Over a week after Shiki's daring invasion of Madara's hideout and rescue of Uchiha Hikari . . .
In the darkest hours of a cloudy night, a fleet of ships silently cut through the sea.
Water Release Shinobi helped the ships remain stable, quick and stealth as their objective approached.
Three ships, mixed in with the rest, carried the leaders of this naval force.
*
"Not much longer now." From one of the ships a large middle aged man with long, wild and frizzy light blonde hair, spoke with a gravely voice.
Powerful muscle rippled beneath his tanned skin, his white flak "jacket" barely only covering half of his torso, lightning flickered in his sharp eyes.
Beside him, two prominent figures stood tall, a tanned teen with a lithe build and long straight hair. Interestingly, the left side of his hair was green tinted black while the right side was pure white.
Unlike the large middle aged man, he wore blue shinobi clothing with chainmail underneath with the same kind of flak jacket on top of everything, much more standard apparel.
Besides him a middle aged woman, dirty blonde haired with a shoulder length bob cut and cold, simple brown eyes, stood icily, her stiff posture not doing her already unnotable figure any favors.
Importantly, unlike the reverent gazes leveled at the large middle aged man by the ship crew and passengers, the other two were looked up with fear and hidden disgust.
*
On another ship stood an older man, small in stature, even more so than a well developed child like Shiki but larger than life in presence.
Despite his diminutive size, heavily greyed hair and balding head, the old man gave out the aura of an unshakable mountain.
'Hmm . . . Something feels off . . .' He silently saw, but let no doubt leak to his subordinates around him.
Behind him stood a tall, muscular teen, physically imposing by any measure, covered head to toe in red metal armor, his helmet shaped like a Kasa and some sort of contraption connected to the armor's back.
His red, pupiless eyes indifferently stared ahead while his thoughts remained his own.
Besides him, a slightly older but clearly smaller red headed young man stood with his arms crossed and a scowl on his face, pupilless black eyes glaring at seemingly nothing in particular.
The attitudes of the ship crew and passengers mirrored the previous example's pretty closely though not as intensely it seemed.
*
On the last commander's ship, the situation was considerably different.
A serene but austere man stood as the leader. Long, straight, black hair and eyes permanently closed, never revealing what lay beneath the eyelids.
He wore a very standard shinobi attire, a dark blueish gray flak jacket over regular dark blue shinobi clothing with chainmail underneath.
But that was not the difference.
Instead of having two regular shinobi behind him like his fellow leaders, the man had a shackled prisoner, chained up and covered in paper seals, so much so it was hard to figure out his features, only that it seemed to be a rather thin, malnourished looking man of average height.
To the prisoner's right, keeping a close eye on him was a lither but wiry man with straight white hair and purple eyes, though the shades of color and facial features lost out to Shiki in quality by a very large margin.
And to that man's right, a below average in height and sickly looking young man, pallid skinned with light brown hair and eyes.
There was no fear or disgust in anyone's eyes.
Other shinobi aboard the ship looked at the sickly young man and prisoner with detachment, as if looking at expendable tools about to be used up.
The man in front received the same reverence and respect that the other leaders inspired but along with that, came a generous dose of fear with the white haired man being the same, even if to a lesser degree.
*
As the fleet quietly surged forward, the waters surrounding them became more turbulent, natural whirlpools began appearing, the sight of them seeming to trigger a tensing action in the sailing shinobi as if readying themselves for battle.
The clouds above them darkened more and more as rain threatened to fall.
Rumblings of thunder and flashes of lightning presaged the coming storm, both in terms of weather and in terms of battle.
Slowly, rain began to fall as the cracks of thunder intensified.
The storm began to pick up and by now, all of the high level shinobi of the invading fleet realized something was wrong with the weather.
But it strained their common sense.
Ninjutsu simply could not affect things at such a scale.
Even hundreds of Elite Jonin working together would struggle to generate something of the scale currently being seen.
Soon though, their fears were confirmed.
The first to notice something was wrong were the last group.
Its leader, the black haired man whose eyes always seemed to be closed, suddenly shouted.
"This rain can drain away chakra and stamina, raise domes of seawater, they need not be thick and powerful just enough to block the rain!" He urgently commanded.
"Mizukage-sama, this seems to be some variation of the Grudge Rain Jutsu." The white haired man from before spoke.
"Although the scale is impressive, the effect is weak. Unlike our Mist Rain Jutsu, it cannot absorb already released jutsu. Make sure our jonin do not waste their chakra on this. Have the chuning take care of it Shingetsu."
"Understood!" The white haired man spoke and vanished with a body flicker.
The other groups realized what was happening with just a slight delay but were nowhere near as well equipped to deal with it.
Through one method or another, the high level shinobi under the command of the large, tan skinned blonde man, Kumogakure shinobi, were able to individually protect themselves from the rain but the fodder were left to fend for themselves.
For the remaining group, things fared even worse.
As nearly all of them were Earth Release specialists, the middle of the sea was not the best environment.
They simply had to suffer from the rain without any good solution.
Fortunately, the drain on chakra and stamina was slow, even an average Chunin would have to be exposed to the rain for several hours to be drained dry.
'Wait a minute . . .' The more quick witted ones soon realized.
With the drain being so slow, they were using more chakra to protect themselves from the rain that they would have lost from simply allowing it to fall on them.
Still, as soon as they realized their "mistake" their efforts to block the rain began stopping.
At this moment however, within the Kumo ships a few individuals were experiencing a sense of deja vu.
'This familiar feeling of being made a fool of through dirty tactics meant to annoy and destabilize more than cause actual damage . . .'
"It's HIM!" Two voices suddenly exclaimed out loud.
"Raikage-sama! It's that boy, he's behind this! We must keep our defenses up!" Dodai rushed to shout towards his village head.
'Based on Ryumon Shiki's modus operandi, this harassment is just meant to create an opening for an actual attack making us forcefully drop our guard by tricking us into raising it in the first place.' He realized.
At the moment, the shinobi fleet was more vulnerable than even before they realized something was off with the storm.
Dodai's credibility in Kumo had taken a serious hit but the Third Raikage, despite his rough appearance, was no fool that let himself be swayed by such things and took the man's warning seriously, ordering his troops to keep their defenses up.
+++++
Hey, Author here!
To promote the novel I will be releasing BONUS CHAPTERS on SUNDAYS based on the previous week's power stone count.
100 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter
500 Power Stones = 2 Bonus Chapters
1000 Power Stones = 3 Bonus Chapters
Every earned BONUS CHAPTER on Webnovel will also be posted on Scribble.
Just a reminder that you can read up to a FULL MONTH ahead of this site on pa-treon.
I'm trying to become a full time Author now and I'm not going to be starting any new novels just so I can make sure this one is properly completed.
Find those sweet advanced chapters on pa-treon.com/lusoba without the -