AN: Note that I do not own Naruto, Naruto Shippuden, or any of the characters from either Anime. This work is a fanfiction written out of my love for the series and not in any attempt to make a profit.

Proofread by: Author and Kyluxia

And so, we are back for the continued mystery of chakra and mindscapes.

Chapter 8: Mind, Consumed

Having grabbed the first edible piece of food they could find, and then having downed a few glasses worth of water in the kitchen; Sakura took a moment to just breathe, not thinking about anything, before dragging herself back to bed as she felt their fatigue overtake them.

"Seems your tour will have to wait," Sakura told Heikō, only for her sister to remind her that she could do it while they were asleep anyway.

They fell asleep as soon as their head hit the pillow. Whatever their chakra had accomplished, had left them exhausted.

Returning to their mindscape was odd. After having spent so much time familiarizing themselves with their previous mindscape, finding a new one in its place was disorienting.

Unlike how they had first found themselves in a black void, the entrance into their new mindscape was now a stone platform, decorated with faint seals, barely visible in the faint light, as darkness seemed to stretch in all directions.

"What… what is this supposed to be?" Sakura asked, looking around in confusion.

"Our first line of defense, I think." Heikō offered, before she walked over to the edge of the circular stone platform, and looked down, revealing their platform to actually be the top of a pillar.

"Okay… why is it stopping us?" Sakura asked, having deduced that they were being kept out of their own mindscape, with no clear way to go deeper. Their only option, seemingly, being to either jump down, into the unknown, or leave the mindscape altogether.

"Perhaps, because we're a danger to ourselves? I mean, we have been taking advantage of our own head for quite some time. Letting our chakra out of its cage seems our own chakra doesn't agree with that." Heikō reasoned, sighing, before she reached down over the edge, patting the side of the pillar, before frowning.

"We can't use chakra to walk down. There are seals here as well, and they seem to repel chakra." She informed Sakura, who looked down at the seals below her feet.

"Are the ones here at the top the same?" She asked, looking back at Heikō, expecting an answer, only to frown as Heikō didn't respond. "Heikō?" She asked, worrying something was wrong and was about to walk over to her twin, only to stop as and stare as Heikō let out a whoop of excitement and triumph.

"Yes, got it!" Heikō cheered, as the sound of stone grinding against stone could be heard, seemingly originating from below, Heikō stood up and smirked at Sakura before she shook her head. "No, the seals here at the top are different, but they do repel chakra as well," Heikō warned.

"What did you do?" Sakura asked, raising her voice slightly, as to be heard over the constant sound of shifting stone.

"I found a mechanism that will let us get down safely, I hope," Heikō answered Sakura, and pointed towards the edge where she had been leaning over.

"I… how is this even possible? How can the will of our chakra create things like this, using seals we don't even know about? Will these even work in real life?" Sakura asked, gesturing to the seamless array of seals covering the top of the stone pillar. Heikō merely shrugged.

"You're overthinking things again. For all we know, the seals are nothing but decoration, something to give the illusion of cause and effect. It makes us wary, and tipped us off to not try and walk down the pillar using chakra, didn't it? It's a clue, nothing more. Although, if these scribbles can actually do something, then I imagine chakra provided the blueprint. Just how snowflakes form six-sided shapes, there are natural formations for seals. If chakra flows a certain way, it causes certain effects. I imagine this would be the natural array for forming whatever effect is required here." Heikō reasoned, convincing Sakura who nodded in understanding.

"Right, right. That makes sense. Natural seals are likely how Fūinjutsu came to be, isn't it? Someone found a place where chakra formed in a certain way, causing some unique effect, and with some experimentation, they found the cause and effect, before expanding on it. It's a bit ironic that our chakra can use Fūinjutsu better than us… provided this array actually works. It looks like an actual array at least." Sakura admitted, inspecting the way the lines, waves, shapes, and squiggles seemed to almost form kanji in certain spots, almost as if by happenstance. She could identify many places where she would have done things differently, corrections that were based on what she had seen in books, before blinking, as the array shifted before her eyes, applying the corrections.

"D-did you just see what I saw?" Sakura asked, looking up towards Heikō, only to realize that her twin was gone, the light tapping of footsteps suggesting she was walking somewhere nearby. Rushing over to the edge, she saw Heikō walking down a spiral staircase that circled the pillar, seemingly having formed from parts of the smooth stone pillar, having moved outwards to form the steps. The sound of shifting stone was still there, although it seemed farther away than it had been previously.

"Hey, Heikō! I think I found something, get back up here!" Sakura demanded, a little annoyed that her sister had just decided to wander off to explore on her own, in the middle of a conversation with her.

"Really? Alright, I'll come back in a bit." Heikō promised, annoying Sakura slightly. Deciding to be productive while she waited for Heikō to return, she walked back to the array, looking down at it, and began applying corrections to it again.

As she worked, Sakura felt the array coming together, slowly revealing the mess to be two overlapping arrays, rather than a single, complete one. Comparing them to each other, as well as to the seals on the side of the pillar, she concluded that the array, without a need for corrections, likely had the same purpose as the rest of the active seals, repelling chakra.

As for the other array, Sakura couldn't tell. While she could correct and complete the patterns in the array, she had little to no idea what all of the components were actually meant to accomplish once complete. While she recognized the errors in them, it was merely because of the explanations Jiraiya had offered every time he had corrected them in their calligraphy, explaining rules, and more importantly, why those rules existed. Something that Sakura was sure what set a competent, and incompetent teacher apart. Understanding why something worked, made it a lot easier to learn it, rather than just remember it as another piece of information to regurgitate when asked about.

It was one of the things the twins had realized they disliked about the Kunoichi classes in hindsight. They had been taught how to pick and arrange flowers, as well as the names and properties of said flowers, but they had never been told outright as to why. A huge oversight in their opinion, as the answer had only been provided to them long after they had already graduated from the Academy, by Jiraiya of all people.

Believe it or not, those particular lessons had once been part of the regular curriculum, meant for both genders, split into other lessons. Identifying plants, not just flowers had been part of what was taught during survival classes, and the flower arrangement was a skill taught to those training to become infiltrators. Allowing them to pass on messages using flowers, body language, and subtle cues strengthened using codes. It made Sakura angry just thinking about it since, while this was still taught at the Academy, it had been made nearly useless, as it had been taught to them in a way that made them unfit to really rely on or use the information properly. It made her glad to know that Jiraiya had been equally annoyed when he realized how horribly the lessons in the Academy had degraded from his time there, although as he had explained, it was all because of the civilian influence, most likely. At least now, they, along with Naruto, would get some proper Shinobi training under Jiraiya at least.

While Sakura busied herself, thinking about the unfortunate state of Konohagakure Ninja Academy, and fixing the sealing array at the top of the pillar, Heikō was exploring the staircase leading down the side of the pillar. Not too far from the top, just barely out of sight of the top, actually, Heikō had found a door leading inside of the pillar.

She didn't know what she had expected, but upon opening the door, she had ended up disappointed, as all it had revealed, was what could only be described as a guest-room.

It had a single, working electrical light, with the light switch by the door, a bed, a desk, and a chair. There was also a dresser and a full-body mirror, as well as an empty shelf. At the end of the bed, was a chest, and nothing more. All in all, it was a boring, very bare room, which Heikō assumed was some kind of rest stop of some kind. An odd thing to find, in what was essentially the new entry point in their mind, although she supposed it spoke to their character that even to an invader in their mind, there was a room for the intruder to retreat to, and relax or recover in if they ever needed it.

Amused, Heikō left the room and went back to the top, intending to bring Sakura with her to explore where the rest of the staircase led. However, upon reaching the top of the stairs, she was greeted to an odd, and worrying sight of Sakura muttering to herself, while the array beneath her feet wriggled and changed. Also, Sakura didn't seem to have noticed the faint script on the stone had begun working its way up her skin, slowly but surely coloring her skin with slightly darker pigments, making it look as if the sealing script was crawling up her body underneath a layer of skin, barely perceptible.

"Um, Sakura?" Heikō asked in concern, only to truly panic, as Sakura looked up at her, her eyes no longer green, but yellow, and filled with more sealing script, dancing on the irises, surrounding the pupil. For the first time, in a long time, Heikō felt out of her depth. Sakura seemed almost possessed, and Heikō had no answer as to what was going on. She doubted their own mind and chakra would harm them, but this… this was beyond worrying. Yet, she couldn't stop it. If she tried, it was possible that all she'd accomplish would be causing more harm to both of them. Sakura hadn't even stopped her muttering, and listening to it, Heikō couldn't even recognize what she was saying.

Carefully, Heikō walked over to Sakura, before eventually getting close enough to touch her, and brought her in for a hug, doing her best to ignore the scary thoughts of what might be happening, and instead decided to trust both Sakura and their own body with this. Still, she couldn't help but shiver as she saw the script crawling up Sakura's neck, coiling around it before continuing up her head. Sakura's muttering began to speed up, going faster and faster, until Heikō was left wondering how she even managed to properly produce the unknown words without stumbling over her tongue.

Finally, as if hitting some sort of crescendo, Sakura stopped, and the sealing script both on her body and on the pillar suddenly erupted in light, before Heikō found herself holding onto thin air, making her stumble and look around in a panic, only to find Sakura missing. The sealing array on the ground was back to the way it had been when they had first arrived there.

The only thing that kept her from going into hysterics, and rampaging through the barriers of their mind in a hunt for any sign of Sakura, was the sense of relief, understanding, and concern for her, that Heikō felt from Sakura following her disappearance. As well as the following reassurance through their connection that she was fine.

Looking down at the sealing array that was to blame, she knew what she had to do, despite how unnerving it was.

AN: Well, a bit of an unexpected twist, isn't it? Now, what will come next?