In both Iwa and Kumo, the average age to become a genin was ten, only two years younger than Konoha's average (and only a year under Konoha's average for jounin-track nin, who tended to flee the Academy at the first opportunity). Suna graduated their students much younger, at eight on average, but there was a separate test taken roughly three years into becoming a genin that allowed for work outside of the Land of Wind (Wind, after all, was safe for Suna-raised nin, was a home they understood far better than any enemy. The rest of the world wasn't like that).
Kiri was…
Kiri.
No one was quite sure when their kage had started being mind-controlled, but the results…
Children far too young had become ninja, had died in droves because of the bloodthirsty men and women who had been far too eager to listen to the rantings of their kage.
Some children had survived.
They were…
Not well.
They could recover, of course, that was one of the great things about children, but.
But.
But Yamanaka Fuuka had been teaching them for over a year, now, and her class (separated from the rest, former Kiri ninja, not one older than ten and the Mizukage had been killed at the end of 45 Konoha, over two years ago) was only just now beginning to trust her.
She watched as one girl, blue-haired, sidled next to the black-haired boy that she had worked with so many times before they'd been captured, brought here to live new lives. She showed him the new book she'd picked out from the library, a book of pictures of animals, a soft, calming book Fuuka had recommended. The girl—Jakucho—had flipped through the book on the spot, deemed it acceptable.
Now she showed it to the boy, Mitsuki, who still hadn't spoken, and helped him flip through the pages, and smiled when he smiled.
All these children, so traumatized.
Fuuka spent hours with them, had personal meetings with each that they did not call therapy (people did not come back from therapy in Kiri), and helped them learn how to live again.
It was a blessing that they even had a chance to recover, that the kami allowed for children to bounce back from things that would permanently mar adults, but it was also a hindrance.
The officials in Kiri's government, they'd wanted power, wanted control, and they'd had plenty of bodies. They could have taken time, if they'd really wanted to invade. They could have taught their children well. They hadn't done that. They'd decided most of the children wouldn't amount to anything, anyway, had thrown them to the sharks, made them sink or swim with barely any training.
It had been a slow process, Fuuka knew. They'd started lowering the graduating age gradually.
But they'd wanted results, they'd wanted them yesterday, and they'd ruled on fear.
Some children had escaped.
Some parents had tucked their children away, died by Kirigakure's hands while their children hid in relatives' houses, hid in closets, and hoped no sensors came to visit.
It was a lucky thing, then, that sensors were so rare in the islands.
But despite the best efforts of so many parents—
Despite all the work to escape, to be free—
Despite it all—
None of these children were likely to be ninja.
Some (the more well-adjusted ones, the ones with better emotional control such that teaching them sealing would not be so much of a risk) would end up in the sealing corps, making decent money and staying under Konoha's protection.
The rest…
Fuuka would help a good number find fishing jobs, most likely. Some others would probably be better suited to indoor jobs with little surprises; she was focusing on math, at the moment, because there where many, many jobs were being able to do fast calculations would be a boon.
She knew some would turn to drugs, to alcohol.
Some would end up committing violent crimes in fits of rages, in horrible flashbacks.
Fuuka did her best to mitigate those risks, to help the children process what they went through, but she was no hero and there were too many children and too little time.
These children hadn't even become genin too young, not really. The burden put on their shoulders was the sort Konoha would rely on a chuunin for, maybe even a jounin. Some didn't know how to count before they'd been sent to die.
Fuuka taught these kids, these broken messed-up kids, these kids who were taught how to kill before they knew how to read, and she was never more happy that the Hokage refused to graduate any student younger than ten.
Never more happy that the Hokage mandated multiple councils, was as open about considered laws as a military organization could be.
Still, even as Mitsuki pointed to a picture of a hippo, tried to form the correct hand sign for 'big', even as Jakucho helped him out, the damage to her hands making it impossible for her to form the sign herself, Fuuka—
Well, she wondered if expansion wasn't such a bad thing after all, if it could prevent this.
.
Sakura understood why the Commerce Department wanted to relax the regulations, why Infrastructure and Utilities wanted the same.
No other hidden village had the same level of pollution regulations, after all, and research showed—correctly, as far as Sakura could tell—that a little bit of air pollution, of water pollution didn't seem to do much damage, not unless you were really close, and wasn't that what masks and filters were for?
But Sakura had information they didn't, so she held firm.
And Minato didn't really understand why it was such a big deal, not when the problem would appear decades down the line if at all and 'wasn't there plenty of time to fix things?', but he trusted her when she said there were problems, trusted her when she asked that the stringent rules be kept in place.
"It's impeding progress!" they argued. "It's dissuading businesses!" Moreover, "It's not fair!"
Well, oh well.
Life's not fair.
Get over it.
Konoha had had one brush with pollution, one awful experience trying to clean the land from the mistake they'd already made, and Sakura had no wish to contribute to the same but on a global scale.
Instead, then, Konoha sold licenses to make some of their anti-pollution seals (those least likely to have any military use, of course), to private sealers, who made good money selling the seals themselves.
And now—
Now that was actually working in their favor.
"So… the nobles like the seals?" Sakura recapped. Shin, on a quick visit to town—'I was supposed to meet with the Hokage but he's out at the moment, want to chat?'—snorted.
"Basically, yeah. They… they aren't really using them properly, or anything, but the air purifier is especially popular; I think it makes them feel superior, to be able to breathe better air."
Sakura blinked. "Huh."
"Yeah. So, any other ones you can ship to our supporters, get more good will?"
Well, the Land of Fire was particularly humid. "What about a dehumidifier? I'll get you the prototype we already have, but if it's for nobles we'll have to pretty it up a bit."
"Shit, I'd buy a dehumidifier if I could," Shin said. "When were you going to start producing it?"
Sakura shrugged. "Never? I mean, not actually, but there is literally so much other, more important stuff, and right now the dehumidifier is just a 'personal comfort' invention. It is still technically in the queue, as a possible money-maker, but…"
"But war."
"Not war, remember?" Sakura laughed.
"Yeah, yeah. Not war. Just a peacetime that happens to have an awful lot of fighting."
"At least Suna's given up on playing sides."
Shin blinked at her, surprised that she knew, then smirked. "You know an awful lot, don't you?"
"I'd be upset that you hadn't told me, except I didn't tell you. How is it going, by the way?"
Shin rolled one shoulder, trying to formulate an answer. Suna had been a 'puppet' government for a bit, now, and in that time had more-or-less completely removed itself from international conflicts, but Sakura had heard little else, and she and Minato's talks had tended to be about other things.
"Not… bad, per se. No desired communication," read: Orochimaru isn't there, "but the 'Kazekage' has become focused on how to use their river to mimic the hydroponics set-up that the Akimichi pioneered, which was very unexpected but not a bad idea."
"I thought they were trying to farm in the summoning world?"
"So did I," Shin said. "I guess it wasn't much of a success."
"Summoning is…"
"Messy, yeah."
.
Bokuso should have known they'd already used all their luck. The lemurs—lemurs who had previously had a summoner for all that they were long dead, lemurs who couldn't sense summons with chakra but could smell them, lemurs who were more than happy to take on three summoners to start because they'd quite liked the chakra income previously provided, lemurs who were willing to get started immediately, lemurs who had managed to work out some sort of deal with the cats on their own (for all that they didn't seem to find each other particularly palatable)—had been a boon of the greatest order, and Bokuso had thought himself more than willing to declare the enterprise a victory on just that.
And then the very next reverse-summoning attempt had also 'succeeded'.
The pika jerked, again, at the slightest movement in his periphery, nosing closer to Itohiki-san.
"We've made deals before," the pika squeaked. Its round body shook with every breath. "We've ceded some territory and work digging burrows to the finches in exchange for their work telling us of danger, so we can hide away in time. We would like it if you could come and kill the weasels. Or the wolves. Or both."
"What can you give us in return?" Bokuso asked. Again.
The pika did not answer.
Out of the corner of his eye Bokuso noted Ibiki beginning to gesture. The boy was handy with Konoha sign, and it took only moments for him to get his point across.
"Itohiki, would you mind reverse-summoning yourself once more and seeking out the finches? Perhaps we'll have more luck there."
The pika perked up. "If you kill a wolf I'll show you the way!"
Itohiki shrugged. "Sure," he said.
And then they both were gone.
Bokuso closed his eyes.
"At least," Ibiki said, "we did find another summons? And maybe we could have one pika summoner anyway, just in case."
"We'll see about the finches," Bokuso said. "But this is clear: half an hour was sufficient evidence that we should never sign with the pika."
"I thought he was cute," Ibiki admitted.
Bokuso blinked at him. "Cuteness is unrelated to usefulness."
Then Ibiki jerked. "I'm not saying you're not cute!" he protested. "Pikas are just really round, that's all. Sorry, Bokuso, I was talking to my summons."
"I assumed."
"How long, do you think, until he comes back with a finch?"
"A few hours at least." He'd implied that the pika's territory was surprisingly large, after all.
Ibiki sighed. He had been the one to request permission to join this mission, however, so Bokuso felt little sympathy.
.
Taro frowned, flipping through the latest record with no small amount of frustration.
It—
It had been over four years since Orochimaru had tried to kidnap the Uchiha child.
Four years since Taro had spent over a week in interrogation; he'd had a Yamanaka teammate, so they'd needed to be absolutely certain he wasn't hiding anything, checked over and over again, and Taro still remembered the resulting cluster headache like it had happened just yesterday.
After that—
After—
Well.
He hadn't been in the best headspace.
He hadn't necessarily liked a lot of what Orochimaru was doing officially, but none of it had been—
Well, none of it had been kidnapping toddlers.
Doing brain surgery on himself.
Becoming so obsessed with immortality that he lost his morality.
None of it had been that.
And Taro had stayed in his room for almost a month, working on simple seals so that he had some income but doing nothing else.
It had been Inohina who had broke down his door one day, told him he needed to get out of his bubble.
She'd dragged him outside, forced him to exercise, forced him to choose groceries, forced him to cook with her.
She was back the next day, dragging him out again.
She took him to bars with her girlfriend, took him to a pottery class, took him to a non-Yamanaka therapist because Taro still remembered the cluster headache, still flinched when he saw her eyes (she'd worn sunglasses, too. He was more embarrassed about that then anything else, but she hadn't even mentioned it, refused to let him convince her that she shouldn't have to).
And then she asked him what he wanted to do next.
When their team had fallen apart, all those years ago, Taro had said some nasty, horrible things to Inohina. About Inohina. About her many boyfriends and girlfriends, about her flighty nature, about her gossipy tendencies.
He'd wanted her to hurt.
He'd succeeded.
And they'd stopped talking.
And then she'd broken his door, dragged him out of his stupor. Didn't side-eye him, wondering how he couldn't notice anything, didn't ask him about Orochimaru or the madman's actions.
She'd just…
Been there, for him.
So he owed it to her to be honest.
He wanted, he said, to work in the hospital, as an administrator.
He wanted to do good, but he didn't—people tended to annoy him.
He wasn't actually, at the end of the day, that good at inventing things, but he was pretty sure he could help the hospital run behind the scenes well enough.
He wanted to feel useful again.
Two days later he had a job in the hospital, was helping to sort through the absolute travesty that was the then-record-keeping system.
Over the years he'd risen through the ranks, and his duties had expanded, and Taro had felt more and more like he was actually doing something worthwhile.
And then—
Well, and then the Budget Bureau had asked for more of the hospital's records, because something wasn't adding up.
And Taro had gone digging.
And now—
It was possible that it was simply poor record-keeping, but very unlikely.
It was too pervasive.
Just a few too many things always lined up to help the missing money slip under the radar.
Just a few too many coincidences ensured that people didn't think about who ordered certain tests, or where the results were.
And Taro…
Taro knew what he had to do.