Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

"Ma'am, how did you do that?"

The greatest medic-nin in the world glanced at her protégé her research partner her colleague Noburi with a frown.

"Do what?"

Noburi gestured at the still-warm corpse on the table. Ten minutes ago this had been Tanaka Osamu, a 19-year-old warehouse worker. He had fallen from a loft in the warehouse and shattered his everything. He had been rushed to Leaf General where Tsunade had done everything that she and her staff could to put his shattered spine, punctured lung, fractured skull, and depressed brain back together, but no one ever imagined that it would be possible. The only meaningful thing she was able to do for him was to ensure that his death was not pointless, that he would contribute to someone else not dying in the future by helping with her and Noburi's research.

"You didn't move your fingers when you opened him up."

She lifted her hands from the body and held them out, palms up. Tiny bursts of medical chakra rose from her fingertips and transformed, becoming hooks and wedges and blades. They roamed around her hand, changing size and shape and angle as she willed.

"Scalpels to part the flesh, retractors to open it," she said as though it were nothing. "Fun party trick. And yes"—she turned her right hand over and made a fist; the chakra migrated around to her knuckles, growing to form finger-length blades—"I have used it to turn an enemy's internals to mulch. Punch, spin the blades around inside them, move on to the next target. Now, if we could come back to the research?"

"Yes, ma'am." He turned back to the corpse but couldn't help but ask, "Did you use that on the Dragons?"

"Nah," she said absently, casually spreading her hands to split Osamu's sternum down the center and open his chest like a flower. "They were too big for the blades. I used medical chakra to create a tunnel down to its organs, then channeled the force of my attack down the tunnel. Punched it from the inside where it's squishier."

Noburi nodded, eyes slightly wide as he suddenly understood the length of the path that led from his current ninja status to the heights of possible achievement. For that matter, was Tsunade even at the peak? Was there a peak, or could ninja simply get stronger indefinitely? If so, how strong must the Third have been? When the team first met him he had seemed like such a friendly old grandfather. His aura when they annoyed him had made clear that he was...more, yet still he must have been holding back so much.

He swallowed and forced himself to focus on the body in front of him as Tsunade submerged it in the pre-prepared bath. He dipped his hand in and found that, as expected, there were still very faint traces of chakra lingering in the corpse. So faint that he probably wouldn't have noticed them two years ago before he achieved mastery over his bloodline.

He cursed himself for using the word 'mastery', even in his own thoughts, immediately after seeing how much farther there was to go as a ninja.

"Well?" Tsunade said. "Hurry up and do your thing."

"Yes, ma'am," Noburi said, beginning to push chakra into the corpse's unbeating heart.


Noburi entered the lab and frowned at the dire rabbit on the table. Tsunade had captured its bladed ears in one leather-gauntleted hand and had the other resting lightly on its neck. The rabbit's head was twitching and its ears were struggling but its body was utterly slack from Tsunade's hand downwards.

"What are we doing today, ma'am?"

"Alternate sensing medium. Cut its side open, stick your finger in, see if you can sense its chakra through the blood."

"My...my bloodline really only works with water, ma'am."

She sniffed. "That's what they taught you as a toddler and a wet-behind-the-ears genin. Doesn't mean it's true. Clans always keep their best secrets back until you're old enough to keep them secret. Now hurry up."

Noburi swallowed and picked up the scalpel.


"The patient in room four is ready for you, ma'am," said Doctor Kurusu, holding out the patient's chart.

Tsunade took the chart and flicked through it, eyes scanning back and forth with trained speed. "Conscious?" she asked, not looking up.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Mild fever, wet cough, aches, tiredness," she muttered. "Damp lung, like we thought. Sounds like we caught it early." She glanced over at Noburi. "You sure about this, kid? I'd think you'd need more of the spirits to be present before you can sense them."

"I'm not sure, ma'am. My thinking with this experiment is that we compare between patients at different stages of illness. I'm sure we'll get someone else in soon who is farther along. It's the season."

"You're not wrong, I suppose. Still, I'm still not completely sold on your ability to kill the spirits with chakra drain but not hurt the patient."

Noburi shrugged. "I can't promise that I can kill the spirits, ma'am, but I can promise that I won't hurt the patient. I've put many patients out without hurting them."

"If there's nothing else, ma'am?" Doctor Kurusu asked, his voice studiously polite. "With your permission, I would like to go back to rounds."

"Yeah, fine." The doctor started to turn away but she caught his arm as she remembered something. "You asked the patient for consent, right?"

"Ma'am?"

Her eyes narrowed. "You asked the patient for consent to be used in medical experiments, right?"

"Ma'am...he's a civilian."

The hand that wasn't holding Doctor Kurusu's arm tightened into a fist, green chakra flickering around it. The hand that was holding his arm must have tightened as well because the doctor went to his knees, crying out in pain as the mountain surged into reality around them, its weight crushing down on everyone within thirty feet. Two nurses staggered and the civilian auxiliary sitting at the intake desk slipped out of her chair.

Tsuande closed her eyes and breathed, forcibly dragging her soul back into its cage the way the owner of a vicious dog pulls it away from its victim.

After a moment she managed to get herself under control again. She lifted Doctor Kurusu back to his feet with punctilious care.

"Doctor Kurusu," she said in a voice that was far too calm. "This is the second time I have had to speak to you about your attitude towards civilian patients. Please take me literally when I say that if there is a third time, I will rip your head off, spit in your neck, and throw your body over the wall of your family's compound. You are free to retire from your position and never practice medicine or use medical chakra again, but if you wish to continue as a medic-nin in Leaf, you will treat all patients, ninja or civilian, with the same degree of respect. If you do not, we are going to have that third time. Am I completely understood?"

The doctor clenched his teeth, visibly restraining himself from saying anything stupid about how powerful and important the Kurusu clan was. Lady Tsunade was the Lady of the Senju clan, grandaughter of the village's founder, Slug Princess, Sannin, the medic who had trained essentially Leaf's entire medical corps, who had saved the lives of multiple Clan Heads and their children, and a former Hokage. She reigned supreme in the medical sphere. In anything related to medicine, this hospital, or its staff, she could do whatever she wanted and not even the current Hokage would so much as wag a finger at her.

"You are understood, ma'am," he said.

"Good. Go get those stress fractures patched up, then get back to your rounds."


"Ma'am?" Noburi had to clear his throat before he could continue. Nervousness had rendered it dry as expired travel jerky.

"Yeah?" Tsunade didn't look up from where she was going through the records of their latest experiment.

"I wanted to ask...um...I wanted to ask if there is anything combat-oriented that you would be willing to teach me? Either based on my bloodline or in general."

She finally looked up. "I thought you wanted to learn how to heal?"

"Medics still get deployed in wartime, ma'am, and I have trouble believing that we'll never see another war, even with this new AMITY thing."

She chewed on that for a moment. "You insisted we set a stop date and I don't want to waste research time teaching you non-medical stuff, but we can look into some weaponization possibilities."

"Thank you, ma'am. Lord Orochimaru said that it was possible he could teach me to manifest chakra scalpels through my Water Whip jutsu?"

She laughed. "'Lord' Orochimaru? Jiraiya would have laughed his ass off if he heard you call Oro that."

Noburi smiled weakly. "With respect ma'am, Jiraiya's not here and Lord Orochimaru is scary. A little bit of politeness seems like a good idea."

"Eh." She shrugged one shoulder. "I suppose. Dunno about the scalpels in particular, but the idea of manifesting medical chakra through your jutsu is interesting." She rubbed her jaw thoughtfully. "That whip thing...two, three yards long, right?"

"Variable ma'am. I've made it up to four yards in combat; I haven't tried to go longer but I might be able to."

"Suppose we had a bunch of operating tables lined up. You think you could lay the whip across multiple patients and use your bloodline on all of them at once? Keep them all sedated or whatever?"

"Absolutely. Splitting my drain is no problem. The Whip would need to be made from actual water though. Can't drain through a construct."

"I wonder...you can push chakra into a person by touch. You think you could use it to disrupt their own internal chakra? Could be a good way to keep them from using jutsu, or maybe even boosting. And maybe you could affect their muscles, make them go limp or cause spasms that have them fall down. Very hard for an opponent to fight when he's in the middle of a seizure."

Noburi's face split into a smile. "That sounds very interesting, ma'am."

"You'd have to be able to do it fast, just on a brief touch instead of needing to grab on. If you manage to restrain someone with your Whip then you don't need fancy medical tricks to kill them."

"Yes, ma'am."

She nodded and pushed the papers aside. "Let's go see what we can do."

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XP AWARD: n/a This is a retrospective on events that have already happened, so XP has already been awarded for this time.

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Voting ends on Wednesday, Jul 31, 2024 at 7:00 AM .