Disclaimer: While the idea of MABU is mine, the characters are not my creation as much as I wish they were. I do not own Naruto
Time Line / Spoilers: This takes place during the time skip and contains spoilers for events pre time skip as well as a few just slightly post time skip. If the MABU universe does diverge from cannon (Manga) possibility, I will make note of it when it happens.
Warnings: Language, Violence, Sexual situations, Sex of a probably Hentai and Yaoi nature. Same basic warnings as Water Runs Red.
Beta by: HGirl69
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Sand Stained Red – Chapter 2
Maito Gai stood on a cliff face watching as a fierce desert storm waged war across the landscape in the distance. He slowly raised his hand to his chin as he watched the awesome power of nature remake the desert below. Behind him, his three students stood. Rock Lee was close by his side, wearing his green outfit proudly as his large round eyes gazed at the storm. The boy nodded as he saw the look in his sensei's eye, both standing in silent awe of this wonder of nature.
Ten-Ten stood behind the two, slowly looking around as she sized up their situation. Without making a noise to alert Gai or Lee, she gave Neji a look of exasperation. They had been traveling for days now to reach Sunagakure, but in the dead of summer, travel across the desert was risky at best and suicidal at worst, so they had been moving by trade routes. Now they were only a day away from Suna, but there was a new obstacle.
Neji nodded at the kunoichi on their team. With out a word to anyone he brought his hands up, "Byakugan!" The veins bulged around his eyes as his vision slipped into near perfect 360-degree mode. "The storm is several miles wide; it looks like it is skirting the city. We won't be able to make it to our destination until the storm passes."
Ten-Ten spoke up before her sensei could make any unrealistic proposal about pressing forward. "We should set up camp here. There is a spring and shelter and once the storm has cleared we can continue on."
Gai nodded as he thought over what his two students had just said. They made very good points. The storms could be as fierce as they were beautiful, and his supervisors entrusted him with the safety of his precious students. He could not let any harm befall the three beloved students, who represented the future of his beautiful village.
Lee looked over at his sensei, "But Gai-sensei? I thought we had to hurry towards Suna to rescue a fellow ninja and return him safely to Konoha? We can not leave a compatriot in the hands of strangers?" The boy look perplexed that they were not charging forward into the storm.
With a glance to Ten-Ten, Neji spoke up. The Hyuuga preferred not to talk too often, and as such, when he did speak, his words held weight. "He is safe. Sand is an Ally of Leaf and as such will watch over him as we would watch over one of theirs." He spoke with a tone of finality, as if he was stating well-known fact and not assumption.
Lee looked up at his sensei, waiting to see what the older man would say to that. With a nod, Gai turned from the storm, "We will set camp and rest before pressing on with youthful vigor when the storm has passed. It will be a difficult journey back with an injured comrade. Once the storm's fury has passed we will make our glorious entrance into Suna and retrieve our fellow Konoha Shinobi!"
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Sandstorms were commonplace in Suna, and as such, measures had been taken when constructing the government offices and infrastructure. Just as other countries adapted to their own weather, Suna had adapted to the sand and when that involved desert storms, underground was the only place that was truly safe. Kankuro walked through one of the tunnels that crisscrossed the village of Sunagakure. He had received an interesting report from the doctor in charge of the leaf-nin, and he was rushing to see the results in person. Of course Kankuro rushing looked the same as always, except perhaps even more short tempered.
He soon reached the doctor's office. Barely bothering to knock on the door, he entered the other man's office, "Komeda, what did you discover?"
The doctor shook his head, he wasn't surprised by any disrespect from the Kazekage's brother; he had come to expect it. After all, the two men worked closely together. While to most people, puppet masters and doctors do not seem to go together, but if a person knew the details of puppetry and the numerous poisons involved, the familiarity would be understood. "Kankuro-san." He held up a few papers of lab work from the blood he had collected from their leaf 'guest'. "It is as I expected. This Chuunin examiner is not a Chuunin examiner, and I find it hard to believe he is a Chuunin at all. As you can see from these reports, he has several chemicals in his bloodstream, even after the time he has been in our care. After seeing these results, I ran some more blood panels and confirmed he has a similar tolerance to poison as our own elite infiltration forces."
Kankuro nodded, "Interesting. Very interesting. Any clue about what he was doing in our territory?"
Dr. Komeda nodded, "It seems he hasn't been in our country long when you had found him. We ran his possessions through a complete forensic panel. He appears to have come from western Rain based upon plant samples. From the poisons he has a resistance to, it would appear his primary defenses are against Rock's poisons, which makes sense given the long-standing rivalry between Rock and Leaf. I believe his story of having fled to here is plausible."
"What is the Leaf's condition? I expect his escort to be here shortly after the storm lets up."
"He won't be ready to leave for several days. I need to pull the bandages from his leg again before we even can think of healing it. There is still too much sand in it for it to be safe to close the wound."
Kankuro nodded, "I'll walk up with you. I want to get another look at this man."
The doctor led the way, carrying all the supplies he would need to rip off another layer of flesh from the leaf-nin.
As they reached the secured hallway – there might be a treaty with Leaf, but not to have the other shinobi under constant watch and security would be foolish – they cleared the seals on the hallway as a piercing scream erupted from the far end of the hall.
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Izumo awoke again. He was alone in his hospital room, but now without the strongest of the painkillers he was able to feel the damage in his leg. He carefully sat up in the bed, his head was much clearer now. He could not let himself fall unconscious like that again; he had to keep on his guard. Sand might be Allies, but he could not trust them.
He took careful stock of his body. His chakra reserves were almost back at the level they should be. He carefully unwrapped the bandages from his leg, the tender exposed muscle beneath the bandages causing him to wince. What wasn't burned was infected, not much was recognizable. Letting chakra flow into the wounded leg, he sensed the sand particles that were impeding his healing. Carefully letting the chakra infuse his blood, he concentrated and brought the blood to the particles. Encasing the foreign entities in a shell of his own blood, he braced himself. This was going to hurt. With a deep breath and a quick hand seal to focus his chakra, he brought his hands up into a rat position and pushed the blood out of his leg.
No amount of ninja training could have restrained the scream of pain as hundreds of blood projectiles burst from the burnt and infected flesh of his leg, each encasing a small foreign body that had been poisoning his body. Izumo screamed until he had to gasp for breath. Blood covered everything in the room. He struggled to control his breathing. Unable to control the chakra laced blood, the projectiles continued on their course, spraying the walls with the bright red fluid,
The door burst open as Kankuro and Dr. Komeda rushed in. Kankuro instantly was in a defensive stance, scanning the room for an intruder as he moved towards the bed, ready to launch an attack at anything out of the ordinary.
Dr. Komeda was careful as well. However, he rushed to his patient's side. Izumo was gripping the rails of the hospital bed as he breathed in through clenched teeth, struggling not to pass out from the pain.
A cool glow enveloped the doctor's hands as he carefully brought his chakra-encased hands towards Izumo's bleeding leg. Looking up at the chuunin, he narrowed his eyes, "How did you do that?"
Izumo shook his head, unable to speak from all the pain. The only thing the chuunin could do was struggle to breath and retain his fragile grip on consciousness. The little used jutsu drained his chakra down to almost nothing. White knuckles gripped the bedrails as he became unable to focus on anything in the room other than just not passing out.
Kankuro crossed the bloody room, convinced there was no danger of an attack from any outside force, "What the hell happened?" He looked down at the doctor who was starting to heal the Leaf-nin's leg. "The whole fucking place is covered in blood."
The doctor nodded, he was too engrossed in healing the wound in front of him to fully answer the questions of the other sand-nin. "Our friend here is full of surprises. I need to close this wound before he bleeds to death. Go get help. He needs a blood transfusion.
Suddenly the room was a flurry of activity, but Izumo was too intent on maintaining his fragile grip on the here and now to be able to appreciate the effort the medical staff exerted to save his life. It was several hours later when the whirlwind of motion slowed down and the chuunin could again open his eyes without the room spinning and blackness descending on him. His leg was re-bandaged, but this time without the sand particles; they even had healed the majority of the wound. What was still unhealed was minor and would not need attention until later. The sheets of the bed had been replaced with clean bedding, and two bags of blood were hooked up to the IVs -- one in each arm. His grip on consciousness was finally lost as he slipped into sleep, his mind barely aware of events around him.
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Kankuro waited outside the hospital wing. He had been in the way of the medic-nins as they rushed around the Leaf-nin. A few days before, he had been on patrol in one of the less traveled areas of Northern Wind country. When the tracker of his group had reported seeing footprints, he had not imagined what they found could have caused this much trouble. They had been expecting a bandit or a lost civilian when they saw the randomness of the tracks. The sight of a pale, slender, young man had come as a surprise. When they first had approached the body, he had assumed it was a recent corpse. The clothes on the man had been ripped to shreds, rendered incapable of protecting skin from the sun. The man's left leg lay exposed to the sun and was an open blistering wound covered in blown sand. The man's sunken features spoke of extreme dehydration. The sand surrounding the body was stained with the man's blood.
Looking back, had they been even a little delayed in following the tracks, the leaf-nin would be dead. The man's pulse had been very weak when they reached him. Kankuro had an excellent memory for remembering who people were, and he barely recognized the man as one of the proctors from the chuunin exam over a year ago. If he thought hard though, he had seen the man again bringing papers to the Hokage once when he journeyed to Konohagakure on a diplomatic mission.
Now, he had no idea how the man's room had become covered in blood. He couldn't think of any weapon that could do that, it was as if several packs of blood had suddenly exploded to coat every surface in sweet red fluid. He had seen plenty of battle and hadn't seen a room covered in blood like that one had been.
Kankuro straightened up as he sensed a familiar presence approaching him. His sister strode through the door, her hair drawn back in four blonde ponytails as she glanced around. "Kankuro. Gaara sent me to get a report on our … 'guest'." She was obviously not pleased to be doing her baby brother's bidding, but with him being the Kazekage, nothing could be done about it.
Kankuro shrugged, "Something happened. The doctor and I were on our way to check on him when we heard a scream and his fucking room looks like it was hosed down with blood."
She froze where she stood, "What? Is he alive?" Her lips dew into a pout. The implications of loosing the Leaf-nin in their hospital could not be good. They had told Konoha that the Shinobi was stable; it would look very unprofessional for him to end up dead now.
"He's alive." He pushed the hood of his puppeteer's outfit back to run a hand through his brown hair. "Somehow he seems to have gotten the sand and dirt out of his leg too. They're healing it up now."
Temari turned to look at her brother, "Why are you out here?" Several medical personnel took that moment to leave the secured area and she turned to them before getting an answer from her brother, "Someone report the status of the patient." One of the older nurses met her impetuous demand.
"You'll have to check with the doctor, but he is stable. I'm not sure about much more than that." When Temari nodded her dismissal, the woman hurried to catch up with the rest of the medics that were leaving for the other wards of the hospital.
With Kankuro on her heels, she strode into the secured area and into the leaf-nin's room. Dr. Komeda was double-checking the IVs flowing into the foreign ninja when the two siblings entered the room. Temari marched right over to him, "Doctor, what the hell happened?" Although people had cleaned the room, it would take a much more thorough cleaning to rid the room of the flood that had found every crevice. The entire room smelt of blood.
The doctor looked up at her, "I am not sure what he did, Temari-san. I am still running some tests. However, it would appear that somehow he used a jutsu to get the foreign particles out of his body. If so it was not the most well thought out move on his part."
She leaned over the man's bed, looking down at his face. She reached out and brushed the hair from in front of his face before turning to Kankuro. Temari journeyed to Konoha for diplomatic reasons much more often than Kankuro, and she was well aware of who this man was. "Why is one of the Hokage's administrative assistants in out hospital?"
Neither man had a valid answer for that. The doctor frowned as he grabbed a clipboard, "I need to run some tests." Without another word to the two sand siblings, he walked out of the room, his clipboard and some blood samples from the room in his hands.
Temari looked over to Kankuro, "What have you learned?" Her hand still rested on the sleeping man's forehand. If this man died, it would be even worse than she had originally anticipated. For the Hokage to lose one of her shinobi would be one thing, but this one had seemed close to the woman and was always at the Leaf leader's side whenever Temari was in Konoha.
Kankuro leaned up against the wall. "We should both report to Gaara, I don't want to have to repeat myself."
Her eyes narrowed, "Gaara sent me here to find out what was going on, so you had better start talking, little brother."
Kankuro he hated when his sister started to pull the in charge act. There wasn't anything he could do about it though, she could kick him clear across the room is she wanted to. "The guy's got an immunity to poisons like out top agents do. He does spy work not just paperwork. Least if the evidence is to be believed. I don't know what the Hokage's been telling you this guy is, but he sure as hell isn't some paperwork slave."
She leaned over the leaf-nin's sleeping body, as if staring him in the eyes would cause her suddenly to understand what the man was doing in her native country. Straightening up she turned to her brother, "Come on, we need to report this to Gaara before the group Konohagakure sent arrives." Without even waiting to see if her brother was following her, she stalked out of the room.
Kankuro followed her from the room, neither looking back at the sleeping man in the hospital bed. If either had, they might have caught a glimpse of dark blue eyes watching them leave. Izumo continued to feign sleep. If what he had overheard was to be believed, he would be in the hands of people he could trust soon. He just needed to last a little longer. He let his eyes close, but stayed on the edges of consciousness. He would sleep when the other Leaf-nin got here. He needed to get the information in his head to the Hokage. The implications of what he had found for Konohagakure and her allies were of more importance right now than his health – rest would have to wait.
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Thank you for reading. As always, I would appreciate if you took a moment to write a review. Updated to occur every Friday
