I found myself in my other aspect’s head as she tried to disrupt our opponent’s summoning with a barrage of water attacks, only to have them intercepted by the big guy that absorbed ninjutsu. Frustrated, she retreated momentarily to rez me.
Building a complete body on the fly took a lot out of me, and the only way I had a chance of hurting these guys would be to push my speed and strength boost techniques to the limit. But at that level I’d be out of chakra in a matter of minutes, especially if I was spamming high-level techniques at the same time. Jiraiya could fight on that level too if he got his Sage Mode running, but Tsunade couldn’t.
“I don’t think we’re going to win this one,” my water aspect said.
I nodded. “Yeah, but maybe we can find a weakness. The absorption guy?”
She returned my nod, and set herself. I popped up and tried to roast one of the others with a Fire Dragon, and sure enough the absorption guy suddenly appeared in the way. I went to full boost and charged him while he was occupied with the flame jet, a kunai of white-hot lava forming in each hand as I ran.
At full boost I crossed the two hundred yards between us in less than a second, but my water aspect was even faster. She passed me with a thunderclap of displaced air to engage the Pein that tried to intercept me, and I reached my target unopposed. He actually parried my first blow with that metal rod he used as a weapon, but that just made my lava kunai come apart into a spray of white-hot liquid that washed across it and into his chest. Even chakra-reinforced tissue is no obstacle to that much heat, and the droplets burned dozens of holes right through him. One down.
I threw the other blade at my water aspect’s opponent, who dodged of course. She sensed my intent and replaced herself with a water clone that stepped into the flying blade as it passed. The clone instantly exploded into a cloud of superheated steam, and her opponent staggered back with third-degree burns over half his body. But when we both closed in for the kill he body flickered away.
She followed him. I turned to the summoner.
The boss toad was gone by then, but Jiraiya still had a half-dozen giant toads carving their way through a small army of monstrous dogs and birds and stranger things. The summoner noticed my approach, but his techniques were the wrong weapon against me. A gigantic rhinoceros appeared between us, but I just threw my arms over my face and leaped into its charge with my full strength. Stone shattered beneath my feet as I launched myself with a thunderclap, and I penetrated twenty feet into its chest before the damage broke the summoning and it dissipated in a massive cloud of smoke. I flicked most of the gore off my arms as I landed and leaped again, this time headed straight for the summoner with a Flame Rasengan forming in my hand.
Some unseen force slapped me out of the air like a bug, and I slammed into the ground so hard I made a crater in the stone. I felt the flare of chakra that told me Tsunade had triggered her Creation Rebirth seal, and most of the toads went down as well. I found myself pinned to the ground by an immense weight, as if gravity had suddenly become hundreds of times stronger than normal.
My water aspect’s body died, and she appeared in my mindscape. Damn it. I needed help, but I couldn’t spare the chakra to make yet another real body.
I replaced myself with a rock on the mountainside far above me, and took a split-second to take in the situation. Tsunade’s control of her strength boost might be less fluid than mine but she was definitely stronger, since she was on her feet and fighting. But she was badly loosing against the guy I’d blown off the mountain earlier, and at this rate she’d be dead in seconds once her regeneration technique ran out of chakra. Jiraiya had gotten his Sage Mode running at least, and he was holding his own against two of the others with the help of the weird little frog elders sitting on his shoulders. The last enemy was floating in the air above us, apparently doing nothing, so the gravity field was probably his fault.
I spotted my own beheaded corpse just beyond the edge of the gravity field and smiled. It was the work of a few seconds to flicker down to it, re-attach the head, and drop my water aspect into it as I re-started the heart and repaired the incidental damage. I gave her a hand up, and we turned back to the fight.
Pein’s last two bodies appeared between us and the others.
“That wasn’t a clone,” he said. “You actually restored yourself to life. But you don’t have the Rinnegan. Who… what are you?”
“An answer for an answer,” I shot back with a grin. “How can you run six aspects at once when your chakra is only human?”
“I am a god,” he declared arrogantly. “Nothing is beyond my power. But I can be merciful. Answer my question, and I may let you live to serve the cause.”
“I’ve met kami, Pein. You’re only a man, and for all your power there is nothing you can do that will stop me for long.” I knew better than to repeat a trick against an opponent on this level, so I wrapped myself in chakra-hardened stone and summoned a pair of shadow clones who immediately did the same. A swirling vortex of water sprung up around my double as she blurred into a dozen overlapping images, a distraction to hide the fact that the water itself was her weapon. Oh, this was going to be fun.
“Do your worst,” I taunted him, “and maybe you can banish me for awhile. But I wouldn’t count on it.”
He growled in frustration, and attacked.
I gave him a good fight for a couple of minutes, until my chakra ran low and I had to ease off on my speed boost. But by then Tsunade was dead and Jiraiya was desperately working some forbidden suicide technique that I was sure wouldn’t make any difference. With no clue how to stop his resurrection ability all the dirty tricks in the world weren’t going to win this fight, and we didn’t have the raw power to just kill all his bodies at once.
For that, we’d need a man with the power of a bijuu.
16. Promises
Disclaimer: I don’t own Naruto.
Sakura, what did you do to this place?
It was Hinata’s voice, but I was lying in my old bed again. In my thirteen-year-old body, damn it, but I’d fix that soon enough. I closed my eyes, and found Hinata standing in my jungle with a faintly nauseous look.
“You might not want to stare at it, sweetie. I was trying to make the space warp as confusing as possible.”
She spun to face me, and I realized that was probably the first time I’d ever managed to sneak up on the girl.
“You succeeded,” she confirmed. “What is that, three different fractal patterns rotating through each other in four, no, six dimensions? I’m getting motion sick just watching, and I thought I was immune to that. Please, get me out of here.”
I chuckled. “Sure, sweetie. Just close your eyes and let me lead you.”
“Always,” she declared. “But it’s been years since I could fully deactivate my eyes, and it’s not like eyelids are any barrier to my sight. Can you do that blindness thing to me?”
I caught her face between my hands, and met her gaze as I focused my will in that particular way I’d perfected for shaping my mindscape. “Hinata, the fact that your Byakugan works here means that it’s an essential part of your nature, and I will never deny you that again,” I said seriously. “But here in my realm, if you close your eyes you can seal off your sight as well. Give it a try.”
She closed her eyes, and relaxed with a sigh. “Oh, that’s much better. Thank you, Sakura.”
I kissed her forehead, and swept her off her feet bridal style. She giggled, and threw her arms around my neck as I carried her down the path to my garden.