They were in the middle of a meeting.
Sakura hated meetings.
She hated how long they were, how little would get done.
But they were a fact of life, as necessary to the government's functioning as anything else, and so…
They were in the middle of a meeting.
And then suddenly they weren't.
The Hokage disappeared first, and then the rest of them were racing after, trying to catch up.
Something had happened.
The Hokage's personal telegraph and radio operator didn't exactly look pleased to be surrounded by so many high-level officials, but he continued decrypting the code from Uzu without complaint.
"Ship…
"Waving a white flag…
"Konoha-specific signaling…
"From Kiri…
"Signals are being translated…
"Refugees…
"Bloodlines…
"Infiltration mission complete…
"Sensors have been sent forward…
"Ship has stopped movement…"
And then all of them waited.
Waited for the sensors to throw up an attack signal.
Waited for the sensors to return.
Waited.
And then came the message:
Refugees confirmed.
Minato was gone.
He'd disappeared so fast that Sakura hadn't even seen a blur.
About half of everyone else was gone in the next second, those who were skilled enough to move that fast.
And then it was Sakura's turn.
.
The refugees were refugees.
They'd come on a ship directly from Kiri, hundreds who had managed to escape right under the Hidden Village's nose because they hadn't been expecting it.
Because no one, before, had defected in such large numbers.
Individual traitors were common, everyday—and usually low-level enough that no one was even willing to bother to take them in.
Clan traitors were rarer, events when they occurred—but they happened.
They'd happened long before the Hidden Villages had formed, and they'd happen far into the future.
But this—
At least half, was Intelligence's best guess.
At least half of Kiri's bloodline clans had sent out everyone they thought wasn't being actively watched.
The leaders, the 'mainline' families for those who broke themselves up that way, they stayed.
They had no choice.
Everyone knew leaders lead defections, and so Kiri watched the leaders.
And the leaders…
They led.
They chose to preserve their families.
Every new insight the defectors gave was worse than the last.
Kiri was running an army of dehumanization, of fear and control and pain.
Kiri was running its people into the ground.
And it was clear the Mizukage didn't care.
It was no wonder, really, that Konoha was having such trouble.
Not only did Kiri have a clear advantage in the sea, but Konoha wanted to keep its people alive.
Kiri didn't.
Which, of course, left the question of why.
There had been tyrants, in the past, who had used similar methods.
Every time, the result had been the same: short-term gain, long-term ruin.
And Kiri knew that.
Had lived through that.
What were its leaders thinking?
.
The defectors meant things, big things, for Konoha—but Konoha still had to survive the immediate backlash.
Konoha was empty.
Disturbingly absent of defenders.
The only ninja left were the injured, the disabled, the pregnant, the elderly, and, of course, the genin.
Ibiki frowned, glaring at his teammates.
"Put them in!"
Misaki squirmed. "It's so gross, though!"
Sadao looked equally unwilling, but all he did was grunt.
Ibiki struggled to keep from stomping his foot. That was immature, and he was mature now. "They're fireflies! It's fine! Put. Them. In."
Misaki stared at the firefly in her palm. "Okay, but you said that to summon as many fireflies as you did you had to get the ones that don't even speak, or, like, know more than three signals to give us."
"Three is better than zero. Our shift starts in less than a minute, and we are supposed to be guarding the wall. They can communicate faster than we do, and right now we need that."
"Danger. Safe. 'Event'," Sadao said. "Is this really worth it?"
"Put! Them! In! Your! Stupid! Ears!"
Sadao grimaced and held his firefly up. It crawled in obligingly. Sadao would be able to feel the signal's vibrations there, and it would get him used to it for when they were finally allowed back out on missions—exactly as Sensei had ordered.
Misaki scrunched her eyes shut (how would that help?) and followed Sadao's example.
Finally.
.
Inoichi spit the blood from his mouth, darting out of the way as Shikaku dispatched the threat.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit—
They'd been fighting tooth-and-nail for almost three hours now and there was no end in sight.
Nothing but pain.
Nothing but death.
A signal, and Inoichi dropped back as ordered—Konoha didn't want to risk any of the Clan Heads—and in seconds a medic already half-dead from exhaustion appeared in front of him, stuffed a few pills in his mouth and shoved chakra into the worst of his cuts and bruises.
Inoichi took another minute to wring out his muscles, to flex the moderate influx of unnatural chakra and get his system used to it, and then it was back to the grind.
To the never-ending grind.
He wanted peace.
He wanted a ceasefire.
He wanted a break.
He wanted a second, a millisecond far away from the frontline.
He wouldn't get it.
A roaring cry, and Kushina was on top of them, destroying dozens of Kiri-nin in every direction.
It was always something else to see her in action, something else to see the power a tailed-beast could bring.
(Before they'd left for the warfront many of the elders had pushed for the Hokage to bring Kakashi with him, right in the middle of the bloodshed. The Hokage had refused, sent the boy to defend the Iwa border instead.
Inocihi respected him all the more for it.
He also knew that many of the other Clan Heads had not taken the decision the same way.)
Kushina was a mess of the red of her hair and the red of her blood as she focused more on causing damage than preventing it—that power, to Inoichi's knowledge, was unique to the Uzumaki.
Fortunate or unfortunate, given that they now had a container without such a healing factor?
Irrelevant for the moment; and even after, more Shikaku's area of interest than his.
He must be exhausted.
Or desperate to think of anything other than what his body was doing, the instinctive dance of jutsus and situational awareness that had become second-nature.
Another ship was sinking in the distance, and suddenly Inoichi had one, horrible, sinking feeling.
Kiri wasn't going to stop.
Kiri was throwing everything, every last thing, and—
Until it was all gone—
They wouldn't stop.
This was the end of the war already.
The question was just how long that end would take.
.
Sakura winced as the next round of injured rushed past her tent.
She couldn't see them—couldn't sense them—was trying to ignore everything outside the tent as much as possible—but their screams were hard to ignore.
It sounded like a lot of injured.
It always did.
The tent was hot, too many people hard at work, but there were no resources that could be diverted into healing seals.
Instead she paced—up, down, right, left—watching as every single sealer who wasn't competent enough to be on the frontlines produced combat-oriented seals at a blinding rate.
Occasionally, as they grew too tired or too dizzy, she'd have to pull some paper away, dispose of it and send the person off for the maximum four-hour rest, but mostly she just paced.
In two hours the usual supervisor would wake up from her own four-hour rest period, and take over the work, and do it better—one of the benefits of the Aburame kikaichu being able to spread through a room.
When that happened Sakura would pop yet another pill—she'd been given an entire bottle, and told she'd need a new kidney by the end of it—and get back to work dealing with the pile of requests and orders that were no doubt piling up while she was keeping one sub-section of the frontline-positioned Research teams alive and functional.
Another batch of wounded passed outside.
Sakura grabbed a pen out of a sealer's hand before he could scratch across what he'd already written.
After a second, he looked up and nodded; he'd finish this seal and take his four.
This was a horrible way to live.
An exhausting way to work.
A dehumanizing way to survive.
But—
They were out.
Every seal they made was used within an hour.
Every seal they made was vital, was the reason that Konoha was able to keep on holding on.
Kiri had already been reckless, been reckless since the war started, but nothing like this.
This wasn't recklessness.
This was attempted murder-suicide.
And it was Sakura's job—as well as the job of everyone who worked under, over, and alongside her—to keep Kiri from succeeding.