Sakura walked next to Hinata and while neither of them was trusted to move on their own their supposed husband was accompanying them as they walked.
'Mr. Why are there so many people like us here?' Hinata asked the village leader.
"We didn't have a reason to make them leave.'
"Some are ninjas that deserted their villages, they saw too much and did too much, so they couldn't stand going back."
"Others are escaped criminals that are trying to turn their lives around, their villages forced them to enter the war and I don't have to tell you girls that they don't ever want to go back to the people that forced them to fight."
"Most are just normal people who lost everything." he says to them as they walk past several boats filled with fish fruits or meat that the men and women are selling.
Sakura can see the smiles on the people's faces as she walks past them.
"Everyone looks happy." she says to herself.
"We're all trying to make the best of it." the village leader says to her.
Sakura didn't know why but the man stopped walking and as she looked at him she noticed that he was looking at something in the sky.
"I thought I told the three of you not to practice here?' he says to someone that she isn't able to see, she turns to look at Hinata who just gives her a confused look.
She was about to ask the village leader who he was talking to when she felt the wind around her start to grow stronger.
She watched as three men quickly fell from the sky, but none of them touched the wooden bridge that she was on.
One man had rocks floating around him and his eyes were glowing with red light, another man had several glowing circles that remained in place but had some kind of writing moving around them.
The third man didn't have anything, he just seemed to have a small glow around him and he was the one who lowered his head to the village leader.
"My apologies sir, but the guards are on high alert. They have seen several nijas nearby, they haven't entered our territory but they are in the nearby desert."
"That explains why the three of you are up there, but why were you fighting each other, despite knowing that one of your attacks could ruin months of hard work?" he asks the man.
"Again I apologize, but we just figured out how to make these spells work and we were excited to try them out." the guard answered the village leader.
Sakura watched as both men smiled at one another before the village leader looked at the three men fondly.
"What am I going to do with you guys?" he says to them.
"I hope you all ate breakfast because none of you are allowed to eat anything and before you complain if I hear that you even ate a bug, you won't be allowed to eat anything tomorrow either."
"Sir isn't that a little extreme?" the leader of the guards asked the village leader.
"I have to be like this because if I don't, you three idiots will just keep on doing it." the village leader answers the leader of the guards who quickly orders his men to fly back into the sky.
Sakura didn't know what to think everything here was so quiet, but every turn had a secret in it. She passed a group of twenty children who were younger than she was, but she could only sense eight of them.
She looked at one of the boats and noticed the engine on it that made the boat go faster than any of the boats that she had heard about.
She knew that ninjas could stand and run on water, but there was a difference between a skilled ninja and a civilian being able to carry a large amount of merchandise from one place to another.
The butcher from the nearby shop held his knife skillfully and she could see that the man had once been a skilled soldier.
It was scary how much the Guardian of the Desert reminded her of home.
'Explain." she heard the village leader say to someone as several of his men escorted a group of Sand Ninjas.
"My Lord these." the guard paused to think of his words before he started talking again.
"These people have come to offer a trade between their village and yours."
"They say that in exchange for allowing their village access to the river and your resources, they will do everything that they can to keep everyone else away." the guard says to the village leader.
"Okay let's hear it, tell me why I should consider your offer." he says to the men in front of him, and Sakura can see the shocked expressions of the ninja's faces.
"Aren't you going to ask your guard for the scroll that we gave him?" one of the men asks him.
'No, I can look at that later, I want you the ones that came here to tell them why I should even consider letting you drink and eat anything here." he answers the Sand Ninja.
"We are all tired and none of us want to fight another war anytime soon.' the man says to the village leader.
"And?" he asks the group of men.
'The Hidden Sand Village is desert-locked so we have to protect any source of water that we can find.' one of the other ninjas says to the village leader whose eyes harden.
"That just sounds like a reason for you to invade or take the resources from this place, while saying that they belong to you because you need them more." the village leader argues back.
"Because we will owe you our lives." the woman in the group says to him.
'Explain." he says to her.
'It's no mystery that we lost a lot during the war and our food reserves were no different, we lost a lot of water too and it doesn't take a generous to know that everything that we import is expensive.' she says to him.
"Give me that thing.' the village leader orders the guard who hands him a scroll.
Sakura tried to not make any eye contact with the sand ninjas, but she failed to do so and it wasn't long before she waved back at the woman who had seen her and was now waving at her.
"Tell your superiors that I'll agree to everything except, the return of any deserters, once they swear loyalty to me they are mine." he says to the group.
"So do you need a place to stay for the night or do you have to go home now?" she hears him ask the group.
'We were ordered to return when you made your decision. It's just that normally it takes longer for these things to be decided." the leader of the ninjas says to him.
'As long as I'm here most of the bureaucratic nonsense doesn't exist. I'm the one in charge so I'm the one whose head will be cut off when things go wrong."
"That's why I can decide things on the spot, feel free to fink and eat your fill if you get hungry or thirsty." he says to them before he turns his attention back to her and Hinata.