Sakura shoved the pill down her throat, glaring up at her sister. Himari smiled back at her. It was a very weak smile.
She watched as Himari washed her face, switched out her still-full water jug for another.
Shin's brother-in-law and one of Juro's elder brothers were doing the same things for them.
It hadn't yet been twenty-four hours, she reminded herself.
It had only been twenty-three hours and twenty minutes.
If—
If he hadn't been summoned to an underwater realm, to a toxic realm, to a desert realm…
He'd probably still be alive, in most realms.
The monkeys hadn't found him yet.
Neither had the cranes.
The deer.
Hounds.
Ravens.
Condors.
Slugs.
Cats.
Every summons was checking, she knew.
Every summons wanted to find him.
Twenty-three hours, twenty-one minutes.
Tsunade and one of Ibiki's teammates—Misaki—were also camped out in the Sarutobi's garden.
Waiting.
Someone—Sakura didn't recognize who—tried to drag Tsunade away an hour ago.
It hadn't been pretty.
There had been a lot of screaming, screaming about how she'd spent hours—
Worked without stopping—
Just so that she'd be able to stay here until Ibiki came back.
She was the only one who didn't use the word 'if.'
Juro's eyes were red, but he was camped out in his medical station.
Waiting.
Shin had written letters to some allies he had from other nations, asked them to get the message out.
Sakura had all but attacked Minato when he'd taken the papers out of Shin's hands, but he'd allowed the messages to be sent after only a quick skim—"I trust you, Shin, but I trust your parenting more."
Twenty-three hours, twenty-two minutes.
Himari had finished doing whatever it was she was doing.
She'd said something to Sakura—something about coming back later—but Sakura wasn't really paying attention.
It killed her, to be unable to do anything.
It killed her, to be unable to even think of anything to do.
And then—
The ground didn't rumble, not like with Asuma.
Instead lights appeared, flickering on and off and growing larger and larger in number, swarming, as tall as a ten-year-old—
"Ibiki!"
.
They didn't notice it at first.
Well, they noticed the byoki going missing, but that's what the byoki did. One of the main reasons why it was so tricky to study.
But they didn't—
They didn't notice the byoki doing anything more.
Anything unusual.
(For byoki.)
They didn't notice until it was too late.
In the weeks that followed, it wouldn't take long for the investigatory team to realize that the byoki attacked when there was the highest number of Uchiha, literally tried to drag the Uchiha away.
None of the Uchiha on the outpost survived, but the seals did their job; the bodies were abandoned only a short time after the seals burned their eyes from the inside out.
Out of those that weren't Uchiha, only one survived.
Might Duy wasn't even stationed at the research outpost. He wasn't a researcher at all, just an eternal genin, but he was trustworthy. Fast.
He'd been put in charge of bringing byoki to the nearest outpost for months now.
He didn't mind—let him spend plenty of time with his son.
He'd just been bringing the latest bit of byoki—black and icky and in a glass jar because he'd just grabbed the first thing nearby when he saw it—when the byoki slipped through the glass.
It hadn't done that when he was watching before.
And then it went forward, toward the outpost.
Might Duy was faster.
He didn't manage to outrun the screams, though.
He stared, aghast, as a researcher threw himself out of a window, black byoki dragging itself out of his nose. "Run! Run!" The man shouted.
No. No, no, no, no, no, no.
Might Duy didn't so much turn around as find himself running in the opposite direction.
A step or two in he changed his angle—straight to the nearest telegraph operator.
He wasn't going fast enough.
He needed to run faster.
(What if the byoki was right behind him?)
(What if it had gathered together, in one giant amorphous blob?)
Might Duy didn't turn around.
He ran, instead.
And ran.
And ran.
And ran.
Later, he'd find he'd been labeled the sole survivor.
He didn't agree with that label, not until he saw the bodies.
Then he had to wonder—had the byoki wanted him to live?
.
Kiri's naval dominance was undeniable.
That didn't mean that it was so strong that they were able to run roughshod across the sea, completely uncaring of any and everyone they ran into. They were dominant, but both Fire and Lightning at least had enough of a navy to do something.
Still, while they might cause Kiri to turn away, stop pursuing another port raid… the dominance was still great enough that it wasn't much of a deterrence.
Now that Fire's samurai were willing to act offensively, however, options opened up.
Kiri was a huge naval power, but to match that they also had the largest merchant fleet in the world—and Kiri wasn't the only nation that could privateer.
Could, better yet, outright steal Kiri's merchant ships.
And that wasn't the only advantage Fire had.
Radio signal might die out too far from an antenna, but Konoha had dotted an almost redundant number of antennae (almost because Kiri would no doubt destroy as many as they could) everywhere they could on the coast, on any island they thought they could control for longer than a month.
And then they put radios on every samurai's ship.
Which meant they, unlike Kiri, could converse near-instantly even when not in sight of each other.
It hadn't been as useful when the samurai had stuck near the shore, near their immediate territory—but now that they were going further afield…
Mitokado Supaku grinned, hair whipping in the wind as he stood next to the ship captain.
The captain laughed as he processed Supaku's latest message—according to the radio their fleet of three and the two other trios were successfully triangulating one of Kiri's raiding ships. They'd targeted one ship specifically at the last raid, and exactly what they wanted to happen occurred—the rest of the very large fleet left the weakling behind.
This was only the third time they'd tried it, and eventually Kiri would no doubt begin trying to lay their own traps, but for now—
Prisoners.
Ship technology.
The actual ship, in need of a few week's repairs but still functional.
Morale.
Every ship they took down—
Victory.
"I haven't had this much fun in years!" the ship captain shouted.
They were in the middle of the sea, nothing visible in any direction—
But they could stalk their prey.
And Kiri couldn't.
Finally, at last, Konoha had the upper hand.
.
Research Co-Head Uchiha Hotaru didn't want to work.
His very soul burned, burned for his kin, for the byoki—burned for revenge.
But they were still in a war.
And they had to find a tool to fight the byoki.
And both of those very real threats to his family, to his village—
They required him to keep working.
He wished he could simply foist this off on Sakura (she was smart, young, capable. Let her do it.), but her son had gone missing almost twenty-four hours ago, had only reappeared mere minutes ago (the relief he'd felt getting that message—), and so he would not begrudge her the rest of the day.
But he couldn't give her any more time either.
Research was underwater.
Between the two of them they were managing to keep Research afloat, functioning, but—
There was a limit to how much they could do.
They could eke everything they could out of their own time, create labor out of nothing; they could work with civilians and samurai (that message had only come twelve hours ago) and whoever else—
But Fire was not limitless, and neither were its resources.
Research was out.
Hotaru's hands shook, just a bit, as he read the latest letter from one of their most reliable iron suppliers—another deposit, emptied.
They needed a solution, but they didn't have one.
Suna was still wholly unsuccessful at bringing minerals back from any summoning realm; Lightning and Earth refused to trade with Konoha, and none of Fire's minor allies had anywhere near enough goods.
They needed another ally.
Ideally, Hotaru thought as he opened yet another letter about an iron deposit running dry, with the Land of Iron.
Not that they'd traded with any shinobi in over a century.