Strangely enough, Sakura did not feel even a single twinge of worry as she set off one of her emergency flares in the middle of enemy territory. She sat down on the altar, watching calmly as the fireworks streaked skywards into the night and dissolved into a cloud of luminous, smoking sparkles that slowly showered down over the area, bathing her surroundings in a warm glow.
It did not take long for the enemy to take the bait.
Within seconds, shadowy figures flickered into sight at the edge of the forest, on the nearby lake's surface, atop the circular wooden structure that ringed the ceremonial grounds, and across the grassy lawn. More and more enemy shinobi joined the encirclement as the first to arrive recognised Konoha's Sixth Hokage and spread the word, until it seemed as though all ten thousand of the Iwa-nin who occupied the region had arrived.
"Before we begin this dance, a word of advice," Sakura said quietly. "You're all going to die if you stay here. Go home if you value your lives."
A lone figure stepped forth from the encirclement.
"Arrogant, much? D'you think you're the Third Raikage, or something?" Kurotsuchi said venomously. "Even Kumo's invincible superman couldn't survive under the encirclement of ten thousand of our bravest shinobi. You're going to pay for stealing my boobs with your life, Hokage bitch."
Sakura didn't bother to refute her. She was done trying to convince Kurotsuchi that Orochimaru was the real culprit, and at this point it no longer mattered. Orochimaru was now her retainer, and the Land of Earth was at war with the Land of Fire.
"I suppose we'll see," Sakura said as she lightly hopped off the altar, dusting her backside with a brush of her hand. "Now, shall we dance?"
It was the dead of night, the moon the only source of light on this battlefield, and with limited visibility, Sakura's greatest strength, her genjutsu, was suppressed. She knew this, and the Iwa-nin knew it too— and without warning, they surged towards her as one.
"Mind's Eye of the Kagura!"
Sakura closed her eyes and allowed her consciousness to expand past her body to envelop the entire battlefield. She could now accurately sense the position of the enemy's chakra in relation to herself.
"Byakugan!"
Thick veins bulged around her closed eyes, and suddenly she could see the disembodied balls of chakra floating around her as people, and perceive their surroundings as well. She forcefully widened her cone of vision to match her sphere of perfect perception, and all at once, it clicked: she could see three hundred and sixty degrees around herself.
"Rotation!"
Sakura wrapped herself in a cocoon of protective chakra as an uncountable number of paper bombs attached to kunai streaked towards her, deflecting them back into the crowd surrounding her in a series of loud bangs. The detonations both near and far raised a fine curtain of dust… and without warning, her silhouette vanished from behind the veil of smoke.
"Damn it!" coughed Kurotsuchi. "Where did she go?"
A scream of ecstasy answered her somewhere deep within the encirclement, far behind her. Then, a fraction of a second later, another blissful moan echoed out, followed by yet another.
"Shisui Style: Body Flicker Jutsu!"
Without even activating Sage Mode, she knew exactly where she was and where she was going at all times, and so she could finally let loose, using her prodigious chakra to accelerate to the limits her powerful body could endure.
"She's gone again!"
The taijutsu and kenjutsu she had learned from Shisui himself could finally be used to their fullest, turning her into a veritable phantom of speed mirages on the battlefield. Of course, since she possessed the Mangekyō Sharingan, this had always been just barely possible for her, but thanks to her newfound unerring sense of her own position in relation to the world and its many obstacles, Sakura was no longer afraid of going splat against a wall.
Sakura blinked in and out of sight, and each time she vanished, so too did a kunoichi's breasts. She dashed back and forth across the ceremonial grounds, her blade reaping one more victim with every pass, but eventually she found herself cornered, with nowhere left to run. Clad in armour of stone reinforced with chakra, the enemy had proved too numerous, and too unafraid to step within the reach of her fists or her sword.
"Close in!" yelled Kurotsuchi. "Don't give her space to move!"
Sakura leapt onto a burly chūnin's head, her fingers blurring as she weaved hand signs.
"Crystal Style: Jade Crystal Mirror!"
Sakura backflipped, twisting her body in midair and slashing the Iwa-nin with her sword as she vaulted from his shoulders onto the horizontal snowflake-shaped mirror that had just appeared before her. She stepped lightly off the hovering green platform, another immediately appearing beneath her sandal next to the first, and she began hopping from mirror to mirror as they formed. Each time she stepped on one, the mirrors would glow with a faint emerald sheen, producing Crystal Clones that dropped into the crowd below, creating chaos in their ranks as they attacked.
"Ignore the fakes!" cried Kurotsuchi as Sakura ran across the mirrors hovering overhead. "Shoot down the real one!"
"Earth Style: Stone Pistol Jutsu!"
Now that they didn't have to worry about shooting each other, thousands of Iwa-nin pursed their lips and began firing a flurry of pebbles skywards from their mouths, each one rapidly expanding into a boulder mid-flight. This was a jutsu perfectly emblematic of the Will of Stone: a single stone bullet was fairly easy to dodge, but gather an army of practitioners, and they could grind a mountain down to nothingness!
The crystal mirrors began cracking and crumbling as boulders repeatedly struck them, wearing them down despite their superior resilience. Bit by bit, Sakura's footholds were disappearing… and it was then that Sakura saw one of the Leaf's emergency flares rising into the sky over Tonika Village.
Minato had successfully managed to rescue the surviving villagers!
Sakura took a deep breath and leapt from her last mirror, flipping and twisting in midair so that she was falling upside down.
"Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu!"
Blue flames erupted downwards from Sakura's lips in the form of a trumpet.
"Water Style: Water Trumpet!"
Great earthen walls, conjured by the Iwa-nin, rose from the ground to shield them as Sakura's and Kurotsuchi's techniques clashed in midair, releasing scalding steam that cooked those nearest alive. Sakura was still falling, face first towards the ground, still spewing three-thousand-degree flames before her…
"I've got you now! Let's see how you like eating cement!" Kurotsuchi laughed triumphantly. "Lava Style: Quicklime Congealing Jutsu!"
But something yellow flickered over Sakura's shoulder, just as she was about to crash into Kurotsuchi. Without warning, Sakura and her blue flames vanished, a tall, handsome blond man appearing in her place.
As the cloud of quicklime surged up towards him, he threw a kunai through it, and just as the jutsu was about to trap him in cement, his figure turned into a yellow blur. A fraction of a second later, the kunai buried itself in Kurotsuchi's shoulder, forcing a pained cry from her lips.
Minato landed on top of her, pinning her to the ground and driving the kunai deeper into her wound. The world spun, and…
…
"Where's the Hokage?"
"Where did Lady Kurotsuchi go!?"
"That was the Yellow Flash, wasn't it? But who're they…?"
In Minato's place now stood a girl and a tall man in a crop top that revealed his rippling abs. His fingers dug deep into his comrade's shoulders, the snivelling blond-haired girl… both wore matching forehead protectors emblazoned with a stylised black spider.
"Do it," Shiranami said, grinning wolfishly.
Hotaru choked back a sob as she shed her top, revealing the unsightly growth embedded in her back, which had begun to shine with a blinding white light…