An Inch of Gold

21

"It makes no sense," Sasuke reiterates. "Even if this mysterious Uchiha you're insisting existed—even if she could manipulate time, no human should have the ability to do what she's done without augmentative technology. And that includes showing up here in the first place. It's one thing to be able to travel weeks or months. But over several centuries? How did she do that?"

Which, actually, is a good point, and which neither Sarada or Sakura have an answer for.

Where's Itachi Uchiha when you need him?

"Maybe Orochimaru was doing something on this side already?" Sakura suggests. Sarada considers her, askance, but her mother has her pensive face on. "We already know that parallel universes and alternate dimensions exist, maybe he did something that created a ripple, or an explosion, but it only affected different time periods?"

"Huh?" Naruto wants to know.

"Like a blast wind, from an explosion," Sarada catches on. "Whenever anything explodes—even something as small as a tag or something—it creates a vacuum. That's physics. Almost immediately, the vacuum will refill itself with the surrounding atmosphere."

"Only in this case, the surrounding atmosphere is time," Sakura says. "And that creates a pull. What if this Teisōko person—at the exact moment when she, I don't know, time-jumped—she got caught in that blast wind."

"And it magnified her abilities, to bring her here."

They nod at each other in agreement, and Sarada can't help grin. It's nice to see that even this early, her mother has the brains.

If this version of her weren't as obsessed with Sasuke, she'd probably have been the top of her graduating class.

"I don't believe you." Both girls glance up, noticing Sasuke glowering at them. "Either of you. You're hiding something."

"N-no we're not, Sasuke – what would we have to hide?" Sakura asks, voice higher than usual. Naruto looks at her suspiciously at that.

You know you're a bad liar if even Uncle Naruto can tell...

"Maybe not about this: figuring out how this convenient, mysterious Uchiha got here," Sasuke allows. "But how you figured it out? There's no way it just came to you out of nowhere."

"Well, tough, we're telling the truth!" Sarada retorts. "And right now isn't the time for us to be sniping, we have a job to do!"

"If you don't tell me—"

"Sarada's right." Everyone startles as Kakashi appears beside them.

"Jeez, where the heck did you come from?" Naruto demands.

"However she came by this information, it's not the issue," the jōnin continues. "Even if it doesn't make complete sense. If Orochimaru had access to this woman, and her abilities are as you describe, Sarada, he would never have let her go."

"That's not necessarily true," she replies slowly, remembering her encounter with the old Sannin during the incident with Shin Uchiha. "Some jutsu are body specific and can't be transferred. My father brought us once to speak to Orochimaru, and there was—er, an experiment there. Orochimaru said he had tried to harness that person's body and its special abilities to use for himself and ultimately couldn't. After that, he ended up just letting the guy go off on his own."

And that nearly got us all killed, too.

Naruto shoots Sasuke a funny look. "Why the hell would you bring your kid to see Orochimaru?"