"Hah, glad to see you two didn't get attacked." I said with a smile as I walked into the shack, Yahiko jumping to his feet and checking my body for wounds while Konan looked amused and giggled at his antics.
"Huh, no wounds."
"Already healed them. Did you forget who I am?" I asked with a raised eyebrow before rolling my eyes as he shrugged.
"Hey, can't be too careful. So, how strong was that guy?" He asked as we walked to the table and I groaned as I sat down before answering his question.
"Pretty strong. The element of surprise helped me mostly with our fight, but if we were both fresh, it might have been a harder fight."
"Cool. So, Konan found something interesting. Show him." I looked at Konan with a frown and she responded by smirking and unsealing a large scroll from the small scroll she stored their intel in, rolling it open on the table and my eyes widened slightly before I smirked as I turned to focus all of my attention on it.
"When was it made?"
"From the detail of the paper and how little damage there is, I think it's about two to three days old, perhaps a day more at maximum." She answered and I hummed as I looked down at the map in front of us, elated at the detailed location of every Iwa supply camp throughout the Land of Rains as well as where they believed Suna and Konoha had placed their camps.
"This…is going to help us a lot."
"We know. Also, I got a crap ton of explosive tags from that camp."
"How many?" I asked and this time, I froze in shock as Yahiko unrolled his own small scroll before unleashing nearly fifty stacks of explosive tags, the guy having a smug grin as I looked at him and back at the tags.
'…Oh, art is about to be a beautiful explosion.'
"So, what do we do now?" Konan asked after I snapped out of my shock and I looked between the tags and the different camps before smirking as an idea came to mind.
"We're about to make a nice art piece for them to enjoy."
"…A what?"
Thunder boomed in the clouds above as rain poured down upon the wet ground of the Land of Rains, a small camp of Iwagakure shinobi warily looking up at the clouds while their commanders frowned as they sat in the main tent of the camp.
"Konoha has taken most of the villages to the east, south-east and south while Suna have decided that the south-west and west belongs to them. We have taken all of the villages to the north-west, but it's the one in the north and north-east that are causing us a lot of trouble, sir."
"It's something very mysterious and irritating as we don't know how many attackers there are or how they figure out where and when our camps are formed."
"You mean the ones that keep attacking and destroying the resource camps the moment they are established?" The rugged man with a buzz-cut and a short beard asked as the three commanders looked at the points in question, the large number of red 'X' along the top border of the Land of Rains.
One or two camps being attacked and destroyed was something their leaders expected, but they thought that they would be able to stop them by alerting the camps before they got attacked.
Now whenever they send someone to one of those camps, all that could be found were large craters and the bodies of their men along with one single message written in blood on top of a wall that was most likely created by a shinobi.
Go away.
When the first few had disappeared, they thought it was just an intimidation trick, but then, three became five that became ten that became thirty.
No matter how much they moved their camps around, there would always be an incident later with the same message, but a week ago, their attackers had left alive a survivor, though the commander didn't think that leaving him alive was much of a mercy when the man was missing his eyes, arms and a leg.
Apparently, he had heard from his men that the survivor in question liked to molest and assault the elderly, having a weighty list of names before he was forced to lose most of his limbs and his eyes.
The man however, was given one message to them and it was an eerie message truthfully.
"One week."
"The one week ends tomorrow. Do we act upon it and retreat back to the mainland or do we think of it as a hoax?" The commander asked as he looked at his second-in-commands, the younger man with dark brown hair and eyes of a matching eyes looking hesitant before they looked at the third older gentleman with black and grey hair who scoffed as he crossed his arms.
"While I would recommend being wary of these foes, we have the strongest shinobi of the camps other than those in the camp of Gari so if these fighters come here, we'll be more than rea-!" The older man was cut off by a loud explosion going off in the background, the commander giving the man pointed stare as they all ran out of the tent only to be greeted by total anarchy.
Half of the camp was on fire as bodies were scattered all around, the commander feeling his heart stopping for a brief moment at the sight of two giant brown snakes slithering around before shaking his head as he remembered that Orochimaru was currently battling a siege against Iwa shinobi in the far east.
However, he was surprised to see a young boy with orange boy that looked to be nine or ten years old running around and slicing through his men with only a slight struggle, the boy's moves fluid yet efficient as he didn't waste any time showing off.
Right behind him was a blue-haired girl throwing shuriken made out of paper that cut through steel and right through the men rolling in pain on the ground, ending their lives right before the two of them froze as they caught sight of the commander and his two men glaring at them.
"Nagato! We found them!" The boy shouted as the two of them leapt back and the men wanted to pursue, but they were stopped by a large cloud of dust exploding up into the air as something impacted the ground in between them.
The commander frowned as he saw a faint figure in the dust right before he ducked right as numerous air bullets flew through the cloud and slammed into the young soldier besides him, watching as his protégé fell to the floor with gaping holes in his body.
"C-Commander Kuzon."
"Ah, I was aiming to take you all out with that." The young boy spoke with a frown, but Commander Kuzon didn't care as he charged forward, knowing that his second-in-command was right on his heels as the two of them rushed towards the young boy who waited for them with a stance.
However, something shouted at Kuzon to jump and he leapt into the air right as the ground below them exploded, the old man trying to do the same only for an air blade to cut his leg off right as Nagato took a deep breath and spat out a piercing water jet into the old man's skull.
Kuzon landed with a grunt and spun around to charge at the young boy with a roar, but Nagato simply shook his head as he made a Tiger Seal the moment the man tackled him with a fist pulled back and the Iwa commander's eyes widened as the boy tore his kimono shirt open to reveal numerous explosive tags on his chest.
"May you rest in peace."
"Boom." I whispered from on top of my snake as my clone blew itself up with a spectacular explosion, watching as the commander's body was blown to bits before shaking my head as I leapt down while letting the snakes continue with destroying the rest of the camp.
It's been three months since our little decision to start on destroying all supply camps that Iwa had in the Land of Rains and so far, it's been one enlightening experience.
There have been quite a few rough battles especially with how hard it became to attack camps when they raised security after the first couple of camps, but other than that, it's been a rather educational time so far.
Detailing patrol routes and times, figuring out weak points in a camp as well as which points are blindspots to the guards, making sure no traces of ourselves could be found as we drew closer to the camp and destroyed it from the inside out.
The ability to analyse and work around every little problem that comes with a battle was not something Sensei could have taught us just like that, but it was through our numerous battles that we figured out these things on our own.
Now to be truthful, a few of our attacks did start off with a failure as we mistimed some of the guards' routes, but we did manage to pull those back thanks to the element of surprise and the panic and confusion that came with blowing their camp sky high.
"Did you finish the fight?" Yahiko asked as I walked up to them, wiping his sword clean and sheathing it while Konan looked through the large scroll on her lap, protecting it from the slight drizzle with a sheen of chakra as I nodded and sat down besides him.
"Yeah, I didn't want to waste any time so I sent a clone to take him out. What about the supplies? Did we get anything good?" I asked before shaking my head as Konan shrugged while rolling the scroll closed.
"A bit more food as well as some new flash bombs, but other than that, the usual of shuriken, kunai and rations."
"Huh, the rations will at least last us a while." I muttered before looking up as a clone of Yahiko landed in front of us, the orange-haired boy grinning as the clone threw a scroll at me and I caught it right as it dispelled.
"It's their new orders. Looks like we have…another camp being formed in the south-west and west to take on the others Suna had formed there. Ah, well, looks like we're holding up on attacking the south-west camp for a while." I muttered with a nervous bead of sweat rolling down my face as I saw the name of the commander in charge of the camp.
"Wait, who is it?" Yahiko asked and I simply handed over the open scroll to them, both he and Konan looking at it before they froze slightly at the name there.
"Kitsuchi, son of the Tsuchikage, and Gari, the commander of the camp and Commander of Iwa's Explosion Corps. …Hah, why couldn't this just say simple and easy?"
"So, we're not dealing with them?" Yahiko asked with a frown as the three of us were seated in our little shack, Sessho snoring away in the corner as I glanced at him before shaking my head as I turned back to the map in front of us.
"No, we're not capable of going against them, especially someone as powerful and infamous as Gari. We're definitely not ready for the reputation and infamy that would place on our heads."
"What's wrong with that? You're the one that said that we should prove ourselves irreplaceable." Yahiko said with a shrug and I sighed as Konan shook her head.
"Yes, irreplaceable as in we are very valuable. Killing these two would put a target on our back so large that we would be forced away from the Land of Rains by Hanzo himself because the Tsuchikage would personally come for us."
"Okay, then what if we just take out Gari?" He asked and both Konan and I looked at him with a raised eyebrow.
"Explain."
"I mean, what if we took out so many camps around their own camp as well as destroy their supply lines that he has no choice but to take us on? We could then lead him into an ambush and boom! We got him."
"…You do understand that for that to happen, the damage would have to be irreversible, right? I mean like we'd have to permanently destroy parts of the Land of Rains to make sure it happens. Are you sure you want to do this?"
"To win a war, sacrifices must be made. That's what Sensei taught us, isn't it?" He said and I smirked as Konan smiled before we looked at each other.
"How many paper bombs can you control?"
"Depends. How many clones can you make?"
"Wait, what are we talking about right now?" Yahiko asked with a frown and I chuckled as Konan giggled before I answered him.
"Like you said, the damage needs to be irreversible so that's what we're going to do."
"Man, this is going to be harder than we thought." I muttered with a frown, hidden inside the foliage of the forest at the edge of the rather large camp below us as well as the dozens of shinobi patrolling it.
That's not even mentioning the hundreds of other shinobi walking around and lounging inside the camp as well as the several shinobi perched on the walls that surrounded the camp.
After our meeting a week ago, we had been going manic across the landscape near the camp by destroying every tree, bush, rock and anything else that may be of use to the camp, which included me summoning giant snakes to burrow underground and completely fuck up the ground.
I don't know how much that worked, but considering that most of the camps near these areas were empty by the time we got to them, it appears that the plan had worked somewhat.
"…How exactly are we going to do this?" Konan whispered to me as she sat besides me, to which I shrugged while scratching the back of my head as Yahiko looked just as confused as I did.
"I expect it to be the biggest camp out of the ones we fought…but there's a difference between biggest and being so overprepared it's nearly impossible to take it out." I muttered as I looked down at the camp, having not even thought of the fact that they knocked down every bit of cover within a ten meter radius of the camp.
Meaning that the moment we leapt out to attack was the moment we would get peppered with every single weapon and/ or jutsu known to man.
"Hah, I guess there's only one option left, then. Going Dark." I muttered as I stood up from the branch, the five clones in the trees nearby doing the same before all six of us flipped back and fell feet first into the ground, sinking deep right before I began swimming through the earth to where I could feel the camp being.
However, I made sure that all six of us stopped within just five meters of the camp as further than that was where the hidden explosive landmine tags were buried, weaving through a hand signs before taking a deep breath and slamming my hand upwards along with the other clones.
I watched as the six surges of chakra raced through the ground, waiting until I felt the chakra flushing over the tags before the rumbling of explosions above made the clones rush up as I moved back to where the others were waiting.
The moment I came up from the ground, I watched as hundreds of shinobi ran around trying to find the cause of the explosion right before even more panic ensued as the clones activated the tags around their bodies and blew up at five points around the camp.
That was the signal as I created a clone besides me, gesturing for him to go down, which it did as I weaved through hand signs and slammed both hands onto the ground right as I pushed myself out.
Instantly, twin large clouds of smoke obscured me from view right as I sunk back and swam back towards where I last left the other two.
However, my eyes widened as the earth around me went solid before spitting me out, flipping through the air in shock before I quickly created a clone that pulled me out of the way right as a boulder nearly missed turning me into a bloody paste.
"There he is! Kill him and the snakes will disappear!" I heard a gruff voice shout and looked down before cursing at the sight of Gari and a young Kitsuchi rushing towards me, the army following in their tracks as they ignored the two snakes trying to get them.
"No!" I shouted as I saw Yahiko wanting to help, landing with a spin while holding my hand out before giving them two fingers and then a fist.
They knew what the signal meant and Yahiko frowned at me before both he and Konan nodded as they leapt away, doing their best to get as far away as possible as I turned my attention back towards the army charging towards me.
Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes as I felt the adrenaline rush fading away, slowly opening my eyes once more as I stared the army down before creating a clone besides me as both of us weaved through a rapid series of hand signs.
"Fire Style: Majestic Destroyer Flame!"
"Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!"
"Collaboration Jutsu: Amaterasu!" The world cried as I spat out a sea of flames that was swiftly enhanced by the stormy winds my clone breathed out, the space in front of us lit up with a bright orange hue that burned everything in its path to a crisp.
The agonizing cries of people being burned alive and the smell of burnt flesh nearly made me gag, but I kept up the jutsu for a few more moments before cancelling it, my clone dispelling from chakra exhaustion right as I made another one and both of us weaved through hand signs before holding my arms out to the side as my clone slammed its palms onto the floor.
"Lightning Style: Thunderbolt!" The booming of thunder echoed in the sky as I created a dome of electricity around us while my clone sent powerful currents of electricity racing through and over the ground, smirking as Kitsuchi and Gari leapt out of the ground along with a couple dozen or so shinobi while the rest got cooked alive underground.
"Wind Style: Vacuum Blast Barrage!" A storm of wind blades was unleashed by my clone that I sent down earlier and I quickly took off as I saw the shinobi being distracted by the wind blades with some of them getting deep cuts, their limbs cut off or even their heads taken by a lucky shot.
Quickly spinning around and throwing flash bombs behind me right as I heard them trying to run after me, I fuelled as much chakra into my legs before taking off like a speeding bullet, leaping and diving headfirst into the ground right as my clone grabbed my arms and threw me further through the ground like a speeding bullet.
I knew that would not be enough to deter them as I could 'see' Kitsuchi and Gari searching the ground above along with about twenty or so chakra signatures right around them, but it was enough to get their attention as I began swimming to our safe house.
'Phase One is done. Time for Phase Two.'
A/N: Did you guys expect this battle to be a short one? No, this is going to be a two chapter battle plan and even then, I want to do Gari justice as his Kekkei Genkai is one of my favourites.
Anyway, Nagato is going more tactics than power as he is the bait, but how does Yahiko and Konan fit into this plan? Well, we'll have to find out next time.
Also, the Jinchuriki are still a factor, but they're busy on other battlefields.
Like always, you can go to my Pat-reon-.-com-/-KingCrimsonNova to read ahead on this as well as many other stories & even some that haven't been released out to this site yet. If you want to, you are free to, but if you don't want, all's good as I will still be uploading here. This is just me trying to get some extra cash.
Anyway, as always, read, enjoy, review and until the next one...
Ba-Bye~!