A Senju in the Stars, Chapter 11

The Bodhisattva Wooden Legion moved like a tide across the upper ruins of the Hive. Twelve thousand strong. Hashirama had crafted them from root and bark and the will of fire, and handed the reins to Batu without hesitation. The White Scar knew the land better than he did. Knew the faces of the friend and the enemy. Knew the shape of this war and the colors of its madness. Hashirama did not know any of that–or most of it. 

They advanced without a trumpet’s call. No banners, no cries of valor. Only the sound of groaning timber, of bark shifting over muscle-knotted limbs, of spear and club rising with grim purpose. The daemonic filth met them in swarms and scattered like dry grass before the scythe. Men twisted into beasts. Monsters clad in flesh and silk, and fine livery. They broke on the wooden line. They howled and wept and bled into the cracks of the earth.

Batu moved at the front, his war-plate now caked in soot and viscera. He bore his curved blade in one hand and a bolter–that was the name of their strange, metal-spitting weapons–in the other. He directed the legion as a seasoned leader of men might’ve done–a warlord. When he spoke, they obeyed. Where he pointed, they struck. The constructs did not question. They did not hesitate. They fought as one. They felt no pain and knew no fear. Mortal enemies–those who allied themselves with the daemons and the enemies–quickly found themselves faced against an enemy they could not hope to defeat. 

And so, like leaves in the rain, they were quickly cut down and swept away, their screams fading out into the dark. Normal humans, Hashirama noted, could not possibly hope to stand against a single Bodhisattva Legionnaire, let alone twelve thousand of them–not unless they unleashed weapons so horribly powerful that they wiped themselves out as well. To be fair, that did happen from time to time as the enemy destroyed a few constructs by strapping explosives to themselves. 

What they did not know was that, as long as Hashirama maintained the stream of Senjutsu, the fallen Bodhisattva would reanimate and repair themselves. 

They encountered the Emperor’s Children at the precipice of a spire-bridge, where half the structure still held and the other half hung like a broken arm over the abyss. The traitor Astartes emerged in lines of purple and gold, their armor glinting like bruised gemstones beneath the firelit sky. They moved with purpose, not madness. Not yet. That came later. Their helms bore the leering visages of saints and beasts alike, and their laughter echoed like music played too fast.

They were faster than most men, stronger than any. Each one a weapon. Each one honed to kill. In this they were not unlike the average Jonin—those elite shinobi who could weave a dozen hand signs in a breath and vanish like mist. But these Astartes bore no such craft. No subtlety. No tricks. They came with roar and blade and bolt. Their skills were of the body. Their minds sharpened for war, not for the balance of elements or the trickery and speed of Shinobi. And so they struck.

But the wooden legion did not break.

Bodhisattva constructs towered above them, equal in mass if not in cunning. They withstood blow after blow, their bodies splintered and mended by the chakra that pulsed through their limbs. Spears drove through ceramite breastplates. Clubs shattered skulls like ripe fruit, because a frightening number of these Astartes did not wear helmets for some odd reason. The Bodhisattva Constructs slammed and tore into their ranks like a living storm. They fought not with hatred, but with inevitability. The kind of violence born not of anger but of nature itself. A tree does not rage when it crushes a man beneath its falling trunk.

Batu watched the enemy falter.

Where the enemy cut one down, three more closed the gap. The constructs were too many, too tireless. The traitors, for all their savagery, could not match the flood.

They came with sonic weapons, whose sound tore flesh from bone. Some constructs shattered at their shriek, bark exploding into dust and root. But the survivors kept coming. They came with chainblades, their teeth grinding, shrieking with glee. But the constructs endured. They dragged the traitors down. Pinned them beneath limbs like stone. Crushed their skulls into the ash-choked soil or simply ripped their limbs apart.

Astartes bled. Astartes burned. And though they fought like gods, they fell like men.

From the rear, Hashirama watched and analyzed in silence. His eyes followed the patterns of motion, of strength and failure. The flow of battle. He was no stranger to death, but here it moved differently. War in itself did not change, but the weapons and tactics certainly did and these bolters, if they had been present during the Great Wars of his time, would’ve scarred the land forever.

He also saw the weaknesses of the wooden legion. Too slow. Too dependent on commands. But effective in numbers. Their strength was in saturation. Overwhelm. A single Bodhisattva Construct could not defeat an Astartes. But two of them ganging up on just one was another story–or five. A tactic suited not for infiltration or assassination, but for war in its purest and most brutal form.

And this was war. Pure and brutal.

The Emperor’s Children died screaming. Some did not scream. Some sang. Some moaned. They died anyway.

Batu said nothing as he cleaved through another Astartes, whose limbs were held in place by two Bodhisattvas. Batu split him in two. He pressed forward without pause. Behind him came the sound of the legion moving, step by step, unstoppable.

In the firelit haze of that hollowed city, the wooden saints of the First Hokage marched with murder in their hearts and mercy in their purpose. They knew no joy. They knew no fear. They had no voices to cry out.

And then they came upon the armored machines. The ones Batu called tanks. Low to the ground, long-barreled and thick-plated. Crawling on treads like worms wrapped in steel. Their engines growled and their guns thundered. They were not alive but they killed all the same.

These were not like the warriors who came on foot with chainblades and lust and songs. These were not men, though they were operated by men all the same. These were metal beasts built for slaughter. They roared from a distance and punched holes in the world. Each time they fired, the sky cracked. The streets buckled. Entire buildings vanished in flame and dust. And where the wooden legion had withstood sword and bolt, these things ripped through them like flood through brittle clay.

Not good. 

They came in columns, dug in behind wrecked bastions and melted stone. Their barrels turned slow but true. Their armor was thick enough that even the wooden saints could not simply punch through. It was a different kind of enemy. Less hate, more fire. Less blood, more thunder.

Batu called them dangerous and he was right.

So Hashirama went to work.

He moved like a shadow between leaves. He summoned his Wood Clones, one by one, and each one bore portions of his Senjutsu, enough to spark the birth of great trees. The tanks were tearing apart his Bodhisattva Legion and, while the broken would eventually repair themselves, it would slow down their advance. The city had to be taken as quickly as possible, before the enemy could regroup and mount a counterattack. The Wood Clones would do.

He sent them out into the battle.

They spread through the ruins, unseen. When they reached the tanks, they struck without pause. Roots tore from the stone beneath and wrapped the machines whole. They crushed the treads first. Flattened the wheels beneath knots of living timber. The barrels turned in desperation and fired into trunks of bark so thick the shells vanished without sound.

Then came the strangling.

Roots climbed the chassis like serpents and tightened. The metal groaned and buckled. And then, they broke. Hulls split down the middle. Some tanks burst apart with the crew still inside, caught in the belly of their own invention. Others were swallowed whole by the forest that came for them. Wood against steel. Life against artifice.

The clones did not speak. They did not cry out. They crushed and moved on.

And Hashirama watched.

He saw the balance tilt. Saw the firepower lessen. Saw the tide of explosions slow to a crawl. Where once a hundred armored beasts had poured fire into the ranks of his wooden legion, now only a dozen remained. Then half that. Then none. The clones faded one by one. Their chakra spent. Their forms crumbling into bark and ash. But the work was done.

In the distance, smoke curled above the wrecks. Amidst the ashes, the shattered and broken Bodhisattva Constructs pulled themselves together and reformed anew. It seemed this was another limit of theirs, Hashirama mused; they were terrible against armored foes. But, similarly, heavily-armored foes were terrible against his clones. And so on. War, more often than not, devolved into something close to rock-paper-scissors and it was only the existence of Ninjutsu that blurred the lines. 

Still, for the purpose of clearing and saving the city, the Bodhisattva Constructs were more than enough. 

The armored beasts were gone. Or, at least, most of them were. The few that remained were flipped over by the Bodhisattvas and left to rot as they were–impotent and ineffectual. 

And the path was open again.

The wooden legion marched without pause. Twelve thousand strong and silent. They moved through fire and ruin like a tide rolling slow over stone. Where resistance rose, it was broken. Men in twisted armor. Beasts that screamed in no tongue known to man. Creatures that should not walk the earth. They came, and they were felled.

Their weapons shattered against wooden limbs. Their bodies crushed beneath bludgeons grown from the roots of the city itself. Some tried to flee. Some did not get the chance. The legion did not speak and did not stop. 

The daemons were problematic at first as his Bodhisattva simply could not damage them in any meaningful way, forcing Hashirama to deal with them himself, injecting them with Physical Energy and then absorbing the resulting Chakra until there was nothing left of them malevolent creatures. 

Among the rubble and blood, Hashirama found the living. Survivors tucked into vaults and crawlspaces. Half-buried in ash. Crushed beneath walls but breathing still. He reached for them with calm hands. Healed what wounds he could, bound them in a breath of chakra and sealed them into scrolls. Their weight vanished. Their breath preserved. Better that than leave them to the sky or the fire or the things that laughed in the dark.

But the sky remained a problem.

The flying things came low and came fast. They roared overhead like devils on burning wings. Their trails streaked the sky with smoke and fire. Their shells landed without warning and killed without mercy. Too fast to follow. Too high to reach. They struck and vanished, leaving only ruin in their wake.

If he focused on them, gave himself wholly to the task, he could destroy them. Of that he had no doubt. He could bring them down one by one. Tear open their hulls with sharpened roots. Strike with spears of stone from below. But the war on the ground would be left wanting. He could not afford that.

So he made the only choice left to him.

He knelt and pressed his palms to the broken stone. Closed his eyes. Drew in the sickened air and filtered it through will. Through calm. Through power.

And the city grew trees.

They rose in silence. Slow at first. Then faster. Branches the size of columns. Leaves thick as tarps. Trunks wider than war engines. They sprouted from ruins and rooftops, from cracks in the ferrocrete and holes torn by shelling. They joined one another, root to root, limb to limb, until they formed a canopy. A roof of living green stretched across the Hive’s upper reaches.

The light dimmed beneath it. The ash and smoke were caught in its net. The shriek of jets dulled against its boughs. And below that veil, the legion moved in shade.

Bombs struck the branches and vanished in flame. Bark shattered. Leaves burned. But the trees remained. And where one fell, another rose in its place.

It was not perfect. But it was enough.

Enough to shield the wounded. Enough to hide the movement of the wooden saints. Enough to buy time. To buy breath.

Hashirama stood at the heart of it. His hands hung loose at his sides. His eyes steady. He watched the limbs sway above him and listened to the wind. And the legion marched on.