Chapter 36: Scars and Stars.

Nawaki was sitting up when Tsunade walked into the medical tent.

That was the first sign. A boy who'd been barely alive a week ago, whose body had been rebuilt from the edge of death by a Uchiha’s hands, was sitting up in his cot with his legs over the side and his fists on his knees and a look on his face that Tsunade recognized because she'd seen it in the mirror every morning of her life.

Stubbornness.

"Lie down." she said.

"No."

"Nawaki. Lie down."

"I said no."

He looked at her. The scars were still raw. The left side of his face was a patchwork of healed burns, the skin pulled tight in places, discolored in others, the kind of scarring that medical ninjutsu could reduce but never fully erase. His left arm was still splinted, though the fractures had fused well enough that the medics said he'd have full mobility in another two weeks. His right knee was wrapped in compression bandages. The burns across his torso had faded from angry red to pink and white.

The necklace sat against his chest. Untouched.

"I'm going back." he said.

Tsunade’s brows furrowed.

"You're not going anywhere. You're done." She said.

"I'm not done."

"Nawaki, look at yourself." Her voice cracked at the edges. "You nearly died. You would have died if Mikoto hadn't been there. Your body might seem fine but I am telling you, as your sister and as a medical-nin, that you are retiring from active service."

"No."

"This isn't a discussion."

"You're right. It's not." He stood up. His right knee protested. He stood anyway. "I'm going back to my squad. I'm going back to Mikoto-sensei. And I'm going to keep fighting until this war is over or until I'm strong enough to end it myself."

"You can barely stand!"

"I'm standing right now!"

"On one good leg!"

"One good leg is enough!"

Tsunade stared at him. He stared back. The scars on his face made his expression harder to read than it used to be, but the eyes were the same. Hazel. Bright. Full of a dream that was too big for his body and too stubborn to fit inside his skull.

"Outside." Tsunade said.

"What?"

"If you think you're ready to go back to the field, prove it. Outside. Right now."

They went outside.

The medics and patients who were well enough to move gathered at the edges of the clearing beside the medical tent.

It wasn't a fight. Not really. Tsunade was a twenty-five-year-old elite jonin with decades of training and her brother was a twelve-year-old genin held together with a dream and pigheadedness.

She knocked him down in three seconds.

He got up.

She knocked him down again. A forehead flick that knocked him on his back.

He got up.

A push to the chest that sent him skidding backward. His splinted arm hit the ground and he winced hard enough that the watching medics flinched.

He got up.

She put him down four more times. Each time faster than the last. Each time he was slower getting up. His knee was failing. His arm was screaming. The scars on his torso had reopened in two places, thin lines of red seeping through his shirt.

He got up.

"Stay down, Nawaki!" Tsunade's voice was raw. "Just stay down!"

"No."

"Why?!"

"Because I'm going to be Hokage!" He was on his knees in the mud, breathing hard, bleeding from his scars, one arm splinted, one leg barely functional. "I'm going to be Hokage and protect everyone and I can't do that from a hospital bed! I can't do that if I quit being a ninja! I'd rather die than quit!"

"Don't say that!"

"Then stop trying to make me! The only way you can stop me is if you kill me, nee-chan!" He looked up at her. Mud on his face. Blood on his shirt. Stars in his eyes. "So either kill me or let me continue!"

Tsunade looked at her brother.

She saw the scars. She saw the splint. She saw the blood seeping through his shirt. She saw the twelve-year-old boy she'd given their grandpa’s necklace to on his birthday, the boy who'd told her he'd protect the village their grandfather built, the boy who should have been dead in a forest somewhere if not for a girl with red eyes and a forgiving heart.

She couldn't kill her own damn brother.

She turned away. Her shoulders shook once. Just once.

"Fine…" She said. Her voice was barely audible. "Go and get yourself nearly killed again. I don’t care…"

Nawaki grinned. Through the mud and the blood and the scars, he grinned.

"Thanks, nee-chan. I love you."

"If you die," Tsunade said without turning around, "I'll bring you back to life just to pummel you myself."

"Sounds like something Mikoto-sensei would say."

Tsunade flinched. Then she walked back into the medical tent and closed the flap behind her.

…

The month moved.

Mikoto fell into the rhythm that Konoha's command had designed for her. Most days she was in the rear, healing the wounded, teaching medical-nin, training her remaining genin. The medical corps under Orochimaru's command had grown noticeably more efficient since she'd arrived. Three more medical-nin had achieved the Mystical Palm. Two could use the Chakra Scalpel. The quality of field medicine across the forward camps had risen by a margin that the reports called "significant".

On the worst days, when the fighting demanded it, they sent her forward.

She was devastating. Three-tomoe Sharingan. Shark Skin. Chakra Enhanced Strength. The Shuriken Shadow Clone Jutsu turning a single ninja tool into a storm of death. Water clones healing around her while she killed ahead. Every crucial push she was part of succeeded. Every stalled attack she joined broke through. The Ame forces on the northern front learned to watch for the girl with the red eyes and the cleaver, because where she appeared, their lines collapsed.

Konoha's command noticed. They didn't overuse her. They couldn't afford to lose their best medic to a lucky hit on a frontline that didn't need her. But when the situation demanded someone who could fight and heal at a level that bordered on unfair, Mikoto Uchiha was deployed.

The sign-in continued its weekly tradition of being mostly useless.

She got a frying pan. A superior one, apparently. Better than her current frying pan by some margin that she couldn't identify but that the food she cooked with it could. The shinobi at her cook fire noticed the difference immediately. Nobody complained.

She got a treasure chest. An actual treasure chest. Wooden, iron-banded, with a lock and everything. It was empty. She stared at it for a full minute, opened it twice to make sure she hadn't missed something, then threw it away.

She got a boat. A small rowboat. In the middle of Rain Country. During a land war. She threw that away too.

She got training weights. Heavy, well-made, adjustable. Those she kept.

…

Tsunade visited once more during the month.

She came on the third week, when Nawaki was still recovering and Mikoto was between deployments. She found Mikoto behind the forward camp, practicing chakra control exercises with Emi and Nonō.

"Mikoto." she said.

Mikoto stood. "Tsunade-san."

Tsunade looked at her for a long moment. The apology was behind them. The fight was behind them. What remained was something harder to name, a debt that Tsunade felt.

"I want to teach you something… Consider it... a thank you. For my stupid little brother..." Tsunade averted her gaze with a faint blush on her face.

She taught Mikoto the Body Pathway Derangement Jutsu.

The principle was straightforward: The user creates an electric field by giving their chakra the properties of electricity. When striking an enemy, the electricity pours into their nervous system and rearranges their body's signals. Ordinarily, the brain sends electric signals to the body to control how it moves. But when under the influence of this jutsu, these signals will produce any movement other than what the brain intends. Most medical-nin couldn't do it. Tsunade believed Mikoto could.

"Considering you could learn even my personal technique on your own, I doubt you’ll trouble with this one unless you don’t have mastery over lightning chakra." Tsunade said.

Then she taught her the Shadow Clone Jutsu.

"I heard from Nawaki that you use the Water Clone Jutsu often." Tsunade also mentioned. "This jutsu is far better than that one especially since you already awakened your Sharingan and seem to have the reserves to keep it active most of the time."

"You don’t need to do this, Tsunade-san…" Mikoto tried to refuse.

“Shut it. Yes I absolutely do. My behavior was inexcusable. I was in the wrong and I let my emotions get the best of me. After I had some time to cool down, I realized a public apology wasn’t enough.” Even now she was still getting dirty looks from some ninjas in this camp. Not as many as before, but still...

Mikoto learned both techniques.

"Thank you, Tsunade-san. And I wasn’t happy with how things came about but I can understand where you were coming from." Mikoto responded.

"Don't thank me." Tsunade's expression was complicated. "I’m just doing what I should in the first place." Now she could finally leave this place and get back to her camp where the ninjas actually liked her.

…

Emi and Nonō had become different people in a month.

Mikoto watched it happen with pride. The Pedagogy Mastery, and the girls' natural talent and determination, had produced results that shouldn't have been possible in four weeks.

Emi's tessenjutsu had gone from functional to lethal. She could utilize it from close-range, medium-range, and long-range without much issue. Her wind chakra was approaching mastery. Her fire chakra was close behind. Earth was coming along. Her genjutsu had expanded from the single fear-based jutsu to a small but growing repertoire.

Nonō's growth was the one that staggered Mikoto.

The girl who'd been healing fish six weeks ago had become a genuinely capable field medic. The Mystical Palm was strong enough to handle most battlefield injuries. The Chakra Scalpel was clean enough for field surgery under supervision. The Poison Extraction Jutsu was functional under the right circumstances. She was currently learning the Chakra Enhanced Strength faster than expected, her natural talent in chakra control was helping. Her lightning chakra was progressing rapidly, further along than Mikoto had expected at this stage. Her genjutsu was solid, her taijutsu was improving, and her ninjutsu covered enough bases that she was no longer the weak link in any squad.

And both of them had reached the Second Activation of the Seven Heavens Breathing Method, and were closing in on the Third.

The Pedagogy Mastery was frightening when applied to talented, determined students over an extended period…

…

Nawaki came back on the twenty-eighth day.

He walked into the forward camp with his arm out of the splint, his knee wrapped but functional, and his scars on full display. He hadn't tried to hide them. The burns on the left side of his face were healed but visible, the skin tighter and lighter than the rest.

He found Mikoto at the training clearing. Emi and Nonō were sparring, and the clearing was in bad shape.

Nawaki watched Emi and Nonō fight. He watched Emi's fan send a two-moon gust that carved a line through the dirt. He watched Nonō leap out of the way and toss a lightning-charged kunai and then close the distance with speed that didn't belong to the girl he remembered.

Then both of them activated the Second Activation simultaneously.

Nawaki's jaw dropped.

"That’s beyond the First Activation!" He realized.

"Yeah, they’ve been training hard." Mikoto said, standing beside him. "Emi reached it first. Nonō two days later."

"I just got the First Activation a month ago!"

"You have catching up to do."

He looked at her. The scars on his face shifted as his expression moved through several stages: shock, dismay, competitive fury, and finally the stubborn determination that had made him refuse to be sent back to the village.

"I'll catch up in no time! Give me two weeks."

"Two weeks?" Mikoto looked at him slightly bewildered. It took him the longest to learn before, what makes him think he’ll be faster now?

"Two weeks.” He vowed.

Mikoto looked at him. Scarred from neck to knee. Dream intact. Eyes still shining bright.

She handed him the training weights.

"These are from my personal collection," she said. "Wear them during training. All training. They'll slow you down at first but your body will adapt and when you take them off, you'll be faster than you were."

He took them. They were heavier than he expected. He attached them around his legs without hesitation.

"Welcome back, Nawaki." She smiled.

"Glad to be back, sensei!"

“I hope this time, you’ll listen to my words more closely.”

Emi and Nonō noticed him from the clearing. Nonō waved with a bright smile, happy to see him up and able again. Emi looked at him, looked at the scars, looked at the training weights, and turned back to her practice without a word.

"She hasn't changed…" Nawaki muttered.

"Neither have you, so far." Mikoto said.

"What does that mean?"

"It means get moving. Laps. Twenty."

He smiled and then he ran.

The squad was whole again.

Mikoto watched her three genin, two of them monstrous by genin standards and one of them scarred and stubborn and refusing to be left behind.

She hoped Nawaki had learned the right lessons.

She guessed she would find out soon enough.