Time Braid

27. Jailbreak

Disclaimer: I don’t own Naruto.

Author’s Note: If you’ve asked a question in a review, the answer is probably posted on my blog (see the web site link in my profile for the URL). Also, I’ve begun posting snippets of original fiction there for anyone who’s interested in what my future projects are going to look like.

Four copies of the Nekomata working together were a force that could level a hidden village. With Deidara’s explosive creations darting in to exploit any opening their distractions created even the Sannin would have quickly been overwhelmed.

Against Naruto they might as well have been housecats.

The four bijuu leaped to attack as one. He smacked one out of the air with his tail, sending it flying back through a dozen piles of rubble and right off the edge of the plateau. The creature flailed helplessly as it sailed far out into empty space, and fell out of sight towards the ocean four thousand feet below. The one in front fared even worse, as Naruto opened his mouth and breathed a lance of superheated plasma so intense it momentarily outshone the sun. The beam blew a massive hole clear through the bijuu’s body where it’s heart should have been, and vaporized the jinchuuriki inside.

The other two Nekomata were merely batted aside by Naruto’s wings, for all the good it did them. He dispatched them both with a series of blows that shook the mountain, ignoring the tiny bombs that leaped and flew to detonate against his armored hide as he fought.

I was starting to have a bad feeling about this fight, but as the first of Pein’s summons charged into battle I had to admit that Naruto was blowing off amazing amounts of chakra. I spotted a couple of Zetsu clones guarding one of the side doors of the palace and skidded to a stop between them, glad that I’d at least evaded capture.

“Sakura reporting in,” I told them as they eyed me suspiciously. “Password azure twelve. Be advised the enemy has copies of me and Hinata working with him, and I think they’ve been sent to capture me while Naruto acts as a decoy. His Hinata was inhabiting his mindscape at first, probably as an anti-genjutsu measure, but they’ve separated now.”

One of the clones nodded. “If they show up here we’ll take care of them. Go on in, the bosses are expecting you.”

I darted inside, glade to be away from the fight for now. The palace was huge, but between Zetsu and Konan it would currently be just about impossible to infiltrate. The kunoichi following me were good, but not good enough to fight their way through half of Akatsuki to get to me. As long as Naruto was busy out in the ruins their odds of reaching me were pretty slim.

I made my way quickly through the outer chambers and into the throne room. Sasuke and Nagato were observing the battle outside on a giant screen set up in the middle of their command post, surrounded by a small crowd of ninja. Kakuzu, Hidan, Sasori and Kisame lounged about waiting to be called into battle, while Hinata stood at attention behind Sasuke watching them. She looked up with a hint of relief as I came in.

“Sakura,” she said. “I’m glad you made it. That was more difficult than expected.”

“I’m fine,” I reassured her. “The initial ambush was touch and go, but after that they never got close to me. I’m ready to get to work.”

I noted a row of suspension tanks to one side holding a dozen sleeping infants with bijuu seals on their bellies. From the taste of their chakra I guessed they held copies of the three-tailed beast, though obviously they weren’t here to fight. A couple of Zetsu clones were carefully draining chakra from their prisoners using some kind of nature technique, and another channeled the chakra stream into Nagato under the watchful supervision of a copy of me.

It was getting a bit weird having all these extra copies of me running around. She must have been the girl I’d given my memories to before I ran through the time portal, but now she wore my adult form and her chakra was nearly strong as mine. Apparently she’d had a busy six months.

Wait, what had the version Naruto just summoned been doing in that time? If she’d spent the last six months waiting for Naruto and me to show up again she might be more dangerous than I’d thought.

“Zetsu relayed your message,” Sasuke said shortly. “Your copy is performing adequately, so I’m adjusting the plan. Naruto’s assistants have already engaged Zetsu’s clones at the east entrance, but we need to ensure that his version of Hinata doesn’t break off the attack to help him when Yakumo begins her genjutsu attack. I want you to go out there and deal with them. Kakuzu and Hidan will assist you.”

“Um, sir, I’m pretty sure Naruto is just acting as a diversion while the other two try to capture me…”

“Now, Sakura,” he said shortly.

“Yes, sir,” I replied, not wanting to make him angry. “Can I get a recharge on the way?”

He nodded, and turned back to the screen. Apparently the Kyuubi’s chakra had finally started to leak into Naruto’s aura, because he’d attracted the attention of one of those stone guardians. I saw him slam it into the ground and rake it with claws sheathed in something that looked like a modified elemental Rasengan, but it barely scratched the thing.

I had a sinking feeling that this was exactly what our enemies wanted, but I couldn’t very well refuse a direct order. So I switched to my adult form, henging my clothes to match as I grew, and stepped over to the Zetsu clone by Nagato so he could top off my chakra. As I did my copy brushed against me, and passed me a memory bubble.

Oh, neat. It was all her memories since I’d overwritten her, including some interesting techniques she’d invented for quickly growing her chakra back to what I considered normal. Oh, and she’d been working on getting closer to our Hinata as well. Just quiet moments here and there, nothing dramatic, but considering how reserved she was that was significant progress. Those were memories we wouldn’t want to lose, if we actually had a tomorrow.

I sent a mental hug and a flash of thanks back to her, along with an offer to merge if it looked like we were going to end up looping again. She returned agreement and relief, and then the moment of contact ended. We didn’t have any particular reason to be so paranoid about hiding the fact that we were communicating with each other, but in a room full of S-rank nuke-nin who might decide to betray us at any moment it seemed prudent.

The zombie twins met me just inside the gate, which was quite a scene by then. With a bunch of bijuu to provide chakra Zetsu could make armies of clones, and there were dozens of them defending the ruined courtyard outside the shattered doors. Opposing them was a formation of twelve Hinata clones with another Sakura in the middle.

Zetsu was a formidable fighter, but this version of Hinata was more than a match for him. Her clones tore through his with the same fearless passion I’d seen before, their formation a blur of constant motion that made hitting them with anything but mass-area ninjutsu nearly impossible. Her Sakura was channeling fire and air, throwing out fireballs and burning away Zetsu’s spore clouds before they could touch the group. Zetsu was good enough that he still got in a hit now and then, but Hinata seemed to have no trouble replacing the occasional lost clone.

“I’m going with fire and earth, so don’t worry about hitting me if you want to hose down the area to kill those clones,” I told Kakuzu. “As long as you don’t use armor-piercing attacks you won’t hurt me. I’ll throw out an interference field to slow down the Hinata copy’s movement, but I’m mostly going to concentrate on the other Sakura. Most of their Hinata’s attacks won’t even hurt you guys, so you should be able to handle her.”

“Hey, I’m immortal,” Hidan blathered confidently. “I can handle one little Hyuuga girl.”

Kakuzu chuckled. “Yeah, jyuuken’s useless against me. We’re ready.”

I shrouded myself in a thin layer of earth armor, just enough to interfere with jyuuken attacks, and opened five of the Eight Gates. Then I body flickered into the melee.

My chakra wasn’t strong enough to completely shut down Hinata’s speed, but I could slow her constant body flickers down enough to make a critical difference. I spun a web of flame around myself that actually caught two of her clones, and tumbled through the gap into range of my pink-haired target.

She was boosting as hard as I was, armored against the flames with my own fire resistance technique, and her fist actually grazed my leg before I could regain my feet. I did a handstand and let the momentum of the impact spin me into a fast leg sweep as I healed the injury. She jumped over the attack and came down with a kick to the face that I stopped with a crossed forearm block. The impact shattered the stone around my feet, and produced a shock wave that should have blown away every shadow clone in the courtyard. But Hinata’s clones saw it coming, and body flickered around it as it washed across the area.

The other Sakura did a backwards somersault off my block to land a few feet away.

“You’re the real me,” she said with a fierce grin. “I was hoping I’d find you.”

A sea of flame filled the courtyard from one of those army-killer ninjutsu Kakuzu is so fond of, but we both ignored it.

“You do realize I’m going to kick your ass?” I replied. “You’re just a copy.”

“Yeah, but you’re crippled,” she shot back. “Come give it a try.”

We each opened a sixth gate, and flew at each other. At that level of boost every block produced a thunderclap that blew out any shadow clone within twenty feet, and we moved so fast there was no point in bothering with ninjutsu. Kakuzu’s giant blasts of fire and lightning moved around us in slow motion as he fought Hinata and her clones, occasionally grazing one of us but never doing any real damage. I wrapped myself in confusing genjutsu and went invisible, hoping to catch her off guard, but she saw through my ploys better than I could have. She copied me, and I took several bruising hits before I got the hang of seeing through her illusions.

Then she turned into water just as I landed a solid punch to her chest. For a split second I was trapped in place, not sure if this was real or illusion, and our eyes met. Something that should have been invisible leaped out of her eyes into mine, and she grinned triumphantly.

There was someone else in my mind. I ripped my arm free and backed away, frantically splitting my attention. It was Hinata. Their Hinata, not mine, but all my inner defenses were open to her. I split myself for the first time since Sasuke had taken me, dropping an aspect into my mindscape in hopes of forcing her out before she could do anything. But she just smiled at me.

“You have nothing to fear from me, Sakura,” she said softly. “Don’t you remember my promise?”

“What promise?” I asked uncertainly. Her shadow clones were just fighting a delaying action now, and the other Sakura wasn’t attacking. What were they trying to do?

“My soul is more dragon that human, Sakura, and you are my most precious treasure. I will guard you for all the ages of eternity, till the stars die and the twilight of the gods brings the end of all things.”

Something deep in the depths of my mindscape blossomed open, and everything came out. My real inner mindscape tried to resume its proper place, smashing aside the fragile work I’d done in my attempts to rebuild it. All the memories I’d hidden rose up to push the patterns of my thoughts back into their proper shape, but so much was missing that there was nothing for most of them to mesh with. My old feelings for Hinata and Naruto welled up with unstoppable force, and smashed headlong into my unbreakable devotion to my master.

I screamed.

The pain was terrible, almost as bad as the punishments Sasuke had inflicted on me, and if not for that grim experience I would have passed out instantly. But there was a battle going on, and someone was going to need my help once I figured out which side I was on. I clung desperately to consciousness as the shards of my shattered soul clashed and ground together.

I felt soft warmth against my lips for a moment, as the other Sakura tried to merge with me. But I was too divided to even attempt such a thing, and she gave it up after a moment. Instead she abandoned her body, and stretched her soul over mine like a bandage in an attempt to help me reintegrate. The pain eased as my mindscape settled into place, but even with her help the rest of the damage wasn’t going to heal anytime soon. Assuming I dared accept her help with anything else. She was me, but she was on the other side. Wasn’t she?

“Think we should kill the bitch?”

It was Hidan’s voice. They’d beaten the last of Hinata’s clones, and both our opponents were in my head now. Were they caught, or was I?

“No, we’ll let the boss decide,” said Kakuzu. “But go ahead and taste her blood, just in case.”

Sakura? Hinata asked worriedly. Did it work? Are you yourself again?

That was the key, wasn’t it? I didn’t have time to be confused and helpless. I didn’t have the luxury of retreating to a mountaintop to spend a year putting myself back together. One way or another the fight that was happening right now would decide all of our fates. Whoever I really was, whatever side I was really on, I needed to sort myself out and wake up right now or I could lose everything.

But how? I didn’t know a technique that could do that, did I? I pawed through a jumble of memory, mine and my counterpart’s, looking for things that could help. My name. Celestial seal-crafting. Orochimaru’s research. A storage seal that held enough chakra to level a mountain.

Yes.

I stepped into the heart of my true inner mindscape, the grove whose trees were all my deepest feelings, and sang into being my own personal version of the Heaven Seal.

I craft a seal of transformation, drawn on my soul and brought to life by my will, powered by the strength stored hidden in my mindscape, inviting the blessings of heaven for sure operation, focusing all effort through my Name, to make me Sakura!

The seal formed on my forehead and lit up with a pure golden glow, announcing that my invocation had been accepted by whoever was in charge of such things. Then the glow turned blue as a rush of human chakra from my storage seal filled it, and everything inside me began to move. The spikes of compulsion Nagato’s techniques had pounded into my consciousness were torn free, shattered and forcibly ejected from my mind by the power of the seal. A dozen permanent genjutsu were isolated, examined and pronounced not Sakura in the blink of an eye, and blown away in the following instant. There were foreign presences in my mind…

But one was my own precious Hinata, a soul tied to mine by eternal bonds of mutual devotion, and she was always welcome inside me. The other was a different Sakura, but in this instant her soul was more true to my name than I was. At my probe she again offered to merge with me, and this time I was whole enough to accept.

Her memories merged with mine, replacing everything I’d lost in my long weeks of ‘training’ under Sasuke, and the spiral of obsessive servitude that had dominated my thoughts since I’d been released from my cell blew apart. The sparkling motes of thought and memory reassembled themselves in something very like their old patterns, but stronger and surer than before. Odd ripples cascaded through my chakra, straightening kinks and removing blockages I’d never known were there.

I was whole again, as strong as I’d been when Sasuke caught me, but the seal wasn’t finished. It wanted to make every part of me express the full potential of my name, and there were things in me that didn’t. Was that a problem? It was my own seal, and I could turn it off if I wanted to.

I didn’t.

The damaged defenses around my inner mindscape healed next, but that was nowhere near the end. The jungle that served as my outermost defense blossomed into a thorny maze of twisted spaces so vast an intruder could wander them for years without crossing his own trail. The inner landscape it protected blurred into a quantum superposition of overlapping possibilities, an endless array of subtly different landscapes that shifted in and out of reality in response to my will.

Of course. My inner mindscape reflected my personality, but every aspect I wore was a little different. Shouldn’t each of them have her own personal mindscape, shaped to properly reflect her nature?

Now they did. A dozen inner worlds bloomed into full reality as all the aspects I’d ever worn awoke, overlapping where we were the same and diverging where we differed, surrounded by a filmy haze of other possibilities I’d never chosen to make real.

There was a deeper level there as well. The hidden recess of my soul that had once opened out into the place between worlds was shifting, warping, changing as something that had existed before in only the most vestigial form spun out connections to every soul in any world whose nature fit my name.

We have an overself now? My demon aspect breathed in wonder. Hot damn, that’s supposed to take centuries to develop. Ok, you win. I was being stupid. I should have trusted you the first time around.

Yes, you should have, said the Sakura that Naruto had made. Hang on, we’re about to get reapportioned.

Neither of them quite fit my name, but they were close enough to adjust instead of being cast out. A ripple of change ran through us all, parts of me ebbing and flowing through every aspect I’d ever worn, until we were all safely parts of the same me. The demon girl gained a touch of benevolence, the avatar of passion learned that some things can’t be forgiven, and the girl who’d been Sasuke’s slave remembered what it meant to be free.

Then everything went gold, and for a timeless moment I had no idea what the seal was doing to me.

When my thoughts began running again I found that I was the Sakura who’d been enslaved and freed, more or less. I was kneeling in the heart of my own personal aspect of my inner mindscape, with a sobbing Hinata holding me in her arms.

“Sakura?” She asked uncertainly.

“Hinata? Oh god, Hinata!”

I threw my arms around her, and hugged her with all my strength.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you! You did it, my love. I’m back, I’m me again.”

“I thought I’d lost you,” she cried. “When your technique didn’t work, I was afraid he’d done something to you that you couldn’t fix.”

I wiped away her tears, and kissed her tenderly. “I had to do something a little drastic, but I’m fine now. Better than ever, as a matter of fact. But he did try, and I’m going to make him regret it. God, am I ever going to make him regret it. I swear, that arrogant, depraved, mind-raping psychopath is going to pay for what he’s done. Fuck benevolence. I’m going to make him pay for every moment of suffering he’s inflicted, on me or you or anyone else.”

Her expression firmed. “Good. This time, I’m going to help.”

I brushed my fingertips over the golden seals around her eyes, remembering what they were. Naruto had used that memory bubble I’d given him not an hour after we parted, and he and Hinata and the Sakura from his loop had spent two weeks plotting my rescue together. He’d put her on a chakra link so she could run dozens of shadow clones at once, and she’d used my knowledge to research ways to help. She’d designed a whole new discipline of summoning warfare in those frantic weeks, and Sasuke had played right into their hands with the summon trap. If Naruto had gotten a finger on me they’d have pulled us both back to Konoha and wrapped me in summoning wards before I could blink.

But her most important discovery was the seal Hinata now wore. A seal drawn on Hinata’s soul with that gold chakra I’d found in myself but never learned to use, invoking the blessings of Heaven to resist the powers of darkness. As long as she wore that her mind was immune to anything the Sharingan could do.

Her body wasn’t. But for a ghost, bodies are easily replaced.

“Thank you,” I told her. “I’ll need your help. But together we can do this.”

She smiled. “You’d better get back outside, then. Those Akatsuki idiots are debating whether to kill you while you’re unconscious.”

“We’ll just see about that.”

I turned my attention back to the outside world, to find myself on my knees with one of Kakuzu’s meaty hands wrapped around my head from behind. Hidan stood about ten feet away in a blood seal that invoked some dark god I didn’t know, and his skin had turned black and white in an odd pattern that gave him a rather skeletal look.

“But Kakuzu, once I’ve started the ritual I have to finish it,” Hidan was saying. “Look, you know they probably turned her, and Sasuke has a spare anyway. We should off the bitch now, before she tries something.”

Despite what I’d just been through, I felt… good. Better than good. Better than I’d ever felt in my life. Perfectly centered, inhumanely focused, aware of everything around me in incredible detail. My true sight engaged effortlessly as I opened my eyes, responding to my desire to know my surroundings without the slightest hint of strain. With the tap on my storage seal open my chakra was stronger than ever, and my control…

Why had I ever thought my chakra was something I had to control? It was the substance of my soul made manifest in the material world, and as perfectly responsive to my will as any other part of myself. More so even than my body, which was a finely crafted instrument but still subject to all the myriad failings of flesh and blood.

I had once told Konan that my control and insight were so great I could weave together new techniques as easily as an Uchiha copies them. I’d been lying when I told her that, trying to cover up the fact that I had decades of experience she couldn’t explain. But now, as I was with this new seal running, I could actually do it.

I also realized I was woolgathering, and this wasn’t the time. Dying now would be inconvenient, but Kakuzu might just be smart enough to listen.

“You never know,” I said. “Sasuke might want to hear what I have to say. I know Pein would, and Naruto is only fighting you guys to get at me. Why did you let some emo Uchiha take over Akatsuki, anyway? If he has his way…”

I trailed off as I suddenly made the connections, and I could feel my face going pale.

“Oh, holy fucking crap,” I murmured. “Sasuke’s another pawn of the curse, just like Nagato. His plan gets Naruto out of the way without actually killing him, so the mandate of heaven won’t be passed on. At that point there won’t be anything at all resisting the curse of misery, and anyone else who’d qualify as righteous will probably die in the power struggle over that damned bijuu weapon Nagato wants to build. It’ll all be over in three or four years.”

Kakuzu’s grip on my skull tightened. “Looks like you were right for once, Hidan,” he growled. “Girl, can you give me one good reason not to kill you right now?”

“You can’t,” I answered distractedly, still sorting through the implications. Somehow we had to stop Sasuke permanently, or he’d keep trying until he found a way to succeed. Maybe he’d listen to Naruto, but probably not. What other options did we have?

My thinking was cut short when Kakuzu discharged a massive lighting attack through his hand, flash-frying me instantly.

“Can’t?” He growled. “Like hell I can’t, little girl. Let’s see you heal that. Better still…”

A swirling rush of cutting wind diced my body to bits, and a gout of flame reduced the fragments to ash. Ouch. But wait, how was I seeing this if I was dead? I was floating slightly above the pair now, looking down with my true sight… oh, right. True sight was a property of my soul, not my eyeballs.

“Darn it!” Hinata exclaimed. “Why did you let them do that? Now we’re going to reset, and… wait, why hasn’t your loop reset? You don’t have another body anywhere, do you?”

“No, but the loop only resets if I get into a state I can’t recover from,” I told her.

She gave me an odd look. “Yes, I knew that. But how are you going to recover from this? Aren’t we both ghosts right now?”

“Watch.”

I summoned a drop of my blood from the hidden container under my workshop, and dropped it into the physical world a dozen yards from the zombie twins. It was a living part of me, an easy conduit through which I could pour my chakra back into the physical world, and it was the work of a moment to transform it into a complete body. Naked, of course, but I could fix that when I had a moment.

Hidan spotted me, and plunged one of the spikes on his weapon into his own heart with a curse. The wound instantly transferred itself to me, and I found myself standing there with a perforated heart.

I raised an eyebrow. “Hidan, you just watched me resurrect myself after being vaporized, and you think you’re going to kill me with a hunk of sharp metal? Were you dropped on your head as a child, or what?”

I healed the injury as I spoke, and watched carefully as he cut his own throat next. Ah, that’s how he was doing it. A blood binding with a one-way contagion effect, and a regeneration curse that restored his own body almost instantly. But it wouldn’t restore lost body parts, or even reattach them without some careful medical work. A few decades of relying on that would leave him a scarred, crippled wreck of a man, but his soul would remain tied to his body no matter what was done to it. It was a nasty piece of work, but pretty much what you’d expect to happen to someone dumb enough to bargain with a dark god.

I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Kakuzu was backing away, his body splitting open to reveal four monsters made from bound souls and threads of demonic chakra. Each had a different chakra nature, and kage-level power. But he was a ranged type, and he’d need a little time to get ready to fight me.

“Whatever, bitch,” Hidan scoffed as he stabbed himself again. “You’ll run out of chakra soon, but Jashin won’t. He’s a god, but you’re just a fancy medic-nin.”

My injury healed as instantly as his, and I chuckled. “You know, I’ve been telling myself that for years. But as long as my Heaven Seal is active I can’t fool myself. I see too much, and I can’t miss the implications. I’m not just a medic-nin, Hidan. I’m the last native kami of this demon-haunted world, and my domains are insight and mystery. Not to mention that I just took about six levels of badass. Don’t make me fight you, or you’ll lose.”

“Nobody beats me once I’ve tasted their blood,” he boasted confidently, and stabbed himself in the heart again. At the same moment Kakuzu finally reached a distance he liked, and two of his beasts turned to spit a massive blast of wind-boosted flame at me.

“Have it your way,” I shrugged.

I went back to full boost and body flickered behind Hidan. As I’d expected his confidence in his own immortality had led him to concentrate his taijutsu training on offence instead of defense, and he’d barely begun to react when my foot met his back. My kick sent him flying out of the seal that sustained his damage-transfer technique, and I threw a flame clone henged into a kunai at his exposed back as he sailed through the air. She hit with a satisfying thunk, and wrapped him in an interference field that prevented him from using replacement or body flicker to evade in the second or so it took his momentum to carry him into the path of Kakuzu’s attack.

Having inhumanly perfect chakra control was going to be fun.

I wrapped myself in invisibility and formed a shadow clone that body flickered away, intentionally leaving just enough of a trace for someone of Kakuzu’s skill to detect. He was a powerful opponent, too fast to outmaneuver easily and too smart to fall for an obvious trap. His body was more black chakra than flesh, inhumanly tough and immune to anything more subtle than a Rasengan to the chest. His soul was tied to all five of his bodies, and with his ninjutsu he’d be able to hit me hard the moment I did anything to reveal my presence.

But he couldn’t see through my invisibility unless I got close to him, so the poor sap never had a chance. I let him play tag with my clone for a few seconds while I ghosted into a better position. Normally I would have created other distractions, but that was a clone of me he was trying to catch. She spun out her own clones of air and flame, befuddled him with a barrage of genjutsu, and even nailed his fire-natured heart beast with a water lance that blew it apart in a cloud of steam. Maybe I was over-thinking this one?

Nah, I wanted to see if this would work. He pulled one of the things back to guard his back, and I managed to find a spot that was within a hundred yards of all of them. Perfect. I called out a bead of pure golden chakra, and poured it into a modified mist technique that blanketed the whole area in a dense fog.

Since the chakra that had fueled the technique was holy, so was the water it produced.

Kakuzu howled in pain as the blessed water ate into him like acid. The black threads linking his bodies dissolved in seconds, and the remaining three heart-beasts immediately collapsed and began thrashing about aimlessly. Kakuzu ran, trying to escape the mist but unable to body flicker without a clear line of sight. I replaced myself with a rock in his path, and slammed my fist into his chest.

I pulled it back out with his last heart in my grasp, and crushed it. One zombie down.

Hidan was just starting to move when I got back to him. Kakuzu’s attack had burned most of the flesh off his bones, and even his regeneration needed a few minutes to fix that much damage. His eyes were still missing, along with most of his skin, and he was in so much pain he didn’t even sense my presence when I cut his head off with an oversized chakra scalpel. I wrapped it in stone with my earth control, covering the surface of the resulting ball with structural reinforcement seals and a written warning that an immortal evil was contained inside. Then I drop-kicked the ball, and watched it sail high into the air. It would be miles beyond the edge of the plateau by the time it came down.

“So much for those two,” I said smugly.

You’re even stronger than before, Hinata congratulated me. That was nicely done. But you do realize you’re still naked, right?

The mountain shook, reminding us both that the larger battle was still going on.

“What, you don’t think I should greet Naruto like this?” I grinned, and started circling the palace. I was only a couple hundred yards from the side entrance, and if I stayed there for long Sasuke would send someone tougher after me.

Hinata snickered. It might distract him from the rescue, she chided me. Better save that for later.

“Spoilsport. But your double still has my contract, so I guess you’re right. We’ve got a lot more fighting to do today. You want a real body while I’m at it?”

Actually, I think I can guard you better like this. As long as you let me see out I can just sit here throwing out shadow clones forever, and no one can stop me.

“Neat trick. Ok, give me a minute.”

I paused in the lee of a building to call up a spinning cascade of hot water around myself, which did a nice job of washing off the blood and gore. Then I concentrated for a moment on conjuring up a decent set of clothes in my mindscape and pulling them into the real world. I could make anything that way, so I might as well go with something useful. Reconstituting myself had burned a good third of the chakra in my storage seal, and if I had to keep healing and rezzing myself I’d go through the rest pretty quickly. Armor sounded like a good idea, and some weapons would be nice too.

I conjured a skintight body stocking of black silk that covered everything but my head, just thick enough to provide a little padding. Over that, a bodysuit of woven diamond threads that should stop light weapons and low-level jutsu. Plates of flawless diamond inscribed with reinforcement seals to cover my vitals, through I had to be skimpy about that to avoid restricting my movement. More plates on my shins and forearms, in case I needed to block something serious. The result was mostly black, with pink accents the same color as my hair.

The weapons were easier. Just a nice selection of fine steel kunai and shuriken, inscribed with seals for silence and invisibility. I didn’t bother with anything else, since I prefer fists for close combat and ninjutsu at longer ranges.

Nice, Hinata commented.

“Thanks. Oh, can I have permission to reset my loop if I need to? Saskue made me promise not to do that without permission, but I didn’t say he had to be the one to give it.”

Hinata laughed. You have my permission to reset your loop whenever you want, my love. Are there any other promises you need to be released from?

“Nope, that was it.”

The mountain shook again, and there was a blinding flash from the direction of Naruto’s fight. Getting caught in one of those giant attacks would still toast me, so I’d better let him see me coming. I’d left two slits just the right size in the back of my armor, so it was the work of a moment to sprout wings and take flight.

I shot a thousand feet into the air on a rush of hurricane-force wind, before I let the updraft dissipate and banked towards Naruto. Apparently Sasuke had thrown a few more bijuu into the fight while I was busy, and Pein’s summoning abilities had been getting a workout as well. But Naruto’s current opponents were the guardian statues that I’d seen flanking the doors of the palace.

They were fast enough that they could actually hit him if he wasn’t careful, and as I approached I saw one project a tightly-focused beam of light from its forehead that penetrated the near-invulnerable scales of Naruto’s dragon form and burned a deep gouge into his side. He smacked it away with his tail and healed the injury almost instantly, but the thing picked itself up no worse for the wear. I could feel more than a trace of the Kyuubi’s chakra leaking into his aura now, which meant he was starting to get tired.

Well, then I’d just have to give him a break.

I looked the golems over carefully as I approached. They were covered in seals of protection and warding, an impenetrable layer of armor that no normal technique would even scratch. The mechanisms inside were a marvel of sealcraft, far more advanced than anything I’d fought before. But I could read it as easily as anything else. Motive force and senses, control links and repair functions, and a deeply-buried power core like nothing I’d ever seen before. Breaching that looked like a really bad idea, but it wasn’t the only vulnerable point.

Naruto knocked one of his opponents flying with another tail slap, and turned to pounce on the other in a blur of claws and teeth. I picked the one he wasn’t ignoring as my target, and folded my wings to dive at its back as it picked itself up. I wove wind and fire together into a dual-element Rasengan as I dropped towards it, compressing the whirling ball of energy until it was barely the size of a match head.

The amount of energy I’d called up was nothing compared to what Naruto was throwing around, and as I’d hoped it ignored me in favor of lining up another shot on him. But when you build a construct with complicated internal mechanisms, you inevitable have to have some way to service it…

I was barely a hundred feet up when I spotted the access panel, and altered course to alight on the back of the thing’s head. There was a cover plate that flipped up to reveal a cylindrical depression with a crystalline sensor at the bottom, which I presumed was the Celestial equivalent of a lock. I dropped my miniature Rasengan into the hole.

The explosion blew a fist-sized chunk of stone out of the construct’s back, and smoke poured out around the edges of the armored panel. The golem stopped, and both hands began to reach back in my direction. I planted my feet, reached through the hole to grip the side of the panel, and pulled with all of my strength.

The panel came free with a snap and sizzle of breaking stone and failing seals, and went sailing off in the direction of the palace. Under it was a maze of crystal rods and orbs and clockwork bits covered in seals, so complex it would have taken me hours to figure out even in my current enhanced state. I shrugged, and started smashing things at random.

The golem staggered, its arms flailing about as it twitched spastically. Then it ground to a stop, and fell over with a thunderous crash.

I jumped lightly off the falling mass, and spread my wings again to glide towards Naruto. Frantically hugging a dragon wouldn’t have worked very well, and getting too distracted would be a bad idea, so I tried to keep my mind on business. I could crawl into his arms and have a nervous breakdown after we won.

I arrived just as he ripped the other golem’s head off with his teeth, and spat it out with a grimace.

“Those things taste really nasty,” he complained. “Hinata says you’re back, but we can’t leave yet?”

“Oh, do you still have one of her clones in your mindscape?” I asked. “That would explain why you aren’t stuck in Yakumo’s illusions. Yeah, that bastard still has the looping version of Hinata under his control, and she has my contract. I think I’m immune to being trapped like this again, but I’d rather not push my luck. Do you have enough juice left to push through to the palace with us and find her?”

He shook his massive head. “There’s some kind of barrier keeping me away from the palace. I might be able to break it with brute force, but I’d probably blow up the whole building doing it. We can’t help her if she’s dead.”

I turned my gaze on the palace, and saw the ward he was referring to. It was actually the Kyuubi’s alien red chakra it was repelling, but it wasn’t like Naruto could just leave his prisoner out here. The ward was a perfect sphere, emanating from somewhere in the palace. Hmm. The geometric center would be a few feet below the floor in the middle of the throne room, maybe thirty feet from where I’d last seen Sasuke’s spare copy of me.

“Give me a minute, and I’ll see if I can do something about that,” I told Naruto. “I think I just picked up a tricky back door that they don’t know about.”

He looked at the walls of the palace, more than a mile away, and at the pack of unkillable bijuu-sized two-headed dogs that one of Pein’s bodies was summoning between here and there. “Sure,” he said doubtfully. “This I’ve got to see.”