Blonding - A Time Travel Fic
Chapter 21
The first thing Three noticed was the way the colors changed.
It all hit her at once. The sights and the smells and the sensations - everything compounded on itself. She could feel a bird perching on a branch a mile away, could sense the schools of fish weaving in and out of undersea caves that nobody ever knew even existed. She felt each footstep, each twitch of the wind in the leaves of the trees, could feel the heat and warmth from the sun just as much as she could feel the gentle hum of the earth beneath her.
Then came the others. They were like whispers in her ears, like a thousand voices collapsing into one. She could feel the world, but she could also feel something else, and it sent a shiver through her spine and into the ground.
She felt the same sensation hundreds of thousands of times over.
She opened her eyes. Shadows walked across the clearing before her, swirling in a roaring tide of indistinguishable voices. A blitz of panic rumbled through her chest as she realized she was alone now - alone in a sea of strangers - but then she felt the same fear through the tree and somehow, some way, it calmed her.
Focus proved difficult, but manageable. She remembered her home, remembered the trees and the sea and the ocean breeze in the late fall that came in from the south and brought with it the scents of faraway lands. The brine, the foam, the quiet hiss of waves as they lapped at the bottoms of the piers during the midday rush. Each thought cut through the thicket of specters, pulled apart the shadows until all that remained was Hoshu, a crowd of monks, and the three blond men.
The colors!
She opened her eyes wider. The trees came through of the shadows, burst through the fog like the sun breaching monsoon clouds. Reds and golds and silvers and greys - the jungle swallowed up the wounds right in front of her, healing itself as she watched.
Three could feel each breath of the forest, each vine tendril and dangling branch and sunstarved stalk of bamboo buried deep beneath the foliage. The same awe, the same reverence flowed through her from countless other minds, each experiencing the world through their own pairs of eyes.
It all made sense. Everything made sense.
The voices, the conversations, the strange manner in which her grandfather lived, speaking in bizarre riddles and tongues. Before, she thought him mad – but now, with hundreds upon hundreds of other Threes from hundreds upon hundreds of parallel realities reaching the same conclusion at the same moment, she understood.
He wasn't rambling. He was talking. Communicating with other realms. When he spoke to no one, smiled at an empty space, he wasn't doing so out of some patronizing, twisted self-indulgence. When he looked Three in the eye, told her something foul and terrible that made her heart stop and soul ice over, it wasn't meant for her.
One wasn't crazy. One was connected.
All ten thousand voices, linked together in one mind.
She looked out across the clearing and down to the sea. She could see the docks from there, could see the place where she had haphazardly tied the fishing boat from the previous night's excursion back to the pier and left it spinning in lazy circles as the tide rolled in.
She expected she'd feel sad; expected she'd be trapped and locked away and unendingly claustrophobic. But instead, with the comforting hum of a million minds alongside her own, she felt free.
The forest whispered to a halt, damage repaired and canopy healthy and green. She smiled.
The world lived.
"Sakura," Kakashi said, "we really should be going."
"We're not finished here yet though," she replied. "I don't want to leave. Not yet."
Kakashi stood still. The trees swayed in the breeze. Three's body, silent and unmoving, sat amongst the roots in their periphery.
"Sakura, the village needs us." He looked her in the eye. "Both of us."
"Yeah?" Sakura shrugged. "Well, the village needs Naruto, too. And Boruto. Hinata needs them, if anything else."
She turned away, looked back out at the seascape that stretched forward from the gap in the trees before them, and traced the place on the horizon where ocean and sky met in a blur of clouds and humidity and distance.
"You go," she finally said. "I'll stay here. Maybe something will happen."
Kakashi raised an eyebrow. "How will you get home?"
With a shrug, Sakura turned back to the tree, and ran a chakra-infused hand down the trunk. "I don't know. Maybe you can send someone back in a few days to get me?"
She knew it was fruitless; she had performed the same diagnostic jutsu dozens of times over the course of the previous week. First it was One, then it was Three, then it was the tree itself and anything else that may have held some sort of clue.
"Is that actually working?" Kakashi asked, as if having read her mind.
She sighed. "No," she answered honestly, shifting back to her feet and ignoring the way her knees popped in protest. "I remember our conversation with the others through the link and they had mentioned something about chakra appearing and disappearing, but…"
"I wish I still had my Sharingan," Kakashi muttered.
"No you don't," Sakura said with a small smile.
Kakashi shrugged. "Yeah, you're right."
"What about Shikamaru?" Sakura asked, turning away and pulling a pair of green field gloves back on her hands. "What's he doing?"
"He's talking to the locals now," Kakashi said. "We are trying to work out some sort of peace agreement, but apparently politics somewhere as isolated as this island is just as frustrating as it is in the Leaf."
"Would he be interested in staying—"
Sakura's pocket vibrated.
She frowned. "That's odd. I don't have cell reception here."
She pulled her phone from her pocket, fussed with the screen for a moment and frowned.
LAND OF LIGHTNING
HIDDEN CLOUD VILLAGE, DEPARTMENT OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
RELAYED VIA SATELLITE
MESSAGE IS AS FOLLOWS:
Naruto and Boruto seizures increasing daily; have stopped today and yesterday but nurses worry that it will cause damage if they continue. Staff notes attached. -HU
She waited a moment, and her phone vibrated again as a photograph of several documents appeared on her screen.
"A satellite message?" Sakura frowned. "I thought the Hidden Cloud decommissioned their satellite after the incident with the moon?"
"Something to worry about later," Kakashi sighed. "What does it say?"
"Their seizures are getting worse," Sakura said. "That's was I was afraid of. After a certain point, the body can't take that much strain and things start to… go wrong."
"What can we do?"
"Nothing," Sakura sighed. "Without a way to talk to the others, there's not much I can do at this point."
Three's eyes shot open. She turned her head, looked Sakura right in the eye.
"You need to talk to them again?" she asked. "I might be able to help."
"Look!" Hoshu cried. The monks murmured amongst themselves, spinning in circles. "The trees are growing again!"
Boruto watched the canopies. "Yeah, they are!"
Minato reappeared beside him, fresh notebook in hand, and looked at Naruto. "This is interesting."
"Do you think Three had anything to do with it?" Naruto asked.
"I don't doubt it."
Hoshu took several gallivanting steps around the clearing, lifting leaves with his hands and smiling like a child. "It worked. It worked!"
"Does it not usually?" Minato frowned.
"Oh, yes, of course," Hoshu scoffed. "But sometimes, there is an… adjustment period."
He smiled. Three sat before them, stationary, legs crossed and eyes closed and arms resting carefully in the confines of her lap. "It looks as though that won't be necessary this time around."
"Well, that's good to hear," Minato said.
They stood in silence, watched as the monks scattered into the woods for one reason or another. Boruto didn't understand them; but like most things in the Hidden Sea, strange rituals seemed to be quite the normal occurrence.
"So what now?" he asked his father once Hoshu announced he needed to leave in order to spread the good news.
"I have no idea," Naruto said. He twisted his lips. "We wait, I suppose."
Minato chewed at his lip, and Boruto watched him mull over his thoughts.
"If you have to," his grandfather said, voice slow and careful, "you can stay in the Leaf. I'll make the necessary arrangements."
Naruto turned, eyes wide, and let the smallest of smiles bloom on his face. "Thanks, Dad. I appreciate that. It means a lot."
"Not so fast," a voice muttered from beneath them.
Boruto started. He stole a glance at Three, flinched in surprise when he saw her staring back at him.
"Did she just speak?" Naruto asked.
"It's difficult," Three continued, meeting Naruto's eye, "but I'm trying."
"Trying to what?" Minato asked.
"To put you in contact again," she said. Her brow stitched up across her forehead in concentration.
Boruto couldn't breathe.
"Did you know," Three asked, frowning, eyes closed, "that there are hundreds of versions of you, all stuck out of place for the same reason?"
"Hundreds of versions of us?" Naruto asked, eyes wide. "What?"
"Yes," Three said. "Hundreds. All in the same predicament, all here waiting on me to make the right match. You each have your own home worlds, and I do not want to accidentally send you to the wrong one."
Minato opened his book and began to furiously scribble away. "Hundreds, you say? How do you know? What's going on?" He paused, leaned forwards toward her. "Tell me what you see. I need to know."
Three smiled. "I… don't know. It's hard to explain." She winced, but her grin didn't break. "It's also quite difficult when I am having the same conversation with you in thousands of different realms. Except each one of you is asking different questions."
Minato blinked in surprise, then wrote that down too.
"Fascinating," he muttered. "The likelihood of encountering something like this in the field is…"
"Impossible," Three copied, speaking at the same time as him. "Yes."
Boruto's gut bubbled in anticipation. This was it. Everything came down to one last conversation; one last breakthrough and they would be home.
He could hardly remember the last time he missed his mother this much.
"I understand now," Three said. "I understand what happened."
"Oh?" Naruto asked.
"It was during your ninja exams," Three said. She paused, raised an eyebrow, and smiled. "Chuunin Exams, I'm being told. It was purely accidental, but…"
Naruto fidgeted. "But?"
"But I'm still sorry," Three said, quiet and soft and far too self-inflicting. "It was my fault. Not all universes are the same; in some, I became One far sooner than others. The other versions of me – the ones already connected to the Great Tree – we are all still connected in some way, regardless of where we are in our lives."
"So you're saying," Naruto frowned, "that your strange time-warpy powers happened because other versions of you that were already stuck to the tree influenced you?"
"They didn't influence me, so much as I lost restraint," Three said. "It's… rather difficult to keep yourself in control in trying times such as those."
Naruto's face steeled. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I understand that."
"I wonder if this happens with every new One," Minato muttered. "I wonder how many villagers here are actually from a different world, they just didn't realize it."
"It probably happens a lot," Naruto said. "But when your community is so small…"
"This was the first time a Hidden Sea villager had left the island," Minato said, nodding. "When this incident happened, it was hard to miss. Especially considering how vastly different our worlds are."
"It isn't just that, though," she continued. "My grandfather… none of what he did was accidental."
Minato looked across the clearing at the man's untouched body. The strange black moss had grown over most of his skin, and it left him looking like a stationary shadow.
"He knew he would die," Three said. She closed her eyes. "He knew what would happen. He was helping you on purpose, because he understood what was at stake."
"What do you mean by that?" Naruto asked.
Three lurched in her spot on the ground, spine arching and lungs struggling to gulp down a breath of air.
"I got it!" she yelled, smiling. "I found them!"
Minato scribbled more notes in shorthand in his book.
"Really?" Naruto asked. "Sakura? Kakashi? Are you there?"
"They… say they are well," Three replied. "They are asking if you are okay."
"We are, yeah," Naruto smiled. "What's going on? What's new? Any developments?"
Three paused for a moment, scrunched up her nose in thought. "They are saying that your original bodies, in your original world, are sick." She tilted her head, as if to better hear a silent voice. "No, not sick – but in dire straits."
She looked Naruto in the eye. "Seizures. Happening daily. They have stopped more recently, and Sakura is unsure as to why."
"Stopped?" Minato frowned. "I wonder why."
"What have we been doing the past few days that's different?" Boruto asked, rubbing a finger along a smudge of dirt hidden beneath his chin.
Minato's eyes widened.
"Hiraishin," he said.
"I hope they got the message," Hinata said to an empty room. She rubbed Boruto's hand.
"It's the only explanation," Minato said, scrambling through pages in his book, searching for a lost note. "Yes, here it is!"
"What is it?"
"I've been keeping concise notes of when and where we've been since we arrived," Minato said.
Naruto shot him a blank stare.
Minato shrugged. "Old habits from my ANBU days. Regardless, based on this schedule, I have an outline of exactly where we've been and when. And considering we've used my Hiraishin to get around…"
"We have something to compare it to," Naruto finished, snapping focused. "Does Sakura have a log of when our seizures happened?" He asked Three.
Three was silent, as if waiting for a response from the other end. It was frustrating; like a drawn-out game of Telephone, but Boruto wasn't upset. Instead, it seemed to raise the stakes even higher, and sent his heart stumbling over itself in his chest in excitement.
"Yes," Three said with a smile.
"Alright," Minato said. "The most recent Hiraishin jump I have here, not including today's to get up the mountain, was two days ago, at approximately… seven o'clock in the evening."
A pause. Three shook her head. "Not on Sakura's list," she said.
"Okay…" Minato muttered, flipping around some more. "Alright. What about the day before, at around noon?"
Three nodded. "She's looking now."
She blinked. "Eleven fifty-six?" she asked, looking at Minato.
"Yes!" Minato shouted. He spun in a circle. "Yes! That's right!"
"Alright, what does that mean now?" Naruto asked, skittish, eyes wide and hopeful.
"Sakura says that every time you have a seizure," Three said, "it seems like you wake up for a moment. But only for a moment."
Minato froze.
"What is it?" Naruto asked. "Dad?"
"Does the log you have, Sakura, have reports of how bad the seizures were at each time?" the Fourth Hokage asked. "If so, what's the worst one to date that's been recorded?"
"The worst?" Three said. "It would appear to be one large event that occurred a week ago."
Minato snapped. He turned, grinned at Naruto. "That's when we first arrived."
Boruto's heart spun.
A distant memory, once thought a dream, bubbled up across the surface of his mind like a sunken ship drudged up from the depths of a murky lagoon.
He saw a hospital room, an army of nurses…
His mother.
"I saw it," he breathed. "I saw Mom. When we first got here."
Minato was silent again. Boruto could practically see the gears turning in the man's head, could see the plan forming letter by letter across some imaginary page.
"I really hope the Tsuchikage doesn't mind this," he muttered, then stretched his arm out to the other two blondes. "I have an idea, and as long as I don't accidentally start a war by appearing in another Kage's office unannounced, it might prove a point."
Boruto took Minato's hand without question, but Naruto hesitated.
"It's the furthest Hiraishin tag I have from here," Minato explained. "If there's a distance component, this will tell me."
"Alright," he finally agreed, and the moment his palm slid into Minato's, the world went black and everything came into focus.
"Help me hold him down!"
The hospital erupted into chaos, and Hinata could only stand back in horror as her recurring nightmare struck once more.
The wailing of the alarms, the cacophony of shouting nurses and screaming machines… she let it all soak through her, weave around her like a smoothed stone in the pool of a gentle river stream.
The sounds stopped, but she could no longer tell if it was because she was fainting again or if it was because her heart couldn't take it any longer.
Nurses swarmed past her, latching onto Naruto's arms and Boruto's legs and forcing them back into the beds. They zoomed by like the starry skies in the faraway, unoccupied lands east of the Land of Tea. Hinata swore she saw trails of their movement, echoes that forced her sluggish mind to remember to think, to feel, to breathe.
Another nurse shot by with iron chains, and it was only with the sound of the metal linking together around their wrists and ankles that Hinata noticed she was walking towards them, too.
She bent over Boruto, stared into his open eyes, and the world went silent again.
Electric blue, as blue as the day he was born.
They turned on her.
"Mom?" Boruto whispered, voice like shattered glass in the enrapturing silence.
And then he was gone again.
They reappeared in the clearing before Three sweaty, wide-eyed, and with thundering hearts.
"I saw it," Naruto said, pale-faced and clammy.
"Me too," Boruto exhaled.
Three coughed, leaning over her chest as she heaved lungsful of air through her gaping mouth. "I felt it," she said. "You saw it, but I felt it."
"You did?" Minato asked, wondering. He turned to Naruto. "Do you think that would work if we did it enough times?"
"No," Three said. "I see." She gulped. "I'm the tether."
"What?" Naruto asked.
"I'm what's holding you back," she said. "This whole time, I've been what's forcing you to stay here. And I hadn't even realized it."
"What?" Boruto asked.
"I… wanted you around," Three said, and him a simple smile. "And I'm glad I did."
She went silent, her breathing steady like the low hum of a faraway storm. Boruto's head went light.
"Try it now," she told Minato, and they disappeared again.
More lights.
More sound.
More panic and indecision and sobbing that Hinata wasn't quite sure was her own until she saw the stains of tears on the sheets beneath her face.
Minato returned to the clearing alone. His surprise faded away and left him laughing, amazed, and far too drunk on the moment to remember much else.
He recalled Jiraiya, appearing beside him with a crowd of monks that had no doubt sprinted up the overgrown path as soon as the news had caught on. Their jubilation, however, was rooted elsewhere.
"You did it, kid," Jiraiya said. "You did it."
As they turned to leave, giving the clearing one last nostalgic glance, Three shouted out after them.
"I know what happened," she said. "That Obito killed my grandfather."
Minato's stomach dropped.
Three smiled. "Tell him, please, that he forgives him."