Naruto: Reborn as Sakura with Manyuu Chifusa Template Chapter 576: A Knot in the Zetsu Network

Naruto gingerly poked a finger at his ribs.

"Owowowow…"

There was not a single part of his body that wasn't throbbing. For so reason, he couldn't help but picture himself as having been put through a few spin cycles in a washing machine until he was completely wrung dry, but when he looked himself over in the blinding morning sun spilling into the valley, there were no outward signs that he had co to any harm.

Then again, the Nine-Tails' chakra always kept him healthy, so if he had been hurt, then his wounds would have surely healed on their own by now.

"Morning, huh?" he muttered to himself. "Did sothing knock out, ya know?"

Naruto glanced around. He was all alone, at the bottom of so kind of ravine or canyon…

"Sakura-chaaaan!" he called, cupping his hands around his mouth. "Kakashi-senseeeeeeei!"

Then, almost as an afterthought, he begrudgingly added…

"Sasuke, you bastard?"

Naruto pricked up his ears, but all that answered him was the echo of his own voice.

"Bastard… bastard… bastard…"

A vein popped on his forehead.

"Who're you calling bastard, bastard!" he roared.

"Bastard… bastard… bastard…"

Naruto decided that he had ssed around enough for now. There would be plenty of ti for that later, when he regrouped with the others. Making a fool of himself wasn't any fun when there was no one around to laugh at his antics, anyway.

"Nine-Tails? You in there?" Naruto said tentatively, rapping his knuckles against his temple as though he were a door knocker. "Did you see what happened to the others?"

Naruto braced himself for the Nine-Tails' inevitable withering response. That tsundere would almost certainly berate him for thinking of him last, but against his expectations, the fox's voice did not ring out inside his head. Was he pouting, or ignoring him again? Maybe he was sleeping, or sothing.

"All right, then," Naruto grumbled. "Keep your secrets."

He rembered falling off Garuda's back and tumbling through the air before crash-landing with the others in the Valley-of-Sothing-or-Other, but everything after that was a blank. Still, he thought, was this really where he'd fallen? That bastard Sasuke's Susano'o should have carved a deep groove into the cliffside where it crashed, but there was no sign of anything like that here. Had soone dragged him away?

"Thirsty…"

A babbling brook ran along the valley's bed towards an ominous-looking cave. The water was the colour of blood and slled like it too, making him nauseous at the very thought of drinking from it. The steep walls of the valley were streaked with orange and red, just like the sedint swirling in the water at his feet. Had Sakura been there, she would almost certainly have explained this colour was due to the presence of oxidising iron ore.

"Hmm…" Naruto said, scratching his chin pensively as he voiced his thoughts out loud. "Should I follow the current? What would Sakura-chan do…"

Pof!

Naruto slamd his fist into his palm in realisation as a lightbulb lit up over his head.

If the others had fallen into the water, then the current would surely have washed them further downstream. That ant he needed to head into the bowels of the earth! Satisfied with his deduction, he marched into the mouth of the cave the stream fed into… but not before creating a Shadow Clone and sending him to explore in the opposite direction; just to be safe.

The light of day gradually receded as Naruto ventured deeper into the cave, prompting him to ignite one of his ergency flares. With a loud fsssh, the flare sparked to life, banishing the darkness and bathing the interior of the cave in orange light... and that's when he saw it.

Before him stood a mountain of corpses, their bodies pure white, almost as though they had been bleached. As he raised his flare higher, he saw that the ceiling was covered in them as well, suspended corpses tangled in a web of what appeared to be congealed blood…

"Urk…"

Thoroughly repulsed by the sickening sight, bile rose in Naruto's throat, but he forced it back down. He had just seen one of the corpses twitch; could it be that they were not as dead as they had first appeared?

"Hang on, I've got you!" Naruto cried out, unsheathing a kunai to cut the body down. "Wait, what the…?"

He had seen this fellow before, though he looked slightly different. Marimo-like hair, pure white skin… he hadn't recognised him at first without his black-and-red robes and his Venus flytrap-like accessory, but wasn't this that aloe vera bastard from the Akatsuki who hung around Madara? Or the white half of him, at least… and upon closer inspection, weren't all of these bodies perfectly identical? Just how many of them were there!?

"Oi, get a hold of yourself, Aloe Vera bastard!" Naruto cried, pulling the White Zetsu free from the network of blood vessels attached to him. "What happened here?"

The White Zetsu's yellow, unfocused eyes fluttered open as Naruto cradled his head in his lap.

"Is this what nstruation feels like…?" he muttered. "Blood, blood everywhere…"

The White Zetsu blinked.

"AH!" he yelped in shock. "Uzumaki Naruto!?"

Without warning, he attempted to wriggle free, but Naruto held him in an iron grip. After a while, he stopped moving, and an awkward silence fell upon the two.

"Are you almost done?" Naruto asked crossly. "Ready to talk, ya know?"

The White Zetsu nodded pitifully.

"I ca here to investigate an anomaly in the Zetsu Network," he explained. "But the instant I arrived, I ran into this strange human female, and when I looked into her red eyes, I fell into a genjutsu, and I was trapped up there… central sent more Zetsus as reinforcents, but after a while they stopped sending any when they realised we kept disappearing…"

Naruto scratched his head in confusion.

What in the world was going on, here? The only red-eyed people he knew were Sakura-chan and that annoying bastard Sasuke, but they couldn't possibly be the ones who had shot down their bird. Apart from them, there were also Kakashi-sensei and Madara, but as far as he knew, they only had one Sharingan each… and besides, Madara was also a mber of the Akatsuki just like Aloe Vera here.

Or, maybe Madara had a falling out with the others?

"Argh, I don't get it at all!" Naruto cried out, pulling at his hair in frustration. "…ah."

Naruto had accidentally let go of the White Zetsu, who wasted no ti swan diving into the ground with the Mayfly Jutsu… but before it could completely bury itself, it froze, its body shivering uncontrollably…

…and then its head exploded like an overripe waterlon left out in the sumr sun. The rest of its body rocketed out of the crater and slamd into the cave's ceiling in a grueso white spatter, before falling back at Naruto's feet in a headless, crumpled ss of broken limbs.

"Who's there!?" Naruto shouted, leaping to his feet and raising his flare.

Silently, a pair of blood-red eyes had appeared in the darkness leading deeper into the cave's depths. Naruto held his breath in nervous anticipation as the sound of footsteps grew louder, and…

"Sakura-chan!" he exclaid in relief as her curvy silhouette stepped into the light. "You're okay!"