Aftermath

"Lord Chixing... I happen to have a few things I'd like to ask you. Would you be interested?"

The battle for the Talismans had ended, and seeing that only he and Chixing were left nearby, Orochimaru immediately began hatching a scheme.

Uncle, who was wary of him, wasn't around. This was the perfect time to gather information.

"But... I have to meet up with Uncle..."

Chixing scratched his head and had just started to say more when Orochimaru interrupted him. "It seems Uncle never specified when you had to meet up with him, Lord Chixing?"

"Besides... after fighting for so long, you must be hungry, right?"

"I've been on a mission in Amegakure before, so I know a really good restaurant there."

Chixing had fought ferociously, but whenever Uncle wasn't around, Patrick Star's dopey instincts came right to the fore. The moment he heard there was food, his face lit up like a child's, and he started drooling.

In a private room at a restaurant in Amegakure, Chixing's eyes sparkled as he gazed at the dazzling spread on the table. He didn't care about the "table manners" Uncle had taught him; he just buried his head and dug in!

"Heh... take your time, Lord Chixing. No one's going to steal your food."

As Chixing gobbled down the dishes, looking completely off guard, Orochimaru knew his chance had come. He promptly asked, "You said before that you're from Bikini Bottom, didn't you, Lord Chixing?"

Orochimaru was very curious about this "Bikini Bottom." He had lived for decades, traveled the Ninja World, and read widely. He even knew a little about some of the small countries on the outskirts of the Ninja World, yet he had never even heard of this supposed "Bikini Bottom."

"Bikini Bottom is my hometown. It's located twenty thousand meters beneath the sea... The scenery is beautiful, and the climate is pleasant..."

Halfway through, Chixing suddenly seemed to get stuck. A little steam rose from his pointed head. "I think that's how SpongeBob taught me to say it..."

"Don't rush, Lord Chixing. If you can't remember, that's all right. I won't make you feel awkward. Why don't we change the subject and talk about your friend named 'SpongeBob'?"

Orochimaru's expression barely changed, but inside he was laughing so hard he was nearly losing his mind. They can survive in the deep sea?! No wonder Chixing's body is so astonishingly tough! I'd love to dissect him and see what he's made of!

"SpongeBob?! No, no! Marshal of Crab Kingdom said I should call him by his codename, 'Yellow Sponge'!"

"He's my best friend! He's also one of the Three Admirals of Bikini Bottom. He has the power to turn his body into light, and he's the fastest among us!"

At the mention of Yellow Sponge, Chixing eagerly recounted their adventures together. He was no longer the dull-witted fellow he had seemed earlier. By the time he had eaten his fill and was ready to meet up with Uncle, he had let slip all the information about Bikini Bottom.

"Lord Chixing, go meet up with Uncle first. I still have a few things to take care of..."

"Oh, okay!"

Watching Chixing's pink figure swagger out of the private room, Orochimaru took out a scroll and a pen and began recording the information he had revealed.

Bikini Bottom was a town deep beneath the sea. It had an organization similar to Konoha's ninja village, called the "Bikini Bottom Navy." As the name suggested, they were the "soldiers" who guarded the waters around Bikini Bottom.

The Three Admirals of Bikini Bottom were its three most powerful figures. They called one another by their codenames: "Chixing," "Yellow Sponge," and "Blue Octopus." Each Admiral wielded a special power tied to a different element, and all three were extremely powerful.

Above the three Admirals was the "Marshal of Crab Kingdom," the leader of the Bikini Bottom Navy, who commanded every resident of Bikini Bottom...

"Heh... Bikini Bottom... It sounds like a fascinating place..."

Orochimaru put away the scroll and looked at the fantastical claims written on it. Honestly, if they hadn't come from a creature whose physical structure and abilities were utterly unlike anything in the Ninja World, he would never have believed a single word. At most, he would have laughed them off as a child's fanciful imaginings.

"What?! The Talismans you got your hands on were snatched away by people from Konoha?!"

"And it was Orochimaru, a student of Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Hokage?!"

In the Land of Fire's capital, Yuan Shixiu dug at his ears and asked again to make sure he'd heard correctly.

Only after seeing the Twelve Guardian Ninja and the Shadowkhan looking like they had suffered a crushing defeat, along with the body lying in the garden outside, did he finally accept that his ears hadn't deceived him.

"Fine! I knew that old fool Sarutobi Hiruzen had gotten senile! He even dares to step on my toes now!"

Although the Daimyo and the Hokage were equals in status, the Daimyo clearly held more power. What's more, the Daimyo controlled Konoha's very "lifeline."

In the Naruto movie The Will of Fire, the Daimyo of the Land of Fire had ordered the Hokage at the time—namely, the Fifth Hokage, Tsunade—to capture the missing-nin Himiko. Otherwise, he would destroy Konoha and replace it with another ninja village.

But "destroy" clearly didn't mean destroying the village by military force. It meant destroying it financially.

As everyone knew, being a ninja was an incredibly expensive profession. The money Konoha's countless civilians paid in taxes, along with the daily bounty from tens of thousands of missions, wasn't nearly enough to support all its ninja.

Most of the time, the village needed financial assistance from the Daimyo to keep operating normally.

If the Daimyo cut off Konoha's funding, he would undoubtedly be cutting off its lifeline.

But... it wasn't time to burn bridges yet. He had the Shadowkhan, but his own forces hadn't grown strong enough to disregard Konoha. I'd better just give them a warning for now...

Though he couldn't burn bridges just yet, he could still cut some of the funding. He could also make sure that Hokage Sarutobi Hiruzen saw exactly what his precious student had done!

Meanwhile, over in Konoha—

"Hmm... So this is the Talisman?"

Sarutobi Hiruzen examined the Horse Talisman in his hand for quite a while, but couldn't make heads or tails of it. It looked no different from an ordinary stone.

"Uncle said the Horse Talisman doesn't simply heal. It drives away external forces from all things, restoring them to their most perfect, flawless state..."

"Hiruzen, why don't we test it first?"

Mitokado Homura adjusted his glasses and suggested.

"Shall we try it on this Kunai?"

Utatane Koharu pulled out a somewhat rusty Kunai. As the director of Konoha Hospital and a support specialist, she rarely had to fight, so she didn't maintain her ninja tools often. Over time, the Kunai had rusted in her pouch.

--Whoosh!

A green light covered the entire office. When it faded, the rusty Kunai had been restored to pristine condition, as if it had just come off the assembly line.

"It's just like new!"

None of the three tried to hide their astonishment. Konoha Ninja consumed tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of ninja tools every year. There were also all the buildings that needed repairs and renovations. The Horse Talisman could undoubtedly save Konoha an astonishing amount of money.

And... in wartime, the Horse Talisman's power would reach its full potential. Konoha would have no wounded and would be invincible.

"By the way, where's Danzo?"

Just as they were celebrating Konoha's newfound strength, Sarutobi Hiruzen noticed that one of his old friends—the one who was always muttering on and on—was missing.

Wasn't he usually the one most interested in anything that could improve the village's fighting strength?

"Ever since he came back from Amegakure, he seems to have been holed up in Root?"

"Forget it! Never mind him. Let's look at Orochimaru's top-secret report first!"