15: Scattered Sparks beget Flames
Standing near the slopes of Mt. Shumisen, a black-cloaked figure gazed up at the clouds shrouding the peak. On his back, the symbol of a white triangle embedded in a white circle was proudly displayed.
An expression of ecstasy colored his face as his bloodshot eyes trembled. All around his feet lay the corpses of an Iwa vanguard squad, speared and mangled in ways evident that their deaths had been slow and tortuous.
"What an unexpected boon, to find these lands so blessed with the Lord's whispers." a low chuckle escaped with his words. The rumors and smells of smoke and destruction had lured him a great distance, but it was all worth it.
The screams of his latest offering still echoed in his ears like sweet music. He had watched as the Iwa squad bombed a nearby village, razing it to the ground and slaughtering its inhabitants. The intent was admirable, but the result was crude. Those villagers' suffering could have been so much more blissful at the hands of an expert, a holy messenger like himself.
And so he took it upon himself to educate those Iwa shinobi one by one on the proper meanings of Suffering and Destruction.
At the memory, he was overcome with passion. Clenching his spike-tipped quarterstaff tightly, he threw his hands to the sky and exclaimed.
"Praise be to Lord Jashin!"
Kana crouched high up in the boughs of a tree, hiding herself among the foliage. Her hood was down and her mask lay neatly by her side, a hand running unsteadily through lengths of her hair. The other shaking hand was held to her mouth to suppress a choked feeling in her throat.
Her violet eyes shone in the dimness, quivering as she observed a sight on another level compared to her past experiences. There was no sneaking away from something like this.
She watched the scene in front of her anxiously. So anxiously, in fact, that she had been unable to calm her nerves with sheer will alone. So she had resorted to the only actions she'd ever known to be comforting:
Relative solitude, quiet, and something soft to run through her hands. Occasionally her hands reached to caress the clasp which fixed her hair into the half-up style that kept it from whipping around in the wind.
And so she sat, knowing that this was burning valuable time. Time she had to set aside nonetheless.
Before her was another battlefield, but one much larger in scale, roaring with the cries of fury and anguish. A series of rocky plateaus and grass plains were churned up by the boots of perhaps several hundreds of shinobi.Jarring, disturbing, astounding, it was all of these and more. Kana had never imagined seeing a scene of such suffering.
As intended, her journeying had brought her to the edges of Ame and Konoha controlled territories, but something like this... was outside of her anticipations.
She was positioned near the northeastern margins of the chaos, where the forests transitioned to fields, though by now the field of death had spread out in pretty much all directions before her. Southeast across the battlefield was the dirt roadway leading towards the Land of Fire. Her ways forward were all but sealed now, and enemies encroached upon her from behind as well.
Shinobi forces from Ame and Konoha waged in brutal duels, feats of jutsu frequently erupting and scattering corpses. The fallen barely had time to hit the ground before their fellows and enemies alike fell as corpses atop them.
No deception on Kana's part would stay this barbarity from assailing her should she try to evade it.
Kana was all but trapped, thankful that she was far enough away not to be immediately noticed. She would have to wait this battle out, then proceed around it when an opportunity arose. That would require vigilance.
So Kana watched, forcing herself to look attentively. Her vantage allowed her to see the demises of individual shinobi coming as they were about to happen, but unable and unwilling to get involved, she held herself in position.
She had briefly felt a faint urge to help, but that feeling was quashed by what she had seen of these shinobi.
Men and women slashed at each other with swords, stabbed each other in the back, threw shuriken into each other's faces. Lighting fried shinobi to ash, water drowned them, wind shredded them. Blood ran in streams and puddles on the stone and grass.Clever tactics were deployed, entire formations being surrounded and bombarded into oblivion. Konoha forces seemed to be systematically dismantling Ame's positions, though at heavy costs.
Seeing people killing each other on such a scale, seeing predictable deaths play out before her, Kana was reminded too much of her own mortality. How fleeting her life was, and how everything she had could be taken from her by men like this, by men like the Shinigon.
Kana was disgusted, mostly at the fact that people like this were a threat to her, were able to hurt her. She hated it. At herself too, for she hated feeling weak against those of sinister will.
And so she had resolved herself to be prepared and on guard for even a scenario like the horrors of this battlefield. She would observe it all, learn from it. Learn how they fought, how shinobi fought to the death. What did victory look like to them? What was done with the defeated?
How could she have evaded that swordman's blade? How did those shinobi counter large scale jutsu? How did they combine jutsu to trap their opponents? What were their battle formations?
If she knew her enemy, and they did not know her, then she could surprise them.
And Kana had had enough of being surprised herself to know how dangerous it was.
And if anyone thought they could kill her now, take away the future she had won for herself....Then she would respond in kind with wrath tenfold their strength.
As she pondered, a particularly versatile Konoha shinobi had taken advantage of his opponent's Suiton jutsu by channeling Raiton through it and electrocuting a swath of his Ame attackers. Too bad that it seemed to deplete all his chakra, for when another Ame squad rushed him, he fell to a barrage of kunai. This squad had cheered their victory, only to be crushed between another Konoha shinobi's Doton jutsu, which split the ground beneath them and smashed them between two rock slabs. Nauseatingly brutal, but effective. Was this the strategy?
Once she'd allowed analytical thoughts to occupy her mind, Kana felt wiser for it and her anxiety waned. After re-affixing her hood and mask, she also noticed a new and valuable skill some shinobi were using.
Clones. Clones made of water, clones made of shadows, clones made of earth. Sometimes shinobi would create copies of themselves to serve all manner of strategic purposes, most often as decoys.
Clones kept the jutsu user alive very well, though it seemed to expend a rather large portion of chakra to create them. Or, use them? Most of the combatants only created three to five maximum.
And a large part of battle amidst shinobi seemed to rely on how they managed their chakra, as running out of it in combat like this was essentially lethal. That train of thought enabled Kana to reassure herself somewhat, for her chakra reserves were quite vast.
This would be an advantage with versatile applications, allowing her to plot some complex counters to the skills on display before her. Building up her chakra reserves and using skills efficiently would still be wise in circumstances like this, though. It would all be owed to how Kana learned and used her new abilities.
Furthermore, to Kana bird's-eye view it appeared that while clever tactics could be employed, the conflict on the whole was largely a battle of attrition. It wasn't entirely that simple though, for Konoha was very subtly employing a strategy where Ame lost all of their high ground, and were becoming surrounded on two or three sides.
Eventually, Kana predicted, Konoha would win this battle, as all of the remaining Ame shinobi would be cut off from escape and massacred.
Nevertheless, their battle did not avoid the elements of attrition, but seemingly incorporated them in a larger plan. Whoever was commanding the Konoha forces here seemed willing to make some shrewd sacrifices.