Gaara's Mindscape


She was sleeping so comfortably, in such soft sand…

Wait...Sand?

Blinking sand rapidly out of her eyes and pushing herself up, Sakura woke up in the middle of a desert, in the middle of nowhere.

"What the...? How did I get here?" She wondered aloud, rolling over to get up, only to roll over something as uneven and hard as rocks, like stepping on lego blocks. "Oof!" Pushing herself up and kicking the offending obstructions out of the way, she didn't see what it was at first due to all the sand.

Until she saw what it was.

Bones. An entire skeleton, in pieces of Sunagakure garbs and rags. "EEH!?" Sakura jumped out of the way of that, brushing the sand rapidly off her clothes. That was creepy.

No…

Sakura looked around herself, and saw piles upon piles of dead bodies; some of them fresh corpses, but many of them were bones and ashes.

This desert was something between a battlefield's aftermath, and a massive grave.

She looked onwards to the desert's horizon, and saw before her an endless expanse of Horizon.

"There you are, Forehead."

"Inner?" Sakura tried to peek inside her own mind.

"Over here."

She felt a tap at her shoulder, and turned around, only to see a very static Inner Sakura standing next to her. Inner Sakura was completely black, with white outlines akin to chalk lining her edges. She looked like a static illusion in this place, but she was solid. Sakura glanced at Inner Sakura's feet and saw the sand indented underneath Inner's feet.

"The fact that I can feel you, and see you, you means that we're not in the real world," Sakura concluded. "I mean, it would be weird to physically teleport from my house to the middle of a desert. So...we're inside Gaara's mind. Although, I...had completely forgotten that you can enter other people's minds too; you didn't have to follow me in here. Wait, then who's taking care of my real body?"

Inner Sakura actually looked embarrassed. "Well, your real body's sleeping beside Gaara, your attempted murderer. Awesome, right? No— stupid forehead, don't try to punch yourself awake! If you do, if you leave this realm right now, he's going to transform into a Bijuu again. We need to put a stop to the whole thing first!"

Sakura paused mid-motion from punching her own face. "Right. So how do you suppose we go about stopping a boy from turning into a Tailed Beast, while we're inside his own mind?"

"Oh I don't know...Kill it?"

Sakura's eyebrows raised. "K-Kill it?! Kill a tailed beast, within Gaara's mind? Uhh….. Inner… I knew you were crazy but I didn't know you were this crazy."

"Sakura, I'm you; you're calling yourself crazy."

"First of all, that's impossible; how are we going to do that? Even if we worked together, that's an entire Tailed Beast we're talking about. We're not strong enough to kill it.

"Supposing the One Tail is similar-sized, and just as powerful, as the Nine Tails inside Naruto... we already know how big and powerful the Nine Tails is… We met Kurama once. So how are we going to kill it?

"And don't let us get carried away thinking about whether we could, that we forget to consider whether we should. What's going to happen when we kill it? Will Gaara be okay?"

"Gaara will most definitely be okay!" Inner blurted out, as though waiting for this moment. "Think of tailed beasts as a creature living inside your mind! If you kill it, that doesn't mean you die. You just freed up extra rental space!" Inner Sakura grinned widely, bloodthirsty. "We might even be doing Gaara a service. He's having trouble controlling the Bijuu, right? I mean, no person just transforms into his Bijuu form while he's asleep; Naruto never did. So we're basically doing him a favor if we kill it. Who knows, he might even have extra chakra to spare, to use, if the Bijuu chakra form is, you know, dead."

"I can't believe it. You're— I'm—we're actually, planning killing the One Tails, while inside Gaara's mind. Kami, are we insane?" Sakura gulped and shook her head. "Inner, have you any compassion? To suggest to kill a creature inside Gaara's head...imagine if someone suggested to kill you, who's inside my head?"

"That's a totally different scenario!" Inner Sakura reacted strongly. "The One Tails is a Demon, I am an Angel."

Sure, Inner, sure, Sakura thought sarcastically.

"Hey! I heard that!"

But now that they realized this, they knew they had to go after Gaara's Bijuu. Even if not to kill it, they had to suppress it and keep it permanently suppressed somehow, because… if they didn't do that, Gaara would transform into a full-blown Bijuu, give away his entire position.

And the entire village would be after him, seal him up, and take him to Torture & Interrogation.

There, they would treat Gaara worse than they treated Temari and Kankuro, considering his status. They would probably amputate his arms, and legs, and keep him inside a box. Unconscious and fed by IV drips.

These horrible visions flashed through her mind, as Sakura and Inner Sakura walked across the desert field, past the countless corpses littered around the desert.

"He might even deserve it, you know," Inner sang aloud, while walking alongside Sakura, in an aimless direction. (They didn't know where they were on the map, or mindmap.) As they walked, they passed by several dozen different skeletons, skulls, and bones, scattered here and there, buried within the sand. There were probably hundreds, if not thousands, of bones in this desert. "These skeletons, bones, and human corpses… Do you know why they're lying all scattered across Gaara's mindscape? And why our mindscape doesn't have these dead bones?"

"Why?" She felt she already knew the answer to that. "Are all these people the people Gaara's killed in the real world? But we've killed before, and dead bodies don't show up in our minds. I don't think that's normal."

"We've killed...once… It was during our first mission to Wave. When you were walking past a puddle, and wanted to test your fireball, so you blew it onto the puddle. Next thing we see, two corpses show up, stinking and ashen! With Naruto poking one of them, about to throw up. That was your one and only time you committed murder...accidentally.

"But there's a difference. You don't obsess over the enemies you've killed. In fact, I think that it takes more than just obsession to add corpses to your mindscape. Everything in a mindscape has a purpose, it's a significant part of you. What was it that Gaara said, when he was attacking you?"

Sakura recalled the memory:

"A monster, like me?" He flashed his teeth, as though excited at the prospect. "A monster, full of power, like me, absolutely worth it to kill. Your death will be a delicious, bloody victory, to prove and sate my hunger and purpose in life."

She shuddered at the flashback.

"Yup. He obsessed over these people, and killed them. Gaara isn't an angel, sweetie. He's a 12-year-old mass-murderer. Now you understand why he keeps killing people in the real world, why he tried to kill you. It's to add onto his sick corpse collection in his mindscape.

"He thinks that's his purpose in life. To kill everyone, until there's no one left to bully him in the real world, because everyone's 'migrated' into his mindscape, where they all leave him alone because they're dead.

"Although technically, it's all a figment of his imagination. People in the real world are dead-dead, and these corpses here are just his permanent imagined fixtures of them."

"God, we're dealing with a nutcase worse than us. I need to tell Gaara that these corpses aren't the real deal."

"I think he already knows...He just doesn't care." Inner said, testing her limbs experimentally. She halted. "Come to think of it, forget just killing the Bijuu. We should kill Gaara too. Otherwise, you'll end up dead soon enough, with a model of yourself being one of these corpses, buried in the sand here. It's been Gaara conducting all the murders, not the Bijuu which we don't even know how much he influences. He's just as bad, if not worse. For example, if A tells B to kill someone, and B does it, they're both bad." She continued walking.

"You're telling me to kill Gaara; if I follow through, that means we're both bad."

"Not what I meant. But yeah, we should consider fighting both of them. It was Gaara after you in the real world after all. How about this— when we encounter them— you take on Gaara, and I'll take on the One-Tails. I don't know if I'll be strong enough, though, so...." Inner Sakura furrowed her white eyebrows. "Listen carefully, Sakura. If things get bad for both of us, we BOTH need to LEAVE the mindscape. Do not leave one of us behind. I don't know what would happen if that happened."

"How do we leave?"

"Just do the Mind Transfer Release Jutsu."

"Okay."

"Yup. That's our way out. Although, if we get out without finishing the job, that means Gaara is fucked, after Konoha gets fucked. So you'd better beat Gaara in here, just as you did in the real world, Sakura. Once you did, help me beat the Bijuu.

"By the way, this Desert Mindscape is awfully long because the Bijuu isn't caged, unlike Kurama inside Naruto's mindscape. Annnd there's endless sand, which is Gaara's specialty. So good luck, Sakura, you'll need it."

"In other words, I'm fucked." Sakura concluded, heart thumping. Part of her wanted to backtrack, to get out of here. But instead, she reached out her hand to Inner Sakura.

Inner Sakura grabbed her hand, and held it, squeezed it, reassuringly. Inner nodded solemnly to Sakura. "We'll kick their asses."

Sakura nodded, and they continued across the acrid desert. It was sunny and scorching hot, but there was no sun in the cloudless, bright, blue sky, only the hot wind blowing at them.



"Maa...this wasteland, graveyard desert is just as bad as Naruto's cellar. Why is everyone's mindscape so unfulfilling?"

"You're one to talk; yours is all black."

"You mean ours."



"Hey Inner, in the worst case scenario...If I die… you should take over my body, okay?"

"Hah, don't speak of such horrible things. You won't die, I won't let you die. However, if I die, you should return to your body, and just...move on with your life."

"Not an option," Sakura furrowed her brows. She grabbed Inner Sakura's hand and held it tightly, pale skin against black skin. "Neither of us will die. We want to see Obito-kun again in the future, yeah?"

"YES! He said he'd come get us someday. Let's do it!" It was a weird thing to live for, but that did it. It was Obito that made her personality so brave, and admittedly reckless enough to end up in this situation, to begin with.


—-


BANG. BANG. BOOM. KA-BOOM.

Large, whirling dust clouds of sand flew across the horizon, and flew past Sakura, who tried to block the sand from entering her eyes with an arm.

Then she realized she didn't need to do that. She had Obito's orange goggles in front of her face. She lowered her arm, and squinted through the orange goggles, through the sands, into the distance.

(Inner Sakura was unphased by the sand whirlwind, and kept marching forward.)

When the dust cloud cleared, they stopped before a surreal sight.

The Ichibi, humongous in size, was chasing a 6-year-old red-haired boy across the desert.

"There it is," Inner Sakura pointed at the two figures, 200 meters across the distance. "Wow, I didn't expect Gaara to only be six years old within his own mindscape. That explains a lot about his immature mentality," Inner Sakura shaded. "I've got a plan."

Sakura kept gaping at the little Gaara, in tears, running away from the hungry Ichibi. "It doesn't look like we have to fight Gaara; we might even be able to avoid fighting the Ichibi….unless we interfere. So what's your plan? We save the boy? Ugh, but how will that work inside a mindscape? We'd just be relocating him to a different part of his mind, and the Ichibi would follow us, or encounter him again once we leave. This isn't the real world."

"Patience, Forehead. Now that I've seen the situation before us, I realized there's a better way to go about this. We don't need to fight them head on. Although, I'd love to see you punch a Bijuu, it's probably dangerous to do this inside a mindscape— real world sure, but in here, we could damage Gaara's brain. Although, I'm starting to suspect it's already been damaged.

"Anyway, I'm going to begin writing a seal, on the desert floor, right here." Inner Sakura pointed at the spot on the ground between her legs. "And you are going to go over there," Inner pointed at the Ichibi and Gaara, "and lure the Ichibi over to the spot I'm standing on. Once the Ichibi reaches this spot, he will activate the Seal I create. That will Seal him in ropes that are made from my essence, and confine him from being able to move. The same ropes that I used to tie Ino up in your mindscape, back then, but at a much stronger level."

"I see," Sakura replied, feeling like a nerd again. "That's a great idea, Inner. But you can do more than that. Remember when I visited Naruto's mindscape and met Kurama? I had a good look at Kurama's cage, when I promised to free him someday, on the day that we end all world wars, on the condition that he helps Naruto willingly. Well, it's because I had a good look at Kurama's cage, that I remembered how the seal looks like…. The patterns and inscriptions behind the Fourth Hokage's seal, that created Kurama's cage and kept him locked inside. And you've been in my head, Inner, you know exactly how those formulas look. I want you, to rewrite those same seals from Naruto's belly, into your trap for the Ichibi. I know it won't be perfect, our skills aren't anywhere near the Yondaime Hokage's level, but… it's something that can keep him caged, so he won't harass Gaara until we figure out what to do with him. Because I know that something that powerful, a Bijuu, can break your ropes if he struggled."

"That's true, I do remember how Naruto's Kyuubi seal looks like, and I should be able to replicate it here. I remember that Gaara mentioned being told to commit murders by his "Mother," maybe his Mother is the Ichibi. In that case, it's time we put a muzzle on him. He's been running around Gaara's mind too freely, and that's how Gaara ended up like, well, Gaara, instead of like Naruto; not just because he didn't have any friends.

"Well, go on now." Inner Sakura stretched herself and smiled, "You're starting to understand how mindscape battles work. I see all that Fuuinjutsu and Genjutsu training paid off, too. I'm going to start writing now," Inner Sakura materialized herself a black paintbrush, out of nowhere, and crouched down on her knees, and started writing in the Sand. Black ink kept coming out of the paintbrush, as Inner Sakura focused completely on writing.

Meanwhile, Sakura turned toward the Ichibi and Gaara from the distance, and began walking toward them. She was going to lure them back into their trap.


-

To be continued, soon.

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Author Note: Since it's 2700 words, I decided to upload this chapter now, so you can get a head start reading, while I finish the rest of the chapter and upload that tomorrow. It'll be interesting. Thanks for reading and having patience: an entire chapter being inside of Gaara's mind. I really do appreciate your patience. Most people don't like it, but it had to be done.

Thanks so much and leave comments here! I enjoy feedback and reactions from readers. Thank you!

~Tobee