Ino's original plan was to force her way into the imposter's mind and force them to break the henge surrounding them and giving them Sakura's appearance.
That proven she could wait for Shikamaru and Choji to restrain the body and then leave so that they could figure out what the hell was going on.
Of course, what she found as she shoved the controlling consciousness out of the front of the mind threw that plan out the window.
She didn't have all the secrets of the Yamanaka jutsu, and only usually caught glimpses of mindscapes, but she was trained in resisting mental attacks at least a little bit, and that meant that she could form a mindscape if it was needed.
When she pushed into Sakura's mind, she found such a chaotic mix of emotions and impulses that she was reflexively drawn into a mindscape.
At first it seemed the standard, featureless blank darkness most untrained minds held, but she quickly saw minute white lines starting to spread and branch out along the blank walls, and a brief look at one seemed to find white, reptilian scales that were slowly spreading outward and around.
And it felt unstable, really unstable...on the edge of collapsing.
But in the back of the mindscape she found the consciousness this space belonged to.
A familiar pink-haired girl with long hair that Ino had known for quite some years. Only now there was large white snake coiled around her, it's jaws clamped onto the back of her head, as if it was trying to swallow her up. Blood was flowing out of the inflicted wounds down Sakura's face and onto her shoulders as the rest of the snake wrapped about Sakura's form, though not all of the snake seemed to be there.
What was worse, Ino watched and it seemed as if, in some places, the snake and Sakura seemed almost to share the skin where it touched her.
A thrill of fear came over Ino for a moment, with this jutsu, what happened to the target would be reflected back at her. Even mental trauma to a small extent was reflected. She'd had a taste of that earlier when she'd experienced Ryoko's intense fear.
If she stayed here, then that snake would be coming around her next.
"You don't belong here!" "What's going on?"
Both statements were in Sakura's voice and Ino watched as another Sakura, a vague sort of outline of her form, stepped out of the first. This one wrapped up in more of the snake's coils, and standing like a giant in the mindscape.
The second Sakura rushed toward Ino and the blonde Shinobi pulled herself away from the attack, stubbornly holding on contact as the inner Sakura tried to overpower her.
Beyond just getting ejected, the inner Sakura had been...bonded with the snake more than the other had. Ino had little doubt that touching her or letting herself be touched would be a very bad thing.
At least the snake was tripping her up and keeping the second Sakura from easily keeping up with Ino.
"What the hell!" Ino shouted. "Sakura is that really you?"
"He did something to me!" "Get out of my head, Ino!"
"Me out of your head, what about the big snake thing eating your billboard head?" Ino demanded.
"Snake?"
That was something both Sakuras seemed to agree on.
Ino grimaced and tried to take in all the various things she had discovered since entering Sakura's mind.
First, it wasn't an imposter, it was Sakura. As crazy as it seemed, the psycho killer whose work they'd stumbled on was her old friend turned rival, Sakura.
Second, she had two spirits, a phenomena that the Yamanaka clan tried to keep quiet. Ino herself didn't know the particulars of how it happened or what it meant, she just knew that most people eventually grew out of it, the two spirits merging into one over time.
Third, Sakura's two spirits weren't thinking along the same thoughts, which meant they were diverging, which was bad for both Sakura and any Yamanaka that tried to get in her head. Such as Ino herself.
Fourth, Sakura had been massively screwed with, body and soul. Fifth, one of her spirits was...sort of aware of what was going on, the other had no clue.
And she wasn't trained for this sort of thing. At least not yet.
The best she could do was re-instance the push part of the mind-switch technique.
Or run away.
Inner Sakura tried to flank her again and Ino shifted around trying to aim a shot at where the coils of the snake stretched from one Sakura to the other.
She envisioned an open door in the back of Sakura's mindscape, gathered the chakra she'd carried with her and ducked under the inner Sakura's angry form to get in position and thrust forward with her own mind.
The snake, stretched between two spirits, and apparently heedless of the second, didn't have the sort of grip it would normally have on one soul, and that was probably the only way this worked at all.
The snake folded around where Ino's push slammed into it, ripping painfully away from both Sakuras and leaving bleeding patches where the snake and Sakura had started to become one.
Instantly, Ino envisioned slamming the door shut and locking it, leaving the snake swirling in the back behind the door she had created and pushing violently against it. Ino pushed herself against the barrier and pushed against it as she took in the two Sakuras.
One had fallen to her knees and was holding herself shivering. Parts of her were still snakish, mostly from those patches that had merged already, but the infection seemed...minimal for the moment.
The other was stalking toward Ino now, cracking her knuckles. She looked a lot more snakish than the other Sakura, but also a lot more pained by Ino's shoving of the snake in the back.
Here lay the problem with the mind switch jutsu against something holding two spirits. Ino could only deal with one spirit at a time.
"Hey!" Ino said. "You push me out now, and this snake gets out."
She jabbed a thumb back of her shoulder toward the barrier behind her.
"Stop trying to pull that," Inner Sakura said. "You don't belong here."
"If I was trying to pull anything," Ino said. "I'd have pushed you in the back, not some imaginary snake."
The inner Sakura considered what she said briefly.
"Fine, hold it there and stay out of my way," Sakura demanded.
The vague spirit started to shift forward toward conscious control and Ino reacted quickly.
"Hey!" she shouted. "When I leave, the door leaves too! If I'm back here keeping the door closed, then I'm getting tired quicker and I'll have to lead."
"I have to get away from you and your team." "I have to destroy those that want to hurt me."
Okay, they were back to speaking two different statements in tandem again.
"Hold the door closed, and I'll take care of your body," Ino promised, eyeing the area of the Mindscape as it started to rumble around her. "I swear on my love for Sasuke-kun that I won't let anything happen to you."
"I can't trust myself." "You better not pull anything."
The inner Sakura stepped forward to lean against the door and Ino cautiously darted around her to move toward the Sakura whom Ino was more familiar with.
While the Sakura against the door was acting stronger and more sure of itself, it was bleeding more than this one was, and looked more...tainted by the snake. But this more normal Sakura was shaking heavier and acting more wounded.
"I killed all those people," both Sakuras noted.
"I didn't have to kill some of them." "Think about that before you betray me."
Ino was getting headaches trying to sort out the discordant emotions and ideas as she beant next to the more colorful Sakura.
"Don't worry about it," Ino said trying to keep Sakura's attention. "My Dad can fix it."
She hoped so at least.
"Can he?" "I don't want it fixed."
Shikamaru stared as Sakura's eyes finally opened after ten minutes. He was thankful that the pink-haired girl hadn't been trying to resist, or else he would have run out of chakra a long time before.
The green, slitted eyes underneath the purplish marks under her eyebrows.
"I've got it, Shikamaru," the girl said. "But we have a problem."
"'It'?" Shikamaru repeated. "That is Sakura then?"
"Yeah, she's got some sort of...snake...thing in here trying to eat her mind," Ino said. "I've got it locked away for now, but I can't leave or it gets out and..."
"And psycho Sakura," Shikamaru said, shaking his head.
"Are you all right in there?" Choji asked nervously.
"Not particularly," Ino said, thinking about how fragile the mindscape had seemed.
"Okay," Shikamaru said. "This is what we do, we've got the scrolls we need, so we can get into the tower. We get there and tell whoever is waiting for us to grab help. Get your Dad to come and take over for you or something."
A new figure jumped down between them and stood above the pink-haired form Ino was currently inhabiting. The three looked up to see the proctor that had given them the instructions on this segment of the test.
"Good plan," Anko said. "I've got something a bit more immediate in mind, though."
She bent down to look into Sakura's eyes, with Ino looking out from them. The woman frowned as she took in the features that had already changed on the pink-haired student.
Orochimaru had found a new jutsu it seemed. The special jonin frowned and wondered how many people had died before this one was perfected.
Or if it even was perfected.
"By the way?" Ino asked. "Who scratched up Sakura's back while I was in there? It hurts like hell."
"Your back's bleeding some too," Choji noted. "Think it was an already there injury."
Anko frowned and moved around behind Sakura's body.
"Let me check something," she said, starting to pull the edge of the pink-haired girl's shirt up, and immediately pulling it down as she caught sight of a few characters virtually carved into Sakura's back.
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(Posted Sun, 12 Sep 2010 10:49)
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