The state of medicine in the shinobi world was rather lacking, as a whole. Medic-nin needed exacting chakra control and years of study to be effective, which usually meant weakening their overall combat ability and keeping all that valuable time training them from being lost on the front line. Plus there was more glory - and money - to be found in taking on dangerous missions than in working at the hospital, it was no surprise the number of iryojutsu-users (the true medic-nin, not just ones who could patch a wound or prescribe a medicine) in the Medical Corps was smaller than even Ibiki's Torture & Interrogation squad.

And this was in Konoha, who had the largest contingent of medic-nin of any ninja village.

In addition, there hadn't been a true genius - one of those brilliant souls who revolutionized the field - since Tsunade gave up the practice almost fifteen years ago. Kabuto could have been that genius that revitalized the discipline and led the next generation of medic-nin, but something had gone wrong with him, had twisted him to use his medical genius for Orochimaru's horrific ends.

Well-adjusted people didn't join up with Orochimaru. Of course, some might say that well-adjusted people didn't become ninja at all…

Sakura only had three years of training and two of practice under her belt, but she was ahead of the curve in that those years had been under that same genius and her senior student, first as an apprentice and then as a colleague. And there had been some advancements made in those five years. War and necessity did as much to advance medical theory as it did combat jutsu, after all.

Even when their country was at peace - as much as ninja villages ever were - the short supply of qualified medic-nin meant that only ninja combat injuries and the most immediately fatal illnesses typically went to them. Civilian doctors and surgeons had to handle the rest, and some things were just beyond their ability.

Which led her to the Morikami, a merchant family which made Konoha their home. Their affiliations were known, making them useless as spies, which paradoxically made them safer. There were few who would attack a hidden village-backed merchant caravan and risk reprisal or even all-out war. Konoha, for its part, got reliable but low-risk C-rank jobs for their genin to cut their teeth on, a cut of the proceeds in taxes, and a wider selection in foreign goods than they might otherwise acquire.

The Morikami's first son and heir had been sickly since he was young, and no doctor they'd taken him to could help. Three years and change in the future, and the merchant group had been at their wits end. The business could go on without Haruka, but like most of the old families, the Morikami desperately wanted to keep the main family's line unbroken.

Tsunade had cured him in one afternoon, in between dealing with a cracked skull from a genin training accident involving a Doton jutsu gone wrong and brain damage from a Raiton electrocution in one of their chuunin.

"Hello," she'd told the pair acting as doormen. "I'd like to see the young master of the house?"

She was informed, quite rudely, that the young master was ill and abed, and no little girl could simply waltz in and see him.

"Beat it, little girl," the younger of the gate guards snorted. His partner, a slightly older man with an eye patch, didn't verbally agree, but also didn't let her in either.

With some difficulty, Sakura controlled her instinctive response, which would be to punch him in the mouth. Breaking their door guards wouldn't endear her to the Morikami.

She subsided for the moment and glanced beyond her current roadblock. The Morikami compound wasn't quite at the level of the grandiose Hyuuga or Uchiha compounds, but it wasn't small, either. And it shared a general aesthetic with those other traditional clan homes. If the Uchiha, Hyuuga and Senju were ninja nobility, then the Morikami factors were Fire Country's answer to the Wind merchant cartels or Wave's shipping magnate Gato. They shipped merchandise in from all over Fire Country and beyond, and were the backbone of dozens of smaller importer merchants.

The pair held their spears with familiarity; genin on long-term retainer to the family, probably, although they could be mercenaries or family-trained guards that had never seen the inside of the Academy. Unless they were more than they seemed, she could take them.

"Look," she said with strained patience, "I'm a medic, and a good one. I'm here to help. Let me through to talk to your master, and he can refuse me or hire me. This isn't your call to make."

She'd been talking to these idiots for the last quarter of an hour. When crafting her master plan, she'd forgotten that she didn't have Tsunade's political clout and genius reputation on her side this time.

"Morikami-sama doesn't want to be bothered, girl. He's had enough of you so-called medics treating the family's problem like an interesting puzzle. Leave, or we make you," the left one said threateningly. He pointed the business end of his spear at her.

Her patience was at an end, and her resolve not to make a scene was weakening. Her hand snapped out and grabbed the shaft of his spear near the head. A touch of Strong Arm and she ripped it out of his hand with all the effort it would take for her to disarm a particularly tenacious baby.

His fault for assuming 'medic' meant 'no fighting ability', and for letting a ninja of any class get that close to him in the first place.

She snapped it like a twig, then clubbed him in the head with the blunt end while he was still gaping and beginning to realize that he was in trouble. The guard face-planted ungracefully and Sakura stepped over him unhurriedly to face the second guard, who had gone from slightly wary to battle-ready.

"Now, unless you're significantly more skilled than your friend, can you just let me in?" she asked.

"Not that much more," One-Eye agreed. Nonetheless, he settled into a solid stance, knees bent and ready to lunge or dodge, off-hand on the shaft to guide the thrust when it came. "But would you allow an unknown to enter unchallenged? I have my duty."

"Look, I just want to-" she sighed. "Yeah, okay. You're not going to accept that."

She bowed her head slightly, part respect and part apology.

His charge was swift and deadly, but rigid. Predictable. She formed three bunshin and used his hesitation on which to strike to ghost aside, down and to the right, to his blind side.

He realized it - she assumed people aiming at his blind side had become commonplace for him - but he couldn't adjust quickly enough. If his weapon had been a yari, a supple bamboo spear, she might have been in trouble. But his spear was hardwood; more damaging, better able to parry a slashing attack and easier to handle, but less flexible and versatile.

As he flew past she spun and slammed her shin into the back of his leading leg, breaking his stance and sending him tumbling. He tucked into a roll but she stayed on him and hit him with a downward chop, pulling enough power that she wouldn't accidentally break his collarbone or collapse his trachea if her strike was off. But no, she'd hit correctly, and One Eye lolled on the ground, halfway to unconsciousness.

A touch to the forehead and a simple anesthesia jutsu, and he dropped the rest of the way into sleep. It was surprising how many medical techniques had applicability in battle, if one was willing to think outside the box.

Sakura thoughtfully dragged the insensate pair inside and dropped them in the bushes near the doorstep before she went inside, shutting the large wooden gate behind her.

A quick, polite knock on the door and she was soon speaking to the majordomo of the Morikami household.

The head butler, Ito, was simultaneously both an easier and harder obstruction to handle than the gate guards. Civilians might know intellectually that ninja graduated the Academy at 12 or even younger in exceptional cases, but emotionally they still saw her as a pretty little girl. Ito wasn't thinking of her as a potential threat.

Which was why this was also harder than it had to be, too. Because the man was treating her as a child trying to get an appointment with one of the most economically powerful men in the hidden village.

Eventually, she found the right lever to use when she pointed out that Ito merely needed to inform the Morikami patriarch that a medic-nin was here to see him about his son. Morikami Dorgen would know enough of the way ninja genius could express itself as young as six to not take her age too seriously.

And if not, well, she could mention the unconscious gate guards left in the azaleas.

Ito left her alone with her thoughts, but soon enough she was ushered in to see the merchant king himself.

Not having much experience with which to judge powerful leaders, she could only compare the Morikami's office to the Hokage's tower. The Hokage's sanctum was spartan except for wall scrolls containing beautifully simple examples of the calligrapher's art, as well as the huge window that overlooked all of Konoha and the Hokage Monument beyond. Sarutobi kept things uncluttered save for the massive desk at which the Hokage sat, covered with papers, the occasional knick-knack and, taking pride of place, an orb of crystal on a purple cushion. It was an open secret that Sarutobi could make the crystal ball show scenes from anywhere within Fire Country, perhaps of the entire world. No one seemed to know how it worked, though there were no end to theories.

If she had ever gotten access to the Forbidden Scroll of Sealing - the scroll purported to contain dozens of the Hokage's most esoteric arts - that would probably be the one she went for first, just to satisfy her curiosity.

Morikami's demesne, on the other hand, was swamped by a cheerful kind of clutter from foreign lands. The walls all but hidden behind colorfully woven wall hangings, entire taxidermied animals, a sword with a blade of what looked like blue crystal in a glass case complete with little plaque. An ancestral blade, perhaps, or something he had imported from some distant place. There was a shelf of books - not the more usual scrolls, but books - and several tiny, intricately crafted miniature ships. Likely replicas of ships he actually owned.

Ensconced amid the chaos was Morikami Dorgen himself. A very large man with a frame of muscle finally going to fat in his advancing years, and a face covered in thick, lustrous brown facial hair like the pelt of a bear. He looked eminently comfortable in his plain cotton kimono, though rings set with large gems sparkled on every finger.

"Ito told me what you've come for," the merchant king said, gazing down at her impassively. Even seated, he was taller than her 13 year old frame.

She began her pitch.

"You're a businessman at heart, Morikami-san. Well, I have a business proposition for you. Give me ten thousand ryo, and I will heal your son of his illness. After that, get in touch with me at any time I'm not on duty and I'll take care of any medical problem - discretely - for only one thousand. That's cheaper than any good medic-nin would charge. Chakra-healing isn't cheap, as I'm sure you know from consulting specialists for your son, but I need the money."

Better for him to think her controlled by her greed, she'd decided. Greed was easy to understand as a lever, and dealing with greedy people was second nature to a merchant lord.

"And why should I trust the word of a child when she says she can cure my boy?" the gruff, bearded Morikami patriarch replied.

"It's an understandable concern," Sakura agreed. The man had had his heart broken too many times in the past by overconfident young medics. "All I can say is that you may test my skill in any way you can think of. It's the real thing."

Morikami leaned back, stroking the ridiculous flowing waxed moustache that competed with his beard to see which feature would dominate his face more. He finally said, "I have a man in my employ with an old wound. The doctor who saw him after the injury said that it was beyond his skill."

"Is it One Eye?" she asked thoughtfully, meaning the eye patch-wearing gate guard. "How old is the injury? The older it is, the more difficult it becomes to heal…"

The longer the body had been a certain way, the harder it was to trick it into believing it had ever been different. It was one of the reasons an illness that occurred in their early years like the Morikami heir's was almost impossible to fix.

He nodded shortly. "Jiro," he stressed, "was injured a year ago in a skirmish with a Wind country assassin. Without his eye, he had to be relegated to gate guard duty."

Sakura wondered how good Jiro had been at his peak. Kakashi had always compensated fine for his covered eye. Whatever his original skill level, the one-eyed guard was a good choice for Morikami; worthwhile to fix if she was telling the truth, but not critical like letting an unknown medic at his son and heir.

Then she considered the injury. Eyes were tricky, but if the damage was only to the outer portion or to the photoreceptors, it could be done. If it was to the optic nerve itself, or if she had to regrow the entire eyeball, she might have the skill but not the chakra reserves to see it through.

"Do-able," she said with more confidence than she felt. "I might need more than one session with him if it's really bad, though."

"Then we have an accord," Morikami said simply.

Jiro picked that fortuitous moment to rush inside, spear at the ready, apparently recovered from his brief ass-kicking.

"Go with the girl, Jiro," the Morikami head commanded. "She's going to help you."

"What are you doing now?" Jiro asked. Either he was genuinely curious or he was worried the crazy little girl was going to poison him, she figured.

"The first step is to get a better idea of what's wrong," she explained. Her palm, wreathed in green chakra, was hovering just over his damaged eye. He had removed the patch, revealing a milky white orb that looked somewhat shriveled in the socket. Around it was the dark, rough, oddly shiny skin that came of a burn scar.

The wound was obvious, but the obvious was not necessarily all there was. With her chakra in him, she could get a sense of his insides, and what was wrong. She let her chakra seep into him and diffuse, letting it speak to her. Here was an old injury, not quite properly healed. Here, a break in the bone that had healed stronger than it had been. Here and there, the myriad of imperfections that everyone had, changes to the basic template that all humans possessed. And then there was the eye.

"Hm," she mused aloud, interpreting what her diagnostic jutsu was telling her. "Heat damage, but very little scarring. Either a too-near miss with a Katon, or this guy was low on power but incredibly precise."

"The former," he admitted grudgingly. "The burns healed, mostly, but the eye never did."

She shrugged, pleased. "Simple enough to fix, really. Be glad it wasn't a Raiton, those have all kinds of unpleasant side-effects so close to the brain. I am curious why you didn't get it healed at the hospital."

"The medic said it couldn't be done," he said quietly. The well-muscled young man drew inwards, making himself seem smaller.

She frowned. "What?"

That was right, Morikami had said he'd gone to a doctor. She'd thought she might have misheard. Jiro wasn't looking at her, but at his hands sitting still in his lap.

She began to scowl. "Eye injuries are tricky, but yours looks worse than it is. The cornea took most of the damage. Any medic-nin worth the name should have been able to fix it. Which means we either have an incompetent doctor on our staff, or a lying one. Who treated you?"

Still he remained silent. The man in his mid twenties looked like a repentant child. She couldn't figure it out. Just about anyone she knew would be spitting mad if something like that had happened to them. Perhaps he was like Hinata, quick to find fault with himself but slow to blame others?

Or maybe he was ashamed of the injury itself. Men and even some foolish kunoichi did that all too often, seeing it as an affront to their skills or toughness. It mostly just got in the healer's way and made them intractable and annoying or cause them to escape altogether before the injury was properly healed. She'd heard some horror stories from the older medics; Kakashi had been infamous for it during his ANBU years.

Still, that wouldn't fly. Since he was sitting down, her short height was tall enough to look him firmly in the eye. "Jiro. I need a name. I don't want to threaten you, but - well, I guess this is me threatening you. Don't piss off your healer. If we can put you back together, we can take you apart."

Jiro shuddered. Perhaps her bedside manner could use some work, but really, if that was the only bad habit she'd picked up from her hard-drinking, gambling addict sensei, she'd count her blessings.

"Yoshi," he finally said. "I think that was his name. I wasn't in great shape at the time, as you can imagine." He smiled wanly at his little joke.

"Thanks, Jiro. I'll see what I can do about him." She didn't recognize the name but then, four years before she had started practicing medicine, anything could have happened to the man. She cared about her people. Even if all she could do was kick it up the chain of command to Sarutobi, she'd do that.

She nodded at what the chakra probe told her, getting back to the real issue. "Okay, back to the wound itself. I'd wager you've had problems controlling your chakra ever since, right?"

One Eye said nothing, but the look on his face told her she was right. "Chakra-formed Katon fire, so close to clusters of nerve and chakra coil, not to mention being directly over one of your chakra Gates? Not too surprising. It happens sometimes to ninja who take damage to their core, too, where the other Gates and major chakra coils are."

She peered at the outer scar, let her fingers trace the hard, shiny flesh. "Yes. Tricky, but not impossible," she pronounced. "You probably won't get everything you lost back, but you'll be surprised, I think. Try not to blink for a minute."

She put her hands on him and called up her chakra, converting it into green healing chakra with a thought. What was needed here was one step above the usual battlefield medic wound-sealer, called Mystical Palm. That just stimulated cells and sped up natural healing, and an injury like this would never naturally heal. She needed to slice away the damaged part of the cornea, then literally regenerate the damaged portions, re-creating the damaged rod and cone photoreceptors and re-healing the cornea again.

True regeneration took more energy than repairing cuts or breaks, but fixing such minute damage was more a test of fine detail work and chakra control than stamina. Fortunately for her.

"Well, that's that," she said finally. The 'operation', such as it was, had taken under three minutes. She was somewhat depleted, but not to a dangerous level, and feeling pretty upbeat.

She lectured, "It might be sensitive for a little while. If you start losing your depth perception or if you start getting a burning sensation, come find me. And let Morikami-sama know you're fixed, okay? I'm going to go track down Haruka-san." She left Jiro blinking rapidly, trying to get used to depth perception.

She was soon turned around in the winding coils of the old house, and eventually needed to find and enlist the help of Haruka's personal maid, whose name she thought was Sella, to track him down.

The Morikami heir was situated towards the back of the house, in an airy room with a good view of the mountain. It seemed she'd caught him on a good day, since he was sitting up and enjoying the view. His cotton yukata was simple in design but well-made, comfortable and a pale green, and it did nothing to detract from his beauty.

Morikami Haruka was as eerily handsome at 18 as he would be at 20. Pale as a ghost - even his hair was a washed-out shade of ash-blond - with aristocratic features, long-fingered hands and cheekbones that could cut glass.

He reminded her of Neji, a bit. But Neji carried an assuredness formed on a bedrock of strength. Haruka was of a frailer sort, like he could blow away in a puff of milkweed fluff on a strong breeze.

He was as different from his father in looks and temperment as Naruto was to Sasuke, but he had a penetrating intelligence that would serve him well once his father retired.

"A medic? Forgive me, I don't know your name," he said, polite but slightly resigned. "Is it time for another healing session already?"

"Haruno Sakura. And not quite, Haruka-san," she introduced herself, still admiring his pallid beauty. Her heart was spoken for, more or less, but she could still look, right? "Now let's get you out of that top."

There was a brief sound of protest from the door, drawing their attention to the third person in the room. "You don't need to worry about his chastity with me, Sella-san," Sakura assured her. "I'm only thirteen, after all."

Well, she might have had the occasional thought - he was really pretty - but that was all.

"I - would never - nonsense speaking -" the servant girl sputtered, drawing in on herself like a startled turtle. Extremely cute, a bit like a nineteen-year-old civilian Hinata. She could see why Haruka liked her.

Indeed, Haruka reassured her with a smile in his voice, "Don't worry, Sella. I'm sure I'm perfectly safe."

Forcing herself back to the matter at hand, she saw that Haruka had shrugged out of the top half of his yukata while they were occupied. She wondered how Sella actually managed to act as nurse to the invalid heir when she was getting incredibly red just from seeing that smooth expanse of chest. Haruka was looking a little red about the face, too.

Sella, she remembered, had the hugest crush on her master, and she rather thought the man returned it. Everyone could see it - except Sella and Haruka themselves, and possibly his father.

But never mind. Sakura placed her hands on his chest and formed her chakra-probe again. Yes, she thought, same as last time. She could feel, on the very edge of her chakra-sense, that tiny sense of Other, of not-Haruka.

She patted his thin chest reassuringly. "All right, you can put your shirt back on, Haruka-san. I'll need to talk to your father, then get the details and prep-work taken care of."

A few minutes later - and only one request for directions - and she was standing in front of Dorgen again.

She winced. It was unprofessional and a little embarrassing, but had to be done. "Morikami-sama, I need you to front me some of my wage to buy some supplies. A genin's salary just isn't high enough to afford everything I'll need."

The hulking Morikami patriarch thought it over. "How much do you need?"

She did a few quick calculations. Chakra ink, soldier pills, a few odds and ends… "700 to be on the safe side, I'm not sure what the local -" by which she meant the current time's "- prices are."

He gestured to Ito, who she had noticed had entered the room but had dismissed as unimportant. "700 ryou for the girl, Ito."

The butler nodded assent. Dorgen shifted his great bulk back to her. "When will you perform the operation or whatever you need to do?"

She blinked in surprise at the easy capitulation. Merchants were usually slower to relinquish coin than that. "Tomorrow should be fine. Afternoon-ish, probably. Can I ask -"

Dorgen shrugged. "Let's say you impressed me."

She smiled, a little bitterly, but there was pride there, too. "I'm going to be the next Tsunade," she said simply. She and Tsunade had quite a bit in common, despite the gulf that separated their social status, and not just in skills; they had failed everyone they had ever loved at one time or another, and others had had to pay the price for it.

But now wasn't the time to dwell on failures that hadn't actually happened yet.

"Perhaps you will be," Dorgen's eyes were calculating under his bushy eyebrows. "Perhaps so, indeed."

Sakura got her money, and got shown the door.

A few quick errands to the right suppliers were in order. Five years hadn't softened Inuzuka Akio's caustic tongue, she discovered; if anything, time would mellow the fearsome seller of soldier pills! Of course, if she'd had to deal with hot-blooded young ninja popping her products like candy and then ending up in the hospital when the false euphoria made them take stupid risks, she'd probably be snappy, too. She couldn't remember how often Kiba wound up in the hospital for over-doing it while flying high on soldier pills.

And she also didn't have her medic-nin certification, proving she had been taught how to handle such things, to smooth the way. She did talk him around eventually by promising she wouldn't hold him reliable for any harm she did to herself, though she had to use more of her seed money than she'd wanted.

A few more quick stops on Shokunin street, though none proved very troublesome, and she was done.

Early to bed, and then running through the usual D-ranks. Weeding the garden was simple with Naruto's shadow clones, but babysitting was still a pain no matter how many extra pairs of eyes they had watching the brats. And they kept expecting her to have some mystical 'girl' knowledge about how to look after children. Even Sasuke, who was normally good at everything he turned his hand to, didn't have any idea about child-rearing, and even less interest in it. She'd had to threaten to show the kids what domestic violence looked like to keep them from running off to train and sticking her with the babysitting duties.

But finally the errands - or 'missions' - were done with and she could get back to her side job. The gate guards let her in without a tussle this time, and One Eye wasn't among them. She wondered if he was back on more important guard duties already. She found Haruka - after a little trial and error, she wondered briefly if they'd made their compound like this on purpose - only to find that she had an audience.

"Morikami-sama! And Sella," Sakura realized, the maid following her in, though she stayed near the door. She smiled a little. "Here to make sure I earn my paycheck?"

Not really wise, perhaps, but she was in a good mood.

"We will watch, and nothing more," Morikami Dorgen assured her.

Haruka shrugged at her, indicating the futility of arguing with his father.

Sakura nodded and pulled out a little reinforced bottle no bigger than her thumb. Holding it up to her eye, she saw the black ink give its peculiar shine. Chakra ink could shimmer with green or violet hues or gleam like arterial-red blood in the right light, depending on the recipe and techniques used in its creation. This one was gilded with a hint of gold. Quite pretty.

Some medics preferred inkstone, but personally she thought not having to grind her own ink every time she needed to use it outweighed the possibility of breakage in battle.

She also produced a thin brush and then got down to work. Two dozen seals soon formed a ring around Haruka's futon. First was 'poison'. Here was 'breath', there was its absence, and on the other side was 'stability of the whole', 'like gathering like' and 'the annihilation of invaders'. Between the two was the two-part seal that meant, 'the formation of order through chaos.'

"The trick," she told Haruka and the watching Dorgen and Sella, thinking perhaps they would stop hovering if they knew more, "is that what's making Haruka-san sick is something like a parasite. Regular healing jutsu treat the symptoms well enough; the weakness, the damage to the lungs. But not the underlying problem. No amount of Mystical Palm or even four-man sealing Resuscitation would fix him. Because no matter how much aid you give it, Haruka's system will never repel this parasite; it's not particularly deadly for an illness, but it's incredibly hearty."

She sat back and studied her drawn seals. She deemed them acceptable. "What you actually need is what we call the Six Point Extermination Seal. It's based on an old Kumo torture ninjutsu; basically, I'm going to burn the infection out, ideally without causing much damage to the rest of him."

"You mean all those tens of thousands of ryou paid for medic-nins were worthless?" Dorgen asked, displeased.

"Not really," she disagreed. "They kept your son alive, after all. 'Not particularly deadly' is still deadly; a fair number of people with this illness die within five years. Haruka-san has had it for, what, ten?"

She placed her hands in the center of the seal and dozens of small seals snaked their way outward, settling around the primary nodes. They radiated outward from Haruka like the spokes of a wheel with him at the center. There were a few areas she had equaled her Sannin sensei in, but the sealing arts were not one of them. Luckily, she could cheat like a Yamanaka on a written exam by using pre-set chakra constructs. They would serve well enough, but without that broader sealing knowledge she'd never be able to create her own or tailor the seals to individual cases like Tsunade could.

Something to think about if she ever had a few years free to devote to study.

"Okay, I'm ready to begin. This is going to hurt a fair bit even with my control as good as it is, Haruka-san. And I'll need to finish today or it'll spread again; in fifteen hours I'll have twice as much work to do. Oh, and this is going to be a little unpleasant to watch," she warned the two on-lookers.

"I understand that," Dorgen said stolidly. Sella gulped but nodded.

"Then… here we go." She placed her hands on one of the inked seals, and the seals lit up as she pumped chakra into the array. The chakra-formed seals glimmered like light thinly carved into the floor itself while the larger ones fairly blazed with green light.

Haruka was as familiar with pain as a ninja, and didn't want to distress the watchers. Only soft grunts and hisses escaped him as Sakura essentially set his nerve endings on fire as she burned away the bacteria infesting him. Slowly and methodically she worked her way from the lungs - containing the greatest concentration of invaders - outwards.

After a dozen minutes of this, she sat back and let them both take a break. She wiped her brow. This was a sustained B-rank ninjutsu as ninja classified such things. Chuunin-grade. Her precision let her cheat the chakra requirements, but she was still feeling pretty depleted. So she dug out a little cloth packet and popped a tiny spherical pill.

"Mmm," she hummed, enjoying the rush. Briefly her skin became supremely sensitive as the pill dispersed within her. She rode the cresting wave of euphoric energy from the soldier pill, doing her best to clamp down on her eagerness.

"Brace yourself, Haruka-san. The worst is over, I think, but I'll need to sweep you to make sure it can't come back."

She got back to work, even Haruka's quiet whimpers sounding magnified in her ears. Here and there she hunted through his body, seeking any pockets of resistance. Every now and again the burning would return as tiny holdouts were found and eradicated.

Finally, she pronounced him clean. They stared at each other, both breathing heavily. "Fluid in the lungs gone?" she asked. He breathed thoughtfully for a moment, before allowing as it was.

"Deep breath," she tested. He did as requested, no coughing in evidence.

"Well, uh, congratulations," she finally said. "I think we're done here. If the fatigue and pain comes back, let me know, but I think you're safe from a relapse."

Then she had to all but dive aside as Sella almost ran her over to check on the young master of the household. Sakura grinned. "He should be up to any strenuous exercise you can think of," she hinted to the maid.

Then the massive form of Dorgen joined the maid, guarded hope on his face.

Ito was pressing a heavy purse into her hand, probably more money than she'd ever had at any one time. "Eleven thousand," he told her.

She blinked. "That's -"

"Worth it," the butler said simply. "Morikami-sama has a great deal of money, but only one son. Of course, if you're cure doesn't work, we shall be having words."

"Ahahah," Sakura laughed a bit nervously. The aging butler could still apparently pull off 'intimidating' when he felt like it. Not that he had anything on Orochimaru's version - but then, she doubted any intimidation attempt would stick in her mind like the first time a ninja's mere presence was almost overwhelming enough to force her to commit suicide to escape him.

Still, walking home afterwards with her moneypouch a heavy weight at her side, her steps were light. A good job all around; a life saved, and well-rewarded for her efforts.

Her good mood lasted all of twenty minutes, until she ran into a red-faced, drunk, belligerent bridge worker from Wave Country.

Oh, hell.

A/N: Some reviewers were having trouble imagining the new coat. For the mountain-stripe pattern, try looking up the male samurai in Disgaea 3, or the Shinsengumi in Rurouni Kenshin.