Chapter 51 - Lifeless army

"Things are getting out of hand, Yahiko's creatures are preventing us from capturing our targets. I didn't think that he would have this many at his disposal, should we send more Nomus young master?" Kurogiri analyzed the battlefield calmly.

Shigaraki didn't respond, he merely scratched his neck in annoyance as he watched the giant green bird fly over the forest. The occasional giant centipede or some other random giant monster would appear out of thin air and free fall. It irritated Shigaraki, to see a high schooler fight off the force he created so nonchalantly.

"We'll wait for the others to inform us if they have found any of our targets, we'll make our move once we have enough information and distract Yahiko." Shigaraki thought about it for a little bit, he then brought his prosthetic arm to his neck and began scratching madly.

[Tomura, this is Sasori reporting in, I just received some information on Yahiko's whereabouts. The teacher gave me his location rather easily, do you think that this might be a trap? He just went back in the building after he told me, but there's no way he would sell out his student that easily right? Should I go back there and kill everyone inside?]

"Have you tried looking up?"

[What do you mean? ...Ah, I see. So should I go back or..?]

"No, those weaklings aren't even trying to put up a fight, they're just going to leave it to that one up there. We'll leave them be for now, and when we crush Yahiko in front of their eyes they'll wish that they did something sooner. For now, find Deidara and work together in order to distract Yahiko while we find and retrieve the other targets."

[Understood, I'll start looking for Deidara it'll be easy for me to find him. I just have to follow the explosions and I'll be with him in no time.]

"Kakuzu, it's time for you to go down there. If you can, bring me the brat's arms." Shigaraki grinned slightly, just thinking about cutting off Yahiko's arms excited him.

"If you pay me enough, I'll bring him back alive and in perfect condition, just for you to enjoy yourself." Kakuzu grunted, he then jumped off of the mountain towards Yahiko.

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"Fuck! There's no end to these things!" Mirko panted slightly as she jumped away from a clay spider, which exploded a second later.

The rabbit hero was dodging the explosions with little difficulty, but the amount of explosives coming her way was unending. She couldn't get close to Deidara, he always seemed prepared to launch a C1 explosive her way whenever she tried to rush past the clay army. The pussƴcats and Himiko also couldn't do much, after all, Deidara had the high ground.

"Dammit! I can't fight and protect Pixie-Bob at the same time!" Tiger cursed himself for being unable to help Mirko. Himiko and Mandalay felt the same, their quirks aren't able to help them in this kind of situation.

"Tch, fuċkɨnġ bastard! Your voice is seriously starting to annoy me! I'm going to shove that clay down your throat! Don't underestimate my power! Luna Ring!" Mirko kicked the heads off of two clay dolls, which prompted Deidara to detonate them.

'Fool, haven't you learned anything at all? You are simply tiring yourself out.' Deidara chuckled to himself as he watched the rabbit hero carefully.

Mirko however, ignored the explosions brushing against her back and started moving towards Deidara vigorously.

"Eh? She's ignoring my art?"

She stomped on the clay spiders and centipedes! Deidara detonated them. She swatted away the clay birds and dragons! Deidara detonated those. Slowly but surely, Mirko ignored the pain and pushed forward.

After seeing that Mirko had plot armor and was starting to get closer to him despite his art separating them, he started to take the fight a bit more seriously. In an instant, the clay dolls started to bunch together to form a much larger doll. This doll was started moving towards Mirko while simultaneously absorbing several smaller clay dolls as it tried to act as a wall.

'He switched the quality of his dolls in order to keep me away? He must know that it'll be too dangerous for me to take this explosion head on, but if he thinks that'll stop me then he's dead wrong!' Mirko quickly figured out what Deidara was up to and took a moment to jump away from the approaching doll, giving herself some time to breathe.

With a smirk on her face, Mirko took in a deep breath and dug her foot into the ground. Lifting her leg up, she brought up a large chunk of the earth that was twice of her along with her. Using her arms to keep it in place, she brought her foot back and kicked the earth chunk towards the giant doll as if it were a football. Almost immediately after, she lunged towards the chunk and grabbed the back of it. Now she was going somewhere!

When she made contact with the clay abomination, she did her best to angle herself toward Deidara while taking the least amount of damage from the explosion that was imminent.

In response to Mirko flying toward him, Deidara threw more and more C1 birds at Mirko, but he only managed to destroy the rest of her chunk of earth. Still, he decided to throw his art at the hero with reckless abandon, this however, was a big mistake.

Mirko proceed to bring her foot down on top of one of the clay birds, using it as a stepping stone. She repeated this process despite the pain she felt in her feet, she couldn't stop now, it was just starting to get exciting!

Her skin started to get charred, but she was jumping off of the explosive birds now! Each step she took, a clay bird would be torn apart and detonated. Mirko quickly learned how to use the explosions to her advantage and was able to increase her speed, surprising Deidara. She is close! Just one kick and this fight will be over!

DEATH

Instinctively, Mirko twisted her body away from Deidara in mid air. Not even a second later, a metallic tail tried to pierce her. Unfortunately, Mirko landed in the middle of the clay horde, which began to mold themselves around her body. Quickly, Mirko looked over to her attacker to see who else could overwhelm her.

"Sasori, my man! You came over here to appreciate my art didn't you? I'm glad to see that even stubborn people like you can learn to appreciate my art mm!" Deidara happily greeted his companion as he detonated the clay around Mirko.

"AGH!" The series of explosions were strong enough to knock her away from the artists and into the dirt.

"Mirko!" Mandalay quickly ran to her side for a pulse, somehow she was still alive. But that could easily change if they don't get her treated for her injuries.

"You idiot, if I was even a millisecond late your head would've been kicked off! And I didn't come over here to appreciate your shitty 'art', I came over here because I have drag your sorry ȧss back to that wannabe villain brat. Come on, I caught one of them but there are two other targets we have to capture. These worthless third rate villains can't even fight against the weaker students. I'm also going to need your help with distracting the dangerous one with Kakuzu, make as many dragons as you can." Sasori said as he presented Himiko to Deidara.

"What! Since when?" Tiger didn't even realize that they had took Himiko away from his side, he was too focused on keeping an eye on the the weaker villains while preventing Pixie-Bob from losing too much blood.

"I will ignore what you said about my art for now, but I would like to present my latest masterpiece before we leave this forest hm!" Deidara put the little man aside and started molding more clay.

"Whatever let's go. Oh, I can't believe I almost forgot. You two over there have proved to the rest of us how incompetent you truly are, therefore, you're no longer needed in the league." Sasori brought his attention to Spinner and Magne, who were also roughed up from the explosions.

"Wait! I haven't fulfilled my objective yet! I refuse to be thrown away so easily!" Spinner yelled, his voice filled with rage.

"We can't fight against a hero that's in the top ten! How were we supposed to know that a powerful hero was here! We just need a second chance to prove that we're still useful!" Magne argued.

"Who cares if you have or haven't completed something on your little to-do list? That won't change anything you know, the league doesn't need burdens like you two around." Sasori replied lazily, his lack of care only angered the two even more.

"Now then, we can't let important information leak to anyone, so consider yourselves lucky that I'm giving you two painless deaths." Sasori's words suddenly made the two villains freeze in place, surely he was just joking... right?

BANG!

Magne suddenly dropped to the ground, Spinner watched as blood began leaking from a small hole in her forehead. He slowly turned to look back towards Sasori, but he couldn't even beg for his life before the same sound was heard again.

"Kakuzu might scold you later for being so wasteful you know, he might even go on another rant about our savings." Deidara frowned as he remembered the last rant Kakuzu went on, he complained for over three hours.

"Well it's not like we have time on our side, we have to finish up quickly if we want to succeed." Sasori respond as he climbed on the C2 dragon with Deidara while dragging Himiko with him.

Before the two pussƴcats were even able to say anything, Sasori was covered in a cloud of smoke, revealing his true form to the others around him.

*Sigh* "It's probably best for me to use this technique now rather than later." Sasori mumbled to himself.

"Red Secret Technique: Performance of a Hundred Puppets."

Taking a scroll out of his cloak, Sasori threw it up into the air and used a chakra thread to open it. After a short pause, a hundred different figures began flying out of the scroll and remained motionless in the air. Bringing his other hand into his cloak, a hundred chakra threads began spilling out of his sleeve and linked themselves to the figures.

"How... are we supposed to win against this?" Tiger muttered to himself in defeat.

"That's the neat part, you don't."