Her fist still aching from her power punch to Tekka's face, Sakura immediately turned to more immediate concerns. That being, Rock Lee, who lay on the ground. His skin was already starting to turn crimson.
"Sa-sakura..." he croaked out weakly, reaching up a hand.
Heedless of the danger, she took his hand in hers, squeezing it, knowing full well she was risking infection herself. "Lee, no... hold on... I'll find a cure... I swear I'll find a cure... don't you dare die on me, damnit!" She blinked away the tears threatening to spill from her eyes.
"Sakura... if I have to die..." he coughed weakly. "I..."
"Don't say that!" she swore angrily.
"I... have..." Cough. "... have to tell you..." he stated, his eyes unnaturally clear. "Sakura..."
Choking back a sob, she nodded. She couldn't deny Rock Lee this. Not after all he'd done for her, all he'd risked for her. He'd defended her life on countless occasions and she'd always gone running off after her precious 'Sasuke-kun,' leaving him behind. By all rights he should've given up on her a long time ago, found someone who could return his feelings.
But he didn't. He stayed.
Like Naruto, Rock Lee never backed down once he set his sights on something. Even love.
"Sakura, I... I..."
Blink.
Sakura, reaching up her spare hand to brush away her tears, blinked in shock at what she saw.
Rock Lee's skin had been covered by an accelerated form of the crimson plague. His whole body had broken out into red lesions in mere minutes of being infected. But now, as she watched, his body was regaining it's normal healthy color, and Rock Lee sat up as the coughs started to fade, then vanished entirely. Sakura slapped her free hand against Lee's forehead, checking his temperature. He was a little flushed, but nothing bad.
"... I... feel... fine?" he asked in surprise.
Sakura removed the back of her hand from his forehead, placing two fingers together in its place. "Chakra probing might give an answer..." she stated, her fingertips glowing an eerie green.
"P-perhaps it was a fake?" asked Lee. "To scare us?"
"Tekka wouldn't be that stupid..." Sakura started to reply, then gasped in shock, removing her hand.
"What? What is it?"
"It's you... oh god, Tekka -is- that stupid!"
"Me...? What?"
Then Sakura grabbed up her fuzzy-browed hero in her arms and hugged him shamelessly, crushing his head against her shoulder. "This is it!" she cried, tears flowing down her cheeks. Tears of joy. "This is the answer we've been looking for! It's the cure, Rock Lee!"
Only vaguely accustomed to being shaken about by a screaming female teammate (working with TenTen tended to do that to him) Rock Lee shook his head and took a moment to gather his thoughts. What was going on?
"It's the cure! It's you!"
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Rock Lee had been born without the ability to properly mold chakra with handseals. Even with the most intense of training, the most powerful drive to succeed, he could never master ninjutsu or genjutsu. No matter how often he practiced, no effect would come when he made the necessary hand seals. Nor did it seem likely that he ever would.
When Tsunade had become Hokage, she'd had a lot of work ahead of her, but she'd displayed a pointed interest in the progress of Rock Lee, healing him after his duel with Gaara. She too was mildly curious by his inability to mold chakra, which virtually anyone could do with the right training. Sometime shortly after her surgery to restore his body to health, she did some studies of her own on his blood samples. She might not have been a brilliant gene splicer and chakra manipulator like Orochimaru, but she was one of the Legendary Sannin, and her understanding of the human body was near unparalleled in the shinobi world.
She'd discovered, what she confided to Sakura, what seemed to be a sort of 'reverse' bloodline limit.
Whereas most bloodline limits were usually blessed things, imbuing the shinobi born with traits and jutsu that could never be mastered (and never copied) by anyone but those born with it, Rock Lee had been born without the ability to mold chakra. It was inherent in him down to his DNA. A freakish mutation of sorts, though both Tsunade and Sakura politely never used the term around Lee.
It was in his blood.
And his blood was the cure.
Sakura couldn't be very gentle as she quickly grabbed some nearby needles to draw Lee's blood. But he was tough, and she was as delicate as she could be given the haste needed for her present situation. Some of the patients only had a short amount of time left. While she drew out the scarlet fluid and began to fill vials of it, Sakura explained her revelation (since Lee was, at this point, completely confused).
"The disease was made by ninja," she explained, shaking one of the vials. "It was designed to attack the chakra system. But your... er... unique... bloodline makes you immune to it, because you cannot mold chakra. Not like normal ninja do, at least." She applied her fingers to the vial, and they began to glow with green energy.
"Shousen Jutsu," she intoned. Within minutes, the red blood began to disperse, leaving only behind a bluish fluid in it's place. Sakura's mastery of fine chakra manipulation was clearing out Lee's blood, leaving the antibodies behind.
"So I am immune... and you hope to find what is in my blood to make me immune... and make more for everyone?" asked Lee.
"Exactly."
"Are you sure you can do that?"
"Positive," she replied, readying a syringe and prepping the first dose. It was a little selfish, but this was what she'd been taught to do. A medic-nin who fell in battle was of no use to her comrades. So before you kept them alive, you had to keep yourself alive.
Grimacing lightly as she drove the needle into her arm, Sakura let the cure flow into her veins, protecting her. Now safe, she turned her attention to making more. Lots more.
She had a lot of work to do.
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It took Sakura nearly a full day to completely create and administer the cure to everyone in Takaki, working well into the night and with the aid of Lee and Naruto to distribute it throughout the remainder of the city. They'd found Naruto fast asleep in a side room of the infirmary, snoring, and with two badly beaten Rock ninjas. Neither of them had known what to make of it, so they'd decided to leave the mystery for later. Naruto's Kage Bunshin had been irreplaceable in helping to spread and deliver the cure all over the city.
Finally, in the dark hours of the morning, Sakura could rest, and she lay on the only remaining cot in the infirmary, with Lee and Naruto watching on with quiet little smiles.
She slept like that much of the day, and even a little into the next, completely worn out from her work. But it had been well worth it. To be fair, some of the people hadn't received the cure in time. And as was necessary, their bodies had to be burned to prevent the spread of infection. Sakura had almost dreaded the thought of going to the families of those who'd perished, but to her vast astonishment, she saw no bitterness, no hatred, no anger.
One little girl, who's mother had died in the plague, had summed up exactly how they felt as she gave Sakura a hug. "My mom may be gone... and I'm sad... but I still have dad and my big bro back. You saved us. Thank you, Sakura-sama."
They'd all been like that. The village Elders, who'd replaced the deposed Lord Tekka (or whomever he had really been), had even tried to convince Sakura to stay behind as the village's medic-nin. She'd politely declined. Her home was in Konoha, her place was there. Word had been sent ahead and Tsunade was sending a replacement team of medical ninja and regular ones to redouble the posts against a future attack from the Earth Country. She doubted there would be. Tsunade was intent on having a rather stern word with the Tsuchikage of Hidden Rock. They couldn't risk an open war, but if anyone thought that was going to stop Tsunade from finding some way to punish them for their audacity, they were sadly mistaken.
So Sakura had packed up her things and bid them all a fond farewell, departing with Rock Lee and Naruto by her sides.
With the two of them with her, there was nothing she couldn't do.
"I got it!" exclaimed Lee. "Naruto-kun must have woken in time to see the attackers, and fought valiantly with all that remained of his energy, defeating them soundly," stated Lee, mimicking the fight in his mind with kicks and punches to the air. "But once he finished, he collapsed, drained of energy. Truly, it was a Springtime of Youth miracle!"
"That can't be what happened," replied Sakura. Lee had been trying to figure it out for ages now. So had she, truthfully. "Naruto was sick when we left him... and we found him cured. I didn't even get a chance to administer the cure," she said, holding up the last vial. She was going to take it to Tsunade, to add to her medical books in case the Crimson Plague ever broke out again.
"Eehhh... I dunno -what- happened," remarked Naruto, arms on the back of his head as he strolled casually forward. His face was scrunched up in deep thought. "I dunno about being sick either... I never get sick. I must've just been really tired."
"You were sick! I saw the lesions!" exclaimed Sakura. "Do you honestly not remember any of it?"
"Last thing I remember is lying down to catch my breath, picking that Marjoram stuff off the ground... then I woke up to find you two over me in the infirmary."
Sakura shook her head, silently amazed at both Naruto's resilience and his stupidity. How he survived the Crimson Plague, she'd never know. She was half-tempted to do a little light chakra probing on him, get an idea of what his blood was like... but ultimately, she decided it didn't matter. They had the cure, the village was safe. Tekka had been defeated (either he'd die or be caught soon enough) and both of the important people in her life were safe.
She couldn't have been happier. She could leave a little mystery for later.
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Author's Notes:
Naruto's escape from death was, obviously, influenced by the Kyuubi (as more than a few of you predicted), but since so few are yet aware of his carrying the demon post-Timeskip I had to keep them in the dark for now.