[July 14th, open]

[not_thedragon]

Who: Uchiha Sasuke
When: July 14th
Where: The most remote training field he can find
What: Sasuke is between missions and has been kicked out of Hinata's recuperating room as gently as possible. Time to break some bones; it's equal parts penance and practical, he swears.

Things had actually seemed to be going well this time. Hinata had been careful not to show her feelings about which way the talks had gone while in the village, and the trip there had been so uneventful that the return seemed destined for the same.

Except it hadn't, and Hinata had gotten hurt because of it.

Sasuke strapped his shoe back onto his foot with vengeful yanks, glaring down the training log in front of him. He was stubborn -- he knew his own faults -- but he didn't entirely ignore advice received, either. The last time a teammate had been injured under his watch, Obito had told him to get stronger as a shinobi, get better as a med-in.

He would. And today, that just happened to mean breaking bones.

Taking stance, he carefully judged the angle he'd need to strike the log at in order to smash some of the finer bones of his right foot. It would force him to counter training ignrained into muscle memory for a long time, something that was likely to prove useful in itself, but for now: for now there was only the crack of flesh impacting wood in all the wrong ways, and Sasuke's stifled grunt of pain as he let the Sharingan flood his vision, watching his own chakra respond to the green glow of medical ninjutsu he applied to the injury, healing it.

Comments

[abileunaspada]

What is that idiot doing?

Adela, wearing a pair of denim shorts and a purple tank top along with her sandals, frowned at the sight she came across while parusing the village for a relaxing walk. It was kind of nice to not have to worry about training for a while, or about missions, or anything at all... Taking some time away from the stress of trying to catch up to her cousin. But, as she walked, she couldn't help but be drawn to the noise of training - or, at least what she thought was training. But it didn't look like it, considering that Sasuke was just hurting himself and trying to heal it over and over.

It didn't take her long to run towards the village, fully intent on retrieving a medical ninja to get Sasuke under control because... Even Adela knew that what he was doing was just plain stupid. Though, it didn't say that she was exactly quiet about leaving.

[not_thedragon]

Absorbed in reconnecting the last set of small bones along the outer edge of his foot, Sasuke didn't notice that someone else had located the training field until he heard the sound of movement. Gaze snapping up in surprise, he caught the tail end of brightly-coloured hair heading toward the village, and his first assumption was that Kushina had unexpectedly turned up and made all the wrong assumptions.

"Hey!" He called out, aggravated. A quick flex of the injured foot satisfied him that his healing job had worked out, and he leapt up into the tree cover to tail the person more quickly. "Oi, where are you running to?!"

[abileunaspada]

"To the hospital to get a medic nin! You're being an idiot, Senpai!" Adela shouted in return, not even bothering to look back as she raced through. She had to be a bit more careful so that her loose hair wouldn't get caught in the branches, but that was the least of her worries. She still felt a bit awkward about Senpai... But she had to do what was right, then. Even if off duty, that was what a noble ninja would do for a comrade.

[not_thedragon]

"Wha--" He put on a burst of speed, slipping through a gap in the trees in order to drop down directly into her path. "I am a --"

Well, no, he technically wasn't a full-fledged medic-nin, and after a brief but noticeable break, he finished the indignant sentence with: "Medically-trained shinobi. If you get a medic-nin out here, all they'll do is complain."

[abileunaspada]

"It's you they'll be pissed at, you're trying to break your own damn bones!"

[not_thedragon]

"That's not --" It was probably true, and he'd get an earful from Tsukiko, but none of the staff at the hospital had been training to be a medic while remaining a candidate for front-line combat.

"There's a practical purpose for it," he said, trying to sound reasonable instead of just annoyed that he'd been interrupted. "I don't do this just to mess myself up, you know."

[shunshinoshishi]

Shisui winced. He'd never really know what it was like to feel pain, but just looking at Sasuke was enough to make him imagine what it could have felt like.

He'd been perched up a tree, reading, having sought out the most remote location himself so he could read undisturbed. Apparently they all had the same idea when it came to picking spots.

Bringing his hands over his mouth, Shisui made the call of a bush warbler. Just announcing his presence so he wouldn't get a kunai flung in his face. "Yo! Did they run out of cadavers at the hospital?"

Oh look. It's cousin Shisui staring down at you from up that tree, swinging a leg off a branch.

[not_thedragon]

The problem with this particular type of training was less the initial damage than repeated damage -- if he grew too accustomed to pain in one area, he was less likely to notice if he missed anything while fixing it. Switching things up made much more sense in practice, but it also meant that when a particularly distinctive birdcall hit, Sasuke was dealing with a bone-bruised arm.

Konoha or not, it wasn't the best way to meet anyway, and his expression was annoyed when he spotted Shisui of all people hovering overhead.

"You don't heal cadavers," he gritted out, concentrating on restructuring the bone plate before adding: "They don't respond as optimally when they've been dead as long as they are in the lab."

[notveryspecial]

Incidentally, wherever he'd chosen wasn't remote enough. She'd found it first. Or at least from her perspective she had, given that she'd been out there before and hadn't encountered him then, so it counted. She'd come out to train off the restlessness she'd felt since the start of the month (this month turned out to be just as stressful as the past few. Perhaps that was a curse of chuunin, finally caught up to her).

When she noted she was beaten to it, she lingered in the treeline for a bit, just to see exactly how he trained without anyone else there. For pointers, mostly.

The pointers she found didn't seem very useful to her. Or anyone else not a medic nin or strange monster of some sort.

...That just wasn't wise at all, medic or not. All he needed was to set those the wrong way or scar something wrong and he'd have permanent damage for an inefficient training method.

She frowned for a moment longer, before speaking, not moving from the treeline because she didn't want to incur whatever sharingan wrath he possessed. "If you need to heal someone, then you should find a volunteer instead." That was smarter and more practical than healing himself, anyway.

...After a pause, and maybe against her better judgment, she added, "if it's not about the medical chakra, then I could probably help with that, too. In a way less likely to end with someone crippled."

[not_thedragon]

Was today the day of interrupting other people's training and he'd just missed the memo? Irritation was already building in Sasuke's expression by the time he finished with his kneecap and turned to face Sakura. He couldn't be rude, he reminded himself forcibly, not when they were leaving for a long-term mission tomorrow afternoon.

Part of him still wanted to be rude. "It's about the medical chakra, and I'm not so unskilled as to cripple myself," he said, tone clipped. There was little point explaining what the specific purpose of this exercise was to someone who appeared to assume that all types of injuries were readily available to anyone looking to train on them.

No -- that was probably uncharitable, said that particular internal voice that sounded annoyingly like his mother. Self-injury wasn't standard medic-nin training in any case.

"What do you think you could help with, if it weren't about the medical chakra?"

[notveryspecial]

He could deal with it: he'd interrupted her training before, so she owed him an interruption. Whether the irritation in his expression was due to the pain of the injury or the interruption itself, she couldn't tell, but her own expression showed nothing in response. Considering his behavior on the last mission they'd shared, his irritation wasn't really a bother to her.

She wasn't so sure she believed his statement about not crippling himself. He may have been the expert on medical chakra between them, and he was the one who'd been raised from very small by a clan of expert ninja who would have taught him better precision and...general skill...than her, but even medical nin could make mistakes, and crippling injuries were dangerous things to toy with for training purposes. Otherwise all ninja would just beat themselves down to nothing and have medics heal them.

She cocked her head to the side slightly, studying him a moment (although in truth she was calculating what she knew about medical chakra and genjutsu), before she crossed her arms. "Becoming stronger. A better ninja. I meant that I could help with that. But...medical jutsu, it's about precise chakra control and application, right?" She understood vague basics about it, she just didn't know anything about actually doing it, or how chakra could somehow be manipulated to heal instead of harm. "You need to manipulate your chakra in a certain way, so that it will heal what you want it to where you want it to. I suppose it would hurt someone if you used too much of it. Or you'd waste chakra you should use on other injuries. Right?"

She didn't know what medical jutsu consisted of, but she assumed just like other jutsu it needed to be practiced. Someone as smart as Sasuke didn't need her to say that, though. "But it's not about the injuring, it's the way you heal it. I can help with that. You could heal any injury you want, as many times as you want, until you run out of chakra. Without harm if you run out before you're finished." Or if he injured himself in a certain way and made a mistake, but just because she thought it didn't mean she'd say it.

[not_thedragon]

Becoming stronger. That was a tall claim to make, that she could help make someone else stronger, especially someone whose ability level she only knew from one mess of a mission. Sasuke had thought she seemed overly self-effacing before, but an eyebrow popped up in response to those words.

"Medical ninjutsu is about precision, yes," he allowed, because that much was true. It was also about understanding both chakra and bloodflow in a human body, as well as the delicate nervous system that shinobi relied so heavily upon, and memorizing more bits of bone and pieces of muscle than the Academy had ever bothered to teach.

"You're suggesting using a genjutsu," he said, tone flat, because there was really only one way to accomplish what she was suggesting without Sakura volunteering herself up as the living equivalent of a practice cadaver. And while genjutsu wasn't impossible, ignoring the way that chakra belonging to anyone in a genjutsu tended to twist itself up and snarl over the will of the person setting the illusion, the reason Sasuke hadn't used one himself --

-- because it wasn't like he was still young enough to punish himself physically for his failures --

"You're saying you're capable of producing a perfectly accurate human body within an illusion?"

[notveryspecial]

She didn't think it was a very tall goal. To become stronger as a ninja, it only meant building new skills, or improving the ones that they had already. She didn't need to be stronger than him to help him do that, just have ideas that could help him improve skills he already had.

Something like that, anyway. It was the sort of thing she believed of training with Shisui and her teammates.

She lifted a shoulder slightly at his question. "If I fail to, break the genjutsu and tell me how it's wrong. I'll fix it. Or if I can't, you can still go back to hurting yourself." She waved her hand after a moment. "Although in that case, it would be smarter to just heal me instead, wouldn't it? Instead of practicing how not to hit something, you could train all out, and if you manage to hit me, you'll get to practice your medical jutsu as well. If my genjutsu isn't good enough."

[not_thedragon]

Spending his afternoon effectively training someone else on their anatomy -- not how Sasuke had envisioned the day going. Only clan-trained politeness kept the thought from surfacing, and he was already hunting for a way to turn down her offer without making the upcoming mission awkward when she offered her second suggestion.

It prompted him to raise his eyebrow a second time, though this time it was accompanied with a scrutinizing once-over, trying to decide if Sakura was the kind of person who tolerated pain well. Hard to tell just from looking, though he could make assumptions based on the kinds of expressions she generally turned to the world. It wasn't a terrible idea, but ultimately ...

"The policy for medical ninjutsu is to not train on humans," he said, albeit somewhat reluctantly. "Other humans, at least. Genjutsu training would help only as practice in maintaining chakra control."

Which wasn't in itself a bad idea, if he thought about it. Genjutsu could mimic the usual distraction-rich field of combat.

[heroscomeback]

As the impact with the log happened, there came a shout along with the crack. "Ouch!"

"... is what you wanted to say, right? Here, said it for you." Naruto dropped out of typically nowhere, suddenly nearby. He was still this unpredictable guy on most days. "So, uh... just what are you doing?" he asked, scratching his head.

"I mean, I can see what you're doing so that's the wrong question, I meant: why are you doing it to yourself?"

[not_thedragon]

The voice made him wince almost more than the pain did, by this point in the day. There were times when his other teammate's seemingly-endless energy was welcome -- mostly when it was Naruto's turn to take the long watch on a mission -- and there were times when Sasuke really didn't want to deal with it.

The day after returning from a mission where their teammate had been badly injured was one of those times.

He didn't bother to dignify the first question, and turned around only enough to level a glare at Naruto before returning his concentration to the damaged foot. "I'm training. Shouldn't that be obvious?"

[heroscomeback]

"Oh, that kind of training! Isn't it not all that practical if you keep mashing your body parts to goo though?" he asked, scratching his cheek with an index.

Your teammate is concerned, Sasuke!

[not_thedragon]

Sometimes it was hard to tell if Naruto was being obtuse on purpose or if he really was maxing out his available brainpower. Sasuke gave him a long, annoyed look before finally sighing and straightening, flexing the now-healed foot to make sure he hadn't missed anything.

"It's practical if you're practicing how to heal standard injuries," he said shortly. "Which is what I'm doing."

[heroscomeback]

Would he have been able to survive that long if this truly was the maximal capacity of his brain?

"Yeah, it's fine if it's your own injuries, but isn't it better to work on someone other than yourself? If it's you, aren't things too predictable?"

[not_thedragon]

"The point of healing myself is to make it predictable," he snapped, manfully resisting the urge to append an instinctive moron onto the end. Still, habit dictated that he explain training to his teammates, however rarely they actually went on shared missions anymore, so he added: "I'm not quitting combat for medic training, in case you haven't noticed.

"If I'm going to stay in a combat role, the person I'll have to heal most often is myself."

[dangodragon]

Itachi debated butting in for a while. It wasn't something he wanted to see--his brother hurting himself for any reason, but he would be lying if he said he didn't understand on some level why Sasuke was doing this. Itachi understood the responsibility and need Sasuke felt--or he thought he did at least. How many times had he had turned sparring session with Shisui into almost brawls for some kind of release? How often were wounds a comfort, the physical pain a counter balance to the mental?

Itachi sighed at least Sasuke had logic, even if everyone kick had Itachi aching in sympathy, and he didn't want to see his brother like this.

And you want to make him Jounin.

At least he could heal himself. Itachi rubbed a hand over his face. Yes, he understood this. No, he didn't want Sasuke doing it. Itachi had seen too much self destruction get out of hand with ninja over the years, and even if it help Sasuke, he needed to find a new method of handling things.

"I hope this has some practical application." Itachi dropped from the trees. "Besides the obviously cathartic effect." He kept his face perfectly blank as he picked leaves off of his clothes.

[not_thedragon]

Sasuke had been interrupted far too many times today to have an excused to be surprised, but when Itachi dropped into the field out of nowhere it startled him -- badly.

It wasn't that he was still shaken up from the genjutsu Sakura had tested on him earlier. It wasn't that at all, because he'd been through genjutsu and the injuries involved had barely been a Thursday on an ER rotation, but when he spotted movement Sasuke jerked away from the training log as if yanked on strings, assuming a defensive stance on instinct before first chakra, then visual recognition clicked.

"I --" He started, stumbled over a few vowels, then finished with an awkward: "Brother."

He pulled his posture back together with effort, relaxing in the awareness that this was the real Itachi (eyes intact). The village; safety; his brother: comfort.

Normally.

"It's ... practice for medical ninjutsu."

[dangodragon]

Itachi watched Sasuke falter with a slight furrowing of his brows. How long had Sasuke been out here, anyway? Maybe his initial idea of letting Sasuke sort things out for himself should be veto'd in favor of bodily dragging Sasuke home and making him rest.

"Is there a reason you're practicing on yourself instead of others?" There were plenty of people running around with minor fractures and whatever else in a village like this.

[not_thedragon]

And there was the million-dollar-question of the day. Apparently everyone had turned into experts on medic-nin training without Sasuke's knowledge, over the course of 24 hours, he grouched internally and probably uncharitably. Was it so insane to practice healing oneself? Regular shinobi practiced combat jutsu on their own all the time.

It was extremely unusual for Itachi to bear the brunt (or any) of Sasuke's more disgruntled moods, but at the end of a trying day and with echoes of that genjutsu still flashing in front of his eyes, Sasuke's tone was much shorter than usual when he answered.

"The person I'll need to heal most often is myself. It only makes sense to train on myself."

[dangodragon]

"I see." Itachi wondered if other people had already been questioning Sasuke's methodology today. Normally Itachi didn't get grumped at for simple offenses, though he'd heard other people complain at length about Sasuke's attitude.

"Then this has nothing to do with Hinata-san's hospitalization?" This being what could be construed as a case of self-punishment thinly disguised as medic training.