The wind on the Suna front was a physical assault. It was a hot, rasping breath that scoured the land with sand and the stench of decay. The main Konoha encampment was a chaotic city of canvas and desperation, huddled against a series of rocky mesas like a frightened animal. It felt like the world's sweatiest, dustiest armpit.
This was my new home. A special kind of hell, tailor-made for me.
My assignment here was a bitter joke. I, "Cat," a scalpel of Root, was now part of an official support wing. No masks. No comforting anonymity. Lord Danzō wanted us seen, a message to the regular forces that even his shadows were contributing. We were his show ponies, and I hated every second of it.
The squad felt wrong, a limb missing its phantom ache. Nonō-sensei was in command, with the quiet Tatsuma Aburame and the too-earnest Inori Yamanaka as support. But the thunderous, terrifying silence where Judai should have been was a constant weight.
I thought of him constantly. I pictured him on the Kumo front, a hollowed-out weapon in Orochimaru's clutches. I knew from the reports he had no memory of me, only that the necklace I'd made him was "mission-critical." He was clinging to a ghost, and the thought was a knife twisting in my gut.
Our arrival at the command tent was met with the stench of stale sake and condescension.
Tsunade Senju, the legendary Sannin, was sprawled in a chair, her face flushed, a half-empty bottle dangling from her fingers. She looked us over with bloodshot, dismissive eyes.
"Look what the old mole dragged in," she slurred, her voice thick with contempt. "Danzō sent his little dolls to play doctor? Don't get in my way. The last thing I need is a bunch of emotionless freaks cluttering up my medical tents."
Inori and Tatsuma remained impassive. Nonō simply bowed. "We are here to serve Konoha, Tsunade-hime."
I, however, had spent the last three days marching through this godsforsaken desert, and my patience was thinner than a chakra thread.
"Tch," I clicked my tongue, loud enough for everyone to hear. "And I thought the reports of your drinking were exaggerated. You reek like a brewery's latrine. Maybe if you spent less time hugging a bottle and more time being a commander, your people wouldn't be dying in droves."
The tent went silent. Shizune, Tsunade's apprentice, gasped, her face going white. Even Nonō-sensei shot me a sharp, warning glance.
Tsunade's eyes, blurry a moment before, sharpened into points of pure, murderous rage. She slammed her bottle down on the table. "What did you just say to me, you little brat?"
"You heard me, old woman," I shot back, crossing my arms, my voice dripping with disdain. "Or is your hearing going along with your liver? I said you're a piss-poor commander who smells like cheap booze. Now, are you going to point us to the medical tent, or do you need us to draw you a map?"
Tsunade stood up, her chakra flaring, a heavy, oppressive wave of power that made the air crackle. "You've got a lot of nerve for one of Danzō's puppets."
"And you've got a lot of empty bottles for a so-called legendary Sannin," I retorted, not backing down an inch. "I don't give a damn who you are. My people are out there dying while you're in here getting pickled. So, you can either get out of my way, or I'll go through you."
"Machi!" Nonō's voice was sharp, a commander's tone I had never heard her use with me before. She stepped forward, bowing deeply to the furious Sannin. "Please, forgive her, Tsunade-hime. She is... unaccustomed to the pressures of the main front. Her tongue is sharper than her blade, I'm afraid. It is a flaw in her conditioning we are still working to correct."
She gave me a look that could have frozen fire. Shut your mouth. Now.
Tsunade glared at me for a long, tense moment, her fists clenched. Finally, she scoffed and waved a dismissive hand. "Whatever. Get out of my sight. Go make yourselves useful before I decide to teach you some manners personally." She slumped back into her chair and picked up her bottle.
Nonō practically dragged me from the command tent.
The main medical tent was a nightmare. The air was a thick soup of blood, antiseptic, and the sweet, cloying odor of gangrene. Shinobi lay on cots, bodies twisted in agony from scorpion venom, limbs mangled by puppet traps.
Shizune found us, her face pale. "This way," she whispered, leading us to three chunin whose faces were blue, a black foam bubbling on their lips. "It's a new poison from Chiyo. We can't stop it."
"Right," I grunted, pushing past her. All the anger from the confrontation with Tsunade was now fuel. I wasn't just going to save these men. I was going to show that drunken fool what a real medic could do.
Nonō, to her credit, was already in command mode. "Machi, stabilizing solution—soldier pill base, liquid oxygen infusion. Inori, mind-probe, find the chakra signature. Tatsuma, chemical breakdown. Go."
We moved. I worked with a furious, focused energy, grinding herbs, mixing solutions.
"You're Machi, right?" Shizune asked hesitantly.
"What's it to you?" I snapped without looking up.
"I... I'm sorry about Lady Tsunade," she stammered. "You just... you don't act like I thought a Root agent would."
"Yeah, well, I'm full of surprises," I muttered, drawing the dose. "Now, are you gonna help, or are you gonna stand there making small talk while these guys choke to death?"
Shizune flinched but nodded, quickly moving to assist.
We worked for the next hour, a blur of focused efficiency. Inori identified the poison's nature—a sandstorm in the lungs. Tatsuma's insects synthesized the complex antidote. And I became the delivery system. My chakra threads, finer than any needle, became conduits of healing, stitching together shredded lung tissue from the inside out.
When it was over, the three chunin were breathing easily. They would live.
A slow, deliberate clap came from the entrance of the tent. Tsunade stood there, her eyes clear and sharp.
"Impressive," she admitted, her voice sober. "I haven't seen that kind of fine-point chakra control in a long time." She looked at Nonō. "I still think your master is a cancer on this village, Nonō. But I can't deny your skill."
Her gaze shifted to me. "And you, brat. You've got a mouth on you that could strip paint, but your hands are a surgeon's."
"Glad my performance met with your royal highness's approval," I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. "Maybe now you'll do your damn job."
Tsunade's eye twitched, but before she could retort, an explosion from the front lines shook the entire tent.
"Chiyo's puppets are breaking through the western flank!" a jonin yelled from outside.
Tsunade's face hardened. The drunken fool was gone, replaced by the legendary warrior. "Shizune, with me! The rest of you, hold this tent!" She turned and ran, a blur of motion toward the battle.
I watched her go, a bitter taste in my mouth. She could be a hero when she felt like it. But I wouldn't forget the broken drunk she was just minutes before. In this war, you couldn't afford to be both.
The week that followed was a descent into a special kind of hell, painted in shades of sand, blood, and purple venom. The Suna offensive was relentless, a war of attrition designed to bleed us dry. Chiyo's puppeteers were masters of insidious warfare, their creations armed not just with blades, but with gas canisters, poison-laced senbon, and razor-sharp wires that could dismember a man from fifty yards away. Every day, the medical tent was a fresh nightmare.
I worked until my chakra reserves burned low and my muscles screamed in protest. The girl who had once fainted at the thought of dissecting a frog now spent her days elbow-deep in the shredded bodies of her comrades, her hands a blur of green, life-giving energy. I became a machine. Stabilize the vitals, neutralize the toxin, repair the tissue, move to the next. There was no time for names, no time for grief. They were just bodies on a table, anatomical puzzles to be solved.
My relationship with Shizune evolved into a strange, unspoken partnership. She was a kind soul, a gentle stream in this desert of death, and she seemed to have made it her personal mission to get through to me.
"You should eat something, Machi-san," she'd say, placing a soldier pill and a water canteen on my workstation. "You haven't stopped in twelve hours."
"I'll eat when there aren't any more bodies to fix," I'd grumble back, not looking up from the mangled leg I was meticulously reassembling.
"At this rate, you'll collapse before that happens," she'd sigh, but she would leave the supplies.
She saw my skill, but she didn't understand the engine that drove it. It wasn't the Will of Fire. It was a cold, hard, spiteful fury. Every shinobi I saved was a middle finger to Tsunade, a testament to the fact that I was doing the job she was too broken to do properly. Every life I pulled back from the brink was another piece of evidence that we, the tools of Danzō, were more valuable to this war effort than the legendary, drunken Sannin.
Tsunade, for her part, seemed to be engaged in a constant war with herself. I would see her on the front lines, a force of nature, her monstrous strength shattering puppets and men with equal ease. She would lead charges, her presence a rallying cry for the beleaguered Konoha forces. But then, hours later, I would see her back in the command tent, her shoulders slumped, a sake bottle her only companion, the ghosts in her eyes winning their nightly battle.
She watched me. I would feel her gaze on me in the medical tent, her sharp, analytical eyes observing my technique. One afternoon, I was performing a particularly complex procedure, using my chakra threads to navigate the tangled mess of a shinobi's abdomen to remove dozens of microscopic, barbed puppet splinters. It was like trying to perform needlepoint in a bowl of raw meat.
"You're using the Mystical Palm as a blanket," her voice cut through my concentration. I looked up to see her standing over me, her arms crossed, her expression critical. "You're flooding the area with healing chakra. It's wasteful. Inefficient."
"It's keeping him from bleeding out while I pick this junk out of his guts," I shot back, not breaking my focus. "You got a better idea, I'm all ears."
"Don't heal the whole area," she said, her voice taking on the tone of a master instructing a student. "Focus your chakra. Shape it. Don't use a hammer when you need a scalpel. Channel the energy only to the specific tissues you are repairing. It will conserve your chakra and provide a more potent, targeted effect."
I grit my teeth. She was right. It was a more advanced application, a technique that required a level of control few possessed. It was exactly the kind of thing Nonō-sensei would have taught me if we'd had more time.
"Tch. Fine," I muttered. I adjusted my chakra flow, focusing the green energy into a single, fine point at the tip of my chakra thread. I felt the difference immediately. The healing was faster, more potent. The tissue knit itself back together with a speed that was almost startling.
When I finished, the shinobi's vitals were stable. I had done in twenty minutes what would have taken me an hour before, and I had used less than half the chakra.
"Not bad," Tsunade grunted, a flicker of something that might have been approval in her eyes. "You learn quick, brat. For one of Danzō's dogs, anyway."
"And for a drunk, you're not a completely useless teacher," I retorted, standing up and wiping the blood from my hands.
"You have a surgeon's hands," she grunted, her voice carrying the faint scent of alcohol. "A true gift. It's a damn shame to see such talent wasted on a dog loyal to a man like Danzō."
Something inside me snapped. The weeks of exhaustion, the constant death, the biting irony of her words—it all boiled over. I whipped my head around, my eyes blazing with a furious, desperate energy. My hands, without my command, flew up to clutch the kunai necklace hidden beneath my uniform.
"You think this is what I want?" I snarled, my voice a low, trembling hiss. "You think I chose to follow that bastard? You think anyone gets a choice?" My knuckles were white where I gripped the cold steel of the necklace, the tiny, hidden picture of Judai a burning coal against my heart. "You stand there in your tent, drowning yourself in pity, while he sends children—us—to do the dirty work that keeps your precious 'Will of Fire' from being extinguished! Don't you dare talk to me about loyalty!"
Tsunade was taken aback, her usual bluster failing her for a moment. She saw the raw, genuine agony in my eyes, she saw where my hands were clutching, and for a split second, a flicker of something—pity? understanding?—crossed her face. But it was gone as quickly as it came, replaced by her hardened mask.
Before she could retort, a massive explosion from the western flank shook the entire camp. A jonin, his face pale with terror, stumbled into the tent.
"It's Sasori of the Red Sand! He's broken through! He's using... he's using the Hundred Puppets!"
Tsunade's face went grim. Red Secret Technique: Performance of a Hundred Puppets. It was Sasori's masterpiece, a jutsu that had supposedly conquered an entire country. She grabbed a flak jacket. "Shizune, with me! The rest of you, hold this tent!" She ran out, the legendary warrior once more, leaving the broken drunk behind.
The battle was a whirlwind of carnage. We could hear the chaos outside, the screams, the clash of steel, the splintering of wood. The wounded began pouring in, overwhelming our capacity. Then, three black-clad ANBU were carried in, their bodies unnaturally still.
"It's Captain Hawk's squad!" a medic shouted. "They got too close to Sasori!"
There were no visible wounds, but their skin was cold, their chakra signatures flickering like dying candles. Tsunade rushed back into the tent, her face grim, her knuckles splattered with the sawdust and oil of destroyed puppets. She knelt beside the captain, her hands glowing with green chakra.
Then she froze.
A small cut on the ANBU's arm, a minor wound from a stray blade, was welling with blood. A single, perfect crimson drop slid down his arm.
Tsunade's breath hitched. The color drained from her face. Her hands, the hands of the world's greatest medic, began to tremble uncontrollably. Her hemophobia. Her curse. In the face of blood, her legendary skill was useless.
Only the highest command and we, the Root agents who had been briefed on all of Konoha's strategic weaknesses, knew of her condition. It was the village's most dangerous secret.
Her terrified eyes met mine across the stretcher. It was a silent, desperate plea. I can't.
I stepped forward, my own exhaustion forgotten. "Get out of the way," I commanded, my voice cold and steady. The other medics stared, but Shizune, seeing the look on her master's face, quickly pulled Tsunade back.
I stood over the ANBU captain. This was no poison. This was something worse. Sasori's puppets had injected his body with thousands of microscopic, chakra-infused wooden splinters, each one actively burrowing towards his heart and tenketsu points.
Tsunade couldn't do this, not because of a lack of skill, but because of a trauma that had broken her. I, however, had been broken in a different way. I had been forged in a place where trauma was just another tool.
"Clear the area," I ordered. "I need absolute concentration."
I took a deep breath. My Kekkei Genkai was more than just threads. It was the power to manipulate fibers, organic or not. Nonō had theorized that it was a form of post-mortem creation. I could not create life from nothing, but I could command the building blocks of the body. I could force dead cells to live again, to regenerate. The Dead Man's Stitch. But it was a forbidden, dangerous art. The smallest mistake, a single misplaced thread, could cause catastrophic cellular collapse.
A thousand near-invisible chakra threads extended from my fingertips, entering the shinobi's body. My consciousness spread through him, a god in the machine of his flesh. I felt every cell, every pathway, and every single, tiny splinter of wood grinding away at his life.
Then, I began my work. It was not an extraction. It was a deconstruction and a rebuilding, happening all at once. My threads located a splinter. I would command the cells around it to die, creating a pocket of inert flesh. I would then seize the splinter and pull it out through the dead tissue, leaving the healthy organs untouched. Immediately after, I would flood the now-empty pocket with my own chakra, forcing the dead cells to regenerate, to knit back together perfectly.
It was a thousand individual, microscopic surgeries happening simultaneously.
For two hours, the only sound in the tent was the ragged rhythm of my own breathing. Sweat poured down my face, stinging my eyes. The world ceased to exist. There was only the dance of the threads, the whisper of life and death under my command.
When I finally pulled the last splinter from the last shinobi, I collapsed to my knees, my vision graying, my chakra reserves scraped completely dry.
The three ANBU were breathing deeply, color returning to their faces. They were alive. Perfect. Not even a scar.
I looked up, my blurry gaze finding Tsunade. She stood in the corner of the tent, her face a mask of stunned, unadulterated disbelief. I had not just done the impossible. I had commanded life and death in a way she, the world's greatest medic, could only dream of. I had wielded a power that bordered on the divine, or the demonic.
"How...?" she whispered, her voice full of a genuine, terrified awe.
I pushed myself to my feet, my legs shaking. I gave her a tired, mocking smirk.
"It's easy," I rasped, my throat raw. "You just have to be willing to get your hands dirty."
I turned and stumbled out of the tent before she could respond, leaving the legendary Sannin to stare at the miracle I had just performed, humbled by the monstrous "doll" she had so easily dismissed.