"Any luck yet?" Sakura asked Tachibana who was helping her find where the Hex Crystal Key would go.
After retrieving Koyuki Yamato praised Tachibana for keeping her safe. He then became busy handling the aftermath of the matters regarding them suddenly killing the ruling Daimyo, Doto.
So to keep Team Seven busy, Yamato tasked Team Seven to search for the reason Doto was looking for the Hex Crystal Key.
It was mostly to distract Sasuke from the pain of losing an eye after he woke up, but that didn't work well since with half his vision gone, Saskue kept bumping into random things and making his own life harder.
Eventually, Yamato assigned Naruto and Sasuke another mission, which was to spar with each other and train their Taijutsu while Sakura and Tachibana searched for the lock that required the key.
"I don't understand these seals very well, probably only Yamato sensei will be able to crack them.", Tachibana explained as he was hunched over the strange seals in the treasury that represented Koyuki's father's grand plans for making the Land of Snow the Land of Spring.
"So we won't be able to find the lock that this thing goes into?" Sakura said studying the Hex Crystal that had a strange dark green fluid inside it.
"....I have an idea. But I don't know if it will work." Tachibana said after some hesitation.
"Hmm?? Well, we might as well do whatever you thought of 'cause there's nothing else to do here but stare at snow."
Tachibana frowned and then looked at the vast and complicated sealing arrays that had been drawn around the mirrors.
"Its these mirrors."
"Hmm? What?"
"If the seals use these mirrors then if there is a large sealing array around here somewhere then there has got to be a place that has all these large mirrors."
"Oh! I get what you want to do. You want to triangulate the position of the centre of the seals by using the position of the mirrors?"
"Yes…but the problem is-"
"-we're surrounded by a mountain range?"
"Precisely. If we want to find the large mirrors then we need to be able to see where the mirrors actually are in the mountain range."
"Any plans on how to do that?"
"Well, not exactly which is why I'm a little hesitant."
"Is it something Naruto would think of doing?"
"....yes."
"So you want to fly the blimp and get a high view from the top?"
Tachibana's head snapped in Sakura's direction and he almost fell when he saw her annoyed smirk.
"How did you…"
"You…well never mind, let's go and ask Yamato-sensei for permission then."
"...sure." Tachibana nodded and soon after the duo found themselves up in the sky, riding a blimp while looking around at the vast mountains all around them.
"Sasuke, if I stood in front of a giant mirror, would I have a giant reflection?" Naruto asked Sasuke who was positively annoyed.
Sasuke sent a sideway glance at Tachibana who almost broke out into laughter, but somehow holding it back in, Tachibana walked up to Naruto and put his hand around his shoulder.
"Naruto, how would you search for the mirror?"
"Hmm…." Naruto's brows furrowed as he focused, trying to think hard about the ways he would find a gigantic mirror.
As Naruto spent time focusing on the problem, Sasuke, Sakura and Tachibana walked to three windows on three different sides of the blimp.
Each genin took a look at a third of the mountain range surrounding the castle and after about half an hour they hadn't found anything.
There wasn't anything remotely reflective in the mountains. Well not exactly since the mountains were snow-clad but there was nothing that sustained a proper reflection.
That was when Naruto came up with a different idea.
"Since there have to be large mirrors, wouldn't the people who built them have destroyed that part of the mountain? What if we look for areas without trees since no tall trees would've grown in that area so soon."
The trio looked at Naruto with widened eyes and quite a bit of shock but they quickly set it aside and scanned the mountain range once again and almost at the same time, they all shouted.
"Found mine/it!"
The trio looked at each other and traced their directions eventually coming to a single point.
"That's it?" Sakura asked with confusion when they saw that the intersection of their three directions was the castle spire.
"I don't know. We'll only know once we take a closer look." Tachibana said with a shrug.
The blimp landed after a while and the entirety of Team Seven walked up the castle wall and started running to the spire.
Tachibana was the first to reach the spire thanks to the body flicker jutsu, but once he got there he looked confused.
"It's just an ordinary spire…" Sakura said once she arrived.
Not one to give up, Naruto walked closer to the spiky ornament and poked it.
"It doesn't move."
Sasuke also looked at the spire with his Sharingan and found nothing notable about it.
Tachibana frowned as he looked carefully around the spire and then around the roof they were standing on.
Finally Tachibana noticed a pattern and his eyes widened.
"Naruto! Go stand there!" Tachibana said pointing to a ridge in the roof tiles. "Sasuke, you go on that one."
And then Tachibana himself moved to the third ridge.
Each ridge was aligned with one of the mirrors in the mountains and as soon as Tachibana stepped onto his he shouted-
"Pour your chakra into the ridges."
Naruto and Sasuke did as told and started to pour their chakra. But surprisingly instead of just dissipating into the air, the chakra from their bodies was being steadily absorbed, as if something was greedily sucking it away.
*CLICK* *CRANNNKKKK* *CLICK* *CCRRRAAANNNKKKKK*
Finally, after a few seconds of noises emerging from under their feet, the spire split open to reveal a Hexagonal hole in its centre.
"The Hex Crystal goes here?" Sakura asked carefully while looking at it.
Tachibana nodded and Sakura slowly and carefully placed the Hex Crystal into the slot.
Nothing happened for about a minute, and just when Team Seven was about to give up waiting, they heard a loud *GGRRRRROOOOAAAANNNNNNNNN*.
The sound came from the mountain ranges, specifically from the three mirrors.
As everyone inside the castle rushed out when they heard these sounds, they all saw the large swaths of snow and ice that had been covering the 'mirrors' started to fall. There was an avalanche.
"Tachibana!!! The snow is falling towards the valley!!!" Naruto shouted in a panicked state.
"Don't worry, I'm sure Yamato-sensei will save us!!" Tachibana shouted, "Don't move from your spot and keep providing the chakra!! I don't want to mess this up by stopping halfway!"
Although Naruto and the rest of Team Seven were worried, they didn't move from their spots.
Yamato soon exited the castle and reached the top where he sensed his 'cute' genins were standing.
"What are you doing!?" Yamato asked bewildered since he spotted the absolutely large chunks of snow that were rolling down the mountains.
"We found out how to use the Hex Crystal!!! No time to explain! Could you please protect the castle from the snow!?"
"Yamato-sensei!!! Protect us!!! I don't want to be buried in snow!!!" Naruto shouted comically with snot and tears running down his face.
Yamato looked at them and finally calmed his emotions before he used the body flicker jutsu and vanished.
"He abandoned us!?" Naruto shouted feeling betrayed.
But then they all saw several shinobi fly out the windows of the castle as they rushed towards the borders of the valley.
"I guess not?" Tachibana said unsure of Yamato's plan. "Maybe he wants them to create an ice wall or something?"