Chapter 82: Rolling Stones

Kitsuchi was a man that prided himself on his ability to keep this head level on his shoulders in trying times. Alternately, if this were going perfectly, against all possible odds, he was also one not to get ahead of himself. His keel was even, especially compared to those that lived closest to him. Be it his wife, father, or daughter, Kitsuchi seemed to be burdened with loved ones whose blood burned too hot for their own good. He was constantly talking one of the three off of an edge that only fell to explosive overreaction and drastic measures that wouldn't be needed in the worst cases.

Watching a man, a single man, bring a grand wall to the ground in a single instant was something that surpassed Kitsuchi's means of level-headedness. How did one properly react to something like that? Did they stand in stunned silence until their minds could properly comprehend the sheer magnitude of chakra prowess to do such a thing? Did they decide to follow the single man with so much power and forget all previous loyalties and personal ties? Was this merely an opportunity to utilize that strength to bring their most heinous enemies to burning defeat in piles of rubble? If the Stone jounin was a betting man, he would safely bet every scrap of wealth he had on each of those possible sentiments pushing through all of his shinobi and countrymen that had stood behind him during that display by the Rain leader. Knowing which one was the correct trail of thought wasn't something within Kitsuchi's grasp, but he knew that all were prevalent.

He knew that those confused thoughts and adrenaline pumping awestruck minds were what initiated the flood of bodies that surged forth toward the rubbled remain of the border wall that lay before them. It was those jolting thoughts that made the joint contingents of Stone and Rain sprint forward with reckless abandon. Who would they have to fear if they were backed by a man that held the power of a god? Who were they to question the second coming of the Sage? When Kitsuchi found himself joining his men in the desperate dash into the Land of Fire, he heard those thoughts be repeated and spread through the accumulations of Rain Shinobi that mixed amongst his own. Their leader was more than the reigning body over their village, but their divine guide that showed them to the paths they would walk.

It was a convincing line of thought.

Kitsuchi found it hard to fight the jittery excitement of blazing a path through the Land of Fire directly to the Leaf Village. Most of the man's exceptions to the war that his father was so dedicated to pursuing all hinged on the losses that they were inevitable to incur to their numbers. Kitsuchi didn't merely see those numbers as faceless, nameless numerals on a scroll once everything was said and done. They were his friends, his friend's friends, and their families. These were people who lived in his own village and people who watched him grow, people who grew up with him, and those he watched grow up. He would always think of his daughter's beautiful smile that she inherited from her mother, the smile that always quirked with more than a little confidence and cockiness, and he would never feel comfortable siding on the side of fighting a war that would put her in danger. Yet, as their way was broken open, as the Leaf held their shinobi to the north to halt the Hidden Cloud Village's march southward, and as they bypassed the Sand army that clearly followed in the south to charge their flank once the assault on the wall begun, it was hard to not turn a feather on the idea of the war. For them, for the Stone and Rain, it wouldn't be a war. It would be a triumph on a scale that no other major village had accomplished. They would be able to remove the Leaf Village from existence.

It was those things that Kitsuchi thought about as they trailed through the countryside of the Land of Fire. None of them had any in depth knowledge of this country's geography, nothing outside knowing its dense woodlands and the major roads that were utilized, and that lack of knowledge kept them following the well-walked path that traveled to the east, to their target village. The Sun of the early evening that hid behind the clouds of the Land of Rain at the start of their charge had begun to wane further when the Stone jounin was made aware of the desperately shadowing Sand army to their south. It was a surprise, to be sure, hearing that the army was already on this side of the border when they broke through. The expectation was for their skirmishes with the Sand to be small-scale and from the opposing side of the wall as their assault began, but they would've been searching for nothing had that been the case. Whatever giddiness had lingered in the man's mind was easily stamped out entirely. Paths were no longer clear and clear threats still remained.

It couldn't be said that they were at too large of a disadvantage. Even in Kitsuchi's mind that sought to determine all the threats to his countrymen, he could acknowledge that the Sand was much less of a threat here than they would be in open fields or their own country's terrain. They, as a whole, knew the geography just as well as the Stone and Rain did. They knew how to fight in the thick, battle muddying branches no better than he did. It was not ideal, but it wasn't the worst case scenario. When night came to pass in truth, when their southern shadows pulled closer and closer to their army, and when scouts made note of gathering bodies that made to cut off their forward charge to the Leaf, Kitsuchi decided it was time to regather the reins of this bumbling army.

He wasn't the Tsuchikage, merely his son that was comparatively disappointing to the greatness that Onoki of Both Scales was within the Stone's great legacy, but he was someone that held the highest command until his father caught up to the main body of the army. It took only one shout to get his men, and many of the Rain shinobi by proxy, to light drift and accumulate to the northern side of the road and into the trees that blanketed the area. Weakening the broad face of their moving swarm of shinobi would weaken any southern charge from the Sand, allowing the weakened face to halt the bulk before a wave of allies came crashing down. It would put many men in an awkward, self-sacrificial position, but that was the cost. Either they all fell, or only those that needed to for the cost of war. Kitsuchi kept a delicate balance on his conscience as he drifted into the trees, but it wasn't anything he was new to.

When they finally met the Sand Shinobi, it hadn't been how he had expected them to come. He had expected thick columns, all bunched in a way that would punch through their gathered shinobi and create chaos for the entirety of the battlefield that they created. It would be easy to do to an army of densely gathered shinobi, but that seemed too simplistic for the desert dwellers. Instead, they met broad face with broad face. They acted as a wide net that pulled their army north, keeping a single minded goal of knocking their army off the road and into the wilderness of the Land of Fire. Kitsuchi was reluctant to admit that he played directly into their hands, too. At first contact, he could've halted the northern drifting line south and break whatever forces they had to contend with, but he didn't. He saw how measly the givings were from the Sand, how thin the numbers were, and he ordered his men forward. Push to the Leaf and they will break along the edge of their spear as they trust forward. What he hadn't expected was for the Sand's givings to grow the further they went, making it much easier to wrangle the tip of the joint army away from their direct course to flow further north. It was inevitable that he was stopped, forced to repel enemies that drove too close to them, forced to push down south instead of straying too far, and forced to re-establish the edge against the wall of Sand shinobi that clashed with them.

"Dad! We need to fight them back south! Let us push them back to the shithole of a village they belong!" Kurotsuchi stayed at Kitsuchi's side during the length of their storming of the Land of Fire, albeit with more than a few complaints drilling into his right ear as she did so. She, like her grandfather, leaped at the prospect of showing the strength of both herself and her village to their enemies. She wanted to meet the Sand in battle the moment they learned of the army's position, fighting every mention of pressing their given advantage by Kitsuchi while making her wants known. It was hard to argue with the girl as she shot a blob of off-white globular mass toward a fan-wielding Sand shinobi in their periphery, allowing the glob of Lava Release chakra mold the man to a nearby tree in a splatter of molten liquid that quickly hardened into rock. Whatever advantage they had with Pain's destruction of the wall was stripped the moment the army of the Sand was able to recover so quickly.

Kitsuchi fell from the trees, the delicate glow of the morning making it easier to navigate the greenery as he flooded his right arm in earth chakra, covering the fist and forearm in a mass of heavy stone that he launched out to meet the sprinting assassin that sought to sneak up on them with tainted weapon in their hand. His fist landed itself in the center of the charging assassin and thrusting the comparatively light body of the assailant into the ground in a sickening crunch that left the body entirely limp. His eyes trailed through the trees around him, taking note of fast flying shinobi that only increased the farther south he looked as the battling drew closer and closer to the dense line of shinobi that still stayed close together. It was an odd meeting of armies. One was being passive with sole focus on a separate objective while the other was extremely aggressive to push them away from that objective. Neither army was focused solely on the other, but more dedicated to the prize of the Leaf. One was allied and the other was the exact opposite. It made for a hard dynamic to get a handle on when the armies met as they did. If Kitsuchi wanted to see these shinobi to their goal, he needed to separate the armies. He needed to reset the board and either break into their goal or retreat and find new ground to battle upon to finally break the Sand to clear their path.

"Get word to as many men to the south as possible," Kitsuchi called through the lines of men that followed him, fresh jounin and other shinobi dedicated to running messages taking in his orders to spread throughout their men, "We retreat north, we put space between us and the Sand, and we build a wall to separate ourselves. Any enemies caught on our side are executed, any of our men caught on their side will have to find themselves a way over or not at all. We must draw our line now!"

Kitsuchi met the burning eyes of his daughter, the excitement painfully obvious in her face as the man finally gave in to her wishes, in a way. It was the right decision, protecting his men, position, and advance. They needed to do it, but he knew that his daughter saw it as an opportunity to strike back at their adversaries. When the front of their line back tracked through the line to spread the order and clear out invading shinobi, the sea of battle began to part as Stone and Rain drifted further and further northward. Kitsuchi shouted and repeated his orders many times over as his chakra surged to clear out fan users, poisonous assassins, and puppeteers from ground that they would declare as their own. Their most proficient Earth Release users joined him and aligned themselves along their army's broad face, opening their palms to the uneven ground on the forest.

"Earth Style: Mighty Rock Wall Jutsu!" The chorus of Stone shinobi that all called out the same jutsu in a long, echoing bellow filled the air around them. For a few precious moments, nothing happened that was visible to the naked eye, but Kitsuchi knew better. His palms felt the warm river of chakra flood into the ground and dig deep into the earth. When the proper amount of earth chakra settled within the many layers of dirt and sediment, a deep rumble began to dance under their feet. Leaves danced to a terrified rhythm as the ground several yards in front of the line of Earth Release users cracked and shifted in a far-reaching line that served to cover the entirety of their army's broad face. Surely there would be stragglers, there would be leftovers of Sand shinobi, and there would be men that were lost in this attempt to re-establish themselves, but it would save more lives than it took from them. When the towering wall of stone shot from the ground with the roots of trees being caught within its surface to decorate the wall with many fitting pieces of greenery.

"Clear our side of our enemies! Put space between ourselves and the wall! Then, begin the charge again toward the Leaf!" He shouted orders that were hung onto closely by the shinobi from the Land of Earth and felt less thoroughly by their allies in the Rain. Still, there was argument to the orders as a flurry of activity broke out again, but it wasn't everyone else that he was worried about. Kurotsuchi's excited eyes drilled into his own, silently asking for his permission to join their comrades in the hunt of the Sand shinobi. Lips pressed hard into themselves as Kitsuchi fought down the immediate reaction to deny the request and gave a slow, shallow nod to his daughter that flew off in a burst of speed.

He facilitated the continued backward flow of the armies, putting a healthy distance between their border upon the battlefield. The silence was appreciated by the jounin, the lack of aggressive pushes by foreign shinobi caring little about charging directly into the thick of an enemy army. Minutes passed and the wall was no longer in direct view through the trees, making them hidden from the army that sat on the other side of the wall with a healthy level of comfort, and he called the moving to halt once again. Just as Kitsuchi was about to order their army to continue forth and direct themselves to the Leaf, a heavy pressure of chakra filled the air. A pressure of chakra that sat on their side of the wall, one that didn't belong to anyone that he knew. His back tightened, his blood rushed through his veins, and the long-time jounin prepared himself to face the threat to their north, but when his eyes fell on that threat, all that blood sunk through his falling heart and stomach.

The leaves of the trees they dwelled beneath provided gaps in their coverage to peek into the sky above, the brightening morning provided the light to see distances far further than any other portion of their battling, and there was nothing else to impede the visage of the the high-reaching body of the slug that toward over Kitsuchi and his men. It wasn't directly next to them, for if it were they would likely be safer hiding within its long shadow, but it was close enough to be known by the massive creature and they were close enough to see the body that stood atop its head. They weren't supposed to be a part of this. None of them were. One defected as an S-ranked criminal that hid throughout the continent and the other two were only associated with the village by label. None of the Legendary Three had taken part in a Leaf Village skirmish since the Second Great Shinobi War, and yet here was Tsunade Senju at the dawn of the fourth.

Ideas poured through his mind, thoughts of how to evade and escape were passing behind his eyes at rapid speeds, but none of them were worthwhile to truly consider. Did they flee toward the village that was their target, now keeping an army and a Sannin at their back? Do they charge forward and strike at the slug that looks more a mountain than a living being in hopes that they remove one of their threats while opening their backs to the other? Splitting their men was equal folly, a mere acceptance of their demise, and that left only one possibility left at their disposal. They could retreat, falling back into a foothold in the Land of Fire and turn this rushed assault into a true meeting of shinobi armies. They wasted their chance at striking directly at the Leaf Village, used up the opportunity given by Pain, but they still had the numbers and they had the benefit of being packed for a drawn out assault on a border wall. A longer, more patient assault could be afforded, and right now it was demanded.

If Kitsuchi hadn't already considered and decided on a retreat as the large white and blue slug scraped harshly across the ground toward them in an echoing timber, he would have when the streams of pale green liquid came pouring from the slug's mouth. It came down like rain. It came down like rain, if rain was thick, stringy globs that burned violently at the touch. For whatever reason, the trees around them were spared, the burning liquid sitting harmlessly on leaf and bark as if it truly was nothing more than water, but the screams of pain that echoed out betrayed that harmlessness quickly. Kitsuchi's wide eyes identified one of the many voices that screamed out only a few bodies removed from his position, watching as the Stone shinobi scraped at his forehead with desperate clawing hands that did nothing to calm the hissing on his skin. An oblong portion of skin that was covered in the pale green goo quickly burned from the light tan of the shinobi's natural skin to a bright pink and then into a deep red. It was an audible burn that somehow was able to be heard over the screams of the man as the deep red gave way to a stark and eerie white. Nobody moved to aid the men, the risk of getting the liquid on themselves too big of a deterrent when paired with morbid fascination, The man fell to his knees, keeping his head toward the sky as another level of pained howls ripped through his throat when the hissing took a deeper grovel at the white of bone that grew more visible on the man's head.

There was no stopping it from digging through and into the skull of the Stone shinobi. An acid that left nothing but a heap of burning dead men in its path.

"Fall back, now! West and north at full speed! Nobody is to approach Tsunade Senju, nobody is to initiate with the Sand! We fall back and regroup!" Kitsuchi was lucky in a very twisted way that Tsunade Senju appeared on the battlefield. Deep within him, even if she hadn't shown herself, the man knew that attacking further was a hasty decision. It was one that would lose them more than they already had when they didn't have to approach so desperately. They had a larger army, a passionate army that was dedicated to their cause, and they didn't fight an army that was familiar with their battleground. If it was the army of the Leaf Village that hid amongst the trees, the Leaf that they faced as they slept under the leaves and above the roots, Kitsuchi would feel safe until the entirety of their army was broken for his own to find peaceful rest. They fought desert dwellers, though. A Sannin, as oppressive as their strength was, didn't shift the scales too far one way or another now that they knew what to expect. War was strategy and man power together. The Stone and Rain had one already, and it was up to him to ensure that they had the other.

Kitsuchi pushed through the line of shinobi, dragging many along with him as he tried to pull eyes from the slowly, ever so slowly, approaching slug that seemed intent on forcing them back south. It only took a few minutes, a few shouts, and a few heavy shoves to get the men around him to follow along. There was a sense of frustration, a palpable tension when Kitsuchi's orders were finally understood. A retreat was always something that brought a weight to the morale of an army, an admittance of defeat always sat heavy on the shoulders of proud soldiers, but that was something he could address later. Now, Kitsuchi only continued forward as they separated themselves from the battlefield that they initiated. They put space between their own constructed wall, they moved across the wide face of the mountainous slug behind them, and they delicately danced around the raining acid that caught more victims in their retreat.

Their retreat was much faster than their progression through the night. The halting that came with the clamoring attacks of the Sand slowed down their progress immeasurably, but when they were in the dash of a retreat there was no such halting. The Sun made its presence fully known as the midday burned high above them when they found purchase in their retreat. It was originally planned to hide in the shade of the wall, a section that wasn't sent to rubble, and clearing out the manned battlements to find security with a stone curtain at their back, but when the armies of both Stone and Rain stumbled upon a walled town that was only a few leagues from that wall, a town that had a humble curtain of stone surrounding itself and a matching garrison that manned it. When the trees broke for a wide clearing that surrounded this town and dark eyes settled on what their armies stumbled upon, Kitsuchi knew what had to be done. They needed a foothold, an outlet in the Land of Fire to fall back to, and they needed a sense of security after a hasty retreat.

"Clear it. This is where we'll establish ourselves." Kitsuchi spoke out to a Rain jounin that stood a few paces to his left, a jounin that knew exactly what the man was ordering without further words being needed. As they were, the army around Kitsuchi still waited for the bulk of their shinobi to pour in behind them. He took a fast retreat without taking precious time to properly gather all that they needed and only a portion followed him closely enough to be in their immediate area, but that portion was more than enough to clear a town of civilians.

Kitsuchi had to harden himself for such an order. Some men could make an order without batting an eye, understanding that it was for the good of their men and leaving it at that. Kitsuchi always had to fight back his conscience that reminded him of the innocents that would fall because of a conflict between shinobi. He had to remind himself that extreme circumstances were needed in times of war, but that never made him feel better. How could it? The best it would ever do was distract himself from the vile that he ordered. It kept his face even as he watched a few dozen men of assorted colors dashing through the clearing and making swift contact with the guards that stood themselves outside the gates of the town. It made it easier to watch the short swords sliding between the plate of the samurai before high-flying leaps carried them to the top of the wall to take out the guards on rotation. The few dozen men were eventually out of sight as they flowed into the city to remove all other guards and samurai that would take exception to foreign armies occupying their city. It wouldn't take much longer, Kitsuchi knew. Once the guards were put down, it would only take the deaths of a few of the more outspoken and hearty civilians to be silenced before the entirety of the town was brought to a heel.

The Sun had barely begun to set from its high hang above them when Kitsuchi saw one of his countrymen wave at the rest of them from the gate they had intruded upon. With a single call, a wave of bodies poured from the treeline in a slow, drawn out stroll that relayed just how much their coming rest was needed. Shinobi could push themselves to ridiculous extremes, and in the heat of battle there would be no mind being paid to their physical or mental weariness if they were still trying to keep themselves alive. The moment those same shinobi were pulled from that battlefield, when that adrenaline and rushing chakra soothed within their system and the weight of their expenditures fell upon them, it was a sore sight to see. While he had little long-form exchanges with their adversaries, Kitsuchi himself felt the mental and physical tax of leading the Rain and Stone men across a countryside and then furiously back in a retreat to this town. His body felt like a dead weight behind the straightened back and forward looking head. His appearance wouldn't report the same, but the jounin was aching for rest to be upon him.

That rest wouldn't come immediately, however. Even if the civilian town they had secured was a larger one, boasting several story structures at its heart with many branching roads to carry traffic throughout the spiderwebbed infrastructure, that didn't mean it had enough space and luxury for an entire army. Walking through the worn cobbled roads, roads that showed more dirt atop the inlaid stone than true hard stone at their feet, it was clear that the town was old. If Kitsuchi was to guess, he'd suspect that it was one of the first true successful settlements in the area. Many of the roads and passageways narrowed the closer one got to the centersquare of the town, making it easy to assume that it was no more than a humble village that catered to an unexpected boom of population. Buildings grew to several stories, it was true, but those buildings were home to marketplaces that still showed the roots of what this place once was with skeletons of the shacks that were with the addition of more atop. The shinobi of their large gathering would fill up the housing that was available, close and centered to each other for general safety, and the rest would have to fill out in the treeless clearing that surrounded the town. They would have to stay near the walls with bright fires, keeping visibility between all their ranks at night within foreign lands.

Kitsuchi, and several other jounin that took the initiative to join him, directed the construction of the camps that surrounded the whole of the squared town by the time the Sun sunk into the horizon. They had groups close to the walls, burning bright fires from the brush found in the nearby forestry, and established watch schedules that included both from the walls around the town to the camps outside the walls. Scouts remained both inside the walls and outside, those on the inside patrolling the roads to keep an eye on any conglomerating civilians that wished to make their situation harder and the others on the outside keeping them mindful of the enemies that still lingered beyond their newly acquired walls.

As the furious, single-minded focus of establishing themselves within the town burned through Kitsuchi's brain, it was impossible to not acknowledge the single face he had needed to see since the town had been found. He had yet to see his daughter since giving her the permission to clear their ranks of any straggling Sand shinobi on their side of the Rock Wall. Granted, she would likely be in one of the last groups that caught up to the swiftly retreating accumulation of Stone and Rain ninja. As the hours passed, as Kitsuchi looked upon shinobi both familiar and unfamiliar, shinobi of his lands and others, he had yet to locate his daughter. There was too much to be done to simply desert the duties he had taken up to search low and high for his daughter. She was a jounin of the Stone Village, not only was she competent to care for herself, but it was to be expected. When things slowed around him, when there was a sense of cohesion within and just outside their town's walls, Kitsuchi was finally able to break away from the delicate and detail oriented planning of fortified camp construction to find the one person that stood above the several hundred around him.

Kitsuchi's search immediately brought him to the outside of the rough-stone wall that curtained their base of operations, the man immediately knowing that he would've been pointed to or would have already spotted his daughter in his frenetic wanderings of the roads. The jounin stepped through the camps with his eyes dancing through the dozens that amassed together in each barely circular camp that centered around a fire. He saw the exhausted, the fatigued, and the wounded all shared in conversation veiled with enthusiasm. Easy smiles passed around to others, gaudy chuckles that were unwarranted echoed out, and playful jokes and japes were thrown around, but all of them kept a poorly hidden melancholy underneath them. Friends died, family died, and comrades died throughout the night and morning in a day that lasted many. As the night settled again, shinobi that knew themselves to still be deep within the thick of a war used their time of rest to cover that truth with hearty banter. It sent a wave of mixed and spiraling emotions as Kitsuchi went from one camp to the next, keeping an eye for shortened dark locks, sharp eyes, and a cocky smile, as he saw the forced smiles and the dwindled number of their army. It wasn't a deep chunk, the majority of their army still stood amongst their fatigue and injuries, but they were lesser than they were.

Even strolling across camps became tiresome in Kitsuchi's deep need for slumber. After the first several gatherings the jounin passed through, Kitsuchi's eyes began to sink and the main focus of his gaze were the bright beacon of light that each camp was, making it easy for the occasional stumbling step to have a guiding light forward. Each pass through became more and more hurried, there was a decent chance that with every face his eyes half-heartedly tried to identify incited a deeper worry within the creases of his face and the burly jounin was soon a pinch-faced fool. That fact didn't slow him down, neither did the confused glances of the ninja that he passed, but what did halt him in his tracks was a single laugh that he picked out through many others. When he start his search, Kitsuchi exited the town from the gate opposite to the one the army entered, as he was already next to that gate when he took his leave, and now that he was near the first gate he past through, it was safe to say that almost half of their entire army had gone by him. Hundreds of laughs and chuckles rang through his ears, but none so distinct as the high-pitched chirp of his own daughter. His head snapped at the noise, suddenly wide eyes cutting through the youthful faces of Stone shinobi who all laughed just as his daughter had, but they only fell on the single most important face in the bunch.

.

"Kurotsuchi!" It wasn't a conscious call that came from his overly excited voice, but it was one that was needed nonetheless. The thumping ache that had settled behind his chest cavity had finally calmed when their gaze met and the girl gave him a warm smile. Not a smirk, not a lopsided smile that displayed her confident nature, but a genuine smile as she excused herself from shinobi that he recognized from years ago when his baby was still a baby learning the fundamentals of shinobi life. Kitsuchi stumbled forward to envelope the girl in a bear hug that lifted her from the ground the moment she was in range, earning an annoyed squeal in return and a heavy thump to the chest from a sturdy fist.

"What the hell are you doing, Dad? We're in the middle of camp." Kitsuchi only smiled down at the pinched eyebrows of his daughter, joy far outweighing the annoyance of his daughter in this moment, but he spared her a second hug while there were still eyes and light-hearted jests being sent their way.

"What? A father can't be excited to finally find his daughter? I've been looking for hours." Rhetorical questions mixed with genuine sentiment. The weight that lifted from his shoulders only got replaced by further tiredness as his mind relaxed and any propriety was now far from his mind. "Come on, I saved a room within the walls near mine. I can't save it for too much longer. We need all the lodgings we can get."

Even if he commanded the Stone army, which in turn bought him the respect of the Rain shinobi that followed them at their leader's behest, Kitsuchi wasn't a Kage. He didn't have the authority to order things his way and only his way, that would only spread unneeded conflict and paint a bright target on his back. Saving a room hinged on the fact that it would be used by a jounin that deserved a spot of comfort, something that he would mightily claim for his own daughter. Despite his words, Kitsuchi watched Kurotsuchi look back at the group of shinobi that he subtly extracted her from, the conglomerating ninja continuing their jovial talk with big smiles and cheers as they spoke between each other, and he knew that she wanted to stay. She wanted to bask in the light-hearted energy that she found upon her return, whenever that was. Still, despite those wants, Kitsuchi saw Kurotsuchi give a relenting nod before they headed toward the nearby gate into the town.

Now that it was night, now that they left the bright surroundings of the camps that were laid before the wall around them, Kitsuchi and Kurotsuchi were greeted with a heavy darkness. There were no late night strolls or gatherings that one would traditionally see in a town during the summer. No festivities were had and no peacefully enjoyed nights accompanied this town that was now infiltrated by foreign invaders. All that gave visible passage to the roads that Kitsuchi led his daughter through her from guards that continued their patrols and the fires that lit the lanterns around their designated accommodations. Their walk was silent until they entered and climbed the stairs in a humble inn that creaked and croaked with every step they took upward, nothing was said until Kitsuchi stopped at a pair of rooms that sat just across from each other on opposite sides of the hall. Before either entered their rooms, Kitsuchi wrapped his daughter in another hug. It wasn't as mighty as the previous one, it was a hug that she had a chance to properly reciprocate in and a hug that brought a delicate smile to the man's lips.

"I'm proud of you, Kurotsuchi. You handled yourself well, just as I knew you would." The man separated them, putting his hands on her shoulders as he caught his daughter's gaze, giving a second of pause so he knew she was focused on what he was going to say. "Tomorrow, after rest has been properly given, we will continue this war. It won't be as today was. It won't be quick and it won't be kind. Prepare yourself, for this is just the start."

He watched his daughter's gaze harden in her resolution, a resolution that was backed by the single jerk of a nod. Kitsuchi couldn't help but notice all the ways she looked like her mother in that moment, all grown up and far removed from being his baby girl. When Kurotsuchi left to sleep into the bed he had saved for her, the only thing on the man's mind was hope. A single hope.

It was the hope that, no matter how ugly the war turned, his daughter would still be there to grow into the fine woman she was coming to be.

A slight change of pace, one that is decidedly slower than the one that had been set by the last few chapters, but I think that it's a good thing. A chapter to take a breather and gather ourselves for a moment. Next chapter is definitely back into some shit, but for now this will have to do. I wanted this chapter to show a little perspective on things. Given the story of Naruto, and the fact that the primary characters are from one place essentially, I think its important to note that each of the other villages are no different. There is no good or bad side when it comes to villages at war, not really. The shinobi in one side are people that live lives akin to those on the otherside.

Of course, then you also have a side that has created monsters into an army and a group that hunts a breed of human weapons for their own plans, but that's context that will be slid to the side for the sake of this point.

Be back on Sunday, I believe. Preferably before the all-star game.