As Ren finished speaking, Baki quickly spoke in a hushed tone, mostly to Temari and Kankuro. "They are all Elite Jonin from Kumo. The black man to the left with the small afro is called F. He has a Lightning Nin-taijutsu specialty, and he can electrify you with every touch. The smoking man with dreadlocks to the right is called Big G. A genjutsu specialist. His techniques use mostly smell. Beware of scented smoke. The man in the middle-"
"Is Killer Bee, the Eight-Tailed Jinchuuriki. If you fight him, you are dead. I will face off against him." Ren succinctly finished because he noticed their opponents were starting to get itchy for action.
Despite his rude interruption, he was grateful to Baki for introducing their enemies, as he didn't recognize the two. Hearing about their specialties, Ren inwardly sighed. They were a very well-balanced team, and it was obvious that Kumo was not messing around. They wanted him dead.
F was there to disrupt his body, Big G was there to disrupt his mind, and Killer Bee was the major firepower of their team. All Elite Jonin. S-rank or not, many ninjas would be weak at least against one thing in this kind of team's repertoire.
"Hah! Ya heard that, Big G? We are famous." F grinned and flexed his fingers, "I call dips on the kids." His eyes trailed mostly over Temari's figure, and his grin widened.
"Dope." Big G let out a puff of smoke from his nostrils, "I guess the Jonin is mine, then. What do ya say, Killa'?"
Ren felt his three clones reach their positions underneath the Kumo Jonins, but stopped when Ren flickered his chakra inside of him, signaling them not to attack yet.
These three... they should attack together. That would give them the biggest advantage, but clearly, they did not intend to do that. It would have been a tactical error to attack them and make this four versus three, if they wanted to make it into two one-versus-one and one two-versus-one fights.
He hated to put so much burden on Kankuro and Temari by pitting them against an Elite Jonin, but Kankuro was definitely a Chunin-level ninja, and Temari was nearly a Jonin. They could survive it with their current skill.
Baki was an Elite Jonin himself, so fighting another Elite Jonin should give him good odds of survival.
Four versus three sounds like an advantageous position for them, but it wasn't. Ren would need to focus on preventing the Kumo team from sneak-attacking his weaker teammates, which would create attack opportunities for them and limit what he could do. It was a very unenviable position. The enemy team simply had better composition.
No. It was better to wait and see if these Kumo idiots decided to split up instead. At least that way, there would be no danger of Killer Bee suddenly attacking Kankuro or Temari out of nowhere to gain an advantage.
Killer Bee looked Ren in the eyes over his sunglasses, "What say you, Stoner? Up for a duel?" He smirked, and Ren's eyebrow twitched in annoyance.
The overgrown bastard knew. He knew Ren could not refuse it in this situation. He wanted to show him a middle finger so much...
But, "Alright. Are we going out of the way? I reckon our fight will be a little bit more destructive." Ren said as impassively as he could while ordering the clones on the ground to sneak attack the two Elite Jonin, the second he and Killer Bee got out of sight.
"Then let's go!" Bee exclaimed, giving Ren finger guns. "But let's not be low." He stomped his right foot on the ground, and Ren inwardly groaned as he felt his three clones dispel due to the ripple of chakra that Bee pulsed from his foot.
'Fuck.' Ren sourly thought but didn't let it show on his outward facade. Silly me for expecting something to go well. Blasted jinchuuriki.'
"Listen to the flow of my soul! I am Killer Bee! I'm gonna whomp ya. Ya fool. Ya little tool! I fly like a butterfly, and sting like a bee!" Killer Bee shouted while doing some sort of embarrassing dance that made Ren want to facepalm from watching it. "Wheee!" He ended his dance by throwing his arms up with a sign of the horn hand gesture.
Ren could practically feel Temari and Kankuro deadpanning at the man from behind him as they got slack-jawed at his antics.
Inwardly shaking his head, Ren motioned with his head to the side at Killer Bee, signaling that he is ready to move, and channeled chakra into his legs.
Still, it didn't pay off to be careless, so Ren checked his detection seal one last tim-
Ren's eyes widened in surprise for the second time in an embarrassingly short time as he whipped around, instantly creating three clones behind him that guarded against a sneak attack from behind by the Kumo group.
Chakra strings sprang forth from his hands at breakneck speeds and connected with Temari and Kankuro, yanking them toward Ren as he instantly kneeled on one knee and created several earth spikes. Baki, fortunately, had good enough reflexes that when he realized something was wrong, he instantly jumped away from his previous location.
But Ren wasn't completely in time, and Kankuro screamed as his right arm was lopped off at the elbow in a single strike by a puppet that suddenly appeared, aiming to bisect him.
"Kankuro!" Temari screamed in alarm. She was way luckier than her brother. As Ren's chakra string yanked her forward, her arms jerked, and the steel frame of her war fan was by sheer coincidence put in the way of the second puppet's blade that was about to slash her gut wide open.
Baki twisted his body, evading the third puppet, just as Ren's earth spikes speared the three puppets. They opened their mouths, and Ren watched enough of the Sakura versus Sasori battle to know that a hail of poisoned senbon was supposed to follow. He channeled more chakra into his earth spikes, and several other spikes grew from them, crushing the three puppets from within along with their inner mechanisms.
The senbons did not launch.
A bead of sweat rolled down Ren's temple as his heart thundered in his chest. He wondered how he had missed the sneak attack for a moment, but then he noticed the clay bird high in the air.
"You gotta be kidding me." He crossly muttered, his expression twisting in an unwelcome apprehension.
He was using a sensory technique through the ground because using Ino's wind one passively all the time required a bit too much focus. And it was not supposed to be necessary. After all, the number of ninjas that can fly could be counted on one hand!
'What kind of bullshit Lancer luck is this!?' Ren grumbled as his eyes stopped on Sasori and Deidara watching him and his team from above.
Three kunai were instantly hurled through the air, all coated in lightning chakra, just as Deidara released over a dozen small clay spiders, letting them fall toward Ren's position.
'Lightning Kunai Net.' Ren inwardly intoned as a chakra string from his other hand shot and grabbed Kankuro's severed hand and pulled it to him.
The lightning-charged kunai suddenly chirped with electricity as streaks of lightning connected them, creating something similar to an irregular net that electrocuted all the clay spiders and disabled their explosive components as they fell through it.
Ren could see Deidara's expression twisting into a snarl as he petulantly stuck both of his hands into his clay pouches while glaring at Ren like a child whose toy was taken away from him.
Another kunai flew through the net, using its blinding light to hide, and while another Sasori's puppet blocked the three lightning-charged kunai before they could impact the clay bird, this kunai was missed as it embedded itself hilt-deep into the underside of the bird.
Deidara blinked as he registered it.
But it was too late. Ren ran a stream of lightning chakra through his hand, and with a loud thunderclap, the lightning from his fingers jumped through the air at the polarized kunai within a split second.
Ren inwardly thanked Hinata for dragging him to practice the lightning release with her. As far as he knew, lightning chakra was the only way to defuse Deidara's bombs, but holy hell, it was not his preference.
Deidara instantly lost control of the electroluted clay bird as it started crashing down toward the ground, flying past Ren and even the Kumo team.
The whole sequence of events happened in less than five seconds, and when Ren once again turned around, he noticed that his clones did a good job distracting the Kumo team by throwing some explosive kunai at them.
Fortunately, the Kumo ninjas knew how deadly the seals attached to his kunai could be, and they could never be truly sure which seal was sent at them. One hit and they could be turned into stone or salt. So, they naturally chose the cautious approach and decided to dodge every single one of his clones' thrown weapons, giving Ren enough time to deal with the flying pricks.
A question of why Sasori and Deidara were trying to kill him flew through Ren's head for a brief moment. But he pushed it away. It was not important right now.
The situation has changed. He could not face Killer Bee, Sasori, Deidara, and two Elite Jonin from Kumo with Kankuro and Temari on the battlefield. They would simply die. Hell, even Baki would most likely simply die in the upcoming fight.
Ren slowly sucked in a breath. He had to make a decision.
Killer Bee and his teammates avoided yet another volley of kunai and landed several meters away from their original position, just as Deidara and Sasori appeared slightly to the right of them. The two teams glanced at each other.
As Ren feared, they were not going to fight each other. His lips thinned in concern as he stared at the three S-rank ninjas in front of him.
It seemed he didn't have the time to hesitate. Temari, Kankuro, and Baki were a burden.