I ignored the clueless idiot’s rambling in favor of finished my left arm, and started working my way down my torso. Several of my tenketsu were damaged, which would degrade my control, but I was starting to be able to feel my chakra again. By conventional wisdom it should have been as crippled as my body, since that’s supposed to be the source of one’s physical energy. But it wasn’t. I was much weaker than what my instincts said should be normal for me, but it felt like I’d have enough strength to get the job done.
Karin plucked the kunai from my hand.
“Stop that!” She shouted. “Are you even listening to me? As our team’s medic I’m ordering you to stop making your condition worse. You’re going to be bedridden for weeks as it is, and if you don’t do as you’re told you may never walk again.”
I glared at her. I was not going to disappoint my master by failing at the first task he gave me, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to risk being punished again. But I was too weak to fight. I probably couldn’t even sit up without Hinata’s help.
“Hinata,” I said, “memories… scrambled, but… trusted you. Allies? Friends?”
She looked down at me, and brushed her fingertips gently over my cheek. “Yes, Sakura. You’ve risked a great deal for my sake, and in any event I believe Sasuke intends for us to be partners. I will help you however I can. What do you need?”
I gestured to the seals on my back. “Finish, please?” I asked. “Don’t let… quack… interfere?”
“Certainly,” Hinata agreed.
“Quack? You little bitch!” Karin fumed. “I’m going to make you regret that one. Hinata, please stop this. We’re supposed to be treating her, not making her worse.”
“Sakura has the same orders, and she requested this,” Hinata said serenely, as she deftly finished off the seals decorating my back. “I trust her judgment.”
“But Hinata…” Karin started to whine, but trailed off as she saw what I was doing.
With most of the seals gone I had access to a decent chuunin-grade level of chakra, which was enough to strip the seals off my legs with a quick dance of chakra scalpels. Then I turned my attention inward, healing my damaged tenketsu and chakra coils. That restored my control to a reasonable level, and left me with full access to my remaining chakra.
There was just enough to transform myself to the adult form I’d memorized at some point in my hazy past.
Karin gasped and backed away as I stretched, reveling in the feel of being strong and healthy again. I gave Hinata a friendly hug, and rolled to my feet.
“Ah, that’s much better,” I said. “Thanks, Hinata. Give me a few hours of rest and I’ll be good as new.”
“Bu… bu… that’s impossible!” Karin exclaimed.
I patted her on the head. “You keep telling yourself that, kid. Hey, Hinata, is there a bath around here somewhere?”
Master examined me with an appraising eye as Hinata looked on serenely.
“So, it isn’t a chakra construct?” He asked. “You actually rebuild your body at the cellular level when you use this technique?”
“Yes, sir,” I said proudly. “I have lesser techniques that work more like a permanent henge, but this is the full version. This body is as real as the one I was born with, and a hell of a lot tougher. Imagine doing a full physical conditioning program for a couple of decades, until you reach the limits of physical training, without accumulating any training injuries or age-related deterioration. Except really what I have is better than that, because I’ve thrown in a lot of subtle physical enhancements based on my medical techniques. Improved joint flexibility, increased bone strength, that kind of thing. On top of that I’ve redesigned all my muscles to tolerate massive levels of chakra boosting, and integrated improved versions of Tsunade’s techniques into my style.”
“Hnn. You’re as strong as Tsunade, then?”
I shook my head. “My technique is optimized for speed and endurance, so my peak strength is only about a fifth of what she can do. But that’s still overkill against anything short of a bijuu, and I don’t have to telegraph my attacks the way she does. The other disadvantage is the chakra consumption. Right now it takes most of my chakra, so I need a few hours to recover after doing a transformation.”
“Interesting,” he said. “You were able to do this casually before, so I want you to determine why your chakra is so much weaker now and fix it. But I expect that will be a long project, so in the short term you’ll develop similar transformations for Hinata and myself. Do Hinata first, and let me know when you’ve finished.”
“Yes, sir,” I said eagerly. Finally, a chance to be useful!
“Now,” he went on, “I wish to observe the two of you sparring. Non-lethal techniques only. Show me what you can do, Sakura.”
The whole room was inside Hinata’s divination range, which was a hell of a disadvantage. Even at full boost she was faster than I was, able to flicker instantly wherever she wanted to be while I was constrained by acceleration and momentum. Her jyuuken was beyond flawless, a transcendent symphony of artful destruction, and her mastery of water techniques was equally perfect. Even Gai would have been lucky to last ten seconds against her.
But I could shake off most nonlethal hits in an instant, and I had far more ninjutsu to work with than she did. I lost the first match, but held my own in the second until chakra depletion forced me to concede.
Sasuke nodded in satisfaction. “Excellent,” he said. “Despite your rebelliousness you’ve carried out your original orders quite well.”
I tried not to grin too obviously, but the thrill of knowing I’d pleased my master was more than I could completely hide.
“You will be working closely with Hinata in the future,” he went on. “I want you to train together intensively until you’ve regained your full abilities. Inform me when this is done, and I will give you your next assignment.”
Oddly enough I already had a template for enhancing Hinata, though I couldn’t remember when I’d designed it. We spent a couple of days tinkering with it together just to make sure it was as perfectly suited to her as possible, and she was quite pleased with the results in her quiet way. But the project went much faster than I’d originally anticipated, and Sasuke was out of Amegakure on some errand when I finished.
So I thought I’d take a look at my own inner state while I waited for him to return, and see about undoing some of the damage I’d done to myself in my mad struggle to run away from my proper place. I was already getting sick of having so many of my memories scrambled, and I could feel something wasn’t right with my inner mindscape. All stuff that should be easy for me to fix with a bit of effort, right?
Silly me.
Sasuke had insisted on tearing open the path to my inner mindscape about halfway through my punishment, and his search for hidden tricks and traps had done quite a bit of damage. But the general pattern of lake and grove and house was still there, so I figured it would be far easier to repair than the utter chaos I’d been left with after absorbing my demon aspect. I stepped confidently up to the wreckage of the grove that represented all my most enduring feelings and gathered my will, intending to sing what was left back to health…
But I couldn’t find the words.
Somehow my grasp of the celestial tongue had evaporated, and I knew that the method I ‘d used before wouldn’t work in a human language. It was the celestial tongue’s nature as a spoken form of seal mastery that had given my songs of healing their power. That, and my name.
“Well, alright,” I said to myself. “I’ll just back up a step. It was contemplating my name that started me on the path to recovery last time. I’ll just do it again.”