Sasuke's breaths came in ragged bursts as he took in the wreckage of the Pain puppets scattered at his feet. He'd be lying if he claimed most of them were his doing; the Nine‑Tailed Fox had torn through them like rice paper, and he'd have been next if his Susano'o hadn't held just long enough for Sakura to reach him in time.
"I overdid it…" Sasuke muttered, as his vision dimmed. "Damn it…"
The vibrant colours of the world were fading, shapes blurring into grey smudges. His Sharingan had already automatically deactivated, and his cursed seal form had already come undone. His jet‑black eyes, once alight with killing intent, now stared blankly ahead, his pupils empty and glassy. He had spent not only the last of his pupil power, but every drop of chakra left in him. His legs buckled, and he sank to his knees. He was dying. His cells no longer had enough energy to sustain themselves.
Darkness was creeping in at the edges of his vision now.
Sasuke stared at Sakura's back as she stood motionless, fighting a mental battle with the Nine‑Tailed Fox sealed within Naruto. He tried, with what little sight he had left, to engrave her sultry figure in his mind's eye before the light faded from his pupils entirely.
Then…
Relief washed over him as Naruto's chakra swelled. The Nine‑Tails' malicious, corrosive chakra was retreating back behind the seal, its monstrous form shrinking rapidly.
Sakura had won. She was safe.
"Sakura," he murmured, half‑delirious, as he toppled onto his side. "I… love you…"
…
Naruto's eyes flew open, filled with determination.
"Go, I'll handle the rest," he told Sakura, as he bent to pick up one of Pain's chakra receivers. In one swift motion, he drove it into his thigh. His eyes turned glassy for a moment, then his gaze sharpened, fixing on some unseen point far away. "Found you."
Sakura smiled at him.
"Good luck, Naruto," she said, heaving Sasuke's limp body over her shoulder. "I believe in you."
Naruto flickered away, leaving Sakura alone with Sasuke in the middle of an enormous crater. With a few hand signs, she incinerated what little remained of the Pain puppets, before starting the long trudge towards the village.
Sakura's heart hammered in her chest, but not from anxiety. She believed, with all her heart, that Naruto would succeed in convincing Nagato of the error of his ways if he faced him alone— and that was why she had not insisted on accompanying him.
Rather…
"I can't believe I actually did that," Sakura said in a small voice, blushing furiously. "Naruto…"
Karin had already taken her first kiss, and Sasuke had also kissed her once, but this was the first time she had actually taken the initiative to kiss a boy… although, did it still count if it had taken place in the Spiritual Plane, inside Naruto's inner world?
Sakura pressed a hand to her chest, trying to still its rapid thrumming, and she frowned. She could instantly tell that her breasts were even smaller than before— from a J‑cup, she'd shrunk to an I-cup. Even though she'd only borrowed a sliver of breast chakra from Lady Tsunade, the chakra she'd just lost had flourished over the past three years, blessing her with a full extra cup size.
A cursory glance at her status panel also told her she had lost the Senju and Uzumaki clans' physiques. From now on, her stamina would not regenerate nearly as fast as it used to. There existed no more full-blooded Senju, so that bloodline was lost to her for ever unless Hashirama revived… but there was still Karin, if she wanted to regain the Uzumaki clan's physique.
"I'm down to a little over nine Kakashi units of chakra," Sakura said with a grimace. "To think I used to have more than thirty…"
Still, it was better than nothing. She'd gained roughly two KK through bodybuilding and had already drawn out about all the physical energy her muscles could offer. Add half a KK from the System's bonus and some five and a half from her breasts— that left her with a baseline of just over one pre‑time skip Kakashi's worth of chakra.
If it were Kakashi now, he'd measure at about three times his former self, by her reckoning.
"Manyū Sakura! Uchiha Sasuke!"
Sakura looked up from her chest as five Konoha-nin flickered before her. A panicked-looking Yamato, Tenten, Ino's father, Shikamaru's father, and the very handsome Hyūga Tokuma.
"The seal, I don't understand," Yamato said, panting. "What happened?"
"I suppressed the Nine-Tails," Sakura said calmly. "Naruto has gone on to confront the Pain master."
"Alone?" Shikaku said incredulously. "You let him go the Akatsuki's leader alone!?"
Sakura nodded.
As much as she would have liked to accompany Naruto to turn Nagato into a woman and then steal her breasts, she would have only obtained the Uzumaki physique. The Rinnegan, after all, were a gift from Madara, the real one.
"Naruto insisted on going alone," Sakura said. "We already defeated the six Pains, and he's in excellent form. He'll be fine."
"Sakura's right," said Tenten. "Why don't we return to the village and help with search and rescue? That's the best thing we can do right now."
"That's preposterous!" Inoichi spluttered.
Shikaku sighed.
"Team 7 defeated Pain, I'm sure they know what they're doing," he said. "Let's return to the village."
…
By the time they reached the crater that had once been the village centre, the place was awash with serpents. They slipped through the rubble of collapsed buildings, rescuing trapped villagers and carrying them to safety in their jaws. At the heart of it all was Orochimaru, directing the recovery efforts, but curiously, Sakura saw no sign of the first four Hokage. Why weren't they helping with the reconstruction? Surely Hashirama's Wood Style would have come in handy for the rebuilding.
Thankfully, the damage to the village was nowhere near as severe as in the original timeline. Deidara's explosives had wrought serious destruction across central Konoha, levelling everything even remotely near the Hokage Residence, but thanks to the First Hokage's quick thinking in growing a huge tree to catch the falling explosives, the smaller, later blasts hadn't caused nearly as much harm to the village's periphery.
"EEEEEK!"
Hearing a woman's scream, everyone in the vicinity turned to see what had scared her so.
The King of Hell's giant head had just burst out of the ground, opening his great maw… and from his mouth thousands of souls came spilling forth. It was quite a sight to behold, as the luminous souls flitted about, searching for their respective bodies, which had been miraculously restored. They swept into the bodies of the dead laid out on the earth, while some slipped down the throats of nearby snakes, which promptly spat out their half‑swallowed snacks that had quite suddenly come back to life.
"What in the world…?" said Inoichi in wonder.
Sakura laughed loudly. "It's Naruto!" she exclaimed, tears of joy streaming down her cheeks. "He's really done it! He's saved everyone!"