Date: Eight months seven days after awakening
Subject: Battle prep
This is not the first time I've wondered on just how Kaga got a position in command, since he's not all that competent or effective. If it were me I would have kept eroding their ability to fight, little by little until we just won by default.
I've finally gotten around to making some human puppets. They're kind of a disappointment really. The genin I skinned to make these things knew fewer jutsu than I do, the puppets can't use jutsu they didn't know in life, and I can't possess the puppets permanently because they already have an active chakra system.
Bloodline puppets better be worth it, or the very fact that I'm reduced to using strings to control them might well tip off people as to what I'm really doing.
The easiest way to get around that would probably be to put a yin seal on a live person and just fight them for control that way, but I have no idea what that would do to a bloodline that relies on a specific kind of chakra, or what it would do to the body… Actually I do know, it would be like Orochimaru's bodies and degrade over time.
Anyway, the upcoming battle, which is effectively going to be 'pitched warfare', because ninjas are all idiots. The actual reason is that this is too minor a front and the guys with a name to make want to be fighting in more active areas where it's easier to do so.
I know already that Chukichi is going to send the Kaguya members after me. Aside from Chukichi and them there aren't any major threats in the Kiri camp. The Konoha camp is a little more varied, since I've focused on them less, only one of their major players has a bloodline, which means that the other two are more well-rounded and harder to defeat.
It all comes down to understanding the different village's strategies. Kiri is more willing to accept Pyrrhic victories because they have few close enemies, they can exchange deaths for political power because they can't really lose territory of their own. Konoha is in the middle, enemies on all sides, so they have to ration out how many men they lose per battle, if something is looking to be a major loss, even if they could potentially win, they'll back down.
So I need to counter the Kiri nin that could be a major threat as individuals, and I need to take out or kidnap enough of the lower level Konoha nin that they start to see the fight as too risky and make a like tree.
Date: Eight months nine days after awakening
Subject: Battle! after action report
We won, for the most part.
Started off by getting most of the troops onto Mother island, a few got stuck behind to ward off the inevitable attempts to destroy the enemy camps.
The citizens of Sea country, well, if they could get off the island they did, if they couldn't then they pretty much consigned themselves to death. Collateral damage isn't something many shinobi care about a whole lot.
Mother island used to be pretty densely forested, but after a few months of fighting, a nice mix of Fire and Water jutsu, it was mostly mud and stone by now. It makes me wonder how they manage to rebuild everything after every war, or else the geography would be absolutely ruined beyond recognition.
There were attempts to form temporary alliances against one of the other groups at the start of the battle and then settle things amongst the victors afterwards, those failed however. A healthy sense of 'warranted caution' prevented anything like that from happening, as betrayals and double or triple crosses would happen due to lowering ones guard. Simpler all round if everyone is already trying to kill each other from the start.
Things started off with Kiri brewing up a massive collaborative Hiding in Mist technique. Trying to cover the whole island to give them the advantage. Konoha sent a few flame jutsu to burn off the bits trying to inundate them, while Suna mostly just blew it back towards Kiri.
As a stalling tactic, the Hiding in Mist technique is pretty good, no one wanted to go into that kill-zone so Suna and Konoha started fighting each other first.
I saw Kaga face off against Hiruko, seems Kaga was a Water natured shinobi, which might explain some of why he was in charge of this front.
Hiruko's that guy that later developed the Chimera Technique, to blend bloodlines into a single body. Even more evidence of the anti-progress stance of the show, and possibly the Elemental Nations in general, since he was given a kill order by the Third Hokage. That might never happen now though, he's just a regular jounin, pissed off at being so generic.
The nice thing about Konoha having so many clans, is that it's easy to shop for targets. Just look around for indicators or clan symbols and pick what you want to go after. This area didn't have a juicy Ino-Shika-Cho type team, but it did have that Aburame girl and an Inuzuka. Neither clan was very interesting for the shinobi they produced, but they were very interesting for the beings they used as partners.
The fight with those two happened a bit conjointly, I didn't really think that my targeting them would be obvious enough that they'd team up.
There's one major flaw the Aburame have against other people that use small bugs. The Aburame clan have lots of little opening in their skin, which go down deep, like an ant farm. That, and the Kikaichu don't bite, they live entirely off of absorbed chakra and thus any mouths have turned vestigial.
Death by internal insect infestation is messy, reminded me of that scene from The Mummy, with the flesh eating scarabs.
Once the kikaichu lost their central will my flying insect puppets just started ferrying them to jars and bottled for collection and future sealing.
By contrast the Inuzuka was a lot tougher, he used a lot of destructive jutsu and the bite from his ninken was massively overpowered. I lost five decent puppets to that combination, ended up using a Water Prison to capture them and hold them till they passed out.
Main flaw of that Getsuga jutsu they like so much, it has a predictable end point. Though that is likely corrected at higher levels of mastery.
It was a few minutes after that point that the Kaguya waded into the battlefield trying to target any puppets and take them out before Kiri joined the fray.
The problem with trump cards is that once people know about them then they start trying to figure out counters. I showed one of my trumps in front of hundreds of people from three different villages. All to take out two battle-idiot mooks. My only consolation is that it probably really was the only way.
I used the Soul Separation Seal, the one I initially worked out to get rid of the connection to my body so I could become a puppet. The one I based on something from the show. It's incredibly overpowered, but relies on skin contact. Generally I'd have to trick someone into positioning themselves to get taken out, but the Kaguya get so deep in their bloodlust, so overconfident in their invincibility, that I just slapped a couple of tags on them during a taijutsu attack and they died.
No muss, no fuss… except for the pants shitting terror on the faces of the nin around me at the time. Quite a bit of fuss actually.
I hadn't quite considered the implications on enemy morale to see a pair of juggernauts get taken down in an instant.
From there I just started attacking, not randomly, focusing on the lower and weaker individuals so make the casualties rise faster than would be acceptable. With Konoha's jounin occupied elsewhere, it wasn't that hard. Most of my puppets have an individual strength that's about on par with a decent chunin, just from jutsu if nothing else.
Chukichi's plan had failed, Konoha's will had broken, Suna's morale skyrocketed. Things turned pretty simple after that. The elites from the enemy sides took the fore to cover the retreat of their subordinates, then Suna took the center of the island and began expanding out to hunt any stragglers.
I kind of wish I could have gotten a few more byakugan, or at least raided the enemy hospital camps, but unfortunately most of my puppets were slated for securing the port and the main island, clearing the lesser islands of traps and just generally consolidating control over Sea country.
I'll have to look through the enemy bodies, see how many can still be of use. Between jutsu and suicide methods, various other forms of attack, a lot of bodies will probably be either useless or very difficult to put to any good use.
