Chapter 47- Assault on Two Fronts

The Land of Hotsprings was often described as a garden of Eden with the most beautiful of vistas, no matter where one went. It was true to a certain extent. The mountains that made up the geography of their Northern neighbor, Shimogakure, always laid in the distance, and one would enjoy their splendor from the relative peace of the quiet foothills in the Land of Hotsprings.

The Land of Hotsprings seldom suffered from drought, and its moderate climate year round lent itself to its specialty, tea production. It was not as hot as the Land of Fire to its south, and its denizens were eternally grateful since if it were too hot out, the hot springs wouldn't be as enjoyable.

Furthermore, the somewhat varied terrain of the Land of Hotsprings allowed for easily built fortifications, whether they be in natural valleys or on rocky outcroppings. The natural defenses the dotted the land had helped decide the borders of the Land of Fire back in the days of the Shodai Hokage.

When the five great elemental nations were deciding on their borders, it was agreed upon that there should be border states between them as a neutral party to help ease tensions. As such, it was also suggested that each border nation be an easily defensible area since their location between two superpowers would be a bit precipitous at times.

That being said, non chakra based soldiers were still relatively common back in that time period, and now that Shinobi fought the bulk of conflicts, those plans were almost useless. Any natural barriers short of the ones that protected the hidden villages were almost inconsequential to ninja.

Kiri relied on an entire ocean of separation, Suna used an ocean of sand as well. Kumo and Iwa were nestled among mountains and were hard for even shinobi to reach.

So when it came to the natural valleys and outcroppings of the Land of Hotsprings, they didn't offer much barrier to the invading Kumo Shinobi.

However, they offered much better defense than anything than Land of Fire had.

The Land of Fire was situated in the great plains and forests of the continent, the bulk of its landmass was flat. Konohagakure, and by extent, Fire, relied on their massive size and strength as a deterrent from invasion because they had nothing else to rely on.

So when Kumogakure made its move, on the night of the first new moon in the year proceeding the Kyuubi Attack, they made great headway.

Both Konoha and Kumo were suffering from the tremendous losses of the Second and Third Great Shinobi wars. Konoha had perhaps 500 shinobi in the area that they could field while still retaining enough to guard its other borders. Konoha had perhaps ten times that number available at the beginning of the Second Great War.

Kumo on the other hand had not suffered such disastrous losses, losses yes, but not that much. It was originally weaker than Konoha, boasting a mere 4000 shinobi in the not so distant past, but while Konoha had suffered losses of over 50%, Kumo had kept approximately 75% of its forces intact.

There were a full 3000 healthy and strong Kumo shinobi ready to support the invasion of the Land of Fire.

500 were retained for village function and defense, but the other 2500 were already at the border, and a full three fifths of them would be mobilized in the first assault.

The Great River of the continent separated the Land of Hot Springs and Land of Fire. At its widest point near the mouth, it was over 2 miles wide, and it collected from 90% of the continent.

Up near the capitol of the Hot Springs, it was maybe only a few hundred yards wide. However, that was still a fairly large space to cross.

Ninja were capable of walking on water at the chuunin level, but competently fighting was a whole different story. It was one thing to use taijutsu, but ninjutsu and genjutsu were a whole different beast. Circulating chakra in two separate ways during the heat of battle was a skill that could be expected of jonin, chuunin might be able to, but it would preferably be avoided.

Kumo and Konoha had an almost "traditional" battleground where the Great River thinned and deepened for a course of several dozen miles. It was opposite of what civilians preferred, wide and shallow, but for ninja, each additional yard less of river width represented less danger of attack while crossing.

The chosen battleground was almost predestined, and even though that was where Konoha had put its border fortifications, it was still the best place to attack.

Kumo's forces were broken into 100 teams of 15, and each team was spaced three miles away from each other, short enough for rapid reinforcement, but far enough away to reduce the chances of any large battlefield being created.

The great villages, all five, had learned over the previous decades that fragmenting the hostilities into multiple minor skirmishes was the greatest way to prevent unnecessary deaths. The fact of the matter was that for every thousand regular shinobi, there was someone like the Third Hokage or Third Raikage who could face down an entire army.

Numbers would work against those superhumans, but at great cost. Any victory would be a Pyrrhic one.

Team 87 was the first of Kumo's to begin its assault. Composed of nine jonin and six chuunin, the team was among the more experienced that Kumo had to offer.

Their area of operation included two outposts and was actually the nearest to one of Konoha's five forts, the other four were situated a bit further away from the border, and this one was larger than strictly necessary. In an aggressive war, Konoha would shift its base here and start operating out of the Land of Hot Springs. Any counterattack would be based here.

Team 87 crossed the great river within 2 minutes of midnight after receiving its authorization to attack. The team leader was actually a good friend of the commander and shared in his love of action.

The commander had once said that "A hastily built plan executed energetically right now is better than the perfect one in only a few hours."

The fact that Kumo had survived the Third Great War with minimal casualties was a testament to the adage. In fact, the energetic and aggressive style of assault that Kumo had favored and executed with great effect had honorably been dubbed "Lightning War" and was being thoroughly examined and picked apart by strategists among all the nations, eager to improve and add to their own stratagems.

Team 87's plan was fairly simple. The Konoha outposts they had been scouting out had between 3 and 6 ninja stationed each while the fort was manned by approximately equal to their own 15.

Currently they were outnumbered, but the Konoha forces were fragmented, and that was why they would fall.

Team 87, once across the river, fanned out in teams of 5 in three different directions, two up and down river, while one penetrated the Land of Fire. Konoha, relying on its once fabled alliance with Uzushiogakure, had detection seals all along it border, and if the Kumo ninja wandered around needlessly, they would be detected and intercepted.

Which is exactly what Team 87 wanted to happen. The upriver team encountered a pair of Chuunin on patrol first, and after a quick exchange of jutsu, the pair were quickly overwhelmed and killed. However, the noise of explosions and flames of battle quickly alerted Konoha to their presence and the Kumo sub team started making its way back to its initial crossing point from where it had split with the other two sub teams.

The plan was very simple, kill a couple Konoha Shinobi, regroup, wait for retaliation, and surprise the enemy with greater numbers.

And that is exactly how it played out. Two Tokubetsu Jonin from Konoha found the battle site where their chuunin comrades had fallen and immediately pursued. What they found was 10 Kumo shinobi waiting for them, and they too died like the chuunin after a quick exchange of jutsus.

After 30 minutes in the Land of Fire, team 87 had neutralized the two outposts in similar fashion, destroying the neutralized fortifications as they left.

The team lead of Team 87 then summoned a small messenger in the form of two marmots, which quickly scurried off to find teams 88 and 86.

The nearby fort was manned by four Konoha Jonin and eight chuunin. The second outpost was successful in firing off a distress signal before dying, and the fort was responding in full force. 6 of the Team 87 jonin stayed in the area as bait, while the other members crossed back into the Land of Hot Springs and set up a trap with the help of Teams 86 and 88.

Konoha, with the advantage of specialized ninja like the Hyuga, Aburame, and Inuzuka quickly found the sites of battle and the 6 Kumo jonin and proceeded to engage.

The Kumo jonin retreated, and Konoha followed in rage and a desire to avenge their comrades who had already died at the hand of the Kumo shinobi.

As the Konoha team followed across the river, the remnants of Team 87, along with Teams 86 and 88 triggered their trap, casting a combination Lightning Jutsu that took out 7 out of the 8 Konoha chuunin immediately and 1 of the four jonin.

Further skirmishing elapsed, and only two Konoha Jonin escaped from the battlefield, heavily injured. It was a resounding success for Kumo.

Up and down the river, between 1200 and 0030, similar events were taking place, as well as many disparate. Some of the Kumo teams were as rash as the Konoha team that faced Team 87, and they suffered great casualties.

Some of the Kumo shinobi favored all out assault over subterfuge, and suffered losses on parity. Of course, they were a few Konoha successful defenses as well, but overall, the initial assault was a huge victory for Kumogakure.

They outnumbered the Konoha forces by three to one, and it showed. Over the course of the night, of the 25 outposts and 5 forts that protected the Fire Border form Lightning, 18 outposts fell and 2 forts.

Following the initial assault, Kumo started using it reserves to rotate men through the battlefield, shifting the front upriver for two different reasons.

One of those reasons was evident within a few days, the other would take a little time to reveal.

Team 15 from Komugakure was one of the few teams that encountered no fighting during the initial assault. The outposts near them had been handled by Teams 13, 14, and 17.

There were no nearby forts, and so after making their way into Fire Territory, they were somewhat at a loss as to what they should do. They had their standing orders though, which was to sow havoc, and attack any supply lines and infrastructure they might encounter should they not meet heavy resistance, or should they penetrate the enemy defensive lines.

At approximately 0100 hours, Team 15 met up with Team 16, also in the same predicament, and the jointly decided on a course of action. They would infiltrate 20 miles into Fire, destroy any military or civilian supplies they would find, such as granaries, supply stores, or trade hubs. Any bridges they came across would be sabotaged, and they would engage any Konoha Shinobi they found, presuming they maintained numerical superiority.

Splitting up into 5 teams of 6, Teams 15 and 16 fanned out through the Konoha countryside and laid waste to any targets they found. They did not kill the civilians they encountered, but each of the 5 sub teams encountered at least one point of interest such as a bridge, food depot, or farming co-op.

However, when the groups rendezvoused later in the morning, three of the subteams made the same, somewhat unsettling report.

They had encountered Konoha genin pairs travelling through the countryside, or at least they suspected they were genin. The Konoha shinobi mounted damn near no resistance before they were killed and they didn't have the normal flak jacket that Konoha Chuunin and Jonin would wear.

The Team Leaders of team 15 and 16 spoke with their troops and had to ease a few ruffled feathers. It didn't sit well with some of the Jonin that they were fighting against Genin. It almost felt distasteful. The life of a shinobi was dark enough, and everyone acknowledged it was live by the kunai, die by the kunai, but some shinobi still held onto a semblance of honor and wished to face opponents that were at least close tot their equal.

The Team Leader of Team 15 had left his men with the following words.

"They wore their uniforms to a battlefield, and they died for it. The fact that they were not strong enough to survive is not on you.

We killed them, but that is what war is. If they were too weak to survive, Konoha is the one to blame. Its not your duty to spare your enemies."

Shijin would realize his mistake in the coming days. Of the twenty genin he sent out the first night, the night that happened to coincide with Kumo's assault, only 6 would survive. Of the forty already on station, 17 would survive.

In the aftermath of the war, the death of genin in mass on the Kumo Front would be a diplomatic sticking point with both sides blaming the other. However, Shijin would blame himself.

Several hundred miles down the river from where Ninja fought ninja, the Lightning Daimyo was mobilizing his troops for his initial assault.

He loaded 250 thousand of his most elite shock troops onto the his freshwater navy ships and started sailing down river.

From the port in Hotsprings to the city of Shina, which laid at the mouth of the Great River and served as Fire's trading hub, it was about 600 miles.

Over the course of two days, the army would float down the river, dropping off 3000 troops to establish a line of fortifications every 20 miles, leaving about 150 thousand troops to invade the city.

The line of fortifications would secure the Great River, which would serve as the main supply line of the invasion, and over the next week, the bulk of Lightning's forces would join the rest of the army in the city of Shina, from which they would set out for Tianchi, which is where they would launch their attack on the Fire Capitol.

Yama and his 60 genin would take the next three days to finally meet up with the Fire Daimyo, who had already left the Capitol with his forces. When the group of ninja had shown up at the planned meeting spot, all that had been left for them was a message to meet up at Tianchi at best speed. So they ran for all they were worth and made it there at about the same time the report came in the Shina had been overwhelmed and had fallen to Lightning forces.

Shina, being a trade hub, had only grown in the decades following the Era of Warring Clans. As such, in the age of Ninja, it did not invest into walls the same way that older, more vulnerable cities had. The city had fallen within hours of Lightning's arrival due to that fact. The Governor of the city had actually ordered the city militia to stand down in order to preserve life. His mere 5000 troops stood no chance against the advancing army. his militia was meant for combating bandits or securing roads, not for fighting wars.

Nevertheless, some of the more patriotic and foolhardy citizens of his city had mounted a token resistance. The reason it had taken Lightning hours to consolidate the city rather than minutes was due to those individuals harassing the forces as they walked through the streets, mostly unimpeded.

Yama and the genin were operating completely in the dark, without any information updates from either Fire or Konoha, almost as if they had fallen through the cracks and been forgotten, and they knew not what had transpired at the border between Kumo and Konoha forces, nor did they know about the solders on the Great River and in Shina.

Yama and his genin had not been forgotten though. The Fire Daimyo was waiting on his "reinforcement" of shinobi, and in his increasingly panicked and frenzied state as the war shifted out of his control, he mind was alive with schemes and plans to help the cause.

He and Danzo were alike in that regard. They were looking forward and still trying to figure out how to win the war. Hiruzen was focused on preventing loss of life, and he was mainly consulting with his subordinates on how to draw other countries into the war and force a stalemate.

Danzo, seeing that Kumo had been drawn away from the homeland, ordered some of ROOT to infiltrate for sabotage. He may not see or hear of the results until after the war, but his men will definitely accomplish the missions, even if they have to sacrifice themselves.