Please leave a comment or PM if you have any questions, suggestions, concerns, or just compliments. For the sake of this work, the elemental balance will go earth}lightning}water}fire}wind. Thanks to SmallFountainPen for betaing chapters 57-73. Thanks to SoaringJe for betaing beginning with chapter 116.

The alarm was one of those for an outer-wall threat, but Ebisu took no time getting out of bed, racing to the door.

It was little surprise to be handed an old woman in the hallway, and he tried not to wince as she began to scream at him—she was clearly more than aware that he was not her son, and more than ready to let him know about it.

Still, Ebisu was in the hospital, now, and mobile, and his Academy-age training had kicked in just like he was supposed to; he was in the bunker, placing the woman on one of the provided beds, almost before he had the chance to guess at the threat.

But he did have time.

It was, after all, his train that was attacked; it was, after all, his train that had to be rescued by the Hokage just before Ebisu's chakra exhaustion caught up to him; and he was, after all, the one who had spent literal hours being interviewed.

Ebisu knew Konoha suspected Kumo.

(Konoha couldn't, and had never been able to, protect all of Fire from infiltrators. It was simply too much land, too many access points. So Konoha focused on those actively doing harm, on those who were the most powerful, and—most importantly—on any large group movement.

(There hadn't been any large group movements reported, or at least none that Ebisu had heard of.

(But twenty… thirty, including the poppy farm attackers, that had been enough to slip through.

(Still, attacking a train couldn't have been their only plan.

(So what was it?

(And what were the chances that this didn't have to do with that?)

"Status?" A medic said, glancing up at him as she read the papers attached to the old woman's shirt.

"For… her?"

"Do you know anything about her?"

"No?"

The medic looked up, sarcasm dripping even before she spoke. "Then how about you?"

"Right. Um, I'm fine."

"You wouldn't be in the hospital if you were fine."

"Just chakra exhaustion. I was supposed to be discharged in an hour."

Would've been discharged already, except that he lived alone and in rare cases chakra exhaustion could cause seizures and strokes.

"Fine, fine," the medic said. Went to the next cot.

Ebisu sank to the ground—he might no longer be medically in danger, but he was still very tired—and hoped that the emergency would be over soon.

That's about when the old lady noticed him again, and started screaming about him being a kidnapper.

Wonderful.

.

It was a really, really good thing they didn't keep the bodies inside Konoha anymore.

Minato couldn't even remember when that rule had gone into place—wasn't it something about disease mitigation?—but it was now standard to autopsy any enemy bodies outside the walls.

Really, regardless of the medical benefit, this made it very clear that there was a far greater reason to store unknown corpses where they did:

Tracking seals.

(They knew. That was the worst part. He'd even already had time to read the goddamn reports, to know that there were definitely seals on the corpses.

(But they also didn't know.

(The seals…

(They were based in the Uzu style, but they weren't recognizable.

(That should've caused greater concern, too, not just pushed back a week until the researchers had more time.

(Too late now.

(Too late.)

It didn't—

The stealth techniques were advanced, almost certainly seal-enhanced, but the Inuzuka, Hyuuga, and Uchiha had spotted the two well before they'd managed to do anything.

And then there was the follow-up question:

Who else?

Minato's shoulders remained tense and his lips were pressed in a narrow line.

"What tripped them up?" he asked, because there was no reason to wait for the interrogation.

A Sarutobi bowed. "I have a Hyuuga genin. He noticed someone sneaking, and I decided to raise the alarm."

Smart.

Smart, but not—

Not enough.

"Sakura," Minato said, and the Research Co-Director was there. "I want to consolidate a lot of these buildings into one, create known exits and entrances. Work with Infrastructure to make sure it's as secure as possible."

Sakura nodded, then nodded again. Good, she'd caught his hand signal then.

"Inuzuka… Tsume? What did you notice about the infiltrators?"

"Well…"

.

Sakura grabbed her nephew on the way to the Hokage's Office.

She was more than a little sure what this would be about, and it wasn't her wheelhouse.

"What was the alarm, then?" Rento asked, because he wasn't combat, was in the walls, and so there was relatively little he'd had to do in response.

"Two infiltrators, targeting enemy corpses. Probably Kumo," Sakura said.

"Well, shit."

"We had some bodies a bit ago. They had seals on. Didn't have you look with everything else on your plate, but—"

"But if infiltrators want to get the corpses back bad enough…"

"Exactly."

"Cool."

Rento blinked, turning to look back at the way an ANBU had opened the door for them just as they would've had to begin slowing their pace.

And then he whipped around, watching as the office doors opened seemingly on its own.

"Hello, ANBU Otter," Sakura said, watching out of the corner of her eye as Rento turned to stare at her.

Arato didn't respond, but she didn't expect him to.

"Where's the Hokage?" Rento asked.

"Probably still debriefing," Sakura said, and then whipped out her 'current work' sealing, releasing a pile of paperwork and beginning to sift through it.

"Should we be here without him?"

"You certainly shouldn't, but you're with me, so it's okay."

"…Okay." He didn't relax until an ANBU reluctantly made themselves visible, made it clear they weren't being forced out.

Wow, she'd done a really good job downplaying her strength.

…Oh well.

"Here," Sakura said, turning over Research's existing notes on the seal.

Rento immediately collapsed into a cross-legged position on the floor, whipping out his own pencil to begin sketching notes onto the side.

"Weird…" he muttered.

"What's weird?"

"Hokage!"

Before Rento could even try standing up Minato was gesturing at him tiredly. "At ease, at ease. What's weird?"

"It's Uzu, but… not?"

"I thought so too." Minato collapsed into his own seat, gesturing to ANBU Otter. "I just couldn't—it follows the Uzu framework, right? But… different particulars." Arato returned, handing him a seal that turned out to contain his own notes on the seal.

"So Kumo—probably Kumo, anyway—has come up with their own sealing art," Sakura said. It was mostly unsurprising, because Konoha's own seals were visibly derived from Uzu but not the same, but also… "Shit."

"We really should have seen this coming," Minato said.

And Sakura—

The thing was, the thing was, she was almost finished integrating Arden's memories, no longer felt like there was an ocean of someone else's knowledge in her own brain, felt like just herself…

But Arden's memories didn't include this.

Hadn't included the whole throw-the-guy-into-space thing either, but Sakura was like fifty- to eighty-percent sure that was zetsu depending on the day, so at least there could be some sort of explanation there.

Maybe.

But sealing—Kumo sealing specifically—well, there had to be one cause for that.

Her.

(It was possible, she knew, that the story just didn't care about Kumo seals; it was possible that this was also true in the world she hadn't changed.

(It just seemed… more than a little unlikely.)

And, the thing was… Sakura already knew she was changing things. Already knew that Konoha's research prowess (which, yes, meant mostly seals, but also economics, and having almost all neighbors fundamentally against siding with anyone but Konoha had many advantages) was the reason for the consistent conflicts.

But this… this was a sign that Kumo could catch up.

That Konoha could very well start being pushed back, that the borders may very well be overrun.

…If Kumo managed to be as successful as Konoha was.

Which,

Kumo had mandatory education for all children.

It wouldn't be hard to catch up, not if they played their cards right.

"But what were they planning…" Minato murmured.

And that. That was the question.

.

Noka Sakura frowned as she rolled out of her bedroll, half-listening to her teammates arguing about how to share theirs. Being a genin-assistant to Konoha's Spring Delegation to the Capital was… underwhelming.

By a lot.

There was, chiefly, the Daimyo.

He was ugly.

Well, maybe that wasn't fair.

He wasn't—like, if she saw him on the street or something, she wouldn't think of him as ugly. She certainly wouldn't think of him as handsome, or anything, but still—he'd be just another face in the crowd.

She'd expected… more, though.

Expected—

Well, she'd expected him to be like rulers in stories: dashing and handsome and brave, always ready to do the right thing.

Real-him was not that.

Her childhood stories had lied to her.

And that was… fine.

Like, she was still happy with life and all that—a civilian-born in the Spring Delegation was rare, and she was honored and all that—but.

Well.

She'd expected… more.

And then—

And then there was that stupid Corn Delegation guy, messing up all her work.

She knew next to nothing about the Land of Corn! It was in the West! It didn't matter! And the guy just had to go all the way across the continent to attend, and then Sakura had to spend hours reading about how in Corn sins of the parent pass to the child, and in Corn they could skip people in the order of succession, and all sorts of other nonsense.

So that sucked.

And the guy could barely even speak Fire's language, so she wasn't even sure why he was here, but Sensei still expected her to make suggestions, and all the (actual) adults kept talking about growing east-west relations, and—

And she was in a bit of a mood, okay?

And the boys were still arguing, and the early-blossoming Sakura trees were everywhere, and she just wanted to sleep.

So she did.

.

Uchiha Fuyuki smiled down at his paperwork.

This was unusual.

But just two days before, a number of illnesses had been reported by the hospital, and then the Public Health Bureau had investigated.

It had taken them no time to identify three farms that had recently purchased chickens that introduced some sort of food-borne illness, and then his Bureau—Resource Distribution—had unsealed three months' worth of chickens to sell on the farmers' behalf because they'd bought into Konoha's food insurance program (a smart way to get people to pay Konoha to hoard food) and—

Well, and that was it.

The diseased chicken were killed, the farmers were gifted some new ones as a further sign of Konoha's goodness, and no new reports were expected.

Simple.

Straightforward.

So utterly unlike anything he'd experienced as a child, before Konoha, always wary about a bad winter.

So utterly unlike anything he'd experienced until now, when they'd store foodstuffs in warehouses because seals were too rare and expensive and then an occasional lightning strike or whatever else would immediately light it—and everything else—ablaze, and all the firefighters would be standing around trying to move the flames away from the food because the stores were too valuable to destroy with water, and non-firefighters were dumping water on everything else by hand because water jutsu were hard to come by and even harder to not overpower.

So—freeing.

Fuyuki knew many in the Uchiha still wished to run, still wished to find safety in the heat of the desert, hope that the byoki would not follow.

Fuyuki had been undecided, had been teetering between his instinct (not safe, must act) and his reality.

His reality was food borne illnesses dealt with without even a hiccough in the market.

His reality was Konoha working to replace every inch of insulation in the entire city with fire-retardant versions, because everything around here was flammable and the Hokage had decided the danger wasn't reasonable.

His reality was his Head next in line for that position.

And still, still his emotions had a stranglehold on him, made it hard to think straight.

But.

But this wasn't the first time a resource issue had been dealt with so smoothly.

And it had been months since the last major fire and that only burnt down one apartment building without a single casualty,

And the Hokage had thrown the killer of his kin into space.

And something in Fuyuki, something in Fuyuki looked down at his paperwork and relaxed.

Let loose its grip.

Allowed him to think maybe, perhaps, Konoha might be safe.

(But before he made any kind of decision he needed to know what that alarm had been about.)