Part 1
(Inside the treatment room)
fig 1
I: Dr. Warm, this is my Chakragraphy test report. Everything came back negative.
Dr. Warm: Then where exactly is your problem?
I: Wherever I wore orthotic inserts, that’s where I have problems.
Dr. Warm: If that’s the case, one session won’t be enough. You can’t start at too high an intensity — your body needs time to adapt.
I: Sure. But the intensity can’t be too low either. It’s not easy for us to come all the way from out of town. If the intensity isn’t enough and the lesion isn’t resolved… Anyway, I don’t want to be traveling to a second-tier city for treatment again and again.
Dr. Warm: Don’t worry. These two guns of mine are ancestral — very powerful.
I: Whoa — are those guns made of titanium? They look like they have noble bloodlines. The director in Smoke City used white guns, and his bullets were made with three kinds of chakra. He sold me a ton of medicine; later I threw all the oral meds away.
Dr. Warm: Nani? Chakra? The bullets we use here are forged from spiritual power — from reiatsu (spiritual power). The higher a therapist’s spiritual power, the higher the spirit-pressure each bullet carries.
I: Spiritual power? Spirit-pressure? Right — the last doctor who did my Chakragraphy told me you have to go to a first-tier city to get spiritual power tested; second-tier cities can’t do it. So are you perhaps also a descendant of a Soul Reaper (Shinigami)?
Dr. Warm: Nope. Our hospital’s surgery department is mainly descendants of Soul Reapers. The internal medicine and support departments are mostly descendants of Hollows. Our department, though, is basically made up of Quincy descendents.
I: My goodness. Big cities really do have all kinds of talent. In hospitals in backward regions, seeing even one descendant of a ninja is already amazing.
Dr. Warm: Hahaha — you know what? The medical device company that supplies our hospital with high-tech polymer disposable rubber gloves — their ancestors used to be pirates.
I: That company must be called One Piece, right?
Dr. Warm: Heh — looks like you didn’t spend much time grinding through problem sets in school; you only watched anime.
I: I wasn’t cut out for academic stuff. But you can’t watch every show; at least you should know about the big ones.
Dr. Warm: Historical reasons. Now we are living in a peaceful era; this society doesn’t need so many people who are good at fighting, so many of our clan chose to enter the medical field.
I: In Bleach the Quincies used to use bows and arrows — now they’ve evolved into guns.
Dr. Warm: Look — the wall behind me records the tools our department has used over the last few hundred years.
I: Quincies are different from Soul Reapers. You all look gentle on the outside, killing without a trace of blood.
Dr. Warm: Heh — we are wholeheartedly FOR the patient. Compared to those big departments, our tools are really gentle: fast-acting and never dragging things out.
I thought to myself: guns breed power.
I: But there must be side effects, right? After being shot, the body inevitably swells for a while.
Dr. Warm: That means your tissues are repairing. Look at this patient I’m treating — she’s already had several sessions here and can gradually get back in the water. Before, her back pain was near unbearable; she almost went to folk remedies.
Fig 2
I: That’s really amazing. This patient didn’t struggle at all — so it doesn’t look that painful.
Dr. Warm: Pain should be there; she just dares not move. During treatment patients must not shift, to prevent the spiritual particles from going off-course when they enter.
I: I didn’t expect your hospital to treat animals too — or are you just a jack-of-all-trades?
Dr. Warm: She’s not an animal — she can transform, and lying like this is more convenient. She’s almost finished. You’re next.
(This patient’s treatment finishes — she reverts to human form and goes outside to rest.)
fig 3
I: Should I lie down?
Dr. Warm: For the first session you need to stand. Per our department’s usual protocol, we treat from the core first. We see the body as a whole instead of solely targeting the areas with symptoms.
I: But every time I switch therapists they start from the core. The core has already been treated many times; in the end the lesion turned out to be clearly in my foot.
Dr. Warm: That’s other people’s theories. Some treat by nerves, some by muscle chains, some by fascial lines, some by chakra, some by qi and blood — we Quincies don’t accept those. The first time we must activate your Cosmo (inner universe). If a patient’s Cosmo can’t be activated, the natural spiritual power can’t tune into your body, and subsequent effects can’t be good.
I: Sigh — well, doctor-patient relationships always have an information gap. If you put this theory in a ninja-run hospital, you might get yelled at as pseudoscience.
Dr. Warm: Which hospital would dare call us pseudoscience? I’d call them traitorous ninja. Lift your shirt — we’re starting. Each of these two guns will fire 1,000 bullets. Both will fire together.
I: Huh? So if you actually fire 1,000 times, this treatment’s fee will be used up in one go.
Dr. Warm: The effect can never be compared by ordinary bullets, okay?
I: Then why don’t you point the guns directly at my core muscle groups?
Dr. Warm: My bullets are made of spiritual particles, invisible and intangible. The direction that lands on the patient’s tissue corresponds to the vector cross product of the gun barrel’s direction and the thumb’s direction.
fig 4
I: Uh — that sounds a bit like left-hand rule / right-hand rule in physics. But there’s no lesion on my belly at all.
Dr. Warm: You young people don’t get it. The first time we must activate the Cosmo so your body connects with natural energy. Our method is all-natural — no drugs, no blood draws. Watch: the particles produced by these two guns are yin and yang to each other. When they reach your tissues and collide, the energy produced promotes cell repair and regeneration. These two guns must be used at the same time, with equal intensity, so your body can remain stable in this universe. If the deviation is too great, your tissue will disappear from this universe. Untrained people easily hold the two guns in the opposite hands.
I: But the two guns look exactly the same. Wait — actually they’re slightly different. The handles have clockwise and counterclockwise spirals.
Dr. Warm: You noticed that? You know, an intern once held the two guns in the wrong hands; instead of hitting the patient, the particles went the other way, and the patient’s pet dog got fired into another universe.
Fig dog-1
I: You mean like Schrödinger’s cat? It’s both dead and not dead — it’s just not fully in our universe.
Dr. Warm: Something like That. Later the patient didn’t ask us for compensation. We just told them their pet had gained immortality. It still eats and drinks at home but its appearance changed.
I: What did its appearance change into?
Dr. Warm: Look at your belly now — it’s like that. The Cosmo absorbed into it. Human bodies are stronger; they can eventually absorb that Cosmo. But the pet got completely assimilated by that Cosmo. Our usual intensities are meant for humans subjects, oh sorry, I mean human patients.
Fig dog-2
I: Technically, pets shouldn’t be allowed in this room.
Dr. Warm: But some patients can’t help themselves — that lady brought her dog everywhere and treated it like a child. She even put a sweater on the dog.
I: Then it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing — like the white cat I lived with.
Dr. Warm: Hahahaha. Lift your shirt a little more; I must make sure the Cosmo doesn’t spread to your myocardium. By the way, that word means your heart muscle.
End of Part 1
Disclaimer: This is a creative project inspired by the traditions of Eastern shonen manga and Western comics and cinematic storytelling.
All characters, abilities, and world elements are original creations.
Any similarities to existing works are coincidental or intended as respectful homage, without any claim of ownership or affiliation.