A vision.

"AARRRRGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!" An angry sound voiced to convey hatred and promises of pain as Megumi quietly stood on the outer edge of the spiraling tornado that rose upwards with poison and flames on a branch as he looked below at the explosion that he had just created to try and explode Hagoromo to bits.

'Huh….turns out he does have ways to stop himself from being fully destroyed. Will he die if I destroy his entire body?'

The Hirashin jutsu was extremely domain sensitive and handed all information of the body to the domain owner for the instant they merged into its boundaries while their marker was still in the outside world.

This meant, each time Megumi used the Hirashin jutsu Hagoromo knew exactly where Megumi was going to be coming out from and Megumi used this to his own benefit by teleporting just a lightning clone filled with explosive sealing tags and a voice seal to mimic his own voice as a Trojan gift for Hagoromo. 

'A truly explosive gift.'

Shifting his attention from the screaming man who had been thrown out of the explosion due to its force and was burning while screaming, Megumi looked at the gate of Rashomon that Orochimaru used to protect himself.

'Is that the counterpart of Pure Land from this world?'

Glancing back and looking through the flames of the fiery tornado, Megumi felt Sakura on the other side of the domain barrier.

Standing in front of the domain, Sakura spotted Megumi up in the trees standing on a branch in front of the giant fiery tornado as she followed her connection to him.

Taking a deep breath and squeezing the hilt of her katana Sakura pushed through the domain as she was easily allowed through since it was only meant to stop Megumi from getting in, and even if it wasn't Megumi could easily pull her into the barrier by teleporting her to a kunai seal using Hirashin Jutsu.

Orochimaru turned around as he looked at Megumi who was up in the trees as he spoke out, "You're like an onion. The more layersssss~ I peel, the more I find…."

"Oh…well…you're remarkably like a pervert….everything you say sounds so weird….as if you're doing something to someone against their wishes…."

Orochimaru didn't respond, but just licked his lips with his long snake like flickering tongue.

"...shit, you're weird."

'Rura….I'ma lie to them a couple of times throughout, you know how it all is when I fight, so make sure to keep calm and pretend as if nothing's wrong and play along with it.'

'I'm going to rain hell against them, so I don't care what you do to them, just don't get in my way….is that bald guy the poison guy who murdered Konoha shinobi?'

'Yes. Saved him. Just for you. Also, I battered Danzo quiet a lot…unless he doesn't have any sharingan to just undo everything that I just did to him using Izanagi, or if he's not a zetsu clone and isn't already dead or maybe this domain doesn't undo any damage inside it…I don't think it does..but just in case remember that and don't let your guard down…..'

'Alright…but God! I need to beat that bastard's face in! I'm so fed up with his random insertions into our stores and wrecking them up ever since the beginning! I feel like I'm getting mad just thinking about it!'

'Well…don't get mad and kill them…..they need to be interrogated if possible….and don't show off all of your trum-'

Before Megumi could complete his sentence, Sakura jumped down from the branch as she landed in front of Gakushi.

"Ho! What are you doing here, little missy?"

"Nothing much. Just here for your head."

"Haha! I've got two people tell me that in the span of a few minutes now. I wonder if there really is a bounty on my head for people coming out of nowhere for it to actually be true."

Gakushi looked down at Sakura as she unsheathed her blade, posing herself for the beat down she was going to hand over.

Under Sakura's focused gaze, Gakushi became focused himself as he looked down at Sakura and took a taijutsu stance that resembled an open stance with his arms held up and the palms of his hand facing her partially.

Sakura dashed towards him with a burst of speed he hadn't comprehended as he raised his palms to defend himself and deflect any attacks Sakura pushed forth towards him, but before he could fully raise his hands, Sakura's sword swung upward as she put her all into the swing, aiming to slice his entire arms off.

As soon as her katana blade came into contact with his arm, Sakura kicked his body and threw herself backward, while Gakushi slid backwards only a little. It was actually too little when one compared the ratios of their presumed body weights.

"You're heavy…." Sakura whispered as she scanned her Katana for any damages.

"Ho! I'm surprised you noticed before you finished your swing! Of course, I'm heavy! I molded my body out of metallic parts! They used to be made out of regular puppetry, but once I got my hands on one of your store's prosthetics, they became a fine learning tool to improve my own knowledge and improve the scope of my own puppetry! I proudly present to you the better version of the prosthetics you so proudly sell!"

*Clang*

Sakura stared at the man as he bashed his forearms against each other to create a ringing sound that only amplified the rage she was feeling inside, and before he could settle, Sakura practically flew at him.

*Clang*

"They're not made for mutilating your own body, you bastard." Sakura mumbled as she clashed with the prosthetic arms.

Not even a light scratch formed on those arms as Sakura tried to cut through them. And just as she was going to use force to push through them, Orochimaru flexed his hand seals to sprout a highly pressured water jet stream, aimed at Sakura's waist, but was stopped when Megumi interrupted it by teleporting it by throwing a kunai at it and from another kunai right at Gakushi.

Gakushi immediately defended himself by stomping the floor to create a rock wall jutsu as he defended himself from the water jet stream that poured out of the kunai and gave Megumi a wary look.

"You've got to deal with me Pedomaru…I'm sure you are eager to die, just like your comrades." Megumi said as he walked in between Orochimaru and Sakura.

"Kekekeke, how funny to look at an ant talking so big while it is still stuck inside its egg."

'Rura. Remember, it is not about the force you use to cut with, it is about everything else. The best cuts are only the ones that are made with ease.'

Dashing toward Orochimaru, Megumi began to engage him in combat as he swung his sword at a rapid speed, pulling it downward along with his motion of stepping towards Orochimaru, making everything seem flawless and work without any wasted moment as if each movement was part of a larger movement.

Orochimaru instantly read the flow and prepared to block Megumi's sword that was moving at him from the bottom right with his own Sword of Kusanagi that he pulled out from his sleeve. But just as Orochimaru perfected his block stance, Megumi thrust his elbows forward as he changed the trajectory of his sword that was moving toward Orochimaru's side earlier, newly toward his left eye.

Orochimaru being a Sanin took advantage of the wide opening in Megumi's stance as he thrust his own sword forward, but before he could stab Megumi, found himself passing through air as his instincts flared and commanded him to dodge, which he did by instantly splitting into a thousand snakes that spilled out of his body, with whom he mixed as he reformed a few feet away, watching as Megumi who had teleported behind him using a kunai that was left there from the blast, stabbing a sword right into the position of where his heart had just been.

"Eh…that was unfair….you substituted yourself with snakes and disintegrated! How can I counter that!?" Megumi stomped and threw a predisposed tantrum, acting like a child, while Orochimaru observed with full focus, watching everything that Megumi did since if the kunai that had been blown away by the blast was just a couple of inches closer, he'd have had to die at least once and dying to a ten-year-old didn't seem like a fun thing to maintain on his resume.

Sakura closed her eyes as she tried to regain her focus that had been disrupted by the foolish use of her prosthetics, but trying to keep her on the edge, Gakushi taunted, "Ha! Which foolish person closes their eyes on the battlefield." and jumped right towards her as he threw a punch at her head.

'Yeah…..he's right…why 'am' I closing my eyes to gain focus? I don't need to do such things with Megi, and he's a lot better at this. You got this Rura! You got this!'

Tightening her grip over her sword, Sakura flashed her eyes open as her focus reached a peak where she felt everything around herself obliterate as the only thing that remained in her view that she could practically feel as a part of herself, were the prosthetic arms that Gakushi was swinging around.

And before either the man or she herself knew anything about it, Sakura had arrived at her destination as she rapidly swung her katana with a plain and serene swing that let it slice right through the metallic arms, creating a shower of purple liquid that bubbled and splashed all over the place.

Sakura stepped back with a serene expression as the poison inside the prosthetic spilled out, and the man looked at his own work with a stunned expression that soon morphed into anger.

"How dare you!" Gakushi roared but Sakura dashed forward without any words, once again, as Gakushi just swung his leaking poison arms at Sakura, attempting to deface her by at least throwing some of the corrosive poison at her, but Sakura just walked through the poison flood as she let it engulf her.

Gakushi's expression turned shocked at her stupidity and then happy, but soon morphed into terror as the poison vanished right in front of him as Sakura emerged from the destroyed poison wave and stepped under his chin.

Before he could pull himself away or begin a new jutsu with the remaining chakra seals he had inside his prosthetic puppet body, a sword blade found its way over his heart and then tore right through it to his back, when he met Sakura's chillingly cold eyes as they locked with his own.

For a moment it seemed as if the chilling eyes had conveyed a death sentence, but then it hit him, like a million ants biting him at once, all on the inside. It felt like his entire body was being destroyed cell by cell, as if a million tiny blades were marching around inside his body and tearing it apart.

Fainting instantly from the shock and the pain, Gakushi collapsed to the ground as he bled through all his orifices when Sakura slowly pulled away her sword's complete blade from his body and clicked her tongue after flicking away the blood on it.

"Weakling." Sakura mumbled.

"Why- Why are you helping him!" Sakura heard a deep, cold and angry voice emerge from behind herself as she looked at the kind and gentle face she had seen in her last life now morphed terribly by anger and hatred.

The newly reset Sage of Six paths glared at Sakura as he immediately dashed towards her with his arms outstretched.

Megumi, noticing the situation, rushed to help, but the Sage of Six paths collapsed the entire domain and reduced it to hold Megumi inside it, alone.

Before Sakura could defend herself she found the Sage of Six paths pushing his hand around her neck as he forced chakra into her chakra pathways through her neck that, no matter how much she tried to force away, couldn't be stopped because of the sheer ferocity with which it was being forced into her stream.

Suddenly she heard a voice she couldn't quite place how, but found extremely familiar as she heard it say, "No way! You were telling the truth!" it broke her concentration as she found herself 

And then she heard a mature, more feminine voice speak back, "Why would I lie about that?"

"Who knows…maybe you just hallucinated the whole thing?"

Suddenly her vision that had darkened from being choked, opened up as she found herself standing in front of the God Tree as she watched with wide eyes as a slightly older version of someone she recognized quite well, Megumi, who had no scars on his face, looked back at her, alongside whom was…Kaguya.

Both looked embarrassed as they left their intertwined hands as she heard Megumi whisper, "Shit…why does this feel weird."

Sakura's heart felt like it had been crushed.

"What do you want me to tell her?" Kaguya whispered back.

"Don't you know what you told yourself? Back then?"

"Erm…..I told you it was all a haze….I couldn't rememeber much else after a few minutes...."

"Just tell something….she's leaving already.….."

"Ehh….Rura….well….ermm...well…don't worry about anything….erm…don't worry about any of this…...?" Kaguya tried explaining.

Megumi just deadpanned as he exclaimed, "That sounded hella suspicious and more like, you wanted to just create more misunderstandings!"

"Eh….I tried my best, I trust my Megi to do the rest...." Kaguya said as she shrugged her shoulders and then before Sakura could even speak, she felt a tug pull herself from the navel as she fell into a different scene once again.

The scene in front of her was of a large mushroom cloud rising in the distance, as she watched what looked like one of the cities from Megumi's worlds get annihilated. 

From the people that survived, all she could see around herself were death and destruction, with children loitering the streets, their bodies malnourished, people begging for scraps of what looked like rotting food, while in the corner she exclaimed when she saw someone drinking the blood of a rat because it quenched their thirst.

As she reached out to touch a person to stop them, Sakura felt the familiar faint pull at her stomach once again as she was transported into a new world where she saw herself fighting alongside Hagoromo and against Megumi as she plunged a sword through his heart and spoke in a seething voice, "I hate every bit of you. I wish you never came here. I wish you were never a part of my life."

And before she could register anything about the terrible scene in front of herself she felt the familiar tug again as she found herself back in her childlike body as she saw Hagoromo looking deeply into her eyes.

"Did you see that! That is what happens if you follow the path that this bastard does!" Hagoromo exclaimed as images of what had just happened flashed through Sakura's mind once again, but her heart felt crushed as she remembered Kaguya next to Megumi again and again instead of herself.

Tears welled up in her eyes as Hagoromo misunderstood her expression and exclaimed, "Yes! Join me! Together we can take him down! You are the only one that can-!"

*Crack* *Crack* *Shatter* *Swish*

Like the shatter of a glass, Hagoromo's domain surrounding Megumi fractured into pieces as a sword slash raced past where Megumi stood as he slashed Hagoromo's body right down the middle.

And before Orochimaru could do anything, Megumi swung his electrified blade right at Orochimaru and separated his torso and used a kunai to teleport right beside Gakushi and picked him up and then to Sakura's side as he held her close and vanished, presumably to another seal he had left in the place he had not been to in a long time.

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Thank you for reading!

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