Chapter 55: Fight Fire with Fire

Beside Orochimaru was the signature yellow hair of Namikaze Minato, Kannin's friend. Seeing the troupe walk in, the he and Orochimaru stopped their conversation to greet them,

"Hellloooo Harakaze..." Orochimaru began, with his stereotypical lip-licking

"Hello Orochimaru-san," Shin, a little putt off, said, "do you have any immediate orders for us?"

Minato jumped in and said, "Yes, actually. Have your force head to our left flank here," he said pointing to a position on the map a few miles to the northwest of HQ, "they've been hitting us hard there recently, and when I leave, it'll be harder to deal with."

Shin nodded, but Tetsu peeped up, "Wait, you're leaving?"

Minato nodded his head, and said, "Hokage said that a change of scenery could do me some good."

"Well that's just great."

Orochimaru cleared his throat at that, and releasing some chakra pressure he said "Am I so weak to dishearten you so, child?"

The pressure weighed on most of them pretty hard, especially the kids, and Tetsu sheepishly responded, "Umm...No sir."

"Very well, then."

And with a devilish smile, Orochimaru began to inform them on the situation of the front. They were, despite the signs of obliteration outside, doing quite well all things considered. Kannin did notice that during the report, Orochimaru seemed to be looking at Warai a lot, a glance here and there, but Kannin didn't think too much of it. Orochimaru might be weird, but he wouldn't be absurd at this point, right?

According to the Sannin, the any time the Raikage took the field, he was to be immediately summoned to counter him--as for A and B, they should rely on the elite jonin and Shin--but now that Minato was leaving, who knew how things were going to play out.

After an hour or so of sitrep, it was finally time to send the reinforcements to their positions, and it was time for Minato to leave. Before he left for good, Kannin decided to ask him how things were going for him, and if he had any tips for fighting the Kumo-nin.

"Well, as long as you don't find A, B, or the Raikage, you should be okay, just make sure to keep your eyes out--their lightning justus are quick. As for A and B, they normally travel in pairs, so aim for one of them to make the other stop. With the Raikage, just run."

Kannin nodded, taking his advice to heart, and added, "How is your team doing?"

Mentioning his team seemed to brighten his spirits a little, and he responded, "We're doing alright, all things considered. Kakashi is well on his way to becoming a jonin. Obito and Rin are improving by the day too."

"A jonin? Already? That's ridiculous, what have you been feeding him?"

Chuckling, Minato said, "It's not me, I swear! And I said he's on the way. Unless he does something crazy it'll still take a few months at least."

"Well, tell him the easy way is being made an emergency jonin since Konoha needs a surprise army. Worked for me."

With a somewhat incredulous look, he said, "They made you a jonin for that?"

"Yeah well, they didn't want a chunnin leading jonin into battle."

"Huh."

Minato had to leave after that, but even the short conversation seemed to lighten both of their spirits. But after talking with Minato, it really was time to get back to work. He ordered his brigade to where Shin ordered him, in the central part of their formation, with Tetsu on his left and Warai on his right.

"How many wind release users do we have here?" He shouted to his companies. Approximately 200 people raised their hands. 'So few..' He wanted at least half of his men to have wind release. He made the decision to rearrange his companies again to evenly distribute the wind release users among the five companies, since wind release was effective against lightning techniques.

Seeing the newly organized companies, he felt as prepared as he could be, though he knew it would be tough.

-

A couple of weeks into his tour, Kannin began to realize why all the trees were worn down to stumps. The astonishing use of Lightning Chakra Mode among the Kumo-nin was really something to behold. They would zoom around the trees, snapping off any stray branches and twigs along the way. In response, the Konoha-nin used increasingly powerful wind techniques to battle them, stripping the leaves off of everything in a flash. And finally, the lightning jutsus of the Kumo-nin would tend to set the trees on fire.

You've never known war until you've seen a forest burn--hundreds and thousands of trees incandescent with searing flame, roaring across as far as the eye could see, charring every poor squirrel and bird unlucky enough to get caught in it. There was never a silence, the crackling of embers, roaring of flame, and crack of thunder constantly surrounded him. The night sky burned orange.

Kannin didn't like it very much, as you might imagine. He was constantly using water release to put out fires, but his water release was weaker here than in the Land of Rivers, or even in the Land of Grass--the water table was low, so his options were to either spend more chakra manifesting water or spend more chakra drawing it from deeper in the earth.

Thankfully, he hadn't encountered any of the big shots yet, but he guessed he had a lot of time for that to change. He did think of a way to combat them, though. The Hachibi could easily be countered by his chains, but he realized that they could also work against A, maybe even the Raikage. His chains were adamantine, theoretically indestructible--except for Onoki's Dust Release, which evaporated his chains back at the disaster--and he theorized that if he wrapped his body in them, they could serve as good armor against the overwhelming speed of A, or even the perfect spear of the Raikage. But only time could tell.