"The village really is doomed, isn't it?" Sakura murmured despondently as she peered into the depths, watching the White Zetsu scurry away like cockroaches, diving into the ground to escape her gaze. "Even if the Hidden Leaf somehow survives the Four Great Villages' invasion, the only reward we'll get at the end is the privilege of being swarmed by Zetsus…"
North, east, south, west… and now, not even down was safe.
No matter where Sakura looked, there was nowhere to run. The Hidden Mist had the southern and eastern ports blockaded, the Hidden Stone and the Hidden Sand blocked the path to the western continent beyond the world of shinobi, the Hidden Cloud and the Land of Iron controlled the north, and the White Zetsu ruled the underground.
The only direction left… was up.
"The sky…"
Two options came to Sakura's mind.
The first was the Ancor Vantian, the Land of Sky's flying fortress that had crashed near the village. If she could somehow get it up and running by tomorrow, she would be able to evacuate some of the civilians, though not all of them would be able to fit inside the flying machine.
The second was the moon itself. She would have to lead a pilgrimage to the cave that held the portal to the moon, but not all of the civilians would survive the journey, as they would undoubtedly be attacked along the way… and once they found themselves at their destination, they would have to face the very angry Ōtsutsuki clan member who lived there, though that was the least of their worries.
"No, that's defeatist thinking," Sakura muttered to herself. "We haven't lost yet. How can I even consider running away?"
It was all that stupid Madara's fault for putting her in the hospital for a week. If she'd been awake, surely the Hidden Leaf would never have fallen into such dire straits… but now that she was standing on the verge of the precipice, but literally and metaphorically, it was time to consider alternatives.
Holding on to the village simply because everyone had put so much effort into rebuilding it after Pain's invasion was just succumbing to the sunk-cost fallacy. So what if they had to give up on a bunch of buildings? As long as the people were still alive, a village could be rebuilt as many times as it took.
"Option one is out, there's no way we can repair Ancor Vantian in time," Sakura sighed. "Option two is also out, I have no clue where the Moon Cave is… and we're back to square one."
Although The Last: Naruto the Movie was the only Naruto film she had watched, since it was supposedly the only canon one of the lot and essential to understanding Naruto's relationship with Hinata come the Boruto era, it had many jump cuts and no maps, so she had no idea where to find it. While it would have been nice to nip the Toneri problem in the bud, she unfortunately had to give up for now.
Sakura scratched her head.
While she was indeed very clever and good at rote memorisation, at least compared to her former self, she could not claim to be the smartest person in the village. It was time to ask Shikaku for ideas, so she gathered the Hokage Guard Platoon and returned to the surface, leaving the White Zetsu problem for later.
…
"You aren't the only one to have considered abandoning this location," Shikaku said when Sakura explained the situation. "Many of the village's elite clans have approached the Manyū clan, offering great riches in exchange for a place in Tanimagakure," he went on, matter-of-factly exposing the shady dealings that had taken place under his watch during Sakura's coma. "As far as the Counter-Intelligence Division knows, none of our enemies knows its exact location."
Although Breast Valley was no longer sealed inside a fragment world like the Great Unexplored Sage Regions, it was still located in a very remote region of the Land of Fire, very difficult to randomly stumble upon.
"Planning to evacuate to the Village Hidden in Cleavage, eh?" Sakura muttered to herself. "Not a bad idea… but it'd be impossible for it to remain hidden if the entire population of the Hidden Leaf were to march there in single file."
Sakura's knuckles turned white as she clenched her fists. Those cowards had been planning to abandon the civilians and lesser clans to their fates, using their sacrifices on the battlefield to cover their escape… unforgivable scum, the lowest of the low… and that included Shikaku and the Nara clan, who had historically always been close to the village's centre of power, as the Sarutobi clan's pet Ino-Shika-Chō.
"Wait, that's it!" Sakura exclaimed. "We have Uzumaki clan survivors! Why don't we seal the Hidden Leaf Village inside a pocket dimension using the… er… what was it called again… Great Mountain Seal!"
The Great Mountain Seal was the fūinjutsu that the Uzumaki clan had used at the Munamori clan's request to avenge them, sealing Breast Valley and the Village Hidden in Cleavage inside a fragment world for ever… that is, until Sasuke stumbled onto it by chance after taking a wrong turn while leaving Ryūchi Cave, some seventy years later.
It required at least one mountain, Uzumaki blood, and enormous amounts of chakra in order to be set up, scaling up exponentially with the area that needed to be sealed.
"Hokage Rock sort of counts like a mountain, doesn't it?" Sakura went on excitedly. "And with Naruto around, it's not as if the seal would ever run out of chakra!"
"I naturally took the Great Mountain Seal into consideration as one of our many options while you were in your coma, Milady," Shikaku said, shaking his head. "Unfortunately, while the Manyū clan could just barely subsist on their rice paddies, fishing, and mushroom picking, the Hidden Leaf's population is simply too large to be sustained inside such a small pocket world. We do not have the farmland— we would starve to death within a year."
Sakura smiled.
"Haven't you noticed? Naruto's chakra is pure life energy!" she said. "Wherever he goes, flowers bloom, so imagine the crop yields we'd get if he just maintained Nine-Tails Chakra Mode in the middle of a field like a scarecrow…"
"But Tanimagakure is nowhere near the size of the Hidden Leaf. Imagine the chakra expenditure required to set up such a seal, when the cost increases exponentially with its diameter," Shikaku argued. "We would have to sacrifice the likes of a Tailed Beast to fully enclose the village and enough arable land to sustain us, but the only one at our disposal is Naruto himself…"
Sakura already had a solution ready.
"There's Lōran's Ryūmyaku! It's already prepared for transport since the Fourth Hokage conveniently sealed it up for us, so all we need to do is bring it back to the Hidden Leaf!" she said triumphantly. "And if that's not enough, there also happens to be another power source we can use... one that's very close by."
Danzō might have taken her Gelel Stone, but Sakura knew where to find more of them…
"We'd have to abandon our way of life as shinobi," Shikaku finally argued. "Give up on our relationship with the Land of Fire, along with the great riches and influence it has brought us…"
What influence? The Land of Fire was done for… and so was the rest of the world, if Madara had his way. And what riches? Hardly any of that fabulous wealth ever reached the village's civilians. The parasites slurped it all up before it could trickle down into their pockets.
"Better a farmer than dead," Sakura concluded. "Besides, unlike the Manyū, we'd actually be in control of the seal... our people could come and go whenever they wanted, so we could still take on contracts from the outside world whenever we pleased."
"Very well," Shikaku sighed. "I'll give the order."