Deathwatch: We're back, sadly it took longer than we expected to get the chpt done…We started this chapter roughly a month and a half ago. But at least it's finally done.

Darksiders death necro: It's high time we got back to this, because we got some surprises for later on down the road in this fic; and we need to get this part done so we can set up the new material we have

AN: "The Lone Swordswolf," sure you can, just mention that we created it first. "Lucas Bane," not really if you consider the size of both nations involved, but on a normal Naruto scale that is huge; and yes she is smoking hot. "DemonAndAGun," this is how we made the story, how we like it, not how some cannon fanatic likes to see stories; if you don't like it then leave, no one's keeping you here except yourself. "riffen121294," you'll find out when we get to it. "bankai777," this chapter is your answer. "Fallen-Ryu," your half right, it's a major drain on Fire; however Blades is made up of thirty modern day countries population wise, so it's not that big of a stretch for the Empire to field that large a force or the force in this chapter. "fryteix," then why are you still here? No offense but if you've lost interest then why are you still reading this fic? That's it for this chapter…Time for the show!

Normal Speech

Normal Thought

Demonic/Deity/Curse Seal/Summon/Armored/Narrator Speech

Demonic/Deity/Curse seal/Summon thoughts

Last time on Emperor of Blades:

The Land of Fire foolishly tried to invade the Empire of Blades, and lost. Among those captured is the heiress of the country, as well as some of Konoha's best shinobi. Now the Empire has launched their counter attack.

Coast of Fire Country: Ember Bay: a Week Later, dawn

Ember Bay was a popular vacation spot for the Land of Fire's nobility; and as such usually had thousands of people there, mostly guards and servants that catered to the puffed up nobles. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on who you ask, the area was deserted, as it was coming up on winter.

As such there was no one there to see the tens of thousands of ships strong Imperial fleet, which carried just slightly over four million soldiers and marines (there were already two million aboard the warships to serve as a second attack if miraculously the Fire forces had held off the first group of two million and they were added to the counterattack when they were no longer needed to attack the invaders), silently glide into the bay out of the morning mist. Soon enough those warships commenced landing operations, using specially designed landing craft that could carry up to four hundred fully equipped soldiers or four artillery pieces along with their support, a process that would take several hours.

The first to be disembarked were the members of Legios I, II, and X along with twenty batteries of field artillery and two cavalry, mostly heavily armored knights, regiments; who then proceeded to form a rough defensive formation while the rest of the invasion force disembarked.

Meanwhile Naruto was going over the battleplan with the Field Marshals and Generals in charge of the individual elements of the invasion; overall the plan was for a multi prong assault with multiple targets. Antonio, supported by Guan Ping Sun Wukong and Zhenji, would lead the assault on Konoha with one million troops in his formation.

The next two pincers, The first being led by Sir John Fastolf and Sir John Talbot while the other was led by La Hire and Gilles de Rais, would each have five hundred thousand men; Fastolf and Talbot's, and their subordinate's, objective was to control the main road to River Grass and Rain. La Hire and de Rais would be sent to take control the main town on the road to Taki Hotspring and Rice.

Edward the Black Prince, supported by Lord John Chandos and his personal retainers (Henry Percy, Imarl the Assassin, and Branwyn of the Bow), leading one million men would be positioned centrally to support any of the other prongs if necessary.

The final pincer was led by Naruto himself, with Michael Bertrand du Guesclin and Joan of Arc as his direct subordinates, were aimed at the capital of Fire, Volcano City, there would be just over one million soldiers in the final prong.

It wasn't a flawless plan…But it took advantage of the fact that the Empire outnumbered their foe at least ten to one, and that any reinforcements from "allied" countries had to take the main roads to get into the country with any appreciable numbers; as such Naruto ordered that as soon as the forces were done unloading that they would commence their plan.

After the disembarkation finished the pincers split up, and started their march to their assigned targets; along the way they captured numerous small villages and their police, including several small contingents of samurai. However one Samurai escaped on a horse, and sped off towards the capital, twenty miles away from his conquered village.

Volcano City: Three Hours later:

As per its name the capital of the Land of Fire had been built at the foot of a long dead volcano, and had some of the most fertile land in the country as its region. This large city had a forty foot high and twenty feet wide wall surrounding the entirety of the area, roughly thirty miles around in a circle; and a secondary wall sixty feet high and thirty wide surrounding the older portions of the city. Both walls were made of bricks with obsidian covering the entirety of the walls.

Inside the walls the city was pretty much a larger version of Konoha, only without the shinobi specific facilities.

The inhabitants of this city of three million were going about their daily business, unaware of the failure of their military to invade the Empire of Blades; however their calm was about to be broken. A tired looking samurai, riding an equally tired horse, sped through the city towards the city shouting the news: "THE IMPERIALS ARE COMING!"

Obviously this declaration was met with disbelief at first; the Land of Fire was the most powerful of the five nations! There was no way some newly founded Empire could stand against them! However soon enough the sight of Samurai and other feudal troops rushing towards the walls of the city was enough to cause doubt and panic to spread, and the various classes of society reacted differently.

The poor and the truly panicked middle class started looting stores and rioting, drawing forces away from the defense of the city to put down their minor rebellion. A good portion of the middle class grabbed whatever weapons they could get their hands on and formed themselves into a militia to defend their loved ones.

For the most part though the rich and middle class hunkered down in their homes, and prayed that this was all just a false alarm and that the Empire of Blades was not truly invading. However those prayers went unanswered, and the thunderous song of a million marching soldiers proved that an hour later.

As the various soldiers and para-military units in the city readied themselves for the assault that was to come, they watched in horror as scores of artillery batteries, mostly large caliber siege cannons, were set up while the Imperial soldiers got into formation for their assault; however much to their surprise a single knight rode forward with a white flag on his lance.

He then shouted: "I bring word from my lord, the Emperor of Blades. He demands the unconditional surrender of the entirety of the land of fire. If that demand is not met then the civilians who wish to leave the city have one hour to do so before the artillery opens fire."

And with his piece said he started to ride back to the Imperial lines, before a literal storm of arrows rained down on him, sending both horse and rider to the ground looking like nothing more than a badly bleeding pincushion.

Of course this enraged the Imperials, none more so than Bertrand who had convinced the Emperor to have that time period for evacuation, and the Imperial's answer to the arrow volley came when Michael, with the Emperor's blessing, ordered the artillery (Picture a bigger and more ornate version of this: www . falling pixel napoleonic - seige - cannon - 3d - model / 1099 no spaces) to start battering down the walls of the city.

To put the noise that filled the air into perspective, there were roughly five hundred large caliber siege guns firing away at the walls so it was about as noisy as being in the heart of a thousand tornadoes while thunder and lightning continuously made their presence known. For a half an hour the artillery fired a continuous barrage at the outer walls and in half an hour one of the strongest walls in the world completely collapsed, allowing the Imperials to storm past the outer walls.

Sure the Daimyo's subjects fought back against the invading Imperials, but they were hopelessly outnumbered; there were only twenty thousand regular soldiers [(Samurai and Arashigaru) most of the remaining army had been spread out to maintain law and order in the areas they drew troops from to attack the Empire] in the capital at the time, and only sixteen thousand civilians took up arms to defend their loved ones, so all told there were only thirty six thousand combatants to fight against the Imperial invasion.

As such the first wave of Imperials, made almost entirely of the heavily armored halberdiers, easily destroyed all opposition in their path as they swept towards the inner wall of the city. Any civilians who tried to stop them were swiftly forced aside and became prisoners.

However when they reached the inner walls thousands of arrows fired out of concealed positions, killing hundreds of them before they withdrew back out of range of the arrows. And then the Daimyo, if there ever was a poster boy for being short useless bastard who you would likely forget as soon as you lost sight of him this would be the guy, himself appeared on the wall.

And unsurprisingly he started monologueing; to save you the time the main thrust of this gloating was that the Imperials underestimated the Capital's defenses and that the Empire had very high ranked traitors in their country who handed the designs of the arrow turrets to the Daimyo to humiliate the Imperials; also that the world would soon bow to him and other typical idiot stuff.

However the idiot seemed to have forgotten about the artillery, which soon began to smash the much stronger fortifications to dust. However soon a bright beam of light flashed out from the dormant volcano, and vaporized the twentieth siege artillery battalion [fifty twenty-ninety pound (describing the weight of the rounds) cannons and five hundred artillerymen] along with the majority of the IV Legio (fifteen thousand veteran legionaries) and ten thousand civilians.

As soon as the light died down the Imperial forces, currently being directed by Bertrand, started to evacuate the civilians left in the newer sections of the city. As this was going on Naruto started channeling the Chakra the Kyuubi left him, before she left his seal permanently, into a Menacing Ball attack to destroy the entirety of the dead volcano.

At the same time Michael gathered together the members of Legio X to launch an assault on the walls; and as their liege fired his attack, which left no trace of the volcano or the super weapon that had been hidden within the volcano, they formed into Testuedos (Literally like the Tortoise, in which the legionaries lock their shields in such a way as to make arrow attacks near worthless) and marched forward.

The automated arrow turrets that were left on the badly damaged wall fired as soon as the legionaries got in range, but to the horror of the Daimyo instead of causing death and destruction the arrows merely bounced of the shields of the slowly advancing Imperials while the walls came crashing down due to more artillery rounds smashing into it. The cowardly Daimyo fled back to his palace though as soon as he saw the weapons were useless against the legionaries.

Immediately after the walls crumbled the elite legionaries and Michael charged straight into the gap opened by the bombardment, and swiftly conquered the old city; however when they reached the palace itself several hundred golems, in the guise of large multi armed samurai, attacked.

The legionaries fought well, but the golems were forged to be expert swordsmen and as such the Imperial Soldiers were falling slowly but surely under the blades of the golems; however just when it looked like the legionaries would be forced to retreat the cavalry quite literally rode to the rescue, led by Joan of Arc.

The knights ripped through the metallic golems as if they were made of nothing but tissue paper, not only saving most of the legion from destruction but opening the way into the palace. However the Daimyo had one last trick up his sleeve, and when the first group of two hundred legionaries entered the palace to arrest the Daimyo it activated. A dozen explosive tags and thirty paper bombs detonating, reducing the soldiers to nothing more than chunks of meat with ruined fragments of armor still attached.

At this final trick Michael's, whose helmet had been blown off by the explosion revealing to the world his visibly enraged features, anger exploded, "TO HELL WITH THE ORDERS TO TAKE THAT FUCKER ALIVE! HE AND HIS COURT WILL PAY WITH THEIR LIVES IN RETRIBUTION FOR THIS TREACHERY!"

The nearest Legionary smirked at his commander: "Field Marshal, as far as all us Legionaries are concerned the fucker underestimated the power of the explosive charges and died from fragments of his palace hitting him."

Michael smiled coldly at his subordinates: "Thank you all, now I'm going in there and killing that son of a bitch. If anyone else tries and enters delay them as much as possible without being disloyal to the Emperor."

With his piece said he slammed his helmet back on and began marching towards the throne room, with his armor shrugging off every blow that came his way due to his channeling chakra into his armor to enhance its strength.

When he burst into the throne room the Fire Daimyo walked down to greet him calmly and surrender, being used to that kind of warfare from the tales his father and grandfather told him. However Michael would have none of it, and calmly declined the Daimyo's surrender before bisected the fool and turning on and butchering the court in a blood rage.

When he left the palace, with his armor covered in blood and with bits of the flesh of his victims stuck to it, he was confronted by Naruto, who was glaring at him, as well as an appalled Joan and a grim looking Bertrand.

The Prussian aristocrat sighed heavily before speaking in a tired, but unrepentant, tone: "I'm in trouble aren't I?"

Naruto's sarcastic: "You think?" Was all the evidence he needed to loudly mutter: "I need a drink."

Konoha: Same time as the assault on Volcano City begins

All of Konoha had feared the worst when their advanced warning sensors discovered that a large force of Imperial troops were on their way to attack Konoha; obviously this meant that the invasion of Blades had failed, as a consequence not only was the Emperor free to strike back but he was also more than likely pissed off.

A fact that was reinforced when the Imperials completely encircled the city, and swiftly set up their artillery; some within Konoha hoped that the Imperials would give them time to evacuate the civilians; however their hope was dashed when the artillery opened fire.

The Imperial artillery regiments that took part in this attack, unlike the ones that bombarded the capital, didn't care about collateral damage; as such more often than not the shells fired by the batteries smashed into the residences on the other side of the wall.

As such it took three hours to smash the seal reinforced walls down, however by then interior of the city was in flames from the thousands of heated shots that smashed into the wooden buildings that made up the majority of the city.

The defenders of Konoha formed as good a defensive position as they could, all things considered, however they were more used to Shinobi Wars, as such when they encountered the full might of the empire that day they were completely unprepared for what was to come.

Before they had much time to fully solidify their positions the mass formations of cavalry smashed into their lines, the shear force being enough to knock out large portions of the frontline. As soon as they finished their charge, the Imperial Horsemen turned around and left Konoha.

However that was just a prelude to the real assault; soon enough the Imperial Forces advanced once again, with their archers firing at an arc into the city to cover their advance. Underneath the veritable storm of longbow fire the Imperial Infantry advanced in disciplined formations and chanting war songs to not only keep themselves psyched up but to intimidate their foes.

As the two groups clashed several groups stood out. The first was Team Ebisu, Konohamaru Moegi and Udon led by Jonin Ebisu, because of their teacher's incompetence they were swiftly defeated and captured by a rookie squad of legionaries from the XX Legio.

The Konoha 11 parents, who had reformed their old squads for this event, and unaware of the fact that their kids were alive but captured by the Empire of Blades. Tsume Inuzuka, Shibi Aburame, and Dustin Higurashi as team 25; Chouza Akamichi, Shikaku Nara, and Inoichi Yamanaka as team 26; and Hiashi Hyūga as the sole remaining member of Team Jiraya.

What was left of the Old Team had reformed as well Koharu and Homura were getting ready for battle knowing that this may very well be their last battle; but calling upon whatever courage they had left shinobi they decided to face their doom as best they could.

The Hyūga clan, who had initially been at the very frontlines of the fighting, had been pushed steadily back to their compound. The Hyūga had been understandably shocked when their vaunted style had done next to nothing to the advancing Imperial infantrymen, whose armor was nigh immune to their strikes. As such a large percentage of the main and branch family fell dead at the blades of the legionaries or those of the halberdiers.

The slaughter among the Hyūga was even worse because Sun Wukong was leading that contingent. Soon enough though Hiashi strode forward to face Sun Wukong, who preferred to use his mega ton staff but to be fair decided to fight Hiashi using only Taijutsu; and to a casual observer it seemed that they were equally skilled, but to those who were Taijutsu experts Sun had the advantage due to his unpredictability. As such he was actually winning, this was surprising and angering Hiashi to no end; since the arrogant Hyūga believed that their taijutsu style was unbeatable.

Hiashi kept lacing his blows with Chakra to shut down the Tenketsu in Sun Wukong's heart, but every time he struck him, Sun would dissolve into nothingness; this in turn would cause Sun to snort and laugh, taunting Hiashi before jumping and slamming a foot into his face knocking him back. The Hyūga head got up enraged, and started to use a Hyūga Forbidden Technique: The Gentle Fist Meteor Palm Strike; which used fire Chakra to not only shut down another's chakra network, but destroy it forever! This technique was forbidden because of this simple fact: it was a last resort jutsu, it had the power…but it burned ones chakra network to be unusable for several months, if not permanently, depending on how easily the user healed.

Hiashi's attack missed by a single millimeter, and that was all it took for his Chakra network to burn out, leaving him vulnerable for Sun to knock him out cold, and take the proud clan head to where they would be holding all the captives.

In the meantime the Hyūga elder council was executed by a group of Halberdiers for "crimes against the Emperor and basic human decency," and the rest of the clan, now only forty percent of their size from before the assault were forced to surrender and were taken to the internment camp outside the village. Among those captured was Hanabi Hyūga, who had lived up to her nickname of firecracker by causing frustration for her foes before her capture.

The Aburame and Inuzuka clans were the next to be hit by the Imperial battle line. The sheer number of Imperial soldiers that fought against the two clans was forcing them to take drastic measures; most of the Inuzuka had already gone into the highest forms of their ninkens' Taijutsu style to even put a dent in their foes armor.

On the other hand the Aburame had sent out several colonies of their insects to try and drain the Imperials, only to discover that their armor was too thick for their allies to affect them. As such their main method of attack had been neutralized, and they were forced to use whatever limited other skills they had.

However, unlike the Hyūga, who had persecuted Naruto when he was younger, the Inuzuka and Aburame had been neutral to him, so the entirety of their clans were merely taken prisoner after realizing how futile their attacks were.

While their clans were being humiliated, Tsume and her team were facing off against Guan Ping and six dismounted Knights (two of them were armed with six foot long halberds and shields, two others were armed with massive Zwei-hander swords, and the other two were armed with longswords and shields), who were like nothing this team had ever faced. Tsume's clothes had several tears in them, not in a way that would be perverted but a way that shows she is badly injured, at the moment her partner Kuromaru was incapacitated after being hit in his jugular by the butt of a broadsword.

Shibi was heaving and holding his bleeding side a long deep gash could be seen under his armor. Dustin's Weapons littered the battlefield he had tried to use his personal Jutsu: the Kunai Dragon tank, which was a mass of Kunai in the shape of a tank with a dragons head for a cannon. but by the time he had even gotten most of his Kunai out he had been bashed in the skull by the shaft of a halberd.

Tsume went for one last attack, but before she could even go through the handsigns she was incapacitated by Guan Ping. Shibi passed out from his wounds at the same time; after that they were all taken to the internment camp behind Imperial lines.

The Ino Shika Cho families were the last true line of defense that Konoha had, besides the Hokage and the decimated ANBU contingents, and they were swiftly losing ground to the unrelenting assault. Soon enough though the Imperials stopped much to the shock of their foes; however they soon learned why when a mounted knight arrived and issued an ultimatum.

Either they surrendered to the Imperials, or their entire clan would be exterminated by the English Longbowmen who had gotten into range of the trapped clans. There followed a short argument between the three clan heads, but they decided for the good of their clans that surrender was the better option; as such the last three great clans of Konoha were brought down, not with a bang, but a whimper.

But what of the Hokage you may ask, what of Tsunade Senju the Godamie Hokage? The truth of the matter would be hilarious if it weren't so sad; she was just waking up from the drunken stupor she had fallen into last night, and the only reason she was waking up at all was the messenger hawk pecking at her head.

Tsunade, still not fully awake or aware of the war being waged in her village, read with missive several times before she understood what it meant, and when she did she dropped it like it was burning her hands. The Empire had invaded, and was decimating the capital's defenses. However before she could even start planning an arrow smashed through the window, breaking the silencing seals and allowing her to hear the sounds of Konoha's fall.

As soon as her brain registered what was happening she sped out to the main square, where the last ANBU units were making their last stand. However by the time she arrived they had all been incapacitated by a woman wielding a nine headed chain whip, the woman had an impassive face as she looked upon her work and the stunned Hokage. However before the two could start fighting, in what Jiraya would surely predict would result in at least partial nudity, a contingent of five hundred Imperial soldiers from Legio I attacked Tsunade.

Tsunade, even in her slightly impaired state, was still a force to be reckoned with, as the Imperials realized too late; she swiftly set about demolishing the group. Soon enough a full fifth of the force had fell to her monstrous strength: either due to internal injuries, from being impaled on the fallen weapons, or being splattered on the buildings.

It took her a full fifteen minutes to finish off the detachment, whose broken forms littered the main square; however before she could attack Zhenji, Antonio De Angelo arrived. The obvious aura of strength that the Marshal projected turned Tsunade's recently awakened anger on him, more than likely saving Zhenji's life.

Tsunade charged Antonio, with her fists at the ready, only to be stopped when a three foot long baton smashed into her face before returning to her foe. The younger man smirked as he brought out a second baton, and applying a bit of chakra merged them into an "x" shape before channeling a bit more into the new formation, causing four one foot long Chinese glaive blades to appear to each end of this buzzsaw.

The sight of such an exotic weapon was enough to send chills down Tsunade's spine, until she remembered that the x didn't have blades until he channeled chakra into it, meaning that he was still something of a novice with that weapon. However the amount of time it took the Sannin to come to that conclusion was enough time for Antonio to use one of the seals on his weapon to blunt the blades, he had strict orders to take Tsunade alive, and to go on the offensive.

To her credit Tsunade reacted quickly, and only took a few hits from the blunted weapon however those hits struck with only slightly less force than her own strikes; and as such she was obviously having a relatively hard time. She had scored several hits on Antonio but he seemed to be enjoying himself, immensely as if pain was a thing he liked to receive, and easily shrugged the blows off.

However everything eventually comes to an end and Tsunade was eventually hit one more time this time on the skull; and before she lost consciousness she heard Antonio say: "You should thank the Emperor that you're still alive; he told us to not kill unless it couldn't be avoided. You however, Tsunade, he has strict orders to take alive, be grateful that he has decided to show you mercy." And with those words ringing in her ears, she fell into blissful unconsciousness.

As soon the fight was over and Tsunade taken to the camp, three legionnaires walked up with a young woman, about the same age as their Emperor, and she looked frail and weak. Antonio walked forward and said: "Why did you bring me this young woman? She looks like she can barely stand up! You did not do anything that would make you regret it, did you?" His calm tone didn't betray the fact that as he said this, he was fingering a dagger he always kept on his person. The soldiers gulped and immediately shook their heads no.

The leader of the small group then spoke up: "This is Yakumo Kurama, she suffers from a demon known as the Ido, that manifested in her mind it makes her Genjutsu more powerful and real. The cost of this power is her sanity, it can also take over her body and make her appearance demon like; as seen when we were trying to apply a seal on her to stop the demon. She can learn to control it, but not among Konoha Nin…since no one trained her, and her own clan disowned her and tried to kill her because of the Ido; she has expressed a desire to move to Blades, if the Emperor will have someone help her train in its powers."

Antonio nodded, and told them to give her some rations and water since she looked so weak and the legionnaires nodded and walked off with her. Several minor struggles continued through the day, civilian militia members and non-clan nins who were trying to just survive, with Konoha losing at every turn. The final moment of the battle of Konoha was an act of Kami, several extremely powerful bolts of lightning fell from the sky and shattered the Hokage's monument, leaving only the Yondamie's face intact, and it looked more stern and remorseful than it had ever seemed before.

Up in Kami's Realm:

Minato Namikaze was laughing manically as he finished destroying all but his face on the mountain, so all of Konoha's inhabitants would see how disappointed he was with them. He then began plotting how to use the other nine irrevocable favors he had won from the goddesses during poker last night. As he plotted a lot of beings felt chills run up their spines.

Back in Konoha:

As the day ended and night fell upon the village the Imperials moved their captives into the ruined remains of their former home, and set guards. They would remain until the Emperor arrived to do anything else with them.

Meanwhile, Antonio was laying on his horse's back, thinking of his loving wife Sonia, aka Inquisitor Tear, and wishing he could be lying next to her but knew that once this was all over he would be asking for a month off for some 'free time.'

Next Time: The Trial and Consequences

R&R