Rento's knee jiggled incessantly as he flipped through yet more requests for body seals. Ever since he'd managed to figure out the whole 'human tracking' thing just about every clan—and plenty of individuals besides—had been offering him heaven and earth to have some seals themselves.

Being in a clan had protected him from most of it—his aunt and the elders both generally had to agree to the deal as well, and took a lot of the labor of filtering the offers off of his shoulders—but now that he was done with the Hyuuga…

He didn't care, was the thing.

Like, yes, he was more than happy to do his duty or whatever, and it was nice to bring more security to his clan and others, but—

But really, Rento wanted to still be in bed with Hisa.

Wanted to be sketching out new seal designs.

Wanted to check in on his sister, because she had ended up inheriting the mind-walking ability and was looking increasingly overworked.

Wanted—

Well, to not do this.

His knee was jiggling so strongly now that the desk was rattling.

Rento stood.

Paced.

Stretched his neck.

Glanced back at the offers, all of them good enough that his aunt and the elders said he could have his choice.

And Rento—

Just wanted a break.

.

Yasuo turned off the water, grabbing for the towel with one hand while he held Miki in place with the other.

"A genin team? You really think I'm ready?"

"Well, you're a combat jounin, aren't you?" Aiko pointed out. "And, to be frank, if you don't your next frontline rotation will probably last half a year—that's the norm, now. If you sign up to teach genin, then—well, the next class is in only a month, so they're probably set, but the one after that is only four months away."

And Yasuo would be leaving at the end of the week, helping hold the line from Kumo's increasingly-belligerent attacks.

"I don't… necessarily mind the idea of being a teacher," Yasuo said. His Sensei had been great, but he knew many of his fellow orphans hadn't been nearly so lucky. Passing on the skills he'd been taught, passing on the good Sensei Inuzuka had been for him, felt… right.

He just—

Well, Yasuo supposed he didn't exactly see himself as someone a kid could look up to.

Would look up to.

"How would I get them to listen to me, though?" Yasuo asked.

Aiko snorted. "They're genin. They'll listen to any jounin… for the first couple months, anyway. And by then they'll know how good you are, and they'll listen because of that instead."

"I'm just barely a kid," Yasuo protested, "and not even a smart one?"

He turned to Miki, finishing drying him off so that he didn't have to see the look on his wife's face. "You are twenty-seven, and you are perfectly smart. Look, do it or don't do it, but don't go making up reasons." The door didn't slam, but it was a very near thing.

Miki looked up at him.

He looked down at Miki.

Aiko… she'd never really been able to understand his struggles with self-worth, with self-confidence.

But she also struggled with being wrong.

"What do you think of your dad as a Sensei, huh?" Yasuo asked.

His two-year-old grinned at him. "Can I has a cookie?"

.

Nohara Kimiko grabbed another hoodie out of her bag. Her teeth chattered as she stripped off her overcoat, forcing the new hoodie over the old one before putting the overcoat—and her tuque, which had come off in the process—back on.

And then her mask, because it helped warm her face too.

For her hands she'd just have to rely on her chakra—she was taking too many notes for anything else.

Uzu was cold.

She'd been warned about that, but cold—the Uzu sort of cold—wasn't something she had experienced before, having gone straight into her Research Apprenticeship after the Academy.

Now, though, Director Yamanaka wanted a full report on the Uzu pidgin, and Kimiko had jumped at the opportunity.

(It hadn't even been an opportunity, not really. It was on the list, sure, with a list of benefits including increasing the complexity of Konoha cyphers and ensuring information security, but it hadn't been high on the list, not a priority during wartime.

(But Kimiko had always been interested in language, had always loved language, and so with enough begging, she'd gotten the assignment.)

And Kimiko—

She was learning a lot, okay.

She was—

There were a lot of local languages spoken in Water's former islands, and immigrants from all over came here, began speaking a blend of those languages, their former national language, Fire's language, and—curiously—Uzu's former language.

And it was fascinating, and Kimiko was learning a lot, but—

But—

But it was also freezing, and wet, and she was getting tired of putting on genjutsu to go unnoticed, and she missed her family, and.

And she couldn't ask for the assignment to end.

Not after begging.

So she was stuck, until she felt like she had enough to bring back without shame.

And—and the thing was—

The thing was, Yamanaka Sakura, Director Yamanaka Sakura, was the one who had submitted this request.

Which meant Kimiko had to impress her.

And Director Sakura…

And Director Sakura created new languages in her sleep. She had cyphers for everything—literally used different cyphers for different subjects to 'practice', and then had several personal cyphers that no one had ever decoded.

She based her cyphers on multiple languages, on abbreviations, on pronunciation, on pen strokes meant to symbolize Konoha sign language—and that was just for her public languages.

Her personal ones, she'd explained, were wildly more creative—included so many references that only made sense to her that even on the off-chance someone got the basic concept of the language they'd never be able to figure anything else about it.

And they hadn't.

She didn't exactly help anyone try, only willingly lent out her Research journals, but Kimiko knew—

Even Orochimaru had tried.

And failed.

And so—

So Kimiko really, really wanted to impress.

Wanted to do well.

But she also—

It was cold, in Uzu.

And it was tiring, to constantly be hiding her presence, listening in as people lived their lives.

And the Uchiha always, without fail, felt the need to brush by her when she started the genjutsu—'we know you're allowed to do that, but we're watching anyway'—and there weren't any other Nohara here and there weren't even any Researchers (there was always something else to do) and—

And Kimiko felt like an outsider.

A voyeur.

…The gossip was interesting, though.

Especially now that she was getting to understand the pidgin.

All sorts of people living all sorts of lives in all sorts of ways, and there was Kimiko in the background, slowly putting together the pieces of the lives of strangers.

Today, unfortunately, she was listening to dock workers.

The dock was always the coldest place on the island.

(Really, the beach was, but the dock was the only part of that she had to regularly visit).

And while the gossip was interesting, while the stories were the sort she'd have never heard otherwise—

It didn't exactly make up for the cold.

For the othered-ness.

And then—

And then Kimiko overheard something.

.

Supaku ran his finger along the edge of the scroll, trying to parse through the implications of the budget.

Konoha was going into debt.

Not—

Not too badly, yet.

Not irreversibly badly.

But Konoha was absolutely beginning to feel the strain.

However.

However, Supaku had spent the past several years assisting the minor nations in their recovery efforts from the current and past conflicts between major nations. Expensive, yes, but Konoha was also reaping the rewards; despite its ongoing 'disputes' with the other major nations, Konoha and the Land of Fire as a whole were not feeling the same resource shortage they had even a half decade ago and—outside of the debt—could maintain this level of conflict for years without issue.

But.

Konoha was still… struggling.

Konoha had already been indebted from the prior years, had already been struggling, but before this particular conflict, Konoha had also been climbing its way out of debt.

That was no longer true.

And Supaku—

Did not like the idea of being indebted.

Konoha needed money, but Konoha also needed to spend.

It was clear, then: Konoha needed more income.

…Typically, during wars, this had always been done by pillaging, a sort of carry-over habit from the Warring Clans Era.

(But then, many thought ninja as a whole simply a remanent of that Era, a net-negative to society.

(Less, now, than there used to be. Konoha's inventions, medical innovations, and opportunities for social mobility ensured that.)

Pillaging…

The Hokage did not like it.

So that wasn't an option.

What else?

…Supaku needed to write to his students.

.

Juro smiled at Emiko as she laughed with her father.

She wasn't his girlfriend anymore; they were engaged, now.

It was hard to feel anything other than utter elation in this moment, so Juro didn't even try.

He smiled, and talked with Emiko's family, and ate, and drank, and smiled.

…The next day was different.

The next day Shin showed up at his front door.

"It's early!" Juro protested. "I don't even have to leave for work for another three hours!"

"I know," Shin said, "but I need to talk to you."

Juro frowned, stepping back. Shin stepped inside.

He looked tense, exhausted.

He was always exhausted, but usually he worked to hide it.

"What's wrong?" Juro said.

"Not here," Shin said. "Grab something to eat and then we'll go to the old bathhouses." The ones that the Uzu worked on, in other words.

The ones that couldn't be spied on.

Fifteen minutes later Juro was staring up at the bathhouse ceiling, trying to process what Shin had begun telling him.

"So… a coup."

"The Kazekage is not a Daimyo," Shin pointed out.

"Still."

Then, thinking on it more, "Why?"

Because they weren't fighting Suna right now, not really. Just Kumo and Iwa, officially anyway. So… why the attack on Wind, on their sometimes ally?

"You can't tell anyone," Shin warned, and Juro knew that. Knew how to keep a secret. Had more than a few of his own. Then, "They've been trying to poach the Uchiha."

Juro sat straight up. Stared. "What—but—but Fugaku's been named the next Hokage!"

"That's… because of the poaching. I think. Minato didn't actually say that, but it seems the most likely."

"Who knows?"

"Well, the Uchiha, obviously. Me. You, now. And ten ANBU."

"That's it?"

"Can you imagine how people would react if this got out? If anyone learned that—it's treason, Juro. It's treason."

"Shit. Fuck. Shit."

"Yeah."

"So—"

"So, Fugaku told Minato. He's still putting his clan first, and he might not stay the named replacement, but… well, Minato wants to trust him, more than anything. And there was a lot of disagreement among the Uchiha to begin with, so Minato wanted to—you know, give them the push.

"But, well, Suna's still courting them. And the elders are largely for going, as far as Minato can tell, and they're only stalling out because the announcement made a lot of the younger Uchiha waver."

"So… make Suna regret it."

"Exactly."

"Shit."