Yasuo watched as the skyline of Konoha passed by.
He'd traded so many bribes, so many bad shifts—he'd only managed to get one round-trip shift, but he'd gotten it.
Trains like this one left for the station north of Konoha every few hours, loaded full of injured and dead.
Yasuo was standing on one of the cars full of dead.
It wasn't worth it to create body seals, anymore. Too many other things that sealers had to make.
So he got to deal with the smell.
It was worth it, though.
It would be worth it.
He just had to get to Konoha.
See his son.
He hoped Aiko got the message.
If he had to get all the way into Konoha—
There would only be a little over an hour before the train left the other way, full of supplies and soldiers ready to go back to the frontline.
He wanted to spend every minute with his son.
Aiko had already sent a picture. He kept the picture with Aiko's, kept them in the seal Sakura gave him so he could carry them everywhere he went.
It was one of his most valuable possessions, but it was only a picture.
He wanted to see his son.
He wanted to see Miki, hold him in his arms.
The train jerked as it began on a curve and Yasuo shifted his stance, glanced at the only other shinobi on the roof.
Everybody else was necessary for the fighting—two was considered the bare-minimum guard.
Yasuo had sacrificed so much to be one of those two.
(He had nightmares, nearly every night.
He was terrified of dying before his son even saw his face.
Before his son even knew who he was.
He just wanted to meet his son.)
It didn't seem like anyone else was around, but that wasn't surprising.
The coast was full of shinobi—anyone trying to slip by would be noticed—so Water wasn't about to be trying to hijack a train.
Wind was an ally.
Earth was busy with a war in the west.
Lightning was trying to make the best of Kiri's distraction, loot many of the islands while the shinobi were killing themselves on Fire's coast.
There was a reason Konoha thought they could get away with a skeleton guard.
The train kept moving, and at last the trees began stretching as high as they did near Konoha.
And then the station was in view, and Yasuo was stretching his legs, and genin teams were ready with the wagon-ambulances and various clan representatives were there to collect their dead—
And the train was stopped, and Yasuo was away.
It took less than a minute to find the grove he'd asked Aiko to meet him in—strategically positioned for its proximity to the station and its relatively private nature.
It took less than a minute for Yasuo to break down.
Aiko wasn't doing much better, was leaning against him, putting their child in his arms.
"I've missed you so much! Miki has missed you so much!"
"I love you. I love both of you."
He only had a little bit of time, but he was going to make the best of every minute of it.
.
Juro hated trauma. There was a reason he'd switched specialties as soon as he could, chose pediatrics to minimize trauma cases as much as possible.
And then—
And then Kiri had to go and start a suicide mission.
And now Juro, and almost every other vaguely medical person Konoha and the Capital had, was just off every beach the Land of Fire could lay claim to, operating day and night in an unending attempt to minimize Fire's casualties.
There were so many patients.
Juro had never seen anything like it.
The closest thing would have to be Kumo's attack on the Kannabi bridge, but that wasn't anywhere near as deadly, anywhere near as futile.
This was insanity.
This was—
Why hadn't every shinobi in Kiri defected?
Juro had asked around, and the Yamanaka confirmed that they didn't seem mind controlled, only terrified of their superiors.
Of course, there hadn't been much time for interrogation since this particular run began.
Every Yamanaka that could be was fighting, and those that couldn't were just trying to keep what prisoners were deemed worth keeping in line and alive.
No one knew how long the carnage would last.
While Kiri clearly had some way to control its masses of shinobi, the bloodline refugees made it clear that some were managing to escape, to get away.
(Rumor had it that Iwa received a group themselves only a handful of days into the suicide run, and Juro was sure that many more Kiri-nin were simply hiding their identities and escaping into anonymity.)
No one could explain the reasoning behind the Mizukage's actions.
No one could explain—
An alarm.
Shit.
Juro was in the middle of surgery, but the worst of the issues were dealt with—he began yelling orders as he patched his patient up well enough to be moved.
Runners were dashing through the camp, and in seconds they'd begun the call—
"Uchiha! Flee! Byoki attack!"
Well, shit.
He was operating on an Uchiha.
It was a good thing he'd decided to close with the first alarm.
Juro glanced around, met the Uchiha anesthesiologist's gaze. "We're together. Escape to Uzu."
"Hai."
There was no time for a more complicated plan—
They simply moved.
.
Ibiki, Misaki, and Sadao jumped when the alarms began, and then with the announcement—
All eyes were on Sadao.
Sadao looked terrified.
"I don't know what to do! I don't know what to do! Help me!"
Ibiki's heart was pounding.
His mind was racing.
They'd only just finished their shifts, they were exhausted—
The byoki could kill, could phase through walls and glass and—
Wait.
"Water!" Ibiki shouted. "Byoki doesn't cross water!"
It had to be a real body of water, too—byoki could and would cross puddles, but there was a reason it hadn't made it to Uzu.
They had to find—
"Nara river!" Ibiki shouted.
"Too far away!" Misaki argued.
She was right.
But—
There was a lake.
His aunt had taught him how to sail, there, which was even better—it had boats.
And it was in the northwest, just outside the walls.
Only a handful of miles away from the section they'd been protecting.
"Follow me!"
.
Uchiha Haruki barely saw the byoki bubbling out of the ground in time.
He leapt, his chakra carrying him to a nearby building, but—
There was byoki climbing up the next building already.
He'd heard the stuff described before, but he'd never heard it described in these sizes, amassing to this level.
(Was this what his kin had seen when they died?)
His heart was in his throat.
Adrenaline pumped through his veins, and he wouldn't give up—would never give up—but byoki was all around him, bypassing other shinobi, bypassing civilians—
Headed straight for every Uchiha.
He needed an escape.
He was exhausted, one of the few able-bodied ninja left in Konoha and that was only because he'd just gotten out of the Hospital the day before and wasn't leaving for the frontline until tomorrow.
His stomach ached.
It had taken months to fix all the damage the water-lance to the chest had done, and now—
He needed an idea.
He needed—
While he was in the Hospital, he'd been put to work reading through Research reports for the Uchiha. Every clan technically had the right to such reports, and as research and development exploded in the frequency of discoveries and inventions more had wanted to take advantage.
But, of course, they were in a war.
And the war hadn't been going well.
So, instead of wasting the valuable time of anyone not bedridden, well… Haruki needed something to entertain himself anyway, didn't he?
Anyway,
He'd been reading Research reports for a while now, and as he ran, as he fled the byoki which roiled below him, he remembered one of the Nara prototypes—
A hot air balloon.
Kept up by a seal pushing heated air into a massive amount of fabric, the prototype had been put on the backburner because of the ratio of time and resources compared to result—
But there was a prototype.
There was definitely a prototype.
And all Haruki had to do was remember where the prototype was, and how to operate it, and—
Warehouse.
He remembered the word warehouse.
He turned, sprinting past a pond full of Uchiha elders waterwalking with their arms full of Uchiha children—the Uchiha clan newsletter had recently informed them that testing showed byoki could go underwater, but it couldn't seem to float.
Non-Uchiha were everywhere, picking up Uchiha children and Uchiha elders and everyone in between and running to the bodies of water, but there wasn't enough room.
Bathtubs wouldn't be large enough; byoki could elongate itself.
Communal baths probably were, but Haruki had no doubt they were full.
Haruki wasn't taking a spot away from anyone who needed it more than he, and anyway if he got it to work then he might be able to take others up with him.
A sharp turn, and—
Blood.
An Uchiha child lying face down, the byoki feasting on her body.
Haruki had to move faster.
Haruki had to figure out how to operate the hot air balloon.
Shit.
With his next step Haruki pivoted, dashing toward the nearest body of water he knew about.
Sure enough, the lake was full and even surrounded by non-Uchiha holding whatever implements they had that might, maybe work.
Haruki was already regretting his choice to turn around as doubts began to plague his mind—everyone that knew seals, after all, had been sent to the frontline.
Still, it was worth a shot.
"I need a Researcher!" Haruki screamed. "Hot air balloon!"
And then, faster than he could blink, a Nara was in front of him. "My cousin's on the frontline, but I know enough. Let's go."
Twenty seconds to get to and in the warehouse.
Eighty-two before the first byoki seeped through the wall, lunged at Haruki.
Haruki ducked, screaming at the Nara to work faster, but the Nara's hands were already flying as she unbound the massive hot air balloon, dragged it out of the warehouse with the help of several shinobi who had followed them.
And then she was working on the seals, and dozens of shinobi and even civilians were holding every part of the hot air balloon off the ground as she worked, and Haruki was inside the basket, and the seal was humming, and—
He was aloft.
And that's when the byoki began attacking everyone else.