Timeline: Late Part I (Four months prior to Sasuke's defection)
Location: The Forest of Quiet Medici, 20 miles from Konohagakure
The distinct scent of Arnica montana and wet loam filled the air. It was a smell that Shizune associated with peace, a rare commodity since Tsunade had taken the hat.
She knelt in the mud, her movements surgical. With a small, curved blade, she severed the stem of the medicinal flower, ensuring the root structure remained intact for next season's regrowth.
"Seventy-two," she counted under her breath, placing the yellow blossom into a seal-lined pouch.
"Tonton, stop eating the moss," she scolded without looking up.
The pig oinked indignantly from a nearby rock, a patch of green hanging from its snout.
Shizune sighed, wiping a smudge of dirt from her cheek. Being the Hokage's assistant meant managing logistics, diplomacy, and Tsunade's temper. But being Shizune meant ensuring the hospital's stockpile of rare antitoxins was maintained. The supply lines from the Land of Rivers had been disrupted by recent bandit activity—or rogue ninja activity—forcing her to make this collection run personally.
She reached for the seventy-third flower.
Her hand stopped.
The air pressure had changed. It wasn't the killing intent of an assassin; it was the heavy, suffocating stillness of an audience waiting for the curtain to rise.
"Your incision angle is correct," a voice drifted down from the canopy, "but you're rushing the extraction. You're bruising the petals."
Shizune didn't freeze. She moved with the practiced fluidity of a veteran Jōnin. In one motion, she grabbed Tonton, leaped backward ten meters, and fanned five poison-tipped senbon between her fingers, ready to throw.
"Identify yourself," she commanded, her chakra flaring.
Sitting on a thick branch, casually leaning against the trunk, was a man in a gray traveler's cloak. He held a small notebook in one hand and a pen in the other. He wasn't looking at her; he was looking at the patch of flowers she had been harvesting.
"Kurobane Sōma," he replied, not looking up. "Independent contractor. Current status: Injured."
He finally looked at her. His eyes were dark, uncomfortably observant.
"And you are Shizune. The niece of Dan Katō. The apprentice of the Slug Princess. The keeper of the books."
"You're a long way from the Bingo Book's safe zones, Sōma," Shizune said, her muscles coiled. She recognized the name. S-Rank potential. High-level Yin Release user. Dangerous. "If you're here to assassinate me, you've made a mistake. Anbu patrols are sweeping this sector."
"I saw them," Sōma dismissed, waving his pen. "Three squads. Rotating on a fifteen-minute axis. Efficient, but repetitive. I slipped through the gap in Sector 4 while they were swapping shift leaders."
He hopped down from the tree. Shizune raised her arm, preparing to loose the needles.
"I wouldn't," Sōma said softly.
He pointed his pen at the flower bed—the entire patch of rare Arnica Shizune had spent three hours locating.
"While you were harvesting the first dozen, I took the liberty of marking the rest," Sōma explained. "I placed a 'Loaded Flora' clause on the roots."
Shizune's eyes narrowed. "Bluffing."
"Condition: If a metal projectile enters the perimeter. Effect: Rapid cellular necrosis."
Sōma smiled, a thin, sharp expression.
"If you throw those needles, the flowers die instantly. You lose the harvest. The hospital loses the antitoxin base. Patients die. Can you calculate the cost of that exchange, Doctor?"
Shizune hesitated. It was a specific, cruel threat. It targeted her responsibility, not her life.
"What do you want?" she asked, lowering her arm slightly but keeping the needles ready.
Sōma opened his cloak. The mesh shirt on his left side was dark with dried blood, and the skin beneath was purple and yellow, swelling angrily.
"A Konoha patrol captain had a heavier hand than I anticipated," Sōma admitted, wincing as he touched his ribcage. "Deep tissue bruising. Micro-fractures on the seventh and eighth ribs. My breathing is shallow, which is interfering with my chakra molding."
He looked at her expectantly.
"Fix it."
Shizune stared at him. "You want me to heal you? You're a missing-nin. You attacked our patrol."
"I critiqued your patrol," Sōma corrected. "They're still alive. Unlike these flowers, if you decide to be difficult."
He took a step closer. Tonton squealed and hid behind Shizune's leg.
"This is a transaction, Shizune. You get your medicine. I get mine. No one dies. No one writes a tragedy today."
Shizune weighed the options. If she fought him, she triggered the trap (if it was real). The noise would draw Anbu, but Sōma was an S-rank evasion specialist; he might escape, and she would lose the critical supplies. If she healed him... she aided an enemy.
But the Hippocratic Oath was a stubborn thing. And the strategic value of the Arnica was higher than the risk of healing a bruised rib.
"Sit," she ordered, her voice cold steel.
Sōma complied, sitting on a flat stone near the flower bed. "You're pragmatic. I like that."
Shizune approached him cautiously. She kept two senbon palmed in her left hand, hidden. She placed her right hand over his ribcage.
"Lift the shirt."
Sōma pulled the mesh up. The bruising was nasty.
"Breathe," Shizune commanded.
Sōma inhaled. He hissed through his teeth.
"You have a hairline fracture on the seventh rib," Shizune diagnosed instantly. "And substantial chakra exhaustion. You've been using high-density Yin release without proper rest."
Her hand glowed green. The Mystical Palm Technique.
Sōma watched the light. He didn't look at her face; he watched the chakra flow entering his body.
"Fascinating," he whispered. "You don't just accelerate cell division. You're manipulating the patient's own chakra to guide the knitting process. It's a collaborative jutsu."
"Shut up," Shizune said. "If you talk, the vibration disturbs the weave."
"Understood."
They sat in silence for five minutes. The forest was quiet, save for the hum of medical ninjutsu. Shizune worked with professional detachment. She felt the texture of his chakra—it was cold, slippery, like mercury. It resisted her at first, suspicious of foreign energy, before accepting the healing.
He's paranoid even on a cellular level, she thought.
"Done," Shizune said, pulling her hand back. "The bone is knit. The bruising will fade in two days. Do not engage in taijutsu for forty-eight hours."
Sōma took a deep breath. He rotated his torso. No pain.
"Excellent," he said. He stood up and adjusted his cloak. "You are more efficient than the field medics I've encountered in Kiri. Less... sentimental."
"It's a job," Shizune said, stepping back to put distance between them. "Now remove the trap."
Sōma looked at the flower bed. He looked back at her.
"There is no trap."
Shizune went rigid. "You lied."
"I created a scenario where cooperation was the most logical path," Sōma said, shrugging. "I leveraged your fear of wasted potential against your desire for conflict. The probability of you healing me was 12% without the threat. With the threat to the flowers? 94%."
He pulled a silver coin from his pocket and tossed it to her.
Shizune caught it instinctively.
"Payment," Sōma said. "For services rendered."
"I don't want your money."
"It's not money. It's a marker."
Sōma turned to leave, walking toward the tree line.
"Shizune," he called back without turning. "The Konoha patrol I fought... their captain had talent. But he was rigid. He broke because he couldn't imagine a world where the ground was slippery."
He paused.
"You're rigid, too. You follow Tsunade's rules. You follow the hospital's rules. Someday, the rules won't cover the injury you're looking at. I wonder what you'll do then."
"I'll do what is necessary," Shizune replied sharply.
"I hope so," Sōma said. "Because the script is changing. And the casualties are going to get messy."
He vanished into the trees.
Shizune stood alone in the clearing. She looked down at the silver coin in her hand. It felt warm.
She flared her chakra, checking it for traps.
Nothing. Just a coin.
But as she squeezed it, she felt a faint, residual hum. A signature.
He didn't trap the flowers, she realized, a cold shiver running down her spine. He trapped the interaction.
She looked at her hand where she had touched his ribs. Her skin tingled.
She quickly finished harvesting the flowers, her movements sharper, faster. She needed to get back to the village. She needed to report this.
But more than that, she felt a lingering irritation. Not because he had tricked her. But because he was right. She had hesitated to throw the needles. She had let him dictate the terms of the encounter because she valued the resources over the risk.
"Tonton," Shizune said, hoisting the pig and the bag of herbs. "We're going home. And I'm going to run a full diagnostic on myself."
As she leaped into the canopy, she didn't notice the single petal of an Arnica flower drift down from the branch Sōma had been sitting on earlier.
It was black. Necrotic.
He hadn't lied about the trap. He had lied about removing it.
The single dead flower was a receipt. A proof of concept.
I could have destroyed it all, the black petal said. But I chose not to.
Shizune landed on the next tree, her heart pounding a little faster than usual. The theater had opened, and she had just survived her first audition.