Sakura awoke all at once, almost as if she hadn't been asleep in the first place.
Of course, she was in the Hospital now, and Tsunade was standing over her, smirking at her work.
"Hello," Sakura said.
"I'm done," Tsunade said. Then, as an aside, "always liked burns."
"I burned my opponent in the first round too—look at me, your ideal competitor. Have they announced winners yet?"
"No—they're still getting through the battles. Couple hours of waiting left. Stay here until then; that should be long enough for your body to recover."
"Aye, aye, Captain."
Tsunade snorted, then left.
"She's doing work, now?" Sakura asked the other medic in the room—a Yamanaka, her… third cousin? Possibly third cousin once removed.
"Oh, yes, but only with a low chance of seeing blood—so we at the burn unit have seen her… a lot. Convenient, though; she really is exceptionally good, and it means we can spend time at other units, helping out there."
"Well, that's nice." Sakura said.
"Are you going to try to get out of bed?"
Sakura considered. "Probably not, no; I want to join in the Ino-Shika-Cho party for the passers tonight, and I don't want to be forced to spend it in the Hospital as punishment."
"Great. Here's some paper and a pen; I'll check on you in an hour."
Well, the burn unit certainly was efficient.
Sakura could see the Sarutobi across the room.
He looked much better—not burned at all—but he waved at her instead of speaking so clearly he was still healing a bit; yelling tended to be painful when your torso wasn't perfectly in order.
He had a paper and pen too.
There was another shinobi—almost definitely another competitor—napping on one of the other beds. The room was otherwise empty.
If the fire jutsu hadn't hit her where it had, Sakura was sure she would've been out already too.
Oh, well, nothing to be done about it now.
After about half an hour of doodling, the doors opened again; the Yamanaka medic, followed by the stretcher with a competitor, followed by Tsunade.
After a minute all but the competitor were gone.
And then Kaede slipped in.
"Are you allowed in here?"
"Who's going to tell? Do you want the update or not?"
"Okay, okay—what's the update?"
"Fujio says they're about to finish the second round, Unusually high number of idiots exhausting themselves and dropping out, apparently. Still better than the risks you pulled, though."
"Gee, thanks."
"No problem. Anyway, your last opponent was from the Taika clan."
Well, shit. Sakura should've considered that; would've modified her behavior.
In her defense, the Taika clan was one of the smallest bloodline clans in Konoha.
It was barely even considered a bloodline, too, except that even before Konoha was founded the Hyuuga had been able to confirm that a Taika only had to use a fraction of the normal chakra requirements for any fire jutsu.
(That, plus the Taika being one of the oldest clans there was record of, encouraged the theory that the Taika were a 'made' bloodline, formed by staying in Fire for so long that no one had a single example of a Taika leaving—even during war the Taika stayed in the border or ran the roads—and the literal soil of Fire appreciating their dedication enough to reward them.)
Anyway, the point is, because of the truly substantially reduced chakra requirements for fire jutsu, Taika tended to focus almost to the point of handicap on fire—but Sakura hadn't considered it, because so many other clans and non-clan shinobi specialized in and had the easiest time with fire—so many in their region, in fact, that it had earned the country its name.
Well, bygones, Sakura supposed.
The question now was if she'd done well enough to pass.
.
The party was being held at the Nara compound; while there were no Akimichi in this batch of jounin prospects, the Yamanaka had Sakura and the Nara had two different competitors.
All three passed.
It had been suitably underwhelming—a flowery, empowering speech by the Hokage followed by a random jounin rattling off the names of every passing jounin in under a minute.
"You've passed." The man's voice seemed to say. "Back to work."
Sakura picked up a couple meat skewers from one of the tables, Aiko following after her.
They hadn't had much time to hang out in the past months—Aiko was busy with her judgeship, and Sakura was just plain busy—but now that the jounin exam was over, hopefully that could change.
"So he's told you?"
"Not in so many words…" Aiko said, grabbing a fish skewer to finish her plate. "He just, you know, wanted to know if I'd say yes."
"So he's told you."
Aiko snorted. "Okay, okay, he's told me. But, I mean, he hasn't actually proposed yet. That's all I'm saying."
Sakura side-eyed Aiko. "You're already planning the wedding."
Aiko flushed. "He asked me if I'd say yes! I'm allowed to start planning!"
"Didn't say you weren't."
Aiko bit her lip. "I hope the peace lasts long enough. Have you heard anything about Kiri?"
"Probably not any more than you; I've been kind of… busy."
"I hope it lasts."
By treaty, the ceasefire was supposed to last for five years. They were only two years in, but that didn't mean they'd actually made it to the inscribed end date.
Aiko pursed her lips, then turned to where Bokuso, Juro, and the others were already sitting—no point in dwelling on the bad—and segued gracefully into how her father hadn't been able to stop crying and hugging them when they'd slipped up and accidentally announced the upcoming engagement.
.
Jiraiya came back lacking Orochimaru.
Despite all that he and his increasingly vast spy network had gathered, then, he still felt like a failure.
He'd grown up with Orochimaru.
He'd learned side-by-side with him.
But he hadn't noticed, not really, when his teammate had begun to descend into madness.
He hadn't noticed when Orochimaru had started to take one step, then two, then three too far—all the way past human decency.
And now, now his disconnection from Orochimaru was underlined once more: months, months of searching, of using every single memory and note he had about Orochimaru to try to find his maddened teammate—
And nothing.
His student, at least, could benefit from what he had brought.
"We'll keep on looking for Orochimaru, of course," Minato said, eyes closed as he digested the sheer amount of information Jiraiya had just rattled off, "but at least we have the prisoner seal, to ensure that we can track all of those we think were working with him."
Jiraiya nodded. The kid couldn't see him; his eyes were still closed.
"The Research, though—"
That was a topic. Jiraiya leaned forward, eager.
"As far as I can tell," he started, double-checking yet again that they were completely alone (Suna, after all, was an ally), "they decided to start researching summoning contracts because they really are different worlds, you know. Or, at least, one different world—while most summons are reluctant to talk of their world, it is pretty clear that some summons border others' territory."
"And they're hoping…"
"To be able to extricate resources from this second world. They have an elephant contract, you know, and based on reports the elephants' home world is a straight-up rainforest—water and wood and meat as far as the eye can see."
"So if they can extricate the resources…"
"Then that suddenly allows Wind as a whole to support itself much more easily. Too, if there's at least one world then there may be many; if they have access to an endless number of worlds, well—"
"Immediate superiority." Minato's eyes opened. "We can't dedicate any of our Research team to this problem; I have been repeatedly informed that they're overwhelmed as is. That said, what you have managed to find… they're not close, right?"
"None of my spies have thought Suna was anywhere near actually accomplishing anything—it was the mere idea that was considered revolutionary, and enough for them to dedicate their newly funded Research Department to."
"Fair enough. Well, we're their allies, so for now we'll just monitor."
"Hai."
"Anything else?"
Jiraiya racked his brain. He'd already listed off most of the information, rumor, gossip that he'd found—oh, right.
"I got the soil samples Tsunade wanted."
"Alright. You can give those to her directly." Minato's shoulder's shifted, his authority suddenly leaking out of them. "It's good to see you, Sensei. Want to come over for dinner tonight?"
"I'd love to. See you then."
.
Kohana drew in a breath.
The air was hot, muggy.
A storm had just ended, though—a relatively tame one, mostly just rain—and the smell of it was still in the air.
Kohana had always liked the smell of the rain.
She was outside at the moment because she'd just finished meeting with the latest of the immigrants to the Ino-Shika-Cho land.
The island was now clearly divided—half samurai-controlled, half shinobi-controlled—and each side was further divided among nobles, clans.
Everything had been built up, by now. The population was still rising—even people from outside Fire, now, and especially from Frost, which was having yet another cold snap.
The immigration was creating issues in the mainland, according to Shin; many particularly lowly vassals of the Daimyo and more local lords had come here, had come searching for new opportunities.
It was interesting to see who went where.
Despite the reputation of shinobi—unknown, unexpectable, deadly—the shinobi side of Uzu seemed to be a decidedly more popular destination, particularly among women fleeing their set paths.
Inoichi, more than eager to test educating adults as well as children, had accepted them all happily, contingent on a mindwalk.
(The mindwalk had scared many prospective civilians off, but it did ensure that, in their own land at least, there was no worry over spies.)
Many of the other clans—Hyuuga excluded—had even contracted with the Yamanaka to use the mindwalking themselves.
Konoha had never bothered; just used the Yamanaka shinobi in the guard to do the duty. They hadn't gotten around to setting up those practices for Uzu as whole, though, just the city (called Kaiso—seaweed—in what must be a reflection of someone's particularly poor sense of humor) so it was up to each of the clans to control their own lands.
The new group had been mostly just normal people, from villages all over Fire. There were a couple from abroad too—several from the islands not controlled in practice by anyone, but claimed in international circles by the Water Daimyo. There was also a surprisingly large contingent from the Land of Mint in the East—there had apparently been a revolution recently, and many had fled to new and, ideally, more stable places.
They'd all submitted to the mindwalk, came out clean. They'd been given apartment numbers—there was free housing for the first six months—and Kohana had run the filling out of paperwork (most, as usual, could not write.)
Inoichi would be happy; the vast majority had signed their children up for the Academy. Kohana was sure few would last for the full age range the Academy accepted—currently it accepted up to fifteen-year-olds, and almost no one but the samurai trained their children for that long before they began working—but it was education, it was free, and it provided lunch.
For the kind of people who would accept being mindwalked by ninja, going the next step seemed to be a no-brainer.
.
Despite the now-indisputable trouble more and more couples were having getting pregnant, it was equally indisputable that Fire was having something of a baby boom.
Or, rather, it was definitely having a baby boom—one that had started during the Third Great War, when it had become clear that despite the sheer number of soldiers needed on the front it was very unlikely indeed that the enemy would actually make it into Fire proper in any great number.
The various natural disasters which occurred throughout that time—drought, fire, that one small earthquake in the southwest—had stymied the progress somewhat, but with the technological revolution, with the stronger sense of security in definitively winning the war(s), with the sheer number of opportunities (Uzu, both Konoha and now the Capital expanding their walls)…
Tsunade snorted as she read through yet another report that population numbers had, yet again, been underestimated when the various shinobi had gone out and checked again.
This was particularly true of the numbers since the war with Kumo ended, when all the shinobi had come home and so many new jobs—Researcher, teacher, fuinjutsu maker—had opened up that let them stay home, stay with their loved ones.
It was unsurprising.
It made the fact that there was definitely something going on, some sort of definitive fertility damper all the more worrying.
Tsunade flipped another paper, snorting again—the genin team in this one had 'cheated' in their first rounds, using chakra sensing and not taking into account how absolutely minuscule some babies' chakra content was.
Then her eyes slid once more to the other data.
It was good news, she knew.
It was, definitively, good news.
It just didn't feel like it.
Progress was sometimes… scary.
She'd had the idea a couple months ago, when Jiraiya had suggested having 'his people' send in soil samples from all over—even from the other side of the continent.
She'd accepted.
The soil samples had been arriving for months now, had been building and building a more complete story.
Some samples had been… odd.
Tsunade had reported this to Nara Taida, who ran Jiraiya's web from Konoha, and he had sent out threats again, asked for more samples.
And then some of those people had disappeared.
And those samples that had come back—usually from the remote areas, where the weirdest initial results had come from—came back…
Well, with more of the weird stuff.
The… drips… of black.
It wasn't oil.
Wasn't mud.
Wasn't anything analyzable.
It didn't register as chakra, not really, but any attempt to measure it seemed to suggest it was chakra.
Always chakra.
It infuriated the Hyuuga she'd had help, had her ranting and raving about 'not-chakra' and how it shouldn't be.
It wasn't anything that anyone had heard of before, measured before.
And, again, those who went searching for it had gone missing.
There was none found on Uzu.
Tsunade had sent off the samples to Research, had told them to override the Hokage's commands and find a way to measure this first.
It was summer already, and who knew how long this thing had been promulgating, migrating? Who knew what it was?
For now, it seemed wise to keep it from Uzu.
From the other islands.
Minato had (after being informed, and she admitted that she probably should have gone to him first) agreed, had the entire Research Department put to developing some sort of detector as soon as possible, so that every single ship could be scanned, double checked before arrival.
Stem the movement of… whatever it was.
The Research Department had started calling the black 'byoki'; malady, illness—something that bode badly for health.
Tsunade had found it rather apt.
She flipped through another genin report of another town with many babies, but the byoki refused to leave her mind, refused to stop lurking in the back of her mind.
She really wanted to gamble now, lose enough to get rid of the twisted feeling in her stomach.
The temptation was too strong.
She flipped a coin, calling heads.
The Daimyo's face stared up at her.
She threw the coin away.
Shoved the documents in a storage seal.
Locked the storage seal in her file cabinet.
She'd tried to keep working, had been trying for weeks, but the fear wouldn't leave.
She's spend some time with Shizune, spend some time teaching Rin and the other girls who had started showing up for her weekly lessons a few chakra techniques.
And if none of that worked…
Tsunade slammed the file cabinet shut. Locked it.
Those were worries for another day.