Chapter 58: Ino-Shika-Chō!

The rain never stopped in this land. It came down in sheets that turned the ground to soup and made the treeline a grey blur and filled every ditch and hollow with ankle-deep, cold, brown water. Rain Country earned its name every single hour of every single day.

Sarutobi Enmaru had stopped noticing it somewhere early in the war. He crouched behind a fallen tree on the western ridge overlooking the valley and watched the Ame lines through the downpour. Two hundred meters of open ground between his position and theirs. The valley floor was churned mud, cratered from three days of back-and-forth, the remains of a bridge sitting in the middle of it like a broken spine.

Forty-six enemies in the valley. Thirty-two in the treeline on the far ridge. Twelve in the dug-in position near the bridge. Two sensor types, both in the rear, both fixed on the center, where the main force was making all the noise.

Inoichi's Mind Transmission. The boy was sitting cross-legged in a hollow fifty meters behind the front line, and his mind was touching every shinobi in the attack simultaneously. Twenty-eight Konoha shinobi connected in a silent web of shared perception, each one hearing Inoichi's updates without a whisper leaving anyone's lips.

Their left side is weaker. Six shinobi, spread thin, covering too much ground. If we punch through there and come around behind the bridge, they have to choose between holding the front or turning to face us. Either way, they're fighting on two sides.

That assessment came through the link from Shikaku.

Their right side is stronger. Ten shinobi, tighter formation. We don't go right. We go left, break through, swing wide, and hit the bridge from behind while everyone else keeps them busy from the front.

Enmaru made the call.

Listen up. Attack group, hit their left side. The rest of you, keep the center busy on my mark. Move out.

Twenty-eight minds heard it at once without any delay. Inoichi let the link go, opened his eyes, and climbed out of the hollow. The attack group was four people. Enmaru, Shikaku, Inoichi, and Chōza. Ino-Shika-Chō and their Sarutobi sensei, moving through the rain toward the weakest point in the enemy line.

They hit the six on the left at a dead sprint. The six Ame shinobi saw them coming through the rain at the last possible second.

Inoichi was the first one in. He drew the chakra blades from his belt and channeled an invisible edge through them, and he hit the first defender before the man's hands finished a seal. The right blade caught the Ame shinobi across the forearm, the zigzag teeth biting through the sleeve and into the skin. A shallow cut.

The man flinched, pulled his arm back, and then his eyes went wide.

His left hand, the one holding a kunai, swung sideways and buried itself in his partner's thigh. The partner screamed. The man screamed too, staring at his own hand in horror, watching his fingers grip the kunai handle and twist and having no idea why his body was doing this. His legs moved next, carrying him forward into a third Ame shinobi, and his arms came up and his hands closed around the third man's throat.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" the third man choked, trying to pry the fingers off. "HE'S GONE CRAZY!"

“I CAN’T CONTROL MYSELF! MY BODY IS ACTING ON ITS OWN!”

Inoichi was already past him, both blades singing through the rain, cutting a path through the enemy shinobi. Every slash was quick. A cut, a nick, a graze of the blade across exposed skin, and the Mind Destruction Jutsu poured through the chakra-conductive metal and into the target's nervous system.

The second man he cut spun and threw a fistful of shuriken at the fourth. The fourth dodged, confused, screaming at his ally to stop, and Inoichi caught the fourth across the back of the hand as he raised it to block. Now there were three Ame shinobi killing their own team, and the remaining two were backing away in genuine terror because they didn't understand what was happening.

Three cuts had made three puppets, and Inoichi's consciousness hadn't left his own body for a second.

He stood in the rain with blood-coated blades dripping and a cocky smile on his face, and the six enemies tore themselves apart around him.

"I will never get used to that…" Enmaru said from behind him. He'd been about to engage and hadn't needed to.

"Mikoto-sensei taught me about intent," Inoichi said, flicking blood from the blades. "The blades conduct chakra. My clan's jutsu is chakra too. I just had to figure out how to shift between yin chakra and water chakra."

"And it wasn’t me asking why you use water through your chakra metal instead of your clan techniques like Shikaku does with his weapon? It's all Mikoto-sensei, huh? I didn't help at all?"

"Yep." Inoichi happily lied.

The last two Ame shinobi, the ones he hadn't cut, were running. Enmaru's Monkey summon caught them both from the shadow of a fallen tree. They stopped running as the monkey’s long blade sliced them in half. The monkey waved at Enmaru and Inoichi before poofing away back home.

Left side cleared. The whole exchange had taken twenty seconds.

…

The bridge position was harder. Twelve defenders, dug in, with earth walls and water jutsu and the strong resolve that came from holding the same position for three days and deciding they weren't leaving it. Konoha’s forces hit them from the front and the valley erupted in ninjutsu.

Enmaru and the trio swung around from the collapsed left side and hit the bridge from behind. The first three shinobi went down quickly, caught between the attacking force in front and the four behind them, and then the bridge position's commander rallied the nine he had left and they turned to face the four at their backs.

The commander was a jonin with a katana in his right hand. He picked Shikaku out of the four immediately. He came straight for him swinging his sword. The first slash came at his neck and Shikaku got the umbrella up just in time, the frame catching the blade with a sound like a bell being struck by a hammer. The impact rattled his arms. The jonin's eyebrows twitched, he should’ve cut straight through that umbrella no problem, but no matter. He continued slashing.

Overhead. Lateral. Diagonal. Three strikes in seconds, each one aimed at a different angle, each one trying to kill the boy. It held every time. The chakra Shikaku fed through the handle hardened the tool beyond what its appearance suggested, and the jonin's expression shifted from curiosity to irritation.

Shikaku fought defensively, patiently, giving ground in exchange for information. The jonin was faster. Stronger. More experienced. But every strike he threw gave Shikaku more information. However, knowledge without being able to act on it was useless. 

The jonin pressed harder. A slash Shikaku barely parried drove him back three steps. A follow-up kick caught his hip and spun him sideways. He stumbled, corrected, raised the umbrella to block the next cut, and the jonin feinted low and came high and the pommel of the katana cracked against Shikaku's temple.

His vision starred. His legs buckled. He hit the ground on his back, the mud swallowing his shoulders, and the umbrella flew from his grip, spinning into the air above them, rising, rising, catching the grey light as it turned.

The jonin looked down at him. The katana rose.

“I always hated you talented Leaf brats. No chunin back home would be able to withstand so many attacks from me.” He glared at Shikaku with disdain.

He stepped forward to finish it.

The umbrella reached the apex of its spin ten meters above the battlefield. There was no sun to cast a shadow, only flat grey light, but Shikaku poured his chakra into the faint shade beneath it, and it spread across the muddy ground below in a wide, dark pool, a solid disc of shade covering the earth like a patch of night dropped onto the field.

The jonin's foot was already inside it.

His body locked.

Every muscle, from his neck to his toes, froze as if the air itself had turned to stone around him. The katana stopped mid-swing, the blade hovering a foot above Shikaku's chest. His eyes went wide. He understood in a single, horrible instant what had just happened.

He looked up. The umbrella, spinning lazily above him, casting its shadow down across the battlefield like a dark sun.

He looked down. His own shadow, swallowed by the umbrella's, connected to Shikaku's through the solid pool of darkness beneath his feet.

Shikaku lay on his back in the mud and smiled.

"Shadow Paralysis complete…"

The jonin strained against it. His chakra surged, every muscle in his body fighting the bind, the veins in his neck standing out like cords. He was stronger than Shikaku, and both of them knew it. The shadow trembled around his ankles, and Shikaku felt it begin to slip.

He didn’t need it to hold for long.

Above them, the umbrella tipped toward the jonin’s back, and Shikaku triggered the release in its ribs.

Hundreds of senbon burst out of the frame in a spinning ring and came down on the jonin from above. They punched into his scalp, the back of his neck, his shoulders, his raised arms, thin lines of steel sinking deep. He couldn’t flinch. He couldn’t lower his hands. The shadow held him exactly where he stood, sword raised over Shikaku’s chest, while the needles kept coming.

Then their shadows disconnected, and he toppled sideways into the mud, bristling like a pincushion.

Shikaku lay there for another second, staring at the grey sky through the rain. "What a pain… I hate fighting people stronger than me." He murmured.

Then he stood up, muddy and bruised and very much alive, and looked at the remaining eight defenders who had just watched their commander die to a young man lying on his back in a puddle.

Chōza, he said through the Mind Transmission link that Inoichi had re-established. I need some help.

Third Activation.

His skin flushed red. A deep yellow burst of chakra erupted around him. Chōza surged into the eight remaining with his adamantine staff. The staff extended. Six meters of indestructible black metal, swung by an Akimichi more than five times stronger than he usually was, in a space full of enemies who were already rattled from watching their commander die.

The first swing caught two defenders at once. The extended staff swept through them at waist height and the force of it sent both of them rolling across the bridge ruins like leaves in a gale. Neither got back up. The second swing came from above. Chōza brought the staff down on an earth wall a defender had raised, and the wall exploded. Chunks of stone sprayed in every direction and the defender behind it took the staff across his raised arms. The blocking attempt worked about as well as blocking a falling tree with your hands.

Three more turned to engage him. A water jutsu from the left, a volley of shuriken from the right, and a brave chunin with a sword coming straight up the middle. Above Chōza, Shikaku's umbrella was spinning. It had followed him onto the bridge, rising on a cushion of chakra Shikaku fed through the conductive frame, hovering ten meters above Chōza's position like a dark halo. Its shadow fell across the bridge in a solid disc that moved with Chōza as he moved, and every enemy who stepped into that disc found their bodies unable to move.

The water jutsu caster froze mid-seal. Shadow Paralysis, triggered through the umbrella's cast shadow, locking his body in place. Enmaru appeared behind him and put a kunai through his kidney.

The shuriken thrower froze next. His arm cocked back, the shuriken pinched between his fingers, his body refusing to release. Shikaku's Shadow Stitching lanced up from the umbrella's shadow and pierced him through the chest multiple times.

The swordsman made it to within three meters of Chōza before the umbrella's shadow caught his feet.

Chōza didn't slow down. The extended staff caught the frozen swordsman across the chest and launched him off the bridge entirely. He flew twenty meters and hit the valley floor and didn't move.

Two left. They fled. They made it four steps before Inoichi, who had repositioned to the far side of the bridge, took both their heads in a single stroke, a sharpened water edge coating his trench knives.

Chōza planted the staff and the Third Activation released. The red drained from his skin. The corona vanished. His breathing was heavy but not ragged.

The bridge position was theirs. The battle broke after that. With it gone, the remaining Ame forces, the remaining Ame forces on the far ridge withdrew into the treeline. Konoha's forces held the valley, secured what was left of the bridge, and began seeing to the wounded. Enmaru stood in the falling rain and watched his three chunin regroup at the bridge.

Shikaku had the umbrella raised over his head to block the rain. A bruise was darkening on his temple where the jonin's sword hilt had caught him. Inoichi was washing off his allies with a water jutsu. Chōza made sure Inoichi hit every spot, shaking his chubby body like a wet dog. Enmaru shook his head while stifling his own laughter. He was the adult. He couldn’t be laughing at a time like this.

“Boys focus up! Keep your wits about you even after the battle seems over.” Enmaru reminded them.

“We know!” Chōza and Inoichi said.

“Mikoto taught us that already.” Shikaku smirked.

The boys knew how much it irked their sensei to be compared to a girl two years older than them.

Enmaru just took in a breath and released it. Not falling for their stupid bait this time.