Hiruzen was in a meeting with the higher level jonin, including Minato and Shin, discussing some of the recent reconnaissance reports, when suddenly they saw a large, silvery fox appear on the windowsill, holding a scroll in its mouth.
Even Hiruzen hadn't seen anything like this in his life, and ordered one of the jonin to let the fox in. Kiyo squeezed through the window, and hopped onto the floor, before dropping the scroll on Hiruzen's desk before asking,
"Which one of you is the Hokage? Kannin said to give this to him!" She said, glancing around the room.
Hiruzen reached over and took the scroll, which was unfortunately a bit wet from Kiyo's drool, and unrolled it. Minato and Shin perked their ears up hearing Kannin's name, and watched the Hokage scan the scroll, and saw his face fall. They both could guess what the contents of the report were, but waited for Hiruzen to say it himself.
"It's a report from Shin's disciple, Uzumaki Kannin. He says he's discovered a large force of thousands of Iwa shinobi crossing The Land of Grass towards Konoha's borders."
Kiyo butted in, "The exact number from what I saw was 4,873 people!"
Shin spoke out, with a worried tone, "How long ago was this?"
"...Well it was about 20 minutes ago with the travel time."
Minato and Shin both shouted "You left Kannin at the mercy of 5,000 Iwa-nin for 20 minutes?!"
Kiyo seemed to understand what they meant after a moment, and dejectedly said, "It's 4,873..."
"I have to go get him!"
"Shin, it's okay, I put my Flying Thunder God formula on him before he left, as long as he's on this continent I can get him. Let me go."
Everyone in the room watched as Minato vanished into thin air faster than they could blink.
When Minato appeared at Kannin's side, he was dismayed. In an instant he saw Kannin surrounded by hundreds of Iwa-nin, and blood gushing out of many of his limbs.
-
It didn't take long for the sensors in the Iwa army to find Kannin in the grass. He had already prepared for that, though. He hid a few dozen explosive tags among the tall grass, and unsheathed Koseki, forming a chakra blade around it.
When the Iwa-nin found him, he had steeled himself. They quickly surrounded him, and Kannin seemed out of options, when the explosive tags detonated, sending dozens of Iwa-nin into the air. He took advantage of their confusion and attacked with Koseki, slicing through a dozen or so more.
However surprising his first attack was, he still couldn't fend off the entire army. They surrounded him again and attacked him in full. Dozens of earth jutsus were launched at him, while dozens more shinobi attacked him with taijutsu and kenjutsu. He launched himself in the air with wind release, and added lightning chakra to his blade, and sliced through many of the earth jutsus. But he couldn't be everywhere at once, and a jagged stone speartip embedded itself in his back.
Knocking Kannin out of the air, he landed hard in the grass. He hobbled up, in debilitating pain, and looked around to find his enemies again surrounding him.
'Hmmm, the grass surely has some sort of water table below it. I could use that along with that jutsu..."
Kannin decided on his plan of action. He first used water release to raise the water table above the soil, putting most of the rock-nin around him step in a few inches-deep pool of water. Many of them laughed at the seemingly pointless move, before they saw him again launch himself in the air, and throw his lightning chakra enhanced sword into the ground. Kannin juiced up the lightning in Koseki as best he could, and embedded it into the shallow pool. Purplish-white streaks of electricity sparked across the water and shocked many of the Iwa-nin around him, but many of them had rubber boots on, insulating them from the electricity, and one of these slashed at him with a kusarigama, hitting Kannin in the left calf.
Knocked down again, Kannin grabbed Koseki before summoning a tornado around himself to repel the projectiles being launched his way. He dispelled it after a moment, and leapt out with Koseki, taking down a few more Iwa-nin, but again being injured in the process.
It repeated like this for nearly 15 more minutes, Kannin incapacitating large swathes of the enemy, each time getting more beat up, either struck by some jutsu or getting his skin cut by scythes, kunai, shuriken, and just about every other weapon you could think of.
In the end, it was looking really bad for Kannin. Blood was pouring from his forehead and obscuring his vision. He hadn't left off from Konoha with much armor on him, and he was regretting that dearly at the moment. Every part of his body was screaming in pain, bleeding and bruised--but still he held on to Koseki and faced his enemies.
Just then, he heard a small whoosh behind him, and he turned to see his good friend Minato there. He must've started going delirious from the blood loss and pain, but no matter what he did, he couldn't shake the image of Minato from his eyes.
"Are you actually here, Minato?"
"Yes, Kannin. I'm here to bring you home."
"Oh thank god. I was starting to believe I'd have to fight you too." Kannin said, with a delirious smile.
Minato grabbed Kannin's shoulder, and teleported them back to Konoha. Kannin collapsed on the spot. Minato brought him to the hospital, where the nurses were shocked at the sight. He stayed while they stabilized him, but left afterward, since there was still more to do. He flickered back to Hiruzen's office, where he found everyone still there, Kiyo included.
Shin grabbed his arm and asked him what happened to Kannin, to which he told her, "They said he should be okay. He's in the hospital."
"What of the intelligence, Namikaze?" A gruff voice spoke out.
Minato turned to Danzo, and sighed, "There is indeed an army of Iwa-nin headed this way. I'm afraid we are about to be at war."
Hiruzen closed his eyes and shook his head, "With the assault on Shin's disciple here, we already are at war, Minato."