Mei Terumi was torn.
Reason told her she couldn't lightly trust a powerful outsider who had just slain her village's own Kage. Uchiha Chizumi's creed of "Absolute Justice" sounded noble, but who could guarantee it wasn't just a gilded cloak for conquest? What if he was using that rhetoric to lower the Mist's guard while hiding an intent to invade?
The doubt flashed through her mind—and she forcibly pushed it away. The tangle in her chest eased.
The reason was simple.
If Uchiha Chizumi truly harbored malice, he could have had Jūzō Biwa—who knew Kirigakure's terrain far better—lead him straight in. He hadn't. Instead, he'd given her and Ao a "choice." That alone was a signal.
Cooperate, and perhaps win a sliver of life; resist, and they might immediately share the Fourth Mizukage's fate.
Even if that was largely her own reading and she couldn't be sure it was right, she couldn't take the risk.
I can't die here yet— Mei told herself.
Kirigakure's future still needs someone to change it. If she died pointlessly in this man's hands now, every hope and effort would evaporate.
Under Ao's startled, faintly disapproving stare, Mei set her jaw and gave a solemn nod, as if making up her mind. She met Uchiha Chizumi's calm gaze. "Fine. I'll take you to Kirigakure."
She hesitated, then added something that even she found hard to believe herself: "But Uchiha Chizumi—if your actions don't match your words, if you truly mean harm to the Mist—I'll stop you, even if it costs me my life."
After she said it, even she wasn't sure where that courage had come from. Maybe, deep down, there was something she valued above her own life.
"You can rest easy."
It was Izumi, standing behind Uchiha Chizumi, who spoke then, her tone earnest:
"Chizumi-senpai has no ambition to invade your village, and he's not the type to spark a war between nations. His goal has always been to purge the evils of the shinobi world."
Ao glanced left and right, lips moving as if to argue or warn—but Mei shot him a sharp, wordless look, and he swallowed the words. The worry on his face didn't fade.
Cough… cough—
Meanwhile, several kilometers from the battlefield, in a torn-up forest—
Momochi Zabuza, mustering everything he had left, used his one good arm to heave a massive log off his chest. Pain like tearing sinew raked him from head to toe; every breath felt like a knife. He turned his head with effort.
A fellow Mist Anbu beside him was pinned to the waist by a boulder, dark blood seeping along the stone's edge and soaking the scorched earth. The man was already still.
Zabuza let out a slow, metallic-tasting breath. By sheer will he staggered to his feet, swaying. Every movement tugged on who knew how many fractures and internal injuries.
He lifted his head and looked out across a wasteland blackened as if by a god's wrath. Two colossal craters gouged by Tailed Beast Bombs lay like wounds in the earth. Farther off, a great mountain had collapsed to either side. In some ravines, dark red magma still trickled, the reek of sulfur riding the wind and needling his dizzy brain.
Who won? … Who lost?
Blood from a head wound blurred one eye, but he still frowned hard. More than the "minor" miracle of cheating death, he cared about whether the Fourth Mizukage—that nightmare of blood-mist for Kirigakure and the Land of Water—had been killed by the enemy.
Gritting his teeth, he fought through the feeling that his body was falling apart, dragged a nearly useless leg, and inched toward the heart of the devastation.
At a turtle's pace like his, by the time he'd spent himself and all but collapsed onto the core of the scorched plain, night had fully fallen. Only the dull red glow from the magma-filled cracks gave this dead land a little light.
Exhausted, pale as paper and gasping, he looked around—no sign of Yagura Karatachi, the Fourth Mizukage; no trace of the Molten Release monster from Konoha either. Only the shocking scars of the battle.
A deathly silence settled over Zabuza. It told him everything he needed to know.
The Mizukage… was dead.
If the Mizukage had won, he would have stayed, rallying survivors and rebuilding the lines.
"Hah…"
A taut string in his chest seemed to snap. Zabuza went limp and fell back onto the still-warm cinders, staring up at a moonless, starless sky veiled in dust.
"Today—"
"What a farce—"
"Like a dream."
He murmured, weakly.
…
Konoha, in the corner of a nondescript little tavern.
Jiraiya slumped in his chair, pouring sake down his throat cup after cup. A faint haze of alcohol wrapped him, leaving him hollow, nothing like the spirited sage who once chased the "Child of Prophecy."
"Tsunade's side—there's no way she's letting me near Naruto," he grumbled, bleary-eyed to the two Toad Sages on the table. "And the old man doesn't seem to fully grasp the Great Toad Sage's prophecy either."
He sighed heavily. "And there's another Sage backing Tsunade, openly against us taking Naruto. The pushback is too much."
He rubbed his throbbing temples. "After that run-in, the Konoha Police are watching me like I'm a thief. If I get close to Uzumaki Naruto on purpose, those Uchiha will show up immediately. If I insist on taking him, they'll see me as an enemy of 'justice'—and then I'd be forced to fight them."
He tilted back another cup, voice drained. "And I am not going to raise a hand against comrades in the village. I've got nothing."
Fukasaku and Shima exchanged a long look, both seeing the same helplessness in the other's eyes. They hadn't expected bringing the Child of Prophecy to Mount Myōboku to be this hard—ten times harder than finding him in the first place. From top to bottom, the whole village seemed, invisibly, to be thwarting Myōboku's plan.
"You've reached the Great Toad Sage, right?" Jiraiya set his cup down, a last ember of hope in his voice. "Any new guidance?"
Fukasaku shook his head. "Not yet. But—the Master seems to have… left Mount Myōboku."
"What?" Jiraiya blinked, sobering a little. In his mind, the thousand-year-old Great Toad never left the sacred mountain.
Shima added, uncertain, "We don't know where he went—he didn't tell us. My guess is the Master went to see the Sage."
Jiraiya thought he understood. "He's going to negotiate with the Slug Sage himself?"
"Something like that," Shima said.
Silence fell again. Three pairs of eyes met, none sure what to do next.
…
Elsewhere, in Shikkotsu Forest—one of the Three Great Sacred Grounds, alongside Mount Myōboku.
Just as Shima had guessed, the Great Toad Sage's immense figure now loomed over this verdant, ancient land. Opposite him stood a massive clone of the Slug Sage, nearly as large as he was.
The Great Toad plopped down heavily. From who knew where, he produced two bowls bigger than a person and a bottle of rich, custom shōchū. He filled both; the liquor rippled. Lifting his heavy lids, he regarded the gentle-auraed slug clone, raised a bowl, and drank half in one go.
Only then did he speak, voice old and weighty. "Sage, you know my prophecies aren't idle talk. You and I both lived through the cataclysm a thousand years ago that nearly capsized the shinobi world. Our world has always been under certain beings' thumb."
He spoke with the heft of history. "Everything Myōboku has done is to steer the shinobi world away from its fated end. The Child of Prophecy—Uzumaki Naruto—is the only hope to reform and free it at a critical moment in the future."
"Without the right guidance, even I cannot foresee how deep a darkness the shinobi world might slide into. Perhaps—its total ruin is not impossible."
The slug clone glanced down at the comically oversized bowl before it and gently shook its head. "I don't drink."
Then it answered. "If Naruto truly is the 'savior' of prophecy, his path needn't run only through Myōboku. The ideal and power of 'Absolute Justice' could also raise him into a worthy guardian of the shinobi world."
"Since even your prophecies can't clearly see what 'Absolute Justice' will bring, why not watch and wait a while?"
It continued, mild and patient: "You might find in the practice of 'Absolute Justice' a road to a better future that looks nothing like your past prophecies."
The Great Toad was silent for a long moment; his huge frog face unreadable. "Because the uncertainty around 'Absolute Justice' is too great. Neither Myōboku—nor the entire shinobi world—can afford that risk."
"In the past, through the Child of Prophecy, Myōboku brought a millennium of relative peace to the shinobi world. That shows the path I chose works."
He paused. "'Absolute Justice' is an unprecedented road; the fog ahead is thick. I can't see its future at all. Sage, as I recall, you're not the type to gamble. Will you tell me why you insist?"
The slug clone didn't seem surprised. It answered frankly. "You glean fragments of the future from your dreams. I—have seen another possibility through observation."
"Mount Myōboku needn't be so biased against 'Absolute Justice.' You haven't even tried to understand it deeply—how can you conclude it can't bring a better future than in your visions?"
"So I suggest you wait and see. For beings like us, time isn't scarce. Perhaps one nap's time is all it will take to witness the change."
The Great Toad drew a deep breath, then slowly rose from his wide-legged seat. He looked hard at the slug clone and finally said, "The risk—remains huge. But since you insist… I can leash my impatience and watch for now."
"Thank you for understanding," the clone replied gently.
As the Great Toad's vast form vanished into Shikkotsu Forest's mists, the clone seemed to deflate, its whole body slackening. In a voice only it could hear, it muttered, feebly, "I'm just a tiny clone—why am I the one sent to handle negotiations at this level with a Myōboku sage? I thought if the mood went south, that frog might swallow me whole…"
The ground under it gave a faint shiver, as if answering. A soft, indistinct wave of intent washed through.
Then—
The clone's body melted into the earth beneath like a drop of water into the sea.
A heartbeat later—
Rrrrumble—
All of Shikkotsu Forest began to quake. A head so vast it defied words rose slowly from the depths of the earth. There was no telling how large its body truly was; it felt like the sacred land itself.
The Slug Sage's true body gazed quietly into the distance.
Silent.