Disclaimer: The characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto and the Naruto franchise

Author's Note: Yes, this was initially all planned for a single chapter. It became somewhat longer than I thought it would be! Thank you again to KARASU25, who never fails to raise a smile with her reviews, Rosebunse, whose concern for the characters is touching, and to The Void Fox, who thankfully enjoyed my story despite the chapters still sitting in my reviews box (and it's lovely to have you on board!). To all who have favourited and followed me, a thousand thanks to you too, and I hope I can deliver. This chapter was really exhausting. On another note, I've got a fair number of tests and applications coming up, so updates might become limited to once a week. Review, let me know what you think. We're over halfway of the story already and it's been pleasure having you all reading. Best, Zen

"Here you go, Uzumaki-kun." The Marksman handed Naruto the report and smiled with her eyes. "I think it's a very good thing what you're doing. Good luck."

"Thanks," Naruto replied with a wide grin. The woman moved away to collect her folder of addresses for the day and Naruto leaned back feeling pleasantly warm. It was a good feeling when you had a job to do.

By eleven in the morning Naruto had a pile of reports at least an inch thick. He was sitting at a desk in the Grey Cross tent, under a proudly pinned up flag he had stayed up painting the whole night before. Tsunade had spoken to the Hyuuga captain who ran the Grey Cross and, by morning, a memo had been circulated around the Marksmen. Reports of cases where children had been left as orphans were to be copied and taken to Naruto, or, as the memo phrased it, 'the blond idiot in orange, looking fresh as a spring roll', as soon as possible.

He was scanning through the latest report when somebody pulled up a chair on the other side of the table. "Morning," said Neji gruffly.

"Morning," Naruto replied. He looked up and paused. There was something different about Neji today. It took him a moment to work out what it was. "What happened to your child-scarer costume?"

No hazard gear, that's what had taken Naruto by surprise. There was a disposable mask hooked around Neji's ears to cover his nose and mouth, but the more important thing was that Neji was neither wearing his hazard visor nor his cloak. He was back in his plain coloured tunic.

Neji scowled and said tartly, "The council take away your gear once you're declared latent and send it off to get burned. If I'd been declared latent a few days ago, they would have put me in isolation. As it is though, with the Zero Chakra order, things have changed. You'll be seeing more gearless ninjas around in the next few days I imagine."

"Oh, yeah," Naruto muttered awkwardly, remembering what Sakura had told him during Kiba's wake, about Neji being turned away from the door. "How's that going?"

"You mean, how's knowing I might only have ten days left of life going? Peachy," Neji snapped, glaring at the floor. He tossed his head imperiously. "It's fine. I got a schedule from Shizune-san this morning for her Zero Chakra course, to stop subconscious daily chakra use."

"But if you can't use chakra, then you won't be able to use the byakugan anymore. What are you going to do on Cross visits?" Naruto shuffled the reports on his desk.

"I've resigned from the Cross. I gave my uncle my letter of notice an hour ago. I am forbidden from using chakra under the Hokages's ban for the latently and actively infected, but also, if I am infected, then I'm infected due to some careless mistake I must have made on a visit. A Marksman shouldn't make mistakes like that."

Effectively exiled from the Hyuuga clan, and now effectively exiled from the exiles of the Hyuuga clan – Naruto could only imagine how much that hurt the proud and loyal Neji. He poured a cup of barley tea from the jug on the table and pushed it across to his friend.

"Thanks," Neji muttered, pulling down his face mask to take a sip.

"I've got an idea," said Naruto brightly, leaning across the desk. "You're like me now, Neji. You're not wearing that scary hazard suit that freaks out the locked in orphans. Why don't you team up with me on my project?"

"Your project?" repeated Neji, and his eyes flickered up to the garish flag strung behind Naruto's head. "What is that symbol supposed to be? An electric snail?"

"A tiger, of course!" replied Naruto heatedly, folding his arms. "Orange and black is the way to go! We're going to be the Konoha Tigers! We're going to find all the locked in orphans, and we're going to bring them all together, so that they never have to feel lonely. That's what we're going to do."

Neji snorted. "You say 'we', but I haven't agreed to join you yet."

"You're not going to refuse," said Naruto with conviction, putting his hands behind his head and smiling winningly across the table.

And Neji, despite himself, found he was smiling too. He crushed the paper cup in his hand and sighed, "I have nothing better to do, I guess. Fine, I'll join you. I refuse, however, to wear an orange and black tracksuit like yours."

Naruto punched the air and crowed, "Konoha Tigers! Here us roar!"

"And," Neji breathed, closing his eyes, "I refuse to go around shouting that."

Once Naruto had doodled on Neji's old Grey Cross linen and given him half the reports to look at they set off into the streets, drawing looks everywhere they went with their ninja forehead protectors and contradicting lack of hazard gear. The people of Konoha skirted around them in the streets, as though they were poisonous, but Naruto had no problem with that. He had dealt with it all his life. Neji, on the other hand, was finding it a somewhat more uncomfortable experience.

When they came to the edge of the town centre, Naruto created twelve shadow clones. To each one he gave the addresses of orphanages they were to visit and several names of orphans to enquire after. The troop of clones saluted and went leaping away across the rooftops.

"We're going to do the same," Naruto told Neji, who was glaring at a civilian housewife who had stopped to stare at them from across the road. "Neji, ignore her."

"It's people like her who make up the Sixth Repentance, Naruto." Neji's silver eyes followed the woman as she turned down an alley with her groceries. "You must have heard what happened to the Keepers yesterday night."

"Well, yeah, it's awful, but – "

"The kitchen knife she's going to use to gut that mackerel," Neji continued angrily, "that might be at our necks tomorrow. They nearly killed Shikamaru last night in the name of their ridiculous Repentances!"

"Yeah, I know, and we're all angry about it, make no mistake." Naruto had been enraged when he had heard the news in the Grey Cross tent. Naruto put a hand on Neji's shoulder. "Cool it, Neji. She's just staring at us because we're too good-looking for our own good. Don't go picking random fights with civilians to get revenge or anything like that, alright?"

"Who do you take me for? Uchiha Sasuke?" Neji snapped, shaking off Naruto's hand, but when he saw Naruto's wounded expression he realised with a start what he had said. He muttered, "Apologies."

"It's fine," Naruto said sincerely. He didn't blame Neji in the slightest for wanting to stalk every hostile-seeming civilian in sight in case they might lead to a Sixth Repentance base or gathering place after what had dealt with in the night. Bodies had been cleared away by the uninjured Keepers in the morning, but the bloodstains weren't going to wash out of the paving until the next downpour and there was little they could do about the memory of the incident – a dark, clotting blot on ninja-civilian relations that wasn't going to disappear in a hurry.

But soon Naruto had found something frustrating of his own to gnash his teeth at, when the first of his shadow clones vanished and sent him its collected information. The clone had gone to an orphanage in the East district, looking for a pair of twin girls, who according to the report had been sent there after their parents locked the girls in a cupboard and abandoned them. A quick interview with the matron, however, had produced a very different story about the girls' fates. At first, she brought out a completely different pair of twins and accused the Grey Cross of having filled out its reports wrong, but under pressure (Naruto was good at pressure) she had cowed and admitted that she had turned out the potentially latently infected Plague orphans and passed them on to another orphanage elsewhere.

The second orphanage had done the same, and passed them on to a third, and when the clone visited the third, the trail went dead. The third orphanage said that the twin girls had never arrived and had simply assumed the girls had found somewhere else to stay, and they had been too relieved to send out a search party. It was as Naruto had feared. Nobody wanted the orphans of the locked in families, in case they began to cough and sneeze and infected the other children already in the orphanage. The twin girls had slipped out of the system and nobody knew where they were.

They weren't the only ones. The reports coming in from his other clones told the same story – a boy here, a girl there, a pair of brothers there. The matron of the orphanage that Neji and Naruto came to cracked under Neji's intense stony glare. She dropped her forehead to the ground and begged for forgiveness, because she had denied entry to a sniffling little girl, even though she knew that the girl was only sniffling due to hay fever. She hadn't wanted to scare the other children, she said.

So much for Konoha ninjas taking care of each other, a small bitter voice rose unbidden from the corner of Naruto's mind, which he hastily crushed. No, the Konoha ninja were taking care of each other – the matrons were just trying to do the best of the families they already had, the ones who they knew were uninfected and still had a full chance at life. The children who came from the Plague families were seen, in comparison, as good as already dead. Why should the matrons care for the dead when the living needed so much attention?

The problem wasn't Konoha ninjas abandoning each other, but Konoha ninjas abandoning hope, Naruto decided. That solved his conundrum (Neji was rubbing off on him, long word like that). They gave up on ninjas as soon as there was even a suggestion they were infected. It was a protective measure because hoping was dangerous. If they gave up earlier on hope, it lessened the effects of despair. They gave up on the latently infected to stop caring about them, and to stop being hurt when they inevitably died ten to fourteen days later.

Except now things were changing – Shizune's Zero Chakra course offered respite for the infected until a real cure could be found and Kakashi had left the town to bring back Sasuke to help develop just that. Neji was walking the streets with Naruto visiting orphanages instead of sitting isolated in a hospital tent, waiting, just waiting for the first wispy cough to escape his throat.

Not all orphanages had turned away children thankfully and when the clones had asked to see the orphans who had been taken in, they tended to be cheerful although a little quiet (unsurprising given their recent loss and trauma), well looked after and healthy. Unfortunately, that still left twenty three children missing, somewhere out in the streets of Konoha.

Neji was shocked. He admitted over a hasty lunch at Ichiraku ramen shop, clutching the chopsticks in his hands so tight he could barely pick up his noodles, that he had delivered a couple of those orphans to the orphanages himself. He had left the children behind as though he were dusting something troublesome off his hands. He hadn't given them a second thought.

"This shames the Grey Cross, Naruto," Neji had said quietly. "And it shames my family, and it shames us as Konoha ninjas."

"Well, now we can start doing something about it," said Naruto with a determined nod. "The orphanages have been busted and they know we have our eyes on them. They won't be hot-potatoing the locked in Plague orphans anymore, and when the kids are signed up on Shizune's course, the orphanages won't have much excuse to keep them out."

Neji adjusted the hook of the mask around his ears. "Naruto, do you know what worries me about Shizune's Zero Chakra course? Eventually the Plague will end the entire ninja system, it's easy to see that, but, before that, I'm worried it's going to divide up ninja society."

Naruto laughed. "You're overthinking things."

Neji, however, looked suddenly grave. "Am I? Shizune's course separates out the latently infected from the uninfected and is designed to keep us alive longer, but even though we'll be alive the latently infected ninjas won't be able to perform our traditional ninja roles. Our only value, if we have any at all, will be in breeding with the genetics of our kekkei genkai. We will be constantly checked and monitored by the uninfected to make sure we don't manifest the Plague. Even if we live, not breathing a single cough, we will not be able to hold public positions, be medics or teachers, or take part in court proceedings because there will always be that risk that we become infectious. They might divide ninja public spaces, like the Academy, Naruto. Do you think uninfected parents will stand for latently infected children being in the same classroom as their children? They'll certainly divide up the surgeries. Nobody uninfected will want a blood donation from a latently infected ninja. The latently infected will be a ninja sub-class."

"Neji," Naruto tried to distract him, "your noodles are going cold."

"When the Plague comes back," Neji gripped his ramen bowl, "because it will, the uninfected will cull us. They'll kill all the latent ninjas on record. You realise that that's the other role of Shizune's course, Naruto? To keep track of the latently infected ninjas and monitor us, so they can corral us in a future outbreak."

Naruto narrowed his eyes. "What were you doing last night when you should have been counting sheep?"

"Taking a long meditative walk around Konoha," Neji replied archly.

"There you go, that's your problem," Naruto sighed, as he paid the bill and they both stood up to leave the shop. "A long meditative walk. That translates to 'too much time spent on self-pitying brooding and I ended up with a headache'. I promise you, Neji, that will never happen. We're going to find a cure in no time at all. You see if we don't! Come on, let's go and find Lee and ask if he's seen any children wandering the streets while he's been out Running."

"Actually," Neji said softly, "I won't see if we don't. I'll probably be dead."

The end of the ninja world. A divided Konoha ninja population. Civilians hating ninjas and ninjas hating civilians. Naruto was determined not to let a single one of those visions of Konoha's future coming to pass. Konoha ninjas were strong. He had faith in Sakura to do some brilliant medical research with Tsunade-bacchan. He had faith in Kakashi to bring Sasuke back. He even had faith in Sasuke to do what was right when it ultimately mattered.

In the meantime, the Konoha Tigers had twenty-three children to find.

Sasuke leapt, but it was already too late. One bound and he was tangled in a web of wires, fine as hair and razor sharp, shot down at him from the trees. Wire whipped about his ankles, bound them together and he smacked down into the wet dirt of the path. As sparks flashed in his vision, dark steel dropped down on either side of his neck - it was the crescent blade of Kubikiribocho. He strained against the wire, winced as it bit into his skin. With all this metal about him, any electricity Sasuke emitted would be instantly earthed into the ground. Dread and shame and anger rode the pulse of adrenaline coursing through his veins, carrying with it the desperate and damning realisation that he was trapped.

Kakashi nodded towards the trees and the three ANBU slipped down from the canopy. It was difficult for Kakashi to recognise the boy who had once been his student. This young man was a rogue – he had the skinny leanness of a hunter-scavenger, more coyote than dog. Hollow-eyed from periods of sleep counted in minutes rather than hours, sallow-faced from travel in the darker hours of the day, this was a young man who lived a hunted life and ruthlessly did anything to survive. Kakashi suppressed a smile as Sasuke glared up at him from the ground. Some things didn't change. Sasuke had always been ruthless in pursuing his own ends, be it ensuring his survival or chasing the shadow of his brother.

"We should snap his fingers, stop him making any seals," muttered the eyepatched ANBU, as Sasuke strained his hands against the wires again. "See. He's trying to free himself. I'd snap his legs for good measure too. The Hokage only said he had to be alive -"

She trailed off as Kakashi turned to her with a cold, dangerous smile. "No snapping fingers; no breaking legs. What do they teach you in ANBU these days? You would have thought we were in the dark ages," he chided her, knowing full well that the ANBU were taught far worse.

The three ANBU ninja exchanged a look of bemusement, but they stood to one side and watched in silence.

"Sasuke." Kakashi crouched down beside him. "It's been a while. You've got sloppy."

Sasuke's eyes whirled, lightened from black to glowing amber but before they turned red Kakashi put his hand over the boy's face. "You're surrounded by four ninjas of jounin ANBU class and there's an executioner's sword on your neck. Use your head, Sasuke. You're in no position to fight."

Sasuke snapped his teeth. He would have bitten Kakashi's hand to the bone if the man hadn't withdrawn it as quickly as he had. "Like a dog," muttered one of the ANBU, before the other two shushed him.

Sasuke snarled, fixing Kakashi with one glowing red eye, the other eye pressed into the dirt.

Kakashi sighed. "There are three things fatal to a rogue - slowing his movements, staying still and having his face seen. Now, I have found you, Sasuke, barely six miles from Ageha, with the help of the doctor you terrorised and he remembers your face very well. Be thankful that we found you first and not a bounty hunter."

It was a miracle they had caught him. Sasuke had been on the run for months. To have caught him not more than a week from setting out from Konoha was nothing short of extraordinary. Kakashi had thought it was Itachi's disease, the Mycobacterium kimimarosis, already exacting its toll on Sasuke's body and slowing the movements of his band. He had been surprised to learn from the doctor of Ageha that it had been Sasuke's teammates holding back his movements and not vice versa.

"But I am in two minds about calling you sloppy," Kakashi mused, observing the twitching muscles in Sasuke's face, as he fought the urge to fight or flee. "You could have left those companions of yours behind when they caught the Plague, and yet! You slowed your movements, set up semi-permanent camps, and even entered a large town to abduct the local doctor. You risked your life for your teammates. Sasuke, I might actually be a little bit proud of you."

A tight knot of emotion rippled over Sasuke's face, a bundle of pain, instinctive anger and flaring fear. On the whole though, he looked insulted. Sasuke's lip curled. "There is nothing to be proud of. I needed them to achieve my goal. That is all."

"Perhaps, but you seemed curiously affected by the death of your remaining tool. Affected enough that you didn't even notice four jounins surrounding you and preparing their trap," Kakashi said lightly and he was rewarded with another ugly snarl. Despite that, Kakashi couldn't help smiling. Perhaps there was hope for Sasuke yet.

He whistled to the pug sniffing at Sasuke's ankles. "Pakkun, what's the assessment?"

Pakkun sat on his haunches and rubbed his nose with his paw. "Nothing, boss."

"No symptoms?"

"No, boss," Pakkun replied despondently. "He isn't infected - not with old strain or the Plague. I'm sorry, boss, but we've hit a dead end. He's about as useful as an old bone."

"He isn't infected with Itachi's disease?" Kakashi repeated. "Are you sure?"

Sasuke stilled and narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean Itachi's disease?"

Kakashi looked up - at the ANBU fingering their weapons, at Pakkun earnestly sniffing again in case he had made a mistake. Kakashi looked down - at Sasuke, ragged and filthy, covered in streaks of blood and mud and pinned to the ground under Zabuza's old sword. Kakashi had to think quickly. If Sasuke wasn't infected with the old strain there was little justification for bringing him back to the village alive.

Sasuke hadn't been a member of the Akatsuki for long. The likelihood he had been made privy to their innermost plans was low. Kakashi doubted Sasuke even cared about what the Akatsuki's real intentions were, so long as the leader helped Sasuke achieve his personal aims. After all, Sasuke had never questioned Orochimaru's ambitions and plans when he went to him, so, as a source of information about the Akatsuki's plans, Sasuke was worth very little. Perhaps they could bring him back to study those unique Uchiha eyes, but you didn't need a live Uchiha to study the sharingan. Sasuke's head, with the brain and eyes intact, was enough.

Then Kakashi's eyes fell on the pile of empty clothes on the road, from the last of Sasuke's companions, the one who had turned to water, and he was struck by an idea.

"Pakkun." The dog raised its ears. "You say Sasuke hasn't got a single trace of the Plague at all?"

"None," Pakkun replied with a shake of his head. "Not even latent."

"That's impossible," laughed one of the ANBU behind Kakashi. "He's been living at close quarters with three infectious companions for weeks, and the RAMK infection rate is 100%, mortality 100%."

"And yet, he's completely clean. Sasuke," Kakashi's tone took on a spring of excitement, "it is important that you answer me truthfully, but have you felt anything wrong at all? At any point during the time you spent with your companions, have you ever felt any difficulties breathing, any tickles in the throat, any chills, fevers, anything out of the ordinary with your chakra?"

"Never," Sasuke shot back. "But what has that got to with the illness that killed my brother?"

"The Plague, Sasuke," Kakashi hummed and put a thumb to his chin as he considered how best to go on, "is a faster, deadlier version of the thing that killed Itachi. Now, we were hoping to collect a sample of Itachi's disease off you, but it looks as though we've found something even better. We've found the one person immune to the Plague in the whole of the Five Nations," Kakashi leaned in closer and smiled. "You're not even latently infected, Sasuke. It's a biological miracle."

Sasuke's eyes widened. He snorted, chuckled softly. "You intend to take me back to Konoha alive and use me as some kind of lab rat."

"By force if necessary, but preferably not. If you cooperate with us, it'll be easier for you to regain your Konoha citizenship. You'll help us to develop a cure for the disease that killed off your companions and the one that killed your brother. You'll be saving the future of the ninja world. You always insisted that you were an avenger, Sasuke. Think of this as having your vengeance against the Plague."

Sasuke's face went still. It was as blank and unreadable as a stone mask. For several minutes, he soundlessly turned over Kakashi's words. The extending silence unnerved Kakashi. The longer Sasuke brooded on something, the more it took on a distinctly Sasuke-flavoured logic that often meant trouble.

Kakashi cleared his throat to break the silence. "I'm surprised you say 'lab rat' with such distaste, Sasuke. We both know you're no stranger to being a lab rat. I can't imagine Orochimaru missing the opportunity to conduct a little bit of experimentation on you the three years you were with him - "

Laughter echoed out into the road. Kakashi closed his mouth.

Despite the sword around his neck, laughs were shaking the length of Sasuke's body. His mouth was wide open, his eyes were closed, and his laughter was wild, high-pitched, and derisive. It was an ugly sight to behold. The three ANBU slipped knives into their palms and prepared to act if necessary.

"Cooperate with you?" Sasuke's shoulders trembled. "Cooperate with Konoha? Vengeance on a disease? I wish I was sick – I'd vomit blood in your face and then maybe you'd understand how I feel! Your words make me sick to the stomach!"

Kakashi gestured at the ANBU to stand down and lowered his voice, "Sasuke, calm down. Listen – "

"I don't need to listen to you!" Sasuke said shrilly, his eyes spinning red and black. "I've heard all I needed. This Plague of yours is destroying Konoha! It's burning down the whole corrupt ninja system! Finally wiping those stupid smiles off those stupid, ignorant faces! This is wonderful! Perfect! The best news I have heard in years!" Blood ran down the side of Sasuke's neck where the skin had touched the blade. "And you come to me, asking for my help. Don't make me laugh. You're telling me I carry the cure. All I have to do is deny Konoha the cure and Konoha will die. My refusal to go with you will be as good as setting every Konoha ninja on fire. The Plague is my perfect revenge!"

"Let me knock him out," hissed one of the ANBU, sliding lead plates over her fingers and eyeing Sasuke with disgust. "We're wasting time trying to get this one to come willingly. I've seen rogues like this before. His mind's gone, sir. He's no better than a talking animal."

"I object to that!" Pakkun snapped.

"If you try to run from us, where will you go, Sasuke?" Kakashi said soothingly, trying to coax him back to earth. "You will be alone. You won't last long."

"I have always been alone," Sasuke hissed. "And it was Konoha that made me that way, when they ordered my family dead and used my brother! I'll tell you where I'll go. You said I'm the only ninja immune to the Plague in all Five Nations. That means the Plague's international. If the other lands want the cure as much as Konoha, then they'll take me in, and when they do, I'll say they can have me on one condition. They can have my body on the condition that Konoha never has the cure, on the condition that Konoha is destroyed!"

"So you'll sell your body to get revenge on Konoha, like you sold your body to Orochimaru to get revenge on Itachi." Kakashi stared at him, this foaming, snarling red-eyed thing, wondering where things had gone so wrong, when Sasuke's hunger for vengeance had been redirected against Konoha and how Sasuke had sunk so low. "And innocent people will pay for whatever grudge it is you have against the town, probably for something they know next to nothing about. Sasuke, that isn't revenge. That is a massacre. You will be little better than your brother Itachi."

"They are guilty in their ignorance!" Sasuke roared. "And don't you dare speak of Itachi to me, Konoha dog!"

A flash of purple and twisting chakra – the wires binding Sasuke exploded off him in a cloud of glittering metal. The sword flew from his neck, spun through the air and struck one of the ANBU agents on the hip as she attempted to dodge its path. It landed point first in the bank of the road and the ANBU collapsed.

Kakashi leapt back at the first instant he had seen Sasuke's sharingan twist, but even he wasn't fast enough. He shielded his head with his arms, and when he lowered them, his arms were ragged and bristling with razor-thin metal. There was metal embedded in his shins, in the front of his flak jacket. Of the three ANBU, one was lying where she had fallen when the sword had sliced through her hip, and the other two were covering their eyes with their hands and whimpering. Pakkun had dived under the pile of clothes left by Sasuke's companion.

Surrounded by a boiling cloud of thick purple chakra, almost fluid in its quality, Sasuke was standing at the centre of a giant rib-cage. For a moment, he looked as surprised as Kakashi felt. Eyeing the ghostly bones about him, Sasuke took one tentative step forward. The ribcage followed like a shield. A smirk rose to his face and Sasuke was laughing again – that high, cold, mocking laughter.

"Tell the Hokage, Kakashi! Tell her, from Uchiha Sasuke!" Sasuke cried, his face lit up with manic glee. "From now on, every Konoha ninja who dies of the Plague - I killed him! The Plague is my fire and the purifying flames of the Uchihas!"

He jumped, and the rib-cage leapt with him, up into the trees, and then Sasuke was running, fleeing, flying away from the road, leaving only a glowing trail of purple chakra behind him. It hung like a band of smoke and shone dimly in the half-light of dusk.

Kakashi watched Sasuke escape. He couldn't follow Sasuke. The three ANBU officers were injured. Irrespective of how much he liked them, whilst he was the mission leader their safety and lives were his responsibility.

"Pakkun."

The pug wriggled out from under the pile of Akatsuki robes and saluted with its paw. "On it, boss."

As Kakashi knelt to check the two ANBU officers' eyes, Pakkun put his nose to the air and scampered into the forest, following the burnt ozone smell of Sasuke's acrid chakra.

It turned out that many Runners had seen gangs of children on their outings. At the Runners headquarters near the hospital, Guy and Lee sat Naruto and Neji down at a table and spread out a map, indicating where the Runners had seen the gangs and, in some circumstances, had to fight them off.

"They've learnt that the Runners carry the basics they need to survive, so Runners make rich pickings for the child gangs," Guy told Naruto with a solemn nod. "These days, they seem to target the chuunin Runners especially. Lee's had some nasty brush ups with a group in the East district. They avoid us jounins, no doubt intimidated by the aura of power we exude from every pore like sweat."

Guy tapped a spot near the third orphanage the first of Naruto's clones had visited. Naruto realised with a jolt that the gang sighting hotspots were clustered in the neighbourhoods of the orphanages where the children had been turned away.

"Can you tell us more about the gang in the East district, Lee?" Neji asked, apparently realising the same thing as Naruto. "Do you remember anything about the gang that attacked you?"

Lee's eyebrows bristled like caterpillars rearing to protect their territories. "There were seven of them attacking me! It was most unfair. They were led by a boy, about ten years old, and a pair of twin girls around eight. I won't forget them in a hurry. I demanded a fair fight, and one of the girls took off my visor and tried to put chewing gum in my eyebrows to…" he dropped his voice darkly "…wax them off."

After sympathising with Lee and promising that they had never heard anything so scandalous in their lives, Naruto and Neji said their goodbyes and left Guy and Lee to finish their short break before their Running shift. They made to the East district of Konoha, Naruto tracing the way his clone had took earlier that day. Neji had suggested they disguise themselves as Runners, to draw out the gang, but Naruto had firmly refused to do such a thing. He didn't want the children to think they were liars out to fool them. They had been let down badly enough by adults already.

Several hours of searching, however, and Naruto was feeling a lot more favourable towards Neji's idea. There wasn't a trace of a child to be found, although plenty of shops they stopped to ask questions at complained of things being stolen from their stalls.

"Cream buns," complained one shop assistant in a convenience store, as he stacked the shelves. "They come in here and the next moment we're out of cream buns and sweets."

"I guess that's not surprising if they're children," Naruto said to Neji, who was taking notes of all the shops that had suffered thefts and muttering under his breath about compensation.

The shop assistant looked up and noticed Neji, and the face mask covering his nose and mouth. The assistant gave Neji a nervous smile. "Not meaning to be rude, sir, but we get a lot of ninja customers in here. Would you mind going outside? No hard feelings, but we rather we didn't have latents coming in -"

"You turn him out, you turn both of us out," cut in Naruto loudly, and he spun round Neji and frogmarched him out of the shop, making sure the shop door slammed behind both of them so hard that the dust fell from its lintel.

"Did he say something?" Neji said in surprise, closing the notebook and pocketing it.

Naruto grimaced and lied, "He insulted my dress sense."

"Ninjas," came a high-pitched whisper. "Forehead protectors! You're real ninjas! Not wizard ninjas!"

Naruto and Neji turned, hardly believing their ears.

The small dirt and dust-streaked little boy, around six years old, was peering out from a nearby alley. He was panting and white in the face. He was staring at Naruto and Neji as though ready to burst into tears. He launched himself at them across the street and seized Naruto's front in his little fists. "You've got to come with me. Please."

Naruto glanced at Neji who gave him a small nod. Neji recognised the boy's face from one of the reports. Naruto turned back to the boy and ruffled his hair, "Got it, kid. We'll go with you."

The boy looked ecstatic. He nodded and pushed up his glasses, the right lens of which was cracked and shattered, then dashed back into the alley, beckoning for Naruto and Neji to follow. He was fast, in an obvious hurry. There were bloody scrapes on his legs and cheeks. Naruto and Neji followed him as closely as they could. The boy took them down twisting alleys, through the backs of gardens, along the edge of a canal. He wriggled through a hole in a chain-link fence, which Naruto had to enlarge with his kunai for him to get through too, and finally the boy was running across a small yard in the shadow of a crumbling concrete building.

EAST KONOHA MUSEUM OF TRADITIONAL CIVILIAN CRAFTS

Naruto had never heard of it. He doubted East Konoha had even heard of it. As Neji hacked the hole in the chain-link fence wider so that he could follow, Naruto watched the little boy disappear round the back of the building. Soon he heard voices. They sounded incredulous, then excited, and the next instant a pair of twin girls appeared round the corner of the building.

One ran forward and snatched at Naruto's hand. Her sister went to pull Neji through the chain-link fence, and all of a sudden Naruto and Neji were being dragged by the twins to the back of the museum. They seemed to be in as much of a hurry as the little boy.

"Jo's right, Nagira, they're real ninjas!" the girl holding Naruto's hand shouted. "They're not wearing those scary hoods. They'll help us. Jo did good this time."

A group of five children were clustered around something lying in the shadow of the museum wall. Their shirts were stained, their shorts muddy. The boy called Nagira stood up when Naruto came into his view. He was thin, sharp and wiry-looking, one eye closed with gunge from an infection. He barely came up to Naruto's chest.

"What rank are you guys?" Nagira demanded, standing protectively over whatever it was on the ground that the other children were tending.

"I'm a jounin," Neji stepped in smoothly. Naruto's genin status wasn't going to do them any favours here. Naruto, to his credit, kept quiet.

Nagira nodded and stepped aside. "Can you help him?"

The twin girls let go of Neji and Naruto's hands. There was a young boy sprawled out on the soil, his blue T-shirt smeared with chocolate, his face pale and tinged with grey. There was a thin trail of yellowy froth running from the corner of the little boy's lips. It was obvious from a single glance that the boy was dead.

Neji put his fingers to the boy's neck, felt for a pulse and shook his head.

"Dead?" Naruto said, and the eyes of the five remaining children darted towards him in disbelief then back to the body they surrounded.

"Poisoned," Neji declared.

The children started muttering and murmuring, exchanging nervous glances, whispering. Eventually the one with shattered glasses, Jo, blurted, "It's like Marie's gang. They were all poisoned too. We're next. Whoever got them, they're targeting us now!"

"Jo, go wash your face under the tap. It's snotty. The rest of you, shut up," Nagira ordered, and the children obeyed. Jo climbed to his feet and ran away with his head hanging in shame.

Naruto turned to Nagira. He must have been the ten year old gang leader Lee had described. Naruto tried to keep the horror out of his voice when he asked, "What did that kid Jo mean by targeting? Who would poison children?"

He was stunned by a ferocious snarl from the direction of the dead little boy, where Neji was still examining the body. Neji had peeled open the boy's fists and found a fistful of chocolate drops. He held them up for Naruto to see.

"Look at this," said Neji in a low voice that shook with anger. He rubbed away the surface layer of chocolate between his finger and thumb, and out of the centre appeared a very familiar looking black lentil-shaped pill. "Konseigan."

A cure for the Plague? A cure of Itachi's disease? To know now after all those deaths, the irony of the timing couldn't be better, Sasuke thought bitterly as the Susanoo chakra began to fizzle out around him. That Konoha wanted him back in order to help it rebuild itself when all he wanted to see it burn gave him no end of satisfaction, but what Sasuke had said about selling himself to another nation, he wasn't so sure any more.

The adrenaline was wearing off. His head was spinning and using Susanoo had made every cell in his body feel like it was trying to contain a firework. He retracted the mangekyo sharingan and some of the throbbing ache in his head vanished. The giant rib-cage disappeared and he stopped to rest on a branch, but lost his balance and fell to the forest floor, righting himself just in time to land in a crouch on all fours.

He thought of the two weeks he had spent with the dying and the sick - Karin, Juugo and Suigetsu -and exhaustion flooded over him. At last they were all dead. At last he was alone. It was quiet. It was peaceful, he told himself. Sasuke could finally think clearly – no more incessant bickering in the background, no more whining for breaks or better shelter, no more demands to know what he wanted from them.

And yet, how could it be that the silence of the forest seemed louder than those fools? Why did he feel so drained and spent? Was it seeing Kakashi? No, he should not have been affected by that. That mad rush of fire that had filled his mind and boiled his blood and made him declare all those bold things was still burning, but not as brightly. Sasuke was tired with everything. Why was he finally feeling so tired?

He dragged his feet behind him as he walked in the night. Something small and dark flitted across the branches – a bat perhaps. As his swirling thoughts finally settled, suddenly everything became wonderfully clear.

Sasuke was tired because the perfect revenge was within arms' reach and his body was preparing to rest at last.

All he had to do was prevent Konoha getting hold of a cure and it would be destroyed.

All he had to do was stop Konoha capturing him alive.

Sasuke felt for the sword, strapped to his back, and drew the blade. It made more noise leaving its sheath than it usually did, which annoyed him somewhat, but that hardly mattered anymore. He sank to his knees into the path. The leaves crackled under his weight. The damp earth smelled of spices and was as thick and soft as fur.

Forget selling himself to another nation. Sasuke was going to take his revenge now, and get his peace at last, because the dark was still chasing him, and everything in it was howling. Sasuke was going to die, alone and triumphant, on a dark roadside in the middle of forest and the bears, foxes, ants and rats could take apart his body.

Still kneeling, he turned the tip of the blade to his throat and closed his eyes.

There was a rush of wind and swirling leaves.

The trail of Sasuke's chakra and scent grew stronger. Either Pakkun was gaining on him or Sasuke was slowing. Both would have suited Pakkun nicely. He bounded from branch to branch, reading the fluctuating lines of odours and smells drifting in the air. His fur was still standing on end from the moment the Susanoo had appeared and he shivered as he remembered it.

A slip in the scents – the boy had gone down to the path below.

Pakkun jumped and landed squarely on a toadstool, bounced and rolled. The shimmering trail continued down the path for a few metres more, but all of a sudden stopped. He stared at the ground.

Sasuke had been kneeling there, not minutes, perhaps seconds, before Pakkun had arrived.

He could hardly have vanished in that time. Pakkun pointed his nose at the trees, at the bushes, and at the air. He ran further along the path, sniffing for a trail of any kind at all, but there was nothing.

He returned to the spot where Sasuke had knelt in the leaves. Had Pakkun been more fanciful, he might have imagined that Sasuke had turned into darkness, that the shadows had found him and claimed him from the human world at last. His vanishing was perfect.

As it was, Pakkun was Kakashi's ninken and he wasn't fanciful at all. He grunted and glared into the shadows, where there was resolutely nothing at all, no matter how much he stared.

He nodded and said to the darkness, "Well played."

There was nothing in the dark to reply, so the little dog began his journey back to his master.

Thank you for reading!

Next time: Kakashi takes disappointing news back to Konoha and Tsunade prepares for the plaguetime Gokage Conference.