Tsunade looked at the scroll on her table with a frown. Gaara had recently been captured just like in the last timeline. A combination of hers and Karin's diplomatic efforts and the ripples Sakura had created in the chunin exams by becoming friends with Temari made the Sand send the hawk a whole day early, giving her time to prepare.

The Cypher Division had just come in with the decoded message, asking Konoha for help. Letting out a sigh, Tsunade called for Shizune. It was time to send Team 7 to Suna.

...

Naruto walked with a bounce to his step. Granny Tsunade had finally decided to send him on a mission. He was flanked by Kakashi and Sasuke. If Sakura were here it would be just like old times. Still, for now he was gonna ignore the feeling of wrong hitting him as he remembered she would never take another mission with him. He was an optimist, sue him. He was gonna focus on the bright side, namely: MISSION TIME!

Opening the door to the Hokage's office, he found Granny Tsunade waiting for them as well as Team Guy and Karin.

"Good, you're here, now I can start the debrief." said Tsunade. "This morning the Cypher Division had received a message from Suna asking for out help. The Kazekage has been captured."

"What? How? Is Gaara ok?" asked Naruto.

"Shut up and I'll tell you about it, brat. As of right now we have no idea of his location. Suna believes the perpetrators were two members of the Akatsuki and one of our spies has confirmed it."

Sasuke straightened up at the mention of the Akatsuki and Kakashi sent him a pointed look.

"Right now your mission is to head to Suna and provide back-up. For the duration of this mission, Karin you will take a temporary role as Team 7's medic and you will act as the diplomatic ambassador for Konoha. Understood?"

"Yes Tsunade-shishō." said Karin.

"Good." then she rose from her desk to stare down both teams. "You will listen to exactly what the Suna government has to tell, and you will follow orders as if the were given from me. Secondarily, as a member of the Diplomatic Corps, Karin outranks all of you while in a foreign country. If she tells you to shut up, you damn well listen to her. I don't want to hear about you creating an international incident, got it?"

"Yes Hokage-sama." said all of them.

"Good, then you are dismissed. Go pack your bags, you leave in an hour."

...

They reached the Sand Village in record, having found Temari on her way back home, she was able to lead them through the quickest route through the Kaze no Kuni desert. Two sand village ninja met them at the gate and quickly led them through the village towards the hospital. Kankurō had been poisoned by one of the members of the Akatsuki and was in critical condition.

"Don't worry Temari." said Karin. "I promise you as an Iryō-nin I will do everything in my power to save Kankurō. Your brother will not die on my watch."

The blonde's eyes widened as she glanced at the redhead, surprised by the conviction in her voice. "Thank you, Karin."

"Neji, get ready to assist me, you always had the better chakra control between the two of us."

"Right."

They burst through the hospital and slammed the door to Kankurō's room wide open. Neji and Karin threw their backpacks on the ground near the door as they ran to the puppeteer's bedside to examine him when the old woman in front of it launched herself in the air with a war cry.

"You bastard!" yelled the woman as she charged at Kakashi.

Naruto quickly created a shadow clone and what do you know, attacked back. He really did not listen to Tsunade when she told them not to cause an international incident.

"Hey, you hag! What the hell are you thinking, attacking Kakashi-sensei like that?!" yelled Naruto.

"Naruto shut your goddamn mouth!" screeched Karin.

"White Fang of Konoha...How dare you show your face? I shall avenge my son's death by defeating you here today!"

"Wait, nee-san." said an old man that stepped in front of her. "Take a good look at him...He resembles the White Fang but that man is not him...and moreover, the White Fang died a long time ago."

Suddenly, the old woman began laughing. "Gotcha, I was only pretending to have gone senile."

Karin sighed. "Good to see you haven't changed one bit, Chiyo-sama."

"You know her, Karin?" asked Tenten, looking extremely creeped out.

It was Baki that answered. "Chiyo-baasama is our village's poison and puppet expert and our best Iryō-nin. Karin-san met her on her last diplomatic mission to Suna. We brought her here to see if she could improve Kankurō's condition."

"Speaking of, me and Karin need to examine him." said Neji.

"Yes, of course." said Baki.

"The rest of you, please clear out, we need space to work." said Karin.

The rest of Team 7 and Team Guy nodded, leaving the room with Chiyo and her brother.

...

Neji and Karin immediately got to work, they brought a basin of medicinal fluid and Neji used his Byakugan to locate the toxin, then after making an incision with a chakra scalpel, pushed the fluid through the incision to draw out the poison slowly. Once the first bit of poison was out, Karin immediately got to work and began creating an antidote. She was extremely lucky this poison was similar to one Sakura had created some time after the chunin exams. A small part of her brain wondered what the fuck was Sakura thinking making such a deadly poison for fun, but the more logical part of her brain ignored it in favor of being grateful to have a base to work with.

Between Neji and Karin working together, they managed to have Kankurō in stable condition in record time.

"He should be fine now." said Neji as he freed his hair from the bun he pinned it in to work. "For now he needs a change of bandages and an IV drip. Karin, how's the antidote?"

"Already done, we can insert it in his bloodstream to wash out any traces of toxin that may remain."

"Good."

"So he's going to be fine?" asked Temari.

"He will Temari. I promised you me and Neji will save your brother, didn't I?"

Temari slid down the wall and collapsed in relief. "Yes, yes. Thank you, thank you so much you two."

...

Once Kankurō woke up they were able to gain more information about the Akatsuki. The one that attacked him was Sasori of the Red Sand, Chiyo's grandson. Kankurō was able to snag a piece of his clothing so that they may be able to track him. Luckily for everyone involved, one of the Leaf's best tracking ninjas was with them. Kakashi summoned his Ninken and after giving them the piece of cloth, they memorised the scent and left on the hunt. For now all they had to do was wait. They were generously offered rooms at the best inn in Suna and dinner. The Jonin senseis left to talk some more with Baki, leaving their students to pile in Team 7's room to talk.

"You know, if I had a ryō for every time Sakura's weird obsession with creating the deadliest, most disgusting poison, helped me save a life, I'd have two ryō. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice." said Karin, trying to lift the oppressive mood that fell over her friends.

Neji snorted. "Please tell me it at least wasn't the Gold Digger."

"Nope. It was the Indigo Reaper."

"Ah."

"What are you two talking about?" asked Tenten.

"Sakura created like...a lot of weird poisons and Tsunade had us memorize them and their antidote. The Gold Digger, as the name suggests, is a metallic poison that uses traces of liquid gold to slowly poison the target. The Indigo Reaper however is just a highly toxic soldier pill. Sasori's poison was similar except, ironically, it acted slower."

"Wow."

Suddenly Naruto's fist came down on the table.

"Dobe! What the hell's wrong with you?!" asked Sasuke, after Naruto spilled his tea with his outburst.

"What's wrong with me? What's wrong with all of you? How can you just sit here doing nothing when Gaara could be dying out there?"

"And what exactly would you rather us do? Run around the desert like headless chickens until we get lucky and run into a member of the Akatsuki?"

"YES! Because at least then, we would be doing something! I hate just...sitting around here, as if one of my precious people didn't get kidnapped in the middle of the night! AGAIN!"

Sasuke had a feeling this wasn't just about Gaara, but he wasn't about to comment on it. "Look, getting yourself worked up will do nothing, except exhaust and make you reckless. We have to wait for Pakkun to come back, so sit the hell down."

Karin punched him in the shoulder over his words. "What Sasuke means, is that the situation is out of our hands right now, Naruto. The best we can do for Gaara right now is to rest so that we are at 100% capacity when we find him tomorrow. And we will find him."

"Karin is right, Naruto. Gaara's springtime of youth is nowhere near the end. Fear not, for we shall persevere tomorrow!" said Lee.

"Speaking of rest though." said Tenten, rising from her place on the floor. "We should probably go to bed soon, especially you Neji. You look dead on your feet."

Neji grunted in response and slowly, Team Guy left Team 7's suite. Karin went to the bathroom to change, leaving Naruto and Sasuke alone.

"We'll find him, dobe." said Sasuke, squeezing his shoulder.

"What if we don't though? What if we're too late?" the again was silent but very heavily implied.

"We won't be. We're a lot stronger than we were 3 years ago. It will be ok."

"I'll hold you to that, teme."

(A\N: So I'm back for now. Hello, the excuse for my absence is the same one as last time, which is: college is fucking hell. So...yeah. I don't know when the next chapter will be. It took me a long time to write this one, simply because I had to write it piece by piece in the course of the last month as, once again I had no time. So yeah...Sorry about that. But the chapter is done now, so here we go.

Also, for those of you who will ask me, where is Sakura? We will see what she has been up to once the Gaara retrieval arc is over, I just wanted to get it out of the way before we go back to her POV. Will we see her before or after I introduce Sai? I don't really know to be honest. We will see.

For now, I hope you enjoy the latest update and I will leave you with a fun fact: the working title for this chapter was 1×Karin + 1×Neji = 1×Sakura. Since both of them together were needed to accomplish what Sakura did alone. But that's all I have for now. Thank you for reading, Crazycousins202 out! )