“So to sum up.” Sasuke had moved beyond bad mood and crossed over into fully enraged, as he sat cross-legged with his back against a beam. “You let the ultra particles disappear before your very eyes to save the life of your enemy?”
“Well … I guess so.” Naruto scratched his cheek awkwardly.
He really was truly and sincerely sorry for destroying the ultra particles Sasuke and Sakura had worked so hard to get from far-off Redaku. But he felt like he hadn’t had a choice. He couldn’t let Furieh die.
The back room of Tami’s sweet shop.
Chihare had been added to the usual lineup of attendees. When they heard the solemn news about the ultra particles’ disappearance, they all dropped what they were doing to meet.
“Um, anyway, allow me to add,” Chihare interjected tentatively, shrinking back at an already intimidating and suddenly scary Sasuke on her first meeting with him. “The Lord Seventh came to rescue me, and I was the one initially deceived by Furieh, so it’s really—”
“I know that much,” Sasuke interrupted. “You be quiet.”
Thus rebuked, Chihare obediently fell silent.
The vein that had popped up on Sasuke’s forehead showed no signs of settling down. He was outraged that the village chief Naruto would prioritize those around him over his own life.
“No use crying over spilt milk. We need to figure out our next step. We’re out of time here,” Sakura said, trying to pacify Sasuke and bringing them back to square one.
She had put together all the information each of them had brought back from the Land of Redaku, given Naruto another careful examination, and produced a hypothesis about his illness that she was fairly certain was accurate.
As she had initially suspected, taking a Biju into his body was the source of Naruto’s malfunctioning chakra channels. There was likely no mistake about that.
Nine Tails’ chakra only flowed through Naruto’s body when Nine Tails made a decision to lend it to him. But in very rare cases, the repeated borrowing and lending of chakra could blur the boundary between the chakra belonging to Tailed Beast and chakra belonging to Jinchurikii, so that a minute amount of Tailed Beast chakra was continuously flowing through the body of the jinchuriki. As this continued, Naruto’s own chakra channels increasingly viewed the Nine Tails’ chakra as foreign to his body and attempted to get rid of it by narrowing and closing his chakra channels. Naruto’s episodes were a side effect of his chakra channels forcibly contracting over and over.
“It’s been two weeks already since your last episode, right?” Sakura asked, and Naruto nodded. “The ceasing of episodes proves that your chakra channels are closing up. If they close completely, they probably won’t recover, not even with the ultra particles.”
“How much time do we have until they close completely?” Sasuke asked.
“Judging from the results of this round of testing, I’d say three days,” she said, the look on her face stern.
Three days.
The blink of an eye. The lantern flame suddenly flickered in the windowless room, perhaps because someone let out the breath they were holding.
“There’s still a way to get the ultra particles. There has to be,” Shikamaru said, shifting his gaze from Sasuke to Sakura.
“Yes. The Sage of Six Paths split the ultra particles into two and hid them in ‘the star that never strays’ and ‘the sky that fell to the earth.’ We found the ultra particles sealed in ‘the sky that fell to the earth,’ so if we can figure out the location of ‘the star that never strays,’ we should be able to get the other half of the ultra particles.” Sakura paused there, and her face grew dark.
Most likely, “the star that never strays” was also in the Land of Redaku, just like “the sky that fell to the earth.” Even if they set out that very minute, Naruto’s chakra channels would close up before they even neared the Land of Redaku.
“The last clue we have … is this piece of straw paper?” Shikamaru set out the paper with its fold lines on top of the tatami mat.
Chihare craned her neck forward and peered at it. “What is that?”
“Oh, is this the first time you’ve seen it?” Shikamaru asked. “It was wedged into Map of the Heavens. It’s just this one line saying the stars increased. We have no idea what it means. But I’m more curious about the Konohagakure mark.” He stroked the swirling mark in ink with the pad of his finger.
Until Kakashi sent his first letter, there was no direct communication between the Lands of Fire and Redaku. About all each country knew of the other was faint rumors and utterings from travelers and merchants about a distant country. Both countries doubted that the other actually existed, and yet the glyph that signified the village of Konohagakure was discovered on a piece of paper in the Land of Redaku. It was too strange.
“At the academy, Master Iruka taught us that the Konoha mark came from the tradition of shinobi who would train with a leaf on their forehead to focus their energy. Maybe this paper with the mark of Konoha on it means that the other half of the ultra particles is in the Land of Fire.”
“That’s probably wrong.”
All eyes in the room focused on Chihare.
“The whirlpool motif is used in countries all over at all points in history. It’s plenty possible a similar symbol would pop up somewhere else. In Konoha, the whirlpool is a mark that expresses concentration of energy, but in the Land of Redaku, it might have a completely different meaning.”
“So then what would that different meaning be?” Shikamaru asked, annoyed, and Chihare looked directly at him.
“It was written in the ancient text, right? The Sage of Six Paths caught the meteor and split it. In which case, it could be that this drawing indicates the falling meteor, couldn’t it?”
Meteor.
Sakura took off her headband and looked intently at the familiar symbol with fresh eyes. She could actually maybe see something like a falling meteor in it. The upside-down triangle at the bottom left could be interpreted as the path of the meteor.
“But there’s something not quite right for a symbol of a meteor,” she said.
“It’s a whirlpool,” Naruto interjected. “Orochimaru said so. In the Land of Redaku, the helix is a symbol of rebirth. But a meteor hasn’t got anything to do with rebirth. Why draw something that only falls with a whirlpool?”
“True,” Sakura murmured. “Map of the Heavens was clearly written to tell later generations the location of the ultra particles. They must have had a reason for deliberately adding the whirlpool.”
“A reason?” Shikamaru put a hand to his chin and sank into thought.
Naruto stared at the piece of paper and then slowly opened his mouth. “Maybe the meteor was reborn?”
Chihare looked at Naruto.
“It didn’t just fall and that was the end of it,” he continued. “The Sage of Six Paths returned half of the meteor to the sky. Used a jutsu to keep it going round and round forever, never pulling away from the earth, like the moon.”
Sakura and Shikamaru said nothing as they considered the possibility of what he was saying.
The idea that half of the ultra particles were orbiting the planet was absurd on its face. But Naruto was brimming with confidence, nevertheless.
Indeed, if it was going around the planet as a satellite, then the phrase “the star that never strays” suddenly made sense, and “the stars increased” also snapped into place. From the day the Sage of Six Paths launched the satellite, there would have been one more star in the night sky.
“Hmm,” Sakura groaned, a complicated look on her face. “Say you’re right. Then it would have to be fairly high up and moving completely differently from the other stars. That kind of celestial body—”
“Exists!” Chihare’s voice suddenly rang out sharply in the small attic room. “That celestial body exists!”
A celestial body much faster than the moon, spinning around this planet.
She was sure of it. Chihare had observed such a celestial body with her own eyes any number of times.
“There’s a body that passes through the sky directly above the Land of Fire in a fixed period. The orbit is 660,000 feet up. The next time it will be observable in Konohagakure is tomorrow night at ten p.m. If you miss that, you won’t be able to see it again for six months,” Chihare said all in one breath, her cheeks reddening with excitement, and she looked around at the assembled faces. “I did fairly detailed observations, so I can precisely identify the orbit.”
“Do you have any records?” Sakura asked. “Maybe you could show them to us?”
“Of course. I’ll go get them.” Chihare shook her head up and down and flew out of the attic room, panting, to get her notes.
Naruto’s theory took on a sudden flavor of truth.
The other half of the ultra particles was going around this planet without straying as a satellite. If this preposterous theory was true, then how on earth were they supposed to get ahold of them?
The whole group sank into thought.
“I’ll build a pillar with Earth Style,” Kakashi said, breaking his long silence. “Sakura, Sasuke. You two run up the pillar and carry Naruto to the top. You can make it if you use Chihare’s system bike. Sakura’ll be in charge of chakra control to ride up the vertical wall, and Sasuke will supply chakra to the engine.”
“An Earth Style pillar 660,000 feet tall? Can you do that, Master Kakashi?” Sasuke asked him doubtfully.
“I’ll have to,” Kakashi said, his tone light, and he crossed his arms. “Although, my chakra might run out halfway through. Well! I’ve got an idea about who I can partner up with.”
“So it’s settled,” Sasuke said firmly, and Shikamaru was forced to swallow the argument on the tip of his tongue. He was against this absurd plan.
For Shikamaru, who was the type to look both ways and then double check before he crossed the street, this plan was a nightmare come to life. But if Sasuke and Kakashi were on board, all that was left to do was carry it out.
He let out a long sigh and looked squarely at Sasuke. “Even if you do reach the satellite, how are you planning to undo the seal from there? The ultra particles’ vessel is likely sealed with the same wards as the one in the lake.”
“I’ll smash it.” Sasuke’s response was simple.
“Seriously?” Shikamaru asked, incredulous.
“Of course,” Sasuke answered evenly.
He’s not going to bend now.
Shikamaru pressed a hand to his eyes with a bitter look on his face.
“I’ll handle that.”
“Right. Please and thank you.”
It was settled.
The next night at ten p.m., the satellite would pass directly above the training ground. Before it did, Kakashi would make a pillar of earth shoot into the sky, and Sakura and Sasuke would ride the bike up the side of it.
Twenty-eight hours until mission start.