Chapter 131: Inner Sakura, Full of Malice
BOOM.
A shockwave of wind and lightning detonated across the entire area. Several Kumogakure ninja still airborne were blown clean off their feet.
Pink hair whipping wild. Green eyes like blades.
"Sakura" caught the grief-fueled strike with one palm and held it.
"Oh, not bad. You've got some behind that, dark and handsome."
The voice that came out was wrong — unruly, cocky, completely unbothered, watching the Raikage's berserking fury the way a tiger watches something that has wandered into its territory.
"DIE—!!!"
The Raikage heard nothing. He wanted one thing. Kill this person. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her.
No technique. No strategy. Just violence, full and absolute — the kind that accepts taking damage to inflict damage.
BANG.
Fist against fist again, then another, then another, another, another—
"Sakura!"
Enma saw the Raikage's frenzied state and moved to help—
"Sakura's" expression was escalating — wilder, more feral, something almost gleeful in it. A state that Enma had never seen on that face. A state that Kakashi, watching from a distance, couldn't place either.
"ALL UNITS!"
Darui pulled himself back from shock and started directing. "Kill the Konoha trash! For our comrades!"
"Hey — white-haired dead-fish-eyes tsundere, don't you dare slow me down, get out of here!"
One palm shoved the Raikage's strike aside. A lightning-fast sweeping kick followed — and the Raikage caught it on his bracer and held.
"DIE!"
"Lightning Ravage — Aqua Millennium Plunge Dance!"
Crackling thunder and lightning on a hand-blade, coming down in a devastating chop—
"What a mouthful for a hand chop."
"Heaven Stomp!"
"Sakura's" body twisted, every ounce of strength behind one high kick — it connected with the bracer and deflected the hand-blade sideways into a nearby tree.
BOOM.
The tree toppled. The cut face was perfectly clean.
"Sakura" grabbed the Raikage's shoulder in the window that created.
Green eyes lit up with something savage.
"Let me show you my signature headbutt."
BANG.
Forehead into forehead, full force.
The Raikage's vision went black. His whole head swam.
"Holy — okay, I have some respect for this body's durability."
"Sakura" pressed both hands to her own head, grimaced briefly, shook it off, and charged him again.
The Raikage came out of it and drove back at her, roaring, fists like a hailstorm—
"Sakura" gave him every bit of it back.
Two animals. Two forces of nature. The ground cracked, split, cratered under them with every exchange, trembling in wider and wider rings.
Enma watched in silence, ignoring the Kumogakure ninja forming up around him.
He was a summoning beast — however many came, he could simply release the summons and return home the moment he needed to. The crowd didn't concern him.
Kakashi had already broken away. Plenty were chasing him, but Kakashi's ability to extract and carry intelligence back to Konoha's lines wasn't in question.
What concerned Enma was the figure in front of him.
Something had shifted in "Sakura." This wasn't her.
No — it was more accurate to say this was a completely different person.
The fighting style was rawer, wilder, reckless in a way the real Sakura never was — dodging what could be dodged, tanking what couldn't with the Strength of a Hundred rather than avoiding it, as if the whole concept of defense was an inconvenience.
And that fighting style was a problem.
Enma didn't know the specifics of how the Uzumaki clan's Yin Seal worked — only that it was a storage vessel for chakra. But vessels had limits.
They weren't infinite.
How many times had Sakura opened the seal since this mission started?
Fighting like this — careless with the expenditure, burning through reserves — the stored chakra would drain at a frightening rate.
The Raikage stood catching his breath, watching the girl with cold eyes.
The rage was still there. But extreme fury had pushed through to the other side, and something like cold clarity was returning.
For the first time in his life, he felt the particular discomfort of facing something genuinely difficult.
He wasn't strong enough.
If he'd learned his father's technique — Hell Stab, one-finger penetration — maybe...
Maybe Shi wouldn't have died.
Maybe this girl would already be dead.
But she wasn't. And she was going to pay for Shi's life regardless.
"Hey. Big guy. Back with us?"
"Sakura's" smirk hadn't moved.
"That was someone important to you, wasn't it." The green eyes were unreadable. "Such a shame."
"A shame?" The Raikage's voice went to ice.
"That I didn't get to kill him myself."
The Raikage went still.
"I would've enjoyed it. Breaking his bones one at a time. Peeling back the layers. Watching the rate his heart was still trying to beat."
"That would've been fun."
"Don't worry about whether he'd survive — I'm the finest medical ninja alive. Nobody dies on me unless I want them to."
The Raikage didn't let her finish the sentence. He came.
"Hey — you, playing dress-up as the Monkey King over there — are you just enjoying the show?!"
"Get over here!"
She grabbed the Raikage's wrist, hip dropped, back bent — the shoulder throw she'd used before — and drove him into the ground with a CRASH that sent lightning arcing across the snow in every direction.
Against his Lightning Armor, even that was minor damage. Both of them knew it.
Enma stared at "Sakura" for a long moment.
He couldn't quite square what he'd just heard with the girl he knew.
But he moved anyway.
And as he did, he arrived at a conclusion.
Sakura had a split personality.
A deeply unsettling one. Once this was over — in addition to filing a formal complaint about the Konoha unit commander with Hiruzen — he absolutely needed to get Tsunade to do some psychological work on the girl. Get this terrifying second personality dealt with before it caused a real problem.
Meanwhile, the runner who'd been dispatched to arrange the main force intercept had returned — and delivered a piece of news that was, for current purposes, unambiguously bad.
Konoha had launched a large-scale offensive.
Darui stared at the pink-haired figure still locked in combat with the Raikage.
Konoha moves their main force now. For her.
Is this all for the Hokage's student...
(Chapter End)
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