CHAPTER TWO

Kakashi was sick of Sasuke Uchiha. He was sick of accommodating the boy's standoffish personality, and he was sick of trying to satisfy his impatience. He was sick of teaching and re-teaching lessons that seemed to fall on deaf ears. He was sick of hearing all his criticisms and advice dismissed with an emotionless grunt. ("Sasuke, your shuriken are drifting to the left again; remember to compensate." "Hn." "Sasuke, you can't keep relying on that curse seal for a quick power boost." "Hn." "Sasuke, you'll never be satisfied if you allow revenge to consume your life." "Hn.") But most of all, Kakashi was sick of the boy's indifference towards his team mates, because even though they were no longer an official three-man team, they were still his fellow Konoha shinobi. And yet, in spite of feeling discouraged, frustrated, and altogether fed up with his student, Kakashi refused to give up hope.

He's so much like I used to be, he thought, twiddling the key to Sasuke's apartment between his fingers. Too much like I used to be. I don't want it to take something as drastic as the death of a comrade to bring him to his senses, but the current situation isn't helping matters.

Much as he respected the Hokage, he was convinced that separating Sasuke from his team mates had not been the best solution to the now infamous fight atop the hospital roof. After all, how could he possibly learn to value his team mates if he was alienated from them? It was this line of thinking that had led Kakashi to risk penalties of insubordination to dispute the Hokage's decision. In the end, he wondered whether their hastily-driven bargain was worth anything at all.

It's a shame I couldn't get her to remove any of the other sanctions, he thought as he began to climb the stairs. Imposing curfews and random searches isn't going to improve his attitude at all. If anything, it's only going to make him even more distant. At least she's allowing him to work with his team mates once a week. He snorted with contempt. For now.

He was halfway up the stairs when he heard the scream. Sakura, he thought, and then he was hurtling up the stairs as fast as his legs could go because something in that ear-twisting screech was enough to make his guts wrench. A thousand explanations for what might cause such a scream flashed through his head as he ran. Sasuke attacked Naruto. Sasuke attacked Sakura. Sasuke and Naruto are fighting again. Somebody's hurt. Naruto's hurt. Sasuke's hurt. Sakura's hurt…. The only thing he felt certain of as he reached the top of the stairs and started down the hall was that he would no longer need the brass key he had gone downstairs to retrieve.

Kakashi soon discovered that he was correct: the door had been blown off its hinges and reduced to a pile of rubble. He didn't pause to examine the wreckage for any trace of residual chakra. Whether it had been Rasengan or Chidori, the implications were the same. Blood rushing in his temples, he leapt over the pile of splintered wood—and stopped short.

Naruto's orange jacket was the first thing he saw as his eyes adjusted to the dim light in the apartment. He was standing completely still, his posture rigid. His lips were working as though he was trying to speak, but there was no sound coming out and his face was ashen. Sakura was knelt on the floor with her back to Kakashi. Her shoulders were shaking, but Kakashi couldn't tell whether she was trembling or crying or if it was a combination of the two. Both of them were looking at something on the floor. From the angle he was standing, Kakashi couldn't see what they were looking at, but he knew what it was all the same.

A stray bit of what remained of the door snapped under his foot as he took a step forward. Naruto remained frozen in place, but Sakura gave a small jump. Moving as though she was underwater, she turned around and whispered, "I don't…I don't know what—" The rest of her sentence was lost on him because once she shifted her position Kakashi was able to see what she and Naruto had been looking at.

As he had suspected, it was Sasuke. And yet what he saw caught him completely by surprise. The dark-haired boy was huddled on the ground in a shivering heap. He was sweating so badly his hair and clothing stuck wetly against his body. He was lying in a puddle of blood-streaked vomit and Kakashi noted with growing concern that his breathing was choked and irregular, as though a heavy fluid was rattling in his lungs.

"I should know what this is; I'm a med-nin now so I should know these things, but I don't know," Sakura babbled. "I've never seen—never even heard of this before and I don't know what to do…."

Kakashi crossed the room and Sakura fell silent. When he reached his students, he placed his hands on Naruto's shoulders and gently maneuvered him out of the way before kneeling down beside the prone Sasuke. Naruto blinked as though only now realizing that Kakashi had arrived and made a choked noise in the back of his throat but said nothing.

From this close, Sasuke looked even worse than Kakashi had first thought. His face was so swollen that Kakashi doubted he could open his eyes, and the ghost of an ugly, blotchy rash discolored much of his exposed skin. Carefully, he took the boy into his arms and stood up. Even through his gloves, Kakashi could feel the heat that radiated from his student's body well enough to know that the fever was dangerously high. What concerned him more was the fact that the vomit was cold and sticky—an indication that Sasuke had been in this condition for a considerable amount of time. But how long, he wondered.

He tried to remember whether Sasuke had shown any indication of illness when he had seen him last. He was quiet yesterday, a little moody. He shook his head. In other words he was acting completely normal. Now if it had been Naruto acting that way…. A low groan prompted him to glance down to the shivering boy in his arms. Memory-searching can wait. Sasuke needs help now.

"Sakura, Naruto, call the hospital. Tell them we're on our way." Training—say something about training. The idea of something as normal as training seemed very out of place in the surreal new reality that had come into being from the second he'd stepped into the darkened apartment. Barely aware of the words as they left his mouth, he said, "Training's canceled for today."

He'd almost made it to the apartment door when Naruto spoke for the first time: "Hey, Kakashi-sensei…he's going to be all right, isn't he?"

Kakashi hesitated, wanting to offer some encouraging words but reluctant to lie. He heard Naruto picking his way towards him over the battered mess of wood on the floor. When he was less than an arm's length away, Naruto sighed and added, "I mean this is Sasuke we're talking about here…he'd never let something as lame as getting sick—I mean, he's so stubborn! There's no way!"

"The doctors know what they're doing," Kakashi finally replied. "They've patched me up plenty of times before, and they'll do everything they can to help Sasuke."

As Kakashi hurried through the door with Sasuke's unconscious form in his arms, he heard Sakura add, "Yeah, Naruto, Konoha's got a great hospital—one of the best." Her tone was falsely cheerful, barely enough to hide her gulped back sobs. Kakashi was almost to the stairs and her voice was very far away when she sniffled, "It might even be number one now that we've got Tsunade."


Tsunade pursed her lips as she pulled the hospital sheet up over the motionless body of Chouji Akimichi. Now that all of the beeping and whirring monitors had been removed, the crackling of those stiff, white sheets seemed to fill the room. The boy's body was still unnaturally warm; she could feel the heat radiating off of him in waves, even through the sheet. It reminded her of a time many years ago when she had stood beside a radiator long enough to raise blisters on her arm.

She had been six years old. Her family had gotten together to celebrate her father's thirtieth birthday. The house had been packed; there had been nowhere else to stand until she started screaming. Then her mother had come running to dab some ointment on the wound.

Maybe we should dip him in an ointment bath, she thought. She dismissed the thought with a shake of her head. She wasn't thinking straight and she knew it. Aching muscles, fatigue, lowered focus—it didn't take a med-nin of her caliber to recognize the signs of sleep deprivation. Even so, sleep was the last thing on her mind.

It occurred to her as she smoothed the sheet over the boy's still face that with his death that the Akimichi clan was extinct. One night. That was all it had taken to wipe out a clan that had been a pillar of Konoha since its founding. Chouza Akimichi had died just after one in the morning and his wife had wasted no time in following him, passing away less than fifteen minutes later. And now the boy.

"It's like the Uchiha massacre all over again," she sighed. But even as the words left her mouth, she knew that there was one vital difference that set the two apart; one that made the Akimichis deaths seem far more sinister: At least we know how the Uchihas died. The Akimichis…I still have no idea what killed them.

The symptoms were nothing extraordinary. High fever. Productive cough. Vomiting. Progressive skin rash. Rapid chakra depletion. With decades of experience under her belt, Tsunade had seen each of these symptoms hundreds of times before. Finding a diagnosis should have been child's play—but for all her talent and for all her experience, the illness remained undiagnosed.

And now here she was, preparing Chouji Akimichi's body for the morgue. She knew she had to perform an autopsy, knew she had to examine the lungs and perhaps samples of the skin and all its underlying tissues as well. Even though she was exhausted, sleep was out of the question until after that autopsy was finished because the idea of a mystery illness wasn't what frightened her most of all. What frightened her most of all was—

"Tsunade, the med-nins from the Sand have arrived," announced Shizune, jerking Tsunade out of her morbid train of thought. Tsunade jumped, wondering when her attendant had entered the room. In her surprise, she disturbed the sheet that she had been arranging so carefully over the deceased boy. It pulled, bunching around his shoulders and exposing part of his face utterly frozen face.

Tsunade frowned. The frantic hours she had spent laboring to save the Akimichis had driven all thoughts of diplomacy and official business out of her head. I was supposed to give those Sand nin a demonstration on my healing techniques, she thought. I can't appear to them like this. "Arrange for them to be shown to their inn and assure them that I will meet them as soon as possible."

Tsunade waited for her assistant to excuse herself from the room, but the younger woman said nothing. Without turning around to face the other woman, she said, "Is there something else, Shizune?"

Even without looking at her attendant, Tsunade knew that the other woman was fidgeting uncomfortably as she answered, "Naruto Uzumaki and Sakura Haruno have just arrived here."

"I suppose they want to know more about the Uchiha's condition," Tsunade replied, her eyes never leaving Chouji's still face.

"What should I tell them?"

"You can tell them everything we know. Which isn't much."

"Yes, Tsunade."

Shizune had reached the door of the room when Tsunade whirled around to face her. "They were with Kakashi when he found the Uchiha boy?"

Shizune nodded.

Tsunade's jaw worked as though she was fighting an inner battle. When she spoke again, her voice was hollow. "They must not leave this hospital. The same goes for Kakashi. And while we're at it, I want Shikamaru and Yoshino Nara here as well. I'll be damned if I let this get out of control on my watch. Do you understand?"

"Y-yes, Tsunade." With a small bow, Shizune left the room, her face paper-white.

Once Shizune had gone, Tsunade reached down and straightened the sheet, pulling it up to hide Chouji's lifeless face from view with a trembling hand. The idea of a mysterious new illness was frightening, but what was truly terrifying was the fact that it was spreading.


Author's Notes: More morbidity... We'll be getting to some real action soon--promise! Reviews and constructive criticsm are very greatly appreciated. Also, thanks to my lone reviewer for chapter one: LittleMana!