I wasn’t terribly surprised when he did essentially the same thing with a young Naruto, and had him train against the twin Yugitos. But he took them to a different location for their training time, and carefully ensured that neither Hinata or I had more than a bare minimum of interaction with him.
There were several others. A young girl named Yakumo, that I didn’t remember ever meeting before. Anko, who somehow resisted his training attempts for nearly three days. Hana, who barely held out for an hour. TenTen and Temari, who were so much weaker than us that I didn’t see what he could possibly want with them. There was even a civilian girl I vaguely remembered from that ramen stand Naruto used to love so much. He spent a few days on some, but weeks on others, and I really started to wonder what was in the memories he had me copy.
Bit by bit the pieces were coming together, and I began to guess at his plan. Somehow he expected to have Nagato’s assistance capturing Naruto, which gave us some of the most powerful missing nin in the world as jutsu fodder. With our own efforts added in that was a far stronger force than I thought it would take to beat Naruto, but Sasuke wasn’t so confident.
“You’ve never seen him fight seriously,” he chided me when I expressed my doubts. “Naruto is the most dangerous man in the world, Sakura. I’ve seen lesser versions of him defeat Pein at the age of sixteen, with nothing to rely on but a few weeks of sage training and an elemental Rasengan. The real Naruto, the one in the loop, will long since have achieved his full potential. If we do not arrange our trap with perfect finesse and overwhelming firepower he will crush us all, and take you back by force.”
“Yes, sir. But, if he sees he can’t win, what’s to stop him from just resetting his loop to escape?”
“Naruto’s greatest flaw is his inability to admit defeat,” Sasuke told me. “With you as my bait, he will willingly dare any odds.”
I should have been thrilled to play such a key role in my master’s plan. But instead, I found myself feeling vaguely ill.
The place Sasuke had brought us to was a ruin. It had been a great city once, with wide streets and soaring towers of white marble, built atop a high plateau overlooking the sea. But it had been deserted for centuries, and now only a few buildings still stood.
“Welcome to the city of the gods,” Sasuke said sardonically.
Hinata powered up her Byakugan, and I looked around with interest.
“Really?” I asked. “I always assumed that was in the spirit world or something. How did you find it?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said shortly. “We’re here because some of the seal work still functions. The palace is still defended by a number of powerful constructs, which will ignore humans but attack anything bearing the Kyuubi’s chakra. There is also a youki suppression field that will dissipate much of the Kyuubi’s power if Naruto enters it. I expect he will destroy both during the course of the battle, but they will weaken him considerably in the process.”
He pointed towards the largest of the intact buildings, and went on. “That building is the focal point of the remaining defenses. Sakura, I expect you will spend most of the battle there healing our wounded, which should also serve to prevent Naruto from destroying the building with one of his army-killer techniques. Come.”
He darted forward across the rubble, and Hinata and I followed without comment. This had been a beautiful place, with tall buildings covered with decorative pillars and statuary surrounded by ponds and gardens. But someone had fought a massive battle here, with the sort of techniques only the most powerful ninja could manage. The ruins were pocked with craters and ovals of glassed rock, and there were strange bones everywhere. Many looked human, but there were far more with monstrous features. Things with horns and tails and giant claws, dog-like creatures bigger than horses, giants that must have stood a hundred feet tall. There was even a pair of dragons, their bones still covered with steel-hard scales, twined about each other as if still locked in combat.
We entered the palace through the front doors, and passed a pair of forty-foot statues covered in a fine tracery of seals that told me they were actually animated constructs of some sort. But they ignored the petty humans creeping past their post, deeming us no more worthy of attention than the bats that nested in the vaulted ceiling or the rats that scurried about in the corners of the once-grand structure. There was a large entry chamber, a larger waiting room, and then another pair of guardians flanking the open doors to what could only be a throne room.
That vast chamber could have swallowed the Konoha stadium twice over. Dim light from rows of shattered windows high overhead revealed an endless expanse of smooth white marble inlaid with sweeping geometric patterns. The three of us crossed the room in silence, passing rows of tall white pillars carved to resemble trees. A dais at the far end of the room supported a massive throne, also of white marble, inlaid with another intricate golden tracery of seals.
Here we found the only sign of combat. There were a pair of skeletons lying on the floor behind and to the sides of the throne, clad in metal armor of a style I’d never seen. Their heads were neatly separated from their bodies, and their posture and the lack of incidental damage to the surroundings said they’d been caught completely by surprise. Sprawled on the floor just in front of the throne was another skeleton, unarmored, and stretched out as if he’d been desperately trying to reach it. The smashed ribs in his back said that someone had blown his heart out from behind with a move remarkably like Chidori.
“The Throne of the Gods,” Sasuke confirmed. “Possibly the most powerful artifact in the world, if only there were someone left who could use it. But this is the center of the city’s remaining demon wards, so this will be our command post. Both of you explore the area thoroughly, we’ll need all the home-field advantage we can get.”
Our preparations lasted another month. I rehearsed my own part three times, and spent days racking my brain for more ways to eke out an advantage. I wanted to spend a few more weeks repairing my mindscape properly as well, but Sasuke vetoed that idea.
“Naruto is hardly likely to attack you with mental techniques,” he pointed out, when I asked for permission to attempt the project. “Your chakra has recovered to an adequate level to carry out your part in the plan, and considering how it will end it hardly matters if you recover your remaining memories at this point.”
“Yes, sir.” The reminder that we were essentially going to die if we won wasn’t exactly welcome, but my tentative efforts to suggest that there might be another way had been dismissed out of hand. So all I could do now was try to make his plan work. For some reason I found that I was distinctly unhappy about the idea of fighting Naruto, but I wasn’t about to let that terrible future Sasuke had shown me actually happen.
Hinata shared my determination, though I knew fighting Naruto would be even harder for her. Fortunately Sasuke understood that much, so he’d given her a different assignment.
“Your first priority will be to guard Sakura,” he’d told her. “Naruto is no fool, and he will find some way to reach her. Exotic clones, or constructs, or perhaps even an ally. They will attempt to reach Sakura, and I feel confident they will have some plan for either disabling or controlling her. The two of you must work together to ensure they do not succeed.
“My intention is for our allies to weaken Naruto sufficiently to make him vulnerable to my mindlock genjutsu, but it is possibly they may fail. Hinata, if that happens you and I will fight him together. Your task will be to disrupt and drain his chakra while I hold his attention. Sakura, you will concentrate on healing our fallen allies so they may return to the fight. You will enter the fight against Naruto only if I explicitly order you to.”