Lift and Wardrobe Malfunction

"Come on, Nerugui!" Sakura called out to the ferret frolicking a few paces in front of her. "You remember where the exit was, right?"

In response, Nerugui stood up on its hind legs and chittered at her— Sakura hoped the ferret wasn't leading her in circles, because she had places to be. By attacking the earth-moving machine, Naruto and Sasuke were bound to have attracted a lot of enemies to their location, and the last thing Sakura wanted was for them to die offscreen in a filler arc, of all things…

"Nerugui is smarter than he looks," said Kahiko proudly. "He's older than I am, I'll have you know— he's been around since the fall of the kingdom."

Sakura had taken a few minutes to heal the worst of Kahiko's wounds so that she wouldn't have to carry him everywhere, but progress was still slow. There was a reason he had been the only one among his caravan to get captured by Hyde's knights— he walked really slowly.

Furthermore, Sakura's latest growth spurt had caused her dress's zip to fly off somewhere, so she had to struggle every step of the way to stay decent.

'It's a shame we haven't mastered Lady Tsunade's perfect Transformation Jutsu yet,' said Inner Sakura. 'We learned it specifically so we could keep our mobility if the girls grew too large…'

As one of the three basic techniques Sakura had learned at the ninja academy, the ordinary Transformation Jutsu was one of the most useful and versatile techniques in her arsenal.

It wasn't perfect, though— the Transformation Jutsu requires its user to maintain constant focus on a mental image of the target, a task that becomes difficult during combat. It is also highly distracting, as it hampers one's concentration on an ever-evolving battlefield.

Luckily, Tsunade was able to create a variant of the Transformation Jutsu that requires so little concentration and chakra that it could even be maintained in one's sleep, but if that sounds too good to be true, then that's because it is.

There are two catches:

Number One: Only one form may be taken.

Number Two: To make the Transformation an automatism, the user's mind must be conditioned to replace one's self-image with an idealized version of oneself, through a process of constant self-actualization over a lengthy period of time.

This approach worked fine for Tsunade, since her last growth spurt had been a few decades ago and she didn't want to look like an old crone, preferring her youthful appearance.

However, since Sakura was still in her teens, her body was still constantly changing, whether it was growing vertically or horizontally. Furthermore, before crossing over, Sakura had been a teenage boy, and after crossing over, she had been thrust into a brand-new identity— that of a teenage girl filled with a cocktail of strange new hormones. It was all very confusing for her.

Suffice to say, even though she hadn't inherited the original Sakura's memories, Sakura's sense of self was still pretty vague at this point, as not even a full year had passed since her transmigration— which is why Inner Sakura was still hanging around.

All that to say, until Sakura attained inner peace and resolved the lingering issues with her self-image, Tsunade's version of the Transformation Jutsu would remain out of reach for her…

…

"Good job, Nerugui!" exclaimed Sakura, as the familiar art-deco lift came into sight. "You found it!"

There it was, bathed in a bloody glow by the emergency lights— the lift Sakura had taken to holding cells level of the building. Now, all she needed to do was to ride the lift down to the atrium to leave this place… that is, if the lift still worked. Sakura approached the lift and tentatively pressed the button marked with a down arrow.

…

…

…

But nothing happened.

"The hard way, then," Sakura grunted, as she inserted her fingers in the slit between the lift's doors and pulled with all of her strength. "…eep!"

By flexing her pectoral muscles, Sakura had unwittingly caused her oversized boobs to pop out of her tight dress and accidentally flashed the lift shaft.

Sakura quickly let go of the doors and pulled her dress across her prodigious frontage. The abused fabric creaked in protest as it stretched thin across her chest, nearly turning see-through from its originally red colour.

"Thank goodness nobody saw that," a mortified Sakura muttered to herself, red-faced. "I really need to go clothes shopping…"

Sakura renewed her attempts to prise the lift's doors open, and with some effort, she succeeded. She then poked her head through the opening and looked down. Since the earth-moving machine had tipped over, the empty shaft no longer went straight down, but now rather dipped down at a 45-degree angle, which would make the trip down that much easier on foot.

And so, Sakura descended into the inky depths with the old man strapped to her back, following the blinking emergency lights, and within a few minutes, she had reached the abandoned lift cabin.

'End of the line,' said Inner Sakura.

The cabin blocked the way down, as it was almost perfectly flush with the enclosure's walls. Luckily, there was a hatch installed on the cabin's roof, so Sakura flipped it open and jumped down through the opening. Looking up, she saw that the needle on the glowing level display pointed to the numeral '2,' indicating that the cabin had stopped on the second floor.

Which meant that freedom was close at hand!

Feeling slightly claustrophobic in the tight cabin, Sakura began repeatedly slamming her thumb on the button marked '1,' but as she was busying herself 'repairing' the lift, Nerugui suddenly leaned forward and began chittering in her ear, drawing her attention.

The ferret, who'd perched itself on her shoulder, then jumped down to the floor, pointing at the door insistently with its little paw.

"What's the matter, Nerugui?" asked Kahiko. "Is there something back there?"

Sakura put her ear to the door and listened, hearing nothing but the low hum of electricity and the whir of machinery. She then placed both palms on the door and concentrated.

"Area Scanning Jutsu!"

Sakura couldn't make heads or tails of what she had just sensed. The room on the other side of the doors appeared to be filled with tubes and bubbles…