Hey Akemi again. I know, I know, "go away and get on with the story so I can either enjoy it or hate it and laugh at your despair!" just gotta do a quick disclaimer and then I'll get out of your hair. Also, I got tired of writing "Sakura POV" for no apparent reason so unless I say otherwise it is in her POV.
Sai: Akemi-san does not own Naruto or anything Naruto related. She only owns this plot, which is actually fairly decent for someone who's writing this in the middle of the night.
Kakashi: Read and Review. Don't be afraid to flame. She wants to know what she can do to improve.
Naruto: Also, there is a point to all of this. She's leading up to the main event. Please be patient and try to bear with the slow-ish first few chapters. She really is trying!
This system went on for three days. On the forth I took the extra time to tie my sand village forehead protector onto right bicep, using a special knot Temari showed me so that it won't come off during battle or daily errands, but simple to undo. We reached the gates of Suna by noon and I smiled at the guards. They opened to gates and we went to check in with the Kazekage, a.k.a. Gaara. When we got there he looked at us with a half smile.
"Panda-chan!" I cried and flung my arms around him, nearly knocking him over. Gaara and I had become close while I was in Suna. Well… As close as you can get with Gaara. He doesn't mind if I touch him and we can hold conversations and just sit and enjoy each other's company but from there that's where it mostly ended. He hates it when I call him 'Panda-chan' but I can't help it! He looks like a panda and it's cute!
"If you ever call me that in front of my villagers Sakura…" He sighed, exasperated and hugged me one-armed before releasing me.
"GAARA WAS THAT SAKURA?" I heard Temari call. She came in and we both squealed a little and hugged, talking about random stuff. I told her how Kiba was doing and how she should visit soon or he'll start howling forlornly on top of a house in the middle of the night. She told me how she fixed up my room to look like mine at Konoha but in a more forest-like way, as mine at home looks very desert-like and gushed about how long my hair was, and I explained about the jutsu and how I made my hair so long so fast.
We walked to my room and dropped off my stuff and I marveled over the absolutely amazing job Temari did. Words could not even describe the loveliness. The walls were a painted mural of a forest so real it was like I could reach out and touch a tree and feel the rough bark beneath my fingers. The ceiling was made to look like the daytime sky with the sun peeking out from behind a lone cloud and creating a warm glow you could almost feel on your skin.
"Temari, it's beautiful!" I exclaimed. "A polar opposite of my room!" I looked in the bathroom and saw green-tinted white walls with a hand painted picture of a river flowing through the trees, slightly off to the left side. A deer drinking from it a little ways ahead. "Gorgeous! Thank you so much! I love it!" I hugged her and then we got down to the serious business.
"We don't know what it is, but it travels fast. We need to get it isolated and figure out a vaccine, and soon." She stated, and started going into detail about what the symptoms were. She may not be a medic, but she knew enough to brief me on the basics of what I needed to know. We reached the lab and we exchanged goodbyes. I put on my doctors/lab tech. coat and got to work. I used drops of already drawn blood samples, trying to find something both common and uncommon. My main clues came from when I looked at the "before the virus" blood of the shinobi. I found a common factor between the several different blood types and isolated it before going back and searching for it again in the children's' blood. It took three days but I was finally able to completely isolate the virus and separate it from the DNA. But it was finally done. All that was left was the vaccine itself.
That was more difficult. It took two weeks before I figured it out. I was constantly falling asleep at the desk I was working at, and skipping meals, but it was worth it. I was 100% sure it would work. All that was left was the test. Temari insisted on being the lab rat. I injected her with the virus vaccine and waited three days before letting her into a quarantine area. She was there for two days. She should've been dying or dead by the virus by then, but was still standing, walking, talking, breathing. We had found our answer. And by the end of the month, everyone would be safe from the micro-killer.