I inscribed a maze of explosive seals into the surface of my earth clone with a thought, and set it running towards the row of bijuu containers as I bailed out. The resulting explosion blew out one wall of the throne room, and wrecked the place quite thoroughly.
I snapped back into my other aspect’s mindscape a moment later, and merged with her as my passenger tried to get her bearings. Naruto and my other aspect had been having quite a fight with the multi-headed dog things, but she’d finally figured out that they were vulnerable to drowning a minute ago. We’d promptly dug out a small lake and filled it with water, and Naruto’s dragon form was currently holding a snarling twelve-headed dog underwater while I watched for the next attack.
“Got it,” I announced. “The barrier is down, and I rescued anther version of me and caused a bunch of havoc.”
“That’s my girl,” he laughed. “One of these days you’ve got to tell me how you do things like that.”
“It’s a mystery,” I said impishly. “Now send a clone down here so I can hug you, you big lug. Oh, and I’m sure my passenger will want to meet you. She’s still brainwashed, but I made it so she’s fixated on you and maybe Hinata instead of Sasuke.”
A human Naruto appeared in front of me in a tiny puff of smoke, and gave me a look. “Only you, Sakura,” he chided. “Are you trying to make a personality for each of my clones, or what?”
I swatted him playfully, and he swept me into a hug.
“God, I was so worried about you,” he admitted. “Are you sure you’re ok now? When you ran from me I was terrified he’d done something to you.”
“He did,” I said tightly. “It was worse that the first time, Naruto. If not for you and Hinata and that last-ditch plan I don’t know if I ever would have gotten free. I owe you both my sanity.”
Naruto hugged me tighter.
“I was afraid of that,” he said after a moment. “Are you really ok now? We can pull out and try to get your scroll later, maybe summon his version of Hinata and take it from her.”
“No, if we do that he’ll just find a better place to hide it and try something else on us. I used a fancy seal trick to undo everything he did to me, and right now I’m stronger than ever. I’ve still got plenty of chakra thanks to that storage seal you filled for me, and if they’re dumb enough to stick around and fight us I think we can beat them and end this once and for all. Let’s finish it.”
“You got it, Sakura,” he said firmly. “That bastard is going to pay for what he’s done, and that’s a promise. So where’s this other version of you?”
“In my head. Let’s see… oh. Um, then again, maybe we should give her some time. It looks like she just met our Hinata in there, and right now she’s crying on her shoulder and promising to be a good girl for her. She’s about out of chakra anyway, so maybe we should just let her rest.”
“Poor thing. Make sure she knows we’re going to take care of her, ok?”
The dog summon finally stopped struggling and vanished in a giant puff of smoke, and Naruto abandoned his dragon form. He bounced across the lake in human form to hug me in person, and I was amazed to realize that he was actually running low on chakra.
“Hey, are you going to be up to this?” I asked, concerned. “I’ve never seen you actually tired before, and Sasuke’s whole strategy was to try to wear you down enough to make an unconsciousness genjutsu work on you.”
“Those statue things took a lot of killing,” he admitted. “But I’ll be fine. I’ve got a lot of tricks I haven’t pulled out yet, and you wouldn’t believe how fast I can recover chakra. If you’re worried about it maybe you should leave an aspect in my mindscape, just in case you need to wake me back up or something?”
“Good idea,” I said. “Here, I’m sending in a shadow clone. I doubt he’ll be able to tell unless she actually does something, but I bet we can lure him into exposing himself to a quick knockout if he thinks he’s beaten us. We just need to clear out all the riffraff first.”
One of Hinata’s shadow clones appeared next to us.
“Maybe you should let us fight for awhile, Naruto?” She suggested. “I can see the Akatsuki preparing to face us themselves right now, but I think Sakura and I can handle them.”
“Good idea,” I agreed. “Let us clear out the riffraff, and you can step back in for the main event. Most of these guys won’t be any challenge for me now anyway.”
“If that’s what you want,” Naruto agreed reluctantly. “You’re right, I could use a few minutes to recharge. But I’m going to stay close in case you need me.”
I noticed he was still channeling natural energy as we ran for the palace, and spared a moment to wonder how before I realized the obvious answer. He had clones out somewhere beyond the edges of the battle, gathering the potent energy and funneling it back to him through that connection all shadow clones share with their maker. Then he took the power and meshed it into his mental and physical energies to form a three-phase chakra, allowing him to maintain sage mode indefinitely.
I studied it as we ran, noting that it was mostly just a matter of knowing how to control the natural energy. Well, that and having an absurdly huge chakra capacity, so you don’t explode from such a massive energy input. Oh, and now he was using the excess power to replenish his own chakra faster, that was a neat trick. At the rate he was going it would take a good twenty minutes to replenish what he’d spent, but that was a heck of an improvement on the day or two most ninja would have needed.
I was starting to wonder if they were going to let us get all the way to the palace when another wave of Deidara’s creations dive bombed us. Hinata threw out a half-dozen shadow clones that surrounded Naruto and me just before they appeared, and started knocking them out of the air with shuriken. We were in no danger with her playing defense, so I just watched for a moment.
The little clay constructs were an earth technique, charged with chakra and set to explode when they contacted a chakra other than their maker’s. They had command links leading back to another construct, some sort of clay clone riding a clay dragon high over our heads. Apparently Deidara was trying to lure Naruto into blowing off another of those big attack jutsu to kill it.
I wove an illusion of foreign chakra around the flying bugs, and the entire swarm detonated at once. Ah, so that’s how the detonation part of the technique worked. Sweet. While the explosions still obscured his view I made a shadow clone, henged her into a kunai and threw it at the dragon-rider with my full strength. My clone wrapped herself in concealment genjutsu as she flew, and struck the dragon construct’s belly a half-second later. Then she detonated it.
“Cute,” Naruto commented as he observed the fireball in the sky far above us. “You’re really on top of your game right now.”
“It’s this Heaven Seal on my forehead,” I admitted. “I’m basically in super-Sakura mode until I turn it off. My true sight lets me see right through the tricks these guys rely on, and I can improvise the perfect technique to counter them on the fly. I’ve got enough stored chakra to stay like this for a couple of hours, so until then Pein, Sasuke and the other Hinata are the only ones I’m worried about.”
“What about Zetsu?” Hinata asked, with an undertone of amusement.
“I don’t actually know much about him,” I replied. “Why?”
A swarm of Zetsu clones emerged from the main doors of the palace, now barely a half-mile away, and charged us. At first I thought it was a few dozen of them, a tactic a normal ninja might use if he had the chakra, but they just kept coming. I paused for a second as my mental estimate went from dozens to hundreds and just kept climbing.