Land Of Snow Arc (7) : Naruto! My Best Friend!

Everyone paid strict attention to Tachibana's pendulum whether it was Team Seven or everyone on Koyuki's side since they all wanted to know just how dangerous the mission they were currently on was after all.

Tachibana opened his eyes and looked at the pendulum.

'It's spinning clockwise at a decent pace.'

"What does it mean?" Koyuki asked calmly with her hands on the table.

"It should be decently easy for us to do so given we all do things to the best of our abilities, but there will still be one or two setbacks." Tachibana interpreted expertly and calmly.

"Is that so…" Koyuki said with a little apprehension.

That was when Sandayu interrupted, "Koyuki-sama! You must not worry! Every fight between light and dark is won only by our sacrifices! Do not worry about this retainer of yours! He is ready to serve with his life if he has to! And so is everyone else we've gathered!"

'Is this how Maruboshi felt when he sacrificed himself for Konoha?' Tachibana thought. In this moment the old figure of Sandayu and Maruboshi seemed to overlap in his mind.

'Don't the people who sacrifice their lives for people like me deserve to at least be treated well after death? Even if while they were alive they were treated like tools by their superiors?'

Koyuki closed her eyes to think about it all and after a few seconds opened her eyes and looked at Yamato before revealing her decision.

"I will help you help me only if you prepare for everything that could happen. If at a single point, I can no longer see our hope for victory, I will give to Doto exactly what he wants so that no one on our side sufferers further for this worthless land."

Yamato nodded and agreed with her before turning to the director as he explained, "I will need your help for the upcoming parts Director Makino. May we discuss this elsewhere?"

The director nodded and everyone in the room slowly started to leave since they all had various works to complete before the next shoot.

Koyuki was the only one left in the room with Tachibana who was sipping on coffee like it was the tastiest thing he'd ever had.

"Can we really do this?" Koyuki asked Tachibana now that everyone was gone.

"As long as we all give our best, we should be fine." Tachibana nodded and stood up from his chair, "Don't worry about it too much. Instead of worrying about the future, try doing what you can do right now. After all, reality isn't like a movie, if you only wish for what you want without doing it you won't end up with a happy ending."

Koyuki nodded with a smile, allowing Tachibana to return.

Back in his room, Tachibana was surrounded by Sakura, Sasuke and Naruto who were all looking at the armour and the corpse he'd pulled out of his storage seal.

"How did you get him with an explosion tag Tachibana-kun?" Sakura asked with some confusion since she'd wasted a few explosives but each one of them was shielded away by the pink shield.

That was when Sasuke explained, "He killed him not by using an explosion tag but by slicing his neck." Sasuke said pointing at the cut in the man's neck that was sized just enough for a kunai to fit through it.

"Hmm…But how did you do even that? How did you bypass the pink shield?" Sakura still asked.

Tachibana only shook his head for now and said, "I'll explain that to you guys later, but for now I want you to help me find out a weakness in this armour so that we can battle them better later."

Naruto was the only one who looked at the three of his teammates with a frown.

"Are you really not bothered by the smell of his cooked body?"

No one said anything and continued examining the special armour as if they were ignoring Naruto, so he just folded his hands and sat down on the floor, frowning since he knew he didn't know enough to help them without dragging them down.

"Why do you think there's a weakness Tachibana-kun?"

"Because they chose to fight us one on one when it would've been much easier to gather us around Yamato-sensei and force him to fight while protecting us. So there has to be some sort of weakness in the armour that forced them to fight us one on one."

Sasuke's eyes narrowed and he thought back to the fight when he remembered that was exactly what happened he was a little surprised by Tachibana's insight.

"Wouldn't the weakness just be this large circle in the middle on his stomach?" Naruto asked innocently, "I mean in all the superpower shows I see on TV the villain always has a weakness like this!", since he couldn't just stay put in his spot on the floor.

Tachibana patted Naruto's head as if he was pacifying him and spoke like a mother would to a child, "You are right. But we are trying to find out how exactly we exploit this weakness. Go to the fridge, there's a box of ramen in there that you can have."

Naruto nodded and started walking to the fridge to get Ramen, he stopped for a few seconds thinking something was wrong about this situation but after failing to rack his brain for what was wrong he just ignored it and went to get himself a ramen.

Sakura and Sasuke became dumbfounded and looked at Tachibana, but he just waved his hands and brought back the topic to the armour.

"We should first figure out exactly how the armour is activated, then we can test various things to see exactly what we can use to penetrate the pink shield."

"Okay." Sakura nodded while Sasuke began to look around the armour using his Sharingan to see if he could spot something like a switch.

Tachibana traced along the body of the man, seeing if there was some sort of manual activation switch or something but it was Sakura who figured out the switch before the both of them.

"This-" Sakura said pointing at a small circular disk-like thing attached to the exoskeleton around the man's thigh. "-this is the switch, I'm pretty sure. It works when he tightens the muscles in his thigh. It senses that and then activates."

"Is there any way we can test it out right now?" Tachibana asked and Sakura thought for a moment before explaining, "No. The only way would be for us to wear the armour, but I don't know if it is safe…"

"Huh…" Tachibana thought for a while until his eyes landed on Naruto.

"Oh! I have an idea." Tachibana said with a smile that confused Sakura and Sasuke but then they saw him walk towards Naruto.

"Naruto! My best friend!!! You ate my ramen! Now you need to do something for me!" Tachibana said calmly as he swung his arm around Naruto's neck.

Naruto looked at him with an innocent but happy smile as he spoke, "Oh!? What should I do for you!?"

"Nothing, you just need to wear this armour for a little while so that we can study it better!"

"Oh!? That's all? Sure! I don't mind!" Naruto nodded with a broad smile, "You can count on me to help!"

"Un! Un! Such a great best friend you are!" Tachibana proclaimed, causing Sakura and Sasuke to look away as they tried to hold back their laughter.