- With Sakura and Hinata -
"I've found the hostages," Hinata whispered, pressing herself deeper into the corridor's heavy shadows alongside Sakura.
She narrowed her eyes as her Byakugan strained against a massive, blinding convergence of chakra ahead. The sheer intensity of the energy struck her vision like raw sunlight piercing the eyes of someone suddenly jolted awake. It stung fiercely, sending a sharp, throbbing ache straight through her temples.
"And Shinno?" Sakura asked, sparing a glance at Hinata. She raised her hands to press both index fingers against Hinata's temples, a soothing light green chakra seeping into her head to ease the throbbing pain before she asked again.
Hinata shook her head and deactivated her Byakugan, pointing toward a corridor she refused to look at directly with her dojutsu active. "He must be there. If you punch a hole through that wall and head straight, he'll most likely be right inside. There is a malicious chakra blocking my view into the room."
"Okay, you free the hostages and find a way out of here. There's no way they don't have an escape route off these flying ruins."
Hinata gave a firm nod and slipped away.
Sakura turned back toward the wall Hinata had pointed out. She pulled back her fist, focused her chakra into a single pinpoint, and drove it straight into the stone structure.
The wall exploded inward with a deafening crash. As the dust cleared, three Sky Ninja guards patrolling the corridor on the other side whipped around in shock. Before they could even draw their weapons, Sakura lunged through the gap, swung a heavy punch, and sent all three crashing into the opposite wall, knocking them out cold. She didn't break her stride as she kept rushing in the direction Hinata had gestured.
She ran down the long corridor until it led her straight into a massive, cavernous room. At the far end, Shinnō sat calmly on a large throne, watching her approach.
"I'm afraid you're a bit late, Sakura; Konoha has been destroyed." Shinnō mocked, leaning back into his throne. He watched her closely, eager to see despair or anger twist her features.
Instead, he saw nothing but a brief flicker of surprise, followed immediately by… amusement?
"What's so funny about your home being destroyed?" Shinnō demanded, his smug grin faltering slightly.
Sakura shook her head. "It's not the fact that I find my home being destroyed amusing; it's the fact that you think you can do so."
Shinnō didn't get annoyed by the girl's retort, instead gesturing to the center of the room in front of him at the large golden circle.
"What you're standing in is not only my throne room, but it is the culmination of the Land of Sky engineering and revenge; it's called the Ancor Vantian. Dark Chakra powers this fortress and can also charge chakra into the built-in Chakra cannon below the fortress, so, girl, do you still believe your people could've survived the Dark Chakra gathered from the suffering of humans in this chaotic world?"
"You're a wordy bastard," Sakura replied. "Watching you spout nonsense while you sit on a throne like you're some kind of king is amusing as it is sad."
Shinnō spread his arms with a hint of amusement. "Then by all means, make me move."
As if waiting for those very words, Sakura vanished in a burst of shaves, appearing on Shinnō's right.
Shinnō tracked her movement, but the confidence in his durability made him confident that the girl couldn't budge him, Tsunade's apprentice or not, but what he didn't expect was that he was blown through the right arm of his throne and sent skipping off the ground like a flat stone on a lake.
Cracking his neck, Shinnō stood, his face swollen, before he fixed it with his Body Revival technique, looking at her with new eyes. The Uzumaki girl was his biggest worry with her chains, but Shinnō didn't expect what the girl just did.
"You projected your chakra outward in a sudden burst. Interesting; it's a very interesting use of chakra control indeed," Shinnō hummed in interest. As someone with exceptional chakra control as well, he could understand the principle and difficulty of pulling it off; if the girl weren't as good as she was, her whole forearm would explode.
"You want to know something interesting?" Shinnō continued before Sakura could even speak. "With the help of the dark chakra from the Zero-Tails and my own Body Revival Technique, I can open all Eight Inner Gates and stay alive. Let me show you a couple; I'll judge whether you're worthy of more or not."
Shinnō pushed his chakra through the first gate before suddenly appearing in front of Sakura, his leg already coming for the side of her head. Sakura raised her left forearm, blocking the kick and sliding back half a step. She immediately jabbed her right finger at his heart, a compressed shockwave bursting right through Shinnō's chest and blowing out his back.
Shinnō stumbled, completely paralyzed and unable to do anything as Sakura's shoe smashed into his temple, slamming him hard onto the ground. She instantly followed it up with a heavy crescent kick, the blade-like slash cutting deep into his waist and flinging him all the way to the other side of the room, leaving a long streak of blood covering the stone floor.
Sakura slowly walked toward him as his wounds slowly closed back up, leaving flawless skin in their place.
"You praise your technique, but can you regenerate yourself if I turned your head into a fine mist? If I ripped your legs off and beat you to death with them, would you stay dead?"
Shinnō gritted his teeth, the smug composure on his face completely shattering as he felt nothing but humiliation and rage from being pummeled by a teenage girl. He pushed a massive surge of dark chakra out of his body, the oily purple energy erupting around him like a violent storm. Skipping the second and third gates entirely, he forced his body straight into the fourth gate.
His skin turned a deep, angry red as veins bulged violently across his face and arms. The sheer pressure of the dark chakra whipped through the cavernous room, cracking the stone beneath his feet as he prepared to unleash his true speed.
At the exact moment Shinnō appeared in front of Sakura and prepared to punch a hole straight through her, he heard her release a smooth, steady breath. The words that followed sounded utterly mocking to his ears.
"Second Breath."
Sakura took a precise half-step to the left, letting his incoming punch pass harmlessly under her right arm. Before he could pull back, she clamped her arm down against her side, pinning his limb in place, and slammed her palm hard against the back of his elbow.
A sharp, brutal snap reverberated through the vast room. Shinnō grunted in sudden pain, but Sakura gave him no time to process it. She instantly unleashed a much stronger, close-range tempest kick. Shinnō just barely managed to twist his body enough to avoid having his groin sliced clean off, but the blade-like vacuum of the kick caught his leg instead. A long, deep gash tore open along Shinnō's left thigh, cutting all the way down to the bone.
Shinnō's cry was cut short as Sakura landed a powerful uppercut, the force of the impact snapping his jaw shut and reeling him backward. The strike was devastating, sent with enough strength to lift him off the ground and leave him dazed as he struggled to regain his breath.
"Use all the chakra from that parasite as you want; I'll just beat you until you're either dead or wish you were."
Shinnō didn't even see her move. Before he could even register that she was already behind him in mid-air, absolute panic took over. Acting on pure, desperate instinct, he threw his newly healed arm backward to smack her away.
Sakura caught it effortlessly. Before he could twist away, she snatched his other arm too. Flipping their bodies completely upside down in the air, Sakura planted both of her boots firmly onto Shinnō's back, locking his arms behind him and aiming his head straight at the stone floor. No matter how much dark chakra Shinnō furiously pushed through his limbs, he couldn't break her iron grip.
The impact was sickening. Shinnō's skull shattered the stone floor with a deafening explosion, sending a violent shockwave through the chamber that cracked the foundation beneath them. The brutal force of the landing whiplashed his entire body, his neck twisting at a grotesque, sickening angle that nearly snapped his spine completely.
Landing lightly on her feet, Sakura looked down at the man and lightly nudged his head to the left so she could see his eyes.
"Some king you were, so overconfident that you thought I wasn't a threat, but in terms of the ability to counter yours, you weren't exactly wrong. Karin's chains can stop you from doing anything with that chakra; Hinata could seal your chakra points, but me? You didn't see this playing out like this, right? Gurgle if you can hear me, because if not, I'll be upset."
Shinnō made a sound resembling a gurgle, but that was just him choking on his own blood and trying to breathe, his technique doing his thing as the Zero-Tails continued to power him, but that didn't mean the injuries were painless; far from it, this girl was making this as painful as possible.
"Get up, I'm tired of you impersonating a worm."
Sakura pulled him up by the hair and slammed her right fist into his gut. The sheer force of the strike rippled straight through his body, leaving a perfect indent of her fist visible on his back. Shinnō violently coughed out the blood he was choking on, a dark splatter of it landing on the right side of Sakura's face.
Her eye twitched. Annoyed, she tossed the man across the room and right through his throne. The grand structure shattered into pieces, leaving behind nothing but the bottom seat itself, now looking like a pathetic booster seat for a child.
Sakura wiped the blood from the side of her face, taking her time and observing his healing as she walked up to him. The regeneration appeared noticeably slower than before.
'Is he getting weaker?' Or is the Zero-Tails giving up on him? Sakura wondered.
She stopped right in front of him. The man looked far less arrogant now, his face a messy mixture of confusion, anger, and fright.
"W-Why are you so furious?" Shinnō coughed up another mouthful of blood, struggling to his feet as his broken body slowly knitted itself back together. "You're confident that I couldn't have destroyed your village, so what is it? What have I possibly done to you?!"
Shinnō raged, his voice cracking as more and more dark chakra began flowing through him. The Zero-Tails beneath the fortress seemed to resonate directly with his surging anger, fear, and despair.
"You broke a girl who wanted nothing more than to help people, and she trusted you to help guide her so that she could, but you stepped on it, twisted your shoe, and spat on her desire to help people. You've made her question her entire life. I'm only doing the same for you now."
Sakura's bright green eyes, which usually seemed so warm, were completely cold and hard. Her gaze regarded Shinnō like a bug that she briefly acknowledged before crushing it out of existence.
Shinnō let out a breathless, mocking laugh, the dark chakra around him flickering as a twisted sense of comprehension crossed his face. "Ah... I see. You resonated with the girl because you share that same pathetic ideal about saving lives. You resent me for showing her that her precious dreams are worthless-"
Sakura didn't let him finish.
She closed the distance instantly, her fist burying itself into his chest and cratering him so violently into the stone floor that the entire room shook. The moment his body bounced up from the shattered ground, she snagged him by the back of his neck and threw him like a ragdoll across the chamber.
Shinnō crashed heavily into the far wall, but Sakura was already there waiting for him. She grabbed the back of his head and slammed his face into the solid stone with bone-crushing force. Keeping her hand clamped tightly to the back of his head, she dragged his face harshly down the length of the wall, grinding his skin and bone against the rough, jagged rock in a brutal, continuous streak of blood.
Sakura hurled him upward into the ceiling, pulling both of her arms back. She was finished playing with him. He was broken enough to satisfy her fury; now, she just wanted him gone.
A dense, hyper-concentrated layer of chakra gathered around her forearms and locked tightly into her fists. Needing this to be absolute, Sakura silently pushed her body straight to the Third Breath, forcing an immense, overwhelming surge of raw power into her muscles.
Shinnō hit the ceiling and began to plummet backward toward the floor. As he fell, his vision cleared just enough to see her waiting below. He saw the blinding, vibrating aura around her fists, felt the sheer atmospheric pressure of the technique, and in that fleeting second, he saw his own death. Panic seized what was left of his mind, but his shattered, unresponsive limbs couldn't even twitch to protect him. He was completely helpless.
As he crossed her strike zone, Sakura drove both fists violently into his midsection.
Instead of a simple impact, the compressed kinetic shockwave exploded straight through his torso. The force instantly tore a massive, gaping hole clean through his stomach and out his back, vaporizing muscle, bone, and organs into a fine crimson mist.
Shinnō hit the ground, a hollow, ruined shell. His Body Revival technique sparked frantically, but there was nothing left in his center to connect or knit back together; you cannot regenerate what is completely gone. He slowly began to die, but the dark chakra of the Zero-Tails refused to let him go, forcefully pumping into his remaining nerves, only keeping him conscious longer to prolong his agonizing final moments.
Sakura began walking away, leaving him with some parting words.
"These ruins will be your grave; hope it was worth it."
Sakura navigated the maze-like ruins, breaking through walls with a simple punch and dealing with any underlings she encountered the same way. Still unable to find Hinata or the villagers, she ambushed a lone Sky Ninja, aggressively shaking him until he terrifiedly stammered out the way to the exit. Tossing the man carelessly over her shoulder, she followed his directions, rushing out onto a wide, open courtyard.
There, she saw the villagers gathered safely onto a massive, glider-like boat.
"You're alright, thank goodness," Hinata sighed in relief. She was standing next to a heavy lever designed to release the vessel, her shoulders visibly dropping as she scanned her friend for injuries.
Sakura smiled softly. "He wasn't so tough. Just arrogant and too sure of his technique." She waved it off casually, letting the Hyuga look her over for a brief moment before walking over to take her place at the mechanism. "I got this, Hinata. Get in the boat. I can get myself off this thing when I'm done."
Hinata nodded in understanding, trusting her completely. She walked over and climbed into the vessel just as the stone beneath their feet gave a violent shudder.
Sakura pulled the lever. The heavy locks disengaged, and the glider flew down a small ramp, catching the wind perfectly as it soared away into the open sky.
Watching them go, Sakura's soft expression vanished, replaced by a fierce, determined grin. "Well, time to take this ugly thing out of the sky."
She cracked her fists, the sound echoing against the stone. Crouching low, she leaped high into the air, launching herself across the courtyard. She began zipping wildly around the fortress, punch after devastating punch landing against the structural pillars and watchtowers, sending massive explosions of debris raining down into the clouds below.
"Stubborn thing," Sakura complained, her brow furrowing as the fortress resisted her initial strikes.
Deciding she was done holding back, she put her all into a devastating punch. The side of the fortress she impacted dipped violently downward, sparks exploding into the open air as the hidden hovering components shattered under the immense pressure.
Sakura didn't stop there. She kept zipping around the exterior, punching bits and pieces off the structure in a blur of motion. Within moments, the ancient, floating ruins finally died in the sky. The eerie purple power shut off completely, and the massive fortress began tilting forward, plunging helplessly down through the thick blanket of clouds.
As she plummeted through the whipping wind, she used Moonwalk to easily arrest her fall, stepping across the empty sky as the massive ruins crashed into the ocean far below.
Sakura turned back toward the coast, using Moonwalk to leap across the sky all the way back to the ruins of Amaru's village. The distance didn't take her long to cross.
She dropped lightly onto the ground and walked over to Karin and Amaru. Next to her, Amaru was sitting up, breathing heavily but completely clear-eyed. The dark corruption of the Zero-Tails was gone, successfully purged from her body. Nearby, Hinata was already busy escorting the villagers out of the safely landed glider-boat.
- Chapter End -
2.9k words. Hope you enjoy; more of Kakashi next chapter.