Sakura, now ten, found herself suddenly and unnervingly elevated in the clan hierarchy. Her time in the Capital, for all that functionally she barely qualified as more than a copywriter, was considered enough of a boon to the clan's reputation as a whole that her own individual reputation was lifted in response.
She didn't like it.
It took hours of her free time every week, for one, and instead of getting to hang out with her friends or perform all the experiments she'd come up with in the Capital, she had to have tea with the elders, join in with family rituals, and take 'walks' with the political leaders within her clan, all poking and prodding for information she could not (for one reason or another) provide. The ability to participate in the talks, rites, and (insofar as they were pressing her for information) clan leadership was supposed to be an honor, but it didn't feel like it.
The worst of it was that she now had a permanent C-rank: tutor.
For Inoichi.
In diplomacy, because the boy had a different tutor for each subject.
His other team members—Shikaku and Choza—had their own individual tutors for each subject too.
Sakura did not like heirs.
She was willing to admit, however, that Inoichi wasn't a terrible student. He was clearly very smart—as smart as she was, probably—and liked messing with people's heads enough that the idea of doing so on the scale of countries was motivating enough to pay attention.
She just thought he was a snot.
"…so…" Inoichi said. He was slumped over the table, his head resting on one arm as he turned his face towards her while the other arm waved idly in the air. "So why don't they just move, then? If there's no more river?"
"That was the largest river by far, so it's not like they had anywhere else which was an obviously equal choice. Their original location was also basically the best place in Wind to have a Hidden Village," Sakura said. "Very hard to siege, many nearby resources... plus it's not near any other population center; that's appreciated, because… because, um, a lot of people are afraid of shinobi. And, well, everything was already there."
"Okay, I get that," Inoichi said. "I do, really. It's just—why didn't they better prepare? They had to have seen it coming."
"Not really," Sakura said. "The river had been very large. It was known that you could change the routes of rivers, even dry them up completely with dams, but… no one had ever done it for a river that large, or anything even close. So Suna didn't even consider that Iwa was capable of doing that, much less that they'd actually spend the time and effort and lives, during a war, to do it."
"Fine, so if it was so difficult why did Earth do it, then?"
"Well it worked, didn't it?" Sakura said. "Wind may be a major trading hub, and it might have a lot of mines, but it was always hugely reliant on their single major river for food. Now they have the smaller rivers, yeah, and oases, and the edges of their lands which have more rainfall, but… before trading was nice, it was helpful for giving Wind enough of a leg up to be considered a Great Nation. After? Right now they literally need trade to keep their population afloat."
"Which means… they can't go to war. Or, at least, they don't want to. Because… trade mostly stops during war."
"Exactly. By doing what they did Iwa ensured not only that Suna had to back off during the current war, but also that they wouldn't be able to stay in any other major war for very long either."
"But they do go to war."
"Well, yeah, but only against Iwa; Iwa doesn't call anyone else in because Konoha makes noises about protecting Suna, and Suna never brings Konoha in because they know that'll cause another Great War and they need trade to continue."
"Fun."
"Yep."
"I'd still move."
Sakura rolled her eyes.
Saturdays, at least (and with significant effort on her part), were now completely free. It took a very short time for Sakura to decide not to let the day fall into a routine: one week she might spend the day with chinmoku, the next with those the Training Ground 40 group that were available. The Saturday after Inoichi's lessons on Iwa/Suna relations Sakura decided to hang out with her Yamanaka girl friends.
They went shopping.
"I'm sorry, but that's just ugly," Hana frowned, stepping back to get a fuller picture.
"I like peach!" The other Hana snapped, twisting around in the peachy-orange shirt in front of the mirror.
"Peach is a perfectly nice color," Sakura said, "it just doesn't go with anything, does it?"
"I think it does," she nodded, then went back into the changing room. Sakura and the remaining Hana exchanged glances.
"Well, at least we're not wearing it."
"Where to next?" Inohina asked.
"I need a dress for cousin Sakura's wedding—not you, Sakura, the Sakura with nine fingers."
"You don't have it yet?"
"I… may have torn my kimono."
Everyone turned to look at Ayumi.
"How?" Sakura asked.
"I—look, sometimes clothing just tears, you know?"
"Not formal kimonos," the older of the Hanas (and the one with better taste) said.
"I—okay, look, you know Haru? With the scar on his lip?"
"The one that won the footrace last month?"
"Yes, him. He, um, asked me out."
The other girls tittered. "And, well, we went out. Last weekend."
"But how did that lead to your formal kimono tearing?" Inohina said. "Not only that, but tearing enough that you need a new one."
"He asked me to dress up!" Ayumi said. "So I did."
There was a pause.
"You did…?"
"He took me out to dinner, and dancing," Ayumi said. "And, it was really nice. And then we went for a walk. And, um, we got… distracted."
"Distracted."
"Yes, distracted. And so we didn't realize that we'd wandered a bit off the path—"
"The grass wasn't a sign?"
"We were very distracted," Ayumi defended. Then, all in a rush, she finished. "So we went of the path, and then there was a tree root, and his foot got stuck, and I tried to unstick it but we were laughing so much so then my kimono got stuck on a branch and I didn't notice, because of the laughing, and we got his foot unstuck but then we got distracted again and by the time we went to walk away from the copse… well, the point is I need a new kimono."
Sakura snickered.
"So was it worth it?" Inohina asked.
"Very."
Sakura quite liked having free time.
.
About a month and a half after returning, chinmoku was given their next "long" C-rank mission. Thankfully it was only supposed to be a few weeks, not even a full month, but it was an unfortunate change of pace from the at home living they had already grown used to.
Their instructions were clear; they were to go to the giant plains to the far west of Konoha, where they would act as the labor and guard to build a school for the children of the nomadic people who grazed cattle there. It was the Daimyo's latest attempt at trying to keep pace with the other Great Nations. Lightning especially was a threat not due to its population alone but because of the nationwide level of education, so as part of the Spring Session the Daimyo granted every child in the Fire Nation the right to five years of cheap schooling within at least twenty kilometers of their residence.
The tribes of the plain had absolutely no schools nearby, so this was the first step.
It was, Sakura supposed, progress.
The travel itself wasn't bad. The supplies were being sourced more locally and transported there by private merchants and caravans, so they'd packed light and moved quickly across miles and miles of road. After some time, Sensei led them into the grassland itself, which required a change of pace; the snakes were a real worry, and the dirt road had helped to keep an eye out, but now they relied on their thick boots and aimed to move too quickly, most of the time, for the snakes to react.
Larger predators were more easily avoided.
They reached the sight at around mid-morning, weary but not exhausted from travel, and stopped at the edge of the land that had already been cleared in preparation for the school's construction. A small hut had been constructed there and, after several seconds' waiting, their knock was responded to by the door swinging open and a portly man with a long mustache blinking at them.
"Hello, hello! You're the team from Leaf, then?"
"Yes," Sensei said. "Three laborers—" he gestured to chinmoku, "and me as protection."
"Perfect, perfect! Come in."
The hut, for that was all it was, was mostly filled by the small bed clearly meant for the mustachioed man. The rest of the room was given to the small table and a cushion to kneel on. Papers were piled across the bed—requisition forms, stock forms, and architectural plans covered receipts, letters, and budgets. More paper, as well as an ink well and pen, sat on the small table. The three of them—Shin stayed outside to keep watch, and Juro stayed outside to start on their own sleeping arrangements—stood just a bit too close together as the man leaned over his bed, trying to find a specific paper.
"Not much here…" he muttered as he rifled through the papers. "Land's fine, not very fertile but that doesn't much matter when building a school. Flat, too—a nice change from the mountains and hills and forests." He yanked out one paper triumphantly, then frowned and placed it back on the bed to search another pile. "Not much to keep watch for, here; there's just not anything that's valuable enough to entice bandits… some wild animals, but most are harmless. The panthers and boars aren't, but the boars tend to stick to a bit more cover than anything around here provides and the panthers go for the cattle, usually, or the herds of wild grazers. If you don't see them, then there aren't any cats either." This time the man was successful, and he turned around fully to face Sakura and Sensei Mitokado. "Here."
Sensei took the proffered contract and scanned it with a practiced eye. It was a copy of the same sheet Konoha'd been sent from the Capital, explaining the required work and pay. He nodded, then gestured to the ink well, which the man let him use to sign the paper.
"How about the native population?" Sensei asked. "Do you think they'll be any trouble?"
Sakura's ears pricked, but the man didn't seem worried. "No, no. They're not paying us any mind. I've been out here about a week now without issue, and I didn't even bother with a guard after the first three days—too expensive, especially to have them stand around waiting for nothing. The natives… well, they herd cattle. That's about it. Most of them don't speak the common language, which is unfortunate, but each of the families—tribes—whatever they're called, each of them have at least one that does." He gestured to the architectural plans next. "This is the plan. One room for the first two grades, the other for the next three, a small outhouse, and this house—it's supposed to be for the teachers, but the government wants to see if we can get the families that live furthest afield to pay for boarding too."
"Do you think they will accept?" Sensei asked. He was examining the architecture in fine detail now, occasionally pointing out certain details to Sakura. Architecture wasn't really something Sakura'd ever studied, but she made notes about where he'd pointed; in all likelihood, they'd go over what he'd noticed later, at dinner, and she'd be expected to explain to the boys what she saw.
"I mean, I'm just the architect, but the government seems pretty optimistic. They're trying to market this as opportunity and childcare all rolled into one but this far away from civilization most kids start working the second they get their legs under them so we'll see."
Sakura found that take very, very funny considering her own age, but then she supposed she did complete her own years of schooling before being allowed to 'work,' so it wasn't quite the same thing.
"Alright," Sensei said, handing the man back his papers. Sakura noticed the man had never given his name—she wondered why. "We'll get settled in today, and I'll have the genin ready to work tomorrow. It looks like the land needs to be cleared before anything else, so I'll have them start at dawn, if that's alright with you."
The man nodded, apparently relieved. "Just—not too much noise, okay? It has been a very long time since I've been forced to get up at dawn, and I have no desire to go back to that."
Sensei agreed easily, and the two of them wedged their bodies back outside.
The building of the school, Sensei explained, would actually be relatively easy.
Relatively.
The school building itself would be the simplest—a floor, walls, and thatch roof. The doors wouldn't be put in until winter; until then they would be kept inside the teacher's quarters, away from any problematic weather. To make up for that, the roof would stretch out a bit in front of the school, to provide shade and safety from rain.
The outhouse wouldn't be much harder. It would have a door put on immediately, but the larger issue was the deep, deep ditch that would have to be dug under it—the task wouldn't be particularly difficult, but the exertion necessary would be significant.
It was the teacher's house which would be the most difficult. It would have four doors, one each for a teacher and two for prospective boarders, and it would need to be insulated better to deal with nightly as well as daily use; a fireplace would be built in, one of the more modern designs, and windows with glass in them too, instead of the simple open holes with wooden shutters meant for the school building.
There would also be large basins for rainwater and an open yard between the three buildings for exercise and play.
Getting everything done in time, with just the three of them as laborers, wouldn't be fun, but it was also far from impossible.
They slept, and at dawn, as promised, Sakura, Juro, and Shin got up to finish clearing the land.
It was midday before they were done, and that was working as quickly as they could. It got easier the more they got used to it, but it still wasn't easy. Then they settled in for lunch, making a quick fire out of some of the cleared grass.
The man exited his hut at around that time.
"Good, good, good," he said, surveying the cleared land. "We'll start on the largest of the buildings first, I think—that's the school building. I'll mark it out."
They kept working like that, physical exertion more than anything else, for several days.
And then the visitors came.
It was Sakura who saw their faces first. "Shin—Shin!" Sakura said from her spot on the roof, nodding to the side. From his spot opposite her, Shin glanced down first the opposite way, then the way she gestured to—all the better to evade notice.
"Huh. I wonder who they are."
"Well, given the size of their faces I doubt they're bandits," Sakura said. Shin rolled his eyes.
"Should we alert anyone?"
"No," Sakura decided. "Sensei's spotted them already, probably, and there's no point anyway. They're just curious."
"Can I say hi?"
"Ask Sensei."
"Sensei!" Shin said. He'd raised his voice but kept it completely level—no danger.
"What is your question?" Sensei shouted back. Sakura couldn't see him, from her angle, but Shin clearly could, and he angled his torso to get a better line of sight.
"Can I say hi?"
"They won't understand you., Sensei said. "They don't recognize any of the words we are using now."
"I can wave though."
"Wave away."
Shin waved.
Sakura rolled her eyes, a mimic of his earlier action, but waved too. Good PR was important.
The children stood, spotted, then inched closer, and Shin slid down from the roof, then waved again.
They tentatively waved back.
The youngest of them, Sakura judged, was probably around six, give or take a year. The oldest was their age—or, more probably, Shin' or Juro's age. He took the lead, stepping forward in front of the group. Six of the eight were male.
Sakura watched as Shin—by far the most social of the group, after so much forced practice—waved his hand at the inside of the building, asking if they wanted a look inside. Some of the younger ones darted forward before grinding to a halt and glancing back at the oldest. He sighed and gestured them forward, before moving forward himself.
They disappeared into the building under her.
Sakura finished her current portion of the roof, then slipped down the side of the building to grab the next materials—no point in using chakra for something as easy as that.
The children were still inside the building, talking in hushed voices at what they saw. Through Sakura's eyes, there wasn't anything much—the furniture and educational supplies wouldn't arrive for another week, and until then it was barren. Still, she supposed to the children it was a bit unusual: they'd used tools to make the clay walls quite flat, and the floor was a sort of concrete that was supposed to hold up in both the heat and cold.
Sakura'd only just climbed back on the roof when the children exited, darting excitedly to what would become the outhouse. They hadn't gotten the walls up for that, yet: they were still digging the hole, and the architect wanted it deep enough that one of them had been set aside each morning, afternoon, and evening to work on it. The longer it would take to need re-digging, the better.
Now the children were clustered around the hole, shouting into it at Juro. The oldest was still keeping an eye out—that was good. The littler ones, however, didn't care.
"Sensei," Sakura said. He was nearer to her, now, watching the direction the children came from.
"Yes."
"The roof should be done by the evening. I'm set to dig, then. Should I set Shin and Juro on the next roof?" They'd already finished the walls of the boarding house, so that would be the next step.
"No—we'll start on that tomorrow; tonight I'll help them start on the clay for the last walls."
"Hai."
The children broke off, now, going to the last building. Shin followed them still, laughing as he gestured wildly at the children and they gestured wildly back. Ideally, they'd go back to their village with a good opinion of both the school and the people with headbands carrying the Leaf.
The man hadn't exited his hut. He usually came out every few hours to critique their work, but he hadn't found any problems with their thatching or digging, so for the past two days he'd only bothered checking up on them once. According to Sensei he was reviewing his next assignment; this was an easy one, but one that didn't make much money: the materials and labor were provided to him by the state, so the man only got the cost of his expertise.
Most people, Sakura thought, believed ninja to be concerned with nothing but killing. In truth, they acted as a military-cum-public works department for the entirety of their nation, providing labor for small projects throughout the country as well as keeping the land safe from internal and external threats. The idea was that if ninja provided the labor, then it would be more cost-efficient for the nation as a whole, act as a boon to Konoha's reputation, and protect particularly extensive works—like the road being constructed through the mountain range to the Capital's south. This particular project was more the latter than the former, but it was still 'shinobi' work, for all that it didn't feel much like what they'd been trained for.
Still, the construction only took ten days.
The teachers had arrived by then, a young man and older woman who had each previously taught before. They chose their classrooms, then disappeared to the horizon, off to convince nearby parents to pay the nominal fee. Neither spoke the local language, so Sakura suspected they wouldn't be back any time soon, and Team 18 would definitely not be around to see their return—the buildings had been erected, the supplies moved indoors, and the contract duly recorded as complete. They left for Konoha where, upon arrival, they would be a tiny bit richer than they had been before, before immediately being sent out on a new mission: acting as customs inspection at the border between the Land of Fire and Tea.
.
As spring bled into summer Sakura's genin work finally turned from all-purpose lessons and missions to, at last, research.
Kind of.
That is to say, she was officially slotted into the Research Department twice a week as, officially, a 'genin assistant' and, less officially, a 'gopher.'
"Your job will consist primarily of making tea, delivering meals, filing forms, cleaning, and ferrying various items."
Sakura didn't know why the genin corps couldn't do that job.
Sensei narrowed his eyes at her. "The genin corps can't do the job for the same reason regular civilians can't do theirs; it has been decided that the Research Department assistants must be more difficult to torture for information than the average corps member."
How… cheery.
"It also provides you time to acclimate to the pace of the division and earn your stripes," Sensei finished, but that didn't really bring much comfort after how he'd begun.
Still, Research had been her goal for years now, so Sakura found herself more than happy to fill the labor shortage formed by a former Research genin's promotion.
The Research Department had multiple labs throughout Konoha, but its headquarters (the building she was told to report to) was slotted between the Aburame lands and a relatively empty training ground which was on permanent reserve to the same Department—not quite as close as the Administrative Building was to her house, but still not tucked into the furthest possible corner like T&I's headquarters.
A chuunin—she could tell by the cut of his vest—stood outside the building, smoking idly as he waited for her to near.
"Genin Yamanaka Sakura?" He called out.
"Yes."
"Great. I'm Takeo Maeda. Come on in."
The building was three stories tall and opened into a narrow hallway with two staircases, one leading up, the other down, that took up most of it. Two doors bracketed the entrance; one was open, and the man led her through it first. "This is the break room," he said. "That's the kitchen, you'll be in charge of keeping the tables clear, and back there are cots that can be used if someone needs a powernap while they wait for one experiment or another." He led her back outside to the other door. "This leads to the offices—there are three here, for the Head and two of the five Deputy Heads. The others have their offices in other labs." Back out into the hallway. "You're not allowed in the basement labs—insufficient clearance, but you will be getting to know the upstairs labs. You'll also be asked to bring things to the basement steps occasionally, but that's it." They went up.
The second floor also had one door on each wall, but the staircases overlapped each other, so you had to walk down the length of the hallway to get to the third floor.
"Alright, so our main labs for Human Research and Engineering are beside the hospital, but that door—you see the symbol—that does biological research too. On the other side there's the main Communication and Detection Research lab, but they mostly build and test stuff in training grounds and around Fire Nation as a whole." He led her up the last set of stairs. Three doors.
"And these are the rest of the labs: Efficiency Sciences and Survivability/Lethality Analysis—they both mostly do analysis on papers and the like—on the left and Weapons and Materials Research on the right. That's the fun lab."
He led her back downstairs, all the way to the breakroom where, next to the door, a stool and ten bells sat. "You see the bells?"
She nodded.
"One for each lab and office, one that leads all the way to the Hokage's office, and one—the unlabeled one—that leads to the Head's house. If any of them ring you fix the bell back into place—it'll get stuck, so that you know if someone asked for you while you weren't here—and go to them. Easy enough?"
Sakura nodded.
"Great! Well, three bells have already rung, so have at it."
It didn't take long for Sakura to get into the swing of things. The job was just as Sensei described; the job she did most often was delivery. Following that, cleaning was probably the most common, and occasionally—when she was particularly lucky—rewriting a researcher's notes to make them legible, or taking notes for them while they spoke aloud.
It took some time, but after the first month or so she'd at least figured out how to time her tasks such that she was usually in the break room when most researchers were taking their breaks and able to eavesdrop.
That was the closest she got to actually researching.
So… yeah.
At least she got to know the general structure and people involved in researching, even if they were overwhelmingly older shinobi on second or third focuses.
The Head was not a man she saw often. He was a very, very elderly Aburame who was called nothing but the Head, and only came in occasionally; most of his research was done in the Aburame lands, and then he'd show up occasionally with packets of his findings that Sakura (or one of the other two genin who worked there) would be in charge of correctly disseminating.
Beyond him, Sakura also got to know the Deputy Heads. The two who were most frequently inside the building (the Survivability/Lethality Analysis and Weapons and Materials Researchers) were also relatively old jounin; an Aburame and an Uchiha, respectively. The Efficiency Deputy Head was a Nara who Sakura didn't recognize; she had an eyepatch and a limp, and was sharp-tongued and intimidating. Sakura really, really liked her, but the Nara mostly worked out of the Administrative Building, choosing a new department every day to yell at. The Communication and Detection Deputy Head Sakura hadn't even met—he was apparently rarely if ever even in the village—but she was reliably informed that he was a scatterbrained Shimura who "meant well."
And then there was the Human Research and Engineering Head.
At least, Sakura thought, at least he didn't work in her building.
Orochimaru could instead be found with most of the rest of that particular Research group: at the hospital, with their own private labs and as little overhead as the rest of the Research Derpartment.
He was…
He was…
He was, Sakura supposed, surprisingly normal.
She didn't know what she had been expecting, but what few times she ran into him, he was as dismissive as the rest of the researchers were of her. He argued his points well, his handwriting was neat enough that she had no problem getting it wherever it needed to go, and he didn't intentionally leave messes with the knowledge that she would have to clean them up.
He was, if anything, one of the more likable researchers.
But she still knew—still remembered—still foresaw—
She wondered if it was a question of him not yet being like that, or a question of him being so good at hiding his actions that no one could tell.
He was only 21, to be fair.
