With his perception sharper now, the flow of his chakra felt clearer than ever.
That much, at least, was true.
Boar, ox, tiger, rat—
Chiba slowed the pace of his hand seals, forming each one deliberately, drawing chakra through his system one step at a time.
Then he activated the chakra scalpel again, without any difficulty at all.
But this time, once he’d let the chakra dissipate, he started varying the seal sequence.
Swapping out two of the seals.
Then, adding in a fraction more of his own chakra control—
After running through the new sequence, a needle-thin coil of compressed chakra took shape in his palm.
Chakra packed dense enough that it had crossed over into something close to solid.
He tested it against a kunai.
Clang!
It deflected the blade with ease.
So these seals help draw the chakra together—they make compression easier.
Though it still takes real chakra control to pull off.
Without that, none of this would work regardless.
Chiba thought it over, then opened his notebook and started writing.
Chakra Needle.
Difficulty: A+.
Effect: capable of contacting solid matter.
Lethality still unverified.
Directions for refinement: thinner gauge, greater number, more durability, lower difficulty threshold.
Not something that could realistically be taught to shinobi at large, as things stand.
That didn’t mean it was useless, though.
The chakra scalpel had a wide range of surgical applications, but it couldn’t handle everything.
Damaged musculature and tendon, for instance—the scalpel struggled to make precise cuts through torn fascia in cases like that.
A needle could.
I need to see it work in practice.
Chiba got up and headed for the office.
As a newcomer, and a student who hadn’t even graduated the Academy yet, unable to perform medical ninjutsu of his own, taking part in an actual operation would require Kitayama Sho’s approval and supervision.
Kitayama Sho, for her part, had all but forgotten the whole incident with the book.
The medical division kept her too busy for it to linger.
It wasn’t wartime anymore, and casualties weren’t pouring in, but training, study, and surgery still ate up most of her hours—there simply wasn’t room left over to dwell on that kind of embarrassment.
Still.
The moment Chiba walked in, the memory surfaced anyway, unbidden.
After a beat of silence, Chiba spoke first.
“Sensei, I just tried folding the chakra scalpel into a technique I’ve been working on.”
“…What?”
Kitayama Sho stared at him, her expression somewhere between confused and are you serious right now.
Weren’t you just learning the scalpel a few days ago?
Are you kidding me.
This kid’s on a roll.
Something in her attitude shifted, just slightly.
After a few seconds of silence, she asked, “What technique?”
“I’ve been calling it the Chakra Needle.”
Chiba ran through the seals quickly and extended his right hand—a needle of compressed chakra took shape in his palm.
“I pushed the shape transformation further, so it has a solid, physical effect now.”
“This technique—”
Kitayama Sho’s eyes widened.
She hadn’t worked in the medical division for terribly long, but she’d accumulated real experience over the years, and the potential use of this technique was obvious to her at a glance.
A specific operation came to mind immediately.
She turned, rifled through a stack of files, and pulled out a patient record.
“Sensei, whose record is this?”
Gansuke Maruboshi.
Officially listed as a genin, but in practice an elite jōnin in everything but rank.
Was she—
“This man suffered a severe fracture to his left lower leg in battle.
Even with prompt field treatment, there were too many bone fragments.
The medical division, after Lady Tsunade left, simply didn’t have the skill to treat it.
In the end, they had to amputate.” Kitayama Sho let out a sigh.
“If someone back then had known a technique like yours, there might have been a real chance to save that leg.”
“Is there a similar procedure coming up?
I’d like to take part, if there is.”
“Cases like that come through every so often.
Give it some time.”
Chiba didn’t have to wait long.
The very next day, Kitayama Sho took him into the operating room.
Not to operate himself, of course—just to observe, to get used to the environment and the rhythm of surgery, so he wouldn’t freeze up or fumble if a real chance came along later.
Not everyone was on board with the idea, though.
Kanpō, for one—the head of the medical division, ranked even above Kitayama Sho.
But she invoked the Hokage’s name, and he had little choice but to allow Chiba to tag along and observe.
After a handful of operations, Kanpō’s opinion of the boy had shifted considerably.
Chiba was clumsy at first, no question, but he treated life with the seriousness it deserved, and his hands were quick to learn.
By the second operation, he was already contributing small, useful things without getting in anyone’s way.
Half a month later, the case Chiba had been waiting for finally came in.
A chūnin of the Nara clan, also serving in ANBU, had taken an exploding tag directly on a mission.
His left arm was shattered, and the blast had driven all manner of debris into the skin and muscle beneath it.
The surgery would be brutally difficult.
“With this level of fragmentation—”
“We operate simultaneously, or we won’t finish in time,” Kitayama Sho said.
She looked toward Chiba, hesitating before she spoke.
“Sensei, let me help.”
“You?”
Kanpō’s brow furrowed.
Chiba was talented, no question—but he’d never actually taken part in an operation like this.
A patient this critical, and if things went wrong, the failure could hit the boy hard.
He thought it over.
“This is too difficult a case.
You should stick to maintaining the medical jutsu for now.”
“I’d like to help clear the debris and set the shattered bone.”
“Fine.
I’ll assist you.”
Before Kanpō could object, Kitayama Sho settled the matter with a single sentence—earning herself a look from Kanpō that could have killed on the spot.
She didn’t bother explaining further.
She’d already discussed the technique with the others, and the consensus had been much the same across the board—
A technique with real promise.
Chiba was assigned to the leg.
He didn’t dwell on it.
He got straight to work.
Seals.
Then the technique.
The chakra needle took shape in his hand.
Kanpō went quiet for a moment, then threw himself into the operation as well.
The patient’s condition was severe.
There was no time to waste.
Focused, breath steady, Chiba found he could sense the position of the embedded debris with startling clarity now.
Between that and the steadiness of his hands and chakra, he’d cleared away several fragments before long.
The minutes ticked by.
Before anyone quite registered it, he’d worked his way from the foot up to the left hip, the chakra needle in his right hand and the chakra in his left never once pausing.
Kanpō and Kitayama Sho stared, stunned.
His hands moved fast.
They watched him work a moment longer, and their shock only deepened.
This was—
His left hand was running the chakra scalpel technique they’d already shown him, but what his right hand was maintaining looked closer to a fine debris-extraction technique—except Chiba’s version was nothing more than raw chakra suction, simply drawing the cleared fragments out directly.
The room fell silent.
The surgeons exchanged a glance, then quietly stepped back to give him room.
Without anyone quite deciding it, the operation had shifted—Chiba was leading it now, the thin chakra needle weaving through the shattered bone in the man’s left arm, slicing through and clearing away flesh and foreign matter with each pass.
The rest of the team worked to fit the bone fragments back together behind him.
Time passed.
Eventually, every fragment had been set in place, and under the medical ninjutsu, the shattered bone began knitting back together, the wounds the needle had opened closing almost as fast as they’d been made.
“All right, that’s enough, kid.
Get some rest.
We’ll take it from here.”
“Huh?”
Chiba blinked, surfacing from the state of total focus he’d been locked in, and a wave of dizziness hit him all at once.
“The worst of the damage was on his left side, and you’ve already cleared out most of it.
We can handle the rest.
Besides, you’re running low on chakra.”
Kanpō said it gently.
If his warmth toward Chiba before had come from simple recognition of talent, what he felt now was something closer to respect.
A shame, really, that the boy could never learn medical ninjutsu properly.
Otherwise, there was no telling—this kid might have grown into another Tsunade.