"Oi, watch it!"
"I'm walkin' here!"
A chorus of protests rose as Sakura shouldered her way through the crowd towards the spot where she had glimpsed her doppelganger. There was no chance she had mistaken the face in the photograph, because she saw it each time she looked into the mirror to brush her teeth or tidy her hair.
"Sakuraaa-chaaan, where are you going?" Naruto shouted. "Wait up, you know!"
A multitude of questions churned in Sakura's mind as she elbowed aside a man twice her size. What was Tsubaki doing here, at the same time she was? Had she come to siphon the contestants' breast chakra? Were Orochimaru and his goons lurking nearby as well? Or had they come with the sole intention of capturing her? Her presence couldn't possibly be a coincidence!
Whatever the reason for Tsubaki's visit to the capital, she was up to no good.
"This ends now," snarled Sakura as she leapt onto a tall branch and scanned the area.
If Tsubaki were caught in the act during such a public event, Sakura could kiss goodbye any hope of keeping her Kekkei Genkai a secret. Worse still, there was every chance the authorities might find her guilty by association, given that they shared the same face… and other, rather unmistakeable, distinguishing characteristics.
"Oi, you up there, in the tree! Get down from there!"
Sakura glanced down and saw guards gathering below her, with more streaming into the park. She had grown so used to wielding chakra that she had completely forgotten that using superhuman abilities in the capital was illegal.
"They're gone!"
With a simple tiger seal, Sakura gathered chakra beneath her feet and flickered to a safe distance before melting into the crowd, vanishing from sight. While she might have lost track of her clone, spending the night in a holding cell would scarcely help her search.
…
After fruitlessly spending the next half hour looking for any trace of Orochimaru and Tsubaki, Sakura was forced to accept that she was utterly hopeless at urban tracking, so she trudged back to the hotel with little enthusiasm, losing her way twice, and by the time she stepped into the hotel, the sun was already setting.
A roaring fire blazed in the hearth of the lobby, and the walls were adorned with Rinne Festival decorations. A gaudy crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, its light scattering across the walls in bright spots like the glint of a disco ball.
"Ah!" came a familiar voice. "If it isn't my bestie!"
Sakura's eyes widened in surprise at the sight of the genki girl bouncing merrily on the sofas in the lobby. She had not seen that particular bundle of energy since the previous summer, when she had saved the girl's life by returning the chakra she'd stolen from her…
…and in the process permanently losing access to Tailed Breast Mode, because Fū was somehow even flatter than the last time she'd seen her.
"Fū!" exclaimed Sakura.
Fū bounced one final time on the sofa and flipped through the air, unfurling insect wings from her lower back to glide a short distance before landing in Sakura's arms and wrapping her in a tight embrace. Losing most of Chōmei had clearly not taken away her ability to fly.
"Sorry, I forgot your address, and I ran out of pocket money, so I couldn't write to you!" Fū sang. "The village head said I had to keep my head down or something, but I got bored and slipped away from the village to come and see you! He said there would be a whooole looooot of boobie ladies, and here you are!"
Fū spread her arms wide for emphasis.
"That's great and everything, but there's someone I need to catch," explained Sakura. "Why don't we talk some more tomorrow?"
As much as Sakura would have liked to catch up with Fū, she had a clone to hunt.
"Like a bad guy?" asked Fū, tilting her head to the side in curiosity. "Like that cereal sparkle thing that lady at the gate told me about?"
It took Sakura a few seconds to work out exactly what in the world Fū was on about.
"Oh, you mean the serial killer," said Sakura in realisation. "Yeah, that might be who I'm looking for. I'm not sure yet."
Sakura did not know much about the serial killer case, but she clearly remembered that Orochimaru had a fondness for live test subjects in his experiments. There was a very real chance he had set up shop in the capital, hiding in plain sight and masquerading as just your average madman with a knife. And even if he were not responsible for the killings… she would still be doing the world a favour by capturing the criminal.
With her shopping plans for the evening abandoned in favour of police work, Sakura checked in and dropped her luggage in her room. But as she went to leave the hotel, the receptionist called after her in a sing-song voice. "Dear guest, you may not be aware, having only just arrived, but there is a curfew in the capital at ten o'clock in the evening, so please make sure to return before then!"
Sakura waved in acknowledgement and stepped out of the warmth of the hotel lobby, immediately buffeted by a cold wave of winter air as she stepped out into the street.
"Well, they never said being a detective would be easy," Sakura muttered to herself, shivering as she wrapped her winter coat tightly around her prodigious frontage. "Maybe I should have stuck to my childhood dream of growing up to be a giant robot..."
"So, where are we looking first~?"
Sakura did a double-take as she realised Fū was standing right beside her. Perhaps it would be wiser to mould a little chakra to energise her basic functions before going hunting, she told herself, because without chakra, she was basically a sitting duck with nothing more than a regular person's awareness.
Electric lights suddenly sprang to life overhead as the lampposts of the inner district illuminated one by one, casting down cones of light that caught the snowflakes drifting from the night sky.
"It's snowing…" Sakura said, holding out a hand.
A few centimetres of snow had already settled on the street while she'd gone to check into the hotel, blanketing the beautiful city in a soft white layer that seemed to muffle every sound in the world…