Disclaimer: Naruto is the property of Masashi Kishimoto

Author's Note: Thank you again to KARASU25 and to Rosebunce, who continue to be so be encouraging - seeing your reviews make me really smile. And also to my three guests, (or is it one? or two? Hahaha), who stopped by to urge me on to this next chapter. I hope you all enjoy it. And to others who have favourited and followed, a thousand thanks. I realised the other day that the death toll is already fairly high - to readers whose favourite characters have died, I am so truly sorry.

The door fell into the corridor with a bang. Neji lowered his palms and stepped forwards, walking over the door with Naruto close at his heels. The door rocked under their feet. There was a heady sourness in the air that burned his nostrils and seemed to cling to the back of his mouth.

Clenching his teeth against rising bile, Naruto stopped to look around the hall. Framed bromides on the wall showed a smiling family of four. Pictures done in colouring pencil drew Dad in a jounin flak jacket and Mum with a kunai between her teeth. The floor was so well polished that the dirt from Neji's boots stood out like the grease of fingerprints on glass.

There was the sound of a door being opened, a weighty pause, and then Neji reappeared at the end of the corridor. He came quickly toward Naruto with stiff, hurried steps, breathing through his nose.

"Neji – "

"Just one moment," came the shaky reply. Neji continued down the hall, back over the door and stopped outside in the landing. He tore off his visor from his head and gasped for air.

There were two reasons why Neji cut his hair. It didn't take a genius to realise that the Hyuuga clan traditional long hair wasn't practical for daily life under the visor. The Hyuuga clansmen in the Grey Cross, however, liked to give an additional reason – they said it displayed their commitment to their work and their acceptance of effective exile. Neji ran his hand over the inch of thick brown thatch left behind by the scissors, urged himself to focus. He breathed in deep through his nose and closed his eyes.

Naruto came back to the flat entrance. "What's in the back room?"

"Leave that to me," Neji said. "You go to kitchen, Naruto."

"What? Why?"

"There's someone still alive in there."

Naruto began to grin before suddenly frowning. "I don't even know if that's a good thing anymore – "

"Talk to him, check if he's sick and find out what happened. I'll come and find you when I need you." Neji pulled the red visor back over his face, squared his shoulders and headed into the flat again. "Don't come until then."

Naruto had a sneaking suspicion that Neji was trying to be kind. The thought was so odd he found himself obeying his orders without a word. He would admit it freely – he felt like a lost explorer who had stumbled into a river so fast he could barely keep his footing. All he could do was wade downstream with the flow and hope things on the bank would begin to look more familiar.

Pushing through an archway strung with beads, Naruto found himself in a neat little kitchen.

At first he thought it was empty. He listened, listened carefully, and heard wispy breathing from the other side of the kitchen table. A small boy was sprawled on the floor next to a fallen chair. Naruto hurried to his side.

"Hey? Hey, kid?" Naruto tapped the boy on his face to get some kind of response. It worked. The boy's eyes flickered. "Come on. Focus on me. Look. Don't be scared. I'm not sick, I promise. What happened to you?"

The boy whispered something. Naruto leaned in closer. "Wanted to get out…wanted the house key…" the boy murmured. His voice was hoarse and his lips were cracked.

Naruto looked up. There was a small shelf on the wall. Naruto raised his arm, felt around the shelf until his fingers touched something cold and metallic and pulled it off - a key strung to a bell and a spoon-shaped amulet. Seeing as the knocked over chair was just underneath it, the boy must have been trying to reach the shelf and overbalanced.

"How long have you been lying on the floor?" The boy flicked up two fingers. "Two days? Did you hurt something?"

"Both my ankles," the boy whispered. "But I only fell because…no food…no water..."

The beads in the archway rattled and the boy screamed. It was the first sound louder than a whisper he had made since Naruto found him and it obviously hurt, because the boy stopped quickly with a whimper. He was staring past Naruto at the silver-eyed man in blood red hazard gear who had stepped into the room. Then the boy's eyes rolled upwards in his head and he fell back, unconscious.

Neji raised an eyebrow and seemed bemused. "I think that's the first time I've been screamed at by a child."

"The kid just fainted at the sight of you," Naruto said incredulously.

"Locked in children tend to react badly. A lot of families locked themselves in before the council developed the hazard cloaks after all."

Naruto looked at Neji and couldn't resist a smile. "You are so taking that personally."

"He's dehydrated, starved and probably infected with the Plague. Of course he'd faint," Neji said brusquely but there was thin blue vein twitching in his temples. He glanced around the kitchen then turned to Naruto. "I've finished examining the other room, so the next step is preparing the bodies. Since it's your first day, you'll just be watching and learning."

"Sure, but what about this little guy?" Naruto pointed at the white-faced boy on the floor.

"Bring him. I doubt he'll be waking up any time before he reaches the hospital."

Wrapping his tracksuit top around the boy, Naruto gingerly lifted him up in his arms and followed Neji out of the kitchen. The smell of decaying flesh intensified when they reached the door of the master bedroom.

There were three bodies in the room – pale and waxy, frozen in the positions they had died in, their skin softening and the gums beginning to recede from their teeth. When Neji had first opened the door, flies had filled the room in a scintillating cloud of blue and green. The mother lay in the bed with her eyes closed. She had black lines of blood at the corners of her mouth and when Neji tapped her chest, he heard a gentle gloop of fluid inside. Her cause of death was obvious, but the father and the older brother lying at the foot of her bed were a mystery. The older brother held a training kunai with its blade buried in the soft part of his father's throat. His face and shoulders were black with blood. How the older brother had died was answered when Neji pried open the father's fist and found two vials – one stoppered, one opened, and the stoppered one filled with small black pills the size and shape of lentils.

At lunch Neji pulled out the stoppered vial and pushed it across the table for Sakura to look at. Naruto and Neji had gone back to the Grey Cross tent for lunch after dropping off the Tsuruya boy at the hospital and Sakura joined them at the canteen bench. She had been curious to hear about Naruto's first morning on service, but when she asked she regretted it almost immediately. Naruto seemed shell-shocked.

"It's konseigan - the poison Shikamaru was talking about," Neji told Sakura as Naruto finished his curry. "I found a letter in the flat, signed by the Sixth Repentance, with instructions on how to use it."

"What do you mean by the Sixth Repentance?" Naruto asked, his spoon stopping on the way to his mouth.

Sakura sipped her barley tea and looked grim. "They're an end of the world cult, Naruto. We don't really know much about them, but they've been gaining a huge amount of influence in the past week alone. We only found out about them because of the deaths they've caused. The Sixth Repentance think that chakra was something stolen from the gods, that the Plague is a punishment for that sin and that this is the final retribution before the ninja world ends."

Naruto spluttered on his food. "That's crazy. I don't get why people would believe any of that."

"They target the vulnerable and the locked in families are horribly vulnerable. They only know what's happening outside of their houses from the occasional Runner who stops to talk. The Sixth Repentance deliver this poison, the konseigan, to the locked in families, and they tell them that the world is ending and that the gods are out to kill anyone who uses chakra." Sakura tapped the butt of her paper cup on the surface of the table as Naruto stared. "The Sixth Repentance say parents should kill their children before they start using their chakra systems properly, then the gods will forgive them and the children won't go to Hell even if their parents do. If the parents truly want to repent, they said that the parents should take their own lives as well."

Naruto surged up from his seat. "Are you actually serious? Suicide and murder? When everybody's trying so hard to just live, there are people trying to make people kill themselves?"

"Some people don't need to be made," Neji remarked pensively. "The Cross is only famous because of the number of whole family suicides we've walked into. When they'd rather die of any way but the Plague, they make their exits."

"Most Plague deaths are very peaceful," Sakura said, when Naruto looked aghast, "but there have been a couple of very high profile cases where the death was…very bloody, and looked painful."

Naruto's knees give way and he fell back into his seat. He felt worn and old. "What is it with you guys?" he sighed, rubbing his face with his hands. "Kakashi decided to drop a tonne of horrible things on me yesterday lunch. Can't a guy eat his lunch any more without a side order of morbid stuff to bulk out his meal? Is there nothing else to talk about apart from how much Plague sucks?"

Sakura pursed her lips, thought for a moment, and then hated herself for saying, "On that note, Inuzuka Hana wanted me to tell you that you've both been invited to dinner at the Inuzuka house. Kiba's wake. Everybody will be there, apart from Hinata-chan, of course."

Naruto dropped his head to the table. "I don't know whether to laugh or cry."

Neji eyeres flickered down to his new partner then went back to the vial of poison in the centre of the table. "Pull yourself together," Neji said, glaring at the konseigan, "we've got four more houses to get through this afternoon. After that you'll be helping me put together our reports. We're Marksmen. We don't have time to laugh or cry."

Near Yotsuba village was a system of caves that none of the villagers dared to approach. Once, in those caves, thirty warriors had been cornered by their enemy and in their final desperate moments each and every one had taken his own life. Now their grudging spirits haunted the hill still, roosting in the caves during the day and hunting the woods at night. Nobody who went to those caves or woods, the Yotsuba villagers whispered, ever came back.

Which was why those caves made the perfect hideout, thought Kabuto, as he made his way back from another burnt out laboratory. The villagers were, in one sense, very accurate. The warriors had died in the caves – he stumbled across a new skeleton, bleached and grinning in old leather armour, almost every day – but Kabuto didn't believe in ghosts, and even if he did he wasn't afraid of them. His life floating between different nations and blending with different natives had turned him into a kind of ghost himself. He felt right at home in the caves of the Yotsubaoka Thirty.

He trudged through the undergrowth, swearing and muttering under his breath. Curse those Konoha ninjas. Most of his lifetime's work had gone up in smoke and flames. They had gotten more earnest since the start of the Plague, perhaps mindful of its origins from Laboratory Twenty Nine. The only paper that he could extract from the ruins he had visited was about squalamine use in Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva treatment, but with Kimimaro dead that line of research was essentially redundant and, more specifically, it wasn't the research he was looking for.

He was so engrossed in his muttering and cursing that he did not notice the man in the mask sitting over the entrance of the cave.

"Yakushi Kabuto."

Kabuto started and looked up. He wondered what would have happened if he had been a Yotsuba villager. He might have mistaken the man for a warrior ghost and died of fright. His lips curved up into a sly smile. "To what do I owe the pleasure, man who goes by the name of Uchiha Madara?"

"Business," the masked man said, regarding Kabuto down from his perch on a rocky ledge. "I have come to hire your services."

"As a spy, medic, or assassin?"

"As a man of science." The masked man's eye shone red. "I want to make a cure for the Plague. I am looking for a man to perform the research and to do it for me privately and exclusively."

Kabuto snorted. "I didn't realise that even Uchiha Madara quivers at the sound of a little wet cough."

"The Plague is disrupting my plans," the masked man said, chuckling with amusement but Kabuto had a feeling he wasn't amused so much by Kabuto's words, but by Kabuto's attempt at posturing. "The cure will help me get back on track. Your master worked on developing the bacteria. What man is more fitting to develop the cure for the illness than his apprentice? And you must know something of the research your master carried out."

"No doubt you already know that I was only taking care of Kimimaro, not studying him. I know very little of the strains Orochimaru developed from his illness. That was one of my master's pet projects," Kabuto raised his hands and sighed, "and the main files on Sasuke are buried under rock and rubble. Without those files or the boy himself, there is very little I can do, and with him being one of your favourite toys I doubt you'd be happy to let him go."

The masked man's legs dangling over the side of the ledge stilled. "What has Sasuke got to with anything?"

Kabuto returned the man's cold, bright gaze. "If you want me to carry out the research, then you will have to give him to me. If you are not prepared to do that, Uchiha Madara, then I'm afraid you shall have to look elsewhere." He pulled his brown travellers hood over his face and adjusted his glasses. "Good luck with that search!"

A breeze rushed past him and suddenly the masked man was before him, blocking Kabuto's path.

"If you can explain why you need him and justify it suitably," the masked man said, his eye gleaming, "you might find the boy yours, Yakushi Kabuto."

In Tsunade's office, Danzo was trembling with rage, so much so that the two civilian thugs he had hired to be bodyguards were wondering whether they should step in. They were there to protect Danzo from harm, after all, and attempting to attack Tsunade was near certain death.

"You destroyed them?" he whispered, his voice low and guttural. "The most powerful weapons for biological warfare were in our grasp and you burnt them?"

"With a katon jutsu," Tsunade told him playfully. "All the little vials went pop, pop, pop in the flames."

Danzo pushed back the chair and surged up like a cloud from a volcano. "You will regret this, Tsunade," he said. "The Mizukage has already announced cases of RAMK in the fishing villages closest to our borders and the Raikage and Tsuchikage have expressed disappointment with our quarantine measures. Soon they'll decide that Konoha is to blame for the disease and when that happens…" Danzo took a handful of dog biscuits from Tsunade's desk and crunched it in his fist, allowing the crumbs to fall onto her reports. "We will expect you to take full responsibility, Tsunade."

Tsunade threw back her head and laughed. "I am touched by your conviction that I will live to see the day when the Plague ends. I am touched, I really am."

Danzo snarled and raised his hand when a knock sounded at the door. Kakashi opened it and peered inside. "Tsunade, are you busy?"

"Not anymore," Tsunade said cheerfully, raising an eyebrow at Danzo. "Lord Danzo was just on his way out. Thank you so much for your advice, Danzo. It really was invaluable."

"Always willing to be of service to our lady Hokage," Danzo said silkily, bowing his head. He swept out of the room without another word, his civilian bodyguards jogging to keep up with him.

As soon as the door closed behind him, Tsunade scowled and slumped over her desk. "Why do conversations with that man always have to be so exhausting? You know what I want right now, Kakashi? I want a beer, and a pack of cards, and a lovely big roulette board spinning in front of me with the little white ball falling exactly where it's supposed to fall. How's the Hellhound Program?"

Kakashi slouched into the chair Danzo had vacated and pulled off his visor. "One of my ninken, Pakkun, came up with something rather interesting."

Tsunade raised her head. "Go on then."

Kakashi told her what Pakkun had told him, about Uchiha Itachi, and how he had been in the late stages of kimimarosis when Sasuke had fought him.

"So like Kimimaro, Itachi was infected with the old strain and it developed into the full blown disease," Tsunade said once he had finished, putting her thumb and forefinger to her chin in thought. "It makes sense. The disease developed from the infection when chakra use was accompanied by a physical transformation. Uchiha Itachi used his Sharingan and his eyes were constantly transforming. Whenever he switched between the Mangekyo, the triple tomoe, and his normal eyes, the bacteria would have proliferated, but why is that of any importance now?"

"Because it is likely that he infected Uchiha Sasuke with the old strain of bacteria during their fight," Kakashi replied and he leaned back in the seat. "M. kimimarosis doesn't cause a disease at all if the ninja's chakra use doesn't need a physical change. Sasuke uses his Sharingan - He might be starting to show the effects of the old type of disease. Now, from what little I learnt of microbiology from that fascinating board room meeting the other day, this could be of some use to you?"

"Of some use? What I would give for a living sample of the old strain!" Tsunade cried, thumping the desk with her fist. "It would be safer to handle than RAMK. We'd be able to do real research on its pathological action. We may even be able to develop a vaccine. By the gods, I would kill for a sample of MK!"

Her eyes fell on Kakashi sitting smugly in the chair. "Out with it. What do you want, Kakashi?"

"Permission to leave the village with a team of ninjas, of course." Kakashi's eyes sparkled. He fiddled with the edge of his red cloak and steepled his fingers together. "To find and bring back Uchiha Sasuke to Konoha for research purposes. Oh, and can I just mention that my ninken Pakkun is wonderful? I did say I would."

Not long before sunset, Suigetsu pricked his ears. He heard the sound of something big crashing through the undergrowth. It must have been a civilian. Any ninja who didn't make a habit of moving without a sound quickly would quickly find himself face down in a pool of his own blood.

He stood up from the fire he had lit to warm the cave. Voices floated out from the dark.

"I beg you, please, let me go. Take me back to my village – "

A small man, greying and bespeckled was shoved roughly into the clearing. He was shivering and rubbing his arms and covered in cuts and scratches. He looked behind, squeaked, and hurried forward. Sasuke followed him into the clearing with a kunai in his hand. He had made the man run through the forest, herded him forward with his kunai like a cattle prod.

The man saw Suigetsu by the fire and stopped running. He swallowed and, turning to Sasuke, suddenly said, "If I do as you wish, you'll let me go back to my village, won't you?"

Sasuke gave one short nod. He turned to Suigetsu. "Karin and Juugo?"

"In the cave," Suigetsu answered and pointed at the man. "Who's he?"

"A doctor from Ageha."

Suigetsu leaned on his sword, looked between Sasuke and the doctor, and whistled. "You kidnapped a doctor from one of the villages just to check up on those two?"

Sasuke led the doctor into the cave, and muttered over his shoulder. "They're useful to me. That is all. Don't think of this in any other way."

"Sure," said Suigetsu breezily. He gulped down a mouthful of water from his flask and stared at Sasuke's back, standing in the entrance of the cave as he watched the doctor examine Karin and Juugo. "How are you feeling by the way?"

Sasuke looked slowly round. His face was set in its usual blank mask. "Fine." He hesitated, then asked, "And you?"

"Never better," Suigetsu lied, holding back the dry cough.

Sasuke narrowed his eyes then turned his attention back to the doctor. "Good."

"What about Madara's orders?" Suigetsu asked him. "What are we going to do about catching the Eight-tails? At this rate, we're never even going to make the border of the Land of Lightning until autumn."

"We continue on," Sasuke said simply.

Suigetsu scoffed and shook his head. "Thought you my say something like that."

The doctor soon finished. He came out of the cave, wiping his hands on his handkerchief and his face pallid. When he reached Sasuke, he fell to his knees and lowered his head until the back of his neck was exposed.

"What are you doing?" said Sasuke coldly.

"Your companions have the Plague," the doctor said. His hands on his knees were shaking. They twisted the fabric of his trousers. "I can do nothing for them. I am sorry, but now that I have done as you wished, please, I beg you, kill me here."

"Plague? What plague?" Suigetsu demanded. He rounded on Sasuke. "You've got a real talent for picking up the freaks with death wishes, haven't you? What kind of nutjob is this guy?"

"A doctor of Ageha who was refusing to treat plague victims," Sasuke said, taking up his chokuto from under the flat rock and unsheathing it with barely a whisper. "I don't know about any plague. I heard he was sitting around at home, so I imagined he could do with some exercise."

That was why Sasuke had driven him forward at blade-point instead of casting him under a genjutsu with the Tsukuyomi, Suigetsu realised suddenly. The doctor was still kneeling on the ground. Sasuke stood over him with his sword in hand.

"There is no point for a doctor to see victims of the Plague," the doctor stammered, and he gazed up into Sasuke's eyes. "There is no cure. There is no treatment. There is only infection, and spread, and death. There is no place for doctors in that. And now, thanks to you, stranger with a blade, I am infected. The least you can do for me is to end my life now before I can go on to infect others."

"There is no place for doctors in ensuring the comfort of their patients, in reassuring their relatives, in helping people who don't know what the hell is going on with their bodies understand what is happening to them?" Sasuke's face twisted angrily and the tip of the chokuto touched the base of the doctor's neck. "You call yourself a doctor?"

"I call myself a father!" the doctor snapped, his cheeks quivering. "That is all that is left for me now. I have nothing but my wife and my daughter, and I will protect them with my life. Here, right now, I demand that you kill me. Use that blade, because I refuse to take this foul pestilence back to my family and see my daughter die."

"You think your family will thank you for dying for them?" Sasuke snarled, standing over doctor with his eyes blazing red. "You think self-sacrifice is honourable? Plague or sacrifice, you will be dead. Death is death. Your family will never know your real intentions."

"Yeah, because, if you die out here, we're not going back to your family to tell them about all this," Suigetsu said with a mirthless grin.

"I'm infected!" the doctor roared, spit flying from mouth. "I can't go back to them -"

Sasuke raised his blade and brought the pommel crashing down on the back of the man's head. The doctor's eyes flashed open, then he exhaled and pitched forward unconscious onto the ground.

"And the subject of payment?" Kabuto continued, clearing his throat when he had finished his explanation. They had shaken hands. Kabuto's palm itched from the masked man's touch.

"Is not Sasuke enough?"

"Sasuke is a necessary resource. You could give him to me, but it doesn't mean I have to apply my skills to him. I could simply sit and drink tea and keep him as a pet. To buy my skills, I would need something else," Kabuto said, watching the masked man carefully. He was gambling on the man's desperation to carry out his plan to bend to his request, but there was sweat behind Kabuto's ears. His skin was prickling. Every hair of his body was singing that the man before him was mad and dangerous.

Uchiha Madara straightened his shoulder and held out his arms. A wind whipped about them, picking up the fallen leaves, and when it cleared there was a large dark shape in his arms. "Is this sufficient payment, Yakushi Kabuto?"

Kabuto breathed in sharply and dropped the basket he was carrying. He laughed. He laughed so loud his voice echoed in the caves of the Thirty Dead. "I do believe that would be sufficient. Yes."

Thanks for reading. Do let me know what I'm doing wrong, or if I'm doing something right!