Sakura's new cell was quite dark.
There was this hole in the wall that let in the light of day, but it was far too small to crawl through, and judging by the distant sound of crashing waves drifting up to her ears, the lake surrounding Hōzuki Castle was right under her window.
Getting thrown into solitary isolation had certainly not been a part of Sakura's plans, but now that she was there, in the dank, cramped stone cell she would be calling home for the next three days, she had to admit that it was a rather convenient turn of events.
"So, the age-old wisdom of beating up the biggest and meanest-looking person on your first day in jail was true after all," Sakura rationalised. "I knew television wouldn't lie to me!"
Though she had not earned herself the reputation of a badass that shouldn't be messed with, having made her victory look like an accident, it had earned her three days of peace. Three uninterrupted days she could use to pleasure… er, train herself, that is. It sounded as though Miss Yamaguchi, the female mountain of muscles, wanted a rematch, and Sakura was all too willing to kick her arse again… once she had evened the scales, that is.
…
By the time Sakura had finished sorting her memories, the moon had already risen in the night sky. Though the winter solstice was behind her, the days remained very short.
Sakura slurped down the thin rice gruel that was to be her dinner, threw away the wooden bowl, and sat in the lotus position on the ground. What she would be attempting was not Dr Shinnō's version of the Body Revival Jutsu, the one that used dark chakra and had made his muscles blow up like pufferfish, but the regular version, which would gradually enhance her muscle fibres in a controlled manner.
The technique was immensely complex, but it could essentially be divided into two parts.
In the first half of the cycle, physical energy from the targeted muscle groups was drawn from their own reserves to stimulate themselves, irritating their fibres and creating microscopic tears. In the second half, any remaining energy was drawn through one's chakra pathways and spun into yang chakra, which was then redistributed to the affected cells to excite their satellite stem cells.
Once one had mastered this cycle, it was only a small matter of repeating it until satisfaction. Since it involved stem cells, the muscle breakdown and repair cycle could be repeated as much as one wished without needing to fear accelerated senescence— that is, transforming into a wrinkled old prune like Tsunade ahead of time.
"Body Revival Jutsu!"
An intensely uncomfortable sensation washed over Sakura as she activated the technique. Her body was warming up at an alarming rate, making her feel like she had a fever. It was not painful like the electric torture she'd subjected herself to when she'd failed to train in Kumo's Lightning Style Chakra Mode, only… incredibly unsettling.
Sakura's muscles began to buzz and pulse and ripple beneath her skin. The sight sent shivers down her spine, and she could not help remembering something from her past life as she began dissociating.
…
It had been a hot summer day, back then.
That day, twelve-year-old Tsutomu had been sitting in the shade on the porch in the backyard, sipping a cool glass of barley tea and discreetly glancing every so often at the lovely girl in a bikini playing with his sister in the pool. His sister Hazumi had come home from Tokyo for the summer holidays, bringing her best friend from university, the radiant Hachimitsu, with her.
As Tsutomu went for another stealthy peek at her curves, his gaze met that of the older girl. She smiled and winked knowingly, making him blush furiously. The tomboy Hachimitsu-chan had grown considerably hotter since the days when she and her younger sister Otome-chan had been his next-door neighbours, and all four of them had gone on adventures, scouring the countryside and searching for beetles to pit against one another in gladiatorial combat…
"Tsutomu!" called Hazumi. "Look at what I found!"
Sighing, Tsutomu put down his glass of tea and walked over to the in-ground swimming pool. Hazumi and Hachimitsu had gathered in one of its corners, and they were looking intently at something on the ground, at their eye level.
"Look, Okazumi-kun," Hachimitsu said gently, pointing at a writhing mass of yellow insects on the ground in the grass. "It's a ball of Japanese honeybees."
Tsutomu looked. It was indeed a ball of bees; he could hear them buzzing loudly.
"Do you know what they're doing?" she said. "When honeybees are attacked, they'll swarm the aggressor and beat their wings really fast to generate heat. Honeybees are really good at resisting heat, but their predators aren't. By working together, they can cook a much bigger enemy alive… I bet there's a Japanese giant hornet in there."
"That's really cool," said Tsutomu, who was trying his best not to look at her cleavage. "So, you still like that kind of thing, eh?"
Hachimitsu blushed.
"I spotted a few hornets coming out of the ground there, amongst the roots; I think it might be the entrance to their burrow," she said sheepishly. "I'm a bit scared of wasps, so if you could plug the hole, I'd feel a lot safer…"
"I dunno," Tsutomu replied hesitantly. "That sounds kinda dangerous…"
"If you go," Hachimitsu said sweetly, "I'll show you something verrrrry special…"
Glancing around to make sure her friend wasn't looking, Hachimitsu hooked a finger under the string between the cups of her bikini and pulled slightly, revealing her creamy cleavage… and a hint of pink, just barely out of sight. Tsutomu held his breath and leaned in for a better look, but to his disappointment, the older girl released the string, and her bikini snapped back into place.
"I'll do it," he said, swallowing hard.
Tsutomu walked away from the pool and started looking around for a suitable rock to plug the hole with. It wouldn't hurt the hornets inside, simply stop them from using that specific exit. They'd dig their way out, sooner or later.
"Eh?" Tsutomu blurted out.
His right foot had just sunk into the ground without warning, causing him to stumble. His ankle was stuck in the ground; murder hornets liked to repurpose pre-existing tunnels and burrows to build their nests in, and he had just put his foot through said nest's ceiling.
The next he knew, Tsutomu was swarmed by furious wasps, each as big as his hand. They plunged their stingers into every exposed centimetre of his flesh, each prick as painful as a gunshot wound. Somehow, he managed to free his foot from the hole, and hearing the girls' cries through that infernal buzzing in his ears, he stumbled towards the source of their voices, blinded by the flesh around his eyes puffing up…
…and pitched forward into the cool water of the pool.
That day, Tsutomu almost died.
But it would be another four years before he finally met his doom.
…
"Gah!" Sakura gasped.
Her palms were moist, and her cleavage was slick with sweat. She breathed in and out in a conscious effort to calm herself, hugging her trembling arms to her chest. She could literally see her muscles twitching and spasming under the effects of the Body Revival Jutsu, almost as if a colony of insects had crawled beneath her skin, like the hornets from that day…
"I had forgotten all about that," Sakura croaked. "So that's why…"
A wave of dizziness washed over Sakura, and she suddenly felt very faint. Her stomach growled loudly. Despite having just eaten, she was starving.
"The belly fat I was trying to melt…" Sakura murmured to herself, putting a hand to her stomach. "It's gone…"
She still had a healthy amount of squish, but she could actually start to feel the outlines of her abs under her skin. But if she kept on like this, she would turn into a skeleton. There was only so much she could do with only chakra; she needed food, some form of protein.
A cockroach skittered past her, appearing briefly as a black flash as it passed through the beam of moonlight streaming through the window. Sakura's face turned green at the thought of eating it. She had made a breakthrough with her phobia of insects, but it would take a great deal more healing before she could bring herself to eat… that!
"Oh, my back doesn't hurt any more…?"
Sakura arched her back experimentally.
Her breasts were incredibly heavy, leaving her neck, upper back, and shoulders perpetually sore. In the Blood Prison, she could not afford to waste chakra on the Transformation Jutsu to redistribute the weight, nor on constantly strengthening herself, so the dull ache had accompanied her throughout her stay. Even now, she could still feel the strain, but at least it was far more bearable.
"I wonder if I could substitute my cursed energy for the Zero-Tails' dark chakra," Sakura thought to herself out loud. "It can't have been more than a few minutes, and I've already exhausted my 10% chakra allowance…"
The worst of the heat was now coming from the Celestial Prison Seal, not her muscles. When Sakura infused chakra, it would absorb most of it and turn it into fire chakra against her will, turning her own energy against herself. Until the glowing jutsu formulae branded on her chest cooled, it would be far too dangerous to mould any more.
"I need to find some meat, or some soldier ration pills," Sakura said, flexing her slightly larger biceps. "Or I'll be forced to drain my breasts for fuel…"
Reducing her chest would be like killing the goose that lays golden eggs, as many orders of magnitude greater amounts of physical energy could be drawn from her breast tissue than from the rest of her body combined. Even if it lightened her load, Sakura was unwilling to reduce herself any further than she had just accidentally done.
Her dress did feel a little loose around the chest… hm? What was that sound?
"Oi!" a hushed voice suddenly called from outside. "Is someone in there? Please, I just need to ask you a few questions, it's important!"
Sakura was taken aback.
There was nothing but hundreds of metres of sheer cliff face overseeing tumultuous waters right outside her window hole. Why would anyone risk such a climb to reach the solitary confinement cells? Certainly not a fellow inmate, not with their chakra sealed like this…