"The world the Sage of Six Paths created is doomed either way, so what will it be, Uchiha?" Toneri said impassively. "Kill me, or save your comrades and grant them a few more hours of life in which to say their last prayers?"
Why choose when she could have both?
Except the doomed part, that is.
"Go get him, you on the nose!" Sakura growled at the Shadow Clone perched on the nose of the tengu mask worn by her pink Susano'o. "The rest of you, with me!"
As soon as she received the order, the Shadow Clone leapt from the long nose of the tengu mask on which she had been standing, pink chakra gushing from her body as she formed her own Perfect Susano'o. Sakura had divided her chakra into twenty portions, each possessing roughly a thousand Kakashi's worth of chakra, so the doppelganger had more than enough reserves to maintain her own Susano'o, eliminating the risk of her being popped like a balloon.
Sakura rocketed skywards in a straight line, her Susano'o flapping its pink wings furiously as they flew after the puppets carrying the unconscious Hyūga clan members. They were gaining on them, but they were still so far away…
Suddenly, a twinkling light appeared on the moon's surface… and moments later, Sakura felt the crushing weight of the chakra that was about to bear down on her.
She reflexively raised her hands to block, but her senses told her that the incoming attack was not something she could deal with. Attacks based on all-encompassing Six Paths chakra or senjutsu chakra were not something ninjutsu absorption could handle easily, so she instantly abandoned the idea. Besides, if she tried to take in that monstrous chakra, she would almost certainly explode like an overinflated football.
Kira!
The sparkling light originating from the moon suddenly grew harsh as it traced a curve across the night sky, revealing its true form to be a pillar of purple energy at least twenty metres wide. The fleeing puppets were on a collision course with the beam falling from the moon, clearly intending to have her follow them into the light of destruction!
"Not going to catch up in time!" Sakura muttered to herself as the patterns in her eyes changed. "Universal Pull!"
The puppets abruptly jerked downwards in mid-air, as if Sakura had hooked them on invisible fishing lines. Knowing their fates were sealed, they suddenly reversed course, their bodies glowing and inflating rapidly under their previously loose robes as they prepared to self-destruct, clearly intending to take Sakura and the hostages down with them!
Time seemed to slow down to crawl as the puppets fell towards her Susano'o like diving falcons. In a split-second decision, Sakura changed the Susano'o's flute back into a naginata and thrust it out.
"Susano'o: Ame-no-Uzume's Seven-Branched Spear!"
The polearm's blade glowed, its pink chakra instantly branching into six additional blades that zigzagged through the air and skewered the puppets through the chest. The constructs detonated harmlessly on the tips of the blades, while the hostages tumbled from their grip, only to be caught safely by the remaining Shadow Clones stationed on the Susano'o's shoulders and the brim of its straw hat.
Sakura lowered the density of the Susano'o's hat, allowing the Shadow Clones and the hostages to sink into the safety of its head, from where she piloted the Gund*m. Cradled in the cool chakra, they were safe; she had saved them all…
All, except for one.
One of the puppets had been concealing a baby in its robes, which a powerful updraught had sent spiralling skywards, straight into the beam's predicted path. The night sky turned bright as day as the torrent of Six Paths chakra ignited the atmosphere; the beam's end was so close now that it seemed to fill Sakura's entire field of vision…
"GOOO!" Sakura screamed.
Sakura expelled one of her Shadow Clones from the Susano'o's body and balanced her on the flat end of the seven-branched naginata's blade. She took aim, then catapulted her towards the baby. One heart-stoppingly long moment stretched as the Shadow Clone sailed through the air… and then…
…the doppelganger caught the infant and flew clear of the beam's path, while the full, merciless mass of chakra slammed into the Susano'o's back.
Sakura's vision briefly went black.
…and she awakened a few seconds later to find that she was tumbling through the air in freefall alongside half a dozen comatose bodies. The pillar of energy coming from the moon was streaming uncomfortably close to them as it drilled into the earth, hundreds of metres below them…
It seemed the shock of drawing upon so much of her chakra at once to maintain the Susano'o's integrity, while at the same time losing in a single instant more than seventy percent of what could be considered an extension of her body, had caused her to briefly black out.
Sakura blinked as the memories of the Shadow Clone that had been pursuing Toneri entered her mind. Losing consciousness due to the shock to her pathways had rippled out to all her Shadow Clones, popping each and every one of them.
"Damn it," Sakura swore. "I lost Toneri!"
Sakura quickly reformed her Susano'o before they all crashed and safely caught the unconscious Hyūga clan members, including the baby, before landing on firm ground to check if they were safe. Toneri's hostages had all been placed under a powerful genjutsu, but that was easily dispelled by disturbing their chakra.
"Poor Hanabi," Sakura sighed as she gently prised open Hinata's sister's eyelids, only to find that her eyeballs had been scooped out. "Just hang on a little longer, you'll have your eyes back in no time."
One by one, the Hyūga began waking up, shivering from the cold where Sakura had laid them out on the snow. She had saved the baby for last, since she had to be especially careful not to damage her immature chakra pathways when dispelling the genjutsu.
"Aren't you a special little girl?" Sakura murmured as she gently nudged the toddler awake, cradling her in her arms. The child was swaddled in a blanket so tightly that only a small part of her face, just above the bridge of her nose, remained visible. "Beautiful golden-coloured hair… just like rice stalks ready for harvest."
As far as she knew, Hyūga clan members either had brown or black, nearly bluish hair. The baby let out a small, plaintive cry, causing Sakura's nipples to tingle. She hugged the child tightly to her chest, shielding her from the cold in the warmth of her bosom.
In the distance, a brilliant pillar of blue light surged over the barren treeline, shooting into the night sky. Hundreds of thousands of kilometres away, Kumogakure's chakra cannon had fired at the moon in response to the Giant Tenseigan's orbital strike.