After killing Danzo and taking Shisui's eye along with over a hundred pairs of Sharingan from him, Sasuke had searched through the Root headquarters. He hadn't found the Scroll of Seals there, but he had found detailed instructions on how to use Izanagi.
Mastering Izanagi was not particularly difficult. Simple, even. The cost of activating it was simply far too steep.
After a brief period of thought, Sasuke transplanted Shisui's Mangekyou into his own brow, giving himself a third eye.
Because of his Uchiha bloodline and the fact that he had already awakened his own Mangekyou, he had no concern about the Sharingan's usual backlash on the body, nor any worry about becoming a chakra drain the way Kakashi had.
It just felt somewhat awkward to use, like wearing shoes that were the wrong size. A little uncomfortable.
As for Izanagi's duration: Danzo had only been able to sustain it for sixty seconds. Obito had been able to stretch it to five minutes.
Sasuke's rough estimate was that using this eye to activate Izanagi would give him around fifteen minutes.
Meaning once activated, he would effectively have two lives for those fifteen minutes.
It was a Mangekyou Sharingan after all. More than three times the duration Obito achieved with an ordinary three-tomoe eye.
Worth noting here was a common misunderstanding about Madara's Izanagi duration.
Madara had actually used the Transcription Seal to prepare and pre-release Izanagi before his battle, setting the condition for it to trigger some time after his death.
It wasn't that Madara's Izanagi could sustain itself for that long on its own. If it had, consider that his battle with the First Hokage lasted a full day and night, followed by at least half a day or possibly more before his revival. That would have amounted to days of effective invincibility.
What would even be the point of the First Hokage at that stage?
So Sasuke followed Madara's approach and used the Transcription Seal on Shisui's Mangekyou as well, setting the same trigger condition of some time after his own death.
His estimate was that he could push the window to roughly six hours at most.
It wasn't his own eye, and it wasn't an Eternal Mangekyou, so a slightly shorter effect than Madara's was understandable.
The reason Sasuke set this up at all was simply a precaution against the unlikely event of some unexpected catastrophe.
Thinking through the current shinobi world, the only scenarios that could realistically catch him off guard were Guy suddenly hitting him with Night Guy through the eighth gate, Black Zetsu showing up to deliver some deeply personal speech, or Otsutsuki Toneri descending from the moon with the Tenseigan.
Outside of something like that, Sasuke's current strength and caution should protect him from sudden reversals.
But Izanagi was secondary. The more significant consideration was how to use the Kotoamatsukami.
After transplanting Shisui's eye, Sasuke examined both eyes and confirmed what he had suspected. The left and right Kotoamatsukami were indeed different.
The right eye's control duration was limited. Sasuke wasn't sure how long Danzo's version had lasted, but his own estimate for his activation was around thirty days.
That window could vary depending on the target's will and mental fortitude, stretching longer or cutting shorter.
The cooldown was also approximately thirty days. Immersion in First Hokage cells could dramatically reduce this cooldown, though that would also consume some of the cells.
Control, or kill?
With the Kotoamatsukami now transplanted, Sasuke found himself thinking carefully about what to do with Orochimaru.
Orochimaru was unquestionably a research genius of the highest order. Combined with a transmigrant's breadth of unconventional thinking, the two of them working together could theoretically spark remarkable breakthroughs.
But Sasuke only needed to consider it briefly before settling on killing Orochimaru and absorbing everything from him.
He couldn't be certain how long the Kotoamatsukami would hold over someone like Orochimaru, and that uncertainty was an unstable variable he couldn't afford.
Beyond that, Orochimaru's reasoning operated differently from most people's.
As he had said himself later, launching the Konoha Crush had not been about destroying the village or killing the Third Hokage.
It had been a way of repaying his teacher.
Even if Sasuke set the Kotoamatsukami to prevent Orochimaru from harming him and to make him obedient, with that man's particular way of thinking, unpredictable problems were all but guaranteed.
And then there was the soul battle through the Cursed Seal of Heaven's reanimation jutsu. Winner takes all. In the original timeline, Sasuke himself had said he absorbed all of Orochimaru's power and experience.
Yet beyond the Snake Style jutsu and the cursed seal techniques, Sasuke hadn't used much else of what Orochimaru had to offer.
From Sasuke's perspective, the original timeline's Sasuke had picked up sesame seeds and dropped the watermelon.
The genuinely valuable thing Orochimaru possessed wasn't his jutsu or his cursed seals. It was his decades of accumulated research experience.
And this time, Sasuke had no intention of letting Orochimaru leave any contingency behind. A complete, thorough kill, with everything absorbed entirely.
---
Meanwhile, at the same time Sasuke was heading into the Land of Rice Fields to go snake hunting, Jiraiya and the other two were searching the Land of Fire for any trace of Tsunade.
A forest clearing, somewhere in the Land of Fire.
Jiraiya sat cross-legged, guiding the two students before him.
"The characteristic of Water Release chakra is flow. It lends itself to nature transformation of the 'form' variety..."
"Wind Release chakra's characteristic is cutting. A chakra as sharp as a blade's edge, capable of..."
"Earth Release..."
Over the past ten-plus days, Jiraiya hadn't taught either of them any concrete jutsu. Instead, he had been working to reinforce their foundational knowledge, tailored to each of their individual strengths.
Naruto had absolutely no patience for theoretical content, but after Sakura hit him once, he sat still.
"Chakra transformation comes in two forms: shape transformation and nature transformation."
Jiraiya continued. Sakura filled in notes on her pad as she listened. Naruto was deeply reluctant, but had resigned himself to enduring it.
"You've both learned the Rasengan, right?"
Jiraiya asked once he had finished the overview.
"Yes, Pervy Sage." "Yes, Lord Jiraiya."
Seeing both of them nod, Jiraiya laughed openly and continued.
"The Rasengan is a ninjutsu without a hand seal, one that takes shape transformation to its absolute peak. Both of you have already developed your own variations based on your individual traits: the Eight Trigrams Rasengan and the Big Ball Rasengan. In terms of shape transformation, you've both taken it about as far as it goes. If you want to keep growing from here, you'll need to work on nature transformation."
Sakura's Eight Trigrams Rasengan rotated in opposing directions, generating a pulling force. Naruto's Big Ball Rasengan simply had more chakra fed into it, giving it greater size, power, and range.
As he spoke, Jiraiya extended his right hand. A Rasengan appeared, blazing and intensely hot, burning a deep red.
"This is the Rasengan infused with a Fire Release nature transformation. It's called the Rasengan of Raging Flames."
"I know neither of you uses the Rasengan as your main method of attack, and that's fine. Naruto, your Leaf Dragon God Style is a Wind Release ninja body technique, and the properties of rotation and compression are central to it. Sakura, your fighting style is built around Water Release, and you've recently been studying the Second Hokage's Hardened Vortex Water Blade. So here is the training task I'm assigning to both of you."
"Add a nature transformation to the Rasengan and create a new Rasengan of your own."
This was a training approach Jiraiya had designed carefully for each of them.
Naruto's signature technique, the Leaf Dragon God, had a weakness.
Once he completed the Wind Release Rasengan, that weakness in the eye of the storm could be filled.
Down the road, combining the two was not out of the question. Using his whole body as the foundation, a Rasengan that took on the form of a wind dragon wasn't impossible.
Sakura needed less explanation.
She was already studying the Hardened Vortex Water Blade, and its underlying principle was extremely similar to the Rasengan's.
Once she completed the Water Release Rasengan, mastery of the Hardened Vortex Water Blade would follow naturally.
"Understood."
And so, under Jiraiya's guidance, the two of them began the work of adding nature transformation to the Rasengan.
___
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