Chapter 144: Sakura vs. Inner Sakura
BANG.
Brilliant sparks burst between their fists — again, and again, and again.
Two fighters with identical combat styles. Both taijutsu specialists who led with raw strength. Even the weapon in Sakura's hand — silver brass knuckles — Inner Sakura had simply replicated in a different color.
The sound of it filled the rooftop like the roaring of tigers, two equally matched beasts locked in mutual destruction.
"Big talk," Sakura said, expression fierce, fist cutting through the air like a gale as she found a gap and drove straight at Inner Sakura's midsection. "But your attacks aren't anything special."
A hit like that landing clean would end this. Both of them knew it.
"If I let you have it that easily, I'd be embarrassed."
Inner Sakura's signature smile. Her hand snapped out and seized Sakura's wrist — and Sakura immediately countered with her other fist, driving it straight at Inner Sakura's face without hesitation.
She didn't flinch at hitting someone who looked exactly like her.
Inner Sakura tilted her head. The fist grazed her ear, wind from the punch whipping her ponytail wildly.
In the same breath, Inner Sakura's fist came at Sakura's face — and Sakura mirrored the dodge precisely, the knuckles brushing past her own ear.
Both had spent their momentum. Both moved to fill the gap at the same moment.
Both chose the same thing.
Sakura and Inner Sakura each rocked their heads back slightly — then drove them forward.
CRACK.
The collision hit both foreheads simultaneously.
Suspended inches apart, Inner Sakura grinned.
"Ha — as expected of myself. Same choice."
"Know your place." Sakura's eyes sharpened. "You're a knockoff. And knockoffs don't get to talk about overthrowing the original."
She drove her knee up hard into Inner Sakura's midsection — when hands were locked, the legs were the strongest weapons available. Anyone who'd fought knew: ten punches were easier to take than one proper kick.
Inner Sakura saw it coming and raised her own knee to block.
"You remember what I said?" Inner Sakura pushed her voice into the space between them. "I fight on instinct. This body's most primitive drive!"
She surged with force. The rooftop beneath them fractured.
Both were airborne. No walls. No footholds. Nothing to push off.
They kicked simultaneously, connected, and were hurled apart.
Two streaks of pink exploded through the outer wall of the building in twin showers of glass and concrete.
Sakura concentrated chakra under her feet and planted herself against the facing building's wall, looking back through the hole at Inner Sakura doing the exact same thing.
Just a second personality.
She launched herself back through.
Inner Sakura came to meet her.
The exchange continued inside — fists, kicks, impacts that shook the structure floor by floor. Glass sprayed outward from every window they passed. They fought from the top floors down through the building's guts and into the underground parking garage in an unbroken chain of violence.
"Ha!"
Sakura landed a hit that pushed Inner Sakura back, grabbed a nearby support pillar, and wrenched it free with both hands, hurling it across the space.
Inner Sakura lifted a nearby van and threw it to meet the pillar.
BOOM.
Flame, debris, shrapnel, scattered in every direction.
Before the fire cleared, both of them were already charging through it. The shockwave from the impact extinguished the flames.
Sakura watched Inner Sakura and pressed her lips together.
Everything she knew, Inner Sakura knew. Every technique, every instinct, the full catalog — duplicated.
It was maddening.
"Still bothered by the me-versus-you question?" Inner Sakura laughed. "What a stupid thing to get stuck on. We're one."
She pushed hard and gained a step, then brought her palms together.
Started forming seals.
Sakura's eyes went wide.
"Summoning Jutsu — Great Monkey King!"
What.
You can summon Enma in here?!
If the real Enma materialized and figured out what was happening, he'd be more likely to beat Inner Sakura unconscious than help her—
Inner Sakura's palm hit the ground and split it apart. A familiar shape materialized.
Same massive frame. Same powerful tail.
But the fur was pink.
Every last hair — pure bright pink.
Sakura stared.
"This isn't the real world," Inner Sakura said, savoring the moment. "Your cosplay Monkey King can't reach you here."
She looked at Sakura.
"Adamantine Staff — Transform!"
The pink monkey became a staff in an instant — pink body, red ends — and dropped into Inner Sakura's waiting hand.
"So. What are you going to do?"
She charged.
Damn—
BOOM.
A pink blur. The entire building's foundation shattered. The twenty-plus story tower began to lean, then collapse, toppled by a single sweeping strike.
Sakura burst through the wave of dust, Inner Sakura close behind with the staff, unrelenting.
"HA! Running away?! I thought you came here to suppress me?!"
"Come on! Let's find out who suppresses who!"
Sakura's expression didn't change.
"Extend!"
The staff struck again, pink light trailing.
"Tch."
She sidestepped cleanly. She had no intention of trying to grab it.
In the moment she evaded, a thick hand extended from the staff's shaft, reaching for her throat.
"Fake."
"Get off."
Her body twisted. One kick connected with the reaching hand and pushed it hard.
The extended staff grabbed the side of a building for leverage. Then it snapped back — contracting — and Inner Sakura came flying along with the recoil.
"HA! Die!"
Inner Sakura's expression was triumph.
Sakura's expression was satisfaction.
Inner Sakura felt something clench.
"Kushina — please!"
Sakura called it upward, toward the sky.
"What?!"
Inner Sakura's face changed.
Kushina's Yang Release chakra had been suppressing her throughout. The inner world's version of herself couldn't deploy the same mass of Sakuras as before. But Kushina herself — in terms of raw combat — was a rounding error. Her showing up wouldn't change anything.
Sakura knew this. Inner Sakura knew Sakura knew this.
So why was she calling for her now?
Above them, the blue sky shifted.
Golden light bled through it.
Dozens of golden chains descended like striking serpents.
Adamantine Sealing Chains—!
Inner Sakura threw herself backward through multiple rapid dodges. These weren't something she could treat casually — these chains had held a fully transformed Nine-Tails. Even for her, being caught in them would be serious.
The chains converged in front of Sakura. They coiled, twisted, fused.
A staff formed from them, brilliant gold, solid light.
"What—"
Inner Sakura stared.
"Adamantine Staff."
Sakura's pale hand wrapped around it.
A single clear ring, like a struck bell.
This staff was built from Kushina's chakra, formed entirely of Yang Release — Kushina's will made tangible.
"Impossible. Everything you know, I know! There was no plan that included this step!"
Inner Sakura's expression had gone rigid.
"You're right," Sakura said. She moved the staff through a brief spin. Her green eyes looked at Inner Sakura with something close to pity.
"A Sharingan genjutsu was set in advance. A memory seal — a trigger point that would make me forget this step existed. The moment I entered this world, the trigger released."
She looked at the other version of herself steadily.
"The effect was better than I hoped. The moment I crossed the boundary — the 'I' who entered became a 'you' and a 'me' instead of just me."
Inner Sakura looked past Sakura at two shadows. A dark-haired boy. A red-haired girl.
Sakura tapped her own temple.
Under normal circumstances it might have seemed smug. On her it read as something quieter — almost cheerful — she closed one green eye.
"That's not instinct, by the way."
"That's the power of rational thought."
"In your terms — the power of the scabbard."
She didn't wait for a response.
She flicked the butt of the staff upward with her foot, caught it mid-spin, and moved.
"Does it even matter?! Your useless ally's chakra doesn't change anything—!"
Inner Sakura screamed and raised her pink staff to meet the charge.
CRACK.
Pink staff and gold staff met. Invisible force radiated outward.
"You've been held back this far by someone you're calling useless," Sakura said, pressing the clash. "Doesn't that make you worse than useless?"
"Oh, and Kushina is not useless!"
Inner Sakura's face went from furious to incandescent.
"Are you seriously saying — that I'm beneath that red octopus?!"
"You've gone too far—"
"And if it weren't for me, the Raikage would have beaten you and hauled you off to—"
That's—
The language was rough. The logic was technically sound. But still—
"DIE!"
"JUST DIE!"
Inner Sakura abandoned all form and swung wildly, furiously, the staff hammering at Sakura without pattern or restraint.
Sakura blocked and returned fire, watching her carefully.
Under the combined pressure of the Adamantine Chains and Kushina's Yang Release chakra, Inner Sakura had been running at a significant deficit. But she'd still managed near-parity until now.
What she was doing at this moment was not near-parity.
Did I hit something?
Probably the bit about instinct. She'd claimed instinct as her defining advantage — her nature, her identity. And Sakura had answered it with a plan. A setup. Layers of preparation designed specifically to counter her.
She didn't give her time to recover.
"Extend!"
Both of them kicked apart simultaneously, staves connecting at full extension—
BANG.
The two staves locked against each other, the gap between them widening rapidly as both extended to maximum. Sakura's feet carved long grooves through the ground, punching through building after building before she found something solid to brace against.
She planted. She held.
From the distance: Inner Sakura's furious roar.
Sakura felt the force transmitted through the gold staff — vast, screaming — and drove one step forward.
Crack.
A sharp, clean sound. Metal fracturing.
Not her staff.
She took another step.
Another crack.
"This fight is mine!"
The green eyes held nothing but certainty.
She ran. Pink metallic fragments burst outward with every step, scattering light, trailing afterimages — and then those fragments weren't falling. They were dissolving, folding inward, rushing as a stream of glowing particles into Sakura's body.
Her power. Coming home.
The gold staff erupted into chains.
They wrapped Inner Sakura completely.
Sakura's fist connected with her midsection.
Inner Sakura folded around the hit.
The building behind her came down.
"You..."
She raised her head. Those green eyes, so familiar — looking at Sakura with something raw in them. Teeth clenched.
"You actually have the nerve to deny my existence."
"Remember this."
"I'll be back."
"This time you won—"
"Next time—"
The words didn't finish.
She dissolved. Streams of pink light poured into Sakura's body like water returning to a river.
Next time.
Sakura stood in the ruins of her inner world and closed her hand slowly.
Inner Sakura was Sakura. Sakura was not Inner Sakura.
As long as Sakura was alive, Inner Sakura would never fully disappear. The Yin Release was too vast — it needed somewhere to go.
But she'd beaten her once.
She would beat her again.
And again.
As many times as it took.
— Real world —
Green eyes opened slowly.
Before she could process her surroundings, arms wrapped around her.
"You won! You won! Sakura won!"
Kushina — who had been feeling every exchange through her chakra link to the inner world — had known the outcome before Sakura's eyes opened.
And she'd also heard exactly what Sakura had said about her.
She was not useless.
"So she did." Tsunade watched the scene and released the Adamantine Chains binding Sakura, the golden light fading.
Hiruzen exhaled. He hadn't realized he'd been holding his breath.
The lesson had been learned from last time. This time it had gone according to plan.
Sakura felt the arms around her and patted Kushina's back gently, coaxing her loose.
"How do you feel?" Tsunade stepped forward, hoisting Kushina aside with one hand like a cat by the scruff, and looked at Sakura.
Sakura stood up. She raised her hand and closed it into a fist.
Pink chakra blazed from her knuckles — substantial, visible, like a flame made solid.
Tsunade's eyes narrowed.
That's her power. The other one's.
But in Sakura's grip, what should have been wild and violent was steady.
As it should be. In the end, Inner Sakura's power had always belonged to Sakura.
"Is she gone?"
The important question.
Sakura shook her head.
"No. The Yin Release is too large — she's dormant, not destroyed. I was able to suppress her until she went under. What I can access now is the limit of what this body can safely carry."
A beat.
"If she actually died, the remaining Yin Release would drive me genuinely insane. She functions as a release valve. If she were stable instead of volatile, we wouldn't have needed to go through any of this."
Tsunade looked faintly disappointed. Then she reset herself. A dormant Inner Sakura was a workable outcome.
"In any case — thank Kushina for this one."
Sakura reached over and ran a hand through Kushina's red hair. Then she looked toward the dark-haired boy who'd stayed back.
"And Sasuke. Obviously."
Kushina's face broke into a radiant smile.
Sasuke looked at Sakura steadily. Her problem was resolved. Time to get back to the other work.
Sakura turned to Hiruzen.
"Old man. Can I go back to the front now?"
He nodded. Then:
"Come with me, Sakura. You too, Tsunade."
Hokage Tower — the Hokage's office —
"What."
Sakura stared at the battle report, voice stripped of composure entirely.
Even Tsunade was looking at Hiruzen with open skepticism.
Are you serious? If the Aburame clan's insects were this catastrophic, how have they been sitting below the Hyūga in the village hierarchy all this time? You might as well make the Aburame Hokage.
Four thousand.
Four thousand ninja.
Danzō was supposed to be a commander. Not a liability.
These weren't four thousand civilians. Four thousand trained ninja, dead — not from enemy action but from the cascade failure of their own side's capability.
Sakura looked at the report, brow deeply furrowed.
Kakuzu's Earth Grudge Fear could steal hearts and absorb the chakra nature of whoever it took them from. She'd known that. What she hadn't foreseen was Kakuzu seizing Torune's heart and thereby gaining direct control over the nanoscale poison insects.
Incidentally — if the Earth Grudge Fear could absorb a kekkei genkai user's heart, could it acquire their bloodline limit too? Explosion Release. Scorch Release. Ice Release. Boil Release, Lava Release. If that was actually possible, the researcher who'd spent decades developing the Chimera Technique had fundamentally wasted his life.
But that wasn't the present problem.
"How do we handle Kakuzu?"
He had to die. Regardless of anything else, he had to die. Four thousand ninja demanded accountability, and beyond that — an entity walking around with both immortality and uncontrolled nanoscale plague insects was not something you left alive.
At minimum, Torune's heart had to be retrieved or destroyed.
"Naturally, he should be dragged back and executed," Tsunade said, voice hard.
This village was her great-granduncle's and great-uncle's life's work. Four thousand capable fighters, gone — not in battle, but through command failure.
A death toll like that didn't happen to a field commander. It followed them. The responsibility didn't go away.
"I've already replaced Danzō with Kagami Uchiha as River Country commander," Hiruzen said, drawing on his pipe. "Danzō is currently being escorted back to Konoha."
He let a moment pass.
"However. Danzō is a Konoha Elder. His contributions in the Second Shinobi World War were genuine. Execution is not on the table."
"Sensei."
Tsunade's voice carried something close to fury.
Sakura looked at the report, and said nothing.
Hiruzen was pulling his old comrade back from the edge. That was what it was.
She returned to the problem in front of her.
Kakuzu, now in possession of both his original power and Torune's insects.
She'd walked back into the war feeling better than she had in weeks.
She found she couldn't quite smile.
(Chapter End)
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