Konoha was overcrowded. Badly overcrowded. Everyone had seen it coming—what space was left by shinobi on the warfront got more than taken up by Fire residents fleeing the drought, hoping for opportunities to get enough money to survive until more fertile days returned.
Konoha was overcrowded, and the people inside her, by and large, had nothing.
Resource scarcity was becoming an issue.
Food was…
But that wasn't the only problem.
Drinking water had begun to be rationed—Sakura had assisted with the patents for several water filters just before Kiri's attempted invasion and they were already being mass-produced—and the hospital was running four to five hours behind every day, constantly having to tackle some new illness or outbreak or just the sheer number of day to day injuries that had exploded alongside the population.
Another issue was housing. There literally wasn't enough room for everyone, rent prices had skyrocketed, a semi-ban on any clan member living outside their compound had been enacted to at least provide some additional rooms, and safety regulations were being ignored in favor of as many fast, tall, and cramped tenements as possible.
And then there was crime, which had gone from bad to really bad to genin patrolling the streets and the Uchiha hiring just about any recruit who passed entrance exams. The jails were full already, some prisoners were being sent to POW camps which was not a long-term solution—
Food. Water. Medical care. Housing.
And, of course, education.
Which was likely why Inoichi had just stormed into her hospital room. (She shared it with two other shinobi, both of them more injured than she. They'd considered letting her finish convalescing at home—Sakura's house was back to being used as a daycare but she still had plenty of room—but she was on orders to go straight back to work the second she was released so the doctors had said some not-so-nice things and extended her bed rest.
(Sakura was pretty sure it was mostly out of spite now. She was much better than she had been upon admission, if not back to full health, and the doctors seemed more than a little frustrated by just how many shinobi had been given the exact same orders as her. Probably just her imagination though. Probably.)
Inoichi looked… well, he looked like all of his attempts at Academy reform had been turned down, most without explanation beyond 'this costs more'—never mind that he had, actually, found a not insignificant amount of money that could be redistributed to education (which was still kind of shocking, actually, given how every coin seemed to be already accounted for, but Inoichi could be very persuasive when he wanted to be.)
"I went to my team first, but Chouza was busy with the drought and Shikaku's in the basement here working with the clones, and his parents wanted me to tell him to check in more, so then I came here to tell him that, and I did, and then I remembered you were here –"
"Deep breaths, Inoichi."
"I still want to do something useful, Sakura. I still want to—to act, to help. But the stupid bureaucrats and the stupid bureaucracy and the stupid elders and stupid clan politics mean that everything I try to do with the Academy, to make it better, to help all our children—everything is just blocked. I know some of my ideas are bound to fail, but I think a lot of them still deserve at least a try. But they disagree, and now I can't do anything, and it's so stupid!"
Sakura shrugged. "Then don't do through the Academy."
"It's not that easy," Inoichi retorted. "I'm doing other stuff too, of course, but—educational reform is important, Sakura, and if I don't do something everything's going to stay the same or get worse and –"
"I didn't say no educational reforms. I just said no Academy."
"What other –"
"There's the daycare your girlfriend runs, for one thing—early childhood education is important too. Some of your theories might be backed up by proof, and none of the experiments look like they'll be remotely harmful to the child regardless of whether they're in the control group or not—and yes, you should have a control group—so go ahead and get permission from the Yamanaka toddler parents and daycare workers to try some things out."
"Well, that'll work for some—"
"And then there's the Yamanaka library. You could run adult education classes out of that, which is an option, or—better yet—open the first public library. Gives you a bigger pool to work with. Even if it doesn't lead to the Academy agreeing to reforms, you'd still improve education overall." Inoichi went to speak again, but now Sakura was on a roll.
"There's the orphanage, too—they're always desperate for funding—and the jail. That's a whole bunch of people of all ages who are probably more than willing to attend regular classes just to get a break from doing nothing. Oh, and—"
"Okay, okay—okay… okay." Inoichi wasn't looking at her anymore, was staring absent-mindedly at the wall as his mind whirred, completely motionless as he—apparently for the first time—really processed that the Academy wasn't the only educational center Konoha had to offer.
Sakura waited a few seconds, then a few more, then some more after, but her Clan Head stayed immobile.
Then she went back to Orochimaru's notebook. By now she'd given up on decoding it—book cyphers were too hard to figure out without the book—but his drawings were still telling by themselves, and she was trying to get as much information out to them as possible. She'd just finished parsing through a series of sketches apparently about organ transplantation to unusual areas of the body—and wasn't that giving her flashbacks—when Inoichi finally startled into wakefulness.
"Right. Right, I have to—and then—how long have I been here?"
"About half an hour."
"Oh. Well, bye."
And then he was gone.
And Sakura…
She was still on bed rest.
(She hated bed rest.)
.
Four days later Sakura was finally out.
Only, Orochimaru was 'taking some time off.'
She'd gone to check up on his lab—of course she had—and while surgeries had definitely happened during her time in the hospital he'd apparently decided to 'take some time to consider the theory' a week ago and hadn't yet come back.
Nara Taro was the only one who had been in the lab since—he was still in charge of the prisoners, after all, and had to regularly apply genjutsu to make them feel as if they weren't in pain, feed them, keep everything clean, and so on.
He had no idea what Orochimaru was doing either.
Sakura, after a minute, decided to spend her day at the main Research building instead.
The building had expanded since she'd started as a genin, was now doubled in size and number of assistants, never mind the total number of Researchers. Konoha was undergoing a bit of a technological boom, and with the war that was unlikely to stop anytime soon.
(They were still working away at the railroad, hiring every single farmer that they could to labor at it, but as every day passed Kumo's advantage only seemed to grow larger, their railroads already built and fully operational and terrifyingly efficient.)
In his own room on the second floor, blocked off from everyone else and almost boiling hot from the energy pouring off of machines, Uchiha Shuji grinned at what was, amazingly, a flickering but clearly recognizable video—or, at least, several pictures taken together very quickly to create a stop motion mimicry of numbers sliding across the screen (but wasn't that what video was? At its very heart?)
"I can't believe you've managed it so fast."
"I haven't—not yet at least. You can't—no sending and receiving, not at the same time. You have to use a different machine—it's over there, to take the video. And then you take the images out of that machine and use this machine, over here, and then this machine translates the images into numbers into the computer and then the computer translates the numbers into white or black and then pushes it onto the screen."
"A binary operation. It's amazing."
"It is, isn't it?" Shuji looked almost wildly happy. His hair stuck up at an odd angle—Sakura had no doubt that it had been some time since he'd slept in a bed—and his clothes… well, he stank.
But then, Shuji had been working primarily on his computer in the basement for so long, for so many years, that to suddenly find himself experiencing breakthrough after breakthrough after breakthrough –
Shuji didn't care that the rest of Research was more concerned about the railroad. He was having a blast, was submitting almost as many concepts as Sakura, and unlike Sakura he was doing the work to actually bring most of them to fruition by himself.
But he was also trapped in the little room, not receiving nearly as much credit as he should because the true power of his creation hadn't yet been understood, fully appreciated.
"Have you considered taking this to the Uchiha?"
Shuji's eyes darted to her. "I am Uchiha."
"I know; that's why I suggested it." Shuji was still reluctant, puzzled over the suggestion. "The Uchiha have that annual art festival—I bet they could do moving art using this, tell stories in novel ways. I bet they'd work on this independently too, try to figure out how to improve it in many ways so more people will be working on your magnum opus, bringing it to its full potential sooner."
"Full potential… so many things possible, so many tiny equations…"
Sakura left Shuji thinking. She had tea with the Yamanaka elders scheduled, and then Inoichi had intimated he needed her for something in the afternoon—and then, ideally, Orochimaru would appear from whatever hole he'd disappeared into and Sakura could try to figure out what he'd been doing the past several days.
She'd just finished changing—this was to be a more formal ceremony—when Kohana threw open the door to her room.
"You!"
"Me?"
"You! You—you—I can't believe you told Inoichi to interfere, to take over my daycare!"
"I didn't! Did I?"
"That's certainly what he thinks you did. You stupid, stupid, geniuses, always thinking you know better. You don't, you know? I know you and he were bored as kids, or whatever, but most of us—most of us aren't capable of being geniuses. My kids are on target, they're happy, and they're doing the best they can. Could they do better? Sure, but only with one-on-one tutoring, and in case you haven't noticed the war, that's not about to happen. So don't you—you—geniuses dare come in and tell me that I'm not doing a good job!"
"I think you are doing a good job!" Sakura said. "I really think this is just a big misunderstanding!"
"A big misunderstanding?! Inoichi came right up to me and started telling me all these things that I had to do, how I had to act, and to teach, and to keep order and you think that—what? He just mistook me for an idiot who didn't know how to do the job I've been successfully managing for years? You know I'm in charge of the whole daycare, now, right? I run it—mostly to give the mothers more time with their own kids, to be fair, but still.
I'm not dumb, Sakura, I'm just not a genius. I've worked hard at this, I'm doing well at this—"
Sakura hugged her.
Kohana started crying. "I just, I just got so upset. He was talking to me like my opinion doesn't matter, like my hard work doesn't matter…"
"He messed up. You're a wealth of knowledge about exactly what he's interested in and I have no idea why he hasn't realized that. I'm talking to him this afternoon—do you want me to knock some sense into his head?"
Kohana sniffled, considering, then nodded. "I'm too angry at him right now. I'll yell at him tomorrow, you can yell at him today. You get what I mean, though, right?"
"Kohana, I created my own language out of boredom," Sakura said, stretching the truth a lot. "I'm well aware that that's not normal." That, at least, was true. "And, moreover, you know that too—you've been teaching toddlers of all personalities for years now and you know how to manage all that. I'd flounder if put in the same position and we both know that. Even Inoichi doesn't want to teach himself—he just wants kids at the Academy to be taught better and when that avenue was cut off I suggested he look at related educational opportunities. I didn't expect him to steamroll over the parts—you—that were actually functioning, actually helping kids. I… probably should have thought through the suggestion a bit more, though."
"Love you."
"Love you too."
"I'm sorry I cried on your formalwear."
"It's drizzling a bit anyway; the elders will understand."
The elders did understand; the tea ceremony was clearly just to ensure that she was well and truly out of the hospital, back to improving the clan.
(They were still upset about her apparent demotion, still offended by what they could only see as a slight to her. She wasn't thrilled about it either, would have much preferred the role of Head, but she—not they—knew the danger of an Orochimaru left to his own devices.
Her role was important, and the risk was great enough to make her current role, if boring, still entirely worthy.
The elders just didn't know that.)
She was on her way to her next meeting—Inoichi was apparently submitting for a right to build a public library, and wanted her help setting it all up first—when Aiko ran straight into her.
"Sakura! I've finished the report!"
"The report?"
"Yeah, sorry it took so long—you were in the hospital anyway—but it's done, on one of the tables in Office 40. Bokuso wanted to talk to you about it, too, dunno why though. I have to get to court, but I'll talk to you soon—bye!"
Sakura responded with the same, then stared at the wall for a couple seconds, doing math in her head. Aiko clearly hadn't found anything horrific (she would have responded differently if she had), but Bokuso… the last she'd talked to him he'd been wholly devoted to the increasingly severe food shortage situation.
Why would he care?
What did he see?
She put the thoughts, careening wildly between worst-case scenarios and the chance that she was making something out of nothing, to the back of her mind.
She still had to meet with Inoichi.
Inoichi was in the Records Office, finger trailing down what seemed to be the statutes on Konoha knowledge control.
He'd commandeered a table to himself, which was no surprise, and along with the various statute books he'd also pulled out a surprising number of building plans, of even the Records layout—that was likely why he was here; that information couldn't be removed—alongside reams of his own work, in scrolls and books and stacks of paper.
"Sakura! Come look at this; I was thinking of–"
"So are you aware of how much you pissed off Kohana?"
"What?"
"You know, your girlfriend? My little sister? About this tall, a Yamanaka, really good daycare instructor?"
"I pissed her off?"
"You're way better than me at reading people. No way did you not notice."
"I—I mean, she was kind of… colder, at the end of our last conversation, but…"
"But?"
"I just figured she was tired? I don't know, I didn't give it much thought."
"What was your last conversation about?"
"Didn't she tell you?" Sakura didn't bother to answer that one. "Okay, okay—well, it was your idea anyway. About the daycare, you know. I just told her what she had to do–"
"See, the thing is, you're the Yamanaka Head, which means you're allowed to tell us what to do."
Inoichi nodded.
"Don't."
"What?"
"Do you think your father went around telling all the daycare instructors how to do their job? All the families how often to clean their linens? All the students how long they should practice throwing shuriken every day?"
Inoichi sat up, apparently offended. "I'm not just making changes for no reason! I have to test my theories somehow—you said so!"
"I said so with the idea that you'd been at least taking into account step 1 of every Researcher's project." Sakura paused, waiting for the inevitable question.
Inoichi rolled his eyes. "I'm not going to forget the control group."
"That—isn't even close to step one."
"Educate me."
"Step four is the experiment, the test model, everything to do with that. Step three is figuring out what you're testing, what you're hoping to find out. Step two is identifying the problem. Step one—the very first step—no matter if you're looking into creating a new cart, or addressing a new disease, or even educating children better—is to collect all information already available.
What you're doing now, actually, for the library."
Inoichi's brow furrowed, and Sakura continued.
"You're clearly looking into what you're allowed to do and not to in terms of a library, but you're also looking into how other libraries—this one included—are set up, and how other public buildings are set up, and so on. If you're trying to modify how a daycare is run, what do you think you should do?"
"…Talk to existing daycare instructors… Kohana included… and see what they're already doing?"
"And what their own experience shows works, or doesn't work, or should be attempted differently. Your father mandated that the Yamanaka do things, of course, but he relied on tradition, and the experiences of the Yamanaka directly impacted by whatever he was trying to fix, to decide what he should order. He didn't just jump in with commands."
"She's pissed at me?"
"Absolutely furious, and rightly so. You're not an idiot, Inoichi, you should know better. I should've worded my suggestion better too, but then I thought you weren't an idiot…anymore."
Her Clan Head blushed. "In my defense, I've been kind of deferred to my entire life. You're just about the only one that treats me as an equal, and I don't think you're technically allowed to do that."
"Oh, I'm not. I just figure it's worth the risk—it'd be a greater risk to let you keep going around with a big head."
Inoichi shook his head. "Well, I'm not about to discipline you—not without a quorum's agreement of the elders, anyway."
Sakura snorted. "You'll apologize to Kohana?"
"Tonight."
"Tomorrow; she wants some time to cool down."
"The morning, then."
Satisfied that her former tutee at least had some idea of why Sakura had to deal with a screaming sister earlier in the day, Sakura sat.
"What do you need my help with?"
"Right, so…"
