Doctor, Doctor, Gimme the News!

Having drank a wonderful cup of hot mint tea, Kaworu was feeling much better. He didn’t even need to, to be honest. For some reason, inside the actual Sunagakure, the temperature was quite controlled, so much so he almost forgot about the Jasmine Dragon. But eventually he did go there, and the affable gentleman who worked there with his nephew served him the sweetest mintiest tea he had ever been served. It had taken a while to get served, to be sure, but that’s where the love went, into the patience to boil the water at the right temperature, to put the proper amount of mint leaves, and to put the sugar at the right time for it to meld into the tea seamlessly. Drinking it, you could almost taste the liquid sugar, and the mint’s flavour would burst through your mouth and immediately liberated your breathing, your nasal cavity cleared of all its stress to allow you to breathe, and your lungs expanded with the slightest pull of the muscles.

Well, that would happen if he had a skeleton and lungs and such. But it did refresh his body. It was nice, and savory, and well worth the ryo he left on the table.

At the hospital, the atmosphere was colder still, and the sterilized scent within it bothered Kaworu, who after the tea now felt nauseated. He made towards the frontdesk. “Hi! Wonderful hospital, I love the smell. Can you point me in the direction of the one called Kenshin? I must see him about my eyes.”

Mia, oh lovely Mia, what pretty eyes he did have. And she did too! Or perhaps it was just the reflection of his own eyes he could see in hers? It mattered little. “Ah, yes, the smell of a clean place might do that. My nose is much more used to the fragrant forests, what with their blankets of flowers, sap bleeding trees, animals dumplings everywhere.” He looked off into the distance, although his eyes were actually gazing at the cabinet on the other side of the desk. “Thank you so much for the information, miss.” He winked, and started moving away.

Whistling as he made his way down the corridor, he looked at the black line on the floor in between ganders upwards to prevent himself from comically striking a medical professional, a door, or a stretcher with a dying person. Within himself, he could feel his tendrils hugging the byakugan closely, connecting to it to make sure it was kept alive, but otherwise unable to connect to the optic tissues that would allow him to utilize the eye as it was meant to. Before long, he found himself in Kenshin’s private study, however it may be described in the following post, but only saying for the nonce his confused and introverted “Aro? Hello?”

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WC: 215
TWC: 474

The morgue was a chilly place, and a vast one too. Four metallic beds would’ve allowed for the draining and examination of corpses, while the many refrigeration units along the walls would preserve bodies. A low “wow” would escape the lips of the Tau as he observed the room and took in the high grade of expertise that had gone into outfitting it. His eyes eventually rested on the figure of Kenshin once he made the comment. “Oh, I apologize if I interrupted, doctor!” He moved closer, unless something in Kenshin’s presence urged his better instincts to stay away. “I talked with an extremely helpful elderly man at the gates today, I didn’t catch his name, but he told me I could come here to find the best ophthalmologist in town. Well, he didn’t say you were an ophthalmologist, to be fair, he just said to come and meet you.”

He moved the white eye within himself from his chest to his right shoulder, and then down his arm. “You see, I got some knowledge on the healing arts, and my own bloodline affords me some… surgical feats. But I was unable to connect the optic nerves of this eye to make it work.” He lifted his right hand, with palm facing upwards, and from his hand a white orb ascended from an open slit in the palm, held by many black tendrils, holding it snuggly within the grip of the Tau. “Do you know how I can attach this to my head and make it work? I’m afraid I am not knowledged enough in the ninja healing arts for this level of operation.”

When the silvery haired doctor closed his eyes Kaworu felt a pang of panic within his brain; a normal human might’ve felt it on the pit of their stomach, except a Tau had no such organs. When Ken opened his eyes again, they were different; one was lilac, and the other a red backdrop with a pattern in black. These were not regular eyes, the Tau could tell. Even with his lackluster understanding of the ninja world and the many bloodlines that populated it, the dramatic exposure of these eyes and Kenshin’s own words gave that away. The lilac eye was the one that drew more attention though, as it looked eerily similar to the one in Kaworu’s palm, in the grasp of his black tendrils.

Kenshin explained that he wasn’t quite an ophthalmologist as Han had led Kaworu to believe, albeit Kaworu himself had admitted earlier that Han didn’t explicitly say that, and instead just directed him to the silver haired man. However the interesting part was the transplant of bloodlines that Kenshin claimed to be proficient in. He said Kaworu would have a hard time performing a transplant on himself, which lead him to believe there was that possibility regardless.

Then, came the offer. A handsome reward for this one eye, the eye that Kenshin himself bore in his socket. Surely, an offer that couldn’t be refused. And yet… “I see.” The pun was lost in Kaworu’s reflection. He looked at Kenshin. “If it’s all the same to you, I would rather keep the eye. If it’s good enough for you to have one, I want to keep this one for myself.”

“In that line of thinking, I am willing to pay you for this knowledge of transplanting bloodlines; I got… erm…” He retracted the eye into his palm, reaching for his wallet. “...twenty nine, thirty, thirty one, thirty two… Huh, I can pay you thirty four hundred ryo? Would that be enough for you to teach me how to do it?”

The Tau heard in earnest as the silver haired man explained the procedure; he seemed to have intimate knowledge on how to perform the operation, not only from a medical standpoint, but from a Tau’s point of operation. As he spoke, Kaworu attempted the operation; he felt for the sea of threads that swam within, and had three threads within his skull feel for his eye, the sensation nothing new as he was used to feeling his own threads always in contact with his eye. Two threads embraced the right eye of the Tau, as a third one touched the optic nerve. The sensation was rather uncomfortable, but he beared with it, feeling the tendril encircling and constricting the nerve.

The next part would require that Kaworu pull out his own eyeball. He didn’t feel at liberty to do that just yet, so he halted operation and instead heard the instruction. Push the eye out while holding the optic nerve in place, place the byakugan’s nerve endings close to his own optic nerve, and perform a high grade medical jutsu such as “Mystical Palm”; so that was what Kaworu had to aim at.

When Kenshin spoke, and allowed his own tendrils to visit the room, Kaworu’s eye shot wide open. Another Tau! How long had it been since Kaworu had interacted with one of his own people? He looked Kenshin in the eye with raised eyebrows and agape mouth, stepping closer before looking at the door to make sure they were alone, the pangs of paranoia pulsing within him as the victim of prosecution he was. “You are a Tau!” What eloquent statement of the obvious. Tau were, as Kenshin had stated, organ hunters, and not a bloodline that could be obtained by the masses.

“My name, right!” He felt the tendrils within his head relax and retract back onto the pitch black mass. “I am Kaworu Sanjuro. I was chased away from the Earth Country when they found out my family was made of monsters. A sentiment you might be familiar with. Pleasure to meet you, Kenshin of the Tau.”

“Now… would it be overstepping my bounds to ask you to teach me this Mystical Palm technique, and how this eye operates?” As Kenshin had mentioned earlier, he was the best at transplanting bloodlines, so it stood to reason he would know this technique. Perhaps the Tau would even sympathize with him given the bloodline they shared.