Time Braid

18. Bonding

Disclaimer: I don’t own Naruto.

Hinata didn’t answer my call at first, and for a moment I was terrified that I’d somehow lost her during my trip to the spirit world. But when I dropped into my mindscape I found her sitting under the sakura trees, staring dumbly at the one where I’d anchored her chain.

It was the tree that represented my feelings for her, and I wondered for a moment if she’d somehow realized that. But she knew I loved her, so why would she react like this?

“Hinata?” I asked, “Are you alright?”

“This tree…” she breathed. “How did I never notice?”

There were tears in her eyes. Now I was really worried. I knelt, and put a hand on her shoulder.

“Sweetie? What is it?”

She seemed to notice my presence for the first time, and looked up at me wonderingly. “You gave up Heaven for me.”

“Well, I certainly wasn’t going to let them send you to Hell,” I pointed out dryly.

She shook her head violently. “No! Don’t try to minimize it! She was telling the truth, I saw it. You could have been a kami, Sakura! You could have gone away to that shining place of peace and hope, and become Naruto’s personal angel, and lived forever, and… and instead you’ve come back to this world of tears and pain, for me!”

“Yes.”

What else was there to say? She was right, and I knew it. But what else could I have done? A ninja who abandons her comrades is worse than trash, and Hinata was the truest comrade I’d ever known.

Hinata wiped away a tear, and reached up to cup my face in her hands. “Sakura,” she breathed. “I… I have no more defenses. I was afraid to open my heart to you completely, after spending so long with the demon. But now… what could I possibly fear? You love me the way I love Naruto, don’t you?”

My breath caught. Did I? I knew what I felt for her wasn’t a human emotion. Born of a fallen celestial’s devotion, it was as changeless and omnipresent as gravity. I was sure that if we were parted for a hundred years, I’d love her as much at our reunion as I did now. But Hinata was so devoted to Naruto that she’d do anything for him without a moment’s hesitation, and I’d never felt anything like that.

Or had I?

I hadn’t really thought about what I was giving up by rejecting Astoria’s offer, because it hadn’t occurred to me that it was a choice. Abandoning Hinata to her fate was something I could barely imagine, let alone seriously consider as an option. Maybe this was what perfect devotion felt like from the inside? But then, how did I always end up in charge?

Because we were both happier that way. She liked to be led, and I liked to lead. She loved our little power-exchange games as much as I did. But if she ever really wanted me to stop, I’d do it in an instant.

Was there anything I wouldn’t do for her, if she really needed it?

I probably wouldn’t give up Naruto. But nothing else came to mind.

“Yes,” I breathed, my head reeling from the realization. “I do. But, I know you don’t…”

She put her finger to my lips, and smiled gently.

“I can, Sakura. You’ve won my heart as surely as Naruto ever did, and I can deny you nothing now. You…”

Her eyes went soft and distant, and her voice gained an undercurrent of hidden power as she chanted a snatch of the celestial tongue.

You are my precious treasure, and never shall we part. I will guard you for all the ages of eternity, till the stars die and the twilight of the gods brings the end of all things.

Her lips brushed mine as softly as falling snow, and for one precious instant I could feel her heart as clearly as my own.

We never did make it to the exam that loop.

Much, much later, it finally occurred to me to ask an obvious question. “Since when do you speak the celestial tongue, sweetie?”

By then we were in the bedroom I’d made for Hinata in my mindscape, sprawled carelessly across the sinfully comfortable bed. Hinata was lying with her head on my belly, and barely stirred at my question.

“I don’t,” she replied. “It just came to me. That happens sometimes, with our strongest clan members. But I know what I said, and I meant it.”

“That’s ok,” Astoria reassured me. “Skuld-sama’s pretty cool about letting junior goddesses use the transport system. Let me just run a trace here… ok, I’ve got your location. Wow, one of the dark worlds? No wonder they don’t let you travel, there’s a class three security barrier around your whole sector. Things must be kind of grim over there with no doublet system and the demons running rampant. I don’t even have an address for your local pantheon.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard other worlds are a lot nicer. Um, Astoria, is it really ok to bring me up there? I’m not sure how these things work, but I think I still count as a mortal.”

“You’re kidding? Wait, then that wasn’t an ascension trial?”

“When we met before? No, that was some kind of sneaky demonic trap trying to force me to convert,” I explained.

“Oh, darn it!” Astoria exclaimed. “I should have read your file first. Hang on, I’m pulling it up now. Hmm. Ok. Oh, wow, that’s amazing. Ok, just so you know, the system lists you as a proto-celestial. That means you count as a mortal for most of the rules, but you could probably qualify as an aspirant and get into one of the angel academies if you want to.”

I laughed. “Me, an angel? Thanks for the compliment, but that’s hard to imagine. Anyway, I’ve got this little time loop problem I have to figure out before I can deal with anything else.”

“Right, good point. Well, I’m afraid I can’t show you my office, but there’s a meeting room we can use. If my boss approves the request I’ll beam you up in just a sec.”

This time I was in my own body when the summoning took me, and Hinata stayed behind. Astoria was so friendly it made me wonder what her ulterior motive was, and ten minutes later she was showing me the recording of Naruto making his wish again.

“What does that mean, exactly?” I asked when it was done. “I mean, how does ‘I wish we could go back and fix things’ turn into us all being stuck in a time loop?”

Astoria shrugged apologetically. “I’m not allowed to explain things like that to mortals, so I’d get in big trouble if I pulled the system log and read off the details for you. Even showing you the advisory will get me demerits if anyone notices, but a promise is a promise.”

“Well, I don’t want to get you in trouble,” I reassured her. “But, is there anything you can tell me?”

She leaned back in her absurdly comfortable-looking chair, and thought. “Well, I didn’t look at the log, so I guess I can speculate a little. Wishes are interpreted by an AI to make sure they’re all granted fairly, and it can be a little quirky about how it does things. It looks at your thoughts to help make sure it grants what you meant to ask for instead of just what you said, so if you want to know what’s included in ‘everything’ you’ll probably have to ask Naruto.”

“I don’t think he remembers,” I said slowly. “Otherwise he would have mentioned it by now. What about the fact that we’re in different loops, instead of sharing one?”

“That’s really strange, actually,” Astoria said with a frown. “He obviously wanted you with him, and the system usually picks up on things like that. But I don’t see how anything could have interfered with the wish itself, so I’d guess it must go back to what he was thinking at the time.”

I sighed. “Oh well. Um, how about the question of who gets affected? It doesn’t seem to be everyone he cared about back then, or everyone he cares about now either.”

“Wishes are very powerful, but time travel is incredibly expensive and they do have a maximum energy budget. It might be the people he cared about the most at the time, or the ones he cares about the most now, or the people he thinks are supposed to be included. But there’s bound to be a limit on how many people the wish can affect, and it probably isn’t very big.”

“I see.” I had a million more questions, of course, but I could see she couldn’t give me more than a few hints at a time. So I’d have to ask different questions each time through, until I got enough hints to figure it all out…

There was a musical chime from Astoria’s… computer, I suppose it must be, and she glanced at the screen. Then she blinked in surprise. “That’s weird. This message is for you, Sakura.”

She turned the screen so I could read it. There were all sorts of interesting labels and icons in the background, but most of it was a white box containing a few symbols in the First Tongue. It read:

Sakura,

That was a clever move, and I don’t mind you bailing out my junior staff. But don’t push it. The rules are there for a reason.

Skuld

I licked my lips nervously. “Ah, Astoria? Who exactly is Skuld?”

“The Norn of the Future,” she answered, looking a bit nervous herself. “One of the three sister-goddesses who control Fate. She’s also my ultimate boss, and the chief system administrator for the last few centuries. You were thinking about some kind of time travel trick, weren’t you?”

I nodded reluctantly, and she gave me a reproachful look.

“You can fool me that way Sakura, but not the higher kami. Please don’t get us in trouble.”

“I won’t,” I reassured her. “I probably wouldn’t have done it anyway, but I guess she wanted me to know I can’t game the system completely. Don’t worry, the last thing I want is to irritate some upper-level kami who could squash me like a bug. I can figure out the rest on my own.”

She breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. Well, I’d better send you back soon, but I’m going to do a memory save first. Call me when you figure things out, will you?”

“Easier said than done,” I admitted. “But I’ll work something out. Oh, that reminds me, can I ask you a question about morality? That can’t be secret, can it?”

“You’d be surprised,” she said with an exasperated look. “There’s this big complicated business about mortals needing to understand the truth by finding it themselves instead of just blindly following the dictates of Heaven, but honestly I don’t understand it myself. I’m happy to offer advice if I can, but keep in mind that I’m not infallible. My Yggdrasil connection helps me stay focused on trying to do good, but I make mistakes as often as anyone else.”

“Well, I’ll keep that in mind, but I think you’ll know the answer to this. I was just wondering what the difference between me and Hinata is. I mean, the demon version of me did terrible things, and I merged with her in the end. But everything she and Hinata did was in the loop, so as far as I can tell that means that when we finally get out it will never have happened. So why does any of it count, and if it does why her and not me?”

Astoria gave me a speculative look. “Someone’s been telling you things they aren’t supposed to, haven’t they? Well, it would be against the rules for me to pull your files and explain it in detail, but I can tell you that you’re looking at it the wrong way. We don’t judge people based on what they’ve done, Sakura. We judge them based on what they are. So, for example, we don’t blame you for your demonic aspect’s actions because right now you aren’t a person who would do those things.”

“Oh,” I breathed. “So that means there’s still hope for her in the end, doesn’t it? Thank you, Astoria. I was afraid it might be too late for her.”

“It’s never too late for anyone, Sakura,” she said seriously. “Don’t ever forget that.”

“I’m going to kill that damned fox,” Naruto growled.

The three of us were sitting atop the Hokage monument after the written exam, trading notes and trying to decide what to do next. Obviously my meeting with Astoria had been the first order of business, but Naruto’s reaction surprised me.

“What does he have to do with this?” I asked.

“The seal used to have a defect,” Naruto explained. “Up until about ten years ago I had a problem with the Kyuubi’s chakra leaking out and eating holes in my brain all the time. I’d regenerate, of course, but that’s why my memories from back then are so screwed up.”

I frowned. “Why didn’t I ever notice anything like that? I examined you a lot when I was researching my memory-edit techniques, and… oh. He can feel it when someone does a medical scan on you, can’t he?”

“Got it in one,” Naruto confirmed. “He’s got some kind of chakra sense that gives him a pretty good idea of what’s going on outside his prison. He won’t admit to it, but I’m pretty sure that before I fixed the seal he could push his chakra out and give me a moron attack any time he really wanted to.”

“That would explain a few things,” I admitted. “Great. So you don’t remember any of that, and the Kyuubi isn’t likely to fill us in. Where does that leave us?”

“Perhaps Naruto simply has to feel satisfied with the outcome?” Hinata suggested.

“Yeah, or maybe we all have to get back in one loop first,” Naruto offered. “Any ideas on how to do that?”

“We’re making progress, obviously. By the time you have your next crossover with Sasuke I think we’ll be able to get the rest of us here at the same time. But does that mean I can’t kill him?” I asked.

“Now Sakura, revenge doesn’t solve anything,” Naruto said sanctimoniously. Then he smiled. “You should let Hinata and me help, so we can make it a group bonding thing instead.”

We all laughed.

“This business with Pein concerns me,” Hinata said. “I don’t want to end the loop only to die a few years from now.”

“Good point,” Naruto said. “I might be able to take him, but that won’t help if he kills you two or destroys Konoha along the way. Damn it, I can’t take a chance on going past the end of the exam, can I? I’d never forgive myself if I got one of you killed because I ended the loop before we were ready.”

I traded a glance and a smile with Hinata, and we both leaned in to kiss him on opposite cheeks at the same time.

“Thank you, Naruto,” Hinata said. “Being a ninja will never be safe for any of us, but your care makes my world a brighter place.”

“Personally I don’t plan to let a little thing like death stop me,” I declared. “A hundred years from now we’re going to be turning over the reins of power to our grandkids so we can go explore the multiverse or something.”

Naruto chuckled. “Well, glad to know being the world’s top medic-nin doesn’t stop you from being ambitious. Ok, girls, we’ve got a lot to think about and I don’t want us making any dumb mistakes, so we’re taking the loop off to figure out our next move.”

“Are you sure this isn’t just an excuse to get us alone, Naruto-sama?” Hinata giggled.

“Why would I need an excuse, Hinata? You know I’m perfectly capable of carrying you off to ravish you without one. In fact, you’re looking kind of tasty…”

He grabbed her wrist and pulled her into his lap, where he buried his face in her cleavage. She shrieked in delight, and giggled madly as he nosed about making silly noises.

“Tasty titties!” Naruto announced. “Gonna eat’em all up! Om nom nom!”

The stab of jealousy I expected didn’t come. I was too busy enjoying their smiles to feel neglected.

“Goof!” I mussed his hair with an indulgent smile. “Ooh! Tasty toes!”

Hinata proved adorably ticklish.

The three of us had never had a full-length vacation loop together, but combining our efforts made it trivial to arrange. I split myself and left an aspect behind to play myself in the exam, and Naruto made some kind of permanent clone to do the same. Then the two of us snuck out of town and made out way up to the Twin Falls resort on the edge of Fire Country. It was one of the nicer resorts I’d visited with Tsunade, located at the bottom of a huge gorge with a spectacular view of not one but two waterfalls. Naruto got us a honeymoon sweet, and I made Hinata a body as soon as we settled into our rooms.

“I am so glad to be able to spend time together as myself,” I announced as I finished. I’d reverted to my adult form before we’d checked in, and Naruto had done his own transformation at the same time.

“Me too,” Naruto said. “The scenery is much better this way. But you two are going to need new clothes pretty quick.”

“Oh, I don’t have to spend the loop henge streaking?” Hinata asked slyly. “I thought the plan was to see how long I can go without getting hit by a dispel in public.”

“Tempting,” I admitted. “But no, the only people I want seeing me naked are in this room. I assume the plan is to make some money gambling and then hit the shops?”

“Exactly,” Naruto said. “I want to buy you both a million presents, and my luck is always good.”

“Who needs luck?” I asked. “Tell you what, you try your luck and I’ll try my advanced cheating techniques. Whoever ends up with more winnings can pay for the shopping expedition.”

“Out! Out! And don’t come back!” The casino manager shouted angrily as he pushed us towards the door. I suppose the trio of bouncers with him were supposed to be intimidating, but none of them had enough chakra to matter.

“Ok, ok, just let me cash in my chips,” Naruto said amiably. He was holding a stack worth about fifty thousand ryo, which put my otherwise respectable winnings to shame.

“I said out!” The manager shouted angrily, and moved to shove the pile out of Naruto’s hands. Big mistake. Hinata appeared between them and grabbed his wrist, twisting it to pin his arm behind his back and then forcing him to the floor with her dainty foot between his shoulder blades in one elegant motion. She held his trapped arm lightly in one hand, keeping it painfully extended without quite breaking anything.

“You should be more polite to ninja, manager-san,” she chided. “Shall I kill them all, Sakura?”

Naruto gave her a startled look, and I chuckled. “Not asking the boss, Hinata?”

“Naruto-sama is much too nice for his own good,” she answered. “You’ll let me decorate the walls with their blood if they deserve it. Shall I?”

The bouncers went pale, and started edging away. They knew better than to tangle with ninja.

“No, I’m sure the manager was just overwrought,” I said. “He’ll be happy to let us cash in our chips before we leave. Won’t you?”

“Yes!” He gasped. “Please, whatever you want, just take the money and go!”

“There, see?” I patted her on the cheek, and she let the man up. I might have had more sympathy if I didn’t know he was a petty yakuza boss, and his gambling hall made a fortune cheating customers with everything from loaded dice to an artfully rigged roulette wheel.

Ok, so he’d whine to his boss, and he’d send someone to ‘teach us a lesson’, and when that didn’t work things would probably escalate. But there wasn’t a yakuza enforcer in the whole country who could make any of us break a sweat, so I’d just consider it part of the entertainment.

Naruto looked amused as he collected his winnings, and I figured he was thinking the same thing. Then he offered us each an arm, and the three of us made our exit.

“Alright, girls, we’re hitting the clothing stores first,” he announced. “I’ve got to see those legs in miniskirts.”

I chuckled. “You’re going to take two girls shopping for clothes on an unlimited budget? You’re braver than I thought, partner.”

“I know. This is a peril that has claimed the sanity of many a brave ninja,” he said theatrically. “But I shall win through with the aid of my ultimate technique!”

Between one step and the next his chakra reversed polarity, and I found myself on the arm of a gorgeous woman instead of a handsome man.

“Let’s see now,” she mused. “There’s a tailor and a couple of good clothing shops on that plaza that faces the southern waterfall, and a neat little shoe store a couple of blocks over from there. Oh, and Izumi’s salon, we have to stop there! Sakura, have you ever thought about changing your hair? Not the color, that’s just too striking to give up no matter how much it limits your wardrobe selection. But I’m thinking maybe something short, to frame your face and show off that neck…”

Hinata and I exchanged a mischievous look. Oh, this was going to be fun.

A few days later we decided to head up the valley a bit and get in a little sparring in the wilderness above the gorge. We were all looking forward to the chance to test ourselves against each other and show off a bit, but the results weren’t exactly what I expected.

Hinata could kick my ass in close combat nine times out of ten, which didn’t surprise me after her performance against Orochimaru. Her speed technique made her so insanely fast that even at full boost I had trouble keeping up, and her actual skill level wasn’t far behind mine. Add in her immunity to illusions, her mist techniques and a library of lethal close-range ninjutsu and I was sometimes amazed I could even land a hit.

Of course, it was a different story if she didn’t manage to close with me right off. My medium-range ninjutsu was miles better than hers, my chakra reserves were deeper, and her best defensive techniques required her to stop moving for a few seconds. She quickly learned that I could usually wear her out or crack her defenses, and started turning our long-range matches into a game of hide-and-seek in the surrounding woods instead of slugging it out. Which, of course, played back to her strengths.

Naruto, on the other hand, could beat Hinata easily. The first time they sparred he let her get right into close combat, then flared his aura up to full strength and shut down her speed technique by the simple expedient of opposing her chakra with his own. Normally that’s isn’t feasible against a real opponent, but he was so strong his chakra completely overpowered hers even inside her own body. She tried to press on, but about thirty seconds later he managed to trap her in a bear hug and started kissing the back of her neck. Her will to fight pretty much went up in smoke at that point.

My first try at sparring with Naruto was a bit different. I went in with my water aspect in control, but my illusions fell apart in that dense chakra field and my water shroud was nearly useless. My strength boost wavered on and off as his chakra scrambled mine, and after our first exchange of blows I was suddenly struck by a desperate desire to have him bend me over the nearest boulder and take me until I couldn’t see straight. I stumbled back, awkwardly parrying blows I couldn’t even feel properly because he was drowning out all my chakra senses, and suddenly I was caught just like Hinata. A calloused hand cupped my breast as I felt his breath on the back of my neck, and my knees went weak.

“Hey, aren’t you supposed to be the one that can resist me?” He asked innocently. “Maybe you’ve got your mind on something besides fighting?”

But I was pretty good at splitting my attention, and he’d given me enough time to trace the effect his aura was having on me. I reached deep into my subconscious, grabbed hold of the part of my subconscious that lit up like a beacon with every flicker and pulse of male chakra, and turned it off with wrenching effort of will.

And then I could think again. Yeah, I still wanted my man to tame me, but I was going to make him work for it. His chakra suppression trick was pretty neat, but no one can match me at chakra control. Hell, he wasn’t a chakra sensor, so I doubt he could even see what he was doing in any detail. He was just putting out a blanket interference pattern, and I could see it clearly now. All I had to do was compensate for the distortion…

I replaced myself with a rock, which got me to the other side of the clearing and out of his aura. But two can play the seduction game. I struck a sultry pose while wrapping myself in a set of allure techniques that would turn most men into drooling idiots in an instant.

“Fight? Why would we fight?” With one finger I toyed with the zipper that held my halter-top closed in front, while I slowly ran the other down my toned belly towards my hip-hugging shorts. “I can think of much nicer things to do with you, big boy.”

“Ooh, I love it when you get all seductive, babe,” he replied with a rakish grin. “Winner gets to be on top?”

“You’re on,” I agreed. I sank into a crouch as I went to full boost and spun up a Rasengan in each hand. “Just don’t think you’re going to get me like you did Hinata. Not that it wouldn’t be fun, but she’s the sub on this team. Now that I know what you’re doing I can beat your chakra interference, and I bet my combat seduction is better than yours.”

“That’s my Sakura,” he said approvingly. “I was hoping you’d give me a real fight.” Then he transformed into a bipedal dragon-thing the size of a dinosaur, and spat a bolt of lightning at me.

Damn, but fighting him was a rush. For the first time in my life I had an opponent I could actually hit, who didn’t go down with one punch. He was unbelievably tough, so much so that even my full strength was barely enough to hurt him, and I quickly discovered his transformation was still running. Injuries vanished as quickly as I inflicted them, his shape mutated constantly to counter my tactics, and he was a lot more used to fighting humans that I was giant monsters.

I led him a merry chase for about five minutes, dancing around him with illusions and clone distractions and invisibility techniques while I rained down increasingly massive levels of destruction on him. After the first couple of Rasengan hits he started throwing out shadow clones in smaller, faster shapes to try to pin me down, but I picked them off steadily and they could barely lay a finger on me. Not that it mattered much if they did, since I could heal myself as easily as he could change shape. Short of massive trauma I wasn’t going to go down until I ran out of chakra, though I was spending it fast enough to be worrisome.

For a few minutes I thought I might actually beat him, until it became apparent that even my biggest attacks couldn’t knock him out and his supply of clone-monsters was growing faster than I could kill them. Then one of the clones managed to bite me, and its venom screwed up my chakra control for several long seconds while I frantically dodged and tried to work out how to neutralize it. I lost my speed boost long enough for another one to tag me, then a leathery tentacle wrapped around my leg and pulled me in. By the time I got both hands around it to rip it apart he had me back inside his aura, with more tentacles around my waist and left arm and a big one with a spike on the end poised right in front of my face.

“Damn, you got me,” I admitted. “I can’t heal myself from a head shot.”

I stopped struggling, and flipped that switch in my subconscious back the other way so I could properly enjoy the feel of his chakra aura saturating every cell of my body. Kami, but it felt good to feel that naughty.

“Is the victor going to claim his spoils?” I asked slyly, as he pinned all four of my limbs with immensely strong tentacles as big around as my thighs. “How are you going to turn back without letting me go?”

“Who says I’m going to change back?” He replied in a throaty rumble. “Pretty girls who fight big, scary monsters with a seduction technique running should know what they’re going to get when they lose.”

I gasped as a smaller, flatter tentacle snaked under my waistband and ripped my shorts and panties right off my body. Then I looked down to see the mass of wet, squirming protuberances that was approaching me from below, and my eyes got very big.

“Oh, fuck yeah!” I gasped.

I have to admit, I don’t think I’ll ever look at tentacle porn the same way again.

It wasn’t all fun and games, of course. I still had a long list of technique ideas to work on, and a vacation loop with Naruto was a unique opportunity to try some of them out. Which is how I ended up spending an entire day in my mindscape setting up a bit of seal-work unlike anything I’d ever tried before.

Seal masters normally work by drawing on paper with ink that contains their own blood and chakra, but it doesn’t have to be done that way. The patterns and chakra are the important parts, and the rest is just a handy set of tools. My variation of Tsunade’s secret seal was done entirely in chakra, drawn in the air with sheer chakra control. It wasn’t easy, but I didn’t see a good alternative.

“Is that really going to work?” Hinata asked skeptically. “I’ve never heard of anyone drawing seals in their mindscape.”

I paused to wipe the sweat from my forehead, and studied the swirling lines of the seal. It was a self-modifying array, which gave it some interesting abilities but made it a real bitch to set up properly. Even a minor error in the initial configuration would tend to grow over time, warping the seal until it failed catastrophically. I wasn’t sure what that would do to me, but I was sure I didn’t want to find out.

“With most seals it would be a waste of time,” I conceded. “But I’ve removed the automated healing function from this version, so what’s left is just a power storage device. That means the only thing it needs to interact with is my chakra, so it should work. Especially considering where we are.”

Hinata raised a questioning eyebrow, and I waved at the pond we stood on. “The water is my chakra,” I explained. “The fish are my techniques, and the little stream that runs over the house and into the pond is my chakra recovery.”

Comprehension dawned in her eyes. “I see. So putting it where the stream runs into the pond means it’s actually a part of your chakra circulatory system? Interesting. Jiraiya and Orochimaru both have seals like that, but I’ve never been able to figure out how they made them. Do you think this is actually the normal way to do it?”

I considered the problem. “I doubt it. My mindscape is a lot more solid than normal. A serious mind-walker might be able to build something similar, but I’ve never heard any hint that Jiraiya had that kind of ability. More likely there’s another way to do it, maybe an advanced meditation technique or a special meta-seal array.”

Hinata nodded. “Yes, you’re probably right. So, ready to try it?”

“Yeah, I don’t see any flaws. Ok, here goes.”

I powered up the seal, and it folded itself into a three-dimensional diamond that hovered in the air with its lowest point just touching the rushing water below. It sank slightly at my direction, and began sucking a steady trickle of water out of the stream.

“Ok, it seems to be charging normally. I’ll check it again every few hours for awhile just to make sure.”

“Alright,” Hinata said. “It looks like it only captures about five percent of your chakra recovery, so it shouldn’t slow you down much. How much power can it hold, anyway?”

“Oh, that’s the best part of the technique,” I grinned. “It doesn’t have a set limit. When it gets full the incoming power is diverted to increasing the seal’s storage capacity. It can charge for centuries before you get close to any kind of fundamental limit.”

“Oh my. So that’s why you wanted to have it working while we’re here with Naruto.” Hinata considered the seal for a moment. Then she turned to me with her best puppy-dog eyes. “Can I have one, Sakura? Please?”

“Um, how?” I asked. “Your mindscape isn’t stable enough, and you get a different body every time we loop.”

“I seem to have a body here,” she pointed out. “I know it’s really my soul, but I bleed and sleep and do everything else just like it was real. And I know souls are usually immutable to fuinjutsu, but… mine belongs to you. Can’t you draw it on me here?”

I eyed her speculatively. “You know, that just might work.”

Both seals worked flawlessly. After I’d spent a few days confirming that fact Naruto was happy to put us both on chakra links for the rest of the loop, and our storage seals filled at a rapid pace. Even with all the various inefficiencies involved in the arrangement I calculated that by the end of the loop my seal would hold more chakra than I could produce in a month, which would be a very nice ace in the hole the next time I had a fight I really needed to win.

“That’s great,” Naruto said when I broke the news over breakfast. “You girls are both really good, but having normal human-sized chakra reserves was one of your big weaknesses. Oh, that reminds me, can you show me how your memory-copy jutsu works?”

“Sure,” I agreed. “If you’ve gotten far enough into medical techniques. Maybe you can give me some tips on transformation techniques while we’re at it? I’ve been experimenting some, but you’re obviously taking a completely different approach. My transformations are a heck of a lot less chakra-intensive, but you’ve got a lot more speed and flexibility.”

“Yeah, I noticed that,” he confirmed. “I want to see how you heal yourself with so little power. Oh, but let’s not leave Hinata out. What do you want to work on, cutie?”

“I’d like to learn how Sakura makes herself immune to your aura,” Hinata said. “It embarrasses me that I can’t even try to fight you, and I worry that you aren’t the only opponent who might be able to do that to me. But I also think it’s time we discussed the situation. We’ve all had time to digest Sakura’s news by now.”

Naruto chuckled. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I’ve been putting it off because I don’t know what to do about it, but we ought to be able to figure something out. Sakura, you’re our big brain. Any ideas yet?”

“Well, maybe,” I admitted. “I’ve been trying to figure out what the wish actually did and why, and I think I have a theory.”

“Really? I’m all ears,” Naruto said eagerly.

“Well, you said ‘I wish we could go back and fix everything.’ The obvious way to grant that wish would be to send you back to some particular point in time that’s far enough back to actually prevent the invasion, and do the same thing with whoever else it thought you meant by ‘we’. Something got screwed up there, because we didn’t get sent back together even though that’s obviously what you meant, and I don’t have any good ideas about that part.”

“But the rest of it actually fits what we’ve seen if you think about it. Your wish was to ‘fix everything’, not to ‘try again’, so my theory is that the wish-granting system is waiting for you to reach the end of the exam feeling satisfied that everything is fixed. Whenever something happens that makes that impossible it decides to send you back for another try, but it helpfully tries to do it at a convenient time instead of immediately interrupting you. The same thing happens to the rest of us, except that since it wasn’t our wish there’s nothing we can do to make it stop sending us back.”

“That’s also why it sent me back when I asked it to,” I went on. “It’s still watching us, and it’s actually trying to be helpful in its own weird way. So when I told it that loop was hopeless it just kicked me back to the start for another try, no questions asked. That part would probably work for any of us, although I suspect we have to be telling the truth about actually needing a reset.”

Naruto frowned. “I guess that makes sense, but now I feel like a real shit for getting you into this. If that’s how it works we’ve got our work cut out for us. I could live with not getting promoted in the exam, but not with Sasuke and the original Hinata both coming out nuts.”

“It’s possible that the wish is tied to what you wanted when you made it, rather than what you want now,” Hinata pointed out. “But I think you’ve both missed a deeper issue. We’ve been played.”

“What do you mean?” I asked curiously.

“Astoria said the bright kami were trying to use Naruto as a pawn in their war against their darker counterparts, and we know some of them can see the future. I have trouble believing that the timing of the wish offer was a coincidence.”

“Wait, what?” Naruto asked in confusion. “What are you getting at, Hinata?”

I, on the other hand, understood what she was saying all too well.

“Those bastards,” I breathed. “You’re right, Hinata. I could see them watching the future and waiting for the perfect moment, when they could manipulate a mortal into making exactly the wish they wanted. But… why this wish? Why not just get someone to ask them directly for help, or… no, wait, they have rules about what they can do in the mortal world. All kinds of arms control treaties and cease-fire agreements and so on. There’s something they need us to do, that they can’t do themselves.”

“That was my thought,” Hinata confirmed. “The three of us are already one of the strongest ninja forces in the elemental countries, and the only limit to what we can accomplish is our own potential. Imagine how strong our team would be if Sasuke hadn’t gone mad, and we spent another twenty years training. We could easily put ourselves in a position to influence world events however we wish.”

“I don’t think Sasuke just went crazy,” Naruto put in. “I think that seal the snake-freak always puts on him does something to him.”

“It could also be his eyes,” I pointed out reluctantly. “They’re actually designed to make mortals end up being consumed by evil. You’re right, it would take a miracle for him to spend that long alone and not go bad… which means they knew it was going to happen, doesn’t it? The question is, why?”

We chewed on that one the rest of the morning, but came to no conclusions.

I was sorely tempted to propose a string of vacation loops together, but I knew Naruto was even more sick of that damned chuunin exam than I was. So when it came time to decide on our next more I pushed for something constructive instead.

“Obviously we need to figure out how to deal with Akatsuki,” I pointed out. “But there are some other leads we should follow up too. I’m starting to think it would be a good idea to find out exactly what Orochimaru’s cursed seal does, and maybe figure out how to remove it. We might need to get Naruto promoted to satisfy the wish, so someone needs to work on who’s blocking that and how to get rid of them.”

“What about the other Hinata?” Naruto asked. “There’s no way I can just leave her like she is now, and I’ve never had any luck getting into someone else’s loop.”

“I’ve got some ideas on that front, but it’s going to take me a few loops to get them worked out,” I replied. “I can actually see the link that lets you summon me here if I’m meditating deeply enough, and if I can dig up the right bits of sealing lore I may be able to figure out how it works and duplicate the effect. Mind you, Hinata’s the easy one. I’ve got no idea what we’re going to do about Sasuke even if we could get at him.”

“Me neither.” Naruto shook his head. “We’ll have to keep thinking about that one. Hinata, I hate for us to part again so soon, but do you think you’d be ok if you did a few long loops with Sakura? I’d love to keep you with me instead, but I think she’s going to have the harder job to do.”

“Yes,” she replied. “I’ll miss you terribly, but Sakura and I have become much closer over the last few years. As long as I have at least one of you near I think I’ll be alright.”

“Alright, then here’s what we’re going to do. Sakura, I want you to take Hinata and do some recon on Akatsuki. We need to know who their members are, what they’re after, how to fight them, all that fun stuff. While you’re doing that I’ll see if I can crack Orochimaru’s security and find out about that seal. We’ll probably both have a lot of dying and forced loop resets doing that, but we don’t have to finish before we meet again. So I’ll summon you again in, say, eight loops.”

“You got it,” I said. “Don’t worry, Naruto. I don’t care how tough these guys are, Hinata and I together can crack anyone’s security.”