While there was no doubt in anyone's mind that Tsunade was the primary reason for Leaf's leadership in the medical world, few were as aware that the Nara were the second: a traditional master-apprentice system could never have supported the scale of something like Leaf General Hospital, but with the ready availability of affordable medical texts, a trainee could make valuable progress in their discipline without having to constantly tie up experts in instruction time. For this reason, there was nothing strange about seeing Noburi lounging around at home with an intimidating-looking book on plague spirits, or the four kinds of miasma, or the medicinal herbs of the Fire Country and which chakra beasts tended to eat people gathering each one.
Today's item of Noburi's choice, however, was not a book. It was, at minimum, a tome. Hazō was tempted to even go as far as "grimoire". The humongous black volume, creaking at the seams in defiance of Leaf's best binding techniques (which, according to Kagome-sensei, were cutting-edge and practically art), seemed like it should contain the kind of forbidden lore that would get you executed by Kei just for being in the same building.
"Enjoying a little leisure reading?" Hazō asked, approaching the dining room table where Noburi had spread his tome, presumably because the desk in his room wouldn't be able to take the weight.
"Something like that," Noburi said, looking up from an eerie diagram of a man with four arms, four legs, and a singularly fed-up expression. "Dr Yakushi lent me his personal copy of Hyūga Kōzō's
Anatomical Manuscript A. They call the guy the second greatest doctor in the world, and you can see why."
Noburi leafed through the tome to find an example for Hazō, stopping on a magnificently detailed, stomach-churningly grotesque diagram of an eyeball melting over a low heat, its various humours captured in the act of leaking out through the pupil.
"It's not like we don't get Hyūga medics," Noburi said cheerfully, "and quite a few others are fine with the occasional paid consultation, but Lord Kōzō practically made it his life's work to catalogue the details of the human body in every state of injury and disease. It's really a shame what happened to him."
"Why?" Hazō asked. "What happened to him?"
"Apparently, when they raided Orochimaru's compound, they found out
where Lord Kōzō had been getting his human bodies in every state of injury and disease. He was the first ever council clan head to be executed."
"Wait," Hazō said. "They executed a clan head? The
Hyūga clan head? You're kidding, right?"
"That's what Dr Yakushi says," Noburi said. "But I'm pretty sure there are some deep waters there that the likes of you and me will never plumb. Like, it was Lord Kōzō's successor that started the Minami purge, not long after, and you know how the Hokage was weirdly slow to shut the whole thing down given it was practically a mini-clan war. But then again, if you start thinking that he did it to appease the Hyūga after executing their clan head, why did he not only recognise the Minami as a clan but start giving out privacy seals like candy practically the next day?"
He shrugged. "This is why I leave politics to my humble second-in-command while I focus on the important stuff. Tsunade and the Nara managed to convince the Third not to have all the copies of
Anatomical Manuscript A burned, if only barely, and that's good enough for me."
"Well," Hazō said. "I guess you learn something new every day."
"You should crack open a book sometime yourself," Noburi said, fondly tapping the weird black blob oozing out from the back of the eyeball. Hazō shuddered.
"Your humble second-in-command only wishes he had the time," Hazō said. "But forget that. I've had some more thoughts on the thing we were talking about the other day."
Noburi gave an exaggerated sigh. "I told you, Hazō, those are just old wives' tales. Besides, if you've got multiple shadow clones and you're still disappointing girls that badly, I'm pretty sure your problem isn't your stamina."
"Very funny," Hazō said. "I was actually talking about
your girl problems."
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Noburi said, raising his voice slightly. "I have no girl problems because I am in a happy and fully satisfying monogamous relationship." He glanced warily through the door into the atrium, then closed it firmly and retreated to his tome. "Seriously, Hazō, do you want to get me killed?"
"I am unable to answer that question for OPSEC reasons," Hazō said. "But after I thought about your situation for a bit, I remembered something Mari once said back when Jiraiya was alive and I asked her why there was a toy chicken with a pulley in the middle hanging from their bedroom ceiling. She told me, 'Familiarity is the poison that kills relationships'."
"I did not need to know that."
"See," Hazō said, "I think you do. Because before I could escape, she grabbed me by the collar and elaborated. And what I got out of that, minus a variety of suggestions that would make Akane's head explode, was that one of the best ways to avoid having to murder your partner for cheating on you is to keep things fresh and exciting, just as if it was still the early days of your relationship. Now, in your case it's more about avoiding
being murdered, but it seems like the basic principle should still apply."
Noburi closed the tome.
"So are you saying we should copy the early days of our relationship where she was busy being my tour guide to a freaky alien world and humiliatingly overpowered training partner while our diabolical bosses plotted to use us as political tools? Or the days where I was trying to navigate a crazy sealmaster's dream of an emotional minefield while busy fighting with Hyūga for her favour—even now, I can't believe those words are coming out of my mouth—while our diabolical bosses plotted to use us as political tools?"
"…all right, maybe not the early days of
your relationship," Hazō admitted. "But you must have a whole bunch of ideas for what you'd want to do with these hypothetical girls you wish you'd had a chance to date. Why not use them on Yuno?"
Noburi frowned. "But… we're married. You were there. Isn't this the part where people settle down and start acting like mature adults and talking about redecorating the kitchen and whatever?"
"I'm pretty sure you'll redecorate our kitchen over Kagome-sensei's dead body," Hazō said. "But it's odd to think of the Noburi I know and may or may not want to get killed bowing to social convention like that. If you want to take Yuno on dates, and give her surprise gifts, and write her terrible love poetry and so on, who's going to stop you? I bet you she'd love for you to simply court her like a single young woman you're in love with, the way nobody ever did."
"Excuse me," Noburi said peevishly, "my love poetry would be amazing."
"Oh, really?" Hazō asked. "I just bet you that Isanese love poetry has a 3-17-12-1 pattern, you only rhyme words with two or more vowels, and you have to mention a different kind of fish every third line."
"…I'll stick with the surprise gifts."
Hazō gave a sagely nod.
"I also had another thought, going off the back of my idea about couples' advice."
"Go on," Noburi said warily.
"You remember how, after the Great Collapse, we made a point of going around and getting people to share their grief with each other?"
Noburi nodded.
"Suppose we got people to do that all the time?"
"You want people to constantly talk about things that make them miserable?" Noburi asked. "Now, I'm not the world's
greatest expert on making people feel better, but that sounds like a fantastic way to send morale through the floor."
"Nonono," Hazō said. "Suppose we gathered a bunch of wise old people, and others who are good at listening, like bartenders and such, and got them to do it professionally, with salaries and dedicated offices or whatever else they need? That way, the Gōketsu would always have someone who could listen to their problems and give good advice, and by systematising it, you could also get the experts to swap tips and generally raise their skill level. You know the Gōketsu policy is to communicate as much as possible, but there's so much that's hard to talk to family or close friends about."
Noburi's face, darkened by contemplation of Isanese poetry, lit up like he'd heard Neji tripped and fell in a latrine pit in full view of the Leaf Chūnin Girls.
"Hazō… that's brilliant. It's an amazing idea. In fact, it's an amazing idea with no obvious ways it can go horribly wrong, which is clear evidence you've been lupchanzed."
"Fear not, Noburi," Hazō grumbled. "We are only capable of targeting people with brains to consume."
"Oh, I'm not worried," Noburi said. "If this is what we can expect from a lupchanzed Hazō, then I, for one, welcome our new half-plant, half-animal overlords. Keep him as long as you like.
"More seriously, this solves a problem Akane and I have been struggling with since forever."
"What's that?"
"So you know how the Gōketsu civilian population is seriously top-heavy?" Noburi asked.
"Right," Hazō said. "Because many of the able-bodied adults moved out again once they had enough money for a place to live that wasn't an improvised shelter outside the safety of the village walls, while old people who had nowhere to go generally stuck around."
"And the thing with old civilians is…" Noburi began. "OK, do you know Hariko, the old woman with the mindmelting yellow lingerie on her laundry lines?"
"Is that who that stuff belongs to?" Hazō asked. "I half-wondered if it was Mari showing off to the civilians."
"I've had to sit through Hariko's life story at least three times now during my rounds," Noburi said, "and it made me think about a bunch of stuff I hadn't considered before, so I've decided I'm going to share the pain.
"See, Hariko grew up as a subsistence farmer in one of those no-name villages up north. One year, there was a chakra bloatworm infestation that took out one of the fields right before harvest-time, and the tax collector was in a bad mood when he was passing through, and in the end, they didn't have enough left for everyone to last the winter. So there Hariko's family was, slowly starving to death, and then one morning, Hariko woke up and her elderly mother was gone. Just like that, nothing but a series of footprints through the snow into the chakra-beast-filled forest. Because apparently, that's what you do in a farming village when times are tough and you're just an extra mouth to feed. You go into the forest, and your family isn't forced to make choices they'll have to live with forever in order to make sure as many people as possible make it through the winter.
"As it happens, Hariko got lucky not long after that. A clanless ninja passing through decided to take her back to Leaf as his mistress. Not that she had a choice or anything, but on the other hand, living in Leaf, and under a ninja's protection at that, is a better fate than most peasants in the world can hope for.
"Buuut… leap forward a couple of years and the natural order of everything sucking reasserts itself. The ninja dies on a mission, and his family obviously aren't going to let a filthy civilian keep the home, so there she is, out on the street with no money and no marketable skills, and nothing going for her except the gorgeous body that got her into this mess in the first place. Still, Hariko is a survivor who has Seen Some Shit just by virtue of being a peasant girl, so she works with what she's got, and eventually manages to make ends meet by working as a seamstress at a yakuza joint.
"Leap way forward, to last year. Hariko's getting fewer clients as she gets older, and her health is shaky by now, so she's preparing to retire. Then one fine night while she's at work…"
Noburi plunged his hand down, as if throwing something away.
"…our best buddies from Hidden Rock drop her house into the Abyss, or whatever they have here instead of the Abyss, with all her savings still in it because she's a country bumpkin who never got her head around the idea of banks. You know what happens after that—it's the Gōketsu to the rescue, and suddenly instead of starving to death in the gutter, she gets a roof over her head and three meals a day and none of it makes any sense but she's not going to question the miracle in case it goes away. Happy ending, right?"
"Isn't it?"
"Here's the thing," Noburi said. "Out in the villages, if you can't work, then you're just a useless extra mouth to feed. And Hariko's living here now, but she's still got no marketable skills, and also her hands are starting to grow numb, so that cuts off most of her remaining options. The way she sees it, she's a parasite. Then bam! Suddenly, the magical young Lord Gōketsu, who saved her life without asking anything in return, is deep in debt for reasons that she doesn't get, but obviously weren't his fault because he's a saint. And Hariko's still a useless extra mouth to feed. And then she remembers what her mother had the guts to do for the sake of her family…"
Hazō winced. "But she's still around, right?"
Noburi nodded. "
She is, sure. Our civilians do look out for each other. But, knowing everything I've just told you, think about what it'd mean for old civilians to have a job that only they can do, without needing new skills that they might feel it's too late to pick up.
"All right," he said. "I'm excited enough about this that I reckon I'll go get the ball rolling. I'm sure Lord Kōzō will forgive me. See you later, Lupchazō!"
"Wait!" Hazō called out as Noburi headed out the door. "Before you go, I had a medicine question for you. Also, don't call me that in case Kagome-sensei gets the wrong idea."
"Spoilsport," Noburi muttered. "So what's the question?"
"When is a dying person beyond saving? Say their heart's stopped. Can you still resuscitate them?"
"Depends," Noburi said. "To dumb it down by a few kilometres for a layman, you die when your soul leaves the body, and the most common reason the soul leaves the body is when it's damaged so the soul doesn't recognise it as a human body anymore. A human body, as far as the soul is concerned, has a beating heart. If your heart stops, the soul doesn't belong there anymore, so it starts to leave. If you're really quick, maybe you can get the heart to start again before it does, and then the soul will figure it's in a human body again and decide to stick around. Otherwise, it's going to go follow the cycle of reincarnation, where eventually it gets drawn to a different type of body based on how it's been shaped by its experiences—but that's eschatology and not really my problem as a medic.
"So there's no 'point where a dying person is beyond saving'. The soul leaves when it leaves, and maybe that's instant, and maybe it'll be a couple of minutes. It depends on the soul, and the type of death, and what you can do about it and how fast. Why, who are you trying to kill for good? If it's Orochimaru, then I reckon you need to back up and figure out if he has a soul to begin with, because the evidence ain't promising."
"Actually," Hazō said, "it's the other way round. I have ideas for seals to suspend people near death, in case we can't save them now but maybe we can save them later."
Noburi frowned. "I don't know if a seal's going to be able to stop the soul from leaving the body. That sounds like, I dunno, a step beyond biosealing and into levels of weirdness even Orochimaru isn't into. On the other hand, I'm not a sealmaster. The stuff you guys do makes no sense to me anyway."
"I'm not sure it makes sense to me either," Hazō confessed after a second. "I tell the fundamental laws underpinning the universe what to do, and they just go, 'Yeah, sure, you got it, boss'. That's more than I get out of my actual subordinates."
"Hey," Noburi said, "maybe if you did a lucky dance of my choice every time you asked me to do something, I'd be an ideal subordinate too. Why not give it a try for a few months, see how it goes?"
Hazō rolled his eyes. "Get out of here, Noburi."
"Yeah, sure, you got it, boss."
-o-
The rest of the plan is left in
@eaglejarl's wicked talons.
