Sakura flung her hands outwards, seizing the sides of the lorry-sized metallic pyramid at the very moment its tip threatened to drive straight through her sternum. The instant her fingers brushed against the black iron sand, the circuit was completed; lightning chakra crackled from her body, generating a fierce current that raced up her right arm and surged through the iron sand, before looping back into her body through her left arm.
Influenced by her magnetic field, the iron sand slowly began decelerating.
"Lightning Style Chakra Mode: Lorentz Gun Jutsu!"
Almost at once, Sakura's arms were violently wrenched apart from each other by the very magnetic force she herself had conjured, electricity still arcing in stubborn ribbons from her fingertips through the black sand.
"SHA!" screamed Sakura.
By sheer force of will, she flooded her arms with chakra, calling upon her Chakra Enhanced Strength. With a jolt, her arms snapped back into line, parallel once more— reasserting the magnetic fields required to direct the Lorentz force along just the right vector!
…
The second in which this unfolded seemed to stretch out into eternity, as Sakura's Lightning Style true electromagnetism and the Third Kazekage's Magnet Style pseudo-magnetism wrestled for control of the iron sand.
In truth, Magnet Style bore no relation at all to Lightning Style.
The Third Kazekage's Kekkei Genkai arose from earth chakra and wind chakra rubbing together, manifesting electrostatic charges that would generate a triboelectric effect— exactly like the science experiment of rubbing a rubber balloon against your hair so that it clings to your head.
In essence, it was simply a roundabout means of using the old 'positive attracts negative' to coax chakra into shifting vast quantities of iron sand, and Gaara's sand manipulation worked the exact same way.
…
In a fraction of a second, Sakura had already drained a good fraction of the lightning chakra stored in her right Breast Seal. It already took immense amounts of chakra to propel even a single senbon at supersonic speeds, let alone the much bigger kunai. But to accelerate this much iron, to such phenomenal speeds!?
She poured ever more of her chakra into her technique, ignoring the searing pain of the lightning coursing across her arms. It had become a contest of sheer chakra— and, with the vast stores she had amassed, there was no chance she'd lose.
Eventually, something had to give— and it wasn't Sakura.
Unwilling to expend all of his chakra on such a dumb contest of strength, Sasori stopped exerting force on the iron sand and yanked on the Third Kazekage's chakra strings to pull him out of the way… but he had underestimated the Lorentz Gun Jutsu's greatest strength— the sheer speed of the projectiles it launched!
BOOM!
In the merest fraction of a second, the iron sand pyramid lost its shape, transforming into a spear of molten iron that shattered the sound barrier, hurtling back to its origin at Mach 7— approximately 8640 kilometres per hour.
Sasori never even had the chance to pull his precious corpse puppet to safety.
While Taijutsu specialised shinobi could move in supersonic bursts of speed, this was seven times that. It wasn't nearly as fast and undodgeable as Sasuke's Kirin, but it was still far beyond the limits of what even the fastest ninja could react to!
One moment, Sasori's prized puppet was intact— and the next, it was just gone.
"Interesting," said Sasori, his puppet face betraying no expression. "You'll make a fine replacement… I'll try not to chop you up into too many pieces."
He didn't seem too upset over losing his one-of-a-kind puppet, because he had just found a much greater treasure. And those huge, fatty lumps on her chest… if they could be hollowed out, wouldn't they be just perfect for storing concealed weapons or ammunition?
"Ngh…" Sakura groaned, her arms falling uselessly to her sides.
Her arms felt like they were about to pop right off her shoulders!
But Sasori wasn't faring much better than she was. As a puppet master, chakra capacity wasn't his speciality. His greatest strength was his chakra control— efficiently shaping the bare minimum of chakra into strings that he could use to manipulate his army of puppets. The Third Kazekage puppet was flashy, but its Kekkei Genkai was quite tiresome to use…
Suddenly, a wave of dizziness washed over Sakura, and she fell over forwards flat onto her pillowy breasts. A tingling sensation was spreading out through her body from her thighs!
"The poison's finally started to work," said Sasori dispassionately. "That makes things easier."
Earlier, Sakura had grasped the iron sand with her gloved hands, coating them in poison. At the time, it hadn't affected her— but when her arms dropped to her sides, her fingers brushed against the cuts and bruises on her thighs, allowing the poison to seep into her bloodstream.
Sakura forced herself to calm down.
Her accelerated heartrate would only accelerate the spread of the toxins through her system, which meant she had to do something while she still held some control over her upper body! Summoning the last of her strength, she rolled onto her side and crossed her fingers.
"Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
Three Sakura doppelgangers popped into existence next to her. The first dropped to her knees and unsheathed the sword from the original's scabbard, while the two remaining began weaving familiar hand signs.
"Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu!"
After all that, his opponent still possessed enough chakra to split into four!? And conjure such vast, intense blue flames with only a quarter of her chakra! Wide-area Ninjutsu users were the bane of puppet masters like him: they could simply obliterate his creations from afar, without ever needing to interact with their tricky hidden weapons.
Sasori instantly shelved his idea to use his Red Secret Technique: Performance of a Hundred Puppets. His puppet army, which he had put so much time and effort into, would turn to charcoal the instant it got near those flames!
No, he would just have to wait for the poison to run its course…