Time Braid

13. Freedom

I woke to blinding pain, and the shrill beeping of an alarm clock I hadn’t heard in so long I’d almost forgotten about it. I flailed clumsily, and finally managed to make the noise stop on my third try. Then I collapsed back into bed, groping through the fog in search of a memory that would explain why I felt like I was coming off a week-long bender. Wasn’t this the start of a new loop? I’d just…

…risked my sanity playing personality mix-and-match with the original me, taking on all of her pain and lending her most of my joy so she could free herself from a genjutsu that preyed on darkness.

…gotten my ass kicked by my mortal self. Crap, she’d broken my connection to the Nidhogg system! Was I even a celestial anymore?

…broken the hold of my demon self’s Sharingan, and severed the source of the corruption that was slowly destroying us. But the effort had been far greater than I’d expected, and the damage to my soul far worse.

Which Sakura was I?

I had no idea. My jumbled thoughts branched and merged again erratically, refusing to settle down into a single stream of consciousness. No voice answered my mental call, and when I tried to drop into my mindscape I found only a swirling chaos of light and sound that nearly made my head explode.

My stomach heaved, and I staggered out of bed like an invalid. I only made it halfway to the bathroom before I tripped over my own feet, and found myself heaving out the contents of my stomach on the floor.

“Sakura,” came my mother’s worried voice from the hall. “Are you alright?”

“No,” I moaned. “Sick. Really sick.”

She took one look at my face and bundled me back into bed with brisk maternal efficiency, checking my temperature and leaving me with strict orders to stay put. I sighed. Miserable as I was, it was nice to be taken care of.

I must have passed out, because the next thing I remember Naruto was sitting by my bed talking about how we’d dominate the chuunin exam together next time. I put my hand on his and mumbled something, and saw him blush before I lost consciousness again.

I woke again to the tickle of a diagnostic jutsu, and found that it was twilight.

“I’m afraid this doesn’t look good, Mrs. Haruno,” a medic-nin was saying. “It almost looks like chakra poisoning, but I’ve never seen a case like this. Her chakra is also being drained somehow, but I can’t tell where it’s going. She doesn’t know any summoning techniques, does she?”

“Oh crap,” I groaned. I groped clumsily, and found the gaping hole where my connection to the infernal system had been. I tried to arrest the flow of chakra leaking from the wound, but for the first time in my life it failed to answer to my will.

“Please,” I gasped. “Need… inverted… Six Sutras… Chakra Seal.”

It was hard to see, but I could make out the medic’s frowning face. “How does a genin even know about that technique?” He asked. “And why would you need to be sealed against spiritual contamination? Kakashi, do you have any idea what she’s talking about?”

Kakashi’s face swam into view, and for once he actually seemed concerned. “Please!” I whispered. “Explain…if I…live…”

“I think we’d better get a Hyuuga to take a look at her,” Kakashi said slowly. “Sakura? Have you been experimenting with new techniques?”

At this rate they’ll sit around talking until you die again, came Hinata’s voice. I can see the problem. You’re right, an inverted Six Sutras Chakra Seal should hold the wound shut until it heals. Give me a moment, I’m not as practiced with these advanced medical techniques as you are.

“Hinata?” I mumbled. “Thank… kami… you’re ok. Wait, you can… see?”

You released me from my bonds, remember? It’s a good thing I have the Byakugan, though. Your mindscape is such a mess right now I doubt a normal person would be able to make any sense of it. Let’s see now, fifth sutra’s anchored, sixth is forming nicely…there. It looks like the chakra leak is stopping, and I don’t see any immediate signs of complications. How do you feel?

“Tired,” I sighed, and fell back into darkness.

I woke to the alarm clock again. This time I managed to hit the button on the second try, and sat up slowly in bed. I still had the mother of all hangovers, but at least I could move.

“Hinata?” I asked. “Are you still with me?”

I’m here, she replied immediately. I think I’ll always be here, unless something breaks our contract.

I remembered forging that chain, and choked back a sob. Then the stab of remorse was gone, and I found myself fuming over my helplessness. The anger faded into confusion, which was washed away by a thrill of fear as I realized how out of control my emotions were. What was wrong with me?

“I’m going to try to come in there,” I told her. “But I may not be able to see, so let me know if it works.”

Of course.

I closed my eyes and fell into myself, just like I used to do so easily. It was a bumpy ride, but after a few seconds I found myself kneeling on a little circle of bare dirt surrounded by swirling chaos.

Hinata put her arm around my shoulders. “I’m not sure what you did to yourself, but it does seem to be getting better. Just give yourself a few loops to rest.”

“What a mess,” I sighed, sagging in sudden depression. “I think all my aspects are jumbled together now. I’m not sure if I won or lost that fight with myself, and right now I don’t have the strength to sort it out.”

“The last of that black chakra is dissipating,” Hinata observed. “And this collar around my neck is silver now instead of iron. I think you won, mistress.”

I choked. “Oh, Hinata. I’m so sorry. I was supposed to train you, and take care of you, and instead I…” Shame and horror warred for control, and I couldn’t even finish.

“I think you’ve trained me quite well, mistress,” Hinata replied impishly. Then she saw how upset I was, and her expression turned more serious. “Sakura, I was only teasing. I’m fine. You’re the one I’m worried about.”

“But I…she…the things I did to you!” I babbled. “She’s still part of me, Hinata. I don’t even know if I can trust myself to be near you.”

“Sakura, get ahold of yourself,” she said impatiently. “I’m not some fragile little civilian girl, and I’m a bit insulted you seem to think otherwise. I turned against your demon aspect because she was careless and cruel and you’re a thousand times the kunoichi she was, not because I didn’t enjoy most of our time together. Don’t make me regret my decision.”

The shock brought some clarity to my muddled thoughts, at least for the moment.

“I’m sorry, Hinata,” I said. “You’re right. I’m just so screwed up right now I can’t think straight. I’m fuzzy-headed and my emotions are all jumbled and my stream of consciousness keeps splitting and merging again at random. I don’t think I’m going to be good for much until this passes, assuming it does.”

She nodded. “I thought you seemed a bit off. Alright, Sakura, I’ll try not take anything you say too seriously for now. Can I help? You probably need to get your aspects separated again, but I’ve no idea how to do that.”

“Neither do I. How do you even know about aspects?” I asked her. “You sound like you’d heard of them somewhere besides me.”

“The Hyuuga have the Byakugan because my great, great grandfather is a dragon,” she explained with a hint of pride. “That makes us something a little more than mortals in the eyes of the celestial powers, and sometimes we have dealings with them. The kami have rules about what they can and can’t do in the mortal world, but a ninja clan can be a useful loophole. Usually they only contact the elders, but as a potential heir I’ve been taught a little of what the clan knows about them.”

I stared at her for a moment.

“I’m an idiot,” I groaned. “I should have realized other ninja would have had encounters with the spirit world, and the Kyuubi calls your bloodline ‘Dragon Eyes’. Alright, what do you know about aspects and kami blood and demonic contracts?”

Unfortunately Hinata’s education was long on history and etiquette, but short on practical knowledge. She did, however, have the answer to one of my newer mysteries.

“All spirit creatures have true names,” Hinata explained cheerfully. “Technically so do a lot of bloodline bearers, but humans usually never figure out what their names are. It’s supposed to take decades of meditation and a lot of exposure to spiritual energies to reach that point, but the few who manage it usually become legendary.”

“Alright, but why do names matter?” I asked. “I mean, I can feel that it isn’t just a word, but I don’t really understand…”

She gave me a speculative look. “The way it was explained to me, seals are the written form of the language of creation, and true names are the spoken form. A spirit being’s name is like a seal array that exactly represents their innermost nature. If you know how to write it you can actually use it for things like summoning and binding techniques, and there’s a sort of spoken form of seal mastery that kami and demons use the same way. Um, Sakura? Are you saying you know your true name?”

“I did, for a few loops,” I replied with a frown of concentration. “But I’m having trouble remembering it. It was… something… damn it, I can’t lose this. I didn’t know it as a demon, but I knew part of the First Tongue. I remember that. I learned another part of it in the place between worlds, and then Astoria asked me who I was and I said… Sakura… no, that’s just a sound. I’m not a sound, I’m…”

Sakura.

I nearly passed out from the effort of singing that one word, but it was worth it to see the stunned amazement on Hinata’s face.

I spent two short loops resting and trying to settle my mindscape into something that didn’t look like a fever dream before I felt well enough to get out of bed, and my first try at a longer loop ended when I flubbed a jump and broke my neck falling off one of those trees in the Forest of Death. My emotions were still bouncing wildly, and I had a sinking suspicion that I was more than a little crazy at the moment, but at least I was regaining enough self-control to pretend to be the old me as long as no one looked too close.

Well, ok, the first time I saw Sasuke I gutted him before I even realized what I was doing. That was a real short loop. The next time around I happened to run into Ino before the written exam, and found myself in her arms sobbing about how I wished she were in the loop so I didn’t have to leave her behind. My grip on reality had an alarming tendency to vanish at odd moments, but I did seem to be improving.

The next time around my chakra control finally started to come back, and I managed to survive our inevitable encounter with Orochimaru and guide my team around all the other dangers that were lying in wait. The boys apparently thought I was PMSing or something, but at least it meant they didn’t argue with me. That gave me most of a week to rest up at the arena in the middle of the forest, and my chakra was almost back to normal by the time I bowed out of the semi-finals to reset the loop. I probably could have won my fight instead, but not without using techniques Kakashi knew I shouldn’t know.

The next loop I actually woke at my normal time, and the dive into what was left of my mindscape was becoming easier. More importantly, I was now strong enough to delve myself and actually see the damage that had been done.

It was pretty bad. All traces of the previous order were gone, my neat patterns of thought and memory intermixed with at least two other patterns and the result crisscrossed with scars and gaping holes. My mind was a complete mess, which certainly explained the problems I was having. I had only a hazy memory of what it had looked like before, and poking at the remains quickly convinced me that while I could eventually reassemble the fragments into any pattern I wanted it would be a long, exhausting project.

Then I felt a tug from someplace deeper, and followed it down to the place where I’d found my sleeping aspects once before. Now it was empty except for a familiar thread of golden chakra, which rose up from the void between loops to connect to my heart.

The tug came again, and I realized that the golden thread was the source. Was Naruto trying to summon me? Curious, I let go of my surroundings and wrapped both hands around it. There was a moment of sharp pain, a rushing sensation, and then I was in my bed looking up at Naruto’s worried face.

“Sakura?” He asked. “Did it work?”

“Sort of,” I answered absently, as I turned most of my awareness inward to examine myself. Same shattered mindscape, but Hinata didn’t seem to be here. “My different aspects all sort of merged when I beat the demon me, and I haven’t been able to sort them out again yet. I think you managed to summon all of me this time.”

“Really? That’s great!” He pulled me into an enthusiastic hug.

I sighed, and relaxed into his embrace. “I guess. I’m a complete wreck right now. I think I’m driving poor Hinata nuts, going from happy to depressed to bitch and back every couple of minutes.”

“You? Having mood swings? No way!”

I swatted his shoulder. “Hey, be nice! I’m an invalid here.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, I can see that. My shoulder’s still attached. Here, let me send a couple of shadow clones to take the test for us and we can take the day off.”

“Jerk,” I grumbled. “I’d love to, but I probably shouldn’t stay that long. I left Hinata alone back in my loop, and I’ve got no idea what’s going on there now that I’m not in it.”

“Oh. Hmm. Alright, how about you find out, and I try this again next loop?”

“That sounds like a plan. Make this a short loop, and then summon me a half hour before the exam?”

He frowned. “You do realize I have to get the other you to cooperate if she’s awake?”

I rolled my eyes. “So lay a kiss of surrender on her first. She won’t argue with anything after that.”

“I guess, but it feels weird doing that. She’s just a kid, you know?”

I sighed. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Being stuck like this is really getting old. Alright, just turn off the alarm and wait a few minutes. Mom doesn’t call me down for breakfast until half an hour after I usually wake up, so that should give me a chance to find out what happened in the other loop.”

“Sounds like a plan,” he said. I gave him a peck on the cheek, and stopped my heart.

“Sakura! You’re back!”

Hinata’s frantic hug woke me before I even had a chance to open my eyes, and I found myself in my mindscape again.

“Yes, I’m back. Are you ok? What happened here after Naruto summoned me?” I asked.

“I thought you were dead!” Hinata exclaimed. “Why did you stay gone so long?”

“I was only there a few minutes, Hinata,” I protested. “Wait, how long as it been here?”

“A whole loop,” she replied, without loosening her grip. “I just woke up in your body, and you were gone! You didn’t answer no matter how much I called, and I didn’t know what to do. So I took the exam for you, and tried to pretend to be you, and waited to see if you’d wake up. But you never did.”

It took a few minutes to calm her down, and telling her that Naruto was supposed to summon me again soon didn’t exactly reassure her. But then she caught up to what I was saying.

“Wait, Naruto can summon you now? Can you take me with you?” She asked eagerly.

“I don’t know,” I said, fighting off a sudden surge of jealousy at the fact that she wanted to see him. Her worry had been gratifying, annoying, appealing…great, I was doing the emotional vortex thing again. This was so embarrassing.

“Come on,” I said suddenly. “Try to hold on to me, and let’s see what happens.”

I dove into myself, searching for that golden thread again. To my surprise Hinata was light as a feather, and carrying her with me was no more effort that making the trip by myself. In a minute or two we were there, waiting for Naruto’s summons.

Hinata looked around curiously. “This is a very odd place,” she observed. “It has twelve dimensions, and I can see openings to the spirit realms and all sorts of strange eddies. What are those threads of chakra coming out of your heart? Oh, look, the silver one turns into the chain on my collar. But the others all trail off into summon-space.”

“Really?” I blinked, and focused my own perception. I could see the fine silver chain of my claim on Hinata’s soul, and the one golden thread that apparently still connected me to Naruto somehow, but nothing else. “Your eyes are better than mine, Hinata. I can’t see most of that. Although…”

It was an impulsive act, just another example of how jumbled my thoughts still were. I’d noticed that the end of the golden thread wasn’t all that firmly attached to me, and it came free with a casual tug. Then I slipped it through the slender collar around Hinata’s neck, and tied it off.

“There,” I said. “Now you can visit Naruto while I get my head on straight. Say hi for me.”

“What? But, Sakura, you need help!” She protested. “Come with me, and eep!”

The tug of Naruto’s summoning arrived at that moment, and plucked her away faster that I could blink. An instant later she was gone, leaving only a fine silver chain stretched out into the endless void.

“Naruto doesn’t need to see me like this,” I whispered. “And you don’t need to be around me either. This is something I need to do myself. I’ll pull myself together, and get sane again, and then I’ll see you in the next loop.”

It was obvious enough that when I’d dropped out of Naruto’s loop by killing myself I’d popped back to my own loop at the next reset. But his summons had arrived just when I expected it, despite the fact that he’d been planning a short loop but Hinata had done a long one. So apparently our separate timelines synced back up temporarily at the start of each loop, but were otherwise independent of each other. If that was the case I’d see Hinata again at the start of my next loop.

But I suspected I’d need more than five weeks to undo the damage I’d done to myself, so I resolved to take my demon self’s final discovery and do it right. After the written exam I spent the afternoon getting back into character as my younger self, and discovering which of my weaker techniques I could currently use without hurting myself. Then I set out to pass the exam.

I’ve done the forest so many times I could sleepwalk through, and the fact that the matches in the preliminary round aren’t actually random makes them easy to game. I walked a pattern that got us through with two days to spare, and ensured they would match me with Ino. Her I could beat easily, with taijutsu just a little better than my old self had had and a few academy-level techniques that she’d never quite polished to full mastery.

Our last day in the forest I pointed out the training potential of Shadow Clones to Naruto, and gave him a few hints about how to properly boost his speed with chakra. Being Naruto he immediately put dozens of clones to work practicing, and got about a month’s worth of training in during our down time. With that extra edge he barely eked out a win against Kiba, and went on to the final round with me. So when Kakashi ditched us to train Sasuke I had a longtime associate as a witness for everything that followed.

“What kind of ninja are you, Sakura?” Ebisu asked encouragingly. “Not the kind who’s too timid to try, I hope?”

“No, sensei,” I replied as I stepped out onto the water, and walked all the way out to where he stood on my ‘first’ try. “I’m the kind with perfect control. I’ve never needed more than one try to learn anything to do with chakra.”

“You’re awesome, Sakura!” Naruto shouted. I grimaced.

“No, I’m not,” I told him seriously. “Until four days ago I was a silly little fan-girl with a crush who thought playing ninja would get her attention. When those Sound ninja tried to murder us all, and I wasn’t strong enough to stop them, it opened my eyes.”

I turned to Ebisu. “Sensei, I’ve never trained seriously before, but I know now how stupid I was. I’m ready to become a real kunoichi. I need to become strong enough to stand by my comrades. Strong enough to protect the people I love, and to defend the village from those who would destroy us. I have a long way to go, but I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get there. Will you help me?”

Yeah, it was corny, but Konoha is like that. Ebisu eyed my feet, still perfectly dry despite the fact that I was standing on water, and frowned. “You do have potential, Sakura. But your jounin sensei was quite specific about what techniques you should be shown.”

“I’m not asking for more techniques, sensei. I’m asking you to push me as hard as possible, and help me turn myself into a worthwhile ninja.”

A jounin who specializes in teaching wasn’t going to turn that one down.

The funny thing was the training actually helped. My taijutsu reflexes were as scrambled as the rest of my brain, with the skills my demon self had stolen with her Sharingan randomly intermixed with the styles I’d learned under Gai and the moves I’d developed myself. Fortunately it wasn’t too hard to push all my old memories away and play clueless novice the first time Ebisu showed me any particular move, and then pull them back out and reassemble the pieces when he wasn’t watching. Within a week he’d decided I was some kind of natural taijutsu genius, and of course Naruto was keeping up with massive shadow clone training and sheer stubbornness.

Mind you, I was still an emotional wreck. I managed to stay professional with Ebisu most of the time, but to anyone I’d ever had a personal connection to I was unbearable. Even Naruto started giving me a wide berth, which said something considering what a raging bitch I was to him before the loops. Of course, it might have just been that he didn’t know what to do when I’d suddenly burst into tears, or kiss him out of the blue, or drag Hinata out of her hiding spot and insist that she join us for lunch. It was bad enough that Ebisu pulled me aside at one point to ask if I had any mental conditions that weren’t in my file, and it took all my decades of practice at lying on the fly to convince him to put off sending me to a shrink until after the exam.

During the whole month of training the only technique Ebisu showed me was Body Flicker, but I made sure he noticed that by the end I had that and the basic three academy techniques fully mastered — which to me means being able to do them without seals or concentration, in the middle of a taijutsu move, without smoke or flickering or any other obvious sign to give me away. I also made it obvious I’d figured out I was earth-natured, and asked a lot of ‘purely theoretical’ questions about the mechanics of inventing low-level techniques.

Oh, yes, I was building a nice back story. Most days I even remembered why.

“Sir! I’ve got an emergency situation!”

I dropped off the roof and staggered to my feet in front of the pair of shogi players, panting slightly after my long run. Asuma looked up slowly, taking in my bloodstained clothes and the depleted state of my shuriken pouch, and his ever-present cigarette drooped. “Sakura? What happened to you?”

“I picked the wrong spot for some last-minute training,” I replied. “There’s a party of over four hundred Sand nin approaching the city from the south, maybe four or five hours behind me. I don’t know what’s going on, but a couple of their scouts tried to kill me when I ran.”

Shikamaru sighed, and began picking up the shogi set. Asuma stood, and gave me a concerned look. “You’re right, this is serious. But why did you come to me instead of telling the gate guards?”

“There’s no way a force that size could get so close to the city without inside help,” I pointed out. “You were the first jounin I could find who I’m sure wouldn’t be in on a plot against the Hokage.”

He nodded. “Well done. Come with me, we’re going to see my father.”

So much for the invasion. Now I just had to get promoted.

Sasuke was seriously pissed that he wasn’t going to be able to fight Gaara after all, which I found pretty amusing considering how many times I’d seen the Sand jinchuuriki crush him like a bug. When they reshuffled the ‘random’ matches I found myself up against Shikamaru, which seemed imminently doable.

He looked up at the stands with a sigh, and started to say something.

“If you give up without a fight I’m going to follow you around for the next month causing you as much aggravation as humanly possible,” I growled. “Take a dive if you don’t want to get promoted, but I need to put on a good show first.”

“You aren’t the same girl I knew at the academy,” the lazy genin drawled. “Alright, then. It’s a pain, but better an hour of bother than a month.”

Shikamaru is a surprisingly tough opponent, with an incredible tactical sense and a preternatural ability to read his opponent’s moves. But he still needed a hand seal to activate his shadow bind, and his shadows moved slowly enough to give me plenty of options for evading them. I opened by body flickering into melee range, and immediately verified that he was no match for me at taijutsu. But I needed to show off a little for the judges, so I let him fend me off with his shadow after a quick exchange of blows. Each time he reached for me with a shadow bind I evaded with a different method — body flicker, replacement, distracting clones, pretty much everything that can be done with the basics. I henged into a rock and let my clones wear him out for a few minutes, until he realized none of them were real and worked out my actual position. I even let him catch me once, just so I could demonstrate teleporting myself out of the bind with a perfectly controlled replacement technique. That was a jounin-level application of the technique, and one of the fanciest tricks I planned to show off.

His eyes went wide. “Are you sure I can’t forfeit now?” He whined.

“No worries, Shiki, I think we’ve put on enough of a show. After all, a good kunoichi doesn’t reveal all her tricks! I think it’s time for the one-hit knockout now.”

“Oh, great,” he groaned, and settled into a defensive stance.

I cloaked myself in a jumble of overlapping illusion clones to cover palming a knockout grenade, and replaced it with one of the rocks at his feet. I’d put a sound-suppression seal on it to keep it from hissing, so his first hint of what I’d done was the smell of the gas. Of course, at that point it was too late.

The crowd cheered. I bowed to the Kage’s box with a grin. “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why every ninja is taught the basic three. Maybe next round we’ll see what other techniques I have.”

Naruto beat Neji, and Sasuke beat Shino, so the final rounds were all team seven. Then I got to watch Sasuke and Naruto fight, which was fun right up until the brooding asshole picked out the real Naruto and put a chidori through his belly. A hush fell over the crowd until the medics announced that he was still alive, and carried him off the field.

“That was uncalled for, Sasuke,” I growled as I stepped back into the arena. “I was going to make this a friendly fight, but now I’m going to put you in the hospital right next to our teammate. When he’s fine in a couple of days and you’re still in traction you can use the time to think about how you treat your comrades.”

“You?” He scoffed. “You may not be as useless as you used to be, but you still can’t touch me. I’ll knock you out with one hit.”

He activated his Sharingan and charged me, not even bothering with a probing attack. I suppose he was expecting me to dance around like I had with Shikamaru, but against his eyes that would have been a fatal mistake. Instead I stepped into his attack, letting it hit me so I could land a punch of my own at the same time. His blow put a bruise on my cheek that would look terrible in the morning. Mine broke two ribs.

He staggered back, but I wasn’t about to give him time to think. I launched into an aggressive combination attack that occupied all his attention for several seconds, while I turned the ground behind him into a field of stone spikes. He must have seen the chakra release of the technique with his Sharingan, but he was so busy he didn’t have time to wonder what I’d done before he stepped on one.

After that the fight was pretty much over.

I got promoted.

Kakashi was shocked at how quickly I’d improved, but Ebisu and Naruto had been watching every step of the way. Every technique I’d used was something I could have actually done as a genin if I’d ever applied myself, and both my perfect chakra control and erratic displays of super-strength had been noted on my file as far back as the academy. So Kakashi got some ribbing from the other jounin for overlooking a prodigy, and I got my jacket.

It was amazing how good it felt to finally win some small measure of public recognition for my skills.

Sasuke was also promoted, despite having tried to murder his teammate. Naruto wasn’t. I smelled trouble brewing there, but fortunately the two of them never had to work together again. It was a week before Sasuke was fit for duty, and he deserted the next day.

By then my mood swings were settling down to something more manageable, and I was starting to regret sending Hinata to Naruto. But seeing the world after the end of the chuunin exam was such a breath of fresh air that I didn’t want it to end, and besides I had a long way to go before I could claim to be fully recovered. I still couldn’t use most of my better techniques, and Hinata would probably kick my ass in a sparring match without breaking a sweat. I was no good to them in my current state.

I spent a few more weeks in Konoha, repairing some of the more essential parts of my jutsu library while I enjoyed the novelty of being sent on missions I didn’t know anything about. But my mindscape didn’t seem to be recovering any more on its own, and the constant pressure of maintaining my cover made it hard to find enough time to make any progress. So when we ran into Itachi and Kisame in a little town on the edge of the Konoha Security Zone I took the opportunity to fake my death in the ensuing battle.

The crisp mountain breeze turned my breath to steam, but the blanket of warm air I held close to my body kept me comfortable despite the chill. Snow Country in winter is a deadly environment to most travelers, but a properly prepared ninja can visit any locale in relative comfort.

Of course, I wasn’t just passing through. The shelter I was building was a sturdy structure of fused earth and stone, sunk three feet into the ground and extending back twenty feet into a tall cliff of solid granite. The glass windows had been tricky with my limited sampling of earth techniques, but the view they’d give of the uninhabited valley below was worth it. A rocky goat track was the only path leading down to the valley floor, but for a girl who can walk on vertical cliffs as easily as a garden path that was hardly a concern.

I eyed the dark clouds that were gathering in the high mountains to the north, preparing to cover the landscape in another foot or more of snow, and smiled. Here, surrounded by the pristine beauty of a land untouched by man, I could meditate and train and heal for as long as it took to put myself back together. Let the world go on without me, until I was ready to face it again.