“I never would have expected Naruto to plan that far ahead.” Ino laughed.
“My teammate has hidden depths, Ino. Besides, you can figure out anything if you get enough tries at it.”
Naruto didn’t react to the hint. Ino laughed again. “Well, I can see you three have a lot to talk about. See you at the next exam!”
Sasuke had already left for his afternoon training, since of course there wasn’t really a team meeting. That just left Hinata, who was clinging to Naruto like she was afraid he’d vanish if she let ‘s confusion was so adorable I couldn’t contain my giggles any more.
“So, Naruto, I guess you finally noticed that she likes you. It’s about time.”
Hinata gave me a surprised look. “You don’t mind?”
“I’ll cope.” I met Naruto’s startled gaze. “I was always so cold to you, I shouldn’t be surprised you found someone else. I’m sorry, Naruto.”
“S-Sakura?” He said. “You’ve never said anything like that before.”
“I’ve had a hundred and seventeen loops to think about it.” I replied.
I was terrified that this was just some strange fluke and he wouldn’t know what I was talking about. But his eyes went wide, and I knew I’d struck paydirt.
“Um, Naruto.” Hinata said after a moment. “If you want, I don’t mind sharing.”
Now it was my turn to be floored. Shy little Hinata proposing a three-way? Naruto choked and looked around wildly, and after a moment I realized he was looking for something to distract me with before I blew up at him.
“Um, well, yeah, we’d better get to that meeting, right Sakura? Wouldn’t want to be late—”
I smiled and put a finger across his lips. “Naruto, I’m not that girl anymore. Hinata, that’s unbelievably sweet of you, but I’m pretty sure Naruto has the girl that he wants. Now, why don’t you leave a clone to keep her company while we’re gone?”
I dragged Naruto off to an empty training ground and pinned him against a tree. “You remember! The forest, Orochimaru, the finals, the invasion, over and over again. Please, tell me you remember!”
“Um, yeah. I guess we’re both looping. But…you aren’t going to yell at me?”
We finally discover we aren’t completely alone in the loops, and this is his first thought? “Was I really that much of a bitch to you, Naruto?” He didn’t say anything. “Look, I’m really not like that anymore. My god, do you have any idea how many times I’ve watched you die trying to protect me? I do have a heart. I don’t love you, but…well, I guess maybe I do, a little. My alter ego certainly can’t shut up about you. But if you’ve looped as many times as I have, with me acting the way I used to…”
I hung my head. “You must hate me by now.”
“No. I don’t hate you, Sakura. I just got tired of it.” Tentatively, he put his arms around me.
The next thing I knew I was holding on for dear life as I bawled my eyes out, while Naruto awkwardly patted my back and tried to tell me it was ok. Eventually I ran down, and just stood there leaning against him.
“So.” He asked awkwardly. “You’re the smart one. Have you figured out what’s going on?”
“Not a clue.” I suppressed a sniffle. “My best idea was to try to pass the exam and see if that ended it. But no one’s going to make chuunin if Konoha gets leveled.”
“Yeah, that’s going to be tough. I can handle most of those guys, but Orochimaru is a monster.”
“No kidding. Not to mention Gaara.”
“Oh, Gaara’s a big teddy bear. I just need to make friends with him early on so he doesn’t join the attack.”
“You made friends with that psycho?” I had to laugh. “I don’t know how you do it.”
“Hey, he’s not that bad. Well, ok, maybe he is, but all you have to do is be nice to him and he comes around pretty quick. The problem is if I do that Orochimaru shows up with a bunch of other tough guys, and that demon lizard thing is even worse than Gaara’s sand monster.”
We spent the rest of the afternoon there comparing notes, learning each other’s discoveries and trying to come up with a plan. Some of Naruto’s ideas were amazingly silly.
“Muscle memory is a figure of speech, dummy! Reflexes are processed by the brain and engraved on your spirit just like any other kind of memory.”
“You mean I could have been improving my taijutu all this time?”
“Yep. I’m about as good as Sasuke was when we took the bell test, and still improving.”
On the other hand, I’d missed a lot as well.
“Sakura, we’re in a time loop. You don’t have to go around following orders anymore. Experiment, try crazy things, break the rules. As long as you don’t get caught before the next reset it doesn’t matter. Heck, even if you do get caught Ibiki likes to let prisoners sweat for a day to two before he does any serious interrogation. I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere if I couldn’t use the loops to talk people into things and get around security.”
Our first practice match was a revelation. Naruto was amazed by the way I used Invisibility Art, Underground Move and Body Flicker to dance around the battlefield picking off clones at will. Me, I was amazed at his jutsu selection.
“Naruto, how can you do all those fire jutsu? I know your element is air! Wait, and I saw water and lightning techniques too!.”
He shrugged. “I pretty much have to steal scrolls to learn anything, and those are the ones I’ve found so far. I’ve got tons of chakra and plenty of training time, so what difference does it make anyway?”
I had to laugh. “Only you could pull off something that crazy. You’re burning ten times as much chakra on that fire and lighting stuff as you’d need for air techniques, and they’ll always take more time to use. Tell you what, show me how that instant swamp thing you did works and I’ll show you some basic wind jutsu I’ve seen Ebisu teach you.”
“Well, I guess I can do that. But I really want you to teach me your genjutsu. I just can’t seem to get Kurenai to show me anything.”
“We’re teammates, Naruto. I’ll teach you anything I know.”
The Forest of Death was almost fun with the real Naruto on my side. Between his firepower and my finesse we flattened every obstacle in our way, played Orochimaru with style and panache and ended up at the forest arena three days ahead of schedule. Naruto even had time to send his clones on some complicated mission to get Neji injured so he wouldn’t end up beating up Hinata, which I thought was awfully sweet considering how many times he must have done it.
“Hinata’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” He said when I asked him about it. “I don’t get together with her that often, because it would kill me if she got boring too. But I’d already started the pattern when we met, and there’s no way I’ll let anything bad happen to her now.”
Naruto was pretty impressed when I got matched with Kiba and actually won. Apparently he’d had a lot of trouble with that fight in his early loops, before he learned enough ninjutsu to deal with it. Then he drew Shino as his opponent, which was a completely one-sided fight. Naruto just ignored the insects, running right through Shino’s swarms to beat on him while the little bugs leached chakra as fast as they could. They couldn’t drain enough to matter, and the biting ones could barely outpace Naruto’s healing, so it wasn’t long before Shino went down.
Then the training month started, and we got to really have fun.
“So that’s Jiraiya.” I whispered, eying the middle-aged man peeping on the women’s side of the hot spring. “He looks more like an old pervert than a legendary sanin.”
“He’s a total pervert. But he’s really strong, too. I learned toad summoning from him my first time through, and I’m sure he’s got lots of other cool stuff. But I can never remember what made him agree train me.”