The white-robed figures of the Ten Puppets of Chikamatsu stood in a tight defensive circle, their wooden joints clicking as Chiyo directed her chakra threads. Above them, Sasori's army of one hundred hovered in the open air, a mass of red cloaks.
"Let's see how your defense holds up, Grandmother," Sasori said, his voice somewhat playful in a psychotic kind of way.
With a sharp snap of his wrists, the hundred puppets bared hidden mechanisms from their wooden limbs. Projectiles, poisoned senbon, and kunai shot out of their frames in a unified click.
A split second later, the sky showered steel. A massive weapon shower poured down from the upper reaches of the hideout, targeting the small circle below.
Chiyo didn't flinch. Her fingertips moved in a rapid blur, snapping her threads to lift three of her white puppets upward. They locked together, spinning their mechanisms to create a rotating shield of steel that intercepted the center of the volley, sending sparks and deflected blades flying across the cavern.
Sakura remained planted behind her, using her shockwaves to blast away any stray kunai and needles that evaded Chiyo's defensive barrier.
As the weapon shower ceased, Sasori dropped his arms, sending his army plunging in a coordinated descent. The one hundred puppets swarmed from all angles, baring blades and cables as they closed the distance to overwhelm the small defensive circle.
Chiyo readjusted her stance, her fingers shifting to command the remaining seven white puppets. They jumped forward to meet the charging horde. Two puppets wielded massive broadswords, hacking through limbs and snapping chakra threads, while another pair deployed hidden chain links to trip and trap multiple attackers at once.
Despite the efficiency of the Chikamatsu collection, Sasori's numbers began to squeeze the battlefield. For every red-cloaked attacker smashed to pieces, two more dropped from the air to fill the gap. The pressure grew, forcing Chiyo's line backward.
A squad of three red puppets managed to slip through an opening on the left flank, their poison-tipped blades aimed directly at Chiyo's blind spot. Sakura tracked them instantly. She drove a heavy punch into the air. The shockwave smashed into the trio mid-stride, shattering their wooden bodies into splinters and blowing the debris clear of Chiyo.
Sasori's eyes shifted to Sakura, viewing her as an extreme annoyance, yet he remained highly wary of her strength. He unhinged his jaw, exposing a mechanical pipe concealed within his mouth. With a sharp exhale, he released a thick, pressurized stream of purple poison fog directly at her, blanketing the center of the defensive ring in a toxic cloud.
"Sakura! Get out of there! Don't breathe it in!" Chiyo yelled in shock, trying to clear a path for the younger kunoichi to escape.
The dense purple smog completely enveloped Sakura, obscuring her from view.
Inside the cloud, Sakura remained perfectly calm. Thanks to the rigorous conditioning of the Seven Heavenly Breaths under Kakashi's tutelage, her body reacted instantly. She locked down her respiratory system, recycling her current oxygen supply while using precise chakra control to drop her heart rate. The lethal vapor swirled uselessly against her skin.
Instead of panicking, Sakura saw an opportunity. The thick shroud hid her movements entirely from Sasori's view, giving her a sudden, invisible advantage. She focused her senses on the clicks and whirs of the mechanical forces surrounding the cloud.
Moving with quiet efficiency inside the haze, she extended her hands and pointed her fingers toward the closest threats. Channeling sharp, highly concentrated bursts of chakra out of her fingertips, she launched a sequence of miniature Finger Pistol shockwaves. The invisible, pressurized air penetrated the fog, targeting the exact wooden joints and hinges of the combatants nearest to her. One by one, the mechanisms snapped, and their chakra threads were severed in complete silence.
Only after nearly ten of Sasori's vanguard puppets suddenly went limp and slumped to the floor did Sakura decide to end the ruse.
Planting her feet, she punched straight up into the air. The massive kinetic shockwave generated by her fist swept the remaining toxic fog upward, carrying the entire purple cloud out through the open top of the hideout. The air cleared instantly, revealing her standing in the same spot, completely unharmed.
Sasori stared down from his pillar, his indifferent expression twisting into genuine irritation as his eyes drifted from the undamaged girl to his newly broken creations. The gas had shrouded her completely, yet she hadn't shown a single symptom of cell destruction or paralysis.
"Impressed, Sasori?" Chiyo called out, a confident smirk returning to her face as she gestured with her chakra threads. "You'll find that this kunoichi is nothing to mess with."
"A temporary trick," Sasori muttered, his fingers twitching sharply. "If she doesn't want to breathe it in, I'll force it directly into her bloodstream."
With a flick of his wrists, twenty of his descending red-cloaked puppets pivoted in mid-air. They abandoned Chiyo's defensive ring entirely, locked their sights onto Sakura, and launched a coordinated diving strike, poison-coated blades and hidden spears angled straight downward.
Sasori watched from his pillar, expecting another predictable shockwave from a girl he viewed as just a brute-strength brawler. But his eyes widened when her hands suddenly blurred through three rapid hand seals, completing the signs with fluid precision before the diving puppets could reach her.
'Earth Style: Earth Dragon Bullet.'
A massive dragon made of mud and stone ripped out of the cavern floor, unhinging its jaws to launch a rapid stream of heavy mud projectiles upward. But Sakura did not pause. In perfect synchronization with the rising dragon, her hands blurred through a fresh sequence of seals as she took a deep breath, instantly unleashing the Phoenix Flower Jutsu.
The two techniques combined. A dozen small, spinning fireballs launched from her mouth and perfectly enveloped each rising mud projectile. The molten, flaming stone spheres tracked the remaining scattered puppets mid-air, slamming into them.
The superheated mud and flames instantly engulfed the wooden frames, burning and reducing the falling remnants to ashes before they could ever touch the ground.
Sasori stared at the falling ashes in complete silence. First, she had acted as a shield, neutralizing every attack aimed at Chiyo. Now, she had wiped out twenty of his masterpieces with high-level ninjutsu.
His calculations were ruined. His eyes remained perfectly blank, but the cold monotone of his voice carried an icy, dangerous weight.
"You are an incredibly tedious brat," Sasori muttered.
Dropping all strategic patience, he unleashed everything at once. With a dull click of his threads, he commanded his remaining puppets to swarm her, simultaneously activating his own flamethrowers, poisoned blades, and cables to turn the cave into a massive kill zone.
Before the barrage could hit, Sakura vanished.
Bypassing the wall of fire and steel, she caught Sasori completely off guard. Focused entirely on his massive assault, he left his own position open. Before he could react, Sakura materialized right beside him on top of the stone pillar.
Her fist was already packed with concentrated chakra. She drove her punch straight into his torso.
The kinetic force exploded on contact. The impact shattered Sasori's puppet body into a mess of splinters and gears, instantly dropping his entire army into paralysis.
Sakura turned away from the pile of splinters, lowering her stance as she assumed the fight was over.
Behind her, Sasori's cylindrical heart core slid silently out of the wreckage. Suspended by a single chakra thread, the core zipped across the stone floor and locked itself into the chest compartment of a nearby, still workable puppet. The puppet immediately snapped to life, snatched a blade from the floor, and lunged.
Before Chiyo could finish shouting a warning, the blade pierced straight through Sakura's back, the metal tip erupting out of the center of her chest.
Sakura's eyes widened in genuine surprise, coughing slightly as she looked down at the blade. She had no idea his vital core existed, let alone that it could switch bodies.
Chiyo, Naruto, Neji, and Karin froze in absolute horror, their breath catching as they prepared for her to collapse.
But Sakura didn't fall. With her forehead seal already fully active, the immense pool of chakra constantly coursing through her body responded to the damage instantly. The automated regeneration closed the tissues around her vital organs, neutralizing the fatal wound the exact second the steel pierced her. Under the completely stunned gazes of her comrades, her expression hardened from surprise to pure annoyance.
Reaching down with a steady hand, Sakura gripped the half of the blade protruding from her chest. With a sharp twist of her wrist, she snapped the metal clean off.
Before Sasori's new puppet body could pull away, Sakura spun around with blinding speed. She drove the broken shard of steel straight forward, plunging it directly through the red core cylinder exposed in the puppet's chest.
As the metal bit into the mechanism, Sakura twisted the blade hard inside the core. She shoved her hand forward, forcing the broken blade all the way through the cylinder until it clicked against the backing plate.
She held the weapon there for a beat, watching the last traces of life leave Sasori's eyes until they looked like those of a true lifeless puppet. Then she shoved the body away and let it crash to the floor.
Reaching over her shoulder, she gripped the handle of the broken sword protruding from her back. With a firm, steady pull, she ripped the metal out of her flesh and tossed it aside. The moment the blade cleared her body, the skin instantly knit back together, closing up completely without leaving so much as a scar.
'Lady Tsunade is going to kill me for letting my guard down.'
Sakura thought with a sense of dread, suddenly not looking forward to going back home.
- Chapter End -
Hope you enjoy the Chapter. I know some of you miss Kakashi; that'll come eventually; bear with it a little while longer. I promise that when he wakes up, it'll be good. ;)