Please leave a comment or PM if you have any questions, suggestions, concerns, or just compliments. For the sake of this work, the elemental balance will go earth}lightning}water}fire}wind. Thanks to SmallFountainPen for betaing.
It was always going to end this way.
He'd known that since the Second War, since all those months fighting with no recognition of his effort.
Still, Takashi grinned, this was about as good as it got.
The room he was in was well appointed, a sign of their generosity—he was delivered good, hearty meals three times a day too.
He knew his family would never forgive him for what he had done, but then they just didn't understand.
He'd wanted to be a hero, wanted to be known, and Konoha hadn't given him that chance.
Kumo did.
He sat at the desk he'd been provided, empty scrolls stacked beside him.
For as long as he kept giving them good information he'd stay here, working. After they'd set him up in a city, they told him, give him training and let him teach genin and chunin what life in Konoha was really like.
He wouldn't luxuriate in the wealth of his family fortune as he had as a child, but then he wasn't going to inherit that anyway—was too far from the direct line of succession.
This way it would be him, personally, that would be well known—respected, even, for turning his back on Kumo's enemies.
They'd never trust him totally, but he didn't need that.
He had all he needed.
He leaned over his desk, and began his daily writing—today, Takashi decided, he would focus on his former classmate, the one who'd made all the Research innovations.
He grinned at the idea of her name in a Bingo book; many years too late, she'd get her comeuppance for being a schoolyard snob.
.
Sakura's breaths came in pants, far too heavy but impossible to stop.
Sayuri wasn't doing much better.
They'd known, of course they'd known, that Kumo had some kind of technology to identify and capture invaders.
They just hadn't known what, exactly, it was.
That was still true, Sakura supposed.
And therein was the problem: they'd only barely gotten close enough to the railroad to begin reconnaissance when Sakura was alerted to enemy presences, and then it was a mad dash away, their own presences as hidden as possible while they tried to decide what to do next.
They were almost in Frost now, their trajectory taking them up the mountains and deep into the coldest country on the continent; Frost might be nominally allied with Lightning, but Kumo would no doubt still be entirely unwilling to share their technology—if they got out of Lightning's borders, their chances of remaining undetected for long enough to get back to Fire increased exponentially.
As it was, however, they were far in the north, near the border with the sea, and nowhere near the fighting of their comrades, and they were actively being pursued—
In fact—
One runner—
In about two seconds Sakura put together that there was no way they'd be fast enough. They were outpacing the other pursuers okay—Sakura had realized they'd been noticed pretty quick, and Sayuri was really good at picking out the fastest route through the mountains—but Kumo had clearly put a runner on their tracking squad for just such an occasion: they were still at least a full day's run from the border and the boy, about her age, was close enough now that he'd begun forming the seals for an attack—
Sakura pivoted the moment she felt the lightning begin to crackle, her whip coming free and flying towards the runner as she did so. Sayuri reacted nearly instantaneously to Sakura's actions; she slowed, too, stopped well out of reach and pulled out her throwing weapons.
They were going to get out of this alive. Even if Sakura couldn't use combat fuinjutsu—too obvious, too likely to get a huge tracking party after them if the runner escaped—she hadn't exactly stopped training, stopped preparing for the next fight for her life in dozens of other ways.
While Sakura's whip had been made to mimic the designs of some of Kumo's weapons, it looked quite different.
This was useful.
It meant that the boy didn't hesitate before releasing his attack, sure that the lightning wouldn't be impacted at all by the whip that he had to simultaneously dodge away from.
He was wrong.
The lightning coiled around the whip, twisting its way closer to her, but Sakura trusted the rubber grip—she flicked the whip instead, casting her own lightning jutsu to redirect the whole of it out, out, out—
The boy hadn't been expecting it.
Between that and the shuriken which slotted between his eyes a second after he got shocked—
Well, most battles were won in seconds.
Sakura just hadn't been expecting this one to be so clean.
She hesitated, staring at the body in front of her, but Sayuri didn't.
"Reinforcements?"
"Can't feel them. Too far out still." Sayuri grunted, perfectly aware of how limited Sakura's range actually was. As she did, however, she arrived at the boy's body and began rifling through his clothes, grabbing anything valuable looking.
"We are not coming out of this empty handed."
"We need to go, Sayuri."
"I know, I know. We've already been running flat out for twenty-four hours, so we should be more than halfway there. Let's go back to masking our presence and covering all traces; speed'll just hurt us if there's not someone close enough, and we don't want to accidently stumble on a village that can just send a new tracking team after us."
"Understood."
They continued on.
.
Yamanaka Akina, second oldest sister of Sakura, rolled her shoulder, frowning over the documents in front of her.
She'd successfully infiltrated into Frost for three years now, had worked her way up from a sell-sword to a very wealthy merchant's personal guard. Kumo ninja visited the cities she was in regularly, but her background was airtight, and her boss's power mighty; over time they'd grown used to her presence, begun considering her one of the locals. Today's mail was her monthly selection: she'd bribed some of the looser tongued shinobi and government officials into sending her regular updates, ostensibly so she could better execute her job and her boss could better do his own.
Most of it was local, the effects of the ever-nearing Konoha forces on Frost. She and her boss would be traveling with the entirety of his family all the way to central Kumo later that week—a fantastic chance for infiltration, particularly because what chakra she did have could be explained away by her profession.
Most of the news she expected.
She passed through it quickly, scanning each line to see if anything should grab her attention.
It wasn't until she got to Kumo's Bingo book that her heart jumped, lodging in her throat as she read one of the newest entries.
The number of Konoha shinobi there were awards for had more than tripled; that was expected.
What wasn't expected was seeing Sakura's name.
What wasn't expected was seeing a fairly accurate, if vague, description of what she had accomplished.
What wasn't expected was the price they were offering.
She flipped back to the front, reading the new entries more slowly.
Many of them were vague, clearly built on battlefield impressions.
Many—too many—were more detailed.
There was a traitor.
That was the only—
Should she—
No. No, getting another country's Bingo book was all too easy to do.
Konoha likely knew already, had probably already figured out who the traitor was.
They'd probably restricted Sakura to Fire immediately.
She would do more than enough, there, and Konoha had no need for her to further end.
Everything was okay.
Her family would be okay.
.
Sakura couldn't feel the cold anymore.
That was probably bad.
Frost was live-able in the margins, had cities and towns and even farmland.
In the margins.
Most of its land, however, was made up by a steep, steep mountain range.
A very cold mountain range.
An unlivably cold mountain range (Kumo's mountains, despite being further to the north, were paradoxically warmer—the arguments over why varied, were made by academics who'd never visited either, and were completely irrelevant to the situation at hand.)
Sakura and Sayuri were halfway up the tallest of Frost's range.
From that altitude they'd turned, started moving horizontally instead of vertically, but that didn't make the height any easier.
The constant snow concealed their passage, made them that much harder to track—a necessity, really, given how far they'd made it into Lightning before being noticed and the target that must have painted on their backs—but it was also…
Cold.
So very, very cold.
.
Uchiha Shuji stared at his machine.
He could swear it was staring back.
"Okay, here we go." He murmured. "You're going to do it this time, aren't you? Prove my brilliance?"
He inserted the sheet of paper, its punched holes denoting the data he wanted analyzed.
A pause, then whirring.
He watched with bated breath.
To his right the printer began churning, preparing ever so slowly to push out the data.
And then—
He gaped.
It had been years, years and years of effort, and there would be years of effort left—he wanted the computer to have a communications function too, wanted to make the machine much smaller to make it more viable for use—but now—
Today—
He checked the first line against the work done by Efficiency Sciences.
It was correct.
The second line?
Correct.
The third?
Correct.
The computer kept on churning, and Shuji watched with a swelling heart as his machine managed to do in seconds what Efficiency Sciences had done in over a week.
He whipped around, expecting to see Sakura sitting in her usual spot, just as excited as he, but—
Right, he was alone.
He preferred it that way, anyway.
He just—
Well, she had given him some reasonable suggestions, after all. Several of which he'd actually made use of.
He'd thank her when she next came to check up on him, he decided.
She deserved it, after all.
For now, though—
Well, he'd met his first goal, and it was time to rub it in as many faces as possible.
.
Sakura and Sayuri were in what their geography and sciences class had termed a white-out.
With the level of snow, both in the air and on the ground, and their altitude, and their complete lack of experience coping with Frost wilderness—
They were lost.
But what could they do?
They had to keep moving, keep trying to push forward, to come out the other side.
Hopefully one day they would.
In the meantime their rations were running low.
Their chakra, too.
They'd stopped masking it days ago, had to use the energy to keep themselves warm.
But they were running out.
They dug holes in the ground to sleep every night, and that did something, but they couldn't—
They had to—
They shivered, fighting against the cold as they kept moving forward.
They'd chosen their destination based on nothing, really, on a possibly entirely imagined feeling of a slight slant of the ground, a gradual dip downward.
They kept moving.
.
Kakashi frowned as the adults closed the door in front of him.
The meeting was about him, wasn't it?
Why wasn't he allowed in?
He'd been well behaved, after all.
Or, well, as well behaved as he could be.
Everyone he had to interact with were idiots, anyway.
They only let him skip one year at a time, too. Had made him start with the first years despite his talent.
He'd been a second year by day 2, a third year by day 3, a fourth year by the second week, a fifth by the third, and now he was in the graduating class and still miles ahead.
He'd pushed for early graduation, could work beside his father if that happened, but they'd hesitated, told him he was too young.
He aced every assessment, though.
Could beat up teenagers and adults with no issues.
Picked up jutsu like that.
And now, even though he wasn't allowed to be in the room, he might finally get the recognition that deserved.
Last week former Elder Shimura Danzo, former General, had been touring the school, had been talking with the administrators about ramping up the pressure in times of war again.
He'd interrupted the final semester's sparring lesson, watched it for some time, and noticed Kakashi's power, his ability.
He'd promised Kakashi help, promised to allow him to demonstrate his ability in practice rather than just in this stupid, slow academy building.
And now…
He was in there.
He was fighting for Kakashi.
Sesnei Uchiha, Kakashi knew, was very against him being graduated early.
Argued that many Uchiha were the tops of their grades, were still discouraged from leaving early.
Kakashi didn't see how that should stop him, though; he was so much better than even the best Uchiha.
He glared at the door, wanting to be inside, to know who was winning, but it remained firmly shut.
Twenty-six minutes after the door shut, however, when Kakashi's eyes were beginning to ache from his continuous glare at the door, it finally moved.
"Hatake Kakashi?"
"Yes."
"You have just been promoted to genin. A sensei will be found for you shortly, and until then you may practice on your own."
"Thank you." He bowed at the academy head, then Elder Shimura Danzo. He did not bow at Sensei Uchiha.
And then he left.
.
Sayuri was the first to notice it.
Sakura's full concentration was dedicated to keeping her upright, moving, but Sayuri was far more used to days of unending effort.
Still, she'd very nearly missed it.
"Sakura, Sakura."
"What?"
"Is that—that's fire, right?"
"That's—"
Technically, they should have acted with caution.
Technically, they should have approached slowly, masking their presence until they'd appropriately ascertained whether the camp was a friend's or foe's.
They didn't do that.
It was pure luck, then, that the camp quickly revealed itself to be Konoha.
It was pure luck, moreover, that the camp was Ino-Shika-Cho.
"Hey Inoichi." Sakura gasped.
"Hey." Sayuri repeated.
"By the kami, what happened to you?"