Chapter 43 -> Part 43
"I suppose I can't just call you 'Uzumaki' here, right?" He shrugged as he put his elbows down on the desk in front of me. I leaned back in my chair behind the desk so he couldn't read the Hokage's file on him that I was skimming.
"That's fine, but I prefer 'Kichiro', since you're asking. Or, you can call me 'Chiro-sensei' like the kids in the hospital do." I snapped the file closed and switched to the file he handed to me. "Close the door."
"I gotta call you that now, don't I?"
"Yup!" I glanced up from speed-reading his file to smirk. "Do you have any current injuries?"
Roach scowled. "Iwa bastard stabbed me in the arm last week, but nothing serious."
"Do you have any pain or difficulty associated with movement?"
"I'm thirteen, not thirty-one."
"Just answer the question."
"Nothing worth mentioning."
"That means there's something, what is it?"
Roach shrugged. "Broke my wrist last month, hasn't been the same since, but it works just fine."
"If you were six, that would be worth noting, but unless you've seen a medic-nin, which in your file it says you haven't done in over a year, the bone isn't even healed yet and the movement is stopping it from doing so. I'll fix it later."
"How was I supposed to know about that?" He muttered sarcastically under his breath.
"By seeing a medic like you're supposed to," I retorted. "Any abnormal fatigue, loss of memory, or delayed reactions?"
"What is up with these questions?"
"You're making this take longer than it should, just answer. They're standard questions for shinobi who haven't had access to proper medical care for an extended period of time."
"Fine, there's nothing abnormal. Happy?"
"Have you had any decline in sensory perception?"
"No."
"Thank you. Go sit down on the table." I closed the file and went to wash my hands in the sink.
Roach just scowled and muttered all the way on to the examination table.
"Do you remember the last time you've had a diagnostics jutsu performed on you?"
"Yeah, what about it?"
"I'm going to make sure you didn't lie in your medical file. If you did, now's your last chance to come clean." He just scowled and I pressed my hand against his forehead.
"Paranoid bastard," he grumbled at me.
I rolled my eyes and finished the jutsu. "Rightly so. You have three cracked ribs, someone stuck five kunai in your right thigh, your collarbone is broken, and you stubbed your toe sometime in the last hour and I know you can feel it throbbing still, on top of the stab wound in your arm and the broken wrist. Those are just the injuries from the past two months. Now tell me, did you honestly think you could get away with lying to my face?"
"The diagnostics jutsu only picks up what you're looking for!" Roach protested.
"That's just the version that's taught to non-medics. Actual medics can perform the full jutsu and process all the information at once."
"Bastard."
"No, I'm just good at what I do." I walked past him and pulled out the smallest hospital shorts from the cupboard and tossed them on the table beside Roach, then stuffed the files on my desk inside of the drawers. "Put the shorts on and put your stuff on the desk."
"What's wrong with my clothes?"
"First, they're armored and I never figured out how to heal efficiently through clothing. Second, I know you're armed past your teeth and unless you plan on killing me by accident, your weapons can stay out of your reach for the time being. It's those shorts or your underwear, take your pick." He chose the shorts while I pulled out what I needed to clean the wounds and set them on the table.
Among ninja, split personalities were not uncommon, especially in young ninja. No matter where they're from, a kid or teenager couldn't handle the stress of multiple high-level shinobi missions. It was one of the reasons kids under fifteen were rare in the ANBU and Jōnin ranks. They tended to snap under the pressure if they couldn't figure out how to handle it. In the entire village, there were five kids under fifteen who held a Jōnin rank. Four of them were fourteen and the fifth was twelve. All five of them reported to me for medical treatment up until the point I made Genin, and while I was on my first mission, three of them refused to see any other medic. The other two died in battle. All five of them had split personalities. I wasn't sure why, but I was sure of it. I wished I had put a bit more effort into high school psychology class, but one of the tidbits I remembered was that split personalities sometimes formed to handle stressful situations and when the stressor was taken away, the original personality returned. The five child-Jōnin created their split personality to handle shinobi life. When I isolated them for treatment, the original personality returned and they turned back into the kids they actually were. I didn't think it was possible to have so many identical cases and didn't like to think about it.
Considering Roach lived and breathed ANBU, I assumed he had found some healthy way to cope. When I tossed a sheet over his ANBU gear and uniform, I found myself proved wrong. Just like the other five, his personality had split as well. Before, he had obviously been functioning through quite a bit of pain. After I removed the ANBU stimulus, the cocky arrogance and easy confidence evaporated, and he curled in on himself.
"It hurts," he whined in English as I laid him on his back.
"I'm going to heal you, okay, but you need to cooperate with me, can you do that?" I responded in English.
He nodded. "Who are you?"
"I'm Dr. Chiro, how about you tell me your name?"
"Ikkaku Umino." Well, apparently his split operated in English, while Roach operated in Japanese. "You're really young to be a doctor."
"I am."
"Where am I?"
"You're in my office. What's the last thing you remember?"
"Daddy is dead, isn't he?"
According to the file, his father died over a year before. "Yes, your father's dead. Can you tell me what today's date is?"
Ikkaku rattled off the date of his father's death.
"Do you know what a Dissociative Identity Disorder is?" I asked as I finished cleaning the topmost stab wound on his thigh. It had begun to fester, causing even more problems. Most combat medics could heal without supplies, cleaning the wound with chakra only, but healing like that was chakra-intensive and I never bothered unless I had no other choice.
Ikkaku shook his head.
"It's more commonly known as Multiple Personality Disorder."
Ikkaku nodded. "I know what that is." I healed over the first of the stab wounds before continuing.
"You have it. Your split goes by the name of Roach and he's an ANBU agent."
Ikkaku's bottom lip trembled, but it might have been because I had started cleaning the next wound.
"It's alright, from what I've seen, your situation is normal." I gave him today's date. "That's why you're missing so much time."
"You know English; how do you know English?"
"That's a story for another time." I finished cleaning the wounds on his thigh during the pause and moved on to the one on his arm, which was clearly infected.
"Who knows?"
"Who knows what?"
"About the split."
"I don't know, I just found out."
"How old is the split?"
"I don't know, Ikkaku-san. I just figured it out because your personality just flipped on me and I've seen it several times before on other people. I don't know anything more."
"Are you going to tell anyone?"
"I'm going to make note of it in your file, but only the Hokage and ANBU General will have access to it. You're free to tell anyone you wish. The Hokage will will most likely inform those who need to be aware of it, but no one will hear anything from me." I shifted to healing the cracked ribs. A half hour later, I finished healing the menagerie of old injuries and broken bones. "I'm not a psychologist, so I don't know how to help. But if you ever want to talk, come find me, okay?"
He nodded and sat up.
"You're free to go, but as soon as I uncover your ANBU things, it might trigger Roach's return. I'm pretty sure ANBU is his trigger."
"I'm in ANBU headquarters right now, aren't I?"
"Yes, you are."
"That makes sense. Thank you, Dr. Chiro."
"You're welcome." I pulled the sheet off Roach's uniform, and sure enough, the cocky boy returned.
"Yo! What's with the long face?" He asked, hopping off the examination table. "That was the fastest trip to a medic I've ever had!"
"That's because you weren't here for most of it. Your other personality was."
"Ikkaku? He's an idiot."
"No, he's not. Next time you're injured, even if you think it's minor, see me or another medic-nin and tell them I sent you. Now get out, I have a job to do."
"Hey, when you're done, I want to show you something."
"Whatever." Roach pulled on his shoe and skipped out, only to be replaced by the woman I had been treating earlier in Kagami's office, her mask attached to her hip.
"You can sit down anywhere; I have a bunch of stuff to write down for Roach before I can help you. Sorry." I fell heavily into my desk chair and started scribbling the edit into Roach's file for the Hokage and the medical file. She stood patiently in the doorway, chatting with someone outside while I finished and pulled out her file to skim through.
"You really ought to read the entire file, Uzumaki-san." She smirked, closing the door behind her.
"Well, I wasn't ordered to and most of the information is useless to me anyways."
She rolled her eyes and dropped her file in front of me. "I spent several weeks in Tsunade-hime's medic program, under an alias of course. If I remember correctly, you were the upstart who asked why I was wearing a Henge inside of the village."
I shrugged. "You were the only one with higher grades than me, so I paid attention. You didn't have to leave after that, you know, I wasn't going to push the point."
"I only stayed for as long as I did because I was interested in you."
"Frankly, I find that creepy, I was barely eight at the time." I opened the file she filled out. "DO I still need to be worried about my virginity?"
"Hell no, not like that, you arrogant little pervert!"
I glanced up with a smirk. "You walked into that one."
She scowled. "Anyways, what I meant was that you could have done anything, especially with Hatake as your sensei. Why a medic?"
"That's the big question, what everyone wants to know, isn't it?" I rolled my eyes.
"Rumor says you're a pacifist, but rumor also says you're the ultimate mercenary spy and here because the Hokage hired you because he suspects a nest of traitors somewhere in the shinobi ranks and medics have the most access."
"Both are wrong."
"So what's the real reason?"
I leaned back and tapped the Kyuubi's seal on my stomach. "Jinchuuriki are much more powerful than you think. In fact, no one actually knows how powerful a Jinchuuriki is, because no one has been able to push a reasonably well-trained one far enough to find their limit yet. Everyone knows that. They know the Bijū inside of them aren't the kindest or most stable of individuals. I suppose I could become the most powerful shinobi in the village and earn respect and acknowledgement that way, but I don't care enough about whether or not anyone respects me, and I don't need anyone's acknowledgement. I just don't want to be feared. Someone who makes it their life's work to fix people instead of break them isn't very scary, right?"
"That's the biggest pile of bullshit I've ever heard come out of your mouth, and I was there when you convinced most of the medic class that the stars were actually suns that are a very long way away."
"Come on! That is true! And no one believes my real reason so I'm trying to find one someone will actually believe."
"You were a medic long before the Kyuubi was sealed inside of you."
"I knew I was going to become a Jinchuuriki the moment I stepped foot in Konoha, it was only a matter of time."
"So what's the real reason?"
"I don't want to kill."
She snorted. "That's even less believable."
"But look at me, am I lying?"
She studied me for a long time. "No, you're not."
"Being a medic is as far as I can get from killing. That's why I'm here instead of on the front lines tearing a hole in the enemy."
"How is making other people better able to kill more any better?"
"It's not. If I could, I would walk out of this village and hide myself in a cave somewhere I'd never have to be a part of this society again, but I can't, so I'm here saving the lives I can and mourning for those I can't."
"That's a lot more mature and coherent than someone your age should be capable of."
"I spent most of my time in pediatrics while I was working in the hospital. I could have switched to a different ward if I wanted to, but I didn't, I think you can see why. It doesn't really matter now, but I have a job to do here, Gekkō-san."
"I go by Rabbit while in ANBU."
"I don't treat masks, I treat people. In here, you're Gekkō Arisu."
She nodded and I started with the standard questions. After I finished the diagnostics jutsu and healed her sprained wrist at her request, she left. Of the stack Kagami gave me, there were eight people left.
The next three people who came through had injuries similar to Roach. The next two had been Jōnin before joining ANBU, so they were in the habit of routine medical care and only had minor injuries, which didn't take long to heal. The next person was in a similar situation as the Senju I saw first, but was obviously not as good at his job, considering he had a few fresh injuries and considerably more scars.
The last person surprised me. It was Rat. His real name was Uchiha Yori, the identical twin brother of the Uchiha clan head.
"I would never have guessed you were an Uchiha," I said as I finished up the file from the patient before him and stuffed it inside of his official file, which went into the completed patients drawer. I scanned the Uchiha's file before switching to the medical file he handed me. I decided on ignoring the fact he had tried to usurp Sakumo as sensei and just treat him like I did all the others who came through.
"Do you have any current injuries?"
"None."
"Do you have any pain or difficulty associated with movement?"
"I do not."
"Any abnormal fatigue, loss of memory, or delayed reactions?"
"I'm not that old."
"Why does everyone think that question is a poke at age? It's meant to determine if you got hit on the head too hard!"
"I haven't been hit on the head in years."
"Good to know. Have you had any decline in sensory perception?"
"I assume that question is meant to accomplish the same thing, correct?"
"No, that question is meant to identify any specific problems that develop from things like breathing in smoke bombs or having a flash tag explode in your face."
"There's been no change in my senses."
"I'll just do a quick diagnostics jutsu and if it's all good, you'll be free to go."
Thankfully, he sat down without protest and I pressed my hand against his forehead immediately noting that he had the Mangekyō Sharingan. I made a mental note to add that to his file. I was about to pull away and tell him he was free to go when something strange caught my attention. There was something odd with his blood.
"Is everything alright?" He asked when I stepped back with a frown.
"I don't know. I think so. Do you bleed abnormally heavily or slowly?"
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"I'm not sure. Do you find yourself lightheaded occasionally, or feel like you have a hard time catching your breath?"
"Why are you asking?"
I flipped open his file from the Hokage and skimmed it more carefully. "There's an anomaly in your blood. From what I can tell, it's genetic. Do you have any children?"
"No."
"It's strange. You're thirty-nine, correct?"
"Yes."
"I can only assume its meaningless, but can I try a more intensive diagnostics jutsu to be sure?"
"That's fine."
I sped through the hand seals of an advanced diagnostics jutsu and laid the palm of my hand over his heart and closed my eyes. "I'm fairly certain it's just a genetic anomaly. If it does something, I can't figure it out. You've gone this long with it, so I assume it's fine, but if you have any children, bring them to me to figure out whether it was passed on."
"I have an identical twin. Does that mean he has this anomaly as well?"
"I don't know. It depends on whether the condition was prenatal, perinatal, or postnatal. Either way, I can't do jack shit about it and there's no adverse symptoms. Just make sure you tell me if you start bleeding funny or weird things happen with your breathing. I'm going to finish my work then get some sleep because damn, you people have so many latent problems I'm exhausted just thinking about it. Get out."
"Boy—" He snapped his jaw closed as I raised an eyebrow at him. "I hope Hatake beats you to dust."
"Don't worry, he will."
He turned on his heel and marched out, only to run into the Hokage.
"Sandaime-sama," Rat automatically dropped to one knee.
"You're dismissed." As soon as Rat left, the Hokage closed the door behind him. I pretended he wasn't there as I finished the paperwork and pulled out the files with the medical additions, dropping them heavily on the desk and pushing them towards him. "How was your first day?" He asked neutrally.
"You're not here for a social visit, so cut the nonsense," I retorted sharply.
The Sandaime nodded and satdown on the empty corner of my desk. Paper crinkled in his pocket. "I want to ask you some things."