The Wanderers
Chapter 66 – Rebellion at Iwagakure
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. If I did, there would be epic sieges.
***Previously-On***
Naruto and Hinata entered the Land of Earth with the intention of finding their friend Sasuke, though it was difficult as each village they came across was empty. In another part of the Land of Earth, Sasuke and Fiore led an Iwa force into a trap that led to their destruction, including the death of their commander Kurotsuchi. While Naruto and Hinata did find the Cascading Flow warriors they were looking for, they weren't seen as allies and taken prisoner by Elika and her force. While on route back to Cascading Flow, Sasuke and his force noticed that something was wrong and went in with a small group, confronted with the image of Elika and their non-combatants being held hostage by the remaining Iwagakure ANBU. With Naruto and Hinata's assistance after they broke out of prison, the hostages were freed and all their enemies were taken out.
***End Summary***
After ensuring that there were no more Iwa ANBU endangering their lives, the Cascading Flow warriors stood down and began to revive the hostages. Fiore knelt down beside her mother and began lightly slapping her cheeks to wake her up, while another warrior checked her for injuries.
Several warriors went to tell the warriors outside to stand down temporarily, while the others began to move the bodies out of the hall. A serious blow had been struck on both sides, but with the death of what was likely to be all of their ANBU; Iwa was at a significant disadvantage in the war.
Naruto and Sasuke stared at each other for the first time in years, sizing each other up. Both of them had gotten taller in the three years since they'd worked together and collected a number of scars that demonstrated the difference between their old forms and their new ones. They both had a weary look in their eyes, but they walked towards each other with no small amount of male bravado demonstrated.
The two Konoha shinobi stood mere inches away from each other, Naruto's blue eyes glaring into Sasuke's red Sharingan. If the observers didn't know the personalities of the two in question they would think they were about to engage in an epic battle.
Almost in synchronisation, Naruto and Sasuke drove their fists into each other's faces.
The impacts sent each shinobi flying in opposite directions. Hinata shot behind Naruto and caught him between her hands, steadying him in place, while Fiore watched as Sasuke slammed into the nearby wall with no small amount of amusement.
Wiping at his mouth with a wild grin, Naruto nodded his thanks to his wife before turning back to his opposite. "You still hit like a little girl, Sasuke."
The younger Uchiha jumped out of the hole in the wall he'd created and dusted himself off with a huff. He cracked his neck loudly, "You haven't exactly improved much either." Flexing his hand he felt a stinging pain along his knuckles, it was like he'd punched a brick wall, not that he'd ever admit that to his blonde friend.
Watching as her husband approached his old friend, Hinata simply shook her head with a small smirk on her face. "First thing you do when you see each other…it's like nothing's changed."
Naruto and Sasuke continued their 'conversation', while Hinata turned her attention to the wounded. The Cascading Flow warriors seemed happy to let her examine them once it was clear she knew what she was doing, they didn't demonstrate any hostility to the young woman as her hands glowed light blue and she used her medical training to help the more severely injured.
As a medical team came to help her mother regain consciousness, Fiore made her way over to Hinata and knelt down beside her. "So I gather the two of you are friends of Sasuke?"
Having healed one of the hostage's concussions, Hinata smiled at the spiky-haired girl, "You could say that." She indicated to her old forehead protector; they'd started wearing them again since coming back home. "My husband and I have known Sasuke since we were children."
Fiore's expression could only be considered priceless as she turned to look at her partner arguing with the blonde shinobi, "Husband? That's…well…aren't you guys a bit young?"
Hinata chuckled quietly and stopped her medical technique, wiping her hands on her jacket. "Maybe, but it was the right thing for us. With the war and everything going on…"
"I can understand that," said Fiore, her eyes drifting to her partner and she thought about what they'd done before arriving at the base. She hadn't thought about the future between herself and the Uchiha, but judging by the look on the white-eyed girl's face when she looked at the blonde one, she found herself feeling a little bit jealous.
Hinata excused herself and approached her husband, placing a hand in the middle of his back and planting a small kiss on his cheek before nodding to Sasuke in greeting. "It's good to see you again, Sasuke. You're going well?"
The younger Uchiha smirked slightly, "For what it's worth, Hinata. I don't know how this would have turned out, had the two of you not shown up." He didn't want to admit it, but in the three years they hadn't seen each other, Hinata had only grown more beautiful and womanly in his eyes. He had no interest in her from that perspective, but he had a begrudging respect for Naruto on that account alone.
"I was just telling Sasuke about what happened in Kiri," said Naruto. "He's said that his forces have seen Han in the past week," he continued with a grave tone in his voice.
The married shared a concerned look; that had a number of implications neither of them wanted to talk about at that very moment.
Changing the topic so they could speak on it another time, Hinata asked Naruto why he'd been gone so long when he took the Iwa ANBU away with his Hiraishin technique.
"Oh, I took them to the first place I could think of." Naruto smirked at the recent memory, "Let's just say they didn't enjoy the trip."
Hinata grinned at the prospect, she understood what he meant. "How is Grace?"
"She's good. She was raiding some small town off the coast of the Land of Wind, having a grand old time. She's invited us to join her sometime next week."
"Sounds like fun," said Hinata back. She went to say something else, but hesitated as she remarked at how different she was compared to the last time she'd seen Sasuke. She was excited by the prospect of wild swashbuckling and consuming large amounts of rum, something she'd have never even considered a few years ago. Her father would be having a fit right about now and not just because of her choice in husband.
Though she still kept her clothes in respectable quality.
Sasuke wasn't sure what they were talking about, but despite the fact that he was surprised to see them, it was nice to know they weren't dead. He turned to Naruto, "Why are you here? No-one's seen you guys in years. Shikamaru and such had written you off."
Naruto and Hinata shared a knowing look with a smile before they both turned him and saying at the same time, "It's a long story."
The younger Uchiha let out a long breath and turned his gaze to the injured Cascading Flow warriors around them. "Well I can't say we've got time to chat. You've dropped into a mess of a situation."
The married couple nodded in understanding as they saw Itachi approaching them from behind his younger brother. Hinata excused herself as a Cascading Flow warrior tapped her on her shoulder and asked for her help with some more of the wounded.
Unable to cope with not knowing, Naruto asked the more important question he'd thought of since first seeing him. Pointing to the older Uchiha's face, Naruto didn't hold back. "Okay, Itachi, what the hell is with your eyes?"
A small grin appeared on Itachi's face as he indicated to the cloth around his glowing green eyes. In a statement that made Naruto's eyes roll, Itachi simply said, "It's a trick."
Sasuke groaned at the same time as Naruto, clearly his older brother still enjoyed being the most cryptic person they knew. "He lost his eyes and decided that he needed a more…intimidating visage."
Naruto gapped at his eyes like a little boy would, he was so impressed at it he didn't even care that it was probably just a genjutsu or something similar.
Itachi leaned in to his brother's ear, "You should set out a new perimeter force, Sasuke. They might've sent a secondary force to observe and reinforce their companions."
"Of course," said Sasuke. "Naruto," he said formally before disappearing in an impressive display of speed.
Naruto gave an understanding look at the empty space where Sasuke had been before turning quietly to Itachi. He had a thousand questions, not just the five hundred follow-ups about his eyes, but he recognised there were more pressing things at the moment.
"Itachi, why are the two of you here? Fighting against shinobi…is there some kind of master plan we can't see? It doesn't make any sense."
"Should you prove to be an ally, perhaps you'll come to know," came a female voice behind him. The blonde shinobi turned to see the woman who'd taken Hinata and him captive. She was cradling her head with a single hand with blood slowly falling through her fingers. There were several medics trailing behind her making a number of comments about lasting damage and her needing to lie down to rest, but the tall woman ignored them to confront the Konoha shinobi.
"You broke out of the prison," she stated with no inflection of emotion in her voice.
Naruto gave her a sarcastic look, "It wasn't that difficult. We saved your butts too."
"Perhaps." Elika turned to her Uchiha subordinate, "Was your ambush successful?"
Itachi nodded curtly and pulled a scroll from his robe, handing it to the Cascading Flow leader. "There are a few things that we need to discuss…" Despite being blind, he still turned his face to indicate to their blonde associate. "…in private."
Elika nodded and began to motion for them to speak in another location, but Naruto wasn't about to let that happen. He stepped between the two of them and faced the tall woman with a serious expression on his face.
"I'm not about to let you continue killing shinobi without knowing why this is happening. We are all in danger from a far more dangerous foe! The Quiraji aren't going to leave us alone, we all have to work together."
Despite obviously being seriously injured, Elika gave him a look that would have normally caused the blood to drain from Naruto's face. However he had been hardened from such things and she had little effect on him.
"I don't give a damn what you think, little boy. I've been fighting wars since you were at your mother's tits. You might have some skills, but I could smash you into dust and barely break my stride."
Naruto took a small step forward so that he could stand toe-to-toe with her. She was taller than him by a measure that only served to anger him, but Naruto wasn't going to let her lord over him and continue killing potential allies.
"Firstly, my mother died when I was born, so don't speak about her without a measure of respect. Secondly, these are the people that killed almost everyone I knew. If your war stops us from surviving, I would take you down with me before I watch any more of my friends die."
His eyes were blazing with confidence; she could see the commitment to his cause clearly. Here was someone she could use, someone like Sasuke or Itachi, but with different talents. While normally she would gladly chew out someone who was so insubordinate, Elika had to capitalise on the situation.
Besides, the white-eyed girl that had been with him had impressed her greatly during their previous battle.
Dropping her hand to her side and letting the blood clot as quickly as it could, Elika stared at him for a few moments before pointing to the kitchen that led to the prison they'd escaped from earlier.
"Perhaps if you knew of our cause, you wouldn't be so quick to judge."
"What are you offering? I'm not going to willingly help you slaughter a whole village of people." He was quite adamant about this, partially after the information Gaara had given him about the fact that there were barely any of them left, but also because Naruto didn't want to kill people for any reason. He would if he had to, but he took no joy in the action. Some pride perhaps, but no joy.
Elika turned to take him to the kitchen, "Come with me, boy. Your companions fight with us, and perhaps after hearing why you will too."
Naruto wasn't convinced by any capacity, but he motioned for her to proceed. As they walked towards the kitchen, he passed Hinata doing her best to heal a broken arm. She hadn't been Shizune's best student when it came to medicine, but years of practise and an impressive amount of talent had given her the knowledge to heal such injuries in short amounts of time.
The blonde shinobi leaned down and placed a hand on her shoulder, "Hinata, you probably want to come with…"
Before he could finish, Hinata shook her head while using her Byakugan to concentrate on mending the broken bone in the young man beneath her hands. "You go ahead. There's a lot to do here."
She didn't have to say it, but he knew that she was saying that she trusted him to make the right decision for the both of them. Their marriage was always a back of forth in that regard. He'd trusted her to make sure that the mission to Kirigakure was something they should commit to while he explored the Land of Fire.
Though it might've been revenge for the time on the island with all the monkeys. She'd promised she'd get him back for that at some point.
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After almost half an hour, Naruto and Elika re-emerged from the kitchen. Naruto had a clearly disturbed expression on his face, while the Cascading Flow leader went straight to her daughter standing near a group of warriors with Sasuke at her side.
"What's going on?" she asked, as she saw the two of them were standing over a green-haired woman that she recognised as one of their medics. Her eye-liner had run down her face with tears, which only served to confuse Elika further.
Fiore turned to her mother with a frown, "This girl was known to one of the Iwa shinobi. They were probably lovers or something like that, but Sasuke and I are determined to find their connection. She might be the reason those ANBU were able to break through our defences."
At the other side of the hall, Naruto greeted Hinata with a hug before she asked him a wordless question of concern. Naruto shook his head like he couldn't believe what he was about to say.
"You sure?" she asked before he could say it. "We might not have time, Neji sounded like he was about to do something quite rash."
"We don't have a choice," said her husband with a sigh. "If we help, we could probably save a lot of civilian lives."
"At the expense of the Iwa shinobi's lives? Would that be worth it?" Hinata hated the idea as much as he did, but from what she'd seen from the Cascading Flow warriors she'd healed, they would throw themselves onto the grinder to get rid of the shinobi from their land.
Naruto leaned forward and gently kissed her on the cheek, as much to reassure himself as her. "All life is at the expense of other life. You know that as well as I do."
"We aren't weapons though, Naruto, we are people," said Hinata with characteristic wisdom. "We would be doing the Quiraji's job for them by doing this."
"I know, I know." Naruto looked over at Sasuke and the two Cascading Flow women. He knew she wasn't arguing with him in order to change his decision, rather to make sure he was making the right one. With another sigh, he turned back to her and placed his fingers through hers and felt her soft skin against his callused hands.
"They have a good reason to fight. We can't fault them for that."
Back at the green-haired girl who was now crying into her hands, Elika almost did a double-take at what she'd heard. "Are you telling me that you killed the Tsuchikage's granddaughter?"
"And they've lost their entire ANBU corps," added Sasuke. "They've just lost a significant amount of military strength, and they don't even know it yet. Despite his tough exterior, the Tsuchikage will be grieving for his granddaughter and less able to command his shinobi effectively."
Elika considered the information for several moments before turning back to her daughter. "Rina isn't at fault, daughter. She might've had a bad choice in lovers, but she had no means of filtering information to her. The ANBU merely powered their way in."
Fiore wasn't convinced, but indicated for several medics to come and take the green-haired girl away so she could grieve in private. When the day's events had calmed down she would go and apologise to her for the way she was treated, but for the moment she needed to maintain her game face.
"How reliable are your Konoha friends?" asked Elika to Sasuke, having come to rely on the younger Uchiha's military perception. He still overreached much of the time, but his ability to analyse situations and manoeuvre them to his benefit was startling.
"Extremely," said Sasuke in response. "Their presence should prove to be the tipping point. It solves a number of areas that Iwa hold over us, and by the looks of it they've gotten much stronger since I last saw them." He glanced over at the loving couple with a slight smirk, "Not that they need to know that."
Elika nodded slowly, her decision had been made.
"Call every faction towards us," she ordered to her captain, knowing that Sasuke spoke with her authority to much of their force. "Gather whatever supplies we require, but we move on the village by nightfall tomorrow. The cover of darkness should allow us to move unhindered while they regroup. We've been given a rare window of opportunity and I refuse to let it go to waste."
Sasuke nodded and disappeared for the second time, while Elika felt at her head and sighed at the blood that appeared on her hand. There was much to do before their army mustered onto the battlefield once again, and she didn't have time to deal with such mundane things as injuries.
Knowing that if she ignored it, her injury could fester or get even worse, Elika spread out a number of battle plans from a set of scrolls on a nearby table before calling over two medics and ordering them to stitch her up as fast as possible.
No-one would be resting tonight.
It took the Cascading Flow army two full days to march on Iwagakure, and in that time they were not accosted by any Iwa shinobi whatsoever. There was no way to tell whether they had been seen or not, but an army of fifteen thousand wasn't exactly hard to spot, even at night.
They stopped marching nearby the large mountain range that held the Iwa shinobi village, wary of the fact that they were all deep in enemy territory and many of them likely wouldn't survive the coming battle. Naruto and Hinata's presence was seen as a boon by most of the civilians, though Elika was reserving judgement until they proved themselves to be on their side. Sasuke and Itachi had talked up their potential to her, but she was still wary of any shinobi.
After the Cascading Flow forces set up their forward camp just out of sight and range of the Iwa shinobi within their village, Elika called in the married couple to her command tent. She nodded in respect to their decision to join their rebellion; Sasuke's word had gone a long way with her.
"Good, I require your help." She motioned for them to come forward as she picked up a pair of devices on the table between them. "I need you to plant these at strategic locations near the Iwa defence wall."
She passed them to the couple, who took them carefully into their hands. The devices were circular with a flat top, a small red crystal placed in the centre. They were clearly alien; Naruto and Hinata had never seen their like before.
"What are they? Bombs?" asked Naruto, trying his best not to press the crystal at the top. It was very compelling.
Elika shook her head as her daughter walked into the tent with Sasuke quickly following behind, "No. These are the chakra dampeners we used when we captured you. After that field test, we believe now is the time to put them to use. The Iwa shinobi won't know what to do."
Hinata placed the chakra dampener in her hands back onto the table, "And you want us to put them near the wall? Won't they notice us doing that?"
Before Elika could say anything in response, Naruto put up a hand as he thought of an idea. "If we transform into the images of the Iwa shinobi, and I teleport us to a nearby position, we can probably fool them long enough to get the things in place."
"That would certainly work," said Elika. She turned to her daughter, "You'll need to go as well."
Fiore nodded and picked up the third device, "When do we leave?"
"Right now." The Cascading Flow leader turned to the Konoha couple, "Are you prepared now?"
The two of them nodded and placed their hands into handseals, transforming into versions of themselves in Iwa shinobi uniforms, with Hinata's eyes having changed to give her a more silvery look as opposed to her obvious Hyuuga heritage. Fiore glanced around for a moment before Sasuke rolled his eyes and placed a hand on her shoulder, using his chakra to transform her. The young Cascading Flow warrior changed to the same uniform as her allies, though her facial features had been altered slightly to avoid being recognised.
She began to thank him, but as she looked down at her chest a frown came over her face and she stepped closer to whisper into her partner's ear.
Both Naruto and Hinata smirked at what their chakra-enhanced ears heard, while the colour drained from the young Uchiha's face rapidly. Fiore stood back and nodded to the other Iwa-disguised shinobi. The three of them left the command tent and went about their mission, while Elika gave her daughter's partner the look he thoroughly deserved.
Sasuke breathed out slowly to try and push Fiore's threat out of his mind. A loud growl from his stomach did the trick as he realised they'd been on the road so long without having anything to eat. Deciding there was nothing left to do but wait for them to return, Sasuke offered to bring Elika some food, but the middle-aged woman declined.
She was too nervous to eat.
After placing the chakra dampeners into position, the three warriors quickly fled back towards the Cascading Flow command tent. Elika gave them a quick debriefing before gathering all her commanders together and displaying a map of the village defences on the stone table in the middle of the group.
The one called Goro placed three flags near the village walls to designate the chakra dampeners before standing back in line with the others. Two of the dampeners sat on either side of the main village wall, while the third one sat almost fifty metres from the centre, creating a triangle area of effect.
"It won't be long before they discover and disable the devices," pointed out Naruto. "I wasn't seen, but they aren't stupid."
"Agreed," said Sasuke quickly. "If we are to attack, it must be in the next couple of hours."
Elika placed a hand to her chin and considered the situation. The addition of Naruto and Hinata to their force had bolstered their chances for success substantially, but taking Iwagakure would cost many of her soldiers' lives. It was her duty to mitigate that, but with her goal in reach it was difficult to maintain proper perspective.
Staring at the map for several seconds, Naruto frowned and leaned forward to get a closer look.
"What is it, honey?" asked Hinata, placing her hand gently on his shoulder.
Naruto uncrossed his arms and pointed to a section of wall around the main village. Iwagakure was surrounded by large rocky mountains on all sides, with the largest gaps being covered by large walls manned with Iwa shinobi. The Cascading Flow warriors had tried to find passageways through the mountains, but the Tsuchikage had filled them all up, essentially bottlenecking his village into the single location.
"If this wall can be breached from afar, they will struggle to bring reinforcements there quickly if they are occupied on the main front, here."
"What are you suggesting?" asked Elika, impressed at the young man's military knowledge.
Looking over at Sasuke for a moment, Naruto smirked characteristically and turned back to the Cascading Flow leader. "I can bring a large enough army on my own to keep them occupied at the front wall. They'll have to keep a substantial number of their shinobi against me; otherwise I'll overrun their position."
"You can do that?" Elika wasn't convinced by his confidence, regardless of the tales she had heard.
Sasuke stepped forward to speak on his friend's behalf, "It's what he's best at. He'll save countless lives and only lose chakra in return."
Elika looked Naruto up and down for several seconds before shrugging and reordering the flags on the table. "That's the plan then. If you set off the chakra dampeners at the right time, you might be able to break through." She turned to one of her commanders, "Get the warriors fed and armed. We move out within the hour."
"How are you going to breach the wall?" asked Naruto, pointing to where she had moved the main army flags. "These are Iwa shinobi; walls are kind of their thing."
Now it was Elika's turn to smirk towards the blonde shinobi before gesturing a hand towards Sasuke and his older brother who was standing off to the side.
"We have our own battering rams. Be reassured, we'll get into the village."
Placing the final part of his disguise onto his head, Naruto turned to show it off to his wife standing beside him. "How do I look?"
He wore a nondescript set of black fatigues and wore some of his wife's makeup to disguise his scars and marks on his cheeks, with a small brown cowl to cover his hair. He looked about as ordinary as he possibly could, which was part of the plan.
"About right," she said after a few seconds. "Are you ready?"
He nodded and sliced at his thumb with a kunai, wiping the blood across both of his palms before putting them into a handseal. He turned to the five Cascading Flow warriors that had been designated to guard him, "Remember, if my concentration is broken, this whole thing won't work. So don't let any of them come nearby, okay?"
The warriors all nodded and stood in a defensive formation around the blonde shinobi. Hinata smiled and tapped her husband lightly on the shoulder before taking up her position at his side. He'd tried to convince her she'd be better suited with Sasuke and that part of the army, but Hinata had simply pointed out that she would be his last line of defence and there was no way she was going to let him out of her sight.
Concentrating a large amount of chakra through his handseal, Naruto began creating his army of clones, each appearing in the same attire as their summoner. He'd made sure to make them as dense as possible, from Hinata's reconnaissance the Iwa shinobi had done exactly what they thought they would.
Across a wall nearly a kilometre in length stood a massive number of Iwa shinobi. As the army of Narutos took to the field and came into view, they began pulling out weapons and preparing their defences. If any of them were surprised at the seemingly odd similarity of the 'Cascading Flow' army, they made no mention of it as the army stopped just out of long range from the wall.
Through her Byakugan, Hinata made a quick count of the Iwa shinobi on the wall. She did it a second time just to be sure before kneeling down beside her husband.
"Naruto, there are just over eight thousand Iwa shinobi on the wall. You'll need more clones."
Though Naruto's eyes were closed and he was concentrating heavily on moving his clone army into place, he acknowledged the information with the slightest of head movements. He changed his handseal and exponentially increased his chakra output. From now on, he had to concentrate on maintaining the technique, and wouldn't be able to communicate with her until the battle was done.
She wasn't sure how much of his reserves he was putting into making his clones, but as she observed him with her Byakugan she noticed a familiar-looking red chakra trickling into his regular chakra pool. Without a seal blocking the Kyuubi from himself, Naruto was free to take as much of the Tailed Beast's chakra as he saw fit, though he'd held off doing so for reasons unknown to her. She'd recognised that there were some things Naruto didn't tell her, likely for her benefit.
The Cascading Flow warriors around them remarked at the sheer numbers he was able to churn out. Even Hinata was impressed, though she was concerned that he was squeezing out more chakra than would be healthy, even for him. She was very proud of what he'd done, though she regretted the fact that he had done it to destroy a shinobi village.
Standing against the wall of Iwa shinobi, was an army of just over five thousand clones of Naruto; each acting independently according to his orders. Naruto was a student of warfare and had seen sieges in the past and fought on both sides, he knew that numbers that were anything less than ten to one for the attacker meant that a well-guarded village would rarely fall.
However Naruto didn't intend to win the battle at all, merely delay them as long as he could. At a distance they looked like the Cascading Flow army, and even with lower numbers than his opponents, Naruto's force would reap a bloody toll on the battlefield.
Not being a patient person by nature, Naruto commanded his army to attack the wall. It wasn't going to be an easy battle, but he had plenty of tricks up his sleeves.
And a few he'd wanted to test out for a while.
After getting confirmation that Naruto's army had begun its attack on the Iwa front, Elika ordered her rebellion's forces to attack according to their battle plan. Under an extremely powerful genjutsu that Itachi had cast on the Iwa defenders and scouts, the forces of Cascading Flow approached the small wall mostly undetected by the Iwa shinobi. There were several hundred that appeared to be more of a reserve force and unprepared to repel a full assault, which only served to strengthen their attacker's position.
Standing in full armour with the other commanders, Elika turned to both Sasuke and Itachi and nodded for them to proceed. Her daughter was among the first wave for the frontal assault; her presence was a great boon for the warrior's morale and Elika felt reassured that she would keep as many of them safe as she could.
Both Sasuke and Itachi placed their hands together and sped through the same set of handseals, their chakra exploded in a blue aura around the two of them as they both completed their technique at the same time. The Uchiha brothers pushed their hands towards the small section of wall they intended to breach.
"Tengai Shinsei!" (Heavenly Obstacle Quaking Star)
Neither of them had used the technique before in tandem, but the effect of both of their chakra being poured into the complex ninjutsu was immediate as the sky began to darken above the wall they were targeting.
The Iwa glanced upwards towards the sky and froze in terror as two large meteorites came crashing towards them at breakneck speed. Several of the less frightened Iwa shinobi did their best to create a tall earth barrier above their position, but as the meteors slammed into the barriers they collapsed in on themselves like folded paper.
With a thundering crash, the meteors crushed dozens of Iwa shinobi into dust before driving straight through the wall and leaving a sizeable gap in the Iwa defences.
The enemy shinobi scrambled to recover from the sudden attack, with a small number leaping back into the village to bring reinforcements while the surviving Iwa shinobi turned back to their attackers to see a massive army of Cascading Flow warriors approaching. The attacking force was a mixture of Elika's warriors and normal civilians that had become fed up with the way they were being treated by the Tsuchikage and the Earth Daimyo, though the latter has been dead for a long time.
Fiore let out a loud cry for their force to charge. With over two thousand Cascading Flow warriors by her side, Fiore felt no fear as she charged towards the large gap that had been opened by the Uchiha brothers.
She twirled her wood staff expertly, deflecting several thrown kunai with relative ease as they reached the wall with minimum casualties. The Iwa shinobi were still recovering from their first strike, unable to mount an effective defence by the time the Cascading Flow warriors had arrived at the gap and began pouring into the village.
The battle had begun.
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As Cascading Flow warriors poured into the village, several of the recovered Iwa shinobi attempted to use their Earth techniques to close the gap, their hands rapidly running through handseals in frantic efforts as their companions fought valiantly against the civilians. Each shinobi that was killed took out a number of Cascading Flow warriors as they went down, but the Iwa shinobi that tried to act defensively were taken out with little effort; the Cascading Flow warrior's weapons cut through any form of chakra defence easily.
Shooting across the battlefield to stop the Iwa shinobi closing the gap, Sasuke's long katana crackled with lightning as he left a long white trail from his position beside his older brother. He leapt high into the air onto the broken wall and cut a swatch through his opponents in seconds. Unlike Naruto, he had no qualms about taking the lives of his enemies; he'd seen the worst that they had done to his comrades.
Itachi had stayed behind at their original position to command the troops and use pinpoint genjutsu techniques to sway the battle, while Sasuke went about the dirty business of ensuring the Cascading Flow warriors survived the battle of Iwagakure.
After a few minutes of constant battle, Sasuke's Sharingan noticed a large chakra source rapidly approaching the breach. By this time almost two thousand of their troops had entered the village and were battling furiously with the Iwa shinobi, yet there were thousands more that were trying to push through and overwhelm their enemy before they could regroup and use their superior strength against them. It was obvious Naruto's army was holding up a vast majority of the Iwa shinobi; which only caused Sasuke to shake his head in surprise. Clearly he couldn't underestimate his old companion anymore.
The chakra source appeared high into the air, but Sasuke didn't recognise it temporarily. That almost cost him his life as a clear cone shape slowly began to appear. The young Uchiha's eyes widened when he realised what was happening. He leapt backwards high into the air and swiped some blood from a cut on his cheek before pointing it downwards towards the ground, summoning a large hawk for him to land on before he moved around in a wide circle.
"Get out of there!" he shouted as loud as he could, but it was already too late.
The clear cone he'd seen expanded downwards into the breach, encompassing every Cascading Flow warrior that was currently trying to get into the village. Sasuke watched in horror as hundreds of civilian fighters were pulverised into dust. They disappeared into nothingness and left a deep concave into the rocky ground.
The Cascading Flow warriors around the devastated area all recoiled with the same horror as Sasuke had, while the Iwa shinobi all cheered and immediately redoubled their attacks against the invaders. His Sharingan honed in on the attacker, with the Uchiha's face screwing up in anger as he saw a short elderly man hovering in the air above the breach. The Tsuchikage was wearing his Kage outfit and had a terrifyingly furious look on his face.
Sasuke's hand began to crackle with lightning, he could see that the Tsuchikage was about to fly towards the rest of the Cascading Flow army still recovering from the death of so many of their companions at once. He wasn't about to let the same thing happen twice, commanding his hawk to take him straight into the direct path of the Tsuchikage, with the intention of running him through with his Chidori blade.
Unfortunately he was overtaken by a blur of brown that nearly knocked him off his large hawk. He doubled back and swung around in the air to see what had shot past him. He watched as his partner leapt high off of her wood platform, collected the wood into a staff and tried to slam it into the Tsuchikage's face.
The elderly leader anticipated her attack and spat out a chunk of rock to block the strike. She glared daggers into his eyes, but the Tsuchikage didn't give her anything but a passing glance. He went to place a hand on her arm to increase her weight a hundred fold and cause her to fall out of the sky, but Fiore knew all about his techniques and pushed off his rocky arm with her legs before landing back on her wood platform a dozen metres away.
She hovered at the same height as him, her eyes carefully watching for any significant movements. If she hadn't been told what the handseals he was running through meant she would have died immediately as the Tsuchikage spread out his hands and a wide crescent shape appeared between his hands before shooting across the sky towards her.
Fiore just barely dodged the particle technique by pulling away her wood platform and dropping a dozen metres in a split second. She could feel the air above her being pulverised by the Tsuchikage's technique, but that wasn't the most troubling in the encounter. After seeing that she had dodged his technique, the Iwa leader turned his attention to the Cascading Flow army beneath them. He started to create another clear conical shape between his hands, but Fiore wasn't going to let him kill more of her people.
She used her platform as a springboard and shot towards him, reaching into her jacket and tossing half a dozen knives directly at the Iwa leader. The Tsuchikage was forced to cancel his particle technique and spit out a small slab of rock to defend himself. While he was distracted, Fiore flew around the side and jumped off her wood platform before using it to strike at high speed at the Tsuchikage's side.
Her wood struck out faster than the Tsuchikage could react completely, though he flew at an angle that she only got a glancing blow at his side. The elderly man grimaced in pain, but kept his stare squarely on his opponent as Fiore pulled back her wood and stayed afloat. Unlike the shinobi she was facing, Fiore couldn't fly on her own. But that wasn't a problem for her, so long as she was clever about it.
"You are persistent…girl," said the Tsuchikage through his teeth.
Placing her hands outwards to her sides, Fiore didn't waste her time with words. She could see Sasuke approaching her position on top of his hawk from the side, but she waved him away with a hand. She wasn't sure whether he'd get the signal or not, but so long as she kept the Tsuchikage occupied, their forces shouldn't have much issue taking the village, assuming everything worked the way they'd planned.
Extending her wood platform up to her hands, Fiore stared down her opponent and began to formulate a battle plan. Her opponent had the ability to destroy her in a nanosecond if she slipped up, but Fiore knew that if she didn't stop him he'd wipe out massive amounts of her comrades.
The Iwa shinobi didn't have any siege weapons to speak of to repel the invading army. Instead, large groups of them collected together and created large boulders in front of them before Iwa shinobi using chakra-enhanced strength sent them flying towards the army of clones.
With shinobi-based instincts the Naruto clones had little issue avoiding the large boulders, which only caused the numbers of attacks sent against them.
On top of the main defensive wall, stood a tall man with a large bulbous nose stared at the army bearing down on his home. Usually a calm and disciplined man, Kitsuchi constantly fought down the urge to leap off of the wall and tear into the invaders with his bare hands. It had only been a day since he heard of his daughter's death at the hands of the rebels, and he was torn between his duty as a shinobi and his fury as a father. She'd been a pain in the ass, but he'd loved her regardless.
The only reason he was on the wall and not with his wife grieving was because he recognised that if he didn't, the village would likely fall to the rebels. And then his daughter's sacrifice would have meant nothing.
"Sir, I have the intel you asked for," came an Iwa shinobi at his side. Kitsuchi greeted him and asked for his report quickly. "The enemy appears to all be the same, sir. We believe it to be some kind of clone technique."
Kitsuchi grabbed the shinobi and pointed his head towards the battlefield, "Look at that army, Chuunin! There are thousands out there; nobody has the ability to create that many clones at once. It cannot be done." He pointed to a group of invaders that had been crushed by one of the flying boulders, "No clones bleed like that, Chuunin. No, this is just a trick to make us think it's a diversion. We hold here."
"Yes sir!" said the Iwa shinobi with a quick nod of his head. He ran back into his position as Kitsuchi watched the battle unfold in front of him. The invading army was almost at the wall, having only suffered minor casualties from their bombardment. He couldn't understand the enemy strategy; they carried no siege ladders to attempt to climb up the wall and he couldn't see any explosives to try and break through.
If anything, it appeared as though they were willing to simply throw away lives in the hope that the Iwa shinobi run out of stamina and ammunition.
Standing beside her husband and watching the battle through her Byakugan, Hinata found herself wishing she could give commands to him as with her doujutsu she was able to see a number of places he could exploit. However while fuelling the technique and making more clones to replace the ones that were taken down, Naruto was connected to every single clone and controlled them individually. The amount of mental concentration that was required was unbelievable, she was very proud that he was able to do the technique to such an extent.
Through her black and white vision, she watched as the front line of clones came within range of the wall and in perfect synchronisation leapt high into the air towards the shinobi lining the wall.
"Defensive positions!" called out Kitsuchi, placing his hands into a handseal in tandem with the shinobi about to be attacked. He put aside the troubling thought that no non-shinobi should be able to do what they were doing and concentrating on moulding chakra to activate his ninjutsu.
Hinata waited until the last possible second before depressing the control button in her hands.
The more sadistic side of her appreciated the looks of confusion on the Iwa shinobi as they attempted to activate their ninjutsu and discovered that they no longer functioned. Her understanding of the devices was quite limited, but having experienced it in the past she knew that it wasn't quite the same as being in the chakra nullifying field of the Quiraji commanders. Rather, it merely prevented chakra from being used in a technique or ability.
The effect was devastating to the Iwa shinobi.
As the Naruto clones made their way to the wall through the air, they each pulled out a hilt that brought a smirk to his wife's face. With flicks of their hand they activated the energy blades in their hands. The Iwa shinobi continued to try and activate their techniques, but for the few that it was clear to that it wasn't going to work they pulled out weapons to defend themselves.
In the first wave of attackers to make it to the wall, three hundred Iwa shinobi were cut down without prejudice.
The Iwa shinobi attempted to push them back with their own weapons, and through sheer numbers were able to push the clones back, but as they killed the attackers another wave leapt onto the wall.
Each clone that died left a corpse that caused almost as much concern for the Iwa shinobi as the living attackers stepped over their bodies and pushed through the defensive formations with no concern for their companion's wellbeing.
Through sheer weight of tenacity and numbers, the Iwa shinobi were able to push the clones back once again, but it became clear to the survivors that if they weren't able to use chakra, they were at a serious disadvantage.
Hinata continued to monitor the battle from her husband's side, wary of any Iwa shinobi that might break away and try to come after them. She was intrigued by the fact that Naruto's blood clones weren't affected by the dampening field, not that they would use chakra-based techniques to begin with, as they only had limited amounts to use. So long as they leapt into the air before entering the dampening field, they were able to use any of the weapons that Naruto had on him when he created them, including the Second Hokage's sword.
Despite knowing that they were ultimately a distraction force, Hinata could entertain the idea that their army would be able to push the Iwa shinobi back into their village and end the war.
With his shinobi being overwhelmed around him, Kitsuchi swore loudly as he destroyed one of the attackers with a rock-enhanced fist. His techniques seemed to work so long as he was at the very back of the wall, even though his chakra refused to mould anywhere else. They'd seriously underestimated the forces against them, but judging from how many casualties they'd suffered at the hands of the enemy he couldn't think of any other way to repel the invaders. The enemy soldiers were leaping up onto the wall like an army of shinobi would, but there were still too many things that were wrong about the situation.
"Sir, we have to retreat back into the village!" came the voice of one of his commanders. "There are too many of them!"
The interior of the village isn't fortified…they were never meant to get this far. And they aren't weakened like we are… thought Kitsuchi angrily. He turned to the commander and grabbed him by the scruff of his collar, "If we retreat, we die. We will hold them here!"
To extenuate his point he grabbed the sword from the commander's belt and slashed to the side, catching one of the attackers in the side. He cried out in pain and fell to the floor, only to be kicked off the wall by the Iwa shinobi.
Kitsuchi tossed back the commander's sword and used the temporary gap to look out over the wall. The enemy's numbers appeared to be endless, but as he looked down at their piles of dead, something felt very wrong. By his estimate his shinobi had killed over three thousand of the invaders, for a heavy price, yet the number of bodies below couldn't have amounted to more than several hundred.
Trusting in his shinobi to protect him momentarily, he watched carefully as one of the bodies that had been sliced to death with several kunai slowly sunk into the ground and disappeared completely.
His eyes widened at the implication, only certain types of clones acted in that manner. But he'd never heard of clones that bled and died before, he'd killed enough with his bare hands to tell that they were flesh and blood.
Squinting his eyes towards the distance, Kitsuchi could have sworn he saw something at the very back of the invading army, but it was only for a second before he was distracted by two attackers leaping high onto the wall and slashing at him with strange swords made of yellow energy. He was still in the strange place that prevented him from using chakra, but Kitsuchi was a veteran of wars and was easily able to dodge the attacks and slash their throats with kunai before they could react.
As the corpses fell down in front of the wall, Kitsuchi turned to one of his commanders, "Call up the reserves and hold this position."
"Sir, what about the breach on the east side? If we pull the reserves they won't have the numbers they need…"
"The Tsuchikage is handling it personally," interrupted Kitsuchi quickly. He knew that any negative attitude at this point would be devastating to the battle and hoped the old man's presence would help boost morale. He only hoped that his father didn't get himself killed in the process, they'd already lost far too much in this rebellion.
The commander saluted Kitsuchi and leapt off the wall into the village. The Iwa shinobi knew he only had a limited window before they were overrun before the reserves arrived, but he had no intention of waiting. He reached out and tapped two Iwa shinobi on their shoulders as they finished off their opponents, motioning for them to follow him. They nodded in compliance and mimicked his movements as he pushed himself off the wall and into the side of the incoming army. As they leapt the wall they could feel their chakra responding once again, with the Iwa shinobi's training kicking in and clapping their hands together in a handseal.
Before they landed on the ground, they shot several large boulders into their landing zone, flattening the invaders underneath with a sickening crunch. They landed on top of the boulders and pushed forward in an attempt to break through. With Kitsuchi's large scale Earth techniques they were able to stop themselves from being overwhelmed by the invaders as they continued to try and swarm their positions.
As they drew further and further away from the Iwa defensive wall, Kitsuchi noticed a small group of people standing in formation in the distance, wearing very different clothes from the invaders. They appeared to be guarding a single figure sitting with his legs crossed and wearing the same appearance as the invaders.
"If we take them out, the invaders may retreat," said Kitsuchi to his companions. "Take them down!"
The Iwa shinobi both nodded and pushed ahead of their general to carve out a path for him to attack. They landed in the middle of a group of invaders and cut a swatch through them with weapon and ninjutsu, though one was taken out by a clever move that cut him down the side with a lightning blade before being swarmed and killed by the clones.
The moment he landed on the ground, Kitsuchi created a pair of giant rock gauntlets that easily bashed apart the small number of invaders that came near his position. He powered forward towards the small group that stood off in the back, with the single Iwa shinobi at his side. After almost a minute of constant fighting they broke through the invading army and sped towards them, the Iwa shinobi at his side running ahead to greet the five warriors that moved between the two of them and their target.
The Iwa shinobi clashed violently with the Cascading Flow warriors, while Kitsuchi came up behind him and attacked them furiously with his rock gauntlets. With their combined efforts the Cascading Flow warriors were easily overwhelmed, their blades falling apart beneath their ninjutsu and they were ultimately taken out with little effort.
Kitsuchi turned his attention to the man sitting a short distance away, but before he could move to attack him he felt a powerful wind blast him backwards. As he recovered his feet quickly, he watched as a young woman jumped in front of his companion. Her hands were like a blur as they slammed into his chest; it only lasted for a moment before she reached forward and pushed him flat onto his back.
Kitsuchi didn't have to check to know that his companion was dead, which only served to anger him further. He was sick of seeing his comrades fall to enemy hands.
The young woman turned to him and stared at him through white eyes that he could have sworn were Byakugan as she took up a taijutsu stance between him and his target.
"You'll pay for that," he said angrily. "For every life you've taken."
Hinata didn't respond, she was using her doujutsu to analyse his chakra levels. It was clear that he wasn't at his full strength, but he still had a frightening amount of chakra to use and the look on his face told her that he would gladly kill her without a second thought.
She watched her opponent move towards her with his rock gauntlets moving expertly, he was clearly an experienced shinobi.
But Hinata was a taijutsu specialist and with her Byakugan tracking him it was no trouble to move the minimum distance out of the way of his relatively slow attacks. She ducked and weaved her way out of his rock gauntlets, analysing his attack patterns and finding that he seemed to prefer straight lines. That made dodging his attacks fairly simple for the experienced Hyuuga kunoichi.
After cartwheeling back from a wide sweeping attack, Hinata used a burst of chakra to shoot forward and attempted to drive her chakra-focused fingers into the weak points in his neck.
Unfortunately Kitsuchi was faster than she initially thought, bringing up a rock gauntlet to block her fingers while using his shifting momentum to slam his other gauntlet into her side. Hinata moved her body to avoid most of the damage, but it still clipped her on her hip, causing her to cry out in pain as she shot back several metres.
She clutched at her side and coughed violently onto the rocky ground, the blow had struck directly into her liver. She immediately began using chakra to try and repair the damage, but she knew that without serious medical attention in the next few hours, nothing she could do would matter.
While she attempted to repair the damage, Kitsuchi, having appeared satisfied that she wasn't going to get back up anytime soon, began marching towards Naruto's seated position. Before he got within a stone's throw of the Konoha shinobi's position, he saw the young girl appear in between him and his target once again.
She brought up her hands once again with pain written on her face, "You will not touch him!"
"Get out of my way, little girl," said Kitsuchi with no small amount of anger in his voice.
Hinata strengthened the chakra to her eyes and stared him down. Clearly he didn't think she was a threat, but Hinata wasn't out of the game just yet. She watched as he let his rock gauntlets fall off of his hands as he straightened up his stance before placing his hands into a handseal. His chakra was steady within his system, though it appeared to explode outwards as he activated a technique.
Her eyes widened and she jumped back just in time to avoid two large slabs of rock from each side that threatened to squish her into a paper-thin state. As she landed she could see the chakra emanating from his feet towards her, forcing her to jump back again to avoid a second attack of the same nature. This happened a third and a fourth time until Hinata realised that he was pushing her back to Naruto's position. At this rate he'd be in range of attacking her husband and that would cripple their attack completely and possibly kill Naruto in his defenceless state.
She quickly decided she'd had enough of defending.
Using her spiritual energy underneath her feet, Hinata rocketed up into the air straight at her opponent. She came at him at such a high speed that Kitsuchi was forced to cancel his offensive technique and slam his hands into the ground in front of him, erecting a large wall to defend himself from her attacks.
However Hinata had no intention of attacking in a straight line, rather using her aerial manoeuvrability to shift around Kitsuchi's defensive wall while running through a quick set of handseals. It was extremely difficult to maintain her Byakugan, her spiritual energy to keep her afloat and fuel chakra into her ninjutsu technique, but in the defence of her husband Hinata felt an overwhelming power swelling within her. It refined her focus and increased her strength tenfold.
Hinata appeared at Kitsuchi's side and activated her technique. From her hands spat a short beam of water that caught the Iwa shinobi in the side of his head, causing him to spiral backwards from the blast.
However unlike her opponent, Hinata had no intention of letting him recover from the attack. With a burst of speed she shot towards her tumbling opponent before striking out with her fingers. Kitsuchi was able to get his arms up to defend his vital points, but Hinata had counted on that fact.
With wind spiritual energy running through her hands and forming into deadly daggers at her fingertips, Hinata rapidly shredded the chakra points and muscles in his arms, causing them to drop uselessly by his side. Using her momentum she grabbed at his shoulders and pushed as much strength as she could into her spiritual energy, sending the two of them high into the sky.
He weighed a lot more than she would have thought for someone of his size, but with his arms useless she didn't need to take him up that high.
It seemed like a cruel thing to do, but once she reached a reasonable height, Hinata let him go.
She deactivated her Byakugan so that she didn't have to watch, but she heard it nevertheless. She floated to the ground slowly, making sure that she landed close to Naruto's position so that she could resume guarding him. It was unfortunate that their Cascading Flow bodyguards were dead, but even with a damaged liver and what she assumed were several cracked ribs, she would stand at his side until the battle was over. She could already feel the disorientation and nausea associated with her injuries, but she refused to let them sway her from her duty.
Though if someone were to offer her a bottle of water and an energy bar, she might consider leaving her husband on that premise alone.
Fiore clutched at her left arm with a grimace, it refused to move even an inch. She tried to shake her muscles from their frozen state, but it felt like thousands of kilos worth of weight was strapped to her arm.
She'd increased the density of her wood platform to accommodate the excess weight, though she was highly resentful of the fact that her opponent had literally made her heavier than she used to be.
He clearly didn't know how important that was to her.
Opposite her hovering in the air was the Tsuchikage, breathing heavily through laboured breaths with his hands in a handseal. The Cascading Flow woman had shown a remarkable refusal to die and had caused him to waste much of his chakra between trying to catch her in the air and defending himself against her rapid fire attacks. If he'd been thirty years younger the battle wouldn't have been a problem, but with his sore back and bad eyesight, it was difficult to maintain his composure in the fight.
If it wasn't for the fact that he was fighting for the protection of his village, the Tsuchikage knew the young girl would have taken him out by now. He'd been able to barely graze her left arm and magnify its weight by over a dozen times, but that only seemed to anger her further.
The battle beneath them was not going well for his side either. It killed him that he wasn't able to assist his shinobi as they died in the hundreds, every time he tried the Cascading Flow girl stopped him. His estimate was that they would be driven from the village in a short amount of time, a part of him was ready to sound a full retreat and regroup, but he knew that would never work.
This was their home, and they would rather die than surrender it.
The Tsuchikage's chakra was running dangerously low, but Fiore had been far too quick for his techniques. His options had run out.
With his hands running through a long set of handseals, three rock clones began to appear at his side, hovering in the same manner as he was. Fiore watched them carefully; her knowledge of the various cloning techniques told her that it was a desperation move, one that clearly preceded a large offensive attack.
She had no intention of letting him finish his technique.
In manipulating her wood, Fiore usually used her hands to direct it, though many years ago she had discovered this was not necessary for reasonable control. As she was unable to use her left arm, Fiore turned her mind to focusing on the wood itself and bending it further than she had in the past.
Her wood platform began to move to her will, while the Tsuchikage's clones each appeared to create a variety of long clear shapes aimed directly at her. She was confused by this tactic as he couldn't possibly think that she would be caught by such a slow technique.
She recognised it as a distraction method for the original who was still running through handseals behind the rock clones. Fiore had no means of sensing what technique he was using, but judging by the desperation on her opponent's face she knew it wasn't going to be good for her, or the warriors below if her guess was right.
The wood platform finally started to change into the shapes she desired, expanding outwards in every direction. It formed into long spikes that shot straight towards the Tsuchikage's clones. They appeared to have been prepared for it as they slightly altered the shapes of their techniques and shot them into the wood attacking them.
Fiore raised herself higher into the air so as not to be accidently struck by the particle techniques, but with her mind so intrinsically linked to her wood she grimaced in pain at its destruction. Massive chunks of her wood were pulverised in an instant, yet she pushed through and continued to expand it, driving the spikes into the rock clones and dissipating them. She moved her wood towards the original Tsuchikage with the intention of finishing the job, but with a surprising demonstration of dexterity the elderly man reached forward and grasped the wood with his bare hands.
Fiore frowned and used her right hand to command the wood to spike outwards, causing the Tsuchikage to call out in pain, but maintain his grip on her wood. The determined look on his face was frightening as he activated his technique.
"Doton: Choukajuugan no Jutsu!" (Earth Element: Super Added-Weight Rock Technique)
With her wood connected to her feet, Fiore could feel her wood gaining rapidly in weight. In a split-second she was already being sent towards the group.
In a desperate move, Fiore leapt off of her wood platform and summoned up a section that hadn't yet changed in weight to her hand, forming it into a sharp axe and driving it straight into the wood attached. It severed straight through the wood and cut it off from the element in her hand, which she quickly formed into a new platform so she didn't fall to the ground. The wood she was now using hadn't been effected by the Tsuchikage's technique, though she was lucky she'd cut it off when she did.
The wood in the Tsuchikage's hands cracked and shattered into tiny pieces of rubble, the added weight too much for it to maintain its structural integrity. The Tsuchikage grimaced as he pulled the now-rubble spikes from his hands, that'd hadn't worked entirely to plan.
But he wasn't done yet as he placed his hands to each side of his body. He could see the young Cascading Flow warrior charging towards him with her strange technique forming into a large collection of bladed edges that she obviously wanted to cut him to pieces with.
"Fuuton: Senmoufuu no Kaze Yaiba!" (Wind Element: Rotating Ferocious Blade Winds)
Fiore's eyes widened as she felt the air around her being cut to pieces by some unknown force, though she found it strange that the Tsuchikage had hardened himself completely in a layer of rock that he'd previously used to block her slashing attacks. On instinct she withdrew her wood and tried to put some distance between the two of them, but she could hear the slashing getting closer and closer to her position.
There was no intel on him using Wind techniques…shit this is really bad…
She flew away as fast as she could, but when it became clear that she wasn't going to be able to escape, she instead took the wood from beneath her feet and extended it in a protective shell all around her. Her stamina was almost completely drained so she wasn't able to make the wood as thick as she would have liked, but it was the best she could hope for.
The wood began to fall apart as it was slashed to pieces by the Tsuchikage's wind technique, Fiore able to do little except hold her breath and prey that he runs out of chakra before the invisible blades reached her.
She winced as the front section of her wood shield was ripped off by the wind blades, she could feel them pressing against her skin. For some strange reason she couldn't see her life flashing before her eyes, as many people have claimed to have experienced. Instead all she could see was a great blue ocean and a burning hot environment all around her. Fiore had accepted her fate; there was no way for her to stop the attacks in time.
The blow never fell.
For almost half a minute Fiore sat in her wood shell, unsure what could have happened. By all rights, she should've been killed by now. After figuring she wasn't about to die, she retracted her wood shield back to a normal platform and prepared herself for whatever she might encounter.
To her surprise, and subsequent relief, she saw her partner flying on one of his hawks in front of her. At his feet was the Tsuchikage with a sword through his chest, though she could tell he wasn't dead just yet.
"Took you long enough," she said with a tired smile.
Sasuke gave her a look and extended his arm to help her onto his hawk's back. "You only gave me the opening, Fiore. This was all you."
She chuckled as she collected her wood in a short stick and held it in one hand while gripping his waist with the other, "I'll hold you to that statement…"
The hawk they flew on suddenly banked to the side, threatening to throw the two of them off as it moved to avoid a large collection of thrown shurikens from the ground below. Sasuke pulled his sword out of the Tsuchikage and picked him up with one hand easily, passing him off to his partner. He nodded to her quickly before lighting his sword up with crackling energy, "This battle isn't over yet."
With that, he leapt off of the hawk and into the fray, while his mount took Fiore back to the Cascading Flow command post. She wanted to join him in the fight, but was too preoccupied hanging on for dear life.
She really hated flying that way.
Within six hours the battle was over.
Thousands had died on both sides of the conflict, but with the Tsuchikage in their custody and their main general dead, the Iwa shinobi were fighting a losing battle.
However they didn't go down without a fight, killing many rebels before finally succumbing to their inevitable fate.
After securing the village entirely, Naruto approached Elika to discuss their arrangement. He hadn't secured anything from her when he'd initially agreed to help with her rebellion, and judging from the losses they'd suffered he wasn't sure they'd be in any condition to help in the war against the Quiraji.
"Lady Elika," he said formally to the tall woman. She was still decked out in her worn battle armour with blood drying on its plates, giving her quite a terrifying visage. His gaze was slowly drawn to the small elderly man propped up against a nearby wall, his hands clasped in the same handcuffs that Naruto had worn earlier and a large cloth bag over his head. Judging by his shallow breathing he could tell he wasn't dead, but Naruto still didn't envy his position.
"What will happen to him?"
Elika turned to the blonde shinobi, "He will stand trial for his crimes. What happens to him from there on is up to the people."
Having heard her reasoning behind the rebellion, Naruto could imagine what that trial would entail. He let out a long breath, "And the Quiraji?"
"Now that the war is over, the people will be going home," said Elika quickly. "But you knew that from the beginning, didn't you?"
"Perhaps." Naruto walked around a nearby table and leaned his hands on the back of a chair, "But our problem still remains and our cause is weakened with the death of so many shinobi."
"They wouldn't have fought with you and you know it."
The Konoha shinobi shrugged, that was something he had considered. "Well my wife and I are leaving to go back to help our friends. Any assistance you could render would be very beneficial."
Elika shook her head quickly, "I cannot do that. These people have no cause to die against an enemy that has no interest in them."
Naruto wasn't the student of facial expressions that his wife was, but something in Elika's face told him something he'd suspected since meeting her.
"You made a deal, didn't you?"
He walked closer towards her and pointed an accusing finger at her, "That was the only way you could have won this war, wasn't it? They armed you with their weaponry and tactics and you in turn remove one of their greatest foes."
Elika smacked away his hand quickly, "I did what I had to. The Quiraji have no interest in normal people and I did what was necessary to survive. They didn't give us anything, except the promise that they would not attack us. Our Quiraji-based technology came from unknown sources."
Naruto considered what she said for a moment before it struck him.
"Neji…"
Everything became clear to him at that moment. Things had happened on a much grander scale than he could have imagined and not for the first time in the past week he wondered how many things the 'Otokage' had manipulated.
He turned back to Elika, "Then there is nothing more to be gained here. My wife and I will take our leave of your land. I get the feeling we aren't welcome here anymore."
The Cascading Flow leader reached forward and placed her hand on his shoulder, trying to make it seem as a non-threatening gesture. "Your efforts were invaluable in winning this war, Naruto. We won't forget that anytime soon. But you must understand our position."
"Unfortunately, I do," said Naruto with a sigh. He wasn't going to demand her dedicate any resources to help against the Quiraji, but he was grateful that at least nobody else would die in her conflict. He turned to leave the room, though as he walked through the doorway he noticed Sasuke standing in the hallway. Unlike Elika, he'd changed from his battle outfit and didn't even look like he'd received a scratch from the battle, even though Naruto knew he'd done some of the hardest fighting in the village.
"You didn't think you'd be going alone, did you?"
Naruto's face lit up at his statement; he'd been wrapped up in getting the Cascading Flow army that he'd forgotten the main reason they'd come to the Land of Earth was to help Sasuke in the first place.
Sasuke looked off into the distance away from Naruto, "Someone's got to keep you from looking like an idiot, after all."
His blonde friend grinned and he opened his arms widely, but Sasuke took a step back with his hand up to stop him. "Don't hug me."
Naruto chuckled and put down his hands, "Well, I'm happy that you want to come along. I didn't figure you for the settle-down type anyway."
"The Quiraji killed my mother and many of our friends, Naruto. I might not be obsessed with revenge anymore, but that doesn't mean I won't fight for it." Sasuke's voice was determined; he could still remember the image of his mother's life withering before his eyes.
"And he won't be alone," came a female voice behind him.
The two Konoha shinobi turned to see Fiore walking towards them, a small towel over her hair. She scratched at the side of her head before placing a hand on his shoulder. "I wasn't going to let you go off on your own, you know that, right?"
"Fiore…maybe you should…" started Sasuke, but the young Cascading Flow warrior ignored him and stepped forward to extend her hand towards Naruto.
"I have my own reasons to fight, Uzumaki. I won't take no for an answer."
Naruto looked over at Sasuke for a moment with amusement in his eyes; he liked this girl for him. She was the right amount of strong woman to put him in his place. He took her hand with a hearty shake, "Then welcome aboard. We'll have to meet up with the Otokage before our next move, but having seen you fight I must say you'll be invaluable." He looked back over at Sasuke again, "And anyone that can shut the teme up is a friend of mine."
Fiore chuckled in response, while Sasuke merely threw his hands up into the air and stormed off. The two of them shared a look before bursting out into laughter once again.
Fiore hummed quietly to herself as she packed her bag with all the essentials. Despite the previous week's events, she felt strangely upbeat. She wasn't sure what her mother intended to do now that their rebellion had succeeded, but she'd made her choice.
"You ready to go?" came Sasuke's voice from the doorway.
"Give me a second," she said back, going through her clothing for a few moments before making a decision and placing the last few pieces that she needed before flipping the top over and buttoning it into place. "Okay, I'm good."
With his own pack over his shoulder, Sasuke gave her a small smile as he remarked at how beautiful she looked as the setting sunlight struck her face through a nearby window. He wasn't sure what was happening between them, but for the moment he was happy with how things were.
"The others are waiting outside. Itachi mentioned something…about something…" Fiore slowly made her way towards him, grinning as she snaked a hand around his waist. "…I wasn't really listening to be honest."
The young girl smiled at his admission, leaning forward to kiss him gently on the lips. She didn't have to lean down at all; they were about the same height, though she did pack a pair of her heels to change that if the situation dictated it necessary.
"We could make them wait…if you want." Her voice changed to a light purr, though to her disappointment her partner's expression didn't appear to change.
"I don't think that's a good idea, Naruto is not the most patient of a person…"
Fiore rolled her eyes with a groan, "Not what I meant, Sasuke. You really need to work on understanding what I mean."
Sasuke looked at her violet eyes with the same look he generally wore when he was disinterested, "If you are talking about having sex, as I said, we don't have time. Besides, we did it three times this morning."
"Four times," corrected Fiore quickly. Sasuke gave her a confused look, but the young woman smirked back. "You were asleep."
Sasuke did his best to conceal his displeasure at being used in such a way, turning to lead her towards the main entrance to Cascading Flow. It felt oddly empty now that almost all of their warriors had returned to their homes, yet the warriors that had survived the battle and decided to remain kept the hall as boisterous as it once was.
The two of them had already bid farewell to Elika and the other warriors, though Naruto said that he'd made a marking on the building in case Fiore wanted to return at any point to speak with her mother. While Fiore didn't like the decision her mother had made surrounding the war with the Quiraji, she understood her position and didn't hold it against her.
They greeted the married couple near the border of the surviving standing army, with Naruto and Hinata both thanking Fiore for coming with them. They knew she didn't have to accompany them, but she dismissed their thanks with a wave of her hand.
"We're all prepared then?" came Itachi's voice from around a nearby corner.
The group nodded in agreement as they greeted the older Uchiha. Once Sasuke had agreed to join them, Itachi committed to their cause as well. Though they hadn't gained an army as Naruto and Hinata had hoped, the addition of the Uchiha brothers was a massive boon to the war effort, and Fiore had a proven ability to fight against the Quiraji leaders better than either Naruto or Hinata could.
Naruto created a Kage Bunshin to the surprise of the group. He put up a hand to stop them asking, "It's just a policy of mine. If I'm teleporting more than one person, I have to make sure that the seal is still in place."
He nodded to the clone and watched as it disappeared with a quiet crack of lightning. Barely a second later he gripped his temple tightly with a grimace of pain.
"What's wrong?" asked his concerned wife, placing her hands on his arm gently.
"I'm fine…I'm just glad I checked the seal before sending everyone along." Naruto put down his hands and breathed out slowly, it was always a painful experience when that happened. "Either the seal was broken or it's been destroyed."
"What does that mean?" asked a confused Fiore, not knowing any of the details of the technique he had attempted to use.
"It means we'll have to walk," said Itachi from the side.
Hinata had obvious concern on her face at the news that they couldn't immediately return to her cousin's side. She knew that her husband had given him a seal wrapped around a kunai, so the only way his technique wouldn't work is if the kunai was destroyed or Neji had intentionally broker the seal. Both possibilities had serious implications; she didn't want to think of the idea that she had already lost her cousin after just reconnecting with him.
"Will you be able to keep up with us if we move at shinobi speed?" asked Naruto to Fiore, knowing that Sasuke and Itachi wouldn't have an issue.
"She'll be fine," said Sasuke before Fiore could answer. The young girl gave him a look before shrugging and nodding to their blonde companion.
"Then we should get going. At best speed, Otogakure is still a week away."
They all began their final preparations for the trip, with Fiore created a wood platform to fly on. It would take concentration, but she would be able to keep up with them with little issue.
None of them could shake the feeling that something terrible had happened.
Author's Note:
There are several things I'd like to note for this battle. Firstly, I wasn't going to be able to detail every single thing that happened in the fight. There were literally thousands of small battles that happened in this chapter that occurred in this manner, it's simply unreasonable to do them all. The fights that the many Cascading Flow warriors and civilians had against the Iwa shinobi were quite numerous. Secondly the reason the Tsuchikage fell in that way is that you have to remember that he is a bit older in this story than he is in the main story, and isn't the shinobi he once was, particularly against a fighting style like Fiore's. Also any concerns about him using Wind techniques, remember that his Particle style is a mixture of Earth, Wind and Fire, so it's conceivable that he'd have some ability in each of those elements.
Also, I'm going to be in the US for a long while and at least for the first few weeks my release schedule will be a bit messed up. As such, expect the next few chapters to be fortnightly affairs. However the next chapter will all be about the romance side of the story. So you've got that to look forward to. And don't worry; it won't with Naruto and Hinata. There's been plenty of that already.
Please review and tell me what you think. I try to take each review into account, and believe me I read them all. Tell me what can be improved, what you liked, what you didn't, everything. I'm a writer so I'm always open to criticism.