Kannin was kept in reserve for the first fight, both due to his prowess and his injuries, so he got to see the horror from the canopy. Limbs were flying off their owners, blood flowed across the ground like someone had found a spring. Shouting and screams assaulted his ears, and shinobi were falling one by one.
From what he could tell, Konoha had the advantage, but their proportional losses weren't good; for every 1 Konoha ninja that went down, 2 Iwa-nin fell, which looked great, but currently they were outnumbered nearly 5 to 1. Those were statistics they couldn't bear. He was calculating this out when he saw Kiyo turn her head sharply in his periphery.
"What's the matter Kiyo?"
"I hear footsteps approaching from behind us."
'That must be the vanguard force returning. If they encircle us, it'll be bad' Kannin thought with alarm, 'I have to go.'
Shin leapt from his perch, Kiyo in tow, and called Warai and Tetsu to his side.
"What's happening, Kannin?" Warai asked
"Their vanguard force is coming back, we need to fend them off long enough to allow our forces to disperse. Kiyo, go to Shin and tell her."
Kiyo nodded and bounded off toward Shin's location. The rest of Team 4, however, went to the backline to stay the vanguard. They landed in a clearing, Kannin in front, Koseki in hand, with Tetsu settling in a taijutsu stance to his left, and Warai wielding 4 kunai in each hand to his right. In front of them were 500 battle hardened Iwa-nin, the select chosen for the vanguard.
What was about to happen would go down as the first of many miracles of the war, where a team of 3 teenagers fought off an entire Iwa battalion by themselves, allowing their comrades to escape an encirclement.
-
The three of them stood together before their enemies, readying themselves for the worst.
Kannin began calling the shots, "Tetsu, you set the stage with some earth release, and grab their focus in the center. Warai, you take the left, and burn them to ash. I'll take the right."
"Do you think we can do this, Kannin?" Tetsu asked with a bit of worry.
Warai said through panting breath, "It's not a matter of if we can, Tetsu, we have to. There is no alternative to failure here."
They all nodded and went to work. Tetsu erected a maze-like arrangement of walls with earth-release, and they headed to their sections. If Kannin's math was right, they had a little more than 150 enemies each, and dealing with them would be trying, even with their skills.
Kannin used the earthen walls to direct his water release right at his enemies, who had begun charging him. A massive surge of saltwater emerged from the ground, and like river rapids, rushed through the corridors of soil, eroding them slightly, and taking many Iwa-nin under. Those whose footing was weak or off balance were swept beneath the wave, helpless in the heavy seawater, their limbs flailing around, splashing their comrades who managed to resist the tide.
Kannin let out a battle cry, which Warai and Tetsu answered with their own. Again using an electrified Koseki, he shocked the water he had channeled through the maze, eliminating about thirty of them.
The earthen walls couldn't last forever, though, especially against shinobi form Iwagakure. The damage from the water wall had softened the earthworks significantly, dying the lower half a deeper brown, almost black. Kannin watched as the underside failed, and the dry, top portion began to fall over as the wall buckled beneath it, sending rubble and dust flying all around him.
Through the dust, the Iwa-nin began attacking. They emerged at random; left, right, behind, above--there was no predicting where they would come from. Kannin was able to block most of them with Koseki, but a few kunai grazed his abdomen, drawing blood. He quickly summoned a whirlwind to clear the dust, and shake off the ninja around him. A roaring gale erupted at his feet, and climbed into the air, whizzing past his ears and soaking up much of the dust in its widening gyre.
When the tornado fizzled out, the dust cloud was mostly gone, and Kannin saw through his still-stinging eyes100 Iwa-nin around him.
'It's not like I haven't survived these odds before' He thought with a smile
He gathered his chakra, and focused his mind. The Iwa-nin were confused at this, seeing their outnumbered opponent close his eyes so suddenly, and they laughed at his stupidity. Kannin, on the other had, was contemplating the odds of his next attack succeeding. Ever since he gained affinity with lightning chakra, he had wanted to add it to his Storm God style, which he thought would increase its potency substantially.
He used wind release to launch himself in the air, and slashed with Koseki, behind which a force of chakra so dense you could feel it in your bones coalesced. To be clear, Kannin's Storm God style was not a Kekkei Genkai or Kekkei Tota, it was not a fusion of Wind, Water, and Lightning chakra, but an application of all three individually at the same. At the crest of his blade, a crescent shaped disturbance of wind formed, and behind it, a jet of deep blue water, which began sparking with azure electricity. Kannin let his slash fly, screaming, "Storm God Style: Cloudburst!"
If the enemies fighting Warai or Tetsu could look over, they would've seen what looked like a glittering blue bomb strike their comrades, sending and electric mist hundreds of meters into the air. The impact of Kannin's technique alone was so powerful that if flattened the nearby trees, and the shockwave sent dozens of Iwa-nin flying.
The aftermath of was a number of small cyclones that faintly crackled with lightning snaking their way across the battlefield. This one attack killed nearly 70 Iwa-nin almost instantly, there was simply no way to escape such concentrated chakra emission for most shinobi.
The ones that lived saw dull grey chains erupt of of their enemy's belly and impale their comrades. Kannin used his chains to pull himself back to earth, and to regain some chakra, as Cloudburst sapped a lot of his reserves.
After landing, he used the rest of his energy to fight with Koseki and finish off the stragglers, impaling them with his blade. With blood flowing off Koseki, he jogged over to where Tetsu and Warai were fighting. It was at this point that Kiyo came back with Shin in tow. There, She and Kannin got to see their teammates unleash their own 'ultimate' techniques from the sidelines.