NOVEL WEB Chapter 147: The Recovery Mission Begins!
Sakura supposed that she only had herself to blame for allowing her secret to get exposed.
Even though she had seen the Naruto anime, she knew it definitely glossed over some details about the protagonists' daily lives. The anime couldn't show every single day of the four years it covered, and the moment an Ōtsutsuki had shown up, she should have been more careful.
'Lady Tsunade is a smart woman, so she was bound to figure it out sooner or later,' Inner Sakura told herself ruefully. 'Besides, it's not as if we hid the evidence…'
Sakura looked down at her rounded breasts— they were quite conspicuous.
"Well, Sakura? Do I have your word that you'll seal away your slashing-and-absorbing Jutsu?" asked Tsunade. "Or will I have to stick the ANBU on you 24/7 and place you under house arrest?"
"I may have lost sight of my feet, but I haven't lost sight of my duty to the village," Sakura sighed, "I promise I won't use it, Lady Tsunade."
Tsunade patted Sakura's head affectionately.
"Don't worry, the ban won't last forever," she said comfortingly. "I'll lift it when I think you're ready. Naturally, you'll still be restricted from stealing Kekkei Genkai from clans belonging to the other great villages even then— you can understand why."
Sakura nodded.
If regular shinobi represented regular infantrymen for a village, then Kekkei Genkai shinobi represented tactical-level weapons and Jinchūriki represented strategic-level weapons. Shinobi were all human weapons, but some were clearly more precious than others…
"Stop!" a muffled voice suddenly rang out from the other side of the door which led to the corridor. "Not one step closer, or I'll—"
The door to the operating theatre was suddenly blasted off its hinges, as an ANBU kunoichi was thrown through the very door she'd been guarding. And a few seconds later, the leader of the Hyūga clan stepped through the doorway; followed shortly by Kurenai, who was covered in bruises…
"Hyūga Hiashi, what is the meaning of this? Do you really think I won't have you arrested for this!?" Tsunade thundered. "I've told you repeatedly that this is a matter that affects the entire village, and that you would get the outsider's Byakugan once I…"
Tsunade's voice trailed off once she saw the bloody figure he was holding in his arms.
"Is… is that Hinata?" she said in stupefaction. "What in the world happened to her?"
"It was Neji, no doubt about it," groaned Kurenai, holding her sides in pain. "He sneak-attacked me and sealed my chakra pathways, and then he went for Hinata… he tried to kill her!"
Hinata's eyes were closed, and her face was deathly pale. There was a gaping hole in her chest, through which her lifeblood pulsated away in weak bursts— there was no coming back from such an injury!
"I beg of you, Lady Hokage!" cried Hiashi. "My daughter— please save my daughter!"
"I'll do what I can, but with an injury like this, I can't make any promises," said Tsunade grimly. "Hiashi, you have your own duties, so you, Kurenai and Sakura— out— you'll only be in the way. Shizune, assemble the operating team— we'll need everyone."
"Understood," said Shizune, before quickly dipping out of the room.
Sakura opened her mouth to offer her help, but Tsunade cut her off before she could even say a single word.
"Haruno Sakura, I'm officially putting you in charge of bringing the suspect Hyūga Neji into custody," she said authoritatively. "I'm temporarily granting you the power to requisition any Genin currently in the village, should you feel the need for backup. I'm also authorising the use of lethal force, should you find your life threatened, but you should prioritise bringing back your target alive— we need to know why Neji would have done this— especially after going through all that trouble to save her."
The village was still short on high-end combat power after the Konoha Crush, so the task of arresting Neji had fallen to the Genin.
As for why Hyūga Hiashi couldn't go, since this was for all intents and purposes an internal matter for the Hyūga clan, it was because the village was still on high alert due to Urashiki's and Orochimaru's invasion— he was needed to direct the Hyūga clan's reconnaissance effort, since Konoha's sensing barrier apparently wasn't of any help against these two…
"You can count on me, Milady!" said Sakura staunchly. "I'll bring Neji back, even if I have to beat him to a pulp!"
And having been assigned this surprise mission, Sakura ran out of the hospital and headed for the residential district. She had a few names in mind for this Neji retrieval mission…
"Hang in there, Hinata," Tsunade whispered to the dying girl, transporting her body to the operating table and unceremoniously dumping Urashiki's body onto the floor. "…Wait, what in the…?"
Before Tsunade's astonished eyes, Hinata's wounds had begun rapidly healing on their own.
Her internal organs were rearranging and repairing themselves, and her skin was knitting itself back together, and before Tsunade knew it, Hinata was whole again— she was still a little pale, but otherwise, she was completely fine. Her white skin was unblemished and unscarred, as if she had never been injured to begin with…
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Meanwhile, Sakura's recruitment efforts had hit a snag from her very first pick.
"What do you mean, you're out of chakra?" said Sakura in disbelief. "Naruto, your whole thing is that you're never out of chakra. It's like your charm point, or something, so what gives?"
Take his enormous stamina pool away from him, and the current Naruto was basically just a slightly craftier male version of the original Sakura… completely useless.
"It's those guys you were hanging with a few days ago," Naruto complained. "They told me to touch their turtle, so I said no, that's just weird, but they kept insisting, so I ended up saying yes, ya know? And the next thing I knew, I was waking up in my room— and I think those guys also ate my premium cup ramen, because I found the empty container under my bed. I was saving it for a special occasion— like a date with you, Sakura-chan, maybe tonight…?"
"Naruto," said Sakura in despair. "What the hell are you talking about!?"
Karasuki the mechanical Ōtsutsuki sea turtle required massive amounts of chakra in order to travel through time itself, so Boruto and Sasuke had paid Naruto a little visit in order to drain him of the chakra necessary to power the device. They had accidentally taken a bit more than necessary, so the device had now accumulated enough chakra to power dozens of trips!