7

1

Ten enemies raced toward them. Kido and Magire retreated to the rear.

The team of Sakura, Ino, and Sai facing this onslaught might have been hastily thrown together, but that didn’t mean they were out of sync with each other.

When faced with a superior number of enemies, the key was to always keep moving and watch the backs of your allies—the body reacting without the head thinking.

Their enemies attacked in a variety of ways. Some tried to push them back with force, others released kunai and shuriken colored with chakra. There was even a Wind Style user. Occasionally, a slicing wind—which required real attention—came flying at them. And it seemed that the deadliness of each and every one of these attacks was further increased by the chakra of the Tailed Beasts.

Sakura fought with taijutsu and strikes. There were no long-distance-type enemies, so she was never at a loss for how to move forward. In this sort of close-range fight, Ino often moved around to the rear, but she wouldn’t be able to get away with that now. Instead, she backed Sai up with taijutsu.

A fireball abruptly came flying at them. And then several fireballs, all about the size of a human head, from their right.

Sakura leapt out of the way.

Their Fire Style attacker was the man who had played the fake Sasuke in the basement. Two tails grew from his chakra cloak.

“You want me to be Sasuke for you again?” he said, smiling crudely.

“Go ahead and try it,” Sakura said. “I’d probably throw my arms around your neck in delight. Of course, then I’d choke you.”

“I’ll be the one doing the choking!” Her opponent stretched a chakra tail out toward her. Just as it was about to reach Sakura’s body, the tip transformed into something like a hand and grabbed ahold of her neck.

“Ngh!”

Her body was abruptly yanked upward, leaving her toes to dangle above the ground. She couldn’t breathe.

“Tailed Beast chakra’s pretty handy, you know.” Her opponent crossed his arms, and an easy grin slid across his face as his other tail shot forth.

The heavy blow hit her stomach. She was pummeled with a series of tail strikes. The damage wasn’t serious, although she felt pain in the moment. But her position was not good. If she kept hanging there to be his punching bag, at some point he was going to get a decisive blow in.

Sakura gathered her chakra in both hands—in particular, her fingertips—and reached out for the tail around her neck. “Hng!” With a stifled cry, she tore the restraining limb away and dropped to the ground.

“Dammit!” Her opponent launched a follow-up attack with the tail.

Sakura dropped down out of its path and leapt at her opponent. She delivered a blow with her knee before tossing in an uppercut. Both landed nicely enough.

“Never! Change! Into! Sasuke! Again!” She punctuated each word with a punch. “Understand?!”

Her big finish was a roundhouse kick. Her opponent’s eyes rolled back to reveal the whites and he fell without a sound.

Once she had defeated him, the chakra cloak disappeared from his body. It seemed that once the user lost consciousness, the chakra robe also disappeared. Which was no different from the structure of any other ninjutsu.

“Looks like the chakra vanishes if you knock them out!” she announced to Ino and Sai.

“And it only works for so long anyway!” came Ino’s voice in return.

Sakura had also confirmed that with her own eyes.

Several light purple chakra robes had already disappeared, even though the wearers were not unconscious. But those wearers quickly popped another capsule into their mouths to bring back the Tailed Beast chakra.

“If we just fight slow and steady like this, they’ll keep replenishing their chakra,” Sai noted. He was fighting with taijutsu, while he sent his ink tigers out on the offensive. “Let’s knock them all out.”

At that moment, Ino cried out and tumbled to the ground. An enemy had swept her feet out from under her with his tail. Two others came flying in at her with kunai.

“Ino!”

Sakura knocked one of the attackers backward with a fist, while the other took a flying kick from Sai and hit the ground.

Ino stood up.

“You okay?” Sai asked.

Ino nodded. “Yeah.” Then she saw that Sai had hurt his arm, and she covered the area with her hand without saying anything. She was blocking the opening of the wound with medical ninjutsu.

Sakura clenched her hand into a tight fist.

Ino-Saku-Sai. We fight pretty good! she murmured to herself, before dashing off toward the enemy.

2

Members of the Anbu lay in heaps around them, unconscious, chakra cloaks gone. And yet, even though all of their subordinates had been defeated, neither Kido nor Magire showed the slightest sign of wavering.

“If we’re going to fight those two,” Sakura said, staring at the two men on the other side of the fallen Anbu, “I’ll take Kido and lure him into the woods over there. Ino and Sai, you take care of that Magire guy.”

“Don’t do anything reckless, Sakura. The three of us together—” Ino started, but Sakura shook her head.

“We don’t know what kind of tricks he has up his sleeve. But at the very least, Magire is a medical ninja, so he should have some kind of recovery jutsu. I think it makes more sense to get him away from Kido and out of his healer role.”

“In that case, I’ll take Kido,” Sai said, but Sakura shook her head at this too.

“Then we’d have two medical ninja here. It’s better if we don’t clump together, if we split up,” Sakura said, nodding to herself. “I can heal my own wounds, and Sai, you can get Ino to heal yours.”

Sai dipped his head slightly in agreement. “Got it. We’ll do it like you say, Sakura.”

Just as their brief meeting ended, Kido and Magire began to move.

Abruptly disappearing, they landed next to Sakura and her friends in the next instant.

“I know you must be tired, so I do apologize, but we’ll have you go up against us next,” Kido remarked.

“You know, if you’re disappointed at how weak your subordinates are, you could let it show in your face a little,” Sakura said.

Kido’s mouth twisted up slightly. “Although I have no real issue with provoking or being provoked in this manner, for now, let’s prioritize time.” He took his coat off to reveal a well-built body under his uniform.

He’s strong, Sakura thought.

Naturally, if he was going to rise to the upper ranks of the Anbu, this man—who spoke of nothing but money and profits—had to be strong first and foremost. His appearance made that strength quite obvious.

Magire, on the other hand, did not remove his white robe. He apparently intended to fight as he was.

Lightning Style! Thunder!

Immediately, Kido waved his arms and released countless tiny bolts of lightning.

Sakura and the others spread out to avoid them. Taking a hit from one bolt, Sai’s tiger splashed back into ink.

The moment Sakura landed, she started racing toward the forest that spread out to her right. The scenario where Kido did not take the bait did cross her mind, but if he had kidnapped Sakura in order to “refine” Sasuke’s eyes, then he likely wouldn’t let her out of his sight that easily.

And in the end, he did chase after her.

“So you intend to separate Magire and I? I suppose it would be nice if that went well, hmm?”

Sakura ignored him and ran ever faster.

Entering the forest of enormous trees, she raced up the trunk of one of these and leapt from branch to branch. Kido trailed after her, looking like he was simply trying to keep up rather than overtake her.

Seeing her moment, Sakura stopped on a branch.

She faced Kido.

Their eyes met.

A wind tore through the forest, making Sakura’s hair dance around her head.

“Well, then,” Kido said. “Shall we get started?”

Without responding, Sakura hit the palm of her left hand with the fist of her right. Whap! The sound echoed through the forest, the signal for the start of the fight.

Kido kicked at a branch and closed the distance between them. They came together, launching kicks and punches, before pulling apart momentarily.

Kido waved his arms. Lightning Style! Thunder!

Once again, the bolts of lightning he had showed off earlier came shooting toward her.

Dodging, Sakura bounded from branch to branch and pressed in on Kido.

Cherry Blossom Crash!

Her fist thrust out before her connected directly with her enemy’s chest.

Yes!

“Hrngh!” Kido let out a cry of pain, and then disappeared in a burst of crackling electricity.

Tch! Sakura clucked her mental tongue. He had used Lightning Style Shadow Clones.

The original Kido was behind Sakura, to her left. He wove signs, moving both hands as if drawing a circle in the air. “Take this!”

Lightning Style! Bear Trap!

An enormous circle of lightning in the shape of a bear trap, the sort they’d use to catch animals in the mountains, came whizzing through the air, ready to close tightly around her.

She wasn’t going to be able to dodge it.

Building up a thick concentration of chakra in the palms of her hands, she caught hold of the electric blades snapping in on her from both sides, an enormous mouth closing. She stopped their inward momentum for a moment, but the blades stubbornly continued to press down toward her.

“Haah!”

But Sakura was the winner of that contest. With a battle cry, she focused her strength and repelled the trap; it vanished.

“Ho!” She could see Kido laughing. “You repelled the bear trap, hmm? In that case…” He took a light purple capsule out of his pocket—Tailed Beast chakra.

Sakura gasped.

Still under her watchful gaze, Kido placed the capsule on his tongue.

3

Magire’s expression did not change in the slightest after Kido disappeared into the forest at Sakura’s invitation.

“I have to ask at least,” Sai said. “If you’re interested in surrendering, we won’t attack.”

Magire adjusted the positioning of his monocle and cocked his head slightly to one side. “I do not understand the meaning of what you say. I have no intention of surrendering, nor do I have any need to. I will defeat you both and go to join forces with Master Kido. Or perhaps before that, Master Kido will secure that woman and return here. Either way, you will be defeated here. That is all.” He moved both hands behind his back.

When they appeared again, each held several kunai.

“What’s with the kunai?” Ino’s face was doubtful.

Sai had never seen any like them either. The part of the blade that was normally iron was instead a glass container that tapered at the tip. Inside, some kind of colored liquid splashed about. He didn’t have to test it to know it was probably poison.

Magire launched the kunai.

Sai and Ino split, leaping off to the left and right. The glass kunai all missed them, but Magire quickly reached around behind him and pulled out several more. He likely had any number of these hidden weapons tucked away on his body.

Sai and Ino kept moving to keep from being easy targets, but Magire also kept moving, tossing the kunai from a variety of angles. Sometimes, he deliberately aimed above their heads, trying to use the travel time to get a hit.

Ino fell into a somersault and wove signs as she got back to her feet.

I’m going to try going in, she signaled Sai with her eyes. She was going to attempt Mind Transmission.

While Ino was readying her jutsu, Sai moved around to draw Magire’s eyes away.

But the jutsu failed. Apparently repelled by Magire, Ino scowled and quickly released her signs.

Sai spread out his scroll and let his brush race across it.

Art of Cartoon Beast Mimicry! Fujin! Raijin!

Two massive images, nearly twenty meters tall, stood up. The long shadows they cast plunged the area into darkness.

“You’re already bringing them out?!” Ino cried, running over to Sai’s side.

“This isn’t the time to be stingy,” Sai said. “We have to finish this quickly and get to Sakura.”

Fujin raised its arm and brought an enormous fist down toward Magire.

Magire leapt backward to dodge the blow heading straight for him. But Raijin was there at the ready, and its foot came own on Magire’s head. The earth rumbled, and clouds of dust rose up.

There’s no way he could have dodged that, Sai thought.

The dust settled soon enough, and Raijin slowly lifted its foot. Or rather, Raijin wasn’t lifting its foot—it was being pushed up from below.

“What the….” Ino’s voice slipped out.

Holding Raijin’s foot up by one hand was Magire. He had apparently taken the Tailed Beast drug; he was cloaked in a light purple chakra.

With a flick of Magire’s wrist, Raijin lost its balance and toppled over. Sai and Ino flew backward, just barely managing to avoid being crushed in clouds of dirt and debris as the ground rumbled heavily beneath them.

Magire jumped up onto the chest of the fallen Raijin. There, for the first time, they got a good look at him.

At some point he had lost the monocle, and he had also tossed away the white robe. His hair stood on end. His intellectual appearance was now something fiendish. And the tails—he had six of them. All thick, all a meter or longer.

Magire raised those six tails and thrust them into Raijin’s chest.

A second later, Raijin’s body exploded and turned into a spray of black ink.

“For me as well,” Magire said, dropping back down to the ground. “This is not the time to withhold anything. That is all.” He sent several of the sharply tapered tails snaking out.

His target was Ino. She jumped in response, but the tails changed trajectory midway to chase after her.

Just as one looked about to reach her, Fujin stepped in and acted as her shield.

The tail pierced Fujin’s foot, and the giant turned to ink, almost bouncing back from the tail.

Just like Raijin before, rather than the enormous painted warrior turning back to ink because it had been stabbed, it seemed like the tail had injected something, some kind of explosive chakra, causing the giant to explode.

The six tails sallied forth, still targeting the two young ninja.

As if the tails weren’t enough, Magire still hurled poison-filled kunai from time to time. It was all Sai and Ino could do to keep avoiding the onslaught of attacks; they had no chance to launch their own offensive.

Sai seized hold of the merest breathing space between kunai and tails and tossed a single kunai of his own with everything he had. But Magire deftly evaded the blade headed for his collarbone.

“Sai!”

Suddenly, Ino had her arms around him, and they were tumbling to the ground together.

And then a tail shot up with incredible force from the place where Sai had been standing. Ino had detected it burrowing along to Sai underground.

“Sorry,” Sai said.

Ino shook her head as if to say not to worry about it.

“This is bad, huh? We don’t do something, it’s going to keep getting worse too,” Sai said, as Magire turned the tips of his tails toward them. Balls of light shot out at them.

They each dove to one side, and the balls slammed into the ground and exploded.

They didn’t flow from the tails or come forth in some kind of organic way. It was more like the tails were shooting the balls like bullets.

So bring a bird out and attack from above? Sai glanced thoughtfully up at the sky.

“Sai.” Ino reached out to him with her Mind Transmission. “There’s a strategy I want to try.”

“Strategy?”

“I don’t know how well it’ll work, and there’s a part that kind of seems suicidal, but…”

They continued to speak as they dodged Magire’s attacks.

“…Got it. Let’s try it.” Sai nodded once Ino was finished explaining.

They exchanged a look and leapt into action simultaneously, throwing smoke bombs down onto the ground. A thick curtain of smoke rose up to hide them.

“This is a waste of your time!” Magire shouted. “That is all!” He brandished his six tails and whipped them at the smoke. The curtain dissipated, and the blindfold effect was gone.

Before the smoke was entirely cleared away, three ink tigers came forward to attack Magire head-on.

The enemy ninja shot balls of light from his tails to rain down on the tigers, and they quickly returned to ink. But from behind the ink, Ino appeared, kunai in hand.

The tigers were pawns. The real thing was Ino’s kunai attack. An attack with one of Magire’s own poison kunai.

But Magire didn’t flinch. He waved a tail, and it hit Ino hard in the stomach.

“Ngh!” She went flying and slammed into the ground.

And then she stopped moving.

“Ino!” Sai shouted, leaping at Magire. He closed in on his enemy, kunai backward in his hand. Magire tried to defend with a tail, but in that instant, the Sai leaping at him turned to ink. An ink clone.

“Hrk!” The ink splattered onto Magire’s face.

The real Sai threw himself at the momentarily off-guard Magire. He tried to bring the kunai in his hand toward the man’s chest, but Magire’s tails waved from side to side, providing a screen.

Sai leapt backward, and was trying to get closer again when the six tails shot countless balls of light directly at him.

He couldn’t completely evade the shower of bullets. He took several in one side, and a painful warmth bloomed and spread from the site of the injury. Sai dropped to his knees.

“Although I praise the courage required to launch waves of attacks mentally prepared for death,” Magire announced, expressionless, “it was simply too ill-advised. That is all.”

“Oh, I’m just happy to get your praise.” The words were no sooner out of his mouth than Sai was kicking at the ground and charging toward his enemy.

Magire welcomed him with direct attacks and light balls.

Enduring the pain, Sai dodged them all.

“You truly are persistent. That is all.” Magire split his six tails into groups of three. The tips of these transformed into something like hands and grabbed on to Sai from both sides.

His reaction time slowed because of the wound in his side, Sai was held fast by those six tails. He twisted and writhed, but he couldn’t move an inch.

“That really…is all,” Magire said, and one tail let go of Sai, the tip sliding up to rest in front of Sai’s eyes.

In that tip sat the tiny glow, a warning of the ball of light to come.

At that moment, Sai saw a single falcon fly in behind Magire.

The falcon had a kunai in its talons. One of Magire’s poison kunai.

Magire noticed the bird’s approach and looked back over his shoulder.

Immediately before the falcon crashed into Magire’s back, it changed course. It shifted back up to the sky, almost scraping along the man, and the kunai was gone.

Plunged into Magire’s back.

“Release!”

Ino returned from the falcon to her own body. She quickly leapt up from where she had fallen facedown and raced over to Sai.

“You…!” For the first time, Magire showed signs of being shaken.

“We made it look like waves of attacks mentally prepared for death, but it was a trick play which used a wild bird. That is all,” Sai said, smiling faintly. They had been right to go along with Ino’s idea of pretending to lose consciousness and entering the falcon.

“You dodged the kunai Sai threw, instead of repelling it with your chakra cloak,” Ino said. “Which means that the cloak will let a kunai through. So I figured we could try catching you off guard and hitting you with one of those poison kunai.”

“Heh,” Magire laughed. “It’s quite fine to be filled with your own self-importance, but you’re forgetting something crucial. Those who use poison carry the antidote to that poison, lest they themselves die from it. If I take that antidote now—”

“Gosh, I sure hope that antidote works.” Ino smiled boldly.

Magire looked confused.

“The kunai in that back of yours. While it’s true we borrowed the kunai itself from you, we replaced the poison inside with my own anesthetic.”

“…What?” Magire finally said.

When they made the smoke curtain, Sai had readied the tigers and his clone, while Ino worked on switching out the contents of the kunai.

Her anesthetic now began to take effect, and Magire’s body started shaking.

“Foolish, this kind of foolish method…” As he shook, the chakra cloak covering his body also began to destabilize. It swelled up and then deflated, before swelling up again.

Sai decided to settle things.

He got out his scroll and brush and began to draw two large figures once more.

Fujin! Raijin!

The enormous images that appeared looked down at Magire. In their shadow, a look of fear came over Magire’s face. The six tails, only recently raging so ferociously, were slumped and stretched out on the ground.

Raijin shook a foot.

The anesthetic had already stolen Magire’s ability to move, so he couldn’t get out of the way. Kicked like a tiny pebble, he bounced several times on the ground before tumbling to a stop.

Fujin’s foot came down where he stopped. The ground shook for a moment and then was still.

That should have finished it once and for all.

Sai and Ino raced over to Fujin’s foot.

When the giant lifted it up, they saw Magire sunk into the earth. He was completely unconscious, and the Tailed Beast chakra was also gone. But...

“He’s not dead, huh? Just barely, but still,” Ino said.

“We have to hurry up and get to Sakura,” Sai said, and returned the two giants to ink.

At that moment, one black shadow after another hit the ground nearby, and they reflexively jumped into defensive postures, thinking it was Kido’s reinforcements.

But that was not the case.

“Master! And Naruto! And Hinata!” Ino cried out.

It was Kakashi, Naruto, and Hinata, all in uniform.

“Hinata and me were going to visit Neji’s grave when we saw Master Kakashi not in his Hokage uniform, right?” Naruto said. “So we figured something was up and followed him.”

“After I talked with the Raikage, I thought I’d come offer some support. These two spotted me on my way here. And, you know, I wondered whether a dangerous mission was such a good idea given that they’re going to be married soon. But they’d just come anyway, if I told them not to. You know how they are,” Kakashi told them with a wry smile, and turned his gaze to the ground. “So that’s Magire, hm? He’s been nicely pressed.”

“How did you know we were here?” Sai asked.

Kakashi lifted his face. “I knew there were some serious chakra slamming up against each other. So I had a general idea of where you were. The rest was Hinata’s byakugan.”

“Where’s Sakura?” Hinata asked, looking uneasy.

“She’s fighting Kido right now,” Ino replied.

Kakashi turned his eyes toward the forest. “Over there? Let’s go.”

4

Kido had grown…nine tails. But they weren’t growing from the chakra cloak.

Is this…did he turn into a Tailed Beast? Sakura furrowed her brow.

The changes to Kido’s body after taking the Tailed Beast drug were very different from what happened with his subordinates.

The light purple chakra explosively growing larger was the same, but in Kido’s case, it became something like a hard skin covering his entire body, much different from the semi-transparent filmlike cloak that coated his subordinates.

Although he had nine tails, his silhouette was not that of a storied fox spirit. Rather than a beast, he was perhaps more accurately described as a mysterious purple person.

“I can’t say the look is very refined, but you’ll soon see that I’m orders of magnitude stronger,” Kido said.

His appearance itself was not particularly frightening. But the amount of chakra he was emitting was overwhelming.

“I guess so,” Sakura said. “I’m a little sorry I turned this into a one-on-one fight.”

“Don’t worry. I intend not to kill you if possible. Here, at least. But—” In that instant, Kido disappeared. “—if you do die, my apologies.”

“Ngh!” She didn’t have time to turn around. She sprang forward and immediately felt a roaring wind at her back. She knew Kido was waving his tails.

She heard the splintering crack of an enormous tree falling in the wind generated by those tails as she landed on a thick branch and dropped into a defensive posture.

Or that’s what she intended to do, at least. But the branch under her feet was destroyed by a tail sailing forth, and Sakura was thrown into the air.

But she didn’t fall to the ground. Instead, a tail shooting in from the side struck a direct hit to her body.

Sakura flew through the forest, smashing through branch after branch after branch. If she hadn’t sent her chakra racing through her entire body, that single blow would have knocked her out of the fight.

Her back slammed into a massive tree trunk, and she finally came to a stop. She started to slide down the trunk, but she quickly bounced back into a counterattack.

She kicked at the trunk and leapt through the branches to approach Kido dead-on.

“That’s the spirit!” Kido launched his tails in rapid succession.

Sakura slipped through the purple spears by a hair’s breadth and landed before her enemy. She drove a fist into his chest.

The skin was hard. The reactive force threatened to shatter her own body. The sensation of the punch lingered in her fist.

As proof of her act, a crack appeared where she had hit him. The skin in that area broke into small pieces and peeled away, falling to the ground.

“That is an almost terrifying destructive power. To be able to injure my body when it’s enhanced by the Tailed Beast drug. However…” Kido laughed abruptly. “This takes us back to where we started.”

The cracked outer skin was repaired before her eyes and restored to its original form.

Sakura gasped.

“I suppose you drew Magire and myself apart because he’s a medical ninja,” Kido remarked. “It seems there was no point in that, hmm?”

An armor of unusual hardness with the ability to regenerate itself. Topped with nine tails sent out at will, an attack that was impossible to predict.

This just gets worse and worse, Sakura thought. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea…

But Sakura herself had brought about this situation. This was no time for whining.

“Are you going to give up and choose instead to die before Sasuke? Isn’t that how you’d really like to die anyway?”

“You’ve got to be kidding.” Sasuke smiled slightly. “If it’s this or dying in front of Sasuke, I choose fighting it out with you here.”

“Fighting it out?” Kido grinned. “The only thing you have is ridiculous strength. How do you intend to fight it out with me?”

“I’ll just do this!” she cried out, and once again launched her fist.

She punched hard at the same place where the crack had been before.

She felt a response, the spot where her fist had landed cracking. But the results were the same as before. A small area of the skin peeled away and fell off, but was quickly repaired.

“You might have ridiculous strength, but like this, you’re simply ridiculous.” Kido wove a sign with both hands. It was one she’d seen before.

Lightning Style! Bear Trap!

The circle of electric teeth came snapping at Sakura.

In an instant, she determined that she wouldn’t be able to stop it. She realized that the jutsu, now enhanced by the drug, was several orders of magnitude faster and more destructive than when she had seen it before.

Unable to retreat and avoid the attack, Sakura leapt forward and slipped through the circle of lightning to dodge the bear trap. The sharp snap behind her told her the trap had closed.

Perhaps not expecting that Sakura would step toward him, Kido took another hit from Sakura’s fist.

But this time, no cracks appeared.

“What? Are you exhausted already?”

“Not by a long shot!” she shouted back, and launched her fist once more. A hit. But no cracks. She pulled her arm farther back.

“I’m not about to simply stand here and allow you to punch me to your heart’s content,” Kido snarled.

A tail shot out. She dodged. Another tail came flying at her. She dodged. But the next tail hit.

Sakura flew backward and slammed into an enormous tree, forcing the air out of her lungs. She very nearly lost consciousness, and dropped to the ground. But soon enough, she was back on her feet.

Kido also jumped down to earth.

Sakura clenched her hands into fists and dashed toward him.

Pummel Kido’s chest—that was the only thing in her head.

“The foolhardy only die young, you know,” Kido said, as he threw out his tails in a feint.

Sakura dodged them, one after the other. But simply dodging didn’t get her any closer to Kido.

One tail snaked forward sharply, and she couldn’t get out of the way. Thmp! The thick tail plunged through her stomach. But Sakura ignored it and kept running.

I won’t die!

Ninja Art! Mitotic Regeneration!

Sakura’s entire body swelled with Byakugou chakra, and a design rose up on her forehead. The cells where she had been pierced rapidly divided, healing the wound. But the tail was still plunged through her midsection, so she couldn’t close the wound opening.

“You…!” Kido stared in disbelief.

It was only for a moment, but he seemed almost afraid of Sakura charging forward, his tail still lodged in her.

Sakura closed the distance between them and launched punch after punch. She wouldn’t have another chance to press in this close to her enemy. She wanted to get in as many blows as she possibly could.

She attacked in quick succession, but the surface of Kido’s body failed to crack.

“Eeah! Enough!” Kido waved the tail piercing Sakura, and her body slid smoothly off.

Her chakra immediately closed up the wound where it had punctured her.

“So we both have the little trick of self-healing, hm? But what are you going to do now?” Kido asked, tails floating lightly in the air. “You can only attack with your fists. And there’s no point in trying to wait out the effect, you know. I still have a decent stock of the Tailed Beast drug.”

“It’s true, I can’t actually do anything. All I have are fists, so all I can do is punch.” Sakura brushed away the dirt on her face and glared at her opponent.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand. Why do you not stop when it’s so clearly pointless to continue? I find it simply mysterious.”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Sakura said. “I want to take you down. I won’t let you make a drug or anything out of Sasuke’s eyes. And I’m not letting you make the Tailed Beast drug either. I won’t let you build your military company. That feeling—my feelings—they haven’t changed! So I’ll face off against you, however many times it takes!”

So I’ll tell Sasuke how I feel however many times it takes!

…Wait. What?

Abruptly, a feeling of love for Sasuke rose up in her heart, knocking her off-balance.

Was pummeling Kido’s hard outer skin making her think of her love for Sasuke, a feeling that went unrewarded no matter how many times she told him about it?

No. It’s not unrewarded.

Sasuke and I have been getting closer bit by bit.

“I’ll see you soon…”

They had gotten all the way to that point.

And this fight with Kido was the same. Sakura hadn’t abandoned all hope yet. As long as her chakra held out, she intended to keep pummeling him.

“No matter how many times you try, the result is always the same. Your fists will lose their power before you injure this body of mine.”

“Sorry,” Sakura said, clenching her fists. “But I’m used to attacking over and over and being repelled!” She started running.

Arriving in front of Kido, she hurled her fist at him.

Hit! Hit! Hit! she chanted as she beat at her opponent. He tried to dodge her or guard, but she simply and intently continued to strike the same place.

She saw a momentary lapse in his guard and grabbed hold of the chance to plunge her fist toward him. The punch that landed was solid.

She watched as a single crack raced along the purple outer skin.

Yes! she shouted to herself triumphantly.

Suddenly, Kido opened his mouth wide. Instantly, Sakura intuited danger. She could see highly concentrated chakra being readied in his mouth.

This is bad! Leaping backward to one side, she crossed her arms in front of her face. A Biju Bomb?!

Immediately after she had this thought, a lump of chakra was launched from Kido’s mouth.

The spherical lump had likely been compressed within his body, but the moment it left his mouth, it swelled up to a diameter of a meter or so, and headed straight for Sakura.

She managed to evade a direct hit, but it still glanced across half of her body. And from that alone, the impact was tremendous.

The force of the tails paled in comparison with this chakra blow, and Sakura went flying into the woods, smashing through several thick branches before slamming into an enormous rock and coming to a stop.

Sliding down onto the ground, she couldn’t stand again right away. Just breathing sent a fierce pain racing through her body. She checked that her limbs would move properly as she finally stood back up.

“Stop already. The condition you’re in now, you won’t be able to evade the next Biju Bomb,” Kido said, walking toward her. “You really will die, you know.”

“I won’t. Stop,” Sakura said. Her voice was slightly hoarse. “After all, just a little more and…”

Kido cocked his head to one side. “A little more? What is that supposed to mean? It’s all you can do to stand. I am uninjured. Isn’t this what they mean by a ‘hopeless situation’?”

“Uninjured? You?” A slight smile rose up on Sakura’s lips.

Kido’s face became doubtful, and he turned his gaze toward his own chest. And then he noticed it.

That the crack running along his skin was not healing, that pieces in the center were beginning to peel away and fall off.

“Wha—! How is this—!” Kido panicked. “Why isn’t it starting to heal?!”

“Because the cells there are already dead.”

“Dead…?” The skin on his chest continued to peel off and fall away in chunks.

“My punches were working. I only made it seem like they weren’t.”

Kido stared at her intently without saying a word.

“While I was pounding on your chest, I was also sending healing chakra. What actually happened was my healing chakra instantly repaired the cracks that appeared. So it looked like you weren’t hurt, like my fists weren’t doing anything at all.”

“You healed the damage…? For what purpose…”

“To speed up the death of the cells, obviously,” Sakura told him. “A wound healing basically means that the cells in the area divide anew and block the wound opening. But the number of times the cells in your body can divide is limited. Your armor’s hard. But if you keep forcing the cells to divide, at some point, they die, and you can break through that point. Practical trick of Mitotic Regeneration.”

“Ridiculous. Don’t think that a scratch like this will decide this contest…!” Kido’s face twisted in rage.

Sakura clenched her fists. It was just as he said—simply making a hole in part of his armor didn’t mean she had won.

One more hit!

Sakura started running to launch one final blow at that hole with everything she had.

She drew her arm back and determined her target.

In her field of view, she saw Kido’s mouth opening.

A second Biju Bomb! Sakura guessed.

“Haah!” Dropping low about ten meters in front of Kido, she slammed her fists into the ground.

The earth shook, and Kido wobbled and lost his balance. In that instant, Sakura danced up before him.

Today’s second—!!

“Oh yeeah!!”

The Cherry Blossom Crash, the last of Sakura’s chakra riding on it, slammed into Kido’s chest.

She felt her fist sing at the perfect hit. As if to prove it, Kido flew through the air, cutting down enormous trees and pulverizing massive boulders.

5

Hit with a blow the likes of which he’d never felt before, Kido flew.

And as he flew, he spit up blood.

Blood calling up bits of memories from the depths of his brain.

His father collapsed, vomiting blood.

“Dad! Dad!”

Kido and his mother raced over to where his father knelt at the edge of the bed.

“Why did he stop taking his medication?” the doctor said to his mother, scoldingly.

I was convinced he was taking it. In the end, his mother never uttered these words that had to have risen up in her heart.

He found so many white capsules in the drawer of his father’s desk.

There was nothing inside them. They were just empty capsules.

“You always forget to take your medication. From now on, please make sure you take it in front of me.”

“Ha ha ha! All right.” His father laughed and flashed a white capsule at his mother. “See? I’m taking it.” A capsule with nothing in it, empty.

“Pretty great, huh, Kido? Now you can go to the academy like everyone else.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Dad!”

Despite his sickly nature, his father had gone out on missions to earn money for them. And thanks to that, Kido had been able to go to the ninja academy. He had half given up on the academy because he knew money was tight around the house, so this news was like the song of angels in his ears.

But the truth was different.

His father had a chronic illness and had to take a certain medication for it.

An expensive medication.

He stopped taking it.

He kept taking the empty capsules in front of Kido and his mother, and saved up the money he would’ve spent on that medication.

His father gave up on his own life and put the money for his medication toward his son’s tuition.

“Pretty great, huh, Kido?”

“It’s not even a little bit great…” he told the portrait of his father over and over again.

If he had money, his father could have taken his medicine.

If he had money, his father wouldn’t have died.

If he had money—

Money—