Chapter 151: The Story of Four Turtles and One Rat
The Clone plus Ninja plus Bald keyword combination had only been a working hypothesis up until this point. The moment the navigation arrow pointed straight at a sewer manhole cover, Ross knew it was almost certainly Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
He would never in his life have voluntarily climbed into a sewer for any reason other than an absolute obsession with game cartridges.
Only Ross himself and the two bald men who had no choice but to follow under the terms of their hire actually went down. Everyone else had dispersed the moment they entered Yorknew City, each heading wherever they wanted to go.
One thing that offered some consolation: as a major international city, Yorknew City's underground infrastructure was decent. The layout had some resemblance to New York's system, with quite a few passages wide enough for vehicles to drive through.
Even the narrower sections weren't anything like The Shawshank Redemption's crawl through a channel of liquid chocolate sauce. Ross was not going to have to move on all fours.
As the sewer exploration continued, Ross found himself genuinely impressed by how adaptable humans were. The unbearable smell that had hit his nose on first entry had faded into something he stopped noticing entirely within a surprisingly short time.
What he encountered next was a different aspect of the sewer environment entirely.
A gathering place for the displaced.
In terms that only Ross would recognize from his own era: a temporary refuge for people who had hit the elimination line.
There were actually a considerable number of people down here. Especially in the wider vehicle-width passages, makeshift sleeping spots were everywhere: cardboard box scraps assembled into something resembling a bed, tents pieced together from grimy fabric, campfires built from old oil drums and scavenged materials for warmth.
More notable than any of that, though, was the sheer number of people. And quite a lot of them weren't the raggedly dressed homeless. A significant portion were people who were fully and neatly dressed, thoroughly out of place with the environment. A number that actually looked like it made up the majority.
"Looks like this is where the goods and people that can't be seen in public have ended up for some underground trading."
Hanzou had adapted to the sewer smell by now and swept a glance across the crowd. Given the timing, the conclusion came easily.
People here were also observing Ross's group with all kinds of different expressions. Understandable: two of the three were bald, and the level of visibility that produced required no further explanation. In any setting, these two would guarantee a hundred percent double-take rate.
Which raised the question: why did the Kasanui-ryu school let its ninjas keep such conspicuous hairstyles? Maybe it was time to add "work in disguise using a wig" to the supplementary employment contract terms.
In any case, now that he had confirmed this underground space had formed its own version of a sewer flea market with considerable character, what he was looking for was almost certainly mixed in somewhere among these filthy stalls.
Ross had already scaled down the navigation arrow to thumbnail size, wearing it like a small ornament, and followed it while scanning each stall using Gyo.
Certain highly intuitive craftsmen, even without being Nen ability users, sometimes unconsciously infused their spirit and focus into the objects they made during the process. Some went further still, using ritual methods involving blood sacrifice to forge items with unusual properties. Objects that had been through something like that could retain faint traces of aura, and to ordinary people without Nen, these were what was called "the spirit in an object."
Picking gold from the mud was difficult, but the satisfaction of actually finding it made up for the effort.
Indeed, because these were goods that couldn't see daylight and couldn't be sold anywhere legitimate, the yield rate here was noticeably higher than the surface flea market with its mix of the genuine and the fake. Several items with faint detectable aura were visible.
Ross was not good at haggling, so he handed that entirely to Hanzou. Hanzou confirmed which items Ross actually wanted, then bundled several together as a group purchase to obscure the real targets, and without spending much at all acquired a bronze mirror, a leather-handled knife in a leather sheath, and a wooden die.
But eventually, Ross found what he was actually looking for.
A metal helmet of unusual design, shaped somewhat like a samurai head covering, with a steel face mask that covered everything from the nose down.
The navigation arrow pointed directly at it.
When Ross's hand made contact, a description appeared.
[Shredder's Helmet: Grade D Nen item, helmet. From the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. The helmet of Shredder, leader of the Foot Clan in New York City and eternal enemy of the Ninja Turtles. Having been worn by Shredder himself over an extended period, it has absorbed a portion of his aura and carries certain special functions.
Wearing Shredder's Helmet automatically equips the steel face mask. The mask alters the wearer's voice and filters out poisonous gases.]
Fairly ordinary as an item. Without the description indicating it was worn by Shredder himself, this would just be a voice-modifying gas mask.
But as a possession of the Ninja Turtles' main villain, there was absolutely no reason to leave it behind. Even if it went unused, it would look excellent in a display cabinet.
Hanzou haggled again. Ross paid cash again.
Thanks to the thrifty saving habits he had maintained since the Sky Arena winnings, Ross still had substantial funds available. Underground markets like this didn't move high-value goods, and anyone tempted to ask an outrageous price had to consider whether they'd live long enough to spend the money.
But the moment Ross completed the purchase and secured Shredder's Helmet, the navigation arrow added new information.
This was a follow-on effect from the earlier upgrade, the one triggered when Ross had arranged the 2v2 bout between the four designated class Nen ability users.
[Detected: you have obtained ownership of Shredder's Helmet.]
[You have unlocked prerequisite directions for the corresponding game cartridge acquisition.]
[Direction 1: Collect Shredder's Helmet, Leonardo's Twin Swords, Raphael's Sai, Michelangelo's Nunchucks, and Donatello's Bo Staff (5 Nen items total) to unlock Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3.]
[Direction 2: Collect Shredder's Helmet, Casey Jones's Hockey Stick, and Hothead's Claws (3 Nen items total), and while wearing any one of the three items, complete one valid combat encounter in any of the following locations: the sewers, the bar district near the Statue of Liberty in coastal Yorknew City. This will unlock Tournament Fighters.]