"Hyūga shinobi, leave the arena immediately!" said Genma in a warning tone. "Otherwise, I will be forced to disqualify Neji!"
A man who Sakura recognized as the patriarch of the Hyūga clan, along with five members of the branch family, had just jumped down into the arena from the stands. However, as far as Sakura could tell, those five clan members seemed quite reluctant…
"Disqualify away, it matters not one whit to me!" spat the Hyūga elder in Genma's direction. "Hyūga Neji has been designated as a traitor to our clan— this is a private matter of the Hyūga clan, so you have no right to interfere!" Then, turning his attention back to Neji, he growled, "Neji, you are to come quietly with us to face judgment for your crimes."
Despite the elder's explicit orders, Neji remained as still as a rock, his disdain apparent on his face. By now, the electric atmosphere of the audience had cooled down significantly, the shouting and hooting having given place to total silence.
High above the arena, a lone hawk let out a sorrowful cry.
"For the longest time, I'd resigned myself to obeying orders from you, the people who had my father murdered," he said, his voice shaking slightly. "Playing guard dog for that hateful woman, that weakling. I used to think that escaping from destiny was impossible— that I'd have to watch over someone like her for the rest of my life."
"What are you waiting for?" the Hyūga elder hissed at the branch family members. "Take him! There's no need to make a spectacle of our affairs in front of the lords!"
The Hyūga clan branch members looked at each other hesitantly— they had just come upon a crossroads in their destinies, and they knew it— but having been subjugated for so long, they themselves did not know if they had the courage to seize the opportunity.
Eventually, upon seeing the Hyūga elder menacingly make the special hand seal that would activate their cursed seals, the branch members begrudgingly began inching towards Neji, their palms outstretched in front of them, ready for combat.
"But that person set me free from the shackles of fate," Neji continued, as if in a trance. "They saved me from the darkness and asked for nothing in return— and for the first time in my life, I had the freedom to actually choose my fate. And now, I'm the one who holds the keys to my own bird cage…"
Sakura stared at the spectacle unfolding beneath her in a sort of morbid fascination. How could something so wrong possibly have happened? Neji was supposed to lose to Naruto; demonstrating that if even a failure like Naruto could surpass a true genius like Neji, then anything was possible, and that fate wasn't set in advance.
"So not only were you not content with sharing the clan's secret Jutsu with outsiders," said the Hyūga elder in horror, "you actually obtained the means to break the Caged Bird seal?"
"I have nothing to do with Haruno Sakura," said Neji, frowning slightly.
"Then, is the person who taught you how to break the Caged Bird that girl who always hangs around you?" said the Hyūga elder in triumph. "That girl, what was her name again— Tenten, I believe…? The so-called sealing prodigy I've been hearing so much about? Good, very good…"
One look at Neji's stony face was all it took for the Hyūga elder to confirm his hypothesis. Nothing could escape the Byakugan, and he had already seen Neji staring in Tenten's direction multiple times during his own match…
"If you touch even a single hair on her head…" Neji hissed, as he settled into the starting stance for the Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms. "You're—"
"All right, that's enough!" said Genma loudly, as he flickered in between the two parties. "We're all comrades from the Leaf, so—"
And then, the spectator stands exploded.
Or rather, something quite small had expanded to such an enormous size so quickly that the accompanying rush of air had produced something akin to an explosion— and Sakura, Ino, Kakashi and Naruto, who'd been sitting quite close to the explosion's point of origin, were obviously not spared.
…
Sakura's eyes fluttered open, her ears ringing. She had just barely managed to retain her consciousness, but her entire world seemed to be spinning. She could feel something pointy digging into her back, so at least she knew that she was lying on her back, but other than that, she was having trouble stringing one thought after the other in her head.
'So cold…' Inner Sakura shivered.
Above her, a myriad pure white feathers were floating down like snow from the heavens, contrasting against the bright blue sky. Every so often, Sakura would catch a glimpse of an enormous yellowish-brown something out of the corner of her eyes— it seemed to be fighting against something small and orange.
'Ugh, so loud,' Inner Sakura groaned in discomfort. 'My ears…'
Suddenly, something scarlet appeared in Sakura's gradually darkening field of vision.
"Onee-sama! Onee-sama!" the red thing kept crying, tears dripping down from her chin onto Sakura's face. "My blood, you have to drink my blood! Here, bite my wrist…"
"Good children don't bite their friends," said Sakura deliriously.
The red thing took out a grey thing, and more red stuff came out of the red thing… tasted metallic, and salty… blegh. Sakura drank her medicine like a good girl.
Gradually, as Sakura's condition stabilized, her vision stopped spinning and growing darker, and she regained the ability to think straight.
'Those feathers!' Inner Sakura shouted. 'Genjutsu!'
"Release!" Sakura shouted, making the tiger seal.
Sakura slowly sat up with some difficulty and looked at her surroundings, ascertaining the situation. Half of the coliseum had collapsed, its walls knocked down; it was the starting point to a trail of destruction that led straight towards the heart of the village. Gigantic summoned snakes also writhed here and there in the distance, destroying the village's key infrastructure...
Shinobi clashed in small groups amidst the rubble and the unconscious civilians, but very conveniently, as if following some unspoken agreement, they were avoiding the V.I.P. area where all of the nobles sat. Farther up, on the roof of the V.I.P. area, a fierce fight was ongoing within a transparent purple cube; the Four Violet Flames Formation…
'It's Gaara,' said Sakura fearfully. 'This is what was going to happen in the original timeline, if Sasuke hadn't cancelled Gaara's Jinchūriki transformation by injuring him during their match!'
Kakashi and Ino were lying by Sakura's side; they had been knocked unconscious, but thankfully, they were still breathing. Naruto, however, was nowhere to be seen.
"We should hide, onee-sama," said Karin fearfully, wiping away her tears with her sleeve. "There are real monsters out there, this isn't something we can deal with…"
In the distance, the gigantic Gaara in Tailed Beast Mode was rampaging across the village, swatting at a small one-tailed being that streaked around him like an orange meteor.
"Naruto…" Sakura murmured.