"Pardon me for the impropriety, young lady," Mui said, as he reached his hand through the bars and pressed his palm against Sakura's bust. "Fire Style: Celestial Prison!"
Unbearable heat flared across Sakura's chest as incandescent patterns bloomed out from Mui's palm, wrapping around her torso like ropes of fire. She stifled a scream by biting her tongue and clenched her knuckles, unwilling to show even the slightest scrap of weakness, and gradually, the white-hot pain faded.
Sakura let out a shaky breath.
"Good, that makes everyone. My job here is done, so I'll leave you three in the capable hands of Banga, my chief officer," Mui said, removing his hand from Sakura's chest and peeling off the sealing tags covering her cage in the same movement. The wooden cage and Sakura's bindings disappeared in a puff of white smoke. "And once again… welcome to the Blood Prison."
And with those chilling words, Mui turned on his heel, his dark cloak flaring behind him, and strode away, accompanied by a small company of guards. His subordinate, the portly man wearing sunglasses, beckoned for the three prisoners to follow, and they started walking across the stone-paved courtyard.
"Once you're under Lord Mui's Celestial Prison Jutsu, you can kiss goodbye all hope of setting foot outside this place," Banga sniggered. "But once you get used to it, life here isn't that bad. It can even be quite pleasant, once you get to know how things work around here…"
The fat warden leered at Sakura, his gaze lingering a mite too long on her curves for her liking. Seizing the belt at his waist with both hands and pulling it up, he turned around and began whistling a jaunty tune as he led his three prisoners into the castle keep, walking past row after row of jail cells.
"Look alive, fresh meat!"
"Are those real!?"
"They sure do jiggle realistically…"
"I'd love to get my hands on those, hehe…"
"Good, I was getting tired of men's behinds, anyway…"
Sakura shuddered as the prisoners pounded against the wooden beams of their cells, jeering and catcalling her. "Hear that?" Banga said, spreading his arms wide. "Your senpai are welcoming you."
They passed the holding area and entered a hexagonal room bathed in pink light from the stained-glass skylight. There stood a reception desk and a statue of an angel poised to drive a spear through a robed woman's chest. The warden led them past the statue to the custody suite.
"First things first, we need to get you processed," Banga said, making grotesque groping gestures with his hands. "I shall personally examine every centimetre of your bodies!"
"Shouldn't a woman be handling that sort of thing for female prisoners?" Sakura cried indignantly.
"You act as if you still have rights," Banga snorted. "Oh, don't look at me like that, I'll be very gentle…"
The custody suite was already crowded with shinobi awaiting processing, so Sakura and her two fellow prisoners were forced to take a seat and wait, while the warden disappeared into another room to conduct strip searches on some other unfortunate soul.
"So, what are you in for?" the tan-skinned man asked, turning to Sakura. "I'm Maroi, by the way, from Kumo, if you hadn't already guessed. And my friend here is from Yugakure— name's Furin. They brought us in together, since the Hidden Steam happens to be along the way here from the Cloud Village."
"It's a long story…" Sakura said dismissively.
With a name like Maroi and a darker shade of skin rarely seen in the Land of Fire, Sakura had already guessed as much. As for the young teen, Furin… The Land of Hotsprings was a peaceful country, so there weren't many things that could get one of their shinobi arrested.
"Yo!" Furin called, waving his shackled hands at her. "Have you heard the good word?"
"What word?" Sakura asked apprehensively.
Furin beamed at her. "Why, the teachings of the great evil deity Jashin-sama, of course!"
"I should've known…" Sakura groaned.
A whiff of perfume drifted from Furin to Sakura as he gesticulated animatedly, outlining the tenets of Jashinism in great detail. Sakura sniffed at the air. The scent was all too familiar: the fragrance of a woman. And wasn't Furin a girl's name, anyway?
"Yeah, he's a bit strange in the head, but he's a good lad," said Maroi, tracing an invisible circle by his temple to emphasise that Furin had completely lost his marbles. "So, how about it? Fancy forming a new prison clique with us? I hear the men's and women's sections of the prison are separated, with only a few shared common areas, but you can never have too many friends, you know…"
Sakura hesitated. Making friends with criminals and cultists was a new low for her, but then again, she wasn't looking forward to sleepless nights watching her back. Before she could answer, a prison guard banged his baton against the iron bars and swung the door open, calling, "Manyū Sakura!"
"Well, you can give me your answer later," said Maroi. "…good luck."
The guard led Sakura deeper into the custody suite and into a room guarded by two more men. Banga, the portly warden, sat at his desk at the back of the room. The spot where Sakura was expected to stand was clearly marked by the outline of two feet in the centre of the floor.
"Strip," Banga said, leering at Sakura.
It was a good thing Jiraiya had already confiscated her beloved forehead protector back home, or she would have thrown it at him. Stony-faced, Sakura shed her clothes one after the other. First came her high-heeled sandals, one of which was broken. Then came the little black dress she had worn to the capital, which was already ripped in many places, letting diamonds of skin show.
"I said strip!" shouted Banga, banging his baton against his desk.
Wordlessly, Sakura peeled off her spats. She shivered with embarrassment, now clad only in a pair of striped panties and her sarashi, white cotton chest wraps. The fragile bands of fabric strained to contain her staggering 135 cm bustline; with her chakra sealed, her Transformation Jutsu had failed.
Feeling mortified and rather exposed, she reflexively crossed her arms in front of her chest.
"She wasn't carrying any weapons in her clothes," announced one of the guards, holding up Sakura's discarded garments. "But I did find two marked bottles in one of her pockets, which I found suspicious. Daily (毎日) and End of the Month (月末)."
The guard placed the two bottles on Banga's desk. The warden leaned forward, unscrewed the cap of one, and shook out a few white pills. "What are those?" he asked, giving them a sniff.
"Sugar pills," Sakura grunted.
The portly warden gave one of the pills a lick, and his eyes lit up. They were indeed pure sugar! In other words, candy! Leering at Sakura, he swallowed them all, holding her gaze the entire time to ragebait her, then smacked his lips in satisfaction.
Sugar was scarce in poorer countries like Kusa— the Land of Fire was the continent's leading producer of sugarcane and exported refined sugar at an absurd markup, enjoying a near-monopoly on sugar farms. People hadn't figured out how to extract sugar from hardy sugar beets yet, after all.
"End of the month, eh? Sort of like a reward for yourself? Then, I wonder what could be in these…"
Banga opened the second bottle and found that it was filled with the exact same pills. Grinning widely, the fat fuck popped them all into his mouth and greedily swallowed them, only to find they had left a somewhat bitter aftertaste on his tongue, and that Sakura now had a look of pity on her face.
The warden's face went as white as a sheet. "What were in those? Poison?"
"Those were my birth control pills, bro…" Sakura said, lip twitching as she struggled to keep herself from laughing. "And you just took two months' worth in one go..."
Sakura didn't carry birth control pills because she went around sleeping with her coworkers, but because the medication had the convenient side effect of skipping her rather heavy periods… provided she avoided the placebo pills, that is.
She liked to keep them close, just in case a surprise mission came up that would keep her from returning home to the Leaf for an extended period… and to prevent a worst-case scenario if she was ever defeated in battle.