A few moments after Mari had disintegrated right before their very eyes like some sort of s.a.d.i.s.tic magic trick, leading to more than a few of the hospital nurses fainting due to shock, the current Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi, finally arrived after he"d received an urgent message from an Anbu.Standing by the door he surveyed the room, and to his surprise found bodies of female nurses littering on the ground.
"What happened?"
Finally noticing him everybody turned around. An elderly medical-nin stepped forward as if to answer him, but stopped right as he was about to speak.
He turned around towards the bed where Mari had disappeared from and left behind a sleeping baby boy. Turning back to the Hokage, he once again tried to formulate intelligent words to explain what had occurred, but only inarticulate mumbling came out.
Giving himself a mental kick in the b.u.t.t, the medical-nin in charge of the baby"s delivery finally managed to say something resembling understandable speech.
"I...I, don"t know –" he stammered.
Patience wearing thin and growing tired of this obvious clown fiesta they"d woken him for, Hiruzen called out to the room in general in the hope that someone would actually tell him what had happened.
"Do anyone wish to elaborate on that? Please, feel free?" Annoyance clear for everybody to hear.
The Anbu who"d been standing in the corner the entire time during the event, observing, answered the Hokage and narrated everything.
Hearing the full story, Hiruzen took a deep breath and exhaled.
"Well, this is a right mess –" Calling over his shoulder, he asked someone to help the nurses who"d fainted and turned his attention to the remaining hospital staff " – has anyone done a full physical checkup on the baby?" He asked with a tone underscoring that someone better well answer him.
The same medical-nin as before answered. Now in a far more collected voice.
"Yes, Hokage. I made a preliminary inspection before I handed him back to his mother –" he once again looked at the place she"d been " – who is now gone."
He audibly gulped before continuing.
"The child was physically perfect when I checked him. There"s nothing wrong with him."
"So, what you"re saying is that there"s no way the child is going to disappear as well, right?"
Everyone on the hospital staff practically went white imagining it and decided to be extra thorough. Each of them hurried forward to check the still sleeping baby once again.
Two minutes and a flurry of activity later where the Hokage had been mostly ignored, the medical-nin came back to report his findings. In the curve of his arm, he brought along the still sleeping baby. Wanting to show proof of the baby"s health to the Hokage.
"We"ve checked for everything and run every test we can, for now at least. We"ve also taken a small sample of blood for a.n.a.lysis. If you exclude what happened to his mother there"s nothing much out of the ordinary. Sure, he"s bigger and doesn"t look like anyone else around here with the dark complexion, but otherwise nothing weird."
"So, no...puff?" The Hokage asked for confirmation. indicating with his hands what he meant.
"Yes, none of that as far as we can tell, but what the h.e.l.l do I know," he said as he handed the baby off to one of the remaining nurses and left the room grumbling something about getting too old for this s.h.i.t.
"The rest can leave as well!" Ordered the Hokage, deciding to ignore the medical-nin"s comment.
Now only the Hokage and the three Anbu members were left in the room. A nurse had placed the baby in a crib opposite the bed where the previous disappearing act hat happened. Hiruzen had noticed how she"d held him tight to her bosom as if she half-expected the baby to slip away into thin air.
Looking around the room he went to grab a chair that"d been standing beside the door and placed it next to the crib. As he sat down he pulled out a bag of tobacco and fished out his usual pipe. After making sure it was filled properly, he lit it with a matchstick and puffed out a cloud of white smoke.
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Eric woke with perhaps the worst headache of his life. Quite possibly worse than that time he"d gone to Moscow to protect some high-rank international douchebag for a couple of days and had tried to outdrink an entire bar of native Russians. In all honesty, he still believed he"d done a valiant attempt, but vodka simply wasn"t his thing. However, the offensive headache he was feeling right now did feel very similar to the hangover from that exact night, just slightly worse.
He tried to open his eyes to see where the h.e.l.l he was. Chaos hadn"t been much use in providing useful information. He"d just sent Eric off, not even a goodbye.
As he finally managed to open them, almost everything was blurry. He couldn"t focus on anything further than a couple of feet away.
Lifting his hand, he noticed he had a brown coloured skin. Reaching further up, he could feel the soft curly hair slide between his fingers. Reminding him of what he used to look like.
The reincarnation really did work, he marvelled by himself.
Even though he couldn"t see much of anything, he was still very sure he was at a hospital. There was no way for him to mistake the sterile smell of that place as he"d been in and out of it more often than he could count.
"Ah, let"s see, what do we have here?" someone with a tired voice said, disturbing Eric"s thoughts. Looking to the far end of the crib, Eric could just barely see a rather young looking third Hokage.
Eric noticed that he"d tilted his head at an upward angle to better glance down his crib. He could feel his eyes inspecting him.
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Hiruzen could feel the young troublemakers attentive gaze watching him.
On little more than a hunch, he placed the palm of his hand above the baby"s stomach. What he felt stunned him. Slowly removing it, he puffed out another cloud of smoke.
"My, my...aren"t you quiet the little wonder," he said while contemplating the consequences of what he"d just discovered. He"d no idea how they"d done, but through some insane miracle, someone had created a seal which for the duration of the poor women"s pregnancy had kept the inner gates open the entire time, and quite literally bathe the fetus in chakra during its development.
In his mind, there was no other way to explain what occurred to that unfortunate young woman and the level of chakra he"d just felt within this boy. He"d no doubt grow up to have an enormous amount of chakra and if not coupled with the proper control might result in him hurting someone unintentionally.
That meant it wasn"t possible to send him to an orphanage. A place like that would be the equivalent of putting a tiger in a henhouse.
The only real place Hiruzen could envision was in the hands of a shin.o.bi family. A place where someone could instruct and guide him.
"I"ll take him," a harsh voice interrupted Hiruzen"s chain of thought.
Both Hiruzen and Eric turned to face the newcomer standing by the doorway.