There was one slight change however in that my sensei now had me working alongside her and Shizune healing minor problems like bruising or scrapes. I have to admit that medical treatment even at this level is a lot harder than I realized. If I didn’t control my chakra precisely I could go from helping to straight up destroying the part I was working on. I even turned a few peoples flesh cancerous on accident when I lapsed in concentration for a split second. It was fixed by my sensei or Shizune but that didn’t mean I didn’t get in trouble for it.-
“An Iryonin must remain focused and alert at all times Kenzo and since that is clearly a weak point for you I have devised a training method to fix this issue.” Tsunade said as she attached metal bands to my hands, feet and my neck.
Each band was plain iron rings with the exception of them being covered in Fuinjutsu seals. Next she placed a ball of fuinjutsu covered iron in my hands and under my feet.
“Those bands and balls are connected and the balls demand an ever changing and constant flow of mystic palm chakra. If your concentration lapses for even a brief moment when the signature of the balls changes you will get a rather unpleasant shock by those bands. I have calibrated the output the last your large chakra reserves for exactly three hours. This training will be over when you can go that full length of time without getting shocked.” she added and I nodded thinking it straight forward enough, I was wrong.
What she had failed to tell me was that the training didn’t reset when I got shocked but continued like nothing happened despite me having to deal with that pain because the bands were in highly sensitive locations. This meant the first few times I got shocked were plain dreadful as I stopped using mystic palm on the orbs and the shock never stopped until I resumed and if I took too long the pain got even worse. It was pretty damned obvious what the hidden lesson here was “A medical ninja must even ignore pain when treating a patient”. A likely true enough statement on a battlefield or after a battle when I would be injured yet need to heal someone else.-
Knowing that however didn’t make the next few weeks any easier on me as for three hours everyday I had to go through this training and then to top it off after that I still needed to spar or heal some people before I was done for the day. Needless to say I was drained most of this time by the end of the day but by the end of it I overcame my short attention span and got to the next troublesome matter, medicinal concoction.
“The flames are too hot for those plants!” “The medicine calls for finely ground monkshood and this course ground stuff!”
There was a lot of harsh criticisms like that when we finally reached the land of herbs and my sensei got access to a plentiful and cheap variety of plants to teach me with. Thanks to her reputation as the best healer in the world known far and wide people flocked to the places we visited and brought rare and valuable ingredients as payment for treatment. Unfortunately my role as her student had been exposed as well and I had to deal with these asskissers trying to cozy up to me since I was clearly learning medical jutsu from my sensei.-
Unless I died along the way I was clearly on track to become a highly skilled Iryonin and that meant everyone wanted me in their pocket. The weird thing though was that some of those who came for treatment belonged to other hidden shinobi villages. My sensei’s policy was very simple and kinda controversial as well.
“I will treat anyone who minds their manners and can pay for it.” she had said proudly when I asked.
Hidden cloud, Hidden stone, Hidden mist, rogue shinobi, it made no difference at all to my sensei and Shizune as they treated everyone that followed her simple rules. One of the craziest patients we had was one of the seven swordsmen of the mist, Zabuza Momochi. He was a stern man who kept his face wrapped in bandages and he never got far from the outrageously large weapon he carried. He had a boy with him who was not much older than me and was fairly nice if a bit overly curious. They had come in because Zabuza had apparently gotten inflicted with a poison that was hard to get rid of in a recent fight and needed a skilled healers help.-
The man was dangerous without a single doubt as even while he was totally calm receiving treatment all my instincts were warning me to keep my distance. Once his treatment was over he paid before leaving without so much as a word after explaining the situation initially. I was glad to see him go as it took a whole lot of effort to stop myself from sending an attack his way to get rid of him. I had nothing against the guy personally but when I was getting constant danger signals it was hard not to want to make them stop with extreme prejudice.-
I learned something interesting in my free time though, shadow clone jutsu was incompatible with sage chakra. I don’t mean that the jutsu didn’t accept the stuff but rather it didn’t do anything if I added it. The resulting clones were no different from my normal ones as all that changed was that this time the clone didn’t need to gather natural energy on it’s own first before using a sage art. I couldn’t figure out why this was at first but after a while I understood.-
Shadow clone jutsu worked by splitting ones chakra amongst the clones in order to make the clones have their own thoughts and ability to execute jutsu independently of the original. The trick was that the clones were EXACT replicas of the original with the exception that taking a hit would cause them to disappear. With me being in sage mode all the time my clones naturally were also in sage mode when I created them and as a result got nothing from me adding extra sage chakra to their creation. It kinda sucked but there was nothing for it given the uniqueness of my situation.
There was a REALLY close call during one of the treatments on a ninja from the hidden stone who had been hunting a rogue from their village. See the damage was so bad that my sensei felt the need to summon her contracted animal summon and I had to make myself scarce immediately. The damn slug was a sage and I felt it the moment it showed up which had me stilling all intake of natural energy while getting as far as possible away. The thing didn’t seem to notice the traces of my sage self in the air but focused on the patient thankfully.