The sound of a baby's cries stirred Sakura from her slumber.
Her eyes fluttered open as she gradually regained consciousness. In that moment, she could not remember what had happened; she only knew she was lying flat on her stomach, pinned under something heavy. Drawing a sharp breath, she pushed against the ground and arched her back, toppling the slab of rock that had fallen on her, before scooping up baby Hatomune and struggling to her feet. By some miracle, she was still alive and well.
And very loud.
"It's okay, you can stop crying," Sakura whispered to the baby. "Shh… we're okay…"
Although she did not realise it, her face was glistening with tears. She looked down at her knuckles, bewildered; they were smeared with blood, though she could not imagine how it had come to be there. She could no longer recall how long she had been here, how she had found this place, or what could have possessed her to come at all.
In the darkness, time held little meaning.
"Where's the exit…"
It looked as though part of the laboratory had collapsed. The main ceiling lights were out, the gloom held at bay only by emergency lamps that pulsed on and off in steady rhythm, flooding the room with shadows that yielded to soft crimson before sinking back into darkness. The glow was the same hue as the blood smeared across the walls— thick streaks and splatters broken by jagged rends and immense knuckle-shaped dents, far larger than any human fist could ever be.
Sakura cradled Lady Kyōko's baby to her bosom as she trudged aimlessly across the room, stepping over corpses and rubble alike, scarcely noticing any difference between the two. Hundreds of glass tanks that had once contained twisted bodies lay shattered; not one had survived whatever whirlwind had torn through this place. Her sandals splashed through the viscous fluid that had filled them, now pooling across the floor, as she waded on through the wreckage.
Following the blinking lights, Sakura reached the exit and pushed the door open. Beyond it stretched what seemed an endless maze of interconnected corridors strewn with rubble, some collapsed, others blocked entirely. But where was she meant to go? A flash of a scientist in a white lab coat crossed her mind's eye, and she clutched at her aching head with a low groan.
"Go right, then take the first left," Sakura murmured to herself. "Follow the corridor to the end, then the next-to-last door on the left… why do I know these directions?"
The terrified face of the scientist flashed before her eyes again, and Sakura shook her head to dispel the mental image. She only needed to know that she would find something worth her time there… yet she could not shake the feeling that she was overlooking something important.
Sakura continued onwards, feeling her way through the gloom.
At some point along the way, Sakura came upon a door left slightly ajar, as though someone had fled in haste and forgotten to close it. She wrinkled her nose as she passed; an unspeakable stench drifted from within. Listening closely, she caught the faint chittering of snapping mandibles, along with innumerable, wet, wriggling squelches. Whatever lay beyond that door, she wanted nothing to do with it, and she hastily moved on before she threw up.
"The next-to-last door on the left…" Sakura muttered to herself, "should be this one."
She pressed her palm against the door and pushed, tearing it clean off its reinforced hinges. It crashed to the floor with a heavy thud, and she stepped over it into the room— only to find hundreds of pairs of scarlet eyes staring emptily back at her.
Sakura gazed back blankly.
"Uu…"
All of a sudden, her stomach lurched, and she clapped a hand to her mouth as the image of a grotesquerie covered in eyeballs, staring at her with each of its crazed eyes, flashed before her mind's eye. She doubled over, gagging and retching. What was that image!?
"Danzō, you sick freak…" Sakura gasped, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "Just how much will it take to satisfy your perverted obsession with the Uchiha clan… You Phantom Troupe copycat bastard…!!"
How had this gone unnoticed? An entire wall of jars, each holding a single pair of eyes! How could the Lord Third have simply brushed aside the fact that, after the Uchiha massacre, every corpse the ANBU recovered already had its eyeballs plucked out? Was his dismissal of Danzō as head of the Root division nothing more than tacit approval? His silent consent for an old friend to do as he pleased?
Revolting as it was, Sakura forced herself to take a quick count. There were far too few Sharingan— some with one tomoe, others with two or three— even accounting for those Danzō had implanted in his arm. The numbers did not match the clan records Sasuke had once shown her after their visit to Naka Shrine; by those figures, more than half the members who had awakened their eyes were still unaccounted for.
Sakura's gaze fell on a scroll placed on a pedestal before the eye display. Rather fancy.
Come to think of it, there was a sort of reverent ambiance to the room, in contrast to the others, which were drabber and drearier… it was almost as if Danzō had enshrined the eyes of the fallen Uchiha.
Sakura had no wish to psychoanalyse Danzō; she did not want to understand him, nor dwell on him longer than necessary. Yet shinobi were trained to see through their enemies, and despite herself, she could not help forming an opinion. Danzō respected the Uchiha only insofar as they had been worthy opponents on his climb towards the Hokage's seat— which, in his mind, made his victory over them all the greater.
Sakura walked up to the pedestal and unfurled the scroll.
"Izanagi!" she gasped, as she rapidly read through the introduction. "It's a how-to manual!"
At long last, Yin-Yang Style was within her grasp, and once she had learned it…
Yin-Yang Style: Gender Reversal Jutsu would finally be hers.
Scroll in hand, Sakura retraced her steps to the laboratory. Performing the Area Scanning Jutsu, she mapped her surroundings in her mind, only to find that every path back to the surface had vanished. The floors above had been deliberately collapsed with paper bombs, sealing her in. Even if she tried to tunnel upwards, she would run out of air long before breaking through… but that did not mean she was out of options.