Please leave a comment or PM if you have any questions, suggestions, concerns, or just compliments. For the sake of this work, the elemental balance will go earth}lightning}water}fire}wind. Thanks to SmallFountainPen for betaing chapters 57-73. Thanks to SoaringJe for betaing chapters 116-163.


The plague was getting worse.

It hit Fire, but the work Konoha had done in vaccinating those closest to the border was already paying off—compared to the extreme death tolls that had begun to be reported from lands as distant as the Land of Dragons, akin to unending typhoon-level waves of dead, Fire was experiencing only a trickle.

And then there were all the countries in between.

The Lands of Rivers, Mushrooms, and Canyons had been almost blatantly fervent in their agreement to the deal Konoha had made to supply them with vaccines—they might be giving up a bit more of their natural resources than they might otherwise have agreed to, but their people were, by and large, living.

They might still get the plague, might still spend weeks coughing, and hacking, and miserable, but—

They were alive.

And, by vaccinating those along major trade routes first, even the number of sick was an affordable number; their medics might be run ragged, but they could treat all the patients.

Storms, which had refused the vaccines—had refused to trust Fire, not bowed even when Fire had blocked any trade coming from the minor nation—wasn't faring nearly as well.

They were, in truth, already overwhelmed.

And the number of sick was only rising.

As for the other Great nations…

Wind—

Wind was coping.

Not well, but its already isolated communities had more-or-less closed themselves off, left a few of the healthiest outside city walls to barter for the necessary food and water, provide the necessary defense.

Earth wasn't.

Konoha hadn't been able to get nearly as much detail on why, on how the responses in Wind and Earth could be so different, but the best guess was that the Daimyo had believed his citizenry to be 'hardier' than those from other countries, hadn't bothered with proactive protective measures.

And Lightning had suffered because of it.

By the time they'd cut off any trade arriving from Ishi-ka Bay, it was too late.

There were too many already sick, too many already carriers.

And they had no way to test for the disease.

They didn't have Fire's diagnostic practices.

Didn't have Konoha's sheer quantity of medications.

Didn't have the false bodies.

No one but Fire did, and now everyone who wasn't allied to Fire was hurting.

This was not, Minato considered, a normal way to stave off war.

He'd take it.

He finished his letter, sealing it and putting it in a drawer in his desk. He'd summon the toad after work, on his way home, have the letter sent to the Tsuchikage then.

The offer of giving any merchants, competitors, and teachers vaccines should they come to the chuunin exams—it would be an enticing offer.

Perhaps even enticing enough that he would accept.

But Minato wasn't going to stop there. With his left hand he finished sketching out his plan for the exams—only a few months left—while he wrote out another missive on the right, this one for Hiruzen.

He closed his eyes, after he finished writing it, just for a moment.

Let himself breathe.

And then it was time to begin approving a rework to one of the training fields, and reading over the daily report from Research, and authorizing several tons of acid to be (precautionarily, of course, the letter promised) sent to Uzu.

A leader's work was never done.

.

Given that the winter storms had more or less completely abated for several months now, the nobles were finally getting a handle on their new, former Land of Water, territory.

Well, some of them were.

It had been hard work, hours spent pouring over maps, over reports, over every possible piece of information Konoha had on the geography, on the people that had been allowed to continue to live on the islands (mostly the elderly and children, as it turned out. Just about everybody in between who could fight got 'conscripted'; those who had not used chakra before were made to keep the ships afloat, and those who had used chakra even for something as easy as lighting a candle were sent to die.)

And then he'd begun making suggestions.

He'd been careful about it, tried his best to make sure that the Daimyo was the one asking for his advice, rather than him offering it unprompted.

The pattern quickly developed. The Daimyo would ask him what he thought of this or that island, this or that section of sea when there were many numerous islands clumped close enough together that ships couldn't sail through.

If it—by appearance—seemed to be an island that looked valuable, Shin would suggest a Konoha-supporter, with non-specific and overly general reasoning.

The Daimyo would push back, point out that the islands had to be fairly distributed amongst all his nobles.

If Shin knew the island was actually valuable, actually had resources or was well-positioned for trade, he'd make a more complex argument for why some noble in particular deserved that particular island. Perhaps it was already (relatively) well known that the island had a significant resource of clay; then Shin would suggest a noble that had an interest in pottery, had built up his local pottery industry since taking over.

If there was an island that looked useful, but that he knew was resource-less and in a bad area for naval navigation too, he would give a few more generic arguments for the noble he was supposedly in favor of, then acknowledge that another, non-Konoha supporter, might benefit more. He'd then give reasons—the noble's land was particularly small, and they could benefit more from the large (arid) island, perhaps, or the noble had many samurai who were trained in ship handling, so they could more easily reach a more distant island.

While he was researching, Shin had made a map of his ideal plan—non-Konoha supporters minimized to the worst of the islands, the least attractive areas of Water. Then he'd made a map of what he thought he could achieve.

It wasn't right on the mark, as it turned out—in some cases, he'd argued more successfully than he'd thought he could for a particular island, and it worked in Konoha's favor. In other cases, the Daimyo was less willing to dismiss a non-Konoha supporter's interest in an island than Shin thought he would be, and it didn't work in Konoha's favor.

By and large, however, Shin was more than happy with the results.

And now it was months later, and his work was paying off.

Konoha-supporters suddenly had more resources, resources they were more than willing to trade with Konoha for in exchange for the ability to use a distance radio—a new type of radio, far more complex, that could make it across the whole of the sea to allow for near-instant communications. These were loaned, too, not bought, so they would be a constant source of income for Konoha.

And then there were the other nobles.

Most had sent out parties to their islands, found them resource-less, or full of hostile and distrusting locals, or with no clear land for a port to be built from, and decided to build a small fort and leave it at that.

Some had better islands, islands with resources, with good positioning, with ports sometimes even already set-up.

These islands were almost always in the north of the former Land of Water.

These islands started receiving nuisance raids from Kumo almost immediately.

It wasn't anything they had done, of course—Kumo was just trying to keep Konoha's strength low while they tried to find ways around the lightning rods.

They didn't care that they were actually fighting samurai, either; both samurai and shinobi were Fire's military, and that was really their target.

The targeted nobility were upset by this, of course; they went to the Daimyo, demanded a war. The Daimyo, remembering his father's reluctance to involve himself in military disputes, refused.

Then they went to Konoha, demanded help. Konoha offered it to them—but only if the nobles paid for it.

They refused.

They were currently trying to do their best on their own, but despite Fire samurai being far more used to fighting on boats than Fire shinobi, the sea was vast.

Nuisance raids got by anyway.

Of course, the Konoha supporters were in a far better spot. They'd worked out deals with Konoha, got lightning rods and even a new (and therefore expensive) lightning rod that worked on ships, and they had radios to call for back-up, and Konoha did send shinobi to patrol over in Water just as they did on land, but without the radio there was basically no chance they could arrive in time to get involved in a conflict.

Shin imagined that if his work could be publicly acknowledged he'd receive a commendation.

He sighed, rubbing his eyes.

It should not be this easy to manipulate the Daimyo; it should not be this easy to sway him to Konoha's desires.

Shin might be very, very good at his job, but he shouldn't be able to get almost anything he wanted.

He knew what he wanted to do.

How he wanted to help Fire, how he wanted to lessen the chance of manipulation by others when he wasn't around to monitor the situation.

He just knew it would be a very, very tough sell.

After a deep breath, Shin pulled out a fresh piece of paper. Better to try and fail, then not to try at all.

.

Kohana would not stop glancing at her. She was living back at their home, would continue to do so until the end of the month, and she would not stop glancing at her.

After dinner was over, on the way back home from Kamui's house, Sakura finally snapped.

"What?"

"What what?"

"You've been staring at me all week. What do you want to ask?"

"Do you know where Inoichi is?"

"No."

"Really?"

"Yes, really. He's my Clan Head, not the other way around."

"But you didn't learn it through, like, your job or anything?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Could you, um, try to find out where he is? Ask around?"

"Why?"

"Because I miss him, that's why. And he's barely sending me mail once a week, and all he'll say is that he's busy but he'll come back when he can, and I should just try to recover. I am recovered, and he's not back."

"Technically the doctors—"

"The doctors aren't recommending I move back to Uzu until the end of the month. They have already declared me 'recovered.'"

"Okay, okay, fine. And no, I probably won't be able to 'ask around.' Everyone will immediately figure out I'm asking for you and not tell me anything.

"You don't know that."

"That's why I said probably."

"I just—I'm worried."

They were home. Sakura stopped, sighed. "Look, I'll see what I can find out, okay? But if you don't know, and I don't know, then this is probably something being kept need-to-know-only. And you are getting letters, so try not to worry."

"Yeah, yeah. I just wish he could communicate with me more often. Even just a quick telegram."

Sakura hugged Kohana. "Want to sleep in bed with me tonight? For the company?"

"Yes, please."