"Ugh, I let my guard down because of Naruto's antics," Sakura sighed as darkness closed in around her. "Well, this is quite the pinch I've found myself in…"
Like Lego bricks snapping into place, the final puppet pieces locked together around Sakura, trapping her within the giant puppet's chest and plunging her into pitch darkness. The overlapping plates pressed painfully against her small body, leaving her barely enough room to breathe, let alone move anything larger than her little finger.
"Knowing Naruto, I should have been more careful…" Sakura grumbled. "…Actually, scratch that! It may be my job to babysit him, but who in the world could have expected him to pull a prank like that at the worst possible moment, that moron!"
Sakura let out a small grunt of discomfort as a draining sensation assaulted her. Faint wisps of yellow energy were being sucked out of her body and wafting away into nothingness… and then her Sharingan forcefully deactivated as she ran out of the last traces of chakra she had moulded, and she could see no more.
And thus, Sakura died… not.
Chakra absorption techniques siphoning away one's chakra was not the same as overdrawing the body's physical energy to forcefully activate a jutsu beyond one's means; such techniques could not force her to draw out her vital stamina and meld it with her spiritual energy; they could only prevent her from gathering enough chakra to do anything useful with it.
"If it was Naruto, he'd go right ahead and mould as much chakra as he could to overload the puppet," Sakura muttered to herself. "Unfortunately for me, I don't have nearly enough chakra to gamble on something so stupid… ngh."
The walls pressed in on her breasts, hard enough to make her ribs creak; before long, Sakura would be crushed flat… unless she moulded some chakra to hold them back. With only a sixteen-year-old girl's strength, even one as strong as she was, she wouldn't last much longer.
"Okay, think, Sakura, think!" Sakura gasped, thinking out loud. "This puppet is taking my chakra at a steady pace, so what if I kneaded a ton of chakra in one single burst? It wouldn't be able to take it all at once… but what jutsu should I use to break out?"
It was in this deprived state that Sakura finally realised something.
That niggling sensation in the back of her mind… she was sensing nature energy all around her, without even having to try! After all, Ryūmyaku chakra's true nature was nothing more than pure, concentrated nature energy; it was what powered Anrokuzan's puppets, and as an Honoured Sage, it was hers for the taking!
…
Meanwhile, outside…
"No, Sakura-chan!" Dark Naruto cried in anguish.
"So noisy," Anrokuzan said distastefully, glancing down at the two Narutos from a raised platform that commanded a view of the entire underground factory. "Now, where are your little friends? I could have sworn there were more of you…"
"They went to close the Ryūmyaku!" shouted Naruto Prime. "You chose to protect the wrong place, you fat bastard!"
To his surprise, Anrokuzan merely chuckled.
"Is that so? Well, they're wasting their time; in its current state, the Ryūmyaku cannot be sealed away," he said, a wide smile creeping across his face. "Why do you think I've kept the queen of this land alive all these years, in spite of her being such an eyesore? She can no longer seal the Ryūmyaku's power— the best she can do is stem or increase its flow!"
By keeping Queen Sēramu alive, Anrokuzan had ensured that both the Hidden Leaf and the Hidden Sand would fail to notice the Land of Lōran's troubles until it was too late… and by then, his puppet army would have grown far too large to stop. It had also allowed him to lay the citizens' grievances at the queen's feet, granting him ever more authority while sparing him the effort of tightening his grip until he was certain he could enslave them completely.
Still…
Had Sakura been with the two Narutos, she might have realised that even this was not reason enough to keep Queen Sēramu alive when he could so easily have turned Princess Sāra into a puppet queen. Something was off with Anrokuzan's story— there was more to it than that; but, alas for her, she was still bound in darkness.
"Oh, I see," Anrokuzan went on, stroking his beard. "You're not twins at all, are you? You're in the same situation I am… guh!?"
At that moment, a kunai buried itself in Anrokuzan's temple. Before either of the Narutos could so much as blink, Minato materialised beside him, seized his head, and wrenched it backwards, breaking his neck in one swift motion.
The paint covering Anrokuzan's face peeled off, revealing his clay-like, inorganic interior. He grinned eerily and lunged at Minato, who reacted instantly and teleported safely out of reach. Anrokuzan's damaged head immediately began piecing itself back together, and before long, he was whole.
"Dad!" Dark Naruto blurted out.
"What?" said Naruto Prime, stunned.
"Take care, Naruto!" Minato shouted to his sons, dangling from a pipe above with one hand. "He's turned himself into a living puppet!"
Anrokuzan peered up at Minato suspiciously.
It seemed this man was the father of those two blond-haired brats, but they could hardly be more than twenty. What would happen if he killed Minato? His children would never be born, and they'd never chase him into the ruins of Lōran at precisely the moment he'd entered them himself…
Anrokuzan clicked his tongue in annoyance.
The blond-haired man couldn't die, for that would mean the missing-nin from Sunagakure named Mukade, his past self, would never have been driven into the Ryūmyaku by his brat in the first place, and thus, he would never have become the Prime Minister of Lōran known as Anrokuzan.
Either Anrokuzan would cease to exist as he existed now, or killing the Yellow Flash was simply not fated to be within his power. It was a paradox, and mighty as he was, Anrokuzan had no intention of testing the limits of time itself.
Still, the Yellow Flash's children and the pink-haired girl weren't off limits…
"And where do you think you're going?" Anrokuzan said coldly, catching sight of Chōza dashing across the factory floor with Princess Sāra in tow, making for the Ryūmyaku relay node on the factory floor. "I won't let you do as you please!"
If the princess cut off the factory's chakra supply, it would be quite troublesome…
Anrokuzan's fingers danced, manipulating the giant puppet with his chakra threads. With surprising speed, the puppet lumbered over to the fat man and the red-haired girl, trampling over dozens of Naruto's Shadow Clones as they tried to stop it.
"Super Expansion Jutsu!"
Chōza swelled until his head struck the ceiling, then charged at the giant puppet, catching it mid-stride and seizing its hands. He locked their fingers together and dug his heels in, and they grinded to a halt. With a thunderous roar, he gave an almighty shove and began forcing the puppet back, step by step…