One thing that Arden's memories had always been very clear on was the power of belief.
No matter what you called it—'business confidence', 'security theater', 'placebo effect'—the power was obvious, inherent in every day of Arden's life.
In her own life, Sakura saw not a single sign that her world didn't work the exact same way.
So, Konoha's economic crisis had a rather straightforward (in theory) solution: make everyone believe that Konoha was okay.
…Actually putting the plan into action had proven difficult.
Now, however, everybody was agreed: the war with Kiri was about to come to an end.
Sakura decided that her job would be to make sure the victory celebration was something to be remembered for generations.
Securing promises from the Akimichi to cook far more food than they probably currently planned to was easy—they knew her, trusted her.
Making some genin run around and find musicians, both native Konohans and refugees from Water, and make them promise to attend the as-yet-unscheduled celebration was also easy—the radio operators seemed more than happy to take a break from the doom and gloom to spread the word.
Instructing various jutsu-experts who were currently sidelined for injuries to begin preparing jutsu-shows also took little convincing: at least it was something for them to do.
Slowly, Sakura amped up the preparations.
Slowly, word started getting out that Konoha was going to win, was going to throw a massive celebration afterwards.
But it wasn't enough.
For this to work, really work, it had to be truly memorable.
The solution was clear: cinema.
The problem was also clear.
For all that Shuji's video-recording invention had rocked the nation, it also… hadn't.
There was always something else to do, something else that worked almost as well. It was always too expensive, too time-consuming to learn.
The movie-making industry simply hadn't taken off.
Sakura decided that was unacceptable.
It took a little time to scribble down what stories she recalled from Arden's past—she had to screen each for intelligibility and good messaging—but within a short time Sakura had a good stack of scripts written.
She gave them to her co-Head, instructed him to hand them out alongside one of their dozens of unused video-making machines to whomever he thought would be most capable, and called it a day.
…In hindsight, she should have suspected that people would have follow-up questions.
She resented Kohana's accusations that she should have shared the stories with her family, though—what did it matter if she rewrote Balto to be about an Inuzuka and their pack, as she had for a script, or a dog named Sausage working alone, as she had for Himari's bedtime story? It was basically the same thing!
She decided to blame Shin; it was his story-writing skill which had given her the necessary tools to rewrite the stories to appeal to a modern audience.
(She doubted he'd feel the same.)
Still, the more people who had questions about her scripts the better—each and every one had been successfully convinced to think about something that wasn't inherently negative.
Now she just had to push them to actually see a bright future for Konoha behind all the awful.
Belief.
If she tried hard enough, she was sure she could get it to work on her too.
.
Yamanaka Ayame grinned against the harsh sea air.
Earlier that day Commander Nara finally decided that the Kiri forces' pushes had become weak enough to take the fight to them, and now dozens of ships were sailing towards Kirigakure's location.
The war had been hard.
Very, very hard.
Their enemies may have been mind-controlled, but they didn't act like they were—they still thought on their feet, still avoided Yamanaka gazes, still fought to their last breath.
It had been hard.
Brutal.
And it had gone on for far too long.
But now, finally, they were reaching the end.
With the number of ninja they were bringing to deal the final blow—including both the current and former Hokage—victory was all-but guaranteed.
Soon, she'd be able to go home.
Hug her nieces and nephews.
Her brothers and sisters.
Marry Yamanaka Chiaki, whom she'd been fighting alongside for months.
Just a bit longer, and they'd—
Well, they wouldn't finish.
There was the byoki, and all the other Nations looking for weakness.
But they'd get a break from the weirdly suicidal Kiri-nin, and that had to be enough.
They sailed on.
.
Ayame was leaning against Chiaki, half-asleep, when something woke her.
Something woke Chiaki too.
It was a scream, from the lookout.
It was a shout, explaining.
It was everyone rushing to look, seeing the lead ship—far ahead—begin a slow turn.
Seeing tiny little people jump off that ship and begin running towards them.
"Anchor! Anchor! Anchor!"
All around the other ships moved to stop, to stall, to keep from entering whatever radius the first ship had.
In the meantime, everyone not involved in keeping the pile of wood afloat squared up—this might not have been the fight they wanted, but they had to do it.
Maybe they could knock some of them out, try to save them in Konoha?
(It seemed unlikely.
(Ayame tried to keep the hope alive anyway.)
And then they were swarmed.
Fighting faces you'd been fighting alongside just the day before was the worst thing she'd ever done.
Every moment was excruciating, every bit of pain extracted—from her or her opponent—enough to make her want to cry.
But what choice did she have?
What choice did any of them have?
The idea that the mind control might be geographical hadn't even—
She slit the throat of another Yamanaka and tried to blink enough tears away to slice the throat of the next.
There—the controlled ship had turned, was near enough.
At least the ones still left on that ship were mostly samurai.
Ayame leapt for it, tried to stab the first man she saw and was nearly bisected in return.
And then—
The thing is, Kiri-nin always avoided Yamanaka gazes like the plague.
And so had the Konoha-nin who had become controlled, all of them far too used to sparring against Yamanaka to do anything else.
Fire samurai had none of that training.
It was second nature—she meets an opponent's eyes, she pulls for her bloodline to discombobulate them, pull them off balance.
Instead the samurai stared at her, tension leaving his shoulders in an instant.
She stared back.
Shit.
ShitShitShitShitShitShitShit—
The samurai turned, barely using his sword to block a blow in time, and Sayuri met that samurai's eyes too, used her family kekkei genkai.
And, again, the man snapped out of it.
"Yamanaka bloodline!" Ayame screamed, her voice cracking with the importance of the words. "Confusion strain!"
And then she met another Samurai's eyes.
And another.
And another.
And she heard shouting from the ship she'd started on—Chiaki had the strain too, was working with the rest of the ship to meet every eye possible.
Who cared why it worked.
Who cared if it could have worked before.
All that mattered—all that would matter, until every single mind-controlled person on any ship was dealt with—was meeting every single eye that she could see.
.
Minato glanced at Yamanaka Ayame, who met his eyes again. Again, Minato stumbled.
It was worth it.
Every minute.
Only twelve of them, now, but they were twelve of the most powerful shinobi Konoha had to offer, and they were surrounded by just about every incidence of the Yamanaka-confusion strain who was currently an adult.
Minato blinked, met Ayame's eyes again.
Twice, he'd faltered, moved to attack—
But both times they'd successfully caught his eye before he could.
Everybody else had faltered about the same number of times.
This fight would be dirty, messy, an absolute disaster.
But they couldn't wait.
Letting whoever—whatever—was causing this fester would bring nothing but ill.
And then it was in front of them.
It—
Almost looked human.
If you squinted.
Actually, it looked a lot like the portraits of Uchiha Madara.
It was also talking to itself, lashing out at the same time with an absolute wave of fire—
Only for it to dissipate as Uchiha Fugaku and Hiruzen together pushed the fire back towards him.
Minato turned to attack Hir—
Right.
Wrong side.
That was getting annoying.
"You think this will help you?" The thing asked. "All of these Yamanaka—"
"Hiruzen?" Minato asked, keeping his eyes on Ayame.
"Yes?" The Sarutobi said.
"Remember that thing you taught Jiraiya?" The bloody pincer technique. Minato had modified it to teach his students.
"I do."
"Let's do it."