Sasuke's roar of victory was deafening. But a second later, it was drowned out by a sound that had nothing to do with celebration.
A BOOM.
Dull, deep, and violent. Coming from the stadium's structure itself.
From the forest, nearly a kilometer away, the explosion was a surreal sight. A cloud of dust and debris erupted from the outer wall of the northern stands. A small, dark figure shot out from that cloud, hurled with immense force. It traced an arc before crashing with brutal violence against the distant tree line and disappearing from view.
In the clearing where the invasion forces had gathered, the silence was sudden and absolute. Two hundred pairs of eyes, from Sound and Sand ninja alike, stared at the scene. Confusion filled the air as their minds tried to connect what they expected with what they had just witnessed.
"What… what the hell was that?" a young Sand ninja stammered. He was crouched with ten others, his hands forming a seal over a complex summoning circle drawn on the ground. The energy beneath his palms wavered.
"That explosion… it came from the stadium!" shouted another, a Sound ninja with his face covered in bandages. He jumped to his feet, breaking the jutsu's concentration. "Was that the signal? It wasn't supposed to be like this! The signal was supposed to be a flash of light, not… not someone getting blown through the air."
A murmur of panic spread through the group.
"Look," a Sand kunoichi said, pointing to the distant forest where the figure had impacted. "Was that… a person?"
The leader of the ten summoners, a man named Genzu, felt an icy knot form in his stomach. Lord Orochimaru's plan was a work of art, every step measured, every contingency planned for. There was no room for random explosions. Kabuto sama, Orochimaru's man on the ground, was the definition of precision and stealth. He would never be so careless, so loud. Something had gone terribly wrong.
"We haven't received the final signal from Kabuto sama!" one of his closest men confirmed, his voice trembling, betraying the uncertainty they all felt. "What's happening? What are our orders? Do we proceed with the summoning?"
Doubt spread through the clearing. A perfect plan depends on a perfect chain of command. And that chain, at that very moment, seemed to have shattered. The ninja looked at each other, searching for answers no one had. Their discipline was crumbling.
Genzu clenched his teeth so hard his jaw ached. He crushed his own fear under the weight of his fanaticism.
"Silence!" he yelled, his voice cutting through the rising wave of panic. The two hundred men fell quiet, their eyes fixed on him. "Stop shaking like it's your first day! Does it even matter what the signal looked like?"
"But, Genzu sama, the specific orders…" the bandaged ninja began to say.
"The specific orders were to wait for a commotion at the stadium!" Genzu interrupted, stepping toward him with a threatening glare. "Did you just watch a piece of the wall get blown away? Is that enough of a commotion for you, or do I need to spell it out? Our mission is to summon the Three Snakes to tear down the walls and sow chaos! The commotion just happened! We don't need any other signal!"
He turned to the rest of the makeshift army, his voice booming with a confidence he didn't feel.
"We were chosen for this honor! To be the vanguard of a new era! Now stop your whining and get back to your positions! Summoners, finish the damn jutsu! NOW!"
His desperate, brutal command seemed to work. Discipline, though fragile, was restored. The summoners knelt again, channeling their chakra back into the seal on the ground. The earth beneath their feet began to vibrate once more with an ominous, contained power.
It was then that the surrounding forest fell completely silent. It was instantaneous. The birdsong was cut off mid chirp. The whisper of wind through the leaves vanished. An unnatural silence fell over the clearing. It was the kind of silence that comes before a predator appears.
And then, a voice echoed from all directions at once.
"Sound ninja… Sand ninja…"
Immediately, tension seized the group again. Those not in the summoning circle drew their kunai, forming a defensive perimeter and scanning the dense foliage around them.
"Do you really think you're here for the glory of your villages?" the voice continued, each word designed to pick at their doubts. "Look at yourselves. Two hundred of you, hiding in a forest, waiting for others to do the dirty work. Waiting for a signal from a man who won't even deign to be here."
"Where is that voice coming from?" a Sound ninja whispered, spinning around.
"It's a genjutsu! Don't listen!" Genzu shouted, though his own eyes betrayed his nervousness.
The voice ignored his outburst. "And Orochimaru? Do you think he's risking his life with you? He doesn't see you as soldiers. He sees you as pawns. Disposable sacrifices in a game that only matters to him. You are the first move, the distraction that will die so he can get his real prize."
The words struck a nerve. They were too close to the uncomfortable truth many of them felt. The doubt Genzu had crushed moments before resurfaced with greater force.
While the psychological confusion did its work, the physical attack began.
From the deepest shadows beneath the ferns and between the tree roots, dozens of dark purple snakes shot forward, glowing faintly, made of pure chakra. They moved with unnatural speed, silent and lethal. They attacked the guards watching the clearing's outer perimeter.
Before the first guard could even scream a warning, one of the chakra snakes coiled around his neck and another around his ankles, dragging him violently into the forest's darkness. There were muffled cries, the unmistakable sound of breaking bones, and then, an abrupt, terrible silence. One by one, the perimeter guards were eliminated the same way, dragged into the shadows before they had time to react.
Panic finally erupted, uncontrollable this time. "We're under attack!" someone screamed.
The invaders broke formation and instinctively clustered in the center of the clearing, back to back, forming a defensive circle. Their eyes were fixed on the impenetrable wall of trees that now seemed to be watching them from all directions.
On the branch of an oak tree, a figure appeared, silhouetted against the partial light. She licked her lips with a long, forked tongue, a savage grin spreading across her face. It was an expression of pure predatory joy, mixed with a hatred so deep and personal it was almost tangible.
"Long time no see… Orochimaru's scum," Anko Mitarashi hissed. She leaned forward. "I was getting bored. I hope you're ready to play."
The clearing erupted into hell.
From every direction, figures dressed in the black uniforms of Konoha's ANBU descended upon them. They moved with silent, lethal coordination. But the leaders of the ambush couldn't be more different.
Ibiki Morino moved across the battlefield with a calmness more terrifying than any war cry. He wasn't a frontline fighter; his battlefield was the mind. While his ANBU engaged in brutal taijutsu and ninjutsu combat, he slipped along the flanks, observing. He threw a series of kunai aimed to pin the shadows of a group of five Sand ninja to the ground, immobilizing them with the Shadow Imitation Jutsu. As they struggled uselessly, Ibiki approached one of them, a Chūnin with war paint on his face who appeared to be giving orders.
"You," Ibiki said. "You look like this squad's leader. The secondary rally point in case the invasion fails. Tell me."
"Go to hell, Leaf ninja!" the man spat, his eyes full of defiance.
Ibiki sighed, a sound of genuine disappointment. "A shame. You always choose the hard way." With blinding speed that contradicted his imposing frame, his fingers pressed several points on the man's neck and chest. The Sand ninja couldn't scream. His body just convulsed, his eyes rolling back as indescribable agony shot through every fiber of his nervous system, a soundless pain. He collapsed, trembling uncontrollably, but conscious.
"I'll ask you again," Ibiki said, unfazed, crouching next to the writhing man. "And this time, you will give me the answer I want." A nearby ANBU appeared at his side. "Secure him and take him to the interrogation post. I want the names of the other squad commanders before this battle is over." His goal wasn't just to kill; it was to dismantle the enemy operation from within, extracting every piece of useful information in the midst of the chaos.
Anko, on the other hand, was chaos personified.
She was a whirlwind of acrobatic ferocity. She leaped from her branch, landing in the middle of a group of Sound ninja, her legs wrapping around one's neck and snapping it with a dry, audible crack, all while her hands were already flying through seals at a dizzying speed.
"Summoning Jutsu: Hidden Shadow Snake Hands!"
Dozens of snakes erupted from her sleeves, each one biting a different enemy. They weren't lethal, but they injected a paralyzing venom that sent them to the ground instantly, twitching and foaming at the mouth, completely neutralized.
Her gaze, however, was fixed on a single target: Genzu, the leader of the summoners, who was now shouting desperate orders to the few men still trying to maintain the jutsu.
"Protect the seal! Don't let her get close! Complete the summoning!" he yelled, launching sound waves from his palms, forcing Anko to leap back to dodge them.
"Mitarashi! The abandoned pet comes crawling back home!" Genzu screamed at her, his face twisted with hatred. "Lord Orochimaru will tear out your fangs and leave you to rot like the trash you are!"
"Better than being the current pet! Does he still have you licking his boots?" Anko retorted, her grin widening. She landed in a crouch, her eyes gleaming. "That snake taught me everything I know about poison!"
She dodged another blast of sound, the air vibrating beside her.
"And the first lesson is that he always, always turns on his own toys! You're next on the menu!"
The battle was brutal, but Konoha's ambush had been devastating. The invaders, outmatched in numbers, strategy, and sheer ferocity, were falling quickly. Ibiki's specialists neutralized and captured key targets, while the ANBU killed with quiet, professional efficiency. Anko, for her part, hunted her prey.
She moved with unnatural fluidity, dodging Genzu's sound attacks, her body getting closer and closer. The man, desperate, saw he was being cornered and began performing a complex jutsu, one that required a series of hand seals.
It was a fatal mistake.
Anko seized the one second opening. Her hands became a blur of seals.
Two large snakes shot from her sleeves, launching toward Genzu like torpedoes. He reacted in time, unleashing a concentrated shockwave that disintegrated the first snake. But the second was already on him. It coiled around him, pinning his arms and sinking its fangs into his shoulder.
Genzu screamed, a sharp cry of pain and rage as the venom began to corrode his chakra from within. Konoha's victory was total.
Or almost.
Genzu, knowing he was finished, looked at the summoning circle. Despite the massacre, the seal was still pulsing faintly with the accumulated energy of his fallen men. A grin of madness and fanaticism spread across his bloodied face.
"Lord Orochimaru… will have his chaos!" he gasped, his voice raspy from the venom.
With his last ounce of strength, he bit his thumb until it bled and, as Anko lunged at him to deliver the final blow, he slammed his bloody hand onto the center of the seal. He began performing a series of one handed seals, a sequence Anko recognized with absolute horror.
"Don't you dare! You idiot, stop!" she yelled, her playful tone gone and replaced by genuine urgency. "That's a sacrificial seal! You'll force the summoning without proper control!"
Genzu just laughed, a choked, gurgling sound as blood rose in his throat. "If I'm going down, I'm taking this damn forest with me!"
The summoning circle, which had been glowing with a purple light, erupted in a blinding, blood red color. The light was so intense it forced everyone to shield their eyes. The ground of the clearing cracked apart. The unstable energy, now without a master to guide it and fueled by an impure blood sacrifice, went completely haywire.
Instead of the clean, defined form of one of the Three Great Snakes, something far more monstrous and deformed began to tear its way into the world. It was a mass of summoning flesh, seething and pulsating, from which multiple snake heads sprouted, all screaming in silent agony. Scales of different colors and sizes covered parts of its amorphous body, while other areas were just exposed muscle and sinew. It had no coherent shape, only a will to destroy.
Anko and Ibiki, who had just secured a flawless victory, could only watch in horror as their perfect operation was about to become a catastrophe of uncontrollable proportions.