"Kill them!" roared Akahoshi.
At their leader's command, the Hidden Star's sixty shinobi sprang into action, but with the unconscious bodies of the young star trainees still strewn about at the Leaf shinobi's feet, they were forced to hold back.
Unwilling to risk harming their own children with a reckless barrage, they were forced to abandon Shurikenjutsu and Ninjutsu, closing the gap and resorting instead to Taijutsu. Thankfully, their soft-heartedness gave Naruto and Sakura ample time to build up their chakra for the large-scale attack they were about to unleash!
"Let's do it!" cried Sakura, clapping her hands together. "Manyuu Assassination Genjutsu: Breast Illusion!"
Her pectoral muscles flexed, causing her breasts to jiggle wildly in the confines of her clothes.
"Got it!" shouted Naruto, performing in quick succession the seal of the ram and the Shadow Clone's seal. "First up is the Sexy Jutsu, followed by… the Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
With their chakra perfectly synchronised, their combined efforts would produce a power greater than the sum of its two parts!
"Collaboration Art— Ōoku: Descent of a Palace of Concubines!"
In an instant, hundreds of columns of white smoke erupted from the ground around the battlefield, outnumbering the Star shinobi by over two times— and from each cloud of white smoke emerged a Transformed Shadow Clone, each more identical to Sakura than the last!
Startled by the apparition of hundreds of new enemies, the Star shinobi reflexively looked at the Shadow Clones, distracted by their… huge tracts of land.
"What the…?"
Just like the feathers in the Temple of Nirvana Genjutsu, Sakura's attack washed over the battlefield, imbuing all breasts— friends' and foes' alike— with hypnotic yin chakra that clouded the brains of all those who looked at them.
Much like the area-of-effect Genjutsu that had inspired it, Sakura's Combination Art was a tremendously inefficient and chakra-intensive Genjutsu, which would normally have been meant to be performed by a group of illusionists. But fortunately, chakra was one thing Sakura and Naruto didn't lack!
"Don't falter, men!" cried a Star kunoichi. "It's just an illusion; it can't hurt us!"
For men, the Ōoku— the palace that housed an important daimyō's or the shōgun's harem— represented something of a forbidden paradise where beautiful women abounded. But for women, especially lower-ranking concubines, the Ōoku could have very well been hell on earth…
The Star shinobi began stumbling and falling, as from their point of view, the ground itself began to transform into mounds of soft, pudding-like breasts. In their eyes, their fellow kunoichi began changing into doppelgangers of Sakura, making them unable to tell friend from foe!
This Collaboration Genjutsu was Sakura's solution to Breast Illusion's weak points: female opponents and inability to establish eye contact. By flooding the battleground with her yin chakra and filling it with mirror images of herself, she made it nearly impossible for her opponents to avoid looking at her chest…
Slack-jawed and with all of their blood rushing to their nether regions, the male shinobi dropped to the ground, happily rubbing their faces in the dirt as they imagined themselves motorboating Earth-chan's breasts. As for the kunoichi, facing an onslaught of Shadow Clones disguised as Sakura while they themselves all looked like Sakura herself, they had no choice but to defend themselves, leading their quick defeat through infighting.
One by one, they all fell— the men from overexertion, and the women from head trauma— until at last, the only ones still standing were Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke. Just like that, Akahoshi himself had fallen, without even getting the chance to demonstrate his 'invincible' star power.
"That was too easy," said Naruto, nudging Akahoshi's body with his foot. "It's like an entire village of Pervy Sages and Grandpa Hokage, y'know…?"
Akahoshi's unconscious body twitched; he was still dry humping the ground in his dreams.
Naruto had only been expecting a reaction on the level of his Sexy Jutsu— which is to say, a nosebleed at best. Never in his wildest dreams would he have thought that combining his joke move with Sakura's Genjutsu could have produced such devastating results!
"You can't expect Leaf standards from a small village," Sakura said, punctuating her point with a violent kick to Akahoshi's ribs. "These people might've had Chūnin or Jōnin ranks, but those are just titles. We're technically low-ranking, but I'm pretty sure we're already in the top ten percent of the world's strongest shinobi."
Compared to the Hidden Leaf, which had a great number of talented shinobi thanks to the Senju clan breeding themselves out of existence, most shinobi from the other Great Villages were just rubbish— and the wild ones or those from minor villages were even worse than rubbish. Honestly, it was just a skill issue; if they had truly wanted power, then they should have found some Ōtsutsuki descendants and started a village with them.
"Don't get carried away," grunted Sasuke as he watched Naruto's face light up. "There's always someone stronger than you."
The Hidden Leaf had a high concentration of talent, but that didn't mean crouching tigers and hidden dragons couldn't emerge elsewhere. The shinobi continent was vast and teeming with people, after all.
!!!
"What in the world happened here!?" came Natsuhi's shocked voice from the edge of the forest.
"Hokuto, everyone!" Sumaru cried out in anger. "What have you done to them!?"
Team 7 turned to face the newcomers.
"They're just unconscious," said Sasuke coolly. "See for yourself."
Sumaru and Natsuhi quickly ascertained that he was telling the truth, and their faces changed from anger to wide-eyed fear. Just as Sakura had told Sumaru earlier, two Konoha Genin and one Chūnin from a Great Village had been sufficient to take out an entire village of seasoned shinobi. Furthermore, they had also fought without taking any damage and without killing anyone…
"The star is yours," said Natsuhi, bowing deeply. "But in exchange, please spare everyone. They were misled by Akahoshi…"
"Who do you think we are?" said Sakura irritably. "We aren't thieves or mass murderers— we're proud shinobi of the Hidden Leaf!"
Mercy was a privilege afforded only to the overwhelmingly strong, but in Sakura's opinion, it was more than that— it was her duty. Sure, the Hidden Star might send assassins after her for the rest of her days for this affront, but she'd just have to beat them up as they came, to show them the error of their ways!
…
And thus, Team 7 triumphed over their misguided adversaries, but their job was not over just yet.
Shisō and Yotaka were separated from Akahoshi, and by dangling promises of a cure to their cancers, Sasuke managed to extract confessions and proof that Akahoshi had orchestrated the Third Hoshikage's murder.
After that, Naruto and Sakura woke up the Star shinobi in manageable groups.
With the meteorite clearly in view, Shisō's and Yotaka's confessions in hand, and the sickly Mizura at her side, Sakura explained how they had all been misled by Akahoshi the Kage murderer— and how the star training was, in fact, slowly killing the star trainees.
It took some time, but eventually, she managed to convince the entire village of her words' veracity, and she handed them back their irradiated meteorite as proof of the Leaf's sincerity.
For the murder of the Third Hoshikage, Akahoshi, Shisō and Yotaka were sent to Hōzuki Castle, the ninja jail in the Land of Grass, and Natsuhi was elected as the Fourth Hoshikage— even though most villagers didn't know her, they desperately needed someone strong in command.
A few days later, a contingent of Medic-nin from Konoha arrived to treat those afflicted by the star tumours, and with that, Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke took their leave of the Village Hidden in the Stars, but their departure was met with frosty stares and cold silence. Even though they had saved everyone, Team 7's heavy-handed handling of the situation had shattered the national pride of the Hidden Star with their incredibly humiliating Jutsu.
Now and forever, the Star shinobi would remember that they were no match for three brats from one of the Five Great Shinobi Villages. In less than a year, their wounded pride would drive them to impeach the Fourth Hoshikage Natsuhi and to resume the star training, rejecting each of the Hidden Leaf's offers to help research a safer way to harness the star's power.
And so, the affair of the stolen star finally came to a bittersweet conclusion, and Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke returned home to train and to await their next adventure…