Sakura poked her head out of the ground, thick, prominent veins bulging around her eyes as she activated her Byakugan. She was still having a bit of trouble projecting her sight in a perfect sphere around herself, but she had improved to the point where she could see everything within a two-hundred-and-seventy-degree arc in front of her.
After all, with the Hyūga clan's Kekkei Genkai still being a touchy subject, she unfortunately hadn't had many opportunities to practise with her new dōjutsu.
"There's chakra in the air…?" Sakura muttered to herself, glancing around.
She had emerged alone on the edge of a forest near what appeared to be some kind of ceremonial grounds, at the centre of which stood an altar, the entire arrangement perfectly mirroring the circular chamber buried twenty metres beneath her feet. Looking down and through her chest, she could clearly see the outline of the subterranean construct she had tunnelled out from.
There didn't seem to be anyone around at first glance, so Sakura experimentally poured more chakra into her eyes... only to accidentally extend her sightline far beyond what she was trying to view. She blindly stumbled forwards a few paces, arms outstretched in front of her to avoid smacking her head against anything.
"Heads up!" Minato's disembodied voice echoed through the miniature radio in her ear. "Enemies coming your way!"
The ground swallowed up Sakura as she sent earth chakra to the soles of her feet, breaking apart the soil's bonds and turning it into sand through which she could easily sink. Moments later, two Iwa-nin appeared exactly where she had been standing, directly above her.
"Well?" came a man's voice.
Sakura held her breath.
In her short career as a mission shinobi, Sakura had never encountered many sensory types, as they tended to be almost as rare as medics like herself, and the few she had met had never given her much trouble.
After all, whenever Team 7 did have occasion to hide, Naruto would usually break stealth at the first opportunity he could find, forcing the rest of the team to rush in after him and rendering any enemy sensory abilities completely irrelevant.
However, things were different now: in times of war, sensor-nin were everywhere, guarding strategic locations and making it generally impossible to sneak around…
"I could have sworn I sensed something right here," came another man's voice in response, sounding rather puzzled. "I don't get it, this doesn't make any sense… Kage-level chakra signatures don't just disappear into thin air!"
Sakura almost hiccoughed in surprise.
What kind of shitty sensory ninjutsu was this fellow using? She still had a few leftover dregs of chakra in her body from when she had opened the Byakugan mere seconds ago, and even if she didn't have any chakra circulating through her pathways, they were standing right on top of her head! How could they not sense her!?
"Hang on, but maybe they do disappear! Didn't the higher-ups say something about revived Hokages? Vanishing Kage-level chakra… if it's the Yellow Flash's teleportation jutsu—"
"If I were the Yellow Flash," Sakura said casually as she burst from the ground and grabbed their ankles, "then you'd already be dead!"
Before they could react, Sakura yanked the two Iwa-nin beneath the earth's surface. The Byakugan made targeting their Tenketsu child's play; she jabbed a pair of crystal senbon into their necks, forcing them into a state of suspended animation. With that, they would be neutralised for at least a week— and the moment they lost consciousness, the strange veil of airborne chakra Sakura had noticed earlier dispersed.
"So, that was sensory chakra all along," Sakura realised. "I didn't notice the perception bubble because I was already inside it…"
With the threat gone, the three members of the Hokage Guard Platoon cautiously emerged from the ground after her.
"You can fetch the Tsuchigumo duo," Sakura said, nodding in their direction. "The Lord Fourth's already gone to rescue the villagers."
"As you command!"
Shiranui Genma, Namiashi Raidō and Tatami Iwashi joined hands in a triangle, each completing their neighbours' one-handed seal, and they began gathering their chakra…
"We used to belong to a squad assigned to protect the Fourth Hokage…" said Genma solemnly. "Well, now it's the Sixth, but the Flying Thunder God Jutsu was taught to us by the Fourth."
"But unlike the Fourth," Raidō went on, "it takes the three of us for it to work—"
"Excuse me, but what are you doing?" Sakura interjected. "Who exactly is this exposition for?"
Genma, Raidō and Iwashi sighed as one.
"Oh, great," Iwashi said. "Now we've got to start from the top again."
"It's kind of like a mantra, Lady Sixth," Genma explained. "Even divided amongst the three of us, the Flying Thunder God Jutsu is phenomenally complicated, so we need to psych ourselves up each time we attempt it…"
Sort of like how some baseball players would perform small rituals to focus themselves.
"Oh, er… okay," Sakura said, turning on her heel to leave. "Well, I'll leave you to it then."
Minato was in charge of saving the Tonika Village survivors, but the enemy numbered at least ten thousand, so he would need some help in the form of a diversion. And so, as soon as she had sensed the Hokage Guard Platoon's disappearance, she…???
Sakura stopped in her tracks.
"Hang on, I'm not a sensory type," she said to herself. "How was I even tracking the baka trio's chakra signatures…?"
And for that matter, how did she even know the enemy's numbers!?
And then it hit her:
"Mind's Eye of the Kagura!"
Earlier, Sakura had accidentally poured too much chakra into her eyes and extended her telescopic vision so far that it reached the stratosphere, making her lose track of where she was standing. Effectively, she had been blinded, and in that short instant of blind panic, she had coincidentally opened her inner eye, Karin's unparalleled sensory ninjutsu!
"Right, I've got Karin's Uzumaki chakra!" Sakura exclaimed. "And that's why they couldn't sense me earlier, I must have subconsciously suppressed my chakra signature like she can!"
Sakura gritted her teeth, clenched her fists and tightened her core, trying to see if she couldn't force out the Uzumaki clan's signature Adamantine Sealing Chains…
"Whoaaa… I can feel something coming!"
…but all that came out was a fart.