82: Truth found in Blood

Tsunade released a long-held breath, having now a few precious moments to calm herself, and made as if to wipe the streams of sweat from her brow — only to catch herself partway while gawking at her still-gloved arms, absolutely saturated in blood.

Shaking her head at her own mentally exhausted state, the Sannin pursed her lips at the truly concerning amount of blood coating her hands and flecked all along her limbs. It was an unavoidable consequence of her profession, but Tsunade consoled herself with the knowledge that the blood which so frequently stained her hands would serve as her eternal reminder of those she treated — a testament to her mastery in medicine and to those lives she had saved.

She made an effort to remember each and every one, all those who had spilled blood for their comrades, blood which stained Tsunade's hands as she kept them alive. Even for a medical ninja early in her career, even for a young woman in her early twenties, that was a list which numbered in the thousands.

And she was just one person. If only her petitions to reform the Medical Corps and reorganize Konoha's shinobi team structures were heeded, so many others might do as she had. So many casualties out of Tsunade's reach on the battlefield might have been saved. Why couldn't those geezers see that the reorganization effort was worth it?! That if nothing changed, even those shinobi she saved would just end up as corpses on a future battlefield!

The Sannin felt her shoulders droop at the long-familiar mess of frustration weighing her down on top of her fatigue, but again she shook her head. Now was not the time for these kinds of thoughts. The stakes had changed, the situation volatile for everyone involved. As always, Tsunade would do her part... but it never got easier.

Time and again she would show them all, anyone who they could bring back, that as long as they still drew breath then Tsunade of the Senju would get them back on their feet! Just as she had for a patient who had been in critical condition mere minutes ago, saved against all the odds.

...Just as she had for Dan, when he needed her most.

Tsunade scrunched her eyes closed and clenched her saturated fists before her at the memory, at the sheer whirlwind of emotion brought by seeing the man she loved most dying before her, yet being saved by her hand. She remembered the feel of his warm blood pooled on her skin, the seeming eternity of mind-blanking terror and then bottomless relief at having stabilized him.

She allowed those moments, those memories to become her strength, to reinforce her fierce resolve that it was never over until it was over. That no matter how bad it looked, no matter the odds, she could do her best to save them — and succeed where likely no other could.

Even if she had to get retroactive permission from the geezer-sensei to do it, as she had done already when she set out to save her lover.

Tsunade allowed that conviction to run through her, relaxing her fists and opening her eyes to peer at her crimson-stained palms once more, which remained unflinchingly steady with a surgeon's precision. Those moments of silent meditation centered her again and cleared her mind of the remaining stress and rigid concentration she had maintained for the last few hours.

With a firm nod and a long exhale, she peeled off her bloodstained medical gloves and tossed them onto the nearby counter in her personal treatment rooms. Shedding her similarly blood-flecked surgery garb, the Sannin spent a few minutes washing up and writing her set of post-operation notes before sliding open the door back to the other half of her private ward, where her patient would spend her recovery.

Seeing two of her most senior nurse assistants attending watchfully inside, Tsunade breathed a mental sigh of relief and handed over a clipboard with her instructions. Glancing at the unconscious woman tucked into the plush recovery bunk, the Sannin nodded tiredly,

"Alright then, see to it that Harumi-san's rest is uninterrupted. I've healed as much of the damage as I presently can, but she's already sustained substantial blood loss. Make sure her movement is kept to a minimum. Risking any further internal bleeding could be lethal."

Meeting the serious gazes of her assistants as they confirmed, Tsunade paused and added,

"Also, let none of the main staff in here. At least one of you two should be present here at all times until I return."

The two nurses turned to each other with raised eyebrows for but a moment, an understandable reaction, before swiveling back to the Sannin with concerned eyes.

Tsunade already knew what they wanted to ask, so preempted them with, "Yes, right, I'll add another to the rotation. Mmm, you can make use of Momoe-chan as needed."

Two pairs of eyes widened with shock and then consternation, before they stuttered out,

"Hetsuma-san?!" "Ah, we couldn't-"

Tsunade dismissed their objections with a loose wave in their general direction, "It's fine, she's more than capable of this. Actually, make sure you contact her at least once. Heavens know one of that girl's rarer tonics would do wonders for this kind of blood loss."

Both of them paled slightly, but they nodded without further objection.

Hetsuma Momoe1Pronounced in three syllables [mo·mo-ei], where [ei] is pronounced as if saying the name of the letter 'A' .  [Hetsuma] taken from a reading of [憋] "Hetsu" - 'to suppress inner feeling' [Momoe] taken from [百恵] - meaning '100 blessings' was a young Chūnin, officially under Tsunade's purview, and a bit of an irregular at the hospital for many a reason, but in a large part because her work at the hospital involved extremely lethal poisons as much as it did medicines. This sometimes had an unnerving effect on the rest of the staff, not helped by Momoe's often solitary work schedule.

One of the Sannin's primary responsibilities during this war was of course counteracting just such poisons, though, so Tsunade had taken the girl on as a trainee. That had largely proven a solid investment, and while the young graduate had a bit of a... unique personality, Momoe had more than earned her Chūnin's armored flak jacket under Tsunade's auspices. In more than one regard...

But, well, that could sort itself out; all her subordinates had been whipped into shape and were competent enough to work together professionally, even someone as irregular as Momoe.

In the meantime, the Sannin made for the exit proper to head back to her main office, practically collapsing onto her paper-filled desk. Tsunade had been on a packed schedule all week, but it was a matter of course to make time for emergencies, especially in the case of her latest patient.

There was, after all, no way she could refuse to treat Sakumo-san's wife, Hatake Harumi.

And it was a good thing she did, too, because it seemed Harumi's complications after her recent birth were quite severe. If Tsunade hadn't caught the warning signs, hadn't stopped in the hallway to talk with a familiar face, Harumi might well have soon bled out from internal injuries, leaving her young son motherless and one of Konoha's most admired war heroes widowed.

Placing one of her now-clean arms over her eyes, Tsunade allowed herself to process her frenzied feelings about that.

Having herself recently experienced some intense feelings of affection, love, and appreciation for those Tsunade would call family, and Dan's near-death experiences, Harumi's situation burned at the Sannin's heart with particularly sentimental distress. The thought of poor Harumi, a cute kōhai2A junior student in the senpai and kōhai dynamic, an expression of an informal hierarchical relationship based generally on age, experience, and shared institutions, in this case, as Shinobi and former members of the Academy, as well as in the Konoha Clan relationships structure. during their Academy days, dying so young...

Hers was a gentle heart, and her constitution had always been much weaker than normal compared to the rest of her family, back when she was still Harumi of the Inuzuka Clan. She'd ended her brief career as a kunoichi when she married Sakumo and joined the Hatake Clan, preferring instead to use her Inuzuka inborn preternatural sense of smell to practice truly exquisite culinary skill, the occasional meal of which Tsunade had been lucky enough to sample.

But she'd almost died, and it shouldn't have ever gotten this close.

Tsunade could scarcely even begin to imagine what her loss would do to the legendary Sakumo, the White Fang. Probably the same as she felt when Dan was dying before her eyes, and if she'd instead failed...

Sakumo, he would have been raising his son all alone, and with the life of a shinobi...

Try as she might, Tsunade failed to keep her eyes from watering, so she wiped her tears away with the arm still draped over her face.

Well, as a Senju, she knew what it was like to lose most of one's family young. And more recently, how important it was to cherish those few who remained, who would also be alone without her.

But still, something was strange about this emergency in particular. A cloud of miscellaneous details arose within her a sense of unarticulated suspicion. Paranoia by another name. That was why she had her personally-trained nurses looking over her patient, and no one else.

Harumi had walked here, seemingly enduring no small amount of pain, all the way from her residence out in the fields of Konoha, aggravating an internal injury she had not been informed about. And so soon after giving birth — and a particularly harsh one at that? How had the supervising doctors failed to investigate the discomfort she was reporting, failed to mark the potential complications on her file, despite the fact that it was clearly indicative of a life-threatening condition!?

Even the hospital bureaucrats at the front desk had been stonewalling Harumi about scheduling her maternity appointments, instead of immediately escorting her to an emergency operating room as soon as they looked at her file. They hadn't even filed any official paperwork for her requests! That was NOT how things were supposed to work.

The Sannin once again had to relax herself, lest her teeth grind even louder. If she were given free reign over the hospital, her ideas listened to, then the amount of needless death that might be prevented...

If Tsunade hadn't returned on time today, or hadn't walked through that lobby to overhear Harumi's frustrated pained requests for an examination, then Harumi would have been a dead woman walking, regardless of future treatment. It was already a close enough thing, losing that much blood.

And her suspicions about the whole fiasco were tempered only by the knowledge that she'd saved Harumi's life, barely, and that it was likely only Tsunade could have done so on such limited time.

As a shinobi she knew she'd have to investigate this... utter failure, but as a doctor, as a person, she knew she wasn't going to like any of the answers she got. But Tsunade could at least share that burden with Dan. She could trust his opinion on this, and he would know who else to talk to or how to properly direct her suspicions.

And gods above and below, Tsunade knew she'd nearly lost that, out in the frosty woods of the Land of Hotsprings. Just like Sakumo had just now nearly lost-...

Tsunade jolted upright in her chair, arm falling from her tear-stained face. There was something to that, some line of thought she hadn't quite picked up on. Some thread of cognition on the level of her battle instincts, like a sixth sense.

The feeling of a team captain, looking to your sides in the heat of battle, only to discover your allies had been felled while you weren't looking.

They were at war... it's not paranoia if people really are out to get you, right? Two such prominent shinobi... losing them would be an incalculable loss for Konoha, who relied on fostering exceptional talents to maintain it's superiority...

...

Tsunade blinked.

This was too large, too visceral for her to calmly inspect, process, and analyze as anything other than an irrational feeling. Not while in such a state of mind, exhausted and emotional. So Tsunade merely shook her head, marking down a note of her thoughts, drawing a line between her and Dan's situation, and as well Sakumo and Harumi's.

Glancing to the rest of her notes, Tsunade stared blankly at the array of papers with agendas, feeling as if she was forgetting something...

With a snap of her fingers, memory returned to her — reminding the Sannin of yet another, more personal task that she'd started preparing before handling Harumi's emergency. Heavens, that would be hours ago now...

This would be the Sannin's other most pressing priority, this too a family priority. After getting herself all worked up and emotional, there was no way she'd allow herself to put this off any longer, even if the mystery of it unnerved her.

Tsunade stood and donned a fresh labcoat, making her way over to the refrigerated vault containing her research samples and most sensitive equipment.

The prototype centrifuge and analysis equipment were such bastards to calibrate, and slow to operate too, but that was usually the hardest part of the process. This kind of investigation and problem-solving far better suited Tsunade's preference, hopefully much simpler and clinical in nature, rather than bureaucratic and infuriating.

Unlocking the personal seal and mechanical locks affixed to her vault, Tsunade searched for a carefully wrapped, unmarked set of vials. A sample of blood, blood from someone Tsunade now considered precious. Blood from a fearful girl whose body held extraordinary secrets, who asked for help.

However, it was not as Tsunade left it.

The Sannin stepped back as wisps of... vapor? Steam? trickled up from the misshapen box on her vault's shelf. In her refrigerated vault.

Tearing off the box's outer remnants, Tsunade gaped as fragments of cracked and shattered glass spilled out onto the shelf.

The first thought that occurred to her had naught to do with the carnage, but of the sample itself. Which was that the blood sample had somehow been run through a centrifuge already, having separated into plasma and hematocrit3volume percentage of red blood cells in blood, measured as part of a blood test. — and an abnormal, impossibly abnormal, amount of both.

That impression was immediately shattered by the wisps of steam floating off the 'plasma' as if it were evaporating, and the fact that the contents of the vial, both gaseous and liquid, had burst open the glass walls and overflowed.

Whatever was in that vial, it couldn't be called blood any longer. It was unthinkable for a mere blood sample exhibit such anomalous changes, and a cursory glance revealed the 'hematocrit' to be more akin to a reddish gelatinous substance.

"No, wait-" Tsunade stiffened, neck whirling to glance back at her main office, and some of the secret records she'd been looking into there.

There was another whose cells had exhibited unnatural volatility. Another whose body possessed extreme behavior and physiology that confounded understanding.

The greatest of the Senju, Hashirama.

"Grandfather..."

Was this the burden of the Senju Clan's kekkei genkai? A symptom or a boon?

Utter bafflement compounded with a surreal curiosity and consternation in Tsunade's mind as she covered her face from the fumes and peered closer. Faint flashes of amethyst light seemed to dart between clusters of the substance, and where it touched, more vapor seemed to emanate.

The Sannin felt her heartrate rising as she collected samples of the not-blood substance, removing the remnant contents and isolating it on a lab table. The vault was sealed behind her as she closed its door with her foot. Closer examination proved the not-blood samples to be little more than inert biochemical residue.

Rapid, cataclysmic denaturing? Protein components indiscriminately degrading...

Tsunade's mind worked over her observations, building a picture in her imagination.

How could this level of activity be sustained? The cells seemingly underwent an unfathomably violent apoptosis, but that wasn't even close to describing the effect. Some of the residue was practically charred, and heated vapor still wafted off its edges.

A pulse of light drew her gaze up, as the main clump of not-blood left in the remnants of its vial vibrated and flared with an amethyst energy. A familiar color, Tsunade realized as she darted away from the examination table.

Sumika's chakra... the girl's chakra was still affecting her blood? In such amounts? After being refrigerated?!

Thinking again, there was far more residue than should be possible from the paltry amount of blood taken from Sumika. Sumika, who appeared to be in irregular health. Who should not have survived much of what those at the Senju Estate gathered she had suffered. Who had... healed...

Tsunade found her hands rising to cover her mouth, eyes widening.

That was it, wasn't it? Somehow, some mechanism of Sumika's physiology was attempting to heal itself, even in a mere blood sample. But that process instead resulted in the chaotic destruction of anything resembling living cells. It almost certainly had something to do with the girl's unique chakra. On the level of Grandfather Hashirama, no doubt.

Nay, if the mechanisms of the First Hokage's physiology were mysterious, then Sumika's were as enigmatic as they were volcanic. The concept sent a tingling shiver through Tsunade's spine.

A sizzling sound seemed to punctuate that thought as she refocused on the shattered vial and its glowing contents. The light of chakra residue flared ever brighter suddenly before fading just as fast, prompting the Sannin to furrow her brows and lean slightly closer.

Just in time for jagged spikes to erupt from the mass, spooking out an involuntary yelp from Tsunade.

A hand over her heart, the blonde woman, in the prime of her health and born of Uzumaki and Senju vitality, clenched her teeth as she clinically considered the possibility of experiencing a heart attack.

Until her eyes once more met the object of her distress.

From it, small and spiked branches of wood grew, lightly dusted with metallic fragments and with roots charring in a puddle of lava that melted into Tsunade's stone laboratory tabletop. Little remained of the original not-blood mass but shriveled wafers smaller than a coin.

What once might have been possibility, speculation, now turned to a firm and sobering fact.

What in the Sannin once might have been fear, now turned to awe.

Speechless, earthshaking awe.

Elsewhere, Sumika felt a lingering irritation vanish from the back of her mind.