Chapter 45: Confrontation
The old saying about tempting fate? Yeah, it had just bitten them all squarely in the ass.
Unfortunately, the bigshots huddled in the command tent were too busy stroking their egos to hear the universe laughing at them.
What else could they do? The enemy had basically knocked on their front door with a battering ram. If they didn't haul ass out there to stop this surprise party from hell, their entire advance force would be filing for unemployment benefits in the afterlife.
They burst from the tent like startled prairie dogs.
As Orochimaru emerged, his serpentine gaze lingered on Qifeng with the kind of intensity usually reserved for dissecting lab specimens.
Qifeng's smile could have powered a small village's worth of awkwardness.
He shuffled after the brass, feeling like the kid who'd just told the teacher about the fire drill five minutes before the actual fire started.
Look, he'd genuinely been talking out his rear end, but apparently the Iwa ninjas had taken his bullshit prophecy as their personal mission statement. Talk about embarrassing career moments.
After all, Konoha's advance team wasn't exactly populated by weekend warriors with participation trophies. These were seasoned killers who checked under their beds for enemy ninjas before tucking themselves in. They swept every blade of grass, every suspicious pebble, every mildly threatening cloud formation before so much as pitching a tent.
Hell, they had Hyuga clan members on the roster. With those all-seeing Byakugan eyeballs doing their supernatural security sweep, regular ninjas had about as much chance of hiding as a neon sign in a blackout.
"What the hell were our Perception ninjas doing? Playing patty-cake? And the Hyuga—were their precious Byakugan taking a goddamn coffee break?" Uchiha Shin's voice cracked like a whip the moment his boots hit dirt outside.
Hinata Hanjian's face crumpled like he'd bitten into something particularly sour, but he kept his mouth shut. Smart move, really.
This clusterfuck had the Hyuga family's fingerprints all over it, and everyone knew it.
Orochimaru didn't waste energy on theatrics. His cold gaze swept the chaos of their camp like a general surveying a particularly disappointing battlefield.
"All Konoha personnel—abandon your work and rally at the command tent!
Jonin form the outer perimeter, Chunin take the inside! Taijutsu specialists on the front lines, Ninjutsu and Genjutsu users provide support! Lightning and Earth release users, get your chakra ready!"
His words carried across the camp like gospel, reaching every Konoha ninja still breathing and conscious enough to listen.
The panicked advance troops, who'd been running around like headless chickens thirty seconds earlier, suddenly found their spine again. The deer-in-headlights expression melted away as they gravitated toward the command tent like iron filings to a magnet.
"Fuck me sideways, I thought I was going to suffocate down there," one of the emerging Rock ninjas wheezed, shaking dirt from his hair. "Hyuga's Byakugan is a real pain in the ass. Had to play mole for so long I was starting to grow attached to the worm lifestyle."
The Iwa ninjas' surprise party had worked exactly as advertised, catching Konoha's people with their pants down and their guard in the neighboring prefecture. As they erupted from underground like the world's most violent game of whack-a-mole, their grins were pure predator—all teeth and malicious intent.
Their patience had paid dividends in blood. Konoha bodies littered the ground like discarded training dummies.
But Orochimaru's presence meant the Rock ninjas couldn't start planning their victory parade just yet.
Dohe, the Iwa advance force commander, studied Orochimaru across the battlefield with the expression of a man about to perform very expensive dental work without anesthetic. "So the Snake Sannin decided to grace us with his presence. Well, this time we're going to teach Konoha what real pain tastes like."
This ambush had been his baby from conception to bloody birth. They'd spent weeks perfecting their underground hide-and-seek routine, diving so deep into the rock layers that they practically needed mining permits.
Iwagakure had been sharpening their knives for this moment, and their advance team's mission statement was beautifully simple: hurt Konoha so badly that the other villages would send thank-you cards.
The goal wasn't just tactical—it was psychological warfare at its finest. Make this advance force disappear completely, and suddenly everyone in the ninja world would think twice before fucking with the Hidden Rock.
Within minutes, Konoha's battle-tested advance troops had sorted themselves out near the command tent, facing off against the Iwagakure forces like two gangs of very well-trained, very murderous teenagers about to settle things in the parking lot.
The ground between them looked like a war zone—because it was one. Shattered rocks, burning tents, and dead friends painted a picture that would give trauma counselors nightmares for years.
The Konoha ninjas were coated in dust and debris, but the panic in their eyes had crystallized into something much more dangerous: the kind of bone-deep hatred that makes people do spectacularly violent things.
Konoha's losses from this surprise ass-kicking were worse than anyone had estimated.
But hey, details, right?
Because they had Orochimaru on their side.
The Cold-Blooded Snake himself, in all his reptilian glory.
No need for motivational speeches or tearful goodbyes. When death-dealers meet on the battlefield, words become pretty fucking irrelevant.
Orochimaru took point and charged the Iwagakure line like a man with nothing left to lose.
Strategically speaking, retreat might have been the smart play.
If Qifeng had been calling the shots, he would have sprinted in the opposite direction without looking back, because this sneak attack had created a numerical gap big enough to drive a summoning contract through.
But nobody on Konoha's side—including their cold-blooded commander—so much as whispered the word "retreat."
Because behind them lay the Land of Fire, spread out like a buffet table for any asshole with conquest fantasies.
This wasn't just a battle they couldn't afford to lose—it was a battle they literally couldn't run from.
Dohe's expression shifted into something that belonged in a slasher film. "Earth Release!"
"Earth Shore Return!"
The Iwagakure ninjas moved like a synchronized swimming team designed by particularly violent choreographers. The moment Dohe's lips stopped moving, every Rock ninja in the front line was weaving hand seals with the kind of coordination that would have made a marching band weep with envy.
They dropped into synchronized crouches and slammed their palms against the ground.
BOOM!!
Massive earthen walls erupted from the ground like the planet itself was having a temper tantrum, forming a barrier that stretched between the two forces like the world's most aggressive property line.
The Rock ninjas perched on their improvised ramparts like the world's deadliest gargoyles, raining down offensive jutsu with the enthusiasm of kids throwing water balloons—if water balloons could melt flesh and shatter bones.
"Summoning Jutsu!"
BANG!
A colossal purple serpent materialized beneath Orochimaru's feet like his personal escalator to hell, launching him toward the Iwagakure forces with the subtlety of a runaway freight train.
The massive snake tore through their defensive line like a scaly battering ram, completely ignoring the Rock ninjas' jutsu attacks as if they were particularly aggressive confetti.
Manda—because of course Orochimaru had summoned the snake equivalent of a natural disaster—thrashed and coiled through the Iwagakure formation with all the restraint of a hurricane in a trailer park.
The Rock ninjas had wanted to leverage their numerical advantage for some good old-fashioned teamwork tactics.
That was their bread and butter, after all.
Hell, if you ranked villages by their ability to work together, coordinate attacks, and function as a unified killing machine, Iwagakure would take gold while everyone else fought for silver.
But powerhouses like Orochimaru didn't give a damn about tactical advantages or numerical superiority.
He'd just grabbed their carefully orchestrated battle plan by the throat and drop-kicked it off a cliff, forcing them into the kind of one-on-one slugfest where Konoha's individual talent could shine.
This was Konoha's home turf: controlled chaos where skill mattered more than raw numbers.
Following Orochimaru's breakthrough like ducklings behind a particularly violent mother duck, the Konoha forces surged forward, each ninja seeking their own dance partner in this ballet of mutual destruction.
But Konoha was still playing with a short deck.
Sure, Iwagakure ninjas might not win many individual talent contests, but that didn't mean they were pushovers. And they still had that lovely numerical advantage working for them.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Four elite Iwa jonin materialized around Orochimaru like the world's most deadly boy band, with Dohe completing the set to make it a solid five-man murder chorus.
The formation wouldn't be enough to put Orochimaru in the ground, but it would keep him busy enough to prevent any more solo performances.
After taking a sustained beating that would have hospitalized a small army, Manda finally threw in the towel and vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving Orochimaru to face his five-ninja welcoming committee alone.
"Hmph. Rock ninjas."
"Orochimaru! Today your arrogance gets its bill!" Dohe snarled with the kind of dramatic flair usually reserved for soap opera villains.
Orochimaru's serpentine pupils glowed with enough cold malice to freeze hellfire, his voice a hoarse whisper that somehow carried the weight of impending doom. "You five couldn't threaten me even if you had written instructions. Tell that old bastard Onoki to show up if he wants a real fight."
"Arrogant prick!"
Onoki was the Third Tsuchikage—the kind of opponent that required matching rank and power level. You didn't send foot soldiers after the final boss.
Orochimaru's tongue flicked across his lips in a gesture that was somehow more unsettling than any death threat. "Whether I'm arrogant or not, you're about to find out firsthand."
The moment Konoha and Iwagakure forces made contact, the battlefield exploded into the kind of vicious carnage that would make war correspondents change careers.
Every Konoha ninja fought like their life depended on it—because it did. Even facing death, they were determined to drag a few Rock ninja bastards along for the ride to whatever afterlife was accepting reservations.
But among all these heroic displays of self-sacrificial combat prowess, there was one notable exception.
For instance, at that exact moment, Qifeng was crouched behind a convenient boulder, wiping nervous sweat from his face and trying to remember how to breathe properly. He'd found his calling in the middle of this bloodbath: professional corpse management.
Whether the bodies had been Konoha or Iwagakure property, he collected them with the dedication of a man who'd found his true purpose in life.
His internal mantra had become beautifully simple: "I'm just the cleanup crew. I collect bodies. That's it. That's the job."
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Batman will believe that fallen/False Alex was baiting when he realised Batman came.****************
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