"Good morning."

"Don't sneak up on me like that!" Sarada yelped, releasing Sasuke from her vice grip halfway through her words. Her voice went low and admitted its insecurity. "Good morning."

"Those are big words from the person tailing me."

He watched as she slumped against the wooden backrest and her shoulders squared in on themselves, suddenly finding the divisions between the floorboards interesting. The pace at which her exposed emotions shifted could give chameleons a run for their crickets. Both of his girls were mediocre liars at the best of times, but were especially lousy at faking their feelings. Even if they managed to obscure precisely what they were enduring, their poker faces were no better than prying the corners of their mouths aside in a friendly greeting.

"Did you sleep all right?"

Sarada allowed herself to weakly chuckle, "Not really."

Sasuke swung his bag around to his lap while waiting for her to recognize she needed to get something off her chest.

"I laid in bed forever. And then… I snuck out the window, to let my team know I would be gone."

"Is that so? Sneaking out to meet with boys in the middle of the night. They grow up so fast," Sasuke whimsied, shuttering his eye in flimsy melodrama.

Sarada rolled her eyes.

"Mama's rubbing off on you. You're just as annoying as she is."

"Don't call your mother annoying. She's nothing but good to us."

"Sorry." Her mother was a benevolent constant; a throughline between every crucial juncture she had traversed. She was her best friend who played games with her after dinner, her mentor who taught her everything from combat prowess to being assertive in her convictions, her comfort late at night when a dwelled-upon bad day gave way to accompanying aberrant nightmares. She really was sorry. "I should have only called you annoying."

"That's better," Sasuke accepted, meeting Sarada's thinly playful expression. He was not one for self deprecation, but the mild abuse was deserved in this case.

Sarada almost did not want to ask, but her father seemed to be soft as always. Going behind his back was new territory.

"You're not mad?"

Sasuke's eyebrows swerved inward, the minute wrinkles on the sides of his eyes moving in tandem. For Sarada, seeing her father confused was itself a confusing experience.

"Am I supposed to be mad?" he asked partially to the empty space beside them as he broke eye contact, apparently entirely serious. "Does your mother have rules about leaving the house at night?"

"No," Sarada lied, not bothering to do it well. "But I meant the whole 'following you on your mission' thing."

"Ah," Sasuke realized. He stifled his amusement as his word trailed off and air left his nose a little quicker than intended.

Sarada turned so that her left leg rested flat against the bench and she could face him.

"You're making fun of me!" she exclaimed with crossed arms.

Sasuke recalled a conversation with his therapist turned hairdresser turned wife from months ago. Supposedly, if you never voice the thoughts in your mind, most people will not know you are thinking, and if you find something funny without context, the person you are speaking to will likewise assume you find them funny. It was all still a work in progress.

"I'm not making fun of you," he pledged, "And I'm not mad. I was thinking that this has become a rite of passage for our family."

A rite of passage that would only last a couple of months, was not sustained by an all-consuming mania, and would be chaperoned by a capable if questionably practiced parent. He could have done much worse, which was an accomplishment that brought on his good humor.

Gears turned in Sarada's head. What was he alluding to, exactly? Going on a trip with his family? Inserting himself into another person's mission? Spending a long time away from the village?

"What do you mean?"

He meant more than he could endure in one go. Still, some recess of his conscience had decided that embarking down the path of reminiscing was appropriate. It was long overdue anyway.

"I left the village."

Sarada started to worry that she might get dizzy from all of the eyes she would have to roll by the time they were home.

"Obviously I know you left the village. It's not really a rite of passage if you are already grown up."

"Before that, about your age."

Freshly oiled, the gears wound back up. Her father's even tone implied that he equated the two experiences. Children could not arbitrarily leave the village for an extended period of time, but perhaps in his day they had more autonomy. That did nothing to explain what would compel a child to leave behind their home.

Feeling his daughter pick apart the pieces of his past and tunnel into his memories, Sasuke decided it was necessary to prevent her from arriving at her own conclusions, preempted by an exhale.

"It's more accurate to say I deserted the village."

"What?!" Sarada bellowed before immediately thinking better of their situation and covering her mouth with both hands. Quietly, "I mean, why?"

"I was young, careless, manipulated, among other things. I didn't appreciate the guidance and connections of my mentor and friends."

"You're being cryptic again," Sarada replied with narrowed brows. The way he wove regret into every syllable stretched the gap between their respective desertions, while meticulously concealing any hint of content.

"What you want to know will have to wait. Maybe tomorrow."

"Oh, come on! It's going to be just us two for weeks, and you know I want to hear about your past. What better time is there to tell me all about it?"

Sarada clutched her upper arm with five fingers, narrowing.

"Things were bad, I know that much. There was a massacre after all," she continued, averting her gaze. "You don't trust me enough to avoid making whatever mistakes you made."

Sasuke abstained long enough that Sarada felt herself looking back to see what he was doing, only to find him still beholding her from above. He had waited for her to make eye contact, what must have been a condition of his speech.

"You're right, about me avoiding the subject. You can see right through me."

Sarada's brow widened a hair, not expecting the unique praise.

"That insight is partially true. It's my job as your parent to keep harmful things from you, after all. The rest of the truth is that that same insight of yours is why I trust you to avoid my mistakes."

Numerous cheers sang out from somewhere far in front.

"You may be ready to hear about it, but I'm not ready to talk about it," he admitted. No age made it bearable, and some sections of the story really wanted for his wife's presence. "At least, not all in one day. How about I tell you my story bit by bit? And by the time we get home you'll understand my perspective."

Sarada nodded sheepishly. The flame that usually burned high with an appetite for knowledge was low, now kindling on a slow but steady source of fuel. Even the intention to speculate on her father's desertion was pushed beneath the bottom layer of singed coals. What was important was keeping this hearth aflame, so that it radiated heat through the night and into the next morning, where it could be tended to anew.

"Are you cold?" Sasuke asked.

Wind that, if visible, would surely be a bluish-white crept into the cart from ahead, above the ox reigned at the helm. It assailed the side of his face that was unaccustomed to being bare. Too much was between himself and the skyline to see it, but the sun was doubtless surfacing. The ultrathin sheen of frost that slumbered on the overflowing flora now dripped in drowsy dew. Indeed, Sarada was cold, if her shivering was any indication.

"I'm okay."

"Well, I'm cold."

He fanned out his fingers under the rim of his bag to loosen the cord, opening the hole in the top. Without much digging, he drew out his cloak and flung it around his shoulders, letting it drape in loose ripples until it came around and settled in a generous overlap at the front.

They sat in a pensive silence for half a minute, watching the trees across from them steadily slide by until Sasuke felt Sarada scoot closer and bump into his side.

"Actually I am a little cold."

Sasuke gripped the interior of the fabric and dragged it over his daughter, leaving his arm over her shoulders to bunch them together.

"You should take a nap. It will be hours before we break."

At odds with her sagging words and already concealed eyes, Sarada answered, "I don't want to waste time sleeping now that we're here."

Sasuke would have smiled if she could see him, but his assurances conveyed a smile nonetheless.

"I'm not going anywhere," he said. "You may need your strength at any time."

"Will we be training later?"

Sasuke intuited her being a few steps ahead of their exchange. Even in her listless state she reflexively followed an expansive chain of logic. Such a strange thing, the simple joy of being comprehended without having to go through all the motions. His voice was hushed.

"You aren't wearing your headband or the clan sigil. You picked up that mission is covert."

Sarada's head stiffened, but otherwise did not react.

"The caravan is to hide your movement out of the village," she explained. "I know it's a mission, sorry. You don't have time for training."

She had preserved the fantasy of this trip being a vacation for as long as she could. A journey without consequences, free of the obligations and distractions that came out of nowhere at home, with ample time to talk and work together on everything she wanted to understand, and to experience the world vicariously through her fictitious, pedestrian self. Having shelved attempting to think about the mission deeply, or any of her father's past missions for that matter, the actual undertakings of it were lost on her. What exactly did he do day to day out in the wilderness? It couldn't be easy. Unless faced with a world-ending threat, he was not to be given assignments, that much was known even amongst her classmates. They were below his pay grade.

Sasuke squeezed her shoulder and Sarada loosened up, going back to idly bobbing up and down with breaths.

"Don't apologize. We will have plenty of free time. However, let's wait until we leave the caravan. That will be in a week, at the first town."

Not long ago he had considered speeding up where he could, taking more direct paths or even throwing caution to the wind in a mad dash to his destination. Now there was no rush.

"Do you think Mama will be mad?" Sarada stumbled out at dream's door.

"Yes," he answered, "And she'll understand."

Sarada hummed her agreement.

The letter he sent Sakura shortly after they started moving was better than leaving her to piece together her determined daughter's actions, and better still than thrusting a poor team seven between a juggernaut and her mini-juggernaut's wellbeing.

Sarada woke up in an unfamiliar limbo between the intense alertness of changing watch shifts out in the wild with her team and ambling out of her bed, groggy, met with an omelet in the kitchen. The lumber awning above blocked out the worst of the sun shining directly overhead. It was louder than before. Looking around, people had filled out most of the space on their bench and across the aisle. Most were eating, or had the remnants of recently eaten lunches on and around them. Also, for some reason, the left side of her face was damp. She sat upright, ever so lightly tugging with her neck to detach from the side of Sasuke's sleeve. After wiping her cheek with the back of a hand, she did the same for the dark spot on his shirt.

"It's hard to keep clothes clean around you two," Sasuke sassed.

"Hey," she sufficed as a greeting, still a little discombobulated.

"Better luck with sleep?"

Sarada nodded, cracking her knuckles, swabbing some residue from her eyes, and cleaning her glasses with a breath and the hem of her tunic.

"Good. Let's stretch."

They stood with their bags, filing down the walkway as more civilians boarded the wagon and squeezed past them. Their seats were already occupied by the time they jumped down off the edge. Careful not to be trampled by the snaillike linen stall that followed directly behind the vehicle, they began walking to the side with the hoard of others. It felt good to touch solid ground. Dirt floors were more natural to the shinobi, even if the arbor that lined the road had given way to an open grassland with no less vivid greens. A patch was cut low in the field way out to the right, tiny from their viewpoint but presumably massive, only visible due to an acute incline that started and ended at unclear locations. The world felt saturated. The deep brown trail, the deep green vegetation, the deep blue sky. The petrichor imbuing pleasure into a process as instinctive as breathing. The light that clogged every crevice and the chatter that occluded ambient noise.

Sasuke tugged his bag by the string around his neck and stowed his cloak away before letting the sack droop back into place. Sarada's fingers interlocked backward above and behind her head.

"What did you bring with you?" Sasuke asked.

"Weapons, some clothes, uhm… actually I'm not sure."

Sarada started rummaging through her backpack. Sure enough, plenty of weapons and a change of clothes.

"A canteen, notepad, some toiletries, uh, a mirror, a book, a-" She stopped short of the last item laying at the bottom, apparently the first thing she had packed in her panic.

"'A'?" Sasuke mimicked.

"That's it."

"Hmm."

Sarada sighed, plucking out a stuffed orange dog in a blue shirt. Blood pressed against her cheeks, partially because it seemed like the sort of thing that was off-limits to chunin, but mainly because of all her belongings she should have brought in its place: money, food, warmer clothes, first aid supplies.

"Don't say it. I know."

Sasuke took a moment, considering exactly what it was his daughter did not want him to say.

"He's fatter than I remember," he revealed. He had seen it in her room on any number of occasions, invariably smothered between broad pillows. "It was from Kakashi, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, Grandpa Kakashi gave him to me for my eighth birthday. I think someone made it for him and Pakkun hated looking at it."

"You don't like it?" he asked, interpreting some mutual disinterest between the two, in conflict with its place amongst her gear.

"I do! He's cute." Quickly and quietly, she added, "And I forgot a bedroll, so he'll be a nice pillow."

"It's good to take something that reminds you of home. Especially on long missions."

Sarada gently squeezed Pakkun before squishing him back into the compartment and beginning to zip it shut.

"Can I use your mirror?" Sasuke requested.

"Oh, sure."

He held the edge of the silver and centered it on his profile. Left, then right, back and forth, Sasuke scanned his head from every angle, as though something new would appear the next time he looked.

"I'm guessing Mama did your hair," Sarada asserted more than questioned, holding back her laughter at his skepticism. "Hey, at least you don't have to look at that purple eye anymore."

Sasuke snapped his gaze down to the side. He glared at her, like a child being told that the Midsummer Goblin was fake.

"That was supposed to be a secret," Sarada caught on under her breath. "You thought it was at least a little creepy, right?"

"Well. Yes, I suppose I covered it for more than one reason," Sasuke looked forward, vision tunneled. "But your mother thought that as well?"

"She did."

"I can't believe she never told me," he said, shaking his head. She was too nice.

"That'll be an awkward first-dinner-home conversation."

Sasuke let himself breathe freer.

"Speaking of dinner, we should eat lunch." He retrieved an oblong box from his sack, decorated with a pink ribbon. "You'll have to hold it."

They ate as they strolled, sharing rice, broccoli, sweet sausages and salty beef. Sarada split the egg with one stick. She glanced around at what others were eating. A healthy variety of dishes, punctuated by liquor which persisted as the standard. The field ended, restoring the surrounding landscape to its native forest habitats. Dark blotches roosted on branches to either side, dimming the collective color of the leaves. They were the expected birds, doing not much but revel in the caravan encroaching on their turf. At home, she would feed them in the morning with her father after her mother had gone to work. She wondered if they would linger until they passed, scavenging fallen food scraps.

"Do you think they would make a pact with me, like they have with you?" Sarada daydreamed. Summoning contracts were low priority to her; a formality, really.

"Pact? With who?"

"The birds."

"I didn't know you knew about Garuda," he stated, finishing a ball of rice. "If you get to know him, I don't see why not. Though the sort of trust needed is not so easily gained."

"Which one is Garuda?" she asked, squinting to more closely study the thicket of foliage overhead that rhythmically careened the animals up and down with the swelling currents. She went on, "And we already know each other - trust each other - more or less. You have them follow me wherever I go, after all."

He followed her stare, side-eying birds that observed nothing in particular.

"Oh, you meant the crows. Those aren't mine."

Sarada was taken aback. They were something that she took for granted, always in the vicinity. Her friends were aware, too; she was not imagining it. On stealth missions the birds receded into obscurity, keenly in tune with her needs from moment to moment. At times, she spotted them in the distance behind her father as well, albeit far fewer in number, so the natural conclusion was them being his way of watching over her from afar. Not having that connection was bittersweet.

"They're not yours? You're joking, right?"

"No," he reaffirmed. "They may follow you, but not because I told them to."

Good. At least she was sane and not playing into the hands of the world's oddest confirmation bias.

"Why do they follow us, then?"

"They like our eyes."

"Do you do that on purpose?" she challenged, rolling her objects in question.

"What do you mean?"

"Say mysterious stuff like that." She consoled him, snickering into her comments, "I don't mind. Really. But I sometimes get the feeling that you speak in riddles, or like, warnings wrapped in triple meanings."

Sasuke scratched the cheek that formerly curtained itself with hair using the rear of a chopstick as phantom locks itched his skin.

"Sorry, I guess don't give it much thought. The crows were your uncle's, though."

He swayed his head up at them, and in reply, hundreds of eyes repaid the gesture, fixed on the black circle he shared with them through achingly slow rotations as the pair strode forward.

Sarada was spooked by the beaks now cocked in unison and was only barely able to catch herself from stumbling backward on the level road. She broke out of her spellbind and tightened the slack in her jaw when Sasuke crooked his arm up and away. From the center of the flock, one crow unfurled its wings, once, then twice, before soaring off its branch and into the sky, touching down below his wrist.

"If you are kind, they will be kind back. Just as with friends, summons are no different."

Sarada may have taken out her notepad and started writing had they finished lunch. By the end of their travels she could complete a draft of a poetry book using nothing but her father's proverbs.

Sasuke contracted his elbow to let the bird climb onto his shoulder. He stroked the feathers on its dome, followed by its beak, and it titled down silently to meet his fingers. As with most activities, Sarada was uncertain if her father actually enjoyed spending time with animals. The way he tended to them bordered on an oath, like they had been married for decades longer than either could remember. Although, most people did not keep a hand towel outside by their bird feed in case their patrons got cold. She had no idea how he could even tell if they were chilly. Didn't they migrate anyway? The rate at which her family went through seed was starting to make sense.

Sarada tipped her chin up at the treeline for a third time. Feathers had reverted to their ordinary bustlings, giving the canopy the illusion of vibrating beneath the atmosphere, the occasional individual taking a short flight to secure a more coveted bough. After the shake of a tail feather, heads gradually turned, staggered, until they were all in sync, sinking straight into her own two dark irises. She had to giggle at her newfound power. A bizarrely useless power, but a power nonetheless. It would be so much fun scaring her friends back home.

The crow on Sasuke's shoulder cawed with abandon, clearly unconcerned for the ear it was perched aside. Around them, previously occupied parties turned to the duo, pointing and exclaiming their astonishment at the animal in such close proximity. 'Charming,' a voice called it. Sasuke pulled a peanut out from somewhere other than their box lunch, evidently having collected them from their wagon. He smashed the shell with a finger and a thumb and offered one nut to an awaiting beak, feeding the other to himself.

"Could I have one?" Sarada asked. She was still more of a cat person. Certainly her relationship with the sleek critter was dissimilar to her fathers', but having it this close, she could see herself warming up to it. Crows felt familiar, as though they were confidants.

Sasuke returned his wrist to the crow's talons, and it agreed to hop on. He ferried it to Sarada's shoulder where it found its next post.

She went rigid, diverting all of her energy into stepping as smoothly as possible. It was right there, a finger width from her face. The creature twitched at an unstable tempo, and Sarada became acutely aware of its agency; its consciousness. She inhaled and twisted a few degrees to her left until her nose was on a collision course. Creased feathers stemmed from the puffed area around its eye. The crow had crow's feet, she mused. Its head was still, and one glossy parallel eye bored into hers, as though they were on opposite sides of a glass pane.

Yep, definitely a cat person.

A peanut found its way into her free palm. She hoisted it up to crack it open in view, but her new comrade leaned forward and snatched it, disappearing the food into its gullet before fluttering away.

Two days and a night came and went. At midday the convoy stopped, resting its beasts of burden and the weary. Drums drummed the signal at the start and end of the allotted hour. Wherever they found themselves, they halted, which was invariably in the middle of a road. Riders in the center shifted to one side or the other in a halfhearted attempt at granting passage to fellow travelers that seldom crossed their path. Sarada had spotted an oncoming ragged few while they were in motion, and most opted to wait them out on the shoulder rather than struggle to navigate the crowd.

Evening began just as the previous had, with an expansive dirt circle sprouting from their route, evenly spaced from the first by a full day's march. The train steered off the road and packed into the circuit starting from the fringes. A sizable hole remained at the innermost where dozens of labor-made folk hauled heavy logs, some needing to be dragged by one end, and arranged them into a tight but breathable pattern. Once the last of the timber trickled in, three women drifted from location to location in the pit igniting discrete regions, before the flames met each other and merged, each fiery union roaring louder and higher. There were reds and yellows cast onto clouds that filled most of the sky, and the fire blended into them while animating a wreath of shadowy forest entrances.

Sasuke and Sarada had preferred to sleep early, but the night was distractingly frigid, and without a cart of their own to worry about, they gathered close to the blaze as all of the nearest seats were being taken. Four concentric rings formed with enough room to walk between.

To her right, Sarada identified smoke amid her loop, low enough to rule out the otherwise obvious source. They were passing along a closed, sanded box with silvery plumes spewing from the slit that ran the length of the lid. A man set it in his lap, raised the cover, and shoved his face into the billowing miasma of ashen air that rose to meet it. He closed the top after a couple seconds, dusting off his face, and handed it down the chain. Ten more people partook in the ceremony. An elderly woman in a loose blouse and slacks that matched her patterned hat was at Sarada's side. She expelled an overblown moan when she collapsed into her place. The box lifted her spirits, and she all too eagerly offered it to the girl on her left. Sarada leaned over to reach for it, but Sasuke intercepted the case halfway, rocking back into his own seat and letting it continue on to the man next in line.

"What, is it bad for you?"

"It will stunt your chakra development," Sasuke elaborated. Sarada did not see the appeal of choking on fumes, so even though she got the impression he was only half serious, she was not interested in investigating further.

Vendors jumped on the opportunity for a high yield in the tired hours, running the course in between the circular rows. They were in sufficient demand to stay busy without shouting merchandise through cupped hands. At this point Sarada recognized most of them; a lovestruck young couple selling water and tea, three men that seemed to have a contentious albeit chummy rivalry in the nut trade, a middle-aged couple who operated independently peddling trinkets - one decorative and one to ward against spirits - that occasionally found each other to exchange short words, two sour old men in robes with washroom staples that cursed buyers for taking too long, and someone for any type of food one could want at varying degrees of spoiled. The Uchihas chose tea and dumplings, and the night aged as they savored their meal.

Between bites, "This all, is it run by the Leaf?" Sarada asked.

"No. It's a semi-annual event connecting otherwise unconnected villages to the major ones."

"Hmmm."

Picturing such a large group moving throughout all five villages was difficult. By the time they made it all the way around the original troupe would be entirely replaced. Sarada studied the traders, some of whom were tapering off to put away their wares, and to the carts on the periphery.

"So who supplies all this?"

He tipped his head here, then there. "Our village, the other four. They all contribute. Some animals, handlers, and wagons, but that's about it." Sasuke raised his cup as if to signify its source. "The merchants are independent."

The whole operation struck her as remarkably organized, but she supposed that if there was money to be made, people would do just about anything.

A huge, tanned man stood, his braided hair spiraled into a bun. Spanning his entire body a layered robe crisscrossed in and out of itself, with enough color to conjure up images of blindly dumping out cans of paint. He paced tediously, halfway from the bonfire and the closest seated spectators. Lips hushed at their own pace.

"Once, every one hundred years, the people of the sea looked up past the ocean's glimmering surface and into the evil eye in the sky: the moon."

Sarada pulled back. He was too loud, and sported a voice so nasal that she cleared her own throat in frustration.

"At the end of that day, it was said to stay hidden in the sky as the sun dipped low. This was their sign to invade the ground dwellers' land. Those sodden sinners would infest taverns, streets, markets and places of work and worship. They do this as in the absence of a celestial body, their own bodies explode at the wrongness of it all. Such trivial sacrifices allow the rest of their kind to take over the land, dooming us all."

He was trying way too hard. Partway through the story, a string player had started accompanying in a sunken register, getting lost beneath the crackle of the flames. The speaker's hollering waned as he circled behind the pyre, before growing again.

"The people of the land took poor records, and knew of this impending disaster, but knew not of how to stop it. Summoned was the local oracle, her sagely words sure to save them all. She demanded meats - the highest quality meats that could be assembled - as payment. But alas, the woman's palette was not held in as high regard as her wisdom, and the people only cared to gift second-rate meats. In a ball of fire, the oracle burnt away, leaving a pile of salt in her place."

The man cast what was presumably salt from a pouch into the fire with an exaggerated arm motion, following through until his fist idled back at his hip. When he soon attempted character dialogue, it came out strangled and goofy.

"For a full year before the empty moon the land dwellers toiled away, collecting salt from the waters on their coasts and piling it ankle-deep to ward against the hazards beneath the depths. When the final night approached, the people cheered, as they had thwarted their attacker's plans. Their leader raised a glass, 'We've done it! To another century of safety!' In return, his advisor raised his own glass as the sun finished setting. With a devilish grin he declared, 'We've done it indeed! For it is rock salt that keeps us out!"

Cheers, cackles and applause rang out around the campground. The storyteller bowed, removing his wide cap and holding it out as he made his rounds, letting listeners drop coins into the bottom.

Sarada blinked, then snorted out a laugh, suppressing it halfway in an attempt to be polite, not that anyone would hear. Gauging her father's reaction, he was equally perplexed by the story, leaning forward with features ever so slightly scrunched inward. When he finished processing the tale he looked her way, where they both arrived at the conclusion to turn in and stood, slipping away to find the closest unclaimed territory as another man prepared for his turn to speak.

"Obviously sea salt wasn't going to work. They live in the sea." Sarada shook her head in disbelief. "Or was it an ocean? That part wasn't clear."

"The moon… doesn't make people explode," Sasuke included, shading his eyes with the hand that massaged his temple.

"And what was the message supposed to be? Don't short change people on their meat or your house will blow up?"

"He didn't strike me as the sort of person to think that deeply about the narrative."

Sarada vaulted across a log bench while Sasuke stepped around.

"It would have been better if we had some reason to care about one group or the other," she suggested.

Sasuke mulled it over.

"The sea people were running out of resources."

"Ooo, that's good! And the land people can't afford to…"

On day three, Sarada was starting to feel restless. Playing along with the procedures of the regulars was easy due to the caravan mostly operating on groupthink, but their perpetual need to stay on the move was constricting; even wandering the outlands would have offered freedom. If she had some service to provide, like the herbal apothecary's apprentice she sometimes made conversation with, or their healer partner that invited her to play cards, it might not have been so bad. She maintained the professional distance expected of anyone working on behalf of her village, not even bragging to her new healer friend about her mother, and the minimal contact was a far cry from being able to stretch her shinobi legs. Going more than a day without some form of combat was agonizing.

Several hours after noon, the cool and clear daytime skies carried over into the evening. The roadway was still walled by endless woods, but the soil was tighter and drier. A shallow cloud of dust lingered up to her ankles from the constant agitation of dirt. Sarada had a simple understanding of the region's geography, west but mostly north of her reference point. Rivers and lakes became more scarce with distance.

The only notable improvement from the past two days was the lowered pitches, as though people had suddenly learned to be respectful of other travelers' hearing.

A man was navigating toward them. She had not seen him before, but his mob looked eager to buy what he was selling. As he got closer, Sarada thought he would better fit in on a farm than as a salesman, with his plain blue apron, feathery belt and loose pants, creased in spots where discarded bands or tape left distinct imprints. Something was printed on the inside of the apron. It was reversed, she realized. 'Traveling Company.' Were she not who she was, the label would be unreadable. On his tray were jugs and glasses scented with alcohol. After three days of steady drinking the passengers were running low, and the money made itself. That explained the quiet.

When he attended to their area, she was surprised to watch her father upend their own cozy silence by approaching him and exchanging a few coins.

"Heated?" inquired the gentleman, already reaching for a pitcher over a flat flame. It must have been popular.

Sasuke nodded and accepted the filled cup. Back down the path from where the man had walked, Sarada noticed a few women dressed in the same apron and with the same containers.

"Would you like to try?" Sasuke asked her.

"Huh? Are you sure that's okay?"

"You can have a sip."

She absorbed the warmth through the thin wall of glass and drank enough to fill a spoon. Sarada swirled it around once before promptly spitting it out at her side, with her face contorted by the bitterest thing she had ever tasted. The fact that the seller was now roaring with laughter made her want to validate herself.

"It smelled sweet! That wasn't sweet at all!"

"It's okay, lots of people don't like the taste," Sasuke said.

He took his own sip and the merchant's beaming intensified, proud of his craft and taking his leave. With a now dry pitcher, the merchant removed a new one from the basket on his back before fixing it atop the fire and severing the lid's wax seal with a kunai.

It got louder before it got quieter, many of their companions riding out the twilight in a solitary buzz. Sasuke returned his cup to a different drink vendor's tray.

"Let's rest for a while," he suggested.

They would make camp sometime in the coming two hours, but Sarada found reading more immersive while stationary, and so did not find herself minding. Earlier, they had migrated to the head of the caravan for a change of scenery, and had to backtrack for a few minutes to reach their usual wagon. Drowsy men and women lurched by that might as well have been sleepwalking.

"Have you noticed?" Sasuke asked in a familiarly open-ended fashion.

"That people drink too much?"

When he refrained from confirming, that was her cue to derive the different explanation that he was indicating existed within their surroundings. Sarada sharpened her focus after having felt sheltered enough to stay at ease for a half week. It was dead silent, save for the rustle of footfalls from animals and the comatose, and the squeaks of rarely-maintained wooden wheels. Her eyes instinctively tracked back and forth, threatened by every ghostly breath that spilled from a tranced mouth.

"Is this- What is this? Some kind of virus?"

"Unlikely."

He already knew what was happening, so she recognized it had to be something straightforward.

"An attack," she guessed. An excerpt from one of her medical texts called out to her: 'When you hear hoofbeats, look for horses, not zebras.' "No, a robbery." An unguarded procession of hundreds was such a practical target that she was frustrated for not having thought of it in the days prior. The size of the caravan alone would deter petty theft, but to an organized crew of fighters a heist would be trivial.

Sasuke nodded. They kept moving, sticking to the inside lanes protected from any long sightlines on the ground.

"So that wasn't just alcohol. Why bother drugging civilians?" Sarada puzzled.

"Whoever they are, most of them likely aren't shinobi."

They reunited with the passenger cart and climbed aboard. Sasuke sat down, employing the backrest under his forearm to prop himself up and absorb most of his weight, while Sarada hovered in the aisle. Her self-consciousness surged trying to have a conversation nearby so many dubiously conscious others, but she knew they had to act.

"Should we really be waiting around right now? We have to help the people that drank-" She cut herself off as the fatigue in Sasuke's expression opposed her. "Wait, you drank that stuff too!"

"I'm all right," he assured with grateful cheeks uplifted. "We had to know if it was dangerous. But right now you have a job to do."

Sasuke closed his eye and slouched a bit as he relaxed against the seat. Sarada automatically stood tall to receive a mission briefing. Despite the spontaneity of the assignment, she felt far more pressure to perform admirably than for even her normal mission coordinator.

"The things they steal have to be brought somewhere. Find the first to leave and follow them."

"What about the others? There have to be lots to rob a group of this size." Her apprehension about combating such a large crowd was loud despite going unsaid. Even if that doubt was warranted, it was too embarrassing to admit when she possessed one of the best tools in existence for handling multiple attackers.

"Don't worry about them, focus on the one. Still, if there's more than one," Sasuke said while pulling a stack of shuriken from his bag and handing it to her, "create space with your tools, rather than attacking with them."

Well, it was not the exhaustive scope discussion she was accustomed to, but if this was what it was like to work with her father, it might not be so bad. She believed in his instructions, and if nothing else, they were simple. Such incredibly broad advice would come off as lazy from a less prodigious teacher, but from her father, she knew it was the most relevant information for the moment.

"And once they stop somewhere, then what?"

"You'll figure it out. I trust you," Sasuke answered quietly. "Come back to me if things get out of hand, or send a signal."

He pointed to his right, to a position they had crossed just minutes ago, as a man in an apron was rifling through a woman's pockets without contest and transferring to his next victim. When she next observed her father he was motionless, maybe asleep. After a deep breath, she dashed through the opening behind the wagon driver, springboarding off the ledge and onto the square awning of the next vehicle over.