowhere near as difficult as bones, it was still imperative that healing any internal organ be done with the utmost care because leaving potential scar tissue behind could ruin how that organ functioned in the future. Yuuki was undergoing an internal surgery at that very moment, and she couldn't even look at what she was doing. She simply had to feel her way around her own insides through Chakra alone.
It was baffling how she'd managed to come this far since graduation.
Even with all the blood and viscera surrounding them, Yuuki managed to remain level-headed in the middle of a dangerous and troublesome situation. Sakura wanted to be like that.
"I know it's unexpected, and not an optimal situation, but I need you to rip the rest of my shirt off. We can't afford for the remains to get in the way."
With just a bit of effort, Sakura forced the fabric apart until it reach both of Yuuki arms and revealed Yuuki's ruined sports bra. "That too?"
"Please."
Even Sakura had to mourn the poor sports bra. Those things weren't cheap.
Finally, Yuuki's torso was left in her mesh armor bodysuit, which was broken clean through. Sakura had to use extra effort to break a few pieces off on each side so it could be out of the way.
The wound was horrible to look at. All inflamed around the metal embedded in Yuuki's chest, and leaking blood down her midriff.
Yuuki unavoidable nudity was steadily ignored.
Delicately, Sakura replaced Yuuki's hold on the kunai -which had penetrated Yuuki's chest at an upward angle, managing to hit its target while not breaking her sternum - and waited for instructions. Yuuki carefully placed her hands around the outside of the blade against her naked flesh and closed her eyes in an effort to concentrate better.
"Pull the kunai out ¼ of a centimeter."
She did so, careful to make certain she had measured the right amount of space to free up. Instantly, Yuuki's hands filled with Katon Chakra, and Sakura watched as she cauterized the outside of her injury to stop herself from bleeding out as the freed kunai revealed her open wound to the air of the forest.
It was so impressive that Yuuki could be working with two different types of Chakra at the same time. Internally, she was healing her heart, and externally she was burning her own wound to stop the bleeding. The ability to split her attention between two different tasks was impressive enough. The fact that she could use two different types of Chakra at a single time and have them both doing their jobs with the necessary skill made Sakura want to cry.
Was it like this because Yuuki was aware years ago that she was going to become a medic, and had already started working toward it? Were the other people in the medical course in her rank the same exact skill level as her? Would Sakura be able to do something like this within a few months?!
"Pull it out another ¼ centimeter," Yuuki advised as her hands moved to better close over the wound.
Sakura nodded and did as she was instructed.
She could see the green light of healing within the red circle of Yuuki's hands. Yuuki's breathing was labored, but she did not seem too pressed beyond the occasional wince of pain.
This continued on for several more minutes until Yuuki let out a soft sigh and declared, "The heart is fine. Now I have to undo what I just did to my poor chest. I'm going to take the kunai from you now and I need you to go into my medic pouch on my left hip and extract everything. I have all manner of sanitized surgical tools as well as sanitizers for us to use. Gloves, masks, and even a shock blanket, though I don't need that one. A just-in-case kind of set-up."
It was just as she had said. The pouch on Yuuki's hip was filled with gauze, syringes, and scalpels of different sizes. Things that Sakura had never even seen before but smelled clean in the hospital sense. Bottles of hand sanitizer and peroxide, cotton swabs and balls, and even some kind of face mask with a weird tube on it.
"Okay, we need to sanitize the entire wound here before we do anything else. It is going to be filthy, and it is not going to be fun for either of us, but I need your steady hands to carefully clean out my blood, the foreign blood, and the dirt around the kunai before I actively heal anything. The Chakura no Mesu does a lot, but not everything."
"That was the kunai they had used on your teammates?" Sakura asked as she prepared the cotton balls and peroxide.
"Yeah, I need to make sure I'm extra clean. The Katon Chakra should have handled most of it but we like to be thorough in this business. I had to manually slow my own heartbeat and my pulse down so that the idiot would assume that I was dying immediately. I was banking on him being a rather sadistic kind of person who would prefer to have me bleed out in agony instead of giving me a swift release."
The fact that Yuuki could just so brazenly speak about such ways of thinking and such treatment of people like herself, without even being offended, always unnerved Sakura a little bit. It was a wonder how Yuuki managed to go through life being perpetually unfazed by anything happening and also not offended by the things that the common person would obviously take offense to.
Not even Shikamaru could manage to be that level of unbothered.
The two Genin worked as fast as they possibly could in the waning sunlight. The Forest of Death was filled with massive trees that blocked out a considerable amount of the natural lighting anyway, but as it was getting darker out, they desperately needed to finish this as soon as possible. Both had to be on high alert and ready for any potential attacks.
Eventually, once everything was cleaned out as it should be, Yuuki then had to force her own flesh to grow back and then restitch itself back together. And she could only do that after re-opening all of the cauterized blood vessels and forcing them back into place. Sakura got to bear witness as the hole in Yuuki's chest began to carefully fill itself in from the inside out. It was not a fast procedure that was for certain.
One thing Sakura knew at the very least was the fact that Yuuki did not have an extensive amount of Chakra at her disposal, which would mean that she had been using everything she had to do this one major surgery on herself. When the adrenaline finally faded, and Yuuki was finally able to stop healing herself, she was probably going to crash from Chakra Exhaustion. And this was where the nervousness settled in once again.
If Sakura was the only person of their two teams who was left conscious, she had no idea what was going to happen!
"I can already feel you panicking from here," Yuuki murmured as she worked, not even bothering to look up from her chest as she finished up her healing. "Courtesy of Shikamaru's lovely mother, I have on hand quite a few Chunin Grade Small Ball Soldier Pills. They are not meant to be taken excessively, and they should not be used to replace more than two meals in a row, but they will significantly help us at the moment."
Soldier Pills were… a way to force the body to refill its energy and Chakra stores. They could often hasten along the effects of Chakra Exhaustion too. They also gave the person who ingested them a sudden boost of energy that could last anywhere from minutes to hours, depending on how strong the concentration was.
The major consequence of having them, or having too many of them at once, was that the eventual crash was going to be worse than it would have normally been. A trade of sorts, for immediate gratification and assistance. That was why they were called Soldier Pills. They helped you soldier onward through adversity.
Yuuki sent Sakura a quelling look and said, "I'm not leaving you to handle everything by yourself."
At her reassurance, Sakura was finally able to take a deep enough breath and not feel like her own heart was about to give out in response.
...She absolutely had to invest more time in her medical training once this was all over.
With a few Soldier Pills to fill her up, Yuuki was finally able to force herself back to her feet as her body was forced to regenerate energy at an alarming pace. She began to rummage through her pouches in order to extract actual food. If she could somehow beat the severity of the crash before it officially set in, that was the best option and thankfully she had purchased all manner of vitamins and supplements.
Bananas weren't exactly cheap in their village because they were something imported from incredibly far away and they were expensive, however, Yuuki was able to afford supplements that provided the same health benefits as bananas would, but like a hundred times more. She also ha several apples and oranges on hand.
Once she was certain that she and Sakura were properly fed. She then turned her attention to their teammates. "In situations of emergency, I have blanket permission to perform whatever medical procedures I feel are necessary."
Presently, they were all just exhausted and slightly injured. If Yuuki hadn't interrupted that creep's attempts at doing something creepy to Sasuke, they probably would have been in an even worse situation. The Shinobi had also done something to Naruto, but it was different than what they had attempted with Sasuke. Kuronuma and Kurosaki were basically in the way and got attacked because their team got involved.
They were currently at the mercy of the elements in the middle of the Forest of Death, with four unconscious teammates. Sure, they had three Heaven scrolls and two Earth scrolls between them. But there were other teams out there who were looking for a fight, not necessarily for a scroll of their own, just for the chance to flex their skills and make themselves feel better. If it was possible, Yuuki would very much like to avoid a confrontation until she was absolutely certain that they were safe.
If either Sasuke or Naruto was awake, then she would have been perfectly fine staying in place and waiting for anything to happen. She would also have perfect faith that either of them would be totally capable of helping send off any potential attackers. However, as things currently stood, it was not smart to stay in this place. She had bled all over her own clothes and the ground, and even had gotten blood on Sakura. That would attract the attention of not only other Shinobi, but also predators.
The optimal solution would be for them to transport their teammates.
There were enough scrolls between them to make it into the tower. No one said anything about everyone being conscious when getting there, just that the whole team had to be present and alive.
It wasn't a recommended thing, but Yuuki had no other choice. She needed extra hands and the best person for that was Naruto, even if it was unsafe to do. She popped a smelling salt in front of his nose and then dove for cover when he and his Chakra lashed out violently to defend him. Fortunately, it woke him up and only destroyed part of their surroundings while not hurting anyone either.
"What's going on? What happened? Why are we in the middle of the forest? Why is Sasuke knocked out? And why is Yuuki covered in so much blood?!" She slapped a hand over his mouth, not having the patience to let him continue at the moment.
"We can answer all your questions later, but we need help. We can't afford to stay here, and we need to get to the tower as soon as possible. I can't carry everybody by myself, so I need you to create clones to carry people for me. I then need you to create clones to act as decoys. Sakura, do you have any of your fancy science equipment with you?"
Naruto inhaled two Soldier Pills and then went about making Kage Bunshin, though it looked as if he was struggling to do so… which had never happened before. Yuuki didn't know what to do about that. She'd have to ask about it later.
Sakura patted her own pack and nodded to Yuuki's question.
"The plan is thus... Naruto, you are going to create several Kage Bunshin and have them turn into all of us so that they can take our place. They will hole up in this tree trunk like scared little mice. Sakura, you will set up as many half-assed traps as you can around this area to make it seem like it is as decently protected as two young girls can possibly manage when all alone in the big bad forest. If anyone else is coming after us, they'll be distracted long enough to give us time to gain distance."
Yuuki took a deep breath. "Do you have any unique kinds of liquids, chemicals, or something that could cause a very interesting reaction if mixed together?"
"I have kerosene, rubbing alcohol, and ammonia among other things."
Her dad was really keeping her prepared. "Are you able to spread a bit of that kerosene around in different places without getting any of it on yourself? It could be used as a suitable way to mask our scents, as well as deter anybody. Sasuke is an Uchiha and people know they love using fire. Placing flammable liquid everywhere would be a bit of a concern for anyone familiar with it."
As for Yuuki, she had to make certain their cargo was safe for transport. As in, patching up Sasuke's leg so it didn't get infected.
With twilight fading and night setting in, their two teams departed for the tower with haste. They left behind them a measly camp, set up with poor defenses in order to lure potential passersby into a false sense of security.
Naruto had dozens more clones scattered about the forest working in a cone shape. Some had transformed into animals, others into other people. Their job was to fan out and help protect the main group on their way through the last part of the journey. If that meant causing explosions, or even engaging enemy Shinobi, then so be it.
They encountered no other obstacles personally on the way, but Naruto did keep them up to date on how many of his Bunshin had exploded. Their campsite had been found just moments before they entered the tower, and Yuuki was able to breathe easy because they still had three days left and she wanted to get in as much rest as possible before they had to continue on to the next Exam.
As Yuuki took a moment to check on their teammates and make certain that they were all still breathing soundly, Sakura took the chance to open both sets of scrolls as the instructions on the wall basically told them to. Before their eyes appeared Iruka-sensei in the flesh, smiling proudly and catching Naruto before he could be properly tackled.
"Congratulations on making it this far!" the man said. And then he finally noticed Yuuki, and his joy instantly melted into worry. "What happened?!"
Sakura instantly pointed to Yuuki, in an almost accusatory manner she might add, and said, "Yuuki got stabbed in the heart and had to heal herself, Iruka-sensei! When can she get looked over by an Iryo-Nin?"
"Eh?!" Naruto gasped while Iruka-sensei made an unholy sounding noise that Yuuki never wanted to hear ever again.
"I took care of it," Yuuki shrugged. "The Chakra Exhaustion from that and then using the Soldier Pills to get us here is about to land though. Did we pass, Iruka-sensei? And if we did, is there somewhere we can go to rest and get cleaned up?"
Their Academy teacher mumbled to himself worriedly. Something along the lines of the Second Exam still being on and them not being able to offer medical assistance until it was officially over. "There are dedicated rooms. Your teams will be settled next to each other in 110 and 112 if that's okay. You are the fourth and fifth teams to make it. The second and third Konoha teams overall."
"Can you tell us who else made it, sensei?" Sakura asked, looking nervous.
"A Suna team that completely obliterated our record for the Second Exam, Konoha's Team Eight arrived around half an hour later, a team from Ame came a few hours ago, and now you lot."
The numbers were a lot lower than she had expected them to be by now. Make no mistake, Yuuki was perfectly aware that the person that had targeted Sasuke was not a normal Shinobi and was in no way somebody who was aiming for the rank of Chunin. They had deliberately entered the exams with the express determination to hunt down the last Uchiha for whatever they needed him for.
"Before I collapse, I need to report a potential S-Ranked Shinobi illegally entering the exams with some kind of plan to target Uchiha Sasuke," Yuuki said swiftly, ignoring how the man's eyes widened.
"They had gone directly after Team Seven, and personally separated all three of them. My team came upon Sakura trying to find her way back to her teammates, and we arrived in time to see Sasuke fighting a strange person with long black hair and sallow skin. They had a presence unlike anything I have ever personally experienced before, even more threatening than the enemy Jonin that I have encountered on missions.
"Their neck extended several meters, and they tried to bite Sasuke on the neck from a distance and was only stopped because I managed to get there in time and punch them hard enough to knock them away. Naruto then attempted to engage them in hand-to-hand combat but was overcome by a sudden burst of odd Chakra, and the Shinobi reacted by slamming some kind of seal into Naruto's stomach, which knocked him unconscious and made the Chakra go away. They then turned his attention to me, somehow getting a hold of a kunai with their mouth and stabbing me in the chest with it. They were strong enough, with a still extended neck, to throw me down, kunai and all. I feigned dying of sudden blood loss to try and divert attention away from myself."
Yuuki then looked to Sakura because Sakura had been the one who managed to stay in perfect physical condition the entire time she would have the clearest recollection of events.
Sakura was shaking once again, nervous as the incident with the strange Shinobi was brought back up. "It was Orochimaru of the Sannin, sensei. I'd seen pictures of him in the Bingo Book. He separated us with a massive snake the size of a house."
"Yeah! I got swallowed by that thing!" Naruto said suddenly. He then rubbed at his stomach. "He hit me with something weird because… my Chakra's been all weird ever since. It's harder to pull on it and it's… weirdly silent."
Iruka-sensei looked between all of them, and then their unconscious teammates, and obviously had no idea what to do or say. Unfortunately, Yuuki's head began to be light and airy, and she knew exactly what that meant.
Yuuki held up a quelling hand before things could become too much. "I would really love to help out more, but I expended so much Chakra to ensure that I did not die of blood loss in the middle of the forest that I am not going to be awake for much longer. I'm sorry, but I have to sleep now."
And then Yuuki did exactly as she said she would, and laid down right in the entrance hall and let the darkness and weightlessness settle in.
She could worry about things later.
Shikamaru's team making it to the tower during the third day had been a long time coming. Ino had originally wanted to lie in wait and just ambush teams to take their scrolls and thin the herd, but Shikamaru didn't want to wait around when he didn't have to. They had managed to collect three extra scrolls in that time frame, and because he was an asshole on the inside, he dumped them in the river, making certain to ruin them beyond repair.
They'd gotten a customary congratulations message when they opened their scrolls inside the tower. The message had come from Asuma, who patted them all in the head and congratulated them for getting done with the forest so soon. Only seven teams had made it before them it seemed.
However, Shikamaru was not an idiot and was totally aware of the fact that their sensei was worried about something. "What's wrong, Asuma-sensei? You're fidgeting."
The man tilted his head for a moment, obviously deciding whether or not he should share this information with them. However, it seemed that he finally came to the answer he needed because he sighed and began to pull out a cigarette to cope with. "Team Seven encountered a foreign combatant who did not legally enter the village and were unwillingly engaged in a game of cat and mouse where they were the mice. Your friend Yuuki's team came upon them in the middle of this battle and managed to thwart the enemy's plans enough for him to choose to leave and rethink his strategy. It is believed that he was after Uchiha Sasuke, potentially for his Sharingan, though it could be any number of reasons as he is the last loyal Uchiha. All but Haruno Sakura sustained injury and four are currently unconscious in their rooms."
Shikamaru was already moving before their sensei had even told him what rooms the two teams were put in. Ino and Choji caught up with him moments later, with Ino spouting off the room number to Yuuki's room and Choji saying he'd quickly check on Naruto's team before joining them.
The door wasn't even locked. All three members of Yuuki's temporary team were currently unconscious on different beds. In the small room they'd been given. Shikamaru's eyes immediately honed in on Yuuki and the dark brown/red covering her entire chest area.
Ino gasped as they all rushed forward to check on her, having never seen the results of such an injury in person before.
When Shikamaru grabbed at the edges of her ripped top to get a better look, he found his hands smacked away by Ino, who looked mortified. "You don't pull up a girl's shirt without permission?!" she hissed; blue eyes narrowed.
"Do you not see the gaping red/brown hole in the center of her clothes? What does propriety mean in this situation when it's of no use?" Shikamaru demanded.
Footsteps alerted them to the presence of another. Thankfully, it was only Sakura in the doorway. Her eyes were wide and haunted, meaning their encounter had been a real life or death experience.
Ino went to her immediately, pulling her into a hug and asking if she was alright. Shikamaru was a bit more focused on what the hell had happened to Yuuki. Pardon him for caring.
"It was Orochimaru," Sakura said in a trembling voice. "He tried to do something to Sasuke, but Yuuki saved him in time. And then he stabbed her in the heart with a kunai and left her to bleed out." Her hands were shaking. "But Yuuki is super smart. She said she forced her pulse to slow down so he'd think she was already dying, and then when he was gone, she had me help her so she could heal herself."
The words made no sense. Sakura had just told them that Yuuki had been stabbed in the heart with a kunai. And yet, while the blood was certainly there, there did not seem to be an injury. But Yuuki had graduated from the Academy at the same time as the rest of them. She was intelligent, and she was hard working when it mattered, but how was it possible that she could heal a human heart? Let alone her own heart that she couldn't even see while healing it?!
"She was so calm, the entire time. She kept saying things like how she was redirecting her blood flow so that she could keep getting the right amount of oxygen to focus. She was using Katon Chakra to keep her blood vessels closed so they didn't bleed and while doing that, she was also using Chakra inside to heal herself. She only needed me to help carefully remove the kunai a little at a time, but she did all of that other stuff herself."
That level of Chakra Control and the ability to split her kind of attention span in so many directions was unheard of for someone their age. Shikamaru released a breath he wasn't even aware that he was holding, and then breathed in again to try and calm his racing heart.
"You guys managed to make it here, though. Is she really fine?"
"She's farther ahead in her medical training than I am, but after she fell asleep when we arrived, I did a basic diagnostic, which was to just run a handful of Chakra over her body to at least double check. It didn't feel like there was anything wrong. Yuuki said that the most important thing was healing her heart no matter what. That she needed all of her focus and her energy to go into fixing that so that the small part of it that was hit wasn't healed wrong."
"An S-Ranked Shinobi somehow managed to miss hitting her directly in the heart?" Ino asked suddenly, looking confused.
Sakura nodded. "Yuuki said that she has a medical condition where her heart is basically inverted in her chest. So, the part of it that typically would have been hit with a properly aimed attack, is actually in the other side of her chest cavity, so only the side part of it was cut. And even with that, it took hours of dedicated healing to fix it. We needed Soldier Pills from your mom just to get here."
It was a very humbling experience to have to realize that he had come incredibly close to losing one of his closest friends, and that he wouldn't have even been aware of it. Shikamaru was aware that these were death games meant to show off their village's power to other villages. A way to try and keep everybody in check so that people would not think themselves above others and decide that a war was absolutely necessary.
If things had remained as they were supposed to, he had complete faith that Yuuki and even her temporary teammates and the rest of all of his friends would have been able to handle anything that came at them. But to know that an S-Ranked threat had deliberately entered the village with intent to harm Uchiha Sasuke first and foremost, and that Yuuki had accidentally stumbled upon their group, got tangled in their mess, and was attacked by their foe and then nearly died…
It had been brought up many times before, but Shikamaru did live a life of privilege, and he didn't really know the meaning of loss yet. He had lost a grandparent when he was very young, but he barely remembered them. And while he was told stories, he didn't really have any emotional connection to them at all. They were somebody that only adults in his life had known, but they weren't somebody that he had known. And so he could not connect to them beyond an abstract idea.
But Yuuki was a close friend of his. She had, in fact, become very close to his family over the past couple years. She was even friends with his best friend. And it seemed like being friends with her had made their entire class much closer as a result in the Academy. Yuuki helped people bridge the gaps between them that their place in society had created for them before they were even born.
A group of spoiled clan children, many of them being the heirs to their families, interacting with a poor orphan(some against their parents' wishes[Hinata]). And many of their families either had alliances or bad blood between them over past actions. But Yuuki didn't care about the alliances and the bad blood, and often thought that those things were ridiculous. Yuuki did not believe that the sins of the ancestors should be trickled down into the youth of today. She also did not believe that people should be forced into alliances with total strangers simply because somewhere down the line their ancestors had struck up some kind of bargain.
A lot of clan things did not make sense to somebody like Yuuki. And when listening to her give her perspective on them, she did make a lot of sense. Those in the present day should not be held to contractual obligations that people several centuries ago made. A young woman should not be forced to marry a strange man she did not know, simply because five generations ago, one of her ancestors promised somebody of their line would marry into someone else's line for whatever reason.
Yuuki preferred to live in the present and believed that people in the present day should make contracts for their generation alone. That they should let future generations make their own contracts and their own obligations in due time.
Being around Yuuki was always a different experience compared to other people. Shikamaru know that she did not like being othered and that she did not like being compared to other girls, but it was the simple fact of the matter is that in his life, he had not met many people like Yuuki and he had no reason to go to the places that she said he should go to if he wanted to experience a more varied example of the female population.
Despite how he might not act like it all the time, Shikamaru very much enjoyed her company and liked having her around. And he was not comfortable with the sudden realization that he could have lost one of his close friends, and not even been aware of it. He could have been without her unique brand of existence for the rest of his life...
Choji's hand on his shoulder startled him back to the present. "Yuuki seems like she'll be fine. If you want to stay here a bit longer, you can go ahead. Our room is 114, which is right next door."
Not too far away then.
"I'm going to stay here for a bit." He was feeling a bit ill and needed a moment.
His best friend gave him a look of understanding. "See you in a bit, Shikamaru."
A/N: Another chapter is done!
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