Sakura opened the door to at least twenty bodies.

T&I always seemed to be the busiest place in Konoha during wartime, but she supposed there were reasons.

Still, she had the sneaking suspicion…

Her eyes flicked to Ibiki.

Ibiki…

Didn't look good.

Was looking at her.

And—

That was her fault, wasn't it?

When she was a genin, she'd read BINGO books regularly. She'd had to—she was in diplomacy, and then tutoring her clan heir in diplomacy. Ibiki hadn't been forced into anything like that, and he was about as interested in pursuing a combat career as Juro had been (an option, but not worth it when there were so many better, less deadly choices).

She…

She didn't have time to deal with that, because they were being led into the room with the brand-new one-way wall.

"Alright, ANBU Otter and Jounin Hatake have gone after the one remaining scent, so we should get the final one in a couple hours. It is clear, however, that their primary goal was assassination. Of Director Yamanaka Sakura specifically, if that wasn't obvious."

All eyes flicked to hers.

Sakura—

Well, she knew enough not to react.

"Is that—is this common?" Ibiki asked, and she was honestly kind-of proud of him because as brash as she was known to be, she wouldn't have spoken up in his position. She'd been… dealing with a lot, as a genin.

"No?" Yamanaka Ketsueki said, but his voice tilted up far too much to be convincing. Then, "I mean, it was very stupid, and incredibly unlikely to succeed even without Konoha's recent investment into defense and infiltration-prevention. But also, these guys got out of Water, like, several years before the end, and they've been making pretty damn decent money in assassination and kidnapping, especially in the minor nations. So I bet their egos got a bit too big."

"My guess," Akimichi Mikuri interjected, "is that they were beginning to experience intrateam conflict. Neither of the two we already got seem remotely concerned about the other, and in recent years their bounties have been increasing rapidly. Sakura's payout would've been massive enough to let them go their separate ways and try to live under the radar as much as possible, which—given that this would be the time to disappear, given the whole not-technically-war shit that's happening—would explain why they took as much of a risk as they did."

"Do we even have any mindwalkers here right now? I mean, ones that actually have the time and energy to do the kind of mind walk this requires," Yamanaka Fuyuki, Ibiki's direct supervisor asked. Sakura glanced at Ibiki again as everybody began complaining about how stretched thin the Yamanaka mindwalkers were. He still looked…

She needed to talk to him.

Yamanaka Ketsueki—he seemed to be the highest ranked of the Intelligence Bureau in the room, which made sense given that the actual Head was still no doubt on his way back from the Capital (Konoha had negotiated for a lower tobacco tax rate in exchange for some mindwalking work, and the Daimyo had negotiated for 'their best' specifically)—rolled his neck. "Look. It doesn't matter what else is necessary. This was an S-ranked threat, and while all those theories are good—"

"We need proof," Nara Ema finished.

Because yes, they probably were just an assassination team out for one last win.

But if they weren't…

"Who has the energy, though?" Fuyuki reiterated. "I mean, really. I get that we want this done tonight, but…"

But mind walkers were crazy valuable, and that meant whenever they had rested enough to have any chakra it was immediately spent.

"I think Yamanaka Yoriko is off right now for mental health reasons?" Yamanaka Ketsueki reluctantly brought up.

And yes, she was.

But Yoriko was also Sakura's niece.

"If you're willing to wait a few hours, I could get Inoichi here," Sakura said.

"He's not frontlines right now?"

"Just rotated back. Probably needs some rest, but…" But he had a lot more chakra than Yoriko to begin with, and he was also a hell of a lot more practiced in mind walking.

"Alright, talk to him." Ketsueki said.

.

Suna was sweltering even in the winter.

Jiraiya whistled, walking along the central river, and flicked a knowing look behind him.

He had… sixteen? Tails, now.

And they just kept on glomming on.

Which Jiraiya understood perfectly well.

Typically he stuck to the smaller towns. Sometimes he was invited into cities for one reason or another, usually to act as Konoha's representative, but—

He wasn't doing that now.

He wasn't—

Orochimaru walked along this river.

Orochimaru met with the (now former) Kage.

Orochimaru primarily lived outside the city, lived by himself, but—

He was here.

He stepped here.

He might have been here when he learned that his plan to kill some of Sensei's family failed.

He might have been here when he learned that his spies had been caught.

(He might have been here, basking in how they didn't catch them all. It might be decades until Jiraiya knew. He might never know.)

Ah, another watcher.

This one—

Puppet, almost definitely.

All sorts of attention.

He hadn't bothered to hide why he was here, not really.

He'd talked to the guy at the wall about Orochimaru, about how long he'd thought Suna and Orochimaru had been colluding for.

(The kid hadn't known. Why would he? He didn't even know who Orochimaru was, except for the vague sort-of-frantic look of someone who had once heard a name and was trying desperately to recall where.)

In a minute, maybe two, some jounin would close in on him. 'Invite' him to have a chat.

And he'd do that, talk to them.

Ask them about Orochimaru.

His little student had thought it was a bad idea, hadn't liked it, but—

Well, it wouldn't hurt for Suna to think they were even further behind in the information game than they actually were, would it?

(His student thought it would, but that's why he was just the student.)

Plus,

Well.

This way he could ask some questions, right?

And Jiraiya had so, so many questions to ask.

.

Ryoma squinted at the diagram.

"Is it… one of the Aburame bugs that's the problem?"

Erigami laughed. "No, but we're going to need their help. There aren't many Aburame currently working at the Construction Bureau, and definitely none in our tiny office, so we'll be consulting with the clan directly."

Ryoma glanced down at the drawings of bugs.

They still looked…

Bug-like.

"What is it then, if it's not an Aburame insect?"

"It's called a bed bug. They, like, drink our blood and stuff."

Ryoma blanched. "What."

"Yeah, and they're called bedbugs because they hang out in bedrooms to do it—suck from us all night long, getting us sick in the process."

Ryoma's blood had not returned to his face. "And… they're in my bed? Right now?"

"I mean, no, probably not. You'd have noticed otherwise. But," They stood, resealing the scroll and gesturing out towards the rest of the city, "we've been getting more and more of them. We don't want the deterrent to travelers, never mind the health issues, so it's our job to fix it."

"So we're going to go to the Aburame, and work with them?"

Erigami nodded. "Exactly. Ideally, we want some kind of seal array that can be part of the construction process and kill the bugs without requiring regular checks, but to do that we'll need to make sure it doesn't target any Aburame insects, never mind other beneficial critters." Shimi, Erigami's dog, trotted happily beside them, tongue lolled out in the morning breeze.

The… morning… breeze.

"If we're meeting with the Aburame in the afternoon, where are we going now?"

"To hunt down some samples, of course!"

.

Rin stared at her fingertips, at the swirls and whorls and arches.

She—

That had gone better than she thought it would.

So, so much better.

It wasn't—

The thing was, she was very good at fighting.

Always had been.

And she was good at medical-jutsu too, because she'd initially thought she wanted to work in the hospital, had initially worked in the hospital.

And then she'd gotten a Sensei.

And teammates.

And very, very quickly, she'd had to get very, very good at fighting.

Figured out how to combine the two, too, which was great.

And then—

It was Tsunade's fault, really.

She'd started coaching several kids, off and on, years ago.

And Rin—she still spent time at the hospital, noticed that behavior.

Told Sensei.

And Sensei gave Tsunade students.

…Which sucked.

Probably not to her, or anything, but—

But now she wasn't teaching hospital kids.

And the hospital kids, they started turning to Rin.

She just—

She hadn't—

"Hey," Sensei said, popping into her living room like it wasn't remotely difficult to do. "How'd it go?"

"Good," Rin said. She was still staring at her fingerprints.

A few seconds of silence, and then Sensei was sitting beside her.

"You don't look like it went well?"

"It did," Rin repeated, "it's just… I didn't think it would go well."

She didn't look up, but she could just imagine his knit brows. "Why not?"

"I—"

And what could she say?

It shouldn't have gone well?

She should've been in their shoes, not at the front of the class?

She wasn't strong, not like the boys, couldn't do what they could?

And yet—

And yet it had been so—

She'd known what their questions would be, because she'd had them too.

She'd known where they were going wrong, and how to correct it.

She'd even—embarrassingly—used the same coaching voice Sensei used when teaching them, and it had worked.

"Kakashi," Rin said, because she had to start somewhere, "sucks at teaching. Like, he's working on it, and everything but it's not—he struggles. A lot."

Sensei nodded.

"And I… didn't."

She chanced a glance. He smiled at her. "Rin, you and Kakashi are very different people. Kakashi—he's a little genius. But that makes it very difficult for him to relate to people, to tutor them. You, Rin, have gotten as far as you have due to hard work, lateral thinking, and the ability to empathize."

Rin blinked.

Sensei seemed to take that as a question. He sat back resting an ankle on his knee, and started gesticulating in the way he did when he hadn't come up with a plan. "Okay, so I'm teaching the three of you, right, and Obito—he'll learn by trying over, and over, and over again, always making these little changes until he gets a result he's happy with. Kakashi's different; he's quick to give up if things don't immediately click for him, and I have to figure out a way to word things so he understands what I'm trying to get at, and usually that takes a couple tries. But Rin, no matter how I worded my instructions—you were always so good at turning them around in your head, figuring out what I was trying to get at. When Kakashi didn't get something immediately, then you were definitely going to get there first.

"I guess what I'm saying is, you think about things. And that makes you a very good student, a very dangerous opponent—and a very effective teacher."

And Rin couldn't help but cry at that, could she?