They landed in the largest of Water's islands, where all four of its major population centers—the Capital and Mist included—were located.

The ship had come from the Land of Steam, so it was little surprise to Sakura that the rest of its inhabitants didn't seem remotely uncomfortable in the humidity and ocean spray. It took no time at all to adjust her posture to mimic theirs, but she already couldn't wait to go back to the relatively dryer climate of Fire—it almost felt like one was breathing water instead of air, here, and that wasn't necessarily the most comfortable sensation.

Eiko had nearly immediately adopted the same posture, but added to it an incredibly affable demeanor. He'd had someone on the ship with a medical license check her out in the morning—"just to be sure"—to clear her of the pox, something that the clearly hungover man did without once actually looking at her.

Sakura would be far more concerned if she'd actually been sick.

After that Eiko'd kept up his flurry of activity, meeting with one person or another, filing forms and answering questions, and constantly not-so-subtly trying to slip in promotion for his wares. He dragged her along the entire time like a reluctant child, constantly turning back to ask if she "got that," if she "understood." Soon anyone he was talking to would look at her with a mixture of sympathy and condescension, and then not look at her at all. (It was, Sakura realized not for the first time, a very good thing that the national language of Fire—Kunise—was also the language of commerce. Besides some coaching in mimicking the right accent the fact that she didn't speak any language but Kunise had little impact on her ability to perform her job.)

(Still, an additional language or two probably wouldn't hurt. Something to think about, she supposed, if she ever wanted to willingly transition away from Research.)

While she may not speak the language, Sakura had otherwise made sure she was very, very prepared for the trip: Water, by now, was a land she knew better than any other besides her homeland, despite having only just stepped foot on it for the first time.

This was made somewhat easier than, for instance, studying the Land of Tea, because of how utterly unique the nation was.

The most notable aspect about it—at least from the perspective of a ninja examining one of the Great Nations—was that it did not have Samurai.

At all.

The Water Daimyo had once had a navy that acted in a very similar, if more seafaring, manner to Samurai, one of the only large ones in the world, but it had fallen into disuse (read: a series of coups turned all the privateers into straight-up pirates, and the Daimyo was to the present still trying desperately to reassert control.) Uzu now did most of the patrolling that occurred in the nearby seas—it was one of the ways that they, being such a small island, maintained their power. Other navies, the Land of Tea's being the next most prominent, also existed, but only to protect their own interests. The sea, then, was considered largely lawless, and as Water was split apart by waves in every direction, the lawlessness very much crept into the day-to-day, even on land.

Given that, Sakura was entirely unsurprised to find to ninja guards on either side of the gates between the dock and the island. Even Fire used shinobi as customs on most land routes—Samurai were the only ones who dealt with the sea, and that was more because of tradition than anything else. She flashed her chakra out, so featherlight only a jounin might notice, and, with that and her eyes, took stock: two males of reasonable power (chuunin, perhaps, or slightly below if they were supposed to be frontline) but who had grown lazy and conniving. As each new applicant approached they'd only do a cursory check for any clear sign of danger, before demanding a rather large fee for entrance and, upon its finding its way into one of their hands, allowing access.

This, too, was unsurprising.

While Konoha was not exactly an expert in the politics of the island Great Nation—its topography might've been inconvenient for its Daimyo in most aspects, but it did impede many espionage attempts—they did (obviously) manage to slip a couple infiltrators in there, and one interesting tactic that was reported back was the way Water dealt with security: visible guards were always, without exception, deemed pointless. They were meant to catch the most blatant examples of danger and only the most blatant; Water relied far too much on tourism to be any more unashamedly heavy handed.

It was the hidden ANBU that one had to watch out for.

While the reports didn't provide exact numbers, it was clear that the Mist had far more ANBU than Leaf bothered with, but then they also expected their ANBU to do much more; it was their ANBU, rather than chuunin guards, who ran the actual security of the islands.

The good news (and really the only reason Mist remained as vulnerable as it did) was that they were notoriously bad at chakra sensing.

Like, really bad.

And it wasn't because they didn't have sensors, either, they just… didn't train them, it seemed like?

The reports were pretty split about how that particular result came about, particularly because Mist ninja were also the best at hiding their signatures.

Still, it did allow for far easier infiltration, even if it was harder to maintain contact while undercover.

Then you only had to deal with the second problem of Water, the problem which affected civilians just as much as it did ninja: it claimed it was one nation.

That claim, admittedly, was what allowed it to become a Great Nation. Otherwise, it would've been stuck with the other smaller nations of the area, like Uzu and Sky and Honey… it would've been, like them, forced to rely largely on the Land of Fire or Lightning as the nearest Great Nation to protect them in the political world.

But that didn't mean the claim was accurate.

In Water more than any other country, families ruled. Each family only paid passing respect to the Daimyo, and while their regard for Kiri was far more real, they still 'felt' like they should have full control of the lands they had claim to.

And so help you if you didn't have land.

This helped keep Kiri from being a major threat to Konoha, but it also meant that getting any information reliably out of the islands was painful—even if you got someone past their ANBU, you still had to deal with how every family was lying, cheating, and stealing from each other as well as foreigners: none of your information was guaranteed to be remotely accurate, and you could only ever learn about a tiny section of the Land at a time, especially because the few effective sensors Kiri had stayed in the Hidden Village 24/7, constantly watching for any threats and keeping out all but the most effective infiltrators.

So.

The two guards standing at either side of the gates were no worry, but that meant little.

After the guards, Eiko wasted little time getting them rooms in the inn and then to the market, where the first of three days of selling their pottery began.

Sakura, playing the role of the daunted ten-year-old surprise heir, stayed quiet and wide-eyed and, whenever she was sent outside so the "adults could talk," allowing her brain to run wild with plan As and Bs and Cs in extracting her brother. They'd already burned the scroll, so she relied wholly on what she'd memorized before they'd docked.

The days passed quickly (the time lost in constant apprehension, constant anxiety, constant hope and fear and stress), and then they were leaving town.

Sakura began pulsing her chakra immediately and, the second the roads in front and behind them were empty, twitched her finger slightly.

They kept going.

Almost half an hour later Sakura's hand formed a fist, and Eiko moved the horse and cart to the side.

"We're good?" He muttered quietly.

She nodded. "They were following a bit, but curved off with the larger group—I think they found them more worrying because they're from Lightning but pretending they're from Frost."

He quirked his eyebrow.

"Definitely from that region, large enough chakra stores that they had to be ninja, and they're not really trying to hide that, and Frost has too few to be throwing them around. They also don't seemed to have noticed us."

He grunted, then pointed up the hill. "That direction, right?"

"Right. Now, your job is keeping out of trouble. I'm going to go in alone—smaller footprint."

He grunted again. "Fine by me." He glanced around. "I'll set up camp a little into the woods and make it seem as if something's wrong with one of the wheels. People here aren't the most trustworthy, but they also like to stay out of trouble—they'll see that I need something and stay well away."

Sakura nodded. "Shouldn't take long. A few hours, if everything goes to plan. If I'm not back by nightfall at all then something's wildly and you should proceed with exit procedures; if I am able to, I'll catch up the next day, otherwise leave get out as quickly as possible."

Another grunt.

She disappeared into the woods.

The palace was… a palace. It took little time to get in, though; the noble wasn't part of a family that used chakra, and while he apparently got along unusually well with Water's ninja contingent, he also didn't trust them enough to have them protect his house. He relied nearly solely on manpower, then, which was helpful in most cases but entirely too weak a defense against even a fresh genin—he trusted the ninja enough to keep danger away from Water as a whole, then, even if he didn't trust them so close to where he went to sleep.

If anything, the other spies that were no doubt dotted around the house should be more worrying, but they were unlikely to interfere—they'd just watch, try to get information from her movements too, if they even spotted her, but not intrude and reveal their cover.

She scaled the wall of the main building with no one the wiser, refreshed the cloak of invisibility technique, and slipped onto one of the balconies whose doors were "always left open," to cope with the high humidity of the island.

The doors were open.

The layout of the palace was also exactly as described, and it took Sakura little time to make her way through the house, constantly watching out for anyone to come near and freezing under her cloak until they moved away.

And then she arrived at the first obstacle: the eunuchs.

They stood, completely blocking any way in or out of the rooms where Arato spent most of his days. They wouldn't move, wouldn't twitch, would bodily keep anyone out—and everyone in.

But Sakura had planned ahead.

A huge crack rang through the house, the sound of splitting wood audible despite clearly being some distance away.

The Eunuchs didn't move.

She hadn't expected them to.

Then came the screaming.

Sakura had planned carefully, using slightly underpowered exploding tags—the kind which would burn themselves up—on several sections of roof, causing a cave-in which, while large, would not initially kill.

She'd done this all on top of the rooms of the three female consorts and their entourages, and now those Eunuchs were rushing to evacuate the wing.

One of the eunuchs twitched uncertainly but didn't move, and Sakura hadn't expected them to.

She ducked behind a wall and, carefully forming hand signs, (genjutsu would never be something she could do with any speed, or even particularly covertly), masked her voice, before shouting out (in their language with a perfect Water accent, so those three days of talking about pottery were useful for something, thank you very much) "More hands! We need more hands! Oh god, more hands!" (Let's not mention how long that took to practice.)

Again, the Eunuchs twitched. Again, they didn't move.

Sakura didn't even look back, vanishing down the hallway to the nearest open balcony.

She exited, carefully masked, to find the women clustered in the yard, looking frustrated more than anything else. Several looked injured, but the injuries were minor—minor enough, too, that the women were spending all their time and effort complaining, drawing the attention of several of their servants each.

Then she inched around the side of the building; the Eunuchs were distracted, and that was enough.

The windows had bars.

Arato had warned her about that.

They were welded on.

He'd warned her about that too.

She moved to the roof, carefully cutting her way through in a way that, after the fact, might look a bit like a collapsed roof. She set an exploding tag there—slow release, long enough for her to do what she needed to—and then another, and then she sank down to the bars that crossed over the ceiling of the highest floor.

One more exploding tag, and then she made her way out.

The women as a whole were yelling, now, furious that the roof "nearly killed them" and "they deserved better."

Sakura made her way to the third, and last, section of the roof that was set up like the one on top of her brother's was. She set it to collapse, the same as the rest, then crept back.

She'd barely made it to the ground when the second roof collapsed.

Just as the others had, these eunuchs rushed everyone outside, standing evenly apart and muttering to each other in confusion. The other workers of the palace—the maids and cooks and butlers—huddled together as well, having wholly evacuated the building for the time being.

Afterwards, there would probably be quite a bit of time and energy spent looking into what had happened, but for now the residents of the palace looked at how only one type of roof collapsed and leapt to their own conclusions—even the eunuchs, while they were still on guard, did not seem to expect an attack.

There were benefits to using fuinjutsu—such seals were rare enough in practice that they were no one's first thought.

And there was Arato.

It was a bit hard to recognize him—he was dressed, more or less, like a girl, and he was significantly older—but he was still her brother, and she saw him watching the roof with a knowing eye; if you knew an extraction team was coming it was harder to dismiss anything as bad architecture.

Sakura snuck back into the woods (this part was particularly dangerous, given how many eyes might notice any mistake), then turned around and, oh so carefully, dragged the log she'd found earlier into sight.

Then she made her way back in the woods.

She'd barely turned around to begin keeping watch when the substitute occurred.

Arato grinned, looking around the woods in excitement, and she stood.

"Sa—" He started, before dashing forward and gathering her in a hug. "Oh, it's so good to see you. Let's go."

Sakura laughed and then, looking back at the eunuchs who were looking at the log in confusion, grabbed his hand.

They dashed back through the woods and to Eiko.

They didn't leave that night. No matter how successful the pretend initial meeting might be, it would still take two or three days. Instead, they camped several miles down in the woods, far from the path, completely silent and with Sakura using her sensing power as frequently as possible. As she kept watch, Eiko helped Arato dye his hair. He'd had a surgery to give himself pseudo-pupils, so at least those sorts of contacts weren't necessary, but they still had to change his appearance fairly noticeably. His makeup was scrubbed off, far more masculine clothing substituted, gray-brown dye used, and rubbing alcohol was rubbed on his hands and feet to hasten callous development as much as possible while his nails were deliberately cut short as any clay worker might do. Eiko also styled Arato's hair differently, using a style popular among working-class Water residents.

It was a very busy night.

The next two days consisted of much the same. It was still far too dangerous to sleep, much less to flee.

The following afternoon they made their way back to the city.

Sakura fell asleep almost immediately, leaning heavily on Eiko as she played on her young body and the long trip to explain away her exhaustion.

Arato sat on the opposite side, his posture entirely different from what it had been at the palace and cheery in demeanor, carving a tiny wooden animal as he taught Eiko a bawdy Water song. His Kunise was heavily accented, the stubble that had grown over the past several days sculpted into what looked like a teenager's idea of a cool look: in just a few days, every aspect of his appearance had been completely transformed.

Sakura slept through their arrival at the city, only waking up when Eiko shook her awake in front of the inn.

"Come on, come on! You can sleep on the ship!"

Rubbing her eyes, Sakura felt two ANBU disturbingly close; not only that, their cloaking ability was so good that if they were even a little further away, she wouldn't have noticed them at all.

That was a sickening thought.

"We're really leaving so soon?" Sakura said, looking imploringly at her pseudo-father.

"Yes."

"Why?"

Eiko shifted, looking slightly nervous. "Oh, you know, the benefits of a better clay supplier really need to be taken advantage of immediately."

Sakura narrowed her eyes at his back as he led her inside the inn. "I'm not an idiot," She muttered under her breath, before following.

The ANBU didn't leave.

It took little time to pack, and as they did Arato—as the nephew of the clay supplier—chatted up another merchant who was trying to sell furniture; like Eiko, he pushed his goods even in situations where said goods were clearly unwanted.

Their things packed and their bills paid, Eiko led the way to the docks. "What do you have leaving today for the Land of Steam?"

The man looked up at him, displeased. "The day is already mostly over!"

"I know, I know! I just—" He glanced at Sakura, then pretended he didn't. "I miss home, you know?"

Sakura shifted, clearly disbelieving, then glanced at Arato herself.

The man didn't seem to care. "Well, we've got—" he started, pointed to a cargo ship, but he was interrupted by Eiko's scoff.

"I'm not going to sail in one of those! I want a ship meant to carry people or I may as well just stay here!"

"Why'd we leave the hotel room, then?" Sakura muttered under her breath. It was Arato's turn to cut her a look; he would, after all, be expecting a properly behaving bride.

"Alright, alright!" The guard said, looking at something over their shoulders. "We have a ship heading towards Frost, but it'll stop at Steam halfway through—the Capital, actually. You'll have to pay for the full trip, though. Is that good enough?"

Eiko huffed. "It'll have to be, won't it?"

A little less than half an hour later, they were boarding when someone cleared their throat behind them.

They turned, finding two Kiri shinobi standing side by side.

"A consort—Nagisa, one of the great Lord Serizawa's—has been kidnapped. Do you know anything about that?"

In turn, they professed their ignorance.

The one on the right seemed willing to believe them, but the second narrowed his eyes. He looked at each in turn, then ordered them to open their luggage.

They did so.

There was nothing there.

The two ninja consulted over a slip of paper—it seemed to be a drawing and description of 'Nagisa' and, at last, decided that none of them looked remotely like the pictured consort.

They were allowed to leave.

They made their way onto the ship, to Steam's Capital, down the coast, and then, at last, they entered Fire's borders and Sakura tackled Arato.

"Oh, I have so much to tell you! I'm so happy you're okay!"

"Me too, little genius," Arato said, grinning. "I'm looking forward to seeing everyone again."