Bab 30: Chapter Thirty
Pre-chapter A/N; Happy Holidays Everyone. Here's this week's chapter right on time for your enjoyment. The next three chapters are up on Patreon (www.patreon.com/Oghenevwogaga) as always. There's a handy little December discount on both monthly and annual plans. If you just want to read complete chapters and not my work in real-time then feel free to purchase this story as a collection on my Patreon page- nice way to support this story, and me while you're at it. Enjoy!
Finding Orochimaru on the island was not hard. And if anything, it turned out that Sakumo had been understating things quite a bit. The man had half his stomach cut open. "You should see Kinkaku" was all the Snake shinobi had said when I expressed concern about his state. Of course, he knew the mystical palm jutsu, so if he wasn't using it, then there had to be ample reason for that. I couldn't check, either. It was rude to scan people with doujutsu without permission. Also, I found that I didn't care much about keeping Orochimaru alive. He would be a loss for the village but when weighed against the danger he'd pose in a few decades, it wasn't even a question as to whether he was better off dead or not.
"So we trade the Jinchuriki for Shimura-san. Not the best of deals" Orochimaru said, and I just barely managed to avoid chuckling at his words.
"There's not much we can do with the Jinchuriki either way. Taking her back to the village courts disaster. And it's not like we have a host ready and raring to go."
"I still say we kill her and leave. That's what Danzo would want as well. We deny Iwa a future asset. If the Four tails reforms in four years, then it will be here at the edge of the sea borders between Kumo and Kiri. They'd fight over it. Kumo is already down a tailed beast so they'd want the Yonbi and Kiri has two dead Jinchuriki so they'll definitely be out for it. It's Iwa's property so they want it as well. We kill her here, and we can be damned sure whatever alliance they have won't last long." I put in my two cents. Getting rid of Danzo here would be even better than getting rid of Orochimaru. Pain, Orochimaru, Kabuto, so many threats would not exist if the fucker just died here and now.
"No. We leave no comrade behind. Moreover, Danzo-san is privy to several of Konoha's most precious secrets and was a student to Nidaime-san" Sakumo said, and his word was final. Of course, it was. He had seniority here. He'd been a Jounin longer than both Orochimaru and I and had been the one implicitly recognised as Second in command.
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In the end, arranging the exchange was easy. Sakumo flared his chakra signature and in minutes, the Kinkaku force was on their way, escorted by a contingent of Iwa shinobi that arranged themselves around Kitsuchi, Onoki's son, who looked about a few years younger than the Sannin if anything. "So you want to make a hostage swap?" The silver haired Kumo shinobi asked with a sharp smile on his face.
"Yes. The Yonbi Jinchuriki for one of ours." Sakumo said, gesturing the black-haired girl whose name I still hadn't managed to get.
"Quite an offer. I have a counteroffer of my own. Why don't we just kill the both of you and take the Jinchuriki," His smile widened and bloodlust leaked from his very pore.
"We'd kill her, and then you'd have lost Iwa their four tails and -"
"You could try," Sakumo cut in instead, still as the grave.
Something about my old Sensei's words seemed to sink in for the Silver haired Kumo shinobi, and he straightened up.
"With all due respect, Ginkaku, I seem to recall the Konoha Shinobi being my prisoner. While it was one of yours that detected him, I was the one to lead the team that captured him. Iwa is very much interested in this trade." Kitsuchi, the Tsuchikage's son, stepped forward. I could tell he was only a few years older than me. Easily the closest person to me when it came to age, except the Jinchuriki, of course.
"Alright then. We will do as planned. We will release both prisoners, and they will walk to the other side. At that point, we will all leave these islands. Enough blood has been spilt here for all our nations" Sakumo said next.
"No to that one. Swap the hostages if you like, but none of you leave here while I still live. I will see that snake bastard pay for what he did to my brother" Ginkaku said, face forming into a harsh snarl that made it clear that he would not be moved on this goal of his. Even worse, the whisker marks on his face were there and dark as ever, meaning that he had nine tails chakra coursing through his veins.
I had faith in Sakumo's strength, but this wasn't the kind of engagement that we had a high chance of escaping unscathed. I'd already allowed Jinpei to return to the summoning realm and summoning him again was going to wipe me out, even with what I'd gained from the soldier pills I'd taken between then and now.
"Orochimaru is already well on his way back to Konoha" Sakumo said, lying through his teeth and I just kept my gaze on Ginkaku's fascinating chakra system to avoid accidentally giving anything away.
"There is nothing to be gained from facing us here. My young partner has already killed Kubo Yatsuki and every single one of the Kumo and Iwa Jounin placed on the other island. Kinkaku has taken a lot of damage, and quite a few of your Jounin are dead. Fighting us now does nothing but put you in needless risk. You might win, you might lose, but I guarantee that you will not live beyond today" His killing intent pressed down on the whole clearing. A man strong enough to beat all three of Hiruzen's students at the same time. It was clear even now that he was the strongest one of us all. Ginkaku hid it well, but few things could be hidden from my eyes, and he was hurting. Kitsuchi had a broken set of ribs and the rest of the Jounin had some injury or the other.
Even I had sustained some damage in my fight with Kubo. Only one of us was unscathed from all the earlier battling- Sakumo.
"Fine. Take your man and get out."
"Thank you Ginkaku-san"
I watched the hostage exchange with bated breath-waiting for them to betray us, waiting for Sakumo to give me some signal for us to betray them, waiting to receive some sort of show of weakness that would make me do it nonetheless. All my tension disappeared in one fell swoop as Danzo crossed the invisible line that marked our territory with nothing happening. I waited even longer and still nothing. Nothing at all. No attack, no surprise. Just an alive Danzo with a terribly broken arm.
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I'd never heard someone cut to pieces as efficiently as Danzo did. "That was an idiotic thing you did, Sakumo. A very stupid thing" he started with the second we left the island. I was surprised that Danzo himself had not started the betrayal during the hostage exchange and attacked the Iwa and Kumo folks, but he'd probably done the math and seen that we stood no chance in that fight, and so he held his peace until we were well on our way. And after that, he did not hold his peace for long. We did not bother lying low in our journey through the land of hot water, and cut our way through their borders at top speed.
At some point, Orochimaru had melted from the shadows to join us. He was not fully healed, but his body seemed to be holding itself together enough for him to not slow the rest of us down. Danzo had a broken arm and several bruises, Orochimaru had leaky guts, and I had several small nicks and bruises all over my body. Sakumo, who brought up the tip of the spear, was none the worse for wear, and we must have made a strange sight. I never got to ask anyone though, as we skirted around what few Yugakure shinobi we could and simply sped through the rest while flaring our chakra for the world to sense.
We weren't hiding, but we had no interest in confrontation, and chakra flaring was one way to ensure that one wasn't disturbed. There was no chance we'd get away with doing this in the borders of any major nation, but the Land of Hot Water barely even had a ninja system to its name. Their Jounin were probably equivalent to Chunin from the Big Five, and they didn't even have a lot of those. We were doing this because we could and because it was the most efficient way to return to the village.
Our intelligence had been co-opted into a trap. Any other set of shinobi in our situation would have been killed. We were told it was going to be a meeting between Kumo and Kiri. But instead of Kiri, Iwa had been the ones there. We'd been faced with Iwa's newest jinchuriki, two platoons of Jounin, the Gold and Silver Brothers, and the Tsuchikage's son. That was the kind of squad that could do a massive amount of damage if unleashed. But that wasn't the full might of either village. There were still powerful shinobi in both villages that could have been placed on the mission to guarantee success. Han, Iwa's other Jinchuriki and the Two Tails jinchuriki were both options that came to the top of my head. The question in my mind then became, where were they? If the mission was just designed to kill some of Konoha's powerful shinobi then why didn't they fully commit? If the purpose wasn't to get rid of us, then why the deceit and drawing us out?
There were so many questions I had, and things just did not add up in my head. Either some brilliant people at Kumo and Iwa had decided to behave foolishly, or I wasn't getting the full picture.
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We entered the village with little fanfare, and with my eyes, I could see that the whole village was abuzz. There were dozens, if not hundreds, of shinobi scurrying from place to place. It was like someone had kicked the hornet's nest and the insects were trying to get their bearings. In one second, a group was dashing towards the Hokage tower, and they crossed another group leaving the tower and heading to the Academy instead. From the academy came a group heading to the hospital, and from the hospital another group heading to the Anbu barracks. It just flowed like that. Shinobi moving from place to place, generally being too quick for the civilian's underfoot to notice. I knew now why the Ninja wars were referred to as Secret Wars.
Even as Shinobi scurried from place to place, the civilians seemed none the wiser to anything that went on around them. T=Our squad of Four noticed all this as we passed, but did not allow it to slow us for more than a second as we rushed to give our report to the Hokage. We cut a straight path to the tower, not even pausing to use the ground floor entrance, but instead jumping straight through the window. OF course, Danzo had flared his chakra in a pattern I wasn't familiar with before we did, so it was no surprise that the window parted before us and anbu blades weren't at our necks even if I could see them stir and become alert by our sudden arrival.
"Report" Sarutobi said, on seeing us and our states. That was when Danzo began to weave the tale of all that had happened since we stepped out of the village on our mission. He spoke of us separating into two cells to lay a trap for them, and then he spoke of the trap being turned around at our expense. That was the first time I got the explanation of why he'd left me alone on my island. He'd adjudged that I was most likely facing the lesser threat and left to understand what was going on on the other island. He had no idea that the girl was a Jinchuriki and felt like I had the resources to hold off Kubo and the Jounin since I'd killed their Raikage six months earlier. Then he went to what was going on with Sakumo and Orochimaru.
The Gold and Silver brothers had encircled them with their jounin and basically embarked on a running chase through the island's forest. Danzo had stuck to the edges of the encirclement and attempted to break it by disposing of a few jounin and then when he'd killed about four of them, a Kumo sensor managed to get wind of him and all the Jounin not engaging Sakumo and Orochimaru converged on him. In the end, it was Kitsuchi who did him in and captured him. From there, Sakumo took over without much prompting and began to speak.
Danzo's presence had given him the chance to take Orochimaru and escape. Both Orochimaru and Kinkaku had dealt nearly fatal wounds to each other and Sakumo had been able to fight off Ginkaku and his jounin escorts for long enough to allow him to escape with Orochimaru, and then he'd sought me out after being assured that Orochimaru would be safe. I waited patiently, and then it got to the time when he made the decision to trade the young iwa jinchuriki for Danzo. Hiruzen nodded approvingly at the situation even while Danzo scowled furiously.
"Danzo is an asset the village can deploy now. Training a new jinchuriki will take years and with war at our doorsteps, we must prioritize the resources we have at our disposal in the here and now. While the loss is a shame, preserving our existing assets must be our priority." He said and that was that on the subject, even if both Danzo and I were visibly far from satisfied while Orochimaru looked to be amused with the whole thing. If I didn't know that the snake Sannin was a psychopath, I might have actually been worried about the man's comprehension skills.
"Now that I am up to speed, I must do the same to you all. We are officially at war now. A day after you left, I received word of a gathered military presence from the Hidden Cloud moving into the Land of Frost. Similarly, Iwa has moved into the land of rain. This war, it seems, will once again be fought using the lesser nations as battlefields," he said. To his credit, he did seem genuinely sad at that fact, even if I knew he would set fire to the Land of Rain a million times before he saw even a single homestead in Hi no Kuni lost to war.
"I have already begun mobilizing our own forces to counter this as while accelerated, we had seen this coming and planned for it. What we did not plan adequately for, however, was Suna" He said, making Danzo freeze and both Sakumo and Orochimaru snap to attention. So all three of them had been involved in the war planning. It made sense, I guess, but did have me feeling just a little bit left out. I guess that was what happened when you spent more time with your summons than you did with your fellow shinobi at home.
"Our alliance?" Orochimaru asked, practically hissing the last word and making me want to scoot away from him a slight bit in case he decided to just full on transform to one of his summons. I hate snakes.
"Gone. While we had assumed that my predecessor's talks with them and our continued attempts to maintain the relationship would suffice, it seems they have been offered something by this Kumo-Iwa contingent that we could not quite match" he said.
"They have moved in force into the Land of Rivers. They are making good progress and if not stopped, we will have an army in our nation in a matter of days. They are the most pressing threat and that is why you, Shorirama, will deal with them".
"What?" I paused as I realised I'd spoken aloud.
"Everyone else here has fixed roles to be taken in the war to come, but you are easily reassigned. You will lead a platoon with a single mission. Delay Suna for long enough that our proper army has the time to mobilize and reinforce you. You must bleed their offensive and ensure that they do not make it to our borders. Consider this carte blanche. Do whatever it takes. Levy the full force of that brain of yours and see to it that this is done" He said.
"Yes, Hokage-sama. When do I have to leave?" I asked.
"I will be taking volunteers for the mission beginning today. You will be leaving by dawn tomorrow. Shorirama, I will not lie to you. This mission will be the most dangerous thing you've ever done. You will be expected to put a hold on thousands. Failure will not be tolerated, but I do trust in you to carry this out." I nodded at the words while already beginning to feel a feeling of weariness.
"Orochimaru, go see yourself to the hospital. You, Jiriaya, and Tsunade will be sent to the Land of Rain to match the Iwa advance. Sakumo, you will lead the army meeting Lightning at the land of Frost. Danzo, you will remain here. Our intelligence has been made a mockery of. You will be charged with rebuilding it from the ground up." He said.
"All except for Danzo. Dismissed" Hiruzen said, and I wasted no time in standing and leaving. Orochimaru was on his way to the hospital in a flicker of displaced air, and Sakumo and I were forced to endure the awkward walk down the tower with neither of us speaking to the other. Since I hadn't just body flickered at the beginning, doing so now would have seemed rude, but the walk was really grating on my nerves.
To pass the time, I turned my mind to Suna. The land of Rivers was a good staging ground, I felt. Especially for someone like me with a water release affinity. Of course, that was the only silver lining to be found. War had come early, and I struggled to refer to myself as prepared. Sage mode. I had wanted sage mode by the time the war came. Now I was going to be facing Suna and all their poisons without sage durability. This would be fun.
A/N; War has come to the Elemental Nations. I wonder how a war between Shinobi would work in real times. It kept me up reading LD1449's Legacy Undone, which has some of the best writing of any Naruto fanfic, period, but even that had a few things that didn't seem to make sense in a world where people can breathe fireballs. I suspect that my own depiction of war will have some logical inconsistencies and inefficiencies as well, so as always, I beg your magnanimous indulgence in this matter. The next three chapters are up on Patreon (www.patreon.com/Oghenevwogaga) as always. There's a handy little December discount on both monthly and annual plans. If you just want to read complete chapters and not my work in real-time then feel free to purchase this story as a collection on my Patreon page- nice way to support this story, and me while you're at it. Enjoy!
— Bab baru akan segera rilis — Tulis ulasan
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