“It is a ninja village,” Hinata countered. “What did you expect?”
“Ugh! I know, I know! I guess I was naïve enough to think all the Hokage’s talk about the Will of Fire and protecting innocents actually meant something. But at this point I’m not even sure Orochimaru is in the wrong here. For all I know they screwed him over too, and he’s just trying to avenge his clan or rescue his kids or something. I think I’m going to have to say that right now breaking the loop is no longer my top priority. What we really need is information.”
Hinata considered that for a moment, and nodded decisively. “Yes. Information is a ninja’s deadliest weapon, and without it we have no idea what we’re doing. But where do we get it?”
“First we’ll see what you can find out about the invasion while we finish going through the Hokage’s files. God only knows what else is in there. Then we’ll have to think about who else has secrets we need to know, and how to infiltrate them.”
Hinata flattened Neji with pure jyuuken in that loop, leaving him unconscious but not seriously injured. The sudden change in her status was startling. Suddenly she was her father’s favored daughter, the presumptive heir and recipient of a considerable amount of special training. Hinata confided that she’d given her father some story about finding her courage in the Forest of Death, and given the obvious results he’d bought it hook, line and sinker.
I would have too, if I didn’t know the real cause of her sudden change. Hinata was still quiet and reserved, but the last traces of her old shyness had evaporated as she adjusted to the foreign memories I’d given her. Now there was a core of steel beneath her serene exterior, her kindness tempered by a strong dose of her counterpart’s ruthlessness. I worried about her sometimes, but it was good to finally see her show some confidence.
Not to mention how much stronger she’d become. By the time the month of training ended she’d mastered the Heavenly Spin and reconstructed that chakra spike technique the other Hinata had used on me. It was almost scary how lethal she could be in close combat.
For my part I spent the month doing physical training and building up my chakra capacity. One thing I’d concluded from that fight with Orochimaru was that I still didn’t have the raw power to fight people on his level, and it might take years of training to change that. So I figured I’d better get started.
We both went to the arena, more to see what Hinata’s Byakugan could find out about the infiltrators there than to fight. Naruto hadn’t made it through this time around, so I got a nice easy little fight with Kiba. Hinata had drawn Kankuro, who gave up without a fight as usual. Then Sasuke finally showed up for his match with Gaara, and Hinata gasped.
“What?” I asked quietly.
“One of the ANBU on guard duty is actually that genin who said he’d taken the test before. Kabuto, that was his name.”
“Interesting,” I replied thoughtfully. “Let’s see if we can find out where he goes.”
The sleep genjutsu went off a few minutes later, taking out most of the stadium crowd. Hinata threw it off almost as easily as I did, and we left a pair of ‘sleeping’ clones behind as I wrapped us in an invisibility illusion. We skirted the fight that was breaking out around Kakashi and Gai, and made our way up the rows of seats to the top of the stadium’s outer wall.
“Ok, we’ll leave a pair of shadow clones here to follow Kabuto and see where he goes,” I directed. “Meanwhile we go for the records vault. This seems to be playing out just like last time, so we should be able to spend a few hours doing research and then get you saved before the loop ends.”
“Right,” she agreed.
Fifteen minutes later I was carving the wall of the vault open, just like last time. Hinata raised an eyebrow at my method of entry, and chuckled. “That’s just like you.”
“What do you mean?” I asked as I did the replace-my-clone trick again.
“Overwhelming brute force applied with pinpoint precision,” she replied. “It’s practically a signature. Anyone else would either finesse the door or blow the whole wall down.”
I laughed. “I guess you’ve got me there. Ok, where should we start?”
The files were endless, and this session wasn’t any better than the last. Orochimaru spent years trying to get permission to pursue his immortality research on prisoners, convicts and even animals before he gave up and turned to friendly civilians. Danzo tried to force Tsunade to go through some secret brainwashing process to cure her hematophobia, and put his agents to work pressuring her to leave the village when she refused. Jiraiya and Sarutobi argued bitterly over Naruto’s handling, which seemed to be the main thing that led the toad sage to leave the village.
The more I read, the deeper the rabbit hole went. I’d been taught at the academy that Konoha acted only to defend itself in the last two great ninja wars, but the web of plots and counter-plots in the secret files was so thick I couldn’t begin to say who was really at fault. We’ve assassinated more than one foreign Kage, kidnapped jinchuuriki and children with rare bloodlines, stolen secret techniques and wiped out the clans that invented them so we could pretend they were always ours. It went on and on.
But with all that, we still showed more restraint than the other villages. We didn’t massacre whole towns as a form of psychological warfare, and we at least had enough shame to hide our sins. Mist and Stone were proud of the horrors they inflicted on their own people, let alone the things they did to ours when they got the chance.
“My clone just dispelled herself,” Hinata said suddenly. “The fighting is almost over, and Kabuto just met up with Orochimaru a few miles outside the wall.”
I set aside the ANBU mission records I’d been reading with a sigh. “Well, that tells us who’s agent he is. Ok, I’d better copy your memories now before we get interrupted.”
Hinata bit her lip. “Yes. Um, can you put me to sleep first?”
“Sure, but why…oh. Yeah. I guess it would be pretty unsettling to be awake afterwards, knowing that anything you do after I finish is going to be lost in the reset.”
She nodded, and laid down on the floor with her head propped on an especially large scroll. It was a good thing, too, because it was only a few minutes after I’d finished that Jiraiya found us.
That set the patter for the next few loops. With Hinata’s eyes and the clues we’d picked up from watching the invasion repeatedly it was easy enough to identify the foreign agents in Konoha and trace their activities in the weeks leading up to the invasion. Kabuto and his secret meetings with the disguised Orochimaru came first, but that was only the beginning. We identified the rest of the Sound agents who’d set up the genjutsu at the stadium, and where they entered the city. We found the team that sabotaged the shelters, and mapped out the deployment of the Sand and Sound forces that attacked form outside the walls. We also got caught a couple of times, once by Orochimaru and once by Gaara’s jounin sensei. But it was good stealth training, and dying was only an inconvenience.
Meanwhile we trained, sometimes together and sometimes apart, and at the end of each loop spent a few more hours digging through those secret records. ANBU mission reports and dossiers. Secret treaties and forbidden techniques. Military records and contingency plans stretching back to the founding of Konoha, and intelligence reports on every significant organization in the elemental countries.
There was a lot to read, but I was finally beginning to understand why the village turned out the way it did. The compromises the early Hokages had to make to attract strong clans and civilian industry to the village, the constant infighting and rivalries over who would wear the hat, the eternal tension with the Fire Lord. It was the constant battle for supremacy among all these factions that caused most of our troubles. Every faction plotted to tear down their rivals, and the cost was paid in betrayed heroes and broken lives.