Sakura threw herself forward alongside Hatake, Maito and Lee. Kusanagi was drawn and the senbon was blocked, the black eyes set in Momochi's accomplice's face staring at her from the other side of the clashed weapons.
"Sakura-chan?" The gender ambiguous kid said. She was miffed to realise they were still a tiny bit taller than her. She scowled.
"Kakashi-san, you saved us!" New Kid cried, naked relief in his voice.
"It's a little early to be celebrating, all of these guys are extremely dangerous."
"I knew I'd be fighting someone but I didn't know it'd end up being you, Kakashi." Momochi said. "I should've been sent to hell after you finished me on that bridge. Next thing I know I'm standing next to Haku and I thought something was off. I guess this really isn't heaven."
"No this is the real world. And none of you belong here." Hatake confirmed.
Momochi and the Accomplice's face's grew troubled. "Kakashi please," Momochi said even as he released a monstrous amount of killing intent. "Stop us."
Hatake made a hand sign and they leapt back to their main forces, the other three carrying an ambush squad member as they did.
"Don't hold back. Stop me. Whatever it takes, I'm already dead. My humanity is dead." Momochi said and the killing intent he was releasing doubled.
Hatake pushed up the brim of his hitai-ate.
"General Kakashi, the man from the hidden stone has a bloodline limit, blast element. He's Gari, a former member of the blasting corps! And the woman is Pakura she uses the sand village's scorching element, please be careful!"
The mist rolled in.
"Nothing but bloodline limits." Hatake said. "Group the battle squadrons around the sensor ninjas! Everyone else cover them from 3, 6, 9 and 12 o'clock in a Manji formation! Zabuza can detect his targets through sound alone!"
"Thickening fog, visibility getting worse by the second, this must be the hidden mist technique." Said Maito at Sakura's back.
"Watch your backs, last time he went for this formation's only blind spot, the centre." Sakura said.
She grimaced. The number of allies made this difficult. With less people she could pinpoint the enemies movement by sound and use stealth techniques to attack them, but with this large a battalion it was almost impossible to track single individuals. She was just as likely to attack an ally than an enemy.
Screams rang out from next to them, a formation going down to the combined efforts of Zabuza and Haku. Pakura and Gari attacking the far sides of their advance.
Zabuza turned, heading to back up Pakura whilst Haku headed towards Gari. Kakashi and Sakura rushed after Zabuza whilst the green pair headed for Haku.
Kakashi blocked Zabuza's kunai and Sakura moved in with a swipe of her chokutō, forcing Zabuza to duck backwards. They worked as a pair, one ducking in just as the other finished attacking, keeping Zabuza on the defensive and preventing him from gaining any ground. Sakura knew Kakashi was focused on the war as a whole, developing strategies to work around the four enemies rather than just the individual battle, so she worked harder than usual to cover his openings.
Then, Pakura and Gari member disappeared behind the others, Zabuza soon disengaging entirely to join them. Sakura and Hatake settled back into the ranks. A sense of foreboding pressing the oxygen from the air. The mist thinned to reveal six coffins, out of which stepped six intimidating figures.
"The last generation of the seven swordsmen of the hidden mist!"
Momochi lifted a half-broken Kubikiribōchō.
"Is team Ensui ready yet?" Hatake asked.
"Almost…"
"Maki from the sand, what about you?"
"Ready and waiting!"
"Hit them all at once! Buy as much time as possible!"
The shinobi launched an attack, a massive volley of kunai and shuriken and ninjutsu hitting the seven figures. They deflected the majority of them in a flashing of movement, the rest passing through them only for any damage to simply reform as if it never happened.
Edo tensei. Unlimited chakra. Unable to be injured. The only way to stop them was to bind their movements or seal their souls.
The middle one pulled out a massive scroll, unsealing it to give four of them their legendary swords. Five out of seven of the legendary swordsmen now had the swords. Sakura grinned.
"The fog's getting thicker, I can't see a thing. And with their silent killing techniques we can't use our ears either!"
"We need to do something about the mist first or the army will be in pretty bad shape."
"General Kakashi! The shadow mimic is complete!"
"Good! Ensui loosen the binding and let me move as I want!" Hatake said, moving through the hand signs for a Chidori. "Yamanaka Santa you'll use the mind-body switch and trade places with me. Use your sensing abilities to locate the enemy and get my body as close as possible, preferably behind them. We'll hit Zabuza first, as soon as you detect him, release the technique and send me back to my body. And I'll fight him so that our shadows converge! The moment I do that, Ensui, you combine the shadow stitch with the shadow mimic, raise the power and bind him completely! Maki will rush in and immobilise Zabuza completely with the cloth binding techniques.
"Sakura, you'll shadow me with your full amount of stealth. Cover my back if something goes wrong."
"Understood, taicho." Sakura said, echoed by the affirmatives of those behind them.
"Let's roll." Hatake said, sprinting forward as he was overtaken by the mind body switch jutsu. Sakura dropped her signature to nothing and settled into the familiar glassy feeling of the transparency jutsu, melting into the mist and padding along silently behind the man.
Momochi was attacking the left flank with a now surprisingly whole Kubikiribōchō. Apparently the sword could regenerate itself. They moved around him, Hatake returning to his body to streak towards the enemy's back with a Chidori, the accomplice streaking into his path and getting hit with it instead.
Haku grabbed Kakashi's arm to hold him in place. Zabuza twisted to swing and hit him through the kid but Sakura's sword was already slicing through Zabuza's arms, sending the massive cleaver crashing to the ground. She shoved Kusanagi through the dead man's chest from behind for good measure as Kakashi stepped forward, connecting the shadows.
"ENSUI NOW!" Hatake roared and Momochi was bound by the shadow possession. Sakura and Hatake both leapt away from the bodies. "Now Maki!"
The woman rushed in, immobilising the pair in cloth and taking them into the back lines.
The mist cleared. Three of the swordsmen were before them; the fat one, one with lightning down their blades and the very skinny one.
"I'll take lightning." Sakura offered. A Shinobi from behind her stepped forward.
"That's the boltsword 'fang' and it's wielder Ringo Ameyuri! They channel a massive amount of lightning energy down their blades, one hit and your dead!" He said. Sakura turned and smiled.
"Don't worry, those kinds of rules don't apply to me."
"Right, Sakura will deal with the lightning wielder, Maki back her up, we'll work on holding off the others until she's sealed."
"Understood." Sakura said and Hatake leaped towards the enemies, Kubikiribōchō in hand and shouting orders at the surrounding shinobi. Sakura looked at Maki. "Stay behind me. When I give the signal, you immobilise her." The sand-nin nodded and Sakura leapt into the fray.
She blocked the swing of the twin swords moments before they hit an ally, Sakura's feet firmly planted as she channeled the lightning chakra down Kusanagi and into the ground. It was a little more difficult with shoes on, to the point she wouldn't be able to focus enough to keep her storm transformation circling so she had to fight without it's benefits, but she would manage.
Kusanagi did not slice through the swords, unfortunately, but Sakura hadn't really been expecting it to. If the swords were the kind that could be sliced through without ridiculous amounts of chakra involved then they wouldn't be legendary.
The lightning wielder's eyes widened in surprise and she disengaged, leaping backwards before coming at Sakura from a different angle. Entire body thrown into a spin as she attempted to break through Sakura's defences.
Sakura ducked one blade and caught the other with her own, sending lightning down one leg and into the ground as the other smashed into the woman's stomach with a pulse of pressurised chakra, sending her flying back and ripping her stomach to pieces.
The residual buzz of the lightning trailed through Sakura's chakra channels, something she could feel as other in her system. Curious, Sakura flickered her signature to match the woman's and she felt the lingering energy merge seamlessly into and energise her own.
Interesting.
Sakura launched after the woman, keeping Maki behind her as she ducked another swipe of blades and blocked another, this time keeping her signature identical to the dead body's and circulating the lightning. Letting it build up with each hit and push Sakura faster and faster. The dead Kiri-nin moved not unlike a Hyuuga with swords, her fighting style based on her lightning becoming a combination of defence and attack. She would form a circle of power that would be impossible to get through at the same time it would smash through almost any defence.
Once Sakura crippled her ability to do such her swords became just swords with weird points on them. The woman was still a difficult opponent, her kenjutsu beyond Sakura's own abilities, but the more she absorbed the lighting the faster she became and the more Sakura outstripped the Edo tensei.
She weaved and dodged around the woman, moving in to clash swords and moving back out again in the natural rhythm of a fight. She kept enough attention on her surroundings to ensure there were no immediate threats to herself or Maki but for the most part she focused on the woman. Hatake would keep the others off their backs. With every clash she gained ground. Every passing minute she found another foothold.
Sakura watched and fought until she spotted an opening, the enemy jumping backwards off a rise and giving Sakura just enough room to slice behind her guard, cutting off the woman's hands. At the same time Sakura pulled a kunai from her pouch, channeled all of the built up lightning chakra into it and slammed it into the dead woman's chest.
The Edo tensei shook, racked with a seizure from the lightning and temporarily frozen in place.
"Now Maki!" Sakura said and the woman jumped out from behind her, wrapping the lightning riddled body in nonconductive cloth. It was taken to the back lines and Sakura looked around at the battlefield.
Somehow, Hatake and New Kid had managed to seal the fat one during the fight, the battalion now working together to fight the tall one. The sun was significantly lower in the sky. It would be dark soon. Sakura watched the fight with keen eyes, taking the opportunity to recover her breath and observe how the tall one fought before jumping into the fray.
"Are you going to take the swords?" A shinobi Sakura vaguely remembered from hanging out with the Kumogakure group asked.
"No." She shook her head. "I have Kusanagi." She gestured to her sheathed chokutō with a thumb. "And I don't have the chakra reserves to handle them, anyway."
"Don't mind if I do, then." The man said, grin shark like. Sakura snorted good-naturedly.
She pulled her nature transformation around her and headed into the battle.
The tall one used a sword shaped like a needle and what looked like a massive spool of ninja wire to move through masses of people and 'stitch' them together, following that up by using the groups of bodies as battering rams to break through peoples defences and 'stitch' the next group. At the same time he was carefully surrounding parties with ninja wire, using it as seamlessly as if it were an extension of his own body.
Sakura watched as a loop of wire threatened to behead an oblivious shinobi and threw a kunai at the string, expecting it to slice through. Instead- though it did knock the loop off course- the kunai glanced off the metal wire and it continued to behead the shinobi. Likely much more painfully than it would have been due to Sakura's interference.
She sighed. It would have to be shuriken, then.
Sakura was very, very good with shuriken. It was essentially a basic requirement for being a shinobi. But she was no Uchiha. This would be difficult.
She jumped forward and used Kusanagi to knock aside the flying sword from where it had been about to skewer a pair of the cannon fodder. The tall man pulled in the string and the sword whipped back to his hand, grabbing just in time to deflect a blow from Kubikiribōchō.
Sakura moved forward as Kakashi tried to drive the man back, adding in to his efforts and pushing the tall man back towards a gap in between two sections of rubble. They moved in tandem, blocking whilst one attacked, dodging whilst the other boxed him in and the man was forced ever so slowly backwards, one step at a time.
It was when he was at the mouth of the gap that things started to go wrong.
The man, rather than retreat inwards or upwards, took Kubikiribōchō to the chest and pulled the string taut. Sakura had already launched a trio of shuriken at the line of string, two catching and slamming it into the ground, but she could tell it wasn't going to hold. Kakashi was committed entirely to the swing, an effort to force the enemy back completely. She grabbed his elbow and started covering his chakra in preparation to flicker them, despite the massive drain it would cost her reserves and possible internal bleeding.
Fortunately, just before the shuriken were pulled out of the ground and they were both either decapitated or Sakura potentially killed herself over a stupid mistake, two green blurs descended from the sky. Lee landed on her shuriken, pinning the wire into the ground and ensuring the tall man's efforts were fruitless.
Gai appeared above the enemy, smashing a leg into his chest and throwing him into the gap.
"Now!" Yelled Kakashi and two teams of cannon fodder slammed their hands on either side of the rock, the walls closing in on the tall man and opening again to reveal a cocoon of stone. "Maki!"
The Suna woman swooped in in a twirl of cloth and covered the stone, wrapping sealing paper around the lump.
"Thank you both." Sakura said with a sigh of relief, sheathing Kusanagi and sweeping keen eyes over the battlefield. It was a minefield of smashed rocks and broken trees, the ground almost unrecognisable from when they had started, littered with bodies and injured cannon fodder alike.
Sakura… was not enjoying this. The fighting was fun to a point, she liked working with Hatake, but there was no satisfaction in it. The enemies didn't die. It was like crushing endless paper dolls. There was none of the visceral gratification of gore and violence.
It was simply never ending nonsense.
Night had fallen. The moon was almost full. It bathed the bloody ground in a beautiful silver light. It was making her nostalgic for some of her favourite ANBU missions.
"The scorching element and blast element users have been sealed. The others appear to have retreated." Maito said.
"They withdrew?" Hatake said incredulously. "They're hardly a traditional army, it's not like they need to sleep."
"Someone is controlling the edo tensei, they probably have human needs." Sakura pointed out. "Though they could simply be regrouping for a more focused attack."
"We'll regroup, reaffirm the line and set up a watch." Hatake said and they nodded, the useful members moving straight to obey whilst the cannon fodder mostly seemed to be milling about and looking shellshocked.
Sakura spared a short moment to wonder what an average chūnin's mission schedule was like, to make the sight of a massacre so shocking to them. Then, she followed Hatake back to the central point of the battalion.
Hopefully she might get some sleep that night.
Sakura did not get any sleep that night.
The three remaining edo tensei had switched to guerrilla tactics with the coming of the night, hitting a weak point in their defences and causing as much damage as possible before they would disappear. Always aiming for cannon fodder, going for numbers over quality of kills.
Sakura didn't even see one of them the entire night, but she had ended up patrolling along the line to try and prevent the attacks, and they managed to slow them by placing someone relatively threatening every two hundred metres or so.
The night was long and filled with endless, pointless chasing of un-killable targets. At least it gave her reserves plenty of time to recover.
When dawn broke and a massive explosion broke the line, Sakura was almost relieved.
She made it to the site of the explosions to see a man with a terrible beard wielding a sword covered in a seemingly endless amount of explosion tags. He was mowing through the forces like a madman through butter, exploding the cannon fodder with ease. He was the only edo tensei here.
Sakura concentrated on her hearing a bit. And there were the two others. She should not expect backup.
Her eyes traced over the available shinobi.
"You!" She yelled, pointing at a group of eight allies, they jolted and looked up at her. "Throw everything you have at him! Kunai, shuriken, rocks, ninjutsu! I don't care! Just slow him down! Spread around the place so he can't kill you all at once! Tell everyone you come across to do the same and that any earth users should do their best to fuck up his footing!" They scrambled to obey, running in seperate directions and spreading the orders among the living members of the defence.
"And you!" She pointed at a guy carrying large scrolls of cloth. "Can you seal him?!"
"Yes Ma'am!"
"Right! I'm going to pin him down, wait for my signal!" The man nodded and she jumped into action, forcing her nature transformation into overdrive.
Her thought's were whirling as she leapt towards him, watching the sword swing and the symbols on the explosive tags. She sprinted and ducked under the blade, avoiding touching it completely, and it swung back around almost instantly, the sharp edge once again being aimed for her.
There was no explosion.
She blocked the edge with a kunai and the man instantly leapt away, Sakura watching with wide eye as a trio of tags detached themselves from the sword, glowing brightly. She flickered away just as the tags exploded.
"Alright." She hummed, forcing her storm chakra to speed up once again and throwing herself at the terribly bearded man.
Sakura got through three swings of the blade, not managing to land a hit in return, before she was forced to flicker away again. The man wasn't that fast on his feet, unable to keep up with her when she backed away, but his arms were monstrously strong and he was able to halt and change the direction of his swings in a heartbeat. It made avoiding the weapon, and hence the explosions, whilst getting close enough to deal damage almost impossible.
She threw herself back into the fray, this time noticing with some satisfaction some weapons were being thrown, forcing the guy to either take the hits and slow down from the damage or dodge them and slow down the swings towards her. The man mostly chose to dodge, and as a result Sakura managed to get in a palm to the ribs, sending him skidding backwards as his chest was blown out.
She tired to sweep under his guard and get in a hit to his arm, but the man switched the directions of his swing at the last second, forcing Sakura to block the blade with a kunai and flicker backwards again when the explosive tags were set off. The arm that had been forced to block was aching. The man's monstrous strength threatened to dislocate a limb if she wasn't careful.
She pushed back on the offensive. Her nature transformation spinning faster and faster. It was a mixed blessing with this guy. On the one hand, she became continuously faster the longer she wasn't forced to use a body flicker which meant she could avoid more hits, but on the other the guy was extremely adept at reading her movements. The longer she spent fighting him the harder he became to fight, she was getting faster but he seemed to be getting smarter at an even faster rate.
She had been forced to flicker four more times. He definitely understood the nature of her technique by now. Sakura pushed the storm chakra around her in dizzying blurs as she leapt back in. She had a plan, but she needed one of the cannon fodder to pull through. Right now the man was being mildly annoyed by the rain of weaponry rather than actually inconvenienced at all.
Sakura couldn't step back to take the time to try out another approach without him turning to continue killing the cannon fodder and hence potentially loosing them the war (because for all that the cannon fodder were mostly useless against the extremely heavy hitters they've been pinned with, there was a reason they'd been brought to this war, there were purposes they would serve) and she couldn't gain any ground until someone got lucky and made an opening for her.
Right now all she could do was make herself suitably dangerous enough to absorb the guy's full attention whilst being as economical with her chakra and energy use as possible. Maybe useful reinforcements would eventually arrive.
Dodge. Dodge. Swing. Dodge. Roll. Flicker.
Swipe. Duck. Dodge. Dodge. Dodge. Duck. Flicker.
Roll. Swing. Flicker.
Dodge. Duck. Duck. Jump. Dodge. Dodge. Swipe. Dodge. Dodge. Duck. Flicker.
Swing. Roll. Dodge. Duck. THERE!
The ground shifted under the edo tensei at the same time a volley of flaming kunai flung themselves at his back and he stumbled, arm swinging slightly too wide. Sakura wasted no time flickering behind the man and slashing his arm off with Kusanagi, taking the rest of his limbs as well. Just to be sure.
Sakura grabbed the collar of the limbless body and threw it at the hiding Suna-nin. "NOW!" She yelled and the guy popped out from behind the rock, throwing sheets of cloth over the limbless lump and wrapping sealing tags around the resulting bundle. The limbs crumbled into paper confetti.
She was pleasantly surprised. Those attacks had been coordinated!
The cannon fodder had just been mentally upgraded to mildly useless genin in her mind. "Great work everyone!" She yelled with an overblown smile and there was enthusiastic cheering. Apparently their coordination had been some kind of extremely dramatic quest for them, rather than just a basic tenant of teamwork.
Ah, well. They can't all be jōnin.
"Get that body to the backlines, everyone else regroup and reform our positions, I'm going to go and help the other fight!" She ordered and they scrambled to obey, giving her a pang of nostalgia for Team Ro.
Sakura locked that down before she could get anymore needlessly sentimental and sprinted in the direction of the noises of a fight.
She arrived to see one enemy sealed and being carried away by cannon fodder and the other enemy fending off the combined efforts of Hatake and Maito. Lee was nowhere to be seen, which was probably not a good sign for his physical wellbeing, though judging by Maito's composure the small green one probably wasn't dead.
Sakura's eyes narrowed on the last remaining swordsman, watching his body turn into water with each hit and the man simply melt through the attacks. Hatake and Maito were trying to pin him down with a team of earth users, which would follow the logic of the nature transformation's weakness structures. Sakura, however, had seen this before.
"HE'S WEAK TO LIGHTNING!" She yelled and they nodded affirmation, Sakura watched as Hatake sped through the hand signs for a Chidori.
He only got through half of them before a lightning wreathed blade was poking out of water-boy's chest and pinning him in place. The Kumo-nin that'd taken the twin lightning blades having managed to sneak up on the enemy.
The enemy was sealed and the living mildly useless genin cheered. Sakura hopped down next to Hatake and Maito.
"Is that all of them?" She asked.
"You got the one making the explosions?" Hatake said and she nodded. "Then yeah. That's all of them." A gloved hand came up to tiredly ruffle her hair.
"Now what?"
"Now! We back up Naruto!" Maito declared before taking off in a blur of green. Hatake and Sakura followed.