Up ahead, at the top of the mountain, the orange-haired woman spun like a ballerina.
"Water Gathering Gorgon!"
Using her chakra, she diverted water from the nearby waterfall and channelled it into a massive sphere. The ball of water hovering above her head shrank slightly, then abruptly sprouted a hundred sharp spikes from its surface, resembling the spines of a sea urchin.
The spikes began to undulate like tentacles. One coiled around Hinata's ankle as she flew past, yanking her out of the air and slamming her hard into the ground, while at the same time, several others merged into a thick stream that surged toward Naruto, engulfing him completely.
"Rasengan!"
Naruto quickly summoned a Shadow Clone and formed a swirling ball of chakra in his palm, churning the walls of his aqueous prison until its surface tension ruptured, releasing him in an instant. But as he rushed to Hinata's side, his vision darkened as a shadow fell upon him.
"Earth Style: Hardening Jutsu!"
An enormous hand clad in rocky armour slammed down on Naruto, as the orange-haired girl's male teammate moved to defend her— but instead of being flattened, he burst like a balloon, blowing white smoke everywhere.
"Damn it, that was the wrong one!" snarled the white-haired man. "Do you see him, Shizuku?"
"Gitai, watch out!" hissed the girl. "The target is—"
But Shizuku never got to finish her sentence. There was an ear-splitting bang and a flash of yellow light, and in the very next instant, Gitai's stone-clad arm was snapped clean off before he could even register the pain.
"Lightning Style:Lorentz Gun Jutsu!"
"My arm!" hollered Gitai, cradling his instantly cauterised stump. "I'll get you for that!"
Each of his teammates, including Gitai himself, had been implanted with a special chakra source allowing them to use powerful techniques, using Dark Medical Ninjutsu. He flexed his muscles, expelling a black snake from the veins in his arm— then, he bit off its head and wrung it out like a sponge, squeezing all the stored chakra into his mouth.
It seemed the dark purple chakra contained some form of nature energy, because his appearance quickly turned monstrous— his musclebound form doubled in size, his skin turned grey, and he grew two extra heads, instantly regenerated his missing arm, and sprouted two more pairs of arms besides.
"Coming through!" Sakura shouted. "Summoning Jutsu!"
A slug the size of a double-decker bus appeared before her as she crested the mountaintop. Sakura and Sasuke leapt onto Katsuyu's head without hesitation, and Sakura pointed straight at the eight-limbed man ahead of them, shouting for the slug to use its signature technique.
"Earth Style: Demonic Rock Spider Armour!"
Thick clumps of rocks and pebbles tumbled up the sides of Gitai's body, covering every last centimetre of skin in a diamond-hard layer of stone. He raised all six arms to shield himself from the giant slug barrelling toward him surprisingly fast for its size, only to take a jet of purple acid straight to the chest.
"I'll leave the rest to you two!" Sakura shouted as she blew past Naruto, Hinata, Shizune, and Gitai— who was screaming in pain and frantically tearing off his smoking armour of melting stone before the acid could reach his bare skin. "We're heading straight to the shrine!"
"Damn it, what are Setsuna and Kusuna doing?" cried Shizuku.
Riding her summoned beast like a snowboard, Sakura slid down the mountain's flank, using Katsuyu's slug slime as lubricant in lieu of snow. The sounds of battle behind her quickly faded away as they descended towards the treeline, slaloming between boulders and the sparse trees that grew on the slope.
"It sounds like the other two are lying in wait in the forest below," Sasuke shouted over the sound of the wind rushing in their ears. "They could be hiding anyw—"
"Wind Style: Rotating Shuriken!"
A flurry of compressed air discs suddenly burst from the forest, cutting Sasuke's sentence short. One of them sliced clean through one of Katsuyu's eye stalks, severing it into a Mini-Katsuyu that was quickly left behind as the rest continued sliding downhill.
Sakura's eyes widened as a second volley of sharp wind shuriken burst from the foliage, aimed straight at her. Thanks to her Sharingan, she could clearly see that each one cut off a possible escape route, making it impossible to dodge them all.
"Rotation!"
Sakura tore Shion from her back and swung her around to her front, pulling her into a tight embrace. Chakra burst from all 361 of her Tenketsu in rapid sequence as she spun, radiating through Shion's body and accelerating their angular speed to 1,200 kilometres per hour, generating a protective bubble around them.
The wind blades found their mark, but bounced off harmlessly Sakura's chakra.
"Sasuke?" Sakura called out to him, looking around her wildly as she stopped spinning. "Where did you go!?"
It seemed she had accidentally knocked him off Katsuyu's back with the repulsive force of her Palm Rotation. He had fallen to the ground farther up the mountain, his figure quickly shrinking as Katsuyu continued sliding down the mountainside at high speed.
"I'm gonna be sick," Shion moaned dizzily. "Everything's spinning…"
"Oh no, you don't," Sakura cried out in alarm. "Genjutsu: Saimingan Hypnosis!"
The tomoe in her crimson eyes revolved quickly around her pupils, and Shion slumped in her arms, unconscious. Sakura tapped Katsuyu's back with her foot, and Shion's limb body sank into the slug's soft flesh, buried deeply in her folds.
And that was one less thing to worry about!
…
After sliding down the mountain for a while, leaving a trail of small blue and white slugs and slime in their wake, Katsuyu's speed began to diminish as the incline levelled out and the pine trees grew denser, each impact with them costing her size and momentum. Thankfully, apart from those last two attacks, no further attempts were made on their lives. The last two remaining enemies, Setsuna and Kusuna, had seemingly vanished into the forest.
Plip.
A droplet of freezing water struck the tip of Sakura's nose, prompting her to look up. Dark, rumbling clouds were gathering overhead, casting ominous shadows across the forest below. It looked as though a thunderstorm was brewing.
Sakura shivered, buffeted by a sharp gust of wind.
"That is no ordinary storm," said Katsuyu apprehensively. "I felt nature energy on those people, earlier. They've been artificially injected with sage power."
"So that's why their techniques were so strong," said Sakura in realisation. "The world is getting dangerous… I need to master Sage Mode as soon as possible."
The storm was right over Sakura's final destination. From the looks of it, the Sealing Shrine was located in the eye of the storm…