Eiju looked Kiyomi straight in the eyes before looking away for a while. He wasn't really feeling bad about this honesty which he was about to show. Technically, he had no reason to feel bad about what he was about to say, no one ever should but that wasn't the source of his suddenly originating pain. It was quite another realization completely.
"Yes, there is one thing that could save Mana even now" the Quack looked at the lifeless body of the girl that actually meant nothing to him and should've meant nothing to the girl that he liked playing around with the thoughts of maybe calling out on a date when he settled down just because he liked her animosity towards him.
Kiyomi winded up a punch but then she clenched her aching ribs and lowered her hand relaxing it. She looked the medical rogue straight in the eyes and walked up to him trying to stare him down, she had a decently intimidating stare but the Quack's firm look didn't budge.
"What does that mean? Why would you withhold that from her then!?" Kiyomi yelled out angrily.
"Because it's a forbidden technique, it isn't that complicated so in theory a skilled medical ninja should be able to use it but it's forbidden, it's a kinjutsu, lovely" the Quack's eyes stared back at Kiyomi, it was the eyes of the Yamanaka that first quivered and started switching sides between focusing on her dying friend and on the Quack.
Kiyomi wasn't sure just what her stance on things was anymore. If the technique that the Quack referred to really was a forbidden one it may not have been proper to bully him into doing it. Truth be told there were no actual legal consequences on using the kinjutsu techniques but they were heavily frowned upon and they were absolutely never taught, most people possessing the knowledge on forbidden techniques were self-taught from various sources such as historic scrolls or black market scrolls containing intel on the techniques. If Quack was revealed to have used a kinjutsu right before the application to join the village ranks he'd sink his odds of actually having his request granted to the bottom.
"What do you care if it's forbidden or not? I know you... People like you. You don't give a shit if a technique is forbidden or not, you just care that it makes you strong, if it can get you to your goals..." Kiyomi whined out. She was honestly on the verge of breaking. Her friend was dying and there was a huge dilemma erected in front of her.
If she bullied the Quack into using that forbidden technique she'd lose his trust and hopes of ever playing around with those thoughts of rebelling against the clan rules, but she'd save Mana's life in the process. She could still let the magician die and she'd morally be in the right – kinjutsu were not to be used, it was more of a moral responsibility but it was responsibility, a badge of honor nonetheless. If she just told Hanasaku things how they actually were the Fifth wouldn't have winked twice and understood it.
"You're right, lovely, I don't care if it's forbidden or not. I couldn't give a horse's shit spouting arse if some bloke sitting in his office decided to ban a medical ninjutsu technique." Quack carefully placed his hand on Kiyomi's shoulder trying to comfort her, normally such gestures of kindness and emotional closeness would've been beyond his care but now he genuinely felt bad.
Eiju felt bad not because he didn't burn with the desire of using the forbidden medical technique but because he simply didn't care that much. Even if healing Mana by conventional means was an option and he tried it and the girl died the Quack wouldn't even frown a muscle. He was emotionless towards human life other than his own or that from which he was to obtain certain use. That was not a fitting emotional state towards a man hoping to legitimize himself.
"I care because of what that technique does. Do you even know why most kinjutsu are forbidden? Impure World Reincarnation is a technique that can bring a dead person back to life but it requires a life and soul of another as an equal exchange, Creation Rebirth and Dead Demon Consuming Seal are techniques that either kill or heavily injure the user beyond the point of ever being able to recover... They are not only vile and morally repugnant techniques, fuck that no one cares about morals these days and lives until their fifth birthday, that they're lethal or costly to the user themselves is what counts" Eiju explained.
Kiyomi turned back at the Quack and placed her hand on his looking him deep into the eyes with the watery eyes of her own. She always tried to do what seemed right, even in this sick world she always tried to be a younger sister worth of her brother's sacrifice, she may not have been his last thought, may not have been the direct reason of his sacrifice but her life was protected by the extension of his sacrifice.
"Will this technique kill you? What will it do to you?" she asked with a firmer and more confident tone. She still considered asking a guy to use a kinjutsu he may have never even used before, there were so many things that could've gone wrong there.
"Not bloody sure. Usually, medical ninjutsu takes the medical ninja's chakra and convert it into universal chakra of healing nature that fuel the regeneration process of the body itself. This kinjutsu doesn't take chakra of the user, it takes their literal life force. It might leave me dying, it might kill me, it might take so much life force that it'll kill me and not even heal Mana. Kinjutsu is tricky bloody business, lovely..." he replied. The weird part was that Eiju felt so guilty by his emotional indifference, having his destination in mind, that he almost was about to do it.
Kiyomi stood up and looked at the rogue, then at Mana and back at the Quack. She sighed. "You have to do it, you have to try it at least. If it doesn't work just stop it"
"What does it matter to you if she lives or dies? She's just another ninja, thousands just like her, even younger, die every day. I've killed younger than her to survive out here myself. I've killed children trying to kill me because I am a rogue who heals rogues. You have no bloody right to ask anything of me, lovely, I've done all I can for all I know..." the Quack's tone changed into a more ironic tone. He decided to just go into Konoha with the same "fuck it all" attitude that carried him through life.
"How dare you!? Did you not swear to save all you can save, even as a rogue, did you not make any vows? Do you have any decency at all?" Kiyomi started to really get pissed at her companion.
Truth be told she was pissed at him the whole time, the only thing that kept her from killing him when she first saw this criminal was gratitude for saving her and Mana's life when they were wounded. Then it was the hope that maybe he was just unfortunate, maybe he could've still been fixed and made into a proper human being. Maybe being a filthy rogue was just a mask one wears that can be washed away with a stream of water strong enough...
"I did swear to the bloke that taught me. The old fart told me that in the world of rogues one must always charge the coins first, then heal the client or leave them to die if they're too dangerous. I've healed the three of you this whole time without charging a single ryo because I hoped to legitimize and truth be told I still have all the right to. I've done all I can, no reasonable medical ninja would resort to kinjutsu ever, I mean those wussies even have precise timing lines of how much chakra spent exactly constitutes "worth saving"... Not for someone who is meaningless in the grand scale, they wouldn't!" the Quack pointed at Mana barely stopping himself from kicking her unconscious body in his anger.
For some reason, this blondie ignited a whole fire of anger that usually wasn't there. Just like this dying brat, she made him remember the path that lead him here which didn't come simply for him... Maybe it was because Eiju actually thought he could be this different person, this good medical ninja guy who smiles to his patients as he heals them instead of charges their pants off of them and then laughs at how funny their exposed bones look.
Kiyomi kneeled closer to Mana and pressed the girl's forehead closer to hers. She didn't know why she had this emotional attachment, she tend to have that kind of kinship with her teammates, it took her entire years and almost dying before she could let go of the memento of her previous team. She almost fought her old teammates when they informed her that they're going to leave her alone with Hanasaku.
The Quack sat down, his anger slowly faded away when he gently pushed Kiyomi's face off of the bloody face of her friend. He looked at those sad eyes and that stain of Mana's blood that slowly dripped off of the forehead of her friend's, taking some time to calm himself.
"Look, I'm doing nothing wrong by letting her die, neither are you. People die, it's not your fault. She ran off alone to fight unknown odds without any rhyme or reason, she made a mistake and sometimes people die even if they do everything right and by the book. It's not supposed to itch you, lovely. It's not your bad..." he tried to calm the young woman down as she was starting to break down.
Crying women were annoying and troublesome, Eiju hopes to one day genuinely form an attachment to his lovely blonde friend but now he just did to avoid that annoying weeping sound he heard a million times before.
"I know... I've no logical reason to care so much but... She looked up to me when we first met, I was almost like her idol, like her older sister and for a moment... For a moment I actually liked that, I really liked feeling like an older sibling and looking out for her. I felt like I was transferring all that love and care that my brother left in me into someone else, it felt like I was moving on past his death by becoming an older sibling to someone else... Like the torch was being passed almost..." Kiyomi replied, slowly and taking her time. She didn't know how long Mana had left or if she was even alive, to begin with.
"Oh, for fuck's sake!" Eiju pushed Kiyomi off of the girl angrily and placed his hands above her. He popped a couple of pills before beginning his healing. If he died healing this fucking brat he may as well have died of transferring his literal life force into this kid and not because that tissue decided to eat his brain or whatever...
The Quack's hands lit up with a bright emerald glow. "One's Own Life Reincarnation!" he forced the chant out through his mouth struggling with the pressure of the poison and the technique sapping his very essence away from him at the same time. The glow around his hands intensified and colored bright blue. After a couple of seconds the tension and the shot out vessels on his forehead settled down, the pain became much more manageable.
"Yeah, I got it. As I've said, when you know what you're doing it ain't nothing to spend an all-nighter for, lovely..." the Quack grunted out, sweat started breaking out on his forehead, he suddenly felt the girl's body lighting up as a reaction to his very life force being transferred into her.
"What if she's dead? What if it's too late? Maybe... Maybe you should stop..." Kiyomi wondered to herself, mumbling under her nose. Quack was such a crazy idiot. He just flipped a full circle around and decided to use a goddamn kinjutsu technique just because she cared so much about this girl... He was literally willing to die just because Kiyomi asked him to. Maybe he wasn't completely hopeless.
"Doesn't bloody matter, this technique was made by some old maniac to transfer life into toys. The cunt liked to kidnap children and keep them in his little house locked down by his crafted and reanimated toy soldiers..." the Quack tried to calm her down without even looking at the blonde.
"It really bloody hurts though so if you'd just... Talk to me through it, I'd appreciate it, lovely..." he added.
"So... You actually did learn it from that toy person?" the blonde asked just trying to keep the conversation going per her friend's request, it may have been a final one for all she knew.
"Nah, that bloke is just where I found out about it from, apparently he was lively enough to survive giving life to one toy at a time so he brought a toy back and waited until his body recovered, sometimes he went back to the village to get healed, telling the medical ninja that he got attacked by some rogues and since he was a farmer outside the village walls everyone bought it... Did I ever tell you how messed up Kirigakure was some time back?"
"I was there once, trust me, I know..." Kiyomi smiled, the experience was scary, being so far away from home in that collection of islands floating in an endless ocean which didn't look so vast from the ground because the islands were so vast. At least all that scary experience made for a bonding moment with this young man willing to risk his life for her emotional stability.
"Maybe now that the reformation is going strong after the Kage Summit everything's going to be fine though? Maybe the Bloody Mist will actually be gone?" the Yamanaka wondered out loud. The Quack laughed out, clutching his aching ribs, his eyes started squinting, Kiyomi touched his forehead and felt the rising heat. He was burning up, at some point he may start go completely delirious if this keeps up.
"Heh, here's to hoping, then again, it happened a couple of times in the past too. People hoping that a new Mizukage or some new law would make big changes, the problem isn't the Bloody Mist in power, it's the Bloody Mist in the hearts of its loyalists. As long as the idea of survival of the strongest and the constant need to check who the strongest in the world are remain strong in them – Bloody Mist ain't going nowhere, lovely. I've seen people as young as five years old slaughtering other five-year-olds because the ideals are strong in them. Regimes don't mean shit, people are what always mattered..." the young man responded, he then smiled.
"I was never a sensor but... This girl's chakra feels nice, it's like drowning in ice cream. I think now I know why that Inuzuka wanted to fight her so much." Eiju smiled as the warm and sweet feeling of the magician's chakra helped him calm down the pain somewhat, the contact between his own life force and Mana's chakra made them closer than people can ever get normally, for some time they shared one life force after all.
"You mean she's some sort of special cookie after all?" Kiyomi's eyes opened wide, what if they were actually rescuing someone really important? What if the magician lied about being a normal kid, what if she was secretly a descendant of the Moon People or some elite clan like the Uzumaki or something?
"Nah, there are just people like that, I've met some. People that let their entire essences be defined by their personality, that one bloody trait. It literally makes their kindness... Or sometimes darkness fill their very chakra. It colors them, makes them a little unique, feel a bit different to a sensor or a ninja who comes in contact with their chakra. There was once this guy in our group that had chakra so dark that it literally petrified any sensor they came in contact with, we used to send him to fight sensors all the time. Then there was this medical girl whose chakra acted like a painkiller, she was too nice for her own good. Both of them are dead now though... Never be all good or all bad, always be what the situation calls you to be, lovely."
"I think you may be delirious or something, you usually don't tell anyone much about your past..." Kiyomi laughed gently, she felt that depressing glee that was both filled with sadness but also quite pleasant. She could possibly lose a friend while another one would be saved.
"Shit... I think I'm running out of juice, if this chick doesn't come back to life soon we'll be majorly screwed over by this. That fucking maniac always said I was too ambitious for my own good and that it'd be the end of me..." the Quack cursed. The black circles around his eyes started turning clear purple and then straight back to a much darker and more clear and terrifying shade of black.
"So... Did you kill that guy? The toy army guy that kidnapped children?" Kiyomi wondered, she tried to change the topic so that she didn't have to confront the fact that this rogue was about to die. For the first time in her life, she felt something other than a wish to murder a rogue ninja.
"Oh yeah... Not because we felt heroic or had an affinity for capes and tight pantaloons, it was because he wanted to give me in to the authorities, I'm a fuckload of more wanted in Kirigakure than I am anywhere else so I couldn't allow that" Eiju sighed wiping the sweat off of his forehead with one hand and then resuming the healing with it.
Kiyomi pouted, "Maybe you can use my chakra for it? Maybe you don't need to die alone, maybe we can both live?"
"No that's just really stupid, chakra isn't water, you can't just pass it around spilling it wherever. It's a lot like blood, except there aren't several different types, there are as many different chakra types as there are people. Some techniques manage to adapt the chakra to another person's but in your case, it'd have to go through my body and then into hers. No offense, lovely, but it's the dumbest idea I've heard in a while..."
Mana's eyes shot wide open, the Quack fell onto his back but managed to stop his fall with his own hands that got overwhelmed by his effort to Kiyomi had to hold him from falling and passing out. It worked, Mana was alive!