On her third day in Suna, Sakura woke up feeling much more optimistic about her mission. She felt much more confidant she would be successful if she had Gaara's help. And well, at least she was better off than Shikamaru, who had been forced out of bed before sun up to meet with Kankuro and the village's financers. Sakura shuddered at the thought, glad to be going out to the desert instead.

Gaara and Hideki's squad were waiting for her at the gates when she arrived. Together, they ventured back out into the desert. She tried to avoid Hideki's gaze as they ran side by side on the sand dunes. She understood why he had so brusquely carried her back to Suna, but she was displeased by it all the same.

Instead, she focused her attention on Gaara's feet as he ran just a few paces ahead of her. She wasn't familiar enough with this terrain to feel comfortable running without his guidance, so she kept her eyes trained on his back so she wouldn't get lost. He had foregone his Kage robes today, instead donning his regular shinobi wear.

"Hideki," Gaara said, his voice sharp and authoritative. "Do you remember where you were when Temari began to show signs of being poisoned?"

"Yes, Kazekage-sama," he said, moving to take the lead. Gaara fell back to take Hideki's place at Sakura's side.

"What is it that we should be looking for, Sakura?" he asked, his eyes connecting with hers for a brief moment before they returned to the landscape in front of them.

"There's no way to know for sure what the plant will look like," she explained. "But usually a plant that emits a poison like this will look like a Venus flytrap. It might be lower to the ground, possibly buried part way in the sand. It's possible that there will be some sort of bright flower or bud attached to make it more alluring to its prey."

Gaara nodded in response, looking back over his shoulder to make sure the rest of Hideki's squad had heard her as well.

Hideki led them to the area they had been in when Sakura noticed Temari had been poisoned. The landscape was completely unrecognizable to her. The group slowed to a more relaxed pace as they began searching through the dunes again, looking for the elusive poison source.

"Kazekage-sama—"

"You may call me by my name, Sakura," he said, giving her a disapproving look. "You are a friend of Naruto's so you are also a friend of mine."

A little flustered, she reached behind her into her pack and pulled out a small vial of liquid. "Gaara-sama," she said, pretending the waver in her voice wasn't really happening. "Here is a vial of the elixir that will make you resistant to most poisons. I'm sorry, I should have given it to you before we left."

He took the vial from her hand and held it up to the sun to inspect it. "Should I drink it?" he asked. Sakura nodded.

"Kazekage-sama, wait," Hideki said. "It could be poisoned. You shouldn't drink something unless your food tester has tasted it first."

Gaara sent a mild glare in Hideki's direction before he pulled the rubber stopper from the vial and downed its contents in one gulp. "Don't be ridiculous," he said, tossing the empty vial in Hideki's direction. Hideki caught it, his face aghast.

"Kazekage-sama!" he exclaimed. "What if she poisoned it? She's a foreign shinobi, remember?"

Sakura crossed her arms, feeling slightly offended that he thought she would poison one of Konoha's allies. Did he take her for a fool?

"Well, Sakura?" Gaara asked, though his eyes were still drilled into Hideki. "Did you poison the elixir?"

"No, Kazekage-sama—" His eyes flicked to hers. "—I mean Gaara-sama."

"She said she didn't poison it, Hideki," Gaara said. "So let's focus on the task we're here for instead of pointing fingers at our esteemed guest."

Sakura briefly considered whether or not it would be uncouth to send a smug smirk in the Suna captain's direction. She chose not to.

Several hours scouring the desert left them still empty-handed. Even with Gaara being able to sense things within the sands, shift them in their favor, and use the sand to raise himself up to get a better view, there was still no trace of the source of the poison.

Sakura gave a heavy sigh, wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her arm. She felt defeated, she could admit. She hadn't realized it would be so difficult just to find the damn poison. She hadn't even started on the antidote yet and she was nearly halfway through the scheduled weeklong stay.

It was almost noon and the sun hung precariously high in the sky, beating down on them relentlessly. The heat was truly stifling – Sakura felt like she could barely expand her lungs well enough to take a solid breath.

"Gaara-sama," she said, squinting in his direction. She could see his silhouette a few meters away. "Gaara-sama, perhaps we should—"

"Hush," he said, putting his fingers to his lips. Sakura obeyed, listening intently for whatever it was that Gaara seemed to hear. He crouched low to the ground, his knees buried in the sand. With his palm against the ground, he closed his eyes. Sakura could see his sand trickling out of his gourd, moving to span over the dune they were standing on.

"What is it, Kazekage-sama?" Hideki asked.

Gaara held up his free hand, his eyes still shut as he listened or felt for whatever it was he sensed beneath the sand. Everyone remained deadly silent as they watched him. The winds whipped around them, whistling in their ears, howling in the distance across the dunes. Compared to the turbulence of the storms, the desert seemed oddly still and quiet in spite of the whistling winds.

Then Sakura felt it – a deep, low rumbling beneath her feet. The ground vibrated, causing the sand the hum and shift.

"We need to move," Gaara said. "Now."

He began to run back toward them, the sand from his gourd now hovering around him protectively.

But just before he reached them, an explosion of sand and dust and something disgustingly wet erupted between them. Sakura staggered backwards and fell down on her back. She rolled down the side of the dune, trying to shield her eyes and mouth from the swirls of sand. A pair of strong hands caught her and pulled her back up to her feet.

"Sakura-san," said Hideki, "Are you alright?"

Before she could reply, a large shadow crept over them, followed by a screeching sound so loud that Sakura crushed her palms against the ears to soften the sound against her eardrums. She gazed up into the sky at what had just passed between her and the sun.

It was a creature – large and legless like a giant snake or a worm. Its head was massive, certainly big enough to swallow any of them whole. It was probably at least a hundred feet in length, dotted with fins that glinted in the sunlight. It was covered in a putrid slime that had gathered sand in clumps all along its body. It let out another terrifying screech, exposing rows and rows of sharp teeth.

"What the hell is that?" Sakura breathed.

"Kazekage-sama!"

Sakura looked to where Gaara had been standing and saw that he had moved into the sky, hovering on his sand platform behind the beast. She saw him make a gesture to Hideki, who nodded curtly in his direction.

"We have to go, Sakura-san," he said. He grabbed her arm and began running back toward Suna, jerking his head toward his squad mates. They moved into formation around Sakura, forming a protective triangle around her.

"No, wait," Sakura said, digging her heels in to the sand and pulling her arm away. "We can't leave him here to fight that thing on his own!"

"He's the Kazekage. He can handle it," Hideki said. "He ordered us to go back."

"He may have ordered you, but he didn't say anything to me."

Sakura spun around and dodged between the other two Sand shinobi, running back toward Gaara. Unfortunately, she then saw why he had asked them to leave. From beneath the beast she could see a rising wave of sand – a wall of it so large she couldn't see where on the horizon it ended. Did he plan to smother it with the sand? Crush its body?

"Gaara-sama!" she yelled, praying her could hear her over the din of the beast and the winds.

"Sakura-san, please," Hideki yelled to her. "You need to come back with us."

Sakura shook her head and pointed to the beast, still hanging in the sky. It lunged toward Gaara, who had yet to send his wave of sand crashing back down to the earth. "It could be the source of the poison," she said. "I'm not leaving without a sample."

"Kazekage-sama gave me a direct order to—"

She couldn't tell whether or not he finished the sentence. She was already running back toward Gaara, who had dodged the beast and was looking beneath him in her direction. The wall of sand began to crumble, fading back into the dunes. Gaara swung down low the ground, coming back toward her.

The beast hissed and screeched again, this time spitting gobs of slime their way. Sakura leapt backwards to avoid the spray. It might have been the cause of the poison, though she thought this unlikely. Still, she wanted to have a sample of it so she reached into her pack and pulled out a clear tube and scooped up some slime and sand from the ground careful not to let it touch her skin.

"Hideki," Gaara said, his voice clear now that he was so close. "I ordered you to take Sakura back to the village."

Sakura ignored the sharp guilt in her gut.

"Gaara-sama, I can't leave until I've collected a sample," she explained. "This thing could be what's poisoning your shinobi."

He turned his eyes on her now, and she shrunk back away from the ire she saw on his face. Behind him, the beast opened its mouth wide and bellowed – a loud, thunderous sound that rattle Sakura's eardrums and made her teeth hurt. It then plummeted back toward the ground, diving into the sand and underneath them again.

She shielded her face from the sand that sprayed up everywhere and moved into a fighting stance. This wasn't going to be easy for her – this terrain didn't lend itself well to her abilities. If she wanted to inflict any kind of damage, she would need to land a direct hit on the beast.

"Hideki, take your squad and go back to the village."

"Yes, Kazekage-sama," Hideki replied, bowing low. He spared a hesitant glance toward Sakura before he launched himself back toward the village with his squad mates following close behind him.

Sakura didn't waste any time. She summoned a healthy amount of chakra into her fist and punched the sand beneath her feet. The impact on the sand wasn't nearly as satisfying as a punch on solid earth would have been, but it kicked up a large amount of sand nonetheless. She wished Hinata were there with her so she could use her Byakugan to search beneath the sand for the massive beast. But without the Byakugan, Sakura would just have to search the old fashioned way.

In the crater she had just created, Sakura scanned the sand, looking for anything that might be releasing a breathable poison. Finding nothing, she moved to the next dune and did the same thing – creating another crater to search through. But this time when she punched the ground, a low rumbling sound followed. She stilled for a moment, listening intently to hear where beneath her the beast was exactly.

Then, from the corner of her eye she saw it – a nest of eggs. She could see the fumes rising from it – either that or heat that distorted her vision just over the nest. Quickly, she summoned more chakra to her feet so she could run to the nest. With a burst of speed, she lunged forward.

The rumbling beneath her feet grew louder. She could feel it, chattering her teeth and making her vision blurry. Another explosion of sand and slime mushroomed before her. She braced herself for impact, but it never came.

Instead, she found herself hanging from Gaara's sand platform, his hand clutched tightly around her wrist. She looked down below her and saw the beast hovering protectively over its nest.

"Gaara-sama," she said as he pulled her up onto the platform. The beast spit another spray of slime in their direction. Sakura squeezed her eyes shut, but Gaara's globe of sand appeared before them, preventing the spray from reaching the platform. "It's protecting a nest. I think the eggs are what's creating the poison."

He glared at her. She took a step back away from him, a little surprised that he still seemed angry. In spite of his ostensible anger, more sand moved to accommodate her step and prevent her from plummeting back down to the ground.

"That was incredibly foolish of you," he said through clenched teeth.

"What?"

"You provoked it and you approached its nest."

She blinked, surprised that he would admonish her for that. It was the entire reason she had stayed instead of going back with Hideki's squad. She had to have a sample of the poison. "I know, but I was just—"

She was cut off by another loud screeching as the floating beast zipped through the air toward them. A tendril of Gaara's sand snaked its way toward the beast, striking its head with a sharp blow. The beast bellowed and reared its head back, preparing to lunge again.

Sakura glanced down to the ground below. It wasn't too far of a drop. If she cushioned herself with chakra, she would be able to land with no injury. Gaara was sending continuous strikes of sand out to hit the beast, which seemed distracted now. Taking the opportunity, Sakura leapt down off the platform.

She landed on a high sand dune and skidded down to the bottom. She could see the crater with the nest inside just a few meters away. Quickly, she began to run towards it.

"Sakura!" she heard Gaara yell, but she ignored it. She glanced above her head up at the beast as it snaked itself across the sky. It still seemed distracted by Gaara, she noticed. If he could just keep it distracted until she could get her hands on an egg…

A dark shadow covered her suddenly, the sand growing darker as she neared the nest. Too nervous to look up at the beast she knew was just above her now, she continued running, trying to keep her breathing steady. As she neared the nest, she realized the eggs were much larger than they had appeared before. They were at least as big as her head and with the poisonous fumes she could see emanating from it, it would certainly be a task to return it to the village without poisoning herself or the Kazekage.

She paused and flung her pack from her shoulder. She reached inside and pulled out a gas mask. She only had one, which she knew she would need to give to Gaara. She could manage the poison in her own system without it – even if she'd rather not have to.

The beast spat another deluge of slime down toward her. She dodged out of the way, but a sand shield appeared to protect her nonetheless.

"Gaara-sama!" she yelled, squinting up toward him. He was directly between her and the sun, which made it very hard to see him. But she could see his location well enough to attach the gas mask to a kunai and launch it up toward him.

It embedded itself in his sand shield before Sakura watched it sink inside. Hopefully he would put it on immediately.

She turned back to the nest. At this point it was too late to coordinate an attack with Gaara. Hopefully she could just make a run for the nest and take off with one and he would follow her.

She kept running and then skidded into a halt in front of the nest. Surprisingly, there was no odor, in spite of the sickly green hue the eggs had taken. She hefted one up out the nest, hoisting it onto her hip like it was a toddler. It was much heavier than she expected, and the shell was slimy and slippery in her grasp. She used a touch of chakra to keep it adhered to the skin of her palms and began to run.

A screech above her head alerted her to the beast's attack. It swooped down in front of her, blocking her path as it's belly skimmed along the sand. It bellowed again – a sound that was more frantic, more distressed than any of its previous noises.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I know it's your baby, but I need it."

It whirled its head around to face Sakura, moaning like it was in pain. Sakura trembled as she gauged another direction she could run. She spotted Gaara in the sky above her, but he seemed to have all his attention focused on the beast.

Without warning, a wall of sand shot up from the ground, launching the beast high up into the air. The beast wriggled and screeched, righting itself before lunging again toward Sakura, who was now frozen in place with nowhere to run. Again, Gaara sent a wave of sand to save her, knocking the beast over onto its side.

A spell of dizziness washed over Sakura. The poison. She blinked rapidly, trying to dispel the feeling. With her chakra, she explored her lungs, looking for the microbes that any second now would send weakness to her muscles and paleness to her cheeks. She expelled what she could, but she knew that she would need to get back to the village to be able to get rid of all of it.

The wall of sand in front of her dropped back down into the earth. Sakura glanced up at Gaara again. He remained in the sky, attacking the beast with his tendrils of sand.

"Gaara-sama!" she shouted as she began to run back toward Suna. She didn't look back, hoping that Gaara would follow her and leave the beast behind. Her chakra levels were dwindling as she continued to suck the infected microbes from her lung and expel them through her sides.

The heat was beginning to get to her. Her face and neck were drenched in sweat, her chest felt like it was on fire, and she felt twinges of unresponsiveness in her muscles. Running on the sand became much too difficult. She could no longer pull her chakra precisely to the pads of her feet. She squeezed the egg closer to her body. If she collapsed and dropped it, it would be impossible to find again.

Another eerie screech ripped through the air close behind her. A second later she felt a spray of the beast's slime against her back. She winced and kept running, hoping that the offending bodily fluid wouldn't do too much harm to her before she could get back to Suna.

Her back began to sting as the slime on her back cooked in the beaming sun. A muscle spasm in her leg caused her to stumble. Her chakra control was suffering and she miss-stepped against the sand. Her leg crumpled beneath her and she crashed face forward into the sand, careful to keep the egg safe from her weight. She tucked the egg into her stomach, curling around it to protect it as she continued to roll down the sandy slope.

When she had come to a stop on her back, she squeezed her eyes shut. The sun was blindingly white. It made her head ache and her eyes smart. She felt them start to tear up. She blinked rapidly a couple of times. Her vision blurred. Then it began to tunnel. Her arms became too heavy to lift. She opened her mouth to groan, but a raspy wheeze came out instead.

The pinprick of light that was left of her vision vanished into shadow, taking Sakura's consciousness with it.

"How can you not remember?" a familiar voice asked. "Weren't you studying her this whole time?"

"Of course, Kankuro-san, but this is different—"

"It looks the same to me."

"That's enough, Kankuro."

The voices continued to chatter. Sakura's head was swimming – a pulsating pain reverberating in her skull. She tried to open her eyes, but they felt glued shut. She tried to open her mouth to speak, but she found she couldn't remember how.

It must be the poison, she thought. Perhaps being so close to the egg had worsened the effects. Did that mean Gaara had been poisoned, too?

"Gaara-sama, surely you don't approve of their slacking. Sakura-san is our guest! How can we send her back to Konoha in this state?"

Sakura felt her chakra reserves. They were at a decent level. She must have been out for some time for her chakra to replenish itself completely. Sluggishly, she tried to bring some of it to her head to alleviate the pounding there. She might not have been able to control her muscles, but she could still at least control her chakra.

"I'm with Gaara on this one," said another voice – Temari's, Sakura recognized. "This doesn't look like what happened to me. I just had a bit of muscle weakness and some nausea."

"Oh, you're an expert now?"

Her chakra felt cooling and gentle in her head. If she had been able to, Sakura would have sighed with relief. Once her headache was gone, she shifted her focus to her lungs. If she had inhaled the poison, she needed to get rid of it as soon as possible.

"All I know is that something is seriously wrong with her."

"Obviously."

The voices continued, but Sakura paid them no attention as she continued to push chakra into her lungs, clearing out what she could of the poison. Once she had finished that, she began working on the tightness in her muscles.

"Maybe we should take her back to her rooms," Temari suggested. "If the medics can't help her, we can at least make her comfortable."

"She's comfortable enough here," said Gaara's voice. "I don't want to move her again. Not until we know for sure what's going on."

Slowly, Sakura was able to flex her fingers. She tightened and curled them, testing her grip strength. Blearily, she blinked her eyes open. The room was spinning in circles, the brightness of the overhead lights pounding into her brain. She squeezed her eyes shut and let out a small groan.

"Look, she's waking up!"

She felt cool, feminine fingers on her forehead. "Sakura, can you hear me?"

Sakura reached up and gripped the wrist attached to the hand on her forehead. Her grip was weak, but at least she could move.

"I can hear you," she rasped.

"What a relief," she heard Kankuro say. "Could you imagine Konoha's fury if we killed their top medic? Naruto would never forgive you, Gaara."

Sakura wished she could have seen Gaara's reaction to that. Slowly, she pushed herself up into a sitting position and opened her eyes. She was in the medical wing on a cot. Temari, Kankuro, and Gaara stood around her, watching and waiting as she gathered her bearings. Behind them, closer to the door was the rest of the medic group she had been working with when she first arrived.

"Are you alright, Sakura-san?" Temari asked.

Sakura nodded, accepting the glass of cold water that Temari pushed into her hands. She drank it in one gulp, not realizing how thirsty she had been.

"You really had us worried there for a second."

Sakura passed the empty glass back, giving the blond an apologetic look. "I'm sorry," she said, her voice still dry and raspy. "I'm fine. Do you have the egg?"

Temari glanced over behind Sakura's shoulder. Sakura followed her gaze to where Gaara was standing, watching them disapprovingly.

"Yes," he answered for her. "We have the egg." To Sakura's chagrin, he sounded pretty angry.

Sakura glanced back at Temari. She looked sheepish, which probably wasn't a good sign. "Well, I'm glad you're okay," she said softly. "You should probably get some rest. We'll leave you alone."

"Wait. How long was I out?"

"Only a couple of hours," Gaara answered.

"More like five or six," Kankuro corrected. Gaara sent a glare in his direction, but Sakura had already figured she'd been out for about that long. There was no way her chakra would have already regenerated otherwise.

"Alright, alright," Kankuro said. "Everyone out."

The medics began to file out through the door. Gaara watched them with a sharp eye, seeming to be angry still. Kankuro followed them, Temari hot on his heels. It seemed the Sand siblings could tell that their brother was not in the best of moods and didn't want to be present for whatever was about to happen to Sakura.

Sakura pressed her lips together in a tight line, waiting for the room to empty so the Kazekage could admonish her for whatever it was that she had done wrong.

Once the room was empty and the thick silence permeated the air around her, Sakura let out a whoosh of a breath. "Kazekage-sama—"

"I'm glad you're okay, Sakura-san," Gaara said, though his voice was tight as he expressed his relief. "However, I feel the need to establish some ground rules. This might have been prevented if you had obeyed Hideki."

"I understand, Kazekage-sama," she said. "I should have listened when—"

"Yes, you should have listened," he interrupted again. "But you did not listen. You provoked an ancient beast. You stole an egg from its nest and enraged it. It's out there as we speak, still wreaking havoc over the desert."

Sakura blinked in confusion. She naturally had assumed that he would have killed the beast before leaving.

"Why didn't you kill it?"

The barest hint of a smirk graced his features. "Easier said than done."

Sakura looked down into her lap, twiddling with her fingers. "I'm sorry, Kazekage-sama," she said. "I was only trying to find the source of the poison."

Gaara moved to the foot of her cot and sat down. "I've sent a message to the Hokage explaining everything that's happened," he said. Sakura felt a twinge of annoyance. It must have shown on her face as well, because Gaara held up a hand to stop whatever she had been about to say. "This was supposed to be a routine mission for you. You almost got yourself killed."

"Excuse me, Kazekage-sama, but I was doing my mission," she argued, sure that her petulance was apparent from her tone. "Being killed was a necessary risk."

"I requested you for this mission. I decide what the necessary risks are."

Sakura sucked in a deep breath, but she held it in instead of sighing. That might have been true, but she didn't feel the need to be coddled like a child. Would Gaara have felt the same way if it had been Naruto out there instead of her?

"It's late, Sakura," Gaara said. "Get some sleep. You may continue working on the antidote in the morning."

Sakura tried not to pout as Gaara made his way out of the medical wing.