At 4 a.m. on a cold winter day, while everyone is still asleep, a major uprising occurs in the city of Konoe, the second largest city in the land of noodles. A small army, made up of a wide variety of low-ranking nobles, ambitious merchants, and glory-seeking mercenaries, carries out what anyone would call a full-blown rebellion.
Unlike a spontaneous rebellion, what is happening is a fully planned assault, guided by competent leaders and executed by individuals with months of training in the use of new types of weapons, designed to surprise anyone who opposes them.
At the garrison of the city, alarms sound everywhere, and samurai and guards run from one place to another. The explosions grow ever closer, and the commander does his best to gather as many soldiers as possible.
"Commander!" shouts one of the guards who has just arrived from outside, "A group of men is approaching us, there are more than a hundred of them!"
"Get ready, men, they're upon us! I want a tight formation in the center of the courtyard, samurai in front and lancers in the second line. Archers take up positions on the walls and at the windows!" the commander orders, drawing his sword and preparing for a long battle.
In the large courtyard designated as a training site, nearly 200 soldiers, including samurai and regular militiamen, are arranged in a tight formation, awaiting their enemies. The situation in the city is unknown to all those present, and all they can do is defend their positions for the time being and await help from the capital when news of the rebellion spreads nationwide, as such situations can often last for days or weeks.
The walls of the garrison are low and not very suitable for defense against a crowd that can throw all kinds of proyectiles, in a street as narrow as that of the city, so the commander prefers to face the possible inexperienced hordes on wider terrain and where he can make the most of his samurai and archers.
Soon, the footsteps and shouts of the rebels approaching the garrison are heard, as well as unsuccessful attempts to open the closed and locked gates, resulting in a subsequent silence that makes all the soldiers doubt that it all seems like a bad dream.
Boom! Booooom! Booooom!
Three explosions erupt at the entrance, causing the brick walls and reinforced wooden gate to be completely destroyed, leaving three massive entrances, which the rebels soon used to enter the garrison courtyard.
As soon as the rebels begin to enter through the openings in the walls, the archers spring into action, raining their arrows down on the unfortunate rebels trying to enter, followed by an attack by some samurai capable of executing ranged chakra attacks.
The rebels suffer several losses and the wounded mount, so they immediately retreat. But what follows is strange, as several rebels begin to peek out from between the openings in the walls and also from the top, apparently using ladders, carrying strange cylindrical artifacts, similar to steel pipes. And then chaos breaks loose.
The explosions generated by the devices aren't too loud, but before the sound even reaches the soldiers' ears, extremely fast projectiles begin raining down on them, easily piercing their armor and causing the formation to immediately crumble.
The archers try to target the device operators, but soon they themselves become targets of the weapons, which seem to be much more accurate than arrows.
The higher-ranking samurai, much more resilient and able to dodge and block some of the projectiles, are soon overwhelmed and forced to retreat. The commander watches in horror as his soldiers' formation begins to crumble, leaving dead and wounded as they begin to retreat.
Then the first rebels appear again through the openings in the walls, this time without receiving attacks from the archers and supported by the fire from the devices on the walls. These particular rebels clearly move in groups of less than 10 and carry devices similar to those they fire at walls, but shorter and with a larger diameter.
The rebels immediately approach the weakened formation of soldiers and soon fire their artifacts at close range, a process very similar to the previous devices, but this time launching a large number of smaller projectiles in a wide range of action, demolishing the first line of soldiers, who fall riddled with multiple projectiles each.
What follows can only be described as a massacre, with the soldiers unable to do anything but break formation and flee on their own, with nothing the commander can do. The result is that a group of rebels, without the aid of chakra-using ninjas or samurai, were able to storm a city garrison in record time.
In the city's residential sector, specifically in the wealthiest district, the situation is desperate. Arata Kawada, a diplomat assigned to the city and chunin of Kumogakure, fights for his life while hundreds of rebels surround his residence and attack it with strange, faster-than-sound projectiles and explosives that slowly destroy it.
Arata and his three genin assistants do their best to keep the rebels at bay, sending all kinds of distress signals, both inside and outside the city, but without receiving any help so far. The only reason the ninjas haven't fled through the roofs or used other escape methods is that inside the residence are Arata's family and several nobles from the sector who sought refuge, all civilians.
The bombs dropped by the rebels are particularly powerful, slightly more than the average explosive seals, leaving significant structural damage to the building with each detonation. The ninjas respond with kunai and shurikens, wounding and killing many of the attackers, but their reserves soon run out, and all they can resort to is justus, which also begin to deplete their chakra reserves.
The rebels seem to be aware of the ninjas' limitations and try to stay dispersed, using walls and terrain features to make it difficult for the defenders' jutsus to hit them. On more than one occasion, the ninjas have tried to counterattack, but the constant fire from the weapons and the indiscriminate use of explosives has caused at least two of the genin to sustain serious injuries.
Arata, seeing that the situation isn't improving and expecting the worst, decides to make the most difficult decision of his life, entrusting his son, no more than two years old, to the only uninjured genin to flee and carry the news of the rebellion back to the village. The genin begs that Arata flee the city, but the man resigns himself to dying at his post if necessary, alongside his wife.
Arata fights to the bitter end, using all his most powerful techniques and taking dozens of rebels with him, when he is finally hit by a projectile, only to die at the hands of one of the attackers' bombs.
Scenes like the one above are repeated throughout the city, where dozens of ninjas, samurai, and other important figures are powerless to prevent the attackers from taking complete control after only a few hours. Even the only individual with strength equivalent to that of a jounin, a samurai with the rank of sword master, falls victim to poisoning, just minutes before the disaster unfolds.
But what many don't understand is that this is only the beginning of something that will threaten more than just a city, in one of the smallest nations in the world.
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