The Wanderers
Chapter 85 – The Day the Bombs Fell
A/N: As the title likely suggests, this is not a particularly pleasant chapter. Consider this the more realistic aspects of war that the main story never really explored.
A/N2: So Naruto is coming to an end. It seems both too soon and not able to come soon enough. Doesn't feel like enough time to finish everything that is going on, but such is life I suppose. This story will be finishing just after that, assuming my schedule is conducive to that.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. If I did, lots and lots of people would already be dead.
***Previously-On***
The final battle has begun.
Having split from the rest of the strike force, Neji, Hinata, Mei, Rock Lee, Yugito and Killer Bee moved to fight against the hated enemy Sensou. At the start it looked like they'd be able to overwhelm him in the first few seconds, but Sensou tricked them and took control of Yugito and her Tailed Beast. Under Sensou's commands, Yugito went straight for her fellow Kumogakure companion and they moved to another part of the battlefield with the Mizukage and Lee to assist them while Neji and Hinata fought against Sensou directly.
Eventually Yugito was defeated and killed by Killer Bee, but moments after her death Sensou took control of Hinata and turned her on the Otokage. While they fought, Rock Lee and Mei turned on the Quiraji leader and were finally able to kill him, just as Hinata was about to finish killing Neji. The death of Sensou relinquished his control of the Hyuuga kunoichi and she was able to save her cousin's life with her healing techniques.
With the main three Quiraji leaders dead, Benkei turned his attention away from the silent Shikyo and to the shinobi survivors. He remarked at the futility of their struggle and how he would enjoy ending their race with his own hands. Upon their questioning his confidence, Benkei told them about their folly when they'd approached the final battlefield.
***End Summary***
There are many days that are remembered in shinobi history.
The day the rebellion against the Quiraji Empire succeeded in toppling a tyrant and sent them across the sea.
The day the Sage of the Six Paths fought against the Ten-Tails and defeated it.
The day Senju Hashirama signed a peace treaty with Uchiha Madara and founded the village known as Konoha, setting up a system that would eventually revolutionise the shinobi world.
Today was one of the days that would be remembered above all others and would hurl the shinobi world into anarchy and chaos.
Today was the day the bombs fell.
In the shinobi continent there were no civilian villages that had been unaffected by the invasion of the Quiraji and the shinobi resistance. There were no villages in the land of Fire that hadn't been assimilated into the Quiraji army and many in the surrounding countries were beginning to lean away from their shinobi allies and towards the ever-growing enemy presence in the hopes for mercy and peace.
But there were also villages that had very little to do with the war. They were mere spectators to the greater conflict, satisfied to live out their lives in the hope that the fighting would never reach their borders.
In these villages and many others around the continent were a variety of people. Old men fishing on small boats, children playing in forests, young women and men going about their daily lives. Some had had family members or friends leave for shinobi villages after they had discovered an ability to mould chakra, while others that had discovered the same ability had chosen to remain behind and live a more peaceful life. Others were shinobi that had long since retired from the fighting lives and left the villages in the hope of a quiet ending to their lives, or even shinobi that had had bad dealings with their villages and were on the run.
The day started with relatively clear skies in most of the shinobi continent. The Land of Lightning looked to have the threat of rain, while the Land of Water had the same foggy weather it had been dealing with for the past five decades. The villages in those places were used to these patterns and paid them no heed as they went about their lives.
But slowly the skies of the shinobi continent began to fill with objects, projecting from the middle that was the Land of Fire. Each object was cylindrical in form and a dull colour of silver, speeding through the air faster than any projectile known to the shinobi world. They moved with uncanny precision and determination, making tiny adjustments according to an internal equation and aimed themselves at their intended targets.
The shinobi continent was a very large continent. The shinobi villages had been large enough to accommodate hundreds of thousands of people, while the smaller villages that numbered in the hundreds held thousands of civilians and other types of people. It was continent of over a million people and varied from place to place on where each of them lived.
There were thousands of objects that littered the sky that day. Each one had been fired from the single projectile from the Quiraji base in the crater of Konoha with one express mission calculated in.
The projectiles began to strike the ground in an organised pattern around known living areas such as civilian villages and housing areas. Each impact came with a shockwave that produced no sound, nor fire or explosion. Instead, each object projected a wide blue pulse of energy that pierced through wood and stone over a massive area, easily enveloping the surrounding areas around the target.
While going about their daily lives, the civilians in the villages nearby the initial impact sites could do nothing as the blue pulse crashed through their living areas and through their bodies. It made no impact on the structures around them, nor did it scar the terrain or do any harm to any animals in the area.
Most civilians didn't even notice the pulse until after it had moved through them. Some felt an odd tingling in the tips of their fingers, but otherwise there was no adverse effect at all. Many of those civilians struck simply shrugged it off as something to not be concerned about and continued on doing whatever they had been doing before the bombs had fallen.
But that was only those civilians who didn't have the ability or capacity to produce chakra.
Men, women, children, old people and all. Those that had the potential to be shinobi but had either chosen a different path, had retired from shinobi life or had been trying to hide their original shinobi roots reacted very differently when the Quiraji blue pulse struck through their bodies.
It passed through them like it did everyone else around them, but the effect was completely different. Inside their bodies the energy created by the pulse impacted their chakra network and invaded it like a virus. In an instant, it closed off every chakra point that the body had before devouring every piece of chakra within the target's body before sending a fatal inner pulse of energy towards the heart and the brain of the victim. Those people who had chakra or the ability to produce chakra had their hearts stop and the receptors in their brain cease to function at the same time.
It was a painless death. A merciful death.
But death, nonetheless.
The first volley of objects had struck the most outlying villages that littered the edges of the shinobi continent, purging those that the enemy wanted to destroy. Some villages lost one or two people, while others lost entire generations of people that had had the potential to become shinobi but were too young to join one of the ailing shinobi villages. But all civilians that couldn't ever be shinobi were unaffected.
Tens of thousands of people died in an instant.
That was only the fastest objects striking at the most distant targets. There were still thousands more that had yet to strike.
The village of Kumogakure had been preparing for war since it had devastated their village in the weeks before. Its shinobi had been trained in specialist techniques to help combat the Quiraji threat and after recovering from the invasion they had begun to fortify their mountainous village. Large barricades with spikes lined the single entrance to the village and trained shinobi manned them day and night. Siege weaponry had been created to sit on the shinobi towers erected on top of housing complexes.
Any enemy that tried to attack Kumogakure again would find themselves facing a fortress that would bleed and bludgeon them before the hammer blow would fall in the form of the shinobi within that were always ready to hurl themselves into battle at a moment's notice.
They were prepared for almost everything. The Raikage had made sure that he wasn't going to make the same mistakes twice.
The Kumogakure leader was in one of the training grounds today, working with the Genin of the village. He normally disliked training such young shinobi as he was not a man known for his patience, but this group had shown particular promise and he knew that eventually they would be sent to the frontlines. He wasn't going to do that to them without giving them the appropriate weapons.
They had suffered a lot of casualties in the previous battles and he needed everyone to be at their best. With both of their Tailed Beast containers in the wind, A was not comfortable with how they were progressing so far. He had banked on Yugito retrieving his wayward brother and bringing him back to reinforce their position, but the Raikage was starting to think that the Quiraji weren't going to come back for them before they defeated the other villages. Kumogakure was hurt, but they weren't crippled.
That meant that they might need to expand themselves out into the shinobi world once again and get an understanding of the landscape. They'd been turtled up in their village for too long.
While the Raikage was showing a prospective student the basics of creating lightning chakra, his secretary jumped up to the training ground and knelt in front of him with her hand clutching a report.
A instructed the student to practice on his own as he walked over to Mabui and put out his hand for her to give him the report. It contained a plethora of useless information, but the Raikage knew that it was the information that wasn't present that worried him.
"Why the hell has there been no word from Yugito? She's meant to be the reliable one."
"I don't know, sir," said Mabui as she stood back up. "But she wouldn't be holding back unless she had a good reason."
"She better have one," rumbled the large shinobi with his usual angry tone. "Some of our best shinobi went with her. I don't like having so many assets outside of our controlled areas."
He went to give her a command to mobilise a small squad of hunters to track down the tracker shinobi, but he didn't get the chance as a loud siren sounded throughout the village. It had been a new system they had put into place to warn against impending attacks, involving Mabui's younger sister at a Kumogakure outpost hidden among the mountains close to the Land of Fire border. She would pen a message and send it to one of the shinobi in the alarm tower and that would sound the siren that now echoed throughout the village.
The people of Kumogakure knew what it meant; they had done enough drills to know where they had to go. The civilians and non-combatants flooded the streets to find the entrance ways to the tunnel complexes within the mountains that had been dug to protect them from enemy attack. While this happened, the shinobi in the village moved quickly to the front of the village to fight off any potential invaders.
A told the students to get to their posts and told Mabui to give him whatever information she could garner from the sounding of the siren.
With a hand to the receiver in her ear, Mabui relayed what she told, letting the Raikage interpret it for himself. "Several objects…moving towards the village…initial observation is that they are explosive devices fired by the enemy at long distance."
The Raikage absorbed the information like a good leader and was already on the move to the entrance. If there was no army to face then they would require a different strategy of defence.
Mabui didn't follow the Raikage, as she knew she had other duties to attend to while the village's strongest shinobi moved to defend him home. The voice in her receiver said that the objects would come into sight within a few minutes, but by then all of their civilians and non-combatants would be within the mountains and out of the way for any explosives that may be dropped on the village.
She figured this was just the first volley, but the Kumogakure kunoichi put that out of her mind and went about all the administrative commands that the Raikage required her to do during such a situation.
The Raikage landed at the entrance to his village in a flash, surprising the younger shinobi in the area for a moment before they snapped quick salutes to him and asked for their orders. A glanced at the battlements for a moment before indicating to the siege weapons nearby. "Get people on those bolt throwers. We've got some kind of projectiles coming in and if any of them strike at the village I'll tan the hide of the shinobi that missed them."
It was an empty threat for the most part, but the tone of the Raikage's voice was more than enough to get the shinobi onto the siege weapons and prepared for the enemy objects to come into view.
Now they waited. That was the hardest part of defending a battlement, waiting for the enemy to come into range, to bring what they could to the battlefield.
But they didn't have to wait very long. Before they had the chance to get nervous, a small cluster of silvery objects came flying through the air towards their general area. From the more observant shinobi's eyes they didn't look they were going to strike the village itself, but would rather strike at some of the mountains that stood within the village's borders.
The Raikage was quite to dissuade their lack of concern however, as he knew that if they were indeed explosives and they struck against the mountains then their village would be covered in rubble and they'd never recover from it.
With a single word, he gave the order for them to shoot them down.
At once the sky was filled with a hail of shinobi projectiles, ninjutsu long range abilities and the bolts from the Kumogakure siege weapons. The Quiraji objects were obscured from sight momentarily upon the commencement of the barrage, with the Raikage adding his own bolts of lightning up to the sky. With his senses extended to the edges of his elemental attacks, A could feel the objects immunity to chakra-based attacks through his arms, but he could see that their metallic projectiles were doing good work at moving the objects away from their original trajectories. The bolts from the bolt throwers were not the most accurate weapons in the world, but two of them were able to pierce through the objects and force them to fall towards the ground in front of the village.
The Raikage and the shinobi on the battlements continued their barrage onto the remaining Quiraji objects still flying towards the village while the pair of projectiles struck by the bolt throwers struck the ground long before they could get into range of the village.
They still exploded their blue chakra pulse outwards though. If they had struck their intended targets they would have blanketed the village completely, but instead their pulses only struck at the most forward posted shinobi concentrating on the remaining projectiles.
Those shinobi struck died instantly, but their demises passed unnoticed by their companions as the Raikage had leapt high up into the air covered by his lightning armour and slammed a fist into the middle of one of the silvery objects. He was confident in his ability to absorb any explosion with his armour; he'd once been thrown into a volcano by his father and had only survived because of his lightning armour.
The object did not explode like he was expecting it to though. It instead extended out a blue pulse that struck through the Raikage and collapsed down into hundreds of shinobi below him.
A didn't get the chance to get one final look at his home or his people. His body gave out on him and his lightning armour disappeared with a flash before his body fell back to the ground. Each shinobi at the battlements and those manning the siege weapons behind them suffered the same fate as their companions, the defence of their village not enough to save their lives.
The remaining Quiraji objects struck at their intended targets without being impeded. At first the village of Kumogakure looked like it had only suffered catastrophic losses at the entrance, but moments afterwards the whole area was covered by a cloud of blue pulses that penetrated through every building and tunnel in the area, ruthlessly hunting down those that had thought themselves able to hide against the Quiraji's wrath.
Their preparations and training had all come to naught in that single moment of slaughter. The village of Kumogakure had fallen.
Hujo stabbed a kunai straight into the middle of the map and glared at the group in front of him with his bright bronze eyes. "This isn't good enough. Where are the people from Tori?"
One of the kunoichi at the other side of the table shook her head quickly, "That base is gone, nearly a week ago. Nobody survived."
The shinobi leader swore loudly and reached forward to pull his kunai out of the table, "This is a shambles. We don't have the numbers…or the weaponry…or the means."
"What choice do we have?" asked Yakiru with a solemn expression on his face. He reached up and tugged at his forehead protector, "We have an obligation to the village."
Hujo scoffed and felt at the edge of his kunai with his finger, "The village is long gone. We're fighting a war on too many fronts."
"What about the Tsuchikage? They announced his execution date as a few days from now."
The resistance leader shook his head and walked to the entrance of their war room. In their underground complex that they'd wrestled off a small Cascading Flow strike force, they had carved out an area for living quarters that was full of their injured being treated by the one medical shinobi that had been lucky enough to be away when Iwagakure fell. Beside that area he could see the large living area that was doubling as the armoury and training areas. He and his shinobi had been on patrol when the rebellion had struck their village and it had only been Hujo's command to hold back that had kept them alive.
They'd heard that the rebellion had been sparing many of the shinobi they had captured, but none of them really believed it. They had done terrible things to their civilians in the past, which had caused the problem in the first place. Hujo had seen it coming for a long time and wasn't very surprised that they had been slaughtered.
It was nothing less than they deserved. The only reason he was fighting was because it was all he knew.
"How many shinobi do we have?" asked Yakiru at his side. His second-in-command had been sceptical about their position but had been the biggest advocate for the attack they were currently planning. According to the information they had, there weren't that many Cascading Flow warriors surrounding their old village and it was open to be retaken.
Hujo wasn't too sure, but he didn't have any other choice. They had almost no moral and no direction with the capture of their leader and he was a poor substitute. He was the oldest and most experienced shinobi in their resistance and he was only twenty-one. He was also barely a Chuunin.
In the armoury and training area he saw the two hundred shinobi that weren't out of commission training and sharpening their weaponry. Most were Genin that had been undergoing the Iwagakure version of their Chuunin Exams, none of which they expected to actually pass as most of the quality Genin had already been battlefield-promoted in the war against the rebellion and had lost their lives.
It was a paltry force, but it was all they had.
With a heavy heart, he turned to his second-in-command and gave him the answer that he actually wanted to know, rather than the question he asked. "We move in two days."
Yakiru nodded grimly and began giving orders to the rest of the people in the war room while Hujo began walking into the living quarters to check on the status of their injured. If they could bring even half of them back into their force they might have a chance of at least putting up a good fight.
If they could take out the hated Elika, then all's the better.
Almost ten minutes after giving the order for mobilisation of their remaining force, the Quiraji bombs struck at the nearby areas with a silent shockwave. From within the rebellion underground complex the Iwagakure shinobi survivors couldn't do anything as the blue pulse moved through their ranks with uncompromising prejudice.
One-by-one they fell to the ground, as dead as the rest of their village. Hujo would have been horrified to see his shinobi coming to such an end, but he felt the same effects as the younger shinobi in their rebellion had. His heart stopped and the flow of chakra disappeared in an instant, taking from him the thing that had set him apart from the village he had come from.
If he'd had time to think about it, he would have thought it a fitting end. To their enemy's credit, it didn't hurt at all.
In an instant, it was over and they were dead.
Stepping back from his training post, the lone survivor of the massacre looked over at the slumped bodies with a dumb-founded expression on his face. There hadn't been any sounds except for the soft thuds of bodies striking the floor. He'd seen the blue pulse go through the area and pass right through him with barely a tickle, yet it seemed to have killed everybody around him.
He shrugged and sheathed the sword he was training with into his belt. He stretched out his neck to take a short count of the bodies, but after a few minutes it was clear that none of the Iwagakure shinobi had survived the attack.
"I guess I should report this then…" he said as he reached up and removed his stolen forehead protector. "There's a month's worth of work down the drain."
The Cascading Flow spy sighed as he began collecting whatever information was left to gather. He'd been preparing to send information to Elika about the impending attack, as this was the last known gathering of Iwagakure shinobi to resist them, but now it felt pointless.
Something told him that wasn't one of their attacks though. Elika was a cold heartless leader and had orchestrated the biggest war in the Land of Earth's history. But this just wasn't her style. If anything, he'd expected her to send him the order to assassinate the resistance leader just before their attack came, which he had assumed he would have to do anyway.
After less than an hour, the Cascading Flow spy left the underground resistance and began the long trek back to the Cascading Flow main base at the ruins of Iwagakure. He guessed that now that the resistance was dead they would no longer need to remain there, but he wasn't a decision-maker and it wasn't his plan to ask.
He was just a spy.
The sun was heavy on their faces while they worked in the fields, but there was a nice mildew in the air that cooled them down and left them able to work as long as the sun was in the sky. The civilian farmers led simple lives away from the conflict raging around them, wilfully ignorant of the people that were dying to try and keep them safe from enemies that had no interest in taking their war out on them.
Placing his rake into the ground with a slow breath, the last surviving Akimichi shinobi wiped at his forehead with the top of his shirt and looked over at the other workers. Many of them were packing up for the day, as they'd been tilling a new field for over a week now and weren't in a particularly big rush to finish it.
"You going back soon?" asked one of the young workers to Chouji. "Can you tell Kiki that we need to do another trench closer to the well?"
"I'll get Misa to talk to her," replied Chouji with a smile. The amount they had accomplished in the time he'd been there was impressive and they had been set up to be self-sustaining for quite a while now, but there was always more to do. There were quite a few things he had been thinking about while working in the fields today that he wanted to talk to her about.
"You'll get a chance right now," came a young female voice at his side. Chouji looked over at where the young girl was indicating to see the only other adult in the village coming towards the field with a small bag in her hands.
Her presence brought a massive smile over the ex-Konoha shinobi and he left his rake behind as he walked up to greet her. She'd been slowly growing out her brown hair since they'd started living together and Chouji thought it made her look even more beautiful than before.
"More seeds?" he asked as she placed an arm around his side and planted a gentle kiss on the swirl mark on his cheek.
His young wife nodded and handed them to him with a wide smile, "I thought we could make a little pumpkin patch."
Chouji smiled back and went to say something about her reading his mind, but something drew his attention towards the sky and the words were lost in his throat. In the corner of the sky he saw something moving towards them at a great speed. He may not have the ability to use the chakra inside his body, but most of his shinobi instincts were still intact and they were screaming at him.
"Misa…get everyone inside their houses."
His young wife cocked her head to the side and turned to see what he was so concerned about. "Chouji…"
The Akimichi shinobi turned to the few young people still in the field and shouted at them to get back to their homes as quickly as they could and stay there until otherwise. His advice had saved the village numerous times and they weren't about to stop listening to him now. They gathered their tools and moved quickly back to the living areas of the village while their leader took his wife by the hand and told her to go back to their house.
"Is it…" Misa couldn't quite voice her concern, but the look in her husband's eyes gave her the answer. She bit at her lips nervously and tugged at his shirt, "Come with me, Chouji. We'll be safe in the house."
Chouji smiled at her and leaned forward to kiss her on the lips. It was a lingering kiss, one that they hadn't shared in quite a while. He pulled back and looked into her blue eyes with the most loving look he could. "I will always love you. You know that right?"
"Chouji, you're scaring me."
He smiled sadly and indicated to their house in the distance, "I'll be in right after you."
She wasn't happy with it, but she repeats his statement of affection and runs back to their house. Chouji watches to make sure she gets there before turning his attention back to the object flying in the sky. It was now only a few moments from passing over the village; by Chouji's reckoning it would likely strike some distance away at a nearby mountainous region.
Something about it told him that it would still strike at their village. There wasn't going to be anything he could do about it. With a heavy sigh he moved to the middle of the field he was working in and sat down with his hands on his knees.
For a split second he could have sworn he could see his father sitting opposite him, smiling at him affectionately. Chouji grinned at the thought and watched the projectile crash into the mountainside. There was no explosion of any description, but Chouji doubted that would be all.
He'd led a good life. Chouji had been eternally grateful for the luck he'd had since being separated from his Konoha companions. It was a shame he never got the chance to see how Shikamaru and Ino had turned out over the years, but with Misa he had been happy.
If he had one regret, it was that he never got to have the children that he and his wife often spoke about having. Perhaps he was being fatalistic, but it would have been nice to see how they could have grown up.
He didn't know what was about to happen, but Chouji was where he wanted to be. He closed his eyes and waited for it to come.
Nothing happened.
Without their esteemed leader, the village of Kirigakure was on high alert for any and all enemy activity in the area. Even in the areas of the Land of Water that had been under Quiraji control were under their dutiful eyes and the strongest sensory shinobi were extending their senses across the border to the Land of Fire in the hope of finding the Mizukage and her shinobi on their way back.
"I've got a hit!" cried out one of the young shinobi in the command centre of Kirigakure. Her Jounin commanders crowded around her as she changed her handseal and narrowed her long distance senses.
One of her commanders knelt down in front of her, "Report!"
"A small group of chakra signals moving towards the Land of Fire border. North-west, near the Ioa River."
"Friendly?"
"They're chakra signals, how couldn't they be friendly?" snapped another sensory shinobi, frustrated that his colleague had found something that he could still not see.
The female sensory shinobi ignored her companions comment and answered her commander's question as accurately as she could. "It appears so. I'm getting a small number of Kirigakure chakra signals…twenty-thr…twenty-seven in total."
"The Mizukage?"
She hesitated for a moment, searching through the signals to try and find the chakra that she knew as well as she did herself. "I…I can't sense the Mizukage. But she might be further inland with another group."
"I can't sense her either," confirmed another of the sensory shinobi. "But the leader of the Swordsmen is with this group."
"Mangetsu?" The Jounin commanders conferred among themselves for a moment before making a collective decision and turning to one of their other sensory shinobi. "Give the order to Kohana's squads to meet them at the border. They should be the closest group in range."
The sensory shinobi nodded in acknowledgement and began conveying their orders, while the original shinobi continued to give detailed information about the approaching shinobi.
They knew that the Swordsmen wouldn't have returned to the Land of Water unless something had gone wrong with their invasion of the Land of Fire.
oOoOoOo
After their victory and defeat at the Quiraji chakra node, the Kirigakure strike force had been in no particular hurry to get back to their village. Some in their group had voiced an interest to return to the Fire Temple to reconnect with the shinobi that had remained behind to defend the area, but Mangetsu had taken command and had already made the decision to get reinforcements.
"I think we're coming up on the Land of Water," said Chojuro as they ran along the grasslands of the Land of Fire. "We're running on rags, Mangetsu."
The Swordsman leader shot the younger shinobi a glare and extended his senses outwards in front of them. He was no proper sensory shinobi, but his instincts had told him of something coming towards them at a rapid pace. "I know that, Chojuro, keep your opinions to yourself. Someone approaches us."
The female Swordsman at his side bared her teeth and drifted her hands towards the swords sheathed at her belt. "If they want a fight, I'll gladly give them one."
"Collar yourself, Ameyuri," snapped Mangetsu quickly. "They don't appear to be enemies."
Besides the three surviving Swordsmen, there were twenty-four Kirigakure shinobi that followed behind them, a short distance behind the specialist shinobi. As the border between the lands came up in front of them, the other group emerged from a thick mist that they knew was not a natural phenomenon. A large group of twenty Kirigakure shinobi stepped into view and relaxed their combative postures when they saw that they were faced with the appearances of their comrades.
The Swordsmen leader was the only one not to relax in their presence, but that was his nature as the leader of the Kirigakure scout group leader approached him with the standard greeting.
"You're late," said Kohana with a smirk on her face.
Mangetsu bared his sharp teeth at her as his way of smiling in response, but before he could say anything they all sensed something coming towards them.
The Kirigakure scout group all stared up into the sky as they saw a cluster of objects flying out of the Land of Fire towards their homeland. It was obvious from the outset that they had been fired by the Quiraji as an attack on their people, but none of them knew what the nature of the objects were.
"Something doesn't feel right about this…" said Ameyuri with a single back step. She wasn't known for fear in either battle or in regular life, but everything about her was screaming to go back to where they had just been fighting. She couldn't explain it even to herself, but something told her that the land they had been in the process of leaving was about to be safer than their home.
Mangetsu had the same instinct and put up his arms to stop his group from proceeding further. "Kohana…come over to our side."
The Kirigakure scout leader frowned and crossed her arms over her chest, "You don't think that…"
"Do it you stupid woman!" roared Mangetsu as he turned around and began running back into the Land of Fire. The shinobi behind him were not sure of what had come over him, but when a shinobi of Mangetsu's stature gave them a reason to be concerned, they didn't question him or hesitate.
They ran directly behind him as fast as they could. They didn't even look at the objects flying above them and spreading out around their homeland.
Out of the twenty-seven Kirigakure shinobi from the strike force and the twenty shinobi from the scout force, only fifteen made it over the border before one of the objects struck the ground and exploded its blue pulse of energy outwards towards them.
A further five shinobi from the scout force made it over the line when the blue pulse reached them and pierced through the bodies of their lagging companions. Those Kirigakure shinobi that had crossed over the border of the Land of Fire were exempt from the Quiraji's final weapon's fury, but their companions suffered no such reprieve.
The surviving Kirigakure shinobi did not look back at their fallen comrades for a long time. It was only when the number of objects in the sky reduced to none that they turned back and started to make their way back to the border. The three Swordsmen and the scout leader had survived the bombing, but they had no idea what had happened to their homeland. Mangetsu was hesitant to go immediately to Kirigakure, but many of the survivors in his midst had families in their village and couldn't be held back any longer.
It would be almost a day before they crossed over the ocean and made their way into the place that had been their home.
By then, it was far too late.
oOoOoOo
The village of Kirigakure was eerily silent. The people that had once populated the great village lay on the ground in their homes and the streets in an eternal sleep, their lives ended without a voice being heard in protest. The waters of the rivers that ran through the village continued to flow regardless of their master's demise and the birds of the sky tried to fill the sky with songs once again but their voices were paltry in comparison to the past.
Walking down one of the main streets of the silent village was a pair of small children, a young boy and girl, siblings by circumstance. They had watched their parents collapse after the strange blue pulse had passed through them, unable to say any last words as they struck the ground silently. They had found each other as they wandered the streets and their youth had forced them together in the hope of finding someone that could help them.
Everyone seemed to be sleeping and they couldn't wake them up. For young children that had already felt the pang of grief at being told they couldn't be shinobi when they grew up, their struggle had only just begun.
They were the last children of a dead village.
The Land of Fire wasn't all bad, even despite the war and genocide that was occurring throughout the land. After completing her part in the liberation of Kirigakure, the Seven-Tails flew through the air with a loud buzzing before landing at the top of a large tree overlooking a lush area that had been untouched so far in the devastation of the shinobi continent.
"This is as good a place as any," said the large creature as it slowly fell towards the ground. Its armoured shell fell apart and transformed back into its container, who flipped around in the air and landed on the ground with a soft touch, like she'd been floating down gently.
Fu flicked her head back to get some of the green strands of hair out of her eyes and glanced around where her occupant had taken her. It was a beautiful valley with a small pool of water within a surrounding area of lush bush. She'd lived in the wild for longer than she had been in her old village and Fu was glad that places like this still existed. She took a moment to take in the view, drinking in the smells and tastes with a long breath.
"Didn't you need to do something?"
Fu thought about it for a moment before her body relented at her and she remembered why they had touched down in the first place. She scampered off to a concealed area and relieved herself before washing her hands in the water pool and taking her pack off her back. She couldn't see any fruits or edible plants in the nearby area, but Fu had been able to wrangle a small amount of goods from a nearby civilian village; the elderly man had taken quite a liking to her and had given her some food in the hope that she would stay around and be a match for his son. Fu thought he was a charming man, but his son had none of his charm and she had left as quickly as was polite.
Biting into a large apple, Fu unhooked her shoes and kicked them off to the side and rested her feet in the pool. She didn't lead a particularly complex life, but it was one that kept her away from conflict and that suited her just fine.
The lack of human contact sometimes got to her though. She had needs as much as the next person.
She rubbed at the back of her neck for a moment before frowning and looking up towards the sky. There was a strange buzzing in the air, faint at first but getting louder by the second. With her connection to her occupant Fu had an enhanced sense of hearing, but this was something she was sure she was going to hear regardless.
"What do you think that is?" she asked to her occupant inside of her.
"I can't tell. It's blocked to me."
Fu frowned and slowly got to her feet. She was an instinctive person by nature and something about the sound was irritating her. With a trickle of chakra from her occupant, a pair of insectoid wings grew from her back and she took to the air with her bare feet dangling beneath her. In a few moments she was high above the tree line, feeling the soft breeze against her legs with a soft sound of pleasure.
The sound was getting closer and closer but she couldn't see anything in the open skies. "Must just be my imagination…" She began to drop back to the ground, but her occupant screamed at her to wait.
"Something is coming towards us!"
Fu squinted her eyes to get a better look and put her hand on her forehead, but still there was nothing. There were two civilian villages in view off in the distance and she could almost see the people inside going about their daily lives. It was a nice view from her distance position, but Fu wasn't able to concentrate on it as the source of the buzzing sound made itself apparent in quick fashion.
A small metallic object flew through the air at a breakneck pace, against the wind in a straight line towards her aerial position. Fu extended her senses out to get a reading on it but just as Choumei had said earlier she couldn't sense anything.
Using her wings to adjust her aerial position, Fu glanced back at where she estimated the object would strike. Her green eyes widened when she saw that it would strike right between the middle of the two villages in the area. She had no idea what the object was, but it was clear that it wasn't friendly or had good intentions.
She didn't know what she was meant to do. She appreciated the affection she had received from the civilians in one of the towns, but had long since steeled herself to becoming too attached to anyone except for herself.
But as quickly as that thought came she swallowed it and faced the facts of her situation. She was human and couldn't just leave those people to their fate.
She was a part of this world. That gave her only one option.
With a loud swear word that her master had taught her, Fu grew a second pair of wings beneath her original pair and shot after the flying object. With two sets of wings buzzing loudly at her back, her speed doubled and she closed the distance between herself and the flying object rapidly. She bit her lip and pumped her body with chakra to further increase her speed. Her body resisted the speed increases with starving muscles, but Fu ignored them and pushed forward until she came into range. The flying object was long and cylindrical on the outside, with symbols running along the side and a variety of wires sticking out of the top. She'd never seen anything like it before, but she suspected that she knew what its intention was.
With a single burst of speed she clutched onto it with her hands and felt the cold steel on her fingers. It was probably less than ten seconds away from moving towards the ground, but she wasn't going to let that happen. Fu reached forward and grabbed at the group of wires before wrenching them out with a triumphant roar. There was no response from the object, which she took as a good sign as she strained to change its trajectory.
Without a word of protest, the Seven-Tails within her gave her the strength necessary as her hands clutched at the sides and she started to pull it up from its intended path. It strained her young muscles and drained her chakra to do so, but bit by bit she pulled the object up until it was directed straight towards the sky.
Within seconds both Fu and the object were moving towards the clouds at such a speed that she could no longer see the villages beneath her.
"Let it go, Fu!"
The Seven-Tails container did just that and let her body fall to the ground with her wings staying still. She felt good that she had been able to spare the villages whatever fate would have befallen them, but a part of her was a little bit sad that nobody would know what she had done.
At that moment, the object detonated with a wide blue pulse that covered the sky. It struck through the Seven-Tails container instantly, but just barely missed striking the civilian villages far below her.
Her chakra network failed and the beast within her gave out a cry of anguish as its life disappeared in a flash, but despite her own death approaching Fu couldn't help but keep a small smile on her face.
Nobody would know what she did. Perhaps that was the best way for her to go. As someone who had hated and been hated around the world, Fu hadn't wanted to die. But this wasn't a bad way to do it.
With her smile persisting on her face, the wings on her back disappeared and she fell down towards the ground.
Nobody was there to see her fall, but there would be those that found her body and discovered how she had saved them. In another life she was the Seven-Tails container, the hated monster from the Village of Waterfalls.
But when she died, she was known as Fu, the woman that had sacrificed her own life to save those that would have otherwise hated her.
The sea was particularly rough that day.
Standing on the deck of the large galley he had bribed his way onto, the Five-Tails container watched as the deck hands struggled to hold onto the rigging as waves of seawater came crashing onto the deck of the ship. In his red steam armour, Han was immobile despite the wild rocking of the ship, his dark eyes fixed upon the landscape that was slowly pulling away from them.
It had not been a decision he had taken lightly, but Han had felt that he had expended all of his interests in the shinobi continent. The gaining power of the Quiraji and the fall of many shinobi villages, including his own during his short absence told him that the time of the shinobi had come to an end.
He didn't care. Shinobi were the ones that had forced the Tailed Beast inside him as a young child to turn him into a weapon and then turned on him the moment he was no longer useful. The Five-Tails had consumed him for decades before he had finally wrestled back control and suppressed the monster's personality with his own. He had finally won the freedom of his own mind, but Han knew that he was already broken.
It didn't matter anymore. The Tsuchikage was likely dead, the Four-Tails container was dead at his own hand and Han still had his strength and his work. Whatever happened to the shinobi now was no longer his concern.
The rest of the world was his playground now. His work had suffered a minor setback during his imprisonment, but since they'd been foolish enough to let him free he would continue his work until the end came for him, however that might occur.
"You're going to get swallowed by the sea if you keep gawking like that," came a gruff voice behind him. Han turned around just a little bit slower than would have been expected, looking down to see the captain of the galley standing on the steps of the ship behind him. "It'd be a shame to lose you to the waves after you paid such good money for your voyage."
Han did not like this woman. She was too confident in his presence, too free about her person. He could see in her eyes that she had been broken and put back together in the past, but the fact that she had become stronger for it irritated him. He wanted to begin his work with her, to create a symphony of screams from her throat and absorb the agony moment by moment.
But he resisted the urge and kept it to himself. For all his knowledge and power, Han had no means of traversing the ocean without the ship and the crew to work it. He had no interest in placating her and stepped past her up towards the living quarters, "Where is our first port of harbour?"
The self-titled Pirate Queen frowned at his disrespect but kept her observations to herself as she barked a series of orders at the young deck hands before turning back to her passenger, "The Isle of Raindrops in the Southern Seas. At least a month, assuming the waters are calm, which at this stage isn't looking too likely." She reached out to grab a rope as the ship rocked heavily from side to side, looking to her passenger to see him immobile on the deck, as if his armoured boots were nailed to the wood.
Han took in the information about their first destination with silent interest. The mapping of the ocean beyond the shinobi continent was almost non-existent, but that was one of the reasons he had left.
There was a whole world for him to explore. New measures to discover and sciences to observe.
Glancing back at the small shinobi continent that he would never see again, he saw a small object in the distance strike the ground and emit a large blue pulse of energy that covered every part of the land before quickly dissipating. The port they had left seemed to be a flurry of activity, but they were too far away to see what effect the pulse would have had on them.
He heard the ship's captain make a comment about someone she used to know, but Han paid her no heed. With his hand in his vest, he opened the door to the cabin he had bought with money earned with blood and closed it behind him. The bed would be wasted as he had not slept since regaining himself, but there was a small desk attached to the wall that would serve him well. He wasn't going to risk exposure by experimenting on the crew, but any additional passengers that they took on would be interesting to examine.
Behind his armoured mask, Han couldn't resist the urge to lick his lips in anticipation.
The future was full of potential.
Even without the final Quiraji strike, the village of Sunagakure was already in the process of being conquered. The Quiraji army had broken through the massive sand walls that had contained the shinobi village through strength of siege weaponry and weight of numbers, though the Sunagakure shinobi that had chosen to remain behind hadn't slacked off on the defence of their home.
Each shinobi that was finally killed by the Quiraji took out many enemies with them and the Quiraji army suffered for every metre they took from the village. Many of the civilians had been evacuated from the village and had moved up north towards the Land of Earth, but many of the Sunagakure civilians had also chosen to remain behind and fight for their home. Some of those were family members of fighting shinobi and had the ability to use chakra, though not on the same scale as their shinobi brethren.
The Quiraji made no distinction between shinobi with forehead protectors on their heads and the civilians that tried to fight against them with makeshift weapons. They had been given orders to purge the village and weren't going to stop until that goal was completed.
The Sunagakure generals had already fallen. Baki and the others had sacrificed themselves in a suicidal charge into the centre of the Quiraji army, taking out a significant amount of enemies before being pulled down through sheer weight of numbers.
But the real turnaround for the invasion of Sunagakure was not when the Quiraji soldiers flooded through the village and began their slaughter. It was when a pair of objects appeared in the sky and aimed themselves towards the centre of the village.
While fighting against the Quiraji invaders the Sunagakure shinobi paid little attention to the objects being aimed at their village, figuring that they were probably just projectiles fired from the Quiraji army and they had bigger, more immediate concerns.
They were both correct and incorrect.
When the Quiraji soldiers and specialist warriors saw the pair of objects flying down towards the village, they let out a collective cheer and stepped back for a moment from their individual battles. The Sunagakure shinobi hesitated for a moment at the sudden lull in fighting, but only for a second before jumping back into the fray to try and defend their homes.
The first bomb struck near the entrance of the village and extended its blue pulse across the battlefield outside of the village and around the areas where small skirmishes were being fought with clusters of two or three shinobi at once. The pulse from the first object would have covered the entire village on its own, but a second object slammed into the Kazekage's office tower and exploded outwards to overlap with the first pulse.
The shinobi fighting against the Quiraji invaders had no defence against the Quiraji bombs. While many fought in close quarters with their enemies, the pulse moved through their bodies and took them down before their enemies could. The Quiraji soldiers stopped fighting the moment the blue pulses drenched the village, as they all knew what is meant and they all just watched as their target was conquered for them.
The battle for Sunagakure was over. The Quiraji could have won the battle without even setting foot on the Sunagakure lands, but that wasn't how the enemy worked.
A few minutes after the bombs had completed their bloody work the Quiraji soldiers began their work of destroying the village anew. The shinobi resistance had been swept away in a single blow, but their job wasn't done until there was no trace left of the shinobi presence in the world.
Some shinobi civilians had survived the pulses as they hadn't had the capacity to produce chakra, but unlike in different areas of the world the Quiraji soldiers in Sunagakure had been given explicit orders.
Nobody was to survive the battle.
While the enemy completed their conquest of the shinobi village, there was one person that had survived the bomb pulses as neither a shinobi nor a civilian. Her struggle had only just begun.
Moving across the countryside with a newborn is generally a very bad idea. Travelling with a mother who had recently given birth and a warrior that had almost entirely exhausted himself in battle before fleeing made it even worse.
But the knowledge that their enemies were likely right behind them, or that they were moving towards even more dangerous place was more conducive to their speed.
"We've been running for hours," said Temari through heavy breathing. "How far behind us are they?"
Her pony-tailed husband shrugged as he ran by her side, his hands wavering near the weapons at his side as they had been since they'd left her home village as it had been invaded. "I'm not a sensory type, so I can't tell. But after that scout group, I doubt they know where we are going."
An hour after they'd fled Sunagakure they'd stumbled into a wandering Quiraji patrol that had suffered a number of losses during the Kazekage's rampage across the border. Having seen a young couple with a baby in hand, they had sensed an opportunity to take revenge for their fallen brethren.
Temari had wanted to fight, but she was the one that held their child in a sling close to her chest and knew that she couldn't put herself in danger for her daughter's sake. Shikamaru and the two ANBU shinobi that had chosen to accompany them had engaged the sizable force. The battle had been short, but bloody. Shikamaru had spent a lot of his chakra in the battle and took out as many of the enemy soldiers as he could, but he hadn't been able to prevent the ANBU shinobi from being taken down by the Red Warrior leader of the scout group. Using poison gas that he'd hoped to save for a later battle he'd been able to avenge them, but once the battle was over they were left on their own to flee towards the Land of Fire border.
They were getting closer now, but both of them were on their last legs. Shikamaru's strength was only being maintained with their decreased number of soldier pills, while his wife seemed to be moving through stubborn refusal alone. Under normal circumstances he would have tried to find a place for them to rest and recover, as she had only just recently given birth, but they couldn't guarantee that they weren't being pursued at that very moment.
They had to get to the Fire Temple. That required them to cross over the border into Quiraji-controlled lands and hope that they would be able to find the Kazekage to tell him the fate of their village.
But that was a long journey and they were both exhausted. They hadn't talked about it, but eventually they would need to rest, which would bring about all sorts of other challenges.
"What about Yoshino? Like my mother?"
Temari rocked her baby in her arms as they ran, trying her best to keep it asleep by running in the same manner without jarring her too much. "Sounds too passive. I want our daughter to have a fiery name, since I'm sure she'll be like me."
"Gods save me if she is," said Shikamaru with a groan. "Why do I get the feeling that I'm only going to have daughters? It's far too troublesome to be so surrounded by women."
The blonde Sunagakure Jounin grinned at him and Shikamaru could feel his worries disappearing in that image. She was a pain in the ass to deal with, but in moments like those he was reminded why he married the crazy woman in the first place.
Though the adorable bundle in her arms certainly didn't hurt her cause.
They moved over the grasslands of the Land of Rivers as quickly as their legs could take them, eating what food they had managed to gather before leaving while on the move and making sure that their daughter was healthy considering her recent emergence into the world.
For the first time in hours, Shikamaru and Temari slowly down slightly as they both noticed a strange collection of objects coming towards them in the sky. From their view on the ground it appeared as though they were flying like stones thrown from catapults, but Shikamaru's eyes noticed that the objects were course-correcting as they flew, telling him that there was nothing natural about them at all.
"Shika…"
"I see them." He considered their options for a moment, but there were really no options available to them. He counted at least a dozen objects coming towards their area alone, but from his observations he also calculated that none of them would strike directly at them.
It was pretty clear from where they were coming from what they were. It didn't take a shinobi of Shikamaru's intellect to realise that the Quiraji had launched their final attack on the shinobi population. He didn't think they were explosives, as there was enough evidence to show that the Quiraji didn't want collateral damage to the civilian populations that weren't directly associated with shinobi.
But they certainly weren't friendly to the three of them.
"What do we do?" asked Temari as they increased their speed once again. The objects began flying over their heads with an eerie silence, tearing through the air at a frightening pace.
Shikamaru bit at the tip of his thumb as he thought. They couldn't turn back for multiple reasons, but he also couldn't think of anywhere they could run to that would be safe.
And then there was their mission to consider. The Kazekage had to be told what happened to Sunagakure, though judging from some of the directions that the flying objects were going, both of them figured that at least one would strike near the village.
"We have to keep going," he said finally. "If the people from Neji's village are still in the Fire Temple, it's probably the best bet that they are holding them back and will give us a moment to get an understanding of the situation."
Temari didn't say anything in response, which he'd learnt was her way of agreeing with his decision. She didn't mention that they would eventually need to stop so that she could feed their daughter, as they hadn't brought any bottled milk with them. She was sure he knew that.
Shikamaru breathed through his teeth and started looking for places for them to catch their breath; they weren't far from the border to the Land of Fire now. They'd made fairly good time considering they were both exhausted and had a newborn with them, but he doubted they could keep up their pace much longer.
But there was something that was really bothering him. After the initial cluster of objects that had flown over them, there was one that had lagged behind and had looked like it was slowly angling towards the ground. His eyes tried to calculate where it would land, but it was difficult to do so without looking back behind them.
"Is that one going to hit nearby?" asked Temari at his side, seemingly having read his mind. "Are we going to make it?"
"We'll make it," said Shikamaru in a rare moment of stubbornness. He reached into a small bag on his belt and pulled out the last soldier pill that he had. Not even needing to think about it, he flicked it over to his wife and motioned for her to eat it. Temari glared at him for a moment, seeing through his gesture, but she still swallowed it and felt her chakra levels increase and her fatigue drop slightly.
They continued to run. After almost ten minutes they continued to run until the landscape began to change and the border to the Land of Fire came into view. It was almost an entire day's journey from the border to the Fire Temple, but seeing the border was a relief of its own merit.
In that moment, the lagging flying object that had long since flown over them struck the ground a short distance away behind them. It barely made a sound, but the impact on the ground was felt by the two shinobi and began to explode its blue pulse outwards towards their backs.
Feeling the object strike the ground and explode behind them, Shikamaru knew that they weren't going to make it. He had no reason to believe that the line denoting the Land of Fire would be safe at all, but he reminded his almost hysterical wife that they had to keep going.
But they weren't going to make it.
Taking a glance at Temari's determined expression and the innocent face cradled in a sling on her chest, Shikamaru knew what he had to do. He was a man, a husband and a father. He knew what he had to do.
With all the chakra he had left in his body and more, he created a massive shadow at his feet and pushed it to his side to catch at the shadow at Temari's feet. In that moment his shadow leapt up off the ground with her and their child in a shadowy cocoon that hurled them hundreds of metres forward in an instant. It took everything out of him and more, but he saw that the two of them had landed safety long past the invisible line that denoted the Land of Fire. His legs began to falter underneath him as the exertion had taken more than his body had been willing to give, but strangely he wasn't so concerned about himself anymore.
In the distance, he saw his wife turn around to stare at him with a furious question in her eyes. He grinned at her and opened his mouth to tell her to keep running, but the blonde kunoichi with their daughter in her arms had already turned back around and was powering forward with a speed he hadn't seen in her in a long time.
In that moment with her blonde hair trailing behind her, Shikamaru burnt the image of her into his eyes. He'd never considered her a particularly beautiful woman in the past; she'd always been very striking, which held its own appeal.
Now she was beautiful. He couldn't deny that for a second longer.
As he thought about his hope that their daughter inherited his wife's looks rather than his, the blue pulse struck through his back and stopped just in front of his body. He took it as an amusing irony that if he hadn't spent his energy sending her forward so far and they'd moved together, he might have avoided the blast, but there was nothing to do about it now.
Shikamaru had a single thought as his body collapsed to the ground and his life faded away. One of the last conversations he'd had with his father had been one before they'd left for the Chuunin Exams in Sunagakure. He'd expressed his disinterest in the whole process and his father had in turn expressed concern over his son's motivations in life. Shikaku had then given his son the one piece of advice that only now did he really understand what he was talking about. Even now, he could have sworn he could see the spectre of his scar-faced father standing in front of him, giving him the same sarcastic that his son had adopted.
We might live in troublesome times with difficult choices to make, but that can never excuse inaction. Once we find something worth fighting for, it becomes the simplest thing to lay down your life. That's what being a man is about.
At least, that's how Shikamaru liked to remember that final interaction. Wondering what his father will say when he sees him again, Shikamaru hit the ground with a smirk on his face and a satisfied look in his eyes.
Fleeing further into the Land of Fire, Temari held her daughter close to her chest and begged her legs for more energy as she gritted her teeth painfully. Try as she might to remain strong, she couldn't help the tears from slowly dripping down her face and onto the top of her daughter's head. To her eternal relief, the little baby had been asleep for the majority of the escape and hadn't seen her mother in such a disturbed state.
"I'll never forgive that bastard…" she said through her tears, knowing that he was gone. She told him time and time again that she didn't want any heroics from him, but their marriage had always been full of surprises.
Temari kept running. It was all she could do.
Author's Note:
I'm not expecting many people to 'enjoy' this chapter. This has been in the works for a long time and was always going to happen in the story. I wanted there to be an enemy has an 'almost won' scenario going into the final battle and this was the most devastating thing I could think of. I came very close to killing Temari and their child at the end, but it would have broken my heart to do it so I kept them alive.
For clarification, here is a list of named characters and villages that were killed in this devastation:
The Raikage, Mabui, Fu and Nara Shikamaru, Baki.
Kumogakure, Kirigakure and Sunagakure, the Iwagakure resistance and various smaller villages with shinobi inside them.
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.