While the Caravan that Naruto and his team were protecting wended its way towards Tanigakure, the town of Saida was dealing with a crisis that many were coming to believe they wouldn't survive. On the day the Daimyo's men had come to arrest Futuro Kinmaru, the merchant's mercenaries arrived to deal with the town as per his orders. There had been a brief battle in which the Daimyo's men who had been part of the Fire Country Judicial Forces rather than ninja had been killed and the village overrun. Instead of fleeing like a sensible fugitive would following the murder of several of the Daimyo's men, Kinmaru who proved to be a madman as well as a criminal stayed, believing that the town was too small and remote for anyone of importance to bother dealing with.
Following Kinmaru's takeover, the townspeople of Saida were living in fear as the merchant who had taken their town ruled over them with an iron fist and severely punished those who didn't show him the "proper respect". The only hope the townspeople had now was that a small boy that had slipped past the mercenary patrols would reach Konoha, and that the ninja there would be inclined to help them despite the treatment they had received at the townspeople's hands the last time they had been through. As the villagers waited and hoped, more and more of them were dragged out into the town square to be "punished" as Kinmaru sat watching in his throne-like chair whilst snacking on delicacies and a group of jeering mercenaries laughed.
Every time a defiant Saida resident mentioned Konoha or the ninja whom they'd treated poorly at the merchant's urging, they received scoffs in return. After all, wasn't it they who had banded together and chased a team from Konoha from their town? Even if Konoha was inclined to help due to their bleeding-heart nature, it wouldn't do much good. It was a well known fact that despite strong numbers and a few well-known figures, Konoha was weak, was preparing to stand down its forces and become a tourist trap like Yugakure had done. The only reason nobody had invaded yet aside from the mutual defense treaty with Suna was the fact that Konoha had been riding on its old reputation, and nobody was entirely certain whether or not the village was only playing dead.
On the day the caravan reached Tanigakure and Sakura had somehow found herself in a fight with one of the locals, a small boy named Hiro stood at the gates of Konoha wondering how he'd be able to get help from the ninja who lived there. Prior to now, he'd only heard stories about Konoha, stories that had painted it as a mystical place whose residents practiced esoteric arts that were unknown to the minds of normal hard-working men. Unfortunately, none of those stories had told him where or how to get help for his friends and family. The only thing he could think of doing was to ask the Hokage who stood ruler over all of Konoha which was far bigger than any other town or village he'd ever seen.
"Hey kid, what're you doing?" one of the gate guards who'd apparently noticed he'd been standing staring at the massive village gate for too long asked.
"I-I need to see the Hokage." Hiro stammered nervously, remembering what he'd heard that the ninja had done to the men who had dared to kidnap some of their own.
"I swear, if this is yet another brat who's run away from home to become a ninja, I'm taking him to Danzo." the other gate guard said before flagging down a passing Chunin.
Once the Chunin who'd previously been taking advantage of his sick leave was settled in the second guard's former position, the gate guard led the boy further into the massive "village" that rivaled the Capitol in size, scope, and grandeur despite the fact that it was centuries newer. Eventually, the two of them reached the massive administrative complex that was the heart of the village. Once there, Hiro was practically dragged to the Mission Assignment room because he couldn't help but stop and stare despite the urgency of his mission, having seen nothing like this place before in his short life.
Standing at the back of the room behind the Mission Assignment Desk was an old man in red and white robes who wore a red and white hat that bore the Kanji for Fire. This was clearly the Hokage whose ninja would be able to help his village.
"There," the gate guard who'd led him from the gate said. "You've seen the Hokage, and as you can see he's a very busy man who doesn't have time for..."
But, Hiro wasn't listening, he was doing what was probably the stupidest thing that one could do in the Hokage's presence, which was approaching the Hokage without permission. Had the elderly man who had a soft spot for children not gestured for the guards to stand down, the boy would have been dead before he had gotten within ten feet of the man, much less close enough to kneel at the man's feet.
"Please." Hiro said as he knelt before the Hokage in supplication. "I need your help."
"What with?" the Hokage asked with a put upon sigh. He received similar pleas from more important people nearly every week, and almost every request made after the initial pleading turned out to be exceedingly trivial and not worth the time or the resources needed to fulfill the request. Getting a child to do the begging was a rather novel move however.
"We arrested this evil merchant who was selling people as slaves, and when the Daimyo's men came to take him to the Capitol to be tried, the merchant's men came and killed them and took over the town. We need your help to get rid of them." Hiro replied, hoping that if he didn't mention what they'd done to the ninja who'd rescued the merchant's children, the Hokage would be more inclined to help.
"There's something you're hiding." the Hokage said, noting that the child showed all the classic signs. He would have dismissed the boy's begging as a stupid and suicidal prank if he hadn't received a missive that morning from the Daimyo who'd requested that a team of ninjas go out and search for some of his men who'd been engaged in a prisoner transfer from a town on the Hot Water Country border and were several days late.
"We didn't mean to!" the boy replied in a rather guilty tone that the Hokage recognized from the days when he'd been raising his children.
"What didn't you mean to do?" the Hokage asked.
"If we'd known that the merchant was lying about your ninja being with the kidnappers, we wouldn't have been rude to them, and we wouldn't have tried to chase them off." the boy replied somewhat sulkily.
The Hokage sighed for an entirely different reason than he had earlier after recalling the incident the boy had mentioned. On the one hand, things in Saida couldn't have turned out better if he'd planned it because, he wouldn't have to send in operatives to covertly deal with the leaders of that little Snafu over the period of several months to a couple of years. On the other, things couldn't be worse. Instead of sending out a single team to search for the remains of the party which he had previously believed had run afoul of bandits, he would be forced to send several teams out into open combat with little hope of remuneration as everything of value had most likely already have been long since been taken from the Saida townspeople, and the Daimyo would more than likely mark the mission down as one of the ones Konoha owed him each year in order to be allowed to keep operating within Fire Country's borders. Normally, Konoha got away with a bunch of cat retrieval missions and a couple of C-ranks, but...
"Don't worry child." he said with one of the smiles that had been formulated to put small children at ease. "We'll still help you despite what you were tricked into doing to our ninja. Sometimes even the smartest people get tricked."
Mentally marking the rescue of the township of Saida down as one of those crappy no-pay to low-pay missions that bolstered Konoha's image as "the nice guys" that they'd been taking on in increasing numbers over the years, the Hokage deftly deflected the small boy's exuberant display of gratitude, and ordered one of the guards to take the boy to get something to eat. Considering the situation the boy had described and the likely reaction the merchant would have to being deposed from his ill-gotten post by ninja, this was likely to be the last time that boy would be happy for a long time. There was a good chance that the child was already an orphan and, until it was proven otherwise, he would recommend that the child be housed in one of the village orphanages.
As far as he was concerned, the situation sucked for everyone all round. The ninja being sent to Saida would be receiving the lowest pay for that rank of mission out of the village's infrastructure funds which would take money away from road repair and park maintenance unless other remuneration was received. He of course would have to justify his reasoning for assigning such a mission, as the number of missions gained from slightly squeamish travelers who would hire "the ninja who dealt with bandits without making it rain guts" wouldn't come close to making up for the ninja who would be lost in that mission. Most of all, it sucked for the Saida townspeople who would be hostages in a few short days when the mission was underway.
Across the village and completely oblivious to the crisis that was brewing half-way across the country, Mitokado Homura's heart pounded in a way it hadn't in years. Certainly not since his beloved wife had passed on at far too young an age when their last child who had soon followed her - a child that had been completely unexpected considering the fact that she should have been going through menopause at the time - had been born too soon. Fidgeting nervously, he once again examined the flowers he'd brought with him before knocking on the door.
His heart hammered even harder in his chest as he heard coming from within the house the shuffling of a pair of dainty feet that had once sent a Kumo ninja flying over a tree before their owner had left the ninja forces in order to marry a good man who - at the time - he'd been upset wasn't him and start a family. Before he was ready, the door opened and a familiar face appeared. Age and arthritis may have caught up with Hitomi-chan, but she was still as beautiful to his eyes as she had been in her youth.
"I'd ask if Sarutobi made you fetch my groceries for me again but, I haven't asked for any recently." Hitomi said when she spotted him on her doorstep, her beautiful brown eyes lit up with amusement.
"I uh, I uh Icametogiveyouthese!" Homura squeaked as he thrust the flowers in Hitomi's face.
Even at sixty-eight, she could make him feel and act like a nervous first-year Academy student...