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.