I gave my mortal side a cheery wave as I crossed our mindscape. “Hey, me. Ready to give up yet?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “Hardly. Watching you rip Sasuke’s heart out didn’t exactly fill me with confidence in your sanity.”
“Hey, punishing the wicked is what demons were made for, sweet cheeks. You should try it sometime. There’s nothing better than delivering a good beat-down on someone who deserves it, and you’d know that if you weren’t all wrapped up in stupid human guilt and moralizing.”
I rooted around among the dead trees and fallen leaves, searching for something I was pretty sure I’d find here.
“You really are a psycho, aren’t you?” She grumbled. “Gods, having aspects was bad enough when we were both human. You need your own name.”
“Don’t!” I admonished her, breaking off my search to dart over to her prison. “You know better than that, dummy. We share the same soul, and it’s only big enough for one Name. If we deny each other we’ll end up as crazy as any human with a split personality, and we’re too smart to do that to ourselves. I’m Sakura, and so are you.”
“I suppose,” she admitted reluctantly. “But I felt how much hate you carry around. That wasn’t in me before this happened, and I’m not going to let some demonic trap turn me into a monster.”
“Silly girl,” I chuckled, leaning between the branches of her prison to pat her cheek. “I’m the darkness of your heart made manifest, to use an old cliché. I’ve got some demonic instincts too, but my core personality all came from you. Your violence and anger and need to smash everything that stands in your way. Your passion, and lust, and all those dark undercurrents you won’t admit to yourself. Your jealousy of the girls who were born beautiful, and didn’t have to work at it. Your disgust and rage at the teachers and leaders who’ve failed you, and the system you’ve started to see is going to chew you up and spit you out just like it does everyone else. The only difference between us, sweetie, is that I don’t feel guilty about any of it.”
“Although, you should know that you aren’t really as nice as you pretend either. If you were, you wouldn’t have needed that ‘don’t act like a psycho’ rule.”
Then I spotted what I’d come for, shimmering among the branches above her head. I stretched, pressing myself suggestively against her in the process, and plucked the iridescent bubble out of the shadows. She flinched, then as I stepped away she saw what I had and paled.
“Hinata!” She shouted. “Don’t you dare hurt her! You know I’ll get out of this eventually, and when I do I’ll rip those tortures you’re so afraid of out of your own mind and make you live them!”
“Oh ho!” I laughed. “See, I knew you had it in you. But I love Hinata as much as you do, silly, so why would I want to hurt her? I just want to fix some of your mistakes.”
“What would you know about love?” She growled.
I frowned. “More than you do, apparently. Love isn’t about understanding and patience and space, Sakura. That’s all part of the bullshit the Light-siders have been brainwashing the mortal races with for eons. Now, I’m going to work a little magic to fix her before your brain hacking gets her so screwed up nothing would help. Then I’m going to show you exactly what you’ve been doing wrong with our cute little dragon-eyes, and what you could have if you did things my way. But just so you don’t hurt yourself trying to ‘save’ the poor girl…”
I held the memory bubble up to her face, and gently touched it to her forehead.
“…make a copy,” I went on. “I know you think I’m an evil psycho-bitch, and evil doesn’t work. If you’re right, then eventually you’ll beat me. So make a copy, and if you really do hate the way this turns out with me in charge you’ll be able to fix it when you turn the tables.”
She gave me a considering look. Then her eyes closed in concentration, and the bubble…rippled, just enough to be visible.
“Alright, it’s done,” she said after a moment. “You know, this is a really strange way to fight.”
“Tell me about it. The way the Sharingan program works I was supposed to just absorb you, throw out all the bunnies-and-butterflies mortal brainwashing crap, and spend the rest of our mortal life dealing out justice and training for the afterlife. But the time loop screwed that up, and trying to beat you into submission would be way too much like raping myself repeatedly, so I have to find another way. So… were you serious about what you said before, about doing an honest merger and keeping ourselves out of Hell?”
She nodded cautiously. “Yes. This isn’t the first time I’ve had a situation like this, just the worst. But if you meant what you said earlier, about being another part of me, it’s stupid for us to fight.”
I chuckled. “If only it were that easy. Right now you’re sure you’re right about your outlook on life, and I’m just as sure I’m right, so it would come down to a contest of who has the stronger personality. Since you’re at least thirty and I’m a few hours old I’d be an idiot to go for that. But we can’t both be right. Either you’ve been brainwashed by a lifetime of Heavenly propaganda, or I’m brainwashed by the spell that made me. We just need to figure out which it is.”
“That makes sense,” she agreed. “I have to admit, you’re being a lot more reasonable about this than I expected. What did you have in mind?”
“We use the loop as a test. First you show me what you think are the best parts of the life you’ve made, doing things your way. Then I’ll show you how things work out doing it mine. In a few loops we can sit down and compare notes, and we’ll see which way works better.”
She glanced at the memory bubble in my hand, and licked her lips. I could practically see her wondering what I was up to. “It probably won’t solve anything,” she complained. “But we might get lucky, and I guess I can’t stop you at the moment.”
I felt her prison growing stronger from the admission, and had to hide a grin. As long as she kept thinking that I’d be fine…
“Alright,” she decided. “It might convince you, so it’s worth a try. I’ll even share some basic techniques, just so I don’t have to wait a year for you to get to where you can survive the Forest of Death without giving away what you are. But what you got last time wasn’t my only defense, so don’t get carried away.”
Delving her was easy when she wasn’t fighting. She treated me to some pretty nice memories of Naruto and Hinata, plus some older ones with Ino and the rest of her old friends. I’m sure she was poking around in my head at the same time, but my plans were safely locked away and there wasn’t much else for her to pull out. Meanwhile I picked up some of her ninja skills, easily enough to qualify for chuunin. I was afraid she’d shut me out when I went for more of her training with ‘sensei Anko’, but surprisingly she let me have a lot of it. She even let me grab a little bit of her body-shaping techniques, which was more than I was expecting.
Well, maybe I should have. She thought she’d tried everything, but I could feel a lot of repressed desires floating around in her head. She was probably hoping I’d go on some wild kinky-sex spree and get her some memories she could savor without having to feel guilty. Which, ok, I might just do at some point, but not yet. I had a point to make first.
Finally I broke away, and staggered back a few steps. “Ok, enough. Any more than that, I’m going to forget which of us I am. Loop’s ending soon, so I’m off to bed. Goodnight, me.”
“Goodnight….me,” she returned.
There’s a treaty that says real gods and demons have to wear marks to warm mortals what they are, but with my provisional license I wasn’t covered by that rule. So I showed up for the exam with an unmarked face, acting just like my mortal self had at the time. No one suspected a thing.