Sakura woke up with her mind on the relative ethics of cannibalism while shipwrecked (the latest in a long line of memories absorbed from Arden), made to yawn, and froze.

She wasn't alone.

"You don't sense automatically when you wake up?" Bear ANBU asked.

"I don't, no. My doctor recommended against it."

An answering hum, then "You've been called to the Hokage."

Three minutes later she was outside his office door.

The Hokage got straight to the point.

She imagined that for others she might dance around it somewhat, but she'd always preferred directness.

"You will not be taking over as Head of Research."

Sakura blinked, tried to do the math behind her eyes as to why.

"Deputy Head Uchiha of Weapons will be taking over instead, and Kato Doi will be promoted to Head of Medical Research. Orochimaru has asked for some time to spend on his own projects, and I've agreed, but I know my student. I would like for him to be watched. By you."

Sakura—Sakura did not like this change of plans, to put it simply.

She considered asking 'why me?' but that much was obvious. Orochimaru rather liked her, or seemed to, while she'd never quite managed to hide her inherent distrust of him (he'd found it funny.) She was also smart enough to at least have an idea of what he was working on at any given time and Sakura had no doubt that the Hokage was perfectly aware of her continued taijutsu training, ninjutsu training, combat fuinjutsu training: Orochimaru, further, thought that she was only working on the latter, and even then mostly as a forced precaution.

She made sense, too, because she'd worked with troublesome Researchers before, gotten them to open up to her. She was a Yamanaka, too, but not a Yamanaka that could mind-walk: she could keep a better eye on his mental state than others, but he wouldn't be wary of her bloodline talent.

She also met, knew, and interacted semi-regularly with both other Sannin.

She understood why.

She just didn't like it.

She bowed.

"I should be clear;" the Hokage said, "this is purely precautionary. I hate to think lowly of my students, but Orochimaru has always been open about his difficulties with… empathy. I think he just needs a sounding board, someone to remind him of the morality we all abide by."

Sakura didn't agree, was absolutely certain that Orochimaru only abided by the morality that he had to in order to stay out of trouble, but, well, it amounted to the same thing.

Hopefully.

It would, at least, make it easier for her to monitor his actions for her own purposes, to make sure the gruesome snake Orochimaru of a possible future never appeared.

But then no one—not her, not the Hokage—no one but Orochimaru knew how far he'd already fallen.

She frowned, but bowed again.

This might not be a mission she'd enjoy, but it wasn't one she could afford to fail.

.

Aiko's courtroom was emptier than usual. Most days were spent blitzing through cases, one after another, nearly every one with a guilty verdict in a matter of minutes if that.

This trial was on its second day, would continue go on for at least another dozen hours, and everyone knew it—they'd have to wait for their own day in court.

Watanabe Haruto was an austere man, and a man who'd run his stores—he had three—for decades now.

He was accused of extorting his customers, using their lack of education to force them into contracts that anyone would, if they understood them, refuse to sign.

Trials in Konoha rarely ran past a couple minutes, and even when they did the judges tried to blitz through them as quickly as possible. A case that wasn't firm enough to be put to bed without back and forth was usually cause for the judges to side-eye the Uchiha Police, to blame them for their courtrooms getting backed up, falling days behind.

But Watanabe Haruto was wealthy enough, established enough, that it was a given that his case would take days no matter the evidence.

Sakura slid into the back row, eying two Academy students who were furiously scribbling in an attempt to keep up with the defense lawyer's rapid-fire questioning of one of the witnesses.

They were the only ones not in the front row, not witnesses or related to the defendant.

Besides her.

Aiko caught her eye almost immediately, but did nothing else.

It would, Sakura knew, be several hours before her lunch break, before they could talk.

Sakura didn't mind the wait.

She had plenty to think about anyway.

The minutes ticked by.

The case continued in front of her.

Sakura thought.

She considered all there was to do, all the threats that still darkened Konoha's horizon. Between the war, Danzo, Orochimaru, jinchuuriki, Uchiha, and all the usual problems that ailed the world, she often felt overwhelmed, daunted by the enormity of the task in front of her.

But she had made progress.

Her work was helping in the war effort. She and the Yamanaka had caught Danzo's rumor mill, had it stopped. Orochimaru's need for human experiments had been diminished with the now provably successful false body clones. Tsunade was working to make sure that whatever had gone wrong during Naruto's birth in her memories didn't happen here. The Uchiha were accepting others into their police program, were on the receiving end of a significant amount of public sympathy for their missing member (Obito, she thought, was also 'something' she had to deal with, but she couldn't remember why.)

She was making progress.

It just—

Well, there was always more to do.

The lawyers began wrapping up, everyone in court eying the clock as the noon hour approached.

The judges officially called a break.

Aiko made a gesture, and Sakura followed her to her office.

"So your case seems interesting."

A look; Aiko clearly didn't agree. "Long trials should be for when there's doubt. There's no doubt here, just… wealth. But that's not why you've come. So what's up?"

"I'm not getting promoted after all."

"What?"

"The Hokage's going to promote Deputy Head Uchiha. Makes sense, anyway; he's more experienced."

"But—I mean, you've got experience with all the divisions, and—"

"It's done, Aiko. I need your help with something, though."

"Yeah, what?"

"It's more straightforward for you to pull cases out. Do you mind grabbing any on missing children or teenagers, bringing them to Office 40?"

"Why?"

Sakura shifted. What could she say? Even with her 'visions', she still thought that she was just making a problem appear when there wasn't any. Orochimaru had never appeared evil to her in real life, and half the time she was convinced that she was just misidentifying the cartoon as him, same name and appearance or not.

And yet the niggling fear persisted.

"Just a hunch."

"Always the hunches with you; never a straight answer. Yamanaka through and through." Aiko sighed. "Yeah, I'll grab the files. It'll take a bit, though—I've got another major trial after this one, and then paperwork. As soon as I can, though."

"That works for me, thanks."

Sakura broke the news to Juro next.

He was on a break between surgeries, looked bleary-eyed but alert, and hugged her.

"At least there's less work, this way." He said. He and she both knew that that didn't matter.

Sakura tried for a smile. "You think?"

"I mean, not really—you'll just make work for yourself—but it's not exactly like you loved bureaucratic work to begin with. At least the work will be something you choose?" Sakura loved Juro, loved him for trying to find a bright side, something positive given that they both knew everyone else would focus on the negative.

He was just struggling, a lot.

Sakura didn't want to explain the truth, never had (it didn't so much stick in her throat as the back of her skull, far enough away from any speaking mechanism that the words never even tried to force themselves out), so she nodded instead, took his best spin as the silver lining.

The rest of the day was much the same, alerting one person after another that the promotion wasn't going through, and giving various Konoha-acceptable answers as to why.

Those who didn't get the truth knew it, but also knew better than to push.

Of everyone, Inoichi was the most upset.

"Look, I get that you're okay with it, but that doesn't—it's still an affront to the Yamanaka. You can see that, right?"

Sakura shrugged. "The push for very young leaders was getting a lot of push back anyway; something had to give, and it wasn't going to be any of the Clan Heads or Minato. It makes sense."

"It doesn't—I—Sakura, my pushes for Academy reform are still being stymied, neither of the Akimichi candidates look like they're going to become Dean of the Hospital, and now not only are you not becoming Head of Research, but instead of the several possible Nara candidates an Uchiha has been chosen."

"I–"

"I am very aware that individually there are plenty of reasons for each decision, each obstacle, but that doesn't change the results. Ino-Shika-Cho deserves a say in the running of this village, and now we're not getting our share, and if I don't do anything, if I just allow this affront to stand, then we'll be dealing with internal turmoil too."

Sakura sighed.

He was right, of course. She hated it—hated politics in general—but… well.

"What do you want me to do about it?"

Inoichi rubbed his eyes. "I don't know what you could do about it. Just… invent something awesome soon, please?"

"I submit something new at least once a month; most of them end up in production by the end of the quarter."

"I know, I know... just, I'm not kidding about this looking bad, Sakura. And this being bad, too."

"I know."

.

Even as life continued on in Konoha the rest of the world continued on too.

Kumo's railroads stretched ever closer to the border, forewarning of a rapid shift in wartime strategy that would put an end to the temporary ceasefire.

Kiri, meanwhile, had turtled even more; the gas attacks were more-or-less gone, now, but after their first tentative overtures for trade were rebuffed Water's government had gone on the offensive—more and more ships were reporting back each day of pirates all over the sea, in greater number and better armed than ever before.

Suna was doing well, its Hidden Village—and many others besides—now reveling in the massive river that intersected it. Trade on Fire's western front was booming, and it was unlikely that would stop any time soon.

Within Fire, though, and outside Konoha, there was a different problem.

A drought.

Most of Fire had experienced unusually little rainfall throughout the winter, and even as the days lengthened into spring the rain still didn't come; some lands seemed to be drying out entirely, and the conditions were becoming ideal for a massive and uncontrollable wildfire.

Nara Shin, hunched over his desk in the Capital, wished there was a giant arrow telling him what to tackle first.

Instead, he dashed off twelve letters regarding the drought, an invitation for a meeting regarding tariff modification in the next Spring Session, a reply to one of the samurai about allocating additional resources they didn't have to more and stronger ships, and no less than twenty-two responses to various questions which asked, one way or another, about Kumo's railroad.

And then he sat back and thought.

The drought—

That was, contrary to what many of his fellow shinobi thought, the greatest concern.

If they had a significantly reduced harvest this year, and by this point that was just about guaranteed, then they'd need to start importing masses of food from the west, but the amount of time it took to get between the Land of Corn (the other half of the country's most fertile Land) and the Land of Fire severely restricted how useful that attempt would be; the further a good traveled, the more expensive it became.

He had gotten a compilation of suggestions sent to him from Konoha, and he was supposed to parse through them to see what would work best, but the truth was the most were stymied by dint of no money.

War was expensive, and it was beginning to bite.

There were, however, some suggestions that required closer inspection.

One suggestion—which addressed nothing about the impending food crisis but did concern the inevitable forest fire—wanted as many people as possible to move into cities, where there were firehouses and their safety was much more assured.

This made sense, Shin thought, but they still needed a lot of farmers to stay where they were, to get as much out of the soil as they could, and—because it always came back to this—there wasn't the money to do anything more active in that regard anyway.

The more interesting suggestion was about Uzu.

The chemical attacks had more or less stopped, the land had been checked over by shinobi—it was fertile, it wasn't affected by the drought…

But it also wasn't "officially" Fire's land, and it was over sea, which meant Kiri would notice and react should they do it.

But the land was fertile.

And, well, just like Water, Fire needed food.

And Fire, not Water, had physical possession of Uzu.

Shin pulled out a new ream of paper.

The logistics would be difficult, the war between Kiri and Konoha would no doubt be reignited, and many more deaths would occur, but at this point, was there any choice?