Chapter Fifty-Three
by Lionheart
I I I
The day of the reset had spurred a frenzy of activity.
They'd nearly lost the fight against the Suna ninja rather terribly. Luckily, they'd turned that around, and in the end Naruto had saved a copy of the remorseful Sakura's memories.
But, to everyone's surprise, Kiba's memories had made it through, too. The instant Hana hugged her brother on reset morning, all of Kiba's memories had come flooding back to him.
They'd discovered this only after the family conference, when the boy had acted confused and outraged about having to go back to take the first chunin test again.
That was pretty much of a dead giveaway.
So, one of Hana's clones was off explaining the situation to him, things her brother had to know as a provisional friend of the clan, just as Temari was saying the same things to Sakura (where she was also declining, on Naruto's behalf, the pinkette's offer of sex - much to her shock and amazement, even though it got explained she'd be taught ninja skills anyway).
Kiba's unexplained arrival had led to some excited discussions among Clan Kitsune, not the least of which was how, exactly, his sister had done it so that it could be duplicated, so friends and brothers, fathers and teachers could be brought in as well, multiplying the number going through the resets, and potentially the strength of Konoha.
Hana had faithfully relayed what she'd known about what had happened, which wasn't much. However, it was the Kyubi who was the real surprise. They'd sought her out in an agony of frustration, knowing this was possible but unable to reconstruct how, when the demoness just up and explained it!
"Oh? You mean you didn't know?" the fox had inquired innocently, having been in a more natural looking clone (for her) these past few resets, playing in the forest chasing rabbits and butterflies. "I hadn't realized you hadn't known all along. Sometimes you act so foxlike it's hard to grasp you didn't come into being with the regular instinctual understanding of this." She hopped up on a cushion, finished chasing rabbits for now, settled back on her haunches and explained, "Well, it's quite simple. Foxes are masters of illusions, and really this is a naturally occurring... well, like a mirage in time, and that's quite close enough to an illusion for us to have an influence over it."
The regular fox-sized kyubi, currently displaying only one tail so she didn't spook all of the guards around Konoha, shrugged in a completely anatomically impossible way for a canine. "Poor things occur when Time and Destiny don't mesh properly. Time insisted that Naruto had to die, having jumped through that violet field, but Destiny wasn't finished with him. So you get this glitch as they work it out together. Destiny always wins these things, but it would have taken a few centuries caught up in the swirl for that to occur on its own. Normally, nobody involved in these things is even aware they are caught up in them, and it would have resolved itself without anyone the wiser, most probably by Destiny stepping in to cause Naruto to select one of the paths he had not taken, and rush off in some other direction, rather than jumping into that field where Time would've insisted he die again."
The tiny kyubi yawned, displaying her canine teeth, before curling up in a furry ball on her cushion, emitting an air of smugness. "Of course, being who we are it was impossible to trap us for long. Our natural foxy cunning makes that absurd to try. We are natural tricksters, and gifted in illusions, so this state which is both a trap and an illusion couldn't have power over us long. Naruto kept his awareness and memories, instead of forgetting like everyone else, and figured out he was repeating almost at once, displaying his true foxy intellect. Then, of course, he took you as mates, and that enabled his gifts to shelter you from the endless forgetting. Then you had the wonderful good sense to see how superior it was being foxes, and once you'd accepted my adoption, if you will, into our magnificent species, you gained the power to shelter your own loved ones the same way he did originally, creating a harbor for their memories within the shelter of your own minds."
"We're also modest, I see," Kurenai deadpanned.
"Yes, aren't we?" the kyubi grinned, completely missing the joke, and preening while other girls stifled giggles at her expense. "Male to female and vice versa is the only way this sheltering works. Males hold males as rivals, and females hold other females as rivals. So it blocks the trust required."
"So that means we can bring in everyone we want!" Ino shouted gaily, happy to have her relationship to her parents restored at last. "Naruto can bring in all of our sisters and moms, while we can grab our fathers and brothers! Hey! We can even bring in the Whole Village!"
"Not quite," the kyubi cautioned, having stopped preening for a moment. "I am in Naruto, so he has much more of my powers than any of you, and thus more capacity. Also, you are only partial foxes, having much more human left in you than fox added, so you have far from infinite power to manipulate this illusion as you'd like. I sense each of you can only bring in one person; and, due to the natural cleverness of a foxy mind, that must be someone whom you trust intimately. If you don't love them, you could never draw them in, and if you don't trust them you will instinctively rebel against bringing their mind into contact with yours, as that's where you keep all of your secrets. And, being foxish, you naturally don't want them stolen."
Anko snorted, lounging back and crossing her hands behind her head. "No way am I doing it then."
Hinata's face had blushed rosy in defiance, and she insisted, "I am staying loyal to Naruto!"
Ino had also blushed rosy, before turning green. "Yeah. The idea of cheating on my husband just makes me sick to my stomach."
The kyubi chuckled at their response, and resumed human form. Since she was inhabiting one of Naruto's Shadow Clones, her human form was naturally the one he'd created for his Sexy technique, and in this form they called her Vicky to avoid alerting villagers that their demon was on the loose. "No chance of that. He's taken you as his mates. Most animals would've lost all interest after getting you with pups, but he shows no signs of ever deciding to leave you. Of course, being foxes, you had small chance of that. We are social animals, communicating and cooperating and living together in family groups. Mated foxes will risk their lives to distract pursuers from each other or their cubs. We make truly spectacular mates and parents."
As arrogant as that statement was, the assembled girls were all too busy feeling relief over that declaration to poke any fun at it.
"Of course, normally we match up in pairs," Vicky allowed with a roll of her head. "Multiple vixens is unusual. Normally, we don't go much into that. Dogs and wolves are the ones that form packs, not us. Too cumbersome. However, I don't claim to understand human mating customs. What I can tell you of our own is that until he releases you (which, as I've told you, most animals would have already done, but foxes are too clever by half to treat something as important as mating as casually as most creatures. Would you risk your life for a mate you never intend to see again after this season? Quite sensibly, Naruto shows no signs of ever doing anything so unfoxy as un-mating you) you'll have no interest or ability to mate with someone else. In fact, should you find that such feelings could exist towards a person, or they have them towards you, you'll be unable to bring them into your mind. And, if they had a shelter there already, they'd be ejected. One mate per vixen, that rule, at least, he has kept. Otherwise I'd be concerned he was turning into a dog."
"So, to bring someone into the resets we'd have to love them... in a non-mate kind of way. Like a brother." Hana mused, before grinning.
Vicky tossed hair off her shoulder in a haughty huff. "Frankly, I don't see what you humans have against mating with brothers. But, yes, if you love them and not as mates, that could qualify for that part. But you'd still have to trust them with having access to all the secrets you possess."
"About that part, that's the second time you've said it," Ino protested. "But I don't understand what you mean about stealing secrets."
Vicky made a finger gesture and suddenly they were all in the elegant manor house that served as Naruto's mind. Now they were in the total privacy of his mind, she released her own foxy accessories, tails, ears and whiskers appearing to match the rest of the clan, although she appeared far more comfortable with them on than even the most veteran of Naruto's wives.
Vicky walked up to a wall, where hung a portrait of Naruto. They were in the concert hall section of his mind, and the portrait was of him playing the flute masterfully. Beside the portrait hung several ribbons for performances well done, and a silver flute stood on a pedestal before this display.
"Naruto knows how to play the flute, right?" the kyubi-in-human-form thrust out a finger at the little display.
She got several nods from confused women, wondering what the point was.
Vicky then took down the portrait, flute and ribbons, shifted them all to her own gilded cage out in the gardens, hung them back up there and proudly proclaimed, "Now I do."
There came gaping astonishment at this smug declaration, but to prove it, the embodied fox lifted the flute and played...
... exactly as Naruto had done. They could recognize his style.
Ino was white-faced in shock. "Naruto won't be able to play until you put those back, will he?"
Vicky shook her head, smiling.
"Only an enemy would take those abilities he'd created away from him," Anko told the fox dryly.
Vicky gave a nasty start, and pained grimace, before snatching them all up again and quickly shifting them back to the concert hall portion of Naruto's mind, where she replaced everything just as it had been before, breathing a sigh of relief as she did so.
"I was only going to borrow them," the demoness snorted defiantly.
To everyone's surprise, Kin reappeared, having run off to get a canvas and stand from her room. These she set up before all of their puzzled gazes, and began to paint.
"What are you doing?" Tenten asked, concerned.
The former Sound ninja smiled to all of them. "Why, I am creating a copy of a great piece of art. Want to join me?"
"What are you trying to do?" Kurenai emphasized.
The dark haired girl gave off a delicious shrug. "I thought it would be obvious. If hanging this painting in my room would make me able to play flute like our beloved husband does, I want to see if creating a copy of that portrait out of my own materials would do the same. We are all in our minds right now, so it's all symbolic anyway. And I don't want to steal, only to have a copy for my own. Wouldn't we all like to be able to do what he does?"
The other Angels all ran off to their mental rooms to grab paints, scattering to go copy portraits of the skills they most desired.
There came an almost instant moment of surprise when Tenten started to copy his weaponsmithing abilities that way, only to see the paints practically fly off of her brush onto the canvas, almost painting the portrait for her - although, instead of showing Naruto at his forge, the painting was of Tenten.
"What's going on?" the weapons mistress recoiled from the spooky canvas.
"Oh, that's something one of your clones is practicing out in the real world." Vicky yawned conversationally. "Naturally, your efforts to copy that skill here and there add to each other. You are telepathically reinforcing the training you are doing in the outside world."
The ladies of Clan Kitsune stared at each other for a shocked instant, before reorganizing quickly to work on things their shadow clone doubles were trying to learn out in the real world. If one was going to try and learn something, might as well go for the best results, the fastest you could get them.
"I think I'm going to put a clone on learning painting from our hubby," Temari popped out of the mindscape, saying, "Back in a second!"
Once more the others looked at each other. "That was pure genius," Tsunade allowed, speaking thoughts for all of them.
Naruto was a great master artist, having been practicing for ages as a hobby he used to relax from the continual strains and frustrations of his condition. His skill had, naturally, improved over all of that time and practice, until he was a truly significant artist, alone in a village not known for its devotion to peaceful arts like music and painting.
Given that they were a militaristic culture not overly inclined to fine arts, Naruto was probably the most advanced musician, sculptor, painter and so on the village had ever spawned. His mindscape was covered in detailed art.
But that was the trick. A mindscape was made up of metaphors, and to do a better job of copying a painting, it helped to be a painter. Even though it was strictly a metaphor, having a metaphorical advantage ought to make things go more easily and quickly.
They all popped out to go task clones with learning painting from him.
Back in a jiffy, they all set up their easels in the art workroom section of Naruto's mind around the self-portrait of him standing in an artist's smock, with a palette of mixed colors in one hand and a brush in his other, a big smile on his face as the portrait of Naruto stared at an empty canvas of his own, about to paint. The portrait caught him in a relaxed and confident mood.
The amount of artwork hanging around the room was truly intense.
"I have a question," Kin stated, pausing as she was in the act of getting her tools together. "Vicky, you'd said we'd need to trust someone absolutely before we could let them into our minds, that our natural foxy natures would prevent us from allowing access to someone we didn't love or trust. So..." the former Sound maiden paused, drawing in a deep breath. "How was it that Naruto was able to copy my memories? I mean, he had to grant me a room in his mind before I was even married to him, just so I could join the resets. How was he was able to do that?"
Ino put down her paintbrush and nodded. "Yeah. That's been bugging me, too, ever since I first heard you explain it. If Naruto still loves and trusts Sakura by now, after all she's done, then he's hopeless. She's never done anything that would inspire either love or trust. That actually worries me more than a bit. He doesn't trust everyone, does he? That could be a disaster."
Vicky popped her eyes up over the top of an easel of her own she'd arranged beside the others, to look at her house-mates. "Oh? No, don't worry about that at all. I was giving instructions for you girls. The same rules don't apply to boys. For one thing, he has this seal holding me lodged in his mind, that opens up a crack nothing can quite fix. Luckily, there are few who know how to take advantage of that, and I can guard against most attempts to take advantage of him through it, seeing as how it's me that's 'caught in the door' so to speak. I am what's wedged his mental shields open a crack, so I'm first guardian. But for the other, boys are naive in a sweet yet charming way."
"What do you mean?" Shizune asked, pausing in unstoppering a tube of colors.
Vicky gave them all a shrug. "Boys are generally foolish enough to believe that any female they can dominate is trustworthy. To be fair, females are generally foolish enough to prove them right. So, to a very large extent, control can be substituted for trust by men, so Naruto can grab memories out of any females he has reason to believe are subject to him. And, a girl under one of his massages promising to love him forever qualifies."
"And the love aspect?" Ayame asked quietly, not knowing if she ought to feel horrified by that previous revelation.
The Kyubi-in-human-form shrugged her pretty shoulders. "Because of the crack in his mental shields, it doesn't have to be much, and Naruto is one of those rare people who's willing to love anyone a little bit. Why else would he have been so concerned about becoming Hokage and protecting a village that hated him?"
I I I
"I'm so very sorry. We wanted to keep it a secret until we could surprise everybody," Hinata's shadow clone mourned.
Naruto and Shizune looked down upon the pale body stretched out lifeless on the medical table, deep below the surface of Konoha, in one of Orochimaru's hidden laboratories, where they'd discovered them hiding out.
"Why did you use the original?" Shizune queried, noting that her husband was too choked up to do so for himself.
The three of Hinata's clones she'd left behind to perform the procedure on her original body all looked terrible, but no worse in their grief than Naruto. "Because it was an invasive medical process, the cellular alteration was too close to damage to perform on a clone. It had to be her. None of us would do. It worked, but only for a few seconds before she..."
Inside a planter a couple of feet away, a trio of cherry trees stood about three feet high apiece.
Crying and grieving, Naruto reached out with trembling hands to draw a sheet over the pale, dead face of his most beloved wife, the one who'd always believed in him, trusted him, and... the first to love him.
Shizune formed extra clones to summon all of the wives, Naruto would need them now. And she also sent off one extra to report to Anko to flunk Naruto out of the tests immediately - it didn't matter her excuse, their husband would be too far gone with grief to do anything until they'd reset and he had Hinata back.
That couldn't happen soon enough, actually.
Shizune took one of the clones aside, and whispered, "Okay, you are going to tell me everything you did. You get credit for the discovery once we complete it, don't worry about that, but this process is too much for one of us to do alone. You're going to brief us all on what you did, how it went, and what went wrong, so we can help you get it right. Hurting Naruto like this is just not something any of us want to do - so you can't be permitted to go playing around with these experiments unsupervised again, alright? This is now a project for the whole clan, and we work on it together. Alright?"
Hana, when she arrived moments later, echoed those sentiments precisely. Yugao would repeat them again moments later, and Tsunade not long after that. Hinata would have her medical badge, just delayed until they could get her to live through the bloodline implantation process.
Anko failed Naruto's team out of the tests for 'being loud, obnoxious brats' (when they hadn't said a word) the moment she announced the second stage. The wives kept the knowledge of what had happened from his various clones so they could go on with the ordinary business of training, and copy over Sakura's memories again that evening as she went to sleep, so they didn't have to explain things to her all over again.
Hana, on Kyubi's advice, was able to do the same for Kiba.
I I I
Meanwhile, another Naruto had been making his own way around town after his own purposes.
That clone had been tasked with finding some of Konoha's summoning seal masters and learning what he could of their art.
Finding a place of business had been no problem. Those masters did a rather large amount of volume in their summoning, and old or retired shinobi of every stripe and description seemed to gravitate there as assistants, using their chakra to activate scrolls in giant warehouses, seeing what they got.
It was a great retirement scheme for people whose bodies would no longer permit them to go about doing active combat, but whose minds had been trained up in how to use and focus chakra.
Excess socks got baked down to charcoal and used to run furnaces to heat buildings. Everything else got sorted according to type and cataloged. What they knew how to recognize got used, and some of the rest got fiddled with to see if anyone could figure them out.
However, the clone's attention got riveted by a bit of garbage just thrown aside as useless, after a shinobi had ripped apart the packaging on a new set of wireless radios.
It was an instruction booklet.
More importantly, it was an instruction booklet written for an international audience, with the same instructions printed in different languages side by side.
The clone eagerly snatched up this Rosetta Stone and made off with it, after having carefully checked around, and grabbed other, similar bits of garbage. A long, long time ago, he'd tried translating a book on chakra control theory, as it had been one of only two available that he could find in the teacher resource library for the ANBU classes.
Despite countless hours of trying, he'd never been successful in translating the unknown language that book had been written in. He could recognize the characters as katakana, but the words and meanings?
No, he'd been hopelessly lost, only now he was found, because he had there a small handful of books printed in both his native Japanese, and this other language, the ever-mysterious 'Engrish.'
It was all he could do to avoid cackling as he devoured this clue.
I I I
Author's Notes:
Would have been out yesterday, but I had trouble wrapping my mind around the Hinata scene. And, to be fair, I was gone most of the day and had little time at my computer.
