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.

To assault a defended position with one third of the forces would be pure folly, no?

But the Raikage grimly smiled, because his commanders were reporting that that was exactly the Konoha forces had chosen to do. Almost no Konoha shinobi had survived. Any threat they would pose in this area could be handled by a small detachment of less than 100 shinobi of various classes.

The situation was perfect for the next phase of the plan. The Lightning Daimyo's plans were to have the Kumo Shinobi immediately come to reinforce his soldiers upon completion of their mission, which was either destruction or delay of Konoha forces. Either way, Konoha forces would not be present to reinforce the Land of Fire's soldiers, and Kumo nin would have free rein to slaughter the unenhanced civilians and conscripts that made up the non-chakra enhanced armies of the elemental nations.

Later that day, Kumo Forces would up and leave the area, headed southeast, towards the eventual battlefields of the Capitol of Fire and Konoha itself. Morale was high among the Kumo shinobi forces following the extremely successful campaign. The Kumo Shinobi forces left a small detachment to hunt down the stragglers of Konoha,

Shijin, long since left behind by the bulk of Konoha Forces, was wandering the battlefields of the disastrous first night and the following battlefields as the frontlines shifted.

He was not wandering without purpose though. He had been left 60 genin under his command, and Shijin would not allow a single one of them to die a dog's death and lay upon the ground to rot. Each and every genin he found, he dug a grave for them by hand, and buried them with the respect they deserved. They at least deserved to rest with an intact body.

They were not meant to die here, and it was Shijin's mistakes that had led to the current situation. The Konoha Chuunin and Jonin corpses that he found though, they knew what they signed up for, and Shijin disposed of them in proper Konoha Fashion, burned to ashes, returning unto dust.

As Shijin followed the trail of destruction westwards, finding more and more bodies, his emotions roiled beneath the surface, but his cold and stony eyes took in every single detail, burning them into his memories. He would remember them so that he may properly excise his pound of flesh from those who did this.

Jonin and Chuunin were more than capable of disabling a genin without lasting injury. Any death among them was a conscious act of wanton cruelty and unnecessary violence. Orders or not, Shijin would not forgive.

Shijin found his first survivor after a few days of travelling. How ironic it was that it was one of the genin that was under his command.

Shijin did not remember the young genin's name, but he recognized the face.

The young boy, maybe only 14 years of age was unconscious and sprawled out in a puddle of mud. One of his hands was holding his stomach, where a deep cut was located, through which Shijin could see the boy's viscera.

The boy was barely breathing, and his body temperature was dangerously low. His heartbeat was extremely faint, and only the minute vibrations of the boy's chest told Shijin that he was still alive. Kumo must not have taken too close of a look.

It would be fair to say that the cold and wet mud of the north of Fire Country had "saved" the boy's life, slowing his heart rate so much that the boy did not yet bleed to death. He would soon die though, and Shijin knew he was powerless to stop it.

Shijin stood there for a few moments, simply observing, before kneeling down and reaching a hand out to caress the boy's face.

Shijin was still fighting the burning pain in his eyes. He knew that his eyes were reawakening, but were still stuck at their current state due to a complete lack of chakra. Shijin's eyes were Rinnegan, but they were not. Shijin's eyes were Sharingan, but they were not. His eyes gave him the power to change the world, but the vision to see that the world does not change.

He could see the ripples in the water of the world, but all he could do is splash around. The reflection was all there was.

It seems that he could not fight fate. and Fate would have him be an avenger.

In that moment, Shijin was as sure as he had ever been. He knew what he could do, and all he needed to do was take the step.

The boy was dying. He would need to be avenged, and Shijin knew the path forward.

Shijin placed his hand over the boy's heart, the source of chakra, the death gate, and activated the Preta Path.

The Preta Path was special among the paths. It did not require chakra to activate, it used the chakra of the enemy to function. It used the enemy's own power to transform that power into the wielder's.

As Shijin snuffed out the last ember of the poor genin's chakra, the boy died, and his chakra whispered through the dry and cracked tenketsu of Shijin. As the chakra passed through his chakra pathways, Shijin's pathways were like the parched sands of a desert soaking up the rain.

The Chakra disappeared as easily as it had appeared, and it seemed that nothing within Shijin had changed, but the Desert Flowers bloom long after the rain has passed.