“Damn it, Hinata, stop trying to kill me. I wasn’t here to hurt you!” I circled towards the window. My Hinata wasn’t this good yet, which could only mean this one was another looper. That blew most of my theories about what was going on all to hell, but I’d worry about that later.
“I don’t care.” She rushed me, and I body flickered to the roof outside. She hesitated for an instant before following, and I used the breathing room to flicker again, to the wall around the compound and then the street below. With my feet finally on the ground my earth armor solidified, the chakra-saturated stone turning hard as steel.
Then I turned my awareness inward, and restarted my heart.
Two beats later Hinata flickered in behind me and leapt to attack, with a dozen kunai on chakra strings whipping through the air around her. The last thing I wanted was to go hand-to-hand with a Hyuuga, so I did a replacement right out from inside my armor and left an earth clone in my place. My Invisibility Art wouldn’t fool her Byakugan for long, but it might buy me a few seconds.
My clone dodged three kunai and parried two more, but the rest sunk home in her vitals. Then Hinata wove through her defenses to plant a palm strike right between her eyes, and a spike of chakra so intense it was actually visible punched right through her earth armor and blew out the back of her head.
“Hinata, come on! Killing me is just going to reset the loop.” I used an Earth Flow River to turn the whole area to mud, hoping to slow her down enough to make her talk. The wall and a couple of nearby buildings slumped into the quagmire, but Hinata’s stance only wobbled for a moment. Then she adjusted her chakra to walk on the surface, just like I was.
“It might not be permanent, but I’ll feel so much better once I’ve beaten you,” she growled.
“What the hell did I ever do to you? I hardly even knew you before the loop.” I frowned. “Wait, is this about Naruto?”
“You stay away from Naruto!” She snapped. “He’s mine! I’m the one who always watched him. I’m the one who appreciates him. I’m the one he needs! Not some shallow bitch who ignores him and hurts him all the time!” Standing barefoot in the road wearing nothing but panties and a nightshirt, she still managed to be more intimidating than any jounin I’d ever seen. But I’ve faced much worse.
Wow, this assertive badass version of Hinata is pretty hot. My other self snarked. I bet she’s a wildcat in the sack.
Some branch family member tried to attack me from behind. I ducked the blow and planted an elbow in his gut that blew him back through two buildings.
Um, did we just kill that guy?
“Ok, you now what? Fine. This loop is officially shot anyway. You want to throw down with me, bring it on! But before you do let me warn you about Sasuke. He’s looping too but he’s apparently gone nuts, and if he notices you he’s liable to try to brainwash you with his Sharingan. The bastard’s still obsessed with killing his brother, but he doesn’t seem to care about anything else anymore.”
She cocked her head. “There are fourteen Hyuuga of chuunin rank or better converging on your position to kill you, and this is what you want to tell me?”
I shrugged. “Naruto cares about you. It would kill him if we got out of this and you’d been turned into some kind of broken mind-slave. Besides, you’re more dangerous than they are.”
A hint of a smile. “Yes, I am. Are you going to stay away from him?”
“Hell, no,” I growled. “Not unless he tells me to, and that isn’t going to happen.”
Her eyes narrowed. “We’ll see about that,” she hissed. Then she was flashing towards me again.
But I was ready now. I dropped into the ground as she came, and animated the terrain around her. She dodged the first few stone spikes that erupted from the ground, and easily sidestepped the earth prison before it could form. But by that point she was surrounded by dozens of animated columns and tentacles of earth, and even with her speed she was hard-pressed to dodge them all. She broke a few of them with that chakra-spike technique, but it was so energy-intensive I was pretty sure she couldn’t keep using it for long.
A couple of branch house members tried to fight their way in to help her, so I formed a shadow clone to keep them busy with more animated earth. Hinata pulled off a Heavenly Spin to destroy the constructs menacing her and get a moment’s breathing room, but that just gave me a chance to start my final move. By the time her technique ended walls of earth were rising to surround her on all sides, and only a thin disk of sky was still visible overhead.
That was her Body Flicker target, of course, but I already had an earth clone leaping through the opening in the other direction. They met in a flurry of blows, as Hinata delivered a series of lightning-fast jyuuken strikes that destroyed my clone, but before it dissipated it landed one good hit with a touch of super-strength behind it. The blow sent Hinata auguring back down into the heart of my Giant Earth Prison with several cracked ribs, and I sucked her underground before she could regain her feet.
A few seconds later we were both fifty feet underground, and she was completely entombed aside from a small space around her head and shoulders.
“I win,” I gloated as I phased my own head into the same hollow. “Better start studying more than jyuuken, sweetie. Now are you going to be nice, or do I have to leave you here?”
She paled. “Bitch. Kill me if you want, but it won’t stop me. Nothing will.”
“Hmpf. Fine, be that way. But if this is all you’ve got after this long you’d better learn to live with me, because I’m just going to keep kicking your ass.” Honestly, I like Hinata but I have my limits.
“I’ll find a way to beat you, for Naruto’s sake.”
I rolled my eyes. “Naruto’s a big boy, Hinata. He can make his own decisions. You do realize he’s looping just like we are, right?”
She gasped. “He is? It…wasn’t a dream?”
“Good gods, girl, how screwed up are you? Yes, he’s real, and if you want a shot at him you’d damn well better get sane. I’ll set him up with Anko before I see him get stuck with some psycho who freaks out every time he looks at another girl.”
If looks could kill they would have had to use dental records to identify my body. “You think I’m not devoted enough? Naruto means everything to me, you skanky bitch. I’d do anything for his sake. Kill, die, betray my clan or the village, anything. Can you say the same?”
“Anything?” I snorted. “Would you share him with another woman? Make love with his female form? Let him make his own choices, and try to accept them no matter how much it hurts? Obsession isn’t the same thing as love, Hinata.”
She just glared at me. I glared back.
“Fine,” I said finally. “Think about it. The next time we meet maybe you’ll actually be willing to talk.”
I phased back into the stone and collapsed the little hollow around her. Without the brute strength to rip her way free she was trapped, and it was easy enough to catch her in a Suspended Animation technique while she was distracted with suffocating. Once she was safely unconscious I healed her broken ribs, made a copy of her last few months of memories, and carefully returned her to the surface a few blocks from the Hyuuga compound.
Then I crept off to one of the abandoned civil defense shelters under the city to have a good cry. Why can’t anything ever be easy?
7. Revelations
Hinata took the news of her alter-ego’s existence surprisingly well, all things considered. I know I’d be a little freaked out if I heard there was a crazy version of me walking around, but she just listened to my account in silence. When I was done she gave me a concerned look, and asked “Are you alright?”