Chapter 153: Right Now, You're Genuinely Weak
Lightning erupted across his body like something prehistoric — hair standing on end from the charge, speed pushed to its absolute ceiling.
Blue-white lightning and cherry-blossom pink streaked across each other again and again across the battlefield. Fists, elbows, kicks, all of it blurring together in the kind of exchange that left craters in the ground where people had been standing.
Sakura tracked him.
The gains from suppressing Inner Sakura were real — heightened acuity, the ability to destroy jutsu outright — but speed wasn't among them. Against the Raikage's full acceleration she still couldn't keep pace.
What she had was something simpler.
As long as there was a trajectory, her eyes wouldn't lose it.
The Raikage had noticed. One month ago, her reaction to his top speed had been fractionally late — enough that he'd felt it. Now she was reading him like he was moving through water.
What happened to this girl in a single month?
He couldn't account for it. He categorized it as some kind of sensory kekkei genkai and kept pushing. Because the alternative — stopping to figure it out — wasn't an option. Sakura left alone on this battlefield was a disaster for Kumogakure. She'd tear through his forces if he wasn't there to occupy her.
Which, conveniently, was exactly what Sakura needed from this exchange too.
If the Raikage decided to ignore her and go after someone else, she'd simply have to make herself impossible to ignore while the body count accumulated on both sides.
BOOM.
Dust and snow. Lightning and pink chakra flickering through the cloud.
They locked again. Sakura's single arm bent, absorbing the Raikage's strike, feet holding ground as the earth beneath them gave way.
"Your hits are softer than last time." She smiled at him, the expression entirely uncharitable. "What's the matter? Did the last month of this war wear you out?"
The Raikage's face did something unpleasant.
"Lightning Ravage — Aqua Millennium Plunge Dance!"
Hand-blade, chakra-loaded, driving down. Sakura's free hand caught his forearm bracer and held. She brought her knee up.
He brought his knee up at the same moment. They connected.
Bang.
And in that instant of mutual lock, the pink chakra burning from Sakura's Yin Seal spread across her forehead and down her arms.
She'd learned from Inner Sakura's lesson. No forehead-to-forehead collision this time — their height difference made that awkward anyway. She dropped her head toward his chest instead.
The Raikage recognized it.
Last time she did this—
In the fraction of a second available to him, he borrowed her own momentum — the foot braced against the ground came up, driving a kick at her chest.
Sakura released the grip holding him up. His massive frame dropped toward the ground without support, and her counter-strike arrived at the same moment.
The crack of displaced air as a whip kick connected with the side of his head — redirected by his forearm bracers raising to protect his skull.
The impact launched the Raikage like something thrown.
The shockwave scattered snow in every direction. A black shape crossed the sky on an involuntary arc.
Sakura checked the surrounding battle in one sweep and started after him—
Jiraiya's voice appeared in her head.
"Sakura."
"Leave the Raikage."
"Something's happened at the rear. The Eight-Tails jinchūriki is at the command position."
She stopped.
The Raikage was hurt. Not seriously — the bracers had taken most of it — but he was going to feel it. He wouldn't die from that exchange.
But Mei Terumī alone against Killer Bee was not a fight that ended well. Not for five minutes. Not for two.
Two problems, one person.
Jiraiya was handling Orochimaru.
She was handling the Raikage.
The rear had Mei.
"Sakura. Come hold Orochimaru for five minutes. I'll deal with the Eight-Tails after I've had those five minutes."
Of course. Jiraiya needed to enter sage mode. He needed time to summon the toad sages and accumulate the natural energy. That was why he couldn't break away from Orochimaru on his own.
Five minutes for Jiraiya. Could Mei survive five minutes?
She didn't know. She had no choice.
"Understood."
She notified Ino immediately, had her pass it to Mei through the Formation link, and turned away from where the Raikage had landed.
A last glance in that direction.
Sorry. We're not done.
She ran.
"You seem worried about something, Jiraiya." Orochimaru pressed the advantage with the Kusanagi, voice smooth. "That's unlike you."
The wind of an approaching presence cut through his sentence.
"Orochimaru!"
Sakura's arrival made Orochimaru's mouth twitch.
"Ah." Jiraiya's voice was cold as he pulled back. "Enjoy yourselves."
He bit his finger, drew the blood across the marks on his face, and began the preparation. The toad sages of Mount Myōboku — called to hold the natural energy he couldn't accumulate himself mid-combat.
"Summoning Jutsu — Great Monkey King!"
No preamble from Sakura. Enma materialized.
Orochimaru looked at the two of them and bit down on his options.
Summoning the reanimated First and Second?
Incomplete technique. And last time — the First's summoned Rashōmon had deliberately blocked the Second's Water Release, buying the enemy time. Reanimated bodies following their own judgment, not his. In a fight this complex, two additional variables that might actively interfere with his positioning wasn't a tactical gain.
"Summoning Jutsu — Manda!"
White smoke. A purple coiled mass, enormous.
"Orochimaru, this time you owe me one hundred—"
"Adamantine Staff!"
CRACK.
The staff came down on Manda's head before he finished the sentence.
A pause. Then Manda's enormous body hit the ground.
Jiraiya, some distance away, mid-preparation, felt cold sweat forming.
This is genuinely stronger than Tsunade.
Manda peeled himself off the ground, eyes crossing.
"WHO—"
"Which idiot just—"
He found her. Pink hair. Black staff. Familiar weapon, unfamiliar wielder.
His instincts said run. The wielder wasn't the old man. His nerve came back.
"Insolent little— I'll swallow you whole—!"
Manda launched himself forward.
Sakura stared at the oncoming mass of snake and simply ran at it.
The staff was already extending before she was close enough to use it.
Dozens of meters. Aimed directly at the forehead.
"Stop being dramatic and go home before I put you in a pot!"
The second hit landed.
BOOM.
Manda hit the ground again. The sound shook the field.
Orochimaru glanced at Jiraiya across the distance — still in preparation, almost there — and moved toward him.
Jiraiya saw it, thought nothing, and ran.
Sakura didn't wait. She dropped Manda where he lay and went after Orochimaru.
"Orochimaru! We have a debt to settle!"
His intelligence file on her. Sold to Kumogakure. The reason the last mission had turned into what it turned into — the reason she'd ended up in a direct brawl with the Raikage with no information advantage.
That wasn't forgotten.
"Tch."
Orochimaru turned to meet her. The Kusanagi came up against the staff.
The contact lasted approximately one second before Orochimaru was airborne.
Sakura's strength against Orochimaru's defense was not a contest.
A faint, plaintive voice came from the staff.
"Sakura. That stings."
She looked at the white mark the Kusanagi had left.
"I'm sorry, Lord Enma. Circumstances. When we get back I'll ask Sasuke to take you to the Ninja Cat tribe's instrument shop for maintenance."
"..."
Enma absorbed this.
I can transform into a staff. That does not make me an instrument.
But it was a battlefield. He'd complain later.
Sakura was already moving toward the Kusanagi's owner.
Fast.
Something faster than Sakura came from the distance.
A bolt of lightning, arriving at maximum velocity from outside her peripheral range.
"LIGHTNING PLOUGH HOT KNIFE!"
The roar and the impact were simultaneous. The Raikage had found her again.
Sakura pivoted. Orochimaru was abandoned in an instant. She let the pink chakra build across her forearm, formed the elbow into the striking surface, and drove it into the Lightning Plough at full speed.
Against Orochimaru she'd hold back. Against this man — never.
BOOM.
The impact resonated through both of them. Lightning and pink flame contested the air between them.
"DIE!"
He was throwing everything. No reserve. The kind of assault that came from losing control of the calculation.
But the calculation hadn't moved.
Sakura could take every hit she took and recover. He couldn't afford a single mistake.
"Your hits have gotten softer again."
She tilted her head slightly, looking up at him, green eyes carrying something precise and cold.
She was a medical ninja. The moment she'd made contact with him, she'd read it — the signs he was suppressing, the thing he was fighting to keep off his face. Fatigue the Lightning Armor couldn't fully hide anymore.
"Softer than before. Softer than just now."
"If you want an honest assessment—"
"Right now, you're genuinely weak."
The killing intent in her eyes appeared and vanished in an instant.
"Heaven Stomp!"
(Chapter End)
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