Disclaimer: Masashi Kishimoto created everything

Author's Note: Thank you, so much again, to Rosebunse (and I really must learn to spell your name right...every time I think, c or s?) who reviewed and urged me on. I'm sorry to say that Kiba truly is dead and gone, so apologies to any other reader I might have confused. This chapter could have been longer, but I guess that's excitement to leave for next time. Please review and leave feedback. I'd love to know what you think of the Hellhound Program, Grey Cross, Keepers, Runners and the Sixth Repentance. What would you do in this situation? Which group you'd join maybe? I don't know, just a bit of fun. All in all, I hope you enjoy this installment! - Best, Zen

When they finished their rounds, Neji led Naruto back to the same tent where they had collected their files in the morning and started to show him how to fill out the reports. He asked Naruto to cross-check details, sign the reports to show they had both witnessed each other doing their work as a Marksman honourably (without stealing from the houses of the dead and the ill, maltreating the bodies, or refusing to help the needy) and then got Naruto to copy out the report on the Tsuruya flat. Neji pursed his lips at Naruto's crabby handwriting, as opposed to his neat, rounded symbols, but said nothing and rolled up the report to tuck into his cloak.

It had felt like one of the longest days of Naruto's life, but thankfully the four houses in the afternoon were nothing like what they had found in the morning. In two of them the whole family had become bedridden with the Plague, but were alive. Another was eerily empty. Neji suspected the family had run away from the village, so Naruto copied out the report on that flat too to deliver to quarantine control. The last house of the day was a happy mistake. The very flustered wife explained through the door that when the Runner had come round, her husband had been in the bath and she herself had been meditating with her children. The children had thought it was a joke that the mother hadn't noticed the Runner arrive and had kept quiet as well.

Naruto sat back and stretched his hands. They were cramping. Outside the sun was setting red and warm and the volunteer canteen were pushing trolleys and steel barrels into the Grey Cross tent for dinner.

"That's it for today," announced Neji briskly, tapping the edge of the reports on the table. "We have an hour and a half or so before Kiba's wake. I'll deliver these to the Quarantine Guard and the Keepers. Normally I'd say you take one report and I'll take the other, but it's been a tough first day for you. Get some rest. I'll see you in the evening. Good work today."

"Thanks, Neji." They clasped hands and Neji left the tent.

For Naruto there was only one place he could think of to go, so he turned his feet towards the hospital and set off in the evening light.

When he came to the reception desk, the receptionist was taking a nap on the pile of paper with her head in her arms. "Excuse me," he said and she started and looked up, "I'm looking for the room or the tent where they brought in a little boy this morning? About four. Tsuruya something…"

The boy had a room in the hospital on the third floor. He didn't share it with anyone, but these days that meant somebody had been bundled up in a sheet and thrown on a wagon. They had put up curtains around his bed to give him some privacy, and his bed was beside the window.

The boy's eyes widened when Naruto pushed the curtains aside. "You're that guy from the morning," the boy gasped and, to Naruto's dismay, promptly burst into tears.

"Oh come on, I'm not that scary!" Naruto didn't know how to handle boys gushing tears like they were trying to save a nation from drought. Well, he knew how to handle himself, but, little kids half his size were a completely different question altogether. "Hey, I'm nice. Really, I am. I'm not wearing a scary costume like my friend, see?"

The boy raised his head from his fists and looked at him. His eyes were red and shiny. "Everybody's wearing those things. I can't tell who anyone is anymore. They all look the same. It's creepy."

Naruto sat down by the boy's bed. "Don't be scared."

"But it's like the town's been taken over by demons," the boy continued and his lip trembled dangerously.

"Well, I'm not going to wear some scary suit even if somebody tried to make me," Naruto said with a bravado he didn't entirely feel, but it seemed to work. The boy stopped crying and looked thoughtfully up at him. "My name's Naruto. What's yours, kid?"

"Yabane," the boy replied. "I'm four years old," he added out of what seemed like habit. "Nearly five." Yabane blew out his cheeks and scowled sullenly. "Why have you come to see me? Is it because you feel sorry for me? If you do feel sorry for me, go away."

"You're not especially cute are you?"

"I don't want to be cute," Yabane muttered, narrowing his eyes.

Naruto smiled. "I just wanted to check up and see how you were doing since the morning, that's all. You're talking more now, so I guess they hooked you up to a drip. Here's a tip - if you act cuter, the nurses are a lot nicer. Are the doctors nice?"

"Yeah, but…" the boy grimaced. "They keep asking me what happened in my house."

"No go zone?"

"I don't know," Yabane admitted and he stared up at the ceiling where a moth was fluttering. "Dad made us go to Mum's room where she'd been sleeping for ages. He made my big brother Yasaki swallow something, pinched his nose and grabbed his head and everything. Do you know what that was?"

"Yes," said Naruto truthfully, thinking of the konseigan and noting Yabane's interest, "and I'll tell you if you tell me what happened in your house. A swap. Like trading cards."

And so Naruto listened as Yabane told his story in a string of broken sentences, how his older brother told him to run to his room and hide and not come to the bedroom again until Yasaki said so; how their dad had tried to grab Yabane by the head as well, but Yasaki had blocked the hand with a kunai; how Yabane had waited for a day in his room until he started to get hungry and the house began to smell, when he finally dared to venture out.

Naruto could only listen and feel useless. What good was the Rasengan if the enemy wasn't something he could see and punch? Here he was, the Jinchuuriki of the Nine-tails, but you couldn't burn out madness and flush out fear with sage mode. You couldn't crack open panic with a handful of kunai. The Plague couldn't be solved by any jutsu. For all his skills, the only thing Naruto might have been able do was turn into a woman to make people laugh.

That was what he was best at after all, when you stripped away his ninja skills - making kids laugh. Adults took a bit more effort to crack, but once they realised they were still kids at heart, Naruto had them, even though they tended to laugh at Naruto rather than with him. He wondered what this kid would look like laughing. Yabane was sullen and serious, and for a flickering instant, as Naruto observed him, it was another dark haired boy from another unfortunate family talking to Naruto from the hospital bed.

Then Naruto realised why he had come to see the boy – Yabane was alone. He was an orphan, just like he was, just like Sasuke. He seemed desperately bewildered, as though a bridge had given way beneath his feet and he had only then realised that beneath was nothing but a chasm. Naruto had known that bewilderment for most of his life.

"The Plague doesn't touch the children, but it gets their parents and Konoha doesn't want any more orphans, if we can help it," Lee had said, when Naruto had met him in the street, and Neji had told Naruto that, "Locked in children tend to react badly. A lot of families locked themselves in before the council developed the hazard cloaks after all."

Naruto was the only ninja who could go around Konoha safely without a cloak and visor and by the sound of it there was a steadily growing population of parentless ninja children scattered about the village. Who was taking care of them? Naruto knew better than anybody that children could slip through the system and, come to think of it, he hadn't seen any children of Academy age since coming back. Even the genins in their yellow cloaks and visors were hard to come by.

"That's it!" Naruto cried, snapping his fingers.

Yabane flinched at the sudden noise then and scowled. "What is?"

There was something Naruto could do in Konoha after all.

People often asked what the Keepers actually kept. Shikamaru thought it was obvious. They were there for the comfort of the people. They kept whatever it was that needed to be kept and whatever people wanted them to keep. If people wanted to believe they kept the peace, then that was what the Keepers kept. Nara Yoshino who ran the organisation liked to say they kept order, but from reports of the past few days Shikamaru was beginning to wonder if their job was to keep Konoha sane. Keep its cool, so to speak. Because people weren't confident they could keep it themselves.

Much like the Hyuuga clan dominated the Grey Cross, the Nara clan were instrumental in the formation of the Keepers. It was a police force in all but name. Nara Shikaku had been worried that there would be looting, panic buying of water and rice and potential stampedes over the hazard visors when they were handed out. He had suggested that the shadow binding techniques of their clan could be used effectively to freeze up mobs.

"Another family taken in by the Repentance?" Shikamaru read through Neji's report. Trouble upon trouble, just piling up like storm clouds. He signed the bottom and then put his fingers together in thought. "This is getting – "

"Troublesome?" supplied Neji dryly.

"I was going to say repetitive," Shikamaru sighed. "But that would work as well. How's Naruto? He's your new partner, isn't he?"

Neji didn't hide his surprise. "News gets around quickly. He's surprisingly reasonable, if a little lost. Loud and as likely to overreact as ever. I told him to take an hour or so off before going to the Inuzuka house. When are you planning to go?"

"I might not be able to make it."

Neji looked thunderous. "You're not going? But he was your friend!"

Shikamaru glanced at the clock on the wall. Cousins and distant Nara relatives with traces of their kekkei genkai were bustling around the room looking anxious. "It's the Repentance."

"What about them?"

"They're finally going public," Shikamaru steepled his hands on his desk in dark, fearful thought and a chill ran up Neji's spine. "They sent us a message – tonight around seven, they're going to be holding a gathering."

"That's a challenge to the Keepers," Neji agreed, taking the piece of paper Shikamaru had slid across the desk to him and reading the memo.

REPENTERS' PARADE

COME ONE, COME ALL!

TONIGHT, WE WALK TO HEAL

Neji's eyes fell on the vial of konseigan he had brought to Shikamaru from the Tsuruya flat and he clenched the memo in his hand. Rage swept through him in a white-hot current. "This is disgusting."

"We're all preparing to be on duty tonight," Shikamaru took out a lighter from his pocket and began to play with its cap. "Don't misunderstand me. I would do anything to be at Kiba's wake, but knowing Kiba, he'd want me to 'take down the bad guys'. If I didn't try to take down these fruitcakes, he'd come back as a ghost to haunt me."

Neji remained silent. He looked around the office once more, at men from the Grey Cross coming and going with reports for their respective Keeper connections, at the jars of concentrated alcohol at the end of every desk, at the huge banner over Nara Yoshino's head bearing the slogan of the Keepers: "Keep the Calm, Keep the Peace."

"Keep safe then," Neji said at last, making to leave. "Make sure you come to the wake later. Naruto would be happy to see you there."

"Keep safe?" Shikamaru scoffed and closed his eyes. "That's probably the one thing Keepers can't keep."

Tsunade had gathered quite a team. Kakashi recognised ANBU when he saw it, even when they had their brands covered by the sleeves of their shirts. It was in the way they tried to move without being noticed, to be more normal than normal. It took effort for them to make to tread with a noise. He didn't recognise any of these three by name, but he was alright with that.

Usually at the prime of their life, the most powerful of their generation and brimming with chakra, the ANBU had been decimated by the Plague and it was even rumoured that Danzo had disbanded them, for Konoha's sake. It seemed that was partially true. These three had volunteered as soon as Tsunade had put up a notice like they had been itching for an opportunity.

"Let's see," Kakashi peered at them over his book, running his eye over them critically. "Any names I'm supposed to remember?"

The woman with an eye-patch saluted smartly. "Aokage, sir."

She elbowed the round-faced, wide-eyed woman next to her, who saluted too. "Kurimi, sir!"

Leaving the man, who lifted his hand somewhat reluctantly and grunted, "Sekitoba."

They had dispensed of their ANBU code names with unemployment. Kakashi shrugged. "Right. Well, in that case, I'm not going to bother remembering them. You're Black, Brown and Red, understood?"

The three agents looked nonplussed but not altogether surprised. "Yes, sir."

He shifted his pack on his shoulder and began to set off down the dirt track to the East Gate. "Alright. it's time to move out – "

"Kakashi-sensei!"

A blonde thatch of hair, orange and black tracksuit, and pinwheeling arms and legs – Naruto was running towards them, red in the face and huffing. He slid to a stop in front of Kakashi. "I saw you from Tsunade-bacchan's office window! She said you were going…that were you going on a mission to bring back Sasuke!"

Kakashi smiled. "That's right."

"Then who are these three bozos?" Naruto gasped, pointing at the three ANBU agents with him. "Why are you taking them? It should be me, you and Sakura. We should be bringing him home – it should be us as Team 7, right?"

"We're not bringing him home, Naruto," Kakashi looked Naruto in the eye. "We're bringing him in to be a biomedical resource. It's like collecting herbs."

Naruto gaped at him. "You can't seriously think that."

"You can't seriously expect a welcome home party for a rogue ninja, Naruto. Besides, don't you and Sakura have things to do?" Kakashi said, indicating the Hokage's office down the road. "For example, what were you talking about with Tsunade?"

Naruto balled his hand into fists. "Don't change the subject."

Kakashi sighed and nodded at the three ANBU agents. They started to walk ahead. "I'm trying to tell you that you have things to do here. You've found something to do, I take it, seeing as you've just been to visit the Hokage and," he squinted with amusement at Naruto's Grey Cross armband, "done some doodling."

"It's an Uzumaki swirl and a smiley face! Can't you see?" grumbled Naruto, folding his arms. He seemed, however, rather pleased with himself. "I went to get clearance for my idea – I'm going to find all the Plague orphans, get them together, and make sure they're being looked after. Run some play groups or something. I mean, it won't be great for Neji, he'll have to find another partner, but -"

"But there we have it, my point proven." Kakashi smiled and his eye twinkled. "You have things to do here."

"Yeah, I do, but – "

Kakashi put his hand on Naruto's shoulder. "What you want to do, Naruto, is not just bring back Sasuke, but to rehabilitate him and that takes time that we don't have anymore." Kakashi let each word slowly sink in, noted that Naruto had registered them before adding, "Be happy we're bringing him back. To bring Sasuke home, however, you'll have to make him realise Konoha is his home. How you're going to that, I'll be leaving to you. Try and think of a way perhaps while I'm gone."

Naruto looked down at his feet and frowned, but then a thought occurred to him, and his face cracked into a smile. Kakashi nodded, seeing his determined grin. "Good. Then until I come back, take care! And have fun building up your gang of graffiti artists!"

Kakashi darted off down the road, waving with the back of his hand, and as he left Naruto behind him, he felt his resolve solidify, his goals become clearer, the world simplify again to that battlefield logic so familiar to a ninja mission. And how freeing it was to go out on a mission, to finally run without the hazard gear again!

"Boss!" Pakkun had appeared from one of the side alleys and was running beside him. "Sorry! It took me ages to get away from that Inuzuka pack!"

"Never mind. Sasuke's scent – do you remember it?"

Pakkun clicked his tongue and huffed, "Since when have I ever forgotten a scent?"

Kakashi smiled.

Ino was there already, Sakura noted, as she signed in the book for Kiba's wake, but aside from that none of her friends had arrived. Naruto was probably late, but Neji she had expected to be there first. Sakura had imagined that he would make a special point of being there, since Kiba wasn't only a friend, but also Hinata's old team mate and with Hinata locked in Neji had to be there at the wake in her stead. Sakura turned the pages of the register. No, Shikamaru hadn't arrived yet either. Ah, here was Rock Lee! The second name in from the top. Sakura smiled. Typical Lee. Always keen.

But Sai was gone, Tenten was gone, Choji was gone, and Shino's family had upped and left in the middle of the night when the body-burning started. The Aburame insects just hadn't coped with the smoke. Now Kiba too. Sakura felt tears prick her eyes, and hurried to the next room.

"Sakura-chan," Ino called out as she entered, the room filled with ninjas in formal black. People were milling around before the ceremony started, speaking in hushed voices. The red banner with the clan crest was pinned up on the wall. Beneath it was a photo of Kiba, grinning with fanged teeth and glowing with vitality. It was a far cry from the withered and whitened shell that Sakura had last seen in the tent. Green-white flowers had been arranged all around in rosettes and chains. Incense had been laid ready for burning. The absence of a body for viewing was the norm these days, when they all went straight to the pits.

Ino was sitting on cushion on the floor. Sakura kneeled on the one beside her. "How long have you been here?"

"Only a couple of minutes. Did you hear about Akamaru?"

Sakura shook her head. Ino narrowed her eyes. "They're putting him down after the wake."

"It's the Inuzuka clan tradition." Smiling sadly, Hana appeared beside them, all in black. Sakura looked up aghast. "We bury every clansman with his partner, so that they can go together to whatever comes next. When I go, my Haimaru triplets will come with me, and when Mum goes, Kuromaru will follow. Is this spot free?"

"Please go ahead," Sakura stammered.

"I heard an interesting rumour at the hospital," Hana continued, kneeling down on the cushion and clasping her hands on her lap. "Tsunade's putting in a ban on chakra-use for all infected?"

"I heard that too," cried a voice from the other side of Ino. It was Lee, his bushy eyebrows aquiver with interest. "It's such a simple idea. Why didn't we think of it before?"

"The Hokage thought it was impossible, so Shizune's been testing it all week," Ino answered him, leaping to Tsunade's defence. She raised her voice, "You'd be surprised how difficult it is, Lee. Shizune realised that she was using chakra everywhere – lifting a heavy shopping bag, drying her hair, reaching higher shelves, running faster up the stairs. It's going to take a huge conscious effort to stop. Shizune's even setting up a workshop program for it."

"Come to think of it, I've sometimes used chakra in my voice just to shout at the dogs," Hana murmured thoughtfully. "So if we stop using chakra and keep it under really tight control, what does that do?"

"It'll slow the bacteria proliferation and disease progress," Ino replied, her eyes shining. "If the person's just got it latently, then he might not even go on to the infectious stage. He'll probably live without infecting anybody else!"

"But, doesn't that mean," Lee twisted his thumbs together and stared, "doesn't that mean we won't be able to train any new generations of ninjas anymore? Doesn't that make us…the last ninjas of Konoha?"

"Maybe," Sakura admitted. There was a weighty pause for thought, before she continued. "But a lot of children at the moment carry the bacteria as a latent infection, and as they grow older and their chakra systems develop, the Plague might come back. We might be the last ninjas, but this won't be the last Plague."

"Think ships, carrying the bacteria into the future," Ino said.

"Plague ships," Hana breathed darkly, looking at her knees.

At that moment there was a loud bark and a growl at the door. Heads flicked up at the guttural noise.

"Is that the dog at the door?" Sakura asked Hana, thinking of the big grey dog with yellow eyes sitting at the entrance. It had sniffed her as she went into the house.

"He's turning away people who are latently infected," Hana said. "None of us are wearing hazard gear here, so if somebody started coughing during the service we would be in trouble."

There was still time before the service started. Sakura rose from the cushion, along with Ino, and Lee scrambled up to follow them out of the room and back into the corridor, past the register table, back to the entrance, where men and women were shrinking away from a tall figure still in his red cloak and visor. The big grey dog was barking at his feet. The figure was glaring down at it with unimpressed silver eyes.

"Neji," Lee gasped, standing behind Sakura.

"First children, now dogs," Neji grumbled. He tried to move into the house, but the dog leapt forward and barred the entrance with its body, baring its teeth and snarling. "What is this?"

"Quit messing around," barked a sharp strident voice – it was Inuzuka Tsume, the formidable clan matriarch, marching down towards the door. She pushed past Sakura, Ino and Lee and stood in front of them with her hands on her hips. "The dog says you're infected. Latent, but infected. Get out of here."

Neji took several paces back before freezing on the spot and staring, wide-eyed, finally realising what had just been said. "But I…how…?"

"You dare to suggest that an Inuzuka dog's nose is wrong? You dare to insult the Inuzuka house on the night of my son's funeral?" Tsume roared, the mane of her hair bristling. "You dare to bring the Plague into my house, Hyuuga boy? Get out of my sight. You shame your name by being here, when I already ordered you to scram!"

Neji wasted no more time. He spared one desperate glance at Lee, Sakura and Ino clustered behind Tsume, then turned stiffly on his heel and walked away from the Inuzuka house. As he walked away, another boy came running from the opposite direction, panting, blonde and orange. Neji lowered his head and hid his face in the shadow of his visor, so that Naruto wouldn't notice him as he ran past, because, at that moment, Neji's shoulders were shaking and he didn't want to be recognised.

Thump. The fistful of earth crumbled over her glasses. Juugo scooped up another handful from the mound beside him, dropped it, and then scooped up another. Suigetsu quickly lost patience and began to push soil into the ditch with the blunt edge of his sword, grumbling about how the great Kubikiribocho had been reduced to a makeshift shovel. His brother would have wept.

"It was cold last night," Juugo said, his voice muffled by the collar of his cloak. "That must have been the last straw."

"Shouldn't we burn her body?" Suigetsu said.

Sasuke shook his head. "No. We'll bury her and go."

They didn't have the time to spare. Sasuke had delivered the doctor to a crossroad just outside of Ageha. He might have already reported them to the local authorities. Besides, the ground was wet with morning dew and a rolling fog was spreading thick along the road. It was too damp for fire and it would have taken too much time for the body to burn.

Juugo continued to pat down the mound of earth with his hands. He pressed it down until it was neat and smooth and tidy. The birds were already singing, but perhaps his ears were failing him, because he could no longer pick out what they were saying. There was a bitter taste in his mouth.

"Well, that's one freak biting the dust at last," Suigetsu remarked before he cleared his throat and tapped his chest. "One less crazy, loud-mouthed, clingy…" Suigetsu trailed off and coughed into his hand.

Sasuke stared down at the mound of earth. The fog must have been dampening the sounds of the forest. It was eerily quiet in the shadow of the pines, despite the birds and the whistling wind. He looked upwards to the sky, scowled, looked down at the mound, scowled, and then turned away to step back onto the road.

"We move on," he said, without looking over his shoulder. "Juugo. Suigetsu."

"Alright, alright, give me a break already!" Suigetsu slung the sword over his shoulder. "You coming Juugo?"

Juugo was still kneeling beside the mound. His hands were clenched in the folds of his cloak, and as Suigetsu looked on they curled into white-knuckled fists then relaxed. His hands dropped to the ground, palms turned upwards.

Suigetsu lowered his sword from his shoulder. He looked at Sasuke, who stepped forward tentatively towards Juugo's kneeling form. Bending down, Sasuke looked into the man's face. Everything below his lower lip, his chin, his throat, the neck of his shirt, the collar of his cloak, was red with blood. There was a perplexed frown on Juugo's face. Juugo had been caught by surprise.

Sasuke put his fingers under the man's neck and closed his eyes. No pulse at all, not a throb, even though the skin was still radiating warmth. Something began to hum in his ears - a sound like a string being snapped taut and pulled.

He shrank back from Juugo's body, pushed it over, twisted his fingers through a series of familiar seals and lifted two fingers to his lips. Glowing hot spirals of flames spewed from Sasuke's mouth. Slowly Juugo's cloak, then the rest of him, caught fire.

"I thought you said we weren't burning the bodies," Suigetsu said with a sharp-toothed grin.

Sasuke turned up the hood of his cloak and folded his arms. "Like I care."

"You just couldn't be bothered to bury him," Suigetsu needled him. "We're going have to stand here for hours now, waiting for that thing to burn out. You just didn't like the idea of getting your hands dirty."

You just couldn't handle the pain of feeling a death, Suigetsu wanted to say. You're scared because you don't know what to do. You just want to turn away and close your eyes in the darkness. Isn't that your specialty, Sasuke? Running away into the night, never looking back, never seeing ahead, just anger lighting the way and colouring your run in false, pretty colours?

Sasuke's face was as inscrutable as ever.

They watched the curls of grey smoke rise.

"Suigetsu."

"What?"

"How are you feeling?"

Suigetsu shrugged and the pus and blood in his lungs sloshed. "Fine. Obviously."

Next time: Shikamaru meets the Sixth Repentance, Naruto gathers together the children and Suigetsu wants to take a break. Will Sasuke stop running?

Thanks for reading!