Boom.
Sakura reeled backwards as A casually broke the sound barrier and punched her in the face.
Boom.
Sakura's arms pinwheeled as she tried to catch him, but he was already gone... and now he was back again with a lariat, slamming the back of her head into the hard ground before she could even touch his first afterimage, let alone catch up to his second and third.
"Almighty Push!"
Gambling on A maintaining his attack frequency and continuing to press his advantage, Sakura timed a riposte and blindly launched a repulsive blast in a sphere centred around herself, sending him hurtling into a nearby tree, but he quickly leapt to his feet and vanished into the forest. He was annoyingly resilient with his lightning armour and iron skin.
"Shit," Sakura swore. "These shitty eyes are useless!"
Sakura blinked.
Her purple Rinnegan winked away, replaced by the familiar cherry blossom petal patterns of her Mangekyō Sharingan... or rather, the double-flowered yaezakura pattern of her new Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan, which she had unknowingly obtained after absorbing Tsubaki's cloned body back into herself.
Although the Rinnegan appeared at first glance to be a straight upgrade of the Sharingan due to its evolutionary path, it was actually an entirely separate dōjutsu that offered a fundamentally different kind of visual acuity. Without creating puppets that could share their sight with her, the Rinnegan was far inferior to the Sharingan, or even the Byakugan, when it came to dynamic vision.
As for how Madara was still able to fight effectively with the Rinnegan… that was simply because he was the G.O.A.T. …and as for how he could manifest a Perfect Susano'o with a pair of Rinnegan derived from Byakugan, or how Sakura had managed to summon her own pink Susano'o just minutes ago despite having the Rinnegan active... she had no clue why it all worked. The same went for Itachi and Madara in the original timeline, who were respectively capable of using their Susano'o while completely blind or even with no eyes in their sockets.
It just worked.
"What's the matter, Hokage?" A taunted her. "Getting tired already?"
Thanks to the Body Revival Jutsu, Sakura's muscles were a perfect mix of red and white muscle fibres, the so-called pink muscles, perfectly suited for both explosive bursts of power and marathon-like endurance, so stamina wasn't a problem...
Rather, the problem was that Sakura was feeling a little out of it, as though she were wearing somebody else's skin, like she had worms squirming under her skin.
Although she had become half-Ōtsutsuki, her chakra pathways still hadn't grown accustomed to her new powers, and by growing to such an enormous size while donning the Susano'o's armour earlier, she had channelled more chakra through her meridians than she suspected Kakashi had in his entire career. This manifested itself as a dull pain pulsating through her limbs, like phantom pins and needles.
It wasn't unbearable yet, only… distracting. Once her body finished adapting, she would be stronger than ever.
Sakura coughed. "I can do this all day…"
In the last few minutes, a thick blanket of smog had rolled in through the trees.
The acrid smoke burned her lungs and stung her eyes, and it made her head spin… though that was probably because the Raikage had rattled her brain with a punch directly to the chin. If it hadn't been for her incredibly durable bones, courtesy of the Might Guy cheat and her newfound Shikotsumyaku, she suspected the blow would have shattered her jaw like glass.
Sakura coughed again.
And where were her reinforcements, anyway? Killer B was temporarily disabled, so her men didn't have to worry about being crushed underfoot any more…
What were her tacticians thinking?
Sakura could barely see through the smoke... perhaps she ought to switch to the Byakugan soon, she thought dizzily, or open the Celestial Empress Lotus Seal and soothe her aching body with senjutsu chakra... she didn't have much left after petrifying a thousand Kumo-nin and fighting her first round against baseline Madara, but perhaps it would be in her best interest to bring the fight against the Gokage to an end as soon as possible.
She'd been meaning to save her limited supply of nature energy to throw down with Ten-Tails Jinchūriki Madara, who would become invulnerable to ninjutsu and genjutsu unless they were infused with nature energy...
"Scorch Style: Extremely Steaming Murder!"
Sakura's scattered thoughts were interrupted when an incandescent ball of fire burst through the smoke, hurtling straight towards her.
"Ice Style: Ice Rock Dome of Magnificent Nothingness!"
A certain technique she had never witnessed or even heard of bubbled up unbidden from Sakura's subconscious, a technique buried deep within her Yuki clan bloodline. She raised her hands to parry the superheated chakra, the moisture in the air freezing into what looked like a gigantic golf ball around her. The dome shuddered, its outer layer sublimating into copious amounts of hissing steam as the scorching chakra slammed into it, but it otherwise held firm.
"For an Uchiha... you're not the most detestable one I've ever come across," came a muffled voice from outside the dome of ice. "My thanks for protecting our village... I've misjudged you."
Senju Tobirama burst from the smoke and landed beside Sakura's igloo. He laid a hand on the ice, gathering the steam and water flowing from the wound in the icy dome and swirled them into a torrent that blasted Pakura deeper into the roiling smog. And as quickly as he had appeared, he disappeared again, flickering after her in pursuit.
"You're welcome… I s'pose…"
If Tobirama and Pakura were here, Sakura thought to herself, then the next-to-last line of defence had fallen… the last stand for the Hidden Leaf Village really would be made here…
!!!
Sakura's tired eyes widened as Ōnoki's face appeared on each pane of the multifaceted dome of ice encasing her, a cube of light growing between his fingers. She whirled around as he fired his jutsu, her eyes flicking from red to purple as she raised both hands, forming a diamond between her thumbs and forefingers…
"Particle Style: Atomic Dismantling Jutsu!"
"The Way of Hungry Ghosts: Blocking Jutsu Absorption Seal!"
Searing white light fell upon the igloo, gouging a perfectly square hole into the ice, but instead of vaporising everything within, the rectangular beam tapered off towards its end, spiralling into the diamond-shaped gap between Sakura's fingers.
"Each Rinnegan has its own unique ability," Sakura murmured to herself. "So, what's this, then…?"
The light condensed into a small white pill in her palm… instinctively, Sakura knew what to do with it, and without hesitation, she tossed her head back and gulped it down.
"She… ate my jutsu…!? That isn't possible!" Ōnoki spluttered, aghast. "Youngsters these days… freaks of nature, the lot of them!!"
His ultimate technique, the unrivalled Kekkei Tōta that combined three whole nature transformations, that not even the vaunted Susano'o could withstand… eaten like a piece of sugar candy!?
Oh, hell nah!
Ōnoki zipped up into the leafy canopy and flew away as fast as he could.
"So, this is the legendary Particle Style," Sakura murmured, lifting her left breast and giving it a grope. "You'll feel right at home with the others…"
She could now fire Ōnoki's particle beam cannon whenever she wanted, though she only had a single shot… better make it count.