Sakura glanced at the child in the black-haired woman's arms.
The skin of his face, especially around the seven orifices, was puffy and red, stretched taut to the point of almost glistening. Although she could not know for certain what kind of poison the woman had given her hostage without examining him, she could plainly see that he was suffering a severe allergic reaction to whatever it was.
"You're… Haruno Sakura?" the woman said, a glimr of recognition appearing in her eyes.
She and her family were Yuki clan remnants, refugees from Kirigakure who had immigrated to the Land of Waves after Gatō's death. She recognised Sakura's face from the ti she had broadcast her image across the continent after defeating Hiruko. From the villagers, she had learned Sakura was one of the four heroes who had saved the Land of Waves, three years earlier; she was the Great Sakura Bridge's nasake!
"Sha!" Sakura shouted, rapidly weaving signs.
Judging by his appearance, the hostage was in the final stage of anaphylaxis, aning he had only minutes left to live, at best. Although Sakura was confident she could neutralise the mysterious woman who had chosen to launch a suicide attack on the Hidden Leaf Village on her own, she would never gamble a patient's life on the outco of a battle. By definition, ninja combat was unpredictable— safer to secure the patient and treat him at her leisure once the enemy had been rendered harmless.
"Crystal Style: Jade Crystal Prison!"
A circle of light appeared at the woman's feet as Sakura's jutsu activated, but sothing went wrong almost imdiately. Rather than sealing her and her hostage inside a solid block of clear jade, the crystal grew erratically, sprouting warped, misshapen spikes instead of forming a neat geotric prism.
"You!" the woman scread, clutching the boy to her chest. One of the crystal spikes had scored a jagged blood-red line across his limp arm. "You could have killed him!!"
The woman saw red as blood dripped down the boy's sleeve. This pink-haired girl in the low-cut dress, who looked as though her breasts might pop out of her top if she so much as hiccoughed, was nothing like the kind person Tazuna and the other villagers had described.
"Wait, hang on," Sakura said, frowning. The woman's fury was too realistic for this to be a performance; she seed to genuinely care about the boy in her arms. "How are you related to—"
"Ice Style: Coiling Ice Dragon Jutsu!"
Unfortunately, the woman seed to have gone berserk. Ri frost and snowflakes condensed out of thin air, gathering into a blizzard shaped like a flood dragon whose eyes seed to glow with cold light.
"Crystal Style: Tearing Crystal Falling Dragon Jutsu!"
Although Sakura had better ways of dealing with Ice Style than Crystal Style, the last thing she wanted was to set the village on fire. Owing to a shortage of stone, mortar, and bricks, and an overabundance of timber, most of the village was being rebuilt from wood, which was far more flammable than modern building materials.
"SHAAA!" Sakura shouted. She extended her hand towards the ice dragon, and it halted in its tracks, the tips of its whiskers slowly turning pink as she tried to assu control over the woman's jutsu by injecting it with her own chakra.
Crystal Style's speciality was converting solid matter into crystals that the user could control, and that included chakra that had taken physical form. If the enemy used Water or Earth Style, that usually ant Sakura could turn their own techniques against them... but once again, her jutsu went haywire.
The rate at which the ice crystals converted into crystal crystals slowed, then reversed— and before she knew it, the ice dragon had resud its course and crashed into her.
Ice quickly spread across Sakura's body as she braced herself, forcing her to circulate chakra through her pathways to prevent the cold from penetrating her body too deeply and deep freezing her down to the bone. She activated the Body Revival Jutsu, using the shivering of her muscles to raise her body temperature.
"C-C-Cold!"
Sakura was safe, but she was trapped inside a shell of ice.
She swapped from the Sharingan to the Byakugan to track her opponent's movents as the older woman walked away from her. Believing herself victorious, she had halted her attack and was now making her way towards Konohamaru, who was struggling to free his friends from their ice cages with only one arm…
Although she was far from defeated, Sakura couldn't help but think this would have gone much more smoothly if she had inford her personal guard platoon of her return from Shikkotsu Forest, but she had been too worried about Naruto, Sasuke, and Kakashi to take the ti to do so...
At any rate, the woman seed to have dropped her guard, so if there was any ti to strike, it was now… though perhaps not with Crystal Style. The cold seed to have a strange effect on the formation of her crystals, perhaps causing the earth nature to precipitate sooner than it was supposed to, disrupting the jutsu's crystalline matrix and also inhibiting its growth...
"SHANNAROOO!"
Sakura flexed her muscles, shattering the carapace of ice encasing her.
Chakra gathered beneath the soles of her feet, carrying her swiftly towards the woman's back, her Byakugan completely negating the tunnel-vision effect that even the Sharingan could not fully eliminate when she moved at high speeds. The woman's Tenketsu were plainly visible in her white eyes, like luminous stars in the night sky…
"Gentle Fist Secret Art: Eight Trigrams, Sixteen Palms!"
At this point, the ice shards from the cocoon Sakura had been encased in finally struck the ground, alerting the woman to Sakura's presence behind her. She whirled around to face her, but it was already too late for her…
"Two palms!"
Sakura twisted the older woman's nipples, causing her to yelp in pain.
"Four palms!"
The air rushed out of the kunoichi's lungs as Sakura's palms found her solar plexus and her stomach.
"Eight palms!"
Sakura's breasts jiggled wildly as her arms turned into blurs of motion.
"Sixteen palms!"
Sakura snatched the child out of the woman's arms as she crumpled to the ground, and with a stylish flourish, she retrieved from her pouch the ergency adrenaline syringe she usually saved for jump-starting hearts and injected its contents into his thigh.
"…urk."
Sakura's vision blurred. She didn't feel so good, all of a sudden… her breasts felt as though they might tear off due to her vigorous movents, but this feeling of weakness ca from deeper within…
[Ding! Congratulations to the Host for obtaining the Ice Style Kekkei Genkai… Beep! Warning! The Host's genetic sequence is beginning to unravel! The System recomnds that the Host imdiately take steps to consolidate Host's human factor!]
"What? I didn't… an to steal…" Sakura croaked. "Status…"
Darkness encroached on the corners of Sakura's vision, and with the last of her strength she forced her eyelids open to read the blurry, blood-red letters inscribed on the translucent status panel floating before her…
Species: 74% Human, 11% God Tree, 15% other (with a 1% margin for error)
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