Uzushiogakure had been destroyed years ago, before the war. Sakura still remembered when it happened—she'd been just back from a mission, had not been planning on doing much at all that day when the alarm sounded.

It had occurred to her later that she'd crossed the same waters as Iwa's ships, perhaps even been close enough in time and space to be visible.

Even if they had gotten that close, she had not noticed; she'd stayed inside the ship most of the voyage, and what time she did spend in open air was completely bereft of any ships besides her own.

Now, now she stood in the same spot as the Iwa attackers. As the entire civilization they destroyed.

They weren't looking for survivors, Jiraiya clarified; that job had been done in the immediate aftermath, and although there were no doubt some who lived through what had happened Konoha's search teams had never found anyone, never found anything but emptiness.

No, they were not here for people.

They were here for information.

Uzushiogakure was, until its razing, the most technologically advanced nation in the world. It wasn't by a particularly large margin, but what they specialized in no other country did, or at least not nearly to the same extent; Uzu's mastery of sealwork, their understanding of how to teach and use such to greatest advantage…

In barriers, in medical technology, in storage and bombardment and food preservation and lighting and so many other things no other country compared.

And then Uzu was gone.

They'd known the risks, of course; their population was far smaller than any of the other Great Nations, and their sealing capabilities and few but powerful clans left them the target of more than a little bit of envy, but they'd tried to guard against an attack as best they could: they'd hoarded their knowledge, put up as many barriers as possible to prevent any from learning to replicate what they could do, and they protected their homeland with every seal they could.

Sakura remembered learning about Uzu's conduct with Juro and Shin, leaning against trees on the grass as they poured through pages and pages of text and Sensei lectured above them. She remembered thinking that Uzu was smart, that they'd made themselves indispensable and were, therefore, safe.

But then, Iwa hadn't really gotten many of Uzu's seals, had it? For them, keeping Uzu around was far more a benefit to their enemies than their homeland.

Now, though, now the world was dealing with the complete secession of the steady supply of Uzu seals they'd been reliant on.

Sakura remembered all too well the plague they'd never found a cure for, the huge chunk of the population gone in mere months.

There were other problems, too: no new buildings could be erected that were impossible to eavesdrop in, Konoha and the Fire Samurai could no longer use the massive bomb seals that could decimate an attacking force in seconds, tailed beasts were a greater risk than ever as Uzu's sealers had historically been the only ones able to contain them…

So here they were, Shin, Juro, Jiraiya, and Sakura, looking for any sign of the knowledge lost.

It was a bit of a futile venture—there hadn't been any sign at all in any of the previous trips, apparently, and Uzu had clearly been very dedicated to keeping their secrets hidden—and yet it continued.

The chance, however small, that some of Uzu's knowledge might again see the light of day…

It was worth it.

(Not so much for Sakura and her genin-brothers to personally be here, mind, she still remembered Ibiki's tears and wide, betrayed eyes—but someone, she agreed, should always keep looking.)

They set up camp and got to work immediately. Jiraiya had been on most of the past excavations, so he knew where they should focus their attention—the areas that hadn't yet had every single rock overturned, only most of them.

Sakura's job was to sense, act as a backup sealing expert (laughable, really, considering the gulf of knowledge that separated her and Jiraiya), and help interpret any knowledge that they did find—it was Research, after all, who had spent the past years (mostly unsuccessfully) trying to replicate what Uzu had been capable of doing for decades and even centuries before.

Juro's job was to act as medic, and to further figure out if they stumbled across anything useful—much of Uzu's most coveted lost knowledge was medical in nature.

Shin's job was to diplomatically deal with any non-aggressive parties they happened to stumble across (it had only happened once or twice, but it was always a possibility) and to get a better understanding of their former sister-nation as any good ambassador should. He also met up with Jiraiya regularly in secret, but Sakura only knew that because of her sensing, and they had pointedly not filled her in on them, so she kept quiet.

The days passed.

Sakura had recently taken up drawing as a hobby. She wasn't much of a fan, yet, but it was going better than any other hobby, so each evening while they all sat around the campfire waiting for whoever's turn it was to cook dinner to finish she'd draw while Shin and Jiraiya wrote and Juro played the Biwa he'd taken up during his time on the front.

It was rather peaceful, actually.

It did little to mitigate the feeling that they were accomplishing nothing, but then little would besides finding something, and that was unlikely indeed.

On the fourth day, Shin spotted a ship in the distance.

"A ship?" Juro asked, half-turned as he threw Sakura up into the nearest tree.

"Yes—" Shin started.

"Twelve oars to a side," Sakura reported, "Coming fast."

"Allegiance?" Jiraiya queried. He wasn't bothering to turn towards Shin or Sakura at all—he'd whipped out a few storage seals immediately and was stuffing everything they'd brought in as quickly as he could manage. Juro moved to help while Shin squinted at the ruined city between them and the shore, trying to plot out the most likely routes.

"Not being advertised." Sakura reported.

Jiraiya snorted. "So not friendly, then."

"Well, I doubt they're going to invite us for tea, no."

"Twelve oars, you said?"

"Pretty sure, yeah. Too far away to see the specific oars but that's what it'd be relative to the ship we rode in on."

"Great." Jiraiya did not sound like it was great. "Can you see people?"

"Couple moving heads, definitely. Not enough to get a specific number, though. No sign they've spotted us, but they might be hiding it. Their course hasn't changed, though: they're clearly planning to beach."

"How good are all of you at hiding your chakra signatures?"

Juro and Shin immediately did just that, then glanced at Sakura.

She paused, thinking, then said, "I wouldn't be able to identify them unless they were ten, twenty meters away from me, but my sensing is nowhere near the best."

"And mine?" In a second Jiraiya's chakra seemed to vanish into the background levels, more or less completely invisible unless she knew he was there. She told him so.

"Yours?"

"Slightly better than Shin and Juro, way worse than you."

"Right, we'll stick together then. Keep back at least 50 meters, to be on the safe side. We need to know who they are, through; once we figure that out I'll decide next steps. On me."

In mere moments the four were gliding silently down the mountains edge that made up the city, descending in flits and flashes to the beach and what little of the docks remained.

.

They were not shinobi. That much was clear immediately; Sakura had met too many shinobi from too many nations to think otherwise. It was hard for her to sense while hiding her signature, so she signaled such to Jiraiya, asking if she should drop the cover to better get an understanding of the men before her. He signed back to wait.

They kept watching.

One of the men had a cold. It was a weird thing to notice, first, but besides that they looked… strong, yes, and definitely up to no good, but also completely and utterly unextraordinary. That one of them looked like he was about to pass out, and couldn't stop sneezing for the life of him, that was more noteworthy.

They were close enough, now, to hear the men—they weren't trying to keep quiet—and they were clearly more than done with having been stuck on a ship with the sneezing man for however long it took them.

"Would you just shut up!"

"I—can't!"

"Can we just leave him here when we're done? He's given me a headache!"

The man who looked to be in charge rolled his eyes. There were less than thirty of them, total, most of them hanging back towards the ship and clearly waiting for orders, but a few—the sneezer included—went ahead.

They seemed to be looking for something.

"Not much left, now." One said.

"Did you think there would be?" The other snapped. He'd been the one complaining of a headache.

The sick man swayed on his feet, but kept forward. All six of their eyes moved in a wide arc, trying to take in everything around them.

'Looters', Jiraiya signed, 'probably raiders too.'

Looters targeted the flotsam and jetsam in the sea, and the remains of abandoned homes and businesses on land, but raiders targeted homes and businesses and occasionally even smaller ships that were still inhabited.

Given that the former required a lot less muscle strength than the latter, and the group in front of them certainly had muscle, Sakura agreed with Jiraiya's supposition.

The man who seemed to be in charge suddenly turned back, seemingly for the first time aware that most of his men were doing nothing. "There's no one here, you know! Look for anything valuable!"

The twenty or so remaining men did just that, fanning out to begin their search as Jiraiya and chinmoku faded further into the shadows.

'Plan?'

Jiraiya frowned. He glanced out in the direction of the men making no attempt to keep quiet. They weren't the first looters—there was no way they would be the last—but that didn't mean that they should be allowed to grab the pots and pans and blankets and chairs that actual humans had once used. Had once died in. (That had been another thing that was very common in the first few months, actually: corpse theft. Iwa had taken or burnt most during the invasion, then Konoha had tried to save what they could, but the looters were always waiting for their chance. The only reason it stopped was because there stopped being corpses to steal.)

The men were speaking in Kunise, the language of Fire, so they could arguably claim that they were intervening to arrest their own people, but Kunise was the language of the Eastern Seas—the men were probably just from several different islands which each had their own native tongue.

They weren't, as they themselves knew, likely to find much; they almost definitely weren't Fire residents, and they wouldn't be hard to take down, but there were a lot of them.

Sakura watched as the pros and cons flashed through Jiraiya's mind, as he weighed the duty to protect what little was left of Uzu with the threat that one or several might get away, might notify Water or some other military force that was much harder to repel that Jiraiya was there for the taking.

The nearest voices were approaching them, now, their boots crunching in the debris as they poked their heads into each house in turn. The one the four of them were crouching in had already been emptied out, but that didn't mean they weren't going to check.

Jiraiya's hands flashed, first to Shin, then to Sakura and Juro. 'Number contained by shadows?'

'Four~Five.'

'Not right type of bloodline?'

'Correct. Trip, disorient. Not mind link.'

'Any poisons?'

'No mass ones.'

'Okay. Plan: Shin and Sakura tie them up using Shadows, Juro and I pick them off using imprisonment seals. Go?'

'Go.' All three signaled.

And then they were off.

This was, as far as combats went, a relatively low-risk venture—none of the men they were fighting against were chakra users, that much was clear, and with Shin's shadows picking them off one by one didn't exactly put them at risk of any weapons strikes—but it was still combat, and it was still important to ensure no one escaped.

Sakura didn't like combat.

A quick cloaking jutsu and the two wasted no time reaching their first target. He popped into a house, intent on checking out the second floor, and they had him tied and gagged on said floor in no time. The second, third, and fourth, were similarly simple.

The fifth, sixth, and seventh were traveling in a group, which made it more difficult, and the eighth and ninth—who had also paired up—had begun to notice the lack of their comrades around, but the increased wariness did little to protect them.

With so few left—Jiraiya and Juro seemed to be working at a similar pace, if not slightly quicker—Shin leapt to the first position he found that let him reach the four closest to them at once, Sakura darted around tying them up, and then…

They were done.

"Right, let's gather them together." Jiraiya said. Sakura stared at herself, then at the three muscular teens and men around her. Well, at least chakra would ease the burden.

In the end, their haul was twenty-eight men bound and gagged.

"What should we do with them?" Shin asked.

"Excellent question."

Chinmoku waited.

Jiraiya did not elaborate.

"You… did think this through, right?" Sakura said.

"Of course I did!" Jiraiya said. He stayed immobile, staring at the mass of bodies in front of him.

"So… the plan?"

Jiraiya frowned at her. "Well, I don't see you coming up with any ideas."

"I think I have one." Shin said. He was looking out at the sea again—Sakura really needed to start checking there—and several ships, likely a merchant fleet with an escort, could be spotted sailing in the distance. They weren't directed toward the island, but they would be passing close enough to see some sort of sign.

"I really don't want it getting out that I was here, and Yamanaka here doesn't have the ability to wipe that particular memory from their minds."

One of the men closest to Jiraiya shivered. The Sannin frowned at him, then at Shin as the teen explained his plan.

"You don't want them knowing you were here because then your enemies might try to capture you here, right?"

"Yes."

"Alright, so we send them off and station a guard post here—"

"That doesn't really—"

"ALLOWING them to do what we're doing year-round while also claiming the territory as our own. You've noticed as much as I have the growing vegetation around us; this place is relatively fertile, large, and has ample and available building material—you as well as I know some people would have tried to set up shop here soon. I'm fairly sure the only reason they haven't already is out of fear of guys like these, and as they themselves pointed out they're kind of running out of stuff to take."

Jiraiya grunted, then glanced at the ships in the sea again. "This is kind of a big decision to make, you know."

"I know, which is why I'm not making it. You're the jounin, and the Hokage's student. You decide."

Jiraiya grimaced, turned towards Konoha, then sighed. "It's a good plan, and something we'd probably have to do soon anyway. Also lets us get away with not killing them while also ensuring they're punished—good for the reputation of Konoha. You're sure the ships' are alright?"

"Pretty sure, yeah. They're definitely not built for attacking."

Sakura made up a flag and got one of the escort vessels—built to defend against attacks more than anything else, and armed with a brace of fighting men and archers—to beach near the raiders. They were more than happy to take the men off the shinobi's hands, which somewhat surprised Sakura.

"Slave trade's alive and well around these parts." Shin muttered. "Oarmen are often slaves, and there's a lot of plantations on islands with volcanic soil too. These people will get them a good profit, given they're so muscular."

Sakura frowned. "Is Fire much involved in the slave trade?" She didn't much think they were, hadn't remembered learning about or experiencing that, but then that didn't mean it wasn't happening.

Shin shrugged with one shoulder, watching as the escort vessel pushed off with its new burden. "Not nearly as much as around here. It's legal, and Fire's got pretty good soil, all things considered, but a big population to go with and most of the land is claimed by the Daimyo, so it's not really much of an issue. Its also illegal in Konoha, and having one half of your major law enforcement force against slavery… still, it is legal."

"Fun."

Shin shrugged. "Not much to be done about that."

Sakura eyed him. "Remember our reform list?"

Shin snorted. "Nothing to take the winds out of our sails like war, yeah?"

"But the war's over."

"I guess so. No, I mean, you're right. I just… we made that list, and everything, but we never really planned the 'how' of the situation."

Juro came alongside them, gesturing towards the houses Jiraiya wanted to search next. It didn't take long to fill him in. "I mean, you're right—but so's Sakura. We've got a son now, the three of us, and family and friends who've been hurt or might be hurt in the future because of what's on that list. What's the harm in trying?"

Shin grimaced. "We are trying. I'm working hard to do right in my job, you and Sakura are doing the same in yours—I just, I don't get what looking at the list will accomplish. We already know what's on it."

Sakura moved to speak, but Juro was frowning now, shoving the door open past its jam as he replied. "So much is on it, though. And sometimes—Sakura's helping loads in Research, with all her inventions, and you are doing what you do in Diplomacy and the sheer amount of training you've been given makes it very clear that's a lot, but I'm just a doctor. And there's nothing wrong with being a doctor, and I know I do a good job at it, too, but—I can do more."

"We can do more." Sakura said. "Together. All of us think differently, can come up with different solutions. And some problems… they're daunting to work on alone. That's why I think—" She paused, an odd rut in the floor catching her attention. After a second, she moved on; no sign of anything hidden. "I want to talk to Aiko, and Bokuso, and Yasuo too. Get the old team back together, that sort of thing."

Shin made a frustrated noise from his position at the top of the stairs. "I still don't see what we'll accomplish."

"I don't know!" Sakura snapped. "That's the point! Why not try?"

"It's not like we're asking you, specifically, to do anything but be a sounding board when you're in town." Juro reasoned, his calmer tone making Sakura flush with embarrassment. They didn't know her memories—would never know, they felt too personal to share—and expecting them to act as if they did was asking for trouble. "But I know I'd feel better doing it, and we'd always planned to tackle the list as a group anyway, when we were older. We're all special jounin now, and Sakura-chan might only be sixteen, but the rest of us are older than that, and we're at peace. For now. Might as well take advantage, you know? Before the next life-altering event slams into us."

Shin snorted, then shrugged. "Fine, fine. I just—no, you're right. I guess I just don't want to get my hopes up. A lot of the stuff that seemed so easy to fix as children just… isn't, and…."

"We were idealistic, weren't we?" Sakura said.

"You especially." Shin grinned. "You always had such wild ideas about what was possible—I was the storyteller, but you were the one with the habit of believing the utopias you thought up."

"I liked your utopias." Juro said. "No children fighting, no major wars, leaps of technology… you always made them sound so possible."

Sakura shrugged. "I thought they were. Still think they are, really, just… had to adjust my timeline expectations a bit. But there's stuff we can do today, tomorrow, that will make a huge difference down the line… we just need to figure out what it is."

"Stuff." Shin said. "Stuff. Well, I've stared at surrealist paintings with you and let you draw the muscle system straight onto my body, and you've listened to my stories and poetry and everything else I wrote long before any of it was good. This can't be any worse."

"What a wonderful rallying cry." Sakura said.

"Three cheers for can't be worse!" Juro crowed. "Three cheers for stuff, and utopias, and childhood dreams come true!"