He staggered back, but I wasn’t about to give him time to think. I launched into an aggressive combination attack that occupied all his attention for several seconds, while I turned the ground behind him into a field of stone spikes. He must have seen the chakra release of the technique with his Sharingan, but he was so busy he didn’t have time to wonder what I’d done before he stepped on one.
After that the fight was pretty much over.
I got promoted.
Kakashi was shocked at how quickly I’d improved, but Ebisu and Naruto had been watching every step of the way. Every technique I’d used was something I could have actually done as a genin if I’d ever applied myself, and both my perfect chakra control and erratic displays of super-strength had been noted on my file as far back as the academy. So Kakashi got some ribbing from the other jounin for overlooking a prodigy, and I got my jacket.
It was amazing how good it felt to finally win some small measure of public recognition for my skills.
Sasuke was also promoted, despite having tried to murder his teammate. Naruto wasn’t. I smelled trouble brewing there, but fortunately the two of them never had to work together again. It was a week before Sasuke was fit for duty, and he deserted the next day.
By then my mood swings were settling down to something more manageable, and I was starting to regret sending Hinata to Naruto. But seeing the world after the end of the chuunin exam was such a breath of fresh air that I didn’t want it to end, and besides I had a long way to go before I could claim to be fully recovered. I still couldn’t use most of my better techniques, and Hinata would probably kick my ass in a sparring match without breaking a sweat. I was no good to them in my current state.
I spent a few more weeks in Konoha, repairing some of the more essential parts of my jutsu library while I enjoyed the novelty of being sent on missions I didn’t know anything about. But my mindscape didn’t seem to be recovering any more on its own, and the constant pressure of maintaining my cover made it hard to find enough time to make any progress. So when we ran into Itachi and Kisame in a little town on the edge of the Konoha Security Zone I took the opportunity to fake my death in the ensuing battle.
The crisp mountain breeze turned my breath to steam, but the blanket of warm air I held close to my body kept me comfortable despite the chill. Snow Country in winter is a deadly environment to most travelers, but a properly prepared ninja can visit any locale in relative comfort.
Of course, I wasn’t just passing through. The shelter I was building was a sturdy structure of fused earth and stone, sunk three feet into the ground and extending back twenty feet into a tall cliff of solid granite. The glass windows had been tricky with my limited sampling of earth techniques, but the view they’d give of the uninhabited valley below was worth it. A rocky goat track was the only path leading down to the valley floor, but for a girl who can walk on vertical cliffs as easily as a garden path that was hardly a concern.
I eyed the dark clouds that were gathering in the high mountains to the north, preparing to cover the landscape in another foot or more of snow, and smiled. Here, surrounded by the pristine beauty of a land untouched by man, I could meditate and train and heal for as long as it took to put myself back together. Let the world go on without me, until I was ready to face it again.
14. Idyl
Disclaimer: I don’t own Naruto. Of course, he doesn’t even appear in this chapter, so maybe I should say I don’t own Sakura instead?
Life on the mountain was lonely at times, but not having an audience to fool or an act to keep up was an enormous relief. For the first time in decades I could just relax and do whatever I wanted to, without having to worry about what someone would think or whether I was going to blow my cover. I was in heaven.
In the mornings I trained my body. My original self had become a taijutsu master the hard way, and my demon had stolen ever style three hidden villages had to offer, but blending the broken fragments of those skills together into something that worked well for me took effort. I started with bits of speed-based styles meant for kunoichi, with their mastery of dodging and precision strikes and conservation of chakra. The fluid evasion of jyuuken complemented that approach, as did the confusion and invisibility genjutsu I’d learned in recent years. As my skill solidified I began to weave replacements and clones and more elaborate illusions into my kata, regained my old deft touch at regulating my jutsu-born strength on the fly, and finally found the key to applying the same technique to my speed.
When I’d begun I was still a young girl, but as my ability to wield high-level techniques gradually returned I began to perfect my body as well as my skills. Unfettered by the need to avoid attention I aged myself a week or more every day, until by the time the winter snows stopped falling I was a young woman of twenty instead of a child. I made myself lean and strong, restoring all the resilience and endurance I’d developed in those long loops of taijutsu training. I’d thought to make myself beautiful after that, but when I was done I looked in the mirror at the sleek, fey creature I’d become and realized there was no need. I didn’t have to compete with Hinata’s figure, or Ino’s hair, or Anko’s aggressive sexuality. For the first time in my life I found I was comfortable with the body I wore, and that was enough.
In the afternoons I meditated, turning my senses inward in an effort to restore order to my battered soul. Some days I dropped all the way to my innermost vision of myself, and spent hours sorting through the heaps of thought and memory that lay there in jumbled disarray. Other days I stopped in the place I called my mindscape, and worked at pushing back the swirling chaos and coaxing life from the barren earth. Both projects were exhausting, painfully slow and prone to triggering long episodes of confusion and self-doubt, and for a few weeks I wasn’t sure I would ever make any progress. But then one day I was meditating in the more conventional way, trying to achieve some tiny bit of serenity, when I hit on the idea of contemplating my name.
Three syllables. Seven notes. A single symbol, if I ever chose to write it down. Yet somehow everything I was or had been or could be was there, only hints at the surface, but as I teased at it the tiny snatch of song blossomed in my mind into a symphony of hidden complexity. It was exactly like the more advanced seal arrays, where you cover an entire room with a complex diagram of thousands of symbols and then they shrink to a single unremarkable character on command.
I spent a day and a night and most of the next day in wordless contemplation of the promise and possibility that I’d discovered in that one word. So many paths. So many dichotomies. So many choices. But the same themes underlay them all, and I emerged with a truer understanding of my own nature than I could ever put into words. As the sun set I stood on the barren earth of my mindscape, and sang a song of life and hope and redemption in the key of my true name. Then I laid down to sleep, and for once my rest was untroubled by nightmares of misery and madness.
When I awoke, what had been bare earth was dotted with fresh green shoots reaching up to meet the dawn.
Even in the depths of winter the mountains were full of life, and despite having a ninja’s appetite I never wanted for food. There were rabbits everywhere, and once I learned to glide soundlessly over fallen snow I could catch them bare-handed with ease. There were deer in the lower valleys, that I could outrun easily and bring down with a deft flick of a kunai. There were fish in the frozen ponds that I could catch with chakra strings, and mountain goats that never seemed to figure out that I could run up a cliff face to reach them. Gathering food took just enough effort to be satisfying, although a diet of pure meat did get old after awhile.