It had been well over a year, now, since this not-peace had started.
Well over a year of ninja at every border, but no samurai.
And, unlike the previous not-conflict… that was fine.
Shin had really expected that to change at some point, for Konoha to falter given the two different fronts (not counting Suna, which…) and Minato's poor health.
But then Minato had gotten better.
And Shin had expected the conflict to end quickly, for Iwa and Kumo to be concerned about their losses, particularly given the Flash's immediate domination—
But then the war hadn't stopped.
And Shin had gone the other way, had started expecting Konohan morale, Fire morale to dip in the face of an unwavering enemy.
…Except that hadn't happened either.
There were some issues, of course; deaths tended to cause that even under the best of circumstances, and Konoha couldn't keep up the war indefinitely, were every month more painfully hurting for money.
But.
But it was fine.
But, despite the pains of such a long conflict—
Konoha was used to it.
Built for it.
Knew how to cope.
Had taken the lessons from all the past conflicts, official and unofficial, and learned from them. Grew from them. Took Minato's emphasis on that particular strength, and ran with it.
Konoha couldn't keep this up indefinitely, but that was fine.
They could, absolutely certainly, keep it up longer than Iwa and Kumo.
.
Ibiki's shoulders were still hunched as he followed her deeper into the Forest of Death.
It had been a few days, now, since the assassination attempt, and at this point T&I's initial guess was confirmed—a group of assassins out for one last payday before breaking up, who aimed a little too high.
Which was…
Fine.
Like, Sakura wasn't thrilled, but she'd been a part of the design process for a lot of Konoha's defenses; she felt a hell of a lot more secure than she should have as a child.
And the one escapee—well, Kakashi and ANBU Otter had tracked him down, stopped any and all information about what, exactly, the next attempt would face from coming out.
(ANBU Otter was still following her now.
(She wondered when he'd realize she knew.
(She wondered if it was mean not to just tell him.)
Sufficiently deep, now, that it was only a matter of time before predators started poking about, Sakura stopped.
Turned to Ibiki.
She'd told him.
Told him about how while, yes, she wasn't necessarily a natural at this 'combat' stuff, she had trained.
And trained.
And trained.
She'd practiced taijutsu.
She'd practiced ninjutsu.
She'd practiced so, so much fuuinjutsu.
She'd worked with even weapons she didn't liked, worked with all sorts of improvised options.
She'd talked out tactics with Shin, with Minato.
The older she'd gotten, the more she'd remembered—
The more she'd made absolutely damn sure she always had a fighting chance.
But part of that had meant hiding just how practiced she was, and it was that choice that was now a problem, because Ibiki didn't believe her.
Couldn't believe her.
Heard what she had to say, wanted to believe her, but couldn't picture it, couldn't put her words into reality.
So.
"What discipline do you think I'm weakest in?"
"Ninjutsu."
Well, that was prompt.
Okay, ninjutsu. A beat, then two, and then—yep, that was a tiger.
And that was now a roasted tiger.
"Shit!" Ibiki shouted, jumping back.
Sakura smirked. "Didn't even need handsigns for that one; I might not have great reserves, but control is easy enough to practice."
"So you made a fire laser."
"The jutsu already existed. I just made it work for me."
"Alright, non-Fire jutsu."
There—a massive hawk of some type.
Sakura lashed out with her whip, with lightning, and the hawk was dead too.
She grabbed a storage seal, made quick work of the tiger's body—the hawk's was smaller, better bait for other predators.
"What's your worst affinity?"
"Wind," Sakura said, because in Fire most people's was wind and she was no exception.
"That, then."
It took a few minutes—the Forest of Death might not take kindly to visitors, but it still took time to hunt them down—and what looked to be some kind of wild dog pack was surrounding them.
Sakura used a series of carefully timed wind jutsu to knock each dog back in turn (no need to waste energy when this may take hours) and then, identifying the leader, suffocated it. The rest of the pack dispersed.
Then sealed the body; her prey wasn't going to go to waste.
"Taijutsu," Ibiki offered, narrowing his eyes. He'd noticed that she hadn't moved around, much, then, and thought he identified the reason.
Well, she'd be more than happy to prove him wrong…
Once more prey arrived.
It took even more time—unfortunately, she'd successfully convinced the forest she was a threat—but eventually a massive constrictor approached.
Well, that worked.
She'd certainly planned out many, many ways to take down a snake.
"No weapons?" she confirmed.
Ibiki swallowed, nodded. Clearly didn't believe in her.
She strangled the damn constrictor.
That… that seemed to get to her son.
"What next?"
"How… how do you know how to fight like this?" She could sense ANBU Otter hovering nearby, just out of what he clearly thought was her sensory range, asking much the same question.
"Look, Ibiki. I've been in charge of foreign economies for years now. I was Orochimaru's assistant; I was the first to identify Danzo as a threat. I came up with railroads; I am considered primarily responsible for the current technological revolution… I knew, Ibiki. I have always known that there could be—and have been—bounties out for me. Right now those bounties are a bit… higher, than usual. But I'm prepared, I promise."
"It just—you sit behind a desk all day," Ibiki said. "It doesn't feel like you could actually—"
Sakura sighed. "You know I was there when Minato sent the byoki to space, right?"
"Like, there there? Actually there?"
"Yes. Actively dodging a great many murder attempts."
"Oh."
"I don't want any of that getting out, because there is in fact a great benefit to being underestimated, but… I don't want you to worry for me, either. Worry for yourself, okay? You're my son, and plenty of shinobi will go after you, too, try to use you to get to me."
"Yeah, I… they told me."
ANBU Otter also seemed… accepting. Not necessarily happy, but accepting.
"Need any other demonstrations?"
"I'm good."
"Then let's… go home. Talk in a slightly less deadly atmosphere."
.
Ebisu glared at their prisoners, trying to figure out why this felt so… wrong.
They were on the train, now, headed back to Konoha to drop off these guys with T&I and finish their mission, and—
This felt weird.
He signaled for Aoba to take over, leapt up to stand next to his team captain Asahi instead.
"Does this feel weird to you?"
"Weird?"
"Like… like they're not fighting back enough. Not trying to escape."
Asahi blinked.
"Huh. I… I think you're right."
"It's weird," Ebisu repeated. What he meant was—was it was wrong.
It was a problem.
"Should we just slit—" And then Asahi shouted. "Approaching! Left side! Approaching!"
…that was a group.
That was a very, very fast moving group.
Ebisu whipped to the right, and—another group.
Also heading straight towards the train.
Shit.
.
Shisui frowned at the many scripts splayed in front of him. His cousin was giving him seed money—not much, but enough—to try to film his own movie. He had to have only child actors, because he was only six and his cousin understandably worried about whether any adult would take over otherwise, and he had to use an existing script.
That… wasn't so bad.
There were a lot of scripts.
Now, though, he wondered.
Yamanaka Sakura's name was everywhere.
He'd thought, when he first noticed that, that it was some other Yamanaka Sakura, not Yamanaka Sakura the Researcher.
He'd asked his cousin Hibana about meeting her, then, and Hibana had laughed—Researcher Yamanaka was far too busy.
And that—
That had done something.
It had been over four years, now, since.
Since he'd been a ninja, for however short a time.
And then everything had gone sideways so, so quickly, and his mother had stopped bowing to his father, started fighting, and she'd asked him if he wanted to be ninja, and she wanted him to say no, and he'd said no, and—
He liked art.
He liked painting, and music, and he absolutely loved movies, and he'd been happy to dedicate his life to that, to focus on that.
And yet.
And yet Researcher Yamanaka Sakura was—well, perhaps not a shinobi-type genius in the same way the Hokage was, in the same way Uchiha Madara was, but she was a genius. She was a ninja. She was very, very busy.
And she wrote so many plays.
She wrote funny stories, and somber stories, and dramatic stories, and stories with morals.
The first drafts were generally not… great. The ones noted as 'edited'—presumably by her genin teammate Nara Shin, but that wasn't stated anywhere—were much better, but that was in terms of story beats, in terms of sequencing, in terms of things like that.
The first drafts weren't great, but their plots were still absolutely magnificent.
If she could manage that, if she could do art and ninja at the same time—
Then why couldn't Shisui?
.
The Aburame were sure, now, that to sense a summons you had to be a summons.
Why wasn't clear, but their insects were far more accurate than the summoned fireflies in every measurable way—
Except that they had not once detected summons.
And fireflies could.
(Given enough time and a distance of no more than ten feet.)
It was not one of the training days—Ibiki (the primary, due to his summons' success) was busy with work, as were the various other summoners working with the Aburame, and Bokuso (who was head of this program, in deference to his friendship with Ibiki's mother and godparents) was instead training his own children, working with them on simple call-and-response practices with their beetles, but his mind was elsewhere.
His mind was far more concerned with traitors.
The Aburame were more than aware that no spy had recently been caught, and Orochimaru—
He was not the type to lay low indefinitely.
Eventually, eventually the man would strike once more.
And who would end up swallowed by a snake?
Who would end up bleeding out on a floor?
Who would be poisoned?
Who would die?
Until Konoha found a better summons-tracking system, Bokuso would never feel secure.
…He knew, of course he did, that Konoha was actually considered the most protected, in that respect.
To Konoha's knowledge, no other hidden village had yet figured out how to even approach the talent of the Uchiha cats, had to rely instead on eradicating animals in general from secure areas (a tactic which carried its own problems).
It was lucky, then, that Konoha could rely on the Uchiha.
It was less lucky, that some infiltrators—human and summons—slipped in regardless.
In the past months, various research teams had come up with all sorts of ways to address the former; they'd created new types of paperwork seals, created counters to track who entered and exited, created all sorts of new job titles to add confusion to any outside observer…
But summons were more difficult.
Were a very particular sort of danger.
And even if the Aburame native-born insects wouldn't work—
Bokuso narrowed his eyes.
Wondered if it wasn't time for Konoha to start actively collecting new contracts.
