Time Braid

20. Final Solutions

Disclaimer: I don’t own Naruto.

AN: Responses to reviews can be found on my personal blog (see the home page link in my profile).

I hadn’t expected anything to come of our temporary association with Anko, but events proved me wrong. Apparently honest friendship is sometimes a more effective means of influence than any mind control technique.

Cutting off Anko’s head and growing a new body for it was a little tricky, but well within my abilities by this point. Anko was insanely grateful to finally be free of Orochimaru’s seal, though it was nearly a week before I found out why. We were camped on a mountainside in southern Lightning Country, and I woke in the middle of the night to find that Anko had vanished from the cozy pile of furs the three of us generally slept in. I sat up silently so as not to disturb Hinata, and found our missing companion perched atop a nearby boulder watching the stars.

She hadn’t bothered to dress, and there were tears in her eyes.

I flickered up to sit beside her, and put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you alright?”

She nodded. “Yeah. For the first time since I was a kid, I think I am.”

“Good. I couldn’t see everything, but I figured the demonic chakra from the seal was trying to influence you somehow. No sign of any lingering effects?”

“I haven’t had the dreams for a week now,” she confirmed shakily. “That was the part I hated the most. Even worse than the pain function. It was like those genjutsu that make you see whatever you’re most afraid of, only it was trying to make me be… like he wanted. Hanging on his every word, crazy to kill anything he’d point me at, loving anything he did to me even if it was torture. It’s hard to resist that in your sleep, especially when it won’t let you wake yourself up.”

I put my arms around her, and for once she actually let me hold her.

“It’s over,” I reassured her. “You’re free now.”

“Finally,” she choked. “No one else could do anything, but you… thank you, Sakura! It was winning, eating my soul one little bit at a time, and I could see everyone who knew had already written me off. But now…”

Her control finally broke, and she collapsed into my embrace with a sob. I held her gently as she cried herself to sleep, then carried her back to bed.

She opened up a lot more after that. I knew she’d always been lonely in the village, with everyone who wasn’t terrified of her seduction skills treating her like a walking time bomb. But Hinata and I weren’t afraid of her, didn’t look down on her for her skills or blame her for what the Snake Sannin had done to her, and weren’t trying to get her to do anything in particular. We just accepted her, and treated her like a friend.

In retrospect, I think that’s what did it.

We ran a few easy missions after that, collecting bounties on a missing Sand nin who’d gone on a random murder spree and a gang of ex-soldiers who’d deserted to concentrate on their slave-trading business. We spent a few weeks with a clan of wind users who traded me their flight technique for my variant on Tsunade’s seal. We made a few training stops in the wilderness where Anko got to watch Hinata and I spar with our full abilities, and finally we treated ourselves to a weekend at the fanciest hot spring resort in Demon Country.

One evening the three of us were unwinding in our suit’s private hot spring after an afternoon of friendly debauchery when Anko decided she’d had enough.

“I give up,” she announced, throwing her arms out theatrically and nearly spilling the sake in the process. “If this is what I get for defecting, sign me up. Just promise me we aren’t planning to destroy Konoha or something.”

I laughed. “Are we private, Hinata?”

Hinata was lying back against the side of the pool with a wet cloth over her eyes, but she gave me a thumbs up. “Some local kunoichi was scouting the area a couple of hours ago, but it looks like we weren’t her targets. We’re clear for now.”

“Good. Konoha is safe from us, Anko. We might have to pretend otherwise at some point, but the worst we’d ever actually do is help Naruto clean house when he becomes Hokage. If you want to join us we’ll be happy for the help. I can’t tell you the details right now, but if you stick with us long enough that’ll change.”

Anko opened her mouth, and then abruptly closed it and looked thoughtful. “Is Naruto secretly the Fourth’s kid?” She asked after a moment.

“Yep,” I confirmed. “One of many, many secrets we figured out before we started this plan. I don’t think he even knows right now.”

“Then I’m in,” Anko said confidently. “I was never all that impressed with the old guard anyway. But unless you two are running some big confidence game on me I’m pretty sure I’ll be in favor of whatever your plan is.”

“Sakura?” Hinata interrupted. “I see one of paper-chan’s spy constructs drifting our way on the breeze.”

“Really? That’s good news,” I replied. “I was starting to think they’d just ignore us. Anko, do mind playing besotted love-slave for a bit?”

“Who’s pretending?”

The paper adept watched us off and on for another month without making contact, which started to get annoying after awhile. We did a few odd jobs to pay the bills, visited another minor clan, and did a bit of training among ourselves while we waited for her to make a move. It might have gotten boring, except that I’d finally figured out how to finish a seal design I’d been contemplating for months.

The resulting scroll was massive, a roll of paper three feet wide and nearly two hundred feet long, but that was fairly typical for such things. The first thirty feet were covered with an intricate array of seals that took days to plan and nearly a week to transcribe. It would have taken even longer in the real world, but I’d discovered that my aspects shared the same mindscape regardless of how far apart we were. So the Sakura who was studying seals in Snow Country spent all her free time on it, and the Sakura who was wandering the world with Anko and Hinata put in a few hours here and there, and between us we got it done.

The scroll occupied the entire length of the main table in the workroom I’d created for myself, but I’d made the place roomy on purpose. There were several smaller tables and plenty of room to pace, and the wide windows that lined one wall let the breeze in and gave me a wonderful second-story view of the field and woods I’d set up as a training ground. A dozen of Hinata’s water clones were sparring industriously as I finished, trying to perfect some sneaky new technique she didn’t want to use in the real world where our stalker might see it, and I let myself relax and enjoy the view for a few minutes.

Eventually she noticed me watching, and the real Hinata appeared at one of the open windows.

“You’re finished?” She asked eagerly. She’d been trying to figure out what I was up to for days, but I’d discovered it was fun to be mysterious.

“Yes. Have you figured it out yet?” I asked mischievously.

She frowned at the seals. “It looks like a summoning scroll, but that doesn’t make sense,” she complained. “You need the blood of the target to create one of those, and there’s no way to get real blood in here. Come on, just tell me!”

I laughed. “I’ll give you a hint. This big symbol that anchors the whole scheme? It’s my name.”

She frowned in confusion, as she traced out the seal work again. Then she finally got it, and her eyes went wide. “It doesn’t need blood because it’s like your chakra seal! Wait, you’re going to have Naruto sign it!” She exclaimed.

“That’s the plan,” I confirmed. “He’ll have to do it in here of course, but if he can’t already mind-walk I’m sure I can teach him. But it isn’t just for him. Would you like to be the second person to sign a summoning contract with me?”

“After Naruto?” Hinata asked excitedly.

“No, after me,” I said, and signed my true name to the scroll with a flourish. Which added an interesting self-referential level to the seal work, but I didn’t see how it could hurt anything.

She beamed at me, and added her own name next.

It took Hinata a few days to get the hang of summoning me, but it worked like a charm. She had a little more trouble when I was aspected, and for awhile I was frequently treated to the odd sensation of a summons trying to call a version of me that didn’t currently exist. But she got better with practice, especially once I explained my trick of splitting myself along chakra nature lines, and within a week she could call the aspect she wanted more often than not. Since summoning techniques are already designed to call targets from other worlds I was pretty confident that Naruto would be able to do the same from his loop as well.

Of course, summoning contracts work both ways. The first time I tried it I accidentally triggered the wrong contract and got Hinata’s disembodied soul, which was a bit embarrassing. But that was easy to fix, and in a few hours I could summon her from miles away with a gesture and a few drops of blood. We were both looking forward to springing that one on the next enemy who thought he’d caught one of us alone.

I was starting to wonder what paper-san was waiting for, so not long after that I sent Anko back to Konoha with instructions to pretend she’d simply given up on influencing me. Unless Jiraiya checked up on her personally there was no way for them to tell that her seal was gone, and I doubted the old men would seriously consider the idea that I might have subverted her rather than vice versa.

“Aw, but hanging with you two is a lot better than the missions they’re going to send me on,” she complained. “I offered to join you to get away from all that.”

I winced. “I know, Anko. But I’m trying to get contacted by someone who’s probably never going to make a move while you’re here, and if you don’t go back the hunters will be after you soon too. It shouldn’t be for more than a few weeks.”

“Promise me you’ll let me come back as soon as you can?” She asked seriously. “I… don’t like living like that.”

“It won’t be forever, Anko,” I said. “I promise.”

I kissed her goodbye, and copied her memories.

Hinata eyes me speculatively as our traveling companion left, and I realized with her vision she’d probably seen what I’d done. She confirmed it once Anko was safely out of sight.

“What are you up to?” She asked. “I like Anko, but I think Naruto is plenty for both of us.”

“Tell me about it,” I chuckled. “No, I’m not trying to set up a harem, silly. But she’s a good friend, and I hate the way her life has turned out. I’d like to be able to have her around sometimes, and I think having us as friends is good for her. Maybe we could offer her a place as a retainer when we get out of the loop, so she can quit that crappy ANBU job.”

“I like that idea,” Hinata allowed. “Although it will be Naruto’s decision, since I assume we’ll be joining his clan.”

“Yeah, that’s definitely the best way to do it,” I agreed. “He claims the Namikaze name, we both marry into his clan, and that makes him our clan head so we don’t have to worry about interference from your clan. But the marriage itself could be tricky. There’s no way your father’s going to agree to let you leave the Hyuuga clan, so we’d have to get the daimyo to overrule him.”

“There might be other ways,” she said slyly. “But paper-chan is almost in range again.”

“Right,” I sighed, and changed the subject.

Another week passed before I finally got fed up, and stopped in the middle of a deserted stretch of forest to confront a strip of paper caught in the branches of a tree.

“Can I help you with something?” I asked with a bit of annoyance. “Because this is really getting old. It was bad enough when you hung back and I just had to listen to Hinata’s comments, but at this range even I can see you. Are you planning to follow us around forever, or what?”

Nothing happened for a moment. Then more strips of paper blew in on the wind, swirling around the one I’d addressed and rapidly coalescing into a humanoid shape. Then the paper took on color, and suddenly she looked like a real person.

“Clones at a distance, huh? Nice technique,” I observed. “So what’s the story?”

“Your partner’s Byakugan must be very strong, to see through my disguise,” she replied. “But you are a greater mystery. Your family is civilian for three generations back, and your instructors laud you as an academic genius while lamenting your lack of practical skills. Even your jounin instructor, the famous Copy Ninja, failed to note anything unusual about you. Yet in your time as a missing nin you’ve demonstrated skills few jounin could match, and I believe you are telling the truth about seeing me. How is this possible?”

“Do you really expect me to explain it to a complete stranger?” I asked. “I see that you’re a member of Akatsuki, but you people are so secretive I have no idea what you’re after.”

“Humor me, and perhaps you’ll find out,” she offered.

I raised an eyebrow. “Recruiting, are we? Hmm. Alright, I’ll tell you this much. I have a recessive bloodline that’s unique as far as I know. I’m a chakra sensor with perfect control and a natural talent for seals, and that combination lets me invent new techniques almost as easily as an Uchiha can copy them. I was just coasting in the academy because I didn’t have to exert myself to ace my classes, but I woke up in a hurry when I got a look at the real world.”

“A plausible story, but one that no one can test,” she noted. “It also seems that you have a true regeneration technique?”

I nodded. “Konoha’s security really does suck, doesn’t it? I take it that was in Kakashi’s report?”

“Yes.” She hesitated, then went on. “Let me ask you one more question. What do you think of Konoha?”

Now it was my turn to hesitate. I had only a vague suspicion about what kind of answer she wanted, and she was probably as good at detecting falsehood as I was at lying. I doubted I could bluff my way through this one, so I decided to go with the truth.

“Konoha is a tragedy,” I said. “A city of noble ideals built on a foundation of lies. Men like Sarutobi and Jiraiya talk proudly about the will of fire and the true king and their dreams of peace, and the sad thing is they actually mean it. But the peace they’re so proud of is built on the backs of broken heroes, and there is no crime they won’t commit to preserve it. The Hyuuga enslave their own kin, the Hokage lets Danzo’s brainwashed death squad do his dirty work, the whole village hates Naruto for being the one who protects them from the Kyuubi… it just goes on and on.”

“But the saddest thing is, as bad as they are all the other major powers are even worse. Konoha’s leaders sleep soundly at night because they can tell themselves that, hey, at least they don’t use captured civilians for medical experiments, or require academy students to murder their friends to graduate, or a thousand other things like that. Never mind that if they were half as pure as they pretend the Third Ninja War wouldn’t even have happened.”

“The whole world is like that,” my interrogator said sadly. “Endless strife and bloodshed and suffering, perpetuating itself from one generation to the next forever. Do you have a solution?”

“Not one I’m happy with,” I admitted. “The wars will go on until someone manages to unite all the elemental countries under one rule, but no one has the power to do that. Besides, the peace would only last a few generations. Then you’d start having succession wars and rebellions, and eventually an inept ruler would let things fall apart again.”

I paused, as I suddenly saw where this was going. “Do you have a better idea?”

“I am only an assistant,” she said. “But there is a man who does, and he could use someone like you. Come with me, if you wish to learn more.”

The number of security measures Konan guided us through was amazing. Even after walking through it all I doubted we could get back out without tripping something, which was probably the point. In Pein’s mind Hinata and I were essentially prisoners since the time we entered Amegakure, since we’d never be able to escape unless he let us go. It must be nice to be so powerful you never seriously worry about whether you can defeat a strange ninja.

Amegakure itself was a bit of a shock. The place looked like it was built by a mad god, all giant pipes and towers of chakra-forged steel. The inhabitants were like squatters hiding out in some vast structure they didn’t understand and could never have built, and by the time we reached Pein’s tower I was convinced that impression was accurate. There was more steel in that complex than all the nations of men have forged since the beginning of recorded history, and the seal work sleeping within was done in a complete different style than any human work I’d seen. It must be some remnant left over from the days when kami walked the world, and I wondered if perhaps it held the secret to Pein’s fantastic strength.

The man Konan introduced as Nagato was another surprise, although in retrospect it shouldn’t have been. The forest of metal rods imbedded in his back were obviously the transmitter for the puppet technique that controlled ‘Pein’s’ six bodies, but they certainly weren’t improving his health. He could probably survive for awhile without the life support pod he was embedded in, but I could see at a glance he probably didn’t have more than a few years to live.

His own explanation of his plan didn’t sound nearly as crazy as the version Jiraiya had told me.

“Once we have merged all the bijuu into a single weapon the great nations will fight for control of it. Many lives will be lost before a victor emerges. But then the victor will have the means to terrify all enemies into submission, with a power that does not depend on armies or the strength of each generation’s ruler. The brutal, total wars of the past will be replaced with intrigue and carefully limited rebellions. After generations of rule the central government will eventually become corrupt and fall, but even then there will be no reason to raise armies and fight devastating battles over the countryside. Only possession of the bijuu weapon will be needed to rule, so the battles to control it will be the only ones worth fighting. The pain of war will not be eliminated, but it will be reduced to the smallest scale that human nature allows.”

“That seems surprisingly plausible,” I admitted. “The devastation of the initial war will be huge, until people realize what they’re up against and adjust to the new reality. But even one century of peace would make up for it, and this new system would probably last for ages. The new rulers could be tyrants, but they can still be assassinated and they don’t have as much need to fear rebellion, so on average they might even be better rulers than the daimyos. Only, why aren’t you setting yourself up as the first ruler?”

“No man with so much blood on his hands should be an emperor,” Nagato said solemnly. “Besides, the daimyos will struggle much harder to oppose a ninja usurper than one of their own. I shall leave it to fate to determine which of them will attain control over the weapon.”

“I see,” I replied. “So, what do you need me for?”

“Most of our other members are greedy men who believe they will attain the power of the bijuu themselves,” he revealed. “Only Konan and I know the truth, though Itachi may suspect. But my power exacts a heavy toll on my body, and the work on the bijuu container goes slowly. If I pass before our plan is complete Konan will need assistance to see it through.”

“Otherwise men like Kakuzu and Kisame really will gain the power of the bijuu?” I asked. “Yeah, that would be bad. Alright, we’re in. But you know, I could probably heal you. I can see that those rods would scramble anyone else’s chakra, but if we remove them the damage would be well within my limits.”

He glanced at Konan, who gazed back at him silently.

“No,” he shook his head. “I must retain the full power of this technique for as long as possible, or our plan has little chance of success. But I am curious what other hidden skills you possess…”

Needless to say, the other Akatsuki members were not impressed. They were used to seeing themselves as the strongest of the strong, and kunoichi just don’t make it to that level. We start out with less physical strength and chakra than male ninja, and contrary to popular belief we don’t have any compensating advantages. Add in the fact that kunoichi tend to specialize in seduction or medicine, and usually retire by their early twenties to raise a family, and it’s no mystery why there are a couple dozen male S-rank ninja for every female.

Most of them were professional enough to keep their mouths shut about it, since ‘Pein’ wasn’t the sort to do things on a whim, but every group has its hotheads.

“I can see why our leader wants you two around,” Hidan laughed as Hinata and I took our first look at the bijuu container. On discovering I was a seal master Pein immediately sent me to examine it and present my own analysis, which is a pretty sensible precaution with something so complex. You never know when even a junior assistant is going to point out that you’ve got an inverted seal or inappropriate coupling somewhere, and one mistake like that could result in this thing blowing up the first time we use it.

“I always figured that Konan chick had it bad for him, but if you two are as hot in the sack as you look I can see why he’d kick her to the curb,” the loudmouth went on. “But if we’re letting members in based on looks there’s a couple of girls back at the Prancing Kitten I want to recruit.”

I rolled my eyes. “Is he always this much of an idiot?” I asked Kisame, who was supplying chakra to the seal array as Itachi carefully inked in new symbols.

“Oh, don’t mind him, ladies,” the shark-faced man laughed. “He’s Kakuzu’s third replacement partner, so he probably won’t last long.”

“Hey!” Hidan objected. “Jashin has made me immortal, fish-face! You’re not getting rid of me that easy.”

“Uh huh. You keep telling yourself that. Anyway, anyone with a brain knows the leader wouldn’t have picked you two without a good reason. But I do gotta ask, are you two just medics or seal masters or something, or are you actually combat effective?”

“Want to spar when we’re done here?” I asked with an innocent smile. He gave me a measuring look, and grinned.

“Could be interesting.”

Most of Akatsuki’s members weren’t the sort to show all their cards, but they did do enough training to ensure they’d be able to fight together effectively. There was a massive chamber buried beneath Amegakure that they used as a training area, since the walls were chakra-hardened steel tough enough to withstand anything short of a bijuu.

Kisame was a fun opponent. I was faster and stronger than he was, but his sword was a bit of an obstacle and he had some interesting water jutsu. I went water myself and played with him for about ten minutes, before I went to full boost and pulled a trick he couldn’t counter. He was a good sport about it when I woke him up.

“Damn, you’re fast girl!” He growled. “Especially your techniques. I’ve never seen anyone do a sealless water dragon like that before. What was that thing at the end?”

I smiled. “Just an improved body flicker, believe it or not. My version takes perfect control, but it’s better at penetrating another ninja’s chakra aura and it doesn’t have that half-second delay between charging the technique and actually appearing. I just concentrate and poof, suddenly I’m hitting the back of your head with whichever technique I feel like using. Most of the big elemental attacks would still be slow enough to give you some warning, but a couple of my medical techniques are actually instant.”

“Nasty,” he conceded. “Guess I’ll have to do some training.”

“Hinata got the trick of scrambling her aura to keep me out in about a week,” I agreed. “Let me know if you want someone to practice it with. I could use another sparring partner.”

I found three serious problems with the bijuu vessel in my first week of looking at it, and one of them was a real flaw instead of something they’d put in on purpose to test me. It was a fascinating device, so complex that even an expert who’d worked on it could easily be mistaken about its real purpose. The parts to store and mix the chakra of the bijuu were taking up most of the effort, since they required massive amounts of power but were simple enough for anyone with a decent grasp of seals to work on. The rest of the array, the parts that were supposed to either create the bijuu weapon or split the power back up into human hosts, were such a tangle that even with my special advantage I had trouble deciphering them.

But I’d already heard two versions of Akatsuki’s master plan, so who was to say there wasn’t a third? Unlike most experts I could actually see the complexities hidden inside a rolled-up seal array if I focused my perception properly, and I had permission to spend as long as I wanted to studying the thing. So I spent long hours every day meditating on it while the other Akatsuki members did their work, and gradually I came to suspect that something odd was going on.

“What I can see of it mostly makes sense,” I told Hinata one day. “But there’s so much hidden complexity in that thing I don’t see how Nagato could possibly have designed it. Even if he’s a genius with seals we’re talking several decades of work, and he isn’t that old. Besides that, I keep getting this nagging feeling that there’s something here I’m missing.”

Hinata shrugged. “Sorry, but I don’t know nearly enough about seals to help you there. I can see all sorts of strange shapes and colors in the bijuu container, but I have no idea what any of it means. I suppose we need some way for you to see the truth more clearly, but I’m not sure how to do that.”

“See the truth… clearly… the veil!” I exclaimed. “Why didn’t I ever think of that? You’re a genius, Hinata!”

She looked so confused I had to laugh. “Veil? What are you talking about, Sakura?”

“I’ll explain next time you come inside,” I reassured her. “I guess it might not work, actually, but I’m going to give it a try. Give me an hour or two?”

“Um, alright,” she agreed reluctantly.

I settled into a comfortable position before the bijuu container, and dropped easily into my mindscape. Then I closed my eyes again, and fell into the lower layers of my inner perception. Down, past the swirling dance of thought and memory that represented my truest view of myself. Down, past the place where every aspect I’d ever worn left its ghostly impression, eight translucent forms sleeping in the dark. One of them had hair of black instead of pink, and I paused for a moment to make sure she was still sleeping.

Then deeper still, to the place where a slender thread of gold sprang out across the infinite void between worlds to reach the heart of the man I love. I still wasn’t sure quite how that connection had come to exist, though I suspect absorbing the version of me that he’d created had something to do with it. Regardless, I was glad of the landmark. I might never have found this place again without it.

Carefully, I took hold of the thread and floated out into the abyss. Just as it had that one time before, the darkness seemed to twist and crawl with hidden movement. I looked away, and back, and found again that sensation of a veil drawn over my sight that protected me from the truth of what lay before me.

I cast the veil aside.

For a moment I was frozen into immobility by the sheer grandeur of the cosmic vision that stretched out around me. I floated at the edge of a universe, an ocean of blue and green seals that sang of worlds and stars and stranger things I had no names for. In my hand was a thread of love spun from the substance of my own soul, singing a defiant song of partners standing together against the world. Beyond was a place where swirling abstract shapes too vast to see in their entirety danced forever through the void, in a symphony too great for any mortal mind to contain.

I felt the first prickling of strain, but this time I didn’t pull the veil back. Instead I turned away, and stepped back into myself. I kept the veil in my hand and my eyes open as I floated carefully back up through the layers of my consciousness, and emerged once more into what we humans call the real world.

The bijuu container swirled with undercurrents of black chakra, carefully hidden from normal perception by something that was to genjutsu what a typhoon is to a spring shower. The seals themselves were distorted somehow, twisting from one shape to another as space warped around them, madly whispering their hunger for souls to twist and mutilate. I’d been more right than I’d realized. Whatever this thing really was, its heart was forged by demons.

I swallowed nervously, and looked away. Kakuzu was working on a stretch of the seal, and I saw five blackened hearts beating in the corrupted abomination he called a body. Each had a different chakra nature, but all were bound together by the black webbing of a demonic pact.

I looked up at Hinata, and found I could see her chakra as well. A river of clean blue power flowed calmly through her chakra vessels, spilling out to form a faint aura around her. The silver collar and chain of our contract were clearly visible, as was a thread of braided gold and blue that connected our souls. But there were swirls of darkness surrounding her in a dense cloud, touching her deeply, spreading black stains through her soul like ink poured into water.

I thought for a moment it was part of her, and indeed much of the darkness did seem to be of her own making. But more of it seemed connected to some other source, something I couldn’t quite make out. I strained to resolve the strands that drifted off into our surroundings, thinning into diaphanous streamers of barely-visible shadow that vanished into thin air.

Or did they? Was it my imagination, or was the air itself a shade darker than I remembered? I frowned in concentration as I shifted the layers of this odd new perception, trying to make sense of it. There was something in the air. A tenuous cloud of subtle influence that permeated everything around me, brushing against people and inanimate objects alike. Some sort of wide-area jutsu, perhaps?

“What do you see, Sakura?” Hinata asked quietly.

“The true nature of the world, I think,” I replied. “But I’m not sure what most of it means. There are layers I can’t make any sense of at all, but this one… is this a genjutsu? I need a better look, but I’ll lose this if I get distracted. Help me get out onto a balcony?”

“Of course.”

Whatever the shadow was, it extended all through the halls of Nagato’s tower. I was sure now that it was made up of demonic chakra, but the seals that would have defined a normal technique’s function seemed to be completely missing. It was just a diffuse cloud of formless evil. Perhaps it was leakage from something in Amegakure, but if so it was odd that I didn’t get a sense of direction or see any variations in intensity.

It took ten minutes of careful walking to make our way up five flights of stairs and across the tower, but thankfully we weren’t interrupted. Hinata opened the door for me, and I stepped out onto one of the high balconies overlooking the city. Sure enough the shadow extended through all the streets and towers I could see from my position, but on this larger scale it didn’t seem quite as uniform. There still weren’t any seals, but some areas seemed just slightly thinner or denser than others.

Then I looked up, and gasped.

The cloud extended across the whole sky, from horizon to horizon, lending the whole world a faint tinge of black. And there was one of the seals I’d expected, its harsh angles stretching halfway across the sky. Others peeked over the horizon on all sides, so huge they were only partly visible from here. But what little I could read of this vast array was disturbing enough…

…every hatred fanned into an eternal flame, every good deed punished with suffering and loss, every bearer of hope forced to choose between evils…

…I’d never heard of such a technique before, but suddenly I wanted out of Amegakure. I didn’t want to spend another minute inside the field of that horrible thing. Only, how far did it extend?

A sudden terrible suspicion led me to contact my other aspect in distant Snow Country, and after a moment of preparation we switched places. She’d been sitting atop the roof of one of the palace towers working the bugs out of a new seal array, so I had a clear view of sky and mountains and miles of broad snow-covered valley.

The same tenuous cloud of evil hung over the entire landscape. Only the symbols in the sky were different…

…for every crossroad of fate the best choices shall be hidden, while the flaws of those that lead subtly to ruin go unnoticed…

“My god,” I breathed. “It covers the whole world.”

For a moment I felt the same hopeless despair as when I’d first found out about the invasion. Astoria had told me. Hell, Kogura had told me, when I was a demon. But I’d been so focused on my own problems I hadn’t thought it was significant.

Suddenly, I couldn’t stand to be alone. I merged with my other aspect, leaving behind a lifeless corpse on that roof in Snow Country, and buried myself in Hinata’s arms.

“Sakura?” She said hesitantly. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s everywhere,” I said hollowly. “This is what Astoria meant, when she said this was a dark world. Our kami are dead. The higher powers have walled us off. There’s nothing left to stop the demon gods from doing whatever they want to us, as long as they don’t break any of their treaties. They’ve spun some monstrous fate-warping jutsu over the entire world, and from what I can see its whole purpose is to drown us in misery. I always wondered why the world’s problems seemed so impossible to solve. Why even the greatest men do so much evil, make so many stupid mistakes. Now I know it isn’t an accident. Though why they would do it this way…”

A passage from my demon self’s briefing came to mind, and I hung my head.

“Of course. They’ve made this a world where anyone who can be corrupted will be, and those who can’t either give up or die young. But if there is ever a day when there are no more righteous men to stand against them, they can claim the whole world and everyone in it forever,” I whispered.

“What? But… what about children?” Hinata protested. “Well, and the world is so big, how could there ever not be even one?”

“Innocent children don’t count,” I said. “Only mortals old enough to understand the difference between good and evil. Hinata, the treaty I’m quoting doesn’t say ‘nice’ or ‘well-meaning’ or ‘mostly ok’, it says righteous.” I sang the key word in Celestial, and confirmed that it meant what I thought it did.

“How many people do you know who always take a stand against evil, no matter what it costs them? That’s what it takes, and there can’t be many people like that left in this world. I’ve only ever known one.”

“Two,” Hinata insisted softly. “You shine as bright as he does in your own way, my treasure. But if Pein kills us, and his plan destroys half the world and leaves the rest a wasteland while someone hunts down any survivor who stands out…”

I nodded. “Yeah, it could happen. We need to tell… Naruto. The hero of the age. Astoria said… Hinata, this could be the reason they gave him that wish!”

“Then we’d better tell him quickly,” she observed. “There are walls in this place I can’t see through, and seals whose purpose I can’t fathom everywhere. Someone is probably listening to us.”

“Right.” I let my vision of the world’s true state fade, and turned to face her. “Come inside, then, and we’ll reset right now. Naruto isn’t due to call us for a few loops yet, but I think I’ve finally reached the point where I can get us to him without help.”