If he was being honest with himself, Ashitaka didn't know what to expect when it came to raiding a village. But he sure wasn't expecting the total lack of any ninja from Kumogakure, or even any local forces, during his unit's entire time scouring the area. The gates weren't even closed, let alone guarded. Aside from the team which had taken it upon themselves to claim the vaunted position of "first into the city" setting off a deadly trap and wiping them out entirely, nothing of note happened during their takeover. The civilian populace refused to evacuate at the first requests, then commands from the ninja that they do so. Instead, they only moved far enough away from the administrative building to watch the fireworks.
The whole affair was terribly anti-climactic barring the surreal paranoia stemming from their inability to find enemy forces. Ashitaka was left in the main village while the remaining ten teams, having found the locations of the area's various resource collection and refinement facilities, dispersed again throughout the countryside to carry out their orders of demolishing the facilities. When they found out that they were going to be bereft of both food and work in a destructive event that couldn't be bothered to be entertaining, the vast majority of them begrudgingly packed up and made their way towards their failed guardians in the Land of Lightning. Kumogakure no Sato was going to be hard-pressed to provide for tens, if not hundreds of thousands of refugees, especially with a considerable amount of vital commodities being cut off.
As he sorted through the loot and bound it into the sealing scrolls that was provided to his teams for the raid, Ashitaka wondered why he didn't feel especially strongly about any aspect of this whole ordeal. He was neither proud of having accomplished such a major win in the war, nor ashamed at the damage he'd caused, nor grief-stricken at the losses his forces suffered. A few choice uses of his own Mass Violent Architectural Restructuring on the designated target buildings within the village transformed them from actual, functional structures into nice-looking 2.5D imitations of what once stood in their place. That evening, ten messenger pigeons and one hawk serving the same purpose would arrive at the Konoha Administrative District's Aviary with confirmation from Ashitaka and his escorts that the siege of The Village Hidden in Hot Springs and its resource sites had succeeded with minimal losses. This would be a crushing blow to Kumogakure's morale and economy.
The whole affair was terribly anti-climactic barring the surreal paranoia stemming from their inability to find enemy forces. Ashitaka was left in the main village while the remaining ten teams, having found the locations of the area's various resource collection and refinement facilities, dispersed again throughout the countryside to carry out their orders of demolishing the facilities. When they found out that they were going to be bereft of both food and work in a destructive event that couldn't be bothered to be entertaining, the vast majority of them begrudgingly packed up and made their way towards their failed guardians in the Land of Lightning. Kumogakure no Sato was going to be hard-pressed to provide for tens, if not hundreds of thousands of refugees, especially with a considerable amount of vital commodities being cut off.
As he sorted through the loot and bound it into the sealing scrolls that was provided to his teams for the raid, Ashitaka wondered why he didn't feel especially strongly about any aspect of this whole ordeal. He was neither proud of having accomplished such a major win in the war, nor ashamed at the damage he'd caused, nor grief-stricken at the losses his forces suffered. A few choice uses of his own Mass Violent Architectural Restructuring on the designated target buildings within the village transformed them from actual, functional structures into nice-looking 2.5D imitations of what once stood in their place. That evening, ten messenger pigeons and one hawk serving the same purpose would arrive at the Konoha Administrative District's Aviary with confirmation from Ashitaka and his escorts that the siege of The Village Hidden in Hot Springs and its resource sites had succeeded with minimal losses. This would be a crushing blow to Kumogakure's morale and economy.
