By the time Tsubaki and Sasuke returned, they found the royal capital in a state of total upheaval over the king's assassination. The prime minister had placed the city under lockdown overnight, but since there were no shinobi anywhere in the Land of Redaku besides themselves, it was only too easy for them to bypass the guards and retrace their steps to the slums, just outside of the city walls.
Following Sakura's massive chakra signature, the pair soon found themselves standing before a hole in the city wall, where they found the Sixth Hokage herself lounging on top of a gigantic blue and white slug.
"Took your sweet time, didn't you?" Sakura yawned as she sat up. "Orochimaru's taken care of? And hello, who's this little fellow?"
Sasuke's pet velociraptor ruffled its feathers and trilled in greeting.
"Tsubaki sealed Orochimaru in ice at the bottom of the catacombs," Sasuke explained. "The crypts have also been flooded, and I've blocked the exit we made with earth style, so I doubt he's going anywhere any time soon."
Sakura nodded.
"I did hear something about some flooding at the palace," she said. "That was your handiwork?"
"It wasn't us," Tsubaki said moodily. "While I was looking for information about the Sage of Six Paths in the royal library, I learned about the ninja tool he gave to the king of Redaku in his era: the Shuigu, a water-making ringed staff… the symbol of kingship."
It was an immensely powerful artefact that barely consumed any of its wielder's stamina to produce any amount of water at will. It was a shame the people of this arid land needed its powers to survive, or Sakura would have confiscated it… for their own good, naturally.
"It seems like things are about to change a great deal around here," Sakura murmured, once Tsubaki had finished explaining her suspicions concerning the coup led by the prime minister against the royal family. "Well, it's an internal matter of Redaku's, so it's not really up to us to interfere, not unless the queen consort or her newborn babe decides to take up the Hidden Leaf's services… I'll drop a flyer in her mailbox before I leave."
Even without Orochimaru's help, the prime minister would doubtlessly have found a way to assassinate his way to power. After all, it was a well-known fact that all Grand Viziers inevitably developed the urge to become Caliph in the old Caliph's stead at some point in their careers.
"Concerning the Sage of Six Paths' disease, I did find a clue," Tsubaki said, taking out the yellowed booklet titled Manuscript: Six Paths Journal and the piece of bone she had picked up in the royal family's crypt at the bottom of the catacombs. "Here."
"What's this old thing for?" asked Sakura, her lip curling in disgust as she gingerly picked up the shard with two fingers. "Ugh, it reeks of snake shit…"
Some of Orochimaru's white goo had ended up soaking through Tsubaki's clothes and into the bone. Thankfully, the manuscript had escaped the same fate, sealed up tightly in one of her special pouches.
"It's written in the old tongue, so I was thinking of using the Edo Tensei to revive a translator…"
"No need for that, I can do it myself," Sakura said dismissively, flicking the bone away. "Now let's see, here…"
Sakura fired up the System's auto-translate feature and scanned the faded words written across the book's yellowed pages. If there was anything her stupid System was good for, it was decrypting encoded text and cheating at go and shōgi.
[Wasting away from a strange and curious malady, the Sage of Six Paths did journey unto his favoured place of repose, desiring to spend his final days within his beloved Land of Redaku, and there did he meet with the Astronomer Jean-Marc Tatar. Upon an evening, Tatar espied a falling star, whereupon the Sage of Six Paths did catch the star in his palm and cleave it in twain for the lolz.]
"How are you doing that?" Tsubaki said in astonishment as Sakura recited what the System displayed. "Aren't we supposed to have the same specs and memories?"
[A bright light did spill forth from the cloven star and the Sage was delivered from the illness that had plagued him these many years. The star had bestowed upon him a most blessed strength, allowing his chakra to expand without limit. The substance within the star Tatar did name ultra-rare chocolatey-fudge-coated sugar-sprinkled mega-ultra-super particles.]
"A person from a thousand years ago said that?" Sasuke said, frowning.
"I'm paraphrasing, of course," Sakura replied, her eyes gliding over the rest of the text. "In any case, it seems the Sage of Six Paths split up the particles, sealing one half in the 'Sky that fell to the Earth,' and the other in 'the star that never strays,' and that any who would seek out this power must tarry in the Land of Redaku and revel with the map of the heavens…. Hmm."
Sakura was fairly certain that last part had something to do with card games… but her life on Earth seemed like an eternity ago, she really couldn't remember. She hadn't paid any attention to the riddle.
"The star that never strays… could that be the polar star?" Tsubaki said thoughtfully. "From our perspective, the night sky spins around the north star, which always stays in the same place…"
The polar star just happened to line up with the shinobi planet's axis, so it never seemed to move.
"I didn't mention it earlier, but I also skimmed over a passage describing how the stars increased," Sakura argued. "The Sage of Six Paths created the moon a thousand years ago, so from the point of view of this Jean-Marc Tatar fellow, the number of celestial bodies would have increased, right? It fits. The moon regularly orbits us, so I think one half might be on the moon… oh, right."
Upon seeing the puzzled expressions of Tsubaki and Sasuke, Sakura realised that since Kaguya had never been revived, nobody but her knew about the true history of the sealing of the Ten-Tails and the moon's birth. Hadn't the Sage of Six Paths' ghost told him? It was getting difficult to keep track of who knew what…
In any case, both Sakura's and Tsubaki's guesses were wrong.
"Ahem, moving right along… the sky that fell to the earth could just be the reflection of the sky in some pond or lake," Sakura deduced. "But which one, though?"
"A meteor crater lake," Tsubaki said immediately. "Remember the line about the Sage of Six Paths splitting a star?"
Bemused, Sasuke watched as the two identical girls bounced ideas off each other in quick succession. Despite their differences, they were still the same girl he had fallen in love with, at the end of the day…
"The meteorite that killed the dinosaurs… that one came far earlier than a thousand years ago, no? At any rate, a meteor large enough to survive burning up in the atmosphere would have left a tell-tale impact crater, one that would definitely appear on a topographical map," Sakura said thoughtfully. "But more importantly, that much kinetic energy doesn't simply disappear upon impact… it gets stored as potential energy within the planet's crust, to be periodically released in the form of earthquakes over the next hundreds of millions of years!"
Somewhere an astronomer would live… with a nearby impact crater, and lots of earthquakes… it was time to hit the maps and the books once again.