"What are you gawking at!?" Sakura screamed at the onlookers. "Get to the shelters, it's dangerous!"
A quick look around informed Sakura that they had landed somewhere in the commercial district. This was good news, that meant she wouldn't have to worry too much about collateral damage, but just to be safe…
Boar! Monkey Horse! Dog! Ram!
"Crystal Style: Ruby Crystal Labyrinth!"
Sakura slammed her palms against the ground. The earth ruptured in a circle fifty metres in diameter as multifaceted translucent red crystal walls surged up along the perimeter, stretching overhead until a crystalline dome enclosed them completely.
Although she was scared out of her own mind, she had trapped herself inside with Shira.
"Show yourself, coward!" Shira roared as he burst from the rubble of the flower shop that had collapsed on top of him. "Which one of them are you?"
Everywhere he looked, Sakura's reflected image stared back at him from each of the ruby crystal's gleaming facets. She was somewhere in the maze with him, he was sure of it.
"I wonder?" Sakura's mocking voice echoed through the maze's walls. "Can you find the real me before you breathe your last?"
Shira roared in anger and punched the nearest reflection, cracking the wall and multiplying the number of grinning faces looking back at him.
The oxygen poisoning was eating away at his lungs and nervous system, and the hotness of his blood was actively boiling his brains, rapidly eroding his sanity. He didn't have time to play hide-and-seek, and there was no way he was going to play along with her stupid games!
Sakura's mocking smile vanished almost instantly as Shira started charging through the walls of her maze, tearing through them as though they were made of rice paper. The labyrinth shuddered as he rampaged through several layers of senjutsu-chakra-reinforced crystal, prompting Sakura to start channelling more chakra into her technique, but it was no use.
"The Fourth Breath."
CRACK!
"Is he getting stronger the closer he gets to death!?" Sakura cried out as the labyrinth shattered, dispersing clouds of twinkling crystal dust as it crumbled to pieces about her ears. "This isn't fair, damn it!"
"I SEE YOUUUU!" Shira screamed incoherently.
"Kyaaaah!" Sakura screamed as she re-entered Lightning Style Senjutsu Chakra Mode. "Get away from me, you persistent bastard!"
Sakura turned into a bolt of lightning and flickered away, but Shira instantly caught up and kicked her, then reappeared beside her as she hurtled backwards through the air and kicked her again mid-flight, sending her crashing into a department store. She hurtled through several walls and boutiques, before crashing into the women's lingerie section.
Despite her lightning armour and the resilience that the Shikotsumyaku granted her skeleton, she had broken every single bone in her body, but just like before, the damage rapidly erased itself. If it weren't for her dress and cloak being reduced to tatters stained with her own blood, nobody could possibly have guessed that she had been on the verge of death only moments ago.
"This is torture…" Sakura groaned, coughing up blood as a pair of lacy panties fluttered down onto her head. "Shadow Clone—"
Sakura's Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan could just about catch the afterimage of Shira's afterimage as he dispatched the ten Shadow Clones she had summoned in the fraction of an instant, giving her just enough time to avoid instant death by twisting her body and kicking him in the side as he went for her head.
"Waltz of the Camellia: Second Step!"
Shira's figure blurred, but Sakura knew one thing for certain: her bone-spiked spinning kick had just been blocked!
"IYAAAAH!" Sakura screamed as Shira reappeared in a flash with his fist clenched around her ankle, grinding it into powder.
"The Fifth Breath."
The yellow aura that enveloped Shira turned scarlet as his very own blood combusted with the flames covering his body. Sakura couldn't even begin to fathom the pain Shira had to be suffering as he burned alive, both from within and without.
"WHY WON'T YOU DIE!?" Shira screamed as he rained punches down on Sakura, blasting her deeper and deeper into the ground with each strike. "WHY!?"
Shira's skin began turning black as his body rapidly carbonised, splitting all over with audible crackling noises. The only thing still allowing him to retain human shape was his chakra pathway network, visible through the fissures webbing his charcoaled body in scarlet lines...
"Because you're attacking a log, idiot!" Sakura's voice called from a dozen metres away.
With a puff of smoke, the Sakura that Shira had been hammering with blows transformed into the remains of a Wood Clone. Earlier, while she'd still been busy flying through walls, she had performed the Substitution Jutsu, swapping herself with a doppelganger!
As soon as he heard her voice, Shira flickered behind the real Sakura, ripping through the dense network of steel razor wire she had quietly set up without suffering any real injury.
At this point, the rivers of chakra flooding through his pathways were doing all the heavy lifting to keep his body in one piece, and since chakra was invulnerable to all substances except chakra, mundane things such as matter could no longer harm him.
Still, the wires slowed him down just enough.
"Lightning Style: Chakra Enhanced Strength — Cherry Blossom Thunder!"
Shira caught Sakura's fist in his palm and twisted, tearing off her forearm, leaving another to grow in its place almost immediately.
"GRAAAARGH!" Shira screamed madly. "THAT WON'T WORK ON ME ANY MORE!"
The electric field generated by that attack truly could no longer affect him; his last brain cells had already burned out. The only thing keeping him going was sheer willpower, an obsession with protecting his comrades indelibly inscribed into his chakra.
"The Sixth Breath!"
"STAND PROUD!" Sakura shouted. "YOU ARE STRONG!"
Sakura released the entire supply of senjutsu chakra stored in the Celestial Empress Lotus Seal. Senjutsu chakra flooded her pathways, powering the simultaneous activation of the Body Revival Jutsu, the Multi-Size Jutsu and Lightning Style Chakra Mode. It was a testament to Sakura's incredible focus that she did not explode on the spot from the backlash.
Channelling her inner Gon, Sakura grew to over two and a half metres tall, her muscles rippling and swelling larger than those of any bodybuilder as she ripped through the last of the clothing covering her curvy frame. Standing tall and completely naked, her immense three-metre bustline no longer seemed quite as impressive as before, reaching only far enough to cover her crotch, and only just.
An inhuman howl ripped from Shira's throat.
"SHANNAROOO!" Sakura screamed as she punched with a massive, musclebound arm, her voice two octaves deeper than usual. "Explosion Style: Chakra Enhanced Strength — Cherry Blossom TORPEDO!"
Their fists met with a cataclysmic impact, creating shockwaves that shattered glass and the knocked down the walls surrounding them, rippling across the entire village. Sakura's arm had been completely vaporised by the detonation, but in a fraction of a second, it had regrown…
At the cost of losing her arm for a split second, she had managed to briefly repel Shira.
"Sage Art, Organic Reincarnation!" Sakura roared as she drew upon the power of the Shikotsumyaku. "Freeform Bracken Dance!"
At this point, Sakura was completely improvising. She could only direct her chakra into the ground using her experience with growing trees and using Organic Reincarnation and hope for the best.
"THE SEVENTH BREATH!"
Immense, misshapen and jagged bones sprouted from the ground all around Sakura and Shira as they furiously exchanged kicks and punches in a frenetic dance, each blow sending the other reeling into the sharp arms of the forest of spikes surrounding them… but Shira's time was limited, and time was on Sakura's side: all she needed to do was hold on for dear life while his life and breath bled out.
The air grew unbearably hot as the chakra leaking from their bodies intertwined, becoming dense enough to suffocate any normal person. Space and time warped wherever their duel carried them, leaving a trail of bloody destruction across the village strewn with ivory bones, until…
Shira abruptly stopped.
His blackened eyes twitched as his sanity fleetingly returned to him, at the very end of his life.
"What a splendid match…" Shira murmured, raising a hand to examine it as his body began crumbling into ashes that drifted away on the wind. "I'm sorry, Sen, Yome… and Lord Gaara, too… I only wish you could have seen the heights your encouragement carried me to… if only you'd survived, Lord Kazekage… perhaps none of this would ever have come to pass… I…"
Unfortunately, Shira never got to finish expressing his thought… he was dead. His body had been reduced to charcoal, yet still he stood proudly on his feet.
"You're the second person to ever bring me this close to death," Sakura groaned as she powered down, her bones creaking audibly as she shrunk back to normal size. "This chakra of yours… I'll acknowledge it. Of all those I've fought over these past three years, there's not a single person who surpasses you in taijutsu."
Even though she had somehow survived, Sakura was completely drained. There was not one drop of senjutsu chakra left in the Celestial Empress Lotus Seal, and…
!!!
"Guh!" Sakura grunted in pain, reaching over her enormous breasts to clutch at her chest. "My… heart…!"
The world spun, and Sakura tipped over, drawing in ragged breaths as the corners of her vision darkened. Abusing Creation Rebirth to forcefully suppress the backlash from using so many self-damaging techniques while simultaneously regenerating the terrible wounds she had suffered during battle had pushed her body beyond its limits… how many years of her lifespan had she just tossed down the drain…?
"Na… ru… to…"