I considered the problem. “I doubt it. My mindscape is a lot more solid than normal. A serious mind-walker might be able to build something similar, but I’ve never heard any hint that Jiraiya had that kind of ability. More likely there’s another way to do it, maybe an advanced meditation technique or a special meta-seal array.”
Hinata nodded. “Yes, you’re probably right. So, ready to try it?”
“Yeah, I don’t see any flaws. Ok, here goes.”
I powered up the seal, and it folded itself into a three-dimensional diamond that hovered in the air with its lowest point just touching the rushing water below. It sank slightly at my direction, and began sucking a steady trickle of water out of the stream.
“Ok, it seems to be charging normally. I’ll check it again every few hours for awhile just to make sure.”
“Alright,” Hinata said. “It looks like it only captures about five percent of your chakra recovery, so it shouldn’t slow you down much. How much power can it hold, anyway?”
“Oh, that’s the best part of the technique,” I grinned. “It doesn’t have a set limit. When it gets full the incoming power is diverted to increasing the seal’s storage capacity. It can charge for centuries before you get close to any kind of fundamental limit.”
“Oh my. So that’s why you wanted to have it working while we’re here with Naruto.” Hinata considered the seal for a moment. Then she turned to me with her best puppy-dog eyes. “Can I have one, Sakura? Please?”
“Um, how?” I asked. “Your mindscape isn’t stable enough, and you get a different body every time we loop.”
“I seem to have a body here,” she pointed out. “I know it’s really my soul, but I bleed and sleep and do everything else just like it was real. And I know souls are usually immutable to fuinjutsu, but… mine belongs to you. Can’t you draw it on me here?”
I eyed her speculatively. “You know, that just might work.”
Both seals worked flawlessly. After I’d spent a few days confirming that fact Naruto was happy to put us both on chakra links for the rest of the loop, and our storage seals filled at a rapid pace. Even with all the various inefficiencies involved in the arrangement I calculated that by the end of the loop my seal would hold more chakra than I could produce in a month, which would be a very nice ace in the hole the next time I had a fight I really needed to win.
“That’s great,” Naruto said when I broke the news over breakfast. “You girls are both really good, but having normal human-sized chakra reserves was one of your big weaknesses. Oh, that reminds me, can you show me how your memory-copy jutsu works?”
“Sure,” I agreed. “If you’ve gotten far enough into medical techniques. Maybe you can give me some tips on transformation techniques while we’re at it? I’ve been experimenting some, but you’re obviously taking a completely different approach. My transformations are a heck of a lot less chakra-intensive, but you’ve got a lot more speed and flexibility.”
“Yeah, I noticed that,” he confirmed. “I want to see how you heal yourself with so little power. Oh, but let’s not leave Hinata out. What do you want to work on, cutie?”
“I’d like to learn how Sakura makes herself immune to your aura,” Hinata said. “It embarrasses me that I can’t even try to fight you, and I worry that you aren’t the only opponent who might be able to do that to me. But I also think it’s time we discussed the situation. We’ve all had time to digest Sakura’s news by now.”
Naruto chuckled. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I’ve been putting it off because I don’t know what to do about it, but we ought to be able to figure something out. Sakura, you’re our big brain. Any ideas yet?”
“Well, maybe,” I admitted. “I’ve been trying to figure out what the wish actually did and why, and I think I have a theory.”
“Really? I’m all ears,” Naruto said eagerly.
“Well, you said ‘I wish we could go back and fix everything.’ The obvious way to grant that wish would be to send you back to some particular point in time that’s far enough back to actually prevent the invasion, and do the same thing with whoever else it thought you meant by ‘we’. Something got screwed up there, because we didn’t get sent back together even though that’s obviously what you meant, and I don’t have any good ideas about that part.”
“But the rest of it actually fits what we’ve seen if you think about it. Your wish was to ‘fix everything’, not to ‘try again’, so my theory is that the wish-granting system is waiting for you to reach the end of the exam feeling satisfied that everything is fixed. Whenever something happens that makes that impossible it decides to send you back for another try, but it helpfully tries to do it at a convenient time instead of immediately interrupting you. The same thing happens to the rest of us, except that since it wasn’t our wish there’s nothing we can do to make it stop sending us back.”
“That’s also why it sent me back when I asked it to,” I went on. “It’s still watching us, and it’s actually trying to be helpful in its own weird way. So when I told it that loop was hopeless it just kicked me back to the start for another try, no questions asked. That part would probably work for any of us, although I suspect we have to be telling the truth about actually needing a reset.”
Naruto frowned. “I guess that makes sense, but now I feel like a real shit for getting you into this. If that’s how it works we’ve got our work cut out for us. I could live with not getting promoted in the exam, but not with Sasuke and the original Hinata both coming out nuts.”
“It’s possible that the wish is tied to what you wanted when you made it, rather than what you want now,” Hinata pointed out. “But I think you’ve both missed a deeper issue. We’ve been played.”
“What do you mean?” I asked curiously.
“Astoria said the bright kami were trying to use Naruto as a pawn in their war against their darker counterparts, and we know some of them can see the future. I have trouble believing that the timing of the wish offer was a coincidence.”
“Wait, what?” Naruto asked in confusion. “What are you getting at, Hinata?”
I, on the other hand, understood what she was saying all too well.
“Those bastards,” I breathed. “You’re right, Hinata. I could see them watching the future and waiting for the perfect moment, when they could manipulate a mortal into making exactly the wish they wanted. But… why this wish? Why not just get someone to ask them directly for help, or… no, wait, they have rules about what they can do in the mortal world. All kinds of arms control treaties and cease-fire agreements and so on. There’s something they need us to do, that they can’t do themselves.”
“That was my thought,” Hinata confirmed. “The three of us are already one of the strongest ninja forces in the elemental countries, and the only limit to what we can accomplish is our own potential. Imagine how strong our team would be if Sasuke hadn’t gone mad, and we spent another twenty years training. We could easily put ourselves in a position to influence world events however we wish.”
“I don’t think Sasuke just went crazy,” Naruto put in. “I think that seal the snake-freak always puts on him does something to him.”
“It could also be his eyes,” I pointed out reluctantly. “They’re actually designed to make mortals end up being consumed by evil. You’re right, it would take a miracle for him to spend that long alone and not go bad… which means they knew it was going to happen, doesn’t it? The question is, why?”