The more she squirmed, the further Sakura slipped into her own cleavage. Growing increasingly alarmed as she felt herself slipping even deeper, Sakura gave her hips a determined wiggle, tucked her legs beneath her, and planted her feet firmly into the ground.

"Yoi… sho!" Sakura grunted through clenched teeth as she heaved— and promptly abandoned the attempt when a sharp jolt of pain shot through her back. "@#%$#@!!"

Back in reality, passersby gave Sakura a wide berth as she wriggled on the ground like a worm, her face buried in her normal-sized (for Sakura's standards) breasts. Another victim of the opioid crisis, they told themselves sadly.

"Come on, think," Sakura mumbled into her breast meat. "There has to be some way to break free…"

…

The Kurama clan's Kekkei Genkai was Sakura's very first bloodline limit, so she knew its peculiarities intimately. It was undeniably powerful, even when used to enhance otherwise ordinary illusions, but it came with three major drawbacks, which made it a nightmare to use effectively, especially for beginners.

The first drawback was that it required a powerful sensory cue to trigger— something striking, like a painting, for instance… or a particularly nice pair of breasts.

In this case, the trigger had been the female bathers' nice bodies. Sakura's mysterious attacker had already landed her illusion, so it was far too late to worry about that now.

Better think of something else…

The second drawback was the Genjutsu's demand for immense mental processing power—meaning that while the illusion's background could shift dramatically, it still had to remain firmly anchored in the user's immediate surroundings. Full-dive illusions this realistic had to be rooted in reality, or the user's concentration would fail to keep up as their victim wandered around the decor.

Sakura had already tried to exploit this feature, but now that she had been rendered immobile, it was a bit too late to try and overheat her opponent's brain.

There had to be something she could use...

The third drawback was that, unless the illusion was simple, the user exceptionally skilled, or intimately familiar with the sensations they sought to inflict, they had to remain perfectly still to maintain their concentration.

Which meant that unless she was exceptionally skilled, Sakura's attacker would either have to rely on the Kurama clan's unique ability to attack, or have a teammate carry out the killing blow in her place.

...

The sound of slow footsteps reached Sakura's ears. Someone was approaching!

It sounded as though her mysterious assailant meant to finish her off within the illusion. To maximise the damage, she would have to make Sakura aware that she was being attacked by ensuring she actually saw it happen for herself— and thankfully, wedged between her own enormous breasts, there was precious little Sakura could see other than white, creamy flesh!

Sakura bit her thumb, drawing blood.

"Summoning Jutsu!"

…and nothing happened.

However, Sakura wasn't too worried… yet. From what she'd seen so far, one of this Genjutsu world's core rules seemed to be isolation— in other words, she couldn't sense any living beings apart from herself and her attacker.

That said, being apparently alone didn't mean she truly was. She was standing on the side of a busy road, and while she still retained control over her chakra within the illusion, she'd rather not risk using a large-scale Ninjutsu, just in case she struck an innocent bystander.

Back in reality…

"Er…" a lorry-sized Katsuyu said, suddenly finding herself carrying a catatonic Sakura on her back. "Sakura-san? Do you require assistance? …oh!"

Ignoring the peasants scrambling away from her in abject terror, Katsuyu immediately linked herself to Sakura's pathways and disrupting the flow of her chakras. But when she turned an enormous eye stalk for a closer look at her summoner, she found that Sakura had remained unresponsive.

What made the Kurama clan's Kekkei Genkai truly unique was its ability to compel the victim's brain to secrete a specific psychoactive toxin— one that heightened their vulnerability to Genjutsu and triggered a psychosomatic response, causing their own flesh, muscles, and chakra to replicate imagined injuries onto their body.

Katsuyu had halted the toxin's production, but it still lingered in Sakura's bloodstream!

"Oh dear," said Katsuyu. "Is that Manda? This is not good at all…"

In the distance, a gigantic purple snake and an enormous eight-headed white snake covered in jagged bone spurs writhed among the ruins of the bathhouse, which had been reduced to rubble. They appeared to be wrestling with a cluster of trees that had grown from the wooden palisade dividing the men's section of the baths from the women's.

Katsuyu turned her attention to the masked, pink-haired girl trembling before her, a sword clutched in her hands.

"…another Sakura-san?"

Still lying flat on Katsuyu's back, Sakura finally stirred, cracking open one eye— and then the other. She could see the sun shining overhead. Her breasts were no longer deserving of the "gigantic" tag on such cultured websites as e-hent@i— now, they merely qualified as "huge." She was no longer trapped in the claustrophobic darkness of her own cleavage!

"Ow! Ow! Ow!" Sakura yelped, feeling as though her chest was on fire.

"Sakura, you're awake!" Katsuyu cried in delight. "Your orders?"

Sakura sat up straight on Katsuyu's back and glanced down. Her breasts were hot, red, and swollen— it seemed as though her body had attempted to mimic the growth she had suffered in the illusion by flooding her chest with as much blood as possible.

"Katsuyu, I choose you!" shouted Sakura, noticing her masked assailant below. "Use Sludge Bomb!"

The once-busy road was now deserted, so the ban on wide-scale attacks was lifted— the appearance of a giant slug in the middle of the street, along with the two rampaging giant snakes farther down the road, had swiftly convinced any civilians in the immediate vicinity that they had no business being anywhere near them.

Katsuyu reared back her head, before spitting out a jet of acid— but the instant before the liquid would have melted the flesh off the female illusionist's bones, a boy dressed in yellow and purple flickered in front of her.

"Gentle Fist Secret Art: Eight Trigrams Palms, Revolving Heaven!"

The stream crashed into the spinning bubble of chakra, bursting into a fine purple mist that drifted over the surrounding area, dissolving everything it touched and releasing puffs of pink smoke wherever the bigger droplets fell.

"Neji!" Sakura gasped.

She could see Orochimaru and Manda in the distance, flattening the bathhouse. But what on earth were they doing here, of all places? Nobody in the village could have known Yamato-sensei would take them to the hot springs, so how had their itinerary been leaked!? It couldn't have been Danzō, could it!?

The truth was far simpler than Sakura had imagined— Team Orochimaru had merely made a brief detour to the hot springs so that Tsubaki could steal a few breasts to build up her chakra pool, only to find Team Yamato (temp. name) already there!