Sakura and Orochimaru were officially transferred to their own division with the start of summer.
Nara Taro tagged along as the assistant.
The new offices were outset, well past the walls of the city but still within the forest that surrounded Konoha. It looked like a building, it was a building, with a little guard outpost on top for scouts to use to replenish and keep watch, but it was also—
Three levels of basement, each wider and longer than the last, each at least double the size of the building itself.
The first was clearly the living quarters, so to speak—several cots folded up and pushed against the wall, a tea setting already out, a small kitchenette, and a large bathroom with multiple showers.
Sakura slid down the ladder into the second room, looking around at the gleaming stone walls and the well-placed chakra lights.
It was, truly, an ideal space for experimentation.
But Orochimaru had yet to explain what he wanted to use it for.
The third room rather gave that away.
It was Taro who reacted audibly to the cages; Sakura'd been too well-trained by her previous sensei to do that.
It was a near thing, though, images—horrible images—flickering into her mind.
Orochimaru didn't bother with the ladder. He jumped down instead, landing beside them with barely bent legs.
"I know you're both curious as to what we'll be doing." He said, a slight lisp visible in the way he spoke. "Our dear Hokage has finally given me leave to use Fire's death-sentence prisoners for my experiments. We will begin work on organ transplants tomorrow morning, when the first arrive."
Sakura's stomach rolled.
She had no doubt that the Hokage really had caved—Orochimaru had been trying for years, and the Hokage was rather well known for his affection towards his former students—but,
Arden's memories didn't exactly speak well of experimentation.
Taro—Taro looked like he didn't know what he wanted to think.
"It's quite alright, Chuunin Nara." Orochimaru said, dipping a hand over the young man's shoulders. "Each and every man who will come through the building is a willing volunteer—this, apparently, is a preferrable type of death sentence."
That cleared up any moral quandaries that Taro had in moments, and he turned to nod determinately up at Orochimaru. "What would you have me do first?"
"I've already written up procedures I'd like followed—you'll find them in your desk in B1. Please familiarize yourself with them today. Sakura, I would like your own ideas of what we need to be careful of in our experiments. I will of course be the one performing the surgeries tomorrow, but I would like it if both of us took active part in this push towards a better future."
Sakura nodded; "Of course, Sannin Orochimaru."
Some hours later she felt his presence behind her back. It was nearly time to go home—a clock's incessant ticking assured her of that, even with the lack of windows—and she'd just about finished transcribing everything she'd considered in terms of blood; between the time she'd considered it as an identifier and the work she'd put in when it became clear Kumo was using it to do just that she'd put quite a bit into her understanding of the liquid substance.
"It is unfortunate," Orochimaru said, leaning over her, "that I have yet to decipher your marvelous code." He didn't ask her to tell him, and Sakura knew by this point it was a point of pride; Orochimaru wanted the knowledge that he was able to do anything he put his mind to, even decode her notebooks, and he wasn't about to accept anything less.
It was rather an exercise in futility, Sakura thought. Not only was she primarily writing in a language—English—for which there was no comparison in their own world (phonetic alphabets in general being very rare indeed) but she'd also begun mixing it up, adding bits of Spanish and Latin as they incorporated into her knowledge base and then switching around the letters using tricks as simple as Pig Latin or as complex as rhyming slang. Sometimes, too, Sakura would phonetically write down words from her own language, often deliberately using different spelling each time.
She found it perfectly understandable, if occasionally a bit slow to parse through.
Anyone else, she knew—at least anyone else who didn't have access to her and Arden's memories—would find it quite impossible.
So far Orochimaru's interest, despite years of effort, had only proved her right.
Still, given her main mission here…
It was a plan which felt dangerous, which felt unwise, but it also felt worth what danger there might be—and in practice, Sakura believed, there would be very little.
"I'll give you one of my texts to study in your own time in exchange for one of yours." Sakura offered. Most people only stuck to one or two methods of obfuscation—more than that being hard to keep straight—but she had a leg up there, and if she was able to read Orochimaru's own notes, understand what he was thinking about, planning, then it would be absolutely worth it.
Orochimaru hummed. "I choose which one I give, and which I receive."
Sakura snorted. "Each of us give the other a selection of three to choose from."
A hesitation, a consideration, and a nod. "Tomorrow morning, bright and early. Remember—we have the prisoners coming before lunch."
Sakura—
Sakura went home.
Ibiki, at least, was in a good mood, thrilled to be starting his fourth year and officially halfway through the Academy. Juro wasn't—he'd been selected to be one of the medics to review the missing Obito's files, given his prior history with the boy, and clearly didn't like what he had found.
Neither of the adults were allowed to talk about their jobs, though, so instead they focused on Ibiki, trying to convince themselves through the younger boy's optimism that everything would be fine.
The next day Sakura watched as the prisoners—six of them, all between the ages of forty and sixty, all of them convicted of multiple crimes—were pushed into a cage each and wished she'd been as good at tricking herself into being happy as she had been when she was younger.
They'd already done the notebook trade, at least. Sakura had gone for the most recent looking of his—he'd snorted and told her that was a mistake, that younger code is easier to decipher. He might have been right, but she'd have to wait and see. He'd gone for one of her earliest ones on medicine, which was what she was hoping for. None that she brought in really covered anything that might pique his interest anymore than it already was, but the text was relatively plainly written compared to many of her others and included very little of Arden's memories—the two women's different anatomies limiting their application.
She'd only had time to leaf through his journal once, hadn't even begun to figure out how to attack the cryptology problem, when they'd arrived.
They were grim-faced, nameless—each had a tattooed number instead—and utterly compliant.
The oldest, #498176, was put under the knife first.
He died before the end of the day.
Orochimaru—didn't like that outcome.
Even as Taro tried not to retch as he dealt with the remains of the body Orochimaru paced, frustrated, across the lab. Sakura sat in her stool, a good distance away from the operating table with a clipboard and sheet of paper on her knees, and watched.
Eventually Orochimaru all but appeared in front of her, an incredibly casual expression of his power that he didn't even seem to notice he'd made. "He died too quickly. We learned nothing. The subjects need to live longer."
"Perhaps don't start with organ transplants, then?"
Orochimaru snorted, then shook his head. "No, no. It has to be transplants." He paused, eying her, then began to explain in more detail: "Your clones were too useful, Sakura. Many in the medical community now think with a bit of tweaking they may be able to survive major surgery—never mind that even Tsunade agrees that there's no sign they will ever be capable of that. Transplants are one of the few necessities that even the most ardent supporter doesn't believe the clone can handle, and therefore it is where we must succeed; how we must show that human experimentation still has its uses."
Sakura, though she hated it (with every memory of him, with every expectation of what he might become –), agreed. "Still, it is necessary to start smaller here, or else—as you put it—we will run out of subjects very quickly."
Orochimaru huffed, but didn't disagree. He left in a puff, his chakra hanging around the space he had been standing for a second or two before dissipating.
Taro came back from disposing of the body.
"I hated that." He said, making a face as he shook out his already well-washed hands again.
"Orochimaru was incredibly displeased that he killed him. It shouldn't be that regular an occurrence in the future."
"But I'll still be expected to deal with it."
A one-shoulder shrug; he certainly wasn't a main contributor to the theoretical aspect of the work. "Yes."
"Shit."
Sakura agreed.
She'd hate to be in his position, be forced to deal with what his life was now like—it was bad enough watching from a distance, and she knew she would've found it a million times worse up close, passing tools to Orochimaru's outstretched hand over the gaping torso of his victim.
But Taro hadn't minded that part, actually, would probably have made a decent surgeon.
It wasn't until the man had died, until his body had had to be disposed of, that Taro had begun making faces.
"Perhaps you could propose a different solution to body disposal to Sannin Orochimaru?" Sakura suggested. "He's always ready to at least hear someone out." That, at least, was true. His presence might be a bit unsettling to everyone who'd had the honor of spending time with him, but no one who worked under him considered him a particularly bad boss.
No one but Sakura, that is, and she was quite biased.
And she was still not even sure that she wasn't just chasing ghosts, could-have-beens.
She went home.
She hated the idea of this day becoming routine, but so far she'd come up with no solution, no magical band-aid that would put everything to right.
She practiced her kata, practiced her jutsu, practiced her drawing and writing and fuinjutsu, and then she went to bed.
There was another long day tomorrow, and she had to be ready for it.
.
Minato didn't want to be here.
That was an understatement, an incredible downplay of his true feelings, but it was still accurate.
That didn't mean he felt as if he could leave.
The Hokage had been exceedingly generous with his soon-to-be successor, giving him all the time he liked to search Obito's trail, even any resources Minato or the Uchiha requested too. It was largely interest for Konoha as a whole, Minato knew—Obito's kidnapping meant only bad things in terms of the war, in terms of Konoha's enemies—but he'd still appreciated it.
Except Obito hadn't turned up.
He'd had every resource he could want, every man and woman who was even remotely good at tracking—all the civilians were helping him too, his incredible reputation post-Kannabi Bridge leading to them actively wanting to give him information, just to say that they'd helped, they'd aided Konoha's greatest hero in his duties.
But nothing had panned out, no signs had been found.
Obito had just—vanished.
And the war hadn't.
So now Minato was doing his best not to slouch, to take a break from racking his brain for new search ideas, and to pay attention to the faces surrounding him.
Danzo was talking now, the drawl of a man convinced he knew best, that everything was going his way.
They were concerned about Lightning's railroads.
It was all that they could talk about nowadays, the damn railroads which were about to kick the northern Front of the war back into high gear. Never mind that Kiri was engaged in privateering, never mind that the Land of Tea's nobility had completely imploded thanks to a tiny little religious cult, never mind that the Land of Wind—their ally—was beginning to grow in power threateningly quickly, no longer as held back by the whims of their ecosystem, never mind Obito –
No, it was always about the railroad.
Now it was Utatane's turn to speak; never before Danzo, always after. "It is good that tracks in Fire have begun to be laid, but it is not happening fast enough."
A complete repeat of the last meeting. The same words used, the same urgency conveyed.
Nothing mattered here.
Maybe he wasn't making any progress with finding Obito, either, but at least there people were still trying, still testing new ideas. In terms of the war there was little to do but wait.
Minato hated waiting.
Minato looked up, surveying the room as Commander Nara rattled off the latest statistics.
His eyes didn't really take in anyone, not much point, but still, it was something to—
"Where's Yamanaka Sakura?"
Commander Nara froze, cut off in the middle of an overview of the increasingly dire food supply situation.
Current Research Head Aburame was the one to actually answer, though. "She's been reassigned to assist Sannin Orochimaru, who is pursuing –"
"I was under the impression that she was going to become Head of Research."
"She was. That position is now being taken by Deputy Head Uchiha –"
"Why the change?"
The (current) Hokage leaned forward. "Perhaps this could be something discussed at a later date?"
Minato –
"To be clear," he said, surveying the many faces surrounding him and feeling just reckless enough not to care how he came off, "when I become Hokage we will not have meetings where we rehash old topics any longer. I missed the last two meetings and yet nothing, so far, has been discussed which was not discussed three weeks ago; there have been no changes, no new ideas, no magical deus ex machina that we've just found. I am more concerned about what has changed, which, as far as I can tell, is that Yamanaka Sakura—the most innovative Researcher in recent history—has been turned into an assistant. Everything else has been progressing as expected. Why the change?"
Danzo opened his mouth—no doubt to say things Minato didn't care to listen to—but the Hokage interrupted.
"Jounin Namikaze has a point; these latest meetings have become somewhat repetitive. We'll meet again tomorrow, and I want everyone to have some possible, viable solution to a problem Konoha and the Land of Fire is currently facing. Dismissed. Minato, please stay behind."
.
Everyone knew when Kumo's railroad was finished.
They began attacking in earnest that very day.
They'd underestimated Konoha, however; Konoha wasn't known to have condor summons, and their frequent scouting trips were kept hidden from all but a select few.
Konoha responded much, much quicker than Kumo had estimated –
But it was still war.
People still died, on both sides.
The front was full again, Konoha empty again, and it felt—despite the lack of a formal peace treaty, despite the knowledge that the fighting had never stopped—it felt like a new war had started all over again.
Sakura's life didn't change much.
After the first day, the first prisoner's death, none of the others died.
It was still sickening; the vivisections were gruesome, not something Sakura ever wanted to see.
But Orochimaru wanted progress, and a prisoner's death just delayed his progress—especially because the Hokage mandated that every volunteer had to be willing.
They were well fed, they were given books and water and good food, and their cells were apparently larger than what the Daimyo gave them –
But also they were routinely cut open, kept permanently underground, and were expected to die.
Sakura wasn't sure if that was a deal she'd take, but then she wasn't offered it.
She was just told to watch.
Sakura had just finished a day of watching—Orochimaru's current fascination seemed to be eyes, and he'd already half-blinded one of the prisoners—and was fully intending to go home and pass out when she realized, perhaps a bit belatedly, that there was no way she was going to sleep tonight.
She wondered if she could parlay that into a reassignment.
It was doubtful—there was too much behind-the-scenes politics involved, and her own need to ensure Orochimaru wasn't turning down a darker path made it unlikely she'd ever even try.
Instead, she switched her course to Office 40; she could at least do something useful while she racked her brain to figure out how to stop Orochimaru's sanctioned horrors.
Juro was already there. "Ibiki's sleeping over at Genma's tonight."
"Oh, okay."
Bokuso was there too. "We're trying to figure out how to deal with the drought."
The drought.
That was something that Sakura didn't really spend much time thinking about, but was about to have a very large impact on the whole of Fire.
"Only a month until the next rice harvesting season, right?"
"Right. So far too late to do anything about Fire's own lands. The Daimyo and the Hokage are both buying goods through the minor nations and Suna, but those routes are expensive—export taxes, you know?"
"So the plan?"
"For the immediate future: unprecedented levels of fishing."
"Fishing?"
"Deep Sea fishing, so we don't mess with more local fishermen. We have this idea for a boat with this giant net –"
"What about Kiri?"
Both men winced.
Kiri's privateering was, if anything, only getting worse as time progressed—they were dealing with their own shortages too, and piracy seemed to be very lucrative indeed.
Finding a way around that which didn't involve manning every boat with an unmaintainable number of shinobi and samurai was…
Difficult.
"Our current task: to find a solution." Bokuso said. Juro nodded.
Neither looked bursting with ideas.
After a second Bokuso slid a piles of scrolls over to her. "This is our current Research, but it's not—we don't have a solution yet. I understand if you're too tired –"
Sakura grinned. "I'll get right on it." She said. This—hard numbers and giant maps and absolutely no visible gore—this was exactly the sort of puzzle she wanted.
"If you're sure."
"Juro, I don't like blood." Sakura said. "And right now, I'm seeing an awful lot of it. Every day. Do you want me to end up like Tsunade? I don't want to end up like Tsunade."
"Confusion: is the Sannin Tsunade not improving?"
"Her mental health is getting better," Juro explained (their ongoing work with Kushina ensured that he was certain of that) "but she's still—no blood."
"And I don't want to end up with another reason for therapy, so I'm just going to do my job, then do this after." Juro didn't bother to hide his disbelief, and even Sakura knew it wouldn't work forever, but until a solution came to her—"trust me."