Konoha had emptied out substantially with the new year and the new island, but it hadn't emptied entirely.
There were people who had found new job opportunities, who now worked in construction, in smithing, in carpentry.
There were also those who had found love, those who had been arrested and convicted, and those who had latched onto the far better healthcare Konoha could provide and were now scrambling to figure out how to afford to stay.
The largest group, however, was the children.
When the refugees had arrived in the city nearly every one of them had enrolled their child in the Academy—it was free, entitled their child to greater rations, and taught skills that might be useful regardless of future career.
When it came time for the refugees to leave, then, when it came time for them to go back to their land and work on getting their farms back on track, there was the question of children.
Most took their firstborn sons with them—they were intended to inherit, after all, needed the most experience with the land they would work.
Many took their other children too—the more hands the better.
But Konoha's Academy still provided an opportunity. Moreover, despite the war the opportunity was the least deadly it had ever been.
Such was the effect of seals.
Konoha's stampede towards progress was almost entirely dependent on seals, required thousands to be made as quickly as possible in as high a quantity as possible.
You could still be a ninja, still pursue just about every career that was previously available—but you could also drop out after correctly forming your first seal, enlist in the newly formed Sealing Division instead, and spend eight-hour work days meticulously writing seal after seal for steady, and safe, pay.
Many, many children, therefore, were left behind.
Given over to the Academy's Apartment Complex, where orphans typically lived out their academic years.
Second-, third-, and fourth-born sons; even daughters, for those who actively fought for it hard enough.
Sealing, actual sealing, was started in year five.
The drought ensured that, beginning in four years, there would be an incredible influx of sealers for Konoha to utilize.
Even without them, the usual students who failed to pass the final exam and joined the corps instead—many of them much preferred the idea of being a Sealer, of steady, safe income and a far less physically taxing career besides.
So much sealing, and yet not enough.
Sakura's eyes ached.
"If we order 20 percent less typical exploding tags—"
"20 percent?!"
"Well, we need more water filter seals—the Daimyo specifically requested—"
"Don't forget we'll need to start making bomb tags when development is completed."
Uchiha glared at Sakura. "Don't add problems we don't yet have."
"At the current rate, development will be finished within a month or two."
"So fast?" Aburame said, playing with the abacus his bugs had pulled out to divvy out their current sealing resources.
"Yes; Minato sent his protégé Kakashi to help assist, and checks in on them with tips every couple days."
"Every couple—"
"He got a faster transport seal to work." Sakura explained. She could almost see Uchiha's forehead start to throb as he took in the words. That couldn't be healthy. "Don't worry—he hasn't been able figure out how to get it to work with anyone but himself—it relies on his chakra signature, I believe."
"Small mercies." Uchiha said.
"A great boon if he does figure it out." Aburame murmured.
"And what resources would we use if he does manage it? What would we take away to—"
"How about fewer explosive seals for now, a complete cessation of Konoha-provided sealing tags—those are popular, but also useful enough that legalizing marketing seal creation might—"
"You want to legalize marketing seals?! And what about the risk of ones that misfire?"
"They are, technically, already legal." Aburame said. "It's just that there's currently no legal recourse should a commercially bought seal not work—a manner of discouraging their use."
"And getting rid of it would overrun the already overrun judicial system!"
"Sealing is, by this point, almost a mandatory part of the Academy—statistics show about nine in ten students take it, currently. Even if they drop out the first semester is all about recognizing proper versus improper explosive, storage, and heat tags. I'm sure if the Police stop by to regularly monitor any store that opens up to—"
"You want to put more work on us?!"
"You're not part of the Military Police Force."
"I'm Uchiha."
"Submit a report of your proposal in two days, Sakura. It would be good to see it laid out and cohesive before Deputy Head Uchiha tries to poke holes in it." Aburame said.
"Hai."
"We'll manage until then. For now limit air pollution tags to only those voluntarily submitted; we've fixed that problem within Konoha enough to put to the side until after the war, and the Daimyo hasn't requested any. Drop explosion tag production, too. That should give us sufficient production capacity to meet the Daimyo's request."
"Hai."
.
Ibiki shot straight up as the door opened.
His blanket was folded on the edge of his bed—it was too hot to bother with—and he'd been mentally drilling potion antidote recipes as a way to deal with his boredom.
One look at Uncle Ren's face and he wasn't bored anymore.
"I passed?!"
"You did a wonderful job, Ibiki. Congratulations, you have completed Yamanaka Clan Training."
Ibiki—
He'd been in this dug-out basement for who-knows-how-long already, had grown used to rice and poison and various attempts at information gathering.
He'd missed a good part of Year Four, would likely have to deal with Asuma whining about it when he did go back to class—
But he'd passed.
More than that, he'd done well.
He threw himself at Uncle Ren.
"Oh! Love you too. Want to go talk to your guardians?"
"Yeah."
"Alright. Let's get you some nice anti-nausea tea and go from there."
"Tea sounds nice."
"Yeah. Trust me, eating good food again will be a slap in the face. Worth it, though."
.
The Land of Uzu was awash with fresh faces, with eager people and green lands—mostly—and enough work to go around. While there had initially been some fear that Iwa had done something to the lands, it quickly became clear that the only reason Uzu remained unsettled was because of the frequent drop-ins by pirates, raiders, and ninjas alike—none of whom got along.
Now, however, the ninja were in far greater quality, and joined by samurai and supplies and very driven people looking to take advantage of the swaths of fertile land and sea salt and fish and every other resource the island had to offer.
The smaller raiders and pirates knew enough to stay away.
The larger ones—better known as the Kiri shinobi, utterly controlling every other aspect of the waters—had a ceasefire with Konoha that neither was particularly eager to break; Kiri even went so far as to pull their ships out of almost all of the southern waters entirely.
Konoha kept an eye on that—ceding resources was not normal, even with a ceasefire—but so far there weren't any hints as to why Kiri took such a drastic step.
All told, then, the island was literally ideal.
It was empty, it was resource-rich, it was under Fire's full control—
But it was also empty, and resource-rich, and Fire was full of many, many different factions.
Despite dozens of meetings plotting out the exact boundaries of every noble's territory, their proxies wasted no time in beginning spats, accusing their neighbors of encroaching on their lands at the same time as the neighboring proxies made the same accusations back.
Three different nobles had also decided to make the 'second largest seaport' of the island (the largest was to be directly owned by the Daimyo) and all three hadn't communicated such plans to anyone else until they noticed the other two ports in construction and became upset.
It should have been better on Konoha's side of the island—with all the clans busy with the Great War, after all, it seemed silly to think they had enough time for petty disputes.
It was not better on Konoha's side of the island.
The clan representatives sent to run their new lands were the ones that weren't needed in Kumo, that weren't needed at home, that were smart enough to get the job done.
In other words, they were all the kind of people who no one wanted to work with. If the Hyuuga representative wasn't accusing the Uchiha representative of arrogance, then the Mitokado representative was acting so condescending that both the Mitokado's neighbors' representatives—Utatane and Shimura—went so far as sending letters home demanding that he be forced to step down.
It came out that Nara Shingo and Akimichi Kentaro had had an affair several years back, ended it when their respected spouses nearly found out, and grew to resent the other for ending it in the time following—and now both were representing their respective clans in Uzu, and often in the same room as each other, and Yamanaka Naoki figured their entire relationship out within the first week.
And then told everyone.
So now Shingo' and Kentaro's wives were pissed, Ino-Chika-Sho Uzu meetings had ground to a halt, and—to top it off—Nara Shingo apparently had an ongoing (and until now successfully hidden) affair with Nara Aimi, who was furious to find out that she wasn't his only affair partner and had proclaimed such in full hearing of Shingo's wife Emi.
Shin could feel his head throbbing.
Six scrolls.
He'd been sent six scrolls, ostensibly covering the commencement of Uzu's colonization.
And some of it did that, covered how much land was being converted to fields, who was putting down mines, how laying down a road system and plumbing system was progressing…
But most of it just seemed like gossip.
It was important information, vital to being able to predict and mitigate future problems.
Shin knew that.
Shin had been taught that, had real-life experiences to fall back on as proof of the importance.
It still felt like gossip.
Shin didn't want to read about how Nara Shingo had secretly paid for Nara Aimi's move to the island. He didn't want to hear about how Mitokado Atsushi had heavily implied that Shimura Toshiaki was mentally ill. He certainly didn't want to hear about how one noble's proxy had literally attempted to kill another when the proxy thought the other was trespassing and he could pretend he thought it was a ronin, especially because the samurai's review of the incident found that both had actually been standing on a third noble's territory.
Shin considered retiring early, going into writing. Maybe fables; they were always straightforward and had a nice, simple lesson to come away with.
Jiraiya had become a writer, after all, had already published three books, started to make a name for himself in literature.
Of course, Jiraiya hadn't retired—was still working just as hard as he always had.
Shin opened the fifth scroll.
It was, of course, about the Ino-Shika-Cho territories and how they weren't synergizing as intended.
Shin sighed.
It was important reading.
It was.
He just really wished that he could get a break from the gossip sometimes, before he fell any deeper into the hole of noble social climbing any further.
He needed a vacation. Needed to see his friends, family again.
He glanced out the window, watching as a cart of wounded Samurai were led up the hill to be personally congratulated by the Daimyo's Military Advisor for their work in the war.
Perhaps he'd manage with the gossip a little while longer.
.
Obito shrugged, the movement feeling strangely unnatural.
"I dunno. When I say I don't remember anything, that's what I mean. Last thing I remember was just after the… the bridge, when the Uchiha medics were whispering about how I might never recover."
He should, he knew, be feeling even worse now than he did then.
Then, at least, he still had eyes.
Still had a chance, however slim.
It had clearly been some time since then, though, and his Sensei's hand was warm in his and Kakashi had summoned three different dogs to keep him company whenever the younger boy had to so much as stick his head out of the room and Rin had given him a koto to play with whenever the medics weren't surrounding him.
They were almost always surrounding him.
He knew he should be—
Well, actually, he knew he would be miserable.
Soon.
Very soon, probably, because he was blind and his eyeballs were gone and something had happened to him but no one knew what and he'd never be able to be a ninja again and he had apparently been intentionally kept from his team prior to his kidnapping because the Uchiha hadn't wanted to admit the severity of his condition.
And also he kept on being questioned, even though he had no answers to give.
There were many, many reasons for him to be upset.
And he would be.
Soon.
But not now, because all he could think—
All he could do—
His parents were dead, had died before he could remember them. His grandmother died during the war, but before the bridge.
He had no more immediate family.
But he felt loved, now, felt cared for in the way that Sensei forced the medics to back off whenever Obito had enough, felt it when Kakashi told him how he'd begun blindfolding himself and walking around his house every morning to prepare the home for Obito, felt it when Rin gave him the Koto, sat with him and taught him how to use it, how to do something that didn't require his eyes.
One of Kakashi's hounds began snoring, pillowed as it was on Obito's feet, and Obito shook his head again as the interviewer asked him about recalled smells.
"Nothing. Nothing at all."
Sensei decided that was enough for the day, the other man was ushered out, and Rin slipped in with barbecue—Obito's favorite, and something apparently in short supply thanks to the drought.
(It had gotten worse, they said. They'd explained to him everything that happened, never tried to hide anything from him just because of his condition. He loved them for it.)
Soon, very soon, he'd have to come to terms with what had happened to him.
He'd have to grieve his eyes, grieve his lost time, grieve his lost autonomy.
But for now—
For now, a bowl was being placed into his hands, and the dogs were begging Kakashi for his portion, and Sensei was laughing and warning Kakashi of the dangers of giving in, and Rin was pouring everyone drinks, and—
He would let himself be happy.
For just a little while longer.