There was a joke, mostly within the Research Department, that the Human Research annex had a corridor with three doors: poison, medicine, and psychoactives. All three lead to the same room.
Sakura, despite having already worked for some time in the Research Department, still didn't know if that was true and hadn't been about to guess: as a general assistant, she'd only ever had to enter their main room where an inbox and outbox lay conveniently near the door. Any of the Researchers who wanted to pass on messages also tended to come out to do so—their experiments tended to be the kinds particularly susceptible to contamination. Now it seemed she had little choice.
The annex was directly connected to the main Hospital building, but most Researchers used the door to the side of the annex, which opened invitingly onto one of the courtyards. She hovered near the flowers for a second—the Hospital's grounds were always very well maintained—then started forward once more.
No use drawing it out, and no matter what her mind might try to say there was probably nothing to worry about.
She'd barely entered the building when she had to stop herself from hitting someone face first. The genin was busy depositing paperwork into the outbox as she entered, but jumped back and smiled as she made her unfortunate entrance. "Chunin Yamanaka." Taro grinned. "Funny to see you here."
"Well, I've been transferred, so..."
Taro's eyebrows rose. "Bored of Weapons already? I thought Researchers generally stuck to just the one specialty."
"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" Sakura laughed. "My proposals are all over the place, though, so the Head's decided to rotate me through every one of them." She waved her transfer scroll, then gestured to the only other door. "That way?"
"Yep. Office of the deputy head is first door on the left. Lab doors are to the right."
"Right. Thanks."
"No problem. You'll like it here." Taro added. "I know I have."
Sakura grinned back, made a mental note of his apparent new specialty, and started forward once more.
Two seconds later Sakura was standing in the same room as—well, him.
Orochimaru's office was… narrow. Uncomfortably narrow. It looked like it had intended to be a hallway and then wimped out at the last minute. The impression was undeterred by the single door and complete absence of windows—the 'office' was just a hallway without the courage to lead anywhere, and that was that.
There were, however, several more desks than most deputy head offices had.
Sensei Uchiha hadn't used his office much at all—he liked to pace the main room instead, looking over shoulders—but Sakura had kind of thought he was an anomaly, given that the Efficiency Sciences and Analysis Heads seemed actively eager to close themselves off from the world in their own.
Apparently not.
That was… inconvenient.
"Yamanaka Sakura."
"Yes."
"Orders?"
Sakura handed over the scroll.
Orochimaru (tall, pale, seemingly so weak and yet nothing could be more untrue) read it.
"Please familiarize yourself with our labs. Your desk will be… this one. Your only active proposal is for an improved bandage, however you purportedly have several others near the point of submission, so that will be your priority in the coming days. Besides that, you may be asked to assist with other Researchers' projects."
"Understood."
"Dismissed."
Sakura bowed and fled.
The labs, at least, were comfortingly familiar.
(She'd never seen anything like them before, not in this life, and yet…)
The labs (for there were multiple, though they all looked more or less identical) seemed primarily designed to create and test various compounds. The actual human testing was done in the hospital itself—that way it was the hospital's staff that ensured everyone was fed and properly medicated.
Sakura's band-aids fit best under 'medicine' so she chose one of the two empty lab areas in that room for her own.
It wouldn't, she considered, take very long for her to settle in.
"Need help?"
And that was the other thing. In Materials people mostly focused on their own work unless specifically addressed. Here… here everyone was friendly.
"Sure. Yamanaka Sakura."
"Kato Doi."
"I knew a Kato—Kato Dan. He was my sensor teacher."
Doi winced. "Yeah, um, my cousin, actually. He died last September."
"Oh, I'm sorry."
"It's… well, it is what it is. He was a great guy, though."
"He seemed very nice."
The awkward silence only lasted for a few moments before Kato Doi shook himself. "Well, anyway. You said you needed help?"
"Yeah. I've just been transferred here, so I'm not really sure…"
"Oh! Oh yeah, I can show you around."
.
Several days later found Sakura hunched over her medical notebooks. Kato Doi's work—a more effective and long term birth control—had given her an idea for a hormone test, so she was further postponing several of her other ideas to sketch out at least an outline of what she was thinking.
And then—
It wasn't anything in particular.
It wasn't a shift in the air, or a barely heard noise, or anything like that.
It wasn't even sensing—Sakura was consciously not sensing every day, because apparently her instinctive need to double check that everything was okay using it had become 'unhealthy.'
It wasn't anything, really, just…
She knew Orochimaru was behind her.
Just like that.
Her pen stuttered.
"Deputy Head Orochimaru?"
"Please, call me Orochimaru. The title gets a bit long. What are you writing?"
Sakura glanced down and almost physically reacted in relief when she realized that her medical journals were not written in English.
They were in a code—a code which she had devised herself—because she'd never been comfortable with even the slightest idea of showing anyone else the memories in her head so she'd come up with it specifically to have a language to write things she wanted to show Shin and Juro that was still at least somewhat secure.
"It's one of my notebooks for my medical ideas."
"May I?" He reached out his hand.
Sakura nodded. Handed him the notebook. Watched as he flipped through several of the pages.
"When did you create this code?"
"The Academy. I finished it in fifth year, but it was workable for some time before that."
Orochimaru looked vaguely approving. "Not the most complex or impenetrable, by far, but your use of multiple layers of obfuscation is quite good." He handed the notebook back.
"So you couldn't decode it?"
Orochimaru laughed. "In the past several seconds? No, though I have a good idea where to begin and I'm sure with a concentrated effort it would not take long."
"Oh." Sakura tried not to be too disappointed, too scared, tried not to think of how that meant that he, and Danzo, and everyone else she'd been having those visions about may very well be able to parse through her English without her having the slightest clue.
Orochimaru snorted. "Don't be too sad. It's still a very good effort, especially for an Academy student."
"Thank you."
"Hmm."
.
Because Kato Doi had been kind enough to show her around on the first day, Sakura felt obliged to help him in return.
It didn't hurt that he was genuinely brilliant, and friendly, and… well, and he didn't make any scary pictures of snakes keep on appearing in her mind's eye.
Mostly this was a good thing.
Mostly this meant she got to learn much more about anatomy and physiology and biology and chemistry than she had before—he even leant her a few of his notes from earlier projects to help her with her own.
She quite liked him, actually. He was a good mentor.
There was just that one problem, and it would've been a problem even if she didn't work with him, so overall she was actually quite liking her time in Human Research.
.
Sakura arrived almost two full weeks after her first day to raised voices.
It was the third time, but usually the arguers eventually found their way outside so as to not interrupt anyone's work.
This time the voices were coming from the Medical lab.
There was a lot of name calling.
Sakura ducked into Orochimaru's office instead.
Every other Researcher with a desk—eight of them, including Orochimaru—was already there.
Orochimaru snorted at her expression.
"Fun, isn't it?"
Aburame Yochuko, who was more or less the only one who worked full time in the psychoactive lab (which caused no small amount of tension, because if she had a lab by herself why did she also get a desk outside of it?) grimaced. "When will you intervene?"
She didn't look up from her work, but Sakura guessed she was asking Orochimaru—she couldn't imagine anyone was asking her to step up.
A clang.
Kato Doi's voice rang out—"She's three! She needs stability!"
Orochimaru sighed. "Why must it always be me?"
"Tsunade's your teammate."
Orochimaru looked, if anything, more aggrieved. "I'm due to leave tomorrow. Why couldn't I be due to leave today."
Another clang.
"Oh Yeah?!" A voice—Tsunade's, probably—screeched, before reducing enough in volume that specific words could not be made out.
"Then they would've had this argument yesterday." Aburame Yochuko said.
"It's kind of tradition." Nara Ayaka said. Sakura had actually thought she was asleep, but apparently the noise was just a bit too great for that.
"You—" Tsunade shouted, before saying a word Sakura was absolutely under no circumstances allowed to repeat.
"You really should intervene soon." Aburame said. "It sounds like it's about to get physical."
Orochimaru sighed, then swept out of the room.
"What… um, what's going on?" Sakura finally asked. She hadn't before—it had seemed rude, considering that it was her mentor and one of the sannin—but this seemed like the angriest fight so far.
"They have joint custody of Doi's second cousin Shizune." Nara Ayaka said. "Before Doi's cousin Dan died he had full custody, and then he… you know, died, and Tsunade wanted full custody—she was dating Dan—but Doi didn't think she was… oh kami, I'm going to have to figure out a way to be polite about this—"
"Doi thought that Tsunade was mentally unstable." Nara Hon grunted. "Which… well, she hasn't really given anyone much reason to think differently. So they 'decided' to share custody."
"Except every time something changes—Doi stays late, Tsunade goes into the field, whatever—it inevitably ends in an argument."
"At least Orochimaru is fairly good at—"
"WHAT?!"
That was Orochimaru's voice.
"YOU WHAT?!"
Also Orochimaru's voice.
"That's not good." Said about four voices at once.
A flare of chakra swept through the room, strong enough that Sakura couldn't even avoid sensing it.
"Really not good." Nara Hon added.
"We should… do something."
The voices were raised now, and if they were talking even a little more clearly, overlapping even a little less, every word would be able to be heard by everyone in the Hospital.
Everyone.
The three voices swelled, screaming over each other with every possible negative emotion in every syllable.
"Hokage. We need the Hokage."
Sakura swept over to the bell alert system and yanked every single one of them. Lee Suji sprinted out the door, ostensibly to alert someone in real time.
And then they were all shoved back as some sort of attack swallowed up the medicine lab.
"Run!" Aburame shouted.
"Trying!" Nara Hon shouted back.
Sakura didn't bother wasting her breath—she was the smallest of all of them, and not about to make her attempt to flee to safety any more difficult than it already was.
But the building was collapsing, and there was too much dust in the air, and the three of them were still screaming, and—
"Grab on!"
She felt a hand.
She grabbed on.
The hand yanked, yanked, yanked, and she was out.
All around her the annex crumbled.
"Hey, Taro."
"You know, I didn't expect your transferring to be a pretense for wanting to blow up Human Research entirely. I mean, I know you prefer Communications, but this seems a bit drastic."
Sakura snorted. "Hey, that was Orochimaru, not me."
"What?!"
And then the ground started moving underneath, and they both turned to see the Hokage using a jutsu to move all of the earth out of the way.
"What is—"
…Here's the thing.
There were certain people, few and far between, who commanded a sort of presence that was impossible to ignore.
Some—or many, depending on how you look at it—could 'fake' it, could seem to have that sort of present for stints at a time, when it really mattered.
Few, very very few, had it constantly.
The Hokage was one such person.
The Hokage's presence was such that even when he was just going about his day to day life people still looked at him in awe.
Even the Daimyo, despite his best efforts, could not manage such a constant presence.
The Hokage did it without thinking.
The Hokage was thinking about it now.
The Hokage was angry, and out of the loop, and wanted to know what was going on.
The Hokage's presence, enhanced by his less than positive view of the situation, caused everyone in the vicinity to watch him with every part of their being not dedicated to keeping themselves alive.
And so when the Hokage began to demand answers, everyone in the vicinity thought that they knew what would come next.
He would get answers.
Explanations.
And whatever he demanded after that, too.
Instead Tsunade, in a rage, flew right by him.
Right by his presence.
And out of sight.
The Hokage turned, slowly, deliberately, and stared at the street she'd vanished down.
Then he turned again.
Kato Doi stood in the wreckage.
Orochimaru stood next to him.
Both looked very much like they'd like to chase after Tsunade, and it was only the presence that was keeping them immobile—and even then just barely.
"What—"
Apparently the presence wasn't such that Orochimaru felt unable to interrupt.
"She wants to take Shizune and leave! We have to act!"
The Hokage blinked.
Sakura blinked.
Everyone blinked.
And then there was a flurry of movement.
Tsunade, while fleeing the scene, had run in the direction opposite the Village Gates.
The direction that Kato Doi walked after every shift.
About half of the jonin that had been drawn to the drama sprinted in that direction.
The other half flew to the walls in every direction, hoping to cut Tsunade off if she'd already grabbed her (almost) niece.
The Hokage and Orochimaru moved so fast that Sakura had no idea which direction they'd gone.
And soon, the only ones left in the wreckage were the members of the Human Research and Engineering Division with one very distraught, very injured man in the center of the destruction.
He fell to his knees.
Taro and Sakura glanced at each other.
"This will not end well." Taro said, as the murmurs from the surrounding crowd began to increase in volume once more.
Sakura stared at her mentor.
She stared at the spot Orochimaru—who her brain had labeled the 'bad' member of the sannin without her permission—had been standing.
And she wished, very much, that she'd just stayed home that day.