The Girl Who Spun Through Time
Chapter 11
Finally.
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Hinata shot bolt upright with a muffled grunt, cold sweat coating her body. She hyperventilated, breathing heavily. The sound of her lungs was like a set of enormous bellows in her ears, drowning out all other sound.
Drowning. Her lungs weren't filled with blood or water. She could breathe. She wasn't sinking into darkness, watching flares of lightning and fire burst into existence high above like the most dangerous art performance in existence.
Hinata was alive, and she did not understand how.
"I didn't understand, when I first saw you." The rumbling voice emerged from just in front of her, and Hinata looked up, focusing.
She was in a small, barely furnished room, laid out on a mattress on the floor. There was a ragged green couch in the corner, with a window above it. There was a doorway leading outside just to the right of it: the wood of the room gave way to the concrete of Amegakure.
Madara Uchiha was sitting in front of her, his legs crossed. His hands rested on his thighs, an almost religious pose, and he peered at her with unblinking ringed eyes. Despite the cracks in his face, she could read him perfectly well: curiosity, and something more. If it were anyone else, she would have called it contentment, but the expression took a turn for the worst on the Uchiha's face.
"Did you see it, little Hyuuga?" he asked, leaning forward. The Rinnegan gleamed, and Hinata instinctively pulled away. She felt slow, tired; her body refused to wake up.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she spat, not bothering to hide her anger, disgust, or terror. She hated being at this man's mercy once more; she hated the inhuman eyes shining out of his sockets. If she were capable, she would have yanked them from his skull.
"Are your eyes not perceptive enough, I wonder?" Madara spoke, but not really to her. He was mocking her, Hinata knew, and pondering to himself in the same moment. It was obvious he could see the anger bubbling up in her, but it was just as clear he did not care.
"What happened to me?" Hinata asked, sagging. She caught herself with one trembling arm. It wasn't broken anymore. No: it had never been broken in the first place. She'd imagined that. Her leg was the one that had been broken.
She shifted it unconsciously, drawing it towards her body and away from Madara. There was not a single errant twinge of pain; no protestation whatsoever. Her leg was completely fine. Had she imagined that too? That was impossible. It was so dark outside. The sun had vanished. She must have been unconscious for at least half an hour for it to vanish completely beyond the horizon. What had happened to Sakura and Sasuke?
"You experienced something I had not thought possible," Madara said with a leering grin. "Did you not understand it as it was happening? Even if you didn't see it, the experience must have given you an inkling."
Hinata's hair was slipping down, blocking her sight, but it hardly made a difference. She was focusing on her breathing, trying to regain her composure. "Stop testing me," she muttered. She was tired of even feigning dancing around the subject. Getting tired of everything. It was all too consuming and overwhelming. "It's pointless."
Madara's face grew harsh. "No," he said, leaning back. "You are my key to mending this dying world, Hinata Hyuuga. And you are unacceptably fragile. Especially after what just happened-"
"What happened?" Hinata asked, her voice too hoarse to shout. Madara grinned.
"You absorbed a substantial amount of chakra, all but identical to your own," the Uchiha said, his teeth showing. There was a crack running through them too, breaking his smile. "Between what you apparently said during the process, and the nature of the chakra itself, the conclusion is obvious."
Hinata stared at the Uchiha in horror, her gaze still partly obscured by her hair. She was cold, far too cold. Up here, high in the sky, she distantly thought, the temperature at night would drop rapidly.
"You already know, don't you?" Madara asked, and Hinata shook her head. "Don't lie to me," he said. "It does you no good."
"I…" she murmured. "That's impossible. It doesn't make sense."
Madara snorted, lifting one of his hands palm up in a gesture of irrelevance. "You're here thanks to traveling through time. Compared to that," he said, dropping his hand to point at her, "devouring the chakra of your younger self is nothing."
It was true. Both what he said, and what he was talking about: Hinata couldn't deny the experience. Something about the tale of her younger self's death had awoken something in her; it was only now, with the benefit of hindsight, that Hinata could really understand the bizarre chakra that had been coiling within her, waiting for a release. It had been there since she'd arrived. The sudden influx of familiar yet foreign energy had crippled her on arrival, tying her chakra system into knots and putting her chest in a vice.
The sensation had been similar to what she'd undergone when she'd first traveled, but so much more intense. She hadn't had time to consider it till now.
The Hinata Hyuuga of here was dead, but her chakra had remained. In what aspect, Hinata couldn't possibly know. But despite her ignorance, it had obviously found a new vessel in her. And it had carried some of her counterpart's memories with it.
Hinata leaned over and vomited, a splash of clear stomach acid that set fire to her throat and squeezed tears out of her eyes. Madara watched her dispassionately as she dry-heaved, desperately trying to wrest back control of her gorge.
"Ghuu…" she groaned, closing her eyes. Memories that didn't belong (no, that wasn't quite right) were all rushing back again. The darkness behind her eyelids was spinning.
"Get control of yourself," Madara said, infuriatingly calm. "You're no use to me in this state."
Hinata clenched her jaw. "I won't do it," she said, the taste of acid thick on her tongue.
She refused to open her eyes, positive that it would cause another bout of vomiting.
"Won't do what?"
"Help you," Hinata said, spitting up a bout of phlegm. "Whatever it is, I'm not doing it."
"Don't be an idiot," the Uchiha said with amusement. "You've seen this world. Met your former comrades. As it is, this wretched place is barely worth saving. But with you, that could change."
"I won't." Hinata's voice was trembling. "After what you've done… there's no way."
"What do you think I'll do, little Hyuuga?" She could hear his sneer. "I doubt I could make anything worse."
'You couldn't. I could.'
"What do you care?" Hinata asked. "You're long dead. What happens here doesn't concern you anymore."
"In a way," Madara said quietly, "you are just as dead as me. Yet, does the state of the world not concern you?"
Hinata sucked in another half breath, tasting more acid, and curled in on herself.
'It's my fault.'
"The snow," Madara said suddenly. Hinata didn't look at him, but she heard him shift his feet under him. "You remember the forest." She refused to answer, focusing on not vomiting on her feet.
"It's July, Hyuuga," the Uchiha said, and Hinata opened her eyes. "Your comrades aren't the only ones dying." He chuckled. "This whole rotten world is."
'What?'
"It's that damnable jutsu," Madara said. Hinata looked up in time to see him clench one hand into a fist. "I don't expect you to understand, Hyuuga, but the strength of an Edo Tensei is taken from the world itself; from the natural chakra, all around us."
"That's…" Hinata heard herself mutter. Her lips were numb.
"Its creator never gave thought to that; after all, how could chakra produced by everything from rocks to grass run out?" Madara chuckled. "And yet, it is. The earth is cracking; letting out its last gasp. The Edo Tensei, born of human greed, is sucking the life from this world."
It took Hinata nearly twenty seconds to respond. As she struggled, Madara stared at her with clear contempt.
"Why are you telling me this?"
The Uchiha smiled again.
"I need you to understand, little girl," he said, sounding almost polite. "You don't have a choice."
He slowly stood up, towering over her. Hinata felt like a weed in the shadow of a tree. "It would be the worst kind of selfishness to leave the world itself to die just so you won't be incriminated by whatever I choose to do." He looked away from her. "You aren't capable of it."
Hinata's heart sank into her stomach, dragging her head down.
"As I thought."
He was right. If he was telling the truth… but he was telling the truth. Her eyes read him like a book, and he was making no attempt to conceal his feeling. Madara Uchiha was telling her the truth, and Hinata could not deny it.
"Why?"
The words slipped out of her mouth, and Hinata reached out towards them, looking for something to draw her out of the grey purgatory she felt herself slipping into. Madara cocked his head.
"Why?" he asked.
"Why did you kidnap Naruto? Why did you attack the Hidden Leaf? Why are you here, working with the Akatsuki?!" Madara's eyes narrowed, and Hinata pulled herself to her feet, her body aching as she did her best to straighten herself before him. "Why are you doing this?"
"Why do you do anything, little Hyuuga?" the Uchiha shot back, and Hinata recoiled. "My reasons are my own: I doubt you would understand them, or care if you did."
"You're a child."
Hinata didn't realize she'd spoken until Madara slammed her into the wall of the building, his arm pressed against her throat.
"Pardon?" he asked as her vision darkened.
"See?" She really had gone crazy, talking to him like this. But why wouldn't she have? She was on a floating city being strangled by a dead man as they flew high above a world being drained of its life by rampaging abominations and cracked simulacra of her home and loved ones. She was beaten, bruised: she'd already died, drowning with broken limbs and shattered lungs as her friends fled. She was speaking without thinking she didn't even deserve to be thinking anymore she'd broken this she'd broken everything–
"That's all the proof I need," Hinata Hyuuga said without thinking, her voice without inflection and her eyes flat. "What are you trying to prove? Attacking me like this? That you're stronger than me? You're Madara Uchiha. You have nothing to prove!"
The pressure on her throat loosened, and Hinata continued babbling.
"You want something from me but you won't tell me. It's not just that I'm a time traveler; I would just be a tool if that were the case, but you're not treating me like a tool. You dropped me before we reached Amegakure. What if I'd died? You couldn't have stopped it. You nearly threw me away, so you're either self destructive or unforgivably stupid–"
"Why?" Madara repeated suddenly, cutting through words as though with a sword. The Rinnegan filled Hinata's vision, and she stiffened in terror, adrenaline flooding her veins and shoving away existential dread to replace it with raw fight or flight. She wanted to run, or sink into the wall, or break the Uchiha's face, but the man locked her to the wall with his eyes.
"You want to know why I'm doing this?" the man growled, and Hinata shook. "I'm trying to save this miserable world from itself."
"How?" Hinata spat in the man's face, and his nostrils flared in disgust.
"The methods do not matter," he snarled to her. "I am going tocraft a perfect, endless paradise for each and every man, woman, and childleft, and you will help me."
Hinata's brain stuttered. Paradise?
"That's impossible," her mouth said, and she felt the rage and sorrow in Madara's eyes burrow into hers.
Sorrow. That's what it was. She finally saw it. That's what had been there, baffling her, like a bright light spoiling her night vision as it lurked behind the Uchiha's anger and contempt. Sorrow deeper than any ocean, curdling in the man's eyes.
She saw it.
"Just as impossible as the rest of this," he said, his lips curling. "Nevertheless-"
There was a yellow flash. Hinata recognized it.
Instincts overrode fear, and she squirmed downwards. She shouldn't have been able to escape Madara's iron grip, but the man's hold had slackened; his focus was elsewhere. Hinata knocked his hand away and slipped down the wall, rolling away from the Uchiha. Her Byakugan activated.
She and Madara were no longer alone. The Fourth Hokage was here, and he'd brought company. Forty Edo Tensei of various shapes and sizes had appeared from nowhere, four in the building she and Madara had been occupying and the rest outside it. They were all shinobi of Konoha; Hinata took special notice of the ones closest to her.
The former Hokage: Hashirama Senju, Tobirama Senju, Sarutobi Hiruzen, and Minato Namikaze. They all stood abreast, facing her and Madara.
Where had they come from? It must have been the Yondaime's jutsu that had allowed them to appear so suddenly. Hinata didn't know how he could have found her. She almost wished he hadn't. The Hyuuga understood now, in a strange way, why the Yondaime had been so intent on protecting her, beyond her time travel. He must have placed some sort of marker on her.
Time stopped, and Madara moved through the frozen air, turning away from Hinata in an infinitely slow arc. She watched his Rinnegan go wide, his lips slip back, bearing his cracked teeth: the Uchiha transformed from a man consumed by sorrow into terror itself.
He screamed, and with the sound the world sprung back into motion.
"Hashirama!"
The building exploded as everyone both within and without moved all at once, and Hinata was lost in a maelstrom of chakra and concrete.
The Hyuuga didn't think: she just went limp, falling through the storm. The couch that had stood in the corner of the room came flying towards her, and she slipped under it, feeling the contrails of air trailing it send her hair whipping about madly. It was pure pandamonium, but the Byakugan brought clear understanding to her of everything happening around her.
Every single Edo Tensei had simultaneously attacked Madara from all sides, uncaring of collateral damage. The Uchiha had lost a leg and most of an arm, but his Susano'o had manifested around him, and it lashed out with ethereal fists and swords, crushing some unlucky shinobi and bifurcating others. The small building was completely destroyed, down to its foundations; what hadn't been shattered had been melted into a slag. Jets of fire and water sliced through the air, alongside sharpened pillars of stone. The air was quickly filled with vapor and debris; the sound was indescribable.
They had been on the outskirts of the city proper, hundreds of meters away from the nearest building. What had been a flat meadow was rapidly becoming a wasteland.
A tornado of slicing wind screamed across the tiny battlefield, little more than a city block in size, lit with flames and lightning. It flung Edo Tensei about like child's toys, but even as they were carried away they flung attacks at Madara with reckless abandon. One by one, they were plucked from it by a flitting flash: the Yondaime retrieved his comrades faster than Hinata's eyes could track, setting them down on safe ground before returning to the fight himself, smashing twin howling Rasengan the size of his torso into the Susano'o ribcage. A flood emerged from the mouth of Tobirama: a shinobi Hinata didn't recognize surfed the artificial wave, her skin sparking with lightning, a long blade wreathed in electricity held in their hands.
Madara glared, and the tidal wave was smashed into a white spray; the woman riding it disintegrated from the chest down, blown into parchment. Trees sprouted from the ground and the Susano'o rode them high into the sky as they grew impossibly quickly, hurling explosive chakra and fireballs at everything below it as it grew larger and fiercer. A man melted into the tree and raced up it after the rampaging Uchiha, bursting up inside the Susano'o and releasing an explosion of monofilaments and slicing wind, taking off Madara's right hand and slicing deep unbleeding cuts into his chest and forehead. The Uchiha bared his teeth and seized the man's face, and the Konoha Edo collapsed into ash.
A hundred impossible battles played out over less than ten seconds as Hinata watched, barely able to comprehend despite her eyes effortlessly taking everything in. She sailed through the air, seemingly as through thick water; adrenaline turned the world into a harshly colored painting, with only the shinobi moving through it.
Then she hit the ground, and every ache and pain in her body returned twice over as she tumbled backwards.
Hinata rolled to her feet, and a crack of thunder and burning wind blew her back a step. Without a thought, she spun on her heel and sprinted in the other direction. It was as simple as breathing: she had to get away from this madness. She fled in a blind fear, lowering her head and pumping her arms, reduced to a smudged blur in the dark night as the world exploded into violent light behind her, the furious roar of battle washing everything away in lurid color and deafening sound.
She didn't know where she was running. Away from the noise: away from all this, from the dying world, the deranged Uchiha, the dead Hokage who'd used her as bait.
Hinata ran away.