"Well, here we are," said Sakura, looking up from her scroll. "That down there should be the valley filled with deadly poison gas, which means that up ahead is the Land of Bears."
'Thanks for the exposition,' said Inner Sakura drily.
The Land of Bears was a country so small that it didn't even appear on most maps. More of a city-state than a proper nation— much like Outer Heaven, off the coast of South Africa— it had only one city: Hoshigakure. But even calling it a 'village' would have been overly generous, as Hoshigakure was little more than a handful of log cabins.
"Where are you going, idiot?" said Sasuke calmly, yanking back Naruto by the scruff of the neck. "Are your ears just for show, or do you not understand the words poison gas?"
Even Naruto wasn't dumb enough to knowingly walk into a cloud of toxic gas.
"I'm not an idiot," grunted Naruto, batting Sasuke's hand away. "I just wanted a closer look, y'know— I thought I saw something move on the other side, that's all."
In the anime, the poison gas that filled the valley was represented by a dense yellow fog for visual clarity, for the viewer's sake. But in real life, the miasma was completely colourless, making it completely invisible to the naked eye.
Without prior warning, the only way Sakura would have learned about the noxious gas would have been to walk straight down into the valley— and by the time the stench of rotten eggs would have reached her nose, it would have already been too late, and she'd have died.
Hydrogen sulphide gas was no laughing matter!
"Naruto's right, someone's coming" said Sakura, peering at the small figure emerging from the dense forest on the other side. "Star-shaped mark on his forehead protector… that should be our guide."
The boy on the other side of the valley motioned for them to take cover. Then, tying a rope to one of the bolts loaded in his repeating crossbow, he took aim and fired at a tree near Team 7. The bolt penetrated the tree trunk, and with both ends of the rope anchored securely, the boy beckoned for them to cross his makeshift rope bridge.
"We've been expecting you," said the boy curtly, as Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke jumped off the tightrope one after the other. "My name is Sumaru. Follow me."
He was obviously a man of little words, but he had met his match in Naruto, master of yapping and practitioner of Talk-no-Jutsu.
"Sumaru, Sumaru, Sumaru…" said Naruto, sounding out the name multiple times to see how it felt on his tongue. "That's a weird name."
"My parents named me after the Pleaides star cluster," answered Sumaru gruffly.
Sakura hiccupped in surprise.
A fellow transmigrator by the name of Natsuki Subaru had also been named after the seven sister stars, which was an important plot point in his own story.
But that wasn't the main issue here— the Pleaides belonged to her former world, and if you looked at the stars from anywhere other than the Earth or the Solar System, then the star cluster wouldn't look the same.
Which begged the question: why did the Pleiades exist here too?
Sakura's first thought was that the shinobi planet must be on the same spiral arm of the Milky Way as Earth, but then she remembered what Lord Yama had said about reincarnating her into a parallel world. This meant the shinobi world wasn't just on some random planet— Sakura had never left the Earth in the first place!
In all likelihood, the shinobi continent was located on an alternate Earth, its history diverging only because the Ōtsutsuki aliens had found it— which would certainly explain why the humans and the animals from this star weren't all that different from Planet Earth's!
Well, it was either that, or humans had no imagination and always came up with the same names for similar things, no matter which world they existed in.
Sakura's musings kept her occupied until they reached Hoshigakure, which was nestled in between two breast-like mountains covered in spruce trees. The Hoshikage's house was decorated with the kanji for 'star,' and it was only slightly grander than the very few houses surrounding it.
This wasn't a village, this was a campground, for goodness's sake!
And a few minutes later, they were all sitting in seiza in front of the village's (lol) leader (lololol).
"Welcome, shinobi from Konoha," said the man gravely. "I am Akahoshi. I serve as interim Hoshikage of the Village Hidden in the Stars."
Sakura's mouth twitched.
'Must… resist… the urge to Tsukkomi…' groaned Inner Sakura. 'Can't… be… rude…to our hosts!'
Unfortunately, Naruto wasn't burdened with any such inclination toward politeness. In the middle of the man's self-important speech, his legs started falling asleep— as sitting in seiza was quite uncomfortable— and Sakura had to firmly sit him back down, to prevent him from standing up and wandering off like a lost child.
"Do I need to put you on a leash?" hissed Sakura— to which Naruto grumbled that he wasn't a kid any more.
"…As I was saying," continued Akahoshi, unperturbed, "to achieve our dream of standing on equal footing with the Five Great Villages, the star that fell from the heavens is absolutely necessary."
Long story short, a meteorite had crashed to Earth long ago. The first shinobi to discover the 'star' found that training near it amplified their chakra and their chakra control through its mysterious radiation, so they decided to settle near it— and thus, the Village Hidden in the Stars was born.
'Maybe the star has something to do with the Ōtsutsuki,' said Inner Sakura. 'Outer space is basically their hometown, right?'
"I will freely admit that our village is currently weak, due to the Third's policies," said Akahoshi in monotone, "so I would like to request your help protecting the star from those who would seek to steal it from us."
In truth, Sakura could barely remember anything at all from this story arc. She vaguely remembered the purple meteorite, the radiation poisoning and the lullaby, but that was about it.
"Sumaru," Akahoshi said at last, once he was done expounding on his ambitions. "Show the Leaf shinobi to the training ground."
Meanwhile, back in the Hidden Leaf…
"What do you mean, those three got the Star Guard mission!?" said Tenten in disbelief. "What in the world is Lady Tsunade thinking!?"
"Haha, who knows?" Guy replied with a boisterous laugh. "But that just means we have even more time to train! I'm know Neji is giving it everything he's got under Orochimaru— so we'll just have to train twice as hard, if we ever hope to bring him back to the village!"
"Just you wait for us, Neji!" shouted Lee, illusory gouts of flame shooting out of his eyes. "The next time our fists cross, our youth will be so extreme that you will have no choice but to listen to reason!"
"That's the spirit, Lee!" exclaimed Guy. "We'll do five hundred laps around the village in bunny jumps— and if we can't do them all before sunset, then we'll do a thousand jump squats around the village!"
A disheartened Tenten sighed and shook her head helplessly.
Her foreknowledge was becoming increasingly useless, with how much the timeline had changed…