"Chimo! Take Akari and get out of here, now! The Wind village is attacking!" shouted Kokona from the top of the hill. From the east, over the plains of the Village Hidden in the Sun, came a virtual sea of shinobi, their black vests turning the pristine valley into a sea of promised carnage, all intent on the destruction of the Sun village. "Get to the safe house, now, before their first wave gets here!"
"I can't leave you all alone, Kokona; I'm a sun shinobi as well! This is my village to defend, as much as it is yours!" She clutched her son, Akari, to her stomach in a tight embrace and held Kokona's hand in a tight, crushing grip . "We're not going to leave you for the Wind to slaughter!" Fear, as well as pain and grief shown in her eyes as she stood her ground against the wave of Wind warriors swiftly closed the distance between themselves and the few Sun shinobi already on the hill.
"That's right!" shouted the eight-year-old Akari to his father. "We're gonna stay and help you kick those guy's butts!" For such a small boy, she showed fierce bravery; more than most his age, not to mention many older children as well.
"No," said Kokona, shaking his head.. "My eyesight is as sharper than yours; each and every single one of those shinobi wears the vest of a Jounin." He looked with a grim expression at his family. "You wouldn't stand a chance against the weakest of them." He pulled his great obsidian blade, Hauberk, from its sheath on his back, got into a fighting stance, and prepared to meet the invading shinobi. "At the very least, I might be able to slow them down. I won't have you murdered, do you understand me!" roared Kokona with enough force to make Chimo flinch.
"All right," said Chimo with eyes of steel. "But I want you to promise me something, Kokona Muramaru: you will return to your family at any cost; we cannot bear to lose you."
Kokona smiled at his wife and winked cheekily. "You know me; once you feed me, I'll never go away." The two shared a quiet, humorless laugh at the memory of their first date: she cooked him a meal, and he was hers from then on, well over ten years ago.
"Go, then," she said. He nodded, and, with a small group of Jounin ninja, went to confront the wave of Wind shinobi. From the hilltop where she and her son stood, they were able to see every grisly detail, even the fountains of blood that sprayed when a nin was cut to meat. Kokona was the fiercest, most feral shinobi on the battlefield; his gleaming black blade danced through the air and the flesh of his foes as naturally as a ballerina on stage. With deadly grace, he cut down man after man that came before him, as invincible as the raging river that formed their northern border, as strong as the blade that cleaved through the skulls of his prey.
But rivers can be dammed, and swords can be broken. Kokona and his Jounin shinobi brethren were mighty, but they were outnumbered over five to one; even with the numbers of Wind shinobi lying like slabs of meat on the fertile green grass, Wind still had more ninja than Sun did at the moment.
It was inevitable; Kokona and his friends, his brothers in arms were surrounded, and as one, the Wind shinobi performed a series of hand signs: SLICING WIND JUTSU! they shouted as one with some unseen command. Invisible blades of air converged onto the Sun shinobi, and were torn to shreds.
The only nin left standing was Kokona himself, although he was in a pretty bad state: no less than five major cuts crisscrossed his body at various angles, and he was literally covered in blood, much of it his, much of it his fallen comrades'. He was grievously injured, and only remained upright by using his obsidian sword as a cane. He held a mad look in his eye as he slowly, painstakingly surveyed the dozens of ninja that surrounded him.
"Cowards!" he shouted at the gathered shinobi that ringed him and the fallen Sun nin with him. "Cowards, one and all! What is your reason to attack the Village of the Sun? Who gave you the right to take the life of these heroes?" He coughed up a lungful of blood, and it was obvious that he was going to die at any moment.
"Cowards, in life," he said through blood-smeared teeth, "and cowards you shall be in death!" Using the last of his remaining strength, he threw down the obsidian blade that had been his companion throughout his life as a shinobi, and before anyone could stop him, he performed a complex set of hand signs, ending with the tiger: FORBIDDEN ART: UNDERWORLD NOVA JUTSU!
A small ball of fire, as bright as the sun, formed above his hands that were still held in the sign of the tiger. "Do you know what happens when a star goes nova, you sons of whores? It explodes to a hundred thousand times its size! When I die, this little sun, created with all of my chakra explodes, and it'll take you all out with me! There's nowhere you can run; all of the land in a mile radius will be nothing more than ash in but one brief moment."
He looked up to the hill and saw his family. He let out a small smile to know that they were safe from the Wind shinobi. "I love you, son!" he shouted to Akari, his words carrying over the miles as if he were no more than a few feet away, who was helpless to do anything for his father down on the battlefield. "Take good care of your mother for me, do you hear? It's your job to be the man of the house now!"
"FATHER!" Akari shouted from the top of the hill. He broke away from his mother's grip, and ran down the hill toward the mass of shinobi, living and dead. "I'M NOT GOING TO LET YOU DIE ALONE!" he screamed, and with surprising swiftness for an eight-year-old boy, he ran down to the center of the valley, broke through the wall of stunned shinobi, and fell to his knees at his father's side.
"AKARI!" shouted Chimo to her son, even though she knew that was in vain.
"Akari," murmured Kokona, "you foolish, foolish boy. Who will look after your mother when we're gone?" With that one final muse, the flame of life in the Sun shinobi extinguished itself. The miniature sun, created with all the chakra of a mighty warrior, was no longer held in check by the will of its creator, exploded. In an instant, the sun multiplied by thousands, then tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands its size. Every living creature was consumed by the ravenous inferno, as well as the dead. To Chimo, it seemed as if Hell in its entire wrath unloosed its fury on the field. She had to shield her eyes from the blazing glory that was the nova, lest she go blind.
Tears flowed freely down her cheeks. She fell to her knees, put her face to her hands, and cried; she cried for her husband, Kokona, for dying for their village; she cried for her son, Akari, who meaninglessly lost his life in her husband's nova blast; she cried for her fellow shinobi that were felled by the Wind nin; she wept even for the Wind nin, for losing their lives for so little reason.
A hand placed itself on Chimo's shoulder. She pulled her head away from her hands to look over her shoulder. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve, and saw each and every villager and ninja of the Sun village behind her on the hilltop. Many of them were the wives of the Sun nin who fell on the field of battle; they clutched each other for strength and comfort as they unsuccessfully fought tears similar to her own. Some of them were the other shinobi of the village of the Sun who didn't make it to the battle on time. No matter who they were, though, they were all weeping, for they all had seen the act of foolishness her son had displayed, and the supreme act of courage that her husband had completed.
The fireball inferno, long done destroying the Wind shinobi, burned itself out. It left a hollow in the land, a full mile deep and two miles long. Smoke twisted off of the land like steam leaving a kettle of tea. The difference was, this steam was black, and had the unmistakable odor of death and destruction.
"Wh…why did all of th- this have to hap-happen?" stammered Chimo to the man standing over her, a ninja named Oda. "Why did they have to attack?"
"Because," said Oda, "their new Reikage told them to. He has always been jealous of the Sun village, and the Forbidden Scrolls in the Sukage's home. He's power-hungry, and will stop at nothing to get what he wants. He took the Reikage position by force, not because of any popularity.
"The Wind shinobi attacked because it was their duty to follow their Kage's orders, whether they like them or not. That is the shinobi way." He looked down at Chimo. "That is the shinobi way," he repeated, almost to himself. "Our job isn't to protect the village, or to hold up a set of ideals: our job is to follow orders.
"Ours is not to make reply, ours is but to do or die.
"That is the shinobi way."
There were many funerals the next day. Really, though, they were more like memorial services; each and every single body had been burned in the inferno, reducing the corpses of the battle to ashes. Not even any stray bits of metal could be found in the crater, for the nova jutsu evaporated everything caught in it. Even the obsidian stone of Kokona, Hauberk, a blade forged in the flaming bowls of the Earth itself, was nowhere to be found.
Chimo didn't return home the day of the attack, nor throughout the days of the funerals; she didn't think that she could take the stress of seeing her home, the home that she had left only a few days before with her husband and child, and return to find it empty. Instead, she stayed with a friend for that time, going through an episode of mourning for her now-destroyed family.
She wasn't the only one grieving, however. A dozen other families in the Village Hidden in the Sun had lost shinobi loved ones as well, many of them ninja themselves. A meeting was called in the village gathering hall, and every villager was encouraged to attend, and attend they did. The hall was packed with the thousands of Sun villagers and shinobi, almost all of them demanding blood from the Wind village. The meeting almost turned into a riot, until the Sukage used a jutsu to create a rather large bang in the air above everyone in the hall.
The Sukage, Sato, was an extremely large man, had a face that nobody in their right mind would call handsome, especially with the numerous scars that burned across his face. Nevertheless, he had a reputation as a kind, wise, and gentle leader, the kind of man who would never resort to violence unless it was the last resort. He called an order to the meeting, and declared it to be officially begun.
"People of the Village Hidden in the Sun!" he shouted from the heightened dais that overlooked the meeting hall. "We have had three days to mourn our dead, and a time of mourning cannot be stopped. Those shinobi died protecting out land. Thirteen brave ninja of the Sun held off an entire army of Wind Jounin, an act of bravery that will be a story that you can proudly tell your great-grandchildren about. Twelve ninja of the Sun were killed by the Wind, and the thirteenth destroyed himself to protect the Sun village."
He didn't mention Akari running to his father's side, thought Chimo. Probably, he doesn't want to upset me any more than I already am. As if to confirm this thought, Sato scanned the crowd, and locked eyes with Chimo. An unspoken message was sent between them in a flash; silently, she thanked him, and he nodded.
"Now," he continued, "there are things that this village, as one entity, as a people, must decide. The attack on the Sun by the Wind was not the fault of the shinobi that came; their mad, new Reikage, Koishi, sent them after me. They wanted to acquire the scrolls in my home that contain the knowledge of the forbidden arts for their master. Now, I tell you this, people of the sun," he said, and, it seemed at that moment, that time stopped; it appeared as if he looked each and every single one of them in the eye, one by one. "Those shinobi that came here just a few short days ago are not at fault for the attack. They died an honorable death in battle."
"What's so honorable about attacking a village full of people just for a few scrolls!" shouted an old man from near the back of the room. "Those bastards killed my only grandson! The Village Hidden in the Wind should pay for what they did to us!"
A restless muttering crawled across the room as people agreed with the old man; what he said seemed to make sense to the villagers and ninja of the Sun.
"He's right!" shouted another, a younger man much closer to the dais. "Wind country cannot go unpunished for what they did!"
"I agree," said Sato, calming everyone down, "but for one thing: I know many people in Wind village; most likely, Kokona killed a few of my friends with that forbidden jutsu of his. The Wind village is a good place, but it has been infected with a disease, a virus, and his name is Koishi. If it weren't for him and his greed, our loved ones would still be alive right now. He won't rest until all of the scrolls in my home are his, or until he is dead.
"So, I ask all of you, the people of the Sun: do we wage total war on the Wind? Or do we eradicate the menace that is called Koishi?
"Do we punish the many for the one, or do we punish the one for the many?
"Do we destroy the cancer in the body, or do we destroy the body so that the cancer cannot spread?"
A silence spread over the gathering hall as each and every person there contemplated the words that were just spoken by their leader. They each knew that the wisdom of their leader was true. After all, they wouldn't tolerate a fool for their Kage.
"Sukage," said a Chunin in the front row as he stood up, "the words you speak are wise. I propose that a small group of elite Jounin are sent to the Wind village and destroy the threat to our village, once and for all!"
"A small band? Are you mad?" shouted a woman in the back. "If Koishi is strong enough to strike fear into the hearts of a village-full of Jounin, what makes you think that only a few ninja are capable of taking down this monster?"
"Only a few will be needed," said Sato, "because I will be leading the assassination team myself."
A gasp went through the assembled crowd as they heard their Kage make this statement. "No!" shouted a Jounin in the front. "The Village Hidden in the Sun cannot risk losing our Sukage in a mission of this magnitude! We, the Sun, need you here! I'll lead it myself if I have to!"
"Sit down," growled Sato. "I understand the gravity of the mission, and am fully aware of the dangers of it. But I took an oath when I assumed this office; I am honor bound to protect this village and all who call it home, even if it means giving up my own life in return. I will not be dissuaded from this course of action.
"I was chosen for this job because, at the time, I was the strongest and most level-headed of my time. Iruku, the last Sukage, trusted this village to me when he died. He did this because he knew that he could count on me to protect you when the time came.
"That time is now. If I don't go, and the mission fails, I fail. I fail, because I sent our shinobi on a mission, knowing full well that it would most likely be a suicide mission.
"You- every one of you- are my charge. I am responsible for every misfortune that befalls this village, because I didn't have the ability to stop it. I didn't have the power to save my comrades from the insanity of the madman the Wind call Reikage.
"I will lead this mission. No argument." He turned, and walked toward the door behind him. "Any shinobi above the Genin level who wish to participate in this mission, meet me at ninja headquarters. I'll choose you myself." And with that, he left.
The hall was silent for a moment, nobody saying anything, until a shinobi got up from his seat and made for the nearest exit. At that trigger, almost every shinobi in the room, even some of the Genin, rushed to get through to the doors. As it turned out, each and every single one of them wanted to be on the team.
Within only a few moments, the room was empty, save for one lonely figure in the furthest corner from the podium.
"What are we going to do?" Chimo asked herself under her breath. "What am I going to do?" She debated with herself for a few minutes, and came to a decision: she was going, whether Sato liked it or not.
End of Chapter 1!
Please review and tell me whether I should continue this thing. Any criticism of any type will begreatly appreciated.