In January posters had begun appearing, varying wildly in size and quality. Most shared a few key features, though: they were mainly pictures and a few select words, they promised prosperity and comfort, and they were everywhere.

The nobles had finally divvied up their side of the island, Konoha's clans had done the same, and now all that was left was to actually colonize Uzu.

Given the ongoing water, food, and housing issues in Konoha… the question wasn't really if there was enough interest, but rather where every interested person would go: would they sign up to be a vassal of the Yamanaka, and give up a cut of their harvests in exchange for the Ino-Shika-Cho's agricultural assistance and military might? Would they instead head for one of the nobles, who generally asked for a smaller cut but also offered significantly fewer amenities? Or would they wait for the first cities to be built, move there, open stores? Or would they prove to the Samurai that they had enough skill to assist in the massive shipyard that was being built, that would house the new, improved generation of Fire's Navy?

The advertisements were loud, exaggerated, and a great distraction—but not a perfect one.

Sakura watched as Orochimaru drummed his fingers, staring at the nearest (hidden) Anbu. Minato had left for the front again—they really were struggling in Kumo—but he'd left behind several seals to test as advanced water purifiers, and she was meant to be figuring out how to make a net of them to stretch across the Naka.

Sakura had relocated to Human Research because they had the labs to test how much, actually, was getting through each seal, and she'd been passed a handful of genin (her own nephew included) to copy Minato's seals so she had more to work with, but it still took some time to get everything set up, to have all the indicators ready and so on.

She was supposed to be spending that time designing the net—the seals could be drawn on cloth, but fish would need to be able to get by—but instead…

Taro was right; Orochimaru was acting weird.

He still had her notebook—she could see it on his desk—but it had clearly been pushed to the wayside, the man distracted by something else.

Whatever it was he wasn't talking.

Whatever it was wasn't going well.

He looked almost… disappointed, really, so perhaps his distraction was caused by one of his innovations not working—but then, his latest public innovation (a new sort of scalpel to use during surgeries) had been a big hit.

Sakura pursed her lips.

The ANBU were watching.

It was fine.

"We're ready!" Rento called.

Sakura shook herself; no matter what Orochimaru was doing, or what he wanted to be doing, the sheer number of sick people couldn't be sustained. Her work was too important to put off.

.

Inoichi smiled at her when she entered the room, but Danzo gave her a knowing look—he'd been…less than impressed by Konoha's initial decision to take in so many new people, and now felt as if he'd been firmly prophetic, and she was suffering for Konoha's misdeeds.

Sakura saw no point in dissuading him; the less he understood her the better.

Neither of the men's expressions quite managed to hide the bad news, however.

"Nothing?"

"The Uchiha agreed that there were absolutely children going missing, and they have begun an investigation, aided by the Tracking Division—your friend Bokuso pulled some strings there before I had the chance to—but they pointed out that given the likelihood that many children simply starved to death, or ran away, or moved to relatives—well, actually figuring out who was taken will be a multi-month process."

"And the orphanage shouldn't wait that long."

"Exactly."

Sakura sighed. "At least there's an investigation." She'd check up on it later, but Bokuso had hinted at much the same the last time they talked. Pulling a notebook out, she flipped to a new page. "Where are we on the orphanage redesign?"

And, of course, both men immediately turned to glare at each other.

Sakura hated these meetings.

.

Ibiki was nearly seven.

It was Ren who pointed it out.

"Are you going to give him traditional Yamanaka training? He can't really do Akimichi—theirs is a lot more centered on their bloodline—and so is the Nara's, now that I'm thinking of it, but ours doesn't actually have much at all to do with the bloodline."

That was true, a sort of unintended side effect of the variety of forms their kekkei genkai could take. Sakura considered, hating the idea of it but also knowing that her child wanted to join T&I, was likely perfectly aware that every other Yamanaka went through it.

Still, it made her stomach turn.

"I—"

Could she? Ibiki would suffer, would cry and bleed and puke and—

"If we don't do it first, then his first taste will be with the enemy."

"Didn't he already get his first taste?" Sakura retorted; after all, Ibiki had spent too long in a Kumo interrogation camp.

"Then he'll pass it quickly. To be honest, Ibiki gets interrogation. You didn't, so it took longer, but Ibiki—despite not being blood Yamanaka—understands, and wants to understand, all the different facets of how the brain works. That part'll actually be pretty quick. The poisons bit will take much longer, and, again: if we don't do it first, his first taste will be with the enemy."

"Can I ask Juro first?"

"Sure."

.

"You're just asking me so you don't have to deal with the guilt of making the decision, aren't you?"

"You're his guardian too."

"It's Yamanaka training."

"Juro!"

Juro sighed, leaning back from his dinner plate and shrugging. Ibiki had already disappeared to the backyard—he and Asuma had a spar coming up and he wanted to win 'for once'—and Himari had an evening shift at the Yamanaka daycare. "It's really up to you, Sakura, but I think I agree with Ren—it's good training, that Ibiki will appreciate, and he'll get to feel like he's a part of the Yamanaka, blood or no."

"It's awful though."

Juro nodded. "It is."

"Very comforting."

"Look, you are a hell of a lot more anti-torture than most, you absolutely hate pain even when its necessary, and you have no interest whatsoever in T&I. Did you blame your brother? No. Did you blame your parents? No. Did you blame your clan? No. Ibiki will come out of it immunized against poison and torture, and that's a pretty good bargain for a few weeks of pain."

Sakura grimaced. "Can't I just ask him if he wants to do it?"

"I thought the whole ambush thing was a part of it?"

"Well, yeah, but plenty of Yamanaka still manage to figure it out well before. I was just… willfully ignorant."

"Then ask. You know what his answer's going to be though."

Sakura made a face, then pushed from the table. "I'll ask now; only a couple weeks to his birthday anyway."

Juro hummed.

Ibiki was practicing his katas in the yard, pausing with each stance before shifting to the next—ensuring every muscle was perfectly positioned.

Sakura watched for a minute.

He was six, but surprisingly large for a six-year-old—he'd had a growth spurt that started somewhere between four and five and never ended.

He looked a lot like his mother; dark hair, dark eyes, defined chin; he was wearing one of Sakura's old shirts, one that she'd tie-dyed just to see if she could do it, and shorts that were already too small for him; she'd have to take him shopping soon.

He shifted to a new stance, grimaced, then went back—his arm was too high, and he'd caught the mistake on his own.

Children, Sakura was now sure, grew up very differently in Arden's world. Perhaps in terms of maturity they progressed the same, but here in the world of chakra kids were smarter, younger, than Arden ever thought possible.

Ibiki's behavior was utterly normal; his drive, determination praised but not unusual. He wasn't as smart as she had been at his age, but he was far more well-rounded: he was skilled in combat, in social skills, and in academia.

She didn't want him to say yes.

"I have something I need to ask you."

Ibiki turned, smiled; he might not have had chakra sense, but he'd heard the door open, knew she was watching him.

"What?"

"Do you know about family trainings?"

His smile shifted—he wasn't that practiced, yet, in hiding his emotions. "Yeah."

"You can't participate in the Akimichi or Nara, but… do you want to do the Yamanaka's?"

Ibiki's eyes bulged. "I can?! I'm not—I'm not Yamanaka though."

Sakura shrugged. "We don't actually focus on the kekkei genkai during family training; no reason you couldn't."

Ibiki, again, repeated: "I'm not Yamanaka."

"You're mine, aren't you?"

And then her arms were full of a crying (sweaty) boy.

Well, that was that then.

She hated family training.

.

With the population rapidly dwindling to pre-war levels, and the various new air and water filters put in place, the end of March brought an official downgrade of the utilities situation from "crisis" to "serious concern."

In other words, Sakura was reassigned to Orochimaru's lab again.

She wasn't thrilled.

The lab was, more or less, unchanged. It needed a bit of cleaning—she and Taro knocked it out in an afternoon—and the prisoners had come up with some sort of call-response game that they played for hours on end.

Orochimaru was still frustrated.

He knocked out three exploratory surgeries on the first day, came in late on the second, and disappeared on the third.

Sakura went straight to the Hokage.

"I don't know."

"I thought he was being tracked?"

"He was… he's grown increasingly frustrated by it. I assume he just wanted some time alone."

Sakura didn't know what to do with that statement.

The Hokage sighed. "I will send Jiraiya after him. He is my student, you know; I believe Orochimaru when he says that he is not doing anything wrong."

Sakura bowed and left.

.

Minato was lying on the dirt, his hand covering his eyes as he tried to take a midday nap between charges.

He was awoken by his student running very, very fast in his direction, and standing and ready to take on whatever made Kakashi sprint faster than he ever had before.

"They found him! They—they—they found him! Sensei, Sensei—they, they found Obito!"

Both took off.

Over the past two days Konoha had managed to successfully push forward and retake a small farming town that they'd lost the week before. It had been the only forward progress Konoha had made in some time, largely thanks to a dual effort by Minato and a regiment of samurai horse archers, as well as the land being the flattest there was for miles in any direction.

It had been a good morale boost.

It also meant that a town's worth of houses, barns, and so on were being systematically reappropriated into store houses, field hospitals, and barracks.

Apparently the house Obito was found in, being by itself in the middle of several fields, was far enough away from the others that they'd only gotten to clearing it out now.

(That no one had noticed the chakra signature was likely something that was going to cause a lot of meetings, a lot of finger-pointing. Minato couldn't care less.)

Obito was in terrible condition.

They'd moved him to the nearest field hospital, laid him out on a cot as three different medics stood over him, and Minato and Kakashi were each allowed to hold one of the boy's hands—Rin was being sent for as well, on the order of the future Hokage.

His skin was incredibly pale—he certainly hadn't been exposed to sun. He was also unconscious; the Head Iryo-nin figured he was drugged, was pumping his system to try to get rid of whatever it was.

His muscle tone was largely gone.

His nose was crooked.

He'd been tied up, based on the bruises on his appendages.

Most noticeably, though, his eyes were gone.

Minato had never seen someone with no eyes before.

He'd seen blind people, he'd seen people with such horrific eye injuries that they were undoubtedly left with no eye, but Obito—

If Minato wasn't so focused on radiating composure, on keeping both Kakashi and himself from panicking, he'd have likely retched.

Kakashi's hounds were out already, were tracking any tell of Obito's scent.

They hadn't reported back yet, but—

Whatever had happened to Obito, whatever had happened to his student, Minato doubted that the kidnapper had left any evidence.

Of course, that brought on the question of why the kidnapper had left Obito alive.

Minato pushed the thought out of his mind, feeling his blood pressure rising.

He squeezed Obito's hand.

He watched Obito as the medics' hands covered his face, began to do what they could there.

Obito had been unconscious for some time, one of them murmured to him. The boy was malnourished, starved.

He was stable, though, his body would recover.

(Their hands were blocking the sight, now, but Minato knew he'd never be able to unsee Obito's empty eye sockets.)

The Uchiha lined the tent.

They stayed outside, out of the medics' way, but Minato could sense them forming an impenetrable barrier.

Obito may not have been very highly ranked in their clan, but he was their clan, and what had happened to him—

For the Uchiha, losing one's eyes amounted to a worst-case scenario.

They stood, unmoving.

Minato knew the fighting was continuing, was likely even more brutal than planned when it became clear that Minato wouldn't be joining the afternoon assault as usual.

The Uchiha meant to be fighting were no doubt doing just that.

The ones here were supposed to be asleep, supposed to be eating.

They stood instead.

The medics shifted again, lifted Obito and poured water into his mouth.

The boy swallowed; a good sign.

Minato swallowed.

He tracked his breathing, tracked Kakashi's.

They'd figure this out.

Whoever had done this would pay.

Obito would recover.

Minato—

Well, everyone told him he was one of the most powerful jounin alive.

That he had immeasurable potential.

He might not have been able to save Obito, but he was still learning new things every day. His air filter and water filter seals were raptured over, his new teleportation seals opened up limitless battle opportunities, and the toads had recently begun instructing him in Sage mode.

He hadn't been able to save Obito, and that would eat at him for the rest of his life, but he would be able to take his revenge.

Kakashi froze, and Minato did a second later, as the hands they were holding began to twitch.

Obito was awake.