Sakura was really, very grateful that all the other sensors had willingly rearranged their schedules to gift her her entire birthday to work on her battery and radio.
And she'd spent the whole day doing just that, too! She finally (kind of) had several sketches for how a battery might work, each more likely than the previous, her radio concept was being translated somewhat well into fuinjutsu… everything about her birthday was, honestly, great.
But that's what made it so very difficult to get through.
Despite the arrival of the samurai, despite the (relatively) smaller samurai force that the enemy sent in response, despite consistent food and fewer deaths, despite all of that…
They were still at war.
She spent every day on constant, high alert.
This break—this one day of doing what she actually wanted, enjoying a full sixteen hours more than she had in literally a year—this break would just make the following days tougher, and she knew it.
Though, honestly, Sakura knew that the day had probably done far more good than bad.
The same could not be said about Arden's memories.
Every night found her lying in bed, eyes closed as she flitted through what Arden knew, what Arden felt, what Arden lived.
And every morning found her lying in bed, remembering, yet again, that she did not live in that world.
When Arden was fourteen, she was in school, only just barely beginning to think with any sort of intent about what she wanted to do with her life. She was watching movies, and reading books, and playing games, and hanging out with her friends, and having family dinners, and mowing lawns for spending money.
She'd never killed anyone.
She had never even seen anyone die.
There was no weight on her shoulders—if she didn't mow a lawn, the lawn just wasn't mowed; there wasn't any worry that the lawn's owner may end up dead, that the house itself may be taken over by the enemy.
The worst Arden could expect was to not get paid.
To get a bad grade.
To get into an argument, lose a friend, lose a game.
Sakura, at fourteen, had already killed.
Had seen more dead bodies than she had years on this earth—than she had months on this earth.
The weight of her camp, of her village, of her country was on her shoulders.
That this weight was shared between herself and all the other shinobi of Konoha helped little.
It still felt far too large.
Every day, when she woke up and remembered (again, again, again) that she was not Arden, that she was Sakura, it hurt a little more.
And yet, like a drug, she couldn't stop looking.
She tried, and was somewhat more successful in, limiting her time spent reviewing memories.
Only an hour, she'd said to begin with.
That, for reasons which had more to do with sleep than the resulting emotions, lasted only two days.
Then she'd gone down to half an hour.
Twenty minutes.
Fifteen.
Ten.
She'd been stuck at ten for a month.
Her mental health, she knew, was deteriorating.
The constant reminder of the horror of her situation, the increasingly severe minutes of dissociation every morning…
She was unraveling.
No one else knew yet.
She couldn't—didn't know how to—ask for help.
What could anyone else do?
What would they do?
She'd never told anyone about Arden's memories.
She remembered, all too well, her time spent in the white room with the evil doctor.
She remembered, all too well, her torture training.
If Sakura went and told people she had someone else's memories in her head, memories from another time and another world and another reality?
Memories which sometimes, fleetingly, seemed to make direct references to this one?
At best, they'd think her mad.
They'd give her the kind of drugs one couldn't think past, put her in one of those homes for people with disabilities and families either too unfit or too nonexistent to care for them.
At worst…
And even if she skipped that part, just explained instead how she felt like she was spiraling out of control, like she had increasingly little say in her life and her emotions and how it was increasingly more effort to do anything, to continue existing…
Well, what could they do?
They needed her to be a sensor.
Even in an ideal world, where she could explain exactly what was happening, Sakura knew what the recommendation would be:
Stop reliving Arden's life.
But Arden's life—Arden's life, while it might be slowly killing her, it also acted as her lifeline.
It, and the letters, and the research, were Sakura's few bright spots.
She didn't know how to give it up.
Didn't even know if she could, anymore.
She was fourteen years old.
She felt like she was one hundred and four.
Everything ached.
Muscle aches, she remembered from her Yamanaka lessons, had a great many causes.
Stress, she suspected, was the most relevant one in her situation.
Would also explain her insomnia, how even when she got to sleep she still woke up exhausted.
Stomach aches, too.
She'd had those for months.
Suspected the lackluster food.
Hadn't gone away, though, so that was probably stress too.
She also found herself acting like she was on the clock even when she wasn't, swiveling her head and throwing out her sense at any sign of danger, at any change at all.
It also—
Well, it wasn't like she was the only one with those types of symptoms, was it?
It would probably be easier, now, to list those in camps without any stress symptoms than those with.
And that didn't include all the other mental disorders that were beginning to spring up.
Long wars were…
They took something out of you.
No matter how little you actually saw, the constant pressure, the constant threat, it weighed on every participant.
The shift was changing.
Sakura slipped into bed.
She wondered what parts of Arden's memories she'd see today.
She'd dispensed of the habit of finishing an entire thread of memories before progressing to the next.
Couldn't see the point.
She hoped they were happy memories.
She'd gotten some, several weeks ago, about a family vacation.
That had been nice.
The shinobi just finishing their shifts came in.
The ones just starting had already left, were already in position.
She really needed to go to sleep.
She closed her eyes, awaiting Arden's memories.
But she didn't fall asleep.
Couldn't fall asleep.
In the days past, when she'd tried to sleep, it had sometimes been difficult—sometimes taken as much as an hour—but she'd always fallen asleep.
Why couldn't she fall asleep?
.
In the main medical tent of the Second Brigade's Second Battalion two medical-nin bent over the eighth bed from the door.
They'd gotten through one through seven rather quickly—none were recent acquisitions, two would be sent to Konoha soon, and the rest would see combat again in a week, give or take.
But the eighth bed held an occupant who had only been there for two days.
"Alright, I know her official diagnosis." One—the elder—said. "How about her prognosis?"
The younger shifted, pulling up his clipboard and flipping to the second page to show the elder. "We can get her to sleep, but she can't fall asleep herself. We could keep giving her sleeping pills, but…"
"Temporary solution. Stress always gets worse if you don't treat the source."
"Plan?"
"Keep her here for now. We'll review once a week, see if she starts to improve. I really don't want to remove any sensors from the frontline."
"Understood."
"Next?"
The two nin moved to the next bed. Behind them the girl lay completely motionless.
.
Bokuso stood just inside the room with the prisoner.
The main interrogator, a Tokubetsu jounin named Kazuo, sat across from the most recent addition to their prison.
The prisoner had started off cocky.
Bokuso was always… surprised wasn't the right word. Bemused, perhaps.
Bokuso was always bemused when they started off cocky.
One of the main draws of Konoha, after all, was the village's Yamanaka clan.
But then, Kazuo was clearly not a Yamanaka.
Still, if it were Bokuso, he'd have started to wonder just how good his interrogator was to be considered an equal to mind-walkers. Or, at the very least, wonder if he'd missed something, misunderstood something, was bereft of valuable information.
This prisoner… this 'Mitsuru'… hadn't seemed to think about any of that.
Perhaps it had been an attempt at his own misdirection, expressing that which he did not feel. It was unlikely, though: Kazuo was an efficient interrogator, and Bokuso—with his bugs constantly crawling in and out of every orifice—an effective tool for maintaining constant fear.
Mitsuru, even once his cocky attitude had disappeared, hadn't quite been willing to give up. Instead, he'd begun blustering, giving some information they knew to be true, others they knew to be false, and still others they knew nothing at all about.
What little was true was likely an error, Mitsuru slipping up after being kept awake for so long.
Sleep deprivation was a common technique, here. Sleep was so important that any little disruption, well…
So there was every chance that some of what he told them, that which they didn't already know, could be true.
And this was the part that Kazuo excelled at.
Bokuso tensed, allowing several larger beetles to come out of one nostril and march across to the opposite ear.
(They wouldn't actually go in his ear, would hide in his hair, but the illusion would remain.)
Kazuo flipped through the papers he'd brought. "Now, now, now. I know you didn't mean to lie to me—we're all friends here—but you did." He grinned. It was a shark's grin—a grin that was so assured of its superiority that all around it had to relent in response. "Do you want to try again?" His eyes, quicker than a fire jutsu, flashed at Bokuso. Mitsuru's eyes followed the movement then froze, watching the beetles as they made their journey.
Kazuo never made a threat.
He didn't have to.
.
Yamanaka Kenta, proud father of twelve, laughed uproariously as yet another dancer appeared from behind the curtains. The two men he'd come with, his work buddies, who'd known him for longer than they knew each other, joined in, only pausing to take up some more liquor.
Today, in their eyes, had been a good day.
Kenta (or, as they knew him, Nobuyuki) was such a great guy—was such a charismatic guy—that he'd managed to get them a job at a palace! Oh, it'd be the same work as always (cook, cook, and then cook some more, never with enough notice and always with the most unreasonable demands imaginable) but the money.
Everyone in town—everyone in Earth—knew that someone had tried to poison the noble, so it wasn't such a surprise that he'd had his entire chef roster except the head (whose head was spared) decapitated, but that Nobuyuki had gotten them three of the six suddenly open positions!
"Another!" Nobuyuki shouted. He thrust his coins forward, gesturing wildly at one of the more expensive bottles on the wall of the by-its-nature cheap establishment. "To good fortune!"
"To Nobuyuki!" His self-identified lifelong friends shouted.
.
Arato grinned as he looked around his new accommodations. Some aspects of his life he could do without, but the luxury… that he'd never resent.
"Hello!" A voice called out. He turned, finding its owner laid out on a pile of pillows: another, and perhaps even the head, male harem member.
Arato turned immediately and bowed; "Good evening, lord."
"Hmm… eastern?"
"Yes. From the Land of Tea."
A snort. "Really eastern, then. We have different etiquette, here. I'll teach you in the morning." The man stood gracefully. He was at least a head shorter than Arato, and incredibly skinny, but he had muscle that spoke of hours of hard work; muscles, Arato knew, were popular here.
Arato bowed again.
"I'll show you to your rooms."
.
"And the Yamanaka in bed eight?"
"She is beginning to fall asleep on her own, kind of, but she's not improving at nearly the rate necessary to keep her on the frontline. She is also unable to relax for hours after sensing."
"Hmm."
.
Sayuri held back a sneeze. She really wanted to be done with this one—she hated it when there were animals because she always sneezed when there were animals.
Still, the mission was going well.
Up ahead, Inuzuka and Utatane were finishing scouting out, but this did seem to be the right place. If it was, then Utatane would work her magic tomorrow to get the guy drugged up and Sayuri would work her own to get his secrets, and they'd be headed back to the outpost before her eyes turned permanently red from the three cats that the merchant saw fit to live with.
Sayuri gave up and plugged her nose. This would be a fun position to keep for the rest of the day.
She really hated missions with animals.
.
Kamui coughed, then began hacking.
His boss, Akimichi Akimichi, laughed. "Spicy, isn't it?"
"Inedible!" Kamui forced out. He grasped for water, found that it didn't help, and then went to the bread.
"Well, by itself probably. But I was thinking we could add it to a few meals, you know, for a bit of flair."
"Flair?!"
"Well, yes."
"Where did you even get this devil's food?"
"The Land of Wind. We're importing a lot more from them, you know, given everything."
Of course. The war. Politics. Shinobi. That was Kamui's entire life, wasn't it? No matter how far he ran, no matter how many times he reiterated that he just wasn't interested—well, it wasn't up to him, was it?
He grunted. "I suppose you want me to figure out how to do it?"
Akimichi Akimichi laughed again. "I'm a busy man."
Kamui glared at him. "And I'm not?"
"You're my underling, so no."
"That's not how it works."
"Isn't it?"
.
"Any change in her?"
"No."
"We'll give it a bit longer."
.
Takashi grunted with exertion. Beside him, up and down the line, all the other shinobi were doing much the same.
In front of them, fire bloomed to life.
This level of wanton destruction was not something they could do often, particularly against an enemy whose average shinobi was more than capable of defending themselves, but every once in a while, without any warning, huge numbers of fire users would be gathered at the front and…
Well…
There was a limit, after all, to how much earth could protect those behind it from the heat and the smoke, even if it tended to work well as an actual barrier.
They'd been the ones to go on the offensive this time, which meant in a few days, they'd have to watch out for the land to start moving under them, destroying all it could as it jerked up and down with increasing speed.
Hopefully, ideally, their contingent of Suna earth users along with what few Konoha users had been sent to their camp would be able to keep the damage to a minimum.
It wouldn't be a fun few days no matter what.
Takahashi grunted again.
This isn't what he'd wanted. He'd thought, as a child, that being a shinobi sounded cool, sounded powerful. He'd dreamt of admiring gazes and, as he got older, of women draped on him, in awe of his power.
And he'd been his mother's delight, so his every wish came true.
He became a ninja.
Except now there was a war, and he was considered 'passable' only at fire jutsu, and no one was looking at him with any admiration, and the only women draping themselves on him were those he'd paid to do so. He hadn't been back home in a year, he had no large shinobi clan to receive messages through, and out of those he worked alongside, the older ones thought he was insolent, those his age couldn't let schoolyard teasing go, and those younger than him thought they were equals.
He'd considered just leaving more than once, going AWOL, becoming a missing-nin. He hadn't, because that would hurt his family name and his father had always made clear that the name was the best thing he had, but…
As the days grew longer,
As the war dragged on without end,
As he went, over and over again, completely unacknowledged…
The appeal grew.
.
Yamanaka Inoto bent over the latest clan letter to be sent to every battalion.
"Anything else that might need to be added?" He asked, mentally checking off everything that he knew needed to be in the paragraphs as he ran through the latest iteration.
"Two things. First, Yamanaka Sakura, daughter of Kenta and Kaoru, is still off duty."
"Any update beyond that given to us?"
"No."
"Then we won't mention it. Second?"
"Your son. There hasn't been a mention about him since he began going on missions."
Inoto rubbed his forehead. Inoichi… Inoichi was a problem.
The last time he'd seen his only son the poor boy had looked—
Had been—
And it wasn't exactly like he'd been able to keep hiding him from the world, keep hiding reality from him, not when Inoichi had been so eager to fight, to battle, to see blood spilled.
He'd tried, in his own way, to warn his son.
He supposed he'd fallen short.
Inoichi was his only child, too, and he was growing old. He'd loved his first wife, loved her more than the desert loved water, but she'd been infertile.
He still remembered the day she'd left, the day she'd said he needed to think of their clan first.
His second wife was a lovely woman, a wonderful wife, but he didn't love her.
He did love their son, though.
But their son hadn't been made to be loved—he'd been made to be leader. And Inoto had ignored that for too long. Had spent too long ignoring his duty to his people, until he was far older than he had any right to be before having an heir, and then, even after little Inoichi had been born, he'd wanted to protect him, to love him, for just a bit longer.
He and his wife, who had been similarly encumbered by love, both allowed the young boy to get away with far too much, until, when at last life came to a head, he'd been unable to cope.
He hoped Inoichi was doing better.
He'd written, twice, but the responses had been… lackluster.
"And what do you think we should say?" Inoto asked.
The other man shifted uncomfortably. "I'm not saying there is anything to say, necessarily, but… well, the clan wants news of their future leader."
Inoto knew what that meant. It meant they wanted to know if he was maturing fast enough, if he'd be able to take over when Inoto inevitably croaked.
"I'm not wasting space to say nothing's changed. That's the assumption, Masaki. There is no point in reiterating the assumption."
"As you say." Masaki said, stopping just short of verbally disagreeing with him.
Inoto brushed aside the man's tone, leaving the battle for another day. "Send the letter."
.
Akina grunted with exertion.
"You good?" A voice called out from the top of the hole.
"All ok!" She shouted back. It was an important question, she knew—at the first sign of collapse she'd have to evacuate as quickly as possible, ore or no—but talking made more of the hot, dead air into her lungs.
She knew that her partner, standing far above her, was working overtime to pump fresh air down the shaft, but she hated this, hated every second of it. Ore mining was a dirty business, the kind only those with no other options turned to, and its risk of death was as high as any military profession.
It was worth it, though.
Every second.
Earth was known to be ridiculously hard to infiltrate into and here she was.
She was a nobody now, but she was a nobody who had been thoroughly checked over and found to be an actual Frost immigrant, lured in by a better life.
Akina grunted again, shoveling a bit further and lengthening the hole a bit more.
Wait and see—her effort would not be for naught.
.
Katoaka Yui grimaced against the sun. Summer was coming in, and the roof of Headquarters provided little in the way of shade.
Instinctively, she turned her head from one side, then the other.
There, as expected, was the Suna contingent, just arriving for their biweekly meeting.
One of her counterparts, if you can call him that (Yui wouldn't, but she wasn't asked) walked at the front of the group; unlike Konohagakure sensors, Suna's sensors followed the most important of them around constantly, guarding people rather than locations.
Toppu Sai was fully grown but incredibly young, with an ill-kept mustache and a style that could best be described as 'colorful.' His job was to follow the head medic.
He was a bit of a flirt, really, but usually his own medic was the target—and given that he was far closer in age to Yui than the woman he bodyguarded, it wasn't going well.
Behind them walked three other 'important peoples' with three other sensors.
Their camp was likely almost entirely unguarded.
It was an odd system, Yui thought.
"Good morning!" Toppu shouted up, grinning as he scaled the walls of the Headquarters in a single bound.
"Should you be using your chakra like that?" Yui asked.
He laughed. Below them the important peoples entered and the other sensors spread themselves across the ground. "I liked you better when you couldn't stop talking about how cool I was."
"I grew up. You should too."
"Oooh, you're in a bad mood. Your sick sensor's not back yet?"
Yui's eyes flashed at him, then around in a wide arc. "You know about that?"
"I was here two weeks ago, wasn't I? And two weeks before that? You've been down a sensor for a while."
"She's… recovering." Yui said.
"Miss your buddy?"
"We weren't buddies."
"Oh come on, you kids always hang out together. At least, that's what happens in Suna."
"Well, we're not in Suna right now, are we?"
"Suppose not. Man, you're touchy."
"I'm just trying to do my job."
Toppu, finally, shut up.
For about a minute.
Then he spoke again. "You know it was stress that did her in, right?"
"I know."
"Aren't you worried about the same happening to you?"
Yui opened her mouth, then closed it. Sakura was many things, but she was not easily overwhelmed. Yui, for better or worse, was.
In truth, she was terrified of ending up like Sakura.
Ending up there quicker.
Ending up there more permanently.
"Hobbies," Toppu said. "Hobbies help, and—"
"She had hobbies," Yui said. "Has hobbies." She corrected herself.
"Really?"
"Yeah. She said—says that all they did was remind her that she'd still have to do this every day."
"All they did?"
"Well, she also said they made her happy, but only for the short term. Meaningless."
"Do you think, honestly, that she'd have ended up down and out sooner or later if she hadn't had her hobbies?"
"I don't know."
Toppu quieted again.
And then, inevitably, the silence was too much for him.
"Do you know what's going to happen to her? She gifted me some heating tags once, in the winter. I just… she's going to be okay, right?"
Yui sighed. "She can go to sleep on her own now, but it still takes her awhile. I don't know what the medics are going to do, but she's… I mean, she seems the same to me, just tired."
Toppu nodded solemnly.
And then, because he was Toppu, asked if she'd heard the joke about the Jashin worshipper who went to a bar with a woman hanging off each arm.
.
Several ninja huddled around a table in T&I. The frustration was clear from the set of their shoulders, their jaws. They'd managed to capture several vaguely high-ranked Earth officials in the past month or so, a better haul than they'd ever gotten before, even now, weeks after the interrogation of the first had begun, it became clear that the solution wouldn't be as easy as just looking in their minds.
All attempts so far had been clear: many of the officials had been told contradictory information.
Today they were focused on the rumored death of the Second Tsuchikage, a relatively common belief amongst many of the prisoners, but not all.
"Don't you think if it were true we'd have heard from somewhere else by now? Or they'd at least be clear about how he died?"
"The death of Muu would likely be a top priority secret. And, really, they all agree on some basics—at least those that think he's dead—he went to Water to try to bang out an alliance and… didn't come back."
"He and the Mizukage hate each other. Why would they be teaming up?"
"Well, there's the rumor about the infighting in Earth's Samurai—"
"Yeah, yeah—that one's not so much a rumor anymore, the only thing they disagree about is the scale… look, I'm just saying it might be a trap."
"Muu hasn't been seen on the battlefield in months."
"See? A trap. Besides, its not like we send our Kage out either."
One of the other Yamanaka in the room rolled their eyes. "Muu was out at the beginning, wasn't he? Stopped our progress in the north."
"We're going around in circles." Another interrupted. "We've had this exact discussion yesterday. At this point we need to make a decision: what do we, as a country, believe enough to act on?"
.
It wasn't Rento's turn to listen to the caller in front of the Administrative building.
It never was, actually; he was too young.
Still, at least once a week, he and his friends would find themselves, like moths to a flame, drawn to the caller.
It was a terrible experience every time.
The street was always packed.
Wailing was common.
The lists, even now that the fighting had died down somewhat compared to the winter, still went on too long.
The caller started with those killed in action.
Name after name after name after name.
Then missing.
Name after name after name after name.
Then returning home.
Name after name after name after—
"What?"
"Don't you have an aunt named Sakura?"
"Daughter of Kenta and Kaoru." The caller finished, before starting with the next name.
Rento took off.
He could hear, behind him, Nara Kayo and Akimichi Kunio sprinting after him.
His chest began aching as he turned onto his clan's streets, bereft of the all-important air that every living thing needs, but he kept going.
He turned into his compound.
He could still hear the pounding of Kayo' and Kunio's feet.
He turned onto his grandmother's street.
His heart began to beat in his ears.
"Himari!" He shouted, recognizing his aunt. She turned, and beside her stood aunt Kohana. "Aunt Kohana!"
He put on a final burst of effort and landed in a heap in front of them.
"Are you alright?"
"Aunt Sakura's being sent home!"