Early the next morning, Sakura roused the others as the sun crept over the horizon at the end of her watch. The four shinobi moved swiftly, wiping away any trace of their camp, and after swallowing a soldier pill each for sustenance, they were ready to depart.
"Get your filthy paws off me, you oaf!" Shion snapped contemptuously, delivering a swift kick to Naruto's backside as he stooped to offer her a lift. "I am a shrine maiden, and I must remain pure. I shall ride the cow, just as I did yesterday."
Naruto yelped in surprise and faceplanted in the dirt, his butt sticking out comically in the air.
In Sakura's original plan, she would have taken the lead; Naruto would have been tasked with protecting the V.I.P.; Hinata would have been assigned to aerial surveillance; and Sasuke would have been placed at the rear. That way, they'd have Dōjutsu wielders guarding both the front and back, with the ever-unpredictable Naruto neatly sandwiched between them— limiting his chances of wandering off and arbitrarily ruining Sakura's carefully arranged formation.
"It might actually be better if I guarded the V.I.P.," Sakura muttered to herself. "Naruto won't be able to protect her against area-of-effect Ninjutsu."
"This V.I.P. has a name," said Shion, sniffing haughtily. "I suggest you use it."
Thanks to his Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu allowing him to overwhelm enemies with sheer numbers, Naruto was passable enough as the team's dedicated Taijutsu specialist, even though Sasuke was better at it than him. But even a small army of clones couldn't shield a target from wide-scale firepower; they'd pop if exposed to so much as a light breeze.
Sakura, on the other hand, knew the Hyūga clan's Rotation Jutsu—and besides, it would be far more convenient to siphon the V.I.P.'s breast chakra if they were practically glued together. All things considered, this formation suited her needs far better.
…
Despite Shion's uncooperative nature, the Demon-King-Slaying-Brave-Hero's Party was making excellent time. In just a day and a morning, they had already crossed two entire countries. And by the time the sun stood high overhead, they'd entered the Land of Swamps, which was decidedly much more humid than the Land of Forests before it. Thankfully, the forest was still dense enough for Sakura and the others to keep moving from branch to branch, so they rarely had to set foot on the ground.
Otherwise, they'd have been forced to slog through the quagmire— either by dodge-rolling or by equipping a dagger and spamming the Quickstep weapon art, just to keep up the pace— and with Sakura already overencumbered by a certain shrine maiden clinging to her back, that would've been anything but pleasant.
As they pressed on, the flat swamplands below gradually gave way to craggier, rock-strewn terrain as the elevation rose. The sluggish waters turned to swift rivers and roaring waterfalls, a sure sign they were nearing their destination.
"Unless I'm mistaken, the Sealing Shrine should be right past this mountain," said Sakura, as she and the others stopped to take a breath at the base of a waterfall. "I say we make a beeline for the shrine instead of going around the mountain."
Shion harrumphed.
For once, she agreed with her guards. Sakura's back was reasonably comfortable— and she'd long since grown used to those absurdly high jumps of hers— so she was more or less content to take the rougher route if it meant getting all of this over with sooner.
"Enemy attack, right above you!" Hinata's voice suddenly rang out in Team 7's earpieces. "Hurry to higher ground, quickly!"
The ground began to rumble, and the roar of water swelled abruptly.
Out of the corner of her eye, Sakura caught sight of a gigantic dragon, formed entirely of water, surging down the river from the mountain. Securing Shion tightly to her back with her chakra, she hopped up the sides of the canyon the river had carved into the bedrock, followed closely by Naruto and Sasuke.
"Your time to shine, Naruto!" Sakura shouted as they crested the ridge, the water dragon surging just below and narrowly missing them. "Coordinate with Hinata and take down the enemy before my sandals get soaked!"
"Understood!"
Hinata soared up the side of the mountain and swooped down, covering Naruto's advance with a barrage of powerful Mountain Crushing Palms, leaving deep imprints in the stone. But when the smoke cleared, the two white-robed figures standing in the hand-shaped craters she'd created appeared completely unscathed.
"I feel… like there's something strange about them," Hinata spoke timidly into her portable radio. "Yesterday, that girl used really powerful Fire Style, but now it's Water Style… Is it really possible to master elemental Ninjutsu of different natures to such an extent…?"
Now that she was circling overhead, Hinata could clearly see that of the four enemies who had attacked the shrine maiden's compound in the Land of Demons the day before, only two were standing out in the open on a plateau within her line of sight.
The first was a burly, white-haired man wearing white robes marked with the trigram for fire— but judging by the rocky growths covering his limbs, which he'd used to shield himself and his teammate from Hinata's Vacuum Palms, he was clearly using Earth Style.
The second was an orange-haired girl wearing white robes embroidered with the water trigram. She was the one controlling the water dragon, but yesterday, she'd used Fire Style to great effect to bake the shrine maiden's defenders alive.
"Do you see the other two?" shouted Sakura. "…whoa!"
Sakura's eyes widened as the water dragon twisted in on itself and surged over the edge of the cliff. She and Sasuke were forced to break formation and separate as the flood dragon crashed into the ground where they'd been standing only a moment before, shattering the overhang and sending it crumbling into the roaring waters of the ravine below.
"It's not over yet!" Sasuke said warningly.
One by one, the scattered droplets gathered into streams, merging around a central core as they slowly reassembled into the water dragon— but before it could fully reform, the animated water lost cohesion and collapsed into a lifeless puddle on the ground. Farther up the mountain, Naruto had finally reached the Jutsu's controller and attacked her, causing her to lose her concentration.
"Come on, let's leave the rest to Naruto and Hinata," Sakura called out to Sasuke. "The goalpost is right there, on the other side of the mountain. We're powering through!"