At long last, Team 7 had returned to the Hidden Leaf Village for a well-deserved rest as the war entered a brief lull. It had only been a week since the conflict had begun, but to Sakura, it felt as though it had already been raging for years.
"Sorry, I went a bit too far," Sakura told Shikaku apologetically as she finished recounting Team 7's feats. "We couldn't enact your plan, but hopefully these three will have information that comes in handy…"
She had left Killer B's disciples, Samui, Karui, and Omoi, under Morino Ibiki's care. She had also handed over the Box of Ultimate Bliss's puppet to Tobirama for study; it called itself Muku, and according to Leaf intelligence, it was supposed to be Mui, the Hōzuki Prison warden's son. It seemed inoffensive enough, but to Sakura's nose, it did not smell human at all.
"You have nothing to apologise for, Milady," Shikaku replied. "If anything, your actions saved the lives of thousands of our shinobi. The strategy of cutting off the enemy's communications can always be revisited at a later date."
"Well, come to me immediately if something comes up, especially if it concerns Lord Namikaze or Orochimaru," Sakura said, rising to her feet behind her desk, giving her shoulders a brief massage. "But in the meantime, I've some business to attend to."
Worryingly, Minato and Orochimaru seemed to have disappeared into thin air. Most of the soldiers posted to the north-eastern front lines had already made it to the rendezvous point after the chaos of the escape, but the two Kage-level powerhouses, and of all people, the fastest and most tenaciously resilient shinobi respectively, had vanished without a trace that night.
"As you wish."
Shortly after Shikaku's departure, Sakura left the Hokage Residence and headed towards Naruto's new apartment. Thanks to Yamato's efforts, and the First Hokage having left behind an abundance of timber before departing for the Iwa front, the village's reconstruction was progressing swiftly. She could already begin to recognise nostalgic hints of the old village within the new.
"Are you in, Naruto?" Sakura called, rapping her knuckles against his front door. "I wanna talk."
No answer came, but her senses told her he was inside.
"I know you're in there," Sakura called again. "Please come to the door…"
Her sharp ears caught the sounds of floorboards creaking. Moments later, the doorknob turned and the door opened, revealing a topless Naruto standing in the doorway, breathing somewhat heavily, his wiry frame covered in glistening sweat.
"You… you've been working out?" Sakura gulped.
Naruto nodded, and Sakura licked her lips, which she found had suddenly become very dry.
His pungent male aroma hit Sakura's nostrils like a lorry, his pheromones making his feelings abundantly clear to her. His sweat smelled of an unpleasant mix of stress, fear, anger and sadness… and the aroma of squid wafting over from his bathroom told her he'd been releasing those negative emotions into a box of tissues.
"I couldn't stop thinking about what happened back then, ya know?" Naruto said miserably. "I lost control again, all because I was too weak."
So that was why he had been working out so hard, Sakura thought to herself. Naruto was depressed because he felt helpless, and the only solution he could think of was becoming stronger… but his problems were not something that could be solved by becoming physically stronger, but rather by growing stronger mentally.
"You can't blame yourself for that," Sakura said softly. "It's my fault… when I saw the Raikage, everything went red… I should've controlled my emotions better."
Although Naruto had successfully communed with the Nine-Tailed Fox, the beast could not change its nature as a mirror of humanity. Since the shinobi continent was at war with itself rather than with an external enemy, Naruto, as a Jinchūriki, was more vulnerable than ever to powerful negative emotions.
Sakura's and Sasuke's Curse of Hatred was a potent poison to Naruto's psyche, and yet they could not distance themselves from him; for his best friends to abandon him, even for his own good, would only plunge him further into the abyss. It was a toxic relationship, but they still needed each other.
"Come here…"
Sakura pulled Naruto in for a hug, but as he closed his eyes and rested his head against her soft, O-cup breasts tightly packed inside her bra, his consciousness was abruptly plunged into a maelstrom of coal-black hatred, churning endlessly inside her bust.
"Gah!" Naruto yelped, backing away frantically as though stung. "…it burns!"
The grudges and malice of more than a hundred kunoichi whose busts Sakura had stolen dwelled within her chest. The moment he had pressed his ear against her breast, he had acutely heard their plaintive wails and cries for bloody vengeance imprinted in their chakra, even through multiple layers of fūinjutsu.
"Naruto, what's wrong?" Sakura said worriedly.
"Y-ya mean ya can't hear them?" Naruto said fearfully, pointing at her chest. "There's voices coming out of your boobs, ya know!"
It was only then that Sakura realised what Naruto meant. She had not entered Breast Meditation ever since that night where they had fought off ten thousand Kumo-nin, perhaps instinctively knowing that she would lose herself the moment she immersed herself into her inner world…
For the first time in her life, Sakura truly hated her breasts.
They were burdensome, clumsy, and unwieldy, and they gave her back pain; and now she could not even walk two paces without her bra on. What was the use of having big breasts if she could not even use them to comfort the ones she loved?
"Stupid, useless, heavy pieces of meat!" Sakura cried, punching, clawing and scratching at her breasts even as hot tears of pain and helplessness dripped from her eyes. "I wish they had never grown this big!"
Naruto's heart nearly stopped. The usually cool and collected Sakura-chan, who always knew what to do, was breaking down in tears before his very eyes, hysterically scratching at her precious chest, all because he had reflexively backed away from her. Because of his thoughtless actions, he had hurt her feelings…
Of course, it was not all Naruto's fault. The pressure of directing a war on so many fronts, her self-loathing for wanting revenge for Tsunade even though she knew it would further the cycle of hatred, and the guilt of being responsible for loss of life on such a scale, had been gnawing at her for days now, but that had been the straw that broke the camel's back.
"Sakura-chan, stop it!" Naruto yelled.
He grabbed her wrists, but she was too strong to be overpowered, and they wrestled back and forth for a few seconds. Thinking quickly, he hooked his foot behind her leg and pushed, taking her to the floor, but as they fell, Sakura's bra hook snagged onto a chair and came loose.
"Eh?"
Naruto barely had time to utter a single word as Sakura's breasts exploded outwards with a vengeance, ripping through her clothes with a loud shrrrip. The force sent him crashing into the ceiling, where he banged the back of his head before falling back down into Sakura's soft cleavage as she lay there on the floor, pinned under the weight of her chest.
Dazed, he could only stare into her reddened, moist eyes, losing himself in her emerald gaze, and she closed her eyes, pursing her lips as though inviting him to prove with a kiss that he did not hate her, or the whirlpool of hatred she was carrying within her chest, both in her heart and in her breasts…