Another Boring Uchiha Power Fantasy.

Mikoto woke up angry at herself.

Her body disagreed. Her body wanted to lie on the cot for another week, maybe two, maybe the rest of the war. Every muscle ached. Her eyes felt like someone had rubbed sand behind them. Her hands, when she raised them in front of her face, trembled with a small vibration that she couldn't stop no matter how hard she focused.

She sat up anyway. The hospital was dim. Early morning light came through the canvas in thin grey lines. Patients slept in their cots. Two medics worked the overnight shift at the far end of tent one, their green glow the only color in the room.

She'd been out for three days.

Three days of patients she hadn't treated. Three days of wounded coming in while she lay unconscious on a cot. Three days of the hospital running without her because she'd pushed too hard and her body had crashed.

"Don't even think about it."

Arata's voice came from behind her. He was sitting on a stool beside the supply shelf, a cup of tea in his hand.

"Don't what?" She asked.

"Whatever you're thinking. You're thinking about getting up, walking to the nearest critical patient, and picking up where you left off. Don't."

"I'm fine."

"You collapsed in the middle of my hospital. Your clones exploded into puddles. I caught you before your head cracked open on the floor." He sipped his tea. "You are not fine. You are recovering. There's a difference."

"How many critical cases came in while I was out?"

"Don’t worry about it."

"How many survived?"

"Don’t worry about it." He refused to answer her.

She swung her legs off the cot. The room tilted. She gripped the edge and waited for it to stop.

"Mikoto."

"I'm not going to push it… But I can't just lie here doing nothing." She argued.

Arata observed her. He set his tea down.

"Fine. Teaching duty."

"What?"

"You're not touching patients today. Or tomorrow. Your hands are shaking and I won't have you accidentally disrupting someone's chakra flow because you can't hold a steady output." He stood. "But those medics you've been training? They need more. Several of them still can't perform the Mystical Palm. The ones who can are nowhere near capable of learning the Chakra Scalpel jutsu. And every single one of them needs better chakra control."

"Teaching?"

"I want you to be useful without killing yourself. Teaching accomplishes that." He picked up his tea again. "The training area behind tent three is open. I'll send them to you after the morning rotation."

She wanted to argue but the reality of her situation didn’t allow it. It was definitely better for her to not try and push her luck and attempt to heal anyone in the state her body was in.

"Yes, sir." Mikoto nodded.

…

Twelve medics showed up behind tent three.

Some of them she recognized from the crowd that had formed behind her occasionally. The woman with round glasses and always seemed to be jotting something down. A big-shouldered man who'd told her his name was Genji. A pair of twins from Field Hospital One whose faces she couldn't tell apart. Others were new, drawn by the stories that had circulated through the Medic Corps in this camp over the past week.

They stood in a loose group, wearing matching white caps and high-collared smocks marked with a red crest, and waited.

Mikoto sat on a supply crate with a bucket of water and a basket of fresh fish that Arata's assistants had caught from the river that morning.

"Who here can use the Mystical Palm?" she asked.

Four hands went up. The woman with glasses. Genji. One of the twins. A quiet girl at the back who looked barely older than Mikoto.

"Who's tried and hasn't gotten it yet?"

Five hands.

"Who hasn't tried at all?"

Three hands. Shame on their faces.

"It’s okay," Mikoto said. "The Mystical Palm requires chakra control that most shinobi never need to develop. It's hard. That's why so few medics can even use it. But hard isn't the same as impossible."

She picked up one of the fish and set it on the crate beside her. It flopped once and then stopped.

"This is how I learned," she said. "You start with a fish. The fish has simple biology. Small body, limited systems, easy to monitor. You place your hands on it and you send chakra in. Not a lot. Just enough to feel the fish's body respond. The goal is to accelerate its natural healing. If you send too much, you'll overload it and the fish will burn up. If you send too little, nothing happens. You're looking for the middle ground."

She placed her hand on the fish. Even with her trembling fingers, the green glow came. The fish's gills flared. Its tail moved. The small cut on its side, one she'd made with a kunai for demonstration, began to close.

"Like that," she said. "Gentle. Patient. Feel the body telling you what it needs and give it exactly that, nothing more."

She handed out fish. Each medical-nin got one. The training area behind tent three filled with the quiet focus of twelve people trying to make a fish glow.

The ones who already knew the Mystical Palm, she started on the Chakra Scalpel.

"Same type of chakra, different shape, different intent," she said, showing them the transition. "The Chakra Scalpel is sharp. It cuts. You need to change the shape of your chakra output from a wide, healing flow to a narrow, cutting edge. The control required is even higher than the Mystical Palm because a scalpel that's even slightly wrong can cause more damage than it fixes."

She demonstrated on the fish. The Chakra Scalpel made a clean internal incision, separating damaged tissue from healthy without breaking the skin.

"Practice on the fish first. Always on the fish first. When you can make a clean internal cut without killing it, we'll move to bandage work."

The Pedagogy Mastery did its work. She didn't feel it. She didn't know it was happening. But every word she spoke arrived in each listener's mind in precisely the right way, carrying exactly the weight of understanding they needed. The woman with glasses grasped the Chakra Scalpel's form in minutes. Genji, who had been struggling with the Mystical Palm's flow control for weeks, felt something click into place as Mikoto described the difference between pushing chakra and offering it. One of the three who had never tried at all got his fish to glow on the seventh attempt and stared at his hands like they belonged to someone else.

Mikoto taught for four hours. Then Arata made her stop and eat.

She taught for another three hours after lunch.

By the end of the day, two more medics could use the Mystical Palm. The technique was there, shaky and new, and it would grow with practice. One of the existing Palm users had produced a functional Chakra Scalpel for the first time.

The next morning, sixteen medics showed up.

Shikaku noticed it on the second day. The patrols had doubled. Sentries stood in groups of three instead of two. Hyūga shinobi, identifiable by their pale eyes, had been stationed at key points along the perimeter and inside the camp itself. Their Byakugan swept the area in regular intervals, those veiny white eyes seeing through walls and flesh and illusion with equal ease.

Spies had been caught. Shikaku had heard the reports filtering through the support line. Ame shinobi using the Transformation Jutsu to infiltrate the camp disguised as Konoha nin. Three had been caught on the first day of the ceasefire alone. The Hyūga had spotted them by seeing through their disguises with the Byakugan.

It made sense. A ceasefire was the perfect time to spy. Both sides had agreed to stop fighting, which meant both sides had agreed to stop watching for attacks, which meant both sides were vulnerable in ways they weren't during active combat.

Shikaku was thinking about this when the screaming started.

He was at the supply station, sorting a new shipment of medical kits that had arrived with the morning convoy. Chōza was beside him, stacking crates. Inoichi was running a dispatch to the eastern command post and hadn't returned yet.

The scream came from the northern perimeter.

Shikaku dropped the medical kit and ran.

The scene at the perimeter was already halfway done by the time he got there.

A Hyūga, young, maybe seventeen, was standing over a man on the ground. The man was wearing a Konoha flak jacket and smoke enveloped him. The Transformation Jutsu wore off, revealing the figure underneath. An Ame shinobi beneath the solid transformation.

The Hyūga had already hit him. Multiple times. The spy's right arm hung limp, the tenketsu sealed shut, the limb useless. His left leg was the same. He was on his back in the dirt with the Hyūga standing over him and his remaining functional hand was forming a sign.

One sign. One hand.

The spy's chakra was building, concentrating in his core, compressing into something dense and hot. He was going to detonate himself.

"Hyūga! Back off, he's going to blow!" someone shouted.

The Hyūga hesitated. One step back. His Byakugan could see the chakra building in the spy's torso, spiraling inward, reaching critical mass. Two seconds, maybe three.

Shikaku's shadow stretched.

It crossed the ground between them in a line so thin it was barely visible, threading between the legs of the shinobi who had gathered, sliding through the dirt and dust until it touched the spy's shadow and locked.

The spy's hand froze. His fingers stopped mid-seal. His body locked in place, muscles straining against the bind, his eyes bulging with the effort of trying to complete the technique. The chakra in his core was still building but the seal was incomplete and without the seal the detonation couldn't trigger.

"His chakra network!" Shikaku shouted. His voice was strained. The spy was fighting the bind with everything he had. "Shut it down! Now!"

The Hyūga moved. Two steps, palm strike, two fingers to the spy's chest. Then his stomach. Then his throat. Tenketsu after tenketsu sealed shut. The compressed chakra in the spy's core destabilized. It didn't detonate. It dispersed, the gathered chakra bleeding out through the sealed points in harmless wisps.

The spy sagged. The Shadow Possession released. Shikaku wiped the sweat on his forehead.

The Hyūga looked at him. Pale eyes, unreadable.

"Nice one, Nara." he said.

"Thanks…" Shikaku exhaled.

Chōza arrived half a second later, staff in hand, looking for a fight that was already over.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Spy. Transformation Jutsu. Tried to blow himself up when his identity got exposed." Shikaku stood up. "I possessed him."

Chōza looked at the unconscious spy on the ground, then at Shikaku, then at the Hyūga who was already calling for a prisoner detail.

"You stopped a suicide bomber with your shadow. Nice."

"It was pretty cool, huh?" Shikaku smirked.

"If I was here earlier, I could only expand my arm and toss him into the sky or something."

"But I was here instead." Shikaku put his hands in his pockets. “Better luck next time, buddy.”

The man on the cot was unremarkable.

Chunin. Mid-twenties. Wound on his right shoulder from what appeared to be a kunai slash. He'd come in with a group of four wounded from a skirmish on the eastern ridge, one of the small fights that kept happening despite the ceasefire. Patrol meets patrol. Insults are exchanged. Kunai are thrown. People get hurt.

His name, according to his intake form, was Hideki. His unit designation matched a rotation that had been deployed to the eastern sector three days ago. His transformation was consistent with a Konoha shinobi. His face matched no one on the watch list.

He was, by every measurable standard, a legitimate patient.

He was not.

Hideki, whose real name was Sōma, had been embedded in the rotation for two days. The disguise he'd used to replace the real Hideki was a unique jutsu only known within his family. The real Hideki was dead in a ravine six kilometers east. Sōma had taken his place, his uniform, his identity, and walked into the Konoha camp with the returning wounded as casually as walking through a door.

His mission was specific. Field Hospital Two. The Uchiha medical-nin. The one whose healing had kept bringing back Konoha’s wounded alive. The one the survivors talked about. The one whose removal would cripple Konoha's ability to sustain the battle at the pass.

Kill the talented healer. Kill the war effort.

The explosive tags were taped flat against his chest beneath his shirt. Dozens of them. Enough to level the hospital and every patient in it.

He lay on the cot and waited for the Uchiha girl to come to him.

She came.

She was smaller than he'd expected. Thirteen years old. She looked tired, but her eyes were red and spinning, the Sharingan active. The bandaged sword on her back was enormous, almost comically large for her frame. She approached his cot with a clipboard and a smile.

"Hideki-san," she said. "Kunai wound, right shoulder. Let me take a look."

Her hands glowed green. She reached toward him.

Then her eyes met his.

The world changed.

Sōma was in a field. Sunlight. Warm breeze. The hospital was gone. The war was gone. He was lying in grass that smelled like summer and the sky above him was blue and cloudless and perfect. There was no pain in his shoulder. There was no tension in his body. There was nothing but peace and warmth and the gentle feeling of something flowing through him that was fixing everything that had ever been broken.

Genjutsu.

His training kicked in. He knew genjutsu. He'd been briefed on the Sharingan's capabilities. Visual genjutsu, triggered through eye contact, designed to incapacitate.

She knew. She'd seen through his disguise. The Sharingan had read something in his chakra, found the inconsistency, and identified him as a threat. The genjutsu was the first move. The kill would come next. She'd pin him under the illusion and then she'd call for backup or she'd kill him herself and his mission would be over before it began.

He couldn't let that happen.

He gathered his will. He disrupted his chakra flow, spiking it hard, shattering the illusion from the inside.

"Kai!"

The field dissolved. The hospital returned. The sounds, the smells, the cot beneath his back. The Uchiha girl was standing over him with green hands and a confused expression.

Her eyes widened when he shot up and his hand went to his chest. His fingers found the edge of the detonation seal beneath his shirt. He ripped the shirt open and the dozens of explosive tags were visible, splattered across his torso and back. He activated the tags.

The hospital went silent.

Every patient who could see him saw the tags. Every medic within line of sight froze. Someone dropped a tray of instruments. The sound of metal hitting stone was the loudest thing in the world for half a second.

"FOR AMEGAKURE! DEATH TO THE INVADERS OF OUR HOME!!!"

The tags activated. The glow intensified. Several explosive tags, enough to destroy the hospital and kill everyone in it. Patients. Medics. The girl with the red eyes. All of them.

Mikoto's hand closed around the grip of Shark Skin.

The sword came out faster than Sōma's eyes could track. She drew it from over her shoulder in a single motion. She dropped low, planted her feet, and brought the sword up from the floor in a rising slash that caught Sōma’s upper body.

The force of the swing launched him off the cot. Off the ground. Through the canvas ceiling of the hospital tent. Through the air above the camp, rising, spinning, the explosive tags on his chest glowing brighter and brighter as they reached detonation.

He exploded seventy meters above the camp.

The blast ripped across the sky. Orange and white and a shockwave that rattled every tent in the staging area. Debris rained down, scraps of canvas and wood from the hospital ceiling, but nothing else. The explosion had happened high enough that the force dispersed upward and outward instead of down into the hospital.

The hospital was intact. The patients were alive. The medics were standing.

Mikoto stood in the center of the tent with Shark Skin in her hand and a hole in the ceiling above her.

Several shinobi burst through the tent entrance. Weapons drawn. Eyes scanning for the threat.

"What happened?!" the first one shouted.

"An Ame spy," Mikoto said. Her voice was steady. Her hands were not. The adrenaline was hitting her now, the delayed reaction of someone who had been two seconds away from dying along with everyone in the tent. "He was disguised as a patient. He had explosive tags on his chest. He tried to detonate them inside the hospital."

"Where is he?"

She pointed at the hole in the ceiling.

Everyone looked up. The smoke from the explosion was still drifting across the sky, a dark smudge against the grey clouds.

Nobody spoke for a moment.

"Is anyone hurt?" the lead shinobi asked.

"No. He didn't get the chance."

The report went up the chain within the hour. The Aburame commander heard it, read it, and issued new security orders by evening. Two additional Hyūga were reassigned from the perimeter to Field Hospital Two specifically. All incoming patients were to be screened by a Byakugan user before admission.

The camp tightened. The ceasefire held. The war hadn't stopped. It had just moved indoors.

Mikoto would be more careful. She'd keep Shark Skin closer. She'd watch for the signs she'd missed today.