It wasn't until the last week of the Daimyo's court—the second to last that they were in the Capital at all—that chinmoku were given leave to go about the city on their own.
"Only as a group, mind," Sensei had added. He'd glanced at each of them in turn, clearly still distrusting of their ability to care for themselves and wanting assurance that they'd behave. "This place is still quite foreign to how Konoha works, and it would be unfortunate if you find yourselves caught in any unintentional missteps without a way to extricate yourself."
The warning had been a bit daunting, but not much of a deterrent; by the time permission was granted, it was not simply Sakura but Juro and Shin as well who were feeling more than a little caged.
Still, it was sound advice: this city did not work as their own did, and it should not be treated as if it were analogous.
It was Shin who suggested, and the rest who agreed, that they stay in the more touristy places—the cultural mash would already be occurring there, so there was little worry about them (Fire natives, unlike many) worsening it.
They'd started with Main Street before diverting into several of the others. They were somewhat barred from activity because they could usually only explore in the evenings: mornings were spent preparing for and attending the session, while afternoons were spent completing court, meeting with one noble or another, and briefing about the day's activities. Nonetheless, they always found one attraction or another to entertain themselves—they'd spent one hour in a fabric shop, gathering gifts for various loved ones and marveling at the sheer variety available. Another hour or so was taken up revisiting one of the first nobles they'd been introduced to; a staunch advocate of chakra use in general, the man (or, more accurately, the various experts he employed) had found various and marvelous ways to use the energy to twist plants one way or another, creating fantastic living scenes that could be touched and interacted with.
Several hours, spread over the course of days, were given to street performers. There were very few during the day, spread apart in some of the squares of the commercial district, but at night they seemed to flood onto every street corner, particularly in the slightly seedier, lower-end portion of the area. While several of the performers…talents weren't really intended for an audience as young as chinmoku, they found more than enough entertainment in the rest; in the contortionists, dancers, musicians—there were even street artists, who would cobble together incredibly accurate (or funny) portraits for barely anything. (Chinmoku had each gotten their own and had even managed, on a day that had gone particularly well, to convince Sensei Mitokado to join them in a team portrait.)
As time progressed, the three genin grew more and more daring, exploring further and further afield. They were always careful, of course, they'd be stupid not to, but… well, nothing seemed inherently more dangerous than wandering around Konoha.
There were less trees, and more obliviousness, and there was no sewage system outside of the wealthiest portions of the city, and the urban area as a whole was several times larger than Konoha would likely ever be, but.
Sensei Mitokado did not seem like a person who took all that many unnecessary risks, no matter how unlikely said risks were, so his worries seemed increasingly overblown and decreasingly important.
At some point, Juro found out where the university was located, and that clinched the activity of their last several days in the Capital; safe enough for Sensei, and interesting enough for the rest of them.
"Iryoninjutsu has risks, though," the… professor? Teaching assistant? Said in reply to something Juro had explained.
Juro nodded. "I'll admit to that, but then that's true of almost any medical practice—you're not about to stop using ether, are you?"
The question of using chakra in medicine was a surprisingly hotly contended one, at least outside of Konoha. Inside Konoha, over half the doctors were ninja outright, either retired or still in service, and Sakura hadn't even heard a whisper of civilians (who were more apt to be wary of any type of chakra use than to those for whom it was characteristic) worrying about being treated using iryoninjutsu. Here in the Capital not only was the general ability to use chakra treated warily and as if war was the only possible application, but the idea of being treated with it seemed to be felt as analogous to letting the shinigami into your house yourself.
Juro, for all that he was keeping his temper about this difference in perception, was visibly perturbed.
Sakura thought that maybe insulting professors might not be the way to go, so she scratched her ear, flashing Juro and Shin the sign for 'abort.'
"What time is it?" Shin asked, turning to look out the window. The professor(?) looked down at his wrist, where a watch—recently invented but already maddeningly increasing in popularity—sat, tied to his arm with a leather strap.
"About a quarter to eight," he said, fiddling with one of the knobs.
"Oh, we're supposed to be back by eight," Sakura said in a false whisper. It was untrue, but as excuses went it was a fairly believable one.
Juro, getting the message, said his polite goodbyes, and the three exited the building and made their way back into the streets of the city.
Surrounding the university itself was several blocks of student lodgings, bars, and cheap apartments. Sakura would guess that about one in ten buildings in the entire section was abandoned, and graffiti—most cheaply done, some quite beautiful, others less so—stretched across nearly every inch of those unmonitored surfaces. Nonetheless, the place as a whole was bustling with life, with students going to or from classes, other adults commuting in the same way; none of it gave off much of a feeling of being in danger—Sakura guessed that, with the occasional pickpocket that frequented the more well-kept squares, this place was even safer than the areas usually well populated by tourists from within and without Fire Country borders. They'd wandered in the area before—there was a bakery Juro found which was great, and it was a nice change of pace from the more populated areas—and never felt remotely endangered.
As they were walking back from the university, though, the hairs on the back of Sakura's neck began to stand up. She glanced at her teammates, who didn't seem to have noticed anything, then backwards—nothing seemed amiss.
And yet…
They rounded a corner, coming upon the more commercial central street that would eventually run to the center of the city.
Sakura's eyes darted around, watching.
The boys, by that point, had been put on alert by her odd behavior, and had adjusted themselves slightly, holding themselves at the ready for an unseen danger.
But nothing seemed amiss, nothing different from what it had been all the times they'd walked down this road before.
It was her nerves, probably, and Sensei constantly warning them of hidden perils. She'd grown a bit paranoid, obviously.
Still, something felt off.
She flickered her chakra sense, but nothing seemed wrong there either—chinmoku had the strongest chakra signatures in the area by far.
They walked a few more paces, coming upon a crowd outside a bar.
Those weren't all that uncommon, but Sakura gave them more leeway than she had any previous night—drunken people were harder to predict, so perhaps that was why she felt uncomfortable.
They passed the bar.
The next crowd was three streets away, in front of a small tucked-away bookstore.
That crowd was also not particularly noteworthy; they'd been there every time Sakura had passed the place, and usually there was one youth or another standing on top of a pile of boxes, preaching about the need for reform, for change.
(The last time they'd come here, the morning before—for the bakery—the sermon had been about the unfair cost of education. Sakura couldn't say she related, the Academy being officially free and having few related costs and being paid for by her clan besides, but the crowd clearly had.)
Today's, worryingly, was about ninja.
"—time for change! Time for a new era, one of peace!"
The crowd roared with approval.
"The shinobi have forced wars upon us for too long! It is time we step up and say, enough! Enough! No one else should die for your worthless displays of power!"
Another roar of approval, and now Sakura was tense.
This wasn't good.
She considered slipping off her headband—there was a good chance no one had noticed it yet—but chose not to. The movement would likely catch the eyes of the orator, if only because those same eyes were sweeping about now, looking for support and dissidents alike.
The rest of chinmoku made the same decision.
The youth moved to speak again. "I grew up near Grass! I have seen the pain of the war they have already forced upon us! These shinobi, they visit our towns, our lands, and they say they are doing us a favor, and we ask for promises of no more war, no more death and destruction.
And what do they do in return? They laugh!"
The crowd disapproved of this.
"They laugh as if the idea is absurd, but I know better! We know better! Before the shinobi got together in their so-called Hidden Villages there weren't massive wars! The Daimyos had secured their lands decades ago, they saw no reason for thousands to die changing them! But it was too peaceful for the shinobi—no, they needed death to make a living. So what did they do? They came together, and they plotted behind our backs, and then they killed our countrymen, all the while pretending they had no choice!"
That was… well, that wasn't even remotely accurate. Sakura was fully prepared to believe the history she'd been taught was slanted wholly in the favor of shinobi and the Leaf in particular, but the Warring States Period was called that for a reason, and the reality of that time was obvious if one talked to anybody who had lived through it, ninja or samurai or civilian. And to say the Daimyos had stopped fighting for decades—the man had either done absolutely no research, had never actually visited any town on the border of any country, or he was delusional.
"No more shinobi!" He began to chant. The crowd followed him eagerly.
"No more shinobi!"
"No more shinobi!"
Sakura, Shin, and Juro had picked up their pace, had finally been able to only show the crowd the back of their heads, when a call rang out.
"I see shinobi!"
They didn't turn, but it was too late. Several from the crowd—the more militant, from the looks of it—split off under the eager orders of the orator and were now surrounding chinmoku surprisingly quickly.
Sakura's mind raced. Using chakra in the city was supposed to be avoided in all but the direst of circumstances, and injuring a civilian—a Fire civilian, no less—was never to be done at all, but they were running out of other options.
They were much smaller than those closing in on them (mostly men, her brain analyzed; young and angry and hyped up by the crowd), and while they were stronger, that wasn't a benefit they were allowed to use. Sakura considered calling for help, but this area wasn't well monitored by police—mostly just left to itself—so there wasn't really anyone to hear them.
This wasn't good.
This really wasn't good.
There weren't any—this wasn't—she couldn't—
Someone in the front—male, early twenties, her brain analyzed, muscular enough, very angry—raised his fist and—
Sensei Mitokado appeared in front of them, and a sharp shock of killing intent pulsed out of him.
In an instant the tone changed
Faced with that, faced with a larger opponent, the crowd hesitated. Those in the back turned around most quickly, and then, feeling their support break, the rest seemed to realize the possible consequences of their actions.
Sakura watched, breathless, as the street cleared.
Sensei Mitokado turned around.
His face, as usual, was expressionless, but Sakura had been trained by him for months now—she knew… well, she knew he was feeling something. (He was a complicated man, okay? And she was two seconds away from being beaten the crap out of not two minutes ago, so… so what if she couldn't tell what he was thinking?)
"Let's…" Sensei sighed. "Let's get you back to our rooms."
Shin shivered. Sakura nodded.
She couldn't wait to be back in Konoha.
.
The next day chinmoku took a break from records and finances and scheming, and instead lined against a wall immediately inside their rooms, shifting back and forth nervously.
"What you just saw…" Sensei began. He looked at them, then frowned and rubbed his forehead, allowing his calm veneer to break. "What you just saw is more common, I think, then you realize."
"I knew–" Juro said "–that shinobi didn't have full support, of everyone; they don't even have that in Konoha. But… they were going to attack us. Like, actually attack us."
"Yes, they were."
No one spoke.
"Shinobi are powerful," Sensei finally said. "Very, very powerful. With a flick of our wrists we can kill; some of us don't even have to do that much. That we are capable of that—that, not only that, but we train our entire lives to do so—is unsettling."
Sakura could agree with that, at least… though, given Shin' and Juro's reactions, she wondered if that particular perception was more Arden-made than she had thought.
"We can tell them, honestly and truly, that we are necessary—that if we were not here, then the shinobi from the other nations would come here, would kill many. Of course, to most civilians there is little difference between them and us, and it is that we are fighting at all that is the problem—if there was only one group of shinobi across all the lands then all problems would be solved."
Shin snorted. Sakura agreed with his sentiment, too.
"Yes, well, because of that, every Hidden Village does its best to argue for their dominance; propaganda is a large portion of it, of course, but there is also a reason that we have a reputation as tree-huggers: that reputation is what grants us with the fewest rebellions of all Great Nations.
The fewest.
Not none."
"But—" Shin said, before falling silent.
"They are doing their best to look out for their own interests, given what information they have," Sensei said.
And that was that.
The Delegation left shortly after: six wagons all in a row.
There had been a party before then, of course, and many statements of loyalty and happiness. But by the time that season's court session wrapped up, everyone was well and truly done, so everyone relied more and more on rote than anything else.
And then it was over.
And then they were on the road.
And then they were home.
Sakura collapsed on her bed, thrilled to be finally done with a position she'd never even wanted, and had one last thought:
All that time learning about horses, and boats, and fancy ways of transportation.
And she had used none of it.