Astoria had told me herself that our gods were all dead. For a moment it seemed hopeless. But there must be another way, or they wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to set up this situation.
While I was lost in thought Hinata spoke up for the first time. “Honored Sage,” she asked, “why is it that the Curse of Despair can’t affect Naruto?”
“Only two things can repel the curse,” the great toad muttered. “The blessing of hope, and the mandate of heaven. If you don’t have one you must have the other, yes? Ah, but I’m tired now. Perhaps another time, children?”
“The mandate of heaven?” I asked as we made our way out of the temple.
Naruto laughed. “I guess even the gods want me to be Hogake, huh?”
23. Betrayal
Disclaimer: I don’t own Naruto.
Unfortunately Sasuke seemed a more urgent problem than the Curse of Despair, since he was liable to find Hinata or come after me for a rematch sometime soon. So the next loop I sent my Hinata off for another round of Naruto therapy while I concentrated on finding a way to help her looping counterpart.
It had been a long, long time since I’d seriously fought Orochimaru in the Forest of Death, but it was a lot easier this time around. I had great fun for a few minutes tearing up his snakes and countering his ninjutsu while the boys tried to fight him, but once he knocked out Naruto he left a couple of clones to play with Sasuke while he turned his full attention on me. Running at around half boost I was marginally faster than he was, and immensely stronger. In my water aspect I could easily counter his fire jutsu and dodge his wind attacks, so it wasn’t long before he decided to kick it up a notch.
“Ku ku ku ku. What an annoying little girl you are,” he complained as we traded blows in the upper branches of one of the great trees. Then his mouth distended, and the Kusanagi emerged.
I had my True Sight running, and as the blade began to emerge I stopped and watched raptly. It wasn’t a space warping effect at all, and it was nothing like a henge. The process of pulling that blade from its hidden storage location was one of the most complex jutsu I’d ever seen.
“Cool!” I exclaimed as it punctured my heart. “That is one sweet technique, Orochimaru! I never would have thought of building a closed space bridge around the illusion/reality dichotomy. Did you invent that yourself, or is it some kind of hidden lore you found?”
He took the blade in hand and stepped back, obviously a bit disconcerted by the way I was ignoring a lethal injury. It wasn’t even bleeding much, since I was holding the blood inside my body and keeping it circulating with a matter-animation technique.
“It’s based on fragments of research left behind by the Sage of Six Paths,” he admitted.
“No wonder I was having so much trouble,” I mused, absently gathering the Kusanagi’s poison and ejected it from the wound so I could heal myself. “I’ve been trying to get an effect like that working myself for weeks now, and it’s been giving me fits. Look, what would it take to convince you to show me how you do that?”
There was an explosion from the direction of Sasuke’s fight with the Snake Sannin’s earth clones, and we both glanced in that direction momentarily.
“Is that really an appropriate question from a bodyguard?” Orochimaru asked.
“Oh, I’m not guarding him,” I laughed. “I just like a good fight. Do whatever you want with the baby Uchiha. So seriously, what would it take? I’ve got a ton of S-rank combat ninjutsu, including some of Minato’s stuff that I stole and improved on. Or maybe medical techniques? I’ve got an age-reversal technique that lets me stay young forever, and you just saw a taste of my healing abilities.”
His eyes narrowed. “Who are you, girl? I don’t make such deals with unknown enemies.”
“Sakura is my name, but I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of me. I don’t have much of a rep in the elemental countries, but the Sage Toad of Mount Mouboku calls me the Sage of Insight.”
“Sage?” He scoffed. “Your chakra is respectable for a kunoichi, but still far too weak to withstand molding natural energy.”
Molding natural energy? Well, that was an interesting idea. Using it by itself would be incredibly awkward, but… hmm. Yeah, blending it with physical and mental energy to make a three-phased chakra would be unbelievably potent. Was that how Jiraiya’s Sage Mode ability worked? Interesting.
Unfortunately my opponent took advantage of my distraction to work another technique, and now there were hundreds of snakes with Kusanagi blades for tongues trying to stab me. Oh well, so much for bargaining with the Snake Sannin.
The rest of that fight leveled acres of forest and made it painfully obvious to Sasuke that I wasn’t the girl he’d thought I was, but the outcome was never in doubt. After the second time I interrupted one of Orochimaru’s elaborate ninjutsu with a lightning-fast Water Rasengan to the face he quit trying to win, and concentrated on getting away. I’m still not sure if he succeeded or not, but revealing myself as a kage-level ninja definitely blew the loop.
The next time around I sent Hinata to Naruto again, and let the events of the exam go by as usual while I spent my free time practicing going ‘light’. It had taken me a good thirty seconds to do it in my last fight with Sasuke, and I didn’t expect him to give me that luxury next time. Unfortunately it was a much harder transformation than just switching elemental affinities, and I could easily hurt myself if I rushed it. I spent a couple of days in the forest nursing an intense migraine from that, while I laboriously sorted out several weeks worth of scrambled memories and dealt with a sudden reluctance to kill even in self defense.
Thankfully that was a temporary problem, but I took it a lot slower after that. Pre-designing the aspect I wanted to wear while fighting Sasuke did make the transition faster, as did chanting a few words of Celestial to focus my mind. But by the time the invasion was due it still took me a good ten seconds to make the change, and that’s an eternity in combat.
My attempts to duplicate what I’d seen Orochimaru do weren’t going much better. I could move a few drops of my own blood back and forth between my mindscape and the real world, but that was mostly because of blood’s special nature as an embodiment of its owner. I still couldn’t take anything else into my mindscape, and the closest I could come to pulling my contract out was a sort of hazy, quasi-real illusion. Doing better looked like it would take some serious research, the kind that requires math and seal work and the ability to do experiments without attracting attention for acting out of character.
So I paid my loves a weekend visit near the end of the training month, and warned them I might be a little lonely the next time they saw me. Then I ran my pattern for derailing the invasion, and settled in for an extended loop.
I figured Orochimaru’s sword trick was still my best bet for getting my summoning contract out into the physical world, but apparently I needed an approach that would lead him to dismiss me as harmless. So I kept an eye on Sasuke, and waited for my chance. It came a couple of weeks later, a few days after Jiraiya officially accepted Naruto as his apprentice.
If Sasuke was surprised to find me waiting for him on the path from his apartment to the wall he didn’t show it. He took in my serious expression, and frowned slightly.
“I’m going,” he said firmly. “Don’t try to stop me.”
“Of course not,” I scoffed, as I pulled my pack from under the bench and put it on. “I’m going with you.”
That got me a momentary look of surprise. “Why?” He asked.