Pre-Chapter A/N:Welcome to September, guys! Let's smash whatever goals we've set ourselves this year. More chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio. Experimenting with two chapters a week, we'll see how long I can keep this up for.
How quickly can a group of shinobi move across a country? The answer was very fucking quickly. We made camp a few miles outside Iwa and slept the night away, resting and recovering our chakra for the long march to Iwa. Well, not really a long march. It was a straight shot, the journey from Kusa to Iwa. So after the night passed, we packed up, cleared our tracks as best we could, and shot off like bullets.
The army being made of mostly chunin forced me to maintain what was essentially a jogging pace for most of it. It was probably for the best, since it meant I could maintain my chakra reserves and physical stamina.
'You won't be getting tired anytime soon with me inside you,' Kurama growled in my head. I nodded, agreeing with the point. In the time since I'd fought Onoki, I'd gotten even better at using his chakra. While he lacked the elemental leanings of his brothers and sisters, Kurama had an advantage none of them could really compare with—a shit ton of power. More power than I could use. Enough power that if I got the balance right, I could empower the entire army with one-tailed forms. Wait, fuck it. Could I do it right now?
'Kurama?' I asked.
'Most likely, but I'm not sharing my chakra with these worms.'
'It would strengthen my position by a fair bit,' I said. I could just imagine being the Hokage that got the army through a war by sharing his power with the rest of the army and protecting them.
'Not your power, is it?'
'If I want to share it with them, I'd have to balance your chakra with mine,' I pointed out.
'Then share your own chakra and see how far it takes you,' he growled before doing the mental equivalent of slamming the door in my face.
'Fine. Be that way,' I screamed at the shut door before returning to the present.
"You okay?" I heard a voice from behind—Uzume, I recognized. I waved away her concern before increasing my speed a bit. Thinking about it, it had probably been an unfair ask. Kurama had only been willing to share his chakra when he faced the Ten-Tails and essentially had the fate of the world flashing before his eyes. Now, I was asking him to use his chakra to help me fight a human war. Of course he wasn't willing. He'd more than had his fill of being used as a tool for humans by now. I couldn't have him thinking the same of me. If I had my way, he would have just spent time sealed in Kushina before I unsealed him and let him go after we were sure the threat of Zetsu was gone. The idea of sealing the tailed beasts wasn't one that I could put my whole being behind.
'I'm sorry,' I called at the door.
'I don't think you see me as a tool. If there is one thing that makes you better than the rest of your race, it is that fact,' he replied, sounding worlds less pissed.
'Thank you. I'll stop suggesting stupid shit like that,' I said. Kurama had agreed to ally with me to take Madara out, not to fight my battles for me, and definitely not to cement my place as kage. He was fine enough with letting me use his chakra when I fought—probably because he could see it as me training to get better and better at using it so I didn't fuck up when I finally faced Madara, but even that, to some extent, went against the spirit, if not the letter, of our deal.
Madara. If things went the way I was expecting, then we would have basically put an end to everything that could possibly lead to his return. No Kakashi meant there would be no Team Minato for Obito to sacrifice his life for and be put in Madara's hands as a pawn. But that meant that I had to consider the other prospects. For one, there was still a chance that another Uchiha would find their way into Madara's orbit. With Black Zetsu working on it, it was almost guaranteed that that much would happen. The Akatsuki getting a hold of the tailed beasts was not going to happen as smoothly as it did in canon. For one, most of the jinchuriki from canon just would never exist.
Uzume had killed the two-tails. That would take a while to respawn and when it did, it would be in the land of Frost, not Lightning. I was going to be gunning to be there to capture it just as surely as I knew the Raikage, and maybe even the Tsuchikage if Iwa managed to survive this mess that they had wandered into. The Eight-Tails was with Kushina; that wasn't changing. The Four-Tails, we had that. Kokuo was free, and when the war was over and I had the time, I was going to look into tracking him down. I wasn't going to go against our deal by trying to have him sealed into a jinchuriki against his will, but a flying raijin marker placed on him would give me a ton of reassurance. Kiri would probably have both their jinchuriki when the time came. The Three-Tails would return somewhere around Uzu. I wouldn't make an attempt for it. Concentrating too many jinchuriki around Konoha could bring as much danger as it brought security, so there was the balance to consider.
And when it came down to it, I'd rather Kiri have two jinchuriki than Kumo having one. For one, Kiri was just as likely to shoot themselves in the foot as they were to aim their weapons anywhere useful. For another, Kiri would be terrible at keeping their jinchuriki loyal or even training them, while Kumo had raised Bee. If I had a choice between Bee and Yagura or Utakata on the other side, I'd pick the Kiri duo any time, any day.
"Contact," Uraume whispered behind me. I nodded. That was our chosen signal for when Iwa finally got into her range. Somehow, she had the farthest-seeing Byakugan of anyone in her clan, even if she wasn't the oldest or the most experienced. There was something to be said of how I had been placed in a class filled to the brim with outliers and geniuses. That would be something to think about later on though, as both Uzume and Uraume stepped forward to brief me on what was going on.
XXXXXX- KOSUKE THE DESERT BLAZE
"I'm beginning to suspect that they're telling us the truth," he said as he watched his teammate interrogate another Iwa shinobi with his knives. The man spoke. They all spoke, but the story he told was not one they had any interest in hearing. Iwa did not have their jinchuriki anymore. There was nothing here for them to steal. And even worse, this was not an all-too-recent happening. So there had to be some explanation for why Chiyo's spies had not reported the change and saved them the effort.
"I believe so as well. Rather, I believe he is telling us what he knows the truth to be," Hayate replied. Kosuke knew that the man that had been chosen to be his teammate in this was the stubborn type, so he had no doubts that they would keep going, but it still galled him. They were deep in enemy territory. Only the fact that Iwa had literal wolves at their gate had prevented them from being noticed, but that was sure to change sooner or later, and when it did, hordes of anbu were going to fall upon them like wrathful gods.
It was better to cut their losses now and get it over with. Chiyo had missed the designated meet-up point, after all. There was a chance that she herself and Riku had perished in this mess of a plan. If that was the case, the best thing Kosuke and Hayate could do was cut their losses and leave. They were some of Suna's strongest shinobi. Wasting their lives for a lost cause here was just stupid. Of course, it would be difficult to convince Hayate of that. One would think he was a samurai with how closely he stuck to those three rules of his.
"So what do you suggest?" he asked with a sigh.
"We seek out the Tsuchikage. If anyone should know for sure, it would be her."
"You want us to sneak into Iwa's defensive unit, somehow get close enough to the Tsuchikage without being made, then kidnap her, and then escape with her all without anyone noticing? And even worse, somehow do it while buying ourselves enough time to interrogate her for however long it would take to break a fucking Kage, and then use the information we get from her to kidnap the Four-Tails jinchuriki—if there even is a Four-Tails jinchuriki—before somehow making it out of this village?" he asked, spelling out the insanity as clearly as he could without resorting to crude language—like telling his teammate that this was batshit insane.
"Precisely. Good to see you have a good grasp of the plan. Now let's get going."
"If Iwa had a jinchuriki, wouldn't they be at war already? Somewhere in the camp waiting to unleash their demon on the unsuspecting Kumo folks?"
"Chiyo's intelligence tells us the jinchuriki is on life support after a confrontation with Shorirama Senju of Konoha. Barely clinging to life as she undoubtedly is, I doubt she's in anything close to a combat-ready state," Hayate parried before beginning to walk away. Kosuke felt the other man's chakra cover him and begin to layer him in a genjutsu to hide the both of them from sight.
XXXX- CEE
It was a semi-mitigated disaster, he thought. At least they had been able to stop the rain of explosive clay for the time being. Killua, backed up by his own sensing, came close to hitting the bird so many times that the people atop seemed to have decided to just focus their attention on flying around out of range. If they could somehow get Killua's storm release to remain stable for a longer distance before falling apart, then they could end the threat permanently. They couldn't, so they made do with what they had.
But the threat of the bird meant that both he and Killua remained outside of full combat. It galled his pride to think he was being protected by his fellow shinobi, but he knew it was the wise thing to do. If the bird came again, it could put an end to their entire war effort in one blow.
"Southeast, twenty-three clicks," he said, when he felt the familiar chakra signature that marked out the explosive clay.
"On it," Killua said, stretching out his hands. Fuck, they're dropping multiple.
"Multiple drops. All Southeast. Fifteen, seven, twenty-nine, eighteen, thirty clicks." He tracked their movements and read them.
"Storm Release: Laser Circus!" Killua screamed out his jutsu name to the world, an amplification shinobi of their level did not oft need. In Killua's case, it was probably more to help him circumvent a lot of the concentration requirements rather than a crude power boost.
The lances of charged electricity flew far and true. Cee sensed them lance into each individual explosive, destabilizing the complex mix of earth and lightning natures within them and turning them into duds that fell uselessly to the ground.
"Huzzah!" Killua said, pumping his fist. Cee could not quite hide his smile at dealing with them so thoroughly. They'd pocketed the people atop the bird one way or the other, and the second they came into range, Cee would see them struck down for it. Now, they just needed the Raikage to finish up with those.
Five shinobi still surrounded him, but just as he had made little headway in dealing with them, they were yet to manage to land a clear hit. Not like Cee thought much would happen if they did. The Raikage's durability was unquestioned. The Monk, his golden aura around him, struck next. He attempted a straight punch at the Raikage, which he blocked with his forearm. The ground around them shattered from the force of the blocked hit. The Raikage did not even flinch, striking out with a knife-hand. The Monk shuffled backwards as the Iwa shinobi formed a single hand seal.
The ground rose in a wall to block the Raikage's attack. He tore through it, never having seen a problem that he could not defeat by bashing his head into it, and stumbled into an encirclement of explosive tags. The anbu were quick. Cee would get to the bottom of what Suna anbu were doing defending Iwa's walls of all things, but that was besides the point as the ground shook from the force of the explosion. The Raikage dove out, still continuing his pursuit.
"Drop, five clicks East," he called out. Killua, in a matter of seconds, shot through the clay explosive that sought to land around the Raikage. If the goal was for the bird to provide aerial support, then they would be sorely disappointed. Cee stretched his senses to the rest of the fighting and nodded with satisfaction.
The brutes, Kinkaku and Ginkaku, were conducting themselves admirably. There was nothing they enjoyed more than slaughter, after all. Yui kept a defensive radius around them that saw them undisturbed even as she struck any that stumbled too close to their position. Sora, in classic Sora fashion, was surrounded by giant shuriken flowing with lightning release that allowed him to cut apart any who got close enough while still picking out some fighters at a distance. They were going to win this. The rest of the army just needed to last long enough for the Raikage to breach those walls. Once they breached those walls, it would be over for Iwa.
Either they would surrender or they would bear the indignity of being the first village to suffer a sacking. The lack of aerial support for the five on the ground meant it was only a matter of time. They didn't make any mistakes, acquitting themselves near perfectly in the way they conspired to lead the Raikage by the nose. The Monk came with his devastating strength whenever he felt the Raikage was distracted. The Iwa shinobi used his earth release to defend any who he felt were in danger of the Raikage's fury, and the anbu made nuisances of themselves in the way only skilled shinobi could. And yet, none of it mattered in the face of overwhelming power.
The Raikage stood still for a second, and the Monk thought he had seen an opening and moved to strike. Cee was not worried. He knew what that look meant. The lightning that surrounded the Raikage spiked, becoming more erratic until it stabilized as he increased the output. If Cee's senses were correct—and they always were—this was the edge of the first level of the Lightning Cloak, not hitting the second level or even the Sage-enhanced third level. The Monk moved to attack still, and the Raikage's hand moved.
In a flicker of space and time, the Raikage was behind the Monk—the latter falling to the floor with his chest sporting a gaping hole. The Raikage's outstretched hand had only two fingers out. The Hell Stab, of course. The Iwa shinobi was next. He put nearly a dozen walls between himself and the Raikage—still his head went in one direction and his body the other in a matter of seconds.
The anbu died in even less time. Cee sensed a flicker of chakra. "Drop, eight clicks East," he called. "This one is bigger," he warned next once he got a better feel.
Killua took heed of the warning, forming three seals before splaying his fingers outwards. The storm release jutsu had Cee blinking spots out of his eyes. Still, he sensed the explosive construct bulge before Cee's jutsu could hit, and then it vomited a swarm of smaller creatures downwards. Too small and far too plentiful for him and Killua to hit.
"Get down!" he called out, weaving one-handed seals as he pulled the Yotsuki heir closer to him and then jumped closer to Yui. The creatures landed all over the battlefield as Cee pointed two fingers above the two of them. "Lightning Release: Spiderweb," he called, stretching his control over the shape of the jutsu to allow it to cover all three of them. It shot from his fingers like a net, forming a quick dome around the three of them that roasted any of the creatures that tried to land on them.
The web would prevent clear visibility of the rest of the battlefield, but he could still sense what happened. That was the one disadvantage of being a sensor as powerful as he was. He could feel familiar chakra signatures that he had spent weeks teaching in the hopes of turning them into competent soldiers for Kumo being snuffed out in a matter of seconds. The bird got lower as it sensed an opening, but while Cee was too busy shielding to attack, the Raikage was not.
He jumped straight upwards, tearing through the bird. A lesser Sensor might have lost track of all the targets with how quickly things had happened, but not Cee. He felt the two people—women, undoubtedly—atop the bird replace themselves with more explosive clay that went inert on contact with the Raikage's chakra cloak. They had made another bird, but instead of swooping around to continue their attack, they flew off—not towards the village, but completely away. A younger Cee would have cursed the cowardice, but now he was just grateful he wouldn't have to worry about such a problematic jutsu while taking a city.
A/N: Next chapter takes us straight to the action I know you guys have been waiting for. The Unstoppable force of Konoha versus Kumo's immovable object. No idea how long that fight will last in terms of word count, but I doubt any of you can quite guess how it ends. I do hope you guys enjoyed this one though. Chiyo gets to lick her wounds again, and this time all she's truly gained is discount Deidara. Next five up on patreon (https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.