Takara laughed at the not-so-stealthy attack.
"The habit of shouting the attack is always curious, especially for a ninja," Takara commented as he looked at the two arms around his neck, with Killer B and the Raikage completely immobile in the air with a fierce expression. "If you were born in a wrestling world, you'd be a hit."
Even the chakra around them was completely paralyzed!
Separating his hands after making the seal to freeze time, Takara lowered his head to move out of the danger point and stepped aside.
"Of course, the Raikage would be the first to arrive," he sighed a bit disappointedly. "Although Nox's creations were a sufficient distraction to capture Matatabi's jinchuriki, it was clear they wouldn't withstand the entire village."
There were probably troops approaching this place right now, right?
He brought a hand to his chin, his gaze alternating between Killer B and the Raikage.
"If there's nothing to hit, will they hurt their arms?" he wondered distractedly while releasing the rest of his puppets, leaving only a few for the workshop's operation. "Take them all out and don't let anyone get close to me!"
He waited a minute for the puppets to leave and canceled the temporal freeze.
(Author: WTF?! Just take Killer B as he is and end this!)
Ignoring the very logical voice in his head, Takara watched with interest as the forearms' strike resounded, and the confusion on both men's faces was evident, but they soon turned and took a guard stance against him.
"Bro, Hachibi has a bad feeling about this guy," Killer B told the Raikage. "Should we retreat and leave the village for him to chase us?"
The Raikage gritted his teeth while keeping his gaze on Takara but responded:
"And you think the plan will work now that you've said it out loud?!"
"Hey, don't blame the messenger, Bakayaro! Konoyaro!"
"You're not the messenger!" the Raikage's fist trembled, tempted to hit Killer B for spouting nonsense in this situation.
Takara watched the exchange calmly. He knew they were buying time for more reinforcements to arrive, but they didn't realize that every second of delay only meant more deaths in Kumogakure.
Although it seemed there were capable people, the number of his puppets was falling at an accelerated rate compared to his initial estimation. But against the last target, this consumption didn't matter to him.
"Oi!" the Raikage noticed that Takara was playing along and thought they had fooled him. "Who are you, and why are you attacking my village?"
"For him," Takara pointed at Killer B. "He has something I want and will have before the day is over."
"I'm not giving you my secret rap rhyme notebook! Bakayaro! Konoyaro!"
One of the Truth-Seeking Balls moved to his right and blocked a stealthy blow from the Raikage, making the muscular man frown as he felt the hardness of that black mass.
"You react quickly," the Raikage complimented, somewhat frustrated, as he moved away from Takara, regretting not having burst his head like a watermelon.
"I don't like sneak attacks…"
Killer B and the Raikage shuddered when they saw hundreds of noxins emerge from somewhere and cover the sky, but contrary to the swarm attack they expected, they saw them cling to their enemy and tremble.
"Oh, that gives me some ideas!" Killer B took out his rhyme notebook and jotted down the inspiration that came to him after seeing the grotesque spectacle.
The Raikage grabbed the notebook and threw it away with an arm throw.
"Noooo!" Killer B fell to his knees as tears streamed down his cheeks.
Takara felt his eye twitch at the comedic duo's performance. Although they were buying time, they were also making a mockery of him without scruples.
Even when Gyuki seemed to have warned him, he wasn't taking it seriously.
He should have expected the tailed beast to tense up when seeing the Truth-Seeking Balls, the strange thing was it didn't seem to try to take control.
Was it because of their mutual trust and understanding?
"This should be enough."
The Kumo duo stopped acting when they saw the little things fall to the ground to reveal Takara, with a large, throbbing amalgam of chakra on his back, forming two large hammers of hyper-concentrated chakra.
Nox used a similar setup against a dragon, but Takara had additional backups due to his various preparations.
Taking advantage of the Tenseigan's mobility, he flew towards the two and began swinging the hammer as if it weighed nothing.
The Raikage tried to use his fist to smash the hammer, but only ended up flying even faster in the other direction, learning the absurd power those things had.
"Listen, I know you don't like the idea, but we seriously need to go!" insisted Hachibi to his jinchuriki, taking advantage of the brief pause. "Your weapons are in shambles, that guy has so much chakra right now I almost mistook him for one of my... another tailed beast. And he still has the black orbs to defend him!"
But Killer B didn't leave, not willing to abandon the Raikage even if it meant giving it his all.
"You're a huge pain in the ass…" Hachibi complained, knowing he couldn't convince him at this point. "Fine! At least you have guts. Here's the plan: we transform, kick him far away, and take the fight elsewhere so we can go all out. If things get too complicated, we'll do that trick."
"I like the plan, let's do it! Weeee~" Killer B raised his hand making the heavy metal sign and began the Tailed Beast Transformation, quickly sprouting his tentacles (or tails?) and changing until he became a massive octopus bull with human arms.
Takara watched the transformation while blocking another attack from the Raikage with the Truth-Seeking Balls, and a question couldn't help but appear in his head.
"Why hasn't he regenerated the horn?"
Hachibi's left horn was cut by the previous Raikage in one of his attacks, but he should have been able to recover that horn by waiting a bit. Even if the regeneration is slow, by now it should be perfectly fine.
The only plausible explanation was that the tailed beast preferred to keep the broken horn as a kind of reminder, but it seemed stupid. It was a horn, not a scar to show off a proud event.
In any case, it should be a rather embarrassing reminder.
"Ink Saliva!" Hachibi spewed a large amount of black liquid from his mouth, propelling it towards the enemy.
"Again?" Takara blocked the stream with a second Truth-Seeking Ball after pushing away the Raikage. "This isn't going to wor-"
His response was cut off when a tentacle emerged from the ink stream from one of the barrier's open sides and whipped him hard in the chest, sending him flying through the air like a kite without a string.
"Strike!" the tailed beast laughed while making gestures with its arms, so it could be deduced that Killer B had current control of the form.
Takara landed on the next mountain, and when he tried to straighten up, he saw another tentacle trying to repeat the operation. He combined the Truth-Seeking Balls to form a complete egg-shaped blockade and regulated his condition, extracting Karin's stored chakra to recover.
He felt humiliated, remembering how he had just been hit like a third-rate villain for talking too much, so he gritted his teeth and gave an order to Nakime through his mental connection.
"Bring out the emergency backup puppet, code: Üc207Pr4f57t9!"