A Measure of Darkness - indefinite hiatus -

ZERO: EIGHT

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The Great Bridge — Recapitulation
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I allow myself only two days to play the sick boy stuck in the Leaf Hospital. There are more important things other than teetering on the edge of consciousness.

What happened?

My last memory is so... accurate. There's a subtle definition to it, whereas all my older memories are still right but a little fuzzy. It's like a snapshot in my mind by not some cruddy camera but a high-definition, professional camera.

Obito was/is on the verge of death. After treating his stump, I begun to heal the infection in his body. Then Kakashi appeared, dead tired, not looking too worse for wear.

"I—Rin—I'm..."

(I hope that doesn't mean she's dead. Please, gods, Pain, tell me she's not dead. Don't let her body float in the debris of Madara's territory. Don't let Obito turn evil because of her death.)

Then something grabbed us. Now I can recall an ivory hand grabbing the front of Kakashi's shirt. The boy wasn't nearly as dazed as I felt. Everything blurred together and snapped back and it was too much for my head. I definitely passed out.

Great. This summary didn't help at all.

But I wouldn't need a summary if I wasn't so stupid. I couldn't have been at their side, watching the battle. No. I go out of commission because of a stupid illusion I couldn't break. Piece of shit thinks he actually knows what I'm afraid of. He's wrong. It pisses me off to think a guy like him is the reason Obito had to save me and lose an arm.

I need to practice genjutsu. Learn something to defend myself with. Then I'll study up on Weapon Techniques and—I'll just see what happens in the future.

Unlike others, the extent of my injuries are more mental than physical. So I get pain medication and a scan under Mystic Palm and that's it. I'm told I'll be able to leave today, the morning of my third day. My nurses are not the ones I had before, but very quiet and demure women who slip in, ask no questions, and get out.

Once again I am in a solitary room, no bigger than a closet.

I've learned the hospital's layout. The map commoners see is just the barebones. Layers upon layers exist because of chakra in this world, there's about a thousand more ways to die.

(Some Bloodline Limits and Bloodline Selections are absolutely insane. The elemental types are okay, but then there's the mutant humans with the ability to control their bone growth, spit legit acid, gain energy by eating themselves—the list goes on and on and I had to learn how to treat injuries like those.)

I know I'm in one of the classified rooms. IE, whatever happens in the room doesn't exist. This stay won't be on my hospital record, but my private hospital record. Wait.

That stint at Kanegasaki.

Was that visit on my private record, too? Kanka said she made me stay all for her stupid tests, but maybe that wasn't the full story? Only 14 days elapsed into my stay when I moved rooms and visitors were allowed.

—the door cracks open without a knock or forewarning. For a moment, I expect it's someone coming to kill me. I'm staying on a floor with shinobi and their wounds from missions that they were "never on" to begin with.