Chapter 112: Swingin' like lava

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[Mikoto Uchiha's POV]

"How do you want to do it?"

Tearing my gaze away from the marching troops, I looked at the masked Sukaina, or the infamous Owl, and staring into those cold eyes I replied, "We should start by clearing the crowd together, before taking a high level target each."

A hint of amusement appeared in those black eyes as she said, "That should do it. Which one do you want, Roshi or the Explosion Corps?"

Surprised, I clarified, "The head of the Explosion Corps, Gari, is just as dangerous as Roshi in singular fight. When I said clearing the crowd, I included most of the Explosion Corps. I don't want to be surrounded by users of the Explosion Release while fighting one of those two."

The amusement in Sukaina's eyes only increased though as she uttered, "And here I thought it would be boring. How about you take Roshi, and I take Gari."

I nodded, liking this better than the other way around. Gari was a difficult opponent, because of how well he had mastered his Explosion Release, which he used to enhance his Taijutsu. Because of his fighting style, which could be described as quite wild and unpredictable, the Sharingan was not as powerful as it should be.

As for Roshi, although I couldn't put him in a Genjutsu, all of the other abilities of the Sharingan were kept. Besides, I'm not a fan of Genjutsu anyway.

Now, with our plan made, I was about to ask for what signal we should make, when Sukaina took out a bunch of pebbles. I never saw her pick them up, but that didn't matter.

As she cocked her arm back, her hair started defying gravity as they slowly rose up, while her pupils seemed to disappear. Then, I barely activated my Sharingan in time to see her arm move, and the pebbles fire into the crowd.

Then, I heard a loud boom as the heads of several of the soldiers exploded into gory bits, signalling the start of the battle. Unsheathing my blade, I body flickered into the crowd, my Sharingan scanning the surrounding opponents to find the most efficient fighting course.

But as I did, I spotted Sukaina, and finally understood why the Owl was so feared. Although my Sharingan allowed me to follow her movements, it only made it worse.

Not only was she moving absurdly fast, each of her strikes were killing at least one person, and more often than not several. She didn't have my deadly effectiveness, the skill of seasoned Jonin like Shisui, or the sheer strength of the Green Beast.

No, she had something of her own. She mixed everything she had learned to turn herself into a death machine, one that couldn't be stopped.

In the short moment I analysed my surroundings for my attack, she had already exploded open the chest of three soldiers, and used another soldier's body as a weapon to smash others into pieces. She fought like a demon on the battlefield.

But seeing this only made me smile. Yes, it was terrifying, but it also sparked my fighting will. My analysis done, I lightly breathed out, before acting.

Making a special handsign with my free hand, lightning chakra gathered on my two extended fingers, my index and middle finger, which I then rubbed on my blade, coating it with lightning chakra.

While I did this, the surrounding soldiers did not even try to approach and instead used their bending to attack from a distance, resulting in all five elements flying my way.

But it only took a swing of my sword to slash apart the incoming attacks, before I started slashing away at them.

I never needed more than a single attack to kill my opponent as my lightning enhanced blade cut through the surrounding soldiers, my body moving with deadly precision as not a single attack hit me.

Sukaina and I turned into a black and blue blur as we moved too fast for them to follow, ripping through the enemy troops.

Surprisingly, Sukaina was able to follow my movements as well, as we had each other's back. We fought in tandem as we intercepted attacks the other couldn't see coming, or could block or dodge in time, moving with frightening speed through the crowd of soldiers. The poor men were far too outmatched, with their only strong officers too slow to catch us in the middle of this crowd.

Unfortunately, they weren't stupid, and so after around a minute of pure and unadulterated slaughter, the troops widened the distance between themselves, clearing out of the valley. However, they still left around 200 of their troops on the ground, dead.

Sukaina and I both stopped as our main targets also appeared, Roshi and the Explosion Corps, the later of which had been halved.

Red magma like chakra poured out of Roshi's body as he said, "The Owl, can't say it is a pleasure to see you again. Came back for a dance?"

I turned to look at Sukaina, who did not show anything as she replied coldly, "I will do my best to make it quick. For all of you."

Roshi looked like he wanted to add something, but Gari interrupted, "This is over, you are surrounded. Surrender."

Surrender. Funny for a ninja to say that, he of all people should know what happens to prisoners. Wait, that is a weird thing to say for a ninja…

Then, I heard the sound of an explosion, and saw a regular soldier in the crowd surrounding us suddenly leaping at me. Explosions came out of his feet, allowing him to move much faster than normal.

I could follow him with my Sharingan, but my body was struggling to move. Usually, I would have predicted his attack pattern and intercept it, but knowing my opponent, I knew this was useless, for I simply raised my sword in his general direction.

And right as we were about to clash, he opened his palm toward the side, and explosion coming out of it as his direction suddenly drastically changed, going past me to reach Sukaina.

I wanted to help her, but as I was about to I saw a large red fist heading for my side, one I had no doubt would rip me open if it hit.

So I quickly circulated my chakra as I used the Body Replacement technique, a poor nearby log taking the attack in my stead.

Reaching a few meters from my original location, I could see the result of the clash between Sukaina and Gari, and that was Sukaina standing there with a hand on her blade's handle, while Gari was back into the crowd, his chest bleeding.

Smiling inwardly, I coated my blade in lightning chakra, before applying lightning to my feet as I rushed to attack Roshi. At the same time I saw all the surrounding soldiers back off, allowing Roshi and the Explosion Corps to go all out.

Roshi did ignored the sword going for his throat, and instead grabbed for my waist. Smelling something wrong, I lowered the strength in my blade, and as it clashed against Roshi's chakra, I was shocked to find it stopped.

I had already fought Roshi before, but he had never shown this. Still, as I had expected something wrong to happen, I was able to respond in time, using the rebounding force to slap away his arm that tried to take me by the waist.

Roshi only attacked with his second arm though, with even more speed than before. In response, I flipped backwards, my foot slamming into his chin. This time, my attack surprisingly had an effect, despite being weaker than the earlier one's, knocking Roshi off his feet.

However, I hadn't put much power into the attack, so despite the lightning effect, Roshi quickly landed on his feet, his guard put up.