A desert lizard crawled by a desolated rocky wasteland path. The little creature sensed loud and strong vibrations of the ground so it decided to get to a cover of some rocky structures on the other side while the large group that was incoming passed by. The creatures that appeared on the horizon and soon flooded the place were ones that the lizard only saw rarely in these parts, they were people. To a more intelligent observer, this large party of men may not have appeared to be dressed accordingly to the climate - the men wore long sleeved black tops and wide and loose trousers, they also wore headgears that looked like turbans and some sort of flak jackets. Truly these people with peculiar headbands on their foreheads must've been sweating profusely. Little would the observer have known that these men were quite adapted to desert-like conditions as this party marching on was none other but the Sunagakure delegation moving to the Kage Summit.
It has been a while since Sunagakure took part in any political meeting. The village has been looked down on for a while and no one really bothered to invite their parties to the Kage Summits that had taken place between this one and after the Second Great Ninja War. Naturally as one appointed as the Wind Shadow the Kazekage had the right to appear in the Kage Summits even uninvited, still, since no one ever would have listened to the opinion of a leader of an unimportant in the grand political scheme village the Kazekage did not even bother with it. This time, however, was different - Hokage Howoku invited leaders of every village and since Howoku was a man who had protected all peace - the state of Sunagakure included, the Kazekage decided to respond in kind.
Had it not been for Howoku's excessive worries of countless peace treaties between all of the villages Sunagakure would've been erased from the map, his peaceful lockdown status quo had helped the village recover and regain power which made it much more of a player on the map. Kazekage headed to the Summit to make a statement - he was sick of Kirigakure and their arrogant and elitist behavior for a long time, it was time that those cocky bastards saw that Sunagakure was back in power and was powerful enough to judge the Mist as equals.
A man walked up to the hulking figure of Kazekage, most Sunagakure ninja were rather short, Kazekage was well over two meters tall so the natural shortage of his men stood out in comparison even more. "Kazekage-sama, there are people ahead, I sense a large concentration of humidity increase in the air up ahead." Kazekage stopped and looked up ahead.
"You are an Advanced Sensor, correct?" he asked his man, Kazekage already knew the answer but he wanted to be sure. "Yes, Sir!" the man nodded, "I am a sensor with the additional advanced ability to sense humidity of the air and sense its alterations - that makes my sensory acuter and lengthens its range!" Kazekage scratched his chin and ordered his men to take a round, defensive formation placing his Wind Release users on the outside where they could've crafted powerful gusts to defend everyone on the inside.
Sunagakure had very few types of ninja: Wind Release users, Puppet users, Weaponry jutsu users and Sealing jutsu users and Sand Release users. While such unimpressive assortment of skillsets may have made Sunagakure military predictable, it also helped each leader craft battlefield strategies much more successfully and easily.
The party advanced forward, there was no way that the Kazekage would allow an opportunity to declare the rising back of their village be burnt down to nothingness just because he got afraid of an ambush. He'd crush those insolent fools who thought they could bully the Sunagakure around, these fools apparently forgot the times they lived in and had to be educated that this was no longer the post-Second Great War period. Iwagakure and Sunagakure were powerful villages to be placed among the Great Ninja Villages - Kirigakure, Kumogakure, and Konohagakure. The Great Three had to move aside and make a place for the returning villages or be swept aside by the winds of change. The Kazekage very much planned to make an example out of those men planning to assault him and his men.
"Akasuna Mugao, by the orders of the Mizukage Namikaze Shirona I sentence you to death." a voice spoke right behind the Kazekage.
"Shit... How did he get there!?" the large man wondered right before his throat was opened by the assassin. However it was not blood that shot out of his neck - it was sand as the Kazekage's bulking figure collapsed into a vortex of sand that surrounded the assassin.
A young man stepped up and thrust his fist forward. "Sand Coffin! Sand Funeral!" the young man chanted energetically as the assassin's body was crushed by the sand and collapsed lifelessly onto the ground in the shape of water.
"A water clone trying to assassinate a sand clone... Interesting!" a cloaked figure further back declared out loud as the real Kazekage removed his cloak and threw it aside. "Well done, Guuma, I'll take it from here." The Kazekage observed his attackers - up on the twin rocky fields up ahead stood two squads of cloaked men with blue Oni Masks - the Kirigakure Demon Corps. Most elite assassins throughout the entire Ninja World and yet... The size of the squad suggested to the Kazekage that these men must've not been the most elite Demons, they were but trainees, even more - an assassin had no chance against a warrior on the battlefield. These men came to this wasteland to die!
"Men! What we have here is a free chance to kick some Great Ninja Village butt and be in the right, let us not waste this chance!" the Kazekage shouted out vibrantly as his voice let the men know just how excited their leader was to kill some Kirigakure Demons. Kazekage Mugao removed a large staff from behind his back as the Demons jumped down and attacked his men. The large hulking brute swung it around swatting several men aside - the Demons stood back up and continued attacking him and his men.
With a simple flick of his finger, the Kazekage transformed his staff into a scythe. Now, these Demons would not just ignore his blows, the Kazekage clashed with one of the Demons, the brute just thrust and pulled the scythe to him disarming the assassin and swung his scythe around. The man that Mugao was attacking leaped back into the fray of his folk with a powerful backflip but several more Demons found the battlefield to be too stuffed with men to dodge the wide-reaching weapon and fell to the rocky ground to never stand up again.
A painful sensation alerted the Kazekage of an attacker from behind. Several swipes of a knife opened some painful wounds - the assassin then tried to stab the kunai right into the man's neck but the knife got stuck into something metal. Kazekage turned around only for his body to be met by kicks and a backflip hiding the Demon once again in the fray of battle. The man grunted as he felt warm streams of blood run down his back and softly tapping onto the rocky wasteland - these Demons meant business, they were silent, quick and agile. Trained in arts of wielding a kunai and how to remain silent and unnoticed until the knife was already plunged. If Mugao held back or underestimated these men he'd really die in here.
"Kazekage-sama!" someone alerted the man of another assassin, Kazekage ducked and saw a knife flash above him aiming for the man's neck. The giant turned around and swiped his scythe upwards cutting one assassin down, another one jumped in out of nowhere and cut Mugao in the leg, slowing the man down. These men were so numerous and so fast that they easily compensated their lack of high hitting destructive power potential. They fought like bees against a hornet - all swarmed up on one, everyone died but left their impact. Kazekage slammed his scythe down and grabbed one man who had injured him by his face, "If you're trying to kill a man, at least have the decency to look him in the eyes, Demon!" he roared as Mugao slammed the man's puny head against his own shattering the demon mask and spilling excessive amounts of assassin blood on his face.
The man then lifted the unconscious but very much alive Demon and showed him to his men. "See, men?! These are not Demons, these are boys who have peed in their beds until yesterday! Let's send them back home to their mothers and their cups of milk!" The Kazekage picked his scythe back up and swung it around, clashing with the demon's knives, defending against the endless onslaughts of the enemy and drastically reducing their rank with each swipe.
"This is stupid..." the brute wondered to himself "I only took five hundred men, just enough to demonstrate Sunagakure's rising military potential but... This is a full military squad, Kirigakure intends to destroy us! This is one-fourth of an actual army... Wait a second... No... They wouldn't do something like that..." Kazekage wondered to himself as he sent more and more assassins down on the rocky dirt. Two assassins swiped at the Kazekage's eyes trying to blind the man, Mugao dashed by them avoiding the attack and gently tapped their backs. "Human Puppet Jutsu!" he shouted controlling the assassins like his own puppets and sending them after their own.
The Kazekage's puppets cut down several more assassins, someone tried to cut the strings much to the Mugao's enjoyment. One could not cut a puppeteer's strings without a chakra conductive weapon of certain controlled flow. These boys clearly had never faced a puppeteer, it took several dozens of men to finally stop their own human puppets and even then - they only struck down their own comrades! Kazekage tossed his scythe forward and his fingers twitched revealing a slight chakra glow on strings attached to the scythe.
"Puppetry Style: Phantom Weapon Jutsu!" he yelled out controlling his scythe as if an invisible ghost was wielding it. As if the scythe had a mind of its own cutting down countless assassins and troubling countless more. Still, this battle was not going well - Mugao kept hearing desperate cries of pain from his own men behind him, occasionally his own body lit up with pain as more of his blood colored the rocks of this cursed wasteland. If he did not end this quick it'd be ended for them! Furiously the giant roared with a battle cry slashing wildly, taking on many assassins and angrily trying to compensate the extreme difference in numbers.
He clashed with tens of assassins at the same time by himself, trying desperately to keep these men focused on cutting him down, getting hit many times in the process but saving many times more lives. Mugao's men saw the devotion of their leader and it inspired them to fight that much harder, faced with an overwhelming military power they fought back like beasts, no, like true Demons educating these fakes of the true meaning of the word. Even when they fell, each Sunagakure ninja took ten if not more assassins with them. These kids cut to maim - Suna ninja cut to kill.
"End this now!" someone commanded the army as the assassins dashed back forming a large circle and started madly weaving seals. The Sunagakure ninja tried to intercept but as they dropped their guards heading for the distraction they were cut down. The ranks of Mugao's men were now incredibly rare. "DARN IT, THIS WILL NOT HAPPEN AGAIN!" Mugao roared leaping towards one part of the circle aiming to cut them all down but being confronted by the assassins protecting the circle ninja. "Water Style: Water Dragon Jutsu!" each and every assassin in the circle chanted spitting out masses of water that took the shape of dragons and lunged towards Mugao - such an overwhelming combination of Water Dragons would've crushed the man's body and stripped his flesh from bone from the sheer pressure.
The loud roaring water dragons all slammed where Mugao stood to form a powerful flood. Violent crashing waves flushed Sungakure ninja away momentarily but the violent water didn't let the Kirigakure Demons proceed to go for the kill, they'd have to pick out the remaining ninja after the water calmed down. Finally, the water settled down and ran into fissures and small holes everywhere in the wasteland, washing the bodies of the fallen away. As the battlefield was cleaned up the Demons tried to confirm the death of Akasuna Mugao - the Fourth Kazekage but... There was no body!
Where Mugao stood and was supposed to be crushed by the water stood only a giant set of armor - one reminding the samurai of the past, no, reminding a general of those samurai. There was one man in the Iron Country who was like the Kage of the samurai called Iron Shogun. This fancy and edgy colossus of steel reminded most of the armor that the Iron Shogun wore. From inside the puppet, a cybernetic voice came, similar to the voice enhancers that the Demons themselves used - maybe even taken from a dead Demon Corps member infiltrating Sunagakure when the armor was built.
"Puppetry Style: Iron Shogun!" the cyber voice of Mugao declared reaching for his back and pulling a giant sword and swinging it around swiping the worn out bodies of the assassins aside. The Kirigakure Demon circle of Water Dragons was no more with a single swipe of Iron Shogun's blade! This was the true power of Akasuna Mugao, the inheritor of the ancient art of puppetry and master of the little known internal puppetry. The art where instead of exposing themselves the puppetmaster was hiding inside the puppet they were controlling and so to get to the puppeteer one must have penetrated the alloy of the puppet.
Seeing how the Iron Shogun was barely bent by the onslaught of the Water Dragon techniques such penetration was highly unlikely. The assassins all charged at the Iron Shogun at the same time, thrusting their knives and trying to find gaps in the armor but even as they found them their blades could not reach the soft skin of the man inside. With a powerful shake, the puppet armor shook all of the assassins aside and with a swipe of his blade finished them off while they were down.
With an excessive attack, the likes of which no one had ever seen before the Shogun dashed forward as his feet shot out flames moving the whole giant structure forward. With powerful and fast swings of his sword, the shogun finished off the last of the Kirigakure military force sent to dispose of the Kazekage. After the last assassin hit the ground the Iron Shogun's chest opened up and Mugao leaped out of the armor with it transforming into an exoskeleton like construction which the giant put on like a backpack. The man's tired and sad face turned to his men - observing only less than twenty survivors and a clean battlefield. It is unknown where the tide had washed away both the Demons that were treated like throwaway tools and those unfortunate enough to get killed as a result of an order made by a sick tyrant.
"Aaaaaaaargh!" Mugao shouted out angrily as he punched the rocky ground opening up wounds in his knuckles. Just like that, his country was reminded of the times when they were ravaged down to near-extinction by war.
"I'm sorry, men..." Mugao spoke up to the survivors, "I wanted so hard to enter that league of champions again, to have our village be placed among the Greats but... I think I may have forgotten what that meant. Before we had the benefit of their pity, we were not attacked from behind, we were always protected by those stronger than us but the moment we walked out of Konohagakure's shadow we must fend off by ourselves. You must understand that this will be the norm now, we'll have to fight every enemy dumb enough to wish to bring us down by ourselves with no one to help us."
"Kazekage-sama..." some surviving men tried to calm the grieving man down but the giant just looked at them.
"You know what? Fuck their pity, they can pity the men we send to the Afterlife and pity their own filthy selves for ever daring to pull sick shit like this. Now let's go to the Summit and kick Mizukage's ass!" the brute yelled out inspiring courage into the hearts of his devoted surviving men.
"Well... I wouldn't be in such a rush, Kazekage." a low pitched husky voice spoke up from the same rock where armies of assassins were located previously, the Kazekage and his men looked up in horror and saw a man in a black jumpsuit and a blue sleeveless ninja outfit like those worn by Kirigakure ninja. And yet the scariest accessory of them all was his white with blue strips Oni Mask.
The man jumped down and stared at the Kazekage, only when the hulking brute returned the Demon's stare did he notice the steel leg appendage that the man wore - this must've been a much older and much more experienced Demon. While the Kazekage wondered just how much functionality did the man have with that metallic leg something suggested that he shouldn't have underestimated the man - he must've seen the Iron Shogun and still revealed himself after all. Either this Oni Mask man believed that he could take the Iron Shogun out or he was just devoted to his Mizukage until the end.
"Back up, I have lost enough men today as it is and I am not losing anyone else, if I fall that means I was unworthy of the title of Kazekage - retreat and elect a new one! Remember the meaning of our actions, bring our village forward to the ranks of the Greats!" Kazekage ordered and his men obediently backed up. "Kazekage-sama..." they almost teared up by the devotion to the village that this large man had. "You do not need to bother, Mizukage Shirona will take over as the Ninja Empress, there will be no more meaning to the useless title of Kage." The man wearing the Oni Mask put a lot of faith in his master. Kazekage broke out a grin - "So old man Daikon finally lost his grip, huh? New butt on the chair, same bullshit..." he cursed at the Oni Mask as the men prepared for an inevitable fight that would break out.