MTL NOVEL Chapter 10: Chapter 10
She was the first one back and went to work on dinner as soon as she freshened up. It was kind of weird having to fetch a stool to reach the high shelves. She felt like one of those kids who played with their easy bake ovens. She wondered if One's kid was enjoying the one she got him. She had picked it on a whim one day, One and his outsider wife begged her to babysit. She had wanted to make a good impression on the two years old and a gift seemed a good way to start.
With a sigh she went back to work trying to shake these thoughts away. This always happened when she let her mind wander. She started thinking about her adoptive brother and his little family. Did he get her letter? She had worked really hard at finding where he had gone into hiding when he faked his death, after that snitch "Five" reported him to "Command." He had thought that "One" was just going to be demoted for starting a civilian family without approval. And he would take his place. How stupid. No wonder the best he ever got was the fifth position. She had a fun time torturing him however before killing him. And then getting rid of the Organization.
Now, "One" and his family could live like normal people. She hoped they would. And that kid better go to college and make something of himself. She kind of did it for him too. After she had stopped calling him "the Thing," when he reached three years and started kicking up a fuss whenever she did, she had to admit that she liked the little fellow. And when the Organization had ordered her, a year after he went into hiding with his father, to kill a bunch of kids his age to cause some sort of diplomatic incident that needed to happen for some reason, she couldn't bring herself to do it. If their existence was for the good of the nation, then how is killing a bunch of kids and breaking the hearts of the ones who love them going to achieve that? There had to be a better way. And now that there is no one to do the dirty work, those politicians will have to find it. She had no regrets. She only wondered if One and the Thing were going to miss her or be sad that she is gone.
When dinner was ready she put it on the table and started going through one of the anatomy scrolls. The others were going to be here any minute now. Her own family. Just like One's.
Sure enough, Izuna barged in first. He kept complaining about what was fair and what wasn't as he went to change and freshen up, and then unceremoniously sit at the table and glare at the door. Apparently, half-way through the afternoon training, Madara was summoned to attend a meeting in the administrative building and he was left out. It wasn't fair because he was a promoted shinobi now, even if it would take a few months to assign him to a permanent squad. But Madara and Hikaku didn't have an official squad either, they just migrated between squads, filling in when needed like on the day of the attack, and they were both invited. Haruka seriously showed her indignation that the great Uchiha Izuna would be disregarded like this, and after accepting it gratefully, he finally noticed her mocking smile and went back to raging. At this point, Tajima and Madara came home together. Madara slipped as discreetly as possible into his room, to avoid being hit by Izuna's indignant words, while Tajima just royally ignored him and muttered something about not having signed up for this.
When they were all back, and sitting at the table, she put the scroll away, and Izuna had already changed his tune, bragging about having come on top in some taijutsu competition they had, as well as the new jutsu he was working on. He had already mastered the Gokakyuu no jutsu, but during his fight with Senju Tobirama, the kid was able to counter it with an equally powerful Suiton jutsu. That got all their attention. Tajima and Madara started giving him pointers, having already met this kind of situation, while she listened intently to get as much information as she could. Dividing her time between training and medicine was going to cost her, and she needed to know as much as possible to be able to save herself sometime when she practiced her own jutsus. When she had one that is. After a while, the conversation drifted to the subject of today's meeting.
Tajima was not a great father exactly. He treated his kids as if they were his students. They would probably never know if he actually liked them, or if had wanted to be a father to begin with. Himiko used to swear up and down that he did, and that he wasn't just complying with his duty as clan head. She swore that he was actually a good person, deep down and that they would see it when they were more mature. Haruka thought so too. She had seen worse parents and witnessed horror stories, and so far even if he seemed to demand a lot of his kids, he didn't actually force them to do anything. That might have to do with the fact they were all hard workers on their own, but that could be a sign that his parenting style actually worked. Surely the boys's nice and kind personality didn't come just from Himiko.
Nonetheless, he was by every definition a great teacher. His mission was to train the three of them to be leaders of the Uchiha, especially Madara, and he was doing a stellar job at that. He gave practical examples, explained the why of everything, and included his kids in a lot of the clan's running to give them the hands-on experience they would need. Madara was always by his side, and as he was growing, Izuna was starting to do so too. He had also given Izuna the responsibility of leading a small group of his peers in their training, under the watchful eyes of a supervisor of course. He seemed to have left Haruka's education to her mother, surely due to his lack of experience dealing with girls (he had had only sons until she got there), but she knew that he treated her with the same attention as the others now.
And now he was explaining to them how the Uchiha planned to exploit their new lands and mines. It was as Touko thought, they were going to get more independent contractors to mine them, sell the gold as is (there wasn't much of it anyway apparently), and use the Iron to make weapons both to use and sell. It came with its fair load of burdens however, as they would have to ensure the security of the mines now and the shipments too. But they also had the remains of the old Chinoki compound and could use them as a second base of operation closer to the mines.
Finally the conversation drifted to her day. She felt shy all of a sudden, not used to talking about her day, because Himiko used to do that for her, but she gave it a go anyway. She explained that they were going to start with theoretical knowledge first, like anatomy and the properties of plants, and then get to the practical, like stitching, chakra healing and making salves. They had also decided that she will train a bit with Touko, but starting next week she will join Izuna's group in the mornings and leave after lunch. The boys were clearly interested, as they hadn't had prior knowledge about what it takes to be a healer, and Tajima was satisfied with her training schedule as it was more than most kunoichi in-training did. And there were still the training sessions he sometimes gave the boys at night, which will include her too now.
After they were done, and after receiving a glare from her that reminded them of this morning's threats, Madara cleared the table, while she washed the dishes and Izuna dried and put them back in their place. Tajima watched, clearly unimpressed and with no intention to join in. He held her glare with one of his own, daring her to make a comment, but she gave up first. He may have won the battle, but she will win the war. After all, she had control of their menu and access to clean and stitched clothes. That seemed to work on his kids, there was no reason it wouldn't work on him. They won't have natto for a while, but Madara was a good kid, and Inarizushi was on tomorrow's menu.
Once they finished, they settled back in the living room in silence, the boys to their weapons, Tajima to his reports, and her to her anatomy books. They were a pain to go through as she wasn't used to the terms, and more importantly they were incomplete, and really vague. Sometimes there were sketches and even then, they were really approximate. But she needed to go through this rubbish, because even if the anatomy she knew was roughly the exact same this book seemed to describe, there was an addition that changed a lot: The chakra pathways. Small vessels, like nerves, that went through the whole body to circulate chakra. After the first three books were leafed through, she had a rough idea of what they looked like and how they organized themselves both between themselves and in connection with the other organs. Touko would have to help her on that, but first she needed to learn everything these books said by heart, even if they were riddled with mistakes, and unscientific claims that were disproved in her world.
After a while she got frustrated. In her last life she was a genius. She had an eidetic memory, a cheat that the other numbers of the Organization often lamented because it gave her a clear advantage in gobbling the mountains of knowledge thrown at them. She had graduated from medical school at age ten. But this body didn't seem to have the same genetic advantages her old one had. Is this how normal people feel when they are studying? She was starting to understand why it took people twelve whole years to graduate from freaking high school.
As she was lamenting her lack of luck, an idea creped in her head. Her memory may not work automatically in this world, but who said it wasn't as good as her last one. Activating her Sharingan she started flipping through the books and she noticed she remembered them exactly as they were. Great! She wasn't ready to be normal. Anything but that.
After a while however she started feeling eyes on her, fixing the corner of the room she had taken for herself and never leaving. She raised her head and noticed the Uchiha males all looking at her like she had grown two heads. "What?"
Tajima cleared his throat, tilting his head to the side and saying, "That is certainly an interesting use of the Sharingan."
She raised an eyebrow at him. "You're telling me that in the centuries the clan has existed, no one thought about using it to learn the content of books faster?"
From the look on his face, she knew that she had hit where it hurt. He finally said, before going back to his report. "Of course we use it to enhance our memory when needed. It's just that we were never big on learning from books. So I've never seen someone do that with the Sharingan. We mainly use it to steal the contents of scrolls without leaving evidence we were ever there.".
Madara and Izuna were a lot more pensive.
She knew that they couldn't wait to awaken theirs. Touko had explained to her how she managed to do so. The Sharingan reacted to strong emotions and was different for everybody. It reacted mostly to pain, like hers did when Himiko died, but the same event didn't affect everyone in the same way. Take Madara for exemple, with how protective he is of his siblings he should have had the final three tomoe form, and yet he hadn't activated it. Same for Izuna. They were twins, and had a lot more similarities on a genetic level, and yet he too didn't activate it when he lost his mother and elder siblings. She had a feeling that it also had something to do with the level of maturity of the person. She was an old soul and thus activated it easily, and Touko had told her that it was rare for someone to awaken the sharingan before age 10. But that was just a theory and she will have to check later. She also kind of wished that they wouldn't have to experience something so painful that it awakened the Sharingan, but she knew it was impossible.
And if it gave them one more tool for survival, so be it.