The two entered back into the hospital room.
"Dad's back." Kito smiled. In his brown Teletubby medical corps outfit, the man looked almost comical as he stood in front of Sayuri's bed. Saul wondered if it was intentionally designed to appeal to kids.
"Hey." She smiled back. "Are we leaving early today?"
"Yes... But first, I have someone who I wanted to introduce to you." The man motioned backwards, "This is Saul. He's a genius medical-nin in training who agreed to take a look at you."
The Eight year old girl frowned. "Dad, I told you not to worry about me. I'm fine. You've already tried this with Ugai."
"But sweetie... your legs. If you're good, daddy might be able to take you to the park tomorrow."
Sayuri huffed in response, shaking her head.
The man looked to be in a difficult position. Kito's top priority was his daughter. Long sick and the only tether Kito had to his late wife, the young girl seemed to hold an almost invisible authority over the man. The grown doctor tried to placate the girl multiple times but she remained unrepentant.
In the interest of saving time, Saul intervened. He was eager to meet this elusive Jonin called Yakushi Nono. Enough time had already been wasted between Himari's trickery and Kito's soft heartedness.
Saul pointed to his Konoha forehead protector, "See this? I am a ninja. My Jonin team leader was appointed directly by the Hokage himself, and my team is among the strongest in the current Chunin exams. Someone like Ugai cannot even begin to compare."
The girl, annoyingly, still looked like she was on the fence. He wasn't going to waste any more time playing nice.
"Kito-sama, would you care to aid me in a demonstration?"
The man nodded. "What do you need me to do?"
"Just stay still no matter what, ok? I think Sayuri needs some proof to see with her own eyes."
The veteran seemed to know where this was going, but he'd do anything for his daughter's sake. Kito rolled up his sleeve and gritted his teeth. Sayuri watched on with wide, curious eyes. She wasn't onto what he was doing yet.
Saul pulled out a kunai. He traced the metal along her father's arm right in front of her. The exhausted man did not have much strength, even if he did this by force he'd be unable to resist.
"Sayuri. I'm going to make a cut right here on your father's forearm. And then I'll fully heal it, ok? It will be like brand new. That way, you'll be able to trust in my healing abilities better. You'll see them firsthand."
Saul raised the weapon high.
"NO! STOP!" She shrieked, "YOU CAN DO IT!"
"Do what?"
"YOU..." She huffed, "You can try healing me..."
Saul smiled, then pocketed the Kunai as if he had done nothing wrong. Taking advantage of their familial bond was the quickest way Saul could get the stubborn child to agree. And of course, he would not do something as tasteless as cutting himself to prove his words. Only idiots like Naruto would endure something like that just for the sake of proving a point to a stranger.
"You're in good hands then, Sayuri. I assure you, your father would have been completely fine after my healing." Then more to Kito than the still slightly shell-shocked child, Saul continued, "He was willing to endure the pain of a cut for your sake. Your father is a brave man. Can you be brave for him too, Sayuri?"
He couldn't leave the child too upset, after all. Saul wanted to milk as much cash out of this as he could.
"Yea..."
Saul cast the Mystical Palm Ninjutsu and moved closer.
"Then I'll begin."
An inspection of her small, beating heart revealed a bunch of very large cells lining the inside of her heart. Like spoiled brats sat at a table of food, forced to remain seated until they finished their meal, they nibbled at the inside of Sayuri's heart. The girl was being eaten alive!
Switching the flow of his chakra to flood one of the gigantic cells directly; he inspected it carefully. Saul recognized it to be a white blood cell. Destroying them would only aggravate her immune system and cause her body to attack her heart with more force. Her heart however was still somehow still in great condition.
What Kito had been doing every day was repairing the muscles in her heart. This was akin to constantly putting more food at the said nibbling children's plates. It could not cure her condition, but ensuring there was always more than enough 'food' enabled Sayuri to survive to this day.
Saul ensured all the minor damage in her heart was repaired before inspecting other areas of her body. Once he got to her extremities, namely her hands, wrists, legs, and feet, Saul found much more damage.
"Interesting..."
The weakened blood flow to her extremities caused by her overburdened heart had caused widespread damage. Her hands and wrists had been cared for - evidently to support the girl's passion for drawing. Yet her legs were almost in complete disrepair.
Many of her cells were even on the brink of necrosis! Saul could see why Kito was so desperate. All his Chakra had likely gone towards healing her arms and heart, he could only do the bare minimum for her legs. But this could not continue.
If her legs kept deteriorating like this, she'd have to get her legs amputated soon. Cell necrosis could lead to an infection taking root within her body. The sickly girl was already on borrowed time as is, an infection would certainly be the straw that broke the camel's back.
Saul ramped up the chakra from the medical palm and immediately went to work repairing the tissue within her legs. It was much more difficult than any other wound he had healed thus far.
In the wounds Saul was used to healing, the actual damages to the structure within was minimal. Take a cut for example. A wedge essentially cleaved ropes of cells into two halves. The very ends of the cut would be crushed, sure, but the majority of the structure was still intact.
All he had to do was repair the damage at the split and join the split portions back together. The amount of chakra used was minimal - and with greater skill - he'd expend less and less chakra healing such injuries.
Muscle tears from training were like this as well. When he reforged such injuries with his chakra, they grew back stronger, more durable, at the spot of the cleave. This just meant his muscles would tear at other areas when he did more training, but over time his muscles became more durable, stronger, and more explosive overall.
Saul was dreading doing this process again with his bones rather than his muscles. Such breaks would have to be more targeted and they'd also be much more painful than mere muscle soreness. Yet, his muscles would hit a limit one day.
They pulled on the bones to exert their force. If his strength surpassed the durability of his bones too much, not even enhancing them by circulating chakra (like he did now) would be enough to keep them stable.
After the bones though, next would be his organs. They had to be strong enough to withstand the intense forces his body would be subjected to as he grew faster, stronger, and took greater blows. Training his body unevenly would result in his weakest part becoming the limiting factor behind his overall strength. Saul had been at a loss at how to achieve this for the longest time until now.
The damage to Sayuri's legs was universal. Cells all throughout the tissue died, not just in localized breaks. It costs much more chakra, control, and focus to heal such injuries. The sheer damage forced him to use much more chakra. Saul had to carefully thread his chakra to target affected areas to heal, lest he cause more damage. Finally, he had to continuously maintain a much larger range of inspection for the Mystical Palm to ensure he left no hidden injuries behind.
Saul did not have Sayuri's condition, nor did he have the ability to restrict blood flow to certain areas of his body. However, he knew of something that could likely cause a similar effect. Poison.
Most poisons target specific types of cells within the body, whether they affect your liver, nervous system, intestine, and so on. Once he healed such damage, even his organs could grow stronger. Such poisons had the potential to become extremely dangerous if he wasn't careful however.
Saul would not be able to perform Medical Ninjutsu at his full capacity while under the effects of various poisons, and if his body was damaged faster than he could heal, well... He'd start to heal worse. Such a slippery slope could only have one outcome, death. He would have to get a lot of practice beforehand for every single poison he wanted to use on himself.
When Saul stopped treating Sayuri, her legs were in a much better state. He had healed a big portion of the injuries within her legs, but long periods of her sickly state had left the muscles within her legs atrophied. They were too weak to support walking.
In addition, the girl's body could not take any more healing for the day. The nutrients and energy within her blood had grown dangerously low - any further healing would require much greater chakra consumption for little benefit. She would have to undergo rehab along with constant full body treatments in order to make a full recovery.
"It's done."
"...That didn't hurt nearly as much as last time."
Saul cracked a smile. Was Ugai's chakra control so poor?
"Didn't I tell you? Come on, why don't you try standing up?"
Sayuri seemed hesitant. Kito, even though he was exhausted, rushed in to check Saul's work with the Mystical Palm. His eyes widened.
"Sweetie! Come on, won't you try standing up for daddy?"
"O-ok."
The eight year old child got up on two shaky legs with the help of her father. She looked at him with disbelieving eyes. Then silent tears started streaming down her face. The two hugged each other in joy.
After a while, the two separated.
"Sayuri... Daddy needs to go and take Saul to the orphanage to meet the director. Did you want to come with us and see little Hiro?"
"Dad... I'm hungry."
"We'll get some food when we're there, alright?"
The brown haired girl nodded. Kito turned back to Saul.
"Alright then, let's go."
"Wait just a moment. Did you say she is the director? At the Konoha orphanage?"
Saul had no memories of Nono Yakushi at first, but he was starting to connect the dots. Sweat slid down his forehead.
"Yes. She is the leader of the medical corps as well as the director of the Konoha orphanage. What's the matter?" Kito inquired.
The roots of this body were finally coming back to bite him. He had come into this world with no memories, and even though he had managed to get by somehow without alerting anyone, contact with the orphanage would almost certainly result in some sort of exposure.
Saul could not let this happen.
Author's note: Yep because of yesterday, I couldn't write this chapter the day before as I normally do. I had to work a double shift... Regardless, I'll be catching up on chapters as soon as I can. Expect a double release sometime in the near future.
The discord members were notified of the situation beforehand. If you wish to join and chat / provide feedback, the link to the discord is here: discord gg YwperMGsBq ("." before gg and "/" after gg, no spaces)
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