"You let your guard down!"
A man burst out of the water and wrapped his noodly appendage of an arm around Sakura's body, constricting her tightly. Normally, he would have coiled his arm around her throat to choke her out, but he had failed to resist copping a feel…
"Yeah— and so did you!" Naruto shouted, landing a spinning kick squarely into Sakura's assailant's back.
"Serves you right!" croaked Gamakichi.
The Sakura he thought he'd just saved suddenly burst into a cloud of smoke, replaced by a piece of driftwood.
"Substitution Jutsu!"
'We're getting pretty good at that one,' cheered Inner Sakura. 'Almost three hand seals per second!'
While Sakura hadn't achieved much success at wielding both Lightning and Fire Styles at the same time over the winter, due to her day job as a medic at Konoha General Hospital, she had managed to sneak in some hand sign weaving practise, since that by itself wasn't inherently destructive. She was still nowhere as good as Itachi, who was so fast at performing seals that even Kakashi only saw a blur when his hands moved, but she was getting up there!
"Oi, Naruto!" shouted Sakura, reappearing a short distance away. "It's those weaklings from the Chūnin exams! I don't remember their names, though!"
It seemed as though Akadō Yoroi (the chakra-absorbing man, whom Neji had beaten up offscreen during the Chūnin exams) and Tsurugi Misumi (the elongating man, whose arse Akamaru had bitten) had found a new job after leaving Konoha. They were both weaklings, but the problem was that Sakura wasn't sure if they were still employed by Orochimaru— she vaguely remembered Orochimaru having something to do with this filler arc, but she couldn't remember if he would actually show up at some point…
At any rate, Sakura's taunt worked— a bit too well, actually…
"Water Style: Great Waterfall Flow Jutsu!"
The relatively calm sea surface churned, and without warning, a second whirlpool began forming at Sakura's feet. Unable to maintain her footing for long under such conditions, Sakura tried jumping away, but…
"Water Style: Water Whip Jutsu!"
A lasso made of water wrapped around her ankle and dragged her back into the water, causing her to get caught in the whirlpool.
Sakura was more embarrassed than hurt at this point — she had called these blokes weaklings to their faces, but it was difficult for her to show her true strength under these conditions. Her Lightning Style was effectively sealed, because of the electrocution risk to herself, and it was equally pointless to use large-scale Wind and Fire Style Ninjutsu, because her enemies would just dive to safety underwater. As for Genjutsu, only sound-based ones would be effective— it was getting really dark, so it's not as if her foes would be able to see her breasts properly…
"Do you think it makes you look cool, wearing sunglasses at night?" Sakura shouted, waving her fist angrily at Akadō as she bobbed up and down with the waves. "How can you even see anything?"
A dozen metres away, Akadō and Tsurugi stared at Sakura in disbelief as she continued to float at the surface of the water, stubbornly refusing to drown. She was spinning at the centre of the whirlpool like a floating piece of poop in a toilet bowl, clearly caught in their Ninjutsu— so how on earth had she not been sucked to the bottom of the sea yet?
"It's her breasts," said Tsurugi incredulously. "Breast tissue is mostly fat, which is lighter than water— they're so big they're keeping her from sinking…"
"That can't be right," growled Akadō. "There gotta be a trick to it."
And having said those words, he silently sank under the waves…
Meanwhile, Anko had managed to haul Ino to the surface just in time before she drowned, and she was now busy breathing air into Ino's lungs with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. As for Naruto… in an heroic yet misguided attempt to save Sakura from her predicament, he had also got sucked into the whirlpool, so now, they were both in need of saving…?
"Naruto, you idiot, I told you not to come over here!" Sakura chided him. "I had them right where I wanted, you're ruining everything!"
"Yeah, right!" Naruto shouted back at her. "And how were you planning on beating them from way over here, huh!?"
Leaving his companion's side, Akadō quickly reached the whirlpool and swam along with the current, drawing nearer and nearer to Naruto's and Sakura's legs as he circled around them… but just as he was about to grab onto their ankles and suck out their remaining chakra, he noticed something odd about the consistency of the water. The closer he got to his prey, the denser and more viscous the water…
"Water Style: Starch Syrup Capturing Field!"
From the moment Sakura had got dragged back into the water, she had been slowly converting the water around her into sticky syrup by releasing chakra from all 361 of her Tenketsu, turning her enemies' own trap against them! Like a spider in its web, she had been patiently waiting for them to come finish her off personally, since they lacked long-ranged offensive capabilities!
Akadō struggled to free himself, but he was already in too deep— every movement only pulled him further into the sticky web of syrup. Unlike Sakura, he couldn't emit chakra from all his Tenketsu, which meant escape was impossible…
Unfortunately, the same went for Naruto, but conveniently, that made his performance all the more convincing— otherwise, Akadō might have thought twice before getting so close…
Seeing that Tsurugi had no intention of coming any closer, Sakura clicked her tongue in annoyance. Her counter trap had worked, but she wouldn't be able to maintain it much longer. The starch syrup was roughly 1.4 times denser than the surrounding saltwater, so she'd been periodically releasing wind chakra through her Tenketsu, infusing the syrup with air bubbles to keep it buoyant… but that was easier said than done.
Expelling attributeless chakra from her Tenketsu, Sakura slipped out of the sticky syrupy mess and shot out of the water. She needed to extirpate Naruto from there before he sank!