When they arrived at the council room, Angel was already fighting against the attackers. Team 7 was surprised to find that the attackers were the same ones that they had been following. The same ones that had poisoned Sasuke and had almost killed him. Angel seemed to be holding his own in the battle so Kakashi motioned for his students to stay back. Unfortunately, Kyusuke hadn't seen him and had dashed into the battle to join his dad. As soon as he got close enough for the enemies to notice him one of them dashed forward to attack him with a dagger. He would have defended himself, but before he could Angel had pushed him aside and had taken the dagger to his shoulder. It wasn't a serious injury, but it did limit his ability to fight enough that Kakashi felt that the team should join in on the fight.

"You take him," he said to Sakura as he pushed Kyusuke back towards her. Sakura nodded and held him close to her with one hand as she held a kunai in the other.

"Let me go!" yelled Kyusuke. "I can fight them."

"Stop struggling," said Sakura. "These guys are going to head straight for you and then your dad is going to try and protect you, which means that he's going to be hurt even more. Next time he gets hurt it might not be as minor as a wound in the shoulder." That made Kyusuke calm down immediately. He had never wanted his dad to get hurt. He just wanted to help. "Don't worry," Sakura said. "I'm sure the three of them will defeat these guys soon enough."

She was right. It didn't take long for the last of the enemies to fall and for Sasuke and Kakashi to tie them up. Sakura was actually surprised that they were so easy. The only thing that must have made them so frightening was that poison that they had used on their shuriken. Suddenly a thought occurred to her: if there was poison on the weapons and Angel had been hit that meant that Angel had been poisoned. She was proven correct again when Angel turned to them with a gaping wound that was much larger than the one that he had originally endured. She didn't understand, however, why the poison was affecting him much quicker than it had been affecting Sasuke.

"Dad!" gasped Kyusuke as he rushed over to his dad when the man sat down. "Are you okay?" he asked. His dad simply made a gesture that looked like he was drinking something. "But you only showed me how to make that once," said Kyusuke. Angel patted his head as if to assure him before allowing his hand to rest over the growing wound to try to stop some of the blood flow. Kyusuke looked at the wound and saw how bad it was getting. He was going to have to make the medicine now so that he could make it in front of his dad and make sure he was doing it right before he fainted.

Kyusuke rushed off only to come back with herbs, which he placed in front of his dad to be inspected. Angel looked at the herbs and picked out a few to hand to Kyusuke.

"Why is the poison affecting him more than it was affecting Sasuke," Sakura asked as she watched the poison continue to spread.

"I don't know," Kyusuke shook his head as he began to crush the herbs so that he could give them to his dad. "Maybe it affects different people differently."

When Kyusuke was done he immediately handed it to his father who pulled off a piece of his facemask so that only his lips were revealed and drank the liquid. After that Kyusuke immediately began to heal the wound.

"You're very good with healing jutsus," said Sakura as she watched. She had been amazed at the fact that he had known any healing jutsu at all, but the fact that he was able to control it so well at such a young age was unheard of. She had been practicing jutsus for years and then medical jutsus for months before she was able to gain that much control over her abilities.

"My dad has been teaching me jutsu since I was five. He just recently started teaching me healing jutsus though," said Kyusuke.

"That's a little early to be learning jutsu," said Kakashi.

"It's when I asked to start learning," said Kyusuke. "I wasn't feeling well so my dad took me with him to go to practice in the woods. I watched him while he practiced and it was so cool so I decided that I wanted to learn. I followed him every day for a week so that I could learn and then I just started trying on my own. My tutor said that he was so worried that something might go wrong and I would hurt myself if I continued to try on my own so he decided to start teaching me."

"What a nice dad you have," Sakura said with a kind smile. She was being nice to the boy that was sitting before her, but even she knew that there was something not right about teaching shinobi at such a young age. It kind of made her feel bad for Kyusuke, but at the same time she had seen how quickly Angel had jumped to rescue him so she knew that it was not spawned by someone trying to make the perfect shinobi. That much at least was good.

"He's the best," muttered Kyusuke as he finished the healing process. Angel rolled his shoulder carefully before he patted his son's head and then pulled him into a thankful hug. Sakura's doubts about Angel faded with that one hug because she knew that no man who was trying to create a perfect shinobi would put that much emotion, pride, love, and worry into one strong hug.

sorry about this chapter being a little shorter than usual, but the next on is going to be really long so they balance each other out. I'll post that one on Saturday unless i get 5 reviews before then