Toguro Sakura
By Moonraker One
A/N: Kudos to the two thus far that advised me that Village Hidden in the Storm is Arashigakure no Sato. I will bestow you with godly powers in your next life.
CHAPTER THREE – Konoha's Own Chuunin Exam
A vast sea of genin, all chatting with one another, had the volume of a tornado and showed no signs of quieting down. That is, until a door swung open; it was then that they parted like the Red Sea and shut up, at the sight of the man standing before them. All the underclass ninja stood at attention and watched as the jounin who'd just walked in paced back and forth, trying to think of what to say. After about a whole minute of trying to plan his speech to give to them, he finally faced them directly.
"As you may know, I am Uzumaki Naruto, one of the higher-level jounin of Konoha," he began. "Some of you, by means of your parents, may also know that I my soul is merged with that of a Kyuubi. Most of you, at one point or another, have heard people saying that I am bad person, an insult to our fine shinobi village." If his tone was not somber, it became so at this point. "However, despite the inner desires of your friends and family, I am here to stay. In fact, I will be proctoring part of this year's chuunin examination." It was at those last two words to come out of his mouth that all the genin began chatting away again. He raised an arm in the air and they instantly became silenced again. "If you have been nominated by your team commander to take the exam, you will have the good fortune of doing a different exam than previous years had. For previous exams, we would hold a written aspect, then field work in the forest of death, followed finally by one-on-one sparring. It is by the wishes of Lady Hokage that we simply drop the written part, and hold one-on-one battles INSIDE the forest of death." This brought on a collective groan from all the students present. "Oh, and one last parting piece of advice: try your hardest not to get put in the group proctored by fellow jounin Uchiha Sasuke. He hasn't taken a bath in three days and thus, he quite reeks of vinegar." A roaring storm of laughter followed from everyone present, even a few of the jounin.
"WHY'D YOU SAY THAT?!" Sasuke demanded. Naruto only smiled.
"Take a bath, and prove me wrong, smell-suke."
"You KNOW I haven't taken a bath because I just came back from a long mission!" Naruto did not turn around, instead, kept walking.
"Whatever, smell-suke."
As Naruto left the building in which the genin were called for their debriefing, he found himself approached by Maito Gai, one of the older jounin. Apparently, some important piece of news was written on a sheet of paper in the elder jounin's hand. "Uzumaki Naruto," Gai explained, "as a jounin, you are invited to partake in a special examination."
"I'm already a jounin, Gai, what exam would I want to take?" he wondered if his fellow upper level ninja had lost a screw somewhere.
"Lady Hokage is retiring after this year's chuunin exam, and has refused to choose a replacement," Naruto's eyes lit up after hearing those words come out of Gai's mouth. "A lot of the jounin will be applying." Naruto wanted to rip the paper out of Gai's hand and shout "yippee!" at the top of his lungs, but before he could, Gai followed up with, "I heard from Kakashi that your new wife, Hinata, is one of the applicants."
Naruto's eyebrows lowered. "Thank you, I'm finally getting my chance!" he shouted. On one hand, this was his dream. On the other hand, he didn't want to go head-to-head with his wife. However, weighing his alternatives took only a brief instant, for he chose to sign himself up. While thinking of Hinata, he looked over and felt a pair of hands tugging at his pants leg. A smile came to his face as he saw young Uchiha Nuuto. Gai walked away and left the sheet of paper in his fellow jounin's hand. He couldn't believe that Hokage had appointed Sasuke's child into Naruto's care. He figured one or both sides would hate it.
"Areyougoingtodolikeyousaidandtrainmetoday,Naruto-sama?" shot out of the child's mouth. He barely understood what the kid had said. As he picked Nuuto up above his head, he weaved the kid left and right in a figure eight pattern like he was an airplane, then set him down.
"Yes I am," he replied, "and I'm gonna teach you a brand new technique!"
"YayIlovenewtechniques!" the child chirped. The kid's rapid-fire speech seemed to fit his enthusiasm. What Naruto simply was amazed by was the fact that the kid was no older than seven and already he was taking on techniques not touched by genin almost twice his age and mastering them effectively. He wondered how the kid could still be like a child, what with the pace at which he seemed to be growing up. It took Naruto almost until he was about fifteen to grow up completely into a mature person.
"If we just go back to the place with the other members of our cell, I'm gonna show you how to do it!" he tried to show as much enthusiasm as the kid had, although that degree of it was hard to display. "One new technique, six new ways of spying on your enemies, and if you're REALLY good, I'll show you a technique called the 'Sexy no Jutsu!'"
"Oooh! Thatsoundscool,Naruto-sensei!"
"You just can't tell your dad I'm teaching it to you."
"You'rewaycool,sensei!"
"Yeah, it's just that a few people don't think so. But you're right, I'm really great." He looked at the kid, and he could see that behind the smile was a serious question waiting to be asked.
"Sensei, do you hate my father?" Naruto looked down in surprise, if merely for the reason that the kid spoke at a normal rate of speed. Other than that, he didn't know how to adequately respond to a bombshell of a question like the one he'd been asked. He often wondered about that himself; DID he really hate Sasuke? Or, like he'd been hoping, was there some way of salvaging the fact that they used to be friends.
"Of course not!" Naruto argued. "I just get peeved with him on occasion."
At the village of Arashigakure, as the chuunin examinations were partially underway, a small waiting area at the base of a small stairs leading up to a fighting ring had previously held six, but that number had whittled away to three. Of Sakura, Koji Luuda, and Koji Ludo, only one could walk away with the top spot, and a chance to fight a jounin. If Sakura managed to get that far as to beat the jounin, certainly she'd be face to face with the kage of the Village of the Storm, where she'd enact the final phase of her plan. She'd kill him and command one, if not the, most militarily powerful shinobi village. From there she'd finally get a chance to overwhelm Konoha, and kill all the freaks that banished her.
A clipboard got raised into the air, and a voice shouted, "KOJI LUDO AND KOJI LUUDA, YOU'RE UP!" It had come down to the semi-finals of this group; brother versus sister, only one would win. Unbeknownst to Luuda, her brother had been training personally under the kage for quite a bit, and had a bit of advantage in terms of skill. Power, they both knew, was anybody's guess, for they each had uniquely powerful jutsus. They readied themselves, and the moment between the dropping of the signal ball, and the gong ring that followed, seemed to last a lifetime.
Not one nanosecond after the gong rang did the two siblings vanish in a poof of smoke, both at the exact same time. Sakura had to increase her power to four percent in order to properly see them swinging at each other, and even then, they were going dreadfully fast. The brother had several techniques that were purely physical that he was using to throw off his sister's guard. He hurled a fist at her face, which she barely had time to dodge by putting up her left forearm in its path, using the force of it to counter and kick him in the chest. He fell backwards onto his rear, but shot back up to a standing position and rocketed towards her with feet swinging as fast as he could hurtle kicks at her. She did quite a good job of dodging them and ultimately reversing one of them into a sweep that he leapt over. As he fired off more kicks to distract her, he formed signs with both hands. Once he finished, she took a kick to her chin in order to be able to bend over backwards as far as her flexibility would allow.
"FIRE STORM NO JUTSU!" A swirling stream of blazing inferno streaked over her, burning off a small section of her shirt and slightly singing her stomach. When she came up, he blasted her six feet out of the ring with a jab to her gut, immediately succeeded by a straight blow to the face. She landed on her hands and knees, pushing herself into the air just a slight bit over and behind him. She delivered a raising knee into his back, thrusting him to the floor face down. He rolled over to avoid her stomp, and leapt to his feet. "C'MON, Luuda!" he egged. "You got some fancy technique! Use it!"
Not yet, she thought. Just give me some time, though, and you're as good as down. She predicted that her brother's next attack would be a forward strike to the abdomen, which had already been slightly singed, which he did but did only as a distraction while he vanished in a puff of smoke and rematerialized behind her, throwing a left hook at the back of her head. With speed unheard of, she bent backwards to dodge it, putting her in prime position to punch straight upwards at his head. He bent his neck back and avoided the potential strike—which probably would have been a tide turner—but was unprepared for her to flip over onto her hands and strike him directly in the chest with both feet simultaneously. Utilizing her arm strength (due to her training she had impressive upper body strength for a scrawny looking girl), she thrust herself back to an upright position, rapidly turning around to slam a series of standing side kicks into his face, chest and gut, all in the time before her previous double-footed strike removed him from his standing position. When her thousandth-of-a-second long flurry of kicks ended, he got uprooted like an olive tree in a force five hurricane. Flying almost seventeen feet across the room, he met the far back wall rather brutally, and fell to his hands and knees. NOW it's time, Luuda thought.
"How the hell did you get so stro…" he yelled as he pushed himself towards a standing position. Before he could finish his sentence (or get to his feet, for that matter) she put her middle finger and thumb together, and made a flicking motion as if to strike a fly in midair. By itself it would have been drowned out by the sounds in the room, but Luuda was well-known for having one technique that had been banned. Her flicking sound was magnified to have the vibration pattern of a lightning strike at zero range, the sound intensity of a bomb explosion, and a range narrow enough to nail her brother directly in the chest. He got hit by the sound waves as though they were a fifteen pound steel cannon ball, which threw him backwards, causing him to meet the wall face first and upside-down. Almost everyone felt the building rattle when he hit the wall at the speed of a fastball pitch. After that, he landed on his back, twitched a bit, then fell unconscious.
"THAT'S the Fatal Sound Aura technique," she whispered. Sakura, from the sidelines, was quite impressed; a mere flick of the finger had been magnified almost fifteen hundred times, and concentrated in a circular area on her brother's chest, the better part of seventeen feet away. It was only when the official went to confirm the winner that he realized that everyone who wasn't fighting was holding their breath. When he went to check Ludo's neck for a pulse, he was amazed that the boy hadn't been either killed or put into a permanent coma.
"KOJI LUUDA IS THE WINNER BY KNOCKOUT!" shouted the official. "AFTER A FIVE MINUTE BREAK, THE FINAL MATCH OF THIS CELL WILL COMMENCE!"
Sakura gave an approving look to Luuda. "You were a bit rough on your brother," she told the girl. Luuda rolled her eyes, and gave a playful grin.
"The boy needed his sorry ass kicked," she replied, "and I was just itching to use my technique." Sakura lifted her eyes momentarily, as though to stress an important message.
"Against ME," she offered, "you'll get to use it to its utmost potential!"
"Wouldn't have it any other way."
A rapid surge of power shot past Naruto's head as he stood opposite his three-man team. He'd been placed in charge of training a team of underclassmen—like any jounin was expected to do—but he never expected the members of his trio to be so different from each other. The primary member was a girl by the name of Iyuko, whose primary skill was her jutsu which allowed control over water vapor. She'd been excelling in nearly every form of taijutsu, although her illusions left a lot to be desired. Next in stature to her was Nuuto, the only son (so far) of Sasuke, who at the age of six already possessed more skill than Naruto himself had at twice the boy's age. The kid's development had been nothing short of mind-boggling; already the kid could turn on and off his sharingan, he could use almost all of his father's fire jutsus, and had taijutsu skills that rivaled shinobi much older than himself. Naruto estimated him to be the second strongest of the trio, just above the final member, a boy who could make illusions better than anything ever seen, and had the ninjutsu techniques of a chuunin, but couldn't fight purely physically if his life depended on it. Not that he couldn't throw his share of punches and kicks, or parry his oppoent's strikes, he didn't have the physical techniques that other ninja his age had. It was a fault that had to be worked on if he ever was to go on a b-rank mission or the sort. His name was Kudano.
"Nice," Naruto complimented, dodging bolts of lightning fired from his trio. "Keep it up! Pretty soon you'll be able to move onto more powerful lightning jutsus. Right now, this is the basic stuff you have to master." The bolts from the two older members of the group were pretty good considering it was the first time they were using them, but after only two tries the short son of Uchiha Sasuke had mastered the basic Lightning no Jutsu expertly. "Nuuto, could you please step to the side so I can talk to you privately?"
"Sure,Naruto-sensei! Isthereaproblem?" Naruto couldn't help but smile; the kid reverted to his thousand-mile-an-hour rate of talking. Pulling him far enough away from the other two so that they couldn't easily hear what he was saying, he carefully planned out his words.
"Nuuto," he began, "you said your dad wasn't training you. Is that true?"
"No,hewon'ttrainme. Hesayshistypeoftrainingistooadvancedforme." Naruto shook his head; he'd predicted this. Even though Sasuke himself had been a master shinobi at a young age, he didn't want his son to have the same responsibilities that he had. He really couldn't understand why Sasuke couldn't see that regardless of what he did, his son would inevitably inherit the same kekkei genkai that every Uchiha had. He'd made a decision; even if the Uchiha wouldn't train his own son, Nuuto would get plenty of training from Naruto whenever he had the chance.
"You're six years old, and already you're better than I was at twice your age! Did you know that?"
The kid bowed his head with a smile, and then dashed off to rejoin the other two to continue their training. Naruto looked to his team, but before he could rejoin them, a knocking was heard at the door to his dwelling. When he opened it, at the door was Kakashi.
"Kakashi-sensei, what're you doing here?"
The copy nin had in his hand a clipboard. "The chuunin exam's been pushed up; it starts in two days," he explained. Naruto's eyes shot open.
"TWO DAYS?" he cried. He couldn't possibly have predicted that Hokage would move the exam up. If it had been moved back, it would have made sense. Why it would be conducted sooner was beyond his reasoning. "Well, what is it?"
"Do you have any shinobi that you'd like to recommend for this year's exam?" Naruto carefully thought up an answer to Kakashi's question. After a whole minute of deliberation, he looked to his team then at Kakashi.
"Iyoka and Nuuto are more than ready," he explained, "but Kudano doesn't have taijutsu skills mastered enough to be much of an opponent. I mean, his genjutsus and ninjutsus are absolutely wonderful, but…"
"Yeah," Kakashi finished, "if you can't precisely predict your opponent's type of taijutsu and counter it exactly, you'll be doomed to lose every time. So, Kizana Iyoka and Uchiha Nuuto, then?" A nod solidified Naruto's answer, and Kakashi wrote down the names of the shinobi to compete. Unlike previous years, teams weren't required to take part, so the two members of his team could actually participate separately.
"Okay, guys," Naruto told his students. "You should go home now; it's been about as long as it should be." Each of the three members of his team gathered their stuff and left, all with a certain degree of wonder. Nuuto wondered what the chuunin exam really was, Iyoka wondered how she'd stack up against some of the more powerful genin she'd have to fight, and Kudano wondered what parts of his skill were lacking that warranted his team leader not to nominate him for the exam. He decided to ask Naruto himself what the deal was. Naruto, naturally seeing his third student upset, he looked down and asked, "What's wrong, Kudano?"
Kudano couldn't help but look confused at his instructor. "Naruto-sensei," he said in a disappointed tone, "why didn't you choose me?" Naruto bowed his head; he'd seen this question coming a mile away. He put a reassuring hand on the genin's shoulder.
"Kudano," he explained, in as nice a tone as possible, "you can do genjutsu and ninjutsu better than about any shinobi your age that I'd seen. It's the simple fact that your taijutsu needs to improve. You don't understand the sheer importance of being able to predict your opponent's pattern and counter; sometimes it could mean the difference between living and dying." His explanation seemed to answer the young ninja's question, but a deeper thought weighed on his mind. Naruto used his Kyuubi power of mind-reading, and saw the answer. The reason the kid was so worried about it, was a reason that made Naruto's blood turn cold.
The kid had an abusive father. To Naruto, such a thing was worse than having none at all. He figured, though, that it would be safer not to tell the kid that he knew the real reason. He'd confront Kudano's father on his own—without the knowledge of the dad's son—and get him to change his tune so that he could lead the young shinobi to think that his dad had changed on his own.
The last minute of the five minute break that took place before Sakura and Luuda were scheduled to go head to head seemed to last forever. Sakura knew that even though the girl's power came nowhere near her own, she couldn't let up for a second or she'd be quick-fried by the Fatal Sound Aura. She estimated the girl's power to be enough to kill Orochimaru's giant snake, so in order to be safe, thirty percent seemed adequate. After all, she didn't want to use TOO much power, lest she attract unwanted attention. Luuda couldn't imagine the depths of power that her opponent had. She'd seen the skinny girl fight only once, and even then, the power displayed was minimal compared to the stores hidden within. She had no idea, of course, of the fact that Sakura was capable of leveling a high-rise building at only half of her true power. The official stood up from his seat and marked down the last fight between the two remaining members of that particular cell.
"UCHIHA TARIKA VERSUS KOJI LUUDA!" he shouted, raising his clipboard high above his head. "FINAL MATCH OF CELL THIRTY! WINNER OF THIS CELL WILL GO ON NOT TO FACE A JOUNIN, BUT LORD KAGE HIMSELF!" Luck smiled upon her; already phase two of her plan was to go underway.
From the complete other side of the huge gymnasium, Orochimaru had already won his cell, and defeated the jounin he had been set to face, so he sat down and watched his protégé as a fellow member of his cell sat down. "One hell of a shinobi, you are," he complimented.
"Well," Orochimaru egged in his stolen voice, "I've been training my entire life."
"I'd bet you'd like to fight our Kage, like she's going to fight," added the cell member. "After all, we've never been challenged under mighty Lord Uchiha." Orochimaru's blood ran cold at the last sound. Ever so slowly, he turned his head to face his cell member.
"Did…did you just say 'Lord Uchiha?' as in…Uchiha Itachi!?"
"Yeah. For siblings to fight, this'll be just amazing!"
Oh fuck! Orochimaru screamed inside his head. At her strongest, I've seen her no more powerful than myself! She'll be maimed in seconds against Itachi! Instinctively, he leaped over the couch he was sitting on and dashed towards his student. She simply had to be warned before she went and got herself killed. "Where're you go…" his cell member tried to protest but couldn't, for the giant snake ninja already was halfway across the huge gymnasium by the time the third word came out. He arrived at the fighting ring Sakura was in just in a few moments before the fight was to begin. Pushing the jounin refereeing the match aside, he leaped into the ring.
"Tarika!" he shouted in a whisper, referring to her by the stolen name to preserve identity. "The kage of this village is a shinobi by the name of Uchiha Itachi!" She rolled her eyeballs left and right.
"And…your point is?" she inquired.
"IDIOT!" he yelled, hastily lowering his tone. "If I'm nowhere near strong enough to fight him, how do YOU expect to be able to?!"
She wanted, at this point, to dispel his doubt by telling him her secret that she possessed strength vastly in excess of his own, but maintained a fear that he'd abandon her just as her home village had a decade prior. For the one of the only people that had ever cared to simply disown her because of superior ability would be a degree of loneliness that simply was too great. So she merely replied, "I haven't seen his fighting techniques yet, and after all," she leaned in to delicately whisper, "I am a demon's child."
"IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE!" he screamed in a whisper. "You'll die, and my dreams as well as yours will die also!" She couldn't believe it; he'd actually come close to saying he needed her.
"Kinuro," she answered in simple terms, "have I ever let you down? Whenever I said I'd kill someone, I've killed them. Nothing has stopped me from killing whomever opposes me."
"ITACHI IS FAR SUPERIOR TO ANYTHING I'VE EVER THROWN AT YOU!" he stated in his sharp whispering tone. "but if you insist on fighting him, I'll have to bail you out at the end."
"CAN WE GET THIS MATCH UNDERWAY?!" the referee rasped loudly. Orochimaru grudgingly left the ring as the two opponents vanished in a poof of smoke. Sakura barely managed to dodge a powerful swing by her opponent by ducking beneath it; Luuda, however, had predicted that her pre-emptive strike would be avoided, so she turned it at the last minute into a violent rising knee that caught the pink-haired demon directly in the chest. A powerful strike from her landed right on Sakura's forehead, throwing her to the ground a few feet away from where she'd previously been standing. Sakura's eyes widened a moment before she flipped herself onto her hands to avoid being stomped on, then pushed herself back onto her feet. Her opponent off guard, she whirled around and smashed a roundhouse kick into her foe's left cheek, spinning Luuda around to land on her face. The older Koji sibling flipped into the air almost catching Sakura on the chin before landing on her feet, thrusting her elbow backwards upon making herself upright, just a inch short of nailing her opponent again. She turned around and leapt backwards; the two shinobi stood opposite each other.
Taking up stance, Luuda grinned and said, "That should do for a warm-up. NOW you'll see the true destructive power of the Fatal Sound Aura!"
This opponent is inhumanly strong for her age, Sakura thought. She's probably about sixteen and she's already mastered a technique so powerful it's been banned in many villages. Twenty-six percent should be about right. Sakura said nothing in response to her adversary's compliment, simply gritting her teeth and letting her chi surge to the surface. Reaching a level of strength her body hadn't used in quite a while, her shorts had horribly torn, just barely managing to hold on by the waist band at the top of them. Her shirt fared just as bad, with the increase in muscle size ripping a split in both sides clean up to her underarms, and tearing off both sleeves. Her shoes had somehow managed to stay intact despite the fact that her feet had increased in size by a full shoe size and a half, but all of these problems were acceptable considering that her power had increased about fifty times. Luuda could barely believe the chakra emissions she sensed off of her foe; not only did she have a tremendous amount more chakra than before, the fact that her muscles were quite a bit larger allowed for a tremendous amount more chakra to be stored in them, allowing for the immense surge of energy. Luuda knew she could not last very long against such a difference in power abilities. She stomped her foot and prepared to modify the sound.
She let the sound pattern from stomping her foot be magnified about eight million times—effectively burning up almost all of her chakra for such a drastic increase in volume—and concentrated it into a cylindrical area two feet in circumference. Then she hurtled it at Sakura with all the speed of a bullet, striking her on the stomach, sending her violently across the room to blast a seven foot wide hole in the wall as she went through nineteen inches of solid concrete of the gymnasium wall. It had been Luuda's most powerful strike possible with the Fatal Sound Aura technique; if this final attack was a failure, she'd have no chance of winning. But after two minutes of nothing, she began to smile.
"ERRRAAAGGGHHHH!" A loud screech was heard from outside as a fist dealt a powerful strike to the wall, widening the seven foot wide hole to twelve feet. Sakura's mammoth frame leapt through the gap in the wall, landing with a heavy thud on the concrete floor, leaving visible cracks upon landing. Luuda could barely breathe as the woman approached her. With one hand, the pink-haired demon raised her opponent four feet off the ground, her grip tight as a vice.
"Please…spare…me…" Luuda rasped. "I'll…do…anything…" The plea for life intrigued Sakura; perhaps she'd have some use for this girl after all. As she put down the girl, the female Koji passed out from lack of chakra and also from sheer exhaustion.
"UCHIHA TARIKA WINS BY KNOCKOUT!" She looked to her left and saw the kage himself appear in a puff of smoke; indeed, Orochimaru's advice was not wrong as she felt a huge amount of chakra buried within Itachi.
"Very good…Sakura," announced Itachi. Sakura gasped; how did he know her name? "You are indeed a powerful warrior…after all, your brother thought so." With his right arm, that had been partially shielded from sight by being held three-fourths of the way behind the rear door to the gymnasium, he pulled into sight Toguro Tabuna, her brother, whom he held above his head with one arm. Not a single bit of effort was required by Itachi in order to hurl him fifteen feet to land in front of Sakura. With his life blood draining from him quickly, from a large group of puncture wounds on his chest, the demon looked up to his sister.
"Sa…ku…ra…" he managed to utter, blood coming from his mouth with every syllable spoken. "I'm…a goner…but I'm…certain you…can kill him…you're…stronger…than…me…" Before he could finish his sentence, a kunai sailed across the room and entered his neck, hastening his death.
"Let's see your true demonic powers; after all, you are younger Toguro's daughter, aren't you?" He looked behind her and saw her sensei standing with a horrified look on his face. "Your teacher doesn't realize your secret, does he Sakura?" Orochimaru looked with a questioning look at his protégé; what secret would she possibly hide from him?!
"So you know I'm far superior to him, Uchiha Itachi?" she egged, letting her disguise drop. The great snake shinobi almost leapt back in shock; he couldn't understand why she'd hide her true power from him.
"SAKURA!" he shouted. "HOW could you hide such a vital piece of information from me, your master!" She gritted her teeth; it was not his sharp tone that struck her like a knife, it was his use of the word "master." She considered herself a servant to no one, much less an inferior being in terms of power.
"You are not a master to me! I am NO ONE'S servant! I'll kill him and then YOU are going to do what I say!"
Itachi raised his eyebrows, surprised and pleased. "Ah! But first you must be able to attack me on equal terms! Let me see one hundred percent!"
Sakura almost laughed; this shinobi could not possibly be such a fool. "I'll take myself to sixty-five percent and no higher! Why should I waste my full power on a useless fool such as you?!"
"You're still a child," he whispered, moving the better part of twenty feet in an instant, slamming a jab into her gut. She spit up a small pulse of blood onto his shirt out of surprise; she was not expecting that degree of opening power. A kick to her face sent her slamming into a small flight of stairs next to Orochimaru. He held her, horrified.
"You should give up this useless effort!" She would not listen to her master's words. Pulling herself up, she caused the entire structure to rattle from the sheer level of energy coursing through her body as her shirt tore off almost completely, leaving behind only enough fabric to cover half of her chest, the other half exposing her bra which had been taxed far beyond the limits of its elasticity but somehow held on.
"Oh, he's SO asking for seventy percent," she joked.
