A small plane appeared in the sky and began drifting slowly toward Ronin's position.
At the same time Machi kept firing Nen threads, using them to carry Chrollo through continuous aerial shifts, angling both of them toward the space above him.
The villa had already been reduced to ruin by the prolonged fighting. Franklin's explosion had finished the work; the entire grounds were little more than scattered rubble.
Susanoo was gone, yet the stone pillars falling from above had not decreased. If anything they had grown more concentrated, slamming down toward the last place Ronin had stood.
After the Rising Earth Spears, Ronin's hand seals changed. His body slipped straight into the ground.
Earth Style: Headhunter Jutsu.
There was no target to drag under, but the technique still let him transfer rapidly through the earth and evade Kortopi's continued barrage.
Kortopi was exactly as Ronin had predicted. With the accumulated pillars now stacked high, every descending column carried the effect of his En—that was how he maintained a lock. Yet as the new pillars struck, the sensation of Ronin's presence simply vanished.
Kortopi did not panic.
He had known for a long time that Ronin could burrow. The pillars he created began to change shape, becoming thinner and sharper. They were no longer aimed only at the previous location; instead they stabbed down across a much wider area of ground.
The sudden change forced Machi and Chrollo, who had been using the pillars as aerial footholds, to drop back toward the surface.
The small plane in the sky hesitated. With Ronin gone, bombing the empty coordinates lost all meaning.
Chrollo slid the bookmark onto the Super Fortress page and turned to a fresh leaf. The moment his feet touched the ground he pressed both hands downward in the same posture Ronin had used for Earth Style.
The earth shattered under his palms. An arm shot upward and seized toward his wrist.
Ronin.
Chrollo had no chance to dodge, and no intention of doing so.
Before the emerging hand could close on him, an antenna slid out from behind Chrollo and stabbed toward the exposed arm.
Machi.
At the same instant the ground Chrollo had touched hardened into solid stone. The arm that had broken through was locked in place halfway.
The antenna sank cleanly into the limb. Neither Chrollo nor Machi showed any expression of victory. The too-smooth success only made both of them tense.
Chrollo moved with extreme speed. His hands left the ground; his feet drove him backward in a single explosive retreat.
The Ronin who had received the antenna detonated.
Shadow clone.
At Machi's feet the earth suddenly swelled into a rising mound. She had no time to escape before the dirt closed around her.
Earth Style Barrier: Earth Prison Dome of Magnificent Nothingness.
Ronin's real body had already appeared less than ten meters away. His first priority was not Chrollo. It was Machi—the one who had just expended an antenna.
From the moment Chrollo activated the teleportation ability, Ronin knew the man had temporarily lost the means to break shadow clones. While performing Headhunter Jutsu he had also released a clone.
The body that slipped underground spread En and locked onto the exact landing points of Chrollo and Machi. The clone moved at once, launching a direct assault on Chrollo. Ronin himself stayed farther back, emerging quietly from a different patch of earth and waiting.
The moment both opponents were drawn by the clone, he sealed Machi inside the earthen prison.
Earth Prison Dome of Magnificent Nothingness—Jirobo's technique among the Sound Four—not only trapped the target but absorbed any chakra the prisoner released while attacking the walls. The single drawback was that Ronin had to maintain contact with the structure.
He closed the distance to the dome. Before touching it, however, he formed seals again and released a second shadow clone. The new clone gave Chrollo no opening to act; it completed its own seals and dove underground at once.
Chrollo understood perfectly. Ronin intended to eliminate Machi first.
The situation also created an opening for him.
His eyes flickered. The page in Bandit's Secret shifted. The small plane that had been circling overhead vanished; the three Nen monkeys reappeared and charged straight at Ronin.
Chrollo had already realized the prison required physical contact to maintain. That was the opportunity.
The only remaining question was whether the figure touching the dome was the real body. His free hand produced the phone again and aimed the camera.
Ronin refused to give him the shot. He shifted position, using the earth prison itself as a solid barrier that kept him out of the lens.
Sharp pillars continued to fall from the sky, yet none of them struck the prison. Instead they targeted Ronin's exact location with unnatural precision, as though trying to force him into the camera's frame.
Then the rain of pillars simply stopped.
A bad premonition rose in Chrollo's chest. Under normal conditions Kortopi would never halt the barrage. He had no attention to spare for supporting the copy-user now.
Under the combined pressure of the pillars and the camera, the Nen monkeys finally closed the distance.
Whether the figure maintaining the prison was the real Ronin or not, the monkeys had to attack.
The lower half of Chrollo's face changed. Among the three monkeys, the one whose mouth was sealed by a zipper raised a hand and gripped the pull tab.
Before the zipper could open, Ronin—already forming a one-handed seal—struck first.
Wind Style: Vacuum Serial Waves!
A continuous barrage of spinning wind blades erupted from his mouth and tore toward the three monkeys.
The Hearing Monkey made an instantaneous decision, stepping forward to interpose its body in front of the Mute Monkey. The blades carved it into pieces in a single heartbeat.
That momentary obstruction was enough. The Mute Monkey finished pulling the zipper open.
At the same instant Ronin's Sharingan caught a single Nen thread shooting from Chrollo's position and coiling straight toward him.