When Everything Changed VI
Fandom: Naruto
Pairing: Kakashi x Sakura
Rating: T
Chapter summary: Wherein Pakkun makes his appearance, a turning point arrives, and the baddies are found?
When Everything Changed Part VI / ?
When Sakura awoke in the morning, Kakashi was gone. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and threw her legs over the side of the bed. Yawning big and wide, she picked up her bag and rooted through it to pull out a clean shirt and a hairbrush. Still waking up, she peeled her shirt off and held up the fresh one when terror struck. The door opened and Kakashi walked in, catching an eyeful of her bosom. The silent shock lasted all of three seconds before Sakura shrieked, accusing him of being a pervert. Her night shirt flew and landed on his head, covering his face.
Mortified, Sakura quickly pulled on her shirt, then stomped over to him and yanked her old shirt off of his head. She glared at him, cheeks and ears flushed a deep pink.
"I... didn't see anything," he lied, trying to ease her embarrassment. In actuality, he was pretty flustered, too, but thankfully his mask hid all traces of it. He didn't need her being upset at him over anything else at the moment - even if it had been an accident.
He held up a mug in offering. "Coffee?"
She muttered a thanks as she took it. "You swear you didn't see anything?"
"I swear."
She pursed her lips to the side, but she was satisfied with his answer. "Thanks for letting me take the bed. You can have it tonight if you want."
He shook his head. "I'm alright. Ready to find out what our orders are?"
She nodded as she set down her drink in favor of brushing her hair. With a few seals and a puff of smoke, they were greeted with a gruff hello.
"Hi, Pakkun," Sakura said with a smile.
The pug trotted over to her and jumped up onto the bed, putting his front paws on her leg. "Hey Sakura-chan, I haven't seen you in a while."
She lifted her hand and scratched behind his ear. He made a pleased sound and leaned into her touch; she giggled at his action. "It's good to see you, too, Pakkun."
"This female smells nice, and she gives a good scratch, you should keep her around," the little dog commented to his master.
Kakashi only watched, hiding his amusement behind an indifferent facade. "Aren't you supposed to be delivering something?"
"Right, sorry Sakura-chan, I know how much you like petting me," he stated as he hopped onto the floor.
"Of course, you're my favorite out of all the ninken."
If dogs could blush, Kakashi swore Pakkun was doing so just then. "Traitor," he muttered.
Pakkun lifted his head, giving him access to the scroll secured around his neck. "Don't be so sour about it, boss. Every animal enjoys a nice touch. You should try it some time."
Kakashi only huffed. "You can go now," he said, giving his loyal dog a pat on the head.
Just like that, Pakkun was gone, and Kakashi unfurled the paper. He sat for a few minutes deciphering the code while Sakura pulled her hair up and sipped on her coffee. "So, what do we do?"
"Basically, Tsunade says she's sending another medic to assist you and that he or she will be here by this afternoon, so keep working."
She pulled a face. "Right. And you?"
"I get to search the village for contamination, see if it's locally sourced."
"Okay, well, I should get to it then."
He nodded. "I'll come check on you during the day. And I'm going to need a sample of that poison."
She could feel the window of opportunity closing, and acted fast. "Sure. Hey, um, what I wanted to talk to you about-"
"Tonight, I promise."
She stopped herself from sighing and offered a tight smile. Window closed. "Okay, tonight. Let's get to the clinic, the sooner we can end this the better it'll be for everyone," she said as she pulled on her flak vest.
"Right behind you."
~*~*~
After obtaining a sample and seeing Sakura off, Kakashi headed out. Once in the out brush away from the crowded clinic, he summoned Pakkun and uncapped the vial.
"What's up, boss?" the pug asked as the smoke cleared.
"I need you to see if you can find more of this," he replied, kneeling beside him. "Sakura says it's odorless, but we know better don't we?"
Pakkun sniffed the vial, nose crinkling. "That's the poison?"
"Yep," Kakashi answered as he retrieved a needle from his inner pocket.
"What are you doing?" the pug asked as he watched him dip the needle tip into the vial.
"Security."
Pakkun tilted his head to the side. "Does Sakura know you're taking these... security measures?"
"Let's go."
"I'll take that to mean no," the ninken muttered as he put his nose to the ground. They strolled just down the inside perimeter and soon the pug picked up the scent and took off running, Kakashi not far behind.
They soon found themselves near the center of the village where residents were standing in line waiting for their turn at the well. Pakkun ran right up to it and turned a concerned look up to Kakashi. "There's some spilled right here," he stated with a grunt.
"The water supply," Kakashi mumbled to himself. He turned to the person at the well. "I'm sorry, but you can't take water from here."
The elderly woman cocked a brow at him. "And why not?"
"It's contaminated; it's what's making your people sick. I have to get back to the hospital and let them know. Please, don't let others drink from here."
The old woman dropped the cover back atop the well as Kakashi turned and walked away.
"Someone's watching us, you know," the dog warned.
"I do."
"Ninja, too, I can smell him."
He turned his gaze down at his canine friend. "Good, then you can track him. I'll follow."
"What about the hospital?"
"Already on it."
~*~*~
Sakura wiped away the sweat that dotted her brow. She had just finished extracting poison build-up from a woman's liver and she was now recovering nicely. She dropped the small hand towel over her shoulder and finished off her water before moving on to the next patient. After a quick analysis, she found that the poisoning hadn't been severe and the patient would be just fine with a dose of the antidote she had made.
As Sakura continued, she wondered why some cases were worse than the others. At first, she thought maybe they had specific targets and were just using low doses on others to try to hide their agenda. But what kind of person would do that to innocent kids? That seemed to be a bit much for a cover up. There was no consistency either. Her patients either fell into the category needing surgery and the antidote or just the serum itself - and the levels of poison in each person varied. It didn't seem to make any sense at all.
Pausing as she prepared another batch of medicine, she thought back to sending a brother and sister home with their parents, who had thanked her profusely for saving them. Kakashi was right about saving lives, it felt pretty amazing.
"Help! Someone help my husband, please!" The near hysterical cry alarmed Sakura in the back.
She darted to the front of the clinic office to find a young woman dragging a man into the waiting area. She ran over to them and, with a little help, was able to lift him and take him toward a cot.
"What's his name?"
"Kunikida Sato," the tearful woman replied.
Sato did not look like he was faring very well. His skin was ashen, face sallow, and he was wheezing and covered in sweat. Sakura glanced over at the woman. "How long has he been like this?"
"I found him outside making that sound this morning. Can you help him, please?!"
Sakura met her gaze. She was so young, probably around her own age, and here she was married and worried and... Sakura's eyes fell to the subtle round bulge of her stomach and then back to the woman's face. "I'll do my best."
After pulling her tools near, she traced her finger down the length of his tunic, the cloth splitting seamlessly behind it. She pressed her hands, aglow with chakra, to his chest. Her body tensed; she couldn't believe what she had found.
She looked back to the woman. "Was he at home last night?"
"What? Why? Why does that matter?" she cried, taking offense.
"It might be able to tell me where he could have gotten this."
"No, he wasn't," replied the wife, hanging her head.
Sakura moved her hands lower and found that it was just as infested with the poison as his chest. "And how was his condition yesterday?"
The press of questions obviously made the woman more distressed, and she began to tug at her clothing with anxious fingers. "He was fine, but... but he didn't want me going anywhere. He was being a little... strange. There was a knock at the door before dinner and he left... I haven't seen him since then, until this morning," she explained between shuddering breaths.
"Okay, thank you. Now I'm going to have to ask you to wait so I can focus on working on him."
"I'm not going anywhere!"
With a jerk of her head, a couple of the staff came over and guided the woman to the doors, reinforcing the order. Sakura lifted a syringe and gave him a dose of a local anesthesia to hopefully lessen the pain of what she was about to do.
It was then that the doors opened and Kakashi entered, much to the protest of one of the staff members that she waved away. He noticed right away that this man was doing considerably worse than the others.
"What are you doing here?"
"Pakkun traced some of the poison to the center of the village, in the water supply."
The information made all of the other fractions of knowledge meld into one. Her eyes widened as she looked up to him. "That's why the poison level has been so varied among everyone!"
She turned her attention back to the man and his soaked clothing. Snatching up a cup, she squeezed some of the liquid from the front of his tunic, and put it to her nose. It didn't have that salty, musky scent that sweat carried.
"This is water," she announced and then picked up a test strip. Just as she thought, the tip of it turned purple when she exposed it to the water. "Kakashi, I need your help."
"What do you need?"
"This man's body is riddled with poison. I'll do what I can, but it's going to be painful. I need you to hold him down."
He nodded in affirmation and moved to the head of the table where he applied some weight on his shoulders. Just like all those years ago when she worked on Kankuro, she pressed the saline-water solution to the man's chest, sourced out the poison, trapped it, and began extracting it from him. His body jerked under her, but Kakashi's grip kept him nearly flat.
There was so much of the poison that Sakura was unsure if he'd even make it through. She deadened the area as much as she could and still be able to use her chakra wisely, but he was still writhing in pain.
After twenty minutes she had to get a new basin and chose a new section of his body to work on. Someone had wanted this man dead, and the job was almost successful. But Sakura was determined and he could hopefully provide some insight on who was responsible for all of this. She just hoped he was as willing to fight for his life as she was. As she poured everything she could into saving the man, she was unaware that a Kakashi bunshin was trailing though the surrounding forest with Pakkun.
With the help of a little diversion, Kakashi had created a clone and then separated from it. The pursuer kept up with him, allowing Pakkun and the bunshin to slip away. After watching the real Kakashi hurry into the clinic, the mystery man began his trek into the woodland.
"He's a pretty competent ninja," Pakkun commented.
Kakashi studied the man's profile. He looked to be of similar age. His dark brown hair was highlighted by the reddish-bronze strands that had shown he spent a lot of time in the sun. He walked with a hurried grace, but a slight limp on his right alerted him to a weakness. They had circled the outside of the village all the way to the far side. There was a hut built out here on its own.
The ninja slipped through the door and Kakashi gave Pakkun the order to remain there before sneaking his way to the home. Stuffing the small speaker into his ear, Kakashi stuck the chakra infused tab to the window, allowing him to hear what was going on inside.
An older voice, one that was weathered and told of his age, began. "Kunikida has been dealt with. His wife dragged his sorry ass to the clinic, but it'll be a miracle if he survives."
A younger one followed. "Yeah, we drowned him in it. There ain't no way he's making it out alive!"
"But we might have a problem on our hands." Another man chimed in, presumably the one Kakashi had followed.
"What kind of problem?"
"One of the ninja that showed up from Konoha traced the poison to the water well. It's closed up now, no one's taking from it."
"Unfortunate, yes, but not much to worry about. So many villagers are already weakened and Kunikida's on death's door. This one is almost in the bag, men."
"You know the Konoha-nin will oppose us."
There was a bark of laughter. "What could one measly medic and her security guard do to us? Nothing! That's what!"
"I beg to differ," Kakashi mumbled under his breath.
"Do ya now?" came a smooth voice from above him. "Big talk for someone who left himself so open."
The younger man spun as he leapt from the tree. Kakashi rolled out of the way, and not a moment too soon, as his opponent landed where he had just been crouching. Body prepared to spring at any moment, the Kakashi bunshin studied him with a careful gaze.
In the blink of an eye, the young man seemed to flash out of existence, but Kakashi was aware enough to feel his presence and block as he came from the side. The Copy Nin stayed on the defensive, saving his energy for the opportunity to counter. His enemy was quick and powerful, but not controlled. Kakashi found his opening when he swung too wide. In three moves he had him pinned an arm's length away to the base of a mighty oak - their outstretched arms were interlocked and Kakashi had a firm grip on the arm that had darted to attempt to free himself.
"You don't mind coming back with me, do you?" Kakashi drawled.
"Like hell I would," the boisterous man spat before trying to break free. But it was that moment later when Kakashi felt that cold prick of metal, that his movement aligned into place and then it all suddenly fell away.
~*~*~
Sakura brushed her forearm across her head. At this point, she wasn't sure if Kunikida would be strong enough to survive another procedure. She couldn't give him any more medication for pain, and she was trying to conserve her chakra for the rest of him - and the other patients as well. She wasn't even sure how he had stayed alive this long.
Her partner's voice broke into her thoughts. "Sakura, you mentioned before that you had been training with Ino."
Wary about the direction Kakashi was headed, she regarded him with cautious eyes. "Yeah, I did."
"Do you think you could-"
"It's an invasion of his rights."
Kakashi abandoned the man's shoulders to walk up to her. "He's the biggest, most solid lead we have. I can tell just by looking at you that he's really bad off and that he may not survive."
"Don't-"
He cupped his hand at the back of her neck. "You've realized the possibility already. We need to protect these people, and he knows who is responsible. You have the ability, and he doesn't have to die for nothing."
She wanted to argue, but even on the field she had never seen this large amount of poison in a person's body. This hadn't been done simply to kill him; it had been done through sheer malice. No one else deserved to have that done to them. She didn't want to say it, but she knew he had a point.
She gave a faint nod. "Okay."
Slipping away from his touch, Sakura rounded the head of the table and set her palm atop his head. A cool spark of chakra spiked up from her hands. She glanced once more at Kakashi, took a steadying breath, and then lowered her eyes in concentration.
She awkwardly shifted out of personal memory after memory as she honed in on the section she needed.
"Think of it as untangling a thread," Ino advised. "When you find one thought, one memory, on an event you can follow it to its predecessors, picking and following that thread through the jumble of other ones."
A dull memory of being tossed to the ground pulled Sakura in and she pushed on, going farther back down the line. A series of hazy and panicked moments intertwined before she saw the face of a man. The visage was dimly backlit, casting shadows over his features. The harder she pushed the more clear the image became.
His scarlet, nearly brown hair feathered across his cheeks. He snarled as he tugged on his flak vest, and then his fist came flying. She jerked, and quickly pushed on the memory line again, fighting the mental fatigue that was encroaching upon her. A short memory of a cabin in the woods came up, the red-topped man the one answering the door.
Sakura pulled away, her knees trembling. Kakashi steadied her with his hands. "Need to sit?"
"No, I'm okay."
"What did you see in there?"
"He was tortured. There were multiple people, but the one I saw was a red-haired guy that I've seen linger about since we got here."
"What else?"
"Actually..."
"Wait," he mumbled as his body stilled, head tilted and perked. A wave of information came flooding to him, which meant his bunshin had served its purpose. The man with the red hair Sakura had mentioned was the same one he had followed.
He looked up at her. "A cabin in the woods outside the village."
"How did you-"
He seemed to be in a rush now. "Thank you, Sakura. I have to go."
Go? No, he wasn't going to leave her and set out alone. "Wait!"
But he pulled the last seal needed and poof-ed out of the room with a cloud of smoke and a whispered apology.
Pairing: Kakashi x Sakura
Rating: T
Chapter summary: Wherein Pakkun makes his appearance, a turning point arrives, and the baddies are found?
When Everything Changed Part VI / ?
When Sakura awoke in the morning, Kakashi was gone. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and threw her legs over the side of the bed. Yawning big and wide, she picked up her bag and rooted through it to pull out a clean shirt and a hairbrush. Still waking up, she peeled her shirt off and held up the fresh one when terror struck. The door opened and Kakashi walked in, catching an eyeful of her bosom. The silent shock lasted all of three seconds before Sakura shrieked, accusing him of being a pervert. Her night shirt flew and landed on his head, covering his face.
Mortified, Sakura quickly pulled on her shirt, then stomped over to him and yanked her old shirt off of his head. She glared at him, cheeks and ears flushed a deep pink.
"I... didn't see anything," he lied, trying to ease her embarrassment. In actuality, he was pretty flustered, too, but thankfully his mask hid all traces of it. He didn't need her being upset at him over anything else at the moment - even if it had been an accident.
He held up a mug in offering. "Coffee?"
She muttered a thanks as she took it. "You swear you didn't see anything?"
"I swear."
She pursed her lips to the side, but she was satisfied with his answer. "Thanks for letting me take the bed. You can have it tonight if you want."
He shook his head. "I'm alright. Ready to find out what our orders are?"
She nodded as she set down her drink in favor of brushing her hair. With a few seals and a puff of smoke, they were greeted with a gruff hello.
"Hi, Pakkun," Sakura said with a smile.
The pug trotted over to her and jumped up onto the bed, putting his front paws on her leg. "Hey Sakura-chan, I haven't seen you in a while."
She lifted her hand and scratched behind his ear. He made a pleased sound and leaned into her touch; she giggled at his action. "It's good to see you, too, Pakkun."
"This female smells nice, and she gives a good scratch, you should keep her around," the little dog commented to his master.
Kakashi only watched, hiding his amusement behind an indifferent facade. "Aren't you supposed to be delivering something?"
"Right, sorry Sakura-chan, I know how much you like petting me," he stated as he hopped onto the floor.
"Of course, you're my favorite out of all the ninken."
If dogs could blush, Kakashi swore Pakkun was doing so just then. "Traitor," he muttered.
Pakkun lifted his head, giving him access to the scroll secured around his neck. "Don't be so sour about it, boss. Every animal enjoys a nice touch. You should try it some time."
Kakashi only huffed. "You can go now," he said, giving his loyal dog a pat on the head.
Just like that, Pakkun was gone, and Kakashi unfurled the paper. He sat for a few minutes deciphering the code while Sakura pulled her hair up and sipped on her coffee. "So, what do we do?"
"Basically, Tsunade says she's sending another medic to assist you and that he or she will be here by this afternoon, so keep working."
She pulled a face. "Right. And you?"
"I get to search the village for contamination, see if it's locally sourced."
"Okay, well, I should get to it then."
He nodded. "I'll come check on you during the day. And I'm going to need a sample of that poison."
She could feel the window of opportunity closing, and acted fast. "Sure. Hey, um, what I wanted to talk to you about-"
"Tonight, I promise."
She stopped herself from sighing and offered a tight smile. Window closed. "Okay, tonight. Let's get to the clinic, the sooner we can end this the better it'll be for everyone," she said as she pulled on her flak vest.
"Right behind you."
~*~*~
After obtaining a sample and seeing Sakura off, Kakashi headed out. Once in the out brush away from the crowded clinic, he summoned Pakkun and uncapped the vial.
"What's up, boss?" the pug asked as the smoke cleared.
"I need you to see if you can find more of this," he replied, kneeling beside him. "Sakura says it's odorless, but we know better don't we?"
Pakkun sniffed the vial, nose crinkling. "That's the poison?"
"Yep," Kakashi answered as he retrieved a needle from his inner pocket.
"What are you doing?" the pug asked as he watched him dip the needle tip into the vial.
"Security."
Pakkun tilted his head to the side. "Does Sakura know you're taking these... security measures?"
"Let's go."
"I'll take that to mean no," the ninken muttered as he put his nose to the ground. They strolled just down the inside perimeter and soon the pug picked up the scent and took off running, Kakashi not far behind.
They soon found themselves near the center of the village where residents were standing in line waiting for their turn at the well. Pakkun ran right up to it and turned a concerned look up to Kakashi. "There's some spilled right here," he stated with a grunt.
"The water supply," Kakashi mumbled to himself. He turned to the person at the well. "I'm sorry, but you can't take water from here."
The elderly woman cocked a brow at him. "And why not?"
"It's contaminated; it's what's making your people sick. I have to get back to the hospital and let them know. Please, don't let others drink from here."
The old woman dropped the cover back atop the well as Kakashi turned and walked away.
"Someone's watching us, you know," the dog warned.
"I do."
"Ninja, too, I can smell him."
He turned his gaze down at his canine friend. "Good, then you can track him. I'll follow."
"What about the hospital?"
"Already on it."
~*~*~
Sakura wiped away the sweat that dotted her brow. She had just finished extracting poison build-up from a woman's liver and she was now recovering nicely. She dropped the small hand towel over her shoulder and finished off her water before moving on to the next patient. After a quick analysis, she found that the poisoning hadn't been severe and the patient would be just fine with a dose of the antidote she had made.
As Sakura continued, she wondered why some cases were worse than the others. At first, she thought maybe they had specific targets and were just using low doses on others to try to hide their agenda. But what kind of person would do that to innocent kids? That seemed to be a bit much for a cover up. There was no consistency either. Her patients either fell into the category needing surgery and the antidote or just the serum itself - and the levels of poison in each person varied. It didn't seem to make any sense at all.
Pausing as she prepared another batch of medicine, she thought back to sending a brother and sister home with their parents, who had thanked her profusely for saving them. Kakashi was right about saving lives, it felt pretty amazing.
"Help! Someone help my husband, please!" The near hysterical cry alarmed Sakura in the back.
She darted to the front of the clinic office to find a young woman dragging a man into the waiting area. She ran over to them and, with a little help, was able to lift him and take him toward a cot.
"What's his name?"
"Kunikida Sato," the tearful woman replied.
Sato did not look like he was faring very well. His skin was ashen, face sallow, and he was wheezing and covered in sweat. Sakura glanced over at the woman. "How long has he been like this?"
"I found him outside making that sound this morning. Can you help him, please?!"
Sakura met her gaze. She was so young, probably around her own age, and here she was married and worried and... Sakura's eyes fell to the subtle round bulge of her stomach and then back to the woman's face. "I'll do my best."
After pulling her tools near, she traced her finger down the length of his tunic, the cloth splitting seamlessly behind it. She pressed her hands, aglow with chakra, to his chest. Her body tensed; she couldn't believe what she had found.
She looked back to the woman. "Was he at home last night?"
"What? Why? Why does that matter?" she cried, taking offense.
"It might be able to tell me where he could have gotten this."
"No, he wasn't," replied the wife, hanging her head.
Sakura moved her hands lower and found that it was just as infested with the poison as his chest. "And how was his condition yesterday?"
The press of questions obviously made the woman more distressed, and she began to tug at her clothing with anxious fingers. "He was fine, but... but he didn't want me going anywhere. He was being a little... strange. There was a knock at the door before dinner and he left... I haven't seen him since then, until this morning," she explained between shuddering breaths.
"Okay, thank you. Now I'm going to have to ask you to wait so I can focus on working on him."
"I'm not going anywhere!"
With a jerk of her head, a couple of the staff came over and guided the woman to the doors, reinforcing the order. Sakura lifted a syringe and gave him a dose of a local anesthesia to hopefully lessen the pain of what she was about to do.
It was then that the doors opened and Kakashi entered, much to the protest of one of the staff members that she waved away. He noticed right away that this man was doing considerably worse than the others.
"What are you doing here?"
"Pakkun traced some of the poison to the center of the village, in the water supply."
The information made all of the other fractions of knowledge meld into one. Her eyes widened as she looked up to him. "That's why the poison level has been so varied among everyone!"
She turned her attention back to the man and his soaked clothing. Snatching up a cup, she squeezed some of the liquid from the front of his tunic, and put it to her nose. It didn't have that salty, musky scent that sweat carried.
"This is water," she announced and then picked up a test strip. Just as she thought, the tip of it turned purple when she exposed it to the water. "Kakashi, I need your help."
"What do you need?"
"This man's body is riddled with poison. I'll do what I can, but it's going to be painful. I need you to hold him down."
He nodded in affirmation and moved to the head of the table where he applied some weight on his shoulders. Just like all those years ago when she worked on Kankuro, she pressed the saline-water solution to the man's chest, sourced out the poison, trapped it, and began extracting it from him. His body jerked under her, but Kakashi's grip kept him nearly flat.
There was so much of the poison that Sakura was unsure if he'd even make it through. She deadened the area as much as she could and still be able to use her chakra wisely, but he was still writhing in pain.
After twenty minutes she had to get a new basin and chose a new section of his body to work on. Someone had wanted this man dead, and the job was almost successful. But Sakura was determined and he could hopefully provide some insight on who was responsible for all of this. She just hoped he was as willing to fight for his life as she was. As she poured everything she could into saving the man, she was unaware that a Kakashi bunshin was trailing though the surrounding forest with Pakkun.
With the help of a little diversion, Kakashi had created a clone and then separated from it. The pursuer kept up with him, allowing Pakkun and the bunshin to slip away. After watching the real Kakashi hurry into the clinic, the mystery man began his trek into the woodland.
"He's a pretty competent ninja," Pakkun commented.
Kakashi studied the man's profile. He looked to be of similar age. His dark brown hair was highlighted by the reddish-bronze strands that had shown he spent a lot of time in the sun. He walked with a hurried grace, but a slight limp on his right alerted him to a weakness. They had circled the outside of the village all the way to the far side. There was a hut built out here on its own.
The ninja slipped through the door and Kakashi gave Pakkun the order to remain there before sneaking his way to the home. Stuffing the small speaker into his ear, Kakashi stuck the chakra infused tab to the window, allowing him to hear what was going on inside.
An older voice, one that was weathered and told of his age, began. "Kunikida has been dealt with. His wife dragged his sorry ass to the clinic, but it'll be a miracle if he survives."
A younger one followed. "Yeah, we drowned him in it. There ain't no way he's making it out alive!"
"But we might have a problem on our hands." Another man chimed in, presumably the one Kakashi had followed.
"What kind of problem?"
"One of the ninja that showed up from Konoha traced the poison to the water well. It's closed up now, no one's taking from it."
"Unfortunate, yes, but not much to worry about. So many villagers are already weakened and Kunikida's on death's door. This one is almost in the bag, men."
"You know the Konoha-nin will oppose us."
There was a bark of laughter. "What could one measly medic and her security guard do to us? Nothing! That's what!"
"I beg to differ," Kakashi mumbled under his breath.
"Do ya now?" came a smooth voice from above him. "Big talk for someone who left himself so open."
The younger man spun as he leapt from the tree. Kakashi rolled out of the way, and not a moment too soon, as his opponent landed where he had just been crouching. Body prepared to spring at any moment, the Kakashi bunshin studied him with a careful gaze.
In the blink of an eye, the young man seemed to flash out of existence, but Kakashi was aware enough to feel his presence and block as he came from the side. The Copy Nin stayed on the defensive, saving his energy for the opportunity to counter. His enemy was quick and powerful, but not controlled. Kakashi found his opening when he swung too wide. In three moves he had him pinned an arm's length away to the base of a mighty oak - their outstretched arms were interlocked and Kakashi had a firm grip on the arm that had darted to attempt to free himself.
"You don't mind coming back with me, do you?" Kakashi drawled.
"Like hell I would," the boisterous man spat before trying to break free. But it was that moment later when Kakashi felt that cold prick of metal, that his movement aligned into place and then it all suddenly fell away.
~*~*~
Sakura brushed her forearm across her head. At this point, she wasn't sure if Kunikida would be strong enough to survive another procedure. She couldn't give him any more medication for pain, and she was trying to conserve her chakra for the rest of him - and the other patients as well. She wasn't even sure how he had stayed alive this long.
Her partner's voice broke into her thoughts. "Sakura, you mentioned before that you had been training with Ino."
Wary about the direction Kakashi was headed, she regarded him with cautious eyes. "Yeah, I did."
"Do you think you could-"
"It's an invasion of his rights."
Kakashi abandoned the man's shoulders to walk up to her. "He's the biggest, most solid lead we have. I can tell just by looking at you that he's really bad off and that he may not survive."
"Don't-"
He cupped his hand at the back of her neck. "You've realized the possibility already. We need to protect these people, and he knows who is responsible. You have the ability, and he doesn't have to die for nothing."
She wanted to argue, but even on the field she had never seen this large amount of poison in a person's body. This hadn't been done simply to kill him; it had been done through sheer malice. No one else deserved to have that done to them. She didn't want to say it, but she knew he had a point.
She gave a faint nod. "Okay."
Slipping away from his touch, Sakura rounded the head of the table and set her palm atop his head. A cool spark of chakra spiked up from her hands. She glanced once more at Kakashi, took a steadying breath, and then lowered her eyes in concentration.
She awkwardly shifted out of personal memory after memory as she honed in on the section she needed.
"Think of it as untangling a thread," Ino advised. "When you find one thought, one memory, on an event you can follow it to its predecessors, picking and following that thread through the jumble of other ones."
A dull memory of being tossed to the ground pulled Sakura in and she pushed on, going farther back down the line. A series of hazy and panicked moments intertwined before she saw the face of a man. The visage was dimly backlit, casting shadows over his features. The harder she pushed the more clear the image became.
His scarlet, nearly brown hair feathered across his cheeks. He snarled as he tugged on his flak vest, and then his fist came flying. She jerked, and quickly pushed on the memory line again, fighting the mental fatigue that was encroaching upon her. A short memory of a cabin in the woods came up, the red-topped man the one answering the door.
Sakura pulled away, her knees trembling. Kakashi steadied her with his hands. "Need to sit?"
"No, I'm okay."
"What did you see in there?"
"He was tortured. There were multiple people, but the one I saw was a red-haired guy that I've seen linger about since we got here."
"What else?"
"Actually..."
"Wait," he mumbled as his body stilled, head tilted and perked. A wave of information came flooding to him, which meant his bunshin had served its purpose. The man with the red hair Sakura had mentioned was the same one he had followed.
He looked up at her. "A cabin in the woods outside the village."
"How did you-"
He seemed to be in a rush now. "Thank you, Sakura. I have to go."
Go? No, he wasn't going to leave her and set out alone. "Wait!"
But he pulled the last seal needed and poof-ed out of the room with a cloud of smoke and a whispered apology.