Bombs.

It was far from the first time they'd been seen on the battlefield—Samurai had numerous methods of using gunpowder to various ends, shinobi around the continent all used explosive tags, and Uzu (when it still existed) was capable of destroying entire ships with one seal.

But, on the whole, the Great Wars hadn't been particularly impacted by bombs.

Explosive tags were too weak for anything but one-on-one battles.

Samurai found horses and archery to be much more effective methods to accomplish their goals and, besides, gunpowder was a rather rare commodity.

Uzu was gone, could only really have affected the First Great War, and had intentionally kept out of that one.

And now.

Now summoned condors flew through the air, listening as the seal underneath them fizzed. Coming up with a seal that had a built-in alarm—that would grow eerily quiet ten seconds before going into effect—had delayed their introduction to the summer, but it was clearly worth it.

With the warning, with the ten seconds of safety, and with the element of danger—the condors weren't the ravens. The condors liked causing damage.

They took off just before dawn, seals clasped in their claws as they sped across Lightning.

Twenty condors—the most summoned at any one time.

All of their summoners were exhausted, passed out, or nearly so in medical tents.

Condors were now spread across miles of Lightning Territory, were finally being noticed by the shinobi.

That was alright, though; their seals had just gone silent.

The condors dropped their loads.

They'd targeted military camps, railroads, the giant sealing circles which allowed Kumo to monitor the surrounding chakra.

The seals dropped, dropped, dropped.

And then they exploded.

.

Minato was on the frontlines when the bombs were due to go off. Most of their best fighters were; even clan leaders and the like had volunteered to help with the push.

He wanted to spend time considering when the bombs would go off—he'd worked so hard on the alarm system, really wanted to know that it was actually successful in practice—but Kumo had already noticed the sudden increase in powerful enemy shinobi and sent out everyone they could on their side; it was all Minato could do to breathe, to keep an eye out on the rest of the battlefield.

He could sense, more than see, the Lightning Samurai trying for another flanking attack, but Fire's Samurai were keeping them off for now.

Kakashi was just behind him, three of his hounds surrounding him as he leapt between enemies, kicking off the chest of one to slice through the neck of another.

Choza was massive ahead of him, pounding through enemies with little care for the dozens of injuries he'd already amassed; Shikaku was in the shadow behind him, picking up and dispensing with any enemy Choza missed while Inoichi dashed beside him, intent on jumping into the mind of any enemy who looked strong enough to actually kill Choza.

Fugaku had went down in a ball of flames several minutes ago, or possibly only seconds ago—time was wonky in battle. He'd done so splendidly, though, had taken down dozens of Kumo-nin with him and used his last burst of energy to use the power of the jutsu to push him towards the nearest medical cart—they'd picked him up, picked other injured up, were already on their way back to camp as new shinobi arrived to take their place.

More of their best would go down soon, Minato knew—perhaps even including him.

But they had to hold out.

They had to keep the assault going until—

The ground vibrated as the closest of the bombs went off just at Kumo's backline, throwing bodies into the air.

Minato wanted to gape, wanted to take in the level of destruction not seen since Uzu was still around—

But there wasn't time.

He was under attack, killing one shinobi while defending himself from eight others, and everyone else was too, and there was screaming, and Kumo knew—

Knew—

Something had changed, but they weren't about to be caught on the back foot.

They kept fighting, clawing for every centimeter of space, not letting up in the least even as their backup fell into complete disarray until, blessedly, their retreat signal rang out.

And then it was Konoha's turn.

Kumo had to retreat—they had no choice, not with the destruction of their nearest camps.

But they likely didn't know how bad it was yet, didn't know that railroads were destroyed too, didn't know that over a dozen different locations were targeted.

Minato was sure that the condors were swooping out now with round two.

Minato was sure that at some point, probably soon, Kumo would recognize the messengers of doom, start killing them, and the tactic would have to be rethought.

But right now, more bombs were coming.

Right now, Kumo didn't know how far they'd have to retreat.

Right now, Lightning's Samurai were rushing around, their formations destroyed.

Right now, Konoha had every advantage.

Minato and his comrades pushed forward.

They passed the wrecked camp, leaping over the debris of what were once buildings.

They passed the ending of the rail line, now almost unrecognizable.

They kept going.

The second round of bombs went off.

Kumo's jinchuuriki was at the forefront now, and the Raikage's heir, trying to slow the assault.

They passed more destroyed tents, more destroyed forts.

There was no third round—Minato surmised too many of the condors had been killed to continue.

The fighting didn't stop.

.

Sakura walked into Danzo and Inoichi's latest disagreement—something about the missing children, but neither were letting the other get enough words out for the exact topic to be discernable.

Her face remained flat, but her stomach flipped, queasy beyond belief.

She wished she'd just faked illness or something, wasn't here.

She'd found more of Arden's memories.

More of Root.

More of missing children, of one man honestly believing that he wasn't a monster underneath his deceptively human skin.

And what was there for her to do, anyway? She could go to the Hokage, but she'd done that before, done that with Danzo no less—

He hadn't done anything.

And what proof did she have?

Nothing.

Obviously.

Because Danzo was running the investigation into the missing children, was on both sides of the cat-and-mouse chase and perfectly poised to be in control of it all.

She felt ill, watching as her Clan Head and the Elder sniped at each other.

No one had liked Danzo after his traitorous activities had come out, after he'd been found to be deliberately weakening the General to try to get his position.

But there was a difference between that and,

This.

This real-life horror show, run by the madman that hunched in front of her, poring over the missing persons numbers that he controlled.

"I have an idea." Sakura said, having absolutely no idea what to do. "But it'll need to be fleshed out some. I'll come back in a week or two. Keep bickering until then."

She left, not pausing when both men began talking over each other to convince her to stay, to agree with their sides of the story.

The worst part was that despite everything, despite knowing—knowing—that in a different future Danzo would go so far as to plan an assassination of the Hokage, she'd still…

She hadn't agreed with him on every point.

Hadn't even agreed with him on most things.

But when she had, when his silver tongue had done its work and she found herself nodding along…

She still agreed with those points.

Agreed with the staggered learning system, the variety of testing formats, the focus on in-field effectiveness for older years.

And now she had to figure out if she actually agreed with any of it, or if she'd just been lulled by his honeyed words.

And, of course, she had to do that while also managing to stop him before he caused any more harm.

She considered tracking, but the Tracking Division was already amazingly good at their job and they hadn't managed to find the kids. A possibility, then, but not a great one.

She considered some sort of seal to make it impossible to kidnap kids, but that was the sort of idea that would never work in practice.

Perhaps—

Her mind, which had been buzzing with the horrors since she woke up that morning, began slowing as an idea coalesced.

Perhaps, at checkpoints, (the gates, her brain filled in, the Academy and Administrative Building entrances), a form of the Kumo seal—a way to identify who was in a room, how many, who they were, their emotion—really, just about any information might be helpful.

It wouldn't be perfect—far from it—but it would limit the most obvious ingresses and egresses, it would provide more security, and it was a place to start.

Of course, it was also seals.

And Sakura sucked at seals.

She turned, exiting the clan compound, and pulled a pen out from behind her ear and a blank notebook from one of the seals lining her belt, taking notes on what the seal could possibly do, what each piece of information could be useful for, where and how the seal could be put into action.

Rento stared at her in abject horror.

"You're not serious, are you?"

"I mean, not everything. Not right away."

"I know—I know the bombs were good—" He should; he'd gotten a promotion off of them. "—but I'm not that good. I've been working on the bomb idea since I graduated from the Academy, you know, and we only shipped them up to the frontline yesterday, and—"

"Can you at least get started? I'll help."

"You have the creativity of a rock when it comes to seals. Even your battery seals were recommendations from other researchers."

"I'll… provide moral support."

Rento snorted. "I don't even—I don't even know how to start tackling this. Like, at all. I don't…"

"Please, Rento. You can see how helpful this would be—and aren't I your favorite aunt."

Rento grimaced. "Fine! But only—only—if you get every other sealer you can convince to work on this too. You're right, it'd be a great tool, but I'm not kidding, Aunt Sakura—this is beyond my paygrade."

Sakura nodded. "As many people as possible on this, I promise."

Rento glared at her, then pulled out one of the heavy tomes that lined his desk—this one labeled 'seal effects in three dimensions.'

Sakura left him to it and went to find the Research Head.

He was glaring at her by the second sentence.

"And where are all these resources for this new seal coming from?"

Sakura shrugged. "We'll be hearing back on how well the large bombs are functioning on the frontline soon. If they're as effectively implemented as they can be, then hopefully the war will be over soon."

"Then your idea can be postponed until the war is over."

Sakura's eyes flashed to the inky boy in her dreams, the horrors he must have gone through. "It'll be really powerful, Head. I think its worth starting work on now."

Head Aburame glared at her, then sighed. She had earned a lot of goodwill, after all. "Fine, fine. But we really do not have that many resources to spread around—you can do the preparatory work yourself, and borrow some genin, but anything else will have to wait until the war is over and we can start redistributing energy."

Sakura nodded, "Understood," and left.

She was bent over Rento's reference books for the rest of the night.

.

They'd finally begun making significant inroads into Kumo, and with it—

Well, it had been a very long war, and the battlelines were constantly full, and who knows when they'd be pushed back, and…

There were many reasons given, many excuses.

Regardless of the true motive, pillaging was now rampant.

"Any seals, metals, technology goes to the Researchers!" Battalion Commander Uchiha shouted. "You may not steal from each other!"

Tacit permission, then.

Yasuo grimaced, poking at what remained of a house as he and the rest of his guard station shuffled through the remains of one of the furthest south Kumo towns.

He'd been reassigned from Iwa several months ago, hadn't even had time to stop at home and be with Aiko for a few minutes, and he was reasonably sure the whole 'permission to appropriate' thing came down to keeping morale high. They might be making progress, after all, but it had been years –

He wasn't the only one who wanted a break.

Yasuo had, at first, been rather… noncommittal, about the whole thing, because obviously Konoha would still keep anything valuable so what was the point?

As days passed, however, and his comrades began stacking good pottery and armor and weapons and books and even livestock to be shipped home, shipped to their families…

He didn't have a family.

He only had Aiko, and she was far wealthier than he.

But he could still find her something.

The guard patrol moved out, towards an even more distant house. They kept their eyes peeled, kept looking for Kumo or—more likely—the many traps left behind, but this place had already been rather picked over.

The only reason they were spending any time on it was because a couple of them, Yasuo included, were sensors.

"Got anything?" Uchiha, a nonsensor with the sharingan asked.

"Nah. You?" Uchiha shook his head. They turned to the other sensor, Sora, who shrugged.

"I told you I saw a Hyuuga and Aburame over here yesterday—everything's gone."

"Well, there's still that inn couple minutes to the east—they haven't completely detrapped the area yet, so if we do that we get first pickings."

"For an inn?"

"Why not?"

"Fine, fine." Yasuo said. There probably was stuff at the inn, anyway—especially if it hadn't been picked over. Just probably nothing good enough for Aiko.

(Of course, he hadn't yet thought of anything she'd truly like. That was the downside to being in a relationship; he really wanted to impress her, and so far all his ideas felt like they'd be complete failures.)

They hadn't yet reached the inn—Kumo really liked its mines—when Uchiha stopped.

Then Sora.

Then Yasuo.

"You—you see that, right?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

"Shit."

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

Yasuo swallowed, his mouth suddenly completely dry, and tried to take a breath.

There wasn't time.

The guard patrol took off running, desperately trying to beat each other (and, more importantly, what was behind them) back to camp.