|
The Power Behind Rayemars The first day, Shizune thought Tsunade would refuse to do the surgery. She had to wonder if Naruto even considered the implications of handing one of Orochimaru's former experiments to his former teammate--Anko she just felt was suffering from the same bout of insanity that led her to tell the girl what Naruto was in the first place. But after they'd gone over Isaribi and determined that it would be possible to separate the modified amphibian DNA from her own, Tsunade said she'd need to rest up and would perform it early tomorrow. She also warned the girl about the high risk of dying or having her DNA mutate during the recovery, but Isaribi only nodded and asked again that Tsunade do anything she could. After the surgery, the girl was moved to a hall in the hospital that had been specially cleared out, with a nurse assigned to the area to make she that she didn't wander out and into any of the ninjas' rooms. Tsunade took the rest of the day off. Shizune went over to her apartment after her shift ended. She knocked on the door for a full minute, and then waited two more, before finally pulling out her lock pick kit and letting herself in. Tsunade's apartment was large and tastefully designed, but messy--she still hadn't finished unpacking, after being here for almost three months. Shizune never chided her for it; years of traveling had gotten to her, too. Even after renting her own small apartment, she lived out of her bag for almost a month, doing her laundry and then folding it and putting it back in the bag instead of the closet without thought. Tsunade was drinking in a chair she'd dragged over to one of the windows, sake bottle balanced precariously on the sill. Shizune sighed silently and went to stand beside her. "You'll get sick, Tsunade-sama," she said, resting a hand on the back of the chair. "Did you at least eat first?" Tsunade's only response was a burp. Shizune sighed again, this time audible, and went to see what was in the kitchen. She had to bring the food to the older woman, pulling a second chair over to set the tray on--Tsunade only moved once, to get two more bottles from the kitchen when the first ran out. "Why the fuck would a man want to be immortal if he never disappears, anyway!?" Tsunade demanded, later; and Shizune knew not to try and answer. She woke up early the next morning, even though she hadn't made it home until past midnight, in order to set things up so the assignments and paperwork would still be taken care of if Tsunade didn't come in later. Tsunade didn't. When Sakura came up to the office in the late morning, Shizune told her that Tsunade was still sleeping off the surgery from yesterday. She taught the girl a chakra control exercise, and told her to practice it and show Tsunade the results tomorrow. In the late afternoon, she caught Sakura talking to Isaribi, and stepped into the room just a few moments before Isaribi could begin discussing Naruto. Isaribi asked when she should finish her report; Shizune said she'd come back and take care of it later, giving Sakura a look from the corner of her eye as she did. Sakura fidgeted. ". . . I was curious," she answered, when Shizune closed the door to Isaribi's room and then moved down the hall far enough that they weren't in hearing of either the girl or the rest of the hospital. "I saw her records when I was filing, and . . . it didn't seem like it would have been as hard on Tsunade-shishou as it was, so I thought if I talked to her about it I'd learn what I missed. . . ." Shizune considered her for a few minutes, and then shook her head. "Between you and me," she said, dropping her voice a little, "Tsunade-sama likes to take advantage of opportunities to sleep in." Sakura paused, and then chuckled slightly. "I am going to have to tell her about this," Shizune added. Sakura went a little bit paler at that, but only hung her head slightly and said, "Yes, ma'am." Shizune sent her back to work and made a note to keep a closer eye on the filing systems in the office. Tsunade decided not to punish Anko beyond a month-long reduction in missions and thus pay, since she'd been relatively psychologically and physically unstable during the mission for justifiable reasons, and also because neither Ino nor Shino appeared to have overheard or seen anything. Ino had been too busy gathering soldiers to see the fight before Gama Bunta was involved, Shino had been fighting the other missingnin, and both had attributed the distinct chakra to the toad and the medicnin's monstrous form, respectively. It also, fortunately, wasn't that difficult to block Isaribi's memories. After the memory loss was induced, Isaribi was kept at the hospital one more night to make sure that all the necessary information had been wiped. Tsunade went home an hour after the secondary surgery; Shizune arrived to find that she'd gotten drunk again. And earlier in the evening this time, too. After hiding the remaining two sake bottles in her bag and making sure that the one Tsunade was going through wouldn't run out before she returned, Shizune decided to treat herself for all the nuisances of the week. She went out and bought expensive ingredients for the night's dinner, and told the woman at the counter to charge it to Tsunade's account. She did wash the dishes later, though; and after making sure that Tsunade was still sleeping on her side, she sat down at the table with an accounting sheet. Isaribi had arrived with a very limited amount of money, so Shizune had to arrange her charges so that she was left with enough to make the trip back to Ocean country. |