Drifting the Temporal Dimension

𝟾. ꜱʜᴇ ᴅʀᴇᴀᴍꜱ ᴏꜰ ᴄᴏʀᴘꜱᴇꜱ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴡᴀʟᴋ [𝟸]

A/N: This chapter jumps the horror line a bit, so if you're easily affected  or don't like things like that, then I'd suggest skipping the flashback! It's nothing too graphic, but I'm not you, so I wanted to give a bit of a warning to tread carefully.

• • •

"It's coming."

Sasuke words hung heavily in the Naruto's heart. No wind or noise other than their own breathing broke the still atmosphere, their warm breath visible as it puffed into the frigid air. The pair crouched lowly behind the rocky outcrop of the cave's mouth, waiting silently for the enemy to appear.

Hinata. That was Hinata's chakra, Naruto could feel it. Their was no mistaking the feel of one's chakra signature, and Hinata's was one that reminded her of lavender and honey, of warmth and happiness - as if she was cuddled up by a blazing fire, slowly sipping a calming tea as it snowed lazily outside.

But Hinata was dead, and accompanying the chakra signature that Naruto knew without a doubt was the Hyuuga's, was something sickly. It curled around the joyful lavender and warm honey like a disease, suppressing it and clouding it with something that grated against her damaged senses like a black sludge and rock, slimy and rough.

She traced the signature as well as she could with the damage done to her system, and the task had luckily begun to get progressively easier as it moved closer.

Her breath caught and she clapped a hand over her mouth as she felt bile rise in her throat.

Disgusting.

That was not Hinata.

It... it looked like Hinata. It had her face, but even her features were damaged beyond repair, barely discernible beneath heavy layers of ash and blackened slime. The slime acted as a glue, mixing with the ash to form a sickly gray paste that held its body together. Gooey black dripped from its mouth, from its eyes and nose, and its head was tilted back at an odd angle - as if the thing didnt have the muscles to hold it up. From that awkward, unnatural angle, it stared, eyes straining to meet with hers. They were white, not the white of the Byakugan, but a white that was tinted a pale, gross yellow, glazed with death. Soulless.

So disgusting. Not Hinata.

Naruto stared in horror. It was weak. It was so, so weak. It wasn't meant for fighting. It wasn't meant to do damage - not even to attempt an assassination while they were asleep. Its decaying limbs struggled to hold themselves, legs being crushed under its own weight because they were too soft - too rotten.

This was a walking corpse. Hinata's body had collapsed into ash, and Kaguya had built it up again.

As a mockery. Naruto couldn't save her closest friends, how could she save the world?

As a message. Hinata was one of the first, but Naruto would be next - reduced to a mindless, soulless zombie that had no purpose other than to warn the last of the human race that there was no such thing ashope.

Kaguya was taunting her. Telling Naruto that she was too weak. She was going to lose. She was going to let everybody down. Her parents, her teachers, her comrades, her village.

Herself.

"Na..."

It spoke. Its mouth moved slowly, choked rasps escaped its cracked and bleeding lips, blood and slime bubbling out as it struggled to form words. It sounded inhuman, its voice more of a muted, soundless scream. Almost as if it had lost its ability to truly speak. (Because it had. Hinata wasn't in there, and Hinata no longer spoke.)

"Na-ru-to... I... tr-... ust... you."

Naruto threw herself to the side and vomited, hands and knees digging painfully into the rocks. Her broken ribs rattled and scraped against her lungs, serving to further her violent, choked heaving and cause strings of dark blood to color her bile. Her back warmed slightly, blocked from the frigid air as Sasuke wrapped his arms around her, gently pulling her hair back from her face.

How dare she make a corpse speak the last words of one who lived.

"That bitch," she roughly swallowed the acid that burned her throat and the hopeless sob that threatened to escape her, "I'm going to kill her."

Hinata was the first walking corpse, but she certainly wasn't the last.

• • •

Belonging to a Team Seven that didn't include Sasuke and Sakura was too strange. Mirai was already in a different dimension now - one that she'd pretty much created with her own hands by separating if from the river of Time - so one would think nothing could make her feel more out of place.

Apparently, one would be wrong.

There was a total of three Team Sevens Before, but now she'd been inserted into the second instead of the third, twenty years into the past, in the body of a fricking toddler - and without two of her closest friends.

Kakashi was alive, but it wasn't Kakashi-sensei, so any sort of personal feelings she had for him were nonexistent in this stubborn, stupid little boy's eyes.

This one was a total asshole, but that she'd expected, since Kaka-sensei had warned her and apologized in advance. Regardless, Kakashi was still Kakashi, even if it wasn't her Kakashi, and he didn't deserve the horrible things he went through, so she would change that.

Sighing, Mirai secured her kunai pouch to her thigh and wrapped black bandages over the entirety of her right arm, and effectively hiding her seals from sight. Nobody but Minato knew they were there, and she intended on keeping it that way. Specialty seals were a rarity in these times, and any sort of fūinjutsu seal that was activated on a person's skin was something that would surely attract attention.

As of now, attention wasn't something she needed. She had gained some from the village already. The chuunin were rather suspicious, and any mention or sighting of a blonde, blue-eyed little girl they'd jump on like chimpanzees to a banana. T and I? Well they're suspicious of everybody, but Mirai honestly suspected that Hiruzen had shut down any questions concerning her person, considering they definitely would have been hounding her about her little stunt by now.

In hindsight, it was rather stupid of her. Once again, she'd jumped in and didn't think anything through and now she was receiving the consequences.

She didn't regret it though. Their reactions were priceless and totally worth it. Besides, it's not like anyone was going to figure out that she was from the future without inside information, which of course was something they'd never get. Her actions were eye-catching, but only within the walls of the village, and most of the future-changing work that she'd be doing would be either undercover or with her team.

They might be watching Mirai, but they wouldn't know the face of the person behind a mask.

She had a mask, and she had a plan.

Mirai sighed dramatically. She also had training with her new team in two minutes, and she was late.

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