Faced with such a grand display of power, Hiruko instantly turned on his heel and fled. Obviously, he wasn't going to confront Sakura on her own terms; he would either have to be extremely confident in his powers or extremely stupid to rashly step into her sticky trap.
"It wasn't supposed to be this way!" Hiruko shrieked. "I was supposed to be invincible! I would have become a perfect shinobi! I was going to be a living god!"
Everywhere he looked, red crystals gleamed, as crimson as old blood left to dry. The labyrinth's walls were translucent, rendering his depth perception all but useless, and the corridors were tight, twisting at sharp angles that forced him to rein in his speed for fear of turning himself into a crêpe against a wall.
"Get back here, Hiruko!" Sakura roared as she launched into hot pursuit. "Weren't you going to show me what you were made of!?"
A flurry of movement at the corner of her eye caught her attention as she dashed through the syrup glazing the labyrinth's walls. Naruto had summoned an incredible amount of Shadow Clones; he was trying to brute force his way through the maze to reach her side!
Hiruko tore open the skin on his thumb with his teeth and smeared his palm with blood.
"Summoning Jutsu!"
Sakura skidded to a halt as the carcass of some unnamed monstrosity suddenly appeared in a puff of smoke between herself and Hiruko; its armoured flesh dented and cracked, thousands of kunai wedged into the gaps between its armour plates… courtesy of Iwagakure's army. Like ants, they had swarmed over Hiruko's chimera, born of the fusion of three of his subordinates… but it was too late for them; his underlings had been dead for quite a while now.
"NO!" Hiruko screamed. "My men!"
He looked around wildly.
Kakashi, if he could only get his hands on Kakashi, he could still fulfil the Man requirement for his ritual and ascend to the Six Paths level, albeit in a half-baked manner… He quickly spotted Kakashi's white head of hair through the transparent walls. There he was!
BOOM!
The chimeric beast corpse behind him shuddered.
"I'll follow you to the ends of the world if I have to, Hiruko!" Sakura's muffled voice carried through the decaying wall of flesh. "You're dead, you hear me? Dead!"
Hiruko failed to suppress a shiver of fear. He had forgotten what it felt like to be weak… but what was wrong with this crazy girl? Okay, he'd tried to kidnap and ritually sacrifice her sensei and he'd started a war that would doubtlessly result in the destruction of her home, but other than that, he'd done nothing to warrant such aggression!
BOOM!
"Shannaroooo!" Sakura screamed. "Chakra Enhanced Strength!"
The strength of a true Slug Sage combined with Lady Tsunade's nintaijutsu was not to be scoffed at. Hiruko barely had time to duck into a side path as the chimera's carcass exploded outwards, painting the walls an even deeper red with the blood, bones and entrails that shot down the corridor like a shotgun blast.
"HIRUKOOO!"
Sakura stepped through the gaping hole she had blasted into the beast's stomach, her body coated with blood and viscera, looking for all the world like an oni dragged up from hell itself. Only one thought burned through her mind in that moment; she had to keep Hiruko as far from Sasuke as possible, before he discovered the truth that she had guarded from him all along…
"Swift Release: Shadowless Flight! + Steel Style: Tetsubō!"
Without warning, Hiruko rounded the corner and came hurtling down the corridor feet first, simultaneously activating two of his Kekkei Genkai to turn himself into a human bullet… but perhaps out of fear of crashing into a wall, or perhaps because the floor was slick with blood, Hiruko hadn't accelerated to his maximum potential.
Sakura reacted to the attack just in time.
Tomoe rotating madly in her scarlet irises, she stepped aside, breasts jiggling madly at the sharp movement, and her hands shot out, grabbing Hiruko by the ankle as he flew past her. Digging her heels into the stone at her feet, she pivoted and slammed him into a wall, causing the entire labyrinth to tremble.
"I've… got you!" Hiruko croaked, cracking an inhumanly wide smile as blood trickled from the corners of his mouth. "Dodge… this! Storm Style: Thunder Cloud Inner Wave!"
The air crackled with electricity, and before Sakura could let go, a dense black cloud erupted from Hiruko's body, swallowing them whole and cloaking them in darkness. Hiruko laughed madly as blue arcs of lightning danced around him, the tongues of power licking at the pink-haired girl and briefly illuminating the gloom… yet, for some reason, her grip did not falter.
A pair of glowing, scarlet eyes appeared in the dark.
"What the—!?" Hiruko hissed, fear clutching at his heart as the sinister eyes fixed their gaze on him. "That was enough current to fry an elephant… argh!"
A wave of dizziness washed over Hiruko, but he managed to transfer the chakra disruption in his brain to one of the sacrificial victims sealed within him. Until his Dark Style secondary body snapped out of it, he wouldn't be able to use its abilities…
"Storm Style: Thunder Cloud Inner Wave!"
More furiously than before, lightning leapt in every direction, filling the darkness of the miniature storm cloud with blinding flashes… flashes of light that seemed to gather unnaturally around the outline of the curvy girl, as if drawn in by a lightning rod, tracing strange and profound patterns across her skin…
"Storm Style: Hiruko Style Chakra Mode!"
The dark storm cloud that had enveloped them suddenly dissipated, revealing Sakura's form wreathed in electric-blue light that flowed around her like water, instead of crackling, arcing and zapping. She knew in the back of her mind that she ought to be screaming, but she was far too wound up to care about the pain.
Even though Sakura had never completed the Raikage's training regimen properly, owing to her delicate skin, she had still mastered the chakra circulation patterns of Lightning Style Chakra Mode, which allowed her to channel Hiruko's own Storm Style chakra through her Tenketsu without letting the currents penetrate her skin too deeply and wreak havoc on her internal organs.
"You…" Hiruko began, but, unfortunately for him, he never got the chance to finish his sentence.
Holding Hiruko's neck tightly in her left hand, Sakura's right straight broke the sound barrier as her fist crunched against his nose, and he flinched as she drew back her hand for another punch.
The Storm chakra activating her muscles, combined with her Sage's physical prowess, granted her the speed to strike hundreds of times in the span of a single heartbeat. Like a pneumatic drill, her arm drove flurries of punches; again, and again, and again her fist fell, moving so fast that her blows appeared to blur into one!
The air filled with metallic clangs as Sakura's fist repeatedly struck Hiruko's steel-like armoured skin, the sound ringing increasingly louder as his skull began to dent and her knuckles imprinted their shape into the centre of his face, until…
"ENOUGH!" Hiruko screamed.