Kakashi leaned against his Sensei, exhausted.
He hadn't even had to beg to be included; Minato said his hours of hard work targeting every bit of byoki he could find was more than enough to earn him a spot on the table.
But honestly, he'd thought it would be more interesting.
He still helped sort Sensei's paperwork for him with Kushina, and that was more boring than anything he'd ever done before, but he'd thought—
Well, it had to be more interesting when people were actually talking, right?
But no, it was discussions about how to repair all the ground that was torn up by earth-jutsu users to help Kakashi find and destroy the threat, discussions of where to keep the dead bodies, discussions of the several buildings which had been taken over by the hospital to allow for room for all the injured, how that space didn't magically conjure staff to go with it.
Things that weren't discussed?
1. What the hell the byoki was (they didn't know, knew they didn't know, and skipped the topic in favor of more pressing matters.)
2. Kiri (their opponent had taken advantage, killed many—but that was expected. Reports from several days ago, though, swore that Kiri's forces were diminishing significantly, so there was nothing they could do about the temporary shift in power other than accounting for places to store the dead.)
3. The public image of Konoha (awful. So many dead that it would have to be awful. Some had brought it up, actually, but any discussion beyond that had been roundly rejected—public relations would have to wait until after the immediate issues were resolved, probably even after Kiri was permanently destroyed.)
4. And the psychological effects of what had just happened (bad. So very, very bad. The table of clan heads, and department heads, and elders hadn't skipped the topic because it wasn't important—they'd tabled it because they didn't even know how to begin.
(It didn't help that the Yamanaka Head, who would usually be expected to lead the discussion, had found out his girlfriend was in critical condition two minutes into the meeting and hadn't been seen since.
(The meeting was already three hours long.)
Sensei looked tired, too.
Everybody looked tired.
Konoha had been caught on the backfoot by an entity it couldn't even understand, and it showed.
But what else could they do?
Sensei cleared his throat.
"Alright. Kakashi's staying in the city—hopefully his acid will help keep whatever controls the byoki away."
That had been discussed—that the byoki was clearly controlled.
That whatever controlled it had clearly been near Konoha.
The byoki near the ports, the byoki in the rest of Fire—it had kept attacking only Uchiha, had been easier to deal with.
It was only the byoki near Konoha that had suddenly switched tactics.
"Everyone else who is physically capable will go back to the front sometime in the next three days. Please coordinate with the Jounin Commander to see that done. I'll join at the end of the week—until then I'll assist with emergency repairs and the mass production of the hot air balloons."
Something else which had been discussed at length.
There was only one hot air balloon, and by the time Kakashi saw it, it was so laden with people it could barely keep a foot above the ground even with wind and fire jutsu users assisting, but—
The man who had figured it out, who had remembered the hot air balloon existed, had filled the damned thing with infants.
With toddlers.
And not one of them was hurt by the byoki, something which was likely the only reason many of the parents who helped keep Konoha running were even sane right now.
More of those—many, to be kept at strategic locations first across Konoha and then around Fire—was not only the obvious next step, it was so necessary that Sensei had already sent for all expert-level sealmakers (including those actively in combat) to be sent back to Konoha to make at least one hundred of them.
(It was unfortunate that the seal that powered the balloon was so complicated—Kakashi had taken one look at it and hadn't even known where to begin—but the other sealmakers could still do good work with every other type of seal needed by Konoha, so it wasn't as if anybody would be left idle.)
Kakashi slowly blinked, forcing himself to stay awake as Sensei rattled off more orders.
He doubted anybody at all would be left idle for a good, long while.
.
Shimura Ryota's eyes ached.
He'd close them, get the sleep he badly needed, but—
He couldn't.
His mother was dead.
His aunts were both dead.
His baby cousin was dead.
So many dead.
He remembered fighting.
He'd been one of about half the force, of about half the non-Uchiha to stay behind, to keep holding the line while everybody else forced exhausted legs to bring them to Konoha, to save who they could.
He'd fought, and fought, and fought, and expected to die—
But he couldn't stop.
Not when things were already going so badly.
It had been the idea of keeping his family safe that had allowed him to keep going, far beyond the point where he should have collapsed.
He was still weak, would be out of action for at least another three or four days.
His hands shook, and he watched the paper shake with them.
He kept reading.
The list of dead kept growing.
Then—
At the very end—
His baby brother, only ten, just a genin—
Alive.
Assisted with the fight, had a mangled leg that was fixable.
Was holding four babies by himself when help arrived.
And Ryota wept.
Throughout the tents and commandeered buildings backing the frontline similar scenes played out.
They played out on the railroad; they played out in the midst of the thick Fire forest as guardsmen listened to the radio between perimeter checks, listened to the lists of the dead.
It happened in Uzu, where so many Uchiha now were.
It happened in Konoha, where no Uchiha dared to stay.
.
Sakura curled at her sister's feet.
She was supposed to be in Uzu.
She was almost always in Uzu, nowadays, managing over the Yamanaka there.
(She hated that term, said they were basically self-sufficient—according to Kohana all she did was deal with the diplomatic bullshit.
(Sakura knew she did far more than that, and that was hard enough alone.
(Inoichi knew it too.)
Inoichi was holding Kohana's hand, but every other part of him was angled so far back that it was amazing he'd managed to keep the connection at all.
The guilt was eating him up.
He'd been able to stop by Uzu a few weeks ago, he'd explained.
(She couldn't even remember when he'd explained.)
(She couldn't even remember when the hospital had begun filling it in.)
Pregnant.
Her baby sister was—
had been—
pregnant.
Had come to Konoha to get official testing, to get prenatal vitamins, to get a message to Inoichi at the front.
She'd been pregnant.
Sakura wondered if she'd gotten a message too.
She would have been too busy to check, if she had.
It wasn't Inoichi's fault, and she'd managed to tell him that.
Once.
Some other Yamanaka could figure out how to make him believe it.
It was midnight, or later than that.
The room was empty except for the three of them.
In the daylight the room was in a constant state of motion—there was too much to be done, to let anyone who could do something sit idle.
That's why Kohana had gotten her own room—to let Sakura and Inoichi work on confidential matters without eavesdroppers.
Sakura's thoughts turned to the front, then frantically away.
She knew it wasn't good.
She knew the combatants were overworked, the sealers were overworked, the medics were overworked—
It was much easier to list what was going well:
Nothing.
(Much, much easier to list that.)
Kohana twitched, just a bit, and Sakura and Inocihi both shot up—
But then she was still again.
They waited long past the point where they should have relaxed.
The doctors had said twitching wasn't much of a sign of anything.
The eyes were important—watch for movement there.
There hadn't been any movement there.
Sakura was going to keep reacting to the twitches.
Inoichi was crying again.
Silently.
He had a talent for that.
Sakura's heart ached for him—
Losing a mother, and four first cousins, and countless other friends and family was hard, especially when it all happened at once.
Especially when you didn't know if you were going to have to add more to the list.
(At least Yamanaka had tracking seals on them now, were easy to track down even in death. Yamanaka and Uchiha both had been the easiest to find—everyone else might very well take weeks to dig up.)
She'd fought, they were told.
She shouldn't have had to.
Didn't want to.
Sakura finally slumped again.
She'd been given sleeping pills, but she wouldn't take them.
Inoichi had made the same decision.
Their silent vigil continued.