She laughed. “Hardly. Demons usually don’t like themselves very much, remember? I’m still figuring this out myself, but I think my job is supposed to be acting as a kind of living hub that manages the connections between all our different alternate-universe selves. Right now I’m mostly you, with a few slivers of the other versions of us who’ve found their names already through one fluke or another. But as the rest of us grow up I’ll become a blend of all of them, and I think my role is going to be making sure you can all get along without driving each other nuts.”
“Oh. Hey, that’s kind of neat,” I marveled. “So, this is going to be like a shared mindscape where versions of me from different worlds can meet?”
“Once I’m strong enough to solidify it, yes,” she confirmed. “It would help a lot if you can keep that Heaven Seal of yours running when you can. Once the other versions of us start growing up and finding themselves I’ll get much stronger, and I think I’ll be able to do things to help you out in a crisis at that point. But right now I’m as weak as an academy student, and the chakra you’re feeding me is almost all of my power.”
“No problem,” I reassured her. “Once this fight is over I’ll get Naruto to put me on a chakra feed and route the whole thing in here for you until you’ve got things stabilized. But first we have to actually win the fight. So, is there a path I can take to reach the me I’m looking for?”
She nodded seriously, and another door appeared on the opposite side of the room from where I’d entered.
“There you go,” she said. “Please, save her if you can. I’m the sum of my parts, and what he’s done to her is hurting me too. Don’t let him do it to too many of us, or he might be able to turn me against you.”
That was a sobering prospect. I bent over the desk to give what might one day become my older, wiser self a reassuring hug.
“I’ll be careful,” I said. “I’ll save her, and he won’t have a clue how I did it.”
Then I turned, and marched through the door.
I found myself in an oddly translucent version of the fake inner mindscape I’d had when I was under Sasuke’s control. The trees were withered and half-dead, the waters of the lake at low ebb, and where the stream of her chakra recovery should have been there was a maze of pipes and pumps festooned with haphazard seals. The whole thing felt thin and stretched, like it might pop if I poked it too hard.
A tired-looking teenage version of myself appeared next to me, and looked around wildly.
“You!” She gasped. “What are you doing here? You’re going to get me punished!”
“No.” I shook my head. “I’m going to show you how to make it so you never get punished again. You’re going to be a good girl, strong and useful, and you’ll never see the dark place again. Isn’t that what you want?”
She trembled slightly as I pushed the buttons of her programming, but she was too smart to be easily manipulated. “How?” She asked suspiciously. “Didn’t you betray Sasuke? You’re our enemy now.”
“I’ll never be your enemy,” I disagreed. “We’re both Sakura, and we should always help each other. Fighting with you would be as stupid as fighting my own aspects. Let me show you what you’ve forgotten, please?”
She hesitated. “You could just be trying to trick me into letting you do something to me.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Do you really not feel how much stronger I am? You’re a thirteen year old girl with my memories, trying to force yourself to be something you’re not ready for yet. Even here in your own mindscape I could beat you easily, and you know it. But I promise, if you let me help you I’ll do exactly what I said.”
She could feel the truth of my promise, and I think that was what convinced her.
“Alright, show me.”
I stepped closer, taking her gently into my arms as I touched our foreheads together, and showed her memories of love and acceptance and companionship. I showed her my own true feelings for Naruto and Hinata, and all of our time together. I pulled us both deeper into her mind while she was distracted by the experience, and reached into the spiral of devotion that dominated her thoughts to dissolve one key element.
Sasuke had spent endless weeks drilling obedience and an obsessive need to please into my psyche, but he apparently thought it was obvious who those urges should be directed at. It was laughably easy to dissolve the referent that said who that massive structure of brainwashed servitude was supposed to be fixed on, and the step out of the way while her mind reoriented in the most natural way it could.
“Oh,” she breathed. “I see now. I’m not supposed to be Sasuke’s broken toy. He tied to steal me. I’m Naruto’s girl!”
“That’s right, sweetie,” I told her. “And you know he’d never punish you the way Sasuke does. No matter how bad you screw up the worst he’ll ever do is look disappointed, and tell you how to do better next time. Now help me out, and I’ll bring you back to him with me.”
Her eyes lit up with a fanatic gleam.
“Anything for Naruto,” she declared. “What do you need?”
A moment later I was looking out of her eyes at Sasuke’s little ops center. Sasuke and Nagato were watching the monitor, Zetsu and Konan were oblivious, and the rest of the Akatsuki members were elsewhere. But Sasuke’s Hinata was turning towards me with the beginning of a frown. Yeah, she could probably see that something odd was going on. No time to waste.
I knew better than to try anything as fancy as making a real body when I was standing almost in reach of the fastest kunoichi on the planet. So instead I formed an earth clone and threw myself into it, leaving the version of me I’d just converted to provide a distraction. She went to full boost and tried to plant a Rasengan in Sasuke’s back, which was certainly an effective way to force Hinata to fight her instead of investigating what I was doing.
I reached my target in three bounding steps. The floor of the throne room was sealed against direct elemental manipulation, but it shattered easily with a punch. Below it was something big and crystalline-looking, filled with a three-dimensional array of seals. The outer layer was defensive, strength and chakra absorption and non-conductivity, along with more tricks I didn’t have time to sort through. Rasengan wasn’t going to work on that, and I didn’t have time to look for a weak spot.
I glanced up to see my copy and several of her clones engaged in a confused melee with Sasuke and his Hinata, while Nagato backed away under Konan’s guard. She was at full boost with all eight gates open, lunging at Sasuke with a lava whip in one hand and a fire-natured Rasengan in the other. He backed away frantically, but only Hinata’s interference gave him time to get his cursed seal active. My copy beat back Hinata’s counterattack with a spray of lava droplets, and wrapped herself in a screaming vortex of air-boosted flame before lunging at Sasuke again.
Damn, she was really going all out. She’d be out of chakra in a couple of minutes at that rate, but until then even those two would have trouble with her. Good, that should give me plenty of time.
I reached into the ground beneath the palace and pulled, bringing up several tons of hard stone that I merged into my clone body. I grew into a twenty-foot hulk in a matter of seconds, and slammed my stony fist into the orb.
The first blow just shattered my hand, so I reformed it and covered it in protective seals. My second blow cracked the thing, and drove it a foot deeper into the ground. I felt the warding waver, and hit it again.
The third blow shattered the crystal, and the ward collapsed.
“Time to go, little sister!” I shouted as I turned back towards the battle. I turned my clone’s other hand into a ball of lava and threw it into the melee, destroying the big monitor and forcing everyone to scatter. A couple of Zetsu clones were killed by flying droplets of liquid stone, and Sasuke simply vanished. My twin stayed where she was, letting the attack hit her as she used a Mind-Body Switch to throw herself into my mindscape.