Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars nor Naruto.

Sakura Haruno's brow furrowed in consternation as she withdrew her chakra-encased hands and turned to her assistant, Kiyoshi Mori. As opposed to Sakura, Mori was using sterilized gloves and they were red with blood. Normally, Sakura would have been the same but this special case required the touch of someone with a splendid control of chakra- cue her presence.

"Perform another blood transfusion for the patient! There is still metal particulates remaining inside."

"Hai, Sakura-dono."

Sakura had to admit that this patient was a special case. He had a metal hand which, in itself wasn't overly strange considering Sasori of the Red Sand had done the same to a friend of his, if Chiyo-sama's words were indeed true. Albeit, working with wood was very different than working with metal. She also noted that the metal connected with flesh in a very odd way...as if her patient's hand had been burned off.

She could to imagine of anything other than a very precise and powerful fire jutsu to do something like that. Perhaps even a very-well controlled lightning jutsu. Very few people had such control. Even Kakashi-sensei had difficulty handling the power of the Chidori, and that was because he had made the technique.

That wasn't all she had to worry about. The young man had managed to get himself hurt with stray pieces of metal and debris, some of which had penetrated skin and gone a bit deeper than it was safe. Sakura had already been operating on him for two hours roughly and her job was growing ever so difficult as each piece burrowed itself deeper and deeper. She ran the risk of tiring the young man's body so much, he would most likely flat-line of the table before he managed to bleed out.

Trust Naruto to be the one to bring her such a problematic case.

Mori returned, entering the well-lit room with bags of blood ready to be used. She would have preferred to will the young man's body into creating more blood but that would got both ways- the absence of required nutrients would make his body weaker and no amount of blood would be able to bring him back. Out of habit- a well placed one at that considering who were the majority of her patients- Sakura performed another scan.

The first scan had very nearly shocked her to silence. The man's chakra coils were something else, truly, but that the time, her interest had lain solely on the condition of her patient. Now she had a few seconds to marvel once more at the system of chakra this man possessed. She suddenly understood why her chakra was draining faster than she could help.

Only Naruto would find problems like these.

"There," Mori announced suddenly, bringing Sakura back down to the moment, "all ready, Sakura-dono."

"Good. Just three more pieces and we can close this incision." And then it was over. After this, she would seek Naruto and get answers. Hopefully, he'd get difficult so that she could throttle the answers out of him.

Steady hands reached out, one with the forceps and the other green with healing chakra. The small particles of metal were hidden underneath a layer of flesh but her mind quickly mapped out the incision she could have to make. She wasn't the best medic-nin for nothing. By her side, Mori held out a small tin which already held tiny flecks of metal inside. Wordlessly, Sakura snagged a small bit with her forceps and dropped it in the tin.

She did the same once more with little fanfare. It was the third fleck that made her pause. "It's cutting in deeper. The risk increases if I choose to pursue it with the methods we have tried."

"You have another thing in mind, Sakura-dono?"

She did. But it was experimental and largely theory at this point. It could go both ways. Fifty-fifty, as they said. Letting the fleck remain in there would be a death sentence and Sakura couldn't allow that to happen. This young man didn't deserve that, no matter what or who he might be.

"Mori-san, I will need your assistance in this."

"Certainly."

"What I am about to do is something I have not tried to its full capacity since I lack the amounts of chakra needed for this, especially right now. I would appreciate any donations you'd be willing to make- this technique requires that I purify the chakra, which incidentally drains a bit more than I can afford alone."

"I am ready when you are, Sakura-dono," Mori stated, holding out her hands expectantly. Touched by her assistant's loyalty and willingness to go above and beyond what was required of her, Sakura made a mental note to promote the woman. For now, both had a difficult task ahead of them.

"Right then...let's begin."

"So what do you think, Shikamaru?"

Hands clasped in front of him, covering a large portion of the most expressive features that counted when it came to Shikamaru Nara, Naruto supposed there were worse people he could have gone to. Shikamaru would not reveal much unless he had a lot of data from which to draw his theories from. And the mystery man in Sakura's operating room was certainly something to wonder about, especially when it came to the way he had arrived to Konoha's eastern borders.

Naruto certainly had a somewhat active imagination- he needed it for half the pranks he did- but what his mind concluded to was almost a fantasy. Sky-fairing craft as elaborate as the hunk of metal had seemed were things of the imagination. Konoha's own efforts to build a simple paper and wooden construct had failed, and that was after they had joined up with the intelligence division with Kumogakure. If paper and wood was still an impossibility within the nations…

From where did Mystery Man come from?

The first thing Naruto's mind came to was the threat such a contraption posed. As a Hokage, his first interest was that of protecting his village and he was certain that the metal contraption had the capability of being used as a weapon. Nobody would leave home base without a weapon.

Ino's team had done their jobs to the letter and Yuki's sketches joined those of the ANBU's compiled files that were being updated even as they waited for Sakura to finish surgery. No detail was ignored. Shikamaru had been staring at those drawings for half an hour already but if Naruto had any opinion on this, it was that there was little to draw from. They had no precedents to this. There was nothing similar to this at all.

The Rokudaime sighed. Huffing, Shikamaru rolled his eyes, "A little patience wouldn't do you bad, Hokage-sama."

"I am not making a fuss about you keeping your mouth shut. I'm just worried, y'know? This, alll of this, is just plain weird."

"You're telling me. I've got five theories but I want to know more about the mystery man before I say anything. It's not a good idea to influence other people with conjecture before the truth is revealed."

"I agree. Sakura-chan's almost done with her work. We should be able to corroborate with any of her findings...perhaps we might even get to talk with the guy."

Shikamaru nodded, crossing his arms over his chest. "You've kept this all a secret. Why?"

"You very well know why, Shikamaru," Naruto said darkly, "I still can't let my guard down."

Not after Konoha intelligence had found out the secret weaponization of Iwagakure's territory. It might not mean much but if they were still cleaning up after the war, anything was anything. Taking care of a situation before it became a problem was quickly becoming the policy with the major villages.

"What do you suggest?"

Raising an eyebrow, Naruto wondered when his advisor began trying to foist his job back on Naruto. Laziness or not, this wasn't Shikamaru's way of operating. The Nara was tentatively probing the situation. Unfortunately, Naruto wasn't in the mood.

"Can't start planning before we're sure the man will live."

Inwardly, Naruto couldn't help wondering what his predecessors would do. It didn't matter. It was up to him to make the decision and like he had already told Shikamaru, none of the older Hokages ever had this particular situation before. .

Both shinobi stirred when a masked ANBU appeared directly in Naruto's field of vision. "Hokage-sama, Haruno-san has asked for an audience. She has finished operating on her patient."

Speak of the devil and she shall send for you. "Thank you, Neko-san. You are dismissed."

The stout dismissal was accepted with a bow and a puff of smoke. Naruto turned to Shikamaru and the two men wordlessly left the Hokage's Tower. Sakura was waiting for them as patiently as she could, which was, sad to say, with very little patience. Her green eyes glittered with annoyance and a bit more; no doubt he'd be hearing more about that.

"Sakura."

"Hokage-sama, mind coming with me?"

Without waiting for a response, she stalked off, leaving the two men behind her exchanging unsettled glances. Her no-nonsense attitude when it came to her practice often unraveled her fiery temper, reminiscent of the woman who had taught her everything she knew related to the medical arts. Sakura was respected for it, as her patients knew she was trustworthy and sincere in her desire to help them. However, for all she cared, the downside was that she often took the emotional side of things- the side of her patients- without considering the situation to its full perspective.

No doubt they both would have an argument today. That was to be expected. He could no longer afford to care for a single individual, not when he had a whole village of people to care for.

They passed dozens of rooms until she turned left into a dark passageway where only a select few had clearance to head inside. This was the cover passageway into the ANBU accommodations where the ANBU themselves went to fix up after a mission. Or where high-risk prisoners or guests were accommodated. The area was protected by decades-old seals that allowed only the keyed in blood recipients to enter- namely the Hokage, ANBU, Head Medical Specialist, and a few others.

Naruto had actually wanted to work with the base seal and augment it in a way that he wouldn't have to slash his hand open every time he entered. The seals were old, but they had never needed maintenance in the way other seals did so it ended up being overlooked for other security measures around Konoha. Perhaps he would, once he got this out of the way.

"You've certainly brought me something special today, Naruto. I can't believe your luck hasn't changed."

Oh...Sakura wasn't mad. She was worried. That was cause for worrying.

"Well, you're going to have to clarify, Sakura-chan. I don't know what exactly it was that I brought you."

They finally came up to the room Naruto had assigned their mysterious guest. Sakura led the way, picking up the report files by the entrance. Her fingernails tapped absently on the paper. The man had been given hospital robes to replace the mess he had on before, and bandaged and sleeping, he looked a bit more human.

"He...this man should be an impossibility. Naruto, when I was operating on him, my scans revealed his chakra coils are still developing. His chakra coils should have finished developing earlier but his haven't."

Shikamaru blinked. "Are you certain of this?"

"I did the scans myself! More than five times. All of them showed the same thing."

"But something else is bothering you…"

Sakura bit her lip, nodding. "Hai. When I tried to investigate the reason why his coils were like that, and with my assistant's help, I managed to come to the root of the reason. During the operation, my chakra was lessening in potency… I was initially losing the battle. I didn't understand why. My control is the best; it has to be for this sort of work. Then I borrowed chakra from Mori and I knew why."

With a careful hand, Sakura withdrew the papers from the folder, her hands still and sure even as she herself seemed to have trouble even thinking of what had happened. It was a strange concept for Naruto, who had always seen Sakura as a pillar of stability, even at her worst. After all, she had been the one thing holding Team 7 together for a long time.

His eyes caught sight of the content of the papers and he found himself clasping a particular sheet in his grasp. Sakura seemed to expect it, for she allowed it, wordlessly taking a seat next to her patient. Shikamaru approached but Naruto's attention was solely focused on the diagrams.

He'd seen it before, when Tsunade-baa-chan had performed similar diagnostics after a particularly nasty fight with Akatsuki. It was a pre-drawn sketch of the human body with lines pointing away to detail the status of the patient before, during, and after surgery. His had been abnormal due to the fox being sealed in him; his chakra levels had been off the chart, and his coils were naturally bigger than the average shinobi.

This diagnostics were...surprising. Mind-boggling, actually.

The chakra levels were close to his own as well, but with differing details, namely the balance. His was a healthy mixture of his own, and the fox's purified one as well. This man's chakra was of a kind that Sakura had not been able to verify.

Unknown.

It must have haunted Sakura. An unknown meant that they were walking in blind. But now he understood what Sakura had been dealing with. The notes on the margin said it all.

"He was siphoning off your chakra," Shikamaru realized, voice so low, Naruto would have almost missed it if it weren't for the utter silence within. "He was healing himself but doing it so inadvertently, he was interfering with your attempts."

"He is a sea of chakra," Sakura said, "but unlike Naruto, he is the chakra. If I were to say something about all that is that he's never used chakra the way we do but he has enough of it to be a potential shinobi. If his body's pattern continues, his chakra coils won't fully mature until another twenty years, which is already a medical impossibility."

The blond Hokage turned away from his friends.

Humans were conduits for chakra, simple containers. They had a specific amount, some of it due to genetics and another part due to the processes of life. Humans couldn't generate it in the way Sakura was saying. There were exceptions but they were called the Bijuu- and they weren't human. Beings composed entirely of chakra; powerful and mighty. He had one in his stomach. And there was another one in front of him, except that this one was in the shape of a human and not something else.

'He is not one of ours. Not like us.'

Shifting, Naruto expertly hid his reaction to Kurama's voice. They hadn't talked all morning but he supposed that was due to the very boring mission he had undertaken earlier.

'But he is an anomaly. Not a dangerous one to you...if you take the right path.'

"There's another thing I need to report," Sakura announced, moving away from her patient to the drawers on the opposite wall. She withdrew the bloodstained and dirty clothing the man had been wearing when Naruto had found him. "I did a cross-analysis on his clothing to ascertain where he had been."

Shikamaru looked a tad bit more interested now. This was something up his alley. "What did you find?"

"No traces of anything worth mentioning. It's like he lived in an environment where there was no life. However, whilst that was a dead-end, I took to investigating what his clothing was made of. I thought that maybe we could work on the origins as well."

"Well?"

"I've half a mind to strangle Naruto here. The clothing is made of synthetic stuff and the fibers are not cotton nor anything we might use. Whoever this man is, he's not from the shinobi nations, nor of the samurai nation."

Shikamaru turned back to Naruto, pinning him in place with a glare that warned him from leaving before they settled it here. "What will you do now?"

"We isolate this man. When he wakes up, I want the best of the TI there- bring Ino into this if you must. We need to make sure this man isn't a danger. If he proves to be a danger, he will be eliminated, but if he doesn't...well, we'd be fools not to take advantage of the situation. He came in a strange transport, he does not have ties to our style of living, nor does he seem to have comrades to fetch him."

"You're hoping he's not something more, aren't you?"

Sighing, Naruto rubbed his forehead tenderly with the back of his hand, "I just don't want another war. Not so soon after that. For our village, I hope he isn't proof of another war." Turning to Sakura, he nodded, "I'll speak with you later on this."

It was three days after Naruto had conferred with both Shikamaru and Sakura that the young man they had rescued finally woke up.

Aside from Naruto, Sakura, and Shikamaru waiting within sight, five other shinobi awaited within the shadows; two were ANBU, and the other three were members of the Konoha's TI Force. Among them was Ino Yamanaka, here at the behest of the Rokudaime Hokage. She had been alerted a day prior to what was expected of her and although she wondered at the aggressiveness behind Naruto's actions, she could agree with them. She was closely 'acquainted' with the rumors of an incoming attack on the fragile peace that had settled after the all-out war with the Akatsuki, Sasuke, and other enemies.

One thing she was still iffy on, however, was doing something to that very handsome young man in Sakura's ANBU wing. To think the pinky had that all to herself and all she could think about were the particulars about the man's chakra. Ino would have tapped that. Sai wasn't doing his job, in any case.

Oh, but she was spacing out.

Shikamaru had come to her earlier today to warn her of the dangers that she could be facing. Beings of chakra weren't to be messed with, no matter the size- she only had to remember that incident with the one-tailed tanuki to get her point across. Ino had to wonder what the other villages would think once this particular secret came out of the bag. Naruto would have to handle this incident very carefully.

Well, it seemed he was. Her very own students had not said a peep about it, even when she had asked. Their refusal to speak had further intrigued her. Ino Yamanaka was training an intel recovery team and their stout refusal had seemed a step in the right direction, but not when it was directed towards her. They were under Lee's kind care right now.

To think Naruto would have a paranoid bone in his body! Well, the man had learned from the best, she supposed, and who was she to question their Hokage? As far as she was concerned, he deserved his position. She would let him and Shikamaru worry about this mess. All she was here to do was to make sure Sakura's sexy patient didn't end up being a raving lunatic with ideas of megalomania.

After this, she was cleaning her hands, dusting them off, and returning to finish her report on the rapist scum Kiba's team had brought back for her.

That is, that was her intention...until Sexy Patient woke up.

Two things came to mind when the young man vaulted up, opening bright blue peepers. One: she was definitely changing professions if this is what Sakura got on a daily basis- because really, there was no shame in admiring; and two: show time. Ino strolled up, getting within sight of the young man, blinking when he only watched her through full lashes and a sleepy cloud. The scar over his eye looked especially endearing but she had a feeling it wasn't gained through the conventional means.

Her appearance would hopefully calm him. It was why she dressed in her civilian kimono a lot of the times; conveying a peaceful, almost ethereal aspect to men ensured she would be treated with respect. Anko always argued against it but Ino had yet to fail with her method.

The man licked his lips, probably feeling parched after four days of sleeping. Sakura quietly moved in to hand him a glass of water but even as the man accepted it calmly, he didn't drink.

"Hello, my name is Ino. You're in Konoha's hospital, healing from the damage you undertook a few days ago. Mind telling us what is your name?"

She instantly knew something was wrong. The man's eyes widened in surprise and he tilted his head to the left, looking more than a tad bit confused.

"Are you okay?" Behind her, a wave of unease settled, but she remained undeterred. "Come on, tell me- are you in any pain?"

The man responded. Usually, Ino would have listened, understood, and spouted off her next question basing herself on the answer. Today, that would be impossible. He spoke in gibber-gabber, his words sounding like fluid water running- clear and soothing, despite their tone, but incomprehensible to her. Incomprehensible to any of her comrades, and basing herself on that, what she said was equally unintelligible to him.

"Uh- guys, we've got a problem," Ino said, almost whining.

This was not on the agenda.