This offensive relies very heavily on the element of surprise and the fact that we know that Ay is still recovering from his wounds.
We will be launching a full frontal assault in a few minutes' time. We have no idea if Ay and Bee are truly present in the large Kumo encampment ahead but we will be prepared for them if they are. The Hachibi Suppression Squad will be there to deal with Bee while our Hokage will deal with Ay personally.
"Loosen up, Haku. Getting all tense isn't going to make things easier."
My godmother's words and her hand giving my shoulder a slight squeeze helped ease my nerves a little. I have taken part in conflicts, I have killed countless people, I have experienced an invasion, but this is truly the first time where I have to take part in a war. Unlike the invasion at Konoha, there's no homeground advantage here and we will be going up against multiple S Rank threats.
"I can't believe that all we are doing is to simply wait."
"The main force will be more than enough to level the Kumo camp. If Bee is there, we will need to be at full strength to deal with him. If he isn't, good for us too, it will free us to be able to assist in pushing Kumo away from our borders."
"A win for us no matter the situation." I acknowledged with a nod of my head. Konoha's main forces will be arriving around today evening at the earliest and by tomorrow early morning at the latest. Even if this offensive somehow goes sideways, all we have to do is to last until our main forces arrive to assist us. We could have waited until they arrived before launching this offensive, but no doubt Kumo already has scouts with eyes on our main forces. It's too hard to hide the movements of an army that big and they will be expecting an assault the moment they arrive. What we are doing now is doing the unexpected, to take them off guard so that we can deal a crippling blow even before the fight begins.
I could actually feel the air getting thicker with tension. I could hear how the forests gradually grew silent. The birds and insects that had been singing had all disappeared, the telltale signs of an incoming disaster.
All of that was broken when I spotted a kunai being thrown into the air. It reached the apex of its flight before curving downwards, sailing straight towards the Kumo encampment. Countless other kunais followed just a split second later, each of them attached with an exploding tag.
The war had started.
Explosions bathed the unprepared Kumo encampment as screams filled the air. The very ground shook as battlecries were yelled and Konoha shinobis flooded out of the trees and charged right at our enemies. The first line of defence for the Kumo troops responded just as quickly and the two opposing forces eventually met in a clash of steel and chakra. Jutsus were thrown around and the landscape was immediately reshaped. Bodies fell within the first few seconds of war, the smell of ash and blood starting to taint the air.
So this is war.
I had once thought that the only way this world could find peace is through war, by becoming a force so powerful that nobody could stop the change being brought about like how Pein and Madara had become. If that is the path taken then war is inevitable, but after seeing this, suddenly, I'm starting to have doubts.
"Anybody spotted Ay or Bee?" My godmother asked.
"None so far. Could they be biding their time?" Obito replied, his eyes already a crimson red and observing the battlefield with intense focus.
"Doubt it. Ay is not the type to sit still and watch things unfold, so is Bee." Kushina commented with a thoughtful frown on her face. The Hachibi Suppression Squad is currently concealed at the edge of the battlefield. Our orders are to observe the battle and to intervene only if Bee makes his appearance. If Bee isn't here, then we will only intervene if Kushina deems that things had gotten too dire for our forces and additional firepower is needed to reduce our losses to a minimum.
I spread my sensory range outwards as best as I could, trying to help pinpoint if Ay and Bee are indeed around. However, the fight out there is too chaotic and there are simply too many people. Everyone's chakra are flicking around wildly, flaring and sputtering every single second and it is insanely difficult to pick out who you are looking for unless you are very familiar with their chakra signature.
We all spotted a flash of yellow and we knew that our Hokage had joined the battle. Konoha's morale rose to an all time high when Kumo's forces were mowed down in seconds. If Ay were indeed watching everything and decided to not take any action yet, he will have no choice but to do it now.
We were not disappointed. A large surge of lightning could be seen from the Kumo's encampment before it shot outwards to meet our Hokage in battle. It seems that Ay is indeed on the frontlines. Ay had lost a hand and no matter how the Kumo nins will try to argue otherwise, that is still a crippling blow for any shinobi, S Rank or not. Minato will have the upperhand in this battle and if he does manage to capture Ay to force Kumo to back off from this war entirely because of it, then it is good news.
Ay had arrived, but where was Bee? Is he even here? Maybe he really had gone back to Kumo?
I tried my best to focus my sensory abilities to detect any chakra anomalies, especially large surges in chakra or anyone who could have chakra reserves too large by normal standards. Bee is arguably Kumo's most powerful weapon and if we can render it useless, or better still, remove it entirely, then Konoha will have definitely won the war.
At first glance, Konoha seems to be winning but I cannot help but feel uneasy. I have no idea why. It may be just my nerves getting to me, maybe my sixth sense is trying to tell me something, but I have a feeling that this cannot be all. Kumo is a superpower in the Elemental Nations for a very good reason, people call them Konoha's next best contender for the title of the strongest hidden village and this is not without reasons. Kumo's military might is nothing to scoff at despite the scarcity of bloodline limits within their lands. While they may not have as many S Rank shinobis as Konoha, they are known for producing quality shinobis en masse. The skill level of an average Kumo nin is usually above those of other hidden villages, including the rest of the Big Five. Not only that, Kumo is probably the hidden village with the most advanced technological developments. A simple example would be how the invention of the camera in the Elemental Nations originated from Kumo.
"Don't push yourself too hard, Haku. Trying to sense a select few individuals in a battlefield is near impossible even for the most accomplished sensors unless they are actively announcing their presence. Just do what you can."
"I don't know how to explain this, but I just feel that something is amiss. This couldn't be all that Kumo is capable of. Why are they fighting a losing battle so desperately when they could have just cut their losses by retreating?"
"Kid's have a point." Yamato spoke up. "Under usual circumstances if you are being outnumbered and ambushed like this, the right call to make would be to beat a strategic retreat, which Kumo is not doing for some reason. This means that either backup is on the way, or-"
"An ambush of their own," Itachi interjected. "They may have expected Konoha to do something like this and have something planned on their end as well. They are waiting for us to commit too much to be able to pull back in time."
It seems that we are not the only ones who have thought of this possibility because the signal flare to retreat was fired into the sky just as Itachi finished saying his piece. Konoha's forces complied almost immediately as they started to pull back, but we were all in for a big surprise when a titanic wall of earth suddenly rose from the ground to cut off the retreat route for our forces, effectively cutting off all visual between our encampment and the battlefield. The next second, an enormous chasm opened up from below and swallowed a large number of our own shinobis before closing permanently shut.
"AMBUSH!"
The loud cry we heard from the battlefield summarised it all.
"That cannot be Kumo's work! None of them have such mastery over Earth Release! Iwa! It has to be Iwa!" Obito stated furiously. "Kumo and Iwa have joined forces! Damn it! Didn't Shikaku say that the chances of them doing so were minimal?!"
"He said it was minimal, never said that it was impossible. I would prefer to point out how it was possible that nobody from our side spotted this ambush, especially the Hyugas, but this is not the time." Fugaku grunted out before turning to Kushina. "Squad leader, your orders?"
Kushina gritted her teeth at the slaughter happening right in front of our very eyes as squads of Iwa shinobis started to rise from the earth one after the other, joining forces with Kumo in their attempt to finish us off like fishes in a barrel.
"We enact Plan B. Work in your pairs and keep a lookout for any potential jinchuurikis running about. Haku, you are with me. Yamato, Obito, do something about that wall. Fugaku, Itachi, run interference, buy time for our forces to escape."
We leapt into action the moment Kushina gave her orders. I followed closely behind my godmother as chakra chains sprouted from her back before they lashed out at the closest group of enemies in front of us, slapping them aside or skewering them even before they could react. I gathered my chakra and rained sharp spikes of ice down on our foes, pinning them down long enough for my godmother's chains to get to them. Unlike my godmother, I will need to conserve my chakra because I do not have reserves as large as hers. She can have the honour of dealing the killing blow, all I have to do is to make her work easier.
It's hard to describe what really followed. Unlike the invasion in Konoha, the fights here just never seem to end. Droves and droves of shinobis just keep coming in their attempt to kill us and we can never catch a break. The moment an enemy shinobi falls a few more will take their place. There's nowhere to fall back to because we are the backup. Everything passes in a blur as Kushina and I are steadily forced to use our bigger and more chakra intensive jutsus in order to handle the assault. There's no time to think. Habits honed from countless training sessions kick in and your body moves as though it is on autopilot.
It was after I froze another small group of shinobis into blocks of ice did I finally manage to catch a small breather. Without further ado, I used this brief respite to finally find time to activate one of my strongest techniques, Hyoten Hyakkaso. This is the most suitable technique I have to combat a large number of shinobis.
Several Kumo shinobis obviously knew what my ice was capable of because they immediately went to seek shelter instead of staying to fight. They are probably the ones who participated in the invasion and lived to tell the tale. The Iwa shinobis, however, are clueless to the hidden threat my snow presented as they ignored it in favour of charging straight at me.
They soon learnt not to underestimate the cold.
"Something is wrong with the damn snow!"
"Be careful, it's Konoha's Yuki brat in Kumo's bingo book!"
I unleashed a raging snowstorm that forced the Iwa nins to promptly erect a sturdy wall of earth to block my assault. However, that is nothing more than a smokescreen from me just so that my godmother can use this borrowed time to her advantage. Her chains pierced through the earthen wall without fuss and ripped it to shreds and alongside it, the Iwa shinobis that were hiding behind that wall.
"Good job, Haku." Kushina complimented before taking a quick look behind. It seems that Yamato and Obito had succeeded in breaking down a large section of the titanic wall blocking the escape route and also preventing it from being repaired. Most of our forces are gradually pulling away from the battle. This battle may not have given us a clear cut advantage in the war, but at least we found out that Kumo and Iwa are working with each other. That in itself is a very important piece of information.
"Are we pulling back too?"
"Yes, we are," Kushina agreed as I followed her lead and started to make our way out of the battlefield. "But dammit, why is Iwa involved now of all times? How did that bullheaded Ay manage to get the old fencesitter to actually not sit on the fence for once?"
"Guess this will really blow up into a Fourth World War." I cannot help but comment after quickly going through all the implications Iwa's involvement might mean in the confines of my mind. Konoha, Kumo, Suna, and now Iwa, four of the Big Five are now officially involved in this conflict. No matter how you look at it, war is imminent.
My godmother and I joined the main assault forces in retreating from the battlefield, heading towards the big hole in the titanic earthen wall that Obito and Yamato had opened up. We occasionally paused in our tracks to help fend off a few stray attacks that might have hit some of our nearby comrades before my godmother found that a little too annoying for her tastes. She ended up throwing a few tags around and erected a barrier that covered our escape.
I sensed a powerful surge of chakra gathering in the sky and I looked up. I could barely see anything in the sky; the sun is only just about to rise and the sky's still dark even though it is starting to brighten.
However, I know that I am not imagining things when I sensed the building up of chakra above us. I squinted my eyes slightly in the direction where I sensed the chakra was, trying to decide if that was friendly or not. Maybe that chakra belongs to someone's summons who has some sort of flight capabilities?
"Haku?"
"Something's up there, building up chakra. I don't know if it's friendly or not."
My godmother immediately threw out more tags, fortifying the barriers around us before yelling at our fellow Konoha shinobis.
"HURRY AND MOVE IT! THE ENEMY IS GOING TO UNLEASH A BIG ONE!"
My godmother grabbed me by the back of my shirt before bolting towards the exit. I quickly released myself from her grasp and ran alongside her, not wanting to be dragged along.
"An enemy?"
"Not many shinobis can fly, and whoever you sensed obviously isn't Minato. If even you cannot decide if it's friendly or not, then there's only one other person that I can think of who needs to build up a lot of chakra while floating in the air in order to attack, especially when Iwa is now involved."
My eyes widened in shock when I finally connected the dots.
"It couldn't be him, right? Why will he come here himself when he could just reap the benefits by simply sitting in his office?"
"Wish I knew too. In any case, we have to get out of his firing range before it's too late."
I sensed it a split second before it happened. Whatever the building up of chakra was for, it was finally unleashed as a jutsu fired in the general direction of the Konoha shinobis that we were a part of. Thankfully, I was fully prepared to slip into the safety of my ice mirror and to bring my godmother along for the job. When we emerged, all that greeted us was an empty and perfectly circular hole where the land once was, like someone had gouged and erased everything within it.
The Dust Release.
I sensed another jutsu being fired at us, with lesser chakra powering it this time but by no means deadly. My godmother and I were forced to dodge to a side away from each other just as a white beam of light struck the ground we were once standing on. That same piece of ground now also has a circular hole in it, just a lot smaller.
However, I can sense a bigger threat lying in wait just below us.
"Below us!"
Molten lava erupted beneath us like a fiery volcano. I didn't have time to see what had happened to my godmother as I was forced to levitate myself into the air. The very first thing I spotted was a lava coated figure shooting himself at me like a comet and no matter how much ice I hurled his way, it didn't stop his charge beyond slowing him down a little.
I heard my godmother releasing a string of furious curses as her chains whipped in a frenzy and extended themselves towards the sky. The deadly beams of white light were still sniping at my godmother from above and I can only place my trust in her that she will be alright. I am not able to spare her any of my attention because that lava coated figure is getting too close to my liking.
I cannot help but groan upon recognising just who that person is. Great, another jinchuriki that possesses an ability that can naturally counter my snow and ice. As if facing Yugito during the invasion wasn't bad enough.
"Water Release: Water Colliding Wave!"
I summoned a spiralling vortex of water to crash down on Roshi while calling upon my ice pillars. I need all the advantages I can get right now. I need more chakra.
I scattered myself into shards of ice as a lava coated fist tried to smash at me. A stream of flames blanketed the skies and I was forced to fly close to the ground. Those flames don't seem to be ordinary flames, it's best not to get close.
Roshi landed back on the ground in his infamous Lava Release Chakra Mode. However, unlike Ay or Hanabi's version of chakra mode, Roshi is only able to achieve this by using the Yonbi's power. This power is not truly his; it's obvious from how he is now sporting a tail.
"Why is Iwa involved?" I asked as I darted around Roshi, who is raining down boulders of magma at my location. There has to be a reason why Iwa is now involved and for my godfather's sake, I need to get to the bottom of it as much as I can.
"You think we want to be here?" Roshi snorted. "We don't want to get involved in the conflict between Konoha and Kumo initially, but it's a different story if Kumo hires our services. The promised pay is too good for the stubborn fool to refuse, so we were sent out."
Hiring the services of another village to bolster your military might in a war? Have to give Ay points for creativity alright. How much did he pay to get the services of both Roshi and the Tsuchikage himself among other Iwa shinobis that are probably at least A Rank in skill or threat level? What did he promise Onoki? How desperate is he to see Konoha gone?
"No hard feelings, kid. Just doing my job." Roshi said as he skidded backwards on the ground after my Water Bullet pushed him back. He sucked in a deep breath, an action that I recognise is a precursor to the usage of most Fire Release techniques, so I immediately made myself scarce before Roshi could unleash whatever he was preparing. It was the right call to make, seeing that the entire ground was being covered in lava just seconds later.
Can I really handle Roshi on my own? The anti-jinchuriki jutsus that I developed was heavily inspired by what I knew about Kisame, so whatever Kisame can do, I can also do the same to a certain extent. The only problem is that unlike Kisame who had years to refine his techniques, my newly created ones are still in the stage where they are being constantly refined and improved. Yes, it did worked somewhat against the demon cat back during the invasion, but the four tails has two times the power the cat possess if we are looking at just the number of tails alone, and I am not even taking into account the disadvantage I am inherently facing based on the elemental natures of our chakras.
Unfortunately for me, I do not have time to ponder. There's nobody else to help me at the moment so I either fight back or die trying.
The first plan I had was to reenact the same course of action I took against Yugito, to break the seal caging the beast and force it to go on a rampage, but that plan was thrown out of the window as soon as it came when I realised that Roshi's lava could probably melt my ice faster than I could touch him and subsequently crack his seal. Roshi's lava is the natural nemesis of my ice and that is probably why he was the one assigned to kill me. They had thought this through even before the start of this battle.
Kumo really wanted me dead, huh. Should I be flattered at the amount of attention they are giving me, or should I be annoyed?
The exchange of jutsu quickly went back and forth with Roshi gunning for my life and me just trying my absolute best to stay alive. Roshi's lava is dangerous to me mainly because of the heat it emits. Since ice doesn't seem to bring about the desired effects in cooling it off, the only solution that I could think of right now is to quickly cool off his lava with Water Release and turn it into solidified slag, so that the lava wouldn't be a literal burning problem to deal with. It kind of worked, but the problem is that Roshi has an infinite well of chakra while I don't. I don't have the luxury to draw this fight out in a contest of attrition, I need to finish this fast, I need to end this immediately, I need a Water Release jutsu that is powerful enough to deal a crippling blow in one go and preferably encompasses a wide area. Doing so would probably eat away a large chunk of my chakra but I cannot be picky about my options when I am struggling just to stay alive.
Let's just hope that this works.
I could see Roshi's eyes widening in surprise when the palm of my right hand began to manifest the infamous chakra ball construct, the signature jutsu of our Hokage. When I was forced to be on medical rest I wasn't spending it by wasting my time away. Inoichi forbade me from training in the physical sense, so I decided to train in my mindscape instead. I had shown my godfather that I had mastered Wind Release chakra nature transformation and it was possible to do so in his mindscape training method, I simply decided to master my other chakra nature while I was on medical rest and to learn how to combine both shape and nature manipulation while I was at it.
The Water Release: Rasengan is currently my most powerful Water Release jutsu that I hadn't told anyone of yet. Not because I didn't want to, but because I know it is technically still an incomplete jutsu. It is still a work in progress that needs some refinement before it can really be considered a completed jutsu like how the Rasenshuriken is. Combining both shape and nature manipulation is insanely difficult; my jutsu is incredibly unstable and barely holding itself together although I believe it can still get the work done.
I know that Roshi knows that the power packed behind this jutsu is no laughing matter even for a jinchuriki like him, because I'm betting my life with this jutsu and giving it my all. I know that he knows that avoiding it is not an option because my version of Rasengan would simply swallow everything in its path just like the vast and bottomless sea would. I know that he knows that this fight will be ended in the next instant, that we will both unleash our strongest techniques to determine the victor within the next few seconds.
There was an incredible surge of chakra from Roshi as the heat emitted from him grew unbearably hot as though I'm facing the sun itself. I could feel the unbelievably dense chakra packed into his fist as he lunged at me, intending to burn a hole through my body before I could stabilise my Rasengan. What he doesn't know is that I never planned on waiting for it to stabilise before unleashing it.
And so, I lunged as well.
My Rasengan exploded with a relentless torrent the moment it came into contact with Roshi's lava coated fist, and I was thankful that my Ice Body technique was active because the entirety of my right arm was shattered into shards of ice from the sheer impact alone. I saw how Roshi's other fist tried to blindside me, but I was able to partially block it with my free hand even if the pain of the molten lava burning through my body of ice had me screaming silently in pain. It seems that my Ice Body is not nigh invincible because at the very least, the Lava Release seems to be able to damage it.
In the end, the unending amount of water exploding out of my Rasengan was what saved me when Roshi was washed away with the current, sucked into a gigantic maelstrom that would continue to rage for a long while, pressed under the dense weight of a huge volume of water and unable to take in a gulp of fresh air. Even if the damage inflicted to his body couldn't take him out due to his jinchuriki status, being unable to breathe would surely render him incapable of fighting for at least a short while. This would give me time, time that I desperately need to find my godmother right now. This entire mission had gone to shit the moment Iwa came into the picture and our task at hand is to secure the retreat for our forces before backing away ourselves, not to subjugate our opponents. Thus, our priority should be to escape with our lives.
Now where is my godmother?
Unlike the usual variants of elemental ninjutsu, the Dust Release doesn't produce much sound when used. Maybe it's because it simply erases everything it touches out of existence, but it is not making it easy for me to track the site of the battle. I did manage to find her eventually, but not expecting to find her in the kind of state she was in.
Everything happened in a flash. I could see Onoki preparing to fire off another one of his particle dismantling jutsu from above. His target is my godmother, who is already injured and covered in blood from head to toe and probably wouldn't be able to avoid his attack in time. I saw how their eyes widened in surprise when I made my presence known, shooting spikes of ice at the Tsuchikage in fury and succeeded in forcing him to dodge and to abort firing his jutsu at my godmother. In that split second, I made a few observations and came to a conclusion.
One, my chakra reserves are running low, I do not have enough chakra after my run-in with Roshi and I could only make one more trip with my mirrors and the distance I could make with it wouldn't be very far. I could try to crunch on a soldier pill to replenish my chakra levels, but I doubt that I will be given the chance to with the Tsuchikage hovering just right above us. Two, there is an entire army of Iwa nins from what I could see that stands in the way of our retreat route back to the Konoha encampment; trying to force ourselves to regroup with Konoha would be tantamount to attempting suicide because we will have to fight against an entire army of Iwa nins for that and I am not confident in being able to slip past them in one usage of my ice mirrors with how low my chakra levels currently are.
That leaves us with only one direction left for us to take.
I grabbed onto my godmother's arm and yanked her towards me as I slipped into an ice mirror, bringing her along with me. It was just right before Onoki fired his Dust Release at us, missing us by just a fraction of a second.