Suna's Ninja (Gaara Love Story)

18: Potion or Poison

Author's POV

"Kakashi Sensei! What's wrong?" Naruto asked, ditching Gaara at the moment.

"Huh?" Guy asked, confused. Kakashi glanced at his student before coughing up a little more blood.

"It's supposed to be like that," Akimi reassured them. "Just continue to cough. It will go away soon. Ah!That's right! Since this is a special type of medicine, you'll need this." She reached into her bag and produced a small purple plant. Yamu watched Kakashi eating the bitter plant.

The Ghaw only speeds up the process, Yamu thought. It's no use. He'll have blood trickling down his nose and ears and soon, his body will be a disgusting corpse.

However, slowly, Kakashi stopped coughing blood, and his minor injured all over him started to heal. "I feel better now, thanks, Aki." He switched his bloody mask for a clean one, while Yamu stared at the scene in shock.

"No problem, Kakashi Sensei," the girl replied.

"What did you do?" Yamu scowled, turning to Akimi. "You saved him, but how?" Akimi glanced at him, her own eyes darkening.

"Did you really think that I would be naive to believe you wanted me to succeed? From the start, you were always watching me, trying to get rid of me. For what purpose, I don't know," Akimi sneered, her eyes narrowing sharply. "When I took the medicine bottle out, I realized you had done something to my real medicine, because the color was slightly blue. I noticed that neither liquid had mixed in, so you must have added more poison to the solution."

"That's right," Yamu admitted. "You're right. I actually switched out your medicine with my poison."

"In addition, you were close enough to see the extra color in the bottle, knowing there was excess poison inside. However, you didn't stop me, and I suspected you wanted me to fail."

Yamu stayed silent, their eyes trained on each other, daring the opponent to break. Pearl, however, brought her fist right on Yamu harshly.

"Alright, enough. Did she pass?" Pearl asked the boy.

"No, wait. How did you heal him?" Yamu asked, jabbing a finger in Kakashi' direction. "If you knew that what you served was poison, why did you give him Ghaw?"

Ghaw: a herb used to loosen up the flow of blood and slightly speed up the rest of the body systems, causing medicine (or poison) to spread and activate faster in the victim's body.

"What? I didn't use Ghaw directly," Akimi retaliated, showing the same purple herb. "This is Cyli. As you may know already, this plant enhances the kidneys, which in return, help filter out the poison from the body."

"But purple Cyli doesn't work that fast, nor does it heal all the minor cuts," Yamu protested.

"Right. However, since your potion is a mixture of medicine and poison on a 1:5 ratio, based on the slightly blue color, you have to remember that there's still a little medicine in it. I only needed that to help heal the major wounds. Also, this" she held up the purple herb. "Is not just any purple Cyli. It's one of my own specially grown Cylis."

"You used Cyli and Ghaw to make a hybrid plant," Yamu continued. "Am I right? However, that takes a lot of skill, since too much of Ghaw would reverse the effect of the poison. At most, your ratio of Cyli to Ghaw would be 1:10."

"I actually did 2:9," Akimi said. "Of Cyli to Ghaw respectively." Yamu stared, skull-shocked at her.

Hey, Akimi! What are you doing, being so far away?" Temari scolded, grabbing her shoulder. "Go kiss him or something." She shoved the fan girls away and pushed Akimi forward in front of Gaara who was now being supported by Naruto.

Slightly chilled hands grabbed her hand and slowly pulled her closer. "Akimi."

"Gaara." She leaned forward, her face centimeters away from his, then hesitated, as if asking permission. He gave a slight nod, and she kissed his 'love' tattoo. "Welcome home."