Minato suddenly appeared beside Shisui in an instant. It wasn't that he didn't want to finish the job, but rather he clearly knew that so-called jinchūriki often had a "boss second phase."
Sure enough, in the smoke created by the explosion of the Rasengan, eight massive tentacles reached out, followed by a bellow that echoed across the battlefield.
Hearing this sound, the Kumo ninjas on the battlefield immediately grew excited.
"Great, we're saved!"
"We're going to win!"
In the shinobi world, the actions of top-tier ninjas from each village could easily influence the morale of the average ninjas.
Several giant octopus tentacles swept across the area, clearing a large portion of the battlefield.
Minato and Shisui had no choice but to retreat from the attack range of the Eight-Tails. Both of them were more specialized in fighting human opponents. When facing a large, thick-skinned tailed beast, especially the Eight-Tails, known for being second only to the Nine-Tails in combat strength, they didn't really have any effective methods. Or rather, they did have jutsu that could deal with such enemies, but the cost was too high.
However, neither Minato nor Shisui needed to take down the Eight-Tails quickly. Since Konoha currently had the upper hand in the battle, their job was just to stall it.
Using the mobility of the Flying Thunder God Technique, Minato found another opportunity and landed a powerful Big Ball Rasengan directly on the Eight-Tails' head.
The Eight-Tails only had its head knocked slightly to the side by the attack, then immediately swung a massive fist at him, who was still in the air and unable to maneuver.
Space rippled slightly, and a flash of yellow light appeared in an instant, he had retreated with a teleport just after the hit.
Shisui stayed at the edge, acting more like an observer, occasionally firing a fire jutsu to distract the Eight-Tails. There was no helping it. His Body Flicker Technique wasn't the same as Minato's Flying Thunder God, it didn't excel in godlike speed.
Unless he used that forbidden power from the Uchiha clan's perspective, all he could do was stay on the sidelines and support the atmosphere.
Right now, Konoha and the Uchiha clan were in a very favorable situation, so unless absolutely necessary, he would never reveal those Mangekyō Sharingan.
While Shisui was still deep in thought, not far away, Shiori, who had noticed the situation, was already getting ready to charge in with her Susanoo.
With a casual toss of Chidori Senbon, she paralyzed a few nearby Kumo ninjas, then formed hand seals and released a Great Fireball Technique to kill them all. She had originally been efficiently killing Kumo ninjas to complete the mission Ryouma had given her.
But before long, a giant monster suddenly appeared on Shisui's side. It was hard not to notice that spectacle, and from the looks of it, it was clearly a tailed beast.
"So this is why he asked me to come here?"
Her thoughts suddenly became oddly melodramatic. In reality, Ryouma just preferred working solo, this allowed him to use powerful jutsu freely without being constrained by allies.
The deafening roar of the Eight-Tails rang in her ears. Her eyes sharpened, and the three tomoe in her Sharingan began to spin rapidly, eventually forming a beautiful and complex Mangekyō pattern.
She kicked off the ground with force, launching herself like a cannonball straight at the Eight-Tails.
As her ocular power surged, a massive skeletal structure materialized. Countless chakra threads wove together to form muscle, and with a metallic clanking sound, a giant chakra warrior clad in dark tengu armor appeared on the battlefield.
Although large in size, her Susanoo didn't lack for speed. With just a few fearsome leaps, it closed the distance to the Eight-Tails.
Facing a Susanoo in this stage, about the same size as itself, the Eight-Tails showed no fear and threw a punch that stirred up howling air currents.
Shiori didn't meet the attack head-on. Instead, she controlled her Susanoo to draw a chakra longsword from its waist. With a nimble twist, she dodged the Eight-Tails' punch and slashed toward its head.
Killer B reacted swiftly. An octopus's natural advantage lay in its many tentacles.
One tentacle reached out and tightly wrapped the sword-wielding arm of Susanoo, while several others shot out to restrain it in place. The Eight-Tails opened its mouth wide, charging up a Tailed Beast Ball.
But just as the Tailed Beast Ball was about to be fired, another Susanoo rose up from the shadows on the ground and delivered an uppercut to the Eight-Tails' chin. Caught off guard, its head jerked backward uncontrollably.
The Tailed Beast Ball shot into the sky and exploded midair. The massive shockwave blasted through the canyon and punched a ring-shaped hole through the thick clouds above.
On the ground, Shisui stood stunned, caught off guard. He had long suspected that Shiori might have awakened the Mangekyō Sharingan.
Even though Shiori seemed reckless, the fact that she'd kept her Mangekyō a secret meant she was still mindful of the delicate relationship between the Uchiha clan and the village.
As a fellow clansman, he had been relieved.
But now? She just casually unleashed not one, but two Susanoo right in front of thousands of Konoha ninjas.
He simply hadn't had enough intel. Before he returned from the Kiri front, Shiori had already used Susanoo once.
Back then, she hadn't used it during battle simply because she was using transplanted eyes from her father, and didn't want to rely on powers that weren't originally hers.
Besides, the internal situation in Konoha had changed by now.
With Ryouma acting as a stabilizing force, even Hiruzen no longer worried daily about the Uchiha rebelling or whether Konoha could withstand it.
Shisui muttered to himself, "Speaking of which… can her eyes really handle this?"
He knew that Mangekyō Sharingan had a limited amount of ocular power, gradually leading to blindness with overuse. Ever since awakening his own eyes, he had calculated every single use with care.
But here was Shiori, even summoning Susanoo for her clone. How much ocular power does she even have?
Minato suddenly appeared beside Shisui and sighed, "So this is Susanoo… truly a powerful force."
He had always stayed in contact with Hiruzen and was also aware of why so many Uchiha ninjas were placed in the unit led by Ryouma. Besides the Uchiha clan's strong fighting spirit, another reason was to use his hand to keep an eye on Shiori.
Shisui was also someone the Konoha leadership kept a watchful eye on. However, as a descendant of Kagami, Hiruzen was still willing to trust him somewhat.
"What do you think of the Mangekyō Sharingan?" Shisui wanted to know what the man before him thought.
Minato, understanding what Shisui was worried about, laughed cheerfully and said, "To me, power itself isn't inherently good or evil. What matters is whether the person using it is doing so for the right reasons."
As he said this, he shifted his gaze to the two Susanoo currently battling the Eight-Tails.
"Believing in comrades, that's my ninja way."
Shisui was a bit moved. Other than Ryouma, among Konoha's current upper ranks, Minato might be the only one who sincerely viewed the Uchiha as true comrades.
B, we can't win two against one. The calm voice of the Eight-Tails rang out from deep within Killer B's mind.
This chakra giant is really tough. It was Killer B's first time facing an opponent who could physically match him in this form.
Because there were so many Konoha and Kumo ninjas on the battlefield, the fight between Susanoo and the Eight-Tails mainly relied on taijutsu.
Even the Tailed Beast Ball from earlier was launched at an angle by Killer B, and Shiori deliberately deflected it skyward.
But as each second passed, his emotions began to destabilize.
To him, A was his only family. Every time he thought about how the Third Mizukage was killed by Ryouma, he couldn't help but associate it with the possibility of losing his own brother.
Shivering all over, he could no longer hold back.
♪I'm going berserk, feel the power burst!The Eight-Tails' wrath, it's the worst of the worst!Bakayarō! Konoyarō!♪
The Eight-Tails released its eight tentacles from the tightly entangled Susanoo, then wrapped its entire beast body into a sphere and began spinning at extreme speed.
Using the eight tails to spin at high velocity, it generated a massive tornado storm through the surrounding air currents.
Shiori controlled her Susanoo to strike down with a blade, but the swirling wind currents diverted the force, neutralizing most of the attack.
The tornado kept growing larger. While it couldn't harm her inside Susanoo, the surrounding ordinary ninjas didn't stand a chance of surviving such a storm.
Shisui touched his eye and thought, Should I use my Mangekyō Sharingan here? But if I use it now, and something happens in Konoha later…
As he hesitated, Minato's voice reached him. "I'm going to use the Flying Thunder God Technique to teleport the Eight-Tails away. I'll leave the rest to you."
That was a good idea, but executing it would be difficult. Shisui frowned and asked, "But with that storm, how are you going to get inside?"
"When I hit the Eight-Tails jinchūriki with my Rasengan earlier, I marked him. I can sense the coordinate, it's inside the storm. However, I won't be able to teleport the Eight-Tails too far. Be ready, there might be some residual shockwaves." After Minato gave his instructions, he immediately used the Flying Thunder God Technique without a moment's hesitation and vanished.
At the same time, Killer B, who had been spinning wildly in place, showcasing his breakdancing talent as the Eight-Tails, also disappeared instantly from the battlefield thanks to Minato's move.
Shiori, still inside her Susanoo, had been considering whether to pull the octopus guy into her shadow space, but in the blink of an eye, the giant creature was just gone.
The violent wind, driven by inertia, held strong for a bit before gradually dissipating. Then, a distant mountaintop suddenly erupted with a tornado identical to the one from before. But since it was far enough away, by the time the wind reached the battlefield, it had lost most of its power and posed no real threat.
Shiori dismissed her Susanoo and landed back on the ground, immediately seeking out Shisui.
"Who moved the octopus away?"
Shisui looked at Shiori, who didn't seem the least bit worn out, and his face was full of curiosity.
"Don't you feel any strain on your body when using the Mangekyō Sharingan?"
Shiori gave him a strange look. "That's a weird question. Did you awaken the Mangekyō too?"
Shisui had no intention of hiding it and admitted openly, "Yeah, I probably awakened it even earlier than you. But unlike you, every time I use it, there are major side effects. You, on the other hand, seem completely unaffected."
"Hn." Shiori turned her head away, refusing to answer. She felt too embarrassed to explain that she had fused her father's Mangekyō Sharingan to gain Eternal Mangekyō powers.
After all, this overwhelming power wasn't something she achieved through her own strength.
Seeing that she didn't want to continue the conversation, Shisui dropped the subject.
Somewhere at the base of a mountain, Killer B uncurled his tentacles after completing the Tailed Beast Eight Twists. He looked around and found that the chakra giant had vanished, and so had everyone else.
"Weird, weird, where is everyone? Here? Over there?"
"It's not that the enemy disappeared. We were the ones relocated." The calm voice of the Eight-Tails echoed in his mind again.
A faint spatial ripple appeared, and both Minato and Ryouma appeared behind the Eight-Tails. They simultaneously formed seals for the Four Symbols Seal, each slamming a palm onto the Eight-Tails' body.
As chakra surged, a large number of sealing symbols spread across the Eight-Tails' body in under a second, then suddenly tightened.
Feeling the suffocating, snake-like constriction all over his body, Killer B suddenly got inspired with a new rap verse.
♪Yo, yo! I got sneak attacked, situation's tight,
But my fighting spirit's lit, I won't give up the fight,
Taking advantage of a brief moment before the seal fully activated, he gathered a massive Tailed Beast Ball in his mouth and detonated it right beside himself.
Ryouma immediately realized what Killer B was trying to do. He quickly generated a cloud of sand under his feet to use as a launch point and leapt forward like a cannonball, directly intercepting the glowing red Tailed Beast Ball.
[email protected]/Malphegor