Sakura rammed her shoulder against the exit door and burst through it, and she stumbled into the dark corridor outside, cradling the wailing baby to her breast with her free arm. The incessant droning of the Kikaichū's wingbeats filled the air, blotting out all other sounds in a wash of white noise.
They were getting closer.
"I won't fail again," Sakura mumbled deliriously to herself. "Not again, never again…"
Sakura barely registered the sound of her own ragged breathing as she ran deeper into the bowels of the earth, leaving a trail of blood spatters in her wake. Keeping her legs moving, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, was all she could manage. Such was the abject, mind-destroying terror that seized her that she could not even remember something as simple as moulding chakra…
"Ah!?"
The world seemed to spin as Sakura's foot met empty space instead of solid ground, and she tumbled down into the darkness, closing her eyes and instinctively clutching Lady Kyōko's baby tightly in her arms to keep her from harm as she fell.
After falling and rolling for a few seconds, Sakura came to a jarring halt as she slammed into a wall, the impact forcing the air from her lungs. A flash of lucidity suddenly struck her; the shock seemed to have finally knocked some semblance of sense back into her. She sat up with some difficulty and looked up; she had fallen down a set of stairs, and her body was covered in bruises…
"Mystical Palm Jutsu… ngh!"
A soft green glow illuminated the gloom as Sakura pressed her palm to her side.
The gaping wound began to close, but under these conditions the best she could manage was knitting her skin back together. She was still bleeding internally… and until her situation became critical, she wouldn't resort to the Hundred Healings. She was short enough already as it was, and the last thing she wanted was to stunt her growth further by prematurely ageing her cells more than she already had.
The buzzing of insect wings grew louder.
"Flush her out."
Sakura set the baby aside and wove hand signs, keeping an eye on the stairs leading to the upper level. Warmth gathered in her stomach, and despite the sharp pain in her side, she drew in a deep breath, filling her lungs with air. And the instant the black cloud of insects appeared in the stairway, she raised her fingers to her mouth…
"Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu!"
A thin stream of blue flames spilled forth from Sakura's lips that quickly widened into a roaring maelstrom. The Kikaichū caught in the blast screamed, emitting horrible screeches as their tiny bodies popped, cracked, and carbonised.
Voices rang out from above.
"Using Fire Style underground, does she have a death wish!? Retreat!"
"Do we know if there's anyone on the lower floors that can cut her off?"
With difficulty, Sakura scooped up the baby and staggered away, her head swimming. She had to get clear while the flames still roared in the stairs like napalm, blocking the way down… Sakura fell to her knees, gasping. Her lungs were full, and yet…
"Carbon dioxide is heavier than oxygen…!" Sakura croaked. "I wasn't thinking straight…!"
Open flames consumed dioxygen to produce carbon dioxide, which was heavier than air… and she was below the flames. At least she wouldn't have to worry about carbon monoxide yet, which would begin forming as oxygen ran out…
"The baby, have to save the baby…"
Sakura bled crimson tears as her coal-black tomoe fused into flower petals in her irises. Her vision blurred as pink chakra manifested around her, forming a barebones Susano'o. The chakra construct was designed to help its user fight in any environment, no matter how hostile… it would filter the poisonous fumes from the air, allowing only breathable air to pass through itself.
More enemies appeared ahead as she limped away from the flames.
"There she is!"
"Wait, that's the Susano'o! Fall back and wait until she exhausts her pupil prowess!"
Sakura gritted her teeth as she limped away.
Of course, Danzō would have taught his subordinates how to counter the Uchiha clan's greatest technique… It would be the epitome of stupidity for them to throw themselves at a tank armed with nothing but knives. Better to hang back and wait, and then pop it open with a can opener when it ran out of petrol!
But to think Danzō feared her to this extent…
He had prepared a squad of female operatives to counter her most powerful genjutsu, armed with flash bombs to force her to close her eyes, taught them jutsu to blind her, and he clearly knew of her phobia of insects… if she had only attacked earlier, perhaps he would not have had so much time to prepare…
Sakura raised her fist, and the skeletal Susano'o mimicked her.
"SHANNAROOO!" Sakura screamed.
She brought down the Susano'o fist, smashing the stone floor with a thunderous crack. Fissures spider-webbed from the point of impact, spreading rapidly… and without warning, the floor gave way, and she was weightless, falling, falling…
BOOM!
The Susano'o absorbed the brunt of the impact, while Sakura and the baby remained safely suspended within its chest cavity. Rather than losing consistency, the damage seemed to spur its evolution: sinew and muscle raced across its skeletal frame, its body growing solider and denser by the second…
"What the—!?" gasped a man in a scientist's lab coat as Sakura picked herself up and dusted herself off. "The intruder made it this far down!?"
From Charybdis to Scylla, Sakura's troubles showed no sign of ending. The deeper she ventured into the earth, the deeper she went into Danzō's lair… further from the surface and freedom, and closer to the horrors sealed within.
"W-wha… what… what is this…" Sakura mumbled, glancing around the room she had fallen into. "Am I still… in the Hidden Leaf Village…?"
This was the room.
Whenever she wished to speak with Orochimaru's chakra imprint, Sakura would slip into Breast Meditation and find herself in a dark chamber lined with glowing green tanks. Inside floated twisted shapes, creatures warped beyond recognition, and she knew, with a chill of certainty, that this was the laboratory from her visions… only somehow worse.
Pregnant men, their bodies bloated and deformed by branches that tore bloody gashes through their skin as they struggled to claw their way free of their own flesh prison; women twisted beyond all human semblance, Senju Hashirama's face where their breasts should have been; half‑tree, half‑human abominations suspended between flesh and bark; pulsating embryos of chimeras yet unborn…
And in one seemingly innocent tank at the centre of the room…
"Ah… ah…"
…floated a first‑year, academy‑aged Haruno Sakura, knees drawn tight to her chest, her face buried in folded arms as she hung suspended within some greenish solution. She might almost have appeared peaceful… if not for the countless scarlet eyes mottling her pale skin. Each one blinking, twitching, veins pulsing as they rolled and flicked wildly in every direction, hungrily scanning the world around her.
Something within Sakura snapped, and she screamed.
…
"It's about time you useless lot showed up! Years of work ruined because of this overinflated philistine!" screeched Shigaraki Tanuki as masked operatives streamed into the room. "Save as many experimental samples as you can and kill this monster! I don't care in what order you do it, so long as you get me out of here first!"
The masked men cast a brief glance at the man in the white lab coat, cowering behind a glass tank that had had its top sliced clean off, then looked back at the rampaging, full-armoured pink chakra construct. It swung its naginata with reckless indifference to the structural integrity of the underground room, smashing glass tanks and pounding the abominations within into bloody pulp.
It did not seem to have noticed them yet in its madness.
"I'm afraid you're still needed here, Shigaraki-dono," said the squad leader coldly. "You will remain and indicate which experiments take priority for saving whilst my men distract the girl."
Shigaraki Tanuki's eyes bulged.
"You absolute fools!" he shrieked. "My scientific knowledge is a hundred times more valuable to Lord Danzō than these failures—"
The squad leader raised his hand and slapped the scientist. Shigaraki pressed a hand to his stinging cheek, eyes watering as he stared at the masked man before him in stunned disbelief… and at that precise moment, the lights went out.
The colossal titan's naginata had just bitten deep into the wall, severing by chance several crucial cables that powered the laboratory. A mechanical whine rose as the backup generators came to life, and a weak red light spread across the room, casting everything in an uneasy glow. Slowly, the emergency lights blinked on and off, the space alternating between reddish gloom and utter darkness…
"This is Lord Danzō's order," the squad leader said. "The paper bombs have already been primed for the base's self-destruction. We have roughly five minutes before we are all buried alive. I suggest you work quickly if you wish to escape with your life."
Shigaraki nodded weakly.
"Do whatever it takes to grab her attention," he said. "Come, I'll show you."
The assembled Root operatives needed no further instruction. Half of them split off and sprinted towards the rampaging Susano'o, while the remainder stayed with him as he darted between the rows of still-intact glass tanks, indicating to the men which contained invaluable or irreplaceable research materials.
This is madness. They're all insane, Shigaraki Tanuki thought, watching as wave after wave of men hurled themselves at the terrifying yet fascinatingly beautiful chakra monster without hesitation. At such close range, few could escape being bisected or crushed outright by the Susano'o's towering chakra polearm, or being flattened beneath its feet amidst the debris tumbling from the ceiling. Yet, they kept throwing their lives away, all for the sake of specimens that had long since ceased to draw breath.
And then, it saw him, and a chill ran down Shigaraki's spine.
Under the slowly strobing emergency lights' crimson glare, the Susano'o seemed to move in stop-motion. Slowly but surely, it continued its inexorable advance towards him in jerking movements, and with each step it took, Shigaraki's guards leapt into action. One by one they vanished into the dark, only to reappear a heartbeat later when the lights briefly blinked back to life, as broken, mangled corpses strewn across the floor, their blood joining the crimson tapestry already smeared over every surface...
"No, no…" Shigaraki muttered incoherently, feeling a warm, wet trickle run down his leg. "Stay away— stay away!"
And suddenly, it was upon him.
A gigantic hand filled his vision and closed around him, crushing his legs as he tried diving to safety. He screamed as the Susano'o lifted him to its head, dangling him upside-down by his now-useless limbs. Its baleful eyes glowed like hot coals in the dark, making him feel as though they were peering into his very soul…
…and then his mind snapped.
The chakra construct opened its hand, and Shigaraki Tanuki fell limply to the ground, his mouth foaming and his eyes rolled back into his head.