The sound of Tsubaki's footsteps against the damp flagstones carried far, echoing uncomfortably loudly down the tunnel as she ventured deeper into the catacombs. Somehow, the darkness felt even more foreboding than it had the last time she traversed the winding tunnels leading to the heart of the mountain.
This was no place for the living, Tsubaki thought to herself.
Generations of the capital's dead were buried here. Human bones and canopic jars filled with human remains lay scattered across the floor. Cavities had been haphazardly dug into the walls and stuffed with coffins.
Whoever was in charge of disposing of the bodies clearly shared Tsubaki's revulsion for the place, for the concentration of these stray funeral containers thankfully diminished the further she descended into the depths.
!!!
Upon hearing the rapid pitter-patter of footsteps, Tsubaki raised her electric torch, casting a weak beam of light down the path. Her heart skipped a beat as a pair of glowing eyes stared back at her, the pupils slitted like a snake's; then the creature turned away and scurried out of sight.
"Just a kitty-cat," she sighed in relief. "Probably just looking for mice or rats…"
Tsubaki resumed her descent.
By her reckoning, she was already two hundred metres deep, but it was difficult to say for certain. She was close to reaching the last point her Shadow Clones had mapped out, as the official map she had found in the library was riddled with mistakes. Past the next flight of stairs, she would officially be in uncharted territory…
…?
Tsubaki tapped her electric torch. Over the past few minutes, its beam had grown noticeably thinner and feebler. Its light flickered a few times before finally giving up the ghost. The batteries had gone flat, plunging her into darkness.
"C'mon, don't give out on me now…"
Tsubaki's nerves could not take much more of this. This dank gloominess, this cramped stuffiness, this strangling feeling of hopelessness… these sensations were all too familiar to this body. Visions bubbled up from her subconscious… of herself floating in a tank, submerged in greenish nutrient fluid… and on the other side of the glass, a tall man in a white lab coat, observing the progress of her growth with cold, yellow eyes…
She couldn't go back to those days, she couldn't... she would die all over again…
Tsubaki began breathing heavily, her fingers scrabbling against the skin behind her shoulder, her nails digging red grooves where the Cursed Seal of Heaven had once been tattooed on her cloned body. It was gone now— Sakura had purged every trace of Orochimaru from her body when they merged— but even so, it still stung with phantom pain with her every heartbeat.
She couldn't imagine how Sasuke had to be feeling… he had kept the mark all these years…
"Sasuke…" Tsubaki croaked.
That's right, Tsubaki's personality core was Lovey-Dovey Sakura's, wasn't it? The very least she could do was rescue the one who had brought her into existence… not Sakura, but rather Sasuke.
"Stay strong, Tsubaki," Mini-Katsuyu whispered from her shoulder. "Can you make some light?"
Tsubaki's trembling fingers formed three signs in succession… then another three, as she had botched the first attempt. Her body seemed to split in two as a Wood Clone peeled away from her, igniting a flame at the tip of its wooden finger for light. She was still scared, but at least they'd be able to be scared together.
Tsubaki and her Wood Clone resumed their descent.
By her reckoning, they were now a full kilometre below the royal palace, and yet the air was still perfectly breathable. Each time the wind blew outside, the catacombs played their haunting melody as air rushed through the network of holes drilled into the side of the mountain, filling the depths with low howls and shrill whistling. The sheer weight of the mountain pressing down on the tunnel walls also made them groan and creak worryingly, almost as if they were in pain…
"I just saw something move," the Shadow Clone said sharply, raising her arm. "There!"
There it was, one of the velociraptors that had attacked her at the warehouses; Tsubaki recognised its distinctive plumage and markings. It had some sort of blackened discolouration around one eye, almost like a monocle.
"Do you want me to take care of it?" the Wood Clone asked in a low voice, lowering her stance. "If we let it call for help…"
Some sort of liquid dripped from the dinosaur's jaws as it stared at them unflinchingly… and with a sickening realisation, Tsubaki understood it was blood… blood from the dead cat clamped between its teeth.
Without warning, the creature let out a plaintive ululation and turned tail, but after only a few steps, it paused and glanced back at them, giving a little inquisitive tilt of the head. This gave Tsubaki a clear view of its eye… and in its iris, she recognised Sasuke's Sharingan.
"I think it wants us to follow it," Tsubaki said. "Sasuke wants us to follow it."
The velociraptor gave a sharp nod and started down a runnel, and Tsubaki and her Shadow Clone quickly gave chase, filling the air with splashing noises.
"Water…?" Tsubaki murmured to herself, glancing at her feet. "Where is it coming from?"
The sound of their splashing footsteps soon drew the attention of the velociraptor's four brothers and sisters. The first velociraptor faltered for a split second before resuming its run, and its siblings quickly fell into formation around them. The dinos closing the march behind nipped at their ankles, while those in front guided the two girls deeper into the depths, until at last they reached a light at the end of a tunnel and emerged into a spacious crypt.
This part of the catacombs had clearly once been richly and beautifully decorated, its walls gleaming with gold and adorned with exquisite frescoes, but nearly all that splendour had been obscured by the grotesque display hanging before it. Half-dissected human and animal corpses had been pinned to the walls like specimens, their entrails spilling from opened cavities and dangling obscenely over the ancient artwork, which was now stained with blood.
A fossil of some carnivorous dinosaur stood proudly in the middle of the crypt, its gigantic head bearing fangs longer and thicker than Tsubaki's arms. A large pile of Edo Tensei dust had been carelessly swept into a corner, while several cracked glass tanks of dinosaur tissue steeped in formalin had been stacked atop a table strewn with scrolls covered in esoteric jutsu formulae, making it abundantly clear that the royal crypt…
"Sasuke!" Tsubaki cried, spotting him hanging from a wall between two corpses.
"Ah, Tsubaki…" Orochimaru's silky voice echoed through the room. "Come to be reunited with me at last…?"
…was now the sole domain of the Great White Snake of Konoha, Orochimaru.