Naruto and Jiraiya had not actually gotten that far. This turned out to be very convenient for Sakura and Sasuke; they managed to get to the nearby town, sure that this technically counted as a Mission and was thus an acceptable reason to leave the Village, just as Naruto was running for his life trying to find the 'Pervy Sage.' Sakura wanted to calm him down and figure out what was happening, but Sasuke had other ideas as soon as he saw who was following their erstwhile bandmate.
"Itachi."
He remembered being a young boy when Amaterasu appeared before him and granted him his Birthright, explaining his heritage and the duty he now held to the Amatsukami, the Clan that bore their name, and to the Three Worlds.
It wasn't as exciting as it could have been, as he had already been told about it long before his Visitation, but little could prepare one for the majesty of seeing a Goddess in the flesh. It didn't hurt that his father paid attention to him for once; rather than grumble about Clan business or focus on Itachi's behavior, his father finally took him out to the collection of Clan heirlooms and had him try to awaken his first spirit.
It had been an utter disaster. He couldn't speak to a single one; while clearly frustrated, and disappointed that his own biological son didn't turn out to be the prodigy that his wife's child had after Tsuki-Yomi Visited him, he did continue to train the boy. It was more than Sasuke usually got.
Even as Sasuke got older, got better, became far better than many of the Scions of his age, it still wasn't enough. Itachi was the best of his age. Itachi was the pride of the clan. And it was Itachi's distance from the Clan that angered his father, made him become distant from anything that wasn't Clan politics or trying to get Itachi in line.
Well, Sasuke could have lived without his father's approval, in spite of everything, had he managed to get Itachi's. For all that his many issues could technically be laid at his half-brother's feet, he himself couldn't help but join in on the admiration that most of the Village heaped on Tsuki-Yomi's son. It didn't hurt that Itachi himself, at least in his younger years, gave him all the same affection he lacked from his father. The two brothers were close, at least until Itachi started getting sent on the most dangerous missions, started doing more and more covert work for the Village, and ran out of time. That was always the line he fed a young and naive Sasuke, that he didn't have free time.
Sasuke wasn't stupid, however. Something was going on between Itachi and the rest of Clan Amatsukami. He didn't know what it was at the time, and still couldn't begin to guess what could have caused the rift that led to the events that would later transpire, but it was obvious to anyone with eyes that something was brewing.
He would find out what that something was on an otherwise completely unremarkable day. He had had eel for breakfast that morning. The Academy started teaching how to use throwing weapons. He had had a conversation with two mortal Clan members about where to get the best fruit. Things that should have been forgotten quickly were seared into his mind by that afternoon.
Sasuke had walked up to the Clan compound, just like he had done countless times before, and opened the gate only to find a strange stillness. He stepped in, confused, until he saw the bodies of those same mortals he had spoken to that very morning. Lying on the ground, with two clean katana wounds struck straight through their stomachs, drying blood smearing the ground around them.
This was when he started to run, screaming for his father and mortal caretaker. The former was already dead when he found him; the latter was giving out her last breath as his beloved older brother sliced through her torso.
"But…what…?" His mind was unable to process what he was seeing, but Itachi was sure to clear things up.
"I did this," his older half-brother had told him, without the slightest bit of regret or melancholy in his voice, "I killed all of them."
"Why?"
"To prove that I could," was his only response. "I suppose you'll want vengeance, yes? Then hate me."
Sasuke did, in fact, try to use the lesson the Academy had just taught to throw a kunai at Itachi. The far superior fighter of the two dodged it without even letting it distract him from his little speech. "Let that hate fester, let it make you stronger, until you're strong enough to face me. Hate me just like Amaterasu hated Tsuki-Yomi when he killed her favorite chef. Learn from our parents, and then, only after you've learned all you can, seek me out. See if your hatred is strong enough."
Sasuke had no memory of what happened next, which he supposed was intentional on Itachi's part. He woke up hours later, in the hospital with minimal injuries; someone had merely knocked him unconscious. He was still alive solely because his brother chose not to kill him; Sasuke had no delusions otherwise, and if that man thought he could leave Sasuke alive without consequences as part some weird game, then he was going to regret it.
"Itachi, I've fostered my hatred all these years, I've made myself stronger, and I am ready to avenge my Clan-"
"You really aren't," Itachi interrupted, his voice devoid of any emotion. "Go away Sasuke, you don't interest me at the moment."
The Rogue Scion then turned his attention back to Naruto. Sasuke screamed, drawing his naginata and charging at Itachi. The target stepped to the left, grabbed his assailant's wrist, and casually tossed him to the side.
"Ooh, some snacks," Kisame grinned.
"There's no need to create an unnecessary scene," Itachi chastised his companion. "Just grab the Gatekeeper and let's get on our way."
"Still have a soft spot for your little brother? I didn't know you had it in you, you softy," Kisame laughed in response. "Very well, mission first."
Sakura was frozen in terror. These two were clearly out of their league; what could she do if Sasuke was taken down so easily? Even Naruto seemed to be scared, only stopping running when he saw Sasuke tossed to the ground.
"Hey, you're him, aren't you? The guy Sasuke told me to stop if he ever died?"
Itachi stared at the boy. "Entrusting his vengeance to a comrade? His hatred really isn't strong enough. But that's irrelevant today."
"You killed off the Amatsukami Clan, your own family," Sakura realized, "and now you're hunting an innocent boy like Naruto for power."
Itachi gave her a single glance, but turned back to Naruto, who was currently trying to come up with a last minute plan and failing. She wasn't going to sit back and be useless here.
"Justice Purview: Guilt Apparitions!"
She had never targeted two people at once with it. She had also never targeted two people of clearly greater power than her; sure enough, Itachi was unfazed. Weirdly, she got the feeling she had when she tried to activate it on a false accusation, but since Itachi was clearly guilty she just figured he was strong enough to resist it.
Kisame laughed as he looked around at something the others couldn't see. "I'm sorry, old friends, but I don't really regret killing any of you, and you, girly, I'm not going to regret killing you either. She's interfering with the mission, Itachi, don't try and stop me."
She was so simultaneously impressed that it worked on him and distraught that it accomplished nothing that only her intense Wits Knack training kept her safe as he swung his sword and her body dodged of its own accord. It wasn't enough for his next swing, and his enhanced speed and proximity got the better of her, cutting into her arm.
Sasuke felt like he agonized over the decision to deal with his brother or the one about to kill Sakura for several minutes; it was, of course, only a few seconds, but the torment it caused him inside meant that time seemed to slow down. Later he would curse himself, not only for the myriad ways he could have gone about it better but the choice he made.
Leaping to his bandmate's side and pushing her away only to take the sword directly to his torso, feeling the simultaneous sensation of teeth tearing into him and thorns stabbing into his flesh, feeling like he was being both eaten and dissolved, he realized that, in the end, his hatred wasn't strong enough. He had chosen a comrade over his Clan's honor. He had chosen weakness.
Jiraiya was entertaining some beautiful woman with her arm draped around him, who was just fascinated by the fact that he was a famous Scion. Her questions were so deep; he almost suspected that she might be a spy for another Village, but ultimately his lusts won out and he indulged her. He was careful not to give out any important information. In fact, he was actually just explaining the basics of the Guardian Purview, at a mere Hero level specifically, when something about his description behind Vigil Brands bothered him.
"Basically, when you use the Boon on someone, it makes it so you know when they're in danger. So, it's generally a good idea to put it on any allies or friends before you separate-"
I never used it on Naruto. Cursing himself for his stupidity, he ran out of the facility, briefly ran back when the owner started screaming about payment, and then headed for the hotel. Hopefully nothing had happened. It had only been a few hours, after all.
Naruto, out of all the possible thoughts he could have been having at that moment, was hyper-fixated on the pervy sage's refusal to teach him Shadow Mask at the time. He was probably right about how useless it would have been against Neji and Gaara, but now, with this Itachi guy apparently targeting him, he could have used it to hide. He could have been all sneaky about it. As it was, his friends were in danger, so he went for his favored tactic.
"Darkness Purview: Shadow Bodies!"
It was a testament to Itachi's psyche that he was able to remain calm at the moment. Kisame was about to screw up Sasuke's life, thus messing up his own plans for a final redemption, and was doing it in a way that made perfect sense for a Daybreak Agent, so he didn't have a way to stop the Demon without blowing his current plans.
Luckily the Gatekeeper had chosen a tactic that would hide him, or at least give him a reasonable excuse for how he hadn't been found later, assuming that the boy did the smart thing and…Naruto did not do the smart thing. All ten of the Shadow Bodies rushed Itachi and Kisame, charging with their knives out and no clear plan besides fighting alongside their friends. Noble, he supposed, but incredibly stupid and disastrous for his own plans.
The entire ordeal might have ended right then and there had a voice he only knew by reputation not shouted out "Naruto!" At that exact moment. It was, to both his delight and fear, followed up by "Stars Purview: Twist Time!"
Itachi found himself slowing down. Every motion, every action, even to a lesser extent every thought was slower, while the newcomer, who was in fact the legendary Sankami Jiraiya "Tishtrya" Yazata, moved with speed only matched by Dexterity Knacks, though the exact effect of his quick movements didn't seem to be physical but rather, like his own slowness, a matter of a shift in the passage of time. Well, this was certainly an annoying boon, not least because it meant their escape could be hampered.
"Kiiissssaaammmeee, wwweee hhhhaaaveee ttooo ggggoooo!" He struggled to shout as he barely blocked Naruto's knife strikes and felt Jiraiya kick into him, causing the odd sensation of flying to the ground in slow motion.
Kisame was disappointed that he couldn't finish off the two young Scions properly, but accepted the fact that they probably couldn't handle Jiraiya and shouted out "Lore of the Wilds: Command the Wild!" He hoped that the sudden swarm of angry trees, mutant thorns rapidly sprouting all over their branches, would distract them long enough to grab Itachi and get away.
It certainly caught the younger Scions, but Jiraiya himself moved bizarrely quickly to strike at the Demon. Well, two could play at that game.
"Lore of Flesh: Manipulate Nerves! Lore of Fundament: Manipulate Acceleration!" He intoned, concentrating all of the Faith energy he had available to him to get it done quickly.
He felt his nervous system grow jumpy with supernatural energy, and he felt his own torment warp the faith energy that was changing the very concept of accelerating and superheating the air around it. He doubted that it would be enough to even moderately annoy someone like Jiraiya, but that was only a side-benefit anyways as he rushed forward with inhuman speed, both physically enhanced and manipulating speed itself, grabbing Itachi and barely overcoming the effects of the slowed-down time his companion was operating under.
"Water Purview: Create Water!" Jiraiya shouted, attempting to stop them by spraying a stream of liquid into the ground and muddying it, but his opponents were too good for that.
Reaching the tree-line, Kisame merely used his enhanced acceleration to jump from tree to tree and avoid the ground, not that it really would have done much if he was stuck to the ground.
As the effects of 'Twist Time' started to fade, Itachi separated from his companion, intoning "Psychopomp Purview: Marathon Sprinter," and soon was running alongside him with effectively the same enhancements.
"Are you not going to take us out of here on that damn rainbow?" Kisame pondered.
"If we're going back to the hideout, I want to get closer so I drain a lot less Ichor. These last two fights actually took quite a bit out of me."
"Me too. Should we really have given so much to the Web of Pain for that ritual of his?"
"Isn't it the entire reason we're doing all this?" Itachi countered. He was secretly glad. This meant that they could leave without questioning his motives. Plus, Kisame hadn't killed Sasuke yet, and maybe, just maybe, there was time to save the boy's life from Wildhunger's curse.
--
Both Sasuke and Sakura had taken hits from that Demon's strange sword, and both still felt it. It wasn't just the severe wound, even with the feeling of some animal's teeth added onto its natural cut, but that, even after losing contact with the weapon, both of them felt like their Ichor was being drained.
For Sakura, it was miserable, painful, and unlikely to heal for a full day. For Sasuke, it was interacting with the mark the kids from Sacrifice had left on him and causing some feedback loop of pain and suffering that Jiraiya couldn't identify or help with.
"I'll send him back to the Village,' the Sankami noted sadly, "but I doubt that there's anyone there who can solve this. Last I checked, the only Scions still in the Middle-World with a God-level understanding of the Health Purview, and I suspect that that's what it's going to take, are Orochimaru "Quetzalcoatl" Aztlanti and Tsunade "Ganesha" Deva. The first isn't an option, for obvious reasons, and so…"
"We'll find her," Naruto shouted. "I was having doubts about helping you with this, Pervy Sage, I'm not going to lie, but I'll find her with you! We'll save Sasuke!"
Sakura, nursing her wound, tried to stand up. "I'll go with you. I can't stand by, watching him like this, and do nothing."
Once both of the younger Scions were certain that their companion was safely locked in a stretcher on his way back to the Village, and Sakura had it confirmed that she would heal naturally given enough time, they all went on their merry way. Well, that would have been the case if Naruto didn't whine about how long it was taking and Sakura didn't keep pestering him with questions about what Tsunade was like and how they were supposed to find her.
Stopping to rest at a semi-abandoned shrine, seemingly to one of the Amatsukami Gods (a little ironic, considering who they just faced), he sighed.
"Tsunade is a…fantastic warrior when she's focused. One of the best in the Village, easily. But that's only when she's focused. She gets angry very easily, and I should know because it's usually at me."
Naruto scoffed. "I can't imagine why that would be."
Sakura hit him. "Naruto, this is one of the Sankami, knock it out!"
Naruto simply looked at her affronted, until his expression turned to that of someone who knew something the other didn't. "You are about to experience one of the greatest disappointments in your life on this trip."
Both of them said "what's that supposed to mean!" in two varying tones, Sakura's one of genuine confusion and Jiraiya's one of outrage. Naruto merely asked his teacher to go on.
"Well, anyway, since the Hindu Gods stopped producing Scions, or at least seemed to, she's been on a long-term mission to figure out why. However, if my reports are anything to go by, she's been spending a lot of that time…distracted. You see, as Scions get more involved in the darker sides of Village life, they occasionally turn to vices to deal with the stress. Tsunade in particular, has, well, to put it frankly she's been spending a lot of her mission looking down bottles of whiskey and under roulette boards. I have been reliably informed that she has yet to find anything."
They both awkwardly took in the news, Naruto ultimately deciding that he didn't care as long as she could help Sasuke and Sakura a little affronted by this knowledge.
"Isn't she the head of Clan Deva?" Her knowledge of internal Clan politics was a bit sparse, considering how obtuse they tried to be with outborn, but she could have sworn she remembered that much.
"Yes, she has in fact been the longest lasting obstacle keeping Danzo from the position, but that's not important. Just like Clan Heads, really, they don't actually do much. If the Village is at peace, they make sure that their rich families stay rich. If it's at war, then everything they own is the Great God-on-Earth's to command anyways. What is important is that we need her back in the Village, both to save your friend and, well, she has important things to care about that aren't explicitly related to the Clan."
He seemed to clam up at that, and Naruto, seeing it as more political nonsense, was willing to let it go, but Sakura thought over matters, piecing together what she knew about the Village's current political situation…
"Are they making her the Great God-on-Earth?"
"What?!" Naruto shouted out, seeming offended by this bit of news. "Some woman who basically abandoned the Village to get drunk and gamble everything away gets to take the old man's spot!" He stomped his feet. "I don't accept this! The Great God-on-Earth should be someone who cares about the Village, becomes part of its Legend, not someone who runs away to get drunk and waste all her money at casinos!"
"Why don't you tell her that," Jiraiya forced out as he internally sighed. He had, in fact, invited Naruto along because he hoped that the boy could convince Tsunade to return, but it sounded like she disgusted him…just as he was about to consider scolding Sakura for not being a moron and seeing through his plan, he did consider the fact that that might just be what his old bandmate needed to hear. Guide Sarutobi had been right; they couldn't keep hiding behind their terrible memories to shun their responsibilities.
"I will tell her that! Come on, let's find this grandma!"
Of course, calling her that would only get him thrown through a series of walls, so he supposed it would be better to coach his little protege a bit first.
As they came across the first town that he had solid rumors of Tsunade having been in, Jiraiya informed his two Heroes that he would check things out on his own while the two explored the town. Thinking that he was the elder to both of these rookies, he decided that it would be worthwhile to give them some grandfatherly advice.
"Now, there are three things that every Supernatural Man will eventually be tempted with, and it's important that you learn the importance of avoiding them before they incurably corrupt you early on. These are, of course, alcohol, women, and money. So, because you are young and prone to foolish mistakes…"
"I'm not interested in women," Sakura interrupted. "And both of us look like mortal children. No one in a town like this is going to serve us alcohol."
Naruto agreed with her. "Plus, we don't really make that much money at our level. And who in the Underworld are you to lecture us on getting tempted by women!"
Indignant, Jiraiya huffed in response. "I'm one of the Sankami, and I for one know how temptation can strike even the most innocent of young Scions. I was going to do the favor of looking after your cash for you, as not only would it save you from danger but I would also be better suited to protecting it from pickpockets, but if you're so certain…".
Naruto had no interest whatsoever in handing over his hard-earned savings after finally saving some, but Sakura nodded and handed him her wallet.
"If it helps one of our Village's Gods, then I'm glad to offer whatever it takes."
You poor fool, Naruto thought as he stared at his companion's actions, but kept it to himself. He had been hit by her enough times already.
As Naruto and Sakura enjoyed the small town, trying out new foods and delights only to find out that the whole place was indistinguishable from the mortal district back in the Village (they were still in the Land of Heroes, after all), Jiraiya found a gambling establishment that only allowed high rollers but kept a staff of beautiful women to fawn over the customers and hint at what they would be willing to do if the guy who just won big bet just a little more on certainly winning the next roll too…Tsunade wouldn't have been interested in that last part, but Jiraiya definitely was, and on a more serious note it meant that they would prefer less-than-legal means of enforcing their debt collection and thus wouldn't really have any means of stopping a Supernatural of Tsunade's caliber from simply running away when she lost more than she could provide the House, which would definitely interest her.
"What's with the bowing?" Naruto eventually asked as the fourth person they passed did so while the two walked around the street.
"This place is relatively far from the Village and out of the way from most travel. They probably don't see many Scions. We're like, well, Gods to them."
Sure enough, a group of children was not-so-surreptitiously staring at them from around a corner, and, when Naruto waved at them, they scurried.
"Run away or they'll call a lightning bolt down on us!" One shouted.
"My mom says they only hurt you if you don't do your chores!"
"Oh no, I skipped the laundry. It was a mistake, I just forgot!" The last kid started crying in terror as he fled from his apparent punishers. He quickly got too far away for them to do anything about it.
"Worshipped….and feared, apparently," Sakura continued her earlier thought. Most of the food stall workers had been pleasant enough, at least when they learned that Scions used the same currency as humans, until they came across a guy selling ice-cream who, when they approached, took a look at their headbands and blanched.
"Will your business here…involve anything dangerous?" He sputtered out.
After looking to one another, Naruto and Sakura both asked, "what do you mean?"
"Are you here to assassinate someone? Or find rebels? Or fight some Titanspawn? If you are, are you going to be summoning huge flames or commanding the weather in a way that might destroy the buildings? It's been a while since one of your kind was around here, and people might not remember to evacuate in time." His hands jumped up, like he expected them to react violently to the question.
"We're just trying to find someone," Sakura said. "There shouldn't be any fights."
His narrowed gaze showed that he didn't really believe them, but out loud he merely said, "shouldn't, alright, that's good, here, have some of our best ice cream and go along."
He handed them two bars of the frozen milk-substance and shooed them away.
"How much does it co-"
"Irrelevant, now get out of here!" He shouted through a strained smile.
"That was weird," Naruto thought out loud as he bit into his frozen treat. "But hey, free ice cream!"
Sakura was lost in thought over the interaction. "You know, I forgot what it was like to be mortal."
Staring at an old woman struggling to lift a jug of water, she pondered the fact that she could do so easily and that anyone with Strength Knacks could do it with one hand and not even notice the weight.
"It must be so weird, knowing that we could kill any one of them and that there's not really anything they could do about it, besides calling in more Scions. It must be so…scary. And disempowering."
Naruto was utterly confused by her line of thought. "Eh, we're their protectors, why should they be afraid of us? We're the good guys!"
"If they thought so, then why do they keep us in Villages?" Sakura said more to give voice to her own thoughts than to answer Naruto's question.
This only confused him more. "You know, I remember you and Kakashi talking about that on the whole 'Gato' mission. About the reasons why we're confined to Villages and whatnot, and I don't fully get it. Isn't the Village Hidden in Legends where Scions are supposed to go? Our God-parents said so. Why should there be more to it?"
"And as I recall you saying back then, you didn't really have a choice. None of us have a choice over whether we were born as a mortal or a Scion, and I don't really buy that eight-year-old me telling Athena that I rejected her offer and didn't want to be one of the people that I was taught to idolize growing up in the Village, didn't want to get cool powers, didn't want to get rid of the biggest barrier between me and my best friend at the time, was a free and fair choice. Doesn't it seem a little unfair to you?"
"Knowing what you do now, would you have chosen to be a mortal, not confined to the Village?"
It was a surprisingly astute question, considering the asker, and it put a pause to her line of questioning. To say she 'chose' her life was still a bit unfair, but looking at how terrified the mortals were, thinking on how frail they all were, and wondering if technical freedom from the Village's walls would've been worth it, she couldn't honestly say yes. If that was the case, did it really matter whether she had a 'real' choice?
--
"Now what's a handsome man like you doing in a place like this?" A beautiful woman asked Jiraiya, rubbing a long finger across his chin.
"Looking to make some money," he said as his eyes roamed up and down her body, imagining all the things he'd love to do to her. "Though I may be a bit late. I heard that the Legendary Sucker herself was around these parts. A shame that I couldn't clear her out."
"A shame, indeed, that you must bring up other customers. I'm not allowed to talk about them. We value privacy here."
Her bare leg slipped out of her dress as she spoke. He was hooked, but had the presence of mind not to let her know that. Sort of.
Without taking his eyes off of her leg, he asked, "and since I apparently can't make money so easily, why don't I spend a little," taking out Sakura's wallet and seeing what she had, he felt that it was clearly enough to not notice a week's pay missing and continued, "are you sure that that won't loosen your lips?"
She smiled. "We'll see, if you want to spend some time…alone."
--
Sakura and Naruto continued their tour of the increasingly boring town, only pausing when a man spat at them.
"Damn Scions. First that woman runs up a ridiculous debt, then not only runs off without paying but destroys three of my rafters while doing so, but now I have some brats hanging around from the same damned Village. Aren't there any other towns with buildings you can destroy?"
Naruto and Sakura glanced to one another, then to the angry man. "This other Scion…."
"I don't know a gods-damned thing about your stupid magic business, and I don't want to! If you're looking for the bitch so you can take her into justice, then fine, check out my establishment for clues and then leave. If not, well, then just leave!"
As rude and minimalist as it was, a lead was a lead, and both Heroes were excited to check out the place, only to be interrupted upon entering by some shouting in one of the private back-rooms that they gladly would have ignored if the response to said shouting didn't seem to come from Jiraiya's mouth. Venturing to pull back a curtain and see what that was about, both looked on in horror at the senior member of their current party, the responsible adult of the group, with a bottle of booze in one hand and the other draped around a half-naked woman who was whining about his wallet being empty. While both were disgusted by the entire thing, Sakura in particular could not help but stare at the empty wallet in question, which was not his but hers.
"Three things that every Supernatural Man will be tempted with, huh?" Sakura's mouth twitched. "Alcohol, women, and money, right?"
"Exactly!" Jiraiya shouted when he saw the pair. "Look what it turned me into! I'm saving you from the future-" the excuse died on his lips as he looked into Sakura's eyes.
Somehow, he saw that same fire that always filled Tsunade's when Jiraiya had done something that made her want to kill him. How did she pull it off like that? Was this Band growing a little Tsunade, because if so he really needed to get better about teaching Naruto before the boy got himself killed. It was mere Fate that had spared himself as a Lesser Hero.
Such concerns were interrupted by a bouncer. "L
"Hey, we don't want any fighting in the hall, and we definitely don't want any Supernatural fighting. We've had enough of that nonsense."
"Relax, man," Jiraiya addressed the interloper before anyone else in the crowd could intervene, "I was actually just leaving."
"Not without paying," the woman he was with harrumphed. "You owe me well over 500 more than you gave me."
"I didn't have 500 in that wallet," Sakura said in an emotionless voice, the twitch of her eyelid increasing significantly.
"A cheapskate, eh?" The bouncer cracked his knuckles. "We know how to deal with your kind, and don't even think about trying your fancy tricks, as I can tell that you're from the Village Hidden in Legends and as loyal subjects of the King of the Land of Heroes, we have rights-"
"Stars Purview: Aurora Cloak," Jiraiya shouted, summoning a dazzling display of glowing and dancing lights of green and blue that entranced the mortals, making them unable to focus on anything other than its beauty. Sakura and Naruto were entranced as well, but they immediately snapped out of it when their wayward companion grabbed them by the shoulder and pulled them out of there.
"That didn't cause any physical damage! You can contact the Village, but you'll barely get a pittance for it!" He shouted back as they ran.
Once they were safely away from any would-be mortal debt-collectors (as well as Sakura's empty wallet, which she was still miffed about), the three gathered together to hold an important discussion.
"What in the cold depths of the Underworld was that about, Pervy Sage?" Naruto demanded.
"Stop calling me that, it's disrespectful to one of the Sankami-"
"Shut up you old pervert," Sakura interrupted. "The only thing wrong with his phrasing is calling you a 'sage.'"
His face fell, but rather than waste time correcting the two youngsters on the many feats of the legendary Jiraiya, he let them know what he was doing.
"I was gathering information. Tsunade had been there, and I needed to learn where she was going next."
"We found that out, too, and we didn't spend any money to do it!" Naruto pointed out.
"Did you find out where she went?" Jiraiya challenged.
"Umm….away to another town with buildings to destroy?"
Jiraiya smirked. "She went to the nearest gambling hall not owned by the Raichi brothers, whom she's in severe debt toward. And that, of course, would happen to be in Castle Town, just a week's journey from here. And that, my friends, is how you gain information."
Rather than dignify that (or concede that he was technically right), the two instead despaired of having to walk for another week.
"And I'm guessing that your promise to teach me about the Stars Purview was a lie also," Naruto got out amidst his other grumbling.
Realizing that the boy, at least, could be pacified, Jiraiya reached into an old, rarely used pocket and pulled out an heirloom he hadn't bothered with in a long time. It was an hourglass, one side glowing blue and the other glowing red, but otherwise completely plain.
"It glows blue when a side has no sand. It glows red when more than one-third of the sand is on a single side." Turning it so that the sand started falling from the red side to the side that immediately changed to dull brown, he continued, "From sunrise to sunset, do not let a single side glow either color. You can only turn the hourglass over 3 times in one hour, and you cannot keep it on its side, it must be standing up. Do that successfully, and you'll have done the first step to understanding the first Boon of Stars."
Naruto didn't really get it, especially when he screamed in frustration after two hours straight of it glowing again and again in spite of his best efforts, but he was determined to try. The Stars Purview looked cool whenever Pervy Sage did it, and he wanted a new weapon in his arsenal. Plus, as Sakura was stifling her laughter at his failure, he felt like he needed to show that he actually could do this. No one in the Academy believed he could do anything with Purviews, and even though he had proven himself capable of Darkness, Earth, and Animal (Horse) since then, he could still hear their doubts in the back of his mind, and maybe mastering the least known of the General Purviews would finally silence them.
And thus, the first day of their journey went forth. Naruto spent the time trying (and failing) to get the timing down while Sakura plotted her revenge on the Sankami for wrecking her finances. Both were confident that this woman would be found and Sasuke saved by the time the week ended.
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Techniques:
Stars Purview: Twist Time-accelerates time around one person while slowing it down around another
Lore of Flesh: Manipulate Nerves-Pure Form-enhances the user's nervous system, expanding their reaction time and sense of feel
Lore of Fundament: Manipulate Acceleration-Pure Form-alters the way gaining speed works for the user. Corrupted Form-heats the air around the user on top of its normal affect, as surrounding particles are accelerated
Water Purview: Create Water-exactly what it sounds like
Psychopomp Purview: Marathon Sprinter-doubles running speed and halves the energy it takes to run long distances
Stars Purview: Aurora Cloak-creates an aurora effect that supernaturally compels others to focus on it, and makes it difficult to focus on the user