"That should be the Sealing Shrine's entrance down there, unless I'm mistaken," said Sakura, turning to the shrine maiden beside her on Katsuyu's head, nestled between the giant slug's eyestalks. "Seems oddly quiet..."
The Sealing Shrine down in the valley was nothing fancy— certainly nothing like Miss Shion's house back in the Land of Demons. It looked like any ordinary cave, little more than a hole carved into the cliff face. If not for the shimenawa hanging between two boulders sealing off the entrance, Sakura would never have guessed she was standing before the resting place of the Mōryō's body.
"I'll be fine from here on out, so just turn back, okay?" said Shion in a trembling voice. Sakura opened her mouth to protest, but the miko angrily cut her off. "Don't you get it? You're not needed any more, so just go away and let me do my job!"
Sakura rolled her eyes. Tsunderes could be such a drag, sometimes.
"And just how do you plan on getting down there, exactly?" asked Sakura pointedly. "Are you perhaps planning on jumping down this ravine, swimming across the river, and climbing back up the cliff to the other side, hmm?"
"…I'll allow you to accompany me just a bit further," said Shion reluctantly. "But after that, you must leave this place at once!"
The Sealing Shrine was close— but for Shion, who had trained only as a miko and never developed the superhuman physique of a shinobi, it might as well have been on the far side of the world. To cross the ravine, she'd have needed the proportional jumping power of a grasshopper.
"Would you kindly bridge over the gap, Milady?" Sakura asked Katsuyu politely.
The giant slug could do many things… but jumping wasn't one of them. Thankfully, Katsuyu's control over her own body was nothing short of miraculous. She stretched herself thin, reaching across the yawning abyss to touch down on the far side, then pulled the rest of her bulk smoothly over the gap. But the moment her single foot brushed the stone plateau where the Sealing Shrine stood, the ground began to rumble.
"I knew it," groaned Sakura. "Of course it's a trap."
It had all been too easy so far.
The Four Elementals— or at least, that's what Sakura had taken to calling them, since each wore robes marked with different trigrams representing either lightning, water, wind, or fire— had apparently abandoned the chase altogether, turning instead to fight the other members of Team 7, as if trying to prevent them from regrouping with her and Shion.
This did not align with Sakura's previous understanding of the enemy's goals— namely, to assassinate the holy shrine maiden before she could reseal the Mōryō or strengthen his body's seal, or something along those lines.
Now, it was almost as if they were trying to ensure Shion faced her destiny alone. Miroku, Shion, the demon Mōryō… Lady Katsuyu's story spanning thousands of years… the pieces of the puzzle were all there, Sakura could feel it. But how did they all fit together?
Sakura had no idea, but if the enemy's plan was to isolate Shion, then she wasn't going to let her out of her sight!
…
Dark figures began emerging from the ground all around them, one by one. The ghost army wasn't made up of real spirits at all— it was, in fact, a wide-scale puppeteering technique, manipulating innumerable, nearly indestructible terracotta statues.
"That's the ghost army!" murmured Shion. "I thought it was marching towards the lands of the east. What's it doing here!?"
Their sheer durability allowed them to ignore most Ninjutsu and Taijutsu, and their inanimate nature rendered them completely immune to Genjutsu. Their numbers were the sole reason the Five Nations had banded together— left unchecked, they would sweep across the land.
But even so, there was a limit to what they could do.
"Oh, quit it!" giggled Katsuyu, as the terracotta soldiers plunged their stone weapons into her soft slug flesh. "It tickles!"
As the name implied, the terracotta army was remarkably resilient— but also painfully slow. Its soldiers were also painfully limited in their ways of approaching problems: they had only one method of attack, which was to jab pointy sticks at the enemy. Even civilians could probably outrun them— albeit only for a while, as stone men do not grow weary.
Indeed, unless Sakura was swarmed, the terracotta soldiers wouldn't be able to so much as touch a single hair on her pretty head. Although, she was, in fact, being swarmed right about now— but since she was perched atop Katsuyu, who was conveniently invulnerable to physical attacks, the statues could do little more than mindlessly drive their blades and spears into her slimy skin as she continued unstoppably inching forwards.
"Katsuyu, use Sludge Bomb!" Sakura exclaimed gleefully. "Followed by Hydro Pump!"
"What are these weird commands?" Katsuyu complained. "Some sort of new Ninjutsu that's popular among young shinobi, these days?"
Ignoring all rules of turn-based combat, Katsuyu spat globs of acid at the terracotta soldiers, instantly reducing them to smoking puddles, then blasted the remains away with jets of pressurised water from her mouth before the fumes could drift back towards Sakura and Shion.
"Your superiors should've put you on the front lines," said Shion, bemused. "Using such a powerful summoned beast as a taxi to bring us here feels like such a waste..."
From what Shion had heard of the Mōryō's legendary ghost army, it was supposed to be this nigh unstoppable wave of destruction. But watching the ease with which Katsuyu dispatched the so-called indestructible soldiers, she couldn't help but relax slightly.
"I'm surprised too, you know," said Sakura smugly. "Terracotta's not like marble— it's not especially vulnerable to acid. Hehe… maybe my Lady Katsuyu really is just that special~!"
And so, ignoring the ants futilely biting at her foot, Katsuyu oozed forwards to the Sealing Shrine's entrance and lowered her head, allowing Sakura and Shion to hop down safely. She then squeezed herself halfway into the hole, blocking it off, before swapping her head with her posterior, allowing her to continue attacking the stone men outside.
"What have you done!? You're stuck in here with me!" said Shion, nervously squeezing the bell pinned to her lapel for comfort. "Don't you get it? I foresaw your death! There's no way you're living through this now!"
"I just realised I was being a bit silly earlier," said Sakura, winking at her. "I'll have you know it'll take more than a hole in my chest to kill me… after all, I'm the only combat medic Lady Tsunade has ever given permission to actively engage in combat."
Shion's fingers curled tightly around her bell.
It was a keepsake from her mother; one she carried with her always. She had intended to give the bell to Sakura for protection, then sacrifice her own life to stop Mōryō— just as her mother had done ten years ago. But if the busty girl truly was that confident in her strength… perhaps everything might still turn out all right.