Chapter 12

The many fires inside Hidden Leaf began almost simultaneously. Fifteen clan compounds, two dozen apartment buildings, commercial buildings…everything was fair game.

It was a great diversionary tactic performed by two dozen infiltrators from Suna. The command and control of the ninja force would break down…people would be trying to put out fires while the major strikes occurred. The more ninja prevented from repelling the major Suna and Oto, the more devastating their entry would be.

Oto's trapping experts began their work rigging up the Hokage Tower and the Ninja Academy building. Lord Orochimaru would detonate these buildings once his conquest of Hidden Leaf was complete.

While the infiltrators and trappers were inside causing chaos, the heavy hitters from both villages were outside the village walls trying to bring them down. Some of Orochimaru's snake summons were queued up to crash through another section of the wall. It was amazing that the ANBU hadn't even detected these massive forces queuing up outside the village.

Orochimaru's personal guards jumped through the city. They had been performing a final search for Kabuto in the interim. The 'spy' appeared to have fled already. Lord Orochimaru would be most…put out.

Once they made it to the arena, Orochimaru had already captured the Hokage and begun his act of vengeance. The Sound Four molded a massive shield and then performed the jutsu a second time to protect themselves from the Hokage who was trapped inside their bubble.

"The arrogance of this village," Orochimaru hissed to his opponent on top of the arena "To invite your enemies, to bare your throat to them…and not even to carry a knife to the battle. Where are your ANBU, sensei? Why was this village so easy to destroy this day? Are you truly ready to die? Because I am most eager to kill you…."

The Hokage and Orochimaru were trading blows back and forth in hand to hand combat. Orochimaru wanted to utterly rattle the Hokage before he pulled out his final, devastating technique, the Impure Resurrection of the Hokage's predecessors in office.

It had been a gamble attacking today.

The disappearance of Kabuto had almost caused Orochimaru to call of this attack…but when the ANBU and chuunin patrols went as normal and the village wasn't on a higher security status, he guessed Kabuto hadn't defected to the Hokage's side.

He would have to find and…punish his infiltrator. Many things necessary for this attack hadn't been done. Kabuto would pay. His medical expertise was valuable; but Orochimaru could not stand a traitor. He was the only one of those permitted in the Hidden Sound.

Orochimaru batted away one of his sensei's rather pedestrian techniques. He wished that Sarutobi would haul out his major techniques. He wouldn't want to win against a frail, old man.

The Hokage summoned the boss of the Apes. He needed to use every tool in his arsenal. But he no longer had the chakra capacity to battle for hours against his student. He knew what the surefire way to end Orochimaru's life was…but he didn't know if he could give himself to the Shinigami for all time the way that Namikaze Minato had.

It was a horrendous fate for one such as he. To never see his deceased family, his one dead son, his mentors, all of his precious people.

"Are you your ready for a good fight, Enma?" He would try to for an unexpected hit. Something that wasn't as devastating as the Summoning of the Shinigami.

"As you wish, Old Friend," the Ape King said.

The Hokage remained nimble and his attacks with a bo would have been devastating to anyone not one of his students. They had spent too many years training against him to be surprised by Sarutobi's style.

The Snake Sannin continued to taunt and rant, but the Hokage didn't listen to it. He was in this fight to preserve his village. He had lived a long time, but he didn't want to go out when his village was in peril. Not if he could fix his gravest mistake, not if he could somewhat repair his failure allowing Orochimaru to escape when his treacheries were discovered.

"You've never recognized your own faults, student of mine. If you could not have this village, then you wish to destroy it?"

Orochimaru laughed. "You are a narrow minded fool, protector of the weak, savior of stranded kittens everywhere. This village is as foolish as it is weak. I am only performing a service, a cleansing wash to get rid of all this rot."

The Hokage was not winning…rather, he was slowly losing. The Hokage steeled himself to using the Shinigami Summoning technique. It would cost him everything, but he knew he would take his greatest mistake with him. The village deserved this much from him.

Orochimaru began the complex process of powering up his Impure Resurrection technique. He was ready for a bloody fight with powerful servant 'puppets' at his disposal.

The Hokage worried that he did not recognize this technique. If it had been developed by his student, it was likely to be powerful and disturbing. He gripped his special staff and prepared to face whatever might come.

Then the Hokage disappeared.

There was no one more surprised than the Hokage. He had a fraction of a second to recognize that he was trapped in some sort of sealing technique. Enma in his bo form fell to the ground and dispelled.

Orochimaru stood, dismayed. His hands were frozen in the final handseals for his Impure Resurrection. Where had that old bastard gone? How had he escaped from inside this shield? It was designed to kill anyone or anything that touched it.

"No. No! Where did he go? Who fucked up?"

He turned round and round glaring at his bodyguards.

Then he saw Jirobo fall over dead, then Kidomaru. The shields began to waver then. Then Tayuya collapsed. The shields collapsed. Orochimaru had no idea what was happening; he didn't even know it was possible to disrupt the shield.

Orochimaru glared at the unfair world. Years of planning rendered useless. He didn't even know how.

His mind began to grasp and prepare for the next phases of what he might do. Sarutobi had fled with his life, but Orochimaru could still destroy the village and kill its weaklings.

He surveyed the roof and was preparing to jump off to cause more devastation when he felt a thousand tiny pinpricks all over his body. He staggered at the sensation, then the flood of pain. It had been a very long time since he'd felt anything like that…probably going back to his earliest experiments on himself to attain immortality. He reeled but did not fall down.

His first thought was to flee, as self preservation was a key trait of any powerful snake, but then his anger and his ego overrode instinct. He wanted to know who had ruined years of planning. So many things had gone wrong. His strongest potential vessel for his immortality technique, the Kaguya boy, had disappeared years ago. Kabuto had disappeared. Some jounin from Grass had managed to drive him off with a technique he couldn't unravel. Now, this.

Orochimaru wanted blood; he wanted guts and brains and bones ground down to meal. He wanted Sarutobi lying dead before him and Konoha little more than ashes blowing away in the wind.

Using his best chakra sensing techniques, he tried to locate the source of what was happening…and he found something. In great pain, he turned and saw a most unpleasant face. That ninja who'd prevented him from taking the faces of some Grass genin. The man who stripped Orochimaru's ability to mold chakra…that ninja would die.

"You! How did you do this? That shield is the strongest technique of its kind. Tell me and I will give you a swift death."

Taro smiled. "You are the worst 'sneaky' ninja I've ever seen. I had a very good idea about what you might do today, but you had no idea about me. I wonder what that says about your intelligence gathering, Snake Sannin. Oh, someone revealed to me that you're also quite a thief…."

Taro yanked his hand.

Pain shot through Orochimaru's body as his sword, The Grass Cutter, stolen the Grass Country years earlier, ripped through bone, stomach lining, muscle, and skin on its way to Taro's hand.

Taro was glad he'd kept returning to probe Kabuto's loosened lips. The existence of this sword inside of Orochimaru's body made this one-time-only attack possible. Anyone with skill in chakra strings could do this, but it took a devious ninja to think of the attack at all.

It was very satisfying that Orochimaru's greatest close-range weapon was now turned against him.

Orochimaru collapsed. How was that possible? His sword ripped from him, through him? Was this freak a magnetic field user, like that Kazekage his 'old pal' Sasori had been so enamored of? Orochimaru had seen this ninja twice and been slapped like a small child, robbed of chakra molding and now his sword. How? Why!

Everything hurt so much….

"I suspect you're immune to any poison you'd use, Orochimaru, so that sword wound won't necessarily kill you. But I know you aren't immune to cancer. Those tiny impacts you felt a few moments ago were the seeds of a thousand small cancers already racing through your body. I estimate you have five days before your body fails, your organs eaten away from the inside. From what I understand, you'll have to find a new host…."

The pale, bleeding Sannin woke from his misery when he realized that this ninja knew about his most secret researches. Someone had betrayed him.

Kabuto…Karin…someone very close. Orochimaru pushed himself up from his crumpled position on the arena roof. He began making handsigns, but again realized he couldn't mold chakra. The hole in his torso had apparently torn the chakra network in this body to shreds.

"I've heard all about your body swapping technique," the Grass jounin said. "Good luck getting away. Your guards seem to be…indisposed."

That hateful stare from the Grass ninja burned itself into Orochimaru's mind. It was a face he would never forget. He would have his revenge. If it took a hundred years, he would have this man's life. Orochimaru would still be young, agile, and beautiful while the ninja before him was old and infirm.

If it took that long, Orochimaru would find the old, weak, infirm man and end his life slowly, painfully.

The pooling blood reached into Orochimaru's field of vision, he didn't know why he was still alive. This Grass ninja could have incinerated him by now, instead of staring. The Sannin felt a hand grasp him, interrupting his dark musings. He looked up and saw it was Sakon. "My Lord, I couldn't move until now."

"Away. Get us away," Orochimaru rasped out. This would have been an excellent time to have Kabuto around. If he wasn't a traitor.

The guard and his Lord shunshined away.

Taro smiled. Anyone who threatened his team deserved to die. Taro could have done worse to the Snake Sannin, but he relished the idea of tearing that creature apart slowly, piece by piece.

He felt an irrational amount of hatred toward the pale ninja, a hatred he would allow himself to quench.

Taro walked to the edge of the arena and observed the field of battle below him. The useless ANBU watching Orochimaru's attempted assassination scattered when the Hokage disappeared; gone to locate him or help out repelling the invasion.

Taro bent down and picked up an oddly inscribed stone and slipped it into his pocket.

The Hokage had never left the dome, of course, just been sealed away into an unconventional storage vessel. A chakra string was perfectly able to pass through that 'impenetrable' shield. Arrogant ninja. Orochimaru knew of Sasori's art and still disregarded its power.

The stone felt heavy in Taro's pocket. It had been obvious to any watchers that the Hokage was using all his effort, all his will…and that he was losing. Orochimaru had just been playing with him.

Taro needed to keep the Old Man safe for a while longer. He wanted a word with him.

But that wouldn't happen if the rest of this disaster didn't end soon. Taro looked into the distance and saw that the Suna and Oto ninja were still fighting. Their leader was driven from the field…but they'd lose their lives in a pointless, failed battle.

Taro had thought long and hard in the last month about what he'd do when Konoha found itself in dire straits. Could he separate out the Old Man of his memory from the colder Hokage? Could he save the place the Old Man loved? He could just as easily let the whole place burn. Their arrogance had allowed this attack to occur. Did he really wish to be a savior of some sort?

He stopped thinking and acted. He could second guess himself later.

He concentrated and formed two thick chakra cables. The individual strings stretched out and latched onto half burned boards or fallen stones all through the field of battle. The process of inscribing seals was slower than he wanted. Using twelve individual chakra strings on each nascent heartstone took thirty seconds to get his Mass Puppet Clone technique ready.

Naruto intended to name this particular usage of his Puppet Clones technique something else: the Flowing Red Death.

Nearly as fast as the Yondaime Hokage's Flying Thunder God technique…and far more devastating. This was a technique that could destroy armies in seconds; end wars instantly; destroy and level villages.

He wished he didn't have to reveal his greatest technique to save this miserable place.

Seconds later, Naruto revealed how one ninja could destroy an entire army from a safe distance. His left pinky finger twitched a few millimeters. In front of every ninja Taro could see or otherwise detect a Puppet Clone erupted, forming up around its heartstone. Each puppet slashed with fire or wind or lightning once or twice, and then each of them disappeared. None of the newly dead even had a chance to blink.

The mass slaughter of two hundred enemy ninja took less than a quarter second from activation to the clones' dissipation.

The few observers would only be able to report seeing a massive sea of red (the color of each puppet's hair, body, and clothing, a signature element of the Flowing Red Death meant to confuse and disorient anyone who might witness the technique). After that, they reported dead bodies as far as the eye could see. No ninja could defend against an attack so unexpected, so rapid, and so devastating.

No one targeted did survive.

In the coming days many would try to explain the attack and how it worked; no one would succeed at that, either.

Taro jumped down from the arena roof with the Hokage safely sealed away inside his pocket. He needed to find where his students had gotten to…and to see if anyone had dealt with that insane red head from Hidden Sand.

Orochimaru was gravely wounded, the main body of the invasion force was destroyed, but Taro suspected that the worst was still to come. Why did he let the Grass Council send him and his team to this Kami forsaken place in the first place?