The blue halo of snapping and whistling electricity behind his shadowed silhouette dissolved into the cold morning air with a final spurt of flickering sparks.
Kakashi coughed violently.
His right was arm submerged in Hijame's chest up to his shoulder. His thin bloodstained fingers twitched with the last vestiges of white-hot electricity, poking through the back of the man's gory shoulders where a spinal column should have been. Sakura distantly noted that Kakashi's white hair was spattered with red.
He tried to back away, simultaneously coughing into the elbow of his free arm and raising it to stop the descent of Hijame's frozen, triumphant grin as the heavy corpse leaned into him. He staggered backwards and, sandaled feet slipping on the blood-spattered grass, tripped over the fallen body of a slain rogue-ninja. He fell flat on his back, unable to catch himself, and Hijame's heavy carcass fell with him.
"Kakashi-sensei." Sakura gasped in horror. She stepped forwards in an unconscious attempt to get to him.
But there was no need, Naruto got there first.
"Sensei!" He quickly grabbed Hijame's enormous shoulders and, with one great heave, lifted the crushing weight off of his trapped teacher. There was a wet squelching sound as Kakashi's arm came free of the ruptured entrails and organs of the dead man.
Sakura felt sick.
"Sensei." Naruto said again, looking down at him with wide eyes. Kakashi rolled jerkily onto his side and his slender frame shook as he coughed into his elbow, slick with blood and gory slivers of torn tissue. "Are," Naruto hovered uncertainly over Kakashi's hunched figure, not sure if he should help or not, "Are you okay?"
Kakashi nodded twice through the hacking coughs. Sakura could only see his eyes, squeezed shut in an acute expression of pain. The rest of his face was covered by his bloody forearm. But the sight sent a jolt of recognition through her. She had seen a very similar expression on his face before.
The image of a smiling Kakashi, his eyes squinting closed overtop of a black-felt mask, suddenly came to the front of her mind. But before she could think about this new-found realization, Shikamaru and Yamato crashed through the trees.
"Sakura!" Shikamaru called out in an uncharacteristically strained voice, "Captain Yamato is injured." She turned to see the young jounin supporting a pale-faced Wood-user, "I have all of the poisons and antidotes right--" he seemed to notice Ino's limp body in her arms because he stopped mid-sentence, his face a curious blend between the uptight, focused expression he had been wearing and the numb look of shock that had started to take over.
There was a split second where Sakura's head reeled, completely overwhelmed with all that was happening, and then she snapped into medic-mode.
"Alright, Shikamaru, can you lay him down next to Ino for me?" She said as she gently set down her best friend, "After you've done that bring this water bottle to Kakashi-sensei, he's over there next to Naruto. Here, put the antidotes here. Chouji, could you go through that bag and separate the poisons from the antidotes and divide them into the different types for me?"
"How do I do that?" Chouji sat down heavily next to her.
"When I was in the camp I talked to some of the more knowledgeable rogue-ninja and they told me how their poisons are labeled." Sakura slipped off he backpack and pulled out her med-kit as she spoke, "First is the scientific name, it's usually two words, and it's followed by a dash and then a capital letter. The poisons are labeled alphabetically and their respective antidotes have the same capital letter."
Yamato moaned softly. He reflexively reached up to hold his bloody shoulder, not conscious enough to realize that there was an arrow shaft jutting out of it but conscious enough to feel it. Sakura batted his hand away testily. "Don't touch it."
Frowning, Sakura hurriedly attached a hypodermic needle to one of the hard-plastic syringes she had taken from her med-kit. As bad as he was hurting, she had to treat Ino first. The fact was that he was conscious and the blonde-haired girl wasn't.
But the sight of Yamato's eyes, brown, doe-eyed, and in agony, pulled at her heart strings.
Sometimes Sakura forgot how young their team leaders were. It was so easy to just write them off as boring, unrelatable adults because of the mountains of experience they had. But, as Kakashi's coughs rang in her ears and Yamato's hand fisted in the grass before her, Sakura knew that wasn't true. They were human, just like everyone else.
"Sakura," her attention snapped back to focus as Chouji called to her, "Is that good?"
She felt a wave of fondness rush through her as her large Akimichi friend frowned down at his work, his chubby cheeks making the expression remarkably childlike. Before him a generous amount of little glass vials were laid carefully on the red-tinted, dewy grass, separated into different clusters.
With just a quick look she could see that her suspicions were correct. At least 40% of the poisons consisted of a dark blue liquid, the respective antidote a clear purple-tinged solution. It was safe to assume that all of the rogue-ninja had used one poison to lace all of their weapons and that Ino and Yamato had been infected by the same toxin. It was still a small gamble but, in the medical field, it often was.
"That's great, thanks Chouji." She smiled a thin, tight smile as she collected some of the antidote into two syringes. The first one she only filled the barrel two thirds of the way up and the second one she filled it up three fourths of the way. She then diluted it with a solution of water that she had on hand, getting rid of any air bubbles.
"Squeeze her arm right here for me, I need help finding a vein." She quickly poured some disinfectant on a cotton swab and swiped it on the crease of Ino's elbow, throwing it to the side as soon as she was done. She bit her lip as she held her best friend's hand in hers and forced it to open and close a couple of times. I just need one vein, c'mon Ino, c'mon--There!
Forcing herself to move slowly, Sakura carefully positioned the syringe that was two thirds full above the slight blue raise in Ino's milky white skin. She held her hands steady as the needle tip broke the skin and she slowly pushed down on the piston pump, injecting her best friend's veins with what she hoped was a life-saving antidote. Alright, that's one down... She breathed a sigh of relief before moving over to Yamato.
"Okay, Captain Yamato, I'm going to need you to relax as much as possible, can you do that for me?" Sakura unconsciously adopted that calm tone of voice she used for little kids when they were hurt and upset. He nodded quickly, his brow furrowed slightly, and took a deep breath in before relaxing his muscles.
Not taking the time to roll up his sleeve, Sakura grabbed the hem and ripped it open all the way to his shoulder. She dimly noted that she wouldn't need Chouji to squeeze his arm for her to find a vein while she rubbed another cotton swab along his muscular forearm. She ignored how his glassy eyes were sliding closed and injected him with the antidote.
She held her breath and waited. Please dear God, please let this work. Sakura wrung her hands nervously as she sat next to Chouji and waited for their friends to come back to life. It was so much harder when there was nothing she could do. It shouldn't be like this, I'm a medic! she thought childishly to herself, stubbornly ignoring the fact that having medical knowledge wasn't some magical answer to exterminating all of the heart-ache in her life.
Ino groaned.
"Ino!" Sakura's eyes snapped open and she was greeted with the sight of her best friend blinking furiously against the bright light of morning, one hand raised delicately to her temple.
"Don't you ever do something so stupid again, you dumb Ino-pig!" Sakura cried out joyfully and hugged her tightly. Ino gave a weak laugh, but hugged her back.
"Hey, Sakura," Yamato coughed, "Do you think you could do something about this arrow? It's kinda... in me." He trailed off lamely.
"What?" She looked over to see the former ANBU grinning weakly at her, "Oh, yeah."
She handed Ino over into Chouji's capable hands, chuckling to herself when she heard her yell, "No Chouji! For the last time, I don't want something to eat!"
She was mending the torn tissue and splintered bone in Yamato's shoulder with her glowing, chakra infused hands when the rest of the team came over. Kakashi's mask was pulled back up and he looked completely normal except for the fact that he was missing a shoe, his white hair was streaked with a sticky red, and his entire right arm was slimed with the gossamer remains of entrails. Shikamaru and Naruto had curiously flushed cheeks, and Sai was nursing a slight bump on the top of his head.
"Yo."
Sakura paused in her healing ninjustu for a moment, peering suspiciously between Kakashi's bland, half-lidded stare and her teammate's flustered expressions. Her green eyes narrowed. What?
Naruto shuffled his feet under her intense scrutiny but was unable to wipe the beaming, victorious smile from his blushing face.
"Oh my god." Sakura's eyes widened.
Kakashi lifted a thin, slanted eyebrow, "Hmm?"
"You, you!" She stood up suddenly, pointing an accusing finger at the three of them, "You saw his face, didn't you?!"
Haha, sucks for Sakura! I would be mad too if I were her. And for anyone who didn't understand Sai's reaction, it was because he probably said something inappropriate and Naruto smacked him upside his tooth.
Anyway, it's good to be writing again, this story is like a constant itch in the back of my mind. As for the medical information, I tried to be as accurate as possible. If there is anything I wrote about that is completely unrealistic or unprofessional I apologize. I know this chapter was a little boring, but it needed to be written. Believe it or not, we are getting closer to the good stuff! Thankyou to anyone who has been reading this, and thankyou for your patience!
Unfortunately, I'm going to have to ask for some more. This next week is crazy in every sense of the word (I'm racing at Penn Relays and--I heard USAIN BOLT was going to be there!! OhGodOhGodOhGod!) and I won't be able to update till next monday or so.
So please, please review and let me know what you think.
~Flintyminty25