Kumoko and I observed the scene below. I watched in horrified fascination. Kumoko… I didn't know what she was thinking. Her tail was stiff, not moving an inch, and her claws dug into my shoulder, gripping tighter.
The big baddie laughed. He pulled his hand out of Temujin's chest, and tossed the body aside. He turned toward what looked like a pedestal; it was something I hadn't noticed during my first inspection. The pedestal, unlike the rest of the room, protruded from the ground in gray, steel-like material and had a slanted top. I couldn't see what was at the top, if anything.
Kahiko moved, feeble hand extending toward the pedestal.
The potentially evil boss stopped. Turned around. Spoke. The words were low, but I could still hear them. "Still alive?"
The voice wasn't pleasant. It dredged up memories from the before, of my once friend and then bully, Veronica. It was how he spoke, the disdain, the arrogance.
Evil boss raised a bloody hand toward the old grandpa. I don't think he was trying to help Kahiko.
Before I had time to consider, I flickered forward. One moment, I was hiding by the access shaft lip; the next, I appeared by the man's side and punched as hard as I could. It was a clean hit. My fist sank into his flesh, but it felt like I was hitting a wooden dummy instead of a person.
My punch flung the enemy away until he hit the wall. A cloud of dust obscured the attack's result.
Now that I was inside the room, the gelel energy was unmistakable: it pervaded everything and everywhere. I couldn't even feel my own chakra inside this place.
Without performing seals, a clone popped and immediately moved toward Kahiko. I kept my eyes on where the enemy was. If he were anything like the others, I doubt this would be enough to stop him. And sure enough, he wasn't down.
"Hahaha."
First was his creepy laughter. Unhinged.
From the corner of my eye, I saw my clone using Mystic Palm on the old man. He kept pointing to the center of the room, trying to crawl there.
"What is this? A local?"
The dust had settled enough to reveal the man walking off from where he had hit the wall like nothing had happened. From up close, I could see more details. His face was strange, not entirely human, but not monstrous either. His eyes were red with vertical pupils. The exposed muscles on his chest, arms, and stomach looked more like hardened leather than skin.
He was smiling, amused. "You can't stop me. I'm all-powerful."
The hell was he talking about?
"Who are you?"
The man's smile never faded. "Me? I'm Haido, conqueror of the world."
What… the heck was he on about?
He laughed again. "Now that I found the Gelel mine, the world is mine for the taking."
A hoarse voice came from behind me, the old man. "Excellent Shinobi from Hidden Leaf", a wet cough interrupted the man before he started again. "We must stop him before the world is doomed."
That clinched it: Madmen surrounded me, each worse than the other. One was a crazy megalomaniac with delusions of godhood. Another believed in doomsday. I took Kumoko from my shoulder, placed her on the ground. Never took my eyes from Haido.
"You should go back, Kumoko."
A single annoyed tail lash was my response. Instead of returning to the badger's land, Kumoko turned and ran toward Nerugui. She grabbed the ferret with her teeth, dragged it to my clone. Well, at least she was being helpful.
I wasn't sure exactly what was going on here. Who was this Haido? What was Kahiko's involvement in all this? Why had Haido killed Temujin? Didn't Temujin work for Haido?
It could be just a classic case of villain betrayal.
A fight was probably inevitable, even if the area wasn't ideal. I'd need to be careful with my explosives to avoid collapsing the ceiling on us. It would be embarrassing to die by my own explosions.
Best Girl Ino would never forgive me for such a blunder.
I cast my perception to the wooden beacon. In the time it took me to get down here, Ino had used her clan's jutsu. I wasn't sure what she was going to do with the batwoman, but she had won.
And then there was the stone I took from the wolf woman. It felt heavy in my perception even through the haze of the gelel energy, almost palpable ever since I'd gotten down here. Like it was ten times the size it should actually be.
Since Haido seemed more than happy to… not do anything for now, I asked a question.
"Kahiko," I said without looking back. "What do you mean by doomed?"
Another cough, then wheezing breaths before the old man spoke again. "Ah, the excellent shinobi from Leaf knows my name." Another gurgle.
I wanted to look back and check the old man's condition, but resisted the impulse. I kept my eyes fixed on Haido.
"There once was an empire," Kahiko wheezed. "But the stone always brings disaster."
"Not anymore," Haido interrupted. "Now that I've found it, I'll create my utopia."
"Does your utopia include sacrificing people to your machines?"
The red orbs behind his back moved, rotating and changing shapes. "Those were necessary sacrifices."
Yep, megalomaniacal crazy.
"Any chance you'd give up and go back to wherever you came from?"
Haido chuckled, then laughed.
Yep. There was no harm in trying. I wasn't sure how strong this guy was, but he killed Temujin, who, in what I saw in the caravan fight, wasn't weak. But I knew Haido's weakness. If his power derived from the stone, I just needed to find out where this was, then destroy it.
Mid laugh, Haido raised his hand. He didn't point it at me, but at my clone and the old man she was still trying to keep alive. I flickered, pushing my hands with the seals. A transparent barrier sprang to life in front of me.
From Haido's pointed hand, a blast of energy, a giant bluish-green laser, hit the barrier with explosive force. Dust billowed out from the impact. The barrier cracked and shattered, but the laser petered out.
Then suddenly, Haido was in front of me. For a moment, it looked like he had used shushin no jutsu. Was he a shinobi too?
He swung a punch toward my face, air billowing around his fist.
Instincts took over. I didn't block; that was a fool's errand. Instead, I pumped my body full of chakra, barely hitting his wrist to give me enough momentum to dislodge away from the attack.
In theory, it should have been a sound strategy. I had done this countless times in the academy, redirecting attacks instead of competing force against force. It still worked, but not like I wanted.
The arm I used to hit Haido's wrist felt like I had just punched a stone with.
I plucked a kunai from my pouch tool, but Haido moved again. He was damn fast, and I was too close. He backhanded me away. I raised my hands in time to prevent a full blow to the face. It felt like being slapped by the hand of god.
The impact flung me away, and in a reverse of what I had done to him at the start, it was my time to hit the walls. I hit stone, and stone gave way. For a moment, there was only white noise and pain. I tried to breathe, and couldn't.
It didn't take long to regain my bearings. I took one much-needed breath, then coughed up, stirring dust.
Clone-chan had stopped healing Kahiko to attack Haido. Now that we knew he was fast and strong, she was doing a way better job than I was at keeping up with him.
Haido kept trying to blast my clone, but he telegraphed the attacks. He used his right hand to perform both blasts and laser attacks. It made it easier to predict, but still challenging to deal with, mainly because my clone had to keep flickering around and summoning barriers to protect me and Kahiko. Still, my clone was doing a better showing than me at fighting Haido. She landed punches, almost tripped the man with an earth wall, and shot him with water bullets, and pebbles imbued to explode. If she had access to my prepared exploding kunai, she'd have finished him already.
Damn, why wasn't I doing anything?
I pushed from the wall I had hit; the rubble dislodged with my movements.
"Took you long enough," Clone-chan said between flickers.
I grunted. It hurt, but I could still fight. And I was pissed.
While my clone attacked and pushed Haido away from Kahiko, I took one of the small scrolls strapped to my thigh. Unfurled it, popped out sets of kunai I had prepared.
"Are you doing anything? I'm burning all my chakra here and can't hold it for much longer." Clone-chan said between flickering and barriers. It took me a while to notice she spoke in English. Heh, not giving info away. Smart of her.
I replied in kind: "Yeah, I got this."
Haido wasn't looking in my direction. He had been pushed away from the pedestal, and toward where Temujin's body was. I threw several exploding kunai. I didn't think that would be enough, but it was just a distraction. And sure enough, Haido didn't move, but the red balls at his back morphed and expanded, creating what looked like shields.
The kunai hit, things exploded, and I flickered toward the ceiling.
At the same time, Clone-chan dashed in instead of dodging or blocking. She kicked and punched and stabbed.
Haido blocked most, ignored some.
But again, what I needed was just the distraction. I threw the kunai in a perimeter around Haido.
Distracted by my clone, he didn't notice until the perimeter was complete.
Then I threw another set, then another.
The first barrier sprang to life, and the tags exploded. Then the second, and the third. Three explosion barriers might be overkill, but I wasn't about to leave anything to chance.
Staggered explosions were something I had been thinking about for a while to make my explosions more effective and less prone to collateral damage. It was a shame I couldn't really feel the explosion reverberations when it was inside a barrier; needed sacrifices.
Inside the tri-barrier perimeter was the charred corpse of Haido.
I canceled the last barrier, approached. Checked for a pulse. There was none, but the body was still full of the gelel energy. Even with the overpowering energy all around, I could sense it inside his body.
My threads burrowed into his flesh, searching until they found the stone in his right hand. When I tried to pull it free, it resisted far more than the wolfwoman's had. I felt a tearing sensation run up my chest, and when it finally came loose, I was left panting, like I'd strained a muscle I didn't know I had.
Haido's stone was bigger than the wolfwoman I had recovered. Was this a case of ego? Bigger stone 'cause he was the big boss? I pushed the silly thoughts away. I placed another perimeter barrier around him, this one to contain instead of explode.
If the guy was still alive even without the stone, it would give me time to react before he broke it.
Satisfied, I turned and ran toward the old man. Maybe I could still save him.