Tachibana was looking at Shizune with an annoyed expression.
"Why are we leaving for the border again?" Tachibana asked Shizune while waiting at the village gates for the rest of Team Seven while holding Tonton in his arms.
"It is a secret mission. The details cannot be divulged just yet without Tsunade-sama's permission."
Tachibana's brows twitched as he gained a weird expression.
"You do know that I can just narrow it down through divination right?"
Shizune didn't respond to that statement and quickly pulled Tonton out of Tachibana's arms and began to squish his stuffy cheeks.
Tachibana turned towards Tsunade and saw her leaning on a tree at the gates with her eyes closed, trying to catch up some z's.
Tachibana activated his spirit vision to try and understand Tsunade's mental state, but when he found her aura coloured a deep blue he knew she wasn't just resting for no reason and that there was something serious going on.
So Tachibana disregarded Shizune's frown before pulling his pendulum and letting it hang freely. He then went through a list of various mission types to uncover the type of their current mission.
'...not escorting.'
'...but the Mission still involves going to the border, so some sort of information delivery mission perhaps?'
'...no.'
'Assassination? No…'
'...but the result was a slow anticlockwise spin which means there is likely going to be violence…'
'...the danger is also pretty high.'
'The chunin exams? Are they being conducted in a different village now that Hiruzen and Danzo have gone missing?'
'...no…it isn't the chunin exams…what then could involve fighting but no direct assassination and the border?'
'Wait a minute! Border dispute?'
Tachibana looked at his pendulum after repeating a simple phrase seven times and when he saw the pendulum spinning clockwise at a quick pace, his eyes widened.
'No way!'
'A war!?'
'Seriously!? That will put everything into a mess!'
'What if the Akatsuki take advantage of the chaos and increase the speed of their plan to capture the tailed beasts!?'
'I doubt with all the chaos that could get created, I'll be allowed to live a simple and normal life.'
'No way. I am not going to let that happen. I need to stop it somehow…'
'But how?'
Soon, the rest of Team Seven arrived along with someone that Tachibana recognised from the show, Inoichi Yamanaka.
"Tsunade-sama." the man greeted as soon as Tsunade woke up from her impromptu nap when everyone arrived.
"Old lady! You were the one that beat up the old-!" Naruto immediately tried to complain, but he didn't get very far since Sakura immediately jabbed her elbow into his ribs.
"*Uff* Sakura-chan!!!" Naruto groaned as he bent low to hold the pain in his chest.
Tsunade had already realised what Naruto was saying, however, and had an annoyed frown on her face, but she soon diverted her attention to the task at hand.
"All of us will be going to the border between the Land of Fire and the Land of Lightning in the Land of Hot Water. The rest of the details will be given to you guys if necessary, but for now, this is all you need to know."
Tsunade's prep talk wasn't for Yamato or Inoichi since they already knew about what was going on. It was for the genin of Team Seven who were rather all annoyed at having to perform another mission while their first mission to return the children had barely just been completed.
"Now keep close and make sure to follow me. Or else you'll be left behind! And-" Tsunade paused to glare at Naruto before saying in a harsh tone-
"Make sure you keep quiet. Because if you don't, you won't be able to tell up from down or left from right once my knuckles kiss your head."
Tachibana knowing what was going on, kept quiet throughout all this since he didn't want to annoy Tsunade any further.
Instead, he only shrugged his shoulders when he saw Sasuke looking at him to see if he had any answers.
Tsunade quickly turned around and began to lead the team of eight people with a pig towards their positions on the map that Shikaku had instructed them about.
They camped during the evenings and early mornings, choosing to only move either in mid-day when the sun was hot on their backs or during the night when it was pitch black.
At each campsite, Inochi would tune into the Yamanaka network using a special jutsu and regain orders from Shikaku who was making sure to do everything possible to keep their movements a secret.
While the team was known to have left the village, Shikaku had changed the logs to reflect that the Team had left the village to see to the completion of the mission, with Tsunade accompanying them to leave the village again to go gambling in Tanzaku Quarters.
Although Tsunade was hard on the genin of Team Seven, she didn't have the luxury of time to cater to their individual needs.
And so everyone including Tachibana was left with having to resort to eating food bars for ration and not taking a proper bath for the next three days.
'....I have a plan to stop any wars for now…'
'But…will such a thing really work?'
With his plan sorted out, on their last day camping in the wild before they reached an outpost, Tachibana volunteered to be the night guard and once he was alone, he quickly entered the Sefirah Castle.
Once in there, Tachibana quickly used divination to figure out which of the vast number of crimson stars in the grey fog belonged to the people he wanted to summon into the castle.
Tachibana spread his spirituality to open a portal into the stars and began to observe them for a few minutes.
One of them had a muscular, dark-skinned man patiently working on paperwork even this early during the day.
A second was of a small dwarf man who was floating while sleeping.
The third was of a red-haired man who was breaking down gold and jewellery into a cloud of quick and easy-to-control fine dust for making his weapons.
The fourth was of a woman who was sleeping with her head on a table as he drool slowly leaked out and caused the table to start burning because of its acidity.
The fifth and final person he checked was a blond woman who was currently blankly staring at a kunai while continuously running her finger over it to produce some blood before quickly healing herself no matter how much she trembled.
'Alright…'
After one last check, Tachibana made sure that everything was alright, before dragging the spirits of all the people he had just spied upon.
'This better work.'
All the people who were lost in their own worlds suddenly froze as a wave of crimson light flooded their vision.
Each one of them used their own means and methods to stay on guard but each one of them failed at preventing themselves from being dragged into the Sefirah Castle themselves.
They all looked around warily at the same time as they readied their weapons if they had any or circulated chakra to make sure it was ready for use in combat.
As each one of them scanned the other people and the surroundings around them in silence, the grey fog that had been slowly swirling around them uptill now started to fade away and clear their vision.
And in their sights appeared a gigantic step throne at whose crown a man covered by the same grey fog that was around them appeared.