All characters and story belong to Kohei Horikoshi and Masashi Kishimoto
—Uuuugugfuu— Bakugo tried to gasp for air, but he couldn't and spat blood onto Ino's face. Then he lay there, his eyes rolling back in his head, unconscious.
"He's alive..." Ino's whisper alerted the others, and then it grew into a roar. "HE'S ALIVE!"
The Leaf genin stared in astonishment at the blonde's revelation, but the most surprised was Kabuto, who summed up the situation that was happening.
"Impossible..." Kabuto said, his voice trembling. He quickly touched his neck and confirmed that he had a pulse again. "It can't be... It's a miracle."
"Kabuto, do something! He still can't breathe!" Ino urged him. Kabuto realized the genin from Team 10 was right, and his mind began racing.
"The venom has closed his trachea; he won't be able to breathe on his own until his body is practically free of the poison." She took a syringe from her kunai pouch and injected it into the blond man's vein. "This is an antidote that works for the venom of all known snakes in the world. But it will still take some time to take effect. He needs to receive oxygen again."
"Should I give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation again?" Ino suggested.
"That's not enough. I need..." After thinking for a few seconds, he turned to Choji. "Before the exam started, I saw you with a juice box! Do you still have it?" Choji nodded, a little scared by the bespectacled boy's demanding tone. And he tossed it to him.
"This isn't the time to be thinking about juice, Kabuto!" Sakura protested.
"It's not the juice I'm interested in..." Kabuto clarified. "It's the straw." He took the straw from him to sip. "This will allow Bakugo to breathe on his own temporarily."
Immediately afterwards, with his scalpel he made a cut in his neck in the area of the trachea and inserted the straw into the hole he had made.
"But she's still unconscious! What can we do?" Ino asked anxiously.
"He still has a high fever from the poison and the infection in his shoulder wound. I need a lot of water to disinfect him. I would take him to the river, but I'm afraid to move him in case his body can't handle it and he dies," Kabuto said, sweat beading on his forehead.
"I'll go to the river!" Choji offered. "With my Baika no Jutsu (Swelling Technique) I can carry a large amount of water."
"It's not ideal to carry it inside your body mixed with saliva, but whatever. It's better than transporting it there. Do it. Hurry!" Kabuto ordered.
—Yes!—Choji replied, giving a military salute and disappearing from the place.
"Bakugo will be incapacitated for a few days. I need a bonfire ready for when night falls so he doesn't get hypothermia," Kabuto said.
"Leave that to me," Sasuke said, his spirits renewed by the feeling of being useful again. Then he went off to gather firewood.
—Sakura, you keep the straw perpendicular. I need my hands free to apply medical jutsu. —Kabuto ordered.
—Yes!—Sakura obeyed without question.
—Ino, you go find a container to hold the water that Choji will carry on his body. —said Kabuto.
"But where am I going to find a container in the middle of the forest?" Ino asked, overwhelmed.
"How should I know!" Kabuto replied. "If not, create it out of wood and join it with chakra thread." He gave her some of the thread he carried in his kunai pouch. "Come on, it's urgent!"
"Okay! Okay! Don't overwhelm me, I'm already stressed enough without needing to rush!" Ino replied, and then went into the forest to take care of the task assigned by the genin with glasses.
"And what do I do?" asked Shikamaru, who was the only one who didn't have an assigned task.
"Climb to the top of a tree and keep watch for any enemies in sight. With all the commotion Bakugo's caused with those explosions, I wouldn't be surprised if my presence has attracted the attention of some less desirable individuals," Kabuto explained.
"What a drag, I don't want to fight again today," Shikamaru complained, but he obeyed Kabuto and climbed a nearby tree to keep watch.
After all the assigned tasks, only Kabuto and Sakura remained near the blond man. The gray-haired man was applying a medical jutsu, and the pink-haired woman was holding the straw that served as a temporary respirator for the ash-blond man.
"Will he live?" Sakura asked, fearful of the answer since Bakugo's appearance didn't give her any reason to doubt it.
"I couldn't tell you. He should be dead by now. But even so, he's still fighting to stay alive. If we were in the hospital, he'd have a much better chance of making it out alive. I'll do everything in my power," Kabuto replied seriously. But then a small smile appeared on his face. "But with how stubborn he seems, Bakugo won't let death take him without a fight. If all goes well, I think he'll live." This last comment cheered Sakura up, and a tear of joy escaped her eye.
"He doesn't just seem stubborn, he is," Sakura said, stroking the ash-blond boy's hair. "He's the biggest blockhead and idiot in the world. He'll live only to defy logic."
"He wouldn't be the first of them to defy all logic," Kabuto thought aloud, remembering Orochimaru's experiments with subjects from another world.
"Wouldn't he be the first of them?" Sakura asked, puzzled. "You've also referred to Bakugo as one of them before..."
"Huh?" Kabuto said. The genin with glasses mentally scolded himself for making another blunder. Sometimes he forgot he wasn't alone. "Oh. I meant patients I've seen who have overcome incurable diseases," the gray-haired man lied.
Sakura looked at him, intrigued, not entirely convinced, but didn't press the matter further. A short while later, Sasuke arrived with firewood for the bonfire. The raven-haired boy made a small fireball to light it.
The next to return was Ino, who didn't need to create anything since she found a large pot that some team had abandoned. Immediately afterward, Choji returned, his body enormous and swollen from his jutsu, carrying a large amount of water. Kabuto and Ino pointed to the pot so he could pour the precious colorless liquid into it.
Now everyone was gathered around Bakugo's body except for Shikamaru, who continued to keep watch. After half an hour, Ino approached and touched the ash-blond's forehead. It was still burning.
"His fever isn't going down!" Ino warned Kabuto, worried. The gray-haired man confirmed by touching his forehead that the blonde was right.
"I've cured his infection. I've also injected him with the antidote. But he still has a lot of poison in his blood. The antidote is working more slowly than I thought. It must be because his body is very weak," Kabuto said, alarming the others.
"So what? Is there anything we can do to help him?" Ino asked, clutching her chest with anxiety.
"There's something I could try..." Kabuto murmured.
—Well, do it!—Sakura and Ino said impatiently at the same time.
"It's just that doing it in an environment like this presents too many risks. But you're right. But first I have to ask if anyone knows Bakugo's blood type," Kabuto said.
"Huh?" Choji said. "Why do you need to know that?"
"I'm going to bleed him and give him a blood transfusion at the same time. That way he'll lose poisoned blood and gain clean blood. I think that, along with the antidote, is the push he needs to bring his fever down once and for all," Kabuto explained.
"Give him a blood transfusion? In the middle of the forest?" said Sasuke, perplexed by Kabuto's idea.
"I already said it's very risky to do it in this environment. But we have to do something. If the fever doesn't go down... Bakugo will die in a few hours. But this time for real. His organs will stop functioning, and there won't be any miraculous resuscitation that can save him."
They remained silent for a few seconds, Ino was the first to cut the ice.
"Give him my blood!" Ino offered.
"I appreciate your willingness, Ino. But we can't just give him blood willy-nilly. The immune system produces proteins called antibodies that act as protectors against invading cells that enter the body. Depending on your blood type, your immune system will produce antibodies that react against other blood types. If someone is given an unsuitable blood type, their antibodies will immediately destroy the invading cells. In a body as weak as Bakugo's, this aggressive response will cause his death," Kabuto explained. "That's why I asked you about Bakugo's blood type. We can't afford to give him the wrong blood."
"Well, I have no idea what Bakugo's blood type is! I don't even know my own blood type!" Ino said.
—Seriously, you don't know something so important?—Sakura asked.
"I'm not a brat and a brainiac like you! I've never asked my parents! It's not a normal topic of conversation!" Ino replied.
"I don't know what my blood type is either," Choji said, embarrassed.
"I don't think anyone knows Bakugo's blood type. Like Ino said, it's not something you usually bring up in conversation," Sasuke reasoned.
—So the two options are either to do nothing and wait for the fever to go down, or to take a gamble and hope the blood we give him is the right one. —Sakura analyzed the situation.
"There's another option. It wouldn't be a lottery if one of us were a universal donor. That is, if we were O negative," Kabuto said. "Unfortunately, I'm AB negative. And in my backpack, I have bags of blood from my classmates, but they're O positive and B positive."
"Why are you keeping bags of your teammates' blood?" Sasuke asked. "By the way, I'm B negative."
"Just in case we suffered severe bleeding in a fight. A prepared man is worth two," Kabuto replied.
"Well, Choji and I already told you we don't know what kind of blood we have!" Ino said. "We're left with no other option..." Everyone looked at Sakura. She lowered her head sadly.
—I'm sorry. I'm O positive.—Sakura said bitterly.
"Damn it!" Ino said. "So what do we do? Do we take the risk or wait for things to improve?"
"Wait a minute..." Choji said. "We're not all here. Shikamaru's missing!" Everyone looked up at the pineapple-haired boy, who was keeping watch in the treetop. "SHIKAMARU!" he shouted at the top of his lungs.
"Shh!" Ino told him to be quiet. "Are you stupid or what? Do you want the whole forest to know we're here?"
—I'm sorry...— Choji whispered.
Shikamaru heard Choji's shout and looked down. He saw his teammates signaling for him to come down. In a couple of jumps, he managed to get to where the group was.
"What's wrong?" asked the shadow genin.
"What type of blood do you have, Shikamaru?" Kabuto asked.
"Huh? What kind of question is that?" Shikamaru said.
"Answer me already!" Ino ordered, a vein throbbing in her forehead.
"Okay, okay. Don't be annoying. I'm O negative. Anything else?" Shikamaru said. Everyone's eyes lit up at Shikamaru's answer. "Why are you all looking at me like that? What's going on?"
"If you were a little more attractive, I'd be kissing you all over right now," Ino said with a smile.
"What the hell?" Shikamaru said, taking a step back.
"Congratulations, you've been chosen," Kabuto said, taking out his transfusion equipment. Seeing the materials, Shikamaru swallowed hard. He really disliked needles.
"Chosen for what?" asked the shadow genin, on the verge of fainting.
"To save Bakugo's life," Kabuto replied, showing Shikamaru a very thin tube.