With only two months to go until her Diplomatic/Research/Possibly even Intelligence gathering mission began, Sakura did what any reasonable person would.

She had a panic attack.

And then she went home, because her father wasn't due to leave for another day and she could use the company.

The path between the Administrative Building and Yamanaka Compound was rather straightforward and short, and given that it was identical to the path between the Academy and the Yamanaka Compound, Sakura could manage the route blindfolded and hopping.

So it was rather a shock to her when, most of the way there (the Yamanaka Compound fencing was already to her right), she felt obliged to stop.

She looked right, then left, then behind her, but no one there particularly attracted her attention—there were several people attending to shrines, a man missing both legs walking on his hands, and several dogs (none looked to be Inuzuka, but it was always hard to tell with how frequently they bred new traits) wandering about, living their own lives as best they could.

Besides that, there wasn't much to see, at least on the first pass.

Just as she moved to open her senses, her eyes flickered up and to the right, towards the massive trees that poked out from the Yamanaka lands and covered the street in half-shade.

"Rento?"

"Hi, Aunt Sakura," Rento—Genin of the leaf, nephew of her eldest brother, legal adult and preteen—said.

"What are you doing up there?"

Well, she knew what he was doing, actually. Could see it perfectly well. He was curled up close to the trunk in a portion of the tree with the most numerous branches and foliage and Sakura would give anything that he was actively trying to suppress his chakra—no small task for those who weren't sensors themselves—too.

"Um."

"Get down. Now."

Rento sighed, then balanced on the branch and paced along it until he could jump down next to her.

"Hi."

"You said that already. What were you doing?"

Rento gave a weak grin. "You asked that already."

Sakura stared at him. As she waited for his response, the number of people on the street began to swell with the usual afternoon rush to hear the town crier's latest news of the dead, missing, and returning.

(There had been more deaths since Danzo's aggressive push began, but there had also been more returning as they began to cycle people out more. Sakura had been quietly hoping that one of her teammates' names would come up, but she'd been unlucky so far. She wondered if they would arrive only to find her gone.)

"That."

"What?"

"I don't—I know that—I know that plenty of, um, enemies do that, and we need to do it back, but I don't want to contribute." He gestured, futilely, towards the town crier, towards the usual news of death.

Sakura allowed a slow blink. "You've entered into the wrong line of work for that." She said rather drily. She wasn't particularly in the mood to be charitable, what with the new burden she was facing, and besides that, Rento already knew her opinion on killing, so acting as if he didn't was helping no one.

"I know! But you don't—I mean, you haven't—"

"I took someone's life. At about your age, too."

A singular someone, so far. She'd been in more fights than that, and had far more moments of fearing for her life, but only once was she ever the one to deal the final blow.

She'd still done it.

"And I dunno if I can."

"Your sensei says it's time?"

"Said it this morning. I, um, ran."

"Did she chase after?"

"No."

"So why did you hide?"

"Just because she wasn't chasing then doesn't mean she wouldn't later. And I know that I don't need to learn how to kill. For paperwork ninja it isn't mandatory."

Sakura sighed. "Not anymore. New rule of General Danzo's—everyone who is to work outside the walls has to have killed or be in the process of getting their first kill. And because every shinobi is inevitably going to have to work outside the walls…."

"Well, that was shitty of him, then!"

Sakura shrugged. "Life's shitty."

"…You're not in a good mood, are you?"

"Nope."

"Why?"

"Ask me later. I'm still trying to process."

Then she blinked.

And then she began thinking out loud. "I'm going to be a diplomat. Diplomats get assistants. Genin assistants. I could have—do you want to be a Research assistant?"

"You literally just said you were being transferred to Diplomacy."

"That's not what I said, but it doesn't matter: do you want to be a Research assistant? An… irregular one?"

Rento shrugged. "Would I have to kill?"

"Yes, but only the once."

That got Rento's attention. "It's outside Konoha? The job?"

"Yes."

"Can I get more information?"

"Not yet. I'm still processing. Can't even promise anything yet—just yes or no."

"Then—yes. Obviously."

"Great. Go apologize to your Sensei and find out when you can get the mission done. There's not much that I can do to help you prepare, but the sooner you do it, the sooner it's over with, and it's best to have your first kill in as safe a situation as possible."

Rento, once again reminded of his reason for his escape into the tree, grunted.

"You could also quit—"

"I'm not quitting!"

"—or refuse and remain a genin forever, probably demoted to genin corps with your unwillingness to kill and made to run messages until you can't take it anymore and retire early."

"I don't like that option either."

"There's really only the three."

As aunt and nephew talked, they'd begun walking and now found themselves in front of Sakura's house.

"I'll tell you more tomorrow, promise. Or maybe the day after. I just… not now."

Rento sighed, then nodded. "I guess I do have to do it. I just… don't have to like it."

"No," Sakura said. Then, "I certainly didn't."

He left, and she entered to find her father cooking rice—they'd gotten their latest ration of rice that day, and already cooked rice could easily be refried, so he was making a big enough portion to fill both the family's saucepans, even with only four of them living in the home.

"Hello, my cherry blossom! How was your day?"

"Don't want to talk about it."

Her father blinked, then shrugged. His whole job was pushing, so he wasn't about to start now that he was home—providing an ear was sufficient enough.

"Any names?"

It took Sakura a second to recall what he was talking about. "Don't know, sorry. I was almost home when the caller was due to begin. I think he should still be going on—they're providing more information now, trying to keep morale up."

"Always keep morale up," Her dad's voice was more than a little snarky, but it was true. Sakura had tried, as much as possible, to ignore the more blatant signs of war when she'd gotten home (and wow, that was a bad habit, wasn't it?), but even she couldn't stay away from the constant propaganda and national songs and so on. The caller even finished every week with a list of "still alive heroes"—those who had somehow done something particularly remarkable on the battlefield and lived to tell the tale.

Sakura's family was one of many to have the sneaking suspicion that the list was half real, half randomly selected names.

They tried not to think about it much.

"Have you ever done any work in the Land of Mushrooms?"

"Can't say I have, no. Weren't you there, though?"

"We passed through really quickly. Both times. There weren't even any people around the first time—probably scared by the size of the army—and the second, I mostly just saw people trying to make a quick buck by selling to anyone on the road; everyone else kept away."

"Ah. Well, I'm sorry I can't be of much help. Why do you ask?"

"I might be headed there soon." Might. Again, ignoring reality. She really needed to stop that, especially now that she had noticed the habit enough that it was beginning to irritate her. "Will be headed there soon, I mean."

"Hmm." Her father hummed. He poked at the rice, then glanced at her.

"A good opportunity?"

Sakura shrugged. "I don't want to talk about it." There it was again—her habit of willfully snubbing reality. She considered forcing herself to ignore the instinct, then decided she'd done enough to combat her bad habits for the day. "Actually, I think I might meditate a bit."

"Go for it. I've got dinner today."

"Thanks."

Arden was no help. One full day of meditation had found her enough of the economics that she'd previously found to make progress, but the two hours she could dedicate before dinner came up empty.

Learning about the process of cooking sourdough bread and using a kneading hook was all well and good, but not particularly helpful.

Dinner, at least, acted as a distraction: with the last group of children well into their first semester of the Academy and the next not due to start until January, the Yamanaka children should have fallen into a relative routine.

Instead, the group seemed unusually active, and that combined with one of the former women who rotated daycare duty dropping out (she was heavily pregnant now, her medically discharged husband having been home for almost half a year, and wasn't up for it anymore) meant that each and every Yamanaka caregiver, her younger sisters included, was being run ragged.

Which meant they had stories.

Eventually, though, dinner ended.

Goodbyes were said to their father—he'd be leaving well before dawn in the morning—and all members of the household went to go to sleep.

Sakura stared at the ceiling for some time, but she didn't reach for Arden. That, at least, was never going to be a nighttime habit again.

Instead, she thought by herself, tried to figure out what to do.

The effort was pointless, the hour late, and her mind already exhausted by having had to go in front of the Hokage mere hours before.

Sleep, eventually, came.

It was a restless one.

.

Three days later, Sakura had completely filled four journals, was now firmly convinced that half of the writings were completely inaccurate, was additionally sure that another third was likely to be untrue, and was more confident than ever that her trip to the Land of Mushrooms would end in utter failure.

She'd also only just gotten access to the Finance records the day before, and they made her head spin so much that she'd already decided to avoid the actual papers for at least another couple of days until she could figure out what to do with them.

Which led her to that day's destination.

It was still in the basement of the Administrative building, though, so her path to work was much the same.

"Hello, sorry, are you Uchiha Shuji?"

"Yes, yes I am. And you—I know who you are. You are Yamanaka Sakura. The Yamanaka Sakura who works in the Research Department, to be specific. Do you know how many Yamanaka Sakuras there are? Do you know how many Sakuras there are? Do you know how many Shuji there are? Far less Shuji than Sakura.

"But that's not what you're here for. I don't know what you're here for. You aren't here to talk about names, though—you already know how common yours is.

"Are you here to talk about my project? I like my project. It's inspired by your telegraph, kind of. Sort of. Mostly my own idea, though. I call it a 'computer.' Look at it—isn't it a beauty? I don't want any assistants, though. Told them that already."

Sakura looked around.

The 'computer' took up the whole room, was so incredibly noisy that it hurt her ears just to be near the machine, and clearly ran so hot that an excess of fuinjutsu was needed to keep it running. It was, Sakura knew, intended to calculate the massive tables often needed by Research work.

For now, though, it was a piece of junk; it straight up didn't work, and he'd been working on it as his sole project for years now.

"Um, not quite. That is—I have my own project."

"Then why are you here? It's not done yet, you know. Doesn't function yet. Will soon, though. You're not the only genius in Konoha, you know."

Sakura knew that. In fact, Sakura knew of him specifically—he had a bit of a reputation.

Uchiha Shuji, born the year Konoha was founded and therefore already 38 years old, was short, wiry, and prone to long rambling tangents. He had so many 'quirks' that there had apparently been a significant debate about enrolling him in the Academy at all, but the Uchiha enrolled all their children into the Academy, so there he went.

He was also brilliant.

At least half of the major non-fuinjutsu-related inventions (he didn't like working with fuinjutsu, which Sakura could more than relate to) were his.

Even the telegraph and radio systems were heavily contributed by him 'in his free time' because he thought it would help with what he considered his magnum opus—the very machine in this room.

He was notoriously difficult to get along with, but he was also widely agreed to be one of the smartest people in Konoha—smarter, even, (depending on how you measured it) than the Sannin or Hokage.

"I was hoping to get your help on my project, if possible. I had some questions about analyzing financial data and—"

"Finances. What an interesting concept. You know, I got my first allowance at two. My parents thought…."

It took another hour, but eventually he agreed to help; it would give him a large database to start checking over his computer with when it started working, at least, and would also allow him to perform the steps he wanted the computer to do himself. By the time she left, he was actually rather enthused by the task, talking to himself quietly about shifted perspectives and angles of approach.

That was step one.

.

Before step two, however, she had another duty that took her to her eldest brother's house.

Ikue sighed when she opened the door to see Sakura. "I have to go to work, but Rento's in our room. Maybe you can snap him out of it. The kami know no one else has been able to."

Due to the costs of the war—the literal resources needed, that is—many previous residences had been disassembled. Ikue' and Ren's house, already quite small, was considered for demolition but allowed to stay because the clan leader's mother-in-law had lived there until her death, thereby lending it historical significance.

Those houses that remained got new duties: Sakura's own was used as storage and daycare, while Ren's had the dubious honor of hosting four elders, all of them the women who had fought for the house to remain.

The rest of the family, then, had crammed themselves into the master bedroom with movable shoji acting as the only sort of privacy.

Rento's bed lay pressed against one corner of the room, and its occupant lay curled in the middle, his blanket covering him entirely.

"How are you?"

Rento grunted.

"Glad to hear it." Sakura sat. "I drank after my first kill." That, at least, got an interested shift from the mass. "My Sensei didn't really know how to handle it, but he figured that it made us adult enough to drink."

A muffled voice, "Did you like it?"

"No."

"Well then what use is that to me?"

"When did I ever say it'd be useful to you?"

"I hate you."

"Look, you have to ask for help, okay? There's a million reasons you might be struggling with what you had to do and until I know more specifics neither I nor anyone else can help much."

"Then don't."

"See, I can't do that. I have to help you. You're my nephew. So the other option is that I stay here—don't worry, I brought my notebooks—and I'll talk to you about—"

"Research?" Again, an interested shift from the mass.

"Nope. About anything and everything I can think of except Research. Got to give you motivation, after all."

Another groan, and then the covers, at last, were thrown off. "Nothing's wrong with me!"

"You're curled up in your bed in the daytime."

"Yeah, because nothing's wrong with me! I just, I dunno, I thought I'd care more. And now I feel like a terrible person because I don't care, because it was so easy."

Sakura sighed. "It's different for everyone, Rento. It doesn't make you a bad person or a good person. It's what you do that matters—and you killed someone who deserved it, right?"

"Right."

"So that's what matters. If you went around indiscriminately murdering you'd be a bad person. As it is, it just means that you are better able to do what needs to be done. That's it."

"You hesitated, didn't you? And Dad did too—he told me. And so did both of my teammates. Everybody hesitated but I didn't, and I didn't even really freak out when he died or anything!"

Sakura shrugged. "You're still not a bad person."

"I feel like one."

"Then light a candle in remembrance. Some do that, you know—honor each person whose life they had to take."

"I could do that, yeah." Rento sighed, then brought his knees up and folded his arms and head over them. "I just… I thought I knew myself, you know? But I don't know myself at all."

Sakura could definitely relate to that. "Want me to help you find a candle?"

"Yeah. And—help me light it? My fire jutsu is still really bad."

"Sure."