A/N: Hey, look, another on-hold Naruto fanfic! Seriously. I started this last year and still haven't been able to think of anything good to continue with. I've got the prologue and Chapter 1 done, but that's it. =____= If anyone wants to help me, I'd love to hear your ideas! Anyway, Ureshii, Ryoto, Kama, Yumi, and a few others belong to Hyugahealer3. Saki, her team, and some of the demon paraphernalia I've got going belongs to me. PERMISSION IS REQUIRED TO USE THEM unless you are HH3. Yeah. Anyway, go ahead and read and see what you think! OH BY THE BY, Kanahoza is just a random town I made up, so it has no real significance other than to set the stage of the story. *nods*
The small village of Kanahoza had a legend that when a person died, it would rain. On that day, the town flooded.
It didn't make any sense, this illness that nobody could find a cure for. Why was it so bad? It started off just like a minor cold did, but quickly moved to something else.
Nobody, not even the legendary Princess Tsunade, knew the cure. In fact, the princess had actually gotten sick herself...
~*Flashback*~
It rained that day. Tsunade was little more than a young girl, old enough to help in the war but young enough not to fully grasp the situation. As she lay on her back in the muddy trench, watching the rain fall down on to her fevered cheeks, Tsunade came to the realization that she was going to die here. Tsunade rolled her head to her left, where a neat, muddy row of bodies stretched as far as her tired and fuzzy eyes could see.
Plip...
Plip...
Plip...
"Nawaki," Tsunade murmured to herself. She was really going to die here, wasn't she?
Suddenly, a cloaked figure emerged from the gloom. He at first seemed to float on top of the ground, but as he got closer, footsteps became visible. And heard, too. The mysterious figure was wearing thick black boots, brown cloak, hood up, with a red cross sewn over the breast. He had a kind, worn face and a gentle smile. He carried a needle or serum in his right hand.
Tsunade looked at him, untrusting. "It'll hurt," the girl muttered. "Whatever you have won't work. It'll just make me worse, and it'll hurt too."
The man gave her a reassuring smile. "I promise this time won't hurt."
Tsunade gave a derisive snort. "That's what they said the last time.... and the time before that.... And the time before that.... And the time before that, too."
Her companion gave a sigh. "Yes, well, I don't belong to that medical corps. As a matter of fact, I don't belong to any medical corps, so I'm telling you the truth."
Tsunade stared at the man in disbeleif. "Then how do you know this works?"
He gave her a smile. "It's been tested before being used, unlike those other so-called 'antidotes.' I know it works. I've used it before."
He raised the needle up to her view. It was filled with a beautiful amber liquid, like honey, yet not as sluggish or sticky. Gently,the manlifted up her arm, and in one swift movement, delivered the antidote.
Tsunade gasped. At first it was a searing pain, but that vanished as soon as it had come. In its place was a blissful coolness that spread across her body, bringing much-needed relief with it, rain on dry land. When the sensation was over, Tsunade realized that she had been completely cured. There was no trace, no record, even,of any illness anywhere in her body.
Turning back to thank the mysterious man, she saw that he had vanished without a trace, leaving nothing behind, not even footprints.
As Tsunade looked in vain, the young girl realized the man had left something behind: a single word, scrawled in the mud.
Heal.
~*End Flashback*~
To this day, the woman known as either Princess Tsunade or Lady Tsunade has never contracted any illness more serious than a bad stomach bug.
But the village of Kanahoza met a much different fate. Each and every one of them succumbed to the sickness, from the youngest baby to the oldest elder. It had always started out the same: light fever, runny and/or stuffy nose, and light cough. After a few days, however, the illness began to get serious. The fever rose drastically high, and the person was all but paralyzed. The person's body would slowly begin to shut down. In the final stages of the disease, the inflicted's skin would have a distinct gray pallor, while the face would still be flushed with fever. When the person died, a casual observer would note that sparkly rose petals seemed to come out of the inflicted's mouth, then vanish as they floated higher.
Why? They wondered, as more and more villagers fell to the illness's rampage. Have we been so bad that we are being punished this severely?
Why?
WHY?
Why...?
Why...
The second Saki stood at the gates of the flooded valley village, her instincts told her something was wrong. There were no sounds save for the sloshing of the water from the freak storm that had blown in all day yesterday, vanishing as quickly as it had come.
As Saki waded through the water with her team, she came to the conclusion that something was very wrong. All of the villagers couldn't have been killed by the flood, could they? After all, that was the only way to explain the silence but for the absurd notion that the villagers had already evacuated, which hadn't happened because an evacuation that size, despite the fact that the town only had about 1000 people, would have had to be seen by someone. And it hadn't.
Saki pulled open a door to one of the houses after clambering on to the raised platform that served both as flood protection and porch. The 15-year-old girl slowly walked through the house, nearly screaming when she found the first open-eyed corpse. It was fresh, no doubt, but there was no water damage, no nothing on the body in terms of damage. In fact, there was no clue to how the person had died, save for the lingering smell of sickness.
"Shu, Rin, Yoko!" Saki called. Her team was at her side in an instant. Together they quickly explored the rest of the town, and confirmed what Saki had suspected. Every single person was dead, all from the same disease that had haunted this town.
"Shu, go get Lady Tsunade. Now. Tell her that we have an infectious emergency the size of Orochimaru in our hands."
'A thousand people! What sickness could wipe out a thousand people on approximately the same day?'