"Cut off its wings before it can take off!" Sakura hollered, weaving hand signs as she ran. "Crystal Style: Crystal Wheel!"
Sakura cartwheeled, pink crystal materialising at her heel and forming a solid ring as she completed her revolution. She landed on the inner side of the wheel and urged it forwards, gouging a deep gash into the Sphinx's hind leg as it spun upwards with her inside it, while Sasuke matched her pace and raced up the beast's other leg, lightning crackling along his chakra blade.
Taken aloft by their momentum, Sakura and Sasuke seemed to float in midair as they leapt, raising their swords above their heads. The tomoe in their sinister eyes spun wildly, making it seem from their perspective that the Sphinx's wingbeat had slowed to a snail's pace.
"Lightning Style: Chidori Sharp Sword!"
"Manyū Style Kenjutsu: Breast Guillotine!"
Sakura's muscles swelled with Chakra Enhanced Strength, while Sasuke channelled chakra through the blade's handle. With arcs of blue and pink, their swords sliced through the Sphinx's feathered wings, severing them at the base in twin sprays of crimson blood.
"Fire Style: Phoenix Sage Fire Jutsu!"
Still clinging to Sakura's shoulder, Mini-Katsuyu squirted a jet of acid at the Sphinx's bloody stump, melting the protruding white bone and blackening the exposed flesh in an angry hiss of steam, while Sasuke cauterised his side of the monster by bathing it in flames. This way, they wouldn't have to worry about the Sphinx taking flight any time soon!
"Do it, Aoda!" shouted Sasuke.
The giant snake had coiled up like a spring, waiting for his master's command, and the moment he heard it, he lunged forwards like a living lance. The yowling Sphinx had no time to react as Aoda slammed into its side like a meteor, knocking it off its legs and sending them both tumbling, crushing row after row of houses as the two giants wrestled for supremacy.
For all their personal strength and skill, Lord Munenori and Kakashi could only watch helplessly from the sidelines, unable to intervene in the clash of kaiju before them. Anyone who ventured even a little too close risked being crushed before they realised what had happened.
"Go, Aoda!" Sakura cheered.
After checking on Naruto, healing and moving him someplace he wouldn't get trampled, there was nothing left to do but cheer; Aoda's and the Sphinx's bodies were intertwined so tightly that she couldn't fire any Ninjutsu, as she risked hitting Sasuke's summoned beast by mistake.
Yet, as the moments passed, it became increasingly clear that the massive serpent could not prevail, even from such an advantageous position, having completely constricted his prey. However fiercely Aoda coiled and crushed, however many times he drove his fangs into the Sphinx's throat, the wounds closed almost at once. Aoda was flagging, and his adversary seemed tireless.
"Aoda won't last much longer at this rate," said Sasuke darkly. "We need to do something."
Lord Munenori's and Kakashi's figures flickered before appearing at Sakura's and Sasuke's side.
"What do you think, Kakashi-sensei?" asked Sakura, turning to him. "You were active during the war, weren't you? How did you deal with this sort of thing, back then?"
"Pretty much by avoiding direct confrontation," replied Kakashi. "For Jinchūriki capable of entering Tailed Beast Mode, we used hit-and-run tactics. But none of that is really applicable in this situation."
Basically, Tailed Beast hosts are still very much human, and thus limited by their stamina, unlike actual Tailed Beasts. So, the tactic was to harass them until they could no longer maintain their transformed states, forcing them to return to the backlines. If it was a fight the Leaf couldn't back down from, there was always the option of targeting other emplacements to force the enemy to rush back to protect their base, that sort of thing.
In the end, the only person capable of dealing with a Jinchūriki who had gone beast mode was a Kage-level shinobi.
As the last line of defence, such individuals usually remained at home, protecting the civilians who supported the war effort with their labour. In this case, that person was Lord Munenori, but the swordsman was over ninety years old. He might well have been capable of felling such a beast ten or twenty years ago, but now, it was simply out of the question.
He was even older than that ancient fence sitter, Fifty-Fifty Onoki (age 79, single, ready to mingle)!
Given enough time and luck, Sakura and Katsuyu might have been able to kill the infinitely regenerating Sphinx, but not before the rampaging monster reduced the village to rubble and killed everyone within it, rendering their efforts pointless. Even with the Lorentz Gun, Sakura lacked the sheer firepower to fell it, and the lengthy cast time did little to improve her accuracy.
"There exists a way."
Sakura, Sasuke and Kakashi turned to look at Lord Munenori, who had just raised his voice.
"Aside from the seal that trapped our mountain in this space-time bubble, there exists a second seal that protects the first," the old man rasped. "Anyone who touches it will get drawn in and swallowed up by a black sphere and crushed to death, along with anything nearby."
"What do you propose?" asked Kakashi pointedly.
The old man coughed, spraying droplets of blood onto his sleeve.
"The clan cannot afford to lose any more kunoichi before being absorbed into your village," Lord Munenori said sombrely. "The beast seems obsessed with me, so I shall lead it away and trick it into touching the seal."
"You'll die," said Sasuke bluntly.
The old man laughed harshly.
"I've lived long enough," he chuckled, a hint of wistfulness in his tone. "I would have liked to see the world beyond one last time, but perhaps… perhaps this is karma, a fitting penance for my sins…"
It very much looked as though the old man intended to tell them a story from his youth, as old men are wont to ramble. Sasuke glanced over his shoulder at Aoda, who was screaming in pain as the Sphinx stomped on his tail and raked its claws across his scaley hide.
"Go on, say what you have to, old man," he said, sighing. "But make it quick."
"Thank you, young Uchiha," Lord Munenori said, his eyes twinkling with amusement. "You would make a fine husband for my great-niece."
Sakura would have appreciated it if people stopped arranging marriages for her without so much as asking her opinion, but with the old man about to head to his own doom, she decided to indulge him and remain silent.
"It all happened seventy-five years ago, when on my twenty-second birthday, I buried the person that I had loved most in this world," Lord Munenori began. "Manyū Kyōka. My mother."
Twelve years after the Hidden Leaf Village was founded, only one day before Tanimagakure Village was sealed away by remnants of the Munamori clan's branch family and the Uzumaki clan.