Bestial

AN: Well, I FINALLY have a working computer. *huggles iMac* I will never leave you for a laptop ever again! So, Chapter Six is here, thanks for all of your wonderful reviews!

Disclaimer: As always, do not own.

Mmmmmm scene break

::jlakjhlkjh:: Inner Sakura

Chapter 6

As I walked towards Kiba, I considered the possible courses of action. Option A was to run away, never my favorite. Option B was to continue to be nervous and uncertain, which was beginning to get old. Option C was to be strong and determined, and to remember that I learned more than healing from Tsunade—something that Naruto got a semi-regular taste of. So I sauntered up to Kiba with a smile on my lips.

“Good morning, Kiba.”

::Just let him try something, heh heh heh.::

I tilted my head to look up at him.

“Hello, Sakura,” he rumbled at me. Nice—I loved that growly, husky quality to his voice. Point to Kiba for sounding good. He bent closer while still leaning against the railing, but I held my ground. He had four to six inches on me in height. Not tall, but tall enough. I’ll say this for him, he definitely had the looming thing down. I think it was the fact that he was broad—a lot of our taller ninjas are on the leaner side—muscular, and toned— ::And dead sexy! :: —but Kiba had broad shoulders and a trim waist. He was overly bulky, but definitely one hundred percent ripped, muscled male. I made a strong effort to reel in my hormones by turning my gaze away from his chest—which looked delicious even when it was covered by an open vest and the long sleeve shirt that most jounin- and chuunin-level men wear—he’s not the only muscular ninja! Kiba had a handsome face as well: strong lines that gave him a well defined jaw, dark eyes that gave him a perpetually wicked look. The clan tattoos just added to the sexy bad boy image that was topped by an unruly mop of dark hair.

::I bet he purposely tousles it like that:: Inner Sakura wistfully sighed.

No, Kiba didn’t have to do much to look like he was trying to tempt you into doing something mouth-wateringly naughty. He looked like a living sex god. Hmm, that whole controlling the hormones thing wasn’t working. If I were a weaker woman…well, to put it bluntly, we’d have a lot less clothes on.

His smile deepened. “You…smell delectable this morning.”

My eyes narrowed, but I managed to contain my look of surprise (the gasp too—I definitely get a point for that). “You’re lying. I’m using a scent-covering jutsu.”

“Ah, but the scent-covering jutsus don’t cover a change in your scent,” he smirked at me, as he leaned in closer. “And I’ll let you in on a little secret.”

“Oh?” I raised an eyebrow, and tried to control my heartbeat. I slowly clenched my right fist.

Kiba moved his head even closer, and inhaled, with his nose near my neck just under my ear. It tickled a bit and I twitched before I caught myself. Think cold, think Ice Queen. Yeah. Damn, it wasn’t working.

“Scent-covering jutsus don’t work on me.”

I felt something wet touch my neck, and in a burst of speed I stepped back and slammed my fist into his right cheek, sending him into the river. Akamaru stood up in surprise and barked, looking though the railing at Kiba, who was sitting in the water, a hand to his cheek.

“Son of a bitch, Sakura, a little warning next time!”

“I’m sorry, perhaps I didn’t make it clear: nobody gets into my pants. So stop trying, or else you’ll just end up getting hurt.” This was the approach I should have taken with Shino the other day. Oh well. I’ll set him straight when I get back from the mission.

I heard some footsteps on the bridge, and then a small gasp.

“Oh, Kiba, what happened?” Hinata asked, a couple of worry lines creasing her forehead. Kiba shook his head, flinging water drops everywhere, and jumped onto the bridge. I walked over and held up a hand glowing blue with chakra.

“Truce?” I asked.

He lowered his hand and allowed me to place my hand on his cheekbone. I didn’t damage it too badly—the strength of my punches was controlled by the amount of chakra I used, so it’s easy for me to do it. But I did get him pretty hard, although I know for a fact that his speed rivals Kakashi, so he should have been on his guard enough to dodge it. Especially since I hadn’t even been trying that hard to conceal my intent.

“For now,” he said, his eyes looking at me hotly. I sighed. This was going to be a headache of a mission, I could tell already.

“Wait a second,” I turned my head, “Hinata, are you the fourth member?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, looking as puzzled as I did. “You’re going as well?”

“Yeah.” But why would they have two medic jounins on one team? Was there going to be a fifth member? It was rare enough to have two medic-nins at all, unless one was an apprentice and needed the experience that the mission would bring. I began to wonder what sort of retrieval mission this was, exactly. Even if we needed Hinata’s other skills, there were other Hyuugas who were jounin—even an experienced chuunin could do an A level mission. Hell, I had been doing A-level missions since I was a genin (granted, I did a hell of a lot better once I was a chuunin, but still).

“Our mission is to retrieve a scroll.” Kakashi teleported in with a puff of smoke, reading his book.

“That’s it? Two experienced medic-nins for that?” I asked in disbelief.

“We have reason to believe that a rogue ninja with medical training may have it.” Rogue ninja? Why didn’t he just say missing-nin? But his words still sent a chill through me—a ninja with medical training can cause a lot of damage—we know how to fix it, so we know how to cause it. The ninja must have begun to harass civilians, or he was threatening to—it was the only reason that Hinata and I would have been paired together. It also meant that he was powerful, or that he was going to do something widespread, possibly both—something that they thought Hinata and I couldn’t handle unless we had another medic-nin to partner with.

“Why not just send hunter-nins and send a team of medic-nins to deal with the aftermath?” I asked.

“Normally that’s what we would do,” Kakashi said. “Or we would alert the hunter-nins from his village. But in this case, we don’t have a record of him as a missing-nin. In fact, we don’t have a record of him even existing.”

Was it just someone with an assumed name? But intelligence would have discovered that easily. A zombie medic-nin? Was that possible? No—we could revive ourselves from the brink of death, but we couldn’t be reborn. Could someone have raised him from the dead? But the only person I knew who could do that was Orochimaru, and he was definitely dead—with his soul sealed and his body dismembered and buried in separate locations so that he was impossible to raise (in the event that somebody else learned the forbidden jutsu that allowed them to raise the dead and control them).

“So he must be powerful, huh? Well then let’s go. We’re not going to get anything done standing here chatting,” Kiba said impatiently. He was right—any other important information could be imparted to us later.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

We got to the village as the sun was setting, and it was obvious from the start that something was wrong. It was completely quiet—no sounds from domestic animals or wildlife, no signs of life at all. I stretched out some tendrils of chakra, knowing that my teammates were doing the same thing, and stiffened in horror. Many were dead—most were on the verge of dying, their feeble chakra flickering. Hinata and I both started forward at the same time, preparing to take action, but were halted by Kakashi and Kiba, who hauled us back.

“Don’t be reckless,” Kakashi said. “It’s obviously some sort of trap.”

“I didn’t sense anything,” I said, trying to twist my wrist from Kiba’s hold. “At least let us treat the ones near the edge of the village, I didn’t sense anything. Do you see anything Hinata?” Another downfall of being a medic—the compulsion to treat those in need. It’s usually impossible to resist—unless, of course, we’re talking about Orochimaru or some other psychopath.

“No, I only see the villagers. I don’t see one standing,” Hinata said fretfully, looking around with her Byakugan.

“Kiba, let me go, we have to help them!” I was beginning to get frantic. I couldn’t have their lives on my conscience. Hinata was also leaning away from Kakashi.

Kakashi sighed. “You and Hinata begin treating the villagers, Kiba and I will scout around the village.”

“Good,” I shot over my shoulder as I sped towards the nearest house. “Get firewood and water while you’re at it—wait, the water may be contaminated, let me check the water first.” I leapt onto the nearest rooftop and began looking for the main source of water as I performed a rather easy water-detection jutsu. Kiba landed next to me.

“Akamaru can already smell the water, he can take you,” he said, then leapt to another rooftop.

I looked at Akamaru, who easily came up to my hip when he was on all fours. “Okay, Akamaru, take me there as fast as you can go.”

Akamaru gave me this look that said, “yeah, and you try to keep up with me” before leaping to the next rooftop. I admit it, I had to use a speed jutsu to keep up with him.

There was a river that looked as though it probably fed any wells that the villagers might use. A swift but thorough examination revealed that the water was fine. I was trying to work as quickly as I could, and barely had time to think that it was odd—usually when something hit an entire village and left no man standing it was from contaminated food or water. There is usually at least one person resistant to a disease, even if it is of epidemic proportions.

“Akamaru, I need you to take me to the nearest well—can you find one?” Akamaru sniffed the air then bounded away and I ran after him. The well water was not contaminated either. I hadn’t seen or smelled anything that might have been leftover food or waste from a festival. I hadn’t seen any sign of any oxen or something that would feed an entire village, so that left out poisoned food. Hinata had probably diagnosed what was wrong now though, so I sent Akamaru in search of her. Having Akamaru was useful—it saved me time and chakra. I wonder if I could talk Kiba into giving me a puppy. Hmm….probably not, since it was a clan thing. He’d probably use it to try to take advantage of me anyway.

I jumped down from a roof and went inside the house that Akamaru was standing in front of. Hinata looked up, the veins next to her eyes pulsing with chakra.

“Their chakra circulation systems have been poisoned, and whatever the disease is, it uses the chakra system to turn their bodies against themselves. Their chakra must be purified before their physical system can be righted.” We stared at each other. That was a Herculean task, and there was no way we’d have enough chakra to help them all and then fix their bodies on top of it. I held a hand over the woman Hinata was kneeling next to.

“It doesn’t feel viral—or contagious for that matter. A jutsu?” I said to Hinata.

“That’s what I think,” Hinata said. We fell silent again. I had never heard of a jutsu that could cause a disease—and certainly not a widespread one like this. Of course, once you had a thorough knowledge of the basics in medical jutsus, creating your own was easy. But this was truly horrifying, and the quiet moans that I could hear now that I wasn’t rushing around the village were disturbing.

“I think I know what we could do,” I said. “But it will only work to purify their chakra, and it will take a massive amount of ours to do it.”

I went outside and briefed Akamaru on the disease, and gave him instructions (to give to Kiba and Kakashi) to keep the villagers hydrated and warm, and to pile dead bodies outside the village perimeter, and to burn them. Akamaru went off like a shot, and Hinata joined me outside. I pulled out ink and began writing on scraps of paper. Hinata, catching onto the idea, began to do the same with her supplies.

“So we’re sealing the perimeter of the village, and then what? You know a purification jutsu?”

“Well, not exactly,” I said. “Do you know Tsunade’s rejuvenation technique? It’s similar to that, but instead of healing everything and losing years of our lives, we’re going to rejuvenate their chakra. Rejuvenation, purification, it’s essentially the same principle. Their chakra levels are dangerously low anyway. And we’re going to apply that on a larger scale than just one body. So slap these on, and connect them all with a strand of your chakra, and I’ll do the same.”

“Let’s just connect our chakra now, that way we don’t each have to do a full circuit.” She reached out a finger glowing with chakra towards me. I held up a finger and we touched them together, concentrating on making our chakra stick to each other, then pulled away, and a ribbon of two slightly different shades of blue connected our fingers.

“See you in the center in five,” I said as I took off. The center of the village was marked with a fountain and a sort of town square-type area. Connecting Hinata’s chakra to each paper was easier said than done, but the fact that we had worked together in the hospital before helped.

When we got to the center, we faced each other and put our hands in front of each other, palms touching.

“We should definitely use ram,” Hinata said.

“Yeah, and dragon.”

“Dog?”

“And hare?”

“Ram, dog, hare, dragon?”

“Better stick a horse and serpent in there—horse after dog.”

“And serpent after dragon.”

“Right. I’ll be the right hand, you the left?” I asked. She nodded. With our hands together, we each formed half of two symbols. Doing two symbols would help focus more chakra, and would also help us to use more chakra faster, and by using one hand from each of us to form the symbols, it continued to mix our chakra, giving it one focus.

We formed the symbols—ram, dog, horse, hare, dragon, serpent, and our chakra was released. Using strong symbols, and symbols promoting protection, and strength in adversity made our chakra balloon into a blue dome, confined by the perimeter of the seal that we made. Hinata and I directed the chakra down into the bodies of the living. I don’t know what Hinata did, but I envisioned our chakra as a wave, and as it washed over the people it took away the impurities in their system, purifying it. It seemed like a tidal wave, and as quickly as our chakra was released, it was around us, filled with the contaminants. I directed the impurities to be burned away except for a small sample, which was siphoned into a vial I had laid next to me. Then our chakra fizzled out, used up, and on wobbly legs I reached down for the vial and closed it then sat and leaned against the fountain.

“You okay Hinata?” I had my eyes closed.

“Yeah,” she said. We sat there for a bit. Sleep was teasing the corner of my closed eyelids.

“We need to break the circle.” It kept everything out and everything in, and needed to be taken down so we could reunite with our team mates.

I didn’t get an answer. I wasn’t surprised. She had already been purifying chakra before I found her, and so probably used up more of her reserves than I did. But I wasn’t too far behind her in falling asleep. I forced myself to get up, and used my last bit of chakra to displace to the nearest paper. I ripped it off the tree and sat under it. It was a delightfully shady spot, but it was still warm outside.

“I’ll find them later,” I mumbled as I fell asleep.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I woke up feeling deliciously warm, and there was a soft blanket on me. And it was kind of heavy on my stomach. I cracked my eyes open and looked down my body.

“Hey Akamaru,” I croaked. I needed water. And wow did I feel nauseous. Nothing like a little chakra depletion to make you feel like utter crap. I started to sit up and Akamaru whined at me and put a paw on my chest, forcing me back down. I really didn’t have the strength to argue with a 130-pound dog. The he stood up and I felt an arm lifting my shoulders, supporting my head.

“Bless you, and your children, and your children’s children,” I muttered gratefully as I sipped the water Kakashi was holding to my lips.

“How are the villagers doing?” I asked after I finished the water. Kakashi gave me a stern look and held up a bowl of broth with what looked like vegetables.

“Eat,” he said, holding a spoon to my mouth. Well, someone was grumpy!

“Where’s Hinata?” I asked after a couple of spoonfuls.

“We separated you two so you don’t do anything idiotic without consulting your captain first,” Kakashi growled at me. I humphed after swallowing another mouthful.

“I can feed myself, you know. And it wasn’t idiotic. We did what needed to be done,” I said primly as I reached for the bowl, which Kakashi pulled away from me. Bastard. But I probably would have dropped it anyway. I was still feeling a little weak.

Kakashi muttered something about medic-nins and being suicidal, but I chose to ignore him and instead turned my eyes inward to examine my body. I was fine, just tired. Running out of stamina and chakra will do that to you. And as a defense mechanism, your body forces you to feel tired so you can rest and get back what you used up. I finished the soup and stretched.

“So brief me, oh great and wondrous captain.”

“No sign of any traps. There was a struggle at the temple where the scroll was held, but that’s it—just a village of diseased villagers. Whatever you did seemed to have stopped the progression of the disease—nobody has died.”

I lowered my voice to just above a whisper. “Do you think the medic-nin is still in the area?”

Kakashi gave a shrug. “It’s possible. This was most likely used as a delay tactic. But for what purpose? There’s a variety of possibilities—an attack on the town, to stall us while he escapes, a combination of the two. We will have to wait.”

“An attack? How long have I been sleeping?”

“A full day.” The bush rustled, and as quick as a blink Kakashi had a kunai in one hand while starting a jutsu with the other, but it was just Akamaru, who woofed at Kakashi.

“Ah. Hinata seems to have awoken.”

“So why are you really keeping us separate? A team is supposed to stick together.”

Kakashi looked at me. “Because doing what you two did makes you both very desirable targets for the rogue nin. Therefore you stay separated.”

“But all we did was reverse the jutsu he did! It wasn’t that hard, and it was over in a second!”

He raised an eyebrow. “You created an isolated explosion of chakra which then swept through the village for a couple of hours, during which time, by the way, Kiba and I were locked out by your circle, and had no idea what was going on because you failed to inform Akamaru of your intentions.”

Well when you put it that way…I was kind of touched by his concern. Gave me the warm fuzzies, it did.

“Heh…oops. Wait, two hours? It felt like a few minutes!” No wonder I was so tired. But I had patients to tend to. I began to get to my feet.

“What do you think you’re doing?” He sounded awfully calm. That was a dangerous tone of voice.

“Going to check on my patients. You can come if you want.” I took a step forward and tripped, Kakashi caught me and lowered me back onto my sleeping bag.

“That was your foot wasn’t it?” I glared at him.

“If you couldn’t even avoid something as obvious as that you aren’t fit to get out of bed. I can see how low your chakra levels are. Sleep.”

I muttered under my breath. I was going to fake being asleep until he left—he couldn’t stay next to me forever. I closed my eyes and turned on my side, then I felt a small surge of chakra and felt Kakashi’s finger on my forehead. That son of a bitch! That was the last thought I had time for before I fell into a jutsu-induced sleep.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Who is the rogue nin? Will he attack the village? Will someone get hurt? What’s going on over in Kiba and Hinata’s section of the town? Will Sakura ever get past Kakashi and get out of bed? Find out in Chapter 7!

AN: Hm…I’m noticing Sakura sleeps a lot in this story, and I end a lot of chapters like that. Well, expect that to change (the unnecessary sleeping).

I used the symbols according to animal symbolism in various cultures. I used the following webpages (delete spaces and parantheses):

www (dot) writedesignonline (dot) com (/) assignments (/) masks (/) animalsymbolism (dot) htm

www (dot) princetonol (dot) com (/) groups(/) iad (/) lessons (/) middle (/) animals2 (dot) htm


I used ram, because people under the sign of the sheep/ram in the Chinese zodiac are supposed to be good healers. The other signs were chosen essentially for wisdom, protection, strength, good fortune, power, and for succeeding in difficult times.

As always, REVIEW, REVIEW, REVIEW!!