The following day, Thursday, she had to work at the hospital. She left her clones in her studio writing the book.
"Seina-sama," called one of the nurses. "Shizune-san is waiting for you in one of the operating rooms."
"What is it about?"
She read the full clinical history, realizing it was a surgery to remove small metastatic tumours. She prepared for the operation, knowing it could take hours, and entered the surgical floor.
"Seina," Shizune called, relief evident on her face when she saw her. "I'm glad you're here."
"What's the situation?"
"There are too many tumours. It's terminal," Shizune shook her head. "We already knew, but..."
"Can't anything be done?"
"Not by us. We've removed a few from her torso, but it's not going to extend her life by much."
"But how long has she been diagnosed?"
"Since this morning."
"Since this morning?" she asked again, surprised, scanning the test results. "Why didn't she come sooner?"
"A long-term mission, discomfort with hospitals... You know how some ninjas are."
She clicked her tongue, realizing that conventional treatment likely wouldn't remove all the microtumours, even with her help. No, she had to find another way. She thought about cancer cells—perhaps she could use them as a target. She pondered the matter as the others waited silently, stabilizing the patient, hoping she could help.
"I need the microtumours you've removed."
"What are you planning to do?"
"I'll use the anomalous tissue as a target and then perform a fuinjutsu ritual—essentially, runes—to eliminate them throughout her body."
The medical staff murmured, surprised and intrigued by the procedure. Shizune frowned, thinking it over.
"It might work. It shouldn't be problematic for the patient, considering what's been removed shouldn't be in her body anyway."
"Exactly. Then it will just be a matter of addressing the origin of her tumour, but we'll have more time."
"Here you go," an operating nurse handed her the samples.
"I'll be back shortly," she informed them.
She left for her personal office with the samples on slides. She needed to think through the ritual alone. Wizards rarely developed cancer because magic, ironically a form of radiation, protected magical beings from other cancer-causing phenomena. Still, targeted rituals were somewhat common for other ailments. All she had to do was modify one of those to make the target the removed microtumours.
She confirmed that all the tissue on her desk had a 90% homology between them, so she used their shared composition as the target without hesitation. If the microtumours had shown more differences, she would have worried about leaving anomalous tissue in the body unknowingly, but fortunately, they'd been lucky.
Half an hour later, she returned to the operating room.
"I've got it. I need to move the stretcher to draw the ritual on the floor."
She and a couple of clones drew the runic circle on the ground. The stretcher was placed in the centre since the ritual didn't require anything more specific. Everyone watched as she activated the runes, her face lighting up like a child's. She was glad they'd tied the patient to the stretcher when she began to tremble. Fortunately, the involuntary movements were mild. The ritual took exactly 18 minutes to complete its effect.
"Is it done?" someone asked as she stepped into the circle.
"Yes."
"How is that possible?"
"The ritual targeted the entire body simultaneously. We'll sedate her for a couple of days while her body recovers from the attack."
Seina noticed the first bruises forming on the patient's skin. She began healing the wounds under the astonished gazes of the others. Shizune wasted no time and joined her, hands glowing green with medical chakra. Another staff member calculated the sedative dose and administered it intravenously.
"In the end, it wasn't as complicated as I thought at first!" she smiled, leaving the room. "I'll handle the patient's paperwork, don't worry."
Her clone would, more accurately. The others nodded, moving the patient to a private room. Another, simpler case file was handed to her—a patient with poisoning from an unknown source, later discovered to be a needle lodged in his back. Huh. Someone had good aim. It was lodged in such a way that the patient wasn't even aware of it because of the tissue where it was embedded. She simply dissolved the needle using her X-ray glasses, healed the resulting wound, and treated the poisoning with a potion. She needed to speak with someone to acquire bezoars.
"I'm heading out, Hikari," she told her assistant. "Here's the paperwork for patient 201."
"I'll file it myself."
"Thanks."
When she got home, she was greeted by a smiling Naruto and a much more relaxed Sasuke than a month ago. They had just returned from their first mission as chunin, likely with a third teammate.
"How was the mission?" she asked as soon as she saw them.
"Great!"
"Finally, a slightly more interesting mission," Sasuke nodded in her direction. "Shino accompanied us."
They recounted what they had done, how the B-rank mission felt compared to the dozens of C-rank ones they had completed, how much less boring it was, etc. Seina listened with a smile on her face. Kakashi, however, wasn't there.
"Where's Kakashi?"
"He left on a mission about an hour ago."
"Any news about Danzo?" Sasuke asked.
"No. Nothing."
"I don't like this. Until now, he hadn't dared act so brazenly," Naruto remarked with surprising maturity.
"I think he feels cornered. Maybe he's anxious now that he can't spy on the Hokage or Shikaku like before. He can't even track us in Konoha anymore... That would pique anyone's curiosity..."
They fell silent, pondering the Danzo situation. In the end, there wasn't much point in dwelling on it. They had the same information as always. At most, they could theorize and waste time.
The next day, instead of going to the hospital, Seina was summoned to Shikaku's office.
"You have another solo mission. The client wants us to retrieve some stolen family heirlooms."
"Do they know who stole them?"
"No. We don't know who did it, where they are, when they were stolen, etc. There's no information except for the heirlooms themselves," he handed her a report with pictures. "This is the family's documentation."
"Great."
"Seina..." Shikaku called out as she opened the door to leave. "Be careful."
For a moment, their eyes met. Seina nodded before departing. Of course, she'd be careful. She didn't want to die or be kidnapped. She headed toward the nearest gate, registered herself as usual, and left with her hands in her pockets. Honestly, it seemed like another ridiculously easy mission. Many of her assignments were A-rank solely because there was no information to start investigating or tracking. Shikaku, of course, leveraged her powers to assign these missions to her alone, charging the same as a team of three, and saving on sending teammates.
She used a locator spell once she confirmed she was alone. Spotting the direction to the south, she used one of her sealing points in that direction to teleport. She repeated the process four times until she found the area where the heirlooms were hidden. It only took 20 minutes.
"Let's see..." she thought to herself.
She summoned one of her flying creatures, a thestral, to survey the area. She skipped the dragon since she didn't need to fly far, preferring to stay closer to the ground while still airborne. Soon, she reached a small town. She could see several medium-sized buildings, many shops, even a small theatre, and an open-air stadium. Enclosed by a nearly decorative wall was a medium-sized Japanese-style castle. Her spell directed her there.
She dismissed her creature mid-air, landing silently on the roof, invisible. She always carried out her solo missions invisibly for her safety, so it was almost like taking candy from a baby. She noted the lack of ninja security, although there were many armed civilian guards. She crept through the corridors searching for the heirlooms when she overheard two men discussing them.
"With the money we'll get, we can expand the castle without touching the family's funds."
"Do you think they'll recover them?"
"Of course, but I don't care. All I want is for someone to buy them. By the time Konoha's ninjas recover them, a few days or maybe a week or two will have passed. Plenty of time to sell them."
Seina rolled her eyes, understanding everything. He didn't care about the heirlooms at all. He just wanted to sell them for their high value. How had he obtained them? Perhaps he'd hired civilian thugs to steal them. From what she understood, the family kept the heirlooms in a safe, but unprotected. It was plausible someone could steal them. The interesting part was how they had learned of the heirlooms if they were supposedly a well-kept secret. Well, she didn't care, to be honest.
She waited silently until one of the men left. The other seemed in no hurry to leave the elegant office where the heirlooms were hidden. Shrugging, she cast the Imperius Curse.
"Take out all the stolen heirlooms from wherever you've hidden them."
The man stopped writing, got up, first setting his things on the desk, then approached the bookshelf. He pushed one of the frames, revealing a large hidden vault. She watched as he spun the wheel to input the code. Hearing footsteps approach the office again, she placed a Confundus-like dissuasive barrier on the door. The steps stopped abruptly outside. Then, hesitantly, they turned away.
"I knew I'd forgotten something!" she heard an exclamation of concern further down the hallway.
The click of the vault door made her turn again. The man carefully took out the relics, one by one, and then stood by the table staring into space, still under the effect of her curse. Seina checked to ensure everything was there, conjuring a padded box to store them in her waist pouch. She had him close the vault door again and return the bookshelf to its original position. Then, she removed the magical barrier from the door, cast a Confundus Charm on the thief, and released him from the Imperius Curse.
She exited through the open window. To avoid leaving traces of her chakra, she teleported to the outskirts of the city and then used the hiraishin to return to Konoha. According to her spell, she had only taken an hour and ten minutes to complete the mission. A new record for an A-rank mission? She checked in at the entrance, ignoring the puzzled looks from the chunin guards.
"Any issues with the retrieval?" they asked at the mission department.
"No. It was easy."
"We'll call the client to have them retrieve their lost items."
She spent ten minutes listening to the client's thanks. Another wealthy civilian. She nodded with a professional smile and then headed to the hospital to begin her shift, though several hours later than usual.
"Seina-sama? I thought you were on a mission."
"I was. I'm back now."
The receptionist on her floor blinked in surprise but accepted her words. Since no cases had been scheduled for her due to the impromptu mission, she went to her office to handle the minimal paperwork she had left. She usually kept everything perfectly organized each day she worked at the hospital since she disliked carrying over administrative tasks from one week to the next. She knew that was the beginning of chaos that could result in mountains of paperwork. She shuddered at the thought.
For a couple of hours, she worked leisurely, reviewing documents, filing paperwork, burning unnecessary records, placing a supply order for the areas she used in the hospital, and so on. It was dull and tedious but necessary. She would have almost preferred assisting someone in surgery, but no one called her.
"Goodbye, Keiko," she said to the receptionist as she left on time. "See you Thursday."
"See you soon!"
She headed home, yawning. She was grateful for the hiraishin, realizing that without it, she would still be retrieving those relics and likely wouldn't return until sunset, if she were lucky. When she arrived home, no one was there. She knew they were training in the backyard shed, so she went to her study to check on her clones and their progress on Kakashi's book.
"Sasuke?" Mikoto's voice called from upstairs.
She closed the study door and went upstairs.
"No, it's me, Seina."
"Oh, hello, dear. How was your day?"
"Good. A mission and hospital work—nothing new."
"No," Mikoto laughed upon seeing her. "I can imagine."
"Are you looking for Sasuke?"
"No, no… I just thought it was him. He must still be training. Why don't you tell me a bit about yourself? I haven't had a chance to speak with each of you for more than a few minutes."
Seina conjured a chair before Mikoto's surprised eyes. She sat down, glancing at the backyard garden to her left and the portrait before her.
"What do you want to know?"
"Well, for starters, how did you create me? And that chair? Where did it come from?"
"I have a new kekkei genkai. With it, I can do many things."
"I see, I see. So, I'm only… a copy?"
"You're Mikoto as reconstructed from the memories of your friends and… of Itachi."
Mikoto inhaled sharply at the mention. Seina knew Sasuke had told her everything except about her reincarnation and the truth of her powers. Even so, for Mikoto, the subject would always be taboo since she remembered her death through her son's memories. There were gaps in her recollection that only the real Mikoto could fill, but even with what she had, Mikoto could deduce much.
"I wonder why I did it," Mikoto said, looking out the window. "That's something neither Yoshino's, Akemi's, nor Itachi's memories can tell me. No matter how much I ponder, being who I am now, I can't imagine what on earth I was thinking. Maybe that's the problem. I didn't think enough. Or maybe I lack the memories to understand why I did it."
"There's no point in dwelling on what happened now," Seina shrugged.
"I suppose not…"
Mikoto's deeply saddened expression stirred Seina's compassion. She began recounting her own story—at least, of her new world. Mikoto listened with a smile, letting herself be distracted, laughing at the right moments, and frowning in anger when she heard how Kushina's children had been mistreated. In the end, Mikoto smiled mischievously, leaning against the frame of her portrait.
"And is there a boy in your life? With that bright blonde hair and those mysterious violet eyes, I'm sure you've caught more than one person's attention."
"I do like someone," she confessed with a smile, "and I know it's mutual."
"Really!?" Mikoto squealed like a schoolgirl. "Ha! If Minato were alive, the face he'd make upon hearing this!"
Seina smiled wistfully at the thought. She could almost picture her father's horrified expression upon learning his nearly thirteen-year-old daughter liked a boy. From what she knew of her mother, Kushina would have laughed at him uproariously.
"And who is it? Is he the son of someone I know?"
"Sort of," she smiled. "I'd better keep it a secret."
"Oh? An illicit romance?"
"What books have you been reading?" she snorted in laughter.
"This is definitely Akemi's doing."
They chatted a bit longer about girlish topics. Naturally, she kept Kakashi's identity a secret. She wasn't about to reveal the truth to a portrait when even her siblings didn't know about her semi-platonic relationship with her teacher. She went to make dinner when she realized it was past lunchtime.
"What were you doing in there?" she asked as everyone sat at the table, Sasuke and Naruto drenched in sweat.
"Taijutsu and kenjutsu with new weights."
"Huh."
The rest of the week passed uneventfully. Seina resumed her ninjutsu training in the shed, taijutsu in the dojo, the creation of new genjutsu, and kenjutsu practice with the ANBU in their secret headquarters. On average, she spent eight hours a day training and planned to keep that streak going as long as possible. She also started using the pool to exercise all her muscles and relax simultaneously, activating the current jets and wearing weighted gear on her limbs.
On Monday, when they all met at the training field, she explained how she trained alone, at Neji's request.
"You and Shikamaru have been chunin the longest and were promoted to jonin the earliest. How did you do it? How do you train?"
"To become a jonin, for starters, you need to study a series of texts," she warned, suppressing a laugh at Kiba and Naruto's groans. "I used clones to reduce study time, but even so, I'd recommend starting now if you plan to attempt promotion next year or the year after."
Neji nodded. Shikamaru, although he showed no sign of wanting to ascend again, also listened attentively, as did Shino.
"Regarding training… A jonin must be an expert in several fields or have advanced knowledge to defend themselves. We're talking about genjutsu, ninjutsu, taijutsu, shurikenjutsu, and kenjutsu. Usually, people tend to focus more on the three main fields."
"Ninjutsu, taijutsu, and shurikenjutsu?" guessed Tenten. Seina nodded.
"To improve in taijutsu, I recommend changing opponents and seeking rivals more skilled than yourself. There's a dojo frequented by jonin near the theatre. That's where I go during my free time to spar and train."
"And ninjutsu?"
"Well, that's easier for me. Kakashi is an expert in ninjutsu, so I try to learn an average of three to four ninjutsu per week. I think I'll catch up to him in a few years," she admitted.
"What!?"
"Three or four ninjutsu a week!?" exclaimed Ino, pale-faced. "I couldn't keep that pace even with maximum effort!"
"You can't compare yourself to others, Ino," Shikamaru sighed, rolling his eyes. "Seina is a jinchuriki, an Uzumaki, and has a medic's chakra control. It's only natural she can learn that many jutsus in a week."
"Shika's right. For those reasons and because I understand the theory of ninjutsu creation. I recommend reading up on it, at least. It's very interesting."
"Ugh. I don't know if it'll interest me as much as it does you," Tenten confessed. "I'm more into close combat."
"So, what do you do? One day you learn ninjutsu? Another day you go to the dojo?" Chouji asked with interest.
"I wake up in the morning. I eat breakfast. I train taijutsu for an hour to warm up. Then I train kenjutsu or shurikenjutsu for an hour, depending on the day. Afterward, I practice ninjutsu for about two hours. I relax by training my body in the pool for an hour. I have lunch at noon. Then, I train genjutsu for another hour and end the day either at the dojo for an hour or training ninjutsu for another two hours, depending on how I feel."
"You train for eight hours a day?" Shikamaru asked, horrified. Then he looked at Naruto and Sasuke. "And you two?"
"Pretty much the same," Sasuke replied. "Sometimes a couple of hours more. Naruto and I spar intensely while Seina focuses on her own research."
"Besides, it's not every day," Seina added, seeing their blank expressions. "On Monday mornings, we all train together. On Tuesday mornings, I train with other jonin. Wednesday, and the weekends, I stick to my regular schedule, but on Thursday and Friday, I work at the hospital in the mornings…"
"Still!" Tenten shook her head. "How many hours of training is that per week? Thirty?"
"Around forty hours," Neji calculated.
"You're insane," Ino complained. "Now I understand why you seem to be on another level. You really are on another level!"
Lee's eyes, bright and tearful, locked onto Neji's.
"YOSH! THAT'S MY NEW GOAL! FORTY HOURS OF INTENSE TRAINING EVERY WEEK!"
"See what you've done!?" Tenten said, horrified, as Neji began seriously considering it.
"But what do you guys do with all your free time?" Seina asked, genuinely confused. "I'd die of boredom doing nothing all day. Training eight hours a day is like a civilian's workday. It's not that much. Plus, I train mostly at home, so I don't even need to walk to the training camp."
"Not that much?" Kiba groaned, lying on the grass. "I can do tons of things in my free time that have nothing to do with training! Right, Akamaru?"
The dog barked, nodding. Shikamaru was the only one who seemed to be seriously contemplating something as he stared into the distance. They began eating the picnic they had promised, right there in the clearing. Shikamaru sat against a tree in the shade, and Seina did the same to escape the scorching heat of an August day in the Land of Fire.
After a while, as everyone continued discussing "gruelling" schedules, convincing each other to increase their training times, Shikamaru spoke to her.
"I've realized something."
"What?" she asked, swallowing a piece of fruit.
"Your team is probably the only one that truly understands what it means to be a ninja. To become a jonin, to be a good ninja, requires constant effort," he said, frowning at his plate of dessert. "I can't just train a couple of hours a day whenever I feel like it. At least not if I want to be a good ninja and not die in the process. You're right to think that free days don't really exist. We're ninjas 24 hours a day, every day. Training is my job when I'm not on a mission. I hadn't realized it until now."
"Well, at least you realized it in time, right?"
Shikamaru nodded. He seemed to have made up his mind about something. It was the first time she had seen Shikamaru so serious and determined. Suddenly, instead of seeing Shikamaru, she thought she saw Shikaku. The serious, intelligent, and competent jonin commander. She had to blink to shake the image away.
"I'll start studying those books for the jonin promotion exam," he sighed, as if he couldn't help it. "My dad won't believe it."
Seina had to laugh at how true that was.