Ino arrived near the defense point where the main Sunagakure force was supposed to be besieging the wall, only for her heart to sink when she realized she was almost too late.
The battle was nearly won, and only some Konoha stragglers were still alive, desperately fighting a lost battle. The Sunagakure ninjas were experienced and numerous, too many for the few hundred defenders that originally guarded the wall. They quickly overwhelmed the resistance and were now already crossing into Konoha.
Ino quietly cursed under her breath, nervously clenching her hand. She had hoped to have at least a small army of Konoha ninjas at her back during her battle, but it seemed it was not to be.
But Ino's nervousness quickly passed. Her eyes sharpened, gazing at the bitterly resisting few Konoha ninjas, and suddenly, ten of the Suna ninjas who fought them stopped. Just for a moment. Barely a second. But that was enough in a ninja melee battle.
Kunais plunged into their bodies as their bewildered opponents didn't let the surprise rob them of the unexpected opportunity, while Ino could feel her ten Yin clones disperse as the victims died.
She released a tense breath. Ten was her limit. She wryly smiled. Once upon a time, she had dreamed of controlling entire armies and bending their wills to her whims. But those dreams... They stayed just that.
Ino didn't wait. The bodies of the ten Suna ninjas hadn't even finished dropping to the ground, and she was already lunging forward with her sword in her hand. Wind chakra coated the blade with a low, sinister hum as Ino rammed straight into the crowd of Suna ninjas, sweeping through them like a storm.
Slash.
Dodge.
Parry.
Counterattack.
Ino fought and killed five ninjas at once with her surprise attack, but the remaining hundreds of Suna ninjas, with more still crossing the wall, didn't stay in disarray for long. They were highly trained soldiers, and Ino quickly met with swift resistance.
As she slashed at the seventh ninja, Ino's instincts flared, and she took a half-step back, letting shuriken whizz in front of her face. She still stabbed her sword forward, killing her target before she had to jump up to evade several thrown kunai.
In the air, Ino somersaulted and swiped one kunai from the air, throwing it at a nearby ninja, nailing him with it in the forehead. Feeling a shift in the winds, Ino quickly formed a wind barrier behind her, just in time as a wave of pressured wind slammed into it, hurling Ino back through the air further into the ranks of Suna ninjas.
While in the air, Ino made a vacuum bullet and hurled it to the side, not bothering to even check how many enemy ninjas it impacted as she landed back on her feet, blocking a slash from another random Suna ninja. Side-stepping to the side, Ino's free hand suddenly glowed with wind claws, and with a blur, the ninja's throat was ripped open, fresh blood splashing the people in front of him.
But Ino was already stepping around him, already needing to deal with another assailant. Neither her sword nor her hand was in a good position to deal with that one in that moment, so she hopped up and, with a spin, her shin met his neck, breaking it while throwing his body to the side, where it crashed into yet another ninja trying to rush her.
The ninja next to her, who was bleeding out from his ripped throat, slowly fell to his knees, and Ino grabbed his head, gripping his hair as she yanked him forward. Several kunai burrowed into his body as Ino used him as a human shield before discarding him. Turning around, Ino ducked under a swinging fist, and her eyes shone with a cruel gleam.
The ninja next to the one who swung his fist at Ino's back suddenly paused for a split second before his kunai was already burrowing into the neck of his comrade under his astonished gaze.
But Ino's sword beheaded him before he could snap out of his bewilderment, and Ino kicked the shocked but dying man with a kunai in his neck, causing his body to smash into the three ninjas directly behind him and topple them all to the ground.
Ino's lips stretched into a small smile as three shuriken appeared between the fingers of her free hand. With a swish, they flew and hit true. The three disoriented, toppled ninjas were no more.
Hinata was not the only one with weaponry tricks.
Starting to have fun, Ino's eyes looked to the right, meeting another desperate fool rushing at her. He threw a kunai. Ino lightly swayed to the left. Two kunai passed each other next to Ino's head, both flying in opposite directions. Both hit the other thrower right in the eye.
Ino felt another two Yin clones dissipate.
But she was already in a flurry of motions, cleaving through a man before parrying a kunai clad in wind chakra with her blade. Ino's eyes slightly narrowed as she dealt with the recoil.
'A Jonin, huh?' She thought.
"Plan twelve!" The kunai wielder screamed, and every Suna ninja alive around Ino abruptly leaped back.
Ino blankly blinked before dozens of elemental techniques rained on her position. Fireballs with Wind bullets smashed into her, exploding in a fiery hell before more and more of them came, covering Ino completely from sight.
The Suna ninjas threw techniques at her for twenty whole seconds before stopping and waiting with bated breath...
But as the flames finally waned a few seconds later, the Suna ninjas were greeted with the sight of her extended, yellow hair covering Ino's whole body like armor, leaving not even an inch of her skin exposed.
Surprisingly, the hair completely resisted the wind and fire techniques from several ninjas feeding into each other.
The hair suddenly bristled and hardened before shooting all around Ino in the form of extremely hard hair needles, decimating the Suna ninjas near her.
But hiding in her hairy cover, Ino's eyebrows furrowed as she felt a massive spike of Hinata's chakra further north. She then sensed the chakra signatures of invading forces there disappearing so quickly that it was honestly kind of impressive.
Ino chuckled. She still remembered how adorably distraught little Hinata was after her first kill.
And look at her now! Butchering an entire army! Ino felt a bit jealous.
A twinge of irritation entered her chest. If she could, she would have dropped a Rasenshuriken into the midst of these Suna cretins and be done with it.
Alas, she was sent to confront the Suna forces for a reason. Ren wanted most of them to live past this day. Something about Suna being needed to fend off Iwagakure and ensure they can't invade Konoha from the west... To be honest, Ino didn't care much when he explained all that political crap to her.
Oh, she understood it. If Suna was too weakened, another ninja world war might be started by Iwa and Kumo, who were near the peak of their strength right now.
The balance of power between the ninja villages was a precarious thing.
So, while Ino might not have liked it, she agreed to hold back. By now, Hinata had decimated her enemies while Ino had barely killed a dozen or two out of the over a thousand Suna ninjas. Heck, most of the Suna forces were actually ignoring her.
There were thousands of them, and she was just a single kunoichi who wasn't even throwing around wide-area destroying jutsu.
Then again, she wasn't here to cause a massacre. She was here to traumatize the Suna ninjas into running away.
As the hair needles stopped raining down on the nearby Suna ninjas, Ino's chakra flared, sending an invisible pulse across the surroundings as she leveraged her extremely developed mind to weave a genjutsu over an entire quarter of the Suna army.
Even the Suna ninjas who were disregarding her presence and intended to rush into Konoha faltered upon sensing the wave of chakra she had released before they tensed in an anticipation full of dread.
Ino inwardly grinned. Good. For the first time, she had everybody's attention.
At least, until the genjutsu-affected Suna ninjas turned around with bloodshot eyes while screaming in fear as they started attacking their comrades, plunging the battlefield into a whole new level of chaos.