Pre-Chapter A/N: For the next few weeks, you might only get chapters on Tuesdays. Real life stuff is getting in the way. I will of course maintain my commitment to at least one upload per day on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (some days there might be two like there used to be but I won't commit to that many for now). Next four chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio.
XXXXXXX- SHIKAHIME NARA
She should have seen this coming the second she began explaining the plan she had for bringing Ame into the fold. Her plan, her risk. While she found the thought of leaving the village at all to be much too troublesome in most situations, she could not deny that this was one where she was wholly suited and most others were far from suited. If only Kizuru was still around, she thought with a small smile. He loved diplomacy altogether too much for a man who had dedicated his life to the shinobi arts. A man who had been killed for that dedication.
She could have been back in the village putting the finishing thoughts on her theory on what exactly had happened to Kizuru and finding the final bits of evidence, but that could wait. Revenge could wait because if she was right then the ones who did it would not be going anywhere. They knew exactly where they were, after all. She turned to the boy walking at her side. Her young cousin, Shikoku was a rising star in the clan.
He had graduated a few years ahead of Shori's title coterie of monsters, yes, but the fact that he had been promoted to Jounin in the same year as they were was nothing but a credit to him as far as she was concerned. If a jinchuriki, an Uchiha prodigy, and the Hokage's favourite student were your competition, there was nothing wrong with falling behind a tiny bit.
"Is something the matter, Cousin?" He asked. She had been staring for too long, she realised.
"Nothing. Do you recall the objectives for the mission and your role in seeing them accomplished?" She asked, not bothering to whisper even though they were outside the village. They were surrounded by an escort group made of Uzume's best Anbu. If anyone successfully managed to escape their notice to spy on her conversation then something as mundane as whispering would not be much of a deterrent.
"Your objective is to come to an agreement with the Beheader while I shadow you and learn from you while I can. I am also to infiltrate the household to the best of my abilities to grant us an even more solid understanding of our ally, and if possible recruit and secure a spy within his household," he repeated, somehow managing to sound tired with just the thought of what he would have to do. She just smiled. Shikoku was a true Nara in a way that she would never be. While none would ever doubt her intellect, breeding, or affinity with their hidden technique, she had heard it said that she had too much Senju in her.
Their hidden technique was as close to pure yin release as one could get without abandoning chakra itself and in breeding children to be able to use this technique effectively, they had bred children with an overabundance of yin and a commensurate lack in yang energy. The intellect, energy levels, and general lack of motivation to do anything other than sleep was a common symptom. Of course not everyone was Shikoku's level. He had been born with abnormally high yin even for the Nara clan, much as she had been born with abnormally high yang.
Perhaps if Shori had never enrolled in the academy, she would have never become a true shinobi. The clan had had little idea how to teach someone like her to use their techniques. Going to the academy and practicing chakra control with Shori until her legs shook with exertion had been what she had needed to make it to the point where she could brute force their techniques into working.
And then over the years she had gone from lacking talent with their hidden techniques to being one of the greatest users the clan had ever seen, and when the time came, there had been no doubts that she should have inherited the position of Clan Head and guide them into the new era.
"You must of course, make sure that you are not caught trying to spy on our allies by any means," she said. He just nodded. She would trust him to handle it. For the time being, he was her heir after all and she had chosen to bring him here for a reason. She had been too busy to supervise the majority of his education and training, so now might as well have been as good a lesson to see him in action beyond their sparring matches in the compound.
"Nara-san, we are going to cross from the Land of Fire to the Land of Rain. From there, we will increase our pace. Please let us know if you are unable to keep up so we can match yours instead. Do not hesitate to do this after we have left the immediate vicinity of the border. Expect violence for the meantime, however." The Anbu in charge of her security detail, Toad, said. She just nodded. It made sense.
On entry to the country would be the perfect time for them to be ambushed so it was better for them to get done with it as quickly as possible and manage to make it into Rain's forests. She did not look forward to the run through Ame's plains either. Many an ambush had been attempted and succeeded in the place they were about to reach now. Their goal would be to somehow make it out of there without adding themselves to the statistic.
The trees began to thin out as they got closer to the border with Ame. For the last few kilometres, there was nothing but plain ground. They sprinted along that, and then sprinted into the Land of Rain, continuing to run. She applied chakra to her feet with every motion to prevent her legs getting stuck in the mud they raced across. The Anbu began to skate along the mud, of all things and Shikoku kept pace with her copying her technique.
"They are impressive," he said, looking over at their Anbu escort.
"You should see them when they have someone to kill," she said instead.
"I hope I don't," he said and she just chuckled.
"You've come on the wrong mission then," she replied, continuing to run as she noticed one of the Anbu escort veering off to the left. Another filed in, moving more to the side to cover his previous path while the guard who veered off weaved seals. He spat a lance of water that was blocked by a wall of water that rose from the ground. He body flickered forwards and then Shikahime had to return her attention back to their coming enemies.
Toad had been right. The Ame shinobi had just been waiting for someone to step into their hornet's nest so they could kill them. The Land of Rain was jealous and protective of its borders. The chaos and bedlam they had suffered in the first war had only been prevented from repeating itself in the Second by Hanzo the Salamander's near singlehanded campaign against intrusion. Now, Hanzo was dead.
Konoha had swooped in and killed the brightest light they had nurtured in their history. So it made some sense that they would have shinobi just waiting for any incursions from the Konoha side of the border. Perhaps it would have been better if they entered through Earth, but she knew that even this was a choice. The aggression had been anticipated and modelled.
As Toad, leading the charge, shattered a man's skull with a single punch to the face and then snapped a man's neck by twisting it a full 180 degrees, she knew this much had been expected. They were making a statement. Konoha knew what waited for them if they attempted to enter the border— the single place where all three warlords had been able to come to an agreement. And yet they had done so regardless. They had broken through the best deterrence force that Ame could afford to muster and given them a bloody nose while doing it.
And the collateral advantage was, of course, that it meant their presence here would be known. Konoha tools would make it known to the other two warlords just what they discussed with Yaga the Beheader. He would be their ally whether he wanted to or not. And if he was too recalcitrant on the way there, he would be neatly replaced when they eventually secured victory on his behalf.
Her Kage had ordered her to see to it that Ame fell and she would never countenance anything other than total and complete victory for him. That was the nature of her position. It was the burden she carried as a shinobi— blade over heart.
She watched as the Anbu maintained a containment field around her and Shikoku. Their assailants were not stupid though, and managed to note that they were the ones being protected. They did not need to know anything more than that to change their strategy of engagement. Focus shifted from the Anbu to those they protected and they learned why this was the most feared division of Konoha's black ops unit before they died. Toad was a storm of fists and grapples. Where she moved, men died. Her fingers broke through guards with the careless ease of a person who knew that they were stronger than everyone they faced, and she shrugged off blows that would have crippled others. A kunai to the stomach was met with a kick that tore the lucky assailant in half. She removed the blade, hurling it with such force that it shattered the sound barrier and then the head of the man it met. Oh, she was pissed.
"You good, Toad?" She called out despite herself. That wound did not look good. The frog mask turned to look at her and the red eyes within reached her like a pair of daggers.
"Yes, Ma'am. Not my first rodeo," she said, and indeed the wound was already healing, steaming with the heat of the regenerative chakra being brought to bear.
One of the Ame shinobi felt he could move in on Toad while she seemed distracted with tending to Shikahime's question. The man blurred out of the rain, body forming itself like a shadow from the void. The void was where he was sent to in a matter of seconds. Toad grabbed a hold of the wrist that held the kunai he wanted to stab into her neck and dragged him forward before lashing out with an elbow that caved in his chest like he had been folded in by a hammer. Toad tossed the body into the air and they kept moving.
Over the din of the battlefield and the rain that fell on the wet ground, Shikahime barely heard the splash as the body landed right behind them. Toad kept going, setting a punishing pace that they were all expected to follow. Surrounding her were Anbu agents not quite as physically dominant as she so clearly was, but in their own ways they were no less deadly.
Housefly was a blur of blades as he weaved through attacking swarms with a katana that reaped lives with every swing. She wondered for a second how he would fare against someone like Toshiro who had taken the art of swordsmanship as far as a shinobi possibly could, and came to the conclusion that despite his obvious lethality, he would still lose. He was an impressive physical specimen but Toshiro had brought genjutsu and kenjutsu together in a way that blurred where one began and the other ended. Fighting through illusions was hard enough without a blade sharp enough to cut through bone in a single swing coming at you just about as fast as you could react.
Housefly blocked a testing probe of a kunai and ran the kunoichi through a second later with a deft flick of his wrists and twist of his hip. Another second later and that blade was going through a hundred small movements a second as he weathered a storm of senbon from one of the Ame umbrellas. She decided to ensure she picked one up before they left. Shori did love to receive unique gifts, after all.
They raced through the marshland that made up the border between Ame and Fire and made their way into Ame proper in a matter of minutes. They had punched through the border guard group, and left them too busy reeling and recovering to be able to mount a meaningful pursuit. Of course, Toad had ordered some of the Anbu to lay false trails as they began to suppress their chakra signatures to blend in further with the environment.
Beyond the border group, it was unlikely that they would run into patrols of any other sort in this country unless they got near enough to one of the warlord bases that they would have to deal with their guards. In that case, it would be expected for them to run into opposition.
The rains of Ame gave no respite even as they got deeper into the country. It was like the skies were constantly weeping for some tragedy they had borne witness to. It was a gloomy place, little suited for being the springboard to begin a world conquest. They passed several villages of starving people before they made it to the castle that Yaga the Beheader called home.
It was multiple stories tall and buzzing with activity. From this far away, she could only see into the building by using one of Shorirama's sight scopes. With that, she could see the bustling horde of Samurai and Shinobi crawling over the place like worker ants doing their best to create a fitting home for their queen. They seemed to be moving in every which direction with some urgency, but not quite the panic and nigh feverish intensity that one would have expected as an answer to an approaching group of their strength. It told the story that this level of activity was par for the course for them.
Yaga clearly kept a tight ship. Of course, she knew that already. That was part of the reason she had chosen him. When Ame was unified, someone would be needed to turn their paltry fighting force to something worthy of marching under Konoha's symbol, and he was the only one of the lot with the ability to ingrain the necessary discipline at the required scale that Konoha would need to operate at a reasonable speed moving forward. Whether he knew it or not, Yaga would become the first domino to fall in the series of events that would culminate in Konoha being placed above the rest of the world.
"So what do we do now?" Shikoku asked by her side.
"Our man inside should be delivering our letter now. If Yaga has any sense, he will leave his castle and proceed to the chosen meeting point," she said with a smirk.
"And yet we are here, watching them," he commented.
"We will meet them on their way there. It should make things more efficient and this way, if Yaga chooses to set a trap or attempt something foolish, we will have the advanced warning we need to either escape or turn his trap around on him," she said.
"Are you well, Toad?" She asked the woman, remembering the wound she had sustained earlier. While she had seen some healing begin in the heat of battle, she did not expect it to have been enough for her to be fully healed however. There were limits to everything.
"Just perfect," she said with a smile. Shikahime nodded, not completely believing her, but not able to dwell on the subject of the Anbu agent's well-being when she could see that the movement within the castle had changed forms. Now there was real haste there.
"What do you think the odds are that they do the smart thing?" She asked her cousin, turning to look at his face. He kept his gaze on the castle for a few more seconds before speaking.
"Seven in ten," he said. She nodded and turned back to the castle. He ended up being right as a contingent with the Beheader himself left the castle after a few more minutes. She nodded at her escort group and they faded into the shadows, moving into position.
She waited in the shade of one of the few trees thick enough to grant any relief from this nation's near-persistent downpour. Shikoku was at her side. Toad and the rest of the Anbu were arrayed around them.
Yaga had a sensor of some skill with him, it seemed as he had slowed his pace about five kilometres from them. He hadn't stopped, however. Just slowed down and now he was only a few minutes away. She could have felt nervous. Perhaps the fact that she did not was a failing of some sort. But war had stripped her of whatever feeling she had in that regard. She had almost died more times than she could count. Compared to that, this felt like nothing.
The Beheader was the tip of the spear. He walked into the clearing that they had chosen with his head held high. Unlike the rest of his men, there was no visible caution on his face. He just watched them with cold eyes. She took the chance to analyse him. He wore a samurai's armour, except in this case blood red rather than the traditional white that the Samurai of the Land of Frost wore. It draped over his somewhat lanky form well and at either side was a hilt. And then peaking out from behind each shoulder was another hilt. Four swords. Around his arm was the helmet all the drawings she had seen depicted him wearing so his face was revealed. A stern face that was younger than she would have expected by some margin. Younger than their intelligence placed his age at. Sadly, getting pictures of warlords was not the easiest thing to do.
"I assume you are the envoy sent by Shorirama Senju. Was the Butcher too afraid to come himself?" The man's voice was an impressive baritone that carried. Toad was bristling at the epithet he used to refer to their Kage, and the rest of the Anbu were only more silent about their rage— not any less enraged. She nearly chuckled. If only they knew how amusing Shori found it.
"Hokage-sama has many things vying for his attention. So many that a meeting with a petty warlord in a minor nation just fails to break through. Apologies, of course," she said.
"Indeed. And yet I am sure that if I had ignored your invitation, the Butcher would have found the time to give my castle a visit. Perhaps he would swoop in at night from the skies and take me like he took Hanzo."
A/N: There we go with the chapter. Hasn't been the best writing week for me but things should be looking up in the next few days so fingers crossed. Next four chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.