Three weeks in, and Tsunade had revolutionized the Body Clone team. Their clones now regularly lasted long enough for clones to fully heal, required sustenance and were capable of full digestion, and could be medically examined using traditional iryoninjutsu. None of the clones were surviving through any traditional surgery, not yet, but—

It was progress.

A lot of progress.

In terms of group dynamics, however…

Taro could barely look at Tsunade without thinking of what she had gotten away with.

Doi was doing even worse.

Orochimaru was still weirdly against the project overall (although Sakura was beginning to have a pretty good idea as to why) and Sakura—well, she didn't even want to know how she fit in.

As for Tsunade herself, her work seemed to be just about the only part of her life that wasn't a wreck. She had panic attacks, far more regularly than Sakura would have thought possible, and she literally couldn't stomach the sight of any blood—not even clone blood. She'd already met with and moved on from four different psychologists, she only managed a veneer of happiness in front of Shizune, and if she wasn't drinking, gambling, or working then she was asleep.

They'd put her on meds.

It hadn't helped.

At least, Sakura considered, she had today off.

Of course, that was only true because she was shadowing the Research Head again…

The five deputy heads, the Head, and Sakura sat around the table stacked with the most recent progress reports of the various inventions.

"And… Sakura's nephew's light seal is complete, so I have filled out the majority of the paperwork to get him promoted to chuunin."

"Anyone have any objections?" Silence. "Then I'll have it signed and forwarded to the Hokage by the end of day. Anything else?"

"New project from the new Nara has this idea for a flying machine—it uses hot air pushed into a special fabric bag to stay afloat."

"Has it got to the prototype stage?"

"Not yet, no."

"Leave it until then. If it works, it works. If not…"

"I have some notes about something similar, actually." Sakura said. "I'll forward mine to her."

Deputy Head Uchiha nodded, made a note, and as one everyone's eyes shifted to Deputy Head Nara of Community and Detection Research.

That Nara was glaring at the other Deputy Head Nara. "Your Uchiha wants to use computers for communications purposes, so you're transferring him to me."

A smirk.

"I want to give him back."

"He's doing communications work—"

"He's an Efficiency Researcher!"

"Who is now doing Communications Research."

"Cope, Hiroshi. Anything else?"

"Yeah, yeah… I have… um, over here, yes. The latest upgrade to the radios—should make them longer distance. Latest prototypes don't have any issues."

"Good. Roll it out. Manpower going to be a problem?"

"Shouldn't be, no."

"Alright—"

Three and a half hours later Sakura was finally left out.

She didn't think she'd ever much enjoy the meetings.

One hour later she was in front of the Academy.

"Hey Ibiki!"

"Hi Sakura! Guess what!"

"What?"

"Kurenai stuck a leaf on her head for the first time!"

"You're learning that in class already?"

"Well, not in class… but Asuma got taught, which means it's okay for the rest of us, right?"

Sakura grinned, hugging the child closer to her as they started walking home. "Right."

"Will you practice throwing with me tonight?"

"Sure."

"Great—we're learning how to throw stones right now, so we can throw them with seals on later, and I'm not doing so good."

Sakura grinned. "You prefer the pointy things?"

"Yeah! They're funner!"

"Well, you can do a lot of damage with stones too, so be careful."

"You can?"

Sakura snorted, thinking of the frontlines against Iwa. "Yeah."

"Cool."

"What is it with boys and violence?"

"Aunt Ayame likes violence too—she's always fighting."

"That's true. So, what do you two have in common that I don't?"

"We're cool!"

"Oh, is that right? And what am I then?"

"Lame!"

Sakura grunted, pretending to be physically hurt by the insult, when—

"Shin?"

"Shin!"

"Hey, kiddo," Shin said, bending down to hug Ibiki while glancing up at Sakura—don't ask, not now. "Making fun of Sakura, were we?"

"Yeah!"

"Well, at least you're honest about it."

"Yeah!"

Hours later, after spending the afternoon with Ibiki and dinner with the family, chinmoku convened in the backyard.

Sakura checked out the neighboring area, but it didn't feel like anyone was nearby.

Shin sighed.

"You've been busy."

"Busy… doesn't cover it. I—well. Anyway, it's wrapping up now. I've got a month off, too, before it's back to the Capital."

"A month?!"

"I've been busy, I said. Definitely earned it."

"Can you tell us anything?" Juro asked.

"Uh, yeah, sure. It's pretty straightforward, anyway; there's a new religious sect that's sprung up—one that demands human sacrifices."

"Isn't that… normal?" Sakura asked. Certainly they'd been taught that it happened fairly routinely in the Academy,

"Sure, but it still needs to be stamped out quickly. This one wasn't—it popped up during the heat of the war, when we were all trying to figure out how to deal with the chemical attacks, and…"

"And it slipped under our noses."

"Yeah. For long enough that they've got a fairly substantial number of followers now, and are hopping up and down the minor nations on the coast, killing as they go. The Fire Temple monks are here because the cult is claiming to worship Yamabushi Tengu, and the monks have taken exception to that."

"Why the secrecy, then?"

Shin winced. "The Daimyo of the Land of Tea was just killed by the cult. Don't spread this around, obviously—Tea's still hiding his death, because he has no sons or other living male relatives. They're trying to marry off his daughter as quickly as possible to one of the nobles, but they haven't decided which, and the cult is still actively killing in Tea, so…"

"Fun."

"I'm sure the civilians are having a great time."

"The monks want to send a huge show of force in, kill everyone falsely worshipping Tengu, and call it a day. Tea wants us to stay away officially until they've gotten a new ruler in place, but also send a contingent of shinobi to protect the nobles until then. The cult wants to kill enough people that they 'earn superpowered chakra' and can take over the world. It's all a mess."

"They come to an agreement yet?"

"We're sending a contingent for two weeks. If they don't have the wedding by then, then we go for the kill anyway, no matter how helpful the 'current crisis' is in allowing Tea to hide their headless-ness."

"How… callous."

Shin shrugged. "The dead Daimyo's daughter's apparently a wreck, so she cares."

"That doesn't really make the situation better."

.

Sakura's head was spinning. She'd never had particular ease with fuinjutsu—it certainly wasn't a skill that carried over from Arden's life—and this was so high level—

Juro, slumped next to her, was massaging his forehead already.

Kushina looked close to tears.

"We need—"

"Not Jiraiya or Orochimaru."

Juro sighed. "We're going nowhere, fast. Even understanding the problems involved with getting pregnant and giving birth as a jinchuuriki is over our heads, never mind finding solutions."

Kushina looked close to tears. "I'm good at fuinjutsu, you know!"

"And I'm good at medicine, and Sakura's good at research. We're all good. We're just not… good enough."

Sakura bit her lip, running through what she knew in her head, then decided it was at the very least worth speaking aloud. "Tsunade's an option. She knows fuinjutsu and medicine and she's pretty good at research, too. She's a Senju, as well—grew up around Mito."

Kushina's brows creased. "She kidnapped her niece, has a gambling and drinking problem, and gets queasy at even the idea of blood."

"I'm not saying she's a perfect solution. But she's not Jiraiya, and she's not Orochimaru, and she's a woman."

Kushina sighed, sitting back in her chair and allowing her eyes to sweep around the room to take in all of the papers they'd been desperately trying to consolidate their relevant knowledge on for weeks.

"How… sane is she?"

Sakura… didn't want to answer that. "I don't know. She's doing great work on the body clones, though."

"Chakra to matter… always a tricky concept."

Juro grunted, nodding.

"So she's smart…she's in therapy, right?"

"Right."

"…and she's not a pervert, and she's not as creepy as Orochimaru."

"Yeah."

"I still don't trust her."

Juro sat up. "We'll keep trying, then, at least for now. But Kushina… unless something drastic changes, we're going to need help."

"Maybe Minato will have some free time soon?"

Sakura snorted. "Sure."

.

The body clones—at least the first prototypes—were ready. They lasted for just under a month, bled, bruised, healed, and digested like regular humans, and—well, they didn't have a brain, not a fully functional one, but that was probably too much to ask.

The first test, intentionally infecting them with a virus there was already a known cure for, and then dosing half of them with the cure, was ready.

Twelve bodies stretched out on beds, tubes attached to keep them alive and four Hyuuga standing around to monitor their condition.

Orochimaru stood, frowning, in the center of the room.

Sakura and Doi flanked him on either side.

Tsunade had opted to sit out the day, so she was off to her newest therapist.

"We've done it." Doi said, his voice hitching as he watched two chuunin begin dosing each body. "We've done it."

"It's not good enough." Orochimaru said. "They still can't survive surgery or changes in mass, they have no brains, and they don't last nearly enough for many projects. We need the ability to use human specimens."

Sakura tried very, very hard not to flinch.

She;d have to send her sensei something nice; his training was why she almost always succeeded.

"It'll still be—be revolutionary!" Doi said. "And we accomplished it so quickly, too, after so long trying to make the fuinjutsu work. It's a good thing you're so bad at chakra seals, Sakura."

"Thanks."

Orochimaru turned, sweeping out of the room. He seemed more angry than she'd thought he would be; more dangerous.

Sakura swallowed.

Doi was far too busy staring, wide-eyed, at the human chakra bodies.

She left him to it.

She needed to do something about Orochimaru, something about the darkness he was doing increasingly little to hide, but what?

.

The Hokage frowned, fingers steepled, as Research Deputy Head Nara rattled off their best theory for Kumo's detection technology. They'd narrowed it down to three ideas months ago, had spent the past several doing everything they could to get more information, and the final determination was some sort of machine that detected all humans in a vicinity, which could be instructed to ignore known humans, likely through a blood from said humans—the reports from Frost were the best help in narrowing that aspect down, apparently.

"Can you stop them, then?"

"Um, not yet." Deputy Head Nara said. "But—working on it. Um, some ideas… nothing good right now. Just thought you should know."

The Hokage sighed. "Thank you for the update."

It was, to be fair, good information.

But it also meant—

Kumo was well-defended, now.

The only infiltrators Konoha could use would be turncoats, and there was always a greater risk of double agents with those.

It was not good news, and winter was coming again—another year, lost to war.

Minato, Sarutobi Hiruzen thought, better be ready to take over.

And then he had another idea, and called the wild-haired Nara back in.

.

A condor swooped across the landscape, high above the mountains below. The wind danced around him—an incoming storm, just visible on the horizon—but the condor knew enough.

The weather had turned cold, the drastic difference between summer and winter temperature already tilted over, but condors weren't known to migrate, so the shinobi patrolling the roads didn't give the bird a second glance; they were near to a town anyway, which meant that no non-Kumo humans or chakra pools could be close.

The condor made sure not to dip any closer to the land, eyed a dense forest with no close lodgings insight; the bird could land there, but not before.

Really, the condor wanted to fight. That's why their family had agreed to a summons contract in the first place, and until they'd been shifted from Iwa to Konoha that had gone fine.

Konoha, to be fair, was rather nice too.

Of their summons—they had four now—most were stationed on the coast, which had… downsides, but their disinterest in playing at reconnaissance had been noted, agreed to.

But now, now Konoha, and therefore their summoners, really wanted them to act as scouts.

So they'd come up with a deal.

Close enough to his chosen landing sight, the condor began his swoop down.

He hoped that he'd be chosen to stake out the Academy after this, 'experience' or something working in his favor, but they hadn't figured that much out yet, only that the Condors would get to personally select their future summoners from the whole of Konoha's pool, instead of whoever their current ones introduced them to.

It was, the condor considered, worth it.

But only because they were getting a permanent concession in exchange for one year's worth of work; he really hated scouting.

Taking off again, the condor began to make a wide turn back south; he'd seen enough for the day, and he'd been promised a full meal if he arrived back before the storm.