Konoha may have wanted to keep Iwa's new bloodline a secret, but less than a week after the Yamanaka letter arrived, the first enemy with the bloodline appeared on their frontline.
By the end of the day, everyone knew that three bodies were lying in the hospital tent, technically alive but completely unable to interact with the world around them.
"Are they still… there?" Sasaki Nao, one of the sensors Sakura shared a tent with, asked. "I mean, are they still thinking?"
Sakura shrugged. "No one in my clan can enter their minds, if that's what you're asking. But that might be part of the technique—like, they're still there, but locked behind a wall or something."
Nao frowned. "Your clan can't tell?"
"No."
"That's…" Nao shifted. "I'm very glad we're not working on the frontline."
Sakura agreed, but didn't say so out loud. They may not have been on the frontline, but the lack of knowledge over the bloodline—the lack of ability to counter it—may very well make that distinction pointless.
There were plenty of deadly bloodlines on both sides of the war, but they were known dangers, counter-able to a point and (importantly) not a surprise when in the middle of battle. They were still deadly—still powerful—still not something you wanted to go up against, but.
Well.
Fear of the unknown, and all that.
The secret was out in all brigades one week later.
Having lost the morale-related need to keep quiet, Konoha decided to go on the offensive: an order was sent out to the entire frontline—kill the bloodline at any cost.
Suicide strategies were okay.
Sakura, from her daily position atop the Second Brigade Second Battalion's Headquarters, knew that this decision had not been popular.
Sarutobi Kyo—the Battalion Major—was particularly against the idea, to the point where her voice could be heard over the sound dampening seals that were printed around the building.
"—STUPID! …WRONG WITH…? …OBVIOUS! AND… WITHOUT… IDIOTS! THE…"
Sakura agreed with the obvious bit, but it was obvious for a reason—she couldn't think of any better way to respond, and it didn't look like anyone else could, either.
Sasaki Nao (he mostly did border patrol because his range was fantastic) had no ideas either.
"I just kind of want them dead, you know? Solve the problem."
"They're all young." Sakura said.
"So are we! Well, you more than me, but I'm still a teenager for a few more months."
"No—I mean, there's at least two of them on our frontline, and three to the north, and they're all reported to be adolescents. All of them."
Nao blinked at her.
"My point," Sakura said, "is that Iwa has clearly been gearing up for war for a while now. The new bloodline seems to be a significant part of that. If they already have five… let's say fifteen year-olds, though, than wouldn't they need at least one adult with it, or more?"
"It's a new bloodline. And Iwa." Nao said. "The first person's probably just… you know, busy reproducing."
"We don't know it's a new bloodline—"
"Iwa didn't exactly use it in the Great War."
"—we just know it's new to Iwa. Do you know how much information we have about the western half of the continent?"
"Not off the top of my head, no."
"The best you can say about our information is that it's more than nothing. My point—my point is, what if all of them aren't siblings? What if Iwa just convinced another clan—a clan from the Land of Pickles, of Swamps, or Frogs or something—convinced another clan to join them?"
"Then why don't we see older adults?"
"Iwa destroyed Uzu." Sakura was getting excited now. Excited for the first time in a while, actually—her shifts had left her too exhausted to care for most of the war. She sat up fully, shifting to look at Nao directly as her theory began to come together. "But Uzu was powerful, really powerful, and they had control of the seas much more than Iwa has claim to. So how did Iwa destroy Uzu?"
"A new bloodline?"
"It would certainly help!" Sakura said. "So, because Uzu was so powerful, they killed all of the new bloodline just like we're trying to do, except—because it was already a built-up clan—they just raised up the new generation, which explains the pause between them attacking Uzu and them preparing to attack us."
"What's the point of this?" Nao said.
"The point is that we might not know anything about the bloodline, but one of the western countries might!"
"I'm sure the strategists have already thought of that."
"Oh. Yeah."
Still, Sakura thought it was a good idea. She hoped it was true, too: any way to get more information would be awesome.
.
Konoha's targeted plan worked well, at first.
The Second Brigade's First Battalion killed their target three days later, despite the concerted effort of Iwa to prevent such a thing.
The First Brigade's Second Battalion killed theirs a full week after that.
In the meantime, twelve nin were affected.
And then it was Iwa's turn to go on the attack.
They also went the targeting route, but unlike Konoha, they didn't have to contend with their target being obvious.
Konoha knew they were probably going to target one clan, but which?
The Yamanaka were considered, and so were the Senju (in particular because of their already diminished numbers.) It was the Uchiha and Hyuuga who were at the top of the list, however. And the Hyuga—who had been courted to join Iwa and refused—were completely pushed back from the frontline.
Seven hours into her shift Sakura was already done. It was the hottest time of day, the summer, and she literally couldn't remember the last day she'd had just to rest.
It may have been her birthday.
A new signature, unusually small, began approaching the tent and Sakura focused on it, trying to determine which of the twelve nin allowed to enter it was.
Then she checked again.
Then she threw the noise seal she carried as hard as she could onto the roof below her.
The alarm—not just an attack alarm, but a "Someone is attacking the Headquarters" alarm—rang through camp.
The intruder had launched himself at her in less than a second, and then it was all she could do to stay alive.
His right fist jabbed forward and she redirected, ducking low to swing at him before leaning back to avoid another blow. She tried to get eyesight, but he'd recognized her hair—he fought blind, seeing it safer than risking his mind. She parried another blow. Behind the enemy, another Konoha-nin appeared, jabbing forward himself. The man parried, then parried again, then through a final punch at Sakura. He was using a suntetsu, and the spike jabbed deep into her shoulder.
A third Konoha-nin arrived—a Nara. He froze the infiltrator in place, and all at once the fight was over.
Sakura screamed.
The infiltrator's fist was pulled away from the suntetsu, and she and the weapon were dashed over to the hospital tent.
"Sensor," the Uchiha who was carrying her gasped. "Stabbed in the shoulder—may be poisoned."
Oh, poison. Yes, that was a good thought, wasn't it? It was probably poisoned.
She wondered if it was a poison she'd been defended against.
Probably not, actually. There was a limit to what non-Kuni plants Ino-Shika-Cho could get their hands on.
.
"Kagome, kagome
The bird in the basket
When, oh when will it come out
In the night of dawn
The crane and turtle slipped
Who is behind you now?"
Singing while performing surgery might seem a bit gruesome, but it was really the only way Juro could keep himself sane. He knew—was very, very aware—that his work, and the work which necessitated his work, was necessary.
But it was hard, on a day-to-day basis, to cope with treating injuries he knew would just happen again.
At least there weren't that many injuries.
There were far better ways to get information, after all.
But on top of the, well, torture, there was also the self-inflicted injuries.
There were a lot of those.
The Iwa nin seemed deadset and determined not to give anything away, even if it meant killing themselves or their less reticent compatriots.
Konoha had guards, of course, but they couldn't monitor every prisoner 24/7, so…
(In defense of Iwa, it was only the prisoners in the greatest and most frequent need of medical attention that were at this outpost—the others only had one doctor instead of two, and an apparently far more leisurely pace for the medic on top of that.)
"Kagome, kagome
The bird in the basket
When, oh when will it come out
In the night of dawn
The crane and turtle slipped
Who is behind you now?"
"New prisoner," Yamanaka Mei said, stepping aside to allow the Nara-controlled man in. "Needs medical attention."
"I'm kind of in the middle of something," Juro said. What even was the point of cutting off fingers if they wanted him to put them back on again later? "Can't Uchiha do it?"
"A prisoner tried to slit his neck. Uchiha's dealing with that."
"Fine. Give me a minute."
"I can't hold this up indefinitely, you know." The Nara said.
"I know. I'm almost done—just one finger left."
Nara and Yamanaka sighed.
They moved to stand (with the prisoner) next to the wall.
"What'd he do to go straight here?" The Yamanaka asked.
"Tried to kill Sarutobi Kyo—the General of the Second Second? Sensor caught him before he could enter the Headquarters though. Another was caught by border patrol and killed himself before capture, and the third got into the First Third's Hospital and tried to kill the Sarutobi medic but he killed her first."
"Did you say the Second Second?" Juro asked.
"Yeah."
"Do you know which Sensor?"
"Uh… a Yamanaka, I think?"
"Was she—were they injured?""
The Yamanaka shrugged. "Might know when the next letter comes in. Why?"
"My genin teammate is a Yamanaka sensor with the Second Second." Juro said.
The Yamanaka eyed him, then looked at the Nara. "If you finish with your current patient in two minutes I can take a look?"
"Are you able and allowed to do that?"
"…is the first enough?"
Juro thought for a second. "Yeah."
Then he bent over the patient and got to work.
He was done in a minute and fifty-two seconds.
"Let's get him strapped down."
The Nara sighed. "Oh, thank god."
The prisoner had barely been pushed into position when the Nara dropped his shadow. "Alright, bye."
"Do you need anything to do it?" Juro asked. The prisoner's eyes darted to him, then the Yamanaka.
"No, just time. It's not a particularly quick process, unfortunately. Plus I'm not… well, I'd say I'm average. Which means… basically, I can kind of sort of picture what they are picturing. Given enough time."
"Should I begin work?"
"Yeah, probably. He's poisoned himself, so…"
Juro's eyes snapped to hers. "You didn't think that was worth mentioning?"
"Wasn't top of my list, no. It's apparently a very deadly poison, but it's meant to slip under our notice rather than work quickly. A Yamanaka medic of the Second Second figured that out really quickly, though."
"Okay. Okay, you figure out what he did to… to the Yamanaka sensor, and I'll keep him alive enough to tell us what else he knows."
"Sounds like a plan. Just—make sure he doesn't go unconscious, okay?"
.
Shin missed fighting in the Land of Canyons.
He hadn't had to do any of the fighting, for one—he just consolidated information for the Major and Lieutenants.
It had been hard work, but work he was practiced in, and not particularly risky either.
And then the new bloodline showed up.
And Shin had been selected to go west to figure out any other information there was.
He wasn't even an infiltrator!
Of course, he also wasn't going undercover.
Ahead of him, Sensei's form was just visible over the heat of Suna's desert. They'd been running in it for days, now, forgoing the safer routes in favor of speed, and their water was just beginning to run low and they'd need to find something edible in the next twenty-four hours or else risk the significantly slower pace of malnutrition.
It was worth it, though.
Information—any information—about the bloodline was worth its weight in gold, salt, or blood—whatever got them knowledge the fastest.
The dunes of the desert surrounded them, and Shin kept one wary eye on the sun's position as they kept on moving.
Sensei slowed, eventually, to a light jog, until he and Shin were parallel once more.
"The oasis isn't nearby; we must be slightly off course. We'll rest now, then during the night track any animals we find to hunt or follow to water."
"We don't have a sensor, Sensei."
"I know. I know an earth technique—I've not used it for some time, and have never been practiced in it, however it is intended to help one feel vibrations in nearby earth. I'll use it, and we'll both have to hope that will be enough."
Shin grimaced, but nodded.
If it weren't… well, if it weren't, then tough calls would have to start being made.
Still, they would keep on pushing forward, their goal far too valuable to abandon.
Shin wondered how his teammates were doing; Juro's medical skill and Sakura's sensing ability would both be outstandingly useful, and having them beside him, knowing they were okay, would make the whole ordeal far more bearable even without their skills.
He hoped they were okay.