Osu, realizing that his only role in this emergency with be a hands off approach directing the mednin under him, decided to get himself out of the hazmat suit with a bit of the poison on the tendril before he was drained of chakra. This was rather humiliating to be perfectly honest with himself, having to stand at the sidelines unable to assist directly despite being the most qualified doctor on site. However he couldn’t leave the suit until it was decontaminated and he would have to wait until a station cleared up. Maddening. Watch if he didn’t simply become a sack of sentient blood in a bag and be even more useless than he currently was.
“Make sure they take proper setup for chelation, and tell the lab to focus on identifying metallic toxins now and the binging and chemical agents later. The child isn’t in danger from the dimeritium agent itself after we separate her from chakra users, but there is likely mercury and who knows what else in her body right now that needs to be targeted. Also tell the mobile hazmat team to focus on processing the possible victims after putting the initial site on ice and send Nomura and his team to decontaminate the site in full gear.”
“Yes Osuteno-Sensei… but I just got a call from the mobile hazmat team… the window of the room was broken from the inside when they got there. The followed direction but it seems a bird was in the office and flew off when they began icing the room. They are trying to track the bird down, it has likely died not too far away from the legation if it were exposed.”
Osu’s blood pressure immediately jumped enough to give three giraffes heart failure. “Find it, contain it, and incinerate it, no excuses.” he barely managed to keep a level tone. The chances we minimal of that leading to further complications, but medical shinobi didn’t operate on best case assumptions.
So Osu waited. He watched as the Raikage and the Sennin were processed, intervened when Yuii raised a hand towards his staff, focusing his attention on seizing the blood in her body from a distance and allowed them to first separate the woman from her child and again when she was putting up a fight in decontamination and sent someone with a vial from Osu’s sleeve and his orders to sedate the Sennin. Hopefully she would forget these little details later. As the two stations soon took the children for decontamination, he saw that the baby was being rushed into the hospital proper immediately by another team of nurses and doctors wearing dimiritum bracelets normally used for visitors to a particular ward. His body was already falling apart and another mednin actually had to carry Osu into the decontamination chamber with Osu’s hazmat suit not appearing to be containing any form of humanoid shape at all and seemed more like a bag of bloody spaghetti.
To be completely honest, Osu couldn’t remember much in this sort of state. Given how even his though processing speed was reliant on some form of chakra flow, he was a barely sentient mush without any. It would be almost fifteen minutes after they had finished decontamination for him to pull himself together somewhat, and at this point he was mostly wanting updates from the mednin currently waiting at the side.
With a small bow they began speaking, “Chelation targets have been identified, dosages being adjusted but it is a delicate procedure given how young the patient is. Mercury, lead, and three minor substances are the main issues for now. Given the child’s age and currently fragile condition, likely something to do with her actually registering on the geiger counter, we are afraid there is currently a chance that even the chelation agents might kill her. The doctor made the call to continue given the child would die if they did nothing, but doesn’t express much confidence and requested research to send a medchief for a second opinion.”
“I trust their judgement and encourage them to proceed as they currently are. Tell them not to risk being too hesitant and gradually adjust from a lower dose every few minutes if they aren’t already.” Osu told the mednin plainly.
“The bird still has not been located, but research reports by their estimates that it shouldn’t have been able to fly very far if it were infected, and would currently be dying somewhere if falling from the sky didn’t kill it. The search continues though, and Nomura’s team is now on scene. The rest of the exposed have been decontaminated and the breakdown of the site has commenced and will relocate to help process individuals at the legation. The young ones are running around but have they all remained on site. The Raikage only has moderate chakra drain, the Main Branch sennin is quite heavily drained, suffered chakra burn while resisting decontamination, but currently sedated. The kids seem healthy enough though the one who passed out from chakra burn needs a follow up and everyone needs to be debriefed.”
Osu simply nodded as he had his sort of whole body equivalent of a headache. Absolutely miserable. “Keep that woman on Stardust until she can be placed next to the child’s bedside. She is likely to fly into a rage once she comes down and she is less likely to do something rash if when she does regain her faculties her daughter is in arm’s reach. She nearly knocked that one poor young woman out thrashing about.
Going back a couple minutes, a group of mednin charged with manning the radios and directing equipment and resource requests were busy at work when two of the people involved in the hazmat scare came up looking to report in.
“Chief, these two are needing to be debriefed,” one called over his shoulder.
“Chief was called in to make a second opinion in that child’s operation.”
“Ahh then we should probably just direct them to the Sesshou to speed things up anyway.” The first guy corrected himself.
One of the other mednin pointed to what looked to be a hazmat suit with blood sloshing around inside being carried into a decontamination station. “Osuteno-Sensei is currently indisposed.”
“Ah dammit, right dimeritium. The boss is completely reliant on chakra isn’t she?” The first guy sighed tapping a clipboard to his chin.
“He, I distinctly heard the Sesshou say he is a guy.” Someone spoke up.
“Nonsense, no one that beautiful could be a guy.” a guy in the back interrupted.
“Cuteness is Justice,” another offered his opinion.
“Anyway, the Sesshou is indisposed, there were three Med Chief on site right?” The first guy asked trying to get everybody back on topic.
“Two are now handling the operation directly, and Nomura was sent to the mobile site,” a woman informed.
“Well who is in charge after them?!” The first guy was beginning to get frustrated.
“Well, this is a fully equipped installation, so that would be the hospital division over the field division, and from there it would fall to General Practice. So it would be the Mednin of General Practice who is most experienced.”
“But Himeko was the one carrying Osu-Chan?” The guy asked again, not seeing the end of this question in sight.
“Osuteno-Sensei, speak respectfully... and also that is a surprisingly humble statement coming from you. Yes Himeko would be next, but she is preoccupied so after her is you, moron.”
It took the mednin a couple seconds to follow the process of elimination before he turned back towards the Main Branch Shinobi with a more authoritative expression, but right at that moment, Ayumu, his boss’s boss’s boss’s husband/boss, arrived requesting an update, causing the serious tone he had just mustered up to crack his voice a bit. “Raikage-Sama… I uhhhhh, I am uhm reporting! … I don’t really know to be honest. Apparently the child is undergoing chelation therapy which is something the poison department developed some years back for metallic poisoning? It is really like them to be honest, chelation agents are poisons in their own way, but in the right doses they break down particular metals like lead or mercury. It isn’t used that much but given… actually the dimeritium thing is confusing me, I only knew the stuff drained chakra but thought it was otherwise harmless? Chojin, you are in research, what was that all about?”
“Do I look like an encyclopedia to you? We aren’t all like those freak bosses of ours who seem to have read every book under the sun. I don’t know either. The Chiefs and Osu-Sensei are very particular about who can study dimeritium among other things. But going by context clues… the stuff absorbs chakra but doesn’t contain any right? Energy can’t be created or destroyed, which means it must be converted into something else for that to be true… But it is safe enough to contain prisoners without killing them, so why would being near chakra users kill the child?”
“That is what I am trying to ask you isn’t it? Must be classified… admittedly makes me want to know even more… Not that I would try and learn classified information without permission Raikage-Sama!”
One shorter mednin in a slightly baggy hazmat suit raised their hand.
“You are a full mednin now, you don’t have to raise your hand to speak.” Sighed the guy apparently in charge.
“I got a call from Nomura-San on the radio. Apparently a bird managed to get into the contaminated room through a broken window and was apparently eating some food that was in the floor and they still can’t find it.”
“... Osu-Sensei isn’t going to be happy about that... Pass that and anything else on to Himeko since she is with him. Seriously, who breaks a window to a hazmat site? What if the stuff had been anthrax? … Not that I am judging if it were you Raikage-Sama! I am sure you were just panicked! Not that I think you would be panicked?! … You may… you may want to leave before Osuteno-Sensei recovers though. I have never witnessed it, but I have heard that when she does get mad there hasn’t been a person yet who wasn’t brought to tears, not that I think you would be Raikage-Sama... but that endangered a lot of people who would not originally have been at risk and whoever did it will probably get the lecture of a lifetime.
A icy cold tone cut in like a sharp knife slitting across the conversation causing the heckles of the young mednin gathered to rise, “I will report to Ayumu-Sama about the hazmat complications later… respectfully.” Osu was now wearing a robe over the general state of near undress they arrived in and out of the hazmat suit from earlier. He was leaning lightly on the previously mentioned, but let go of them and walked forward alone and kneeled a bit to get on eye level with Shizuka. With a warm smile Osu brushed his hair out of his face and behind his ear, fully displaying two eyes that seemed like clear glass orbs with blood swirling within. Osu began to pull various tools from their sleeves as they spoke. “You were knocked out from chakra burn a bit ago correct? That is admirable of you to push yourself so hard, but you should be more careful. If you keep trying to use chakra when you are running on empty you burn your life force instead and very harshly at that, drain yourself unconscious and you will be helpless and as good as dead in a combat situation should you find yourself in one. Please look into this little flashlight, but don’t move your head around, thank you. You might think you feel fine right now, but your body’s self repair is running frantic at the moment and that doesn’t run on nothing. Say ahhh, and don’t mind the tongue depressor. I want you to check into the hospital, I am prescribing you a nutritionally balanced… 2500 calories before you go to bed tonight, yes that is a lot of food but you need to eat all of it including the vegetables, and the vitamin and mineral supplement and a hearty breakfast in the morning. Your body doesn’t work for free, especially as a shinobi. Take a few slow deep breaths for me, yes the stethoscope is a bit cold. Plus, if you do manage to stomach it all you can have a dessert for later on me, our cafeteria staff tend to get a bit eccentric if you praise or challenge them. Yes, that means I want you to stay overnight in the hospital. No, you can’t talk your way out of it. You have no idea how many people we have had promise to go home to get some rest and come back the next day ill from overtraining, so we just started forcing people to rest properly whether they like it or not, I even have Kahako-Senpai’s permission to lock Ayumu-Sama up for his own health should it ever be necessary. That is only partly a joke. If you try to train in your room or escape, we will have you as sedated as that impossible… as the Main Branch Sennin happens to be right now.”
Finishing his little checkup of Shizuka, Osu stood ruffling her hair a bit, and looked to the Raikage. “Reporting. The child’s condition is very precarious. The poison has severely wounded her lungs according to the last update, and is on machine assisted breathing, the chelation therapy is progressing, but the bonded metals are complicating the dosing and that can be as deadly as the poison itself… as for the dimeritium…” Osu looked at the other medical shinobi and the children. “Why don’t you two report what you can to Himeko here while I go speak with Raikage-Sama a bit,” Osu said gesturing Ayumu to follow him a bit off to the side away from the group, signaling it wasn’t really something that should be discussed to those who weren’t cleared to know, in this case it was a need to know issue even among most Jounin though most never bothered to be curious about it.
Stepping in closer to whisper to Ayumu, “the dimeritium compound is different from the alloy we typically use. I will be able to bring you some documents with a more complete explanation of the physics and chemistry involved, but for now know that rather than the bit of above body temperature heat our alloy gives off from absorbing chakra, the alloy inside the child transfers the energy from chakra to a dangerous amounts of ionized particles according to the Geiger Counter. It seems to be aimed to cook shinobi from the inside powered by their own chakra… This couldn’t have been made in some home lab, the equipment and resources, monetary or otherwise to research and develop such a thing, as well as the necessary technical and highly classified information necessary to even know how to properly alloy dimeritium to such an effect… the only two organizations I know to exist in Lightning, Bear, or Marsh that could make such a thing would be the Lightning Country Navy Laboratories and this very hospital… But there is no way it would escape my notice if someone were using the resources and energy here, and I can’t think of any reason the Lightning Navy would want to kill the Sennin?”
