Glasses desperately grabbed Choji’s collar. He yanked it forward, but Choji’s core was too strong and he didn’t budge. Choji grabbed Glasses’ necktie and slammed him into the wall. As Glasses collapsed along with part of the wall, Choji charged to finish him off, but Glasses nimbly spun around and used that force and momentum to pull the pipe out of the toilet.
A surge of water clobbered Choji, fixing him in place momentarily.
He felt a prickling pain race up his fleshy back.
“Huh?” He reached around and felt a small needle. His body grew numb, and he dropped to his knees. He looked back and saw that the man with long hair had the barrel of a gun turned toward him, even while Shikamaru sat on top of him pummeling him with blows.
“What did you do?!” Shikamaru grabbed the back of Long Hair’s head and pressed it into the flood on the floor.
Needle. Poison?
“Choji! You okay?!” he called.
“Fine.” Choji had already finished weaving the signs by the time he replied in a low voice.
Multi-Size Technique!
His body abruptly swelled and expanded outward. With the washroom very much unable to contain his rapidly growing bulk, Choji smashed the walls and pushed up against the ceiling.
The lethal dose of a poison depended on the size of the body. If the body were enormous, then the required lethal dose would also need to increase. If he made himself a little taller, if he grew to about sixteen feet, then one shot of poison would no longer have any effect on him.
“What the …”
Glasses and Long Hair gaped, and by the time they came back to themselves, Shikamaru was gone. While Choji was tearing the washroom apart, Shikamaru had flown the coop.
“Haah! It’s cold,” Naruto sighed, as they finally broke through the top of the cloud. How many times had he witnessed Sasuke’s superhuman art of cutting lightning after that first strike?
The air around them was below freezing, and they were all covered in ice pellets. Naruto brushed away the ice that clung to Sakura’s neck and shoulders, and Sasuke brushed away the ice building up on Naruto’s head. Since no one could do the same for Sasuke at the end of the line, he shook himself like a cat drenched in the rain and knocked the ice off himself.
The area was calm like they’d flown onto an atoll, making their terrible journey through the cloud seem like an impossibility. Space lay ahead of the extending pillar, and the stars shone like gold dust in the riverbed of the starry sky, clear like a small brook. The light reflecting off the startlingly large moon was so sharp, it seemed like he could almost grab hold of it, but unfortunately, the threesome didn’t have the luxury of enjoying the view.
“Honestly. That was no fun at all,” Sakura said wearily and looked down. A cloud hung far below, looking like a goat’s back. It was definitely a cumulonimbus cloud. There was a real possibility it was raining on the ground. “I hope the masters are okay.”
Sakura’s hope was not borne out—the village of Konohagakure was being assaulted by a downpour.
“Ah, this isn’t good,” Kakashi had said when a drop of rain hit his nose a mere two minutes earlier.
The downpour began in earnest almost instantly, raining down without mercy. Both earth and wood grew softer from the wetness. The earth pillar was particularly susceptible to moisture, and the surface quickly began to crumble. He would have to use extra chakra to reinforce it and keep it from falling over.
“If we keep using chakra at this pace, we definitely won’t make it to 660,000 feet!” Yamato cried. “Kakashi, what should we do?”
“What should we do?” Kakashi muttered, his hands still planted on the ground. “I guess all we can do is keep trying.”
The elevator deposited Ino and Orochimaru on the thirteenth floor with a little mechanical hum. The director’s office should have been at the end of a long hallway, but they had only taken a few steps when a thick, steel door blocked the way ahead. The security system to one side clearly used fingerprint and optical authentication for entry. If an unregistered person attempted to get in, an alarm would no doubt sound.
“So a card’s too old school then,” Ino sighed.
“I could destroy it all?” Orochimaru said evenly.
Ino shook her head dejectedly. Ino-Shika-Cho missions were centered around intelligence gathering, for the most part. The rule was they left no trace of themselves behind. And now this snake man comes along, ready to burn it all down.
“So don’t break it? Then I’ll at least hack into the security cameras.” A snake slithered out from the hem of Orochimaru’s kimono. It wriggled up the wall and wrapped itself around the camera hanging from the ceiling, bit into it, made a hole in the side, stuck its slender tongue in, and began flicking it around.
Ino and Orochimaru had likely already been filmed standing in front of the door, which meant that if they stayed there, someone would come along eventually. They could continue to play the researchers and eloquently plead their case and get them to open it, or …
While Ino’s thoughts raced, a voice came from behind them.
“You two. What are you doing there?”
When Ino looked back, a woman in a grey suit was walking toward them. She had to have seen the snake wrapped around the security camera, but perhaps Orochimaru had cast a genjutsu on her—she paid it no mind as she marched straight toward them.
“This floor is off limits to anyone without permission.”
“Oh! Umm. We needed to speak with Director Furieh.” Ino played the timid scientist and shrank into herself as she replied. “Um. Who are you?”
“Mr. Furieh’s secretary,” the woman replied, puffing her chest out.
His secretary would definitely be able to get through the security to the director’s office. On a normal mission, Ino wouldn’t have hesitated to borrow the woman’s body with Mind Transmission. But while she was using the jutsu, her body was completely defenseless, so she only used it when she was with trusted comrades. Was Orochimaru really the sort of person she could entrust herself to like that?
“Um, we’re with the Mathematics Department.” Ino pointed to the badge on her chest. “The equation we discovered seems like it could be applied to the chakra pluripotent applicator research Director Furieh’s been moving ahead with. We wanted to discuss it with him.”
Hearing the words “pluripotent applicator research,” the secretary’s expression changed slightly. Furieh had Chihare working on that project in secret, and only a few people in the institute knew anything about it.
She stared hard at Ino and Orochimaru. “Which section do you belong to?”
“The mathematical analysis team.” They chorused the answer they’d prepared at the strategy meeting earlier.