Time Braid

23. Betrayal

Disclaimer: I don’t own Naruto.

Unfortunately Sasuke seemed a more urgent problem than the Curse of Despair, since he was liable to find Hinata or come after me for a rematch sometime soon. So the next loop I sent my Hinata off for another round of Naruto therapy while I concentrated on finding a way to help her looping counterpart.

It had been a long, long time since I’d seriously fought Orochimaru in the Forest of Death, but it was a lot easier this time around. I had great fun for a few minutes tearing up his snakes and countering his ninjutsu while the boys tried to fight him, but once he knocked out Naruto he left a couple of clones to play with Sasuke while he turned his full attention on me. Running at around half boost I was marginally faster than he was, and immensely stronger. In my water aspect I could easily counter his fire jutsu and dodge his wind attacks, so it wasn’t long before he decided to kick it up a notch.

“Ku ku ku ku. What an annoying little girl you are,” he complained as we traded blows in the upper branches of one of the great trees. Then his mouth distended, and the Kusanagi emerged.

I had my True Sight running, and as the blade began to emerge I stopped and watched raptly. It wasn’t a space warping effect at all, and it was nothing like a henge. The process of pulling that blade from its hidden storage location was one of the most complex jutsu I’d ever seen.

“Cool!” I exclaimed as it punctured my heart. “That is one sweet technique, Orochimaru! I never would have thought of building a closed space bridge around the illusion/reality dichotomy. Did you invent that yourself, or is it some kind of hidden lore you found?”

He took the blade in hand and stepped back, obviously a bit disconcerted by the way I was ignoring a lethal injury. It wasn’t even bleeding much, since I was holding the blood inside my body and keeping it circulating with a matter-animation technique.

“It’s based on fragments of research left behind by the Sage of Six Paths,” he admitted.

“No wonder I was having so much trouble,” I mused, absently gathering the Kusanagi’s poison and ejected it from the wound so I could heal myself. “I’ve been trying to get an effect like that working myself for weeks now, and it’s been giving me fits. Look, what would it take to convince you to show me how you do that?”

There was an explosion from the direction of Sasuke’s fight with the Snake Sannin’s earth clones, and we both glanced in that direction momentarily.

“Is that really an appropriate question from a bodyguard?” Orochimaru asked.

“Oh, I’m not guarding him,” I laughed. “I just like a good fight. Do whatever you want with the baby Uchiha. So seriously, what would it take? I’ve got a ton of S-rank combat ninjutsu, including some of Minato’s stuff that I stole and improved on. Or maybe medical techniques? I’ve got an age-reversal technique that lets me stay young forever, and you just saw a taste of my healing abilities.”

His eyes narrowed. “Who are you, girl? I don’t make such deals with unknown enemies.”

“Sakura is my name, but I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of me. I don’t have much of a rep in the elemental countries, but the Sage Toad of Mount Mouboku calls me the Sage of Insight.”

“Sage?” He scoffed. “Your chakra is respectable for a kunoichi, but still far too weak to withstand molding natural energy.”

Molding natural energy? Well, that was an interesting idea. Using it by itself would be incredibly awkward, but… hmm. Yeah, blending it with physical and mental energy to make a three-phased chakra would be unbelievably potent. Was that how Jiraiya’s Sage Mode ability worked? Interesting.

Unfortunately my opponent took advantage of my distraction to work another technique, and now there were hundreds of snakes with Kusanagi blades for tongues trying to stab me. Oh well, so much for bargaining with the Snake Sannin.

The rest of that fight leveled acres of forest and made it painfully obvious to Sasuke that I wasn’t the girl he’d thought I was, but the outcome was never in doubt. After the second time I interrupted one of Orochimaru’s elaborate ninjutsu with a lightning-fast Water Rasengan to the face he quit trying to win, and concentrated on getting away. I’m still not sure if he succeeded or not, but revealing myself as a kage-level ninja definitely blew the loop.

The next time around I sent Hinata to Naruto again, and let the events of the exam go by as usual while I spent my free time practicing going ‘light’. It had taken me a good thirty seconds to do it in my last fight with Sasuke, and I didn’t expect him to give me that luxury next time. Unfortunately it was a much harder transformation than just switching elemental affinities, and I could easily hurt myself if I rushed it. I spent a couple of days in the forest nursing an intense migraine from that, while I laboriously sorted out several weeks worth of scrambled memories and dealt with a sudden reluctance to kill even in self defense.

Thankfully that was a temporary problem, but I took it a lot slower after that. Pre-designing the aspect I wanted to wear while fighting Sasuke did make the transition faster, as did chanting a few words of Celestial to focus my mind. But by the time the invasion was due it still took me a good ten seconds to make the change, and that’s an eternity in combat.

My attempts to duplicate what I’d seen Orochimaru do weren’t going much better. I could move a few drops of my own blood back and forth between my mindscape and the real world, but that was mostly because of blood’s special nature as an embodiment of its owner. I still couldn’t take anything else into my mindscape, and the closest I could come to pulling my contract out was a sort of hazy, quasi-real illusion. Doing better looked like it would take some serious research, the kind that requires math and seal work and the ability to do experiments without attracting attention for acting out of character.

So I paid my loves a weekend visit near the end of the training month, and warned them I might be a little lonely the next time they saw me. Then I ran my pattern for derailing the invasion, and settled in for an extended loop.

I figured Orochimaru’s sword trick was still my best bet for getting my summoning contract out into the physical world, but apparently I needed an approach that would lead him to dismiss me as harmless. So I kept an eye on Sasuke, and waited for my chance. It came a couple of weeks later, a few days after Jiraiya officially accepted Naruto as his apprentice.

If Sasuke was surprised to find me waiting for him on the path from his apartment to the wall he didn’t show it. He took in my serious expression, and frowned slightly.

“I’m going,” he said firmly. “Don’t try to stop me.”

“Of course not,” I scoffed, as I pulled my pack from under the bench and put it on. “I’m going with you.”

That got me a momentary look of surprise. “Why?” He asked.

“Someone has to watch your back,” I lied. “Besides, I can get us over the wall without setting off any alarms. Now come on, we’ve only got a ten minute window here.”

Bemused, the brooding avenger let me have my way. Fifteen minutes later Konoha was rapidly receding behind us, and thanks to my finessing the wall wards no one even knew we were gone. By the time the Sound Four intercepted us I was pretty sure we’d get away clean, which was important if I didn’t want to have to face a determined Naruto trying to bring us both back.

The Sound nin were a little surprised Sasuke wasn’t alone, but they didn’t much care as long as I didn’t slow them down. The way they stuck him in a seal-covered barrel to ‘finish evolving his seal’ said a lot about what the thing was really doing to him, but I wasn’t there to interfere with Sasuke’s dive into stupidity. I had bigger game in my sights this loop.

It took two days to reach the hideout Orochimaru was currently using, and Sasuke was still in the barrel when we arrived. This was definitely intentional, since I’d seen the Sound ninja apply several layers of suppression seals to the thing as we traveled. I found out why when we arrived to find a rather weak-looking Orochimaru being attended by Kabuto in a lab full of exotic medical equipment.

“Excellent,” he chuckled as his minions set the barrel at his feet and bowed. “My new body has arrived just in time. Well done, all of you. But I see we have an unexpected guest. Did you come here to be with little Sasuke, Sakura?”

“Hardly,” I snorted. “I can read the seals on that barrel, sir. For that matter, I could read the seal you put on him. I knew he wasn’t strong enough to resist, so I’ve just been waiting for him to lead me to you.”

“Oh? And why would a loyal ninja of Konoha seek me out, hmmm?”

“Because those idiots back in Konoha won’t teach me anything,” I fumed. “I have an undocumented bloodline that gives me perfect chakra control and the ability to read seals as easily as normal writing, and they haven’t even noticed. Hell, Kakashi won’t even teach me a useful combat jutsu, let alone let me get involved with seal work. I’m hoping a ninja who’s renowned for his research into forbidden techniques won’t be so reluctant to let me use my abilities.”

“You can read seals? What does Tayuya-chan’s say, then?”

I glanced at the mark on the foul-mouthed redhead’s neck, and sang:

“Gather the darkness of the subject’s heart as an invitation to the powers of evil. Throw open the first four gates of life at hatred’s command, and let their power swell this fragile mortal form with demonic might. At hatred’s second call let the next three gates fall…”

I felt the words trying to coalesce into an active seal array, and stopped before they could find a target to latch onto. “Um, sorry, saying the words is the same thing as building the array, and I don’t have the chakra to power it. But I can read it all the way to the end, with the bit about devoted contentment and despairing doubt.”

“What an interesting talent,” he chuckled in that creepy way of his. “Very well, girl, we’ll give you the chance to be of use. But first, my new body. Kabuto, prepare the transfer chamber. Tayuya-chan, please entertain our guest while I’m indisposed.”

Working in Orochimaru’s labs was a weird experience. I’d thought his servants would be ruthless mercenaries, like the missing nin Hinata and I had encountered while looking for Akatsuki. Some of the flunkies were, but the ones closer to him were more like some kind of religious cult. It was enough to make me wonder if the Snake Sannin was another victim of the curse of despair, with some tortured back-story that drove him to think he was somehow doing good by destroying Konoha.

That lasted until I saw what kind of experiments he was conducting.

“You’re too soft-hearted,” Kabuto chided me a month later, as we looked over the remains of the latest set of cursed seal experiments. Most of them were horribly mutated from the seals, and crippled from the free-for-all battle Orochimaru had just put them through. “I’d think a girl who turned her first crush over to Orochimaru-sama to use as a host would have less empathy for random thugs and criminals.”

“Sasuke dug his own grave,” I answered. “These people were just convenient victims. What are we even trying to accomplish here?”

The prissy medic-nin sniffed, and looked down his nose at me. “Methodical testing of variants is essential to finding a more useful form of the Heaven Seal,” he informed me. “It takes dozens of test cases to find each workable improvement.”

I rolled my eyes. “Or you could just have me look at them. Jeez, half these things aren’t even grammatical. If you want the stage one transformation to give more durability all you have to do is change the third stanza to say so. Maybe ‘skin like iron’ or ‘form a tangible shield of chakra’ or… hmm. Ok, I guess there are a lot of variants to try, but we don’t need to waste our time on useless shit like ‘tough more bone please’!”

Kabuto fumed, Orochimaru grinned, and from then on I was in charge of seal design.

A lot of the Snake Sannin’s work was like that. He tried to be systematic in his research, but most of the time he didn’t know what he was doing, so his projects tended to kill hundreds of test subjects without getting anywhere. I think he was sadistic enough to see the casualty rate as a positive thing, a little recreational torture to while away the hours between major plots. But he was happy enough to get actual results instead, especially since my designs often went wrong at first.

Some of the things I had to witness made me sick, but I consoled myself with the thought that he’d be doing his experiments whether I was there or not. The girl I was playing had a weak enough stomach that he quickly decided it was more productive not to make her watch his more horrific deeds, which helped a lot. But my conscience still troubled me, and I resolved that when the loops were done one of my first projects would be putting an end to this madman and his little band of sadists.

Still, it wasn’t long before Orochimaru was personally instructing me in advanced sealing techniques and giving me open access to the notes from many of his past projects. I was the perfect tool in that respect, a harmless genin whose apparently instinctive knowledge of Celestial was guaranteed to generate unexpected insights in any project I looked at. It was a pretty sweet arrangement from my side too, since I was learning all sorts of interesting things from his research. I figured sooner or later he’d show me the scroll he’d learned his sword trick from, and in the meantime I might as well make the most of my opportunities.

I was expecting to have plenty of time, since I hadn’t heard of Orochimaru getting involved in anything significant in the years before Nagato made his move. But I hadn’t accounted for the one crucial change I’d made in the timeline…

“You should never have touched my brother, Orochimaru,” Itachi said with the slightest touch of anger. “Now you will die.”

Orochimaru cackled madly. “But I have a Sharingan of my own now, Itachi! This time I shall defeat you.”

I sighed, and tiptoed away. I knew exactly how that one was going to turn out. Orochimaru thought he was bad news, but he didn’t even have the Mangekyo. Come to think of it, he could probably never activate the higher levels of the Sharingan. They all required sacrificing bits of humanity that he’d cast aside long ago. His parents were dead, he didn’t have a true comrade to murder or a brother to steal eyes from, and he couldn’t even produce children who were genetically his own. How ironic, that in his mad quest for power he’d already thrown away the ability to gain what he really wanted.

The floor shook as I made my way into the Snake Sannin’s private lab, and began unlocking the seals on the shelf of scrolls he’d never let me see. I knew who was going to be standing when this fight was over, and it wouldn’t be Orochimaru.

“What do you think you’re doing, Sakura?” Came Kabuto’s voice from the door.

“Getting what I came for. You do realize Itachi’s going to kill him, right?” The first scroll was a treatise on immortality techniques. Useless crap. I set it aside, and started unlocking the next one.

“Perhaps you’re right,” he allowed as he approached me. “But if so, you should be more polite to the man who’ll be left in charge.”

“Uh huh.” I gave him my best annoying teenage eye-roll. “You aren’t too bright, are you Kabuto? I’m not going to work for you.”

The second scroll detailed the origin of his cursed seal, so I kept that one. Who knows, someday I might be able to turn it into a useful technique.

Kabuto’s hand cam down on my shoulder, and I felt a paralysis jutsu wash through my body.

“Such an irritating child,” he chided. “But I won’t have to deal with it any longer, once I’ve determined how that interesting little talent of yours works.”

I countered his technique and slammed a Rasengan into his chest before he could blink. He collapsed with a comical look of surprise, although of course he immediately began to regenerate. I shook my head, and picked him up by the front of his shirt while transforming myself into decent fighting shape.

“I’ve got a better idea, Kabuto,” I said coldly. “How about I figure out how your interesting little talent works, and then dispose of you?”

It was complicated, but with my best analysis jutsu running I could actually see his regeneration working. It was quite different than my medical transformations, but much more thorough than conventional medical techniques. Hmm. Maybe I really could copy this.

“How?” He gasped, still barely able to move.

“I don’t make villain speeches, Kabuto,” I replied. “You’ll just have to die not knowing.”

I put my hand on his head and formed a Rasengan in his brain, which put an end to any attempts at resistance on his part. His regeneration wasn’t good enough to replace that, but it was interesting to watch it try. It took a good ten minutes for his body to finally realize it was dead and give up.

I turned back to Orochimaru’s cache and set to work on the rest of the scrolls, humming a merry little tune under my breath as the sounds of battle raged in the distance. I was nearly done by the time the hideout collapsed around me.

I’d seen two other hideouts in my time with the Snake Sannin, and a map I’d found in Orochimaru’s notes revealed three more. I looted them all in turn, and found clues to others in the process. One of them even had the scroll I was looking for, which pleased me to no end. I put a little extra effort into rigging that last facility for destruction, my mind already juggling options for getting a quiet place to work for a few months as I strolled back out the door. But just outside I ran into a familiar face.

“Jiraiya!”

I stopped in surprise, not expecting to run into the old goat here of all places, but before I could do more than smile the demo seals detonated. He started, then gave me an amused look as half the mountain behind me collapse with a thunderous roar. It’d been a pretty big underground base.

“I guess you’re the one who’s been blowing up my old teammate’s hideouts,” he observed when the rumble of collapsing stonework finally died down. “You were pretty enthusiastic with this one, though. Personal reasons?”

“Nah, the bastard never had the chance to do anything to me. I just like big explosions,” I explained. “I’m Sakura, by the way.”

“A woman after my own heart. I don’t suppose you picked up any interesting scrolls on the way out?”

I laughed. “Yeah, I’ve been taking everything that looked important. I was going to head up to Twin Falls and camp out at the hot spring resort for a few weeks to go through it all. You’re welcome to come along if you want, but no seducing me! I’m engaged to Naruto.”

“I see my reputation precedes me. Alright, Sakura, I’ll be a perfect gentleman. Although, I’ve got to hear how my godson’s old teammate aged six years and got engaged to him without his knowing.”

“I’ll tell you, but you’ll never believe me…”

As a confused genin no one ever believed my story, no matter how desperate I was to convince them. Now that I was a confident badass who didn’t care what people thought, somehow they suddenly took me seriously. Go figure.

Oh, I didn’t tell him everything. But a few days of banter, and my casual display of any number of techniques I shouldn’t have known, were enough to convince him something odd was going on. And really, was time travel more implausible than a kunoichi who could steal secrets from half the clans in the Elemental Countries without anyone noticing? Supposedly time jutsu do exist, they just haven’t been seen since the era of the Sage of Six Paths.

“So you decided to use this time loop business to become the world’s greatest ninja?” Jiraiya asked one morning over a pile of journals. “Because I think you’re just about there.”

“Flatterer. My version of Naruto can kick my ass easily, and so can Nagato. No, I think the gods put me in this situation for a reason. Right now I’m trying to get everyone who was affected by the wish into the same world, so we can try to do something about it.”

“Ah. Wait, Nagato? This wouldn’t happen to be a Rinnegan user from Rain Country, would it?” Jiraiya asked eagerly.

“Actually, yes. Wait, you know him?”

“Know him? I taught him!”

Which led to Jiraiya telling me all about the time he spent teaching a trio of orphans in Rain Country, in return for my own observations on how accomplished his students had become. We reluctantly concluded that Yahiko must have died somewhere along the way, but he was quite pleased with how well his students had turned out. Well, until I explained how they were going to destroy Konoha.

“How sure are you about this, Sakura?” He asked grimly.

“Honestly?” I shrugged. “Events always seem to play out exactly the same unless I change something, and since he told me most of this himself I don’t think there’s much room for misunderstanding. But don’t worry, I’ve already decided the best thing to do about him is to get my Naruto to talk some sense into him. He’s amazingly good at that. I suppose it must have something to do with the mandate of heaven, whatever that really means.”

Jiraiya nearly lost a mouthful of tea at that. “What? Naruto has the mandate of heaven? Who told you that?”

“The Great Sage Toad,” I said innocently. “Naruto has some pattern where you train him and let him sign the toad contract, and we visited Mount Myouboku recently. I take it you know what he was talking about? I know the daimyo like to make claims like that to justify being in charge, but it sounded like he meant something more concrete than some nebulous claim about divine favor.”

Jiraiya gave me an unusually serious look. “The story is that in the old days the gods appointed an emperor to rule over all of mankind, and gave him a special blessing to enable him to rule benevolently. Then the emperor appointed governors for every region of the world, and passed on a lesser version of the blessing to them. The blessings were hereditary, and a lot of the traditional inheritance laws were meant to ensure that noble titles passed to the same heir as the blessing. Even today the daimyos try to trace their families back to one governorship or another, but no one has been able to make a plausible claim for descent from the old emperors in centuries.”

“A hereditary blessing, huh?” I mused. “So at some point there was a missing heir and the line of descent was lost to common knowledge. I can’t see an actual blessing on Naruto, but there doesn’t have to be a jutsu effect if it’s really just a matter of Celestial rules. Yeah, I can see that. The divine system designates him as the heir, the infernal system picks up on that, and they both give him special treatment because of old treaties and such. Interesting.”

Then I chuckled. “Wait, does that mean the gods would consider him the rightful ruler of the world? That’s funny. He thinks he’s being ambitious by telling everyone he’s going to be Hokage someday, but he’s really supposed to be the next Emperor.”

Jiraiya cracked a smile, but I could see he was still troubled.

“That would be something,” he admitted. “But this could stir up an amazing amount of trouble. I need to talk to the Honored Geezer about this. Please, keep this quiet?”

“Sure, no problem,” I reassured him. “The last thing I want is to have half the noblewomen in the world trying to marry him before I do.”

My research took far longer than I’d expected, to the point where the staff at the Twin Falls Resort started joking about offering me a long-term lease. Jiraiya ran into Tsunade in the local casino a week after we arrived, which led to introductions and more bemused reactions. But the fact that I obviously knew a lot of secret techniques neither of them had taught anyone was counterbalanced by my casual willingness to share my own secrets, and eventually they both decided to at least act as if my story was for real. After that I’d get a visit from one or the other of them every few weeks, but they rarely stayed for more than a few days at a time.

Amusingly, at the end of Tsunade’s second visit Shizune begged off leaving with her in hopes of studying under me instead. I’d shown them both the basics of my medical transformations at that point, and apparently the long-suffering jounin had decided her time was better spent learning instead of following Tsunade through every bar and casino in Fire Country. It was a bit of a distraction, having her interrupt me every few hours with another question about one technique or another, but she was so determined I didn’t have the heart to tell her to figure it out for herself.

Three months after Orochimaru’s death I finally managed to pull an ordinary kunai into my mindscape.

Shizune looked up from where she’d been practicing at my cheer, and gave me a quizzical look.

“So, you made a kunai disappear?” She asked at my explanation. “How is this a big deal?”

“Hmpf,” I grumped. “This isn’t like storage seals. Let me see if I can make it work the other way.”

In my mindscape I crafted a long, straight blade of flawless diamond, inlaid with seals for strength and sharpness and a fiery chakra nature. Then I focused my will, grasped the hilt, and drew the blade from my mindscape into very solid reality.

My vision blurred as it came free, and I had to tap my storage seal a bit to avoid chakra depletion. But the blade I now held in my hand was as flawless as the one I’d imagined, and when I plunged the point into the floor there was only the barest hint of resistance. Not only was it solid, the seals I’d worked into it were functional.

“Oh, so it’s like Orochimaru’s sword technique,” Shizune observed, still clearly unimpressed. “I suppose that has its uses, if you can learn to do it without passing out.”

“Bah!” I scoffed. “Orochimaru’s version was a half-assed hack job. With this technique, I can make myself a gateway between the physical world and the realm of ideas! I can create anything in my mindscape, and now I can make anything in my mindscape real.”

“Can you make a drug that cures cancer that way?” Shizune asked dryly.

“Spoilsport,” I pouted. “No, I’d have to know of one to make it. Ok, fine, so it’s mostly just a cute trick for fabricating things I could have made anyway. But now I can take things with me when I loop!”

“If you say so, Sakura-sensei. So, how would you tweak your medical transformation to replace lost blood without doing anything else?”

“Oh, honestly, isn’t that obvious?” I grumped. “Here, let me make a subject and I’ll show you…”

I kept the loop going long enough to finish unraveling Orochimaru’s various cursed seal designs, which let me work out a less drastic removal process for next time I wanted to help out Anko. With the demonic invocations removed it was actually an interesting branch of seal tech, with the potential to tap just about any energy source in useful and interesting ways. But it was also a dangerously unstable sort of power, and I eventually set aside my plans for a version that could tap my storage seal as not worth the risk.

The rest of Orochimaru’s research tended to be more cruel than useful. His work on artificial mindscapes was interesting, but I was skeptical about its effectiveness against a mature Sharingan. His medical experiments were mostly useless, although they did provide an interesting basis for working with modified physiologies. I spent a few weeks playing around with having extra limbs, odd joint designs and even a tail before I decided that none of the changes were actually an improvement on the plain old human body. Most of them sacrificed flexibility or had serious side effects, and the few that didn’t were sufficiently obvious that the benefits weren’t worth getting stared at all the time.

Orochimaru’s library of information on rare drugs and poisons was also pretty impressive, and I had some fun working out water and wind techniques that came pre-loaded with various concoctions. Stashing real objects in my mindscape to pull out later was much less tiring than just creating them, and with practice it wasn’t too hard to summon them back as part of an elemental technique. Not having to re-create my poison stash every loop made it a lot more feasible to do interesting things with it, although I had no intention of becoming too reliant on the stuff.

But once that was done I had no more excuses to put off what I needed to do. I was getting lonely by then anyway, after nearly six months apart from my loves. So one morning I said goodbye to Shizune, and climbed to the top of the cliff overlooking the Twin Falls just as dawn peeked over the gorge.

“Well, let’s see if I can make this crazy idea work,” I said to myself, and switched my chakra nature to air. It was still a bit harder to adopt than the other elements I’d mastered, and my air techniques lacked the effortless fluidity of my water and fire shaping. But maybe I just needed a reason to practice more.

I called up the highest level of my transformation technique, becoming aware of every detail of the shape and operation of my own body in a way I never could have managed without so many years of practice. Then I sprouted wings.

Orochimaru had tried dozens of approaches to the problem of human flight, and none of them had worked for more than gliding. But I knew a lot more about what I was doing than he ever had. My wings were feathered, patterned after a harrier’s to allow stable hovering, but my wingspan was only eight feet. Far too small for actual flight according to Orochimaru’s calculations, but at the same time far too large to be powered by any set of muscles that would fit in a human torso.

Of course, none of his test subjects were me.

I threaded the flight muscles carefully around my ribs, noting the way this enhanced my bust with a touch of amusement. Then I conditioned them for extreme chakra enhancement, just like every other muscle in my body, and gave them an experimental flap. The movement wasn’t quite right, but that was easily fixed. Another flap, and I felt a significant lift. Excellent.

I called a wind to help carry my weight, and leaped off the cliff.

The next few minutes were an exhilarating confusion of rushing wind and spinning ground and my own shrieks of delight. I frantically juggled my wind control, trying to keep myself aloft while I learned to use my new appendages, and managed to bounce off the sides of the gorge three times in the process. But the damage from that was nothing I couldn’t heal with a thought, so I kept at it. Finally I hit on the idea of wrapping an air control field directly around my wings, effectively increasing their surface area to something that could actually support my weight. I did a lot less falling after that.

A few hours later I was circling lazily among the thermals three thousand feet above the gorge.

“Now this is sweet,” I crowed to myself as I watched the people far below. “Naruto can probably already fly, but Hinata’s going to faint when I show her this.”

Hinata.

I sighed, my mood spoiled.

There were two of her, and the one I was in love with was a ghost. What was going to happen when they met? Would the looping Hinata freak out, and refuse to have anything to do with us? Would she merge with my Hinata, and if she did would she still care about me afterward? Would she try to drive me away, so she could have Naruto all to herself? How would Naruto react to any of that? I didn’t know, and I was afraid to find out.

“The more I put this off, the more I’ll agonize over it,” I observed to myself. “I can manifest my contract easily now, so I’m out of excuses. It’s time to get this over with.”

The real Hinata listened gravely as I showed her my summoning contract, and explained how I proposed to get her into Naruto’s loop. She’d actually invited me into the Hyuuga compound for this meeting, so we sat in an elegant sitting room drinking excellent tea instead of standing on a windswept roof in the dark. It was two days after the preliminary round in the forest arena, and already Hinata was practically running the place.

“I thought you were leading up to something like this,” Hinata commented when I was finished. “It’s a logical extension of your method of visiting me. But if I understand correctly we will then be able to summon one another, and there is no easy way to sever the contract.”

“I’m afraid not,” I admitted. “It isn’t just a piece of paper. I might be able to remove your name later on, but it would take time and some difficult seal work. So we have to trust each other not to abuse the power, which I know is a lot to ask. For what it’s worth, Naruto told me to tell you that he doesn’t intend to let me use the contract against you. Not that I would anyway, but I’m trying to give you more to go on that just my word.”

“I am prepared to risk much, to attain my goal,” she said serenely. Then she pricked her finger with a chakra scalpel, and signed her name. Her calligraphy was immaculate despite the difficulty of using a bloody finger instead of a brush.

“Thank you,” I said. “I won’t betray your trust. Naruto said he’d wait for us in his loop for the rest of the afternoon. Once I go back I’ll need a few minutes to recover, and then I’ll summon you. I’m not sure if I could call you against your will or not, so please try not to resist when you feel the pull.”

She nodded, and turned to look up at me gravely. “You have gone to great lengths to make this possible, Sakura. Do you really believe it is possible for two such as us to coexist so… closely?”

I stepped closer, and had to remind myself at the last minute not to touch her. She wasn’t my Hinata, and proper Hyuuga ladies don’t deign to accept hugs no matter how much they need them.

“I do,” I answered. “I promise you, Hinata, if you’ll meet me halfway I think we can make this work.”

“I… see,” she breathed. “It isn’t a ploy, is it? You really do want me to be a part of this, even though something about it terrifies you. I’m sorry, Sakura. I wish you’d found me first.”

The first blow struck before I even registered what she’d said. I was caught completely flat-footed at close range with a kage-level Hyuuga, and her Sixty-Four Palms attack was my first sign of danger. I tried to body flicker away, but she followed without missing a beat. She closed a dozen of my tenketsu before I’d even started to think about a plan, and my Hinata always beat me if she got me to this point. Hell, I wasn’t even wearing a taijutsu-capable body. I hadn’t wanted to remind her that I could have that when she couldn’t, so I hadn’t done the full transformation on myself.

“Hinata, what are you doing?”

I wrapped myself in fire and tried to fend her off long enough to split off a second aspect, but the flames didn’t even slow her down. Her limbs were coated in a thin layer of water, little spikes of it penetrating my skin and forming chakra disruption seals across my tenketsu as she struck them. Even my control wasn’t enough to work around that, but when had she ever had the time or motivation to research such a thing?

She swept me off my feet and slapped a hand against my forehead, and everything went vague and distant. My body was shutting down, and my mind wasn’t doing much better. I felt like I was moving in slow motion, my thoughts trapped in sticky tar. My chakra was draining away, and I didn’t want to reveal that I had a seal holding more, and Hinata was damaging my body so much faster than I could heal it anyway. Better to die and come back later…

My blurry gaze fell on the Sakura Contract, still lying on Hinata’s table in solid form, and I felt a moment of panic. Would I lose it if it wasn’t in my mindscape when I died? Did Hinata have some plan to use it against me?

Wait, the techniques she was using were all non-lethal…

Then everything went dark, and I knew no more.