Kakashi grunted, the air completely knocked out of him.

Kushina couldn't stop laughing.

"Come on, I didn't hit that hard!"

"I'm not an Uzumaki, you know! Demon or no!"

"Yeah, yeah… you're fine though."

Well, he was, but that didn't mean she should just assume that.

They'd only been sparring together for like half a year!

Which…

Was actually a while.

Kakashi's stomach clenched.

He got up, dusted himself off.

Turned to look at the effects of their spar.

"Not nearly as much damage as last time."

"Yeah, you've been improving in control a lot! You'll be downright effective when you get old enough to go on the field again!"

Kakashi swallowed, "When do you leave?"

Kushina's form, from where it was across the field picking up various projectiles, froze.

Started again.

"Soon. Two days."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

She'd told him yesterday that it'd be within the week.

He'd had time to prepare, knew it was coming from the second they'd learned the Daimyo died.

But—

Kakashi took a breath.

Hesitated, tried to figure out if he could get the words out.

Sensei'd had him in therapy for four years now, since his dad had died, hadn't let him out of it even when Kakashi had spent the first seven months refusing to talk—told him to take the opportunity to meditate if nothing else—and.

Kakashi knew it was healthy.

Good for him.

'Emotional vulnerability.'

But it still galled.

He'd spent so long trying to get people to treat him as capable, realize how much he could do—

And then Sensei, who'd known exactly how much he could do, how quickly he could learn, had moved up the minimum age.

At first Kakashi had thought that was because of the whole bijuu thing, because of all that had happened there.

He still thought that, actually.

But then—

Sensei'd never liked Kakashi being on the field.

Never.

It didn't matter how capable Kakashi had shown he was, how much Sensei clearly believed that he was capable, Sensei still didn't like it.

Hated it.

And then when he'd become Hokage he'd done something about it.

Which—

Kakashi hadn't wanted to believe that Sensei thought he was weak, not when there was so much evidence to the contrary, which had left him little other option.

He'd begun, more or less against his will, to rethink his theories on weakness.

Obito had helped a lot there too.

And Rin.

And Sakura, who was absolutely awful at fighting (at least compared to Kakashi) but clearly influential despite that.

And Juro, who had stepped away from combat entirely and still managed to help so many people.

And Sensei.

And even his dad.

So Kakashi had been all but forced to… reconsider, some of his beliefs.

And his therapist—Chuunin Yamanaka—had told him lots of things he hadn't thought about before.

Including how important 'emotional vulnerability' was.

And Kushina, she deserved for Kakashi to try.

Kakashi turned away (easier if he didn't have to look at it) and spat the words at a rogue cluster of knotweed.

"I'll miss you."

And—

Damnit.

He should have seen this coming.

Before he had time to react, Kushina had swept him off the ground, squishing his ribs together as she held back actual sobs.

"I'll miss you too!"

"Okay, okay, okay—put me down now, please. Please. Please put me down. Kushina, I can't breathe."

"Oh, sorry."

.

The seal was finally finished.

The timing couldn't be worse.

Rento bent over his desk, fidgeting with his final draft.

It wasn't finished finished, technically.

Still needed Uchiha approval.

Probably a few modifications, based on the compromises he'd had to make.

But this one—the one he was staring at now—it should work.

It would work.

The Uchiha Head wasn't even in Konoha—was already on the frontlines.

Most shinobi were out of Konoha by now.

It was ready, but the Uchiha didn't have the time to think about it right now, helpful or not.

Also, who would do the sealing?

Rento shoved the papers back in the seal, unwrapped and rewrapped his top body wrap—his notes at work were being constantly monitored, but his notes for his 'personal project' weren't, so he had to make sure they were safe himself.

He needed a break.

His sister—she was leaving tomorrow. Fifteen years old, plenty old enough for the frontlines.

He remembered most of the time that she was only a year and a half younger than him, remembered most of the time that she was an adult, now, grown up and moved out and… well, not a baby.

But he still pictured her as a toddler, as the little kid who'd chased him around and begged him to teach her how to throw kunai.

She was leaving tomorrow.

They were supposed to have family dinner tonight, anyway, but maybe she wouldn't mind a bit of extra company before then?

Just—

To give him time.

Rento looked out the window.

The Yamanaka compound was too far from any of the walls to get a good view outside the city, but his current apartment—he'd moved out when Yoriko had, giving his mom and dad the chance to downsize—gave him a pretty good view of the Administrative Building.

Ninja streamed to and from the windows.

New telegraph lines had been put up—now they clung to every side of the building, brought messages to and from the Hokage from every direction.

War had arrived.

Rento was going to spend time with Yoriko, even if he had to be the annoying older brother and refuse to leave her alone.

.

Utatane Aiko paced the very short amount of bare floor she had, watching the sand drip out of her decorative hourglass out of the corner of her eye.

Her apartment was small, but well adorned, with probably too much furniture in probably too little room.

She and Yasuo had started looking for apartments to rent together when they'd gotten engaged, but they hadn't planned on getting married until the summer.

Now Yasuo was already on the coast, and Aiko—

Her eyes cut, once more, to the hourglass.

Cut away.

Only a few spare grains left.

She paced, again.

Swallowed.

Looked at the hourglass.

The top half was empty.

Her eyes turned, unwillingly, to the bathroom.

Was it good news?

Bad news?

Would she even be able to tell the difference when she saw the results?

Should she have waited for Yasuo's first return home, however many months that might take?

(Well, that last bit was clearly wrong.)

She shook her arms, her legs.

Opened the bathroom door.

The test was where she left it, on the edge of the sink.

She took a step.

Another.

Two lines stared up at her.

.

Orochimaru frowned, listening to the sibilant hisses of his serpentine scouts as he made another small x in the corner of the page—yet another failure.

Yamanaka Sakura had not been particularly remarkable to him when he'd worked with her—smart, yes, but not combatively capable and lacking the drive to succeed that marked those truly worthy of being opponents or allies.

But then there'd been the book trade.

He'd given his text away easily enough—it was one of his older ones, and book cyphers were all but impossible to decipher without the requisite book—and had fully expected to spend a few hours decompressing from more engaging projects picking apart whatever infantile code she'd begun producing at her young age.

And then he hadn't been able to solve it.

And she'd been picking apart his astonishingly well, correctly reasoning the topic and therefore able to make educated guesses on a lot of the words.

She still hadn't gotten anywhere, not really, but—

She'd gotten ahead of him.

He'd wanted to spend more time, show her why he was considered such an incredible mind, to show off a bit really, but it still hadn't been that important.

She was a nobody.

He had other plans, more pressing in importance.

And then he'd been caught.

And she'd been promoted—co-head, now, above his former position in an incredible act of mockery on the Hokage's part.

And Orochimaru had still been busy, was still busy, but now some of his plans actually benefited from being able to understand her code, especially because he knew her current one was built off of it, but—

Still.

Nothing.

The letters made no sense, the text read left to right for reasons he could not even begin to explain, there didn't seem to be any tie at all to Kunise or, for that matter, any other language—

Orochimaru looked up.

"You are due to leave tomorrow."

The boy nodded.

Orochimaru smiled.

No point showing the boy that he was upset that he couldn't give the child more to work with—the boy would take what he got, and it would be enough.

And if it wasn't—

Well, he was only the first of many.

"Remember, Yamanaka Sakura—she's the main target."

The boy nodded again, bowed, his head touching the floor.

Orochimaru's smile grew, feeling the tiny seal he'd carved on the boy's skull ring out to him. The best part was the hair would completely conceal the scar—no sign at all of the danger about to reach Konoha's doors.

"Dismissed," Orochimaru said, and even as the snakes continued to come and go with status reports, even as his attempts at deciphering were once more put aside for more pressing matters, he couldn't stop smiling.

Konoha would soon remember exactly how powerful their maligned Sannin really was.