I chuckled. “I guess you’ve got a point. Look, I’ll deal with her myself, one way or another. I just didn’t want you to be caught by surprise if we had a crossover loop or something. I’m sure she’d be a lot of fun, but she’s also psychotic.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said seriously. “Just remember, I’m here if you need me.”
He hugged me, and this time I didn’t try to stay in control. I needed to know I wasn’t alone. That I was loved. That there was somewhere I could relax, and let down my defenses, and know that I’d be safe.
Nothing makes a girl feel safe like being held by a man who can turn into a dragon.
I felt that internal tug again when the loop ended. My temporary merger dissolved as I was pulled away from Naruto’s loop, and cast out into the darkness again. There was a rushing sensation of motion, and my veil slipped for a moment as I instinctively tried to orient myself. I caught a fleeting glimpse of vast complexity rushing by as I was pulled forward in a net of golden power. Then I was flung headfirst into a whirling cyclone of seal-streamers, and frantically tried to brace for impact…
…and awoke in my prison of thorns, in the darkness of my own mindscape.
I sagged. For an instant I’d expected to be in my old, familiar bed, but that would be too easy.
Then I realized that I’d moved, and opened my eyes again to frantically examine my prison. Before I’d been wrapped so tight I couldn’t even wiggle, but now there was an inch or so of give to the cold metal. But as I examined them the vines solidified again, becoming just as immutably rigid as before.
“What the hell?”
I hadn’t done anything to my prison, and my captor didn’t seem to be paying attention. A glance at the viewport revealed that she was fully occupied…um…yeah. Wow. ‘Fully occupied’ was definitely an accurate description. What a slut.
Well, at any rate, she wasn’t likely to notice anything I did at the moment. But why would my prison suddenly weaken like that, and how did it get reinforced if she didn’t do it?
“All I did was go away for awhile,” I whispered to myself. “I suppose some of my chakra went with me, and I wasn’t paying attention for…how long was that? Days? Weeks? Quite awhile, if demon girl isn’t concentrating on Hinata anymore. But why would that matter…”
Then it hit me.
“I’m an idiot,” I grumbled. “It’s a parasitic trap. It turns my own power against me, so when I was mostly gone it weakened. But how can that be? Those things are easy to beat, you just stop struggling and let it fall away. If that worked on Sharingan genjutsu everyone would know it. It’s hard to believe they’ve fooled the whole ninja world about something like that.”
I considered that statement, and gasped.
“Belief. If you believe a parasitic trap is unbreakable, then it will be for you. No matter what you try your own chakra will turn against itself, and all your techniques will fail. Which is exactly what I’ve been seeing. There must be something else, some little twist that would keep the standard counters from working and explain why I can’t see it leeching my chakra. But it doesn’t have to be anything complicated, because once people started expecting Sharingan genjutsu to be unbreakable that belief would be enough to make it true. As deadly as the other Sharingan powers are, it would be easy to kill the occasional genjutsu master who figures it out. That could be it. It doesn’t have to be any more than that.”
Eager to follow up on the clue I dove back into my meditation, focusing again on the trap that held me in place. My inner sight was much clearer than before, and I wondered for a moment just what my experience in the place between loops had done to me. But I pushed that concern aside in favor of my new project. The black chakra pulsed through my prison just as it had before, but there had to be more to it than that. An illusion to pierce, a veil to lift, another level…
I fell into the web of malevolent power, through the churning surface and into the turbulent layers beneath. There was normal human chakra there, faint streamers of it hidden beneath the demonic taint. I touched one, and felt again the confused misery of my first few loops. Another was my despair after escaping from Sasuke, when even Tsunade proved unable to cure me. The loneliness of the long loops before I’d found my second self, and again when having myself as my only companion had begun to wear.
I followed the strands back to their source, and sure enough it was me. The dark power I’d thought so irresistible was anchored to my own darker moments, somehow exploiting the memory of my past miseries to leech away a part of my strength. I strained against my bonds for a moment, and watched the construct suck out more of my own chakra to counter me. Yes. I was right. It was mostly my own strength that was holding me helpless.
Fascinated, I began to run through my repertoire of genjutsu counters.
“Hello? Hello? Excuse me, is there anyone in there? I really need to talk to you for a minute.”
The voice pulled my awareness back to my surroundings just as I’d been starting to make real progress, and for a moment I was annoyed. Then I opened my eyes, and realized that it wasn’t my captor who was talking to me.
She was perfection in miniature. Slender and delicately curved, with huge blue eyes and a long mane of honey-blonde hair that drifted around her hovering form in a golden halo. Her dress was an elegant creation of ribbons and bows and fantastic embroidery that even a daimyo’s wife would envy; daring, classy, and impossible to move in without the clothing animation technique she appeared to be running. But her expression was businesslike, and she held an ornate clipboard made of translucent crystal in one hand.
“Oh, good,” she said with a friendly smile, “I was afraid you weren’t going to wake up. I’m Astoria, goddess third class, and I’m a trainee with the sysadmin’s office. I’m sorry to interrupt, but I needed to ask you a few questions to finish my incident report.”
I blinked at her in surprise. “Goddess? Incident? Wait, you’re not me! Can you help me? Please? I don’t want to end up being a demon!”
“Then don’t,” she said firmly. “I’m sorry, my office doesn’t get involved in local trials and such. I don’t even know what the rules are in this world, and I certainly don’t want to ruin your chances. But you’re stronger than I was at your age, and I know the local kami must be rooting for you, so I’m sure you’ll pull through. Now, according to the log files you recently left this mortal-world sandbox to visit another one. Since you don’t have a transport medium that means you were exposed to the multiversal process space in transit, which is pretty dangerous to anyone but the sysadmins. Did you have any problems?”
“Process space?” I repeated dumbly, a bit overwhelmed by the idea of an actual kami paying me a visit. Then it clicked. “Oh, that. Yes, that was…um…indescribable. But I think I stopped looking in time.”
She almost dropped her pen. “You saw? Oh, dear, that’s not good. There could be side effects. You didn’t hear anything, did you?”
“I did,” I admitted. “A chorus…I can almost remember the words. Um, what kind of side effects?”
She flitted around me, wringing her hands nervously. “Oh dear, oh dear. All sorts of things. Personality damage, premature manifestations, sudden loss of mortality. It depends on what parts you saw. Can you understand me?”
The last part was sung in a language so beautiful it brought tears to my eyes. I realized it was the same language as the cosmic symphony I’d heard before, and hearing it again set the same chorus echoing through my head. I knew instinctively that it was only a tiny part of some greater whole, but it resonated with something else in me. The demon Sakura had known a different part of the same song…