...Could they stop shouting? He was right there.
Might guy wrapped his arm around Saul's shoulder with a powerful grip while carrying Lee in his other arm. Then he jumped. With a single, powerful leap, Saul found himself soaring upwards through the skies of Konoha. Was this guy even human!?
Guy caught his disbelieving stare and flashed him a wide, toothy grin with his signature wink. Saul was almost blinded by the reflection of the sun on his pure white teeth.
"Where do you want to land, son?"
Why the hell were you asking that after you jumped!? Saul just silently pointed to clearing he recognized as Team Eight's Training Grounds, speechless. Guy grinned.
"Alright then, here we go!"
He angled their bodies towards the area, holding the two of them out in his arms like wings as he used the air resistance to guide their falling forms toward the training grounds. Clearly he was used to this method of travel. Saul was not.
He had to forcefully calm himself as they hurtled toward the ground at terminal velocity. It would be fine, he had trained his body enough. It could handle something as simple as this, even if Guy messed up. Thankfully however, Guy was not playing around with the injured Lee present. A short distance away from the ground, he tossed them both back up into the air. This massively slowed their descent while it sped up his own.
*BOOM*
Guy crashed into the ground at the next moment, sending a bunch of dirt and grass flying as his body made a crater on impact. Then he reached up and lightly caught the two falling Genin.
Guy flashed him a smile.
"I'm going to bring help from the Hospital. You'll be fine on your own in the meantime, right?"
"Yes sir."
With another leap, the man disappeared. Saul took the chance to examine his wounds. The scary looking ones were the two blade wounds in his back, but as Saul investigated further with the mystical palm, he quickly found out that they were not the ones to worry about.
There was a poison spreading slowly through the needles in his arm. It attacked the cells in his blood, muscle, and tissue, then spread throughout the rest of his body. Rock Lee's breath was coming in short bursts now - he was clearly having difficulty breathing.
Cold sweat poured down Lee's face as he looked up at Saul who was clearly growing slightly worried.
"D-doctor-san. A-am I going to be alright? I feel lightheaded."
"My name is Saul, and I've treated many people at the hospital already. You'll be fine, Lee. I'll make sure of it."
Well, it was now or never. Saul made two other clones and went to work. One clone continually formed hand seals for a Jutsu he hadn't fully learned yet, another clone took his arm and began draining the blood in the area as a desperate stopgap, while the main body continued using the Mystical Palm to keep Rock Lee stable.
The Jutsu Saul was trying to perform was the Delicate Illness Extraction Technique. It was an extremely difficult technique not just in performance but also execution. Like the mystical palm ninjutsu, one would insert their chakra into the patient's body. Unlike the mystical palm however, said chakra was not carefully controlled and stripped of will to seamlessly meld with the patient's Chakra.
Instead it forcefully entered inside like a liquid, breaking the parts of the body down that contained whatever undesirable element and removed it directly through an open wound. The wounds inflicted by the needles would serve this purpose just fine, Saul did not need to create an incision. Then whatever chakra was left inside the body converted itself into beneficial chakra, which could later be used to help heal the destroyed area.
The only delicate thing about this technique was the skill its user required not to inflict too much pain. As a newbie to the technique, Saul could not consider himself 'skillful' by any means.
"Lee. This is going to hurt a lot, ok? Bear with me and do your best to keep still. I'll be taking out the poison in a moment."
The bushy browed man nodded grimly from the ground and gritted his teeth.
Saul nodded to his clone, whose two hands now glowed with a pale green light. His left hand laid down on Lee's bicep. This was where most of the poison was now, still traveling up Lee's arm. It hadn't reached his heart yet, thankfully.
His other arm hovered above the open wounds, ready to extract the poison as it was funneled up Lee's arm.
"Are you ready?"
"Yes, Doctor-san!"
The man merely furrowed his brows and gritted his teeth in response to Saul activating the medical ninjutsu. There was no screaming, no desperate struggling like the book mentioned. Maybe Saul was performing the technique well?
Regardless, Lee stared at the blackened blood being extracted from his arm with silent tears streaming down his face. A vein popped out on his forehead.
Yeah no. Someone like Lee must have had a crazy amount of pain tolerance to reach the heights he did with the Eight Gates. If even he was finding it this bad, Saul couldn't imagine what would happen when he tried it on his 'test subjects'.
"Bear with me, Lee. I'm almost done taking out the poison."
Little by little, every pass of his chakra expelled less and less black blood. Eventually it got to the point where he could no longer extract visible amounts of poisoned blood. His clone which was using the delicate illness extraction technique dispelled itself. Now Saul did whatever he could about Lee's arm with the Mystical Palm Ninjutsu.
Repairing the tissue, generating more blood to replace what was lost, reversing the widespread damage from the poison. Thankfully he had a lot of experience with this type of injury from healing Sayuri at this point - so Saul did not waste too much chakra to heal him.
Next he turned his attention to the wounds on Lee's back. He had stabilized them earlier so they no longer bled before he turned his attention to the poison from the needles, so they would be quickly healed. Suddenly there was a big *BOOM* as Might Guy landed just on queue.
"THE NINJA AT THE HOSPITAL SAID I NEEDED TO BRING LEE FOR TREATMENT!!! QUICK! WE HAVE TO GO NOW!"
God, could the man not shout directly into his ear? It took all of his focus to continue the Mystical Palm, closing up the deep wounds that had previously been inflicted on Lee's back.
"Please relax. The treatment Lee is receiving right now is much better than what he would have gotten at the hospital. Look at him, I'm almost done."
The man clearly tried to dial it down seeing Saul focused on treating Lee, but... Even when the man was 'dialed down' or so to speak, he was still much more animated than most.
"Lee! How are you feeling!?"
"Much better! Guy Sensei!"
A soothing feeling spread directly from Saul's hands, a sphere of green light extending from them as the man worked. The pain from the wounds were quickly vanishing like smoke, making Lee feel ecstatic.
"You seem to have a lot of wounds within your body too. These weren't caused recently. Have you ever even taken a break from training?"
"NEVER!"
Saul looked down at his wiry muscled, yet skinny body and sighed. It was absolutely ridiculous how such a body had so much strength. However, this was all the healing Lee could handle for now. Any more, and he'd do more harm than good. Lee was clearly not eating enough to sustain his body through the training he underwent.
The green sphere of light faded. Saul pushed himself up from his kneeling position as Lee inspected the areas where he was wounded in disbelief. Everywhere he touched there was nothing but smooth skin remaining.
"Wow...! How can I ever thank you? I don't have any money for treatment..."
Before Saul could respond, Guy interjected,
"That's alright, Lee!!! Sensei will cover it for you! How much do we owe you, um..."
"Saul. My name's Saul."
"SAUL! Your name is filled with YOUTH!!!"
"That's right, Guy sensei!"
Before they could get too far lost in their own world, Saul spoke up.
"Generally such flesh wounds wouldn't be a big deal. 20,000 ryo would be a pretty fair price. However the issue is those needles were poisoned. Poison makes things tricky, as it's extremely difficult to deal with. Even if I healed the wound that caused the issue in the first place, the poison would remain within the body continuing to kill it from the inside."
Guy's eyes widened comically wide.
"POISON!?"
"Yes... As such I had to expend a ton of chakra expelling the substance to save his life."
"Lee, is this true?"
"Yes Guy-sensei!"
He punched Lee in the face. Saul wondered, should he heal that too...?
"WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME YOU WERE POISONED!? YOU COULD HAVE DIED, YOU IDIOT!!!"
Lee got up from the ground, brushed his mouth, and looked up at his sensei with teary eyes.
"I DIDN'T WANT TO WORRY YOU, SENSEI! IT WON'T HAPPEN AGAIN!!!"
Guy opened his arms wide.
"Come here, Lee!"
"Guy Sensei!!!"
They hugged again. Saul was considerate enough to wait until they separated before quoting his price. He remembered what Kito told him about his treatment of Sayuri for his baseline, as the treatments were quite similar. He wanted to treat Guy fairly and give him a price he could afford. Saul wanted to learn the eight gates technique one day, after all.
"Healing the blade wounds should be around 20,000 ryo, healing the damage from the poison should be around 50,000 ryo, and as for performing the delicate extraction technique to extract the poison, well. That's an extremely difficult technique that very few people in Konoha know at the moment. However, I don't want to make things difficult for you two. We'll lowball the price as much as possible and just say it brings the total to 100,000 ryo."
"100,000 ryo!?"
Guy directly knelt down in front of him, bowing his head to the ground. He pulled Lee down with him.
"I DONT HAVE THAT KIND OF MONEY ON HAND!!! PLEASE!!!"
He didn't even have 100,000 ryo? What? With how powerful Guy was, Saul was sure the man at least had an S rank mission under his belt. Yet Saul was not considering a couple of things.
For one, such missions were rare to come by. The village would assign the best of the best on such missions. Guy's strength was the absolute best, but his mannerisms would not bode well for Konoha's reputation. Thus the likelihood of him receiving such missions was minimal at best.
Second, Guy was currently taking care of a Genin team. The mission fees from such missions were paltry at best, then they were split among the four of them. Currently, he has very little income.
Finally, he wasn't the type to save money in the first place. Training was extremely taxing to the mind, body, and wallet. And he was a training fanatic. All of these combined to make Guy probably the poorest Jonin in Konoha.
Saul sighed. "Get up you two, we can talk about repayment later. For now Lee, you just need to avoid stressing your body too much. I removed most of the poison, but trace amounts of it still remain circulating through your bloodstream. Your body should be able to deal with the remainder over time, but in the short term I need you to avoid highly taxing your body. Otherwise the remaining poison will quickly finish you off while you're weak - and no one will be able to save you. Do you understand?"
"Yes Doctor Saul!"
Saul smirked. "You shouldn't be affectionately calling me Doctor. We'll be enemies soon, after all."
Author's Note: Alright I set up the foundation for Saul's future relationship with Guy just now. I've listened to the comments about this before, it's just that they had no organic way of making contact before this point in the story. Look forward to his future training with the eight gates! Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed the chapters!
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