Chapter 57: The Road Back!

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[Obtained: Accustomization Pills x50!]

Name: Mikoto Uchiha

Age: 14

Rank: Jonin

Affinity: Lightning Affinity, Fire Affinity, Yin Affinity, Water Affinity, Earth Affinity, Wind Affinity

Unique: Immense Chakra Reserves, Sharingan (Three Tomoe), Advanced Growth Rate

Skills: Fire Style Mastery, Water Style Mastery, Lightning Style Mastery, Yin Style Mastery, Earth Style Mastery, Wind Style Mastery, Shurikenjutsu, Elite Taijutsu (Ninja Art: Bare-Handed Blade Block), Superb Genjutsu, Ninjutsu (Body Flicker, Advanced Body Flicker, Clone Jutsu, Substitution Jutsu, Transformation Jutsu, Ninja Art: Shuriken Shadow Clone Jutsu, Amplified Summoning Jutsu, Shadow Clone Jutsu), Perfect Chakra Control (Chakra Enhanced Strength), Kenjutsu (Uchiha Style: Kenjutsu, Drunken Blade), Stealth, Survival Knowledge, Cooking, Medical Ninjutsu (Mystical Palm, Chakra Scalpel, Poison Extraction Jutsu, Body Pathway Derangement Jutsu, Regenerative Healing Jutsu, Mystical Healing Field Jutsu), Fūinjutsu Mastery (Sealing Jutsu: Release), Pedagogy Mastery, Space-Time Ninjutsu Mastery, Seven Heavens Breathing Method, Musical Talent, Craftsmanship Aptitude, Needle Mastery

Equipment: Kunai, Shuriken, Senbon, Smoke Bomb, Explosive Tags, Poison Gas Bomb, Flash Bomb, Gas/Sleep Bomb, Food Pills x84, Wire Strings, Shark Skin, Gunbai, Bingo Book, Fūma Shuriken x74, Hero Water x4, Superior Frying Pan, Accustomization Pills x50

Fifty small white pills in a sealed bottle. Knowledge flowed into her head about exactly what these pellets were. Transplant medicine. The pills allowed a body to accept foreign material, organs, limbs, tissue, anything that wasn't originally its own. They suppressed the body's rejection response and helped the implanted material take root over time with regular doses.

Medical-nin were supposed to use them during and after transplant procedures: one pill while the new limb or organ went in, then one a day for the first week while the body learned to stop attacking what it had been given. The uses on a battlefield were obvious. A shinobi damages an organ, and if there was a compatible donor and these pills, a medic could give them a new one. It wasn't a perfect solution, nothing about field surgery ever was, but it was the difference between a career-ending injury and a second chance.

Mikoto didn't need them. She could rebuild an arm from a single strand of the patient's own hair. But that took a sealing array, every bit of her focus, and a patient who would be eating like three people for weeks afterward, and there was only one of her. At Field Hospital Two she'd seen more damaged organs in a single week than she could have rebuilt in a month.

Any medic trained in transplant surgery could use these, though. Fifty pills was eight per patient. Six people, if nobody's body fought too hard.

She sealed the bottle away alongside the rest of her medical supplies. She'd find the right time to hand it over to the hospital and have it studied, so that it could be remade for future medical-nin.

…

Mikoto was sitting on the back step with her mother, a basket of green beans between them, snapping the ends off and dropping them into a bowl. Mikan was telling her about the woman two houses down who'd started keeping chickens and hadn't told anyone, and how everyone had found out at dawn. It was the kind of relaxing afternoon that Mikoto had come to love since coming home.

Someone knocked at the front door.

Mikan wiped her hands on her apron and went to get it. Mikoto heard the door slide open, heard a young man's voice ask for Uchiha Mikoto, and heard her mother not answer right away.

She got up and went to the front.

The chunin on the doorstep had a satchel over his shoulder, stuffed with rolled scrolls, each one tied with the same red cord. He held one out to her.

"Uchiha Mikoto?"

"Yes."

"Sign here, please." He held out a board with a list pinned to it. Her name was halfway down the page. There were a lot of names above it and a lot of names below it. She signed, and he took the board back, nodded once, and was already walking away. Further down the lane, another door slid open for him.

Mikoto untied the cord.

The scroll was short. It carried the Hokage's seal at the bottom and said what it needed to and nothing else.

Uchiha Mikoto, Jonin. You are recalled to active duty on the Rain front. You will report to the main gate at dawn on the fourth day from receipt of these orders, accompanied by your assigned genin: Senju Nawaki, Tokage Yoshino, and Inuzuka Tsume. On arrival, report to the camp commander, Hatake Sakumo, for assignment. Duration of deployment: until relieved.

Until relieved.

All the good feeling drained out of her, and she slouched over with a loud groan.

"Mikoto?" Her mother was standing in the hallway behind her with a bean still in her hand.

"I'm going back to war in four days…" Mikoto said, trudging back down the hall.

Mikan looked at the scroll, and then at her daughter, and didn't ask to read it. "For how long?"

"Until the war is over."

Her mother nodded slowly. She went back out to the step and sat down in front of the basket, and after a moment Mikoto heard the snap of a bean, and then another, slower than before.

Mikoto stayed in the hallway with the scroll in her hand. It felt like she'd only just gotten back. No more warm beds. No more family meals, no more Kushina showing up at the window, no more strangers stopping her in the street to talk and get to know her. Just the rain, and the tents, and the cots, and every day wondering which of the faces around her she wouldn't see the next morning.

I hate war… Mikoto sighed.

She rolled the scroll closed and went back out to help her mother with the beans.

…

She told her squad the next morning.

They were at Training Ground Eleven, still exhausted from the morning training, sitting in the grass with their water and their chests heaving. Kuromaru was panting with his tongue out while watching a butterfly.

"We've been deployed to the war in three days." Mikoto said.

The butterfly flew away before Kuromaru could get his stamina back to chase it. He sorrowfully went over to lay down beside Tsume.

Nawaki nodded.

"How long?" He asked.

"Until the war ends."

He nodded again.

"What are a bunch of genin going to do in a war?" Yoshino asked.

"Whatever the camp needs." Mikoto said. "Carrying stretchers. Delivering messages. Staying out of the way. Fighting, when needed. The orders say we report to the camp commander and he'll tell us where we're needed. I'm a medical-nin, so I'll most likely end up in the medical tents, and you three go where I go."

"Nee-chan got her orders too." Nawaki said. "Last night. She's going to a different camp."

"How's she taking it?"

"She broke a chair." He looked down at the burn scars on the back of his hand for a second. Then he grinned. "I'd better not get hurt. She'll never let me hear the end of it."

"So we'll be on the front line?" Yoshino asked.

"It depends. We could be in the rear or we could be in the front. It just depends on where we’re needed most."

Tsume hadn't said anything. She was stroking Kuromaru's ears with both hands, her fingers working through the fur the way they did when she was thinking hard about something she didn't want to think about.

"Tsume."

"I'm fine." Her voice wasn’t shaky. "I'm fine, sensei. I just..." She looked up. "Are there gonna be people like those bounty hunters?"

Mikoto could have lied. She didn't.

“Worse. We barely made it home from that one, and the war is full of shinobi like that, on every side.”

"Good." Tsume bared her teeth. "Then I'll get the chance to tear them apart!"

Kuromaru barked in agreement.

Mikoto smiled.

"Three days," Mikoto said. "Use them well. Train in the mornings. Spend the afternoons with your families. Eat your favorite foods. Sleep in your own beds. Do the things you'll miss."

She looked at each of them.

"And pack warm. The Land of Rain lives up to its name."

…

The three days went by too quickly in Mikoto’s opinion.

Mikoto trained her squad in the mornings, harder than before but not desperately. Foundational work. Things they'd need: first aid, basic poison identification (what she could teach in three days), fighting in wet conditions, and hand signals for when the rain got so thick they couldn't hear each other shout.

She spent the first afternoon with her parents.

Mikan was distraught with her baby going back into that hellhole. She’d seen how she couldn’t even sleep without holding that sword. When she tried gently taking it from her to place it on the floor, the bandages shifted under her fingers, like something underneath had woken up and didn’t want to be moved. A cold prickle ran up her hands. Then Mikoto shot up, grabbing her arm, Sharingan spinning, a heartbeat away from putting her in a genjutsu. Mikan’s heart nearly jumped out of her chest from how quickly she moved. It tore her apart that her baby was so affected by the war, but as her mother, she couldn’t even bring her comfort and peace in her own bed…

Kaen sat with Mikoto on the porch after dinner and said nothing for a long time. Then he put his hand on her head like he used to when she was small, and left it there.

"I know you will do our clan proud out there." He told her. "Even if you do nothing but save lives. All I require from you is to make sure you come back home, daughter."

"I will."

"I know I haven't told you this before. But I love you, Mikoto, and I’m proud of you." He pulled her head into his chest.

Mikoto hugged her father tight. He was a man who rarely gave compliments of any kind. She breathed in his scent and tried to keep it, stored deep in her memory. "I love you too, dad…"

The two of them sat there for a while in silence.

…

She spent the second afternoon with Kushina.

Kushina was pissed.

"Why can't I go?!" She was pacing the training ground with Uzu in her hand, the orange tassel whipping with every turn. "I'm stronger than half the ninja they're sending! Tsume-chan is going, and she's nine! I should be out there!"

Mikoto had wondered about that herself. Very rarely did Kushina ever get to leave the village. Even for C-rank missions, it had to be very close to Konoha or in Konoha itself.

"Because of this stupid fox!"

Mikoto blinked. "Stupid fox?"

Kushina stopped mid-turn. The tassel swung once and stopped swinging. She looked at Mikoto, then at the trees around the training ground, then back at Mikoto, and the color drained out of her face all at once.

"...You didn't know."

"Know what?"

Kushina walked over and sat down hard in the grass in front of her. She glanced at the treeline again before she spoke, and her voice dropped lower than Mikoto had ever heard it go.

"I'm not supposed to tell anybody. Not even you." She pressed her fist against her stomach. "The Nine-Tails. It's in here. That's why they brought me from Uzushio, you know…?"

The boar hunt came back to Mikoto in perfect detail thanks to her Sharingan. Kushina's arms coming up as the tusks rose. Chakra flooding into them, thick and dark red, and more than any genin should have had. Mikoto had seen it and didn’t know exactly what it was. She looked over to the ANBU who were always watching Kushina from a distance. Even on the boar hunt, she’d caught two of them keeping pace from a distance and thought nothing of it. She’d always thought it was because Kushina was the last Uzumaki in the village. Now it made sense. The ANBU answered to the Hokage, and the Hokage would always need to keep an eye on Konoha’s jinchūriki.

"The red chakra… When the alpha charged you. Is that what you’re talking about?" Mikoto said.

"Yes..." Kushina nodded.

Kushina pulled her knees up and hid her face in them. "So now you know," she said into them. "If Iwa or Kumo ever catch me, they get a Nine-Tails to point at Konoha. That's why I can't go."

Mikoto sat down beside her. She thought about all of her own secrets that she’d never be able to tell anyone, Kushina included.

"I won't tell anyone." She said.

"I know. You're the only one I'd trust not to." Kushina sniffed. "I still hate it. I hate being the reason I can't help."

“Well, it’s better if you don’t go anyway. War sucks. I hate it. If I could stay home, I would.”

“What?! Why?! You became famous because of the war! You’re a freaking jonin because of the war!” Kushina couldn’t understand what she was talking about.

“I didn’t ask for any of this, you know?” Mikoto had a somber smile on her face.

“I can’t understand the words coming out of your mouth at all!” Kushina exclaimed.

“War. Sucks. Peace. Is. Awesome.” Mikoto simplified it.

Kushina looked at her as if she’d grown two extra heads. Like the words she was saying were spoken in code or something. She shook her head. Even if she couldn’t understand Mikoto’s words or why she felt that way, she hugged her.

Mikoto hugged her back. Kushina hugged back even harder, and neither of them let go for a long time.

When they finally did, Kushina grinned. "You still never asked your mom about the sleepover."

"Tomorrow night, before we leave," Mikoto said. "Mom already said yes."

Kushina's eyes went wide. "I've had my stuff packed for a week, you know!"

…

Dawn of the fourth day.

The main gate was crowded. Shinobi in full gear, packs on backs, weapons checked and rechecked, the bustle of an army getting ready to march. Mikoto recognized plenty of faces, veterans going back in. Some grimly accepting that their break was over and others irritated that the recess didn’t last as long as they wished.

On her back, Shark Skin was in a far better mood than she was. Rain Country meant battlefields, and battlefields meant more chakra than it had tasted in weeks. Plus, it actually liked the rain.

She found her squad at the assembly point.

Nawaki was already there, Kusanagi on his waist, his pack riding high and tight. He'd cut his hair shorter. His burn scars caught the early light.

Yoshino arrived next, her ponytail freshly tied, her gear organized with a neatness that bordered on compulsive. She had a small scroll tucked into her belt that hadn't been there before.

Tsume came last, running, with Kuromaru at her heels and a large backpack that looked way too big for her.

"I'm not late!" She announced.

"Good job arriving on time, I know how hard that can be for you sometimes." Yoshino remarked.

"Kuromaru had to say goodbye to his best friend! It was important!"

"And I guess he couldn’t do it earlier?"

"Nope! My dad didn’t wake me up on time!"

Mikoto looked at her squad. She had to make sure they came back home no matter what. She turned toward the gate.

"Let's move out, team." Mikoto said.

I'm really not looking forward to this…