Sakura frowned, rubbing at the callouses on her hands. They were a couple days old, and typically she was more on top of things like that.
It was a tricky thing, the iryouninjutsu to remove them.
It had taken months to learn, spending at least an hour every single day.
(It probably didn't help that she had never spent that long on iryouninjutsu, had really only learned basic first aid before that. She was quite certain if she asked any medic, Juro included, they'd all say it was pretty straightforward.)
Her hands glowed, and she watched as the callouses faded away.
Was there a point, anymore?
She'd spent—years, now.
Hiding her skills.
What were the chances that she'd been recognized when fighting the byoki?
But then, it had been a bit—messy.
Then.
(Still was messy, months later. Still felt like no time had passed. Like decades had passed.)
She stood.
She'd been in the middle of dressing for work when she'd noticed the callouses, and now she continued, put her hair up in the standard Yamanaka ponytail.
Moved to the door.
And then—
A flurry, an absolute tsunami of noise.
Of light.
"Aunt Sakura! You'll never believe it! I succeeded at my first long-term mission! It took forever, making friends with him—can't say who, even though you probably have clearance—but I did it, and he's talking now, and I—I just." Ibiki threw his arms around her, hugged her. "I'm so happy."
"In hindsight, T&I was a bit of a challenge given your historic difficulty making friends," Sakura snarked, just because she could.
Ibiki made a face at her. "Nyuh. Well, actually, it wasn't so bad this time… he was pretty young, and traumatized, and I remembered… well, I remembered being like that. And how you and Uncle Shin and Uncle Juro and Head Yamanaka made me feel better." Ibiki grinned at her, and her heart clenched. His smiles were always identical to those of his mother's. "He's on the list for recruitment, now. It'll probably take some time—most mind-reading Yamanakas are already busy—but. I'm happy. That I made his life easier." And then, as if remembering that his official mission had other priorities, "and everyone on the frontline too, of course!"
"I'm glad to hear it." Sakura decided not to mention just how much he'd given away about his mission; he likely already knew but—as he'd already alluded to—figured her clearance was high enough that she could've figured it out herself without his help.
Which it was.
Just not due to her official job title.
"Are you busy? I have today off."
"I have work, but the morning's stuff will all be pretty non-confidential if you want to join me."
"Sure!"
At this point, the Hokage Department's Research Office only had a few permanent members. They had all research genin—Sakura had successfully argued that rotating them across offices would be beneficial—but besides her and her Co-Head, the only other Researcher who hadn't fallen into one of the other Departments was Uchiha Shuji.
And the Sealing Assembly, of course, but that was in a different building.
He cackled when she entered with Ibiki, which meant he had absolutely not been working on surveillance cameras like he was supposed to.
"Hello, Yamanakas!" he said. He thrust a box forward. It was full of paper and rock dust. "Remember when you told me about how geology can be used to measure time?"
"Vaguely," Sakura said, which was true. The only reason she remembered it at all was because it was only after she'd already made a comment about geological time records that she'd learned that concept was not, in fact, already present in Konoha. Or Fire. Or any records they had from all the other countries.
At least she had a reputation for coming up with all sorts of ideas—no one had batted an eye. (In hindsight, she wished this wasn't the case. She'd been a lot more careful as a teenager, but after years of Arden's memories being taken as her genius, she'd grown complacent. Lazy. Maybe, if she hadn't, she wouldn't have mentioned the space thing to Minato.)
"What about it?"
(She really wished she hadn't mentioned the space thing to Minato.)
"I've tested it, gone to the coast, and I think you're right! See here, this—"
"Shuji, have you not worked on surveillance cameras at all?"
Shuji hesitated.
Ibiki, behind her, carefully shifted to get further away.
"We are being attacked. Iwa and Kumo have successfully pushed in, are continuing to push in. Suna is nipping at our heels with everything but all-out aggression. You know me, Shuji. You know that nine times out of ten I let you research whatever you wish."
She was so, so tired.
She wondered how much this non-war war (because officially nobody had actually declared war, despite how obvious it was that war was exactly this was) could've been postponed if she hadn't mentioned space to Minato.
If they'd not won so quickly, in a little less than an hour, against something that they still didn't understand.
(And then there was the fear, the likelihood, that there was still byoki somewhere. That the body could reform, despite a good chunk of it being somewhere to the north of the moon.)
Shuji hesitated, looking down at the box in his hands. At the rocks on his desk.
At Sakura.
"I—I am stuck. I don't—it's not. Making sense in my brain. To make the surveillance."
So, he'd moved on. Tried to give his brain a chance to rest, to focus on something else and allow his subconscious to continue working.
"…That's reasonable. But, really, rocks aren't… they're a peacetime concern."
They stood.
Stared.
Ibiki cleared his throat. "How about medical technology? Like, that's been stagnating recently, right? That's what Sensei said, anyway."
"Heart rate monitoring!" Shuji shouted, and then he was gone.
Well, medical care was absolutely an immediate concern. The only reason Konoha was holding on as well as they were was because they could treat injuries their opponents couldn't, and anything that allowed them to build that advantage, make it seem as if nothing at all could take a Fire shinobi down permanently, would be useful.
"Thanks, Ibiki."
Ibiki grinned. "Happy to help. I thought… I thought the Hokage Department's Research Office would be bigger."
Sakura snorted. "Hotaru and Shuji are rarely here," she said, "so there's not really a need for much more room."
The geology thing, though…
That, and space…
What other waves was she making, without even intending to?
What would she turn around and discover next?
It frightened her, as it always had, but—
Well, they'd dealt with the byoki, or at least some of it.
They'd dealt with the byoki, and she'd helped.
So she might as well keep going, keep seeing how she could make the world a better place.
.
It was the talk of Kaiso. And probably Konoha too, and all the compounds.
A pregnant Inuzuka mother had exploded.
Of all the ways multi-bloodline pregnancies could fail, that was perhaps the worst.
(And it was a multi-bloodline pregnancy. The gossip was very certain of that.)
It—
She'd gotten past that, hadn't she?
Her darling Ame was born, now, was four months old, now.
It was the talk of Kaiso, and it made Hono's stomach twist.
Because the risk wasn't over, was it? There had been an Uchiha girl a generation ago who'd fallen in love with an Akimichi, and their child was born, seemed healthy. Grew up healthy. Went into the field and activated his sharingan.
Went blind immediately, was in severe pain for the rest of his life—a life which was cut brutally short because the malfunctioning sharingan also damaged his brain, and gave him a sort of very early onset dementia.
She'd grown up hearing that story.
Had grown up without thinking much about it.
And then—
Well, now it was constantly in her thoughts, even without the gossip.
Her perfect little Ame, the risk life might pose.
At least—at least both Uchiha and Yuki had a chance not to pass on their bloodline. Her doctors were pretty sure that was what had happened, given how risk-free her pregnancy was.
Unfortunately, there wouldn't be any way to tell.
Not until she was older.
Not without risk.
It was the talk of Kaiso, and Hono wished Konoha wasn't so very good at stamping out worry over the war.
She'd prefer doomsday chatter to this.
.
Fugaku frowned.
They'd received another missive from Suna, asking in a roundabout way what it would take to get the Uchiha to switch loyalties.
And now the elders were actually talking about it, treating it seriously.
Not officially, of course.
Officially it was just a 'thought experiment' or 'something we need to thing about due to Uzu anyway' or 'a way to pass the time.'
Fugaku didn't want to leave.
Hated the very idea.
Konoha was theirs, and that thought rang through his head over, and over, and over again.
He just couldn't understand why the rest of his clan didn't feel the same way.
He arrived at his house, opened the front door.
Smiled.
Uchiha Shisui looked up, smiled back from where he was jiggling a rattle at Itachi. The boy's mother, who had kindly offered to watch Itachi during the day, called out from the kitchen—it was dinner time.
He picked up his son, rubbed Shisui's head.
Thanked Hana for making food for him as well, no matter how many times she assured him that she didn't mind.
Went to sit, eat, put his worries aside for the day.
And then there was a knock at the door.
.
Bokuso watched as Head Uchiha stared at him.
Tried to get a sense if he'd judged right.
It was a very nasty proposition he'd just thrown on his lap.
But it had to be done.
He tried to put himself in Head Uchiha's head, as he had before this meeting.
First, there was Bokuso himself. Not the Aburame Head, but then the Aburame Head was fighting Kumo, had just obliterated about fifty people the day before with a new, explosive, insect.
So not the Aburame Head, but they had sent Bokuso, and the Aburame strongly valued fertility, fecundity.
Bokuso had twins.
They'd shown their interest in this proposition as well as they could.
And then there was the proposition: have Uchiha cat summons teach Aburame insects summons sensing.
On the one hand, this would solve the summons-sensing shortage issue. It would provide more protection, would ensure that no more summons (from Kumo, from Iwa, even from Orochimaru) would be found well within Konoha's walls.
There were a lot of benefits to that, for Konoha as a whole and even for the Uchiha.
But there were a lot of costs, too.
More accurately, there were costs to the Uchiha.
Bokuso knew perfectly well that the Uchiha believed they were being pushed out of Konoha. It had started with the police—
Well, no. It had started with Danzo.
But he'd been killed, and everyone important knew that he'd had some sort of grudge against the Uchiha and the Nara, had been plotting against them.
So that was… dealt with. More or less.
Then there had been the police.
The deal that had been made with Konoha proper, the trade for research resources—for forensics—in exchange for opening the police to the general public.
Then there was the Co-Heading of Research, a situation which continued even after the government reshuffling, and which—despite his friend's clear genius—seemed inherently unfair on the basis of inexperience (something the Uchiha felt strongly about for bureaucratic jobs).
And then there was Uzu, and how the Uchiha were not given a larger section in deference to their role in founding Konoha.
And the Academy's mandate that none younger than ten should graduate, a mandate which was explicitly due to an Uchiha child.
And there was also the relative dearth of Uchiha in diplomacy positions, and the continued discontent over the Uchiha's strict rules about living within the compound, and the huge losses they suffered to the byoki, and—
Well.
And, more than anything else, there was the discontent over the Uchiha cats and the territory they now had to keep watch over, the number of summons they missed.
So Bokuso knew very well why Head Uchiha was taking so long to respond.
"It has historically been the role of the Uchiha to manage the threat of foreign summons," Head Uchiha said at last.
Bokuso bowed his head, conceding the point. "And yet the territory of Konohagakure and its clans have expanded tremendously since the time of Konohagakure's founding."
"While that is true, the Uchiha believe we can continue to perform our duties as well as ever."
Both knew that was a lie.
Bokuso didn't want to press that, not seeing the point. Instead he inspected his tea cup, allowing the pause to lengthen before he responded.
Allowed the silence to say what he could not.
"The Uchiha are stretched very thin, Head Uchiha, and your prowess across many fields mean that there is always a demand. I ask you to consider, one last time, allowing the Aburame to share in your burden."
If he said no, the Aburame would simply dedicate more of their family to figuring it out themselves; they had enough allies with summons to allow such an endeavor. Asking permission, however, seemed the best first step, particularly considering how territorial the Uchiha had always been. Particularly considering how relations would no doubt worsen if the Aburame would figure it out.
Bokuso stared straight forward, waiting expectantly.
The answer could shape Aburame and Uchiha relations for decades, and he did not object to the time Head Uchiha took to consider the ramifications.
He did, however, wish that he did not already know the answer.
