Chapter 61.2- One Thousand Hands

XXXX- KITSUCHI

The Iwa army moved as a single column. They walked ten abreast and fifty deep. Five hundred shinobi marching in file. They were only half of the force that would be making their way into Konoha. It was his father’s idea. Split the approach into two. One led by him, and the other led by Taakeshi the Immovaeble Mountain called up from his pacification of the Land of the Grass and the insurgents therein to help manage the invasion of Konoha. Kitsuchi had a fair idea where his father’s own force was— they would approach through Waterfall. Shorirama’s Senju retreat on all fronts would bite him in the arse there as they were going to hit the Hidden Leaf from two sides and leave them struggling to respond.

Their retreat told their best analysts that Konoha didn’t have the numbers to contest them on the field so they were going to sit in their village— behind walls. Ha. Walls. Walls against Iwa. They would be fools if they did not sally out to face them on the field and that was the point of their splitting up their force. Shorirama Senju would have to face one army or the other. If he went for his father’s force then he would die against the Tsuchikage himself.

If he came here, then he would face Takeshi the Immoveable Mountain, Kaen of the Explosion Release, Hikari and Tsubasa of the Lava Release, and Kitsuchi himself. Any one of them were enough to qualify as an S-ranked shinobi. The five of them working together? Kitsuchi wagered that they would kill the Sage of Six Paths himself. And then their column came to a sudden stop.

“What’s going on again?” He heard Kaen’s sharp voice from his side and sighed. If only their team of S-ranks had less grating personalities then everything would be perfect.

“Probably another trap” Hikari said with a sigh of her own.

“One must wonder what the point of all this fanfare is. If we can feel the traps then we should just skirt past them and move on” Tsubasa added.

Kitsuchi was tempted to agree. But he knew that this was his father’s idea. Every trap was unearthed and then carefully contained before their people continued, giving it a wide berth and making sure none touched it. His father was paranoid about Shorirama Senju, and Kitsuchi did not understand it at all. Until there was a sudden feeling of space to his side.

“What the fuck?” Kaen’s voice sounded. Kitsuchi whirled to the side and found nothing to his side. Hikari had fallen to the ground shaking. What was going on? Not just her, he noticed as chunin and jonin all around their camp seemed to begin to fall at random, shivering and shaking like there was a frost none but them could feel.

“What happened?” He found himself asking.

“They just fell like this. What the fuck could have happened?”

“Shorirama Senju” He said, feeling a sense of dread building within him.

“That doesn’t even make any sense. We dispatched all his traps”

“Well, there’s something causing half of us to fall to the floor at random” he said as he watched the column around them begin to fall into disorder.