Sakura's Rinnegan, Chapter 3: Inner Sakura, the Oni
Pain.
Hot, searing pain that burned all her nerves.
The complete, pitch-black darkness, and the complete loss of thinking. She was dead to the world, her cries of pain hadn't once deterred his wrath. Unresponsive, thoroughly benumbed.
It hadn't been a year since her emergence. The act of verbalizing her thoughts, to express her agony, were out of her reach in every way.
However, she knew exactly what she was thinking. The workings of her thought process inside the marginally developed mind was far more progressive, and none of it was a coincidence. Even if only by visual imagery, she more or less understood.
She noticed that the man— and he was a very familiar figure, hated her. If he didn't, why did he beat her up? Why didn't he stop when she was crying?
Why did he punish her so much?
Sakura felt fear throughout all the pain. She wondered when all the pain would end— perhaps never?
Her heart and head clenched in agony. Her body and all her nerves felt like frying. Sakura tried to consider all the ways to suppress this endless pain, although, being upside-down and constantly taking beatings, Sakura found it quite difficult to focus her thoughts.
She needed either this man to stop, or someone to save her.
No.
She had to escape from it, but she didn't— how was she supposed to stop him?
She screamed into the void, head-splitting, ringing in her own ears. When she opened her eyes, all she could see was fresh salt water from her tears rolling up her forehead toward the ground above her line of vision.
Then, like magic, the pain was no more and it was... bliss. Each part of her muscles reenergized, all the damage being reversed, and a new energy flooded her very being, strengthened, restored her to the hilt.
Apparently, someone had come to a rescue. To patch her up, healing her altogether.
She found peace.
Abruptly, the gnawing fear came back to life. Despite how much she wanted to relish and enjoy it, she was terrified to get too complacent.
What if it happened again?
She focused as much as possible on the pleasant feeling the woman gave her. She could feel this foreign force of energy hitting certain parts of her body, the way her bones melded together, and how her cells regenerated.
When the woman removed her hands, Sakura let out a small sob.
Immediately, Danzo lifted her upside down by her foot again, and the beatings resumed.
She felt betrayed. She hadn't been able to learn anything. She tried her best to mimic the woman's work, but all she could feel was the frightfully familiar form of torture forced upon her.
The process repeated ten times, and ten times she felt like she learned absolutely nothing about that... soothing to the very core, gentle strength.
At the dozenth or twentieth or hundredth time— she failed to keep count— she blacked out.
The complete, pitch-black darkness, and the complete loss of thinking that she thought she had before?
That was her state now.
鬼 おに
Sakura woke up in a place she had never seen before.
A land where the existence of light was no more. She was completely deprived of sight. With the lack of noise, even the energy of life was utterly absent. It appeared as if she was hanging in the middle of outer space without stars.
Panicking, she reached her hands outward, only to notice her chubby hands were there in front of her. She peered down, and there was a glow from her tiny figure.
She made an attempt to walk. She noticed she was strolling across an invisible, seemingly pitch-dark surface. The flooring felt smooth, as though it was made of glass.
She jumped experimentally.
The inexistence of sound greeted her.
She heard her own screech, and was slightly relieved. Although, she was still scared— did this mean she was stuck inside this endless expanse of darkness forever?
She felt extremely lonely, and she yearned for those beatings back.
There was nothing except for herself.
She stumbled and ran forward, far, far, and far. She— she could move on her own?
After hours of running, there was a growl from her stomach, which startled her. She halted her steps, clutching her stomach. It felt empty, and even her mind was hungry—
Her mind?
It was her mind, a place where she could mentally retreat to, and a place where she could escape. This was all in her head, which meant she could wake up from it. The outside world was far more better, it felt greater than being trapped in a void. She could take the pain, she preferred it even.
She expected to snap out of it, to wake up from this empty space.
Sakura had had dreams before, and knew how to wake up from them. It was by doing an extremely harsh action, to force her body forward as she was living through her dream. That tended to jolt her awake, back into reality.
This one... it felt authentic. So much that it was essentially real— and she could treat this mindscape she's hiding in like a dream to get out now. All she had to do—
(A part of her wondered if simply hurting herself would work, since she got so accustomed to pain.)
She jumped forward, hitting the ground with a silent thump. She rolled onto her knees, smacking the ground repeatedly, attempting to shatter the glass in order to fall through.
She gasped, staring at the surface which was beginning to crack under the force of her small hands.
She slammed it furiously until her hands bled. She kept striking the ground until it broke through— and it shattered. She wasn't prepared for the outcome, screaming in fear as she fell through.
Whoosh.
She felt herself falling for a few minutes, but nothing in her vision had changed, only what she was physically feeling.
The gravity pulling her downwards; the free-falling.
She began to fret, questioning whether this was going to last forever, as she was beginning to regret it.
Just when she started to bear doubts, she saw— she wasn't able to decipher it.
Sakura was falling through a galaxy.
Surrounding her were colorful stars, of various distances, in an endless expanse of space. But due to the sheer distances of the stars, being light-years away, she was falling slowly relative to the stars.
Though unfamiliar with the view, she's capable of admiring the sights.
She shook her legs and tried to propel herself, to fly toward that random sparkle, because unlike the utter darkness that was all there was before, at least there was something now to travel towards.
As she struggled to figure out how to do that, to stop herself from going down, she found herself unable to. Suddenly, her eyes widened as she saw what she was being sucked into.
It was... her brows furrowed. It was massive, she was certain of it— and it was dark. It was a massive black hole in the middle of space.
!!!
Bizarrely, a smaller black hole emerged in front of her. A pale hand seemed to reach out of the smaller, black portal, and grabbed her.
She had a split second to consider whether to let it grab her and pull her into the black hole.
Realizing she didn't have any other options, that this was something different, she allowed it to.
The hand pulled her through the mini-black hole. That thing, that creature pulled through a black portal that was similar to a baby's waterslide, only galactic-themed and weird. That creature was flying, and she too was flying alongside it.
That creature was of the same size and stature as her, much paler clone of herself except with horns— and a part of her felt that she wasn't the original.
It popped out on the other side of the portal, and she landed on a white, rocky ground. That creature landed somewhere behind her.
Location-wise, they were standing on the moon's surface, a white moon. It could have been a different moon from the one that revolved Earth. The dust skies were dark and sprinkled with glittering stars.
"Don't leave me!" A feminine voice that sounded like a glitched music, came from behind her.
Surprised and fascinated, she turned around and peered at the creature.
It stared back at her.
She had never seen anything like it. It had pale skin, horns, and was the same height as her. Both of them looked older than they were supposed to.
She was only a few months old, but she was in a three-year-old body herself. One thing was for sure though, this creature was not her, past, present, or future.
The creature had horns that looked like a demon's, while she had none. It had two devil horns and one unicorn horn. Sickly, pale white skin that was tinted purple, while her skin was a darker ivory, human. Long, straight pink hair, while hers was short, still growing.
It had pure, unnatural and eerie-looking white eyes, as though it were an alien. Somehow more alien than her natural purple-with-black-rings eyes.
All in all, it didn't look like it was produced out of the human race. While it resembled Sakura, it was a messy caricature of her and was not her.
It parted its mouth, revealing teeth sharp like knives, and grinned at her, hungry white eyes eagerly staring at her while its white teeth remained bared.
As if it wanted to devour her.
She changed her assessment about it resembling a messier version of herself; it looked like an evil caricature of her. It was a monster.
She was standing on the surface of the moon with a pink haired monster— a monster who tried to imitate her.
(Was any of this a dream or had it become real? Was this even a dream in the first place?
That might've explained why the creature vaguely resembled herself. After all, what were the odds that another alien looked humanoid and similar to her? None so it had to be a dream or all in her head still.)
Sakura opened her mouth.
In her baby babbles, she gurgled, "You're a figment of my imagination, just like this entire...thing. You're just a part of this fake universe." She pointed at the little monster before pointing to herself. "You're a fake."
The creature gaped and looked offended. It retorted, in a glitched, anxious and desperate voice, "I'm not a figment of your imagination, I'm you! I'm your inner self!"
It paused and stared at her. It licked its lips.
Then, it tackled her and began biting at her skin, making her squawk.
"OWWW! You can't be me—" Sakura pushed the other creature, the girl with horns, off of her.
It came onto her again and they rolled rapidly around the moondust.
Fifteen minutes of roughhousing later, both of them grew bored and exhausted. Laying on their backs, looking up at the stars.
"You're right. I'm not you," The creature beside Sakura concessed, sounding glitchy and sad. "I'm still your inner self, but I'm an entirely separate entity living trapped inside of you. I'm an Oni. Just like the kind you hear in legends. Sometimes they're called yōkai, demons, or ogres. That's what I am. A monster. You're... you're a human."
Sakura turned her head to face it.
"Then..." She felt a pang of loneliness, and empathy toward the creature, despite their initial feud. "What's your name?"
"You can just call me... Oni." That was its vague reply, and Sakura sensed there were more to that. More about this creature, secrets and riddles it wasn't disclosing.
Oni continued. "I haven't met my human counterpart ever before. Let's be friends, forever."
Sakura hesitated.
'This is all wrong.' Was her conclusion. It wasn't the world she knew, and she had been trying to get out for— how many hours? Days? And how would one get out?
She couldn't stay here forever.
"How do I leave this place?" Sakura asked, gesturing at the universe surrounding them.
Oni grinned at her, white eyes ghastly and ghostly and curved with mirth, and seemed to read her mind. "No need to leave, Sakura-chan. We can explore planets and outer space forever!"
No.
Sakura rolled over and jumped onto her feet, pointing accusingly at Oni.
"NO!" She roared, curling her fists in the fabric of her shirt. "I know what you're trying to do. If I stay here, I'll die in the real world!" She didn't know that for sure, but that seemed logical. If her consciousness was focused in this realm, wherever this was, then that meant that there was nothing controlling her real body; her body must be asleep right now.
"My body—" She bit her bottom lip. "—will be in a coma. D-daddy would... kill—" She spilled out the term with terror. "—me, if I never wake up. W-what if he—" She couldn't finish her sentence. She may be a baby, but she could articulate her thoughts and worst fears in this realm, this mindscape, even if she was vocally incapable in the real world.
"Don't worry, Sakura-chan!" Oni cackled madly. "We can pause time! One million years in this universe would only be one second in the real world! One billion years. One trillion years! Spend one quadrillion years here in this realm with me, and I'll let you return to the real world for three seconds! After those three seconds, you can come back and repeat the cycle with me, together! We'll be friends forever. We'll outlive planets, stars, and galaxies, as they die and rebirth, and we'll still be here, we'll just watch."
Sakura stared at the creature like it was deranged: "...So you're not going to help me get out. I guess that leaves me with no choice." She raised her hands, wrapping them around her neck. "I'll kill myself and see if that gets me out." Sakura decided, squeezing it with solid determination.
"DON'T!" Oni grabbed her hands, and it began to plead. "Please—" And the strong grip made her uncomfortable. "—no, please... so I won't be alone anymore... please—" Its hands rested on her shoulder. "—stay."
Sakura stared at it silently.
That only seemed to enrage it.
"Why?" It demanded, full of tears and anger. "Why do you want to leave?! Your father—" It sneered, the title was uttered with absolute disgust. "—in the real world hates you! No one loves you on the other side. You only have yourself; you only have me. I'm the only one who cares about you!"
She couldn't bear it anymore. It was true that she had no allies, no friends. She only really knew Daddy, and as sick as it was, that was probably why she loved him.
(She had no other options.)
Mindlessly, she hugged Oni. Embracing her arms around the demon-like girl, she stroked its silky pink hair, so much more unnatural and magical than her own. The little alien was— a friend, an ally. "I won't leave you," She promised dearly.
"I'll take you with me, out there, when it's safe."
Oni sobbed into her shoulder, as she patted her back. There, there.
"I don't want to go out," Oni finally gathered its courage to say. "It's dangerous out there. Why not just stay in here?"
Sakura had been preparing her answer.
"I know you can't stretch infinity into one second, there's always a limit; that's why you even said a quadrillion in here for 3 seconds to pass in the real world. There's still three seconds that need to pass out there.
"What if those multitudes of 'three seconds' from my real body run out before our multi-trillion years are up?" She questioned its earlier logic, deciding to play along. "What happens if I die in the real world? Would I vanish from this universe, leaving you alone forever?"
Oni gulped. "...you would." it answered. "You cannot die in the real world. You must find immortality! I can't be alone again."
She nodded. "Just bear with it during the moments I'm gone. Wait...you're in my mind. Is it possible that you can just sit consciously in my mind's eye, and see what I see? You're me essentially."
"I can, with your permission." It gasped, as though realizing something. "Earlier, you said you won't leave me, and that you'd take me out there when it's safe. You meant this. Does that mean you care about me?"
She nodded. "I do." She took a step back and looked the Oni up and down. "Right now... Daddy is physically beating me up. It's not safe for you to share my eyes, senses and thoughts. Wait until afterwards."
"...I see," Oni allowed. Discreetly, it was stirred over the fact that Sakura cared. "Okay, Sakura-chan. I get it. So you need to achieve immortality, then you can spend true infinity with me. Otherwise, it's only a temporary amount of time, even if it's 100 quadrillion years. Infinity is an even longer period. I'll support you. And... regarding your father beating you," the Oni's eyes turned red. "Kill him before he kills you."
She gulped. She didn't think she would kill daddy, she... loved him.
"I'm sure there's no need for that," She replied, then put her hand over the Oni's shark mouth before it could protest. "If he beats me up again, I'll come hide here with you, and come out when it's over."
Oni pushed her hand off. "Don't let him beat you up anymore! Get stronger. Stronger! Defend yourself before he can lay a hand on you."
"Not learn that healing power that woman used to fix me?" Sakura wondered.
"No," Oni grimaced. "The answer isn't to just heal yourself after getting bruised. The answer is to not get hit in the first place. It's like with genjutsu; you won't have to break the genjutsu, if you simply don't get caught by one in the first place."
"Wh— what?"
"That's too advanced for you right now. You're still young. Start with the basics. When you return to the real world, just ask...Ask Danzo to hire tutors to teach you how to read and write. That's going to be the only way you can justify and explain away about how you're improving and learning so fast, without drawing suspicion; you were self-studying. When you come back here and I teach you anything, you tell Danzo you read about it in a book. Or figured it out yourself. He must not find out that I exist."
"Yes, Oni." Sakura said. "I'll do that right away. Can I get out now?"
Oni nodded. "The way you leave your mental plane is just to think, and focus hard on something in physical plane. Focus on something in 'reality.' Something that's a greater pull than this mental universe.
"It's just like in real life; if you're stuck in your head, you can distract yourself. So try it!"
Sakura felt a little confused, but decided to try what Oni suggested. She closed her eyes, and focused this time on what happened before she passed out.
She focused back into the dojo where she was getting beat up.
The scent of fresh milk and a baby bottle?
She focused on that new image that appeared.
When Sakura opened her eyes, she sees Danzo handing her a bottle of fresh milk.
Sakura smiled evilly, but kept her baby face, and accepted the milk bottle eagerly.
"Kill Minato!"
Oop.
"Thankchu papa!" Sakura said instead, and drank the milk.
Danzo hummed. "You're learning... since your body is too frail and small to train... you can't even walk... I will make my Root operatives teach you how to read and write."
Oni purred inside Sakura's mind. You didn't even need to ask.
Little Sakura gave a tight smile, and beamed up at Danzo. "Thank-chu dadda dandan."
In fact, Sakura would study hard, learning to speak, read, and write, over the next few months... with the Oni's photographic memory and existence to assist her.
In the future, Sakura would wonder whether or not the universe in her mental plane was modeled after the actual universe in the real world. She would wonder whether she could use it as a map; whether her mindscape was an actual model of the universe or whether she simply just had a big imagination. With no immediate way to find out about space, Sakura would consider getting into astrology and inventing a telescope to find the answer.
Summary of this chapter:
(This Inner Sakura Oni Fanart is Custom-Made for this RinneganSakura story, Sakura's Rinnegan. Art is by TinyDharla.)
Fun Fact / Trivia / Discord Chat:
tiny12/24/2020
It was in a school..I saw a girl around my age, and also that girl look sad because everyone happy with their family celebrate a graduation and then i came to her and sayin "let's celebrate it together"
So i came to her house, and the house looks so messy..like someone used black magic long time ago and killed her family in that house
And i said, why you ain't clean this mess?
And she said "I'm scared to touch something here"
So we just celebrate it with noodles and eat it there
The face and the figure of this girl is sooo clear, but in my real life i never seen this girl before
Note : i haven't watched any movie or anything this week that can trigger me to have this dream
Friend12/24/2020
If I remember correctly, your dreams pulls faces from people you've seen before, whether consciously or subconsciously
tiny12/24/2020
Hmmm probably
Me12/24/2020
Ommmg tiny it's because you drew this art for me.
Don't worry, it's just a story. You did a good thing helping that friend in the dream xD
tiny12/24/2020
Ahhh probably, that's the last story I've read hahahahhaha
(P.S. Want a discord ping whenever there's a new chapter? Join https://discord.gg/Aj2nVaJ )