“What do you think you’re doing, Sakura?” Came Kabuto’s voice from the door.
“Getting what I came for. You do realize Itachi’s going to kill him, right?” The first scroll was a treatise on immortality techniques. Useless crap. I set it aside, and started unlocking the next one.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he allowed as he approached me. “But if so, you should be more polite to the man who’ll be left in charge.”
“Uh huh.” I gave him my best annoying teenage eye-roll. “You aren’t too bright, are you Kabuto? I’m not going to work for you.”
The second scroll detailed the origin of his cursed seal, so I kept that one. Who knows, someday I might be able to turn it into a useful technique.
Kabuto’s hand cam down on my shoulder, and I felt a paralysis jutsu wash through my body.
“Such an irritating child,” he chided. “But I won’t have to deal with it any longer, once I’ve determined how that interesting little talent of yours works.”
I countered his technique and slammed a Rasengan into his chest before he could blink. He collapsed with a comical look of surprise, although of course he immediately began to regenerate. I shook my head, and picked him up by the front of his shirt while transforming myself into decent fighting shape.
“I’ve got a better idea, Kabuto,” I said coldly. “How about I figure out how your interesting little talent works, and then dispose of you?”
It was complicated, but with my best analysis jutsu running I could actually see his regeneration working. It was quite different than my medical transformations, but much more thorough than conventional medical techniques. Hmm. Maybe I really could copy this.
“How?” He gasped, still barely able to move.
“I don’t make villain speeches, Kabuto,” I replied. “You’ll just have to die not knowing.”
I put my hand on his head and formed a Rasengan in his brain, which put an end to any attempts at resistance on his part. His regeneration wasn’t good enough to replace that, but it was interesting to watch it try. It took a good ten minutes for his body to finally realize it was dead and give up.
I turned back to Orochimaru’s cache and set to work on the rest of the scrolls, humming a merry little tune under my breath as the sounds of battle raged in the distance. I was nearly done by the time the hideout collapsed around me.
I’d seen two other hideouts in my time with the Snake Sannin, and a map I’d found in Orochimaru’s notes revealed three more. I looted them all in turn, and found clues to others in the process. One of them even had the scroll I was looking for, which pleased me to no end. I put a little extra effort into rigging that last facility for destruction, my mind already juggling options for getting a quiet place to work for a few months as I strolled back out the door. But just outside I ran into a familiar face.
“Jiraiya!”
I stopped in surprise, not expecting to run into the old goat here of all places, but before I could do more than smile the demo seals detonated. He started, then gave me an amused look as half the mountain behind me collapse with a thunderous roar. It’d been a pretty big underground base.
“I guess you’re the one who’s been blowing up my old teammate’s hideouts,” he observed when the rumble of collapsing stonework finally died down. “You were pretty enthusiastic with this one, though. Personal reasons?”
“Nah, the bastard never had the chance to do anything to me. I just like big explosions,” I explained. “I’m Sakura, by the way.”
“A woman after my own heart. I don’t suppose you picked up any interesting scrolls on the way out?”
I laughed. “Yeah, I’ve been taking everything that looked important. I was going to head up to Twin Falls and camp out at the hot spring resort for a few weeks to go through it all. You’re welcome to come along if you want, but no seducing me! I’m engaged to Naruto.”
“I see my reputation precedes me. Alright, Sakura, I’ll be a perfect gentleman. Although, I’ve got to hear how my godson’s old teammate aged six years and got engaged to him without his knowing.”
“I’ll tell you, but you’ll never believe me…”
As a confused genin no one ever believed my story, no matter how desperate I was to convince them. Now that I was a confident badass who didn’t care what people thought, somehow they suddenly took me seriously. Go figure.
Oh, I didn’t tell him everything. But a few days of banter, and my casual display of any number of techniques I shouldn’t have known, were enough to convince him something odd was going on. And really, was time travel more implausible than a kunoichi who could steal secrets from half the clans in the Elemental Countries without anyone noticing? Supposedly time jutsu do exist, they just haven’t been seen since the era of the Sage of Six Paths.
“So you decided to use this time loop business to become the world’s greatest ninja?” Jiraiya asked one morning over a pile of journals. “Because I think you’re just about there.”
“Flatterer. My version of Naruto can kick my ass easily, and so can Nagato. No, I think the gods put me in this situation for a reason. Right now I’m trying to get everyone who was affected by the wish into the same world, so we can try to do something about it.”
“Ah. Wait, Nagato? This wouldn’t happen to be a Rinnegan user from Rain Country, would it?” Jiraiya asked eagerly.
“Actually, yes. Wait, you know him?”
“Know him? I taught him!”
Which led to Jiraiya telling me all about the time he spent teaching a trio of orphans in Rain Country, in return for my own observations on how accomplished his students had become. We reluctantly concluded that Yahiko must have died somewhere along the way, but he was quite pleased with how well his students had turned out. Well, until I explained how they were going to destroy Konoha.
“How sure are you about this, Sakura?” He asked grimly.
“Honestly?” I shrugged. “Events always seem to play out exactly the same unless I change something, and since he told me most of this himself I don’t think there’s much room for misunderstanding. But don’t worry, I’ve already decided the best thing to do about him is to get my Naruto to talk some sense into him. He’s amazingly good at that. I suppose it must have something to do with the mandate of heaven, whatever that really means.”
Jiraiya nearly lost a mouthful of tea at that. “What? Naruto has the mandate of heaven? Who told you that?”
“The Great Sage Toad,” I said innocently. “Naruto has some pattern where you train him and let him sign the toad contract, and we visited Mount Myouboku recently. I take it you know what he was talking about? I know the daimyo like to make claims like that to justify being in charge, but it sounded like he meant something more concrete than some nebulous claim about divine favor.”
Jiraiya gave me an unusually serious look. “The story is that in the old days the gods appointed an emperor to rule over all of mankind, and gave him a special blessing to enable him to rule benevolently. Then the emperor appointed governors for every region of the world, and passed on a lesser version of the blessing to them. The blessings were hereditary, and a lot of the traditional inheritance laws were meant to ensure that noble titles passed to the same heir as the blessing. Even today the daimyos try to trace their families back to one governorship or another, but no one has been able to make a plausible claim for descent from the old emperors in centuries.”
“A hereditary blessing, huh?” I mused. “So at some point there was a missing heir and the line of descent was lost to common knowledge. I can’t see an actual blessing on Naruto, but there doesn’t have to be a jutsu effect if it’s really just a matter of Celestial rules. Yeah, I can see that. The divine system designates him as the heir, the infernal system picks up on that, and they both give him special treatment because of old treaties and such. Interesting.”