Time Braid

29. Reversals

Disclaimer: I don’t own Naruto.

I dropped my chakra shield, and wiped the hastily-drawn seal arrays from my skin. Then I faded into invisibility, and glided silently across the ruins towards the main event. They were still throwing around absurdly huge attacks in there, gigantic beams of light and flame that could probably level a city. I couldn’t begin to match that kind of power, but I might not have to. As much as the Kyuubi hated Sharingan users, if I could interfere with Sasuke’s control he’d probably switch sides in an instant.

“Hinata, how’s your fight going?” I asked of the shadow clone she’d left in my mindscape.

“Not well,” she replied. “She’s better than I am, and I can’t keep clones up consistently with all these explosions. I’ve worn her down quite a bit, but I don’t know if I can actually beat her.”

“That’s alright, sweetie. With Akatsuki out of the way it’s time to end this fight, but to do that I need to make Sasuke think he’s won. Can you arrange to die valiantly, so the real you can get back into Naruto’s mindscape unobtrusively?”

She grinned. “No problem, Sakura. Give me a minute or two to make it look convincing, and I’ll be in position.”

Where the palace had stood there was now a field of overlapping craters a couple of miles across and hundreds of feet deep. I hid myself at the bottom of one of the huge trenches radiating out from that central zone of devastation, and carefully made my way to the edge of the cratered zone for a peek.

Naruto stood at the bottom of the deepest crater, bruised and battered but still fighting. One of his opponents was still down, either unconscious or dead, but the other two were grimly trying to murder him in a flurry of flashing red claws and tails. Sasuke stood well back from the melee, though from the way the occasional chunk of debris flew through him he was obviously using some sort of dematerialization technique. A second look told me it was Sharingan-based, which would make it a bitch to dispel.

“Crap,” I muttered. “Well, I didn’t really expect to take him by surprise. Let’s see, two Kyuubi copies up, Naruto is getting tired, Hinata should be ‘losing’ right about now…”

The shadow clone Hinata had left in my mindscape abruptly vanished. Inconvenient, but not unexpected. Being technically killed does tend to disrupt any techniques you have running, but she’d spent long enough as a ghost that I doubted it would slow her down much. Which meant it was almost time for me to play my part in this impromptu performance.

“Damn, this is going to hurt.”

The elder Hinata appeared behind Naruto, and planted one of her fancy chakra-disrupting super-jyuuken blows in the back of his head. He staggered, and Sasuke started making seals.

An instant later I was standing between Naruto and his Kyuubi-possessed foes with all eight gates open. I punched the nearest one in the chest, sending it flying back into the wall of the crater, and spun to slap my hand over the other one’s face. But the anti-Sharingan seal I applied fell apart at the touch of the Kyuubi’s chakra, just as I’d suspected it might.

Then the pain hit.

My hands were both gone, burned away by even that brief contact with the foes Naruto had fought to a standstill, and a river of tainted red chakra oozed into my body through the wounds. I fell to my knees, trying desperately not to scream as I struggled to force it back out. I’d expected it to be bad, but not like this.

“Demonic Mind Lock technique successful,” Sasuke said triumphantly. “Excellent work, Hinata. Kyuubi-Two, bring me Sakura.”

A hand wreathed in youki grabbed me by the neck to drag me across the torn landscape, and this time I did scream. The leakage from its aura burned out half my tenketsu in seconds, tainting my chakra and scorching my nerves, making it impossible to think. The shock was so great I lost control of my own body for an instant, and barely managed to wrench the Eight Gates closed again before the conflict between their uncontrolled energy and the Kyuubi’s alien power tore me apart.

Somehow I forced my mind to keep working, turned my sight inward to see what that poison was doing to me and how to stop it. It was like concentrated hate given physical form, and the light side of my soul that I’d been clinging to as a defense against Sasuke’s Sharingan could not abide its touch. I shifted myself darker, embracing violence and vengeance and my inner demon’s stern sense of justice, and the pain muted to a mere physical burn. By the time my captor threw me at Sasuke’s feet my chakra was my own again, and I knew I could heal my body with a bit of effort. Of course, my resistance to Sasuke’s Sharingan would be practically zero in this state, and he could probably see that.

Perfect.

I exchanged memory updates with the shadow clone I’d left in Naruto’s mindscape, and verified that she was still there. She was in full light mode, utterly immune to Sharingan abilities and ready to weave a counter to Sasuke’s genjutsu at my signal. According to her Hinata was in there too, though her opponent’s unconventional attacks had scrambled her chakra so badly she wouldn’t be able to form shadow clones again for a few minutes. That was inconvenient, but I could work with it.

I just had to hope Sasuke stayed true to form. I must have looked pretty damned beaten with my hands burned off and my chakra system destroyed, and wisps of poisonous red chakra oozing from my cracked and smoking flesh. But his chakra was more depleted than mine at the moment, and physically he was only human.

I formed a fresh new body in the depths of my mindscape and dropped an aspect into it. She immediately readied my best knockout technique, and set herself to step out and use it. Now I just needed the bastard to give me a good opening…

“And now we see who is truly the superior ninja,” Sasuke gloated. “Naruto is beaten, and in a few minutes I shall cast him out of the time steam entirely. I’d thought about sparing you that, Sakura, but after this latest display I think it’s best if you go with him.”

“I thought we were all going to go together, Sasuke,” I choked out around my damaged throat. “Or was that a lie too?”

“Of course it was a lie,” he scoffed. “Did you think I was going to tell you the truth when there was a chance he might get you back? No, you and Naruto and his copy of the Kyuubi will be locked in stasis and cast out of the world entirely. Then I will have a free hand to do the same in every other world I can reach. I’ll save hundreds of worlds. Maybe even thousands. In the end, it will all be worth it.”

A movement drew my eye, and I glanced over to see the elder Hinata assuming her usual place at Sasuke’s back. I couldn’t beat them both, but once Sasuke was out of the picture I was confident Naruto could handle her. Then again, maybe Sasuke was about to knock her out for us.

“What about her?” I gasped. “She can loop too.”

“Not anymore,” he countered. “We’ve both extended our loops, and we will never reset them again. I shall keep her at my side for as long as she proves useful, and unlike you she will never betray me. We—”

I was spared the rest of his rant, because at that moment his eyes rolled up and he collapsed in a heap.

Hinata lowered a brightly-glowing fist, and looked down at him contemptuously.

“Never is a long time, Sasuke,” she said mildly. “Arrogance was always a failing of the Uchiha, but you took it to a new level. I’ve lived fifteen years since you broke me, and yet you thought I’d never find myself again? Well, you’re done now. You won’t wake again until it’s too late.”

“Wait… what… Hinata?” I stared up at her. “Wow, that was completely unexpected. But if you’d broken free already, why wait until now to turn on him?”

She turned a contemplative gaze on me. “I could not have done so earlier. Even now, there is only one goal for which I can find the strength to disobey him. Surely you know me well enough to guess what that is?”

“Naruto, obviously,” I replied. “But how? You said your Naruto was gone, and the ones that are left don’t feel like the same person.”

She nodded, and stepped up to examine the Kyuubi-possessed jinchuuriki who had caught me. He was standing frozen, staring blankly off into space, obviously caught in some sort of mental trap. The other one was the same, so I presumed Sasuke had set up precautions to keep them from turning on him if his control was somehow interrupted. The red chakra around them was dissipating, the fanged humanoid beasts reverting back into teenage versions of Naruto.

“My Naruto,” Hinata said contemplatively, “is the man who mastered the Kyuubi. The man who united the elemental countries under his rule, and nearly united all of humanity under his banner. The man who gave me five wonderful children, strong boys and beautiful girls with the power to change the world. That loop is over, and to the rest of the world none of them ever existed. I’ll never see them again…”

“Actually, you could,” I interrupted. “The divine system exists outside of normal time, Hinata, and it doesn’t destroy souls. If you marry Naruto and have his children, they’ll be the same ones you knew before.”

Her mask of reserve cracked, and she turned a wondering gaze on me. “How do you know such things, Sakura? I’ve lived dozens of extended loops, searched out every source of hidden lore left in the world, walked Hell’s victory more times than Sasuke ever dared to interrogate the things that infect that fallen world. Yet you constantly surprise me. How old are you?”

“I’ve only lived about forty years,” I told her. “But I’m kami enough that the demons and gods treat me like a potential recruit instead of a mortal pawn. There’s a lot I still don’t understand, but I’ve got a demon’s guide to the supernatural world stuffed in my head and that covers a lot of the basics.”

“Forty years,” she breathed in wonder. “Oh, Sakura, you are a treasure. I’ve lived three times that long since our first meeting, and still you manage to prove yourself my equal. Come, stand at my side as we claim our prize together. I could never have arranged this without you, and after all your sacrifices I find I cannot deny you the place that you have earned.”

I abandoned my broken body for the healthy one I’d made to ambush Sasuke with, merging my aspects in the process, and smiled at her in relief. I wasn’t at all sure I could beat her in a straight fight, but apparently I wouldn’t have to.

“Thank you, Hinata,” I replied. “I’m glad to hear you say that. I really didn’t want to have to fight you. But what are you up to?”

She smiled a mysterious smile.

“Patience,” she admonished. “Did you ever study the Fourth Hokage’s seal? I spent several decades unraveling its secrets after my husband died, trying to understand what had happened.”

“I’ve never had a reason to worry about it much,” I admitted. “I probably should have, but my talent for seals has really only blossomed in the last few years and Naruto always seemed to have it under control. I know the three Bijuu Sealing Methods and the Dead Demon Consuming Seal, of course, but I know Minato built a lot of complicated fail-safes of his own design into the Kyuubi’s prison.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. What I eventually came to understand is that the seal has a critical flaw, which was my husband’s undoing. You see, Minato designed the seal to gradually steal the Kyuubi’s chakra and transfer it to Naruto. But he apparently didn’t understand that the Kyuubi’s mind is a part of that chakra, so it was being transferred as well.”

“That’s disturbing. But then why didn’t it ever seem to affect him?”

“It did,” she replied. “Did you ever notice how he could be so clever one day, and so dense the next? I think that was the reason. As a child he struggled constantly to assimilate those alien fragments of the Kyuubi’s soul, and often the conflict was so intense he was barely aware of his surroundings. It wasn’t until his last year at the academy that he decisively gained the upper hand, and began to recover. In my longer loops I’ve seen the whole process run to completion several times.”

She smiled at my look of concern. “You should have more faith in him, Sakura. He grows more magnificent with each passing year, throwing away the demon’s anger and hate and keeping only its insight and strength. By the end he is more god than man, a beacon of hope for the whole world. But he never loses that indomitable spirit that first drew me to him. Can you imagine what it means to be such a man’s wife?”

“Oh, hell yeah,” I grinned. “Our looping Naruto is a lot like that, Hinata. But then, what’s the problem?”

“The seal draws out the last of the Kyuubi’s mind long before the raw chakra of its power is depleted,” Hinata said softly. “When that happens the remaining energy becomes violently unstable, and corrodes the seal away. In twenty years or so it fails catastrophically, releasing about four tails worth of youki all at once. Even Naruto’s regeneration can’t handle so much internal damage.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t worry,” she reassured me. “I’ve long since found a solution.”

She vanished with that damned Hyuuga teleport technique, leaving a shadow clone behind, and reappeared standing over the real Naruto. I whirled and tried to follow, but her clone jammed my body flicker with consummate skill. I frantically ordered my own clone to wake Naruto up while I went back to full boost, and covered the forty yards between us with a single leap. But by the time I landed it was already too late.

Hinata brushed aside the tattered remnants of Naruto’s shirt, an intricate pattern of chakra-saturated water already forming on one fingertip, and touched it to the seal on Naruto’s belly with delicate precision.

Naruto convulsed, his hands going to his head as the genjutsu holding his mind in stasis was broken by the sudden surge of demonic chakra. A fountain of tainted red power sprang up around him, and I was forced to abort my leap and back away. My shadow clone was blown away by the wave of hostile energy, and I had no idea what effect it would have on my Hinata.

“You backstabbing bitch!” I shouted. “What are you doing?”

“He’ll be fine,” she reassured me. “It was only the governor stage I broke. He’ll absorb the Kyuubi’s mind and dominate it in a few minutes, and then the rest of its chakra will be his in less than an hour. Have faith, Sakura!”

“Faith my ass! What if you’re wrong? How could you risk Naruto like that?”

“I’ve done this before,” she insisted. “At thirteen he’s not strong enough, but by twenty he can do it. I’ve tested it twice, and I know the real Naruto is far stronger than the ones who don’t loop. Leave him be for a few minutes and you’ll see for yourself!”

I stalked around the pillar of glaring red chakra with my fists clenched cursing myself for not waking Naruto up when I’d had the chance. But there was nothing I could do about it at this point.

“If it’s such a great idea, why didn’t you just wake him up at tell him about it?” I demanded angrily.

“He’s always too worried about the Kyuubi to risk it,” she explained serenely. “Everyone has told him so many stories about how terrible it is that he won’t believe me. This is the only way.”

I stopped, struck by the similarities between her planning and Sasuke’s. They were each convinced that they were the only one who could solve the problems they faced, and had some elaborate rationalization for why there was no point in talking to Naruto about it. For that matter, Nagato had been the same…

“Hinata, you idiot!” I growled. “This isn’t some confused genin, it’s the real Naruto! He knows more about the Kyuubi than both of us put together, and I’d bet my soul he’s studied every detail of that seal. But you’re telling me you that you distrust his judgment so much that you had to go behind his back and force him to do things your way? That isn’t the Hinata I know.”

She flinched, but I wasn’t done.

“You say you’ve studied all the hidden lore you could find? Well here’s a revelation for you. The blessing of hope is gone, the curse of despair is destroying our world, and Naruto holds the mandate of heaven! You just let yourself get conned into doing gods know what to the only man who can save us all.”

“W-what?” She suddenly looked uncertain. “No, that’s impossible! I’m not some weak-minded fool who listens to the whispers of darkness, Sakura.”

Naruto chuckled, and sat up slowly as the red chakra died away.

“You always were the smart one of the bunch, Sakura,” he said. But his voice was deeper than normal, with a gravely undertone that send chills up my spine.

It was the Kyuubi.

“Naruto-sama!” Hinata exclaimed in relief. “Please, tell Sakura you’re alright.”

“Yes, I’m just fine little dragon. You played your part perfectly.”

His body changed as he spoke, growing fur and sprouting tails, shifting to the humanoid fox form he’d worn the last time I spoke to him. An invisible aura of power sprang up around him, engulfing us both, and for an instant I felt the same helpless attraction as I had the last time I encountered him in a physical body. But it was no worse than what Naturo often did when we sparred, and I knew how to turn off my reactions.

Hinata obviously didn’t. She stared at him like a mouse before a snake, and when his hand cupped her cheek she began to tremble.

“You… you’re not…” She stumbled over her worlds.

“I’m not Naruto?” He asked sarcastically. “Of course not, silly girl. No mortal will can overcome mine for long, though it was thoughtful of you to arrange for the brat’s mind to be paralyzed when you freed me. Now I don’t have to worry about some trite little dominance struggle, and I can eat his soul at my leisure. I’ll do it so gradually the wishgiver system will never notice, and in the end I’ll be the one in control of the time loop. Hells, I might even be able to take the mandate of heaven while I’m at it. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

“But… this is impossible,” Hinata babbled. “I tested this. Naruto always defeats you…”

The Kyuubi laughed. “You still don’t get it? My awareness spans all worlds where I exist, and as long as Naruto loops I do too. I’ve been feeding you hints for all these years, leading your gullible little mind where I wanted it to go. Those times you tested your stupid theory? That wasn’t the brat who held you and fucked you and made you worship him. It was me.”

“No!” She backed away slowly, shaking her head in horrified realization.

“Oh, yes,” he said maliciously. “Your misguided experiments have destroyed the man you love half a dozen times now, and this time it’s going to stick. But look on the bright side. You make such a cute bedwarmer I might put my collar on you this time around too.”

“You have to know I’m not going to just stand around and let you do that,” I said firmly. “What’s your angle?”

“Oh, so you’ve found a little self-control?” He asked me. “That’s fine, Sakura. You might actually be strong enough to make playing with you fun now. But as for my angle…”

Red chakra erupted from every part of his body, forming a dense four-tailed shroud much like his other copies had used against Naruto. But this time it kept on growing, becoming more fox-shaped and sprouting more tails, until a nine-tailed fox of chakra thirty feet tall stood before me. One of his tails picked up Sasuke’s unconscious form and deposited it on the ground between his mighty forepaws.

“Who in the nine thousand hells do you think I am, little girl?” he growled. “I am malice incarnate, and I don’t make stupid mistakes. I’ve been planning this ever since I addled the brat’s brain to screw up his wish. The brat won’t wake up unless I let him, and neither of you has the power to so much as scratch me in this form. My body is impervious to your feeble techniques, my mind is immune to your petty genjutsu, and the last Sharingan wielder who could have opposed me has already fallen. Oh, and if you were hoping to use these copies against me…”

His tails gathered up the still-frozen forms of Sasuke’s three blonde minions, and tossed them into his gaping maw one by one. The chakra that composed his body surged and boiled furiously, and I could see him devouring the paralyzed souls of his alternate-universe doubles. Two more tails sprouted from the creature’s body as he assimilated their power.

“You see?” He laughed. “I was already as strong as all the bijuu in the world combined. But this fool conveniently brought more of me here. Do you have any concept of how strong an eleven-tailed beast is? There is nothing in your world that can stand against me, Sakura. But please, fight me if you can. If you’re entertaining enough I might even let you enjoy the things I’m going to do to you.”

Hinata collapsed to her knees with tears in her eyes. “Naruto,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Oh, gods, what have I done?”

My mind flashed through a thousand options in the space of a heartbeat, but there was really only one choice. For all his bluster I wasn’t afraid of the Kyuubi. I could step into my mindscape whenever I wanted, and from there I could reach any world that contained a version of me. The Kyuubi obviously didn’t have that power or he’d have done something like this on his own, so there would be no way for him to follow me.

But he had both my loves prisoner in his mind, and if he ate their souls I was pretty sure the loop wouldn’t re-create them. I wasn’t going to abandon them to that, no matter what it cost me.

“I guess it’s up to me, then,” I said heavily. “Hang on a sec.”

I made another real body, a few years younger than the one I currently wore, and nudged the alternate-universe copy of myself that I’d rescued from Sasuke into it. She blinked, and looked around nervously.

“Um, big sis, I don’t think I could do much against the Kyuubi even if I wasn’t out of chakra,” she protested.

I silenced her with a kiss, and passed her all the memories I hadn’t had time to give her before in the process.

“Just back off and watch. Survive. Get Hinata out of the area if she’ll let you. And… take care of them for me, alright?”

She looked up at me with wide eyes, and nodded. “I promise.”

“Are you ready yet, kid? I’m getting bored.” The Kyuubi yawned.

I looked up at the towering inferno of hate, and shook my head. “You really sure you want to back me into a corner like this, Kyuubi? You do realize what those two souls you’re holding prisoner mean to me, right? There is nothing I won’t do to free them.”

“I’m not going to let you set up some elaborate sealing technique, Sakura,” he scoffed. “Now do something interesting, or I’ll start chewing on your girlfriend.”

“Then there’s no other way,” I said sadly. “Fine, then. I’ll tell you the flaw in this grand scheme of yours. There’s one other person who can command the full power of the Sharingan.”

I pulled yet another body out of my mindscape and aspected myself as I spoke. But the aspect I dropped into that new body was the demon who’d slept inside me for so many years, and the first thing she did was shift her eyes.

She was a very junior demon, without even a connection to the Nidhogg system, but her kind had created the Eyes of Misery. Her eyes were fully developed, and using them was as instinctive to her as breathing. Even as a beast of eleven tails, the Kyuubi wasn’t immune to her Tsukuyomi Bijuu Bind.

He froze, rooted in place by her technique, and roared in frustration. “How? You were never one of that cursed clan, and even if you were you haven’t the stomach to unlock those powers.”

“I told you, Kyuubi, there is nothing I wouldn’t do to protect my family,” my demon aspect reminded him. “But I’m not a mortal bargainer, so I don’t have to worry about those rules. I guess the real Naruto must have blocked your senses, or you would have heard about this when we told him.”

He snorted. “Whatever. Fine, you tricked me. It won’t do you any good. You can barely bind me in place, let alone command me. You can’t make me give up the souls you’re so attached to, and you can’t hold me for more than a few minutes.”

“We don’t have to,” I said. “You’re about four times more powerful than when Minato sealed you, but I’ve got a lot more chakra left than he had to work with.”

For the second time that day I threw open the floodgates holding back the vast lake of power hidden in my storage seal. What felt like a limitless sea of power surged through me, replenishing my reserves and banishing my fatigue in an instant. But I could see that I’d already spent more than half my reserve, and what I was about to attempt was unprecedented. Even as a nine-tailed beast the Kyuubi had been almost impossible to contain, and now he was four times stronger than that. But I’d noticed before that my own method of singing seals in the celestial tongue was much more effective than conventional hand seals, and I didn’t need to do anything near as elaborate as Minato’s masterpiece…

“Hah!” The Kyuubi barked. “That amount of power is nothing to me, girl. Besides, what could you possibly use as a container?”

“I won’t be needing one,” I said coldly. “Goodbye, Kyuubi.”

Then I mustered all the love and determination I could find, and raised my voice in the most painful song I’d ever sung.

Guardian Shinigami of this mortal world of woe, hear my call of desperation and make manifest your form. I am Sakura Haruno, born of mortal man and woman, faced with a foe I cannot defeat who threatens all I hold dear. But as the Celestial Emperor has commanded that no power may stand above all retribution, I offer now the bargain of sacrifice.

The air grew cold around me, and I heard Hinata’s startled gasp as the Shinigami materialized behind me. No matter how powerful the Kyuubi might be, he wasn’t stronger than death.

Who shall I take? The ghostly presence whispered in my ear.

“Whoa, wait, are you nuts?” The Kyuubi protested. “Kid, that thing will take you too. Do you want to be digested in his belly for a hundred years?”

The Kyuubi that stands before me is my foe, I sang. Take every trace of him, but touch not his prisoners, and my soul shall provide your rightful payment.

I accept your bargain.

The ghostly figure nodded, and its arms stretched out to fasten on the struggling demon fox as its mouth gaped wide. A river of seething red chakra was ripped out of the Kyuubi’s chest, streaming down into that endless black maw along with a steady stream of my own blue chakra. The bijuu thrashed and struggled wildly, desperately trying to break the technique that froze him in place. But my demon aspect stood firm, and the binding held.

“Sakura, you can’t mean this. You’re a goddess! All you have to do is say the right words, and you’ll be immortal. Let me go, and I’ll tell you what they are.”

My demon aspect shook her head. “We’re not afraid to die, dumbass.”

The fox shrank visibly, its eleventh tail vanishing into the maw of the Shinigami. But half my chakra was gone as well.

The Kyuubi tried another tack. “But if you do this, you won’t even have an afterlife! You won’t go to one of those Heaven realms, or reincarnate, or even get punished by the demons. The Shinigami will devour your soul!”

“Like you were going to do to Naruto?” I asked. “I understand exactly what I’m doing, Kyuubi. If this is the price I have to pay to protect my family from you, I’ll pay it.”

Another tail was sucked away, but my storage seal had already shrunk alarmingly. This was going to be close.

The Kyuubi howled in pain, and struggled vainly against its bindings. I could see my demon aspect was tiring fast, but she wouldn’t have to hold him much longer. Three-fourths of the Kyuubi’s chakra was already gone, and his ninth tail was sucked away as I watched. The eighth went, much faster than before, and then the seventh. But now my storage seal was empty, and my own chakra was fading fast.

“You can’t do this to me!” The demon fox howled. “You owe me! I call in your debt to me, little goddess!”

I blinked in surprise, my concentration wavering for a moment. Damn, he was right. I owed him for the hints he’d given me so many years ago, and I was bound to honor that obligation whether I wanted to or not.

But then again, it wasn’t an unlimited obligation.

His sixth tail was ripped away, and his howling began to sound more like whimpering.

“You’re right, Kyuubi,” I admitted, my voice tight from the strain of maintaining my technique. “You gave me a chance to survive, so I have to repay you in kind. But that’s all I have to give you. A chance.”

His fifth tail was sucked into the void.

“What? You bitch! What the hells does that even mean?”

His fourth tail went, and his third, faster and faster as his power faded. With each loss his power was halved, but so was mine. As the Shinigami claimed the Kyuubi’s second tail I realized that my own chakra was almost gone, but that was alright. My job was done.

The Kyuubi’s final tail was dragged into the mouth of the Shinigami, but I ended my technique before the last of it was taken. The Kyuubi had reverted to a humanoid form, his red aura of chakra barely stronger than any jounin’s.

“You have a chance to live,” I said. “But you aren’t taking over anyone in that state.”

Hinata glided up behind him while he was busy staring at me, and laid him out in a blur of precision jyuuken strikes. She caught him before he could fall, and looked up at me with tears running down her cheeks.

“What will happen now?” she asked fearfully.

“Naruto will be fine when he wakes up,” I reassured her. “He can handle that furry asshole easily now, and my younger self over there can fix any medical problems that might come up. But Hinata, promise me you’ll work together with them from now on. Let Naruto know about any other problems you think you’ve found, and trust him to work things out instead of coming up with these crazy schemes on your own.”

She hung her head. “I don’t deserve him after all this,” she choked. “But… it isn’t about me. I promise, Sakura. I’ll listen to Naruto, and do whatever I can to make sure your sacrifice wasn’t in vain.”

“Thank you,” I breathed. I felt so weak. Hollow, like something vital was already missing, and my chakra was so strange. I looked back at my demon aspect in time to see her collapse, completely drained of normal chakra. All that was left to her was a tiny mote of darkness, the trace impurities I hadn’t been able to purge when I severed our Nidhogg connection all those years ago.

She pointed behind me, and I turned to see that the Shinigami was fading from view. Clutched in his hand was a ghostly blue outline of myself, who gazed back at me gravely.

“Take care of them,” she mouthed.

Then she was gone.

I fell to my knees as what little strength I had left fled from my body. But wait, if the Shinigami had taken me how was I still here?

I looked down at myself to find that the last traces of blue human chakra had been sucked from my body as my invocation of the Shinigami ended. All that was left was a faint tracery of gold.

“Oh, dear,” I muttered. “Did I just sacrifice my humanity?”

“I guess so,” my demon aspect said weakly. “Damn, this is going to be awkward. If we merge again our chakra will probably self-destruct. Oh, wait. Never mind. I don’t think I’m going to last long anyway.”

“Spiffy,” I commented. I turned my awareness inward for a moment, surveying the state of my mindscape with a frown. My soul was much weaker than it had been, and I didn’t seem to be producing chakra anymore. Not blue human chakra, obviously, but not gold either. The little bit of energy I had left was all I would ever have.

Wait. Pure gold.

“I think I get it,” I said wearily. “We’re ghosts. Probably the Shinigami doesn’t take celestials, so he left the little bit of celestial power we had behind. But I think I’ve got one last job to do before I fade away.”

I pointed to the Throne of the Gods, still hovering it its original position several hundred feet above our heads.

“Hinata, can you help me get up there?”