Time Braid

9. Descent

Needless to say I made my next loop a short one, and ended it thinking of Naruto again. But alas, it wasn’t that easy. I tried again the next loop, and the next, but after a half-dozen failures I was finally forced to concede that there must be more to it than that. I did, however, notice a few oddities about the loop end that I’d missed in my initial explorations.

The first time around I blew off the exam to spend the day training. I was perfecting my ability to do taijutsu drills while water-walking with a Rasengan in each hand, an exercise that simultaneously challenged my control and endurance. I kept at it all day, with just a couple of breaks for meals, and only stopped about fifteen minutes before the loop end. I thought I’d established long ago that my one-day loops ended at 1:47 AM, but it seemed like the shared loop had ended a few minutes early and I didn’t want to take chances.

The next loop I knocked off training an hour early, thinking that maybe I needed to spend more time thinking about Naruto to trigger a crossover. I’d spent at least an hour wandering through the ruins of Konoha reminiscing before our shared loop, and I couldn’t think of anything else I’d missed. So I settled myself under a tree at the edge of the lake I’d been training on and tried to recapture the same state of mind.

About twenty minutes later the loop reset.

Further investigation revealed that not only was the reset point not fixed, it was considerably influenced by my own state of mind. If 1:00 AM rolled around and I was just waiting for the loop to end it would reset right away, but if I was in the middle of something it would considerately wait for me to finish first. Unless I never stopped, in which case the reset would come right around 1:47.

“That sounds suspiciously like some person is controlling it,” Hinata pointed out when I explained the situation.

“Maybe, but I think it’s actually tied to our own minds somehow,” I disagreed. “That last shared loop the reset didn’t happen until after I woke up and did your memory copy, even though I was asleep at one AM. It wasn’t until I was finished and kissing Naruto goodbye that it triggered. So either my thoughts are affecting it, or whoever controls it is reading my mind.”

“Or they can see the future,” Hinata pointed out. “Surely anyone who can send you back in time repeatedly could send themselves notes as well?”

I groaned.

“The more I know, the more confusing this gets!” I complained.

My relationship with Hinata was equally confusing. She’d actually shocked me a bit with her sly little suggestion about putting on a show for Naruto, and she’d certainly enjoyed herself at the time. But now she could barely look at me without blushing, and she carefully avoided touching me while trying to pretend nothing had changed. If she were some civilian girl I’d had a fling with that might have made sense, but why on Earth was Hinata acting like an insecure teenager?

Maybe because she is one? My other self offered. She might seem like a hardened jounin sometimes, but don’t forget she’s really just a teenage girl with that jounin’s memories impressed on her brain. Maybe there’s more to maturity than just having the right memories?

I considered that. “You know, you might be on to something. I’ve noticed she seems to be more shy at the beginning of a loop than the end, and her chakra control starts out a bit shaky as well. All I’m copying are conscious memories and some reflexes, so it makes sense that everything else would still be the old her.”

Right. That includes all those subconscious parts of the brain we never figured out, and probably a lot of feelings and habits and other nonverbal stuff too.

“Great. So what do we do about it?”

Most of me had no idea, but the ghost of the Sakura that Naruto had made thought it was obvious enough.

Honesty. Respect. Love. Faith. Patience. Give her enough of all five, and it will work out in the end.

Well, what the hell. It was so crazy it just might work. I waited until near the end of our loop to broach the topic, but once I’d started I tried my best to follow my own advice.

“Hinata, I know you’ve been uncomfortable around me since that last loop with Naruto,” I began. “I guess I can see why, too. But I want you to know that I would never do that to you without your permission. Yes, I’m attracted to you, and I’d love for us to be together, but I’m not going to push you. This must be complicated enough for you as it is. So, if you need time to sort out your feelings, I’ll wait. And if you decide it was just too weird for you, and you don’t want to do it again, that’s ok. Your friendship means a lot to me, Hinata, and I don’t want to jeopardize that for anything.”

Hinata smiled softly. “Oh, Sakura!” She said, “I should have known. But what about you? I know how you are. I was trying not to…um…tease you.”

I chuckled. “Yeah, I guess being a perpetual teenager has left me a little on the horny side. But I’ll be fine, honest. I got used to controlling myself years ago, back when I used to use Sexy Technique all the time, and I can always take a loop off to be with Anko or the old Naruto if I need to. Or are you saying it bothers you to think I might be checking you out?”

She blushed. “No, I…well, it is confusing. But, um, also flattering. I’m not used to people looking at me like that.”

I grinned. “I can’t help it if you’re beautiful, sweetie. If you dressed to show it all the boys would be following you around with their tongues hanging out, and your sexy form is even better. But I’ll try to stop if you want me to…”

“No,” she shook her head, and put her hand shyly on mine. “Just…give me some time?”

“Of course,” I reassured her. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”

I would have been tempted to press the issue, but I had a more urgent problem. It didn’t look like I was going to be able to control the crossover loops just by wishing, and it hadn’t escaped my notice that I’d met Naruto again barely six months after my crossover loop with Hinata. That was a sharp contrast to the near-decade intervals between my previous crossovers, and I had no idea what it meant. The crossovers might be getting more frequent, or they might be random, or they might follow any of a dozen other patterns I’d dreamed up within ten minutes of noticing the change. But there was one thing I did know.

I still wasn’t ready to meet the real Sasuke again, and for all I knew it could happen at any moment. It was time to do something about that.

Itachi raised one eyebrow minutely as he read the Root dispatch, and fixed me with a dispassionate stare. “Do you really think this bloodline of yours will protect you from the Sharingan?”

“No one knows, sir,” I replied carefully. “That’s why Danzo-sama sent me. I’m probably not immune, but based on my performance against other bloodlines I might be able to fight off the Tsukuyomi with proper training.”

“Pity,” he replied, and suddenly I was on fire.

I stifled a scream as I turned off my pain receptors and frantically tried to summon water, but that was never my best element. The modest shower I called down had no effect at all on the black flames, and by the time I realized it wasn’t going to work my fingers were too damaged to form seals. As I collapsed to the ground I barely heard his final words.

“Danzo would know not to ask me to train a weapon he could use against Sasuke,” he said coldly. “Whoever you really were, your clumsy attempts at infiltration will accomplish nothing but your own death.”

Ok, not one of my better ideas. Itachi was a consummate professional, unlike Tsunade, and he wasn’t going to be fooled by any casually concocted story. But I’d long since learned everything any of the jounin instructors would teach a genin, and nothing I’d found in the ANBU jutsu theft records was any help. There were hints that various groups had tried to develop anti-Sharingan measures over the years, but none of them were still around and the details of what they’d tried had been thoroughly scrubbed from the records.

Every source I could find agreed that the Sharingan was by far the most powerful remaining bloodline in the world, and even defenses that were impervious to normal genjutsu were generally worthless against it. So I’d never know if I was getting anywhere without a Sharingan user to test myself against, and it didn’t look like Itachi was going to help.

Hmm. Maybe it was time for some self-study?

For someone who always acted like the kami’s gift to ninja Sasuke was pathetically easy to ambush. I just waited underground at his usual training ground until he started on shuriken drills, then reached up and tagged him with a paralysis technique. I had him unconscious before he even knew what happened.

Not that I wasn’t tempted to leave him awake, but gratuitous torture is bad for the soul. This version of Sasuke might have belittled and ignored me for most of the time we’d known each other, but if I went around taking vengeance on people just for being assholes I’d never do anything else. So I reminded myself that he wasn’t the Sasuke I wanted to punish, and anesthetized him.

Doing the surgery on myself was a little tricky, but only because I wasn’t used to it. Healer aspect in shadow clone, warrior aspect in real body, stick with local anesthetic because I’m not quite good enough to maintain a shadow clone while I’m unconscious. No problem. An hour later I released the clone, switched places with my other self, and took my first look at the world through Sharingan eyes.

For a few minutes I might as well have been blind. I was sure I’d done a much better job than Rin did on Kakashi, but all I could see was a mass of strangely whirling colors. I tried to renew my clone so she could lead me to a less public place, but of course she came out with Sharingan eyes too. Spiffy.

Fortunately the jutsu gave me enough of a frame of reference to recognize that I was mostly seeing chakra, which gave me the clue I needed to sort things out enough to be minimally functional. Everything a normal person would have seen was oddly red-toned, and mostly obscured by clouds and swirls and streamers of chakra in every color of the rainbow. But in an hour I’d acclimated enough that it was no worse than groping through a thick fog, and an hour after that I was running through my technique repertoire to see what they looked like. There were odd after-images surrounding everything I did with chakra, but I could swear sometimes they appeared before I actually started. Was this how that predict-your-opponent’s-moves thing worked?

“Sakura, what have you done?”

Kakashi’s voice caught me by surprise, which showed just how messed up my senses still were. I turned to look at him quizzically, and he glared at me.

“Oh, you mean the eyes?” I said. “Don’t worry, Sasuke will be fine. I just needed to see how these things work. What do all the black and gold threads mean?”

He frowned, and drew a kunai. “You aren’t Sakura.”

I chuckled. “I’m just too distracted to pretend to be twelve. I’ve been living in a time loop for, hmm, maybe thirty years now? When you report me that will end the loop, and it’ll be this morning again. But seriously, don’t worry. If the loop doesn’t reset for some strange reason I’ll give the little bastard his eyes back and the Hokage can punish me if he wants. So, about those threads? The dark ones going into the ground could be gravity, except that it seems like only things with chakra have them. And the gold ones trailing out of our hearts into summon-space have me completely baffled.”

He shook his head minutely. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but it’s obvious you’re insane. Surrender now and maybe we’ll try to cure you instead of holding an execution.”

Normally I would have gone quietly and played poor-confused-genin until the reset, but somehow I just couldn’t stomach the thought of surrendering. Not to a man I’d lost respect for years ago.

“There are people who can still beat me, Kakashi, but I don’t think you’re one of them. Orochimaru can kill me, but Gaara can’t and I’m pretty sure he’s tougher than you. Now why don’t you put that knife away and help me figure this out? I’m not sure why you don’t see the threads. Is it a gender thing, or do we all see things differently, or did Rin get something wrong when she was doing your transplant? You must at least have a guess?”

He replaced himself with a clone so seamlessly most jounin wouldn’t have caught it, and dropped underground while it charged me. I might have done the same, but I realized that I could see what the clone was going to do a split-second before it happened. That was too good a learning experience to pass up, so I drew my own kunai and met him head-on instead.

Kakashi was much better than I expected. His clone lasted through nearly a minute of furious close-range sparring, during which I realized that the Sharingan’s split-second precognition adds a whole new dimension to taijutsu. I was much faster and stronger than he was, and probably more skilled with taijutsu as well, but his greater experience let him exploit his Sharingan to the fullest while throwing out false tells to confuse mine. It was frustrating, but after the first few exchanges I quickly began learning to play the same game myself.

Of course it was only a distraction, and it wasn’t long before the real Kakashi tried to sneak up behind me. I body flickered away from his paralysis jutsu, leaving behind a violent little whirlwind of sand that dispelled his clone, and came to a stop on the opposite side of the clearing.

“You’re better than I expected,” he said. “I guess I’ll have to take this seriously.”

He started to form seals, and I copied them on impulse. It was a lighting jutsu, something that should have been nearly impossible for me to use, but with my stolen Sharingan it was effortless. My Chidori lit up with an electric crackle at the same moment his did, and we rushed towards each other at incredible speed. It was hard to keep the unstable ball of lighting in my hand from veering off course, but I could see how he was doing it and it was so easy to copy…

I realized this wasn’t such a bright idea just as he made a minute error, which I blindly copied, and we both went tumbling off course. I released my Chidori, not wanting to burn myself with it by accident, but that turned out to be another mistake. Instead of dissipating harmlessly the electrical energy of the jutsu grounded itself out through my body, and I slammed into a tree as my muscles spasmed uncontrollably. It was all I could do to keep my heart from stopping, and then a blow to the back of my head sent me spiraling down into oblivion.

“Well, that was dumb of me,” I grumbled to myself as I climbed out of bed. “What on earth made me think it was a good idea to copy a jutsu I barely know anything about instead of using my own?”

Maybe having a Sharingan makes you stupid, my other self joked. Are you sure there’s no one else out there who has it? It looks like figuring it out on our own could take a long time, and I really don’t want to spend years cutting Sasuke’s eyes out every loop.

I winced. “Yeah, that does kind of violate our ‘don’t act like a psycho’ rule, doesn’t it? Well, there are all those Uchiha filed as ‘Missing, Presumed Dead’. I doubt we’re going to find Madara wandering the countryside training genin in his old age, but I suppose someone in that list might still be alive. Ninja certainly fake their own deaths for all kinds of reasons. But how would we find them?”

Who says we need to? We just need a name, and a little background info…

Itachi eyed me intently, radiating a barely-leashed killing intent that would have sent any normal genin fleeing in terror. I brushed a strand of long, black hair away from my face, and gazed back anxiously with my own Sharingan eyes. Well, technically they were Sasuke’s eyes, but he wasn’t using them at the moment.

I’d carefully sculpted myself until I looked Uchiha from head to toe, with a strong resemblance to a distant cousin of Itachi’s who’d been lost on a mission years ago. Since my transformations were real there was no illusion for his eyes to penetrate, no disguise for him to see through. With a little practice I’d even managed to perfect the transplant process, so that I could turn my stolen Sharingan on and off. It ought to be enough to fool even Itachi, and my cover identity…

“My mother was Rei Uchiha,” I explained, “Or at least that’s what father always said. She died when I was four, so I don’t remember her very well. But when my eyes activated we knew I couldn’t stay in Mist any longer, not with the blood purists executing anyone with the faintest hint of nonhuman ancestry. I know you must have your own problems, but I didn’t know where else to turn.”

My cover wouldn’t know anything about secret clan codes or recognition signs, so there wasn’t anything to trip me up on. He might be suspicious at first, but the mere fact that I had the Sharingan ought to convince him. Right?

He created a shadow clone without so much as a gesture, and it immediately vanished in a swirl of leaves. Then he cast an unobtrusive little signaling jutsu, and a moment later I felt another presence approaching.

“Let me introduce you to my partner, Kisame,” Itachi said evenly. “I’m sure he can verify your story about being a chuunin of the Mist. By the time he’s satisfied my clone should be in Konoha, so I can assure myself that Sasuke is well. If I find that he is dead, or simply missing his eyes, your remaining time on Earth will not be pleasant.”

Well, crap.

Itachi was by far the hardest target I’d ever tried to crack, but he did have one fatal flaw. Whenever one of my plans failed he’d tell me what went wrong before he killed me. Maybe it was arrogance, or maybe he just wanted to give me a chance to offer an explanation if I had one, but either way it was enough.

Fortunately I was quite proficient with suicide techniques.

It took me a bit of work to adapt my transformation jutsu for regenerating lost eyes, but in some ways it was actually easier than the full-body rebuild I’d grown used to doing on myself each loop. Passing as a Mist nin would be much harder, but fortunately that wasn’t an essential part of the story.

“I was raised in Hidden Earth”, I explained, “I honestly don’t know if I was kidnapped as a child, or created using some forbidden gene splicing technique. But when my Sharingan activated…well, I don’t know how to use it properly, and once they realized that they decided I was useless to them. I’m just lucky they underestimated me, or I wouldn’t have made it out alive.”

Itachi raised one eyebrow minutely. “So you decided to ask me for help?”

“In the ninja world I think it’s safe to assume that any public account of an event like the…fall of the Uchiha…is simply a lie concocted for political purposes. I don’t know what the truth is, and I’m not going to ask. What I do know is that you’re the senior surviving member of the clan, and the only one who can help me. I’d like to return to the clan, if you’ll have me.”

He studied me a moment longer, and nodded to himself. “When my brother comes to kill me, you will not interfere,” he ordered.

As if the old Sasuke could even make Itachi break a sweat. I suppose he might have eventually gotten good enough to be a threat, but it almost sounded like Itachi wanted Sasuke to kill him. Was that why he’d spared Sasuke, the night of the massacre?

Yeah, that sounds like the way these nutcases think, my other self commented.

“Yes, sir,” I agreed. “That matter is none of my concern.”

“Then follow me. If you can keep up, I’ll teach you what you need to know. Perhaps one day you can help him revive the clan…”

My elation at finally convincing Itachi was just enough to counter the nausea triggered by the thought of bearing Sasuke’s children.

Oddly enough, Itachi was an excellent teacher. Oh, he’d go from sensei to interrogator in a heartbeat if I let slip anything that contradicted my initial story, and he was too busy to spend more than a few odd minutes here and there on instruction. But he had an amazing talent for conveying key insights with just a few well-chosen words, and I learned more than I’d thought there was to know about the Sharingan in that first loop as his apprentice.

I also learned that having Sharingan eyes was an incredible power trip. I’d spent years sweating blood to polish my taijutsu skills to jounin level, but when Itachi showed me parts of the Uchiha family style it was trivial. Moves that should have taken weeks to learn became second nature in moments. Jutsu, even complex ones involving elemental manipulations, were obvious tricks I could easily duplicate. Predicting an opponent’s moves became effortless, and I could see through even the best genjutsu with ease. For a few weeks there I thought I was on the verge of becoming as invincible as Orochimaru had always seemed.

Then the loop reset, leaving me looking at the world with my own eyes again.

It felt like I remembered everything I’d copied while posing as an Uchiha, but when I retreated to my favorite training ground to test myself it quickly became obvious that something wasn’t right. I could still perform the individual taijutsu moves flawlessly, but they didn’t flow together properly. I could still do the fire techniques he’d shown me, but my control with them was terrible. After a few minutes my eyes started to hurt from the strain of trying to see chakra, and I stopped in disgust.

“That was pathetic,” I muttered. “Alright, so what happened? Do I need to have the eyes again to be able to use things I copied with them properly, or does having the Sharingan cause some kind of delusion where you don’t see the flaws in your own techniques? Neither option makes much sense, but I don’t see another one.”

Heck, that’s an easy one to test, my other self said. Give me a clone to run, and use that regeneration technique to give yourself the eyes again. I’ll still be normal, so if you think your technique is perfect again but it really isn’t I can tell you.

“Hmm. Good idea, although I’m not sure if I can actually pull that off. I don’t have the genes for the Sharingan, but I’ve certainly scanned them plenty of times. I’ll give it a try.”

The clone trick was practically second nature by now. My double took a seat on a tree stump and watched as I called up my chakra and reviewed the stored memory of the medical scans I’d done on Sasuke’s eyes. I had no idea how their weirdly twisted chakra vessels produced all of his bloodline’s strange powers, but I was pretty sure I could copy it all. Adjusting them to fit my own body was harder, but the way my transformation worked made it necessary. If I tried to just change myself to have Sasuke’s eyes I’d just end up with a mangled mass of tissue, and probably kill myself in the process. So instead I had to reconcile the pattern with my own genetics, adjusting size and shape and blood type and all sort of murkier biochemical quirks that I barely understood. It was nearly an hour before I was satisfied that I had a viable template, but after that it was a simple matter to fire up my transformation technique and make the change.

I screamed.

My eyes dissolved into burning pools of acid that hissed and squirmed in their sockets as they burned smoking pits into my face. Caustic tears traced tracks of fire down my cheeks, and I realized distantly that someone was holding my arms, keeping my clawed hands away from my face so I couldn’t rip the monstrous things out. I could feel them digging deeper, sending sharp tendrils burrowing into my flesh in search of my brain…

I tried to turn off my pain receptors, but the agony didn’t stop. Then something dark and malevolent touched the walls I’d built around my soul, and I realized with horror that whatever was happening wasn’t just a physical attack.

Another transformation struck me, and for an instant the pain eased and I could see again. My clone was standing over me with a horrified look.

“What the hell?” She asked. “Did that fix it? What happened?”

There was another flash of agony as my mental barriers cracked, and everything went dark.

I dreamt of that strange mental exchange I’d had with the jutsu-born Sakura, only this time I was the one being examined. Someone was touching me, probing my heart and mind and memories just as I’d done with her. The touch was so familiar it had to be some version of me, and I instinctively reached out to her in turn. I had no clue what was happening, but as long as I always help myself I can get through anything.

The mind I found was full of icy malevolence, motivated equally by petty vindictiveness and an insatiable thirst for power. I recoiled in shock. How could that be me?

“Silly girl. What did you think would happen, when you asked to be a demon?”

What? What are you talking about? I asked in bewilderment. That’s the last thing I’d ever want.

“You summoned the Eyes of Misery, and the boss approved the transaction. Congratulations, you’re a demon now. In a few more minutes we’ll merge completely, and that little spark of light you have will be drowned in my darkness forever.”

A cold stab of fear struck my heart as I suddenly remembered how I’d ended up unconscious. If my own bloodline was due to a kami ancestor, the idea that the Sharingan was literally demonic was suddenly all too plausible. I sat up with a start, and forced my eyes open.

Thankfully, they worked.

I was in my mindscape, beneath a particularly large oak tree. Leaning casually against the trunk was a girl who looked exactly like my Uchiha disguise, right down to the two-tomoe Sharingan eyes. But her face was marked by a bright red slash on each cheek, and somehow I knew that they weren’t just paint or tattoos.

“Who the hell are you?” I growled.

“I’m Sakura,” she replied with a nasty smirk. “Demon third class, provisional license. You should be honored, you know. The boss arranged this personally, just to make sure you got full service. I guess it’s not every day a girl with the divine spark calls up the Daimakaicho and asks to be corrupted.”

I frowned as I rose to my feet, mind racing furiously. I knew from my training with Ino that foreign minds were a grating, alien presence in this place. Despite her mindwalking skills and our bonds of friendship it…itched, sort of…to have her here, and she always complained that my forest was just a wavering fever dream to her senses. But this intruder was as comfortably at home as I was, her presence her almost as natural as my own, and when I’d touched her mind earlier she’d felt so familiar…

“I’m getting really sick of people trying to stick new aspects in my head,” I complained. “Especially crazy ones. How the hell is transforming my eyes supposed to have invoked the queen of the demon gods, anyway?”

She chuckled. “That weird pattern of chakra vessels you were wondering about? Part of it’s a summoning matrix. When you powered it up that completed the invitation, and here I am. So, does this mean you aren’t going to fight me? I was looking forward to a little violence before I take over your pathetic life and start having fun with it, but I guess I can go easy on you if you cooperate.”

“You’re pretty transparent for a demon,” I observed. “If I was that easy to manipulate I wouldn’t be much of a ninja. But let’s say I believe you. Does this mean all the Uchiha have demons in their heads?”

“Nah, they’re not worth the trouble. They grow up with the eyes, so they’re already corrupted from the moment they’re born. Why would Hell bother assigning real demons to a sure thing like that? But the boss is interested in you for some reason, so you—” she suddenly glided into my personal space with a sultry smile, and cupped my face in her hands. “You get special service.”

She was beautiful in her own dark way, and the pull of the connection between our souls was stronger at close range. If I were really as inexperienced as I look I would have been confused, embarrassed, and thrown completely off guard. But I haven’t been a kid for a long time, and it was an odd misstep for a supernatural opponent to make against someone with my skills. I still wasn’t sure what she really was or how she’d come to be here, and I needed to find out fast.

So I slipped my arms around her and planted a Kiss of Surrender on her lips. She stiffened in shock for a second, then melted into my arms as the technique took effect. I trailed my hands up her back, triggering a series of pressure points that Anko had always warned me not to use on normal civilians, and dove back into her mind while she was still dazed with ecstasy.

A moment later my suspicions were confirmed. She was a new-formed aspect alright, with just a few minutes worth of personal experience and a hazy copy of some of my own recent memories. But her chakra was dark and heavy, monstrously strong and suffused with a bloodlust I was sure I’d never felt in my life, and someone had stuffed her head full of instinctive knowledge of things I’d never heard of. The customs and laws of the demons, her own lowly place in their ranks, some skills with a power that wasn’t exactly chakra. She barely knew more than I did about what was happening, but she was convinced that she had to succeed at corrupting me or she’d be tortured for all of eternity. She knew what that would be like in excruciating detail, and she’d do anything to avoid it.

“W-what are you doing?” She panted, still sounding a bit dazed. “That tickles.”

We’d somehow ended up on the ground, with her in my lap. I hugged her sympathetically. “Don’t worry, I just needed to get some answers,” I said. “Poor thing, no wonder you’re so fierce. I’d be desperate too if I were in your situation. But I’m not going to hurt you, and we don’t have to fight. We can find another way.”

“What? Don’t you dare pity me!” She cried, as a panicked look stole across her face. “I don’t need your pity! I’m stronger than a mortal like you could ever be!”

“You’re only ten minutes old,” I countered. “You’re pretty strong, but I’ve been training for decades in this time loop. Normally I’d just give you my skills, but someone really tried to turn you into a psycho when they made you. I think we can fix it if we work together, but that needs to be our first priority.”

“Time loop?” She blinked in confusion. “You, fix me? I wasn’t briefed on…wait, you’re not just a kid prodigy? But then…”

She turned her gaze back to me, and clumsily tried to probe back through our connection. I pushed a few select memories to the front for her to find — discovering the loop, Naruto, the two versions of Hinata, a few flashes of training and my better fights. She frowned, and pushed harder, but I fended off her groping touch.

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

“Who are we?” She asked desperately. “I should have known about all this, but I didn’t. So you must be shielded, or have a patron, or there’s something more complicated than just a target-of-opportunity corruption going on. Which is it?”

“Um, I’m not sure?” I answered. “I still don’t know what caused the loops, and how would I know what demons care about?”

“Liar!” She shouted. “I’ll make you tell me!”

“Hey, calm down…” I began, but her eyes were beginning to whirl. Her two-tomoe Sharingan mutated into the three-tomoe version, and then…

“Oh, crap.” I breathed, as the black pinwheel of the Mangekyou Sharingan formed in her eyes.

“You see!” She crowed triumphantly. “My master created the Sharingan. I may be young, but I can command the full power of the Eyes of Misery.”

The sunlight faded to a ruddy glow as my trees died, showering us with dead leaves. A tangle of blackened roots erupted from the ground to twist around my arms and legs, pinning me in firmly in place.

“What good will your fancy techniques do you now?” The dark-haired girl in my lap asked. “You can’t even move unless I let you, and I can do anything I want to you. Now, show what you know, or I’ll punish you until you give in!”

She trapped my head between her hands and stared into my eyes as she groped at our connection again. Her probe was as unskilled as before, but it was backed by a terrible strength unlike anything I’d ever felt. There was no way I could stop it the way I had before.

So I gave her all my memories of the last time I’d been in this position.

She recoiled with a strangled scream, clutching her head, and for just a moment I could move. I ripped myself free of the prison of roots with a burst of super-strength, my hands already flashing through the seals of a knockout jutsu as I sprung to my feet. But I was too slow. The technique dissipated as her will reasserted itself, and I fell flat on my face as my limbs locked up again. Then the roots had me again, and it was too late.

I was expected the worst, so I was a bit surprised when my opponent fell to her knees and was noisily sick all over the dead grass. Unfortunately her control didn’t slip this time, so there was nothing I could do but watch. Even my voice was paralyzed.

Eventually she got herself under control, and climbed back to her feet. I tried to steel myself for what I knew was coming, though I knew it wouldn’t do much good. If she was tied to my soul that meant she’d still be with me when the loop reset, so even suicide wouldn’t be enough to escape…

She paled a little as she caught my expression, and the trembling I was trying so hard to hide. Her eyes went wide. “No! Not like that!” she cried. “How could you even think I could do something like that to you? I can’t torture someone who doesn’t deserve it, and Hell knows you don’t. Besides, you’re me! If I destroy you I destroy myself.”

I licked my lips, and discovered I could talk. “So…you aren’t going to…?” I couldn’t finish the question.

“No!” She insisted. “I’m supposed to convert you, not drive you insane! We have to come together, merge all of our strengths and just throw out the weak parts, or we’ll never survive in Hell. You really don’t want to know what happens to crazy demons, or converts who aren’t strong enough to stand up for themselves.”

“Oh,” I said weakly. “But what about all that ‘fear me, puny mortal’ posturing?”

She hung her head, and kicked at a clod of dirt. “I was hoping I could convince you to just give up. Bless it, what am I supposed to do now? You’ll never give in without a fight, and if you survived that nothing I could bring myself to do is going to phase you. I was going to try a nice seduction instead, but after that kiss I’m guessing you’d win that one. Crap, what a mess.”

“I guess I should have just gone for it then,” I said. “I don’t necessarily object to merging, you know. But I don’t think we’d agree on which parts to leave out, and I’m not too keen on become a slave of some demon god.”

She snorted. “The bright kami don’t have it any better, and you really don’t want to know what happens to tainted mortals. Ok, I need to think, and I’m not doing it here where you talk me into making a stupid mistake. So I’m going to have to lock you up for now.”

As she spoke the roots writhed and moved, lifting me into a spread-eagled position a foot off the ground. Long runners grew up my body, ripping away my clothes as they wrapped around my torso and reached up to encircle my neck. More layers sprouted, growing leaves and thorns in the process, until I found myself trapped in something that looked like an over-affectionate rose bush. Even my head was pinned in place, though at least my face wasn’t covered. Then they froze, transformed in a heartbeat into some dark metal that felt oddly warm to the touch.

She looked me over uncertainly, and reached between the razor-sharp leaves to gently stroke my cheek.

“Sorry, I know this can’t be comfortable,” she said. “We’ll work this out soon, one way or another. But I can’t let you win.”

“I saw that,” I said. “But I can’t let you win, either. There’s no way in Hell I’m going to let you turn me into a demon.”

The light was fading towards absolute darkness, but there was still enough that I could see her nod. “Yeah, I get that. I’ve got to report in, and figure out what’s going on, and come up with a plan. I’ll, um, leave you a viewing portal, ok? So you can see what’s going on? No sensory deprivation for my light side.”

I considered what it would be like to be trapped like this in the dark for days, and suppressed a shudder. “Thanks.”

“No problem. Just…remember that, if things are ever the other way around.”

She closed her eyes in concentration, and vanished along with the last of the light. A moment later the training ground where I’d been practicing swam into view before me.

“Let’s see now,” she said casually. “If this is a time loop I can do just about anything without having to worry about getting caught. So whose blood should I use to call home?”