The Girl Who Spun Through Time

Chapter 10

That fool nearly killed her. She has to be more careful.

The city in the sky was a sprawling mass of jagged steel and concrete structures, sticking up out of the sphere like vicious knives. Cast in the light of the setting sun, half the city seemed to be on fire as ember-like reflections leapt from one surface to another. There were electric lights too, massive ones, highlighting signs and elaborately constructed faces hanging from the buildings.

Hinata wondered how a floating city could possible have electricity. Generators? They would have to be very large ones. She could probably find them with a cursory look. Maybe some raiton users were providing energy; it wouldn't be very efficient...

Hinata's attention was drawn outward. There was more orbs beyond the one floating before her. Six others, all connected by the roots she'd seen earlier. Four of them were covered in the same kind of urban construction, but Hinata noted that two seemed to be entirely devoted to what looked like farmland.

Konan brought her towards the 'ground', and the other spheres vanished behind the looming buildings. They landed upon a concrete bridge that extended out into nothing: it had clearly led somewhere once upon a time, but now it jutted out of the orb, leading to the empty sky. Hinata touched down with a wince, her leg protesting, and Konan glanced at her.

The constricting paper unwrapped itself from Hinata's body and arms but remained around her leg, and she looked down at it. Something must have shown on her face, because Konan spoke.

"Don't worry; it's not a security measure." The woman looked past her, deeper into the city. "Until you get that fixed, I'll be keeping that on. We can't have you walking around with a broken leg."

"Madara broke it, you know."

Hinata narrowed her eyes.

'Twice.'

"Oh?" Konan's eyes widened, just a little, but her expression didn't change. "That's unusual. You must have done something particularly… foolish."

Hinata refused to grace that with an answer. Instead, she did what any responsible ninja would do, and began shamelessly fishing for information.

"What is this place?" was her first question. At that, Konan gave her an amused look.

"Usually people ask 'How is it floating?'" she said with a twist of her lips. "And besides, I already told you; this is Amegakure."

"Amegakure was…" Hinata looked around. Amegakure: the Village Hidden in the Rain. It was reclusive, but most certainly not known for floating several miles above the ground. "You mean…"

The scale of it washed over her in a moment, making her knees wobble. Someone, or something, had ripped the entirety of the Village Hidden in the Rain out of the earth and sent it skyward, where it now stood in complete defiance of gravity. That kind of power was unthinkable.

Konan started walking, and Hinata followed after her with some hesitation.

"This place is a sanctuary," the paper woman said. "It was necessary. As I'm sure you've seen, almost nowhere is safe for the living now." She looked back, and Hinata was struck by the genuine melancholy in the woman's eyes, and for the first time, the fact that this woman was the first living person she'd set eyes upon since arriving. "Many of the survivors of the Nations call this place their home."

'Many' of the people left alive on the continent called a single city their home. Hinata had to stop and take a deep breath as the implications struck her dead on. Despite what the Yondaime had told her, the gravity of her situation continued to compound upon itself. There was only so far she could step back from reality. Hinata could feel it eating at her: hopelessness and terror, rolling in her gut.

Still, Konan's earlier comment had stuck in her mind.

"How is it floating?" Hinata asked, still rooted in place. Konan quirked one of her eyebrows.

"That is thanks to Amegakure's god," she said. Hinata blinked. Konan added another three words, though they looked as though they left a sour taste in her mouth. "And Madara Uchiha."

"Indeed. Without little Nagato, this would have been a challenge even for me."

The Uchiha seemed to materialize out of thin air, directly behind the two women. Konan turned towards him, seemingly surprised, while Hinata stood stock-still. Two paradoxical urges overwhelmed her, freezing her in place. The first was to remain quiet and try to sink into the confines of her vest; the second was to break the Uchiha's nose.

She was tired, and injured, and angry, and some of it obviously manifested. Konan gave her a warning look.

"I'm sure you can see why I took an interest in her, Konan," Madara said, stepping forward. Hinata felt him approach from behind, like an oncoming thunderclap. "When was the last time someone in her position struck at me?" She could sense the smirk. "She even wants to now."

'Hit him.'

"Hinata." Konan laid her hand on the Hyuuga's shoulder. "Calm down."

An Akatsuki member warning her not to attack a dead Uchiha as they stood on the outskirts of a city floating thousands of meters above the earth. Hinata's mouth was dry. Her hands curled into fists.

"Right now.'

She shouldn't be here. She couldn't be here.

But she was. She was. She was acting stupid. She had to get a hold of herself, or all of her effort up till this point would be wasted. Hinata could feel it, like a string stretched taut between two of her vertebrae, just below the nape of her neck. If it snapped, she wouldn't be able to put it back together.

She took a deep breath, and turned around.

Madara Uchiha stared at her with narrowed eyes.

"Hm." She couldn't read his face. "You broke your leg again."

Hinata threw herself at the lifeline presented. The string became a little less tight.

"You broke my leg again," she said quietly, her voice humming with soft aggression.

Madara snorted. "It's not my fault you have all the grace of a drunken dog. Any decent shinobi wouldn't have been injured by something so pathetic." He crossed his arms. "I won't be fixing something that wasn't my fault."

Anger and humiliation, hot and stinging, shot up into Hinata's face, and she felt it grow red. Konan squeezed her shoulder once more.

"Madara," the paper woman said. "Why are you doing this? You've never taken such interest in any of the others."

The Uchiha scowled. "She attacked me," he said, crossing his arms. "Though she knew it would be her death." The rings of his Rinnegan bore into Hinata, and once more she had to fight the urge to shrink away. "I normally don't care for the suicidal, but this one is peculiar."

Was he lying? It was more likely he had "taken an interest" in her thanks to her time traveling. Though, that wouldn't explain why he had dropped her. Maybe he really had thought she would have been fine?

It was something more than that. It must have been another test, like the conversational one he had laid down back in the Land of Iron. Had she failed it? Did that matter?

Hinata turned back around, and Konan's hand slipped from her shoulder. She started walking, moving forward with a slight limp.

"Where are you going?" Konan asked. Hinata didn't look at her.

"Away," she answered. "I need…" She paused, not really knowing what to say.

What did she need? Safety, a moment to rest? Quiet? Food? Sleep?

"I need some… space," she eventually decided. She kept walking: Konan didn't come after her.

"Hmph." She heard Madara grunt, and then a soft pop. Hinata looked over her shoulder in time to see the last traces of smoke from the shadow clone whip away. Konan stared at the empty space, looking distinctly annoyed.

"Fine," the paper woman said. "I understand: but I'll be coming for you later. There are things we have to discuss."

Konan melted away in a wave of paper butterflies, and the setting sun burned Hinata's eyes in her place. The Hyuuga turned away, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath.

She had to find somewhere to sit. Her legs would buckle otherwise. A bench was all she needed.

Hinata staggered onwards, every step sending a ping of dull pain shooting up her leg. The bridge to nowhere she stood upon led directly into the thick of Amegakure; concrete buildings, each more than five stories tall, immediately met Hinata as she moved away from the burning sun.

Without ceremony, she activated her Byakugan.

Amegakure was much smaller than Konoha; perhaps it had been larger before it had been lifted into the sky. There were seven spheres, arranged in a circle, each with a chunk of city sitting upon it. Hinata turned her attention downwards, peering towards the interior of each of the spheres, though she remained aware of the rest of the floating village, her mind subconsciously processing what her eyes had already seen.

Something terrifying sat at the core of each sphere: a smaller orb comprised of pure darkness, burning with cold chakra. Hinata analyzed the one closest to her, beneath her own feet. She could see space, and something less tangible, twisting around the orb. It was a hole, drawing everything around it towards it.

These must have been the genesis of the floating city, she realized. What she was looking at was strangely familiar. Something had created these spheres, twisting and molding gravity in an incredible manner to produce these artificial… moons, almost. They were miniscule ones, but as Hinata gazed at the small black hole, the interplay of gravity became clear to her. This circlet orbited the earth, denying its own much more massive gravity...

'But I almost fell off the side.' Hinata twitched.

Artificial gravity, strong enough to form these floating spheres of rock and keep them elevated high above the earth, but not extending beyond the surface of them? It didn't make any sense. She should have been pulled towards the black hole in the middle from any angle.

Her head hurt. Hinata couldn't tell if it was thanks to the bruises or not. It was a pounding sensation, like someone playing the drums against her temple. She shifted her attention.

Still, something about that was–

'Without little Nagato, this would have been a challenge even for me.'

Madara had done this, at least some of it. Wide scale gravity manipulation, completely beyond the scope of anything else Hinata had seen chakra be capable of.

Madara, who had the Rinnegan.

Hinata felt dizzy. Her leg trembled, threatening to give out from under her. She really needed to find someplace to sit down.

She collapsed to the pavement instead, her broken leg stretching out. Her body seemed to sink into the concrete as the world kept spinning.

That worked too.

Nausea with the Byakugan activated. It had only happened to Hinata a couple times, but it never ceased to be incredibly peculiar. She tried to ignore it. Her mind was focused on more important things.

It made sense. Gravity manipulation: the same kind Pain had been capable of. Somehow, he and Madara had created this impossibility. No wonder Konan was here: if Pain really was the leader of the Akatsuki, then it was unlikely he'd be alone.

Three years before he would destroy Konoha. Though now… that would probably never happen.

The thought brought no relief, but it did slow down the panicked spiral her mind was slipping down. Hinata was able to pay more attention to the city around her. In many ways, it seemed identical to any other, regardless of its location in the sky. People going about their daily lives; talking, laughing, crying, playing, training, relaxing, sleeping…

How many were there? The city was rather dense: it looked to Hinata there were about twenty thousand people calling Amegakure their home. Her eyes took them all in, effortlessly absorbing a massive amount of information.

Most of them she didn't recognize, but she could tell they came from all walks of life. She spotted shinobi from every major Hidden Village, though for some reason nearly none were from Konoha. Many kept their headbands somewhere on them still, though their homes were gone. They were outnumbered in total by shinobi bearing Amegakure hitai-ate, but there were still thousands of them. Some of the foreign ninja were together, drinking or eating or talking; it hadn't occurred to Hinata, but if anything would bond enemies, it would be the end of the world as they knew it.

Almost unconsciously, she searched for Pain, not really wanting to find him. To her relief, she couldn't. She did, however, spot Konan approaching from the east.

The woman had company. Hinata couldn't believe her eyes.

She'd seen them earlier. She just hadn't been able to accept it then, and she was having difficulty now. Distracted by the ringing pain across her body, the gravity-warping masses at the center of each sphere, the weight of the situation, the expanse of the city, the presence of the Rinnegan, her remnant low-burning fury at Madara leaking out and coloring everything…

She was still lying down. In the middle of the road, as it were, though no one was nearby. Should she get up?

Could she?

Hinata pressed her head back into the concrete, keeping her eyes wide open, trying to find some sort of comfort in the solidity. Her leg felt hollow.

She was so tired. They were less than a hundred meters away, with just a couple buildings between her and them. She had to get up. She didn't want to be seen like this.

Hinata dragged herself to her feet, putting all her weight on her left leg, and staggered towards the side of the street. She leaned against a plain grey wall: as far as she could tell, the building was an apartment complex of some kind, all but empty. The only inhabitant was an old lady on the fourth floor, bustling around a pot of soup.

She closed her eyes, breathing heavily, and deactivated her Byakugan. For the next several seconds, she just focused on breathing; in through her nose, out through her mouth. The repetitive action filled her head with the sound of rushing air, and the feeling of her chest expanding and contracting provided a calming metronome.

Out, in, out, in, out, in…

It wasn't much, but it grounded Hinata enough for the pain in her leg to slip away. The aching in her head receded with it. Her breathing evened out, becoming quieter.

"Hyuuga."

Konan's voice deflated the momentary quiet Hinata had bought herself. She opened her eyes, looking to the left where the sound had come from. The paper woman was there, along with…

Sakura Haruno was so young. Thirteen years old. A good foot shorter than when Hinata had last seen her, and so uncertain looking. Her hair was short, roughly cut, and her plain clothes were unusually dirty. She was staring at Hinata with hard green eyes. Suspicious eyes. But it was impossible not to recognize her. The hue of her hair refused to be dimmed, especially in the harsh light of the sunset. The little girl saw something in Hinata's eyes, probably her disbelief, and glanced away just for a second in discomfort, trying to make eye contact with her other companion.

Sasuke Uchiha, just as young as Sakura, didn't look over at her. His eyes remained locked on Hinata, the characteristic red glow of the Sharingan backlit by the hard orange of the burning sky. Young as he was, Hinata felt as though he were still looking right through her. Just like his brother had, back in the past, she couldn't shake the suspicion the Sharingan saw something she could not. He was thinner than she remembered: the Uchiha reminded her of a bird of prey.

Why were his eyes activated?

"These two were the closest Konoha-nin I could find," Konan said, and Hinata made eye contact with her. Was the woman lying? She wouldn't have much reason to. "I assumed they would be the best to… 'show you around,' I suppose."

"You're not Hinata," Sakura cut in. Sasuke just kept staring at her. Hinata was tired, but not too tired to ignore the fact he seemed on the edge of attacking her. She couldn't deny the feeling anymore: the Sharingan saw something she could not. Itachi, Danzo, Madara: they'd all given her this peculiar hostile look.

Sakura though, Sakura just saw a teenager instead of her comrade. Hinata sighed.

"I am, Sakura," she said wearily. She looked to Konan. "Can I talk to them?"

The woman nodded, silently acquiescing, and disappeared in a flurry of paper. Sakura spoke up, a bit louder, before the paper had fully dispersed.

"Hinata's dead," she said, her eyes narrowing. "Why are you lying?"

"I'm not lying," Hinata said, her lips numb. The sun had nearly set. She had died here. The Yondaime had mentioned something similar, but the idea still sent a chill down her spine.

"I'm from the future."

When Hinata was done explaining, Sakura's eyes had changed. The younger girl was no longer paranoid. Now, she was just struggling to believe what she'd heard. Sasuke, on the other hand, looked just as suspicious as ever. They were looming over her now, their shadows cast long by the nearly set sun. Hinata had sat herself against the wall, propping her broken leg out.

"Are you telling the truth?" Sakura asked for the second time, and Hinata nodded. She could feel her consciousness draining out her broken leg; the world grew darker and narrower by the minute, but she refused to give in to exhaustion. She could not afford to.

"Why would I lie?" Hinata asked back, and Sakura frowned.

"I don't know," she said. She looked to her teammate. "What do you think, Sasuke?"

The Uchiha glanced at her, and then back to Hinata. Though his eyes bled caution, his expression was unreadable and flat.

"You never mentioned me," he said, and Hinata grimaced. That was true. She'd explained as much as was reasonable about the Akatsuki, Pain, the Chunin Exams she had experienced, and how she had ended up in front of them: she'd talked about how Naruto had fought the Akatsuki's leader, and Sakura had ended up training under Tsunade to become a world class medic. Hinata had wanted to inject as much detail into her story as possible; the more there was, the better a chance Naruto's teammates would believe it.

But she hadn't talked about Sasuke. She'd been worried what he would think. That was stupid, in retrospect: of course he would notice. Her exhaustion was clouding her judgment.

"I didn't want to," she said, and she could tell Sasuke saw the truth in her words.

"Why?" Sakura asked, and Hinata sighed.

"Sasuke left the village," she said, shifting her unbroken leg to help its circulation, and the Uchiha finally showed recognizable emotion: confusion. "He abandoned Konoha for Orochimaru."

"That's…" Sasuke said, staring at her. "That's impossible. I would never…"

Hinata gave him a humorless smile. "I didn't know you very well, Sasuke. I don't know what you were thinking. You'd confronted your brother–" Sasuke's whole body jolted, and he took in a short, sharp breath, "–and he had put you in a coma. You left a little less than a month after waking up." She took in a deep breath, feeling her lungs straining against her ribs. Sakura was staring at her, eyes comically wide. What Hinata was saying seemed to shock her more than her story about time travel. "Naruto went after you, with a team that included my cousin: neither of them ever told me what happened, but you got away, and Neji came back on the brink of death."

She let the silence settle, glad for a chance to breathe uninterrupted. It was easier to think about the past, however terrible it might have been, than her confusing and terrifying present.

"Well," Sakura said, shaking her head. "That doesn't matter. Sasuke wouldn't…" she looked at her teammate. "The Sasuke I know would never do that."

"I wasn't accusing him," Hinata said quietly. "Trust me."

"I didn't say…" Sakura said, before her voice died. Sasuke was shaking, his eyes screwed shut.

"Sasuke?" The Uchiha waved Sakura off.

"I'm fine," he rasped. He looked back to Hinata. His Sharingan was finally deactivated. "We've been asking enough questions: Konan brought us here to answer yours, anyway."

He wanted to change the subject. It was obvious, but Hinata was happy to take the opportunity. She never liked talking about herself.

"Who else made it here? From Konoha?" she asked.

"Not enough," Sakura shook her head. "Shikamaru's here. He's the only other one from our class to make it. I don't know how Konoha is doing, but I doubt anyone left there is…" The younger girl wasn't able to complete the sentence.

"I was there," Hinata said, "but only briefly. The village was too quiet. What happened to everyone?"

Sasuke spoke in a dead voice. "We didn't get the whole picture, at the time or afterwards. Both Naruto and Gaara were barely outside the stadium when Madara showed up: he grabbed them before we could do a thing about it."

"You saw it happen?" Hinata asked mutely, and the Uchiha nodded. She couldn't imagine how terrifying something like that must have been… or what Sasuke and Sakura must have felt, living here by the grace of a man who'd captured their teammate right in front of them.

"After that, everything was too crazy," Sakura said, while Sasuke looked down, closing his eyes. "Both the Sand and the Sound kept attacking until practically all of their ninja were dead; they never got the order to retreat, like you told us about. The Hokage went after them, and after that they didn't stand a chance. There wasn't any communication. The Village was in terrible shape by the end of everything."

"There were about two months of quiet after that," she continued. "No missions, no traveling outside the Village; everything was focused on rebuilding and fortifying. But then, the Edo Tensei started showing up." Sakura's mouth turned down, but her eyes showed Hinata the terror that sentence inspired inside her.

"It was small groups at first, nothing that patrol teams couldn't handle with the right tools," Sasuke said. "But soon enough, it was hundreds, constantly attacking the walls. Some started making it through." He swallowed. "After that, everything changed."

"We couldn't beat them," Sakura said. "Not when they would just regenerate from everything. A lot… a lot of our classmates died. So the Hokage started making Edo Tensei of his own."

Hinata had already heard this from the Yondaime, but hearing it from the mouth of a terrified young girl cast it in an entirely different light. To Sakura, the Sandaime's actions must have seemed the ultimate betrayal.

"At first, it was really powerful people," she said. "The older Hokage, Kakashi-sensei's father… there were less than a dozen the first week that it happened, but they made a huge difference. People could walk the streets again without having to worry about dying to a stray jutsu, even if you could hear the battles happening from anywhere in the Village."

Sasuke soundlessly growled, baring his teeth. Sakura grimaced.

"Eventually, they must have decided that wasn't enough. The Hokage started bringing back any jōnin that had died in the fighting. He brought back Sasuke's family as well: any Uchiha who had been career ninja. But they…"

"He made them puppets," Sasuke snarled, and Sakura shut her mouth. "They walked around with blank eyes: none of them would talk to me. And they fought like…" His expression twisted. "Not even my parents…"

The Uchiha balled his hands and dropped his head, falling silent. Sakura gave him an anguished look, before turning back to Hinata. The Hyuuga barely noticed the look, her mind occupied by what Sasuke had said. Why make the Uchiha into puppets? Why take away their free will? It didn't make sense.

"At that point, we thought about leaving," Sakura said. "Well, Sasuke did, and I wouldn't let him leave alone. Neither would Kakashi-sensei. But we didn't really decide to until…" Sakura took a deep breath and blew it out. "There was a big announcement. One of the Hokage's advisors, Danzo Shimura, he called all of the Village's ninja together during one of the lulls, when most of the Edo Tensei had been contained or driven off."

Danzo. Hinata remembered the last time she'd seen the man, and shivered. The temperature was dropping along with the sun.

"He told us there had been a breakthrough with the Edo Tensei." Sakura looked disgusted. "That for anyone who wanted to volunteer, there was a way to transform yourself into one, while keeping all the strength you had in life. He told us it was the best way to defend the village from an enemy that couldn't die: to become undying ourselves."

"There was no shortage of volunteers," Sasuke said with a hollow voice. "Konoha became a village of the dead. We couldn't take it anymore."

Sakura sniffled, and Sasuke continued. "We left at night, with Kakashi. Away from the main fighting, heading north. Some people went with us." He bit his lip; something Hinata had never seen Sasuke do before. "But a group of Edo Tensei caught up with us, at the Valley of the End."

"You were with us, Hinata," Sakura said, her voice breaking. "We couldn't…"

"Kakashi told us to run while he held them off," Sasuke said. "None of us wanted to, but he didn't give us a choice. But you… one of them hit you with a suiton dragon while we were hesitating." His composure cracked. "Like idiots. It killed you on impact: you went right over the waterfall. After that, we all knew we had to run."

Hinata stopped breathing. She had to focus on her heart, on her lungs, to make them start again. She'd always known she'd die ingloriously. No. She was here. She was alive. She hadn't–

"Konan found us, barely an hour after that," Sasuke said. Or was it Sakura? Hinata could hardly tell; their voices sounded like they were coming from underwater. "She said she was looking for survivors, and she was going to take us to a safe place. She didn't take no for an answer. When we asked her to go back for Kakashi, she told us it was pointless. He'd already–"

"It didn't kill me on impact," Hinata muttered, and Sakura, or Sasuke, stopped talking. They were both looking at her with confusion, guilt, regret, fear. Sakura was crying silently. "I was still alive."

"What?" The warbled sound came from a black gulf eating her vision: she couldn't see the people in front of her anymore. All she could see was the waterfall, whizzing past her.

"It broke my leg." The creeping agony in her leg was doubled, overlaid by fresh pain. Another layer of concrete, dragging her down. "My arm." A phantom pain seized her left arm and crippled it, driving stakes into each major muscle, snapping her tibia in two. "Most of my ribs." Her lungs were filling with weightless blood. "But it didn't kill me."

Her voice dribbled out of her mouth, choked by blood that wasn't there. The waterfall was going faster, faster. "I didn't die when I hit the water, either." The impact was sudden. Hinata was spinning. The world was spinning. The sun had set. She could see the light vanishing beyond the darkness enveloping her sight. It didn't make sense, but she could see it nonetheless.

"I drowned," she croaked. "I tried to swim. I couldn't. I drowned."

Water was rushing into her mouth, stinging her eyes, pulling her down down down down down–

She could see everything they had told her. The Edo Tensei storming the village, vast forests and tornadoes and floods springing to its defense just beyond and inside the walls, the Uchiha moving everywhere like blind dolls spitting fire without care, shinobi fighting and screaming dying, Neji coming back from the walls painted in blood that wasn't his own, Hanabi crying in the night, Danzo calling the Village together, the shouts of relief as people gave up their humanity, the Will of Fire being reduced to kindling.

Hinata saw it all, as though she'd been there herself. She had been there herself.

She was remembering what she'd never experienced. Her head sunk lower, her body curling in on itself.

"Hinata!" Sakura was screaming. Someone grabbed her shoulder, wiry fingers with an iron grip. Sasuke. He was shaking her. Hinata didn't care.

'Why should I care?' she thought.

'I'm already dead.'

AN: This chapter's rougher than most of the recent ones. Going back to school has taken up a lot of my time. Nevertheless, despite both that and a recent job offer, I'll be doing my best to keep this regularly updated. Thank you for reading: I hope you enjoyed it.