Rats' Nest

The next few days were a nightmare for spies in Konoha. The anbu struck like lightning, quickly capturing any suspects believed to be spies for Orochimaru. Well, the effort ended up catching a lot more than sound shinobi spies. There were actually quite a few shinobi identified from the other great nations. In all, the distribution heavily leaned toward the civilian sector.

While Kamui's initial scan discovered a lot of suspects on the shinobi side, it was Orochimaru's memories that gave them the biggest lead. Essentially, Danzo had informed him of how to utilize various intelligence networks throughout Konoha. It was a pretty safe move on his part too. Orochimaru was the one ninja everyone knew would never get captured; the best Konoha would ever be able to do was kill him. There had never been a ninja on record with unrestricted access to the information stored in the soul before. The closest were the Yamanaka and even they had to use the brain as a terminal, which could be protected with mental defenses. With all the information Orochimaru had, it wasn't hard for Inoichi, Shikaku, Ibiki, and a team of anbu to rip through the various intelligence networks with the ferocity of a ravenous beast.

In the military sector, they identified two jonin, six chunin and twenty genin as sound village spies. They even found that, more often than not, the jonin would act as senseis for the younger spies and the genin would either 'fail' to pass the chunin exams enough times to be sent to the genin reserves or pass and take a position in a support bureau like the medical corps. From interrogating the 28 shinobi they captured, they found that this had been happening for years. The spies would stay undercover until they were tipped off that their cover was blown and they'd use the root tunnels to escape. Apparently, it became a lot more challenging to send spies into these sectors after the nine-tails attack sixteen years ago. Needless to say, it wasn't hard to figure out who helped Orochimaru set up his Konoha spy ring.

The other nations only had genin-ranked shinobi spies. They didn't have the same level of support as Orochimaru and couldn't afford to waste a good prospect on a potentially 20-year mission. After all, deep infiltration missions involved sending in a trained civilian to guide a young child in rising through the ranks of Konoha, while still remaining loyal to their respective village. To make it even harder to find out their origin, the nations typically used pure civilian children with mediocre talents. This helps keep attention away from them, allowing them to slowly gain intelligence over the long term. With Uzumaki-level village seals operated by a living trained Uzumaki (Kushina), sending actual ninja was too risky.

On the other hand, the civilian sector was a rats' nest. Every major office had moles with a few members of the civilian council taking bribes from various villages for information and support for the enacting of economically crippling policies. Since they didn't have chakra, most of the village's barriers couldn't detect their activity. A lot of the deals were done outside of the village on 'merchant business'. With the civilian council being as powerful as they were for the numerous years before the nine-tails incident, an intelligence infrastructure was created to allow other nations to contact any level of civilian they needed information from through proxies controlled and regulated by the council. Most civilians weren't aware of the overall network, only the specific jobs they were getting paid for.

From the civilian's perspective, they could always take refuge in one of the capitols if they needed refuge. With the information they had, the invading village probably wouldn't kill them off; that was their thought process at least.

The law that made this possible required any civilians suspected of a crime to be investigated by a separate division, which was overseen by the civilian council. The reason that was given for its initial proposal was that civilians were constantly treated unfairly in Konoha and were often used as scapegoats for shinobi crimes. Without a real importance to the direct military strength of the village, the third Hokage didn't care about them all that much and let these incidents go without much of a fuss. These were all true statements.

Hiruzen would often exhibit disinterested behavior when dealing with civilian affairs. To save face, this too was put at the late Danzo's feet, but most weren't sure whether this was true. Hiruzen may have been benevolent to shinobi, but he didn't respect those without utility to preserving the will of fire, those too weak to be useful; this was well known, even if no one said it out loud. This was less prominent in his later years, but by then the law was already in place.

In the last sixteen years, the network became much harder to use with Minato as Hokage, the civilian council on a tighter leash, and the chief enabler dead. That said, there were still opportunities for contact outside of the village.

Needless to say, Minato and the shinobi council were reviewing every detail of how this infrastructure worked and how to reorganize the village in a way that best secured their interests. Somehow, they had to redevelop the village's economy and secure the discovered vulnerabilities without compromising the military aspects of the village. This would likely take years to accomplish, but it had to be done. As an immediate measure, they had to evaluate candidates over the next month to fill the new vacancies in the critical civilian leadership positions; they found that they were underprepared for the amount of dirt they uncovered. To call it a mess would be an understatement.

In hindsight, it was no wonder the other villages were always so well informed on the goings-on in the village. Konoha simply didn't understand the true importance of civilians to the running of a persistent military operation. Then again, this same logic could be applied to most hidden villages. It was only shinobi like the late Danzo, Homura, and Koharu who understood this fact.

All that said, this had nothing to do with Kamui.

Training Ground Alpha Leaf Simulation Zone (Two Weeks Later) (Kamui's Point of View)

Kamui sat on a rock near the center of the leaf simulation zone. She was currently surrounded by clones training in different exercises. She had two working with her to master the introductory earth sensing method and about fifty others working on other skills.

Thanks to the epiphany gained through Shino's question, Kamui figured out a way to use shadow clones to expedite her training. She would have them work on different variables of the techniques she was working on.

In the case of her earth sensing, her main body focused on interpreting everything received from using the echolocation-like technique. While she was doing this, one clone worked on improving her speed in interpreting the information from her pulses, while the other used different elements to create changes the other two could perceive during their training. The goal was to help the other two recognize and correctly interpret changes in the environment with their senses.

She had two clones working on omni-directional vision, two clones working on far-sight using light release and the rest working on controlling the different elements she could command. One of them even started working on wood release, though that one was taking more time.

Thanks to this varied used of her clones, her training was coming along a lot faster than expected. In fact, she was close to achieving the initial level of her earth sensing technique. Soon, she would reach the point where refinements would need to be made in the field. Essentially, she shouldn't have too much of a problem identifying terrain, structures, people, etc within 2 km. It wasn't very far, but it was a really solid start.

The past few weeks had been pretty peaceful for her. The only interesting thing she had to deal with was the completion of two C-rank bandit exterminations. In both cases, she made quick work of them in their sleep. There was neither a confrontation nor a struggle. They just died without realizing it.

Through her new seismic sensing, she realized that the anbu were exceptionally active recently. Considering that she witnessed her father giving those same anbu orders right before their operations, she didn't worry about it too much. With the new intelligence gained from the various spies they'd discovered, it wasn't surprising that major shifts were happening. That said, those had nothing to do with her.

'Maybe I should tell dad that I can see him through my seismic sense...' Kamui casually thought to herself. 'Meh. I'm sure he'll figure it out soon. I'll be using it in missions soon, so sensei will let him know through the mission reports.

Kamui had been at this for hours at this point and was quickly approaching a point where she needed a break. Thinking that talking with others could alleviate the tediousness of her training, Kamui reached out through her senses to see if anyone else was in the training field. The annoying thing about her seismic sense is that processing that much information required her to focus on a specific subject. Basically, she couldn't see everything at once, yet. She would eventually be able to, but not at this time.

Thankfully for her bored mind, she found four humans conducting what looked like a team training exercise a little over a km away. Focusing on them further, she realized very quickly who they were, team 7.

Seeing this, Kamui smiled. She thought, 'Well, it's rare that I see them training together.'

She noticed that the three genin were struggling to perform one of the standard Konoha team drills. Kakashi just watched his team struggle from a distance. Seeing this, Kamui sighed.

'Kakashi is skilled in a lot of things, but squad training doesn't seem to be one of them. If what I'm seeing is right, he's not addressing the core of their problem. Regardless of how well they know the drill, all three of them need to be able to physically perform it. Without that synergy, it would be safer just to have the three perform individual tasks. In this case, the weak link seems to be Sakura. No matter how far she's come during the past few weeks, it isn't enough. No matter how hard someone tries, they can't improve their physical ability enough to make up for Sakura's shortcomings in just three weeks. It's just not possible without some form of external power. Maybe I should test Sakura myself…or not.'

If Sakura was just some random nobody, she wouldn't really worry about her. She'd just allow Sakura to fumble about in her mediocrity. However, Sakura was her brothers' teammate. If she couldn't protect herself, they'd be in danger. She could even be used as a hostage to compromise their safety if the enemy realized her weakness and captured her. Needless to say, she couldn't be on their team and remain weak.

Sighing, Kamui got up, updated the clones on where she was going through their connection, and started toward team seven's location, her eyes closed the whole time.

This was actually another form of training she'd come up with recently. Moving with her eyes closed as a means to force herself to rely on seismic sense more. She wouldn't be doing something like this in the field until she'd mastered sensing land, sea, and air, but it was perfect for training.

(Kakashi's Point of View)

This was frustrating. This team had been at this drill for the past few hours and still couldn't get it. It shouldn't be taking this long. Shouldn't this be the 'golden team' of the academy? How were they struggling on such a basic exercise?

Sighing, he silently muttered, "Can these three really be ninjas? Sakura looks like she's having trouble even performing the movements involved in this drill. Naruto and Sasuke are handling it well individually, but don't seem to be working together very well…"

Then, a voiced sounded out behind him, causing him to glance back in annoyance.

"You're missing the core of the problem." A resonant voice stated.

Getting a better look, he noticed a girl with silvery-white hair standing there with her eyes closed.

'What's she doing here? Shouldn't she be training with her own sensei? Then again, standard teamwork drills aren't all that necessary considering she's the only genin on her team.' He pondered.

Deciding to see what she meant by her comment, Kakashi asked semi-sarcastically, "And what would you say that is?"

"Simple. You're asking them to do a drill that Sakura isn't physically capable of performing. Sakura and Ino are the weakest members in our graduating class due to the unhealthy habits they adopted during the academy in their pursuit for my brothers' affections; part of these practices involved various extremely low-calorie diets. Unlike the rest, their physical endurance was barely into the upper-genin at graduation. While Sasuke may have helped push her into the lowest tier of chunin-level endurance over the past two weeks, there's only so much she can achieve in that short period of time.

"The reason they're failing is that Naruto and Sasuke are simply too fast and physically proficient to work together with her in this kind of formation. They naturally want to move at their natural speeds, which imbalances the formation and spoils their efforts." Kamui impassively explained.

Silence dominated the space between the two for a few moments, the only sounds were those of the trio training in the distance. One part of Kakashi was considering his god-sister's words; the other was mulling over why the girl's eyes were still closed.

He'd realized everything she was telling him over the past few days. The problem was, he was comparing Sakura to one of his old comrades. The issue with that comparison was that the comrade he was comparing her to was a medical prospect and lived a healthy lifestyle for her entire childhood, so she improved faster than Sakura did. Really, the lesson he got from Kamui's words were why Sakura seemed so physically deficient. Her unhealthy habits weren't in any of the Academy's records. The academy didn't take note of these things, a practice that was clearly a mistake. Realizing the problem and a list of potential solutions, Kakashi decided to probe Kamui's mind.

"So…." He started with his trademark lazy tone. "What do you propose?" He already knew roughly what the right answer would be, but decided that testing Kamui would be a productive exercise.

Hearing the question, Kamui smiled and responded, "If I were in your position, I would shift the focus of training to physical conditioning and mission protocols. I'd even enlist the team to take on a C-Rank mission to show them the reality of the world. Since the worst they'd have to deal with would be bandits in theory, it would be a good motivator for her. That would also satisfy Sasuke and Naruto in the short term and allow them to test the results of their training."

Kakashi nodded. That was about what he was thinking. Actually, he would take it a step further. He'd have to ask his sensei for permission to implement it, but there was another measure that would allow him to overhaul her lifestyle.

"Thanks for the second opinion. I think I know what I have to do at this point." Kakashi replied, causing Kamui to adopt a smile similar to his. Looking at it, he actually felt a little annoyed seeing it on someone else, even her.

"Of course. If Sakura doesn't succeed, neither will you three. It's my job as a sister to help in any way I can" She explained.