Little Chika never stopped spouting out nonsense all the way home. Takara struggled to carry her all the way there, readjusting her from over her shoulder to on her back, and then just dragging her by her foot. (Though Chika didn't care. She was more preoccupied with the fact that the world seemed to "turn upsy down".)

Takara walked through the front door and involuntarily smiled when she saw her long blonde haired mother, Fumiya, shuffling through some papers on her desk.

"Mom, Mom, Mom!!" She ran up to her, carefully putting the sugar intoxicated child onto the living room sofa. "How long are you staying home?"

"I've got some herbs I need taken to the hospital-- some paper work too-- and then I'm coming back to file medical reports. Why?" Shizute Fumiya sold herbs and medicines to doctors and distributed them to patients for a living, and Takara trained in her mother's footsteps.

"Great, great, great!! I'll take these for you!!" She hurriedly grabbed the paper stacks and boxes of herbs are off table.

"Huh, what? All right, then. But why?" Her daughter wasn't usually so eager to run errands. She was more than skeptical that she had suddenly turned over a new ambitious leaf.

"Oh, I just feel like going out. Ya know, it's kinda cramp at home, and I don't feel like training right now. . ." 'Perfect,' Taka thought. 'She'll think I'm being lazy from training. . .'

"You have the Third Exam coming up, you have to train!!" Fumiya scolded.

"I am, I am!! But you have a lot of paper work to do, so I'll just take all this. . ."

"Hold up a minute!!" She knew her daughter never volunteered for work, but Takara pretended not to hear. She walked as fast as she could out the door, paper and herb boxes in her arms.

"Takara, I'm speaking to you!!" The forty-year-old blonde herb specialist felt what was like a three foot tall tree collapse on her leg.

She looked surprised down on her younger daughter, seemingly under the influence of something.

The easily angered woman's face went red.

"You gave her chocolate, didn't you? . . ." It was family rule not to give the child any chocolate or chocolate like substance.

She manufactured a smile, waved at the passing neighbors, and hid the child behind her leg. 'She is in SO much trouble. . .'

At The Konoha Hospital

Blank expression and deep in thought of the burdens on her mind, Takara didn't notice the glass doors of the Konoha Hospital and bashed into them.

An anonymous chunin opened the door for her, helped her up, and told her to watch out. Takara nodded and blushed at her own stupidity. The chunin went on his way with all but secure faith in the genin of his village.

Taka went into the lobby. The first sight she came to was like a brick wall of moist green eyes, but she continued walking.

Haruno Sakura, heart heavy with care for her team mate and crush, wasn't expecting to see Shizute Takara's brown, golden flecked eyes. She didn't particularly like the girl and she felt the feeling as mutual.

Takara, wanting to polite no matter the relation(as she learned from her people person mother), gave an obviously forced smile and waved. Sakura just barely nodded, not caring too much. They averted their gazes.

A few moments after they'd passed each other, Taka stopped. She turned to see a pink haired girl exiting through the glass doors.

'Were those tears?'

She shook her head and looked down at the ground woefully. 'She's not going through what I am.' Taka thought bitterly.

She proceeded to the first room with a prescription on the list: room N-12, the intensive care facility, in need of sedative cicely leaves and gingko leaf juice injection, for muscle tissue repair. She absentmindedly read over the name, not caring who it was.

'But then again,' She guiltily reconsidered, 'She might be going through something worse.'

'But then. . . what can she be upset about? Whatever it is, Naruto would help her through it, and Sasuke . . .'

She nearly felt like crying with the mix of jealousy, resentment, empathy, and nostalgia she was feeling. 'I don't know what Sasuke would do to help someone through something, now. I remember when--'

Takara gave a soft groan and her face twisted mournfully. She had a lot of good friends, and she'd lost them. Then, in her mind, the name on the paper registered. 'Uchiha. How ironic. . .' She groaned louder.

But she stopped, paled in the face and forgetting all the thoughts swirling inside her, when she felt a cold kunai on the back of her neck.

Quiet and on alert now, she opened her mouth to speak but the kunai was lowered.

"Shizute Takara, right? You should be more cautious." That tired(and kind of sexy) drawl, she immediately recognized. Hatake Kakashi, the only man able to handle Kaori-sensei.

"Hehe, sorry Kakashi-san. I have some medicine here for Sasuke-k--. . . you're guarding him, are you? Is he in some sort of danger?"

"Don't worry about that. But you should be more careful. Don't tune out like that."

"I know, I'm sorry, Kakashi-san." She followed him into the hospital room, to see a sight that shocked and painfully disoriented her.

Uchiha Sasuke, when he cared and when he didn't, was always strong. It disheveled her to see him lying in a white hospital bed, tubes inserted in him everywhere.

Kakashi looked back at the terrified girl. There was a moment of silence, waiting for her to come back to reality.

"Well?"

"Hm? Oh, I'm sorry. I was just. . . thinking." She went to Sasuke's side, gentle care apparent on her face. She opened the top to a machine that kept the air flowing through his lungs and let some of the cicely leaves into the cage.

The fumes from it would keep him in a comatose state so he wouldn't feel the pain of his body healing. Takara had been taught that and many other herbal uses and remedies by her mother.

(Cicely, perilla, and lavender leaves crushed together made the sleeping powder Taka used on Yuria in the Preliminaries.)

Takara then took a vile of teal liquid and let it into a inoculation. She pressed down on the shot a little, as to clear any bubbles. There'd been a time when Taka was too squeamish to take shots, let alone give them, but in the medical training administered by her parents she learned that shots were used to help people.

It was something hard for the naive girl to stomach, and she still shivered whenever she gave them, but like her parents saying that plants had to die to be used for food and to heal people, she had to be strong.

(It had been one occasion when Takara cried her eyes out after getting a booster shot, not because of the pain, but because the medicine had been made with plants that died so she could use them. "It's not fair, Daddy, it's just not fair!! Why do flowers have to die?!")

"Which part of him needs the muscle rebuilding inoculation?"

Kakashi just looked at Taka and she could feel herself being judged, as though he was deciding something. Takara understood and was quiet.

"Here." He pointed to strange black marking on Sasuke's shoulder that Taka didn't notice before. Her eyes widened and she inoculated his collar, forgetting to be jittery.

"What is that?" Takara demanded. She suddenly felt like there was a cult being formed that she wasn't a part of.

Kakashi sighed. She could tell he was contemplating something and that he wouldn't answer her anytime soon.

She turned her gaze to her old friend.

"Sasuke used to be my friend. I don't know why we're not anymore. . ." She gave Kakashi a look of determination. "But I still care for him, very, very much. If it's a battle, I'll fight it for him. If it's a secret, I'll keep it for him. He's my comrade and more. I'll help Sasuke-kun to the best of my abilities."

Kakashi was more than surprised.

"In that case. . ." He pinched his chin in between his fingers and spoke light heartedly. "I'm going to ask you a favor."

She nodded furiously.

"I need some help to take care of Sasuke. He's in no condition to train and needs to heal, and you're right, he's in a sort of danger. So. . ."

She continued to nod.

"If you help to take care of him, I'll be happy to let you."

Takara "sweat dropped", as many call it.

"No wonder you're seeing Kaori-sensei, you're so cheap like her." But Taka bit her tongue when she realized that he might take it back.

"I could get mad, but then, I could tell her. Which would you prefer?" Takara comically stiffened, remembering the only time she saw her sensei mad: when the man at the tea counter gave her lemon basil tea instead of the rosemary tea she ordered. She flipped over the table and screamed words like "inept" and "failure", along with a few words that it is impolite to mention.

"I thought so." He smiled a smile that showed he was at ease, but probably meant someone else was feeling uneasy.

Takara shook to rid it of the unneeded thoughts. "But yes, yes, I'll come to help with Sasuke-kun. But-- why must he be protected? And what's with the mark? Please tell me!!"

"All right."

Then, Kakashi told Taka something she really did not want to hear. He told her about a wicked man trying to capture Sasuke for unknown purposes(though that was a little bit of a lie). Not only that, but he gave Sasuke a curse that would bind him to pain and give him tormenting power. Along with that, Sasuke would have to use sheer will to fight off the evil curse marking him.

Curses? This was all starting to sound like a twisted fairy tale without a princess heroine to Takara.

"But Kakashi-san, why don't you ask Sakura to help you with Sasuke-kun? She likes him very very much and is part of your team."

"Sakura would be a good candidate, but she's not a medical ninja. And-- how do I put this?-- you have blatant chakra exposure. You're distracted so you don't take the time to cover it, so I can read your chakra signature right away. If an enemy tried to impersonate you, I'd feel them covering their chakra and I'd know."

"Is that-- a good thing?"

"In this case it is."

"Hm. . ." Takara looked at Sasuke, then back up at Kakashi. "Thank you, Kakashi-san. I should get going. . ." She felt awkward trying to dismiss herself, but she really had to go deliver the remaining prescriptions.

"Go ahead, but be back here at 5:30 tomorrow."

"Thank you, sir, goodbye! And goodbye, Sasuke-kun!" She waved to the copy-nin and sleeping boy.

Two Hours Later

When she'd left Sasuke's hospital room Takara had been floating on Cloud Nine. She still had her head amongst the clouds two hours later, even through the uneventful prescription deliveries.

She was down to her last appointment: room J-07, in the recovering clinic, of healing saw leaf cream and bee balm to steady a bad vertigo, to-- Akimichi?

'He's on Ino-chan's team!! Maybe she's visiting him! I hope she is, I haven't seen her in a really long time.'

She went into the room. It was smaller than Sasuke's, as were the rest of the rooms not used for intensive care, but it was nice and almost completely white, with grey floor tiles. The opened window let in a soft wind that blew the white curtain. It matched the walls and the bed sheets.

"Choji-san?" Taka asked, but saw he was sleeping. "Oh, sorry," she pardoned in a hushed tone.

The only other person in the room was a boy with black brownish hair and honey eyes. He was playing solitarily on a board that Takara recognized. "Oh Shikamaru-san, are you playing Shogi?"

"Yeah." He turned back to his game, showing no interest.

"I have to wait until he wakes up to apply the healing cream. Do you mind if I play with you while I wait? I'm not the best, but I like to play that game."

He gestured with his hand that she could go ahead and they each set up the pieces.

"I have a board like this at home, only the pieces are glittery." She giggled a bit. "And have princesses on them." He gave her a look of disbelief, but with good humor. He mumbled something about how things having to be pretty was so woman like.

She giggled again. "What can I say? I'm a woman. And, of course, men don't care for princesses."

"What are you, some kid? You still like princesses?" He said, still in good humor.

"I love princesses! I'm a Ninja Princess, you know." The lethargic boy laughed out loud.

"Are you serious?"

"Why yes, I-- eh?!"

"Checkmate." He moved his piece, and the game was won.

"No way, we just started!!"

"You need to pay more attention."

"Rematch!! I want to win!!"

"Fine, fine."

Throughout the rest of the game, Taka, though trying to pay attention, seemed to be eyeing Shikamaru's face, more specifically, his cheek.

He sighed. "What is it?"

"You have a mark."

"What?"

"Right there. You have a scratch." She pointed to his face. "You must have gotten it in the previous exams. Here, I'm sure Choji-san doesn't need all this cream, he can spare some." She opened the black top and dug two fingers into the peach colored paste. She reached to put it on his face, but he backed away.

"Hey, don't--" She proceeded her fingers onto his cheek, rubbing in the cream. She didn't notice his face redden behind the healing cream.

The two heard chuckling behind them. Choji had awoken just in time to see his friend's embarrassing situation.

"Oh, Choji-san, you're awake. Here, some saw leaf cream; it should help with those wounds." She applied the cream and bandaged the scrapes.

"He's not hurt so badly," Shikamaru reminded her. She was bandaging up even the smallest cut.

"I know, but I don't like seeing people hurt, and I always want to help people as much as I can." Again, she giggled. "As Naruto-san would say, that's my ninja way!" They all understood that.

"Now, here, have this bee balm smelling potpourri. Smell it and it will straighten your head out. That run in with the Sound ninja must have given you wicked vertigo." She leaned in the hand the smellings to him, but she tripped over her foot and clumsily plopped onto the ground.

"Hey, are you okay?" Shikamaru asked, and Choji took a long whiff of the smellings.

"Yeah, I'm all right." Her face completely reddened at her awkwardness. "Choji-san!! Don't eat it, you're supposed to just smell it!!"

He smiled sheepishly. "Sorry."

Taka was going to continue her game of shogi because she was determined to win, but she caught sight of the clock on the wall, and ran out, dismissing herself with a yell of "gotta go" in the hall.

She normally wouldn't have been so rude, but she had a probably infuriated mother, and needed to get home before her being late made things nay worse.

Sterile white on grey tile stone,

Bright florescent light is shone.

Boy with heart and hand of cold,

Girl with tears she tries to hold.

AUTHOR'S CORNER:

Like my wonderful senpai, Desert.Moon-sama, I've finally reached chapter 25!! Hopefully I'll make it to one hundred-- NOT!! I'll probably move to a sequel by then.

Were the descriptions to anime for ya, CherryBlossom? She knows what I mean. ;)