Chapter 55

Slaughter

"I can't believe they are following us like this." Shino said. "I think even Naruto would be able to see that this is a trap."

"They're probably relying on their superior weaponry." Hinata said as she looked at the oncoming enemy. Fortunately her circular vision also caught a few other things, like the fact that Kiba and Arch were muttering to each other in quiet tones, and occasionally chuckling amongst themselves. Hinata had no idea what they could be talking about, but she had a feeling that this wasn't good.

"Good. I much prefer an arrogant fool as an enemy. They make more mistakes." Iren said. "We're only few miles away from the trap. Let's give them another round, just to make sure they're good and angry."

The warriors got into position, and Hinata could not help but notice that Arch was walking his horse beside Akamaru, who was carrying Kiba. The two of them were still grinning. Hinata still didn't like it. She knew that Kiba could sometimes be a little immature, as well as hotheaded. However, the warriors were starting towards the Smoke army at a swift canter. Hinata and Shino followed on foot, while Kiba stayed on Akamaru.

As the group swooped towards the Smoke army Hinata grabbed a few more kunai to throw at them. She wasn't going to use one of those guns, not at all. It just seemed wrong, and she could see why the Sand ninja didn't use them. They were too loud, to messy, and a bit unpredictable. Plus, for fighting as a ninja they were relatively ineffective. They took too long to reload, though the newer ones might have solved this problem, but a fast ninja opponent could dodge individual bullets and then strike while the shooter was reloading. In fact the only reason that the Smoke guns had been so effective was the fact that they had fired in large groups, and it would have been hard to dodge so many. Hinata heard the guns beginning to fire, and she shoved the idle thoughts she had been having in the back of her mind. Concentrating she tossed her weapons at the Smoke. She was just turning to leave when she saw Arch and Kiba taking up the rear of the group. To her shock and horror the two boys, in almost perfect unison, presented their backs to the Smoke, shifted around until they were sort of squatting on their mounts, and mooned the entire Smoke army.

The roar of outrage could probably have been heard all the way back in Konoha. The Smoke, who had been going pretty fast up till now, actually sped up. Arch and Kiba, launching uproariously, urged their horse and dog forwards. Akamaru looked fairly annoyed with this; in fact he was shaking his head and sighing a doggy sigh.

"Kiba, what was that?" Shino asked sternly.

Kiba grinned "Extra incentive?"

Arch was grinning as well "Good clean fun?"

"Hey, they're really pissed now and they are chasing us. Isn't that what we want?" Kiba said.

"It wasn't necessary." Shino said.

"This guy doesn't understand the concept of fun, does he?" Arch said to Kiba.

Kiba laughed and ruffled the young boy's hair "Nope."

"Just because my definition of fun doesn't include rude and offensive gestures, that doesn't mean I don't understand the concept as a whole." Shino said.

Arch looked up at Kiba "What'd he say?"

"He doesn't understand our kind of fun. He likes doing things like…like studying bugs." Kiba groped for an activity that Shino liked.

"I wonder, Kiba, what you would have done if the Smoke decided to take a shot at the rather large targets that the pair of you presented to them?" Shino asked mildly.

Arch grinned and shrugged. "It didn't happen, though, so why worry about it?"

Shino turned his head towards Arch and studied the little brat. He had never given the kid a second glance, mostly because the boy didn't really interact with the ninja, aside from some general gawking. To Shino the passing rebalance to a traitor that Arch bore wasn't important. It was not like the brat had chosen to look as he did. Now, however, he was observing the kid. To Shino the kid seemed relatively unremarkable. He seemed cheerful and active, a typical young boy. Shino decided to keep observing the kid, just in case something odd did occur.

"If you don't plan ahead then you are doomed to make mistakes, and some mistakes can be fatal." Shino said.

Kiba rolled his eyes and Arch giggled. Neither of them seemed inclined to listen to Shino at all. The two of them rode off together, talking amongst themselves.

Hinata, who had come up while Shino had been talking to the ingrates, smiled at the annoyed bug user. "He's almost like a mini-Kiba, isn't he?"

Shino shook his head "Kiba didn't need a little choir to egg him on. This could be a disaster."

"I think it's a good sign." Hinata said. "His sister was hurt by us, but he seems to be holding no ill will towards us."

Shino nodded "I suppose that's a good point. Still, I'd watch them. We might need to pull them out of danger any day now. I can almost guarantee it."

Hinata agreed with him, but the idea of watching people to make sure they didn't make a mistake got her thinking about her father again. She couldn't help but feel nervous about Hiashi, which was almost absurd. Hiashi had never needed her to watch out for him. He was always so self assured and confident. Still, his recent behavior had upset Hinata. She didn't want him here, and had thought that time away from him would be good. However, she felt herself fretting at odd occasions and worrying about his welfare. She hoped that this mission was over soon. She could see the canyon in the distance, even without the Byakugan. Soon the trap would be sprung.


Hinata had good reason to worry about Hiashi, though not for the reasons she thought. Maro was driving Hiashi absolutely insane, and the feeling was mutual.

"He always does this." Maro growled. He had gone back to the angry pacing, which Hiashi had tried to ignore for almost nine solid hours. "Leaving me behind to babysit a Leaf. How humiliating!"

Hiashi's teeth were grinding together "Perhaps your father would let you do more if you were not such a petulant little brat?"

Maro turned "I never said I was talking about him! How'd you know that?"

Hiashi smiled "You just told me, little idiot." This was turning out to be kind of fun. Maro had said several things to this effect periodically, and Hiashi had enough of it. The kid may have had some Hyuga blood, but he clearly favored his father's side of the family. For one thing he was way too bulky and large to be an average Hyuga, sure he had the eyes, but the eyes were a dominate trait. The only real reason it was rare was because the Hyuga kept a strict control over who married who (at least they were supposed to), because the eyes were a dominate gene. Maro had also seemed to inherit the temper that seemed prevalent in just about every single member of his family that Hiashi had come across. In fact, the boy's temper seemed to be worse. He seemed to Hiashi to be almost frustrated about something. Curious about this, and bored, Hiashi decided to try and figure out why the brat was acting so, well bratty. Besides, they had time till the Smoke got here, and Hiashi was certain that he would spot them in time.

And just as Hiashi had guessed, his comments had made Maro angrier. "You think you're so smart, you little peacock. I bet you've never fought a day in your life!"

"You'd be wrong about that, Brat." Hiashi could see the kid's blood pressure rise every time he called him "brat", so he would keep doing it. Hiashi could read a person as well as Neji could, it was something that you learned as a Hyuga. "On the contrary, I think you're the one without battle experience here." He knew that he was pushing Maro's buttons the more he talked, and he could guess from Maro's face that he was on the right track.

"I've been trained to fight!" Maro said, but Hiashi could tell that was not the entire truth.

"Training, yes, I think so, but you've never actually fought for real." Hiashi said. Half of what he was doing was confidence. If he pretended that he knew everything then Maro would believe that he did. And sure enough the slight widening of the kid's eyes confirmed his suspicions. There was something going on here. Why would Jhimey have shoved his son in with Hiashi, when anyone else would have done just as well? Heck, if it came to that Hiashi could probably have used the damn horn himself. And why was the boy going on and on about "he always does this"? Was Maro's being left behind a normal occurrence during battle? If so this might have something to do the boy's seething aggression. It was Hiashi's impression that he was probably naturally aggressive, but if he was being held back in such a manner then this would only cause more issues with the anger management. "Your father won't let you fight. I wonder why. Are you inept?"

Hiashi could tell that the kid had enough. He could see the blow coming a mile away from the way the kid's muscles bunched up before he lunged at Hiashi. Maro aimed a punch at Hiashi, and the teacher in Hiashi imminently evaluated the blow. It wasn't bad, but it a bit too slow. Hiashi easily grabbed Maro by the wrist and tossed him aside.

"You're too slow. I can see your moves from a mile away." Hiashi said calmly.

Maro bellowed in anger and rushed him. Hiashi stepped to the side and tripped the kid. "You also let your temper rule you. How do expect to fight anything if you're always rushing around like a wounded bull?" He wasn't bored now. In fact Hiashi was starting to have fun. The last people he had taught were Neji and Hinata. Neji had the same pent up anger that his boy had, but he had been able to hide it better, and the anger had faded a long time ago. Hinata had no anger at all. To be honest this was kind of interesting to Hiashi. It was almost a game.

Hiashi continued to play with the brat, but as he played the Smoke were rushing ever closer, and Hiashi was no longer watching the canyon.


The decoy group thundered down the canyon, the angry Smoke soldiers at their heels. They had not taken their mocking from Kiba and Arch well, and were now in a total fury.

The Dragons reached the end of the canyon and whirled to face the Smoke. "Get ready. We'll attack as soon as we hear the horn." Iren said. He had his pistol at the ready, as well as a sword belted to his side. He knew very well that his gun only had six shots in it, and he fully intended to drop the thing and lay in with his melee weapon as soon as his round was used up. He aimed the gun at the charging Smoke and waited for the signal. The rest of his tribe also readied their weapons.

They waited. The Smoke drew closer, the muzzles of their own guns aimed and ready to blast the Dragons. At the realization that their foe had stopped the Smoke had deployed and were now arranged in neat little rows. Their commander called a halt, and several automatic weapons were now aimed directly at the Dragons.

For a second, no one moved. Iren waited for the signal. No signal.

"What the hell, where is the horn?" He muttered.

The commander of the Smoke grinned. Whatever trpe these barbarians had planned it was obviously a failure! "Ready." He bellowed in the language of his people, which no one save his own troops could understand. "Aim…" the noise of several thousand weapons being cocked filled the air.

By now Hinata had figured out that, for some reason, her dad had decided not the blow the damn horn, and if someone didn't do something then those Smoke were going to fire. Despite the loud protests from the others, she darted in front of the Dragon army and stood in front of the maws of a hundred muzzles, and that was just the first row of them. The commander looked at the little girl in front of him, standing there as if she thought she was going to stop them and laughed. "Fire." He said.

To say that both the Dragons and the Smoke were shocked when the small woman in front of them began to emit chakra from her palms in small beams was an understatement. And they certainly were surprised to see her move her hands so fast that a protective dome of flashing light beams appear from one side of the canyon to the other, apparently all emitting from Hinata's hands. The beams of chakra lashed out, slicing and blocking every single bullet from the Smoke, stopping the fire from hitting even a single Dragon.

"Arch, get to that tower and smack that idiot city squatter into gear, now!" Iren snarled. The girl, Hinata, had just risen in his estimation by a great margin, but Hiashi had greatly lowered. What was that fool doing?

There was a small winding path, probably another one of those used by goats, that lead up to the top of the canyon. Arch kicked his horse in the ribs and sped for the canyon. However, he only made it halfway up when the Smoke spotted him. A shout went up from the Smoke, and several of them turned as one and began to fire at Arch, who was now beyond Hinata's range.

"Kid!" Kiba bellowed. He had barely known Arch, but he sure as hell didn't want to see the poor thing shot! Akamaru barked and changed from dog to human clone right then and there, as if reading his master's thoughts. "Fang over Fang!" Kiba bellowed as he and Akamaru rotated in the air, their spin blocking the bullets in mid flight. It was a good thing that it only been a section of the Smoke troops that had fired at Arch.

Arch squealed at this, but to his credit he didn't stop. His horse was obviously terrified, only the whites of his eyes were showing, but the horse didn't falter or shy away but ran all the faster to the top of the cliff.

Meanwhile, the ninja at the top of the cliff were watching all of this in sheer puzzlement. They knew they were not supposed to attack until the signal, but the moment that Hinata began to defend the Dragons Naruto began to fidget.

"Something's wrong. This isn't supposed to happen. We need to get down there!" He said urgently.

"Naruto, wait!" Sakura tried to stop her friend, then she saw Arch break away from the group of Dragons, and his close call that was only halted by Kiba and Akamaru. Naruto saw this as well, and he had finally had enough. Soon the Smoke were being rained on by at least a hundred Narutos.

This caused a slight ripple on the canyon, as the other ninja milled about, wondering what the hell was going on and should they attack or not. Gaara suddenly decided that they would have to attack, as he doubted that Hinata could keep that attack up, and even though something had apparently happened to Hiashi that didn't mean that the rest of the plan wouldn't work. He gave the ninja his order, and soon the rest of the ninja were joining the ocean of Narutos. Small streams of sands picked up soldiers and either smothered them or crushed them. Kunai and other flow weapons flew. A large dragon puppet swooped and soared over the Smoke, belching fireballs. However, the Smoke soldiers began to take refuge in their transport cars and fired from there. They were not totally protected from the sand or the fire, or the occasional shadow or sand clone that would reach through a window to punch them in the face. Still they were protected from the most of the physical blows from the ninja, as not all of them could get enough chakra power in their hands to break the thick steel. Not even Guy, whose punches had always shattered steel before, only caused dents in the metal.

As if from a signal that none of the ninja or Iifernati could see, the huge tanks at the back of the Smoke column turned as one. There were fifteen tanks, and all at once all fifteen of them began to fire at the ninja remaining on the cliff as well as the Dragons at the other end of the valley. These were the ones with mid to long range attacks. Shocked, the ninja had little in the way of defense, and only a few of them managed to get away in time. Some managed to jump away or substitute in time, but the first round of tank fire made the sides of the canyon turn red with the blood of the ninja that had been lining it.

The tanks prepared for a second round, but all of a sudden huge red tentacles burst from the sides of the canyon and covered the remaining ninja in time. An ugly, octopus face emerged from the sand and a few more tentacles tried to grab at the tanks.

"Lord, that last tank is right on top of that trap door. We have a big problem here." Sticks emerged from wherever he had been to stand next to Gaara. His hands were emitting chakra strings, and he looked like most of his concentration was on the business of operating a puppet.

Gaara was about to give an order when Guy, who had been close enough to hear, bellowed cheerfully "I'll get it!" The green clad ninja leaped down towards the offending tank. To every single Smoke soldier's amazement Guy leaned down, grabbed the tank by a tread, and lifted the entire tank. With a heave Guy spun it to the side and slammed the offending tank into another, causing that tank to be utterly crushed.

The Eagles, who had heard the firing since it started, had been unable to do anything since there was the huge bottom part of the tank covering their trapdoor. In fact, Jhimey had been hitting the bottom of the tank with the hilt of his broadsword for the past five minutes. He was just about to give up when the tank moved and was flung away from the trapdoor. Jhimey poked his head out of the hole in the ground to see a rather tired looked Guy just standing there, grinning at him and holding up his thumb.

Shaking off the absurdity of the situation, Jhimey led his troops up from the hole and nearly had a heart attack. He could see from the blood on the canyon walls that this was not going well. And, instead of facing the squishy backs of soldiers eh was gazing at the treads of several tanks.

Jhimey could feel his wife coming up beside him. He knew that he could not back down, couldn't let his nephew down. Besides, he couldn't let his people see how utterly terrified he was right now. He drew his sword, bellowed and charged the tanks, followed by his people. Unfortunately their swords did pretty much nothing and since they had thought they would be facing soldiers instead of tanks, they hadn't brought any guns. So they ran through the forest of tanks, slapping uselessly at the metal tires, and causing no damage at all. The tank's guns swiveled and fired at the Eagles, and while most of them were too close to the tanks, so that the guns couldn't dip down enough to get them and the others couldn't do anything without hitting their own tanks, a few of the shots managed to land blows.

Gaara shook his head "This isn't going to work." If they stayed they would die. There were too many Smoke soldiers and their weapons were to powerful. They didn't have enough people, and if those tanks kept up soon they would break the Kraken puppet's tentacles. "Baki, tell them to retreat."

Baki, who had been with Gaara from the beginning, stared at his leader for a brief second and then nodded; he began to the call he retreat.

The Dragons were the first to go. They had been there the longest, and they wanted to get out of there and right now. Almost as one they wheeled around and ran. However, neither Shino nor Hinata followed. Instead they leaped to the top of the cliff, to find Kiba.

They found Kiba and Akamaru laying the ground, bleeding from several hundred wounds. Because of their rotation they had not died, but a few of the bullets had ended up in buried in Kiba's shoulders and legs, and a small chunk of Akamaru's back had been shot off. Arch was jumping from Kiba and Akamaru with a roll of bandages, clearly panicked and trying to patch the two up to the best of his abilities. When Hinata and Shino arrived he jumped and faced them, babbling in the Iifernati tongue and clearly panicking.

Hinata put a hand on the kid's shoulder to stop the babbling "It's alright, I can help them. Shino, can you take of that." She nodded at the tower in the distance, unable to even mention the man who she would have cheerfully strangled at this moment.

Shino nodded and went. What he found their nearly caused him to a silent blowup. How in the hell had Maro and that moron who presumed to lead them managed to miss the fighting? And why, why were the pair of them fighting like a pair of little children while ninja and Iifernati died? He was so angry that his bugs buzzed out and slammed into the two combatants. The two stopped and stared as the annoyed bugs buzzed around the tower and finally settled back on a fuming Shino.

Shino took three very deep breaths and said "If the pair of you are done, the army is retreating. I suggest you do the same."

"Army, what army?" Maro demanded.

"Ours, we are retreating. Now." Unable to say anything more Shino turned and went back to Kiba to see if he could do anything.

Now that he was no longer focusing on the kid, Hiashi turned his attention back to the canyon. He stiffened when he saw the slaughter thee, and the long line of Iifernati fleeing.

It occurred to Hiashi that he might have made a huge mistake.


A few hours after the battle, the only people left in the canyon were the Smoke. Calmly and efficiently the Smoke buried the few dead they had, turned their vehicles towards the capital and headed towards if, as if nothing had happened.