Finding a New Path

Ty knew with his father now gone, his extended leave from the military would be coming to an end shortly. He had spent a lot of time thinking about what it was he wanted to accomplish as a shinobi. He had gone on missions of all kinds and swapped blows with some of the village's best fighters. In all that time he never felt very confident in his fighting abilities. Someone was always faster, or stronger, or more clever than him. His reckless fighting style only served to make that reality more apparent. It was time to come to terms with the fact that he just wasn't suited towards hand to hand combat. Now standing in his backyard training area he was coming to terms with his weakness all over again.

As silly as it was to him in this moment, there was a time when Ty thought emulating his mother was his best path forward as a ninja. In hindsight and as harsh as it sounded, copying the moves of someone who never amounted to much in her career was probably a bad idea from the start. Still it helped him feel closer to the woman who raised him in a time when he had nobody to lean on. He would forever remember the way his father's eyes would light up when he watched Ty train in the backyard. The old man would always give him pointers and compliments despite not being able to physically help with training. It helped them both remember better times and so it became a real exercise in bonding for the two of them. Because of this Ty couldn't help but feel a little lost trying to practice on his own. He knew the moves still despite how rusty he was, but the passion behind them felt gone.

The young ninja would plop down on the back porch where his dad used to sit and soak in the sun. He fought back tears and just stared at the dirt while his mind drifted from one memory to the next. It was painful to even try training like this. He stood up and went into the dark and lonely house and began to sift through some of his father's old belongings. The walls were lined with medical textbooks that his dad used to study religiously. He was also a shinobi medic and a pretty decent one at that. He knew exactly how his own condition would progress and the family saved a lot on medical bills by having his father diagnose his own symptoms and treatments. 

Ty himself had studied many of these textbooks in hopes of being useful in a dire situation. He knew a thing or two about field treatment and how to stabilize someone with deep wounds. He was obviously also well versed in infection control considering his own ailment. Still, he didn't feel like he could truly call himself a medic. There were so many things he didn't know how to deal with. Maybe this would be his new path forward. Maybe leaning into his medical experience would prove more productive than continuing to train physically. He decided to give it a try because it would at least occupy a large chunk of time.

It was just before noon when he settled in to start reading the basics and the sun was setting when he finally decided it was time for a break. His head was pounding from reading in a dimly lit room all day and his mind was filled with technical terms and anatomy info. All canopic children learn the basics of human anatomy at a young age so that they can better understand what's happening in their own bodies, but there was a lot more to people than the basic stuff they were taught. This would definitely not be a small undertaking, but it would be worth it in the end. Knowing this stuff could be the difference between saving a comrade's life or watching them die. Typhon had had enough death in his vicinity for a good while and was not going to be the reason why another person he cared about wound up dead.

The day would pass by slowly but surely as the young man's eyes strained and eventually started to sting. He would have to call it quits on the reading for now, but he could always attempt a practical application. The textbooks were filled with various exercises that a prospective iryo ninja could try. The most basic seemed to involve taking a fish fresh out of water and applying steady chakra throughout its nervous system to keep it alive. It seemed a little barbaric, but he figured practicing with a fish had to be more humane than trying it on your fellow man. The trip to the market was quick and uneventful, but he returned home with a few fish still alive in bags of cold water. They were rather expensive as Hoshi was situated in a desert, so Ty hoped it would all be worth it.

He set up a table to work at and layed out one of the icy fish. He only had moments to start before the thing would begin suffocating. He placed his hands roughly an inch away from the creature's scales and let chakra start to flow out. He had used healing hands like this a few times before, but had no real concept of what he was doing other than repairing damaged tissue. Now he knew the full capabilities of this technique and only needed to train in the muscle memory for it. After a few minutes of hard work the fish would start to flop up and down on the table. A sign that he managed to keep it alive and well until it thawed enough to move around. 

He was happy that his first attempt was a success, but it certainly wasn't easy. He wiped a thick layer of sweat from his brow before looking at the two remaining fish. He was tired, but he had paid all that money already. He might as well push through and try to test him limits while he was at it. He continued with the other two and by the end of it was coughing and sputtering for air. He had succeeded but was drenched in sweat and felt light headed. He had burned through a lot of chakra and had to remain completely focused the entire time. He would need to do this exercise dozens more times before it would truly be down to muscle memory. That would need to be a stretch goal for him because for this day, he was completely done. 

He cooked up one of the training fish alongside some stir fried vegetables and sat down for a good meal. It was more lavish than he was used to but still, eating alone felt hollow. He used to love sitting down to eat with his father. It didn't matter what the food was. The company and quality time was what was important.

The young shinobi would repeat this cycle with a few other training exercises for roughly a week before he really started to see progress. The techniques were becoming easier and required a lot less focus. This was always the part of training that he enjoyed most. When you could start to really see all the fruits of your labor. This would be the beginning of his new training regimen. He would study as much as he could from various medical books and then try to test put those knew skills with practical exercises. He hoped after a few months of this he would finally be able to truly consider himself a medical professional. Who knows, maybe some day he could open up a clinic of his own and compete with those profit driven hospitals.

(WC 1314)
Exit

Claims


13 chakra