Menma clamped down on Sakura's wrists and pinned her to the sofa, bearing down on her with the full weight of his body, while his mother summoned her chakra, ominous purple flames flickering at the tip of each finger on her right hand.
"Move a little, Menma," Kushina said grimly as she approached them. "I need to apply the seal to her head."
"Let me go!" Sakura cried out as she struggled to free herself. "He's… right… there!"
Menma shifted his upper body to allow his mother access to Sakura's wide forehead, but in doing so he left himself slightly off balance. Seizing upon that momentary lapse, Sakura headbutted him, loosening his grip on her, and she twisted her body to scissor her legs around his neck, trapping his head between her thick, tree-trunk thighs.
"Where do you think you're putting my son's face!?" Kushina screeched indignantly. "We're trying to help you, you hussy!"
Menma's muffled voice echoed out from between Sakura's thighs.
"Quit it!" Sakura giggled. "That tickles!"
As they wrestled for control, the pair accidentally rolled off the sofa. Stars exploded behind Sakura's eyes as she struck the back of her head against the hard wooden floor, and her vicelike thighs relaxed their hold on Menma's neck, but strangely enough, he did not seem in any particular hurry to withdraw his head.
"Five-Pronged Seal!"
Kushina's clawed hand shot towards Sakura's face like an eagle's talons, but, luckily, Sakura recovered just in time to clamp both hands around Kushina's hand, her eyes crossing as they focused on the five cold flames burning eerily at the tips of the older woman's fingers, mere centimetres from her nose.
"Be a good girl and let me seal your chakra," Kushina said through gritted teeth, pressing down on her sealing hand with the other. "That's it, easy does it, ya know…"
In this world, Sakura was not nearly as toned as she was in the real world. Her arms were trembling with the effort to keep Kushina's blazing fingertips away from her face, and she was slowly losing ground…
'Focus! Even the original Sakura wouldn't struggle so much!' Inner Sakura whispered in her ear. 'We are stronger than this! Didn't we practise Lady Tsunade's jutsu until both our arms broke?'
How could she have forgotten?
"Sorry, but this might hurt a little," Sakura grunted. "…mother-in-law."
Kushina made a strange, angry sort of choking noise. "Why, you little—"
"Chakra Enhanced Strength!"
Sakura's fingers from her left hand locked with Kushina's, freeing up her right hand to slide down the woman's forearm to the elbow… and then she pushed.
"Shannarooo!"
Sakura's right shoulder rotated inwards as she pressed against Kushina's inner forearm, using her left hand as a fulcrum to twist the woman's arm. A blood-curdling scream sprang from Kushina's lips as her elbow joint shattered and her radius snapped with a sickening crack, white bone piercing through the skin in a spray of blood at the elbow.
"My arm!" Kushina screamed. "You… little whore!"
Orange chakra bubbled out from Kushina's wound, scalding Sakura's skin where she held her arm. The chakra quickly oozed all over her body, wreathing her in a fox-shaped chakra cloak, complete with ears and one tail…
"What is this chakra!?" Sakura yelped. "It burns!"
Sakura was forced to let go as the burning sensation intensified, releasing Menma as she kicked him away, and she swiftly scrambled backwards on all fours. She glanced down at her hands and arms, which had made contact with the orange chakra. Her palms and inner arms were covered in angry red welts, her skin raw and bloody…
"Grr…"
Primal fear took hold of Sakura's mind as she watched two more chakra tails sprout from Kushina's back. The woman's loose arm twitched and jittered unnaturally as her bones mended and her muscles reknit. And all the while, Kushina was fixing her with a murderous glare, dense malice and killing intent pulsating from her in waves…
"Mum…!" Menma groaned as he pushed himself to his feet. "Calm down!"
"Get back, Menma!" Sakura said fearfully, tugging at his sleeve as she hid behind him. "It's dangerous!"
Kushina growled menacingly, long white canines poking out on either side of her mouth. Her once-blue eyes were now crimson, her pupils lengthening into vertical slits. This was no woman… this was a beast wearing human form.
"Get away from my baby boy, you slut!" Kushina snarled. "You can't have him! He's mine! All mine!"
Talk about a monster parent, Sakura inwardly thought.
Kushina bared her fangs, lowering her centre of gravity and… in the blink of an eye, she was gone.
Sakura's Byakugan pupils dilated, her body already moving, but she was a fraction of a second too slow. Kushina clipped her shoulder as she streaked past, sending Sakura spinning into a wall ("Oof!"). Roaring in frustration at having missed, Kushina tensed, and a chakra arm burst from her shoulder, snatching up the sofa from the sitting room and hurling it at Sakura.
"Hup!"
Sakura flexed her knees and leapt as the sofa crashed into the wall behind her, bursting apart in a shower of synthetic foam, wood, and springs. Coating her palms and the soles of her feet in chakra, she stuck to the wall like a spider.
"Mum, stop!"
Menma's voice was drowned out by his mother's inhuman screech.
Kushina had hidden herself well by running in the shadow of the sofa she had thrown, but Sakura had already seen through her sneaky ploy with her Byakugan. With chakra claws raking along the floor, tearing out strips of wood, Kushina ran up the wall after Sakura, yet another burgeoning tail sprouting from her backside.
"REEEEE!"
Kushina gathered up the rubble she had torn from the floor and flicked it at Sakura with one of her tails, pelting her with shards of plaster and wood shavings and forcing her to shield her eyes… but Sakura could still see her, even through her hands and eyelids!
"Gentle Fist Secret Art: Revolving Heaven!"
BOOM!
The instant Kushina pounced on Sakura, she was repelled by an impassable wall of rotating chakra, her immense strength rebounding upon her, and she flew backwards like a crimson meteor, crashing into the stove in the kitchen.
Kushina's chakra cloak flickered like a flame about to sputter out, and she groaned, visibly dazed.
Feeling slightly disorientated, and still somehow clinging to the wall, Sakura stumbled forwards a few paces as she stopped spinning, leaning against the ceiling for balance. Now she knew how Neji must have felt, back in the original timeline… that was quite jarring.
Wait, original timeline…? What was that?
"Who are you!?" Menma's voice echoed in Sakura's ears. "Get away from my mum!"
"No…" Sakura mumbled incoherently as a masked, black and red ghost descended through the ceiling. Still dizzy from having been struck so hard through her Palm Rotation, she tripped over her own feet and slid down the side of the wall and crashed to the floor. "Ouch…" she groaned. "You can't… be here…"
Obito's ghostly figure shimmered as he phased through Kushina's body… and vanished.
"I suppose I should thank you for softening up the Nine-Tails Jinchūriki for me, Miss Sakura," Kushina said in a low voice, her head snapping up as she locked eyes with a frozen Sakura. "Now let me show you my appreciation by granting you a swift death."