Sakura woke up dreaming of Romans.
She still hadn't figured out an easier way of sorting through Arden's memories than simply grabbing onto one and absorbing it, as quickly as possible, into the organized section of her brain, in the hopes that eventually the sea of memories would drain to the point that she would get to what little of her world that Arden had been aware of.
The method was tedious, took a significant amount of time, and was difficult to control—there was little she could do to determine the theme of the nightly memories.
Tonight's was apparently Romans.
Arden knew a lot about Romans. She knew of their levying system, of their politics, their wartimes and peacetimes and illusions of both. She knew what they ate, knew what they drank, they what clothes they wore and what clothes they didn't. There were laws, too, so many laws, and myths, and histories, and poems, and combinations thereof, and there were battle strategies and war strategies and relationship strategies and, to top it all off, dozens of threads of more information connected to them (Greece, for instance; the "Renaissance" too, and Britain, and, again, hundreds of others)
Sakura hadn't even been able to get through a tenth of the Roman section, but at least she had somewhat reduced the size of that strand of memories.
The Romans were interesting, she supposed, and fascinating and probably something that would give her ideas to write in her notebook later, but it wasn't immediately helpful.
War was (probably) coming.
Arden knew of the exact war that was coming, knew of the combatants and the winners, and maybe other details too.
Why couldn't she remember any of Arden's memories about that?
Orochimaru was only growing in power.
How about any recollections to find evidence for that?
Death and destruction was around the corner.
Why could she only find the memory of the death and destruction instead of what had caused it, what could be done to stop it?
Instead, she got Romans.
Fascinating, again, but not necessarily useful.
.
Given what Sakura and everyone else had learned during the Spring Session (which was then reiterated by the Emissary that attended Lightning's Summer Session) it was no surprise that, no matter what the Daimyo said, Konoha decided to move to war footing.
They did it slowly, though, because apparently insubordination at the pace of a snail was better than insubordination at the pace of a cheetah.
For reasons.
Some of the differences were small—there was a greater recruitment push, for one, and many children across the Fire Nation who would normally not be actively pursued for shinobi life were. There was also an increased time spent on training against Iwa tactics, against Earth techniques and terrain and organization.
Other preparations were more overt.
Konoha, for instance, took pains to reiterate each and every promise of protection they had with smaller states. In addition, the village also called an impromptu census; knowing exactly how many resources they had was suddenly very important. For related reasons, production began to slowly (oh so slowly) ramp up—Sakura found herself running around more and more every month, delivering messages between factories and research labs as brand-new inventions were built, tested, revised, and built again. New posters found their way onto various walls, too: posters encouraging food rationing and preservation, picking up extra shifts, and Konohagakure nationalism. By fall, everyone knew that war might be around the corner, that those in the know saw the signs they didn't want to see.
By fall, everyone was individually preparing for war.
Clans and private factories alike ramped up production (Akimichi farms were doing their best to double theirs within half a decade); even toymakers began working overtime with the knowledge that the second war came, they'd be using their skills in a decidedly different manner. Individuals, too, were listening to the propaganda, saving what they could and cutting down where they could as children played "bash the rock" and old grannies knitted bandages for the hospital.
The Daimyo said that war wasn't coming.
Konoha didn't listen.
By and large, however, shinobi life continued as usual: it was one thing to know war was coming, but until a date was added to the sentence the people of Konoha (civilian and ninja alike) would hope that this would be yet another false alarm.
For chinmoku, despite more direct evidence of the likelihood of something on the horizon, this held true too. At least three days a week each member of chinmoku spent with their genin-work: Sakura's research, Juro's hospital internship (which was, according to him, two-thirds cleaning up puke and one-third sitting in a tiny room with a dozen other students memorizing every imaginable disease by rote), and Shin's…
Well, Shin had an internship.
He wasn't allowed to talk about it, though, but that wasn't unusual: many genin assistants were banned from mentioning anything about the job, even the job itself, for about six months as a test.
Sakura could guess, but that was it.
Beyond their jobs as assistants, chinmoku filled their days with learning elemental manipulation (they were all fire-natured, which was convenient but also not great in terms of diversity), walking on water (even moving water, which was hell), increasing weapon accuracy… just learning everything a chuunin was supposed to know, because those skills would be beneficial in and out of a war.
Then there were the missions.
The missions sucked.
They were done with D-ranks, at least, but most C-ranks were equally as boring, given that the higher pay rate was due to the length of time or the amount of physical exertion or some other reason which had nothing to do with how interesting the mission was.
Sakura felt like she was going to tear out her hair every time they were sent to capture yet another rabid animal. How many animals could there possibly be? (Not as many as reported, actually, so a good third of the time they were sent out it would turn out to be nothing, but unfortunately Fire was suffering from a rabies outbreak which lasted the entire summer, so the rest of the time...)
And then, of course, there was the month when, after three rabid squirrel missions in a row, they were sent to the Akimichi lands on a C-rank to capture a rogue cow who had evaded all other attempts for the past month and a half.
A cow.
A rogue pregnant cow, as it turned out, as they found her mid-birth.
At least the cow didn't have rabies.
A Thursday in mid-November found the trio standing, once more, in the mission office, with their Sensei standing directly in front of them.
Sakura had both hands behind her back, fingers crossed, as she prayed to every kami and Arden-world God she could think of that there would be no animals involved in the mission. She didn't mind the background check missions—why couldn't they have more of those? Or one of the missions where they did a bunch of D-ranks in a town to boost public opinion. Those were boring, but didn't tend to involve poop. One of those would be nice. Bodyguard missions were good too, even if they rarely got those, or the more frequent border patrol missions; Sakura wouldn't even mind another public works mission, or a fire brigade mission—at this point, even long-term missions were ranked above animal capture.
"Sensei Mitokado Supaku. How are you?" The mission chuunin was an Utatane with a wide grin who had ditched his original infiltration focus after losing a hand and eye when he was caught out. Nine times out of ten, he was the one manning the desk, and he was chatty enough that, when dealing with other Senseis, the teams in line might have to wait as much as ten minutes between each assignment being handed out.
Sensei never even bothered to entertain him through pleasantries.
"Well."
"…I'm good too. Stubbed my toe this morning, though."
Sensei didn't answer.
"…Alright. So any mission preference? We have quite a few available today. A report of a rabid fox about a day's journey away, a background check for a family moving into the village, testing existing exploding tags for usability—oh! There's a trader who—"
"C-rank adjusted, please."
The chuunin blinked. "Oh, yeah, okay." He shuffled a few papers around, then looked up and began reciting: "You are aware that, given the career paths of your genin, such a mission is not necessary, only strongly recommended?"
"Hai."
"You understand that, with the exception of a declaration of war, your students will be required to take a full week off from any missions, including any ongoing genin jobs?"
"Hai."
"Alright. We'll match you up with an existing team, then. Team 25 is leaving to clear out a bandit camp in about an hour, meeting at the front gate. I'll send a message to them, and you can meet them there. The Sensei is Inuzuka Aiko."
"Alright," Sensei whipped around to face chinmoku, unrolling the mission scroll as he did, and Sakura blinked.
"What—"
"We'll be going northeast, likely experiencing light rain. Pack for a trip of approximately a week. Go."
They went.
Based on context, however, the purpose of the mission was still clear:
They were about to get their first kills.
Sakura, along with what she would normally pack, shoved in her childhood stuffed caterpillar (made ratty by age, but simple enough in design that it was still in one piece) and tried to ignore her thoughts—
Don't go don't go don't go don't go don't go don't go don't go don't go don't go don't go
—so that she arrived at the front gate on time.
Why couldn't they go back to rabid squirrels? They were fine, really, and even if the rabies outbreak had begun weakening in October, well… rabies didn't ever go completely away, did it? So surely her team could be sent to hunt something.
Just not people.
She was at the front gate.
By Juro's and Shin's expressions, they had also been able to deduce the purpose of their first combat-focused C-rank.
"Ready?" Shin asked, looking both sympathetic and very, very empathetic.
"No. You?"
Shin shrugged. "Have to be, don't I?"
Juro looked a bit green. "Do you think they'll scream? Beg us to stop?"
"Not if we do it fast enough," Shin said.
He'd always been the most pragmatic of them.
"I packed a stuffed animal," Sakura said.
"I should have done that," Juro said. Then, "I packed extra food. Different flavors, too, in case any of them don't sit well after…"
"My sister says after your first time burning bodies it's hard to eat meat for a while," Shin said.
Sakura really, really hoped they'd just be allowed to bury them.
"All packed?" Sensei said, appearing behind Shin.
Chinmoku nodded.
"Alright. Let's meet the team we'll be working under."
Sakura had never met Sensei Inuzuka Aiko before, but she recognized the name; Yasuo was one of her genin, along with two other boys Sakura barely knew. She was, in person, an incredibly tall woman with almost no hair and a vicious-looking dog standing beside her.
Even chinmoku's Sensei—a tall man himself—was barely taller than her.
It seemed sometimes like everyone was tall, but then that might have just been because Sakura was so short.
"Have you ever worked on a combined team before?" She asked.
Chinmoku shook their heads.
"Well, we're in charge—we're the ones with the expertise. Each of my genin will be in charge of one of you each, and for the duration of this trip their word is law. It'll be a simple mission: I'll set the pace, we'll get there tomorrow around noon, kill, then get back. If you need to stop, speak up. I'd rather take a break for you to puke in a bush than for you to break your leg while trying to puke running. Got it?"
"Got it."
"Right, figure out your pairs."
Yasuo and the other two boys turned towards her, Juro, and Shin.
"How do you want to split up?" One of the boys—an Uchiha, Kenji if she remembered correctly, asked.
"Juro's our medic," Sakura answered, "Shin can use shadows but he's best long range, and I'm a sensor."
"Yasuo's in front until I get my eyes," the Uchiha answered, "so you go with him. He's a standard short to midrange fighter and has just started training with a suntetsu. He's a sensor, too. Juro, you'll be with me—I'm taijutsu and ninjutsu, and Shin you'll be with Takahashi—he uses a fukiya with poisons on the darts—only mild, for now, but try not to get hit."
Sakura nodded, and the rest of her team dispersed.
Less than ten seconds later they were out of the gate, racing through the trees in a straight path to the last reported location of the camp.
They moved too quickly to waste air talking, so the journey was silent until, at last, Sensei Inuzuka called a halt.
"We're about to lose our light, so we'll stay here for the night. Help my genin with their designated tasks. We'll leave at dawn tomorrow morning, so have a large dinner—we won't be eating again until the bandit camp's dealt with."
She and Sensei disappeared.
Yasuo's task, as it turned out, was water collection, so Sakura followed him back to the stream they'd passed a minute or two before rest was called.
"How are you holding up?" He asked, not quite looking at her as he did.
"Nothing's happened yet, has it?"
Yasuo rolled his eyes. "So?" The waterskins having been refilled, he sat. "Ask your questions. I know you have them, and I've done this before, you know. It's kind of my job."
Sakura sat beside him. "What—what will it, um—"
"The whole point of shinobi is to kill, you know?" Yasuo stared at the stream. "That's what we sign up for, to kill or help other people to kill. But it's… no one ever talks about having done it, not really. I mean, immediately after, sure, and if there was a big bounty then obviously you have to so you can collect the bounty, but… no one talks about it. They talk around it easily enough, but never about it.
"And now you don't even have to talk about it. You have to actually do it.
"It'll be close range. Most killing—most of it is longer range, you know, by ninjutsu or exploding tag or something. But they want to make sure you can kill close range if you have to, so it'll be close range. For me, it was… I mean, the guy had a giant mace that he was swinging right at me. It was kill or be killed, really, and so I killed. The second time we snuck in on the camp while they were still asleep—that's how most are done, when they're done close range—we snuck in on them and slit their throats.
"For me… it's not something I'll ever enjoy, but it helps to know that I agree that the deaths are necessary. Bandits kill, but they kill innocents—tradespeople and migrants and civilians visiting family. Their kills are selfish in nature; mine, ultimately, aren't. That said, most people, they pause."
"Pause?"
"Yeah, they… they're in the situation, you know, and it's time for them to kill, and they just—they can't do it. So then whoever they have as backup—if I hadn't killed that first time, it would have been Sensei—they protect you until you screw your head on straight enough to do it. I'll be your backup tomorrow."
"So you think I'll pause?"
"Probably, yeah. Honestly, Sakura, you… you never talk about the whole death thing. Like, no one does—I've said that already—but you're, you're even more against it than most. You say you'd do it, because you know it would be the right thing to do, but I think once you're standing right next to the person you're supposed to kill…
Yeah, I think you'll freeze."
"And then unfreeze."
"And then… well, this camp has more than three bandits—seven to eight, going by reports. So you'll have multiple tries."
"How about Shin and Juro?"
"None of you are natural killers. Or at least you don't act like it. All of you—I think—are going to freeze, going to hesitate, going to need your backups to protect your ass until you psych yourself up enough to actually go through with it."
"Sorry."
Yasuo shrugged. "We're friends, right? And comrades, too. You protect me in the ways that work for you, and I'll protect you in the ways that work for me. And anyway, you might surprise me and, like, rip his head off barehanded or something."
"I'm definitely going to freeze tomorrow."
Yasuo nodded. "You are."
Sakura stood. "Juro packed some sweets, if you'd like a couple."
"Sounds good to me."