The seal array around my body was supposed to prevent me from using my own summoning techniques as well as keeping me from being summoned, but the inner regions of my mindscape are only loosely connected to the physical world. So I dove into the depths of myself with Hinata in tow, and arrived at length at the place between worlds.
“What are you going to do?” Hinata asked me. “Do you think you can summon the Sakura from Naruto’s loop here, and give her a message for him?”
“I could, but I’ve got a better idea,” I told her. “Hold on to me, ok? We’re going to go see him.”
“Alright,” she said as I stepped out into the void, with one hand on the golden thread that served as my guide. “Are we going the slow way, then?”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure we have time for that. They’ve had me for at least a couple of weeks, and I think it took me a week or two the first time I made this trip. I just want to get well out into the void, to make sure nothing from the world we’re in can interfere with me.”
“I see,” she said. “This is a very strange place, Sakura. I have this feeling that there’s more around us than just darkness…”
“Oh, no. No, please, don’t try to see through the darkness, Hinata,” I hurriedly told her. “There’s a sort of mental block that protects mortals from seeing what’s really there, but peeking past it is dangerous. With your Byakugan you’d probably see enough to flash-fry your brain in a heartbeat.”
“Oh. Um, I’ll try not to look, but telling me I could doesn’t exactly help,” she said nervously. “We’ve come about half a mile now, is that far enough for whatever you wanted to try?”
“Should be. Hold on tight, sweetie.” I let go of the golden thread, and tried to summon Naruto.
It was like trying to lift a mountain, of course. But at the moment there was nothing anchoring me to the world I’d just come from, and I found myself flying towards him instead. Just as I’d planned.
It took all of a few seconds to pull myself across the whole vast space between our loops, and emerge into Naruto’s world. For a moment I was very confused, because I could feel Naruto’s chakra and assorted other people in the general area, but I couldn’t see anything. Then I realized that you need eyes to see.
“This feels very strange,” Hinata observed. “Are we both ghosts here?”
“Yeah, forgot I didn’t have a body waiting on this end. Let’s see now…”
Projecting chakra into the physical world without a body is hard, and shaping it to interact with matter when you don’t even have tenketsu is even harder. But I could feel exactly where Naruto was, and that’s all a good mindwalker needs. A moment later we were in Naruto’s mindscape.
Anyone with the ability and an ounce of sense builds some kind of defense around their mind, but he’d never offered to show me his. A glance around revealed why. We were standing in a vast cave lit by torches, with several feet of water covering the floor. The bars that bisected the room looked entirely too familiar, but I noted with relief we were on the proper side.
“Hello, Sakura,” the Kyuubi chuckled. “Ah, and you’ve brought your tasty little pet with you. Have you come to see if you’re strong enough to be interesting yet?”
“Considering that Sasuke is currently trying to brainwash my other aspect with his damned Sharingan, I’m not really in the mood,” I replied sourly. “So, Naruto made it so visitors have to go through your cage to reach his mind? Cute trick.”
“It gets me a snack now and then,” the great fox rumbled. “You’ve come a long way, if you can be here in that state while the Uchiha has you. Maybe I really won’t eat you when I get out.”
“Flatterer,” I said sarcastically. “I’m sure you say that to all us insignificant insects. Hey, I just realized. The idiots in Konoha always called you a demon, but your chakra isn’t black. Are you some other kind of celestial being, or—”
“Sakura!” Naruto’s excited cry cut off my question, and a moment later I was swept into a frantic hug. “Sakura, is that really you? Are you alright? What happened?”
“Yes, it’s me, Naruto,” I reassured him. God, it felt good to be held in his arms again. Was I crying? How embarrassing.
“Sasuke got to the other me first,” Hinata explained, as I struggled to get my emotions under control. “They captured Sakura, and they have her body locked up inside a mass of anti-summoning seals right now. Fortunately our treasure is too slippery for him.”
I shook my head. “I haven’t escaped, Hinata. I’m sorry, I thought you understood. My other aspect is still trapped in his genjutsu, and I can’t break it like this. He’s working on her right now, trying to nail enough compulsions in her head to keep her from escaping if he lets her wake up. If he realizes I’ve split myself he’ll just summon this aspect back, and do it to both of us at once.”
Hinata gave me a horrified look, and Naruto clenched his fists.
“Damn it,” he exclaimed. “I’m sorry, Sakura, I never thought trying to help the other Hinata would be this risky. How can we get you out? If I use you as a focus I should be able to lock a summoning on your other aspect…”
“No!” I warned him. “That last summoning tug of war almost killed me, and I don’t think the loop will fix me if my soul is torn apart.”
“I was afraid of that. How did he get so strong, anyway?”
“He probably brainwashed a couple of jinchuuriki,” I guessed. “He can do that to most people in a few seconds, and he can teleport too, so it wouldn’t take long to set up if he already knows which ones are vulnerable and where they are. My contract didn’t appear back in my mindscape when I looped, but it obviously still exists, so he must have a way to hold on to it. That means he can have every strong ninja he knows how to control sign it, and use them all to keep me away from you.”
“Damn. Ok, so we can’t summon you. Can you just cancel the contract or something?”
I shook my head. “I’d have to change my true name somehow, and even if I could do that I wouldn’t be me anymore. I—”
I swayed as a lance of agony surged down the connection from my other self. Naruto caught me before I fell, and gave me a concerned look.
“Sakura?” He asked. “What was that? You’re so pale…”
“I still feel an echo of what’s happening to the other me,” I explained, a little ashamed at my own weakness. “I think he just realized something is wrong. I’m sorry, Naruto, but I don’t have any good ideas on how to get away. I can keep slipping away like this, and probably cause him all sorts of hassles in the process, but in the end that’s just going to piss him off. I have to steal my contract back before I can escape for more than a few minutes at a time, and he isn’t careless enough to let me do that.”
“Don’t tell me you’re giving up,” Naruto said. “Come on, Sakura, we can beat this. We’ll think of something.”
“Yes,” Hinata agreed. “You’re my treasure, and he can’t have you!”
“Thank you,” I said. “I hope you’re right, but I don’t have much time. I need to do what I can to limit the damage he can do if he breaks me, and make sure I can come back if I end up getting brainwashed before you can find a way to rescue me.”
“All right, Sakura,” Naruto said gravely. “What can we do?”
I stepped away from him, and manifested the chain of my contract with Hinata.
“This is the most important thing,” I told him. “As long as Hinata is tied to me there’s a chance Sasuke will find her, and then he’ll have us both. So I need to pass the contract to you. That means she’ll be tied to your loops instead of mine, and you’ll be able to put her soul in a clone body so she doesn’t have to live in here all the time. Just please, please be careful not to ever let go of the chain. If you do she’ll die for real, and I don’t think anything short of a true resurrection would be able to bring her back to us. Find something really solid in your mindscape to tie it to, ok?”