"Welcome to Mt Shumisen, Sixth!" said Senju Hashirama with a boisterous laugh, extending his hand to Sakura. "Hoho, that's a firm handshake you've got there," he added as she took the proffered hand. "What can I say, except as expected of Tsuna's top pupil?"
The Hidden Leaf's forward operating base in the north-western reaches of the Land of Fire was located on Mt Shumisen, Hiruko's old fortress haunt. The craggy, stony mountain, previously devoid of all life but coarse grass, had been transformed into a flower-covered paradise, its slopes covered in palisades grown from the trees Hashirama had created using his Wood Style jutsu. Short of it being struck by a meteor, Sakura could scarcely imagine how such a natural fortress could possibly be taken by the enemy.
"It's an honour," Sakura said brightly. "I'm looking forward to fighting alongside the legendary First!"
Standing side by side in their Hokage cloaks, Hashirama and Sakura cut quite the impressive figures to the assembled jōnin and chūnin. Although most male jōnin-ranked shinobi measured over 180 cm, their Sixth Hokage was not far behind them in height; yet rather than her comparative shortness projecting weakness, her beauty instead stirred their protective instincts and raised their fighting spirits!
Hashirama led Sakura to a large rectangular table placed in the exact spot where Hiruko had once kept his victims crucified. While all unsavoury decorations and fixtures had been removed from the fortress, the skylight and the surrounding five stained-glass windows representing the five Kekkei Genkai Hiruko had stolen had been left in place on the ceiling. The noon sun streamed through them, bathing the otherwise gloomy chamber in a soft, multicoloured glow.
"Oh good, you're finally here," Shikamaru said, he and his fellow tacticians looking up from the map spread out on the table. He glanced around. "How many reinforcements did you bring?"
"It's just me, the Fourth Hokage, the Hokage Guard Platoon, and two volunteers from Tsuchigumo Village," Sakura said, handing him a sheaf of papers containing their details. "I'm sure you'll find some way to incorporate us in your strategy, right?"
The opponent this time was Iwagakure, the village with the largest army but the weakest elites, which meant Shikamaru would be right at home directing the grand strategy of this front, since Hashirama was quite hopeless at this sort of thing. The enemy possessed no logic-defying strength, so conventional tactics would work just fine… and there were none better at strategising for conventional warfare than Shikamaru.
"What a drag…" Shikamaru sighed.
He had been thrust into a position where he would have to send thousands of men and women to their deaths, but that wasn't the worst of it. Sakura and high command wanted this front wrapped up as soon as possible, yet their opponents were doing everything in their power to buy time; spreading out, advancing and retreating and generally mirroring the Leaf's movements, turtling up… thus making a total victory impossible any time soon.
"You know, we're already winning just by staying put," one Nara clan tactician argued. "Our supply lines are much shorter than theirs since we've got Kusa's plentiful food reserves nearby, and we can easily sever Iwagakure's supply lines by turning their own hit-and-run tactics against them. If they keep lurking on the border without ever committing to an attack, we might as well maintain a scarecrow army here and secretly divert some of our forces to reinforce the north-eastern front against Kumo; finish them off first…"
Shikamaru shook his head.
"Too risky. What if the Hidden Stone finds out this mountain is actually mostly hollow?" he said. "Before we know it, they'll have crossed half the Land of Fire and started besieging the village."
"I won't be able to stay here too long, the other fronts are going to need my help too," Sakura said. "The Hidden Stone may have superior numbers, but we've got the superior shinobi, so I say we need to pull off something daring."
Shikamaru glanced at Sakura.
He knew exactly what she was thinking: One single Sixth Hokage might be worth a thousand ordinary men in combat, but the intrinsic value of their lives was the same. She wanted to shield her countrymen from harm by eliminating the threat quickly and efficiently with her superior prowess, as the Will of Fire dictated, but…
"Even an elephant can be brought low by an ant, given enough of them," Shikamaru said wisely. "Sakura, you don't—"
"Are you calling me fat?" Sakura interjected.
"Wait, what? No!" Shikamaru said incredulously as Sakura cracked her knuckles menacingly. "I'm just saying that if you get surrounded, Iwa's got enough men that you could spend three days crushing your way through them and still not be out of the thick of it!"
Sakura shrugged.
"That's why I brought the Lord Fourth with me," she said, tilting her head towards the exit. "He's busy scouting the surrounding area and planting his Flying Thunder God kunai wherever he thinks a battle might break out."
"The Yellow Flash, eh?" Shikamaru said, vaguely remembering his father singing The Lord Fourth's exploits against Iwagakure. "That'll be something to watch out for…"
Namikaze Minato had received the special flee-on-sight designation by Iwagakure's high command during the Third Shinobi World War, meaning it was perfectly acceptable to drop everything and run the moment he joined the fray. Inferior chakra quality and reserves meant inferior reflexes, so even jōnin-level Iwa-nin were little more than sheep awaiting slaughter before him…
Shikamaru examined the papers Sakura had handed him earlier.
"The Tsuchigumo clan's Fury Jutsu…" he muttered to himself, the few lines of text beneath Shiranami's and Hotaru's portraits catching his attention. "If we could just locate Iwa's primary forward operating base, we could deal them a major blow by blasting the whole place sky-high…"
Piece by piece, a plan began forming in Shikamaru's mind…
"We'll need Team 7, Team 8, and my Team 10, at the very least," he said to himself. "The heavy hitters, the scouts, and the bait-and-switch… if we can get them to chase our tails, we might be able to deal them a heavy blow…"