“Yeah, yeah, I know you’ll come up with something. Anyway, this could be a clue about the big fate jutsu, but he says he wants to see you and Hinata first. Come on!”
I let him drag me away, still protesting half-heartedly. The instant we were out of sight he wrapped his chakra around us both, and suddenly we were in a training ground halfway across Konoha. I stopped, looking around in surprise as Hinata joined us.
“Naruto, was that your dad’s Hiraishin technique?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Not sure. He didn’t write it down anywhere so I had to re-invent it, and my version probably isn’t the same. But it’s great for avoiding long trips. Hold on tight, now!”
With that he called out enough chakra to level Konoha, wrapped it around us, and… made us be somewhere else? The mechanism was completely different than Body Flicker, at any rate. But now we were standing on a mountainside, on a terrace overlooking an immensely long staircase decorated with giant statues of frogs.
Frogs.
“Is this Mount Myouboku?” I asked. “I thought that was supposed to be on one of the summon worlds?”
“Nah, it’s just on the other side of an ocean from Konoha,” he corrected. “Now come on, the old geezer is waiting on us!”
He pulled the two of us up a final flight of steps into an audience hall built for giants, where an ancient toad the size of Gamabunta sat reading from a scroll as big as a house. He set it aside and smiled down at us benevolently as we came in.
“Ah, the child of prophecy has returned,” he said in greeting. “And you’ve brought your guardian dragon and the Sage of Insight. Good morning, everyone! Would you care for tea?”
I glanced out the open doors at the sun, which was maybe an hour short of setting, and hoped this was just an act. Then I thought about what he’d called us, and suspected that it was. Who was this ancient toad, anyway?
“Hey, old geezer!” Naruto replied airily. “Yeah, tea would be great. But you said you’d tell us about the fall of the gods and the demonic fate if I brought the girls.”
“Yes, yes, nasty business that was,” the great toad replied. “Those young hotheads just kept pushing until it all fell apart. I tried to warn them, you know. Ah, but who listens to an old toad?”
Suddenly, I understood why we were here. It had never occurred to me there might be people still alive who’d witnessed whatever happened back then, but Naruto had gone and found one.
“We will,” I said confidently. “We aren’t gods. We know we don’t know what we’re doing, and the stakes are very high. Please, sir, will you help us figure out what to do?”
He chuckled. “So that’s how it is, eh? Well, I may not have your answers, little lady, but you can always ask your questions.”
I hesitated, and Naruto nodded encouragingly at me. “Go ahead, Sakura,” he said. “I’m not as dumb as I used to be, but you understand this stuff better than I do. I’ll jump in if I think of something you miss.”
“Ok,” I said. “In that case, can you tell us anything useful about this demonic curse that seems to cover the world? I’ve only recently become able to see it, and it’s rather unnerving to realize that it could be influencing anything I do.”
“Ah, you’ve seen beyond the veil, have you? Yes, the first time is always upsetting. Especially now. But the dark powers can only whisper temptation in your ear, you know. They can’t make you listen.”
“I suppose not,” I allowed. “Free will, and all. But they seem to be awfully good at corrupting everyone who can be tempted, and then using them as pawns to pull everyone else down too. It’s not just us I’m concerned about, sir, it’s the whole world. Isn’t there some way to counter their technique?”
The ancient toad leaned back and contemplated me for a long moment.
“Do you think you can make the world a perfect place, Sakura?” He asked gravely.
“Of course not,” I replied immediately. “I wouldn’t know where to start. I’ve always felt that if I can just leave the world better off than it would have been without me, I’ll have done my part. But I’m afraid that evil is terribly close to winning forever on our world, and having some massive fate jutsu constantly trying to corrupt everyone can’t be helping.”
“Ah,” he said, as if I’d just answered some difficult riddle. “But you see, it has always been this way. The powers of darkness spin their curse of despair over the world, and the powers of light reply with their blessing of hope, and in the balance between them mortals work out their own fates.”
I stared at him. It made a horrible kind of sense. Both sides of the cosmic struggle would try to influence mortals to their side somehow, regardless of the situation. Each side would try to counter the other in any given arena, and tugging fate in opposite directions would mostly lead to a deadlock. But there was one little problem with this picture…
“But, sir,” I said, “right now, on our world, there is no blessing of hope.”
If he’d had eyebrows he would have raised one. “Are you sure?”
“Give me a moment,” I said, and sank into a meditative pose. Calling up my true sight was getting easier, but it still took a few minutes of concentration during which I lost awareness of my surroundings. When I came back to myself a much smaller toad was serving my companions tea while Naruto chatted amiably with the toad sage.
“I’m back,” I announced. “I see… yes, I still see a technique made of black chakra covering everything in sight. I see the blue glow of our chakra, and the spirits in the air around us, and the heart of the mountain below us. I see the green of natural energy all around us… wow, this mountain is much brighter than Konoha. Hmm. I see a lot of other things I don’t understand at all. The structure of matter, the curvature of space around the world… no, that’s only a metaphor, isn’t it? The truth is… clouds of possibility interacting in phase space? But every interaction goes every way, we just can’t see it? Wait, then is time itself just an illusion? Ow, now my head hurts. Sorry, I’m still getting the hang of not looking too deep. Anyway, the point is I don’t see any gold chakra at all, aside from the little trace of contamination in my own aura.”
The ancient toad gave me a concerned look. “Child, you haven’t just glimpsed beyond the veil, you’ve torn it aside completely. Come back to us, please, before you lose yourself.”
I blinked, and let my sight lapse back to normal. “My name is Sakura,” I sang experimentally. “Hmm. I’m fine, as far as I can tell. Doing that here isn’t nearly as bad as the time I did it between worlds. But if it’s that dangerous I’ll remember not to do it lightly.”
“I see,” he said speculatively. “Well, if the blessing is gone you’d better call those slackers upstairs and tell them to turn it back on.”
Now it was my turn to raise an eyebrow. “Just like that? I’m sure they want to, so there must be some rule stopping them. Can any random mortal really make a request like that?”
“No,” he said sadly. “It would have to be… oh… the chief kami of our world, I suppose, or a designated representative. That would be… well, no, he died. Then… hmm… none of Amaterasu’s tribe are left, so… yes, and the heroes died out… hmmm… yes… I suppose that would be it, yes.”
I waited politely for several minutes while he stared off into space. Naruto’s patience ran out before mine.
“Well?” He asked. “Who do we need to talk to, old geezer?”
The toad started, and I wondered if he’d managed to fall asleep with his eyes open. “Eh? Oh, yes. The lines of succession are all broken, Naruto. I believe any uncorrupted kami of this world could claim the Throne of the Gods now. But mind you find one with pure gold chakra! Half blue won’t do. Oh no, half blue won’t do… heh heh.”