Sakura saw Taro in Research for the first time three days later, as she was bent over her desk writing a response letter to Inoichi (they were discussing morality now, and Arden had had a lot of information about that) and awaiting a message from the production lab about her set of batteries to be delivered by assistant.
Taro was that assistant.
"Deputy Head Uchiha?" Sakura said, skimming the letter quickly to make sure everything was ready for testing.
"Yes?"
"I will be testing my batteries today. Because… well, I have several dozen to test, and with three models each the numbers quickly become unwieldy. Could I borrow an assistant to help get through it?"
The Deputy Head's eyes flickered between her and Taro. "Do you believe a battery will be ready soon? That is, fit for use?" He asked. He was… not so much unimpressed, and more outright leery of her designs, and of those additions made by other researchers, which tended to mimic her groundwork. Her argument (made truthfully) that finding a way to make a battery work without chakra or sealing, or without both (as about half of her designs were) would allow for them to be more easily mass produced, and for false fuuinjutsu—both activated and inert—to be more easily added to the models to further confuse any enemy that comes close enough or even outright steals a battery.
"Maybe? I am relatively sure several will work today, but how tenable they'll be depends on the design. Some are one-time use only, others can't be moved after they've finished being made, and others require expensive materials to function." (and hadn't that been a thrill, when she'd realized they'd let her test with those materials?) "Most of my energy storage models only have one or two of those downsides, however, and ideally it will be at least one of those that works today."
After a pause Deputy Head Uchiha nodded grudgingly. "Borrow him for the rest of the day; if testing runs into tomorrow you can use another assistant."
"Thank you." Sakura stood. Taro, eyes wary, followed.
The next half hour was spent bringing all the batteries to a training ground which was literally just a dirt pit—no point putting anything or anyone in danger.
Hard work, given the weights of many of the prototypes and the fragility of even more of the designs, but work that could mostly be completed as two individuals moving toward the same goal. Having Taro made the work go faster, but they weren't really working together.
And then came testing.
The thing was, her devices were… complicated.
Very, very complicated.
And while having an assistant to work directly with was absolutely—mostly to take notes as Sakura worked directly with her designs made real, and to bring the next battery to the center of the pit after each test—it just took time.
Lots of time.
Every time a battery failed she'd try it twice more, usually slightly modifying her actions or the battery itself, to make sure that it was actually a dud.
And the entire time she had to keep up a running commentary of what she thought went wrong, what to change in the future, and what went right.
Taro, too, had to interrupt frequently, ask clarifying questions, keep track of all the past notes so whenever Sakura thought of a new question for a previous design it could be put in the right place…
An hour (and nearly ten designs) in and they were already exhausted.
This particular model, however, she felt relatively good about… except that it was one of the ones that couldn't be moved once put together, so she was having to build it in the pit in real time while Taro shuffled uncomfortably a few steps away.
"How's… how's the rest of chinmoku?" The sixteen year old said at last, just to break the silence.
Sakura considered. Shin was still writing almost solely in poetry (not including the very long rant of a letter when he'd found out she'd been hospitalized) but the poetry was far more upbeat, and longer, than it used to be, so there was that. It maintained its philosophic edge, though, and the latest had been a series of treatises of the power of rain which she'd only just begun to understand, but then that was Shin for you. Juro was still a medic at the very same prison that he'd been allotted to when they started, except that he was becoming increasingly exhausted—Sakura'd taken it upon herself to pen a letter in support of his return home, arguing that he was showing many of the same signs she had been—but he was still upright, still working diligently months after Sakura's fall.
"Better than me." She said at last. "Zatsuon?"
Taro snorted. "Not Zatsuon anymore, are we?" Then he sighed. "Arata's good, loves his new job. And Inohina's being a consummate Yamanaka out in the field, so she's doing well too. I'm the only real failure."
Sakura rolled her eyes. She'd feel more sympathy except he'd so clearly just said that to try to get said sympathy that he might as well have just said "pity me!"
It would have been more honest, at least.
"Hand me that wrench?" She said instead.
"This one?"
"Yes."
"Here."
After a pause (tightening everything took effort) it was time to test this battery.
It was a dud.
Taro ran up the pit and came down with the materials to make battery #11, design #4.
"Well, you've still got time." Sakura said.
Taro, after a second to remember where they'd left off, gave a sort of hollow laugh. This one was more genuine, at least. "Not really. I… my family is one of the ones with the deer summons, and sixteen is the last year you can be considered for it."
Sakura… hadn't known that.
She did know about the Nara summons, though.
The thing about summons was that they tended to vary, a lot, in power.
And the variation rarely had anything to do with what the summons was technically capable of.
There was a shinobi family in the Land of Storms, for instance, which could summon lions. Only, the lions were purportedly only interested in acting as trackers; they apparently had more than enough fighting in their own realm and had no interest to encounter more in another.
The Nara deer were similarly limited in shinobi use.
In fact, if Sakura remembered correctly the only distinctly ninja use was to act as guards for a 'homeland', and the non-summons deer did that well enough already. The summons, then, mostly acted as babysitters and shogi players, helping instruct the mind but doing little for the body.
So being able to summon a deer was not so much a draw due to the physical power of the deer as the social power that having a summons at all held.
Sakura personally knew the two summons of the Yamanaka—the cranes, who could hypnotize, and the dragonflies, who could track exceptionally well—were a matter of great honor, and each summoner could expect to be several seats higher in the spoken and unspoken hierarchy of the clan than they would be otherwise, particularly as summons tended to be very picky indeed about who they'd agree to listen to.
"And there's no chance?"
Taro shrugged. "It's… not likely. My little brothers, who sleep all day and haven't shown the least bit of interest in trying, are probably going to get it, but not me."
"Why?"
"They—well, they've never done anything stupid, have they?"
"How old are they?"
"Four."
"So they haven't done anything stupid yet. If I remember correctly, your real issues started after academy graduation."
"Well yeah, but that's only because I was saddled with a terrible team. They won't be."
"You think you were intentionally saddled with a terrible team? Wrench."
The discussion paused as they again watched a model do nothing and made notes on why. Then Taro fetched battery #12, design #4.
"I don't… I don't know, honestly. Most other Ino-Shika-Cho teams seem to work. Yours did, well enough that you got to go to the Capital. Repeatedly."
"And you think you were blameless in the failure of your team?"
"…not blameless, but it's not my fault none of us could get along."
Sakura hesitated, trying to fit a particularly ungainly piece into the right spot. "Did you try?"
"Did I try?"
"I didn't, not at first. I'll be honest, for the first couple… years, really, of me, Shin, and Juro being put together we basically just slept and did our own things around each other, instead of with each other. It wasn't until the academy that we all—and especially me—started making a really concerted effort to learn more about the other."
"I know Inohina and Arata. That wasn't the problem."
"We also—and this is true of all my friendships, by the way, not just chinmoku—gave each other time to be ourselves, and spent time trying the other's hobbies too."
"So you're saying the problem is that I didn't pay enough attention to flower arranging?" Taro said.
"I—wrench?"
"Wrench."
The battery made, the two prepared to take notes on a dud again.
And then the battery worked.
"Is—"
"Yes."
"Wow."
"Yes!"
"I mean, this will change things."
"YES!" Sakura felt a bit like a mad scientist. She decided she liked the feeling.
Given that this was one of the ones that couldn't be moved, Taro was sent off to find Deputy Head Uchiha as quickly as possible and Sakura stared in wonder at the mixture of glass, water, wiring, and (relatively) expensive metals which stood in front of her.
"And this will work with your other designs?" Deputy Head Uchiha said, referring to her blueprints about how to actually make use of the energy stored in a variety of applications. Those had been taken up by several other researchers, along with her radio system—even batteries she'd gotten loads of notes on; the inventions were so invitingly useful that quite a bit of manpower had been put behind them.
"Yes."
Deputy Head Uchiha grinned. "Better get started testing the rest, then."
Sakura blinked, then stared up at the dozens left to go.
The next day Sakura was still buzzing. Five—FIVE!—of her designs worked.
It didn't matter what drawbacks each had, where their current designs might fail in actual implementation—this was just step one, the step of actually seeing if any had a chance to succeed. And they had. Five of them.
She was walking on air when she got up in the morning, when she went to work, when she finished work, when she picked up the tiny baby Ibiki (she'd volunteered to babysit him for a few hours every week, to give his usual babysitters an empty apartment or at least an apartment free of babies) and when she went home.
"Aunt Sakura!"
"Hey Rento. Don't shout—Ibiki doesn't like shouting."
"Oh, sorry. I just heard—did your invention really work?"
Sakura grinned. "Yup."
"How about—about the communication thing?" That would be the telegram system which had (beyond the initial idea) been more or less designed entirely independently by two Communications chunin. The idea was that if they could get that set up and running (which seemed a mite easier than the radio) than they'd keep their technological advantage for longer with the radio, as the opposing side focused on cutting of the physical connection and had no idea of the connection through the air.
"Testing it next week, with the most durable of my battery designs."
Rento grinned. "Cool."
Rento had apparently been quite serious about his interest in research. In the past several weeks, even before she'd been allowed back to work, he'd taken to pestering her about various ideas and failed experiments that he had, and for stories of her own attempts.
His own teammates, Nara Kayo and Akimichi Kunio, were… less interested, to put it lightly, but they still reliably turned up at least once a week so that they could, as they put it, "keep up with Rento's notions."
"Want to come in? Kamui dropped off some food last night."
Rento grinned. "Yes!"
"Quiet."
"Sorry."
Baby Ibiki was, thankfully, a relatively deep sleeper.
After feeding herself and Rento (and hadn't he been a surprise, to come back to the front and find that her nephew thought she was cool and old and a role model), and giving Ibiki a bath and a meal, Sakura worked herself into a meditative pose.
As usual, the second she closed her eyes the desire to look at Arden's memories—to try to get a glimpse at the future, or at the very least a better world—grew exponentially. It was as if the part of her mind that was Arden, that had lived the memories fully and wanted to coalesce again into its own person, was tugging, pulling, and yanking at the rest of Sakura to plunge once more into the depths.
She took a breath.
She tried, once more, to cram everything that was Arden down and out of her consciousness.
The yearning for memories that were not her own didn't decrease.
She took another.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
She could hear her sisters entering below her, them whispering about something (she'd told them she'd have Ibiki today) and plates clinking together as they made their meals.
The pull of Arden's memories remained steady, forcing Sakura to make a constant effort not to succumb.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
Finally she opened her eyes.
She'd lasted nearly twenty minutes, and Arden seemed quieter—not bad.
She went downstairs.
"Hey."
"Hi Sakura. Ibiki causing any trouble?"
"No, thankfully he's been sleepy. He didn't particularly enjoy the bath, but he's down now. Sachiko's friends say he wakes up a lot in the night, though, so that'll be fun."
Himari grinned. "Do you want to hear what Sakuri with nine finger's son did?"
"Do I?"
"You do." Kohana grinned. "It was bad."
"Lay it on me, then."
"You know Ami-with-the-scar's daughter?"
Sakura nodded.
Ami-with-the-scar had six children, five of them boys, and she'd ended up praying at 176 different shrines over the course of three years (ever since baby number three) to have a little girl.
She had eventually succeeded, so there was that.
"Well, she's a bit—"
"A lot!"
"—spoiled, and last week when it was Ami-with-the-scar's turn to watch the kids she let her daughter play Sakura-with-nine-finger's son's toy without his permission, so Sai spent five whole days trying to decide what to do and then—"
Sakura grinned.
She loved being home.
Still, now that she was home, there were things to do.
The first afternoon she had off after she was officially cleared for any amount of physical conditioning she went to Yamanaka Taiki.
Taiki was, to no surprise, drunk when she found him.
Taiki was, not particularly surprisingly, in the middle of training a student when she found him.
Taiki was, very, very surprisingly, in the middle of teaching a non-Yamanaka when she found him.
Taiki was, most surprisingly, training someone Sakura knew.
"Might Duy? Is that you?"
"Ah! It is me! And who are you!"
"I'm Yamanaka Sakura, I used to train behind the daycare you used to do missions at." She took his incredibly athletic form. He was truly an adult now, hadn't been a teenager for… two years, about, and he looked…
He looked like he should be on the frontline.
"I just got recalled from the front. I'm working at research now. How about you?"
"I HAVE A SON!"
He had a son.
Might Duy had a son.
Who in the world would—
It was sudden, like a flash of lightning or the flicker of a flame reaching just high enough to catch on something important. Might Guy, Sakura suddenly knew, was his son's name. Might Guy was best friends with 'did you say something' guy, with white hair, and Might Guy was a taijutsu expert. Might Guy—
She forced herself, almost painfully, back to reality.
Those memories came from Arden.
She couldn't deal with them.
Couldn't…
She clearly had dealt with them, had lived through those memories already however many months ago when she was in the rut and not fully cognizant of what she was doing, but she couldn't deal with them now.
Didn't, as horrible as it sounded, have the capacity.
She shoved the thoughts aside, the thoughts that she had sought after for so many years, and focused again on Might Duy's mighty grin.
"His name is Might Guy! He is the best son I ever hoped for! He is fantastic! And wonderful! And—"
"Hello." Taiki said. "Or did you just want to ignore the poor, sad drunk man in the corner?"
"Hello sensei." Sakura said, instead of answering his question. "Can I talk to you?" Her eyes sidled to Might Duy, who grinned at her. "In private."
Taiki grunted, then led her into his house. "Keep up with the katas!" He shouted behind him, sending Duy back into a flurry of activity. To Sakura he said, "the man's eager. Wants to learn just about every taijutsu technique there is. Mighty persuasive too, and a quick learner. Now, what do you need me for?" He threw himself against a wall in his kitchen, taking a swig from the sake he'd just liberated from a cabinet.
Sakura sat, then stared at her hands. "I—I've been promoted to chunin." She took a breath, then continued, vowing not to stop again. "It happened some time ago, because I managed to successfully fend off an assassin for long enough for him to be dealt with by others. It was only a few seconds, if that, but—I'm very lucky to still be alive. And that he refused to look me in the eyes helped, and the immediate backup made all the difference, but…" Against her will she ran out of words.
Taiki had no trouble following her line of thinking though. "But you'd prefer to be better protected next time."
"It didn't even—I mean, at first it didn't seem like that much of a big deal that it happened. I even enjoyed the break. Except then the next round of assassins came, and were far more successful—and my Brigadier General, my former Brigadier General, thought that the first attempt was just a test run. To see what defenses we have."
Taiki grunted. "A not unreasonable assumption."
"And so after that, every time I was on shift…"
"You knew that you were barely strong enough for their probe, much less their full-fledged attempt."
Sakura released her breath. "Yeah."
"I can help." Taiki said. He nodded decisively, then moved to stand.
"Another thing," Sakura said, because she might not to be able to deal with Arden right now, be able to deal with the future, but that didn't mean she didn't know it was coming, "I'd like… I don't want anyone to know I'm better trained."
Taiki eyed her for some seconds. Sakura tried not to fidget. It wasn't as if she could explain her reasoning—oh these memories from another life thinks there's enemies from within the village, but I promise I'm neither a traitor nor insane—but it would help to have an ace, or at least as close as she could get, up her sleeve.
Finally Taiki nodded. "I'll say you're demonstrating the katas and such for Duy. I'm old, and not many others use our style, and you're less busy than all of them, so the excuse will pass muster without anyone thinking you're learning much more than what you already know. Duy could use a sparring partner too, and he—ironically—can keep quiet."
"Thank you." Sakura said, and she meant it.
Taiki snorted. "Thanking me for doing my job…" He muttered. "What's next? A commendation from the Daimyo?"