The Invasion (Part 2)

The advancing army could be seen across the horizon, appearing with the first light of the day, as they all stopped their former marching and began rapidly advancing towards the Konoha fort.

Mizuki: "Fuck me, there's twenty of them for every one of us. And it's not like we are using the most prime material."

Saying those words, Mizuki turned to look at a soldier who was quaking in his boots, clearly fearful of what is to come.

Neko: "Don't have to be such a downer man, I hear that Konoha offers a killer pension for fallen shinobi"

Konchu: "I am not sure if I should congratulate or hit you for that pun"

Neko: "Let's just stick with the first one then, eh?"

Over the course of the night, the shinobi in the base layered traps in the direction that they predicted the enemy would emerge from.

*BOOM*

Shinku: "So it begins"

Mizuki: {Surely enough, it appears as if they just ran into the first layer of traps}.

The traps employed by the Konoha shinobi were relatively rudimentary, with spiked earthen pits being the main trap, as it was easy to set up.

However, the group also sprinkled areas trapped with paper bombs throughout the battlefield in order to confuse the enemy and slow them down.

Shinku: "Do it."

As if on queue, around a dozen shinobi all leaped on top of the walls before weaving a series of hand seals and using their jutsu.

Shinobi: "Futon: Great Breakthrough!"

A great gust of wind swept some of the Iwa nin back, causing cuts to appear on their bodies as they all felt as if they hit an invisible wall, making it incredibly harder to advance.

While some Iwa nin were able to able to erect walls of earth in order to protect themselves, in the end, the Konoha regiment had been able to achieve their first goal.

Slow the enemy advance.

Now, onto the second.

Shinku: "Katon users!"

Again, upon receiving their queue, around a dozen new shinobi arrived on top of the walls, all of them welding a series of hand signs quickly before casting their own barrage of Jutsu.

Shinobi: "Katon: Fire Dragon Bullet"

Now, while a wall of dozens of flame bullets is terrifying enough, this attack was even more brutal, as the flames ignited the previously cast wind Jutsu, causing a blanket of flames to envelope the enemy position, reducing it to ash.

The flames soon faded away, revealing the result of the first wave.

Of the original thousand shinobi, only around two hundred were part of this group.

For the most part, the Konoha shinobi was able to successfully annihilate this regiment, with the vast majority of the members dead or critically incapacitated.

However, this little victory would do little to help Konoha win the battle.

Far from it, as several shinobi were tired out, and there was still another eight hundred Iwa shinobi to go, all of whom had now flanked them, causing them all to be entrapped.

Things could only get worse from here.

And things quickly did, as a rumble could be heard underneath the feet of the Konoha shinobi.

Neko: "Son of a bitch!"

Shinku: "Scatter!"

Despite the hoping initial strategy may allow for some breathing room, all of the shinobi knew that it would be hard to stop some Iwa shinobi for assassinating their men by burrowing underground.

While the counterstrategy to this normally was to saturate the ground with lightning chakra, Shinku knew that if he had any chance of winning this battle, it would need to be on the backs of those men.

And he could not afford to have them waste their energy here.

He was forced to sacrifice some of the men under him in order to attempt to win the battle.

Following his orders, the shinobi inside the camp scattered, all of them launching themselves away from the camp in order to avoid dying.

Unfortunately for some of the more exhausted shinobi though, they were not able to react on time, and as a result were slaughtered.

In a flash, the Konoha regiment went from around fifty men to an amount in the mid-thirties.

. . . . .

Mizuki was able to evade the assassination attempt relatively easily.

Upon realizing what was going on, Mizuki was able to tunnel into the earth himself, traveling underground directly towards the enemy backline.

Unfortunately for him, his opponents had several censor ninja, as the earth above Mizuki was torn away, revealing several shinobi all preparing to kill him.

Mizuki: {God Damnit. . . .}

Knowing that it was his only option, Mizuki quickly used a smoke bomb, body flickering away once inside of the cloud in order to confuse his enemies.

Mizuki appeared next to two of the Iwa shinobi who were looking for him.

Knowing that he would have no time to waste, Mizuki wasted no time before casting some of his strongest jutsu.

Mizuki: "Shiroi Nensho: Flame Falcons"

Several projectiles of white flames instantly fired out of Mizuki's hands, all of which resembled falcons in flight.

The projectiles all hit both the Iwa nin beside him, alongside several other Iwa nin around the area, inciting general confusion among the enemy.

However, just before his opponents died, Mizuki quickly grabbed them, absorbing as much of their chakra as he could before using the body as a shield or distraction.

And while Mizuki could not steal all of his opponent's chakra in those brief few moments, he was able to swipe a small amount from a large amount of people, causing Mizuki to appear as if he had massive amounts of physical and spiritual energy to his opponents.

Slowly but surely, Mizuki was becoming a higher and higher priority target in the eyes of his enemy.

And Mizuki was not the only one.

While several Konoha shinobi quickly lost their lives, most of them were not in vain, as they were at least able to take their opponent with them through the usage of suicide techniques such as paper bombs.

Among those shinobi left, Neko and his ninken partner could be seen kiting several Iwa nin to traps which they had set up beforehand, and him ambushing them with decoy clones before using Inizuka style taijutsu to crush them.

Konchu himself was also impressive, even if not explicitly specialized in combat, as he created swarms of bugs which obstructed enemies senses, which other shinobi were able to quickly able to use to their advantage as they swooped in and killed squadrons of Iwa soldiers.

Finally, there was the leader himself, Shinku Yuki.

Shinku wielded his blade expertly, using his kenjutsu to cut down shinobi after shinobi, as he effortlessly fused it with his taijutsu and even ninjutsu.

As he used raiton and suiton to enhance it, allowing him to cut down shinobi as if they were cabbages.

(A/N: Always wanted to use that line.)

However, despite the obvious skill of a few of the Konoha shinobi, they were still losing heavily.

Their numbers had now dropped below ten, while the Iwa shinobi, even after the second round of combat, were still at least seven hundred strong.

Mizuki: "Old man, what do we do now, I don't know 'bout you, but I've got no plans on dying any time soon."

As he said those words, Mizuki dodged through the sea of men, rapidly wielding hand signs before turning stomping on the ground, causing the area around them to ignite in white flames.

Shinku ground his teeth slightly, as he saw another Konoha shinobi get cut down, finally overwhelmed after taking down a couple of Iwa nin and being ganged upon.

Shinku: "We retreat"

Shinku: "Fall back, there is no way we can win this battle, we must conserve all of the manpower we can get."

The remaining shinobi all nodded before following after Shinku.

Mizuki used a breath of white flames to torch the area surrounding his assailants, and also as propulsion to push himself away from them before landing tens of meters away and turning to run.

Although, not before giving all of them the middle finger first as he escaped.

In the chaos, another one of the Konoha shinobi was tragically killed, bringing the initial odd fifty ninjas down to a mere seven.

Three of whom were not even from the base.

. . . Back at the battlefield . . .

Iwa Nin: "Sir, we have secured the area, our troops are ready to continue marching at your command. We can catch those Konoha scum."

Iwa Commander: "Give the men the night off."

Iwa Nin: "I'm sorry sir?"

Iwa Commander: "Give. Them. The. Night. Off."

Iwa nin: "B-b-but sir, they can go further. We can go further."

Iwa Commander: "They won't. we may have won this battle, but that doesn't mean that we did a good job."

Iwa Commander: "We lost nearly three hundred men for their fifty. And we had the element of surprise and prep time on our hands. The men need a night off to raise morale, this is the first time most of them are experiencing war, and they just experienced a very bloody battle."

Iwa nin: "Sir, with all due respect, we can't have the Konoha shinobi escape. They know our strategy, and as a result how to counter it."

Iwa nin: "If we can't get them now, or before they have the time to send a crow, our initial advantage will be severely dampened."

Iwa commander: "Who said anything about giving up? I just said that we wouldn't be using any ordinary soldiers."

Iwa nin: "You can't mean-"

Iwa commander: "I do. We need somebody who can definitely get the mission done."

Iwa commander: "Send him to me. "

A couple of minutes passed, and soon, the Iwa nin returned, this time with another shinobi in tow.

He had long brown spikey hair, with light blue eyes, looking to be in his mid to late twenties.

A serious gaze adorned his face, as he wore the standard Iwa vest and undergarments.

Iwa Commander: "I have a mission for you . . . Gari"

. . . . .

[1] I've said it once, and I'm gonna say it again, nothing beats a good LOTR reference.

[2] Just wanted to put this here to say that I never used the word whilst once in this entire chapter. Praise me and give me your power stones as a reward.