Saints and Suffering: A Naruto Fanfiction

Chapter 51- Sacrifice

Domaru and Hikaru were almost at the end of their ropes with the pace set by their team leader. The elder Hyuga was pushing his subordinates as hard as they could function, and the two young and freshly promoted chuunin were definitely the weakest link. As the team of five rushed towards some objective only known by the team leader, the two youngest members had no stamina to spare and it took all they had to keep up.

The situation was about as dire as it could get. Their team had been cut in half with a simple ambush, but worse than the losses incurred was the fact that the Kumo ninja ambushed them at that specific location. Konoha Intelligence had put the Kumo Forces surrounding the area around the Valley of the End, but their team had encountered enemies on their retreat path, which should have been swept clear by some of the main forces of Konoha that weren't involved in the direct assault at the valley.

At the point of the team's formation were their Team Leader, the Hyuga, and his jonin lieutenant, a middle aged man from the Sarutobi Clan.

Hikaru, Domaru, and the remaining Uchiha were not privy to the jonin duo's hushed conversations as the team ran across the countryside.

Hyuga-taicho and Sarutobi were the only two in the team that were given enough tactical information to realize just how abnormal their situation was. The chuunin might've attributed the Kumo ambush to bad luck, but the two jonin knew better, and were discussing what went wrong and how to get back to Konoha. Their evaluation was extremely pessimistic, and they were much closer to the truth than was comfortable.

The Fourth Raikage, in a rare good mood, read reports from his subordinates as they came in.

His battlefield commanders were reporting complete destruction and fragmentation of Konoha forces in the area. Furthermore, his ninja had already destroyed every fortification their intelligence had recorded. The base, five forts, and 25 outposts were already demolished into fragments.

The Raikage felt like buying a lottery ticket, as he couldn't believe his luck. The plan that the Lightning Daimyo had concocted up had worked perfectly.

Baited by the threat to their founder's statue, Konoha had stayed in the area to engage with Kumo, and that was their downfall.

As soon as the Raikage had delivered his threat at the Valley of the End, he started mobilizing his troops.

When the enemy retreats, attack, and when they advance, retreat.

Kumo ninja had completely retreated from the Valley of the End almost immediately, leaving only an outpost with a few trusted subordinates under secret orders and a suspiciously high number of suspected turncoats, malcontents, and otherwise problem shinobi as bait.

The rest of Kumo forces ran at breakneck speeds towards the East, and crossed into the Land of Fire over one of the battlefields from the previous days, which was now abandoned as the main hostilities shifted ever westwards.

Once the bulk of their forces had infiltrated the land of Fire, they mobilized at best speed to put themselves smack dab inbetween Konoha and the Valley of the End, manning all of the natural chokepoints that were along potential retreat routes of Konoha Shinobi.

With Kumo's numerical superiority and a defensive position, Konoha would either be forced to try to break through in a direct assault, or take the long way around on their retreat back to Konoha. Either way, they would be delayed long enough for the next phase of the Daimyo's plan.

The Raikage expected them to take the long way. Only a fool would try to break through. Assault usually took 3 times more attackers than defenders to be successful, and Kumo intel suggested the Konoha forces had been decimated and Kumo outnumbered them 3 to 1 the other direction.