Kevin Curry
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Psychoprotective Epilogue 4
🕑 Added 2024-07-08 09:59:00 +0000 UTCI should be able to get this into an acceptable state to move on to the next life in one more chapter. This has always been something of a self-indulgent outpouring of ideas that made making Book 2/3 difficult by distracting me, so I'm not too bothered about things running long.
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“Okay, now that the shocking part of this has been handled,” Tanya said, holding herself confidently and ignoring how easily the group assembled could kill her. This life wasn’t quite a loss yet, but if she wanted to not set a new personal record for shortest life, she had to manage this conversation. “-I can explain what’s actually going on.”
As expected, the Hokage, or what appeared to her senses to be some kind of archetype projection like Naruto’s shadow clones, was the calmest at this revelation. “If you aren’t Sakura, Miss, then… who are you?”
“Excellent question, Lord Hokage.” Tanya said, bowing slightly. “But not the best way to explain. The real question is: who was Sakura?” There was another upsurge of discontent, but they were quieted by a surge of intent by the Hokage. “Sakura was, in a very real way, me. I was asleep, and she was the dream. A dream of innocence, of someone who could have things like childish crushes, and form bonds with others easily.” Tanya sighed. “But then Orochimaru woke me up, and all that remains of that dream are what few memories and emotional bonds I could save.” She firmed up her stance. “I’m just thankful I saved enough memories to be able to extract my teammates from that dangerous place without further casualties.”
Kakashi, with a measure of nervous energy and a massive sea of grief, spoke next. “You spoke of them as your teammates.” He said sternly, not a trace of his pain in his voice. “Don’t you mean Sakura’s teammates?”
Very insightful. “When waking up, my first priority was figuring out what was going on, as the place was awash with killing intent.” Tanya explained, “But I was able to save the five strongest emotional bonds that Sakura held dear to her heart. As such, I still feel the love and care she had for you, Mom, Dad, Naruto, and Sasuke.” After a beat, she added: “Listed in no particular order.”
“W-what about me?” Ino asked, eyes red from the crying she had been doing.
Tanya’s eyes softened. “I’m sorry.” She said, “I understand if you don’t want anything to do with me, so as to not taint her memory.” After giving the girl a moment to sob, she added: “But I would like to know more about who Sakura was, as someone who grieves her just as you do, and I know that there’s a side of her that no one knows but you.”
“T-thank you.” Ino said between tears. “I’d like that.”
Clearing her throat, Tanya turned back to the collected people. “Now, to answer your original question, Lord Hokage, my name is Tanya, and I am someone who has died three times before, each followed by a rebirth into a new life. After my latest life, the first to live long enough to grow old, I decided to take things into my own hands and suppress over one hundred years of memories in order to experience life anew once more.” She gestured vaguely. “As I was a telepath in that life, skilled with mind arts, it was also the first time such a thing became possible.” It was easy enough to rephrase things to make more sense to her audience. Decades of playing all kinds of video games in all sorts of settings made doing such a thing simplicity itself. “It was a selfish wish, but if I did not, Sakura would just be a role I pretend to play, instead of a real person who has unfortunately been killed by Orochimaru’s soul invasion jutsu.”
Anko, who was here for what was likely that exact topic, spoke up: “Yeah, about that: Explain! What did you do?”
The Hokage gave a grandfatherly smile, smoothly transitioning into the role of ‘good cop’. “Yes, I’m sure we’d all appreciate an explanation on that last statement.”
Tanya nodded calmly. Everything was still going according to her plan. “While, naturally, I do not have any prior knowledge of Orochimaru’s jutsu, drawing on my previous experiences can give me a pretty clear image of what happened. The goal of his jutsu, from what I could gather from both my senses and the context from his words and actions, is to insert a fragment of his mind and chakra into someone, which has many potential benefits to him.” She gave a vague hand gesture which was easily construed into something lewd. “As such, it was something I had to deal with before I could fully preserve Sakura’s personality, and the battle to fight off the invasion had significant collateral damage.” She had taken the time to examine her mind for anything missing, and she was fairly certain there was less of her third life there than she had initially preserved, but she had no way of determining what was gone.
“What about me?” Sasuke asked bluntly.
“This is the kind of procedure that’s easier to do on other people than it is to handle it for yourself.” Tanya said confidently. “Destroying the fragment of Orochimaru within you was simple, although I would like to return to your mind at a later date, as I saw something concerning while in there, I think it was some kind of memory alteration or hypnosis.” It could also be entirely self-inflicted, but with the context of Sasuke’s extended family all being murdered on the same day a few years ago, it was something that could use some therapy regardless. “I assume I’ll need to speak to your therapist or trauma counselor or whatever they call that profession here first.” Oddly, there wasn’t a word in the local language for ‘psychologist’ that she knew. There were words that were similar, like ‘therapist’ in the context of physical therapy, or one that meant ‘mental torturer’ like that examiner for the first exam, but she was still holding out hope that it was just considered shameful to attend such sessions instead of it not existing.
Sasuke seemed offended at the very idea that there was anyone who mattered besides him when it came to such decisions. “What do you mean?”
“I’ll cover that later.” Tanya promised, “For now, I still need to salvage this run.” Ah, she accidentally mixed in gamer lingo in her normal speech again. “Sakura never seemed to have asked, but exactly how long is the term of service for enlisting in Konoha’s military? It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been in one, but I’ve killed far too many people to want to stack more bodies on the pile.”
Mercifully, the Hokage seemed to understand her question, even if the answer was as she suspected. “Being a ninja of Konoha is a lifetime commitment, I’m afraid.” He said easily. “But until war breaks out, that doesn’t mean as much as you might think. Further, there are non-combat specializations you could go into if you’re suited, such as medicine. My old student Tsunade had never liked killing either, and has become one of the foremost medical authorities in the world.”
Tanya nodded in thanks. “Yes, thank you. I have no intention of starting a new life without any friends or family, that’s exactly what I was trying to avoid. I fully intend to pick up where Sakura left off, and from what I can gather from her memories, she wasn’t exactly the bloodthirsty sort anyway.”
Naruto snickered. “Sakura was pretty quick to get mad…”
“Well, I was a very angry little girl anyway.” Tanya said, shrugging. “Now, are there any other questions that need to be addressed? While I don’t really need to be anywhere in particular until next month, there are others in this room who need to prepare for their gladiatorial matches.” Namely, Naruto and Sasuke. Ino lost her match too.
“Oh!” Naruto raised his hand enthusiastically. “How old were you when you died?”
Tanya blinked. She really should have expected this from him. “Thirty-two, seventeen, and one hundred thirty-eight. In that order” She said, smiling indulgently at the excitable child. “I could have lived longer, but there were enough unknowns with what I was doing that I wanted a margin of error. Being born senile was a very real possibility, so I needed to die while my faculties were still intact.”
“Woah! You were old!” Naruto turned to the Hokage’s shadow clone. “How old are you, Gramps?”
The Hokage took the blatantly familiar address in stride. “I’m sixty-nine years old.” He said easily, fishing out a pipe from his robes. Nice. “I find it curious that you died at exactly twice my age. How did you manage that, may I ask?”
Tanya shrugged. “Coincidence.” She said, “I divested from my original body when I was seventy-six, slotting my brain into a mechanical body of my own design.” She waved her hand vaguely. “I doubt this world has psitanium, so I’d need to rebuild any repeat attempts from the ground up.”
“A puppet body?” The Hokage asked, intrigued. “There have always been legends out of Suna about puppet masters who turned themselves into puppets, but none have been substantiated.”
“Yes, that sounds similar enough.” Tanya agreed, “From what I understand about Chakra, you would need more than just the brain in order to make it work, but if that puppet the Suna boy in the preliminaries is an example of the basic application of the technique, someone at the forefront of their field could probably make something human enough to be directed from inside through chakra manipulation alone.” You’d need to extract most of the chakra system, the eight gates that the Lee boy uses for that hysterical strength technique at the minimum. “It would be difficult to keep the biological bits alive, but not impossible.” The real issue would be if an abbreviated body can still produce chakra at a similar rate to a full one. It would require research. “I suppose if I become a medical expert, I could fit in that kind of research in between more important activities.” How she could do such a thing without the very convenient physics of psychic powers will be a thought for another day.
“Well, I’m sure that all of the critical matters have been addressed.” The Hokage declared. “You’ve convinced me that you’re not a spy, at the very least. While refuge in audacity does exist, it doesn’t fit.” His eyes narrowed as he peered straight into Tanya’s face. “You were fully prepared to be killed this entire time.”
Tanya blinked in surprise. “Well, even if you did kill me, I’d just be reborn again. It would be tragic for you and inconvenient for me, but it would also mean that I’d dodge having to fight in another war, which is enough of a win in my books.” Two is already one too many, she’d like to avoid adding a third.
The Hokage smiled. “A win, indeed.” He agreed, “But tell me, how far does your pacifism reach?”
“Death and killing should be avoided, when possible.” Tanya insisted, “But I couldn’t even go one day in this world without having to kill some poor kid to protect Naruto and Sasuke. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.” Sasuke dying was unacceptable. “I’m not a real pacifist. I’m just human.”
“That is why you’ll fit right in here.” The Hokage said firmly. “Welcome to Konoha.”
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Honestly, being honest worked out a lot better than Tanya had anticipated. It was kind of a high-risk maneuver instead of trying some elaborate plot… but she simply didn’t keep enough of Sakura’s memories to be able to plausibly slot herself in seamlessly anyway, so that was not a realistic option.
Both Naruto and Sasuke were quickly brought into dedicated training programs. Sasuke was given Kakashi’s personal attention, and given that the boy had Gaara as his first opponent this was a wise decision. Naruto, on the other hand, got his little seal problem fixed surprisingly easily (but the Hokage claimed to have handled it personally, so she wasn’t about to question the man who was known to Konoha’s enemies as the ‘God of Shinobi’), and was sent to be trained by one of the finest tutors in the city, a special jounin who specialized in teaching genin to chuunin-level techniques.
Tanya, on the other hand, spent most of her time reacclimating herself to living in an organic body, with people that could not be merely ignored by blocking whatever communication method was used. It was… an adjustment period.
That wasn’t to say that she didn’t do what she was supposed to be doing and training her combat skills for her new profession. “Yin-Yang release: Chakra Armor.” She said to herself, which does actually help actualize a technique that wasn’t fully mastered.
A shroud of chakra enveloped her body, forming a solid layer over the majority of her body along with a more liquid layer covering her joints. Her hands were now covered in wicked claws, her adaptation of her preferred psi blades. Her face was coated in a transparent barrier, although it did tint everything pink. As it turned out, changing the color of one’s chakra was actually rather simple with yin manipulation, albeit cosmetic. It was apparently a Nara clan technique, to make their shadow jutsu more subtle.
The conventional wisdom of chakra is that it’s a combination of mental and physical energies. While the ‘mental’ component of that energy was not completely the same as psychic energy that she was used to, it did have a lot in common, thus her overabundance of yin chakra. The physical component had more in common with the magic of her second life, more inclined to be directed via the nerve impulses of the body rather than solely in the higher realms of thought. It was why magic tended to be paired with physical motions and phenomena, finger gestures at the minimum but more frequently adjustments of the body to direct flight formulae or the use of staves and wands, guns in the Empire’s case, instead of burdening the mind with having to consciously understand the math involved. The computation orb handled that part. It wasn’t as similar to yang chakra as psychic energy was to yin, but it was close enough to provide her a mental paradigm to work with.
A jutsu was essentially a computation orb’s program, created on the fly through handsigns and the manipulation of chakra. Once the jutsu was complete, it executed whatever it was supposed to do, with the only necessary direction being the kind that was deliberately left to the user so as to improve the jutsu’s precision by allowing on-the-fly adjustments.
In this case, she creates a solid chakra construct to protect her vital organs and to arm herself, and the jutsu binds the manipulation of these constructs to her physical motions, allowing it to move with her. Was it an effective jutsu? Well… she wasn’t sure. Theoretically, it should allow a superior protective quality in comparison to merely reinforcing her body with chakra, but it might have unanticipated inefficiencies. Thus, the testing.
“Are you ready?” Naruto said, fingers twitching as he presumably plotted out his game plan.
Tanya flexed her fingers, the claws shifting in turn. “Yes, the technique is stable.”
“Great! Shadow Clone jutsu!” Naruto shouted, forming the peculiar handsign he used for that fascinating reminder of that old man that brought her so much trouble. He was relatively restrained this time, used to Sakura’s old level of strength. He only made about forty clones, who each charged with wild abandon.
As they approached, Tanya lashed out with her claws, killing at least one with each motion. Naruto’s fists, although impressive in their strength, were as rain to her chakra armor, and within twelve seconds all forty were but smoke. “That was a good warmup.” Tanya shouted, clapping her hands together. By design, the chakra claws interlocked without issue when she joined her hands for jutsu. “But it’s time to stop fooling around and get down to business!” Just to be sure, she cast an illusion on his senses, making her position lag one whole second behind her actual location.
Naruto’s face went incandescent at her bawdy phrasing. “R-right!” He said after a moment, summoning even more clones and sending them in along with himself. They approached more cautiously, spreading out. Each of them decided to open by tossing a brace of kunai, the trowel-knives forming an impenetrable rain of iron.
Tanya had, of course, ducked low and used her claws to launch herself forward along the ground a half-second before they started throwing, so they completely missed her as she went straight to the real one, cutting through five clones to reach him.
To his credit, he reacted immediately to her physical gripping of his shoulder, stiffening as her claws just barely nicked his throat. “I win.” Tanya announced.
“Ha!” Shouted the old man who had apparently taken over Naruto’s training on the first day. He was sitting on a giant probably-poisonous toad, and by giant she meant the size of a small car. “Okay, now that’s the kind of killer instinct that you can’t just find in the market. I wasn’t sure if I believed everything my old teacher told me about you, but I do now.”
Oh? Well, he is an old ninja, having connections in the higher ups of the village would make sense. “While I don’t have all of my old tools, I think that just about shakes off the rust for the basics.”
“When’d ya get me with that genjutsu?” Naruto asked, scowling in frustration. “I thought you still needed to form handseals for them.”
“When I clapped between the bouts.” Tanya said idly, which caused Naruto to slap his forehead.
“You’re really gunning for that faux-jinchuriki aesthetic though.” The old man said, scratching his afternoon stubble.
“A what?” Tanya asked, confused. Naruto stilled, suddenly nervous.
“How long do you think you can hold that?” The old man asked, changing the subject.
Tanya used the counterseal for the technique and the chakra armor dissipated. “Not much longer. I’ve tuned the technique to use more yin chakra than yang chakra, but when you have as large of a chakra imbalance as I do, there’s only so much you can do.”
“Once you grow up a bit and get more chakra to play with, that’s the kind of technique that earns you a nickname.” He said idly. “A lot of ninja have copied jinchuriki techniques and went on to become legends.” Idly, he formed a swirling mass of chakra on his hand before letting it dissipate. Presumably, it was another example.
“You have yet to explain what that is.” Tanya said, scowling. Some kind of sacrificial soldier? Is it a penal legion thing? Wait. “Naruto, what is he talking about?”
“Ah… I don’t know.” He said unconvincingly. Tanya raised an eyebrow. Naruto immediately broke. “It’s a tailed beast container!” He stammered out. “The pervy sage threw me off a cliff so I could talk to the nine-tails and use his chakra and now he’s making me explain this so he doesn’t have to!” He shouted, pointing at the old man accusingly.
The old man laughed. “Well, actually it’s because I’m not allowed to tell people you’re the container. You, however, can.”
Tanya narrowed her eyes. So, the legendary tailed beasts are sealed into people, which gives those people tremendous power and a set of techniques that have been copied by ordinary ninja. “Oh.” Tanya said, realizing something. “That’s what Orochimaru thought I was. Some kind of demon container that had unleashed itself to protect Sakura.”
“The parallels are rather striking.” The old man pointed out. “In a way, you are.”
“I suppose.” Tanya acknowledged, “Now, what’s this about tossing a young boy off a cliff? Mr. ‘Pervy Sage’? Neither of those two things sounds good to hear in reference to one of my only friends”
“Uh oh.”
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While, upon explaining the situation, the Hokage agreed with her that Sasuke probably could use some additional treatment via astral projection, he insisted that such a large procedure wait until after the exam, as the aftereffects would likely compromise his performance.
It appeared that Tanya would get to delve into another mind before that was going to happen.
“Mother wants your blood!” Gaara shouted as he launched his sand towards the assembled team seven.
“Any ideas?” Sasuke asked, panting. He was low on chakra, from what Tanya’s senses could tell.
“I’ve got some.” Naruto offered, “Can you distract him for a few seconds?”
“Just one.” Tanya said, “If you take care of my body I can project myself into his mind and suppress that so-called Mother of his.” Any insanity coherent enough to be a voice in someone’s head was the easiest possible opponent for a psychonaut.
Of course, in this world that entity could actually be real. Either way, Tanya liked her odds against the voice in Gaara’s head much better than she did her chances against Gaara himself.
“Done.” Sasuke said, immediately putting Tanya in a princess carry.
Immediately, Tanya felt her temperature skyrocket and her heart pound in her chest as the crush she had continued to cling to like a favored stuffed animal did its work. Nevertheless, she used the handseals she had developed. “Yin Release: Astral Projection!”
Tanya dove into the insane ninja’s head straight through the scar shaped like the symbol for ‘Love’. It seemed appropriate.
Comments
Eldar ortell
I'm loving this Naruto sequel, even as a stand alone sequel, it's kinda jumpchain-esqu, in concept if not in execution, wich i love, cus i love the idea of jumpchains, but i usaly don't like the execution, but I'm loving this as said
