Time Braid

10. Corruption

“What the fuck is your problem, kid?” My supervisor growled at me. “You think the boss is going to come up here and explain the big picture to you just cause your little head’s all confused? Grow up! If she wanted you to know she would have told you.”

Kogura was the class two limited in charge of corruption operations in Fire Country, not that you could tell by looking at him. With his bad suit and oily expression he could easily have passed for a petty yakuza boss, aside from the red slashes on his cheeks that identified him as a demon. But he was also my immediate supervisor, so I gritted my teeth and tried not to punch the little shit. My inherited reflexes kept telling me he was a half-trained brawler I could trash without breaking a sweat, but I knew he was way more powerful than I was.

Were those reflexes wrong, or was my mortal self really strong enough to take down a mid-level demon? Yet another thing I should have known, but didn’t.

“But sir, this time loop has completely screwed up the system’s Sharingan Invocation program,” I protested. “It made me from her pre-loop data, but since then she’s gone from an insecure genin to some totally badass super-ninja. How am I supposed to absorb her when she’s stronger than I am?”

He rolled his eyes. “Kid, no one in this world is that hard to corrupt. Ever since the gods pulled out the whole place has been shifting over to our side, and these days the mortals are practically born damned. It’s not like those high-tech paradise worlds I used to work in, where everything’s all puppies and unicorns and a pretty goddess shows up in person to grant wishes every time some mortal is feeling down. Just offer her some vengeance, or seduce her, or make her think she needs the power to protect someone. For that matter, you could quite pussy-footing around and torture her until she gives in.”

“She doesn’t deserve it,” I said quietly.

He paused in his rant to stare at me. “She’s a ninja,” he said. “They all deserve it.”

Wordlessly, I called up my mortal counterpart’s profile. The real one, as of now, instead of the truncated version of her pre-loop life. A normal human profile looks like a twelve-dimensional explosion of spikes and jagged edges, mostly grey with a few darker or lighter areas. A typical ninja would be especially spiky and dark, with only a few regions of grey or off-white.

Sakura still had plenty of sharp points and jagged edges, but her pattern was shot through with smooth curves of clean, white crystal, like a swan struggling to emerge from a tar pit. Kogura studied it for a moment, and whistled.

“No wonder the big shots want this one,” he said thoughtfully. “But this op is more likely to end up a big clusterfuck than a fancy victory, and…hmm. Yeah, this is a dangerous one. Wait, have we had this conversation before?”

He gave me a sharp look, but fortunately the fact that I hadn’t thought of that yet made my startled look genuine enough to pass muster. “No, sir,” I protested. “That would be gaming the system.”

He nodded. “Right, and I’ll kick your ass if I catch you at it. Ok, I’ll tell you this much. If this girl loops long enough she’s got a shot at ascending, and if the other side gets a fresh goddess trainee out of this world in the state it’s in now the Daimakaicho’s going to have us all in the Pit for the rest of eternity. So I’m ordering you to do whatever it takes to throw her off track. Get her some enemies, drive her nuts, kill yourself, whatever. If you two end up in Hell without merging I’ll take you on as a trainee myself, assuming the big shots don’t have other plans for you. I hope I don’t have to explain what happens if she gets light enough to drag you up to Heaven instead?”

I swallowed nervously. “There’s no place in the realm of the Bright Kami for the likes of me, but they can’t separate us because we share the same soul. So they’ll burn out every part of me that can even imagine violence or justice or passion, and call it a cure. I’ll be lucky if I’ve got enough brains left to use a spoon.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Now, I don’t know how you’re going to do any of that while you’re stuck in a time loop, but you’ll just have to use some creativity.”

“Couldn’t we just end the loop?” I asked curiously. “Or at least find out what it’s for, since it’s way too big to be anything secret? Time manipulation is supposed to be really hard, so there must be some serious power behind that thing.”

“I already checked. It isn’t ours, kid.”

“Oh, great.” I hung my head. “So not only do I have to deal with my creation being bugged, but I’m living in the middle of a major enemy operation?”

“Sucks to be you, kid,” Kogura replied with a chuckle. “And you’re out of time. Good luck.”

The last trickle of blood ran out of the heart I held in my left hand, and it stopped beating just as Kogura vanished. I dropped the organ onto Sasuke’s cooling body with a sigh, and absently licked the blood off of my hand.

“Alright, so I’m in a bad spot,” I told myself. “I’ll cope. At least now I’ve got more options than just trying to win a mental battle with someone who’s better at it than I am.”

I suppressed a shiver at the memory of my last attempt at that. Demons can be very sensual creatures, but we’re usually good at turning that to our advantage. My mortal aspect had blown through my defenses with a single kiss, and her follow-up had reduced me to a quivering puddle of surrender in seconds. She could have had me if she’d pressed the advantage. Instead she’d stopped to investigate, and tried to help me, and I’d turned the tables on her.

For now.

I’d seen enough to know that she might find a way to escape my trap eventually, but that wasn’t what scared me. Demons are made to fight, to endure pain and loss and hardship, to switch from hunter to hunted and back again in the ebb and flow of the eternal battle. The mortal Sakura could chain me in her mindscape and torture me for a century, and I’d still be ready to break free and trap her again at the first opportunity.

No, what frightened me was the little voice in the back of my head that insisted I was being an idiot. That I didn’t have to solve this alone. That all I had to do was let her go, let her help me, cooperate with my other self instead of fighting, and everything would work out.

Demons aren’t made to trust. It shouldn’t be possible. But some part of me trusted my mortal self. I was terrified that if she ever had me at her mercy again she’d somehow convince me to give in, and let her turn me into everything I hated.

“Get a hold of yourself, girl,” I muttered. “It could take decades for her to get free, and if you can’t turn her by then you deserve to get dragged up to Heaven and brain-burned. Now, what could I do that would convince her to stop fighting me? Or at least keep her from turning into a fucking Light-sider? She wants companionship, power and an end to the loops just like I do, but her priorities are different.”

I gave my mortal side a cheery wave as I crossed our mindscape. “Hey, me. Ready to give up yet?”

She rolled her eyes at me. “Hardly. Watching you rip Sasuke’s heart out didn’t exactly fill me with confidence in your sanity.”

“Hey, punishing the wicked is what demons were made for, sweet cheeks. You should try it sometime. There’s nothing better than delivering a good beat-down on someone who deserves it, and you’d know that if you weren’t all wrapped up in stupid human guilt and moralizing.”

I rooted around among the dead trees and fallen leaves, searching for something I was pretty sure I’d find here.

“You really are a psycho, aren’t you?” She grumbled. “Gods, having aspects was bad enough when we were both human. You need your own name.”

“Don’t!” I admonished her, breaking off my search to dart over to her prison. “You know better than that, dummy. We share the same soul, and it’s only big enough for one Name. If we deny each other we’ll end up as crazy as any human with a split personality, and we’re too smart to do that to ourselves. I’m Sakura, and so are you.”

“I suppose,” she admitted reluctantly. “But I felt how much hate you carry around. That wasn’t in me before this happened, and I’m not going to let some demonic trap turn me into a monster.”

“Silly girl,” I chuckled, leaning between the branches of her prison to pat her cheek. “I’m the darkness of your heart made manifest, to use an old cliché. I’ve got some demonic instincts too, but my core personality all came from you. Your violence and anger and need to smash everything that stands in your way. Your passion, and lust, and all those dark undercurrents you won’t admit to yourself. Your jealousy of the girls who were born beautiful, and didn’t have to work at it. Your disgust and rage at the teachers and leaders who’ve failed you, and the system you’ve started to see is going to chew you up and spit you out just like it does everyone else. The only difference between us, sweetie, is that I don’t feel guilty about any of it.”

“Although, you should know that you aren’t really as nice as you pretend either. If you were, you wouldn’t have needed that ‘don’t act like a psycho’ rule.”

Then I spotted what I’d come for, shimmering among the branches above her head. I stretched, pressing myself suggestively against her in the process, and plucked the iridescent bubble out of the shadows. She flinched, then as I stepped away she saw what I had and paled.

“Hinata!” She shouted. “Don’t you dare hurt her! You know I’ll get out of this eventually, and when I do I’ll rip those tortures you’re so afraid of out of your own mind and make you live them!”

“Oh ho!” I laughed. “See, I knew you had it in you. But I love Hinata as much as you do, silly, so why would I want to hurt her? I just want to fix some of your mistakes.”

“What would you know about love?” She growled.

I frowned. “More than you do, apparently. Love isn’t about understanding and patience and space, Sakura. That’s all part of the bullshit the Light-siders have been brainwashing the mortal races with for eons. Now, I’m going to work a little magic to fix her before your brain hacking gets her so screwed up nothing would help. Then I’m going to show you exactly what you’ve been doing wrong with our cute little dragon-eyes, and what you could have if you did things my way. But just so you don’t hurt yourself trying to ‘save’ the poor girl…”

I held the memory bubble up to her face, and gently touched it to her forehead.

“…make a copy,” I went on. “I know you think I’m an evil psycho-bitch, and evil doesn’t work. If you’re right, then eventually you’ll beat me. So make a copy, and if you really do hate the way this turns out with me in charge you’ll be able to fix it when you turn the tables.”

She gave me a considering look. Then her eyes closed in concentration, and the bubble…rippled, just enough to be visible.

“Alright, it’s done,” she said after a moment. “You know, this is a really strange way to fight.”

“Tell me about it. The way the Sharingan program works I was supposed to just absorb you, throw out all the bunnies-and-butterflies mortal brainwashing crap, and spend the rest of our mortal life dealing out justice and training for the afterlife. But the time loop screwed that up, and trying to beat you into submission would be way too much like raping myself repeatedly, so I have to find another way. So… were you serious about what you said before, about doing an honest merger and keeping ourselves out of Hell?”

She nodded cautiously. “Yes. This isn’t the first time I’ve had a situation like this, just the worst. But if you meant what you said earlier, about being another part of me, it’s stupid for us to fight.”

I chuckled. “If only it were that easy. Right now you’re sure you’re right about your outlook on life, and I’m just as sure I’m right, so it would come down to a contest of who has the stronger personality. Since you’re at least thirty and I’m a few hours old I’d be an idiot to go for that. But we can’t both be right. Either you’ve been brainwashed by a lifetime of Heavenly propaganda, or I’m brainwashed by the spell that made me. We just need to figure out which it is.”

“That makes sense,” she agreed. “I have to admit, you’re being a lot more reasonable about this than I expected. What did you have in mind?”

“We use the loop as a test. First you show me what you think are the best parts of the life you’ve made, doing things your way. Then I’ll show you how things work out doing it mine. In a few loops we can sit down and compare notes, and we’ll see which way works better.”

She glanced at the memory bubble in my hand, and licked her lips. I could practically see her wondering what I was up to. “It probably won’t solve anything,” she complained. “But we might get lucky, and I guess I can’t stop you at the moment.”

I felt her prison growing stronger from the admission, and had to hide a grin. As long as she kept thinking that I’d be fine…

“Alright,” she decided. “It might convince you, so it’s worth a try. I’ll even share some basic techniques, just so I don’t have to wait a year for you to get to where you can survive the Forest of Death without giving away what you are. But what you got last time wasn’t my only defense, so don’t get carried away.”

Delving her was easy when she wasn’t fighting. She treated me to some pretty nice memories of Naruto and Hinata, plus some older ones with Ino and the rest of her old friends. I’m sure she was poking around in my head at the same time, but my plans were safely locked away and there wasn’t much else for her to pull out. Meanwhile I picked up some of her ninja skills, easily enough to qualify for chuunin. I was afraid she’d shut me out when I went for more of her training with ‘sensei Anko’, but surprisingly she let me have a lot of it. She even let me grab a little bit of her body-shaping techniques, which was more than I was expecting.

Well, maybe I should have. She thought she’d tried everything, but I could feel a lot of repressed desires floating around in her head. She was probably hoping I’d go on some wild kinky-sex spree and get her some memories she could savor without having to feel guilty. Which, ok, I might just do at some point, but not yet. I had a point to make first.

Finally I broke away, and staggered back a few steps. “Ok, enough. Any more than that, I’m going to forget which of us I am. Loop’s ending soon, so I’m off to bed. Goodnight, me.”

“Goodnight….me,” she returned.

There’s a treaty that says real gods and demons have to wear marks to warm mortals what they are, but with my provisional license I wasn’t covered by that rule. So I showed up for the exam with an unmarked face, acting just like my mortal self had at the time. No one suspected a thing.

The written exam was boring as shit, but the thing in the forest was kind of interesting. Unlike a mortal my Sharingan never turns off, and it was easy enough to run a little genjutsu to make my eyes look normal, so I got to pick up all sorts of interesting little techniques from the other ninja in the exam. I had a bad moment when we met Orochimaru, and realized the Snake Sannin had enough demonic power to punch through my cloak and see my real nature with ease if he wanted to. But he was so focused on Sasuke that he never bothered.

Taking care of the boys that night wasn’t much fun, especially since Naruto was too much of a dork at that age to interest me. But the next morning I got to kill those idiots from Sound, which was just enough of a fight to be fun. The boys woke up while I was hanging the mangled bodies from a tree.

“Busy night, Sakura?” Sasuke asked mildly.

“Nah. These bozos thought they were going to kill us, but I talked them out of it.” I finished the last knot, and stepped casually off the branch I’d been standing on. It was thirty feet to the ground, but I barely disturbed the leaves when I landed.

“Whoa! Sakura, when did you get so badass?” Naruto exclaimed. “Wait, have I been in a coma for a year or something?”

“Dork. No, you healed overnight just like you always do. You guys want breakfast? We need to get moving before those bodies attract predators, but I’ve got some spare ration bars I can share.”

Naruto’s eyes went wide and he pointed at me while shouting, “Wait, wait, how do we know you’re really Sakura? You’re acting all weird and stuff! What was that password, Sasuke?”

I rolled my eyes, and smacked him almost hard enough to knock him out again. “Cut it out, dumbass!”

Sasuke snickered. “It’s really her, Naruto,” he declared.

The pre-finals went pretty much as expected, which was just what I needed for the plan I’d been developing. Kakashi took Sasuke off for advanced training the next day, and Naruto didn’t make it through, so after I ditched Ebisu that left me with plenty of time to myself.

I made a beeline for the hospital. The other players in this little drama could be tricky, but the key to Hinata’s soul is obvious to anyone with eyes.

“What do you m-mean, you can get me N-Naruto?” She asked in that hesitant, please-forgive-me-for-breathing tone of hers. Fuck, but that was going to drive me nuts if we didn’t fix it quick.

“I mean I can get you Naruto,” I repeated. “You’ll have to share him with me, and I’m definitely going to be the alpha bitch because you’ve got less backbone than an amoeba, but if my plan works you get to be Naruto’s hot little Hyuuga fuckbunny for the rest of your life.”

Her blush was bright enough to read by. “B-b-but f-f-father—”

“Won’t be able to stop us,” I interrupted. “Look, we both know you’ve never had the strength to get Naruto’s attention, and probably never will. But it doesn’t have to be that way. I’ve been involved in some secret stuff I can’t tell you about right now, but as a result I’ve had a unique chance to find out exactly what each of us could be in the right circumstances. I could be the best medic-nin in the elemental countries. You could be the most lethal assassin Konoha has ever produced. Naruto could be, not just a Kage, but the Kage who unites the hidden villages. And I have a jutsu only a handful of people in Fire Country know, that can make that reality instead of just a distant possibility. Are you in?”

She looked like she was trying to decide if I was crazy or not. “B-but you d-don’t like N-Naruto…”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t like it when he pretends to be an idiot, Hinata. I hate it when he lets me hit him, and follows me around trying to get my attention like some whiny little loser. But I know I’d be a lot worse if I’d been through what he has, and more importantly I know it doesn’t have to be that way. I’ve seen a Naruto who can handle everything I can dish out and more, and that’s the man I want. So yeah, I’m a bitch, but if this works I’ll be a bitch who’s on your side.”

She considered this for a long moment. “It s-sounds too good to be t-true,” she finally said. “Are y-you sure you’re not a d-demon in d-d-disguise?”

“Oh, sure,” I drawled with all the sarcasm I could muster. “I’m actually a demon of misery, and I’m trying to trick you into selling me your soul. Damn, Hinata, where do you get this stuff?”

“S-sorry,” she stammered. “F-father always s-said…n-never mind. W-why me?”

“It’s complicated,” I replied. “I might be able to make things work without you, it’s just that the odds aren’t as good that way. But if you aren’t interested I guess I can give Hanna a try…”

“No!” She gasped. I chuckled. We both knew what her answer was going to be.

“I’ll b-be strong?” She asked pleadingly. “N-Naruto will…l-l-love m-me?”

“Yes,” I reassured her. “I promise.”

“And you…you’ll…t-take care of m-me?”

The way she blushed made it clear she was aware of the double meaning on some level. I gave her my best cat-got-the-cream smile. “You bet I will, sweetie.”

“A-alright,” she agreed. “W-what do I h-have to d-do?”

The angular seals of my spell-work lit the empty bunker with a harsh ruby glow as I worked. Konoha has dozens of underground shelters that never see use unless the village is under attack, and thanks to a few hundred invasions I knew every nook and cranny of them. It took hours to draw out the seals that formed our contract, but when it was done Hinata eagerly signed her name in blood.

Ninja are so used to doing that for their summoning techniques that they tend to forget what else blood signatures are used for. I felt the warm rush of power as the contract was recognized, and knew I’d already won this round. I just had to deliver on my end of the bargain. Hinata sat obliviously in her wheelchair, waiting for me to finish the ritual with that superhuman serenity the Hyuuga are so famous for.

“Nidhog command line voice control mode activate,” I chanted in the First Tongue. “User name Sakura, demon trainee third class provisional, requesting access to Soulforge program.”

A ripple in the flow of chakra through my spell indicated that my request was granted. Which was a good thing, since I wasn’t sure what permissions the system admins were actually going to let me keep considering my fucked-up situation. I took a deep breath, and pressed on.

“Let my workspace be configured for local human profiles. Designate target as the subject of my spell circle. Identify target and cue anomaly detection.”

An upper-level god or demon could do this kind of thing with her own power, bending reality itself with the song of her soul. As a mere trainee I had to rely on system calls for anything significant, and I’d barely started to find my voice. My song wavered erratically between the sullen defiance of the Fallen and a cheery depravity I’d picked up indirectly from Anko, with random bursts of other emotions. I’d be lucky to light a candle on my own in this state, but fortunately the infernal system is set up with a lot of utility programs for young demons to use. You just have to have the right permissions.

A coded series of pulses echoed through my spell, indicating that target acquisition was complete and no anomalies had been detected. This would be so much easier if I could just call up a terminal, but I’m sure Hinata would catch on if I did that. She almost had me when she asked if I was a demon — we aren’t allowed to actually lie about that.

I called out the memory bubble I’d stolen from my mortal self, and placed it in the spell’s secondary focus. “Activate merge template subsystem,” I sang. “Let the merge template input be the contents of my spell circle’s secondary focus. Load template and initiate compatibility check.”

My song wandered into mischievous anticipation as the check came back positive.

“Let the merger of target soul and template begin.”

There was a slight delay as the system probed Hinata for consent, and found it. Damn free will clauses always made things complicated, but this time it wouldn’t be a problem. Then the fun part began. My mortal self had simply written new memories onto Hinata’s soul, which made her think she was the older Hinata. As a demon I had better tools at my disposal.

The soul forge program read the memory bubble I’d given it, extrapolated the corresponding soul, and reached out into the infinite web of possibility that makes up the multiverse in search of a match. Found her, and plucked her from the time stream at the final instant of the last loop where she’d existed. Poured her into the same body as her younger self, leaving the two versions of Hinata in mental contact.

The older Hinata had so many memories of supplanting her younger self that doing it again was a simple reflex. The younger Hinata was expecting to be transformed into a stronger version of herself, and welcomed the change eagerly. A moment later two branches of the same soul became one, and it was done. I felt a shiver of uncertainty as the merger called the validity of my contract into doubt, but that should be easy to fix.

A few seconds passed while the merger stabilized, then she opened her eyes. “Sakura?” She asked in confusion. “What was the point of all this? Why didn’t you just restore me like you always do?”

“I found a better way,” I explained confidently. I strolled across the fading lines of our infernal contract with an eager smile on my lips, and laid my hands on her shoulders. I’d gotten enough of my other self’s transformation technique to heal Hinata’s injuries easily.

“Now I’ll never have to restore you again,” I explained as I worked. “Which is a good thing, because forcing the same overlay onto your soul over and over wasn’t good for you. You were building up a rejection resonance, and it probably would have stopped working in a few years.”

“I have been feeling a bit…off,” she admitted as I pulled her to her feet. She stretched, and looked around the room curiously. “But what exactly did you do? I can’t make heads or tails of this seal work.”

I kissed her.

She stiffened when my lips touched hers, and tried to pull away as my chakra washed into her. I pulled her back in with one hand in her hair, and plundered her mouth while my Kiss of Surrender turned her limbs to jelly and my Lust Aura made her forget ever wanting to resist. I forced a Sexy transformation on her and let my free hand wander over her older body’s lush curves, hitting pressure points and applying arousal techniques as it went. She was red-faced and panting by the time I pulled away.

“You sold me your soul, lethal curves,” I told her with a feral grin. “Now you’re mine, and I’m just going to take you with me when I loop. I can let you out whenever I want, or I can keep you in chains in the back of my mindscape and… play with you. So you’d better not give me a reason to punish you…”

“But…Sakura…you said you wouldn’t do this…” She protested weakly.

I silenced her with another kiss, and snaked one hand under her waistband to claim my new property. She whimpered and squirmed against me as my fingers slipped inside her.

“No more excuses,” I ordered sternly. With the techniques I’d learned from my mortal self I had her trembling on the edge of orgasm in an instant, her whole body wound far too tight with desire to allow anything resembling rational thought. “No more hiding behind the little girl you once were. No more pretending you don’t know what you want. You’re a hot little slut who needs someone strong to serve, and that someone is going to be me.”

“Oh!” She gasped, and writhed against me. “But…Naruto!” she protested weakly.

I grinned, and nipped her ear. “If he’s man enough to tame me he can have us both,” I growled. “Wouldn’t that be hot? Maybe we’ll even collect a harem. I could mindfuck all the sexiest kunoichi in the village, and make them wait on us hand and foot. Can you see it? You and Temari and Ino and even Anko, all lined up on your knees dressed in nothing but tight leather collars?”

“Oh god!” She moaned, her hips bucking as she rode my probing fingers. “Sakura!”

“Yeah, I thought you’d like that. Now, who’s the alpha bitch, slut?”

“You!” She cried.

“Who’s in charge of this juicy little pussy?” I demanded.

“You are!” She wailed.

“Who do you belong to?”

“You! You! Oh, god, yes, Sakuraaaaaa!”

With that admission her only loophole for disputing our contract was gone, and I claimed her soul as her delighted cries echoed through the dark halls.

For the rest of the loop I kept Hinata so fogged with lust she could barely see straight, just for the fun of it. Of course, it was barely a week before Hiashi had us both assassinated. It was bad enough having his daughter turn into a lezzie sub who followed me around calling me mistress, but having her kick Neji’s ass the same day she started wearing a collar was just too much.

Personally, I thought it was adorable.

But by that point I’d had plenty of time to absorb everything my deadly pet knew about the Gentle Fist fighting style, so I was ready to move on anyway. I pulled Hinata’s soul into my mindscape as our bodies died, and a moment later found myself snatched right out of the time stream. Then I was back in my bed, at the start of a new loop.

Sakura? What’s happening? Hinata asked. I can feel you, but I can’t see anything!

“Yeah, yeah, don’t freak out on me,” I grumbled as I climbed out of bed, transforming as I went. Turning back into a kid at the start of every loop is really going to get old, especially since I can’t get away with looking more than a couple of years older than I should be. “The loop just reset, so you don’t have a body at the moment.”

What? Am I dead, then?

I chuckled. “Technically, yeah. But that just means I get to collect on our bargain, and do whatever I want to with your soul.”

…that isn’t very reassuring, Sakura. Wait, does this mean…when you admitted you were a demon, you weren’t joking.

“Nope.” I slipped out the window into the tiny garden behind the house, and cut my palm with one talon-sharp fingernail. I let a good amount of blood run out into the loose earth before closing the wound.

I can’t believe I fell for that, Hinata complained. But, what happened to Sakura?

“I’m still her,” I explained as I used an Earth Clone technique on the blood-soaked dirt, turning it into a perfect replica of my current form. “Humans get turned into demons all the time, Hinata. It doesn’t mean I’m a monster or something, and it certainly doesn’t mean I stop being me. I just have a new set of powers and responsibilities, and a little bit of a new outlook on life. Now don’t resist, or this will hurt like a bitch.”

I kissed the clone, passing Hinata’s soul through the point of contact and into the chakra construct. It shuddered, and fell against me as she took control of her new body.

“There, all fixed,” I reassured her. “Be a good girl, and I’ll let you stay out this loop. I can always tell people I’m experimenting with clone techniques.” I ran a speculative hand down her naked body, and cupped her tight ass. “Yeah, I can think of some fun experiments to do with this clone.”

A day before she would have dropped to her knees and started babbling something about serving her mistress, but dying had broken the fog of lust I’d been keeping her in. So instead she gave me a troubled look.

“You made a bargain with the younger me,” she said. “You promised to make me strong. Keeping me on my knees doesn’t do that.”

I lilted her face up with a finger beneath her chin. “Can you honestly tell me you didn’t enjoy it?”

“…no,” she admitted.

“There you go,” I said. “I can’t break a bargain, Hinata. I promised to give you power, free you from your family, make you Naruto’s personal sex kitten and help you win his love. I also promised to take good care of you, which is exactly what I’m going to do. But you agreed that I’m in charge, and you aren’t backing out of that.”

“I didn’t agree to sell you my soul!” She protested.

“You signed a blood contract you couldn’t read!” I shot back. “Do you have any idea how stupid that was? I had to put the terms we agreed to in there to make it valid, but I could have added anything else I wanted to. Anything!”

She licked her lips nervously. “Why didn’t you?”

“Because I love you, you silly girl!” I shouted. “I love you, and I want to protect you and take care of you and keep you with me forever! And now I own your soul, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

“You…really are Sakura,” she said in wonder.

“Damn right I am, baby,” I growled. “I’m the new and improved model, and together we’re going to break this stupid time loop and take on the world.”

Her eyes narrowed, and she gave me a speculative look. “What about Naruto?”

“I told you, if he can handle me he can have us both. Do you think he can handle me?” I asked with a sly grin.

“Yes,” she replied without a second of hesitation. “And…you’re right, he would like that, wouldn’t he?”

“You’re damned right he would. Now come on, we’ve got a new loop to exploit.”

“Yes, ma’am!” She chirped with a relieved smile. “I’m going to need to hear more about this ‘demon’ business, but…I’m with you, Sakura. Just tell me what to do.”